March 19, 2008 at 11:20 am
by Ben Schiendelman
A week ago, while talking about the viaduct, a friend said to me “If only we had just built the monorail…”
A few days later, when he regained consciousness and they took him out of the ICU (joking! joking!), I had calmed down. I gave him a list of why the monorail would never have worked, was a bad idea in the first place, and would probably have ended up half-built and bankrupt:
First, putting your technology choice in your law is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of. Your law should always say something like “high capacity transit” or “fixed guideway transit” – something flexible – that way you don’t get backed into a corner. There were very few initial bids for the monorail – and only one that held up for long. This is not a standardized transportation system – there are many competing technologies for both trains and guideways. They’re generally proprietary – only one vendor will sell you the trains to go on your tracks. That means single bids, which kind of defeats the purpose of competitive bidding, don’t you think?
Second, don’t claim your fantastical technology will “pay for itself”. Seriously, that was how this all started – “it will be profitable”, we were told, “companies will be falling all over themselves to get the contract”. Yeah, and my buddies in Baghdad don’t know where to put all the floral arrangements. The original monorail group started out with that claim, then moved to $18-36 million a mile with operating costs recovered through fares (still no chance in hell), then more like $50-100 million a mile… eventually it became clear that it was, actually, a transit system, and that transit systems do, indeed, cost money. Too late: making all those crazy claims killed their credibility.
Third, and maybe even most importantly: This was supposed to be grassroots, bringing people together. Instead, it became an anti-light-rail festival of lies, alienating the support of transit users and people with brains everywhere. “Light rail can’t climb a grade”, they said, when the stretch we’ve built along SR-518 is as steep as their Hitachi monorail could do. “Light rail isn’t elevated”, they said… I hope everyone on this blog realizes the humor in that statement. “Light rail is so expensive”, they said (and I’m leaving out their capital letters and exclamation points) – but it turns out that the differences in cost between light rail and monorail are negligible. They poked fun at their base supporters, and it cost them.
Fourth, to cut costs, they planned to use single tracking and switches over the West Seattle Bridge (and they eventually cut Ballard from their plan entirely). Switches, for monorail, are huge, cumbersome devices that take many times longer than standard rail switches to actually switch over. The maximum frequency of trains over the bridge would have been choked off by switch actions between every set of trains. Even after making that decision, the monorail agency still advertised three minute headways – when they would have been physically impossible.
The rose-colored glasses the monorail agency looked through at every issue bit them time and again. They claimed that their real estate costs would be low because they “only had to pay for posts in the ground”, that their columns would be “thinner than light rail” (they weren’t), and that they would offer a “quieter, smoother ride” – they wouldn’t have. I’m not even discussing the financing plan – it was astounding. Along every step of the way, the agency lied, taking advantage of Sound Transit’s bad position at the time to hit as hard as they could at light rail, rather than collaborating. Oh, yeah, and they spent more on advertising alone than they were bringing in. …And their projections for car ownership (their funding source was an MVET) were far too high.
I’m glad they’re gone. There was no opportunity for mass transit there – they failed so many times in so many arenas that I hope that’s clear. All they did was confuse the public and spend our money. Yeah, I know, Ballard and West Seattle residents feel cheated – but it’s like Publishers’ Clearinghouse – you weren’t actually going to win a million dollars. We don’t have the tax base in Seattle alone, especially not just with an MVET, to build mass transit in that corridor.
We will. Once light rail is built northward to the county line, those will be the next logical places for Sound Transit to build using North King money.
March 18, 2008 at 9:09 pm
by Andrew Smith
King County will take the last $426,000 from the Monorail project and transfer it to transit improvements West Seattle and Ballard. The monorail project overall cost the taxpayers $125 million.
March 18, 2008 at 7:48 am
by Andrew Smith
Light rail is out of the 520 plan officially. As Ben said a couple of months ago, not necessarily the worst thing in the world.
