“Three through lanes” (in each direction) is the mantra of the Columbia River Crossing project and the I-5 partnership.
But if we need a reminder that the appetite for lanes is insatiable, look no further than yesterday’s USA Today for a roll call of the mega-projects. Phoenix is sure that if they can just take I-10 from 14 lanes to 24, their congestion will go away.
the USA’s latest giant superhighway proposal designed to ease the kind of gridlock that some planners say could stunt economic growth.
Sounds an awful lot like the local “cost of congestion” argument.
43 responses to “Extrapolating from a 12-lane Columbia Crossing”
14 is insanely stupid. Where’s the freaking city?
Does one realize you could fit like a city every mile in that many lanes?
24 lanes?!?!?!?!?! I’m sorry, that’s just offensive. Make a slip and slide and just shove everybody down that. 24 lanes is just stupid. How sick are the people along those routes (the 14 lane routes) to justify NOT building 24?
Why don’t we just pave every impervious surface and have at it?
Look, if you’re already at 24, you might as well go to 36.
You guys know that when Phoenix passed its big 20 year highway ballot measure which contained funding for one measly light rail line, there were people opposed to the ballot measure BECAUSE of the light rail line on it. (I think Jim Karlock was part of that effort, not sure)
Here’s what Phoenix is eventually building: http://www.dot.state.az.us/Highways/Valley_Freeways/Index.asp
And once that’s all done, I’m sure all their traffic problems will simply vanish…
Wow Morgan, that is scary. But don’t you remember? “People vote with their cars every day.” What they don’t mention is that in most places there is only one candidate on the ballot.
Interesting article Chris… what it doesn’t say is why the heck 4 million people are living in a dang desert. Their only indigenous resource is solar energy and we don’t even do that well.
Morgan Says:When Phoenix passed its big 20 year highway ballot measure which contained funding for one measly light rail line, there were people opposed to the ballot measure BECAUSE of the light rail line on it. (I think Jim Karlock was part of that effort, not sure)
JK: How dare you suggest that I was part of that effort – I didn’t even know about it.
(However, if that were to happen here, I would oppose any such waste of taxpayer money – see DebunkingPortland.com for how truly ineffective light rail has proven to be – the Westside MAX actually carries the equivalent of 1/3 of one lane of a freeway and it costed almost a BILLION dollars.).)
Light rail costs too much and does too little
Thanks
JK
Look, if you’re already at 24, you might as well go to 36.
I thought the same thing.
That USAToday article seems unabashedly pro-highway. Not a single mention of any problems associated with enlarging a freeway. All political opposition dismissed as the bumbling of inefficient bureaucrats. No mention of the fundamental unsustainability of continuing to develop the desert as if it was full of water. The urgent need for expansion is defined as “competition” from other cities, a kind of inter-city race to the bottom. Almost every assertion there is dogma, and it’s all refutable. Who’s refuting it?
I wonder: where’s the opposition to this? It must exist somewhere in Phoenix. Or is the place so decentralized that there’s no constituency for sitting still?
Phoenix is not Oregon, that is for sure.
We, and I agree, (I-5 Bi-State Transportation and Trade Partnership decision) decided to limit the number of lanes in the I-5 corridor to a total of 3-lanes.
At key I-5 corridor choke points it is 2-lanes and at Delta Park it will be widened, but from the Freemont Bridge south into the I-84 merge mix it is 2-lanes on the east bank. There is reason believe that we do not have enough money (an estimated $8-Billion) to try to fix this choke point that limits the I-5 corridor to nothing more then a low grade local arterial status. The I-5 corridor is wholly inadequate to meet our regions the freight mobility needs now as well as in the future.
We must ask for and get a change to where the I-5 corridor is NO longer designated as the primary north/south freight corridor through our region. Thsi designation should be shited to the I-205 corridor. Public Safety is one big and overiding reason to demand this change. They cannot fix the narrow lanes south bound going up on to the Marquam Bridge with the sharp curve. They cannot fix the I-5 corridor Terwilliger Curves section of the freeway it would be just too expensive.
Common sense has to lead most anyone and everyone to the conclusion that we must move all of the trucks away from the I-5 that we can. They need alternatives as much as the people do to this endless congestion and the congestion oriented polution that equally kills people and busiensses.
Un-like Phoenix we want to save our downtown, our urban setting, our air, our water, our businesses, and know that putting a big 12-lane funnel that induces more traffic into our city is un-acceptable.
We know that there are alternatives to these CRC recommendations, if the CRC Task Force will pull off its blinders and open up its “Purpose and Need” statement and pull back on its very restrictive “Criteria and Weighting Process” to where common sense comes back into the picture.
