Oran Viriyincy/Flickr

As someone who’s a big fan of center platforms in general, I asked Sound Transit spokesman Bruce Gray what the prospects were for East Link to add a center platform where it meets the Central line:

A center platform at IDS was not studied as part of the EIS plans and isn’t in the works for final design. As I understand it, there was discussion of this early on but the following issues are the main ones that precluded moving forward with it:

• Difficulties having enough space to add elevators/escalators for a center platform given the space constraints in IDS
• Fire/life/safety codes make it difficult to fit a wide enough center platform that could accommodate the crush loads we see at rush hours, much less game days
• Potential need for a turnback (pocket) track at IDS
• Our long-term ridership projections put Eastside > Airport travel at about 3% of daily ridership – not enough to warrant the costs/risks associated with what it may take to do a center platform

This may be one of those things where I can’t be moved by any arguments weaker than “this absolutely cannot be done,” which is not what I’m hearing. This is a minor project in the scheme of things, but it’s another example of the system punishing transfers as much as possible. If you have luggage, a stroller, or a wheelchair, it’s no small thing to take two elevators instead of simply walking across the platform. Even if you’re an able-bodied youth, it’s frustrating to see the train on the other track as you pull in, knowing you’re never going to make it.

It may be primarily inattention to detail by Sound Transit, or astonishing lack of foresight by the designers of the DSTT. In either case, it’s one more item where decades from now, riders will wonder “what were they thinking?”

punkrawker4783/Flickr

The Summer 2012 Sound Transit schedule book is now available; new timetables take effect Saturday, June 9th.  There are no changes to Link. Sounder is unchanged, although maintenance in the South Corridor might aggravate drivers and pedestrians. Below are the bus revisions, especially big changes in Pierce County:

• Route 542: Revised stops at Redmond Transit Center
• Route 550: Trips added and minor evening schedule changes
• Route 554: Minor weekend schedule changes
• Route 560: Major nighttime schedule changes
• Route 566: Minor schedule changes
• Route 577: New weekday morning northbound trip; minor schedule changes
• Route 578: Route no longer runs between Puyallup and Tacoma; significant schedule changes; new Sunday service between Seattle and Puyallup; new evening trips
• Route 586: Two morning northbound and two afternoon southbound trips discontinued until October 2012.
• Route 596: New route between Bonney Lake and Sumner weekdays only. [The story behind this change is here.]

Photo by Andrew Smith

I’ve finally made it through Puget Sound Sage’s much-hyped report “Transit Oriented Development that’s Healthy, Green, and Just.” I read it warily, but was pleasantly surprised by many of the conclusions, even as I had issues with some important omissions. As it happens, the argument the report makes is largely orthogonal to the apartment-tower-vs.-single family home debate that rages on the internet, and in that sense it’s quite refreshing.

For those of you who are interested in this issue, the sixty pages are totally worth your time. The executive summary is pretty good too, but for the extra-lazy here’s my summary:

• Gentrification (an influx of higher-income residents) is happening in the Rainier Valley, encouraged by light rail and other factors.
• Through a variety of mechanisms, gentrification is likely to lead to displacement of the poor into South King County, with various moral, social, and environmental consequences.
• The set of policies usually grouped under “affordable housing” must expand to more directly consider the obstacles to disadvantaged people remaining in place.

There’s a lot to agree with here, although I think the report applies a much more negative tone to the idea of gentrification than I would. In particular, I find the emphasis on the relative proportion of various racial groups as opposed to their absolute numbers to go well beyond avoiding displacement. (In fact, the report shows that the population of color has continued to increase, although not as much as other areas and perhaps not sustainably.) Gentrification is essentially inevitable in an improving neighborhood, so we should either resolve to not improve the neighborhood, or else look to mitigate some of gentrification’s less attractive consequences.

