Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute
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One note - I just donated, but I almost bailed out when I saw I had to go through the whole UW process (especially when I then paid with PayPal, which has all of that info anyway....). I'm sure you're restricted to using their platform, but even better PayPal integration would go a long way.
Thanks again!
In general, focusing on transit at the expense of drivers is simply the smart thing to do — roads are a limited resource, and as the population grows we have to use them more efficiently. Doing so helps the most people for the least cost.
I'm sorry if you own a car and things get a little less convenient for you, but in the end we have to create the most value for the most people, especially those who don't have the luxury of owning a car.
Light rail will not reach Snohomish County until the mid 2030's. That is not an acceptable answer.
That is a solvable problem: get rid of the zoning that keeps them out.
It's not a war on driving - it's favoring public transit over driving. There's a contradiction in your statement because public transit is often opposed by wealthy communities for fear of attracting "undesirable elements" (read: the poor). How can public transit both be used by working class people but also be bad for them?
To add on to that, how is it better financially for working class people to put thousands of dollars (a significant fraction of their net worth) into an otherwise unproductive asset that sits idle 80-90% of the time? Not to mention that $1000 used car is far more likely to break down and require expensive repairs (due to more use) when used by a poor person who has to drive an hour each way every day (because housing within decent commute range is too expensive). Operating a car can cost quite a bit too. Insurance can easily be another $1000/year and gasoline is maybe another $1500 more. Compared to that an unlimited VTA pass is $70/month. And the cost of sitting in traffic vs sitting in a train/bus and possibly getting some sleep or work done.
Yes, that's exactly how it needs to happen. Transit works more efficiently in higher-density areas, and higher-density areas become more appealing when served by transit, and everyone benefits. The solution is obvious: upzone all the low-density neighborhoods within city limits, then build transit links connecting them.
Dynamics of mass transit infrastructure in the Seattle region is dominated by a multi-decade absence of adequate funding and building. Seattle spent several decades through the mid-20th century in decline, but even as jobs and residents started flowing back (beginning in the '80s) Seattle nevertheless squandered additional decades failing to build out infrastructure. Only recently has that changed, and the process has to overcome a reluctance towards taxation and government spending in the area (Seattle specifically has very low taxation levels compared to a city of its size) and the deep hole of those lost decades. The only way to counteract not building up transit for decades is either spending decades building up transit or taking a hard short-term financial hit to accelerate the process.
The interim solution is the same as it has always been for suburb/exurb transit: the last mile is a drive to/from a park and ride.
Plus, as Seattle continues to expand, it's only going to become more expensive and difficult (zoning, nimby etc) to build rail mass transit. Now is the time to do it and do it aggressively. You put it into place now because you won't be able to later.
Things are not just "a little less convenient" for people who use a car. That's minimizing what has been a much more real impact to me and many others I know. There was a time even only a few years ago when I could zip around the city and do many different things in one day, making the most of the limited time me, my family, and friends have. Now a lot of that way of life is simply not possible due to the amount of planning/time it takes to get around - we can't casually expect to be some place at some time, and in the end we just plain do less and live a less-enriched life as a result. That's a lot more than a slight inconvenience to us.
And along the same lines, certain neighborhoods in the city (e.g. Capitol Hill, Ballard, etc.) are downright inaccessible to anyone who doesn't live there, whereas previously it was possible to drive there and find parking (even if it took a little bit :D). I'm sure someone is going to mention there is now light rail to Capitol Hill, which I'll head off by saying that the nearest light rail station for me has no parking, and taking a bus to get there and then waiting for the light rail basically adds 40m+ to the trip and just makes it not worth it. ST3 is also not a panacea. It will take years for it to reach its intended coverage (whereas the population is growing _now_), and there's also a good chance that it will not be enough by the time it is ready.
Lastly, I think saying we have to "create the most value for the most people" is also more of an opinion than a fact of life IMO. From my perspective, the city government exists firstly to protect the quality of life of its existing constituents. It is plainly failing at that.
