7 ms·

I can see how such services are helpful in sparsely populated areas. I don't know Seattle personally, but in any larger city something like this begs the quest

by hannob 7y ago

I can see how such services are helpful in sparsely populated areas. I don't know Seattle personally, but in any larger city something like this begs the question: Why not improve the normal public transport service and also provide light-rail or busses to the areas that have "little east-west bus service" according to the article?

resonantjacket5 7y ago
East west travel in Rainer valley is hard because of hills and freeways. The north south bus routes are fine but the east west one doesn’t work well
- hinkley 7y ago
  That east-west problem is not just Rainier Valley. That’s the whole county. The light rail system needs to be shaped more like a ladder, so you have some options to go cross-town. It’s coming, very slowly, but it won’t be enough.
  - resonantjacket5 7y ago
    Unfortunately there isn’t that enough demand to go east west to justify building light rail. Light rail going up those steep hills is even more expensive so I don’t think a “ladder” approach would work well. More RapidRide buses are expected to cover the east west gap though
    - grogenaut 7y ago
      Anecdotally density seems to follow light rail placement long term. Not sure if this is backed by data
      - hinkley 7y ago
        People live where they can get housing. When the route was finalized a bunch of housing speculators bought up a strip of land all along that corridor and build apartments and townhomes. There's something on the order of a mile of route down near the Central District that is virtually all new construction. I was curious about the progress of the LR project so I drove the at-grade sections a couple of times during construction and a lot of those properties were for sale/lease about the time they were still stringing wires (and then the city allocated like 8 months for system testing to follow construction prior to launch). So there must have been people buying houses a year before the rail was there.
    - loeg 7y ago
      Yeah light rail's scale east-west is a bit wider than that.[0] But it seems like the area might be served well by east-west bus routes instead? I mean, whatever, I don't care. If this is the most cost effective way to get people to transit, I'm all for it. It seems to have a convenience aspect that bus lines certainly don't have. [0]: http://soundtransit3.org/map#map http://soundtransit3.org/map#map
Transfinity 7y ago
The Rainier Valley where this service is being tested is a long north-south residential corridor, bordered by Lake Washington on the east and a steep ridge on the west. It's a few miles wide, just wide enough that it's not reasonable to expect people to walk from the edge to the center to catch the train. Because it's relatively sparsely populated and most trips would be short last mile trips, there's no way running full bus lines would be cost effective.
- gmanley 7y ago
  What I don’t get is why routes need to make money. This is a public service, sure it’s a good thing to have it pay for itself but the focus shouldn’t be on that.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    "Cost effective" does not mean "profitable." This is a straw man that transit advocates like to throw up. No transit system in the entire U.S. is held to the standard of "mak[ing] money." All transit in the U.S. loses money on an operating basis, even excluding capital costs: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/06/how-much-money-us-transit-systems-lose-per-trip-in-1-chart/395189 https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/06/how-much-mone.... (Contrast many other countries, where transit often at least breaks even on operating costs, if not capital costs.) The issue is the magnitude of the public subsidy on a per-trip or per-mile basis. Right now in D.C., transit advocates are fighting battles for service that costs $20-30+ per trip (late night Metro service and the streetcar). That's just a waste of taxpayer money when subsidizing Uber/Lyft could allow those same trips to happen for lower cost. Even more generally, rail service is subsidized, on a per-passanger-mile basis, about an order of magnitude more than automobiles. (While roads receive several much more funding than transit, they comprise about 50x more passenger miles of travel.) https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=15144 https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=15144
    - hannob 7y ago
      > Even more generally, rail service is subsidized, on a per-passanger-mile basis, about an order of magnitude more than automobiles. Only if you completely ignore carbon emissions and other externalities.
intopieces 7y ago
Seattle is improving the normal transport service, too. They are tearing up streets and putting in trains, they are eliminating parking(!) in favor of places to hang out. Seattle is becoming fantastically more car-hostile by the day. Seriously, the last time I visited one street had eliminated street parking in favor of a protected bike lane, potted plants and some chairs. There are 27 distinct, voter-approved transit projects in progress: https://www.soundtransit.org/system-expansion https://www.soundtransit.org/system-expansion
- news_to_me 7y ago
  Is that a bad thing, though? I mean, it is for people who like to drive, but I think the benefits to everyone else outweigh the preferences of car owners.
  - glloydell 7y ago
    I read "fantastically car-hostile" as a pro car-hostility statement.
    - loeg 7y ago
      I had the opposite take. Usually when I read opinions colored by "car-hostile," it's from authors who advocate for car-maximized infrastructure.
      - intopieces 7y ago
        I used to term car-hostile as a step beyond "pro-transit," because cities can be pro-transit while still not doing enough to actively reduce the number of people getting into cars. Seattle is not just making riding transit more convenient. They are making driving more inconvenient.
        mjevans 7y ago
        As someone living in the suburbs near Seattle... You're half right. Mostly about the making driving (and parking) more inconvenient. In programming terms they're ripping out a deprecated interface without having first provided a replacement to transition to. Yes there are park and ride facilities outside of the core city, but they're specced for local capacity. The gateway interface would be much more like replacing several warehouses near the tram line and freeway with GIANT, actively police monitored, parking garages. On the north end something similar probably needs to happen near the northgate mall, and if the extension up through the U doesn't go there it needs to. THEN after the pre-requisite work is done, they should just ban all cars from the city outright.

