- 625 more battery buses ($), and a new base for them.
- Kent charging ST $6.7m for permitting work.
- Mountlake Terrace permitting in its last throes.
- Open House about a North Sammamish Park and Ride on July 11th.
- Seattle approaching 750,000 residents, is the fastest-growing large city in Washington on a percentage basis (!)
- Amazon to build the tallest building in Bellevue next to the transit center and future station.
- SDOT quietly ruins another bike lane project.
- Sumner’s 500-space Sounder garage ($) is “back on track.”
- TriMet will study putting the MAX in a downtown tunnel.
- Oregon is about to effectively eliminate single-family zoning. The whole state.
- Google Maps can now tell you if your bus is crowded.
This is an open thread.
Does anyone know how the curb lane weight restrictions on 1st Ave will affect streetcar construction and operation, if at all?
The link for Oregon eliminating SFZ doesn’t seem to point to the right place.
“[The bill] will allow duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes and “cottage clusters” on land previously reserved for single family houses in cities with more than 25,000 residents, as well as smaller cities in the Portland metro area. Cities with at least 10,000 residents would be required to allow duplexes in single-family zones.“
Might be this one, but there are a bunch of different articles out there about this:
https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2019/06/bill-to-eliminate-single-family-zoning-in-oregon-neighborhoods-passes-final-legislative-hurdle.html
Eliminating single family zoning doesn’t make a city affordable. 0% of Manhattan is zoned single family. Just 37% of San Francisco is zoned single family. Affordable cities? Bing it if you don’t believe me.
A lot of the rest of the Bay Area IS zoned single family residential. San Francisco’s Zoning and permitting process is very restrictive which allows very little new development. Just look at the difference in pace in new development between SF and Seattle. It’s the same with New York. The key is to allow incremental development. When a city with mostly single family homes starts growing, you allow low rise apartments. Then you allow more mid or high rise apartment buildings after that.
It gives property owners more freedom to respond to market demands and increases the available housing stock. It won’t make affordable housing, because the market rarely does that. It will help control upward pricing pressures in high-demand cities.
“Eliminating single family zoning doesn’t make a city affordable.”
Do you ever get tired of building strawmen? Eliminiating it isn’t enough to cut rents in half, which is what you’d have to do to make it affordable. But it would eliminate the artificial land scarcity which caused rents to go up so far in the first place. Rents are based on the number of renters competing for a unit. When multiple people come per day, the landlord raises the rent and takes the highest bidder. When nobody comes for more than a week, the landlord lowers the rent. Single-family zoning restricts the city to a very limited number of units and skews it toward large/expensive units. An apartment may be $2000 currently but a house is $4000 and to buy $700K, so now do you see why single-family zoning is several times more unaffordable than multifamily?
In the large picture, we should have loosened zoning in 2000 before rents/prices started accelerating, then they would have remained close to inflation. We didn’t do it, and we let it fester for so long it created an acute crisis which we’re now having to patch. One patch or one fix won’t solve it, but it can incrementally improve the situation. Because of the gap between incomes and housing prices (incomes rose less than inflation while housing prices and healthcare and education were dramatically higher), we’ll need a lot of below-market housing to fill the gap — estimates are 150,000 units. But we should still loosen the zoning too as part of the total solution.
“Lloyd Center to Goose Hollow”, exactly the endpoints I’ve advocated for a decade.
U hope they “go the second mile” and make a belly north through the Pearl District and run north-south through the downtown core to PSU before heading west.
It’s longer of course, but allows a station at the Rose Garden which isn’t 90 feet deep and serves all of downtown Portland except South Waterfront. However it would be two stops away from the PSU station using the Orange Line.
This would mean that the Orange-Yellow Line would have capacity across the Steel Bridge to accommodate service to Vancouver.
Hooray for Tri-Met.
I’d like to see it head directly west from the Rose Quarter and land a stop right at the Post Office redevelopment site. This would permit easy transfers to Union Station and serve The Pearl on the south end. From there it would turn directly south for the Pioneer Square and PSU stops, before turning west to Goose Hollow. The big challenge would be how best to serve PSU without diverting too far south. Is City Hall/Jefferson close enough?
Also, where does this leave the existing East-West line through downtown? Do they run a shuttle MAX service with single car trains between Goose Hollow and Lloyd, say, every 10 minutes?
