89 Replies to “Sunday Open Thread: Beijing’s Metro is Crowded”
BUSES v. RAIL – Revisited Again, and again, and ….
Much has been written these past weeks on improving Metro’s bus network, with hundreds of insightful comments along the way. I really enjoy the thought provoking discussions here on STB. Comparisons between LRT, BRT and old fashion bus service abound, with most acknowledging a properly integrated system of all three, using the right tool for the job, would be the most efficient network. I agree too.
If we assume that tax revenues are a finite resource to all of transit at some point, then it becomes important as to how that resource is allocated – ‘the more bang for the buck crowd’. The classic comparison comes from Metro’s Rt 194 from the Bus Tunnel to SeaTac Airport, taking 30 minutes on most trips, with few stops along the way after Spokane St on bus only lanes. The nearest current day service we have today would be ST550 from BTC to DSTT, taking 33 minutes, running 6 minute headways in the peak. From ST’s SIP, this route costs $2.78 per boarding. As both the ST550 and MT194 had nearly identical trip times, lengths, and operating environment, it follows that cost would be very similar today.
Looking at Central Link, the same trip takes a bit longer at 38 minutes and costs more than double at $6.20 per boarding, excluding depreciation of about $9 per boarding (2.5 B/30yr) and Pr. &Int. of about $4. ($106M/yr) That pushes the cost per rider to nearly $20 each, whereas a comparable bus would have cost about $3 (fully allocated, as purchased from MT).
Before everyone wets there pants, I also acknowledge that the 550 is maxed out at 6 min. headways due to the current DSTT tunnel agreement, and there is no way the MT194 could accommodate the current loads carried on Central Link in total, but could have increased service on just the DSTT-Airport runs for today’s loads. It’s interesting to note that on–time performance is nearly identical between the 550 and Link, at 90%.
My only point here this morning is that expecting rail (any rail) will always pencil out to be more efficient than any other competing bus lines. Yes, there is efficiency in having only one operator for many more riders, but that’s obviously not a given, according to the bean counters. Adding more cars to Link, and higher loads from Northgate and beyond will bring costs close to or better than bus service, but assuming that formula works for all the rail lines we love to draw on our maps is a fool’s errand.
Carry on David, Bruce and others to ‘tune-up our bus system’ or maybe it’s time for a major overhaul.
Are there any plans to implement any true BRT in the region? The closest I’ve heard is proclamations that Madison will be a BRT corridor. But I just can’t see buses getting dedicated ROW all along Madison. Unless someone is designing a Madison Gondola, then BRT is not part of the toolbox that is being explored for transit improvements in the region.
The plan for the Madison BRT is the only true BRT plan I’ve seen.
It includes eliminating street parking on Madison and adding dedicated bus lanes. It’s assuming 5 minute headways with 40′ ETBs.
West of Broadway, getting the transit lanes is easy and painless. Which is good, because that’s the part where it’s most needed.
East of Broadway, the ROW narrows from 5 to 4 lanes, and bus lanes become much more difficult. If we got a bus lane, it would probably mean that a lot of popular left turns would have to get banned at rush-hour to keep general-purpose through traffic moving, and that opens up a very ugly can of worms. We would probably not get transit lanes above Broadway when the line opens. But most of the delays associated with that mixed traffic will happen between Broadway and 12th; above 12th it’s more or less smooth sailing.
The city also studied BRT on Eastlake and Westlake. The authors of the transit master plan seemed to not consider that very seriously. I say that because (if I read the report correctly) of the way they calculated the capital cost per rider. For the streetcars they divided capital costs by the number of riders in a 30 year time period (the life of a streetcar). For the bus they divided by the number of riders over a 15 year period (the life of a bus). But in both cases the capital costs were mostly street and utility work, not the cost of vehicles. So essentially they doubled the costs per rider of BRT versus a streetcar.If they had done both over a 30 year period BRT would have fared quite a bit better.
ST is planning to study BRT on 405. I have no idea what that means or what level of service it would be. That’s what would have to be defined.
A real BRT along 99 makes so much sense to me that I can’t quite understand why they aren’t doing it. We already have dedicated bus lanes for most of 99 through much of King and Snohomish county… connecting them into a single BRT route down one of the busiest corridors in the state.
The only sense I can make is that they are afraid people will not use it because it goes through “rough” parts of town. People being afraid to ride it could be a problem I guess, but its not like Link doesn’t go through parts of town people consider “dangerous” and they use it anyway, so I don’t think that is really an effective argument against making this happen.
I certainly hope its not the silly parking lanes on 99 between Green Lake and 105th that are keeping this from happening.
Some combination of rapid ride E (under construction) and Swift (maybe run jointly or by Sound Transit) seems like an excellent use of the corridor that we could have operational rather quickly.
Is there something I am missing here?
I still want rapid rail transit through Seattle (ala Seattle Subway), but this seems like a pretty good mid term solution while we are getting that constructed.
99 BRT from Seattle to Everett is also in ST’s long-range plan. Again, we have no idea what that means. But presumably it means something like Swift, with at least 15-minute frequency. It would run into the same problem the original 174 (downtown – Federal Way) had: it’s hard to keep a very long line with many intersections on-time. It’s also possible that when ST gets around to studying this corridor, it will also study overpasses or Link, which would improve reliability and travel time.
As for why Metro didn’t do it, it’s because it couldn’t stretch the RapidRide budget that far. It couldn’t afford both a Swift route and a local route.
@Mike Orr Yeah that makes sense, it just seems like a waste of a good corridor not to do more to make use of it for transit.
Resources are always a problem of course, and the signals do slow things down… couldn’t they time the signals more like they do with Link in Rainier valley to improve reliability?
Probably, I don’t know. 99 is already timed so that a car driving the speed limit hits minimal stoplights. The problem with the 358 is it makes so many stops that it can’t make the synchronized lights. You could implement transit priority on the lights but that would impact the other traffic in the area. The other thing MLK has is that all except a few intersections were made right-turn-only so they don’t cross the tracks. I’m not sure how MLK’s remaining intersection spacing compares to Aurora, since already you can’t effectively turn left except at a signalized intersection. Closing more intersections on Aurora would have a significant impact on the area because there are such large neighborhoods on both sides and no other way through.
In one city I’ve heard, buses have the same privilege as emergency vehicles so they can bypass stoplights and traffic. It’s a shame we don’t give transit similar priority here. That would help to close the convenience gap between transit and SOVs.
@Mike Orr
It sounds like having an express bus with fewer stops might be a good idea here.
On another interesting (and somewhat related) note, I just went by the Interurban/99 crossing today and noticed that the last commercial property on the complex where the two interurban bridges meet (a Denny’s) has closed.
If a rapid bus (or other high capacity transit) existed in that corridor it seems like there would be a lot of opportunity for redevelopment here. I do understand that this is not a small ask though… especially since there are not yet a lot of high density residential properties along 99 as of yet. Given the current rental/real estate environment though you would think there would be some pressure to change that….
Mike Orr,
Concerning Highway 99 traffic lights being timed so a car driving the speed limit; that is not the case on a Saturday night between SR-525 and NE 185th Street as I found out last night. The lights through Lynnwood, Edmonds and Mountlake Terrace seem to not to talk to one another.
@ Mike Orr “ST is planning to study BRT on 405. I have no idea what that means or what level of service it would be. That’s what would have to be defined.”
And which one will eastside residents go for in ST3?
Interesting. Which flavor do we like better? The WSDOT flavor is 10-minute frequency weekdays until late evening, from Lynnwood to SeaTac. The ST report is so long and complex I only read part of it, and I didn’t see anything about frequency or how it would differ from WSDOT’s. The ST report looks like an alternatives analysis, which must mean the AA was done and BRT won.
I have some doubts about how effective 405 BRT would be. Most people will want at least one end of their trip to be on foot, not transferring to another bus. That means it would serve people going to downtown Bellevue and Renton, Renton Boeing, and the airport. I’m not sure if Totem Lake mall and Evergreen Hospital are within walking distance or could be made so. And it leaves downtown Kirkland out, again.
Then a clear definition of BRT is in order.
The above reply is in the wrong spot.
This one is to answer Mike Orr’s question.
The Sound Transit I-90/Eastside HCT Analysis was a preliminary study to flesh out what they were going to propose in ST2.
There were complaints that Sound Transit’s rail bias was skewing the numbers so that BRT looked worse. As it turns out, there were a few technical issues and miscommunicated costs that had Sound Transit revise their BRT numbers downward from a high of ~$5 Billion, to ~$3.5 Billion. The technical issues were resolved by the engineering staffs as they realized that direct HOV-HOV access wasn’t necessary on all quadrants of the major interchanges, and that ST thought they were getting a different years cost data, and confusion as to whether they were Budget vs. YOE.
In this case, LRT won, since that’s what appeared (in certain segments) in ST2.
So it would be like WSDOT’s, in other words. I’ve seen ST say repeatedly “405 BRT” so it sounds like they’ve already decided against light rail on that corridor. That makes sense because it was never as strong a rail corridor as East Link or Ballard-Redmond Link or Ballard-Issaquah Link. It just doesn’t have as many pedestrian-attracting destinations.
What are your top three pedestrian-attracting destinations along East Link?
DT Bellevue, Microsoft, and Overlake Hospital? And when it’s extended, downtown Redmond. Not to mention downtown Seattle and the UW, thanks to interlining.
“Top three” is arbitrary and I don’t think it’s worth listing. But the significant pedestrian destinations that make East Link valuable are downtown Bellevue, Microsoft, downtown Seattle, Capitol Hill, the U-District, and Northgate. Secondary or future destinations are Overlake Village and the Spring District. And the adjacent stations on the south line are just a train-to-train transfer away: Stadium, SeaTac.