However, Ron Sims and the anti-rail noisemakers are upsetting me again:
The decision to focus on bus rapid transit on 520 has led to a new buzz for bus rapid transit in the Interstate 90 corridor, particularly as a short-term substitute for more-expensive light rail.
Sound Transit, the agency that has worked for years developing light rail in a north-south corridor, last week delayed until April 10 a board vote on a revised transportation package to possibly be sent to voters this fall. The board is mulling its response to the November defeat of a comprehensive roads and transit package. The measure included funding for light rail across I-90 and an “Eastlink” at least to growing Bellevue, one of the region’s biggest employers.
“The decision has been made on 520: four general-purpose lanes and two high-occupancy vehicle lanes, and it’s going to have bus rapid transit, not light rail,” said King County Executive Ron Sims.
…
King County, helped by federal transportation policies and funding, is bullish on buses. While Sims supports light rail as a needed “spine,” he considers buses the “rib cage” of a transportation system. With gas and parking costs climbing, bus ridership already exceeds demand, Sims said.
Lay it to rest, Ron! Obviously, you love your bus feifdom you’ve created, and you’d love to see more buses over rail. But would ridership be better that way? Isn’t that what this is all about? Repeated studies show vastly more ridership with much better service over I-90 on rail.
At least other people in the are an the right track:
The cost of Seattle-Redmond light rail service at up to $3.9 billion, compared with up to $3.4 billion for buses that would run in exclusive lanes with doors on both sides of the vehicles, basing figures on 2005 dollars. The study estimated that the rail system would carry an average of 35,000 passengers each weekday, while the bus system would carry 24,500, with light rail travel times three minutes shorter between the two cities.
Seems obvious which one is better…
March 17, 2008 at 11:09 pm
by Andrew Smith
Sorry, I was slow on digging through the results of the Sound Transit survey. As expected, the people who visited the website were more interested in transit and transportation than those polled via the phone, but surprisingly the the phone polls were more positive toward every agency rated, especially Washington DOT. In general the results were not hugely different. Some more highlights than last time:
- Nobody really cares about ferries other than Ron Sims and the King County council. Only 3% in the phone poll and 1% in the online poll cared about foot ferries.
- Light Rail and Mass Transit were the most popular choices for transit improvement in both polls, but roads faired better in the phone poll (20%) than in the online poll (14%).
- 82% of people support the expansion of transit in the region in the phone poll, a number I find amazingly low. That number was 79% in the online poll.
- More than 70% of people in both polls want Sound Transit to come back to the ballot in 2008.
There you go. Here are the pdfs of the raw data for the phone poll and the web poll. I think the moral is that Sound Transit should return to the ballot in 2008.
Photo from Bejan in the STB flickr pool.
March 17, 2008 at 10:52 pm
by Andrew Smith
The City is starting its One Less Car Challenge, which provides tremendous incentives for residents who drive less. There are two levels, the first you drive less for a month, and you can earn up to $100 in flexcar credits, and in the second, you sell your car and can get as much as $600 in flexcar credits.
Pretty good deal for those who aren’t sure whether they need a car or not!
Any of you plan on doing it?
March 16, 2008 at 11:00 pm
by Andrew Smith
Check out this graph from the Institute of Policy Studies (original PDF here).
 If you look at the left column, government spending on mass transit creates the most jobs on a number basis, and the second highest number of jobs on a total wages basis. Giving people money for personal consumption, as Congress and the President have just done, is basically the worst way.
The thing that they authors didn’t take into account was long-term benefits of the investments, which make domestic consumption and health care look better than they actually ought to. For example, defense spending created the Internet, which has created entire economic sectors, and education spending creates a better educated work force which has downtstream effects on the future generation’s earning prospects. Similarly, what has been the total return-on-investment for New York City’s 100-year-old subways?
Obviously, the other Washington is trying to give a short term “shot-in-the-arm” to economy, so the long term effect wasn’t as important to their decision. However, this does give credence to the idea that, in the long run, mass transit can provide significant economic stimulation. I think it’s worth noting that spending $152 billion for 300 million people averages a little more than $500 per person. Extrapolating that to the nearly two million folks in King County you’d get almost one billion in federal money right there, or $1.8 billion over the entire Sound Transit district.
