I absolutely agree with the contention that light rail is not the best idea for Seattle. Having an "auto-alternative" that must compete with existing traffic makes no sense at all.

However, while visiting cities like Chicago and Tokyo on business, I had many opportunities to ride their "heavy rail". In Tokyo, this usually involved elevated transit or subway (I'm not referring to the bullet-train or monorail technology). The average speed of the intercity transit in Tokyo is around 40 mph. And the ridership of such transit is common knowledge (been on the "subway-sardine-can" many times). The distances that can be travelled are outstanding. On one occasion, I travelled the equivallent of a Seattle-Olympia trip in 2 hours DURING RUSH HOUR.

The only problem with heavy rail is that it is quite a bit more expensive than light rail. But if less is spent, we will end up with a light-rail system which too many drawbacks: anyone for a new monorail or tourist trolley?

I just wanted to see what people on this forum thought about a heavy rail system in Seattle (As opposed to building light rail or more roads).

-- Melvin (shonen@hotmail.com), December 27, 1999

Answers

"I just wanted to see what people on this forum thought about a heavy rail system in Seattle (As opposed to building light rail or more roads)." What you are really asking here, is whether or not we need to move people from one population center to another. The light rail/heavy rail choice is more than just about money, much of the speed is derived not just from having a bigger engine or dedicated right of way (since much of the northern part of LINK is planned to be built underground, there really won't be any competition for right of way for much of the system). The key thing in getting SPEED is fewer stops. If you are going to have stops essentially every mile, as proposed for LINK, you're going to get an average of 14 mph, same as for every other light rail. Light rail, by it's nature, substitutes for local bus service. It gets it's speed advantage (buses only average 13 mph) from fewer stops. Heavy rail really is meant as a substitute for express bus service. If you have a full load of people going from one center to another center, or to a series of centers more or less linear, with nobody getting on or off in between, it gives you more speed. But most of the speed doesn't come from the difference in speed between the vehicles. It comes from the decrease in the number of stops where people board and depart the vehicle. Do the math. It doesn't take very many seconds of zero speed to offset a sizable increase in velocity while you're moving. And the acceleration/deceleration can only go so fast, at least if you don't want small children and little old ladies flying through the air.

The other problem is from a social standpoint. Heavy rail traditionally winds up being a subsidy to the well-off executives who can play the gentleman farmer on their rural large lot estate, while getting highly subsidized and fairly convenient transport to their city office. It steals tax base from the city and puts it in the country. New York and other cities have put commuter taxes in place to attempt to recapture some of this. But it also affects the transit system as a whole. It becomes the 600# gorilla that gets all the priority. The LA heavy rail had an expansion curtailed because a coalition for the lower income was able to demonstrate to the judges satisfaction that the presence of heavy rail was stealing funding from more cost-effective buses, required by the transit dependent, to fund ex-yuppies dispersal to country estates.

Besides, we don't have the $100 million a mile we need for LINK yet. Where would we get $225 million a mile for heavy rail?

-- Craig Carson (craigcar@crosswinds.net), December 27, 1999.