For a 405 line, staying on the freeway except for Bellevue TC and between Renton Boeing and Renton TC, the major pedestrian destinations are downtown Bellevue, Renton Boeing, SeaTac, and UW-Bothell.. Secondary or future destinations are downtown Renton, Bothell, Lynnwood, and possibly Totem Lake. Downtown Kirkland is too far away to be a major destination, but there will still be people who go to it in spite of that, so it’s a secondary destination in the context of this line.
There’s also the potential for transfers from 405 BRT to East Link, but I don’ think I have enough grasp of how popular these would be to say. From Kirkland, Bothell and Renton there are more direct buses to Seattle. I would take the BRT+Link because it’s more frequent, but others would take the regular bus because it’s a one-seat ride and possibly less travel time. BRT+Link could be popular from Bothell or Renton to Microsoft. But on the other hand, when you install a high-quality transit service, people surprise you by using it more than you expected, or more than they even expected. So BRT+Link trips could be popular, especially if they’re less prone to congestion and delay than other buses.
On another interesting (and somewhat related) note, I just went by the Interurban/99 crossing today and noticed that the last commercial property on the complex where the two interurban bridges meet (a Denny’s) has closed.
There is a report on the City of Shoreline website. They are working on plans on how to develop the “economically disadvantaged” area that includes the 4 buildings near the old Denny’s, the entire shopping center area there, possibly turning Sears into a theater & a auto Shop class location for Shoreline Comm College, adding updated retail, adding apartment complexes, moving Westminster Way, and so on.
Might be worth looking into….
@ Mike Orr
“So it would be like WSDOT’s, in other words. I’ve seen ST say repeatedly “405 BRT” so it sounds like they’ve already decided against light rail on that corridor. That makes sense because it was never as strong a rail corridor as East Link or Ballard-Redmond Link or Ballard-Issaquah Link. It just doesn’t have as many pedestrian-attracting destinations.”
They’re following the Preferred Alternative that came out of the I-405 Corridor Program study. Light Rail in the corridor had a yr2000 Budget $ amount of $4.5 Billion, and the return on that investment wasn’t until after the 30 year horizon used for the Cost/Benefit analysis,
BRT’s cost for the analysis resembled what was in the WSDOT BRT White Paper.
Sound Transit will no doubt be the lead agency in the transit portion of the I-405 improvements, just as they were for the Totem Lake freeway station.
Sound Transit’s own BRT ‘flavor’ is a high-performance ‘LRT convertible’ system that attempts to avoid the hassles of SOV mixing by retaining its exclusive use, even to the extent of running a bus-only segment down the RR ROW through Kirkland.
If they stay in the freeway ROW, WSDOT has said that the lanes have to be HOV/HOT lanes, and built to a different standard.
One assumes that BRT in the corridor would coincide with the rest of the highway improvements, which on the face of it , appears to tie it together with Roads.
I’m sure the next ballot measure will be as Roads & Transit one. Just like before.
Bellevue, Microsoft, downtown Seattle
DT Seattle isn’t part of East Link. DT Bellevue is much more of a transfer point than a destination. True it’s getting more housing but people pay a premium to live there mostly only if they work there. Some are retired and will use Link but those same people currently have better bus service than what the train will provide. Bus service that would be way better for a small fraction on the cost of Link. I’d be surprised if total boardings at BTC are greater than any single station of the DT Seattle Bus Tunnel. Microsoft is a commuter hub. Again better served by buses on 520 and way better once the six lane bridge is open. Unfortunately it’s all compromised by the stupid trains in the King County funded Bus Tunnel that ST is going to take exclusive ROW for it’s trains. Totem Lake maybe? Evergreen is larger than Overlake and Group Health in Bellevue. There’s far more employees in the business parks (medical and hi-tech) in Totem Lake today than there are in the Spring District Muffler Town.
“DT Seattle isn’t part of East Link.”
Not part of the construction project, but the “East Link” train will have one terminus at Northgate or Lynnwood, and that’s what’s significant for passengers.
“Totem Lake maybe? Evergreen is larger than Overlake…”
I wasn’t talking about the number of employers and shops, but about whether they’re close enough to be within walking distance of a freeway station. I don’t know the area well enough to tell, that’s why I said maybe. Would it be similar to the distance from Northgate station to NSCC and those medical complexes?
“I wasn’t talking about the number of employers and shops, but about whether they’re close enough to be within walking distance of a freeway station.”
The freeway station is just to the east of 116th NE and Evergreen is to the east of 124th NE, but a ways away from the road. It would probably be about a 10 block mostly flat walk. I wouldn’t advise it if you’re headed to the emergency room or the maternaty ward.
The area around the freeway station has densified quite a bit lately with medical offices on both sides of the freeway.
Totem Lake Mall is not worth thinking about as a traffic generator in its current state. There’s almost nothing there.
The freeway station is just to the east of 116th NE and Evergreen is to the east of 124th NE
Yes it’s a long hike to Evergreen without any decent transfers. It’s even farther from the P&R which is where most of the 255 buses stop; a total crock not to have a stop adjacent to the flyer stop and then put a stop both right before turning onto 124th and right after (literally 100′ apart). The East Link stop will be directly behind the employee parking garage. Currently the SB 234/235 and 226 stop directly in front of Overlake and at the south end of the block on NE 10th SB. NB the stops are at the north and south end of the block. Why not just directly in front of the employee garage I’ll never know. Maybe to make it easier for all the Group Health employees that don’t ride the bus? Even with fantastic connections to BTC and S. Kirk. P&R hardly anyone (~4people/hr) use transit. Hey, it’s Bellevue ;-)
The area around the freeway station has densified quite a bit lately with medical offices on both sides of the freeway.
Quite true. Kirkland Municipal Court is a 15 minute walk and there are a lot of high tech office park spaces in that same radius. The Mall is currently a Zombie. Kirkland desperately wants to change that and there is already an OK bus connection. It would definitely need some serious increase in frequency to make it viable as driving is just so easy compared to DT Seattle or even Bellevue.
Using buses for mainlines is a 3rd world solution. ‘The more bang for the buck crowd’ and any one who thinks otherwise never actually had to RIDE the 194, or any other regularly crowded bus.
And talk about depreciation, bus depreciation is horrid. Those Gilligs we’re sending to the scrapyard are barely 15 years old; the train fleet MTA just finished replacing was in service for 40.
Your comparision between the 550 and the 194 is also flawed – East Link is nearly a direct replacement for the 550, where the only thing that the 194 and Central Link shared was the termini. To my mind there is still room for a 194-style “airport express” bus in the current system, but I don’t find airport access to be a compelling priority in system design or see it as a particularly high priority. I think we overvalue direct airport access in current routings – I don’t see how it’s helpful to make some poor sap commuting from Burien to Bellevue on the 560 tool around the congested airport drive for 10 minutes. If you think the VA deviation is bad, check that out.
“Using buses for mainlines is a 3rd world solution.”
Agreed. 1.6 million daily riders on buses is ….laughable …. Holy BatCrap, BusMan. Did I read that right?
… and apparently Lack didn’t enjoy riding the Breda’s to Seatac at 53 mph tops, on a high floor, two door bus, with cash fumblers at the end holding up the line. I wonder if modern day buses would fare any better in this equation?
I also rode the 194 when it was a low-floor tunnel hybrid artic. And the Bredas at least were 3-door buses.
Bogota: Best BRT system in the world…. and the conditions on it are so horrible riders rioted.
“Most Bogotans have found Transmilenio to be an improvement over previous bus service. An independent survey in 2005 reported that a majority of respondents thought the new bus system superior, and only 15% thought it worse. Transmilenio was also found faster and more convenient than other competing transport choices. When asked about problems, many survey takers complained about overcrowded buses. Between 20 and 30% cited pickpockets and long wait times as problems.”
Context is important…
We have to evaluate Link in terms of the entire segment. I.e., airport trips, Rainier Valley trips, Beacon Hill trips, Tukwila trips, SODO trips, and stadium trips combined. Link is a new level of service for all these trips. Is that worth the cost? I’d say yes, because Seattle has been suffering for not having first-class transit mobility, and its benefit will only grow as (A) the population increases, (B) cars become less popular, and (C) Link is paid off and people stop caring about its capital cost. Comparing Link’s cost to just the 194’s airport-downtown trips is a red herring, because we did not build a system with only two stations. Likewise, TIB’s park n ride ridership seems to be mostly new ridership, not diversions from buses. And even if it is diversions from buses, it’s such a huge improvement over; e.g., the 150+169, that they can barely be compared. (A benefit in terms of subjective travel time for the resident. Whether it’s environmentally sound to drive to the station rather than spend 1 1/2 hours on two buses, is of course another question.)
People who advocate for BRT-only, due to the cost, seem to forget that they are putting a bus on an already-built road while a rail line has to be built completely new. So, yeah, a bus will be cheaper, if you only look at it that way but remember that a bus is adding TO the traffic(at least the way BRT is being built here in Seattle) while rail generally is going to be seperate from traffic.
Most Bogotans have found Transmilenio to be an improvement over previous bus service.
…previous bus service being a potpourri of uncoordinated and disorganized private minibuses operating in general purpose traffic. Spoiler alert: Reserved lanes, fixed routes, and fixed headways are beneficial to a bus system.
Transmilenio was also found faster and more convenient than other competing transport choices.
The other competing crosstown transport choices being walking. bikeshare, or gridlock.
When asked about problems, many survey takers complained about overcrowded buses. Between 20 and 30% cited pickpockets and long wait times as problems.
The overcrowding they’re seeing is so bad that they’re using fare hikes to reduce it. There are songs made about how unpleasant riding TransMilenio is. Crush loads over uneven, rapidly degrading paving.
Context is important…
Yes it is.
Depreciation of vehicles is a very small (5%) number compared to the total price tag of Central/Airport Link. Buses last half as long and cost half as much, so it’s a wash.
Can we just give up the light rail farce and go all tunnel. Even Seattle to Bellevue?
