SDOT is planning to finally stick it to 520 commuters this spring, to the proposed tune of $7 per day for peak commutes. Unfortunately, the Valhalla I fervently wished for was eliminated as an option, as they also plan to nail carpoolers- you know, those little buses that run for free. My interpretation is that carpoolers lack for a lobby that can push their point of view. They also aren’t extreme enough for either political party to pander to (Cars Bad! Cars Good! Nazi!)
Anyhow, if you’re Microsoft then your commute should be faster as the riff raff will be off the road and you can better enjoy your time on the Connector with your reserved seat, free wifi, and complementary fresh ground coffee*.
For most everyone else in Wallingford, your 520 Transportation Choices™ are not so good.
520 bus routes will be expanded but will continue to skip Wallingford. As someone that commuted to Microsoft in pre-Connector days I can vouch for how impossibly slow buses are, with 3 transfers required to get across 520 and to downtown Wallingford. The one way rush hour commute to Microsoft typically exceeded an hour, whereas it was less than half that time when carpooling.
Metro bus choices from Wallingford across 520 are still limited to either getting up to the 65th street park and ride or down to Montlake via the Burke Gillman trail. This will typically mean getting on a bike and having a decent cell phone data plan. Plus you’ll have the complication of waiting for a bike slot, as these fill up quickly in the summer. Here’s a view of the new routes- if you’ve found a good way to make things work via metro please let us know in the comments section:
Your next best option is to be rich and pay the $1500 or so per year, which is a great new Transportation Choice™. After that, your next best option is to defray your costs. If you go in before 5 AM or come home after 11 PM it’s free one way. On the other hand, if you have a life or wish to have a life some day you can carpool and split the cost. You will need to sign up for a “Good to Go” pass as that saves a bit. There is also a Metro run Web site that you can use to find carpool partners. Alternately, there’s a real-time 520 ride sharing option that’s in pilot mode for now (amusingly it is not yet Windows Phone 7 compatible, but then again at Microsoft you rely on the “carpool” alias for real time match making).
Finally, there are a few alternate visions of reality in the future. Assuming the big one hits while you’re on the bridge, things will not be good- hollow concrete columns built on marsh land. Still, this is a low chance- only a 5% risk over the next 50 years that the Seattle Fault will slip, and you’re only on there 10 minutes a day. Pshaw- worry about traffic accidents with cell phone chatting Land Rover drivers first. Still, there would be this to look forward to:
Or you can hope for a bridge that is promised in 2014 but that is only 1/2 paid for and is being blocked at mid span by a mayor that will hold his breath rather than let it be finished in any way other than His Way. His Way includes keeping it at 4 lanes (eliminating that dastardly carpool lane), and adding rail (which is a kazillion dollars and will also not cross I-5 into Wallingford.) Where are the “don’t blame me, I voted for Nickels” signs at Not a Number?
We may not build things in this country anymore, but at least we can create groovy fly throughs:
Finally, if you want to view the official tolling propaganda here’s a handy video with the happiest music / commentary on earth. The subtext is clearly “please don’t vote for Tim Eyman’s next initiative”. The muted version of this is likely to be your reality for some time to come:
*- Lies. In truth you must wait and get your complementary fresh ground coffee at work.
Hey Eric, my husband commuted in pre-connector days, too. He liked the 242 (to the 65th street park and ride) and then bike over. The Bicycle Alliance had a bike locker ready–all he had to do was ask and pay the small deposit. And now there’s apparently a second bus that will go there (the…542? I’m not sure, but I have it bookmarked).
Another option would be to take the 44 or 31 (or 46 I guess) to the University and walk over the bridge to the Montlake stop. The 44 stop at the hospital and the 31 stop on campus just above the hospital are pretty close. Or you could get off on 15th near Campus Parkway and get the 271. I actually haven’t taken the 271 in a while, so I assume it still stops there.
Still not ideal and doesn’t solve the Montlake bike+bus problem.
Don’t forget about Metro vanpools as a viable option without bridge tolls. Of course, you still have to pay the Metro vanpool fee. There are several vanpools that pick up in Wallingford and go to the east side.
Ouch. It does cost money to get things done. Nice little editorial – cue the doom and gloom music.
Thanks to Adam, Rob, and ssm for other suggestions.
Getting a bike across the bridge is fairly easy, quick and reliable. ALL buses crossing 520 stop at the Montlake bus stop to pick up cyclists, even the empty buses returning to their base. The ride is free.
