Starting April 22, you’ll be able to ride RTD’s A Line, an electric commuter train, from Denver International Airport to Union Station in 37 minutes, every 15-30 minutes, 22 hours a day, at speeds up to 79 mph.
117 Replies to “Sunday Open Thread: Denver’s Train to the Airport”
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Hey, a schedule that allows you to use the train to get to the airport in time for the early flights! What a wacky idea!
and trains that travel at competitive speeds with freeways? No way!!
The faster speeds of Denver and the longer distance simply cancel each other other. Link from downtown to the airport is also 37 minutes.
It should also be noted that Link runs every 6-15 minutes, compared to every 15-30 minutes.
@asdf2,
Correct. On average Link from the airport will a rurally be faster due to the shorter wait time. And Link is dual track the whole way. Plus it will (eventually) approach the airport from both the north and the south
Its not just about the airport, when Link reaches Everett and Tacoma, it will take 2-3 times longer than the buses it will replace.
I’ve long pointed out that light rail isn’t always the best technology for speed. Unfortunately ST 3 focuses on light rail or express bus for most of the new capital ‘track’ projects (noting Sounder is already running). A single track EMU like this could be applicable for some corridors but ST won’t even public ally look at it.
Really too bad the conspiracy that put GM in power “disappeared” this one.
Because here’s actual proof that as part of its fine streetcar design program, in 1930 or so, the Brill car company actually solved the problem of an electric streetcar that could get passengers from the CBD to Sea-Tac at 79mph.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/43315334@N07/25563179925/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/43315334@N07/25195790919/
Strangely enough, this information was discovered by the attorneys for an industrial equipment firm as part of a patent lawsuit over Brill’s appropriation of a patent safety-line buckle.
However, defense attorneys prevailed with evidence from an interview with a crewman at the Ballard locks whose Federally-demanded safety line. His sworn opinion was that the fixture’s only good use would be as a trolley wheel for a flying streetcar.
Sadly, by the time these documents were discovered, every municipality on its route demanded that the line only run along I-5, even though Interstates were still only a gleam in Eisenhower’s eye.
And Denver Airport was a cactus and a sock. And the streetcar line needed all its existing wire because the new trolley buses needed a negative wire too.
Mark Dublin
@Tgc,
Ah, the old “End-Point Fallacy.” It’s been a long time since someone trotted out that old arguement in support of maintaining the status quo.
But never mind, Link will be faster than the equivalent bus service serving the same destinations. And it will be more reliable too. Not being “Buses Stuck in Traffic” does wonders for speed and reliability.
“when Link reaches Everett and Tacoma, it will take 2-3 times longer than the buses it will replace”
It will not take 2-3 hours to get to Tacoma or Everett. Lynnwood will be in the midrange of ST Express (faster than peak hours, slower than 6am), and Everett will be too (not including the Paine Field factor [1[]). Tacoma is coming in around 75 minutes, so 25 minutes slower than the fastest ST Express, or 1.5 times slower.
But you have to look at it in the context of the subareas. The Paine detour affects only people north of it, and Snohomish is pretty unamimous in wanting the detour. Tacoma is not concerned about the travel time to downtown; it wants rapid transit to the airport, and a one-seat ride to downtown is a bonus. Also, south end travel times aren’t solely because of the Rainier Valley detour; the raw distance also plays a part. Federal Way is almost as far as Everett. The longer a line is, the greater the discrepency between a 55 mph train and a 65 mph freeway.
@Mike Orr,
Correct, but keep in mind that even if WSDOT converts the HOV lanes to full HOT lanes the Federal standard that drives the tolling algorithm is still an average speed of 45 mph (or is it 40). At 55 Link will still be competitive.
“the Brill car company actually solved the problem of an electric streetcar that could get passengers from the CBD to Sea-Tac at 79mph.”
A few years ago I attended a conference in San Francisco, and stayed at Fisherman’s Wharf and commuted downtown on the vintage streetcars, cable car, and #8 trolleybus and Van Ness bus. (They all took the same twenty minutes.) I rode both the pre-WWII streetcars and the 1950s streetcars. The pre-WWII ones are noticeably slow and bumpy like the Benson streetcar was, and I don’t remember if they were loud. The 1950s streetcars are just as smooth and quiet as the modern streetcars in Seattle and Portland. I was amazed that 1950s technology was that good, when cars of that era were big and loud and clunky. and I couldn’t help but wonder how much better they’d be now if American streetcar manufacturing had remained continuous.
Or maybe it wasn’t a trolleybus? It went on the freeway south of downtown so it can’t have been a trolleybus.
Re: #8(X/8AX/8BX)
Yes, those are diesels. But a short walk to the West and South would have taken you to the #30 Stockton which is an ETB. See the SFMuni’s website at San Fran. M.T.A. for more info.
Slow and bumpy depends on a number of factors.
More modern cars deal with uneven track much better.
Before road paving was extensive, ride standards on short trips was quite different. Depression era road improvement projects changed what people wanted.
In an entirely mechanically sprung car, you have to hit a happy medium between how the springs perform at crush load and empty. Some cars do really well if the car is crush loaded.
After 80 years of use, some things don’t work right, and some parts aren’t available and must be made in the shop. Shop drawings of the part might say things like “grind slightly here for best fit and function” but the people who knew exactly what that internal note meant are long gone. Today’s crew puts the drawing into a laser cutter and gets exactly what they want, while the shop crew of 100 years ago got there by general feel and hard work because something like that, which would make every single part exactly the same each and every time snd exactly as it was told just didn’t exist.
So, the pre World War II equipment may or may not perform as the originals did.
>> Ah, the old “End-Point Fallacy.”
