Orphan Road

I think I posted this a while back, but I've updated my Google maps of Link and Sounder alignments based on the proposed 15-year plan from Sound Transit.

http://maps.google.com/maps/user?uid=103428233658015669918&hl=en&gl=us&p...

My last post got me thinking about the 98/99-B Line again. Most of you are familiar with my previous Metro ridership posts, however I don't think that I ever explained the reason I started looking at those numbers.

While attending the CITE conference in Victoria I talked to a engineer who worked for Vancouver. We got to talking about TransLink's Gateway projects and specifically the Broadway Line and he said that basically TransLink can't add any more buses because they are already running at 2.4 minute headways.

This in-turn got me thinking about routes here, none of which run that often. Anyways coming full circle today I become curious about how Seattle's transit stacks up against Vancouver's in terms of riders per mile (which I think is the best measure). Here are the results. Because I had to pull projected riderships and non Metro information this is less accurate, although you get a good idea of where things fall.

The biggest thing is that the B-Line has huge ridership, almost more than Central LINK per mile. It achieves this with a medium BRT treatment which shows that BRT can handle lots of people. With that said I think it also shows that the B-Line corridors should already have Skytrain.

Also these numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt because the GVA has much higher densities than almost anywhere in the Seattle area outside Downtown/Cap Hill/UW. Then again that is an integral part of transit ridership isn't it.

Skytrain is huge success and it shows. Also you can see that the initial Link segments has comparable ridership to the B-Lines but with any expansion plan now on the table it will grow rapidly and be comparable to Skytrain when it opens. Also notice how the old ST2 or a solo Eastside expansion don't have amazing ridership compared to the other options. Goes to show how important the North and U LINK are for ridership.

Oh and poor Rapidride. It makes me want to laugh. Although then again Metro is spending ~2.5 million a mile for it which is a fraction of LINK. I had to make an educated guess (120% 54 and 358 ridership) because I couldn't find any ridership projections. My guesses may be way off but we will have to wait until it opens.

Brian notes that the Seattle Streetcar ridership is up, especially during peak travel times. Still, there are no doubt plenty of off-peak runs that are empty or nearly empty. But if you read Krugman today, that's not necessarily a bad thing:

Public transit, in particular, faces a chicken-and-egg problem: it’s hard to justify transit systems unless there’s sufficient population density, yet it’s hard to persuade people to live in denser neighborhoods unless they come with the advantage of transit access.

Atrios comments:

Obviously it makes sense to focus spare mass transit dollars on population centers, but it also makes sense to change the way we think about mass transit and not have those dollars be so sparse. Development corridors could incorporate mass transit from the beginning, at the very least with right of ways preserved and zoning around planned station locations in anticipation of what is to come.

The Seattle Streetcar, for all its faults, is the rare public transit investment that anticipates future growth by trying to do exactly that. Of course, spurring infill redevelopment is not the same as opening up new land for development out in the hinterlands. But it achieves a similar goal.

[Central Link is similar, but mostly along MLK. When you take into account the full, envisioned Link to Northgate and the Eastside, it's more about serving existing communities than trying to spur redevelopment.]

PS: I like Krugman's column title, "Stranded in Suburbia." People tend to associate auto-dependent lifestyles as somehow more "free" than transit-oriented ones. But that's obviously only true as long as you can afford to keep filling the tank. Otherwise you're... stranded.

I didn't live in Seattle when Sound Transit planned the route of the light rail, so stop me if this has already been debated to death. Also, I know it's far too late to change anything. I'm just curious.

Can someone tell me why, exactly, Link takes it's expensive and circuitus path? Considering it will take as long (or longer) as it currently does via bus to get from downtown to the airport, this would not seem like a great idea.

One would think a straight line would be the easiest, cheapest, and fastest route. This would take us through some industrial areas, which would seem to have inexpensive land. It would also drive by Boeing Field, which could be useful if it ever runs as a commercial airport. Plus it seems like there would have been little/no boring reqired.

