In last night’s KING5 Mayoral Debate, Mike McGinn came out in favor of building light rail over SR520 as well as I-90. As Capitol Hill Seattle reports:
McGinn’s answer during Wednesday’s debate? Option McGinn. The candidate said he’s choose none of the above because none of the existing options include specifics about light rail.
Although the bridge is to be engineered to be rail convertible, I asked the McGinn campaign if there’s a particular plan he had in mind beyond building the bridge and waiting for ST3:
On the east end of the lake, rail could extend from the South Kirkland park and ride to Kirkland and downtown Bellevue along the BNSF corridor, head east along 520 to Overlake and Redmond.
On the Seattle side, rail could extend through the University District to Wallingford, Fremont, and Ballard, and along the 520 corridor to South Lake Union and downtown.
By holding the rebuilt bridge to two lanes of vehicle traffic, the impact on communities near the bridge is substantially reduced. WSDOT own numbers estimate that peak bridge vehicle traffic is 29 percent lower under the 4-lane scenario versus 6-lanes; it would be reduced even further with dedicated high-capacity transit lanes open from day one (for lanes 5 and 6).
With substantial variable tolls planned for the bridge, there really isn’t any question that 4-lanes can fully accommodate traffic and eliminate current congestion provided that an adequate transit option is provided.Much of the cost of 520, and almost all of the marginal new revenue at this point will come from tolling. Not only is it legally acceptable to spend a portion of tolling revenue on transit, Mike would argue that it is absolutely necessary on equity grounds.
The Mallahan campaign did not take an opportunity to respond.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention that right after the debate, King 5 claimed that “McGinn seemingly agreed with King County Executive candidate Susan Hutchison, who the night before called for change in planned light rail.” which we all know couldn’t be further from the truth.
http://bit.ly/4jmYK5
david,
Debunking the local media is a full-time job, and I already have one.
haha. luckily I don’t!
Me neither, but the local media does have a purpose in that it shows what is on the radar of the general populace even if it is nothing very much. Actually, I have been enjoying Joni Balter’s columns in the Seattle Times of late as she echoes a lot of my current thoughts – especially with regard to the mayoral race and today’s column debunking 1-1033. Danny Westneat can be good but he changes his mind a lot – such as on Greg Nickels. Sometimes he thinks that Mayor Nickels should be long gone, othertimes he laments his departure and tells us so. However I digress but during last night’s mayoral I thought that Mike and Joe were going to punch the poor moderator out of the way. They were both more restrained on KCTS tonight but it was less enlightening as a result.
Has KING 5 fixed this sloppy “news” report? I can hardly believe they made such a big blunder.
nope, it’s still up there exactly as it was last night. It’s under the header “light rail issue.”
http://www.king5.com/news/specials/politics/stories/NW_102109POB-seattle-mayor-debate-TP.23c356f14.html
What about continuing up from Kirkland, around the lake to Bothell and Lake Forest Park, then continuing NW to meet up with a future extension north of Northgate Mall? That way, residents living in LFP and Bothell would be served without having to get to Northgate.
There are a lot of things that could happen – the key, though, is making sure a bridge design incorporates the ability to add rail.
6 lanes or 8?
I love that idea, provided that the residents of LFP are willing to triple their residential density. Light rail is a great technology, but it ONLY works when there is a high enough residential density to support it. I am getting really tired of communities saying that they want the public to spend billions of dollars to bring light rail to their door but then refusing to accept any additional density near the stations. The fact that ST has allowed the public to develop these expectations is a failure of leadership. The public needs to understand: no density, no light rail.
Some communities will embrace density and light rail, others will reject both, but we cannot continue to let people believe they can have their cake and eat it too. It just doesn’t pencil.
Actually, the Victoria Transport Policy Institute debunked the density myth – you can look at just corridor density, and if you’re above some 9 units per acre, it’s generally cost effective.
