Aug

25

Next Sounder stop: Ballard?

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Sounder Commuter Rail

Via Designer Dale

The Ballard News Tribune has a story today on a citizen petition effort to build a station for Ballard on the existing Sounder commuter rail line through the neighborhood.  Is this a quick and easy way to help foster a car-free lifestyle for the northwest corner of the city?

When Crown Hill resident Kevin Morgan watches the Sounder trains whoosh past Golden Gardens and the Shilshole Bay Marina on their way between Edmonds and downtown Seattle, he sees missed opportunity.

“If you really want to get people out of their cars, you have to get serious about it,” Morgan said.

Morgan is pushing for Sound Transit to construct a Sounder Commuter Rail stop in the Golden Gardens area to accommodate Ballard riders. In the past weeks, he has gathered 80 to 100 signatures of support on posters he put up around the neighborhood.  More…

Feb

24

A New Online Resource for Commuting

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The Downtown Seattle Association, King County Metro, and the City of Seattle have teamed up to create commuteseattle.com, a new website with online tools for commuters.  The site has portals for commuters, employers, and property owners that provide information about daily commute options, commuter tools employers can provide, and ideas for how property owners can support non auto-transportation.

Check out the site and let us know what you think.

Feb

23

Metro Faces Service Cuts if no new Revenue is Found

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Been waiting a long time for your bus in the rain?  Program your I-Pod with more music.  You may wait a lot longer in 2010.

Metro Transit and its connecting systems to the north and south of Seattle are experiencing a major drop in sales tax collections.  Two thirds of their budget is covered, or in this case not covered, by the regressive sales tax.

If no new funding source is developed, that means severe service cuts in 2010 according to Metro’s top management in their report to the King County Council.

But wait, Seattle!  There’s more and worse.  Seattle and Shoreline, the “West Service Sector” for Metro, is already limited in the sales tax transit funding by the County Council-supported 20:40:40 division of those dollars: 20% to Seattle/Shoreline bus service, 80% to Eastside and South King County.  Seems unfair, since the vast majority of bus trips originate to, from, or within Seattle.

Some King County Council Members and people who lobby them want to work the 20:40:40 sales tax dollar division in reverse to require a 60/20/20 service cut.
That 60% dollar reduction in sales tax transit support for Seattle/Shoreline would create a major disruption in transportation for those cities.

Metro ridership increased more than 20% over the past two years.  New riders have stuck to Metro’s service, as fuel costs have dropped and now are rising again.

Metro and some King County Council Members are themselves lobbying Washington State House Representatives and Senators to allow the county to tap the Motor Vehicle Excise Tax for transit operations to back-fill the drop in sales tax revenues.

Consider contacting your representatives in Olympia to ask them to provide King County with the power to access the Motor Vehicle Excise Tax, your annual car tab fees, to fund public transit in this recession.  The MVET dollars should go to the bus routes with the most ridership.

Right now there appears little interest by State Representatives and Senators in authorizing MVET support for transit this year.  Let them know your ideas on that or let Tim Eyeman rule.

Feb

9

Transit Gets Shorted

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Lots of riders – Less funding

Metro’s bumpy buses looked like a great, low-cost alternative to driving your car and parking it expensively.  A big bump in riders – more than – 20% in two years – have packed out the diesel and trolley bus vehicles. The recent drop-back in fuel prices didn’t send recent transit converts back to their cars, and the ridership growth continues.  So there are less gas tax dollars to fix the roads the buses wear out.  Recession-plagued folks are buying less and borrowing not much, so the sales tax revenues that directly fund Metro Transit are down.

Big Hurt

Metro bought ultra-expensive diesel fuel at the height of the fuel price fluctuation. The agency is trying to add more buses to the essential routes.  But a projected deficit looms.  Without new tax sources or the return of federal tax dollars to the state and cities, transit agencies like Metro will wither and need to cut current and promised bus rapid transit services, just when the demand for service is at an all-time high.

New Funding Strategies

Buzz word #1: Stimulus Package. The most transit-oriented version from the Senate ladled out nation-wide totals of $27 billion for roads but only $11.5 billion for transit.  Count on it, but not for much.  Sound Transit has nailed down it’s share for Link Light Rail to Husky Stadium. Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, a group that represents government contractors, said the government appears to lack the planning and the “infrastructure and architecture” upfront to manage the massive infrastructure spending. (Washington Post 2/8/09)  “Without it,” he said, “we’re going to have a repeat of what we’ve seen over and over and over, from major weapons systems to Katrina and Iraq.”

Buzz word #2: State Highway Mitigation Dollars.  Temporary funding to make up for less road capacity in the SR99  corridor during waterfront viaduct demolition and replacement has faded a lot with the adoption of the deep bored tunnel concept.  This is the flip side of minimizing the reduced capacity and down-time in the corridor.

Buzz word #3: MVET. The Motor Vehicle Excise Tax, the fee for those annual license plate tabs, is being lusted after by all local transit agencies, especially Metro.  Even the brand new King County passenger ferry district is looking for MVET dollars.  But the outlook in ’09 for state legislative authority to raise MVET fees is no good without Governor Gregoire’s endorsement.

