Vancouver got its first discount air service from the U.S. over the weekend.
The Frontier Airlines flight to Denver coincides with the begining of cruise season. Lower fares could help Vancouver successfully compete in the lucrative market against Seattle, which has more flights and discount carriers.
Vancouver already has discount service to points in Canada and Europe.
The Seattle area is getting the first serious proposal to dramatically alter traffic congestion, fund transportation projects and limit pollution.
Drivers would pay a fee, depending on congestion, to use all freeways from Everett to Lakewood. The proposal would provide the first monetary incentives to use transit, carpool or limit trips. Some initial reaction is here.
Why does it make sense? Because the region can’t possibly build its way out of congestion. The only way to accommodate growth is a combination of changing habits and building new infrastructure. Criticism of the very idea completely misses that point.
The best way to accommodate Cascadia’s growth is with more development, in tandem with infrastructure such as transportation and business.
“It’s a question of where,” architect/critic Witold Rybczynski said this morning on KUOW (begins at 14:00), noting that the U.S. adds more than a million houses a year. “If you create a village, people will start to act like villagers.”
Rybczynski’s sounds like he’s advocating suburban development, or at least singing its praises compared to urban centers. The trick is incentives to steer development. Sprawl doesn’t take into account the larger costs in traffic and the environment.
The LA Times mostly panned his book. The Denver Post interviewed him.
Privatizing bridges, ferries and roads is one way to fund new projects and upkeep. But it isn’t necessarily a good deal for taxpayers, according to a series of articles in BusinessWeek.
The magazine could also have considered British Columbia, where the governing BC Liberals have pushed privatization of health care, transport and other services. Just today there’s an example of how the results have been mixed.
It would be interesting to see analysis of how these deals could be structured on a local level to better benefit the community as well as investors. What terms can be required? What can the rest of Cascadia learn from B.C.’s example?
Experts expected gridlock following the collapse of a major freeway overpass in Oakland yesterday. But it didn’t happen.
Why not? Commuters had mass transit options. Among other things, BART simply added more trains in order to handle about 150,000 more people than usual, according to a report on NPR.
Imagine a similar disaster in Seattle, where transit depends on roads. Good luck getting through the traffic to take a video like this:
If taxis were more convenient, more people would use them. To someone looking for incentives to ditch his car, that seems obvious.
Luckily Seattle may license more cabs, according to the Seattle P-I. Yet officials are reluctant because the extra competition could hurt existing drivers. (Seattle has 643 taxis and King County 200+ more.)
Why not consider taxis a part of the city’s transportation network, alongside buses, rail, carpooling and biking? How about adding as many as the market will bear? The city could help by establishing taxi stands in every neighborhood.
Compare Seattle to compact cities. Boston has about 1,800, San Francisco 1,400 and Denver more than 900, according to this study. Vancouver is listed as having about 500.
Since the question came up in comments, a list of the biggest cities in the U.S. and Canada seemed in order.
It turns out to be a tricky question. For example, Seattle ranks as the 12th largest metropolitan area according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s list of combined statistical areas. But that definition counts people based on commuting patterns and doesn’t include places like Phoenix and Miami. Statistics Canada uses a different set of definitions. Then there’s the case of San Diego, which has either 2,941,454 or 4,804,806 depending on whether Tijuana is included.
There are other complications. For example, the five-county Seattle area is 5,800 square miles while greater Houston is over 10,000. The city of Jacksonville (841 square miles) has about 200,000 more people than the city of Seattle (88 square miles). Unless otherwise mentioned, Cascadia Report generally conflates cities and metropolitan areas.
So, just for the record, here’s the closest apples-to-apples comparison of the top U.S. metro areas (primary census statistical areas):
1. New York-Newark-Bridgeport — 21,976,224
2. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside — 17,775,984
3. Chicago-Naperville-Michigan City — 9,725,317
4. Washington-Baltimore-Northern Virginia — 8,211,213
5. Boston-Worcester-Manchester — 7,465,634
6. San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland — 7,228,948
7. Philadelphia-Camden-Vineland — 6,382,714
8. Dallas-Fort Worth — 6,359,758
9. Houston-Baytown-Huntsville — 5,641,077
10. Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Gainesville — 5,478,667
11. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach — 5,463,857
12. Detroit-Warren-Flint — 5,410,014
13. Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale — 4,039,182
14. Seattle-Tacoma-Olympia — 3,991,911
15. Minneapolis-St. Paul — 3,502,891
Greater Vancouver clocks in at 2,170,976 and the Portland area at 2,137,565. Houston, Atlanta and Miami all passed Detroit in the last five years and Phoenix grew by more than 20%. For comparison, Toronto-Hamilton counted 5,555,912 and Greater Montreal 3,635,571
Here’s a list, using a combination of counting methods, of largest population centers in the Americas.
Seattle has been the largest U.S. or Canadian city without a nonstop flight to Mexico City. Until now.
Aeromexico this week said it would launch daily flights to Mexico City and on to Guadalajara. The daytime service is a big boost to businesses that operate in the area, saving travelers time and potential delay.
The additional flight is the latest since the Port of Seattle lowered fees to attract routes to Sea-Tac to better compete with Portland and Vancouver. (As a non-hub, the Seattle metro area has been the largest without a direct Mexico City connection.)
Who loses? Probably Alaska Airlines, which faces higher fuel costs and more competion. Today it said its bottom line worsened from a year ago and vowed to “do whatever it takes” to hold onto its dominant share of the West Coast market. Aeromexico’s addition eats into a market Alaska has been slowly building.
Washington on Wedneday began issuing its first electronic transponders to collect tolls from drivers who cross the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, a funding mechanism that’s sure to catch on around the region.
The system deducts tolls from the driver’s prepaid account, eliminating the need to stop at a toll plaza. To see the state DOT’s demonstration, click on this link.
Tolls are likely to be part of financing any future area road improvements. They should also be seen as an incentive to boost demand for transit, which needs to be increased in tandem with the addition of tolls.
Vancouver’s transit agency seems to have found a new way to extol the virtues of its latest light rail line, which will connect Richmond, the airport and downtown (start watching at about 1:20):
The video was posted on April 9, soon after the Washington State Dept. of Transportation posted its own disaster scenarios for the 520 bridge.
In addition to YouTube videos, there are a bunch of things that Vancouver can admire about Seattle, including a couple cited in Bill Virgin’s recent column. One is Seattle’s strong business base that makes amenities possible and provides prosperity. Seattle’s lack of density in the center city is more dubious. In the video above, note the density in neighborhoods such as around 49th Street. Why won’t that work elsewhere?