Even More Sound Transit Incompetence

Sound Transit continues a decade of demonstrating its failure to understand what constitutes effective public transit.  The latest example is their plan for shutting down Line 1 during weekends to implement routing Line 2 trains to Lynnwood.

It’s never been clear why Sound Transit chose to route east side light rail trains through DSTT to UW and beyond.  Sound Transit could have terminated Line 2 at existing CID station and allowed those needing to go beyond to transfer to Line 1 trains. Routing additional Line 1 trains through DSTT could have satisfied any need for added capacity to and from Lynnwood.  Routing Line 2 trains through DSTT halves the number of Line 1 trains to both Lynnwood and Angel Lake.

Any transit system board member with a modicum of competence, especially someone receiving $200,000 in compensation, would raise all sorts of questions.  Does Sound Transit continue to schedule Line 2’s current 2-car trains every 10 minutes for 16 hours a day to Lynnwood?  Limiting half of the trains to Lynnwood to 2 cars is hardly a way to increase the extension’s capacity.

However, routing 4-car trains 18 miles to downtown Redmond and back the 96 trips the schedule requires will double the operating cost. At $30 per vehicle mile, each round-trip cost $1080 per car or $4320 for 4-car trip. Maintaining the current schedule of trains every 10 minute for 16 hours a day requires 96 trips, or $414,720 each weekday.  

Yet the 3839 weekday boardings for the 8 Starter Line stations in January indicated only 1919.5 average riders, a fraction of the 4000 to 5700 predicted.  While the extension to downtown Redmond and stop on Mercer Island will add riders, routing 4-car trains to CID is an expensive option.

The other question is how does Sound Transit merge Line 1 and Line 2 routes.   While Line 1 can be scheduled southbound to Angel Lake and Line 2 to Redmond, how do they intend to account for different trip times when they return. Safe operation through DSTT normally requires 4 minutes between trains. Routing Line 2 trains through DSTT would seem to require increasing the scheduled intervals between trains to assure they satisfy that requirement. 

The bottom line is Sound Transit should have never routed light rail trains across the I-90 Bridge.  Doing so precluded two-way only BRT on center roadway with 10 times the capacity, 10 years sooner, at 1/10^th the cost. They compounded that problem by choosing to use light rail trains to replace I-90 corridor bus routes into Seattle.  Replacing bus routes reduces transit capacity into the city.

As detailed above routing Line 2 trains through DSTT results in all sorts of problems. The failure to recognize them is another example of Sound Transit Board incompetence. The Line 2-to-Lynnwood debut next winter will demonstrate the result.