The First BRT Line for Tacoma Shows There Are Lessons To Be Learned

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May 13, 2022 by seradt

Tacoma and the Puget Sound have for decades grappled with the consequences of a society built on heavily subsidized auto travel. Since the highway building era of the 1960s, ribbons of new roadway have torn through and polluted the city’s neighborhoods, dismembered one of its great parks, further isolated Downtown from its waterfront, and thoroughly suburbanized a city that had once been intensively urban. Today, new high-capacity transportation projects aim to disrupt this model and promote a more urbane manner of living, providing mobility choices to some citizens that haven’t been available since the 1930s. The Tacoma vicinity stands to be the beneficiary of billions of dollars worth of such investments, much of it in the form of interurban light rail, streetcars, and bus rapid transit. This is, to be sure, a step in the right direction.

However, one way or another, they will all fail to upend the area’s pervasive auto dominance. The city, with the help of regional players, is making profoundly flawed long-term planning choices that will forever impair success. There appear to be two immediate reasons for this. First, instead of making fundamental changes to transportation planning orthodoxy, where auto-centric projects and their design reign supreme over other modes, these new transportation projects simply overlay themselves onto or along the very road systems that are already failing the public realm. Second, the planning process has generated unproductive alignments that will not be able to bring about the efficiencies and results promised to the public, especially in relation to their high cost. This blog has already detailed at length the looming problems of the Tacoma Dome Link Extension, as well as the ongoing inability of civic leaders to make basic planning decisions that could actually deliver trains to Tacoma. This article, instead, will focus on the first Stream bus rapid transit (BRT) project along Pacific Avenue, as well as general improvements to the city’s bus network. As there is much to cover, part one will encompass the current state of affairs for the BRT project, and part two shall cover the possibilities of what quality long-term planning could deliver to generations of Tacomans.

ROUTE 1, THE ESSENTIAL TACOMA TRUNK LINE

The promise of BRT in a city like Tacoma is the ability for the technology to deliver rapid transit improvements akin to a rail system with fewer barriers to implementation and a far lower cost. 

With the city’s modest population densities and highly developed street network, any cost effective and modern transit system was destined to be rubber tire based. This is especially true following the success of peer BRT projects in the Puget Sound region, and due to the extraordinary cost (and cost overruns) of local rail projects, including the T Line Hilltop Extension. 

The planning effort that was to become Pierce Transit’s first BRT line, Stream 1, first came into focus in early 2017. When it hired the consultant WSP-Parsons Brinckerhoff for a formal corridor study, the agency had already identified Route 1 as the corridor deserving of the initial high-capacity improvements. This was the obvious selection as the line was then carrying over 1.7-million riders each year, easily the busiest in the system (see page 2-8). Notably, contemporaneous agency documents state, “The Pacific Avenue corridor has the current highest transit ridership and would likely realize the greatest benefit” (see pg. 14). While Pacific Avenue was clearly going to be a prominent element in any new BRT line, the corridor that was included for study featured only Pacific Avenue and nothing farther. It outright eliminated from the review the strongest performing segment of the line, from Downtown to Tacoma Community College (TCC). To keen observers, this was a very concerning development. 

Pierce Transit’s Route 1, which has since 2003 been the system’s essential trunk line, is a through-routing champion. Today the route offers critical services through Downtown Tacoma and connects diverse station pairs in almost all of the city’s major zones (think South End, East Side, Central and West End Tacoma, and the North End, too). The oft-sought bridging of east and west here in this city, and the crossing of the barrier highways, is achieved every few minutes throughout much of the day as Route 1 buses cruise the corridor. In what is otherwise a hub-and-spoke system, Route 1 provides for transfers outside of the Commerce Street hub, and provides uninterrupted access through the core neighborhoods of the city. It is truly an ideal urban bus service for Tacoma. 

A PROBLEMATIC BEGINNING FOR BRT

Why the advantageous through-routing was nixed at the outset of the 2017 study remains a mystery, a decision whose origins are lost in the pages of old records that have proven difficult to recover. If BRT systems are supposed to emulate rail services, as Pierce Transit materials have attested, then local designers were not seeking best-practice examples of rail planning when they sliced the Route 1 into two. The planning instrument that is a central terminal station is a Gilded Age relic. There are now examples the world over where such terminals have been through-routed at great expense in order to optimize the local rail network, dramatically increasing capacity and efficiency. The termination of Route 1 service in Downtown is the polar opposite approach, and the consequent imposition of transfers on all riders traveling through Downtown to other parts of Tacoma represents, in the opinion of the author, a grave transit planning error. Worst of all, the Pacific Avenue corridor selected for BRT casts aside the urbanizing 6th Avenue, which is perhaps the most suitable corridor for such investment in the state outside of Seattle. If there was a corridor to prioritize for this project, it should have been 6th. Even Pierce Transit’s own study data would find that congestion and per-mile ridership was far more intense here than anywhere on Pacific Avenue outside of Downtown—in other words, this is BRT territory (see pages 52-56). Ostensibly, concerns over right-of-way acquisition and feasibility deprived 6th Avenue of consideration. This is despite the fact that far more complex corridors than 6th have become successful BRT ventures, and that those very same qualities that create complexity often make them particularly amenable to BRT service. 

