The average speed of Sound Transit's light rail line is easy to calculate: According page S-7 of the Link Final Envi-ronmental Impact Statement (FEIS), the total travel time to Northgate is about 49.8 minutes and distance is 23.07 miles, which works out to about 28 miles per hour, not 15 as claimed by Ms. Fimia. The average speed on a regional light rail system will depend on many factors, such as number of stops, proportion of on-street vs. aerial or tunnel, presence of sharp curves or steep grades, etc. But even through the mostly on-street Rainier Valley segment, the time is 10.5 minutes over 4.59 miles, or 26.23 miles per hour. This beats freeway gridlock any day and is far faster than most buses.
Claim: People will have to go down 200 ft. to access some stations .
The 200 foot deep stations at the UW and First Hill are no big deal. Once you get in a fast elevator you'll never notice the difference. A couple of years back I descended into a 190 foot deep station in Atlanta and thought nothing of it. The deepest transit station in North America is Washington Park Station in Portland on the new Westside MAX line. The high-speed elevators whisk passengers down over 260 feet in a matter of just seconds. Once you are down in the station, numerous displays and artwork make it an interesting and secure place to wait for your train.
Claim: Most of the riders will come from the existing bus service.
About 2/3 of the riders will come from existing buses. They will be getting a much better ride, at a lower subsidy (50% vs. 75% for buses) and saving travel time (an average of 5 to 8 minutes one way (FEIS, 3-8)). This increase in "mobility" is, in fact, the major purpose of the light rail (From the Sound Move plan: "The high-capacity transit system's purpose is to improve mobility within the urban areas by providing travel alternatives so they may grow comfortably while preserving rural areas for future generations.") This is not just a commuter transit system. However the remarkable fact is that the 1/3 of new riders constitutes 36,000 people a day. And it will take 16,000 cars a day off the roads, more than one clogged freeway lane for the entire length of Seattle. Over time, many more new riders are expected due to the superior level of service.
Claim: This Light Rail Project, even if built out, 120 miles in 30 years at a cost of over 12 billion dollars, raises the percentage of transit riders from 3% of all trips to less than 6%! That includes both rail and bus riders. We could be doing much more with those dollars to increase transit and vanpool ridership than by spending it on a massive tunnel and buying wide swaths of commercial and residential property.
It is true that this is a drop in the bucket compared to regional traffic, but along the light rail route itself it will make a difference, especially since this route parallels I-5 at its most constricted segment. That is, growth in congestion will be slowed along specific routes, but it won't be enough to overcome current growth rates in car travel. Actually reducing congestion region wide in the short run would require quite radical measures. Taking the long view, the goal is to change the "car culture" by building a region-wide rapid transit system with a variety of local and feeder transit plus a major movement toward transit oriented development. While raising transit ridership from 3% to 6% would be a major accomplishment, we can expect this strategy to do far better in the long run, especially when we're forced to confront mitigation measures for global warming and spiraling costs of dwindling global oil supplies. Ms. Fimia expresses concern about the costs of the tunnel, but remember that a concrete-lined rail tunnel lasts virtually forever. It is the safest place to be during earthquakes and advances in signaling can dramatically increase passenger-capacity over time.
Claim: We won't have the resources to take people to all points they need to access off of the line, so they will still opt to drive. Only 1 out of 1000 cars will be eliminated from the road.
By serving high density neighborhoods directly, large numbers of people will be able to walk to the stations. Many others will be able to take a short bike or bus ride. This is what leads to the huge ridership (125,000 a day with Northgate) that is far in excess of all other recent light rail lines in the country (Portland MAX is now 65,000 and Los Angeles Blue Line is 63,000) . This is why commuter-oriented proposals such as "freeway monorail" that specifically avoid such neighborhoods would have such low ridership. Extended region-wide this will give people real alternatives, especially to congested freeways. Most regional car trips are non-commuter trips (about 85%), often local, so transit ridership may not look like much statistically. But when fully built out, Link could be carrying the equivalent of 7.2 freeways lanes of traffic through the downtown bus tunnel (FEIS 3-5). This sure beats building freeways forever.
Claim: It is now apparent that Sound Transit is borrowing against Federal money into 2015 for the first SeaTac to University segment. That means we will have no Federal aid for any further regional transit projects till after 2015. No money for phase 2.
Nothing will stop Sound Transit from applying for additional funding. Ongoing debt will be paid out of local revenues, not federal money. The Full-Funding Grant Agreement covers only 'MOS-1' or the segment from SoDo to NE 45th. Further federal commitment is expected for Phase 1 segments through Rainier Valley to SeaTac and from NE 45th on to Northgate.
