PT Tomorrow Update, and MoMap

Not much to report out of the Mobility Master Plan session for last week. We talked mainly about goals and the need to have conversations about policy outside of the meetings so we can hammer out some of the more important issues when we all come together.

Jessyn Farrell from Pierce Transit handed out a brochure about "PT Tomorrow," which is going to be a series of public forums where people interested in transit in Pierce County will be able to craft what a system ten or twenty years in the future will look like. I think that this will be a positive exercise, since the community hasn't been asked to think about the whole system and about the future.

I'm currently putting together a vision of public transit that I hope to gather support for from the local neighborhood councils and Tacoma Streetcar.

Here's what the brochure says:

Join us to discuss:

• Prioritizing service. The economic recession has shown us that we can't always have everything.
• Where you'd like to see improvements and least like to see reducations. Destionations? Time of day? Frequency? This is your opportunity.
• Regional connections. Travel beyond Pierce County is important to a growing number of transit riders.

Follow our progress, give your suggestions, and sign up to get the latest updates at PTtomorrow.org (currently not available). Or link to it from PierceTransit.org.

Here are the dates for the "Community Design Workshops"

Lakewood / University Place / 7-8:30 PM
Pierce Transit Training Center, 3720 96th St. SW, Lakewood, 98499
Served by Routes 48, 300

Puyallup / South Hill 10/14 7-8:30 PM
South Hill Library, 15420 Meridian E, Puyallup 98375
Served by Routes 402, 490

South Tacoma 10/15 7-8:30 PM
South End Neighborhood Center, 7802 South L St. Tacoma 98408
Served by Routes 45, 48

Gig Harbor / Key Peninsula 10/20 6:30-8 PM
Location TBD. Check PTtomorrow.org for update.
Served by routes 100, 102

Downtown Tacoma 10/27 7-8:30 PM
Evergreen State College, 1210 6th Ave., Tacoma 98405
Served by Routes 1, 16, 26, 28, 57

Parkland / Spanaway 10/29 7-8:30 PM
Parkland / Spanaway Library, 13718 Pacific Ave. S, Tacoma 98444
Served by Route 1

Sumner / Bonney Lake 11/10 6-7:30 PM
Sumner City Hall, 1104 Maple St, Sumner 98390
Served by Routes 408, 409

North & West Tacoma 11/12 7-8:30 PM
University of Puget Sound, 1500 N Warner, Tacoma 98416
Served by Rotues 16, 51

Eric Anderson: Pay As You Go Bike Lanes and Streetcars

The Tacoma Weekly and Exit133 both covered this last weeks Tacoma City Council Study Session. But what they didn't cover were some really important elements in Eric Anderson's presentation on transportation in the City of Tacoma.

Editorial Comment
When I listened to the Council's comments, I noticed a particular shift in the rhetoric. No longer are we talking about trimming around the edges when it comes to transportation and land use policy in Tacoma, we're talking about significant mode shifting - discouraging the use of cars in dense areas and expanding transit options and choices for walking and cycling throughout the City of Tacoma. It seems like there's enough policy now - with Complete Streets, Upzoned Mixed Use Centers, Streetcars, the removal of parking requirements, and the Green Ribbon Task Force on Climate Change, that the sheer inertia of incremental geological movement in policy at the city, is resulting in new conceptions of what the city will look like in the future - that wouldn't have been possible a few short years ago.

The Study Session
Mr. Anderson talked a great deal about parking meters, yes, but he also put a lot of emphasis on buses, streetcars and bicycles. Basically the situation is as he described it, our infrastructure is in a poor state of repair at the moment, and it is this way essentially thorughout the entire city, representing hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs. So since we have this new policy of Complete Streets, we should implement measures, which make our public streets as conducive to walking, cycling, and transit as according to plan whenever we do repairs or reconstruction of streets. In this way, we work incrementally, in a pay-go method, day-by-day, week-by-week in the right direction. We are finally getting some movement, which is so much more than what we've had in ages.

Streetcars
According to Mr. Anderson, the city is going to be using some state funds it to reconstruct Stadium Way, so that it looks similar to Broadway or St. Helens. What's really awesome is that he's talking about having the city lay rails in the ground all the way to base of Division Avenue. This is amazing, because it's the first time that the City has ever undertaken engineering of railway in City street rights of way in probably 85 years. When the public sees this happen, it'll definitely start some conversation - just like the addition of bike lanes to a portion of N. 21st street did.

Parking & Water Transport
He's still talking about creating new parking garages - but only as market demand grows for parking. Eric also alluded to using our city's waterways for transportation. Water taxi between NE Tacoma, Ruston Way and Downtown, anyone?


The City Manager's presentation can be viewed here on TV Tacoma (August 11, 2009).

Summer Transportation News Roundup

Since the last post a good deal has happened in regards to transportation in Tacoma. Here is a smörgåsbord of stuff that's been happening locally.

