Another attempt in more than a decade of using Voters’ Pamphlet to inform voters what they won’t read or hear elsewhere has ended adding thousands more to the current 260,000 views of this blog. What began as an attempt to prevent Sound Transit from confiscating the I-90 Bridge center roadway for East Link light rail has evolved into attempts to expose the folly of their “light rail spine”. The result of a Sound Transit Board made up well-meaning elected officials who don’t understand what constitutes effective public transit.
Other posts have detailed how the WSDOT could reduce I-405 travel times for all riders by limiting HOT to one HOV lane. That it's not the data center power needs that's the Climate Change problem, it's the inability of wind turbines and solar panels to comply with the Clean Energy Transformation Act. That even if they could eliminate all the state's fossil fueled generation it would only reduce CO2 emissions by less than 0.2% if planet’s.
However, the majority of the posts have dealt with the fact the Sound Transit Board is made up well-minded elected officials who don't understand what constitutes effective public transit. That board members the Traffic Lab charitably called “Nonspecialists” have their elected office payment supplemented by $150,000 to $230,000 as compensation for serving.
Public transit’s goal should be to provide access to transit for those who can’t or choose not to drive in sufficient numbers to reduce congestion for those who drive. Snohomish Community Transit (SCT), King County Metro (KCM) and Pierce County Transit, have all provided transit service in the Sound Transit Service area. SCT has provided routes throughout the county with multiple routes into Seattle and Bellevue. Sound Transit’s Express Regional Bus routes supplemented those transit systems on the major routes throughout area.
However, a February 12th 2019 Seattle Times Traffic Lab article reported “Seattle-area traffic was the sixth most congested among big U.S. cities”. The problem was not a lack of bus routes, it was the lack of parking with access to bus routes. A Seattle Times Nov 2, 2016, article reported "19,488 cars occupied park-and-ride facilities each weekday in Snohomish, King and Pierce Counties” with “51 facilities next to express bus or train stations that were at least 95% full”. Yet Sound Transit’s response was limited to promising ST3 would add 8,560 parking spaces between 2024 and 2041. A fraction of what’s needed to meet projected transit requirements.
Rather than use funds to add parking to increase access, Sound Transit opted to use the funds to extend light rail across I-90 Bridge and its light rail spine along I-5. All for 4-car light rail trains that don’t have the capacity to accommodate the riders needed to reduce peak hour freeway congestion and cost too much to operate off-peak. Dwarfing the cost of implementing additional bus service with added parking during peak commute and off-peak bus operation.
Instead, Sound Transit chose to provide riders by forcing bus riders using existing parking to transfer to light rail trains for the commute into and out of Seattle The result being replacing bus routes into Seattle reduced transit capacity into the city, did nothing to reduce GP lane congestion, and reduced access for current riders during peak hour commute.
The bottom line is Sound Transit has been allowed to not release Northgate Link ridership data that “likely” was far less than its 41,000 to 49,000 prediction. The need to redo light rail attachments has delayed the June 2023 demonstration of the failure of 4-car trains every 8 minutes to reduce I-90 corridor congestion.
Thus, this blog looks forward to reporting the “Lynnwood Link” debut this fall will again demonstrate the folly of the light rail spine.
No comments:
Post a Comment