
The Real Cost of Seattle's Next Transport Bill Would Come from Not Passing It - jseliger
http://civicskunkworks.com/the-real-cost-of-st3-would-come-from-not-passing-it/
======
yummyfajitas
I'd be willing to take transit activists more seriously if rather than
advocating for more money, they advocated for reforms to get costs under
control. US costs are insanely out of control relative to, well, everywhere.

Construction costs are 2x-10x more than everywhere else in the world.

[https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comp...](https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comparative-
subway-construction-costs-revised/)

[https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-r...](https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-
rail-construction-costs/)

Labor costs per ride are 3x more than Paris, 4x more than London.

[http://www.wsj.com/article_email/mtas-costs-loom-
large-14688...](http://www.wsj.com/article_email/mtas-costs-loom-
large-1468803446-lMyQjAxMTE2OTE0ODAxODg5Wj)

Yet transit activists always ignore the fact that we could get 2-10x more
transit for the same money. It almost makes you wonder if their real goal is
just funneling more money to the people currently taking all the money, rather
than actually getting transit.

~~~
abduhl
How do you propose we cut construction costs? Should we cap labor rates on the
workers? Looking at your lists (and from my own personal experience with
people who have been on the various jobs listed), it seems obvious to me that
the major differentiator between jobs is the labor costs. It just flat out
costs more to hire skilled labor in the US and UK versus Singapore or Japan.
This is largely related to union rates and municipal regulations on wages.

How do we get 2-10x more transit for the same money? Where in your mind can we
actually cut costs?

~~~
yummyfajitas
One way is, as you note, to cut wages to British or Spanish levels. Another is
to eliminate "buy American" provisions and just buy Japanese trains. A third
way is to cut labor usage down to international levels.

A fourth would just be to hire foreigners to build/manage us trains as per
their own standards.

------
aaronbrethorst
This is only semi-related, but if anyone here has an interest in making a
meaningful difference in improving their fellow Seattleites' mass transit
experiences, I'm always looking for more people to pitch in on OneBusAway for
iOS: [https://github.com/onebusaway/onebusaway-
iphone](https://github.com/onebusaway/onebusaway-iphone)

Well thought out PRs for any bug or feature you care about are always welcome.

Also feel free to email me at aaron@brethorsting.com if you'd like to discuss
more details.

~~~
csydas
Oh wow I didn't realize this was an entirely volunteer project - I thought it
was from the various transit authorities for the Puget Sound.

This was an incredible app when I lived in the Seattle-Tacoma area, and I wish
more places had it or at least a similar app.

I lack the skill to contribute code-wise, but are finacial donations
beneficial? Is the best means of donation through the UoW website as listed or
do you have alternate donation channels? (i.e., does the UoW donation page
slice off some of the donation for the University or is it earmarked in whole
for the project?)

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Financial donations are definitely welcome. It can be a bit of a hassle to
find the money for domain registration, even.

There's a Donate table item on the Info tab of the iOS app you can tap. Thank
you!

------
Hydraulix989
At first, this seemed like a politically-motivated editorial that I would
consider out-of-place on HN, but then I realized this skunkworks guy has a
point.

Seattle's public transit runs around the Bay Area's in circles right now. The
Link light rail is clean, modern, and actually useful. Buses come EVERY TEN
MINUTES, and they take you anywhere in the entire Puget Sound. There's even
ferries and trains.

As tech companies hire more people, you're going to be looking at more
gridlock. Think about how packed the 101 has gotten since 2011 when FB and
Apple went on their hiring frenzies.

This transit packing is about to happen in Seattle (in fact, I consider in
many ways the Bay Area to be a leading indicator for what is about to happen
in other cities), which is already bottlenecked by two bridges, and Redmond
already has the greatest daytime population shift in the US during commute
hours.

It's a shame that the companies that are causing the problem (Amazon,
especially) in Seattle can't help pay for solving the problems they are
creating.

