November 2009

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Crosstown Traffic

By Frank on November 24, 2009

rapid_trolley_c.jpg

In the comments to this STB post on McGinn’s solicitation of ideas, one of the readers links to the rapid trolley network, an idea that was commissioned as a possible component of the surface-transit alternative to the Viaduct replacement.

Matt Fiske wrote about this idea in Crosscut back in March (I could’ve sworn I wrote about it, too, but I can’t find any reference in the archives).

Obviously the buses are run by the county, but Seattle can still play a fairly significant role in getting transit through the city more quickly. Indeed, the report lists them out:

  • Business Access and Transit or BAT lanes allow transit coaches to operate in the outside lane shared only with right-turning traffic. BAT lanes can help improve operation speeds and reliability of routes.
  • Bus bulbs are another option to improve speed on trolley routes. Bus bulbs allow transit to stop in-lane, saving time necessary to re-enter traffic flow and provide additional space at bus stops for passenger facilities. Bulbed bus stops require less curb space than bus pullouts due to pull in and pull out distances.
  • Turn restrictions that focus on areas with heavy pedestrian traffic or where left turns may be unprotected or where right turning vehicles may be delayed by large pedestrian flows.
  • Transit queue jumps provide a lane or green time allowing transit to enter a signalized intersection ahead of general-purpose traffic.
  • Routing changes could go around congested intersections but may require new segments of electric trolley overhead.
  • Transit signal priority could provide trolley coaches with better speed and reliability through improvements in signal timing including adjustments to signal length and cycles. Transit Signal Priority allocates green time at signals to favor transit flow.

Almost all of these fall within the city’s domain and would be a huge boon for in-city transit. Sadly, none of them are included in the report’s cost estimates. *

In fact, if the network had any hope of being “rapid,” you’d have to invest significantly in the street-grid bottleneck between downtown and Capitol Hill. Almost all of the proposed rapid routes — much like the current routes between Queen Anne/Belltown and Capitol Hill/CD (2,3,4,8,10,11,12, etc.) — would waste a ton of time getting from one side of I-5 to the other, especially during rush hour. Finding a way to prioritize crosstown transit between, say, 5th Avenue and Broadway would be a big help.

* The report does calculate $142M in capitol costs for new trolley wire, improved stations, new fare collection systems, and a new electrical substation. Street improvements are outside the scope of the analysis.

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Ready to get rid of your extra car?

By Matt the Engineer on November 24, 2009

If so, SDOT will give you a pile of free stuff.

If not but you’re a single occupant commuter, promise to change your evil ways for two months and they’ll still give you $60 in bus tickets and a discounted Zipcar membership.

Already doing the right thing? Well, no free stuff for you. But thank you anyway.

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InfoGraphic Displays Rider Stats

By tsparks on November 24, 2009

There is an excellent graphic I found at the Greater Greater Washington web site. The graphic displays ridership across the Washington D.C. metro system. This is a useful tool that shows ridership stats in an easy to understand way. Is there any graphical analysis like this for King County metro or Sound Transit?

LINK http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=4068

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Parking on Capitol Hill

By Frank on November 23, 2009

Great post from Josh @ CHS on Capitol Hill’s new parking regulations, and why it might be a good idea to raise rates for street parking. This, in particular, is fascinating:

The most important thing to understand about off-street parking is that it simply is not satisfying a market demand. While trying to find a spot curbside can be a nightmare to say the least, most parking garages in the neighborhood sit empty. In its most recent Comprehensive Parking Study SDOT found that in the residential area surrounding Broadway, off-street parking utilization rates peaked at 50%, with an average at just 40% (along Broadway itself it was 65% and 51% respectively). Even validated retail parking, such as the Broadway Market, was noted by SDOT as being “underused”.

That’s certainly my experience. I can’t remember the last time I paid for parking on the Hill (now, I live close enough that I’m rarely on the Hill in a car). I’ll circle forever before I pay. Rational? No way. But such is the nature of the human mind. Make it a little more expensive to park on the street, and I’ll probably change my mind.

Parking is one of those subjects (like congestion pricing) where normally decent-minded liberals freak out and turn conservative. (Hint: they’re usually making outlandish claims about what’s good or bad for “families,” as if all families can all be lumped into a single bucket.) What people often fail to grasp is that no one’s proposing taking parking away, but rather pricing it appropriately so that it’s used most efficiently. Clearly, 50% occupancy for off-street parking is not an efficient utilization.

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Can McGinn Save The Trolleys?

By serial catowner on November 22, 2009

It’s plain to see that we’re near the end of the electric trolley buses in Seattle. What we should have seen by now is the purchase of several modern electric trolley buses for testing and studies of modern overhead wire to improve the service. What we have seen is an auditor’s report that short-term savings could be found by taking the wire down and converting the system to all-diesel, and a notable failure by KCMetro to plan for the orderly replacement of an aging fleet.

Saving and rebuilding Seattle’s electric bus system is first and foremost a job for the Mayor of Seattle. Nobody has a better right, or greater obligation, to ask the pointed questions and dig deep into the quangos, rooting out institutional inertia. And what could be more fitting, if the Mayor is an environmentalist, than saving a transit system that can run entirely on solar, hydro, and wind power?

Admiral Jellico said that he was the man, in WW I, who could have lost the war in a day. Mike McGinn is now positioned to be the Seattle Mayor who could save the trolleys- or lose them, with overly deferential obeisance to bogus audits, and pusillanimous wheel-spinning and focus groups.

History is watching.

