SurveyUSA asked 500 people in the Seattle area this question: “The state’s current plan to replace the Highway 520 bridge does not include light rail. Do you think the state’s plan should move forward? Or do you think the project should be delayed so ways to add light rail to the bridge can be studied?”
Only 33 percent of respondents said we should begin with a plan that doesn’t include light rail, and 55 percent said we should figure out a way to get light rail on the bridge.
- SurveyUSA Poll Sponsored by KING 5
A breakdown of the poll shows that most respondents in all categories—both genders, all age groups, and all races—prefer light rail planning for the 520 bridge.
Mayor Mike McGinn issued a report yesterday that says the states plan, if it proceeds, would create “insurmountable” obstacles to ever building light rail on the bridge. His plan also lays out a way to make it happen. Meanwhile, the Seattle City Council and the governor have said construction needs to begin now.
So, tell me…why couldn’t we have a separate light rail bridge when it comes to that?
Thought never occurred to me until you mentioned it, Mis; you raise an excellent point. There may well be another cross-lake corridor that doesn’t work for a highway but does work for rail transit.
But, please, let’s think about it and identify workable corridor(s) before committing to another No Light Rail Ever floating bridge on 520.
Slog and McGinn really need to get a room…
You don’t have to delay it to include light rail. You only need to have the bridge have 7 pontoon widths instead of 6.
They don’t even have funding for most of the Western portion anyway.
No delay.
Good observations @1 and @2. The thing that makes me wary of having the 520 bridge double as a light rail route is that it reminds me a bit of the old, discredited “freeway monorail” way of thinking. Then again, I-90 is being used for light rail, and the fundamental problem with a highway routing for a mass transit system isn’t so much running alongside a highway, it’s having stops along a highway. Hence the stupidity of the thankfully aborted “Vision Line” in Bellevue.
I think eventually we’re going to need a north Lake Washington mass transit line, just like we’re going to need a Ballard-to-U District mass transit line. But the real goal for such a line is probably going to be connecting Husky Stadium and Kirkland. By the time we come to it, is that better accomplished with a new bridge farther north or piggybacking on an existing 520 bridge? I dunno.
So I guess I’m with the folks who say let’s not preclude light rail on 520, provided we make a serious, sincere attempt to ensure future light rail compatibility and that serious, sincere attempt doesn’t blow up the whole damn project. My suspicion is that the real political driver for 520 light rail isn’t coming from transit supporters like me, it’s coming from Montlake neighborhood interests who want to co-opt the light rail cause as a smokescreen for their own cause.
I should remind all the “light rail or else” folks that, even without light rail, the new 520 bridge is going to be a huge win for transit over the existing 520 bridge, as long as there are dedicated HOV or transit lanes between the Montlake exit and Husky Stadium. And I’m saying this as someone who never passes up a chance to be a light rail snob when the comparison is made to buses.
The equation is this: How much longer will it take to get light rail-readiness added to the 520 plan, versus the likelihood of a major earthquake in that time frame?
In my experience here in this passive-aggressive town, the process of getting agreement could take some time. A pissing contest between Olympia and Seattle is always a protracted battle. So there is real risk there…we all saw the NYT article, I think, about how fucked we are when (and it is “when” not “if”) the big one hits.
After an earthquake kills a few hundred people on the bridge because McGinn succeeded in delaying construction, that survey won’t mean shit.
Sorry to be so harsh about it, but I haven’t heard any good arguments to the contrary.
I have asked before, and since I missed my opportunity to ask the mayor himself on questionland, I want to know why it has to be light rail? The way I see it, what really matters is that the rapid transit system we build be grade separated or otherwise use dedicated space.
The way I see the 520 situation, Bus Rapid Transit would be the better choice for routes that cross this bridge. This could provide options to more communities on the Eastside than light or monorail, while the dedicated lanes would provide passengers with a speedy commute while their driving cohorts are stuck in traffic with no way around it.
