I don’t mean to be harsh but obviously a lot of people didn’t get the message. I think it’s because of old habits where people just flash the pass and they’re good but the system no longer works that way. They now play messages at stations very frequently telling ORCA card users to tap on and tap off when using Link light rail.

ST doesn’t get any money from your pass if you don’t tap it. So if you ride Metro and ST, but you don’t tap in on Link and only on Metro, Metro will get all the money and ST none.

If Link had faregates you’d be forced to tap your card even if you had a pass.

http://www.weeels.org/

Cell phone app for ridesharing in taxis.

Is this in the small print somewhere in the station and I just missed it? I think expecting riders to check out the newsletter seems unrealistic.

The railcars and Rainier Valley stations are just normal modern light rail, so if you think that’s Disneyesque, I guess you think all light rail is Disneyesque. If you’re referring to the artwork at the stations, that’s due to the “1% for art” law, so it’s a regional thing. Did you see the playing cards in the Beacon Hill tunnel?

The Rainier Valley routing separates those who are afraid to go through the valley from those who are not. Perhaps that’s the first step in lowering both real crime rates and suburban hysteria.

South Seattle has clearly not developed much in Link’s first year, but check back after ten years. Also, Valleyites don’t love the train as much as Tukwila/Highline people do. Those are Link’s main challenges over the coming years (besides building out the ST2 stations).

Sounder exists because taxpayers couldn’t resist leveraging the existing tracks. It would not have been built that way from scratch. Instead there would have been local-and-express Link going straight to Tacoma, without the wide detour to Auburn and Puyallup. It would go on 99 because that has the highest density and growth potential all along the route. (You remember what density is, right? Kent is an isolated pocket, Auburn is a has-been, and Puyallup is really far away.) Later, a supplemental loop to Kent, Auburn, and Puyallup might have been built.

I don’t like huge double-decker heavy rail trains much. I just find light rail or subways more pleasant to ride in. But if we have heavy rail, I’d rather have it frequent than rare.

As for “A bus could do it”, Jarrett of Human Transit points out an inconvenient truth about streetcars. Namely, if a streetcar travels the same speed as an existing bus and makes the same stops, its travel-time advantage is zero. The same applies to Link, although Link is properly compared to an express bus rather than a local bus. This means that the train’s advantages are in all its other benefits, not strictly the travel-time issue.

Of course, one cannot truly put a bus on Link’s route and achieve the same speed because of traffic lights, hills, and traffic. But the bus fans would split it into two routes, reinstating the 194 and creating another route for Rainier Valley. We could have 7-10 minute headways on those routes, but it would take a lot of buses, and Metro/ST have been unwilling to do that anywhere except the downtown-UW corridor.

But on another Link route, the 550 probably has similar speed and stops as Link will. So is Link useless there? It depends on how valuable you think an integrated rail network is, so that one can get from Lynnwood to Bellevue, or SeaTac to Bellevue, without leaving the rail network.

I have a non-driving friend who moved to Mount Vernon but came back to Seattle to work. (She moved in with relatives after a bad divorce, but couldn’t find any housekeeping jobs in Mount Vernon.) She said she could get back to Mount Vernon as long as she left Seattle by late afternoon (5pm?). Of course she could only handle it for so long before she moved back to Seattle.

But there has been zero marketing of statewide bus trips. A couple volunteers have put chain schedules on the web, but they’re not comprehensive or necessarily up to date. There should be a state-run transit website with all the schedules and connections in the state. (Maybe not every Puget Sound route, but at least the main intercity trunk routes: 510, 550, 554, 594, Link, 174, 358, Swift, 150, etc.)

In Germany you can buy a 12-zone through ticket from Aachen to Liege, Belgium; which is a 3-hour trip on three local buses. The transit agencies could do this in Washington if they coordinate their fares. ORCA everywhere would be even more convenient.

Like the Sounder. I like getting on the Sounder because it feels rock solid…even more so than LINK. I don’t feel the acceleration, or most of the curves (the switching is a little nerve racking).

But also just the “thereness” of the train makes it something you can build around. That’s good and bad, but sometimes good.

That’s exactly the feeling I had after realizing I used the SLU Streetcar way more that I thought I would
http://joshuadf.blogspot.com/2009/12/confession-i-like-slu-trolley.html

2. I rode the LINK light rail for real (not just tunnel) for the first time when my son and I went to the Sounder’s game. We parked at Tukwila. I was very impressed with that station — it has the grandiose theme of railroading from the 19th century done in a modern way that I always like (the new L.I.R.R. Jamaica Station is another good example).

The train itself had a somewhat playful feel to it…very Disneyesque. I felt I was not so much on a commuter train as on an adult rollercoaster. The Seussian Stations through South Seattle added to that feeling.

Because of the Sounders game, the train acted as a Park n’ Ride Shuttle. It certainly saved me the up to $40 I’ve paid in the past for near by parking. Coming back it was jam packed…but I don’t think we left many at the Stadium Station.

As far as the other agenda of developing South Seattle…didn’t see much of that at all the stations. However, I think that ferrying business people and the middle class sports fans through the area gave it a different feel. Maybe it makes people feel comfortable about the “inner city” and maybe the dwellers there feel connected with them coming through. That train just felt right.

I can’t help by like LINK although the rationalist in my says “but but but it could just as well be a bus”. I wish there were a good reason for rail over bus that would satisfy that guy inside my head.

On the Sounder this morning, I also thought, well, if Light Rail can go 60 mph as it seemed to be going when we paralleled traffic…what’s the point of heavy rail? Shouldn’t we just build an elevated along that route?

Like anything complicated…there are more equations then unknowns to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld.