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6 lanes, 8 lanes, What's the Difference?

By Frank on February 12, 2008

For a variety of reasons, I think the 6-lane option is best for a new 520 bridge, as I’ve said before.

But the simple fact is this: Sound Transit, the only agency that would build such a light rail line, has no interest in a 520 rail link. Heck, they still don’t have the funds or a mandate for an I-90 link (as Mike @ CIS notes). And the Husky Stadium station, as currently designed, would not be able to handle the incoming connection from 520. More expensive excavating would be required, perhaps directly underneath the Stadium or Arboretum. it would be a mess.

That said, I’m somewhat sympathetic to the idea, pushed by Eastside pols, that using the only two HOV lanes for light rail at a later date would be somewhat problematic. Running light rail to, say, Redmond, would mean that carpoolers heading to Kirkland would be stuck in general purpose traffic, and we’d be back to our current problem. But trying to predict the technology, demographics, or business climate 50 years out is a fool’s game. There’s no guarantee that we’ll still be using light rail then, or that Microsoft will even exist.

I’d be more interested in seeing money invested in good HOV connections from 520 to I-5 and I-405 so that buses can use the full HOV network to get around.

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Pontoons

By Frank on February 1, 2008

Looks like the plan to save money by building smaller, light-rail-incompatible pontoons for the new 520 bridge has been scrapped. Instead, we’re goign to save money by building the pontoons now, before the design for the rest of the bridge is complete:

Gov. Chris Gregoire last month commended WSDOT’s Early Pontoon Construction Project, part of a $4 billion fiscal plan for the bridge, citing emergency preparedness, and an estimated $400 million savings from reduced pontoon size and lower inflation-related construction costs.

The plan calls for completion of the pontoons by 2013. A bridge replacement is not expected before 2018.

Engineers are designing pontoons as long as 360 feet — the length of a football field — and strong enough to support a state-mandated, six-lane freeway — two general-purpose and one HOV lanes each way — with potential capacity for future light rail.

Sounds good to me. Not unlike the Viaduct solution: agree on what we agree on, and kick the can down the road on the rest.

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Accountability … and Stuff

By Frank on January 27, 2008

State Sen. Cheryl Pflug has a rather incoherent and semi-unhinged rant the the Seattle Times arguing for … well, it’s not exactly clear. She’s mad at the Governor for a bunch of stuff, the Democratic majority, too.

While I grant that the Ferry system has a lot to answer for, her argument really runs off the rails when it turns to a new 520 bridge:

Now the governor wants to take money from the viaduct and give it to 520. She wants to build a smaller version of the bridge — six lanes rather than the eight we really need. Her hurry-up plan will not relieve congestion or provide for future transit options.

Worse, in 2008, the governor and majority will propose to fund the 520 floating bridge through tolls — penalizing people for driving cars. They point to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge as an example that has worked well. The public knows better.

With the Narrows Bridge, drivers do not have alternative routes. There are many alternatives to driving over 520. Some say regional tolling is a way to avoid the congestion caused by drivers trying to avoid toll roads. But regional tolling brings other problems.

Sure, there are alternatives to 520. Like I-90. Which is exactly why the Gov proposed tolling that, too. And I’m sorry, but the line “penalizing people for driving cars” has to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever read. What, does Sen. Pflug really think that the State should be rewarding people for driving? “Sweet ride, here’s a check!” Sorry Senator, but even eight lanes across 520 won’t be enough to handle the demand caused by that policy.

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My Kingdom for a Bridge

By Frank on January 23, 2008

The final price tag for the Tacoma Narrows Bridge is $735 million, $114M under budget. The new Evergreen Point bridge will cost almost six times that much. Now, clearly all bridges are not created equal, but surely this disparity warrants further investigation. How did this project go so well?

Certainly one advantage was the design-build contract with Kiewit and Bechtel, which shaved two years off the process and committed the contractors to delivering a new bridge at a fixed cost.

However, the cost doesn’t include finance charges. The legislature floated an $800M bond, and we’ll be paying that off over the next 23 years — plus interest — with tolls. By contrast, a good chunk of the $4.4B cost of the new 520 bridge is the finance charges. If the proposed Lake Washington tolls do bring in the $2B or so that WSDOT expects they will, then the real cost of the 520 bridge is more like $2.4B, if we’re comparing apples to apples (or bridges to bridges).

Nonetheless, even with Frank Chopp’s last-minute effort to re-do the finance plan (which either saved us money or cost us money, it’s not entirely clear to me) the Tacoma Narrows Bridge seems to be a runaway transporation success story in a region with too few of those.

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New 520 Finance Plan

By Frank on January 23, 2008

This is the plan for tolling the 520 and I-90 bridges, with scenarios including pre-construction tolling (i.e. tolling the existing bridge between 2009 and 2018).

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Paying for the Tolls on 520

By Frank on January 13, 2008

I posted a comment on this piece over on Crosscut, but it turned into an interesting point so I thought I’d re-post here. In weighing the pros and cons of tolls, Casey Corr writes:

I doubt the public has paid much attention to planners’ talk about “congestion pricing,” which is proposed in the new plan. Environmentalists support the concept as a means of “encouraging” the use of public transit and of reducing auto pollution. But what’s the answer to the construction worker in the pickup truck who starts to believe he’s been priced off a public road?

