by TIM BOND
Last Wednesday Sound Transit held an open house (PDF) for the Central Link extension to S. 200th Street. Not much new was announced at the meeting; the 30% design has been completed and the project is being readied to be put up for bid. Because this will be a design-build contract, the contractor will finish the remaining engineering for the station.
One of the advantages of a design-build project is that the contractor can gain additional efficiencies by tailoring the design and construction processes to meet their internal flows. This echoes the Sound Transit’s mantra for the project of “save money, build quicker.” Proposals will be due in June 2012 and the contract will be awarded in August 2012. Construction is expected to begin in early 2013, with the extension opening mid to late 2016–the same time as University Link.
More below the jump.
In July Sound Transit released an addendum to their design and environmental analysis which presented new alternatives for parking at the station due to a study required by the City of SeaTac. The initial design called for 630 parking spaces at the station; the new design calls for 1,100. 1,100 stalls is the expected peak demand between the time the station opens and when the next station opens at Highline Community College. Terminus stations always have the highest demand for parking as riders flock from many points around the station instead of just areas between stations. Once the next station opens, the demand is expected to reduce significantly.
With that in mind, there are three alternatives:
- Build one 1,100 stall garage
- Build two garages with 470 and 630 stalls, respectively; the latter being on leased land
- Build a 470 stall garage and utilize surface parking on leased land
While mega-garages do sound transit-unfriendly, SeaTac code requires that at least 50% of the streetside portion of parking garages be occupied by retail or commercial uses “not specifically auto-oriented in scale or nature.” That would mean this garage would look similar to WallyPark’s new garage or MasterPark’s garage, which both have ground-level retail units. The only other garage inside SeaTac’s city limits is the airport garage, which just happens to be the second largest parking garage in the US and has no retail to speak of. It was grandfathered in when SeaTac’s multi-use code kicked in.
No alternative on the parking structures have been decided yet. ST is checking cost estimates to determine which will be the most feasible. Because the southern parking facility would be located on leased land, it might actually make the most sense to build the 1,100 stall garage. Otherwise, you end up leasing spaces for a few years until the next station opens up, and at the end of the lease you have nothing to show for it. The 1,100 stall garage might end up costing nearly the same or slightly more than leasing spaces but would be somewhat future-proofing capacity and would allow greater flexibility for surging demand. Regardless of which alternative is chosen, demand at Tukwila/Int’l Boulevard Station is likely to drop considerably.
Separate from the parking alternatives, Sound Transit is also submitting an application for $27 million of TIGER III funds. You can show your support for this project and the TIGER III grant by writing a letter that Sound Transit can include in their final application. The most effective letters speak to the importance of the project from your own perspective as a transit rider, supporter, or advocate.
You can fill out this comment card or better yet write a letter using this template (PDF) and fact sheet (PDF). Address your letter to USDOT and email it to rachel.smith@soundtransit.org or send a hard copy to Sound Transit, Attn: Rachel Smith, 401 South Jackson Street, Seattle, WA 98104 while making sure your letter arrives by Friday October 14th. The letters will be submitted with the TIGER III application. The letters will also be forwarded to Senator Patty Murray, Senator Maria Cantwell, Governor Christine Gregoire, Congressman Adam Smith, and Joni Earl, Sound Transit CEO.
As always, you can submit general comments about the project to main@soundtransit.org.
Oh good, they’re doubling parking. Please at least tell me it won’t be free. But of course it will.
Would it hurt Tiger funding if I wrote a letter shaming them for using their multi-billion dollar transit project to create sprawl?
A study concluded that charging for parking at Sounder stations would have a break-even point (for enforcement) that came out to as much as $3 per space, which effectively doubles overall rider costs in a way unlikely to be subsidized by employers.
If parking was paid, I would expect demand to be low, as there are nearby services that cost less and provide equal or better service. TIBS and KDM P&R are two examples.
We need it to be more painful to live far away in sprawl than to live close to work. An extra $3 a day helps meet this goal. Consider that the real alternative that many practice is to drive all the way in and pay $10+ a day to park.
So you feel your job is to torture people?
Nope. Just that our job is not to spend billions of dollars to make it more attractive to live out in sprawl. Long-distance commuters already get enough subsidy.
You have to be realistic about station goals. Let’s focus our urban development on the stations in Seattle. There are plenty which are very lacking (looking at you, Beacon Hill).
As a Sounder rider myself, if they started charging parking for Everett Station, it would make driving a whole lot more inviting. 9 dollars a day for the train + 3 for parking vs. 9 dollars a day for parking + a few for gas?
Sorry Matt, but the City of SeaTac is far away from the Urban Growth Boundary, within which we’re trying to contain and shape growth.
If it ain’t near the edge of the UGB or beyond, it ain’t sprawl.
The Sound Transit service area is a good boundary, at least for King County. It’s smaller than the urban growth boundary. Or if you want to go smaller than that, the 1990 suburban ring was Federal Way-Kent-Renton-Issaquah-Redmond-Bothell. That’s the most urban part of the county and the main targets for non-single-family growth.
SeaTac is clearly and obviously sprawl. As are Black Diamond, Enumclaw, Snoqualmie, Carnation, and North Bend, all inside the UGB. I don’t think you understand what sprawl means.
We can’t fit 3.2 million people in the Seattle city limits, and another million coming.
Fun fact: at Brooklyn levels of density, we could in fact fit 3 million people in the Sattle city limits.
The 200th St parking kilo-garage won’t be a subsidy for Seatacers. It will be a subsidy for non-bus-riders throughout South King County, and a blight on Seatacers living nearby, when true TOD (e.g. multi-story housing) could have been built, but now won’t.
I don’t mind, as long as it is the *last* parking garage built along Link. A mix of parking garage stations (Airport, 200th, Federal Way, Tacoma Dome) and TOD stations (TIBS with the parking redeveloped, Highline, Redondo Heights, South Federal Way, Fife, downtown Tacoma) wouldn’t be too bad. Building parking garages instead of housing at all the stations would be tragic.
BTW, Matt, many of the suburbanites are living where they are because that’s close to where they work. I can’t fault anyone for finding jobs wherever they can, and moving there, even if it is in the suburbs.
[Brent] Absolutely. But I’d be surprised if that describes more than a small fraction of the commuters there, even with the airport nearby.
If I could afford to live in downtown Seattle, I would. But the only place I could afford a house (that wasn’t falling apart or in a bad neighborhood) was Everett. I’m all for increased density (and I think most of us here are), but we need more housing supply and lower costs in Seattle. We also need transit that can take us from the outer edges of the city itself to downtown in quick order. Currently, a bus ride from Roosevelt or Ballard to downtown can take as much time as a train-ride or drive from Everett.
Are you so sure about the drop in demand for parking at Tukwila/I-Blvd once a new parking structure at S 200 St (and eventually Highline CC) opens? For some, freeway access is everything, and neither S 200 St or Highline have access quite as good as Tukwila’s access from Rt 518, especially for those coming from the Kent valley.
One other minor consideration – what changes, if any, might need to be made to RR A once the Link extensions open?
Yes. I don’t have it handy, but a study from a few months ago showed zip codes where people were driving from to get to TIBS. The study was conducted by having person(s) out in the lot in the morning asking people getting out of their cars “from what zip code did you drive from this morning” (or something along those lines). More than a third, and maybe more than half–I can’t remember, it’s been a while since I’ve seen the map and have no idea where I saved it–were coming from points south of the station.
For the A Line, no changes would need to be made. The only thing that could even be considered is looping it through the bus bays, but that would just increase travel time for those not using the station. It will be less than a tenth of a mile walk from either RapidRide stop to the station.
Good to know that ST is doing that kind of research, and the results you cite are certainly credible, but it doesn’t directly answer the question. I’m curious to see how big that drop is, given that the Link ride itself will almost certainly cost more (but that’s not a huge deal for someone who drives to the station from any modest distance or more) and will be a longer ride from a station further south. We’d have to do an economic analysis of whether it is more efficient to cover that distance on the freeway or via Link, and the handful of associated external forces for each option. Only time (or a well-paid urban economist) will tell…
There’s already more demand for parking at TIBS than what it provides, it wouldn’t surprise me if the lot remains full after S. 200th is built.
The ride from 200th to TIBS would probably be about 5-6 minutes. I think it’s about 3 from TIBS to the airport, should be about 2 to 200th, and about a minute to discharge/load passengers at the airport. The current trip to the airport will be sped up, as there will be no need to switch tracks. Also, because of its tail track, there will be no switching tracks to enter the platform at 200th. Trains will discharge at the east platform, head south out of the station, and then load up on the west side.
I like the tail track. It simplifies boarding by designating one platform for loading and another for unloading. Trains will enter and depart S 200th faster without track switching.
true … the tail track will make it easier for people to know which platform to wait at … and speed up arrivals/departures from the station … they do however add to the construction cost … remember that the tail track needs enough clearance for the operator to exit the train and walk to the rear most LRV in order to have the train run the opposite direction …
Gordon, it’s also a “down payment” of sorts on the future extension. I’m sure it’s cheaper to build a few hundred feet now than the same distance in a few years.
Tim … I wasn’t implying that it wasn’t (a down payment for future growth) … but it is a cost factor that has to be considered.
it does also allow for storage of an extra train (depending on how quickly they turn)
I know. Just pointing out an additional advantage.
The tail track also means much less construction work would end up going on around the station while the station is in service. Safety.
The tail track is one awesomely great part of the plan!
Disclaimer: I could be one of the beneficiaries of the first train out of 200th in the morning if I continue having early shifts at work and realize my dream of moving next to a train station (but not one with a tower of parking).
I can guarantee you hardly any in the Kent Valley (except Renton) would use TIBS after this is built. Orilla/188th Street is a breeze compared to 518. It’s out of the way. Hence why I just catch the 150 or go to RenTC instead of Link. Although, there will be a further split once Link is extended further south by those in Kent Valley.
Is the platform longer than other Link platforms? Is the gap in the weather protection for artwork or is that a view corridor or something like that?
The platform will be 380 feet with 300 feet of canopies. Haven’t whipped out my tape measure at any of the other stations so I can’t say how that compares.
