The Line 2 Link Challenge

The May 10^th Seattle Times Traffic Lab column “What you’ll find at Redmond’s new light rail stations,” touts how the “New segment connects parks, restaurants, and more along the Eastside”.    That, “All those destinations should make the Eastside 2 Lanes now-empty trains more versatile”. It’s not clear whether versatile, “adaptable to many uses”, assures more riders for the daily commutes.  

Especially since it follows a May 7^th Seattle Times front page column, “Light rail: Will new Redmond Stations fill train cars?”.  It reflected recent concern that “In March a mere 3240 passengers per day boarded the 6-mile Starter Line”. It neglected to consider that most passengers paid for two boardings, one to go into Downtown Seattle or South Bellevue and one to return. Thus, only 1620 commuters likely rode the Starter Line in March, despite having far more potential riders available.. 

The May 7^th column reported Sound Transit estimated that next winter, when people can ride light rail into Seattle, 5700 riders will use the two stations daily. However, it’s unlikely many of those will be “big city” residents traveling daily to Redmond. 

Until then, the hope is large numbers will walk to the Downtown Redmond Station (DRS) or drive to the 1400-stall Marymore Village Garage to ride light rail to Redmond Technology Station (RTS), downtown Bellevue, or South Bellevue.  The Traffic Lab finally recognizing “Ridership predictions are notoriously wrong”. 

Neither article mentioned Sound Transit’s cost for operating the Downtown Redmond Extension.  At $30-per-mile vehicle cost, the 2-car trips over the 3.4-mile extension every 10 minutes for 16 hours, will add about $40,000 per day to the 6.6-mile Starter Line $76,000 operating cost, $116,000 daily from DRS to South Bellevue.  

The ~8-mile extension from South Bellevue to International District Station adds ~$500 per trip or $48,000 for the 96 trips, for a total $164,000 daily.  Thus, even if 5700 riders paid $6.00 fares, for to-and-from destinations, the $34,000 fares would still leave $130,000 for Sound Transit to pay from other sources.

The Line 2 Link challenge is satisfying conflicting requirements.  Sound Transit had previously decided to use the extension to replace ST550, ending access to transit for many of the 4303 March ST550 boardings, (and presumably 2152 riders) at multiple stops in Bellevue and along route to South Bellevue P&R.  That all the I-90 corridor buses would terminate on Mercer Island forcing bus riders to transfer to and from Line 2 trains for the commute into and out of Seattle.

The challenge is Sound Transit complicates the scheduling issue by opting to route the Line 2 trains through DSTT to provide half the trains to Lynnwood.  Those trains will have to safely merge with Line 1 trains returning from Angel Lake and later Federal Way.  What train schedule is needed to assure safe operation? Will the Line 2 trains continue to be 2 cars that won’t have the capacity needed to Lynnwood or 4-cars that double to trip costs to Redmond?

The bottom line is the May 10^th Traffic Lab article makes the dubious assumption that large numbers of Seattle residents will use Line 2 to visit Redmond.  That some combination of the number of cars in Line 2 trains, an operating schedule that will assure safe operation, provides needed capacity during peak commute to and from Lynnwood without costing too much for Line 2 to Redmond.

A self-inflicted challenge from routing Line 2 beyond CID.