(more…)

Two interesting opportunities for the public to comment this week:

• Sound Transit is holding a public hearing on Ride Free Area elimination. It’s at Union Station this Thursday from 12:30 to 1pm. The stated purpose of this meeting is to receive comment from the public.
• The Puget Sound Regional Council is doling out $2.3m in federal funds, for operating subsidies to Community Transit as well as transit facility construction in Kitsap County. The deadline to submit comments is May 31st, but May 24th is the deadline to get your comment in the agenda packet.

zargoman/Flickr (file photo)

Last Monday night I happened to witness a service disruption on Link. It was not Sound Transit’s finest hour. I got the story from Link Operations Director Paul Denison via spokesman Geoff Patrick:

The service disruption began after a 7:57 p.m. departure from Westlake experienced a brake fault and had to be removed from service. Several minutes later we began turning trains back at Stadium. The malfunctioning train was cleared at 8:46 p.m. and we were back in full revenue service within about 15 minutes… the first voice announcement in the tunnel was at 8:36 p.m., which was a half hour after train service in the tunnel was suspended and is not up to our standards. Paul wanted me to relay to you that while there will be delays from time to time, we recognize that how we communicate with our customers determines how well [we] did in responding… Paul is going to look into this further since the control center didn’t do as good of a job as they are capable of in this instance.

There were well over 100 people on the platform at Westlake. It’s a shame that some of them probably don’t have enough experience with the system to know that this is rare, and are now telling their friends that Link is fundamentally unreliable. But I’m not here to slay Sound Transit; disruptions happen. The communications breakdown isn’t acceptable, but people drop the ball sometimes and they’re going to look into it.

Instead, this episode emphasizes how useful real-time arrival information is. It’s a nice-to-have during rush hour, but when headways are long — particularly during construction or service disruptions – they’re critical. It’s another level of redundancy that prevents fiascos like Monday from occurring.

If you’re a big union person and a transit buff, have I got an event for you on Monday:

You are invited to join us next Monday, May 21st for an evening of Rider-Driver Solidarity, and a discussion of the future of public transit in King County. There will be a guest appearance by Seattle folk singer Jim Page. We are co-hosting this event with the drivers’ ATU local 587. It is free and all are welcome. There will be refreshments. Details are below, and more information can be found on our website here: www.transitriders.org. Hope to see you there!

Rider-Driver Solidarity Evening
Monday, May 21st 7pm
Labor Temple, Hall 8
2800 1st Avenue

Some background on the TRU here.

The Old 42 (photo by the author)

Metro is collecting ideas on how to improve service in Southeast Seattle:

This spring Metro is holding conversations with community organizations, bus riders, and residents of southeast Seattle about transit options in their community. Our goal is to learn about ways to make transit easier and more inviting to use. At every conversation, we ask people to tell us which transit options they use, why they use them, and how these services can be improved. We leave every conversation with a better understanding of how people travel around their community.

Please take a few moments to share your thoughts and ideas >>

Areas of emphasis seem to be ORCA card access and dirty and/or dangerous stops. It also raises the possibility of stopping the 8 at Mt. Baker and resurrecting the old 42, but stopping in Pioneer Square instead of traveling downtown. I first caught wind of this idea late last year.

I think there are two ways of looking at this. One is that the set of one seat rides enabled by a revised 42 is pretty strong: retail along Rainier, the I-90 freeway station, and Little Saigon. To this Columbia City resident, the 8′s set of destinations between Mt. Baker and Madison Park don’t seem nearly as attractive: Garfield HS and Central District retail.

On the other hand, current service to the former set of places is extremely frequent, making transfers less painful than they would be to the 8. And the 8, by providing access to a whole different part of the city, offers better access to a whole network of cross routes. In other words, the 8/42 switch might increase the number of one-seat rides, but the advantage of a gridded network is turning the dreaded three-seat ride into two-seaters. The 8 does better at this.

From an access perspective, sending the 48 with the 8 would be the best of both worlds. It would provide access to the Rainier corridor and (in 2021) the freeway station, while still providing a one-seat ride through the central district.

However, both the 48 and the souped up 42 don’t solve the most serious problem with the 8: that it is too unreliable southbound to serve as a Link shuttle. This can only be solved by splitting the 8. Doing so in Madison Park would preserve connections and reliability, as MLK is seldom congested. It is a better use of resources than the alternatives.

Oran/Flickr

On Friday Transportation Choices Coalition is putting on a forum about the end of the Ride Free Area (RFA). The panel is gangbusters:

Tim Harris- Real Change News 
Jim Jacobson- King County Metro
Bill LaBorde- City of Seattle
Zach Shaner - Seattle Transit Blog

The talk begins at noon at Seattle Municipal Tower. RSVP here.

Image by Aren Roberson

Until Link goes more places, enthusiasts from other parts of the city will need excuses to come to the Rainier Valley. This week’s excuse is the Franklin (High School Arts Festival, Saturday, May 19th from 11am to 3pm. The school is clearly visible from Mt. Baker Station. From PTSA president Elizabeth Lowry:

The festival will feature student performances, including the steel drum band, kung fu team, jazz band, Quaker band and lion dancers, along with displays of visual art, ceramics and wood arts. Franklin High School is celebrating its 100th birthday this year.

