Mike McGinn’s plan for Westside light rail is welcome news. Ben @ STB notes that Sound Transit is planning to study this in 2015, so McGinn might try and find the money to push that up a few years.
Great.
But here’s where I start to have a problem with the McGinn proposal:
He mentioned Portland’s newest light-rail segment, the Green Line, which opened last weekend, as a good model. Eight new miles of new corridor were built for $576 million, in the east suburbs and near Portland State University downtown.
The reason why the Green Line was so cheap, as The Transport Politic explains, is that it was built in a highway median that was set aside 30 years ago for transit, much like our I-90 HOV lanes. No such right-of-way exists on the Westside.
The old engineer’s adage is: “Fast, good, or cheap. Pick Two.” McGinn’s promising all three, which should make us all a little suspicious.
Careful when you use the word “plan”. The only actual plan announced by McGinn is to draw up a plan and submit it to the voters by 2011.
McGinn has been straight-forward in saying “We’re not sitting down to pull out a Magic Marker and draw lines on a map”, and disingenuous in suggesting a price tag of $70 million per mile can fit in the same paragraph with light-rail running in reserved ROW.
In reality, any trip from West Seattle to Ballard will reveal a number of engineering expenses, such as getting down the eastern bluff of West Seattle, crossing the Duwamish, crossing the railyards and streets, passing the ‘waist’ of Seattle, and crossing the Ship Canal.
Ironically, not only is McGinn promising to prevent “the biggest tax increase in Seattle history”, but he’s also promising to give taxpayers the chance to approve the biggest tax increase in Seattle history.
Only part of the Green Line is highway right of way; they also built from Union Station to PSU downtown (and also moved the Yellow Line onto these new tracks). This part also used existing right of way: city streets.
McGinn did talk explicitly about using city streets to make it cheaper.
And I think that’s great. But there’s a difference between “using city streets” and using ROW that was specifically set aside for transit 30 years ago and is just laying dormant.
Central Link uses city streets (MLK Way) but it was still expensive b/c they had to rip up the whole street and widen and rebuild it.
I think it’s definitely possible. Elliot Ave/15th has significant room. But it will be more expensive than Portland’s Green Line.
I want to repeat a comment I have made before; the cities that have successful “surface street” light rail systems have segregated the light rail from traffic giving it the right of way that is essential for smooth fast travel. This is a requirement other wise light rail will be too slow and will not attract serious commuters and will be judged a failure by opponents.