When the 15-year light rail plan in 2008’s ST2 is finished in 2023 (fingers crossed), Sound Transit will have built 53 miles of Light Rail. We’ll have come a long way in less than 30 years.
Today Sound Transit also provides express bus service to 53 cities in the central Puget Sound, which doesn’t mean all that much, considering if you drew the lines differently the number could change dramatically. However, 53 cities does give a little bit of an idea of how hard it can be to get things down around here. Consider just how many “cities” are around here when the Governor tries to explain her veto of potential transit funding from last week.
Also, the Alaskan Way Viaduct opened in 1953. It will be torn down by probably 2016 and replaced with a cars-only tunnel under downtown.
Drove on the viaduct for the first time yesterday.
Even though it stands for everything ugly, the view on the NB level is absolutely fabulous!
Yes it is. The view from the buildings in that area and open space that will replace it will be even better. That, and you won’t have to worry about plunging to your death during a serious Earthquake.
Or worse, driving in the SB level and getting smashed like a pancake. The photo of the collapsed SF Bay Bridge section from 1989 just scares me.
Forget the Bay Bridge (which is metal and only had one failure); think Nimitz Freeway, which is of the EXACT SAME DESIGN!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Loma_Prieta_earthquake#Interstate_880.2FCypress_Viaduct
http://home.pacbell.net/hywaymn/Cypress_Viaduct_Freeway.html
http://www.vias.org/physics/example_3_1_11.html
is that a long way seattle will have came in 30 years?
denver, 15 years, 45 miles of light rail. in 8 more, there’ll be 122 miles of commuter and light altogether.
just to put in in perspective.
well considering Seattle’s subway system is alive and well… in Atlanta
Well after that 30 years we’ll have 135 miles of commuter and light rail altogether, which is especially good considering it’s much harder to build her than in Denver, where it’s much flatter.
Salt Lake City also has a whole gang of LRT in a short period of time. both of these places are smaller (in population) than Seattle but much larger in area. Since they are in places that are not nearly as geographically constrained as our area, they are both lower density and need to build more LRT to service their sprawl. Certainly Seattle isn’t high density or big, but it’s not SLC either.
denver’s light rail is entirely surface level and the city is about as dense as lynwood. Seattle’s denser and its partally subway. If seattle had the area of denver it would need the mileage.
Also, don’t forget the Seattle Streetcar, which might add as much as 15 more miles of streetcar lines by 2023.
certainly a nice start. it would be great if they’d get more ambitious than this, but i’d rather play it safe than not play it at all.
denver’s light rail is entirely surface level and the city is about as dense as lynwood. Seattle’s denser and its partally subway. If seattle had the area of denver it would need the mileage.
Denver’s population is actually larger than Seattle’s. Denver has ~598,000 people compared to Seattle’s ~594,000.
We must get beyond thinking of populations as just that of the core city, but rather take into account the whole metropolitan area, sprawl and all. Those political boundaries are meaninglesss when it comes to transportation planning, water and sewage, air pollution control, etc
Unfortunately, the political boundaries are NOT meaningless when it comes to funding new services though ( the Metro rule and sub-area equity )
Even then it is a little bit, since the “West King” Metro area and the “North King” Sound Transit sub-area is Seattle + Shoreline and Lake Forest Park. If Seattle annexed North Highline, that would mean that part of Seattle would fall outside of those two areas, further validating the idea that the city boundaries themselves aren’t always useful.
I agree with lloyd. When comparing the size of regional rail networks, you want to compare the regions, not the central municipalities. Denver’s is about 2.4 million, Seattle’s about 3.4 million.
Another interesting thing to think about is that even though Denver and Seattle are about the same population, the area’s are dramatically different in size: Seattle’s 600K live in 83 sq miles, Denver’s 600K live in 154 sq miles. So Denver’s about half as dense as Seattle.
Denver is the size of Seattle, Bellevue, Shoreline, Kirkland, Burien, Shoreline, Lake Forest Park and Mercer Island put together. About 860,000 people, so Denver’s considerably less dense. Combined with being more flat, you need more rail to serve the same number of people.
But you need the same amount of rail to cover the same area. Outside of Seattle density drops off dramatically yet Bellevue is slated to have six stops and the end of the line is only a mile north of Bellevue city limits. East Link is a building a 100 year solution for Bellevue when it should be a 12 year project to achieve the maximum possible coverage for the eastside sub-area.
My point is that it’s not like those 122 rail miles in Denver are all in the city limits. We’re definitely behind them, but to have a realistic comparison about the amount of rail there and here, you need to compare what’s being built in the same area.
Except that Denver got a bit messed up in terms of square footage/mileage by the annexation of the land from Adams County by what is now Denver International Airport. Still, Denver is one of many cities in the RTD district (if you want to compare apples to apples) and is by no means the driving force in population growth of the greater Front Range.
In fact, Denver can no longer annex any of its neighboring cities; even the annexation of the land for DIA/DEN* was done via an act of the Colorado Legislature.
*(Stapleton airport and the new one are run by the City of Denver and it was thought to be better to continue this practice rather than set up a new regional agency)
Metro Denver is Kansas with mountains and has plenty of land to expand with no growth management per se (apart from the mountains and the fact that there is not enough water to sustain the area as it is already).
Also remember that unlike King County, which is NOT ST, and which seems to want to permanently convert any rail ROW’s into trails, the RTD in Denver had the foresight to buy up the old Interurban Rights of Way and those of smaller rail branch lines as well as the lines the majors no longer needed in the area due to mergers, etc.
So Denver is well equipped with places to lay track, while “Lesser Seattle” will have to dig a bunch of tunnels or build a number of elevateds
It’s rather amazing that the viaduct was built along the waterfront in the first place. Didn’t people know that the Interstate was going to be built a decade later? Then in the “never learn” department Seattle decided it would build a convention center over I-5 to compound the problem. I guess it should be no surprise that $2B for a 2 mile four lane road seems like a good idea.
It is surprising, isn’t it? The 50s and 60s were the peak of modernism, and I think they just thought that whatever was there at the time was too old fashioned to be useful and that a water-front freeway was futuristic.
Usually Washington/Seattle follows the lead of California/San Francisco. I got to wondering if the viaduct was Seattle’s version of the Embarcadero Freeway. To my surprise this is one idea where the PNW was “ahead of the curve” and that the Embarcadero Freeway wasn’t built for a decade after the Alaska Way Viaduct was completed. I also learned that the San Francisco financial district is not just on fill but it’s actually reclaimed land from the Bay and the Embarcadero follows the old breakwater structure enclosing Yerba Buena Cove. YIKES!
There’s a reason North Beach is called “North Beach” and not “north place a mile or so from the water to the North”.
It shouldn’t be surprising. Remember that in the post WWII years, California was the be-all and end-all. We had a city council member here in Seattle in the late 1950s or early 1960s who insisted that we ought to be emulating LA in its freeway building. Go back and look at the highway plans from that era – bridge to Vashon, bridge from Sand Point to Kirkland, the RH Thompson, the Mercer Expressway and on and on.