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Sound Transit seeks feedback on light rail to West Seattle, Ballard… and beyond

Screen Shot 2015-07-06 at 9.28.17 PMSound Transit 3, a “sales-tax, car-tab tax, and property-tax increases”-powered $15 billion package of projects for the agency to take on once its currently planned investments are complete in 2023, will go to the ballot in 2016. Right now, Sound Transit wants your help shaping the package:

The Sound Transit Board needs your help to determine which projects should be included in the ballot measure. The Board will also consider the findings of technical analysis about each project, feedback from the public and key stakeholders, and project cost considerations. The Board is made up of 17 elected officials throughout the Puget Sound region and the Secretary of the Washington State Department of Transportation. It is scheduled to release a draft plan for system expansion in early 2016 for public review and comment before advancing a final ballot measure for public vote in late 2016 or afterward.

Sound Transit is conducting a survey through Wednesday, July 9th collecting feedback on 39 alternatives on a “draft priority projects” list including multiple variants of light rail options connecting to Ballard and West Seattle. You can learn more about ST3 and take the survey here.

The Madison Bus Rapid Transit project is also included in the draft list.CHS reported on SDOT’s Madison BRT planning here. We’ll have to follow up to find out how the new Sound Transit package funding would mesh with the current planning process.

The survey provides the opportunity to weigh in on the individual importance of each of the draft items on the project list and also provide “top 3” rankings for the regions Sound Transit serves. It also includes question #8 which seems to inform as much as it queries:

Screen Shot 2015-07-06 at 9.24.59 PM

Sound Transit’s Capitol Hill light rail project, meanwhile, is on pace to begin service by early 2016. Isn’t that? a) awesome b) totally awesome or c) all of the above

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Chris
Chris
8 years ago

Reducing travel lanes on an already busy street to save six minutes would likely increase everyone else’s commute by more. Seattle’s concept of ‘decreasing’ car traffic by removing lanes for busses and more recently for bikes it seems is counterproductive. There are plenty of surveys out there (Seattle Times did one recently) that note people that drive solo are not likely to give up their cars any time soon – so all these tend to benefit those who already have given them up. Or those those who feel that 6 minutes is a monumental amount of time.

And the talk of putting bike lanes on the same road? Asinine – put the entitled on some side streets where running stop signs and signals won’t likely get them killed.

Wes
Wes
8 years ago
Reply to  Chris

Amen! The new 520 bridge is one of our largest projects. It expands travelling lanes from two in each direction to….. two in each direction.

But there is a new 14ft pedestrian lane? Because apparently we expect all those single-occupancy-vehicles to start walking to work?

Ian
Ian
8 years ago
Reply to  Wes

Please tell me it’s two additional in each direction, right?

Jim98122x
Jim98122x
8 years ago
Reply to  Ian

nope

Wes
Wes
8 years ago
Reply to  Ian

Nope.

4.5 Billion dollars gets us:
A new 3+ HOV/Bus lane and a 10ft shoulder on both sides, and a pedestrian lane on the north side.

On a side note, I’ve almost never seen a full 3 passengers in the existing 520 HOV lane on the eastside. Mostly 2 person and sportscars/tintedwindowguys.

This is happening in other places though. As we know there was talk about making part of pike/pine pedestrian only too!

poncho
poncho
8 years ago
Reply to  Wes

The ones who complain about traffic and parking are the ones who apparently have a magic car that doesn’t take parking spaces or cause congestion. Stop blaming everyone else for the problems your g.d. car creates for everyone else including other motorists and those taking much more spatially efficient modes. 80-100 people are carried on a single bus that takes up the space of 2 single occupant vehicles… gee, I wonder why there is traffic congestion!!!!

Wes
Wes
8 years ago
Reply to  poncho

Not trying to hate on buses and carpools – they are great options for those who can take them and we should be expanding our transit system.

I am hating on dedicated transit lanes because of the space efficiency as you mentioned. A dedicated transit lane that sits unused except for a bus every 15-20 minutes carries fewer people that if we just had regular lanes.

That means if we’re going to devote 30-50% of the lane-space to transit, we need to have more frequent buses to use them, or it would be better to use the lane for other traffic.

At the moment, the underutilized bus and bike lanes cause more congestion than they take away. That is the problem.

Ryan
Ryan
8 years ago
Reply to  Wes

During rush hour 13 busses an hour cross the I-90 bridge and 30 busses an hour cross the SR-520 bridge. The Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel carries 45 busses per hour plus 8 Link trains per hour, or in other words roughly every 4.5 minutes and every 2 minutes and every minute during the most congested hours of the day. Quite a bit more often then your every 15-20 minutes.

Wes
Wes
8 years ago
Reply to  Wes

Public transit is a great option and they do run more frequently at peak times.

The question is how many people per hour do you get across in those buses in dedicated lanes vs what you would if you expanding the road to all traffic by 50%? The lanes are mostly empty at congested times.

