Stepping Back from the Ledge

Posted on by Martin H. Duke

Well, that stunk.

I sincerely hope that left-wing Roads & Transit opponents are correct, and that transit will come back soon and pass. I’m skeptical, but we’ll see.

Regardless, we will at least have light rail from Downtown to the Airport in 2009, and that can only help to build support for transit, although it means delivery of less rail, later, for more money.

In the meantime, as Seattle transit supporters, what should be our priorities over the next few years? Here’s my layman’s stab at a list:

1) Scrutinize (and probably oppose) “governance reform.” This is usually code for scrapping Sound Transit and replacing it with some other agency to oversee transit. Although in principle there are almost certainly governance structures superior to the current one, in reality it’s virtually certain that any replacement will spend its first years mired in mismanagement and incompetence (see: Sound Transit, 1996-2001; Seattle Monorail Project). That’s not what we need as the University LINK project comes close to getting seriously started.

2) Protect University LINK. The light rail line from downtown to Husky Stadium is supposedly all set to open in 2016. However, not one spade of Earth has yet been turned, nasty financial and engineering surprises are no doubt ahead, and God knows what legal and other challenges are lurking in the wake of the Prop. 1 failure.

This segment has the highest ridership projection of all, and the clearest time advantage for rail. An 8-minute travel time easily outclasses any conceivable alternative, including a streetcar. We must remain vigilant about this project. Like the airport, the University provides all-day traffic demand that justifies non-peak operation.

3) Get to Northgate. We must find the $1.2 billion (2006 dollars) to get to Northgate. This is the obvious terminus for southbound commuters to get on the line, and will increase the exposure of light rail that is critical to future expansion. Ideally, this would be part of a reduced regional package, but even if Seattle alone must fund it, it’s “only” $4,300 per household spread over many years — a lot, but not backbreaking.

4) Get to Bellevue. The two bridges are the most obvious chokepoint in the region. Getting to downtown Bellevue at least allows connection to the “RapidRide” BRT service that will continue to Overlake. Not optimal, but something we can accomplish. The high-end cost estimate is $2.2 billion, something that will probably require at least King County to fund. Paging Senator Murray…

5) “A Thousand Little Things.” There are lots of little things we can do that cost little compared to these mega-projects: streetcar extensions, bus lanes, arterial fixes, etc. These generally occur at the municipal level. A lot of these are being discussed on earlier threads. Expanding Sounder park-and-rides is another inexpensive capacity increase.

UPDATE: A point I should have made more clear is that there is zero chance a package involving these points would pass the three county district: there is literally nothing in it for Pierce and Snohomish Counties. To move forward, we probably need to restrict the taxing authority to the city of Seattle or King County.

In the case of King County, perhaps that involves a few hundred million for Sounder park-and-rides to win over the Southern part of the County. Whatever it takes.

BNSF Corridor

Posted on by Andrew Smith


People have been talking a lot about the BNSF corridor on the Eastside now that it seems the port is going to buy it. Some people want to build passenger rail there, but there are some serious problems with that. First, the trail goes straight through the middle of the street in Renton, sort of like SF Muni in San Francisco (see the photo). This is a huge problem because while SF Muni carries riders a few miles at most, the distances in the BNSF corridor are huge and could only be served by either a Link type system or preferably a Sounder type system. You can’t run Sounder Trains in the middle of the street. Second, through Bellevue the trail goes about 800 feet on the Eastside of 405, about a mile and a half from downtown Bellevue. This means that everyone who takes the train to Bellevue would have to transfer from the station to downtown, and everyone knows transfers are a deal breaker most of the time.

Those were the two problems that jumped out at me immediately, and I only looked at the tracks for a few minutes, and only in those two places. There could be problems with the Kirkland and Woodinville alignments as well. Plus, the “Eastside Rail Now” group is an anti-Prop. 1 front. Still, Prop. 1 does include a study for high capacity transit through that corridor, and it’s something worth keeping an eye on.

Why You Should Read The P-I Instead

Posted on by Ben Schiendelman

Today I woke up to nonsense. The Seattle Times is seriously arguing against building light rail from Seattle to Tacoma.

Now, look at the way I just put that. Light rail from “Seattle to Tacoma”. It’s easy to argue against that, right? We have Sounder from Seattle to Tacoma. We have express buses from Seattle to Tacoma. Why would we need more? Anyway, this article says it would take riders on light rail 70 minutes to get from Tacoma to Seattle! Isn’t that a long time?