We cannot continue to mix large trucks
You know as someone from Tucson, I hate Phoenix as much as anyone here, but I think it is important to have a little bit more information about this project and understand what it is and what it isn’t. This isn’t a proposal to widen all of I-10 to that many lanes. It is a proposal to control how several freeways connect together in a very short span.
While I don’t think it will make congestion go down. I do think it will make the intersection safer. More than a decade ago, I went to grad school in Tempe, and would drive through this section of the freeway after visiting my folks. I would take the Broadway exit, which comes right after the US 60 freeway merges with I-10. I always felt I was in danger when I tried to make it across all of those lanes, and sometimes would have to overshoot my exit and backtrack. The idea of this proposal is to get everyone in the right lane so they don’t have to weave to make the Broadway exit, or the other two freeway exits.
Keep in mind that the city that the Broadway curve sits in is Tempe, and they are the ones pushing the hardest to fast track this. I think it is safe to say that Tempe is the most transit friendly cities in the state, so I don’t think you can just draw this as a freeway/transit issue.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/021624lane0216.html
Thanks for that post eckeric. It was interesting reading the comments of AZ residents to the article. Comments were generally kind of the same that you see here, but one topic I saw a few people concentrating on was to blame congestion on illegal immigrants! I’m not making any judgments, but it sure is interesting reading the things people come up with to blame congestion.
I also thought this post was thought provoking: “The rest of the taxpayers should not have to pay for their ill-informed home purchases. It is too bad we cannot charge them higher taxes. Anyone who lives more than 10 miles from work ought to pay higher taxes to offset the damage they do. The rest of us pay for it in higher taxes, decreased air quality and overcrowded roads. Let the distance commuters pay for the 24 lanes.”
Well that’s an interesting thought! Why should I, as an individual who last year made a conscious choice to purchase my home close to my work so I could have a short commute (subsequently sacrificing a big yard, double car garage, and a second bathroom) be forced to pay for widening and building new freeways for individuals who made a choice to live miles away from work, subsequently creating their own congestion, and then griping about how bad traffic is and demanding that more freeways get built.
Why should I, as a taxpayor, be forced to subsidize the personal choices of others? Particularly so since this subsidization is not for the greater good of society, but the narcassistic choices of some. Terry, you might find this interesting as it is kind of related to your thoughts on being forced to subsidize bikers.
Dan: wouldn’t a toll on the freeway (per miles driven) accomplish the same thing?
Bill,
sure, you bet! And probably much easier to implement.
“what it doesn’t say is why the heck 4 million people are living in a dang desert.”
that’s because no one wants to hear it. 40+ million people are living in a desert because of the “social engineering” of the federal government last century that brought huge dams to the colorado, and thousands of miles of massive freeways in order to decentralize the populations to relieve the cramped conditions in the eastern cities that were leading to populist and even socialist uprisings.
oh wait, social engineering only applies when the policies negatively affect cars… sorry, ignore this.
When I write about congestion here in the Portland area, I often get calls from people blaming it on illegal immigration.That’s fairly ridiculous, but according to commuting expert Alan Pisarski,immigrants start out taking public transportion, move to carpools, and then the longer they are in this country, the more they gravitate to SOVs like the rest of us.
“what it doesn’t say is why the heck 4 million people are living in a dang desert.”
that’s because no one wants to hear it. 40+ million people are living in a desert because of the “social engineering” of the federal government last century that brought huge dams to the colorado, and thousands of miles of massive freeways in order to decentralize the populations to relieve the cramped conditions in the eastern cities that were leading to populist and even socialist uprisings.
oh wait, social engineering only applies when the policies negatively affect cars… sorry, ignore this.
When I write about congestion here in the Portland area, I often get calls from people blaming it on illegal immigration.That’s fairly ridiculous, but according to commuting expert Alan Pisarski,immigrants start out taking public transportion, move to carpools, and then the longer they are in this country, the more they gravitate to SOVs like the rest of us.
I heard a whisper in the wind here in this thread– did I hear that the MAX is equivalent to ONE THIRD of a lane of freeway traffic? I thought it was ONE FOURTH?
Oh woe, woe, woe.
Alex-jon:
MAX ridership at peak hour in the Vista Ridge corridor exceeds a full freeway lane, possibly two, in the peak direction. The numbers I posted about this were in another thread from a couple of weeks ago, but I’m having difficulty Googling them and don’t wish to run them all again at this moment…
But even my numbers are based on combining counts from multiple, disparate sources. It would be very useful to the debate, in my opinion, if a study could be done with a very direct comparison: Actual per-lane peak-hour vehicle counts at the Vista Ridge tunnel, including analysis of peak-hour average vehicle occupancy, with actual passenger counts of peak-direction MAX passengers between Goose Hollow and Washington Park.
