
$50B transit proposal would boost light rail throughout Seattle region - jseliger
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/sound-transit-proposal-includes-2nd-downtown-seattle-tunnel/
======
hacknat
To all the people dissing this plan from afar you have no idea how bad Seattle
has gotten in the last three years. Over 100k people have moved into the metro
area every year for three years.

My commute times changed noticeably over the course of one year. It went from
consistently 30 minutes over the 90 bridge to consistently an hour (we're
talking 18 miles, door to door).

This thing should have been built in the 70s.

My wife and I actually moved back to the Midwest 2 months ago after living in
Seattle for 8 years, despite my comfortable Senior Engineer salary, because
all of our closest friends moved away in the span of a year, because they
could no longer afford to live in the city (none of them worked in tech).

I wish Seattle good things from afar, and it will always hold a special place
in my heart, but I'm glad I'm not living through these infrastructure growing
pains that should have been addressed years ago.

~~~
erikw
I think that economics will sort out the cost-of-living issues. Seattle
doesn't seem to have the NIMBYism of the Bay Area, and Washington State
actually requires that communities plan for growth under the state Growth
Management Act. I'm not sure how this compares to California (witness the
unencumbered sprawl of LA, or the inability to build anything in the Bay
Area), but from what I've seen, local Washington governments are not
pretending that population growth is a fantasy. Seattle's growth plan
specifically mentions "directing growth to existing urban centers and
villages", so I can see how the proposed Sound Transit line extensions would
help facilitate urbanization.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_State_Growth_Manage...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_State_Growth_Management_Act)

[http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/cityplanning/completeprojectslist...](http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/cityplanning/completeprojectslist/comprehensiveplan/whatwhy/)

~~~
specialist
I hope so.

Seattle, Vancouver, SF, etc need to upzone, to permit more development, so
that supply can meet demand. As I understand it, that upzoning is not
happening nearly fast enough.

Public transit initiatives trigger (begats?) upzoning. This is an end run
around the regressive restrictions on property taxes and entrenched NIMBYism.

I fully support it. Whatever works. I wish my peeps working on affordability,
homelessness, economic justice would put less emphasis on set asides,
protecting older listings, etc, and place more emphasis on increasing
inventory.

One potential monkeywrench of increasing supply is absentee landlords. I just
read something like 1/3rd of Vancouver properties are owned by Chinese
investors. Which I'm totally cool with so long as the units are mostly
occupied.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
Seattle does have plenty of stupid people like every other place. People that
vote against all road building because they only want bike lanes or transit.
People that vote against transit because they don't want poor people coming
where they are (really this happens, search for Kemper Freeman initiatives to
keep the poor people out of bellevue).

We have to do increase all modes of transportation. The problem with this
proposal is that it will take 25+ years. We need a 10 year version of this
plan. Charge us rich programmers more, we can afford it.

------
erikw
Trains are very cool, and the idea of shared public transportation is probably
noble, but there is an intractable economic problem. If my wife and I both
take the train, it costs twice as much to us. If we drive somewhere, it costs
half as much.

Additional issues that need to be solved to make pubtrans competitive with car
ownership are scheduling, the ability to bring cargo, and negative class
connotation. And this completely discounts the probable arrival of ubiquitous
autonomous electric vehicles before Sound Transit even gets to finish this
project. As much as I enjoy the romantic nature of trains, I think the Puget
Sound is gearing up for a folly of a white elephant.

~~~
greggman
Have you calculated how much you're actually spending per day?

I roughly calculated my expenses once.

$32k car $8k tax/license + loan interest up to point I paid it off = $50k $200
gas a month for 6 years = $14400 $4k renew service plan $1200 a year car ins
$7200 2 sets of tires at $1k each = $2k

100k miles on it at 6 years

So $50k+14.4k+4k+7.2k+2k = $77.6k / 100k miles = 0.77 cents per mile.

My commute was 40miles each way or $61 PER DAY!!! That's a TON more than
public transportation. That price will slowly go down the longer I keep the
car but still, $61 per day is a lot of money. At 20days month that's $1220 a
month. That's far more than 2 people's monthly transportation passes.

~~~
flubert
Not that anyone is going to be convinced of anything here, but...

Car: $11,600

[http://bellingham.craigslist.org/cto/5494584275.html](http://bellingham.craigslist.org/cto/5494584275.html)

Taxes/tags: $1,500

Gas: $150/mo (100,000 miles @ 25mi/gal @ $2.50 gal over 6 years) = $10,000

Maintenance: $250/year * 6 years = $1,500

Insurance: $600/year * 6 years = $3,600

2 sets of 65k mile tires: 2*600 = $1,200

sell the car @140k miles: -$2,000

[http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/cto/5488481558.html](http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/cto/5488481558.html)

Total: $27,400 or $0.274/mi

~~~
jschwartzi
What about the inevitable repairs on a used car? I find that I spend another
1000/yr on things that break in my car because it is off-warranty. Also, gas
prices are more like 2.80 to 3.50 here in Seattle, historically.

~~~
marssaxman
I spend at least $2000/year on things that break in my car (and I've never
owned a car new enough to know what is or isn't covered by a warranty),
because it's a Range Rover and replacement parts cost more than you think they
should. That's still far less than I'd be spending on monthly payments if I
had a newer car, and insurance is cheap since I don't have a loan company
requiring me to sign up for the expensive comp/collision package, so I feel
like I'm coming out way ahead.

------
WalterBright
Ironically, the existing tracks from Renton to Bothell could have been used
for half of a light rail system for a song. But the government has desperately
pretended those tracks don't exist, and has gone to considerable lengths to
destroy them.

A few years earlier, they destroyed the tracks from Renton to Black Diamond so
thoroughly the right-of-way can never be used for rail again.

It boggles the mind.

~~~
OrwellianChild
This interests me... Do you have any articles I can read about this?

I was always under the impression that the Sounder (our commuter heavy rail
line) used tracks shared with commercial traffic (BNSF, etc.) and thus
couldn't be fully developed into a city-wide system...

~~~
WalterBright
Nothing has run on the tracks for 20 years. Some of it has been pulled up, but
the right-of-way remains.

Seattle Transit just announced a $50 billion plan to blast new right-of-way,
never mind the trackage could be doubled by re-using that right-of-way for a
few million.

You can still see the tracks on Google Maps:

[https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6753261,-122.1882192,16z](https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6753261,-122.1882192,16z)

although it has been renamed "Cross Kirkland Corridor" in their attempt to
hide what it is. Sound Transit prefers a plan that costs one thousand times as
much, still won't serve the eastside, and will not be in service until half
the existing taxpayers are long dead.

~~~
Twirrim
It's not Sound Transit's fault. The cities won't let them. Kirkland wants them
to build out Buses and threatens to veto any light rail project. Residents by
the CKC want to "save the trail" (aka we're selfish jerks that bought a
property by a railway line, but don't want noise of trains)

[http://seattletransitblog.com/2016/03/12/kirkland-st-
struggl...](http://seattletransitblog.com/2016/03/12/kirkland-st-struggling-
to-agree-on-st3/)

~~~
WalterBright
The tracks still run through Renton and Bellevue and can connect to the rest
of the light rail system in the Tukwila area.

I'd build the system to the border of Kirkland, and wait for the Kirkland
residents to get fed up with rotting on 405.

~~~
limeyx
Easy to say if the tracks don't go (almost literally) through your back yard
as they do mine.

------
13of40
Meanwhile, on the east side of Lake Washington, we're busy tearing up all of
the track and replacing it with bike paths.

------
stevewilhelm
Building transit infrastructure is expensive and time consuming in
metropolitan areas.

Case in point: a five mile extension on an existing Bay Area Rapid Transit
(BART) line and one new station cost $890 million and took seven years to
build. [1]

The resulting extension is expected to increase in ridership by 5000 to 7000
daily trips in the next decade. [2]

[1]
[http://www.bart.gov/about/projects/wsx](http://www.bart.gov/about/projects/wsx)
[2]
[http://www.bart.gov/about/projects/wsx/chronology](http://www.bart.gov/about/projects/wsx/chronology)

~~~
greggman
I have a strong feeling much of that is corruption and/or over charging. I
have no proof but AFAICT Singapore and Tokyo have no trouble building new
lines quickly and for far less money and I suspect they both do a better job.

~~~
stevewilhelm
Well, the Shibuya-Ikebukuro section of the Tokyo metro is 12 miles long and
was built between 2000 and 2012.

It cost 250 billion yen, or just over 2 billion US dollars. [1]

[1] [http://www.treehugger.com/cars/trainspotting-new-subway-
line...](http://www.treehugger.com/cars/trainspotting-new-subway-line-opens-
in-tokyo.html)

------
JDDunn9
I wish someone would give PRT a chance. Something like skyTran could be built
for 1/5th the cost and would be significantly faster for commuters (since most
time is spent at stops before yours).

~~~
Grishnakh
Yep, I say this all the time, and people think it's an even crazier idea than
bigfoot and alien sightings.

