Light Rail wins in Seattle, LA,; loses in Kansas City and San Jose

Rail transit ballot measures lost in Kansas City and San Jose, but won in Seattle, Sonoma-Marin counties, and Los Angeles. From the point of view of sensible transportation policy, the biggest disaster of the election was passage of the California high-speed rail measure.

Sometimes I think it is wonderful that we can live in a country that is so wealthy that we can afford to build rail lines that cost five times as much per mile as freeway lanes yet carry only one-fifth as many people. But, as it turns out, we really can’t afford to do so.

The bursting of the stockmarket bubble in 2001 would have sent us into a recession but for the increase in consumer spending that resulted from the housing bubble. Now that the housing bubble has burst, our weak economy stands naked and trembling for all to see. Yet this did not much dampen enthusiasm for ridiculous rail projects.

First, the good news. After rejecting light rail seven times, then approving a plan that turned out to be unworkable, Kansas City once again resoundingly defeated a new light-rail plan. It would be nice to think that after 56 percent of voters rejected this plan that it will stay dead and buried, but these things always come back.

As it came back to Santa Clara County, California, which in 2000 approved a sales tax increase for a BART line from Fremont to San Jose. But the line turned out to cost a lot more than expected, so votes were asked for another sales tax increase. The latest count says that 66.27 percent said yes, which means that it failed because California requires a two-thirds majority to pass tax increases. But it was painfully close.

In two other ballot measures, San Jose residents gave up what little oversight they have over the nation’s worst transit agency, the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA). Under VTA’s charter, the agency must submit its transportation plan to the voters every six years. In measure C, VTA asked voters to approve a plan that it had not yet completed. In measure D, VTA asked voters to repeal the requirement that it submit plans to the voters. Both passed by huge margins.

In Los Angeles, the “red” subway line is, by all accounts, a failure, costing 50 percent more to build than the original estimates and carrying less than half as many people as estimated. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) was content to focus instead on light rail. But L.A.’s new mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, wanted to complete the “subway-to-the-sea” line, and he managed to persuade 67.4 percent of voters to raise sales taxes to do so.

The “SMART” train is a proposed commuter-rail line in Sonoma and Marin counties that would end near (but not at) a San Francisco ferry terminal but otherwise not approach any major job centers. Voters twice before failed to muster the two-thirds majority needed to fund it, but in this case, the third time’s the charm.

Finally, California high-speed rail passed with 52.2 percent of the vote. This commits California to spend $9 billion starting construction on what ultimately will be a $50 to $60 or more billion megaproject.

Backers of the plan are counting on getting matching or even more than matching funds from the federal government. They may even get it, but not without starting high-speed rail crazes in other parts of the country.

It is widely agreed that government failure caused the current economic crisis (though not everyone agrees on just what that failure was). Ironically, as NBC anchor Brian Williams noted during Tuesday night’s election coverage, “There is evidence that more people are now viewing government as the solution and not the problem.” It will be sad indeed if we end up suffering from more government failures as a response to government failures of the past.

Sound Transit never open to light rail on 520

Rail: Visualize the '80s, not '50s

DARWIN P. ROBERTS
GUEST COLUMNIST

Local leaders and Sound Transit are making transportation plans that threaten to take us back to our distant past (Tuesday P-I). Apparently, in designing the replacement for the 520 Bridge, they are all but killing any chance that light rail will ever cross it.

We're told this is because we won't need light rail on state Route 520 in our lifetime, if we have bus rapid transit on that route and light rail on the I-90 Bridge.

But the prospect of bus transit on SR-520 apparently has also led to a "new buzz" for bus rapid transit in the I-90 corridor, particularly as a short-term substitute for the more expensive light rail. Rail might be built across I-90, but someday in the future, when voters' attitude toward it is "more clear." In the meantime, it's proposed that I-90 could be used for more express buses and single-occupancy vehicles in tolled "zip lanes."

Our leaders seem to have forgotten that Seattle made decisions just like this in the 1950s, and they crippled our current efforts to build rail transit. When I-5 was being planned, the city's Transit Commission proposed reserving a 50-foot right of way in the freeway median for future rail transit. But as HistoryLink's Moving Washington Timeline puts it, "The state was only willing to consider express bus service." This intransigence led I-5 to be built with reversible express lanes only, "frustrat(ing) future transit planners."

