A dramatic vote in favor of a rail transit plan
The weight of 40 years of paralysis about transit planning played a role in the Sound Transit decision to try one more time to convince the voters of the need for more light rail.
"We've dug ourselves a 40-year hole," said King County Council member Larry Phillips at the meeting of Sound Transit Thursday, July 24. Not long after, the board passed, 16-2, the latest effort to get out of this hole by putting a 34-mile extension of light rail on the ballot next November. The hole was created in 1968-70, when the region twice turned down a rail transit proposal and fell far behind the rest of the nation's big cities. There followed, Phillips said, four decades of analysis paralysis, during which "the perfect has been the enemy of the good."
No one was saying the plan passed on Thursday was anywhere close to perfect. Putting rail across the Interstate 90 floating bridge is full of technical problems. Even though commuters are clamoring for more buses, this plan puts 67 percent of its $17.9 billion into light rail and only 2 percent into buying new express buses. It won't be completed until 2023. The bond measure might be cutting it close on margins of debt coverage, and the board narrowed those margins a bit more yesterday by front-loading the bus relief in the next few years. Spooked by the way voters rejected the bigger Proposition 1 package last year, this Sound Transit 2 (ST2) package does not really finish the job, since it does not get to Everett or Tacoma or Redmond.
But as a political compromise that got a strong vote from the board (only King County Executive Ron Sims and King County Council member Pete von Reichbauer of Federal Way voted against it), it's an artful package that might work. The packed chamber at Union Station applauded when the vote was finally taken. Now the measure goes to the public, and we shall see if the region can finally overcome the legacy of those 40 years. The opponents, who mostly favor buses or some of the newer devices of managing congestion through tolls, are ready to attack ST2 and may even outspend the dispirited forces for rail. And all the time spent getting to yesterday's decision means the pro-rail campaign is very late in getting started.
The dramatic vote not only looked back at all those years from the Forward Thrust defeats to the final passage of the starter rail system (opening next year), passed in 1996. It also provided some glimpses of future political leadership. One sad moment came when a partly researched measure introduced by Sims, with backing from state Department of Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond (and therefore, presumably, her boss, Gov. Chris Gregoire), drew lots of criticism and was rejected, 3-15. The Sims amendment would have given $120 million to Metro Transit to provide immediate relief for overcrowding. It had all kinds of problems: Sound Transit can't legally fund local bus service, and the Sims amendment threatened to take money away from expanded express service to Snohomish County, the key concession that made ST2 gain a majority. A face-saving compromise amendment, increasing Sound Transit express bus service, was passed, which seemed to be enough to bring Hammond, a bit surprisingly, over to the yes side. (Gregoire had been firmly advised that opposing ST2 was going to cost Seattle area support in her governor's race.)
If it was poignant to see Sims, himself a former chair of Sound Transit, so isolated and unpopular, it was also interesting to see the rise of the Snohomish County forces, especially the smooth young county executive, Aaron Reardon. Reardon played a strong game of poker with Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, the Sound Transit board chair, gaining lots of bus service, some of it at Seattle's expense, before swinging to support ST2. He tried to help Sims with his clumsy amendment, and paused dramatically before voting against it in the end.
ST2 [1.1 MB PDF] definitely responds to many of the political criticisms that sank Proposition 1 (combining roads and transit into a whopping package). It adds performance audits. It says the taxes should be rolled back in 2038, when the phase has been built, not extended in an open-ended fashion. It has money (and a time limit for spending it) for building a short rail line on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe route on the Eastside. It envisions substituting a more modern tax, such as a carbon tax, for the sales tax component of ST2 sometime in the future. It has more tools to leverage partnerships with the private sector and local bus systems, as well as several mixed-mode transit nodes. It has more flexibility to adapt to changed market conditions.
In the end, though, ST2 will draw a lot of fire for putting so many eggs in the rail basket when so many people are demanding more bus service — right now. Phillips' "40-year hole" is one reason for having to spend so much on so few miles of rail — the costs of retrofitting rail into a built-up environment are huge. The Sound Transit people argue, with reason, that unless the system has a high-capacity spine, off which feeder services can play, it will never get ahead of the congestion woes, nor be able to shape much growth around station nodes. (Not much shaping, however, again a result of having waited so long.)
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Comments:
Posted Fri, Jul 25, 1:27 p.m. inappropriate
Can't we all just get along?: Come on David, there's room for you on the train as well. It's time to get excited about the possibility of fixing our transit problems, not mire in misleading anti-transit numbers.
