Very intelligent aritcle. Vanpools are clearly far superior to light or heavy rail in every way, including the fact that vanpools are far more energy-efficient than light rail or heavy rail.

Why isn't this being pursued more energetically by our elected officials? What is the downside to increasing the number of people who use vanpools? I don't see a single negative.

Vanpools are great a great tool (among many) in the transportation toolbox, when they work. Unfortunately, they can be difficult to sustain. The article doesn't address the volunteer nature of vanpools (they're not driven by vanpool "employees") or that the true cost to the commuters is covered by employer paid subsidy.

When participants move to a different employer (or change their hours, or get relocated, or laid off, etc.), they leave the group. This can easily lead to the group falling below the minimum required amount of riders. Our employer provides a very small subsidy compared to how expensive a vanpool would be for my commute. Because of that, no one wants to form a vanpool with me. I also know several vanpoolers who had their group quit because their employer reduced their subsidy and they would rather drive alone and have their own car than pay to vanpool.

Wonderful! Not only vanpools, but any and all forms of raising the number of persons per vehicle. Ride sharing,picking up folks so as to shift to the HOT lanes, more incentives to firms for ridesharing, also jitneys. Three or more persons in a vehicle is, as noted, FAR FAR the most efficient form of transport, economically and environmentally.

Light and heavy rail are doing different things than are van pools, and difference is scale: Heavy rail is interurban transit that keeps people off highways. Light rail is meant to convey large numbers of people out from outlying areas to transportation hubs or business districts, also keeping people off roads. Buses and trolleys stop at multiple locations within a few neighborhoods. Vans pools are essentially custom bus routes for multiple people going to exactly the same destination. When you look at robust, fully used transit systems in other places like Tokyo, London, or Berlin, you see that these layers work in harmony, not in competition. Thinking that van pools could replace heavy or light rail is silly--but rail, buses, and trolleys if harmonized could (and probably eventually should) replace van pools.

Well-said, smacgry. It's impossible to imagine doing away with Link or Sounder rail services and substituting vanpools. Where in downtown Seattle could we park a couple thousand full-size vans? Assuming that most rail riders would willingly switch, which is hard to fathom.

The big shortcoming of vanpools is that it's a "bus" with one trip in the morning and one trip in the afternoon. Miss that one trip and you're stuck. Get to work some other way. Or get home some other way. Vanpools work best for long commutes and between relatively low-density origins and destinations.

And of course don't even try to imagine vanpools getting you to the Seahawks game on the weekend, or to downtown for shopping at Christmas time. Vanpools are ONLY a work commute mode.

Excellent comments, smacgry and R.

Why don't Balmer and other Microsoft people understand about scaling. If you think about transportation systems in terms of computer network design, a system involving only roads will never scale. Even with van pools, it will just never work.

Another odd thing about this article and others like is the emphasis on reducing traffic (road) congestion. This will never happen, even if you build more and more roads. Get out your laptop, write a traffic simulator program and run it with the expected population increases around here.

"It's impossible to imagine doing away with Link or Sounder rail services and substituting vanpools. Where in downtown Seattle could we park a couple thousand full-size vans? Assuming that most rail riders would willingly switch, which is hard to fathom."

You are saying that the few thousand people who commute into downtown on Link or Sounder trains did not previously drive to work in cars, because if they had driven to work in cars, vanpools would need a fraction of the parking spots vacated when those commuters switched to Link and Sounder trains. If those train commuters did not previously drive to work, then all Link and Sounder trains did was take people off buses at an extremely high cost in tax dollars.

Van pools are not designed to attract people away from buses, but out of single-occupancy cars. The cars that no longer are driven into the city would vacate up to 15 parking spots for each van in a van pool. So, what is the concern about parking? 15 commuters in a van would take one parking spot compared to 15 parking spots if they each drove alone.

Many people might not willingly switch from trains to vans, because the train trips are about 80% subsidized by taxpayers. Make train commuters pay the actual cost of their trips, and there would be no train commuters to start with.

However, vans for the most part would probably be much faster than trains, because they would travel non-stop between the park-and-ride to your donwtown workplace, with no stops at stations along the way. And vans would take you right to where you work, instead of dropping you off at the King Street Station, or downtown tunnel, and forcing you to transfer to a bus, or walk, to your final destination, again adding time to your commute.

The only advantage to trains over vans is that trains are so heavily subsidized that the cost of riding trains is absurdly low. That is the basic lure of trains -- ridiculously low fares due to enormous taxpayer subsidies.

Lincoln, some current rail riders did drive cars (or carpools) to work downtown, and some rode the bus. Putting commuters on rails frees up capacity on buses, leaving empty seats for new riders (caveat: to be filled as the economy recovers...) It also frees up space on the highways and parking garages for new driving commuters.

Re your "...vans for the most part would probably be much faster than trains, because they would travel non-stop between the park-and-ride to your donwtown workplace..." What highways do you commute on, pray tell, where you always get a non-stop trip during weekday rush hours? And what will rish-hour traffic be like when the economy fully recovers???

