Constantine's Incompetent Sound Transit Board

The Seattle Times October 14th front page article, "Constantine, Nguyen snipe over competency, urgency" and their subsequent Constantine recommendation  prompted this post.  The article credits Constantine, "With helping make possible Sound Transit's continued expansion", clearly failing to recognize the agency's decade of incompetence under his leadership.  The incompetence was the reason I was one of the "non-serious" county executive candidates in 2017 and earlier this year.  Not to win, but to use the Voters' Pamphlet to inform residents about Constantine's failure to select competent directors to the Sound Transit Board.

For example, the Board referred to Prop 1 approval in 2008 as "a gift to our grand children."  They either failed to recognize the need for transit capacity or that extensions routed through the DSTT lacked the needed capacity.  A 2004 PSRC study, funded by Sound Transit, concluded the DSTT stations limited light rail trains to four cars and that safe operation required a minimum of 4 minutes between train.

The resultant 60 cars per hour and 148 riders per car provide 8880 rider-per-hour capacity in each direction, far less than what's needed to reduce congestion.  Routing half the trains across I-90 Bridge halves that capacity to Bellevue and SeaTac.  The billions and years spent extending light rail beyond UW,  SeaTac, and Bellevue will do nothing to increase that capacity.  Yet Constantine and his board continue to approve budgets projecting annual Link ridership will increase from 22 million in 2017 to 162 million in 2041.

Since Prop 1 passed Constantine and the Board have refused to add bus routes to increase transit capacity into Seattle.  A hundred high capacity buses an hour could've easily accommodated 10,000 passengers an hour; and more could be added. (900 buses an hour use a bus lane onto Manhattan Island.)

The bus routes could have been facilitated using a lane limited to buses or vehicles willing to pay tolls.  Limiting traffic to 2000 vehicles per hour (vph) assures 45 mph velocities.  The tolls could be raised to limit traffic to 2000 vph with whatever additional bus routes are needed.  The 10,000 transit riders would've reduced congestion on remaining I-5 lanes and eliminated 10,000 vehicles an hour on city streets.  And more routes could have been added.

Constantine and his board not only failed to understand the benefits of increased bus capacity, they failed to recognize commuters need access to any transit mode.  All of the P&R lots with access to bus routes or future light rail stations have been full for years.  Yet Constantine and his Board have spent a decade refusing to add parking with no plans for significant additions until at least 2041. 

Instead, Sound Transit is generating ridership by choosing to use the Link to replace bus routes into Seattle.  While using light rail to replace bus routes may provide those with access more reliable commute times, doing so will do nothing to reduce travel times for those without access.  The benefits of reducing bus routes into Seattle pale in comparison to the benefits of eliminating 10,000 vehicles an hour into the city with an additional 100 bus routes.  Again, and more buses could be added.

The bottom line is Dow Constantine's selection of Sound Transit Board members have failed to demonstrate a modicum if public transit competence.  The Seattle Times crediting him, "With helping make possible Sound Transit's continued expansion,"  demonstrates the paper's decade-long failure to recognize the incompetence.