Such a study would be the most direct comparison we can make between MAX and freeway traffic at a specific location, because both modes carry traffic/riders to serve the same region and are constrained by the same physical limits (tunnels, few transfer/exit opportunities in that section of corridor, etc.)
– Bob R.
The numbers I posted about this were in another thread from a couple of weeks ago, but I’m having difficulty Googling them
Here is the link
I found it in the Portland Transportation Custom Google Search. It includes only Portland area web sites, including Portland Transport. If you are interested in contributing/collaborating on the site there is a place to sign up on the search site.
the “social engineering” of the federal government
oh wait, social engineering only applies when the policies negatively affect cars
Government’s role is to provide the services by consent of the public. Most people see transportation (namely, highways) as a role of the government; most ballot measures which have to do strictly with highway funding pass overwhelmingly.
So, how is it “social engineering” when a democratic process simply approves spending public dollars on something that is popular; as opposed to the government (namely, Metro) forcing an alternative idea upon the public and openly finding ways to fund it without a public vote or discussion; or by limiting public discussion so as to stifle the democratic process and/or to limit access by opponents of the idea being put forth?
Erik,
You said, “Government’s role is to provide the services by consent of the public. Most people see transportation (namely, highways) as a role of the government; most ballot measures which have to do strictly with highway funding pass overwhelmingly.”
This is not true on a number of levels. First, voters (and the legislature) have been very unwilling to increase funding for roads. Check out the last time the gas tax was increased. Second, look at some of the most recent polling on the issue. It suggests that the public is much more divided in terms of priorities than you suggest. The tagline “people vote with their cars” is cute, but when asked “people” in the Metro area suggest that they want balance. This includes both roads and other transportation options.
The fact that you are in the minority in terms of opinion does not give you the right to suggest that your opinion is “the majority.” The people in this area have spoken many times and from that standpoint you are in the minority, no matter how right you happen to think that you are.
but when asked “people” in the Metro area suggest that they want balance.
When was that voted on? (And let’s focus on ballot measures – and not random telephone surveys of 1,000 people, or unscientific Internet polls.)
In Washington County, the MSTIP was approved four times in a row, so that must suggest some support for local transportation projects.
And if highway use is in the “minority” as is claimed, then wouldn’t the highways be clogged with busses; light rail and streetcars be more common than at the 1920s height of the streetcar and interurban era; and that all of the LRT measures would have passed?
So, how am I in the minority? Wait, I guess I am in the minority; in that I actually do use mass transit to commute to and from work. And I go door-to-door, instead of relying on a park-and-ride lot. So in that sense, yes, I am in the minority, as only about 20% or so of the trips made in the Portland metro area are made by mass transit. So despite my reliance on mass transit (in that I function five days a week without any use of an automobile, and that my household owns only one automobile), I understand the importance of a well functioning highway system.
Yes, I am in the minority.
Thank you for stating that Hawthorne. I was gonna write pretty much the same thing. :)
For the sake of clarification, someone should explain the difference between Jim and Bob’s numbers. Jim uses the data that 2/3rd of MAX riders are former bus riders, and he assumes that all bus riders are captive and all MAX riders are choice, so therefor only 1/3 of MAX riders are former SOVs, and when the blue line first opened, that worked out to about 600 people/hour which is 1/3rd of a freeway lane. (Ridership has gone up since then so using the same ratio, he should get 2/3rd now, but that is a different issue.) Bob is using more recent data and doesn’t distinguish between choice and captive riders, and therefor gets 2 lanes.
The big problem with Jim’s numbers is that it suggests that Tri-Met reduced the number of buses at the same time as they built the MAX, (which means that that cost savings should be subtracted from the MAX costs in Jim’s analysis,) or that there are now a bunch of buses that were full and are now running empty…
Neither of those happened. If you look at the systemwide Tri-Met ridership data, the opening of the westside MAX caused a jump in ridership on the MAX part of the network, (55M miles/year to 100M miles/year, or 10M to 17M boarding rides, or 8M to 14M originating rides, depending on how you want to look at it.) And the 2/3rd ratio says that there should have been a significant corresponding decrease in bus parts of the network. But the data doesn’t support that, in fact originating rides went up slightly, and boarding and miles went down slightly, with slightly more bus vehicle-hours, in other words, systemwide bus ridership stayed about the same when the westside light rail line opened, even though there were 1800 more people an hour riding the westside light rail line.
Ultimately the problem is that Jim’s theory isn’t true, not all bus riders are captive, and the MAX not only attracts people to the train, but it actually attracts people to the system as a whole, and then they get used to using the system, even though much of their riding is actually done on the buses that were vacated by the people that use the MAX instead…
So if Jim wants to subtract the former bus riders from the MAX ridership, because they aren’t new, he needs to add the new bus riders to the MAX ridership, because they are new. And he is going to come up with almost the same number as Bob, except that it is going to be a lot more work.