//2 percent into buying new express buses// How much goes to bus service in general - bus drivers, gas, maintenance, etc?
//It won't be completed until 2023// True, but why not bring up the fact that service to Bellevue will start much sooner?
//taxes should be rolled back in 2038, when the phase has been built// Wait, you said it would be complete in 2023. Oh, you mean when we're done paying for it. Claiming it won't be built until 2038 isn't just misleading, it's a lie.
I know you're used to trying to kill ST and would like a bus in every cul-de-sac.* But ST2 is a good plan. Can you hold off on the negative spin and try to bring the debate to a more intellectually honest level?
* I don't disagree about busses - we need more. How about I agree to support any bus plan you come up with, and you try to be more sensible when it comes to rail? The two systems will work great together.
Posted Fri, Jul 25, 4:14 p.m. inappropriate
40 year hole ?: The principle reason we have a transportation 'hole' is the refusal for
decades to upgrade and expand the road/freeway systems of this region !
Go ahead, throw away all this money on light rail, IF YOU VOTE YES, and
remember that 90 percent of the regions population will never use this
system - a system that wil have to be subsidized forever .
While your at it, be sure to budget money to pre-paint each rail car with
appropriate gang graffiti - and save the thug riders their effort .
King county council = a ship of fools !
Posted Fri, Jul 25, 5:17 p.m. inappropriate
RE: 40 year hole ?: The $11 billion expansion plan for I-405 will carry a fraction of the people ST2 will. Add to that the cost of rebuilding 520, the Viaduct, etc., all for what? The same exact traffic levels?
More roads doesn't equal less traffic (this works in reverse as well). That's something we've failed to learn in the past 40 years of road expansion and sprawl. What put us in this mess? It sure wasn't rail.
Posted Fri, Jul 25, 5:28 p.m. inappropriate
RE: 40 year hole ?: "The principle reason we have a transportation 'hole' is the refusal for
decades to upgrade and expand the road/freeway systems of this region!"
Steptoe.fan, I would love nothing more than to see your plan to spend billions adding 10 more lanes to I-5 and I-90 get pulverized by voters in the November election. Someone, please, put this on the ballot!
Posted Fri, Jul 25, 6:03 p.m. inappropriate
No sunset on 1/2 cent transit sales tax hike, and light rail test ride already funded: Brewster writes, "ST2 [1.1 MB PDF] definitely responds to many of the political criticisms that sank Proposition 1 ... It says the taxes should be rolled back in 2038, when the phase has been built, not extended in an open-ended fashion."
To the contrary, I can't find anything about a 2038 sunset applying to the proposed transit sales tax hike (1/2 cent on a dollar) in the Resolution 2008-11 describing the November ballot measure that was approved yesterday by the Sound Transit Board.
There is, however, this interesting paragraph in Resolution 2008-11 about the Sound Move taxes from 1996 that were promised back then to be reduced somewhat if a light rail expansion plan were to lose in a future election:
"Section 6. The existing four-tenths of one percent sales and use tax, and the existing three-tenths of one percent motor-vehicle excise tax approved by the voters shall continue to be levied or imposed for the purposes set forth in Resolution 75 and as provided in Sane Transit v. Sound Transit, 151 Wn.2d 60, 85 P.3d 346 (2004), notwithstanding the outcome of the election provided for herein."
Summary: If the new Sound Transit mass transit tax measure wins in November, the agency has the authority to collect both the existing and new taxes indefinitely.
If the new measure loses, the agency will still keep on collecting all the existing taxes at the 1996 rate, which has now reached one million dollars per day.
Sound Transit has already pledged to the U.S. Department of Transportation that this existing revenue stream, without ST2, but including the promised Federal grants, is sufficient to complete the construction of light rail from Husky Stadium to the Airport, and to operate enough trains sufficient to meet forecast customer demand. Achieving this will require that all of the 1996-approved taxes continues to be collected.
In other words, light rail is coming to Seattle no matter what happens in the Prop 1 Do-Over election. Scheduled opening to the Airport is late 2009. Actual opening, TBD.
A question for the 2008 Sound Transit voter is, do you want to take a test ride on the first Seattle light rail train before deciding to double Sound Transit's tax take?
