So, on this blog, sometimes, we disagree. This is a response to Martin’s post below. There are things about Sound Transit I gripe about (and who doesn’t have nitpicks about anything they’re interested in?), but what Martin wrote about are not gripes I have. Here’s why.
1) When an organization’s leadership is replaced, like an administration, there is no reason to continue to use the benchmarks set forth by an old administration, especially when we know they were faulty. It’s pointless to tell someone every day that they are late when there is no way they could ever have been on time, because they inherited someone else’s work. It is meaningful to measure them based on the job they were given. Sound Transit is not a person. There is no “they” who made a mistake in the original estimates for Link. The people who made those mistakes are no longer making decisions that will lead them into the same situations, so benchmarking the agency based on those mistakes, made more than a decade ago, does nothing but create an attitude of distrust rather and foul any recognition of progress made.
2) The choice was: Build the Rainier Valley at grade, or build nothing. Those were your options. And Portland’s MAX is on time, as is Tacoma Link. I do not see how Central Link should be any different, as it is built to higher standards than either of those for grade separation. Also, I’d be a lot more worried about the South Seattle crossings than the ones in the Valley – those are the ones with long trucks and heavier game traffic. I’m still not worried.
3) Signal timing can only happen in one direction without completely impeding the flow of cross-traffic. Unless you have a fantastic new theory that transportation managers the world over would love to see, this is simply impossible to implement. You’d end up with wildly varying signal lengths. Sure, with a long section and only a couple of crossings, you can time trains to avoid this. You cannot do that with a dozen or more crossings in a handful of miles.
4) Critics can’t kill U-Link. We’re not voting on it again. I do agree I’d like to see some obvious work so people have something to look forward to, but I’m not that worried about it.
Ben —
Good points.
1) This is of course a tactical argument. I don’t mean to suggest that the new management should be fired because they didn’t meet the original benchmarks — that would be idiotic.
It seems Orwellian, however, to pretend like those original promises never existed, and that feeds cynicism about the agency in general.
2) This is a really good point, that I don’t have a very good answer to, except that #2 was a really poor way of me getting to the point at the end of the bullet: that we need to introduce some relatively inexpensive mitigations to reduce the risk of service disruption and improve the perception of speed. I’m terrified of this particular problem.
As for Tacoma and Portland, those are much shorter segments that also are also major destinations for most riders, so perceived speed is less of a factor. MLK has more traffic, driving faster, than either, and more unsupervised kids running around in developments like Rainier Vista. But I hope you’re right.
3) To some extent, I’d say “screw the cross traffic,” but the unmentioned problem is that there’s a certain minimum crossing time associated with pedestrian crossing.
But even with 2 minute headways in each direction (and that’s far in the future), you can’t have any worse than ~1 minute openings every 2 minutes. That doesn’t strike me as wildly out of line with the timing on MLK now, although I should go collect some data. And that’s a pretty worst-case calculation.
But, I suppose I have to defer to actual traffic engineers who know what they’re talking about. I guess that just puts more mustard on my hopes for more mitigation.
(4) Another example of my political paranoia. We’re not voting, but what if there’s another huge engineering surprise? Some sort of congressional funding watershed? Governance Reform creating chaos at ST?
I’d put the chance of U-Link being finished at something like on schedule at 70-80%; it’d be higher if they’d already broken ground.
Thanks. :)
1) It’s just that it’s been seven years – and more like ten since the real planning failures. At what point do you stop pointing out failures that have been fixed for seven freaking years? Saying “we’re late we’re late we’re late” doesn’t help anyone.
2) Segment length doesn’t really matter – crossings, overall interference with traffic, does. What you do between those crossings doesn’t create timing uncertainty. MAX has more crossings (through downtown Portland) than Central Link, in a shorter distance (meaning it’s harder to use acceleration to make up time).
3) We’re not ever going to have 2 minute headways on that section! We’re interlining with East Link, and East Link will need more capacity in the long run. We’ll have no shorter than (likely) 4 minutes through the Valley.
All of that misses the point, though. With a 2 minute headway in each direction, you can’t assume perfect 1 minute separations. You’d get some ten second separations (first one direction, then the other), and you need time padding on both sides to enable traffic to clear (yellow lights, plus more). We’re limited to more like 3-4 minute headways.
4) We wouldn’t be getting a $750 million grant from a federal government who doesn’t like transit if there were going to be a sudden engineering surprise.
I put U Link being finished on schedule at 20%. I put it being finished within a reasonable time of on schedule – like four months, five months late (looking at a 7 year construction time) at 95%.
> I do agree I’d like to see some obvious
> work so people have something to look
> forward to, but I’m not that worried
> about it.
For what it’s worth, I live 3 blocks from the future light rail station on capitol hill, and recently sound transit has started fencing off and boarding up the buildings that will be torn down. The “No Trespassing” signs with the tiny Sound Transit logo are so far the only indication of progress, but have already given me something to look forward to.
I hope that big colorful “Future home of link light rail” signs go up soon.
That was not the choice. The choice was Rainier Valley or elevated through Sodo.
Obviously, we got the better choice.
daimajin, the city – nickels – wouldn’t have signed off on elevated through SoDo.
We talked about this over the phone, but what I’m talking about was long before Nickel’s time, back in the 1998 area.
Anyway they made the right choice of those two.
I don’t want to see the fairly decent staff team ST has now constantly burdened by the past screw-ups either, Ben…
On the other hand, they don’t need to keep promoting “on time and under budget” in their public relations. I agree with Martin that this helps breed cynicism with public agencies.
I’m sure they could come up with several workable slogans that would gloss over the mistakes of the past. (On time for ’09? Putting your taxes to work?)