Link is back to normal. ($) Is it, Comment Section? Mike Lindblom says the next planned closure will be June 1-2, for electrical/signal work at CID station. New escalators for CID station should arrive in late 2024, followed by other stations over this decade. There will doubtless be other disruptions to renovate 34-year-old aging tunnel.
ST has a survey on how well it did during the disruption. Beware that the first several screens don’t have a “Back” button to change your answers.
Ballard Link will have a South Downtown Hub workshop February 28, 4-7pm, at Union Station. It looks like a joint effort by ST, Seattle, and King County to refine the CID/N and CID/S station areas.
The second edition of Human Transit goes on sale today. It’s an introduction to transit-network planning by Jarrett Walker. STB editors will be rushing to buy copies. The second edition has three new chapters, and new sections and edits in almost every other chapter. Jarrett grew up in Portland, and now helps transit agencies in several countries restructure their route networks.
More below the fold.
Microsoft on Cascadia high-speed rail. (Sponsored article in the Seattle Times.)
The legislature considers tax breaks for converting office buildings into housing ($). Some of the ideas would waive the affordable-unit quota.
Housing prices fell in Palm Springs ($) when the city capped the number of Airbnbs in a neighborhood.
Seattle police arrested two teenagers who stole cars and deliberately hit pedestrians ($) on Aurora in November. The pedestrians were in a driveway or bus lane.
The Urbanist has a meetup February 15, 5:30-7pm, at Stoup at 1158 Broadway (Union Street) on Capitol Hill. It’s a brewery but is all-ages. It will recur monthly on the third Thursday at the same time and location. STB hasn’t had a meetup since before Covid, so this is the next-best thing. STB will probably resume meetups at some point.
Subsidizing transit makes it more efficient according to a study. (Streetsblog)
There’s still time to stop a douchebag. (“Gave a Lift Home”) The ped/bike path signs are visible at 1:33 and 3:12. At least the drivers aren’t deliberately hitting non-activist pedestrians.
This is an open thread.
What’s going to happen if they need to single track Link through downtown after the full 2 line is running? Combined frequency every 26 minutes means each branch running every 52 minutes (yikes!). Having the 2 line end at Judkins Park with a shuttle bus transfer is also bad, and if there’s no turnaround track at Judkins Park, the 2 line itself would have to run at reduced frequency, even though not passing through the construction zone.
What Sound Transit does, it’s going to be ugly.
It’d probably still be 26/27 minutes.
They could run two sets of trains north (from SeaTac and east link) and then two sets back south.
The problem of course is if say the pathway is clear for the northbound SeaTac train and the east link train isn’t there yet. The SeaTac train could probably go ahead for now but if the east link train is too late it’ll have to wait for the next cycle as they’ll be some southbound train coming down soon. So it could easily slip to 35/40 minutes the main turnback points
> and if there’s no turnaround track at Judkins Park
There’s turn around pocket tracks just west of Judkins park. It can hold I think 2 trains actually.
There’s another turnaround track at cid as well, though I forget exactly how it works if it’s north or south of cid
There’s a center track at CID and a center track just south of Stadium.
Here’s an idea for single-tracking after Line 2 starts: use the center track at CID for Lynnwood trains, the east track for Bellevue and the west track for RV-SeaTac. Then build a narrow temporary platform between the tracks, line the trains up and simply transfer passengers between cars. The trains would run as a “pulse” at CID. People who want to board or deboard a Lynnwood train would simply walk through either a Bellevue or an RV train to get to or from the center track.
This gets around the problem of, say, having the only the Bellevue trains be stubs and having Line 1 be the “surviving” service of the two level changes. With the pulse everyone is equal and every transfer is only a few feet.
You would think that if the can spend $50B they would address the most obvious operational limitation, huh?
Not Sound Transit! They’re too busy trying to keep Dow happy by replacing a county building!
And ST won’t even commission a very small engineering feasibility study to define the problem and develop a solution!
I would look to putting in scissor tracks for emergency use only in University Street station
> The Urbanist has a meetup February 15, 5:30-7pm, at Stoup at 1158 Broadway (Union Street) on Capitol Hill
Sounds fun I might join.
> Ballard Link will have a South Downtown Hub workshop February 28, 4-7pm, at Union Station.
Glanced through it doesn’t look like any new proposals since last time.
I think it’s fun that Microsoft is excited by the brainstorming around high speed rail. Obviously the business case for options outside of our congested freeway spine is clear
But high speed rail would not be easy and not come cheap! Urban approaches are the most critics segments of such systems and north of Seattle these just exists no feasible route! Not even I-5 really. And we must be realistic about ridership too. There just isn’t enough people in the PNW to make a high cost project pencil out
Really as long as there are opportunity costs to how our state spends its money it would be far more effective for governments and businesses to put their support behind unsexy functional standard intercity rail. If WSDOT can make 2.5 hours travel time SEA – PDX or SEA – YVR happen, but more importantly consistent hourly service happen, that would be really transformative for how people along the I-5 corridor can get around! You could maybe find such a plan for about as much money as the interstate bridge widenin— I mean replacement! (A bit tongue in cheek there)
Microsoft is one of the partners in the state’s high-speed rail study. If the proponents are convinced about all the economic and environmental benefits of 30-minute travel time to Portland., maybe when they realize their shiny new toy is too expensive to build or find right-of-way for, maybe they can be convinced that 2.5 hour travel time to Portland would also have significant benefits, and it can be achieved by simply implementing WSDOT’s existing long-range plan for Cascades.
Word inflation also works in our favor. Amtrak’s conventional speed limit is 79 mph. Traditionally “medium-speed” is the next two levels, 90 mph and 110 mph, and “high-speed” is 125+ mph. Cascades’ long-range plan is to reach 90, then 110. That’s the sweet spot for cost/benefit. At 125 mph the track requirements get ever stricter and you get diminishing returns.
But this year I saw some marketing materials that called 90-110 mph “high-speed”, and 125+ mph “ultra-high speed”. That could allow us to convince people that 110 mph is high-speed, so we could just finish Cascades’ long-range plan and get it.
Also remember that European/Asian lines are quoted in kilometers per hour, so “200 km/h” is 125 mph.
> Word inflation also works in our favor
I think we need a catchy name/phrase for the “medium-speedâ€? variant 90 mph and 110 mph amtrak cascades similar to “build the spine”. Saying “improve amtrak cascades to medium speeds using existing rail according to the wsdot master build agreement” and not Cascadia HSR is just too wordy and hard to market to the public or officials to care.
The official document calls it “Long range plan for amtrak cascades” also kinda a lame name. https://www.solutionaryrail.org/ma
We can’t really call it Cascadia Regional as that implies too short distance.
Cascades Express? Pacific Breeze? lol
There you go, “Cascadia Spine”. “The Spine of Cascadia”. We just need to popularize the term for our speed before they think of it.
Cascades long-range plan 2006
The current effort to update it, and an Urbanist article. Oh, the Urbanist article mentions a webinar today, 5:30-6:30pm, and has a link to a survey closing February 24.
Word inflation also works in our favor.
I agree. I also think it is quite reasonable to call a train that is going 90-110 MPH “high speed” simply because it is going quite a bit faster than cars.
I think we need a catchy name/phrase for the “medium-speed� variant 90 mph and 110 mph amtrak cascades similar to “build the spine�.
How about: “Build High Speed Rail Now, Not Ultra-High Speed Later”. This is similar to “light rail” which has a particular meaning in terms of hardware, but is vague enough to appeal from a marketing standpoint. It implies something a bit cheaper — a step down from a big heavy rail system. For cities that aren’t even sure they want a rail system, this seems “right sized”. Of course cites went overboard with the idea, but that is neither here nor there (I’m just talking marketing).
In this case, high speed (instead of ultra-high speed) is definitely the way to go. I would say that the terminology is the only major flaw in this editorial. If instead of calling for “Upgrading Amtrak”, they called for “High Speed” (meaning the long range plan) I think it would sound better.
It’s pretty sad that I live in Portland (walking distance from the train) and have never taken Amtrak Cascades to visit friends in Seattle or Tacoma. It looks like there’s coach seats this weekend for only about twice the price of gas if I bring my bike and don’t travel at the most convenient time.
I’ve found special sales midweek in the off season or shoulder season, where the price is half that of weekend seating. I’ve typically paid $40 each way when I get a good deal. Now is a good time to travel because the college students are in term, the tourists won’t increase until April, and the high travel season won’t start until late June. Seattle hotels may have deals, and Pike Place Market is thick with shoppers. If you tell is when you’re here, a few of us may be able to meet you and we can take a bus/train walk somewhere. The easiest place to meet is the Nordstrom entrance to Westlake Station because that’s convenient for everybody and easy to find.
I lived in the International District for a year, easy walk to the trains, and no car at the time. Always ended up taking the Bolt Bus because the train schedule was very limited and it was always much more expensive (I generally don’t plan weekend trips weeks in advance). I had figured I could also take the Sounder to hang out in Tacoma some times, but nope, schedule doesn’t work for that either.
I agree, as much as I have loved high speed rail in Japan, Europe, etc. I don’t see a 250 mph bullet train in the Pacific Northwest penciling out. Costs would be so high, the benefits have to be huge, and I’m not sure the demand would really be there at the costs they’d have to charge.
That long term, incremental plan crafted years ago to get Seattle-Portland down to like 2.5 hours does seem both feasible and desirable.
To the north, Vancouver BC is actually 25 miles closer to Seattle than Portland is (as the seagull flies), but Amtrak Cascades takes an hour longer to get there… like around 4.5 vs 3.5 hours. Clearly, anything approximating high speed rail to the north would need a brand new corridor for at least major portions of the route. The real estate for all this track, even with a Lynnwood or Everett intercept, does not exist. It doesn’t exist on the BC side either. There isn’t a lot of geographic flexibility at 250 mph. You gotta go in a pretty straight line most of the time.
What does exist going north now is a slow track that works OK for freight, plus a continuous ribbon of highway you could run buses on from, like, Lynnwood to Vancouver, cheaply, with a Link intercept. There’s probably a good SkyTrain intercept on the other side, maybe YVR.
Much faster trips could be achieved soon with the new electric aviation technologies that are getting pretty far in development. My instinct is, something like a fleet of small electric airplanes might be a lot faster to build, cheaper to run, with lower carbon footprint, versus high speed rail to BC. Something like these: https://www.eviation.com
The Canadian government has not been interested in making the track improvements Washington state has already made, nor in having onboard immigration/customs like the US has for customs. That makes the slog between the border and Pacific Central Station take an hour, and then up to another hour for immigration/customs, and sometimes the train waits ten or twenty minutes at the Fraser River for a freight train. If Canada won’t improve these things, I don’t see how they’ll build high-speed rail.
The Vancouver situation is laughable. They basically want to spend billions (trillions?) on a high-speed rail line without dealing with the biggest problem: the borders crossing. Fix the slowest part first. The train shouldn’t have to stop when going across the border. The goods should all be checked before the train leaves the station. Airport security can check riders as they get into the country (like they do at airports).
I agree with Ross that the border issue is elephant in the room. Many of Europe’s wonderful rail connections are possible because of border crossing reforms made over the decades.
@John,
“ There just isn’t enough people in the PNW to make a high cost project pencil out�
LOL, that is pretty much what people said about Seattle when they argued against passing the original ST1 ballot proposition. “Seattle just isn’t big enough to support Light Rail�, “Seattle Isn’t dense enough to support Light Rail�,�It’s too expensive�, etc, etc.
Thank gawd people didn’t listen, because ST1 passed and now we have the 4th highest ridership LR system in the country and with the highest number of boardings per mile. It worked.
However, per HSR on the NW Corridor, I’d be happy if they just got the trip speed KSS to Portland Union Station down to a reliable 2.5 hours or less. That would be enough for me, at least for now.
“have the 4th highest ridership LR system in the country and with the highest number of boardings per mile”
That’s not saying anything. We have an unusual light rail, where the grade separation and costs are closer to heavy rail. So you’re comparing apples and oranges. If you compare both light and heavy rail on the same cost/ridership scale, Link comes up mediocre, and worse than similar heavy rails.
@Mike Orr,
Link is not a heavy rail system. It’s purely nonsensical to compare it to systems like the NYC subway.
Yes, Link does have a higher degree of grade separation with more elevated and tunneled stretches than a typical LR system. But given the success of the system, it would appear that these were wise design decisions on the part of ST.
ST was not around when the DSTT was designed. If Seattle were going to build a Metro, would’t that have required a complete redo of the DSTT for much longer platforms, or construction of a brand new tunnel?
But now that ST is going to build a brand new tunnel, can and should it be designed for a Metro?
We’re lucky the DSTT existed, because otherwise the tunnel would have been on ST’s budget, and that might have sunk passage. See the failures of Forward Thrust in the 1960s and the Bogue Subway in 1912.
> ST was not around when the DSTT was designed. If Seattle were going to build a Metro, would’t that have required a complete redo of the DSTT for much longer platforms, or construction of a brand new tunnel?
Metro generally just means completely grade separated. DSTT would probably be built the same (assuming they were willing to do cut and cover). Aka like muni or bart on market street in sf.
We don’t really need longer train cars, just run them more frequently and it’s good enough. One can easily run trains at 2~3 minute frequency worldwide — we’re currently at like 8~10 minute frequency there’s more than a 4x capacity increase possible.
> But now that ST is going to build a brand new tunnel, can and should it be designed for a Metro?
The brand new tunnel and alignment is basically built to “metro” standards with it being completely elevated and tunneled. That’s also why it costs so much and has blown it’s budget even after exhausting all of the contigency.
that is pretty much what people said about Seattle when they argued against passing the original ST1 ballot proposition. “Seattle just isn’t big enough to support Light Rail�, “Seattle Isn’t dense enough to support Light Rail�,�It’s too expensive�, etc, etc.
Bullshit. There was a very strong case for adding rail between the UW and downtown. Prior to U-Link it was the busiest corridor (by some measure) without rail. Every transit expert in the country supported rail between those areas, as well as a reasonable expansion on either side.
This is more like Tacoma Dome Link. Yeah, sure, it will be nice. Tacoma will benefit. Not a lot, but some. Will it be worth the money? Of course not. Not even close. It is actually quite common for transit advocates to say that the Cascade Corridor is simply too small and the terrain too challenging for bullet trains.
What appeals to people is the distance. It is well-suited for faster trains. But it is this distance that works in its favor for trains in the 90-110 MPH range. That just won’t work between L. A. and San Fransisco. Flying is still a lot faster, even with all of the issues trying to get to and from the airport. In contrast, if it takes 2:30 hours to get to Portland (something they could have achieved by now if they had simply implemented the plan) then flying is no longer a big time saver. Same with driving.
A travel time of 2:30 minutes gets you almost all of the riders for way less money. At that point, why would you spend more, just so that relatively few people can be coaxed out of their car or flight? That is just not good policy.
The bar for how many people you need in a region to justify high speed intercity rail vs. light rail is not the same. High speed intercity rail is much more expensive to build, and since people travel between cities much less often than they travel within them, ridership is much lower.
See the failures of Forward Thrust in the 1960s
The initial Forward Thrust plan got over 50% of the vote. It had to clear a higher hurdle than Sound Transit. Meanwhile, Sound Transit clearly couldn’t deliver what they promised, which helped them pass ST1. If they had been realistic, it is quite possible it would have failed.
But yes, building a brand new tunnel would have been silly. There is nothing wrong with the tunnel. It is the best part of Link, really. Link’s biggest problem is that the stops are too far apart. They could (and tried) to squeeze another stop in at Madison with the original bus tunnel, but even without that there is good stop spacing downtown. Sound Transit then abandoned the Convention Place Station and essentially replaced it with Capitol Hill Station. While definitely an upgrade, it is ironic that there are as many stations between Westlake and the UW as there was when the buses traveled on the freeway between there. The train goes along a corridor with a huge amount of density, and yet there is only the one station (Capitol Hill). To be clear — it is a great station. But adding a station at First Hill or 23rd & Madison (or both) would have been much better, and more in keeping with a traditional mass-transit system.
The choice of low-floor light rail is not ideal. This could have been fixed fairly easily, right from the beginning, but that would have meant kicking the buses out right away. This wouldn’t have been too bad if the trains initially went to the UW. But they didn’t. For political reasons they went south, instead of north. North would have got you a lot more riders (and replaced more buses) but they were worried about the construction issues. They also wanted to make it clear to the suburbs that the rail would go really far (even if it didn’t actually work for their trips into the city). Image is everything.
Of course they could change over now, but it would mean changing the platforms at every station. I think some cities have done this, but it sounds like a lot of work. I’m not sure what it would get you. You could get a bit more capacity on each train, but there are other ways to do that. Maybe not as much capacity as a high-floor train, but still plenty. Maybe the trains could go faster — I don’t know. In general top speed doesn’t matter, but we have huge gaps in our system. East Link over the water. The super-express between Tukwila and Rainier Valley. Different machinery might speed things up a bit.
As far as the stations themselves though, they are just fine. We don’t need longer trains. We really don’t have a capacity problem, nor will we have a capacity problem in the future. This is why the second tunnel is such a waste. Sound Transit has shown no interest in reducing crowding by allowing for roomier trains or better headways, yet they think we need a second downtown tunnel. The tunnel is also bizarre. It is remarkably close to the first one — adding basically nothing in terms of coverage. Yet the transfers will be really bad. It is essentially the opposite of what you want to do (add coverage and have good transfers).
“There was a very strong case for adding rail between the UW and downtown….“Seattle just isn’t big enough to support Light Railâ€?, “Seattle Isn’t dense enough to support Light Railâ€?, ”
There was both. The objective case was clear: UW-downtown was well within the threshold for a metro. Express buses were running every seven minutes and were melting down with overcrowding and delays. There was spillover to the local 43, 49, and 70. Congestion on I-5 and Eastlake was too thick to convert two lanes to transit-only; their land is too constrained to widen them, and building a 2-lane bus tunnel would have cost as much as the Link tunnel. European cities a lot smaller have rail.
At the same time there was widespread public skepticism. Many people had never experienced a metro before. Or they’d used them in Europe or in the northeast but somehow couldn’t imagine the same thing could work on the west coast in newer cities. They’d gotten a century of anti-rail, pro-car propaganda. So they couldn’t imagine people would really ride it, or that it would solve problems, or that people would sometime say, “How could we have lived without it?:”
When the initial segment opened, it took many of those people a year or two to gradually try it out, or to realize it would serve their trip pair, or to compare it to expensive parking downtown. They eventually came round. Some of them use it regularly, or occasionally whenever they go to central Seattle.
When Capitol Hill and the U-District opened, there was a huge pent-up demand that immediately used it, like in all urban walkable neighborhoods. People in Roosevelt realized it’s much faster than buses. People in Northgate realized it’s much faster if you’re going to the Roosevelt, the U-District, or Capitol Hill.
Brent, actually, a six-car subway train is about as long as a four-car Link train, because articulated LRV’s, like articulated buses, are longer than their rigid equivalents. The stations really are long enough for fairly high capacity use, the platforms are just not wide enough for efficient passenger distribution.
No, they’re not as long as BART platforms, but the Bay Area is more than twice as populous as Central Puget Sound, with even worse geologic barriers.
So far as the “new tunnel” it should not be built, at least, not as ST is envisaging it, deep and largely station-free.
Tom,
It also seems like BART trades long trains and long lines for shorter branch headways, I believe 15 minutes throughout the day. At almost twice the frequency of that, the case that link needs to be longer is even less so, however I think it also makes the case stronger that link would be better suited for prioritizing frequent bus intercepts at the termini instead of long extensions
As you said link is already very long! The trains, being low floor for starters, just aren’t very efficient high capacity! If station platform heights and system minimum curve radii allowed it you could possible accommodate up to 6 overhead electrification alstom metropolis cars per train at current station lengths. That’s a lot for us!
Technically a few DSTT stations are longer and will forever have unused extra platform space. I wonder why stations like westlake were so overbuilt in size? Was this maybe thought to be for bus overtakes of some sort?
I honestly wouldn’t mind rather than expanding to every crevice of the metro post ST2 we continued to focus on using the HOV on-ramps at federal way and Lynwood to make hopefully useful express bus intercepts and then put most of our attention toward the existing system. Like I wish ST wouldn’t have disregarded their candidate project to upgrade signaling and frequency in the existing DSTT. And if you grade separated or maybe more realistically added quad gates to the rainier valley you could possibly fix some of the branch frequency limitations (but isn’t max frequency achievable here at least every 6 minutes per direction?)
Also as far as using any currently unused DSTT space, center platforms at Chinatown or Pioneer square would be quite nice to make east link – south Seattle transfers easy but this would necessitate center platform to surface level egress options so people don’t walk on tracks which may make such a plan not pencil out well
I think it would be ideal were link not low floor. Considering the miles of tunnel and number of stations ST3 plans for, even if only Ballard link was built and the rest of the package was service improvements of different mode types, I think it could be argued that Ballard link simultaneously having higher headways but also high floor trains would be a primarily good thing for such an expensive and hopefully well used project. I do wish option D was on the table however
John, I have been criticizing the choice of technology “since forever”. Loq-floor articulated LRV’s have a “hunting” problem with the single-axle idler under the articulation that limits their top speed. They are simply inadequate for long segments with multi-mile station separations like are cooked in for the Link extensions.
But nobody listens to us. Instead they drink the Seattle Subway Kool-Ade or reject rail all together.
ST3 should be repealed with Pierce made whole on their contributions toward Link thus far, with reasonable interest.
@John,
Most agencies starting from scratch nowadays typically go with low-floor for a variety of reasons, but ST really didn’t have a choice anyhow. The selection of low-floor was effectively dictated by Metro.
Since the plan was to retrofit the existing tunnel with its pre-existing low platforms, and since the original plan was for joint bus/train use, there really wasn’t much of a choice except low floor. ST ended up lowering the roadway a couple of inches when the functional rails were installed, but it was pretty minor. And high-floor would never have worked with Metro buses anyhow,
And today’s low floor LRV’s really aren’t that bad in terms of capacity when compared to the equivalent high floor vehicle, particularly for ST’s LRV’s.
The center truck is unpowered so not a lot of space is wasted, and it is placed under the articulation which already has space utilization issues. So not much of an impact.
The high floor sections are over the powered trucks. But really the only wasted space is the steps, which represent a pretty minuscule portion of the total floor area.
So ST undoubtably made the right choice, and there just isn’t any justification at this point in the game to change technologies. Low-floor is working just great, and there really isn’t much of a penalty to using it.
Plus people really love it, and it is particularly good with ADA compliance.
Most agencies starting from scratch nowadays typically go with low-floor for a variety of reasons, but ST really didn’t have a choice anyhow. The selection of low-floor was effectively dictated by Metro.
That isn’t true. The problem was how we built it. We should have started with the piece of our system that is now carrying the most riders: Northgate to downtown. At that point the system resembles what it does today (the buses don’t run in the tunnel). The buses from the north are all truncated, while the 255 is sent to the UW. Other buses run on the surface. Again, that is what is happening now, and has happened since Northgate Link*. At that point, since you are converting the tunnel from bus service to trains, you would change the nature of the platforms so that you could use high floor trains. Even the stations in Rainier Valley would be high floor. Since there are so few surface stations, it makes sense to just adjust the stations.
This is what most transit agencies would have done. They also would have added a bunch more stations. Anyone who looked at the data would have concluded that the section from the UW to Northgate would get you the most riders (while also reaching a “tipping point” where kicking out the buses is not that painful).
The reason we didn’t was a mix of politics and ignorance. A lot of people did imagine a lot of surface rail (similar to what Portland has) although the designs from the very beginning suggested very little surface running. There was more to it than that. They wanted the trains to go far into the suburbs. This was seen as essential, whereas building the traditional way (from the inside out) was not. If they had built something like Northgate Link — entirely in Seattle — those from outside may have complained that we weren’t going to accommodate them. Thus we shortchanged the city in our zeal to prove to the suburbs that we were going to serve them. The problem is, the suburban riders will be hurt by this decision almost as much as the urban ones. Travel along the freeways is actually very fast. It is the travel within the city that isn’t. Someone trying to get from Edmonds to First Hill will benefit far more from a station in First Hill than they will the extension to Snohomish County.
