Is Light Rail on Track?

I have no idea what “on track” means, so I suppose this ThinkTank is an excuse for everyone to vent about light rail.

Clearly, the Sound Move plan has been reduced in scope and vastly extended in schedule. It’s early, but ST2 is starting to fray at the edges — a stop or two is likely to be cut from the South End, and some segments may arrive a year or two later than planned — thanks to collapsing revenues and legal wrangles on the Eastside. So in the common sense of the phrase “on track”, no, things are not going according to plan.

Anyhow, Mr. Niles’s argument is that ridership is below projections, QED. I’m not sure that anyone — Mr. Niles, me, or the proverbial man on the street — would have changed their vote if told that 2011 ridership was going to be 20,000 rather than 25,000, or indeed 35,000 instead of 25,000.

This is about building a system that is legible, reliable, fast, and frequent, something that multiple bus agencies have never been able to provide here. It’s also about building a system capable of efficiently high volumes of people between urban centers. Mr. Niles is ready to declare it dead based on one year of results of the initial segment, that doesn’t yet connect the densest parts of Seattle and was specifically sited to encourage long-term ridership growth through redevelopment that hasn’t yet occurred.

my thoughts

-I think this is more of just a slow start instead of a boondogale.but it will defenitly be filled in 10 years when there are one- or two million more people here.

- it was smart to make it go from the city core to the airport, but maybe it should of been exapnded to south center mall. that would maybe of increased the amount of people who used it.

-its “cost for use” is too high and this is a common complaint among the minority-poor of south seattle. its a legitimate complaint, but as the system grows those costs will come down.

-A initial system in North Seattle (Ballard/UW area/Greenlake) would of probably had a better start. But making the line goto the Airport is a smart long term strategic decisions.

“This is about building a system that is legible, reliable, fast, and frequent, something that multiple bus agencies have never been able to provide here.”

Have you heard of SWIFT bus system between Everett and Aurora Village?

http://www.commtrans.org/Projects/Swift.cfm

This 17-mile route was constructed for a mere $30 million, compared to $2.6 BILLION for the 15.7-mile Central Link light rail.  You think that SWIFT is not “legible”?  lol  What does that mean?

SWIFT bus is not “reliable, fast and frequent”?  SWIFT buses come every 10 minutes, but, for just a few million dollars more, they could easily come every 7.5 minutes in peak hours, like Link.

And, of course, Link light rail is about 10 minutes SLOWER than the #194 express bus between downtown Seattle and SeaTac airport.  That fast bus was eliminated because of Link, to force the people who used to ride the #194 to have to take Link light rail, instead.

What sort of fantastic bus system could have been built in this area for the $2.6 BILLION that was spent on that one little light rail line?  For $2.6 BILLION, we could have built many SWIFT-style bus routes that would be moving hundreds of thousands of people per day right now, instead of the pathetic 21,000 per day who use the stupidly expensive Link light rail.

Swift doesn’t run on Sundays. Immediate fail. And it isn’t as frequent at many times, although it’s probably appropriate for the corridor.

And I like Swift, and think we should build many, many more of those lines and improves the ones we do have. I’d favor large tax increases to fund such a system. How about you, or do you just support BRT to the extent it can steal from rail funding?

Show a political path to $2.6 billion worth of high-quality BRT, and we can talk. Until then, you’re comparing apples and oranges, or just trying to reduce the amount of money we invest in transit.

“I support it if done right” opined someone above.   Wow, now that’s really going out on a limb.  Such courage of  convictions.

So if LINK light rail proves to be a white elephant, with vastly lower ridership and vastly higher cost than voters thought their hard-earned (but easily-taken) tax money would yield, you as a ‘supporter-in-concept-only’ can wash your hands, point to Larry Phillips and indignantly say he & his colleagues “didn’t do it right.” 

Sorry, that won’t wash.  Your hands will be as dirty as theirs.  You voted for it.  Your vote enabled its agents to build it.  You cannot disown it later.  That’s how life works.  There’s no do-overs.

“I support it if done right” opined someone above.   Wow, now that’s really going out on a limb.  Such courage of  convictions.

So if LINK light rail proves to be a white elephant, with vastly lower ridership and vastly higher cost than voters thought their hard-earned (but easily-taken) tax money would yield, you as a ‘supporter-in-concept-only’ can wash your hands, point to Larry Phillips and indignantly say he & his colleagues “didn’t do it right.” 

Sorry, that won’t wash.  Your hands will be as dirty as theirs.  You voted for it.  Your vote enabled its agents to build it.  You cannot disown it later.  That’s how life works.  There’s no do-overs.

194 was fast – as long as you didn’t hit any traffic jams on I-5.   

What nonsense.  The fact that SWIFT may not run on Sundays, if that is true, is trivial.  Buses can and do run on Sundays, and there is no reason why SWIFT could not.  That must be a budget issue, or a lack of demand on Sundays.  To imply that one bus route not operating on Sundays has anything to do with any sort of inherent difference between buses and light rail is just stupid.  Just as frequency difference is not inherent between buses and light rail.   In fact, it is much less expensive to run buses more frequently than to run light rail more frequently.  In sum, buses can operate every day of the week that light rail can, with just as short of headways as light rail, for a fraction of the cost of light rail.

I am saying that $2.6 BILLION was an incredibly stupid amount of money to spend on that one little 15.7-mile long Central Link light rail line, at about $160 million per mile.  You could have built several excellent SWIFT-style bus routes with the same capacity and same frequency as Central Link, serving the same trips that Central Link serves, for a fraction of the cost of Central Link.

The point is to get the most people on transit for the money spent.  SWIFT-style bus service carries a lot more people per tax dollar than Link light rail.  Link light rail is a terrible waste of billions of scarce tax dollars.

Hey Martin — it’s pretty easy to spend other people’s money isn’t it?   Your retort is thoroughly unacceptable and thinly-veiled condescension.   

The problem is your challenge (“show me a path to [another] $2.6 billion”) overlooks the FACT that ST’s Alternatives Analysis itself didn’t compare apples (BRT) to oranges (LRT).  You can confirm that with Professor Scott Rutherford at the UW.  He admitted such in front of an audience at Portland State in January 2003, even going so far as to –wait for it– shrug his shoulders!!

