Sound Transit's Sounder and Tacoma Link on Google Transit

A quick Tweet from Sound Transit really caught my attention today:

More of ST on Google Transit! Sounder trains, Tacoma Link, and ST Routes that run in Snohomish County #smday

I went straight to Google Maps and was able to plan a transit trip from Tacoma to Seattle on Tacoma Link, an afternoon Sounder and then King County Metro's transit system.

Unfortunately, Pierce Transit-operated Sound Transit routes are still unavailable through Google Maps. I have contacted Pierce Transit and Sound Transit for more information and will update this post once more is known.

Update 5:26pm:

Pierce Transit has stated that they are working on their General Transit Feed. A little background on this: Tacoma Tomorrow covered some news back in February about Pierce Transit's General Transit Feed here. At this point, Pierce Transit says that they are internally reviewing the data on Google Transit before it goes live.

And in Highway News...

Photo from WSDOT's Flickr Page

The new Nalley Valley Viaduct had been progressing very well up until an unfortunate mistake was discovered. The Tacoma News Tribune has the story on this error during the construction of the new Nalley Valley Viaduct.

As the project was refined from two lanes to three on the eastbound mainline, engineers needed to move the offramp to make room for the extra lane. But that wasn’t communicated between members of the eastbound design team and the westbound design team. As a result, the engineering plan went out with the offramp in the wrong place.

Luckily the problem was caught before things got worse and at least nothing was structurally deficient. The overall schedule shouldn't be affected and the cost to fix the problem fits within the contingency budget for the project.

Take Transit to this Summer's Festivities

There are a bunch of special events coming up that are accessible by public transit.

First off is Taste of Tacoma today, Saturday and Sunday. Pierce Transit is running a shuttle express from TCC Transit Center every 15 minutes from 10am to 9:30pm. It costs $1.75 each way or $3.50 for a whole day. ORCA cards with passes are accepted, but E-Purse is not. Also, on another note, there was a bicycle corral there last year.

Taste of Tacoma Image taken from their website

Next is the Freedom Fair in Old Town the coming 4th of July weekend. Route 13 will operate on a special 15 minute schedule from noon until 7:30pm. There will also be 2 express shuttles from TCC Transit Center and also Tacoma Dome Station. They will both run every 15 minutes from 10am until 8pm and then again once the fireworks are done. Once again, the fares are $1.75 per trip, $3.50 for the whole day or one could use their ORCA with a Pass, but not using the E-Purse.

Fireworks Picture taken by Flickr user Tuldas

Sound Transit runs the Sounder Train to select Mariners games. The train makes all of the regular stops along the line. The tickets cost the same and can be paid using the ORCA with a pass or E-Purse. On a personal note, I have taken the special event Sounder numerous times for a variety of reasons other than for the game.

Also worth a mention was an interesting item I found out. Around the time of Mariners games, to a pleasant surprise, I noticed buses not completely overloaded that didn't arrive quite when scheduled. When I inquired about this to Sound Transit they stated that:

[Sound Transit will] routinely add extra coaches for our customers during times when overloads are expected.
...
[Sound Transit] tracks various events occurring in Sound Transit’s service area on an event by event basis to determine whether projected overflow (compared to non-event ridership) will require additional service, as budget constraints allow.

So there isn't much need to worry about full buses heading to and from special events on a regular Sound Transit route.

Safeco Field picture taken by Flickr user Sean Munson

Then there's also the Puyallup fair, but that's still a ways away.

PT Tomorrow: What's Next?

Now that Pierce Transit has completed it's second round of meetings, it's getting closer to the point where an actual decision will have to be made on what to do. I attended the Tacoma public meeting and found this handy chart shown below:


Pierce Transit recently had their official public hearing (which the TNT covered), so if all goes to plan, the board will select a preferred alternative next board meeting on July 12th. The implementation schedule of everything is something still to be determined. And if the Growth Alternative is picked, there is the task of deciding how and when to put the tax increase to the ballot and thus eventually the question of whether Pierce County voters would approve said ballot.

The High Cost of Serving the Suburbs

Photo taken at PT Tomorrow Meeting

While at Pierce Transit's PT Tomorrow meeting last week, I came across a few charts and diagrams that showed quite clearly how much more expensive it is to provide transit service to areas with less activity. The first picture above shows a few routes with certain styles of service and their respective costs. It starts out quite well per rider with trunk route 1, but then gets worse and worse until it gets to Shuttle service which provides door-to-door service.