Yeah guys, you just don’t get it. It isn’t about Tacoma to downtown Seattle, or Everett to the UW. It is about Tacoma to the airport, or Federal Way to Fife. Those are the trips that will really drive the big ridership. Those are pretty much equivalent to UW to Capitol Hill, or First Hill to Beacon Hill. Oh, wait, that last one isn’t possible. Anyway, you get the idea. It is obvious that remote suburban locations by the freeway, with huge park and rides and marginal connecting service at best, and almost nothing in the way of employment or other attractions will result in huge — I mean HUGE — numbers of riders. Because rail is magic. You can expect tons of riders, just like occurred in every city that has a similar system. OK, well, no, it has never worked out that way — but just you wait — just you wait — this time it will be great.
And if not — if it turns out that this grand experiment fails like every similar experiment has failed (for the same reason) — well, then, I guess that is the way it goes. It is only billions of dollars we are talking about. It isn’t like the region has anything better to do with that kind of money.
RossB
It took me a moment to get your sarcasm, but I totally agree. One big mission of ST is congestion relief. The freeway is congested with people going to large employment centers ike Seattle and Bellevue, and peak (and off peak!!) travel times from distant suburbs matter more than anything.
People don’t mind a comfortable bus ride with reclining chairs straight to their employment center. A milk run train ride at 20-25mph? (Avg link speed) not as much.
And for the record, I’m a rail enthusiast. I’ve lived in Tokyo for 7 years. And for the distances we are trying to serve, I’m telling you. Light rail doesn’t work.
TGC;
I got real concerns about this whole light rail spine deal too, believe it or not.
15 minutes ago, I published almost two pages of comments I started working on 10 hours ago to Community Transit’s 2016-2021 TDP Draft. I wrote in part:
I also made clear in my discussion of a Paine Field commercial terminal proposal – that just cleared a major legal hurdle – my request to,
There you go.
I took the 30 Stockton too, but the 8 was closer. And at 5pm the 30 northbound was so packed that it took three minutes at every stop the to load and unload passengers in Chinatown. Worse than on the 71/72/73X. I understand the Central Subway will replace that; it was critically needed.
TGC,
Not two to three times longer. About 15 minutes longer than an express bus running at 10:30 at night. During peak hour congestion, especially southbound in the afternoon when no HOV lanes are available south of Northgate Way, Link will eviscerate the buses.
Now I personally think that stopping at Lynnwood would be perfectly acceptable. There are good, reliable HOV lanes north of there and a high-quality interchange access to the HOV lanes from the TC. It’s south of Lynnwood where almost all of the congestion happens now that the widening south of Everett is complete.
Buses would be fine from there to Lynnwood.
As Link expands, early airport service will be increasingly politically demanded. It’s only a matter of time.
I wonder if there could be a mechanism to provide this.
I think Link starting/ending times are heavily influenced by joint ops and when Metro opens the DSTT for service. Once the buses are out ST will have more flexibility to add early runs to the airport (if they make sense of course)
I asked the Metro planners at the Pioneer Square meetup whether ST could unilaterally decide to keep the DSTT open later. They said yes, but ST would have to pay the security costs, so that’s apparently the sticking point. Then there’s the reserved time every night for track maintenance, which many of us think is excessively long and can’t be needed every single day.
At the very least, ST could run an ‘owl’ Link emulator route using Sounder buses during the overnight hours when rail isn’t running.
ST could choose to start/end trips at Stadium Station during the wee hours… But The “Spine” will need to find a way to be almost 24 hour service just like the RedLine in Chicago.
Going forward, when Bus service ends in the the DSTT, it should remain open much longer.
ST could choose to start/end trips at Stadium Station during the wee hours…
They do, actually. There’s a 4:41 departure from Stadium that arrives at 5:10. (The 8X night owl’s second runs drop off there about five minutes before, which means I can get from North Seattle to the airport on transit in a little over an hour.) Which is nice, but I wouldn’t try it for any departure prior to about 6:20, given the state of security lines early in the morning. There are a lot of flights earlier than that.
7:45: talk about a station with a lack of density around it.
talk about an airport with lack of density around it.
Are there ANY buildings in CO?
It was my experience when flying into DEN that there was a whole lotta ‘nothin we were flying over and the approach pattern took us far to the west and north to get to the airport. Also, very bumpy thermals.
The airport is in the middle of nowhere. The next station after the airport is located, after several miles of express running, at the edge of the urban area. There are stations along the rest of the way to downtown. It’s still pretty desolate until 38th St but that’s for other reasons (the Union Pacific line, the expressway, general sprawl in Colorado)
RIPE for TOD with no height restrictions.
Aside from the smoke alarm that kept going off,
the slow speed (we should export our FRA to the EU to screw with them for a while),
and the single track,
I think the line could use ‘more cow-bell’.
When I flew to Denver once in the early 2000s, there was a 15-minute bus from the underground downtown depot to the airport. The trip was 15 miles on a highway through nothingness. That’s not much further than SeaTac but the emptiness gets to you, and the DOT put up signs “airport 10 miles”, “8 miles”, “5 miles” to break the monotony. The fare was also $13 each way. I couldn’t believe a city transit bus could be $13, but it was doubtless cheaper than a shuttle and at least it was frequent.
The first time I flew into the new airport was maybe a year after it opened. There was as oil well running in the middle of the parking lot. Other than that and the airport building, you could sort of see downtown Denver way off in the distance and no other buildings in sight.
Really horrible thought, Mike….Did you check out those links about the Brill Helicopter?
It was partly inspired by something only a little less ridiculous- a scene in I forget what movie where the hero had to fly a helicopter through the Channel Tunnel with a train chasing him.
Would’ve been really great to get an MP3 of the exchange between the driver and whatever’s French for “LCC”. Also the incident report. And talking to the Base Chief. “Now think carefully. You know we do have pigeons in there.”
But greatest of all would be the message on the train PA. “The train….is slowing down because of helicopter delay. The train….will be back at 241.41 Kph Shrug. C’est la Vie!
But worst bad influence was talk with MTA maintenance technician aboard a Boeing Vertol LRV in a stub tunnel under Boston. He told me some different design assumptions between aircraft and railroad designers. Summary?