@6: I agree, somewhat. In Portland – where we actually do “light rail” in seriousness – you usually find that busses are wayyy more useful than light rail. The truth is that a lot of our transit problems can be solved not by expensive rail systems, but much more efficient use of bus rapid transit through dedicated lanes, efficient designs for boarding/alighting, and frequent service schedules. We need infrastructure to support bus transit – it can be electric/biodiesel if we want – because it’s really what’s going to get people out of the cars on the “local” level.
Along some corridors – probably in Seattle too – light rail will be necessary to increase the efficiency of a comprehensive bus system. But it’s ridiculous to assume light rail will be a dramatic improvement if we don’t have a comprehensive bus system.
@7: Sort of. But what’s been ignored here is that McGinn is no more responsible for the delay than the state, which is pushing a pro-car agenda Seattle won’t swallow. If they simply backed off and agreed to compromise, they’d grease the wheels of this in no time. Seattle is constantly in these debates because they’re ignoring their opponents’ perfectly reasonable concerns. If we actually tried to work together and take the time to listen to one another, things actually move faster.
Consensus isn’t just more fair. It’s also more practical.
That seems to have been a question asked without presenting all the facts. To be fair, it should have asked if one thinks the 520 Bridge should have light rail IN ADDITION to the light rail already planned for the I-90 bridge.
Cressona @6, last time I looked at A+, the HOV lanes end at the Montlake interchange. Buses and HOVs have to fight their way through mixed traffic on Montlake Blvd. to get anywhere, including Husky Stadium and the rest of the UW.
the idea of rail on 520 isn’t new. some of us met with WSDOT in 2002 to tell them to do it. Answer then is same as now:
not our yob. We don’t do rail.
the underlying problem is the state and the wsdot don’t seem to see it all as one big system to efficiently move people around….it’s divided by mode and by entity…it’s a bit like having the state dept. of math instruction and the county dept. of english literature and the city agency for history. we just want to go to school, man, and the politicians oughter like get their act together.
in every city with robust metro transit, it wasn’t just the localities pitching in, it was an effort led by the state or the province or in europe where they REALLY do it right by the national government. sitting here with the same population and product as sweden or switzerland it’s amazing we can’t simply fucking build transportation that works, it’s not rocket science. you just put down enough buses so they come fast, then people take them! you put down enough rail lines so they go most everywhere then people take them! we sit around here debating whether to do it how to do it is it something for consensus or not who should do it blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah when in the end you just have to freaking build it
or you can’t ride it.
@8: You said the M-word. Don’t say the M-word. But yeah, BRT as a basic modal feature with pre-planned extensibility for light rail as part of the final design, is probably the smartest, most cost-effective compromise at this juncture to make everyone settle down somewhat.
@7: All things considered, the fatality count, in terms of earthquake risk, still falls on the Viaduct’s dodgy state. Even if seismic undulations to water on the Lake tear the bridge from its ground moorings on Montlake and Bellevue, there are still pontoons with buoyancy in them. Worry more about the hard structures — even robust bridges like Aurora and I-5 over the canal are susceptible in a major quake.
@1 + @2: Where is there potential rights-of-way for another cross-lake possibility beyond 520 and I-90? The expropriation costs, litigation, environmental impact assessment, and other upgrades would make this extremely problematic. “Build it right alongside the new 520” wouldn’t work, because the entry points from land are already confined by surrounding development.
@10: Is the I-90 LRT plan a done deal, or just a nice possibility?
@9: I hear you. But your scenario doesn’t describe reality. Seattle and Olympia aren’t going to back off and agree to compromise anytime soon.
Also, I think you’re underselling the scope of this would-be delay. You can only “grease the wheels” so much. This is a big change to the currently planned project that involves the structure of not just the bridge, but the surrounding stations, etc. It would be a huge undertaking, and it would take time even if all the relevant parties miraculously had a kumbaya moment.