Posted Fri, Jul 25, 11:39 p.m. inappropriate
More Straw men: Interesting article. There are three "straw men" that really stand out. The first is the "40 year hole." Are you referring to outcomes, for example share of transit ridership to overall commuters, or infrastructure? I would assume infrastructure. But if we look at transit ridership to overall commuter service, the greater Seattle area ia one of the top areas in the nation, ahead of many other cities like Portland for example.
I have a question: just how much rail do we need to double this percentage of trips taken by transit? Also, how would you or Phillips define the hole being filled? 1000 miles of track? 50 miles? or what? I 'm curious to know how much is actually needed to "fill the hole."
Another straw man is this one: "The Sound Transit people argue, with reason, that unless the system has a high-capacity spine, off which feeder services can play, it will never get ahead of the congestion woes, nor be able to shape much growth around station nodes."
Here we have the attempt at goals that to a certain extent contradict each other: a place for feeder service is not necessarily great at facilitating high density transit oriented development.
Questions: how many park and ride spaces are there for the additional locations proposed for this measure? How good are the connection infrastructure between buses and the train stations at most of the stops? The stop in Tukwila at 154th doesn't exactly look accessible to buses, though it is not completed so maybe there's something that is not yet evident. How much density is going to be needed at locations near the stations to make a significant dent in traffic? Or how much investment will be needed in feeder bus services, also not funded in this measure?
We hear ad nauseum the claim that rail will be a catalyst for density. Yet, there are plenty of examples of increased density where there's no rail. Ballard, downtown Bellevue, downtown Burien and many others all come to mind.
A third straw man: "Only Sound Transit has any money to do anything about our transportation mess, she argued. The state is broke. Metro's taxing authority is used up. "Nobody is planning anything," she lamented. Underlying her argument is the political reality that with only Sound Transit having some real sources of money (unless tolling is found feasible), all the other strapped agencies wanting to repair bridges and add modern bus service will likely pick the pockets of Sound Transit in a coming session of the Legislature – unless ST2 is enacted by voters this fall."
Actually, I would turn this on its head. One could state "If ST gets this tax increase, no one else will be able to ask for anything more for a long time." My sense is Metro is not seeking new taxing authority now because they got a .1% tax increase just last year. The state similarly has its hands full implementing the recent gas tax increases and keeping costs under control. It seems dubious to claim no one is planning anything. There are plenty of plans going on for the viaduct and for 520, and for the ferries." On these issues, the challenge is actually making a decision, not having plans.
The claim that only Sound Transit can do anything is simply absurd. The absurdity was shown by Mr Sims asking for $120 Million for Metro so people can get a seat on a bus instead of having to stand, but ST saying no, we can't do that. Nickels may think a long bus ride standing is a joke, but to bus riders it is not.
One final question: if ST2 passes, what is to keep the legislature from picking ST's pockets? ST will actually have even more money. That gives more incentive to pick the pockets, so to speak. And maybe it will even be easier to pick the pockets if there's more flexibility, as seems to be implied in the article.
Posted Sat, Jul 26, 9:21 a.m. inappropriate
Crosscut has been an open forum for strong arguments for and against ST2; we don't take any editorial position, leaving that decision to our readers. I am certainly not "trying to kill ST," and have written in support of rail transit and in support of Prop 1.
Posted Sat, Jul 26, 3:33 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Can't we all just get along?: I appologize for equating your opinions with that of your site. I stopped reading Crosscut months ago because of the constant anti-rail, anti-density tone. Only Ben's recent piece brought me back. Looking back at the articles published those months ago, I don't see your name. I do hope that I'm mistaken about the tone of this article.
Posted Sat, Jul 26, 11:42 p.m. inappropriate
RE: No sunset on 1/2 cent transit sales tax hike, and light rail test ride already funded: John Niles continues his 20 year jihad against light rail with outright lies and innuendo. There is no indication that light rail will not open on schedule. Trains are already being tested on MLK and in SODO. We know that light rail will work, John, we are the last major metropolitan area to build any.
Posted Sun, Jul 27, 9:54 a.m. inappropriate
too late, wrong funding, outdated technology: Dead on arrival #2. Sound Transit has its collective head in the clouds again. From its inception, the agency has chosen the wrong technology--on-grade standard rail--over more innovative, cheaper-to-build, quicker-to-implement solutions. The funding mechanism (a NICKEL INCREASE of the sales tax??? crazy!) is outrageously regressive and plainly unacceptable. I agree with Larry Philips AND Ron Sims; we diddled around too long, and we need immediate relief.
