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| Tacoma Link at Commerce St. Station (Photo by Chris K.) |
I hope that this is the last time I speak of Councilmember Boe's
arguments against E-1. I find most of them shaky at best and dead wrong in many cases. You might be asking the question, "Why do I need to address his arguments even though a decision has already been made?" My response is, because it's important to speak truth to power and it's important for Tacomans to not have any lingering doubts in their minds about the decision that was made.
I want no one, several years from now, to go "if only we had chosen to build a hybrid route to the East Side." When someone says something like that in the future, please refer to this post so that others can remember, "Oh that's why we didn't do that."
Each of Councilmember Boe's comments are in bold and italicized. They were initially
covered on Exit133.
E1 is not part of a long-term
plan
 |
Sound Transit's Long Range Plan
Includes Tacoma Link expansion to
Tacoma Community College |
There was city-wide light rail
feasibility planning conducted by the City of Tacoma in 2006-2007. The study looked at technologies, grades, zoning, and costs. The results of the study indicated three primary alignments that made sense as part of an initial expansion of streetcar/light rail: 6
th
Avenue via Stadium Way, Martin Luther King from Division and MLK and
Portland Avenue via Puyallup Avenue.
After the study was concluded, several neighborhood councils fought to have an $80m Tacoma Link light rail capital contribution included in Sound Transit 2 in
2008. It was anticipated that the extension would be along Stadium
Way to Tacoma General, with some level of extension afterwards.
A light rail connection along Stadium Way to Tacoma General is included in Transportation 2040 (
as project 5459), the regional long range transportation planning document, as well as in Sound Transit's 2005 long range plan. The Division Avenue to 19th segment along MLK Way was not programmed in, and thus is not exactly a regional project, but the only other corridor that was was B1 (
PSRC project 4075) and seven of nine Councilmembers didn't even mention that that corridor existed in this process.
Funny that.
Anyways, since that time there hasn't been any
actual planning done by the City because we handed off the study
process to Sound Transit essentially in mid-2010. David Boe has been
sitting on the Tacoma City Council since 2010. Where was the
initiative by the Tacoma City Council before this time to engage the
public with a long term transit planning process? It's not like this is
anything new. Tacoma Link has been in operation since 2003. We have
been doing studies for how to expand it since 2004. This argument that there has been no long range planning done has the caliber of some arguments that I have heard come out of Congress.
Light Rail design is a heavy
transportation option – the system we have is for going fast on
flat ground
 |
Trolleybuses are used in Seattle and San Francisco
for steep grades that streetcars can't handle |
There used to be 125 miles of streetcar lines in Tacoma. The pre-1938 streetcar system carried 30 million passengers a year, compared to 10 million served by Pierce Transit today and 15 million at Pierce Transit's peak. Historically, we adapted to the city's topography using a
combination of different technologies. For traversing the city's
steep slopes we used a cable car loop, that I have been describing in
blog entries and emails to public officials since I learned about it close to seven
years ago. Streetcars operated on relatively level grades and were integrated by the east-west cable car loop. The analagous modern transit technology for dealing with steep inclines in excess of 8.5% nowadays is the electric trolleybus, currently in use in Seattle and San Francisco.
You can’t go directly south
from Hilltop – the E1 route cuts off half the city – we’re
painting ourselves into a corner for long-term planning
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| E1 opens up B1, retains C1 and G1, and enables Tacoma Ave. |
Where
exactly are we painting ourselves into a corner in this? By
expanding double-track to Division Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr.
Way, we are then capable of expanding westward to TCC via 6
th
Avenue, or we could spur again down Tacoma Avenue from the Stadium
District, or if we double-tracked all the way to 19
th
St., we could create a bridge across the valley to the Lincoln
District and beyond. It's not like Portland Avenue is going
anywhere. We still need to address single track sections on Pacific
Ave and S. 25
th
before proceeding with any kind of streetcar buildout on the East
Side of Tacoma. If we don't, then we will make it difficult to maintain service frequency because of bidirectional train conflicts.
At least going to the lower
Portland Avenue center builds towards a long-term plan – the best
option from a planning standpoint
Expansion to
Portland Avenue is not the best option from a planning standpoint.
The Eastside has a steep slope to its west side, which makes system
expansion (west) to the rest of South Tacoma technically infeasible aside from S. 38th St. How is painting further expansion into a non-expandable corner the best long term plan? There are several one-mile extensions of rail that make sense from a ridership and development perspective off of E-1.
The goal of Sound Transit is to
be regional player in transportation – MLK and Stadium are both
located in downtown Tacoma – connecting the Eastside to downtown
makes it more of a regional connection
That doesn't make
any sense at all. Arguably the most “regional” connection was to
extend Tacoma Link to Fife where we would run light rail through
swaths of vacant land and industrial area, which in Councilmember
Boe's mind would be ripe for transit oriented development with the
right zoning.