Somehow, it's realistic to think about us all having self-driving cars dealing
with the chaos of city traffic and pedestrians, and it's realistic to propose
spending billions and billions of dollars on slow light-rail systems which
require years of construction where the roads are all torn up, but it's
completely bonkers to think about building a system with elevated rails
hanging on utility poles and small, autonomous cars riding on these rails for
only $1 million per mile.

I can't wait until Israel has their SkyTran system working so all these idiots
in America won't be able to say how "impossible" it is.

------
kingnight
Why 25 years?

------
cwbrandsma
We should have the guys that ran the Big Dig in Boston take care of this. They
can run that tab up to $100B in no time.

~~~
zifnab06
Just to point this out: sound transit's last project, which expanded the
existing westlake->seatac airport light rail from Westlake to capital hill and
finally to UW, finished under budget and ahead of time.

It was originally scheduled to open September 2016, and the first trains
carried passengers last weekend.

------
serge2k
is this system going to be anywhere close to the actual needs of the region in
25 years?

Seriously, 25 years out. That just seems ridiculous to me.

~~~
melling
whatever happened to those maglev trains that I used to read about as a kid?
Oh right, China...

[http://youtu.be/c8SqDVUdMtY](http://youtu.be/c8SqDVUdMtY)

[http://gbtimes.com/china/beijing-launch-first-maglev-
line-20...](http://gbtimes.com/china/beijing-launch-first-maglev-line-2016)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_S1,_BCR](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_S1,_BCR)

~~~
djcapelis
Line S1 will be much slower than most traditional trains, the energy usage of
maglev isn't that much less than traditional rail (so they don't tend to run
faster, the metal rails aren't a large limiting factor for speed) and the
vertical alignment restrictions on maglev technology means it's not
necessarily gonna be technology you can easily put everywhere.

~~~
melling
Can you be more specific? How fast are traditional trains? These are intercity
trains we are discussing, right? The S1 is being used where you would have a
subway or light rail.

~~~
Alphasite_
Well i'm not sure about outside europe but Italy's new trains run at ~400Kph

~~~
melling
They run that fast between cities. Clearly we aren't talking about that.
Japan"s intracity maglev is going to go almost 600kph.

[http://youtu.be/VuSrLvCVoVk](http://youtu.be/VuSrLvCVoVk)

Of course, you don't build that to go 10 city blocks.

~~~
djcapelis
> Japan"s intracity maglev is going to go almost 600kph.

No it's not. 603 is the fastest they've ever gotten the train to go on a test
track, which doesn't make that the speed they'd actually run for commercial
service. Their current plan is 500 with a top speed of 505. Which is really
good, but also a decent ways off and involves some serious earthworks to make
the track flat enough.

For comparison, the speed record for wheel on steel rail trains is currently
574 km/hr.

The rail really isn't a huge impact on the speed yet. At those speeds it
really start being more about aerodynamics of the vehicles and the cost per
kWh. Maybe maglev technology will change that at some point, but right now we
haven't really seen results that would lead us to assume that big of an
advantage comes from getting rid of the rail. Arguably the biggest advantage
is going to come when someone figures out how to put the trains in a tube
where the aerodynamic situation changes completely. That's why the hyperloop
proposal wasn't just "use a maglev".

Maglev trains are cool as shit though, you're literally floating through the
air, it's awesome. I highly recommend riding the one in Shanghai. Make sure
you hit a 430 km/hr run and not the slower 300 km/hr ones, the experience is
very different. It's fun as hell.

------
Aleman360
I wish the train to the east side went across 520 instead of 90. Oh well.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
It seems idiotic that we didn't allow for that on 520. Did we really screw it
up that much?

------
jessaustin
Clicking on the map to magnify it, makes it smaller.

------
sitkack
What was the cost for the monorail again?

------
LAMike
50 Billion could buy a lot of self driving cars in 5 years.... why not just
spend it on city owned cars that taxpayers can order on demand?

~~~
st3v3r
Cause that would do nothing to alleviate traffic congestion.

~~~
barney54
And neither does light rail. light rail is a bad investment. It is expensive
and low capacity. It is 19th century technology.

Building bus rapid transit makes much more sense because it is felixible and
less expensive. But politicians don't like photo ops with buses nearly as much
as with trains.

~~~
dpark
Politicians like trains because their constituents like trains. Buses are
stuck in traffic. Light rail runs on dedicated lines. Light rail is attractive
because it is more predictable. The buses in Seattle are less attractive
because they suffer the same congestion and unpredictability as driving.

~~~
superuser2
Bus rapid transit specifically refers to bus lines on dedicated right-of-way.

However, once you are going to the trouble of building dedicated right-of-way,
the incremental cost of making it rail isn't too bad compared to the enormous
efficiency/scalability of rail over buses.

