Re: I’m Not Actually Obsessed w/ the Monorail Anymore, but…
Josh says Sims’s bus plan would pay for “frequent bus service between downtown and West Seattle and Aurora/Ballard,” exactly the same route as “the monorail line.” Then he trashes it for costing $10 billion over 50 years - almost as much as the monorail’s $11-$14 billion prediction.
But wait a minute. If you look at Sims’s bus plan, it doesn’t just fund a single bus line between Ballard and West Seattle. In fact, it would pay for bus runs between downtown Seattle and West Seattle, Ballard and Aurora Avenue every 10 minutes, plus equally frequent trips from Bellevue to Redmond and along Pacific Highway South. Sims’s bus plan would also fund more trips to Eastside suburbs such as Sammamish, Kent and Covington; route expansions in the neighborhoods surrounding Sea-Tac; trips every 15 minutes between business districts on the Eastside; feeder buses from Beacon Hill and the Rainier Valley to Sound Transit’s light-rail stations; more east-west trips among Queen Anne, South Lake Union and Capitol Hill; more Access buses for the disabled; and electronic message boards at the busiest bus stops, to announce when buses are arriving.
That’s a lot more service than one line between Ballard and West Seattle.
As for the 21 million rides being “the same as the monorail’s prediction,” that’s just not true: All 21 million of the rides Metro is predicting are new rides; the monorail’s 21 million included the monorail’s entire ridership, including people who used to ride buses. The monorail’s own estimates predicted that just 18 percent of its total riders would be new transit users, or about 3.78 million rides a year.
Finally, Metro’s $10 billion estimate includes both capital costs and operations and maintenance costs. The cost comparison only works if you assume the monorail would have paid for 100% of its operations from farebox revenues - something no transit system in the country has ever done (and something even monorail officials were saying was unlikely when the monorail imploded.)
I agree that spending money on buses doesn’t promote density like fixed-rail transit does. Duh - bus routes can be moved, which eliminates any real incentive to put new developments along bus lines. And buses get stuck in traffic. But let’s be realistic: The choice right now isn’t between fixed rail and buses. It’s between improving bus service and doing nothing.
And, as a bus rider, I also know that the real problem isn’t that buses get stuck in traffic (except downtown and during rush hour between Seattle and the Eastside); it’s that there simply aren’t enough buses to serve every neighborhood reliably. Unless you’re riding between Capitol Hill and downtown, buses typically arrive every 20 to 30 minutes - less frequently in outlying neighborhoods like Crown Hill and during off-peak hours. Of course people don’t ride the bus when it means waiting 45 minutes in the cold and rain: It’s much less convenient than driving a car. That’s why we need more bus service, not less.
You told him.
=)