Food for thought when national politicians start talking about spending for the economic growth. Via Overhead Wire, Via Free Public Transit.
March 16, 2008 at 6:31 pm
by Andrew Smith
I’ve been reading about Community Transit’s Swift BRT plans and comparing them to King County Metro’s Rapid Ride BRT plans. The proposals are extremely similar: buses that run in existing roads, with more frequent service. But at least on paper, Swift’s plans seem better. Off-board fare machines. Rapid ride will have payment systems at each door of the bus, but that isn’t as good as off-bus fare machines. Paying before boarding reduces boarding time, and reduces unnecssary interactions between people and the driver.
No schedules. Rather than showing schedules, electronic indicators at the bus stations will show when the next bus will come, and the service will be frequent enough that schedules won’t be necessary.
Transit signal priority and transit-only lanes. The Swift route will have ten miles of transit signal priority intersections, which allow the signals to stay green longer for approaching buses, and seven miles of transit-only lanes. Some of Rapid Ride will have TSP as well, but in places like West Seattle, the improvements are paid by the city rather than the county, and in other places there may be no signal priority. Very little transit-only lanes will be created for Rapid Ride. On-board bus racks. Bicyclists will be able to board the bus with their bikes through the third door.
Last, but not least, Swift opens in 2009 rather than in 2010 for the earliest rapid ride routes, and much later for some of the other routes.
The major problem I have with Swift, is that most of its press materials say that Swift is “rail-like” or a “rail-replacement”. That I don’t like, because the service quality of even that bus is not like link light rail.
I’ve added a couple of concept pictures from Community Transit. I’ll be talking with a representative from Community Transit, if you have questions about CT’s BRT, please leave them in the comments!
March 14, 2008 at 11:21 am
by Andrew Smith
The Sound Transit Board went over the survey results yesterday, and they released the results here along with a phone poll. My quick analysis of the phone poll, not the survey.
- 9000 responses is a lot for a survey that supposedly everyone hated.
- 82% of people either strongly favor or favor expanding rail.
- More than half of people want ST2 on the ballot this year.
- People were split on whether they wanted more commuter rail or light rail, this is likely because people don’t understand the difference.
More analysis to come, but the poll points to a good chance of ST2 coming back this year.
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March 14, 2008 at 10:17 am
by Ben Schiendelman
Will over at HorsesAss has weighed in on the Sierra Club’s changing goalposts for what they’ll support, and I certainly have an opinion. Parking places next to transit are eventually going to stop being a solution, but for now, they’re necessary.
ST2.1 won’t pass at all without park and rides. Only urban core voters – North King – will vote for a package without them, because they’re the only constituency that has existing development around potential stations.
Transit oriented development – building a mix of uses to directly take advantage of transit facilities – is slow. I mean, all development is pretty slow, but the process of going to city councils to change their city plan to build something that your neighbors are wary of – that can take a long time. In addition, this can be a multistage development process – you might not get mixed use all at once, it may take several investment cycles to fill in the space around a station. A parking structure brings potential users where few would otherwise tread. With fifty riders a day, no business can reasonably make a go next to a station where there is currently nothing – but with five hundred riders a day, they likely can. Those park and rides can eventually be torn down for more TOD, in a political climate where the vast majority of riders come from the adjacent mixed use. That has happened on Capitol Hill and downtown in recent years (parking structures and surface parking being replaced with mixed use).
Ridership would be abysmal for years without park and rides. We wouldn’t see another “Ridership Exceeds National Average by a Ridiculous Amount” piece in the P-I for a long time. Worse, and more importantly, you’d end up with newer ST lines branded as “poorly planned” as a result, compared to other systems in the US, and that’s big ammo to kill ST3. Just walking users don’t get you squat when all the nearby housing sits on full lots – the distances involved up near Shoreline and down near Federal Way are immense. Also note that there are often big parking lots along 99, so a South line would have nearly no walking ridership until TOD was in place.