In the 1980s, in contrast, we planned the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel for our future rail transit needs. It was designed from the start to be used by a rail system, even though we didn't know whether we'd actually build one. Because of that foresighted decision, Link light rail will run the length of downtown Seattle next year.

If you walk by Convention Place Station, though, you can still see where our smart planning in the '80s ground to a halt against our poor planning from the '50s. The '80s rail tracks come out of the transit tunnel, run through the station, curve hopefully to the north -- and then stop dead, just short of I-5's reversible express lanes. We could have left a path for the tracks to go to Northgate, but we decided not to. The billions we'll spend fixing that mistake could instead have been spent adding rail lines to all the other parts of our region that need light rail service.

Today, we can't afford to plan as badly as we did when we built I-5. We've made a massive regional investment to build a light rail system, which is finally about to start paying off. For the foreseeable future, rail transit will be critical in keeping our economy and environment healthy.

When we plan any major transportation project, such as SR 520, we should include the capacity for future rail if there is any reasonable chance we'll need it -- just like we managed to do in the '80s. And across I-90, we should stop fiddling around with the warmed-over traffic strategies of the '50s and get a rail line to the Eastside built. It'll be good for all of us.
Darwin P. Roberts lives in Seattle.

Readers Comments


Posted by Concerned_Citizen at 3/19/08 5:41 p.m.


In the 1980s, in contrast, we planned the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel for our future rail transit needs. It was designed from the start to be used by a rail system

Did you forget that we just spent more than $30 million to 'fix' the tunnel for rail?

seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews
/2002557741_tunnel13m.html


Posted by skeptical at 3/19/08 7:08 p.m.

Seattle plan - are you kidding?

They could not even decide to use the rail line for rail -
going to make a trail out of it. So they can spend Billions later for rail.


Posted by John N at 3/19/08 7:23 p.m.

Sound Transit is in charge of light rail in this region. The systems design for light rail has been locked down for over ten years.

Read the Sound Transit long-range plan from 2006.

Read the Master Plan from the 1990s.

The Sound Transit light rail design has NEVER been open to the possibility of light rail on the SR 520 bridge.

Sound Transit's tunnel and track design does not have the capacity to aborb the predicted ridership load from Northgate, plus from the Eastside, in the University Link tunnel that is planned between U of W and Pine Street.

The Eastside light rail ridership MUST come in to the Seattle downtown from the south of Seattle's downtown, across I-90, in the ST design.

To have changed the design at any point in this current century would have jeopardized the $750 million Federal grant that ST hopes to achieve later this year.


Hi John N,

While it is true that ST never planned to take Eastside commuters over 520, why should we propagate their shortsightedness from 15 years ago?

Things change in 10 years, much less 50 years. And we are talking about a 50-100 year system lifespan. Why should we lock in future planners because of today's short sighted thinking? Remember, we will have an additional 1,000,000 people on the Eastside in 20 years. Bellevue will surpass Seattle as the state's largest city.

Unfortunatly, Ron Sims is responsible for much of this now outdated transportation thinking. I can see his dirty fingerprints all over this decision making process.

Remember how, just a few months ago, he was absolutely adamant about permanently blocking future Eastside rail with a stupid bicycle trail on the BNSF right of way? He even wrote threatening letters to POS board members. Good thing the county council and the Port of Seattle pulled him up by his jock strap. That stupid jerk was going to tear up the tracks immediately. The heck with the next 1,000,000 people moving to the Eastside in the next 20 years.

I have a sneaking suspicion that another rail crossing may be needed to accommodate that future growth. Unless, of course, Seattle is willing to tear out the Burke-Gillman trail....

Posted by BenSchiendelman at 3/20/08 1:03 a.m.

Wow. Possibly the only time I've ever (kind of) agreed with John Niles.

It would be pointless to build light rail capability into this bridge, because we have so much other light rail construction to worry about before we'll ever want to do 520.

The capacity argument isn't exactly true, as light rail trains in the future can run with very tight headways (as little as 2 minutes), just like other mature systems. It would just be extremely expensive and frankly, silly, to build an underground connection to rail over 520 when we already have the infrastructure built to build it over 90. Interlining does work perfectly over 90 as well.

This explains the issue simply and well:

http://www.soundtransit.org/Documents/pdf/projects/eastlink/LoadBalance.pdf
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Posted by Soul not sold to Road Warriors at 3/20/08 1:23 a.m.

