Orphan Road - airport - Comments

Half the flights out of

serial catowner — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:43:27 -0800

Half the flights out of Seatac are commuter flights. Let them take the train.

Good points, guys. As they

Frank — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 09:42:31 -0800

Good points, guys. As they saying goes, "predictions are hard, especially about the future." Time will tell, I guess.

Frank, I'm not so sure.

chrisb — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:55:28 -0800

Frank, I'm not so sure. Similar projections said we needed miles and miles of new highways... and we don't.

New York City will deal with this problem long before we get seriously overcrowded... slot auctions and congestion pricing at JFK, LGA, and EWR seem pretty inevitable, which will encourage the use of larger aircraft, and alleviate the need for additional runways and overcrowded airspace.

//Sea-Tac will still hit

Matt the Engineer — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 11:17:16 -0800

//Sea-Tac will still hit capacity in 20 years or so// Says Sea-Tac. Petroleum geologists say we'll hit peak oil in less than 10 years, which will definitely put a huge damper on the demand for flights as fuel prices go up.

I think the best strategy is to wait and see. We can always shift local and domestic traffic to Boeing and Paine fields if we need overflow.

As I recall the airport

serial catowner — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:09:25 -0700

As I recall the airport thing, after 9/11 the Port said they had to rethink security, a new baggage handling building was under construction, so ST dead-ended the line a mile from the Terminal to avoid all the hassle. Then later somebody figured out it really would be smarter to let the LINK reach the terminal. Who knew.

Carless, the airport station

CJH — Sun, 18 May 2008 14:02:34 -0700

Carless, the airport station is going to be right next to the current parking structure - certainly not a mile from the terminal (which I think most people consider to be the airport proper)! You can already see it taking shape if you take the 194 to the airport (http://www.soundtransit.org/x1173.xml shows its exact location).

Tukwila's city government is notoriously corrupt (I suppose that's what happens when you're a major commercial center but no one lives there!) but it wasn't exactly political blackmail since they didn't get what they really wanted - a stop at Southcenter - which would indeed have been a huge route diversion. The current stop is a over a mile (and a trip over the freeway) from Southcenter in the center of a smaller commercial and residential center. It was a bit of a diversion from a direct Boeing Field to Sea-Tac route but not enough to substantially increase travel time. The real problem with the Tukwila stop is that it cost buckets of money to build an extra station (was this one reason Boeing Field was deferred?).

bgtothen has nailed it, I

Carless in Seattle — Sun, 18 May 2008 08:29:26 -0700

bgtothen has nailed it, I think. If you view the airport as a major employement center like Overlake and Bellevue and Downtown Seattle (which it absolutely is), Link is running through many of the neighborhoods where airport employees live. Add in that the Link station is (if I recall correctly) at least a mile from the airport proper, it's not really designed to get travellers to and from the airport. I think the airport expected travellers to drive, not take mass transit.

The other bit is, as I recall when I was researching this last year, political blackmail by Tukwila. The city council voted against the original route which bypassed the South Center business district, and threatened $500 million in federal financing. Without approval from Tukwila, Sound Transit couldn't complete the route. If I recall correctly, ST had little choice but to change the route the way Tukwila wanted, adding a bunch of time onto the travel time and securing that financing.

The reason that the routes

bgtothen — Fri, 16 May 2008 22:13:56 -0700

The reason that the routes is circuitous is because the assumption about the route choice is wrong. The point of the original LINK segment is not to get to the airport, the point is to connect as many people as possible for the lowest cost possible to light rail. The rainier valley has 2 of metro's 5 highest ridership routes and LINK capitalizes on that fact. As Frank said above it also allows for TOD that would not be possible with other routes.

The point of transit it not to maximize mobility but rather to maximize accessibility. Who cares how fast you can get somewhere if it isn't were you want to go? Maximize speed and you increase mobility at the expense of accessibility. The opposite is true as well. Every mode has to balance these opposing objectives.

Good Q Matt... my guess is

Frank — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:38:15 -0700

Good Q Matt... my guess is there are a couple of reasons, and they both relate to federal grant money:

1. The ridership would have been too low (Downtown -> SoDo -> Airport = no residential neighborhoods).

2. The feds give extra points to projects that "revitalize" low-income neighborhoods, so going through the Rainier Valley made it more attractive for funding.