by hannob 7y ago

resonantjacket5 7y ago

East west travel in Rainer valley is hard because of hills and freeways. The north south bus routes are fine but the east west one doesn’t work well

hinkley 7y ago
That east-west problem is not just Rainier Valley. That’s the whole county. The light rail system needs to be shaped more like a ladder, so you have some options to go cross-town. It’s coming, very slowly, but it won’t be enough.
- resonantjacket5 7y ago
  Unfortunately there isn’t that enough demand to go east west to justify building light rail. Light rail going up those steep hills is even more expensive so I don’t think a “ladder” approach would work well. More RapidRide buses are expected to cover the east west gap though
  - grogenaut 7y ago
    Anecdotally density seems to follow light rail placement long term. Not sure if this is backed by data
    - hinkley 7y ago
      People live where they can get housing. When the route was finalized a bunch of housing speculators bought up a strip of land all along that corridor and build apartments and townhomes. There's something on the order of a mile of route down near the Central District that is virtually all new construction. I was curious about the progress of the LR project so I drove the at-grade sections a couple of times during construction and a lot of those properties were for sale/lease about the time they were still stringing wires (and then the city allocated like 8 months for system testing to follow construction prior to launch). So there must have been people buying houses a year before the rail was there.
  - loeg 7y ago
    Yeah light rail's scale east-west is a bit wider than that.[0] But it seems like the area might be served well by east-west bus routes instead? I mean, whatever, I don't care. If this is the most cost effective way to get people to transit, I'm all for it. It seems to have a convenience aspect that bus lines certainly don't have. [0]: http://soundtransit3.org/map#map http://soundtransit3.org/map#map

Transfinity 7y ago

The Rainier Valley where this service is being tested is a long north-south residential corridor, bordered by Lake Washington on the east and a steep ridge on the west. It's a few miles wide, just wide enough that it's not reasonable to expect people to walk from the edge to the center to catch the train. Because it's relatively sparsely populated and most trips would be short last mile trips, there's no way running full bus lines would be cost effective.

gmanley 7y ago
What I don’t get is why routes need to make money. This is a public service, sure it’s a good thing to have it pay for itself but the focus shouldn’t be on that.
- rayiner 7y ago
  "Cost effective" does not mean "profitable." This is a straw man that transit advocates like to throw up. No transit system in the entire U.S. is held to the standard of "mak[ing] money." All transit in the U.S. loses money on an operating basis, even excluding capital costs: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/06/how-much-money-us-transit-systems-lose-per-trip-in-1-chart/395189 https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/06/how-much-mone.... (Contrast many other countries, where transit often at least breaks even on operating costs, if not capital costs.) The issue is the magnitude of the public subsidy on a per-trip or per-mile basis. Right now in D.C., transit advocates are fighting battles for service that costs $20-30+ per trip (late night Metro service and the streetcar). That's just a waste of taxpayer money when subsidizing Uber/Lyft could allow those same trips to happen for lower cost. Even more generally, rail service is subsidized, on a per-passanger-mile basis, about an order of magnitude more than automobiles. (While roads receive several much more funding than transit, they comprise about 50x more passenger miles of travel.) https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=15144 https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=15144
  - hannob 7y ago
    > Even more generally, rail service is subsidized, on a per-passanger-mile basis, about an order of magnitude more than automobiles. Only if you completely ignore carbon emissions and other externalities.

intopieces 7y ago

Seattle is improving the normal transport service, too. They are tearing up streets and putting in trains, they are eliminating parking(!) in favor of places to hang out. Seattle is becoming fantastically more car-hostile by the day. Seriously, the last time I visited one street had eliminated street parking in favor of a protected bike lane, potted plants and some chairs. There are 27 distinct, voter-approved transit projects in progress: https://www.soundtransit.org/system-expansion https://www.soundtransit.org/system-expansion

news_to_me 7y ago
Is that a bad thing, though? I mean, it is for people who like to drive, but I think the benefits to everyone else outweigh the preferences of car owners.
- glloydell 7y ago
  I read "fantastically car-hostile" as a pro car-hostility statement.
  - loeg 7y ago
    I had the opposite take. Usually when I read opinions colored by "car-hostile," it's from authors who advocate for car-maximized infrastructure.
    - intopieces 7y ago
      I used to term car-hostile as a step beyond "pro-transit," because cities can be pro-transit while still not doing enough to actively reduce the number of people getting into cars. Seattle is not just making riding transit more convenient. They are making driving more inconvenient.
      - mjevans 7y ago
        As someone living in the suburbs near Seattle... You're half right. Mostly about the making driving (and parking) more inconvenient. In programming terms they're ripping out a deprecated interface without having first provided a replacement to transition to. Yes there are park and ride facilities outside of the core city, but they're specced for local capacity. The gateway interface would be much more like replacing several warehouses near the tram line and freeway with GIANT, actively police monitored, parking garages. On the north end something similar probably needs to happen near the northgate mall, and if the extension up through the U doesn't go there it needs to. THEN after the pre-requisite work is done, they should just ban all cars from the city outright.