Inaugural Ride Ticket, by Atomic Taco
Inaugural Ride Ticket, by Atomic Taco

Once the Seatac station opens, there will be 3 elevated stations in the system.

The mean time between adjacent stations is about 3 minutes.

$2.50 is the maximum fare on Link (rounded to $3).

Sound Transit is a 3-county agency.

The Seattle City Council wants to open the First Hill Streetcar in 3 years – by 2012.

This is an open thread.

77 Replies to “3 Days”

  2. Like most people, I love the new ST system map that is at all Sounder/Link stations, but there is one thing on there that bugs me: THE MONORAIL!

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/viriyincy/3641039818/in/pool-seatrans

    It shows the monorail on the map as a connection between Westlake and Seattle Center, but of course, the SCM is not a part of “the network” – it has its own ticket. Why doesn’t the burgeoning SDOT Rail Division just take over the SCM already so that travelers can use it seamlessly with the rest of the network? Light rail won’t reach the Seattle Center for sometime; the inclusion of the SCM into the rest of the network would be a wise choice, right?

    I mean, they will still pick up tourist revenue (and their ticket will work on more than the SCM), plus all of the extra riders that need to get to the Center that would forego a 3/4/16 ride. Thoughts?

      2. Yeah, not too hard… The City already owns it. Metro actually ran it briefly at one point. (Screwed it up, but that’s another story…)

        I’d love help lobbying to get a better transfer connection between the two and use of ORCA. Trouble is that electeds still get skittish any time I mention the M word around them. *L*

    2. Does anyone else find it odd that in the ST system map the Tacoma-Seattle Sounder crosses east of LINK between Beacon Hill and Mt Baker stations? I understand that it needs to make it to Tukwila, but shouldn’t the crossover be shown between Rainier Beach and S 154th? You know, where is actually occurs?

      1. I’ve taken issue with that as well – Oran’s map is better. Hopefully it’ll get an update in the next revision. :)

    3. I like the map too, but it’s more of a regional commuter map than anything else. It doesn’t have the SLUT on it either. There should be a ‘Downtown Seattle and it’s environs’ map that includes the monorail, SLUT, frequent bus service, etc. They should also stop calling the 99 a ‘waterfront streetcar’. It’s just an embarrassing and disappointing lie.

    4. I agree, it would be wonderful to have the monorail included into the “network”, so that transfers, ORCA Cards, etc can be used. It would help attract folks to the Seattle Center, which is exactly what the city wants to have happen anyhow!

    5. I think they should do the monorail like they do the Water Taxi: make it free if you have a pass, but $3 or $4 if you don’t, so tourists shell out the dollars and commuters use it for free.

  3. The Seattle monorail is a huge money pit…there is no way a public agency such as ST would be able to justify such a purchase.

    1. Although I don’t think SDOT should buy the Monorail, I was under the impression it makes a profit? The city of Seattle currently owns it, which is sort of a public agency… Anyway, it’s certainly not privately owned.

    2. According to the Monorail website:

      “Many people believe that the monorail is owned, managed and operated by the City of Seattle. However, unlike Metro, Sound Transit and the trolley , the monorail is a privately run business with independent leadership and staff. Not only is the monorail not government, subsidized, but in fact, it makes money for the city.
      Area businessman, Tom Albro, holds the concession with the City of Seattle to manage and operate the monorail.
      Today, the trains carry approximately 1.5 million riders every year. The monorail has become an important fixture in Seattle for locals, who use the trains during major festivals and sporting events. Seattle Center Monorail is the nation’s only fully self-sufficient public transit system.”

      No matter the operator, I don’t see why the Monorail couldn’t accept ORCA, and transfers through ORCA. Of course, the South Lake Union Streetcar doesn’t yet accept ORCA and it is run by Metro, so I guess there is a while to go for full integration.

      1. Yes, the City owns the Seattle Center Monorail. It also has use of the designs for the existing cars and could contract with someone to build new ones if necessary.

        The Monorail made a profit on about 2-2.5 million fares a year until recent maintenance troubles which required a significant investment in upkeep to the trains. Part of the reason for this is that maintenance fell behind when they expected to have to rip up the existing system to replace it with the new project; part of it is simply that the trains are 40 years old.