“This car works exactly as well as if the Baldwin Steam Locomotive Company built a helicopter.” Led Zeppelin probably came about in similar conversation. Which is doubtless where “Steam Punk” got the idea that cast iron bridges were lighter than air.
But incidentally: “Time of the Trolley” has wonderful description of the Queen Anne Counterbalance: “An example of the slightly demented mechanism often found among streetcars.”
Almost as hare brained as a car-line with catenary in only one direction. Click those links, man!
Mark
This video is only 10 minutes of a 37 minute ride and only shows the outer third of the route from the airport to the intersection of I-70 and Pena Boulevard. The stops are big park and ride lots for commuters into the city. I don’t know about TOD that far away from the city with a transit line at those frequencies. Also the route follows highways for part of its route. The Stapleton stop is unfortunately on the other side of a big interchange from that development. From the google tour I just took, Stapleton is not living up to its promise. Overly wide streets, too much parking and disappointing platting leaving the houses with very small yards.
The station I am talking about, which starts to appear closer to 7:20, doesn’t even appear to have a parking lot. It appears to be platforms with sidewalks that go three feet into the grass and end.
I assume these is a parking lot that is hidden from view?
I think they’re building a new development from scratch around the station: http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_29420867/smartening-city-denver-vies-become-whats-next
Wrong about Stapleton. Most of the town is south of the line and close to the station. Better development pattern too. But still roads that are too wide and houses with yards that are too small. Isn’t the whole point of a sfd having a yard? Many of these houses have more driveway than yard.
I’m sorry to have to ask this question, but is there some rule that prohibits putting notices up on buses that will have significant routing or schedule changes on March 19, or elimination? (e.g., many of the routes through the U District)
Maybe a simple flyer? (“ATTENTION”)
Stick it in the flyer slot where the “HOLD ON!” flyers are?
Would that be too much?
Would it also be too much to put a permanent banner on the Metro website, rather than the notice that appears when the website loads, and then sweeps away in a matter of seconds to reveal the second news item.
Call me cynical, but it would appear that they are trying to hide the changes.
Metro continues to impress me with how incompetent they are at communicating with the public. Do they have not anyone to proofread communications?
Metro has changed nearly all signposts in NE Seattle, but there’s no explanation, and more importantly no indicating that the changed routes don’t kick in until March 26. Want the 67 from Northgate Mall to U-District? Better not go to the stops along 5th Ave because even though they say “67 to U District” that’s not the right stop!
And where there are alert signs, Metro screwed them up. There’s alert signs at Northgate Transit Center, for instance that the 68 and 242 are being deleted. But Metro has incorrect information. The alert sign says that the 67 will now pick up at Bay 1. So if I want the 67 from NTC to central U-District, which bay do I go to. The large signpost says Bay 1. The alert sign says Bay 1. The tiny font printed timetable says Bay 5. The diagrams in the middle of the transit center say Bay 5. Great messaging Metro! Because as an average person, I would trust A – the largest sign, or B – the alert sign. And both of those have incorrect information!
This past week, on about half the bus rides I’ve taken there’s been at least 1 person asking the driver questions like “where do I catch bus X?” or “does bus X still run? It’s not on the sign”?
Ever try to find “accessible”entrances to the DTTT without consulting a map?
The buses are already cluttered with signs and advertisements. People would probably miss them.
TriMet posts notices at bus stops.
Especially since some of the announcement signs are out of date for months.
It’s unfortunate to have the expense of making signs like this for only a few days of use, but the first photo of the slide show shows what TriMet usually does
http://koin.com/2014/08/12/max-service-streamlined-during-construction/
Sometimes the signs are quite a bit less detailed.
In the case it isn’t obvious enough, the sign is held in place by two holes at the top and bottom, and is attached to the pole by a couple of zip-ties. They can install one of these at any bus stop in about 20 seconds.
Seems this is the transit technology/mode that should have been used for “The Spine”, not light rail. Personally I’d rather not run all the way from North of Everett to South of Tacoma, and stick with Sounder for those trips, but apparently that decision has been made.
+1
+1,000,000,000
One like for every dollar we foolishly spend on inappropriate light rail technology
Yet we’re spending about $37 per boarded passenger for Sounder North. That is not sustainable…
Sounder North, hugging the coast, is not an accurate comparison.
Sounder North is also not running enough service to make it attractive to use. It’s a conundrum.
Charles, I agree. We can shut the damn thing down if we spoke with one voice and did some horse-trading and had a spine.
Oh that’s right Charles you and I are in the minority of STB. Most STB folks don’t want elected boards so transit advocates like us can influence Sound Transit.
I will say this again… if I was on the Sound Transit Board we’d give Snohomish County a choice: Sounder North or light rail to Paine Field. We got them over a barrel… let’s use some leverage.
+1E12 for Link to Paine Field Terminal One. Then off to Boeing N and S stations. It’s only 4 minutes extra over the I-5 alignment.
Only 37 minutes from Seattle to the Terminal. Hey, that’s the same as S. Link to Seatac.
Coincidence? or Conspiracy? DEN, SEA, and now Paine all 37 minutes?
If you have Sounder North already and have sunk lots of money into and the decision is to keep it, then at least make it work with more than 4 runs a day, yes being on the coast is a problem, but only 4 runs a day is phenomenal way to make a service unattractive to riders. And add the Broad Street and Golden Gardens stations.
You are aware that a Sounder Monthly Pass allows you to use Amtrak Cascades trains for Sounder North – Edmonds and Everett, via Amtrak Rail Plus aren’t you?
Yes you knew that.
Maybe Train #513 is a bit late in for the morning, but Train #516 outbound in the evening is handy if you miss the last the last Sounder, or want to stop off for a drink after work.. or both.
Better yet, if they get a midday Seattle-Vancouver, BC train… then maybe the Amtrak schedule can be adjusted a hair.
Ya. Like we need yet another mode in Seattle.
We already have that. It is called Sounder. Are you suggesting that we make Sounder faster? OK, but don’t expect that to be cheap. This wasn’t that expensive because of where it was built. Making Sounder faster would be really expensive.
