Sound Transit Moving to One-Car Trains on Evenings & Weekends

I have a quibble with your capacity number – Sound Transit lists the crush load of a single car as 200, not 150: http://www.soundtransit.org/Riding-Sound-Transit/Our-Vehicles/Link-light-rail.xml. According to the Link Operations Plan (http://www.bettertransport.info/pitf/SoundTransitCentralLinkOpsPlan.7.29.08.pdf) 148 is the capacity used for scheduling purposes.

That said, this does seem like a strange move. Are they confident they can keep track of all the special events that could spike demand? And where does the $460,000 savings come from? The power bill?

Sending out only one rail car in a Sound Transit light “train” probably makes security maintenance and fare compliance inspections easier.

Also, rail cars, like aircraft, probably have a maintenance schedule that is based on hours in service. Fewer hours reduces maintenance requirements per period of time.

Similarly, fewer hours of rail car operations make the productivity statistics — passengers per revenue hour or per revenue mile — reported to U.S. DOT come out better.

fewer cars ….great.

Now is it clear that spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on art — and millions on palatial stations — was a mistake?

Erica–they can add a car anytime if they need to. If you had been paying attention you would know that ST faces a $4 billion shortfall due to the Bush recession. Times are tough and belts have to be tightened.

Not a mistake.
Rail is a long-term investment, and you don’t want to blow it in the begining by being too frugal with things like that, even now.

But palatial? Where is our Union Station?

URBAN LEGENDS: WHY SUBURBS, NOT DENSE CITIES, ARE THE FUTURE

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/08/16/urban_legends

Urban population densities have been on the decline since the 19th century, Angel notes, as people have sought out cheaper and more appealing homes beyond city limits. In fact, despite all the “back to the city” hype of the past decade, more than 80 percent of new metropolitan growth in the United States since 2000 has been in suburbs.

I am going to take a wild guess here, and assume that Sound Transit knows that the numbers of riders Link has in the evenings and weekends will easily fit on one-car “trains”. Although, I expect ST will take Erica’s professional opinions on this matter seriously.

J. Niles probably makes the best point: reducing capacity, and lowering operating cost, will make Link light rail appear slightly more cost-effective to operate than it would otherwise be.

They said they would only use one car, but what they didn’t tell you was that this is the car:

http://www.translationdirectory.com/images_articles/wikipedia/railroads/A_handcar_pump_trolley_UK.jpg

Guess ridership didn’t meet expections…

any station that is an entire building above ground is palatial. Stations need only be platforms underground; there is no point at all in building a building above ground as at Beacon Hill station. At Tukwila it could have been two platforms in the air and not a huge palatial station at immense cost. some of the public art costs thousands of dollars, too, and all this does almost nothing to improve service to riders, so it has nothing at all to do with being a long term investment (like tracks). If by union station you mean DC it’s renovation was not really a part of the construction of metro and was a huge beautification project paid for by congress largely aimed at amtrack; the metro trains are NOT the trains that are in union station, they don’t need to be. BTW if we had a central downtown station linking to amtrack and subway lines THAT would be one where a large roomy room on top of platforms would make sense. The palaces such as Beacon Hill and Tukwila don’t make sense at all. Instead of stations, those buildings should be housing and retail atop or astride train platforms. by putting a station on the whole block they eliminated the block that woulda been the best TOD.

Mass Transit: The Great Train Robbery

http://www.joelkotkin.com/content/00273-mass-transit-great-train-robbery

Last month promoters of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s Los Angeles rail projects, both past and future, held a party to celebrate their “success.” Although this may well have been justified for transit-builders and urban land speculators, there may be far less call for celebration among L.A.’s beleaguered commuters.

Despite promises that the $8 billion invested in rail lines over the past two decades would lessen L.A.’s traffic congestion and reshape how Angelenos get to work, the sad reality is that there has been no increase in MTA transit ridership since before the rail expansion began in 1985.

Much of the problem, notes Tom Rubin, a former chief financial officers for the MTA’s predecessor agency, stems from the shift of funding priorities to trains from the city’s more affordable and flexible bus network. Meanwhile, traffic has gotten worse, with delay hours growing from 44 hours a year in 1982 to 70 hours in 2007.

First of all I would imagine that on Saturday and Sunday the ridership is much more evenly spread out over the day than on a weekday. That could explain why even though only about 10% less riders overall they could get away with one car trains.

Secondly, times are tough. Better to cut length than cut frequency.

So 9 am Sunday would be the same as 9pm Saturday night?

What happened to all the revelers flocking to pub crawl in an Urban Paradise?

You ate paint chips as a child didn’t you?

I think this move makes perfect sense. Keeping 2-car trains out if the 1-car trains are insufficient is easy.

In the budgeting world, 1% is a huge savings.

Isn’t of the ‘building’ at Beacon Hill just elevators, emergency stairs and ventilation equipment?