And I was seeing an article about the Fayetteville, Arkansas area considering light rail because in 20 years, parts of the area will be above 4 units/acre, “dense enough for light rail.”
4 units/acres puts you sort of at the bottom of the range for transit being effective. If you take the some what accepted (some what arbitrary) density of 4,000/sq.mi. you’d have to average about 6 people per acre (if I did my math right). That’s almost exactly where Bellevue is at.
Bellevue overall – but in the light rail corridor itself (the quarter mile around stations), it’s much higher than that.
That’s true. I wasn’t trying to say the Downtown and Microsoft aren’t good candidates for rail. Likewise a station at Marymoor makes sense because it’s “corridor” is all of the car traffic it will bring in from 202 and East Lake Sam. It wouldn’t make sense to build light rail out to Fall City or run it around the Sammamish Plateau but intercepting the traffic at the fringe makes sense. But most of Bellevue is barely able to sustain bus service.
Of course, it would much more easily be able to sustain light rail than bus service, as a lot of people in the suburbs are much more likely to take a nice shiny train than a slow rickety bus.
I think the 520 line should just continue up to UW Bothell or so. A separate spur should go off at Roosevelt or Northgate to Lake City, LFP, Bothell, and Woodinville. A 405 line should go along Central Link from Everett to Lynnwood then diverge and go down through Bothell, Kirkland, Bellevue, Newcastle, and Renton, ending in Burien, and sharing track with other lines for most of the way.
Let’s build a light rail tunnel under Lake Washington, connecting Downtowns Seattle and Bellevue in a straight line!
McGinn is really starting to seem questionable…
He’s supporting something that was in the DEIS for the 520 rebuild anyway – building rail across it eventually is a good idea.
Yes, it is a great idea but let’s get it across the I-90 first and save reaching Kirkland and Juanita and Bothell to another day. Let’s also wait to see who wins the County Executive race, because if Susan wins, we are going to have to husband our concerns and focus our energies very tightly on the minimum that most of us here on this blog won’t be able to live without – does that make sense? In other words, just keeping her focused on bringing Link to Bellevue over I-90 is going to have to be one of our top priorities – much as just keeping operational subsidies going for Amtrak was the least and most Democrats could get out of the former Bush administration and even this was a struggle.
McGinn didn’t say we should do it before I-90 rail. Then again, he didn’t say much at all, and it sounds like he came up with this position on the spot.
He’s talked about this on KUOW before. The beauty of his proposal is he is talking about a different set of funds — tolling revenue — that could really accelerate the deployment of light rail.
The toll revenue from tolling SR 520 won’t be enough to build the 520 project. I don’t know why you think there would be toll revenue available to build light rail.
True, but do also realize that the recently projected toll amounts are lowball.
Light rail across 520 is an excellent idea – we need it across both bridges and we need to fight for it to happen on 520!
This probably isn’t economically feasible, but what about elevating light rail on 520? That way you still get 3 lanes in either direction, one on each side being HOV. As much as we need light rail, buses and carpools are still going to be essential, and deserve to have their own lane.
Side note: Does anyone know what travel times will look like end-to-end for East Link under the preferred alignment? Will they be comparable to the 545?
You can’t but the weight up that high on a floating bridge. You’d also have a windage problem and since bridge motion is amplified the higher you are above the deck you start getting sea sick passengers on the train.
All of the segment times are in the East Link draft EIS. What I don’t know is how long it will take to get from where East Link and Central Link merge into the DSTT. I would thing this would have to be somewhat variably because there will be some contention between northbound and west bound trains that have to start sharing ROW.
East Link trains will merge just south of the International District Station where I-90 buses currently do. The plan is to use the existing ramps to access the I-90 center roadway. With modern signalling systems there shouldn’t be any delay at the junction.