For one of the few times in his life, JNiles actually applies some real world logic to his axe-grinding jihad. Niles references ST's long range plan, thus acknowledging the value of following some semblence of a blueprint-driven planning over the decades. Don't worry? Though. Niles will find something monorail/technobabble/ new to pursue soon. Since he works for tv Discovery Institute, look for a submerged vacuum tube footferry tlcing m n

btw, the author of this half-sane guest column wins the transportation Darwin award.

When he said "skip LRT on I-90, and do Buses Stuck in Traffic (BrT) instead of light rail, do you think Mr. Darwin Award even took a peek at what it would take to do short headway buses once the coaches leave I-90?

Of course he didn't.

And do you think Mr. Darwin Award ever examined the 35 year planning history behind converting the center lanes to light rail ?

Of course not.

Why on God's green earth would you build light rail on a bridge which was designed for light rail

Hands down, many rabid anti-rail nuts have seized on this520 rail concept, because they also know 520 ISNT ready for rail any time soon. Delay is a good thing for the crank-ideologue.

What a joke: transit opponents doing what transit opponents do best: propose sure losers. Look at Shilo's string of ideas. (two long)

Mr. Darwin Awards, what axe are you grinding today? NIMBy axe? Grudge axe ? Maybe somebody told you about Will Knedlik's free and easy BNSF crazy train?
Your guest column was convoluted an confused...the sure sign of a grudge-based secondary agenda. You're in good company with that.
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Posted by rwb77 at 3/20/08 6:35 a.m.

We could solve this problem on the proverbial cheap by people living on the side of the lake on which they work, but that would be too much to ask of Americans, wouldn't it?
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Posted by shilos dog house at 3/20/08 7:57 a.m.

Hey Soul,

I am not against mass transit in any form, other than extremely expensive holes in the ground.

What I am against is designing a transit system that creates built-in expansion restrictions.

Bellevue will be larger than Seattle in just a few years. There is no doubt about it. One only needs to look at the population history of Seattle to realize that it has only grown 10% in 50 years. Bellevue, on the otherhand has grown 1,000% in 20.

Transit planners like Ron Sims some how cannot envision this gargantuan poplulation and power shift that will occure in the near future. By constantly focusing on a Seattle centric system they obscure the much larger picture of the whole county all the while asking the whole county to pay for it.

If we do not plan for this future growth I am afraid we will have BIG Issaquah popping up all over the Eastside with no infrastructure to accomodate it. Are we ready for a Hobart with a population base of 50,000?
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Posted by hparks_3 at 3/20/08 8:26 a.m.

As has been proven (and rejected at the polls repeatedly) in the past, rail is too expensive and inflexible. But it makes the Left feeeeeel good.
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Posted by gettingreal at 3/20/08 9:06 a.m.

What we need is to have rational people plan this without their own agenda. Local planning is dominated by people who have little vision, but lots of personal agenda. Ron Sims envisions 1/2 of the population taking the bus. It is well known that buses are expensive to operate, 73 cents/passenger-mile.
king county metro government statistics

His plan won't work, because that's $15 to travel 20 miles. No matter, king Ron won't give up his fantasies. All we need to keep light rail alive is to build the 520 pontoons wide enough to handle 8 lanes, and hope future generations have better leaders.
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Posted by shilos dog house at 3/20/08 10:12 a.m.

One thing to keep in mind. Short-sightedness is inherent in all planning.

John N. talks about the plans from 10-15 years ago, and how rail on 520 was not in the plan. Ron Sims was the driver in that planning group.

I met Ron about that time at a meeting in Bothell on Brightwater. His first comment was "Wow, you guys in Bothell live way out in the country!"

Ron Sims' horizon for planning was his constituency base in the central area of Seattle. Guess where all the rail transit was/is focused? Thinking much beyond the city limits was out of his grasp at the time. Having served multiple terms now as the county Executive has broadened his scope somewhat. However, Bellevue is apparently still far off "way over there". Issaquah might as well be Denver as far as he can see.

There are 1,000,000 new people coming our way. They won't be settling inside the Seattle city limits. They will be in Hobart, Carnation, Duval, Covington, Ravensdail, Black Diamond, or Maple Valley.

For the last 30 years Seattle has been diminishing as the economic and population center of our region. That has steadily been moving east, across the lake. Microsoft is not in Redmond/Bellevue just for the view. They have located in the center of the growth pattern. We need to refocus our transportation planning for that reality. Ron Sims is not the man to do it. I don't know who is, but I know who it ain't.

