Transportation Expenditure to relieve congestion

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The extravagant cost of the planned light rail system has been discussed here because some of the money from the MVET is diverted to transportation. The low speed of the light rail has been indicated to but the REAl problem with light rail hasn't been touched upon.

Light rail will make all the congestion on the freeways spill over into the neighborhoods.

East/west traffic in all the neighborhoods where the proposed rail is to go will be backed up in both directions because they won't be able to cross the streets. This will cause even more congestion in the surrounding neighborhood streets and be a significant hazard to all the people living and working in the areas.

And of course if Paul Schmell has his way I-5 will be able to handle much less traffic at the same time..

Our congestion is not the result of too many cars and too few trains and buses. It is a result of poor planning or deliberately planned congestion.

Cities all over the country have freeway routes go go through city center and Bypass routes for those who have no wish to visit the city.

All freight from north of Seattle must jockey through downtown Seattle on an antiquated freeway system.. And calling it a system is a long stretch of the imagination.. It is ONE old decrepit road.

Every new innovation is a joke. For example the split that takes you from I-5 East to I-405...left lanes go East..right lanes go south.

Well super intelligent engineers decided......"Well a great majority of our drivers are complete idiots so let's build a special over pass from the far right lane for the ones who are too stupid to move over to the right and continue going south."

Anybody been there? Anybody have any idea how much this unadultered stupidity cost us?

Olympia doesn't build roads correctly and they have no clue how to eliminate congestion...... So quit giving them money

You are NOT going to lose any services....But you may get some relief from 'being serviced'

That's what I-695 is about...

-- maddjak (maddjak@hotmail.com), August 24, 1999

Answers

Definition of light rail - A device for taking you from where you're not to where you don't want to go.

-- Larry Helseth (Larry@MatrixTrim.com), August 25, 1999.

Wow, what a rant.

The answer to your questions are all "What are you talking about?"

How is a subway going to stop cars?

For example you say ......"Well a great majority of our drivers are complete idiots so let's build a special over pass from the far right lane for the ones who are too stupid to move over to the right and continue going south."

Well, maybe this or it's to let the people who are getting on at Cherry Street have access to the southbound I-5 lanes.

I am filled with fear that you drive on the same roads as I.

Jim

-- James Benson (bensonj@aracnet.com), August 25, 1999.


Jim I explained exactly what I am talking about and exactly where it is located. Obviously you don't have a clue about the location because there are NO entrances from ANY streets to the particular interchange. There are the right lanes which go south and the left lanes which go east. The State built an overpass/bypass loop, added two extra left lanes for people who are either too stupid or too lazy to move over to the right lanes.

It's very simple need a little kid to explain it to you.

Are you having a hard time understanding congestion too?

That's when a choo-choo train takes up a lane or two that used to be used by cars, goes 14 miles an hour and causes traffic jams at every intersection where people USED to be able to cross the street.

I'm terrified that you are on the same PLANET that I am....but I know you're just visiting.

-- maddjak (maddjak@hotmail.com), August 25, 1999.


James-

<> Well, I'll tell you. Given that resources are finite and there arte competing uses for the resources out there, spending disproportionaltely on one, particularly when it is the least efficient at getting people from point a to point b, will result in increased congestion. This is the 6 year capital budget for roads and transit for King County, not counting light rail: Roads- 298 million for 6 years capital improvement only Transit 782 million for 6 years capital improvement only Source: http://www.metrokc.gov/budget/budget99/adopted/04capita.pdf

HOV lanes and busways are included in the roads. Light rail will be another $2 billion (and rising daily) for transit over this same period of time. Basically, the annual capital budget for roads is less than King County will pay for one-half mile of light rail. 97% of the passenger miles, however, are logged on the roads. Is it any wonder that King County has congestion?

-- Gary Henriksen (henrik@harbornet.com), August 25, 1999.


maddjak

What people need to realize about congestion....... It's by design, with the intent being to force people into transit, even if we must change the design and population density of cities to try to make it work. Please read: http://www.bts.gov/ntl/DOCS/retk.html http://www.cascadepolicy.org/growth/gordon.htm It demonstrates the thought processes of the new urbanists. Befor the car, the cities ruled. Get rid of the car, and they'll rule again. Except they won't. http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/taubman/report/articles/transit.htm

-- Gary Henriksen (henrik@harbornet.com), August 25, 1999.



Wow,

Transportation conspiracy theories, I love it!

