Transit Trouble Is Brewing In Tacoma

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November 20, 2022 by seradt

How We Can Fix It: A Mapped Review

• 1. INTRODUCTION
• 2. THE STATE OF TRANSIT NOW
• 3. PLANNING IN AN IDEAL WORLD
• 4. THE NEEDED INTERVENTION
• 5. CTLE ALIGNMENTS
• 6. GOLDEN AGE RAIL
• 7. CONCLUSION

1. Introduction

By virtually all metrics, the 15-minute walkshed out from 11th and Pacific in central Tacoma is the dominant administrative, economic, cultural, residential, and transportation core of Pierce County. Today, this area is served most directly by the Commerce Street Transit Center, a rich hub of local and regional transit connections.

15-minute walkshed from 11th Street & Pacific Avenue, Central Tacoma.

When including the Tacoma General Hospital and University of Washington areas, central Tacoma utterly dwarfs everywhere else in the county 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.

2020 Census thermal overlay analysis of job density in Pierce County, with central Tacoma being the biggest jobs center.

2020 Census commute analysis of Pierce County workers, with Tacoma easily being the destination of most commutes.

And yet, based on our long-range transit planning, you wouldn’t know this.

For Pierce Transit’s Stream 1 bus rapid-transit (BRT) project, a route deviation to the Tacoma Dome adds travel time to all trips to Commerce Street after spending $250-million to reduce it. It will also impose a new transfer on all riders who wish to visit Pacific Avenue in the city center and points beyond.

The Stream System Expansion team of Pierce Transit is also studying ending Stream 2 BRT at Tacoma Dome Station, despite the fact that the busline it will likely replace, the Route 3, has obtained its ridership while serving the city center.

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. The project is called the Tacoma Dome Link Extension, or TDLE, and it is because of this rail project that local bus services are being redirected away from Commerce Street Transit Center. Worse, the last mile of this proposed rail line will be on a street that poorly integrates these new bus and rail services.

There is not a conspiracy to build bad transportation in Tacoma. Indeed, most of the plans that will be reviewed here have evolved from choices that made some level of sense at the time and place they were decided. A variety of local agencies that are acting in good faith—staffed by transit advocates with a strong desire to make things better—have worked diligently to deliver beneficial infrastructure for the public. Comprehensive transportation planning is rarely a simple and straightforward affair.

However, due to reasons as varied as groupthink, siloed institutional decision-making, incomplete or insufficient data points, and government inertia, their work has produced individual projects that do not work toward a coherent whole. When considered altogether, these plans are being executed seemingly without appreciation for how riders will use the system, or how the system will serve the city of Tacoma. It is time for a reset, now, while we still have the ability to do so.

The following essay maps paint a path forward that would bring about this reset, while also providing context for how we got here. Generalized and brief, the maps attempt to convey the transit planning situation that is unfolding in Tacoma right now, which would otherwise take thousands of words.

I hope you enjoy these maps, and I hope that you are able to discern lessons from them that may inspire you to work with local governmental leaders and agencies in order to secure transit planning that more effectively serves the people.

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2. The State of Transit Now

The following maps, arranged in a filmstrip from left to right, provide a basic sequential understanding of how the transit system in Tacoma is developing. The slides identify the consequences of each new piece of infrastructure on the system. If those impacts are left unchecked, they will introduce disorder and unnecessary complexity.

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3. Planning In An Ideal World

The following maps, arranged in a filmstrip from left to right, provide a sequential review of how Tacoma transportation infrastructure might be built in an ideal world. In this alternate reality, transit improves in a manner that solidifies the network, improves urban areas, enhances rider experience, and effectively serves the city of Tacoma.

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4. The Needed Intervention

The following maps, arranged in slides for immediate comparison, provide a review of how individual projects are to unfold. Subsequent slides then identify an “intervention” to that project, illuminating an opportunity to reset project scopes and objectives. The goal is for each intervention to be a realistic pathway to save the project from its own failures or excesses—and do so in a manner that enhances the transportation network in the city of Tacoma. These interventions are desperately needed right now, in some form or another.

At the end of this section, a filmstrip of images provides an overview of how these interventions would reorganize the Tacoma transit system into one that is more logical and efficient.

Intervention 1: Address Link to the outskirts of the city.

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Intervention 2: Resolve how BRT separates the city transit network.

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Intervention 3, Option A: Fix with BRT the poorly considered expansion plans.

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Intervention 3, Option B: Fix with streetcars the poorly considered expansion plans.

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A summary of the impact of the interventions on the city transit network.

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5. CTLE Alignments

There are multiple pathways into central Tacoma for Link light rail. They just need to be studied. Critically, the Puyallup Avenue alignment known as “TD1” in TDLE scoping documents must be included within the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for that project. Without that alignment, the CTLE is dead. Puyallup Avenue is the only route that can physically deliver trains into Tacoma.

Map Link: Central Tacoma Link Extension Alternative Alignments Review (ArcGIS)

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6. Golden Age Rail

The following is a map of the historic streetcar and interurban rail network of Tacoma and vicinity. The map provides context on who we once were, and how we once designed such systems. There are many lessons to be learned from Tacoma’s Golden Age railway designers.

Map Link: Tacoma Area Historic Rail Network, Circa 1925 (ArcGIS)

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7. Conclusion

Back when American society routinely built railroad systems that were heavily used, travelers heading into Tacoma on the interurban rail line enjoyed this view upon their arrival, with the station in the heart of the city:

A view of Old City Hall from the area around Puget Sound Electric’s Tacoma Station.

After the Tacoma Dome Link Extension opens in the mid-2030s, new interurban train riders will not see the landmarks of this historic city. Instead, they will see vast multi-story parking garages that are located about 1.5-miles away from the city center:

Tacoma Dome Station on industrial East 25th Street, where Link light rail will terminate. Consider this line by Vincent Scully on the destruction of New York’s Pennsylvania Station: “One entered the city like a god; one scuttles in now like a rat.”

While the aesthetics of railway terminal neighborhoods are less important than their functionality, location does send a clear signal of the values and aspirations of those who build train stations:

-What does it say about Tacoma that it tolerates a $4-billion subway line that does not serve any of its finest urban amenities?

-What does it say about Tacoma that, the middle of a climate emergency, the climate will be substantially harmed for the construction of a rail line that ends at a park-and-ride facility well over a mile away, and where 80% of its users drive to it in single-occupancy cars?

-What does it say about Tacoma that its long-range plans and policies do not promote the continued centralization of its transit network in downtown?

-Finally, what does it say about Tacoma that you will need to transfer to get to its city center, especially its most glittering and reputable street, Pacific Avenue?

Tacoma deserves excellent rapid transit that serves the city well and which nourishes the type of infill development that is essential to its future growth and resilience. That means continuing with the revitalization of the heart of the city, reinforced by major public investments that are naturally well suited to it—like new bus and rail lines.

It is time for a transportation planning reset in this city.

-Troy Serad

Promotional poster for the Central Tacoma Link Extension, or CTLE.

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