I’m not against buses, just the dedicated lanes, especially when it is a large percentage of the available road space (when there are only one or two travelling lanes)

Ryan
Ryan
8 years ago
Reply to  Wes

Easy. A congested lane drops to ~700 vehicles/lane/hr. During commute hours personal vehicles carry only 1.1 people per vehicle, so that’s 770 per lane. (And of course with the HOV lanes those GP lanes are averaging close to 1.0 people per vehicle…) A crush loaded artic can carry 140 people, there’s seating capacity for 60. If you look only at the ST 545 which *IS* crush loaded using solely artics during rush hour, there’s 6 busses an hour from 4 PM – 7 PM. That’s 840 people per hour just on one bus that comes every 10 minutes.

So yes. Even if only one crush loaded artic bus came every 10 minutes it would carry more people then the congested GP lanes, while appearing very empty. Add to that the other 24 public transit busses, and the 20 Microsoft busses an hour that run in rush hour on 520 and the reality is that HOV lane is carrying more people per hour then the two GP lanes COMBINED. If you were to remove the HOV lane then it would quickly become just as congested as the GP lanes. The busses would run 2-3x slower over its whole route (after all they’d be stuck in stop-and-go traffic instead of moving freely) which would double to triple the cost to run the same level of service, while at the same time REDUCING the amount of people that get through that highway because those busses would take a lot longer to get through.

Timmy73
Timmy73
8 years ago
Reply to  Chris

Yes, can’t wait to see Madison go down to 1 lane in each direction with the BRT in place. It will be a joy for those car commuters trying to get on I-5 making the back up extend well past Boren. All because many people apparently need to get from 23rd to the waterfront quickly and saving 5 min off transit times will vastly improve their lives. Meanwhile those who have to drive will be sitting in gridlock with idling cars.

Joe
Joe
8 years ago
Reply to  Timmy73

Thanks for making me feel better about myself and my transportation choices.

(And yes, I will enjoy watching people who choose to drive single occupancy cars receive their fair allocation of our street space.)

poncho
poncho
8 years ago
Reply to  Timmy73

well the motorists only have themselves to blame for traffic congestion and gridlock caused by their own car

Wes
Wes
8 years ago
Reply to  poncho

The motorists may have the city to blame. It depends on if the new BRT lane puts more people per minute through the lane than a normal traffic lane would have.

If the buses don’t run full and frequently, the city is to blame for reducing road and space efficiency, and increasing congestion.

In 2014 the budget cuts reduced the number of buses, and at the same time we are stealing entire lanes for bus use? Seattle just needs to make up it’s mind.

Buses are great. Dedicated lanes are debatable.

Ryan
Ryan
8 years ago
Reply to  Chris

The goal isn’t to reduce congestion for personal vehicles, that’s a lost cause, as the more roads you build the more cars will come to fill it. (http://www.vox.com/2014/10/23/6994159/traffic-roads-induced-demand) No region has ever managed to build their way out of congestion. The goal is to get as many people through the area as fast as possible.

Already less then half of downtown employees drive to work, 34% drive alone, 9% carpool. Both of which are smaller then the 43% that take transit. Or in other words equal amounts of people drive vs take transit to get to work downtown. (source: http://www.downtownseattle.com/files/file/Transportation042914.pdf) We already have as many people getting to downtown at rush hour via transit as personal vehicle *despite* there being many fewer lane-miles dedicated to busses. Perhaps people in personal vehicles shouldn’t complain when they’re already getting a larger share of the roadway then their population.

Timmy73
Timmy73
8 years ago
Reply to  Ryan

We will always (in our lifetimes) have the need for SOV occupancy. SOVf folks also pay a variety of taxes and license fees and deserve to use roads efficiently just like everyone else.

The majority may not drive “to” downtown but many do drive “through” it. Roads and transit systems to need to grow as cities grow. Goods and services do not magically appear from the sky.

Wes
Wes
8 years ago
Reply to  Ryan

From the article Ryan posted: “Turner and Duranton have also found that public transportation doesn’t really help alleviate congestion either”.

I’m not sure if that article really supports your point – it is advocating congestion-based tolling.

Ryan
Ryan
8 years ago
Reply to  Wes

I recommend starting at the headline of the article “The “fundamental rule” of traffic: building new roads just makes people drive more” and working your way from there. I also started out my comment by saying “The goal isn’t to reduce congestion.” So… your point?

Jim98122x
Jim98122x
8 years ago

My feedback to Sound Transit is the same feedback I’d give to City of Seattle: identify and get support for different ways to fund this besides dumping it all as property tax levies on homeowners. Otherwise we’ll see another “no” vote to transit, like what delayed rail so many years ago. Seattle has already reached the tolerance limit of these special levies. I will not be surprised if Move Seattle goes down to defeat. You can only delay the state income tax just so long before something has to give.