Alert commenter Tlsgwm noted that Sound Transit has once again started publishing quarterly ridership reports, which had been MIA since last November. In July, the agency released the 2019 Q4 and 2020 Q1 reports simultaneously.
Sounder ridership was mostly flat (North Sounder was down by nearly 6% but overall Sounder dropped by 0.3%, a testament to how much South Sounder drives the numbers).
With the Downtown Transit Tunnel closing to buses last year, ST Express Bus ridership suffered, with Route 550 leading the decline. Operating costs per rider increased as well.
2019 ended with Link boardings overall 2.5% higher than 2018. Diving into the station-by-station numbers, though, shows the impact of the tunnel closure as well: UW and Westlake were up 12% versus the year-ago quarter and Chinatown / ID was up 20%, suggesting both more North end riders transferring from buses and more people exiting the system at the beginning and end of the tunnel.
2020 Q1 brought the two-fer of Connect 2020 and COVID-19, which hammered ridership across the agency, resulting in double-digit declines for ST Express, Link, and Sounder. Q1 ended in March, which means it was barely a few weeks of lockdown. 2020 Q2 numbers will not be pretty.
There is no Link station data for Q1 2020. Nor is there an explanation why. Maybe station data is gathered manually, and they suspended those counters. It seems to me that they should have ORCA card data, especially for boardings. I think it be worthwhile to get data for trip pairs (which again can be gathered by ORCA reading) even if it is a bit skewed by people forgetting to tap off.
UW and Westlake were up 12% versus the year-ago quarter and Chinatown / ID was up 20%, suggesting both more North end riders transferring from buses and more people exiting the system at the beginning and end of the tunnel.
Yeah, in Q4 of last year, there was solid growth across the board, but especially in the north end. Of all the stations, ID had the biggest jump, while SoDo had the biggest drop. This suggests a lot of people who normally would get off at SoDo just getting off at I. D.
I think it is interesting that prior to the pandemic, the three most popular stations were Westlake, Capitol Hill and the UW. The other downtown stations were also very popular. As expected, it is clear that we built the system out of order. The most cost effective section (by far) is from the south end of downtown (I. D.) to the UW, and this is with only one station close to the UW (there should be three) and no station in First Hill.
“…built the system out of order.”
Imagine if ST had attempted the north section first. The relatively short tunnel under Beacon Hill was an engineering nightmare; imagine if ST had attempted to build the much more complicated tunnel to the University District without the lessons learned on the south line. There also would have been a First Hill Station if ST had built north first. And if ST had built north first, all the system critics would be pointing to the inevitable cost overruns and screaming that there wasn’t a light rail connection to the airport.
I think we should all be thankful that ST built south first.
Politically there was no other option. I fear that if they had attempted to build north first we would be left with nothing.
South first was the right decision for a variety of reasons, Even though all the experts understood that the economics of the north segment were better.
If ST had built north first, all the system critics would be pointing to the inevitable cost overruns and screaming that there wasn’t a light rail connection to the airport.
There wasn’t a connection to the airport with the first line either. Folks had to take a shuttle bus.
The main thing is that you could have had huge ridership right off the bat, which would have quieted most critics, especially if you did it right (with a First Hill station and three UW stations). Just look at how excited everyone got when they just did the two stations. Even with a poorly placed UW station, folks were thrilled. Link used that line to pass ST3.
Politically there was no other option. I fear that if they had attempted to build north first we would be left with nothing.
That argument is circular. The politicians decided where to go. Some wanted to go north, some wanted to go south. But there was no widespread public interest either way. It is just that the politicians that wanted to go south won out.
I really don’t see how going north would have failed. The initial line is pretty much as bad as possible. It doesn’t have a First Hill station, and the UW station is in a terrible location. You could argue that by waiting we were able to do it right, but that obviously isn’t the case.
There might have been cost overruns, but the initial line had plenty of cost overruns. They might have had trouble digging the tunnel, but as Guy pointed out, the Beacon Hill tunnel had problems. Once you start a big project like that, it is going to get finished. Even the Big Dig (the poster child for cost overruns) got finished. The SR 99 tunnel — that had a lot more widespread opposition than Link ever had — still got finished, despite cost overruns.
