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This is an open thread.

96 Replies to “News Roundup: Close Call”

  1. Since the Seattle Times website is now paywalled, I suggest it be excluded from news roundoups, or a non-Seattle Times article be substituted.

      1. With a slow connection or quick finger you can click stop loading prior to the pay wall page coming up.

      4. Jason,

        That “incognito window” appears to open one’s computer wide to invasion. The first thing one sees is “downloading proxy script”. Then a “POPUP BLOCKER TEST” page showed up with “Click Anywhere On The Page”.

        Kaspersky was screaming about an invasion threat.

        So I for one am not going to use it.

        Please STB, put (Seattle Times) after the links. Or even better, DON’T INCLUDE their stuff. Don’t drive page views to closed sources.

        Thanks.

    2. At least a word of warning, for example putting (Seattle Times) after the link, would help those of us hoarding our free pageviews for the month.

      1. Don’t hoard page views. Just use private browsing. In Chrome you can just right-click the link and choose “Open in incognito window.”

      2. Move your cursor over the link. At the bottom of your screen it will display the location of the link, from which you should be able to easily identify the text “seattletimes.com”

      3. Tim, if we’re browsing on a tablet or phone, we can’t move our cursor over a link to see where it goes before clicking.

      4. On a phone, hold your finger on the link without letting go and you will see where it goes.

  2. What do we know about how BRT will be implemented along Madison? I’ve heard people (Mayor McGinn in particular) refer to it as “true” BRT and I’m curious what will set it apart from the BRT lines we already have.

    1. The rumblings so far seem to indicate that it will have dedicated lanes (replacing the current part-time parking lanes) at least between I-5 and Broadway. That plus aggressive signal priority could really make a difference.

      The question in my mind is how they will handle the intersection of 6th/Madison in the inbound direction. Almost all westbound traffic on Madison turns right on 6th there. A queue jump for buses at either 7th or 6th would only help once per very long light cycle. How do we keep the bus moving while crossing the (often backed up for several blocks) traffic headed for 6th?

      1. Since there are no inbound stops between 9th and 5th, switch the dedicated lane to center-running for getting over I-5?

      2. The question is how to switch to the center without bogging down the bus at the point of the switch. I’m sure it can be done; I’m just not creative enough to figure out how.

      3. From what I hear, the main question is how they’re going to take away two GP lanes on Madison near I-5 without causing a bunch of intersections to fail horribly.

      4. David,

        A bus moving from a curb BAT lane to center running has the right of way to change lanes. That “Yield” sign painted on the left rear corner of buses in Washington State is a legal traffic control sign. It just happens to move around with the bus……

        Just put a camera on the BRT buses used on Madison with a bright red flashing LED “RECORDING” indicator that goes on with the left turn signal. Attach a $250 failure to yield fine — Madison is a city street, so I think Seattle can do that — and voila, free movement for the buses.

  3. Could someone explain the logic of East Link’s East Main Station to me? The location is awful. Of all the current and future Link stations, I’m declaring this one the worst.

    1. I live in Bellevue, and after staring at the proposed East Main Station location on a map for a good hour, I got nothing.

    2. It’s a desire to give “something” to Old Bellevue and south Bellevue rather than just bypassing it all. As we’ve heard from several transit fans, wide stop spacing is a Bad, Evil Thing. All the 104th/108th/112th proposals had a station either at SE 8th St or Main St.

      This station would have made more sense further west, especially at Bellevue Way where it would be a 5-10 minute walk to many things. Here it reaches about half that market, although the downtown park, Meydenbauer Park, and Bellevue High School are still within a 15-20 minute walk. Sounds like Bellevue should be thinking of a shuttle bus on Main Street. (Hmm, 84th, Lk WA Bv, Main St, 112th, BTC; it could replace the 271’s Medina segment.)

      I’m not sure why the SE 8th station was eliminated. Wasn’t Surrey Downs’ opposition mostly about the track location rather than the station? Maybe it was a technical/cost issue. But in any case, when the SE 8th station was eliminated, it was moved to the alternative location, Main St. I’m sure south downtown businesses argued for that.

      The station could have renaissance someday if the surrounding hotels-in-the-park are ever replaced by mixed-use buildings with garages.

      1. So the East Main Station is the stop for Old Bellevue? Interesting. It’s a half mile away.

      3. Don’t blame Surrey Downs for the placement of the East Main station, Mike. I know they’re a favorite whipping boy around here but they’re not the ones who argued for it.