In terms of environmental impact – in the short term, a short drive to transfer to transit for the longer portion of the trip (as we see with Sounder now) is by far a net environmental benefit, even if you account for the concrete structure. The vehicle miles prevented for those users vastly outstrip the ones they still incur getting to the station. That would be even more so with South Link, because you’d make the average trip for Sounder park-and-riders shorter (fewer people would drive over from Federal Way, etc, to get Sounder). In the long term, you give these people a permanent incentive to move closer to their rail station, creating demand for TOD. When they move (which they do, as we see residential development along Sounder), they open up a parking spot for a new person and the incentive recycles to a new user.
These park and rides aren’t perfect, but not building them is a good way to really damage ST’s public image and prevent us from getting more transit in the long run. I can’t say this enough, and specifically for you, Sierra Club leaders: The perfect is the enemy of the good. All of these environmental issues are complex, you know that very well. Addressing only part of any given issue, like park and rides, without looking at the whole thing, the overall environmental cost of sprawl, is a good way to lose sight of the real problems and the real solutions. We city people are going to be just fine walking to a subway station to get to everywhere we need to go – but someone in Shoreline cannot simply change their life to do that. The best we can do is provide them a choice that makes them consider their options. They will, and those park and rides are the best way to expose them to those choices.
March 13, 2008 at 10:00 pm
by Martin H. Duke
As you may have noticed, to the right you can see our new blog email address. If you have any tips, you can contact us at
seattletransitblog@gmail.com
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March 13, 2008 at 6:11 pm
by BEN WOOSLEY
Thoughts from my own choice to give up my car:
Thoreau said that freedom was not only a situation apart from ourselves, from which a person could be plucked or into which one could be thrust, but also could be a consequence of our choices, the things we volunteer ourselves into, for our own reasons or on behalf of society.
In particular, he contrasts the lifestyles of the native peoples, whose simple habitations were easily constructed, with the farmers who would spend decades of work to pay off the mortgages on their homes. The farmers may have seemed better off, but at the same time they were bound to this heavy burden, which drove them to work the land rather than write, as Thoreau did, or simply live more simply. I don’t mean to romanticize the state of the natives, but there’s a legitimate question to be asked here: how free were the farmers, really? Had they unknowingly chosen to punish themselves because that was “the right thing to do” in the society they lived?
This concept of the unacknowledged burden became quite real to me recently when I unloaded myself of a burden which had once been, and remains to many, a symbol of freedom: my car.
I’ve been living in Capitol hill for the past year and a half. My drift away from the car started immediately; first it was obvious that the bus was an easier commute than my car, because on the bus I had my time to myself, and it spread from there. I’ve since read books, watched films, learned a fair amount of French and even done a bit of work on the bus. In fact, I largely wrote this post on the bus.
Over time, I built up a pretty clear case for giving up the car, which I share here because some of the arguments can be subtle, and may have been missed. I’ll try not to cover the obvious reasons, (i.e., the inconvenience of parking and the cost of gas and insurance), just 3 oft-ignored costs.
The Inconvenience of Maintenance
One cold night, a friend and I went to take my car out. It’d been a few weeks since I’d used it, but it had always been dependable, so imagine my surprised when the engine refused to turn over. No problem, it had just been out for a while and the battery had discharged. A jump from a helpful friend later, and I’m on the road. Perhaps I only need to drive a little while and the battery will be charged back up and good to go.
Wrong. Only after a month and a hand-full of attempted jumps, including one from a re-neg-er who said “um, this is taking longer than I expected, I’m gonna go back to my house” (5 minutes in and half a block away from her house) did we make it back to be fixed. The battery had gone bad.
All told, this event required hours of time, $200 in the cost of jumper cables and a battery, and the priceless aid of friends and passers-by, to be fixed. Time, money, inconvenience.
But beyond that, upon checking the car for the battery problem, the mechanics came back with a laundry list of concerns, adding up to thousands of dollars in potential maintenance, of questionable necessity.
