-18 °c
Sunday, March 7, 2021
  • Shop
  • My Account
    • Cart
    • Checkout
  • Contact Us
My blog
  • Home
  • Mobility
  • Environment
  • Transit
  • Sharing Economy
  • More
    • Health
No Result
View All Result
My blog
  • Home
  • Mobility
  • Environment
  • Transit
  • Sharing Economy
  • More
    • Health
No Result
View All Result
Plugin Install : Cart Icon need WooCommerce plugin to be installed.
My blog
No Result
View All Result

Seattle’s voters and leaders know the value in keeping commuters out of cars

admin by admin
December 4, 2019
in Walking
0 0
0
Home Walking

Daily peak-time commuters into Downtown Seattle have increased their use of public transit and decreased single-occupancy vehicle trips in each of the last seven years.

These trends occurred over a period when the city added some 60,000 new jobs.

A study conducted by Commute Seattle, and funded by the Seattle Department of Transportation, confirmed that bus, light rail, streetcar, and pedestrian-ferry ridership rose from 42 percent in 2010 to 48 percent in 2017. Simultaneously, one-person car, motorcycle, and moped trips fell from 35 percent to 25 percent. Looked at as a separate single category in the study, travel by train, light rail, and streetcar grew by 110 percent from 2010 to 2017.

These results may seem astonishing in an era when transit use is declining across the United States. To explain them, Andrew Glass Hastings, Seattle DOT director of transit and mobility, cited three factors: new investments in transit, smart land-use policies, and public-private partnerships to incentivize transit. (Mobility Lab reported on the incentives last November.)

Feeding a virtuous cycle

According to Commute Seattle, the efforts listed by Glass Hastings create a “virtuous cycle” in which each amplifies the positive effects of the others. With funds from employers greasing the rails, transit use goes up, which increases demand, which prompts more investment in infrastructure.

Also helping, Seattle residents have repeatedly passed generous transit project referendums.

Commute Seattle Director Jonathan Hopkins noted, via email, that voters approved of “light-rail expansions and bus-service increases multiple times since 1996.” He also mentioned a 2016 vote in favor of a $54 billion transit package.

“The population, again and again, is willing to say, ‘Yes we want this,’” Glass Hastings added. “And, in fact, ideally, they want it now.”

One result of the willingness of voters to spend on transit was the 2016 opening of two new light-rail stations in locations previously only accessible by car.

“It was incredible to see the ridership growth on light rail just by opening up those couple of stations,” Glass Hastings said.

Geography further encouraged a culture of transit. Glass Hastings described Seattle’s hilly terrain and constrained location with water on two sides as contributors to traffic congestion and a search for commuting alternatives.

Other keys to breaking up people’s love affairs with cars include providing housing in the city center and implementing wise land use as part of a broader smart-growth strategy that mixes the elements of a diverse city into dense neighborhoods situated around transit hubs.

“We’ve added more than 20,000 residential units downtown since 2010,” Hopkins pointed out.

And Seattleites who live downtown do more walking and biking. They also opt more often for public transit. The amount of walking to one’s job leapt by 30 percent after 2010. In South Lake Union, a major site of new housing, some 20 percent of commuters are now walking, according to Glass Hastings.

The final piece of the puzzle has been Commute Trip Reduction. The CTR program grew out of a Washington state law passed in 1991 to encourage local governments to form voluntary partnerships with businesses to reduce vehicle traffic and cut air pollution.

Seattle has done more than perhaps any other municipality to implement CTR initiatives. In fact, Commute Seattle is a public-private partnership funded by the Seattle DOT, King County Metro, Sound Transit, and the Downtown Seattle Association.

Actions Seattle officials have taken through the CTR include negotiating with employers to have the organizations pay employees’ public transit fares and convincing garage owners to charge by the day for parking instead of by the month.

