Seattle Press on Line - 54 Deaths on L.A. Light Rail Tracks in 10 Years

54 Deaths on L.A. Light Rail Tracks in 10 Years

Jan 24, 2001 -- I had never been in the bus tunnel until last week. I usually ride my bike to work, and since I'm in Fremont, I'd much rather bike downtown than take the car. And I've never liked buses much since that day in Detroit in 1947 when I threw up on my mother and several other passengers as we were going to visit my cousins on the other side of town.

But I took a Metro bus in from the airport the other day, and I am still stunned by the genius of the bus tunnel. It's this huge, 1.3 mile-long underground thoroughfare with half a dozen stops throughout downtown. You can make connections to dozens of different bus routes, or you can stay downtown. It's like a New York subway, only with buses.

There couldn't be a faster connection to downtown from the airport. It was 30 minutes from the airport to the Bon Marche stop in the tunnel. Then I took the escalator up to Third Avenue, waited 10 minutes for a number 5 bus, and about 20 minutes later stepped out a block from my office. The whole trip, door to door, took less than 90 minutes. Price: $1. The bus tunnel made it all work.

And did you know we are giving this away? King County Metro promised to turn the tunnel over to Sound Transit to run light rail in--for $1. So where are all those buses going to go? They're going to all be on surface streets? Can you imagine what that will do to downtown traffic?

King County built the bus tunnel in 1990, at a cost of $458 million. It's quite likely the equivalent cost today would be closer to $1 billion. We should acknowledge this as one of the hidden costs of Sound Transit.

Problems Must Be Addressed

Kicking buses out of the tunnel is not a transportation improvement for downtown. It is a disaster for the buses, cars and trucks that will be trapped in clogged downtown streets.

In fact, many features of Sound Transit create problems for someone else:
- Having a terminus in the U District creates a huge parking problem there.
- Tunneling under Capitol Hill requires destroying part of their business district.
- Laying track in Rainier Valley destroys dozens of homes and businesses.
- Wherever light rail tracks cross city streets at grade, traffic is impeded.
- Train tracks are dangerous! In Los Angele,s 10 people were killed in accidents at Blue Line train crossings last year--54 since service started in 1990.

Last week five Sound Transit board members, including long-time light rail drum-beaters Greg Nickels and Mayor Paul Schell, said, "Wait a minute." They're asking for a six-month delay in the implementation of any light rail plans so the board can explore alternatives. They want to be sure light rail is the best option before spending the federal money.

"We need to be open to all sorts of ideas and criticism. We need to be sure," Schell said in a Seattle Times article.

Jack Crawford, the deputy mayor of Kenmore, agreed. "We should consider alternatives," particularly monorail, he said.

King County Council members Maggi Fimia and Rob McKenna and the Sane Transit organization have all done an outstanding job of publicizing the problems and dangers Sound Transit brings to the community. We cautiously cheer the movement to reconsider. There must be a better way to move people and reduce congestion than the options Sound Transit has offered so far.

Reader Comments

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Ruth Korkowski	Feb 19, 2001	Seattle, WA	librarian
Thanks for the great article. I live in Rainier Valley, and recently discovered that I can save 15 minutes in the afternoon by taking an I-90 bus through the tunnel to Rainier Ave @ I-90. (The morning is no problem anyway because there's no gridlock here or downtown, yet.) What you don't mention is that at grade, in traffic light rail like Sound Transit wants to build here is not rapid (35 mph max) and not reliable. Buried in Sound Transit studies is the fact that they expect and accident more frequently than every two weeks. How about that for a trip to the airport!