Sound Transit begins a series of open houses this week designed to convince voters to pay for a series of rail and road projects.
It’s critical that voters approve the roughly $11 billion in funding, which would extend the light rail starter system that’s currently under construction. That’s why problems with the proposal are so painful to discuss. Here are three examples:
— The light rail line suffers from dimished expectations. For example, the Eastside line won’t open for almost 20 years (!) and the route already has been shortened, thanks to a dispute developing over how to route the future line through downtown Bellevue. It appears the line would end near Microsoft rather than in downtown Redmond.
— Sound Transit appears to have taken the most expedient route — not the best route — for commuter rail south of Tacoma, where the project may interfere with redevelopment of the neighborhood. Dan Voelpel correctly notes that the agency wants to avoid any further delays that could hinder this fall’s vote.
— Both costs and ridership are low-balled. The agency wants to keep the total bill down in order to avoid sticker shock. Meanwhile ridership figures appear based on current land-use patterns and don’t take into consideration future congestion or factors like tolls or more costly gasoline. It’s likely that density will increase around train stations, boosting ridership, and the region will need to spend more on the system once construction starts and people realize how much they really want it.
These are serious issues but shouldn’t derail the overall projects. I plan to be skeptical at the open houses, vote for funding this fall and then demand the projects be built as efficiently as possible.
Comments
9 responses to “Sound Transit readies package — flaws and all”
Bradley, what would be the “best route” for commuter rail south of Tacoma in your opinion? The agency can’t do earthwork or acquire new right-of-way – this is existing track, other than the connection between Freighthouse Square and the Lakewood Subdivision.
It seems to me the best route is the AIA suggestion that included a short tunnel but cost quite a bit more. It seems that ST has taken the route of least resistance — but that may not be best longer-term.
Okay, I wondered if that was what you meant.
There are a number of reasons that a tunnel would be a bad call:
1) Amtrak Cascades will be moving to that corridor in 2010-2011 as part of their Point Defiance Bypass project to decrease travel time. Any tunnel built now would have to be ripped up (or at least altered) and double-tracked to support that service. An elevated route leaves room to add a second track without significant new earthwork. WSDOT has around $60 million budgeted as part of the 2005 Transportation Partnership Package to do just that, but if a tunnel were built by ST now, WSDOT would have to go back to the legislature to ask for more money. Considering we had I-912 on this topic already, more statewide legislative discussion and probably at least a biennium delay would be a bad idea.
2) Sound Transit would have to cut another project, probably more than one project, to come up with another $150 million or more for a tunnel. The projects chosen are already carefully balanced to both make the best service increase choices and to ensure that every community in the district sees a benefit. $150 million would lose us a couple of park and rides, or a couple of miles of light rail – it’s not pocket change, and it would likely seriously impact ST2/RTID’s chance of passing.
3) Here’s the technical issue. When this corridor was first approached, ST found that an at-grade crossing of the major arterial (is it South Tacoma Way?) at 3.3% grade would prevent a stopped F59PHI locomotive with loaded cars from starting in wet weather. An elevated route smooths the climb up to Lakewood to 2.8% (a safe grade in any weather). A tunnel would be *below* the original grade, meaning that climb southbound would likely be even more steep, and even more likely to cause a problem.
By the way, I agree with you on ridership. As I understand it, Sound Transit is bound to use FTA-approved models to project ridership, and is not allowed to take into account a lot of regional factors (like future congestion or tolling). You might want to email them and ask, actually – their staff have been fantastic about answering questions for me.
Just to add: That corridor will see 18 trains/day from Sounder, and eventually 24 or 26 trains/day from Cascades – far too many for a single track tunnel. With Sounder ridership climbing rapidly, I also wouldn’t be surprised to see round trips added in addition to the 9 already planned. It’s very, very hard to expand a tunnel once it’s built – in a corridor seeing expansion, the worst possible plan is to limit yourself to single track.
Actually, much of the reason we’re moving Cascades to that corridor is *because* of the bottleneck caused by the single track Nelson Bennett tunnel under Point Defiance. It would be extremely foolhardy to make the same mistake again and bottleneck our ability to expand.