Claim: If this region can commit to increasing density around stations and having a more user based system for the single occupancy vehicle, we will see higher ridership and less car trips. But, other technologies like monorail are quieter, safer, faster and much cheaper to build. And pedestrians and cars are never in peril as with surface light rail. But the Sound Transit Board refuses to consider anything but this tortured combination of a surface and deep tunnel rail line. It is old technology, and not easily adapted to our topography because of the hills.
Contrary to Ms. Fimia's claim, monorails are not necessarily quieter, safer, faster, or cheaper to build. A case in point is the most recent US monorail project, the Las Vegas monorail extension, requiring $650 million in bonds to finance 3 miles ($217 million a mile, compared to $170 for Sound Transit revised budget). Other monorails have varied widely in cost, as have light rail projects. Modern light rail is just as quiet as monorail. The speed depends mostly on the number of stops. With stops every half mile or so, the Las Vegas monorail will actually be slower.
The advantage that monorail advocates have is that they haven't had to take their plans out into the neighborhoods. The newer monorail lines must include a walkway along the monorail beams (unlike Seattle's monorail) to meet new transit safety codes. This means that aerial monorail structures look a lot like aerial light rail structures. Sound Transit received almost universally negative responses to concepts of aerial transit and is avoiding it wherever possible. Also, monorail is no better suited to Seattle's hills than light rail. According to the Monorail Society web-site, new monorail systems handle a maximum grade of 6%-the same as Link.
Finally, safety has been belabored by SANE pointing to Portland. After the new MAX line opened, there were several accidents involving vehicles 'running' the grade crossings or pedestrians carelessly crossing the tracks. This occurred in the area west of Portland where light rail had never operated and does not run down a raised street median, a safer configuration. (This safer design is to be used in Rainier Valley.) Local cities and Tri-Met quickly undertook a rail safety campaign and there have been no major incidents for some time. Statistically, fatalities from light rail operation are very rare when compared to auto accidents.
While at-grade light rail has some risk of accidents with vehicles or pedestrians, this is often offset by an increase in overall traffic safety due to reconfiguration of the street and traffic lights. This is the plan for Rainier Valley. As a final note, with regard to other 'better' alternatives, a thorough analysis was done before the 1996 vote. Previous planning studies had looked at heavy rail, monorail, mag-lev, etc. and concluded that for our transit needs in the Seattle core, light rail was the clear preference in terms of performance and versatility. Nothing in the interim has changed that conclusion. A recent evaluation by different transit consultants for the Orange County Transit Authority concluded that monorail and mag-lev were too specialized and had never been proven in typical heavy-duty US transit applications.
Claim: The cost of light rail will be $120,000 ($150,000, $200,000, ) per new rider.
Such specious arguments demonstrate clearly the old adage about lying with statistics- in this case, an FTA evaluation measure. FTA uses the measure 'Cost per New Rider' to rank various projects and Link has a low cost and high ranking based on this measure. However, it is hardly a useful measure of cost-effectiveness. A highway project could be damned with similar arguments. For example, the I-90 reconstruction that cost about $1.7B for six miles ended up adding four lanes and vehicle volume jumped 30,000 per day almost immediately (with no reduction on SR520). That means that between the federal government and WSDOT, we spent $50,000 per car just to encourage an additional 36,000 persons per day onto the road-already straining its capacity. If Link costs $2.4B with 36,000 new riders per day, then the cost per new rider is $66,667. However, since Link could easily handle an additional 200,000 riders per day, the ultimate cost is about $10,000 per new rider. The true measure of cost-effectiveness is the cost per passenger-mile and is reported yearly by the FTA in its National Transit Summaries and Trends. According to the 1998 NTST, the cost per passenger-mile for light rail is 44 cents vs. 54 cents for bus.
Claim: Light Rail capacity is overstated.
It is commonly accepted in transportation engineering that the peak capacity of a lane of freeway is about 2,000 cars or 2,400 persons per hour (at 30 mph). A light rail car holds 130 people comfortably - some standing but most sitting. Link stations will accommodate four-car trains and the signal system is being designed to permit two-minute spacing between trains. Therefore, at 520 riders per train and 30 trains per hour per track, light rail can easily carry 15,600 passengers per direction per hour. That's the equivalent of 6.5 lanes each way. So, if anything, 12 freeway lanes is an understatement.