Seattle may be generations behind (see today’s Crosscut story here) when it comes to rapid transit, but it makes up some ground this year with its new light-rail line. The first phase of Link starts up in July, from Downtown to Tukwila, with the extension to the airport due to start up in the fall. (More here.)
The airport section looks familiar:
To a Vancouverite, the Link guideway seems like a somewhat more elegant version of SkyTrain.
Initially, Link wasn’t going to run to the airport, a bizarre decision that was fortunately reversed. The airport station looks like it will be impressive, but still some distance from the main terminal – unless there’s more to come.
http://regardingplace.com/ has a video and a link to a Seattle Times item. The times story indicates that there will be a temporary shuttle from the last station to SeaTac until the airport station opens in December.
maybe now Vancouverites can stop associating the words LRT with a slow street tram. As you’ve shown in your pics, LRT is versatile and can be anything – tunneled, elevated or at street level (and sometimes all of the above on a single line), whatever makes sense for the immediate area it is running in. Whereas SkyTrain *must* always be fully seperated because of that bizarre third rail.
More elegant?
With the miriad of poles on top of the elevated guideway for the overhead caternary wires?
Given noise compliants from residents close to the elevated portions of the line, you also can probably expect to see sound barriers erected at the track/wheel level of the guideway (as has been done for SkyTrain for years since the original Expo Line garnered noise complaints).
See article on wheel squeal noise here:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009419669_stnoise05m.html
I believe that to some degree Seattle has followed the same model as Ottawa, using for the most part bus rolling stock and highway allocations, in Ottawa’s case the dedicated “busways”, instead of rail based solutions.
Seattle has had a downtown bus subway since 1990. Now buses and trains will share the downtown tunnel with a signaling system to keep them separated.
While the Seattle region doesn’t have Ottawa’s exclusive busways, we do have an extensive network of High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes that are on nearly every freeway in the region, “freeway flyer stations”, and more recently built direct access ramps between the inside HOV lane and adjacent park & rides.
While there’s a group of people in Vancouver who are calling for LRT as an alternative to Skytrain, there are a group of people in Seattle who are calling for the opposite. This is evidenced by the supporters of the failed monorail project (which would’ve been completely elevated and automated) and people who are complaining about the safety risks and operational limitations of having a regional rail system run at grade down the middle of a street in the Rainier Valley (a diverse neighborhood that was neglected for many years).
overall, not a bad system. But the stations are way too far apart. In some cases, 1.5 miles. In the highway section, it skips past an entire neighbourhood without giving any reasonable service there. They could have done a much better job, but it’s a start and it will keep being added to with the University Link already approved, I understand.
I’m thrilled Seattle is finally getting a rapid transit line, though the planned schedule for leaves something to be desired.
“Trains will leave every seven and-a-half minutes during peak periods, and every 10 to 15 minutes during midday and evening hours.” [From the LINK facts pdf on the Sound Transit website Gord provided]
Now, granted, this is probably their initial schedule and over time more trains will be added to speed things up. Plus it will take some time for transit oriented development to establish itself along the corridor and increase demand.
I cannot wait to take a trip down to Seattle this August to try out both the LINK LRT and the unfortunately acronymed South Lake Union Trolley (streetcar).
Follow-up on the wheel squeal – confirmed that the LRT violates US Federal limits at night:
http://www.seattlepi.com/transportation/408034_tooloud11.html
Grand Opening events and hours are listed at SeattleLightRail.net with over 275 nearby businesses in the “Train Business Directory.”