Eric – can’t tell if you’re really angry or being sarcastic. I don’t know that I would characterize the plans as “stick it to 520 commuters” or the video as “propaganda”. And the Go 520 Project is probably not available on Windows Phone 7 because that software was released 60 days ago, with a limited java-script library. I bet you’ll see an application for WP7 in the future.
In any case – tolls for bridges and other public by-ways are pretty standard both in the US and other countries – it’s the closest we have to a consumption tax, or a “pay for what you use”. I think that’s a fine idea – consume more, pay more.
Patrick
Thanks for pointing out Vanpools! Note that for a Vanpool you must have at least 5 people taking the van and also have a special Rideshare license plate from Washington State Department of Licensing.
Re: angry vs sarcastic, I was trying to be funny but I’m angry about the lack of support for carpooling. If everyone that could carpool did carpool we wouldn’t have traffic, we wouldn’t have to subsidize super-expensive transit solutions or new road capacity, and it would help build community. Should WSDOT really be requiring 3 people in a prius to pay the toll? I think that’s lousy public policy. Tolling is great but to be done right you must value carpooling.
Sorry to say, but this really is Eyman’s fault, or rather the fault of the voters that passed that short sighted initiative to micromanage transportation projects. –Because *we* know *much* more about what infrastructure the state needs than people that do it for a living and have degrees in the subject and such. How did anyone not see this coming? There is no viable option for SDOT to fund projects anymore. A toll booth to Redmond was destiny. Pretty soon they’ll have to put meters in the neighborhoods too and we’ll get to buy monthly overnight passes.
As far as fairer options, well pretty soon cars will have enough telematics built in to handle this. The already can tell exactly what you are emitting, how much fuel you are using, how much your car weighs, how far you are going and what streets you use. Just add how many people of driving age are in the car for your discount (# of cell phones with GPS?) Something like that formula would be the fairest for a usage based model, but then someone will call it regressive because poor people have older cars and will have to pay more, then someone else will raise privacy concerns Oh well, it was a nice thought.
BTW: if you look at traffic shaping of any sort (physical cars, network packets, etc.) it’s actually pretty costly to carve off a lane or bandwidth, etc. and dedicate it to priority traffic. It will be faster on avg for everyone to get the same service but able to use the 4th lane.
The carpooler’s discount is a toll that is split with everyone in the car and hopefully everyone gets across the bridge in a reasonable timeframe. I would support a $0 toll for a carpool of 2 or more people over the legal driving age. (Kids/Babies in a carpool aren’t one less driver on the road)
Hey, aren’t you getting a 50% discount if 2 people carpool? That seems like a partial inducement.
The point about bus connectivity is well-put, but hardly unique to wallingford. It sucks to go east-west in this city in nearly any neighborhood. (And any mode of transportation..think I-5 to Ballard in the afternoon.) I don’t know what the solution for that is. Would more bus service help?
I’d hardly call between $0 and $3.50 twice a day “sticking it to 520 commuters”. The most highly-trafficked times of day (6:00ish-10:00ish) still average out to just over the price of a bus ticket.
I’m continually astonished by the whining Seattle drivers engage in when suddenly required to pay for even a small part of the damage their driving causes. I’m more astonished by the whining they engage in when asked to pay even a small part of a bridge planned to make their commute easier in the near future.
As a telecommuter, I haven’t really followed the latest on the 520. However, I thought there was going to be an actual bike lane. Has that been eliminated at this point?
The bike lane is planned as part of the rebuild, but the rebuild is being blocked by mcginn on the Seattle side of the lake, plus there’s not enough funding. The plan is to build the East side of the bridge first, and then wait for a more reasonable mayor before connecting to the West side. They say they plan to finish the bike lane with existing funding, but as they can’t finish the 6 lane configuration I don’t understand how that’s possible. Unlike the viaduct tunnel which is far enough along that they can steamroll McGinn, 520 is still early enough in the process that he can block progress.
Regarding “sticking it to 520 commuters”, I almost said “justifiably sticking it to 520 commuters”, but as there’s no toll on I-90 AND no support for carpoolers I couldn’t bring myself to call it justified. Don’t be smug if you take metro or bike- you are being heavily subsidized and a lot of people resent it. You may think it is right to subsidize those choices as they get cars off the road and help traffic / the environment, but in that case we should also be supporting carpooling. For many people it really is the only practical “transportation alternative”.
