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C-Tran says they want a “dedicated lane” for their buses on a replacement I-5 bridge. Yet C-Tran’s Express bus service to Portland carries only 1,499 people on an average day (2016 numbers). Ridership peaked and has declined for several years.
The 1,499 people on C-Tran’s Express buses are a rounding error of the 310,000 vehicles crossing the Columbia River daily. People don’t want more mass transit. Recently, PEMCO’s survey indicated 94 percent of people prefer their cars.
The real bottleneck on I-5 is the two-mile, two-lane section of I-5 at the Rose Quarter. ODOT reports the second worst bottleneck in the region is I-5 Southbound beginning at Rosa Parks Way and continuing through the Rose Quarter.
WSDOT reports one freeway lane can carry 1,800 to 2,400 vehicles per hour, depending on vehicle speed. Over 24 hours, that’s potentially 43,200 to 57,600 vehicles daily.
C-Tran wants a “dedicated lane.” How many buses would C-Tran put on that “dedicated lane” each hour or each day?
C-Tran has seven Express bus lines into Portland, five of which use the I-5 corridor. (Those seven lines carry the 1,499 people each day). Most people commute from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., returning home from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
If C-Tran’s Express buses run every 10 minutes, that’s six buses each hour. (Present service is five per hour maximum.) There are five separate Express lines using I-5, meaning 30 Express buses would use a “dedicated lane” each hour. But only during the hours people are commuting to and from work.
Ignored in the discussion is this question: how many vehicles are not able to use the new lane?
If 30 C-Tran buses use a new “dedicated lane” each hour, then 1,770 to 2,370 vehicles are stuck in the other congested lanes. Creating a “dedicated lane” hurts 1,700 to 2,300 cars and trucks each hour that could have been driving in the new lane. That’s 20,400 to 27,600 vehicles over a 12-hour period (6 a.m. to 6 p.m.) when people are most likely to use the road. It doesn’t make sense to harm 20,000 vehicle drivers, simply to benefit 30 C-Tran buses each hour, or 360 (mostly empty) C-Tran buses over the same 12-hour period. It’s not an efficient use of a new freeway lane.
We see what happens with a “dedicated lane” on Portland’s I-5 HOV lane. In the evening, just before 3 p.m., traffic gets jammed up on I-5 north as vehicles are forced to merge into the two general purpose lanes. Vehicle speeds slow to just 13-15 mph — half the morning speed as southbound doesn’t have an HOV lane.
No private business would buy an asset that is used at just 1 or 2 percent of its capacity. The taxpayers of Clark County are not well served by spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a new freeway lane just for C-Tran.