It’s not really that big, far from palatial IMO.

This decision by Sound Transit illustrates the flexibility of the system ST has built. A rail system should be built for the future, not today. This system is able to run anywhere between one and four cars. Other systems around the country run one car at night. It simply makes sense. ST has no doubt done their homework and believes it will work just fine. If it does not, they can add a car anytime. This is not a reason for concern, but a sensible adjustment

Would it be cheaper to shut it down and run a bus?

(I know this will hurt some “feelings”)

If it weren’t for the Sunday JC folks you could charge for Sunday parking and force those people to ride. What Would Jesus Drive?

Dude, thats why the future is density…

Suburbs are unsustainable. And now acres of those new ‘berbs built since 2000 lie empty, devoid of habitation due to a burst bubble.

Of course it would, Mr Baker. Good suggestion.

Because John Bailo is obviously smarter than you are, that makes you think he ate paint chips as a child?

Because John Bailo is obviously smarter than you are, that makes you think he ate paint chips as a child?

I would guess that Anc’s point was that because train use on the weekends would be more recreational then during the week (travel to airport, shopping, bars, etc) there would be reasons to take LINK throughout the day, not just before and after work. It may not be at nine in the morning, but it doesn’t seem like a ridiculous statement that LINK use would be more even during the weekend.

This hardly seems like news. If weekend and evening cars are consistently filled to capacity, that will be news. Otherwise I’ll take a wait-and-see apporach.

Some of us like having our public facilities look nice. And really the stations are hardly palatial.

Electricity is cheaper than diesel and maintenance on a train is less than a bus so no.

Sorry, PW, I just don’t agree with your basic premise that public facilities should be cheap and ugly, especially if you’re trying to get non-transit riders to consider a new mode of travel. Thanks for playing, though.

Must not double-post when I’m calling someone else dumb. Must not…

On a per-hour basis, Link single cars cost three times as much to operate as ST buses.

This is TYPICAL policy from the elitist SUV driving yuppie scum making transportation policy in this region.

People do NOT use transit cuz it costs too much AND cuz it doesn’t run frequently enough.

IF transit runs MORE than every 10 minutes, then I have to look at all your stupid schedules and plan stuff – instead of just walking outside and waiting a few minutes.

Round trip to work everyday would cost me about 5 dollars, or 2 in gas. Don’t tell me about the other costs of running a car – NO SHIT. Because you didn’t factor in MY time, I have to spend more AND wait more.

Ta Da! There ya go – ALL your graduate degrees in Gawd-Knows-What ain’t worth the Charmin they should be printed on. I lived in Boston from ’78 to ’89, and I moved out here.

The FIRST thing that needs to happen to ALL transit agencies is to take everyone who is NOT in maintenance or driving something, making over 40,000 a year, and fire them. While we’d probably lose a lot of decent underlings working to keep a f’d system running, we’d at least lose all the scum at the top.

rmm.

Do you have a cite for that as it makes no sense? Both have a driver, and both require some level of central staffing to keep things on schedule, but given how cheap electricity is it seems very unlikely.

I might buy into this if the suburb was designed as cycling and walking paradise. Sadly, they are woefully auto-dependent. The older I get the more I hate Bellevue because I’m practically forced to choose a car as my primary transportation method.

God help ST if it intends to make up $4 billion shortfall through $500k/year in savings. It would take a mere 8,000 years.

The decision to cut the number of cars in half is incomprehensible.

There’s no world in which a 1% savings is huge when it requires a 50% cut in capacity.

The real money is spent on labor—-and Sound Transit knows it. There is not enough ridership to justify the frequency in the off hours but reducing frequency means Sound Transit might have to face reality: bus transit is better, cheaper and more flexible. And literally, at the end of the day, more people use it…..

what systems run one car at night?

btw the fact that the trains here end around midnight is the real problem the system is totally unusable if you’re from othello area and want to go out in downtown seattle because the trains are not there when the action comes to an end on your night on the town. i think the relevant comparison is “other systems in cities with great rapid transit” and you will find that in most of them, they do NOT have shorter trains at night. Of course, I have only ridden transit in one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight other cities, no make it nine, so the fact that in all these other cities with far more usage of rail than we have here they ALL have full trains not one car trains at night and the fac that they are used by those going out at night to do what people in urban areas do which is GO OUT AT A NIGHT that’s all just a big coincidence, right, any association I might make that HAVING SERVICE and trains being THERE and being full is what works is just “anecdotal evidence” and it’s the super geniuses at ST who have “no doubt done their homework” and know what works, right?

