I have three things to write about. I’ll start with a transit related item and then move on to the other two in subsequent posts. It’s bonus week!
When one returns from a different planet, for example New Hampshire, one finds things are not very different from when one left. Or two. The number of travelers isn’t crucial.
Sound Transit has been approved by voters to extend the Link Light Rail over Lake Washington to Bellevue. The plan is to eventually connect to Redmond. The route over the I-90 Floating Bridge carpool lanes is being challenged. That should slow the whole thing down by years.
The route in Bellevue is also still open to some decisions. Committees are forming as we speak. You might be on one. You better check because the meetings have started and you don’t want to be late.
Bellevue feels that if Sound Transit goes along streets on the “surface” it will conflict with cars and cause disruptions to normal traffic flow. Have you been to Bellevue? Nothing is normal. I’ve seen as many as six cars run the light after it changes to red.
Anyway, one Bellevue solution is to bore a tunnel under the central business district. There are three main questions: where does it start, where does it end, and who has to do the digging? I’m not going to do it. They have a Tunnel Boring Machine that can take care of it but its being oiled up for the Alaska Way Viaduct project right now.
The Sound Transit “Fact Sheet” shows various routes. Protests are already beginning. Maybe you’re on one of those groups, too.
We here in the Greater Newcastle Puget Sound Metropolitan Area (GNPSMA) have been fighting transportation issues for over 100 years. We have the four longest floating bridges in the world. Two have sunk and been rebuilt and another is ready to sink. We also have the largest ferry fleet (number of boats) in the world.
One of the most vexing problems is that there is no place for a new multi-lane highway. We have to fit more capacity into the ones we have. And they too are nearly at the edges of their right-of-ways. That’s the primary argument for increased mass transit.
There’s a Puget Sound Regional Council consisting of 67 members… Wow that’s a recipe for wasting time right there. Each “member” is from an agency that has its own responsibilities and goals. The problem is these are naturally in conflict. The light rail on I-90 is just one example of a conflict. We apparently have a law in Washington that says you can’t use a road built with gas tax dollars for anything but a road. That’s how we built the I-90 Bridge so it has to be used for a road. Maybe. The courts will have to decide.
Another planet heard from is Kemper, the Bellevue Square guy. He says rail transportation can only work in very dense cities, such as New York. He’s got a point; in order to make a transportation system efficient it needs to collect riders near their starting points, run so often that missing one is no impact, and deliver riders close to their destinations. The GNPSMA bus/rail/ferry/trolley systems require riders to travel some distance from origins and at the end of the ride travel again to their destinations.
But the vision for the future is that we’ll reach a sweet spot where that hub and spoke concept will work. Here’s one part of that concept: more cars on the road these days use less gas which means they don’t pay as much in gas tax. Thus fewer dollars for roads. More riders on public transportation also mean fewer dollars from gas tax. Smart people are working on electric cars and bikes that use no gas at all. So traditional funding for roads is shrinking. What they want to do is add a pay as you go system. Everyone will be tracked and get a monthly bill for miles.
What that will do is make people realize what it costs to drive. Right now it’s hidden in the gas and other tax. If they see the specific costs they will change their habits. This will usher in a new form of small neighborhood collection vehicles. These will run around picking up commuters and dropping them off at the transit centers where they catch a bus or train. At the end of the trip another local delivery system will shuttle them to destinations. This isn’t my idea or even my solution. I don’t see it. But some heavy thinkers are saying it might look like this out in the future.
Right now the two biggest issues with the East Link Light Rail are the I-90 Express Lane usage and the route of the downtown Bellevue segment. Do either of these even mention Newcastle? No. So why do I care? Because once the dust settles I bet the whole thing will move to Newcastle. We’ll have the world class transit station much sooner than we expected.
There’s no punch line to this one, so watch Letterman tonight.
Al
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