There are competing perspectives where even the shortened Stream 1 corridor is too long for BRT improvements, and that a termination Downtown was advisable. However, this perspective fails to consider alternative corridors that maintain through-routing in Downtown and which serve the urban neighborhoods beyond it. The current 15.0-mile Pacific Avenue project falls well within the norms of some peer project lengths (see RapidRide). But consider a TCC to Pacific Lutheran University (PLU) corridor, a prized alignment anchored at both ends by prominent institutions, serving key urban areas like 6th Avenue, and preserving through-routing across Downtown, all in just 13.2 miles (see graphic at top). While this specific alternative would not have served the Spanaway Walmart at the south end of Route 1—a busy stop, no doubt—the trade off is BRT service to TCC, which actually is the busiest stop on the route outside of Downtown. If TCC can be served by conventional buses after Stream 1 opens in 2027, then certainly the Spanaway Walmart can be served by conventional buses under this visionary scenario, with timed transfers to the BRT line at PLU. This is one variation of many that could have been considered and which would have better served the city of Tacoma.

A Downtown termination, by itself, is not a nail-in-the-coffin development for Stream 1. The Commerce Street hub is the center of our regional transit network, and that hub is located in the economic heart of the South Sound. Downtown is where most people intend to travel, so the harm is mitigated to some degree. The problem is that the splitting of Route 1 is not the only unusual feature of the new BRT line. In addition to the termination, the line will also deviate east to serve Tacoma Dome Station in anticipation of Link Light Rail, and then, after returning to the Pacific Avenue axis, deviate again to the west to serve Market Street in anticipation of future urban development. Both deviations should be reviewed independently on their merits. 

ONE PROJECT, TOO MANY OBJECTIVES

The BRT deviation to Tacoma Dome Station likely satisfies either a general planning directive of Sound Transit, or one of its funding stipulations. Neither have been confirmed through documents reviewed for this piece, although Pierce Transit staff comments have implied as much. Regardless, Route 1 already has a connection to the station via the T Line streetcar, negating the need for any deviation. The streetcar has long served as a downtown connector to Tacoma Dome Station and its regional services. Furthermore, the mere existence of the line is routinely highlighted as the key reason why Link should not be extended beyond the Dome and into the Commerce Street hub (out of frivolous concerns for “duplication”). If the streetcar is so integrated with Link as to warrant obstructing Link from serving our major urban center, then the existing Union Station bus and streetcar stop should also qualify as Link integration (or, alternatively, a shared BRT/streetcar station at 25th & Pacific). Of course that isn’t true: the streetcar will never be the equivalent of Link, and any credible planner would agree that ending an urban metro line over a mile from a city center is not good practice. Resolving this connectivity failure should be the work of Sound Transit as it aims to serve our regional centers. It must not be the work of Pierce Transit to redirect its own services in order to mitigate the impacts of Sound Transit choices. Ultimately, should certain funding be predicated on service to Tacoma Dome Station to support Link Light Rail, Pierce Transit should emphasize existing connections via the T Line, or insist that Sound Transit properly advance a last-mile Link connection into Commerce Street. 

In what should be understood as an early demonstration of the need, the deviation to Tacoma Dome Station was never executed in the 22 years that Sounder served the facility, nor even after Amtrak (haltingly) moved to the line in 2017. Many popular regional bus lines have long served the facility as well. Despite the lack of direct service, Route 1 ridership increased, treating riders with direct trips into Downtown or beyond. Pierce Transit maintains that there will be substantial BRT ridership at Tacoma Dome once the Tacoma Dome Link Extension (TDLE) opens after 2032, despite the fact the extension will replicate existing bus services in an often inferior manner—namely slower and with a parallel freeway routing. The Dome ridership theory apparently rests on studies performed for the TDLE project, which estimates only 27,000-37,000 daily riders on the multi-billion dollar corridor. Not all of those riders will travel to Tacoma Dome, and those that do will likely choose to drive home from the parking-rich station. A rough calculation finds that the higher end of the Sound Transit estimate is approximately three times larger than the existing ridership of all the bus lines that Link will replace—combined—including those that also serve Downtown (see pg. 2-7 here, and pg. 2 here). It is too early to tell if these ridership estimates will fare as poorly as those for recent construction costs. If so, will the time penalty for the deviation of all BRT trips into Downtown be worthwhile? The answer is likely no, but at least this deviation is rooted in some transportation planning logic, even if the Sound Transit project mandating the connection is sub-par. 

