Results tagged “transportation”

The folks at Sound Transit must be in good spirits this week--the lowest construction bid for the University Link tunnel was $20 million lower than Sound Transit's original estimate.

Reading through Lucas from Neighborlogs' coverage of a King County Metro budget meeting, we're left with the uncomfortable feeling that we read the phrase "deferred maintenance" one too many times. Besides fare increases (to $2.25) and bus service suspensions, Metro's Kevin Desmond says "Metro will greatly reduce the number of buses it purchases, and speed, reliability and asset maintenance programs will be cut." [Emphasis added] We know! Reads like a line cut from Drag Me to Hell, doesn't it?

Thank the gods of Olympus! Amtrak's twice-a-day Seattle-Vancouver train service starts a week from today, on August 19, 2009. (UPDATE: Seattle Transit Blog says Thursday the 20th. Here's the current train schedule.) Seattle rail passengers will be able to depart at 7:40 a.m. or 6:40 p.m. and arrive in Vancouver, B.C., at about 11:35 a.m. or 10:45 p.m, respectively. From Vancouver, the southbound Amtrak Cascades train will leave at 6:40 a.m., hitting Seattle four-ish hours later, and arriving in Portland at 2:45 p.m. We get the train to help us get to the 2010 Olympic and Paralympics Winter Games, with no promises for after the Games are done.

The ORCA card is, of course, the new, handy way to pay fares for many kinds of transit including the new Link light rail. Like all good Seattle things (e.g., a trendy restaurant, your friend's house, or the Fremont Troll), the youth ORCA card is not that easy to find unless you know where to go already.

In the Seattle Times story about mayoral candidate Michael McGinn, "McGinn: 'He's the guy who's against the tunnel,'" state representative Judy Clibborn, chairwoman of the state House Transportation Committee, tries to pull the "done deal" card: "Since we're so far down the line and this was a decision that took so long to make, we're not going to change just because one person doesn't like it." Judy, Judy, Judy...70 percent of Seattle voters rejected a tunnel in 2007. We're not statisticians, but we think that's more than one person. (Check out tunnelfacts.com for all the reasons why people haven't warmed up to the deep-bore option.) But maybe we're looking at this the wrong way--if the state has a few billion sitting around to spend strictly because of process inertia, Governor Gregoire is obviously misleading us about all those cuts to healthcare we need to make that will kill people.

Earlier today, we were smiling over the Seattle Times trying to use the first day of light rail ridership as a benchmark. "What was the Times headline on February 4, 1965?" we asked, thinking of the opening of I-5. Then we really wanted to know, so we looked it up.

From the Times: "On the first day of regular light-rail service, ridership on Sound Transit's new Link train system is rather light. Midway through the morning commute, trains were arriving at Tukwila from downtown Seattle with fewer than 10 passengers aboard." And: "Normal use is projected at 26,600 per weekday next year—far more than today's trend." One morning is a trend? This makes us curious. What was the Times headline on February 4, 1965? "I-5 Looks Awfully Open"? Times commenters are through waiting for ridership to increase--they sound about ready to rush out and pull up the tracks.

• Jon Talton on his Sound Economy blog has a nice overview of the state of the economy nearly two years into our current economic nightmare. Read it; it's not pretty and things aren't getting better any time soon.
• Erica C. Barnett at Publicola has liveblogged the the County Executive debate from Bellevue, featuring some choice right-wing nuggets from is-she-or-isn't-she-Republican Susan Hutchinson.
• Speaking of Hutchinson, Seattle Transit Blog has some info on her thoughts on transportation issues. Also not pretty.

One thing the loop does is remove the need for decision about 12th or Broadway, which, it being Seattle, could keep us at the consensus table for the next quarter of a century. Also, as we understand it, it takes up less space to run the streetcar one way down a street, and it pencils out (construction-wise) as cheaper to do.

The Seattle Times has a complaint from a Redmond woman who was taking two kids to the fireworks on the Fourth. On holidays, Metro's policy is that kids ride free with a paying adult. But it turns out the Fourth is not a holiday...well, not a Metro holiday. Metro's holiday was the Third of July, which as you know celebrates the day the Founding Fathers settled on the parchment for the Declaration of Independence.