Of course many of these things can be done with buses, which is why the point I made is that local agencies have consistently failed to do so, not the straw man that you set up. In many contexts, doing it right with buses (ie, separated from traffic) will cost just about as much as rail.

Again, I favor building an awesome BRT system and rail. I presume, from your non-response, you don’t. You prefer to put as little money as possible into the transit system. Which is fine, but be honest about it. Because that’s exactly the problem. Once the debate shifts from rail vs. BRT to BRT vs. nothing, you lose both supposed BRT “advocates” and people who equate rail with ubiquitous availability and buses with the opposite.

I disagree that maximizing boardings is the sole goal of transit, but that’s the least of the problems with your comment.

“These investments are 100 year investments “  lol

How stupid to make an investment for “100 years.”  None of us will be around 100 years from now.  More importantly, none of us has any idea what the world will be like 100 years from now.

100 years ago, nobody even had television, let alone computers.  How long have personal computers and the internet been around?  Not quite 100 years, I believe.  What about cell phones and I-phones?  Were people using them 100 years ago?  How about 50 years ago?  Twenty-five years ago?

The internet is going to change everything. 

Already:

You don’t have to travel to a bank — you can bank online.

You don’t have to travel to a library or bookstore — you can download books to your Kindle (or many other devices)

You don’t have to travel to a record store (if you can even find one) — you can download music to your ipod (or whatever).

You don’t have to travel to a video store (if you can find one) — you can download movies to your pc (or other devices).

And, most importantly, more and more people don’t have to travel to their jobs — they can work online.

Telework is going to make transit obsolete in much less than 100 years.  The only thing transit is good for is taking people to a central destination, like downtown Seattle.  Most peak hour Link riders are commuters who work downtown.  Many of those jobs in downtown office buildings are going to be done at home via telecommuting in the very near future.  This is already beginning to happen.

So, what happens to Sound Transit’s already way-off ridership projections, when telecommuting in Seattle goes from 5% of workers to 10%, to 20%, to 30% in the next couple of decades?

Telework is the future — not 19th-century technology of little trains in and out of downtown.

If local bus agencies had the tax dollars that ST has wasted on Link light rail, you don’t think they could afford to operate buses on Sundays?  lol  Don’t be stupid.  The frequency and days of week that buses operate on is constrained by their budgets.  ST doesn’t care how much money they spend on light rail.  But bus agencies have to try to please a whole lot of people with limited dollars.

Again, it’s just plain stupid to say that light rail is superior to buses because SWIFT does not operate on Sundays.  lol  Give SWIFT a tiny fraction of the money that is spent on Central Link, and SWIFT will operate on Sundays and with 5- minutes headways on weekdays.

In other words, to make it extremely simple for you, so that even you might grasp it — local bus agencies don’t have enough money to operate as frequently as Link, because bus agencies don’t have the tax reveues that ST spends on Link.

I am completely honest about it:  Link light rail is an incredibly stupid waste of  billions of tax dollars.  How much more honest could I be?

Spend tax dollars cost-effectively.  Stop wasting billions on vanity projects like Link light rail.

You are not being honest when you refuse to admit that local bus service is not as frequent as Link, purely because local bus agencies don’t have nearly the tax revenues per passenger that ST is spending on Link light rail.

If local bus agencies had the tax dollars that ST has wasted on Link light rail, you don’t think they could afford to operate buses on Sundays?  lol  Don’t be stupid.  The frequency and days of week that buses operate on is constrained by their budgets.  ST doesn’t care how much money they spend on light rail.  But bus agencies have to try to please a whole lot of people with limited dollars.

Again, it’s just plain stupid to say that light rail is superior to buses because SWIFT does not operate on Sundays.  lol  Give SWIFT a tiny fraction of the money that is spent on Central Link, and SWIFT will operate on Sundays and with 5- minutes headways on weekdays.

In other words, to make it extremely simple for you, so that even you might grasp it — local bus agencies don’t have enough money to operate as frequently as Link, because bus agencies don’t have the tax reveues that ST spends on Link.

I am completely honest about it:  Link light rail is an incredibly stupid waste of  billions of tax dollars.  How much more honest could I be?

Spend tax dollars cost-effectively.  Stop wasting billions on vanity projects like Link light rail.

You are not being honest when you refuse to admit that local bus service is not as frequent as Link, purely because local bus agencies don’t have nearly the tax revenues per passenger that ST is spending on Link light rail.

The problems that cause Link Light Rail to miss its numbers have been obvious for quite some time. In my opinion the crux of it is that Metro and Sound Transit are not working together.

I ride Link every workday. The most difficult part of my commute is the last mile. It’s getting from home to the train in the morning and back home at night. I live in Rainier Beach, and Metro simply does not provide proper transit to the Link station. Even worse, they run a bus, the #8, right alongside the rails in some sort of bizarre mass transit drag-race.  Since paring is prohibited around the station, that leaves my bike in decent weather and coordinating rides with family members for the other 8 months of Seattle weather.

There needs to be a change in thinking at Metro. Seattle is a North-South town, but now there is a high capacity rail running N-S. Metro needs to think East-West. A primary job of Metro should be getting people from the neighborhoods to the rail stations without long waits and route changes.

Metro and Sound Transit are separate organizations. Someone with authority over both needs to knock some heads together and force them to coordinate their plans to create an actual mass transit SYSTEM for greater Seattle.

I’ll ignore your gratuitous insults.

ST and most local bus agencies collect at the same tax rate. The money to improve Swift can come from anywhere: other local service, ST, or new taxes. The fact that you’re interested in one of those is telling about your actual agenda.

The practical problem with buses is there’s simply too much centrifugal force on service. Too many pressures to spend those dollars on buses to way out on the fringe, instead of concentrating on high quality corridors.

Thomas: all government spending involves “other people’s money.” Do I not have a right to express an opinion on how taxes I pay are used?

I’m not sure that a fruit metaphor lends itself to describing a “FACT” rather than an opinion, but ST’s alternatives analysis is neither here nor there. Design a BRT plan, get it on the ballot, I’ll vote for it — unless you’re paying for it by replacing light rail with an inferior alternative.

I guess I did not dumb it down enough for you.  Let me try again.

Just in operating costs, ST will spend about $50 million on Central Link this year;  Community Transit will spend about $10 million on SWIFT buses.