@13: If you are right, and it can confidently be established that the bridge will at least mostly withstand a major quake, then never mind. The only compelling reason to move forward is to save lives, and if that’s not an issue, then why the hell wouldn’t we take another look at the plan?
@8: Well, sort of. Be careful, though. There are other benefits to light rail that rapid bus transit doesn’t offer. One is capacity: light rail, if designed properly, can carry up to 20,000 passengers per hour, versus some 9,000 or so for bus rapid transit. Also, its capacity can expand more easily and efficiently, as each articulated bus (capacity = 120) they put on a line requires its own driver, where a single rail operator can carry more passengers.
Furthermore, there’s the issue of the land-use/transportation nexus: that is, the fact that no transit system is particularly effective unless built environments are designed such that transit makes sense to efficiently operate. Land use, in this way, ensures the efficiency of transportation; but also, transportation shapes the market feasibility of land use. (Ie. if you can’t get to a place, it won’t make sense to develop it.)
Some of the experiences here in Portland suggest that rail is better at doing this because it’s less flexible, that developers can be confident that they can build and market units along transit lines without having to worry that the lines are going to be moved to some other location before their project turns a profit. In essence, rail lowers the market risk of transit-oriented development by ensuring that transportation infrastructure will remain reasonably constant throughout the economic “life” of the project.
But I’m certainly not saying light rail is always the answer, as some planners do. I think we just need to be talking about all these things if we’re going to get to something that works.
@16: That’s a risk assessment we haven’t yet seen published or done, I don’t think. It would be helpful to have something like that, as cold as it sounds, just to know what the worst case possibilities are.
Also, as inane as this may sound, a “big one” could happen at 4am just as much as it could any other hour. Nevertheless, factoring gridlock on all four mentioned structures as a set of pre-requisite conditions for said risk analysis would be necessary — not to mention any commuter/business/residential activity below said bridges (and other minor overpasses of concern).
In this case, the only bridge of the four certain to be unaffected by fatality and property risk from falling or crushing debris from above is the existing 520.
@17: Largely speaking, agreed on all counts. Thank you for raising the ridership thresholds necessary to justify the expense of building hard infrastructure. This is something that doesn’t often (enough) get mentioned in general public discussions.
While BRT handles a lower hourly capacity versus LRT (which is less, in turn, than heavy-rail such as subway and Sounder-type service, but that’s for another time), it nevertheless builds in a buffer of investment risk in the event that it is a flop (i.e., due to poor land-use/transit integration, as you noted). It’s relatively inexpensive to undo the BRT soft barriers in an integrated design if it fails, giving those lanes back to cars. But it’s also more cost-effective to engineer the new design to be readily (and easily) retrofitted for heavier capacity use such as LRT rather than, wedging it in there with no design forethought.
@15: I see what you’re saying, but my point less that than it is to think ahead, and to not undersell the cost of delay created by failing to anticipate it. I think if this was planned for the future from the beginning, we’d see little of the delay from Seattle that’s now beginning to hold up the process – and will now continue to hold it up in the future. What’s being incubated here, by steamrolling over Seattle again, is another viaduct debacle, another monorail debacle.
In essence, my argument is that by ignoring – and sometimes outright rejecting – the potential for compromise, they sow the seeds for obstruction and delay, which does little but heighten our earthquake risk and costs in the long run. This failure to recognize the need for compromise early on is actually what threatens lives. Seattle’s obstruction won’t just be willed away because earthquakes are eminent. We need to plan for their concerns, we need to know it’s a very real factor in the success of any of these necessary investments.
So, whatever happens with the 520 project, I believe that we have to begin to learn how to better anticipate and address this kind of policymaking disaster at the outset, rather than trying to steamroll over it after you’ve already spent thousands on design and planning, and the fallacy of prior investment has begun to set in.
@20: M-word profanity!