Sounder takes 60 minutes – from Tacoma Dome Station to King Street Station. The express buses are scheduled to take 40 minutes, but of course they’re often stuck in traffic, and that’s getting worse. Those buses run all day, and carry as a whole around five thousand people. Sounder, with only five peak-direction round trips, carries ten thousand passengers a day, and that number is steadily increasing – the express buses carry half that. What, you say? Are these people dumb? Why would they take Sounder instead of the bus? Oh, wait. They’re *not* dumb. Most of them live in Auburn, Kent, Puyallup, and Sumner, and some of them even drive from Renton to Tukwila and take the train from there. In just a few years, Sounder will connect Lakewood and South Tacoma with Seattle as well. These people have the same commute time every day, which is very important to people who have jobs that are not next door.

But what does this have to do with light rail from “Seattle to Tacoma”?

Simple! We aren’t just building light rail from “Seattle to Tacoma”. We’re building light rail from Sea-Tac to Des Moines, and Des Moines to Federal Way, and the Rainier Valley to Federal Way, and Sea-Tac to Tacoma, and Des Moines to the Port of Tacoma, and Federal Way to Tacoma, and the U-district to Federal Way, and Bellevue to Federal Way – and I actually know people who work in Redmond and live in Des Moines, which is a crazy commute, but this would serve them! Sounder doesn’t serve ANY of these trips. In fact, even if someone did live in Tacoma and take transit to Seattle, if they wanted to go to Westlake or Capitol Hill, they have to transfer if they take the bus or Sounder (and with Sounder, they could only go during peak hours) – but not if they took Link. Transfers kill potential ridership, and make people stay in their cars.

Let’s point out some more of Andrew Garber’s bull – that “70 minutes” number? That’s from Westlake to Tacoma. Sounder service doesn’t serve that – it stops at the other end of downtown, at King Street Station. You have to take a bus (or starting in 2009, transfer to light rail) to get to Westlake. The Times picked that number because they think it makes light rail look bad – but all they’re doing is showcasing the fact that light rail built by Proposition 1 will serve trips that aren’t currently well served. In 2030, taking the bus from Tacoma to Westlake will take 80 minutes during peak times, and the same trip will be 70 minutes, consistently, on light rail – faster *and* vastly more reliable.

Readers of this blog already see some of the flaws in this article. Ron Sims’ “Buses are great and futuristic!” argument falls flat when we read the same thing from 1968 – the last 40 years are pretty good proof that magical superbuses just aren’t effective, even where we have transit lanes. Comparing the south line to University Link, the best projected ridership per dollar of any transit extension planned in the United States in thirty years, just tells us that the south line is normal, in line with the cost-effectiveness of all the other cost effective transit built around the country. And yeah, those 2030 University Link riders? They won’t be there if we don’t build Sound Transit 2 – some of them are coming from the south line, and a lot more are coming from the north and east lines. We don’t get those if we vote against Prop 1.

Oh, yeah, and if you’re going to say “is it worth the money?” about a project, at least compare to another project that actually moves a similar number of people – like building a new highway, which is what you’d have to do to move as many people as the south line will.

One last shameful and misleading thing? The graphic on the Times’ article doesn’t show University Link as “under way” – uh, folks, a lot of the properties have been purchased, the design is well under way, and we’ve got the money.

Hey Seattle Times: do you wonder why readership is down? Trying to think of reasons that the Blethens are having to prop you up? Maybe it’s because your front page pieces don’t pass the whiff test for the people you’re trying to sell to – they smell like bull. People driving their cars don’t read papers – people on the train do. If you want to survive, stop shooting yourselves in the foot.

More BRT

Posted on by Martin H. Duke

We’ve already been over the unnecessary duplication of effort between Sound Transit 2 and the “RapidRide” Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) portion of last year’s “Transit Now” package. To be clear, I blame Metro for this more than Sound Transit; Ron Sims knew ST was going to propose something along the SR 99 corridor in South King County, and proposed this anyway.

I would much prefer that this corridor go somewhere else, perhaps along the West Valley Highway to take pressure of SR 167. It would have made a ton of sense for Metro to release the information about one of the other RapidRide lines now, and wait for the outcome of Prop. 1 before committing to a redundant system.

My disappointment with Metro is because of the clear inferiority of this brand of transit with Light Rail. Let’s break down the features of RapidRide, because this is the alternative that Ron Sims and Kemper Freeman have in store for you if you reject expansion of light rail next month.

