"SLUT", by Flickr contributor Bejan
Buried in Wednesday’s P-I article about the Mercer Street rebuild:
The revised Mercer design also eliminates traffic signal priority for the South Lake Union streetcars. Instead of getting an automatic green light at intersections, the streetcars will stop with the rest of traffic, which is expected to add several minutes to streetcar schedules.
I’ve never been terribly energized about the Streetcar, because in terms of speed and capacity it offers only marginal improvements over RapidRide. Similarly, the Mercer redo is, to the extent I’ve been paying attention, a relatively harmless revision of a pretty poorly designed corridor.
Nevertheless, if we’re going to pour a lot of money into the streetcar — which we should — and try to get people out of their cars, it would make sense to prioritize the transit, not the cars, even if it means the light is a few seconds shorter. A longer green light to cross the river of cars on Mercer would, of course, also help pedestrians and bicyclists.
SDOT did not reply to an email opportunity to comment.
This shouldn’t be too much of a problem. The Streetcar rarely takes 15 minutes to get to the other end of the route, and usually ends up waiting at the terminus for a while.
Eric,
It’s not “too much of a problem” for Metro operations planners, but it is very much a problem for people actually, you know, riding the trolley.
It makes it slower and less reliable. And for what?
Exactly – for what? Certainly NOT the convenience of the passengers!
SeaDot and KCMetro should have as one of their highest priorities preferential treatment for transit at signals, elimination of 4-way stops on transit arterials, elimination of on-street subsidized (“free”) parking on narrower transit arterials, etc. In our efforts to improve transit and reduce auto use, we can afford nothing less, and this won’t require a Billion $ bail-out to carry out!!
No, my point is that its reliability probably won’t be affected. The streetcar doesn’t leave the end of the line until it’s scheduled to (on the hour, :15, :30, or :45), and it usually waits 5-10 minutes at the switch, depending on traffic, until that time. If it waits a couple minutes less, that won’t affect what time it actually leaves the station. In the couple months I commuted on the streetcar last summer, there were only few instances when it took the entire scheduled 15 minutes to get to the other end of the line.
Two problems with this. One I don’t like the precedent of getting rid of signal priority once you have it. Two while it might not cause schedule problems now it does make the ride slower. Besides there is the possibility that the streetcar may be extended to either the U-District or Freemont/Ballard at some point in the future. With a longer line the potential for delay increases.
Does anyone know why it waits so long at either end? It seems like keeping the thing running would be more important than meeting a schedule.
My guesses for the reason:
1. Schedule recovery time, to prevent traffic delays from affecting the next trip
2. Layover is the operator’s break time, the labor agreement requires at least 5 minutes layover at the end of every trip although in this case it is not required since the trip is shorter than 15 minutes.
3. It is not possible to maintain reliable service with shorter headways than 15 minutes without sacrificing the above or making service improvements.
EXACTLY!
From the operator’s point of view the streetcar is scheduled to take about 10-12 minutes with a 5 minute layover at Westlake and a brief break on the Fairview switch. It’s set up to have two streetcars in service running at 30 minute cycles. While shortening the terminal time might work, don’t forget that the operator needs to take a break, too. I don’t know how much is required by the union but that is a consideration when they plan the schedules.
I don’t know the signal timing plan for Mercer but the streetcar should not have to sit through another 1-2 minute cycle (typical) because there was no priority to hold the light green. Worse case, if traffic is heavy on Westlake then it might have to wait through two cycles. The line crosses Mercer twice so double the time lost waiting for a green at Mercer. You quickly add minutes this way. If it takes 15 minutes to make the trip, there will be no time left for a break or for schedule recovery. Then they’ll have to add another train to service or reduce the frequency.
Removing priority will definitely make it less reliable, otherwise what’s the point of having it in the first place?
I use the streetcar fairly regularly, and I don’t know what they’re talking about “automatic green light.” The SLUT waits at lights, including Mercer or Valley, just like traffic–in fact, it sometime has to stop in the intersection and honk at drivers who are over the white line (and therefore too close to the trolley tracks).