Chris, what you’rE saying is essentially what I want too, but I think you’re ignoring the necessary grades. Using a “belly” curve north to about the grain elevators north of Broadway allows a shallower station at the Rose Quarter and higher speeds because the curve radius to turn south could be larger.
Also, the north Pearl station should be a little farther north, between Lovejoy and Marshall to get the big high rises up there. A second station about Couch and the North Park Strip would serve the older parts of the Pearl.
Thanks for replying.
So far as the east-west line, have a Gateway to Beaverton “local” service. It adds capacity on the inner trunk while retaining service to First and the Inner West Side.
True. With the proposed Red line changes, there would be capacity at both the Beaverton and Gateway transit centers to turn trains. This would effectively give the core line betwen Beaverton and Gateway 5-minute headways, since there would be (3) 15-minute headway lines overlapping. The exception, of course, would be between Goose Hollow and Rose Quarter on the surface track, where just the one line would be running. Rose Quarter to Lloyd would also have the Green line.
The line should be “SDOT quietly ruins a few more intersections”. The bike lane does very little good for almost no users while substantially decreasing the usability and safety for a significant amount of car traffic. Traffic is going to be much, much worse here.
Since you agree the Mayor is ruining more intersections, what is it you wanted SDOT to do, besides not have bike lanes?
SDOT’s own past reports routinely have declared that two-way left turn lanes make a street 19 to 47 percent safer. They just eliminated one to add protected bicycle lanes on Colombian Way. The downhill lane is sloped enough that bicyclists can cruise down the lane at a speed-limit-breaking 35 mph without pedaling (which I’ve witnessed). The Beacon Avenue intersection median has a concrete curb for bicycle lane separation right where cars have to swerve at the very spot where left-turning vehicles may conflict with cars, buses, pedestrians and bicycles moving in the other direction.
For a Vision Zero city, this project appears to look the other way — to favor bicyclists over safety.
I’ve always considered Alaska St. from MLK to Beacon as too unpleasant and dangerous to even consider riding my bike there. Now, with the re-channelization, I would be willing to ride there. There is now a clear pathway for motor vehicles to get through the Alaska/Beacon intersection without having to swerve and, as Al S. points out, there is a concrete curb protected bike lane on the most dangerous part along the median between the northbound and southbound lanes of Beacon.
Bike riders on the uphill climb will be separated from cars by at least 3 feet of striped lane markings which include plastic bollards. Bikes will be very visible and at the crest of the hill where the sharrows begin, that lane will be for right turns only. Cars won’t be swerving into that lane anymore to avoid cars turning left onto Beacon. The work isn’t done yet and I’m hoping SDOT will be installing more signage to show the new lane plan at the Alaska/Beacon intersection to help drivers see the new road plan.
This project doesn’t guarantee 100% safety for bicyclists, but it does remove almost all of the most dangerous aspects of the previous road plan and I think it will encourage more bike riders to use Alaska St.
I guess the safety of non-bicyclists don’t matter to some people.
And it’s clear that others don’t understand cycling well enough to criticize projects that they deem to have no benefit.
I’m at a loss as to how the cancellation of the 35th Ave NE PBL improved safety for people in cars or pedestrians. The lanes just got wider, so, naturally, the cars are moving faster.
The link to the article about the Sumner parking garage isn’t working. Here’s the updated link: https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/community/puyallup-herald/article232148077.html
Erica Barnett, who, unlike a candidate we talked about at length yesterday, is actually quite deft at “exposing cabals”, reports that some of the candidates who are benefiting from independent expeditures by the Chamber’s PAC are asking the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission to release them from the spending limits that come along with accepting Democracy Vouchers, because the Chamber’s PAC is simultaneously spending money to support another candidate in their race, who the PAC co-endorsed. Hopefully, the SEEC will see these requests for the nonsense that they are.
Anyone know what construction is going on that’s shutting down the bus loop at TIBS for 3-4 months? They shut it down Monday and no one there seemed to know what it’s for and I can’t find hide nor hair of it online. It’s seriously inconvenient for anyone who has trouble walking, and I didn’t think they’d start any prep for STRide stuff there until I’d at least heard about a semi-detailed plan for what they were planning on building (if that’s even what this is).
They didn’t warn Tukwila/Seatac residents, or give us a reason. 3-4 months is an insanely long time to disrupt service without a given reason. Kone’s completely rebuilding the Seatac Link overpass elevator in only 2 months, including tear down time.
