ONE WEEK AGO, Sound Transit started running morning and evening commuter trains between Seattle and Tacoma (to far fewer than expected riders). Later this winter, a daily Seattle-Everett run will commence.
It marks the real start of the regional transit authority's operations. (It's already been running some commuter bus routes, including a few formerly operated by Pierce Transit.)
For at least the first six months, and perhaps another year thereafter, the trains will only run into Seattle in the morning and back out in the evening.
Those of us who reside here in Seatown can't use the trains to get to the hi-tech jobs being lured to the south and north; but we can enjoy the scenic sunset rides through sprawl and small towns and the yet-unsprawled spots of countryside, into those two economically-bereft yet beautiful industrial cities. (The Everett run also includes lotsa Puget Sound views.) Then, to get back into Seattle you'll have to ride the ST Express bus down dull old I-5.
The assumption that riders only want to go in one spoke-to-hub direction, or can be made to want to go that way by the machinations of civic planning, is a common mistake among transit bureaucrats. This dream of a Singapore- or Sim City-style ordered-from-above urban community is only one thing the Sound Transit brass has gotten wrong.
They're also stuck in a similar rut of engineering and systems design. It could be due to the lobbying and salesmanship by the light-rail industry; or it could just be the natural tendancy of timid officials to "play it safe" with off-the-shelf technologies, whether they're appropriate for this particular area's needs or not.
Thusly, we get a light-rail technology that can't climb Seattle's hills, being put through deep subway tunnels under Capitol Hill and on a neighborhood-bisecting surface route down the Rainier Valley; along a Northgate-to-airport route which, like the commuter-rail route (running with regular passenger cars on, for now, existing Burlington Northern Santa Fe tracks), only goes north-south.
As for the exploding growth of travel to and within the Eastside, ST plans only a few more commuter bus routes and some park-and-ride lots.
And as for getting around within Seattle, they offer only the same ol' Metro buses on the same ol' clogged surface streets.
And the whole thing'll cost much, much more than it ought to. Not only because of all the tunnelling and surface construction, but because potential ridership (and hence potential farebox revenue) will inherently be limited to those who need to go only between the light-rail and commuter-rail systems' limited destinations.
I supported Sound Transit when it came up for a vote back in '96, flawed as it was. Any alternative to auto-dependence these days is a good thing.
It's just that it could be a better thing.
What ex-Seattle Weekly publisher David Brewster would like: Putting all the light-rail money into more commuter-hour bus routes, then cutting bus fares, eventually to zero.
What I'd like: The original Monorail Initiative's cross-city plan, extended south to the airport (and eventually to Tacoma), north to Lynnwood (and eventually to Everett), east along additions to the floating bridges, and with an additional Eastside loop roughly parallelling I-405.
Can this be done? Physically, yes. Fiscally, yes--if there's the will to see it through.
I don't mean the "civic will" the daily papers and the politicians talk about--the voters and the populace getting up the guts to do what the politicians ask them to.
It's the will to lead, so as to eventually get our "leaders" to follow.
TOMORROW: Some non-retail downtown buildings.
ELSEWHERE:
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