But yeah, building light rail to Tacoma and Everett is really silly, no matter how fast the trains go.
If you were to do a 99 alignment, you could have RapidRide as local service, Link as an express service for medium distances, and Sounder for the fastest service to Seattle and other major regional centers. A 99 alignment and light rail would also massively promote TOD.
Yeah, you need to hit 80 MPH to go to Denver Airport. It’s so far out there they had to build a whole new freeway network for it. In some ways it made sense to build the airport way out there. It’s an enormous airport, and as I understand it, it has to be; with the wind patterns up there you need more runway options than in the calm northwest.
According to the website there’s a private parking lot at the last stop before the airport, which I assume is mostly going to be used for remote airport parking. The closer-in stations with P&Rs appear to charge $2 per day for multi-day parking system-wide for RTD residents, $4 for outsiders. Unless airport parking is unusually cheap in Denver those P&Rs are going to be flooded with long-term airport users. I bet they have to change that policy within a year or so.
A couple of the P&R stations with $2 parking already have airport bus frequencies that are commuter rail-like, and they aren’t anywhere close to full. This train will add a bunch of new parking lots, so I don’t see them filling up that fast.
Of course Link doesn’t go even close to that speed, and costs twice as much to build. It doesn’t go past 50 miles per hour because, you know, it’s impossible.
Well mostly flat at grade, low budget catenary, single track for long segments, and minimal ROW acquisition costs and I’d guess a minimal public involvement process leads to cheaper build costs.
Have you been to DEN? It’s flat, barren plains out there, nothing around it for miles and miles. Denver is an extremely flat and square city, and the route to the airport is about as developed as the moon for most of the way.
With family in Denver in the early 1950’s, the city had both streetcars and electric buses. But in those days, I don’t think cities like Denver had any suburbs at all. Main difference is that Denver used to be a cattle town.
Now that its Western spirit is Lynnwood vanishing into the horizon which still has sagebrush, the bull droppings don’t fertilize anything, making an airport unnecessary because of the place’s general usefulness.
Mark
Top speed is mostly irrelevant for a train that stops frequently. You’re already spending most of the time accelerating out of a station or decelerating into a station. Making a slightly higher top speed for the few seconds in the middle isn’t going to make that much of a difference.
Exactly. Chasing top speed only makes sense if you don’t stop very often. But, you know, a useful system usually has lots of stops.
DEN is sort of unique in being way they heck out there in BFE. They implemented a different tech than their LR, benefited from lots of flat, cheap land, and still needed lots of single track to make it pencil out. Crazy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norristown_High_Speed_Line
You might want to check this out, Eric and Lazarus. Can’t report the ride quality of current cars, since when last I rode this line it had cars that looked like short PCC’s running on third rail- with “shoes” that had to have a wood “paddle” inserted between the carbons and the tracks to insulate for in-service maintenance.
Reportedly designed in a wind tunnel at University of Michigan. Definitely high speed and a lot of stops. Wouldn’t doubt that computerized controls can smooth out the ride exactly like with a skyscraper elevator.
At least it will give future pro-transit voters something to “Wheeee!” about besides a window seat inbound from Tukwila. Might also be a better slogan than either “Mobility for the Region”, or “We’ll Get You There!”
Mark
Relevance of top speed depends on what you are doing. ST has said in the past they want only few stations because they feel they need a regional train that goes further and faster.
If that is the case then higher maximum speed is relevant.
It’s running in between a highway and a pre-existing railroad to the edge of Denver, and from there to the airport it goe through literally a giant plain next to s highway. If they didn’t save a bunch of money on ROW acquisition I’d be pretty disappointed in them.
Plus, there’s the fact that this train doesn’t go over a single hill along the entire route.
Yep, that makes sense. This was probably pretty darn cheap to build. This is a commuter rail line. That is the whole point. Relatively cheap and fast. Classic commuter rail.
Comparisons with a light rail line are silly. Except, of course, to point out how silly it is to build a light rail line for a commuter rail pattern. Expensive, slow, with very few destinations along the way. Welcome to Sound Transit, everybody!
Its kind of a toss-up for me as to which is more unfortunate: the fact that light rail is a horribly abused mode of transit in the Puget Sound region, or the fact that the routes and alignments chosen by ST make it seem like they never heard of the term “urban geography.” The light rail logic prevalent in the region insists on mediocre transit everywhere (density and geography be damned) at the expense of appropriate transit everywhere and high-quality transit to the places that need it. A pretty decent example of this will more than likely unfold when the “spine” and West Seattle get light rail instead of the Ballard-UW spur and Metro 8 subways (a la The Urbanist). ST’s misguided priorities are self-defeating. If we can’t trust them to bring density-friendly, high-quality transit in the urban core of Seattle, why should we trust them to bring it to the rest of the region?
$9 each way seems pretty steep. Also, the name is just terrible. I understand wanting to leverage any money making opportunity but I would expect a rail line called “University of Colorado A Line” to actually go to the University of Colorado.
Compared to what? That’s what a bus to the airport costs now. For a cab, add a zero to that.
When it opens, it will be the only one of Denver’s seven rail lines that doesn’t have a stop at a University of Colorado campus.
This is why selling naming rights is a bad idea.
Notice how RTD planned for a future second track in the single lane sections? There is the right of way and the bridges already in place.
That’s called planning ahead. It is a concept that works for future branching and infill stations too. Let’s hope that ST board learns this lesson because past boards and staff haven’t practiced this concept very well in the past.
One of the bridges is single-track and would have to be rebuilt completely for double-track. The others, yes, they prepared.
This is not light rail. This is commuter rail. This line is more similar to sounder than link. With the “spine”, ST and our polititians are pretending than Link can be light rail and commuter rail at the same time. It can not. We need to invest in heavy/commuter rail on the I-5 ROW from king st station to Everett. We need to invest in BRT/light rail from the tukwilla Sounder station SeaTac Airport.