To preclude future transportation planners from using 520 or any other current open corridor is just silly, to the point of being criminal. Just because a short sighted man set the plan 15 years ago is no reason at all for refusing to review that plan today.
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Posted by frustrated at 3/20/08 11:00 a.m.

I think the posts about the future importance of the eastside are correct. The eastside seems to have a lot more of the tech jobs that drive a region, and people who are leaving Microsoft or other established ventures to start something new are more likely to start them close to where they live. Often this is the eastside.

Please don't let light rail ``go south'', and steer clear of I-5

June 5, 2001

Honorable Paul Schell
Mayor, City of Seattle

Dear Mayor Schell,

My name is Jonathan Dubman. I am an active member of the Montlake Community Club and I have been closely following Sound Transit and other regional transportation issues and engaging many others in discussions on these important topics. I have generally supported your agenda from early on, but I was recently very disappointed to hear of your enthusiasm for "going South" with Link, if we assume the entire system can't be built at once.

Furthermore, I understand you have expressed some degree of support - and please correct me if I'm wrong - for an eventual alignment north of downtown close to I-5.

There are a great many reasons why that is an inadvisable approach.

Simply put, the University Link segment would be an enormous boon to the transportation infrastructure to the region, a belated success. The segments to the south, if built first, would be so ineffective, and manufacture such a coalition of enemies, as to doom future phases of this important system.

Transit must first go where the lion's share of the people and the jobs are: First Hill, Capitol Hill, the University District, Northgate, and of course, downtown. There are the designated urban hubs of the region. These are the areas that have been accepting growth, and all the attendant traffic, with the expectation that light rail was going to come and solve some of our mobility problems. These are the areas with land use that best supports light rail.

Southeast Seattle has a transit-dependent population with high Metro ridership, but let's be frank about it - it's the redevelopment potential that would give that region the density to justify the large expense of constructing light rail. And that could take a long time to develop, at the possible expense of affordable housing there. Why not start light rail where the existing density is, and build a system that will convince the region that even the starter light rail is a big success, and higher density can afford a high quality of life, and we're serious about transportation concurrency?

Many within Rainier Valley have been very vocal against at-grade light rail through their community. I respect both sides of this issue. Whether or not their fears are justified, a lot of people there really don't want it. Tukwila doesn't want it down route 99. The airport won't be ready for light rail for years, and even if we did build light rail to the airport, Metro express route 194 would still be faster from downtown. Sound Transit's own operating plan calls for half the frequency south of downtown than north of downtown, and that is because north is where the ridership is. The Federal Full Funding Grant Agreement was made for the north segment first because that's the segment that's easiest to justify.

Those arguments seem to make a strong case for University Link as the first segment of light rail in the region, if cost weren't an issue. But is University Link the most cost effective segment? The answer is a resounding "yes"!

The Executive Summary of the recently released Central Link Board Workbook bears this out. University Link is by far the most cost effective segment of the Central Link light rail system. While it's admittedly easy to oversimplify here, let's take a quick look at the numbers, straight from this document:

* University Link: Cost of $2,250 million (today's estimate) for ridership of 85,000, or $26,000 per daily rider.
* CPS to Henderson: Cost of $1,580 million (conservatively using the low estimate) for ridership of 27,000, or $58,000 per daily rider.
* CPS to South 200th: Cost of $2,250 million (again, using the low estimate) for ridership of 51,000, or $44,000 per daily rider.
* Capitol Hill to Henderson: $2,150 (again, using the low estimate) for ridership of 60,000, or $35,000 per daily rider.

These are construction costs, not including operating expenses, but operating expenses should not vary that greatly among these various routes.

While the projected revenue service dates vary, they do not vary by much. University Link is projected to open Fall 2009. The earliest projected opening date is mid 2008 for CPS to Henderson, perhaps 15 months earlier, but that system has less than half the cost-effectiveness of University Link by the straightforward calculations above.

In the interim, Southeast Seattle can be served reasonably well with a new in-city express bus route or routes - call them "7X" and "9X" - that run frequently, with few stops, from downtown or Capitol Hill along MLK with traffic signal priority. This could be done in the relatively short term to provide improved service for Southeast Seattle much faster than with Link, and feed into University Link when that is complete. With this plan, Southeast Seattle could see big improvements sooner than anyone else, and there won't be any injury statistics or lawsuits related to at-grade rail down MLK.

