A New York Times article says that preserving the High Line viaduct in New York as a public park revitalized that

Image courtesy of James Corner Field Operations

that the deluxe apartment buildings and hundreds of art galleries, restaurants and boutiques near the High Line make up for the $115 million the city has spent on the park and the deals it has made to encourage developers to build along the High Line without blocking out the sun.

Do you see any parallels with the High Line and plans for the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle and Seattle’s Central Waterfront?

Photo courtesy of Iwan Baan

Seattle developers are paying more and more attention to bus-rapid transit, so on Saturday I went to check out Metro’s version, RapidRide.

As a transit geek, I’d been wanting to go since the A Line between Tukwila and Federal Way opened last fall. I mentioned this in passing to Paula Rees. It turns out her Seattle company, Foreseer, is doing “environmental

communications” consulting on the planned D Line from downtown Seattle to Ballard, so we headed out

People with Orca cards pay before boarding, and people can board or disembark from three doors, speeding up the process. Photo by Marc Stiles

together.

Here’s my take as well as the opinion of a frequent rider, Steve Elling. We chatted him up at the Federal Way Transit Center.

* The diesel-electric coaches did move at a good clip. But it was early and I wondered what the pace would be like during rush hour. A survey of A Line riders found 84 percent are satisfied with the service. Steve concurs: “The A Line is super.”

* I was surprised by how close some of the stops are to one another; doesn’t seem very BRT-y to me.

* The pay-before-you enter system speeds that processes up, and fare enforcement officers make sure people do that. We didn’t see any, but Steve said they’re around and have zero tolerance for scofflaws.

* At major stops on the north-south line there are east-west connections. In-coach signage, however, didn’t seem to indicate where these transfer points are. Plus, the same route signs are reversed. As we headed south, the signs made it look as though the bus was going north confusing for folks who are not familiar with the lay of the land.

* Steve said the east-west bus connections are too few. And those that do exist stop running too early at night.

* I liked the multi-modal character of RapidRide. The transfer from light rail to RapidRide in SeaTac was fairly convenient despite having to cross International Boulevard on a pedestrian bridge and then cross back at street level to catch a south-bound bus. I was impressed that RapidRide’s southern terminus in Federal Way is at a transit center served by different transit agencies. One complaint: it wasn’t clear where in the center you catch the RapidRide heading back north.

* Metro gave RapidRide its own brand. Instead of the regular blue and green and yellow regular Metro coaches, RapidRide buses are red and yellow. We found that scheme cautionary. This combined with the do-this, don’t do that, Hold On! signs was off-putting. “There’s very little customer information and way too much regulatory messaging. I felt like maybe I shouldn’t be here,” Paula said.

* I’ll catch heck from my fellow transit geeks for this, but it seems like Sound Transit and Metro and Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn’s expansion plans and dreams overlap. We already have the A Line, so why is a cash-strapped Sound Transit pushing ahead with its plans to extend light rail farther south from SeaTac along the A Line route. And if RapidRide is coming to Ballard and West Seattle, why is McGinn pushing to extend light rail to those areas?

* It took us 1 hour and 20 minutes to get from downtown Seattle to Federal Way via light rail and RapidRide. Impressive when you consider that before RapidRide and light rail, the trip would have taken almost forever. If you’re looking for a truly speedy route, take Sound Transit’s express bus from Federal Way. We did on the way back and it took only 25 minutes.

Dan Bertolet of hugeasscity and PubliCola fame has started a new blog called Citytank. Its mission is “to propagate ideas that help fulfill the promise of cities to both expand the human spirit, and sustain a thriving

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This morning on my bus commute, I assessed the newly completed suicide-prevention fence on the Aurora bridge. How’d it turn out? Depends on your perspective.

Aurora bridge lit up. Enhanced photo by Kenji Tachibana.

It isn’t so bad if you’re looking at it close up as the bus whizzes by. The view of the Olympics from the southbound coach was nearly transparent. Due to the speed of the coach and the narrow spacing of the fence “sticks,” I could hardly tell the new fence is in place.

Conversely, looking south and east at the skyline and Mount Rainier, the fence was as clear as the beautiful sunrise. But I do not deem it a disaster because you can still see the view.

Yes, it’s a change, but not too unsettling. People would have something to kvetch had WSDOT put an opaque fence in place

I doubt Seattleites will ever pine for the “good ol’ days.” Think how ridiculous such reminiscences would sound:

Remember back when depressed people jumped to their deaths off this bridge?

Yeah, that was sad, but at least we had slightly better views…

It’s January 9 and the economy remains horrible. But doesn’t it feel like spring is in the air, and something is starting to happen?

