Transportation

Puget Sound travel times showed improvement in the second half of 2009 compared with the same period in 2007 and 2008, according to WSDOT’s congestion report on travel times published in its most recent quarterly report.

The largest improvements in travel times, comparing the latter halves of 2009 to 2008, were on I-405 between Bellevue and Tukwila.

The morning commute showed a 13 minute travel time improvement northbound in the morning and a five minute travel time improvement southbound on the evening return trip.

Rainier Dispatch -- better known as Farwest Taxi -- jumped into the legal war against the embattled Port of Seattle and is now the second taxi company to claim the Port’s process for selecting a new on-demand airport taxi contract is illegal.

Farwest Taxi filed a lawsuit Friday, Feb. 12 in King County Superior Court against the Port of Seattle and Yellow Cab, its former partner in a joint bid for the airport contract. The lawsuit claims the Port’s proposal process was illegal.

The lawsuit says lobbyist Chris Van Dyk drafted the bid for Yellow Cab, the winning bidder for the on-demand airport contract. Then he turned around and used that insider information to draft a less competitive proposal by the No. 2 bidder, a joint venture between Yellow, Farwest and Orange Cab.

According to the lawsuit, Van Dyk knew trade secrets of the two other bidders in the joint venture, and used that proprietary intellectual property to ensure Yellow Cab submitted the top bid. In addition, in its legal filing, Farwest says it explicitly told Yellow representatives that it did not want anyone who drafted the joint venture proposal to also draft a proposal for any of the three individual members. They said they were assured that would be the case.

This latest lawsuit follows on the heels of a lawsuit filed by the Seattle-Tacoma International Taxi Association (STITA) on Jan. 29.

Like STITA's lawsuit, Farwest Taxi's lawsuit requests a court order barring the Port of Seattle from officially signing a contract with Yellow Cab.

It also seeks an order disqualifying Yellow Cab from future re-bids of the airport contract.

Traffic was down, in concert with the down economy, in 2009, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal.

In 2009, there were 31,227,512 total incoming and outgoing passengers, down from 32,196,528 a year earlier.
 
The number of inbound international passengers fell by more than 11 percent, and the total number of international passengers fell by nearly 10 percent.

Cargo volume fell by more than 7 percent last year from 2008. International air freight volume fell the most, percentage-wise, dropping a total of 11.62 percent from 2008.

If you have late night travel plans on I-5 overnight near Tukwila, you might want to re-think those plans.

While WSDOT crews erect a sign bridge to hold new high-tech signage, there will be full closures of the freeway.

Starting at 11:30 p.m. tonight, Monday, Jan. 25, crews will close northbound I-5 at SR-599. The lanes will remain closed until 4:30 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 26. Two I-5 on-ramps in the area will close at 9 p.m. They include:

o Eastbound SR 518 to northbound I-5
o Interurban Avenue S to northbound I-5

Crews will detour traffic to SR 599 where they return to northbound I-5 via Boeing Access Rd.  Drivers should consider taking alternate routes such as I-405 or SR 99 to avoid long delays and backups.