Recluse reflections

Recluse reflections: Times story questions monorail capacity
Notes on spaces seen through windows

"But now he knows these hills, that is to say he knows them better, and if ever again he sees them from afar it will be I think with other eyes, and not only that but the within, all that inner space one never sees, the brain and heart and other caverns where thought and feeling dance their sabbath, all this too quite differently disposed."
-- Samuel Beckett

author

Robin Evans
Seattle

blogroll

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Times story questions monorail capacity

The Seattle Times focuses on one of the questions that the PI missed yesterday in their story on the Seattle Monorail Project.

Today's Times article considers the capacity constraints built into SMP's proposed system -- including the short line that will be on the November ballot. The story points out that SMP's ridership projections are based on numbers that would require cars to be jam-packed with riders during peak commuting times. The projections would give each of the riders on an SMP train just three square feet of space, compared to four square feet allotted each peak-time rider on New York's subways or six square feet allotted for commuters on BART in the Bay Area.

SMP interim director John Haley told the Times that the constraints are not significant since SMP could simply add more of its driverless trains to handle crowding. "That's a great problem to have, by the way. There's lots of ways to mitigate it," Haley said.

It's not clear, however, that the crowding could be mitigated in a way that would allow the system to reach the break-even point in 2020 that the SMP board insists is one of their goals.

The Seattle Planning Commission was not convinced that overcrowding could be so easily solved. SMP's single-track guideway over the West Seattle Bridge limits lead times on trains using that part of the system. Short loading platforms on stations throughout the system prevent SMP from running longer and higher-capacity trains on the system.

The Times quotes unnamed SMP "board members" as expressing hope that "political will" would help SMP solve capacity constraints. But that "political will" could just as easily work against the monorail system, especially if current bus riders who are expected to supply most of SMP's ridership determine that transfers from roomy buses to crowded train cars aren't worth the inconvenience and balk at the transfers. King County Metro is unlikely to supply the kinds of shuttle service SMP is expecting (but hasn't yet arranged) if Metro's riders complain about the monorail's service.

In a June letter to Council Member Richard Conlin summarized the problems with SMP's ridership forecasts:

Because the Green Line proposal includes obvious limitations on capacity due to the single-beam guideway sections and the short train/platform lengths, we performed an analysis to determine whether these limitations will result in capacity constraints on ridership. We found that even under the least-conservative assumptions used in the ridership forecasts; the system is overloaded during the peak hour between Seattle Center and 5th/Broad. Under more conservative assumptions the overloads increase in magnitude and occur in other sections of the Green Line as well. These capacity constraints will likely deter ridership on the system. The most recent ridership forecasts for the Green Line, for the year 2030, explicitly assume that there are no capacity constraints to ridership.

posted by WebWrangler | 1:29 PM | Link | 0 comments

Comments: Post a Comment