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ST3: A Complete Geographic Map

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Hi there, for the past few hours I have been mapping out our future ST3 Light Rail system in it’s entirety over a geographic map, so now you can see exactly where every station and routing will be and how it fits into our urban environment. Check it out here. If I have made any errors, please let me know and I will fix them.

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Comments

  1. Lukas;

    Good start on your map. But my understanding is that the light rail station for Paine Field SW Everett Industrial Center should be at Seaway & 75th. The Seaway Transit Center is intended for light rail.

    That’s my understanding. Could be wrong.

  2. The route through SLU/LQA looks wrong to me. The station won’t be in the middle of Seattle Center, it will be in LQA and it’s missing a station around Mercer and Aurora.

  3. You put Ballard station at Leary. I’ve never seen this proposed; the most likely (and superior) location would be at Market.

  4. You put Ballard station at Leary. I’ve never seen this proposed; the most likely (and superior) location would be at Market.

  5. The location of Lynnwood’s station is a bit off. The track and station will be oriented diagonally (SW to NE) and the tail tracks will jut into the furniture store. (see here)

    Everett’s terminus will be at Everett Station, which is quite a ways away from your marker.

  6. Central Issaquah station will likely terminate at the transit center, which is between Newport & Maple.

    Factoria station should probably be a bit further east, directly over Richards Road. It will be an elevated station.

    Are you planning on including provisional stations?

    SE Redmond stations will be “southeast” of the 520-202 intersection, according to the ST3 website, so you’ll want to drag it a bit farther east.

    • I wish Issaquah station was closer in by the transit center, but ST’s maps show otherwise.

      No, provisional “stations” will not be shown. I’m only showing infrasturctre that the public can use on the map, ie. not provisions or trainyards.

  8. I am curious about the routing from the Delridge station to the Avalon station.
    Would it actually be routed on Genesee ?

  9. This is an excellent start, with the caveats mentioned above. But what I’d like to say is how clearly it shows that, with the exception of the portions in Seattle proper and midtown Bellevue, this is an enormously sprawl-inducing design. It depends on Park-N-Rides and bus transfers almost exclusively in the suburban areas. It’s a fustercluck of enormous proportions because Shoreline, Sea-Tac, Des Moines and Federal Way blocked use of Highway 99 along which “string of pearls” development clusters could have been built.

    And they did it because they’re addicted to the crack of car dealership sales taxes. What a stupidly shortsighted way to build a transportation system.

    • As to, “sprawl-inducing design. It depends on Park-N-Rides and bus transfers almost exclusively in the suburban areas”

      Well let me tell you we need ST3. We in the North need light rail to Everett Station and want it to Paine Field to make those transfers.

    • Thanks for the compliments. I’m really not too interested in land use and TOD so much as that every part of the region gets a rapid transit line of some sort. I sort of see favoring dense cores over suburbs as generally sensible, until people start saying that plans should be scrapped entirely or changed to ONLY include these areas. A blind dismissal of the suburbs means that 75% of the region’s land area gets nothing.

    • I’m not so sure about the inducing part of that. It’s already sprawled. The sprawl inducers were the highways.

      Now that those are full and it’s not dense enough for really good transit, now what? There really are t any good options that don’t include adding something to the areas where everything has sprawled.

      • Glenn, Joe,

        I did not say “Don’t go to Everett.” I did not say “Don’t go to Tacoma.” Ross has said those things and I admit I have said that if ST3 does not pass because the suburbs vote against it, well, they will have made their collective bed and must lie in it.

        What I did say is that this plan, with it’s almost entirely “freeway alignment” is stupid and very sprawl-inducing. For a travel time penalty of at most four minutes (two minutes for the two mile detour and two minutes for an additional stop) North Link could have used SR99 between 205th/244th and 130th and the Interurban ROW to get to downtown Lynnwood. That would have allowed the development of a large cluster of development between 130th and 145th and a large cluster of development between 160th and 175th (the additional station) and a large cluster of development between 185th and 200th (moving the 185th station a half mile north).

        The same thing could have happened north of Lynnwood had the line also followed SR99 north of Airport Road except for the dogleg to Paine Field. That routing would have added perhaps three minutes because there would have been an additional station somewhere near 128th would could have provided for a large cluster of development.

        These large clusters of development would have meant that fewer peripheral SFH developments would have been needed to accommodate the future workforce of the Puget Sound Region.

        The same thing could have happened in the South King corridor. Very few people are going to be commuting from Tacoma to Seattle via Link because of the Rainier Valley detour; they’ll ride all-day Sounder or Pierce Transit will run a replacement for the 590. It’s the only valid political position for Pierce County.

        Again, with a couple more stations between the Airport and Federal Way, and enthusiastic embrace of Kent-style high rise developments at them, South King could have absorbed twenty or thirty thousand new residents along the line.

        This is why I say that the system as designed is a sprawl-inducing fustercluck. Not because it goes to Tacoma and Everett, but because it does so along a effyouseeking freeway where nobody will want to live and there isn’t room for the development among the ramps and spaghetti anyway.

  10. I have updated the map with everyone’s suggestions.

    Just a thought: I find it interesting that the 2 branches off the main trunk/spine east and west of Lake Washington mirror each other, right down to the number of stations.

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