Even HOV lanes come to an abrupt halt every time someone runs out of gas or gets in a fender-bender. Or do you advocate building more freeway lanes to accommodate rush hour commuters, and future traffic growth? If so, 'fess up please.

What trains do is provide new right-of-way for the public to travel on, beyond that provided by the highway system. Trains have a very high on-time performance and are not susceptible to the traffic congestion that's become routine on our highways. Yes, they are subsidized -- because the voters voted to tax themselves to build them! And as we can see and hear on the media every day, the public damn well expects politicians to provide what they voted for! Listen to what the tea-partiers say about politicians who don't deliver what the voters want.

If you or Mr. Ennis seriously want to pursue an expanded vanpool program, please check with King County Metro to see how long the waiting list is for vans for new vanpools. I suspect the list is short, if it exists at all. As I said earlier, there is a limited market for vanpools, mostly very long commutes (Seattle to Olympia, Enumclaw to Seattle, etc) and trips connecting remote housing tracts and low-density employment sites. Most non-SOV commuters want options, and not be locked in to only one trip to work and only one trip home: the heart of the vanpool concept.

"Putting commuters on rails frees up capacity on buses, leaving empty seats for new riders " Adding new buses to routes also creates new capacity on buse, at a fraction of the cost of building rail lines. And when people switch from cars to buses that frees up space on highways for the buses. It is such a stupid argument to say we should build trains to free up space on buses, when what we really should do is spend that money on more buses, to free up space on buses, at a fraction of the cost of building train lines.

"What highways do you commute on, pray tell, where you always get a non-stop trip during weekday rush hours?" Every one. Vanpools do not have to stop at five "stations" between Tacoma and Seattle, like Sounder trains do on every trip. Sounder takes one hour for that trip. Driving is significantly faster. Van pools do not have to stop at 11 stations between SeaTac and Westlake, like every Central Link light rail train does.

"Or do you advocate building more freeway lanes to accommodate rush hour commuters, and future traffic growth? If so, 'fess up please." This is the ignorance of the typical train cheerleader, either genuine ignorance, or feigned. A van can carry 15 people, vs 2 people in a typical car in the HOV lane. Now, by my math, 15 is about 7.5 times as much as 2. Therefore, a van pool can take 7.5 cars off the road and replace them with one van.

To simplify this for you, a highway lane with 2,000 cars per hour at 2 people per car totals 4,000 people per hour. That same highway lane with 2,000 vans per hour with 15 people in each van carries 30,000 people per hour. Ergo, you greatly incrase the people-carrying capacity of highway lanes by putting more people in each vehicle. Van pools, car pools and, of course buses, do this at a fraction of the cost of trains.

We don't need "new right-of-way" at $160 million to $600 million per mile (for ST light rail.) We can greatly increase the capacity of our current highway system by putting more people in each vehicle, with van pools, car pools and buses.

Buses provide all the extra trips commuters need to augment van pools, should they miss their ride. We certainly can provide many times the number of trips to a far greater number of locations for a given amount of money with buses than we can with ST's stupidly expensive trains.

I should also add that vanpools can take you right to your office, while Sounder trains drop everyone off at King Street Station. How many people do you know who work at King Street Station? How long does it take the typical Sounder commuter to get to their office after being dropped off at King Street Station?

Michael’s bias is obvious, but he does make some good points; here’s where I differ. In my view, most commuters prefer their car and accept the higher cost of driving because of our preference to "cocoon" (be alone), the comforts of the automobile (heat/cool, CDs or whatever as loud as they want, can sing in the car, etc.), that they’re unaware of what those costs truly are, but also for the freedom of mobility, flexibility, the power of the masses (everyone else drives and the perception of riding a bus, and perceived speed. There’s also a lack of understanding of how to ride a bus – particularly if transfers are involved (there is a bus rider etiquette and lingo for newbies to overcome, and transit agencies do a poor job of m), the discomfort of having to walk to a stop, wait out in the elements, and being in close proximity to strangers. However, about 7% of the public doesn’t own a car, and still others only have a single car, so for these folks, a vanpool won’t cut the mustard. Re: automobile commuters, I think if you conducted a survey, most people would equate the cost of driving with the cost of a gallon of gas and the number of gallons they use based on the inflated EPA estimate for their vehicle, which doesn’t account for “real world” driving conditions. This is the same group that pays for monthly parking and goes out to lunch every day, then wonders why they’re always “broke.” For speed, I presently take a two bus trip, and it takes at most 5 minutes more than taking a car, and it’s a whole lot more relaxing, particularly on the way home when there’s much more traffic, so for some, speed may be more of a perception than a reality, and the benefit of less stress is difficult to measure. Vanpools, while far less dependent on taxpayers, Michael’s only priority, aren’t nirvana. I used to be in one, and it was problematic in large part because one participant was never ready when the vanpool came, and the vanpool’s route kept changing to accommodate him, eventually stopping across the street from his house as we watched him casually drinking his morning coffee, the vanpool’s engine running. Being late and returning late (due to this person not being at their pickup location on time) were commonplace, and temperments were tested. Eventually, folks peeled off, even though the destination was a major employer, and the vanpool ran out of a sufficient number of riders to keep it going. I’ve seen where carpools have met a similar fate. I’d like to see a different type of vanpool/carpool experience. Say, for a common location, e.g. Lynnwood Transit Center, there were a fleet of four seat vehicles – not necessarily vans, it could be something more economical to operate – at the ready to go to any number of destinations that the buses therein don’t go to. Riders could walk up to the first van they see going to “X” and hop aboard. The complication would be coordinating such a venture!