Tacoma Tomorrow discovered that this latest round contained 33% more service hours than the previous alternatives, which was primarily due to calculating geographic coverage. Martin Duke over at Seattle Transit Blog noted that expanding or contracting geographic coverage can have a large effect on how many service hours are available to a transit agency. The following two pictures below really show the effects of how much more terrain the growth alternative must cover due to ADA requirements:

Shuttle service area in Reduction Alternative

Shuttle service area in Growth Alternative

So after seeing this affect, it really begs the question on what the best way to serve the suburbs is after seeing how much more resources it takes to provide transit service per person.

PT Tomorrow's Latest Downtown Tacoma

This evening, I stopped by the Tacoma open house for PT Tomorrow. It was good to get a refresher of the information and also take a look at the public meeting charts (aka the ones that are brought out only for the public meetings, but never posted online). Anyways, I spent most of my time trying to decipher the map of downtown service as shown below:


I'm not even going to withhold any of my feelings or apologize when I say that this is the absolute worst transit map I have ever seen. I spent a fair amount of time speaking with some Pierce Transit reps on figuring out just exactly where each route goes. I took some notes, but I'm sure there are some errors and of course this isn't finalized, but here it goes:

Route	Path
1	Pacific / 9th / Tacoma
2	Market / 15th / Pacific / 13th / A st / 9th / Pacific
3	Tacoma / 9th / Commerce / Pacific
26	Broadway / 9th / Commerce / 13th / Pacific
28	Same as before
41	Pacific -> change route
42	25th / Tacoma / 9th / Pacific -> change route
45	Yakima / 9th / Pacific
48	Jefferson / Pacific -> change route
53	Pacific -> change route
57	Same as before
61	Pacific
102	up 11th to TG / down 9th to GH
402	Pacific
500/501	25th / Market / 13th / Pacific?
700	St Helens / 9th / Pacific? / Jefferson
702	Pacific / 9th / Broadway

So as can be seen, a lot of service is shifted to Pacific Ave and also some to Market and Tacoma Avenues. However, for the service that does go on Market and Tacoma avenues, it goes about as far as 9th or 13th and then heads back down the hill. There are only 3 bus routes (1, 700 and 702) that continue north of 9th - now the 26 doesn't merit counting since it's a loop circulator.

Another feature is the hill climbing routes. There's the 1, 3, 42, 45, and 57 that climb up 9th; the 28 and what appears to be the 501 or 500 climbing up 11th; the 2 that goes up 15th and then 19th; and then the 48 and 700 which climb up Jefferson and then descend 25th with the 42 as well. An interesting fact I learned was that buses can't run up and down 25th because they will bottom out (not sure at what exact point), so the city would have to fix that in order for the routes to actually work.

Another big feature of the downtown network is that most routes will be interlined. It seemed that only a few routes will actually layover in downtown. But nobody at the meeting really knew or had decided which ones exactly. Preliminarily a Pierce Transit rep at the meeting told me that the 700s would be interlined as would the 41 and 42 which would effectively force a transfer on what today is a one-seat ride on those buses.

And one final observation I had on the proposed downtown network was that there is just 1 bus route with all day service to TG (again the 26 doesn't count). The 3 routes in service today that serve Saint Josephs will all still be there in the both alternatives.

City Manager: Tacoma needs streetcar extension concept by December

Tacoma Link at Union Station
Source: Flickr Mike Bjork

The engineers that are redesigning Stadium Way need to know whether or not to design streetcar tracks into the project.   The half mile link between Old City Hall in Downtown Tacoma and Stadium High School is both the current terminus for Tacoma Link, and apparently is in need of reconstruction.  According to Tacoma’s City Manager Eric Anderson, speaking at a City Council study session earlier today, the City has received a grant to rehabilitate the corridor and reconstruction of Stadium Way is slated to begin in 2011.  However, construction on the road cannot proceed without having the track question settled.

In order to solve the track question, Tacoma needs to solve the question of where an extension of Tacoma Link should go and if it should use Stadium Way.  The City Manager will be requesting direction from the City Council in December on how to proceed.  The CEO’s of Pierce Transit and Sound Transit and Eric Anderson think that a community stakeholders group should come up with a recommendation about how to go about extending Tacoma Link.  This process will empower the City Manager to appoint a number of individuals from throughout the City to examine alignments, come up with:

• route principles,
• design standards,
• project goals, etc.

