• [Note: The opinions expressed below are those of the author alone.]

SB 5001, a bill that would change Sound Transit into an 11 member elected board will be making its way to the House Transportation Committee soon as promised by Judy Clibborn according to The News Tribune

BART of course has the favorite 2003 extension to SFO Airport. An airport connection has political will and motivation given the wide benefit to users. At the time the project was billed at $580 million, by the time construction started, it was closer to construction in 1999, the cost escalated to $1.167 billion and ended up costing $1.483 billion by the time 2003 came. The schedule at the time had completion in 2001. The project was overbuilt given 3 terminus tracks for less than 10 minute frequency on the ends of each line, and forcing transfers from Milbrae to SFO between BARTs Red Line, Yellow line and then to the SFO People Mover if heading to a domestic terminal. See BART to SFO Study for more information. The Oakland Airport Connector played out similarly with a starting cost that is low and ends up costing 3 times as much by the time construction comes around with a fare much higher than the existing options for little to no benefit.

Warm Spring In Trouble
The Warm Springs extension is only 5.4 miles for one additional station. It was initially supposed to open in 2014 and supposed to cost $890 million. Now the opening date is unpredictable with a target of Winter of 2017. The San Francisco Chronicle stated BART’s aging infrastructure with power lines and communications system and tying new and old into each other has been the biggest difficulty and they cannot determine when it will be open. These issues should be planned around with extensions due to rapidly changing technology. As Link extends into the next decade, I hope Sound Transit has considered these possible challenges of tying into existing systems and will plan this into any capital program.

BART over the years has enjoyed great voter support and the Bay Area understands the need for frequent reliable transit. The system however has fallen upon aging times and just recently asked for maintenance dollars. Sound Transit at least planned that into Sound Transit 3 for maintenance.

In reality, this makes Sound Transit’s U-Link extension look pretty decent given the preferred alternative in 2002 dollars was projected at $830 million to $1.1 billion. Using an inflation calculator, the cost was about $350 million over the projected range given inflation to today. At the time of construction in 2009, the schedule was to open in September 2016 and was beat by 6 months.

To add onto everything eBART to East Contra Costa County was supposed to open up in 2015. Now it is projected to open in 2018. There has been a trend with BART even as an elected board which transit critics have come out after Sound Transit for with Sound Move. Over budget and behind schedule have been the trends at BART and continue to be so even with an elected board. It is difficult to determine if the Metropolitan Transportation Commission plays a large role in this or aging systems but one thing is certain. An elected transit board does not change the factors Republicans point to with projects. Many of the complaints are coming from suburban and rural constituents who do not use transit on a regular basis and have chosen to live further out. There are three Democrats who supported SB 5001 within the ST District being Bob Hasegawa of the 11th District, Guy Palumbo of the 1st District, and Steve Conway of the 29th District.

BART as an elected board has had a history of cost overruns with projects behind schedule and still does. California might be a different animal, but an elected board does not create immunity from poor leadership decisions. If the Republicans really want to help things out and ensure all citizens of this state receive a better bang for the buck with transportation costs, maybe it would be better to evaluate what delays and holds up projects and having a conversation on both sides of the aisle of what do we want to prioritize? There are only 3 directly elected transit boards in the country. BART is one, RTD in Denver is the second.

Going Forward

Given the evenly divided legislature and the bill receiving bipartisan support in the Senate 29-20,  there needs to be a push in the House Transportation Committee. Knowing history and Mary Margaret Haugen, the chair of the Transportation Committee is a very powerful position.

I would recommend the following.
1) Allow rural Pierce County that isn’t within the Pierce Transit PTBA and have regularly voted down Sound Transit packages to annex out of the district. There needs to be some reasonable standard to allow the rural areas to be outside the district given rural King and Snohomish Counties are not inside the district.
2) Reform the way vehicle depreciation is done. Get rid of the current state formula and implement something that closely follows Kelly Blue Book values. It was one reason voters likely voted in I-695 and significantly reduced transportation funding throughout the state. If taxes are more reasonable that may dial the pressure back.
3) Allow for better citizen participation in some form or another. The Citizen Oversight Panel should have a bit more say at the table rather than a rubber stamp on proposals. I personally would be open to having citizen appointments to the board with up to and no more than half the members. Citizens would get to know elected representatives with experience. Given Senator Liias’s and Conway’s remarks in the Senate Floor debate, change will need to occur.  see 50:00

There are many routes this bill could go

1) Inslee could veto the bill given there isn’t a 2/3rds majority in both chambers to override the bill given the current vote totals.
2) The bill ends up not making it out of the House Transportation Committee given Democrats have a majority there.
3) The bill ends up not making it out of the House Rules Committee for a hearing on the House Floor.
4) The bill makes it out with or without numerous amendments and to the House Floor for a vote.

I would not count on Democrats to hold a party line on this vote.

I would follow through on discussion with voters in order to bring the temperature down. We want to ensure taxpayers are receiving what they asked for in a cost effective manner.

If transit expansion is important to you, I would contact your legislators and tell them that a full directly elected board will not bring about the changes desired and may hinder the ability of Sound Transit’s work on system expansion and project delivery.

Prior to the September 2012 restructure, the peak-only Route 46 ran via Seaview Ave NW. Route 46 was axed in the September 2012 restructure, and there has been no replacement bus service along Seaview Ave NW. There are a couple apartment buildings along Seaview Ave NW, and people living in these buildings complained about the loss of bus service.

One possible solution is to extend Route 29 to Golden Gardens via Seaview Ave NW. It would provide a similar amount of service as the old Route 46. Midday and weekend service would be nice too, because many people go to Golden Gardens during the weekends.

Currently, there is no bus service on NW 65th St. Apparently there was a bus during the 1990s that served this corridor, but it eventually got axed.

There should be a bus that runs along NW 65th St between 36th Ave NW and Aurora. It would provide a good connection between Ballard, Phinney Ridge, and Green Lake.

NOTE: This post is copied in its entirety from an article I wrote, titled With Major Revisions, the SPIRE Plan Becomes Our Region’s Surest Best for Express Rail Service: A Mapped, Annotated Update. It is the latest entry of my blog, Transportation Matters, a Pacific Northwest-flavored blog that discusses railway planning, urban planning, and related politics.

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For over a decade now, and principally advanced by the November 2016 election, the majority of voters within Sound Transit’s taxing district have committed themselves to the extension of the Link light rail line from Seattle to Puyallup Avenue in Tacoma. The resurrection-in-spirit of the old interurban line of the Puget Sound Electric Railway, which dutifully linked the two cities between 1902 and 1928, manifested itself through a number of factors: the anguish over limited mobility options between the two cities; increasing congestion and delay; the failure to prioritize bus transit on existing roadways; environmental concerns, and; the pro-transit pull of our region’s growing urban cores. By 2030, a passenger-friendly rail system should again bridge that divide in a manner that no system has since the termination of interurban services nearly 89 years ago. Whatever one may feel regarding ST3, compliments to Sound Transit for this rather extraordinary achievement.

In a high-tech, fast paced region like the Puget Sound, however, the ±70 minute travel times between the two cities will eventually prove unsatisfactory; indeed, the primitive interurban had precisely 70 minute trip times scheduled, too, including padding, for their express services in 1922 (a separate, undated timecard details 65 to 75 minute express services). Damningly, this was achieved on a notably longer pioneer alignment that began on Occidental Avenue in Pioneer Square and ended not on Puyallup Avenue in Tacoma, but near old city hall in the crowded central business district. Though our ST3 rail investment will spur growth and positively affect the geography of the region, we are paying an enormous sum of money to establish transit services that are roughly comparable to those conceived in the late 19th century, constructed in the early 20th, and dismantled a few decades thereafter.

The SPIRE rail modernization plan was initially a 2015 reaction to the numerous technical criticisms of the Link extension toward Tacoma. It was a proposal that conveyed a potent message: despite the price and the press, Sound Transit’s multi-billion dollar rail plan was neither the visionary nor intelligent plan needed. Unfortunately, the SPIRE’s best mechanism for financing died with the passage of ST3, considering the core of its alignment rests entirely within the taxing district, and the existing services utilizing its right-of-way for their operations are already wildly popular. In the future, with rail service between Commencement and Elliott bays underway and Sound Transit largely working to pay down huge debts, it seems unlikely that a majority of voters would agree to a major upgrade of rail services on the heavy rail mainlines parallel to the Link corridor.

Consequently, the future genesis of the SPIRE plan will likely have to come in the shape of rail investments in the Cascades corridor to Portland, Oregon, representing a multi-state and/or federal effort to deliver quality express services to the region. Such an effort will be mandatory, in fact, should we ever insist on regional trains that travel at speeds swifter than 90mph (145kmh). That figure is the strict BNSF speed cap for passenger trains, with or without positive train control (PTC). Now, with the following improvements rendering the plan even more rational and executable, the Seattle-Tacoma-Olympia core of any higher speed rail project would almost certainly be the SPIRE line proposed here. Alternative alignments would cost billions more and require a dismaying planning process, the entirety of it vulnerable to collapse due to local politics and eminent domain battles.

SPIRE PLAN MODIFICATIONS

When originally proposed by this blog, the SPIRE plan was to feature routine operating speeds of 125mph (200kmh) on largely tangent track between Tacoma and Seattle, with antiquated curves widened to a minimum 6235ft (1900m) accordingly. However, multiple issues arose from this choice: grade crossings were required by law to be eliminated, raising costs dramatically; numerous homes, or even neighborhoods, were destroyed for some curve improvements; the speeds were unrealistically high for corridor commuter trains and had no real impact on lowering travel times, and; it failed to take advantage of higher equilibrium cants, in essence the sum of the tilt of the rails and the distance value of how fast a train can travel around curves before distress. The higher speed was a benefit to express travelers, though. Unfortunately, express trains were never meant to be the focus of the SPIRE plan.

Modifications, which are presented below, lower the maximum speed to 100mph (160kmh) on track with 10in (254mm) of equilibrium cant, or 110mph (175kmh) on 12in (304.8mm). To accommodate these speeds, curves are widened to a far more sympathetic 3935ft (1200m), sparing numerous homes, businesses and streets from condemnation and destruction. On the express track from Auburn to Tukwila, and on the new passenger-dedicated tracks from Tukwila to Georgetown, top speeds may remain at their original 125mph (200kmh) cap should investments be made to eliminate or avoid grade crossings on those stretches. As this blog has argued before, grade crossing elimination should be a safety priority for the region whether-or-not the SPIRE plan is realized, especially in the valley cities of Kent, Auburn, Sumner and Puyallup.