It’s not “both” light rail and commuter rail, it’s an in-between compromise. The powers that be did not want to build two levels of rail service, so they built an intermediate one.
And while Sounder could theoretically have been the higher level at least south, ST did not position it that way. The original motivation for Sounder was that it was low-hanging fruit: it could be started in a couple years with low capital costs. But it was unidirectional peak only, so useless as all-day transit.
Right now useless but with another round-trip run this September and two more next year, some of the blanks will begin to fill.
Mike, sorry I couldn’t get to you sooner. The PCC streetcar- which also had its heavy rail counterpart for subways, was probably the finest transit vehicle ever made.
By the 1930’s, the streetcar companies many if not most of which were privately owned, realized how much trouble their industry was in as more people could not only buy cars, but scatter into suburbs.
By some accounts, streetcars started down grade in 1915. So by 1930, in addition to using both designs and individual cars that were long out of date, many fleets were old and in very bad repair.
In 1950, with the rest of the world in wreckage only surpassed by the current state or own industrial cities, our country industry was without competition.
A major difference in perspective between the US and the rest of the world is that the war which devastated the rest of the planet left us not only undamaged, but rocketing out of the Great Depression.
And in addition, able to use our wartime experience to research and practice in the exact experience to quickly make machinery that was tough, well thought-out, and above all, simple.
You’ll notice how much a PCC car has the look of a late-WWII fighter or bomber.
Judging by Metro’s MAN (Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg) artic fleet, trolley and diesel both, German engineering considers it natural to have a crew of technicians standing by to constantly adjust an excellent vehicle.
The people responsible the PCC cars hardly ever discussed politics. Or needed a lifetime of trillion dollar schooling to build streetcars. Trade-school or family experience worked just fine.
This election especially, it’s a shame so many of them are gone. And their outlook with them. Because underneath the rhetoric, we the people were very much held together by the unspoken understanding that manufacturing itself held the country together.
Maybe unfair, but to me Information Technology has yet to pick up this talent. And since 1970, not one of the accounting excuses that sent away our transit manufacture can convince me by the balance sheet that its loss was worth the savings.
MUNI’s “F-Line” isn’t a carnival ride. Every one of those cars carries the design and manufacturing lessons necessary to start building similar again. Every trade school in our region should send students down there to study for at least a term.
Would be even better if we could expand our own system so they don’t have to go so far.
Re: PCC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCC_streetcar
Re: whole streetcar history: http://www.amazon.com/The-time-trolley-William-Middleton/dp/B0006BQWXM
You won’t be able to put the second one down.
Mark Dublin
Most commuter rail is dirt cheap (like Sounder). It leverages existing rail line. Sometimes running new rail is also very cheap. This is one of those times. There is a huge amount of empty, flat land between Denver and the airport — perfect for rail.
But it really doesn’t make sense to spend a huge amount of money building commuter rail. It just isn’t a very good value. Cities that can’t leverage an existing rail system for commuter rail just run express buses from the suburbs — we should do the same.
Link isn’t a compromise between the two — it is a sucker’s project. I get it — I fell for it. It operates like a light rail line but the project covers a commuter rail area, and has commuter rail line stop spacing. Thus it will not work very well as a light rail line (as a subway, if you want to use that terminology). People assume it is light rail (it is called light rail, after all) and if you don’t look at the details, it makes a lot of sense. But ultimately, if we continue to build the spine, we will have spent an enormous amount of money on something that is simply inappropriate. The ridership per dollar spent — or transit improvement per dollar spent — will likely be one of the worst in North America.
RossB,
Yes and no. Light rail as implemented by Sound Transit is a bit of an odd duck. In terms of grade separation it is really a heavy rail system but with the capacity and speed of light rail. However much of the resulting system covers commuter rail distances with commuter rail stop spacing and station location.
As for cost effectiveness the saving graces for Sound Transit are downtown-Northgate (and Downtown-Ballard if built) will have such high ridership and several other US rail systems have truly horrible ridership by every measure.
“Most commuter rail is dirt cheap (like Sounder). It leverages existing rail line. Sometimes running new rail is also very cheap.”
There’s a problem of multiple definitions of commuter rail. I’d say it has fewer stations and runs faster and further than a metro, but it should still run every 15-60 minutes so that it’s an all-day alternative to driving. (15 minutes in the case or PATH, 30 minutes for Sounder South, 60 minutes for a smaller community. Did I mention that Belfast and Glasgow have several commuter rail lines every 30-120 minutes?)
But others define commuter rail as peak-hour trains to the central city running on legacy tracks that happen to exist. Many American commuter rails follow this model.
But if we start with commuter rail as a true alternative to having a car, and running in parallel to metros which serve different transit needs, or instead of metros in smaller communities (Belfast and Glasgow, ignoring the historic Glasgow Subway which reaches a small part of the city), and that it should run all day, then it starts to make sense to build new rights of way for it if no legacy ROW exists in the right places. (And the reason it’s not in the right places is the change in housing/job patterns after freeways.) So a city might build new rights of way for both light rail/metro and commuter rail.
Ross,
Other than the Rainier Valley segment 112th SE and Overlake, Link when completed to Lynnwood, Midway and Overlake could be converted to heavy rail with third rail by elevating (Overlake), tunneling (112th SE) or avoiding (Duwamish Bypass) those three segments.
The biggest problem would be converting the stations to high platforms.
Just because BART chose wide gauge doesn’t mean that heavy rail has to be wide gauge. There are plenty of HRT vehicles which are capable of 70 mph.
What do you see as the advantage of such a conversion?
Mark,
The F-Line PCC’s may not be a carnival ride, but the Milan cars certainly are. They slow down the entire system. However, there’s no doubt that they do add capacity; there aren’t enough PCC’s alone to run the headway required by the ridership along Market.
If your goal of a conversion to high floor is higher speed, keep in mind Ottawa is getting 65 mph cars that are 100% low floor. The stability should be very good due to not having the short middle section that many partial low floor designs have. Stadler has partial low floor designs good for 75 mph, and I think one variant can do 93 or some such.