             

The trains will open with service from Westlake to Tukwila on July 18. It will be free to ride on the 18th and 19th with paid service starting on Monday, July 20. The base ticket price will be $1.75 with a .05-cent increase with every mile. When the Tukwila to SeaTac section opens in December, it will cost $2.25 from Westlake to the airport. Trains come about every 7.5 minutes during peak times, and every 15 minutes otherwise.

Last night at about 10:20 p.m., a bicyclist was struck and killed by a car taking the Dexter Way North exit from Aurora, says Queen Anne News. The police arrested the car's driver after "an evaluation showed signs of impairment."

Mayor Nickels, speaking of the tunnel for which no cost overruns can be foreseen, noted that, "The design work and engineering on the 'mile in the middle,' which has been the controversial part, will go forward in about two years." Does that mean what it sounds like? Is the most controversial part really undesigned? (The Weekly's Damon Agnos has some terrific quotes from someone who looked like the Mayor speaking out strongly against a tunnel a little while ago.)

Friday we got our new ORCA card in the mail and ran straight to the computer to add cash dollars to our account using our ultra-high-tech VISA technology. Saturday we checked the account and saw $0.00. Oh, wait: "Any value purchased in the last 24 hours may not be shown." Really? Is someone doing this by hand back there? As of now (2.5 days later) our transaction is still pending, our ORCA card useless. *sigh* Great idea, though!

Farsighted Capitol Hill Seattle has been nosing around in Sound Transit's documentation, trying to discover if Capitol Hill residents might be in for "sandy void" surprises when the light rail tunnel passes through.

A friend of ours was at the Washington Conservation Voters auction fundraiser last night, where Mayor Greg Nickels was being applauded for his greenery. But when Nickels got to the part about the deep-bore tunnel, the response was noticeably tepid. Perhaps thinking people needed a little push, Nickels mentioned his excitement about the tunnel again, only to hear some back-of-the-hall derision. Did his staff not tell Hizzoner that real greens don't buy into tunnel-vision?

It's heartening to discover we weren't the only ones who found it possible to envision cost overruns in building Seattle's deep-bore tunnel. Sightline's Clark Williams-Derry: "It's a potentially enormous financial burden, since even the best planning process can't anticipate things that can go wrong with such a massive undertaking." The Seattle Times' Danny Westneat: "I do think it's suspicious that this same tunnel was rejected in December by a stakeholder advisory committee on account of it being way too expensive. Only to have the costs then shrink (!) by $400 million, arriving at a size that happily fits the state's pre-existing budget." Westneat does everything but call those involved bald-faced liars. Since the alternative is that they're delusional, we're not sure which option is preferable.

Sometimes we fantasize that the Capitol dome is a Reset button that just needs a really big thumb. Here's the exciting part about the viaduct bill that just passed the House: "Any costs in excess of ($2.8 billion) shall be borne by property owners in the Seattle area...." Are you at all reassured by Gov. Gregoire's spokesperson that "we don't envision any cost overruns to occur on this project"?

Commonsense prevails, as the seven Puget Sound public transportation agencies--that includes ferries too--have joined together to start rolling out their new "transportation baby," a collaborative regional fare system.

Seattle's transportation projects and politics tend to be the Achilles heel of progress in this city. Ironic, isn't it? On Friday, the state House passed a $4.9 billion two-year transportation budget, with the intentions of funding select mega transportation projects (ferries, viaducts and the 520 bridge, oh my!), as well as restoring the funds (per voters request) to move I-90's HOV lanes to prep for the East Link light-rail route. A win in Sound Transit's column, although we are beginning to see those pesky politics and pet-projects--yes, House Speaker Frank Chopp and your one or two billion dollar 520 Tunnel idea, we're talking about you--try to take precedent over the November 2008 voter-approved transportation initiatives. Here we thought a complete transit system was in our foreseeable future (sigh).

Yes, there's snow on the ground, but on Sunday, April 5, the most-awaited emblem of spring in Seattle finally arrives: the Elliott Bay Water Taxi begins its run, wrapping up in fall on October 31. (As you know, residents of West Seattle begin their winter hibernation about then, and have no need of transportation across the perilously stormy Elliott Bay.)