It would have been built and would have been popular (just as it is now) and ridership levels would have been higher much sooner.
There are two other factors about the initial segment timing:
1. Subarea equity. I think South King was on the hook for the initial segment too.
2. Low-income issues. ST would have been accused of deprioritizing construction to what were poorer neighborhoods. Of course, building Link made those neighborhoods more desirable and thus more expensive — but the politics at the time that timing decisions were made would have made a huge issue about this.
“It is just that the politicians that wanted to go south won out.”
You’re forgetting the construction risk of the Ship Canal. Link was going to go from U-District to SeaTac. The engineering studies showed considerable risk of cost overruns with the then-preferred Portage Bay alignment. There was no light rail running yet for people to experience, so there was greater public skepticism about it: many people said it was unnecessary or cost too much, and a cost overrun would be unacceptable. We lost the opportunity for rapid transit in the 1970s and we could lose it again, and might not have another change for thirty more years until another generation comes to power. And there were still those who preferred south/suburbs/low-income/airport first. The Rainier Valley segment made Link more competitive for federal grants. All that was the reason the southern segment became the first phase.
You’re forgetting the construction risk of the Ship Canal.
I’m not forgetting anything. It is all well documented on Wikipedia. There were big cost overruns several times. There were cost overruns for going south, and there might have been overruns going north. Again, the Big Dig got finished. The SR 99 tunnel got finished. My point is, there is no way they were going to stop without at least getting to Husky Stadium — the exact point they are now. Once they got there, they would have had the big ridership gains, and folks would have forgotten all the ridiculously bad estimates, and pushed for an expansion (with more conservative estimates). Oh, and then when they met those more conservative estimates, ST would pat themselves on the back, and say those were the estimates from the get go. All of that happened anyway, it is just that it took a ridiculous time to get to Husky Stadium, and we still aren’t at the U-District (the obvious terminus of an initial system).
If the line from the U-District to downtown was great, then you would have a decent argument. In a parallel universe someone is saying “Yeah Ross, but our experience with the southern line set the stage for all the improvements that followed. We learned our lesson with Mount Baker, and so instead of putting a station next to Husky Stadium (which would of been awful) we put the station in the triangle. People were now committed to a real subway, with real urban stop spacing, so we added a station at Campus Parkway. Sure, it came later, but it still came. Oh, and some even said that the First Hill station was at risk. Imagine that — no First Hill station — a station that gets over 10,000 people a day, and that is before we get to Northgate!”
Except we don’t live in that world. We live in a world where the line to the UW is about as bad as possible. Just to be clear, it is still really good. You can only screw up that line so much. But the delay only hurt ridership, and decisions are being made while ignoring lessons from other parts of the world, as well as our own.
Right or wrong from an urbanist perspective, building toward the airport was what the majority of the ST taxing area wanted. The politicians did what their constituents wanted. ST plans are driven entirely by what will sell at the ballot box. It leads to some questionable design choices but it is what it is.
@RossB, I think that U-Link should’ve served the Central District rather than dogleging south to First Hill. I agree that there should’ve been 3 stops in the U-District, but I wouldn’t have put a station box under the Montlake Triangle, rather enclosed passageways through it.
“We learned our lesson with Mount Baker, and so instead of putting a station next to Husky Stadium (which would of been awful) we put the station in the triangle.”
How would ST do that? Convince the UW regents to allow it? They tried and failed. Convince the legislators to pass a law overriding UW’s wishes? That’s way beyond the scope of ST’s responsibility; it would be more something for the Seattle mayor and city council and county council
building toward the airport was what the majority of the ST taxing area wanted
That is quite a bold claim. Any evidence to support it?
How would ST do that? Convince the UW regents to allow it? They tried and failed. Convince the legislators to pass a law overriding UW’s wishes? That’s way beyond the scope of ST’s responsibility; it would be more something for the Seattle mayor and city council and county council.