From the Metro website:

After RapidRide service begins, Metro’s plan is for buses to arrive every 10 minutes during the busiest morning and evening travel hours. At other times between 5 a.m. and 10 p.m., buses will come every 15 minutes. Between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., service will be similar to what it is today.

Great, this is long overdue, and a real improvement over existing service. However, light rail promises 6 minute intervals during rush hour, and each 4-car train carries up to 800 passengers! That’s 8,000 people per hour, the equivalent of almost four freeway lanes. It’s clear that the capacity of this line is much smaller, which makes it much harder to spur dense development.

Also, cutting off service at 10pm makes RapidRide useless for people who might want to use it to attend a Mariners game, or go out on a Friday night. One advantage of the huge capital investment of light rail is that it encourages authorities to run it a lot, thus amortizing that cost.

RapidRide buses will have low floors and three doors, so people can get on and off quickly. A new, trial fare payment system will allow riders with passes to pay as they enter any door. The inside of the buses will be designed to make it easier for passengers to move to seats and exits.

Emphasis mine. Riders with passes aren’t the problem. The problem is idiots fumbling for change and arguing with the driver over the fare. This is dramatically inferior to the LINK or Sounder approach of buying a ticket from the machine while you’re waiting at the station.

Buses will use the new HOV lanes on Pacific Highway S/International Boulevard. As buses approach intersections, they will send signals to traffic lights, requesting that green lights stay green longer or red lights switch to green faster.

The magic words I was hoping to see here are “bus lane”. Anyone who’s ever taken the 545 from Overlake or the 532 towards Lynnwood knows that HOV lanes are a poor substitute for a dedicated right-of-way.

Still, I’m ecstatic to see they won’t be running in SOV traffic, and will get signal priority. Hopefully, these innovations are to be repeated along Aurora, 15th, NE 8th, and to West Seattle.

The shelters and signs will look different from those you see at regular Metro stops—they will have a special RapidRide style and color scheme. Waiting areas will be well-lit, increasing security. Electronic real-time signs will tell people the actual number of minutes before the next bus will arrive.

I’m not sure if the branding will overcome the “rail bias”, or if it’ll just confuse people already struggling to grasp three or four overlapping transit systems. Either way, the electronic signs are a big deal.

BRT is cheaper than rail, undoubtedly, and it’s a heck of a lot better than vanilla bus service. But it’s also probably not the ultra-reliable, high-capacity, dedicated-right-of-way transit that will drive lure tons of new riders and drive development.

I eagerly await Daimajin’s report from Los Angeles on the BRT there, and how it’s doing in terms of ridership and spurring transit-oriented development.

Future of Transit in Seattle

Posted on by Andrew Smith

The Seattle Times article today, “Seattle gets a glimpse of its transit future”, is a decent little round-up of the goings-on these few weeks with regard to transit.

• In the South Lake Union area, a red streetcar arrived by truck Monday afternoon, the first of three to begin service in December.

• Two Sounder commuter trains will be added Monday between Seattle and Tacoma, and one will be added to Sounder’s Everett-to-Seattle line.

• Link light-rail trains begin service from downtown to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in the second half of 2009. Train tests inside the tunnel will start in October, on nights and weekends, Sound Transit spokesman Bruce Gray said.

• And, high-occupancy vehicle lanes are being added in Everett, Tacoma, on Highway 99 south of the airport and on the Interstate 90 floating bridges.

Also, the bus tunnel reopens next week. Some people are worried the mirrors might start taking people’s heads off now that the tunnel floor has lowered eight inches. It’s funny that the times article spends half the space on unions and danger. Pandering to it’s suburban, anti-transit readership I reckon.

The street car arriving is great news, but I am sure it’s “unfortunate” nickname may actually boost its popularity. It’s a bit stupid anyway, since trolley means any transport with an overhead wire, so the electric buses are actually trolleys too. I guess I shouldn’t be so pedantic.

In other Seattle Transit news, the Elliot Bay Water Taxi has had its service extended through October. I’m not exactly sure why this doesn’t run year ’round. Is it a safety issue? Ridership drop-off?

NW Progressive on Sierra Club’s defeat in Superior Court

Posted on by Andrew Smith

At Northwest Progressive, Scott has a thought-provoking post on Sierra Club’s case’s denial by King County Superior court. The Sierra Club, an environmental lobbying/political group, had been trying to add their own “con” argument to the voter’s guide because the con argument that goes with the bill is an anti-rail position. The Sierra Club supports the rail portion of the bill, but opposes the RTID roads portion. The court ruled that the planned con section is within legistlative guidelines, and it is too late to change it.