It is worse than that, really. Transit is not a zero-sum game. It is not like community centers. If the county only has enough money for 5 community centers, then it definitely makes sense to fight for one in your city. Transit doesn’t work that way. Transit has economies of scale. Service is influenced heavily by ridership. The more people ride the train, the more often it will come. Short, very busy sections have very good fare-recovery, and as a result, very high frequency. Folks laud SkyTrain for its very high frequency (as well they should). There is no question that automation plays a big part. But so too does the fact that it has very high ridership per mile. Toronto, for example, runs their (manually operated) trains every 3 or 4 minutes all day long. They get enough riders to justify it.
The better the urban system, the better the suburban system. If you shortchange the urban system in your zeal to extend outward (and we have) you make things worse for everyone. It is harder to get where you want to go. Trains run less often. Repairs are generally more costly, forcing you to cut corners where you can (e. g. long outages instead of doing the work at night). No one on the Sound Transit board was never able (or interested) in explaining this concept to the public. The decision to go with low-floor light rail vehicles is just tiny example of how the leaders behind Sound Transit either didn’t know what they were doing, or weren’t interested in making sensible decisions.
* The plan was to kick them out with Northgate Link, but they were actually kicked out a bit early because of work done at the Convention Center.
Most agencies starting from scratch nowadays typically go with low-floor for a variety of reasons
I think you are talking about a different thing. The advantage of low-floor is that it makes building stops on the surface easier. Streetcars are typically low floor (and that includes ours). You can build it as high floor, but then every stop (or station) costs a lot more. You have to build high platforms with ramps (or expect people to step up to the train, which is a real pain and not ADA compliant anyway). So for lots of stops on the surface, low-floor is the way to go.
But that is the only advantage. High floor is faster and roomier. With low floor you have a rise over the bogeys which means it is actually worse for folks on wheelchairs (they are limited in where they can go). With high-floor it is completely flat. It really depends on what you are building. A system like MAX has dozens of surface platforms, making it appropriate for a low-floor tram design. In contrast, we have only a handful of surface stops. It isn’t a huge issue in my opinion, but it is clear that we are using the wrong type of trains. It is just that at this point, it would cost a bundle to switch over. Every station would have to be changed. Japan has done it, but then Japan has spent oodles of money improving various aspects of their system. We are in a different league.
To enhance Ross’ comment about high floor, I believe all these new automated systems in Honolulu, Montreal and Toronto (Ontario Line) are all high floor.
Low floor was very trendy after ADA when street running and less costly light rail was the rage. With newer projects not being built this way, the loss in top speed and capacity (bogeys reducing available floor space) outweighs the low floor platform design benefit.
With high floor it seems like you should be able to either raise the platforms or lower the track. I don’t want stairs, and I don’t like the bi-level platforms on MUNI Market Street where the regular platform is low but then in one corner there’s a small high platform with stairs up to it, apparently for two different train levels.
At Westlake Station I wouldn’t want to go down the escalator and then in front of me have a couple steps up to a raised platform. Ideally we’d raise the entire platform; that would require shorter escalators. Or lower the trackway.
Similarly in surface segments, I don’t see why a new trackway couldn’t be built a little lowered so the platforms could be right on the surface. I guess that would screw up intersections though.
After traveling little to none during the pandemic, I now find myself making frequent trips back to Chicago. I had a 6 AM flight out on a Sunday during the construction (one of the best times to fly BTW) so I… asked my partner for a ride, which I hadn’t done once since the opening of University Link, and rarely before that. I used to get to Sea-Tac in about an hour from Montlake using the Freeway Flyer stop, a route like the 255 in the bus tunnel, and a same-platform transfer to the 194.
I’m in Chicago now, where the Blue Line runs to O’Hare 24/7/365. The posted schedule simply says, “Service at all times, every day”. It’s actually every 6 minutes much of the time, never more than 15 as far as I can tell. This is close to what Link could be if it were maxed out. The 24 service is great from a rider perspective, probably a PITA from the operations perspective.
When I was a kid in Chicago (and the youth fare was 25 cents!) the Blue Line ended at Jefferson Park, a seemingly random northwest residential neighborhood in the direction of the airport. I was elated when the O’Hare airport extension opened in 1984. Link opened to Sea-Tac in December 2009, now almost 15 years ago, also a cause for celebration. Both seem pretty well used. There are a few folks on the Blue Line who have found it a nice warm place to spend the night but with 10 cars at that hour there’s enough space for everyone.
I remember being in Chicago in 1990. I was out to 1:30 am on a Friday night! I went back to the Red Line to go north once I left a club.
The station gates were open and there was no attendant. The sign posted said that the El was free! I guess CTA determined it was cheaper to not collect fares than employ station agents.
SDOT posted they are going to start safety projects on 15th Ave and seismic retrofits to Ballard bridge
> We’re gearing up to start construction as early as this spring on the 15th Ave W/NW & Ballard Bridge Paving & Safety Project and Leary Way Bridge Seismic Retrofit Project.
There’s going to be lane closures and temporary bus stops. Most notably the Ballard bridge will start being closed on weekends (idk how often)
Besides seismic retrofitting the bridge:
* fixing sidewalks
* new crosswalk and bike signal at 51st
* repainting existing north bound bat lane
* new south bound bat lane
https://sdotblog.seattle.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/02/Image-03-scaled.jpg (Map of changes)
https://sdotblog.seattle.gov/2024/02/06/construction-ahead-15th-ballard-leary/ (blog post)
I ride Link from Mt. Baker > University St. (we really need to rename that stop) Tuesday through Thursday, and it seems quite normal today. Maybe a bit lighter, passenger-wise, and the northbound and soundbound train arrivals were weirdly synced, but otherwise lovely.
Re: University Street station
That’s actually my favorite downtown stop, with its nice curvy accessible ramp opening up to 2nd Avenue, perfect for bike access, close to Pike Place Market, but I cringe every time I hear the name “University Street”. “Seneca Street” would be so much better and less… university-y.
As much as I love classical music and the mellifluous sound of the name “Symphony Station”, Seneca Station also sounds nice and I would just go with that.
Now didn’t we have this convo before? Why did this get dropped, did ST just chicken out? Isn’t Seattle pretty much the most educated city in the US? I think folks could adjust to a minor change. And come on, it’s just absurd to have three stops named University on the same portion of the same line with only two that aren’t between them. When are we going to do this? Never? Or How about when Lynnwood Link opens this year and we have to reprint everything anyway?
As a region, we showed the guts to adapt the plans to open the Eastside as a starter line…. so I think we can summon the guts to rename a station in Seattle.
ST has already done public input to rename University Street Station. The choices were Seneca Street Station, Seneca Station, Symphony Station, etc. ST settled on Seneca Street Station. The signage will probably change with Line 2, when Link will switch to a new signage/wayfinding scheme systemwide. Some of that has been gradually introduced since 2020, like the exit numbers, the station-area signs, and the increased “fare paid zone” signs. A station-numbering scheme is coming, and line/destination signs.
That is not correct. They are renaming it Symphony Station.
https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/ActiveDocuments/Motion%20M2021-61.pdf
What? They chose my favorite name after saying they’d call it Seneca Street Station? That’s a complete surprise, and the opposite of everything I heard at the time. Still, it will be nice to have a soothing artsy name to look at when people are stressed.
Sound Transit’s latest agency progress report lists the “Forecast In-Service Date� for ELSL as 23-Mar-24. This is only about 6 weeks away and will represent a significant transit milestone locally.
However I have not heard an official notification of this. Has anyone heard an update?
We linked to the report in Open Thread 33. I haven’t seen a public announcement of the date. The report also has other Link opening dates in 2024-2026. It’s surprising an announcement hasn’t come yet, but the starter line is unusual and has low expectations, and ST may be giving itself wiggle room to change the date if necessary.
@Mike Orr,
Yes, but the progress report also lists July 17th as the start of revenue service for LLE, yet Timm was very fond of saying “fall�. And it appears the real date is closer to “end of summer�. I have no explanation for the difference.
So I’m not sure you can put much credence in any of the dates gleaned from that report. But ELSL is supposedly only 6 weeks or so away, so I’d expect to hear something a bit more formal coming out soon.
And I wouldn’t underestimate the significance of ELSL opening. It will be the biggest improvement in Eastside transit so far this century, and it will remain so until the full ELE opens.
And ELSL is supposedly Balducci’s ticket to the KC Executive’s chair. So here is more to watch than just “transportation�.
We don’t know which documents may not have caught up with other documents. But March 23 is apparently ST’s own target. What we don’t know is how definite it is. But we haven’t seen another date, so this must be the most likely. We know that the agencies generally prefer service changes in March and September/October.
@Mike Orr,
“ We know that the agencies generally prefer service changes in March and September/October.�
Yep, but that doesn’t really pertain to the opening of LLE.
The reason most agencies have traditionally grouped their restructures together is because most restructures are just that – restructures. Major additions of service are rarely included. So these restructures are normally just a rearrangement of the puzzle pieces that are already on the table, and that requires some degree of coordination within an agency and across agencies.
However, the LLE opening does not represent a simple rearrangement of existing service. It is a wholly new service that does not require rearranging existing bus service to be fully operational.
Yes, launching LLE without an accompanying bus restructure would result in somewhat reduced ridership, but this is actually an advantage.
Operating LLE at somewhat reduced ridership for the first 1 to 2 months would allow ST to work out the dispersed storage problem without simultaneously having to solve the capacity problem. This is a major advantage because it allows ST to focus on one operational challenge at a time.
The downside is that the commuter buses will bleed ridership for the same period. This will degrade their economics somewhat, but their economics are already bad.
Additionally, in some cases it might be possible to do frequency reductions or truncations/deletions of certain routes before implementation of the full bus restructures in Sept/Oct.
So there are lots of options. But having LLE sit ready, but fallow, for 2 months seems like a bad one.
Laz, you DO know that “ELE” is a planet-destroying occurrence right? Let’s all hope that Line 2 doesn’t do anything worse than shake the bridge pontoons to pieces.
“Mr. President, who is ‘Ellie’?”
Ryan Packer on Monday:
https://x.com/typewriteralley/status/1754695076301951294?s=20
@Nathan,
Ya, but how “close� is “this close�?
Theoretically it should be soon, but we will see.
And it ELSL has nothing to do with Orange Swift, so I think we can assume that those two aren’t functionally tied together.
No insight into opening dates, but I do see test trains regularly and the signs and announcements are operating at South Bellevue. There are definite signs that service is getting close.
@AndyL,
Thanks for the firsthand report. It is much appreciated.
Hopefully we have a real target date soon.
I was on a bike ride in the area, and I saw trains running at “simulated service frequency.” An opening of the Eastlink Starter line next month does not seem far fetched.
Per Mike Lindblom in the Seattle Times today:
“An official 40-day period of this testing began Jan. 22.
An opening date for this segment, the East Link Starter Line, should be announced within two weeks, Moises Gutierrez, chief system quality officer, said Thursday in an update to transit board members.
Besides making practice runs, the agency needs to replace tiles that came loose at the South Bellevue and Spring District stations during the tail end of construction.”
For somebody still trying to learn more about transit best practices, say only in college and with not too much life experience yet, would you say the human transit book is a pretty good jumping off point?
I like reading jarretts blogs. He very fundamentally seems to believe in the power of transit services and approaches transit topics in a way that I find very upfront. I mean he sees and contributes to those changes in front of his very eyes as a career. A lot of his blog has convinced me over the years of just how impactful good bus service can be. I wonder
Becoming more interested in transit can sometimes feel transformative in how it changed my view of how I look at cities and development but also can feel frustrating to me where I sort of wish I was a bit more blissful about how much I pay attention to or focus on things.
For example I was too young to vote on ST3 but probably would have been excited about the prospect of light rail going to my hometown, Everett. As I have learned more about what makes successful rapid transit systems though and just outcomes based policy in general I’ve become far less enthusiastic about it (and many other ST3 projects it feels like) and have become convinced that the project is just bad value compared to making more affordable and affective bus improvements coupled with better land use. I think back then my very young self would have accused me of trying to “screw over� Everett when really I just want the best bang for buck service outcome which I don’t think the project is example of
In a way this feels relieving because I no longer necessarily feel like our region just never has enough money per say, yet I simultaneously get saddened about where we are spending our money instead of broad bus improvements where rail doesn’t quite make sense, and building rail where there is lots of demand and large amounts of people can be served
> I like reading jarretts blogs. He very fundamentally seems to believe in the power of transit services and approaches transit topics in a way that I find very upfront. I mean he sees and contributes to those changes in front of his very eyes as a career. A lot of his blog has convinced me over the years of just how impactful good bus service can be.
I like his book. He did used to post a lot more on his blog too as well, though understandably is more busy now. He’s quite transformed a lot of usa bus networks from having a plethora of coverage bus routes of 60 minutes frequency to culling them into something more useful even for small/medium sized cities.
I also have the trains busses and people book https://www.trainsbusespeople.org/ by Christof Spieler which goes over most US transit agencies. Most notably is his maps showing transit lines overlayed with a density map. Also talks about pros and cons of freeway transit
The main thing I’ve learned over the years is that transit is really about land — as in transit lanes, bat lanes, tsp, elevated alignments and then in land use itself. The vehicle really doesn’t matter as much even though it’s what people like to focus on (those articulated bus vs streetcar debates etc…)
> we are spending our money instead of broad bus improvements
It does have to be more than just frequency, it has to be say bat lanes and direct access ramps. But in general the farther out from the core the less advantage light rail has. Anyways I guess part of it was that the ‘suburban dream’ was that they’d drive to the park and ride and take the link but doesn’t really quite work. Or I mean even if it did work, are we going to build a 10k vehicle parking garage.
“would you say the human transit book is a pretty good jumping off point?”
It’s the best book I’ve seen by far, and the only one that’s so thorough about network design theory. Some transit agencies and cities have their staff and policymakers read it. I may get a few extra copies for friends and family who aren’t on STB so they don’t know as much about what makes an effective network.
“Trains, Buses, People” would be my second choice. It has transit-mobility maps of several North American cities. That’s like what Jarrett calls “freedom to access places”, or the range of destinations you can reach within N minutes on transit from any location. I read the first edition and only vaguely remember it. I think it was very positive on Seattle’s emerging ST2 network and Seattle’s bus investments, but ST3 hadn’t been settled yet so it wasn’t included. Of course, since then Move Seattle has delivered less than expected, Seattle’s TBD was reduced, and there’s a driver shortage.
If you’re interested in urbanism books, my favorite is “Makeshift Metropolis” by Witold Rybczynski. It explains the differences between Garden City, City Beautiful, Radiant City, and Broadacre City. And “The Option of Urbanism” by Christopher Leinberger, and “City: Urbanism and Its End” by Douglas W Rae. And Jeff Speck’s books on walkability and Donald Shoup’s on parking lots.
Jane Jacobs wrote the famous “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, and she also has an overlooked book “The Economy of Cities” that I found informative. She has a persuasive theory that agriculture started in cities, because most innovations do, because that’s where people meet others by chance and hear about ideas they didn’t expect.
Jarrett is really smart. He has a graduate degree in literature and honing that training helps make him a very good writer too. He knows how to explain things very well! He also developed his wisdom by being a service planner as his primary transit work experience — so unlike many utopian urban theorists he sees transit more practically.
The beauty of his popularity is that he can state systemic problems that have plagued an operation by decades of having made only incremental changes — pushing back against local political pressures that some leaders apply or inertia that sets in because “that’s how things are done� in a city. Plus, he isn’t pressured by some large engineering firm to “bring work� in by proposing outrageously expensive public works projects. Jarrett can identify cost-effective recommendations rather than invent utopian recommendations that are financially impractical; he understands tradeoffs and budget constraints.
The bigger tragedy is actually that we need more respected field experts (“more Jarrett’s�) to push back against unwise transit decisions. For example, there is a knee-jerk reaction among idealistic transit advocates to support anything related to transit, and someone like Jarrett can politely point out when it’s not a good idea and be respected for his view. We also need more Jarrett’s to persuade skeptical leaders and citizens why transit is beneficial when it’s done cost-effectively.
So I hope you pay attention at how well Jarrett can explain things just as much as the wisdom that he has, and how much his advice comes from practicing service planning for decades rather than be merely theoretical.
I wasn’t in the area to vote on ST3, but I probably would’ve voted yes without thinking about it too much.
I’m rather sanguine about the ST3 to be honest. I think it’s bad value in that we should be getting more out of our tax dollars. In my ideal world we’d have some kind of progressive income tax and we’d be spending it on more cost-efficient transit/pedestrian/bike infrastructure. Instead we have Sound Transit absolutely swimming in cash and spending it on expensive and questionably planned light rail extensions. But I think we’re lucky in that we are fighting for better execution rather than better funding, and I think the alternative would’ve been more sprawl rather than better transit planning. My biggest worry is that some of the light rail extensions (West Seattle or Tacoma for instance) seem like they could lead to downgrades from the status quo.
In King County we’ve seen rather dramatic density growth around light rail stations, likely much more than would have happened without them. I suspect that when we look at population change between the 2020/2030 census we’ll see massive population/job growth around the existing light rail stations.
Looking at Everett it seems the planned light rail extension goes through the some of the denser areas and the largest employment center (Boeing) in the region. It’s not ideal, but Everett is growing fairly quickly and hopefully given some upzoning (which likely would not happen without light rail) and a decade or two of infill development it will look okay. Is that overly optimistic? Maybe it is, I don’t know. Is the extension good value relative to other possibilities? Probably not, but I think the alternative would’ve been nothing at all.
> My biggest worry is that some of the light rail extensions (West Seattle or Tacoma for instance) seem like they could lead to downgrades from the status quo.
I wish we had went forward with the cheaper options — the at-grade light rail concept, before ST3 went crazy with money. Notably they actually went farther up to crown hill and south to white center. I don’t think we can actually afford these deep bore tunneled route+ deep mined stations, and in the base case scenario it is just forcing more bus transfers. Anyways we’ve talked a lot about ballard-west seattle alternatives on the other threads and others support the ballard stub idea which has it’s own pros and cons.
> Looking at Everett it seems the planned light rail extension goes through the some of the denser areas and the largest employment center
Everett is a bit odd. I’m still kind of laughing at how we avoided the sr 99 alignment in shoreline/lynnwood to save money routing on i 5; and then for ST3 we have a ludicrious 7 mile elevated detour to paine field. I don’t think many people really understand how large of a detour it is since it looks small on the zoomed out map, but it’s like the entire rainier valley line segment.
Anyways, thankfully everett does have density on the corridor, it is being routed there for all the wrong reasons of going to an airport that isn’t really serving that many passengers, but I guess it’s not the worst?
> Probably not, but I think the alternative would’ve been nothing at all.
The other alternative was to go straight up i-5. The best alternative for density/ridership is probably to go elevated on evergreen way, but idk how politically possible that is.
As far as I know it’s being routed to Paine Field for Boeing. It’s named “SW Everett Industrial Center” and the prospective stations seem to align with with the job center rather than the airport itself. I think skipping Boeing would be a mistake, but yeah a 99 alignment would probably make more sense. No idea on the cost/political implications of that though.
In the early 2010s, Siemens or another German company was looking at opening a factory in the Everett industrial center. Boeing has been there for decades, but Everett/Snohomish are trying to generate major job growth by giving it a new “industrial growth center” identity. The company executives came to visit and asked Snohomish officials, “What is the high-capacity transit plan for the industrial center?” The officials said, “None. It has lots of free parking and highway access.” The company was aghast because that wouldn’t be allowed in Germany: every new industrial center must have a high-capacity transit plan for its tens of thousands of workers. The plan can be an existing S-Bahn station, a new S-Bahn or metro extension, a high-quality BRT line, or something. The company turned around and rejected the site.
That’s what led Everett/Snohomish officials and the state to create the Swift Green Line to Seaway Transit Center, and to add the Paine Field detour to Everett Link. They’re convinced it’s necessary to attract employers and jobs.
It’s important to look at transit history for both failures and successes.
One obvious urban transit failure case study is the Cincinnati subway. It’s a poster child of how corruption can turn a good project into a failed one.
Another is fate of the LA streetcar system. It’s galling how the investment disappeared.
Then of course there are the many lessons of the problems in the SF Muni Metro Subway operations , summarized here:
https://www.streetcar.org/forty-frustrating-years-underground/
We just witnessed the outcome of a Link design failure this past month with the inane 26 minute service frequency because ST did not design for scissor tracks in the DSTT. It’s too bad that ST is too proud to admit it’s a design failure and won’t study developing a modest project to fix it.
@John,
“ would you say the human transit book is a pretty good jumping off point?�
It’s a good starting point. But keep in mind that the audience for his public facing work is the layperson who might not have a technical background. As such, what he writes is very general and should be taken as such. Things get a lot more complicated, and less obvious, on the detail and implementation level.
Also, a lot of what he writes is most applicable to medium cities with lower density, sprawl in all directions, and an often atrophied public transit system. Seattle, with its unique and challenging geography, higher density, and more developed transit system is a bit of a different beast.
But he writes well. And that is a plus these days.
Also, a lot of what he writes is most applicable to medium cities with lower density, sprawl in all directions, and an often atrophied public transit system. Seattle, with its unique and challenging geography, higher density, and more developed transit system is a bit of a different beast.
Greater Seattle definitely has sprawl in every direction. It is definitely low density. We are a typical American city in that respect. You can see that in the World Density Map by hovering over Seattle and a similar city in Europe or Asia (http://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen/#10/47.4963/-121.6901). Maybe you are confusing us with Boston?
If you are referring to Seattle proper, then sure, we have some density. In fact, we have pretty much all the density found in the state. There are a handful of pockets on the East Side and even smaller density elsewhere, but Seattle is pretty much it.
Does that change anything? Not really. Consider the greater Central Area. By that I mean the area east of downtown (between the freeways for sake of argument). This is the largest contiguous area of density in the state (especially as you include downtown). There are skyscrapers and high-density low-rise as well. It stretches pretty much all the way to 23rd, and even oozes out a bit here and there. Does our subway system cover it? No. There is a single station (in Capitol Hill) and the stations downtown, but that is it. Thus it is up to the buses to cover it. The best way to cover it is found in the pages of Jarrett Walker’s book: With a high-frequency grid. This isn’t a low density suburb, miles away from the city. This is the heart of the city; an anywhere-to-anywhere area. A high-frequency grid would give you a ton of ridership. You still need need to deal with covering those low-density suburban areas (that won’t respond the same way to that treatment) and thus still grapple with the ridership/coverage issue. That is in the book as well.
Then there are places like Northwest Hospital. It sits in the middle of a sea of low-density housing. Not only is it not “on the way” of a high density corridor, it isn’t “on the way” of any corridor. Seems like a pretty good example to me.
I really can’t find any case where he mentions something and I think “Oh, that doesn’t apply to us”. We aren’t that special.
For somebody still trying to learn more about transit best practices, say only in college and with not too much life experience yet, would you say the human transit book is a pretty good jumping off point?
Yes, absolutely. He covers technical issues quite well, without oversimplifying things. He references technical studies, so if you are in college (and have access to a good library) you can look at the studies as well. It is a great overview of transit in general, while focusing a lot of routing.
As mentioned, what he doesn’t cover is major mass transit systems. There are plenty of ideas that overlap, but plenty that don’t. One of the big issues with mass transit systems is their cost. American tend to spend way more than other countries, and get way less out of their mass transit systems. But cost isn’t the only issue. Mass transit offers big capacity advantages of rail and often offers big speed advantages (between stops). It is a different beast in that respect.