Plants and art will be for sale as well. See past Link excuses here.

Oran/Flickr

Anecdotally, I’ve been having a lot more success with OneBusAway the last few weeks. I asked OBA point man S. Morris Rose if it has been restored to the accuracy level of, say, a year ago:

At some level, OBA per se hasn’t changed at all, but there have been fixes inside the KCM network that have fixed a lot of the problems. In one instance, there were problems with the integration of the new and old types of AVL data. In another, there were problems with buffering of GTFS-based real-time data. Brian Ferris- yes, he yet walks this earth- fixed both of those particular problems, and I would agree that things are much better now than they were before.

Have we returned to the Golden Age of OBA for KCM users? I think that’s overstating recent advances. (Bear in mind that OBA serves Pierce, Community Transit, and Intercity users. None of this applies to any of them- their level of service has been solid.) Things are better than they were, but not as good as they were before that.

Mr. Rose believes it is “likely” that by the end of the year OBA will reach new highs for data quality, as GPS rolls out and the raw schedule data better reflects holiday (and UW off-day) reduced service levels.

Yesterday brought the heartbreaking news that PubliCola is folding. Luckily, friends of STB Josh Feit and Erica Barnett are landing on their feet at Crosscut.

It’s a small ecosystem of local sources that focus heavily on transit and land use, so this loss will be keenly felt. PubliCola, and Erica’s writing in particular, was the closest thing to STB in the for-profit realm. It’s true that enthusiasts like us can cover many functions previously exclusive to the formal media, thanks to ease of publication and widely available source material on the internet. But volunteers with day jobs have difficulty covering press conferences, unrecorded midday board meetings, or hanging around city hall to pick up the tidbits that construct a larger narrative. I don’t think STB competes with other sources, but rather, complements them with additional information and in-depth analysis. One less sister publication will make our jobs harder, not easier.

Best of luck to Josh and Erica. PubliCola will be missed.

wikimedia

The Sound Transit Citizen Oversight Panel (COP) is an internal watchdog that observes Sound Transit’s various functions and identifies risk areas. They produce some of the more interesting reports to come out of the agency.

Anyhow, they’re looking for members of the public, especially from South King and Pierce Counties, with some kind of relevant expertise to fill some vacancies:

To Qualify You Must:

• Be a registered voter within the Sound Transit District
• Reside and/or work in King County, Pierce County or Snohomish County within the Sound Transit district boundary
• Have experience/skills in one or more areas of expertise related to the panel’s responsibilities-business and finance management, engineering, large projects construction management, public facilities and service, government processes, and public policy development or review
• Be able to attend meetings twice each month during normal business hours.

More application details are here.

seattlestreetcar.com

One of the more exciting ideas in the new Transit Master Plan is the Rapid Streetcar Network, which is a way of having Seattle control its own transit destiny. The crucial word is “rapid,” which makes this potentially transformative rather than a fancier bus line. The lines would have significant stretches of dedicated right-of-way and ubiquitous priority treatments.  But how are Seattle’s existing and under-construction lines doing in this regard?

According to SDOT’s Ethan Melone, of the 18 signalized intersections on the South Lake Union line, ten have some sort of signal priority or preemption, while only one has a queue jump.

That’s not ideal, but it’s a magic carpet compared to the First Hill Line. I count twenty-two signals each way,  and Mr. Melone confirms there will be only four priority signals: across Broadway & Boren and Broadway & Howell in both directions; southbound, the left from Broadway to Yesler and the right from 14th to Jackson, across the diagonal of Rainier/Boren; and northbound, the left turns on and off 14th Ave.

Mr. Melone explains that cost, which is “a few thousand dollars per intersection,” is not the constraint. Instead, the transit lines and high vehicle volumes that cross Broadway make “it difficult to prioritize green time for the streetcar through movement, because of the impacts to transit/traffic on the other movements.” However, he adds:

Signal priority is therefore pretty limited, but we have made other changes—signalized left turn pockets on Broadway, the southbound exclusive track on 14^th, and the streetcar-only approach lanes at each terminus, some new left turn restrictions—that supplement the signal priority in terms of speeding up the streetcar operation as much as possible in this corridor.