Not sure what the gap is for. Bunch of SeaTac-ites want to preserve/enhance views from the station; they are apparently impressive. I didn’t notice anything spectacular from the ground.
the drawings look like the platform will be about 5 link LRVs long … MLK stations are almost as long but most of the extra platform is fenced off as part of the entrance/exit ramps to the platform themselves
There are only 600 spaces at Tukwila station, which is the current de facto terminal for park and riders. No mention of a parking charge on the ST web page that I could find….or is there a charge for it?
Parking is free and demand exceeds capacity. The point of charging is to get people to arrive at the station by means other than driving. Since the station’s walkshed for residential units is pretty pathetic, and connecting transit is marginal, I don’t see any reason to charge for parking.
I don’t see any reason to have parking. If we’re using our multi-billion dollar light rail system as a park-and-ride bus, we’ve wasted our money.
The reason the P&R exists is that local transit to the station is so spotty. It’s (sadly) cheaper to build a parking garage than to add two or three frequent routes.
If, as you say, “demand exceeds capacity,” do you mean that it fills up at 7 AM? If so, it’s underpriced.
There are a lot of reasons to charge for parking. Charging a market price gets rid of the bias toward early birds, and ensures that parking is available throughout the day for off-peak riders. But the most important is that it communicates that there is a cost for providing that parking space, just as there’s a cost for providing the trains. Why charge people for the trains and give parking for free?
“If, as you say, “demand exceeds capacity,” do you mean that it fills up at 7 AM? If so, it’s underpriced.”
No, because P&R spaces aren’t like croissants. The issue isn’t what price they should be for maximum fullness. The issue is, how many spaces are needed to get the most people who don’t live near a bus route to take transit rather than driving. The number of P&R spaces and bus routes is limited by how much money the transit agencies have, not by the potential demand. Charging more to prevent overcrowding means that only rich people can use P&Rs. But P&Rs aren’t there to give deluxe service to rich people; they’re there to get the most people onto transit. So charging more than most people can afford on a daily basis is counterproductive.
[Mike] That doesn’t make any sense.
“The number of P&R spaces and bus routes is limited by how much money the transit agencies have, not by the potential demand.” Then why do we care if Tukwilla is over capacity?
“they’re there to get the most people onto transit” Then we shouldn’t be extending Link. Use that money to build massive parking garages, and use the operations money we save to pay people to park there. Goal satisfied.
The real reason we have park and rides is to cater to the car commuter in order to get them to vote for future expansion. But in the end, park and rides induce demand for sprawl and driving.
We’re extending Link because it will serve people that have a need to get to other places in the region. If there is no parking at the station, people will have to rely on means other than driving to access it. Since there is virtually no residential nearby to speak of, you rely on busing and bicycling, which would result in abysmal ridership.
If the area around the station was densely populated, it wouldn’t need parking. But it’s not, and clearly the people of South King County don’t want density. If they did, they wouldn’t be living there.
[Tim] Then we it’s the wrong place to build light rail. If I were transit czar, I’d build a really nice bus transfer station and no parking. Put the local politicians on the line for not wasting this multi-billion dollar investment and upzone around the station and bump up their feeder bus routes.
Just because people it that area live on large lots doesn’t mean density can’t work. You’re looking at a self-selecting sample. Sure, everyone that lives there likes large lots. But they moved there because that’s where the large lots are. Build dense multifamily, and that’s where the people that like dense multifamily will live.
Tim:
Matt:
False! Maybe they’re living there because it’s all they can afford. Maybe it’s close to their job (or, in a two-earner family, it’s a convenient midpoint between both jobs). Maybe they have family in the area.
There are about a zillion possible reasons why people choose to live where they do. To assume that one of them (the absence of density) is the only reason is bad reasoning.
What, that 8 storey jail isn’t tall enough for you? Situated between a federal jail and a really crappy bar, I imagine those will sell like hot cakes. But that’s OK, because TOD is great, right? Build it and they’ll fill the complex! Seems to be working great for The Station at Othello Park. Their vacancy rates are so low they post four or five times a day.
We can’t just bury our heads in the sand and say, “No transit outside Seattle city limits because people shouldn’t be living there, and if they do live there they can jolly well drive.” That horse left the barn 50 years ago, and Seattle is only 20% of the region’s population. And Sound Transit’s job is to move people across the region, regardless of whether they live in the city or in close-in suburbs. There are 800,000+ people in south King County that have to get to jobs and appointments and everything else. The only way to fix this “sprawl problem” is to extend transit to the densest parts of it (which are on 99, where Link is) and encourage them to densify their cores further. Not by saying, “Sorry, you’re too low-density for us. Build some condos and then we’ll give you transit.”
[Mike] It’s far too early in the game to give up. We are SF Bay Area 40 years ago. They built BART, and that lead to sprawl, sprawl, sprawl. My wife and I bought a home an hour from downtown SF, and she would drive half an hour each day to park at free parking at a BART station. I knew people that lived past Davis, nearly up at Sacramento that did the same thing.
Every choice we make right now will affect development patterns for at least the next century.
Matt, BART is a response to sprawl. It didn’t cause sprawl. Otherwise there would be no sprawl in Silicon Valley. The difference between the East Bay and Silicon Valley is that it’s easier to get around the East Bay without a car. (Not easy, but easier.) Sprawl is caused by people who don’t give a whiff about transit, and don’t even ask whether there’s transit near their dream house before they buy it. But there are a lot of other people living in the suburbs who aren’t so blind; they want more transit and they will ride it when it’s established. They live in the suburbs because they grew up there, or their job is there, or they can’t afford to move, etc. Just like in Seattle where NIMBYs hinder rezoning, the same thing happens in the suburbs. That doesn’t mean rezoning is the wrong thing to do or that the majority doesn’t support it; it just means the naysayers are extremely active and influential. The suburban cities do “get it” and are densifying their downtowns — almost all of them. The problem is that they’re way behind in doing it, just like Seattle is way behind in its HCT corridors and frequent-transit network. Unfortunately America wasted the real estate bubble mostly on sprawl rather than on infrastructure for the 21st century. But we have to start somewhere, and that means improving transit in the suburbs as well as the city.
I mostly agree with you [Mike], but feel like you’re missing one component. People will spend up to a varying but fairly standard amount of time in their commute. This is the true limit of sprawl – how long does it take to get from your home to the major job center. It feels good to be getting people off the freeways and onto buses or trains. But that frees up freeway capacity, and people can suddenly drive even further in that set amount of time.
Oh, and BART absolutely caused sprawl, whether or not the intent was to reduce it. Silicon Valley is a whole seperate beast that we’re starting to deal with here: what happens when businesses decide to abandon the cities and move to sprawl. The answer is a network grid of traffic, where everyone has to drive everywhere and transit doesn’t work at all.
Explain what would have happened in the Bay Area if BART hadn’t been built.
Maybe Pittsburg and Dublin would not have expanded as much, but it doesn’t matter because Silicon Valley, Marin and Sonoma counties, and the penninsula expanded without BART. Do you really think those Pittsburgites and Dublinites would be living in San Francisco or Oakland if it weren’t for BART? SF was too lefty and squashed for them, and Oakland was too black. They would have moved to another part of the periphery, at the same density they are now, only their kids would not have BART to take them to shows and college and later work. Sprawl is the same whether it’s in Dublin or Almaden, so it doesn’t matter if Dublin would have been smaller.
You’re both right. BART was built to give transit access to the already-existing sprawl. In turn, it made it easy and attractive for the sprawl to sprawl further.
It’s a vicious (and very expensive) cycle, and it’s still ongoing.
I love the “comment from a resident”:
“My wife and I bought a house in Antioch a little over 3 years ago anticipating that BART would have been extended into Antioch by the time that we moved into our home. Taking BART in Pittsburg is great but it would be even better if it was in Antioch. In the morning at 5:00 AM, it takes us 30 – 45 minutes to travel 10 miles on Highway 4 to get to BART. That is an awful commute that should only take 10 – 15 minutes. If they extend BART to Antioch it would only take us probably 5 minutes from our house to get to BART.”
Translation: We moved out to sprawl because we thought they’d build a BART station here. In fact, everyone moved out here, so traffic was bad getting the the BART station. Now that they’ll build a BART extension life will be easy, and I’ll tell all of my friends how great life is way out in Antioch.
Let’s take a case where BART actually does exist. At some point the Concord line was extended to Pittsburg. What percentage of Pittsburg residents (or new Pittsburg residents) use it? If Pittsburg is typical (I’ve never ridden that far), probably less than 10%. Maybe a quarter of those chose Pittsburg because of BART, while others like their lot size or have family there or something. That leaves 90% who never experience BART except at a distance, and who would live there with or without BART. Those are the people who cause sprawl. BART would not have been extended to Pittsburg unless Pittsburg were already large. The few people who move to Pittsburg because of BART, or poor people who take advantage of BART because it’s there, are lost in the mass of sprawl-causing drivers.
I just realized something obvious. Pittsburg and Antioch are not at all equivalent to Federal Way, Tacoma, or Everett. Tacoma and Everett are the historic second cities in the area, like San Jose but half the distance from the main city. Extending BART to Pittsburg and Antioch would be like extending Link to Marysville or DuPont — something that almost nobody has suggested.
BART should have been a triangle between SF, Oakland, and SJ. That would have captured the most populous regions and the largest number of trips. Peripheral places like Pittsburg and Dublin are less important. But Santa Clara County, San Mateo County, and Marin County voted it down originally, and that set back their transit and mobility for literally decades. Faced with refusals on the south, west, and north, BART naturally extended to the east where people did want it.
The station plan looks good. Simple, center platform, accessible, easy to find. I’d love to see stairways to the platform running along the S200th sidewalk (rather than having to walk completely under the station and THEN start climbing), but I’m sure current and future adjacent landowners would hate that forever.
I think the garage + surface lot is the best long-term plan. When 200th is no longer the terminus, parking demand will be reduced. Size the single garage for the long-term, and use a surface lot for the short term. Once the next station is opened, the surface lot will be available for redevelopment. And even if it doesn’t get redeveloped after ST lets go, once a private company has the lease, they’ll charge for parking at market rates.
Also, LOL at that photoshop job on the platform representation.
Not a fan of surface parking, but would prefer that in the hopes of future TOD when demand via new station south splits demand.
