It’s quite the obvious the shortcomings at Sea/Tac Airport, TIB, Othello, Mt Baker, and Beacon Hill. The Sounder stations fare better, yet it becomes obvious that whomever desinged the bus terminals at many of them had little experence in the industry (Kent, Auburn). Of course its hard to design something decent without making a large land grab, but even in the case of beacon hill, Intergrated shelters, better facilitys for crossing the street, etc should have been in the plans.

1) Link has shorter headways than the 194. Therefore, OVERALL trip time will be reduced for many riders — even if the bus would have run faster at a given time of day than the train.

2) While Airport Station is less convenient to some travelers that the airport bus stop, it is actually more convenient for others, and certainly is a better connection for folks living and working nearby or heading to/from a couple of major hotel and convention centers. Therefore, OVERALL trip time will be reduced for many riders with Link.

3) The key to “forcing” bus riders onto rail — and this requires vigilance by transit supporters! — is that at least some of those bus hours must be reprogrammed to create new connecting routes and/or increased headways on the truncated bus routes. When done properly, OVERALL trip time is drastically reduced for many riders and a whole group of new riders will now have convenient options for transit use.

Win, win, win.

Team A blithely departed Westlake on Link, receiving a call from Team B 25 minutes later saying the 194 never came. Team B got on the 4th Link to pass after Team A departed.

We timed ~7 minute walk from the Link station to the middle of the airport upstairs and a ~6 minute walk from the middle of the downstairs to the 194. Team A returned on the 194; Team B grabbed a Link back.

In the end, the (lone data point) 194 was about 4-5 minutes faster, though as Scott said “we probably won’t get a paper out of this”.

Are you suggesting that ST should have launched a costly software project to warn riders for the month and a half where both Link and the 194 went to the airport?

However, I don’t think we can agree on any actionable conclusions from that. A few minutes isn’t reason enough to maintain 194 service. I suppose Norman would argue that we shouldn’t have built Central Link at all, which is both irrelevant at this point and ignores the fact that a faster scheduled time to the airport wasn’t really the objective.

Likewise, I am grateful to the county council for giving my neighborhood 20-minute frequency on the route that gets me to Link fastest, and gives me access to the rest of West Seattle via a transfer at White Center, and a much shorter, quicker path to the airport.

Gone are the days when we in south King County had only one destination we could reach without a day trip.

Frankly, it is *beyond* dubious that someone so openly and adamantly opposed to Link consistently reports completely unverifiable anecdotal evidence that only supports his positions.

Not only are “Norman’s” reported Link and 194 comparisons suspicious, I’m just not buying the persistent “run-ins” with always-anonymous tourists, ST employees, and cab drivers who all somehow spout opinions that magically dovetail with his Norman’s own positions.

Maybe sometime, Norman, you would like to mention what company a cab driver works for and ask that driver if he minds being directly quoted, with attribution. The ability to verify your “reporting” would be most welcome. Because, let me tell you, man: I ran into this great gal from Curitiba on Link tonight, and she said our light rail was so much hotter than the BRT in her hometown…

Infact, Grey Line has cut back on the Airporter in response to LINK’s opening as i’m sure many of the business riders are finding out that LINK is far more convient to get downtown than the Airporter.

One of the biggest issues with the full scale opening the LINK station, and re-alignment of services is that there is no more central transfer point in the area. Services are spread out amongst the Sea/Tac Airport station, and TIB. And only 2 services of the five remaining lines service both. Here’s where the new transfer policies, and indeed LINK’s detrimental fare structure will come into play.

For example, if you wished to go to Burien from Tacoma, you used to take a 574 than transfer at the airport to the 140. Pretty simple stuff, you could do it on a cash fare (lowest common denomiator, which should be the stanard for all public transit decisions). Now, you take the 574 still, however you must board a 174 at Sea-Tac Station, paying another fare, and ride the five minutes to TIB, where you can use your metro transfer to get on the 140 to continue your journey. Without an ORCA card, your cash fare costs have doubled over what was previously offered, making this trip probally 1/3 less likely for the ORCA user (Because of the added transfer) and 2/3s less likely for the cash fare user (because of both). So you have effectivly lost ridership as a result of both changes.

Personally, I’d like to see a study of the policy and its effects on ridership. For example, where there more cash fare transactions in 2009 than 2010 (at the end of the year), % of ORCA card use vs. overall ridership, Ridership gain on alternative local routes over the course of calendar year, and if the information is available were they cash fare transfers. Cross agency transfers, did they go up or go down as a result of ORCA, and other similar calulations.