This may be a good video for any visitors planning to use Link:
124 Replies to “Sunday Open Thread: Finding Link at the Airport”
Nice write-up of the first mixed-use micro housing development at the Capitol Hill Station site in the Capitol Hill Seattle blog this morning http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/?p=2067117473
It’s funny that many people claim it takes 20 min to walk from the Link station to the terminal and this whole video is less than 6 min, including extra explanation.
Yet, what I continue to fail to understand is why is a 6 minute walk from SeaTac/Airport Station to SeaTac airport, or a 10 minute walk from Columbia City Station to Rainier Avenue a quick and easy walk, but a 1 minute walk from Bellevue Station to Bellevue Transit Center is an unacceptably long walk.
Two reasons:
1) In Bellevue, most of the time is is not spent actually walking, but standing at traffic signals, waiting for lights to change.
2) If you are headed beyond Bellevue TC, your actual walking time is longer. I timed it once and got 3 minutes from future Link Station to BTC (including 1 1/2 minutes of waiting to cross 110th), and 9 minutes to the front door of Bellevue Square.
It’s not 1 min. It depends on where you get our of the train. From one end to the other can be a minute. Then wait for stairs that are clogged or elevator. The cross a major arterial. Then cross the bus lanes. Then you got another three or more minutes if you bus is in bay 1 or you have to hike to the middle to look at the map and figure out where your bus actually will arrive. If I leave meetings at City Hall I have to allow 10 minutes to catch a 249 at bay 1. But all this wouldn’t be so dumb ass stupid if they weren’t spending ~$200 million on a tunnel that actually has a negative impact on operations and will cause major construction disruption. Think tunnel under SEA terminal and then put the station at the exit as far away as it is now.
For the record, and solely by distance, Columbia City station is as far from Rainier as:
– Bellevue station is from 106th;
– SeaTac station is from the foot of the “C” concourse;
– Denny is from Mercer.
Each is significantly closer than downtown Ballard is to “RapidRide”.
The difference is how many people are transferring to buses. At BTC a large number of people transfer to buses to Crossroads, Kirkland, Factoria, Eastgate, etc. A 2-minute hole in the middle of your trip is a bummer, and will turn some riders to their cars cursing at the low-quality transit system. In contrast, most people at SeaTac or Columbia City stations are going to the airport or Columbia City; they’re not “transit centers”.
Here’s all I know. I continually see Excuse of the Week posts that describe a 10 minute walk as being short and easy, and I also see lot’s of posts and comments decrying a 1 minute walk from Bellevue Station to BTC as being too long and grueling. And as long as I continue to read inconsistent statements, I will continue to come here and point out your inconsistencies. You can try to explain it away all you want, but I’m not buying it. If a 1 minute walk is a hardship and difficult, then a 10 minute walk is ten times as difficult. It can’t be short and easy.
Here’s all I know. I continually see editorials decrying the state of the American education system. But what I done learned in the one-of-a-kind pre-fabricated public school I went to — don’t you go blocking my view of it — is that 6=10 and 3=1 and that all situations are the same regardless of context. That’s why I take pediatric vitamins despite being 45 and why I schedule regular mammograms despite being a man. My doctor sat me down and tried to give me contextual mumbo-jumbos, but I’m far too thick for that so I’m going to keep coming to his office to point out his inconsistencies.
I continually see Excuse of the Week posts that describe a 10 minute walk as being short and easy, and I also see lot’s of posts and comments decrying a 1 minute walk from Bellevue Station to BTC as being too long and grueling.
As others have pointed out, not one minute. But seriously, are you really pretending to not understand the distinction between a walk in the context of a leisurely outing and a walk in the context of a 10X a week commute?
From Denny to Mercer is about 1/4 mile. From 15th Ave NW to 20th Ave NW is about 1/4 mile. 20th is pretty close to the middle of downtown Ballard. In fact, 15th is at the edge of downtown Ballard. D.P.: your sense of distance could use a little work. 15th totally makes sense as the rapidride trunk line. But I do agree that Sea-Tac Station could be closer to the airplane gates.
1) 1/4 mile from 15th is Monkey Bridge, still 2 minutes shy of 20th.
2) 20th is not downtown Ballard. No way, no how.
3) Actual downtown Ballard is a solid 1/2 mile — a 10-minute walk — to RapidRide.
4) A 10-minute walk to actual frequent, fast, reliable transit is acceptable. RapidRide is none of the above.
5) MLK->Rainier is a 6-minute walk, so Sam is still wrong as well.
Also, Bill, by your logic, how is there any possible defense of the LQA detour?
A bunch of whiners that can’t walk 10 or 6 minutes. Give me a break. As someone stated already, be thankful that we have an airport link terminal.
Yeah, right? Who wouldn’t want to trudge miles in the cold and wind? We should thank our overlords for even deigning to let us taxpayers fork over billions of dollars for the worst brand-new airport connection in the developed world!
Food for thought: if the Port resisted a closer station because they worried it would undermine rental car taxes and parking revenues, does it not stand to reason that the final outcome is having negative consequences beyond us being “whiners”?
The answer is yes. I know many people who will avoid Link whenever they can, with the distasteful access situation their primary rationale.
The video starts at the northernmost point in baggage claim.
Those who routinely come in of JetBlue or Virgin — the airlines arriving from cities with public-transit-disposed demographics — know that 20 minutes is no overstatement and signage is nonexistent.
You can cut about 5 minutes off by walking diagonally across the gigantarage. Of course, what signage exists orders you not to do this. And doing so further reminds of (or foreshadows, for first-time visitors) the palpable second-class status transit users hold in this town.
I was also right next to the correct sky bridge. If you’re coming from one of the A gates, it can definitely take 20 minutes, even with the help of the STS trains.
So it’s Link’s fault that it takes ten minutes to walk from one end of the airport to the other? Every large airport is like that, as I remember when I had to run from Customs to a Halifax gate in Toronto’s airport.
SeaTac should have TWO Link stops, as many (most?) large airports do. The signage to Link is also horrible, if it’s even there at all.
It should have one stop, above or beneath, and as close as possible to the motherfucking middle.
If they’d even just deviated to a point above the old bus stop, it would have been infinitely closer to that ideal.
Putting it 1000 feet to the north of the northernmost access point of a functionally-linear terminal, with a trudge across the “hey, look how much closer you could be if you drove” garage as a cherry on top, is the kind of bush-league crap with which Link is becoming synonymous. Defend past abominations and you legitimize future ones.
Did you forget that the station was going to be right at the terminal until 9/11 happened and the feds freaked and forced it further away? If ST had gotten what it ideally wanted, SeaTac station would be at the terminal, the MLK segment would be on or under Rainier Avenue, a Graham station would have been within budget, and East Link would be on Bellevue Way and open in 2021.
Complain all you want, but Link still connects with SeaTac airport better than transit does in numerous other cities with transit systems more well-developed than ours, for example:
– Newark airport makes you take a shuttle train to connect to NJTransit. Outside of rush hours, it runs only once or twice an hour at best.
– JFK airport requires a shuttle train to connect with the New York subway. The shuttle train costs $5 to ride and does not accept passes, even though it’s only a mile or so. And once you finally do make it on the subway, it moves a lot slower than Link does, Ranier Valley detour or no.
– La Guardia airport is not served by the subway at all and requires that you take a bus.
– Logan airport in Boston is served only by buses, not rail. The silver line does run about as frequently as Link does, only it gets stuck in all the pick-up-and-drop-off traffic at each of the 5 terminals, in addition to lacking HOV lanes through the I-90 tunnel out of the airport, and getting bogged down in stoplights getting off the freeway and into the bus tunnel downtown (just like our buses do). The bus was also extremely crowded. This is a perfect example of a bus line that desperately needs to be converted to rail.
– San Francisco airport requires that you board a shuttle train to connect to Bart, as BART doesn’t get any closer than the long-term parking garage. Even then, you end up at an “airport” BART station, which half the train bypass without stopping. Off-peak headways of trains that actually serve the airport station are inferior to Link. To reach CalTrain, it’s even worse – you have to ride the shuttle train, then hop on BART for one stop to reach the CalTrain station. Be prepared for long waits, as CalTrain only runs once per hour outside of rush hour.
– LAX is not served directly by the LAMetroRail system and requires a shuttle bus to connect.
– Washington Dullas is served directly by an hourly bus. If you don’t feel like waiting that long, you can spend $15 for an every-30-minutes shuttle to West Falls Church, and pick up the Orange Line there. Dullas is also such a huge airport, it can easily take 30 minutes of walking through the terminal just to get to any kind of ground transportation.
etc., etc.
All in all, If I know exactly where to go, walk fast, and have no bags to check, I can be on a Link train, moving, in as little as 15 minutes after stepping off the plane. This is much better than tons of other airports.
We’ve been over this. Repeatedly. There isn’t a single direct-access rail connection to a major airport anywhere in the world that’s younger than 30 years old and as bad as ours.
LAX doesn’t claim to have a direct connection. Not germane.
Dulles is getting one, and National’s example suggests it will be better than ours.
BART and JFK are retrofits, and good ones. As already discussed, BART’s service drawbacks do not diminish the fact that the SFO station is 200 feet from the closest gates and 1500 feet from the furthest. The people mover connection is excellent, but even without it your walk is significantly less than for nearly half of SeaTac.
And Boston’s Silver Line is a great BRT fraud, but you don’t even need it. The Blue Line shuttles run constantly, with different lines for different terminals, and it takes all of 6 minutes to get downtown on the train. The Silver Line exists for one-seat obsessives and travelers who fear Hispanic people. Nobody pretends it’s an airport train, and nobody would walk a damned mile to it.
(p.s. Mike, we’ve never seen even a shred of evidence of that “9/11”-based claim. Not even a mealy-mouthed Port or ST source, much less a document from any federal agency. I consider it baseless speculation.)