Don’t forget the second lot would be leased. It could possibly return to its present use as an airport parking lot. But given its proximity to the station, I bet the owner could find more lucrative uses for the lot. But commercial and residential development isn’t my forté. Web development is.
Great. A Sound Transit parking lot could become…an airport parking lot!!
At least then it would be priced at market rates.
“At least then it would be priced at market rates.”
Thank the Creator, then, that the airport and 200th St Station are not in the City of Seattle, where car drivers scream “socialism!” when the mayor tries to implement market-based parking charges.
will be great if you need to visit someone in the Federal Detention Center located just east of the station’s location …
also from the architectural drawing in the PDF … looks like the station could accommodate 5 car link trains (not that they’d fit anywhere else in the system)
As far as requiring Retail … I would imagine that a Starbucks or Subway/Quiznos kind of food establishment would do well there with the AS/QX HQs, as well as people working at/with the detention center. Starbucks would be a hit with the commuters if nothing else
I think a bail bonds, 24/7 check cashing, pawn shop, and hachsaw blade sharpening outfits would do well. Maybe even a gun shop.
Aw dang, will put all the businesses on 99 out of business! :-/
There’s already a smoke shop and a gun shop at the intersection.
S. 200 is a beautiful example of how each and every LINK station should have been built.
Access, low cost and utility that is integrated into the personal transit system.
This region would have been better served with a pearl necklace of S.200 stations all up and down the 99 corridor.
In a lowish density area, with several times more space allotted for cars than for actual people?
Not beautiful, just a necessary evil to bridge the gap between the Rainier Valley and Federal Way.
Yeah, that would be totally awesome. You could drive to one giant parking garage, get on the train, and ride… to another giant parking garage.
One with buses to complete the rest of the journey.
Or, increase commercial real estate at the stations so that it becomes a destination instead of cramming everything into downtown.
1,100 stalls is the expected peak demand between the time the station opens… Once the next station opens, the demand is expected to reduce significantly…
Build the garage. Build it once. Make this the terminus forever.
This is much less of a sprawl subsidy than a billion-dollar extension to the next sprawl-collecting hub would be!
The next station after this is actually a destination, Highline Community College. And Redondo is just one more station after that, and Federal Way just one more after that. After Federal Way the density drops off considerably and the stations would be much farther apart. So there’s a good reason to extend it to KDM Road, and an almost-as-good reason to extend it to 320th. There’s less of a reason to extend it beyond that.
Highline is built like a mall: surrounded by a sea of parking lots, with no direct access to the main road and no hope of ever integrating into anything resembling a built-up area.
Federal Way has no “density.” At all. Nothing.
The long-term drop-off envisioned for the S. 200th garage doesn’t mean people are getting out of their cars. It just means they’re driving to a different station. Heck, maybe they’ll even move further away, now that we’ve given them a 40-mile-long commuter rail and $15/rider subsidy!
As even Tim has admitted, most Highline students are just going to keep driving to school. For those that don’t, Link gives them little that a better-expedited RapidRide couldn’t.
Make no mistake, Mike, South Link isn’t about students, and it isn’t about reaching or expanding walksheds. It’s about shiny things geared for commuters, and it’s about sprawl, sprawl, sprawl.
Build the S. 200th garage. Make it really nice. Give it some amenities. And then use it forever.
Sorry you don’t like it, d.p. But the voters wanted it, and they’re willing to pay for it with their own money.
D.p., serious station planning has been done by Kent and Des Moines for 99. Des Moines has some of the tallest buildings on the ridge and considerable density that has sprung up in past few years. Take a RR ride and check it out or Reenvisioning Midway…
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Where? By the Lowe’s? Maybe the Jack in the Box?
Tim, sales tax revenues are precipitously down in South King, so you can’t really say they’re “paying for it with their own money.” At least not yet.
There’s something utterly ridiculous about the fact that I get shouted down every time I suggest Seattle needs to translate its political will — and proven ability to pay for real subway infrastructure — into a demand for high-quality in-city connectivity.
But billions of dollars in elevated guideway and free-use garages and 8-minute service to the Fred Meyer in Des Moines and 4-minute frequencies to the fucking mall in Lynnwood are somehow absolutely necessary.
Do you see how ridiculous Pugetpolitik is on its face?
Fun fact: the money for 200th is already in the bank.
Seattle is not paying for it. South King residents are getting what they asked for, if they can come up with the money. They are not going to vote their money for in-city transit in Seattle. That’s Seattle’s problem. But the flip side is that Seattlites are not paying a dime to extend Link to 200th or further south, so it’s not coming out of the Ballard subway fund.
Tim, I’m in favor of S. 200th. It’s a fantastic place for a park-and-ride to serve all of the low density extremities south of SeaTac. As you say, that money’s in the bank.
But you were treating Redondo as a done deal. And that money’s not there.
Mike, you know that I understand how the money side of sub-area equity works. It’s the project-prioritizing that gets a bit messy.
“No discussion of in-city projects. We’re a regional light rail!”
“Let’s transfer money to Bellevue. Or make you pay for a dumb freeway station as a pretext for transferring money to Bellevue. Because East Link is the most important thing for you!”
Build North Link first! Build it to the border! Vite! Vite! No branches! Because Lynnwood’s gotta have 4-minute headways! It’s vital!
Do you really think all that is unrelated to mayor McGinn’s suspicion no real subway could come to fruition? Which is why he’s resigning himself to a streetcar plan that nobody with the slightest understanding of Ballard-Fremont geography [cough: Martin] thinks is a productive solution, just so he can build something.
Andrew argued just a few days ago that “Seattle could build [more]large projects if it wanted to,” because the desire exists and our ability to fund subways — U-Link is coming in under budget, remember — is proven.
But it won’t happen if everybody accepts the Sound Transit project list as a given. And what I’m saying, emphatically, is that the Sound Transit project list is full of a bunch of useless “done deals” that push much more effective projects off the table.
So all I ask of you guys, and of Ben, is to stop accepting Sound Transit’s “we musts” as evidence of proper priorities. Because they’re full of some of the most ridiculous fallacies imagine. (Like North Link needing 12,000+ hourly capacity each way. B.S. B.S. B.S.)
Now we’re getting somewhere. You don’t support the ST2 network that was voter-approved. I do. I also think it’s useless to focus on done deals rather than on the next to-be-done deal. And that it would be foolish to turn down a city that is asking/urging/demanding/begging for rapid transit (Federal Way). We’ve put so much work into getting the cities to acknowledge that transit is important. Now that they want it, we need to take this opportunity to connect them better to the network.
Mike, you’re missing the point. d.p. has infinite wisdom that no decision maker or resident in Washington could ever have. S/he knows what should be done, and we’re all foolish for not listening to him/her.
You really want to go there [Tim]? Try to be an adult.
Matt, I’m just re-iterating dp’s point of view. S/he has made it clear many times in the past that we haven’t got a clue how to build, plan, or operate public transportation in this region.
Has it occured to you that it’s possible we’re doing it wrong? You sound like a Hindenberg engineer, after a coworker questioned why he was designing a flammable skin.
Listen to your critics. They can a strong source of knowledge.
Who’s we?
I find it hard to believe one person knows better than thousands or tens of thousands of people.
Tim, I give DP more credit than that. He has some very precise values, just like I have precise values and you have precise values. He wants the kind of situation where you can step out of your house and walk to the supermarket/school/library, or wait five minutes for rapid transit to take him to whichever one isn’t in his neighborhood. He has turned against the suburbanites, while I think we have to unify the region with a strong network. He’s not saying “I’m so smarter than you” like Sam or some others, he’s just passionate about what he thinks makes good cities and good transit.
You and I must be reading different threads. d.p. is quite downputting, and Sam just asks questions that pro-transit people don’t like.
Ah, the old tens of thousands of people can’t be wrong theory. Good luck with that one.
If tens of thousands of people say that’s what they want, why does d.p. get to come in and say that’s not what they want?
“Thousands or tens of thousands of people” following problematic ideologies will yield problematic results.
Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956.
Urban Renewal.
The freaking highway tunnel we’re about to build.
You really want to endorse “groupthink” on this one, Tim?
You haven’t explained how you get the power to decide what other people want.
Really?
I can find you 10,000 people in this country who think that evolution and global warming are false. I can find you 10,000 people in this country who think that being gay should be a crime. Hell, if I look hard enough, I bet I can find 10,000 people who think that slavery should still be legal.
All of those people are wrong. They’re not wrong because they’re outnumbered; look at Prop 8 in California, for example. They’re wrong because their ideas are wrong.
The number of people who agree with an idea has *nothing* to do with whether or not that idea is correct or useful.
d.p.’s posts may contain a lot of yelling and cursing, but they’re still about ideas. The fact that he disagrees with the results of a vote does not invalidate his ideas in the slightest bit.
And you haven’t explained how the “wants” dictated by lifetimes of misplaced subsidies and cultural engineering should be indulged to the tune of billions of dollars.
Thank you, Aleks.
I’ll really try to tone down the yelling and c%rsing.
Then go have a second vote. Because any government that says “We know you voted for X, but we’re actually going to change it to Y” is a bad government.
The station is in Seattle and serves Seattle as much as say SODO station does (IIRC the projected ridership isn’t too shabby compared either to the rest of East Link or to Rainier Valley)
Eh? I don’t know what you think should be built ahead of North Link. Besides most of us realize getting to Northgate is pretty important. This is going to be the second most heavily used portion of the entire system after U-Link. Maybe you think Ballard or 45th would have more ridership, but that is conjecture on your part.
As much as I’m tired of waiting for North Link at least it has an EIS done and is to 30% engineering. We’re not anywhere near that close with Ballard or 45th.
I think the Nelson/Nygaard study shows a Ballard-Freemont streetcar would have very strong ridership. Strong enough to justify a higher capacity transit mode than buses. Speed wouldn’t necessarily have to be any worse than surface light rail in other US cities either.
This isn’t to say building Link between downtown and Ballard more or less along the RapidRide D corridor isn’t justified. If anything the strong ridership for an Eastlake line in the 70 corridor shows there is probably room for both local and regional service.
So what do you think should fill out the rest of the ST2 project list?