        I haven’t heard anyone who wants the Main St station. I brought it up a number of times at the recent open house and no one from Bellevue City or Sound Transit could explain why it’s a good placement. My prediction is that Sound Transit will eventually run East Link 2 up and down the existing rail right of way (the B7 line?) from Woodinville to Renton and the Main St station will become the transfer station between lines.

        Sound Transit desperately wanted at SE 8th St station. The Bellevue Club–the same folks who got ST to move the train to the west side of 112th to save their tennis courts–opposed the SE 8th St placement. As per usual, Sound Transit and Bellevue listened to businesses and screwed homeowners. (Yes, the condo owners happily sold because they wanted the hell out of Dodge but the homes near them don’t profit quite as cleanly.) Ironically, if things do go badly for the Bellevue Club they’ll just pick up and move.

        There’s already a train station entrance planned for 110th and NE 2nd St. That’s *by far* more convenient for all of Old Bellevue and half of Surrey Downs.

        I have no idea what will become of the useless strip of land stranded between the train and the highway. I wouldn’t want to stay in a hotel where I could choose to listen to either a train or a highway. The same goes for office buildings and retail/commercial. It’s not prime property anymore.

      4. Also, what “south downtown businesses” would have argued for the placement? There is almost no commerce near the South Main station. There are a few small businesses–dentists offices and art studios–that will come down to build the train. There are three hotels and the Bellevue Club. And there are some car dealerships across the highway on 116th. But there are no other businesses anywhere (and no high-density housing) anywhere near the South Main station.

      5. For a Woodinville – Renton line, Hospital Station would be a fine transfer station. South of there, it could follow the BNSF for a ways, then along Lake Hills Connector to Richards Road, thence to either Eastgate P&R or Factoria.

      6. Bluntly, the entire route through Bellevue is too far east. Too late to change that now.

  4. I’ll throw this idea out there to pick apart. Someone suggested it to me, but I didn’t catch his name.

    Instead of having a Metro low-income ORCA, why not take all the free-ticket money and convert it into free monthly passes (on registered cards, carefully tracked to make sure each recipient is using only one)?

    Here are a few reasons to go this path:
    * Instead of adding new administrative expense for human service agencies, it should actually lead to a significant reduction in administrative expenses, and substantial increase in the ratio of benefit distributed to administrative labor.
    * The monthly pass would be good on all ORCA agencies, not just Metro.
    * The monthly passes would be provided to the distributing agency at 20% of the face value (as the tickets are now), so they would cost the recipient only $21.60 for a 2-zone peak pass (or $5.40 for a pass on an RRFP card).
    * The pass could be provided free for those who truly cannot afford to pay, at the determination of the providing agency.
    * Instead of getting a subsidized ticket to get home from an appointment or to another appointment, the recipient would have actual mobility for another month. So, a lot more boardings would be provided under this system than under the system where one ticket is distributed at a time and paperwork is filled out for each ticket.

    * the passes so distributed would lead to an actual reduction in cash boardings, and hopefully make it politically viable to enact an electronic payment discount and maybe even eliminate paper transfers.

    As it is, the committee seems to be leaning toward allowing maximum cash payment (but there is no funding to be found for the committee’s dreams, especially in light of the 17% cut looming). I don’t get the sense that the committee has gotten it at all that cash payment costs a lot of service hours.

    1. Well, it seems like it makes sense. But since nothing to do with ORCA has been done sensibly (why is there a $5 surcharge to get ORCA?!?) it’s going to be hard to get anywone to listen.

  5. why don’t we have cell phone repeaters in the bus tunnel stations? i cringe every time i walk under all the smartphone ads.

      2. Chicago got the carriers to pay for this. We should too. When ULink opens, it will be a crying shame to have nearly 3 miles of tunnel and no signal. Students aren’t going to like that.

    2. When these are installed it’s often only one carrier, so their phones work and others don’t.

      1. That shouldn’t be an issue anymore in a couple of years; all the carriers are standardizing on LTE. It will be a couple of years before almost everyone has an LTE-capable phone, though.

      2. It’s not a question of technology (LTE, CDMA, HSPA, and so on), it’s a question of radio frequency. AT&T uses some combination of 700MHz (lower half), 850MHz (mid range), and 1900MHz. T-Mobile uses 1700MHz, 1900MHz, and 2100MHz. Verizon uses–potentially–all of those, but in the upper half region. Sprint uses 800MHz, 1900MHz, and, for some insane reason, 2500MHz for WiMax. There is, unfortunately, not One Antenna to Rule Them All.