Do you honestly think SWIFT buses could not operate on 5-minute headways 7 days per week if they had an operating buget of $50 million per year, like Link?  Really?

That is the only reason why Link has shorter headways than SWIFT, and operates on Sundays, while SWIFT does not — because the one little 15.7-mile light rail line spends $50 million per year on operating expenses, wihle the 17-mile SWIFT bus route spends only $10 million per year.

Does that help at all?

Link  has 7.5-minute peak hour headways compared to 10 minutes for SWIFT?  Link has an operating budget FIVE TIMES the size of SWIFT’s! 

 Of course COULD run Swift that frequently, but it isn’t and won’t, for the reasons described above, and also because people like you aren’t interested in raising revenue to make it so.

 Of course COULD run Swift that frequently, but it isn’t and won’t, for the reasons described above, and also because people like you aren’t interested in raising revenue to make it so.

 Of course COULD run Swift that frequently, but it isn’t and won’t, for the reasons described above, and also because people like you aren’t interested in raising revenue to make it so.

 Of course COULD run Swift that frequently, but it isn’t and won’t, for the reasons described above, and also because people like you aren’t interested in raising revenue to make it so.

you’re right.  a bridge won’t be around nor a road nor a tunnel in 100 years.  how stupid of the londoners to build a bridge over the thames and a tunnel under it.  man they are DUMB!!!!  And those new yorkers who built all those subway tunnels and the brooklyn bridge — stoooooopid!  they can’t know that shit would last 100 years.  And look at roads, why they were dumb to lay out wall street — clearly no street can last 100 years.  And how dumb is it to build a cathedral, anyone knows buildings should fall down after 40 years the way our floating bridges do.  100 year time horizon!  HA!  how stupid can you get.

Oops.  I should have looked that up before I wrote down the operating cost of SWIFT just from memory.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010386196_swift30m.html

“Startup costs are $29.5 million to build the stops and buy 15 buses, plus $5 million a year for operations.”

So, Central Link’s operating costs per year are about $50 million, compared to about $5 million per year for SWIFT buses (not the $10 million/year I wrote before for SWIFT).

In other words, Central Link light rail is spending TEN TIMES as much per year for operating costs as SWIFT buses.

If SWIFT spent even 1/5 what Central Link spends per year on operating costs, SWIFT could operate buses with 5-minute headways seven days per week.

I’m not blaming Sound Transit for Community Transit’s revenue problems.  I’m just saying that ST could have built dozens of SWIFT-style bus routes with 7.5-minute peak headways for the $2.6 BILLION they spent on that one little Central Link light rail line.  That is just patheticlly little transit that Sound Transit is providing for $2.6 BILLION of tax dollars.

 DC has 750,000 trips a day.  We seem to be planning for two lines with about 200,000 trips a day when built out, IOW, about one third of what we need and should have. 

the funney thing is each additional line that can add another 12 stops produces incredible ROI as it makes ALL THE OTHER LINES ALREADY BUILT that much more useful. Like, it’s ten times more useful if your line connects to nine others than if it doesn’t because if it does – you can go anywhere! 

Building one line is dumb.  Building two slightly better.  But it really makes little sense to build two lines only and not build the other five we need.  Because those two lines are not all that useful–  if you’re going to or from the 75% of Seattle that they do not serve — they have zero utility.  You wll take the car, or a slowish bus. 

It’s also a poor decision to put it on the surface and to build a tunnel under the ship canal that will be maxed out capacity wise the day it opens so  you can’t add more lines to it later.  It was a very poor decision to go on the surface as this forever limited the length of the trains …in effect slashing the capacity by half….obviously the big cities that have the six car trains know what they’re doing, those systems are all huge successes, and you cna’t get to the 750K trips a day level with little short trains. 

If you decide to get electricty for your house, you don’t just run it to two rooms out of nine.  If you want the REAL benefit of rail you have to cover the city and all key burb spots …not just bellevue but southcenter AND renton and Federal way ANd Burien for starters…..you have to cover west seattle and ballard and crown hill…you need not just one little stop on cap hill you should have about three…..near hospitals, one near north end of comme4cial strip and one just south of ship canal…you should have a stop on 80th not just 65th then northgate….you should have a big old central station underground, downtown, connecting various lines and sounder…..etc..if you’re planning on spending billiions per line to get only two lines, it’s just not a full system, it’s not a system at all, and it’s not transformative the way a real system is.  The sad thing is all these features are well know and everywhere they’ve been put into place == they work!  There is not ONE city that has regretted a multiline rail SYSTEM.  You probably cannot point to any other gummint program with such a high success rate — maybe public water supply or sewage systems are as successful.  Real systems work.  Ours is highly limited and there are no plans for a real system in our lifetimes. 

Mr. Duke says I’m ready to declare Seattle’s light rail “dead based on one year of results of the initial segment.”

Actually, I’ve thought Seattle’s light rail project worthy of death since the 1980s. I was on record against building light rail before it won its first ballot test in a 1988 King County advisory vote, despite having no route map and no budget: http://www.bettertransport.info/pitf/NilesAntiRailLetter(1988).pdf. 

I’ve also done research on why building trains for 100 years in the future is not a good idea, for example, http://www.bettertransport.info/NilesNelson2001.pdf.

Now that Seattle light rail has begun operating with increasingly lousy ridership numbers, it’s proving that billions of dollars can’t raise it from the dead, though I’ve no doubt that Sound Transit will keep on trying. It’s what a majority of voters in two Presidential election years, 1996 and 2008, wanted to spend money on to make our beautiful city “world class.” And the spending-to-ridership ratio is certainly that.

Mr. Niles,

It’s no secret that you have a deep, long-standing, and perfectly general opposition to rail, but that’s not what you chose to focus on in your piece, so it’s not what I commented on.

“Lousy” is a pretty subjective term, particularly for a system that isn’t even close to done yet. It’s by far the most popular transit route in the State, without yet serving a lot of the densest neighborhoods.

As to your 1988 piece, I hope you’ll join forces with me in working for a better bus system. In the meantime, I remain unconvinced that virtually every other major city in North America is wrong and that a bus system can accomplish everything we want it to accomplish.