Erik,
You said, “In Washington County, the MSTIP was approved four times in a row, so that must suggest some support for local transportation projects.”
You’re right. And if you look at those project, they were balanced. The last round included commuter rail, bike ways and pedestrian access in addition to roads. What’s your point?
Don’t tell me that just because you don’t like the result that you don’t think polls run be reputable organizations are valid? Again, if you want to go with the “polling” data, people have voted down increases in the gas tax more than they have supported increasing it. Again, what is your point other than that you don’t like what the majority of people here want?
You know what? The area transit system is a complete joke and it’s a bold faces lie when they claim this is “America’s Best Transit System”. I’ve gone to many other cities around the U.S. and their’s was much better. Today, out of an attempt to learn and be open minded, I rode around on the max and bus. One bus ride had me 40 minutes late to an appointment. One max ride subjected me to a guy telling me to “GO F MYSELF” after I caught him spitting on the floor of the car and told him I didn’t appreciate that. The icing on the cake was a ride on the Amtrak to Salem where it was delayed 45 minutes even leaving Portland! While en route it stopped a few times for some unknown reason. It took me 2:30 hours to get from Portland to Salem and cost $13, too. See the common thread here? Government sponsored transit systems SUCK!
n Washington County, the MSTIP was approved four times in a row, so that must suggest some support for local transportation projects.
Actually the last time Washington County actually voted on additional fundingfor MSTIP was over ten years ago – before the westside MAX opened.
And, as was noted, the MSTIP itself was presented as representing a balanced plan with the following one of the criteria used for selecting projects:
Address several transportation demands (cars, trucks, bikes, pedestrians, transit)
On the other hand, the voters in almost every county across the state have opposed increasing the gas tax, which is constitutionally dedicated to roads, when they have actually voted on it.
In terms of light rail, Westside Max was approved by the voters, the folks along Interstate who are paying for Interstate Max voted in favor of all three bond measures to pay for it. It was approved by the region’s voters once, but not Vancouver voters. It was defeated by statewide voters once as part of a larger transportation package. And it was defeated by the region’s voters once – while having majority support in Multnomah County and specifically in the neighborhoods served. Airport MAX was funded privately in exchange for development rights.
So, how am I in the minority?
What you believe should be done represents the minority opinion in the region. There are plenty of people driving their cars that would use high quality transit if it was available to them. That has been proved repeatedly by the success of light rail. So expanding the reach and quality of transit makes a lot sense. It serves the people who want to use it and that serves the people that don’t want to use it by freeing up road space.
I’m sorry but explain to me why you think the MAX is “quality”? It’s terrible! It is rarely on time, it’s a bum and drug addict haven and you often have to stand packed in so tightly you have to stand up with nowhere to sit! Why would you advocate that people give up their cars for this insanity? And you call this quality? Why don’t they make it double decker to deal with the deplorable crowding problem?
The success of transit in our region is smart business for our region and YES, it does free up space on our road systems.
It is not the total solution to our regional transportation problems, no more then the bike and PED modes. But I am for one who likes and support and growing acceptence of the secondary modes of transportation.
However I know that when population growth and/or shifting of population happens, with how the Urban Growth Boundary are managed or played with transportation get wipped around like a wagging tail of a dog.
The integration of needed changes to address where people live and work has to be better anticipated or we have conditions like we see and that creates congestion, polution, and stress on every facet of government infrastructure.
Tri-Met is an excellent transportation/Transit entity and has a gold plated funding mechanism with its regional transit excise payroll tax.
This funding as well as the funding that has been received from the Federal Government is the envy of many other transit angencies.
But what hurts us are the exceptions to this “Transit Excise Tax” that pay NO payroll transit excise tax and prevent adequate funding to expand the system to where we can get more people closer to transit connections to and from home to work.
These exceptions are inexcusable in how they have created a special class employer and this class is often government, large non-profits and other entities that have NO right to having these exceptions.
This is government talking out of both sides of their mouth. They had better start telling the legislature that they want this changed to where they start paying this transit excise payroll tax or shut up and recommend building more roads.
They can be part of of the solution or not. But we all that they have to be part of financing of these new transit the solutions and extensions or they are hyporcrites.
It is like telling your children, “do as I say but not as I do”, and that is not stepping forward and funding equally multi-mode solutions.
These exceptions are inexcusable in how they have created a special class employer and this class is often government, large non-profits and other entities that have NO right to having these exceptions.
Just to be clear, the “special class” applies to all taxes, not just transit payroll taxes. Non-profits don’t pay income tax and they don’t pay property taxes. So are all these exceptions for non-profit, tax exempt organizations “inexcusable”? Why is the transit tax different?