~~~
drewrv
Amazon did help build the South Lake Union Streetcar and in my mind it's been
a huge success: "The majority of property owners along the alignment supported
the project, despite being asked to pay increased taxes to fund its
construction. Only 12 of 750 affected property owners formally objected to the
proposed "Local Improvement District" tax."

Without having to tax anyone, some private organizations just pitched in to
improve the service: "In May 2011, increasing ridership led the Fred
Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Group Health Cooperative, UW Medicine and
Amazon.com to underwrite a third streetcar to operate during peak commuting
evening hours (4pm – 6pm), reducing headways from 15 minutes to 10."

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Lake_Union_Streetcar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Lake_Union_Streetcar)

The thing was cheap and quick to build. I wish we could just build streetcars
all over the whole city instead of this ST3 mess.

~~~
techsupporter
> I wish we could just build streetcars all over the whole city instead of
> this ST3 mess.

Amen to this but I want them _only_ in dedicated lanes, preferably lanes
separated from general purpose traffic by more than just paint. A streetcar
would be great on, say, 23rd Ave between University Station and Mt Baker
Station. Or replace route 7 down Rainier and connect it to the south side of
the First Hill Streetcar. (As an aside: the Broadway segment of the FHSC is an
example of how _not_ to build them.) Or, if I'm wishing for ponies, start at
Carkeek Park and go south on 8th Ave NW, turn right onto NW 85th St to go west
until either the terminus of the most northern Ballard Link stop (and that's
where you plant the maintenance and operations base for this streetcar) or
continue on to the foot of the Ballard Bridge and run the M&O shop into the
run down area just south of Ballard Blocks.

------
chris_va
Not necessarily wrong, but not a well thought out piece. I'm all for public
transit, but this doesn't cover the issue in sufficient depth to actually be
informative.

Assuming $30/hour opportunity cost? Pulling 20 minutes a day out of a hat?
Ignoring the alternative forms of public transit?

Commutes are complex beasts. The article ignores the demand curve of
commuting, and dynamic responses like people moving closer to their work.

If we are going to look at opportunity cost, what is the expected gain by
investing $53B in existing public transit? Or rezoning density downtown?

~~~
techsupporter
> Or rezoning density downtown?

You can't really get any more dense in Seattle's downtown core. There aren't
any single-family houses left and everything between Denny and, say, Yesler is
zoned much, much more dense than pretty much anywhere else in town.

I completely agree that there needs to be more dense zoning, especially around
the light rail stations. (I also read somewhere that the new Roosevelt station
will have less density zoned for it, because of neighborhood opposition, than
already exists in areas of Seattle not getting light rail. The math seems to
bear that out, at least from the zoning maps I have read.)

~~~
maherbeg
Seattle still has a long ways to go for densification. Lower Queen Anne is not
dense at all if you walk through it.

There are also still a lot of surface lots in downtown and throughout the city
that should ideally be buildings with parking garages instead. If we converted
some of those garage spots to paid public parking (similar to the pearl
apartments on 15th), we'd get the best of both worlds.

------
techsupporter
Just watching the staggering change that has happened now that Capitol Hill
and University Link stations have opened makes me both thrilled for the next
ones (U-District, Roosevelt, and Northgate) and insanely jealous of the
handful of areas inside the city that are going to get real, grade-separated
mass transit over the next two or three decades. It is already far too late
for me to afford to buy housing in any of the coming-very-soon areas that is
walkable to the new train stations and the new stations (Ballard and West
Seattle Link) are going to areas that are already priced out of most
affordability.

Though I understand the political and infrastructure reasons _why_ we have to
build light rail to the suburban areas before filling in the urban core[0],
that doesn't stop me from being sad that, in my lifetime, already-dense areas
like Georgetown or the Central District or Lake City or even Greenwood[1]
won't see real high-capacity transit. (Having a single station in the CD's
Judkins Park doesn't really count, not when Interbay and Ballard are getting
five stations between them, or when West Seattle has four.) I read somewhere,
probably on Seattle Transit Blog[2] from someone who likes to rant about this
stuff like I do, that route 48 through the CD has more daily riders _now_ than
the train to Issaquah is supposed to have five years after it opens in 2035.

But Goldy makes the most salient point: Voting against Sound Transit 3 doesn't
accomplish anything except, maybe, make Sound Transit _more_ cautious in a
second vote and less willing to put out a big package to build for the next
generation. Voting for it doesn't get a perfect system, but I think that it
helps more than saying no.

0 - Because Sound Transit is a regionwide taxing district so the region has to
pass it and selling voters in Everett on a transit package that builds only in
Seattle will not fly; because we should have been building Ballard Link 30
years ago so, by that same logic, we need to build Redmond and Issaquah Links
_now_ instead of waiting 30 years...

1 - Yes, I realize that "85th St Station" is marked as "provisional" and that
85th is the southern boundary of Crown Hill and that having a light rail stop
west of IH-5 with easy bus and RapidRide access from west Greenwood and Crown
Hill would be a good compromise...but nothing would beat having a station
parked right at NW 100th and Holman.

2 - It's a good blog, you should read it:
[http://seattletransitblog.com](http://seattletransitblog.com)