The line between Lynnwood and Downtown will need 12,000+ hourly capacity at least during peak hours. Sure it doesn’t need that capacity for the entire length of the line, but it does at least as far as Northgate (which BTW was the operating plan last time I checked)
Chris, I just addressed many of your reactions about 95% of the way down this thread. Ctrl-F for “my head nearly exploded” and you should find it.
That I-90 freeway station wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for Bellevue’s needs. I’m not belittling the need for East Link here, I’m simply stating the obvious: that station wouldn’t be in Seattle top-100 list of priorities. Even musing that we should pay for it like we wanted it is kind of offensive. Don’t order room service, offer me the crumbs, and then charge it to my bill.
There’s not a hair on my head that wants to see the Northgate project slowed. And I fully recognize the legitimate, though hardly earth-shifting, purpose that building to Lynnwood serves.
But that “line between Lynnwood and Downtown will need 12,000+ hourly capacity at least during peak hours” thing is straight-up fraudulent. When people take unsubstantiated crap like that as an article of faith, then try to use said unsubstantiated crap to discredit other proposals, I’m going to keep calling it out.
75,000. That’s the highest number I’ve ever heard for North Link. That includes Brooklyn station. Subtract Brooklyn and you get 60,000 max.
That’s 30,000 each way. Peak is at least 2 hours long. To argue that 24,000 need it in those two hours is to claim that 80% of usage will be one-way commutes. And if that were the case (it’s not), why the heck would we build an all-day-oriented transit mode for that purpose.
Basically, you said it yourself: “[North Link] is going to be the second most heavily used portion of the entire system after U-Link.” So where’s the justification for sending every U-Link train the whole way north. The demand beyond the U is already split; why shouldn’t the service be?
The Nelson/Nygaard study foresaw the Ballard-Fremont streetcar as getting 26,000 boardings for its 1/3 billion dollars.
A few reactions:
– That’s 10,000-13,000 individuals, which is actually a pretty pathetic percentage of those who live or work in its walkshed. (And its walkshed is itself much smaller than the east-west subway spur’s would be.)
– How much will that number drop when the line turns out to take 22-25 minutes rather than 16? Because that 16-minute estimate is also fraudulent.
– To the extent that the number is pretty high, it demonstrates just how starved NW Seattle is for transit that even attempts frequency and reliability (if not speed), something we’ve supported overwhelmingly in the past (urban village, TransitNow) and been screwed over for (final RapidRide specs).*
– If we can get adequate numbers to ride something lousy, think of the ridership we could get on something good!
The streetcar plan isn’t Hitler. It’s not even Goebbels. It’s just kind of a silly diversion in that its $327 million doesn’t buy speed, doesn’t avoid bottlenecks, still crawls into downtown (lousy for connections), and offers no good connections elsewhere on its route.
It’s far from the best we can/should/must do, and it pains me to see everyone treating it like our best shot.
*Hey, Tim, what was that you were saying about voting for one thing and getting something else instead?
[d.p.] really sounds right with regard to North Link. I’d love to see a post with d.p. and Ben debating the issue, using referenced numbers.
Light rail will help sprawl which is why — when it’s done right, meaning cheaply, and with stations that accommodate personal transit, it should be supported.
And each of these stations can evolve into things other than just a parking lot.
Each should consider making itself some sort of focal point or destination that people from other stations might want to visit.
How about an outlet or factory store center? Many urban people never get to go to the remove factory outlet stores because they don’t drive. How about being able to jump on a LINK train, get off somewhere just north of Tacoma, and load up with cheap brand name clothing…coats and scarves and all.
While Rainier station wouldn’t be a priority for Seattle-only transit, East Link is important to Seattle in the grander scheme of things.
There are a very large number of people who live in Seattle and who work East of Lake Washington. Better connectivity to the Eastside provides additional employment opportunities for residents of Seattle. Due to surface street congestion and congestion entering and exiting the highways it is in the City’s interest for as many of those people as possible to take public transit.
Similarly it is in the City’s interest for as many people who work in Seattle and live on the Eastside to take transit as possible. In addition to the congestion issues less cars in Seattle means less need to provide parking for them.
Compare to Central Link in capital cost per boarding. Hell compare it to your 45th st subway. Ballard to U-District would be roughly 6 times as much for likely less than twice the boardings.
Really it isn’t. Compare to the ridership of Central Link. For that matter look at the population and employment in the Freemont and Ballard Urban Villages as well as the portions of the Ballard-Interbay industrial area within the walkshed of the line.
So you claim. But I’m going to trust Nelson/Nygaard’s numbers here. Even if it takes longer that is still faster than current bus service during much of the day. In any case I suspect reliability will prove much greater than the 15/18 or 26/28. (Note to the City: please do something about the morons on Dexter turning left onto Mercer and completely blocking Dexter in the process.)
Note that NW Seattle was not promised Link service in ST1 nor ST2. Also note that the TMP upgrades the RapidRide D corridor closer to what the service should have been in the first place. NW Seattle almost certainly will get Link service as part of ST3 if and when that happens. The best way to make sure it doesn’t is to pick a fight with the suburbs over finishing ST2 projects.
Again you claim a Fremont/Ballard streetcar would be lousy. Given how your “spur” line requires going through the U-District first before getting to Ballard I expect the actual travel time for your spur would be longer than a more direct streetcar route. I don’t see the Fremont/Ballard streetcar as being any worst than the surface light-rail many other cities have built.
Of course the big “win” in travel time would be a grade separated direct Ballard to Downtown route via Uptown. All indications are something like this will be on the ballot if there is a ST3 plan.
The Mercer to Westlake segment would be substantially sped up from the current SLUT if a Fremont/Ballard line is built. The line would offer connections to the 26, 5, 28, 30, 31, 15/RR D, 18, 17, 75, and 44.
The streetcar is the best shot other than RapidRide D in the next 10-20 years. One of the key features of a streetcar is they can be built fairly fast. Even if Sound Transit suddenly found $2 billion for building your 45th spur tomorrow it would still take a fair bit of time to plan and build. I’m guessing on the order of 8-10 years.
The argument here is *exactly* the same as the argument for taking I-90.
The U-District is an important regional destination. The 44, the main bus between Ballard and the U-District, has almost as much ridership as the 15, and more than the 18.
A direct grade-separate rail line from Ballard to downtown would undoubtedly be a faster way to get downtown than going via the U-District. But, conversely, the spur would be a *much* faster way to get to Fremont, or the U-District, or Husky Stadium (for 520 buses), or Capitol Hill, or even Northgate.
In a perfect world, I’d love to have a whole network of rail lines. One for each of the in-city RapidRide routes; one for 45th; one along Denny; etc. But in practice, a Ballard spur is the cheapest and most cost-effective way to provide grade-separated transit to NW Seattle, and the fact that it isn’t optimal for Ballard-downtown trips is irrelevant.
Based on a quick back of the envelope calculation Ballard to Downtown via Uptown will actually cost about the same as a Ballard to UW line via 45th. Why does the longer line cost the same or less than the shorter line? Because Ballard to downtown the line can run grade separated on the surface through Interbay. Because of Uptown and Belltown this line will have much higher ridership than the E/W line on 45th.
The entire discussion is a bit moot though as there isn’t a $2 to $3 billion bucket of money lying around to build either line. Even once the money is there the EIS process and construction will take many years.
Due to the far lower cost money for a rapid streetcar to Fremont and Ballard will be much easier to find. It will also be much faster to build once a funding source is identified.
“East Link is important to Seattle in the grander scheme of things” I’ve heard this argument a lot, and hate it. What, Seattle isn’t important to the East Side? How much did they pay for central Link?
Chris, I don’t have the time to respond to each of your points at this moment — which I’d really like to — and by the time I’d get the chance (Sunday?), the audience for this thread will have shrunk to just the two of us.
I’m sure we’ll get another chance, so don’t be surprised if I quote from this thread later.
Just a quick response to your “back of the envelope”:
A downtown-to-shooting-out-the-west-flank-of-Uptown bore is actually just as far as a Brooklyn-to-west-slope-of-Phinney bore.
Seriously. Each comes in at precisely two miles. And the former is way more complicated and encounters far more construction conflicts along the way.
And that’s before you’ve even dealt with the Ship Canal crossing. Add hundreds of millions there. (Because I know you’re not proposing putting in on the existing Ballard Bridge and then claiming it’s more reliable or effective.)
When I estimated east-west ridership earlier (based on the 44, parts of the intersecting north-south routes, and the heavy car traffic the corridor currently sees), I was being pretty conservative with the numbers. I could easily see the line getting 3x-6x the oversold streetcar estimate for its 3x-6x the cost, outweighing those Northgate commuter-oriented estimates in the long-term. My hunch is the east-west line would also have 2x-3x the ridership of even the fastest Interbay line.
p.s. Matt,
I’m not sure I can even engage that argument anymore, because I’m so troubled by the circular logic it seems to encourage.
You should pay all of the costs of the I-90 segment because it’s in Seattle.
But it’s not a priority for in-Seattle transit. Not top ten. Not top 100. We don’t want or need it for its own sake.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a priority by itself, because it’s part of East Link, and East Link is a priority for Seattle.
I’m not devaluing East Link, but its not more important to Seattle than Seattle Link is to the Eastside. Probably less, because one is commuter-focused and the other is multi-purposed. But we’ve decided to isolate project costs and funding, so the money hasn’t before (and shouldn’t now) flow arbitrarily in one direction or the other.
Well, you should at least pay all of the costs of the I-90 segment because it’s in Seattle…
[…and so on.]
RapidRide D + U-Link will improve Ballard to Capitol Hill travel times, especially off-peak…
Fun fact #1: RapidRide D contains no improvements in frequency whatsoever Monday-Saturday, and in fact represents a frequency drop after 10pm.
Fun fact #2: through-routing RapidRide C with RapidRide D (i.e. over the mid-construction viaduct) is likely to cause equal or greater headway fluctuations than the current situations.
Fun fact #3: RapidRide’s signal priority, apparently, can extend green lights for up to ten seconds. Which is awesome and likely to save time on a lucky day. But which does not avoid the many 3-minute waits at Leary, 2-minute waits at Dravus, or 4-minute waits at Mercer Place.