Unfortunately, America does things that most countries don’t (and then gets less out of their systems). So far as I know, no one has wrapped this up into a book. I’ve read Trains, Buses, People. I wasn’t that impressed. It is an opinionated guide, and while it covers a lot of the issues, you have to really dig into it to find themes. Walker recommended this book, and I’ll probably get it at some point: https://humantransit.org/2023/12/a-great-new-book-on-north-americas-lost-rail-transit-systems.html. I would like a book that basically covers what works and what doesn’t as far as mass transit. We are basically left with various blog posts and studies. Here are some of the ones I’ve bookmarked:
https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/economics-of-urban-light-rail-CH.pdf — This focuses on light rail but it would apply just as well to heavy rail. For example, BART makes all the mistakes. Speaking of which.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120306030956/www.ctchouston.org/intermodality/2006/05/06/tale-of-two-subways/. The original URL no longer exists, but at least most of it is archived. In any event this compares the two major mass transit systems built in the post-war period: BART and DC Metro.
https://seattletransitblog.com/2013/02/14/news-roundup-geeks/#comment-292594 — A comment on this blog by a professional writer who is a transit nerd. It compares Link with DC Metro. Definitely worth parsing over in great detail.
I would love to see a book comparing the major transit systems in North America built after the war. Various themes evolve, in both a positive and negative way. One very important consideration is that the the U. S. has a lot of people living in low-density areas. These are areas that are very difficult to serve with transit. Dealing with that is a challenge, and some have risen to it, while other have failed miserably. As I see it, there are several models:
DC Metro — While billed as a commuter-rail/metro hybrid it is by far the most conventional of the U. S. mass transit systems built after the war. There is almost complete coverage in the city. It stretches out to the suburbs, but not at the expense of covering the urban core.
Vancouver — Bus integration is the key to its success. It creates what Walker called “an almost perfect grid”. It is striking how even the most low-density parts of the city at least have access to a bus that allows them to get damn near anywhere with one transfer. In the suburbs you might make another transfer, but it is still quite fast overall.
Toronto — Sometimes small is beautiful. You can argue that the system is just too short, but quality is more important than quantity. Trains cover the urban core at great frequency all day. Buses (and slow trams) connect to the trains. It could be better (and will be, fairly soon) but just about everyone agrees that what they built is high quality, and what needed to be built first.
BART — The model that way too many agencies mimicked (including Sound Transit). It held promise, and was really an interesting social experiment. Would commuters from distant suburbs ride very fast trains into the city, even if service within the city remained extremely slow? No, not really. A few, but not nearly as many as those within the city who endure the slowest transit system in America. It is easy to imagine the alternative: Several lines covering San Fransisco, Oakland and Berkeley. Dozens of stations instead of the handful. Express buses from the suburbs connecting to freeway stations, giving the suburban riders “the keys to the city” (as d. p. put it).
For greater Seattle (like Dallas and Denver) we made the wrong choice. If we built a Toronto type system it would probably have the same (or more) riders spread out over a smaller area. This is much cheaper to maintain and operate (which means much better ridership). A DC Metro would be fantastic. It seems unrealistic until you realize we are spending that kind of money for Link. The Vancouver model would have been ideal and quite successful. Blame it on American arrogance that we ignored the tremendous success and obvious advantages of the system run by our closest neighbors and instead tried to mimic BART.
What impresses me about the DC Metro is the trains are busy at 10:30pm like it’s midday. PATH is like that too. The New York subway and Chicago el are actually less full than that at that time.
Mike, those 10:30 riders are Congressional staffers and the flunkeys in the lobbying practices staggering home after fifteen hours and pizza twice in one day.
John, getting the “best bank for the buck” often means that politically connected and coddled “stakeholders” get less than they expected when they gave those campaign contributions. Quiet “understandings” Trump “best practices” when it matters.
“best bang” [arrgh]
As I said a couple days ago, 1-Line ridership still appeared to be anemic Monday even during what would usually be its busiest time.
I will try to get to UW and U-District Stations in the next few weeks to observe their peak-of-peak patterns for alightings and boardings. But I would welcome hearing anyone else’s observations specific to those times, in the peak direction (northbound).
I don’t expect disproportional growth in any of those figures from Capitol Hill to Roosevelt when Lynnwood opens. I do expect much larger growth in downtown boardings, mostly headed to Lynnwood.
So far, I haven’t seen reason to worry for riders getting on board at Capitol Hill, but that was a tiny data set on a day that may have to be thrown out as an outlier due to riders not yet returning from the latest weeks-long slow-down.
You might want to take a look at this person’s YT channel. He has some recent videos of various Link stations during the late afternoon and early evening. I’m not sure why he says the videos were taken in the late evening. You can clearly see the clock saying 5+ PM, 7+ PM, etc. Some stations include Cap Hill, CID, etc. While the stations themselves don’t look very busy, the trains seems to be somewhat full.
https://www.youtube.com/@acela2150/videos
Your observations make sense to me Brent. ST data has also not shown much change in rider demand these last several months compared to the prior year’s month.
The sad thing is that none of the staff presentations on the topic seem to focus on “existing conditions�. I have yet to see a graph describing the current train loads on the peak train or the peak half-hour. I have yet to see a graph of where the new LLE riders will come from (Canceled parallel buses? Induced demand? Park and ride opportunities?). Your basic “research� should be being done by ST staff at the direction of management and the Board and presented at Board meetings.
It also bothers me that staff can only present one solution to the Board: run express buses — which duplicate the route yet won’t be enticing because they will serve origins that aren’t where the overcrowding will first occur.
I feel like there should instead be a “toolbox� of available realtime solutions instead. ST has extensive experience at handling loads from special events that can be applied here — from putting spare trains ir drivers on reserve if overcrowding happens to instructions on how to skip stations when a train gets too slow as people squeeze in and out to temporary information screens or announcements that warn riders before the descend to the platforms.
ST should quit presenting this as a “planning� issue and pivot to it being an operational one. That begins with existing conditions research like this!
“It also bothers me that staff can only present one solution to the Board: run express buses — which duplicate the route yet won’t be enticing because they will serve origins that aren’t where the overcrowding will first occur. ”
When you have a hammer everything looks like a nail.
And downtown-UW and Capitol Hill-Northgate may look like less ST’s responsibility because it’s less than five miles and within a single city. Whereas Lynnwood and Seattle are clearly different cities and counties and further apart, so clearly ST’s responsibility.
U District is my home station. A few observations:
On Wednesday just before 5pm there were ~75 people exiting with me. I usually leave work earlier but 50-75 is a normal number. Roughly 1/3 of the remaining NB passengers exit at U District.
AM commute: on Monday/Friday U District usually has 10-20 people waiting for my SB train early in the morning. Midweek is 20-30. Usually nobody waiting NB. If I see a NB train it usually drops off a group of construction workers for the high-rise projects near U District station.
UW station has a decent number of NB PM peak boardings, mostly UW Medicine employees coming off shift. I see a good deal of alighting passengers there in the morning, heading in for perhaps a 7am shift.
GARDEN CITY: Ebeneezer Howard’s 1898 vision of a compact neighborhood with middle housing and houses mixed with green space. At its best a streetcar suburb. At its worst an isolated cluster with not enough jobs and no transit so everybody drives from it, and some people think it’s too low density.
CITY BEAUTIFUL: 1890s-1900s movement emphasizing aesthetic downtown civic buildings. All the art deco train stations and civic centers came from that, including King Street Station. Private buildings were an extension of that, like the Smith Tower and the Bon Marche.
RADIANT CITY: Le Corbusier’s vision of highrises separated by open space connected by highways, with nothing in between. When it was adopted widely, “towers in the park” became “towers in the parking lot”.
BROADACRE CITY: Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision of a decentralized “un-city”. There’s a small downtown, but most of the population lives on one-acre farms and drives everywhere, and there may be a farmers’ market or supply store at the highway exit. Wikipedia calls it “the opposite of transit-oriented development”. When this was adopted widely, it became suburban sprawl, gas-station mini-marts at freeway exits, and big-box stores.
What do you think about it contrasted with the “15-minute city” idea. I guess notably there’s a much more varied idea about what the “15-minute city” entails. I’ve heard some differing definitions even from urbanists.
The “15 minute city� is a mere renaming of an old idea — walkable neighborhoods with mixed uses rather than a monolithic sea of just single-family detached homes.
It was pretty much how urban development evolved from the beginning of urban life anywhere in the ancient world until car culture took over a mere 80 years ago. Even then, the new towns concept promoted by the Federal government in the 1960’s echoed similar principles.
When I read how right-wing media implies that it’s some sort of new radical agenda it seems laughable and surreal at first — yet the repeated demonization of it is pretty disturbing. Consider how regional shopping malls are just “15 minute cities� except with parking spaces instead of residences, or how Walt Disney popularized a faux Main Street as “the happiest place in earth�.
To me, this new right-wing hysteria is a tragic attack on basic human history of community building universal in all human settlement across the world. It seems to be developed by those who hate and fear coming into contact with anyone outside of their immediate circle — and the resulting isolation is terrible for soneone’s mental well-being.
Good post Al S.
You’re right, most of “15 minute cities” in the USA were built mostly our of single family houses with apartments and small retail clustered on bigger streets. Seattle, in the pre-war years, was most a system of walkable neighborhoods that residents didn’t have to leave…. because without easy access to cars, walking was the main form of transportation.
Seattle’s walkable “15 minute cities” are still highly desirable places with houses costing well over a million dollars.
So what happened? Cars. Lots and lots of cars. Chain store retail. Supermarkets. Warehouse superstores like Best Buy or Walmart.
The problem in America is we’re not building any more traditional 15 minute neighborhoods. We don’t build reasonable sized single houses on small lots clustered around retail and apartments in walking distance. A big part of why has to do with US consumer habits. We like driving to Fred Meyers. We like 4000 square ft houses on 1200 square ft lots.
And let’s get one thing absolutely straight. Real “15 minute” neighborhoods lessen the need for mass transit. Why on earth ride a bus when you can walk? TOD (transit oriented development) is rarely a 15 minute neighborhood. It’s jamming hundreds of units of crappy housing on vacant land somewhere on a light rail line. That’s the opposite of a “15 minute” neighborhood because you’re living in wasteland (like the Tacoma Dome area or even downtown Tacoma). Big Transit has traditionally been the enemy of the “15 minute” neighborhood. Stupid transit projects (and freeway projects as well) have often wreaked good minority neighborhoods “for the greater good”. There are posters here who believe their damn subway has the right to destroy Chinatown/CID… the #1 “15 minute city” in Seattle by no small margin. Old Asian people just walk everywhere in the CID.
The solution is simply looking to the past for what works and getting back on track. Politically speaking, the Left just doesn’t get the allure of home ownership… it’s easy enough for Rightwingers to demonize 90% of all the Left’s “housing density solutions” because individuals get dealt off the bottom of the deck in most of these “15 minute city” schemes. Home ownership is the highest rung of the “building community” ladder.
> The problem in America is we’re not building any more traditional 15 minute neighborhoods. We don’t build reasonable sized single houses on small lots clustered around retail and apartments in walking distance.
> And let’s get one thing absolutely straight. Real “15 minute� neighborhoods lessen the need for mass transit. Why on earth ride a bus when you can walk? TOD (transit oriented development) is rarely a 15 minute neighborhood. It’s jamming hundreds of units of crappy housing on vacant land somewhere on a light rail line.
Lol Tacommee, if they build TOD on top of existing single family homes then they’d (and you’d) talk about them destroying the fabric of society. Now when they build them on empty/commercial lots it’s bad as well?
“Real “15 minuteâ€? neighborhoods lessen the need for mass transit. Why on earth ride a bus when you can walk?”
Because even with those neighborhood destinations, a large city of “15-minute cities” have many more unique destinations beyond your home neighborhood. Having lots of pedestrians and transit generates more destinations and jobs. Every neighborhood may have Generic Supermarket, but there’s only one Pantages Theater in one neighborhood, only one Zillow headquarters you work at, only one Hattie’s Hat with Aunt Harriet’s Room, only one Space Needle, only one Superior Yoga Teacher you must go to, only one Vegetarians of Washington monthly dinner, only one Greenlake.
“That’s the opposite of a “15 minuteâ€? neighborhood because you’re living in wasteland (like the Tacoma Dome area or even downtown Tacoma)”
Tacoma tells us the Dome District will become a TOD neighborhood Any Day Now. Downtown Tacoma certainly has the beginnings of a self-contained walkable neighborhood. I haven’t spent enough time there to tell how far it has gotten, but it has the potential to do so if the city gets serious about it. Downtown Bellevue has had all everyday needs met since the 1980s, Real Ballard has it, Northgate has gotten a lot of it, downtown Kirkland probably has it. So downtown Tacoma certainly has the potential if it’s not already there.
“Old Asian people just walk everywhere in the CID. ”
What do they do in Japan and Seoul and Taipei? They walk, but they also fill the subways and bullet trains.
I should note that many shopping center developers today augment the property value these days by adding adjacent housing ir hotel rooms. That’s the case at Northgate, University Village and the Bellevue Collection. Even SouthCenter and Alderwood malls have new large apartment buildings nearby.
These projects evolve because it’s what the market wants. It’s not a secret leftist conspiracy. It’s corporate profits instead!
Al S.
“I should note that many shopping center developers today augment the property value these days by adding adjacent housing ir hotel rooms. That’s the case at Northgate, University Village and the Bellevue Collection. Even SouthCenter and Alderwood malls have new large apartment buildings nearby.
These projects evolve because it’s what the market wants. It’s not a secret leftist conspiracy. It’s corporate profits instead!”
Exactly! But let’s be clear about this. Can you actually afford to live in these units? If not, why even care? What the Seattle Left is doing is kowtowing to corporate profits. Let’s change zoning! let’s increase density! Why? So more rich people to move to Seattle? Seattle has added so much housing over the last 20 years… but none of it was affordable. We tore down affordable housing (or in my case remodeled it) to build unaffordable housing.
If you don’t own a house in America, you’re a sucker. The rent is only going up and you’re just the kind of chump corporate America loves to take advantage of.
Nothing personal Al S., just a public service announcement for the younger guys reading this (I’d guess we’re all dudes… my apologies if I’m wrong). Nobody is getting a free lunch in Emerald City…. if you’re renting in Seattle, just plan on signing over much of your retirement to to Man.
“We tore down affordable housing (or in my case remodeled it) to build unaffordable housing.”
Don’t you understand that that affordable housing — without any remodel — had already become unaffordable, or would become so in a few years? Not building the denser buildings or not remodeling wouldn’t have stopped it, because it was a housing shortage. Housing prices started rising faster than wages in the mid 1990s, and lower-income people in Rainier Valley and the CD were the first to be displaced to Skyway, Renton, and Tukwila. A few buildings in Columbia City had been gentrified, but not many. So unchanged buildings were rising in price and pushing people out. By 2010 that same income level had been pushed further to Kent and Lynnwood. And then Auburn. And then Tacoma and Everett. And now Tacoma and Pierce County are becoming unaffordable. The prices are rising across the entire region, even though only a small percent of lots have been densified, and only some of the remaining lots have been remodeled.
In 2005 I knew people in central Seattle in tired 1960s or older apartments paying around $550. In 2005 I had a 1950s bargain studio a block from Harborview for $450. It flooded and I moved to a 1920s Summit studio for $550. By 2010 it had risen to $700 without any improvements. I acquired a partner then and looked for a 1 BR. I looked at one in the Carolina Court on Eastlake for $700, a 1915 building with new gas plumbing. I didn’t take it because of the loud freeway noise in the courtyard.
I chose a 1 BR in newer 2004 building in a better location, where the Pine and John Street buses merge to downtown. It was $1175, including a $100 discount because of the lingering 2008 recession when people moved away.
In 2012 the market was back and rents started escalating. Those affordable $500-700 units suddenly jumped to $1000 or more, and the residents had to move south. Mark Dublin on STB, an elderly transit engineer or something, who had grown up in Detroit and Chicago and had worked on the railroad, saw his Ballard rent jump like that — with no renovation or densification — and he was forced to move to Olympia to find something in his price range. I don’t understand why he couldn’t find something in Kent or Tacoma, but he said he couldn’t. He may have had a particularly limited social security plus part-time work income and maybe a disability or something. In any case, lots of people were being displaced to Auburn, Everett, Tacoma, Olympia, and Centralia at the time.
Housing prices rose became more people were competing for each unit. In the 1980s you could look at an apartment, take a week to decide, and it was probably still available. The vacancy rate was 5-10%. Apartments typically took 6 weeks to rent, and houses took 6 months to sell. In 2012 the vacancy rate dropped to 1-3%. Apartments rented on one day or a week, often during an open house, when 2-3 people were simultaneously looking at it and one got it. Houses sold in 3-6 weeks. That’s what drove up prices: more competition for each unit. Before, landlords/owners couldn’t make price rises stick, because tenants/buyers would just go to another building a block or a few blocks away that hadn’t raised its price. But now tenants/buyers were accepting increases because there was no other building down the street at a lower price, or you couldn’t find another building with a comparable location/size/quality. Tenants/buyers even bid up prices by offering more than asking, in order to get the unit when several other people were ready to swoop in if they didn’t. That’s what raised prices so much.
By 2019, nine years later, my $1175 apartment had risen to $1925. A 40% increase, when inflation had been running at 2% or less since 2000, and it had had no renovation or densification. That’s what happened all over Seattle.
Since 2020 my increase has been small, and rents in central Seattle have sometimes gone up a bit, then six months later they reverse, then six months later they reverse again, so the longer-term trend is unclear. But rents in less-hot areas like Broadview, Crossroads, Auburn, and Tacoma have been rising faster. I think the areas that rose the most in the mid 2010s (Capitol Hill, downtown, Ballard) reached a ceiling, and the other areas that didn’t rise much are now rising faster now to catch up. The whole city and region seems to be heading toward equalization, even if it never fully gets there. Because the housing shortage is regionwide, not just in one city or neighborhood.
Since prices in walkable neighborhoods that don’t have Neiman Marcus aren’t rising as fast as they did in the 2010s, I’m thinking that maybe we don’t have to be quite as strong on upzoning and increasing capacity as we were then. Growth is increasing, but maybe more slowly. Still, many people thought prices would stop rising rapidly in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, (hiatus), 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, but they didn’t. This slowdown has lasted 4 years, and maybe it will continue longer term, but maybe not. There have been so many times when people thought we’d increased housing capacity enough, but we didn’t and prices accelerated again, and a larger percent of the population became displaced or cost-burdened or homeless. I don’t want to make that same mistake again, not until it’s certain that we’ve gotten ahead of the growth for the medium-to-long term.
I didn’t want to trigger hostility, tacomee. I’m just observing that the shopping center business is morphing into creating a 15- minute city business.
I will opine that Seattle upzoning is not the catalyst. Take a look at a place like San Francisco and its San Mateo and Marin suburbs, and how they eschew upzoning for most areas. They are a whole level more expensive than Seattle is!
I’ve visited much cheaper metros in the US too. Even many huge shopping centers there are also morphing into 15-minute city centers — or closing entirely.
I feel you in terms of your frustration. I think it’s a huge structural economic problem. The whole reason that boomers could afford home purchases is because the prior generations enabled it (and I won’t even drag the thread into the ways that the system was also discriminatory). The only other observation I can lend is that missing middle housing strategies — including splitting giant tract homes into two or three units — will be part of the solution. Big apartment buildings take years to plan and build and finance, and many shopping centers have blocks within a 15 minute walk that could be converted to missing middle housing stock with zoning law changes.
Prices started escalating in San Francisco and New York in the late 1990s. San Jose followed soon after. Seattle joined the fray in 2003. San Bernardino and similar non-tech-elite cities and smaller non-coastal metros joined it in the late 2010s. Idaho, small towns, and rural areas joined it around then or maybe a bit later.
So it started in two cities, then spread to the big coastal cities, then spread to the rest of the country. The only areas it didn’t reach are depressed areas with few jobs, cities with a shrinking population (like Chicago), and a few cities like Houston and Dallas that allowed the housing supply to grow enough to match population growth.
Even if you think Oklahoma or Indiana or Idaho is cheap because you come from a more expensive area, for the locals the housing prices are rising faster than wages and and creating more cost-burden. And this is recent: it was unknown ten or twenty years ago. When you move to one of these lower-cost cities, it displaces a local who then has a greater cost-burden. So what are they supposed to do? Move to Mississippi or Mexico or Haiti? Throw themself into the ocean?
Detroit is well known for $1 houses on blocks where all the other houses are abandoned. But these are in the outskirts of the city, with no longer any stores and the least transit. Downtown Detroit has been renovated and prices have risen to the point that average Detroiters and lower-income Michiganders can’t afford to live there.
Chicago is growing on the north side, but shrinking on the south side, so overall it’s shrinking.
California is a unique basket case. Prop 13 froze property taxes for people who are still in the same house they had before 1979 or at least for a long time. Those are the boomers who benefited from all the subsidized sprawl in the 1950s and 60s. They pay hardly any property tax relative to current prices/wages, so everybody else has to pay most of the burden for schools and whatever else property tax funds. That includes their own children buying houses later, people who moved to another house, and people moving into the area. But wait, it gets worse. There’s a 1960s environmentalist streak that cities are bad for the environment, so they block anything except single-family houses to “save the planet”, even though it kills the planet with their high per-capita energy consumption and infrastructure use and it causes astronomically high housing prices. It gets even worse than that. San Francisco has the bad kind of rent control where a few people who got units a long time ago benefit, but an increasing majority of the population who moved there later, switched apartments, or couldn’t get one of the limited number of rent-controlled units effectively pays the costs they don’t.
The good kind of rent control is like in Germany, where it’s statewide, applies to all units both old and new, and is loose enough to allow it to rise enough to cover inflation, maintenance, and a modest but steady profit. Developers still build, because some profit is better than no profit, and they can’t just go beyond they central city boundary to an uncontrolled area.
“Big apartment buildings take years to plan and build and finance”
And taller buildings have stricter requirements. Up to four stories can be inexpensive wood-frame. Beyond that you need more expensive concrete bottom floors. When you get above 40 stories or so, the space taken by the elevators and stairs starts to eat up more and more of the floor space.
Mike Orr,
I bought a house in Tacoma in the mid 90s and a triplex (with my brother) in 2000. Sold the house in Tacoma and bought another in Ogden, UT 6 years ago (almost to the day). The houses were pretty close to a straight across trade.
My real estate holdings are worth (at least) 800k? I’ve got about 100k in mortgage debt still. The triplex kicks out about $800 a month in profit. We did live in the triplex for awhile and rented out the Ogden house for around $1300 in profit a month for 2 years. Longer term we haven’t decided where we want to retire. I will always love Tacoma.
I did get $6000 from my grandfather way back when to start out with, but other than that, we (the Mrs. and I) did all this with our own money. Neither of us graduated from college. We also have IRA and 401k accounts worth about the same amount as our real estate holdings. It’s not like I ever had a high income job in tech or something and I’m certainly not some financial genius.
All I can say is if a person doesn’t own their own home, the rent just keeps going up and much of what they should be saving for retirement ends up going to pay rent. I’m in no means an educated man, renting seems like a losing game.
I think the real estate market in Seattle has such high pressure on it now that rezoning and density is certainly on there way. But can you cash in on that? Seattle can build as many new apartments as it wants, but if a person doesn’t own their unit or can’t afford to rent it now… or 10 years down the road, why even care?
I guess people can bet that somehow enough units are built in Seattle vs. demand that the prices go down, or at least stabilize? But I’ve worked in the trades and know the building industry… those people are way smarter than that. Those guys are very good at looking out for themselves.
Why there isn’t much future in mass transit or the supporting neighborhoods is because there isn’t currently a way make it work long term for anybody financially. (except big property management companies and construction firms) . If I would have rented in Tacoma my whole life, I wouldn’t own real estate and my IRA might be a third smaller? And I’d be looking at never ending rent increases until the day I die.
“All I can say is if a person doesn’t own their own home, the rent just keeps going up and much of what they should be saving for retirement ends up going to pay rent. I’m in no means an educated man, renting seems like a losing game.”
