
Sound Transit 3, the light rail initative, can bring mobility to Seattle - jseliger
http://thatopinion.com/st3-bring-freedom-mobility-seattle/
======
gotthemwmds
WA's current Gov. Jay Inslee's opponent in this fall's election is running a
great ad of him sitting in a car, stuck in traffic on what looks like the
eastside of Seattle (aka Bellevue), promising that get "gets it" and that he
will end gridlock, without offering a single solution.

He is against ST-3.

I chuckle every time it comes on.

~~~
saosebastiao
I do too. Quite possibly the most vapid ad I've seen on actual traffic
solutions, all the while opposing the best measure he could possibly support
to mitigate the coming traffic disaster that accompanies growth.

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nodamage
I'm really surprised by the responses here. It makes me wonder if any of the
people opposed to this have ever lived in cities with good public transit
systems (e.g. London, Tokyo, Hong Kong).

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lostmsu
I like the idea, despite enormous time we were promised for implementation.

However, I am worried, that the plan does not allow any kind of back out.
Considering very high price and 10+ years execution time, I'd like a clear
strategy for cancelling that if situation on the road changes significantly
due to self-driving.

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CamperBob2
I'm sure we'll all be very proud of our shiny new fixed-rail tracks in 2046,
when cars are self-driving, operated as a coordinated fleet, and available for
hire in less than a minute in any street, driveway, or parking lot in the
area.

~~~
lhopki01
How do self-driving cars deal with capacity? Even with self driving cars there
isn't enough capacity on the roads for everyone. Highways are terrible at
traffic throughput. To give you an example Crossrail in London has the
capacity for 1 million passengers per hour while on two lines of track. An 8
lane highway struggles to manage more than 150,000 per hour. In terms of land
use efficiency highways are terrible.

~~~
CamperBob2
Yes, light rail is much better at getting people from one place where they
don't want to be, to another place where they don't want to be.

You wouldn't judge an entire rail system based on the throughput of a single
track, would you? Why judge the throughput of a networked surface vehicle
system by the throughput of a single highway populated by human drivers?

The other person I'm conversing with in this thread makes the valid point that
vast swaths of urban land are taken up by streets. What I'm saying is that
this is a _feature_ of an effective transit system, not a bug. Nobody really
wants to go from one light-rail terminal to another, but streets go
everywhere.

~~~
VintageCool
Light rail and self-driving cars will operate in tandem. The backbone will be
light rail and the "last mile" will be self driving cars.

A self-driving Uber car will pick up me in north Greenwood, then it will pick
up another passenger, and we'll ride to Northgate Station. I'll take Light
Rail to Downtown, and then walk the rest of the way to the office.

~~~
lhopki01
Honestly a city with a well designed public transport system doesn't really
need cars for the last mile. Walking and cycling covers almost everyone.

Rural areas will always need cars but well cities shouldn't.

~~~
CamperBob2
_Honestly a city with a well designed public transport system doesn 't really
need cars for the last mile. Walking and cycling covers almost everyone._

It rains here. A lot. And not everybody is a twenty-something Amazonian,
Googler, or Microsoftie in the best shape of their lives.

------
barney54
Now is a strange time to commit to spending billions on light rail. In
multiple cities ridership is down even as more money has been spent on rail.
Two examples are LA and DC.

[https://www.google.com/amp/www.latimes.com/local/california/...](https://www.google.com/amp/www.latimes.com/local/california/la-
me-ridership-slump-20160127-story,amp.html?client=safari)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/met...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/metro-
fourth-quarter-ridership-
plunges-11-percent/2016/09/06/b94a2fa6-744c-11e6-b786-19d0cb1ed06c_story.html)

Transportation options are becoming more personalized with Uber, Lyft, and
autonomous cars around the corner, but rail is and inflexible technology.

Without new ideas on how to make light rail more flexible and personal, these
investments lock people it to inflexible transportation infrastructure and
that is troublesome.

~~~
Analemma_
> In multiple cities ridership is down even as more money has been spent on
> rail.

In other cities maybe, but not in Seattle. Ridership on the Link Light Rail
has gone way up since the UW extension opened.

> Transportation options are becoming more personalized with Uber, Lyft, and
> autonomous cars around the corner,

Uber and Lyft exist in Seattle today, and they clearly aren't enough to solve
the problem, since commute times are still increasing (2x since 2010).
Autonomous cars can't fix it either - the only way autonomous cars can
actually decrease congestion is if ALL the cars on the road are networked and
there can be a computer somewhere doing birds-eye planning on the whole fleet.
That scenario is many decades away if it happens at all.

Also, as another commenter pointed out, Sound Transit is specifically
investigating how to incorporate autonomous vehicles into their planning as
part of this proposal.