100% low floor and shorter station dwell times and 65 mph might be good enough, depending on what good enough is desired.
Glenn,
Sorry for the delay in responding. You listed some low floor LRV’s which apparently have the stability to run at higher speeds, so perhaps converting to high platforms is not important. The main reason is that high-floor cars do not have “idler” wheelsets which hunt badly; there’s no rigid axle between them. They depend on a automobile-like independent suspension, but the forces are orders of magnitude greater in a rail car because of the weight. HRT vehicles have every wheel a part of a classic railroad truck, a technology which has been shown to be stable at over 250 mph. So running 70 to 80 is SOP.
I can’t even envision how a 100% low-floor rail car would work. Where would the traction motors go? It’s a mighty short distance between the railhead and the floor of a low-floor car.
Keep in mind what we call light rail is a bit of a fabrication. What we call light rail cars are used on European main lines as regional trains in place of stuff like Sounder. So, higher speeds are useful if you are intermixing service on the same lines as 100mph intercity trains and the like. So, there is plenty of reason to make what we call light rail cars have a higher top end speed.
100% low floor is definitely the direction the rest of the world has gone with its streetcars. Toronto is the first in North America to get them, but for some reason everyone else in North America has gone with a partial low floor design that would be considered outdated in much of Europe.
Toronto’s cars:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sAa3PKbRNF8
Stability issues at higher speeds can be overcome, but the difficulty in doing so depends on the cause of the problem. For 100% low floor cars there is also the issue of getting the larger motors in there.
One source of instability can be four wheels on a very short car section. Most of the partial low floor cars have those, and they don’t have the same level of stability as two car sections supported from a single truck. Alstom’s car design completely does away with those short sections and is more along the lines of longer car bodies joined at a single truck at the articulation joint.
Stadler uses the short middle sections on its low floor designs, but on its designs that is usually where the traction module goes, so it’s heavier than the rest of the car. You can walk through it, but it is narrower than the rest of the car. Generally, their designs are the same from this module to the car end, and this module is changed based on if you want a diesel or electric car. Obviously, cramming a Diesel engine into the thing takes up a bit more space in the center module.
Certainly, there are issues with doing all this in a 100% low floor car, as the motors have to go someplace. If all that is wanted is higher speed, then there have certainly been some partial low floor designs that have done this.
100% low floor can be kind of nice though. An extra set of doors makes for faster boarding and really makes sense if higher speeds are wanted. No sense in keeping long station dwell times if the goal is to keep moving. For streetcars that 100% low floor is something many operators view as vital for frequent stop lines such as streetcar. Getting the motors crammed in there for higher speed was an issue for a while, but now apparently someone has done it (the cars aren’t in service yet).
The choice of light rail was driven by the expectation that a lot more of it would be on the surface, from Mt Baker to SeaTac and beyond. Surface running was the key to low capital costs (which was assumed to be one of voters’ primary concerns, and why Sounder was front-loaded to bring results quickly). Heavy rail can’t do surface so it was rejected. Rainier Valley howled but got surface “because it’s flat so we can run surface there”. Other segments were expected to be the same, but one by one the neighborhoods and cities and public asked for underground or elevated and got it even though it kept raising the price. Luckily the public realized that grade-separated speed and reliability is really important. It’s unfortunate that the political climate didn’t allow for a fully grade-separated plan in the first place, and then it could have been heavy rail. But that’s what happens when anti-tax and anti-train people have too much power. And Rainier Valley shows the double-edge sword of being first: you get the first service, but later segments have the benefit of things being politically possible that weren’t before Link opened.
Mike,
Not sure how your theory really holds. Perhaps the RTD folks thought there would be more surface running. However of the EIS docs I’ve looked at the only two where substantial surface running was contemplated are Central Link and East Link. For Central Link, the route between BAR and TIBS was supposed to be along SR99 on the surface until Tukwila objected as they didn’t want the construction disruption so an alignment alongside I-5 and SR 518 was selected instead (sound familiar?).
With East Link there has been much horse trading over the years, but there are still some surface sections. Due to city of Bellevue objections surface running wasn’t used in Downtown Bellevue. The alignment through Overlake has been modified to reduce the amount of interaction with vehicle traffic.
AFAIK U-Link and North Link have been budgeted since the 1995 Sound Move measure as tunnels, the extensions north of northgate were budgeted as freeway alignments. The only open question was South of the Airport. I think the original plans may have contemplated a surface alignment. The EIS studied elevated alignments as Sound Transit has found the cost of surface vs. elevated to be a wash in many cases.
The original phase was 45th to SeaTac. The other extensions didn’t even have concepts when the mode was chosen. But it was set up to continue south in the middle of 99, and north in the I-5 express lanes. When the alignment was moved to Broadway and University Way, obviously the next extension would have to start underground for some unspecified distance, and the first North Link proposal had it daylighting at 63rd and going along the freeway (with some underpasses) to Northgate.
So in your first paragraph we’re both saying the same thing about south of BAR. In your second paragraph, I don’t know the initial East Link alignment except it involved Bellevue Way. Gradually ST2 Link became entirely grade-separated for a while, and then it pulled back somewhat in Bel-Red and Overlake. I told and ST staff I was concerned that Bel-Red intersections would impact East Link’s performance, and he said the only crossings are low-volume streets. Since I grew up in Bellevue I know that area has several very low-volume streets, with most cars sticking to the main arterials. So I was still concerned but not greatly. I don’t know exactly where the surface segment in Overlake are or how high-volume the intersections.
