By Frank on December 16, 2007
The recent problems with the WSF’s Steel Electric ferries has focused some much-needed attention on the nation’s largest passenger ferry system. When former WSDOT chief Doug MacDonald resigned back in April, I wrote that the lack of focus on the ferry system “suggests a fundamental myopia at WSDOT. The ferry system is essentially a very large mass transit system, and the fact that the road-centric WSDOT sees it almost as an annoyance is troubling.”
As I acknolwedged at the time, there wasn’t much evidence to back up that assertion, but it seems to grow more and more correct as this saga unfolds. The ferry system appears to operate in its own little black box, off the radar of both WSDOT and the legislature, who are both trying to claim ignorance and blame one another for the lack of attention, as the News-Tribune reports in a whopper of an article on the state of things. Money quote:
State lawmakers approved the Steel Electrics’ retirement in 2001 and provided money for replacements two years later. But ferry officials opted to build boats too large to work as replacements. They wanted vessels that could serve routes anywhere in the ferry system. To make that work, however, they needed to replace narrow, shallow Keystone Harbor, a place where only the Steel Electrics could operate safely.
The state spent six years and $5.5 million studying a new Keystone terminal before abandoning the idea this spring. They blamed community opposition.
The new terminal was estimated to cost $1 billion over 30 years. It would have served about 3 percent of ferry system passengers.
While the authors are trying to make the point that it’s silly to spend so much money on a ferry terminal that serves so few people, surely there would be some big advantages to standardizing on a single ship design that could be used at all terminals. But, unfortunately, the cash-strapped system, still reeling from budget cuts due to I-695, can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The State clearly had to make drastic changes after the 1999 initiative decimated ferry funding, and, as one sailor in The Hunt for Red October says to his new trainee, “a boat this big doesn’t exactly stop on a dime.”
Read the whole piece to get a sense of just how hard it is to change direction, and give credit to new WSDOT chief Paula Hammond for trying to make it happen.
Posted in ifyoubuildit, kingcounty
By Frank on December 13, 2007
Amid all this streetcar hubub, I’ve been remiss in not talking about the emerging crisis with respect to the Steel Electric ferries that service the Port Townsend-Keystone route. The 80-year-old ferries have been pulled from service and are unlikely to return.
The Everett Herald has been all over this story, and it seems like a pretty big screw-up at all levels. The state legislature approved replacements in 2001, but the replacements were too large to dock at Keystone! So now we’re looking at 16 months or so before a local shipbuilder can design and build new boats.
In the meantime, the 90-minute passenger-only ferry being proposed from Seattle to Pt. Townsend sounds great. I’d make a weekend of that.
In a press conference today, Gov. Gregoire announced plans to build three new ferries at a cost of $100M by borrowing money from other ferry projects. The passenger ferry from Seattle will begin service in January.
Fun Fact: These ferries were built in 1927 to move people around the San Francisco Bay. When the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges were built, they were sold to the Puget Sound Navigation company and renamed (via Wikipedia).
Posted in ifyoubuildit, kingcounty
By Frank on November 29, 2007
I found my way to the Columbia River Crossing website today, and I was duly impressed. It outlines all the potential alternatives in a clear way, shows cost estimates, and even includes an event calendar with an RSS feed!
We have several megaprojects here in Puget Sound, and I can’t recall any that have such an informative, easy-to-use website. The downtown tunnel site is decent, but limited in scope.
The crossing project is estimated at $3.1B – $4.2B, which puts it in range of the Viauct and 520, neither of which have websites that are at all comparable. Sure, there’s the WSDOT project pages, but with all due respect, they’re pretty meager.
In the meantime, for each of these Seattle-area projects, independent advocacy groups have stepped in to fill the void, such as the People’s Waterfont Coalition and BetterBridge.org. But they both have a single point of view. And while it’s fine and
When Sound Transit releases a poll showing that 95% of Puget Sound residents had no idea how much that huge, much-publicized ballot measure acutally cost, it’s a wakeup call to all public agencies: your outreach efforts aren’t working.
Now, maybe WSDOT looked at the traffic on the CRC website and decided no one was visiting it and so it wasn’t worth trying again, I don’t buy it. If anyone out there has more information on why Seattle-area megaprojects haven’t done this sort of thing, drop us a line.
Posted in kingcounty
By Frank on November 19, 2007
The New York Times reports that WSDOT is selling its old foot ferries on eBay:
“The state decided to get out of the passenger-only ferry business,” said Traci Brewer-Rogstad, director of operations for Washington State Ferries.
It has been four years since budget cuts, controversy and eventually declining ridership ended service on the so-called foot-ferry route that the two 350-passenger boats served between Seattle and Bremerton. The state is focusing its ferry system on its core operations, larger boats that carry vehicles as well as people. Yet the goal of getting rid of the passenger-only boats is intended to generate cash so that King County, and possibly other local governments, can get into the foot-ferry business themselves.
This week, King County approved raising property taxes by an average of about $22 a year for a $400,000 house to help pay for the operations of what it hopes will be an expanding year-round foot-ferry service that could include routes in Puget Sound and Lake Washington, which separates Seattle from suburbs like Kirkland and Bellevue. The sale of the Chinook and Snohomish would go toward capital investments, including buying or leasing smaller passenger ferries that are more fuel efficient and require smaller crews.