~~~
seattle_native
>> the only way autonomous cars can actually decrease congestion is if ALL the
cars on the road are networked and there can be a computer somewhere doing
birds-eye planning on the whole fleet. That scenario is many decades away if
it happens at all.

Did you know the UW has a big transit lab and actually has the equipment the
track cars around the city. Same with SPD.

That future is coming quikcly!

~~~
erispoe
Autonomous cars are still nor nearly space efficient enough for dense urban
environments. Autonomous cars will be great for suburbs and highways. Cities
will still need mass transit.

~~~
seattle_native
Sure. Though I would hardly qualify Seattle as "dense". We are mostly single
family housing

------
seattle_native
This article completely fails to mention how much of this initiative is mired
in corruption and inefficiency.

A portion of ST3 is to pay for ST2 and ST1, which both went over budget. In
those cases, union and industry donated massive amounts to work on the
initiative to get even bigger contracts after.

It is projected that ST3 will carry __less than 3% __of the local traffic
capacityou, at a huge cost.

We need VC thinking here, and more proposals with a clear eye on the ROI.

If my city dropped 5.4 billion on buses (a tenth of cost of ST3), we could
have much more capacity that could be provisioned in a more dynamic way. That
could be ready in a few years.

Instead we get rail in 25+ years at a massive cost now.

Having spent the last week in DC and been stuck on the Red Line for a trip
that took 3x as long as normal, I am not convinced a rail line with it'so
single points of failure is the best solution.

Transit is cool, but I am firmly of the opinion that this train wreck of an
initiative is __NOT __the way forward and will vote NO.

~~~
Analemma_
> A portion of ST3 is to pay for ST2 and ST1, which both went over budget.

Completely false. ST2 (which isn't even complete; I'm not sure why you're
referring to it in the past tense) is $100 million under budget and 6 months
ahead of schedule (source:
[http://www.masstransitmag.com/article/12171636/ahead-of-
sche...](http://www.masstransitmag.com/article/12171636/ahead-of-schedule-
under-budget-sound-transit-expansion)).

> mired in corruption and inefficiency.

Again, false. One of the reasons why ST2 is under budget is that Sound Transit
got a lower interest rate than they expected on the bonds they issued,
specifically because they're one of the best-run, most efficient mass transit
agencies in the country (source: [http://www.soundtransit.org/About-Sound-
Transit/News-and-eve...](http://www.soundtransit.org/About-Sound-Transit/News-
and-events/News-releases/News-release-archive/423-million-bond-issuance-takes-
advantage-of-low-interest-rates))

> We need VC thinking here, and more proposals with a clear eye on the ROI.

Ah, the hallmark of the uninformed public transit opponent. Lots of handwaving
with "we need innovation and outside-the-box thinking!" with very few concrete
proposals. The ST3 planning process went on for years specifically so people
could propose alternative ideas- they weren't taken up because none of them
were any good.

> If my city dropped 5.4 billion on buses (a tenth of cost of ST3), we could
> have much more capacity that could be provisioned in a more dynamic way.
> That could be ready in a few years.

Buses where? The roads (both the highways and the surface streets downtown)
are already jammed. Nobody is going to take buses if it doesn't offer any
decrease in transit time over just taking their car.

> Instead we get rail in 25+ years

Yup, construction takes time. I will only mention that we could've had this
all today if your spiritual forerunners hadn't killed Seattle's transit plans
in the 70's and 80's making basically the same arguments you're making now. We
can either continue to make their mistakes or try to fix it.

> at a massive cost now.

No, the cost is spread out over the same multi-decade time span as the
construction. Do you know how taxes and bonds work?

Behold the usual ST3 opponent: vague proposals that reek of concern trolling,
combined with empirical falsehoods. Please vote Yes; Seattle is getting choked
to death in traffic and we can't repeat the mistakes of the 80's by doing
nothing.

~~~
dlp211
So I haven't voted yet, but my two concerns are the additional sales and
property taxes and I don't believe that ST3 does enough, in a short enough
timespan. Do you have any comments on my 2 concerns?

~~~
seattle_native
Have you calculated out the costs for you? Sound Transit floats a misleading
"average $169" figure, but for a property owner it is much higher.

Do you want to own a nice car? If you buy a 100k car you are on the hook for
$800 extra to Washington's already high vehicle taxes

~~~
plandis
I'm not trying to attack you personally but you've stated very misleading
things in your above post.

If the true reason you don't support light rail is that you own luxury cars
that the majority of the population cannot afford and you wouldn't ever take
public transit that's fine, but don't lie to make a case.