Photo enforcement of left turns on MLK when?
In a contest between a light rail vehicle and a regular car or truck the light rail vehicle almost always wins.
Just like in this case, most of the car vs. train accidents I’ve seen on MLK are cars turning left where they are not supposed to. It’s clearly signed no left turns from MLK to Brandon.
Re: study BRT on 405
This I’ve got to see–the few times I’ve been on 405 during the rush, it’s been a mobile parking lot: Would they actually widen 405 (I don’t know where the hell they’re going to find the room)? Would they take a lane of traffic away? Which I could see turning 405 into a slightly mobile parking lot. I could see them flying BRT up the flagpole of existing HOV lanes.
to answer East-coast-cynic’s question:
Yes, the plan is to widen I-405 by 4 GP lanes.
Any green space between the sound walls will be eliminated, and there will be property takes in the Kennydale neighborhood to accommodate additional lanes.
When you think of transportation planning in the PNW, think Wet LA.
ST does not have the authority, mandate, or budget to add general-purpose lanes. If it piggybacks of WSDOT’s work, then it could have custom transit lanes made for it, but that would require a high-cost roads package which would be a hard sell at the ballot box. If ST is going to do it alone, then it would presumably use the existing HOV lanes. Are the HOV lanes on 405 really congested, or are they incomplete somewhere?
WSDOT is planning to create an Express Toll Lane system on I-405, converting the HOV lane and adding a second lane in each direction for two ET lanes in both directions.
You could say that the HOV lanes are incomplete in relation to how BRT will perform, since a major portion of the ‘upgrade’ to BRT is the HOV-HOV direct access ramps at the major interchanges that will be needed, along with the additional freeway stations.
The 405 HOV lanes are routinely bumper to bumper near downtown Bellevue on weekday afternoons, especially southbound. The real problem here is that the 2+ designation is not sufficient to keep traffic moving. When one out of 5 lanes is HOV and one out of 5 cars is carrying at least 2 people anyway, what you get is an HOV lane that has the same level of congestion as all the other lanes.
The HOV lane southbound in the PM commute is often the slowest of all the lanes. Ironically the fastest lanes are often the right most (the slow lane) because so much traffic is exiting at NE 8th. Where they are going and why I do not know. You’d think everyone would be fleeing DT Bellevue after work. The HOV lane should be 3+ per WSDOT’s own policy. But that would turn the GP lanes to a complete parking lot so they’re not going to do that until after the widening project is complete and there is a HOT lane in addition to the HOV. Then I think you’ll see the HOV 3+ and the HOT lane priced to allow 35mph traffic. $5 or 30 minutes to drive through Bellevue; your choice. A six lane 520 with tolls will further help to manage the flow in for transit.
The economic analysis is flawed because the Link costs include contruction and maintenance of the right of way – which is substantial new capacity – while the bus costs you cite do not include any right of way costs and assume WS-DOT and local governments provide the roads.
Another significant issue is station dwell times. Especially when dealing with ADA requirements. When a wheelchair user needs to be boarded or disembarked, it can result in a 3-minute dwell time for a bus at a single station. While that is occurring, the entire tunnel is backed up – including other buses and light rail. Contrast that with a light rail train where wheelchair riders and self-load at any of 8 doorways, and there is ample room for strollers, luggage, etc. Beyond a basic capacity level, BRT doesn’t work very well. And while you can board 3-4 buses along a platform, unless they are all headed to the same direction, you have dwell-time issues as riders have to find their bus.
Does anyone in China work from home?
Hand pulling noodles
Once again, the narrowly focused, shallowly analyzed “what if we had done nothing” option re-emerges. The answer is that there really is no such thing as a “do nothing” option. “Do Nothing” is always analyzed in the EIS process; but with a growing population base and crumbling traffic infrastructure, “do nothing” is not possible: old roads would have to be improved, new roads would be built, new suburban housing would have to be built, decaying inner city neighborhoods would have to be rehabilitated. And the cost for those changes wouldn’t have been seen as the cost of “doing nothing”, Don’t forget that the low per passenger operating cost of the 550 is partly based on the fact that the 550 (or 194) doesn’t pay for the roads it travels on and wouldn’t be charged for the cost of building new roads to serve growing traffic between downtown Seattle and Bellevue or the airport. Federal grants and local tax money would provide the roads, but Metro/ST wouldn’t carry the cost of those new roads on their books.
You are also ignoring the fact that Link is much more than just an airport-to-downtown connector. Link is serving as a meaningful transportation asset for the neighborhoods that it serves on the way to the airport. The investment of public dollars for Link in SE Seattle is also creating new residential and commercial activity that contributes to the state and local tax coffers and; if the writers on this blog are correct, will create a modern neighborhood that is denser, livelier and more sustainable than the previous urban model. We’ll see if the urbanist utopia eventually emerges; but when looked at broadly, Link has created many positive returns for the invested dollars.
I love Link, and I think its great, but I want more and I want it yesterday.
I know it will take years to get the rest of link up and running and to get more like it on the west end of town, so I am prepared to help push for good medium term solutions in the mean time to help improve mobility in the city. Things like BRT (like along 99?) seem like a good starting point. You can always upgrade to rail later in the appropriate corridors as capacity needs increase… and of course as we get funds to build things on the west end the capacity we added through things like a BRT (though I am not so attached to the idea that I would not consider other things) could give us a relief valve to deal with the stress of having to shut down parts of the system as we build new link and/or subway lines.
Holy dwell time, Batman! Beijing could have used the Spanish Solution. Alas, Robin, they did not.
ST planners had the foresight (or more likely, dumb luck) to make the Spanish Solution doable at two of the stations where it could make a huge difference in eventual minimum headway on the whole system. I’m talking, of course, about International District Station and Westlake Station.
Dwell time by itself isn’t the problem. To impact minimum headway, it requires short stop spacing, e.g. that travel time of less than a minute between IDS and Pioneer Square Station, less than a minute between University Street Station and Westlake Station (once the buses are kicked out), and less than two minutes between UWS and UDS. Being on the interlined segment of the Link system (that is to say, the North Link line) is also a requirement to impact the minimum headway.
If you went by today’s boarding/alighting volumes, you wouldn’t think IDS would be one of the bottlenecks. But don’t discount the effect when East Link brings passengers all the way from the Microsoft Campus downtown via I-90, transferring to head south to the airport, or Federal Way, or someday downtown Tacoma. Combine that eventual large dwell time with the short distance to Pioneer Square Station (which will seem even shorter when the 30 mph speed limit goes away), and, voila, you’ve got a bottleneck. There is nothing to be done about the short travel distance, other than closing a station, which is not a palatable option. So, the key to removing the bottleneck is going to have to be reducing dwell time.
The obvious solution to reducing dwell time is the Spanish one. As has been noted by multiple commenters recently, a central platform at IDS would be useful as an egress path for all deboarders, not just those transfering to another train across the platform. This would be a much more major renovation than what is being contemplated to occur over the course of several weekends and a full-week station closure in 2019. Using it for all egress would certainly mean adding elevators and escalators.
That, of course, leads to the question of where exactly to put an alternate turn-back track. The consensus seems to be emerging that that may have to happen at Convention Place, where there is substantial distance for a turn-back track (and which is a closer location to take a semi-disabled train out of service, compared to the SODO O&MF). Indeed, ST hasn’t explicitly said it doesn’t plan to do that anyway.
But back to the Spanish Solution, headway, and dumb luck. We have suffered for years taking extra minutes to get to unnecessarily deep platforms in the DSTT, with empty mezzanines along the way. But these mezzanines may just come in real handy. Imagine pouring a concrete slab in the middle of Westlake Station, and bringing in a pairs of escalators and elevators, leading to those ornately-decorated overhangs on either end of the station. For perhaps not a whole lot of renovation cost, Westlake could go Spanish. Twenty years from now, people could point to that renovation as the project that enabled the fullest possible throughput in the DSTT.
Building crossover tracks, which could eventually be replaced by center platforms if dwell-time issues warrant it, in PSS and USS, would also be a wise investment during the DSTT renovation, IMHO. An engineering study on what it would take to Spanishize UWS and UDS might also come in handy, even if the price tag the study comes up with is large.
Some might call this all unnecessary. But in that case, I’d like to hear what the other causes of minimum headway are.
I feel like we shouldn’t get bogged down talking about the Spanish Solution with regards to IDS. New York had it for years on a bunch of their subway stations, and ended up closing & abandoning the outer platforms nearly everywhere it was implemented. Our volumes aren’t going to be nearly as heavy as theirs.
We should be talking about getting a fully functional center platform at IDS, even if it means losing the outer platforms.
On a previous discussion of a center platform at IDS, someone suggested an interesting operational scenario for times where there is a lot of crowding at the station, i.e., after stadium events. During normal times, the center platform could be used for cross platform transfers between East Link and Central Link. At post event times, the center platform and two outer platforms could be used to segregate northbound, eastboud and southbound riders. Norhbound riders on the east platform, southbound riders on the west platform and eastbound riders on the center platform. At such times, transferring riders would have to go up and back down.
+1 to just building a center platform.
IDS is the *one* station in the currently-funded network where train-train transfers will occur, and also the *one* downtown station where there isn’t a mezzanine, and instead of the obvious step of converting it to a center platform, ST is proposing to build a turnaround track there instead.
Boggle my mind, it does.
Seems to me if we nixed one of the side platforms, we could theoretically build the turnaround track off to the side where an existing platform is. Of course, it makes the switching more complicated, but no one ever said doing it right was easy.
That is excessive dwell time indeed. With the amount of time wasted by allowing the platform to have that many people waiting to board and blocking those alighting, they could easily get a few more trains to pass through the station per hour with proper station management. What a failure.