There’s a drawing of it on page 3 of this document;
http://www.soundtransit.org/Documents/pdf/projects/eastlink/deis/Appendix_G1_Drawings_Segment_A.pdf
I looked at some of the routing that McGinn’s proposing and it’s interesting what you come up with. If he wants to hit Downtown Kirkland, South Kirkland P&R, and Downtown Bellevue along the old BNSF right-of-way, it’s eventually going to have to curve back north to get to the 520 ROW. There should be connections with East Link at the Hospital Station east of 405, and even potentially sharing the guideway for just a bit until the line has to branch off towards 520.
From there, the line would do well traveling west through Downtown Bellevue hopefully through another tunnel and could serve the NE 6th east-west corridor that East Link won’t hit. That’ll really make Kemper fly off the handle.
It would cost way too much to have a separate tunnel for this line in DT Bellevue, it should just share East Link’s trackway for a little while.
My first thought when I heard Mike McGinn mention that about Light Rail on the 520 was to think he had flipped again and was now joining Susan Hutchinson’s campaign! I like the idea of light rail on both bridge decks, but right now, let’s concentrate our energies on the I-90 bridge deck so that we can keep East Link on track. As I make my phone calls for Dow Constantine, this is a point I am making repeatedly as I leave messages for folks – that Dow will be the best candidate to keep East Link on track.
The debate last night was a tawdry affair and tonight’s was even worse. Neither candidate can get beyond the tunnel issue and neither candidate has much to say about what lies beyond it. To quote a recent Bob Dylan song: ‘Beyond here lies nothing’. I have not felt more depressed for my beloved Seattle than I do right now. I can’t endorse Mallahan because of his views on guns on City property and I can’t endorse McGinn because of his tunnel vision even with flip flops on. Otherwise I like the guy!
Tim, don’t mean to generalize, but this was the same attitude that caused many environmentalists to support the Road and Transit measure. Fortunately, Mike beat those 182 miles of highway and got us a clean vote on light rail the next year. I think we shouldn’t be timid in asking for more rail, and faster, especially when a candidate is willing to fight for real funding to make it happen.
And get over the tunnel!
Everything is just a race to the bottom as a colleague said to me the other day. On balance, I think that McGinn is more likeable as a candidate than Mallahan and he has conceded something on the tunnel plan but I am not really sure I can trust that he won’t create problems for implementation in the future.
As I have said many times, let Olympia, Seattle and King County work out their funding options for this thing and go from there, but until then, let’s stick with their unified game plan – it is so rare that this happens in our political system.
As for Light Rail on the 520, of course I am all for it, but if Hutchinson gets elected, she will be all for that and ignore voter approved desire to bring East Link to Bellevue over the I90 bridge deck. We should be focusing our energies on keeping her on track on this plan before looking elsewhere for lines. This is not timidity, this is practical pragmatism during a time of fearing for the future of everything right now – at City and County level. Now, if Dow gets elected to KC Executive, this could be as much of a game changer as electing President Obama has been for Amtrak and High Speed rail for the United States.
What’s irritating about both races right now, is that for anyone who works for local government, it must be a nervous time wondering who is going to be closest to the door when the music stops. Once this campaign is over and we get to see who is still left standing (mixing my metaphors here), then we can revisit the idea of Light Rail over the 520, but for the moment when the races are still up in the air, we need to focus on keeping all candidates working the I-90 bridge deck proposal for Light Rail. With law suits here, this struggle is going to be hard enough without other distractions.
Now, if Dow gets elected to KC Executive, this could be as much of a game changer as electing President Obama
I don’t think you can count this as a “game-changer”. Although Sims went a little off the reservation late in his tenure, I see a Constantine administration as basically a continuation of Sims’ transportation principles.
Yes, sorry Martin – I didn’t really express that phrase correctly and ‘continuation’ is the better wording I think, but Ron Sims went off Light Rail in the end and Dow is not on that track that I see any evidence of. Maybe Susan would be the game changer but not in a good way that most of us here could attest to.
Funny how after the defeat of the **regional** roads and transit package **all** the **road** and all the **transit** money ends up in Seattle.