MLK and Stadium are neighborhood
mixed-use centers – an Eastside expansion could get you to a
community mixed-use center – there will be pressure will be to
upzone neighborhoods around the Link, where as the Lower Portland
area is already a community mixed use center, with better ability to
accommodate big buildings
There may be pressure to upzone Stadium
and MLK and any areas that get rail. This much is probably true.
The CCX zoning that Boe refers to here does have higher height
levels, but only a difference of twenty feet. During the
environmental analysis, if we determine that an additional height
bonus is better, we could implement station area zoning for transit
oriented development that could exceed existing heights for zoning.
This is a reasonable change, given appropriate processes.
The Urban Land Institute said
don’t get tied into the north/south corridor, but instead focus on
east/west connections and getting up the hill from downtown
The ULI is right in
this case. E-1 isn't the best way to scale the hill to connect the
Downtown core. A better method would be to use high frequency buses
with electric motors, but that doesn't invalidate the ability of the
project to stimulate development along the MLK corridor.
There is no real development
benefit to going up Stadium Way, other than getting up the hill to
Stadium
You don't get development from rail in
the absence of stations. You just don't. Ride Central Link in
Seattle and take a look at what single story development and off-street parking lots still exist between the long distance between stations on their light rail
line.
Getting to Stadium is of prime
importance. It is the densest area in the County, if not the State,
outside of the City of Seattle. Stadium is zoned for dense, mixed
use development, and has several opportunities for infill, which will
make the neighborhood contiguously urban and more livable and attractive.
C1 gives the potential to look at
feeding in block by block for potential development
Are
there any developers assembled, besides the Tribe? The proximity of
this land to the noise and nuisance of the freeway doesn't make it
the most desirable. The presence of one rail station connecting Tacoma Dome Station to Lower Portland Ave may not be enough of an economic boost.
Only one entity has come forward
towards partnering on funding, and that’s for the C1 option – the
project will require such a partnership, and here we actually have an
interested party
Both the B1 and E1 options have a significant capability to raise
funds via LID for their last-mile segment of the rail extension. B1
and E1 both have taxable property value in the range of $600m in an
area ¼ mile along their mutual corridors beyond Division and MLK.
The Tribe is offering $12m, when the needed local match will be
undoubtedly higher.
E1 doesn’t relieve, but instead
creates congestion – rail where freeway entrance ramps come into
the city will create congestion
There is no station
programmed or even considered along Stadium Way. With 12 minute
headways, streetcars would travel along the corridor every six
minutes. If the signal timing is synchronized, there won't be any
impact as streetcars will travel with the existing lane of traffic.
This is one of Boe's poorer arguments.
The original Link wasn’t laid
out as a system, it was put in as a shuttle – we’re expanding off
of a poor decision from a long-term standpoint – going to only E1
adds another poor decision on top of that
The original Link
was a starter line. It was meant to get us ready for an extension up
Stadium Way. That the City designed the monster that is Tollefson
Plaza or didn't adequately vet where the stations were placed doesn't really have
anything to do with how the route was configured for expansion. Additionally it has little relevance to how we're going to be connecting Downtown Tacoma
and Tacoma Dome Station to other parts of the City. This argument is sounds a lot like sour grapes, to me.
C1 doubles capacity for people
arriving at events at the Tacoma Dome and Convention Center – we
need to look at ways to leverage investments in transportation to
help these City assets, including connections to hotel rooms
How does David Boe justify that we are
“doubling capacity” for people arriving at events at Tacoma Dome
and the Convention Center? An additional direction of travel would be supported to Tacoma Dome during special events, but does that additional direction have sufficient nominal demand to support service over the remainder of its period of operation during the day? How much hotel space does Councilmember Boe think is viable in the Lower Portland Avenue Mixed Use Center that would be accessible from the single station on E 29th St.?
By expanding Link to Stadium and MLK, the
areas with the greatest existing and future residential and
commercial density, we have the ability to expand access to those
events to local residents. There is still plenty of vacant land for
hotels in Downtown Tacoma or on many potential sites along light rail
on an E-1 corridor.
C1 has ability to take the
development pressure. This will create gentrification. Rents will go
up. Some businesses will have difficulty staying where they’re at.
Wherever rail goes,
there will be some level of displacement. It isn't like that isn't going to happen
to residents on Portland Avenue, either. However, development will
not occur without sufficient ridership and residential and commercial
demand. Ridership levels on C1 aren't as high as they are projected
to be on E1 or B1.
We need to have a vision that
says Tacoma can see development like Portland’s Pearl District –
C1 has that potential.
The Pearl District
had brick warehouses that were easily
rehabilitated and converted into mixed use buildings. Portland
Avenue does not have that kind of building stock that makes it easy
to flip such buildings. Instead, new construction has to stand on
its own, which will mean excessive amounts of parking so that banks
will finance the projects, as well as a focus on market-rate tenants,
which will have to charge high prices for goods and services.
The Pearl District and gentrification are practically synonymous.
Several members of the public addressing the Board indicated their support for an E1 alternative. Downtown On The Go's Kristina Walker cited the E1's feature of linking Downtown Tacoma with the Stadium District - which is the densest residential neighborhood in Pierce County. 
