The November 19th Sound Transit Board meeting video detailed preparations for the debut of Sound Transit's Northgate Link operation in Sept. 2021. It's the first of Prop 1 extensions beyond UW that should have never been built.
Sound Transit agreed to pay UW $20 million to tunnel under the university to Northgate rather than use the UW station to interface between increased 520 BRT and Central Link into Seattle. Thousands of commuters from both sides of the lake would have benefitted. Instead Sound Transit extended Central Link to Northgate spending $2.5 billion on what was described in their website as "a 4.2-mile, 3-station extension that will operate every 6 minutes during peak hours with projected ridership 41,000 to 49,00 daily by 2022"
The November 19th video of Sound Transit's presentation to the board for Northgate's initial operation demonstrates the problem. The first item on the agenda was the Northgate operating schedule. Sound Transit's initial draft, "trains running every 8-minutes during rush hour,(rather that 6 min), 15-minute intervals midday & weekends, and 30-minutes late night was revised due to survey results to 10 minutes midday & weekends, 15 minutes late evening.
A schedule of 6 hours of peak-operation 8-minute intervals, 10 hours of off-peak 10-minute intervals, and 2 hours of late-night 15-minute intervals requires 113 round trip routes each weekday to Northgate. A light rail car costs ~$25 per mile, so routing a 3 or 4-car light rail train the 8.4 miles to Northgate and back adds $645 to $860 to the routes operating cost: $72,885 to $97,180 for the 113 daily round trips.
The purported reason for spending the $2.5B extending light rail to Northgate was to reduce I-5 congestion by attracting more commuters to public transit and reducing bus routes into Seattle. Again Sound Transit claimed 41,000 to 49,000 commuters would use Northgate daily in 2022. If 80% of those commuters rode Northgate Link into and out of Seattle during the 6 hour peak commute, each of the 45 peak-hour trains would have to accommodate between 683 and 817 riders; if not exceeding total capacity, ending access for current University Link riders.
Only a fraction of ST CEO Rogoff's projected commuters will ride Northgate Link. Even a smaller number will be the added transit riders needed to reduce I-5 congestion. Sound Transit has refused to add parking at any of the three stops, Rather than add new local bus routes to the station to increase access the November 19th video detailed plans to "truncate" current ST 511-513 routes at Northgate (ending access at NE 45th Freeway Station) and ST 522 route at Roosevelt station for riders.
However, the survey results also showed commuters preferred riding buses directly into Seattle during rush hour. As a result, ST 510, which runs from Everett station every 10-15 minutes between 5:00 and 8:45 a.m. and from 2:30 to 6:50 p.m. will continue into and out of Seattle.
All of the Snohomish Community Transit 400 series buses currently into and out of Seattle will continue. KCM41, which currently runs from Lakewood will continue into Seattle from Northgate. Metro has even added new KCM 322 & 361 routes from Northgate through Roosevelt Station into Seattle.
Thus Northgate operation will only replace 22 ST 511/513 buses into Seattle between 6:00 and 9:00 a.m., and 29 ST 511/513 routes out of Seattle to Northgate between 2:30 and 7:00 p.m.: trivializing any I-5 congestion benefits from Northgate into and out of Seattle. It also raises questions as to why Sound Transit would route 21 3 or 4-car trains from UW to Northgate to accommodate those riding 22 morning ST 511/513 routes.
The last Sound Transit quarterly ridership reports for individual routes showed 9,138 daily riders on routes 510-513 in 3Q 2019. However, 80% of those probably rode on ST 510 during peak commute. The 5088 daily ridership for 3Q 2019 for ST 522 will be forced to transfer to either Northgate Link at Roosevelt station or to KCM 41, KCM 322, or KCM 361 to continue into Seattle. Thus, daily ridership on Northgate Link in 2021 will likely be less than 8000.
That limited ridership would have prompted a competent transit board member to suggest they continue routing ST 510 after current 6:50 p.m. schedule rather than routing 3 or 4-car trains beyond UW station to Northgate. Especially since the ST 511/513 routes being replaced cease operation after 7:00 pm. The evening routes could include stops at Roosevelt and Northgate with "stops on demand" beyond Northgate, replacing ST 512 routes beyond Northgate ending the need for evening commuters to transfer from light rail to bus.
A competent transit board member would recognize terminating Central Link at UW station would not only be more convenient for commuters, operating costs would be reduced. Sound Transit budgets bus operating costs as about $10 per mile. Routing a bus the 15 miles from 5th and Union to Northgate and back would cost $150.00, a fraction of 3 or 4-car train costs.
Again Sound Transit will continue route ST 510 in the morning. They need to recognize commuters "preference" would be to avoid having to transfer during their returns routes. They could do so by using ST 510 to replace 26 evening Central Link routes to Northgate. They include the 6 light rail trains for each of the 3 off-peak routs from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. and the 4 for each of the two late hours from 10:00 pm to 12:00 am.
Terminating Central Link at UW rather than at Northgate would reduce daily evening operating costs by $16,770 for 3-car trains and $22,360 for 4-car trains. Again, ending the 21 morning 3 or 4-car train routes from UW to Northgate would save an additional $13,545 for 3-car and $18,060 for 4-car trains each weekday.
Extending ST 510 operation to replace the current 16 ST 512 routes rather than routing 26 light rail trains to Northgate would cost $2400 a day. Additional ST 510 routes could easily be added to meet future demand. Doing so would also end the need for evening commuters to transfer to buses at Northgate to reach final destination.
Again, a competent transit board would have never approved extending Central Link beyond UW station to Northgate. It does nothing to increase either the number of transit riders or transit capacity into Seattle needed to reduce congestion. A fraction of the billions and years spent extending Central Link to Northgate could have been used to add parking with access to added bus routes into Seattle. The least the Sound Transit Board can do is mitigate the damage by limiting its use.
No comments:
Post a Comment