RapidRide D + U-Link will improve Ballard to Capitol Hill travel times, especially off-peak…
So without increased frequency, without improved reliability, without off-board payment, and without fixing any of the extended service slowdowns that result from the Ballard Bridge, from not using the Dravus underpass, and from the Uptown detour, how do you figure?
As for the streetcar… you’re right that the Westlake-Mercer segment should be reconstructed if it’s going to even come close to keeping its promises of speed and capacity. And yet that sort of obliterates the argument that the streetcar is taking advantage of pre-existing infrastructure for the sake of construction speed and cost-effectiveness (since almost none of the SLUT should be used as is).
So the sales pitch already makes two conflicting arguments. Off to a good start!
Also, the “16 minute” claim isn’t “Nelson/Nygaard’s number.” The original streetcar-boosters’ PowerPoint is responsible for that little doozie. Not a reliable source. (I have no idea to what extent Nelson/Nygaard ridership estimates relied on that claim.)
As Aleks points out, your insistence that a Ballard-to-downtown-via-U-Link line is bad for Ballardites seems based on the “X-to-downtown is paramount” fallacy that has long caused problems in Seattle transit planning.
But even presuming that were paramount, my calculations (based on U-Link’s 6-minute travel time) put Ballard-downtown via the spur at a mere 14 minutes. That’s less than half of most “direct” trips now. It’s 10+ minutes faster than RapidRide upon opening, and at least 5 minutes faster than SDOT-expedited RapidRide or the Fremont streetcar will ever achieve in the real world.
Who cares if you go 3 miles further as long as you get there faster?
WRT to the Rainier station, yes moving the funding from the East sub-area budget to the North sub-area budget is a decision driven by politics. However whatever the harm in that act it is outweighed by the benefits of “getting to yes” with the City of Bellevue over East Link.
Keeping political will oriented toward completing ST2 and preventing efforts toward “reforming” Sound Transit are critical. Make no mistake Sound Transit has plenty of enemies and doesn’t need to be adding to the list unnecessarily. Also realize that most so-called “reform” proposals are simply attempts to effectively kill the agency and steal its lunch money.
Where has Metro revealed the RapidRide D schedule? They didn’t “promise” improvements on the RapidRide B schedule either, but in the end the schedule was better than I expected (although no night owl). I assume we won’t know the final RR D schedule until next year.
Mike, I can’t seem to find a service schedule on any of Metro’s current RapidRide-specific sites, blogs, or promotional materials — all of which are notorious for the transience of their specific information — but the following headways have been released officially in the past:
6:00 AM – 7:00 PM = 10 minutes
7:00 PM – 10:00 PM = 15 minutes
after 10:00 PM = 30 minutes
Meanwhile, a line of text that has survived on this page for over a year now (“The D Line… will replace Metro routes 15 and 18 on [the entire shared segment from downtown to Leary”) is unmistakable: this is replacing all 18 service as well!
Current 15+18 headways (Monday-Saturday, locals only):
6:00 AM – 7:00 PM = 10 minutes (ends at 5:45 inbound, how much do you wanna bet RapidRide does too?)
7:00 PM – midnight = 15 minutes
After midnight = 30 minutes
So there you have it! RapidRide offers no service increase all day and night, and offers a service decrease after 10:00!
If you really want to be infuriated, check out the professional weasel they’ve given the unenviable job of lying with a straight face on the “RapidRide Blog“.
RapidRide will be 25% to 30% faster than the locals, which makes it even faster than the 15/18 expresses, he beams, providing precisely no basis for or evidence to support his claims. When challenged, he provides a link that extols the virtues RapidRide’s bus bulbs… all three of them, between 70th and 80th, where they’re least needed!
(Better link.):
p.s. It actually makes my stomach churn that the S.T.B. homepage, on its right side under “Best Reference Posts,” contains a “RapidRide Standards” link to a 3-year-old Martin-penned post claiming that RapidRide D will “roughly double service on route 15 or 18 both mid-day and after 7pm.”
Metro’s RapidRide site is extremely clear: it will replace both. It therefore doesn’t “double” the service on either. It doesn’t even match it.
I think it’s time for S.T.B. to trim the links to “reference” material that time has proven horribly false.
Can’t be done. Voters voted for an extension to Redondo.
Voters voted for a lot of things that aren’t happening. Most of which should before this does.
Maybe you should take that up with them instead of ranting about it here?
Don’t have to. Their sales taxes have disappeared, so should their boondoggliest projects.
[legitimate comparative outrage above]
Didn’t disappear, it reduced. Significantly. Down but not out. That doesn’t mean we get to say “Oh, you guys aren’t generating enough money. Bye bye goes your projects!” Because they’ve already raised money. There’s money waiting. As I stated above (or below) the money for 200th is ready. That’s why it got moved up.
I just don’t get you. With your infinite wisdom on what people want, why do you waste your time here?
It’s already a done deal. Draining the piggy bank to extend the tracks to another parking garage combined with the additional operational subsidy guarantees this will be the last capital expenditure the South sub-area will be able to afford. In fact they’ll probably have to cut back ST Express service just to afford this. ST can’t deliver on what was promised to the voters. It doesn’t matter where you place fault it’s just a fact. Happens with other voter approved measures too; like the nickle a gallon tax falling far short of what was promised. Keep in mind when you vote of the next tax package that the promises always exceed the reality of what’s delivered. The only exception in the history of the State have been tolls on bridges which have consistently paid off debt faster than anticipated.
+1.
And again, it’s worth repeating that subarea equity is actually hurting South King and East King.
A large number of the transit-riding population of South/East King use transit to get to Seattle. This is almost so obvious it goes without saying, but for evidence, look at the recently-released 2010 Metro Performance Report. The top-performing routes that don’t serve the Seattle core would barely avoid being the bottom-performing routes in Seattle. There are only four routes outside of the Seattle core which approach the top 25% of routes inside, and they’re the 128, 164, 169, and 345 — two of which do, in fact, serve Seattle.
In all likelihood, faster transit inside Seattle would be more helpful to suburban commuters than faster transit outside. Getting from Kent or Federal Way to Seattle is much faster (on a mph basis) than getting from, say, Westlake to Fremont. So if you live in Kent and commute to Adobe, then building rail to Fremont would be much more helpful to you than building rail closer to your home. (Especially since you’re just going to drive anyway.)
In practice, without subarea equity, South and East King would probably hurt themselves (and Seattle) even more, by siphoning even more money from Seattle to pay for not-very-useful commuter rail extensions. But if we were able to put aside our differences and focus on what’s best for the region — where by best, I mean providing the greatest amount of mobility to the greatest number of people — the answer would almost certainly be to build rail in Seattle first.
The linked Forbes article says that the Sea-Tac garage is 2nd largest in the world, not 2nd largest in America. #1 is at a mall in Alberta. So SeaTac’s garage is the largest in America.
Uff da. That is pretty large.
how many stalls does the SeaTac Airport garage have?
and how many more parking places will it gain when all the rental car space shifts to the new complex?
Click the link, the numbers are there.
Other airports don’t have gobs of parking? Just because it isn’t all in the same building doesn’t mean it’s any different.
Other airports have similar or more parking. Seatac’s garage is unique in that it’s all under ONE roof, in one structure.
Would it be possible to make some money by allowing some of the spaces to be used for paid airport parking? For example, a pricing scheme like $3 for one day and $10 for each additional day? This would be especially useful on weekends when the lot would be 95% empty if the only people using it were commuters.
The issue with that is that airport parking is, by its nature, long term.
We’d only be able to offer it Sat/Sun, because we need the spaces first thing Monday morning. That wouldn’t be a huge market. We should just leave parking to the private sector.
I’m getting confused here. Exactly which parking are we leaving to the free market to provide?
The “drive your car here, park it here, catch a shuttle to the airport here” type
Ah, but it’s in the public interest to provide free parking for daily park-and-ride drivers? Why on earth would that be?
Although I’ve never been a fan of it, free parking for park-and-riders is supposed to serve as a substitute for comprehensive local bus routes.
Or to serve a demographic that has preconceived misconceptions about buses. Know anyone that will ride Link but not a bus?
P&Rs have a 72-hour limit. We don’t want to subsidize air-trip travellers. They have plenty of parking lots to choose from.
And Park ‘n Riders don’t?
TLjr, there’s a big difference between a P&Rer going across town for the day, and an air-traveller going out of the region for several days or weeks. If he’s not around for several days, his car should be in the most out-of-the-way place possible, not taking up space in a P&R. All the airport lots have free shuttles to the airport, so it’s not like the driver is inconvenienced by parking in one.
(Also, P&Rs have a secondary role when somebody from outside the region is visiting someone inside and needs to park somewhere. But the 72-hour limit ensures that they can only do it for a couple days.)
Re: Transit and parking:
We’re building our transit system early in a period of inevitable transition from living patterns requiring private automobiles to live an ordinary life to patterns that don’t.
In design time-frame for terminal in question, it’s better that people leave their cars in a large garage containing a light rail station than continue to drive them everywhere in the region as they do now.
However, with the future in mind, it would be good to deliberately design the parking structures so that they can be easily converted to beneficial use when surrounding areas have been rebuilt for car-independent life.
You don’t need to advocate torture, Matt. Most motorists are now helpless victims. Use your engineering skills for above design and you’ll be remembered as a liberator!
Mark Dublin
Mark Dublin
It’s all spin. I could have come at this from the other side, anything that gets people out of their cars has reduced their pain, even a solution that involves $3 parking and a comfortable ride on our multi-billion dollar system rather than staring at the road in front of you and $10 parking. $3 is more painful than free, but less painful than status quo.
Of course the effect of adding parking is to both increase freeway capacity and parking capacity. We’re building up their car-dependant lifestyle, not breaking it down. The empty room they leave on the freeway will be taken up by the next sucker that has bought into the “drive until you qualify” giant house in the far suburbs dream. It’s called induced demand, and building new roads isn’t the only way to induce that demand – transit plus free parking can too.
That is assuming that the status quo involves paying $10 for parking. If I drove to work, I’d pay have to park neither at home nor work.
But you’d still sit in traffic, staring at the road.
If we can charge $3 and still fill a parking lot, then this choice is less painful than the status quo for every one of those people paying $3. Whether they pay $10 a day for parking at work or nothing.
