Seattle Department of Transport spokesman Rick Sheridan;
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Reader Lee M. writes;
Thus
no parking lots near most of the train terminals. After packing the trains (free fare) over the weekend the new system commenced paid operation this morning and …. around 8 a.m., trains were arriving at Tukwila from downtown Seattle with fewer than 10 passengers aboard.
$165,467,625. That’s the cost of building the system. Per mile.
Mercifully the rail, created to carry passengers from downtown Seattle to the airport, is only 13.9 miles. It’s 15.6 miles from downtown Seattle to the airport. But that’s being fixed.
This boondoggle was created by King County, WA Executive Ron “tax-to-the-max” Sims. Ron is now Obama’s deputy secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
If you build it, they will come.
NOT!
FAIL
A trackload of fail.
dont let Bronco Dave Bronconnier see the price per mile or he will kick up the taxes in Calgary.
Behold the wonderful miracle of socialism and progressiveness!
Well that idea runs as slick as a train on a gravel road.
There is no parking in downtown Seattle, either. You’d think no one in the whole damn city drives a car.
Oops, I guess that was obvious.
Just because we can… doesn’t mean we should.
Cal Bonehead Bronco will probably try to hire that guy away from “THE ONE”
perhaps they can extend their rapid rail link all the way to Mirabel.
LOL !!!
When we are all forced to drive Chevy Volts, with 40km max range, then there will be plenty of people taking the train.
Getting to Seatac from downown can take 20 minutes it can take an hour and a half depending on the traffic and depending on whether you are in the car pool lane.
I get the idea that you want to truncate cars, but unless you ran dedicated shuttles to the stations on short routes it wont work. Regular public transit meanders way too much, and honestly…have you been on a bus in Seattle, or any major city, recently?
Weren’t McSlippery and Mil-liar talking about the same thing in Toronto?
Fed among others, with cyclists?
Yeah right, like we’re going to leave our shiny road bikes locked up at a train terminal all day long.
We may be crazy for cycling in the city but we’re not stupid!
I don’t even know what to say about people so foolish.
It boggles the mind how people [don’t?] think.
At the price they paid, they could have put in subways for about 5 times the distance. What, exactly, cost them so much?
What, exactly, cost them so much?
Posted by: Jason at July 21, 2009 11:47 AM
It does seem like they messed up a decimal place, doesn’t it?
Expropriating the land might have been tough. Are there bridges involved? I seem to remember a lot of water around Seattle.
I don’t remember downtown Seattle being busy enough to need a direct link to the airport.
Wow, this makes me so happy that Iggy wants high-speed rail here.
I’m trying to figure out who the rail line was actually designed to accommodate? Business travelers, out of the Downtown, is all I could come up with. With no downtown parking, what would be the motivation for Mr. and Mrs. Urban, with their holiday luggage, to engage with this train? (*shudders*)…
Was there much demand for this, or was it railroaded through government? Looks like there was demand from 10 people for it.
It looks like it’s being fed on $165,467,625 government ham.
DaninVan- Downtown Seattle is not like downtown Calgary. Besides, how busy is Seattle’s airport? It seemed like pretty small potatoes, to me.
Maybe it was designed as a shuttle for aliens to get to the space needle.
I’ve been to a few cities with light rail to the airport and must say that, while it can be of use for airport workers who live downtown, it is more about feeling good for the greenies.
Case 1: 13 hours on a plane, another couple clearing customs and you now have a choice of toting your baggage and tired body onto a lightrail to get somewhere close to your Sydney, Australia hotel, or a taxi from the airport to the entrance of your hotel for only about 25% more. And with no tipping the cabbie to boot!
Case 2: Fly into Boston’s Logan airport for a mini holiday late at night, grab the subway that goes right out there and after a few transfers get to within a block of your accomodations, or find a rental car and try to find your way around in the dark.
The rail to the airport from downtown will only be of use to business types who go from office to a meeting in another city and just have a carry on. Anything else doesn’t make financial sense and not having any parking for park-n-ride is downright stupid.
I bet Ottawa can do better with it’s plans for LRT!!
When it comes to stupid, Ottawa city council makes even the big 0 seem clever and well rounded.
Of course there’s no parking lots. That’s Phase V of the Obamalution. There will be no cars. You will not have a car. Obama didn’t mortgage the kids so you could have a car, he mortgaged your kids because you’re going to pay for his military infrastructure, necessary to prevent you from owning a car (and other green initiatives).
Why do you suppose he bought GM? He has to have a domestic producer of war materiel. GM knows all about tanks, personnel carriers, utility trucks, buses and locomotives. They’ve even built planes. Who do you think put wheels under WWII?
“Downtown Seattle is not like downtown Calgary. Besides, how busy is Seattle’s airport? It seemed like pretty small potatoes, to me.
Maybe it was designed as a shuttle for aliens to get to the space needle.”
KSEA is busy — top 20 in the U.S, with about 350,000 movements. It’s busier than all Canadian airports except Pearson.