What do you mean all the transit money? Subarea equity, you get out what you put in. Seattle puts in more and gets more out. If you guys in Tacoma would spend more at the store or buy more expensive cars then you’d get more transit. ;-)
Sorry, great picture by the way!
Yeah I can see my dad’s house…kind of.
I can see Alaska from your dad’s house.
I know my house is somewhere near the upper left edge.
Mike is overreaching on the rail issue. We all want more light rail. We all know we should have started forty years ago. By calling first for a citywide initiative to build light rail to West Seattle and Ballard and lowballing the costs he does a disservice to the long term debate. The cost will be far more than the freeway line he compares it to in Portland. Remember, such a line will have two water crossings, a busy downtown core, and serious topographical challenges. I am not saying Seattle shouldn’t do this, but go into it with your eyes wide open or we could end up with another Monorail debacle.
Sound Transit studied 520 as a light rail corridor and rejected it for ST2 because it adds too much capacity in the north end, doesn’t serve downtown Bellevue well, and requires an expensive station to transfer at Husky Stadium. ST believes 520 will be a good rail corridor, but only after we have completed ST2. By then we can distribute loads enough to make it work in an ST3. Build the bridge to accommodate rail, but not right now. BRT on 520 is in the ST2 plan and it works far better for now.
Mike only gave ammo to Kemper Freeman and Susan Hutchison who are actively working to kill light rail to the Eastside. It seriously makes me wonder whether he is responsible enough to be Mayor of Seattle. And no, I don’t like Mallahan either.
Instead of light rail on 520, how about it paralleling Hwy 522. The area next to 522 between the U-District and Bothell is pretty well developed with high transit ridership, especially from the U-District through Ravenna to Lake City. The line could then pass through Lake Forest Park and Kenmore then on through Bothell and terminate at the UW Bothell campus with perhaps an extension to Woodinville and a spur south to connect to KIrkland, Totem Lake, and Bellevue. There is plenty of potential for this route and the area here is ripe for TOD.
Why instead of? These are completely different corridors, and someday we should have both.
Way to go, Mike.
It makes sense to design and engineer for light rail on 520 now and to build light rail when the bridge is built. Retrofitting later will be more expensive. Light rail on 520 provides a necessary route to serve the Eastside north/east of Bellevue. Not instead of I-90 but in additon.
This quote is from today’s Seattle Times article, Would it be feasible to shift light rail from I-90 to 520?
Has anybody seen plans for this or know how it would work? It sounds like there’s a way to separate the bridge in the middle and widen it (there’s no way rail would work with the current narrowed 6 lane layout). I can’t see how this would work without closing the bridge for years and creating traffic bulges at each end. Then there’s the issue of what in the hell you’d do once you got to the west side (nothing is being engineered into the current spine) and who you’d serve on the eastside since East Link is already routed to serve all of the major northern destinations on the eastside (522 and 202 corridors). The need going forward will be along the 405 corridor, both north and south into Bellevue/Redmond and I-90 east of 405.
Now that’s news. When did Kurt Triplett appoint and the ST board approve that?
Not sure how it would work to put light rail on the bridge.
How would East Link serve the 522 corridor? And the 520 line would be more to connect the U District and UW to Eastside destinations, so I think it would serve plenty of people. But yeah, 405 corridor and Issaquah corridor should be higher priority.
East Link as it’s envisioned is set up beautifully to serve the SR-522 corridor. Redmond City Council has already gone on record saying their preferred alignment through downtown is to stay on the old BNSF ROW rather than swinging over to the parking garage by the skate park to save cost (gets Link to downtown soon) better serve Redmond Town Center and to connect with a future extension on the BNSF ROW to Woodinville. Redmond does care about 522 commuters because 202 (Woodinville Redmond Rd.) is packed with traffic driving through DT Redmond.
I love how there’s one part of the quote where he’s talking about “two lanes.” We all know he means in each direction, but how awesome would that be if they just replaced 520 with something more like the Hood Canal Bridge? Man, that would cut down car use a lot!