Forget the Tacoma Mall, Any Visionary Light Rail Extension Should Serve the Hilltop

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December 26, 2021 by seradt

The alignment of the Tacoma Dome Link Extension (TDLE) is already on shaky ground in terms of the low population and employment density of the project area, the quality of existing transit services, and poor station locations. Using its trains will never approach the general simplicity of driving on the interstate it parallels. Fife will never Manhattanize. The line is effectively a huge jobs program with rails that provides very little benefit to the majority of transit riders. Indeed, the use of the term “shaky” here is very generous: the line will almost certainly fail to achieve even the low ridership estimates produced by Sound Transit, all to the tune of at least $3.5-billion dollars. Prominent local bus lines will be redirected from Commerce Street to Tacoma Dome Station in an attempt to provide the extension life support at the expense of Tacoma transit users. With mandated transfers and route deviations for everyone, we can already picture the troubled future of transit in Tacoma. We should be trying to do better.

Fascinatingly, in a great example of doubling-down on an error, people who should know better continue to advocate for a Link light rail extension to the Tacoma Mall over the city center. If any further extension is warranted, it is to Downtown Tacoma and the Commerce Street Hub. Home to all of the city’s key transit connections and by far the most jobs-rich census tracts in the South Sound, with up to 34,353 jobs per square mile, Downtown Tacoma cannot be skipped (see pages 4 through 6, Census Tract Nos. 061601 & 061602). Comparatively, the mall is an absurd prospect for rail service considering the area’s skeletal transit system, minimal jobs and low population density, well-developed vehicular infrastructure, and the enormous geographical barriers to accessing it.

It is confounding that Link would not serve the city center, and local leaders should be working toward a correction. TDLE remains in the preliminary planning stages, it will open at least 10-years from now (at best), it has already been delayed, it is extremely susceptible to further delay, and therefore all efforts should be undertaken now to secure a Puyallup Avenue alignment. If a delay occurs in support of this revised or supplemental DEIS, we are better off for it. The frustration of a disgruntled public might be intense, but it would be fleeting; however, built poorly as proposed, they and their children will forever reflect on the obvious flaws of a system they use and pay for each day. Downtown Tacoma should be the terminus for the 65-mile Link spine. It can be done for $250-million to $610-million extra, depending upon how the rails reach into Pacific Avenue. The mall extension, however, would be $2-billion project, representing a 106% price hike over a straightforward downtown terminus. That huge difference in cost, by itself, would convert multiple Pierce Transit trunk lines into BRT, a far more impactful infrastructure that would naturally include the Route 3 into the mall.

Still, if we are to remain in the business of Link fantasy rail maps that cost billions of dollars, presumably sapped from the precious funds that should otherwise be dedicated to general bus improvements and bus rapid-transit, then I have one more to propose.

Even with its new streetcar line, which has a role in the local transit hierarchy that is distinct from, and complimentary to, Link light rail, any visionary extension of Link should still be to Downtown—and ultimately Hilltop—not the mall (see the ArcGIS map here). More specifically, the concentration of medical facilities, jobs, and high-population densities around MLK & Division, or perhaps around MLK & 6th Avenue near Wright Park, is an ideal location for a regional rail station. Directly accessed by the stop are areas with employment density up to 22,255 jobs per square mile (see pages 4 through 6, Census Tract Nos. 061500 & 061400). The inclusion of the Hilltop, City Center, and Union Station stops would have a transformational impact on the value of Tacoma Dome Link Extension. It would provide a streetcar connection on Hilltop that allows riders to avoid the streetcar horseshoe, a key critique of that routing. Tacoma would broadly have the best of all worlds for a city of only 220,000: a streetcar necklace that connects its highest population densities, a light rail system that slices through its challenging geography and connects its most prominent urban centers, and a bus rapid transit network that fans out from Downtown, just like the area transit system has done since the 1870s. The stage would be set for the dramatic densification of the most prominent urban area between Seattle and Portland.

Tacoma can still salvage something high-quality out of the TDLE. The trains just have to go north after Tacoma Dome Station, not south.

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Please see the map below showing a hypothetical City Center and Hilltop Link extension superimposed over 2020 Census employment data.

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