(Shoot. I didn’t even notice ASDF’s repetition of his Newark ignorance, seemingly the result of a one-time glance at the Jersey Coast Line schedule blossomed into a deeply held misconception. Check the Northeast Corridor schedule, you [ad hominem]. When combined, trains to the city are practically constant. And again, the silly EWR monorail is a retrofit, and offers no excuse for a “direct” train with a craptacular walk.)
(p.s. DP, why else do you think the station was moved from a superior to an inferior location? What benefit did ST get out of that?)
Doesn’t MARTA go directly to the ATL Airport?
You can’t call direct connections and indirect connections separate when, at the end of the day, what really matters is how long does it take to get from the airport to your transit station. Whether it’s 10 minutes of walking, or 5 minutes waiting for a shuttle + 5 minutes riding the shuttle doesn’t make that much difference, at the end of the day, it’s still 10 minutes. If you have luggage, that’s what wheels are for. Have lots of luggage? That’s what smart carts are for.
For example, if ST wanted to, they could have never built the SeaTac airport station in the first place, and kept the temporary shuttle from the old 194 bus stop to TIBS as the permanent solution. By your logic, this configuration would have been “infinitely better”, but anyone who’s ever ridden the old shuttle can attest that total travel time is faster under the current configuration. Even if the Link shuttle had no wait whatsoever (best case assumption), it still took longer for the nonstop shuttle to drive to TIBS that it takes today to walk to Link.
Sure, there are other airports out there that have better direct connections, but there are many other airports out there, some of with are huge hubs in transit-oriented communities, that have to make do with indirect connections and Link today is still far better than any indirect connection would ever be.
The reason why so many airports have indirect connections is the same reason for the long walk you are complaining about – that the airport was originally built thinking only about cars and by the time transit was added on after the fact, there was simply no room. Without taking a lane of the airport drive or building a super-expensive underground tunnel, there is simply no room for the train to go right up to the terminal. I’m just grateful that the airport station exists and that concerns about the walk being too long or about drivers losing some of their precious parking spaces to make room for the walkway didn’t cause ST to cop out make the shuttle approach the permanent solution, as so many other airports have done.
One of my friends, who worked with the Port of Seattle for many years a few years ago, said that the Port was not going to allow a LINK station close to the terminal because then it would start to lose revenue from rental cars and parking.
Also, doesn’t the Portland(Oregon) airport have MAX come right to the end of the terminal? Sure, its not in the center but at least it is connected to the actual terminal building…
Chicago’airport stations are either underground such as st O’hare or adjacent to the garage at Midway. The difference is they have people mover systems and in the case of Midway heated walkways. Makes those 20 minute walks kore bearable.
Mike, see Cinesea.
Cinesea and East Coast, ATL and PDX are both in my link. MARTA is near the front door/security-side people mover, and MAX is practically in the airport’s center. Check out my linked post above; I Google Mapped each and every one.
ASDF, with the sole exception of LAX, those indirect connections were retrofits for older transit systems as well as older airports. Everyone else who built brand new trains built them to the freaking terminal… not to 1700 feet from the terminal.
Link is, quite simply, the worst of the modern batch. Stop trying to argue against reality.
Charles,
Have you been to Midway since they moved the entire airport east? It’s about 5 minutes walk from the security overpass now.
O’Hare station is roughly that same distance from each of the three primary terminals.
d.p., Dulles is making the exact same mistake we made. The station is going to be elevated and next to Daily Parking 1, about 1250 feet from the nearest entrance of the terminal. The walk will be underground.
I haven’t seen ST documentation of the TSA veto either, but it’s not made up out of whole cloth — it was well known and widely discussed at the time Airport Station was being planned. That said, my memory is that ST and (especially) the Port didn’t try that hard to overcome the TSA’s concerns, because the station we got was cheaper than the original plan.
That’s a long walk with luggage. Are you positive about the length? I can only find a general location reference, not a specific one.
I noticed that one Metro board member agreed to the compromise only with the caveat that the closer, underground station would remain on the table should a cheaper way to build it be found.
Is the Bellevue subway station still on the table?
Why the SeaTac result annoys me so much is that we weren’t even talking about the massive cost differentiation between elevated and underground. It would have been elevated in any case. If the Port resisted a front-door approach, even the slightest deviation away from International Blvd would have been better than nothing.
The current state of affairs makes it seem like Sound Transit doesn’t get it, didn’t try to, and doesn’t care.
Correction: 1,150 feet, not 1,250. Still a long way.
Well, I hope they scrounge the money or find a cheaper way to do the underground.
Still, thank heavens for moving sidewalks and a newly-comprehensive security-side people mover.
“Complain all you want, but Link still connects with SeaTac airport better than transit does in numerous other cities”
So should we make Link’s new motto: “Link, a little better than the worst”?
Come on. The least they could now do is put in some moving walkways from the station to the terminal. That walk is atrocious, especially in mid-winter at 6 PM.
D.P., yes, MDW was renovated before I left Chicago. The walk from the train platform is up an escalator from the train terminal and then along a walk through the garage. Thankfully it is heated by overhead warmers. It’s certainly a shorter walk than before. But id still say its roughly comparable to the Link walk.
Sorry, you said “20 minutes”, which is how far it really was from the El to the front door of the old Midway, including a partially-heated, freestanding overpass/walkway. So I presumed you were referencing the old Midway.
The new Midway is still through a garage, like Link, but the outside walk is 60-90 seconds shorter than ours. And once you get to the main terminal (just east of Cicero), security is right there on the bridge, followed immediately by the concourses. At SeaTac you’ve still got a lot of walking to do, both to security and beyond.
I’ve done SEA-MDW. The Chicago retrofit is slightly — but noticeably — better than our brand-spanking-new exercise in mediocrity.
djw, yes, I really do not understand this, and I am trying to figure out how a 10 minute walk can be quick but the 1 minute walk from Bellevue Station to the BTC is Bataan Death March.
It takes me 13 minutes to get from my planes gate to the Light Rail. I know this because I’ve timed it multiple times. I needed to know because I used to work in Irvine and I’d fly down in the morning then back home at night so I could sleep in my own bed. The last Light Rail train I could take and get all the way home was 10:20, my flight arrived at 10. That made for some pretty quick connections with Link. Saying it takes 5 minutes is not that accurate either as he started halfway between his plane and the light rail already.
Also, Bill, by your logic, how is there any possible defense of the LQA detour?
[No idea how that ended up down here. G’night, tireless defenders of questionable logic.]
Bus Stop Photoshop Prank. Watch Video. Very Amusing.
This is one of my finest contributions to STB. Is it to much to ask to be recognized and thanked for it?
On behalf of the STB Editorial Staff, nearly everyone who has ever posted on STB over the years, in millions of grateful Washitonians, let me say Thank You.
Yay, SURVEILLANCE!
Chinese government moving 250 million people into cities in next 12 years. They must be reading this blog.
Even though its only a few minutes walk, I don’t see why they can’t put in a moving sidewalk. They’re used to get gates……why not to Link as well?
1) You’d have to cut a giant hole in concrete
2) There isn’t enough height in the floor below
3) Both the equipment and reason 1 would cost $$$$$$$
They should install a moving sidewalk. The airport just doesn’t consider it a high enough priority.
This and streamlined, legible signage would make a world of difference for accessibility. When in the airport at no time is it made obvious that there is a train running from the airport to Seattle’s CBD.
The Link connection from Sea-Tac was horribly designed. During the Winter months, the wind blows the rain into the walkway making the trek bone chilling. Given the amount of money spent on Link, it would have made sense to make a more expeditious way to get from the transit center to the A Concourse vice cutting through the park garage. Enclose the walkway to provide an HVAC system and protect users from the elements, provide users a moving walkway so the hike isn’t as arduous, and maybe consider some signs indicating when the next train to Westlake will be departing. There’s nothing worse than riding the escalator up to the platform and hearing the train depart the station. Are there any plans to address this with the extension project? After all, it’s within the project limits (aka project scope).
Roughly along these lines, can someone explain since when Orca gives a free bus transfer from Link to Metro? I caught this on a recent jaunt to Vegas. Admittedly transit to the airport beats any parking facility near the airport (for me and possibly most Seattle users), $5.00 to the airport ($2.25 on Metro and $2.75 on Link), and only $2.75 back to Shoreline with my Orca card.
The cost of your Link ride is more than riding a King County Metro bus. When the cost of the ride in a second vehicle is equal to (or less than) the cost of the ride in the first vehicle, it’s a free transfer if done within 2 hours.
This 2 hour free transfer clock resets if you go from a lower cost mode to a higher cost mode (local bus to ST bus or bus to link etc)
Try Kirkland Transit Center in the winter. Metal benches shelves which are wet from condensation even if it’s not raining. If it is raining the “shelters” provide zero protection. Not even enough shade when it’s sunny to be able to see the display on your phone. At South Kirkland they removed the shelters and benches entirely last Thursday. Obviously that was only a few hour task. We’ll see how long until they are replaced. My bet is that they could have remained until after the reconfiguration or removed right before it was necessary. No telling what’s going on since they didn’t bother to put up a sign explaining what’s happening and what the final configuration will be. Oh, and the traffic signal on 108th is still up and hanging there without power. We don’t care, we don’t have to; we’re the phone company transit agency!
So, new shelters at South Kirkland P&R this afternoon. They are now east of the old location. Same size and shape as what was torn out but now farther from where most of the buses stop. So, assuming there is some logic in this, why didn’t they just move the old shelters east? Oh yeah, we’ve got government money we need to spend so waste is no object. And yes, the old and new shelters bolt to posts that mean they would have been interchangeable. Stupid is as stupid does.
It’s not mentioned in the video, but there is a trick to knowing whether to walk or run to catch the train. During the bulk of the day, when the trains, are at 10 minute headways, the incoming train usually arrives a couple minutes before the outbound train leaves. Which means if you see two trains parked at the station, it’s time to run because one of them is going to be leaving very soon. If you only see one train parked at the station, feel free to dawdle, as you still have plenty of time.