Oh, and you’re paying at work and at home. The costs just aren’t broken out so that you can see them (and are likely sunk costs).
Matt,
The reality of Link is that even with 4 car consists and 2 minute headways, the carrying capacity of the line as designed is but a small fraction of the existing freeways. The line has indeed been sold to the voters in part as a relief solution for those that choose to continue driving.
In order to get to the ideal of changing the patterns of life, you are looking at massive changes in our existing built space and massive investment in non-auto infrastructure. On a scale that makes our current investment in Link seem like small change.
And here’s another reality, while creating dense walkable communities is important to our future, this region will never (as in not in our lifetimes) become like New York. And personally, I’m glad for that. But, we can become a series of dense urban walkable villages connected by transit. You also need to get over the idea that the only legitimate place to be is the biggest city around. There are very valid reasons why people live in the various places of this region and each of them contributes to our economy. Tacoma for example has a metro population of over 800,000 and serves vital shipping port on par if not bigger than the Port of Seattle’s container facilities. It is also a vital part of the defense of this nation with 2 major military bases (well, now 1 ginormous one) employing scores of thousands of people. Are you going to suggest that all those people have no legitimate business living and working where they do?
Either you’re not paying attention, or I’m missing the point. I keep talking about how people should live close to their work. If they work in Tacoma, they should live in Tacoma. We could go into detail how efficiencies lead toward most people living in large cities and the terribly inefficient network model used in sprawl, but we’re getting off topic.
“we can become a series of dense urban walkable villages connected by transit” Not if we build big parking lots next to all of our stations. I commuted to one of those in the Bay Area. No density, all cars. You’d even have to walk through two huge parking lots and across a major street (really, a highway) to get to the nearest business – a big box store. That’s exactly what we’re doing here.
Each lane of traffic, each direction, will get you about 2,000 cars per hour at peak flow (page 9 of this powerpoint). At 2 minute 4-car trains, that’s about 800 people x 30 = 24,000 people per hour – about the same as 10 lanes of traffic in each direction.
Matt, how will not building that station and parking garage make that area more walkable? The difference between having a station and not having a station is that thousands of people can go somewhere without a car. Long Island has LIRR; New Jersey has New Jersey Transit and PATH and Amtrak. The difference between the New York metro and Pugetopolis or the Bay Area is not the existence of sprawl: it’s the fact that in NY/NJ/CT/Philly you can get between the cities and suburbs without a car, and you can do so on weekends and evenings as well as “peak hours”. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing.
I didn’t say not to build the station. I’m in favor of the station. But don’t add the parking lot.
How will they get to the station if there are only a few local buses running half-hourly or hourly, or not at all in some hours? Have you never gotten off a bus in south King County and walked an hour to somebody’s house?
They simply won’t until we reroute buses and add TOD. The numbers will look bad at first for this station. But we’re not planning for 5 years down the line – we’re planning for 50. If you want density around the station, the worst thing you can do is add parking.
“The Apartments at Jail’s Edge” sounds like a great place to live. When can I pre-lease?
Fun fact: Kent Station is quite sucessful, despite having a jail.
So Matt, you get to decree who can live where? Do you get to decree what job they can have? Life doesn’t work that way. What choices one makes are through a variety of factors.
What if in a household where 2 members work but in different locations? In a situation where there is significant scarcity of work, should one member simply stop working in order to conform to the idealistic notion of Matt the Engineer? I don’t think so.
So, you’ve suggested that at maximum theoretical capacity Link could carry more people than cars comparing 1 link line to 10 lanes of traffic. Well, consider that right now, freeways go to places that Link doesn’t and won’t. Consider that if more cars operate as HOV’s instead of SOV’s, your capacity argument goes out the window. Consider all the people on I-5 in south King country driving north, they don’t all continue to Seattle, large percentages of them veer right and go to Renton, Tukwila and the Eastside. If you live in say… Covington and happen to work or intern a couple days a week in say… downtown Redmond, Link isn’t going to help that person get there anytime soon. And it shouldn’t. And the answer isn’t that one person living in a multiperson household shouldn’t be commuting to Redmond from Covington, the answer has to lie in acknowledging peoples’ circumstances and needs as they exist. To that end, I think park and rides and parking at SOME train stations is an appropriate bridge to the future.
The built environment already exists, we can now through policy decisions shape our future but it doesn’t include in our life times bulldozing whole cities and roads. With 1.5 million more people coming in the next 2 decades, we have to plan for where and how they are going to live. So, if they come in a linear fashion, in 5 years, 350,000 will have arrived in the Puget Sound region. But Central Link’s projected daily ridership is only projected to increase by 10,000 riders. Some people will choose the big city, others will for various reasons choose other places. We can make it easy for them to choose living modes in dense urban villages or not. One way is to acknowledge that no one city is an island in our economic region that people and commerce freely flow between them.
Kent station is retail. No residential. Sound Transit owns 1,101 spaces, and that doesn’t include the hundreds of spaces for the shopping.
So are you trying to say we need a bus transit facility, some shopping, and an assload of parking to be successful?
You’re fighting a straw man, [Charles]. I’m not telling anyone where and how to live. But our policy and design decisions have impacts. Make it easier to live far from work where land is cheap, and more people will move there.
“What if in a household where 2 members work but in different locations?” Fine with me. Whether or not 200th has parking will not change this fact. We can incentivise a shorter commute, but I’ve never suggested we outlaw longer ones.
“We can make it easy for them to choose living modes in dense urban villages or not.” And creating parking lots is the “not” option.
Kent Station’s in the middle of a residential area. So is 200th. In fact, there’s an elementary school right next door and a couple of private schools within walking distance.
I wish Matt would go back to engineering issues. Let’s make this the best transit system technical-wise rather than worrying about whether there’s a parking garage.
Detailed design is garbage if you haven’t worked through issues at the schematic phase. Driving quickly is pointless if you’re heading in the wrong direction.
S 200th is in a former residential area; the Port bought out just about all the houses. That’s why SCORE is getting built where it is–the land is useless.
Good point Tim. Due to the airport Tukwilla, Sea-Tac, and S. 200th stations are all going to be somewhat marginal locations for residential TOD. People aren’t going to pay a lot of money to listen to loud jets 24/7.
Some people will put up with the noise for other perceived benefits, witness some of the apartment/condo developments near TIBS marketing their proximity to the station. However this area will never be desirable in the same way Roosevelt or even Northgate are desirable.
Remind me why we’re choosing this location to put a high capacity rail station.
Maybe the agency should be renamed Sound Parking. The train is just an amenity to draw people to their lots. It absolutely is an incentive to live out in the ‘burbs and ditch the car before the congestion incentive kicks in. Why pay more to live close to work?
Some people like living on large lots. You can’t always get that close to work.
I like living on a large lot. I don’t work in DT Seattle; I”m 7 miles from work and ride a bike about 1/3 of the time. There’s plenty of employment outside of the DT core but there’s a relatively small amount of housing in the CBD. Build that instead of P&R lots.
Depends on your definition of a “large lot”. If you’re not looking for a half-acre, you can usually find one relatively close to just about any workplace.
And if you are, then you can find a workplace out in the outer suburbs, instead. But if you want to live in the exurbs and work in the center city, don’t ask government to go out of it’s way to facilitate that commute.
While there are professions in every market, not every market has every profession.
What [Lack] said. Specifically, compared to a far exurban commute you can buy an extra half million dollar of house and save 24% of you non-working, waking life by moving close to work.
Some people like race cars. Or gold teeth. Or skydiving. Where is the public subsidized skydiving? Just a billion dollars could buy a whole lot of airplanes.
A couple of other things:
First RapidRide D + U-Link will improve Ballard to Capitol Hill travel times, especially off-peak and especially if the City of Seattle can make the proposed corridor improvements in the Draft TMP.
If the Ballard-Freemont streetcar is built it will improve travel times even further.
Sure neither are the kind of times we would expect if there was a grade-separated Link line to Ballard (even with a rail to rail transfer). But I fully expect such a thing to be part of a ST3 plan.
Oops, this comment was meant for another thread.
To me, that falls under the category of “life choices”.
If I want to live in Belltown and pursue a career as a lumberjack, my commute is simply going to suck. It is simply not a reasonable expectation for the government to go out of it’s way to accommodate my particular lifestyle choice.
We’re talking about the lowest-price part of the county. The place where people go if they can’t afford to live elsewhere. We’re not talking 3-car garages and Lexuses on acre-lots.
Which is another great reason to build density. What’s cheaper than a house on cheap land? A townhouse on cheap land. What’s cheaper than that? An apartment on cheap land.
It doesn’t matter the level of income. Density is always cheaper than sprawl.
Not everyone likes density. That’s why some move to the suburbs and exurbs–they don’t want their house touching or even within spitting distance of another house.
Nobody is proposing that we bulldoze massive areas of single family homes. There is plenty of supply for those that want single family homes. But some want, or are willing to live in, more dense housing. And are willing to save on rent to do so.
This is the fallacy of the single cause.
It’s true that the suburbs and exurbs are less dense than Seattle, on average. It is *not* true that that’s the main reason why people choose to live in the suburbs and exurbs.
If someone wants to spend their money on lots of land, cars, and other things they need so that they can be the only house on their street, then power to them. But there are many more people who live in low-density areas because of the enormous subsidies that all levels of government throw towards that lifestyle.
There are lots of good, solid reasons to subsidize density: it’s better for the environment; it’s cheaper (once you get past the initial investments); it’s more energy-efficient (so less foreign oil needed); it’s safer (when you factor in the lack of deaths due to motor vehicle accidents). I’m not aware of a single legitimate reason to subsidize sprawl. And yet, when public transit can get you from Federal Way to Westlake more quickly than from Ballard to Capitol Hill, subsidizing sprawl is exactly what we’re doing.
Amen and bravo, Aleks.
And yet, when public transit can get you from Federal Way to Westlake more quickly than from Ballard to Capitol Hill, subsidizing sprawl is exactly what we’re doing.
Ballard to Capitol Hill is (or should be) the great litmus test of Seattle transit planning, politics, and advocacy.