Isn’t that a project that involves a total surface replacement for pavement that failed prematurely? I recall reading about the spending authorization being approved a while back. I’ll see if I can find a link.
ST only just put out a service alert on this project and its impact yesterday, July 3.
https://www.soundtransit.org/ride-with-us/service-alerts/tukwila-intl-blvd-station-bus-loop-closed-repaving
Weird. The existing pavement was better than some of the roads around TIBS. There was certainly no apparent issues.
I do remember them having to shut it down for emergency repairs at least twice in the last few years, so it makes sense to me.
It’s just incredibly inconvenient and seems like an incredibly long time for a repaving, even with ripping everything out and starting from scratch.
For what it’s worth, this is why TriMet switched to concrete paving in its transit centers.
Resolution No. R2019-17
“Midlife Refurbishment for Tukwila International Boulevard Station Budget Amendment”
“Background
The asphalt in the Tukwila International Boulevard Station bus loop has extensive surface damage,
often referred to as “alligator cracking.” The asphalt was installed during the original station construction in 2009 and, as a result of heavy bus traffic, has experienced numerous failures requiring several patch and repair projects to fix the damages. With every repair there needs to be bus re-routing and partial closure of the parking lot, requiring coordination with King County Metro and the City of Tukwila. Due to the continued degradation, requiring premature overlays, asphalt in the area of the bus loop is not expected to last its full useful life. Full replacement is needed to avoid continual failure. Future Sound Transit bus loops are now designed with concrete as opposed to asphalt in order to mitigate the problems seen at Tukwila.
“The construction project is expected to begin in early July and be completed by November. Buses will
be rerouted to the parking lot across the street during construction. There will be no interruption to Link
light rail.
“Fiscal information
The baseline budget for the Station Midlife Refurbishment Program project is $3,343,541. The proposed
action would add $100,000 to the Construction Services phase, $50,000 to the Contingency phase, and $80,000 in the Agency Administration phase resulting in a total increase in the project to $3,573,541.”
I’m overjoyed at the prospect of 3-4 months of having faster bus routes along Southcenter Blvd. There are ways to mitigate without forcing all the riders to spend 5 minutes in the TIBS loop-de-loop, when we can walk to the escalator in one minute.
How about a motor-cart similar to what is used at Airport Station, except going between the bus stops and the elevator? It should be able to cross the street just fine to pick up and drop off on the north side of Southcenter Blvd. The savings in travel time and increased ridership from not sending the buses through the TIBS loop-de-loop should easily cover the cost of the cart and driver.
Other ideas? Let’s find a way to keep the F Line faster while improving accessibility.
The Amazon tower in Bellevue is noteworthy.
1. The site is adjacent to the BTC and across the street from the light rail station in Downtown Bellevue. That puts it at perhaps the best transit corner in the Eastside — 2 directions with East Link, 2 directions with 405 BRT, RapidRide B, and 2 more directions with Kirkland-Issaquah Link in the far future. This is the best place for the tallest Bellevue building! Us transit advocates should rejoice!
2. Pedestrian crossing of 110th is an inevitably big issue, making the Rainier Ave crossing at Mt Baker look trivial by comparison (light rail and transit center own opposite sides of a busy and wide street). This is the best and probably the only opportunity to get a developer to connect a badly-needed pedestrian passageway under 110th. Will Bellevue staff pursue something for pedestrians to get to Link or are we just destined to have a bigger “Mt Baker east” problem that everyone gripes about in 2028?
What has happened to humans? A long time ago we all used to be monkeys living in trees in Africa. Then we decided to climb down from the trees, change into humans, and migrate thousands of miles to other continents. Now we can’t cross one street without a special passageway?
Sam. Paleoanthropologist.
I don’t think pedestrian crossing of 110th is an issue. It’s actually not a major street (like 8th St for example) with most traffic going to the buildings there, buses to the transit center, or to the ETLs. And there’s already a lot of pedestrian traffic there – Microsoft has offices on both sides with decent traffic between them plus there’s the Meydenbauer center.
My guess is that Bellevue will do what they’ve done on the other side of the transit center – have a series of lights for cars, and then an all-crossing pedestrian signal allowing both diagonal and straight crosses. I think the 108th Ave side works pretty well so I don’t foresee many issues.
Agree with David, a scramble intersection will work fine, just like what is currently at the other end of the TC
Hopefully the Amazon projects will cause Bellevue and the Eastside to absorb the residential growth that we’ve experienced in Seattle proper, and they will smartly be more aggressive in up-zoning the surrounding towns to accommodate it:).
