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Sound Transit delayed Renton’s Bus Rapid Transit by 2 years and delayed parking facilities by a decade. These decisions were based in part on this ridership projection, which is ironically an outcome of disparate Sound Transit spending and planning to date. Width of blue lines indicates predicted Sound Transit ridership.
Sound Transit, faced with financial problems, is choosing to focus their reduced resources on areas where they’ve already spent the most. This is putting Renton even further behind.
As I discussed in my previous blog entry on this topic, Sound Transit has delayed Renton’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) service by two years and delayed its parking by 10 years. This decision was made following a review of every Sound Transit project against specific criteria.
Sound Transit’s first criteria for determining which projects to keep on schedule is “ridership potential,” as shown in the map above. Ridership potential is largely a function of where past money was spent.
The use of ridership projections to determine future investment could be argued more strongly back when fares covered up to 30 % of operating cost, but lately the majority of Sound Transit riders do not even pay, and fares are only paying 5% of operating costs. So improving ridership in these areas at the expense of other areas is just giving more free transit to people that already have the most.
In fairness to Sound Transit, their second criteria is Socio-Economic Equity. Unfortunately the way they measure equity is nearsighted, looking only at how many BIPOC and socio-economic disadvantaged residents live within a mile of a planned station. Renton will have only one and a half BRT stations to cover 25 square miles of our city; one station at Main and Grady, and one station shared with Newcastle at Exit 7.
To keep the busses near the freeway, Renton stations have been located in the least populated areas of Renton. The one-mile radius around a station does not give a good account of the vast numbers of BIPOC and socio-economic disadvantaged residents that will use that station and deserve access to parking in order to be equitably served. Our population is majority non-white. A much more illuminating measure would have been “the number of BIPOC residents in the Sound Transit taxing area that will consider this their closest station.” That number would have been about 50,000 or so.
There were other criteria considered too, like connecting centers, project tenure, outside funding, completing the spine, extending outside the spine and phasing compatibility. For the sake of brevity, I won’t go into all of them but you can read about them here.
In summary, Renton’s BRT delayed by its ridership projections being lower than light rail, and its parking was delayed by expediency– it’s easy to seperate the parking into a later phase.
Ridership will be lower without parking. So the next blow Renton should expect will be in 2027 when Sound Transit says we don’t ever deserve light rail connectivity since our BRT ridership is not meeting projections, (which will be due to no parking). The parking they have delayed is a $20 Million dollar expense, roughly 18 weeks of taxes that Renton pays into Sound Transit. Furthermore, Sound Transit still owes us three times this amount from the original Sound Move, approved all the way back in 1996.
Renton’s Bus Rapid Transit service should be at the top of Sound Transit’s priority list. At this point it’s probably too late to get the start date back to its original planned 2024 opening date, but it’s not too late to get our parking added back into the 2026 service roll-out. Furthermore, work on the concept for a Renton light rail connection in a future Sound Transit 4 should be conducted immediately. This conceptual work was approved in Sound Transit 3 for a cost of $5 Million. Unless this concept is completed soon, Renton residents may one day find we are paying for another Sound Transit expansion without light rail access.
Sound Ford building have been torn down at the site of the future Main and Grady Bus Rapid Transit station, behind this gateway sign. This site was cleared in part for a 700 stall parking garage planned for 2024, that will now be delayed until 2034.
Please see my previous blog entry on Sound Transit here for more background.
Damn. I suspect a lawsuit is in order.
But I don’t think it you can consider just ridership but also need to consider what are the reasons the ridership isn’t higher. My opinion is that while the area with the higher ridership sees this improvement, it is also the area with the most people that don’t need to drive to get to the bus/link rail. I believe if they improved the parking lots, you would see improved ridership coming from the south end. Because these are people going longer distances you would see a higher improvement in fuel usage and less sitting in traffic.
I know in my case when I go downtown Seattle, I prefer taking the 101 bus instead of driving to Tukwila because of the parking and the extra distance I have to drive, yes the bus is about 10 minutes slower but because Sound Transit choses to ignore Renton residents, I will partake of KC Metro instead.
So let me get this right: we’re getting screwed because we were screwed before?
It like a cycle of abuse.
Yes, we’re in a sort of “under-served death spiral,” where the more under-served we become the lower our ridership numbers, and the less service we get.
https://mltnews.com/sound-transit-hosting-online-open-house-about-stride-bus-rapid-transit-through-april-8/
In the LAST PARAGRAPH, of 6 paragraphs! to read Renton loses our only ST capital projects.
“The parking at the South Renton Transit Center and at Northeast 44th Street is anticipated to be completed in 2034. ” 11 years. 2034!!!
Losing Renton’s only capitol project in 20+ years is so…. so…. frustrating, maddening, upsetting….My entire 12 years on Council, I was Transportation/Aviation Chair (except the year I was Council President). From the first months in 2004, I was challenging ST’s CEO & Board Chair publicly about the lack of any Renton projects. Serving on numerous regional transportation boards and committees, I continually advocated for Renton to get a fair share from ST. It was never in the “plan”. Not near term plan, not long range plan, not anywhere was there any mention of Renton. Except begrudgingly acknowledging that the worst congestion on any Washington highway was I405 from Tukwila to Bellevue. Yet, no colored line connecting that portion on any map.
So I along with my Council colleagues were happy when Renton finally got a seat on the ST Board of Directors. Randy Corman, Don Persson, Denis Law, Armondo, Ruth Perez, Transportation Dept., Economic Development Dept., city attorney, all worked hard for 20+ years to keep ST accountable to Renton’s taxpayers. And finally, ST committed to building a parking structure at Rainier & Grady, the new Transit Center ( the “old Sound Ford” site), as well as a 200 stall parking lot at the new 44th St. Exit. Renton was finally getting an investment from ST, long overdue.
Now, it’s gone? What was the discussion at the St Bd. meeting? Certainly there was strong pushback for Renton losing (for 11 years) the only capital investments in decades???
Yep, ST continues to make me grind my teeth I just realized. Total frustration.
Marcie P
What I understand, our representative from Renton voted to remove Renton’s project from funding. Go along to get long Ed Prince strikes again.
Not to get all ‘equity’ on people, but the map at the top is basically where the wealthy white people live.
A bit of irony as ST claims to place a high value on ‘equity.’
Even more weird when you figure out who sold us under the bus. Pun intended.