In terms of bottlenecks that reduce potential train throughput, Westlake may still be worse than IDS even after East Link opens. The center platform there may become more important than the one at IDS in that regard. The center platform at IDS will still be the most important one for improving travel time and reducing daily operational costs.
This video, more than anything, shows that trains are not aren’t a solution to a problem. The best thing someone could say about this is it’s better than buses, and that’s not saying much. Improved public transportation only encourages longer commutes. Trains are to commuting what food aid is to hunger. You can air drop bags of rice to a starving country, but it will never fix the underlying problem. Address the real problem, don’t enable the problem.
Can you imagine if all those people were trying to drive? Even locally?
The big problem to me seems to be single-use zoning. Holy uni-directional flow, batman. Hardly anybody is getting off that thing. It’s rolling into the station full and everyone is riding through. If there was significant churn, if this station was actually a destination rather than pure residential origin, it would be much more functional.
I know nothing about the Beijing subway, but Wikipedia tells me this is line 13, a 25 mile long line that loops through 3 suburban residential districts, before going into the central city. downtown.
Maybe they should possibly think about turning some of that residential space into workplaces?
Invalid statement. What Beijing shows is that a huge population can overwhelm any transit system. The London Underground and DC Metro are also operating at capacity during peak hours. One common solution is to add more lines. In London’s case it is adding lines. In DC’s case it decided that new lines are too expensive so it’s trying to enhance surface transit to attract people away from the metro for certain in-city trips. Also, how can you tell visually how many passengers are from 5 miles away and how many are from 50 miles away? I assume you haven’t studied Beijing’s demographics and trip patterns. China has sadly gotten into the automobile-suburb thing from what I hear, but how can you tell whether any of those residents are in this station?
[DC is] trying to enhance surface transit to attract people away from the metro for certain in-city trips.
Except that what DC Metro is trying won’t work.
No rationally self-interested commuter is going to voluntarily sacrifice their time by taking a stupid mixed-traffic streetcar for a trip that would be twice as fast underground, even under crush conditions.
The correct solution would be to first look for ways to wring extra capacity out of the existing lines (more interlining adjustments like the plan to send more commuters over the Fenwick Bridge rather than the the Rosslyn Portal, which is already being done), and then to make real investments in cross-town tunnels or BRT, which would add utility to the network and give users a rational time-based incentive to skirt the downtown bottlenecks.
China has so much cash it’s pursuing several kinds of infrastructure simultaneously. Highways and high-speed rail. Power plants, oil supplies, and solar technology. Automobile suburbs and new urban towns. So we can applaud the good things and lament the bad, but at least the good things are being built. As for single-use zoning, I don’t know whether China has imposed anywhere, except in the obvious case of heavy-industry factories. I doubt China has imposed it because it’s so universally recognized as obsolete now. Especially when China really has a problem of raising the standard of living for millions of people at once, a problem that can only be addressed with new dense cities.
With PAX and Bumbershoot in town it’s difficult to understand why Sound Transit / Metro put only 40′ coaches on the 545 with 30 minute headways. It’s probably just an oversight – Metro’s Operations Bulletin for this weekend didn’t list PAX, for instance – But that’s a big oversight considering the Convention Center’s Calendar clearly shows PAX and even lists the estimated number of attendees.
It’s because PAX hasn’t been around for 30 years so local government hasn’t acknowledged its existence yet.
“Metro put only 40′ coaches on the 545 ….” First off, ST calls the shots in that scenario. It’s ST’s buses and route. My sources tell me that Metro often asks permission of ST to use 60 foot buses during special even weekends, but are denied by ST. The reason having something to do with ST wanting to put miles on certain type of coaches. That’s all I was told.
Happy to place the blame squarely at ST’s feet if that’s where it belongs. Regardless of who made the decision, it’s a bad one.
Sound Transit and WSDOT will receive $24M from the latest round of TIGER grants. They’ll get $14M for the I-90 Two-way Transit and HOV Project and $10M for the Tacoma trestle replacement project (benefiting Sounder and eventually Cascades trains).
Love it. But three gears? How do I get up QA Hill with three gears?
Lately wondering, Velo, what number -World the United States really occupies. There’s an old saying about picking your enemies carefully, because that’s who you’ll resemble after the war.
A lame economy whose most promising source of employment comes from fossil fuels will leave our land a grease-trap. Helpless blustering fury over our inability to control a disintegrating empire our people won’t either pay or die to fight for.
Our President throwing a temper-tantrum like a six year old because his ex-Soviet counterpart, a secret policeman, torturer, and assassin, won’t send an American kid back to be jailed for talking to the ‘papers.
Incidentally, Edward Snowden worked for privatized intelligence.
Have seen pics of beat-up Skoda 40’ trolleybuses coupled together in St. Petersburg. Could at least solve our following-distance problems on busways.
Mark Dublin
Obama threw a tantrum like a six year old? When? Link please.
Age and maturity reference are my own view of the context. It was that far beneath the dignity of the President of the United States even to mention this matter to the likes of Vladimir Putin, let alone to interrupt diplomacy over it.
My view of the context isn’t sweetened any by the fact that the administration of Barack Obama, a Nobel Peace Prize winner for whom I voted in both his Presidential elections, has initiated more prosecutions under the Espionage Act for non-espionage matters than any president since the law was passed.
A law, incidentally, that was passed during the First World War, at a time of induced hysteria, persecution of US citizens of German extraction, and repression of organized labor. Succeeding years included the Second World War and the Cold War, in which the US was threatened by totalitarian powers with world military reach and huge armies. And spies.
Current prosecutions are about leaks chiefly detailing an unprecedented program of surveillance on our own people, and also revelations of lethal mistakes, incompetence, and graft. Look up “Thomas Drake”. Most but not all charges were dropped, but the man was looking at years in jail for revealing the politically inspired substitution of bad surveillance software for good stuff.
Neither does it help the President’s stature that his justice department has never prosecuted a single intelligence agent for torture. “Look toward the future, not the past”- either Mr. Obama or Leon Panetta.
Fine. Now let John Kiriakou out of prison, and drop the charges against James Risen.
And re: Edward Snowden, would the President please fire the contractor who hired him, and make US intelligence public service again. And for the young man’s crimes, Russia has a brutal fate in store. Anna Chapman, the cute red-haired spy, has demanded that he marry her.
He’ll probably be at the gates of Leavenworth begging for life in solitary!
Mark
Mark Dublin, that’s a bad link. The ellipses in the displayed text are also in the URL.
“A lame economy whose most promising source of employment comes from fossil fuels will leave our land a grease-trap.”
Exactly right. That’s why it’s critical to build a mass-transit infrastructure and encourage low-density suburbs to consolidate to medium-density neighborhoods. We at least need to offer the choice between the two, at the same price, so that people can voluntarily switch to low-energy lifestyles without losing the standard of living of their European counterparts. Solar energy and hydrogen fuel cells may allow us to have a high-energy lifestyle “for free” and sustainably, but we should not depend on that. The low-energy infrastructure is insurance against recessions, oil-price spikes, wars, or the cutoff of overseas shipping. That’s why Europe went toward a low-energy infrastructure in 1972, and why a few countries (Norway, Iceland) have declared energy independence a goal. It allows Europeans to weather recessions without encountering the major hardships that car’-dependent people do. There’s also no reason why we can’t have a low-energy infrastructure alongside future solar-powered high-energy alternatives.
That wasn’t a temper tantrum. Its called diplomacy……….you might want to read up on the subject.
They really grasp the concept of “stand back from the doors”…Way to kill efficiency. I have to wonder if station managers are actually controlling the flow of people into and around the station like is typical in London and New York and many other cities. This really seems dangerous, especially with no protective automatic doors along the platform. I imagine a lot of people are pushed or fall into the tracks in Beijing. Yikes. I’m not sure I’d want to travel by underground rail at peak hours there.
Stephen,
Book for you: The Lunatic Express, by Carl Hoffman. A really brave reporter resolved to go around the world from New York- ticketing only on the airlines with the worst crash records, the bus lines that blew bald tires and fell off mountains, the passenger boat lines that regularly lost ships with all hands, and ditto passengers. And the electric commuter heavy rail in India.
The doors are horror beyond belief. If you don’t crowd the door to deboard, you can’t get off. If you do, you can easily get pushed off a fast moving train. The transit system has its own morgue.
Interesting note: On the major part of the trip, the author found the dangers and discomforts counterbalanced by the kindness and decency his fellow passengers showed him. The one exception? Riding Greyhound from the West Coast back to New York. Nothing fatal. But a prevailing spirit that passengers were only aboard because this is what losers deserve.
Overnight between Sacramento and Eugene, only thing that stopped me from scraping our flag off the side of the bus- it was Fourth of July weekend- was desperation to get away from the bus.
Book is must read.
Mark
Okay Mark, I’ve got my hold on it at the library. Hopefully I get it before my upcoming plane trip. Hmm… now which airline in the US has the worst record???
Does anyone know where the service revisions for Metro/ST/PT are published? They don’t seem to be on the internet yet.
Typically they’re not pubished until about 10 days out.
Providing us a Link to the print-ready schedules might save them the embarassment of telling the Spanish-only speaking population that there won’t be any service on weekends.
I will say that crowd would not be as bad if they had a more rigourous queuing regime in Beijing
Instant infrastructure:
Hydrogen Refueling Station Incorporated in Retail Gasoline Station Opens
Buy Flowers Downtown and Ride the Train for Free? A Look at Toyama’s Creative Approaches to Being a Vibrant City in a Time of Depopulation
As the population is decreasing, a big question is how Toyama can become more attractive as a place to visit and live while being sustainable as a city? We interviewed Masashi Mori, Mayor of Toyama, who has been instituting his many creative and innovative ideas one after another since he was elected to office (like his “Bring Flowers on the Train and Ride for Free!” promotion), while also working on the serious business of scaling down and improving facility management in the city.
BUSES v. RAIL – Revisited Again, and again, and ….
