Previous posts have detailed how congestion
in Seattle and on I-5 and I-405 can be reduced. Reducing congestion along I-90 corridor has been made far
more difficult by the Mercer Island City Council’s recent East Link agreement with Sound
Transit and King County Metro.
East Link should have never been approved. It has always been the most egregious example of Prop 1 extensions that will inevitably be rated as some of the worst transportation boondoggles in history. The PSRC concluded in a 2004 “High Capacity Corridor Assessment” funded by Sound Transit that light rail routed though the Downtown Seattle Transportation Tunnel (DSTT) will be limited to 8880 riders per hour, a fraction of the capacity needed to reduce congestion.
Sound Transit will spend billions on an East Link extension across I-90 Bridge for half that capacity. It not only halves capacity to SeaTac, it increases I-90 congestion. Sound Transit violated the Revised Code of Washington 81.104.100 by never considering two-way bus only routes on the I-90 Bridge center roadway for lower cost HCT. Doing so, along with added 4th lanes on outer roadways for non-transit HOV, could have provided 10 times East Link capacity, 10 years sooner, at 1/10th the cost.
East Link should have never been approved. It has always been the most egregious example of Prop 1 extensions that will inevitably be rated as some of the worst transportation boondoggles in history. The PSRC concluded in a 2004 “High Capacity Corridor Assessment” funded by Sound Transit that light rail routed though the Downtown Seattle Transportation Tunnel (DSTT) will be limited to 8880 riders per hour, a fraction of the capacity needed to reduce congestion.
Sound Transit will spend billions on an East Link extension across I-90 Bridge for half that capacity. It not only halves capacity to SeaTac, it increases I-90 congestion. Sound Transit violated the Revised Code of Washington 81.104.100 by never considering two-way bus only routes on the I-90 Bridge center roadway for lower cost HCT. Doing so, along with added 4th lanes on outer roadways for non-transit HOV, could have provided 10 times East Link capacity, 10 years sooner, at 1/10th the cost.
Sound Transit also ignored an
FHA Record of Decision conclusion the center roadway was needed for vehicles even with the 4th lanes added to outer roadway East Link confiscation of I-90 Bridge
center roadway will increase outer roadway congestion.
The recent Mercer Island City
Council agreement with Sound Transit and King County Metro will surely
exacerbate that congestion.
Sound Transit does little to provide additional parking or even local
bus routes to provide access to any of the Prop 1 extensions. Thus, rather than using light rail to
increase transit capacity, light rail extensions will be used to replace
existing Sound Transit and King County Metro bus routes into Seattle.
While
spending billions on light rail extensions may assure faster commutes for
current transit riders, reducing the number of buses on HOV lanes will do
little to reduce congestion there and nothing on GP lanes. Again,
the Mercer Island agreement exacerbates the problem with Sound Transit’s plan to use light rail to replace buses.
Sound Transit
initially proposed replacing buses to the Mercer Island City Council with a
January 21, 2014 Integrated Transit System (ITS)
presentation. It detailed how 40,000 of East Link’s 50,000
daily riders would come from terminating all I-90 corridor buses at either
South Bellevue or Mercer Island light rail stations.
A subsequent (Nov 19th) Mercer Island presentation went into considerable details about ITS. Their preferred approach was for buses to exit I-90 on WB HOV off ramp to a 200 ft drop off and pick-up area on the 80th Ave overpass before returning to I-90 on EB HOV on ramp. Sound Transit presented 5 different proposals for routing up to 84 buses an hour onto and off the island.
A subsequent (Nov 19th) Mercer Island presentation went into considerable details about ITS. Their preferred approach was for buses to exit I-90 on WB HOV off ramp to a 200 ft drop off and pick-up area on the 80th Ave overpass before returning to I-90 on EB HOV on ramp. Sound Transit presented 5 different proposals for routing up to 84 buses an hour onto and off the island.
Mercer Island residents
objected to their light rail station being inundated with thousands of
transferees every morning and afternoon. That objection was presumably the reason all
five of Sound Transit proposals for terminating buses on the island as “no
longer under consideration”; presumably ending ITS.
However a March 13,
2019 MI Weekly resurfaced the issue.
It included notice of a March 19th Sound Transit
presentation of the results of a Mercer Island Transit Interchange Operational
and Configuration Study to the City Council. The end result of that
presentation was a Mercer City Council agreement allowing I-90 buses to drop off and pick up commuters on 77th
Ave rather than 80th Ave.
However rather than
the 84 buses an hour Sound Transit had initially proposed, Sound Transit and
King County Metro agreed to limit I-90 bus transit to 20 buses an hour for East Link to replace cross-lake buses.
Meanwhile the council ignored previous objections to terminating buses
on Mercer Island. The result was
both agreed to ending transit capacity for thousands of I-90 corridor
commuters.
The bottom line is
East Link should have never been approved. The recent Mercer Island City Council action exacerbates the
debacle.
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