Council member Phillips is an honorable man, and as such I would expect him to do the right thing when he is wrong.  Whoever at Sound Transit is feeding you this nonsense, to pass on to the public deserves to be shown the door.
I challenge you to back up your claim of Link rides costing $1.35 each from any document for either Sound Move or ST2.  Either post back your source document or ask for an apology from the good readers here.  Rides on Link are far higher than current Metro bus, and will remain so.  If you add in the enormous debt load, repayments, and depreciation, the cost of Link soars to over $10.00 per ride.  Mr. Niles has you cold on the facts.
You quote Link arriving to the east side in 2023, yet forget that as late as last week it was forecast for 2021.  We’re only a couple of years into ST2 and the schedule has already slipped two years – and not a peep out of you on that little point.  Another apology to all the east side tax payers is in order, and it won’t be the last.
You fail to mention that Federal Way will not see any Light rail until 2040, instead of 2023.  Another gaff?
Please explain why Sounder is costing the taxpayers nearly $20 a ride with depreciation.
And PLEASE explain how you can justify spending several billion dollars for a tunnel to Univ of Wash. with only two stations, while you and your fellow council members have been cannibalizing Metro reserves the last couple of years, and are now poised to cut service by up to 35%.  
How can you justify draining all that cash out of the economy and stuffing it down a rat hole?

Mr. Niles disparages projected ridership numbers for Link by, for example, suggesting that it’s ridiculous to believe that the Capitol Hill station could have as many boardings as the 53rd & 7th station in densely populated Manhattan.  He conveniently ignores the fact that potential subway riders in that neighborhood can easily choose among *seven* additional stations located in the rectangle defined by 6th and 8th Avenues (east and west edges), 49th St (south edge), and Central Park South (north edge, equals 59th St). 

He also conveniently ignores the fact that many subway lines pass near 53rd & 7th.  The station he mentions serves the B, D, and E lines.  Therefore, anyone planning to use the N, Q, R, 1, 2, or 3 train would choose a nearby station that operates on one of those lines.

He further conveniently ignores the fact that his (very carefully selected) station is the *least trafficked station* in the above-defined rectangle.  Well, there’s another at 14K (57th & 6th), but the others have the following ridership:

50th & 8th — 17K
49th & 7th — 25K
50th & Broadway — 25K
57th & 7th — 28K
Rockefeller Center (47th-50th & 6th) — 57K
Columbus Circle (Central Park South & 8th & Broadway) — 66K

The eight stations named here experience nearly 250,000 daily boardings.

Mr. Niles disparages projected ridership numbers for Link by, for example, suggesting that it’s ridiculous to believe that the Capitol Hill station could have as many boardings as the 53rd & 7th station in densely populated Manhattan.  He conveniently ignores the fact that potential subway riders in that neighborhood can easily choose among *seven* additional stations located in the rectangle defined by 6th and 8th Avenues (east and west edges), 49th St (south edge), and Central Park South (north edge, equals 59th St). 

He also conveniently ignores the fact that many subway lines pass near 53rd & 7th.  The station he mentions serves the B, D, and E lines.  Therefore, anyone planning to use the N, Q, R, 1, 2, or 3 train would choose a nearby station that operates on one of those lines.

He further conveniently ignores the fact that his (very carefully selected) station is the *least trafficked station* in the above-defined rectangle.  Well, there’s another at 14K (57th & 6th), but the others have the following ridership:

50th & 8th — 17K
49th & 7th — 25K
50th & Broadway — 25K
57th & 7th — 28K
Rockefeller Center (47th-50th & 6th) — 57K
Columbus Circle (Central Park South & 8th & Broadway) — 66K

The eight stations named here experience nearly 250,000 daily boardings.

Thanks for doing this. It was my first thought, too, but I was too lazy to look up the numbers.

like i said, good systems have multiple lines.  it’s a poor system that only has one line going to the UW.  Where the line from ballard or Kirkland to Uw?  it’s the synergy of multiple line that makes the whole system work for most folks most everywhere, without the multiple lines you don’t really have a system.  Our projections for a total daily ridership of what, 160K or 225K or something are just a third of what a real system would be for a region with the population we have.  it’s underbuilt, of course the riderhsip is low but the costs per ride both capital and operating cost per ride will be very high. 

100 years ago, things were not changing very fast.  Nobody had cars in 1800, and almost nobody had cars in 1900.  By the year 2000, things had changed quite a bit, no?

In 1900, it would have been a fairly sensible idea to believe that things would remain relatively the same for the next half-century, at least, as they had for the prior half-century.  Now, to think that things will be the same 50 years from now, let alone 100 years from now, is stupid.

There was no internet in the years 1500, 1600, 1700, 1800, 1900 or 1950.  Now, almost everyone has internet access.

You apparently don’t think that makes any difference?

For centuries, things remained pretty much the same.  Look what has happened in just the last 50 years, including jet airliners.  When they were building subways in 1900, do you think they were contemplating jet planes, personal computers and the internet?

Do you honestly believe “commuting” will not change drastically in the next 100 years?

In the latest period reported, the four downtown Link stations combined averaged only 9,400 boardings per weekday, both directions, combined.  So, the one Link station on Capitol Hill is supposed to get 14,000 boardings per weekday?  Are there more people living and working within a quarter-mile or half-mile of the one Capitol Hill Link station than there are within a quarter-mile or half a mile of all 4 downtown Link stations combined?

Why would anyone expect any of ST’s ridership projections for Link for 5 to 20 years in the future to be any more accurate than they were for Central Link?  The ST projection made just 2 years ago for Central Link ridership this year is going to prove to be around 33% too high.  How accurate could ST possibly be with projections for ridership 5 to 20 years in the future, if they couldn’t even come close to predicting ridership just 2 years in advance?

This is what the public was actually promised, by Greg Nickels, back in 2000, when he was co-chair of Sound Transit:

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20000211&slug=4004270

“The all-electric Link light-rail system will carry at least 105,000 riders a day – equal to a 12-lane freeway – and do it pollution-free. Tacoma will be making state history in 2002 by introducing the first Link light-rail line, and by 2006 the 21-mile system connecting SeaTac, Tukwila and Seattle will be up and running, possibly going an additional three miles to the Northgate Transit Center if additional funding is secured.”