The video is great but it has the same problem as the signs in the airport: it tells where Link is, but not what it is or where it goes to. I would add something like, “Link light rail, which is the rapid transit system to downtown Seattle. It runs every 10 minutes until 10pm, and then every 15 minutes until about midnight. It costs $2.75 to downtown. Extensions to north Seattle and suburban cities are under construction, and will open in 2016 – 2023.” Then at the ticket machines, mention ORCA cards.
This tells people that Link is a viable alternative to a taxi or shuttle downtown, that it’s incredibly cheap compared to those, and that they won’t have to wait more than 10-15 minutes, and that in a few years they’ll be able to take it to the UW or Bellevue/Redmond (the second- and third-most likely destinations of visitors).
I could have sworn in my last trip to the airport, the sign actually said either “Train to Seattle” or “Train to downtown Seattle”.
You could tell them that, and let some visitor from Australia come in and spend $2.50 instead of $50 for a cab ride that adds to the local economy.
John,
I don’t think any of us knew you were a cabbie. That explains why you know so much about the road system.
If it does say that, it was changed in the past few months. That’s what it should say, and what O’Hare’s signs say (“Train to city”).
Bailoman, that Australian will have $47.50 left over for a candlelight dinner, a piece of artwork, a ticket to a play, or many other things that are better for the economy and the environment than guzzling gas in a taxi.
I’m guessing the reason none of the signs in the airport say where LINK goes is because of the taxi and airporter lobby. If people knew there was a cheaper way to go downtown they would loose business.
Mike,
A little background on this video:
Originally I shot a version before the station opened. I took a walk from the skybridge level to the end of the garage that would connect to the station. The construction wall was still up. The point was to show how it was going to work–the airport link extension hadn’t opened yet and a few people were curious.
After the airport extension opened, I started to get comments from people that wanted to know if that’s really how you got to the station. So I re-shot it, and here’s what you have.
Not much planning went in to it; I wasn’t expecting to be greeted and I wasn’t trying to walk around anyone–that’s just the speed that I normally walk.
I’ve been reading this blog for quite a long time and I’m wondering if anybody can answer this question: Is the new Rapid Ride F line going to terminate at Renton Transit Center or The Landing? The current map shows the last mile or so to The Landing as an “extension”. Is it still being discussed? I also wonder where the buses are going to lay over in DTR. From my heavy use of Redmond’s transit center, it looks like there’s at least three idle at the end of a route at any given time. There’s not too much room in downtown Renton for that from what I can see.
And thanks ST for the new 567! I finally have a place to sit on the 566 for the first time in years!
I think that the F-line is extended to the landing for sure, and they are even talking about extending route 140 there before the F-line replaces it.
And I don’t like what they did with route 567. In opening this route and reducing service on 566, they horribly fragmented service along the 405/167 corridor.
AlexKven, close, but you’ve got it reversed. The 140 is going to be extended to Renton Landing, while the F Line extension is still up in the air. I’m guessing since F Line has been delayed a bit they are going to use the time to test run the extension.
Wes said:
“I rarely rode the 194, and I never rode the 7. Now I ride link every time I go to the airport and I visit beacon hill, mt baker or columbia city often, I never did prior to link. I know many other downtowners who are the same”
Hooray! $2 billion dollars for Seattle to have their own Northwest Trek in-city.
[ot]
Unfortunately, this video didn’t give you the fact that from baggage claim to the link station is a ten minute walk. For me link is not at all an improvement over taking the metro route 194 (discontinued) from just outside of baggage claim. Route 194 took about 25 minutes (if there’s no appreciable traffic on I-5) to downtown. Also, for my money there aren’t enough direction signs to link from the terminal.
For me the 194 took anywhere from 30 minutes to 50 minutes depending in traffic. Link takes from 33 minutes to 38 minutes. In my opinion it’s a huge improvement. I’ve never felt like the walk was a challenge, and it’s actually easier than some airports I’ve been too.
Sure it’s an improvement. But is it a $2 billion dollar improvement? Or would an alignment that is actually faster than a bus the with cost savings allowing it to already be well on it’s way to Federal Way have been better than the scenic tour of the RV? The station ended up a long way from the terminal but I’m not sure it would have been worth a loop into and back out of the terminal and after the FAA/TSA folk decided you could again build a station into the terminal there was nowhere near enough money left to tunnel. I would have liked to have seen the Port and ST look seriously at using the new rental car garage. You know there will be baggage and people shuttles from there. Maybe even an extension of the airport underground at some point. With the current arrangement there are certainly things that can be done to make significant improvements.
it’s actually easier than some airports I’ve been to.
We’ve been over this. There isn’t a single direct-access rail connection to a major airport anywhere in the world that’s younger than 30 years old and as bad as ours.
I rarely rode the 194, and I never rode the 7. Now I ride link every time I go to the airport and I visit beacon hill, mt baker or columbia city often, I never did prior to link. I know many other downtowners who are the same. I’m willing to sit on a train for another 2 or 3 minutes (194 was actually rarely faster than link and no room for luggage) if it actually serves the neighborhoods and offers a much more comfortable ride.
Aside from the occasional crowds on the 194, I miss being able to walk out the door at baggage claim after a long flight from the East Coast or Europe.
I have to side with d.p. on this. Zigzagging through cars on Level 4 makes the Link-users think planners could care less about providing a positive first impression to the City and the greater Puget Sound Region. I still think that signs indicating when the next train is departing along the walkway should be installed. While the regular user can catch the subtle hints such as a second train arriving, the casual or unfamiliar user won’t catch it.
Additionally, It would have made some sense to create a passageway for pedestrians through the park garage by condemning a number of parking spots, providing overhead signing and installing lighting to guide/complement the direction one must take to/from the Link Station.
No, what made people thing we couldn’t care less about our city’s gateway and about transit overall was having only a bus at the airport, one that got stuck in traffic, came every 15 minutes only limited hours, every 30 minutes other hours, and not at all after 9pm when you had to take the local bus that stopped at every stop along the way. Compare that to London, Chicago, San Francisco, and even Los Angeles, it looked like we didn’t take transit seriously. Add to that the fact that Link will go directly to UW where a good chunk of visitors are going, as well as Lynnwood and Bellevue, and Capitol Hill and Rainier Valley, and you’ve got something far beyond what the 194 ever provided. Not all visitors are going to downtown hotels.
CharlotteRoyal,
Unfortunately, it wasn’t Sound Transit’s decision about Sea-Tac. It was the Port of Seattle that basically refused permission for Sound Transit to build a stop right at the terminal. Sound Transit has made many poor decisions over the years, but this specific one cannot be blamed on them.
The decision to put LINK where it was, is not only Sound Transit and the Airport, the TSA has some to do with that as well. I remember that portion of the design was nearly done when 9/11 happened. It got tabled in the paranoia since than, only to come to life at the last minute and get completed shortly after opening of the line.
Personally, the line should have gone around the terminal, and also had a stop at the rental car facility, than like in Minneapolis, you could ride free in-between the two points and it would not have required all the rental car shuttles. Of course on that subject, Now that the airport has setup such an advanced rental car shuttle system, its too bad they cant be extended to Tukwilla station to provide better all-around connections in-between the Airport/RCF/and the two major transit stops.
Not all visitors are going to downtown hotels.
True, but it’s an infinitely larger proportion than are those going to the RV/
Hell yes Bernie, you hit the nail on the head.
Although this conversation seems a bit disjointed as I have all of d.p.’s comments hidden.
Which I suppose is especially nonsensical since I have in no way disagreed with anything you’ve said on today’s thread.
In one case, you unknowingly parroted my comment about the A gates almost verbatim and posted it directly below mine.
and not at all after 9pm when you had to take the local bus that stopped at every stop along the way.
Yeah, but as someone who used to use SEA-TAC late at night when I didn’t have much money, the 24 hour coverage was a hell of a lot more important than the extra time it took. The lack of late night options in the present system is a real loss, and embarrassing.
Outside of rush hour, that the 194 was generally faster and closer made up for the slightly less frequent service. For those of us who don’t live near a link station and aren’t irrationally bus-phobic, the switch to link was undoubtedly a change for the worse in airport service.
The A and 124 still run 24 hours. You’ll have to wait for an uncoordinated transfer at TIB, but it’ll get you to downtown or Federal Way.
“Unfortunately, this video didn’t give you the fact that from baggage claim to the link station is a ten minute walk.”
The only 194 stop next to baggage claim was next to the far corner of baggage claim. If you weren’t checking bags, the walk to the 194 was only marginally shorter than the walk to Link today (although, I will grant you, nearly all of the walk was in an enclosed building).
That is flatly untrue, as even a quick glance at a Google Map will tell you.
The 194 stop was about twice as close as Link to the dead center of the airport, and as close to the furthest baggage claim as Link is to the nearest baggage claim. The bus stop was surrounded by gates to its north, south, and west; Link is well past the most northerly extremity of the airport proper.
You’re going to injure yourself from the straining you had to do to write the false equivalency above.
Maybe you have more flights than I do from terminal A, but most of mine go through either terminal B or N. I also usually do not check bags, which means I have no reason to pass by the baggage claims at all. While I grant you, the walk to Link is a little bit further, the difference is small – only a couple of minutes and not something worth quibbling over.
The mouth of the B concourse is about 3.5 minutes from the bus stop and at least 9 from train stop. Really.
That’s worth a quibble.
Especially since that’s the “median terminal” example, with the “airport extremities” comparison being significantly starker.
