Join City of Seattle staff for a “PechaKucha” style word slam about the livability of our city on Tuesday, April 19th. We will have local talent to entertain and an opportunity to find out what many City programs are up to. HALA will be featured and you can find out what is in store for the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda in the city.
6:30 – 7:15pm Open House
What will happen at the Open House? Attendees will have a chance to discuss policies and proposals with City staff one on one. When you get all your questions answered you can enjoy the history of Seattle by visiting the rest of the museum.
7:15 – 8:00pm Program
The Mayor and his Department Directors will be on stage to do an update on how they see the vision of a vibrant Seattle coming through the programs they lead. This program will be lively and fun.
HALA – Move Seattle – Plan for Community Centers – Equity and Environment – Arts & Culture – Off Leash Area Plan – Community Planning – Anti-Discrimination
Have you heard? Sound Transit has a bold plan to massively expand light rail (LRT), commuter rail, express buses, and bus rapid transit (BRT) throughout the Puget Sound over the next 25 years. The biggies include projects like:
Ballard to Downtown Seattle LRT;
Lynnwood to Everett LRT;
BRT on I-405 and SR-522/145th Street;
Federal Way to Tacoma Community College LRT;
West Seattle to Downtown Seattle LRT;
Extended South Sounder service from Lakewood to DuPont; and
Bellevue to Issaquah LRT.
Sound Transit wants to hear from you on their Draft Plan. Throughout the month of April, you can comment on the proposal (public comment ends April 29th). Learn about the Draft Plan at soundtransit3.org and then take a survey. Or, show up to one of seven open houses hosted by Sound Transit staff and give your feedback. Each meeting (with the exception of the one at Union Station) will run from 5.30pm to 7.30pm with presentations kicking off at 6pm:
King County Metro is wading into a process to evaluate and overhaul the late night bus network. The agency has long operated a late night bus network, which is still visible with the maddening spaghetti routes of the 80 series. Night owl bus improvements have occurred over the past decade, but the primary focus of those have been through the progressive implementation of RapidRide routes and select allocation of new trips to core workhorse routes like the 7 and 49.
Current late night bus service in Seattle. (Seattle Transit Map/Oran Viriyincy)
This new initiative, however, would be the first time in many years that the agency has seriously considered a real transformation of the late night bus network. To begin this process, Metro is seeking feedback from regular night riders, and folks who may not be riding at all. The survey ask riders about their current late night bus habits, why they ride at night, and what issues might deter them from making trips.
As our region grows and changes, our need to get around 24 hours a day is also growing.
While there are up to 40 late-night routes that help riders throughout King County get to and from jobs and entertainment, it’s been many years since Metro Transit took a wide-ranging look at how well the late-night service is working. That’s why Metro is now reaching out to riders to learn more about how they use late night service, especially trips that run between midnight and 5 a.m.
Metro knows late-night bus service is essential in serving people who work night-shifts, go to the airport or take in the nightlife. But this service has not undergone significant change for many years. So Metro is now reaching out to riders to identify how well the system is working or not working for them.
During this round of outreach, Metro is inviting riders who use the bus late at night to take our survey. Customers will be asked about their travel habits, how they are using the service and whether they experience barriers to using late-night service. Riders who don’t take the bus at night might have thoughts about other types of late-night bus service that could meet their needs.
Metro will also partner with the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) to reach out to key stakeholder groups, human service agencies and others to better understand employment patterns and the needs of underserved groups, in addition to talking directly with riders who use the bus during the nighttime hours. Metro will accept feedback via its survey through May 4.
When the outreach is complete, Metro and SDOT will review the customer feedback and determine next steps. Possible outcomes would range from adjusting hours of service to making changes to routing.
If you thought that regional growth might be petering out, you’d be wrong. Recent data from the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) shows that job growth remains strong throughout the Sound. In January, 4,500 new jobs were added to the employment rolls at a pace of about 145 new jobs per day. Regional employment growth has been relatively consistent and healthy since 2010, leading the unemployment rate to drop from a high of 9.1% to the current low of 4.9%.
In the six-year timeframe from January 2010 to January 2016, the PSRC found that the regional economy had netted 269,600 jobs, with the lion’s share of those going to locations in King County and Snohomish County. The added jobs have led the region from a low of 1.74 million to a new high of 2 million jobs. The PSRC also took a look at two snapshots in time between January 2014 and January 2016, and what they found was accelerating job growth. In the January 2014 to January 2015 time period, 54,600 jobs were added while in the January 2015 to January 2016 time period, 58,000 jobs were added — a rate increase of 3,400 more jobs and 6% higher than the year prior. According to the PSRC, the 2015-2016 time period saw an overall annual job growth rate of 3% and a monthly employment rate of more than 4,800 jobs.
A snapshot of regional employment from January 2010 to January 2016. (Puget Sound Regional Council)
New jobs are undoubtedly a good thing. As people become employed, they are better able to support their lifestyles, feel personal satisfaction, and contribute to their communities. But new jobs also create new demands of their own; perhaps the biggest of those are on transportation systems and housing. Fortunately, many of the newly employed within the region are choosingactive transportation and transit over driving, alleviating some congestion that might otherwise end up on local roads. On the housing side of things, the local economy is delivering a substantial number of new units every month, but the data suggests that the building industry isn’t entirely keeping up with demand. And that’s not exactly surprising.