Maybe you guys haven't been outside lately, but there is -No room- in the I-5 corridor through downtown to add lanes. It is full! No more room at the Inn.

The only option would be to make a 2 deck I-5 from one end to the other which, believe me, would cost much more than light rail. In addition, the double deck I-5 would never be allowed by the neighborhoods along I-5.

But it couldn't be built even if they wanted it because I-695 won't support it.

I don't know if you have ever been on a rail vehicle but they hold a lot more people. Once you reach your destination you don't need parking. They also run on much less right-of-way (land). They also cost less to maintain and don't need to be resurfaced every year.

The region needs to prepare for significant growth. There is no more room for major highway facilities. Light rail is a perfectly viable option.

Plus, after I-695 it'll be the only solution with a funding source.

So if you really hate light rail, I-695 is going to take away what roadway improvements there were going to be.

Think through it as oppose to reacting to it,

Jim

-- James Benson (bensonj@aracnet.com), August 25, 1999.


James-

"The region needs to prepare for significant growth. There is no more room for major highway facilities. Light rail is a perfectly viable option. "

Recommend you peruse the following: http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/taubman/report/articles/transit.htm

Light rail is a boondoggle. I wouldn't mind if it were payed for by those who choose it, but it isn't. And saying that it has any significant effect on congestion is simply wrong.

-- Gary Henriksen (henrik@harbornet.com), August 26, 1999.


Gary wrote:

"Light rail is a boondoggle. I wouldn't mind if it were payed for by those who choose it, but it isn't."

Since you keep dodging me, I'll ask again: how is this not paid for by "those who choose it" considering that the light rail plan passed by a public vote? Doesn't that mean that we chose it?

BB

-- BB (bbquax@hotmail.com), August 26, 1999.


BB- "I'll ask again: how is this not paid for by "those who choose it" considering that the light rail plan passed by a public vote? Doesn't that mean that we chose it? " Not exactly. Only 50% of the light rail comes from local funds of any kind (or that's the theory, there seems to be considerable concern about federal matching funds in "the out-years" as we used to say when I was a federal program manager.) But even so, the "local funds" are MVET, sales tax, hotel tax, etc. If you want those who choose to use it to pay the bills, you make user fees that cover the cost, rather than hiding them. The economic theory is that the market will "fairly value" the commodity (transport). Given that Sounder and Link together will be over $4 billion (in 1996 dollars, closer to $6 billion in "then year dollars," and only anticipate taking in $40 million annually in fares, the non-users are going to be paying an awful lot for an awful long time. If MVET goes away (and that's my bet) the local MVET will lack a mechanism for collections. You better believe the Seattle locals will be knocking on the door in Olympia for more state funds (in fact they already have).

-- Gary Henriksen (henrik@harbornet.com), August 26, 1999.

BB- A great quote from an ADVOCATE of light rail. See his column at http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/9934/impolitics-parrish.shtml

"Many folks voted for the newer, inferior transit plan because they were simply desperate for something, anything to be done about Seattle's horrific transit problems. Light rail is the most visible, most expensive, and in many ways least efficient component of the plan."

And I think the above analysis, if you substitute "horrific congestion" for "horrific transit problems", is close to correct. And I accept your point, that the public will not always make the right choice when confronted by many options, but I'd hope you'll admit that the politicians and bureaucrats have made their share of mistakes as well. I'd rather let the people make the votes, because it's harder (and more expensive) for the special interests to buy a million voters than a few hundred legislators.

-- Gary Henriksen (henrik@harbornet.com), August 26, 1999.



Gary - I read Parrish's column, and for the most part I agree with him. I do think that we've got a rather half-arsed plan, and I think if you're going to do something like this is should be either massively comprehensive (to try and make it really work) or not at all.

Here's my question to you: aren't you forgetting an economic motivation to all this? I can accept your 12 to 14 minute add on time to the commute because of stopping at a park and ride, because I've done it. But it's a much better deal for me to spend $3.50 both ways and waste an extra half hour (when I can be doing reading for work anyway) when the alternative is spending tons of time gridlocked in downtown Seattle and then spending $15 a day to pay for parking!

With transit, even if I waste a little bit of time, I save a whole lot of money. What's your response?

BB

-- BB (bbquax@hotmail.com), August 26, 1999.


BB--Re: "With transit, even if I waste a little bit of time, I save a whole lot of money. What's your response?"