Backfilling declining sales tax funding for transit with MVET dollars needs an advocate.  Legislators are understandably reluctant to go to a MVET increase when education and healthcare funding is also tight.  Authorization would need to come from both the State Legislature, famously unsympathetic to King County and Seattle, and the King County Council.

Oddly the MVET advocates might be drivers acting in their own self interest and voting “yes” for MVET dollars to fund transit.  Better, more frequent transit takes many car trips off the streets making space available and less congested for necessary car trips.  Trucks in Seattle need street space, and shifting a significant number of car trips to transit will improve freight movement all over town.

Meanwhile there is a bill in Olympia to encourage “transit-oriented communities” (HB149i0/SB5687/)  Such a law would encourage people state-wide to live in urban communities with access to mass transit.  The law would encourage local governments to create affordable, livable, and walkable urban centers around transit stations.

Time to Breathe

King County is studying what new funding authority Metro needs now versus what the need will be later in the decade to serve the projected population increase.  There’s some time to work on new MVET authorization.  It may be that less than 1% of the assigned value of a licensed vehicle would be sought for increased MVET  to mend King Co. Metro Transit’s funding gap.  Expect new anti-tax initiatives from Tim Eyeman, our state’s de facto finance director.

posted on behalf of John Coney

Jan

29

How Can Seattleites Get Modern Transportation Alternatives?

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Are you paying $500 a month to park downtown? Or are you, like me, riding a packed-out bumpy, infrequent bus? Why is that our alternative to the more and more costly automobile commute? Really, can’t we do better?

Did you know that King County exports gas tax dollars for roads to many other poorer counties in Washington? We’re the only county to have the surplus dollars to do that.

And even within King County, Seattle doesn’t get a good shake. When a Federal Judge turned over Metro Transit to the King County Council, that body voted to limit Seattle to 20% of the sales tax dollars for in-city transit service hours. The East Side and South King County get 40% each. Hasn’t Metro built out its system to the limits of the urban sprawl by now? Don’t the majority of bus trips in King County begin or end or being and end in Seattle? Hey, give us a break!

Lately Seattle has been trying many things to obtain true big city quality transit alternatives.

The late lamented Seattle Monorail established, and then extinguished, a separate district to fund in-city, off the street, mass transit with a Motor Vehicle Excise Tax slice. But the engineering was so awkward and inflexible that the project couldn’t adapt to the amount of funding available. There went tens of millions of dollars that could have bought us better bus service or at-grade rail or streetcar service.

Then our deregulated “free enterprise” economy went south. Bus rider numbers increased more than 20% over two years. A transit agency’s dream? No, a nightmare, as prices for the polluting diesel fuel skyrocketed, then crashed, then began a new rise this year.

Seattle voters spearheaded the “yes” vote for Metro’s three, yet to be implemented, “bus rapid transit” routes into downtown: West Seattle, Ballard/Uptown, and Aurora. These are regressively funded by new sales tax, but are scheduled currently to begin service in 2011-2012. Why so long? Meanwhile expect long waits and bumpy rides.

At the same time Seattle voted to tax itself on property, commercial parking lots, and employers (by number of employees) to improve key arterials, fix up streets and sidewalks, and buy – yes! buy — more than our 20% share of Metro bus service hours.

In November, 2008 King County voters spearheaded a really big decision to fund major extensions of the Sound Transit Link Light Rail slated to open this year from downtown to SeaTac Airport. At this time the new destinations include Lynnwood, Redmond, and Federal Way.

This January the City, County, and State executives finally agreed on an Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement: a surface Alaskan Way, downtown avenue and street improvements, improved access to the I-5 freeway at Spokane and Mercer Streets, and some more transit. Included in the transit are proposed Central Line, a First Avenue Streetcar service connecting Pioneer Square, Pike Market, downtown, and Belltown, to Seattle Center. Since Sound Transit cancelled the First Hill light rail station, the yes vote for extending Sound Transit light rail includes funding for a streetcar service linking Pioneer Square, First Hill, and Capitol Hill. So by extension the Central Line links to both the existing South Lake Union Streetcar to east Lake Union and to Capitol Hill’s Broadway.

Well, isn’t this boring, and isn’t this a shaky, variously funded mix. Is this our best try for excellent big city transit that will really relieve our main roads at peak travel hours?

In a period of US history when our national government is reducing taxes while fighting wars, the costs of transportation are shifting more and more to states, counties and cities.

We’ll need to find out how to pay for the needed improvements for all kinds of transportation, in-city, regional, inter-city, and international.

There are some viable alternatives: the Motor Vehicle Excise Tax, abhorred by Tim Eyeman, variable hour tolling, bonding against future tax revenues in districts with improved land values. The latter is the funding that built Portland’s Max Light Rail.

Talk to your State Representatives and Senators. Let them know that better transportation planning is needed and better funding is the key.