Written By Andrew Stephenson, 13 June 2015
Sent To the members of ERC Trail Proposal Planning Committee; ERCtrail@kingcounty.gov
Greetings,
In your hands is the future of the Eastside. In the midst of the biggest infrastructural revolution since the dawn of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, cities have recently reinvested billions solely into mass transit, bike trails and better walkable communities, attracting Millennials and retiring Boomers in the tens-of-thousands. The current ERC bike trail proposal only addresses the need for a bike trail, naturally, continuing the “suburbia culture” of drive-drive-drive, spending every hour not working sitting in traffic congestion, dropping-off and picking-up people you know without cars, due to the lack of TOD planning. The valuable time left at the end of the day not spent commuting is used to exercise, in this case: on the ERC trail. In 10 years, there will be no time left after one’s commute for any activity whatsoever. The future involves incorporating activity into your commute and avoiding traffic gridlock, whether that involves commuting by bicycle or walking to the train station. The ERC trail addresses only commuting by bicycle, this is not an appropriate investment for the fastest-growing metropolitan region in the nation. To accommodate bicyclists is a significant achievement, a recently acknowledged mode of transport for this nation, but will not improve Eastside mobility nor attract Millennials and techies from Seattle whom are desperate for a “car-less” lifestyle. Addressing only one issue along a corridor that can support two modes of transportation is comparable to a D+ on your exam. Take this rare opportunity to use the ERC, a grade-separated, tree-lined (thus sound-mitigating) right-of-way to please bicyclists, families, motorists, tourists and transit users alike. This is a two-in-one opportunity.
For the sake of our future, it is imperative that you include and leave room for a double-tracked electrified heavy-rail line in the design to parallel the bike trail on the ERC alignment. Having world-class rail infrastructure in addition to a paved trail for cyclists to commute on will make Bellevue the centerpiece of the rapidly growing Eastside, promoting Bellevue as a potential economic competitor to neighboring Seattle.
Yours sincerely,
Andrew Stephenson
President, Developing Sustainable Communities, Washington State University
I have only posted one other time here on STB Page 2 which also concerned the ERC for heavy rail, an important connection between Eastside communities that could be voted on and approved in 2020 and easily completed no later than 2025 due to its conveniently unobstructed right-of-way. I suggest others on the Eastside also enthusiastic about using the ERC for heavy rail to email the ERC trail proposal committee like I have.
Thanks everyone,
Andrew Stephenson
Good luck Andrew!
You can write an email too! Send them your thoughts at ERCtrail@kingcounty.gov
Something like this? I just returned from a visit to the Bay Area– people are very excited about it.
http://main.sonomamarintrain.org/updates/
Looking at the picture, the land there is a lot more open than the ERC, as well as not in people’s back yards.
It’s important to think of the ERC as a valuable transportation asset that shouldn’t be limited to a bike and ped trail. I believe it’s a mistake to say that it should be a heavy rail corridor. It should be thought of as a mode neutral transitway; let the powers that be go through their process of alternatives analysis and decide whether it makes most sense as busway, light rail, heavy rail or perhaps nothing for now.
I agree. We shouldn’t get hung up on mode, but room must be left for transit be it bus or rail.
There’s room, in that the ROW is wide enough all the way for double tracks and a bike path. Then there’s room in terms of reserving specific continuous flat land for tracks. There’s some transit potential in the ERC, but there are also some hard questions. We don’t even have enough of a transit plan for the ERC to state design requirements. Remember that when we first built the DSTT we included rails on the floor, and they had to be re-laid when we actually built Link because the requirements for what we actually built were different than what we originally assumed.
A bike path can be built cheaply and quickly, despite the insane gold-plated master planning exercises Kirkland and Redmond are going through on the CKC and RCC trails. This work would improve pedestrian connections across the ERC in many places, which is important because the ERC is itself one of the barriers to pedestrian mobility that limits urban form around it. Holding that up to wait for requirements from an ERC transit plan that may never get that far would be an indefensible waste of time. Designing around assumed requirements now would be an indefensible waste of money.
We can be fairly sure the rails in place today aren’t going to be a part of a mass transit line in the future, and we can be fairly sure a bike path will be part of the future of this corridor. Significant parts of the corridor will need to be regraded to support multi-tracked transit, but the exact extent of this depends on technology and station locations. The soonest we could have a workable understanding of ERC transit requirements is after ST3 projects are designed (but that’s unlikely, since an ERC-based project is not that likely to be in ST3), and the soonest we’ll actually need the work done is decades down the road. The thing to do is to build a pretty basic bike path, improving connectivity along and across it as much as possible without spending too much money, with the understanding that it might all be torn up for regrading in another generation.
Can anyone name even a single instance (in a country with reasonably accountable governance) where a rail corridor has become a developed, official bike or walking trail, remained so for a significant period of time, and then been returned to use as a motorized transportation corridor. I suspect they exist, but I can’t think of any. I want to confirm that we aren’t hoping to find a unicorn.
There’s two, I think, nationwide. I have the references somewhere. Both were restored for freight rail service when an actual freight shipper showed up; the ‘railbanking’ law gives any railroad who offers to put up the money, the absolute right to rip out a railbanked trail for profitable freight service.
I can’t find an example with passenger service. It would be hotly contested. I’m pretty sure the law gives a *profitable* passenger service the right to rip out the trail in the same way, but since profitable passenger services are very rare….
“There’s room, in that the ROW is wide enough all the way for double tracks and a bike path.”
Sure, but only if you chop down all the trees and end up with a trail looking like this:
https://www.google.com/maps/@47.582256,-122.32756,3a,75y,40.43h,86.5t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sCYwqx4QVgW7FdexdlpcsKw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
With noisy buses and trains passing through frequently.
On top of that, between curves, safety, and noise concerns, no bus or trail on the ERC will be able to achieve anywhere close to freeway speeds. You’d be looking at around 30 mph at best, which is not really any faster than what you could get by running the bus down relatively uncongested, adjacent, surface streets. Along some stretches of the trail (e.g. the back of the Google campus, you’d likely be limited to 5-10 mph.
The ERC belongs as a trail – let local buses run on the adjacent streets, and express buses run down the HOT lanes on 405.