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Monday, February 8, 2010

Transportation Developers' Light Rail Line Would Kneecap Eastside Ridership

Posted by Unpaid Intern on Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 4:00 PM

Robert Ullman

Posted by news intern Sarah Anne Lloyd.

A couple of weeks ago, I reported on the Vision Line, the proposed Sound Transit East Link Light Rail alignment that would run along I-405, bypassing the heart of downtown Bellevue. It was the brain child of developer and city council member Kevin Wallace and backed by anti-light rail advocate Kemper Freeman. At the time I wrote my article, official reports from Sound Transit on ridership and environmental impact of the route were pending.

Well, the numbers are in. Sound Transit has released their report (link courtesy of the Seattle Transit Blog), and our suspicions are true: The Vision Line would lead to a significant decrease in ridership. The Seattle Times reported today:

The freeway station would cut the predicted 2030 Eastside ridership by 2,500 — there would be 51,000 daily boardings with a tunnel, and only 48,500 with the Vision Line, the Sound Transit study says.

That's mostly because fewer workers and condos would be within a five- to 10-minute walk of the station.

That's the ridership for the entire Eastside. According to the report, the Vision Line also has the smallest segment ridership—that is, the number of people boarding daily in the Bellevue segment alone—at only 6,000. The other routes studied in the report boast a segment ridership of 7,500-8,000.

More after the jump.

The cheaper of the two highest-ridership options is a surface route, but some are worried that building a light rail surface route through downtown Bellevue would lead to heavy congestion. Those arguments are holding less and less water. From the Seattle Times article:

Sound Transit's study says that Bellevue traffic will be so congested anyway by 2030 that, if traffic signals are timed for trains, a surface line would slow east-west travel by less than one minute.

The Bellevue City Council and the Sound Transit Board will be holding a joint workshop on the new proposed routes on Thursday afternoon.

Note: if you feel like getting all nerdy with the Sound Transit report, the Vision Line is the C14E 114th NE Elevated.

Comments (14) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

how about we just say a big fuck you to the eastside and build more lines over here in seattle?

Posted by high and bi on February 8, 2010 at 4:17 PM

Because some of us, though we wouldn't step foot on this side of the lake after 5pm, actually have to work over here?

That's my guess, anyways.

Posted by j.lee on February 8, 2010 at 4:22 PM

@1 I'm with you. Even if @2 is correct.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on February 8, 2010 at 4:28 PM

I just hope this is the beginning of the end for the whole distraction that was the Vision Line, and that we can focus on the real issue for downtown Bellevue: tunnel vs. surface.

I agree the congestion argument against the surface route is bogus. I'm kinda surprised the time savings for a tunnel isn't more than a minute. But even if the tunnel doesn't save much time, I've got to believe the tunnel would be worth it in the long run--that it would be worth it to Bellevue and ST together to find a way to pick up the extra cost.

Bellevue has a serious emerging downtown, and anyone who has ridden light rail through downtown Portland can attest to what a drag the surface routing has been on the line. Sure, Portland's Max is still pretty good, but going at-grade through an urban center hurts reliability and it constraints headways. (OK, I realize there's a whole lengthy discussion to be had as to how much East Link's headways are already constrained. And when I hear about nine-minute headways, I'm hoping that's just starting out and not the maximum frequency.)

Posted by cressona on February 8, 2010 at 4:29 PM

I know - let's ignore cost.

It's not like that matters, right?

Posted by Will in Seattle

on February 8, 2010 at 4:48 PM

#4: Uh, what? Portland's light rail has headways of 4-8 minutes during the day downtown. That's a lot better than Seattle's with our 3 ginormous tunnels. Plus it doesn't take 5 minutes to get from the street to the actual light rail stop.

Downtown Portland real-time headways for the green/yellow lines: http://bit.ly/djYZdM
Downtown Portland real-time headways for the blue/red lines: http://bit.ly/alrI7a

At-grade light rail is only a "drag" to easily-confused SOV drivers. Tunnels are bad for transit users, good for car drivers.

Posted by transit user on February 8, 2010 at 4:56 PM

#1: Sound Transit has subarea equity. All the money spent in Seattle was raised here (or in Shoreline, the only other city in the same subarea), and all the money spent in Bellevue was or will be raised on the Eastside. We could say fuck you to Bellevue, but it wouldn't raise a damn cent to pay for more rail in Seattle.

Posted by Cascadian on February 8, 2010 at 4:56 PM

Subarea equity is a legal fiction.

Just like the 60 vote requirement (hah!) in the US senate.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on February 8, 2010 at 5:36 PM

The eastside robber barons are determined that if the train has to come through Bellevue, they're going to make it as useless as possible.

After all who will buy all those fucking condos if people can just take the train to Bellevue Square from where the fuck ever?

Posted by K on February 8, 2010 at 6:09 PM

@8: Wait, so it's just a legal fiction that it requires 60 votes in the Senate to end debate? Do explain...

Posted by Lee on February 8, 2010 at 6:52 PM

@10: Preventing cloture doesn't just require constant threat of filibuster that we've been witnessing; it requires an ACTUAL filibuster. 41 Republicans endlessly passing the baton around on the Senate floor, preventing any other business from taking place, on display in front of the masses as the obstructionists they are.

Posted by d.p. on February 9, 2010 at 3:12 AM

@11: I know this, but that's precisely my point: it's not a legal fiction. Yes, there are things dems could do to make it very difficult for the GOP, but they would still need 60 people to force an end to it.

Posted by Lee on February 9, 2010 at 6:24 AM

@9, Kemper Freeman doesn't care where you came from, as long as it was by car.

Posted by laterite on February 9, 2010 at 10:26 AM

@12: I would deduce from this that a 60-strong cloture vote is only one path to the end of debate. Should the GOP fail to sustain an actual filibuster (by being shamed into "blinking"), debate will have concluded on its own, rendering a cloture vote unnecessary. Cloture-voting as a requisite is thus not so much a "legal fiction" as a media fiction.

Posted by d.p. on February 9, 2010 at 11:13 PM