Prop 1, More Buses & A Suggested Experiment for SDOT

In today's PI, Ron Sims announced that he opposed the road-building initiatives in Proposition 1 because "this plan continues the national policy of ignoring our impacts upon global warming".

In short, Prop 1 adds 50 miles of light rail and a bunch of roads including a six-lane 520 at a total cost of $150 billion.

Those that oppose the proposition say it's really expensive (the largest tax bump in state history according to them) and more roads will double the amount of congestion in the next 20 years. They also claim that ridership will only be about 1% of overall trips to Seattle on the light rail side.

It's this last fact that is most shocking to me coupled with my research showing that for every bus that goes down Yesler Avenue towards downtown, there are 124 cars that travel the same route (70 buses per day, 8700 cars per day). So why do so few people ride the bus down Yesler compared to driving?

It's not cost -- a round trip on the bus is $3, parking downtown is about $10 these days if you're lucky plus gas.

It's not commute time I don't think -- when I park downtown and go to my car and go up the elevator and go down and wait for the guy in front of me to give the attendent their credit card, and then I pay the ticket and wait for the change blah blah blah it eats up about the same 10 minutes as waiting for people to get on and off the bus at the various stops between my house and downtown.

It's possible that it's other people -- I mean... who wants to sit next to the smelly guy, but I encounter road rage guy on the roads much more often then smelly guy on the bus.

I really think the issue though is frequency. Bus service downtown in the morning on Yesler is every 30 minutes. Bus service back home to Yesler after 7:00 pm looks like this.

7:05pm
7:55pm
9:05pm

Ridiculous.

I drive to work downtown sometimes because in the morning I miss the bus and don't want to get to work 30 minutes later or I don't want to be stuck waiting an hour for a bus on the way home at night. I have the same deal this evening... I'm going to the Mariners game, and I'll probably take a cab home because I don't want to sit waiting for the 27 for an hour to get home... and it's impossible to tell if I just missed it because it was early or it's coming in a few because it was late.

My wife and I went to NYC for a week in April, and didn't take a cab once. It's a pretty typical experience, you just go down to the subway look at a map, figure out which one you want to take it comes in a few minutes and you go. Nothing to worry about.

So what would happen if Seattle simply experimented with bus service to and from Yesler every ten minutes from 6:30am to 10pm for six months and saw how traffic flow was affected? I'd increase my bus ridership from probably 10 days a month to 20 days a month, and I bet you'd have a big increase in ridership across the board because you never have to worry if one is coming or not (a big ridership issue on the 48, or as an annoyed fellow resident once opined "the forty-late".)

I can't prove this... but it would be a low-cost experiment for the city. Double buses on Yesler from 70 (35 round trips) to 220 (10-minute service 6:30AM - 10PM , 30-minute service overnight), and see how much you reduce car traffic from 8,700/day.

[where: 98122]