That busy? I guess it’s been awhile. My memory has faded a bit.
The last time I was in Seattle, I drove from Vancouver. I stayed downtown, and had a terrible time finding a safe parking space.
The kind of story that gives you a really cold ice cream kinda brain freeze hurt.
It looks like Windsor wants to do the same thing.
I live close to the Richmond Hill GO station north of Toronto. Not only is there a large (and free) parking lot right there, a few years ago, the government purchased land across the street and virtually doubled the size of lot. (At the same time, they introduced the very private enterprise idea of selling 100 dedicated and reserved spots right next to the train. Shocking, no?).
And, the station is served by two all-day buses, plus there are six different shuttles that bring in customers for each of the four morning trains, each route winding through residential streets so that most people are within 1/4 mile of a bus (less than 200 yards for me in either direction).
At the other three stations before downtown, there are also large parking lots, and the parking is actually more convenient than transit when you get into Toronto proper. At Oriole station, for example (Leslie and 401), the Leslie bus drops you over 400 yards from the train entrance; most parking is less than half that. I’ve written to the TTC about this, and gotten the usual dismissive “Thanks, peon, we know better than you how to run our money-losing business.”.
There are times I need to take a car downtown, and times I don’t. I think the GO people understand that their ridership is going to mix cars and public transit, and they’ve done a pretty good job accomodating them. Seattle could learn a thing or two from GO.
As a further discouragement to commuters that drive their cars to the LRT station, Calgary has implemented pay parking at the stations. Great, taxpayers that already own the property must now pay to use it.
About the train connections to the airport – it does suck (horribly) if its just part of the regular system. The Underground link from Heathrow to the center of London and the link between Boston and Logan are examples of horrible, horrible ways to connect travelers.
The direct, rapid links are awesome though. Heathrow Express is much cheaper than a taxi and gets your from Heathrow to Paddington Station in 15 minutes, leaving every 15 minutes. There’s the first class fare if you need/want more space. So many major airports are very far away from their city’s core and suffer from horrible traffic getting there: Pearson, Heathrow, Tokyo, JFK…
If you have a full family it might not save you money (far better for 1 or two people compared to the taxi) but it is faster and predictable. Then take a taxi or limo from the train station to your destination for a faster and usually cheaper trip.
LRT is the spawn of Satan.
I’m trying to figure out who the rail line was actually designed to accommodate? Business travelers, out of the Downtown, is all I could come up with. With no downtown parking, what would be the motivation for Mr. and Mrs. Urban, with their holiday luggage, to engage with this train? (*shudders*)…
Posted by: DaninVan at July 21, 2009 12:19 PM ”
Danin: perhaps seattle’s spankin’ new green machine is meant only for one-way trips out of the city.
LOL !!!
I think it’s all about trying, with our money, to keep the Big City core the center of the universe. We have all moved out of the hell hole of downtown except for the movers and shakers; but the city administration can’t let go.
Why the h*ll should everyone commute for 3 hours a day to get to their workplace and back?
Smart planners would try to de-centralize. But that means the Political Power of Big Central would be lost along with all that money to blow.
Smart companies are moving out of downtown. Costs are much lower, not just for real estate but for everything else. Also; think of the impact of a large disaster. I still have visions of all those people trying to evacuate the Texas coast. And that was only a storm!
So, we have a transportion system which discourages transportation to go along with Oregon’s version of Obamacare which discourages care (and kills you deliberately instead.)
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,392962,00.html
I was in Seattle last summer and my cab ride from SEA to downtown passed this train under construction, it would be useful IF you didn’t have any bags and you don’t want the cost of a cab ride.
If i recall the cab was 40ish but considering I just flew clear across the country with bags in tow I wouldn’t take the train, even if my company wasn’t paying…
Everyone likes LRT as long they don’t have to take it. If improved LRT can make my car commute easier I like it. Of course everyone driving has similar point of views so everyone keeps driving.
LRT by Bombardier?
The Edmonton Calgary proposal has me really concerned.
Some clever clogs is going to put forward a bunch of projected ridership numbers that will make it look like the smartest thing since sliced bread and the reality is that it does not make a lot of sense, but it does cost a lot of money
Granola logic always leads to bad policy … at least in Calgary they built parking lots at the C-Train stations, but now you gotta pay to park as well as ride the train. Sort of defeats the purpose. I thought the idea was to keep the cars out of downtown, not the keep the cars off the road. No one seems to get that in order to get people to use the feeder busses they actually have to design the routes AND time tables using some sense. In Know that in Calgary, and it’s likely true for Seatle, some of the feeder busses run once an hour … that convenient!!!
When I saw the train went from downtown Seattle to Tukwilla I thought it might be useful but it doesn’t seem to go to Tukwilla’s Southcenter mall so I won’t be taking it next time I’m in Seattle. Every time we go to Seattle I spend a few hours sitting at the downtown Nordstroms doing some programming on my laptop while my wife shops for shoes (very comfortable chairs and power plugs in profusion at Nordstroms) and then we drive down to Southcenter to visit the Nordstroms there where the process is repeated. I don’t enjoy driving in Seattle and I suspect that the traffic has gotten even worse since it’s been a few years since I was last there.