After this latest proposal is voted down, ST is likely to die a miserable, stunted orphan unless a better proposal is made with more innovation. And the third time will be the last shot.
How about adapting roller-coaster technologies with passenger pods instead of open-air seating? Pipe rails ride smoothly, could be elevated, constructed or moved relatively easily and affordably, built out cheaply to population centers, and would draw customers like a magnet.
Without a good small-bus feeder system, though, any transit system will be ineffective. Example: my friend who lives in Beaverton is too far from the Tri-Met station or a bus stop to walk there from home, and his office is too far from downtown to walk to work from that station. He would love to use Tri-Met from home to the airport when he travels, but Tri-Met won't let him leave his car in the lot overnight. Ergo, transit does not work unless every link is in place and provisions made for the cars of those who must drive to an embarkation point.
As for buses, WE STILL DON'T HAVE A BUS SOUTH OF ISSAQUAH, RON!
Posted Sun, Jul 27, 2:32 p.m. inappropriate
Sean, your the typical rail shallow supporter: adding lanes in the 60's style to any existing freeway is NOT a solution,
the road and freeway people understand this, you never will !
New road / freeway construction would feature segregated truck / car
deisgn , on and off ramps of length to allow for speed up BEFORE entering
traffic and HOV capacity as the RIGHT most lane only. They would also
be designed for directional changing from the start - not a piecemeal design
added on decades later.
Most importantly, they would deliver people NOT to seattle city center, but to
secondary locations where bus service could then bring people into the city .
What the light rail fools will NEVER understand is that private personal
vehicles are and will remain the choice mode for transportation .
sound transit = king county council = wsdot = the transportation mess we
are all in NOW
Posted Sun, Jul 27, 2:34 p.m. inappropriate
RE: 40 year hole ?: and, gee Matt, light rail wouldn't have significantly changed ANYTHING !
Posted Sun, Jul 27, 2:44 p.m. inappropriate
Sean = stuck on nothing: well, well, well, another brilliant statement by a light rail fixated individual .
If you had any sense, you would understand that the real use for I-5 now
AND in the future is conversion to handling truck and thru region traffic only.
Getting ALL such traffic off the rest of the region grid would help tremendously.
Eliminating on and off ramps that allow locals to hop on and off and expanding
on and off ramps for truck traffic at industrial centers only would aid this usage.
And it wouldn't cost 'billions' .
Come back when you have something, anything other than light rail !
Posted Sun, Jul 27, 4:18 p.m. inappropriate
promises, promises . . . don't believe 'em!: From John Niles: the Sound Move taxes from 1996 that were promised back then to be reduced somewhat if a light rail expansion plan were to lose in a future election
Look, everybody knows supporters of taxing measures on ballots can lie to their hearts' content. They can make up all kinds of false claims about how much tax will be taken in, what kind of services will be delivered, when new projects will be completed, etc. They can flat-out lie about all that and nobody can do anything about it later.
There's no downside for supporters of lying about ballot measures. Making false statements about what a ballot proposition from some government will do, or what it will cost, is just "free speech."
What are these "promises" you are thinking of from 1996, John Niles? I don't know what those are. Nobody ever should believe promises about what will be delivered (or what it would cost) if you vote "yes" for something at an election.
Here's an example from 1996 of a Sound Transit supporter making false statements about what "ST1" would cost: lawyer Jim Ellis and his "$8 per month for a family" promise. In the "Statement For" the ST1 measure, ST's lawyer Jim Ellis said that. That was his quote in the Voters Guide that was sent to everyone who had a vote on ST1.
Of course we now know he was full of shinola about that. But it doesn't matter. He and his law firm partners are making tens of millions off of ST1, and nobody can do anything now about that what he said in the Voters Guide (it's his protected free speech right to give us incorrect estimates that serves his purposes).
So what are those promises regarding "reducing" the ST1 taxes you reference, John Niles? Give us links, or quote the garbage they put out back then.
We don't want to be burned again by those same tactics. What did they say in 1996, and are they giving similar false assertions this time around?
Posted Sun, Jul 27, 8:47 p.m. inappropriate
RE: too late, wrong funding, outdated technology: 10ft., it's not a nickel increase in the sales tax, it's a half-cent increase -- 0.5% -- a half-cent on the dollar. No, it's not a good tax, but it's the one the State allows us to levy. It's up to the voters to decide if it's acceptable or not.