Obviously dedicated right of way and more frequent service would be an improvement, but I find it hard to believe that two-way Mercer would change things a lot from the present. Perhaps automated green lights were part of an earlier plan for the future.
Will it be as easy to get a stroller or wheelchair onto a RapidRide bus as it is the streetcar? I know that might seem like a minor point, but it makes a big difference in some people’s lives.
joshuadf,
Signal priority isn’t an automatic green light, but it somewhat accelerates the arrival of the next one.
Good point about the strollers and wheelchairs. There will also be less off-board payment on RapidRide, but I think my general point about relative speed stands.
Hmm, an SDOT engineer in this article Streetcar schedule interrupts traffic-signal timing seems to confirm that there is some signal prioritization going on at Westlake/6th/Stewart (a horrific intersection by any standards). I can’t say I could tell from riding the streetcar, though. It seems to always be waiting at lights.
It’s too early to see how the numbers play out but using city projections of 330,000 riders and $1.7M operating costs that divides out to a little over $5 per 1 mile trip. Yes ridership was higher this year but what were the number of paying riders? A good portion of the time it was free and there’s questions about fare collection. Yes the route is 1.3 miles but not all those trips are the full distance so I rounded down to a mile. The $1.7M is an estimate I believe was made before the trolley was operational. It makes no allowance for depreciation or cost of capital. Half of the $50M capital came from LID money but even if we just count the city portion the cost of capital comes to around $1.5M per year (figuring a conservative 6% for servicing debt and depreciation) which pushes costs upward of $10 per passenger mile. Maybe acceptable for a tourist attraction but ridership needs to reach the 1 million mark without increasing operational cost before the revenue/cost ratio starts to even approach that of buses. If that happens in 3-5 years then the city got a good deal with the LID money. If it’s 10-15 years then the developers got a nice handout from the tax payers.
The scary part is that operational cost doesn’t depend on how long the route is. In fact operational costs will rise slightly and capital costs increase as the route gets longer. Frequency of stops has some effect on operation and the Pill Hill line should benefit a little bit on that count. Does anyone have the numbers?
Pet peeve, bikes got screwed by the SLU…
It was free for less than a month (December 12 – 31, 2007). I suspect it is impossible to tell “paying riders” without a lot of legwork because transfers and passes (like my UPASS) are good on the trolley, but hopefully this data will be collectible with ORCA. SDOT is already claiming new riders and 15-50 percent more riders than buses, and we will see what happens to ridership once Amazon’s buildings open in 2010-12, which is within 5 years.
Another factor for transit riders at UW SLU is parking passes. Even though a 300-space underground garage was required for the buildings, you have to be senior faculty or administrator to qualify for that perk. (Somewhat unrelated, but UWEEK had an article by a guy who switched to biking: The silver lining of lost parking privileges.) I don’t know if other organizations such as GHC or Amazon have a similar policy.
The bike/rail problem is awful. It’s embarrassing that apparently no one in SDOT asked planners in Portland about how their streetcars accommodate bikes. Of course, the real problem with Fairview is lack of a dedicated bike lane in my opinion.
While there’s no bike lane on Fairview, don’t know why, but SDOT recently added bike lanes to Eastlake between Fairview and Mercer.
Eastlake has been identified as a major bike corridor between the U-Dist & Downtown. It’s off the “main” Fairview street due to heavier traffic volumes and connectivity issues (i.e. tracks, sidewalk, difficult intersections, etc.).
Note that the new bike lane on the south-bound hill of Eastlake (just east of FHCRC) was installed adjacent to ONE lane of uphill traffic, with parking to the right of the bike lane. This allowed a bicyclist to move past traffic stopped at the light at the top of the hill and positioned the bicyclist well to merge with traffic at the top, where the bike lane ends and the traffic lanes “jog” to the left.
Drivers complained to SDOT about having to queue up at the light a minute or two longer than normal (ONLY DURING EVENING RUSH HOUR BTW). Next thing you know, in spite of bicyclists urging no change, the bike lane was moved to the far right, another lane for traffic was added (only 200 ft long) and bikes are now relegated, as the old configuration forced them to do, to trying to merge left into traffic at the top of the hill, or run into the back of cars parked in the parking strip at the “jog.”