Central Link in 2010 carried about 21,000 riders per day, ONE-FIFTH of what Greg Nickels said it would be carrying in 2006.

And, by the way, light rail advocates, I-5 carries over 400,000 people per day just north of the the exit to SeaTac, and I-5 is 10 through lanes at that point –not 12 lanes.  So Central Link is actually carrying a fraction of one lane of I-5 — nothing even close to what a 12-lane freeway carries, which is around 500,000 people per day past a point.

Both tracks of Link combined are carrying fewer people than ONE-HALF of ONE LANE of I-5.

Elg is absolutely right. East-West service by Metro was cut back just as
Link got up and running. Folks like me in Seward Park, Rainier Beach, and S Beacon Hill would be boosting link ridership number every day if we could get to the stations without our cars.

Martin — you’re more than a decade late to the party.  The ship has sailed — Scott Rutherford said, “when the more powerful people decided rail was gonna be it, that was it.”  The hoped-for BRT v LRT alternatives analysis was short-circuited.  And there was never a $2.6 B BRT plan put up against a $2.6 B LRT plan.

There’s no additional $2.6 billion in the offing for BRT in the region — at least not while the “thinkers” (like you) continue to plan how to drain everyone’s pockets. 

You must be new to the area.  Read up on the history of transit in the region — if you can find an objective source, that is.  I’ve done my research; I know what I’m talking about.  Very few who visit these fora do.

“I hope you’ll join forces with me in working for a better bus system”

You mean *no one* at KC Metro is doing this, Martin?  If so, then why?  Might it be because of politics?

“I strongly suspect that that opposition is rooted in something deeper than ridership or financial performance.”

Why wouldn’t/shouldn’t that be sufficient?  Do opponents also have to get into the scale of ST’s subsidy to undergird more downtown growth, at the expense of taxpayers who won’t benefit?  OK — it’s $150,0000 for every new office cubicle.  Just one building could reap $200 million worth.

“you’re right.  a bridge won’t be around nor a road nor a tunnel in 100 years.  how stupid of the londoners”

100 years has importance for two reasons: 1) you will have to spend substantial money refurbishing the facility at some future date; and 2)  If these are investments, then the value of benefits 100 years out at any interest rate you want to apply will be zero.  So those of you who want to call this an investment, then let’s apply the proper standard.  Look up time value of money.. 

Yes.   People have voted to spend Billions on a Light Rail system.   People have not voted to spend Billions on a BRT system.   Let’s work to get a comprehensive BRT system (I’m talking REAL BRT, not Rapid Ride) on the ballot and see how it does.

Maybe there was no $2.6B BRT plan b/c people won’t vote for a $2.6B BRT plan?  

I’m more than happy to be proven wrong, through.  Where do I donate to get a BRT plan on the ballot?

Wow Grover, you’re quite the futurist. You say “none of us has any idea what the world will be like 100 years from now.” Except you, I guess, when you predict that “Telework is going to make transit obsolete in much less than 100 years.”

I wonder why Amazon is putting thousands of employees into new buildings in South Lake Union, right in the middle of the big city?

Hogwash.  EVERYONE in WA State benefits from a strong DT Seattle.

http://reuvencarlyle36.com/2011/05/30/beyond-the-political-safety-of-sameness/

Mike is connecting the dots.

Mike is connecting the dots.

Is there some reason why you can’t differentiate between 100 years, and “much less than 100 years”?

Everyone can see that telecommuting is the future.  You disagree?

Nobody is claiming that everyone is going to be telecommuting.  But, there will be enough people telecommuting to make transit systems in and out of Seattle’s downtown unnecessary.

This is just common sense.

Link hasn’t changed downtown Seattle one iota.  Downtown Seattle would be just as strong — or weak — with or wihtout Link.  Link has no impact whatsoever.  It just takes some people out of buses and puts them on insanely expensive little trains, instead.

No it’s not.  Especially not for a city like Seattle.

No link, sorry, cutting and pasting from my Kindle.
Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier (Edward Glaeser)- Highlight Loc. 628-51 | Added on Monday, May 30, 2011, 10:32 AM
A wealth of research confirms the importance of face-to-face contact. One experiment performed by two researchers at the University of Michigan challenged groups of six students to play a game in which everyone could earn money by cooperating. One set of groups met for ten minutes face-to-face to discuss strategy before playing. Another set of groups had thirty minutes for electronic interaction. The groups that met in person cooperated well and earned more money. The groups that had only connected electronically fell apart, as members put their personal gains ahead of the group’s needs. This finding resonates well with many other experiments, which have shown that face-to-face contact leads to more trust, generosity, and cooperation than any other sort of interaction.
The very first experiment in social psychology was conducted by a University of Indiana psychologist who was also an avid bicyclist. He noted that “racing men” believe that “the value of a pace,” or competitor, shaves twenty to thirty seconds off the time of a mile. To rigorously test the value of human proximity, he got forty children to compete at spinning fishing reels to pull a cable. In all cases, the kids were supposed to go as fast as they could, but most of them, especially the slower ones, were much quicker when they were paired with another child. Modern statistical evidence finds that young professionals today work longer hours if they live in a metropolitan area with plenty of competitors in their own occupational niche.
Supermarket checkouts provide a particularly striking example of the power of proximity. As anyone who has been to a grocery store knows, checkout clerks differ wildly in their speed and competence. In one major chain, clerks with differing abilities are more or less randomly shuffled across shifts, which enabled two economists to look at the impact of productive peers. It turns out that the productivity of average clerks rises substantially when there is a star clerk working on their shift, and those same average clerks get worse when their shift is filled with below-average clerks.
Statistical evidence also suggests that electronic interactions and face-to-face interactions support one another; in the language of economics, they’re complements rather than substitutes. Telephone calls are disproportionately made among people who are geographically close, presumably because face-to-face relationships increase the demand for talking over the phone. And when countries become more urban, they engage in more electronic communications.
Certainly some people still work alone, handling customer complaints or airline reservations, perhaps, over the phone in some spot far from any city. However, most of those jobs require less skill and accordingly pay less. In the average U.S. county with less than one person per acre, 15.8 percent of adults have college degrees. In the average county with more than two people per acre, 30.6 percent of adults have college degrees. The Internet and long-distance calling make it possible to perform basic tasks at home, but working alone makes it hard to actually accumulate the most valuable forms of human capital.

