Comments on: The Seattle Times Can’t Handle Simple Math

By: Not Transit Related : P-I News is Bad News - Seattle Transit Blog

Not Transit Related : P-I News is Bad News - Seattle Transit Blog — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:36:55 +0000

[...] bills. We’re happy with that situation, and while maybe we can compete with the sort of lazy reporting that you sometimes read in newspaper, we could never compete with the deep-research exposé [...]

By: Ben Schiendelman

Ben Schiendelman — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 01:03:15 +0000

If you’re going to have money in politics, you should not be allowed to have politics in money. If it costs money to buy those ads, that money represents the speech of the people who donated it, and the station should not be able to refuse it on political grounds, especially during an election season.

The same people who want our politics to be governed by who has the most cash also want control over how people use that cash.

By: Craig

Craig — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:37:21 +0000

Oh Bonneville. Don’t get me started. “We can’t get enough money because no one is advertising, except liberals, so we’d rather starve (or fire dozens of employees) than take their money.

Sorry, I needed to get that out of my system. It’s been another frustrating week.

By: J-bob

J-bob — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:06:14 +0000

Hey smart people – why don’t you all take these excellent points and write a letter to the editor on the subject. Lots of people read them!

By: AJ

AJ — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:57:18 +0000

Too bad Bonneville is stonewalling liberals (refused a top-dollar ad buy from Gregoire’s campaign!), otherwise a quick radio ad could be cut saying “1911, subway system planned for Seattle. Cancelled. 1929, subway system planned for Seattle. Cancelled” and so on and so on.

By: Ben Schiendelman

Ben Schiendelman — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:44:23 +0000

Yeah, more. 1911 or 1913 was probably the first HCT plan.

By: AJ

AJ — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:48:10 +0000

In terms of planning a regional high capacity system, it’s been about 80 years, hasn’t it?

By: Ben Schiendelman

Ben Schiendelman — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:16:25 +0000

A lot of this I’ve covered in the past – I wanted to strip away anything that was possibly arguable. Even though you and I know damn well there will be TOD regardless of what our economy looks like, a lot of people don’t agree with that.

In terms of the two Snohomish stations – I know it’s not strictly kosher to simply subtract the boardings (and multiply by two for the returns), but I don’t think those two stops alone account for anything like 69k daily. More like 15k, if I recall correctly.

The comparison I’m making here is to point out that with the same funding, Link can be built and move more people than Metro can, and then yes, roll back. I know there are other uses of the King County funds, I just wanted to make the very simple comparison that the same money gets us a lot more use on rail.

By: John Jensen

John Jensen — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 07:03:56 +0000

Thanks for the informative comment, Ric.

By: Ric

Ric — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 05:50:53 +0000

Just a couple things need clarification on this post.

It isn’t correct to say Snohomish county will account for only a small portion of ridership in the system. Lynnwood is a very robust transit market. Ridership between Lynnwood and UW is expected to be 69,000 by 2030, roughly 50% higher than is forecast for the airport segment.

The 286,000 figure is light rail-only ridership forecasted for the ST system in 2030. This figure represents about one-fourth of the system’s capacity and will exceed system performance for all western states’ LRT systems outside San Francisco and Los Angeles. Adding express bus, Sounder, and streetcar ridership to that gets the total system forecast up to 358,000.

These figures do not assume anything about future development around stations. They do not include special events ridership of any kind (think Seahawks, Mariners, etc.), and they don’t assume any kind of “premium” for rail that has been experienced in other cities.

Finally, when the ST2 system is built, the proposed .5% tax will be rolled back, leaving .4% in place. This will sufficient to cover ongoing O&M for the whole system. The current .3% mvet tax sunsets in 2028.

By: Ben Schiendelman

Ben Schiendelman — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 03:50:35 +0000

The 48 is a core route to the UW – it has significantly different UW and non-UW schedules. They even have an express run that goes from 65th to the hospital a few times in the morning to handle the overload.

With Prop 1, we won’t need those trips anymore, and we won’t need morning overloads up from the Valley.

By: Ben Schiendelman

Ben Schiendelman — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 03:49:00 +0000

The prop 1 taxes get rolled back after we pay off the construction bonds. The operating costs are even lower than the .4% left over, but I don’t know how much lower, so the .5% is the safe bet.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 03:35:44 +0000

.5% is the difference between the light rail construction and operating costs?

By: alexjonlin

alexjonlin — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 03:16:06 +0000

I don’t think the 48 will lose many people. I’m pretty sure that not that many riders get on and off inside Rainier Valley. I was thinking about a 48-ish light rail route in the future…

Link to map here.

What do people think?

By: Ben Schiendelman

Ben Schiendelman — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:01:21 +0000

Yes, the passenger miles traveled would be much higher. And of course, that 0.5% can just build us more, too.

By: Ben Schiendelman

Ben Schiendelman — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 01:51:49 +0000

Metro’s ridership will fall as their core routes (71, 72, 73, 49, 43, 48, 7, 36, 194, many more) lose people to rail. Those service hours will move to other routes that don’t garner the same ridership.

It’ll also fall as their money can’t operate as much service as it does today. Right now, on a budget of something like $350m, they have, what, a $60m shortfall? Not even Metro projects increasing ridership on their current taxes – it’ll drop.

I don’t even have to say the FTA numbers are conservative. Link will still carry more than Metro in 2030 if we pass this, based on the fact that Metro can’t afford it.

And yeah, when we get real ridership that isn’t based on bus math and $2/gallon projections, we’ll blow it out of the water even if Metro did get more money.

By: Ben Schiendelman

Ben Schiendelman — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 01:40:29 +0000

2 of 34 is a little under 6% – that’s why I said 90-95%. As a lot of the Seattle guideway is more expensive as it’s underground, I used cost. I believe it’s under 5% of cost.

And as the King County light rail will carry well over 5% more passengers than Metro, it evens out.

By: andrew

andrew — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:31:52 +0000

One thing I do know, however, is that the passenger miles is out of the water for light rail.

By: andrew

andrew — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:30:33 +0000

I don’t know much about the 286K number, but metro’s ridership right now is 330K per day, not 400K, though I bet it’ll get their by 2030.

By: John Jensen

John Jensen — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:16:26 +0000

Ben, the article says ridership for Metro is 400k boarding per day and ST projects 286k riders per day (in 2030). Is your conclusion representing a difference of “boarding” vs. “rider” and/or an overly-conservative ridership figure from ST/the feds?

I think the biggest different than rail and buses, even “BRT” like RapidRide, is the reliability. I liked the part about CT buses being on time 95% of the time, but that their schedules have been padded out as the years go by. Light rail just can’t suffer from that problem.