I know that nearly everyone thinks they're a better transit planner than the transit planners, but this is the first I've heard about roller-coaster technology being applied to public transit! Website please; I want to read up on this. It must be fascinating.
Re your friend in Beaverton, no, there will never be transit within a short walk of every residence in the region, nor every job. When people choose where to live and where to work, the availability of transit service should weigh in the equation along with all the other factors that people evaluate at such decision points.
Posted Sun, Jul 27, 8:54 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Sean, your the typical rail shallow supporter: Step, you continue to amaze. Don't add lanes to old-fashioned freeways -- build entirely new freeways instead! At what cost? When I-5 was built through Seattle, it wiped out 6,000 homes. How many would you propose to destroy in your wave of freeway building? How high would the tax levy be, and how would you sell it all to the voters?
Yes "private personal vehicles will remain the choice mode" BUT not for every trip at every time of the day or night. Stand with me some night at the International District/Chinatown Station and watch all the SRO buses leaving for the suburbs. Driving SOVs into and out of major employment centers every day is just nuts, and increasingly a choice only for the wealthy, who can afford gas at $4.30/gal. and parking at $X00/month. Personal vehicles are useful for many other trips, but not for commuting on our busiest corridors.
Posted Mon, Jul 28, 4:51 a.m. inappropriate
Finally, A Vote: This package is very likely to pass this year. All the polls indicate that it will. There is also logic in the high turnout expected and people wanting a viable alternative to high gas prices over time. Opposition will need to do more than blog posts and the occasional newspaper story, combined with the expected No vote by the Seattle Times editorial page. For the doubters: consider the big MO that produced the package (16-2) and the vote (18-0). For months they could scrape together 11 votes.
So if it wins, as seems likely, are all the transit dollars all lost for more buses? Hardly. The sales tax might be tapped out in King County (if ST looses we might have discovered that the tax source is really tapped out already by being oh so close to 10%), but there are a host of other ways to get the buses people need with other tax sources. If the demand is there, Olympia will provide the taxing authority - just like it did for the Monorail.
A constitutional amendment could provide one state source: gas tax money now confined to roads and ferries. Even though the gas tax is largely spent right now, it could provide more. If only the legislature had indexed the gas tax to inflation a few years ago, we wouldn't be facing the shock to the state transportation budget we're all feeling now. The oil companies screamed bloody murder on indexing then. They hardly have standing now (even though they have big checkbooks for campaigns).
Tolls ought to be another source of transit funding.
At some point urbanites are going to wake up to the fact that Olympia is pretty much stuck in a 1950s transportation tax structure that is great for a farm and timber economy but not much else.
Posted Mon, Jul 28, 10:41 a.m. inappropriate
1950s Democrats with a 1950s Tax Structure Trying to Fleece the 2008 Obama Voter: You've hit the problem on the head. This is the big point against ST2: the practically criminal and unaccountable taxation of people who won't use the thing. Who's going to benefit? Mainly Republican property owners, rich Bellevue & Mercer Island commuters, wealthy Microsoft workers, busines people riding to the airport, and thousands of special interested folks whose $100K+ salaries depend on it.
Any Obamamaniac who lives in, or hopes to live in a house with a backyard will still be stuck with an oppressive GMA-induced property tax burden, a sales tax heading past 10% (f the ST2 trend holds) and the unfortunate necessity of having to drive to school, home, and likely work. ST2's horrnedous cost, unaccountable taxation, and the special-interest pigs-at-a-trough feeding frenzy is directly comparable to the Geoge Bush military-industrial funding of the Iraq War machine. Vote for both Obama and ST2 at your peril.
The notion of paying for light rail someday out of revenues from users should be the bedrock of any funding plan. We liberals (and I consider myself one, even though because of waste and bureaucracy, I can appear to be against a lot of liberal propositions) should demand that growth pay for growth, just like it's done in the suburbs. Instead we're going to soak everyone in equal regressive measure.
At least Sims sees through the smoke in the fun-house, where the politicians have trotted out so many distorting mirrors that reality and facts have ceased to be worthy of attention. Sims is finally understanding that the debt service on light rail is ongodly; that incompetence and failure is being REWARDED, not punished; and that more deserving initiatives , such as buses or education or holding the taxation monster at bay, will have their oxygen sucked out of their lungs by the ST2 fiscal forest fire.