Much has been written these past weeks on improving Metro’s bus network, with hundreds of insightful comments along the way. I really enjoy the thought provoking discussions here on STB. Comparisons between LRT, BRT and old fashion bus service abound, with most acknowledging a properly integrated system of all three, using the right tool for the job, would be the most efficient network. I agree too.
If we assume that tax revenues are a finite resource to all of transit at some point, then it becomes important as to how that resource is allocated – ‘the more bang for the buck crowd’. The classic comparison comes from Metro’s Rt 194 from the Bus Tunnel to SeaTac Airport, taking 30 minutes on most trips, with few stops along the way after Spokane St on bus only lanes. The nearest current day service we have today would be ST550 from BTC to DSTT, taking 33 minutes, running 6 minute headways in the peak. From ST’s SIP, this route costs $2.78 per boarding. As both the ST550 and MT194 had nearly identical trip times, lengths, and operating environment, it follows that cost would be very similar today.
Looking at Central Link, the same trip takes a bit longer at 38 minutes and costs more than double at $6.20 per boarding, excluding depreciation of about $9 per boarding (2.5 B/30yr) and Pr. &Int. of about $4. ($106M/yr) That pushes the cost per rider to nearly $20 each, whereas a comparable bus would have cost about $3 (fully allocated, as purchased from MT).
Before everyone wets there pants, I also acknowledge that the 550 is maxed out at 6 min. headways due to the current DSTT tunnel agreement, and there is no way the MT194 could accommodate the current loads carried on Central Link in total, but could have increased service on just the DSTT-Airport runs for today’s loads. It’s interesting to note that on–time performance is nearly identical between the 550 and Link, at 90%.
My only point here this morning is that expecting rail (any rail) will always pencil out to be more efficient than any other competing bus lines. Yes, there is efficiency in having only one operator for many more riders, but that’s obviously not a given, according to the bean counters. Adding more cars to Link, and higher loads from Northgate and beyond will bring costs close to or better than bus service, but assuming that formula works for all the rail lines we love to draw on our maps is a fool’s errand.
Carry on David, Bruce and others to ‘tune-up our bus system’ or maybe it’s time for a major overhaul.
Are there any plans to implement any true BRT in the region? The closest I’ve heard is proclamations that Madison will be a BRT corridor. But I just can’t see buses getting dedicated ROW all along Madison. Unless someone is designing a Madison Gondola, then BRT is not part of the toolbox that is being explored for transit improvements in the region.
The plan for the Madison BRT is the only true BRT plan I’ve seen.
It includes eliminating street parking on Madison and adding dedicated bus lanes. It’s assuming 5 minute headways with 40′ ETBs.
West of Broadway, getting the transit lanes is easy and painless. Which is good, because that’s the part where it’s most needed.
East of Broadway, the ROW narrows from 5 to 4 lanes, and bus lanes become much more difficult. If we got a bus lane, it would probably mean that a lot of popular left turns would have to get banned at rush-hour to keep general-purpose through traffic moving, and that opens up a very ugly can of worms. We would probably not get transit lanes above Broadway when the line opens. But most of the delays associated with that mixed traffic will happen between Broadway and 12th; above 12th it’s more or less smooth sailing.
The city also studied BRT on Eastlake and Westlake. The authors of the transit master plan seemed to not consider that very seriously. I say that because (if I read the report correctly) of the way they calculated the capital cost per rider. For the streetcars they divided capital costs by the number of riders in a 30 year time period (the life of a streetcar). For the bus they divided by the number of riders over a 15 year period (the life of a bus). But in both cases the capital costs were mostly street and utility work, not the cost of vehicles. So essentially they doubled the costs per rider of BRT versus a streetcar.If they had done both over a 30 year period BRT would have fared quite a bit better.
https://seattletransitblog.wpcomstaging.com/2011/07/26/tmp-hct-analysis-iii-maximum-ridership/
ST is planning to study BRT on 405. I have no idea what that means or what level of service it would be. That’s what would have to be defined.
A real BRT along 99 makes so much sense to me that I can’t quite understand why they aren’t doing it. We already have dedicated bus lanes for most of 99 through much of King and Snohomish county… connecting them into a single BRT route down one of the busiest corridors in the state.
The only sense I can make is that they are afraid people will not use it because it goes through “rough” parts of town. People being afraid to ride it could be a problem I guess, but its not like Link doesn’t go through parts of town people consider “dangerous” and they use it anyway, so I don’t think that is really an effective argument against making this happen.
I certainly hope its not the silly parking lanes on 99 between Green Lake and 105th that are keeping this from happening.
Some combination of rapid ride E (under construction) and Swift (maybe run jointly or by Sound Transit) seems like an excellent use of the corridor that we could have operational rather quickly.
Is there something I am missing here?
I still want rapid rail transit through Seattle (ala Seattle Subway), but this seems like a pretty good mid term solution while we are getting that constructed.
99 BRT from Seattle to Everett is also in ST’s long-range plan. Again, we have no idea what that means. But presumably it means something like Swift, with at least 15-minute frequency. It would run into the same problem the original 174 (downtown – Federal Way) had: it’s hard to keep a very long line with many intersections on-time. It’s also possible that when ST gets around to studying this corridor, it will also study overpasses or Link, which would improve reliability and travel time.
As for why Metro didn’t do it, it’s because it couldn’t stretch the RapidRide budget that far. It couldn’t afford both a Swift route and a local route.
@Mike Orr Yeah that makes sense, it just seems like a waste of a good corridor not to do more to make use of it for transit.
Resources are always a problem of course, and the signals do slow things down… couldn’t they time the signals more like they do with Link in Rainier valley to improve reliability?
Probably, I don’t know. 99 is already timed so that a car driving the speed limit hits minimal stoplights. The problem with the 358 is it makes so many stops that it can’t make the synchronized lights. You could implement transit priority on the lights but that would impact the other traffic in the area. The other thing MLK has is that all except a few intersections were made right-turn-only so they don’t cross the tracks. I’m not sure how MLK’s remaining intersection spacing compares to Aurora, since already you can’t effectively turn left except at a signalized intersection. Closing more intersections on Aurora would have a significant impact on the area because there are such large neighborhoods on both sides and no other way through.
In one city I’ve heard, buses have the same privilege as emergency vehicles so they can bypass stoplights and traffic. It’s a shame we don’t give transit similar priority here. That would help to close the convenience gap between transit and SOVs.
@Mike Orr
It sounds like having an express bus with fewer stops might be a good idea here.
On another interesting (and somewhat related) note, I just went by the Interurban/99 crossing today and noticed that the last commercial property on the complex where the two interurban bridges meet (a Denny’s) has closed.
If a rapid bus (or other high capacity transit) existed in that corridor it seems like there would be a lot of opportunity for redevelopment here. I do understand that this is not a small ask though… especially since there are not yet a lot of high density residential properties along 99 as of yet. Given the current rental/real estate environment though you would think there would be some pressure to change that….
Mike Orr,
Concerning Highway 99 traffic lights being timed so a car driving the speed limit; that is not the case on a Saturday night between SR-525 and NE 185th Street as I found out last night. The lights through Lynnwood, Edmonds and Mountlake Terrace seem to not to talk to one another.
@ Mike Orr
“ST is planning to study BRT on 405. I have no idea what that means or what level of service it would be. That’s what would have to be defined.”
Good question. Will it be the WSDOT flavor, or a variation on their own?
And which one will eastside residents go for in ST3?
Interesting. Which flavor do we like better? The WSDOT flavor is 10-minute frequency weekdays until late evening, from Lynnwood to SeaTac. The ST report is so long and complex I only read part of it, and I didn’t see anything about frequency or how it would differ from WSDOT’s. The ST report looks like an alternatives analysis, which must mean the AA was done and BRT won.
I have some doubts about how effective 405 BRT would be. Most people will want at least one end of their trip to be on foot, not transferring to another bus. That means it would serve people going to downtown Bellevue and Renton, Renton Boeing, and the airport. I’m not sure if Totem Lake mall and Evergreen Hospital are within walking distance or could be made so. And it leaves downtown Kirkland out, again.
Then a clear definition of BRT is in order.
The above reply is in the wrong spot.
This one is to answer Mike Orr’s question.
The Sound Transit I-90/Eastside HCT Analysis was a preliminary study to flesh out what they were going to propose in ST2.
There were complaints that Sound Transit’s rail bias was skewing the numbers so that BRT looked worse. As it turns out, there were a few technical issues and miscommunicated costs that had Sound Transit revise their BRT numbers downward from a high of ~$5 Billion, to ~$3.5 Billion. The technical issues were resolved by the engineering staffs as they realized that direct HOV-HOV access wasn’t necessary on all quadrants of the major interchanges, and that ST thought they were getting a different years cost data, and confusion as to whether they were Budget vs. YOE.
In this case, LRT won, since that’s what appeared (in certain segments) in ST2.
So it would be like WSDOT’s, in other words. I’ve seen ST say repeatedly “405 BRT” so it sounds like they’ve already decided against light rail on that corridor. That makes sense because it was never as strong a rail corridor as East Link or Ballard-Redmond Link or Ballard-Issaquah Link. It just doesn’t have as many pedestrian-attracting destinations.
What are your top three pedestrian-attracting destinations along East Link?
DT Bellevue, Microsoft, and Overlake Hospital? And when it’s extended, downtown Redmond. Not to mention downtown Seattle and the UW, thanks to interlining.
“Top three” is arbitrary and I don’t think it’s worth listing. But the significant pedestrian destinations that make East Link valuable are downtown Bellevue, Microsoft, downtown Seattle, Capitol Hill, the U-District, and Northgate. Secondary or future destinations are Overlake Village and the Spring District. And the adjacent stations on the south line are just a train-to-train transfer away: Stadium, SeaTac.