It shouldn’t be that way. Rents should be stable. They were stable for decades until the 2000s: that’s why more people didn’t buy early in life. The reason they’re not stable now is the extremely flawed American system, that allows some people to speculate on a necessity of life for others, while ignoring the latter people. Even the tax code is skewed: mortgage interest is deductable but rent is not. Enjoy your benefit, robber baron. In a democracy the government should try to do what’s best for everybody, not just homeowners and the top 10%. That’s what the Nordic countries and New Zealand have but the US doesn’t. Not looking out for everybody is a form of corruption, because a few people are buying government policies that serve their narrow interests at the expense of everybody else.
In Germany the rents are stable because there’s statewide rent control and it’s reasonably structured. People don’t feel pressured to buy and go into huge debt (many times more than they’d ever borrow for any other purpose). People know they’ll still be able to afford their apartment in old age, so they feel less need to buy.
If I’d known it would be like this now I might have tried harder to buy something in the 1990s or 2000s. But I’m old enough now that there’s not as much point in buying now. I’d have the large mortgage payment and repairs for most of the rest of my life, and I’d have to guarantee I’ll be working for the next 10-30 years so I don’t default, and I have nobody to give the place to when I die.
It’s very, very, very important to me to live in a walkable neighborhood with good transit — that’s the biggest thing I want in life — and I wouldn’t been able to do it if I tried to buy a condo/house at these prices. I’d have to live somewhere I don’t want to live, and that would be like throwing away a large part of my chance for some happiness in this life. I’m also strongly adverse to taking on large debt; I have kind of Depression values. Stay within your means, keep your options open, don’t go into huge debt. Especially for a future windfall that may never happen, or that will come too late for me to do much with, or that I have nobody to pass it on to. I’ve had enough relatives and friends that have lost money in real estate that I hesitate to count on being one of the lucky ones.
“Housing prices rose became more people were competing for each unit.”
https://www.nahro.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/NAHRO-Summit_080222-Greg.pdf
See slide on page 15 for supporting data.
Tacomee: You do realize that the 4th Avenue Shallow station and its associated construction would not even be IN the CID, right?
Brandon,
Why would you (or any of us really) care about a billion dollar subway project in a city you cannot afford to live in?
Brandon, which neighborhood would the 4th Ave shallow station be in?
How did we get from 15-minute cities and renting/buying to the 4th Avenue CID alternative? Was that for another thread.
Of course 4th is in the CID or on the border between the CID and Pioneer Square. It’s one block from the current CID station, two blocks from the Chinese gateway, and three blocks from Uwajimaya. So for anyone coming from anywhere in the CID, it’s one more block compared to the original 5th Avenue Shallow site that was definitely in the CID.
> The “15 minute city� is a mere renaming of an old idea — walkable neighborhoods with mixed uses rather than a monolithic sea of just single-family detached homes.
I guess in some ways the ‘urban villages’ was a prototype version of it as well. Most notably recently was the “neighborhood anchors” idea in the one seattle plan adding a bunch of “mini” urban villages throughout the rest of Seattle
Good question Mike Orr,
Back to the “15 minute city”. Conservatives absolutely hate the whole current Liberal version of idea because it goes smack dab against the American Dream… home ownership for those of modest income. The idea that government money would be channeled into making these neighborhoods is a really bad idea. Going back to Mayor Rice and his “urban village”…. how much market rate affordable housing did these create? Why would anyone of modest income sign off for more of the same?
But let’s go back up to the time when almost all of Tacoma and Seattle were “15 minute cities” . Back to the decades around 1900, companies platted land, put in utilities and built street cars. Houses were built on small lots, really good houses that are mostly still around and worth a million dollars. Retail districts with apartments were built on arterial roads. And all of these beautiful houses were owned by families! Not the corporate interests that currently own more of Seattle every day. Nobody called these “15 minute cities” but they were in the very best sense.
Now the “15 minute city” label its attached to everything and anything built in “Liberal Land” . It’s doesn’t mean anything now. Seattle progressives seem Hell bent on building subways and changing zoning…. and maybe that’s for the better? Although tearing down those wonderful 100 year old homes for butt ugly apartments seems a little short sided, but oh, well, life will go on.
My question to the readers of this blog is…..
Does any of this transit, this growth, this massive change in Greater Seattle personally help you?
Where’s your home ownership? Your piece of the pie? Key to the City? Your future in Seattle?
Because I will tell you all of this matters! In fact, without opportunity for residents to have ownership and the real community that brings, urban planning is simply using public money for the benefit of the wealthy. That’s how Seattle got the place it is now. Let’s tear down 100 year old houses where families used to live to build 4 plexes only the upper income folks can afford? Count me out.
Tacomee, the interesting thing about our views is that our ideals overlap significantly, but we come to almost opposite conclusions on how to get to them.
“15-minute” city is the idea of a self-contained neighborhood, where you can walk to typical everyday necessities and some optional things. I experienced it living in the U-District, where I only had to leave the neighborhood once a month or so — except maybe for work. I went to Northgate once or twice a year for clothes or housewares not available in the U-District. Streetcar suburbs and urban villages are the same thing.
Cities like Paris are pushing the 15-minute concept, where the entire city is essentially all 15-minute neighborhoods all next to each other. Seattle’s urban villages are like small island in a sea of residential-only low density, so it can only happen in the islands.
A couple conspiracy theories have arisen about 15-minute cities, that they’re a UN plot to control and surveil people and restrict them from leaving their home neighborhood. But the point of 15-minute cities is that everything is available, whether you use it or not.
We don’t use the term 15-minute city much; it’s more a term other politicians use. But it’s the same thing as urbanism.
> Where’s your home ownership? Your piece of the pie? Key to the City? Your future in Seattle?
> Because I will tell you all of this matters! In fact, without opportunity for residents to have ownership and the real community that brings, urban planning is simply using public money for the benefit of the wealthy. That’s how Seattle got the place it is now. Let’s tear down 100 year old houses where families used to live to build 4 plexes only the upper income folks can afford? Count me out.
@Tacomee
Have you ever checked out the bayarea or losangeles subreddit’s about people asking where to live.
People are asking about “is this 2~3+ hour commute” bearable. The idea that we can continue only having single family homes being for the average worker is long dead.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/18dejag/anyone_else_commute_from_av_to_la_for_work_2_hour/
https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/809nez/living_in_ontario_and_working_in_la/
this person asks about driving from ontario
https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/18orycz/moving_from_san_jose_to_tracy/
https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/o239re/is_a_tracy_to_fremont_commute_34_times_a_week_an/
The bay area is even more hilarious, some of these are tech workers living that far.
I’m not sure why you think there is some hidden warp dimension swath of land ready for single family homes just “10 minutes” away
Mike Orr,
I lived in the Lincoln District in Tacoma for a couple of decades. I walked from my house to Zingler’s Appliance and bought a washer and dyer for my house the day I closed. Walked to Safeway. Walked Lincoln Hardware. Frisbee’s barkery, lots and lots of other small family owned places, often owned by non-White folks. I loved it because I spent countless hours driving in a van for work. That is the worst part of working in construction. I’ve never driven drunk in my life… because I always lived close to tavern and walked. I love the 15 minute city!
Seattle in the beginning…. as perfect. You can never beat the mix of small retail–mom and pop apartments– surrounded by owner occupied houses on small lots. That’s the gold standard in urbanism.
New York City? Doesn’t really work, does it? The more like “NYC like” you try to build Seattle… the bigger the homeless camps are going to be. A billion dollar commuter train rumbling though what used to be a SFH neighborhood for working class people and now is a train track, high end condos and a huge homeless camp. That whole idea is just a silly as freeways are. Bigger and higher equals urban failure. Human being thrive only in places that are human scale.
My whole reason for apposing everything Sound transit has ever done except express buses comes from the fact the Greater Seattle region can’t even run a simple bus system. Get the bus system right… we’ll talk about rail. Remember, bigger and higher equals urban failure. Buses are basic human scale transportation.
WL,
Let’s start with… “Why would anybody in God’s name, care about the mess called California?” I mean if you want an example of everything wrong with the entire country, look at Cali.
Please don’t fall for the ever popular, “There’s no land left!” trick of the Lefties. Washington State has plenty of empty land. The State and Federal governments own a lot of it. As I’ve said before, Washington State could have built several planned cities in Eastern Washington of 100,000 ++++ in last 25 years, from scratch. Using urban planning… the water use and fossil fuel use in these new cities could have been 50% of the national average. Want walkable cities? high levels of home ownership? alternative energy, gray water recycling? It’s all possible for money Seattle pissed away on subways and low income housing at 500k per unit.
But then there’s only like a dozen places in the whole country Liberals can live in. That’s the problem here. If you’re young… I’d suggest a road trip to the Midwest. Life is better out there.
Where is the Lincoln District?
Would these 100,000 person new towns have the density of Spokane?
> WL,
> Let’s start with… “Why would anybody in God’s name, care about the mess called California?� I mean if you want an example of everything wrong with the entire country, look at Cali.
That’s literally what you are always asking for to implement — California’s suburbs
Mike Orr,
When you say Spokane, do you mean the old, beautiful part of the City or the later auto-centric sprawl part… the part the runs clear to Post Falls ID.? I like the old part. The new part? not so much.
As far as urban planning for new neighborhoods…. no SHF building lot over 3,000 sq ft. (I’d drop a 1300 prefab moble home on that with 2 parking spaces). Narrow streets with no street parking, lots of dead ends and cut-de-sacs with bike and pedestrian access. It might be faster to just walk to the store?
4 story business district… small narrow buildings, owner occupied retail (so the Mexican restaurant we all love is owned by real Mexicans) apartments on top. Maybe a village green style park behind the business district ringed by more apartments? A parking garage with rented spaces separate from apartments? No overnight street parking tolerated anywhere?
I’d have no idea if this place even needs office space or what kind. WFH really changed everything. Ask the experts. It’s got to have some sort of industrial zone… but keep it tight without sprawl.
You tell me… I’m certainly not an urban planner. I do know a lot of small business owners who’d love to own their own space and not lease. That’s a lot of cash right off the bat. Selling homes for around 300K would raise even more money… sustainability absolutely means paying for itself.
These new cities would have density numbers better than Seattle as a whole. Not as high as Capital Hill but certainly better than Lake City. Build them on agricultural land and try like hell to keep the water usage neutral. Solar power on every building… this needs a whole lot of AC. 2/3 of everything is owner occupied and paid for with traditional 30 year mortgages.
Maybe 4 planned “towns” of 25k connected by light rail. It’s cheap to build that first and then infill and little of any tunneling would be needed. Think modular? Like just start another town if the one fills up? instead of endless sprawl?
WL
Not once in my life did I ever think California sprawl was a place I wanted to live. I also who hate some sort of overpriced “apodment” in downtown anyplace. There’s a lot of middle ground here.
What do you want the new towns to look like?
tacomee, sounds just like the Redmond Green, and you’re right everybody loves it!
Mike Orr,
I’m certainly not the right guy to ask what they new towns should look like. I’m not an urban planner, not a skilled artist or draftsperson. I do know that 3-4 story brick over wood frame is the gold standard for all construction. I also know that manufactured homes are the cheapest way out our housing mess. So a mix of those two? Strive for a walkable, human scale, yet dense build? There are experts on this, just not me. Some place both kid and senior friendly?
I do know the money side of this better. The trick is to use people’s personal credit to build it. Building and selling homes and businesses means that private people make the payments and upkeep. A 50 million investment in public housing is close to nothing… that 500K a unit and then somebody isn on the hook to maintain the building. A 50 million dollar investment in new town outside of Yakima is a “one time only” charge because after the homes are sold, they are the owners problem. It may even be possible to use Habit for Humanity and other qualified non profits to “bake in” a reasonable amount of lower income housing because with a 1200-1500 homeowners laying out 300k each… take 10% of that and we’re talking the kind of money Seattle is currently spending on low income housing… with a new unit cost of way under half the Seattle price.
Think of it this way. There’s no way to economically remodel public schools built in the 1970s. Those are just crap that needs to come down and start a new school fresh. Seattle’s a heck of a town… but honestly everything you love about it…. when year was it built? Capitol Hill is great… because much of it is old. The new stuff? Doesn’t fit, does it?
> Not once in my life did I ever think California sprawl was a place I wanted to live. I also who hate some sort of overpriced “apodment� in downtown anyplace. There’s a lot of middle ground here.
Sigh do you know how many American cities have espoused how they didn’t want to be like “Los Angeles� with traffic and their solution was to only allow single family homes equating apartments with traffic. And they just turned into having Los Angeles traffic anyways just driving from really far instead.
And this concept of edge city is again not a new idea.
You’re acting like this is some new found strategy when this is the idea in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s to try to hold onto single family homes everywhere
It has already been tried for 50 years — let it go already
tacomee, but the thing about your “pop-up” cities east of the mountains, is the weather SUCKS there! Big time. There are folks along the Columbia and Okanogan Rivers because of the alluvial soil and farmers scattered across the Palouse for ditto. But there’s no pressure to rip out the apple orchards and replace them with houses along the Columbia and Okanogan north of Wenatchee, because there would be no economy! Cities grow because there is one and more people will make it better.
More people in Malott will just be unemployed.
Actually Tom, you have no idea what you’re talking about. Some of the construction industry that built the last boom in Seattle have relocated to Eastern Washington to build over there. Just look up Hood River on Zillow, dude. You can’t afford to live there.
One of the biggest backers of building new cities in Eastern Washington would be all the young people living there that can’t afford homes because rich people from “the coast” are colonizing places like Walla Walla.
There’s this little movement we’ve been having… called “work from home?” also this thing Boomers are doing… called “retirement” . There’s a lot of housing problems out East. Let’s fix this for the whole State.
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2023/jun/04/after-giant-spike-last-year-spokane-county-home-va/
Hood River is not some windswept hill in the Palouse. Like The Dalles it has an agricultural economic base with an overlay of electricity using data centers because of the nearby dams. And its population (including the uplands toward Mt. Hood) is 25,000. Seattle grows nearly that much in two years.
Try harder.
Expecting Washington to have channeled much of its growth to Eastern Washington thirty years ago sounds unrealistic. The Eastern Washingtonians who want to keep it rural aren’t here to defend it. The economists and ecologists who point out that we need Eastern Washington’s agriculture and climate/ecosystem moderating forests, and that much of eastern Washington is a desert and needs irrigation. aren’t here to defend those.
We could just as easily build 100,000 person new cities in Western Washington, and it would be more compatible with the state’s thirty-year-old direction. As to where you’d put those cities in Eastern Washington: you wouldn’t plant them from scratch; you’d grow existing towns. We already know which ones they’d be: Wenatchee, Ellensburg, Yakima, Pasco, Kennewick, Richland, Moses Lake. Possibly Pullman and Ritzville if we need more.
As to what I’d think of new 100,000 person cities, it depends on what they’d be like; e.g., what kind of walkability, density, use mixture.
The location of the current cities in Central and Eastern Washington aren’t misplaced. They evolved at strategic water/ port, rail and highway locations. So I don’t see why any new cities need to be developed from scratch.
We also aren’t seeing overall population growth as a country to warrant something as profound as building new large cities where nothing exists today. The Census Bureau expectation that we will “peak at nearly 370 million in 2080 before edging downward to 366 million in 2100“.
Yes there are metro areas in the US growing pretty significantly in this era. However, the current immigration policies combined with lower birth rates will mean that population growth in any metro will be less and less unless we see significant populations abandon their home areas — and I think that’s unlikely in future decades compared to past ones.
I realize that there are currently affordable housing shortages in many metros. However, this is being driven by localized demand. Houses are still more affordable in Lubbock or Rochester or Macon. There is a difference between a national problem and a ubiquitous one.
And a family living in the Puget Sound area is going to have a smaller carbon footprint than one in Moses Lake will have. That’s somewhat attributable to just climate (less air conditioning needed).
Washington State has had a huge population growth surge since its founding. But it will slow down. The only way I don’t see it slowing down is if there is a flood of climate refugees combined with more favorable immigration policies to absorb residents displaced from massive climate change or massive war or massive economic collapse in other countries.
Surely, the most cost effective growth would be for the state to augment existing cities, towns and urban areas rather than build new ones with the hope that it can succeed.
Quote source:
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/population-projections.html
@tacoma,
No way in “heck� is anyone going to force me to move to some faux urban ghetto in Eastern Washington with no professional sports team, no live music,,and crappy beer. Not going to happen.
And what about medical care? I have a Medic One unit stationed less than a mile from my house, two separate first rate hospitals within 3 miles, and a level one trauma center just 6 miles away. I can completely flatline and there will be trained staff here within 3 minutes to revive me.
But in your mini Stalingrads in Eastern Washington? A volunteer fire department with some kid trained in an AED? And if you need a level one trauma center anywhere in WWAMI you get life flighted to Seattle anyhow?
No thanks, count me out. I want to live, and enjoy living
“some faux urban ghetto in Eastern Washington”
What I worry about is, will it really have local buses every 10-15 minutes, and connections to the rest of the state every hour? That seems highly unlikely given Eastern Washington’s track record. People say “Why don’t liberals and lower-income people move to the 85% of the country that have lower housing prices — and look, they’ve got two blocks of organic shops and craft beer now”, but then the areas don’t have the infrastructure to be more than suburban hell. And now in many of those states/cities you have to worry about your right to vote being suppressed, or the government targeting demographics it has a knee-jerk grudge against.
@Mike Orr,
“will it really have local buses every 10-15 minutes, and connections to the rest of the state every hour? �
Ya, like I am really going to move to Eastern Washington and trade Light Rail at 8 mins (soon 4 mins) for a bus at 15 mins. I don’t want to go backwards.
And why move to a mini Stalingrad in Eastern Washington just to take an hourly bus back to Seattle for everything a person needs. I already live in Seattle. I don’t need an hourly bus to get here. I can just walk out my front door.
Since it’s 2024 Decided to take a peak at the king county metro routes ridership (mainly looking at later half of 2023)
Most of it isn’t too surprising:
Rapidride E ~11k, 7 at 10k, D 8k, A 8k.
Rapidride C is at 7k from 5k in 2022. B is at 5k from 3k in 2022
Route 11 sadly at under 2k (from 4k before pandemic). Honestly a bit odd we’re building the first real brt on this corridor.
Route 62 at 6k from 4.5k last year, much nice gains
Route 128 (white center to south center) I was kinda surprised to see it at relatively high 3k considering even before the pandemic it at around 3k; plus considering it only runs 20 min frequency most of the time.
route 255 sadly at 2.5k. Honestly, it’s relative drop even compared to 271’s is much lower. Probably will get some flak for saying this, but maybe it should be rerouted back to downtown seattle — well if the current under construction montlake lid configuration allows it to continue on.
https://kingcounty.gov/en/legacy/depts/transportation/metro/about/accountability-center/rider-dashboard
Random questions: kinda wondering if bus ridership will continue to increase next year (on average for these routes) will stagnant around this level?
I always find myself wishing Metro would do a top level comparison of current year to the year 2019 on their System Dashboard. They only seem to offer this systemwide quick look as compared to the previous year, which of course will show good ridership gains.
ST seems to do a better job referencing current data to pre-pandemic data, and I think that is an important comparison to make at this point.
2018 would be a better base year; ridership declined in 2019 due to the downtown Seattle constraints and the poor response to them by Seattle, ST, and Metro. The capacity crisis was caused by the county selling CPS to the WSCC and ending bus serving in the transit tunnel prematurely. It was simultaneous with the WSDOT deep bore project.
It is a bit more tedious but you can find historic levels by looking at old Metro reports: https://kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/metro/accountability/pdf/2019/system-evaluation.pdf. It is sometimes hard to make an “apples to apples” comparison because sometimes the route changes.
Same thing goes for Sound Transit. Sound Transit used to release stop data (for the buses and trains). This included directional data. This means you could tell how many people at a particular stop took the bus or train a particular direction. Not quite the same as trip data (which shows trip pairs) but still really useful. (Metro releases none of that.) But now Sound Transit has stop data, but not directional data. Worse yet, they only have stop data for Link. Even for Sounder they don’t show you the ridership at each station. Station data for Link is helpful, but it only tells half the story. For example, Capitol Hill Station ridership is up, but it doesn’t tell you which direction people are headed. As a result, it gives a skewed view of ridership. It is highly likely that old trips — that is trips that could have taken place before Link got to Northgate — is down quite a bit, across the board. Ridership downtown is down. So is ridership at all the other stations but Capitol Hill.
I’m hopeful that if KCM increases service hours then ridership will return. Service is still far below where we were at in 2019. Take a look at total vehicle hours and miles in the 10-year summary below, and take a look at the monthly productivity tables. The 10-year data is missing 2023, but if you want you can extract it from the NTD data
https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/about/data-and-reports/performance-reports
https://www.transit.dot.gov/ntd/ntd-data
Unfortunately they are still spending more money so I’m not sure they can add more service.
2018 $630 million; 4.1 million bus hours
2019 $690 million; 4.3 million bus hours
..
2022 $755 million; 3.3 million bus hours
Is Metro making headway in closing the driver shortage gap, or is it still falling further behind?
Agreed John. It is an odd time. Link expanded while Metro shrunk. In contrast, at one point Seattle was spending more on service within Seattle at roughly the same time as U-Link. Metro also truncated the buses fairly drastically, leading to an even bigger increase in frequency. This was basically the high point of ridership. Good frequency where it would get the most riders, along with Link finally connecting the UW with Capitol Hill and Downtown. Northgate Link was also a huge expansion, and if it wasn’t for the driver shortage/cutbacks, we would be in much better shape.
To be fair, people are working from home, but not enough to screw up the numbers this big. I think eventually it will get better, but it may take a while. None of the Link expansions — as important as they are — will result in huge service improvements. The East Link restructure plans look nothing like the plans for U-Link. With U-Link the savings resulted in dramatic improvements in frequency. Yet with East Link it is much smaller. With Lynnwood Link the savings are almost entirely in Snohomish County. The Community Transit network will be much better, but it is still small potatoes compared to Metro. Pierce County, of course, still struggles.
Whether you are talking about Seattle itself or the region as a whole, we will continue with fairly low ridership until we get more drivers.
@WL,
“ Unfortunately they are still spending more money so I’m not sure they can add more service�
Your numbers are odd. So Metro is spending 10% more than they were in 2019, but they are delivering 25% less service hours than they were then?
Makes no sense.
“So Metro is spending 10% more than they were in 2019, but they are delivering 25% less service hours than they were then? Makes no sense.”
Congestion. It takes more service hours to provide the same level of service when you have to have more extra runs and standby buses to compensate for buses getting stuck in traffic and thrown off-schedule. There’s also increasing insurance costs, labor costs, parts costs, etc. And having half the bus fleet out waiting for mechanics’ time or supply-chain bottlenecks probably adds extra costs too.
Yeah on top of inflation, Metro has suffered from a major staffing shortage that has them relying on (very expensive) overtime. Last I heard it was getting better, so hopefully we’ll see some service return this year.
https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/10/18/metro-seeing-early-signs-of-labor-rebound-and-ridership-momentum/
@Lazarus
I’m just quoting the document given.
I’m not quite sure why it costs so much. Even traffic couldn’t account for such a high amount. And I don’t think this is about ridership ticket money either as the bus fare
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qyj31NiW1kc30GX9PCNrmnAn_EEmPn8WaUB_NMkYCQE/pubhtml
When I looked into it a few weeks ago, my estimate of total Metro drivers in 2019 was 3100, but in 2023 it dropped to around 2500. But I also believe the ratio of part-time to full-time drivers shifted in the favor of full-time by quite a bit. So, even though there are less drivers in total, perhaps by having a greater percentage of them being full-time means they get more work out of less employees?
@Matt Orr,
The metric WL provided was for service hours, not service levels, or ridership, or anything like that.
An hour is an hour, regardless of whether or not those hours are spent sitting in congestion or zipping down the freeway in the HOV lane. So how can Metro be providing 25% fewer service hours at 10% higher cost?