Nationally, holiday sales figures were way up this season. The private sector added jobs in every month of 2010 (ok, at a slower rate than population growth). The financial and auto sectors have survived and even prospered to some degree, avoiding catastrophes that might have spread throughout our economy. In both residential and commercial real estate, for various reasons, there seem to be more deal-making and delaying and less foreclosing than was expected. Fundamentally, the US appears to have avoided a depression, and started to tick upward.

Locally, the return of apartment construction is great news, because each project is both a jobs machine and a tax revenue machine. It’s also related to population growth, which, along with business spending and jobs, is tied to filling up our glut of commercial space. It’ll take years to eat up our excess office space, but Seattle has more than its share of growing companies and organizations, and who knows, maybe things will recover more quickly than we’ve thought. And long before new buildings make sense, the moves of any down and recovery period are sure helping those of us who build renovations and tenant improvements. 

The Seattle area’s public capital spending is interesting. Some is getting cut, perhaps necessary but certainly a damper on jobs. But light rail is going strong. The 99 tunnel will (knock on wood) be a huge stimulus, with money already being spent. Say what you want about your preferred 99 option, but the tunnel is starting at a time when the construction industry badly needs a big project, and the public is getting pricing it’ll never see again.

Optimism isn’t just about feeling good…it’s an ingredient to recovery. Optimism is probably a big reason why consumer spending has risen so quickly. It’s helping companies choose to lease more space. It’s why apartments are breaking ground. There might even be a trend toward buying homes again, as suggested by this article (as they say, not a clear trend yet), and anecdotally by what seems to be a declining condo glut as fire sales continue. Much of the down economy has been money sitting on the sideline, and now a lot of that money is jumping in again.

Of course there’s plenty of reason for pessimism too. Due to the the wild stock gains of the past 23 months, it now seems like a riskier, moderate-upside time to buy stocks. Declining public spending is cutting jobs and probably doing more immediate and long-term damage than it’s saving. Foreclosures might still keep home prices down. Commodity prices have risen dramatically and, with the sharp rises of other economies, perhaps permanently diminished the US “birthright” of cheap stuff. The latter is a problem for the economy not because plastic lawn chairs and 3,000-calorie restaurant meals might cost a couple dollars more, but because a lot of commodity consumption is less flexible, and higher prices will, particularly in the short term, deduct money from the rest of people’s budgets. Of course it’s all the worse if you’re poor and the issue is the price of 600-calorie meals for your kids.

Yet things are looking up. In 2008 and early 2009 the issue was stemming the decline, and now the issue is the pace of recovery, both for the general economy and the A/E/C/RE industry.

That, plus the Seahawks, is why I’m smiling today.

Being a public-sector employee, I understand just as well as anyone the dire financial situation our local municipalities are in, due to substantially lower revenues from sales, property, utility, real estate excise other taxes. And I am all for creative solutions. Keep ‘em coming!

But I have to agree with Kemper Freeman, Jr., that Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn’s  plan to hike Downtown on-street parking rates is ill advised. There is no doubt that it would raise needed revenues. And if you’ve driven the obstacle course of potholes that our local streets have become, you certainly can’t argue that SDOT needs more revenue. But a healthy, thriving and competitive retail sector is crucial to the continued success of one of this nation’s most successful downtowns. Parking for $4 an hour is a mighty high rate. In fact, it would be one of the highest in the country.

Is it high enough to scare away retail shoppers, restaurant-goers, theater-goers, etc.? That’s hard to say, but is it worth the gamble?

In the early 1990s, during Downtown Seattle’s possibly darkest period, after the closing of several venerable retail establishments, not the least of which was Frederick & Nelson, I served on a task force convened by Mayor Rice. The objective of that task force was to study Downtown parking options. Without going into detail about our findings, the prevailing notion was that there were enough obstacles to retail’s success in Downtown, and parking rates (something the City could actually control) should not be another!

We should not rest on the laurels of our recent successes Downtown by assuming that the retail community is so rock-solid that it can withstand yet another blow after the Great Recession. If substantially increased hourly parking rates deter retail visitors, that could be the proverbial last straw for many retailers.

Portland, a city we often look to enviously for its innovative and progressive ways, has both an easily accessible system of public parking garages, as well as an affordable set of parking rates, due to an aggressive validation campaign.

Perhaps we should look to our neighbors for some creative ideas. Perhaps the $4/hour parking rate would be palatable if there were an ambitious new validation system. Perhaps a more modest hike in parking rates would pass under the radar, yielding more revenue without scaring away customers. I’m sure there are many ideas that perhaps a new Downtown parking task force could take under advisement. The Mayor would do well to consider convening such a task force before a unilateral parking-rate hike.