      3. The should at least have public wifi in the tunnel stations. That’s easy since there are no major obstacles inside the tunnel area.

      4. Or, at the very least, real-time arrival signs to make up for the lack of OneBusAway caused by the lack of cellphone signal.

        The display signs are already there. It’s just a matter of changing the useless text of “Downtown transit tunnel” to something useful.

      5. Redmondrider: and this is why we need a national government, to set national standards for what frequencies cellphones use.

        Apparently we don’t have a national government.

      6. The FCC regulates cell phone frequencies. They sell bands for big bucks because there is a lack of bandwidth. All that data on your smart phone eats up a lot of capacity. It’s one of the reasons for the push to digital TV so they could repurpose the old UHF channels for cell phones. Moving forward there are going to be more and more frequencies in use as the existing bandwidth is pushed to it’s limit.

      7. There is “a national government” that sets “national standards for what frequencies cellphones use.” They call themselves the FCC.

        If they all used the same frequency, it wouldn’t work because receivers can’t differentiate between two transmitters transmitting on the same frequency. Read up on where the Cell in Cell Phone comes from.

      8. Also, even if a phone can use multiple frequency bands (most GSM phones now are quad-band), it doesn’t mean you have the right to use another provider’s network. For example, if you have a T-Mobile phone and only AT&T service is available, the phone will go into “Emergency Only” mode because there’s no roaming agreement between those two carriers.

      9. Orv: Are you sure that applies here? Seattle’s GSM towers were jointly built by VoiceStream and Cingular and shared. VoiceStream became T-Mobile and Cingular became AT&T. I was a Cingular and then an AT&T customer and my phone roamed on T-Mobile’s and smaller networks without an extra charge. I switched to T-Mobile a year or two ago, and it has worked everywhere except deepest rural Oregon, although although I haven’t traveled off the west coast since I switched so I’m not sure about the rest of the country.

      10. Pretty sure. I have an AT&T phone, and I get good coverage in places where my friend’s T-Mobile phone shows “Emergency Only.” It may depend on the plan, though; more expensive plans sometimes include more roaming capability.

  6. From the RapidRide E article:

    With service at least every ten minutes during the morning and evening commuting hours and fifteen minute service the rest of the day, bus riders do not need a schedule.

    I was under the impression that “fifteen minute service” was what we like to call “normal bus service”, for which one does, in fact, need a schedule. In what way is this new line “rapid”?

    1. It’s obviously a judgment call how frequent is “frequent enough to not need a schedule”. Metro’s line is that 15 minutes is the cutoff, and it’s sticking to it. However, it has now published off-peak schedules for the D Line and C Line after huge public demand, so we can demand the same for the E.
      (Interestingly, the page titles say the D and C lines are routes #674 and 673.)

      My own sense is that it’s a continuum, and people behave differently if the service is 15-minute, 10-minute, and 5-minute. The more frequent it is, the more willing people are to ride it in cases where they could go either way; to transfer to it for the last mile; and to downsize their cars. Jarrett Walker talks about how agencies need to make some definition of frequent service and distinguish it on their maps, however minimal it is, because it’s a first step toward better service. Metro’s definition is minimal: 15 minutes until 6pm Mon-Fri. However, the RapidRide standard extends this until 10pm every day. Only a few other Metro corridors meet this standard (A, B, C, D, 3/4, 7, 26/28, 36, 44, 70/71/72/73, maybe a couple others. The 49 almost makes it.)

      I suppose there’s one good thing about “Rapid” in the name. It means we can keep going to Metro and say, “Hey, this is supposed to be rapid. Make it rapid.”

      1. We should also demand for published off peak schedules for Rapid Ride A and B too. Of course, as mentioned by most of us, the worse offender of publishing no schedules is Sound Transit’s LINK.

      2. At the STB meetup in December or so, Kevin Desmond said that the reaction of Seattlites to RapidRide C and D was like night and day compared with suburbanites to the A and B. The suburbanites think it’s a great improvement and are quite satisfied with it, while Seattlites complain about crowding and frequency and schedule. He said that reflects the higher expectations Seattlites have for transit. He also briefly said, “Off-peak schedules are coming,” without saying when or which routes. And then it turned out, only the C and D were published. This suggests the A and B will not be published unless there’s a huge demand from suburbanites, which there hasn’t been so far and thus is unlikely to be. Publishing the schedule also changes the operations because it has to run on a schedule-based model rather than a headway-based model. Metro likes the headway-based model so it will resist making more of RapidRide schedule-based unless the public demands it.