Originally, there was supposed to be a LINK stop further north of the airport around where the Post Office/Cell Phone lot is now. Port of Seattle was looking at building NEAT (North End Airport Terminal) and would been connected to the main terminal by extending the little rail shuttle that operates between South Satellite and North Satellite. 9/11 and airline economics changed that plan, so there were various other scenarios. I think it was not possible to fit an elevated rail line where the airport drives are now, and the desire to serve the City of Sea-Tac, so we got what you see out there today. Yep, everyone seems to like the 194, though it only operated every 30 minutes weekday peak/nights (15 min weekday midday, though I heard from rumors that grayline sued on that one, due to competition),all day Saturday and Sunday DAYTIME (no sunday night service, yep you take the 174). So, you had a tradeoff, closer airport access but less frequent, or more frequenty, but a farther walk to the rail station? I agree signage sucks. When I drove the 560, I would have some people who wanted to get to downtown Seattle from the bus stop. I could tell them to walk all the way to the north end of the airport, or just simply haul them to the next stop, which was 176th/Int’l Blvd, where the station was. It was much easier to haul them for customer relation purposes (I didn’t charge them, just told them to pay for the LINK rail ticket, the flaw of NOT having a day pass option for disposable ORCA cards, but that is another topic).
I think it was not possible to fit an elevated rail line…
You think wrong. St. Louis and various others stop right on the darned roof.
One under-appreciated benefit of the airport Link stop being where it is is that it actually serves the surrounding neighborhood and provides connections to the A-line, rather than just serving the airport and doing nothing else.
I took advantage of this once, on a day when I had a 6 AM flight. I took Link to the airport stop, but instead of walking to the terminal, I walked the other way to a hotel right across the street.
(I still had to take the hotel shuttle to the airport the morning of the flight, because I could not afford to take a chance on missing my plane if whatever security guard was responsible for opening the Link station and walkway at 5 AM each morning was running late).
“Serves the neighborhood.” Give me a break.
So you save a handful of occasional hotel users a short walk but impose a long haul upon everyone who uses the station for its primary purpose. Seriously, give me a break.
So, what are you suggesting – that people in the SeaTac neighborhood who can today walk to link should have been told to just suck it up and drive to TIBS (or drive all the way downtown if the parking at TIBS is full). Or that RapidRide A should have wasted time getting stuck in traffic down the airport drive, in order to provide the Link connection that it is currently able to get while traveling in a straight line?
While the neighborhood is not the primary purpose, it is important to not get tunnel vision when designing transit facilities and think only about one use case, while ignoring everything else. If ST wanted to, they could have skimped on cost and omitted the bridge over International Blvd., along with the elevator and stairs on the east side of the street. They did not.
Eric, there’s no neighborhood there.
It doesn’t exist. You are speaking in fictions.
There are a couple of hotels and services that do exist, and that have always had pedestrian crossings to access the airport, and should certainly have seen pedestrian access upgraded to allow for access to Link as well.
But it’s asinine to suggest that the train needed to be CLOSER to them than to the actual freaking destination that billions of dollars were being spent to serve.
That is straight-up stupid.
Question: before Link was proposed, how many of you thought the 194 was an excellent airport connection, as opposed to just being something better than the 174. And for those who had been to cities that at that time did have a train from the airport (Chicago, St Louis, but not San Francisco), did you think the 194 and Metro were equal quality to their transit systems, and were sufficient for what a city Seattle’s size should have?
I mostly loved the 194. If you were waiting for one at the airport and it was going to be a wait, you could easily step back into the airport to get out of cold/elements/etc. And I liked the view of Seattle in the distance as the 194 was headed back to the city. While you get some nice views from Link, you can’t stare at the city in the distance the same way you could on the 194. And I liked the non-stop nature of it.
Having said that, and as others will point out, the 194 was obviously at the whim of car traffic. I once missed a flight because of that years ago. And watching people navigate their luggage through the narrow bus aisles was frustrating.
Having regularly driven the 194, I can confirm that it was indeed always late (at least when operated by Breda buses), because it was physically impossible to stay on the schedule.
Northbound, I could leave FWP&R on time, make no intermediate stops other than the freeway stations, keep my right foot on the floor the entire way, and arrive at the airport 5-7 minutes late.
The schedule was similarly impossible between the airport and downtown.
Your claim is refuted by the 2 or 3 occasions when I missed an inbound 194 because I couldn’t squeeze off the plane fast enough and the bus left as much as 5 minutes early.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the 194 either, but off-peak speed was not its problem.
I mostly loved the 194.
Ditto. But I’m apparently one of the rare people that doesn’t care whether I’m on a train or a bus, all else equal. It was faster and closer to the terminal, which more than made up for the slightly less frequency. And while the 174 was a slog, at least we had a cheap option if you’re flight comes in after midnight (which isn’t that rare). Now, you’re stuck with the damn airporter or a taxi, at great expense.
The failure to have a shadow bus after link shuts down for a busy 24 hour airport is maddening.
Either that was during the hybrid era (67 mph > 53 mph), your clock was off, or the driver left 10 minutes early from Federal Way.
I operated the 194 every single day for almost a shakeup and never once was on time, let alone early.
In the era of cellphones, clocks are never “off”.
FWIW, each time it happening was in the early evening, but after rush-hour traffic had dissipated.
The A and 124 still run 24 hours. You’ll have to wait for an untimed transfer at TIB but it’ll still get you to downtown.
For starters, the 194 was always crowded and always late. Even if you walked out of the airport exactly when the schedule said it would come, you would still usually have a 5-10 minute wait. Oh, and I also had a lot of evening trips that I was forced to slog out on the 174 because the 194 wasn’t running.
It wasn’t “always” late and “always” crowded. Hyperbole much?
Even if it was late I’d know about it (this was in the years before OBA, I’d bring up the Metro real-time info via Bus Tracker / Location View while heading to the main terminal area). There were a few times when I’d see that the 194 was super behind and I’d decide, for kicks, to take the 174 back instead.
Does the “Mid-December” time reference you mention include the period where Link only went to Tukwila and then you’d need to take a bus to seatac?
Here’s the ultimate way to decide the question – there was a period of about 2 months, from Mid-December to mid-February, when the Link airport station had just opened, but the 194 was still running.
For those of you that flew during that time, how many of you chose Link and how many of chose the 194?
My answer – for trips to the airport, I took either Link or the 194, whichever came first. For trips from the airport, I went for Link.
You guys know that something can be better and still be sub-optimal and bordering on unacceptable at the same time, right?
“Rejoice! I’m going to get waterboarded every day for the rest of my life! But at least they took me of the rack!”
Remember that every bad station decision compounds every other bad station decision. No one gives a shit if it’s “better” than prior terrible transit of it still fails miserably when compared to driving.
I mean it. You guys honestly seem to forget that, as do our transit agencies and politicians.
It’s really important!
So, what you’re saying is RR-D is a vast improvement, just waiting for the center of Ballard to move 7/10 mile to the east?
Also, are you sure you didn’t see the previous 194, running 10 minutes late? That’s much more likely.
Nope. Because the next bus was 30 minutes later and perfectly on time.
I have always wanted to see floor signage (don’t know the technical term) between the terminal area and the link station. Just a simple colored line that people can follow. Yes, I know there is signage from the ceiling. And yes, I know once you get closer to the station it’s obvious which way to go. But earlier on, right out of the terminals, it’s not 100% obvious which way to go, especially at those sections with elevators (going around the elevator and walking through the elevator area basically gets you to the same place, but some people pause because they’re not sure if there’s a “right” way).
I think one of the terminals in seatac (Delta?) has a floor line that directs people deplaning to the main terminal area. There are fish or other water creatures on it, so kids (who are obviously closer to the ground) seem to notice it. Put a Link line on the ground in the garage area and cover up some of that awful cement and include illustrations of light rail cars on it. Make the concept of light rail exciting for the kids.
Hello, thanks for this helpful video, flying to Seattle soon for a first-ever visit and hoping to use public transportation, stumbled onto your excellent blog while researching this, thanks especially for your page for visitors. Couple of questions, if you would be willing to help: I see that the Link only reaches the south part of downtown, still 1.5 miles from my hotel at the South Lake Union, how would I get my family, including kids who couldn’t haul suitcases that far, from the final stop downtown to the hotel? Is it pretty easy to hail a cab downtown or should we try for a bus? Also, I’ve read about the Seattle Trolley that goes near our hotel, but none of the online links seem to work, is the trolley still in operation?
Welcome to Seattle. The streetcar still exists however tickets on Link are not valid for fare on the streetcar. You may want to consider getting the ORCA card which allows transfers between agencies. However, the $5 cost of the card would depend on other factors such as what will be your primary mode of transport while in Seattle, how old the kids are, etc.
Also please note that ORCA cards are available from the very same vending machines at the airport Link station as one-time tickets. We are eternally frustrated by the lack of signage to this effect.
If you are staying in SLU, the ORCAs will be more than worth your while, at least for the adults, as the streetcar fare is FREE as long as you are in possession of an ORCA.
I unsarcastically hope that the significant distance from the airport to Link does not prove too far with the bags and little ones.
Doesn’t your hotel provide a free shuttle to/from the airport?
Pretty much no hotels downtown (or anywhere other than the airport and Southcenter/Renton areas) provide free shuttles to the airport.
Lots of threads and blog posts about Car2Go but I’d never heard of Uber, Lyft or Sidecar until I drove to work this morning and was able to get my dose of Dave Ross.
More cynically, this might end up replacing just a tiny bit of the nightmare service cuts. Still, that’s better than nothing.
///////// Change since Video was produced: United Airlines has relocated to the South side of the Main Terminal. Ticketing and Baggage Claim has moved and the gates used now are in the A Concourse. ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Nice write-up of the first mixed-use micro housing development at the Capitol Hill Station site in the Capitol Hill Seattle blog this morning http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/?p=2067117473
It’s funny that many people claim it takes 20 min to walk from the Link station to the terminal and this whole video is less than 6 min, including extra explanation.
Yet, what I continue to fail to understand is why is a 6 minute walk from SeaTac/Airport Station to SeaTac airport, or a 10 minute walk from Columbia City Station to Rainier Avenue a quick and easy walk, but a 1 minute walk from Bellevue Station to Bellevue Transit Center is an unacceptably long walk.
Two reasons:
1) In Bellevue, most of the time is is not spent actually walking, but standing at traffic signals, waiting for lights to change.