So I’ve been thinking. What would I be willing to take in exchange for supporting the deep bore tunnel? What would it take for me to capitulate and get on board the deep bore bandwagon? Okay, here it is. It’s pretty simple and straightforward: a sensible land use policy. I think it might just be worth the $4.5 billion, the rancor and the power grab by the Seattle City Council if we could get our act together on land use in Seattle. We know compact communities are better for the environment, use less energy, and promote walking, biking, and transit use. So warm up the boring machine but here’s what I want first.

Let’s start with Beacon Hill. About 15 years ago I moved to Beacon Hill and got involved in the neighborhood planning process. It was fun. I learned a lot and the various committees and organizations on the Hill worked hard to develop a vision for Beacon Hill. There was a small, dedicated, and relentless group focused on getting Beacon Hill a station on the new light rail line that would be passing deep under the neighborhood. There was no plan for a Beacon Hill station, or at least there wasn’t any money. But the group persevered, and, amazingly, landed a plan for a station and a commitment for a station shell. They pushed some more. Finally, there was a commitment to build a station—one of the deepest in the world at the time—to serve the neighborhood.

At the time the neighborhood was also planning where to put the library and how to take advantage of the lid going in at the reservoir in Jefferson Park. All of these things were challenging (sometimes controversial) and took a lot of energy from neighbors. But the station seemed to be an unqualified and big win. We’d finally get that core to the neighborhood conceived of in the planning process. The neighborhood could finally grow up with mixed use buildings and retail. We’d exchange the squat and decaying buildings for transit oriented development. Again, not without controversy, but why not take advantage of the rail line to create a compact downtown for Beacon Hill centered on transit.

Well, what does downtown Beacon Hill look like today?

All photos are by Roger Valdez.

I moved to Capitol Hill some time ago. But a recent trip to Beacon Hill made me wonder “what happened.” Then I thought about the City Council falling all over themselves to dig the tunnel on the water front. Why that big project and not Beacon Hill?  Fifteen years after I moved there, Beacon Hill does not have thriving transit oriented development. Instead the station looks like the stump of a felled tree. And that’s about how it feels.

So dig your tunnel City Council. But I’d like to see the rezones on my desk for transit oriented development on Beacon Hill by the end the day. That shouldn’t be to hard, just dust off the plans we worked so hard on. We’d also have a chance to consider things like district energy, affordability, and LEED requirements as part if the legislation. And rezones are free! Write up that resolution for Monday, pass it with a unanimous vote (sure they’ll be a few whiners in the audience but that shouldn’t slow you down. You’re the “get it done gang,” after all).  How exciting! Maybe one day we’ll be able to stand up and say we’re like Redmond. Here’s what they built near their park and ride.

And what the heck, once the rezones are signed, sealed and delivered, I’ll bet we can talk Mayor McGinn into taking a trip out of town so Richard Conlin can do the honors and sign them into law. I’ll even loan him a pen.

It’s crucial for foreign architects to have offices in China with staffs that include younger, innovative Chinese designers, says Gary Larson, a senior principal with MulvannyG2 Architecture, in the firm’s “Design at Work” newsletter. According to Larson, here’s why:

The growing sophistication of Chinese designers

Western design thinking has become more seamlessly dovetailed with Chinese cultural underpinnings

Fujian Provincial Electric and Power Co., Fuzhou, China, MulvannyG2 Architecture. Courtesy of MulvannyG2.

China’s more discerning reception of architecture

In China’s building boom of the past 20 years, the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing represents both a high point and a turning point in China’s fascination with Western design. Foreign architects designed the Olympic Games’ major athletic structures and important civic and public buildings. These designs resonate in the collective memory of the Olympics as much, if not more, than the games and athletes do. Yet, post-Olympics, not all Western work is applauded and accepted, as before, without criticism. Today, the Chinese want to see their rich culture and heritage expressed in major new work, and that desire cues a new level of collaboration with foreign architects. MulvannyG2 has experienced that in creating Fujian Power and Electric Co.’s headquarters and the China Construction Bank, Larson says.

Higher expectations for client service and project delivery

While plentiful opportunities for that collaboration exist, competition among foreign architects is keen. That competition makes the foreign architect’s local office in China even more important because, as fees become more competitive, the ability to serve clients more completely, locally, grows in importance.  And as the general level of expectation of quality from the consumer rises and delivery of quality by the construction industry increases, the need to have design and technical design expertise on the ground becomes imperative.

More influence on China’s sustainable future

A new level of collaboration among Chinese and foreign architects promises a steadily improving design environment, one that would benefit a project with sustainable goals. Characteristic Chinese determination can bring this new design excellence to bear on the country’s issues of growth and resource consumption. Indeed, nationally announced plans for sustainability and the ambitions of foreign architects and young Chinese designers will hopefully allow China to leapfrog the sustainable progress of today’s developed and developing nations.