Well now we get into the issue of what are the true costs of transit (and admittedly the same issue can be said for autos. A lot of the cost of transit is not payed by the user. Here in Pierce County, farebox revenue covers 16% of operating expenses or, if you toss in capital expenses (new buses, etc.), approximately 12% of total expenses: http://www.ptbus.pierce.wa.us/99budget/bsum.htm http://www.ptbus.pierce.wa.us/99budget/oprev.htm

Seattle has a higher population density so you're a little better, but nowhere near break-even. Capital expenditures (to buy that park n ride lot, for instance, and certainly for light rail) is much higher so if you include amortization of investment, it's probably no better). Now as an individual, if the taxpayers are foolish enough to continue to subsidize you, you'd be a fool not to take it. But from a policy perspective, since MOST people do not take transit and if everyone did, operating expenses would go even highter, what's good for an individual is not necessarily good public policy. When you lose money on every ticket sold, increasing your volume is not gonna save you money. I think that transit systems have their place, but light rail is the least effective/efficient and most capital intensive of transit systems.

-- Gary Henriksen (henrik@harbornet.com), August 26, 1999.


Thanks for the intelligent debate. I honestly do appreciate it.

Gary writes:

"But from a policy perspective, since MOST people do not take transit and if everyone did, operating expenses would go even highter, what's good for an individual is not necessarily good public policy. When you lose money on every ticket sold, increasing your volume is not gonna save you money. I think that transit systems have their place, but light rail is the least effective/efficient and most capital intensive of transit systems."

Why would operating expenses go higher if more people rode transit? You are arguing that not enough people ride it now, right?

That gives me images of half empty buses (which on the 226 from South Bellevue P & R to the Bus Tunnel that I rode every morning is certainly not the case). Still, how would filling buses that currently aren't full increase operating costs? You already run the buses, just putting more people on them wouldn't really make things more expensive, would it?

And would the cost of running buses be offset by the fact that Seattle wouldn't have to work as hard to maintain its downtown streets? Or that money wouldn't have to spent on expanding the 520/I- 90 corridor (for example) because we'd have less vehicles running there? I'm curious what your answers are.

Personally, I think that light rail isn't necessarily the answer either, because it isn't fast enough. I guess all this is moot anyway, because it looks like it's gonna be built no matter what.

BB

-- BB (bbquax@hotmail.com), August 26, 1999.


BB-

"Why would operating expenses go higher if more people rode transit? You are arguing that not enough people ride it now, right? That gives me images of half empty buses (which on the 226 from South Bellevue P & R to the Bus Tunnel that I rode every morning is certainly not the case)." The answer is simple. Someone would have to pay for the new buses (at $435K per for the big ones) and then you need new drivers, dispatchers, infrastructure, etc. When the system is at capacity and still losing money, adding more capacity is going to lose more money. "Still, how would filling buses that currently aren't full increase operating costs? You already run the buses, just putting more people on them wouldn't really make things more expensive, would it?" You need to do something to get more people on the buses. That something winds up being one of the following: decreasing fares. increasing frequency of service. increasing geographic coverage. The first decreases revenue, the second and third increase both capitalization costs and operating costs, and generally decrease load factors (not invariably, there are rare circumstances where increased frequency increases bus use enough to actually increase ridership to the point where load factors have gone up. It's rare, but it has happened. Increasing geographic coverage generally means going to an area of lower population density, which usually raises costs disproportionately to the additional passengers since overall load factors go down.) "And would the cost of running buses be offset by the fact that Seattle wouldn't have to work as hard to maintain its downtown streets?" About 10 years ago I visited Naplesthe eruption of Vesuvius. Guess what. It had streets. It had stone cobblestones deeply worn by the oxcarts that supplied the city. Streets are inherent in cities and were there (and heavily used) long before the automobile existed. If you are willing to forswear all technology and live in an unheated unplumbed shack in the middle of Montana (ala the Unabomber) you can get by without streets (although he rode his bike to a local store that was supplied by road) but when you are talking population densities of the order of 3000/sq mile, you will require streets and they will be used. Clearly, in some urban areas, busways and HOV lanes have made a modest difference in congestion. The auto is stiff competition however, for a variety of

-- Gary Henriksen (henrik@harbornet.com), August 26, 1999.