And with these in hand it will be easier to make the decision about whether to use Stadium Way as a corridor for a northward extension.  More after the jump.

Transit a focus for Tacoma City Council this week

Tacoma Link Light Rail via Flickr (Photo by: Slack Action)

There are a number of transportation items on the City Council's agenda for next week.

The focus of Tuesday's City Council study session will be an update on the Tacoma Link extension and an update on the Pierce Transit redesign (pttomorrow.com).  Later, at the City Council meeting at 4:30pm, Ordinance No. 27892, to formally adopt the Tacoma Mobility Master Plan will get a first reading.  If you have any further changes you'd like to request, this will likely be your last chance to suggest them.  The plan now stands at a total cost of $38 million over a period of 15 years.  That's not that much in comparison with Portland's bike plan ($613m) or Seattle's ($240m).  The proposed bike network maps are on pages 25-28.  The long term outlook is very good.  Tacoma has a lot of roads that are under capacity, which are ripe for road diets seen on N. 21st and S. 12th streets.

This meeting would be a great time for anyone wanting to say anything about the Tacoma Link extension or if you have any comments to make about the Pierce Transit redesign, since it's Citizen's Forum again.  Each Tacoma resident is entitled to three minutes at the lecturn.

On Wednesday, the City Council's subcommittees on Economic Development and Environment and Public Works will be holding a joint session.  One agenda item is "Citywide Transportation Planning."  We don't have details on what will be presented, but Jim Parvey, an engineer with the public works department, is the staff contact for this project.

TacomaTomorrow will make every effort possible to be in attendance of both meetings.

Freighthouse Square for Sale

Photo from Flickr user aleferrari

You've probably heard about it either at Exit 133 or straight from the TNT, but Freighthouse Square's owners will be auctioning off the property with the deadline for bids on June 23rd. The minimum bid is published as $3.5 million.

The article notes that vacancy has substantially increased in recent years. However, with the substantial foot traffic generated from the Sounder, Tacoma Link and the Tacoma Dome Transit Center investors could reasonably expect continued activity in the area. Also, Amtrak is planning on moving the station up to Freighthouse Square, so there will almost certainly be anchor tenants at the location.

PT Tommorrow and the North End

PT Tomorrow Growth Plan North Tacoma Focus

As with most areas in Pierce County, significant revisions are being proposed. North Tacoma is an area in particular that will see a lot of changes to the structure of the existing routes.

The 11, 13 and 16 will all be replaced with new routes. The 11 will morph into the 702 which mostly follows the same route, but terminating in a loop southeast of Ruston. The 13 and 16 will sort of be merged into a single route - the 704 in the Reduction Alternative or the 700 in the Growth Alternative. Both would travel mostly along I st and 21st as far as Proctor in the Reduction Alternative or the Lutheran Home Loop in the Growth Alternative.

As for north-south service, the 51 and 220 are both eliminated and replaced with the new route 703 shown below. The 10 will serve the Lutheran Home Loop in the Reduction Alternative, but in the Growth Alternative it will continue straight on Pearl.

Proposed Route 703

As for all this reconfiguration, there are a few connections that are a little harder to make. Most importantly, the connection to and from UPS are now much less convenient. The new 703 would travel by UPS, but it would only come once an hour (in both the Reductions and Growth Alternatives). Getting from UPS to downtown would be way less convenient requiring a walk either to 6th ave to catch the 1 or to 21st and Cedar to catch either the 700 or 704. Similarly, to get from UPS to TCC, it would probably end up being faster to walk to 6th ave to catch the 1 than to take the meandering 703. Also, with the loss of the 51 and 220, there is now no direct connection between North Tacoma to areas to the south.

Sound Transit Service Changes

Seattle Transit Blog picked on this story some time ago, but Sound Transit has published their new June schedule book ^{(4mb pdf)}.

There are a few schedule changes to the 574, 577/578, and the 590 series. Some trips have been eliminated from the 586, 590, 592 and 593. And the big new thing for Pierce County is the addition of Saturday service on the 578. The new 578 Saturday service will be hourly starting in Puyallup traveling through Sumner, Auburn and Federal Way and then going express to Seattle from 6am until 8pm. On the way back, it will be from 8am until 10pm. Since the 577 and the 578 will alternate this means that there will be half-hourly service between Seattle and Federal most of Saturday.