Over the past four weeks, Seattle hosted six World Cup matches featuring teams from eight different countries. Fans from around the world traveled to Seattle to cheer on their team and enjoy the Pacific Northwest. Seattle stepped up to the challenge of hosting 750,000 visitors by implementing temporary changes to make their experiences as wonderful as possible. Before the first kickoff, several outlets ranked Seattle as one of the best World Cup host cities in 2026. Thanks to the Pioneer Square Pedestrian Zone, countless watch parties, and a disregard for parking availability, Seattle showed that it deserved those high rankings. Now that the last match in Seattle is over, it is time to use the experiences from the past four weeks to create lasting changes that all Seattleites can enjoy.

Highlights

While the whole city was abuzz on match days, a few amenities stole the spotlight.

Waterfront Park

Seattle’s newest flagship destination was a hit. The park saw over 400,000 unique visitors between June 11 – 21 and likely more than a million people over the past month. The boardwalk and bike lanes were busy, especially on match days, with people shopping/dining, enjoying the views, and checking out the various pop-up events. Alaskan Way was not as busy and was even closed to car traffic temporarily on Monday.

Continue reading “Seattle won the World Cup, what did we learn?” | 4 comments

Transit & Streets

• Kettle Proposes Slashing Seattle Transit Measure, Halting City-Funded Bus Service Growth (The Urbanist)
• Bellevue’s Grand Connection gets a little help from its neighbors (The Seattle Times, $)
• Op-Ed: Why Spokane Needs to Keep Its Transit Momentum (The Urbanist)
• US Subways Build Too Many Cross Passages (Construction Physics)
• Sound Transit’s Bespoke Wayfinding System Is Unnecessarily Baffling (PubliCola).
• Can Seattle move Highway 99 out of [South Park]? (KUOW)
• ‘So be it! See to it!’ Bus shelter mural honors acclaimed author Octavia Butler (Metro Matters)
• How a maintenance crew turned their commutes into a multimodal adventure (WSDOT Blog)
• Seattle’s FIFA construction pause ends, WSDOT’s Revive I-5 resumes this weekend (SDOT Blog)
• Do you visit West Seattle or Queen Anne? Take SDOT’s parking surveys (SDOT Blog)
• Rant and Rave: Couple appreciate help at light rail station (The Seattle Times, $; free via SPL)
• High demand, low turnover: SDOT study reveals parking crunch in West Seattle Junction (Westside Seattle)

Land Use & Housing

• Misinformation Runs Rampant as Seattle Council Considers SEPA Appeal Changes (The Urbanist)
• Seattle council considers limit to ability to challenge density plan (The Seattle Times, $; free via SPL)
• As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of ‘zombie’ towers (The Seattle Times, $; free via SPL)
• I’m homeless in Seattle. Here’s what will get more of us housed (The Seattle Times, $; free via SPL)

This is an Open Thread.

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Look out Seattle! World Cup fever has reached its peak. The final World Cup game in Seattle is today at 5pm at Seattle Stadium (Lumen Field). The US Men’s team will be playing against Belgium in the Round of 16. The stadium itself will be busy, along with various watch parties around the city. Expect crowded buses, trains, and bike lanes. To avoid the worst crowds, go early and stay late.

For those of us without tickets to the match, several free watch parties will take place in and around downtown Seattle. These include:

• Seattle Center
• Pacific Place
• Waterfront
• Victory Hall
• Hing Hay Park
• Westlake Park

Bremerton, Everett, and Tacoma are also hosting watch parties. Check out our previous post on those events.

Continue reading “How to get around Seattle today” | 1 comments

A Golden Gardens Direct ride from the beach to central Ballard, partly with a view of the bike trail and its linear woods. (Scooby Doo and the Goblin King) This is the real-time trip block by block, so if you find it too slow you can go into Settings -> Playback Speed and speed it up. There’s two points of dialog at the middle and end, so you can return to normal speed for that and hear the shoutouts to STB.

While I was watching this I discovered there are at least three channels with videos of individual Pugetopolis bus/train routes, in case you want to see what a certain route or its neighborhood is like. This one caught my eye…

Route 224: Duvall to Redmond Transit Center (Seattle Transit)

This reminded me of my Snoqualmie Valley bus trip, which included this route. I did the trip in 2014 and again in 2022: 554 to Issaquah City Hall, 208 to Snoqualmie, Valley Shuttle to Duvall, 224 to Redmond TC, 545 to Seattle. Now I could take Link from Redmond Station, and in the fall the 215 will improve access to Snoqualmie.

The 224 is interesting because it has several contrasting parts: (1) growing small town (Duvall), (2) deep in the woods, (3) Redmond Ridge new urbanist development, (4) fields with occasional houses that haven’t changed since my 1970s childhood, (5) downtown Redmond. Redmond Ridge has little bus service so everyone has to have a car, but on my second trip I noticed it has good internal walking paths, and I saw a surprising number of people out walking. A long-ago STB author I hadn’t seen in years got on the bus in Redmond Ridge and got off somewhere in east Redmond. There’s more to Redmond Ridge than this camera view can show, so I’d recommend taking the 224 yourself through it and looking all around.