The speed update to the SPIRE plan allows for a piecemeal grade separation of the corridor—if at all—as the lower speeds no longer legally compel such a separation. While this does substantially lower the cost and complication of the project, it allows for the nuisance of approaching train horns to continue largely unabated.

This SPIRE update also includes a dramatically more precise measurement of rights-of-way based on technical standards from the California High Speed Rail Authority, BNSF, Deutsche Bahn, the Israeli Railways, LTD., amongst others. Elevation contours provided by the city of Seattle, and Pierce and King counties, also were useful in determining the location of critical civil works. This provides us further confidence in the strong technical feasibility of the SPIRE plan, for both the passenger and freight corridors. Roughly all prominent physical features along the railroad rights-of-way, with the exception of utilities, are now identified based on their likely impact.

Additional modifications concern new research and awareness into specific planning issues:

1) The Stampede Pass rail link to the freight corridor is now achieved via graded fill and bridges, rather than trenching. Geotechnical issues related to the water table precluded trenching, as did impacts to adjacent roadways and bridges (pg. 15).

2) A lengthy tunnel is no longer supported though Tacoma; instead, the current alignment is improved with widened curves, affecting some local streets while avoiding hundreds of millions of dollars on civil works under a busy urban zone (pg. 27).

3) Highway columns, especially on the new I-5 Puyallup River Bridge, were incorporated into the project and considered during the design. While some curves were altered to circumvent these columns, it is presumed on other, smaller bridges that steel would provide a means to relocate errant columns. On other bridges, still, a rebuild would likely be cogent due to end-of-life estimations (pg. 26).

4) A new alignment is proposed between Tacoma and Puyallup that roughly parallels the existing BNSF right-of-way. While the new alignment does include a modest tunnel, it avoids the evisceration of a neighborhood and spares numerous additional structures on tribal land. The alternative alignment remains in the SPIRE plan maps for consideration (pgs. 22, 25).

5) Near Olympia and Lacey, the Woodland Trail alignment was selected as the preferred option of accessing the center of Olympia, having proven incredibly amenable to express rail infrastructure using 1200m curves. It is now, by far, the best route to serve the people of the south Puget Sound (pgs. 37-41).

6) In Olympia, competitor siting options for the station were discarded for the location along Legion Way. It is far less disruptive than the alternatives, allows for UPRR to continue to access the Olympia port on their operational cargo line, and provides a fine location near both the city center and the capitol (pg. 47).

7) In the Nisqually Valley area, great pains were taken to avoid the destruction of hamlets and farms, all-the-while preserving 200kmh (125mph) speeds that support a high-speed link to Portland, Ore. The interchange from the SPIRE line to a central Washington high-speed line will probably be made in this rural area (pgs. 35-38).

8) Though the map represents a right-of-way capable of accommodating three tracks, the freight corridor is no longer presumed to be triple-track from the outset, but double. While the SPIRE plan will preserve enough space to allow for three mainline tracks on the entirety of the corridor, current daily freight train totals on the UPRR and BNSF do not warrant three active tracks. Only alongside the rail yards in Fife, Auburn and the Tukwila area can we presume that three main tracks will be useful at this time.

9) Now depicted on the maps are the recently constructed third main lines on the BNSF corridor between Auburn and Tukwila, with the intentional gap through Kent (the railroad has had difficulty acquiring property through the area, and it would further require destruction of Kent Station facilities to accommodate the third track). Should the Seattle to Portland passenger rail link be constructed, this section would need the third track to support express services. A third track would also be required south of Tacoma, though the location is undetermined and dependent on currently uncalculated timetable work. This work is underway and the maps will be updated accordingly.

10) A challenging stretch of right-of-way between Tukwila and SODO has been refined to avoid numerous structures, and now incorporates previously unaccounted-for civil works. Tweaks in the alignment have improved the line’s feasibility (pgs. 2-7).

11) Fort Lewis Station has since become Dupont / Fort Lewis Station, having been moved away from the Fort Lewis main gate and toward a more sensible location near Dupont and the fort’s Clark Road gate (pg. 34).

12) The north arrow is now facing up, mercifully.

These improvements, as well as the precision updates to track geometry, will allow us to better understand the impacts of the intelligent SPIRE proposal on our region. Furthermore, simple budgets and timetable string graphs are now able to be completed, providing us a much clearer picture of how transformational these rail services would be on our mobility and urban geography.

From here, I’ll let my plan speak for itself. I welcome scrutiny and constructive criticism.

On ST Link trains the sign on the head of the train rolls along “UW STATION” or “ANGLE LAKE STATION” and whenever I look up there or inside the train where intermediate station names are displayed, I end up reading the word “STATION.” Now I am under the impression that the trains stop only at stations and don’t peel off along Othello Street or wander around the University of Washington. In no other transit system I have ever used (and that is quite a few) are rolling signs involved. The rider just needs to know one word: the unique name of the station. On Boston’s MTA, it says “HARVARD”, not “HARVARD STATION”. The system there assumes that the rider knows it is going to the station where Harvard University, Harvard Square, Harvard Street are all proximally located.

When we finally have more than one line, we will have to be able to know what we need to know at a glance on a crowded car or fast on the platform. Could we not do better and assume a little intelligence on the part of the rider?

Metro Route 41 is one of the two most frequent routes slated to be kicked out of the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel. The One City Center plan calls for it to live loop on Pike & Union. But why just there? During the peak hour, there’s enough runs and ridership to justify splitting it in two, decreasing the number of 41 riders who would have to transfer from Link.

I also think it’s possible to save driver hours in the process. Most passengers get off at the Northgate TC; if we run fewer buses to 125th, fewer buses have to sit in traffic on I-5 southbound from 130th.

To illustrate this, I’ll focus on the evening peak hour, as has already been discussed a bit in recent blog posts discussing the One City Center plan and alternatives.

Route 41 already has two different variants; the peak-only variant goes from downtown to Northgate as an express, stops at all local stops until 125th, and either returns to base or gets on I-5 southbound for another run (getting stuck in heavy congestion all the way from 125th). The all-day variant (including one in three runs during most of peak, one in four runs during the peak half hour) follows the same path but turns right at 125th to head to Lake City.

When I’ve ridden this route during peak, most riders disembark at Northgate TC; fewer than 1/3 of riders continue on. So we should be able to truncate half of the runs there, taking 5th Ave to the ramp on NE 75th St at 9th Ave NE (just like the southbound 41 does during the evening peak). To avoid confusion, this should probably get a new route number. The existing 41 would still have some runs that continue to Lake City and some extra peak runs that stop at 125th, just fewer runs than the new route.

So what about downtown? I’m less sure about that, but here’s a starting suggestion. One route would live loop in north downtown, perhaps using Stewart – 9th, entering the I-5 express lanes behind the Paramount Theatre. This would require a new peak-only stop on 9th somewhere near Pine St.

The other route runs would live loop in a different part of downtown, perhaps Union – 5th, entering the I-5 express lanes at 5th & Columbia.

The good? We get better downtown coverage, and probably save service hours in the process by improving the return path to downtown for service runs. The bad? Neither of my specific route suggestions is that close to Link. The 5th & Seneca stop is two blocks uphill.

Are there other downtown routings that would be better for this?

The coming of ST2 and ST3 will require consideration of ‘transfer ease’ between Link lines. An ideal transfer is made by stepping off one train, crossing the platform, and boarding a train headed out in the opposite direction. This saves walking and time. What is not an ideal transfer is one where stepping off the train requires going up a set of stairs to cross over to the platform on the other side of adjacent tracks and then down another set of stairs (or slow elevators). This awkward transfer is precisely what is planned for passengers riding in on Eastlink (say Redmond or Bellevue) and going to the airport or any point south of the International District station. A central platform between the tracks would solve this problem. The space is available in the ID and other tunnel stations and it is cheap. Is there an issue with opening doors on both sides of the train? Surely people will get the hang of it and get out on the right to leave the station and on the left to transfer.
If, as I hope, the transfer from the Issaquah line (ST3) in Bellevue takes place at the S. Bellevue station, then all is good there because that station has a center platform. If the transfer is made on any other Bellevue station, it will be more difficult.

First apologies for the follow up post, I don’t think I can easily fit everything into comments to the original thread. I got some great comments from, Al S, AJ and William C, and Guy on Beacon Hill did some field work downtown! The most pressing question I think is about turn radius. I had envisioned going above, or if necessary taking the small, 60s office building at the corner of 5th and Union (or above the Banana Republic for Pike), but Guy was right, that would still be too tight. While I couldn’t get find the original ALWEG turn radius, the Malaysian trains, which are very similar, have a minimum radius of 70 meters. Not enough for the 5th and Union turn. Should have double checked. However, that lead me to a slightly different alignment which might actually be better in terms of competing with fewer views and presents a rather unique opportunity to leverage a second stranded asset.

Here goes:
Abandon Westlake. The station would have to be rebuilt anyway to make better connections with Link and to fix the unfortunate pinch point where they narrowed the guideways when they built the new station in 88.

Instead turn from 5th on to Olive. This would require going above McGraw Park and the two story BofA building and/or taking it (possibly to create a new station.) This would still offer nice connections to Link and the expanding streetcar system. This would yield a turn radius of 110 meters.

From Olive the line could utilize the space above I-5 to turn to reach either Pine to reach further into Capitol Hill (option A) for an east running route or Boren (option B) to reach the hospitals on First Hill. Again, I think this alignment leave room for the turn.

The Pine street alignment could reach further into Capitol Hill with a stop perhaps at Pine, 16th and Madison where the 7-11 is. From there, it could be extended as far east to 23rd and the down 23rd all the way to the I-90 stop or even Mt. Baker. The turn from Pine to 23rd could be above the City Light marshalling yard, which should yield sufficient radius. Running the line to the I-90 station would be 5.3 kilometers.

Alternatively, the Boren route, suggested by William C would better serve the hospitals and the redeveloped Yesler Terrace. Possible station location could be in the parking lot at Seneca and Boren, or the parking lot at James and Boren. This route, too could be extended all the way to I-90 or Mt. Baker without and a single sharp turn. The Boren route to I-90 would be 4 kilometer. Both extended alignments are here.