Hopefully the Eastside will upzone as much as Arlington and Alexandria Virginia did. We just need to reach a critical mass of density where the benefits of walkability and convenient housing choices accelerate, then the public mood will turn, as happened in DC and Vancouver. Tukwila and Renton and Lynnwood can join in too. Unfortunately I’m pessimistic about Bellevue, Redmond, and Seattle, and really pessimistic about Kirkland.
The building will only house 4,200 workers. Total Bellevue employment by Amazon is pegged at 6,500 over the next few years. Development in the Spring District can absorb that. The Wilburton area is planned to provided 21,500 housing units by 2035. There’s no reason for Bellevue to spread out development to areas farther from the commercial center. That’s the opposite of smart growth.
Amazon will be able to help its employees find places to live in Bellevue. In Seattle, employers are pretty much banned from doing so, thanks to a law “my” city councilmember pushed through. So, now she can concern troll Amazon for gentrifying existing housing stock all over the City with its army of well-to-do employees (while, of course, she has been the most resistent councilmember to allowing new housing to be built, especially in South Lake Union). That’s one more reason I am going to write in “Joe Nguyen” for D1.
You mean non-Amazonians won’t be able to find an apartment in Bellevue because the landlords will prefer Amazonians? How does that help Bellevue’s overall housing situation? That’s what was happening in Seattle when several inner-city landlords were taking only Amazon and Microsoft and a couple others, and that meant people who don’t work for those large companies had even less ability to find a place in a walkable neighborhood near all-direction frequent transit — even if they did an equivalent job at a smaller company or other institution, and even if they had the same salary and job security and company permanence.
If Amazon wants to build and operate housing designed to serve its employees first, I see no problem with that, other than it is now illegal in Seattle. The solution to Amazonians competing in the housing market is to allow more housing, of whatever type. Before Herbold got this law passed, she fought hard to kill hundreds of new housing units in South Lake Union, and won.
The local news ran a story on Amazon building in Bellevue yesterday. Their “stats” claimed Amazon would be building out 4 million sq ft and that was enough to emply 25,000 workers. Simple math says that’s 160 sq ft per worker which doesn’t sound plausible when you figure the amount of space required for hall ways, meeting rooms, kitchens, etc. The also didn’t say if that included sq ft of parking garage. In the spring district one of the new buildings advertises three spaces per 1,000 sq ft of office space. If you take just half of the 4 million as office space that would still equate to 6,000 spaces. Can you expect only one space per 4 employees, 2 employees? What’s typical in DT Seattle?
That intersection would be a great place for a nice pedestrian scramble (just like its twin to the west). There’s not a lot of through-traffic on 110th anyway, so one could go a step further and close the section between 6th and the Microsoft garage, extending the plaza to make bus transfers even easier. Or at least give it the Pine Street treatment and make it softer.
Non pay wall link to Metro’s big electric bus buy:
Seattle is getting a massive fleet of all-electric buses, Proterra gets the bulk of the order
Also this:
Metro tests new battery-powered buses that can go 140 miles on a charge
With the emphasis on long range instead of quick charging, I assume most if not all of the charging will be done at the South Base in Tukwila. Does anyone know if that’s supplied by Seattle City Light or is it PSE. I believe the rate from City Light would be substantially less.
I still think fast charging at distributed locations makes more sense than buying and hauling around more Lithium ion batteries.
More importantly, the majority of PSE power comes from fossil fuels (59%), unlike Seattle City Light and Tacoma Power, which are both over 90% renewable. Metro’s EIS needs to consider power sources and the expected rate at which PSE’s grid is likely to incorporate renewables if they want to consider a base in PSE territory.
Two thoughts:
1) Thanks for using my photo with credit of the recently retired MV Hyak
2) This is really great news that Google Maps is able to attempt to track bus tracking. Let’s see in 5-6 months how accurate this truly is…
It is nice to see Seattle population growth outstripping the population growth in the rest of the state. With the census just around the corner this should translate into an increase in political power for Seattle, and hopefully a refocusing of state politics back to Seattle issues. Even a little bit more political power for Seattle would help.