The only time I can envision myself taking a train/subway/skytrain from an airport to downtown is if I happen to be in town for a day and am only carrying my light pack. I can’t imagine what the Vancouver skytrain (or whatever they call it) will be like when it is packed full of families with screaming children and all the luggage they need for a months stay. Taxis from the airport are fast and I’m at the stage in life now where I’ll pay extra for comfort.
What Seattle could have done with $2.4 billion would have been to create a fleet of automatic vehicles that would take you and all that you needed to carry to your destination and then, instead of taking up space in a parking lot, heading off to where they were next needed to transport people. The greenies could be mollified by making the electric vehicles. They could drive in special freeway lanes that would be reserved for automated vehicles which would have double the capacity of normal freeway lanes as vehicle spacing could be closer. Hopefully someone other than M$ would write the software to run this system.
There is nothing that beats individual vehicles for getting people from A to B and why we can’t work on improving this system is something that never ceases to amaze me. Trains were great in the 1880’s but we’ve moved a long way from there.
And then there’s the newly approved LRT in Waterloo Region, Ontario. A proposed $790 million for about 13 km (8.1 miles) – a bargain at only $97.5 million per mile – running from the mall at the south end of town to the mall at the north end of town.
It’s ok though; it isn’t our money. Apparently the federal and provincial governments will be picking up the tab, so it’s free. It’s ok though because on day one the ridership will immediately be double that of our best day with buses. And surely there will be no cost overruns.
The best explanation I heard was that the LRT will attract smart people to town. I guess that means that since we don’t have an LRT currently there are no smart people here.
“I can’t imagine what the Vancouver skytrain (or whatever they call it)”
I move we continue the theme and call the new Vancouver airport LRT line the DirtTrain, seeings how most of it is underground.
No parking at Vancouver’s ugly skytrain either,
the nice thing about the new extension to Richmond is
no longer having to go downtown to buy crack.
I live within one block of the new Southgate LRT station, to be opened in a few months. I don’t want everyone parking in my neighborhood, and the shopping center (Southgate) has refused the right for people to park there either. The LRT is a total waste of money and the problem could have been solved by express buses from Southgate transit center.
I live within one block of the new Southgate LRT station, to be opened in a few months. I don’t want everyone parking in my neighborhood, and the shopping center (Southgate) has refused the right for people to park there either. The LRT is a total waste of money and the problem could have been solved by express buses from Southgate transit center.
I live within one block of the new Southgate LRT station, to be opened in a few months. I don’t want everyone parking in my neighborhood, and the shopping center (Southgate) has refused the right for people to park there either. The LRT is a total waste of money and the problem could have been solved by express buses from Southgate transit center.
I live very close to an LRT, and my office is very close to an LRT.
I drive because for half an hour each way I dont have to deal with anyone face to face. and I can sing , or pass wind or listen to whatever station I want at volume 11
oh give me a home where the buffalo roam and the deer and the antelope play.
you people complaining about the cost of said LRT, simply do NOT understand the cost of kickbacks!!!
Think park and ride…think out of the “green’ box ferheavensake.
What do all politicians who jump on these alarmist bandwagons have in common?
1-Their pet projects get fast tracked and little attention is paid to the cost until it is too late.
2-They get to move on to bigger and better things.
HOPEFULLY … that will eventually include jail time.
“Light rail was meant to be fed by people taking the bus, walking or biking. It was not mean to be fed by cars.”
Maybe they should tell that to the folks at Caltrain, the former Southern Pacific line running from San Jose to San Francisco (I know, it actually starts in Gilroy, but not all the trains go there, and lots of folks have the good sense not to know where Gilroy is). They’re talking about charging me $1 to take my bike on the train (they don’t charge me anything now).
I know that it costs them revenue to remove seats from the cars so that we can store our bikes while we’re riding, but I thought that part of the point of this was, you know, to get people out of cars.
They can charge the dollar. I’ll just drive instead. It’s cheaper now to use the bike and the train, but it’s not a dollar cheaper.
Calgary’s Bronco tax “Buck” grabbing mayor is pushing through a LRT line towards the western edge of the city which incidentally is by far the shortest and will be the most negatively impacted by a permanent rail line.
Nobody ever thought about building transit parkades on the periphery and using a number double long buses to move people on their 15 minute transit trips to downtown. That would just merely remove thousands of cars off existing roads and use those same roads much more efficiently. Instead our smart-like-a-fox mayor is pushing hard to blow hundreds of millions more of not-his-hard-earned-dollars for something that will cause significant constant traffic interference while not moving any more people. This ignores the visual eyesore of LRT infrastructure and the plight of many displaced residents that didn’t ask to be moved out of the bulldozer’s path.
He wouldn’t happen to have any landholdings near the rail route, would he? The next civic election can’t come soon enough to buck this bronc from our backs.