        The compromise in this case was to allow peak-hour (10 minute) service to remain headway-based, and off-peak (15 minute) service to be schedule-based. The biggest drive for schedule-based service is people making transfers, because if you’re transfering to a half-hourly route you really need to know whether you’ll have time to make it.

  8. Whats the feeling for the proposed 3rd Ave bridge? two lanes? Four? Plus cycle track and ped. walkway? Is the assumption that it’s built first to provide relief for when they put rails across Fremont and Ballard bridges? Gonna add a lot more traffic to Nickerson east and west bound. Would the “road diet” be removed?

    1. “No bridge” would be my opinion.

      And certainly no bridge for Link caliber LR. If we are going to build something with that much capability we should put it in a tunnel.

  9. Ideas for Potential Future Link Stations South of Angle Lake

    -Kent-Des Moines Station–Pacific Hwy S & Kent-Des Moines Rd
    -Midway Station–Pacific Hwy S & S 252nd St?
    -Star Lake Station–Pacific Hwy S & S 272nd St
    -Federal Way TC (duh!)
    -South Federal Way Station–Pacific Hwy S & S 348th St
    -Fife Station–Pacific Hwy E & 52nd Ave
    -Tacoma Dome Station–joins ST’s two Link systems (yes, I know about the voltage issue…

    1. FWIW, the name of the P&R at 272nd & Pacific is “Redondo Heights”.

      Federal Way TC is located hideously. The cost of having Link leave Pac Hwy to get to the TC may be larger than the cost of the parking garage itself. Pac Hwy & 320th is in walking distance of nearly everything in downtown Federal Way. The TC, not so much. Maybe the current parking garage could be sold as part of a TOD plan.

      If the Puyallup Tribe is willing to go in halvsies, would a station next to EQC make more sense than in the Fife business district, such as it is? I know lots of people from Seattle who go to EQC. I don’t know anyone who goes to Fife.

      1. I don’t know anyone who goes to Fife.

        I do!

        Should be interesting to see what the alignment looks like south of FWTC; if there’s a stop in South Federal Way it may have to take an I-5 alignment to get there.

    2. Based on the alternatives analysis, it looks like Sound Transit is leaning toward an I-5 alignment. Lower cost and just as many estimated riders.

      The Midway Station (Kent/Des Moines Station) will probably be at 236th Street (perhaps on 30th Ave?). The next station south would be Star Lake Station at the Star Lake P&R right next to the freeway.

      South of that, … I wonder if Milton will clamor for a station.

      1. There will need to be a station at Highline CC. That’s the most major destination between the airport and Federal Way.

      2. I don’t think ST is leaning towards anything at this point, it is all still in scoping.

        But please post what you have, I’m curious. And lower cost isn’t the only consideration — it will get political. Future redevelopment and TOP potential is much diminished on the I-5 route.

      3. Highline CC is a quarter-mile south of Kent-Des Moines Road – that station should be located at the community college.

      5. It is beyond insane to run Link along I-5 south of 200th. There’s essentially a greenfield opportunity for string of pearls development all the way to Federal Way by running along SR99. Any freeway alignment cuts off half the walkshed of any transit alignment. Plus there’s that bluff along the east side of the freeway from about 200th to about 250th.

        If they insist on building BART North, they should have adopted heavy rail technology. It’s cheaper (no overhead), faster, and you can piggyback on the volume purchases of the Big Boys.

        Apparently the only place in the Link system where light rail’s strength — the ability to run at-grade with relatively minor road crossings — will be used is along MLK and on the stretch between the International District station and Lander Street.

        It’s a relatively sizable part of the system now, but will be at most 10% when completed. Crazy.

      6. There will be a station at Highline CC/Kent Des Moines Road and it will have a parking garage.

        As to where, that’s still speculation, but I imagine buying out the low density retail at Pac & 236th would be pretty cheap and would be an excellent site for the station.

      7. At the meeting in Federal Way, Sound Transit said that the “Kent Des Moines” station would be more aligned to S 240 St because of a small community college a few blocks west of there.

      8. I think the name “Kent – Des Moines station” is more about nominally service those two cities than about being near Kent – Des Moines Road.