The bus system is especially critical to this. It doesn’t take billions of dollars to add a new bus route, or make buses more frequent on a route, so congestion issues at bus stops are largely addressable. The routes are also generally being made more convenient, so the added benefit of driving in a car is diminished.
I live in New York now, and while the subway coverage here is certainly unbeatable, its unreliability, dirtiness, congestion, and the borderline-criminal mismanagement of public transit infrastructure in NYC (including buses) make me really miss living in Seattle.
With a car, you can hop off the freeway and take a side street and you're there in 30-40 minutes instead of 2+ hours.
If you want to discuss borderline-criminal mismanagement, there's the $50 billion ST3 plan. We could put one WA State resident on the moon for that price.
You're comparing the best case time with a car to the worst case time of a bus. How long do you think the car will take in 5 years, or 10, as the region continues to grow?
> We could put one WA State resident on the moon for that price.
Perhaps, but what's the utility of that? Infrastructure costs money and the region needs mass transit or it will suffer from increased gridlock and commute times.
A call to the absurd is a way to illustrate my frustration with the relative lack of return on the investment.
Did we live in the same city? This is the exact opposite of my experience with Seattle transit.
Roads need to be _EXPENSIVE_ to use, Cars need to be expensive to own Transit needs to be _UBIQUITOUS_ and _CHEAP/FREE_ to use
_ANY_ other combination is insanity. It has been proven time and time again that any other combination leads to insane amounts of congestion.
As far as cleanliness goes, it really depends on the route. Commuter routes tend to be pretty clean.
For me it's no problem, both my office and apartment are on the C Line route but if I lived in North Admiral I would probably just ride my bicycle to work.
Public transit in Seattle is still not convenient or even possible for actually getting around the city. I still use Uber/Lyft or my own car or motorcycle to get around other than getting to work and even then I prefer to ride the motorcycle in traffic over being crammed into the sardine can C-Line.
But hopefully we can expand transit to where most people choose it over cars.
1. Geographical limitations (we literally cannot build more freeways) -- we're on an isthmus.
2. A newfound willingness of the public to vote for transit (ST2, ST3 etc). Some of this is generational, some is new yuppie residents (i.e., AMZN employees) (this is not intended as an insult, just a demographic observation).
3. As a result of (2), light rail. Light rail is a commuting density godsend and we're building more of it as fast as we can.
4. Benefits for HOV carpoolers in the city — access to expressways and HOV lanes.
5. Parking lots downtown are too expensive not to sell to developers, and even if there is a mandatory minimum parking on new construction, it doesn't seem replace existing supply. So, to put it another way, parking pressure / increased expense makes driving less appealing.
6. Rapid ride / BRT ("Bus Rapid Transit")? Some buses are at least supposed to be very frequent and have fast load/unload. Supposedly they have dedicated lanes and access, too, although this doesn't always work out in practice. Still a lot better than the historical Seattle standard of buses every 15-20 minutes that would arrive within +/- 20 minutes of their scheduled stop time.
Mass transit use up, quality of life down. I've grown up slightly outside of Seattle and have been working at some startups, but I'm leaving at the end of this year.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/2/6/complete-neighb...
The 405 toll lanes originally removed capacity on off peek hours by removal of the HOV lanes, until pushback had them undo it. 2 person HOV was removed.
The way the WADOT has been measuring success of the toll lanes is by polling people at the Bellevue Transit Center to find out if they are now taking the bus because of the toll lanes.
I have been commuting through downtown the last couple weeks and while traffic is heavy it's totally manageable.
- They have eliminated car lanes in favor of bike lanes that are typically not highly utilized - even in neighborhoods far from the downtown core, street parking is being eliminated for bike lanes, and is making even simple tasks hard and hurting quality of life (e.g. taking the kids to the dentist but not being able to park anywhere nearby).
- They have reduced speed limits in many places and therefore added travel time everywhere. This includes thoroughfares obviously designed for high throughput (e.g. WA-522, Lake City Way).
- Next month, the main on-ramp at Mercer Avenue onto I-5 will begin to be metered, which is going to be incredibly painful given that traffic is already super bad on Mercer (as always they are claiming it will "improve safety").