Eric,
I don’t understand your much-repeated point about “no support for carpoolers.” As many commenters have rightly noted, carpoolers drastically cut their per-person toll cost. For anyone motivated by monetary savings, that’s a huge incentive to carpool. I don’t see the argument for increasing those monetary savings even more — the car is still travelling over the bridge and contributing to wear and tear, just like a single-person occupied car.
Beyond mentary savings, what “support” are you looking for? Do you expect the government to organize your car pool for you? If you want carpooling to be easier to participate in, then start a movement. Build a website to help potential carpoolers identify each other and promote it. Get to know your neighbors and your co-workers so you can find carpooling mates more easily.
What If you had a supertrain? You give people a reason to get out
of their cars. Coffee, great music…they will park and ride. I know they will.
But I still love my car though…
Steve: Nicely done. (And exactly what I was thinking…)
Oh, and I’m going to give you my answer, and then I’m going to thank you for your time…
If you take the bus or vanpool the government is actively subsidizing your commute- providing buses, drivers, vans, and so forth. The government is paying for you to use those alternatives in order to reduce car use. This becomes very expensive as more people rely on these options, and is also impractical for many people whose routes don’t align to transit (like many in Wallingford). Rail is the most expensive option of all, with both build and operation costs through the roof.
Carpools on the other hand receive no financial support at all (there are several ridematch web sites already). I don’t think carpools should be subsidized to the extent of transit- we shouldn’t actively pay the drivers of carpools like we do for bus drivers, or buy the cars and maintain them like we do for buses and vanpools. However, I think it’s wrong to charge carpools for crossing the bridge when super-expensive to build and operate transit options get a huge subsidy plus a free pass.
I’m saying all of this as someone that doesn’t use 520 anymore. I’m looking at this strictly as a transportation challenge- how do you reduce automotive traffic equitably and pay for a rebuild while also balancing the budget. In those terms, I think the best alternative is to have the gas tax pay for the 4 lane rebuild and transit, then have single occupant bridge drivers pay the additional cost for the 6 lane alternative via congestion tolling.
> Thanks for pointing out Vanpools! Note that for a Vanpool
> you must have at least 5 people taking the van and also
> have a special Rideshare license plate from Washington
> State Department of Licensing.
Quick note: Vanpools (at least the ones I use or have used — Metro or Community Transit) don’t have you using your own van. The vans are owned and maintained by the county, and your vanpool group pays a monthly fee; Metro/Community Transit buys gas and does all maintenance to the vans.
And you can have as few as 3 (or 2 on I-5) in the van, and still use the HOV lane.
Don’t be smug if you take metro or bike- you are being heavily subsidized and a lot of people resent it.
You’re wrong, Eric. Bicyclists are NOT being “heavily subsidized.” Cyclists pay a disproportionate amount for the infrastructure they use and, in fact, subsidize drivers. Seattle’s roads are paid for via sales and property taxes, taxes we ALL pay. Have you ever seen a bike create a pothole? The impact that a bicycle makes on our roads is negligible.
Yeah but carving 3 feet out of the road for bikes and building special lanes for them is likely highly subsidized don’t you think? I mean how many cars would you have to take off the road to cover the cost and maintenance of those special lanes?
“and is also impractical for many people whose routes don’t align to transit”
This is really the crux of the problem. Living in Wallingford and commuting daily to Redmond? Really? And complaining about the lack of transportation “options” to boot?
If everyone lived close to where they work, there would be much less traffic, less wear and tear on roads, and much less burning of fossil fuels for transportation. You’re a city person and love being in Seattle? Great, get a job in the city. Can’t part with your job at Microsoft? Move to the Eastside. Yes, having “choices” is fabulous, but you can’t choose everything at once without consequences, such as a long and invconvenient commute.
I support the design feature of planning for light rail on the bridge. Rail to the Eastside has been blocked for over 30 years by Kemper Freeman, Mr. Eastside. The future world-class Seattle should include a commuter rail system like any other large city. In the meantime, perhaps the space can be used for a carpool lane. Keep the cost down by limiting the bridge to four car lanes plus the additional space for rail/carpool/bus.
Yes, it would be nice to offer a discount, but difficult to accommodate in the new technology used for tolls. Guess we’ll just have to be satisfied with the “discount” inherent in sharing the toll among our carload.
We are well on our way to “user fees” for everything because it seems that no one wishes to pay for anything they do not use, e.g. ferry system, highways, bridges, bike lanes, etc. Either you pay into a general pool or you “pay-as-you-go”. Personally, I prefer the “George Bailey” model where my money might support your street improvements and your money might support my rail or bridge. It all works out.