Just like they did their homework and were 100% over budgeton first plan and are ten years delayed and now have a 25% $3.9 billion revenue shortfall, you talking ’bout the guys who did that “homework”?

pwn

1. it is a building.
2. it takes up a whole block.
3. if it were just elevators and stairs etc. it could all be underground.
4. it’s not.
5. look at tukwila station, it’s much more than platforms, tracks, etc.
6. look up the costs they’re shocking.
7. if you have ever been to say nyc or paris you’d know you don’t take up a whole block with a station building (except maybe the grand central station of the whole system) as (a) it’s wasteful and (b) you just used up the very best block for TOD.

Please go compare the building they use for the 51st st. lexington avenue line in NYC with our ST LRT Beacon Hill station. You will see what I am talking about. So, it’s not a matter of IMO or IYO ST builds buildings for stations where they’re totally unnecessary thus they are palatial.

stations that are entire buildings above ground are a waste. Here we are cutting service, when all you need at beacon hill is an entrance in the sidewalk and perhaps an elevator, not a whole building taking pu a block. You may like having it look nice. That’s nice. but it’s public money and all over the world subways and elevated trains usually don’t require a distinct building just for a neighborhood train stop. It adds very little to the experience for you to have a “nice bjuilding to look at” during the ten seconds you enter the building and go down the stairs or elevator. Hopefully your “experience” of standing onb the platform is only a few minutes, too. If you want to look at beauty, well, having more trains and more service is more beautiful, what can I say, or buy an ipod and listen to beautiful music. We’ve spent tens of millions of dollars extra for palatial stations and now we’re delaying fed. way station and cutting service. BTW if you want it not to look cheap and ugly dn’t build a useless building in the first place, then, on the platforms put up posters of plays and movies and local brewpubs and failing that go buy a picasso flower poster for $24 and put it in a $200 frame and hang it on the wall by the platform; or just look at art on your iphone. Seriously, you guys want to spend an extra tens of millionson unneeded station buildings, while we cut service and delay bringing stations on line? seriously? tell me how much the public art is in the capitol hill station, likely hundreds of thousands of dollars, hardly justified versus service cuts.

Minneapolis and Phoenix for starters. Light rail haters like you and lovers like Erica want to twist this action to mean something, but it is a minor adjustment. And every government in America is suffering from the same 25% loss of revenue.

John Niles has done this region a great service since 1996, tracking promises and outcomes of public transit investments in the Puget Sound. Thanks John.
He correctly states the reason for going to one-car trains. Numbers, both rankings and cost savings.
Here’s an exchange of ‘peer’ systems light rail costs, that Sound Transit considers important and strives to achieve.
http://seattletransitblog.com/2010/07/17/link-ridership-up-7-5-in-june/
The ‘peer’ discussion with the blogger starts about 3/4 down in the comments.
To summarize, average peer system cost per boarding is under $3. Last year Link was over $9, budgeted for $6 this year, but due to lower ridership, will come about $7. Adding in depreciation and amortization of the debt raises that to $17.32 for each person that boards the train.
By comparison, a Metro bus is $3.67 per boarding.
Riders per train car is another important reason to shorten the trains.
Peer systems averaged 71 per car in 2008(Nat. Transit Database). Link averaged 38 last year and will come in at about 55 this year.
Link is growing, but with lots of capacity to spare, it makes sense to conserve vehicles and improve the bottom line.

From the same article:

Consider the environment. We tend to associate suburbia with carbon dioxide-producing sprawl and urban areas with sustainability and green living. But though it’s true that urban residents use less gas to get to work than their suburban or rural counterparts, when it comes to overall energy use the picture gets more complicated. Studies in Australia and Spain have found that when you factor in apartment common areas, second residences, consumption, and air travel, urban residents can easily use more energy than their less densely packed neighbors. Moreover, studies around the world — from Beijing and Rome to London and Vancouver — have found that packed concentrations of concrete, asphalt, steel, and glass produce what are known as “heat islands,” generating 6 to 10 degrees Celsius more heat than surrounding areas and extending as far as twice a city’s political boundaries.

What does “auto-dependent” mean?

Lower density means more bikeable streets. You don’t need bike lanes, paths and other restrictions in low density. Every street becomes a safe biking street.

What is more, bikes make far more sense in the suburbs as an adjunct to the car, as the necessities are often within a mile or two from the home…perfect distance for bike transportation.
I live in Kent, and I use my bike all the time for recreation and sometimes for transportation of groceries, etc.

That works where you aren’t restricted by high-volume arterial streets between your home and your destination or long distances. That said, many homes in suburbia are further than 2 miles from services. I have to bike > 2 miles to get to downtown Mercer Island – It’s a pleasant ride on the I-90 trail, but that’s the exception, not the rule. To get into downtown Bellevue, I have to navigate Bellevue Way which is doable but only for a skilled and confident vehicular cyclist.

I feel your pain, and as member of the Kent Bicycle Advisory Board fight the same battle here for the more highly trafficked arterials.

I always push for the type of separated bike roadways that they use in Europe.

