Link’s next challenge?
It’s time to declare Link Light Rail “basically on target” for ridership. July’s weekday ridership averaged 24,145 vs. a December projection (page 17) of 26,600 for by mid-2010, and it’s done so during a downturn in both jobs and travel. It’s hard to guess how quickly ridership will rise from here, but it seems plausible that numbers might hit the 26,600 weekday figure by year-end.
It’s a fairly impressive figure, in context. Many rail lines start with more riders, but they usually have higher densities around them, or park-n-rides, or connecting rail lines, or bigger feeder bus systems, or all of the above. Central Link has neither parking (except Tukwila) nor density, and a moderate amount of connecting transit. It doesn’t even get many in-Downtown trips, because it competes with free tunnel buses.
To be honest, I’m relieved. The projections made sense, including the upward trend as the drivers of ridership came into place, like the connecting bus lines. But it was far from certain. Kudos to Sound Transit for being realistic with your ridership projections, much as you’ve been conservative (in the last decade) about project cost projections.
Now my worry isn’t ridership, but limited capacity. Trains can only be two cars long until 2015 (page 96), when use of the stub tunnel on Pine is no longer limited by construction of University Link. Meanwhile, trains can’t run more often at peak times, due to required separation between trains and buses in the Transit Tunnel. There may be no way to grow capacity until 2015.
Anecdotally, I’ve seen peak-time Link trains so full that riders can’t even board. By 2012 or so, we might need measures to decrease ridership a little, like restoring a couple bus routes into Downtown. Or maybe Sound Transit can negotiate some closer proximities between buses and trains with the feds. Or maybe it would help to move some tunnel bus routes to the street, though the bus riders are important too.
Long term, capacity is a huge advantage with rail. Link is built for trains up to four cars long, which by itself would double capacity. Once the buses are out of the tunnel (presumably 2016, when University Link opens), frequencies can be much better. Of course, when University Link opens, the system will also have a lot more turnover on each trip, i.e. a lot of people who go from the ends to Downtown and vice versa, but not as many who travel the whole length. Capacity will be multiples of today’s in 2016, and much higher still in the early 20s when the line hits Lynnwood, Redmond, and Federal Way.
We’ll need that capacity. I’ll skip the half-pager for now, but in brief, this region continues to grow, a lot of jobs and residents are projected to be added around the new and planned Link stations, and it seems unlikely that voters would pass any major increase in road capacity.
On a side note, Link seems to be doing very well as an airport shuttle. When I ride on weekends, it seems like 30-50% of the passengers have luggage. What an improvement in quality of life for tourists! That might strike some people as unimportant, but given that tourists spend billions in Seattle every year, it seems pretty important to me.
Related to that, here’s some constructive criticism about Westlake Station, for the benefit of both tourists and locals: (a) It’s easy to be confused about how to pay. There are several ways to get to the train platform without walking past a ticket machine, and the signage is woefully inadequate, so improve the signage and think about adding ticket machines on the platforms (can anyone explain that one?). (b) The ORCA card readers are only on the mezzanines, not on the platforms, meaning for example that a bus-to-rail transfer requires going upstairs and back down, which again the signage doesn’t adequately explain (and which doesn’t seem to make sense to begin with). (c) Exiting the station is very confusing, as evidenced by the tourists I continually run into asking how to get to the street, sometimes around the elevator in the center of the mezzanine. A few sign poles in the mezzanine, with maps, would solve this problem. (d) There’s no drinking fountain, and no concession. Give us something to drink!
