Sound Transit has unveiled their initial proposal for the 2027 service plan. These changes are relatively minor compared to the Fall 2026 service changes that will take effect in August. This proposal includes changes for routes 510, 512, 532, 535, 545, 560, and Link.
Routes 510 and 512
In Everett, early-morning Route 510 trips and late-night Route 512 trips would be truncated at Everett Station. This removes the four stops in downtown Everett north of the station.
A still frame captured from a video posted to various social media midday today shows a section of overhead wire damaged on July 9, 2026 (Sound Transit). Click to enlarge.
At 6:47 this morning, Sound Transit issued an ominous alert stating “1 Line and 2 Line trains are experiencing delays until further notice due to power issue near University of Washington Station”. Less than 10 minutes later, Link service between Northgate, Stadium, and Judkins Park Station was suspended due to the power issue, with shuttle buses ordered to provide replacement service as Sound Transit investigated the issue. Later in the morning, some 1 and 2 Line trains began operating through Westlake Station.
Waterfront Park was a popular destination over the past month, especially on July 6. (Michael Smith)
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, severaloutletsranked 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.
The crowd watches a match on the big screen in Pioneer Square. (Michael Smith)
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:
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.
Custom World Cup-oriented signage helps visitors navigate the Link system (Mike Orr).
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).
The Swift Orange Line has played a key role in boosting Community Transit’s ridership over the past two years. (Michael Smith)
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.
Overall Community Transit ridership broken down by local routes, Express/Commuter routes (4__, 8__, 9__) and Swift routes.
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)