Finally, there is the prospect of building a station as part of the Convention Center expansion on the site of the former Convention Place Bus station. First, it would be in the Convention Center’s interest to have a station. Second the city has some leverage now in the permitting stage, especially as the WSCC and the developers want to vacate Terry. Finally, the WSCC has some commitments to Metro as part of the purchase agreement to sustain bus access for a period of time. Perhaps that could be traded for a monorail station? Personally, I think having the Monorail running inside a glass tube above the main exhibition hall would be cool, but there’s obviously a number of way to incorporate the station. Perhaps the abandoned bus tunnel from Convention Place to Westlake could be turned into moving walkways? Perhaps having its own monorail line would reduce the need for parking?

Again thanks for all the great suggestions. Where is the more pressing need, First Hill, or going as far east as possible? Best station locations?

I know, I know, I know. Everyone has Monorail PTSD. Even mentioning the M word probably activates the bile duct of half of the STB readership. But consider the future slowly congealing before us. ST3 will prioritize extending the existing lines (completing the spine), then West Seattle, and finally Ballard. The Ballard line will travel via South Lake Union and thus bypass Belltown. At the same time, the the new DSTT will likely stay west of I-5 because tunneling under I-5 (twice) would be difficult, expensive, risky and circuitous. Thus, we confront a future where after a 25 year wait the two densest neighborhoods closest to downtown never get high-capacity transit services. At the same time, passage of ST3 (arguably) exhausts the sales tax bonding capacity. These areas are well suited to transit, and, generally, amenable to further density. Failure to serve these neighborhoods in one of ST’s greatest sins but it’s clear at this point that their mandate for regionalism trumps any cost/benefit analysis or efficacy.

However, the city has existing real and political infrastructure lying around that allow us to serve these areas at reasonable cost and build the dense walkable city we all want. First, we have the existing guideway, service bays and two (recently rehabbed) trainsets running for just under a mile right through Belltown. The Monorail currently terminates on top of West Lake Station which will also be the transfer point for the new Ballard line making it one of the two major rail hubs for the region. Monorails have certain advantages and disadvantages, however the, alignment proposed below utilizes its strengths and minimizes its limitations. First, monorails have smaller, lighter guideways than rail and is relatively quiet. In a post-ST3 world going elevated may be the only way to get high-capacity transit to areas not covered by ST3 and if we’re going elevated, then monorails the integrated guideway and loadbearing structure probably dominates in terms of construction cost and installation. Second, because the guideway can be precast and hoisted into place, they make it better at spanning existing infrastructure (like I-5) but also run above existing buildings. Finally, because of the rubber tires monorail can climb steeper grades to reach the heart of Capitol Hill and are relatively quiet. The major limitation of monorails are cumbersome switches that would entail some operational limitations to branching. However, this proposal is of limited ambition, where the monorail largely serves to augment link and would not require many additional switches.

Here’s a draft alignment that would connect four dense residential areas: lower Queen Ann, Belltown, First Hill and Capitol Hill with the existing the Green and Blue lines and the downtown core:

A rough map is available here:

head SE from Westlake on 5th for 2 block.

• turn East on to Union.
• new station on the north side of Freeway Park incorporating existing elements of the Convention center. This would activate a somewhat isolate area and create new connectivity across the Freeway. Also the monorail would, arguably, complement the park’s existing Brutalist architecture. This location could service much of the hospital district.
  Station at Union, Madison and 12th where the Pony bar is now.
• Finally, build an in-fill station on the existing line in the vicinity of 5th and Bell.

Obviously a lot of riders will be transfers and it still won’t be that long, but it’s a lot of connectivity for 1.25 miles of guideway and three new stations. It would require exactly one taking for the eastern terminus. Everything else is existing infrastructure or public property. It would leverage a lot of otherwise stranded assets.

It would reach 4 distinct neighborhoods, two of which are skipped my heavy-capacity transit altogether. It would connect to existing and planned transit investments including Link and the streetcar at Westlake and Madison BRT on the east end. The Las Vegas Monorail cost 160M per mile for an entirely new system. Even assuming some cost for inflation and the Seattle Way (TM) wouldn’t 200M be in the ballpark? That just happens to be the amount that ULink came in under budget. For effectively 4 new stations! And not just any stations, but some of the most transit friendly and thus productive in the city!

If this initial segment proves successful it could also be expanded incrementally,  running further east to 23rd and then south on 23rd to the I-90 Link station. It could also be extended through the Center up to the base of Queen Anne. When we look at effective transit systems in the world, they tend not to be ones that reach deep into the suburbs. Instead they offer a dense grid/lattice/network of lines in a relatively small area. Paris or Barcelona are probably the best examples. Extending the existing monorail is an affordable way to build out that grid within the urban core.

Amtrak has released their monthly reports for October and November 2016.  Examining the Cascades performance for this time period shows ridership has continued to be above 2015, on time performance was relatively poor, and revenue was up.

Ridership

• October
  • 2015 – 54,190 
  • 2016 – 62,930
• November
  • 2015 – 57,844
  • 2016 – 63,177

Ridership is on pace for a 9% improvement over 2015 and if December is similar to November and October the total for the year may be 810,000, barely surpassing the 807,000 riders from 2013.  In 2012 with 836,000 riders was the last time ridership was higher.

On Time Performance

• October
  • 2015 – 78.5%
  • 2016 – 72%
• November
  • 2015 – 77.9%
  • 2016 – 63.7%

The on time performance dramatically dropped.  For most of the year it was tracking close or better than 2015.  The poor performance in October and November made it extremely unlikely for on time performance to exceed 2015.

Though on time performance was much worse, the amount of time spent delayed is very similar.  In September 2016 the on time performance was 82% with 11,148 minutes of delay.  October had 10,942 minutes of delay with on time performance of 72% and November 11,134 minutes of delay with on time performance of 63.7%.  There is not a correlation between minutes of delay and on time performance for this period.  With the current Amtrak reports I am unable to narrow the cause.  I presume there was an increase in the number of trains delayed, but the delays themselves were shorter.

Fares

• October
  • 2015 – $2,108,965
  • 2016 -$2,230,003
• November
  • 2015 – $2,236,715
  • 2016 – $2,297,269

Average revenue per ride has varied so far this year, similar or better than 2015 in the first half of 2016 and below 2015 in the second half of 2016.  Due to October and November, the revenue per ride is now slightly lower overall, down 4%, but total revenue from fares is up 5% over the course of the year.  This points to a decrease in ticket prices leading to a boost in ridership.  If the costs are similar to last year this could be a smart change as overall revenue is up.  I now expect the end of year recovery rate to be around 61%.

A few months ago and before the October and November data, almost all metrics were better than 2015.  Now that October and November data is in, the metrics look a little less rosy, but still very good.  810,000 riders for the year, 61% recovery rate, overall revenue up, but revenue per ride slightly lower and on time performance similar to 2015.

Sources:

• https://www.amtrak.com/reports-documents
• https://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Rail/PerformanceReports.htm

If you’ve spent enough time walking in Columbia City, you may have noticed the faint traces of a former Metro bus stop on the east side curb of 37th Ave South between Hudson and Ferdinand Streets, just one block west of Rainier Avenue. In the late 1970s and continuing into the early 1980s, this ghost stop was once the mid-day and evening terminal of the 39 SEWARD PARK (which later became the 31 BEACON HILL/SEWARD PARK). During the peak hours, the 39 offered express service between Seward Park and downtown Seattle; but mid-day and evenings, this stop on 37th Ave. S. was the terminal of the 39 (or 31) route.

Columbia City hasn’t always been the thriving business and residential area that we see today. In the mid 1970s, Columbia City was considered a very dangerous neighborhood and most of the commercial spaces were boarded up and empty. But in 1978, Charles Royer became mayor of Seattle and he was determined to revitalize the Columbia City neighborhood. As part of the plan, route 39’s northern terminal was moved from Mt. Baker (where it connected to the 10 Mt. Baker) to Columbia City. The service to Columbia City apparently didn’t generate much ridership because by 1983 the terminal had been moved back to Rainier and Genesee. However, Metro’s curb paint has long outlasted the transit service.

I recently had the opportunity to sightsee around Japan for a week. As somewhat of a transit tourist, I’ve experienced several of the busy, urban rail systems of the western world, but the scale of Japanese intercity and urban transit still shocked me. For some idea of the orders of magnitude involved here, consider that Shinjuku Station in Tokyo – a single train station – serves around 3.6 million riders on an average weekday. That is about 2/3 of the weekday ridership for the entire New York City Subway with over 400 stations. The urban Japanese would probably describe our three car Link trains with the word “kawaii” – how cute.

Japanese rail, or even the regional network of Tokyo, could easily occupy a dozen of these transit reports. So, I’ll narrow my focus to a city and transit system of (slightly) more manageable complexity: Osaka.

Osaka from the castle hill

Osaka city has an official population of 2.6 million, but it is situated as the principal city in a metropolitan region (known as the Keihanshin) with almost 20 million people. The city’s economic importance within Japan is only rivaled by Tokyo. Accordingly, Osaka has a world class transit system consisting of public subway, privately operated regional and long distance rail lines, and a bus network. In the spirit of STB’s excellent Transit Report Card series, I’ll try to cover some aspects of the transit network like scope, fare structure, and accessibility, among others.

Lines ridden

• Midosuji and Nagahori Tsurumi-ryokuchi (Osaka Municipal Subway)
• Osaka Loop and JR Kyoto (Japan Railways West)
• Keihan Main (Keihan Electric Railway)

Design and Scope

In my experience, you really can get just about anywhere you want to go on Osaka’s transit network. The municipal subway, in particular, is extremely useful for getting around the core of the city.

Looking at the subway map, there are a couple of design elements to note: a roughly radial network at the outskirts and a well defined, rectangular grid of lines in the central area. Jarrett Walker-ites will note that if one were designing a transit network for maximal ridership in a multi-nodal city like Osaka, it would probably look about like this. Indeed, the subway is heavily used with nearly 2.5 million weekday riders. For comparison sake, that’s well more than double the DC Metro ridership on 70% of the track length. Of course, Japanese land use patterns are inextricably linked to the high utility of their transit systems…but I digress. For me, the pedestrian tourist, this network meant total freedom of movement – I was never more than a 10 minute walk from a subway station.

For longer trips within and outside the city, there is a network of regional routes operated by a handful of private, for-profit companies. The largest and most important of these is the West Japan Railway Company, or JR-West. Their routes are seen on the subway map as narrow, blue lines with a JR prefix on the route name. JR’s Osaka Loop Line, as its name implies, runs in an elongated circle around the core of Osaka, connecting with nearly all of the subway lines and several other regional lines. Having lived in Houston for a while, the Osaka Loop and Tokyo’s Yamanote line struck me as the transit analogues to the giant freeway belts of I-610 and Highway 8. For intercity travel, JR and others operate numerous lines to neighboring Kobe, Kyoto, and Nara metro areas.

