Testimony from John Niles and David Lange to the
Sound
Transit Board System Expansion Committee, January 10, 2019
John opened: Good afternoon, my name is John Niles and I live
in Seattle. My friend Dave Lange lives in Kenmore. We are independent professional analysts not
representing any organizations. We request our two minutes each be combined to
four.
We are commenting on the
new Link Light Rail infill station at 130th, in today’s Motion
2019-04. Sound Transit may eventually realize
that it’s not an IN-fill station, but more accurately an OVER-fill-the-trains
station. We are referencing the passenger capacity of the Link trains compared
to the likely passenger demand in the mid to late 2020s. We urge you make sure there is enough flexibility
in the station design to reduce and repurpose any planned pickup and drop off
areas for customers in road vehicles in case this train is as successful attracting
customers as the hopes of rail-focused urbanists have manifested.
I’ve been one who complains about light rail trains not
carrying enough passengers to be cost effective, as in the forecast and early displays
of insufficient demand in the early years of the Initial Segment, documented in the “Before and After Report”
required by the U.S. DOT. Recently, it
was quite a startling revelation for me to grasp with Dave’s help that this
problem of too much cost for too little ridership could remain insolvable at
the other end of the spectrum because of geometric and technological upper
limits on train capacity.
I’ve learned new things over the past few years. Based on the research behind the Grush-Niles
2018 text book, The End of Driving,
and also picking up on a suggestion by CEO Rogoff in his presentation at the
2016 Transportation Tech conference in Bellevue, a singular cost-effective
application of driver-less road vehicles would be low-fare robotic shuttles
taking travelers in or out of high-capacity transit stations like 130th
and other new ones coming in the future with Northgate Link and the pending Lynnwood
Link.
However, feeding ever more passengers into transit stations
from catchment zones that are expanded by many square miles through future
robotaxi service, never mind the vast numbers of commuters on the buses of
today hoping for a seat on a future train, is trouble with a capital T. It just won’t be a feasible people-moving
strategy if Link trains at three minute intervals get jammed to the walls with peak
crush loads.
Dave presented the rest:
As you now know, John and I wrote an essay
for New Geography online focused on the light rail extension to Snohomish
County over-crowding the trains in Seattle.
We asked our question: in response to
demand from population and employment growth, won’t light rail get filled up in
peak period just like urban highways? Trains at minimum headways with a fixed
four-car length are even less expandable than I-5 lanes that still have hope with
road automation.
The response of Sound Transit staff to our essay has been, “don’t
worry, the train platforms are as long as football fields, and plus, there is
going to be a second tunnel in downtown Seattle.” John and I do not understand how these features
mitigate the new potential for trains being too small and not capable of coming
by often enough to meet customer demand in the north corridor spine. Our
concern is especially true if the region is as successful as with the PSRC award-winning
regional walk-to-the-train-station program of densification called “Growing
Transit Communities.”
So at first the Link Light Rail lacked ridership and now it
has plenty, and a major TOD push by all groups involved may very well overfill
the trains to a point of discomfort which turns away ridership. Contrary to multi-modal thinking, you on the
Sound Transit Board may find that.you don’t want ever more buses dropping off
morning loads of southbound commuters in northern train stations like at 130th.
Why not? Because in the morning peak there just isn’t any more room on the peak
trains headed south.
I again repeat the ask in our essay that construction be
halted at Northgate until authorities have collected real ridership data to
Northgate and the addition of Eastgate Link to
determine if Sound Transit’s plan is still valid. John and I both claim that
the Board should be very concerned with the sum of train loading
impact in peak between Westlake and the U-District, seemingly headed to blowing
past the high Sound Move forecasts from the 1990s.
The trees at 145th scheduled to be chipped in two months will
not be replaced in our lifetimes, an environmental insult if we learn that following
billions in construction, the Lynnwood extension bumps riders in stations
closer to Seattle and are already filled to overflowing.
Contact point: Email jointly to
Dave and John at Link@bettertransport.info