If you disagree with the parent comment, give your viewpoint on why this isn't the case or these changes were good.
Best of luck to you in your new city :)
Car: 23 minutes. Even during the awful 520 rush hour, it's still ~15-30min faster.
> in/out of the city becomes a lot easier for more people than it becomes worse for
Pretty hard to imagine losing 2hrs on a round-trip into the city is a benefit for anyone that can't afford to live in the city proper.
In general, it doesn't make sense to invest in making it easier for cars as the population grows — it's not as sustainable as improving transit, since public transit is a far more efficient way to transport people.
I think it's naive to suggest this as an alternative when we could have working mass transit systems using proven equipment within a decade. Why would we wait for what might come when we could have something better today?
Busses in the city are plagued by our homeless. A lot of the busses simply don't feel safe, especially if you're a female traveling solo.
The exception to the rule seems to be the 'commuter' busses, double deckers that go to park and rides straight downtown, but park and rides are full by 6:30 with not enough parking, and service is limited.
Connecting busses out of county (Community Transit, Gnomish county) sucks, no service out of 9-5 hours Monday through Friday. Total roundtrips for most people start at 2 hours and go up to 4 (my commute to college and home).
Ultimately, the buses are torn between two opposing causes: serving disadvantaged members of the community by being cheap and helping people commute at odd hours, or serving mass commuters that work downtown, and it fails at both.
This is actually the opposite of the truth. Commuter buses are far more expensive routes to run due to both the distance (wear and tear, fuel) and the deadhead (empty) return trips. City routes cost far less to run per head.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_County_Metro#Operating_co...
> Metro's higher-than-average cost per boarding can be at least partially attributed to its high percentage of commuter routes, which run at peak hours only, and often only in one direction at a time. As of 2011, 100 of Metro's 223 routes are peak-only. These routes require significant deadheading (particularly on the one-way routes), as well as a very large part-time labor force, both of which drive up costs.[29]
> Metro's lowest-cost route overall, route 4 (East Queen Anne to Judkins Park), had a cost per boarding of only $0.46 during peak hours in 2009. By way of contrast, Metro's peak-only route with the lowest cost per boarding was route 206 (Newport Hills to International School), at $2.04. Metro's highest cost route by this measure, route 149 (Renton Transit Center to Black Diamond), had a peak time cost of $34.47 per boarding. Route 149 serves the rural southeastern corner of King County.[30]
For the direct source, check out this PDF: http://metro.kingcounty.gov/am/reports/2009/2009-RtPerf.pdf
Starting on page 24 (20 in the document), you can see look at "Fare Rev. / Op. Exp. Ratio." The "West Subarea" is the city of Seattle; the East and South subareas are suburbs. You can see that the aggregate fare recovery per operating expenses is much higher in Seattle than in routes serving the suburbs.
If you or someone you know is hiring College Graduates in these areas, drop me a line.
Thankfully I’ve recently landed work in Bellevue (as opposed to Yet Another Pioneer Square Startup), so maybe I can hold off for a while longer. Love Redmond, but a lot of the work is across the lake. And, no, I’m not moving to Seattle.
I guess my real complaint with articles like this is that they assume cars are a problem and buses are a solution. This is wrong. The problem is that I need to get from point A to point B. Buses are a possible solution, and cars are a possible solution, bicycling is a possible solution, walking, heck, even electric skateboards are possible solutions.
The big problem right now in Seattle is that any form of commuting (especially downtown) sucks. Buses are more popular now and cars less popular now, but that's largely because for many of us commuting by bus sucks less than commuting by car. But make no mistake, they both suck.
The problem isn't cars per se. It's the percentage of trips made with cars and the relative low person-density of a SOV (or even a fully occupied car, relative to fully occupied buses or light rail).
There will always be routes that are not well served by transit compared to cars. The end goal is not zero trips made with cars. The goal is to make transit convenient for the majority of trips, so that people choose transit over cars. The result of higher person-density transit is that travel times do not become even more unreasonable as the region grows.