My answer: That he should pass the increased costs on to the general contractor that’s employing him, no?

I live in Seattle and do consulting on the Eastside. I already charge my clients a travel fee, so I’d just have to add on the toll. If it actually does work to reduce congestion, presumably I’d be spending less time in traffic and my productivity would go up, so it’d be a wash overall.

And if my client decides to go with a consultant on the Eastside? Even better — that’s one less car off the bridge: mine.

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More on 520 Tolls

By Frank on January 11, 2008

Variable pricing, up to $7 at peak, and also tolls on I-90. Great, I’m all for that. Starting in 2009? Genius.

About the lack of light rail, Ben at STB makes a good point that by the time Sound Transit ever got around to putting trains on 520, even a new bridge will be halfway to the end of it’s natural life. So it’s not as big a deal as I’d made it out to be yesterday. Greg Nickels agrees.

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How To Go Broke Saving Money

By Frank on January 10, 2008

The new plan to save money on a new 520 bridge:

Depending on the final design, trimming the size of a new bridge could save the cash-strapped project $100 million to $500 million, said state Rep. Judy Clibborn, D-Mercer Island, chair of the House Transportation Committee, who has been briefed on the proposals.

…

The current $4.4 billion cost estimate would be reduced, to a range of $3.6 billion to $4.1 billion, by spending less on floating pontoons, said state Treasurer Mike Murphy, who said he was briefed by a senior Gregoire aide.

That idea will be controversial, because the state Department of Transportation had envisioned a series of twin, 75-foot-wide pontoons to provide extra buoyancy, allowing future light-rail or other trains to be added. Instead, the state would look at a single-pontoon design, Murphy said. But any downsizing might hinder a transit retrofit two or three decades from now.

Really? We’re going to nibble around the edges here?

[I really don't understand why this 520 bridge thing is so complicated. It's far more straightforward than the Viaduct. Everyone agrees we need a new, bigger bridge and we need it now. Why not just tear down the 4-lane bridge and replace it with a 6-lane, with shoulders and bike lanes, and be done with it? Why all the sturm und drang?]

Look, I have no problem with running light rail across the Lake exclusively on I-90. I think it’s more efficient to have one Lake crossing, and from Bellevue the rail line can fan out in multiple directions: Kirland, Overlake, Issaquah, etc. That’s basically how BART works in San Francisco. But BART is running out of capacity on the Transbay Tube and is planning a second one.

And while I’m all for saving money, you have to look at the opportunity costs. The other way to save $500M it to use the Montlake Interchange option instead of the Pacific Interchange option. What’s so great about the Pac. Interchange that it’s worth depriving future generations of potential rail capacity? That’s the implicit tradeoff here.

Update: The Governor announces $2B in State funding, the rest in tolls. But will she toll I-90 as well? She’ll have to, I’d guess. Tolls could also reduce congestion on 520 in the interim decade or so until the new bridge is completed.

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Light Rail via 520

By Frank on December 14, 2007

Theodore Lane and Bill Mundy take to the Times’ op-ed page to argue in favor of routing the East Link via a new 520 bridge, rather than over the I-90 bridge. It’s an interesting thought experiment. After all, one could build the new bridge with light rail in mind, rather than retrofitting it and scraping off concrete to get the weight down, which is the current plan, I believe, for the I-90 alignment. They further argue that the real employment growth is along the 520 corridor, from UW to Redmond.

But that’s about where the interestingness ends and reality kicks in. The idea that you could save money by to Overlake directly loses weight when you consider how many fewer people you’d serve by going that route. Lane and Mundy try to account for this by advocating a “Bellevue spur.” But once you’ve built a two or three-mile spur into downtown Bellevue, you’ve removed much of the cost savings that was the basis for the route in the first place. Further, such a spur would abandon Seattle’s Central District and Mercer Island completely. Not so for the I-90 alignment.

It should be said that Ron Sims, in his now infamous op-ed, also pooh-poohed the I-90 alignment as “slow and cumbersome.” But Sims was arguing against Eastside rail altogether. And it’s hard to see how a grade-separated light rail would be any slower or more cumbersome than the expanded bus service he was advocating as an alternative.

Bottom line: if we’re going to do light rail across the lake, I-90 is still the best bet.

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Rails, Trails, and Trains on the Eastside

By Frank on November 28, 2007

Danny Westneat wants to cancel the proposed I-405 widening, divert the money to a new 520 floating bridge and set up passenger rail on the BNSF Eastside rail corridor.

The other day, I advocated using viaduct money for the same purpose. I still prefer that, since a wider 405 could strengthen the case for not rebuilding the Viaduct (by adding regional North-South capacity).

But hey, why not do both? We can take Danny’s idea for 520, then use the money saved by not rebuilding the Viaduct to build a sweet little monorail between, say, Ballard and West Seattle.

Meanwhile, Westneat’s passenger rail proposal comes via this reprot, which pegs the cost of track upgrades to the eastside line at $37M. That sounds compelling, until you realize it doesn’t include the costs of building stations and buying trains. PSRC pegged the costs at $300M, though that’s still a bargain when you consider the costs of building new light rail can be upwards of $300M per mile.

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