Sims' plan to speed up buses falls on voters

In Curitiba, a city in the south of Brazil, buses as long as trains carry up to 15,000 people an hour across streets dedicated to their use. In Los Angeles, buses rolling along exclusive corridors stop for passengers every 90 seconds.

Both are examples of "bus rapid transit," a concept growing in popularity worldwide that, if King County Executive Ron Sims has his way, will become a featured element of the Metro transportation system.

Sims' proposal for the service represents potentially the most dramatic change to the regional transit landscape in his bus-expansion plan. He's seeking voter approval this fall for a sales tax increase to finance the plan.

Bus rapid transit generally means bus service that runs in dedicated or separated road lanes, unaffected by other traffic, and operating so frequently that riders who miss one bus must wait only a few minutes for the next one and thus don't have to bother with a schedule.

Ideally, the arrangement allows buses priority at traffic lights and includes "intelligent transportation" systems, such as electronic signs notifying waiting riders when the next bus will reach their stop. Tickets could be bought before boarding, reducing stop times, and commuters might make use of "smart cards" to pay fares while switching between buses and other forms of transit.

"It's a way to encourage ridership," said County Councilwoman Julia Patterson, D-SeaTac, chairwoman of the council's Transportation Committee. "It helps to get cars off the road and that helps (reduce) congestion."

Bill Vincent, program manager for the environmentally oriented Breakthrough Technologies Institute in Washington, D.C., is a big fan of bus rapid transit.

"It has proven to be a successful, popular, cost-effective way to provide people alternatives to driving their cars," he said.

But it's not clear what, exactly, bus rapid transit would mean in King County.

Sims hopes to add the service on five corridors, including three in Seattle, as part of his $50-million-a-year "Transit Now" proposal. To pay for Transit Now, Sims wants to raise the sales tax by one-tenth of 1 percent -- equivalent to a penny on a $10 purchase -- and he's asked the County Council to put the tax increase on the fall ballot.

Representatives of Metro, the agency that runs the county's buses, said the "RapidRide" service will run on road lanes, use distinctive buses and stations and include enough buses to provide service every 10 minutes.

But the details won't be worked out unless county voters approve the tax increase. The specifics of routes, station locations, fares, ticketing and other elements would be developed with the cities where the routes would run.

At the moment the proposed routes are "lines on a map," Metro chief Kevin Desmond said. And Victor Obeso, Metro's service development manager, said, "There's a lot of operational issues" Metro needs to work out before RapidRide rolls.

Bus rapid transit systems originally were conceived in the 1930s but not developed until four decades later. Metro experimented with a version in the early 1970s with a demonstration "Blue Streak" service that ran from downtown Seattle to the University of Washington using the Interstate 5 express lanes. But Metro discontinued Blue Streak after a few years when the agency undertook a major expansion of its bus service.

Curitiba's was the first real bus rapid transit system in the world, Vincent said. Besides exclusive bus lanes, its newest buses, which carry up to 300 passengers each, have five doors to allow for quick exits. The first advanced U.S. bus rapid transit system was developed in Pittsburgh and operates on dedicated bus ways completely separated from other traffic.

Because they frequently use lanes on existing roads, the systems can be relatively easy to put in place. That makes them cheaper. A 2001 federal Government Accountability Office study put average rapid bus costs at $13.5 million per mile for systems with bus ways, $9 million per mile for those using high-occupancy vehicle lanes and less than $700,000 per mile for those using existing streets. The comparable light rail cost averaged $34.8 million per mile. Sound Transit, which was not included in the study, expects to spend $150 million per mile for its light rail line from downtown Seattle to the airport.

Metro said it doesn't know what RapidRide's per-mile cost would be. Sims envisions the service on two segments of Highway 99, the Elliott Avenue/15th Avenue West corridor north of downtown Seattle, a route linking downtown to West Seattle and another between downtown Bellevue and Redmond. Metro said it picked the corridors for their potential to attract riders, how fast buses could travel on them and their proximity to homes and businesses.

There are eight rapid bus systems in the United States, according to a recent survey by the transit publication Metro Magazine, which said 13 more lines are planned. Another study, done for the McLean Civic Association, said there are 43 overseas, including a dozen in Latin America, with more than two dozen others planned.

Will the King County system be for real bus rapid transit? It's another unanswered question. Not all the basic elements are necessarily present even in existing systems around the world. Most U.S. systems don't have off-bus ticket sales, and the buses in about half of the operating systems cited in a recent federal study aren't physically distinguished from other buses in those cities.

"There's not very many of those (pure bus rapid transit) things that exist," said Scott Rutherford, chairman of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Washington.

The systems haven't been universally popular. Attempts to start a rapid bus line in Honolulu foundered after some residents opposed giving up street lanes exclusively for buses and after a new, pro-rail transit mayor was elected. He canceled the bus project, citing budget reasons.

Before any semblance of such a system could be added in King County there are questions to resolve. In Seattle, they include extending the Aurora Avenue business access and transit lanes farther north of the Ship Canal and keeping them open longer hours; laying out bus lanes and siting stations in West Seattle, Ballard and Crown Hill; and dealing with the effects on sidewalks and parking in West Seattle. Any bus priority traffic signals would have to be added to all five proposed rapid bus corridors.

Some Aurora Avenue business owners worry they'll lose parking at their stores to an extended bus lane.

"What we have a great problem with is there's a great number of businesses that will be blocked," said Faye Garneau, director of the Aurora Avenue Merchants Association.

While there's some support for Sims' rapid-bus idea on the King County Council, there's also concern about raising the tax and the fact that some cities won't get the fastest service.

Councilman Dow Constantine, a West Seattle Democrat, likes the rapid bus idea but wants assurances that the fast bus corridors could some day be switched to streetcar or other fixed-rail systems, to help concentrate development.

BUS RAPID TRANSIT

What is it? A system in which buses run in exclusive lanes at 10-minute intervals or less, are allowed through traffic lights before other vehicles, have special stations and distinctive buses, sell tickets off the bus to reduce boarding time, and use electronic signs to show when buses are due.

Who has it? Systems in eight U.S. cities have at least some of those characteristics and 13 others are planned, not including King County Metro's proposal.

What's coming here? It's uncertain. Voter approval for a sales tax increase is needed and details would have to be worked out.

P-I reporter Larry Lange can be reached at 206-448-8313 or larrylange@seattlepi.com.

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