Clearing out my inbox of interesting tidbits:

22 Replies to “News Roundup: Stale News Edition”

  1. Has Sound Transit announced when the Seatac Station will be open or announced when they’ll announce it?

      2. That old 2008 article of mine questioned whether Sound Transit could open by the end of December 2009 as planned. There were delays because the original design for the Sea-Tac/Airport Station was too costly, and needed to be revised. But since then, ST and contractors have gained time, and the latest oversight reports confirm it is on track to open Dec. 31. (or in 118 days if you read STB’s countdown clock just to your right….)
        — Mike Lindblom, Seattle Times

      3. Hi Mike,

        Have these reports explicitly listed December 31st as a target date? Is it on track to open by or on the 31st? What’s the probability of completion before Christmas?

      4. The official construction schedule in the monthly Agency Progress Report says Dec. 30, and shows two weeks of float. Bruce Gray of Sound Transit tells me today it’s opening “by the 31st” and a final date has not been announced.

      6. One of the Link airport shuttle bus operators announced that Airport Link will open a 2 days before Christmas. Of course, he may be wrong or might have heard it from another ST person.

        Also, that operator also used the time between the airport to the station to explain how to use Link to passengers (how often Link runs, first and last trains/shuttle buses, fares, travel time, etc.). Very helpful!

      7. My suspicion is that they’re on track for it. It’s just testing and the ped bridge now.

  2. By the way, do we know if ST is addressing the issue of marking ‘paid fare zone’ boundaries? There seems to be a lot of unintentional fare evasion going on. Roughly two weeks ago, three middle-aged women asked me if they could pay after getting off the train on the Beacon Hill platform. I had to send them back up the elevators. I visited the Canada Line last week, and make no mistake, they explicitly mark off where you need POP. Seeing as that’s not the case here, it seems like a stupid oversight.

    1. Well, they’ve started putting up larger signs – I saw one at the Columbia City station last night. And the ORCA readers are arranged to sort of demarcate the beginning of the fare paid zone. But I agree it is still far from obvious.

    2. The concept of having an honor system with POP is new to most Seattleites as is the entire LR system itself. I would expect unintentional fare evasion to go down dramatically as people move up the learning curve. And of course ST will tweak things as they get operational feedback.

      Incidentally, I took a friend on a tour of the Link system last weekend and we got checked twice! (Once before boarding at Tukwila and once onboard) Everyone in our car had the proper ticket, which I found very encouraging.

      1. I’m a regular rider and have been checked many times, and I’ve never noticed anyone around me who did not have valid fare.

      2. I’ve seen one person leave at University Street Sta, having been checked at Westlake just after the doors closed. I’ve been checked 4 times in approximately 36 rides.

      3. I heard on the radio this morning that ST is now fining fare evaders. Up to now, it’s just been a warning.

    3. Yeah, in Vancouver they have huge overhead signs in red and yellow letters saying ‘FARE PAID ZONE’. There’s also a black and yellow strip with a sticker on the floor demarcating the fare paid area.

  4. It’s hard for me to believe that ST will do something as sensible as build a direct line from Seattle to Issaquah along I-90.

  5. Wonder if the Greyhound Bus runs between Seattle and Vancouver are affected by the bullying tactic annoucned today by the Scottish-owned, US-based subsidiary of FirstGroup? They are asking Canadian Governments to pay up on unprofitable routes, or they will discontinue them. Right now it is only $15 million they are asking for. If the Vancouver-Seattle cross border run was on the block, would make that 2nd Train from Seattle more appealing.

    http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/09/03/greyhound-bus-stoppage.html?ref=rss

    1. The Seattle-Vancovuer route is run by Greyhound US so it’s probably not affected by the Greyhound Canada situation. Plus it seems to have plenty of passengers, partly due to the lack of trains for so many years, and partly people going from Vancouver to California.

      It was interesting reading about the impending loss of service in Manitoba and northern Ontario because we’ve already had the same. The Greyhound route from Billings to Minneapols was cut around five years ago, and replaced by local Trailways companies running once a day. The Walla Walla bus was also cut around the same time, and I don’t think there were any buses between Pasco and Walla Walla until the Grape Line started recently.

      I rode one of the last Seattle-Chicago buses in 2000, and one of the drivers was a former railroad man so he had lots of interesting stories. He said the small-town stops got like one passenger every ten years. This contradicted the sentiments of the counties that bus service was vital, especially for the elderly. Greyhound said it couldn’t make a profit on them but that smaller companies could. I don’t see why that is because the cost of a bus and fuel and a driver is the same either way, but somehow it works with the smaller companies, who also run north-south routes from Canada to the soutwestern states.

      So I don’t see why the same thing won’t happen in Manitoba and Ontario. Let the provinces run their own minibuses. If Washington state can do it, they should be able to.

      Or they could resurrect VIA rail, which apparently has tracks all through the affected areas.

      1. The way VIA ran services in the Prairie Provinces prior to 1989 was often a Budd RDC or not even that, passenger accomodation(a coach/baggage combine) on a freight train, the last major Mixed Train operation in North America, down to just train 290/291 in Rural Manitoba. I was following the Global National story out of Winnipeg on this, and turns out they just relocated to a new terminal last week. The local news on the two CanWest Global affiliates in Alberta something interesting was mentioned. Greyhound is supposed to provide the service on the losing-money routes, in exchange for the province keeping competition off the profitable routes like Edmonton-Calgary.

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