Yes, the route drives through a few communities, but this seems like a reason to not put light rail there - you end up stopping at stoplights. Building communities around transit seems like a much better idea.

I imagine a strong difference between city-based transit, that tries to conform to neighborhoods, and regional transit, that should be built for speed. This is clearly regional transit, but seems to be designed as city transit.

This weekend, Sound Transit turns on the juice for light rail testing.

If I listen closely, I can hear the buzzing of the old Lionel Model KW:

The Seattle Times has a front-page story on the changes light rail is bringing to the neighborhoods along MLK Way. It's a fine read, but I wish it had dug a bit deeper into the underlying reasons why the neighborhood is changing.

Pivoting off of daijimin's post on the subject, I think there's a much more complicated story to be told here. We know that light-rail was a disruption, and that many of the Asian immigrants who lived in the neighborhood moved away because of construction. But much of that was going to happen anyway. And anyone who thinks those communities won't thrive outside of the Rainier Valley has obviously never been to Renton...or Federal Way...or Lynwood...or...

The story of immigrants to America first living in urban areas and then migrating out to the suburbs as they prospered is almost as old as America itself. After all, New York's Lower East Side is no longer a bastion of Italians, Irish and Jews. And as an Irish-Italian descendant of those immigrants, I'm glad they made their way out.

On the other hand, if they'd held on to the real estate, I'd be sitting pretty right now! Which gets us to the other side of the coin: if you believe, as I do, that the cul-de-sacs of today could become the tenements of tomorrow, then it's problematic, from a public policy perspective, to consign the poor folks to the auto-dependent suburbs at a time when auto-dependent lifestyles are on the wane.

Still, the newly-middle-class still seem more interested in movin' on out (to the suburbs) than movin' on up (to, say, a deluxe apartment in the sky). And not just in the U.S. Thousands of gated suburban communitites are going up in China to house that country's newly mobile middle class. It's mostly those of us who've lived for a generation or two in the suburbs who want to try living in the city for a change.

All of this is to say.... it's complicated!

Controversial paens to the military-industrial complex aside, the underground light rail stations are going to be beautiful. The downtown transit tunnel, now that it's reopened, is equally beautiful. Most transit systems have stations that are brutally efficient but not much fun to look at. Seattle's, on the other hand, will be a truly amazing work of public architecture and public space of the kind that we have far too little of.

The combination of the light rail station and the new Cal Anderson park will be an urbanist's paradise.

Mike O'Neill rightly wonders if the Sierra Club is going to live up to its promise to support the next round of light rail. The club is still on the fence, apparently because park-and-ride lots encourage sprawl.

Let's be honest: park-and-rides do, in fact, make it easier for people to mix cars and transit. But as Will says, it's important to design with your users in mind. As long as you have to pay to park, you're imposing a cost and letting people make a rational decision. And park-and-rides eventually facilitate denser, transit-oriented-development down the line (notice how all the parking lots in downtown Seattle are being developed). Finally, Seattle has chosen (for good or ill) to go down the path of most mid-sized American cities and decided to use basically one system for both intracity and intercity transit (ignoring Sounder for a moment). So park-and-rides are an inevitability as the system expands outside of the downtown core.

As always, one has to consdier the alternatvies, and I will be curious to see what Mike O'Brien at the club has to say on that at the forum Will mentions on March 20. Because it's perfectly reasonable for the Sierra Club to be anti-light-rail, and they don't even have to be advocating an alternative. They're just an interest group with a singular mission: stop sprawl at all costs. That's one angle, but it's not the only angle.

But we as policymakers (yes, in the initiative-driven transit world, Joe Citizen is a policymaker) do need to weigh the alternatives. What, overall, is going to provide the best mix of decreasing fossil fuel usage, respecting the environment, increasing density, providing options to commuters, etc., etc. When you consider al the factors, ST 2.1 is a no-brainer.

Update: What Ben said. Habituating people to transit -- even if only for part of their commute -- is important in the short-term.

More will be coming tomorrow.