Month: November 2007

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

One more thing about the P-I article I referenced earlier. They should not be using quotes like this without context:

It is possible to have passenger trains and pedestrians both use the corridor at a much lower cost, said Bruce Agnew, the director of the Cascadia Center at Discovery Institute, which just commissioned a study that found it would be possible to modernize the 42 miles of track to accommodate small diesel commuter trains for $37 million.

“We need to look very closely and not make hasty decisions, like ripping out 31 miles of perfectly usable track,” Agnew said.

$37M is just the cost of upgrading all the track. You might ask Mr. Agnew why, if the track is “perfectly usable,” it will cost $37M to “modernize” it. And indeed, if you read the Cascadia Center’s report, it advocates “ripping out” nearly all of the track and replacing it:

Costs were preliminarily estimated by Fay as follows: tie and rail replacement, $33.6 million ($800,000 per mile X 42 miles); bridge replacement, $3.42 million(1,140 feet of bridge at $3,000 per foot). Other costs are yet to be determined, including stations; equipment plus storage and repair facilities; project EIS and engineering.

The PSRC estimates it will cost $300M to do a proper rail line, including stations and, you know, actual trains. That’s the number the P-I should be using.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Ron Sims will take his ball and go home if the Port doesn’t commit to ripping out the tracks. But it sounds like the port has the votes on the commission to buy it anyway, even if Sims won’t lease it for a trail.

There’s a lot of posturing going on here, and so it’s hard to know what people’s real motives are. The Port does not want the corridor for freight use. If it was a viable freight corridor, BNSF wouldn’t be selling it. Remember, this whole thing got started because of King County Airport (Boeing Field). The Port’s ultimate, ultimate goal is to keep King County from building a passenger terminal at Boeing Field and luring away Alaska and Southwest Airlines.

Earlier this month, I praised Sims for getting such a good deal out of the port, since he’d get to keep the airport and get cheap use of the corridor. Now it turns out that the deal may be too good to be true. Sims hasn’t left himself many cards to play here, assuming the Port is willing to buy the right-of-way with or without him. His ace-in-the-hole is the airport. With the Port’s decision expected soon, I expect we’ll be hearing more about how Boeing Field fits into this in the next few weeks.

Photo of the Wilburton Trestle by Wikipedia user brianhe. Do you really want to jog or bike across that thing? Not me!

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Check out this video, and always check your blind spot when driving in Houston:

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

I found my way to the Columbia River Crossing website today, and I was duly impressed. It outlines all the potential alternatives in a clear way, shows cost estimates, and even includes an event calendar with an RSS feed!

We have several megaprojects here in Puget Sound, and I can’t recall any that have such an informative, easy-to-use website. The downtown tunnel site is decent, but limited in scope.

The crossing project is estimated at $3.1B – $4.2B, which puts it in range of the Viauct and 520, neither of which have websites that are at all comparable. Sure, there’s the WSDOT project pages, but with all due respect, they’re pretty meager.

In the meantime, for each of these Seattle-area projects, independent advocacy groups have stepped in to fill the void, such as the People’s Waterfont Coalition and BetterBridge.org. But they both have a single point of view. And while it’s fine and

When Sound Transit releases a poll showing that 95% of Puget Sound residents had no idea how much that huge, much-publicized ballot measure acutally cost, it’s a wakeup call to all public agencies: your outreach efforts aren’t working.

Now, maybe WSDOT looked at the traffic on the CRC website and decided no one was visiting it and so it wasn’t worth trying again, I don’t buy it. If anyone out there has more information on why Seattle-area megaprojects haven’t done this sort of thing, drop us a line.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

This time, commisssioned by Sound Transit, and starring your well-informed electorate:

Among the poll participants who had voted no on Proposition 1, three-fourths cited “no cost control” and “cost too much” as major factors. However, only 5 percent of all those polled could accurately guess that the price fell somewhere between $10 billion and $100 billion. Most couldn’t say what it would have cost them personally (roughly $200 to $300 a year, for an average household.)

Also interesting is that MVETs and gas taxes are viewed more favorably than sales taxes.

There are some differences here with the Sierra Club’s poll from a few weeks ago, but the overall point still applies: people. want. transit. They just don’t really want to pay for it.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

I can’t say that I really want to move to Canada (though I toyed with the idea after the ’04 elections!), but it’s sorta fascinating to get a glimpse at how light rail is being talked about in Ottowa:

City council set the municipality on a new $2-billion transit path Wednesday when it approved a series of projects as immediate priorities, but the questions of what to build first and how to pay for these things remain.

With very little dissent, council set its top priorities as a downtown tunnel, light rail to the south of the city, completing and extending the bus transit way the west and Barrhaven, and developing a new dedicated transit route in the east.

