Without Metro & Sound Transit, the Eastside’s traffic problems would be much worse

The Seat­tle Times is run­ning a sto­ry in tomor­row’s print edi­tion about the 48th LD state Sen­ate race, which pits well-liked State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Cyrus Habib against Repub­li­can Michelle Dar­nell, an attor­ney. Habib, who cap­tured over 63% of the vote in the August Top Two elec­tion, is con­sid­ered to be a shoo-in, but that’s not stop­ping Dar­nell from cam­paign­ing (nor should it).

The Times gave both can­di­dates an oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak to their views on the issues. On the top­ic of trans­porta­tion (which is one of the top con­cerns of East­side vot­ers) reporter Lynn Thomp­son had this to say about Dar­nell:

She’s also crit­i­cal of Sound Tran­sit and Metro, which she said are too Seat­tle-cen­tric and leave East­side dri­vers stuck in traf­fic and spew­ing pol­lu­tion. Instead, she said she’d like to see more pri­vate trans­porta­tion solu­tions such as the vans and jit­neys that move peo­ple around oth­er cities in the world.

Sound Tran­sit and Metro may be run from Seat­tle, but they are hard­ly Seat­tle-cen­tric, as Seat­tleites would be the first to point out.

Dar­nell is clear­ly not very famil­iar with our region’s mass tran­sit sys­tem, or she’d know that Metro’s plan­ners care about see­ing that the East­side is well served.

Per­haps she’s unaware that both the East­side and the south coun­ty got RapidRide lines from Metro before Seat­tle did. (The A line serves the south coun­ty; it opened in 2010. The B line serves the East­side and opened in 2011. Seat­tle did­n’t get RapidRide until 2012, when the C and D lines opened).

Sound Tran­sit, mean­while, is devot­ing con­sid­er­able resources to East Link, which will bring light rail out to Red­mond’s Over­lake neigh­bor­hood via Mer­cer Island and Belle­vue. Present­ly, the East­side is well served by Sound Tran­sit Express bus ser­vice. In fact, half of Sound Tran­sit’s routes have ter­mi­nus­es in East­side cities!

For the record, Michelle, these are the routes:

• The 522, con­nect­ing Wood­inville and Seat­tle via SR 522.
• The 532, con­nect­ing Everett and Belle­vue via I‑405.
• The 535, con­nect­ing Lyn­nwood and Belle­vue via I‑405.
• The 540 and 542, con­nect­ing Red­mond and Kirk­land with the U District.
• The 545, offer­ing fast and fre­quent ser­vice between down­town Seat­tle and Red­mond via SR 520. It’s eas­i­ly one of ST’s most pop­u­lar routes.
• The 550, con­nect­ing down­town Belle­vue and Seat­tle via I‑90.
• The 554, con­nect­ing Issaquah and Seat­tle via I‑90.
• The 555 and 556, con­nect­ing Issaquah and North­gate (these routes use I‑90, I‑405, SR 520, and I‑5).
• The 560, con­nect­ing Belle­vue and SeaT­ac Air­port via I‑405.
• The 566 and 567, con­nect­ing Auburn and Kent with Belle­vue and Red­mond’s Over­lake neigh­bor­hood via I‑405 and SR 167.

Is there room for improve­ment? Cer­tain­ly. But the point is, the East­side is not being ignored by Sound Tran­sit or Metro. King Coun­ty lead­ers made a delib­er­ate choice to go to the vot­ers of the whole coun­ty ear­li­er this year with a request to approve bad­ly need­ed fund­ing for Metro and KCDOT — and that’s because they did­n’t want to pur­sue a Seat­tle-first approach to pro­tect­ing our bus service.

As for Michelle’s com­ment that she’d like to see more vans and jit­neys… per­haps she’s unaware that our state has the largest van­pool fleet in North Amer­i­ca. Accord­ing to WSDOT, there are near­ly 3,000 van­pools in oper­a­tion as of last Novem­ber. The pro­gram has been grow­ing like gangbusters:

Since 2003, van­pools in Wash­ing­ton have increased by more than 85 per­cent – a net increase of more than 1,300 van­pools. In 2009 and 2010, van­pool growth flat­tened pri­mar­i­ly due to the Great Reces­sion. Since then a slow but steady eco­nom­ic recov­ery has spurred van­pool growth in the state. Increas­es in fuel costs and traf­fic con­ges­tion (espe­cial­ly in busy cor­ri­dors) have also added to van­pool growth.

The East­side is not with­out pri­vate trans­porta­tion solu­tions, either. East­siders can choose to take a taxi, Uber, or Lyft. In addi­tion, Microsoft oper­ates its own pri­vate bus sys­tem to help employ­ees com­mute to and from work… The Con­nec­tor.

Again, there’s always room for improve­ment, but a major rea­son our traf­fic is lousy is due to the way the East­side was built. Traf­fic is an inevitable prob­lem of con­struct­ing auto-cen­tric sub­urbs. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we’ve been doing this since the 1950s, so we’ve dug our­selves into a pret­ty big hole.

And we can’t seem to stop. King Coun­ty has fool­ish­ly con­tin­ued to per­mit auto-cen­tric exur­ban devel­op­ment east of the East­side’s inner suburbs.

For­tu­nate­ly, cities like Red­mond and Belle­vue are increas­ing­ly grow­ing up instead of out. The increased den­si­ty will make it much eas­i­er to live on the East­side with­out a car and make the build out of light rail more cost effective.

Dar­nell would do well to read an eye-open­ing text like Sub­ur­ban Nation to under­stand the root of our traf­fic prob­lems and why they’re hard to solve.