I don’t believe it. Remember that backroom deal for Northgate that’s bad for bicycling? Well, it’s worse than we thought.
According to Sound Transit, right now, 70 percent of the 5,000 people using the Northgate transit center daily get there on bike, foot or transit. In 2030, 90 percent of the 15,000 people accessing the light rail station daily will get there on bike, foot or transit. 90 percent.
Agency staff present their plan to the Sound Transit Board
Yet at the Sound Transit Board meeting last week, agency staff presented the plot they hatched behind closed doors to spend $40 million of limited taxpayer dollars on a 900-stall parking garage, while tossing a few scraps at making it easier for people to safely access the station on bike, foot or transit.
Instead of working to figure out how they can provide the 90 percent of people who will access the station on bike, foot or transit with safe and convenient ways to get there, Sound Transit might spend tens of millions of dollars benefiting the 10 percent at the expense of everyone else. That’s just not fair.
Northgate deserves a fair deal. So does every community where Sound Transit builds a station. From Redmond to Tacoma, Lynwood to Federal Way, Edmonds to Issaquah, and right here in Seattle – we need to stand together and let Sound Transit know that there’s a better way.
Join us at the June 4th open house and tell Sound Transit that Northgate deserves a fair deal.
An ocean of parking
As we mentioned last week, the construction of the light rail station at Northgate provides a once in a lifetime opportunity. This is our chance to transform a neighborhood dominated by an ocean of parking lots into a bikeable, walkable and transit-rich community where everyone who wants to can safely bike or walk to the station.
For a fraction of the cost of a $40 million, 900-stall parking garage for the 10 percent, Sound Transit could choose to make hundreds of small shovel-ready improvements that would benefit the 90 percent of people who will access the station on bike, foot or transit – and create more jobs than building a garage. Improvements like cycletracks and neighborhood greenways accessing the station, a bike/pedestrian bridge over I-5 to North Seattle Community College and Licton Springs, sidewalks in the surrounding neighborhoods, and improved bus service to the station. Improvements that the community and existing users of the transit center actually want.
We can get a fair deal for Northgate, but only if we stand together and make our voices heard at the June 4th open house.
We’d love to have you join us and ride to the open house together. We’ll meet in front of the Green Lake Starbucks (7100 E Green Lake Dr N Seattle) at 5:15 p.m. and ride to the open house on a route past the transit center and the potential location for the proposed parking garage.
Apparently you failed basic math: 90% of 15,000 is 13,500. That means 10% is 1,500. Yet they propose 900 parking spots, or 40% less than they think they need.
Shouldnt the headline really be that Sound Transit is proposing less parking than they need, which could result in cars circling the station block and parking illegally, making things genreally more complicated for cyclists and walkers?
I really appreciate the work that Craig and Cascade have done to bring this issue to our attention. It’s critical that we take a stand for safe, walkable neighborhoods. And, in general, surrounding stations with parking lots will defeat many of the advantages of light rail.
That said, after reviewing the Sound Transit proposal, I can’t help but feel like the tone of these posts is somewhat misleading. Yes, the proposal calls for building a new 600-900 stall parking garage, but it does so in order to “allow conversion of [King County Metro]‘s surface [Park & Ride] lots to TOD [(Transit Oriented Development)] sites.” (p. 22). Those two lots (labelled “KCM West Parcel” and “KCM East Parcel” in the slide presentation) account for 753 parking spaces, and they would *both* be converted to dense TOD sites for development of 85-foot-tall residential apartments with ground-floor retail. These lost parking spots would in turn be replaced with the parking garage, built on a site owned by the mall that currently holds about another 150 stalls of surface parking.
In other words, Sound Transit isn’t proposing the addition of a single parking space. Instead, the proposal calls for taking about 900 stalls currently spread out over 7 acres of surface parking and replacing them with 600-900 stalls in a single 1.1-acre garage. This will cost millions of dollars, but it will open up 6 acres of prime real estate *directly* adjacent to the new light rail station and the Northgate Transit Center for dense, walkable, bikeable development. In fact, ST claims that the number of Park & Ride spaces under this proposal would actually drop from the 1522 (now) to 1219 (when the light rail station opens). (p. 25). That’s not too shabby, considering that ST expects transit use to *triple* (from 5,000 to 15,000 daily boardings).
That’s not to say that this plan is perfect. I would love to see *all* of the parking around the light rail station torn out to accomodate TOD. If that’s not feasible, I can imagine Cascade arguing that ST should only spend money moving surface parking spots into a garage once it has committed to building all of the desired bike infrastructure (like the bike/ped overpass to North Seattle Community College). Moreover, even if one supports the idea of concentrating parking into a garage to make room for TOD, it might be nice if that garage were further from the station, freeing up even more of the directly adjacent space for dense, walkable development. Finally, it seems obvious that ST shouldn’t build any kind of the garage unless King County Metro commits to turning over both of its current surface parking lots to TOD; otherwise, we might end up with the worst of both worlds.
Craig is right that “[t]his is our chance to transform a neighborhood dominated by an ocean of parking lots into a bikeable, walkable and transit-rich community . . . .” But that’s exactly what Sound Transit is trying to do here by freeing up 6 acres of surface parking for TOD. We can and should debate whether there is a better way to do it and/or whether it should be taken even further, but it doesn’t really seem fair to demonize ST for a proposal that would *decrease* Park & Ride parking and *significantly increase* TOD opportunities.
Antoine,
Ditto. Well described. Other than missing the element of the bike/ped overpass to NSCC, and the actual commitment to follow through with the full plan (TOD & eliminating surface lots), this sounds like a reasonable plan, not the shady, underhanded deal that it’s being headlined as.
[...] million parking garage” (yesterday debunked again on Crosscut) has gone viral, with Cascade Bike Club and Feet First making it the centerpiece of efforts to rally opposition to parking structures at [...]
[...] a May 24, 2012 briefing to the Sound Transit Board, agency staff presented the plan they developed behind closed doors to build a 600 to 900 stall parking garage while making minimal (and nearly entirely unfunded) [...]