Pierce Transit is on the upswing. Cash reserves are riding high with more than $110 million in the bank thanks to frugal spending habits and buoying sales tax receipts. The agency’s board of commissioners met on Monday to vote on a major expenditure plan to increase service, purchase new equipment and replace aging assets, and hire new staff. Getting to this point though, wasn’t easy and is largely the result of a tumultuous eight years.
Before the Great Recession hit, Pierce Transit had over 660,000 annual service hours on the books. Facing collapsing revenues and an unwillingelectorate to save the agency from catastrophic cuts and deferred investments, the agency was forced to make tough choices. Painfullydeep cuts — to the tune of 38% — decimated weekend service, curtailed the span of service for weeknights, obliterated frequency, and ravaged countywide coverage on local and express routes. When the dust settled, the agency was left with a severely damaged image and a meager 413,000 annual service hours. But all that has changed.
Financial estimates for 2015 and 2016. (Pierce Transit)
At the center of the current proposal is a massive 13% bus service increase over the course of the next year and a half. Pierce Transit anticipates a roll out of three rounds of service improvements that would total 59,000 annual service hours. This latest proposal comes on the heels of a year of new service deployment (16,000 service hours in total) that wrapped up in March. Adding the the new service hours to the agency’s current scorecard would bring the new tally to 502,000 annual service hours by the end of 2017 — that’s still a far cry from the peak, but it at least gets Pierce Transit more than one-quarter of the way to a new high score (158,000 service hours short). To pay for the new service, the agency plans to largely draw down on the built up cash reserves that are nearly twice the amount needed.
The Seattle City Council weighed in on three land use items yesterday, which included votes for a site-specific rezone and the landmark designation of two separate structures. The first two votes dealt with establishing historic preservation controls to protect a City-owned structure on the Seattle waterfront and a privately-owned building in South Lake Union. Both measures passed on unanimous1 consent by the Council. A third vote was taken on a proposed rezone to property in Eastlake. The Council, again, passed the measure on unanimous1 consent, paving the way for a proposed mixed-use project to move forward for final approval and construction.
Eastlake Rezone
Eastlake property rezone. (City of Seattle)
Councilmembers took up the issue of rezoning a 12,300-square foot site in Eastlake (located at 2203 and 2209 Eastlake Avenue East), a quasi-judicial land use matter that requires Council approval. The applicant requested the rezone in order to develop the site with a five-story mixed-use building.
Prior to the rezone, the property had split between two zoning district designations: LR2 and NC1P-30. The rezone proposal involved rezoning the entire site to NC2P-40, which typically allows buildings up to 40 feet in height with a mix of residential and commercial uses. The P (Pedestrian) designation specifically requires retail and active commercial uses along the ground floor where applicable.
Under the proposed development plans, the project would deliver 45 residential units, 3,006 square feet of commercial, and 39 below-ground parking stalls. The residential component is planned to provide for a mix of tenancy types, including: 7 studios, 2 two-story lofts, 29 one-bedrooms, and 7 two-bedrooms. Three commercial units will be located on the ground floor facing Eastlake Ave E.
The Council-approved rezone comes with a property use and development agreement (PUDA), which essentially ties the rezone to the development proposal and requires that the applicant comply with all conditions of the land use application. The rezone, though, is potentially time-limited due to provisions that could result in a lapse of the rezone if the Master Use Permit is not issued within seven years from the date of the rezone ordinance. But it’s very likely that the applicant will want to quickly complete remaining building and construction permit approvals so as to begin development.
Tomorrow evening (Tuesday, April 12) we’ll be hosting another monthly meetup of The Urbanist! Our meetups are open to all and free to attend or drop in. We’ll be at the Belltown Pub on Tuesday, March 8th from 5.30pm to 7.30pm. You can find us in the loft space just beyond the bar area.
We’ll be joined by guest speaker Sonja Burseth, an Associate Planner with transportation consultancy Nelson/Nygaard. Sonja’s graduate research at the University of Washington looked into a shared parking model for empty spaces at multifamily developments on transit corridors. Sonja also works on a variety of other transit and non-motorized projects that seek to efficiently use limited urban space and provide mobility benefits equitably and economically. Around 6.30pm she’ll lead a casual 15-minute discussion and then be available to mingle one-on-one.
My initial impressions of Sound Transit’s draft plan for Sound Transit 3 were that it was weighted too heavily to delivering project to the suburbs first rather than moving forward the highest ridership urban projects first. I suggesting adding in Ballard-to-UW subway line to give Ballard (and the rest of Northwest Seattle) a quicker win, but Sound Transit appears to view that project as an addendum not a prologue, which puts more strain on building the Ballard-to-Downtown line as quickly as possible.
The Transport Politic‘s Yonah Freemark did an excellent analysis of the ST3 package and confirmed what many urbanists suspected: the Ballard-to-Downtown is by far the strongest project on the list and deserves to be built first.
The Transport Politic ran the numbers to find the subsidized cost per rider, which is a good indicator of a line’s performance. (Yonah Freemark)