This past weekend, The Seattle Times came out against Sound Transit’s newest ballot proposal, prompting this post. At a recent Kirkland City Council’s meeting, the City Council came out in favor of the Sound Transit ballot initiative. Mayor Lauinger was the lone holdout who advocated for better bus service. Better transportation is critical for this area as it continues to grow. But better, means exactly that, not just any transportation system, but a better transportation system.
If you check out my post on my eastside blog, I’ve talked about some of the very basic reasons why the transit package is flawed. The Seattle Times, Ron Sims, and The Eastside Transportation Association are all against it. The light rail proposal is a plan for 15 years into the future, not a solution to today’s commuter problems. What will happen now and over the next decade if something more immediate and comprehensive is not done?
The package, besides its exorbitant costs for light rail and its lack of short-term solutions to today’s transportation problems, includes money for a demonstration train on the BNSF tracks. The train along the BNSF railroad line would be a diesel train, a diesel motor unit, that won’t minimize commuting times because it crosses 50+ intersections and travels by schools and neighborhoods at a “fast” 25-30 miles pace along older rails. (There’s a video on the Eastside Trail Advocates website which shows a 4 minute wait during the middle of the day at the Totem Lake crossing because of a train coming through the intersection.)
We all, including the city, need to become more “green” and look for ways to limit our carbon footprint, ways that are realistic and meaningful, not ways that sound as is they may work, but don’t accomplish the goal to improve our transportation.
Besides commuter rail along the BNSF line being a poor way to improve transportation, a commuter line will take away from the possibility of a fabulous world class trail for the City of Kirkland. This would be a trail people could use for commuting, biking, and walking. Ironically at the very same City Council meeting, several of the City Council Members talked about the Kirkland community’s emphasis on walking. The Active Living Task Force is a huge promotor of walking in the community. This is their mission statement:
“The Active Living Task Force (ALTF), created in 2007, is comprised of residents, community agencies, local businesses, and City representatives.
Our Vision is for community design, services and programs to enhance our quality of life by making it safe, enjoyable and easy for everyone to be physically active in their daily lives.
Our mission is to advise Kirkland policy makers, advocate and provide support for local strategies aimed at promoting community-enriched physical activity as an integral part of everyone’s (including the disabled) daily life.”
It would be great if the City Council would pay attention to the goals of the Active Living Task Force. One of the city’s goals, according to a comment made by Council Member Jessica Greenway, is to connect all of Kirkland parks by trail. The BNSF line is the answer.
A similar discussion has been happening in Bellevue. That city has also been wrestling with support of the Sound Transit package. The Seattle Times had an article discussing the opposing viewpoints. Bellevue’s Mayor Grant Denniger is for the proposal and Eastside Transportation Association (ETA) backed by Bellevue developer Kemper Freeman, is not. Dick Paylor of ETA was quoted in the Times article as saying: “There’s much better choices than what we have been given.” The group supports ride sharing, road improvements, and a better bus service through $1 billion dollar investment for bus stations. The bus system would be ready far sooner than a rail line, which is supposed to take 15 years and far more more money.
On many levels the transit package is flawed. One level affects everyone. There will be a huge tax increase for a long term solution that may not solve our transportation problems. I’m not against taxes, that’s so far from my thinking. If taxes are raised to pay for services, teachers, police and fire departments, health care, and realistic programs, I’ll be first in line. But I’m last in line for raising taxes for a program that makes no sense.
Another is our immediate transit needs are not being effectively met, and lastly, on a local Kirkland level, we could end up with a commuter line that disrupts Kirkland’s traffic, routes for walking to schools, separates neighborhoods, and costs us the opportunity for a world class walking/biking/commuting trail.
Still not sure what to think or how to vote? There’s an open house this weekend at Bellevue City Hall.
What’s your opinion?
Kirkland Highlands Real Estate Buzz
Hi again Debra-
As you know, I support Proposition 1 and the light rail solution. I think the opposition has been saying there are “better solutions” for decades, going back to the 1968 transit vote, but those solutions have never materialized. The one plan the ETA has doesn’t identify funding sources and advocates for an series of tunnels and elevated busways in Bellevue — which we are not given a price tag for.
Your concerns about the BNSF trail are valid. Any rail service there would have to be approved by the ST Board and local governments — and the ST plan only offers partner funds for right-of-way. To be honest, there is almost no chance of that corridor being feasible for the reasons you’ve mentioned so that money would instead — it’s in the ST2 plan — be programmed for Bus Rapid Transit along the I-405 corridor.
I do believe the greenest thing we can do is build light rail across the region — especially completing the network across the lake to give commuters a real choice for once. Buses operate on diesel, as you know, which is not only costly but not very green. Light rail operates by clean electricity.
