Link Excuse of the Week: SDOT’s Route 7 Improvements and Columbia City Farmers Market

21 Replies to “Link Excuse of the Week: SDOT’s Route 7 Improvements and Columbia City Farmers Market”

1. Per the website, they’re giving away up to 1000 ORCA cards with a $20 credit loaded on them (factor in the $5 card cost for the $25 advertised in the promotion). I’m all for encouraging people to use transit, but that seems mighty generous just to encourage use of a single corridor…

   1. I rode the 7 from I-90!

      There was a pretty hefty queue at CC Farmer’s Market for these passes.

      Afterward, I took light rail to the ID, had dinner, and took the 49 back home, with the same driver that had carried me southward just a few hours before. [aside: I really appreciate that 49 = 7^2]

2. Looks like another excellent excuse! The La Medusa link is broken — it redirects relative to the current page.

   1. Thanks, fixed!

      I should also have said that the Columbia City Farmers Market is VERY family friendly. Even when it’s raining there will be families picnicking and 50 kids playing in the park beside the market.

3. Well, it’s a kind gesture but I don’t know how many Orca cards it would take to get me on the “regular” 7. The 7 is the reason I ride a bike!

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5. Anytime I ever need to travel down the route 7 corridor, I nearly always use Link instead. The walk to the station and the faster travel time roughly cancel each other out. Wait times are the same on paper most of the day, but are much more reliable on Link. And the walk+train ride is much more pleasant than a bus that stops every couple hundred feet. A bus that creates the illusion that you’ve traveled so unbelievably far, when you’ve actually gone not even a mile.

   1. The new “Ride the 7” billboards advertising the trip times are kind of silly – are they proud of “20 minutes from Mount Baker to Downtown”?

      1. According to google maps, its faster than link from Mt. Baker station to Pioneer Square station. (Google maps says 24 min for 7 and 25 for Link).

      2. Link takes approximately 12 minutes from Mt. Baker to PSS.

      3. Not only is LINK twice as fast as the #7, but it’s also $.25 cheaper during peak. From Beacon Hill it’s twice as fast and up to $.50 cheaper than the #36.

6. This seems like it exactly illustrates one of the drawbacks of multiple transit agencies. SDOT has just spent $12 million to enhance a transit corridor that directly competes with the millions spent by Sound Transit on Link. (What’s more damning is that they seem to have been able to spend just $12 million and still outpreform Link on speed from Mt. Baker, even with more stops).

   With such a massive investment in rail, wouldn’t it make more sense to focus these improvements around accessibility and safety to Light Rail stops?

   Can anyone tell me whether overall transit ridership growth from the Rainier Valley outpaced ridership growth in the city as a whole due to Light Rail?

   1. Link is twice as fast from Mt. Baker to PSS as the 7. Check the schedule rather than Google Maps.

      1. Plus, remember Bruce’s footnote from a recent post: “[Google Maps prioritizes the 7] over Link for Rainier Valley trips because Link’s all-day frequency is considered to be 20 minutes, due to the post-9pm single-tracking that’s currently happening for repair work. The 7 runs every 15 minutes until much later, and is thus considered a superior service by the routing engine, even though during most of the day it’s is actually an inferior service for most trips.”

   2. Fair enough, Link is faster. However, I do think the proximity of the 7 to amenities, specifically in Columbia City, somewhat negate this quickness. Perhaps that will change in time.

      But regardless, that’s not really my main point. My main point is why have we invested so heavily in two transit corridors that inherently cannibalize each other?

      1. Because they really don’t cannibalize each other. They do different things and complement each other.

         Link is fast mass transit from a couple of key nodes in the valley to downtown, Sodo, and the airport (and, eventually, UW). The 7 is local transportation along Rainier, which serves people whose origin or destination is within reasonable distance of a Link stop, people with challenged mobility, and people who prefer short walks rather than speed. Ads aside, the 7’s primary mission is not to carry people from Mt. Baker Station or the heart of Columbia City into downtown, and Link is not well served to take someone from Hillman City to Little Saigon.

         If I were dictator of Metro, I’d take the 7 out of downtown altogether, and make it a straight gridded corridor along Rainier and Boren from Rainier Beach to South Lake Union.

      2. The 7 has a better routing, without a doubt. My understanding is that the 7’s route to Rainier Beach was the preferred alignment for Link, but Rainier’s ROW was too narrow and ST couldn’t afford land purchases to widen it.

         I believe that an all-day 7X could make a successful BRT line (disregarding the local tail).

         They’re near each other, sure, but I don’t think they cannibalize each other. Only two link stops (Mt. Baker and Columbia City) are within 1/2 mile of Rainier. And if they are stealing each others riders anyway, there seem to be plenty to go around, with standing-room-only crowds on both services.

         I

      3. They do different things and complement each other.

         Failure to run the highest-quality and highest-capacity service on the highest-demand corridor and failure to place stations at walkable distances from one another are bugs, not features.

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