They’re two of Seattle’s busiest and most resolutely mixed-use areas (Ballard’s still got more jobs than Northgate, North Link purists.) They offer unique experiences and services that make them regional destinations.
They are barely 5 miles apart. Driving between the two takes no more than 12-15 minutes, ever. Thousands upon thousands daily make trips between the two already (the smart ones do this by car).
But traveling between the two by transit takes 40-45 minutes minimum, (not counting waiting time for the first leg). And at the wrong time of day, or if you’re especially unlucky, 65-80 minutes is all too common.
The streetcar plan the know-nothings are ballyhooing simply doesn’t fix this. At best, streetcar + U-Link will shave the trip down to 35-40 minutes and make that number more reliable (Fremont Bridge’s 35 daily openings excepted).
Not acceptable. That’s still 3-4 times as long as driving, and as Aleks says, it’s still longer than a trip from Federal Way.
Ballard to Capitol Hill should be our Waterloo. No transit plan that short-shrifts such trips should be acceptable.
But even here, on a transit advocacy blog, “not in our lifetimes” is considered acceptable.
I’m not an inherently angry person. But that’s why I find myself so irritated around here.
If you stop traveling between the two, your hypertension will decrease.
[d.p.] Problem solved. 10 minutes to the U district from Ballard, and add a few for Link. Usually faster than driving.
The real problem lies much deeper. In the United States, we just don’t build big infrastructure projects anymore, and certainly not for transit.
Vancouver just completed the Canada Line, and is now considering building yet another line along Broadway to UBC. Europe and Asia have transit megaprojects all over the place, ranging in scale from streetcars all the way up to high-speed rail that puts our proposals to shame.
Meanwhile, here we are, quibbling over whether we can afford to build a second in-city rail line.
Imagine if the ST taxing district had an income tax. It would just be a rider on your existing federal return; no new forms, just an extra checkbox. Whatever your federal tax burden is calculated to be, ST gets an additional 5% of that amount.
Suddenly, we can afford to do *everything*. We can tunnel under QA Hill, and add a Ballard spur, and have them both intersect in Ballard. We can fully grade-separate MLK, and make the whole line driverless, so that we can have SkyTrain-like frequency. Hell, we can build that whole crazy gondola network. :) And in doing this, we’ll provide jobs to thousands of people, just like the New Deal before us. The region will prosper, and the infrastructure we’ve built will reward us for decades.
Instead, the response to everything is “but we don’t have enough money!”. That’s why we can’t build transit, or have universal health care, or provide food/shelter for the homeless, or educate our children properly, or maintain any of the other thousands of programs that are getting cut across the country. (It’s even why many of us think that the DBT is doomed to failure; like the Big Dig, it will run out of money, and it will get delayed, and there’s nothing we can do about it.)
We’re the richest country in the world, and yet we’re acting like we’re the poorest. This has to stop.
You mean like Sounder, the WSF system and free P&R lots with Express buses?
Yes, I do.
All of that subsidy money should be going to in-city capital improvements, including grade-separated rail to all of our urban centers and villages (or, at the very least, our hub urban villages).
I don’t care how much Lynnwood or Federal Way are densifying. Ballard and Fremont are already dense! They have jobs, and people, and retail, and heavily-used transit service. And if we took the money that we’re spending on those suburban P&Rs and South Link, and spent it in the city instead, we would get a lot more bang for our buck.
Everyone here likes to talk about transit-oriented development. But the best place for transit-oriented development is somewhere that already has (and likes) development! Ballard has some of the highest-ridership bus routes in the Pacific Northwest, and people are building apartment and condo buildings there left and right. The last I heard, S. 200th was expected to have about 2,700 riders daily. Ballard has more riders than that on *buses*, and it should go without saying that building rail would attract even more.
I’m with d.p. on this one; it boggles my mind that, even on a transit advocacy blog, people think that a BART-style commuter metro is a better use of our money than a subway to the places where people live and work *today*.
I’m not even that much of an ideologue about this. I know that express buses serve a valid purpose for moving present-day sprawlers between home and work without their cars. I think park-and-rides and the S. 200th garage are necessary evils, and better than pretending that we’re magically going to provide sell-your-car levels of service in the boonies.
But last week, when Ben & Andrew insisted that an east-west Link spur was “undoable,” not because of Seattle’s ability to fund it but because Northgate and beyond “need” four-car trains every four minutes, my head nearly exploded
As Aleks knows, I grew up on Boston’s Green Line. Light rail, one central tunnel, four branches, 6-14 minute frequencies on each, with 1-3 car trains. Carries a quarter of a million passengers a day. So yeah, you could say I know what those sort of numbers look and feel like.
The most ambitious number I’ve heard for North Link is 75,000. And North Link includes Brooklyn station. North of 45th, we’re looking at 50,000-60,000 max. (Make no mistake, Brooklyn’s numbers are included in any salesman’s estimate to make the project more impressive.)
Any estimate of crosstown ridership needs to include affected walksheds of the 18, 15, 28, 5, 16, and 26, in addition to the 44/46 riders… plus the many thousands of drivers who clog up the east-west roads all day but who currently avoid the 44 like the plague it is. Those people would be on the train in a nano-second.
You’ve easily collected tens of thousands of riders right there. Easily enough to put it in the same league as North Link.
So why are transit advocates screaming “undoable!”?
Hey, I just crunched the numbers elsewhere in this mega-thread. The results astonished even me. It bears repeating:
“75,000. That’s the highest number I’ve ever heard for North Link. That includes Brooklyn station. Subtract Brooklyn (any spur proposal includes Brooklyn in both lines) and you get 60,000 max.
That’s 30,000 each way. Peak is at least 2 hours long. To argue that 24,000 (peak direction) need it in those two hours is to claim that 80% of usage will be one-way commutes. If that were the case (it’s not), why the heck would we build an all-day-oriented transit mode in the first place?”
Roosevelt-Northgate-Lynnwood do not need the cited capacity, period, and won’t any time in the forseeable future. Can we please stop citing this fallacy as a basis for (therefore unsound) further argument?
To be fair the 70,000-75,000 rider per day number for U-Link/North Link doesn’t actually include any ridership North of Northgate.
A very optimistic guess is NCT will add another 24,000 boardings per day.
A majority of the ridership on the line will be from/to Brooklyn, UW, and Capitol Hill stations. Not to say Roosevelt and Northgate don’t look good (they do compared to Central or East Link) or that Lynnwood ridership isn’t impressive for a suburban P&R (it is) but they are dwarfed by U-District and to a lesser extent Capitol Hill ridership.
From a capacity standpoint there are two issues with a spur line. The first is allowing room for additional growth. Both for the eventual expansion all the way to Everett and for any ridership growth at stations North of Brooklyn (including any on a hypothetical spur). Second is once system capacity is reached South of Brooklyn any riders from North of there (including from a spur) will be squeezing out riders from Brooklyn, UW, and Capitol Hill station.
The remaining barriers to a Ballard spur are technical, financial, and political.
From a technical standpoint there is no provision right now for putting an underground flying junction in North of Brooklyn Station. Installing such a thing after North Link opens will be expensive and complex.
Much more serious is the financial issue. There simply is no money in ST2 to build a $700 million/mile spur to Ballard in the North sub-area budget. Not even if you drop the NCT to Lynnwood, the First Hill Streetcar, and make the East sub-area pay for all of East Link including Rainier Station. Even if you throw in the money it would take to build the Ballard/Fremont streetcar you don’t have enough.
Sure you “borrow” the money from other sub-areas, but that opens a huge can of worms. From a political standpoint such a move would likely mean the end of Sound Transit and no further system expansion.
Keeping the various projects and services programed for the South King, East King, Snohomish, and Pierce sub-areas is necessary to keep everyone on-board, to finish the Seattle projects in ST2, and to have any hope of passing ST3 in the future.
Similarly the idea of taking the money going to the WSF system, Sounder, or free P&R lots with Express buses and putting it toward rail in the City of Seattle won’t even get out of the gate. Even if the money were to be freed up it wouldn’t be given to Seattle.
Frankly I expect the road-warriors to be making an all out assault on transit funding in the name of filling the budget holes on WSDOTs highway project wish list. Sure they will cloak it in a “fairness” argument (“transit riders should pay their own way!” “only 5% use transit, what about the rest of us?”), but the writing is on the wall. BTW one little-noted effect of passing I-1125 is it will take away all of the mitigation money for additional transit in the 520 corridor.
I don’t think having Seattle pick a fight with its suburbs over transit funding is a wise course of action. The end result won’t be pretty and will give transit opponents exactly what they want.
Accidentally posted this above …
A couple of other things:
First RapidRide D + U-Link will improve Ballard to Capitol Hill travel times, especially off-peak and especially if the City of Seattle can make the proposed corridor improvements in the Draft TMP.
If the Ballard-Freemont streetcar is built it will improve travel times even further.
Sure neither are the kind of times we would expect if there was a grade-separated Link line to Ballard (even with a rail to rail transfer). But I fully expect such a thing to be part of a ST3 plan.
RapidRide D + U-Link will improve Ballard to Capitol Hill travel times, especially off-peak…
Fun fact #1: RapidRide D contains no improvements in frequency whatsoever Monday-Saturday, and in fact represents a frequency drop after 10pm.
Fun fact #2: through-routing RapidRide C with RapidRide D (i.e. over the mid-construction viaduct) is likely to cause equal or greater headway fluctuations than the current situations.
Fun fact #3: RapidRide’s signal priority, apparently, can extend green lights for up to ten seconds. Which is awesome and likely to save time on a lucky day. But which does not avoid the many 3-minute waits at Leary, 2-minute waits at Dravus, or 4-minute waits at Mercer Place.
So without increased frequency, without improved reliability, without off-board payment, and without fixing any of the extended service slowdowns that result from the Ballard Bridge, from not using the Dravus underpass, and from the Uptown detour, how do you figure?
As for the streetcar… you’re right that the Westlake-Mercer segment should be reconstructed if it’s going to even come close to keeping its promises of speed and capacity. And yet that sort of obliterates the argument that the streetcar is taking advantage of pre-existing infrastructure for the sake of construction speed and cost-effectiveness (since almost none of the SLUT should be used as is).
So the sales pitch already makes two conflicting arguments. Off to a good start!