Historical note: The last time Oregon voters had a chance to support roads with a gas-tax increase,in 2000, they said no 88 percent to 12 percent.
From Paul Edgar:
“At key I-5 corridor choke points it is 2-lanes and at Delta Park it will be widened, but from the Freemont Bridge south into the I-84 merge mix it is 2-lanes on the east bank….
…They cannot fix the narrow lanes south bound going up on to the Marquam Bridge with the sharp curve. They cannot fix the I-5 corridor Terwilliger Curves section of the freeway it would be just too expensive.”
A couple of observations: I-5 at the Fremont Bridge has additional capacity in the form of I-405. There really are 4 lanes south of that junction. I fully expect there will be more congestion southbound on I-5 when the third lane is added at Delta Park. However, traffic should lighten up once it is south of the Fremont Bridge split. For the same reason, the traffic backs up northbound at this point in the afternoon – 4 lanes drop to 3.
Capacity thru North Portland will not change so 3 lanes in each direction is the most we will all see in our lifetimes. My goal as member of the CRC is to significantly reduce the bottlenecks along I-5 near the Columbia River. 99E has a full lane of capacity that is unused, and a flyover on to I-5 at the Marine Drive interchange will allow drivers to avoid using I-5 because they are on MLK where they were in the first place. The miles of out-of-direction driving will be huge when the DEIS is done.
The “narrow lanes” on I-5 southbound leading up to the Marquam are much better than they used to be. I believe the accident count in this area is dramatically reduced vs. before.
The Terwilliger curve accident count has been significantly reduced with the increased signage and the 5 MPH reduction in the speed limit. Is it ideal? No, but it’s better than it was.
Mathews
Great comment, great elaboration of JKs numbers, in all, awesome.
It kind of cracked me up with the numbers you’ve seem to actually have gone through.
Greg Thomkins
“America’s Best Transit System” does NOT include Amtrak. Amtrak is etirely seperate from Tri-met. Tri-met rarely has delays more than a few minutes here and there. When delays do occur it is usually when ice or snow has hit and Tri-met’s delays are usually nothing compared to what others are experiencing at the time.
As for “America’s Best Transit System” I’d have to say that hasn’t truthfully existed for over 60+ years. I also must agree with your statement that “Government sponsered transit system sucks”. Generally speaking they do and they’ll never be and never are an even remote comparison to what private industry provided in the past.
But I digres – Tri-met IS America’s Best Transit System. Compare it to almost any other city (besides New York or Chicago where things HAVE to work) and it is relatively true. No other city this size in the US even has a system that is remotely close to as capable as Tri-met’s.
Also – as for the “Go F myself” comment. I wish you had gotten a better response. Thanks for at least saying something to the sick bastard. I’d have done something I won’t even state on this blog – seeing as how most are of weak stomach in this area of the country when it comes to truly standing up for one self.
Anyway, point being – I wouldn’t include Amtrak as part of Tri-met’s system or as part of “America’s Best Transit System”. Amtrak can’t seem to get itself straight to anything.
…and another thing Mr. Greg Thomkins.
I know there are some bums and drug whacks on the MAX… they bother the piss out of me and I wish something would be done (Potter is theoretically working on that). I however must state simply that it is NOT a large problem. In the morning and throughout the day there are more than enough opportunities to catch a seat. During rush hours there is often standing, but in all seriousness at least those people aren’t getting fat like all the sheep sitting in their cars during rush hour. Either which way, rush hour sucks wether on the train, in a car, or on a bus it’s BAD. Also – THERE IS NO SOLUTION TO RUSH HOUR via increased throughput. The simple fact is there needs to be a better organization of hours worked and the stupid 9-5 concept needs to go away. If you’d rather do something like read a book, think, relax, sleep, listen to some headphones, work on the laptop – all of those things can be done on the MAX but NOT in our car.
So seriously Greg, why would anyone want to give that up for the insanity of driving??
Paul Edgar
“This is government talking out of both sides of their mouth.” …and when do they NOT do this? Come on, don’t expect Government to be a solution to real issues. The Government sucks at what they ARE supposed to do.
As for the Government paying these taxes. Why does the Government employer pay taxes at all? It’s the most asinine, stupid, kindergarten idiocy I’ve ever heard of that feds pay fed taxes etc etc. It’s this big stupid circle jerk of people paying themselves the money. It GOES AROUND IN ONE BIG BEAURACRATIC CIRCLE!!! How can that help anything. There was a study a while back that it costs the government billions to collect taxes from itself. WTF?!?!!?!?!
Anyway… just making some points. I’m going to sleep now.
When I write about congestion here in the Portland area, I often get calls from people blaming it on illegal immigration.That’s fairly ridiculous, but according to commuting expert Alan Pisarski,immigrants start out taking public transportion, move to carpools, and then the longer they are in this country, the more they gravitate to SOVs like the rest of us.
