What happens in Chinatown/ID when light rail is under construction?
The International District gate, King Street Station, and Union Station. Credit: Joe MabelOne of the most contentious aspects of the ST3 Link extensions is the Chinatown/International District (CID) station and alignment debate. In the simple version of the argument, CID activists oppose a 5th Avenue South alignment because of worries that the station will cause interminable construction impacts, and, in doing so, strike a decisive blow of gentrification and displacement.
On the other hand, Sound Transit seems to prefer the 5th Avenue alignment (though they'd never say so explicitly in public), because it will cost much less and be much simpler to engineer.
But Sound Transit has released new information that makes the calculus even more complex. At an overflow neighborhood meeting in Sound Transit headquarters in Union Station, Sound Transit released more detailed information about the construction impacts, and ultimate rider environment, of each station option.
Caveats apply. In any case, the CID will experience construction several orders of magnitude more disruptive than the construction of the First Hill streetcar. That project comes up a lot in discussions about the new light rail line. Residents and neighborhood leaders blame the protracted streetcar project for uncomfortable living conditions and business closures. A common point I've heard when talking to neighborhood residents is a feeling that the City downplayed the actual impact of the project.
Fortunately, nobody could accuse Sound Transit of doing anything like that. The agency has been clear from the beginning that the construction process is going to-this is a technical term-suck. At the meeting, Sound Transit released more detailed estimates of how much pain the construction will cause.
All figures listed below are estimates from Sound Transit's presentation at the meeting, and subject to change. Cost estimates are based on figures Sound Transit released in January.
5th Avenue shallow stationA cut and cover station on 5th would require:
- 6 years of construction
- 4 months of traffic detours
- $200 million in savings from the ST3 representative project
- Rerouting base ingress and egress for all Metro trolley buses
Transfer times in the station would be:
- 1 minute between Link lines
- 4 minutes between the new Link line and Sounder/Amtrak
A deep mined station on 5th would require:
- 7 years of construction
- No detours
- $400 million more in cost than the ST3 representative project
- Rerouting base ingress and egress for all Metro trolley buses
Transfer times in the station would be:
- 5 minutes between Link lines
- 7 minutes between the new Link line and Sounder/Amtrak
A 4th Avenue cut and cover station would mean:
- 10 years of construction
- 7.5 years of detours
- $300 million more in cost than the ST3 representative project
- Rebuilding the 4th Avenue Viaduct
Transfer times in the station would be:
- 4 minutes between Link lines
- 4 minutes between the new Link line and Sounder/Amtrak
A 4th avenue mined station would require:
- 9 years of construction
- 5 years of detours
- $400 million more in cost than the ST3 representative project
- Rebuilding the 4th Avenue Viaduct
Transfer times in the station would be:
- 5 minutes between Link lines
- 7 minutes between the new Link line and Sounder/Amtrak
Sound Transit often mentions, during conversations about the new CID station, that 33,000 cars and trucks traverse the 4th Avenue South viaduct every day. It's also, as Chris Arkills points out, a crucial piece of bus infrastructure. Arkills is a longtime transportation advisor to King County Executive Dow Constantine and a policy staffer at Metro.
The trolley wire interchange at 4th and Jackson. Credit: Neil Hodges"4th and Jackson is one of the busiest bus intersections in all of King County," Arkills said after watching the briefing at the meeting. "You've got regional buses coming in from Sound Transit, coming up 4th. A lot of buses coming out of our bases and coming out of South King County that come through that intersection, hundreds of buses every day."
Arkills said that the "hundreds and hundreds" of 4th Avenue buses would "most likely" be diverted to 5th Avenue if the new station were built on 4th. He also said that cars and trucks would most likely go through CID streets to the east of 5th Avenue, since the King Street station rail yard, BNSF mainline, and stadiums prevent access to downtown Seattle from most of its southern approach.
A 5th Avenue alignment would cause its own headaches for Metro.
"5th Avenue is where all of the trolley buses come out of the base towards the network," Arkills says. "We would likely have to restring new wire on an alternative pathway through the Chinatown-ID area."
A trolleybus on 5th Avenue South in the International District. Credit: Zach HeistandArkills says that Metro is studying the best places to move buses, with "where we could string temporary wire, where is that workable, what are the impacts to the community," as primary considerations for the new route.
Both alignments will require Metro to give up some of the Ryerson Base as a construction site in the middle term and, in the long term, as permanent right of way. Some possible Link alignments also require permanently closing the E3 Busway to bus traffic.
What happens nextSeattle, King County, and Port elected officials will weigh in on the CID station at a meeting scheduled for March 29. CID stakeholders will have a chance to do the same at a meeting on March 21. Seattle and King County officials have so far taken the side of CID activists.
King County Councilmember Joe McDermott, who represents the CID on the King County Council, was in attendance on Wednesday. So was Constantine. Both are Sound Transit Board members and have expressed support for CID positions.
With all the new details, the choice between 4th and 5th has become more complex. Based on Sound Transit's latest work (and keeping in mind the agency's tacit preference for the alignment), 5th will require less construction time. But it will be literally at the CID's front gate and could move a high volume of buses into the neighborhood. After construction, it would yield the best intra-Link transfer environment, and it might save money.
4th would require hundreds of millions of dollars more in cost, and a full decade of construction. CID streets like Maynard would become bus and freight corridors. Already, years of Sound Transit and SDOT outreach have turned up persistent, verifiable complaints about shortcut-takers driving at dangerous speeds through the neighborhood. That would become an exponentially worse problem if the 4th Avenue Viaduct were closed to car traffic.
Bluntly, the construction period of neither alignment will be good for the neighborhood. It's just one more megaproject in a neighborhood that's been under construction for decades with little respite. The stadiums and I-5 required demolition of entire blocks of Chinatown. Building the streetcar-and the original downtown subway tunnel-made daily life and business excruciating.
The neighborhood has borne more than its fair share of construction burdens, all in the name of bettering the city or the region. That's not to say that those projects haven't made life in Seattle better. Readers of STB can certainly agree that the original transit tunnel has. The new tunnel will as well.
But Seattle's leaders have an obligation to remember that history, hear the neighborhood and act on both. Now that the Central District's Black community has been displaced, the ID is the only neighborhood in central Seattle whose residents aren't mainly white. Seattle's leaders must do what they can to prevent Link from causing the same thing a mile down the hill.