Fare Structure

Subway fares range between 180 and 370 yen and are tiered based on distance traveled – which is actually quite comparable to the fare structure and cost of Link. The regional train lines generally charge a base fare that varies with distance traveled; express or special services add an amount in addition to the base. Costs range from a few hundred yen within the city to thousands of yen for long distance express services. (At present exchange rates, $1 US is about 110 yen).

Single ride tickets for subway and regional lines can be purchased from machines and, usually, staffed ticket offices in all stations. Additionally, the ICOCA stored value card can be used on just about all of the routes (subway, regional, bus) in Osaka. As far as I know, there is not a sizable financial benefit to using an ICOCA, but it is certainly faster and more convenient. You can even use it at some vending machines and convenience stores! It’s worth noting that the contactless reader technology in the Osaka area is also compatible with many other cards, like SUICA from the Tokyo region.

Speed

Rail transit is the fastest game in town in urbanized Japan – no question. According to Google, the drive time between Kyoto and Osaka is at least 45 minutes (i.e. without traffic) and a flat 28 minutes on the JR Kyoto line.

View post on imgur.com

For longer distances, one can ride a shinkansen bullet train which hits top speeds of 150+ mph. Mic. Drop.

Frequency and Reliability

The Osaka subway seems to run at usual metro-like headways of 3-5 minutes all day. I certainly never felt like I had to wait. The service span of 5am – midnight does leave a bit to be desired given the very active nightlife of Osaka.

In comparison to many US commuter rail systems, the JR lines often run at astoundingly high frequency. For instance, the JR Kyoto local line runs every 5-10 minutes off-peak! Express and Special Rapid services tend to run closer to half-hourly off-peak frequency. The on-time performance on the regional routes is also very high. Japanese trains, in general, seem to run obsessively on schedule.

Stations

Major train stations in Osaka and many other big Japanese cities tend to be crowded, labyrinth complexes where transit and commerce meet head-on. An extreme example of this is Namba Station which is seamlessly integrated into an underground shopping mall (or is it the other way around?) called The Namba Walk.

The Namba Walk

This can make navigation a challenge during transfers, especially when a decent portion of the wayfinding signage is in a language that you can’t read. However, it also means there is always somewhere to stop and eat something tasty on-the-go.

Stations are generally very clean and safe, by US standards. The issues that one is more likely to encounter are crowding and confusing signage, especially in stations providing transfers between local and regional services. I got lost in a station at least once a day. Luckily, there were staffed ticket gates where I was able to ask a human how to get where I needed to go using a combination of gestures and poorly pronounced location names.

Accessibility

I normally wouldn’t have a lot of reason to observe accessibility, but I happened to be traveling with friends who have a toddler – and thus, a stroller. Practically, that meant we needed elevators. The elevator requirement put another level on the difficulty of station navigation. In our experience, one can almost always find a sign pointing to an elevator from the train platform, but finding an elevator from a mezzanine to a surface-level exit was another matter. There were at least a few times when my weary travel companions settled for carrying the toddler/stroller combo up the stairs. Another obstacle, literally, was the narrowness of the ticket gates that one must pass through at mezzanine level. In most cases, there was a staffed gate with a wide-enough portal, but we did encounter a couple of cases where the stroller simply did not fit and we had to use a different exit on the other side of the station.

To summarize: the train stations are technically accessible, but the large size and complexity of many stations makes the search for elevators a confusing, time-consuming process.

Final Thoughts and Lessons for Seattle

I suspect that one could live an entire life in Japan that is ignorant of asphalt highways, given the massive scope of the regional rail networks. The analogy between the transit hierarchies in Japan (shinkansen > commuter/regional > subway/metro > bus/tram) and the road network hierarchy in the US (interstate > at-grade highway > major arterial > local access/residential street) is striking. If you want to see the logical conclusion of dense urban planning and high capacity transit on a large scale, I highly recommend visiting the Tokyo-Osaka corridor of Japan.

I think there are some takeaways here for our city as we build out the ST3 rail lines in the coming decades. It’s obvious that dense, mixed-use planning with good pedestrian access is very important. There are smaller initiatives too, like colocating retail/commerce with some of our busier stations, that would improve the network. Zach mentions the same point in his report from Mexico City – and I think it bears repeating. A related point is to ensure that the transfer environment is as simple and comfortable as possible for riders. The nature of Japanese transit, with its multiple private operators necessarily occupying different regions of a single train station, leads to a fairly complex transfer. Here is one area where we can actually do better in our city.

Originally published on thatopinion.com

The dream sold to us for the last 60 years hasn’t been leather seats, sickening acceleration, cup holders, or a spacious trunk. It’s been free movement. Cruising at 65 mph, there’s not another vehicle in the camera’s sight, and the driver has complete autonomy. The watermark around them suggests a low-interest payment scheme and gas mileage that will keep it from becoming a financial stressor. This fantasy usually seems to apply to camping, but hasn’t in daily life since the automobile was adopted en mass, no matter how many neighborhoods are torn up under the premise that adding lanes to our highways will bring it to reality. Experiencing gridlock is claustrophobic, painful, confining, and part of the daily chores of most Americans.

With the right weather, lock, bodily abilities, and infrastructure (that’s far smaller, cheaper, and even more likely to be inadequate today than roads), bicycling offers the exact same feeling of freedom through a reliable guarantee of efficient movement. In the real world of the United States, the deadly lack of infrastructure overwhelms most people who have other options, especially women, leading to a 75% male gender makeup. Warped cycling demographics don’t exist in countries with adequate infrastructure; encouraging people of all classes, ages, and genders to travel in a healthier and more sustainable way.

Mass transit is the same. When well designed, there is a certain magic to the guarantee that within minutes of arriving to a well-lit area with understandable signage, you’ll be affordably taken wherever you need to go, with dedicated right of way reassuring no delays. There’s no need to hunt for parking or to think about whether your car will remain intact left there. Coming home, you’re given a safety net that puts no morbid responsibility on your cognition. Generations-lasting public infrastructure creates a cozy and secure relationship with your city and has you interact with the people of it outside just your social bubble. As Kathryn Robinson at Seattle Met describes, “It transforms our relationship with our city, whose far reaches now become familiar, whose liveliest districts we no longer have to rule out because of parking, whose crosstown residents begin to feel like neighbors.”

Freedom of mobility comes from our trust in not having to think about it, and presently in Seattle, no all-encompassing mode of transportation earns it. You can feel the energy of what can be on Link’s platforms and trains. Just getting started, it’s made the worry-free neighborhood reach of people from the University of Washington, International District, and Rainier Beach all cross paths.

Sound Transit 3 is the greater Seattle area’s 25-year plan to greatly expand mass transit, and it’s the last item on the area’s November ballot as Proposition 1. Along with new BRT lines and Sounder Commuter rail improvements, it builds 62 new miles of Link Light Rail over new 37 stations, bringing access to 84% of Puget Sound residents, making the system comparable to Washington DC Metro in mileage and station density.

The reliability of car travel, and thus most bus travel, is at a breaking point. For example, in order to have a 95% chance of arriving in Seattle from Overlake on time during commute hours, a trip that would take 13 minutes without traffic, you must leave 60 minutes ahead of time. A 10-minute trip within city limits would require 27 minutes to be trusted. From 2014 to 2015, the average resident’s annual time spent in traffic increased by 3 hours, or 5%. Even without ST3 passing, Sound Transit predicts public transit ridership in the region will nearly double as the population grows. Those riders will face either constantly deteriorating bus service side-by-side with and caused by car commuters, or 69% of transit trips on the zero-emission, zero-congestion, 3-minute frequent Link Light Rail, offering trusted arrival times and a worst case rush hour scenario of standing room only, compared to the entrapment of endless idling between freeway exits. The difference between the two worlds in quality, reliability, and speed of transit would be immense. Between existing users and car-converts, ST3 will save 51,000-67,000 hours of people’s time every single day, an economic impact in lost working time, and more importantly, an immeasurable impact on lost time enjoying life. ST3 will take the current 70-minute average Bellevue to Ballard bus commute down to a trustworthy 36 minutes on trains.

Looking at every world city, building a climate controlled, safely engineered room around every single commuter with one hour of daily utility simply doesn’t scale up. Building more lanes and parking destroys the value of the communities we’re trying to get to, and doesn’t succeed at reducing congestion. The phenomenon of induced demand has been observed every time higher capacity roads are built, to a perfect 1:1 ratio. Car infrastructure development makes relying on it a more attractive option until the awful homeostasis is inevitably restored, offering no new freedom. It’s been observed to work in reverse, too. Remove lanes, and fewer people will drive. Seoul, for example, tore down a 168k vehicle/day highway to only positive repercussions.

Developments spread far enough out to eliminate the possibility of congestion causes each individual to take on the economic and environmental responsibility of more pipes, wires, roads, and resources spent on moving goods. This ungridded pattern also prevents walking, cycling, and transit from being options, adversely affecting the disenfranchised. Even in a suburban Omaha neighborhood of $1.8m McMansions, the tax base couldn’t sustain their own roads, resulting in the city converting asphalt to dirt. This directly correlates to environmental impact: people from dense places like Barcelona have 1/6th the individual carbon footprint of those from sprawling Atlanta, and New York City is the greenest place in the US. Inevitably, the people who live in far-flung sprawl still want to experience the culture and opportunities of a city, and funnel in as traffic. This leads the Puget Sound region to a dismal 14% transit usage share, despite Seattleites’ impressive 52% non-driver figure. ST3 makes a commitment to accommodating our growing population in a more sustainable fashion through following Puget Sound Regional Council’s VISION 2040, “an integrated, long-range vision for maintaining a healthy region – promoting the wellbeing of people and communities, economic vitality, and a healthy environment”.

One of the greatest issues facing cities is the growth of suburban poverty: as urban areas are gentrified with attractive amenities, the poorer former residents that benefitted most from walkability, local social services, and transit access are forced to decaying suburban sprawl, essentially requiring car ownership or causing them to lose a lot more of their day to commuting. Driving is second only to housing as a living expense: $10,000 a year for an item that spends 23 hours a day just occupying real-estate. ST3 addresses this with a plan to sell the excess land at new stations to developers on the condition that they build mixed-use, walkable communities with 80% of housing units dedicated to and affordable for people making below 80% of the area median wage. $20m of the package is immediately allocated to affordable housing. The simple solution to the issue of high quality transportation causing gentrification and displacement is to build enough of it for everyone, something we can only do with a package this large.