It’s time to declare Link Light Rail “basically on target” for ridership. July’s weekday ridership averaged 24,145 vs. a December projection (page 17) of 26,600 for by mid-2010, and it’s done so during a downturn in both jobs and travel. It’s hard to guess how quickly ridership will rise from here, but it seems plausible that numbers might hit the 26,600 weekday figure by year-end.

Link Light Rail. Photo courtesy of Sound Transit.

It’s a fairly impressive figure, in context. Many rail lines start with more riders, but they usually have higher densities around them, or park-n-rides, or connecting rail lines, or bigger feeder bus systems, or all of the above. Central Link has neither parking (except Tukwila) nor density, and a moderate amount of connecting transit. It doesn’t even get many in-Downtown trips, because it competes with free tunnel buses.

To be honest, I’m relieved. The projections made sense, including the upward trend as the drivers of ridership came into place, like the connecting bus lines. But it was far from certain. Kudos to Sound Transit for being realistic with your ridership projections, much as you’ve been conservative (in the last decade) about project cost projections.

Now my worry isn’t ridership, but limited capacity. Trains can only be two cars long until 2015 (page 96), when use of the stub tunnel on Pine is no longer limited by construction of University Link. Meanwhile, trains can’t run more often at peak times, due to required separation between trains and buses in the Transit Tunnel. There may be no way to grow capacity until 2015.

Anecdotally, I’ve seen peak-time Link trains so full that riders can’t even board. By 2012 or so, we might need measures to decrease ridership a little, like restoring a couple bus routes into Downtown. Or maybe Sound Transit can negotiate some closer proximities between buses and trains with the feds. Or maybe it would help to move some tunnel bus routes to the street, though the bus riders are important too.

Long term, capacity is a huge advantage with rail. Link is built for trains up to four cars long, which by itself would double capacity. Once the buses are out of the tunnel (presumably 2016, when University Link opens), frequencies can be much better. Of course, when University Link opens, the system will also have a lot more turnover on each trip, i.e. a lot of people who go from the ends to Downtown and vice versa, but not as many who travel the whole length. Capacity will be multiples of today’s in 2016, and much higher still in the early 20s when the line hits Lynnwood, Redmond, and Federal Way.

We’ll need that capacity. I’ll skip the half-pager for now, but in brief, this region continues to grow, a lot of jobs and residents are projected to be added around the new and planned Link stations, and it seems unlikely that voters would pass any major increase in road capacity.

On a side note, Link seems to be doing very well as an airport shuttle. When I ride on weekends, it seems like 30-50% of the passengers have luggage. What an improvement in quality of life for tourists! That might strike some people as unimportant, but given that tourists spend billions in Seattle every year, it seems pretty important to me.

Related to that, here’s some constructive criticism about Westlake Station, for the benefit of both tourists and locals: (a) It’s easy to be confused about how to pay. There are several ways to get to the train platform without walking past a ticket machine, and the signage is woefully inadequate, so improve the signage and think about adding ticket machines on the platforms (can anyone explain that one?). (b) The ORCA card readers are only on the mezzanines, not on the platforms, meaning for example that a bus-to-rail transfer requires going upstairs and back down, which again the signage doesn’t adequately explain (and which doesn’t seem to make sense to begin with). (c) Exiting the station is very confusing, as evidenced by the tourists I continually run into asking how to get to the street, sometimes around the elevator in the center of the mezzanine. A few sign poles in the mezzanine, with maps, would solve this problem. (d) There’s no drinking fountain, and no concession. Give us something to drink!

Southern Sudan plans to rebuild cities in the region in the shapes of animals and fruit, according to this BBC News report. SeattleScape blogger Mark Hinshaw sees potential there. Here’s what he has to say:

The World Institute for Anthropomorphic Town Planning announced last week that Washington State will be the recipient of six grants to counties for free-standing urban development.  Each county would be required

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“We are excited about this prospect because we know that many legislators have been wanting get rid of the Growth Management Act,” said Keefer Bakelite, Palouse County Commissioner. “Who could possibly object to towns shaped like animals?”

Says Professor William “Willy” Grant of CWU’s urban planning school, “Few people know it, but animals make the ideal shape for communities. Civic uses fit nicely in the head, industry fits in the stomach, housing in the legs. Waste disposal systems go, um, well… near the tail.”

A number of counties are vying for the grant, having already selected the Bighorn Sheep, the Black Bear, the Salmon, and the Geoduck for their own submissions. Palin T. McHall, Executive Director  of the WIATP remarked, “Other counties will have to be extra creative as some of the best animal shapes are already taken.”  “Insects are also eligible,” he adds.

For their part, Futurewise and the Sierra Club are in a political quandary. “We hate free-standing communities. But we all love animals. It’s a true dilemma,” one close source who chose not be identified said.

Personally, I think it would be swell to have a town in look like a cicindela tranqebarica.