That’s right, folks — the city council just decided that they wanted a $2B light rail system, and so they made it happen. I can’t imagine any of our elected representatives here in the Pacific Northwest being so bold as to, you know, represent their constituents instead of punting the decision to the people in a big, confusing public vote.

Now, I won’t pretend to understand Ottowa politics, but from what I can gather, the old city council approved the rail system, then got booted out of office, the new council killed the contract, and then brought it back but without the expensive and controversial downtown tunnel (any of this sound familiar?). So it’s not all wine and roses up North. Still, the differences are telling:

Bay Councillor Alex Cullen said it is going to be a challenge for the cash-strapped city to come up money for its share of the cost of the plan, but he’s confident a way will be found. He said both the provincial and federal governments have been saying they want to get into the transit funding business in a big way, so it will soon be time to hold them to their word.

“Once we are ready, we will be asking them for money, which they have and we don’t,” he said. “It’s time to get moving, and we are. We just have to keep focused and see this through.” [Emphasis mine]

Can you imagine Governor Gregoire saying “man, we sure are excited to give Seattle money for light rail!” The feds, certainly, have been generous (due in no small part to Sen. Murray’s work on the Appropriations Committee). But I certainly wouldn’t say that either the State of Washington or the U.S. Government “want to get into the transit funding business in a big way.” But it sure would be nice, wouldn’t it?

Bonus Fun Fact #1: Ottowa has a very successful BRT system, but it wasn’t getting the ridership they projected and the buses were crowding.

Bonus Fun Fact #2: The current light-rail, the O-Train, is a Diesel Multiple Unit on a single-way right-of-way, not unlike the BNSF corridor being proposed for Seattle’s Eastside.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

There’s been a battle brewing for some time now over the Sound Transit track being built (.pdf) between the Tacoma Dome and Lakeview. In order to avoid taking the long route around Tacoma along the BNSF corridor, ST has wisely decided to build its own track through the city. As best I can understand, some local business and residents want an elevated overpass, fearing that the grade-level crossing will cut off parts of the neighborhood.

The Tacoma City Council has scheduled a vote for December, although the vote will be largely symbolic. Sound Transit has the final say. The TNT’s David Seago sums up the debate here, including maps of some proposed alternatives.

My guess is that they’ll go for the cheaper option, which is to run the train at-grade. It would obviously be better to get the train out of traffic, but since we’re only talking about a few trains a day, it’s probably hard for ST to justify the added expense, even if it could come up with the money.

You have to wonder about the long-term cost/benefit, though. If Amtrak is going to start using those tracks, too, the grade-level crossing will start to become another bottleneck in the system (and forget about high-speed rail, of course!).

Where I grew up, we had heavy-rail commuter trains running every 30 minutes or so at grade-level, stopping traffic and roaring through leafy suburban backyards. No one complained, though, probably because no one could remember a time when the trains weren’t there. When you’re building new tracks, it’s a whole different story.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Danny Westneat wants to cancel the proposed I-405 widening, divert the money to a new 520 floating bridge and set up passenger rail on the BNSF Eastside rail corridor.

The other day, I advocated using viaduct money for the same purpose. I still prefer that, since a wider 405 could strengthen the case for not rebuilding the Viaduct (by adding regional North-South capacity).

But hey, why not do both? We can take Danny’s idea for 520, then use the money saved by not rebuilding the Viaduct to build a sweet little monorail between, say, Ballard and West Seattle.

Meanwhile, Westneat’s passenger rail proposal comes via this reprot, which pegs the cost of track upgrades to the eastside line at $37M. That sounds compelling, until you realize it doesn’t include the costs of building stations and buying trains. PSRC pegged the costs at $300M, though that’s still a bargain when you consider the costs of building new light rail can be upwards of $300M per mile.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

CS Monitor has a sampling:

Coming soon to a bottleneck near you:

•”Queue-jumper” lanes such as one in Lee County, Fla., where harried drivers paying a 25-cent toll can get around backed-up intersections.

•Trucker toll lanes, already under consideration in Atlanta, that will in effect segregate big rigs from the rest of the freeway public.

•Privately managed zoom lanes, similar to the South Bay Expressway that opened in San Diego on Nov. 19, that allow motorists to move at a heavenly 65 miles per hour.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Seattle is no longer the hottest housing market in America:

Seattle’s 12-month reign atop the nation in annual home-value increases came to an end in September, according to a report released Tuesday.

Charlotte, N.C., posted a year-over-year increase of 4.72 percent, just ahead of Seattle’s 4.69 percent, according to Standard and Poor’s S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices.

How could that have happened?! Let’s see… Charlotte opened a brand-new light rail system this month, and Seattle voted one down.

Coincidence? I blog… you decide.