Future of transit updated in report

By Eric Pryne
Seattle Times staff reporter

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It's 2030. Light rail or monorail lines link Seattle with Tacoma, Everett and Bellevue. From Bellevue, trains run south to Tukwila, north to Lynnwood, east to Issaquah and Redmond.

Most people still drive to work. Traffic is significantly worse than it was in 2004.

But, without the new rail lines, the highways would be slightly more congested. Partly because of the trains, transit is a faster, more attractive alternative to driving, drawing 150 percent more riders than it did three decades earlier.

That's the picture painted in a new environmental study Sound Transit released yesterday. It's part of the agency's effort to piece together a second round of transit projects to submit to urban King, Snohomish and Pierce county voters, perhaps in 2006.

An extensive regional rail network was the centerpiece of a long-range transit plan the Sound Transit board approved in 1996. Voters approved part of that plan, including a starter Seattle light-rail line, that same year.

The new report updates decade-old conclusions about what difference the remaining projects in the long-range plan might make: how many riders they might attract and what their environmental consequences might be.

Paul Matsuoka, Sound Transit planning and policy officer, said any package that's submitted to voters almost certainly won't include all the projects in the plan. It also may include some new projects. The Sound Transit board will start making those decisions next year.

"What we're trying to do is develop options for people," he said.

The study — officially a "draft supplemental environmental impact statement" — compares the effect of the full long-range plan to what it calls a "no action" alternative: the projects Sound Transit already is building, plus the Seattle monorail, plus highway projects funded by a nickel-per-gallon increase in the state gas in 2003.
 
The "no action" option also assumes Sound Transit can extend its Seattle light-rail line north from downtown to Northgate. The agency doesn't have money for that now.

If only those projects are built, the study says, the number of commuters taking transit to 21 major employment centers would increase from 9.7 percent now to 15.5 percent in 2030.

If all the projects in the long-range plan are built, it says, transit's share would increase to 18.4 percent.

The additional projects have less impact because "what we chose to do first was the most productive part of the system," Matsuoka said, "the low-hanging fruit."

But the additional projects would connect the centers, he added. The study also suggests they would reduce air pollution and energy consumption slightly.

While the study includes ridership estimates for each component of the regional rail network, it doesn't include updated cost estimates. Matsuoka said those should be available early next year.

But John Niles, a transportation consultant and light-rail critic, said the projected rail ridership is "quite insignificant" compared to the likely cost. "It's shocking," he said.

The study also includes ridership estimates for some projects not included in the long-range plan, including "Bus Rapid Transit," a concept often touted by rail critics as a better, cheaper option.

The report suggests Bus Rapid Transit in the Interstate 405 corridor would move roughly as many people as rail.

Sound Transit has scheduled 10 public hearings on the study next month.

Eric Pryne: 206-464-2231 or epryne@seattletimes.com