JK: I suspect, but have not looked into, that immigrants are the reason Trimet is one of the more successful transit systems and also the reason that we see hints of declining ridership lately (again I haven’t looked at real data, just a newspaper article or two.)
Thanks
JK
Matthew Says: For the sake of clarification, someone should explain the difference between Jim and Bob’s numbers. Jim uses the data that 2/3rd of MAX riders are former bus riders, and he assumes that all bus riders are captive and all MAX riders are choice, so therefor only 1/3 of MAX riders are former SOVs, and when the blue line first opened, that worked out to about 600 people/hour which is 1/3rd of a freeway lane. (Ridership has gone up since then so using the same ratio, he should get 2/3rd now, but that is a different issue.) Bob is using more recent data and doesn’t distinguish between choice and captive riders, and therefor gets 2 lanes.
JK: Perhaps you didn’t notice that Trimet now claims that the Westside MAX carries an equilivant to 1.2 lanes of US26? Now discount that by some factor to account for the FACT that most MAX riders would use the bus if Max didn’t exist. That discount factor can be debated, but it was 2/3 per Trimet’s survey just after west max opened. It is closer to 80% according to one scenario used by the I-5 task force in projecting ridership of a proposed Vancouver toy train. See DebunkingPortland.com/Transit/RailAttractsDrivers.htm
Matthew Says: The big problem with Jim’s numbers is that it suggests that Tri-Met reduced the number of buses at the same time as they built the MAX, (which means that that cost savings should be subtracted from the MAX costs in Jim’s analysis,) or that there are now a bunch of buses that were full and are now running empty…
JK: Naw, they just eliminated the bus lines that competed with the toy train and re-routed a bunch of them to feed max.
Matthew Says: Neither of those happened. If you look at the systemwide Tri-Met ridership data, the opening of the westside MAX caused a jump in ridership on the MAX part of the network, (55M miles/year to 100M miles/year, or 10M to 17M boarding rides, or 8M to 14M originating rides, depending on how you want to look at it.) And the 2/3rd ratio says that there should have been a significant corresponding decrease in bus parts of the network. But the data doesn’t support that, in fact originating rides went up slightly, and boarding and miles went down slightly, with slightly more bus vehicle-hours, in other words, systemwide bus ridership stayed about the same when the westside light rail line opened, even though there were 1800 more people an hour riding the westside light rail line.
JK: Please provide a link to that data. It seems suspect, to say the least.
I hope that everyone is aware that Trimet’s “ridership” numbers are actually “boardings” – they count every time that a person boards a transit vehicle. This means that when buses are re-routed to feed max, the passengers get counted twice – once each time that they board.
Matthew Says: Ultimately the problem is that Jim’s theory isn’t true, not all bus riders are captive, and the MAX not only attracts people to the train, but it actually attracts people to the system as a whole, and then they get used to using the system, even though much of their riding is actually done on the buses that were vacated by the people that use the MAX instead…
JK: Are you forgetting to net out people who quit using transit because their commute time got longer?
Matthew Says: So if Jim wants to subtract the former bus riders from the MAX ridership, because they aren’t new, he needs to add the new bus riders to the MAX ridership, because they are new.
JK: That is inherent in the method used.
Matthew Says: And he is going to come up with almost the same number as Bob, except that it is going to be a lot more work.
JK: The bottom line is that Trimet says that max carries 1.2 lanes of freeway worth of commuters and that most of those riders would not suddenly go to SUVs if max was replaced with a bus. So max only removes about 1/3 of one lane of traffic from the freeway. BTW, when you are dealing with real world data, 1/4 is, often times, about the same as 1/3. Whichever is correct, MAX is a dismal failure at reducing congestion.
Light rail costs too much and does too little.
Thanks
JK
Jim, I provided a link. The fact that you missed it is kind of humorous in it’s own little sad way. But I wasn’t expecting to convince you, so it doesn’t really matter.
What you are suggesting is that they somehow rerouted the buses so that they traveled the same number of passenger-miles as they did before MAX, (maybe they made them run circles in the transit centers,) and then after the people got off, they had spent so much time on the bus that their transfer had expired and they then had to deposit more money into the ticket machines at the station before they could continue their trip, and that this new statistic never showed up in any of the ridership surveys that they do, in fact, somehow you are the only person that has noticed even though you don’t actually use the system yourself… Quite frankly, that seems like kind of a stretch.
However, traffic should lighten up once it is south of the Fremont Bridge split. For the same reason, the traffic backs up northbound at this point in the afternoon – 4 lanes drop to 3.
Brad –
The Fremont bridge also adds southbound traffic at that point and there is a weave with traffic coming off I-405 merging with traffic that wants to get onto the Banfield. There is not three lanes of capacity at that point for the same reasons the Columbia Bridge does not have three operational lanes, only worse.