This is only one example of drivers complaining about being slowed down by improvements for the general good. Another? Drivers complaining that buses on the West Seattle Bridge eastbound, using the dedicated bus lane and then “cutting in” to the exit to 99 northbound. Result? Drivers were told by Metro/SDOT to not use the bus lane because drivers were complaining (heard this directly from bus drivers when I asked them about it)!
Rule: single occupancy drivers get priority in this town.
Here’s another one:
Drivers complained about the bus lane on NB Elliott Ave W between Mercer and the Magnolia Bridge. So SDOT is going to remove the bus lane and make it a right turn lane for the Magnolia Bridge. It is temporary until more bus service is added to the corridor (i.e. RapidRide), then they’ll restore it.
1). a tram car has roughly twice the lifespan of a bus
2). a portion of tram riders are new riders who would not have ridden a bus
3). as the system is expanded, it is likely the rate of ridership will increase, driving down cost per rider
4). again, rail drives development. A bus will not.
5). I ride bikes; I can’t imagine it being that much of a problem.
Sorry, Zach, but the 50 or so folks who are considering a class action suit due to injuries caused by the SLUT tracks would probably disagree with your “I can’t imagine it being that much of a problem” assessment.
The several dozen people who ride the SLUT regularly will be very disappointed to hear this news.
It’s always seems to be full when I’m on it. I take it to and from work and the ridership seems pretty good to me so far. I can’t believe that they are going to take away signal prioritization. One of the things that amazed me the first time I tode the SLUT was how long and how often it has to stop for signals to change. It seems like they could have designed it so that the signals start to change before the streetcar gets to the intersection so that it doesn’t have to stop at all. That would make it a much faster and more attractive ride. And what’s with those stupid 4-way stops on Terry? I don’t know who thought it was a good idea to make a train stop every block. What a waste of momentum.
Tacoma Link runs every ten minutes and doesn’t stop for a light as often as the SLUT does. The city of Tacoma timed the lights to correspond with train arrivals but it’s more complex for the SLUT with it crossing Stewart, Denny and Mercer and the fact that it runs in mixed traffic most of the time.
The reason behind 4-way stops is safety. If you make it a 2-way stop or yield for cross streets, the risk of someone getting hit by a streetcar while crossing the street in a vehicle or on foot increases. The traffic volumes probably don’t warrant a signal there either.
Go to Zurich. Plenty of uncontrolled intersections that the trams wizz through without mass carnage. I don’t understand why we can’t get it right here. If people can’t see a streetcar coming they shouldn’t be driving, or walking!
You have to look at traffic volumes, collision history, and the operation of the intersection in an engineering study before deciding that installing (or removing) stop signs is appropriate or not. I don’t know whether SDOT has studied that issue but it is a good question to ask.
I agree with your sentiment but driver and pedestrian behavior in the US is different from that in Europe. Most countries around the world don’t use all-way stops so they handle uncontrolled intersections better than we do. We’re also a more litigious society. Even if they’re dumb drivers, they’ll still sue the city and Metro if they can.
Wow, I can’t even remember when waiting two minutes got me all wound up. My parents did, though- they called it the ‘terrible twos’ and nicknamed me “the terrible tempered Mr. T”.
The thing about streetcars, though, is they’re not about speed. If they were, you’d just beef up the traction motors and go faster. But they’re not. It’s all about headways, and any old street railwayman could tell you the goal- “A car in sight at all times”.
It’s an important point to remember about streetcars. They run in an environment filled with pedestrians, cyclists and other traffic, and if they run fast, they make noise and kick up dust like other vehicles. Streetcars never were very fast and, in the absence of grade-separation, never will be very fast. It’s all about headways.
How about extending the streetcar network from south lake union to seattle pacific on lower queen anne? Are there any plans for that?
For now, there are no plans for that. The planned SLU-Fremont-Ballard line would cross the Fremont bridge, from which it is a 12-minute walk to Seattle Pacific U.
That’s unfortunate.