        We need to put pressure on some folks to get it to take ORCA. It’s ridiculous that someone can take Link from Tukwila all the way to Westlake, but then switch to a bus to complete the last mile to the Bite of Seattle this weekend or Bumbershoot later this summer.

      2. Since the City owns the monorail but contracts it out to what we could just call a concessionaire, couldn’t the City just require integration with the ORCA system in its RFP or whatever?

  4. I hate cross posting but I doubt everyone has seen this yet.

    —

    I talked to one of the PR folks at ST. Here’s how it’ll work for the golden (silver) ticket holders:

    1) Get to Mount Baker. You can take the shuttle from Union Station if you want.
    2) Watch the ceremony
    3) Get on board a train. There will be a northbound and a southbound train. It sounds like each will be a two car train. There will be a TON of people, so you may not get to pick which train.
    4) Ride the train in the direction it’s headed. At the terminus, you will turn around and go to the opposite terminus. If you wish, you may deboard at any station, but you’ll have to stand at the end of the line to get back on.
    5) Upon reaching the second terminus, you will be forcibly removed from the train. At 10 am, trains will be open to everyone.

    It takes 54 minutes to go from Mount Baker to one terminus and then back to the other. So I imagine golden ticket bearers will be boarding around 09:00.

    While you’re there, look for me in a bright blue T-shirt with “Atomic Taco” written on the front. Say hi!

    1. Well, I hope I get on the southbound (then northbound) train. I’d hate to be forcibly removed in Tukwila.

      1. Don’t worry about getting stranded at stations on Opening Weekend. ST is running Link shuttle buses that shadow the route. There will be two services: a Local will serve every Link station and an Express. Shuttle buses will run every 5 minutes.

      2. That’s encouraging, though I’d still rather end my Link ride near the Bite of Seattle.

      3. Yeah, I’d rather end up at Westlake as well, but it sounds like Tukwila would be okay as well. MEHVA “will be displaying a historic bus” there and there may be some other things going on there that Westlake won’t have.

  5. Metro will be replacing the Gilligs with 40 foot hybrid Orion VII’s. Link, Link. Hat tip to Oran.

    The article isn’t very clear which Gilligs will be replaced. At the time of purchase, Metro owned:
    40 foot: 395
    35 foot: 15
    30 foot: 95

    According to the article, the buses that will be replaced will be 14 years old in 2011, so that means the fleet being replaced would have been delivered in 1997. The 35 footers were delivered in 1997, and the 40 footers were delivered between 1996 and 1999.

    1. I hope the 4100s don’t get replaced with these by accident. Other than that, I think it sounds like a good idea. Say, think Orion can experiment with a trolleybus version of the Orion VII?

      1. I doubt the ETBs will be replaced with these. Metro is looking to expand the trolley network a bit (pdf) so replacing them with hybrids doesn’t make much sense.

      2. I am sure there will be some who will push for it anyway. It’s amazing how the trolleybus survived in 5 American and 1 Canadian City. I personally believe all modes fit in, and I am holding out that maybe a trolleybus with off-wire capability can re-electrify the 11.(If that is what it takes to appease residents in Madison Park). Metro can improve the trolleybus fleet by getting a handful of low-floor ones at least.

      3. I’ve noticed a lot of hybrid busses on the 44 route, especially on the weekends. Any ideas why that would be?

      4. Most likely due to construction work along the trolley wires, especially that new building on 15th & 42nd. Metro allows the trolleys to be shut down on the weekends for construction or maintenance.

  6. Darn, no ticket for me. Oh well, I’ll get in the 5 AM line (wink) at Westlake for the 10 AM train

    1. The City will soon decide a route alignment for this Streetcar.

      A number of community members have joined to advocate a Loop alignment — one that’s more like Portland’s Streetcar.

      Rather than run as a dual-track down a single path, a Loop would widen the route to include the 12th Avenue north-south corridor. The idea is to strike a balance between the goals of serving the city as it is (by providing additional transit to the area’s hospital workers) and helping to shape the city by giving impetus to a neighborhood ready to thrive.

      I’m not too involved in the issue, as I no longer live in Seattle, but my brother Tri Nguyen has been pretty involved. He’s posting updates and news and helping organize people through a Facebook Group, which can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=90929559232#/posted.php?id=90929559232

      1. loops are the worst, it means you have to walk an extra distance for the other direction. better to concentrate transit on one street than dilute it.