There’s a bus cost per hour metric. I imagine it’s a combination of labor (overtime on mechanics, admin, and drivers) and gas prices? It seems to have dropped significantly in 2022
In John D’s Urbanist article: “County Councilmember Claudia Balducci noted that anecdotally she was noticing that ridership was rebounding on the routes she was using.”
There we go, Balducci rides Metro. And since she’s Bellevue-based, it’s probably Eastside routes.
“Route 11 sadly at under 2k (from 4k before pandemic). Honestly a bit odd we’re building the first real brt on this corridor.”
The 11 got 15-minute weekday and Saturday service in 2017, but lost it in 2020, and with the driver shortage it’s now 20 minutes weekdays and 30 minutes weekends and evenings. So it’s hard to ride it even if you want to. I would ride it more to Trader Joe’s and the Arboretum if it weren’t so infrequent. The 11 and 12 have also suffered reroutes due to RapidRide construction. For instance, sometimes they’re diverted from Madison Street to John Street, which is several blocks away and a long detour. You might as well take the 10 or 8, which always go to John Street and have a more efficient routing. Or you can’t remember whether it’s rerouted or not. For a long time eastbound was rerouted but westbound wasn’t.
That’s definitely true hopefully ridership is better when it opens
Route 11 sadly at under 2k (from 4k before pandemic). Honestly a bit odd we’re building the first real brt on this corridor
The 11 is just one bus on the corridor. There is also the 12 and 2. As Mike explained, the buses have been hammered by very low frequency and re-routes.
The same thing is true with East Link. The backbone of the system is basically the 550. Should we be worried then, that ridership never exceeded 4,000 last year? Not really. It is a shadow of its former self, and a shadow of what Link will provide. Same goes with RapidRide G. People will be attracted to a bus that runs every six minutes and doesn’t get stuck in traffic.
You can’t pick and choose when to forgive poor ridership due to poor service. You’ve hammered all-day Sounder repeatedly, even though many of the runs are essentially one-way (I think I’ll call the reverse peak train “The Strander”), but you are giving these routes a pass.
You’ve hammered all-day Sounder repeatedly, even though many of the runs are essentially one-way (I think I’ll call the reverse peak train “The Strander�), but you are giving these routes a pass.
I’ve only done that in the context of Tacoma. If you are going from Tacoma to Seattle, then it is common to take the bus one way, and the train the other direction. About 10% of the riders do that. The idea that Tacoma doesn’t have any bus service connecting the two cities when Sounder isn’t running is absurd. As I’ve pointed out, not only are they running the buses, but more people take the bus between the two cities than take Sounder! The last bus leaves Seattle (heading for Tacoma) at around midnight. Stranded my ass.
Now if you want to talk about other places (Kent, Auburn, etc.) then you definitely have a case. But the answer is not to run more trains, but run more buses. Do you really think we can afford to run Sounder every half 15 minutes until midnight? The buses have to complement the train — it is the only thing that we can afford.
But let’s just look at the ridership numbers again:
2 — 5,900
11 — 4,100
12 — 3,400
Those are buses that run at least part of their time on that corridor. That is over 13,000, although obviously not all of the trips are on that corridor. Now look at particular South Sounder runs:
1518 — 150
1520 — 100
1522 — 75
1524 — 80
1501 — 60
1503 — 60
1505 — 90
All of these numbers are from before the pandemic. This is the baseline essentially. The problem is, even at these levels it doesn’t make sense to add more train service. Definitely add more bus service, but it just isn’t worth adding more trains when they are getting this many riders. Not when it is so expensive to add trains (and the price goes up for each train). We can’t possibly afford a full substitute for the buses, which means at best we are adding a handful of runs scattered around — train runs that will likely get similar ridership to these (if we are lucky).
In contrast, with the G the baseline is very good. It is worth noting that nothing happened to Sounder. The tracks aren’t torn up. The train is just as reliable as it was. In contrast, Madison Street is torn up right now. The buses are a mess. Furthermore, when this is done, the bus will be faster. Thus it will go from extremely slow to extremely fast. It isn’t just frequency they are improving.
The Madison Street corridor is also influenced more by frequency. It is a very urban corridor, and the trips will be fairly short. In contrast, Seattle to Tacoma is not. No one takes a spontaneous trip from Seattle to Tacoma, whereas trips along the Madison Street corridor are very common (or will be when service is restored).
You are comparing individual trains to total service. That’s not a fair comparison. How many passengers does each bus average, one-way? I know the costs are vastly different, but you could at least compare same-to-same.
You need to think of The Sounder as a gateway drug. I’ve attempted to convince many people to take transit to Seattle in the last 3 years I’ve live in Tacoma, and each one said they would be willing to take the Sounder, but didn’t know how they were going to get home. They were unwilling to brave the unreliable and infrequent buses. Folks in Tacoma haven’t had good transit in 100 years. They don’t get buses at all, and they barely get trains.
Provide good service on trains, and you will get ridership. Just look at the traffic volumes between the cities. There is clearly latent demand. Try to get some of those folks out of cars and trusting the transit can work for them, and actually be better than driving. It’s an absolute imperative. We can’t afford not to do it as our world burns.
Here is another way to look at it. Every service can compare itself with existing service to see whether the investment is worth it. There are three questions worth asking:
1) Is (or was) ridership high?
2) Is the service more frequent?
3) Is it considerably faster?
In the case of RapidRide G, the answer is yes to all three. Same with East Link. You are switching modes, but that alone does very little. The key is the speed and frequency improvement upon a fairly high ridership base (somewhere close to 20,000 riders a day if you count the expresses from Issaquah).
Now imagine we replace every 594 bus with Sounder. Look at it only from the perspective of Tacoma. The answer in each case is No! By definition we are running the train as often as the bus. During the time we are adding service (in the middle of the day) the bus is actually faster. Ridership is nowhere close to what you want with a train. If people just switched modes than the trains would be desolate. Even if twice as many rode the trains (and why would they?) the trains would be desolate. A typical peak-oriented Sounder train gets around 130 riders from Tacoma. A midday bus gets around 30, which is just a bit more than what a midday train gets from Tacoma. It just isn’t worth it to spend a huge amount of money on Sounder, especially when Tacoma has so many other transit needs.
You really aren’t offering anything that the bus doesn’t, and the buses don’t carry that many people. Improve the buses — it is much cheaper.
You can look at poor transit service that doesn’t work for people all day and say people aren’t using it. To that I say “duh”.
Yes, some hearty souls do ride the 594. I ride the 594. But I think a good analogy is:
The 594 is a gutter bike lane on Aurora Ave. Sure, some idiots (like me) would ride on Aurora with 50 mph traffic whizzing by 6 inches from their handle bars. But not many.
The Sounder is like an all-ages and abilities protected bike lane on Westlake Ave. Now you open biking up to a vastly larger demographic willing to ride, and you see a million riders a year using it.
It’s simply the wrong mode for the distance. A bus is not going to attract a lot of intercity travelers. A train is.
You are comparing individual trains to total service. That’s not a fair comparison. How many passengers does each bus average, one-way? I know the costs are vastly different, but you could at least compare same-to-same.
I am comparing individual trains because we are talking about individual trains. The trains that run during peak do very well (well over 600). The ones that run during peak do poorly. All the numbers are from this: https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/2019-sip-final_compressed.pdf
How many passengers does each bus average, one-way?
It varies, but it is in that document as well (page 207). I’ve also mentioned this before. Northbound the bus starts out strong, fizzles out a bit, then rallies in the middle of the day (with about 40 riders a bus). Then it fades out — in the evening it gets around 20. The southbound bus peaks at about 7:30 (with 50 riders) but there are a couple sub-peaks along the way. As a bus, ridership is OK, but not great. The main thing though is that it doesn’t have the extreme highs and lows of Sounder (which are on page 229).
Then there is the 590. It directly competes with Sounder. It runs during peak — the only time of day when the train is faster. Yet ridership is solid. For whatever reason, a lot of people prefer the bus over Sounder.
Which is why the idea of running more trains simply won’t work. You will get more Sounder riders overall, but the riders *per train* will actually go down. This is the problem. The cost to run each train is extremely high, and goes up every time we add a run (BNSF of course will charge more).
I’ve attempted to convince many people to take transit to Seattle in the last 3 years I’ve live in Tacoma, and each one said they would be willing to take the Sounder, but didn’t know how they were going to get home.
So what? These people are not going to ride the train to Seattle on a regular basis no matter what you do. For that matter, they may try it once and then decide never again. Oh, the train is nice and all, but where we like to go (Pike Place) is too far away, and buses be scary. This is just elite projection. It is favoring a handful of riders at the expense of many.
Consider someone else I know. He grew up in Tacoma and now lives in the north end of Seattle. He took the bus to work (downtown) for years. Link got to the UW, and he would take a bus and transfer to it. In short, he has an ORCA card and knows how to use it. So then they moved his job to Tacoma. Does he take the bus? Does he take the train? No, he drives. He drives through terrible rush hour traffic (to get through downtown) and then drives all the way to Tacoma. To be fair, this is only a couple times a week, but still. This is a commute. This is a regular trip — the type you can dial in. Leave work at a particular time and you can expect to be home at a particular time. That sort of trip. Yet he drives. Not what I would do, but it is an example of how some people will drive even if the other options are good.
Just look at the traffic volumes between the cities. There is clearly latent demand.
You can’t just look at traffic. You have to look at where they are actually going. I’m sure if my friend lived in the CID and commuted to the Tacoma Dome he would have taken the train. But a lot of people are on the freeway going to other places. It is way to easy to assume that everyone is just driving to downtown, but they actually aren’t. Modal share to downtown is actually quite good (relatively few drive). Traffic is clogged because of all the different places people are going. I used to work in Factoria and commute from Pinehurst. The bus options sucked, so I often drove. Every time I go hiking I contribute to traffic.
Try to get some of those folks out of cars and trusting the transit can work for them, and actually be better than driving.
Yes, and the way to do that is with better bus service.
The 594 is a gutter bike lane on Aurora Ave. Sure, some idiots (like me) would ride on Aurora with 50 mph traffic whizzing by 6 inches from their handle bars. But not many.
Then why do so many people take the 590! It runs when Sounder runs, and carries just as many! The one time that Sounder is actually faster, and people prefer the “gutter bike lane”. Your theory has been disproven by the riders.
It’s simply the wrong mode for the distance. A bus is not going to attract a lot of intercity travelers. A train is.
Yet when the train is running — and is actually faster than the bus — about as many people take the bus as the train. It seems like they are both just as attractive.
Look, I get it. You like the train. I would do. But the idea that the only thing that will get people out of their cars is a train is ridiculous. Imagine they cancel the buses and replace them with trains running at the exact same schedule. The ridership will be remarkably close to what it was with the trains. Some will prefer it, some will hate it. They will hate it for any number of reasons. The bus goes to more places in Seattle and Tacoma. For many, this means fewer transfers. The bus is faster most of the day. While you think the bus is somehow intimidating, I don’t. Sound Transit buses are especially cushy. Not at the level of a commuter train, but still.
But that misses the point. It would cost a fortune to run the trains as often as we run the buses. Probably more than Pierce Transit and Sound Transit spend on all their bus service combined! Yet even if ridership doubled — a huge increase well beyond what most would expect — it isn’t worth it. That is the nature of service like this around the country. In lots of cities they only run the trains during peak even though they own the tracks! It is simply too costly to run a train for that many riders. There just aren’t that many people who will take transit from Tacoma to Seattle, and most of them are on the bus already.
It’s probably a mix of habit and preferring a 1 seat ride, given that it serves both downtowns. Which is an excellent point. But we aren’t talking about commuters here. They are already reasonably well served.
Sounder really should be serving Union Station in Tacoma. On the Seattle side, they should hopefully build a seamless transfer from Link to Sounder, once they rebuild 4th. I have no idea if that would be feasible, but it would be a game-changer.
I am perfectly happy on the 594. Or would be if it was reliable and frequent. And we put in some HOT 3+ lanes.
I don’t think it’s elite projection to want a reliable, predictable way home. Rich and poor alike prefer that.
I’ve found myself planning on taking the 594, then, after waiting 15 minutes for a no-show, running for the Sounder. Sure it sometimes take 15 more minutes. But it leaves on time, and you know exactly when you will be arriving.
I think all-day sounder would still be useful, especially for tukwila, kent, auburn.
For tacoma to Seattle, I unfortunately do agree with Ross’ assessment. There is no chance they run commuter trains that frequently as busses with such a large span. And unfortunately, it even takes longer to get there by train than by bus most of the time.
I mean even japan/europe doesn’t run their trains that frequently. You might say hey tokyo runs trains that frequently — but that’s tokyo. if you go to say some medium sized city like Sendai if it’s 25 miles out they only run their commuter trains that far like half-hourly and then it drops to hourly. Sure they run a couple more trains during peak time, but it’s not all the time.
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Hebita+%E8%9B%87%E7%94%B0/Sendai+%E4%BB%99%E5%8F%B0/@38.3506939,140.9964142,12z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m19!4m18!1m5!1m1!1s0x5f89a39cbc683c77:0xcce59e0b252aaf8c!2m2!1d141.2774315!2d38.4384448!1m5!1m1!1s0x5f8a28180c510b87:0xb2a30b91be1ffdbc!2m2!1d140.8824375!2d38.2601316!2m3!6e0!7e2!8j1707480000!3e3!5i4?entry=ttu
And I choose an example much denser than Seattle, let alone comparing Tacoma’s density.
Yeah, I wouldn’t expect better than hourly, which would be fine if extended into the evenings and weekends.
> I am perfectly happy on the 594. Or would be if it was reliable and frequent. And we put in some HOT 3+ lanes.
I guess maybe they could build that direct access ramps to industrial way metro originally wanted.
Sounder should focus on peak congestion, and express buses can serve the non-peak periods.
I think Ross undervalues the benefit of running Sounder 15-min frequency vs 20-min frequency (this improvement in frequency should induce more total ridership, same as boosting frequency on a bus), but otherwise I agree with his points. The express buses connect the same cities, but the actual station locations are quite different – the express buses simply have better tails in both downtowns, so as long as the bus isn’t too much slower it can be more compelling than a train.
But we aren’t talking about commuters here.
Which means we aren’t talking about that many people. That is the basic problem. Just to back up here, Tacoma is not a suburb. But the transit pattern resembles one. I keep repeating this, but is very important. If you ignore Sounder and just look at the buses it resembles a commuter pattern with Tacoma being a suburb. There is very strong ridership peak direction, and weak ridership outside of it. Even though Sounder is poaching bus ridership, it still resembles a peak route.
If you were ignorant of Sounder, and were just looking at the bus ridership, you could make a case for some sort of regional rail system but only during peak. The rest of the day you won’t get many riders, simply because you don’t get many riders now. Not from Tacoma.
The other places are more of a mystery simply because unlike Tacoma, they lack midday express bus service to Seattle. The 594 runs every half hour, and it will get you to Seattle faster than the train. There is nothing like that for Kent. Sound Transit offers them nothing. Your best bet is the 150, which runs every 15 minutes, but takes close to an hour. An express would take about a half hour, even if it stopped at Tukwila along the way. A train would be a little faster, but extremely expensive. You can’t possibly match the frequency of the 594, let alone the 150. Run it every hour and you run across the same problem as with the midday train runs — a lot of people take the bus simply because it runs more often. You just won’t get enough riders on midday trains to justify the cost.
Sound Transit should run an all-day express from the other cities (Auburn, Kent, etc.) long before it dreams of running more trains.
“even japan/europe doesn’t run their trains that frequently.”
Caltrain runs every 20-30 minutes midday, and I think it plans to upgrade to 15. BART runs every 15 minutes on each branch, and some segments have 2-4 lines overlapping. The Dusseldorf S6 S-Bahn (Essen-Duesseldorf-Cologne) runs every 20 minutes midday, 30 minutes after 9pm, 60 minutes after 1am. PATH 33rd-Journal Square runs every runs every 12 minutes midday.
Half-hourly Sounder South would be an ideal and would transform mobility options in Kent and Auburn. But it’s hard to get there with BNSF’s high timeslot fees and the economic need for freight traffic.
I agree with Ross that Sounder today has limited utility. Its ridership is heavily commute focused and that is reflected in the data. It is not fast because it is essentially a freight train that just so happens to carry people. On the flip side it is very reliable, which balances out the mediocre schedule when compared to I-5 congestion of the AM/PM peak, exclusively. (An aside: the line’s diversion toward Puyallup is done at-speed, delivering a minor time penalty in favor of a better passenger railway; the multiple stops are what mainly inhibit speeds, followed by the speed limit and equipment). Especially if there was a real prospect that I-5 HOV lanes could be better managed for reliable travel, I’d invest in frequent buses there over anything Sounder. We have limited resources.
Unfortunately, Sounder needs a lot of money, planning, and stakeholder coordination to become something truly special. That hasn’t happened, and Sounder and the corridor it operates over have not been given their due consideration. It is a fluke that we even have the opportunity to discuss more trips (i.e., Covid-19). I believe the population of the line can support hourly all-day headways and, if it can be swung, those should be implemented using short trains. If I had sole power, I would first expand the breadth of the peak-hour window with additional 30-minute headways and explore equipment procurement options to quicken travel. Although they were popular, the original 20-minute headways complicated the relationship with BNSF because they decimate track capacity. More analysis should be given to the extent of triple track main needed to improve operations, if desirable. A major gap near Kent persists, and I suspect that extending the third track to west of Puyallup Station would allow for uninterrupted cargo movements. But once you get to civil scopes like the latter, you are playing a different game.
In a better Washington, the SPIRE regional rail plan would be a publicly financed megaproject, a transformation of the dual mainlines into Seattle for dedicated passenger and cargo operations. It is a great investment that will never come. Track capacity and precious rights-of-way are plainly wasted without it. The BNSF corridor, when electrified and modestly improved, can support commuter times as fast as 35 minutes from King Street to Tacoma Dome with lighter equipment and 100mph top speeds. Even after rounding that to 40 minutes, that would constitute a sea-change. Many buses don’t need to run at that point. Our Herculean effort would then be to build a rail tunnel from King Street toward Westlake and possibly beyond—RER style—with accompanying subterranean station(s).
It is fun to dream about it, and it has a lot of merit. Clean passenger rail in the core Valley cities and dangerous cargo out of them. Check. Very rapid and frequent rail transit in the South Sound with level boarding. Check. Corridor-wide grade separations. Check. Zero local emissions electric power. Check. Dedicated cargo movements between the ports and the cities. Check. An urban high-speed railway path into Seattle from points south. Check. It’s all there. The public even owns the railway from Nisqually to Tacoma Dome already.
Instead, we will build a $5 billion light railway from Federal Way to “Tacoma”—which, for some unexplained reason, must also terminate at the Sounder station by the Dome. That, and area highway expansions. What have we done.
I think Ross undervalues the benefit of running Sounder 15-min frequency vs 20-min frequency (this improvement in frequency should induce more total ridership, same as boosting frequency on a bus) but otherwise I agree with his points.
I’ve never opposed 15 minute peak headways. It is definitely something we should look at. It is quite possible that BNSF actually “blocks out” the entire period, which means running trains every 15 minutes or even 10 minutes might not cost much more than what it does now. It would definitely increase ridership — whether it is worth the money is a different matter. It is worth noting that the farther out you go, the less responsive ridership is to frequency (especially as you get more and more frequent). Either way, it is definitely worth investigating.
I think the best value is midday bus service. Sound Transit was planning on running the buses every 15 minutes to Tacoma which would make a huge difference. Going from 30 to 15 is a much bigger deal than going from 20 to 15 or even 20 to 10.
But the other locations need help as well. Puyallup, Sumner, Auburn and Kent all have similar ridership to Tacoma. That is where most of the Sounder ridership is coming from. Tukwila is a little lower, but also quite bidirectional*. Some combination of an all-day express would save those riders plenty of time. It would also boost Sounder ridership. Lots of people (about 10%) take the bus one direction and the train the other. The better the midday bus service is, the more attractive Sounder becomes.
* Tukwila gets almost as many riders heading away from Seattle than towards it. I don’t know where those riders are coming from. If they are coming from Kent and Auburn then a bus that served all three stations would work out well. This helps with crowding as well. Not that I expect a bus to be crowded, but for a trip like this the more room the better. Of course if these folks are from Tacoma then it becomes more challenging. I think it makes sense for Tacoma express buses to connect to Federal Way (when Link gets there) and then continue to Downtown Seattle. But I don’t think we can afford a Tacoma to Tukwila bus, which means riders would have a three-seat ride (likely the F, Link, 594). Not ideal, but we still aren’t talking about that many riders.
“It is not fast because it is essentially a freight train that just so happens to carry people.”
The speed problem is the route, not the train or track. I-5 goes straight to Tacoma, while the BNSF route detours via Puyallup. It runs at 79 mph, which is faster than I-5’s 65 mph speed limit. Those WSDOT upgrades would raise it to 110 if they’re ever implemented.
How can Ross undervalue something that will never happen? 15 or even 30 minute all-day Sounder will not only not happen in our lifetime, it will never happen. You are all debating an imaginary scenario that will never exist.
I assume they were discussing peak service, not all-day 15 minutes headways.
Mike, without referring to the plan, I’m fairly certain the 2006 Cascades LRP presumes 79 mph service through the Seattle suburbs and no faster.
Separately, of course a hypothetical I-5 alignment is faster than the one that exists through the valley cities. Instead, I was stating that the southerly run to Puyallup adds only a marginal increase in time while picking up several great stops. Otherwise, the route is excellent (minus some curves that could use widening).
Finally, Sam, agreed. Sounder could get hourly headways today, but 30s are off the table without a fully triple tracked main. That just isn’t in the cards at this time. Furthermore, if we had the option to add service, I would seek to expand the window of service, as opposed to inserting a trip in the existing schedule to reduce headways below 20 minutes.
“I’m fairly certain the 2006 Cascades LRP presumes 79 mph service through the Seattle suburbs and no faster.”
The LRP doesn’t get into specific segments; it just says the top speed would be 110 mph and the Seattle-Portland travel time 1.5 hours. That includes any segments that can’t increase due to level crossings or surrounding density.
Glenn, what’s the potential maximum speed of a train going through the crossings around Kent and Auburn without stopping?
110 mph is currently being operated by Amtrak through crossings in Michigan and Pennsylvania. So, they should be able to do at least that.
I think there’s been some discussion of what could be done to get the limit up to 125mph, but I don’t think anyone has attempted to go through the safety approval process yet.
How can Ross undervalue something that will never happen? 15 or even 30 minute all-day Sounder will not only not happen in our lifetime, it will never happen. You are all debating an imaginary scenario that will never exist.
It is really two different things. 15 minute peak service could easily happen. The trains run every 20 minutes now, so it isn’t a stretch.
In contrast, all day 30 minute train service is a fantasy. My point is that even if this were to happen it would not get a lot of people. Hourly is more realistic. But at hourly you start losing even more people to the buses (which frankly, don’t carry that many people). It just doesn’t work. Sounder has to carry a lot of people per train to be worth it. The more train service you add the higher the overall ridership, but the fewer people you get per train. Unless you reach some sort of tipping point where no one would bother to take the bus, which gets us back to the original fantasy.
It is really only Tacoma that has to deal with indirect routing. A few hundred thousand years ago Federal Way and West Seattle were an island. Mount Rainier erupted, and the lava filled in the water, and created a nice flat route for the train. But that means that the trains starts out by going southeast even though Seattle is almost due north. The freeway takes a more direct routing. Puyallup and Sumner are really not on the way as the crow flied, but they are for the railroad. Starting from Puyallup and Sumner though, the train is about as direct as the freeway (and that does include the places along the way).
Yeah, I was talking about 15 minute peak service, which is functionally just adding one additional roundtrip each peak hour.
