Lenny wrote on Jul 3, 2007 8:41 PM:
" I forgot to mention - John Niles has stated his opposition to rail stems from his opposition to WA DC's Metro system, one of the most popular rail systems in the world. John Niles used to take a half empty bus from his home to his office, but that bus went away one day with the advent of the Metro subway. That was the beginning of John Niles' 25-year obsession with killing all rail systems, no matter how popular or effective those systems might be. It all goes back to John Niles' half-empty bus...with lots of leg room, and door to door service. Who cares about the hundreds of thousands of people who now use the subway, with a reliable and quick connection all around the DC and N. VA area. I'm sure those people would rather be sitting on a hot, slow bus which shows up 40 minutes late...reliably unreliable. "
Lenny wrote on Jul 3, 2007 8:35 PM:
" "Recently released computer modeling of future traffic by analysts working in State government shows that congestion in 2028 after $38 billion spent would be 18% less bad than it would be IF Roads & Transit were not approved. "
And in JNiles' fantasy world, Personal Rapid Transit, robot-cars, telecommuting, buses (stuck in traffic), bigger&wider freeways complete with BIG BUCKS tolls... all will magically "solve" congestion.
John Niles used to pretend he was supportive of public transit. A quick review of the website he recently updated with PRT fanatic Emory Bundy shows they are fundamentally opposed to mass transit (unless you call a minimally subsidized suburban Vanpool "mass transit")
It's no surprise Niles is affiliated with the Intelligently Designed Discovery Institute, which comes up with a new wacky "alternative" every other week. Today is was "bring back the Misquito Fleet" Tomorrow, MagLev, submerged tunnels, freeway monorail, ITS, telecommuting....the list is endless (but light rail or any variety of rapid, high capacity transit is always excluded). In other words, if it's untested, or not viable, Niles is for it. If it's popular and effective, he's against it.
That's some way to move people around, wouldn't you agree?
John Niles' recent re-affiliation with Kemper Development Corporation www.truthabouttraffic.org convinced me his multi-decade "pro transit" charade and intellectual inconsistency must be countered.
The closest John Niles has come to pushing an actual off-the-shelf technology, or an actual viable plan has been his decade+ promotion of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lite (no actual grade separation - gotta keep it cheap, and slow, and unreliable).
Yet, Mr. Niles refuses to put an actual plan forward, because he knows how easy it will be for us bus-riding transit geeks to tear it apart.
Imagine spending half your professional life opposing a single mode of transportation - and NOT ONCE putting forward your own plan.
John, let your perpetual BRT concept out of the closet: this is year 12 of opposing light rail in Seattle. I'm sure there's a couple hundred grand sitting around in Kemper-land to fund this (oops - John's friends over there hate buses, too....but they like PRT!)
OK, we'll make this simple. For over 5 years John Niles has been opposing Link north - and has been all across the country doing what he can to stop it. The first section is 3 simple miles from downtown Seattle to the UW. Further extension is to Northgate. Mr. Niles, you've spent several decades and countless thousands of hours telling us about extremely vague BRT plans for the region.
Start simple: give us a BRT plan to go head to head with North Link light rail plans www.soundtransit.org/st2 "
John Niles, CETA wrote on Jul 3, 2007 2:47 PM:
" Those are excellent questions, Ben! Here is CETA's response -- Four to five millions more daily trips per decade will be added to the region in the years ahead, and Sound Transit's $24 billion 20-year program on top of RTID's $14 billion is a pathetically inadequate and misdirected response to this expected surge in trip-making driven by population and employment growth. The few hundred thousand trips forecast to ride on Sound Transit's trains ten or more years from now will be affected by the congestion getting to and from the train stations, and by the person-to-person congestion on standing-room-only light rail cars from UW to Beacon Hill, and perhaps even on I-90 to Bellevue if the Feds cave in to local pressure to reduce freight capacity on that floating bridge by taking over two lanes for barely-used passenger railroad tracks. If Sound Transit wins in November, government computer models for 2040 with 125 miles of light rail show that a few hundred thousand train travelers will look out the windows of the train cars on the other 19 million daily travelers stuck on cars and buses in traffic. (Note: most transit trips in 2040 would still be on buses, because buses go to more of the places that people need to go.) Sound Transit and RTID assure us that road congestion will continue and grow practically unabated ... 18% less bad than it might be, but 79% worse than it is today. Even if the train ridership were to be double what Sound Transit projects, with all trains stuffed full and running at minimum headway, the regional economic and mobility impact would still be trivial except for peak work trips to the small fraction of regional jobs in three employment centers. Even building twice as much light rail as the $38 billion Roads & Transit package offers would provide a pathetically thin, absurdly low-capacity approach to mobility. The 6-mile low-capacity Seattle subway addition (Pine St to NE 75th) at $500 million per mile plus line extensions to the burbs sucks up all the money needed to do something that would actually provide effective transit. Tripling King County's Transit Now bus improvement program for 2/10% additional sales tax coordinated with re-engineering of arterial street space to give buses more priority would be much more effective and less expensive than 5/10% that Sound Transit wants to waste. But Sound Transit has buffaloed us into thinking a sleek light rail magic bullet is the way to go. It won't go to Ballard; it won't go to West Seattle; it won't go to Magnolia; it won't go to Queen Anne. It won't go to a lot of places. And to add insult to injury, Sound Transit wants to double our taxes for more light rail before showing us what the first line to the Airport will allegedly accomplish. "
Ben Schiendelman wrote on Jul 3, 2007 8:45 AM:
" Does that congestion take into account the people who simply won't be affected by congestion because they'll be on the trains?
Also, how many more people will be traveling? What's the economic hit of not being able to support those trips? "
John Niles, CETA wrote on Jul 2, 2007 4:51 PM:
" Article states, "The $9.7 billion regional road-building plan will be combined on the ballot with a $23.6 billion proposal to expand the Sound Transit light rail system."
Correction: The price for the road-building plan is $14.3 billion when made comparable to a $23.6 billion Sound Transit price.
This higher price reflects inflation-adjusted construction costs and bond interest over 20 years.
The total 20-year price tag for the November package, therefore, is $38 billion, $14B for "roads" plus $24B for "transit," mostly light rail.
Recently released computer modeling of future traffic by analysts working in State government shows that congestion in 2028 after $38 billion spent would be 18% less bad than it would be IF Roads & Transit were not approved.
Computed with reference to the present, the computer forecast shows that congestion in 2028 after the $38 billon Roads & Transit plan would be 79% worse than in 2006, instead of 118% worse. Not better than today, but less bad.
Note: Congestion is measured by average weekday afternoon traffic delay in hours -- hours spent because congestion reduces speed below legal speed limits.
More detail at http://www.roadsandtransitfactual.info from Public Interest Transportation Forum.
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