You’re right.  It hasn’t completely transformed DT in 18 months of operation in the middle of the worse recession in 70.  Complete failure.

These things take time, especially in an area as built up as DT is already. 

Amazing how we never here about how much a failure the SLUT ‘Paul Allen’s toy train’ is these days… 

ANC:  In 2006, Metro put Rapid Ride on the ballot and it won.  It’s not “real BRT” but it goes faster, people like it, and it attracts more riders where put in place. It also doesn’t cost billions, it costs millions. Even short of Rapid Ride, Metro and municipal governments are implementing steps to make buses run faster — bus lanes on arterials, transit signal priority, ORCA, more distance between bus stops.
Using transit dollars to do Rapid Ride improvements quickly all over the region is more likely to provide a better ridership result than spending billions and decades for a few passenger railroad spines. We are trending at the moment toward sufficiently-funded rail and under-funded buses, yielding a two-tier, two-class transit system.

Hey, you’re preaching to the choir brother.  Give me a chance to vote on adding BRT to our system and I’ll do it.  Now where is that plan?  Where do I sign up?

What was at the Amazon SLU site 100 years ago?

Will there even be an Amazon company 100 years from now?  If so, how many employees will they have, and where will their offices be located?  Have any idea?

How long has Amazon existed as a company?  100 years?  Almost 100 years?  Because I read that Amazon was founded in 1994 — about 17 years ago.

You think people 100 years ago should have built a transit system that would serve Amazon today?  in 1911, they should have been planning for 2011?

Why don’t you tell us what will be at SLU in 2111, then we can start planning for it, ok?  lol

You don’t spend much time on this site apparently.  People are constantly pointing out what a waste of money that stupid little SLUT is.  Are you kdding me? lol   Don’t tell me you think the SLUT is useful in any way at all. 

A $50 million toy for yuppies.

Grover, I don’t understand your comment. 

Let’s look at a 1911 map of Seattle: how many roads from that period are still used and maintained today?

Grover, I don’t understand your comment. 

Let’s look at a 1911 map of Seattle: how many roads from that period are still used and maintained today?

1) The 8 serves local stops. Believe it or not, there are plenty of people who travel up and down the MLK corridor who aren’t going to a Link stop. The 8 also connects those folks with the Central District, Cap Hill and Queen Anne. It’s a very popular bus route.

2) Blame your neighbors for the current state of affairs in SE bus travel. Folks begged and pleaded for one-seat rides with no transfers, and they got what they asked for.

You != ‘People’

And people that matter, like The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Group Health Cooperative, UW Medicine and Amazon disagree.  You could throw in the Gates Foundation as well.

Systemic wrote: “We seem to be planning for two lines with about 200,000 trips a day (…) about one third of what we need and should have.

How in he11 do you arrive at that figure?  Sounds like a plan to colonize Mars.  Is that even achievable?    What are you smoking, fellow? 
—
Also he writes: “the funney thing is each additional line that can add another 12 stops produces incredible ROI as it makes ALL THE OTHER LINES ALREADY BUILT that much more useful.”

That’s a pretty damned good description of the street network, in case you hadn’t noticed the parallel.  Every street connects to lots & lots of others.  Why would you think attempting to duplicate this with new ROW, lots of steel and (in)frequent, unionized service that closes shop at 10 PM and on Sundays would produce “incredible ROI”?  How many blocks between parallel LRT lines in your construct?  What would this cost?  What marginal benefit would it produce?  The track record thus far is pretty dismal.

Drop the indignant (and ignorant) stance.  Why couldn’t/shouldn’t some significant share of that growth be more economically served at places like Northgate, to which large numbers of workers in Seattle’s northend could WALK, or BIKE or BUS?  They wouldn’t need to board a steel fuselage to be pumped into downtown to fill up new cubicles there.  It is YOU that’s slopping the hogwash.  Your thinking is really biased.

Drop the indignant (and ignorant) stance.  Why couldn’t/shouldn’t some significant share of that growth be more economically served at places like Northgate, to which large numbers of workers in Seattle’s northend could WALK, or BIKE or BUS?  They wouldn’t need to board a steel fuselage to be pumped into downtown to fill up new cubicles there.  It is YOU that’s slopping the hogwash.  Your thinking is really biased.

Who is saying it couldn’t/shouldn’t go there too?  Better there than in some greenfield in the Kent Valley or Issaquah Highlands.

Reread my post.  You said Link was only benefiting DT.  I pointed out that anything that helps out DT helps out the city as a whole, the region, and the State. 

Oops — should have said “shallow” in addition to “biased.”

You’re obviously unaware that BART studies (very thorough) found its only significant effect was in downtown SF.  That’s where all of ST’s plans and services lead.  You don’t understand how metropolitan regions work, do you?  I’ve studied their economic dynamics for most of my life.

Building Northgate into a ‘downtown-like district’ (jobs, housing, shopping, entertainment side-by-side) is a more economical & effective alternative to absorbing the region’s growth than trying to pump ever more and more people from ever afar into a narrow, confined hard-to-access downtown isthmus.  (And doing so would be just as effective in relieving development pressure on the greenfields in the Kent Valley and Issaquah.) 

But developing Northgate into a genuine Urban Center isn’t what the downtown business association and downtown property owners want.  They merely want Northgate to feed people to their buildings, offices and shops. 

Now, if they did it on their own dime, that’d be OK with me, but a downtown uber alles mindset that’s supported by billions upon billions of public taxpayer dollars goes beyond the pale.

Ask yourself this: Does a commute on light rail (or Sounder) to downtown make a worker more productive & competitive in his daily task than he could be at Northgate?  Enough more productive that the tax yield from that increased productivity offsets the tax cost of enabling it?  That’s the real policy question.  Don’t hide behind “what’s good for downtown is good for all” pabulum.  Improve your acuity.

Oops — should have said “shallow” in addition to “biased.”

You’re obviously unaware that BART studies (very thorough) found its only significant effect was in downtown SF.  That’s where all of ST’s plans and services lead.  You don’t understand how metropolitan regions work, do you?  I’ve studied their economic dynamics for most of my life.