Agree with everything Ross says here:
” It is definitely something we should look at. It is quite possible that BNSF actually “blocks outâ€? the entire period, which means running trains every 15 minutes or even 10 minutes might not cost much more than what it does now. It would definitely increase ridership — whether it is worth the money is a different matter. It is worth noting that the farther out you go, the less responsive ridership is to frequency (especially as you get more and more frequent). Either way, it is definitely worth investigating.”
Caltrain owns their ROW, so the comparison to Sounder is irrelevant.
Troy is right that Sounder’s technology is essential a freight train. That was my initial point about converting to new rolling stock would be faster & therefore better (not only faster travel times but potentially more trips for the same ROW easements).
One reason BNSF charges so much for Sounder is they do need to block out a huge chunk of the main line, in order for Sounder to not get stuck behind some slow moving freight train (see Amtrak Cascades).
As such, it’s hard to say how much they would charge for an additional train per peak period but the capacity should certainly be there.
As to whether that is worthwhile doing all day, keep in mind the Cascades long term plan is for half hour trains. At that frequency you might as well cancel Sounder and have local versions of Cascades stop at more stations, and schedule peak period trains to be something like Centralia to Everett or some such.
> As to weather that is worthwhile doing all day, keep in mind the Cascades long term plan is for half hour trains. At that frequency you might as well cancel Sounder and have local versions of Cascades stop at more stations, and schedule peak period trains to be something like Centralia to Everett or some such.
It’s a bit more complicated than that. The non-stop variants are easier for freight to accommodate because it leaves quickly. It’s already at over capacity if the train both stops at Tukwila and Tacoma for half-hour frequency (including all improvements). If one had the train stop at the intermediate stops like auburn, kent, you’d need even more improvements on top of what is suggested.
powerpoint outlines the capacity requirements:
https://wsdot.wa.gov/sites/default/files/2023-10/SDP%20public%20webinar%20-%20for%20web.pdf
The whole capacity thing on the BNSF alignment could be mooted by doubling UP. It can be done; the right of way is wide enough. It would probably require buying out the railroad side of a few blocks of homes in Pacific which would certainly be impacted by tripling the daily cohort of trains passing by, but how many million dollars is that? A couple score at most.
If ST owned the track it could essentially make it free for BNSF to go northbound and significantly lower BNSF’s southbound costs by letting UP go northbound for free as well. Maybe BNSF would say, “that’s still not good enough. We want ALL southbounds to be free, too” and they’d have to pay BNSF’s wheelage for the excess tonnage over the UP-free northbounds.
And UP is going to demand dispatching rights; they don’t play so nicely with passenger authorities as does BNSF, but they do host old C&NW scoots on three lines in Chicago and honor their responsibilities.
There are more costs to doubling UP other than just the trackway and signal bridges. At least five current grade crossings would have to be separated, probably by overhead bridges. There are a few places where there is already a switching lead on both sides of the trackway so the existing main might have to make a wiggle to fit within the ROW. But the whole thing should be well under a billion and it would improve freight haulage as well as make Sounder more reliable.
As Tom is alluding to, with regards to general operations improvements or even a megaproject like SPIRE, the problem with the area railways is political in nature, not one of technical feasibility. Transformative changes are possible, but we lack both a vision and commitment to deliver such change. You’d think that the recent interest in “ultra” high speed trains would compel review of something like SPIRE, but no, somehow we will build a new 220mph railway through Seattle suburbs instead.
We lack a strong grasp of the political hurdles as the concept has never been fully explored by the State. That is the likely political entity to execute such a project, if not a consortium of local governmental bodies and other stakeholders.
The UPRR ROW is generally 100-ft in width and that is sufficient for a full double or even triple-tracking now.
WL, that’s true, though the 250 serves Northup Way and the medical district as well, and crosses 405 twice. It would inconvenience people that are going to Northgate since they’d have to go through downtown Seattle on Link but would give better connections with Redmond, downtown Seattle, and areas to the south.
I certainly agree the current 255 doesn’t seem to be working well, and a lot of it probably comes down to limited frequency and unreliability with 520 and getting to UW.
WL: it’s actually easier to accommodate a slow train making all station stops, as that more closely aligns with current freight speeds on the line.
The problem with Sounder is even with all station stops, it’s fast enough to still require a much different operating scheme than most of the freight over the line.
> WL: it’s actually easier to accommodate a slow train making all station stops, as that more closely aligns with current freight speeds on the line.
These passenger trains aren’t going that “slowly� so it’s just about how much time slots they are taking up.
The master plan document itself talks about how adding express trains from Portland to Seattle are easier than ones that stop at “local stops� like Tacoma, Olympia etc… to add even more local stops of auburn and Kent at the most crowded area would exceed capacity
WL: the local Cascades stops take up a lot of space because either they have to be on the track closest to the station, or when they wind up on the outside track they have to block both inside and outside tracks. Both moves take quite a lot of space, either blocking both mains or blocking off enough space to move to the inside track and then back out.
However, the thing that really takes a lot of space is the passenger service is quite a bit faster than freight, so they can’t just play follow the leader. If they were operating Cascades at ≈50 mph and threw in a few station stops, they’d be operating about the same average speed as freight and the passenger trains would take up les track space.
Sounder stations don’t have the blocking multiple tracks problem as the platforms are separated. One track can be northbound and the other southbound and there’s no need to block both tracks to get to a station on the wrong side.
BNSF typically runs freight trains through there around 45 mph, but Sounder wants to operate at 79 mph, or nearly twice that. So, even with Sounder making all the station stops, a freight train ahead of it will still be in its way. Or, they put the freight train behind and have it block the next Sounder train? Doesn’t work either.
The only real solution is to just block off a whole time slot when Sounder is operating, or add more track.
Or, just tolerate having a lot of slop in the schedule.
It’s this last bit that’s expensive: to guarantee the schedule, freight has to be nearly absent from the line. Since Sounder is so heavily one direction, they can operate some freight on the counter-direction track, but they certainly can’t clog the line with slow moving steel walls.
The only real solution is to just block off a whole time slot when Sounder is operating, or add more track.
That was what I was getting at when it comes to rush-hour frequency. If what you are saying is true (and it probably is) than increasing frequency during rush hour may not cost BNSF much at all. Just to put things in perspective, here are the northbound times for the train as they leave the Tacoma Dome:
4:50, 5:15, 5:40, 6:00, 6:20, 6:40, 7:00, 7:20, 7:50, 10:25, 16:06, 16:30, 17:15
Thus there is a period between 5:40 and 7:20 where the train is running every 20 minutes. It is possible that a freight train is moving a little ways (and then being diverted onto another track) between passenger trains. Then again, maybe BNSF does nothing on those tracks during that period. If it is the latter, then increasing frequency wouldn’t cost BNSF anything, which means that it would in turn be cheaper to lease from them. It is possible the same is true for the “ends” (4:50 and 7:50). There is a 25 minute and half hour gap there. Again, that might be enough time for them to move trains from Tacoma to Auburn (in preparation for going over the pass) or the reverse. Having little gaps where they can shuffle things around may actually be quite valuable — I don’t know much about the field. But this is definitely something worth exploring. This is also reason number 73 why the railroads should be nationalized. If we owned the railroads it would be a matter of negotiating with no profit incentives. The freight railroad people would open their books to the passenger railroad people. Instead we are stuck negotiating with a company that has no incentive to tell us how much it would cost to add more runs.
It is worth noting that the midday and reverse peak runs carry very few people. Unlike the other runs, ridership on these trips have fully recovered from the pandemic. The problem is they weren’t that high to begin with. The midday run (leaving Tacoma at 10:25) reached a peak of 147 in December. The reverse-peak runs had highs of 105, 63 and 77 last year (which is a little better than the year before).
WL, re the 255, I know Metro didn’t propose any changes to it a couple years ago with the East Link Connections project, but I wonder if it would make sense sending it to Bellevue TC instead of U-District, either on the 556 pathway on 112th, or Bellevue Way to get some more walkshed. That would give another connection between Kirkland and Bellevue, and even without 520 traffic would save ~10 minutes vs going all the way to the U-District, which Metro could put into getting the frequency back up.
The 250 (Redmond Kirkland Bellevue) already goes to Bellevue and future rapidride K will head to Bellevue as well from kirkland
I live in Kirkland. If the bus network forced me to detour to Bellevue to reach anywhere in Seattle, I would stop riding the bus. The time it takes the 250 to go from Kirkland to Bellevue gets the 255 all the way from Kirkland to UW station.
asdf2, one thing that struck me looking at the ridership dashboard is that the 245 and 250 both have about the same ridership as the 255 at this point, despite the 255’s frequency and connection with a Link station. I’m not an Eastsider (though I do visit), but after seeing that it does seem to me that something with the 255 needs to change. Sending it back to downtown Seattle would almost certainly come at the expense of frequency, and probably more ridership, but are there other options besides that? Maybe throw the resources into improving frequency on the 250 when the full ELE opens, since it would be connecting two Link stations?
something with the 255 needs to change.
The issues surrounding the 255 will change. Link will become more reliable (already has). Frequency on Link will increase as soon as East Link is finished. The 520/Montlake Bridge work will wrap up sometime this year. As a result, travel will improve dramatically for those trying to get from Kirkland to various places in Seattle (including the UW).
I think you can make a really good case that Metro should have waited to make this change until the 520 work was done. But at this point I think it makes sense to just keep things the same. Things will get a lot better fairly soon.
The 250 should run more often, but it not at the expense of the 255. I think part of the problem is that there’s just not enough service hours to go around, but also because too much service budget is going to geographic coverage in areas with low ridership potential, rather than running the core routes more often. The 250 should also be straightened at South Kirkland Park and Ride, stopping on the street, next to the park and ride, rather than in the park and ride, itself. That would not only save operating costs, it would also save riders time by speeding up trips.
The 250 should also be straightened at South Kirkland Park and Ride, stopping on the street, next to the park and ride, rather than in the park and ride, itself. That would not only save operating costs, it would also save riders time by speeding up trips.
Those are the kind of little changes that can really add up. A lot of the various problems (like congestion) are out of Metro’s hands. But routing is not.
Absolutely! The 255 also should not do a loop-de-loop through the P&R, and just use the existing stops on 108th. Generally there’s 0 riders to pick up, and I think the most I’ve ever seen is 4.
I hope Ross is right, and the 520 and Link messes have combined to just temporarily hurt the 255, fortunately we won’t have to wait long for confirmation.
Weren’t you people just complaining that Stride won’t detour into TIBS?
Weren’t you people just complaining that Stride won’t detour into TIBS?
That is different. In the case of Stride, there will eventually be a freeway station. Once that is done, the bus will easily stop there (like it does at Mountlake Terrace and various places along 520). The question is, what do you do until then? Go into the station or skip it entirely? I think most people want to serve it, even though it means a considerable delay for other riders.
In this case riders have to walk a short ways from their car to the bus stop. Buses should only go into a parking lot like this if they are ending there. Same thing goes for the Swift at Aurora Village. Right now the bus ends there, so it doesn’t matter that it goes into the park and ride. But once it is extended to 185th it should stop on the street, not do an extra loop through the parking lot. It is a judgement call, of course, but making a big detour is usually not worth it.
> Weren’t you people just complaining that Stride won’t detour into TIBS?
Did they decide on skipping TIBS for the interim Stride 1 configuration? I thought they discussed just heading there anyways and incurring the 6 minute penalty, since they couldn’t build the inline station there for now with the fish culvert issue.
Anyways it would be bit hilarious for this brt to go from Burien to South Renton TC and then bellevue. Missing seatac, southcenter, tukwila sounder station, downtown renton, the landing and factoria.
> The 255 also should not do a loop-de-loop through the P&R, and just use the existing stops on 108th. Generally there’s 0 riders to pick up, and I think the most I’ve ever seen is 4.
The South Kirkland P&R? I ride the 255 regularly (from the downtown area) and that stop is one of the busiest ones on the line.
I would love if the 255 was straightened out at the South Kirkland P&R, but 108th is a steep hill with narrow sidewalks and low visibility. I think crossing the street at the P&R would be pretty dangerous. Southbound buses could probably stop on 108th but unless the intersection is redone I’d be wary of moving the northbound bus.
The northern end of the 255 should probably route through the mall on 120th instead of Totem Lake TC; there’s tons housing on that street and the mall itself is a major destination.
It’s good to see a link to an ST article where I see DT (or someone who sounds exactly like him) is doing his usual thing in the comment section.
Also, something I’ve been wondering about lately, with the East Link Starter Line about to begin operation soon, and that is Sound Transit is obviously aware of the most dangerous and deadly spots along Link’s 1 Line path. It has all the data of what happened, where, etc. I wonder if they’ve taken what they’ve learned, and applied it to the ELSL, to try to predict its most dangerous and deadly spots for cars and pedestrians. For example, if MLK and Alaska is a known dangerous spot for pedestrians, is there any place that’s comparable along the starter line? Same with cars accidents.
Or, has any commenter here ever noticed a particular spot or intersection along the starter line and thought it looks unsafe, and it’s only a matter of time before an accident happens? I would guess that some sections of the Bel-Red area might not be particularly safe, but the one thing that might help keep accidents down in that area is the lack of density (at least for the near future).
d.p. was a commentator in the early 2010s. He was heavily pro-urban network. Think Lazarus’ love of metros, Ross’s love of close station spacing, Jarrett’s understanding of how people in walkable cities take a lot of transit trips to everywhere, Ross’s and Jarrett’s respect for BRT and frequent buses, DT’s prolific writing that that sometime overwhelmed comment sections, George Carlin’s swearing, and DT’s ad hominen attacks. He got a lot of warnings for months and was finally banned or left. He moved back to Boston, and popped back occasionally a couple times to say something, but then vanished. He may have continued reading STB, and may still be reading.
He was from Boston and talked about the T. He lived in Ballard near 24th. He coined the term “Real Ballard”, referring to the high-pedestrian, transit-oriented population and buildings between 24th and 17th. He saw the opening of the D and 40. He thought the RapidRide should have been in the 40’s corridor because that’s where the Real Ballard ridership is. Metro chose 15th over Leary/24th because it was ready for redevelopment and went straight north to 85th: it assumed the new development would eventually have more riders than Real Ballard. d.p. preferred waiting for the 40 in the high-ridership area rather than having the D’s next-arrival display and higher frequency. (The 40 was initially half-hourly or hourly evenings.)
Metro saw the dilemma between 15th and 24th, and eventually resolved it by upgrading the 40 to RapidRide too, but that got dashed by Move Seattle’s overoptimistic budgeting and the pandemic, so now SDOT is just doing “sub-RapidRide” street improvements.
d.p. was the one who convinced me that an underground 45th line could zigzag down to central Fremont and up to 46th & Aurora and still have good travel time , because underground you can ignore the street constraints. He also showed how a few stations between Ballard and the U-District could replace the 44.
His comparison of the DC Metro vs a Link-like network superimposed over DC is a microcosm of d.p’s philosophy.
It’s interesting seeing the old commentators’ names. Some of them are still here, but most of them have been replaced by others.
Sam, you must have been around when d.p. was here, weren’t you? You didn’t have the title T1 (Troll Number 1) yet, and we didn’t know about your brilliant Nobel Prize winning breakthroughs until they started piling up, but it seems like you’ve always been around, like the ghost of the comments section. Come to think of it, that’s another remarkable achievement. T1 managed to outlast two problematic commentators without getting banned. What do you want your prize to be?
dp got banned by Martin H Duke and Frank C, if I remember right.
It was Martin H Duke if I remember. He got tired of spending so much time every night moderating d.p.’s comments (which means cutting unacceptable content and replacing it with “[ah]” or such — a labor-intensive process), that he finally said enough. Frank may have been involved but not that I heard. Still, it’s natural he might have consulted with Frank for a second opinion before doing it.
Mike, not 45th and Aurora, but yes, 45th and Wallingford. Aurora is only two blocks from Fremont. Trying to accommodate the sharp turn would push the station west of Fremont, away from the densest part of the neighborhood.
And you could have a station at 40th and Stone along the way to 45th and W.
Mike, any thoughts on potential train/car or train/pedestrian danger spots along the ELSL?
d.p. was and hopefully is great. He was not a problematic commenter.
He lived on old Ballard Avenue NW.
Metro held two-stage public processes to select the alignments of lines B, C, and D. (Metro and ST held one for Route 522 as well). I agreed with d.p. on the D Line alignment, but the public voted overwhelmingly for 15th Avenue NW. Small “d” democracy is important. Route 40 was designed to complement the D Line; it does.
Note that SDOT did not hold much public process for the G and J lines. Is a radial R Line really optimal? With new Link stations, I doubt it.
> Note that SDOT did not hold much public process for the G and J lines.
are you saying they didn’t do enough studies? They’ve had public comments and studies for a decade.
Or are you talking about prioritizing a different line/alignment?
> Is a radial R Line really optimal? With new Link stations, I doubt it.
I’m always a bit confused by people wanting to truncate south seattle bus routes as if they are underperforming badly. Or at least provide a more solid argument. Currently the 7 has the second highest ridership out of all the king county metro lines below the E. Perhaps the 106 could be eliminated if there were more infill stations, but then that’d slow down others on the link so the bus remains.
I communicated with David (d.p.) via email for a while after he moved back to Boston. He got pretty busy with other things in his life, so eventually it took longer and longer for him to respond. I haven’t heard from him for a while, and the last couple times I reached out he didn’t reply. I think he is fine, I think he has simply moved on. He was one of the most knowledgeable people on the blog when it came to transit and transit issues. He suffered no fools though, and got into it with a few commenters, including Martin Duke, who had taken over the blog from Bruce Nourish. Martin and David largely agreed on what rail should be built, but Martin was always more forgiving when it came to Sound Transit. David — having seen this movie before — was much adamant about stopping it before it was too late.
None of the various problems that have occurred would surprise David. I think the biggest flaw is epitomized by Tacoma Dome Link though. Here is Tacoma, a charming but fairly low density city that has struggled in the past but appears to be rebounding nicely, lead by a revitalized downtown. Transit is terrible, and what folks there need more than anything is just more service. But instead of spending money on that, they are spending a money on a hugely expensive mass transit system that will connect to the outskirts of town. A bizarre combination of light rail, commuter rail and a metro — somehow failing at all three. It doesn’t have the low cost and stop spacing of light rail. It doesn’t have the speed or low cost of commuter rail. It doesn’t operate like a regular metro — the stop spacing and destinations are all wrong.
Yet it is not unique in its failure to provide what the area needs, despite the really high cost. Again, we’ve seen this before.
> Is a radial R Line really optimal? With new Link stations, I doubt it.
I’m always a bit confused by people wanting to truncate south seattle bus routes as if they are underperforming badly.
It isn’t about performance. Various routes that perform well should be changed. You can’t look at a route in isolation. We aren’t talking about a truncation they way that buses like the 73 were truncated at Link stations. We are talking about a rearrangement of buses that perform well (the 7 and 48).
It would work like so: Extend the 48 down to Rainier Beach. Then truncate the 7 at Mount Baker Station. This has been considered for quite some time. It was part of Move Seattle (Corridor 4). Riders from the south end who want to continue on Rainier would have an easy transfer to the 7 (a same stop transfer). Riders heading downtown could either take that option, or transfer to Link. Transferring at 23rd will be easier and a lot more pleasant than the transfer at Rainier (under the freeway).
From a rider standpoint, I see the advantages. The corridor is solid. There is a strong cultural tie between the areas that would be connected with the new 48. The three historically black high schools in the city (Rainier Beach, Franklin and Garfield*) all lie on that corridor. The buses run east-west through the Central Area (and are or should be frequent) which means that you have a two-seat ride to the various hills (First, Cherry, and Capitol). Some of those connections are a two-seat ride anyway (via the 60/streetcar) although this would be better in most cases (even if you fixed the Broadway situation).
On the other hand, it has some weaknesses. People aren’t likely to transfer to Link to get downtown. The existing 7 is more frequent, and a new 7 would be more frequent. Thus you are forcing a transfer onto another bus for a fair number of riders. You add a one-seat ride to the UW, but that is actually far enough away that a Link connection would be worth it. In other words, of the two big destinations — UW and downtown — it makes more sense to transfer to get to the UW, and stay on the bus to get downtown simply because downtown is a lot closer than the UW. If you are headed to the East Side it is better, but only a little bit.
I can see the merit, but there are probably a dozen things I would change first. There may also be logistical reasons for the split. If the 7 is shorter, it can better be through-routed to another frequent bus. That might tip the balance in its favor.
* Cleveland and Sealth might lay a claim to be part of that club.
“Martin Duke, who had taken over the blog from Bruce Nourish”
Not Bruce Nourish. STB is descended from Frank Chiachiere’s Orphan Road blog, which also focused on transit and land use, and there was somebody else as main editor, maybe Adam Parast, and Ben Schiendelman. I don’t recall Bruce writing articles until later.
By the way, Bruce Nourish, Mark Dublin, and VeloBusDriver all were or had been Metro drivers.
“Extend the 48 down to Rainier Beach. Then truncate the 7 at Mount Baker Station. This has been considered for quite some time. It was part of Move Seattle (Corridor 4).”
I’ve always had reservations about this. It breaks the unity of south and north Rainer. There’s a continuous line of overlapping trips and destinations all along Rainier and Jackson. That’s why the 7 has so much more ridership than the 48. Restructuring it this way would break the unity of north and south Rainier. Having two different routes each serve half of Rainier would make the network more complicated. People in south Rainier would have to trade all the many destinations in north Rainier and Jackson for an almost residential-only area on 23rd going on for miles before it reaches the U-District. The only significant thing in between is Garfield HS. Some people may want to go there, but I don’t think most people. Surely not even a fraction of the people who want to go to the many destinations in north Rainier and Jackson. So you’d be asking them to trade an excellent route for an abstract experiment that may not pan out. I suspect it was concerns like this that led Metro and SDOT to withdraw the 23rd-Rainier concept.
Just a note that the 9X is a radial, limited stop route on Rainier Ave too. And a note that Link on MLK followed the same route as an extended 48 or an extended Route 8 in earlier times before University Link extension opened in 2016. It’s just never earned “RapidRide� consideration and instead Netro keeps weakening its frequency and service hours.
With Judkins Park opening soon, I was disappointed that Metro didn’t put any ideas out there for a limited stop route to better overlay with Route 7.
Finally, I think a good case for either moving the Mount Baker Transit Center could be made or reducing the number of routes that terminate there could be made in general. It’s no longer a hub but is instead part of a longer densifying corridor that runs from Jackson to Columbia City — and there are no buses to nearby Beacon Hill or SODO from there. The only way to transfer south of there is to cross Rainier Ave. It works okay as a transit hub but it’s not great as it was intended for an earlier transit system (before Link).
> It’s no longer a hub but is instead part of a longer densifying corridor that runs from Jackson to Columbia City — and there are no buses to nearby Beacon Hill or SODO from there.
I did see a funny idea to move route 50 to mt baker in the remix maps. Though it was kinda a circuitous alignment coming from columbian way then north on 38th
Just curious is spokane street/mcClellan street too steep for busses?
“Just a note that the 9X is a radial, limited stop route on Rainier Ave too.”
I thought radial routes came from downtown; the origin of the “radius”. The 9 doesn’t go downtown, it goes to Broadway, so it’s a crosstown route. It crosses the radial east-west routes like the 2, 3, 4, 11, and 12. The 9 is also a kind of north-south grid route since it runs parallel to downtown.
The difference between the 9 (Rainier-Broadway) and the 48 extension (Rainier-23rd), is that the 9 exists because of the heavy requests for a route from Rainier to the hospitals and the Broadway shopping district. I have yet to hear of any demand for a route from south Rainier to 23rd, so it seems like the tail wagging the dog.