This is a general audience, you know! There may be kids around! 😉
@11 is correct. Not to mention that none of the plans until 2050 include I-5 getting any wider, so it’s not like they could go on I-5.
Should we build pontoons? Yes. Can the current design have light rail without removing a lane? No. Can the current design of the bridge itself have light rail – when it is built – by adding one pontoon to the width, without removing a lane, and use that 2-lane portion for BRT, bus, and vanpool (HOV-6) usage without any major changes to the Eastern (funded) portion, the Bridge (mostly funded) portion – yes.
The Western (mostly unfunded) portion needs some minor changes, but it’s more a matter of minor tinkering for the other parts.
@19: Yeah, I mostly agree. Except I need to add one nuance: part of my argument regarding nexus is that the quality of BRT that makes it “easy to undo” often actually contributes to its failure.
In order to get the land-use/transit integration we need, it has to make economic sense to private developers to risk their capital on that integration. They’re rolling the dice: they want to know that the public investment which helps makes a transit-oriented development pencil out isn’t suddenly going to go away. So I guess, with that, I’m suggesting by going all in – getting rid of our ability to undo a failed transit investment – is sometimes exactly what you need to do to keep the transit investment from failing. (Am I making any sense with this? I’m not sure, I’m trying.)
But my larger point, where I think we agree, is that while we’ve invested millions in light rail, we’ve done very little to improve the efficiency of our bus system, which actually yields the highest immediate ridership returns in terms of how a transit system is realistically used. In even the most extensive light rail system, people are going to use the bus most often, and our busses could be made way more attractive to would-be riders by just dedicating a lane to them and increasing their efficiency.
@21: I also used the “v-word,” in case you missed it. 😉
@24, 23: Ah, but “viaduct” isn’t a profanity, as many cities have them (and they do just fine). Alaskan Way just has to go, and go soon somehow, but I’m not about to hop into that political fire here.
No, you make perfect sense. It’s the developer “five-minute” rule: developers are more wont to invest on a new development when the support infrastructure is fixed, not easily malleable. It’s why condos and businesses will cluster nearby subways stations, and increased retail activity frequently follows LRT station additions.
(The five-minute yardstick, for everyone reading this, is the time limit assumed that a resident or officer worker is willing to make by foot to a transit station or rail stop from their starting point. Anything beyond that, and the rate of return falls rapidly, as does the desirability to develop.)
This is why pre-designing the new bridge with extensibility for light rail as the growth goal, with BRT place-holding those lanes from the launch of the new bridge (with the proviso that LRT fails to get the green light from inception of construction, but is expected to be upgraded later), is a lot more logical than just adding in two BRT lanes that are only designed for rolling tire stock.
Pay a little now, Olympia, and pay a lot less later.
the reason to plan rail now is the same reason to plan rail now even if we weren’t building a new bridge. the earlier you plan the rail the cheaper it is to site the stations and the lines. because development happens. and the more built up it is, although demand for rail is greater, hoo boy, the cost zooms up like a rocket. the cost of the right of way.
“highway development” is part of that. if we splotch down huge cloverleafs for a highway off ramp, you use up the perfect spot for a train stop….
and doing that means the train stop won’t work there, in the middle of the off ramps.
Where’s this future train line going to go? where will it stop? that’s what we need to talk about now, not just are the pontoons big enough.
@26 – we already know that. Any light rail across 520 has to connect to the existing N-S line and there is no way in heck anyone’s building a really really long tunnel to the station on Capitol Hill, so the only place it could go is adjacent to Husky Stadium (you can even see it in various ST design plans). This allows you to figure out the angles – basically 3 ways – either a tunnel (down) or a bridge (up) or a small bridge next to the bridge on the cut (same flyover) (existing bridge can’t handle it).
If a small bridge on the cut, you could just use BRT/Bus/HOV-6 up to there at the proper grade. If a big bridge or a deep tunnel that baby’s going to cost a bit so all you can do is make sure the 2 lane plus divider run length is long enough (1000-2000) feet to allow for the drop/rise in elevation and don’t build that part until later. When you do build that, you have a number of other choices, but that’s not in the scope of the 2 laws the state did for this project.
