I’m unlikely to park my car in a cheap lot on MLK all day just so I can have the privilege of riding Link at 5am.

And since airport travel is one of Link’s main functions at this point, and many, many people fly in on Sundays after 10:00 (plus a few minutes rolling to the gate, plus waiting for checked luggage) having Sunday service end so prematurely is just bad form.

http://soundtransit.org/Documents/pdf/riding/CentralLinkTimepointsDec0919.pdf

The earliest Link gets to Seatac from downtown is 6am, which is too tight for any flight before 7am by the time you get into the terminal, get through security and get to your gate.

A 90 minute bus ride at that time of the morning mean a very long day. It’s just easier to drive.

Being a transit nut, I had written down the alternative schedules. 174 at 12:19 and and 1:12. Link to Mt Baker at 12:22, transfering to 7 with a 3-minute gap. The later Links did not have any bus transfers; we’d have to wait for the 7 night owl at 3am.

This was also the time of the track work so we didn’t want to count on the train schedules. We did catch the 174 but there were three abnormalities:

1) The bus stop sign listed completely different bus routes than what stopped there. The 174 was not listed, although its schedule was below.

2) We missed the 12:19 bus but the schedule listed an extra one at 12:29. We caught that, and made a direct transfer at TIB to the 124. (The 12:29 is listed on the online schedule now. I’m not sure if I didn’t see it or it wasn’t there.)

3) I checked the southbound bus stop for future reference. The route numbers it listed were also totally wrong. If I remember, it didn’t have any route numbers at all. It would also be hard for a tourist to find the stop, because a sign pointed vaguely south but you had to walk a long block next to the highway to get to it, and then the bus stop looked like you weren’t sure whether it was really used.

Hopefully the stops will get all straightened out in February.

Airline departures start at 5:45 am and passengers and employees need to be able to arrive by 5am.

With MT 194 there was an arrival around 5am, seven days a week.

Link won’t arrive until 6am Mon-Sat and 7am Sun.

MT195 was supposed to bridge this but was cut. MT 124/174 doesn’t arrive any earlier than Link – other than a single 3:33 am departure from downtown, then nothing until Link around 5:30am. That’s not sufficient.

I’m saying, after that last trip all the way to the end of the line, the operator can either deadhead back, or he can take passengers while he’s on his way back.

The last trip doesn’t go to Westlake because the tunnel is the expensive part to operate, and because the demand is outbound at night, not inbound.

Sound Transit does the more friendly thing – carrying passengers.How much extra time on the clock would it be for the operator to take the train all the way into downtown and then deadhead back to the yard? I’m guessing the amount of deadhead time would be about the same. I think that would be the more friendly thing to do.

I like the ST560. It’s always clean, comfy and almost always on schedule.
Any delays are almost always in the return from Sea-Tac.

Depart 15th NW & NW Market – 2:46 AM on Route 81
Arrive Union & 4th – 3:03 AM

Leave Union & 4th – 3:30 AM on Route 124
Continue through Tukwila International Blvd Station on Route 174
Arrive International Blvd & S 182nd – 4:13 AM

One other option would be to try to get to Mount Baker Station by 4:35 to get on the first train arriving at the airport by about 5:10. I wonder what the cab fare difference is between Ballard and the airport versus Ballard and Mount Baker Station?

(I rode Link towards the airport on the last day of the connector bus service. Terrible experience. Took 85 minutes between hopping on Link at Westlake and arriving at seatac via the Connector. But that’s a whole other story…)