Congratulations to Sound Transit: Central Link light rail celebrates first anniversary!
Congratulations are in order today and tomorrow to Sound Transit, which successfully inaugurated service on our region's first light rail line a year ago.
We provided extensive coverage of the opening weekend, which was a pretty big deal. As many readers know, I got involved in politics to save this project, standing beside Sound Transit and against Tim Eyman back when few would in 2002.
Eight years ago, light rail for our region was only something that existed in colorful exhibits sitting on easels at community meetings.
Now, it's reality. It's a dependable and convenient way to get around.
The opening of the Airport Link extension in December — which brought Central Link into SeaTac — has made it possible for travelers to get to and from downtown without having to worry what traffic conditions on our roadways are like.
In a news release on Friday, Sound Transit estimated that during its first year, Central Link carried six million riders, with forty three million passenger miles traveled. By riding the train, those riders avoided burning an estimated 1.8 million gallons of gasoline. That's pretty amazing.
"This is a great achievement for a region that has embraced light rail after years of waiting," said Sound Transit Board Chair and Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon. "Thanks to light rail, the people of this region have saved time, money and precious natural resources. We’ll only see those savings grow as we expand the system to the north, east and south."
Well put. For once, we as a region are actually planning ahead. Instead of building Central Link and stopping, Sound Transit has simply switched gears and is working on expanding the system so that Link will come to more neighborhoods faster. When University Link opens in 2016, trains will reach the University of Washington, serving Capitol Hill along the way. East Link will bring light rail all the way out to NPI's hometown of Redmond. North Link will take it to Lynnwood.
And South Link will bring light rail to Federal Way.
That's the planned future of the system.
But the future is not assured. Kemper Freeman, Jr., Tim Eyman sugar daddy Michael Dunmire, and other reactionaries have sued to keep trains off the Interstate 90 floating bridge. We don't anticipate that their lawsuit will be successful, but there's always a chance it will be. Even if it is not, they may resort to the initiative process to try and kill East Link, as Tim Eyman did in 2002.
We must be on our guard. We can't afford delay and obfuscation. Our region needs light rail expansion to be delivered on time and on budget.
POSTSCRIPT: The Seattle Times has a story about Central Link's anniversary today, by Mike Lindblom. It's actually a nice article, except for this one paragraph, which should have been left out because it doesn't add anything:
It's funny... Niles was against building Central Link. Now that we've got it, he says it's a shame that it took so long to construct. Well, we did it, didn't we? Sound Transit got it together and completed the project with few complications. No thanks to the people (cough, Rob McKenna, Tim Eyman, Maggie Fimia) who tried to stop Central Link with ill-conceived lawsuits, ballot measures, and cynical P.R.
The reason we're building Link is that an effective transit system needs a rail spine that can move people efficiently through corridors. This is what Niles & Co. just don't understand. Buses — whether they share a road with other vehicles or they have their own fixed guideway ("bus rapid transit") — are complementary to rail. Not a substitute. It's like how apples and oranges are different types of fruit. Trains and buses are different types of transit.
We provided extensive coverage of the opening weekend, which was a pretty big deal. As many readers know, I got involved in politics to save this project, standing beside Sound Transit and against Tim Eyman back when few would in 2002.
Eight years ago, light rail for our region was only something that existed in colorful exhibits sitting on easels at community meetings.
Now, it's reality. It's a dependable and convenient way to get around.
The opening of the Airport Link extension in December — which brought Central Link into SeaTac — has made it possible for travelers to get to and from downtown without having to worry what traffic conditions on our roadways are like.
In a news release on Friday, Sound Transit estimated that during its first year, Central Link carried six million riders, with forty three million passenger miles traveled. By riding the train, those riders avoided burning an estimated 1.8 million gallons of gasoline. That's pretty amazing.
"This is a great achievement for a region that has embraced light rail after years of waiting," said Sound Transit Board Chair and Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon. "Thanks to light rail, the people of this region have saved time, money and precious natural resources. We’ll only see those savings grow as we expand the system to the north, east and south."
Well put. For once, we as a region are actually planning ahead. Instead of building Central Link and stopping, Sound Transit has simply switched gears and is working on expanding the system so that Link will come to more neighborhoods faster. When University Link opens in 2016, trains will reach the University of Washington, serving Capitol Hill along the way. East Link will bring light rail all the way out to NPI's hometown of Redmond. North Link will take it to Lynnwood.
And South Link will bring light rail to Federal Way.
That's the planned future of the system.
But the future is not assured. Kemper Freeman, Jr., Tim Eyman sugar daddy Michael Dunmire, and other reactionaries have sued to keep trains off the Interstate 90 floating bridge. We don't anticipate that their lawsuit will be successful, but there's always a chance it will be. Even if it is not, they may resort to the initiative process to try and kill East Link, as Tim Eyman did in 2002.
We must be on our guard. We can't afford delay and obfuscation. Our region needs light rail expansion to be delivered on time and on budget.
POSTSCRIPT: The Seattle Times has a story about Central Link's anniversary today, by Mike Lindblom. It's actually a nice article, except for this one paragraph, which should have been left out because it doesn't add anything:
Seattle transit analyst John Niles — who favors bus rapid transit over rail here — points to the bittersweet side of this story, that the regional rail system was conceived almost two decades ago, funded by voters in 1996, and has still reached only a startup phase.Niles may be a glass half-empty guy, but we say that having only one light rail line in operation today is better than having none. We chose not to build rail when we rejected Forward Thrust decades ago. We've been paying the price for that ever since. Fortunately, we are not making that mistake again.