BB- Not sure how that post got distorted. The reference was to visiting Herculaneum while on a trip to Naples. It has been excavated from the ash, and gives a great glimpse at early cities. The point is still the same. If you are going to get a high population density you need sewerage, water, logistics. This means roads. Tour Europe- Pre automobile cities had roads. Go back East. Pre-automobile cities had roads. Go to Salt Lake City. Pre-automobile religious communities had BIG roads. Transit cannot replace road

-- Gary Henriksen (henrik@harbornet.com), August 26, 1999.


From the 1998 King County Growth Report

Indicator #42 Transit trips per person. Transit ridership has fluctuated a small amount over the last ten years, but shows no pronounced trend. Ridership is generally keeping pace with population growth, but overall vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in the county has grown much faster than either population or transit ridership. Transit ridership for 1997 was 48.3 trips per person.

1. We are, by design, increasing population density in the rural areas under the UGMA. 2. The theory is that this will force people to use transit. 3. We over fund transit capital improvements, and underfund road improvements, to both coax and force people into using transit. 4. We massively subsidize transit, to make it cheap so more people will use it. 5. Less than 4% of them do, despite the increased population density. 6. Congestion goes up, driven by our own policies of increasing urban area densities 7. WE DID IT TO OURSELVES, BY OUR PLANS AND POLICIES.

Any Questions??????

-- Gary Henriksen (henrik@harbornet.com), August 30, 1999.


Correction item1: We are by design increasing population density in the urban areas.

Sorry

-- Gary Henriksen (henrik@harbornet.com), August 30, 1999.


Lessons learned from Bay Area Rapid Transit. What does it tell us about light rail for Seattle?

http://www.hevanet.com/oti/weber.htm

The fundamental idea that underlay the BART plan held that spatially dispersed patterns of employment, housing and gathering places ought to be converted into concentric ones--more like those of Eastern European cities. How to do that? By installing the kind of transport systems that had earlier shaped those older metropolitan areas. The other major objective was to eliminate automobile congestion -- an outcome that would, of course, reinforce urban centering. The key lay in converting the auto-dominant transport system to a mixed system in which rail-transit would carry much of the peak-period traffic. By selectively placing rail stations at the mid-points of potential subcenters, these places would become points of high accessibility, thus attractive to developers of high-density housing, office buildings and retail complexes. In turn, as subcenters became densely settled, more and more people would leave their cars at home and ride trains to work within concentrated employment centers.

Now, something over twenty years after he decision to build BART and ten years after operations began, a great deal of office space has been built in downtown San Francisco and downtown Oakland, but neither the suburban centering effects nor the traffic-congestion effects have been realized. BART may have contributed significantly to CBD growth, but it has not yet as expected restructured the suburbs. To be sure, BART had a slow start, owing in part to equipment failures that hampered reliability and hence discouraged some patronage. The system is still not operating to designed capacity. Until it is fully fixed patronage will continue to be depressed below potential levels. Nevertheless, it is now apparent that it is unlikely ever to attract as many passengers as its designers had hoped for. Fewer people than expected are switching from automobiles to trains.

As one result, traffic congestion within BART's district is about where it was before. That's in part because these motorists who did switch to BART left vacant highway space that was then occupied by others, including others making trips they would not otherwise have made. It's in part also because BART has drawn many of its riders from buses, thus displacing low-cost transit service with high-cost service, while not significantly affecting traffic congestion. And, of course, Bay Area populations have risen over the years, thus expanding highway demand. By now, BART is carrying somewhere around 3 percent of vehicular trips within its 3-county district.

Suburban centering has been slow in coming. A few new buildings now stand next to BART's suburban stations, but the expected concentration has just not happened. Suburban construction has moved apace, but station sites have not become the magnets they were expected to be.

Studies of BART's impacts, conducted at the University of California and at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, suggest three main explanations for these unexpected outcomes.

1. The Bay Area, like all the other Western metropolitan areas, contains a dense overlay of streets, roads and freeways, supplemented by extremely high auto owner ship rates. These regions enjoy virtually complete accessibility. Every place is directly connected by road to every other place. Despite frequent traffic tie-ups, most people enjoy exceptional mobility. New rail access at suburban stations added new accessibility as planned. But the increments proved to be insignificant in proportion to overall accessibility. As a result very few developers were enticed into seeking sites adjacent to rail stations. They sought good pieces of land accessible to the road network instead. It looks as though it is now simply too late to use limited-access rail transit as an instrument for inducing urban centering.