“With Judkins Park opening soon, I was disappointed that Metro didn’t put any ideas out there for a limited stop route to better overlay with Route 7. ”
Where do you want the limited-stop route to go? The only corridor I can see is the 9, and the 9 already exists. I’ve long thought the 9 should run all day and be more frequent, to unify upper Broadway, lower Broadway, and Rainier. Metro has always shortchanged lower Broadway. The 9 only appeared later. The 60 detours to 9th between Madison and Yesler. When the 9 got all-day service it wasn’t very frequent. The streetcar only goes north to Denny and terminates. You can’t take the streetcar to destinations north of Denny or south of Jackson because it stops serving that corridor. You’d have to transfer to another route, or take another route in the first place, but you can’t take another route because the 9 is peak-only and the 60 detours to 9th, so you have to workaround all these.
I think the 9 was reduced to peak-only to avoid competing with Link, so that people wouldn’t take the 9 and that would lower Link’s ridership. But a Broadway-Rainier route is so useful, especially a limited-stop one, that they should run it all day, at least every 30 minutes if not 15. And that would serve Judkins Park Station.
“Just curious is spokane street/mcClellan street too steep for busses?”
McClellan Street isn’t. When Link started, the community clamored for a Beacon Hill-Mt Baker route on McClellan and got it. That took service hours that were going to go to the brand-new 50. Some people in the eastern part of the valley wanted a P&R on MLK so that they could drive to the station; they argued they couldn’t access it otherwise because east-west bus service was nonexistent (before the 50) or minimal (after the 50). The 50 was going to be that bus service. But then hours were diverted to the dubious Beacon Hill-Mt Baker route, and the 30-minute 50 proposal became 45 minutes or such, so that’s not much for east-west service or an incentive not to drive.
“ I thought radial routes came from downtown; …�
You’re correct Mike. I should have called it a crosstown route! I was thinking “crosstown� but wrote @radial.
I read suggestions about rerouting Route 7 to Boren. Just promoting Route 9X and swapping 7 buses for 9X buses would accomplish most of this. I realize that 9X is diesel or battery and Route 7 is caternary wire, so that has to be considered. I would love to see every other 7 bus be a 9X bus instead.
An added benefit is that Route 7 buses could run into Skyway while Route 9X buses could terminate at Rainier Beach.
[Ed: Respelled the last sentence to what I think Al meant.]
I confirmed it with a source I trust — Taylor Swift will NOT be attending Community Transit’s Orange Swift dedication on March 30th. Apparently she was previously engaged.
So…instead of having Taylor Swift in a beautiful orange gown at the Orange Swift dedication, CT will have the second best thing — a Link LRV in the background!
No word on whether or not Taylor Swift will endorse Orange Swift from the press box at this weekend’s Super Bowl.
Very funny!
Seriously though: Has CT ever looked into developing a mutually beneficial marketing campaign? I bet that a Warhol-like image in the different line colors (take a black-white image and make it orange-white, then blue-white) would sell well on merchandise and make tons of money for both! Or maybe ad campaigns can change the words of her songs like “tap it off�, or “you can ride with me�!
Or maybe we can rename a primary color “taylor� and make that one of the lines!
@Al S,
Wow. Someone on this blog actually has a sense of humor. I’m impressed. Thank gawd for small blessings.
And, yes, “Taylor� actually is a color. Sort of a purplish violet thing. So it would fit in nicely with CT’s current colors.
Not sure though how the CT legal department would take to “Swift Taylor�. Normally the “guys� with their law degree hanging on their office wall don’t have much of a sense of humor about such things.
But hey! Worth asking the question.
Taylor was the brand name on an ornate thermometer/humidity meter we had on the wall when I was s child. I called this instrument “the Taylor”.
SDOT finally announced the FAB lanes. They are starting construction now and finishing in 2025. I’ll inline the important parts below, but feel free to just click on the link.
## news
> As part of the Route 40 Transit-Plus Multimodal Corridor (TPMC) project, we’re launching the first “Freight-and-Bus Only Lanes� (FAB lanes) in Seattle as a one-year pilot program.
> To keep freight moving reliably along Westlake Ave N, a major truck street, we’re piloting new FAB lanes. People driving freight vehicles over 26,000 pounds (about the size of a garbage truck, large box truck, or semi-truck) will be able to use bus lanes to travel along the corridor. Commercial loading activities will only be permitted in designated locations separate from the FAB lane.
> By adding FAB lanes to the project, we expect to reduce travel times and improve trip reliability for transit and freight along the Route 40 corridor. We have a goal of reducing peak transit travel times by 5% to 10% and making the time between buses more consistent so riders can rely on trips to take about the same amount of time, no matter the time of day.
> After the FAB lanes are installed and construction is complete in 2025-2026, people driving will still be able to make right turns into driveways, parking lots, and intersections to access their homes and businesses.
* Convert one northbound travel lane on Westlake Ave N to a FAB lane between Aloha St and where the Aurora Bridge crosses over Westlake Ave N.
* Convert one southbound travel lane on Westlake Ave N to a FAB lane between Blaine St and Aloha St.
* Travel lanes on the Fremont Bridge remain the same as today.
https://sdotblog.seattle.gov/2024/02/07/freight-and-bus-only-lanes-route-40-project/
## my thoughts
I think it’s kinda interesting/useful, I’ve never really heard about a freight and bus lane before. I guess closest example I can think of is at ferry/airports where they have dedicated lanes. Though it seems a bit of a niche use case as if the truck traffic is too high then it kinda defeats the purpose of the FAB. But on the other hand if the truck traffic is too low then no one is asking for it.
Anyways I guess if it placates the industrial council a bit and allows more bus lanes to be built it’s somewhat alright. I’m a bit tepid to wholeheartedly endorse this strategy though.
Anyways the second area, it looks like might be implemented are for rapidride D. Though back then they were peak only bus lanes with the rest of the time being parking so it was more useful to convert them to transit and freight. Now they are bus lanes for expanded hours so I’m not quite sure this is really helping transit if some 15th ave freight and bus lane were implemented
I googled a bit and it seems this was originally studied all the way back in 2019 by the UW urban freight lab (when the sr-99 was closed)
> described a Freight-only lanes pilot study on Elliott Ave and Spokane St respectively. The conditions on Elliott Ave preclude this study, and the first attempt to fund Spokane St pilot via grant was declined.
The other area talked about was
> The group felt that a further case study along 15th and Elliott or along NB SR 99 near Dearborn with a longer test section and clear signage would provide more meaningful results in the future.
https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/SDOT/FreightProgram/SFAB/Presentations/20190521_SFAB_Presentation_SDOT_Draft_FMP_%20Implementation.pdf
re Westlake Avenue North FAB lanes: as the BAT lane function will still be needed, how will they be signed? General-purpose traffic will still need to turn into and out of side streets and the parking on the eastside of Westlake Avenue North. Sorta simultaneous BAT and FAB. FAB-BAT lanes?
Well technically BAT stands for business access transit lanes if they continued the moniker it’d be FAT for freight and transit lanes but understandably that is not a very popular acronym.
I guess one could call it FABAT
Freight And Business Access Transit lanes
Or BATT
Business access transit, trucks lane? :D
@WL,
Bus And Rapid Freight lanes?
And I thought moving “freight� was a form of “business�. Why both a “B� and an “F� for the same thing?
> And I thought moving “freight� was a form of “business�. Why both a “B� and an “F� for the same thing?
The “business access” means specifically right turns into businesses’ (well and resident’s houses sometimes)
The “freight” means one can continue moving straight along it.
@WL,
Where I grew up kids could get their driver’s license at age 13. The main stipulation being that they could only use that license while doing agricultural “work�.
All the 13 year old kids would just through a bale of hay in the back of the family car and drive their friends around. Problem solved!
So if all I need to do is through a can of soup in the trunk so I can claim “freight� and use the BARF lanes, then you better believe I will do it.
mhmm I kinda assumed you knew how our existing BAT lanes worked so I didn’t bother going into detail.
But anyways the Freight part is only for actual trucks, not pick up trucks lol
@WL,
The old time scam in Seattle was to get truck plates for your car so you could park in truck zones downtown. Was totally legal at the time.
There are multiple ways to skin a cat.
@Lazarus
As I said above “People driving freight vehicles over 26,000 pounds (about the size of a garbage truck, large box truck, or semi-truck) will be able to use bus lanes to travel along the corridor. Commercial loading activities will only be permitted in designated locations separate from the FAB lane.”
I guess if one really wants to buy a box truck for their commute, they’ll be able to use the freight lanes. I guess there might be a couple rich people living in ballard/fremont commuting to downtown who do that, though finding parking will be a bit of fun downtown.
@WL,
“ People driving freight vehicles over 26,000 pounds……..will be able to use bus lanes to travel along the corridor.�
Seems like a loop hole large enough to drive a box truck through, and some people certainly will.
And, yes, I do have occasional access to such a vehicle. I can certainly see myself driving the big rig up to the store to save time instead of wasting time in the hybrid.
And why are small businesses excluded from this? Seems discriminatory.
The “B” stands for business as in customers and workers turning into driveways.
“All the 13 year old kids would just through a bale of hay in the back of the family car and drive their friends around.”
Sounds like in the early days of Covid where some cities let people out only every other day for essential shopping, so people would carry a shopping bags so they could pretend to be on the way to the store when they “accidentally” happened to meet their relatives on a street corner.
In New York City they are labeled “Only Truck Bus” or “Bus Truck Only” (depending on how you read it).
The legislation for the RapidRide G and Lynnwood Link bus restructures just dropped. We’ll have articles tomorrow or as soon as they’re ready. Please hold comments on these until then.
“Mike, any thoughts on potential train/car or train/pedestrian danger spots along the ELSL?”
(ELSL=East Link Starter Line)
The level crossings are in Bel-Red, which I’ve seen, and in south Redmond, which I don’t know where they are. When ST first proposed lowering them to the surface to redirect some capital money to to the City Hall tunnel Bellevue was begging for, I talked with an ST rep at an open house. The open house was at Bellevue City Hall and focused on 120th and 130th stations, and I didn’t know about the Redmond ones then, so we didn’t get into them. I said the Bellevue ones would cause train slowdowns and might cause conflicts with cars/peds. He said they’re at low-volume intersections so conflicts would be minimal.
I also objected to the surface parking lot at 130th. He said it’s a temporary land use until Spring District growth reaches that area, when it could be converted to TOD. I said having a P&R would create a constituency that would demand it remain forever. He didn’t think it would be a problem. I had my doubts about that.
Where are the street crossings on Redmond Link? Because I thought that extension was 100% grade separated. Or are we just talking ped crossings at Marymoor Station?
Admittedly I don’t get over that way much because I don’t dress well enough, but last time I drove that stretch I didn’t see anything that looked like a future street crossing.
There are two street crossings between 130th and Northup Way. And, of course, 130th and Bel-Red Road themselves are street crossings. So four total.
Here’s a satellite photo of an at-grade section in the Bel-Red neighborhood that’s an area of concern with me. On the left, starting at 130th Ave NE & NE Spring Blvd, following the tracks to 136th Pl NE and NE 20th St, there’s a few spots (the station, the curve in the middle, and at 20th St.) where I think an accident will most likely will happen. But, at least for the time being, there’s hardly any nearby residential, so that should make accidents a rarity.
https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6258307,-122.1613309,708m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu
Lazarus, since you are one of this blog’s biggest light rail fans, I hope you do come over to this side of the lake to ride the starter line when it opens, and then write here about the experience. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts. One observation I have in occasionally observing the starter line in action is just how slow it seems to be moving at times. Especially from East Main to Spring District. I guess it’s because there are so many turns and so many stations packed together, it’s either slowing for a turn, or slowing to approach a station, or both. Anyway, I hope as the drivers get more used to the line, and gain more confidence, they can safely increase the speed a little.
“He said they’re at low-volume intersections so conflicts would be minimal.”
I’ve mentally made this brush-off myself in the past, but as I consider it, I’m not sure I’d classify Northup at 136th Pl as ‘low-volume’.
Meanwhile, the Bike Bellevue lane-diet proposal includes removal of one westbound lane of Northup from 140th westward:
https://bellevuewa.gov/city-government/departments/transportation/planning/pedestrian-and-bicycle-planning/pedestrian-bicycle-implementation-initiative/bike-bellevue
While I wouldn’t expect the pause for a train to be all that long here (as the train isn’t near a stop), I suppose the potential exists for a single lane of westbound Northup traffic clogging at 136th to spill into the 140th intersection. I hadn’t considered this before — wasn’t thinking about Link and Bike Bellevue at the same time.
Yes, but Redmond Link extension is from Redmond Tech Center to DT Redmond. And I don’t think there are any street crossings in that section.
So I think that is the source of the confusion.
My reply above was intended to target just the Bellevue portion of Mike’s post. I’m also drawing a blank on at-grade crossings of Link anywhere in south Redmond, with the only exceptions being the stations themselves.
For Redmond Technology Station, I’ll quote this article, next to video ‘V. Zooming over the Redmond Technology Platform’:
https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2023/09/trainspotting-with-npi-light-rail-vehicles-roll-into-redmond-for-daytime-line-2-testing.html
“RTS uses a center platform configuration rather than platforms on either side. Riders can exit at ground level or by going up and over the tracks.”
Venturing a guess: for the starter line, trains can all use the western (i.e. SR 520) side of the center platform, so pedestrians won’t cross active tracks until the Redmond extension opens. The first video in this article shows a northbound test train entering Redmond Tech station on the western tracks:
https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2024/02/trainspotting-with-npi-follow-an-lrv-as-it-heads-into-redmond-technology-at-sunset.html
Overlake Village Station, by contrast, has separate platforms for each direction, with at-grade pedestrian crossings at each end of the platforms. (The adjacent ped/bike 520 overcrossing does not offer grade-separated access to the 520-proximate platform.)
Most of it is already completed, you can view it from google maps where the (most) at-grade crossings are.
130th ave
https://www.google.com/maps/place/130th+Ave+NE+%26+NE+Spring+Blvd,+Bellevue,+WA+98005/@47.6245802,-122.167736,210m/
136th pl ne
https://www.google.com/maps/place/136th+Pl+NE+%26+NE+20th+St,+Bellevue,+WA+98005/@47.6280002,-122.1582069,314m
overlake station (west bound platform at-grade crossing)
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Overlake+Village+Station/@47.6361048,-122.1406029,17.6z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x54906d886acecf4b:0x60d0fc86d87486f2!8m2!3d47.6361688!4d-122.1389552!16s%2Fg%2F11b7x1xy9v?entry=ttu
Marymoor village is a center platform with escalators exiting upwards (similar to mercer island station)
“Redmond Link extension is from Redmond Tech Center to DT Redmond. And I don’t think there are any street crossings in that section.”
The materials said southern Redmond, so I took that as between Overlake Village and Redmond Tech or Marymoor. It wasn’t specifically related to the Redmond Tech to Redmond Downtown construction phase.
It’s possible that “southern Redmond” was sloppy wording and they really meant between 130th and Overlake Village. Bellevue-Redmond Road goes deep into Bellevue. The Redmond-Bellevue border is somewhere slightly south of 24th (just south of Overlake Village Station) and zigzags in a complicated mess. So it’s possible that by “southern Redmond” they meant the 136th crossing. But it sounded like something further north, north of Overlake Village station. I’ve never seen the full track up there.
Yes, cars could back up into the interchange, but that would be illegal, just like any other interchange? I’m sure occasionally a car might inadvertently get caught in the intersection, but then the Link driver honks until the car scoots forward out of the way.
At this comment depth, it can be tricky to discern where a comment is being directed. I’ll try to answer anyway :-)
“Yes, cars could back up into the interchange, but that would be illegal, just like any other interchange?”
Right — for Northup and 140th, a typical ‘don’t block the box’ scenario. And even in the worst-case conditions I could come up with, this area would be far from the worst in Bellevue when it comes to this.
As for backups in the other direction — eastbound, clogging from 140th into 136th Pl, such that a car could end up on the tracks — wasn’t thinking about that, but I suppose it could happen (albeit at low probability IMO).
Which (I think) leads into the other question:
“I’m sure occasionally a car might inadvertently get caught in the intersection, but then the Link driver honks until the car scoots forward out of the way.”
I got to watch a train cross Northup at 136th today, and this seems reasonable. If I had to guess the train’s speed, it would be around 25 mph, unlikely any more than 30. As an Eastsider I’m new to scrutinizing train speeds, but my recollection is that at-grade trains tend to be assigned a speed limit no higher than the roadway they parallel (in this case 136th Pl).
Yes, I would imagine Link will run cautiously on that segment. Slow speeds is the tradeoff for cheaper ROW and better station access (130th station being completely at grade).
There were plans to widen 130th ave to 5 lanes. I’m not sure if they were shelved or not
I had forgotten about that. Looks like the plans are still up at least:
https://bellevuewa.gov/city-government/departments/transportation/projects/belred-street-improvements/130th-avenue-ne-belred-rd-to-ne-20th-st
Not sure about construction though. Personally I wouldn’t trust the dates listed on the website; lately my impression has been that Bellevue’s static web content is out-of-date all over the place.
Not surprising. 120th and 124th were already widened to 5 lanes as part of the Spring District upgrade. That seems like way overkill to me. 120th and 124th need more capacity than 23rd in Seattle? When 116th is right nearby? It sounds like a car-centric viewpoint, and not even trying to reduce the number of cars the emerging Spring District would have, as if this were the exurbs or Santa Clara sprawl. I thought this was supposed to be a compact mixed-use neighborhood next to a compact mixed-use downtown, not a big-box power center that everyone would drive to.
> . 120th and 124th need more capacity than 23rd in Seattle? When 116th is right nearby?
They are planning on adding a 520 to 124th interchange to allow westbound cars to enter bellevue without entering the 405/520 interchange
“Currently, the I-405/SR 520 interchange is significantly congested. This project will build a new on-ramp to eastbound SR 520 and a new off-ramp from westbound SR 520 at 124th Avenue Northeast, improving access to the Spring District and the medical district as well as downtown Bellevue and future East Link light rail. The project also includes a new SR 520 eastbound auxiliary lane from 124th Avenue Northeast to 148th Avenue Northeast and will realign the existing SR 520 Trail along westbound SR 520. The project will correct a SR 520 fish passage barrier at Goff Creek and improve water quality.”
https://wsdot.wa.gov/construction-planning/search-projects/sr-520-124th-avenue-ne-interchange-project
> It sounds like a car-centric viewpoint, and not even trying to reduce the number of cars the emerging Spring District would have, as if this were the exurbs or Santa Clara sprawl.
Lol, they kinda implemented bike lanes but couldn’t resist adding lots of parking lots and rexpanding other roads. I also like how they mention connecting east link as a “benefit” to the freeway interchange
I’m not too keen on the East Main double track pedestrian crossing to the Seattle-inbound platform. ST has already erected large crossing gates to warn pedestrians there!
I just don’t get why that station isn’t a center platform station to begin with, especially since that’s the transfer station for the planned 4 Line to Issaquah. Is it better to make every rider cross one track, or make half of the riders cross two tracks? I note that when train drivers pop out of tunnel they don’t appear to have an ability to see crossing pedestrians ahead of them in time to stop.
Perhaps the East Main Village project will extend the planned 112th pedestrian bridge to the southbound platform to offer a pedestrian path that doesn’t require crossing light rail tracks.
East Main station was planned before Issaquah Link got definitively into ST3.
The 4 Line was being talked about as part of ST3 starting in 2013. ST could have foreseen this as a possibility. I think at the time the thinking was that South Bellevue would be the transfer point. It still could be I guess.
Regardless, it’s downright dangerous to have a light rail train pop out if a curving tunnel and have a pedestrian crossing so close.
I think as the time the stations were designed, the Issaquah branch was expected to occur at the Wilburton station, as Link was to follow the Eastrail ROW on the east side of 405. Having Issaquah Link cross over 405 was a late decision, IRRC.
“ I also objected to the surface parking lot at 130th. He said it’s a temporary land use until Spring District growth reaches that area, when it could be converted to TOD. I said having a P&R would create a constituency that would demand it remain forever. He didn’t think it would be a problem. I had my doubts about that.�
At 300 spaces, I could see how there could be some pushback. It’s however not huge like South Bellevue or Marymoor.
I do think there is strategic value in having only surface parking initially as opposed to a garage. It provides a bigger footprint so that any eventual TOD can be bigger. The spaces could be incorporated into a shared parking strategy, or relocated into a future garage with a new TOD. It’s allowing for flexibility in the future.
I could also see how vehicle automation may someday eliminate the need for lots of park and ride spaces generally as new driverless cars could just automatically return to their home parking spaces. Maybe systems where many people don’t even own and store cars, and merely summon them from their smart phones may evolve.
American petrolheads not own a CAR!?!?!?!? Impossible.
Another document dropped, most of it isn’t too surprising but I’ll just recap most as I can’t remember what was already noted or not.
Update on projects in construction:
* East Link Starter Line: Simulated service started as
planned January 22, 2024.
* East Link (I-90 Corridor). Concrete track plinth demolition at 95% and reconstruction at 64% complete as of Jan. 29, 2024
* Downtown Redmond: Overall, 85.4% complete; completed 70% of the OCS pole installations; outfitting systems rooms with equipment.
* Lynnwood and NE 130th Street Infill Station: 97% complete (that percentage is about lynnwood excluding ne 130th station but that’s the title)
* Federal Way, completed the long span piers (the metal thingys) and now implementing the rail
* Lots of parking garages along south sounder
Interesting tidbit the Series 1 vehicles need to be adjusted for driving on the east link section
https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/ActiveDocuments/Presentation%20-%20Update%20on%20Link%20Projects%20in%20Construction%2002-08-24.pdf
claudia balducci added an item that sound transit should continue doing the long range planning, noting that even though ST3 has a long way to go it should still plan for the future — I guess we might get some fancy ST4 maps to armchair plan over (hopefully we are alive by then to use st4 lol :)
What does East King want in ST4? I haven’t heard anything.
Snohomish wants an extension to Everett College.
Pierce wants an extension to Tacoma Mall.
South King wanted the Renton-Burien line, which would depend on the Burien-West Seattle segment. But when the study came out that said it would have low ridership and high cost, they got very quiet. So do they still want this? If not, what else?
North King has factions that do and don’t want the West Seattle extension. And there’s the studied 45th line. And transit fans want a “Metro 8” line, and we’ve proposed a Ballard Link option that could do that (if it doesn’t continue south from Westlake). But ST has never acknowledged the other two as a possibility. There are also speculative thoughts of extending Ballard to 85th or Northgate, or from Northgate to Lake City and Bothell, or both. None of these seemed to have reached the point of a lot of people coalescing around them. 45th has gotten the farthest. Some transit fans think the West Seattle extension would be not much benefit for the cost and not worth voting for. What else is there? A speculative concept to Renton. ST hasn’t acknowledged that as a possibility either.
I think that the best way to get to an ST4 is to propose something very different than ST3. Mere Link extensions will not be exciting or beneficial enough for a majority voters — especially as the cost inflation going on with ST3 Link projects push the opening dates further away or get cancelled due to lack of funding.
I instead see the next big regional referendum containing both automation and faster trains. I also expect additive projects to correct eventual problems in the current system like station improvements and track additions. I can’t predict what those projects will ultimately be but with at least 25 years more of ST3 being approved we aren’t in any hurry.
@Al S,
If we ever get to an ST4, it will most certainly be the same basic tech. There simply is no compelling reason to change.
Changing tech would increase costs (and therefore reduce coverage area) without producing any real advantages.
Link level tech has the capacity, frequency, and reliability to serve the region well. Chasing higher speed doesn’t provide any tangible benefits when the stations are often just a mile apart, and higher capacity trains just results in lower frequency.
Additionally, people have become very enamored with Link and want more of it. You see this most obviously in the burbs where every little town wants to be connected to Link, but you also see it in Seattle where more and more neighborhoods want their own connection to the system.
And what would be the application for a faster tech be anyhow? An express line from DT Tacoma to DT Seattle? Even though those two destinations already are connected via Sounder and will soon also be connected by Link?
So how many votes would an ST4 package get when it only serves as an express between a limited number of destinations that already have service? While many other voters have zero service? Answer: very few votes.
Na, the name of the game for any ST4 package would be increased coverage using existing tech, with maybe some limited and targeted improvements in the existing system.