Scott’s point is very well though out:

The Sierra Club is the only major environmental organization to oppose the measure. The Washington Conservation Voters, the Washington Environmental Council, Futurewise, and other groups dedicated to a sustainable Earth strongly support Roads & Transit.

They believe, as we do, that by investing in fifty miles of new light rail, thirty miles of new high occupancy vehicles lanes, enhancements to Sounder commuter rail, and Park & Ride expansions we can decrease single occupancy vehicle use and improve our transportation choices.

Additionally, by removing dangerous choke points that cause congestion, we can improve the reliability of our bus system and make our roads safer.

The roads section of the bill is mostly freight roads, HOV lanes and is chokepoint improvements. It has very little new roads in it, the major new road, the so-called “cross-base highway”, it does not even full fund. My position is that we will never get a fully baked region rail system if we don’t start it now, and we’ll never get expansions and increased rail systems in the future if we don’t start now. Opposing a bill that creates something we need, light rail, because it has something you don’t really like, roads, is counter-productive because the roads projects are likely to get built anyway by politicians, and they are not likely to build rail on their own accord. I feel like if you’re going to oppose roads being built, you should do it where huge roads projects much worse than this are, and don’t oppose those that are tied to necessary transit improvements.

Should we never build more roads? Should we destroy the ones we have? If you hate roads, than that is the only logical step after the Sierra Club’s argument.

City of Destiny Train Opens!

Posted on by Andrew Smith




Sound Transit opened a the new reverse-commute “City of Destiny” train (a Seattle-to-Tacoma route).
From the press release:

Today Sound Transit announced expanded Sounder commuter rail service starting September 24th that includes two new weekday round trips on the south corridor and one on the north corridor. The new south corridor trains include the introduction of a new “reverse commute” train that will run from Seattle to Tacoma in the morning and return northbound in the evening.

The reverse commute train will for the first time enable commuters to ride Sounder to jobs in South King County and Pierce County. The additional runs expand Sounder service hours in both the north and south corridors, with the first train starting at 5 a.m. and the last train making its final stop at 6:55 p.m.

More trains, more hours, and the new reverse commute train all add up to more choices for commuters who want to ride Sounder commuter rail and leave traffic behind.

Pretty awesome! I have been doing reverse commutes for years, first from San Francisco to San Jose, and now from Seattle to Redmond, and this is going to open possibilities for economic growth through that corridor, and give people more options to work where they want, and live where they please.

So what kind of commutes do you guys have? Anyone else do a reverse commute?

Comprise, yes, but fragile?

Posted on by Andrew Smith

Today the Seattle Times ran a cover-page story about the Roads and Transit package. Headlined, “Record-setting tax plan wraps roads, rail in 1 fragile package” it begins:

It’s hard to find a political leader in love with the nearly $18 billion roads-and-transit tax package on the November ballot.

Among the complaints: The plan spreads projects too thinly, doesn’t fully address some of the region’s most pressing traffic problems and imposes the wrong set of taxes.

Yet most of the leaders want voters in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties to pass the biggest tax package ever placed on the ballot in this state, arguing it does enough good to warrant support.

“I don’t think we’ll get anything better,” House Transportation Committee Chairwoman Judy Clibborn, D-Mercer Island, said. “Everybody wants us to have a plan. This is the plan.”

That’s right. We won’t get much better than this. Most people want either roads or transit, and it’s very difficult to please both sides of this debate. Studies have shown that most new roads projects are far more expensive than light rail (for example, increasing I-5 by one lane each way just within Seattle would cost more than $25 billion, which is enough to build an entire subway network), and even widening 405 will cost nearly $4 billion. Building new highways would be even more expensive, and when looking at the cost of replacing the viaduct (cost between $4 and $6 billion) and the 520 bridge (around $5 billion), $10.8 billion for 50 miles of light rail, four miles of street cars, and improve Sounder access make the project seem cheap by comparison.

The big problem for the pro-environmentalist side is that if the package fails, it’s likely that the state legistlature, who’s 100% pro-highway, will push through a roads package and we won’t get another rail package for years:

Horn, with the Eastside Transportation Association, says roads would emerge as a winner if the measure fails. “If it’s not passed this year, the Legislature will have to step up and address it in some way,” he said.

Legislators aren’t sure what would happen.

It’s possible light rail would reappear on the ballot fairly quickly, but fixing the region’s highways is another matter. Legislative leaders predict few people would want to touch the issue in 2008 because it’s an election year.

