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Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Transportation What Is Wrong with the City Council? They're Cowards When It Comes to Rail Planning.

Posted by Dominic Holden on Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 3:12 PM

As Cienna just reported, the Seattle City Council has decided to delay spending $1.35 million for studying a likely rail line from downtown to the University District, because, well, rail's not their priority. There's a case to be made, of course, that it is a priority: Ben over at Seattle Transit Blog explains why the council should fund it immediately.

It would carry 25,000 riders a day, downtown is growing, South Lake Union is a ballooning jobs hub, and the UW is the city's largest employer. Of all the corridors in the city's Transit Master Plan—some of which the council is funding studies for, per the mayor's budget—this streetcar route has the greatest promise for high ridership.

But the council's decision to withhold money makes perfect sense if you believe that designing and building rail isn't the city's greatest, unmet transportation need. If you think we need to spend more for bus-corridor improvements (like coordinating lights and building curb bulbs), which is what they'll use the money for instead, this is totally logical. The council has said, in essence, "We have other priorities so we're putting rail on the back burner."

But that's the problem with this city. Generations of city councils in Seattle have made this calculation to defer for decades, and look where it's gotten us: We still don't have a real rail system. The suburbs are sprawling, the city's neighborhoods are bisected from one another because traffic is jammed, and the bus system is jammed along with them—our transit system sucks. The light rail being built by Sound Transit is so glacially slow, it will take 100 years to build a complete urban system, and the city's leaders have been too craven to take any initiative on their own. My entire life in this town, the city council has stood idly by—while the metropolitan population booms—while gunning for freeways and leaving the one big transportation need of every big city leaderless: a fucking rail system.

Council transportation chair Tom Rasmussen was the deciding council member. Reached by phone, his office wants to deflect blow-back by saying they'll fund this stuff next year. Just not this year. Just like we've always heard. Here's video of Rasmussn explaining his logic in the council chamber.

Sure, people can make an academic case for investing in other transportation modes—and council apologists do—but all that's done is kick the city's biggest can down the road indefinitely.

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Comments (26) RSS

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One reason why might be that our transit systems sucks, so instead of fixing it, lets build a totally different transit system and hope that doesnt suck, because if it does, then we'll have to build another totally new system. We'll pay for it all naturally by jacking up the car tab fees, which i'm sure all the drivers just love to hear how their car tabs are paying for a system that sucks and doesn't work.

Posted by Kinison

on October 31, 2012 at 3:31 PM

Who profits most by not doing this now? Identify them and trace the money in contributions back to Rasmussen. There's your answer.

Another reason for district elections, right here.

Posted by Joe Szilagyi

on October 31, 2012 at 3:33 PM

Between this and the weird Frankenstein beast that is the new "Rapid Ride" system, I'm getting the sense that transit in this city is measured solely on whether it can get people from point A to point B without much thought to the spaces in between. That there's already a route going from Downtown to UW means that we don't need to bother with another route that serves SLU. That the buses go from Ballard to West Seattle is all that matters, not that they bypass areas of growth like SoDo and Interbay.

So long as the accounting is pretty, everything else is irrelevant.

It's a shame that this should be thought of as a utility more than a business.

Posted by Chris B

on October 31, 2012 at 3:35 PM

Studying an Eastlake trolley is the thread that if plucked will unravel our entire rail-planning-sweater? Really?

Posted by gloomy gus on October 31, 2012 at 3:35 PM

No Dominic you fucking little putz. The Eastlake corridor is jammed enough as it is, and when people talk about rail, they're talking about GRADE-SEPARATED FUCKING RAIL, and not trying to jam 10 pounds of shit into a 5-pound bag because RAIL. When even Erica C. Barnett gets it, and you don't, it's time to find another line of work.

Posted by Dumber than Erica! Sheesh! on October 31, 2012 at 3:48 PM

Yeah, I would have thought the lack of budget for both 520 and 99 is the major issue, and the services that connect to those, including the bridges.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on October 31, 2012 at 3:48 PM

@4 on its own no, but Dominic's point is that you have to look at this in the context of years and even decades of Council making similar decisions that kick the ball down the road on rail. Death by a thousand funding cuts.

Posted by motown philly on October 31, 2012 at 3:49 PM

Nicely put, Dom. But I think you know the answer to the question in your headline... The Council isn't cowardly, it's conniving. Politics are what motivated this decision.

The City Council, all of whom secretly (or sometimes explicitly) wish they could be Mayor, couldn't let McGinn have another win on rail. He just got ~$2M from the feds for study on extending the First Hill alignment- if he was seen as actually getting shit done on transit, they worry that he would have better chances in 2013.

Nobody on the City Council, with the possible exception of O'Brien, wants McGinn in office. He hasn't been playing by the rules, and they like the taste of power they got when he was still figuring out how to be Mayor.

Posted by kitschnsync on October 31, 2012 at 3:57 PM

I was talking to my dad a while back, a couple years before we got light rail. The one route we have. He said he remembers voting on this crap and the city arguing about it when he was my age (mid 20's); and he is 66 now. 40 years of no progress sounds about right to me.

Posted by erly on October 31, 2012 at 4:05 PM

erly, we voted against it in 1968 and 1970, that's when your dad likely remembers.