I'm all for light rail if you or other supporters can show a reasonable and accountable way to pay for it. The current funding through the sales tax boils down to simple theft from the young and idealistic Obama voter over a 30yr period, with little cost or schedule control. This is how cyniicism is bred and perpetuated.
Posted Mon, Jul 28, 11:20 a.m. inappropriate
Vote No on Light Rail Bailout: Of the 34 miles of light rail in ST2, 7 were supposed to be on line and paid for in the original 1996 package of a 21 mile route from Northgate down to 200th in SeaTac. This is a multi-billion dollar bailout of a failed, delayed, cost overrun boondoggle. Please vote No and tell those out of state college students to vote NO early and mail in the ballot and not to vote in their college towns.
Posted Mon, Jul 28, 12:10 p.m. inappropriate
RE: 1950s Democrats with a 1950s Tax Structure Trying to Fleece the 2008 Obama Voter: I thought that it was how the Puget Sound area finally got a light rail system. I'm looking forward to voting "yes."
Posted Tue, Jul 29, 11:48 a.m. inappropriate
A correction about Metro's taxing authority: Actually, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal, Metro can only collect a sales tax of 0.9%. This is the limit per the state legislation letting transit agencies collect any sales tax. So Julia Patterson is right when she says "Metro's taxing authority is used up."
What's interesting is there are some Sound Transit bus routes that could be just as easily run by Metro. Examples are the 545 (Seattle - Redmond) and about 10 others listed on this page, in fact it looks like half the buses Sound Transit runs are only within King County.
http://www.soundtransit.org/x7849.xml
Conversely, Sound Transit could well be putting more money now into helping riders who are not even able to get on the buses today because they are full. The PSBJ story is quite interesting, and I bet there are many other routes just as jammed. So much for the myth that only trains can get people out of cars.
Here's the article
PSBJ article
Posted Tue, Jul 29, 3:38 p.m. inappropriate
Could Step possibly be thinking of I-605?
Posted Sun, Aug 3, 11:30 p.m. inappropriate
It's the communications system, not the trains and tracks, that are behind.: The indication that Link light rail in Seattle might not open on schedule is arriving monthly to insiders in Seattle and Washington, DC in what are called "Project Management Oversight" reports from the independent engineering firm STV, Inc. which is paid by the Federal Transit Administration to keep an eye on Sound Transit's work.
From the May 2008 report: "...less-than-planned construction progress and technical issues with respect to the Communications Systems element are risks to achieving the planned revenue service date for the Initial Segment Project as well as the Airport Link extension." I've posted this report in pdf on the Resource Page of the Public Interest Transportation Forum.
According to STV in its oversight role, "The December 2007 suspension of bus operations in the DSTT has revealed technical deficiencies with elements of the contract C803 Communications Systems. In the PMOC's opinion, it appears evident that the manifestation of additional design and Quality issues should be anticipated as the overall systems test program is initiated. From the PMOC's perspective, due to the complexity of the communications system, this situation has the potential to further erode the probability of achieving the July 2009 revenue service date. ST continues to disagree with the PMOC's view on this issue."
Network specialists may be interested in this description of the light rail communications system posted by an engineer working on it: "TCP/IP traffic, computer terminals, and network devices ...[are part of] ... the Sound Transit Control Service Network (CSN). This is a closed network is carried over a private Sonet Ring throughout the Link Light Rail System and the Downtown Seattle Bus Tunnel."
According to the May report cited, the C803 communications contract work is at 79% design level and 53% completed.
You'd think it ought to be 100% designed by now!
Turning to another point, despite Tiptoe Tommy's claim, Seattle is not the last major metropolitan area to build light rail. Here in order of highest to lowest population are major U.S. metropolitan areas that have neither heavy rail nor light rail:
Miami- Fort Lauderdale- Pompano Beach, FL
Detroit- Warren- Livonia, MI
Riverside- San Bernardino- Ontario, CA
Tampa- St. Petersburg- Clearwater, FL
Cincinnati- Middletown, OH- KY- IN
Orlando- Kissimmee, FL
San Antonio, TX
Kansas City, MO- KS
Las Vegas- Paradise, NV
Columbus, OH
Indianapolis- Carmel, IN
Providence- New Bedford- Fall River, RI- MA
Austin- Round Rock, TX
Milwaukee- Waukesha- West Allis, WI
Nashville- Davidson-- Murfreesboro-- Franklin, TN
Jacksonville, FL
Louisville/ Jefferson County, KY- IN
A few of these places have in-operation or pending commuter rail, such as Miami area and Austin. There are a few street trollies for tourists in some of these places, and a few overhead monorail or automated people-mover type systems. Orlando-Kissimmee includes Disney World, which has all kinds of transit, but I won't count that unless somebody thinks I should ...