Opponents claim that ST3 will be spending 25 years building obsolete technology no more efficient than what Google, Uber, and Tesla are cooking up. Autonomous cars will likely spend a good chunk of time on our roads completely empty, picking people up and doing circles to get more people going the peak direction. Currently, 1,600 vehicles holding an average of 1.1 passengers each make it through a lane of I-90 during commuter peak, always facing congestion, compared to a zero-congestion capacity of 20,000 passengers in a lane of Link. Meeting the capacity of mass transit would require a vehicle a lot closer to mass transit than the Tesla Model X carpool Elon Musk envisions. They may allow us to reclaim a huge amount of urban space in the form of obsolete parking, but it’s likely that an increase in zero-occupancy vehicles, smoother acceleration, productivity encouraging longer commutes, and parking bases outside of the expensive city will overwhelm the supposed congestions benefits of self driving cars. Additionally, bigger facilities allow for seamless and high quality ADA compliance and accessibility, as well as safety in numbers. Electric vehicles may achieve minimal operational emissions, but Tesla’s plans still fundamentally rely on resource-intensive lower density infrastructure. Concrete production alone accounts for 5% of greenhouse gases, making the concept of achieving a suburban, Whole Foods-shopping, EV-owning world for 7 billion people more of an environmental nightmare than appears at first glance. Link’s prevalence and reduction in diesel bus and private car use will save nearly 800,000 metric tons of greenhouse emissions each year, equivalent to leaving 4,224 railcars of coal unburnt. This 9% reduction in total regional emissions will improve both our respiratory health and climate footprint, another reason to remember that there are costs to not building. Transit is also an investment: every dollar spent building brings in $4 in economic returns.

In addition to being wonderfully more environmentally friendly, highly populated transit corridors encourage engaging in your community (which can have higher quality public spaces from the density and larger tax base), a healthier level of walking and bicycling, and places cozier than strip malls. Old main streets sprouted from the railroad station, and most people consider them cuter than the sea of asphalt in front of every modern store and house, the anti-pedestrian inset strip mall design that’s required by law in many municipalities. Transit Oriented Development is a concerted effort to build a new sense of place and reverse the course set by car maker-benefitting regulations. We can once again build freedom of movement into growing up, restoring the kind of design that allowed half of children to walk or cycle to school (compared to today’s 13%).

The development pattern we’ve adopted (left, by Infrogmation of New Orleans) makes it look like cars are the species the public space is built for, not humans. (right photo by Ian Freimuth)

Many ST3 foes point to Bus Rapid Transit (what RapidRide aspires and fails to be) as a faster, better solution, knowing local routes don’t cost in the billions to deploy. However, the capital cost is not inherent to rail and trains, but to the things that make it typically faster and better than a bus: exclusive right-of-way, high quality stations that offer accessibility and information understandable to visitors, platform payments and multiple entryways to speed boarding, etc. All things that cost just as much to give rubber-wheeled transit, but are harder to sell the public on than trains, and easier to dwindle down and delete with swinging political will. Considering this, rail ends up cheaper, with vehicles that last about double as long and require less maintenance, the cheapness of our zero-emission electricity compared to diesel, and 7x the number of passengers per driver in a 400’ train versus a 60’ articulated bus. Link’s fare will recover 38% of costs, compared to 28% on the BRT lines of ST3. Meeting the max capacity of Link with BRT would require 14 second frequency, which is impossible considering load times.

Other criticism has come from Seattelites, including myself, unimpressed with the plan’s suburban heaviness. ST3 spends nearly double West Seattle Link’s budget on the Issaquah line that will achieve a quarter the ridership, accompanied by a Park-and-Ride that will never scale to meet demand. When Sound Transit was established, before Seattle boomed, regional anti-transit politicians forced a “sub-area equity” policy where projects need to be funded by the area they serve. They assumed that Seattle, where suburban commuters need to get to, wouldn’t be able to pay for its own urban subway, sabotaging the whole network. It’s completely backfired on them. Since suburbanites largely flock to Seattle for work and culture, but not vice versa, all subareas will pay for the second downtown Seattle subway proportional to their ridership, but unless commute direction flips, Seattleites won’t be subsidizing the less efficient projects outside its lines. With Link fulfilling the need, Metro will shift bus resources away from getting neighborhoods to and from downtown on highways. King County’s 2040 masterplan based on ST3 passing builds a grid of frequent routes connected to Link stations, bringing east-west connections currently severely lacking. With the combination of Link, an alphabet worth of bronze BRT RapidRide (with much improved speed from the current lines), and most other routes becoming frequent and running longer, Seattle will one day have a truly fantastic system capable of getting you anywhere in good time.

ST3 would be paid for with a 0.5% sales tax increase (bringing us to 10.1%), $0.25 increase per $1,000 in property tax (totaling $9.52), a motor vehicle excise tax of 0.8%, and a rental car tax of 1.372%. These figures keep Seattle’s sales tax under Vancouver’s 12%, and our property taxes would remain well below Portland’s ($11.62) and San Francisco’s ($11.74), cities that all have the income tax we lack.

This vote is the decision of our generation. ST3 would make up for the grand mistake that was voting down Forward Thrust rapid transit in 1968, building the system we lost to Atlanta and more. With ST3, we’ll have one of the highest quality transit systems in the country, finally getting to Portland and Vancouver’s levels that have allowed them to be more livable than Seattle. If the vote comes out a no, the best we can hope for is a smaller package delivered later on that will fail to bring all-encompassing freedom of mobility to Puget Sound residents. Gridlock would continue to grow with the population, and unorganized attempts to escape it would build more unsustainable development. Voting yes on Proposition 1 is a no brainer and absolutely essential for all who have the option, the last box on the November ballot. We don’t know what 2024 and beyond will think of Clinton or Trump, but we have the concrete choice of letting it inherit a better city.

[Editors’ Note: It has come to our attention that people are misrepresenting this post as “STB is opposed to ST3.” As Ross would be the first to say, he is not an STB staff member. and Page 2 functions much like a newspaper op-ed page. Indeed, Seattle Transit Blog wholeheartedly endorses ST3.]

I consider myself a tax and spend, bleeding-heart liberal. I’ve voted yes for almost every bond issue since I turned 18 (a long time ago). I’ve supported all four Sound Transit proposals. This is why I find it strange and uncomfortable to oppose ST3. It sounds like a great proposal, especially because it is similar to the one originally proposed by Sound Transit. However, in the last few years, thanks in good part to this blog and the folks who write or comment on it, I’ve learned a lot about transit and transit issues. I have a much better idea of what works and what doesn’t; what is a good value and what isn’t. ST3 is not. It won’t do enough to improve transit to justify the large price.

What Works and What Doesn’t

Building mass transit is no guarantee of success. You can spend a huge amount of money and only help a handful of riders.

Or you can build a system that transforms a region. People still drive, but everyone knows that taking transit is a viable option, no matter where they are going. Within the urban core, where all day demand is high, there are two systems that work. The first covers all of the city with a subway, with overlapping lines connecting various neighborhoods. Most of these were built a long time ago (New York, Chicago and Boston). Washington D. C. stands out as a city that has built this recently. Unfortunately, building a system like that is extremely expensive. Even if we build ST3, we are nowhere near achieving that goal.

The second type of system is much smaller. It doesn’t cover the entire city, just the essential core. More importantly, it integrates really well with buses. Trains travel through the most congested, highest demand areas, allowing the buses to run quickly and frequently as well. A great example of a system like this is right up the road, in Vancouver, B.C.  Vancouver is about as similar to Seattle as you can get. Both have challenging terrain full of hills and waterways. Both are fairly new cities that grew with the automobile, not before it. Yet despite having roughly the same number of people, Vancouver BC has a subway that is small compared to ours. While it carries a lot of people (390,000 people a day) it is their overall transit ridership that is impressive: over three times the ridership per capita than Seattle. The model works. Make it fast and easy to get from anywhere to anywhere via a bus or train (or likely, a combination) and people use transit.

These types of subways work really well inside the urban core (where all day, neighborhood to neighborhood demand is high). For the suburbs, building such a system would be prohibitively expensive. You just can’t build a high speed mass transit grid for every suburban neighborhood. What works for the suburban communities is a radial system reaching everywhere, connecting people to the core via a mix of commuter rail or express bus, with service concentrated in the peak but available less frequently the rest of the day.

What doesn’t work well is sending trains to low density or distant areas. Dallas, for example, has the longest light rail line in North America yet it has the lowest transit ridership of any big city. Unfortunately, we are building a system more like Dallas, and less like Vancouver.

Weakness of ST3

Much has been written about the shortcomings of ST3, or rather, the advantages of other alternatives. There are plenty of flaws.

• Poor Bus Integration.

Even the best, most productive, most justified additional railway section of ST3 fails from a bus integration standpoint. For example, when the Ballard Station is finally added (in 2035) very few will use it from Phinney Ridge, even thought it is one mile due east. It would require two buses to get there, and for most destinations (downtown, the U-District, Northgate, Bellevue, etc.) it isn’t worth taking the new train. What is true of Phinney Ridge is true of Fremont. These are neighborhoods adjacent to the light rail line, but the ST3 additions are pretty much useless for them. Sound Transit has failed (as they have in the past) to consider our geography and the role that complementary bus service plays in it.

• Cannibalizing bus routes

At the same time, there are clearly areas where buses will feed the stations. Unfortunately, for many of these, the train stations don’t complement the bus service, they cannibalize it — forcing riders into a time consuming transfer. Consider the neighborhood of High Point, the most densely populated part of West Seattle. Right now, if you want to get from High Point to downtown, you can take the Metro 21 directly there. In 2030, when a new bridge is built over the Duwamish and trains run overhead through the Alaska Junction, riders will be forced to get off the bus and wait for the train. What is true of West Seattle is true of Issaquah, where most riders will have to make two transfers to get downtown. It is possible that the buses will continue to run as they do now — but that would mean extremely low ridership followed by extremely low frequency on the trains. Either you eliminate the direct alternative, or put up with a system that performs very poorly and bleeds huge amounts of money.