Building Northgate into a ‘downtown-like district’ (jobs, housing, shopping, entertainment side-by-side) is a more economical & effective alternative to absorbing the region’s growth than trying to pump ever more and more people from ever afar into a narrow, confined hard-to-access downtown isthmus.  (And doing so would be just as effective in relieving development pressure on the greenfields in the Kent Valley and Issaquah.) 

But developing Northgate into a genuine Urban Center isn’t what the downtown business association and downtown property owners want.  They merely want Northgate to feed people to their buildings, offices and shops. 

Now, if they did it on their own dime, that’d be OK with me, but a downtown uber alles mindset that’s supported by billions upon billions of public taxpayer dollars goes beyond the pale.

Ask yourself this: Does a commute on light rail (or Sounder) to downtown make a worker more productive & competitive in his daily task than he could be at Northgate?  Enough more productive that the tax yield from that increased productivity offsets the tax cost of enabling it?  That’s the real policy question.  Don’t hide behind “what’s good for downtown is good for all” pabulum.  Improve your acuity.

All I can do is laugh. 

All the development you list would have happened just the same without that little toy SLUT.  If you believe that Paul Allen would not have developed that land he bought in SLU without a little streetcar, you truly are not very bright. 

He didn’t buy that land just to let it sit there and do nothing with it.  lol

And to think that the SLUT had anything to do with the Gates Foundation headquarters is just too stupid for words.

Let us continue to build fast, reliable rail across our great metropolitan area. Overall, I am thrilled to see light rail becoming a reality here in the Pacific Northwest. The environmental, social, and economic benefits to having mass transit along with transit oriented development cannot be overstated. Sadly, large infrastructure
projects that require over a decade to complete and have a somewhat unstable revenue sources may require adjustments as funds dictate. In the future, I hope that more stable sources of revenue can become available to Sound Transit. We must continue to link neighborhoods and cities across the central Puget Sound.

Fact: Cities that matter have proper transit systems.

Light rail, trams, Subway, Underground, Metro, U-Bahn… call it what you want, but the fact is: a conurbation of Seattle’s size in Europe, Asia or even Australia would have one. It wouldn’t even be considered worthy of debate – it’d be considered a no-brainer.

Yes, they are very expensive – big, BIG capital investments – but they’re investments for the long term, investments that will benefit the city for the rest of our lifetimes, and beyond.

Cities that ‘get’ this and invest accordingly are not only aiding their inhabitants in getting around; they’re also sending out a message to visitors and investors. And that message is, to borrow L’Oreal’s famous advertising slogan: “Because we’re worth it.”

This is something that buses alone can never achieve, and they’re equally ineffective at tempting motorists out of their cars. Where transit exists, motorists consider it a genuine alternative to using their vehicles; not so with buses.

I believe a city of Seattle’s status deserves – and should feel entitled to – light rail transit. Once a proper network is in place (even if it takes a hundred years), ridership will increase, the network will feel part of the city’s ‘furniture’ and one-time sceptics will wonder why they ever quibbled about it in the first place. That’s a long way off, but keep the faith. As someone who lives in a city with fantastic public transport, I promise you it really IS worth it.

 And what, pray tell, do *you* pay for it?

P.S.  thanks for all the relevant data (rolls eyes)

“The environmental, social, and economic benefits to having mass transit
along with transit oriented development cannot be overstated.”

Thanks for not even bothering to state *any*.

Hey Grover, can you give us a better idea of exactly when “telework is going to make transit obsolete”?  I think a lot of people would be really interested to know that. In much less than 100 years you said. 10, 20, 50? And do you have any reports or other references you can cite to back up your claim?

“Where transit exists, motorists consider it a genuine alternative to using their vehicles; not so with buses.”

Nope.

Transit is only a desirable alternative to a car when the trip time involved to use it is equal or less than it would be for a car. That is not the case in Puget Sound, and until it is, most commuters see light rail for what it is: a train from nowhere to nowhere. But if one is a white, uptight Capitol Hill-ite, at least one doesn’t have to feel guilty about it, because it goes through Rainier Valley, so therefore that means it’s social justice at work, right?  

Repost from STB:

It’s important to focus on ridership, but thinking back to 1993 when
these systems were first being proposed, the sole reason was reducing
automobile traffic.

Now, you may say that ridership implicitly relates to that — but not exactly.

How many people are those coming from airport trips (not daily commuters).

How many are local stops along the route (people who would not be using I-5).

In what way and by how much has this system impacted traffic on I-5?

Most people were willing to spend money on this system if it meant
reduced travel and congestion on roads. Nearly two decades later…has
it?

1) And a crappy, unreliable, infrequent one. Theoretically, living in Queen Anne, the 8 should be a convenient route for me into and out of Capitol Hill. But I never use it because, unless I watch OneBusAway and my watch and my schedule allows me to time it perfectly, the timing often requires me to wait upwards of 20-30 minutes to utilize it, meaning it’s quicker just to hop one of many buses going Downtown and either connect to a bus going up the hill or just walk up Pike. The 8 is convenient in too few circumstances.

Well actually, central to as far south as Sea-Tac, with an extension a couple miles north in 5 years. There’s not nearly enough N-S coverage for Metro to just ditch its role in facilitating N-S commuting.

“Transit is only a desirable alternative to a car when the trip time
involved to use it is equal or less than it would be for a car.”

I don’t disagree with this caveat. My point was, a bus that achieved a reduced trip time (e.g. by way of bus lanes) would still be disregarded by most motorists as an alternative.

If I’m correct in inferring from your post that you think Link Light Rail travels too slowly, then I undoubtedly agree. This surely can be addressed fairly easily.

“A train from nowhere to nowhere”.

Maybe now. But transit systems need to time to grow into proper networks. Most historic light-rail and Subway systems in the world were built line by line, one at a time, and extended as and when funds allowed. You have to start somewhere.

Although, hang on – let me retract that ‘maybe now’. Are you really describing SeaTac Airport as ‘nowhere’? And downtown Seattle as ‘nowhere’ too?

“But if one is a white, uptight Capitol Hill-ite, at least one doesn’t
have to feel guilty about it, because it goes through Rainier Valley, so
therefore that means it’s social justice at work, right?”

The ability of light-rail lines to act as catalysts for urban regeneration is well established. It doesn’t happen overnight. But it happens.