For a 405 line, staying on the freeway except for Bellevue TC and between Renton Boeing and Renton TC, the major pedestrian destinations are downtown Bellevue, Renton Boeing, SeaTac, and UW-Bothell.. Secondary or future destinations are downtown Renton, Bothell, Lynnwood, and possibly Totem Lake. Downtown Kirkland is too far away to be a major destination, but there will still be people who go to it in spite of that, so it’s a secondary destination in the context of this line.
There’s also the potential for transfers from 405 BRT to East Link, but I don’ think I have enough grasp of how popular these would be to say. From Kirkland, Bothell and Renton there are more direct buses to Seattle. I would take the BRT+Link because it’s more frequent, but others would take the regular bus because it’s a one-seat ride and possibly less travel time. BRT+Link could be popular from Bothell or Renton to Microsoft. But on the other hand, when you install a high-quality transit service, people surprise you by using it more than you expected, or more than they even expected. So BRT+Link trips could be popular, especially if they’re less prone to congestion and delay than other buses.
On another interesting (and somewhat related) note, I just went by the Interurban/99 crossing today and noticed that the last commercial property on the complex where the two interurban bridges meet (a Denny’s) has closed.
There is a report on the City of Shoreline website. They are working on plans on how to develop the “economically disadvantaged” area that includes the 4 buildings near the old Denny’s, the entire shopping center area there, possibly turning Sears into a theater & a auto Shop class location for Shoreline Comm College, adding updated retail, adding apartment complexes, moving Westminster Way, and so on.
Might be worth looking into….
@ Mike Orr
“So it would be like WSDOT’s, in other words. I’ve seen ST say repeatedly “405 BRT” so it sounds like they’ve already decided against light rail on that corridor. That makes sense because it was never as strong a rail corridor as East Link or Ballard-Redmond Link or Ballard-Issaquah Link. It just doesn’t have as many pedestrian-attracting destinations.”
They’re following the Preferred Alternative that came out of the I-405 Corridor Program study. Light Rail in the corridor had a yr2000 Budget $ amount of $4.5 Billion, and the return on that investment wasn’t until after the 30 year horizon used for the Cost/Benefit analysis,
BRT’s cost for the analysis resembled what was in the WSDOT BRT White Paper.
Sound Transit will no doubt be the lead agency in the transit portion of the I-405 improvements, just as they were for the Totem Lake freeway station.
Sound Transit’s own BRT ‘flavor’ is a high-performance ‘LRT convertible’ system that attempts to avoid the hassles of SOV mixing by retaining its exclusive use, even to the extent of running a bus-only segment down the RR ROW through Kirkland.
If they stay in the freeway ROW, WSDOT has said that the lanes have to be HOV/HOT lanes, and built to a different standard.
One assumes that BRT in the corridor would coincide with the rest of the highway improvements, which on the face of it , appears to tie it together with Roads.
I’m sure the next ballot measure will be as Roads & Transit one. Just like before.
DT Seattle isn’t part of East Link. DT Bellevue is much more of a transfer point than a destination. True it’s getting more housing but people pay a premium to live there mostly only if they work there. Some are retired and will use Link but those same people currently have better bus service than what the train will provide. Bus service that would be way better for a small fraction on the cost of Link. I’d be surprised if total boardings at BTC are greater than any single station of the DT Seattle Bus Tunnel. Microsoft is a commuter hub. Again better served by buses on 520 and way better once the six lane bridge is open. Unfortunately it’s all compromised by the stupid trains in the King County funded Bus Tunnel that ST is going to take exclusive ROW for it’s trains. Totem Lake maybe? Evergreen is larger than Overlake and Group Health in Bellevue. There’s far more employees in the business parks (medical and hi-tech) in Totem Lake today than there are in the
Spring DistrictMuffler Town.“DT Seattle isn’t part of East Link.”
Not part of the construction project, but the “East Link” train will have one terminus at Northgate or Lynnwood, and that’s what’s significant for passengers.
“Totem Lake maybe? Evergreen is larger than Overlake…”
I wasn’t talking about the number of employers and shops, but about whether they’re close enough to be within walking distance of a freeway station. I don’t know the area well enough to tell, that’s why I said maybe. Would it be similar to the distance from Northgate station to NSCC and those medical complexes?
“I wasn’t talking about the number of employers and shops, but about whether they’re close enough to be within walking distance of a freeway station.”
The freeway station is just to the east of 116th NE and Evergreen is to the east of 124th NE, but a ways away from the road. It would probably be about a 10 block mostly flat walk. I wouldn’t advise it if you’re headed to the emergency room or the maternaty ward.
The area around the freeway station has densified quite a bit lately with medical offices on both sides of the freeway.
Totem Lake Mall is not worth thinking about as a traffic generator in its current state. There’s almost nothing there.
Yes it’s a long hike to Evergreen without any decent transfers. It’s even farther from the P&R which is where most of the 255 buses stop; a total crock not to have a stop adjacent to the flyer stop and then put a stop both right before turning onto 124th and right after (literally 100′ apart). The East Link stop will be directly behind the employee parking garage. Currently the SB 234/235 and 226 stop directly in front of Overlake and at the south end of the block on NE 10th SB. NB the stops are at the north and south end of the block. Why not just directly in front of the employee garage I’ll never know. Maybe to make it easier for all the Group Health employees that don’t ride the bus? Even with fantastic connections to BTC and S. Kirk. P&R hardly anyone (~4people/hr) use transit. Hey, it’s Bellevue ;-)
Quite true. Kirkland Municipal Court is a 15 minute walk and there are a lot of high tech office park spaces in that same radius. The Mall is currently a Zombie. Kirkland desperately wants to change that and there is already an OK bus connection. It would definitely need some serious increase in frequency to make it viable as driving is just so easy compared to DT Seattle or even Bellevue.
Using buses for mainlines is a 3rd world solution. ‘The more bang for the buck crowd’ and any one who thinks otherwise never actually had to RIDE the 194, or any other regularly crowded bus.
And talk about depreciation, bus depreciation is horrid. Those Gilligs we’re sending to the scrapyard are barely 15 years old; the train fleet MTA just finished replacing was in service for 40.
Your comparision between the 550 and the 194 is also flawed – East Link is nearly a direct replacement for the 550, where the only thing that the 194 and Central Link shared was the termini. To my mind there is still room for a 194-style “airport express” bus in the current system, but I don’t find airport access to be a compelling priority in system design or see it as a particularly high priority. I think we overvalue direct airport access in current routings – I don’t see how it’s helpful to make some poor sap commuting from Burien to Bellevue on the 560 tool around the congested airport drive for 10 minutes. If you think the VA deviation is bad, check that out.
“Using buses for mainlines is a 3rd world solution.”
Sounds horrible.
Agreed. 1.6 million daily riders on buses is ….laughable …. Holy BatCrap, BusMan. Did I read that right?
… and apparently Lack didn’t enjoy riding the Breda’s to Seatac at 53 mph tops, on a high floor, two door bus, with cash fumblers at the end holding up the line. I wonder if modern day buses would fare any better in this equation?
I also rode the 194 when it was a low-floor tunnel hybrid artic. And the Bredas at least were 3-door buses.
Bogota: Best BRT system in the world…. and the conditions on it are so horrible riders rioted.
Context is important…
We have to evaluate Link in terms of the entire segment. I.e., airport trips, Rainier Valley trips, Beacon Hill trips, Tukwila trips, SODO trips, and stadium trips combined. Link is a new level of service for all these trips. Is that worth the cost? I’d say yes, because Seattle has been suffering for not having first-class transit mobility, and its benefit will only grow as (A) the population increases, (B) cars become less popular, and (C) Link is paid off and people stop caring about its capital cost. Comparing Link’s cost to just the 194’s airport-downtown trips is a red herring, because we did not build a system with only two stations. Likewise, TIB’s park n ride ridership seems to be mostly new ridership, not diversions from buses. And even if it is diversions from buses, it’s such a huge improvement over; e.g., the 150+169, that they can barely be compared. (A benefit in terms of subjective travel time for the resident. Whether it’s environmentally sound to drive to the station rather than spend 1 1/2 hours on two buses, is of course another question.)
People who advocate for BRT-only, due to the cost, seem to forget that they are putting a bus on an already-built road while a rail line has to be built completely new. So, yeah, a bus will be cheaper, if you only look at it that way but remember that a bus is adding TO the traffic(at least the way BRT is being built here in Seattle) while rail generally is going to be seperate from traffic.
…previous bus service being a potpourri of uncoordinated and disorganized private minibuses operating in general purpose traffic. Spoiler alert: Reserved lanes, fixed routes, and fixed headways are beneficial to a bus system.
The other competing crosstown transport choices being walking. bikeshare, or gridlock.
The overcrowding they’re seeing is so bad that they’re using fare hikes to reduce it. There are songs made about how unpleasant riding TransMilenio is. Crush loads over uneven, rapidly degrading paving.
Yes it is.
Depreciation of vehicles is a very small (5%) number compared to the total price tag of Central/Airport Link. Buses last half as long and cost half as much, so it’s a wash.
Paint is Cheap[for BRT], Rails Systems are Extremely Expensive
Rogoff being wrong (and construing non-BRT as BRT) does not automatically make you right.
Then a clear definition of BRT is in order.
Car collides with light rail train in S. Seattle; no injuries
Aug 31, 2013 at 3:00 PM PDT
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Car-collides-with-light-rail-train-in-S-Seattle-no-injuries-221943481.html
Can we just give up the light rail farce and go all tunnel. Even Seattle to Bellevue?
Photo enforcement of left turns on MLK when?
In a contest between a light rail vehicle and a regular car or truck the light rail vehicle almost always wins.
Just like in this case, most of the car vs. train accidents I’ve seen on MLK are cars turning left where they are not supposed to. It’s clearly signed no left turns from MLK to Brandon.