• Poor intermediate destinations

Trade-offs like this exist in many subways. Folks trying to get from Queens to Manhattan sometimes take an express bus (or a cab). Yet the subway is still extremely popular, because lots of people are going to stops along the way. Unfortunately, most of ST3 lacks this. Very few will take a train from one stop to another in West Seattle. Nor are there a lot of people trying to get from park and ride to park and ride. Mariner to Mountlake Terrace or Federal Way to Fife trips just won’t happen. Despite spending billions, most of the riders would be better off with express buses.

• Superficial Service

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of considering door to door travel time versus “serving” an area. It isn’t enough to simply add a station in an arbitrarily designated city or neighborhood. Tacoma stands as a great example of this. From the Tacoma Dome to downtown Seattle, it will take about an hour and fifteen minutes. Sounder is faster, and the bus is much faster in the middle of the day. But more importantly, very few people live close to the Tacoma Dome. Just about everyone is going to have to spend an extra fifteen minutes just to get to the stop. This means that even if a Tacoma resident works right in downtown Seattle, right next to a station, they will spend three hours a day commuting via Link. There just aren’t that many people willing to do that. This is why it is rare for subway systems to extend out this far. Washington DC, New York, Chicago, London and Paris all have over a hundred miles of track, yet none of them extend out this far. They serve those areas with commuter trains or express buses. We should do the same.

It isn’t just the suburbs that suffer from the myth that simply having a station is sufficient to “serve” an area. The Ballard stop is another example of this problem. The route is largely parallel to the existing route, which means it is useless for a large percentage of Link riders. From the UW, Roosevelt, Northgate and every other stop north of there, it is meaningless. It is faster to take the 44 bus than it is to transfer downtown.

By failing to consider geography, density and the history of transit in the world, Sound Transit has failed to come up with a sensible plan. It emphasizes superficial achievements, such as “serving” areas like Tacoma, Everett, Issaquah, and West Seattle instead of building a cost effective transit network.

The planning process is broken

Of course this is just the armchair analysis of someone who listens to experts and has way too much time on his hands. There are plenty of people who feel the same way, but maybe we are all wrong. Maybe the folks at Sound Transit, who hired real professionals to do the job, have come up with the best available plan.

Unfortunately, the professionals haven’t been given a chance. The Sound Transit process is broken, which explains why we have this mess.

In a typical transit improvement process, you start with a blank slate. You look at the census data, the traffic maps, the existing trips as well as existing (and potential) transit and try to make the most cost effective system available. You measure alternatives by how much rider time you save versus how much you want to spend. This is a commonly used metric, that until recently was required for federal funding. Of course there is bound to be some horse trading at the end of the day, but you at least initially come up with reasonable ideas and debate the merits of all of them. Nothing like that happened here.

• West Seattle

For some bizarre reason, West Seattle — despite having better average transit times and lower density than much of Seattle — was considered a priority, while the Central Area (with the opposite) was not. Making matters worse, Sound Transit never considered a bus tunnel for downtown. Despite a front page article in the largest newspaper in the state and the support of the most fervent subway proponent in town, they didn’t consider it. They studied a couple of “BRT” options, but they failed to include a tunnel, which resulted in slow time estimates. Of course it did. There was no tunnel. Failing to study an obvious option — one that was well known — is not an oversight, it is a sign that the process is broken.

• Kirkland

What happened to West Seattle was not unique. The city of Kirkland hired a team of consultants to design a bus based solution that would leverage and enhance the existing bike trail. It was part of a range of improvements for the East Side (a plan nicknamed BRISK). Sound Transit didn’t study it, largely because they favored rail. The end result is a plan that features rail from Issaquah to South Kirkland, which is as misguided a plan as one can imagine. Despite a proposal put forth by a major municipality with the help of hired consultants, it was never seriously considered by Sound Transit.

• The Spine

Then there is “the spine”, a subway from Tacoma to Everett. In every single proposal, projects are graded on this bizarre and arbitrary criteria. Right next to ridership, cost and other obvious measurements, each planning document lists as one of their “Key Attributes” a row entitled

“REGIONAL LIGHT RAIL SPINE. Does this project help complete the light rail spine?“.

The assumption being that the spine is, without question, extremely valuable. That assumption is ridiculous. Very few people are willing to ride a subway for over an hour through miles of suburbia, which is why very few agencies bother to build such things (and those that do have failed miserably at it). Instead of considering and measuring various alternatives on a common and meaningful metric, they judge a project in part on whether or not it helps achieve an arbitrary and dubious goal.

The planning process is broken. An independent, experienced set of planners should be given the resources and freedom to come up with proposals for the area. Each proposal should be measured and openly debated. I don’t think there is any way we would get anything like this plan if that was the process.

Where we go from here

There has been a lot of discussion as to what will happen if ST3 fails. I understand and sympathize with those who feel like a flawed plan is better than nothing. While I can point to many mistakes made with ST2, I would enthusiastically vote for it again. But the amount of money we are talking about requires a better system. We have other needs besides transit. We could spend the money on education, day care, mental health services, homeless relief, police protection (or training), just to name a few. In the meantime, we will be able to muddle along. Seattle is making changes that will improve things considerably, while ST2 will change things dramatically.

It is likely that Sound Transit will come up with another plan. Just about everyone expects the next proposal to be smaller. So, whether proposed by Sound Transit or individual municipalities, it is likely to involve less rail and more bus service. These proposals would not only be more cost efficient, but better overall. In the suburbs, bus service improvements and new busways would enable much faster door to door service for a lot more riders.

Seattle remains one of the few areas in the region where light rail could be cost effective. But building smaller, shorter, more effective rail like a Metro 8 subway or a Ballard to UW subway would upset too many in West Seattle (where the head of Sound Transit lives). What is more likely is to build the WSTT, and make other, relatively cheap improvements. That would serve a much wider area — not only within West Seattle and Ballard, but along the extremely popular Aurora corridor. It would provide much faster door to door travel times for more riders. Like a similar and very successful system in Brisbane, we will be able to convert the busway to a subway eventually. But my guess is like them, we will be happy with the busway and focus our efforts on other parts of the city.

In all these cases, a cheaper plan would actually save more people more time than what ST3 has proposed. But I could be wrong. Show me the numbers. If ST3 fails, I want them to go back to the drawing board, and then show me the cost effectiveness of each proposal. I’m sure that we will end up with something much better.

On October 5th, the University of Washington released its draft Seattle Campus Master Plan (CMP) along with an accompanying Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The Plan governs the University’s future development on campus between 2018 and 2028. The document is particularly important because pursuant to the City-University Agreement signed between UW and the City of Seattle in 1998, “University development within the University’s [Major Institution Overlay (MIO)] boundary is governed by this Campus Master Plan, not the underlying zoning or land use code. This Campus Master Plan replaces the underlying zoning, development standards, and land use control ordinances for development within the MIO boundary.”

The last campus master plan, completed in 2003, laid out the development of 3.0 million gross square feet, of which all but 211,000 square feet currently remains to be built. The 2018 Plan calls for 6.0 million square feet of net new development which the plan describes as completing “full build-out” of the Seattle campus. 85 potential development sites are identified with a maximum buildable allowance of 12.9 million square feet altogether, so the development of nearly half of this capacity in just 10 years represents an aggressive growth strategy. Still there are causes for urbanist concern. One of the core standards guiding all development on campus is to “provide adequate light, air, access, and open space [and] conserve the natural environments and historic resources.” Accordingly, many of the graphics in the CMP illustrate plans for buildings that use up much less space than the maximum buildable envelope through tower spacing rules and required setbacks in order to maintain “pedestrian scale daylight & views.” Encouragingly, though, new developments will aim to have “public-facing ground floor uses” to create active corridors. One of the main reasons given for restricting building heights, especially in East Campus, is to preserve waterfront views from Central Campus.

The plan divides campus into four main sectors: Central, West, East and South Campus. The 2018 CMP envisions intensive development in the three sectors outside Central Campus in order to preserve “historic assets,” existing open space and “campus character” in the core. This presents a mixed bag of opportunities and challenges unique to each sector which are explored below.

East Campus

East Campus is comprised of the area of campus east of Montlake Boulveard. The CMP concentrates development in the northern half of this area which is currently occupied by massive surface parking lots. The area gets a rezone for building heights up to 130’ in some areas promising greatly increased activity from current levels, but the stroad that is Montlake Boulevard presents an unnatural barrier between the new development and the rest of campus. To mitigate this issue, the CMP calls for a new land bridge, similar to the one leading from Rainier Vista to UW Station, to cross Montlake Boulevard just north of Wahkiakum Road. While this feature will help in combating the inherently anti-urban nature of Montlake Boulevard, the CMP does not address Montlake itself except to say that improvements “should be explored.” While the road is a WSDOT facility, the plan should at least call for working with that agency to humanize the street by accommodating non-SOV modes, however tall of an order that may be in practicality. An easy first-step, which is not mentioned in the CMP, would be to lobby Metro to add bus stops for the 65 and 78 as there are currently no stops between UW Station and University Village. Much of East Campus is within the walkshed of UW Station, but these stops will be necessary to facilitate quick connections to downtown from the northern end of this area as well as West Campus and the University District.

South Campus

South Campus, defined as the area west of the Montlake Bridge and south of Pacific Street, will be home to some of the tallest buildings and densest development in the future UW. The CMP contains a rezone that will allow for building heights up to 240’ for much of this area and lower heights closer to waterfront. Pacific Street presents another barrier for pedestrians and cyclists, but the CMP at least states that bus improvements “should be explored” here. Perhaps the biggest feature planned for South Campus is the creation of a large new open space which will create “major pedestrian connections between Central and South Campuses, and…a permanent view corridor to the water.” The current and planned amount of open space near this area is already considerable, so the necessity of more parkland in the face of dire need for more housing is debatable.

An exciting new feature in this area is a waterfront trail which would run along Portage Bay and the Ship Canal connecting the new West Campus open space, the new South Campus open space, and the backside of the UW Medical Center. IT would join up with the existing waterfront trail that currently begins at the Montlake Bridge and runs adjacent to the Waterfront Activity Center, Husky Stadium, the planned East Campus Land Bridge and the Union Bay Natural Area among other amenities.

West Campus

West Campus, which is the area west of 15th Ave NE and south of NE 41st St, will be the absorb most of the university’s growth over the next decade. This area, unlike the other peripheries of the campus, enjoys a human-scale street grid. Most of the area is within close walking distance to the retail and services contained within the University District, frequent bus service on 15th and Campus Parkway, and the future U-District Station. Consistent with the proposed U-District rezone by the City to the north, much of this area will also be rezoned for 240’ height limits dramatically increasing buildable capacity. In addition, Brooklyn Avenue is slated to become an “Active North-South Connector and Green Street” but it is unclear what this envisions beyond the introduction of a bike lane and an “activated pedestrian realm.”