After talking with the regents, they should have appealed to the governor first. Then they should have taken the issue to the press. Eventually you organize protests until the UW (a public agency) agrees. The biggest reason that it never happened is because people were completely unaware of the issue. It would have been an embarrassment for the university to oppose something that has clear public benefit. Unlike tunneling under the campus (where there were issues with physics experiments) I don’t think the UW felt strongly about the location. It was probably just a matter of working out the specific security arrangements. But ST being cheap, and spineless, resulted in a station in the worst possible location (north, southeast or in the triangle would have been better than the current location).
The main point I’m making is that building later didn’t make it better. There was nothing in the U-Link design that suggests that they learned any lesson from the other line, or that newfound public confidence allowed them to make slightly more expensive, but far more valuable changes. At worse, the system would be the same if they started by heading north. At best, we would have improvements like a station at First Hill (even if — like the Link section we did build, it was over-budget and late).
I wouldn’t have put a station box under the Montlake Triangle, rather enclosed passageways through it.
There are already some enclosed passageways — there would be more. The point is, if you put the station under the parking garage, then accessing the hospital becomes easy. It is shorter, and there already is a passageway under the street. To access the campus, there would be a new, relatively short underground passageway up to the Rainier Vista parkway. That means getting to the two main destinations (the hospital and the main campus) would be much easier. No more waiting for a pair of traffic lights to get to the hospital. No more extra walking to cross over Montlake Boulevard. To get to Husky Stadium, at worst you just cross the street. The few times there are significant numbers of pedestrians crossing the street, their are police waving pedestrians across (i. e. no waiting). The vast majority of riders would save a significant amount of time, and it probably wouldn’t have cost any more.
Evidence would be the Board’s votes, which were made by politicians who are directly elected by the people. Aside from direct polling, this is the best evidence we’re going to have in a representative democracy.
Evidence would be the Board’s votes, which were made by politicians who are directly elected by the people. Aside from direct polling, this is the best evidence we’re going to have in a representative democracy.
So basically you have no evidence, and your previous statement has no merit. You are simply engaging in circular logic. The board were elected by the people, and therefore, they did what the people wanted. That is an absurd statement. Representative routinely do things that a majority of the public don’t like. That is the point! Otherwise, we wouldn’t have a republic, but put things up for a vote every time (Eyman would be thrilled).
You also assume that the board was elected based upon their opinions of transit. This too, is ridiculous. The board was (and is) made up of politicians who have other jobs. We don’t elect a transit board. We elect mayors, county executives, and city council members. The appointments are somewhat arbitrary –no attempt is made to accurately represent the public. None of them run on their transit bonafides — which makes sense, because none of them have any. Only one member of the board has any expertise in transportation, and that person isn’t elected (the head of WSDOT is appointed by the governor). None of the officials have any expertise in transit.
You are also ignoring the fact that the board was torn. Many members of the board wanted to go north, for the very reason I mentioned (it was the most cost effective project). The decision to go south was a politically driven decision that had nothing to do with public support, or lack thereof. Quite the contrary. There was plenty of opposition from folks in Rainier Valley. It had nothing to do with more people from the south wanting this. It had everything to do with a long range strategy that was flawed, and self serving. The belief was that if Sound Transit built something — even something that wouldn’t be that useful — they could convince the public into building something bigger later. Does that sound like an approach the public wanted? Of course not.
Like skipping First Hill (much later) it was a gutless decision. I don’t support the SR 99 tunnel, but the folks in charge had courage. They knew there was a good chance of tunneling problems. It was quite likely there would be overruns and a large political cost because of it. But they figured that once started, it would eventually be finished — as all projects of this nature are. But the politicians who decided to go south with Link wanted to play it safe. They knew that additional cost overruns (above and beyond the new estimates which were much higher than previous ones) were unlikely. They could proclaim victory with a relatively small improvement, and leave the tough work for someone else. That approach would have been great if it meant that they showed newfound courage for the line to the UW. But it didn’t. The success to the south only lead to building to the north — something that should have been done first.