Because the census counts residents and draws legislative boundaries based on the number of residents, having a lot of residents doesn’t necessarily increase political power. And, Seattle’s growth since 2010 has actually resulted in a decrease in the political power of Seattle residents. The most populous legislative district in WA is the 36th, located in Seattle, with over 112,000 registered voters. The district with the fewest registered voter is the 15th, located in Yakima County, with just over 60,000 registered voters. In 2010 there were an equal number of residents in each county, but today each voter in Yakima county has roughly twice the legislative political power of a resident in the 36th.
As long as Seattle’s housing prices are unaffordable for families and Seattle fills with DINKs and single people, the suburbs and smaller towns will have a greater political power than Seattle. Children don’t vote but they do count in the census.
In 2010 Seattle had 9.05% of Washington residents, good for about 4.43 state legislative districts. These new estimates put Seattle’s population at 9.9% of the state. If that holds through to the Census next year, Seattle would have 4.85 state legislative districts. Not a huge increase in political power at the state level, but it’s not nothing either.
@Eric,
Exactly. But what is equally important as who is gaining power is who is losing power. Basically, while Seattle is gaining power E Wa will be losing power. The combined effect will not be insignificant.
And the other areas that gain power in the state will predominately be those areas surrounding Seattle in the greater Seattle metropolitan area. These areas are more likely to align with Seattle than the more rural and conservative regions of the state. This should also make things easier for Seattle.
Naw. Trump-ed up gerrymandering of Tacoma and Bellevue with Spokane and Tri-Cities will more than suffice to maintain the balance of power.
Less. a bi-partisan commission decides district boundaries. It is VERY difficult to Gerrymander with that system.
The irony is that increasing the City’s population will tend to work against the City’s goal of lowering the City’s carbon emissions. (The goal is actually neutrality, but we haven’t even begun to move in the right direction). It may help lower the planet’s carbon emissions (the more important goal), *if* we provide a carbon-neutral transportation system that includes the BMP pre-Durkan, all-electric buses that don’t get stuck in traffic, and getting ST to source its cement from a vendor that uses CO2-infused cement, as well as banning fossil-fuel-burning appliances in new housing, etc.
Part of the local, national and worldwide climate action plan needs to be raising the status of women to be more in control of their own lives (which tends to have a fairly direct impact on population growth, for multiple reasons). Maybe the next Democratic presidential administration will take the opportunity to push for extending the deadline to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, so that a 38th state can step forward and ratify it. My money says the 38th state will be Florida, but Congress has to extend the ratification timeline.
But I digress. I assume the City is smart enough to calculate the climate impacts of population absorption in its carbon-emissions reports.
I had another first riding the bus today. Upon missing the 542->255 connection at Yarrow Point, I ordered an Uber (the pool option), and ended up sharing the ride with another passenger coming off the same bus, attempting to make the same connection.
Now that Lyft and Uber have become known to almost everybody, I’m curious whether a similar situation has occurred to anyone else – multiple people on the same bus missing the same connection and sharing a ride in the same Lyft/Uber car.
Back when the only transit connection to Boeing Everett from Seattle was riding the ST 512 to Ash Way P&R and then catching the one peak Metro 952 that stopped there (all other runs bypass that stop), another 512 rider and I split an Uber from Ash Way after narrowly missing the 952.
Luckily there are now more options.
On another note, the per-minute price to ride a Lime bike has now gone up again to $0.30/min., exactly double what it was just 6 weeks ago. Assuming 6-8 minutes per mile (which is about as good as you expect for a route with stoplights), this translates into a marginal cost of $1.50-$2.10 for each additional mile traveled – a figure that is now *higher* than the marginal cost per mile riding in a Lyft or Uber car with a paid driver.
(I don’t know if Jump has matched this price increase or not, as neither their website nor their app discloses their prices).
At the moment, Lime bikes are still able to compete with Lyft Uber on price for trips that are extremely short (since Lyft and Uber charge a minimum fare of about $5/trip), but the new rates seem to suggest that Lime has completely lost interest in attracting business from anybody riding more than about 2 miles or so at a time (except for tourists who specifically want the bike experience and don’t care how much they spend to get it).
When the Seattle city council voted to allow Lime bikes on the city streets, you could rent pedal bikes for $1/30 minutes, and travel as much as 4+ miles in those 30 minutes under favorable conditions (e.g. along the Burke-Gilman trail). I don’t think anybody expected that within 2 years, a trip by rental bike would cost as much as doing the same trip in what is effectively a taxi. As a certain point, one has to question whether, at these prices, the service is still providing enough of a public benefit to justify the hassles involved with improperly parked bikes.