2) If you are headed beyond Bellevue TC, your actual walking time is longer. I timed it once and got 3 minutes from future Link Station to BTC (including 1 1/2 minutes of waiting to cross 110th), and 9 minutes to the front door of Bellevue Square.
It’s not 1 min. It depends on where you get our of the train. From one end to the other can be a minute. Then wait for stairs that are clogged or elevator. The cross a major arterial. Then cross the bus lanes. Then you got another three or more minutes if you bus is in bay 1 or you have to hike to the middle to look at the map and figure out where your bus actually will arrive. If I leave meetings at City Hall I have to allow 10 minutes to catch a 249 at bay 1. But all this wouldn’t be so dumb ass stupid if they weren’t spending ~$200 million on a tunnel that actually has a negative impact on operations and will cause major construction disruption. Think tunnel under SEA terminal and then put the station at the exit as far away as it is now.
For the record, and solely by distance, Columbia City station is as far from Rainier as:
– Bellevue station is from 106th;
– SeaTac station is from the foot of the “C” concourse;
– Denny is from Mercer.
Each is significantly closer than downtown Ballard is to “RapidRide”.
The difference is how many people are transferring to buses. At BTC a large number of people transfer to buses to Crossroads, Kirkland, Factoria, Eastgate, etc. A 2-minute hole in the middle of your trip is a bummer, and will turn some riders to their cars cursing at the low-quality transit system. In contrast, most people at SeaTac or Columbia City stations are going to the airport or Columbia City; they’re not “transit centers”.
Here’s all I know. I continually see Excuse of the Week posts that describe a 10 minute walk as being short and easy, and I also see lot’s of posts and comments decrying a 1 minute walk from Bellevue Station to BTC as being too long and grueling. And as long as I continue to read inconsistent statements, I will continue to come here and point out your inconsistencies. You can try to explain it away all you want, but I’m not buying it. If a 1 minute walk is a hardship and difficult, then a 10 minute walk is ten times as difficult. It can’t be short and easy.
Here’s all I know. I continually see editorials decrying the state of the American education system. But what I done learned in the one-of-a-kind pre-fabricated public school I went to — don’t you go blocking my view of it — is that 6=10 and 3=1 and that all situations are the same regardless of context. That’s why I take pediatric vitamins despite being 45 and why I schedule regular mammograms despite being a man. My doctor sat me down and tried to give me contextual mumbo-jumbos, but I’m far too thick for that so I’m going to keep coming to his office to point out his inconsistencies.
I continually see Excuse of the Week posts that describe a 10 minute walk as being short and easy, and I also see lot’s of posts and comments decrying a 1 minute walk from Bellevue Station to BTC as being too long and grueling.
As others have pointed out, not one minute. But seriously, are you really pretending to not understand the distinction between a walk in the context of a leisurely outing and a walk in the context of a 10X a week commute?
From Denny to Mercer is about 1/4 mile. From 15th Ave NW to 20th Ave NW is about 1/4 mile. 20th is pretty close to the middle of downtown Ballard. In fact, 15th is at the edge of downtown Ballard. D.P.: your sense of distance could use a little work. 15th totally makes sense as the rapidride trunk line. But I do agree that Sea-Tac Station could be closer to the airplane gates.
1) 1/4 mile from 15th is Monkey Bridge, still 2 minutes shy of 20th.
2) 20th is not downtown Ballard. No way, no how.
3) Actual downtown Ballard is a solid 1/2 mile — a 10-minute walk — to RapidRide.
4) A 10-minute walk to actual frequent, fast, reliable transit is acceptable. RapidRide is none of the above.
5) MLK->Rainier is a 6-minute walk, so Sam is still wrong as well.
Also, Bill, by your logic, how is there any possible defense of the LQA detour?
A bunch of whiners that can’t walk 10 or 6 minutes. Give me a break. As someone stated already, be thankful that we have an airport link terminal.
Yeah, right? Who wouldn’t want to trudge miles in the cold and wind? We should thank our overlords for even deigning to let us taxpayers fork over billions of dollars for the worst brand-new airport connection in the developed world!
Food for thought: if the Port resisted a closer station because they worried it would undermine rental car taxes and parking revenues, does it not stand to reason that the final outcome is having negative consequences beyond us being “whiners”?
The answer is yes. I know many people who will avoid Link whenever they can, with the distasteful access situation their primary rationale.
Meanwhile, there’s a first-time visitor down at the bottom of the thread asking about the Link->SLUS connection, because he’s worried about the 1.5 miles from Link to his hotel, with bags and kids in tow. Didn’t have the heart to tell him that depending on his airline, his airport->Link connection could be almost as far:
https://seattletransitblog.wpcomstaging.com/2013/06/16/sunday-open-thread-finding-link-at-the-airport/#comment-342377
The video starts at the northernmost point in baggage claim.
Those who routinely come in of JetBlue or Virgin — the airlines arriving from cities with public-transit-disposed demographics — know that 20 minutes is no overstatement and signage is nonexistent.
You can cut about 5 minutes off by walking diagonally across the gigantarage. Of course, what signage exists orders you not to do this. And doing so further reminds of (or foreshadows, for first-time visitors) the palpable second-class status transit users hold in this town.
I was also right next to the correct sky bridge. If you’re coming from one of the A gates, it can definitely take 20 minutes, even with the help of the STS trains.
So it’s Link’s fault that it takes ten minutes to walk from one end of the airport to the other? Every large airport is like that, as I remember when I had to run from Customs to a Halifax gate in Toronto’s airport.
SeaTac should have TWO Link stops, as many (most?) large airports do. The signage to Link is also horrible, if it’s even there at all.
It should have one stop, above or beneath, and as close as possible to the motherfucking middle.
If they’d even just deviated to a point above the old bus stop, it would have been infinitely closer to that ideal.
Putting it 1000 feet to the north of the northernmost access point of a functionally-linear terminal, with a trudge across the “hey, look how much closer you could be if you drove” garage as a cherry on top, is the kind of bush-league crap with which Link is becoming synonymous. Defend past abominations and you legitimize future ones.
Did you forget that the station was going to be right at the terminal until 9/11 happened and the feds freaked and forced it further away? If ST had gotten what it ideally wanted, SeaTac station would be at the terminal, the MLK segment would be on or under Rainier Avenue, a Graham station would have been within budget, and East Link would be on Bellevue Way and open in 2021.
Complain all you want, but Link still connects with SeaTac airport better than transit does in numerous other cities with transit systems more well-developed than ours, for example:
– Newark airport makes you take a shuttle train to connect to NJTransit. Outside of rush hours, it runs only once or twice an hour at best.
– JFK airport requires a shuttle train to connect with the New York subway. The shuttle train costs $5 to ride and does not accept passes, even though it’s only a mile or so. And once you finally do make it on the subway, it moves a lot slower than Link does, Ranier Valley detour or no.
– La Guardia airport is not served by the subway at all and requires that you take a bus.
– Logan airport in Boston is served only by buses, not rail. The silver line does run about as frequently as Link does, only it gets stuck in all the pick-up-and-drop-off traffic at each of the 5 terminals, in addition to lacking HOV lanes through the I-90 tunnel out of the airport, and getting bogged down in stoplights getting off the freeway and into the bus tunnel downtown (just like our buses do). The bus was also extremely crowded. This is a perfect example of a bus line that desperately needs to be converted to rail.
– San Francisco airport requires that you board a shuttle train to connect to Bart, as BART doesn’t get any closer than the long-term parking garage. Even then, you end up at an “airport” BART station, which half the train bypass without stopping. Off-peak headways of trains that actually serve the airport station are inferior to Link. To reach CalTrain, it’s even worse – you have to ride the shuttle train, then hop on BART for one stop to reach the CalTrain station. Be prepared for long waits, as CalTrain only runs once per hour outside of rush hour.
– LAX is not served directly by the LAMetroRail system and requires a shuttle bus to connect.
– Washington Dullas is served directly by an hourly bus. If you don’t feel like waiting that long, you can spend $15 for an every-30-minutes shuttle to West Falls Church, and pick up the Orange Line there. Dullas is also such a huge airport, it can easily take 30 minutes of walking through the terminal just to get to any kind of ground transportation.
etc., etc.
All in all, If I know exactly where to go, walk fast, and have no bags to check, I can be on a Link train, moving, in as little as 15 minutes after stepping off the plane. This is much better than tons of other airports.
We’ve been over this. Repeatedly. There isn’t a single direct-access rail connection to a major airport anywhere in the world that’s younger than 30 years old and as bad as ours.
These are just the North American examples: https://seattletransitblog.wpcomstaging.com/2013/04/26/st-board-rubber-stamps-bellevue-decision/#comment-323914
LAX doesn’t claim to have a direct connection. Not germane.
Dulles is getting one, and National’s example suggests it will be better than ours.
BART and JFK are retrofits, and good ones. As already discussed, BART’s service drawbacks do not diminish the fact that the SFO station is 200 feet from the closest gates and 1500 feet from the furthest. The people mover connection is excellent, but even without it your walk is significantly less than for nearly half of SeaTac.
And Boston’s Silver Line is a great BRT fraud, but you don’t even need it. The Blue Line shuttles run constantly, with different lines for different terminals, and it takes all of 6 minutes to get downtown on the train. The Silver Line exists for one-seat obsessives and travelers who fear Hispanic people. Nobody pretends it’s an airport train, and nobody would walk a damned mile to it.
(p.s. Mike, we’ve never seen even a shred of evidence of that “9/11”-based claim. Not even a mealy-mouthed Port or ST source, much less a document from any federal agency. I consider it baseless speculation.)
(Shoot. I didn’t even notice ASDF’s repetition of his Newark ignorance, seemingly the result of a one-time glance at the Jersey Coast Line schedule blossomed into a deeply held misconception. Check the Northeast Corridor schedule, you [ad hominem]. When combined, trains to the city are practically constant. And again, the silly EWR monorail is a retrofit, and offers no excuse for a “direct” train with a craptacular walk.)
