Frank and I are going to tape another podcast mailbag. Please put your questions in the comments below this afternoon. As always, try to keep it to a single question, and make it one that can actually be answered. Thanks.

34 Replies to “Submit Podcast Mailbag Questions Here”

  1. If the 1st Ave streetcar becomes a trolley bus with center running, exclusive lanes, are you OK with that outcome?

    And if the 1st Ave becomes a trolley bus, what do we do with First Hill and SLU streetcars? Keep them, or transition to trolleybuses?

  2. I’m only allowed one question and one question only so I’m going to make it good: Since the ORCA Joint Board seemingly can’t be bothered to record their meetings, can STB please send a reporter every month to ORCA Joint Board meetings so we have accountability & transparency and regular status reports please?

  3. Pure speculation: Where do you think Metro Seattle will get its first gondola?

    Possible options:
    Seattle waterfront
    Kirkland downtown to BRT station
    SLU to Cap Hill
    etc.

    1. Tukwila Sounder to new Renton TC for 405 BRT connection (Auburn-Eastside trips)
      Southport (Renton office/hotel complex) to somewhere

    2. If a Gondala was ever proposed, Southwest Seattle to Rainier Valley likely makes the most amount of sense considering the terrain you would otherwise have to drill through and the lack of currently available right of ways

    3. A comment on any cable-pulled transit vehicle besides a vertical elevator would be interesting to me.

      1. He suggested that about a week ago. It seems like a very good idea since there’s a Link station entrance right across the street.

    5. We’ll sell the viaduct tunnel to Elon Musk to pay off the debt, and he will turn it into a car gondola, as a demonstration project of how much more capacity such a contraption would have than just having people drive through.

      What will improve the capacity will be the multi-G acceleration and deceleration.

      The fare won’t be cheap.

  4. What happens to buses when Montlake Freeway station closes? Will a weekend trip from UW to Redmond require detouring all the way downtown? Will the 542 start running 7 days a week?

    With regards to service restructures, everyone is talking about buses being kicked out of the tunnel, but nobody is talking about what happens when Montlake Freeway station goes away, sometime mid-2019.

  5. Should Sound Transit and Community Transit terminate they’re north end commuter bus routes at Northgate once the light rail station there opens? My understanding is they are going to continue running buses downtown until Lynnwood opens.

    2. The streets from the Northgate freeway exit to the transit center are already full. Adding hundreds of more buses peak hours doesn’t sound very plausable.

      1. You could create bus-only lanes, which would convert back to GP after Lynnwood Link opens.

      2. The streets downtown are also full, as is the Stewart St. exit ramp off of I-5, which can back up nearly a mile. I find it hard to believe that Northgate would be *that* full – especially during morning rush hour, when most of the mall stores are still closed.

      3. Downtown buses go straight down Stewart Street which is four lanes one way, accompanied by other four-lane one-way streets. Northgate Way is I think two lanes each way, and buses have to turn three times: once off the freeway, once at 21st & Northgate Way, and once into the transit center. Turns are lower capacity than going straight, and often cause cars to stack up and that can spill over into the regular lanes, and these intersections were not designed for hundreds if turning express buses. If ST2 hadn’t been extended to Lynnwood (and I didn’t expect it to be), ST would surely had to have built dedicated exit ramps from the freeway to the transit center or put the bus turnaround on the west side of 1 st Avenue. But Lynniwwi Link obviated that, just like the second downtown tunnel obviate making the first tunnel higher capacity. And it’s only for three years. It s not worth making a big change and then another big change three years later. Northgate is just not a practical terminus

    3. I typically get to work by 8. I get off the bus near Westlake and transfer to another bus. I expect transferring at Northgate to get to Westlake instead of riding the bus all the way down would take me longer. I don’t know what time Stewart St gets backed up a mile.

      Getting back I’m usually in the peak of the rush. If traffic is digesting a concert, ballgame, accident, protest, VIP in town, etc I expect it would be faster to be on Link those days despite the transfer. When it is really bad I will sometimes find *any* bus that will stop at MLT and wait for a 511 to get to Lynnwood or have a family member pick me up.

      Sorry, I’m not paying attention enough to Link because I’m an infrequent rider now. When Lynnwood opens there are all 4 car trains and bumped up frequency? I don’t think they can provide that earlier than that? If so, that would be another consideration but I think we’ve discussed this a few times before.
      The expensive improvements needed at Northgate and their temporary need ruled it out.

      1. The cars for 4-car trains are coming in 2019. Frequency may revert to its pre-U-Link level (8 min peak instead of 6).

  6. Who do you want as the next (permanent) SDOT head? What should be his/her first priorities?

  7. Hi, I’m the mobility co-chair at East Bay for Everyone, a grassroots organization advocating for more housing, better transit, and long-term planning in our Bay Area communities. We haven’t focused much on transit so far, but see an opportunity coming to lobby BART for better off-peak service during planned Transbay Tube maintenance. What organizing strategies have you seen work best to improve transit in Seattle, and how do you think they could apply to the Bay Area?

