This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
The P-I reports that the planned UW light rail station will not have (1) direct connections to buses, or (2) a park-and-ride lot.
It’s worth unpacking what’s going on here a little bit, as these kinds of decisions will undoubtedly come up over and over again as Seattle builds this brand-new infrastructure.
The question is whether to try and turn the Montlake/520 area into an intermodal hub, where people can go to connect from one form of transportation to another, be it car, bus, bike, or rail. Now, obviously Montlake will never be a full-blown transit center, along the lines of Eastgate, Northgate, and Overlake. There’s just no space, as UW spokesman Dan Arkin succinctly puts it:
“You can’t look at the University of Washington as an intermodal exchange or station area. It doesn’t work,” Arkans said. “You can’t have people driving here to get on a (light rail) train, because there’s no park and ride — and there’s zero chance of putting one here. There’s no space.”
However, since Montalke is where 520, I-5, and Light Rail meet up, it’s tempting to want to make the area an transfer point. But once you really think about it, there’s really no reason why so many people should want to transfer at UW from bus to rail.
Certainly there’s room to make some improvements in the bus-to-bus transfers. The connection from the 520 buses to the 48 is, as Bus Chick has well documented, terrible.
But the overwhelming majority of people who board light rail at UW will be either going to or coming from… UW. If you’re coming from the East side, and you want to get on the light rail, there are better places to do it, like downtown.
Finally, I don’t see why everyone’s so hot for light rail across the 520 bridge. I see little use for it. The far end of the 520 corridor (Overlake, Redmond) is going to be served by the planned East link. Better to do what San Francisco does and have one route across the water that forks when it reaches the ‘burbs. Like a Kirkland spur that runs through Belleveue and connects with the main Eastside line across I-90, for example.