After 2010, Seattle transit officials began reaching out to employers with fewer than 100 workers to get these smaller organizations involved in boosting transit use in the same ways larger employers already were. Offering incentives and disincentives to as many commuters as possible matters because much evidence shows that, say, offering express bus service does little on its own to change people’s habits. So, Seattle has managed to swim against the tide. If low gas prices, competition from Uber and Lyft, and deteriorating systems have cut into public-transit use elsewhere, Seattle has proven that a different future is possible. Success can breed success, and inertia can become a friend of public transit.

However, past results do not always predict long-term performance. Seattle has a young rail transit system, and Glass Hastings warned that his city must avoid the mistakes made in New York and Washington, D.C., where maintenance went underfunded and undone for years.

He pointed to “a value in asking voters to approve these investments,” noting that doing so makes them feel that “I’m investing in it, and it’s something I use every day and value.”

Without foresight, once-successful cities can find themselves in a vicious cycle in which poor service pushes riders away, and revenues for operation and upkeep diminish.

Seattle seems positioned to avoid that fate.

Hopkins emphasized, “Thankfully, our voters support strong investments in the future. It’s part of our culture. Therefore, our agencies have lived up to voter demands by proposing and executing some of the most aggressive transit expansions [and] improvements.”

Photo by SDOT Photos/Flickr.



Source link

ShareTweetShare
admin

admin

Next Post
Solving U.S. transportation? Columbus offers hope

Solving U.S. transportation? Columbus offers hope

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest
Traffic Gardens Teach Safety and Engineering to Kids as Biking Surges

Traffic Gardens Teach Safety and Engineering to Kids as Biking Surges

January 20, 2021
Carrying stuff around town no longer means being tied to your car all day

Carrying stuff around town no longer means being tied to your car all day

December 5, 2019
Transit is pretty safe. What can we do to erode misleading stereotypes?

Transit is pretty safe. What can we do to erode misleading stereotypes?

December 5, 2019
Seattle’s voters and leaders know the value in keeping commuters out of cars

Seattle’s voters and leaders know the value in keeping commuters out of cars

December 4, 2019

Hello world!

1
Walking Back Jaywalking May Be a Step Forward for Pedestrians

Walking Back Jaywalking May Be a Step Forward for Pedestrians

0
Drawing on past success but looking to the future, Arlington Transit fights declining bus ridership

Drawing on past success but looking to the future, Arlington Transit fights declining bus ridership

0
Why do people ride the bus? A review of the literature

Why do people ride the bus? A review of the literature

0
Walking Back Jaywalking May Be a Step Forward for Pedestrians

Walking Back Jaywalking May Be a Step Forward for Pedestrians

February 17, 2021
Traffic Gardens Teach Safety and Engineering to Kids as Biking Surges

Traffic Gardens Teach Safety and Engineering to Kids as Biking Surges

January 20, 2021
A quick round-up of holiday travel research

A quick round-up of holiday travel research

November 18, 2020
We May Not Be Ready for Fare-Free Transit, Though TDM Tactics Can Replicate Effects

We May Not Be Ready for Fare-Free Transit, Though TDM Tactics Can Replicate Effects

October 29, 2020
My blog

We bring you the best Premium WordPress Themes that perfect for news, magazine, personal blog, etc.

Read more

Walking Back Jaywalking May Be a Step Forward for Pedestrians

Walking Back Jaywalking May Be a Step Forward for Pedestrians

February 17, 2021
Traffic Gardens Teach Safety and Engineering to Kids as Biking Surges

Traffic Gardens Teach Safety and Engineering to Kids as Biking Surges

January 20, 2021

Categories

  • Bicycling
  • Carpooling
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Mobility
  • Parking
  • Sharing Economy
  • Transit
  • Uncategorized
  • Walking

Walking Back Jaywalking May Be a Step Forward for Pedestrians

© 2019 Moblitymakers.com

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Mobility
  • Environment
  • Transit
  • Sharing Economy
  • More
    • Health

© 2019 Moblitymakers.com

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Fill the forms bellow to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In