I’m not sure why it turned them into smart quotes…I used regular quotes.

This is where I have a problem. When you have stations far apart, long distance trips take a shorter amount of time because trains don’t have to stop as much. This can encourage people to live far away from where they work.

I’d like to add that Sound Transit can help break our auto dependency by not building so many park and rides.

I think Sound Transit had their schedules out a week ago.

If you’re a regular, expert commuter you already know changes are coming — and you know when the service changes occur.

If you’re a casual user, you don’t want to see these changes weeks in advance — because that would just confuse the hell out of you. On the other hand, if you’re planning ahead and call or go online to create your schedule, these time and routes changes are already changed for future planning.

So I don’t really understand why you’re complaining that the new schedules aren’t printed sooner, since I don’t expect that would help these theoretical riders you’re so concerned about.

And, on a side note to another comment you made up above. How is it less affordable for people to ride Link than a bus? If they use ORCA, they get a full transfer now onto Link from the bus.

And sure, they’re “massive” changes. But how many routes does the average rider use? 1? 2? 3?

Those that do ride many routes are probably well aware that at least one of them will change and are aware of how to find out about these changes.

As to why it takes so long for Metro to get rider alerts out, I can’t address that. I don’t work for Metro. But you’re getting overly alarmist. “Routes changing where there going. It is less than a week away. The real problem is every one knew that this was coming and the new schedules will not be issued until Thursday.” I’m not really sure what that means, but if I replace “there” with “they’re” it makes a little bit more sense. To answer that concern:
a) The 140 is changing its routing. Rider alerts were probably posted last week at the stops. I saw a bunch of them on Friday. And don’t act like this is the first time you’ve heard about it changing. I’ll let this page do the explaining for me.
b) The 564/565 are becoming the 566. It won’t affect many users (that’s why it’s changing), and even so I’m pretty sure I saw rider alert signs last Thursday at Sumner when I caught the 564.
c) Everything at SeaTac Airport Bay 1 will now move to the stops outside the SeaTac/Airport Link station. Don’t even try to tell me this is bad. Benefits: it cut at least 5 minutes off each trip, it provides a direct link to get downtown. Catch the 180 from Auburn, transfer to Link downtown. Auburn doesn’t have much direct downtown service besides the 152 and Sounder. Disadvantage: it’s different from before. Many people, such as yourself, want things to stay the way they are forever and will whine incessantly about it. Change will happen. Accept it. Oh, and some people might have to walk a bit further to the stop. It’s an airport, OK? You have to walk there.
d) 5 routes are moving to the tunnel. But those are all routes that operate in North Seattle, so you have no reason to complain about them. To further underscore that point, I’ll let you know that rider alerts were posted last week at the stops. Which means riders have about a week and a half to adjust.
e) About 40 routes have trip reductions. Most of the time these reductions are combining the two least-used trips into one that comes halfway between each. I’ll agree that this will inconvenience some people. But as mentioned about 500 times already, Metro has no money and needs to cut costs somehow. Be thankful it’s only 40 routes.

Yes, I’ll agree that Metro could get it service change information out faster. You’re brining this up two posts below here, and I hope I don’t confuse anyone by answering it here. Anyway, the delay is probably delayed due to two things:
1) It takes time to figure out what needs to be changed. Once that’s done, the information needs to be compiled and the service alert created. Then that goes to press, and a few days (or weeks) later Metro gets a few boxes of those brochures and can begin distributing them. That’s why information shows up online faster than offline. Sound Transit can do this faster because they have about 90% fewer routes than Metro does.
2) If we publish information a month in advance, you’re going to confuse some people about which information is right for the current day. I could come up with about five examples, but I’ll stick with just one because I’m tired of responding to this BS. So the example is that Metro has everything published on January 1. On Jan 1 both red and purple timetables are available. A customer grabs a red timetable, unaware of the difference between the two. If you’ve ever worked with the public, you know that people only read what they want to, and many people won’t look at the text on the front stating what dates the timetable is valid. And a big sign near the timetables would go unnoticed. After reading the timetable and figuring out what time the bus is coming (which is actually what time it will be coming 5 weeks from then) the customer waits at a stop. Due to the schedule being different and possibly other factors, the bus is delayed many minutes. When it finally arrives, a cold and irratated passenger boards the bus and takes their anger out on the operator. Definitely not good. Could be verbal or physical abuse, but not good at all. Let’s keep our timing the way it is, though I wouldn’t mind if it was advanced a half week or so.

I’d have no problem with it if you had to go to a special URL to get the mobile version of the site and the site view didn’t default to the mobile view whenever you hit the site from a mobile device.

Some of that can still be seen nearly a hundred years after the Interurban stopped running, in densely-platted neighborhoods surrounded by “modern” quarter-acre car suburbs.

1) Any growth in population outside the city (aka the suburbs) is ‘sprawl.’ This is incorrect. You need only look at one of the first ‘streetcar suburbs’ a city originally named Breuckelen, now known as Brooklyn. While it experienced most of it’s growth as a suburb of New York City, I think you would have a hard time calling it sprawl.

2) That the rail construction (or in the case of Sounder, increased usage) is happening in a vacuum. As much as I and many others would like to turn back the clock on the last half a century of autocentric developement, we can’t. These sprawling suburbs already exist. It’s not like Link is bulldozing fields and forest to build stations outside of the Seattle Metro Area. Instead it is connecting already built areas to the core. The hope is that this will help guide/confine future growth to these already existing areas and not just continue out, out, out.