(p.s. DP, why else do you think the station was moved from a superior to an inferior location? What benefit did ST get out of that?)
Doesn’t MARTA go directly to the ATL Airport?
You can’t call direct connections and indirect connections separate when, at the end of the day, what really matters is how long does it take to get from the airport to your transit station. Whether it’s 10 minutes of walking, or 5 minutes waiting for a shuttle + 5 minutes riding the shuttle doesn’t make that much difference, at the end of the day, it’s still 10 minutes. If you have luggage, that’s what wheels are for. Have lots of luggage? That’s what smart carts are for.
For example, if ST wanted to, they could have never built the SeaTac airport station in the first place, and kept the temporary shuttle from the old 194 bus stop to TIBS as the permanent solution. By your logic, this configuration would have been “infinitely better”, but anyone who’s ever ridden the old shuttle can attest that total travel time is faster under the current configuration. Even if the Link shuttle had no wait whatsoever (best case assumption), it still took longer for the nonstop shuttle to drive to TIBS that it takes today to walk to Link.
Sure, there are other airports out there that have better direct connections, but there are many other airports out there, some of with are huge hubs in transit-oriented communities, that have to make do with indirect connections and Link today is still far better than any indirect connection would ever be.
The reason why so many airports have indirect connections is the same reason for the long walk you are complaining about – that the airport was originally built thinking only about cars and by the time transit was added on after the fact, there was simply no room. Without taking a lane of the airport drive or building a super-expensive underground tunnel, there is simply no room for the train to go right up to the terminal. I’m just grateful that the airport station exists and that concerns about the walk being too long or about drivers losing some of their precious parking spaces to make room for the walkway didn’t cause ST to cop out make the shuttle approach the permanent solution, as so many other airports have done.
One of my friends, who worked with the Port of Seattle for many years a few years ago, said that the Port was not going to allow a LINK station close to the terminal because then it would start to lose revenue from rental cars and parking.
Also, doesn’t the Portland(Oregon) airport have MAX come right to the end of the terminal? Sure, its not in the center but at least it is connected to the actual terminal building…
Chicago’airport stations are either underground such as st O’hare or adjacent to the garage at Midway. The difference is they have people mover systems and in the case of Midway heated walkways. Makes those 20 minute walks kore bearable.
Mike, see Cinesea.
Cinesea and East Coast, ATL and PDX are both in my link. MARTA is near the front door/security-side people mover, and MAX is practically in the airport’s center. Check out my linked post above; I Google Mapped each and every one.
ASDF, with the sole exception of LAX, those indirect connections were retrofits for older transit systems as well as older airports. Everyone else who built brand new trains built them to the freaking terminal… not to 1700 feet from the terminal.
Link is, quite simply, the worst of the modern batch. Stop trying to argue against reality.
Charles,
Have you been to Midway since they moved the entire airport east? It’s about 5 minutes walk from the security overpass now.
O’Hare station is roughly that same distance from each of the three primary terminals.
d.p., Dulles is making the exact same mistake we made. The station is going to be elevated and next to Daily Parking 1, about 1250 feet from the nearest entrance of the terminal. The walk will be underground.
I haven’t seen ST documentation of the TSA veto either, but it’s not made up out of whole cloth — it was well known and widely discussed at the time Airport Station was being planned. That said, my memory is that ST and (especially) the Port didn’t try that hard to overcome the TSA’s concerns, because the station we got was cheaper than the original plan.
That’s a long walk with luggage. Are you positive about the length? I can only find a general location reference, not a specific one.
I noticed that one Metro board member agreed to the compromise only with the caveat that the closer, underground station would remain on the table should a cheaper way to build it be found.
Is the Bellevue subway station still on the table?
Why the SeaTac result annoys me so much is that we weren’t even talking about the massive cost differentiation between elevated and underground. It would have been elevated in any case. If the Port resisted a front-door approach, even the slightest deviation away from International Blvd would have been better than nothing.
The current state of affairs makes it seem like Sound Transit doesn’t get it, didn’t try to, and doesn’t care.
Correction: 1,150 feet, not 1,250. Still a long way.
http://www.wmata.com/about_metro/board_of_directors/board_docs/070711_DullesMetrorailPhase2July711.pdf
Well, I hope they scrounge the money or find a cheaper way to do the underground.
Still, thank heavens for moving sidewalks and a newly-comprehensive security-side people mover.
“Complain all you want, but Link still connects with SeaTac airport better than transit does in numerous other cities”
So should we make Link’s new motto: “Link, a little better than the worst”?
Come on. The least they could now do is put in some moving walkways from the station to the terminal. That walk is atrocious, especially in mid-winter at 6 PM.
D.P., yes, MDW was renovated before I left Chicago. The walk from the train platform is up an escalator from the train terminal and then along a walk through the garage. Thankfully it is heated by overhead warmers. It’s certainly a shorter walk than before. But id still say its roughly comparable to the Link walk.
Sorry, you said “20 minutes”, which is how far it really was from the El to the front door of the old Midway, including a partially-heated, freestanding overpass/walkway. So I presumed you were referencing the old Midway.
The new Midway is still through a garage, like Link, but the outside walk is 60-90 seconds shorter than ours. And once you get to the main terminal (just east of Cicero), security is right there on the bridge, followed immediately by the concourses. At SeaTac you’ve still got a lot of walking to do, both to security and beyond.
I’ve done SEA-MDW. The Chicago retrofit is slightly — but noticeably — better than our brand-spanking-new exercise in mediocrity.
djw, yes, I really do not understand this, and I am trying to figure out how a 10 minute walk can be quick but the 1 minute walk from Bellevue Station to the BTC is Bataan Death March.
It takes me 13 minutes to get from my planes gate to the Light Rail. I know this because I’ve timed it multiple times. I needed to know because I used to work in Irvine and I’d fly down in the morning then back home at night so I could sleep in my own bed. The last Light Rail train I could take and get all the way home was 10:20, my flight arrived at 10. That made for some pretty quick connections with Link. Saying it takes 5 minutes is not that accurate either as he started halfway between his plane and the light rail already.
Also, Bill, by your logic, how is there any possible defense of the LQA detour?
[No idea how that ended up down here. G’night, tireless defenders of questionable logic.]
Bus Stop Photoshop Prank. Watch Video. Very Amusing.
http://tinyurl.com/mjpynhl
This is one of my finest contributions to STB. Is it to much to ask to be recognized and thanked for it?
On behalf of the STB Editorial Staff, nearly everyone who has ever posted on STB over the years, in millions of grateful Washitonians, let me say Thank You.
Yay, SURVEILLANCE!
Chinese government moving 250 million people into cities in next 12 years. They must be reading this blog.
http://tinyurl.com/l37u8ut
Even though its only a few minutes walk, I don’t see why they can’t put in a moving sidewalk. They’re used to get gates……why not to Link as well?
1) You’d have to cut a giant hole in concrete
2) There isn’t enough height in the floor below
3) Both the equipment and reason 1 would cost $$$$$$$
They should install a moving sidewalk. The airport just doesn’t consider it a high enough priority.
This and streamlined, legible signage would make a world of difference for accessibility. When in the airport at no time is it made obvious that there is a train running from the airport to Seattle’s CBD.
The Link connection from Sea-Tac was horribly designed. During the Winter months, the wind blows the rain into the walkway making the trek bone chilling. Given the amount of money spent on Link, it would have made sense to make a more expeditious way to get from the transit center to the A Concourse vice cutting through the park garage. Enclose the walkway to provide an HVAC system and protect users from the elements, provide users a moving walkway so the hike isn’t as arduous, and maybe consider some signs indicating when the next train to Westlake will be departing. There’s nothing worse than riding the escalator up to the platform and hearing the train depart the station. Are there any plans to address this with the extension project? After all, it’s within the project limits (aka project scope).
Roughly along these lines, can someone explain since when Orca gives a free bus transfer from Link to Metro? I caught this on a recent jaunt to Vegas. Admittedly transit to the airport beats any parking facility near the airport (for me and possibly most Seattle users), $5.00 to the airport ($2.25 on Metro and $2.75 on Link), and only $2.75 back to Shoreline with my Orca card.
The cost of your Link ride is more than riding a King County Metro bus. When the cost of the ride in a second vehicle is equal to (or less than) the cost of the ride in the first vehicle, it’s a free transfer if done within 2 hours.
This 2 hour free transfer clock resets if you go from a lower cost mode to a higher cost mode (local bus to ST bus or bus to link etc)
Try Kirkland Transit Center in the winter. Metal
benchesshelves which are wet from condensation even if it’s not raining. If it is raining the “shelters” provide zero protection. Not even enough shade when it’s sunny to be able to see the display on your phone. At South Kirkland they removed the shelters and benches entirely last Thursday. Obviously that was only a few hour task. We’ll see how long until they are replaced. My bet is that they could have remained until after the reconfiguration or removed right before it was necessary. No telling what’s going on since they didn’t bother to put up a sign explaining what’s happening and what the final configuration will be. Oh, and the traffic signal on 108th is still up and hanging there without power. We don’t care, we don’t have to; we’re thephone companytransit agency!So, new shelters at South Kirkland P&R this afternoon. They are now east of the old location. Same size and shape as what was torn out but now farther from where most of the buses stop. So, assuming there is some logic in this, why didn’t they just move the old shelters east? Oh yeah, we’ve got government money we need to spend so waste is no object. And yes, the old and new shelters bolt to posts that mean they would have been interchangeable. Stupid is as stupid does.
It’s not mentioned in the video, but there is a trick to knowing whether to walk or run to catch the train. During the bulk of the day, when the trains, are at 10 minute headways, the incoming train usually arrives a couple minutes before the outbound train leaves. Which means if you see two trains parked at the station, it’s time to run because one of them is going to be leaving very soon. If you only see one train parked at the station, feel free to dawdle, as you still have plenty of time.