Your concern for the environment is great! Over half of our region’s greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation. An immediate expansion of ST bus service by 17%, a 65% increase in Sounder service, and a 36 mile expansion of light rail — that’s Proposition 1 and that’s a great way to clean up our environment.
Your readers can find more information at http://www.masstransitnow.org.
PS, the link to the Bellevue City Hall forum is broken :)
Hi John,
Thanks for the heads up on the link. I changed it.
I think we both agree that we need to become more green with transportation. I think we disagree as to how it should be done.
Unfortunately, when Sound Transit puts together a ballot measure, they add in things which complicate the choices. I’m glad you agree the commuter line on the BNSF tracks is a bad idea, however, I do not share your optimism that the powers that be will figure that out!
Debra,
I think several aspect of this is flawed in your comment regarding rails.
1. Provided the rail line is maintained, the rail should be able to transport people at approximately 50-100 mph. Cars yield for trains and not the other way around. You can minimize the amount of crossings by either not allowing the crossing to happen or by building underpasses or overpasses. Towns can strictly enforce the laws about railroad crossings- Cars stop and trains pass then cars cross. During rush hour driving down towards Renton, that would be an amazing improvement over the snail pace of driving.
2. Developing an intermodal or multiple option transportation strategy over independent networks is a leverage for strength and growth. A true intermodal transportation strategy could begin to grow your community and encourage a “Green” environment. By diversifying your transportation options over multiple independent networks prevents single point failures and can be efficient in managing urban sprawl. Even using a diesel train, it is far greener to transport 100 people on one train that in 100 cars. When there is a problem on I-405 or WA 520 or any other highway, having only one transportation option (buss and car are the same- they use the same network) cost towns and individuals millions of dollars in real and productivity. That is one reason why a “bus only” option fails. Buses are forced to use the same snarled infrastructure that cars use. Businesses do not want to locate where employees can’t easily get to work. You could even extend the line to the airport. Urban sprawl can be contained by planning communities around an intermodal infrastructure and creating your green spaces around these intermodal stops.
3. Why wait for Sound Transit to decide this is worthy or politically correct. Sound Transit may not have the Eastside’s as a primary focus. Various strategies could be used outside of Sound Transit. This could be a mix of private and public participation similar to what foreign airlines use. Foreign airlines may hire Boeing to run and manage their maintenance operations, while they run the airline runs marketing, flight operations, and finance. Thus, the towns could build their own transportation company or cooperative and outsource key functions. For example, BNSF could be outsourced to maintain the tracks to a spec, maintain the rolling stock, and to perform traffic control. The “Eastside Transportation Corp” would market the services, run the day to day operations, and maintain the finances. The point here is that transportation shouldn’t be held hostage to a single mind set.
4. Green transportation- There are “green Trains”. Getting to having the green trains might involve incremental steps. For example, to get the system running and to build usage, Diesel Trains might be used to carry passengers from Everett to Kirkland to Bellevue to Renton to the Airport. The next phase might be to expand the right of way to include express trains. Then with expanded right of ways, a migration from the diesel train to either a different, greener type of locomotion can occur while allowing the current network to continue to satisfy the customer. Also, route expansion could be planned to capture Issaquah, Snoqualamine, North Bend, Mercer Island, Redmond, the University District (Seattle), Northgate (Seattle), or Seattle Center, for example.
I oppose the rail to trail proposal as this option makes constructing a diversified transportation strategy more expensive.
Hi Jim,
Thanks for your comments, however, I disagree with some of your thoughts.
1. “provided the rail line is maintained, the rail should be able to transport people at approx. 50-100 mph.” The rail line is not well maintained and cannot accommodate trains at such a high speed. Trains on the BNSF line can go no more than 40+ miles an hours.
Cars already yield to the trains. There are over 50 crossings. It would be great to build underpasses or overpasses, but who’s going to pay for all of that? Without all these overpasses, which would cost a fortune, local traffic would be disrupted in a major way. The railroad crossings go east to west, most of the time, not north and south, so they affect cross town-local traffic. If you check out http://www.eastsidetrailadvocates.org, there’s a YouTube I personally took while waiting for a small train to cross the intersection in Totem Lake. It was mid-day, non-rush hour traffic, and it took four minutes. I can only imagine what the traffic tie ups would be during rush hour.
2.”Developing an intermodal or multiple option transportation strategy over independent networks” is important. We disagree as to how that would be done. Cars would need to transport commuters to the train and where would they be parked? Buses, on the other hand, could originate in a large number of places, often close to people’s homes, so cars could stay in the garage and not be needed to transport people to a train line.