Apparently WSU conducted a new scientific poll in Spokane to gauge support for construction of a new light rail system. The results are somewhat surprising. Check them out here. If a light rail was built between downtown Spokane and Liberty Lake, how often would you use it? My answer: I would use it to commute on the days that I don’t need my car. Whenever I am in a large city, I use the light rail system. I am especially fond of the Metro in Washington DC. It’s easy to use and much faster than taking a cab in most cases.
Another question: Do you have a favorite light rail system?
I think a lot of people are interested in light rail, but when it comes to riding it or paying for it that quickly changes. I live in north part of the city of Spokane, so I would probably never ride it. I rode the Max in Porland once, and it was ok, but the noise from people crossing the tracks all night kept me from sleeping the first night I was there for a convention. I was so tired the next night I did not hear anything.
Charles
Hey Charles, on the bright side, it sounds like you got used to the Max pretty fast 🙂
BTW, did you know that the North Spokane Freeway Corridor includes the right-of-way for light rail. That means that as the freeway is built to the south, all of the land necessay to provide light rail to the northside is being purchased. That is the most expensive part of building a light rail system…
So, if we start now on the east/west connection, maybe we could have it built and paid for by the time the north/south link is ready to be built…
I knew about the light rail path in the north Spokane corridore, but will we live long enough to see that freeway completed?
Charles
I’m not sure, Charles. I like to think we will. There is a lot of momentum around transportation funding right now. It’s more than I have seen in years, so hopefully we are going to start acting like a region to pull off the big projects like the North Spokane Freeway and the light rail…
Interesting article in Car and Driver Magazine December 2008 issue page 28 on light rail. The article says “Most Light-Rail systems use as much or more energy per passenger mile as the average passenger car..” I want to note it says MOST, because they figure the energy usage from the way they power the system, and electricity is a poor use for fossil fuels, a lot is lost in transmitting the electricity to the place it is used. They do say that systems in the northwest use water power and so we can be much more energy efficient than the coal fired plants back east. I always thought that rail transport was much more eficient than busses due to steel wheels and rails causing very little friction losses, so this article seems to be against that. I will say that it is from a magazine for auto people and may be a little biased.
Charles
Very interesting Charles. I’ll see if I can dig it up today and post it. Thanks!