Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Tacoma Transportation News Roundup

There's been quite a bit of transportation news lately, but not many posts. I blame it on the nice weather outside - just look how many posts there were in March and April! Anyways, here's the latest:

New Tacoma Link Stop

Yes that's right, the 11th street station is well underway. The Tacoma Daily Index first broke the news that the City of Tacoma was about to have a study session about the new stop. Legally, the new station is headed to the City of Tacoma Council as a resolution on September 14th and then finally to the Sound Transit Board on September 23rd. Construction is supposed to begin in January and be complete in March. I was live-tweeting about the study session which can be found archived at TV Tacoma here under 8-31-2010.

Murray Morgan Bridge Cash Infusion

WSDOT apparently came out of nowhere and asked Tacoma if they would like a $20 million 0% interest loan according to this detailed writeup in the News Tribune. According to the article, the City of Tacoma had already secured about $37 million for the project and was seeking $24 million more. With this loan, it is expected that work can proceed quickly and all at once.

NOT ON OUR BUS!
Pierce Transit is beefing up security and enforcement of proper conduct on buses. Pierce Transit notes in a following press release that:
Nearly 750 contacts were made, resulting in 68 ninety-day exclusions from Pierce Transit services for disorderly behavior or criminal activity.
As always, the News Tribune has a good writeup about the program here.

Downtown Tacoma Parking Update

The first parking pay station was installed outside Paddy Coyne's on August 24th. The Tacoma Daily Index had a good writeup of the action. About 10 stations are being installed 5 days a week through Labor Day. Parking will go live on September 20th. Also, remember, tomorrow is the last Parking Task Force meeting before parking goes live. Did you know that Downtown Tacoma Parking even has a twitter and facebook account?

Chip Seal on 12th

An error in laying down the chip seal on S 12th is costing the City of Tacoma $56,171 to redo.

Highways:

I-5/SR-18 Interchange

Work has broke ground on upgrading this interchange. The work will include two flyover ramps - westbound to southbound and eastbound to northbound. Again, H/T to the News Tribune. Also, here is WSDOT's official project page for this interchange.

Investigation of SR 16 error

Following up on the costly mistake of putting an ramp in the wrong place, a report was issued regarding the messed and WSDOT Secretary Paula Hammond did a Q&A with News Tribune readers.
Posted by Evan Siroky at 11:43 PM
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4 comments:

  1. Regarding the new light rail stop.

    On the plus side......

    Davita wants it.

    On the minus side.....

    It's gonna cost $350K.
    It's gonna reduce capacity of the system substantially. With a 12 min headway vs the current 10 min headway, it'll reduce the number of trips from 6/per hr down to only 5/hr, a 20% reduction. How that'll work out to an increase in ridership is a mystery to me.

    It's gonna eliminate the future ability to double system capacity by coupling two cars together. This stop just isn't physically big enough.

    Oh well, I guess that when we get the ridership up enough that we need to double up the cars, we can always rip out this new stop.
    ReplyDelete
  2. I react to the new stop a little differently. The stop demonstrates that the City is willing to put up money for further development of Tacoma Link. That'll look good to the FTA when we apply for funds - which will make the $350k look like pocket change.

    We already have capacity issues with Tacoma Link as it is. I am hoping that we can find a way to retain the 10 minute headways using traffic signal preemption, like we had before the signal timing was implemented. More concerning to me, capacity-wise, is the presence of single track south of 19th.

    I am generally concerned about the inability to couple the cars, but the cars would have to be modified anyway and other stations would have to be built out before we even consider that. Car coupling is something we won't have to worry about for a while.
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  3. Good points Chris.
    If FTA likes it, and Davita likes it and stays downtown, and we don't have to have another surface parking lot on Pacific Ave........

    I would have to consider that to be a net gain. It sounded like from the study session that Councilman Mello hasn't given in to Davita on the parking lot issue yet. I mean really, does Davita actually need a new street car stop and a new parking lot?
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  4. I thought that Davita was on S. 15th anyway!

    There's more going on here than just Davita. Recall that the AG's office was supposed to be moving to Pacific Plaza as well. There were also rumors of (haha) a grocery store there as well.

    I agree though about the Davita lot. It would be better walled off than be yet another surface parking lot. That money would go to better use in streetscape and infrastructure improvements.
    ReplyDelete

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