      2. Depends on the loop from my point of view. Couplets like Portland has for it’s streetcar or MAX though downtown aren’t too bad as each direction is only a block apart. It is no more annoying than making a bus route a couplet in an area of one-way streets.

        OTOH 12th is a fair ways from Broadway and there is the slight problem of a steep hill in-between in the area of the hospitals. Ideally I’d like to see a streetcar on both 12th and the Broadway/Boren corridor.

      3. Couplets are great, and they certainly work very well for Portland (both MAX and streetcar). When the two tracks are a a block apart it spreads out the transportation resource a bit without resulting in overly long walks to get to either track.

        And they work very well with one-way streets.

      4. A streetcar on Broadway would directly serve A hospital (not hospitals). Most commuters to Harborview or Virginia Mason will be able to connect to ST light rail much more quickly by taking one of the frequent buses to Third Avenue.(The #2, #3, #4,— travel time on the bus between either hospital and Third Avenue — about 5-6 minutes.) On the other hand, Swedish Hospital First Hill does have its front door on Broadway. The walk to 12th Avenue from Broadway is a 4 minute walk. The walk from 12th to Broadway, admittedly, takes slightly longer.

        The walk from Swedish/Providence campus to 12th is about 6-8 minutes.

        North of Madison St. there is not a significant grade between 12th and Broadway. These details are important.

      5. i love the streets in downtown seattle where 3rd and 1st are two-way and are major transit streets. i cant think of a lot of downtowns with two major streets that are still two-way. it makes it easy for transit users, people can say “oh thats the 3rd street bus,” it reads easily on a map and is easy to remember the route of in ones head. i think its better to make one street have a strong concentration of transit service.

        if youre up for it search nytimes for how the bus companies in nyc opposed the conversion of avenues to one way in the 1950s and 1960s. and jane jacobs wrote a section in the death and life of great american cities about this topic.

        the only place i have no problem with loops is as a terminus for vehicles to loop around the block.

      1. Ah, ok. I was going off by what was listed on the Opening Day page, which states: “Each train will carry about 350, including those standing.” So it sounds like they won’t be squeezing people in and will limit it to ~175 per car?

  9. I’m curious to know how well/widespread the Orca rollout is moving. I’m surprised that there hasn’t been more publicity efforts. In addition to the obvious benefits of the card, I think that local riders have yet to realize one of the greatest hidden benefits of having an Orca card – 20 people boarding a bus with an Orca card takes a fraction of the time that it takes for each of them to pay cash fare. I’ve seen this in action in London, where no one leaves home without their Oyster card: on any given bus during rush hour, small crowds get onto buses quickly and smoothly, and the bus gets going faster. I can’t imagine that anyone would get anywhere on a London bus if cash fares were still used.

    1. I personally have an ORCA, but that’s because there’s a bunch of us who want to play with new toys. I see it a few times on the 230 (most still use PugetPass, cash, or transfers) going to/from Overlake

    2. There are signs on most Metro coaches now, and when the ST folks were at Pacific Place on Tuesday, they had some ORCA info as well. My understanding is that the plan has always been for a “gradual” ramp-up this year, no?

      1. Metro’s plan for publicizing ORCA was for a “gradual” roll-out so that they could better meet demand and address problems before a large population was using the system. Since ORCA launched in April, they have been focusing on getting business accounts up and running (Microsoft, FlexPass accounts, etc). I have heard that they are planning on doing more public outreach in September and October.

      2. That seems to make sense. The nerd herd in Redmond sounds perfect for early adoption, bless them and their blue screens.

    3. Well, Microsoft is using them now. I think that’s some 6-7,000 transit users.

    4. I overheard someone on the bus saying that they’ll eliminate intersystem paper transfers in September and the ORCA site said Fall 2009.

      How many cards do they expect to distribute and how many people know that’s coming?

      I bet that after Link launches for a few weeks, they’ll focus their efforts on mass distributing ORCA cards. I sure hope the TVMs are well stocked.

    5. Are monthly Puget Passes still available on swipe media? If so, does anyone know when they will all transition over? I have a yearly FlexPass, so have to wait until February 2010 to get my Orce from work, but I don’t know what’s currently being sold for monthly pass holders.