I fully expect there will be more congestion southbound on I-5 when the third lane is added at Delta Park.
In fact, one of the studies done for the last trade partnership study showed the widening at Delta Park would actually reduce traffic at the Rose Quarter and over the Fremont Bridge. When I asked Jay why, he gave two answers. One was that it showed the “real choke point was the bridge”, the other was that they were including all the RTP’s improved transit in the build but not in the no-build they were comparing it to. So a lot of the reduced traffic was people in North Portland switching to transit.
Capacity thru North Portland will not change so 3 lanes in each direction is the most we will all see in our lifetimes
I think that is correct. But there are a lot more than the three lanes of capacity on I5 through North Portland. You are ignoring local streets. There is substantial traffic in North Portland that gets onto the freeway southbound. Its likely some of that traffic will be diverted to local streets and transit either “naturally” or with traffic management tools designed to control congestion on the freeway.
The levels of congestion in North Portland will largely be determined by the tolerance levels of people commuting from Vancouver. That will certainly be true for I5. It will be true for streets that are practical alternatives to I5. That includes streets like Martin Luther King Boulevard and Vancouver in Northeast Portland.
My goal as member of the CRC is to significantly reduce the bottlenecks along I-5 near the Columbia River.
Obviously, I don’t agree that is the focus. I think we need to focus on livable communities, not freeway operations. And while reducing the “bottlenecks” is desirable, perhaps not if you live in the bottle and will be drowning in traffic that gets through that wider neck with nowhere to go.
Matthew Says: Jim, I provided a link. The fact that you missed it is kind of humorous in it’s own little sad way. But I wasn’t expecting to convince you, so it doesn’t really matter.
JK: I used that link on debunkingPorltand.com. It is not relevant to this.
Lets look again at your earlier post:
Neither of those happened. If you look at the systemwide Tri-Met ridership data, the opening of the westside MAX caused a jump in ridership on the MAX part of the network, (55M miles/year to 100M miles/year, or 10M to 17M boarding rides, or 8M to 14M originating rides, depending on how you want to look at it.) And the 2/3rd ratio says that there should have been a significant corresponding decrease in bus parts of the network. But the data doesn’t support that, in fact originating rides went up slightly, and boarding and miles went down slightly, with slightly more bus vehicle-hours, in other words, systemwide bus ridership stayed about the same when the westside light rail line opened, even though there were 1800 more people an hour riding the westside light rail line.
JK: How do you explain this:
The debate about ridership on westside light rail and its effect on traffic continued Wednesday, with Tri-Met saying it has attracted 1,773 new bus and rail riders in the westside corridor
Tri-Met based its number on a count of bus riders between 6 and 9 a.m. on an average of five mornings in October 1997 compared with a similar count of bus and rail riders this month in the same corridor. The agencys transportation consultants counted 3,642 riders both directions in October 1997 and 5,415 this month ( Oregonian October 29, 1998 , see DebunkingPortland for link)
1. There were 1773 new bus AND rail passengers not 1800.
2. They were spread out over a 3 hour period NOT PER HOUR.
3. That is 1773/3 = 591 per hour. At 1.3 people per car that is equal to 454 cars removed from the freeway. At 2000 cars/hr for the freeway, that is 23% OF ONE LANE OF FREEWAY.
That is what we got for ONE BILLION DOLLARS – 23% OF ONE LANE OF FREEWAY.
Don’t forget that when Metro modeled the proposed Vancouver toy train they used 18% and 31% as the percentage of rail riders that would be in cars. See bottom of page at: DebunkingPortland.com/Transit/RailAttractsDrivers.htm
Hopefully this will end the argument: Max removes around 1/4 of one lane’s worth of cars from the freeway. Considering its cost, it is NOT EFFECTIVE AT REDUCING CONGETION.
If you want better data, you should get the detailed stop by stop data for both bus and rail before and after max and see what really happened.
(Let me know if Trimet is still hiding that data.)
Thanks
JK
One thing that I seem to notice is that people want the transportation fixes done, they just do not want to pay for them. Then there are cases where they bring in voters from other counties to vote on local projects. I agree with the people of the portion of Pierce County on the West Side of the Tacoma Narrows. Voters from areas like Thurston County(Olympia), and Northern Kitsap County to vote on whether tolls could be used to fund the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. For the people of Kitsap County, they are used to paying tolls to get to the East side of Puget Sound. All they get out of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge is a cheaper toll.($3, and only collected one-way. Ferry Tolls are collected both ways for cars). I would like to see prohibitions against tolls on Interstates removed, at least in urban areas. I even am getting to the point that tolls should apply to transit passengers. That could be included in the fare. I noticed that in San Francisco, the Key System’s Interurban trains crossed the Bay on the Bay Bridge, the toll for passengers was just 2.5 cents per passengers, while car tolls at the time were 25 cents. Now the mechanism could be used today. Make it a percentage of the car toll. Using the Tacoma Narrows Bridge toll of $3, this would be 30 cents. Pierce Transit Local Fares are $1.50. That would make the fare $1.80. Still cheaper than driving. Also, transit has some interest in the new bridge. There is room for a 2nd Deck on the new bridge, that could be used for more lanes, a busway, or Light Rail, in the future.