Posted Wed, Aug 6, 1:39 p.m. inappropriate
THIS DOG WON'T HUNT: We've been riding the good times for too long now, and it seems a gaggle of chickens are now coming home to roost. Local, Regional, and State agencies are all seeing red on the ledger sheets, and trying to come to grips with the current realities.
A telling vote will occur in November with both I-895 (Tim's latest child), and Sound Transits 20+ Billion light rail proposal. With energy costs going through the roof, along with most everything else we depend on, it seems that I-895, catering to congestion relief "NOW", and Sound Transits train to Overlake and Lynnwood by the 2020 or 2030 are on completely different sides of the same issue. My guess is most voters will vote with there pocketbooks and say yes to congestion relief for no new taxes, and a big NO to Sound Transits next generation startup of a plan that costs each household about $15,000.00.
Doug MacDonald, former Transportation Secretary, in a recent series in Crosscut should be required reading for the voters guide. He lays out a very convincing argument for buses and bus rapid transit corridors, combined with regional planning policies that can be phased in starting NOW, for much less money.
Global Warming, and green house gas emissions should be at the forefront of everyones agenda. Politics aside, if we get this one wrong, were all in the same boat -- the one that is sinking as the tide rolls in. We need to invest our tax dollars wisely from here on out. Building a hugely expensive light rail system that barely increases transits share of all trips made over the next several decades is foolish. The lavish plan for rail actually generates more greenhouse gas than it saves, considering traffic and construction emmisions during build-out.
Thank god most voters will get this one right!
Posted Sat, Sep 6, 4:53 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Can't we all just get along?: David Brewster and Crosscut are most certainly not anti-Sound Transit.
Note Brewster's echo of a pro-Prop 1 campaign theme in the subtitle above about the "weight of 40 years of paralysis about transit planning," then starting off by quoting a leading supporter of Prop 1 who thinks the region is in a "40-year hole."
However, the four decades of paralysis thing is nonsense. The Puget Sound transit world began anew a dozen years ago with voter approval of Sound Move's ten year, multi-billion dollar plan in 1996. More recently, King County Metro -- delivering much more transit connectivity than Sound Transit, and the future operator of Link Light Rail after Sound Transit gets this railroad built -- has gained two transit tax hikes within the first few years of this century.
Sound Transit has been planning massive transit expansion continuously for the past five years using resources approved in 1996. What happened in the decades leading up 1996 don't matter any more.
Voters rejected the fruits of the recent Sound Transit expansion planning -- Prop 1 the first time -- on November 7, 2007. Now the Prop 1 Do-Over -- implementing less trackage with the same tax hike -- is again going to the voters.
So no planning paralysis is evident from recent past years.
Furthermore, no paralysis will be forthcoming even if Prop 1 loses again, since ST is fully funded and authorized to keep on building the first stage of its plan for years to come. Or so they say.
Posted Sat, Mar 14, 4:27 p.m. inappropriate
Update, March 14, 2009: Prop 1 passed overwhelmingly last November, and the regional sales tax jumps up a half cent on April 1, doubling Sound Transit's daily take of revenue.
In these economic hard times, the agency CEO is quoted in a cover story of the March 2009 Progressive Railroading magazine describing Sound Transit as being “really, really healthy.” The magazine notes, "Sound Transit is not proposing any service cuts or fare increases in its upcoming budget." The CEO declares,“We’ve stayed really conservative and while things are tight financially, we’re in good shape despite the economy.”
With doubled tax revenue on April 1, we should expect this agency to be in "good shape!" I testified at the Sound Transit public hearing in February for the opening fare of light rail to be free until the train opens all the way to the Airport later in 2009 or in early 2010.
Will the first Seattle light rail segment to Tukwila open on schedule, July 3? Nowhere in the magazine article was "July" mentioned ... rather "this summer" was the quoted time of opening. However, the Sound Transit CEO just declared on Friday March 13th that "July" will be the time of opening. This claim is made despite no extra float days for unexpected problems remaining in the schedule of construction completion and comprehensive testing. Stay tuned.