~~~
drewrv
I've decided recently that I'm voting against ST3. It bums me out because I've
always been a big transit supporter (I know how republicans voting for Hillary
must feel).

The thing is, ST3 builds a ton of crap to the outer suburbs and 50 billion
dollars and 20 years later it will still be a pain to get from the University
District to Ballard. But at least the taxpayers of Bothell will have an easy
way to get to Totem Lake!

~~~
techsupporter
> ST3 builds a ton of crap to the outer suburbs and 50 billion dollars and 20
> years later it will still be a pain to get from the University District to
> Ballard. But at least the taxpayers of Bothell will have an easy way to get
> to Totem Lake!

That's one of the shitballs that the Washington legislature has handed us with
how Sound Transit 3 works. It's called "subarea equity" and means that taxes
are spent only in the area where they are gathered--areas called things like
"North King," "South King," "Snohomish," and so on--which sounds great and all
_but_ the tax rate has to be uniform across the district _and_ the entire
district must vote in a single yes/no vote. So Bothell is spending its own
money to go to Totem Lake but Seattle's more expensive needs can't be fully
met because it would take the tax authority of the entire district to be spent
in a single subarea and neither the voters or the Sound Transit district
organization would go for that.

This is what I alluded to when I wrote that I understand, politically, why ST3
is written as it is. Seattle as a city is never going to have the tax
authority for us to buy the kind of in-city dense transit we really want.
There's absolutely no reason for the state legislature to give it to us
(especially not with that 1% hard property tax cap written into the state
constitution) since leveraging Puget Sound's representatives for votes on
allowing us to tax ourselves on a handful of transit packages is what the rest
of the legislature uses to strongarm votes for road packages in the rest of
the state (that, conveniently, never seem to have to go to the ballot).

So I'm voting yes on ST3 because, with all due respect to Mars Saxman whom I
really respect and really want his ideas to come true, I don't think we'll get
a better package in four years.

------
lanestp
I instantly have problem with anyone touting the opportunity costs related to
an entirely made up number. 10 minutes off a fictional commute is not a
convincing metric. How about instead we have say, line X needs $Y for
modernizations after which line X will be Z minutes faster along its route.
Or, which arterials will have new transit solutions.

I'm not arguing this is a bad spend of money (quite the opposite) but this
article badly needs some real numbers to make its point.

------
WalterBright
If ST would include the Renton-Bothell train tracks, which are already there,
it would form the right half of a circle all the way around Lake Washington.
This would greatly increase the effectiveness of the system, at minimal cost.

~~~
techsupporter
Sound Transit wanted to run light rail on the Eastside Rail Corridor.
Kirkland's city government strenuously objected:
[http://www.kirklandwa.gov/Residents/Community/ST3.htm](http://www.kirklandwa.gov/Residents/Community/ST3.htm)

~~~
WalterBright
There are still tracks from Tukwilla to the southern edge of Kirkland. Adding
the tracks to that point would cause a lot of pressure on Kirkland that I
doubt they'd be able to withstand.

