A Comment to the Tacoma Transportation Commission

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August 18, 2022 by seradt

Tacoma is experiencing a period of growth that challenges this committee on all fronts, down to the granular details of sidewalk repair. However, with nearly $6-billion in public money recently spent, newly dedicated, or programmed for major transit projects, we have an obligation to get the “big picture” correct, from which all successive investments flow. Frankly, I find our “big picture” transit system to be needlessly problematic, and it is because of misconceptions or misrepresentations on what or where “Tacoma” actually is. It is for this reason that I am very proud of our recent BRT expansion letter, where this Commission emphatically stated that Tacoma is where it has been since 1884, anchored out of the city core.

There are those who claim that the core of Tacoma is obsolete, or that it will be supplanted in importance by the Mall, Brewery District, or some other section of the city. They hold this position against all evidence to the contrary, as shown by data from the City, Pierce Transit, and the US Government. By virtually all metrics, the 15-minute walkshed out from 11th and Pacific is the dominant administrative, economic, cultural, residential and transportation core of Pierce County. When including the Tacoma General Hospital area, central Tacoma utterly dwarfs everywhere else in prominence—there is no competition. Indeed, our best data shows that Tacomans and County commuters travel to it in far larger percentages than any other regional destination, including Seattle.

And yet, based on our long range transit planning, you wouldn’t know this. The Stream expansion team is studying ending Route 3 at Tacoma Dome Station, despite the fact that this busline has obtained high ridership while serving Downtown. For Stream 1, the project features a route deviation to the Dome that adds travel time to all Downtown trips after spending $250-million to reduce it, in addition to erasing the busiest urban section of the busiest bus line in Pierce County. Most egregious of all, nearly $4-billion dollars is being spent to send Link trains not to the Commerce Street Hub in downtown, which is Transit Planning 101, but instead to the park-and-ride at Tacoma Dome in the industrial margins of the city. It will also do so on the worst possible alignment for bus and rail integration. All of these plans are being executed without conception for how riders will use the system, or how the system will serve our City. To the fundamental issue of where our transit should go, our recent letter should be considered the first pushback against a now pervasive and backwards logic.

Recent developments appear to stem from the 2016 Sound Transit 3 vote, which had Link trains traveling only to Tacoma Dome Station and no farther. I am aware of no other urban metro line in the world that intentionally stops 1.5 miles away from the urban core it is supposed to serve, to include its rich transit connections. Sound Transit did not offer to us any plans that showed Link service into central Tacoma. And the lackluster plans they offered were defeated in our sub-area, only to be overruled by Seattle-area voters.

The consequence has been our transportation network in disarray, an identity crisis in what it means to serve Tacoma. It has resulted in two distinct transit nodes that serve the same small city, adding absurd complexity to our planning. This has a practical impact to all users of the system, too, as it discourages transit use in a city where it is all too easy to drive. A historical perspective is valuable here: in the years before the city dismantled its streetcar system in 1938, a key complaint against the streetcars was that the system forced transfers onto riders. The public hated it, and the replacement buses then did away with it to great popularity. 100-years and multiple billions of dollars later, all regional trips to the heart of Tacoma will need to transfer, all riders traveling across our city on its busiest transit artery will need to transfer, and riders heading into Downtown from within our own city will need to transfer. This is madness, and our ancestors would be mortified. Link should be joining our system, not upending it.

We can amend projects that are a decade or more away. In light of the West Seattle, International District and Ballard communities seeking to improve their Link plans by way of better alignments, tunnels, bridges, and stations, I want to challenge our Commission to seek improvements here. Tacoma deserves Link plans that properly serve our City. I encourage this Commission to draft a letter to Councilmember Walker and the Sound Transit Board seeking a supplemental EIS for the Tacoma Dome Link Extension to review a Puyallup Avenue alignment that, one, better integrates with the bus system at Tacoma Dome, and two, prepares for an extension to the Commerce Street Hub in the heart of the city.

The wealth and resiliency of Tacoma will be built upon the success of its urban core, and we should be prioritizing, where appropriate, major investments that are naturally suited to it. This includes a multi-billion dollar metro line that aims to connect regional centers. In the South Sound, there is no bigger center than Downtown Tacoma.

I am happy to present to this group on the value of Downtown, and of the precedent of transit services being rooted in Downtown. I understand that this request challenges recent Tacoma planning orthodoxy. However, I feel strongly that a supplemental EIS to study a Puyallup Avenue alignment and downtown extension is the right step for Tacoma. We have time to right a major wrong, but that window is beginning to close.

Thank you very much.

-Troy Serad, August 17, 2022

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