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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 d
by 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 agoAnecdotally density seems to follow light rail placement long term. Not sure if this is backed by data
- hinkley 7y agoPeople 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 agoYeah 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