47 Replies to “Sunday Open Thread: Tokyo”

  1. Way to go. Phoenix Light Rail keeps setting new records.
    http://www.progressiverailroading.com/prdailynews/news.asp?id=23235
    Opened in Dec.09, Avg daily weekday riders are at 45,000 per day. The system cost 1.4 Bil, goes 20 miles at an average of 25 mph, has 28 stations (8 of which are P&R’s)and paid for with 1/2 cent sales tax, plus FTA and 40% local city taxes. Having ‘skin in the game’ keeps cities from making all sorts of demands that just keep jacking up costs.

    1. correction, the line opened in Dec. 2008. The ridership data are for Apr. 2010.

      I believe the line exceeded the ridership projections from the time it opened.

    1. Cars wont be going away from any city. They play a good role. The problem is when you depend on them entirely. Then you start paying way too much in transport.

      2. Dear God in heaven…I had to check back to see if the statement “cars…play a good role” was still here in STB.

        I feel like I’m still dreaming.

  3. Here’s something else that’s cool. This past Friday, Streetsblog posted ‘The New Vision for the Paris Waterfront.’ An architectural rendering shows a grassy, landscaped esplanade with risers, which extend over a strolling path, facing a floating stage. It’s like a cross between NYC’s High Line, Greenlake and Spokane’s Riverfront Park.

    What’s missing? The cars that used the road that’s now the strolling path!

    I don’t know if there’s any place Seattle could adapt the Paris plans, but it’s a fantastic way to take back the shoreline.

    1. Build a streetcar from Fremont to the U along the water, and take out the street. Waiting for the interurban no longer!

    1. Yeah it was a really good piece. I’m especially interested to see how viable it is to have trolley buses that can run offwire for a portion of their route.

      1. I’m just happy to see some attention paid to the issue – with an article that covers pretty much all the bases on it. Mike did a good job on this piece, and deserves the thanks of the transit community.

        1. My only complaint is that there is no Sodo maintenance base. Or perhaps I was taking it too literally, and he meant it so say something along the lines of “Sodo-area maintance base”. Otherwise a great article.

        2. I caught that too but chalked it up to “Atlantic Base” being too vague a reference to the average reader. Kind of like when folks in Redmond tell their East Coast friends that they live in Seattle because then they’ll know where to put the tack on the map.

  5. I have a couple questions for this open thread. First of all, what will happen to the trolley wire on Broadway when the First Hill Streetcar starts? I remember hearing talk of having the streetcar use a trolley pole instead of a pantograph so it and the trolleybuses could coexist, but I don’t remember hearing about this for a while.
    Second, how’s progress on that new Tacoma Link station? There’s very little info about it anywhere.

      1. But I mean along Broadway there will be both the two trolleybus trolleywires and the one streetcar trolleywire. Will they be side-by-side or something?

        1. I don’t know the answer to your question, but I think you could have the single streetcar wire lower than the trolley wires. The pantograph would only contact the streetcar wire, while the trolley poles would reach past that wire to the higher trolley wires. It might not be the safest system, but it would be simple.

        2. In SF, the F-Market and Wharves uses a trolley pole, and along Market street, where there is a big networld of ETB wires, the trolley pole just connects to one of them.

        4. That requires the streetcar to be the same voltage as the buses. The SLUT and Metro are different.

        5. If they do this for the First Hill streetcar they will probably have it use the same voltage as the ETBs. That or use a fancy inverter based power system that doesn’t really care what the supply voltage is.

  6. What’s the deal with Metro using articulated buses on express routes in the morning, then in the afternoon they are almost all short buses? More often than not, they get to crush load before making the whole run downtown and end up skipping stops. It is highly annoying and have noticed this on the 26X, 28x, 17X and 18X.

  7. Several months ago I read that TVMs would be coming to Bellevue TC and other locations in April. I haven’t seen one near BTC; was the location or the schedule changed?