The more confounding deviation is that to Market Street, a planning decision made after the initial 2017 studies and apparently requested by City of Tacoma officials. The deviation quickly became a political fixture that was under review by mid-2018. Frustratingly, no City record has been found that details the rationale behind the request, nor the actual text of the request that led to the route deviation. Pierce Transit staff have commented in public meetings that City officials desired a second high-capacity route through the city center, and the moving of Stream 1 to Market Street satisfied this goal. Further justification included serving the new development rising near Market Street and the area farther up the hillside from Pacific Avenue. While additional high-capacity corridors and an expanded urban service area are laudable goals, they are not quality reasons to abandon the jobs-heavy historic alignment of your primary rapid-transit route. The downtown stretch of Pacific Avenue is a transit alignment that has reliably served the public for well over a century. There are societal demands and expectations that have long been attached to it, all of which will be severed for reasons that are sourced in local city planning groupthink. The riders lose, and they do so for a corridor revision that does not appear to have been provided a comprehensive assessment and executed on a whim.

Soon, all transit trips into Pacific Avenue between 25th and 9th Avenues will require either a transfer or a long walk, directly impacting individuals with access and functional needs. The center of the UWT campus, Union Station, the history and art museums, the waterfront, and numerous other cultural and economic hotspots will be deprived of their convenient bus access. Instead of building an integrated transit system whose parts reinforce the whole, Tacoma has adopted the approach of segregating its transportation investments: Link cannot encroach upon the streetcar, and the streetcar cannot encroach upon BRT, etc. This manner of planning ignores the independent and complementary utility of each service, and that each service fulfills a different function in the larger transportation hierarchy of the city—even if they might occasionally share the same right-of-way. This deviation is fear-based planning, where concerns over finite funding have a project doing too much in an attempt to accomplish too many things. And despite the great investment, Tacoma will be poorer for it. Perhaps most frustrating of all, plans are already moving forward for a second BRT Line—Stream 2—and it will almost certainly be the Route 2 or Route 3 to be improved (although Route 2 should be selected). Route 2 operates over Market Street, and Route 3 easily could be made to do so, which means the second high-capacity corridor so desired by City officials is already in the works. It would serve that urban zone up the hillside, capture those rapidly developing areas, and reaffirm that we never needed a Stream 1 deviation to Market Street after all. 

AN OUT-OF-TOUCH PROJECT SCOPE

The contortion that is Stream 1 near Downtown Tacoma is an unfortunate development for a project of great promise. If this corridor emulates any rail system, it is the figure-eight of a toy train set. Originally promised at $150-million, the project will actually spend upwards of $250-million to eliminate stops, add expensive roundabouts and create dedicated bus lanes, all to speed up service on the south end before meandering on a final slog at the north end to Commerce Street. This is the transit planning equivalent of making people go upstairs to go downstairs. Compared to the full Route 1 it will supplant, the alignment changes will lower the overall mileage by just 3 miles out of 18, despite excluding all of 6th Avenue. To top it off, it then imposes transfers on every rider that wants to travel within and beyond downtown, specifically degrading regional access to Hilltop’s job rich “Pill Hill”. The project will likely do little to change the transit-use threshold of a city whose residents easily choose to drive over the alternatives.

In a time when Pierce Transit struggles to find operators and trips are canceled with upsetting frequency—when the real urgency is simply getting more buses on the road through a modest tax increase and to provide basic upgrades to a system lagging behind its peers—Stream 1 is stricken by bureaucratic excess. This should have been a straightforward improvement project for the busiest bus line in the South Sound. The most urban and complex sections should have been prioritized over outlier areas. General enhancements to the existing corridor should have been executed first, especially those with an immediate high-value impact like upgraded transit signal priority and modern shelters. The project scope should have been kept simple, with results that were deliverable to the public in the timeframes and budgets promised. Value engineering should have been conducted to achieve a similar performance to more expensive alternatives and physical improvements. Instead, we will get something else entirely.

Fortunately for Tacoma, bus systems are far easier to modify than rail lines. 

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