Category / Bus Related

by Adron

17% Service Reduction?!?! Seriously?

Ok, this sucks. Straight from Metro.

County Executive calls on County Council to enact two-year funding for Metro or face 17 percent service reduction

King County Executive Dow Constantine this morning asked the King County Council to make important decisions about the future of Metro Transit: approve a two-year, $20 congestion reduction charge to help maintain Metro service near current levels for two years, or begin the process of reducing the transit system by 17 percent.

The poor economy has hit Metro hard, causing a drop in Metro’s funding from sales tax. Over the past four years, Metro has cut costs, raised fares four times, dug deeply into reserves, found new operating efficiencies, canceled the purchase of replacement buses, and negotiated cost-saving contracts with its employee unions. These actions have generated nearly $400 million to narrow Metro’s budget gap for 2008-2011 and about $143 million annually for the years ahead—but Metro still faces an ongoing shortfall of $60 million per year.

The two-year congestion reduction charge would be $20 a year on vehicles licensed in King County. The proceeds would be used to preserve transit service while King County works with regional leaders, legislators and the Governor on a long-term funding solution for transportation needs.

In case the congestion charge is not approved, the Executive also asked the Council to authorize a reduction of about 100,000 annual bus service hours in February 2012. This would be the first in a series of reductions totaling 600,000 service hours that the Executive would ask the Council to authorize for the next two years if new funding is not approved.

These reductions would shrink the Metro system by about 17 percent, leading to the loss of an estimated 9 million passenger trips annually.Overall, a reduction of this size would affect 80 percent of Metro passengers—meaning four out of five bus riders would have to walk further, wait longer, make an extra transfer, stand in the aisle, or even see fully loaded buses pass them by.

Other areas have balancing budgets at this point? Why is Seattle still getting hit so hard? Can we stop serving the areas that barely use transit and bulk back up where we get real ROI already?! This is insane.

The other question I have though, is what in the world is this $20 congestion charge? How would it be applied? It appears that this isn’t a concrete idea or maybe somebody knows something more about it?

by Adron

Portland Leads Again

Again, Portland takes the lead with coordination with Google Maps. They’re now offering real time arrival information via the maps service itself!

Impressive, I hope to see this in other cities soon!

UPDATE #1: They’re also slowly starting to restore service.  Of course, the locals bitch on as always (see 1st comment), even though this is an improvement in service.

UPDATE #2: Ok, so a couple of my long time readers got all riled up as if me stating Portland is making some progress is a jab at Seattle. I understand there is an unspoken tit for tat going on between these cities, but I wanted to add that Portland is doing the above, but Seattle also is getting things done:  For instance, SDOT has started a massive repavement effort on Dexter.  Check out these links for this awesome transit + bike improvement effort (which of course auto drivers will benefit form also, and hopefully kill less people in other cars, bikes, or pedestrians).  Cheers!

Seattle is making progress, it just isn’t always in regards to transit buses or light rail.  This blog happens to primarily be about those things.  However maybe I’ll start including more about bikes and pedestrian movement.
Thanks for reading, and you guys stop thinking I’m trying to put Portland on any bigger of a pedestal than it is already on.  o_O
by Adron

Jeez Seattle, Come On… But Seriously, Cool Stuff Afoot!

Yesterday morning as all three buses pulled up to the Market and Ballard Stop I watched as about 25 people boarded the #17 Express, 3 on the #17, and 11 on the #18 Express. A total of 39 people at one stop is pretty impressive.

Today the morning departures came in exactly on time, one after another. The #17 Express boarded 13 people, the #17 boarded 2, and the #18 Express boarded 13. This seemed a bit more the average than yesterday.

However, we did have a dead bus that Metro Workers were working diligently to get out of the the stop. The bus had spewed some oil and the guy taking care of it had thrown down a material that pulls the oil up to prevent any additional from seeping into the cement or roadway cracks.

The last few days of commuting have been good, no serious delays and for the most part, the buses have arrived at the stops I board on time. When I say on time, regular readers know I literally mean on the dot too! I’m a stickler for that. Not that it is a big deal to me if they’re a few minutes late, but I’m always happy when things go according to plan. 😉

There is one thing I’ve noticed over the last few weeks that I knew, but recently it has really resounded loud a clear.