      1. FlexPass customers will convert to One Regional Card for Everyone (Orce) upon their annual renewal date, beginning in mid-2009. Basically Metro will mail your employer a box of ORCA cards instead of FlexPasses.

      2. Monthly PugetPasses will continue to be available at least until the end of the year.

      3. Ah, thanks. I don’t know the statistics, but from my casual observations on the route 8 and 36 it seems that of those who pay by pass the majority are the one month PugetPass, as opposed to yearly FlexPasses. So I would surmise that when the PugetPass converts over to ORCA then we’ll see the biggest increase in ORCA use. Especially as that will happen all at once, while the yearly PugetPass and FlexPass conversion will happed slowely as the passes expire on different months.

    6. What I think they need to do is get more places selling the cards, or at least more than one freakin’ window at Westlake. I’ve been there a few times, and the line for the one Orca window has been quite long while there was no line at either of the other two windows.

    7. I think some people will avoid switching to the card forever. Not everyone can afford a pass, and they might not have enough money to put a large chunk of it in the e-purse.

  10. I had some thoughts about the SE Seattle Metro bus service changes that are gonna hit in September when I saw a guy waiting for the 39 on Sunday afternoon. Hopefully the service changes are flexible in the next 5 or so years as Metro and ST discover the light rail’s ridership patterns.

    They are changing the 36 so that it turns east at Myrtle to terminate at Othello Station – currently, crews appear to be installing trolleybus wires along the route. What if th 36 were extended past Othello Station, past Rainier, turned north on Seward Park Avenue and terminated in Seward Park itself – the driveway loop there would make a good bus turnaround. Thus, the southern part of the Seward Park neighborhood would have frequent bus service to access Link, and Link riders from all over the region would have frequent access to a park that’s one of the best places in the city. Some neighbors along this 36 route would be upset about the wires, and I don’t know what this would do to the 39 – certainly its new terminus at Othello Station might not be completely necessary anymore, but how could this impact the 34 and 39.

    Oh, and another thing to help out with that annoying loop that the 39 does through the VA Hospital lot. Perhaps since the 38 has been altered to be a shuttle between Beacon Hill and Mt. Baker, it could dogleg to the south at the Beacon Hill station and terminate at the VA entrance. The 38 would probably require two buses rather than one at that point.

    1. Matt, you’re a bit late on the SE Seattle issue, to which we gave saturation coverage before the decisions were made.

      We’ve had dueling experts on whether or not you can trigger trolley wire across the Link wires. Regardless, people are a little squeamish about that.

      The issue with the VA is the direct link to downtown, which the 38 doesn’t provide. The VA loop is also served by the 60, and sort of by the 36.

      1. Well, I never thought of alternatives other than what Metro was proposing until I saw the guy standing there on Sunday, and like I said, I understand the service changes are all set – let’s just hope that some time in the near or even distant future they can be re-evaluated if in fact they need to be.

        And there’s only one way to find out if you can build trolley buses across Link – do it! Or you could use super high voltage buses.

        Just kidding.

  11. Anyone care to comment on the fare structure? As I read the brochures they are passing out today, I’ll be paying $1.75 to ride in the tunnel (although the bus is still free?) and $1.25 for a child (50 cents more than the normal bus fare). Perhaps I’ll be using light rail a lot less than I thought (being a regular Westlake to International District rider).

    1. IMO, the adult fares seem reasonable compared with bus fares, but the youth fares are far more expensive. I think they could afford a slightly lower farebox recovery in the interest of having some sort of fare coordination when it comes to youth.

    2. That’s been discussed before. I’ll hit one one of the reasons:
      The Rainier Valley isn’t home to a bunch of millionaires. If rides in the DSTT were free, the base fare would be higher, and many of these riders would be less likely to use Link.

  12. any way for a visitor to get a golden… err, silver “travel light” ticket? i’m planning to come up from portland tomorrow night.

    if you dont have a ticket, is mt. baker still the best station to go to. is that where the main action is occuring?

      1. There is not going to be much parking at Tukwila during opening weekend. I was there today. ST had a bunch of tents set up in the parking lot. They also had a line of Honey Buckets. And a half dozen Sound Transit PD cars. I’d say there were maybe 75 open spots.

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