Two buses are required to get across the bridge, unless you are willing to walk or bike to the U-District (44 to 271). Takes about 45 minutes to an hour, likely less once a bus lane is provided. It takes about 15 minutes to walk to 15th near Campus Way.
Roads are paid via the gas tax, which is avoided by a bicyclist for every mile pedaled. I support bikes, but many bikers claim to be “vehicles” yet often ignore traffic laws. Perhaps a bike registration or license would be beneficial. The impact on roads may be negligible, but we still need to build and maintain the road in the first place. A car is not impacted by a pothole nearly as much as a bike!
re: bike subsidies- good point regarding city streets. When I carpooled we’d bike to each other’s houses and then to work after getting to Microsoft, which was a great system.
520 itself isn’t being rebuilt with city funds though, and they are adding a bike lane, so some people resent that bikers are getting a “free ride”. Also, if you go across 520 now then you’re on metro which means there are operational subsidies as well. State 520 funds are from gas and other vehicle fees. See this for funding so far:
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/SR520Bridge/financing.htm
Anyhow, the statement above and about not being smug is because I’m trying to represent a number of people I’ve heard speak at a number of community council meetings. I personally think bike subsidies are great and relatively economical, so I should probably stop weakly trying to represent anti-smugness 🙂
It’s WSDOT -* Washington State* DOT, not Seattle DOT that is tolling the 520 bridge. Please get your facts right.
I’m thinking that’s more of a misprint than an incorrect fact. Given that the 520 goes over Lake Washington to another city it’s sort of a given.
“We may not build things in this country anymore, but at least we can create groovy fly throughs:”
Amen.
Greetings and thank you for the opportunity to comment. Some years ago, long before I participated in the challenge of introducing better transportation to Seattle, I sent a recommendation to Congress describing a new concept: the Job Exchange Corps. In this paper I visualized that the skills you have developed working for a company that is now an inconvenient distance from where you live can be replaced by locating a company very much closer to where you live, with your friends and neighbors at a salary and benefits comparable to those you currently enjoy. At the same time, a worker who is equally inconvenienced by the $1,500 yearly expense to commute because he/she lives in Bellevue, Kirkland or Redmond will also be connected with a company requiring a person of similar personality and skills, paying exactly the same compensation — within a few blocks of Bellevue, Redmond or Kirkland. The Job Exchange Corps –happily and efficiently managed by retired executive volunteers — will thus ensure the multiple benefits of the exchange, while dramatically reducing the number of precious lifetime hours you must spend in being away each day from your friends, family and community. Please don’t take your time to criticize this concept but put on your thinking cap and build on it — together with your commuter colleagues. In that way, it will reduce your cost of living, provide more hours every week to enjoy the best things in life (which are free!!) and benefit the Northwest, where the children and the grandchildren of Seattle’s founders once enjoyed the glorious benefits of its rivers, forests and gold rushes. Your happiness and fulfillment are the rewards, and the love you can bring back to those who love you will be enhanced and extended. If you have any questions about this, let me know, and I will gladly share the details needed to develop this concept along 21st Century lines, based on my 57 years of professional consulting experience. Thank you for your kind attention.
Sincerely, Gerald X. Diamond, Met. E., P.E.
Has the toll amount been finalized or is there a website to go to put input on the amount?
re: Toll rates: There is a semi-final proposal here:
http://www.wstc.wa.gov/HighwayTolling/SR520Bridge.htm
I’d like to point that THOUSANDS of Microsoft vendors and contractors commute across 520 daily and we do not get to take the Microsoft Connector buses. Perhaps we are part of the riff-raff of which you speak.
Additionally, when I lived in Wallingford (until about 2 months ago), I took the 44 to the U District and got on the 271 to Bellevue. It was not the most enjoyable commute, but it was certainly better than driving.
…and when buses actually have transit lanes across the bridge, the bus ride should be much faster.
Just don’t add the extra four lanes for cars!!!! Save the money and reduce the toll.
I just noticed that I had posted the wrong video for the West side redesign- I had posted the video of the East side fly through. The article is now updated with the correct video.
For commuters to Kirkland, there’s another route not on the map. The 540 goes from 15th and 42nd to downtown Kirkland. So, between the 540, 542, and 271, a Wallingforder can reach Kirkland, Redmond, and Bellevue, respectively, after the quick hop on the 44.