The City of Seattle and surrounding city areas just are not remotely as serious about transit as San Francisco, Portland, or Vancouver British Columbia. Seattle is looking at 2022-2023 before they lay down light rail that should have been built 10-20 years ago to Bellevue and Redmond. (or the city should have bulked up its original transit system instead of letting it die) As far as north western cities go, Seattle is the least progressive when it comes to transit (Ok, some could maybe argue Spokane, but it doesn’t always come to mind).

However, there is a silver lining. Seattle still manages, mostly through no political competency but mostly pure simple lay of the land, to have clean power through hydro. It has fairly clean transport by American Standards because the citizens in the area are generally thoughtful of such things. The air is clean by measure of many American Cities also. Seattle just lacks luster in getting serious transit infrastructure built compared to its immediate neighbors.

That just bums me out.

However, I’ve been a happy citizen as of late. The city overall is doing pretty well, and even amid these bouts of infighting and backwards mentalities from the east side there is some shining examples of great strides forward (I’m not sugar coating it, it’s mostly the east side that has this perverse orientation and obsession with everything being massive paved over roadways, livability be damned!)

Seattle is Kicking Bicycles into High Gear on Dexter!

One of these examples is the bike way from the Fremont area to downtown were bus stop islands, bike ways and bike lanes are being put into place, and generally the roadway as a whole is being improved dramatically. I hope to get some pictures soon of this and get an entry put together to discuss and describe what they’re doing.

Another great example of progress is citizen activity around building out improvements to the transit system with things like One Bus Away. Even though King County Metro doesn’t put much effort into these things (unlike TriMet, San Francisco, etc) there are efforts among local coders to make sure these extremely valuable tools are maintained and expanded for use. Hopefully King County Metro will get on board with more support in the near future but either way, it is great to see the individual support of Seattle Citizens taking this on themselves to make things better!

King Street Station is Looking…

Sexy. This station, which was once and will again one day be a magnificent piece of American Architecture and design. The station is getting cleaned up and rebuilt in some places to assure it continues to remain standing another 100 years! This station has a huge amount of history for the city and had been in disrepair, but now there is a great future awaiting the station. This then leads me to…

King Street Station, Union Station, International District Station to First Hill to Broadway Streetcar!!!!

Yes, Seattle is stepping it up with a streetcar in what is probably the most happening part of the city. Night life, art, architecture, startups, small business, schools, neighborhoods, restaurants, and more all are on Capitol Hill. With the addition of this primary arterial mover, a streetcar line, running from Cap Hill down to the train station and the International District/Union Station Tunnel Stop two major connection points will be brought together. I also imagine that this streetcar might have higher ridership than the existing one on Westlake. But that brings me to my last positive point…

Amazon is Kicking Ass and Bringing Life to Westlake and South Lake Union

Amazon, a major Seattle employer is in the process of building out several major buildings and moving it’s 12k + employee headquarters to South Lake Union. This has caused the ridership on the SLUT (South Lake Union Trolley) to skyrocket. Travel down that way and check out the stops around Amazon at any time during rush hour and you’ll see 20-40 people waiting to board at several stops. I could imagine if they expanded that streetcar into downtown to Pioneer Square and up into East Lake they’d have one of the busiest transit routes in the city with the completion. Already as it is the ridership is finally getting up there.

This means the streetcar will likely take its place as the cleanest mode of transport per passenger in the city, finally beating out the Monorail and Ferries. But we shall see. 🙂

Overall there are a lot of great things going on even though it often seems as if it is in spite of the transit agencies themselves. I’m hoping to see even more improved and better energy between the Seattleites and transit authorities themselves as time goes forward. As Sound Transit, The Seattle Streetcar, and King County Metro all improve the system with BRT, Light Rail, Streetcars, and increased service levels along major arterials Seattle will finally start pushing forward in a big way.

It is, after all, one of the biggest cities in the north west and it could easily take the lead in many of these neighborhood, complete streets, and transit related efforts!

by Adron

Green Transit

I was pondering recently, even with all the fussing the naysayers have about transit, what was accomplished when TriMet finished the Green Line connecting another couple of neighborhoods to the light rail system plus multiple park and rides.