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Free Companion Fare on Amtrak Cascades

By Matt the Engineer on November 20, 2009

I noticed the coupon at the Fremont PCC grocery store. Travel by May 21, 2010, anywhere Cascades runs (Eugene to Vancouver BC). There are a handful of blackout dates – mostly at holidays. The discount code is H815, but it says you have to present the coupon when you travel. They had a pile of them at the checkout counter at PCC, or I’m sure you can call Amtrak to find out where else you can get a coupon.

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Streetcar Expedited

By Frank on November 19, 2009

I’m a few days late on this, but I’m very glad to see that the First Hill Streetcar is being expedited for a 2013 launch.

I’ve been bullish on the 12th Avenue alignment in the past, and I have reservations about the efficacy of streetcars on North Broadway (all it takes is one double-parked car to shut the system down), but even running along Broadway the entire time, the line makes sense. It will be good to have it here earlier.

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Don't Change The Oversight Now

By serial catowner on November 17, 2009

By the end of the Bush years, the Federal Railway Administration (FRA) had come up with a plan to make it impossible to build more transit- simply regulate transit as though it was sharing the rails with heavy freight trains, and require the cars to be strong enough to survive collisions with 100-ton freight cars. This would increase the cost of any transit system to a point the public couldn’t bear. The plan couldn’t be implemented then, however, because transit systems were not under the control of the FRA.

Now the Obama administration wants to put the transit systems under federal control. The first story I read on this said the plan was to put the systems under control of the FRA, but this NYT article, heavily biased in favor of the proposal, says the plan is to use the Federal Transportation Agency. The Times article is probably an accurate harbinger of how the drums will beat in favor of the change, but not reliable for details.

Sadly, the major acquaintance of both Obama and LaHood with trains appears to have happened when they watched a department store display of toy trains at Christmas. What they should be doing at this point is clearing out the Bush moles from the FRA but we see no evidence of that.

Urban rail transit in America has a great safety record, substantially better than alternate ways of getting to work. Hard questions should be asked about any power grab at this point being made by people with limited understanding of transit and railroads. It would be truly sad if Republicans could legitimately claim that Democrats had overridden functioning local controls to install a federal agency that totally buggered transit.

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The Automobile As A Cargo Cult

By serial catowner on November 16, 2009

Turn to a comment thread in the P-I or Times, and you will find a striking vehemence of belief among automobile owners- striking, but not a mystery, when the car is seen as a cargo cult for Americans.

A cargo cult is one in which believers remember (albeit dimly) the arrival of a ship bearing cargo, and look forward to the day when that ship will return, loaded again with wonderful goods. After WW II cargo cults were discovered in the South Pacific, worshiping remnants of American airplanes, and praying for the return of the silver birds and great ships that had come before laden with goods.

It would be odd, indeed, if my generation of Baby Boomers did not hold this affection for the car. As a child, I saw the USA in my parents Chevrolet, and as a teen, almost everything I wanted to do happened first and foremost in a car.

And we were prepped for this role of adulation by the core belief of America in the 50s, that Henry Ford had demonstrated that capitalism could benefit the workers by cheapening the goods, through mass production, and raising the wages of the workers so they could buy the cheaper goods. To this was added, in the 50s, the General Motors view, that the corporation could provide benefits, health care, and retirement pensions that would make unions (or government) redundant- a view that the Boeing company endorsed and whole-heartedly put into effect- until that fatal day.

And, in a sense, it all ‘worked’. The Eastside, largely farmland and second-growth timber in my youth, is now the prosperous home of hundreds of thousands of people. In another sense, it’s all been a Ponzi scheme, with the reckoning yet to come, but remember, a religious belief is a belief, not a reckoning.

Presumably the cargo cult of the automobile will not be as durable as the great monotheisms, but there will always be some who remember fondly the time when the car brought goods and prosperity, and look forward hopefully to when that will happen again. The virtues of ‘transit oriented development may be *ahem* mildly overstated by fervent advocates, but it’s probably all good as a cargo cult competing with the automobile.

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Libraries, Parks and Transit

By serial catowner on November 14, 2009

I recently read a comment that “Well if you want to put light rail in the category of libraries and parks that’s fine”. I’m glad to hear that, because I do put transit in the ‘category of libraries and parks’- all core values that makes us better. Building a transit system is in a very basic sense building civilization.

Let’s compare and contrast with the automobile, which to all appearances makes us selfish megalomaniacs who drive alone and consider the burden to be on the pedestrian to stay out of our way. And let’s be perfectly clear- when Henry Ford paid his workers more, it was because he had to- almost none of them lasted more than six months working on the sped-up Ford assembly line.

It was Henry Ford, in fact, who emerges as the single person most responsible for the creation of Hitler. Hitler was still sitting in a German prison when Ford paid for the distribution of hundreds of thousands of copies of the forged “Elders of Zion Protocols” to the German people in the early 20s. It was on these fraudulent ‘Protocols’ that the Nazis built their anti-semitism. Ford in Germany was a big company and, ultimately, a big supporter of the Nazis. In fact, Ford hired a German Nazi to run his factory police force in Detroit in 1940.

The automobile, which will soon fade from common use, has a sordid history and is not a cultural or core value to our civilization. The private automobile has been anarchic and authoritarian at once- anarchic in the freedom granted the driver, and authoritarian in the powers we’ve granted the police on the highway. Neither of these can be considered values of civilization in any way.

In contrast, transit is a shared investment in a civilization that outlives the original investors, creates value in excess of its own existence, and benefits generations to come. Consider the railway system of India, a nation that upon liberation was almost entirely illiterate, yet had a framework of trained and educated employees spanning the mighty size of their nation, a network that instantly became a basic building block of governance.

It’s a sad comment on where the car has taken us that we even need to think hard about these things. But it’s where we are and it’s time to start thinking.

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