The video is great but it has the same problem as the signs in the airport: it tells where Link is, but not what it is or where it goes to. I would add something like, “Link light rail, which is the rapid transit system to downtown Seattle. It runs every 10 minutes until 10pm, and then every 15 minutes until about midnight. It costs $2.75 to downtown. Extensions to north Seattle and suburban cities are under construction, and will open in 2016 – 2023.” Then at the ticket machines, mention ORCA cards.
This tells people that Link is a viable alternative to a taxi or shuttle downtown, that it’s incredibly cheap compared to those, and that they won’t have to wait more than 10-15 minutes, and that in a few years they’ll be able to take it to the UW or Bellevue/Redmond (the second- and third-most likely destinations of visitors).
I could have sworn in my last trip to the airport, the sign actually said either “Train to Seattle” or “Train to downtown Seattle”.
You could tell them that, and let some visitor from Australia come in and spend $2.50 instead of $50 for a cab ride that adds to the local economy.
John,
I don’t think any of us knew you were a cabbie. That explains why you know so much about the road system.
If it does say that, it was changed in the past few months. That’s what it should say, and what O’Hare’s signs say (“Train to city”).
Bailoman, that Australian will have $47.50 left over for a candlelight dinner, a piece of artwork, a ticket to a play, or many other things that are better for the economy and the environment than guzzling gas in a taxi.
I’m guessing the reason none of the signs in the airport say where LINK goes is because of the taxi and airporter lobby. If people knew there was a cheaper way to go downtown they would loose business.
Mike,
A little background on this video:
Originally I shot a version before the station opened. I took a walk from the skybridge level to the end of the garage that would connect to the station. The construction wall was still up. The point was to show how it was going to work–the airport link extension hadn’t opened yet and a few people were curious.
After the airport extension opened, I started to get comments from people that wanted to know if that’s really how you got to the station. So I re-shot it, and here’s what you have.
Not much planning went in to it; I wasn’t expecting to be greeted and I wasn’t trying to walk around anyone–that’s just the speed that I normally walk.
I’ve been reading this blog for quite a long time and I’m wondering if anybody can answer this question: Is the new Rapid Ride F line going to terminate at Renton Transit Center or The Landing? The current map shows the last mile or so to The Landing as an “extension”. Is it still being discussed? I also wonder where the buses are going to lay over in DTR. From my heavy use of Redmond’s transit center, it looks like there’s at least three idle at the end of a route at any given time. There’s not too much room in downtown Renton for that from what I can see.
And thanks ST for the new 567! I finally have a place to sit on the 566 for the first time in years!
I think that the F-line is extended to the landing for sure, and they are even talking about extending route 140 there before the F-line replaces it.
And I don’t like what they did with route 567. In opening this route and reducing service on 566, they horribly fragmented service along the 405/167 corridor.
AlexKven, close, but you’ve got it reversed. The 140 is going to be extended to Renton Landing, while the F Line extension is still up in the air. I’m guessing since F Line has been delayed a bit they are going to use the time to test run the extension.
Wes said:
“I rarely rode the 194, and I never rode the 7. Now I ride link every time I go to the airport and I visit beacon hill, mt baker or columbia city often, I never did prior to link. I know many other downtowners who are the same”
Hooray! $2 billion dollars for Seattle to have their own Northwest Trek in-city.
[ot]
Unfortunately, this video didn’t give you the fact that from baggage claim to the link station is a ten minute walk. For me link is not at all an improvement over taking the metro route 194 (discontinued) from just outside of baggage claim. Route 194 took about 25 minutes (if there’s no appreciable traffic on I-5) to downtown. Also, for my money there aren’t enough direction signs to link from the terminal.
For me the 194 took anywhere from 30 minutes to 50 minutes depending in traffic. Link takes from 33 minutes to 38 minutes. In my opinion it’s a huge improvement. I’ve never felt like the walk was a challenge, and it’s actually easier than some airports I’ve been too.
Sure it’s an improvement. But is it a $2 billion dollar improvement? Or would an alignment that is actually faster than a bus the with cost savings allowing it to already be well on it’s way to Federal Way have been better than the scenic tour of the RV? The station ended up a long way from the terminal but I’m not sure it would have been worth a loop into and back out of the terminal and after the FAA/TSA folk decided you could again build a station into the terminal there was nowhere near enough money left to tunnel. I would have liked to have seen the Port and ST look seriously at using the new rental car garage. You know there will be baggage and people shuttles from there. Maybe even an extension of the airport underground at some point. With the current arrangement there are certainly things that can be done to make significant improvements.
We’ve been over this. There isn’t a single direct-access rail connection to a major airport anywhere in the world that’s younger than 30 years old and as bad as ours.
https://seattletransitblog.wpcomstaging.com/2013/04/26/st-board-rubber-stamps-bellevue-decision/#comment-323914
I rarely rode the 194, and I never rode the 7. Now I ride link every time I go to the airport and I visit beacon hill, mt baker or columbia city often, I never did prior to link. I know many other downtowners who are the same. I’m willing to sit on a train for another 2 or 3 minutes (194 was actually rarely faster than link and no room for luggage) if it actually serves the neighborhoods and offers a much more comfortable ride.
Aside from the occasional crowds on the 194, I miss being able to walk out the door at baggage claim after a long flight from the East Coast or Europe.
I have to side with d.p. on this. Zigzagging through cars on Level 4 makes the Link-users think planners could care less about providing a positive first impression to the City and the greater Puget Sound Region. I still think that signs indicating when the next train is departing along the walkway should be installed. While the regular user can catch the subtle hints such as a second train arriving, the casual or unfamiliar user won’t catch it.
Additionally, It would have made some sense to create a passageway for pedestrians through the park garage by condemning a number of parking spots, providing overhead signing and installing lighting to guide/complement the direction one must take to/from the Link Station.
No, what made people thing we couldn’t care less about our city’s gateway and about transit overall was having only a bus at the airport, one that got stuck in traffic, came every 15 minutes only limited hours, every 30 minutes other hours, and not at all after 9pm when you had to take the local bus that stopped at every stop along the way. Compare that to London, Chicago, San Francisco, and even Los Angeles, it looked like we didn’t take transit seriously. Add to that the fact that Link will go directly to UW where a good chunk of visitors are going, as well as Lynnwood and Bellevue, and Capitol Hill and Rainier Valley, and you’ve got something far beyond what the 194 ever provided. Not all visitors are going to downtown hotels.
CharlotteRoyal,
Unfortunately, it wasn’t Sound Transit’s decision about Sea-Tac. It was the Port of Seattle that basically refused permission for Sound Transit to build a stop right at the terminal. Sound Transit has made many poor decisions over the years, but this specific one cannot be blamed on them.
The decision to put LINK where it was, is not only Sound Transit and the Airport, the TSA has some to do with that as well. I remember that portion of the design was nearly done when 9/11 happened. It got tabled in the paranoia since than, only to come to life at the last minute and get completed shortly after opening of the line.
Personally, the line should have gone around the terminal, and also had a stop at the rental car facility, than like in Minneapolis, you could ride free in-between the two points and it would not have required all the rental car shuttles. Of course on that subject, Now that the airport has setup such an advanced rental car shuttle system, its too bad they cant be extended to Tukwilla station to provide better all-around connections in-between the Airport/RCF/and the two major transit stops.
True, but it’s an infinitely larger proportion than are those going to the RV/
Hell yes Bernie, you hit the nail on the head.
Although this conversation seems a bit disjointed as I have all of d.p.’s comments hidden.
Which I suppose is especially nonsensical since I have in no way disagreed with anything you’ve said on today’s thread.
In one case, you unknowingly parroted my comment about the A gates almost verbatim and posted it directly below mine.
and not at all after 9pm when you had to take the local bus that stopped at every stop along the way.
Yeah, but as someone who used to use SEA-TAC late at night when I didn’t have much money, the 24 hour coverage was a hell of a lot more important than the extra time it took. The lack of late night options in the present system is a real loss, and embarrassing.
Outside of rush hour, that the 194 was generally faster and closer made up for the slightly less frequent service. For those of us who don’t live near a link station and aren’t irrationally bus-phobic, the switch to link was undoubtedly a change for the worse in airport service.
The A and 124 still run 24 hours. You’ll have to wait for an uncoordinated transfer at TIB, but it’ll get you to downtown or Federal Way.
“Unfortunately, this video didn’t give you the fact that from baggage claim to the link station is a ten minute walk.”
The only 194 stop next to baggage claim was next to the far corner of baggage claim. If you weren’t checking bags, the walk to the 194 was only marginally shorter than the walk to Link today (although, I will grant you, nearly all of the walk was in an enclosed building).
That is flatly untrue, as even a quick glance at a Google Map will tell you.
The 194 stop was about twice as close as Link to the dead center of the airport, and as close to the furthest baggage claim as Link is to the nearest baggage claim. The bus stop was surrounded by gates to its north, south, and west; Link is well past the most northerly extremity of the airport proper.
You’re going to injure yourself from the straining you had to do to write the false equivalency above.
Maybe you have more flights than I do from terminal A, but most of mine go through either terminal B or N. I also usually do not check bags, which means I have no reason to pass by the baggage claims at all. While I grant you, the walk to Link is a little bit further, the difference is small – only a couple of minutes and not something worth quibbling over.
The mouth of the B concourse is about 3.5 minutes from the bus stop and at least 9 from train stop. Really.
That’s worth a quibble.
Especially since that’s the “median terminal” example, with the “airport extremities” comparison being significantly starker.