There are those who support the "Ride Free Express" or some other solution involving buses. The biggest problem is, in the north direction there is no uncongested right of way for buses to travel on, and I-5 doesn't even have two-way HOV operation. Where would these buses go?. How do we expect to handle transit north of downtown if we don't build Link? If you think another technology could be the answer here, I'm happy to consider that, but it seems clear that buses aren't going to cut it.

There are those who think that Capitol Hill has good bus service now, so why is Link necessary? While Capitol Hill may have excellent bus service to downtown and decent bus service to the University District, try getting from Capitol Hill to downtown Bellevue, or to Northgate. Even to the University District, buses snake through a lot of congestion. Capitol Hill transit service is not as great as it's cracked up to be.

Next to University Link, Capitol Hill to Henderson is the segment under consideration that makes the most sense (except for well-publicized reservations about at-grade operation in the Rainier Valley). But this would make sense only as a very interim solution. It seems like folly to construct a hugely expensive rail system that doesn't cross the biggest bottleneck in the city, the ship canal. We would still need generous bus service from the University to Capitol Hill. Direct service downtown would also be required. Downtown is the place that's already the easiest to get to from Capitol Hill, and route 9 does directly serve First Hill and Rainier Valley from Capitol Hill.

And of course, the place we really want to end up is Northgate, itself an urban hub, but also within shot of rapidly growing south Snohomish County, which generates a lot of the traffic south into Seattle. It is going to be much harder to effectively serve South King County than North King County with light rail any time in the foreseeable future, given that it's 7 miles from Northgate to downtown, with just a handful of stops, and about 15 miles just to get to Sea-Tac, which will still be 40 minutes away from downtown by light rail. We may want to build great infrastructure everywhere, but we have to start where it's going to be most effective.

There are those who support an I-5 alignment for north Seattle. I used to think the same myself, until I realized that between downtown and Northgate, this alignment would service not one major center of activity. How will Eastlake and Portage Bay / Roanoke Park feel about more transportation infrastructure, and another huge bridge, in front of their doors? They strongly oppose the idea. A station stop at Campus Parkway instead of Pacific Street has lower ridership and requires disruptive cut-and-cover construction in the already suffering University District. And a station stop near I-5 makes no sense at all. It would be the death knell for the University District as we know it today. How many transit users want to visit the Blue Moon Tavern on 45th near I-5, versus the University and the Ave? How would we shuttle everyone to where they are going? With more buses that travel down traffic-choked arteries? Are we planning to redevelop the station areas near I-5 with high rises to justify light rail? Imagine the effects on I-5 of all the light-rail related pedestrian and vehicle traffic next to the exits. The topography, the comparatively low density of the built environment, the dominance of low-density zoning (much of it single-family), the high levels of traffic and noise, and the limited pedestrian crossings in the vicinity of I-5, to say nothing of the complexity and costs of constructing a light rail system in this overburdened corridor, all point to the fact that I-5 is not only not the best but perhaps the worst choice for an alignment north of downtown. Can we build adjacent to I-5 while keeping I-5 open the whole time? Can we visualize the effect of closing part of I-5 and the bus tunnel at the same time? That would be a good time to get out of town.

I encourage you to consider very seriously the possibility of routing University Link under the Montlake Cut to save $50 million and raise the level of the stations in the University District. A station could be built near Rainier Vista, the UW Medical Center and Husky Stadium, and would service the University population very well. Moreover, such a station would interface much more readily with transit across SR-520, the forgotten stepchild of Seattle's transportation infrastructure, which is considering a tunnel connecting the Eastside directly with this very spot. If we could intercept buses from the Eastside at a University District station, perhaps we could get them off the downtown streets, off of congestion on I-5, and make up for the fact that they are no longer in the tunnel.

Please forgive me if there's a critical piece I'm missing here, but with all this in favor of University Link, why would you support another segment of this crucial piece of our transportation infrastructure in the region?

The only reason I can see to postpone the segment north of Capitol Hill is to refine the alignment, perform the necessary study for the Montlake Cut alignment, and coordinate with the Trans-Lake Washington Project. If that is your motive, I strongly respect that, and support Capitol Hill to Henderson as the next best way to get started on this important north-south artery. Please let me know your reasons for your current stance, how strongly you take that stance, and if you might be willing to reconsider in light of the arguments above.

Thank you,

Jonathan Dubman

2014 E Calhoun Stre