June 16^th:
The City Council is considering a levy lid lift for the November election (or perhaps next year). It would be a the first of a four part series of road investment packages to rid the city's streets of potholes. There are 45 miles of bike lanes included in the package, but I'm not really game on the improvements that are supposed to take place in my neighborhood. This is probably not going to happen this year with the poor state of the economy.

June 18^th:
Tacoma's Streetcar/Light Rail extension information session was not all that I was hoping to see. Councilmember and Sound Transit Board member Julie Anderson, was apparently working to simply alert the public that Tacoma has a number of transportation-related planning initiatives in the works at the moment and that some work has been done in regards to a streetcar system or light rail extension to Tacoma General Hospital. She brought stakeholders and interested citizens together at least. I got to meet one of the workers at Oregon Iron Works / United Streetcar, which has built a Skoda-design streetcar, like the ones we're presently operating Tacoma Link. Morgan Alexander and I talked about potentially using voter lists from Sound Transit 2020 to target for an initiative campaign of sorts in 2010, if the City and Pierce Transit fail to come through with a light rail extension or streetcar element in their investment packages.

July 13^th:
The City of Tacoma's Mobility Master Plan initial meeting was primarily about bicycles – the health benefits of active transportation, traffic engineering to make Tacoma more bicycle friendly, etc. Apparently something like this has happened once before – a citizen-led planning effort that went nowhere because no one was in charge and there was no money to ever implement the plans. Transit is taking a back seat in this discussion for the most part, it seems, much to my chagrin. I don't know how you make dense urban environments work well sustainably without public transit. We are going to have to tackle a good number of issues concerning right of way and roadway design to make all of these modes work together. Pedestrians will also see something come out of this committee, tree-lined complete streets, and the like.

I spoke with Jessyn Farrell about what our next steps for streetcars should be. She told me more or less that the City has to take the lead on the project:

• establish an initial alignment,

• do some street engineering,

• figure out some possible sources for operations,

• and then come to Pierce Transit to ask for them to take over operating Tacoma Link.

Oh the merry-go-round of trying to get elected officials to do something that makes sense and where we have the money to do it. A transit activist's life never stops.

July 13^th:

Pierce Transit brought their talking buses and TRAX gps vehicle location system online. Routes 1, 2, 3, and the Seattle Express buses have automated stop announcements. I've ridden it on routes 1, 2, and the Seattle Express, and it works marginally well. Route 1's buses never seem to have the volume set correctly and not very many stop locations are announced on either route 1 or route 2. The Seattle Express buses work pretty well though. I'm still waiting for NextBus at bus stops and available via mobile phone SMS and for Pierce Transit to collaborate with Google Transit's scheduling information. On my phone in King County, I can use my GPS as my starting location and use Google Maps to point to my destination via touch screen to get transit directions. The process takes at least two to three times longer via Pierce Transit's trip planner and is prone to endless address clarifications.

July 15^th:

Washington State's High Speed Rail application to the Federal Railroad Administration was a whopping $2 billion. Apparently the long range vision is for trains that can operate at 220MPH. That would bring the trip from Tacoma to Portland down to about an hour. Pretty nifty. We'll see if the money comes through. Since we're using the TALGO trainsets, we should be able to get the trains up to 110MPH in a few years and get on time performance to 95%.

July 19^th:
I got the chance to ride Seattle's Central Link Light Rail a few days after it opened. A couple of comments:

1. Ridership currently is light, no matter how you cut it. 12,000 passengers a day are their current average numbers. Tacoma's light rail extension to TCC, studied in 2005 by Sound Transit estimated ridership to be about 15,000 passengers a day.

2. Buying tickets at the TVM's is confusing, even to a seasoned rider such as myself. I can't really understand why I have to pay $6 for a Link roundtrip, and how much the transfer is good for, and how long it's good for. Confusion about fare costs and transfers between buses might have something to do with ridership numbers. The ORCA cards work fabulously well though. Tap on as you get to the station – tap off as you leave your destination station.

3. Southeast Seattle's urban pedestrian environment SUCKS. Where are the street trees to shelter people from the elements so they can easily get to the stations? There's so much trash and debris on the sidewalks that it feels like you're in a third world country. Also, if you walk along MLK it is horrendously loud.

Bottom line though, I love the trains. The Kinkisharyo trains are quiet, smooth, speedy, and attractive. The A/C is a little louder than I thought it would be, but still a lot quieter than a bus. The system is definitely a starter line and the urban impacts are yet to be fully felt for another ten years. I just think that a little more finesse and cooperation with the city to improve the streetscape around stations would have made riding a lot more pleasant.

July 27^th:

A meeting was held again concerning Sounder Commuter rail south, the Dome District, and the D-M street design. We're going to have to deal with berms instead of beams for the most part. This is sad to say, but really, people should have spoken up a bit sooner about the proposed design. This project was supposed to be completed many years ago and cannot have any further delays as D-M, and the Point Defiance Bypass, are critical segments for President Obama's high speed rail system in the Pacific Northwest. Further reading: WADOT Amtrak Cascades Studies. Too bad.

That's all for now. There's a Tacoma Streetcar board meeting on Wednesday