I find this disappointing for reasons of perception and branding. Although from an engineering perspective the time penalty of a traffic light may be small, coming to a complete stop creates the perception that the ride is slow. If the city can show voters that the streetcar network is more than just more transit stuck in traffic, they might be more inclined to support it. And frankly, if rail isn’t a means of making priority more politically viable the capital expense is much less compelling in corridors that don’t need the extra capacity.

As a candidate, Mayor McGinn understood this, saying that we should “strive to make [the FHSC] quick and separate it from traffic as much as is feasible.” Obviously, there are many cooks in the kitchen of this project besides the Mayor, but it’s sad his department hasn’t been more imaginative in fulfilling that sentiment.

Via.

Othello & Rainier

Any longtime bus rider has noticed that Metro tends to place its stops so that buses must pass through the intersection before they open their doors. That’s great for runners, but not so great if your transfer whizzes by on the cross street. It turns out that there are several great reasons for this. The folks in Metro’s Transit Route Facilities Department explained:

The jurisdictions through which Metro operates are the authorizing agencies for each stop location. While Metro doesn’t have a policy for stop placement, farside (after the intersection) stops are preferred because: it eliminates conflicts from vehicles making right turns in front of stopped buses; it encourages passengers to cross behind the bus; and it leaves more curb space for neighborhood parking. Also, where we have Transit Signal Priority in use, farside stops are preferred so that we can provide advance detection to the traffic signal.

While this policy is sensible, I wonder if it shouldn’t be tweaked under certain circumstances. There are, of course, truly unique cases like the 554 in Chinatown, but I wonder if the system’s gradual shift to frequent corridors with less frequent crossing service demands a change.

Specifically, missing a frequent-to-infrequent transfer is a bigger deal than the reverse. I’m inclined to believe that in spite of all the reasons provided above, the frequent service should stop before the intersection, maximizing the chance of catching the feeder.

Consider the example of Rainier Ave. and S. Othello St, where the (infrequent) 39 crosses the (very frequent) 7, pictured above. Riders coming from the Seward Park area and seeking a transfer to the 7 are not greatly inconvenienced if a 7 breezes by while they are stopped at a light: the next is perhaps 10 minutes away. Coming back on that 7, though, there’s a premium on getting off the trunk service as soon as possible in case a 39 comes by.

Of course, that frequent trunk service really ought to have signal priority, and if if it does this whole discussion is for naught. But since we’re apparently far from ubiquity even in Seattle, much less in the suburbs, this is a little thing that Metro could do to make riders’ lives a bit easier.

In my quest to find an example of this configuration, I discovered it’s much rarer than you might think; but as we progress towards a transfer-based system the current policy will make it more and more common.

What does everyone else think?

Mayor Dave Enslow

Now that a large of chunk of Pierce County is no longer in the Pierce Transit district, where they paid taxes, received service, and voted down a ballot measure to maintain PT’s service level, a large area in Eastern Pierce County is solely served by Sound Transit.

Yesterday, the Sound Transit Board followed the proposal of Board Member and Sumner Mayor Dave Enslow and created Route 596, a replacement for PT 496 and connecting parts of Bonney Lake, Buckley, and Enumclaw to the Sumner Sounder station.

ST Express Route 596 will function as a fast, limited-stop service for passengers making long-distance regional trips, with direct connections to commuter rail and other transit modes. The route serves 290 boardings each day and will be timed to meet morning and afternoon Sounder trains…

[The 596] resurrects a previously-operated connector bus route that voters approved in the 1996 Sound Move ballot measure. Known as ST Express Route 582, that service operated between Bonney Lake and Tacoma. It was gradually phased out when Pierce Transit began operating Route 496 service in 2007.

It will begin running June 11th, the first workday after PT wraps up the 496 on June 8th. The $253,000 operating cost for 2012 will come out of the Pierce subarea reserves.

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Google Maps

I pass through the Mt. Baker transit hub, using just about every mode, perhaps a dozen times a week. With all this exposure, I often think I’ve fully cataloged its faults, only to stumble upon whole new layers of design flaw.  At the moment, ST doesn’t plan very many more elevated stations, but perhaps exploring these flaws will spread a few lessons.

As always, these flaws are not the result of incompetence or malice of individuals, but instead very real technical, legal, political, and/or fiscal constraints. I’ve footnoted a brief explanation of why many of these flaws exist, courtesy of ST spokesman Bruce Gray. These explanations in no way diminish the ongoing inconvenience for riders.

Minimal Intermodal Interface (more…)