Should future renewal contracts come with language limiting how much these companies can charge? Or, do these price increases means that Lime is running out of venture capital money and is about to go under? Will Seattle find itself back to having no bikeshare within a few months?
Clearly, the original price scam was to gain market share. Hopefully, as companies try to actually monetize this it will eliminate the bike litter that has been a major problem. Realistically, these bikes are good for a 2-3 mile trip in a dense area; which is where they should stay. The one way lift up a hill with e-bikes is about as heathy as e-cigs.
Weird, it’s almost like Uber’s complete business model is unsustainable. I guess they did lose $2+ billion last year.
Things have to change now that the company has gone private and the venture capitalists have cashed in. Uber’s reported PE is 2400:1 vs the NASDAQ average of 20:1. If there’s no change in earnings (and fast); expect the stock price to drop from the current ~$44/share to less than $1, literally a penny stock. LYFT is skating on even thinner ice with a large negative EPS. “In the end there can be only one – Highlander.
What is the deal with the fare enforcement officers boarding a completely empty 40 at Jackson St. twice this week, without off-board payment and without all door boarding (since it’s not on 3rd yet) and asking the riders to show their Orca cards that the fare enforcement officers (as one admitted to me today) had just seen us use? If there’s a worse use of Metro resources, I’d be interested in what it is.
If there’s a worse use of Metro resources, I’d be interested in what it is.
1. Having buses get stuck in general traffic, including sometimes on 3rd Ave, because the City can’t afford a little red paint, or thinks storing a couple dozen cars in that lane is the highest and best use of it off-peak or in the counter-peak direction.
2. All the cash fumbling we still have, by people who can easily get an ORCA card, because ORCA payment isn’t incentivized, or because of the highest-in-the-nation fee for getting a bus smart card. That $5 fee remains pound-foolish. This one can be pinned on Council Chair Rod Dembowski, who misunderstood the economics of fare collection, and blew off Metro’s proposal to lower that fee.
3. Both the fare revenue and improved boarding efficiency that is being passed up by having the cash fare $2.75 instead of $3. We have a low-income fare for reasons.
4. Running routes 60 and 107, pre-bunched by the schedule on 15th Ave S, with poor timing with Link and poor training of operators who don’t wait for the riders they should see coming out of the elevator, all evening and most of the day on weekends, resulting in customers waiting an average of 20 minutes for a bus at Beacon Hill Station for that corridor instead of the average 8 minutes it could be with at least spacing the buses better and randomizing the timing with Link. The City is subsidizing 60 service, but not actually improving the service provided without getting Metro’s scheduling department to pay attention.
5. Running express buses to Kent Station, during peak. Seriously, is Sounder anywhere close to crushloaded? The Kent Station express buses I’ve seen are nowhere close to SRO. Roll the hours into improving frequency and span on local Kent-Covington service. If those routes exist because there is somebody on them who can’t afford the low-income Sounder fare, give her/him a free monthly pass.
6. Running the F Line and 128 through the TIBS loop-de-loop. Eastbound, it ends up increasing the time to get to the escalator. There is usually staff there who could assist those who have a hard time with that short walk.
7. My obligatory mention of route 106 going all the way downtown, instead of being more frequent south of Mt Baker Station. The public outreach process to try to correct this would be expensive.
8. Running Link connector buses every 15 minutes off-peak. Graduate the highest-performing third of these routes (including RapidRides A and F) to 10-minute headway, and recalibrate the lower-performing 2/3 to 20-minute timed headway, which would reduce average wait time from 7.5 minutes to 5 minutes for the transferring customers on the routes losing service hours. For the streetcars, I’d actually invert the schedules to be 10-minute headway off peak (if the maintenance schedule allows it) and 12-minute headway during peak, so that a streetcar is waiting at Capitol Hill Station for every Link train most of the time, and every other train during peak. Then, add streetcar shadow buses to alternate with the streetcars during peak.
Metro has to ramp up its FEO force at some point, ahead of 3rd Ave finally getting all off-door payment, so I don’t see this over-policing as necessarily being a waste of money. Which brings me to…
9. Metro and Sound Transit having separate fare enforcement units.
10. Metro continuing to honor those threadbare historically-zoned paper transfers, leading to riders getting warned or fined on Link for trying to use them. How much more mitigation is needed before they can go away? Why hasn’t such mitigation been implemented?