2. Because BART is laid out essentially as a mainline railroad, rather than as a network of lines, very few people find either their origins or their destinations adjacent to stations. For most people, a train ride requires a supplemental trip-leg, either by foot, car, or bus at either the origin end, the destination end, or both. Recent studies reveal that travelers find these supplemental trip-legs to be most onerous, clocking the time costs at two to three times the rate assigned to travel along the main leg of a trip. Neglect of that factor alone would account for much of the exaggerated forecasting of rail-transit patronage we have recently seen.

3. Recent research also reveals that people choose automobiles not because they have a love affair, or that cars confer social status, or that they go fast. People choose cars because they offer door-to-door, no-wait, no-transfer service at tolerable dollar costs. Car time spent starting and ending a trip is brief, hence that total trip time is typically shorter by car than by transit. With a car waiting in one's own garage, access time is zero; the access leg of the transit trip is eliminated. By using a single vehicle from origin to destination, the high fractional costs of transfers are reduced to zero. Where public transit runs adjacent to both origin and destination, a transit trip can approximate the total travel time of an auto trip. Transit systems do then effectively compete with cars.

Unfortunately, the geometry of a mainline railroad does not match the geometry of Western metropolitan settlement patterns, and so the automobile trip is fastest overall. Therein lies the failure of the rail rapid-transit idea for the Western metropolis. It is based on the assumption that commuters can be enticed out of their cars and into modern trains that go fast. But it is total travel time that matters, not speed. The way to entice people out of cars is with transit that can compete with the automobile on its own terms--with transit that approximates door-to-door, no-wait, no-transfer service. That calls for transit technology that is more like an automobile than like a suburban railroad train. The bus threads through the local neighborhood, then runs non-stop into the city center, offers one successful model. (AC-Transit buses continue to serve large numbers of San Francisco-bound East Bay commuters on routes that parallel BART's tracks. Its advantage: it can collect morning passengers from their local street comers, then head directly into the City on freeway and

-- Gary Henriksen (henrik@harbornet.com), September 11, 1999.


The essay Gary posted writes:

"Now, something over twenty years after he decision to build BART and ten years after operations began..."

Bart was voted on in the early sixties. It started running in 1972. This essay must be from the early eighties.

You ask about this essay: "What does it tell us about light rail for Seattle?"

Not a whole lot. It's too old.

250,000 riders a day take BART now. Was ridership the same back then? Were development patterns the same back then? Have they done a better job getting people to ride? Worse? Have more offices sprung up along the tracks in the suburbs? Has San Francisco's destruction of a couple of inner-city freeways caused more people to ride BART?

Whatever the answers, an essay from the early eighties isn't going to provide them. There's been too much change in that region since then to get a definitive answer from what you posted.

BB

-- BB (bbquax@hotmail.com), September 11, 1999.


Actually BB, the issue was the geometry of light rail and other linear transit systems, which has not changed. There is a fundamental limit in the population density that you can crowd within a 1/4 mile radius of a light rail stop, particularly when the line is costing you $100 million per mile in capital costs alone, before you start to operate it. BART in fact, has advantages, since it can run somewhat of an express service on some of it's routes, since no one expects it to stop every mile when it's in tunnels under the bay. Even so, it hasn't kept market share of transit in San Francisco from continuing to decline. It has, at great price, switched many bus riders to train riders. But the percentage of people taking transit, relative to driving, has continued to decline.

Putting an End to the Transit Blackmail The US media frequently reports on frustration with growing traffic congestion and intractable air pollution. And just as often the solution of more funding for transit is advanced as a solution. However promising the theory, higher transit subsidies have invariably failed to produce a corresponding increase in ridership. Last year's BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) strike in San Francisco illustrates the point. As most everyone following the local media accounts knows, BART employees are paid well above market rates. Yet BART employees walked oft the job and exposed the community to unbearable traffic congestion. The subsequent expensive settlement will consume funding that could have been better used to expand transit services and attract new riders. For more than two decades governments have provided substantial and increasing support to transit. Yet national transit ridership is at the lowest point in 20 years, and trends in the Bay Area are little better. While BART is one of the most successful rail systems in the nation, the Bay Area transit market share continues to slip --- down more than 15 percent since 1970 (before BART). One of the primary factors in this less than stellar performance is escalating unit costs (costs per mile or hour). Since 1970, the most new transit funding has gone to support higher than inflationary cost increases, rather than the new services and lower fares that might have attracted higher ridership.

http://www.publicpurpose.com/pp-bart.htm

-- Gary Henriksen (henrik@harbornet.com), September 14, 1999.


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