@17, thanks for the reply. Your response IMO confirms one of the problems I have with our regional transit plan, which is it seems very narrow in the options explored.
Your reply has actually modified my opinion. I now think there should be a main line of some sort of fixed rail (light rail or monorail)running from downtown to redmond, with supplemental BRT to serve communities that would not benefit a line along 520 yet have the density, or the capacity to develop residential and/or occupational density to support transit lines.
We need our transit plan to involve exploring all technologies available. We need a complementary mix of rail (light rail, monorail, local trolleys-I mean streetcars), local buses, BRT, and short jumper lines feeding into the main lines from neighborhoods, as well as water taxis and passenger only ferries.
We are a major metropolitan area with one major city and 3 satalite cities, as well as expansive suburbs. It is time for our transit system and our land use policies to reflect this. It is time for the other cities in the region to get with the program and become part of the solution.
Time to move on, just build the freaking thing already. Also, who says we need to have light rail over 520, just build a bridge from Sand Point to Kirkland when the time comes, also build a station in Laurelhurst or Ravena along the way from the Husky stadium station.
Oh and if you build light rail over 520, then you basically go EXACTLY WHERE THE I-90 LIGHT RAIL IS GOING…. BELLEVUE! Seriously!? Spend billions on light rail upgrades, on two bridges, and they both go to Bellevue?
@29 – you must be new here.
@28: You’re welcome. I too have this problem with the regional transit plan. I actually have this problem with the regional transit plan in Portland, but it’s nowhere near as bad because Oregon had the good sense to consolidate all of its metro transit agencies into TriMet back in the 70’s. But oh well…
Anyway, yeah, basically you’re hinting at the problem of Seattle’s decentralization of objectives, which to me is the largest problem the metro has. I don’t blame this on the “other cities,” though as much as I’m likely to blame “everyone.” There’s basically no comprehensive consensus vision, and on those cases there sort-of is (like SoundTransit) the objectives of other state and local agencies still can get in the way.
They don’t plan state road infrastructure with local planning and land-use objectives in mind. As a result, we end up with these kinds of situations: Either Seattle’s stuck doling out money twice, for infrastructure that should have only been built once, it’s fighting with the state, or it’s trying to tack on more comprehensive and forward-looking improvements to independently planned infrastructure. Sometimes a combination of all three.
I mean at one point, the city, state, county, and other agencies were, in all seriousness, moving ahead with a plan that was to build both the monorail and light rail while developers – mostly outside of either of those plans – were picking up the SLUT. And none of them really had anything to do with each other besides that they somehow intersect – on three different floors – with Westlake Center.
It’s really just insane. And then we have the conservatives all getting on the side of just steamrolling whatever poorly thought-out piecemeal project because they know it’ll piss off environmentalists – who really actually just want a more comprehensive plan. The whole damn time, tax money is getting wasted by everyone as we try to fight it out between the various agencies…
We’ll be lucky to have light rail over I-90 in 20 years, and I-90 was designed for it and we have already voted to pay for it. We won’t be voting to pay for additional light rail to the East side for at least another 10 years, which means we won’t be building it for at least another 40 years, so it’s really not worth worrying about. When the Mayor says “delay” to build light rail, he really just means, “delay.” And when both the viaduct and 520 fall apart without any replacement available, you can thank McGinn.
The current 520 bridge and its replacement will likely be at the bottom of Lake Washington, along with the first I-90 bridge, before we even have the funds in hand to construct light rail across 520.
We put the rails in the downtown bus tunnel 20 years early, and that didn’t work out so good now, did it?
500 people? WTF? This is why survey usa is a third rate pollster. You need 1000-1300 people to have an accurate poll. Plus any poll with a margin of error greater than 2.5% is BS. But hey….gotta give the left wing hipsters at the stranger credit for being consistent. They stick to showing ridiculous polls that back up their minority position on issues.