“Telework is the future — not 19th-century technology of little trains in and out of downtown.”

Bullshit. It’s the height of technological arrogance to think that you can ever replace the benefits of interacting with people face to face. Even at the most technologically advanced companies today, anyone who cares about their career shuns telework like the plague. You just can’t have the same input if you’re halfway across the city.

“Are there more people living and working within a quarter-mile
or half-mile of the one Capitol Hill Link station than there are within a
quarter-mile or half a mile of all 4 downtown Link stations combined?”

Since most of the downtown stations are in commercial rather than residential areas, that seems possible. Also remember that the first hill streetcar is intended to expand the service area of the Capitol Hill station, so the half-mile limit is probably a bit small.

But the bigger problem with your claim is that “both directions” means almost nothing today, since the line ENDS in the middle of downtown. Once it actually goes somewhere in both directions you’ll obviously see boardings in downtown go up. And ditto for the Capitol Hill station. A lot of people there commute to UW, so once those two are connected you have a bunch of rides guaranteed, as well as everyone wanting to get downtown or to the airport.

In short, there doesn’t seem to be any good reason to trust your ranting more than the projections of experts.

Why is it that Vancouver B.C’s system carries so many people so efficiently?  Can anyone out there explain how Vancouver developed a system in an area with similar topography/geography/geology, employed public ROW’s, didn’t mix with cars/trucks/pedestrians and still carries almost as many people/day as our whole Metro system……

Why is it that Vancouver B.C’s system carries so many people so efficiently?  Can anyone out there explain how Vancouver developed a system in an area with similar topography/geography/geology, employed public ROW’s, didn’t mix with cars/trucks/pedestrians and still carries almost as many people/day as our whole Metro system……

Sandeep: the south-first Link decision was made in early 2001.  In 1999, Executive Sims and Mayor Schell proposed building Link between Mt Baker and NE 45th Street and substittuing BRT on MLK Jr. Way South, Rainier Avenue South, and center access ramps at Industrial Way with frequent bus service to and from SeaTac.  The ST board, led by Nickels and the  South King and PIerce members rejested the proposal.

Sims went along with the rest of the board in 2001, but he knew the north line would have much higher ridership.  It will take us decades to overcome south-first.  Please do not blame Sims.

In 2006, Sims and MacDonald were skeptical about east Link.  In 2007, Sims opposed the joint RTID ballot measure.  I miss Sims.

Complicated question with some incorrect premises. The topography/geography of pattern and density of land use is different in Vancouver-Surrey-Richmond than in Seattle-Bellevue-Tacoma. Politics and funding different also. One thing the same as there and here is ongoing controversy on how to divide spending between buses and trains, and where to put the next train line. The decision to build the most recent line between downtown Vancouver and Richmond with a spur line to the Airport was at one time opposed by many elected officials in the region. The Province of BC was the pusher, not the region’s  municipalities on the board of the regional transit agency.  The Airport paid for the spur, and charges a $5 premium add-fare to arriving visitors who use it leaving the airport.

A first step to understanding is to go up to Vancouver and ride around on the trains and buses for a day. A multitude of differences are evident, and it’s not easy to explain how they net out. 

But transit ridership is impressively high up there. According to American Public Transportation Association, Translink buses and trains serving the Vancouver, BC region board about twice as many weekday passengers as the five transit agencies in the three counties of our region combined. Impressive since Vancouver area has smaller population than greater Seattle-Tacoma. The driverless, automated trains in Vancouver region (Skytrain + Canada Line) all by themselves reportedly carry 381K per day, while the buses carry 744K. King County Metro carries 382K per weekday while Sound Transit’s buses and trains carry 75K. Data source, http://www.apta.com/resources/statistics/Documents/Ridership/2010_q4_ridership_APTA.pdf
See http://www.bettertransport.info/pitf/images/Linkpa29.gif for graphical view of how passengers divide up among the transit agencies around here.

I-5 traffic jams slowing the 194 to a longer trip than scheduled when they occasionally happened were in the afternoon peak going to the Airport from downtown, and in morning peak northbound from the airport. The dedicated busway parallel to I-5 from the Bus Tunnel (adjacent to today’s light rail tracks) down to the Spokane St Viaduct provided free-running through some congested periods.  In my dozen years riding that bus to or from the airport a few dozen times, I never experienced a delay from schedule, but it could have happened.  

Metro bus schedules are set to reflect average conditions, and on average, that 194 bus was faster then than light rail is now, by a few minutes. And it dropped you off closer at the airport to more of the airline check in counters than light rail does. File this comment under historical footnote.

I-5 traffic jams slowing the 194 to a longer trip than scheduled when they occasionally happened were in the afternoon peak going to the Airport from downtown, and in morning peak northbound from the airport. The dedicated busway parallel to I-5 from the Bus Tunnel (adjacent to today’s light rail tracks) down to the Spokane St Viaduct provided free-running through some congested periods.  In my dozen years riding that bus to or from the airport a few dozen times, I never experienced a delay from schedule, but it could have happened.  

Metro bus schedules are set to reflect average conditions, and on average, that 194 bus was faster then than light rail is now, by a few minutes. And it dropped you off closer at the airport to more of the airline check in counters than light rail does. File this comment under historical footnote.

Wait, with the devaluation/dissapearing/zombification of the middle class, should the metric of a rider be proportionately Ginsu’ed? It’s really closer to 22,500 per day. The railing of humanity.  Modernity shrugged.

Sound Transit has now conceded — and passenger counts through 2011 confirm — that its ridership ambitions for Central Link light rail from downtown Seattle to the Airport in the years prior to future line extensions were too high. Ridership is supposed to be on a growth curve that it would get it to 45,000 per weekday by 2020 even if no other extensions were opened. Growth to reach this level of ridership is not now happening. The average for all of 2011 was 23,535 daily.  Short-term forecasts are below the predicted growth curve, and have been reduced several times in recent years to better match the emerging reality.  

See the complete report on 2011 ridership that I posted at 
http://www.bettertransport.info/pitf/Linkpassengercount.htm. The gap between expectations and reality raises questions about Sound Transit’s forecasting methods. The same methods that have come up short on today’s light rail were used to develop the forecasts for tomorrow’s extensions to the north, east, and south.