By Matt the Engineer on November 10, 2011
Seattle is covered in broken, dangerous sidewalks. I always assumed our sidewalks were terrible for the same reason that our roads are terrible – because WA is too anti-tax to fund anything properly. But today I found out that homeowners and businesses are actually required to maintain their own sidewalks. Not just rake and shovel [...]
Posted in taxes
By Matt the Engineer on July 21, 2010
There’s a very frustrating piece of our state constitution*: any tax you put on gasoline MUST go to building and maintaining roads. This is frustrating because increased fuel taxes would be a great way to discourage driving and help prepare us for peak oil. Plus, as real prices go up we can lower fuel taxes [...]
Posted in peak oil, roads, taxes
By Frank on January 4, 2009
A friend — who runs the NYC-based Bridge and Tunnel Club site — was in Phoenix for the opening of the new Valley Metro Light Rail and sends along these pictures:
Northbound train, interior:
Central Avenue and Camelback Station:
19th Avenue and Montebello Station:
It seems like they had a very crowded opening day. Apparently several Sound Transit staffers went down there to gain insight in advance of LINK’s opening in just a few months.
Posted in i5, taxes
By Frank on December 28, 2008
Sounds like it was a big success:
If you walked around downtown Phoenix on Saturday, you saw something unusual: people. Thanks to light rail, bars and restaurants that are nearly empty on many weekends were buzzing with people.
(via)
I hope to have some more reports soon from friends who rode it this week. The catch, of course, is re-orienting downtown Phoenix’s development to make it more attractive as a form of commuter transit, not just a recreational or tourist people-mover.
Posted in taxes
By Frank on November 26, 2008
Did the big dig actually ease traffic in downtown Boston? Maybe not:
Despite being a national embarrassment, advocates say the Big Dig has achieved its goal of alleviating traffic in Boston, and they’re right. In 1994, getting from one end of Boston to the other using the Central Artery took 15 minutes — today it can usually be done in three minutes or less. Back in the day, traffic jams on the the artery could last up to 14 hours a day. Today, the Big Dig tunnels are almost always clog free.
But move out from the center of Boston, and things don’t look quite as rosy. After examining scores of state highways records, the Globe concluded that at points north and south of the city, congestion has gotten worse since the opening of the Big Dig, sometimes quite a bit worse. At one 11 mile strip just north of the city, evening commute time has more than doubled, from 12 minutes to 25. Similar increases can be seen at other points outside Boston on the roads leading into the tunnels.
Why? Because with such a sleek, streamlined new highway in place, more and more suburbanites now choose to commute into Boston by car. That would be ok if the highways leading into the city from the North and South had been expanded in conjunction with Big Dig construction, but they weren’t. Prior to the Big Dig the main road into Boston worked like an hourglass — a wide pathway that narrowed as you approached the city, and then opened up on the other side. But now the shape has changed, with the road underneath Boston wide open, narrowing as you move north or south away from the city.
This is what we call “induced demand,” folks.
Posted in Eastside, taxes
By Frank on November 9, 2008
Posted in taxes
By Frank on November 5, 2008
For a while there, the construction costs were rising at 10% to 15% annually. This was making infrastructure projects incredibly expensive. Competition for cement and construction workers were among the factors driving these cost increases. Sound Transit got one lousy bidder for SeaTac station, and the bid was double their budget! Construction companies had too much work on their hands to bother.
But with the bursting of the housing bubble and the overall slowing of the economy, infrastructure projects should become less expensive. Also, the cost of acquiring land will likely go down. California is set to spend $3 to $4 Billion just buying land for their high speed rail link. How much would that land have cost if it were purchased two years ago, at the height of the California housing bubble?
Point being, these costs should subside in the coming years. Of course, they’re subsiding because the economy is cooling overall, meaning that tax revenues are going to go down. Will Sound Transit suffer a revenue shortfall because of this? Will the decrease in construction costs be more than enough to cancel it out? Hard to say. If anyone has answers to these questions, feel free to drop a line.
Posted in taxes, zipcar
By Frank on September 9, 2008
New York’s MTA tries it out on the Bx12:
The route, which goes from 207th Street in Upper Manhattan across the heart of the Bronx along Fordham Road and Pelham Parkway, was revamped in July as part of an experimental program known as Select Bus Service. Riders pay their fare using machines at sidewalk bus stops, which allows them to board more quickly through either the front or the rear door of extra-long articulated buses.
Buses travel in red-painted lanes that are off limits to other vehicles during busy times of day, and additional police officers are deployed to keep the lanes clear. Traffic signals along Fordham Road have been equipped to communicate electronically with the buses, allowing, for example, a green signal to be extended for a few seconds to let a bus through or shortening a red signal’s time.
Another major innovation: Drivers were told not to worry about keeping to a schedule, but to drive off as soon as they picked up passengers. That has eliminated the often frustrating delays at stops while drivers whose buses are early wait to get back on schedule.
This is basically the full BRT monty: off-bus fare collection, dedicated ROW, and signal priority. I do hope Metro is able to salvage at least some of Seattle’s planned BRT routes in the midst of this budget crunch.
Posted in rail transit, taxes
By Frank on August 4, 2008
France’s state-owned rail agency is going gangbusters:
[T]he new SNCF chairman sees rail stations, mainly in the regions, becoming new transport (and commercial) hubs not just for trains but for buses and trams – “all those places where people don’t want to bring their cars.”
SNCF executives believe rail can take market leadership from air and road on journeys up to four hours long and point to the success of Eurostar (part owned by the group) in increasing traffic so far this year by around a fifth on the back of shorter journey times between London and Brussels/Paris. You can even get to Marseille from Paris in little more than three hours.
Pepy is, therefore, unfazed by the recent move by Air France-KLM to join forces with French freight operator Veolia and launch its own TGV services to, say, Charles de Gaulle airport. “SNCF is not going to be an airline-style operator as we need to operate regional and local services as well.”
This comes via Savage via AutoblogGreen, who both focus on SNCF’s $1.7B profit in 2007. While that’s certainly encouraging, I’d caution against focusing too much on those numbers. SNCF runs both freight and passenger service in France, as a government monopoly. I’m pretty sure that if the US congress decided to nationalize BNSF, Union Pacific and the rest and roll them up into a huge ball with Amtrak, the resulting agency would be profitable.
Still, it goes to show that if you invest consistently in rail infrastructure, you can expand it pretty rapidly when demand rises. On the other hand, if you let it decay for 40 years and then try to throw a hail mary at the last minute, it’s going to be pretty difficult to achieve anything significant.
Posted in HOV Lanes, tacoma, taxes
By Frank on June 25, 2008
Try doing this with a bus:
DART is updating its fleet of 115 light rail vehicles (LRV) by inserting a new, low-floor insert between the existing sections of the vehicle adding seating capacity and improving access through level boarding. The newly modified vehicles began service on June 23, 2008.
Known as Super Light Rail Vehicles (SLRV) because of the greater length and added passenger capacity, the SLRV will seat approximately 100 passengers compared with 75 on the current vehicles. Standing passengers on the vehicle can nearly double the capacity.
(via)
Posted in i5, taxes
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