Posted by Ben Schiendelman on October 31, 2012 at 4:15 PM

@7 fair enough. To be frank I'm looking at this through the lens of a person who doesn't find trolleys a particularly good way to spend transit money in any case. If this was grade separated light rail, holy shit, I love it. But trolleys? One thing I love about Ben's linked post is that he has the decency to correct everyone who's been claiming the term "high-capacity" as it relates to transit can include trolleys.

Posted by gloomy gus on October 31, 2012 at 4:22 PM

It's not cowardice so much as it their placing the good of the city below their desire to replace McGinn.

Certain members have basically adopted the strategy of the Congressional Republican. But instead of doing anything (or nothing) to ensure the President doesn't get a political win ( even if it means the country suffers) they are doing everything they can to make sure the Mayor doesn't get a win (even if the city suffers for it).

Posted by Matthew 'Anc' Johnson on October 31, 2012 at 4:35 PM

I remember voting for the monorail a few times. Let's do it again!

Posted by Will in Seattle

on October 31, 2012 at 4:58 PM

Meh, Monorail is dead. Seattle Subway is where it is at:
http://seattlesubway.org/

Posted by Matthew 'Anc' Johnson on October 31, 2012 at 5:07 PM

Anyone who thinks a stuck-in-traffic trolley through an isolated strip with 4,000 residents and almost no demand generators will "carry 25,000 riders a day" is a fucking imbecile.

Not even the slanted TMP study makes that claim. Its calculation of 25,000 "boardings" (that's half as many riders) presumes a huge increase in usage along the SLU segment that already exists, plus more than a few short-hop riders from one part of the U-District to another. Vital!

If that's what your idea of a sea change for the Seattle transit experience looks like, then you need to get out more.

Posted by d.p. on October 31, 2012 at 6:19 PM

Also, the blathering, ironically-titled nonsense from Mr. Schiendelman in Dominic's link was a reaction to a post of actual synaptic function by a different writer on the same blog.

Sloggers owe it to themselves to give it a read before jumping to Dominic's conclusions: http://seattletransitblog.com/2012/10/31…

Posted by d.p. on October 31, 2012 at 6:30 PM

Just because a transit proposal uses rails doesn't make it better or faster or cheaper. This isn't a subway or an el folks. It's not the Link Light Rail.

I agree, the money would be much better spent on planning for the Seattle Subway (Light Rail Extensions). Duplicating bus service with more expensive, slower, tracked trolleys seems pointless. Why not just buy more electric buses for that route? Why put in tracks that are cyclist hostile?

Posted by Steven Bradford

on October 31, 2012 at 7:07 PM

Why does McGinn support surface rail? Bicyles can trip over rails.

Okay all sarcasm aside this does seem to be a natural rail corridor. Let's get on it City Council.

Posted by Frank Blethen's vodka distiller on October 31, 2012 at 7:14 PM

And what is the advantage to a tracked streetcar? Seriously.

Posted by Steven Bradford

on October 31, 2012 at 8:33 PM

Over $1 million for a study? Because that's what they decided to delay: the study. How they would read the study would be a whole other thing, and if they then decided not to do it, we wouldn't get that $1+ million back again.

Posted by sarah70 on October 31, 2012 at 9:14 PM

I don't get this, the SLUT is already half built, just fucking finish it!

Posted by high and bi on October 31, 2012 at 10:07 PM

What d.p. said.

The SLUT is a monument to letting one developer's agenda undermine long-term transit planning, and adding this proposed leg to it and essentially duplicating the light rail line presently under construction to justify its existence just throws good money after bad.

Posted by Mr. X on November 1, 2012 at 9:37 AM

@19 - wide doors, easy on/off for passengers in wheelchairs, super fast load/unload times compared to a bus. Do you ride a bus? Have you ever ridden a street car? I don't think you'd be asking that question if you'd had...

Posted by MoonPatrol on November 1, 2012 at 2:42 PM

The Council must have list interest when they found out it was only a million. Throw in a multi-billion dollar car tunnel if you want them to get interested.

Posted by TLjr on November 1, 2012 at 8:36 PM

#23 - Thanks for the serious answer! I do ride the bus, all the time. I've only ridden streetcars a few times, mainly in other cities, where the designs are older, more like buses. I guess my follow up question is, are flat floors and extra wide doors worth it? I know I'd appreciate them on my primary route, the 3/4. Though a streetcar can't do those hills, easy roll on and off would sure speed up all the wheelchairs and strollers on that route.

Is that worth the extra cost of construction? Would it make more sense to simply use the money to buy a lot more buses to service the existing routes more often? (I don't know the answer).

Most of the time, comfort, easy boarding, etc are not what's put foremost in the streetcar pitch.

If those things are attractive enough to get a lot more people riding, then that would be great, I could support that. Like most people I'm most interested in fast and frequent. A slow and infrequent but comfy ride may not be enough.

Posted by Steven Bradford

on November 2, 2012 at 7:49 AM

@25 - you're welcome =)

As for it being worth the cost, I say yes, but I'm sure compelling arguments can be made against it too. I like nice infrastructure and I'm willing to pay more for nice bridges, nice sidewalks, nice parks, nice transit, and a nice city. I don't like the race to the bottom where the only discussion concerning any public investment is "how cheap can we make it?"

Having said that, you're right about frequency - it's the most important factor to me as well.

Posted by MoonPatrol on November 2, 2012 at 10:24 AM