I enjoy reading this blog, and I think it’s a good idea to remain skeptical in an era of megaproject cost over-runs, but it appears the author missed some important facts in this thoughtful commentary.
“The light rail line suffers from dimished expectations. For example, the Eastside line won’t open for almost 20 years (!)”
I asked this very question at an open house in Bellevue. I was told by sound transit staff that the Bellevue line will be completed in 12 years, which is still a long time, but not so long when you consider the challenging topography, narrow rights of way, and highly organized opposition. The 20 year period for full build-out is due to cash flow issues (thanks to Eyman’s I-776, sound transit is limited to collecting only sales tax in phase 2). Once light rail service opens in 2009, and people see the incredible redevelopment opportunities which come along with it, I believe King County residents will consider voting to infuse more revenues into the key projects, and speed up construction. We didn’t get into this mess overnight, and we aren’t going to get out of it quickly, either. I agree with the author: timing is imparative, and we need to keep our political leaders’ feet to the fire and get these light rail extensions done sooner rather than later.
“and the route already has been shortened, thanks to a dispute developing over how to route the future line through downtown Bellevue. It appears the line would end near Microsoft rather than in downtown Redmond.”
I don’t believe the decision about a Bellevue tunnel has been made yet, so this is not the issue. The issue again appears to be financing and cash flow; sound transit appears to have gone out of its way this time to avoid past cost estimating problems and avoid over-promising. From the materials I have read, no federal funding is assumed. I know for a fact other regional transit agencies have built federal funding assumptions into their extension plans, which allowed them go a lot further than they could have with local money only. We’ll see if sound transit is willing to use this tool. They received $500m for their first 14 miles. I think they should be able to get a billion for the next 40. I don’t know if that would get you to Redmond or not. In the end, I don’t think Redmond is the most important destination. Microsoft/Overlake sure is, and I would imagine they would oppose a Bellevue tunnel if that option put the last couple miles to Bill Gates Land in jeopardy.
“Both costs and ridership are low-balled. The agency wants to keep the total bill down in order to avoid sticker shock.”
I think sticker shock will happen either way, but again, I believe cost estimating has been more rigorous this time around. For instance, I heard south extension line is assumed to be elevated – because it’s more expensive – even though there may be options for at grade sections along I-5 corridor, the same way a section of the current line to airport is being built next to the freeway near SR 518.
I think Ben S is right about ridership estimates. The feds require extremely conservative modeling. I’ve read Denver was forced to underestimate ridership by as much as 40%, which has caused problems with park and ride capacity. I wonder if there is any way to get the FTA to change it’s requirements if current standards consistently turn out to be wrong.
Finally, a quick search on sound transit and cost estimating led me to this excellent resource:
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/partners/erp/mtgnotes07-20-21-2006.pdf
It appears they learned their lesson: real estate contingencies are much higher, project scoping with local jurisdictions was done ahead of time (I remember the city of Tukwila gave them a hard time in phase 1) and no stone seems to be left unturned.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think the author’s comment about costs being lowballed is necessarily accurate this time around. Maybe the author is privy to some other report or source he chose not to cite?
Anyway, great discussion. I am thankful for all the independent voices out there in blog land these days.
Transit will enjoy much more support once people see the first leg in operation. But it’s critical that growth be focused around this new infrastructure so it can deliver results.
Thanks for the great information. I’ll look into those and follow up!
Brad, I’ve recently learned that the grade issue with Sounder was due to operator error – EMD brought out a rep in May of 2006 who verified that the trains can climb 3.5% from a stop on wet track. Sounder Operations has asked that any additions be limited to 2.85% regardless (preventing issues).
Thanks, Ben, for the info. Do you think this is a sign that ST is erring on the safe side with design overall?
No problem. 🙂 From what I’ve seen, ST always errs on the safe side in design. Structural support for light rail trackway in SoDo, grouting for Beacon Hill, long-term testing of at-grade safety systems with Tacoma Link before implementation in the Rainier Valley – I’m learning, at this point, to think twice whenever I see something and think it’s a problem. If I dig in, I have always found that ST made the best choice available with the information at their disposal.
So, yes – I do see this as another piece of evidence that they always err on the safe side.