Also, the Nelson/Nygaard study isn’t responsible for the “16 minute” claim. The original streetcar-boosters’ PowerPoint is. So it’s hardly a claim of experts. I have no idea to what extend Nelson/Nygaard ridership estimates relied on that claim.
As Aleks points out, your insistence that a Ballard-to-downtown-via-U-Link line is bad for Ballardites seems based on the “X-to-downtown is paramount” fallacy that has long caused problems in Seattle transit planning.
But even presuming that were paramount, my calculations (based on U-Link’s 6-minute travel time) put Ballard-downtown via the spur at a mere 14 minutes. That’s less than half of most “direct” trips now. It’s 10+ minutes faster than RapidRide upon opening, and at least 5 minutes faster than SDOT-expedited RapidRide or the Fremont streetcar will ever achieve in the real world.
Who cares if you go 3 miles further as long as you get there faster?
I give up; I don’t know which thread the RapidRide D schedule issue belongs to.
DP, where has Metro revealed the RapidRide D schedule? They didn’t release the B schedule until a few weeks before opening, and it turned out to be better than I expected. (I.e., more frequent than just combining the 230 and 253.) I assume we won’t know the final D schedule until next year.
Mike, I can’t seem to find a service schedule on any of Metro’s current RapidRide-specific sites, blogs, or promotional materials — all of which are notorious for the transience of their specific information — but the following headways have been released officially in the past:
6:00 AM – 7:00 PM = 10 minutes
7:00 PM – 10:00 PM = 15 minutes
after 10:00 PM = 30 minutes
Meanwhile, a line of text that has survived on this page for over a year now (“The D Line… will replace Metro routes 15 and 18 on [the entire shared segment from downtown to Leary”) is unmistakable: this is replacing all 18 service as well!
Current 15+18 headways (Monday-Saturday, locals only):
6:00 AM – 7:00 PM = 10 minutes
(ends at 5:45 inbound; how much do you wanna bet RapidRide does the same?)
7:00 PM – midnight = 15 minutes
After midnight = 30 minutes
So there you have it! RapidRide offers no service increase all day and night, and offers a service decrease after 10:00!
If you really want to be infuriated, check out the professional weasel they’ve given the unenviable job of lying with a straight face on the “RapidRide Blog“:
“RapidRide will be 25% to 30% faster than the locals, which makes it even faster than the 15/18 expresses!” he beams, providing precisely no basis for or evidence to support his claims.
When challenged, he provides a link that extols the virtues RapidRide’s bus bulbs… all three of them, between 70th and 80th, where they’re least needed!
(Better link): http://rapidride.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/how-will-rapidride-get-you-there-faster/#comment-80
p.s. It actually makes my stomach churn that the S.T.B. homepage, on its right side under “Best Reference Posts,” contains a “RapidRide Standards” link to a 3-year-old Martin-penned post that RapidRide D will “roughly double service on route 15 or 18 both mid-day and after 7pm.”
Metro’s RapidRide site is extremely clear — it will replace both. It therefore doesn’t “double” the service on either.
I think its time for S.T.B. to trim some of the “reference” material that time has proven horrible false.
So, if the 1100 stall garage gets built, can Kent/Des-Moines P&R and Starlake P&R get redeveloped?
And then, can the 574 cease serving these P&Rs, so it can become more of an “ST Express”? And the various Metro expresses to these P&Rs could go away, too.
Also, I’m not seeing any plan to re-route the 574 to serve 200th St Station, so as to provide the quickest express bus routing to the south end of Link. I was once under the impression that a major point of 200th St Station was to provide a better bus link to the portions of King County south of the airport, so I’m concerned that that doesn’t appear to be part of the plan. In other words, it is becoming a multi-hundred million dollar station to serve 1100 parking stalls, and nobody else.
Also regarding the 574, I’d like ST to consider a tweak to their county-based fares: Yes, the 510-513, and 590-595 ought to charge double the one-county fare (and should do so consistently, designating the routes as two-county routes rather than fare-basing the zones, so as to eliminate the time involved in requesting zone changes on the ORCA reader downtown with a couple dozen buses sitting right behind). But in order to incentivize riding Link + 574, I think the 574 should be categorized as a “one-county-equivalent route”, due to its shorter length.
The demand for 590s continues to increase. This could have something to do with people wanting to save $3.50 every day they choose marginally expensive bus service over the sunk cost of Sounder service.
The 577 remains popular, too. And why not? If someone wanted to ride Link to 200th St Station, and then hop on a 574 express (or any other bus) to Federal Way, that would cost 50 cents to a dollar extra for the round trip. So, I’d like to see the 577/578 designated as a two-county-equivalent route, and charge twice the rate of one-county-equivalent routes. South King County needs the money.
If one-county-equivalent and two-county-equivalent aren’t politically salable labels, then come up with something like ST Rapid Transit for cheaper routes and ST Express for more expensive routes.
But don’t leave bus access out of the 200th St plan, please.
Could it also be that and express bus from downtown Tacoma to downtown Seattle is 1/2 the time of Sounder? Sounder is nice and pleasant ride, but time wise, past Auburn, the value is questionable. Though I understand it seems a large number of riders come from Puyallup/Sumner.
That IS the reason people ride the 59x from Tacoma to Seattle. It is cheaper, faster, and more frequent.
Sounder is only a better option for Puyallup/Sumner, it is NOT time competitive from Tacoma to Seattle.
Of course, it is a more comfortable ride, and choice riders generally prefer rail. So there are some riders who take Sounder from Tacoma who won’t even consider taking a bus.
Sure. Are you going to write Metro the check? Because Sound Transit isn’t.
Why? So the people who drive to these get to drive further? What about the two dozen people that walk to them now? What about the people that aren’t going to the Rainier Valley? Or what about the people that want to get downtown, but don’t want to increase their trip duration just because it’s in a LRV?
Nor should it. You’d force a transfer to a 7-15 minute headway train that travels a short distance.
Look again. There’s a bus transfer facility. We don’t plan reroutes five years before they take effect.
So it will be illegal to transfer from the A Line?
What’s your reason for wanting to dump people on this? Just to make it so we have fewer buses on I-5 north of 200th? If so, please look at the travel times of driving from Lakewood to 200th, and Link from 200th to Downtown. Notice how you significantly increase the trip time AND force a transfer. You’re watering down the transit experience for a ton of riders.
Or they appreciate its higher frequency, or their destination is not near King Street Station.
ST has not said that it won’t restructure the 574. Your feedback to them will make it more likely that they do. You can also suggest deleting the 577 and truncating the 594 off-peak, when people have less expectation of speed, and when greater frequency would be a godsend. You may have enough money to achieve RapidRide frequency on the 574, and then it would be an easier argument to not extend Link south.
Why would they restructure the 574? All you would do is increase trip durations and force transfers. Two things that kill ridership.
People have a blind spot about off-peak frequency. They don’t realize how convenient and satisfying it is until it’s there. Then they wonder how they lived without it.
There are arguments both ways on restructuring the south King/Pierce buses. I’m not saying I have the perfect answer, just an idea. I know I have often wished there were 15-minute frequency to Tacoma at all times, even if it took slightly longer and required a transfer. Some people are resistent to any transfers or slowdowns, but that’s most critical during peak times. So I suggest keeping the peak runs as-is and consolidating the non-peak runs.
+1. There’s always a tradeoff between time on-vehicle and time off-vehicle. Traditionally, the decision (at least in these parts) has been to exclusively reduce frequency off-peak, rather than increase trip time. But we’re starting to see that change (e.g. the 512), and I’m hoping that Link will push us even more in that direction.
So you’re willing to let the trip take 20 minutes longer just so you can wait 15 minutes less for the next bus?
South Link’s time handicap is 10 minutes. That’s the longest it’s slower than the 194 under best-case conditions for the latter. My estimates are that the difference will remain constant if Link is extended to Federal Way or Tacoma. So 10 minutes slower than the 577, and 10 minutes slower than the 594. That’s for a trip entirely on Link. Ten minutes is not a bad compromise off-peak, if in return you get double or triple frequency, and freedom from oil price spikes. A severe oil shortage could cause the sudden suspension of ST Express routes.
It’s worse time if you transfer to the 574 and then go to Federal Way or Tacoma, but how much depends on the bus’s frequency. The further south Link is extended, the less of an impact this will be, because Link does not leave the freeway to wander into P&Rs along the way. Instead it stops on the tracks at a RapidRide transfer point, should anybody want to transfer. The further Link goes, the shorter the 574 has to go, which means it can be more frequent with the same service hours.
200th is a special case because it’s so close to the airport. It would be silly to truncate it a mile short of the biggest destination. KDM would me more reasonable as a truncation point, and Federal Way even more so, because then you’re saving several miles in bus-hours and gasoline.
+1 to what Mike said.
For non-commuter buses, the best way (IMHO) to calculate travel time is from “mind to door”. That is, you start at the moment you decide you want to go somewhere, and you end the moment you get there.
Let’s say the best case end-to-end time for the 574 is X. Then the worst-case time is X + 30.
Now, let’s say truncating the bus at Federal Way lets you double the frequency. Link runs every 10 minutes. So your worst case time is now X + 25.
Thus, even if Link takes 5 minutes longer to cover the same distance, your worst case time is better.
Late at night, the difference is even more dramatic, since the 574 currently drops to hourly, but Link stays at 15 minutes.
There are a number of other arguments in favor of truncated buses:
– Link is immune to highway (and airport) traffic, so you don’t have to factor in those delays.
– Express buses skip stops. If you need to get to any destination along the route that the express bus skips but Link doesn’t, then it’s *way* faster to take Link.
– Buses can be timed (inbound) or held (outbound) to facilitate Link transfers. Inbound, that decreases the transfer penalty on average, and outbound, it reduces it to pretty much zero.
FWIW, I’m still not convinced that extending Link past 200th should be a priority now. But if we do it, the least we can do is take advantage of the frequency.
Guh. Is this tiny extension sensible? It doesn’t seem to be.
Is the airport garage completely full? If not, really that should be enough parking.
And doesn’t it make more sense to wait to build an extension until you can reach something approximating a destination, rather than stopping in the middle of nowhere?…
…well, “subarea equity” gets this result I guess. Sigh.