    3. How about:
      – “Kent-Des Moines Rd & totally empty train” station
      – “Highline CC (is that thing over there surrounded by parking lots to which everyone drives)” station
      – “S 252nd St & totally empty train” station
      – “S 272nd St & totally empty train” station
      – “Federal Way TC (why is this slower than my commuter bus was?)”
      – “South Federal Way Totally Fictional New Urban Center” station
      – “Pacific Hwy E & my god this is in the middle of freaking nowhere” station
      – “Tacoma Dome Not Remotely Sufficient All-Day Demand Transit Center” station

      2. A lot of people ride the 197 from the Kent-Des Moines P&R to the U District. The last bus on that route (the 7:59, the one I take) is often crush-loaded.

        One disadvantage I see of an SR-99 alignment is it puts the station up a very steep hill from Highline CC. An I-5 alignment would be even worse, and also force the train to climb a pretty steep grade if the alignment elsewhere is along SR-99.

      3. The observation-bias problem and the bullshit Seattle definitions of “crush-loaded” and “a lot of people” rear their ugly heads again.

        “Hey. 45 non-car-owning UW students from South King sleep as late as the bus schedule will allow before heading to class, and thus all end up on the same bus. Occasionally, one of them doesn’t even get a seat! Let’s build them billions of dollars worth of elevated infrastructure!”

      4. Well, that wasn’t my definition — I’ve been on that bus many times when there was literally no more room for standees — but duly noted. I do have a car, and if Metro cancels the 197 as planned, I’ll go ahead and drive it. I’d add that, seeing as this is a route that originates at a P&R, most of the students riding it presumably have cars, too. I don’t see many of them coming in on the 166.

      6. So as it happens, I was waiting for a 43 by the UW Medical Center yesterday, and the last run of the 197 pulled up. I counted precisely a dozen people on the articulated bus. And this was the last stop before it went express.

        I’m not saying that “crush-loaded” never happens on some particular run other than this run — although 8 people standing on our no-standing-room buses seems to be the local-consensus definition of a “crush” — but I am calling you out on your assertion that there is some sort of pent-up ongoing demand for this particular long-distance trip that vastly exceeds available capacity, and therefore justifies empty trains forever.

        Contrary to the straw-man that is often levied against me, I am not some suburb-repudiating demagogue. I have no problem with the idea of you or others living where you choose to or can afford to live, and still having the ability to get to major destinations such as downtown or the U without having to drive.

        But you must accept that there are realities of distance, land use, and the resultant transit geometry that do not work in favor of very expensive plans to grossly overserve a single corridor of South King.

        Sound Transit’s most optimistic (read: inflated) estimates for an entire hypothetical Federal Way Link corridor max out at four digits worth of one-way boardings. That’s fewer than 5,000 round-trippers. Nearly all of who would be using it at rush hour and no other time. It’s pathetic.

        The simple fact is that the distances at play, combined with the paucity of points of origin from which the line would be the clear and obvious best choice for a given trip, do not favor a spontaneous-travel form or level of service of any sort. Sorry, they just don’t.

        Cancelling this boondoggle wouldn’t be shortchanging South King: hundreds of thousands of people live down there, and only a handful would ever have used it anyway.

      7. If your opinion of South Link or Lynnwood Link becomes popular, there will never be light rail to Ballard.

      8. Divorce the funding.

        It will have to happen eventually.

        It’s the only way this region will ever get transit that actually corresponds to need on a place-by-place basis.

      9. d.p., I was talking about the last run northbound — the last run southbound is one of the less busy ones, because it’s fairly late (6:14, I think, when UW is in session, 5:44 otherwise.)

        Keep in mind a lot of the people traveling that route are students, who don’t necessarily work 9-5. I suspect many of the ones who are catching the 7:45 and 9:00-ish buses in the morning are heading home on earlier buses after their classes are over.

        I understand where you’re coming from. If we got rid of all the suburban routes and somehow could spend all that money within the Seattle city limits, Seattle would have a first-class transit system. It would do nothing for me, however, and I wouldn’t vote to fund such a system. Neither would most other people in the suburbs. So in reality that money wouldn’t be there, anyway.

      10. (And as I said, with the 197, the 158, and parts of the 121 and 122 on the chopping block, I may be driving to work before much longer. At that point my interest in what happens to Metro will pretty well end.)