Driving home the point that I didn’t have time for maintenance, one of their suggestions was that I replace my wiper blades, which were in fact bad. Apparently, they had failed to notice that I had a fresh pair in the backseat, which had been there for months but I’d never had the time to put in place.
The Cost of Depreciation
Yes, depreciation: the difference between what you could sell your car for last month and this; the value that your car loses over time. In my case, I drove a distinguished but not flashy two-door coupe, bought it for $9000 and two years later could sell it for around $6000. $3000 dollars over 2 years, and this for a 10 year old car!
This is not the cost you see flowing out of your wallet, but it’s the true economic cost. It exists, it’s substantial, and it’s an amount you should account for when comparing alternatives.
The Goal of Density
I’ve an appreciation for density for one important reason: cultural diversity. A major part of what determines whether a certain obscure genre can be represented in an art gallery, music venue or bar is the quantity of patrons willing to make the trip out to support that establishment. Greater density means more people within a given radius and thus a greater likelihood that enough people will be willing and able to travel to and support this establishment, keeping it alive.
This is one reason rural and suburban areas are so often cultural wastelands. Institutions can’t muster the support they need when their potential patrons are so spread out. You can’t have a gay bar and a metal bar and a indie bar and so on when you have a handful of each.
And spread out why? For the sake of lawns and parking. If there’s one thing which prevents a place from effectively becoming more dense, it is the roads and parking lots needed to support the car-only lifestyle. A one-car-per-person society has a hard limit on how dense it can become, and thus typically a practical limit on how culturally diverse it may be. But if we make the choice to minimize our own footprint, we open the door to greater density and all the attendant benefits.
Conclusion
So, when I finally relieve myself of my car, I not only save money (by relying on public transit and zipcar), lessen my impact on the environment, clear my mind & schedule by offloading the concerns of maintenance to those I rely on, and give myself time to read and to write, but I also help support a society in which it is possible for minority ideas & establishments to flourish in the support of their nearby constituents.
This is the liberation I’m finding as an ex-motorist.
March 13, 2008 at 9:21 am
by Andrew Smith
The Discovery Institute’s Bruce Agnew is spewing insanity again, this time in a Seattle Times Opinion piece. He’s saying he’s got the region’s transportation problems figured out, and here are his ideas:
The Puget Sound Regional Council is working to help better coordinate signalized intersections; there are 2,300-plus in our four counties. Greater synchronization, where signals actually talk to each other, could significantly cut congestion. Related strategies use real-time traffic information to alter electronic roadway signs, signals and even lane configurations, maximizing capacity. Applying developer contributions to higher-tech traffic operations is a natural under the state’s Growth Management Act. The Eastside is an ideal proving ground.
Signal Synchronization? Is he serious? That’s the first in his ideas? I’m sure that it can provide a small amount of help, but I can’t imagine how it could solve the fundamental problem: too many cars trying to go through the same intersection on the same streets.
Then, let’s improve the bus experience. On the Eastside, crucial suburb-to-suburb transit remains a challenge even after the 2006 Metro measure added new express bus routes. Microsoft’s private Connector buses with their reservation system, Wi-Fi and that magical morning-commute invention, the cupholder, are the gold standard. Other Eastside companies could copy this approach, utilizing grants from the state’s Trip Reduction Performance Program and, eventually, carbon-tax credits.
I don’t agree. As a Microsoft employee, I can say that my only connector experiences have been dreadful. It departs extremely rarely, and is constantly waiting for people who have made reservations but are not considerate enough to show up. I know a lot of people do take the connector, but the 545 “microsoft express” bus is still getting huge ridership gains. Anyway, what other employers make enough money and have enough employees to afford this sort of scheme? Few I am sure; Microsoft is the second largest in the region.
Then he completely flies off the handle:
The Eastside is also prime territory to jazz up the dead zones we call park-and-ride lots. They’re transformable into high-tech hubs with joint housing, retail services, plug-in electric vehicle stations, technology-office clusters and many transportation choices. One could be a new idea called flexible carpooling, pioneered by a New Zealand entrepreneur named Paul Minett now seeking regional business and political support. Prescreened drivers and commuters pair up in designated park-and-ride areas for trips to different employment clusters, under a market-based credit and debit system. Missed your car pool? Catch the next one!