The seattlepi's real estate reporter, Aubrey Cohen, just spotted a bridge floating across Elliott Bay. Turns out it's pieces of the new Hood Canal Bridge (to be finished in 2010), "pontoons U, V, W and X," according to WSDOT. (We're kidding about Aubrey wanting to sell it. That's a little real estate humor, vital in these dark times.) WSDOT has been photographing the Hood Canal bridge project for Flickr, if you want to see more.

How convenient! The Washington State Department of Transportation now has a map where you can see exactly where our federal stimulus money will be improving the state's highways and byways. The projects are concentrated, as expected, along I-5 and I-90, with a spattering up by Spokane and a few down towards Yakima. Here's the Washington Jobs Now project list; so far, five of the stimulus projects are at "Gone To Ad" status, whatever that means.

In announcing his run for mayor of Seattle [video], Michael McGinn wanted to say three things: schools, broadband, buses. But staying on message isn't easy when you have a whole press conference to fill, and McGinn, despite his Greenwood Community Council and Sierra Club past, looked like a rookie early on. He whiffed on what should have been softball questions in the Q&A: "Why are you running against Greg Nickels?" and and had no public safety plank.

The bored tunnel option just got a big wet kiss from the Senate, though its House reception will not be so warm. Still, the clock's ticking and WSDOT, King County, and the City of Seattle are inviting you on a free short walking tour of the viaduct on Saturday, March 21, while the structure is closed to traffic for an inspection.

CommuteSeattle is an "initiative of the Downtown Transportation Alliance (Downtown Seattle Association, King County Metro and the City of Seattle)" which is responding to the fact that driving in and out of Seattle on a regular basis begins by giving you a twitchy eye and ends with a Glock in the glovebox which you promise to only use on people who drive up beside you and try to merge. It's for commuters, employers, and property owners, and it tries to assemble all the information any of them might need to help people choose life (outside a car). We count ten little car-alternative icons on the home page for commuters. Ten! Maybe they should add one for Snow Day.

At about 6:50 this morning, Metro's bus tracking service crashed, which meant that MyBus and OneBusAway were not delivering fresh data. Meteorologist Cliff Mass was having none of it, and made a call: "They promised that they are going to replace the servers of the bus track information system and this problem, which inconveniences hundreds or thousands of us unnecessarily, will be taken care of during the next month or so." Metro's press release sounds appropriately chastened: "Metro is already looking to next season by pursuing additional steps that can be taken to keep riders better informed of transit disruptions. Those actions include: redesigning elements of the Metro Online website; beefing up emergency event staffing plans for the Customer Information Office; adding additional staff to track and post bus reroute and service disruptions online; and exploring the use of emerging public communication tools to help disseminate information." Ooh, exploring! That's like when you get on a bus operating on an unpublished reroute!

The news over the wire (i.e., Twitter) is that the commute has not been pretty this morning, though it's improving except for 405 southbound, which is red and black on the map. For those of you still wondering where your bus is, take a look at Metro Tracker and the adverse weather/reroutes page. Savvy bus users tell us they swear by One Bus Away. They even have a blog for you to read while you're waiting for your bus. The One Bus Away Twitter feed has the absolutely latest bus news.

The slurry hits the fan tonight on southbound I-5 under the Convention Center, we're told by WSDOT Twitter. Lanes are being closed while the broken, cracked, 40-year-old concrete is being fixed. WSDOT, break it down:
• Contractor crews will begin closing the southbound lanes of I-5 at Stewart Street at 8 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 13. Three out of five lanes will be closed by 11 p.m.
• The Union Street off-ramp and Howell Street on-ramp will also be closed. Detour signs are in place. You can find detour maps here.
• The I-5 express lanes will remain open in the southbound direction all weekend so drivers can get to downtown Seattle. We want to remind drivers that the Pike/Pine and 5th/Columbia exits are HOV only. Mercer Street, Stewart Street and through traffic is for all drivers.

John Cook reports on more layoffs at Rhapsody, a RealNetwork unit based here in Seattle. Fortunately, there's good tech news today too: a Brazilian tech company called Spring Networks is setting up shop in the city, and will be hiring some 35 employees. The Southlake is looking at possible upsides to the bored tunnel viaduct replacement option. West Seattle Blog has more updates on the Junction shooting, including photos of the memorial set up at the site. And over at Sound Transit Blog, there's a list of the major Sound Transit Express changes coming up in 2009.