‘One of Those Cities Where They Go In Pretty Hard on Angled Parking’
While angled parking comes with safety and aesthetic costs, in Bellingham, it can also delay buses.
Two Sundays back when I was watching a recent video from Ray Delahanty, aka City Nerd, on Nebula — his videos usually post to YouTube on Wednesdays — I chuckled out loud when Delahanty observed something about Ames, Iowa, home to Iowa State University. I hesitate to give away spoilers from City Nerd’s video featuring a top 10 list of affordable college towns, but regarding Ames, Delahanty said: “This is one of those cities where they go in pretty hard on angled parking.”
Bellingham didn’t make CityNerd’s affordable college towns list, but I might assume that Delahanty would classify the City of Subdued Excitement as “one of those cities” that features a lot of angled parking in walkable commercial areas.
In addition to many streets in Fairhaven’s historic commercial core, there are numerous examples of angled parking in Downtown Bellingham, including along Railroad Avenue’s 130-foot wide right of way between Chestnut and York streets, plus along parts of Cornwall and Grand avenues, plus Bay, Champion, Maple, and State streets.
While you can cram in more parking spaces on a block with angled parking compared to parallel parking, there are some tradeoffs. That includes sacrifices in street safety and aesthetics, both made worse by current SUV and truck bloat trends that can junk up the streetscape, limit sight lines, and endanger bicyclists.
“What’s your angle? Analyzing angled parking via satellite imagery to aid bike-network planning,” a 2020 peer-reviewed article published in the journal Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, notes how “numerous studies indicate that this layout is associated with higher rates of collisions than parallel parking.”
But angled parking can have another impact besides roadway safety and aesthetic concerns, something most Bellinghamsters wouldn’t think much about unless they regularly use transit: Bus delays.
What’s the big deal with buses and angled parking? The ends of longer and larger vehicles, including trucks and SUVs, can jut out into the adjacent traffic lane and force bus operators to slow down as they pass with care. Additionally, more parking spaces means more opportunities for street delays caused by motorists entering or leaving parking spaces.
In Bellingham, the primary transit pathways generally avoid streets with angled parking. But not totally.
In some of these cases, it's not a big deal. For instance, with the southbound one-way section of N. Street Street south of E. Holly Street, there’s angled parking on the east side of the street and parallel parking on the west side of the street. Since Route 1, 46, and 47 buses stay in the traffic lane adjacent to the west side of the street instead of the east, bus operators don’t encounter oversized SUV and trucks jutting out into the traffic lane.
So, where is the problematic angled parking that can impact bus operations in Bellingham?
On downtown-bound Route 14 leaving Fairhaven, the angled parking on the 1200 block of Harris Avenue can delay buses making the right turn from 12th Street to Harris Avenue, especially when there’s an oversized SUV or truck parked in the first space east of 12th. At one point last fall while riding a Route 14 bus, I observed a 40-second delay at this spot. The bus operator couldn’t squeeze through since in addition to a delivery truck in the adjacent angled parking space, there was also a line of motorists on westbound Harris Avenue queued up at the 12th Street traffic signal. A 40-second delay for Route 14 leaving Fairhaven can lead to additional delays heading to Western Washington University and downtown and impact the reliability of through-routed Route 15 buses heading out to Cordata Station via Meridian Street.
Fortunately, that particular bus trouble spot in Fairhaven is being addressed. As BhamByBus recently reported, WTA is implementing a minor reroute of Route 14 in Fairhaven, bypassing the 1200 and 1300 blocks of Harris Avenue by using Mill Avenue instead. While Mill Avenue also has angled parking, the right turn from 12th Street is seemingly easier for bus operators to navigate.
Let’s rethink how Champion Street can better accommodate WTA buses in Downtown Bellingham.
This leads BhamByBus to Champion Street, which comprises Downtown Bellingham’s most important transit pathway leading to and from Bellingham Station. Every WTA bus route serving Bellingham Station uses a portion of Champion Street. But annoyingly, there’s angled parking on the south side of the 200 and 300 blocks of E. Champion Street, between N. Forest Street and Bellingham Station, and the 200 block of W. Champion Street.
On a Sunday last fall, BhamByBus was riding a Route 1 bus that was running late out of Fairhaven. While Route 1 buses running behind schedule can sometimes arrive at Bellingham Station just in time so passengers can make bus connections, there can also be a last-second surprise awaiting on Champion Street in the form of a motorist backing out of an angled parking space and into the traffic lane buses use to approach Bellingham Station.
In that particular situation, BhamByBus barely missed a Route 232 bus, which pulled out of its bus bay at Bellingham Station just as the Route 1 bus was pulling in. If there hadn’t been a surprise delay on Champion Street, there wouldn’t have been a missed connection. As many WTA bus riders can attest, missing a bus transfer at Bellingham Station on a Sunday, when some routes have reduced service frequency, can be very frustrating.
As WTA progresses with planning for building a new and expanded Bellingham Station, if the new downtown transit center takes shape at the former Lighthouse Mission Base Camp site at Cornwall Avenue & York Street — as has been under consideration — there’s a very good opportunity to rethink how Champion Street could better accommodate WTA buses in Downtown Bellingham.
WTA’s November 2023 rapid transit feasibility study notes a potential contraflow bus-only lane on E. Champion Street between Railroad and Cornwall avenues leading to Bellingham Station, eliminating the need to go around the block to enter via E. Magnolia Street. But that feasibility study assumed WTA’s transit hub would stay at its current site. With Bellingham Station potentially moving to a new and expanded transit center at the former Base Camp site one block north, that presents an opportunity to think bigger.
It’s important to remember just how many WTA bus routes use Champion Street: Routes 1, 3, 4, 14, 15, 46, 47, 49, 50, 72X, 75, 80X, 105, 107, 108, 190, 196, 197, 232, 331, 512, 525, 533, and 540, plus the future Routes 9 and 10 being introduced in June. That’s hundreds of bus trips every day! If there were any street in Downtown Bellingham where it makes sense to prioritize the transit experience, Champion Street would be it. That’s especially true for any potential future crosstown bus routes that would give Bellinghamsters an opportunity to pass through Downtown Bellingham without having to transfer to another bus route.
Given the intense civic debate over the City of Bellingham’s Holly Street bike lane pilot project in 2024, Champion Street comparatively doesn’t seem very sacrosanct to Bellingham’s crosstown motorists traversing downtown.
For the 200 and 300 blocks of E. Champion Street, better accommodating buses could look like a westbound bus-only lane on the north side of the street feeding into a new transit center at the Base Camp site. It’d also make sense to reconfigure the 100 and 200 blocks of W. Champion Street, between Cornwall Avenue and Grand Avenue, to better accommodate buses. That could include an eastbound transit-only or transit-priority lane that’d help thread buses past the Mount Baker Theatre building and toward the new downtown transit center. The 200 block of W. Champion Street, which currently has one westbound travel lane flanked by angled parking on the south side of the street and parallel parking on the north, presents some challenges — some of the street trees would need to be sacrificed to accommodate both inbound and outbound buses. But it’d benefit numerous local transit users.
Reducing points of potential delays along important bus corridors should be prioritized. And that involves eliminating some instances of parking, including angled parking.