On September 29, the Ride Free Area in downtown Seattle will be eliminated.

The RFA was established in 1973, the same year that King County Metro began operations. It was originally called the “Magic Carpet Zone”, and it was intended to encourage people to get out of their cars, to help downtown businesses, workers, and tourists, and to relieve traffic congestion.

In the subsequent decades, many health and human services for homeless, disabled, and low income people grew up in and around the RFA, choosing their locations knowing they’d be accessible by bus for free. But three months from now, they won’t be any more.

There was no public process leading up to the decision to eliminate the Ride Free Area. This decision was made by the County Council during negotiations over the $20 car tab fee in summer 2011, and there’s not much we can do about it now. But what isn’t set in stone yet is what the county and the city will do to mitigate the effects.

The Transit Riders Union takes the following position on the elimination of the RFA:

• The elimination of the Ride Free Area on September 29 will place a significant burden on low income riders who currently use the RFA to travel around and through downtown. This includes disabled people, and service and other low wage workers. The elimination of the RFA will make getting around more difficult for all downtown workers, shoppers and tourists, will hurt the businesses that rely on these customers, and will remove an incentive for people to choose public transit over cars. Meanwhile, very poor riders will find their mobility and access to vital services severely curtailed.

• This is unacceptable. It is the shared responsibility of the County and the City to find a solution that adequately mitigates the hardship that the RFA’s elimination will impose, especially on low income and poor riders.

• The county’s current plan, which calls for several small (10-15 passenger) free circulator shuttles operating nine hours per day, five days per week, with service every thirty minutes, is a totally inadequate solution. These shuttles will not effectively serve even the poorest riders; moreover, they will create a second-class ridership of those who cannot afford to take the ‘normal’ buses around downtown.

• In order to constitute an adequate solution, a free downtown circulator should meet the following conditions:

1. Full size 40-foot coaches.
2. Free of charge and open to everyone.
3. Operates 12 hours per day, 7 days per week.
4. Frequency no less than every 20 minutes.
5. Runs from Jackson to Denny and up to Harborview, routed to serve the low income and disabled housing buildings and resources that are currently served by the RFA.
6. Operated by Metro.

Stay tuned for a plan of action!

On Thursday, June 28, the Sound Transit Board will consider a motion that would commit up to $10 million to improve pedestrian and bike access to the future Northgate light rail station; the City of Seattle has agreed to contribute another $10 million. The proposal still includes the construction of a 450-stall parking garage. City of Seattle Council Member Richard Conlin and Mayor Mike McGinn have been working on this proposal, encouraged by public pressure; it isn’t perfect, but it is much better than the original plan!

Thank you to everyone who wrote letters and attended meetings, pressuring the board to spend less money on a bigger-than-needed parking garage and more on making it easier to access the new station by foot, bike and transit. You can send a final message encouraging the board to pass the new proposal here.

The motion will do the following:

Read more

***Take Action! Join us in Northgate on Tuesday and Wednesday, and at the Sound Transit Capital Committee meeting at 1:30 pm on Thursday, 6/14. Email contact@transitriders.org for more information.***

by Beau Morton

In 1993 the City of Seattle designated the Northgate area as an urban center. As a developing urban center, it is expected to take much of the job and residential growth in the city over the coming decades. Years of planning and studies have been performed in order to make Northgate a denser, less car dominated, more livable neighborhood centered around low-income housing and transit oriented development. So why is Sound Transit proposing a 600-900 stall, $27-40 million parking garage be built as part of the Link light rail station?

In Sound Transit’s own words “it is not feasible to meet future transit demand at Northgate and achieve land use goals without shifting focus to non-driving access modes such as expanding rail-bus connections and pedestrians and bicycle access.” By Sound Transit’s own numbers, the Northgate Transit Center currently serves more than 5,000 riders each weekday, with 70% of them getting there by transit, foot or bike. By 2030, Sound Transit projects 92% of 15,000 daily weekday riders will get to the station by transit, foot or bike.

Under the terms of the North Link Record of Decision, Sound Transit has to provide “best effort” mitigation for 428 park and ride stalls temporarily lost during construction. After construction is finished, 117 park and ride stalls and 64 other private stalls will have been permanently eliminated. There are many ways Sound Transit can mitigate the temporary loss of parking: leasing additional parking stalls, running shuttles from satellite parking locations, purchasing additional bus service from King County Metro. So why spend up to $40 million on storing cars, while leaving less than $2 million for pedestrian and bike improvements and increased bus service?

In a time of ever rising gas prices, declining incomes and demographic shifts away from driving, mitigating the loss of 181 parking stalls with a permanent 600-900 stall parking garage is the wrong answer. Siting a 600-900 stall parking garage in the middle of what will be dense transit oriented development is the wrong answer. Spending $27-40 million on the 8% of people who will drive while leaving less than $2 million for the 92% who won’t is the wrong answer. Seattle deserves better than a mid-20th century solution to a 21st century problem.

