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What Are Your Goals for Regional Transit?

· Posted Thursday July 13, 2006 by jamie

In developing their next round of regional transit improvement, Sound Transit has pulled together three draft options of the next package that will go to voters for approval, and they are seeking feedback on these possible choices.

I actually find the choices quite intriguing with respect to their impact on Tacoma and Pierce County. They have tiered the plans as “Bus/Rail”, “Medium Rail”, and “Maximized Rail”, but this far from tells the whole story for what might happen here.

As far as the extension of the Central Link light rail (which would connect to the airport, Seattle, and other points north and east), these descriptors are good in that each option brings the Central Link further south, with the “Maximized Rail” travelling as far as the Port of Tacoma (presumably near the Tacoma Dome Station). Update: the News Tribune is reporting that Central will only extend to some location in Fife in the Maximized plan, though I cannot find any corroborating mention of this on the ST website.

However, the implications for Tacoma Link light rail are somewhat the reverse of this. The Bus/Rail plan extends the light rail down Sixth Ave all the way to TCC. The Medium Rail plan shortens that extension, so that it will only reach Tacoma General. The maximized rail plan actually makes no reference to a Tacoma Link extension at all.

I’m inclined to think that the Maximized Rail option is pretty cool. We would gain a good transit connection to the airport and other points north, and the proposed Tacoma Streetcars could be implemented to provide local connections around Tacoma in absence of a Tacoma Link expansion. (To a lesser extent with the Medium Rail plan, the Tacoma Link extension to T.G. could get us up the hill, and then the Tacoma Streetcars could operate through the business districts using a shared right-of-way, as the exclusive right-of-way that the Link would use is one of the big disadvantages of extension down Sixth Ave.)

Here’s your big chance to participate in the process and tell Sound Transit what you think.

Check out the press release
Visit the ST2 Website for more info on the and provide your feedback

Update: Check out this post at ErikEmery.com for a critique of the use of sales tax to fund this. He is totally right on, our state needs to move to income tax.


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  1. I don’t want to fully disclose all of the research and planning that I’ve been doing alongside the Pierce Transit/City of Tacoma study on streetcars, but I will say this:
    I was the biggest fan of light rail until Morgan introduced me to the concept of heritage streetcars.

    Now light rail is a very high quality mode of transit, it offers modern low floor cars with air conditioning and all of the bells and whistles. However, the effort that needs to go into construction is insane. Utilities underneath the roadway must be moved out of the way for the excavation needed to secure the tracks. The reason for this is that light rail is not really so light, the Tacoma LINK cars are on the order of 65,000lbs each. That and they’re expensive – each car from the Czech republic (with the spare parts and shipping) cost about $3 million. Streetcars on the other hand can be bought for $600,000 a piece or can be refurbished for even less money and they weight less, meaning you really only need to dig about a foot or so into the roadway to secure the tracks. That and they last forever. San Francisco has been using some very old cars, but they run just fine with the proper maintenance. Further, streetcars can easily run in mixed traffic and have traffic signal control (which is one element of light rail). All of these fiscal advantages of streetcars allow us to build a much larger system for much less money than it would cost to build even a short extension of light rail.

    This is what I would like to see happen with transit. First of all we need to get electrified. Our transit runs on compressed natural gas, this fuel, like all other fossil fuels is coming under increased worldwide demand, causing prices to increase. In fact, if you do a little research, you’ll find that the supply of CNG is going to be in considerable danger of declining in the next decade (See Peak Oil). So, If our transit, be that busses or trains, ran on hydroelectrically generated electricity, our air quality would benefit, the long term security of the transit system would be sustained, and it would be cheaper to run. (not to mention the great acceleration you get out of an electric motor on a bus)

    In terms of alignments we need to look back at the past. One of the reasons the streetcar system failed in Tacoma was because, like today’s buses, they ran on lines. If you take a look at the Pierce Transit map of the north end many of the bus routes are similar to the streetcar lines that ran in that area, but not very many of them are successful. As the streetcar system of the past became more developed and as the surrounding areas of Tacoma became more developed it became more necessary to create interconnections among the lines with motorbuses. Because we would be reintroducing streetcars into a mainly built-out environment, the proper course of action would be to set up circulators for the most part, which would be linked up to a central transit artery (East/West along 6th Ave. in the North, and North/South along Pacific Ave in the South).

    I’m not saying that light rail should go down 6th Ave and Pacific though. Light rail should probably be extended up to the Stadium District where it can more easily connect with the streetcar system. But streetcars should be the primary mode for local travel. Light rail is geared towards moving many people a long distance with very few stops – hence the “regional” focus. Streetcars have more stops than light rail but fewer stops than busses, have a high frequency of trains per hour, and can more effectively leverage funds for investment. I’ll leave it at that for now.

    — Chris Karnes    Jul 13, 10:26 PM    #

  2. Wow, Chris…thanks for all of the great insights…

    I think you hit the nail on the head with the correct roles for light rail vs. streetcars, in that light rail is ideal for “distance” travel and streetcars are what would be needed for moving people around town. I think this further accentuates the benefits of Plan 3, the Max Rail option combined with Tacoma/PT pursuing the streetcars for in-town travel. (Though if they would bring the light rail up the hill to the Stadium District, that would be a pretty killer benefit for the streetcar development…)

    I do have a few concerns after reading the TNT article, though:

    1) If they are bringing Central Link as far as Fife, they need to do what it takes to get that connection to the Dome Station. There is no reason to create yet another transit station so close by with its associated parking needs.

    2) The designation of a Central Link extension only as far as Federal Way as something that should be considered a benefit to Pierce County…last I checked, driving to/from Federal Way during rush hour sucks. This extension might be a big benefit to Fed Way and South King, but it’s not helping people in Pierce County to get out of their cars. I don’t want to pay for that crap.

    3) Biggest of all, the tying together of the RTID and ST tax measures. I’d heard something about this a while back, but was reminded by the article that when this Sound Transit plan does eventually go to voters, it will be done so at the same time as a tax measure from the Regional Transit Investment District, which would cover highway improvements. Our legislature, in its infinite wisdom, passed a measure that if either of these measures fail before voters, both fail. It is of course ridiculous to associate a transit measure and a road measure. I plan to write a posting on this, and we should all be writing to our legislators to ask them what the hell they were thinking.

    — jamie    Jul 14, 09:14 AM    #