Originally, there was supposed to be a LINK stop further north of the airport around where the Post Office/Cell Phone lot is now. Port of Seattle was looking at building NEAT (North End Airport Terminal) and would been connected to the main terminal by extending the little rail shuttle that operates between South Satellite and North Satellite. 9/11 and airline economics changed that plan, so there were various other scenarios. I think it was not possible to fit an elevated rail line where the airport drives are now, and the desire to serve the City of Sea-Tac, so we got what you see out there today. Yep, everyone seems to like the 194, though it only operated every 30 minutes weekday peak/nights (15 min weekday midday, though I heard from rumors that grayline sued on that one, due to competition),all day Saturday and Sunday DAYTIME (no sunday night service, yep you take the 174). So, you had a tradeoff, closer airport access but less frequent, or more frequenty, but a farther walk to the rail station? I agree signage sucks. When I drove the 560, I would have some people who wanted to get to downtown Seattle from the bus stop. I could tell them to walk all the way to the north end of the airport, or just simply haul them to the next stop, which was 176th/Int’l Blvd, where the station was. It was much easier to haul them for customer relation purposes (I didn’t charge them, just told them to pay for the LINK rail ticket, the flaw of NOT having a day pass option for disposable ORCA cards, but that is another topic).
You think wrong. St. Louis and various others stop right on the darned roof.
One under-appreciated benefit of the airport Link stop being where it is is that it actually serves the surrounding neighborhood and provides connections to the A-line, rather than just serving the airport and doing nothing else.
I took advantage of this once, on a day when I had a 6 AM flight. I took Link to the airport stop, but instead of walking to the terminal, I walked the other way to a hotel right across the street.
(I still had to take the hotel shuttle to the airport the morning of the flight, because I could not afford to take a chance on missing my plane if whatever security guard was responsible for opening the Link station and walkway at 5 AM each morning was running late).
“Serves the neighborhood.” Give me a break.
So you save a handful of occasional hotel users a short walk but impose a long haul upon everyone who uses the station for its primary purpose. Seriously, give me a break.
So, what are you suggesting – that people in the SeaTac neighborhood who can today walk to link should have been told to just suck it up and drive to TIBS (or drive all the way downtown if the parking at TIBS is full). Or that RapidRide A should have wasted time getting stuck in traffic down the airport drive, in order to provide the Link connection that it is currently able to get while traveling in a straight line?
While the neighborhood is not the primary purpose, it is important to not get tunnel vision when designing transit facilities and think only about one use case, while ignoring everything else. If ST wanted to, they could have skimped on cost and omitted the bridge over International Blvd., along with the elevator and stairs on the east side of the street. They did not.
Eric, there’s no neighborhood there.
It doesn’t exist. You are speaking in fictions.
There are a couple of hotels and services that do exist, and that have always had pedestrian crossings to access the airport, and should certainly have seen pedestrian access upgraded to allow for access to Link as well.
But it’s asinine to suggest that the train needed to be CLOSER to them than to the actual freaking destination that billions of dollars were being spent to serve.
That is straight-up stupid.
Question: before Link was proposed, how many of you thought the 194 was an excellent airport connection, as opposed to just being something better than the 174. And for those who had been to cities that at that time did have a train from the airport (Chicago, St Louis, but not San Francisco), did you think the 194 and Metro were equal quality to their transit systems, and were sufficient for what a city Seattle’s size should have?
I mostly loved the 194. If you were waiting for one at the airport and it was going to be a wait, you could easily step back into the airport to get out of cold/elements/etc. And I liked the view of Seattle in the distance as the 194 was headed back to the city. While you get some nice views from Link, you can’t stare at the city in the distance the same way you could on the 194. And I liked the non-stop nature of it.
Having said that, and as others will point out, the 194 was obviously at the whim of car traffic. I once missed a flight because of that years ago. And watching people navigate their luggage through the narrow bus aisles was frustrating.
Having regularly driven the 194, I can confirm that it was indeed always late (at least when operated by Breda buses), because it was physically impossible to stay on the schedule.
Northbound, I could leave FWP&R on time, make no intermediate stops other than the freeway stations, keep my right foot on the floor the entire way, and arrive at the airport 5-7 minutes late.
The schedule was similarly impossible between the airport and downtown.
Your claim is refuted by the 2 or 3 occasions when I missed an inbound 194 because I couldn’t squeeze off the plane fast enough and the bus left as much as 5 minutes early.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the 194 either, but off-peak speed was not its problem.
I mostly loved the 194.
Ditto. But I’m apparently one of the rare people that doesn’t care whether I’m on a train or a bus, all else equal. It was faster and closer to the terminal, which more than made up for the slightly less frequency. And while the 174 was a slog, at least we had a cheap option if you’re flight comes in after midnight (which isn’t that rare). Now, you’re stuck with the damn airporter or a taxi, at great expense.
The failure to have a shadow bus after link shuts down for a busy 24 hour airport is maddening.
Either that was during the hybrid era (67 mph > 53 mph), your clock was off, or the driver left 10 minutes early from Federal Way.
I operated the 194 every single day for almost a shakeup and never once was on time, let alone early.
In the era of cellphones, clocks are never “off”.
FWIW, each time it happening was in the early evening, but after rush-hour traffic had dissipated.
The A and 124 still run 24 hours. You’ll have to wait for an untimed transfer at TIB but it’ll still get you to downtown.
For starters, the 194 was always crowded and always late. Even if you walked out of the airport exactly when the schedule said it would come, you would still usually have a 5-10 minute wait. Oh, and I also had a lot of evening trips that I was forced to slog out on the 174 because the 194 wasn’t running.
It wasn’t “always” late and “always” crowded. Hyperbole much?
Even if it was late I’d know about it (this was in the years before OBA, I’d bring up the Metro real-time info via Bus Tracker / Location View while heading to the main terminal area). There were a few times when I’d see that the 194 was super behind and I’d decide, for kicks, to take the 174 back instead.
Does the “Mid-December” time reference you mention include the period where Link only went to Tukwila and then you’d need to take a bus to seatac?
Here’s the ultimate way to decide the question – there was a period of about 2 months, from Mid-December to mid-February, when the Link airport station had just opened, but the 194 was still running.
For those of you that flew during that time, how many of you chose Link and how many of chose the 194?
My answer – for trips to the airport, I took either Link or the 194, whichever came first. For trips from the airport, I went for Link.
You guys know that something can be better and still be sub-optimal and bordering on unacceptable at the same time, right?
“Rejoice! I’m going to get waterboarded every day for the rest of my life! But at least they took me of the rack!”
Remember that every bad station decision compounds every other bad station decision. No one gives a shit if it’s “better” than prior terrible transit of it still fails miserably when compared to driving.
I mean it. You guys honestly seem to forget that, as do our transit agencies and politicians.
It’s really important!
So, what you’re saying is RR-D is a vast improvement, just waiting for the center of Ballard to move 7/10 mile to the east?
Also, are you sure you didn’t see the previous 194, running 10 minutes late? That’s much more likely.
Nope. Because the next bus was 30 minutes later and perfectly on time.
I have always wanted to see floor signage (don’t know the technical term) between the terminal area and the link station. Just a simple colored line that people can follow. Yes, I know there is signage from the ceiling. And yes, I know once you get closer to the station it’s obvious which way to go. But earlier on, right out of the terminals, it’s not 100% obvious which way to go, especially at those sections with elevators (going around the elevator and walking through the elevator area basically gets you to the same place, but some people pause because they’re not sure if there’s a “right” way).
I think one of the terminals in seatac (Delta?) has a floor line that directs people deplaning to the main terminal area. There are fish or other water creatures on it, so kids (who are obviously closer to the ground) seem to notice it. Put a Link line on the ground in the garage area and cover up some of that awful cement and include illustrations of light rail cars on it. Make the concept of light rail exciting for the kids.
Hello, thanks for this helpful video, flying to Seattle soon for a first-ever visit and hoping to use public transportation, stumbled onto your excellent blog while researching this, thanks especially for your page for visitors. Couple of questions, if you would be willing to help: I see that the Link only reaches the south part of downtown, still 1.5 miles from my hotel at the South Lake Union, how would I get my family, including kids who couldn’t haul suitcases that far, from the final stop downtown to the hotel? Is it pretty easy to hail a cab downtown or should we try for a bus? Also, I’ve read about the Seattle Trolley that goes near our hotel, but none of the online links seem to work, is the trolley still in operation?
Welcome to Seattle. The streetcar still exists however tickets on Link are not valid for fare on the streetcar. You may want to consider getting the ORCA card which allows transfers between agencies. However, the $5 cost of the card would depend on other factors such as what will be your primary mode of transport while in Seattle, how old the kids are, etc.
Also please note that ORCA cards are available from the very same vending machines at the airport Link station as one-time tickets. We are eternally frustrated by the lack of signage to this effect.
If you are staying in SLU, the ORCAs will be more than worth your while, at least for the adults, as the streetcar fare is FREE as long as you are in possession of an ORCA.
I unsarcastically hope that the significant distance from the airport to Link does not prove too far with the bags and little ones.
Doesn’t your hotel provide a free shuttle to/from the airport?
Pretty much no hotels downtown (or anywhere other than the airport and Southcenter/Renton areas) provide free shuttles to the airport.
Lots of threads and blog posts about Car2Go but I’d never heard of Uber, Lyft or Sidecar until I drove to work this morning and was able to get my dose of Dave Ross.
Ah, this must be what propted the talk radio segment on KIRO, Seattle taxi drivers protest unregulated competition
Ah, this must be what prompted the talk radio segment on KIRO, Seattle taxi drivers protest unregulated competition
Hmm, comments vaporizing into the blogoshpere? Hopefully this doesn’t get threepeated. Seattle taxi drivers protest unregulated competition must be what prompted the talk radio segment on KIRO this morning.
So, is there a filter to prevent reply to your own post? Just make a new thread; that doesn’t seem like a good answer. Seattle taxi drivers protest unregulated car services
More service hours (~5,000/yr) for a few routes, with service added during evening and weekends(!):
http://www.seattle.gov/mayor/press/newsdetail.asp?ID=13740
Horray!
More cynically, this might end up replacing just a tiny bit of the nightmare service cuts. Still, that’s better than nothing.
///////// Change since Video was produced: United Airlines has relocated to the South side of the Main Terminal. Ticketing and Baggage Claim has moved and the gates used now are in the A Concourse. ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////