    4. Could they take the section of SR 99 from about 180 ST to the Tacoma Dome Station, remove 1 lane in each direction, and build track directly on that, similar to the way they do it on MLK Way? It would save a ton of cash, as well as serve the Pacific Highway corridor and keep their footprint smaller. They could also have more stations:

      Sea-Tac Airport Station (S 176 St)
      YMCA Station (S 188 St)
      Angle Lake Station (S 200 St)
      7-Eleven Station (S 216 St)
      College Station (S 240 St)
      Fred Meyer Station (S 252 Station)
      Redondo Heights Station (S 276 St)
      SR 509 Station (S Dash Point Rd)
      Federal Way TC (S 314 – S 320 St)
      Pacific Coast Ford Station (S 336 St)
      S Federal Way Station (S 348 St)
      South West Station (SW 374 St)
      Milton Station (Porter Way)
      East Fife Station (54th Ave E)
      West Fife Station (33 Ave E)
      Tacoma Dome Station (Tacoma Link tracks)

  10. I’m not understanding how the “new Ship Canal crossing” described in the article, given the corridor described, is any different from the existing University Bridge, or how much it would relieve pressure on the Ballard and Fremont bridges.

    1. The idea is to provide more transit capacity across the Ship Canal between Lake Union and Salmon Bay without reducing automobile capacity, which would be politically unpalatable. One possibility is that they could build this new bridge at 3rd Ave for transit, bikes, and peds only, but I don’t think that’s very likely since it would skip Fremont. What makes the most sense to me would be to build this new bridge with auto lanes and bike/ped facilities, then make a lane in each direction on the Fremont Bridge transit-only. I believe I heard that alternative will be included in this study.

      1. Should this bridge be 4 lanes? If so, you could feasibly suggest transit only lanes on the Fremont AND Ballard bridges…

    2. Eastlake? I thought this was about the second Fremont bridge for the downtown-Ballard streetcar. But this is another transit Bridge McGinn is thinking about now? Which routes would use it? The 49, 66, and 70/71/72/73? (All of which are likely to be reorganized with North Link and a possible Eastlake streetcar.) What about the Montlake buses, it wouldn’t affect them?

      1. This article is talking about two different things. One is the 3rd ave bridge the other is the streetcar up eastlake to the U district. It’s only talking about one new bridge.

  11. FYI, all: OneBusAway is trying out some tentative solutions to the “pole problem” that yields awful predictions near route beginnings.

    But there may be unintended consequences. A mid-route 40 was just listed as passing through Ballard 14 minutes early, and has failed to correct itself even after passing the next timepoints.

  12. On the 40 now – OBA showing it as later than it is and a lady who just got on said every single bus on the OBA board was wrong.

    1. OBA for my stop (on the website) is showing some 542 and 545 trips 15 mins early, others 15 minutes late. The arrival times are also oscillating wildly. I seriously doubt it’s true, but haven’t been over to the stop yet to see.

    2. That is weird. I generally find that OBA is usually spot on. But since there is no GPS on board Metro buses, there is no way to be sure where it is.

  13. RapidRide is so frequent you don’t need a schedule. But when a real time arrival sign is broken, it says “refer to schedule.” Well…….

  14. Presumably, highway 599 throws-off more decibels thank LINK. Plus, the highway noise is much more of a constant. So then why is Sound Transit building a sound wall near the Duwamish river in near Tukwila when the state didn’t build one for the highway?

  15. Is there an ETA on the writeup of the interview with Car2Go?

    I know the bloggers have lots of other priorities in their lives; just wondering what to expect.

    1. It doesn’t appear to be a malfunction of the equipment per se. It could be a design deficiency if the escalator wasn’t smart enough to detect an obstruction and stop or even reverse.

      1. True, although I imagine the missing comb plate teeth may have contributed. It’s an unusual accident — most entrapment injuries seem to involve items being pulled between the steps and the hand rail supports, where there’s a long, unguarded gap, not items being pulled in at the comb plate.

  17. Just read the Link notice. From April 1 to July 31 — that’s four freaking months! — between 9pm and 1am Link will operate every 20 minutes.

    Link is already closed for about 4 hours a night – a bit longer on Sat & Sun nights. They need to strangle night service for four months to build a stinking wall? Why is that acceptable? Do the work during the existing shutdowns and the 15-min frequency periods.

    And of course Sound Transit values riders time as so unimportant that they can’t be bothered to tell us when Link will be running

    1. la metro posts a schedule for all of its services…from those that go every 2 hours to those that only operate every 3 minutes. why can’t sound transit and metro do that? community transit does that with swift.

  18. the walla walla ferry after 3 million in repairs is entering service tonight April 12 with a 905 pm sailing from bremerton to Seattle. according to news reports it was scheduled for next Thursday but evidently it was able to be moved up.

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