That would push any highway proposal off until 2009, and by then the debate over replacing the Highway 520 bridge and the Alaskan Way Viaduct — both in danger of collapse during an earthquake — could suck up all the attention and money for years to come.

If you care about mass transit, which I certainly do, you want to support this bill. It’s likely to show how little you get from billions of dollars in highway spending, and just how much can be done to change people’s minds when looking at rail projects.

Freeloading

Posted on by Nick L

It was a beautiful day for most of the day today, and to get out and enjoy it I decided to head to Bellevue Square to start looking for some new threads to wear for the next wedding coming up. I know there is nothing in Bellevue that I can’t get in Seattle, but I wanted to check out the lake and see what the scene was like over in Bellevue. This also meant that I got to take the 550, which is quite fast for bus service. Yes, it costs more, but for the views, express service, and comfortable Sound Transit buses why not? Plus it probably is no secret, I like Sound Transit, I haven’t had any problems every time I have had to take their buses. Except today! It wasn’t anything ST did, but everything the passengers didn’t do. That is: Pay the EXACT fare! Appalled, disgusted, and confused begin to describe some of my thoughts about this experience. I counted today cause it got to be about every other customer, and 5 didn’t meet that requirement! 5. I am not a fan of fare evaders, I pay my fare as do most on the bus. The thing that got under my skin the most enough to cause me to blog about it, was level of disrespect to the driver. If these punks get on a bus they should know ahead of time what they are going to have to pay! All they have to do is look at the fare box! Watching the people who claimed they didn’t have the extra dollar get off the bus and laughing about it with their friends. There is only one word, ignorance. One guy, get this, used his “Sounder” ticket and read ignorantly to the driver that it should count as a transfer on the bus while walking off the bus. What a moron, the Sounder didn’t run today! The offenders today were younger in their teens, one older, mix of male and female. I have ridden the 550 before where 2 offenders did the same thing once in Bellevue except they didn’t give the sob story that they didn’t have the money, they flat out ran off the bus and flipped the rest of us off. Now, I wonder is this something that occurs on certain routes more than others? I see it on intercity routes, and I feel like it would probably occur on those routes more due to increased passengers. I thought while riding, perhaps it is confusing passengers to have ST and KCM buses be different in cost? But then the disrespect makes me think these people know the difference between the two and probably understand the cost breakdown well enough. Seattle to Bellevue is 2 zones, and costs $2.50! They should make no mistakes, $2.50, not $1.30, and definitely not free! Not to take it out on you, I am sure you all express my frustrations as paying transit folk! I wonder if it might make things better if there was a ST ticket vending machine (TVM) like the Sounder uses at multiple locations downtown that people could buy their tickets and show them upon boarding. That way, you won’t slow down the bus, you will have proof of purchase, and I will feel better about the world. Maybe we could even make it a machine that represents all transit agencies in the metropolitan area. What do you think? Have you encountered this before? Feel free to vent if needed, surely I have.

Transit+ Riders – I-5 lanes = Nice Commute

Posted on by Nick L

I was going to post Monday evening, but thought I better wait at least another day and see how things go. As you may have heard traffic on I-5 has been better than expected both Monday and Tuesday and at the time I am writing this it is good as well. Perhaps the coolest mode of transportation in my opinion, the Sounder, carried 6,709 people on Monday and about 1000 less on Tuesday. I hope that the influx of new riders will like it and stick with it, certainly, it has to be better than driving alone. This shows that Seattle has the capability of using transit and taking cars off the road! Certainly Sounder wasn’t the only mode to experience increased ridership, the water taxi had 500+ people cross Elliot Bay, Metro had normal levels on Monday and increased levels on Tuesday. This may be people not able to get on Sounder? Who knows. I have read a lot in the local paper comment sections that this was planned, it is a conspiracy that Seattle chose to do this at the time the ST 2 vote was coming up. I have 2 thoughts on that, first being if it is a conspiracy, that is some effective planning across many sections of government in our state, which is extremely unlikely to happen and invalidates that possibility. Second, if it was a conspiracy, which I don’t think it was, maybe it is a good thing to show people this is a good alternative to riding alone? I see nothing wrong with that? It goes to show you that riding transit is a mindset. Certainly there are problems with transit, but without riders you won’t see any changes. Of course, there has to be a Yes vote on ST2 ballot to help. Transit can work and will work in Seattle. All these people could have stayed in their car and dealt with backups to Tacoma, but they didn’t! I think it’s a sign. More transit!