Al, yes to your proposals. And if Link is really going all the way to Tacoma, an inexpensive “Bypass” with one station should be in ST4, and diversion of Line 1 to it with conversion of Lines 1 and 2 to high floor cars and stations. The RV line can be connected to a better version of the CCC using real five-segment trams on the Third Avenue mall. It should still go to the airport at the south end, because many airport workers live along it nowadays.
Some RV trains could also go to Capitol Hill, though they’d have to be somewhat shorter to fit.
“If we ever get to an ST4, it will most certainly be the same basic tech. There simply is no compelling reason to change.”
I hope by “same tech” you’re not rejecting automation. That would enable much higher frequency at lower cost, every 2-5 minutes. That’s a compelling benefit for passengers. All that waiting 10 minutes for a train has no useful purpose: it’s just overhead like heat from an incandescent light bulb. We should minimize waste and inefficiencies like that, especially when it affects tens of thousands of people’s time for decades on end.
I was kinda hoping for some avenue brt. Like lake city way median brt, or aurora ave center lane brt. Fixing stride 1 with direct access ramps to southcenter and the landing would be great.
Ballard to uw to Bellevue to crossroads or issaquah could be a brt corridor. I guess bribe taking away parking spots for bat lanes along 45th by building parking garages hehe… for the Bellevue to crossroads I guess we’d need bat lanes on 8th. Not sure what could convince peeps. Or if that doesn’t work head south towards issaquah. Maybe a factoria inline freeway station etc….
Regarding a new rail lines. As Lazarus noted most likely simpler extensions say Ballard to crown hill, alaskan junction to white center, Everett to marysville? Or Redmond maybe to totem lake. Idk 25 years later if they are denser or if Kirkland wants to allow rail on the erc
assuming st3 actually pulls off building the Ballard link, there’ll be extra space there.
one would have to build the “AirPort Express down i5� but once it reaches tukwila one could either go east to Renton or south to Kent/Auburn.
I don’t even want to think about how hard it’ll be to electrify and deal with the existing freight if using the existing sounder corridor. (Was thinking like Caltrain or other Canadian ones converting commuter to light rail) It honestly might be cheaper to use the 167 median alignment if they built toll/hov lanes.
Anyways we’ll first see how st3 goes
@Mike Orr,
Automation will eventually come to Link, but it will come more in the form of self operating vehicles and not in the antiquated form of heavy rail type automation. And it will be phased-in over time as individual LRV’s in the existing fleet are retrofitted. It will happen even without ST4.
But automation will not make manna fall from heaven. It will be mainly used for cost and throttle management reasons.. And it won’t result in ultra low headways. We will already have 4-min headways (interlined) with manually operated Link, and there just isn’t that much reason to go lower.
The difference between a 2 min average wait and a 1 min average wait just isn’t that significant.
We could certainly put together a package of BRT lines (RapidRide, Stream, Stride, Swift) that would improve mobility and have good value. (I mean something more extensive than Stride 1/2/3 and Stream 1.) That’s what some of us have been saying should have been in Pierce in ST1/2/3, and we can draw them up for the other subareas. ST hasn’t been thinking about this approach. But we can put it together to offer ST as an alternative to more Link extensions. If ST starts outlining ST4, we can move on it. Otherwise there’s not much point in it, because ST4 may not be outlined until the 2040s or 50s or never, and by that time the trip patterns and needs may have changed.
> Otherwise there’s not much point in it, because ST4 may not be outlined until the 2040s or 50s or never, and by that time the trip patterns and needs may have changed.
I mean even before ST4, the cities throughout washington are planning/finalizing their transportation plans just like Seattle for the next 4~5 years. And the psrc and federal government are going to start reviewing grants afterwards
“ If we ever get to an ST4, it will most certainly be the same basic tech. There simply is no compelling reason to change.
“Changing tech would increase costs (and therefore reduce coverage area) without producing any real advantages.�
I think you are only thinking about Link, Lazarus. I am not.
Automation can be applied in all sorts of ways. Maybe it will be last mile driverless shuttles. Maybe it will be automated routing so riders don’t miss infrequent transfers. Maybe it will be automated buses in freeway median lanes. It’s a much bigger topic than driverless Link trains.
And it will take almost 90 minutes to go between Downtown Tacoma and Downtown Seattle on Link. Downtown Everett to Downtown Seattle will take at least 60 minutes and probably more. That’s approaching what the high speed rail advocates say we should have to Portland and Vancouver!
In contrast, mainly extending any of the post ST3 Link lines further won’t build much public excitement. Getting to Issaquah Highlands, Everett College and Tacoma Mall is just not exciting enough to convince a majority of voters extend taxes. Crown Hill and Westwood Village aren’t much better. And what new lines would build excitement for a “yes� vote? Even new lines like Ballard-UW and a Metro 8 Subway will be costly but not add much to travel speed for most trips. If all the referendum does is extend Link a few more stations, it will likely have tepid support and easily could be voted down.
Would any hypothetical ST4 package be affected by the SDOT future potential high capacity transit map? Both the one with red frequent/rapid ride bus lines as well as the one with link expansion corridors and sounder infill stations
Also would these corridors be popular? In the interim SDOT needs to fix their shit with the Denny way metro 8 situation. It’s such a relied upon route. But is it a route that works for rail service?
Also I do like the idea of sounder infill stations, as they allow for people to possibly get where they want without back tracking from king street station, however for intracity trips I feel like this may not have much effect without a more consistent all day schedule? I realize Angelinos say “nobody rides� metrolink (tbf many say the same for metro) but with hourly service restructure that may induce some trip patterns previously not possible
I agree with Mike that pierce transit would have benefited from BRT projects in each Sound Transit package. The streetcar in my opinion does not enhance mobility very largely in the city/county. Didn’t some sound transit packages at least partially fund some rapid ride projects in north king or am I mistaken?
@Al S,
Do you really think last mile driverless shuttles would build “excitement� in the electorate? I sincerely doubt it.
And do you really think automated buses in freeway lanes would build “excitement�? Na. This region has been doing various forms of BRT-Lite for decades now, going all the way back to Blue Streak, and all we really have to show for it is an alphabet soup of buses stuck in traffic. And at the end of the day people don’t care much if a person drives their bus or a computer. Computers don’t build excitement, at least not since the ‘70’s.
And adding automation to create better timed transfers won’t exactly build excitement either. The best timed transfer in the world is NO transfer. A one seat ride. That is what people prefer. But changing tech doesn’t eliminate transfers, it institutionalizes them. No excitement there.
And, at the end of the day, automated last mile shuttles, automated buses in freeway lanes, and automated timed transfers are no match for an old man in a Buick with a hat pulled down over his ears. Automation might work fine in theory, but it only takes one bad driver in an old Buick to crash the system. People know this. That isn’t excitement, it is dread.
Na, Link is working great and is highly successful. And automation will come to Link slowly, with or without a voter approved ST4.
The only real valid criticism of the Link system is coverage. It doesn’t go enough places (yet) and it doesn’t serve enough people (yet). But lack of coverage isn’t solved by changing technologies, it is only changed by increasing the size of the system.
But just wait. Next year we get ELSL and LLE — increased coverage! And in 2025 we get RLE and full ELE — increased coverage. And then of course comes FWLE and TDLE. More coverage.
So by the time a vote comes on any ST4 package, the voters are much more likely to be asking “Why not me too?�, and much less likely to be asking, “Why not something completely different and unproven?�
@Lazarus,
Typo: “This� year we get ELSL and LLE.
The future is almost here!
“New Tech” doesn’t need to a be a wiz-bang gadgetbahn. For example, electrifying Sounder creates real value, mostly by decreasing trip time through faster acceleration/deceleration, but the fundamental technology is not new. Same with BRT – there is a lot of basic, non-electronic technology that goes into high quality bus lines that the Seattle region has not yet implemented at scale; WL notes a few like center running (or contra-flow) bus lanes and direct access ramps; these technologies can be ‘simple’ conceptually but can still be major products from a civil engineering standpoint.
Lazarus misses the most important value of automation, which is to reduce operating costs, mostly labor costs, and therefore allow for increased spending elsewhere.
Blalucci aspires to be a county & regional leader, so I doubt she is thinking, “gee, what does my sub-area need” when she is advocating for an update to the long term plan. But for an initial list of projects for post-ST3, Renton will need major investment as Stride poorly serves the urban center, Kirkland downtown and Issaquah highlands are logical extensions of a Kirkland/Issaquah line (whether that lines ends up being a BRT or Rail line), and there is an opportunity to extend the Stride approach to the SR520 corridor (Kirkland and/or Redmond to UW and/or Seattle downtown). I imagine how Kirkland, Bellevue Factoria & Eastgate, and Issaquah will be served will be re-thought; the existing Link project has always struck me as more of a finance placeholder to serve those corridors rather than a firm commitment to a certain technology. And finally, ST can invest in “station access,” which is a broad enough category to fund a ton of work around bike lanes, pedestrian bridges, and various other nice-to-haves.
*Balducci
@AJ,
I am a big fan of electrification, and it does reduce trip times as you state. But whether or not it represents the best value for the buck is open to debate.
Value in transit systems is usually measured in ridership, and while saving 5 or 10% in trip time is a good thing, it’s hard to imagine such a time savings producing more new ridership than increasing the number of trains via either better frequency or more coverage time.
Adding more trains would almost surely add more riders to Sounder than reducing trip times, and that means adding more trains has higher value.
As per automation saving money, I have stated that many times before. But beware, many automated systems still retain the operator as a babysitter to perform certain mundane tasks and in case something goes wrong. Obviously the goal of a modern automated system would be to fully eliminate the operator and the babysitter, but only time will tell.
I do think Link will go to more automation someday, but it will be phased in gradually and won’t require something as large as ST4 to make it happen.
ST4 is most likely to be about more Link coverage and minor improvements.
“ ST4 is most likely to be about more Link coverage and minor improvements.�
If that is what’s chosen to be on the ballot, I just don’t think it will pass — at least not district-wide and maybe not even in North King.
It’s the dream of a new way to travel to many other places that drove ST3 support — which still was not a landslide . Moving forward, voters won’t be so easily allured by the hopeful dream, and will vote more based on real experiences on Link. The slow run times to distant places will instead permeate their thoughts and the remaining destinations unserved after ST3 won’t be very enticing.
Transit advocates that discuss ST4 today are looking for additional funds to complete a badly-budgeted ST3, and not to build additional system expansion.
I agree Link automation does not require a new vote. ST is authorized and fully funded within existing taxes for replacement of the current fleet with future generations, and a shift to automation as a part of the “Series 4” or “Series 5” procurement should, from a legal angle, be very straightforward.
I agree additional Sounder trips add more utility, but with the high cost of additional Sounder easements, at some point electrification will be the best value (in utility/cost). Also, in the context of 1) Pierce’s I5 express routes being truncated and 2) steady addition of Link infill stations, making Sounder ~10% faster becomes more compelling.
“Transit advocates that discuss ST4 today are looking for additional funds to complete a badly-budgeted ST3,�
Who are those people? Daniel Thompson? We aren’t discussing it. We’re talking about expansions beyond ST3. And we’re watching the board to see when it might be ready to consider ST4, and what they want in it. I’m not expecting them to do anything until the 2040s or 50s: they’ve got their plates full implementing ST3. They aren’t even finished with ST2 yet.
And ST3 uses all of the ST1+2+3 tax sources. They’ll do so until it’s finished and the bonds are substantially paid down. If ST3 finishes in 2045, it may take another ten years to free up enough money for additional construction. Anything more before that would require a new tax source on top of the existing ones. The current three-level rate is already high in people’s minds, so it would be harder to get a fourth one on top of it approved.
The whole concept of “a badly budgeted ST3” is pointless. The enabling legislation gives ST the right to continue taxation until it discharges the bonds for which the taxes were established. So far as I know, there was nothing in the vote which limited the amount of bonds to be sold, so if ST continues its Quixotic quest to build BART del Norte it can tax until 2060 to pay for it if necessary.
Tlsgwm can correct me if I’m wrong, but surely seems that’s the case.
Tom, my comment isn’t doubting the ability of Sound Transit to continue its ST3 taxes indefinitely. It’s merely about what ST4 would be containing.
The legislature debated HB 5528 in 2022 in response to the possibility that ST3 could not be fully funded. It’s pretty clear that the bill included funding assistance for completing ST3 faster. It’s also clear that many transit advocates raised the possibility by going to the legislature at a time when drastic scaling back of ST3 was a stronger possibility.
https://seattletransitblog.com/2022/01/11/sb-5528-gives-transit-power-back-to-voters/
The thread referenced new projects, for sure. But its catalyst was driven by the “restructuring� of ST3 to complete it given its badly budgeted list of projects. (Maybe I could have said badly estimated costs, but ST also ignored FTA guidance by building the ST3 program of projects with low contingencies.) Once the Board determined that they could merely extend the taxes, there has been little visible interest in implementing HB 5528. There aren’t any new corridor studies to define projects for HB 5528 votes for example.
A big challenge with mere ST3 continuation is subarea equity. Some subareas need to arrange for backfilling project funding and others do not. That’s also been highlighted in many discussions.
So I don’t really think my comment — that the driver to date of another funding vote like ST4 has been much more to focus on ST3 completion rather than to focus on new projects — is out of line or mistaken.
Al, my apologies. I did not mean to pick on you. I thought that several people had used the phrase and meant it as a general reply.
The enabling legislation gives ST the right to continue taxation until it discharges the bonds for which the taxes were established. So far as I know, there was nothing in the vote which limited the amount of bonds to be sold, so if ST continues its Quixotic quest to build BART del Norte it can tax until 2060 to pay for it if necessary.
Right, but there is a limit. It is like buying a house. If the house is too expensive for your budget, it doesn’t matter how long the mortgage is. 100 years, 1000 years — it doesn’t matter.
I think the same thing is true here. They are limited in how much they can tax. This in turn influences the bonds. The bonds will only pay for so much. Even if ST is willing to tax us for a thousand years we can’t pay for projects that cost a trillion.
Which is why we could be in deep trouble at some point. Imagine we start building West Seattle Link and prices continue to escalate. By the time it is done, the price of Ballard Link is just too expensive (despite being delayed several times). We need higher taxes. The same thing is true (but to a lesser extent) with other projects. The prices for Tacoma Dome Link and Everett Link have also gone up, and those areas aren’t seeing a big increase in tax revenue. Even Issaquah Link (at the back of the line) looks doubtful, despite the East Side rolling in money.
What then? An ST4 that completes all of these projects and adds just enough new stuff to interest voters? I don’t see that passing — too many folks from outside Seattle would be opposed. Even people from inside Seattle would question a lot of the assumptions (like the need for a second tunnel). People in West Seattle wonder why they can’t just interline everything — at least outside peak, when trains are running every 10 minutes (which means 3 minutes 20 seconds inside the tunnel). People in Snohomish County are already cutting bait, saying that Ash Way or Mariner (along with good express buses) is enough. The folks on the East Side wonder why they want to run a train from Kirkland to Issaquah, given the fact that it will only serve one neighborhood in Kirkland (far from downtown) and skip the Highlands. Tacoma Dome Link is looking less and less attractive as riders either hate being forced on to Link, or largely ignore it while they take express buses (and Sounder) to Seattle.
At this point it begins looking a lot like the monorail. Every measure passed comfortably except the last one — when it was clear that the folks in charge didn’t know what what they were doing.
I’m not saying that will happen, but from what I understand, it seems quite possible.
Ross, I agree that there is certainly a practical limit beyond which the region cannot wisely tax itself. That said, if the electeds continue to operate as if “one and done” is an immutable command to build ST3 in all its wasteful “glory”, they can do so. It is a hideous waste of money, but at least most of the money will be spent locally.
“Another document dropped”
It must be the end of the holiday season; all this work happening.
New Seattle Times article this morning about the East Link Starter Line … Trains in training: Sound Transit powers up its future Eastside light rail route, by Mike Lindblom.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/trains-in-training-sound-transit-powers-up-its-future-eastside-light-rail-route/
Ya, I just read that and was about to post. Good article.
It’s also interesting that Lindblom calls out 6000 daily riders for ELSL. I have heard this value before, but honestly don’t know how accurate it is likely to be.
But it should be noted that 6000 daily riders is about 50% MORE riders than RapidRide B is currently carrying. And this is without the Redmond Link Extension into downtown Redmond.
It will be really interesting to see if ELSL actually does get 6000 riders per day, and also what the impact on RR-B ridership will be. I suspect RR-B will see a significant reduction.
I have mixed feelings about the ELSL. On the one hand, I’m excited that the Eastside is getting light rail. On the other hand, it’s hard to get too excited for something that’s just going to run between Redmond and Bellevue. The real benefit will come when it crosses the lake. I also don’t think it’s that important whether or not the ELSL has low or high ridership. The important thing to remember is when the entire 2 Line is open, it will eventually have great ridership. It may not happen right away, but it’s inevitable for two main reasons. First, as you say, Lazarus, people will absolutely prefer taking light rail over a bus, especially to cross the lake. But, the biggest thing working in favor of strong ridership on the Eastside portion of the 2 Line is the growth I believe the Eastside is going to see in the coming years. Growth in downtown Redmond, the greater Overlake Village area, the Bel-Red station area, the Wilburton station area, the Bellevue Downtown station area, the East Main station area, and the Eastside in general. And by growth I don’t mean a few apt buildings popping up here and there. In the next dozen years or so, some of these station areas are going to be unrecognizable.
@Sam,
You are correct, the ELSL won’t see its full ridership potential until it crosses the lake. That is when we will see its full value.
But the estimate of 6000 daily riders is just for this short segment of East Link, and is still fairly impressive (if it is accurate). I suspect that value is based on analysis of existing transfers and ridership patterns, but we will see. And we will see what happens to RR-B ridership.
I’m in no rush to try out ELSL, but I’ll probably give it a try after a few weeks of service. Will be fun to check out the new pedestrian bridges at least.
Raise your hand if you really think this train will get 6000 daily riders. I would guess it will be much closer to 2K. And if it delays any real trains from opening, that will be a tragedy.
The ELSL won’t function for more than about a year unless ST surprises us (again). Unlike UW students who started riding Link on the first week, the primary market won’t shift over on Day 1 or Week 1 or Month 1. So I think the first two months will be extremely low — even below 2K for an average weekday.
The abundance of free parking at South Bellevue coupled with costly parking in Downtown Bellevue will be a tradeoff that some people make. The number of people making that tradeoff will likely be about 1-2K of the total ELSL ridership (2 Link rides per parking commuter at South Bellevue). I don’t know enough about Bellevue parking costs (and employer paid parking arrangements) in 2024 to speculate with much confidence though.
The other big factor is what happens with Microsoft employees. If the Connector buses are less frequent or if Microsoft reorients the system to feed Link rather than the campus, that will also add riders.
I note that the free or cheap shorter -term parking at the medical centers will initially suppress ridership to those places. They generate lots of trips all day,
The result by October 2024? It could vary widely. It will likely be between 2-6K. My general guess is 3-4K is most likely and I would put down 3,500 average weekday boardings as my final guess. But if parking can be cheap and easy in and around Downtown Bellevue, 2,500 seems more likely to me.
And the first month (after the big opening splash) will likely be below 2,000. That will cue pundits already waiting to trash the ELSL entirely. This initial bad press is inevitable so ST and local elected officials better be ready for it.
I see the primary value in the ELSL as breaking in the stations and the new OMF. The pre-revenue testing period is useful — but having real riders around will give ST the chance to get 8 stations seasoned for use before larger crowds arrive. Lynnwood will add 4, the full 2 Line will add 2, the Downtown Redmond extension will add 2 and Federal Way will add 3. No other extensions being built or planned will add as many as 8 stations at once except for maybe BLE in the 2040s. So, this will be the single most stations added in one day since the system began and maybe the most added ever in one day in our lifetime. It’s better to fix any unexpected problem when there are 2-6K riders than when there are 25-50K riders. So I don’t think there is much of a reason to care about ELSL ridership numbers this first year anyway.
Per the latest document drops from ST, looks like the pacing item for opening ELSL is the platform tiles again! Seems like a contractor issue to me.
But looks like all work on ELSL will be done in early March, so the opening shouldn’t be to far after that.
And plinth repairs on full ELE have slipped again, but supposedly still within the schedule.
A contractor issue is a Sound Transit issue, given they hired them.
We need to move away from contractors and rebuild our institutional knowledge. We are going to be building and maintaining trains for a long, long time, and we need to be able to do it ourselves.
I agree Cam! Not only did ST hire them, but ST is internally responsible for some level of quality control!
And bad tiling has required ST to make repairs several times in the past few years. It’s not like the need for better oversight is unforeseen.
The two year plinth delay gave ST ample time to finish and inspect station platform construction. Any tiling issue should have been apparent by the end of 2022. For it to come to light in February 2024 should outrage the Board and the public. It appears like ST staff isn’t on top of things. Is it laziness or staff shortages that’s the problem, or both?
The tiling issues didn’t come to light in February 2024. Repairs have been underway at south Bellevue for months and were reported on back in September 2023.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/south-bellevue-light-rail-isnt-open-yet-but-somethings-already-broken/
That’s still terrible optics for ST, Andy. Not only is this still many months after when the system was supposed to be fully tested and running, but that was five months ago — and now there is concern that it could delay a spring opening?
ST got tiles replaced at Columbia City in 2022 and got it done in less than 10 working days — all with trains running nearby! A potential tiling- created opening date delay appears incredibly ridiculous, even for ST.
I don’t disagree that it’s a bad look, merely pointing out that it didn’t just come to light; ST has known about the issue for several months. I expect that the tile work could and would have proceeding much more quickly if it were critical path.
Per the latest staff report, the tile work will be completed in early March, which is right about the time the 40 days of system testing will have wrapped up.
Rode link yesterday for the first time since December. Seemed to be just about back to pre disruption service. 11an qestlake to u district plenty of room. Return at 2pm train much fuller but not packed. Both ways i was pretty much only person I saw wearing a mask.
CID station has spiffy new next-arrival displays. They’re in a compact wide format with just enough room for two rows of destination and time. The graphics are contemporary and sleek.
At the exit is an overhead yellow bar saying to tap out, and that the fare depends on what distance you traveled.
Does anyone know if Metro plans to launch any of the East link route changes this year or if it will wait until the Seattle and Downtown Redmond segments are complete in 2025?
I believe the bus changes are waiting until 2025.
We’re not expecting any changes. Any March changes would have had to have gone to the county council 1-3 months ago for a vote, and then it takes Metro six weeks to assign and train drivers to the new routes. The September changes will go to the council around April-June. The Starter Line has no existing bus route it can replace or truncate. It doesn’t reach downtown Redmond. The core area between Bellevue Downtown and Overlake Village is rather short to force a transfer. Rerouting the 550 and 554 would be ST, and ST probably doesn’t want to anger riders before the full Line 2 is in place. ST wasn’t going to make any ST Express changes for the Starter Line, then it said it might, but I don’t remember it proposing any actual ones, and it’s rather late now to. The gap is only for a year, and there’s some public resistance to a 2-part restructure.
International District station was closed at 3:50 pm because of a demonstration but instead of running the trains normally and skipping the station ST has brought in shuttle buses to go between Stadium and Pioneer Square stations.
The station is closed so demonstrators cannot get in and get on the track if ST is worried about that so why not run the trains and skip the station.
Maybe another example of Mickey Mouse operation by ST.
CID is repoened. This is the second demonstration closure.
What do other cities do when there’s a demonstration near a station?
I would argue that there are 2 routes listed as East link routes that could open. The 256 was on the list of effected routes but it doesn’t connect to any new link stations (replacing 252, 257, and 311). The 342 (at increased frequency) would only connect to Bellevue TC and Shoreline P&R.
I’m sure they would be modifying some routes that go nearby the stations to stop closer to the stations and have more seamless transfers.
East Side Starter Line opening date to be announced today at a 1 pm press conference at Bellevue city hall plaza!!!