What on earth is he talking about? Credit/debit car pool exchanges with strangers? What kind of person would sell space in their car like that? That’s totally nuts, I’m not paying to sit in the car of some random nut who shows up to the park-and-ride.
This makes a bit more sense:
The abandoned BNSF rail corridor from Snohomish to Redmond and Renton offers a potential 42-mile rail and trail combo that, with track rehabilitation, could feature quiet, high-tech, double-decked, biodiesel-burning, bike-carrying, north-south trains to connect to east-west express bus lines on Highways 522 and 520, and Interstate 90. Private sector cost-sharing is distinctly possible. One example: At the nexus of the rail line, Highway 520 and Interstate 405, where an old Safeway distribution center stands, Wright Runstad is proposing a 36-acre office and housing development (the Spring District). The company could share costs for the trail and a commuter rail station complex.
Back to the insanity:
At stops in Bellevue and South Kirkland, why not add a remote airport clearance station for future transit connections to Sea-Tac Airport that are actually convenient for Eastsiders, as suggested by Port of Seattle Commissioner Bill Bryant? Utilizing commuter rail that could eventually go as far as Renton, and then a speedy connecting bus, you could first check your bags and then go through all the plane preboarding paces with no stinting on security. Upon arrival at the airport, you’d go straight to your gate.
What does Commuter rail have to do with security screen off-site from the airport? I’m so confused why this makes sense. What exactly is the advantage to off-site screening other than a looser security standard? Seems like an extremely odd proposal and a security risk since there are so many more chances to subvert security between Bellevue and Sea-Tac, especially when you need a transfer. Bruce Agnew is just sitting around dreaming up crazy ideas I think.
Please no more of this, let’s stick to ideas we know will work.
March 13, 2008 at 9:15 am
by Andrew Smith
Here’s a pro-light rail expansion opinion piece from Dow Constantine that is running in today’s Seattle Times.
We as a region are about to complete the first phase of a new transit system — Sound Transit’s Link light-rail line. Next year, you will be able to ride the 14-mile line that connects downtown Seattle, Beacon Hill, the Rainier Valley, Tukwila, and Sea-Tac Airport. A few years after that, light-rail expansion will take you north to Capitol Hill and the University of Washington.
Sound Transit has done extensive planning and public outreach over the past three years on extending our rail system. But, our plans to extend this first line to the north, south and east are mere lines on a map until regional leaders and voters summon the will to move forward.
I believe that now is the time for Sound Transit to present to the voters a modified light-rail and bus-rapid-transit plan, freed from last year’s legislative mandate that married it to the roads package.
Good stuff, he even comes up with a mitigation plan in the event Sound Transit cannont come back to the ballot this year, the first time I’ve heard a politicain mention this idea:
If agreement cannot be reached on a Sound Transit expansion proposal, local jurisdictions should consider other options for moving forward. State law provides that both counties and cities may form “transportation benefit districts.” The people of a single county could decide, in the absence of a regional package, to forge ahead with the creation of high-capacity transit service, such as new bus-rapid-transit corridors or the extension of light rail.
I’d much rather Sound Transit do it than resorting to a King County expansion, but it’s nice to see the politicans thinking outside the box.
March 13, 2008 at 9:03 am
by Ben Schiendelman
The most common reaction I’ve seen, here and elsewhere, to Sound Transit’s plans for East Link light rail is:
“Why wouldn’t they go all the way to Microsoft?”
So, for the answer: They can’t right now, and it’s not really a choice for them because of subarea equity.
You may have heard of this, but for those who aren’t entirely clear on it, let me explain. Subarea equity is part of the state law that created Sound Transit. It requires that Sound Transit collect the same level of taxes in each subarea (of which there are five), and spend the money collected in a given subarea in that same subarea.