  8. Is BRT still on schedule for Rainier? I haven’t heard anything about this project (and the website for doesn’t look like it’s been updated recently).

  9. If the Center City Connector is cancelled based on the upcoming report, do you think it will ever get built?

  10. This region now has an established record of failures at enabling efficient transfers to from Link (examples abound: UW Station, Mount Baker Station, TIBS, Sea-Tac Airport, etc.)

    What can or should be done — and by whom — to avoid repeating these mistakes on a grander scale with ST3, particularly where rail lines intersect, given tight budgets, tight timelines, and tight geometries downtown?

    1. Add this, Jonathan:

      To what extent is dissension between its separate entities to blame for the problems you mention? And to what extent, in turn, is this degree of separation a violation of the original promise of integrated regional transit in its winning political campaign?

      Mark

  11. What do you think is the most appropriate way, purely from a transit perspective, to connect the Coleman Dock ferries to the rest of the regional transit system?

    1. If money were infinite, the ideal solution would be an underground pedestrian walkway connecting Colman Dock to whichever downtown tunnel station is closest (I guess, Pioneer Square Station). Thanks to the hillside, such a tunnel could actually be level and take you right to the platform.

      I the real world, people are just going to have to walk up the hill. Fortunately, there’s already an elevated level walkway to 1st Ave., which leaves only one block to 2nd, which, I think, has entrances to the downtown transit tunnel.

      A shuttle bus is not really a viable solution because the vast majority of people will find it faster to walk up the hill than to wait for it, and there’s no enough disabled people willing to ride the bus to fill a shuttle with any kind of reasonable frequency (for those with difficulty walking, the time penalty of using transit compared to driving or Uber is greater, hence greater willingness to pay for a direct ride). Even a timed shuttle connection for arriving ferries wouldn’t work all that well because, the two ferry routes combined would have uneven headways. Plus, every trip out of the ferry terminal, the bus would get stuck behind all the cars coming off the ferry. Metro tried the shuttle bus idea years ago with route 99. The route was canned due to terrible ridership.

      While it’s tempting to pick some random route (e.g. 12) and extend it to the ferry terminal, the principle that a shuttle to go three blocks isn’t worth waiting for means it would only really be useful for people headed to somewhere along *that* route, which is, again, only a small percentage of passengers. Plus, just by having the route go to the ferry terminal, you subject it to random delays when the bus gets stuck behind all the ferry cars. Such delays propagate to the entire rest of the route, and would cause people not going anywhere near the ferries to experience unreliable service.

    2. B, solution has been hanging from span-wire from First Avenue trolleywire at Cherry, one block south on Second to James, and half block short of Third for thirty years. Was part of the original Downtown Seattle Transit Project.

      Direct trolleybus from the First Avenue end of the Colman Dock walkway to the rest if the system. Could switch onto Third. Or continue past Harborview Hospital to Lake Washington.

      For the Podcast, my only request is don’t ask why. Don’t give anybody enough time to answer that. Martin or Frank, one of you keep talking, and the other one impersonate Dow Constantine and call the shop to just do it.

      Mark

  12. In terms of dollars to convenience to the traveling public, is there any project that could deliver more bang for the buck than ripping out the escalators in all Sound Transit facilities and replacing them with ones whose goal is 100% uptime?

    1. Breadbaker, also ask:

      What’s the best way for Sound Transit Blog to get a permanent supply of accurate and credible information on all of transit’s machinery? Not at the cost of digital systems.

      But, as with the elevators, concentrating on parts that physically come loose, jam up, catch fire, and break? And for those of us who are going to do it- at least tell us our best source.

      Mark

  13. Does/Should STB follow/advocate for major Freeway projects, IE 520 Rest of the West, 405 Renton to Bellevue Toll Lanes and the continuation of 167 to I-5?Sshould we be advocating for carpool lanes, flyovers to connect carpool lanes? And should they be designing the Rest of the West for Future link expansion over 520(Seattle subway shows a line travailing down Madison – arboretum then on to 520 over the water)?

  14. What extent do you think the influx of new renters will (approx 40,000 since 2016) have on the midterms as it relates to transit policy? also are their going to be an transit initiatives on the 2018 ballot?

  15. Is there any value in a vision that expands the regional rail network based on existing capabilities? Is there a path to expand Sounder service to more places using existing trackage and higher frequencies?

  16. Can you make any observations on Metro’s North Seattle bus demand and restructuring process after Northgate Link opens? Today, Route 70 is about 30 minutes between U-District and Downtown; Link will be 10. Route 41 is about 25 minutes between Northgate and Downtown; Link will be 14.

    Compared to the U-Link restructuring, should Metro use the same decision timeline and public process? Will the public behave differently? How good will station transfers be?

    We are about 36 months from opening day.

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