Metro... is it really transit?
Linnea Noreen
Being a good, environmentally-conscious citizen, I attempted to use mass transit to get from my home on Capitol Hill to my workplace in Renton the other day.
I went to King County Metro's trip planning page. The first round (point-to-point, .5 mile walk) culled 3 options averaging 3.5 hours and 4 transfers. The second round (point-to-point, 1 mile walk) gave 3 options, with two transfers and 3 hours. Third try (house address-to-Southcenter mall): an average of 1.25 hours, between one and two transfers. That does not include the 20 minute walk from Southcenter to the office in Renton. Total: close to two hours.
Are you kidding me?! Between 2 and 3 hours to get to work... each way?
Figuring this couldn’t be right, I rode to Southcenter anyway. Two hours later, finally at work, I realized this scenario is why we will never solve our congestion problem with the current approach. Why would anyone take public transportation when it takes 2 hours to get to work... and only 20 minutes by car?
TECHNORATI TAGS: PUGET SOUND, SEATTLE, SUBURBS, BUS SERVICE, COMMUTING, TRAVEL TIMES, ENVIRONMENT
Comments
Linnea,
I think if you ask Metro, they would recommend that you look into one of their Vanpool or rideshare programs.
Posted by: Frank | October 1, 2007 1:07 PM
It's not surprising at all that a random home-to-work journey made by automobile takes much, much longer on public transit.
Here's why:
Puget Sound Regional Council, the official transportation planning agency of this region, reports the following in its recent planning update called Vision 2040 (page II.29, Figure 2-8).
Today, the average household is within a 30 minute or less transit ride of just 0.7% of the region's employment sites. That rounds off to about one percent.
The average work commute time by automobile across all workers, homes, and workplaces is 25.4 minutes today.
In 2040, after complete implementation of Roads & Transit Prop 1 and billions more in follow-on spending that would expand phase 1 and phase 2 light rail to a 125 mile network in the region, the average household would be within 1.07% of the region's employment sites. That's an improvement from today, but it also rounds off to one percent.
The expected automobile commuting time in 2040 is expected to increase by about one minute over today, to 26.5 minutes.
In other words, in the future, following implementation of the present Metropolitian Transportation Plan being funded by Prop 1, driving to work instead of taking transit will be much, much faster, on average, for our community of widely dispersed homes and jobs, even if commercial and residential centers are dense and walkable individually, and even if a light rail train network connects them.
You can look up these numbers at www.psrc.org.
Posted by: John Niles | October 1, 2007 4:50 PM
Indeed, it's an urban development problem. We've built as if everyone has automobiles, not in corridors, so it's impossible for corridor travel to serve most destinations; however, *building* corridor rapid transit is the only way to change this, by channeling new development.
Posted by: Ben Schiendelman | October 4, 2007 3:05 PM