A major theme of this entire document, more parks, appears again with a proposal for a “multi-use, public open space that functions as the heart of the West Campus.” The seven acres of open space are necessary in order to provide “needed outdoor relief from the added density throughout the West Campus” as well as “a sense of privacy for the Fishery Sciences.” Fishery Sciences’ need for privacy is unclear, but more perhaps more perplexing is that the CMP declares that a main purpose of creating open space is to encourage pedestrian activity but it then cites that open space is necessary in providing much needed privacy in the area.

Parking

Currently, the number of parking stalls available within the MIO is capped at 12,300 which is unchanged since 1984. UW is 1,633 spaces under this cap and no substantial changes are planned for the new CMP. Considering that the large surface lots of East Campus are slated for redevelopment, the UW identified 14 potential new parking locations to replace some of this lost capacity. The campus of the future should strive not to replace lost car storage, but considering the U-PASS program continues to depend heavily on parking revenue, this is a mixed bag until the university steps up and identifies a more sustainable revenue source going forward.

Among other potential parking management improvement strategies, the CMP directs the University to “ to discourage the use of SOV’s,” institute a more dynamic pricing model based on demand, transition away from a parking permit model to a pay-per-use model, adding new wayfinding and real-time parking availability information to improve the efficiency and utilization of existing supply, try to coordinate and integrate with City of Seattle’s e-Park system and work with the City to manage unrestricted on-street parking adjacent to the University, most likely through expanding the Restricted Parking Zone Program.

Notably, the CMP retains minimum parking standards for student housing of “one space per unit for family housing and spaces for up to 4 percent of total residents for single student housing.” Students in university housing near campus are perhaps the segment of the population that can most easily live car-free in the entire region. Also, considering that Northgate Link will come online during the life of this iteration of the CMP,  the plan should strive for elimination of parking minimums to reduce the construction costs of new housing and keep rents more affordable.

Multi-Modal Access

Pedestrians

The plan recognizes that long stretches of campus boundaries currently provide a poor pedestrian environment including the “continuous, blank building facades along NE Pacific Street near South Campus” and “the retaining wall along 15th Avenue NE.”  15th is re-imainged as more pedestrian oriented with the following improvements:

• Enhanced planting, lighting, and furnishings, and removal of retaining walls improves the permeability of the campus, notably at Parrington Lawn, NE 43rd Street, and the development site south of the 40th Street Gateway;
• The new Burke Museum activates the street edge, and locates an entrance at NE 43rd Street;
• Introduction of a street level plaza at NE 42nd Street improves universal access to Parrington Lawn and welcomes visitors.
• NE 42nd and 43rd are designated as “Green Streets”; and
• Pedestrian bridge overpass across 15th Avenue NE is improved and integrated with new development or relocated to maintain and enhance universal access.

The CMP notes that Red Square is, not surprisingly, the area of highest intensity pedestrian use on campus which makes the fact that the lack of ADA-accessibility from the north and west entrances a significant current failure. The plan calls for “accessibility and environmental improvements in a few key locations” but there are no further details.

Bicycle improvements

The CMP calls for a comprehensive campus bike network that contains “desirable bicycle facilities” while reducing conflicts with pedestrians. Among specific improvements, the plan notes that sharrows on Stevens Way are inadequate and calls for “consideration of bike improvements” on this road. The plan also envisions re-routing bike traffic off the Burke-Gilman Trail down 11th Avenue along NE Pacific Street and connecting back at the corner of 15th Avenue “to ensure safer Burke-Gilman Trail connections.” Improving the facilities that connect with key inter-neighborhood and regional routes are emphasized as well as improving the capacity of the Burke-Gilman Trail through campus. Investments in “high-security” bicycle parking and providing adequate bike parking supply to serve demand are also considered.

Transit Network

The CMP makes a number of recommendations for improving the transit network in and near campus. The plan recognizes light rail stations as “major destinations for all modes of movement” and accordingly directs that sidewalks leading to and from stations should be designed to meet capacity needs and to visually and aesthetically connect to campus. Also on the list are possible bus lanes and/or signal priority improvements along multiple corridors including Roosevelt/11th Avenue, University Way NE, 15th Avenue NE, NE Pacific Street, NE 45th Street and Montlake Boulevard NE. The University also calls on the various agencies that serve it “to improve early morning service (before 5 AM) and increase off-peak service to provide greater user flexibility.”

The ongoing financial saga of U-Pass is briefly addressed as well. The CMP recommends the following three strategies for the program:

• Review pricing structure of the U-PASS.
• Review University subsidy methods for U-PASS program.
• Explore the possibility of expanding the U-PASS to be an integrated, multimodal transportation payment method.

It is a relief to see the university exploring how not only to make U-PASS more financially sustainable, but also how to expand it to be more useful.The possibility of integrating U-PASS with Pronto is specifically mentioned.

Timeline

The 2018 CMP process kicked off in 2015 and the draft plan and EIS were released earlier this month. The final plan and EIS will be published in early 2017. Next, the CMP will go before a hearing examiner and the Seattle City Council in Summer 2017 with final approval from the City Council and UW Board of Regents expected in late 2017 or early 2018.

Comments on the CMP should be submitted to Theresa Doherty, Senior Project Director, at tdoherty@uw.edu and Leslie Stark, CMP Outreach Coordinator, at lstark24@uw.edu. A public hearing on the draft EIS will take place on October 26th from 6:30-9:00pm at the UW Tower Auditorium at 4333 Brooklyn Ave NE. Comments on the EIS can also be submitted to  cmpinfo@uw.edu or jblakesl@uw.edu. November 21st is the deadline for submitting comments.

NOTE: This post is copied in its entirety from an article I wrote, titled The Upgrading of Our Regional Rail System Is Now Called the SPIRE Plan. It is the latest entry of my blog, Transportation Matters, a Pacific Northwest-flavored blog that discusses railway planning, urban planning, and related politics.

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In an effort to consolidate the many critical pieces of the Seattle-Tacoma (-Olympia) rail modernization project into one digestible concept for the public, I would like to introduce some helpful branding into the conversation: the SPIRE Plan.

It is an acronym for Seattle, Puget Sound, Intercity Railway Express. It is a vision for a rail based future that invigorates both our economy and our population.

For those within Sound Transit’s taxing authority—especially those living south of Seattle and who are dedicated to improving transportation options in a systematic, meaningful manner—the SPIRE plan is the mechanism through which our transportation ground game is revolutionized.

The SPIRE plan is the reorganization and enhancement of our local rail infrastructure that, incredibly(!), already exists. It would serve historic communities like Kent and Puyallup, cities with good urban bones, all of which are primed for new infill development and additional residents.

With up to 350 daily passenger trains at full build-out between Seattle and Tacoma, traveling safely at maximum speeds of 120mph, the social geography of the Puget Sound would be forever altered in powerful, transformational ways. Additionally, it places higher speed rail service to central Olympia directly at our fingertips, and it accomplishes this through a logical exploitation of existing resources. Key to the plan’s success is the diversion of all freight trains to an adjacent and parallel railroad line, thereby streamlining heavy freight operations into and out of our major ports and urban areas.

The SPIRE plan is absolutely doable, politically and technically, but only when we make the responsible planning, legislative, and funding choices that pave the way toward its realization.

By comparison, the planned Link light rail extension into Tacoma is the epitome of planned obsolescence. Not only does it build redundant rail infrastructure to poorly considered stations in low density auto-sprawl areas, it endangers actual quality plans with more deliverable timeframes, and which possess far more potential to positively affect regional mobility.

The SPIRE plan is one such proposal, a no-brainer commitment to incrementally upgrade our rail network to a world class standard, and which is fed riders by a suburban bus rapid transit system that stretches into the hinterland.  Ultimately, we could tie a region together via swift, reliable, high-capacity transportation. We could construct a passenger rail spine that is truly worthy of financial capital, political capital, and our collective admiration.

Do you want swift, electric, frequent, and reliable passenger trains serving Seattle, Tacoma and beyond? Do you agree that our freight railways are an integral part of our transportation system? Do you wish to protect our cities by diverting dangerous freight cargoes away from their city centers? Do you want to eliminate every dangerous and traffic-plagued railroad crossing from our regional map?

If so, only one proposal could ever deliver those transformation results.

That proposal is the SPIRE plan.

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With the SR 99 tunneling project more than half done, it is worth considering what a revised Metro 8 bus route could look like in 2018.

By then the street grid will be connected, like so:

With that in mind, I’ve come up with a bold proposal for a new routing.

It is unlikely that all of this will come to pass. There are sections that would be very controversial, and quite possibly not be worth it. Here are my thoughts on the routing, section by section (I ignored the east end of the route, as it would remain the same).

First and Mercer through the Seattle Center

This could be rather controversial, of course. Running a bus through the Seattle Center might upset some people. During big events, the bus would have to re-routed (just as buses around Husky Stadium are). There aren’t that many events like that, though, so I don’t see this as a problem. Thomas Street does go through the Center, but some work (making better sidewalks) would have to be done. To avoid complaints about diesel exhaust, the route could become a trolley or a hybrid (running only on electricity through there). The advantage to running via Thomas is that it wouldn’t encounter any traffic through the Center. The second advantage is that it would enable a much faster connection to the monorail.

Running on Thomas avoids the worst congestion on Denny. Another alternative would be to skirt around the Center to the northeast (via 5th, then Mercer). That is likely a significant improvement, but I’m not sure how easy it will be to get additional right of way there. On the other hand, this would share part of its trip with the RapidRide D route (along 1st Ave. West and Queen Anne Avenue) which means that if those streets are given bus lanes, both routes would be able to take advantage of them.

Seattle Center to Eastlake

This is arguably the greatest part about the viaduct replacement project. The grid north of Denny (up to Harrison) will be connected. One of the great things about this area is that converting general purpose lanes to bus-only lanes won’t be that difficult from a political standpoint. There is no “taking” as people can’t drive that way today. It is quite reasonable to extend those bus lanes throughout this area, all the way to Eastlake Avenue. Even with the change, it isn’t a major through route, because you simply can’t go that far (I-5 and the Seattle Center cut off through traffic). This makes it significantly different than Madison or Eastlake (where lots of lanes were taken, while taking others proved too difficult).