Re your third paragraph, ST recognized that hilly areas require tunnels or similarly expensive alignments. So once the decision was made to serve Capitol Hill, it would have to remain underground at least to 63rd where the land goes down to Ravenna Creek. North of that it was assumed to follow the freeway pending the EIS. Freeway alignments are initially presumed to be inexpensive because they’re public right of way. Also a train can be often be technically “at-grade” along a freeway while enjoying immunity from intersections because it can use the freeway’s underpasses for major streets, and minor streets are blocked before the tracks. Parts of Lynnwood Link in north Seattle and Shoreline are at-grade with underpasses, and parts of the proposed I-5 alignment in south King County are also that way. To laypeople it can look entirely elevated but technically run on the ground in parts, because people equate at-grade with intersections, but that’s not exactly what it means. At-grade along a freeway is intrinsically low-cost, although the age and environment of the particular freeway can counteract this. I-5 in far north Seattle and Shoreline is one of those expensive places, because the freeway is fifty years old and any disruption of its stanchions would require an expensive rebuild, and the right of way next to it is narrow. So that segment was not bargain-basement cost, and not that much less than the Aurora-elevated alternative.
I agree that elevated alignments along highways are not that expensive, which is why Link can be extended easily and cheaply in south King County and Pierce, either along I-5 or 99.
More conclusions in my next comment.
Remember the rail portion of the 1995 Sound Move plan that failed was much more extensive than the one that passed in 1996. I can’t remember anymore if it went all the way to Everett and Tacoma or if it stopped short (I believe it went all the way to Redmond)
So in 1995 there was at least a conceptual-level notion of the alignment with some initial back of the napkin scoping.
We can’t forget the RTD process that led to the 1995 and 1996 votes either. This was the stage where it he decision to run in Rainer Valley as opposed to along Boeing field was made. Mayor Rice pushing for serving Rainier Valley as well as Boeing’s objections to having rail between its hangars and the airport both played a role. Much earlier the RTD folks also decided rail should serve First Hill, Capitol Hill, and the University District rather than run along the express lanes from the Convention Center to Northgate.
Do remember in the 80’s and early 90’s after the opening of the San Diego Trolley ‘light rail’ was the magic sexy transit mode. It could be built cheaper and faster with less construction disruption than third-rail ‘heavy’ systems.
In the case of Seattle this ignores the reality that has made other cities light rail systems relatively cheap which is having suitable existing rail, highway, surface street, or utility corridors available to allow running on the surface with minimal ROW acquisition and construction costs. It turns out when you go for 100% grade separation the cost difference between modes is minimal.
See also recent transit planning that treats BRT and streetcars as similarly magical.
Still in transit planning during that time ‘rail’ was considered a bad word unless prefaced with either ‘light’ or ‘commuter’. RTD and predecessor groups back into the early 80’s had ‘light-rail’ as an implicit mode choice.
So the short version is the mode choice was primarily made by politicians because it was sexy at the time rather than on technical grounds.
After writing about Link’s evolution from mostly-surface to mostly grade-separated, I realized that’s a good illustration of how piecemeal this process has been, and how that has led to many of the criticisms of Link.
We should have started with a comprehensive regional plan, with travel-time goals and centers/villages to be served, and at least concepts for feeders and local-bus integration. When Jarrett Walker was asked at a local event what he thought of ST1 Link and ST2 EIS planning, he said he wished it had started with an integrated regional+local transit proposal; i.e., Link + Metro buses. That made me realize it should also have planned future phases (what we call ST2 and ST3) at the beginning, so that neighborhoods would know when and how they would be served and what it depended on (i.e., just a future vote at a tentative time). Instead you have a case where ST1 was approved in 1996, but Aurora did not know if it would be getting Link until ca. 2012 (when the preferred alternative was chosen), and 45th still doesn’t know if it will get Link in ST3, and Lake City and Renton have absolutely no idea if it will ever come or what feeders or other service they might get in the meantime.
ST’s Long-Range Plan at first glance looks like a comprehensive regional plan, but it’s not. It’s just a list of vague corridors ST thinks it might possibly want in the next hundred years. So it essentially punts the decisions on them to the future. Those decisions include whether the lines will be built, in what order, which mutually-exclusive alternatives will be chosen (Is 520 still on? Or Northgate-Bothell-Kirkland?), and which neighborhoods will be served +/- a three-mile lateral leeway (Aurora to Lake City Way for Lynnwood Link). That makes a big difference to those neighborhoods in terms of how easy it will be to get around without a car, where the feeders and crosstown routes will go, and whether it will have enough “T” to support a large TOD village.
At the same time, I shudder to think how bad the comprehensive plan could have been given “1995 values”. Those are the values that led to Northgate and 145th I-5 stations because there were existing P&Rs there.
I also wonder how surface Link in south King County would have affected Tacoma/Pierce’s attitudes. If it had been surface on 99, then it would be the 2-3 hour travel time TCG fears. Would Tacoma really want a Central Link extension in that situation? Does that mean Pierce and the ST Board missed the fact that surface light rail and “Spine destiny” are incompatible goals? Light rail was chosen because it can run on the surface, but a full Tacoma-Seattle-Everett network is incompatible with a mostly-surface alignment, especially if it’s to serve Tacoma-Seattle and Everett-Seattle commuters. Why didn’t the ST board address this discrepency in the 1990s? Why didn’t it set travel-time goals for the following phases, rather than letting each phase decide on its own? Would a mostly-surface Link have lead to Tacoma eventually abandoning the idea and letting it terminate in south King County and pushing for more Sounder instead? (But then there’s that airport thing.)
So the initial ST board was responsible for a lot of these decisions and how it structured Link planning. But politicians and the city and state and transit fans also share a lot of blame for not articulating the need for a comprehensive plan up front, and getting the bus agencies planning a local network to complement it at the same time. Instead it’s, “What does each city want?”, regardless of whether the cities understand or agree with best transit practices, and we’ll only ask them when their phase is coming.
Too busy today to play in the open thread between…
a) An Island Transit whistleblower and a watchdog of Island Transit are going public with their story… STAY TUNED.
b) Going to write Island Transit an open letter about fares. Will forward a copy to STB leaders… and if they don’t want to publish, will just post in the mid-week open thread.
c) Finalizing photos from the 727 delivery to The Museum of Flight.
d) Sending in comments to Skagit Transit Citizen’s Advisory Committee on their by-laws.
