5 ms·

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

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