The 224 is hourly weekdays until 8 pm, and no service weekends. This is one of the routes I think should be more frequent and should run all day and evening every day, so that people in a new urbanist cluster would have ready access to transit and a viable alternative to driving. Every neighborhood should have that, especially one with integrated businesses. This is why we need more transit funding to make it happen. Of course, I also wish Redmond Ridge were adjacent to central Redmond so it weren’t so isolated.

The movie Trains will be shown On July 9 at 7:30pm at SIFF Film Center. (The webpage takes a minute to fully come up.) It’s a 2024 Polish film that’s a wordless montage of 20th-century vintage train footage, a kind of Koyaanisqatsi of rail. The director is Maciej J Drygas. I saw Koyaanisqatsi in the 80s and am looking forward to this. Thanks to Martin Pagel for finding this.

This is an open thread.

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Holiday service announcements: Metro holiday service with Sound Transit, streetcars, and the King County water taxis. Sound Transit, Community Transit, Pierce Transit, Everett Transit, Kitsap Transit, Monorail, Washington State Ferries announcements. Trailhead Direct (choose route from Routes menu; holiday section is in top right).

Below is a breakdown by day. If something is critical to you, double-check the agency’s announcement to make sure I haven’t made any mistakes.

Continue reading “Friday Roundtable: July 4 Weekend Service” | 62 comments

Reminder: most transit agencies will be running Sunday/holiday service this Friday, July 3, in observation of Independence Day. Check your local agency’s service alerts.

Reminder: To ensure there is enough space on trains, bikes and scooters are not allowed on trains on World Cup match days. There are matches today (July 1) and next Monday (July 6).

Transit & Streets:

• Sound Transit Board Advances West Seattle Link Into Final Design (The Urbanist)
• As Everett weighs transit merger, paratransit riders want same service (Everett Herald)
• Op-Ed: How the Seattle Transit Measure Can Benefit All (The Urbanist)
• Op-Ed: Seattle Needs Car-Free Streets (The Urbanist)
• New Report Outlines Clear Case for Removing SR 99 Through South Park (The Urbanist)
• How Do We Get Transit Champions on Transit Boards? (PubliCola)
• Sound Transit refunds debt for ~$23 million in savings (The Platform)
• Temporary Street Closures Along Aurora Ave N to improve public safety (SDOT Blog)

Land Use & Housing:

• Court of Appeals Ruling Pushes Out Next Phase of Seattle’s Growth Plan ‘Significantly’ (The Urbanist)
• The Good, the Bad, and the UGA-ly as WA Growth Management Act Turns 35 (The Urbanist)
• KCRHA Spins the News that Homelessness Is Growing (PubliCola). Also in The Stranger.

This is an Open Thread.

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Since the Lynnwood Link Extension opened in August 2024, Community Transit has overhauled its network. The two Link stations in Snohomish County have allowed the agency to invest more service hours in local routes than ever before. This investment comes at the cost the Commuter routes, which the agency has truncated and rebranded as Express. Community Transit has also grown its bus rapid transit network with the opening of the Orange Line in March 2024.

Overall Ridership Trends

Ridership on the agency’s services has shifted in response to the changes in the network. In October 2023, Community Transit had 23,701 average weekday trips. About 47% of these trips were on one of the 26 local routes and 18% were on a Commuter route to or from Seattle. The two Swift lines, Blue and Green, had 24% and 10% of all boardings, respectively.

Jumping ahead two years to October 2025, Community Transit’s ridership looks a bit different. Overall boardings have increased to 24% to 29,277 each weekday. This increase is primarily due to higher ridership on local routes and the Swift Orange Line. Ridership on Commuter/Express routes has shrunk by nearly 75% to just 1,085 average weekday passengers. The Swift Blue and Green lines each see about 1,000 more passengers per day than they did in 2023.

Continue reading “Community Transit Ridership Jumped 24% After Lynnwood Link Restructure” | 30 comments

Vancouver BC chose a Skytrain extension in the eastern Surrey-Langley suburbs over a competing surface light rail (LRT) proposal with a different L-shaped route. The video discusses the tradeoffs between the two, how to build an elevated rail extension, and the socioeconomic factors for the station cachement areas in both alternatives. (The B1M)

This is an open thread.

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Reminders: To ensure there is enough space on trains, bikes and scooters are not allowed on trains on World Cup match days.

Local:

• What to expect during RapidRide I construction (Metro Matters)
• Everett Transit Annexation Would Level Up City’s Transit System, Mayor Says (The Urbanist)
• A Seattle Times reader wishes buses were quieter (The Seattle Times, $; free via SPL)
• 50 years later, one of Community Transit’s original buses hits the road again (CT News)
• Olympic College in Bremerton is piloting free transit passes for students (KT Headways)
• Data Backs Up Supportive ‘Housing First’ Model in Spite of Federal Attacks (The Urbanist).
• DESC’s Susan Byrnes opines Homelessness is a complex problem. Stop looking for a simple solution (The Seattle Times, $; free via SPL)
• Tacoma Sees 62% More Homes Enter Pipeline Following 2025 Zoning Overhaul (The Urbanist)
• Op-Ed: ‘Seattle Atlas’ Can Demystify Zoning, Build Case for More Housing (The Urbanist)
• A review of the impacts of the World Cup on Seattle and the region (CascadePBS)

Continue reading “Midweek Roundup: Level Up” | 126 comments