As an organization of working and poor people, the Transit Riders Union opposes the use of taxpayers’ money in such an unfair, inefficient, and wasteful way. We believe Sound Transit should look to the future, heed their own words, and focus their investments on the 92% of people who will get to the station in 2030 by transit, foot or bike.

***You can send a message to Sound Transit from the Cascade Bicycle Club’s blog here.***

by Katie Wilson

On Tuesday, January 10, Governor Gregoire released a 10-year transportation revenue proposal (posted on the Seattle Transit Blog here). Less than 5% of the package is dedicated to transit – not nearly enough, although this should come as no surprise to anyone. Two items bear directly on local public transit:

1. “Grant funding for transit to mitigate potential service cuts to passengers that would affect their ability to get to work, school and other destinations – $150 million”

Direct state funding for public transit is sorely needed; unfortunately this $150 million in grant money is a one-time (not an annual) deal, and would presumably be spread across the state, so the amount that would reach Metro over the next ten years is likely to be rather small.

2. “Either allow local governments the option, through councilmatic [sic] approval, to impose a 1 percent increase in the Motor Vehicle Excise Tax, with proceeds to be dedicated to local road and transit needs, or allow transportation benefit districts the option, through councilmatic approval, to adopt up to a $40 vehicle license fee for local road and transit needs.”

A 1% MVET increase isn’t a great funding tool, but at least it would be more progressive than a flat car tab fee – a welcome reminiscence of the days before Eyman’s Initiative 695. But Martin H. Duke’s post on the Seattle Transit Blog suggests that in King County that 1% would end up going “to address traffic diversion from the tunnel.” And if the $40 VLF were approved, even much of that would likely be consumed at the city level, rather than being funneled to King County Metro.

Which leaves us with… not much.

As politically impossible as it seems right now, it’s worth thinking about some more progressive funding measures we might demand of the state once we have built up the people-power to do so effectively. The Economic Opportunity Institute’s fact sheet, “$2 billion in progressive annual revenue for Washington,” contains several transit-related items. For instance, a state-wide 10% luxury tax on motor vehicles, vessels, and aircraft valued over $50,000 would raise $70 million annually; and repealing the sales tax exemption on trade-ins would raise $114 million. EOI has this to say about trade-ins:

“Trade-ins – When someone trades in a car (or boat or appliance) while purchasing a new one from a dealer, no sales tax is charged on the value of the trade-in. In private party sales of used cars, the purchaser pays sales tax on the purchase price when registering the vehicle. Typically, sellers get a better price by selling a used vehicle themselves, so trading-in is primarily a convenience, and especially benefits those who frequently buy a new car. Eliminating this exemption would primarily affect upper income people. Because a portion of sales tax goes to local governments, eliminating the exemption would provide $35 million in additional revenue to local governments.”

Of course, there’s also no good reason why transit funding should come only from transit-related taxes.

by Nat Latos and Katie Wilson

On December 29 the Seattle Times featured an article entitled “Seattle looks to clean up Third Avenue transit corridor,” describing some of the obstacles facing the city’s plans to improve this section of downtown. Unfortunately, author Lynn Thompson both displays the Times’ usual editorial prejudice against poor people and fails to address the fundamental issues at play.

Violence is the article’s narrative thread, and the most apparent conclusion is that clearly we need more police. In describing the scene at Third and Pine the author says commuters encounter “a gantlet of open-air drug deals, the homeless, the mentally ill and crowds of loitering street kids.” The implication is that the homeless, mentally ill, and “street kids” don’t have as much a right as anyone else to be in the downtown core. More to the point, even though she aptly points out that the city and state are both broke she fails to appreciate that many people literally have nowhere else to be. As services are cut, those who are left behind cannot simply be pushed out of sight and should not be criminalized. While violence is unacceptable, to lump all poor people and ill people in to the same group as felons and thugs is irresponsible journalism. The latent assumption is that downtown exists for businesses, consumers, and tourists – not for all of us.

There is no doubt that the Third Avenue transit corridor is badly in need of physical improvements. But the suggestion of Jon Scholes, vice president for the Downtown Seattle Association, that the city should be solely on the hook for the cost of making this a “nice” (read gentrified) place is not only fanciful (the city is still broke) but ignores that many businesses directly benefit from the corridor. Simply taking the city to task for something it can’t do is not the answer. To make Third Avenue safer (more and better lighting) and to improve the experience of transit riders (better bus shelters, more seating, landscaping), one way or another the downtown businesses and property owners will have to pull their weight in funding them.

Otherwise, it will be business as usual and everyone will continue to wonder why no one in the city will address the Third Avenue problem.