This whole article is such a false choice, vanpools or light rail. On that point, the article fails miserably to make any kind of logical case. It's like saying community colleges vs. 4 year colleges (like UW). That would also be a phony argument. Community colleges serve different markets than the UW. Light rail largely serves a different market than vanpools. So the article fails to make its case because the whole premise is wrong headed in the first place. Vanpools have their place but not as a replacement for light rail, any more than vanpools could or should replace all single occupant vehicles on the road.

Check out any Sounders game or baseball game or football game. Light rail is PACKED because people are smart. They know that hooking up with light rail and leaving their car far away from the stadium is a good idea. Imagine thousands of vanpools shuttling into the city for a game. Or worse, the nightmare of cars we have now. Now that light rail is open, they are using that in droves. Over time, similar things will happen as people will move closer to light rail stops that are convenient for them. Not all, of course but some. Some will continue to have their 2-3 hour commute from the islands, driving to the ferry, taking the ferry and then driving to their office. That's their choice and there's nothing cheap about it either.

It's puzzling why Mr. Ennis is asking King County to pay for a van pool and perpetuate big government programs. He should take seriously his own Washington Policy Center's slogan, 'Improving lives through market solutions.'

Why doesn't he urge businesses to set up and run vanpools privately, if the market is so vast and the model is so wonderful? If there is a market out there for vanpools, perhaps the Washington Policy Center should be pushing for that.

Either/or is a red herring. On both sides. The only time humans learn much is in a crisis. That's pretty much all the time for those with the lowest means—I grew up that way, and have to say that car pooling to the U-Dub was a lot of fun even at the time--most of the rest I remember with more fondness now than at the time. I digress.

My point is that in a crisis both the people and their governments do what they have to do, not what they prefer to do.

Such a time may be approaching, e.g., the headline about for the first time throughout the entire nation having to make drastic cut backs in public education— our seed corn. Don't look to the feds, they just pledged taxes far into the future for bailouts and jumb-start everlasting growth again floated as the new economy.

We will know we have reached a crisis when when we find we are kick these things around for real, instead of just argue for what appeals to us, what we want others to do, or both.

oops "when we find we can kick these things around"

another vote for post correcting posts

"Imagine thousands of vanpools shuttling into the city for a game. Or worse, the nightmare of cars we have now. Now that light rail is open, they are using that in droves."

Well, since van pools carry at least twice as many people as cars, replacing those thousands of cars with vanpools would reduce the number of vehicles "shutting into the city for a game." Vanpools oviously greatly reduce traffic congestion. So what is your point? You have no point.

People are using light rail in "droves" to get to pro sports games in Seattle? How many is a "drove"? Quite a few of those "droves" going to games on light rail are coming from downtown. They all could have made that same trip on the many buses which use the same downtown tunnel as the light trains, and stop even closer to Safeco Field than the light rail trains do. So, for those fans, light rail takes no cars of the streets.

People coming from the south on light rail are a small percentage of total fans. How many fans live close enough to a light rail station to make that practical? A tiny percentage.

Van pools can originate anywhere -- not just at the 8 light rail stations on Central Link.

And using pro sports games to justify the enormous expense of Link light rail ist just stupid. The small percentage of fans who ride light rail to games could easily just take a bus, at a fraction of the cost to taxpayers that the stupidly expensive light rail cost.

If Ennis were saying we should increase mass transit funding to expand van-pools, I'd agree - but somehow that's not the impression I get from this or anything else he's ever written.

Van pools are a great ADDITIONAL option - but the only work if you can commit to a fixed commuting schedule, which most people cannot do.

What happens if you take a van-pool to work and unexpectedly have to work late? What happens if you end up having to leave work early because something happens at home? What if you need to run errands or make an unplanned stop somewhere along the way.

In situations like those you'd likely have to use some other form of mass transit - which people like Mike Ennis are eager to gut - or end up wishing you'd had your own car.

I have a car, but I almost never use it because I live on Queen Anne and work downtown and take a bus; if I need to head to another urban center like Tacoma, I take Sounder; for the airport, I use Link.

As far as subsidies go, EVERY means of transportation is subsidized: it's just a matter of degrees.

Typical anti transit smear. If a transit project is successful, that means we should cut funding to everything else.

Every means of transportation is subsidized, and every means serves a purpose. No working transportation system around the world uses just one technology or another.

What the writer is doing in this article is like pitting Eastlake against I-5 because it costs less to the taxpayer to move someone down Eastlake.

It's all part of an integrated system, and we don't need more anti transit advocates turning the argument into "rail vs. bus. van pool vs. car."