The first thing was the system picked up another 17-18k riders per day. The riders on this line were almost entirely new at first. At least 10-15k of them. The busiest bus line in the city, the #72 plying up and down 82nd Avenue, saw almost zero change to the ridership. Being only about 1-6 blocks at various points from the light rail one might have thought some of the riders would have switched modes. The simple explanation is that the #72 serves a specific constituency and the light rail serves another constituency.

There is however one huge difference. After a period of 18-20 years Trimet will have spent – including infrastructure – less on the light rail service than on the bus service on 82nd Avenue while getting a growing ridership on the green line that will even surpass those estimates.

What does that mean?

It means Trimet will have more money to spend, operationally and for infrastructure, on other parts of the system.

Fast forward to my current city I’m living in. The light rail that Sound Transit is building is almost 10x the cost of what Portland is building. Primarily because Seattle’s Sound Transit is getting the light rail built in raised and subterranean infrastructure. This type of infrastructure is inordinately expensive. A cost, that at this point is unneeded.

Recently Federal Way requested that Sound Transit make sure the promise of light rail doesn’t disappear from the future. Right now, from a money perspective, Sound Transit has basically told the city it won’t be getting light rail. I see two massive problems here.

1. There isn’t money for the current plan to get light rail into Federal Way. That’s the plain and simple reality of the matter.
2. Sound Transit and most of the area Governments are inflexible on building light rail more cost consciously.

Now these are the two problems at the surface. Looking a little deeper, just below the surface, one will immediately notice the real problems. Both of which I’ve raised here at Transit Sleuth a number of times over the years.

The first problem is that the Government assumes the economy will do X and has almost no plans to mitigate when Y happens. Our currency is hosed, so an individual citizen of Seattle can safely assume that all plans moving forward that aren’t already under contraction and paid for are on the chopping block. Yes, EVERYTHING. Increasing funds and taxes won’t particularly help either until some politician in the White House gets the balls to do something about our currency and valuation against the global markets. Right now we’re sunk. That’s the summary position of problem #1.

Problem number two is a different beast. With the money that is allocated so far Sound Transit could do a lot of infrastructure investment. They could, in all honesty, get to Federal Way. The problem lies in Federal and State Regulation that causes Sound Transit to be rather inflexible in how or what they can do with that infrastructure money. This inflexibility we as citizens we do want and don’t want.

Either way, I digress, I hope that Seattle and Sound Transit can find a better way to get real infrastructure with high quality transit built. Right now the ambitions look good, but more reality needs brought to focus. This massive high cost light rail infrastructure probably is not the best way to go about getting higher capacity and higher quality transit to the Seattle area.

by Adron

Day #15 of the Ballard Commute

Today the sun is out and shining bright in Seattle. This always brings more people out by an order of magnitude. The sidewalks have all sorts of people out and about, in addition it also brings those people out that the rest of society would rather not see. The entertainment factor also increases. People and all their silly pet tricks get into full swing.

But I do digress. It’s nice to see everybody outside wandering and playing around in the sun. I however am going to ramble on about the actual Ballard commute some.

The commute generally stays the same as it did the first few days, except a slight bit faster in the morning and a little bit more cumbersome in the evening. It seems, when their isn’t rain pouring everywhere that people manage to not wreck as much. At least, they aren’t wrecking on roads that I’m riding the bus on.

The Market Street & Ballard Street Bus Stop has been immensely useful. With the #17, #18, and #44 running through that stop, it is very easy to get anywhere that I need to be in a reasonable amount of time. Even the run to the airport isn’t really that bad. Albeit, it would be nice if it were a single seat ride.

The ride out of downtown is the only part of the daily commute that has a little bit of a problem. The Denny to Elliot Street traffic is a complete catastrophe most of the time. It only amounts to about 3-4 blocks of traffic, but the bus lane doesn’t begin until the bus manages to get through that 3-4 blocks. Amazingly I don’t have any solutions for this bottleneck and obviously Seattle doesn’t either.

Anyway, just a few observations from the last few days of the commute.