It’s a very good thing – Pierce and Snohomish portions of the Sound Transit district wouldn’t vote for their packages if they weren’t assured money collected there would be spent there!
The downside, and the reason Sound Transit can’t “just build to Microsoft,” is simple. If they got more money from the East King subarea, as in, collected a higher tax in that subarea to build that project, they would also have to collect a higher tax in every other subarea. We already know where that goes – post-election polling showed that Proposition 1 failed primarily due to its size. Sound Transit is also prohibited by state law from putting an identical measure (I suspect even one too close) to what they last submitted on the ballot, so changing things really is necessary.
So, before we get all riled up about Sound Transit building to the hospital, let’s step back. Do we want the agency to fail at the ballot again? No, so it can’t be so big that people kill it. Do we want light rail to Microsoft, ever? Yes, and it’s trivial to build an extension the next time around. We’re at least ten years out from opening East Link, so we can probably do it in the meantime – but if we don’t have an East Link to extend, what will we get? Nothing at all.
PS: With a new 520 bridge, there will be HOV lanes the whole way from I-5 to Microsoft. 60-minute 545 commutes will be a thing of the past long before East Link would open anyway.
March 13, 2008 at 5:02 am
by Brian Bundridge
It appears the Spokane Streetcar is back in the news. I found this in WSDOT’s 2008-2011 Transportation budget.
Local Programs – Other Grants 0 9,522 0
000 2LP602E – Loomis – Oroville Road Guardrail 0 250 0
000 2LP704E – Leavenworth Icicle Rail Station 0 522 0
000 6LP705E – Spokane Street Car feasibility study 0 250 0
998 0LP601M – Passenger Only Ferry 0 8,500 0
March 12, 2008 at 6:59 pm
by Andrew Smith
So says that Tacoma News Tribune’s editorial board.
The argument: The proposal to extend rail from Sea-Tac Airport to Tacoma unnecessarily inflated the price tag of the transportation package. Why? Because the wannebe train commuters in this southern corridor are much less numerous than they are around Seattle.
There’s no quarreling with that latter assertion. Ridership would be lower on the south end of the Sound because the population is smaller. The potential demand right now may be too low to justify the expense of light rail.
Right now. But that’s going to change. The South Sound population will expand rapidly in the next 20 years and for decades beyond. Projecting the future using a snapshot of existing trendlines is always a risky business.
Sound Transit has just sprung a surprise on the region: Over the course of 2007, ridership on all its trains and buses jumped 12.3 percent – well beyond the agency’s own projections. The numbers get especially interesting upon closer examination.
As they say, read the whole thing.
March 12, 2008 at 12:41 am
by Andrew Smith
The Sound Transit board has until the end of the month to decide to whether to put something on the ballot in 2008, and they are homing in on a plan. Here are slides with more detail about the potential plan. Things I’ve noticed after the images.
- The Ballard Sounder station is out.
- The Everett Streetcar is out, as their mayor wanted, but the First Hill Streetcar is still in, and Tacoma Link would get one more station.
- Light rail would go to Northgate, 200th street (just one station south of the airport) and all the way to Overlake Hospital, but not quite to Microsoft at Overlake transit center.
- The overall expense on light rail goes from more than 90% to about 60%, with the rest going to Sounder and Express bus service. In Seattle, still, nearly all of the money goes to Light Rail.
In all, I think it’s a good compromise of quickness to delivery and effectiveness, especially since all of the capital projects would be in place by 2020, just 12 years from now. The last board meeting of the year is the 28th of this Month.
March 11, 2008 at 8:54 pm
by Martin H. Duke
As usual, Ben has written a wonderfully contrarian and thought-provoking post about the perils of congestion pricing. Frank at OR has a response where he basically agrees.
I’m very sympathetic to his point that congestion charges are politically problematic in the absence of non-bus commuting options, although as several commenters point out, there is some scope for trip reduction. The problem is that all other taxing options are lacking in economic justice, political viability, or both.