Re: study BRT on 405
This I’ve got to see–the few times I’ve been on 405 during the rush, it’s been a mobile parking lot: Would they actually widen 405 (I don’t know where the hell they’re going to find the room)? Would they take a lane of traffic away? Which I could see turning 405 into a slightly mobile parking lot. I could see them flying BRT up the flagpole of existing HOV lanes.
to answer East-coast-cynic’s question:
Yes, the plan is to widen I-405 by 4 GP lanes.
Any green space between the sound walls will be eliminated, and there will be property takes in the Kennydale neighborhood to accommodate additional lanes.
When you think of transportation planning in the PNW, think Wet LA.
ST does not have the authority, mandate, or budget to add general-purpose lanes. If it piggybacks of WSDOT’s work, then it could have custom transit lanes made for it, but that would require a high-cost roads package which would be a hard sell at the ballot box. If ST is going to do it alone, then it would presumably use the existing HOV lanes. Are the HOV lanes on 405 really congested, or are they incomplete somewhere?
WSDOT is planning to create an Express Toll Lane system on I-405, converting the HOV lane and adding a second lane in each direction for two ET lanes in both directions.
You could say that the HOV lanes are incomplete in relation to how BRT will perform, since a major portion of the ‘upgrade’ to BRT is the HOV-HOV direct access ramps at the major interchanges that will be needed, along with the additional freeway stations.
The 405 HOV lanes are routinely bumper to bumper near downtown Bellevue on weekday afternoons, especially southbound. The real problem here is that the 2+ designation is not sufficient to keep traffic moving. When one out of 5 lanes is HOV and one out of 5 cars is carrying at least 2 people anyway, what you get is an HOV lane that has the same level of congestion as all the other lanes.
The HOV lane southbound in the PM commute is often the slowest of all the lanes. Ironically the fastest lanes are often the right most (the slow lane) because so much traffic is exiting at NE 8th. Where they are going and why I do not know. You’d think everyone would be fleeing DT Bellevue after work. The HOV lane should be 3+ per WSDOT’s own policy. But that would turn the GP lanes to a complete parking lot so they’re not going to do that until after the widening project is complete and there is a HOT lane in addition to the HOV. Then I think you’ll see the HOV 3+ and the HOT lane priced to allow 35mph traffic. $5 or 30 minutes to drive through Bellevue; your choice. A six lane 520 with tolls will further help to manage the flow in for transit.
The economic analysis is flawed because the Link costs include contruction and maintenance of the right of way – which is substantial new capacity – while the bus costs you cite do not include any right of way costs and assume WS-DOT and local governments provide the roads.
Another significant issue is station dwell times. Especially when dealing with ADA requirements. When a wheelchair user needs to be boarded or disembarked, it can result in a 3-minute dwell time for a bus at a single station. While that is occurring, the entire tunnel is backed up – including other buses and light rail. Contrast that with a light rail train where wheelchair riders and self-load at any of 8 doorways, and there is ample room for strollers, luggage, etc. Beyond a basic capacity level, BRT doesn’t work very well. And while you can board 3-4 buses along a platform, unless they are all headed to the same direction, you have dwell-time issues as riders have to find their bus.
Does anyone in China work from home?
Hand pulling noodles
Once again, the narrowly focused, shallowly analyzed “what if we had done nothing” option re-emerges. The answer is that there really is no such thing as a “do nothing” option. “Do Nothing” is always analyzed in the EIS process; but with a growing population base and crumbling traffic infrastructure, “do nothing” is not possible: old roads would have to be improved, new roads would be built, new suburban housing would have to be built, decaying inner city neighborhoods would have to be rehabilitated. And the cost for those changes wouldn’t have been seen as the cost of “doing nothing”, Don’t forget that the low per passenger operating cost of the 550 is partly based on the fact that the 550 (or 194) doesn’t pay for the roads it travels on and wouldn’t be charged for the cost of building new roads to serve growing traffic between downtown Seattle and Bellevue or the airport. Federal grants and local tax money would provide the roads, but Metro/ST wouldn’t carry the cost of those new roads on their books.
You are also ignoring the fact that Link is much more than just an airport-to-downtown connector. Link is serving as a meaningful transportation asset for the neighborhoods that it serves on the way to the airport. The investment of public dollars for Link in SE Seattle is also creating new residential and commercial activity that contributes to the state and local tax coffers and; if the writers on this blog are correct, will create a modern neighborhood that is denser, livelier and more sustainable than the previous urban model. We’ll see if the urbanist utopia eventually emerges; but when looked at broadly, Link has created many positive returns for the invested dollars.
I love Link, and I think its great, but I want more and I want it yesterday.
I know it will take years to get the rest of link up and running and to get more like it on the west end of town, so I am prepared to help push for good medium term solutions in the mean time to help improve mobility in the city. Things like BRT (like along 99?) seem like a good starting point. You can always upgrade to rail later in the appropriate corridors as capacity needs increase… and of course as we get funds to build things on the west end the capacity we added through things like a BRT (though I am not so attached to the idea that I would not consider other things) could give us a relief valve to deal with the stress of having to shut down parts of the system as we build new link and/or subway lines.
Holy dwell time, Batman! Beijing could have used the Spanish Solution. Alas, Robin, they did not.
ST planners had the foresight (or more likely, dumb luck) to make the Spanish Solution doable at two of the stations where it could make a huge difference in eventual minimum headway on the whole system. I’m talking, of course, about International District Station and Westlake Station.
Dwell time by itself isn’t the problem. To impact minimum headway, it requires short stop spacing, e.g. that travel time of less than a minute between IDS and Pioneer Square Station, less than a minute between University Street Station and Westlake Station (once the buses are kicked out), and less than two minutes between UWS and UDS. Being on the interlined segment of the Link system (that is to say, the North Link line) is also a requirement to impact the minimum headway.
If you went by today’s boarding/alighting volumes, you wouldn’t think IDS would be one of the bottlenecks. But don’t discount the effect when East Link brings passengers all the way from the Microsoft Campus downtown via I-90, transferring to head south to the airport, or Federal Way, or someday downtown Tacoma. Combine that eventual large dwell time with the short distance to Pioneer Square Station (which will seem even shorter when the 30 mph speed limit goes away), and, voila, you’ve got a bottleneck. There is nothing to be done about the short travel distance, other than closing a station, which is not a palatable option. So, the key to removing the bottleneck is going to have to be reducing dwell time.
The obvious solution to reducing dwell time is the Spanish one. As has been noted by multiple commenters recently, a central platform at IDS would be useful as an egress path for all deboarders, not just those transfering to another train across the platform. This would be a much more major renovation than what is being contemplated to occur over the course of several weekends and a full-week station closure in 2019. Using it for all egress would certainly mean adding elevators and escalators.
That, of course, leads to the question of where exactly to put an alternate turn-back track. The consensus seems to be emerging that that may have to happen at Convention Place, where there is substantial distance for a turn-back track (and which is a closer location to take a semi-disabled train out of service, compared to the SODO O&MF). Indeed, ST hasn’t explicitly said it doesn’t plan to do that anyway.
But back to the Spanish Solution, headway, and dumb luck. We have suffered for years taking extra minutes to get to unnecessarily deep platforms in the DSTT, with empty mezzanines along the way. But these mezzanines may just come in real handy. Imagine pouring a concrete slab in the middle of Westlake Station, and bringing in a pairs of escalators and elevators, leading to those ornately-decorated overhangs on either end of the station. For perhaps not a whole lot of renovation cost, Westlake could go Spanish. Twenty years from now, people could point to that renovation as the project that enabled the fullest possible throughput in the DSTT.
Building crossover tracks, which could eventually be replaced by center platforms if dwell-time issues warrant it, in PSS and USS, would also be a wise investment during the DSTT renovation, IMHO. An engineering study on what it would take to Spanishize UWS and UDS might also come in handy, even if the price tag the study comes up with is large.
Some might call this all unnecessary. But in that case, I’d like to hear what the other causes of minimum headway are.
I feel like we shouldn’t get bogged down talking about the Spanish Solution with regards to IDS. New York had it for years on a bunch of their subway stations, and ended up closing & abandoning the outer platforms nearly everywhere it was implemented. Our volumes aren’t going to be nearly as heavy as theirs.
We should be talking about getting a fully functional center platform at IDS, even if it means losing the outer platforms.
On a previous discussion of a center platform at IDS, someone suggested an interesting operational scenario for times where there is a lot of crowding at the station, i.e., after stadium events. During normal times, the center platform could be used for cross platform transfers between East Link and Central Link. At post event times, the center platform and two outer platforms could be used to segregate northbound, eastboud and southbound riders. Norhbound riders on the east platform, southbound riders on the west platform and eastbound riders on the center platform. At such times, transferring riders would have to go up and back down.
+1 to just building a center platform.
IDS is the *one* station in the currently-funded network where train-train transfers will occur, and also the *one* downtown station where there isn’t a mezzanine, and instead of the obvious step of converting it to a center platform, ST is proposing to build a turnaround track there instead.
Boggle my mind, it does.
Seems to me if we nixed one of the side platforms, we could theoretically build the turnaround track off to the side where an existing platform is. Of course, it makes the switching more complicated, but no one ever said doing it right was easy.
That is excessive dwell time indeed. With the amount of time wasted by allowing the platform to have that many people waiting to board and blocking those alighting, they could easily get a few more trains to pass through the station per hour with proper station management. What a failure.
In terms of bottlenecks that reduce potential train throughput, Westlake may still be worse than IDS even after East Link opens. The center platform there may become more important than the one at IDS in that regard. The center platform at IDS will still be the most important one for improving travel time and reducing daily operational costs.
This video, more than anything, shows that trains are not aren’t a solution to a problem. The best thing someone could say about this is it’s better than buses, and that’s not saying much. Improved public transportation only encourages longer commutes. Trains are to commuting what food aid is to hunger. You can air drop bags of rice to a starving country, but it will never fix the underlying problem. Address the real problem, don’t enable the problem.