At least with the Viaduct Vote, it is Seattle Voters only on the Advisory Vote that does not mean nothing. Interesting in the talk shows about it, is the people who are pro-elevated seem to be accident-prone drivers. They only care about the view of Puget Sound they are going to lose if it is a tunnel or surface option. An engineer who designed the first one, and later was elected Governor 3 times, is pro-tunnel. Another Former Governor who is pro-tunnel(in fact, WSDOT was leaning that way under Governor Locke), mentioned that the columns would be bigger for earthquake reasons, and there would be re-inforcing walls, eliminating the views. I thought in driver’s ed, they said to keep your eyes on the road, not on the view. With all the arguments over the tunnel and elevated, I am going to probably go NO/No. There are others who favor Repair and Prepare, and shift the rest of the money to SR520. That one is going to cost more than an elevated or tunnel on Alaskan Way. Almost getting lost in this fight are a few details. The existing elevated structure is on fill, it does not reach Bedrock. The Seawall holding the fill in and Elliot Bay out, is 20 years older than the Viaduct itself, mostly made out of timber(this was built during the Depression), and falling apart. The tunnel proponents have forgot that just a few years ago, they were mentioning how there project could do both at once.
With SR520, they are arguing over whether the new bridge will be 4 lanes or 6. That seems reasonable, but some eastside developers, ignoring the property values along the route from the Bridge east to Redmond, want an 8 lane bridge that will be more expensive. I am all for building for the future, but property aquistion can be a nasty proposition in this state for even highways. People will sue. That is what happened in the early 1970s here, led to the Freeway Revolt of 1972. The Bay Freeway, R.H. Thompson Expressway were cancelled by the voters. The latter was going to slice through the Arboretum, then through some expensive homes and then through an area east of Downtown and Capitol Hill known as the Central District. They may have been poor and minorities, but they were active. Only one on/off ramp was ever built for that project. There was also the Interstate 90 debacle. The portions east from Factoria to Idaho was finished by the end of the 1960s, but lawsuits delayed completion of the portions through Ranier Valley, Mt. Baker Ridge, and Mercer Island. The original concept was for 18 lanes, but after a judge threw out the EIS, they settled for what was known as 3-T2-3 option. The new bridge was opened by 1989, the problem was, the plan called for retrofitting the Lacey V. Murrow Bridge, but it sank due to too much water in the pontoons.(To this day, some believe it was deliberate on behalf of the State and the Construction workers, so a new span would be ordered to replace the 50 year old bridge). It was finally finished in 1993.
ETF,
You can make a defense of tolls, but some of us would rather see a consolidation of projects and effficent use of federal resources to get the most value out of the dollars spent. There are, however, vested interests behind nearly every proposal. We have been making that allegation regarding the Columbia River Crossing project, especially now that estimates are going as high as $6 billion. All that tax or toll money would sure finance a lot of careers–or some really lucrative ones–but if most communities across the US do the same our federal spending will continue to spiral out of control. The tolls will never pay the whole cost.
From my experience in Seattle I tend to think some light commuter rail would be a solution to the traffic on I-405 and I-5. But for heavens sake do the costs have to push into the billions? Maybe luxury buses would be better.
Investment will be necessary. No argument on the essential fact. Many of us favor exploiting a new route—from NW Portland to W. Vancouver, which now has the AMTRAK service, instead of placing ever greater amounts of traffic on I-5. Because the second alternative seems to be more costly the tolls come in as a solution. This could be the beginnng of an unending tax and spend spiral. But it is highly questionable whether expanding the I-5 route is the right thing, in the first place. It’s still a grass roots movement—as was the stopping of the Mt. Hood Freeway–but check out newinterstatebridge.com for an alternative proposal
Btw, Matthew, what is your reference for your statement “there were 1800 more people an hour riding the westside light rail line. ”
Thanks
JK
Jim Karlock said:
“Considering its cost, it [MAX] is NOT EFFECTIVE AT REDUCING CONGETION.”
>>>> Agreed. Even if MAX attracted some additional patronage, it was nowhere near worth the cost of the lost opportunies incurred. Specifically, I an talking about a well-designed
bus rapid transit system for Portland Metro.