Sales taxes? Very regressive. Income tax is DOA. Gas taxes make a lot of sense from an economic and security standpoint, but are tremendously unpopular and can’t be used for transit, to boot. Ben himself points out that MVET may have cost us almost as much money as it raised. So what to do?
It seems that sales taxes have been accepted and are here to stay, but the capacity for further increases is not unlimited. By being a little more creative with congestion pricing, we might be able to accomplish something. For instance, we could start by only tolling corridors that have rail transit. For instance, in 2009 we could start tolling I-5 from Southcenter to about I-90 downtown. When we get to Northgate and Bellevue, I-90 and the northern approaches of I-5 can follow suit. Don’t like it? Head to the park-and-ride or take a surface arterial.
It seems that this would address the core of Ben’s argument — when you have no choice but to drive, the charge is coercive — and allows the region to slowly adjust to SOV-reduction measures that will become increasingly necessary. There are other consequences, like clogging those arterials, but it seems like a way forward that provides funding, reduces congestion, and avoids the most anger-inducing elements.
Thoughts?
March 11, 2008 at 10:40 am
by Ben Schiendelman
Lately people have been tossing around an idea which I find, at best, dubious. The concept is simple: Add a freeway toll that varies – charging people more when traffic is heaviest, and presumably encouraging them to choose other methods of transport. This in itself sounds great – some people would shift to transit, and some would shift to working other hours, based on how congested the roadways are.
Wait a minute. Let’s say I live somewhere like Renton, and work at the UW (to allay potential confusion, I personally do neither). There’s virtually no effective transit service between those points – or most other regional commutes. I have to work on the UW’s schedule – a few commuters can’t change the schedule of the chemistry library or move a class, and I have to be there when students need me.
So, as that Renton-UW user, I’m representative of a large voting bloc in the region. I might be willing to take two trains to work, but I’m not about to take two buses when that’s slower than me driving – they sit in the same traffic I do. I have little choice – so I would start to consider this a tax. An unfair one, too, as it disproportionately affects little old me, an already struggling service employee who can’t afford to live in the city. I would also have to be reminded of this tax every day – unlike a property tax or income tax, this tax would be simple and highly visible. I would rally against it.
Now, let’s step back. That guy I’ve been describing? There’s a small chance any one of them would become a new Tim Eyman – and they would win. Any projects funded with congestion pricing would be flogged to death, and we’d start back at square one – just like many transit agencies were forced to when they lost the ability to collect MVET (a car tab renewal fee). How much money did Sound Transit have to spend on legal fees to defend the MVET – just to pay bonds issued after the public had already voted for them? How much service did King County Metro have to cut while they scrambled to get a sales tax to match the lost revenue?
The issues, as I see them:
- There are no alternatives yet for many drivers. Sounder service is already packed – people are riding it as it becomes available. We don’t have that much rail (yet).
- We’re already seeing rising energy costs that are encouraging infill development (converting parking lots to larger structures) in the city core. That will also help increase transit ridership and give more people new choices.
- This would be viewed by many as a tax, and a contentious one at that.
- Whatever is funded by this would nominally see revenue *decrease* over time, rather than increase. There would be no incentive for the programs funded to actually reduce congestion, as they’d lose money!
- Reducing the number of people who travel will have a negative economic impact on the region.
I’ve been hearing from the local Sierra Club that they want congestion pricing to fund transit. Okay, so let me get this straight: We want to fund transit, something that costs more as more people use it, with revenues that decrease as more people switch to transit?
We don’t need this fight, we have plenty of battles already. We can’t punish people for going to work when they have yet no viable alternatives. I’d like to get some more light rail built instead of going on the defensive again.
March 11, 2008 at 9:36 am
by Andrew Smith
According to the P-I. Nationally, transit ridership was up only 2.1%, which is a bit more than population growth.
Its interesting that 10.3 Billion Trips taken on public transportation in 2007 is still less than the number taken in 1957, when the nation’s population hadn’t yet reached 200 million (it’s 300 million now). It just shows how much the car has come to dominate our nation’s transportation landscape.
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