But to me, that’s not a “suburbia” problem — that’s a problem of Washington State planners being untutored when it comes to modern civilized concepts of ped-bike-auto design.

Would you be unhappy if this were the situation on Bellevue Way:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdU-RAW-zhQ&feature=related

It’s relatively cheap to build and fully separated for all users. That would fit my definition of a “cycling and walking paradise” quite nicely.

Suburbia has more room for this kind of facility than more urbanized areas. That said, entrenched automobile interests seem to be winning out – just witness the fights over road diets in Seattle. Bellevue is talking about more bike lanes downtown but I’m not holding my breath.

Then why are small businesses moving to the suburbs? The movement to buy local – a great many small business I used to go to in the Seattle core have fled to the suburbs because they can no longer afford the real estate prices in Seattle, nor could their employees.

The working and middle class can no longer afford the density being created in Seattle, it is becoming more effect and white, less racially diverse, and the tree canopy is being destroyed. I don’t consider that progress.

BART runs different-sized trains.

In what world is $460K “miniscule”? I am sure it is a small percentage of total costs, but that is money that doesn’t have to be sucked out of taxpayer pockets (or that can be used for something else).

I believe the depth requires elevators and ventilation equipment. I’m not sure how easy it is to put that kind of stuff underground, it is quite possible that it would be more expensive than the small building they have there. Besides, between the entrances and ventilation intakes and exhaust how much usable space would you have even if you did put it all underground?

And why do you keep stating that the building takes up the whole block? Have you actually ever been there and seen it or just looked at pictures? It only uses up a small part of the block, here’s a good discussion about what to do with the rest:
http://beaconhill.seattle.wa.us/2010/03/20/opinion-a-bold-idea-for-beacon-hills-central-park/

Thank you. Didn’t think I would need to explain but I was wrong. First time for everything. :p

There are two main reasons that transportation planners use to suggest that very expensive and inflexible rail is always superior to bus rapid transit (BRT):

1) Wealthy people don’t like the bus (and I guess when we say we need to get people out of their cars, we usually mean white, middle and upper class people).

2) BRT is easier to de-fund– once you build rail, you’ve supposedly built a constituency for public transit that is much more durable than BRT, and therefore is unlikely to be cut.

So if they start reducing ST service just a couple years after it opened, I guess we’re down to just one reason why we spent/ are spending all that money on Sound Transit?

Service is not being reduced. Capacity of each trainset is being reduced not frequency.

if you have to stand insead of sit, service is cut. if you don’t get on because there’s a surge and the onhe car is full, service is being cut. if you have to wait an extra ten minutes while that train goes into the yard to let go of the one car as it turns from day to night, service is cut. if you’re the person with the bike who comes to the train and the bike slots are full and you don’t feel comfortable wrestling your bike into a crowded single car, service is cut. if you’re on the fence about light rail and weighing your options and just decide you’re not going to risk being upright in a crowd with a drunk whom you can’t avoid by moving to the next car, service is cut. the degree to which transit advocates are willing to say anything is amazing. BTW if the extra car provides no extra “Service” it was a waste to provide it up till now, wasn’t it?

When MOST people talk about service being cut they are talking about service hours. If Metro changed buses on a route it isn’t considered a service cut.

Also, if, if, if… do you know that any of this will happen? I don’t know either, but I would hope ST is tracking these things and based their plan on the evidence. As I believe I said on my first post in this comments section, times are tough, better to cut unneeded capacity than cut frequency. Rail is about frequent dependable service first IMO with quality a close second. The large doors and open floor plan mean that even when it is standing room only unlike a bus it is still relatively easy to get in and out.

And yes if this capacity is not needed then running it was a waste. One of the great things about rail is how easily scalable it is. ST thought long term in building platforms that are longer than some subway system platforms and that in the future can handle 4 car trains. However if capacity is not needed it is also easy to scale back too.

You and the other citiphiles might find this amusing. There’s a new cafe that opened in downtown Kent called Urbia Fresh. Think I’ll go there today and get myself some veggie sandwiches and chili.

http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/south_king/ken/business/101609578.html

Urbia Fresh Café, a new gathering place for Kent, celebrated Aug. 24 with a grand opening celebration at its location at 415 Central Ave. N., Kent.

Clearly you HAVEN’T seen transit “all over the world” because there are a number of systems with art and chandeliers and carvings and other beautiful “add-ons” as part of their systems…

Have you been on one of these trains during a weekend evening? Most of the time they’re not anywhere close to packed. Often they’re pretty sparse.

Going to bed early for 9am Sunday at church?

Get rid of the SODO station. NOBODY uses it. 2 maybe 3 riders. Station should have been put on Orcas and MLK.

Yeah, cities are becoming so dense that nobody goes there anymore.

single length trains running more frequently would do the trick. And maybe wouldn’t take so darn long to get out of the way of the buses.