    I think that TVMs should have been installed at high-traffic locations like BTC prior to the full cutover to ORCA, so that people who don’t travel through downtown Seattle or by rail have a place to get an immediate card or an immediate fill-up.

    I’m glad, however, that the 30-day deadline for picking up remotely-purchased passes and money was extended to 60 days, so I no longer have to find somewhere to load my monthly vanpool pass if I haven’t had an opportunity to take the bus the first half of the month but I want to preserve the ability to take a bus trip in the second half.

  8. The Sound Transit 2010 SIP [PDF] mentions a potential new stop/shelter for the 545 at the Olive Way on-ramp to I-5.

    Sound Transit is working with the City of Seattle DOT and WSDOT on developing a new stop and bus shelter for Route 545 near the Olive/I-5 on-ramp. If the project is approved and funded, the new stop would continue access to Capitol Hill while eliminating the lengthy route deviation now needed to reach the Bellevue Avenue/Olive Street stop, decreasing one-way travel time by more than 5 minutes.”

    Does anyone know if this project is going forward?

    1. I know the city was looking at doing something for this onramp because of safety issues. Maybe the two are related?

  9. Is there a plan for Convention Place Station once the buses are kicked out of the tunnel?

    1. It seems like Convention Place would be the ideal location for another Link train yard. The current yard doesn’t have the capacity for the number of trains to add for U-Link.

      In the long term, possibly convert it to Seattle’s bullet train grand station, connected to Westlake Station by a horizontal escalator.

      1. I think they should use the 99 tunnel for HSR when it is no longer used at all (i.e. a couple years after it opens) and put the station underground near Pioneer Square.
        Metro will still probably use the bottom for bus layover space and for the I-5 express lanes access, but I’m guessing a big development will be built in its airspace at some point, possibly for the convention center, as has been suggested.

        1. There really won’t be open space above the tunnel to redevelop. It bores under a whole bunch of skyscrapers (several of which are nervous about the whole operation).

          Nor will it likely be finished, since things will grind to a halt halfway through the boring when the money runs out and nobody can agree on who pays for the rest.

          The interesting question arises of whether the bottom layer will be of sufficient height for the bullet train. I suspect the top layer isn’t designed to support the weight of a train. Maybe we need to ask that both layers be heavy-rail ready. ;)

          Hopefully, one layer can be bullet train and the other can support a passenger line as well.

          But even then, where will the trains go from each end?

        2. Here’s a thought at compromise: Reserve the lower deck of the tunnel for the bullet train, when it reaches Seattle. At that point, the cars would get kicked upstairs, with one lane each way.

        1. The O&M base is actually big enough to handle the entire ST2 light rail system.

        2. I don’t think that’s right. They’re going to build another facility on the Eastside. But there is enough room to house all the U-Link trains.

        3. But from the ST person I spoke with at the last Redmond open house (someone in land acquisition) there is no money in ST2 for even buying the land for the eastside MF. It’s only in there for environmental review and nothing will likely be decided until such time that the extension to Redmond is funded.

        4. As Bernie points out the Eastside MF won’t be built until after ST2. In the plans for the Northgate station there is storage for a few trains on the tail track but I think it is only 20 cars or so.

          I don’t think ST2 will require an additional storage yard. If it does the only two locations for it are somewhere between Northgate and Lynnwood or somewhere between S. 200th and Star Lake.

    1. Wouldn’t it be nice if they could get the mid-day parked cars out of the bus lanes? Pretty please?

      Those parked cars have to go away anyway when Line D opens. Why wait?

      But I’m also curious if there are plans for a bus line from downtown to the Interbay docks. The Magnolia bus lines jump right over them on the Magnolia Bridge. Even one that simply went back and forth between the docks and a Line C station would be nice.

      1. One issue that has come up around RapidRide is how bikers can get in the way of the buses. Has anyone put some thought into a resolution for that?

        1. No, I’m not talking about a city council resolution declaring the city’s intention to be conflict-free by 2030.

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