I’m the biggest light rail fan on the planet. But Mike McGinn and his band of clueless Club Sierra folks are giving good planning and engineering a bad name.
Yeah, the Publicola kids tend to follow the latest transit fad (see their insane monofail rants over the years). But they should have learned by now that the populist winds don’t always yield the best results.
Seattle Transit Blog has two excellent recent posts explaining how misguided this effort REALLY IS.
“In Portland – where we actually do “light rail” in seriousness – you usually find that busses are wayyy more useful than light rail.”
doesurminglow = transit idiot savant.
Buses stuck in traffic work well – when light rail does the heavy passenger mile lifting.
See the KC Metro financial meltdown for the model doesurminglow hopes to mimic.
I love watching windmill tilters do their stuff.
@34: I’m with you, to a point. STB doesn’t always get it right opinion-wise but they pretty much always do a good job of breaking down some of the more complex issues at play here.
@35: Ummm… I think you probably should re-read my posts. It’s like you saw “buses” and that was your cue to cut to “KC Metro financial meltdown.” Or something. As if that had anything to do with anything I was talking about…
I very intentionally did not say we should prefer buses to light rail, or that we should prefer light rail to buses. My argument was that they needed to work in better conjunction, and often, some of the more immediate issues can be addressed with much more minor investments in bus infrastructure. (Isn’t this your argument too?)
This isn’t a “model,” or a “vision,” really. It’s just real life. I whole-heartedly support light rail, especially in Seattle where it’s well overdue, but I’m not in the business of pretending it’s going to suddenly change the reality. I think we all know a little better than that.
Also, a little unrelated, where do you get this idea buses must be “stuck in traffic”? That’s ludicrous. They shouldn’t always need to share a right-of-way with cars. And yes, if they’re operating alongside rail, buses can operate more efficiently in traffic. But that’s hardly seems a necessity either. There’s a lot of ways to operate bus systems that aren’t the KC Metro way. Many are also privately-run.
What is your proposal anyway? Do you have any ideas about this really? It seems like we actually agree, you just wanted to attack my position because, well, this is the internet, and it’s easy to do. But I am a little concerned your only contribution here is that KC Metro is poorly run, and that therefore we should just kinda overlook opportunities to improve bus transit because it won’t work without rail, and, ugh… forget it… this is where this becomes a pretty stupid debate to have, so I don”t think I’m going to have it.
@32: Re: “We put the rails in the downtown bus tunnel 20 years early, and that didn’t work out so good now, did it?”
Actually, that ended up working out fine, in a way. There are trains running through the tunnel right now. The presence of the rails helped instill in the public’s mind a vision of a regional rail system, and since they were installed, there have been two public votes to build and extend that system.
The lesson we should learn from the fact that we didn’t install the rails properly was that we really should do things right the first time. Installing the rails in the tunnel was a relatively cheap way to learn that lesson. The lousy plans the state came up with for 520 cost $4.65 billion while failing to solve today’s problems, let alone those we’ll experience decades out. We need to fix those plans.
So Im sitting here looking at the project.
The new bridge won’t even have any more lanes??? WTF
Sorry as a transplant I am convinced. You Seattle natives are ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY, RETARDED!
Why would you agree to a 5 billion dollar project that won’t even ease congestion? SPEAK UP YOU CAREBEARS, and stop allowing the politicians to waste your tax dollars.
Damn this city pisses me off.
Oh and with all due respect no one cares about Ballard, or Queen Anne, or any of the other little towns in Seattle. Most of the money now is in BELLEVUE. The people who live in Ballard, or wallingford contribute very little to the overall economy.
Bellevue has more people then Seattle Metro. Ease our congestion, and let the green carebears walk or ride their bikes. They enjoy doing that anyway while they are stoned on heroin or meth.