Can you imagine if all those people were trying to drive? Even locally?
The big problem to me seems to be single-use zoning. Holy uni-directional flow, batman. Hardly anybody is getting off that thing. It’s rolling into the station full and everyone is riding through. If there was significant churn, if this station was actually a destination rather than pure residential origin, it would be much more functional.
I know nothing about the Beijing subway, but Wikipedia tells me this is line 13, a 25 mile long line that loops through 3 suburban residential districts, before going into the central city. downtown.
Maybe they should possibly think about turning some of that residential space into workplaces?
Invalid statement. What Beijing shows is that a huge population can overwhelm any transit system. The London Underground and DC Metro are also operating at capacity during peak hours. One common solution is to add more lines. In London’s case it is adding lines. In DC’s case it decided that new lines are too expensive so it’s trying to enhance surface transit to attract people away from the metro for certain in-city trips. Also, how can you tell visually how many passengers are from 5 miles away and how many are from 50 miles away? I assume you haven’t studied Beijing’s demographics and trip patterns. China has sadly gotten into the automobile-suburb thing from what I hear, but how can you tell whether any of those residents are in this station?
[DC is] trying to enhance surface transit to attract people away from the metro for certain in-city trips.
Except that what DC Metro is trying won’t work.
No rationally self-interested commuter is going to voluntarily sacrifice their time by taking a stupid mixed-traffic streetcar for a trip that would be twice as fast underground, even under crush conditions.
The correct solution would be to first look for ways to wring extra capacity out of the existing lines (more interlining adjustments like the plan to send more commuters over the Fenwick Bridge rather than the the Rosslyn Portal, which is already being done), and then to make real investments in cross-town tunnels or BRT, which would add utility to the network and give users a rational time-based incentive to skirt the downtown bottlenecks.
China has so much cash it’s pursuing several kinds of infrastructure simultaneously. Highways and high-speed rail. Power plants, oil supplies, and solar technology. Automobile suburbs and new urban towns. So we can applaud the good things and lament the bad, but at least the good things are being built. As for single-use zoning, I don’t know whether China has imposed anywhere, except in the obvious case of heavy-industry factories. I doubt China has imposed it because it’s so universally recognized as obsolete now. Especially when China really has a problem of raising the standard of living for millions of people at once, a problem that can only be addressed with new dense cities.
With PAX and Bumbershoot in town it’s difficult to understand why Sound Transit / Metro put only 40′ coaches on the 545 with 30 minute headways. It’s probably just an oversight – Metro’s Operations Bulletin for this weekend didn’t list PAX, for instance – But that’s a big oversight considering the Convention Center’s Calendar clearly shows PAX and even lists the estimated number of attendees.
It’s because PAX hasn’t been around for 30 years so local government hasn’t acknowledged its existence yet.
“Metro put only 40′ coaches on the 545 ….” First off, ST calls the shots in that scenario. It’s ST’s buses and route. My sources tell me that Metro often asks permission of ST to use 60 foot buses during special even weekends, but are denied by ST. The reason having something to do with ST wanting to put miles on certain type of coaches. That’s all I was told.
Happy to place the blame squarely at ST’s feet if that’s where it belongs. Regardless of who made the decision, it’s a bad one.
Sound Transit and WSDOT will receive $24M from the latest round of TIGER grants. They’ll get $14M for the I-90 Two-way Transit and HOV Project and $10M for the Tacoma trestle replacement project (benefiting Sounder and eventually Cascades trains).
http://www.murray.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/newsreleases?ContentRecord_id=fd7a79a0-fb99-4221-964e-641e1a35bc14
Looking for a new bike:
Detroit Bikes aims to crank up mass production
http://www.freep.com/article/20130816/BUSINESS06/308160016/detroit-bikes-factory-launch
Love it. But three gears? How do I get up QA Hill with three gears?
Lately wondering, Velo, what number -World the United States really occupies. There’s an old saying about picking your enemies carefully, because that’s who you’ll resemble after the war.
A lame economy whose most promising source of employment comes from fossil fuels will leave our land a grease-trap. Helpless blustering fury over our inability to control a disintegrating empire our people won’t either pay or die to fight for.
Our President throwing a temper-tantrum like a six year old because his ex-Soviet counterpart, a secret policeman, torturer, and assassin, won’t send an American kid back to be jailed for talking to the ‘papers.
Incidentally, Edward Snowden worked for privatized intelligence.
Have seen pics of beat-up Skoda 40’ trolleybuses coupled together in St. Petersburg. Could at least solve our following-distance problems on busways.
Mark Dublin
Obama threw a tantrum like a six year old? When? Link please.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/obama-putin-meeting_n_3718825….
by Luke Johnson – in 135 Google+ circles
And subsequent articles on Google
Age and maturity reference are my own view of the context. It was that far beneath the dignity of the President of the United States even to mention this matter to the likes of Vladimir Putin, let alone to interrupt diplomacy over it.
My view of the context isn’t sweetened any by the fact that the administration of Barack Obama, a Nobel Peace Prize winner for whom I voted in both his Presidential elections, has initiated more prosecutions under the Espionage Act for non-espionage matters than any president since the law was passed.
A law, incidentally, that was passed during the First World War, at a time of induced hysteria, persecution of US citizens of German extraction, and repression of organized labor. Succeeding years included the Second World War and the Cold War, in which the US was threatened by totalitarian powers with world military reach and huge armies. And spies.
Current prosecutions are about leaks chiefly detailing an unprecedented program of surveillance on our own people, and also revelations of lethal mistakes, incompetence, and graft. Look up “Thomas Drake”. Most but not all charges were dropped, but the man was looking at years in jail for revealing the politically inspired substitution of bad surveillance software for good stuff.
Neither does it help the President’s stature that his justice department has never prosecuted a single intelligence agent for torture. “Look toward the future, not the past”- either Mr. Obama or Leon Panetta.
Fine. Now let John Kiriakou out of prison, and drop the charges against James Risen.
And re: Edward Snowden, would the President please fire the contractor who hired him, and make US intelligence public service again. And for the young man’s crimes, Russia has a brutal fate in store. Anna Chapman, the cute red-haired spy, has demanded that he marry her.
He’ll probably be at the gates of Leavenworth begging for life in solitary!
Mark
Mark Dublin, that’s a bad link. The ellipses in the displayed text are also in the URL.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/obama-putin-meeting_n_3718825.html
“A lame economy whose most promising source of employment comes from fossil fuels will leave our land a grease-trap.”
Exactly right. That’s why it’s critical to build a mass-transit infrastructure and encourage low-density suburbs to consolidate to medium-density neighborhoods. We at least need to offer the choice between the two, at the same price, so that people can voluntarily switch to low-energy lifestyles without losing the standard of living of their European counterparts. Solar energy and hydrogen fuel cells may allow us to have a high-energy lifestyle “for free” and sustainably, but we should not depend on that. The low-energy infrastructure is insurance against recessions, oil-price spikes, wars, or the cutoff of overseas shipping. That’s why Europe went toward a low-energy infrastructure in 1972, and why a few countries (Norway, Iceland) have declared energy independence a goal. It allows Europeans to weather recessions without encountering the major hardships that car’-dependent people do. There’s also no reason why we can’t have a low-energy infrastructure alongside future solar-powered high-energy alternatives.
That wasn’t a temper tantrum. Its called diplomacy……….you might want to read up on the subject.
They really grasp the concept of “stand back from the doors”…Way to kill efficiency. I have to wonder if station managers are actually controlling the flow of people into and around the station like is typical in London and New York and many other cities. This really seems dangerous, especially with no protective automatic doors along the platform. I imagine a lot of people are pushed or fall into the tracks in Beijing. Yikes. I’m not sure I’d want to travel by underground rail at peak hours there.
Stephen,
Book for you: The Lunatic Express, by Carl Hoffman. A really brave reporter resolved to go around the world from New York- ticketing only on the airlines with the worst crash records, the bus lines that blew bald tires and fell off mountains, the passenger boat lines that regularly lost ships with all hands, and ditto passengers. And the electric commuter heavy rail in India.
The doors are horror beyond belief. If you don’t crowd the door to deboard, you can’t get off. If you do, you can easily get pushed off a fast moving train. The transit system has its own morgue.
Interesting note: On the major part of the trip, the author found the dangers and discomforts counterbalanced by the kindness and decency his fellow passengers showed him. The one exception? Riding Greyhound from the West Coast back to New York. Nothing fatal. But a prevailing spirit that passengers were only aboard because this is what losers deserve.
Overnight between Sacramento and Eugene, only thing that stopped me from scraping our flag off the side of the bus- it was Fourth of July weekend- was desperation to get away from the bus.
Book is must read.
Mark
Okay Mark, I’ve got my hold on it at the library. Hopefully I get it before my upcoming plane trip. Hmm… now which airline in the US has the worst record???
Does anyone know where the service revisions for Metro/ST/PT are published? They don’t seem to be on the internet yet.
Typically they’re not pubished until about 10 days out.
Providing us a Link to the print-ready schedules might save them the embarassment of telling the Spanish-only speaking population that there won’t be any service on weekends.
I will say that crowd would not be as bad if they had a more rigourous queuing regime in Beijing
Instant infrastructure:
Hydrogen Refueling Station Incorporated in Retail Gasoline Station Opens
http://www.japanfs.org/en/pages/033020.html
Wind Power Makes [Hydrogen] Fuel For German Gas Grid
http://www.earthtechling.com/2013/09/wind-power-making-fuel-for-germany-gas-grid/
Buy Flowers Downtown and Ride the Train for Free? A Look at Toyama’s Creative Approaches to Being a Vibrant City in a Time of Depopulation
http://www.japanfs.org/en/mailmagazine/newsletter/pages/032980.html