Any decision on Link routing is political. There are two science-based criteria I can think of:

1) Successful rapid transit serves the largest pedestrian destinations: downtown, UW, stadiums, airport, shopping malls.

2) It must also serve one or more dense residential areas: Capitol Hill, U-district. Rainier (or West Seattle) is borderline, but it certainly serves this purpose better than I-5/Georgetown.

Southcenter is obviously a shopping mall, but I think it was excluded at Tukwila’s inistance, and also because it would fit more naturally on a future 405 line, which would also serve Renton and Burien.

As for continuing south on MLK and terminating in Renton, that was never suggested during the initial planning as far as I’m aware of. So it’s way too late to complain about it now. I do get bothered by people (not saying you’re one of them) who complain about Link’s routing at the last minute, yet never spoke up when it was being designed and could have been changed.

Think of it. Between the Henderson St station and the airport there are just two stations generating only 5600 riders/day on a fairly long and expensive stretch of track. If that same amount of money had been spent on a route that continued south through the RV providing more local service and eventually serving the Boeing plant and then terminating in Renton, I’d bet that those 5 or so additional stations would generate substantially more ridership.

Politics affected the decision to go to the airport in 2 ways:

1) The need to quiet the critics who labeled any system not going to the airport as a “train to nowhere”. Never mind that the Seattle CBD and RV certainly aren’t “nowhere.”

2) The need to tap into and eventually spend South King subarea funds designated for LR. Subarea equity is definitely a political necessity given our local politics, but it does affect routing decisions. If you need to cross the subarea boundary to tap into those funds, then you are either going to do it along the freeway ROW, or by going along Hwy 99. And if you are going to go along Hwy 99 then you are going to stop at the airport.

. Even better are places like London Gatwick

yeah, all my English relatives that live in the London area prefer Gatwick but for international flights it’s often not an option. Heathrow sucks big time!!!

Seattle increases it’s international stature many times over by having Link connect downtown to the airport. Our connections with Asia are very important.

Haven’t had to travel to the Bay Area for years but SFO was always to be avoided. Didn’t matter if transit was at the airport. The airport was always hours behind because of fog delays in the morning that just extended into the rest of the day. Oakland and San Jose were better choices. Side note, I flew into SFO ~2001 when the BART train was stuck on the tracks (way the F up in the air) during testing at the airport. That wasn’t a big boost for rail.

Yes, the U.S. measures are officially linked to the Metric system by the Bureau of Standards (or whatever they are called now), but transportation engineering is still usually done in whole numbers of feet, inches etc.

We have 12-feet-wide (3.6576 meters) lanes, not 3 or 4-meter lanes.

But still, the most well-ridden rail systems in the world do include a line from the airport to downtown. And many visitors and would-be residents judge cities based on whether they have this. My impression of Chicago, St Louis, LA, Newark, etc was raised immensely when I experienced it. As opposed to Raleigh and Charlotte, which don’t even have a bus from the airport to downtown. Even better is places like London Gatwick and Duesseldorf, which have a mainline train right at the airport, to take you downtown or to anywhere in the country.

I was surprised when I heard Sea-Tac is the biggest transportation hub in the northwest, and the biggest generator of non-car traffic, but it’s true. What other place has shuttle vans coming from as far as Bellingham? So skipping the airport would have been a huge mistake.

They did try to go North but were afraid the cost of going under the Ship Canal would sink the entire project. So they did South first to get a starter line in place. Later as they gained more experience and did more ship canal studies and found a way to assuage the UW’s concerns about disrupting its seismic sensors, they found a way to make the North line work.

As for the surface track on MLK, yes it’s a mistake, but something is better than nothing.

I don’t remember any proposal for a West Seattle routing ten years ago. The proposals were for Rainier Valley or the freeway. The freeway choice was nixed because it would attract too few riders (nobody lives within walking distance of the freeway stations). And because they got a better federal grant for serving a poor minority area. (And, if you believe the critics, to allow ST’s buddies to acquire real estate adjacent to the line for cheap, and to funnel construction contracts to them.) If people think a West Seattle routing would have been better, they should have spoken up ten years ago.

I wasn’t posting a “belief” in anything, just clarifying that the airport is, indeed, a large employer.

In 2020 the Airport Station is expected to generate 3000 riders/day. But the Tukwila Int Blvd station (which is located in the middle of nowhere) is expected to generate…..2600 riders/day.

Isn’t this largely due to bus tranfers (people commuting in/out of Seattle to points south? The airport by contrast is the actual destination for the 3000 riders per day. If I’m looking at the route performance tables right you’d generate at least 2600 riders just by transferring folks from Federal Way to downtown on the 174 and 194 (that’s assuming ~40% of the riders are headed downtown and it’s probably much higher).

A single, centrally located, Link station might be great for travelers, but it isn’t necessarily as great for airport workers. I suppose you could have shuttle buses driving around for airport workers, but adding more buses to the congestion at the airport seems counter productive and you lose ridership when you force that sort of mode change anyhow.

But hey, if you don’t believe that, then check out the ST ridership estimates. In 2020 the Airport Station is expected to generate 3000 riders/day. But the Tukwila Int Blvd station (which is located in the middle of nowhere) is expected to generate…..2600 riders/day.

As long as he doesn’t hijack unrelated threads to talk about one of his hobbyhorses…