Indeed, King County is estimating $8.5M in revenue from the sale of the two ferries to go toward the Ferry District.
Posted in ifyoubuildit, kingcounty
By Frank on October 24, 2007
King5 and SurveyUSA have releasedthe results of a poll on Proposition 1. The results show voters are roughly split 30%”Yes,” 32% “No,” and a whopping 37% “Undecided.”
A couple of interesting nuggets from the poll itself:
- Liberals are 2-to-1 in favor
- Support is even across all three counties
- Generation Y (the only voting generation who has a reasonable chance of commuting on light rail to the Eastside in their working lives) is in favor of the measure by 22 points.
- Meanwhile, the boomers are against it by 15 points
- People who have already voted are 3-to-2 in favor (a miniscule sample size, admittedly)
- Sound Transit is viewed more favorably than WSDOT
(Via CIS)
Posted in bicycles, kingcounty, Port, sr509
By Frank on October 4, 2007
Here’s something ironic: the increase in gas prices this year is causing a projected shortfall in gas tax revenue. Why? People are using less gas.
Actually, that’s not ironic at all — it’s exactly what you’d expect: supply and demand. It is, however, instructive in the over-reliance on a single source of revenue to fund transportation. It also highlights just how divergent gasoline consumption and road use are becoming.
Back, say, 50 years ago, when all the jobs were in the cities, every household had one car, and all those cars were basically interchangeable Fords and Chevys that all got roughly the same gas mileage, the gas tax would have been a fairly equitable and reliable way to fund road construction and maintenance.
Today, however, the picture is different, and only getting more so. With hydrogen, biofuels, and ultra-efficient electric cars on the horizon, consumption of gasoline will soon cease to be a useful predictor of road use.
Which leads us to other types of “use” taxes, such as static (i.e. toolbooth-based) or dynamic (radio transponder) tolling. Sen. Ed Murray elaborates:
“Almost worldwide after the end of World War II, gas tax was a way that transportation was funded. We are now moving into a period of time where we have to explore what is going to … replace the gas tax,” he said.
Murray, D-Seattle, said the state needs to look at tolls to fill the gap but added, “That’s going to be a long debate.”
It’s a debate well worth having.
Posted in kingcounty, seattle transit
By Frank on July 21, 2007
Gov. Gregoire is conducting a national search to replace Doug MacDonald as WSDOT chief. His chief of staff, Paula Hammond, will be the interim secretary.
I’ve already put in my two cents as to what I think the next WSDOT Secretary needs to do, but, oddly enough, the Guv has yet to call me to be on the search committee. Maybe she lost my phone number…
Posted in kingcounty
By Frank on July 20, 2007
The P-I gives us the rundown on the looming construction mess:
The state wants the job done quickly so I-5 is usable when initial work begins next year to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct. There was no way to keep more lanes open and allow crews to work safely, state officials said, or to spread it over nights and weekends and get the work done before fall rains begin.
Initially, up to two lanes at a time between Spokane Street and I-90 will be closed, then three lanes toward the end of the job during the work — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“In terms of the impact to traffic, this is going to be the biggest,” said state transportation spokeswoman Jamie Holter of the $15.5 million project. “There isn’t a place in the state where you have that many vehicles on the road.”
WSDOT is doing everything it can to get the word out, Metro is pitching in with increased bus service. One logical piece would be to reroute through-traffic to I-405. In fact, as I’ve argued before, when they finally widen 405 in 10 or 20 years, they ought to re-name it I-5 and make the route through Seattle — the one that goes down to one northbound lane at Seneca Street — I-405 or I-205, like in Portland.
Who knows, maybe through-traffic isn’t significant enough to make a tangible difference, or maybe even the wider I-405 can’t handle the increased traffic.
Posted in kingcounty, transitnow, vancouver
By Frank on June 29, 2007
Study of the I-90 center roadway.
Posted in kingcounty, transit
By Frank on June 29, 2007
What can I say, I suppose it’s “HOV Lane Friday” here at Orphan Road.
Driving back from Bellevue this morning, I noticed work had begun on adding HOV lanes on and around Mercer Island:
I-90 has a two-lane reversible center roadway between Seattle and Bellevue for buses, carpools and vanpools only. Traffic travels westbound in the mornings and eastbound in the evenings on the center roadway. However, buses, carpools and vanpools that are traveling in the opposite direction of the center roadway are forced to use general-purpose lanes. This makes buses and other high occupancy vehicles traveling between Seattle and Bellevue run increasingly late during rush hours, and reduces the benefits of sharing the ride.
The reversible center lane, used on I-90 and I-5 north of Seattle, naturally only works when the bulk of traffic is going one way in the morning and the other way in the afternoon. That may have been the case years ago, when the I-90 lane was first envisioned (and it’s still mostly the case on I-5), but it’s not the case any more on the Eastside. In fact, there may even be more people traveling East in the morning. Q.E.D., the buses suck.
Fortunately, when light rail is built across I-90, they’ll do away with the reversible center lane entirely, use it for the trains instead, and put standard HOV lanes in either direction. I suspect the work on Mercer Island is a precursor to that effort.
Posted in flexcar, kingcounty, sr509, transit
Sound Transit Latest News
Recent Comments