In happier news, Los Angeles opened an extension of 11.5 miles of new rail on the Gold Line in the San Gabriel Valley this week. It’s now the longest line in the LA Metro network at 31 miles, and came in at $1.0B.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-san-gabriel-commuters-officials-cheer-gold-line-extension-20160305-story.html
http://moregold.metro.net/
…and another 12 miles further east in the works. Sounding a lot like the spine here, a good core segment that gets stretched beyond the limits of where light rail makes sense.
I have a feeling that when our lines reach a certain length, our rail cars will have seats a lot more comfortable, and maybe even bathrooms.
Quit running away with your fingers in your ears. It will never be possible for our trains to become The Electroliner for the ironclad reason is that they’ll never run street track in mixed traffic.
Also, this generation of espresso machines will not make china cups an white table-cloths necessary.
Mark
Some of those areas have a fair amount of population, business and other activity in them. The 15 miles of not much between Everett and Lynnwood along I-5 is a different matter. The highway 99 segment is OK-ish, but not especially great.
It helps to have a county of nine million people.
Sound Transit is running three-car trains right now:
https://twitter.com/SoundTransit/status/706559401222664196
Yes. I’m in car 3 right now – and seats are 65 percent full on a Sunday afternoon!
Community Transit just dropped their TDP DRAFT: http://www.commtrans.org/Projects/Documents/DRAFT%202016-2021%20TDP.pdf
$9 airport fares may sound steep, but at least it’s not $27.50 like Toronto’s.
By the general rubric Walker lays out:
– The Denver train is a cul-de-sac, but that’s OK because the airport is so far out there won’t be any place to go beyond it for a long time.
– The stops between the airport and downtown are not in great locations for walkability, but they may be in OK locations for transfers.
– They’re also in pretty good locations for drop-off or P&R use… and the transit agency seems to support use of its P&Rs for airport parking.
I think that BART from SFO to downtown SF is around 8 or 9 bucks…and that’s only a (several) few miles. New Jersey Transit trains from EWR to NYC (Penn Station) also seem really expensive ($13.00) for a not-very-far run…and, for heavy rail, that route is crazy slow. If you factor in cost, Link to the airport is a pretty great deal.
Johannesburg’s airport fare is (or was when I was there a couple of years ago; the rand is worth even less now) about $15 on their very nice rail line. Convert $15 to what that would be to the average South African, even those who fly, and you’re looking at Heathrow Express pricing (or worse). The station at the airport is physically separated such that you can only enter/leave a certain car at a certain point on the platform, which is how they can manage the much higher fare for airport trips. In practice this often means that the airport car is packed solid whilst the other cars are largely empty.
If you go one station beyond the airport on BART, the fare is several dollars less. At JFK if you go into the subway from the city entrance it’s several dollars less than if you come in the AirTrain entrance. And beware that the Airtrain 5-ride passes are Airtrain only, not a suiway pass plus Aitrain as I thought, and then they wouldn’t give me a refund. I ended up using four of them though because I had to come back to the airport for my lost bag, and then I think I gave the card to who flies regularly.
I haven’t been to Heathrow, but Getwick has both the Gatwick Express and the regional train from Victoria Station to Brighton. I usually took the regional train because it’s much cheaper and only makes one stop between Gatwick Airport and London. It’s less frequent though. But the last time I came back I took the Express because my plane was going to depart soon, the line for express tickets was much shorter, and it leaves every 15 minutes so I was sure to get to Gatwick within 45 minutes.
I read recently that Toronto is about to cut the price to under C$20.
How does the capacity of Link’s articulated cars compare to a heavy rail system? Are Link’s 4-car trains equivalent to 4- or 8-car trains on the Chicago El. DC Metro, NYC subway, or BART?
They are similar. A Central Link car can hold 74/200 seated/crush and an older BART car could hold about 60/200. BART is designed for 10 car trains though.
For NYC, a R160 car (60′ long) seats 42-44 with 198-202 standees, depending on whether it has an operator’s cab or not. The IRT cars are shorter and narrower: the R142 has a total capacity of 176-188 including standees. Typically trains are run in 10-car sets with exceptions on a few lines.
The total capacity of a 10-car NYC train is ~1800-2400 depending on the line. Link would be around 1100 for a 4-car train.
HRT trains have greater capacity mostly because they’re longer. But they’re also more powerful because they have high floors and all axles are powered, so they accelerate more rapidly. The standard railroad trucks also have greater resistance to “hunting” so top speeds can be higher.
Now most HRT is inner city subways, but BART has shown that it can sustain speeds of as high as 80 mph reliably in revenue service. That’s over 50% faster than LRT.
Tacoma rents rise faster than Seattle. Tacoma mayor Marilyn Strickland in an interview with KUOW mentions transit as one of the city’s top priorities, and says she has learned that transportation and land use decisions have to be made together. Bill Radke asks her if Tacoma is considering opening up some single-family areas to multifamily development as Seattle is considering. She says Tacoma has designated multifamily areas where it wants growth, and until those are filled to the brim she doesn’t think affecting single-family areas will be necessary.
I don’t know enough about Tacoma’s multifamily zones to say whether they have the same problems as Seattle: it’s not enough land to meet the housing demand, and the unused capacity in some lowrise lots is too little to make it feasable to replace the existing building.
The difference between having plenty of land (Denver area) and not (Seattle) is striking. The video could have been “somewhat” a view of here had our predecessors had the foresight to vote for rail in the late 1960s. We’ll continue to pay for it, particularly where we opt for “at grade” as was done for C-Link. While it would be wise to do, I doubt it will happen that future leaders will invest some money in improving that part of the equation…even a moving sidewalk with some degree of protection from the elements would be welcomed, as would far better signage beyond what continues on an “everybody knows” or “everybody can figure it out” basis, e.g. tapping on and tapping off.
Some incompetent idiot crashed into the back of one of the brand spanking new articulated trolleys on Capitol Hill. So new that as someone who travels by bus daily on any of the 10,11,43,47,49 lines I have yet to catch a ride on one.