Bus Rapid Transit proven approach to mass transit

(From Seattle P-I letter to the editor )

Bus Rapid Transit proven approach to mass transit

Brian Steinburg (March 18 letters) believes Bus Rapid Transit would be as difficult, as inflexible and as costly to institute as light rail, so therefore we should build light rail.

Ignoring the illogic of his conclusion, I'd like to clarify his mistaken premise that BRT always requires exclusive rights of way. It doesn't.

In fact, Vancouver, B.C., already has two BRT lines running mostly on the clear curb lane of ordinary city arterials. A new exclusive guide way would not be needed in King County to enhance existing express bus runs from downtown that already get to SeaTac faster than light rail would.

Metro has had BRT plans for the Rainier Valley corridor hidden in a drawer since summer 1999, when King County Executive Ron Sims and then-Seattle Mayor Paul Schell became hesitant about Sound Transit's plans to run trains as long as football fields down the median of Martin Luther King Jr. Way.

BRT is a proven approach to mass transit. A General Accounting Office report last fall revealed that BRT is not more costly to operate than light rail. Metro, Pierce County Transit and Community Transit have all implemented a form of BRT with their popular skip-stop regional express runs. These three agencies also run ST express bus service under contract to Sound Transit. It works, and Sound Transit rightly boasts of it in radio ads.

For the price of light rail in one corridor, our region's solid bus service can be upgraded to BRT quality in many corridors -- years sooner.

BRT would run on the region's existing 200 miles of HOV freeway lanes and use the new bypass ramps and transit centers paid for by Sound Transit. When congestion reveals pinch points, exclusive right of way can be added incrementally.

We all know the sad, never-ending story of Seattle's light rail. For $200 million a mile it promises in 2020 to replace one auto in a thousand from just one part of the region's rush hour traffic. BRT is a way out of the quagmire.

- John Niles
Public Interest Transportation Forum