It's funny... Niles was against building Central Link. Now that we've got it, he says it's a shame that it took so long to construct. Well, we did it, didn't we? Sound Transit got it together and completed the project with few complications. No thanks to the people (cough, Rob McKenna, Tim Eyman, Maggie Fimia) who tried to stop Central Link with ill-conceived lawsuits, ballot measures, and cynical P.R.
The reason we're building Link is that an effective transit system needs a rail spine that can move people efficiently through corridors. This is what Niles & Co. just don't understand. Buses — whether they share a road with other vehicles or they have their own fixed guideway ("bus rapid transit") — are complementary to rail. Not a substitute. It's like how apples and oranges are different types of fruit. Trains and buses are different types of transit.
# Posted by Andrew : 12:49 PM
Comments:
Not only do I not understand the allegation that Seattle needs "a rail spine that can move people efficiently through corridors," I've just had my research report on "incremental BRT" published by the Mineta Transportation Institute that argues for more focus on network-wide bus improvement, as a supplement to, or even potential substitute for, corridor-focused, high-priced transit. In other words, if all-doors boarding is good for a train, why not make it work all the time on buses? If Link trains can turn traffic lights green, why can't buses?
As the press release announcing this report states, "Bus performance improvement offers quick results at a reasonable public cost.” http://tinyurl.com/289zuo7
What's not to understand, John?
Look at the WSDOT traffic map for Seattle any weekday during rush hour, and you'll see that the major gridlock is on our highways. That's where people get stuck on their commute to or from work.
Our objective, then, is to improve everyone's commute by reducing congestion. To that end, we're building a rail spine through our major corridors so people have a choice in getting to work, and aren't forced to drive.
As I said in the post, the two modes of transit are like apples and oranges. It's not a question of which one is better than the other... we need them both.
Rail simply excels at moving people through corridors. It's more versatile, efficient, and reliable. For example, trainsets can be configured with additional cars to meet high demand. Buses do not offer such flexibility.
We've had buses moonlighting as trains for way too long. We need the real thing. People who own cars will continue driving no matter how convenient we make the bus. But they will choose taking the train over driving. Research has proven this.
We have, in fact, spent a sizable amount of money building transit ramps and bus lanes over the last few years. And while these infrastructure improvements have made Metro and ST Express service better and faster, they are not a panacea.
You're basically trying to argue that buses moonlighting as trains are better than trains. It's a pretty silly argument.
Let's suppose we did decide to scrap Link expansion and build a grand "bus rapid transit" system instead. In order for the buses to avoid the congestion on our highways, they would need their own right of way. In other words, their own roadway physically separated from other traffic. Since there wouldn't be popular support for restricting HOV lanes only to buses, or converting general purpose lanes to buses, we would have to build new lanes somewhere.
But where? I-5, SR 520, and I-405 are already as wide as they can be in many places. Even if we could widen them, it would take years.
Adding "busways" to arterials would likewise be difficult and time consuming. It can't be done as quickly and cheaply as you think.
Then we'd have to build stations.
And, to make the buses cleaner and quieter, and more like Link trains, we'd need to electrify them. That would mean installing overhead wires, and buying a fleet of new rubber tire vehicles that look something like trains but are fake.
At this point, we've got a high price tag, because none of these capital overlays would be cheap. It doesn't make sense to build "BRT" when we can invest in rail instead. Trains have lower operating costs than buses, and developers can bank on being able to put up buildings near train tracks, knowing that train line isn't going anywhere. A train line cannot be converted by a Tim Eyman initiative to be open to solo drivers.
And, as previously stated, trains can get people out of their cars while buses can't. That point can't be repeated enough.
Andrew
For many years I believed exactly what you believed, until I moved to Seattle in 1982 and started studying the problem. My revisionist thinking began when I started riding on Seattle's quite good, award-winning buses, and then found that Seattle region has a higher daily market share of commuters on transit than any light rail dependent city in America. Heavy rail (metro subway) served regions like San Francisco Bay Area do better, but not the light rail-served regions like Sacramento, Portland, Denver, Dallas, et al. Despite building a light rail subway from International District to Northgate, we are not getting a heavy rail metro system under ST2. Even running at full capacity, the Link light rail and Sounder commuter rail spines won't solve the congestion problem you say needs to be addressed.
There's not enough money available to make a light-train-fed-by-buses system work in Seattle better than buses on steroids, including tweaking arterials and traffic lights to give buses more priority along the lines of Metro's forthcoming RapidRide. Future buses will likely be fuel-cell-powered, zero emission.
The failure of a light-rail centric approach is demonstrated by the Puget Sound Regional Council computer modeling (psrc.org) of the planned 2040 regional transportation system in which Sound Transit gets even more money than the agency is now authorized to spend. This 2040 Transportation Plan was overwhelmingly voted approval by elected officials last May 20. PSRC was unable to double the transit market share with a rail-centric future transit network. Mayor McGinn noted the lousy gain in transit market share in voting "No" on the plan. Transit market share for all trip types is forecast to grows from 3% to just 5% between now and 2040.
PSRC's plan shows us that congestion-variable road use fees reduce congestion on the expressways from today's levels, but rail transit ridership in 2040 is forecast to fall below Sound Transit's rosy forecasts for 2030 that were used to sell us the doubling of Sound Transit's taxes.
Sound Transit and PSRC analysts are now working to resolve the alternative views of the future that have emerged in ST2 vs T2040. This is a developing news story that I hope NPI digs into and follows.
Post a Comment