Eastlake to Capitol Hill

This is another controversial change. Right now there are no buses on Belmont. This, again, is why it would make sense to run wire along this line, so that neighbors don’t complain about noisy buses struggling to get up the hill. By going over the freeway on Lakeview, the bus would avoid the traffic on Denny altogether. A traffic light (with signal priority for the bus) would have to be added to Eastlake at Thomas, but that is a pretty cheap addition. If more money is found, it looks to me like you could widen Eastlake (next to the freeway) or eliminate some parking to add jump ahead lanes. Lakeview is a bridge, of course, and it wouldn’t make sense to spend the money on expanding it. But if traffic overall is less of a problem there than it is on Denny, moving the line north would make sense.

As with the change through the Seattle Center, it might not be worth it. The big improvement will occur when the grid around Denny and Aurora is open. That, just by itself, will enable a huge improvement in speed and reliability for one of the most important buses in our system.

Once the current projects are completed, Seattle to Portland travel time via Cascades trains will drop.  The current published expectation is a decrease of 20 minutes from 3 hours and 40 minutes to 3 hours and 20 minutes.  10 minutes due to construction delays and 10 minutes from improved speed and on time performance.  The actual decrease will be even greater.

The Washington State Long-Range Plan for Amtrak Cascades from 2006 indicates three hour travel time is possible after the in progress improvements are complete.  Specifically page 3-4:

Current travel times from Seattle to either Vancouver, BC or Portland, OR will decrease by approximately thirty minutes each way.

The projects required to complete that kind of travel time are listed in the document and those projects are very similar to the ones already completed or in progress as part of the current WSDOT High-Speed Rail Program.  The 20 minute delta between estimates in the Long-Range Plan and the current planned reduction is significant and meaningful.  I have not yet found the cause of the delta.  One possibility for 5 minutes of the delta is the Tukwila stop, but this is only a part of the delta.  I surmise planners want to be cautious at first and see how the completed projects impact on time performance in practice versus their modeling.  Near 3 hour travel times are possible in the next couple of years.

The long term goal is a travel time of 2 hours and 30 minutes.  This has been re-iterated in multiple of the Washington rail plans.  For example in the 2014 rail plan:

Thirteen round trips between Seattle and Portland (1-hour frequency during peak travel times) with a travel time of two hours and 30 minutes (2:30).

The current projects will decrease delays and improve the average speed.  Currently, the maximum speed is 79 mph indicating a maximum track class of 4.  The long range planning documents indicate 110 mph speeds and class 6 track will be needed to reach the 2 hours and 30 minutes goal.

Many of the current projects, once completed, will allow for the track to become class 5.  Class 5 track allows for up to a maximum speed of 90 mph.  On page 4-14 of the Amtrak Cascades Mid-Range Plan on the WSDOT website:

This project will upgrade and maintain all existing main line tracks to FRA “Class V” standards. However, trains would still be limited to 79 mph maximum due to signal limitations.

The signal limitations, I believe, were addressed in some of the current projects.  The quote is referencing track between Blaine and Vancouver WA.  An associated cost increase in maintenance would occur if the track became class 5, from page 4-15 of the Amtrack Cascades Mid-Range Plan on the WSDOT website:

WSDOT estimates it will cost more than $200,000 per track mile. This equates to $97.4 million with delivery in 2014 (Exhibit 5A-8, Appendix 5). In addition, the cost of maintaining the tracks to the higher standard will be higher than today. This will take about four years to implement without severely disrupting existing service. BNSF estimates it will cost between $10,000 and $13,000 (2008 estimates) per track mile annually for ongoing maintenance at the higher track standard.

There are roughly 300 miles of track for the Cascades in Washington.  If being unkind with inflation and staying on the higher side of the BNSF maintenance estimate that brings the total extra cost in maintenance to $4.5 million annually.  Not all of the track needs to be of higher classification and if focused on the Seattle to Portland route the annual cost impact could be lowered.  It sounds feasible for at least some of the track to receive a class 5 rating.  I believe, based time estimates in the WSDOT plans, this would reduce travel time by another 10 minutes.

Basic internet searching for class 6 maintenance costs versus class 4 maintenance costs suggests the increase would be double the class 5 versus class 4 cost.  It seems class 6 track is an unreasonable expectation at this time.  The past couple of years WSDOT has named operating cost reduction as a goal.  It is also unclear how much if any track at this time is built for class 6 or if the existing engines are economical to run at class 6 speeds.

Aside from track improvements, the new Charger locomotives should also have an effect on travel times.  They are more powerful and more efficient.  Better acceleration will improve the average speed and the greater efficiency should allow for more use of the greater power due to lower operational costs.  There are hints in the various WSDOT plans and articles online that the new engines should help reduce travel time slightly, but I have not found any numbers to indicate how much of an effect they will have.

Over the next four years we should see a gradual decrease in travel time.  In 2017 travel time should be 3 hours and 20 minutes.  By 2019 I expect to see 3 hour travel times.  With a class 5 track rating, by 2020 I would hope for a 2 hours 50 minute travel time between Seattle and Portland.

Sources:

• http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Rail/default.htm
• http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Rail/Plans.htm
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_speed_limits_in_the_United_States
• http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/trnews/trnews255rpo.pdf

There is quite an assortment of rolling stock at the Innotrans 2016 show, but I have selected one in particular to serve as an example of what is being built for other cities. It isn’t necessarily something that should be grabbed as a complete design and immediately put to use in Seattle, as it has a number of features that were requested by the operator. It does illustrate what features other cities have asked to have on their transit equipment and some of these features may be useful to consider when looking at what might one day operate in Seattle.

The particular car I have selected is the Krakowiak, built by Pesa for the Krakow, Poland tram (streetcar) system.

Some basic numbers:
Length: 141 feet in four car sections
Number of seats: 93
Full passenger capacity: 284
Maximum Speed: 43 mph

By the numbers it doesn’t seem so impressive I suppose. It sounds like a fairly typical streetcar, though obviously a bit longer than what is currently in use in Seattle, Tacoma or Portland. Though, it should be pointed out that in the not too distant past streetcars in use in Krakow weren’t this long either, but the transition to longer cars proved desirable for a number of reasons.

Taking a look inside gives an impression the numbers don’t necessarily reveal:

While most of the doors have a fair amount of space for passengers to move around, one door is the designated bike door and pictured above is their solution to bike storage.

While this particular method of stowing a bike on transit equipment takes up a bit of space, it also eliminates some of the issues with having people lift their bikes into a hook. The door is equipped with a sign that indicates bikes need to board at that particular door.

I found it interesting that some of the seats were equipped with these very small tables.

I found it especially interesting that these tables were each equipped with USB power outlets.

USB power outlets seems to be an extremely popular thing for transit equipment these days. At least two of the battery buses on display at the show have them, as well as a number of rail transit cars.

The car is essentially 100% low floor, and there are no stairs at all from the entry to the rest of the car floor. While this does mean that the wheels protrude into the passenger area, it is still possible to utilize the space.

The ticket validator on the far right is a touch screen that is able to display messages in any of six or so languages.

As with pretty much all of the transit equipment at the show, the car is equipped with LCD screens that give the next several stations, and otherwise is a much more useful display than what is typically seen in the USA.

Tomorrow the outdoor displays are open to the public, and this is usually an extremely popular day. Visitor counts on Saturdays have been in the tens of thousands. Thus, this is my final article about Innotrans 2016, unless someone has special requests for more.

My hope is that you have enjoyed a little bit of a window into what is currently being built for other transit systems elsewhere.

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Glenn Laubaugh (“Glenn in Portland”) is part of the engineering staff for a small company in Portland that builds electrical equipment for railroad passenger cars.

While it is true that Innotrans is advertised as a railway exhibition and trade show, there are some non-railroad products at the show as well, as operators of railroad equipment may also be interested in these products.

No diesel powered buses of any sort are part of the displays (many are operating services to and around the show), but there are five battery powered buses as well as several variations of charging apparatus that are part of the show displays.

Hamberg is one of several cities in Europe using battery powered buses, and in fact in the case of Hamberg their goal is to move completely to battery powered buses by 2020. One of the Hochbahn buses being used in this service is on display.

Two of the buses are full scale articulated buses. One of the representatives from battery bus maker Sileo says they guarantee in their literature a distance of 230 km (143 miles) per charge, but in reality they typically get closer to 300 km (186 miles).

The battery buses are operating an occasional very slow loop around the Summer Garden area of the show, and they are all very eerily quiet. One can drive right past only inches away and you don’t know that it is there.

Efforts at making things quiet, zero emissions and otherwise eliminating traditional combustion powered engines is also going on with the railway equipment that is being shown as well, but none of it has enough space at the show to actually operate.

The above example is a hydrogen fuel cell powered version of the Alstom Coradia Lint regional train. They are calling this the iLint. It will begin service on regional trains in northern Germany after the show is over. Equipped with a restroom and commuter style seating, the car will operate in services of distances similar to Sounder.

Other pieces of equipment at the show that illustrate the extensive efforts at moving away from diesel engines include a regional freight locomotive from the Austrian Federal Railway that was upgraded to include off-wire battery packs. Passenger locomotives can’t be too far behind if freight equipment is already being built with this capability.

Noise along railway lines, however, isn’t just caused by diesel engines. Streetcar and other urban systems suffer from wheel on rail noise transmitted through the concrete into which the rails are set.

Prokop Rail of the Czech Republic has developed their BRENS system of sound deadening cushions specifically aimed at noise reduction and runoff water control for street railways or other situations where railway lines might otherwise be encased in concrete. Their system includes panels made from repurposed old automotive upholstery. These panels may have either artificial turf on top, or have an assortment of small plants such as sedum sewn into the material so that a natural top layer is formed. It is intended for use on lines with speeds up to 160 km/hr (100 mph).

Other products at the show to help make operations more quiet include various makers of transparent noise walls made from plexiglass or similar materials that are intended to block the noise but allow light to pass through. Several other non-transparent noise wall products were at the show as well, but everyone knows what noise walls look like.

There are many things that I don’t have enough time or space to cover. For example, a non-catenary light rail car for the Dubai Metro is also at the show. However, the products listed above are the ones that stand out to me as far as serving as an interesting step forward in the area of making things run quieter and cleaner.

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Glenn Laubaugh (“Glenn in Portland”) is a member of the engineering staff of a small Portland based manufacturer of electrical equipment for railroad passenger cars.