You are engaging in Polyanna BS if you really think that it all worked out for the better. If we had committed to a line to the U-District (with three stations in the UW and one at First Hill) we would have that by now. Or at the very least, a line to Husky Stadium that includes First Hill. Like the SR 99 project, it might have been delayed for years. Various board members might have taken heat; officials would have been fired. But it would have been built. Once built, ridership would have been high (as it is now). At that point, building south (and north) would have been the obvious next step. ST levies held during a general election would have passed easily. The history of ST really wouldn’t have been that different. Multiple disgraced officials would have been fired for overly optimistic cost estimates, followed by new members with more conservative estimates being lauded. The big difference is that we would have had a better system, and would have higher ridership much sooner.
This article in HistoryLink.org does a good job explaining the thought processes at the time.
Remember, back then the public really had no idea what infrastructure costs were. The first Sound Transit vote put a price tag on the cost of a rail transit system.
Road projects just magically happened, mainly because of Scoop and Maggie, and also because the bridges to nowhere weren’t connected yet.
(What that translates to is, that Washington State was a receiver of Federal dollars. Once the last of the original ‘Interstate’ projects was finished, we became a donor state. The rest was on our own nickel.)
Traffic hadn’t deteriorated to the painful point, at the time.
The I-405 Corridor Program was the first to put a price tag on a major highway mega-project.
It generally takes more years to build a long subway than to build a surface or aerial segment. Building it “backwards” would likely have meant U-Link would have opened earlier — but not six years earlier.
It’s why West Seattle is supposed to open in 2030 while Ballard is listed to open in 2035, even though the same planning and environmental process covers them both.
It generally takes more years to build a long subway than to build a surface or aerial segment.
Yep, no argument there. The line to the UW is about 3 miles, and the extension to the U-District is another mile. I wouldn’t call a 4 mile subway long.
Building it “backwards” would likely have meant U-Link would have opened earlier — but not six years earlier.
Hard to say when it would have been done. Both the line to Tukwila and the U-Link took 7 years. I think it is safe to say a line one mile longer would add some time — maybe a year. Or they could cut back (if it encountered problems) and just run it like they do now (with the terminus at Husky Stadium). I think it is quite likely though, that the extension to the U-District (along with everything to the south) would have been done in 8 years, or by 2010. That would be roughly ten years before the U-District will have a station.
It’s why West Seattle is supposed to open in 2030 while Ballard is listed to open in 2035, even though the same planning and environmental process covers them both.
That’s not why West Seattle is being built first. It is all political and financial. Ballard costs more and they have to wait for the money to come in before spending it. Politically, it is just one of the many decisions that the board made, just like they decided to go south first (even though some members of the board wanted to go north).
Northgate Link with a tunnel is estimated at 9 years of construction. Lynnwood Link above ground is estimated at 5.
New Downtown light rail tunnels in San Francisco and Los Angeles are projected to take about 11-12 years.
@AL.S that’s because SF and LA are having problems with parasitic contractors, not because it actually takes that long.
Not circular evidence, just weak evidence in the absence of an alternative. The Board’s primary job is to gauge public opinion and set the Overton window for ST staff.
Good counterexample with the 99 tunnel. I’m not sure Sound Transit was strong enough that we would have gotten the tunnel to UW built no matter the setbacks … a mistake like a stranded Bretha could have been fatal to ST, a far weaker institution than WSDOT was at the time. Maybe successful 80% of the time, but not 100%.
I’m rusty on my history – was the decision to skip First Hill taken before or after the ST2 vote? At this point (post-ST3 tax levy) Sound Transit could survive a major project or two going completely sideways, but certainly wasn’t true prior to 2008.
For every “they weren’t bold enough” project, there are plenty of “they went bold and it blew up in their faces.” Cal HSR is probably the best current example of intentional to-big-to-fail project planning getting in the way of an ‘incremental’ (still multi-billion investment) approach that would have sustained support and been more successful in the long run.
Alon Levy’s recent post on incrementalism was a good one, and he’s right that many transit projects require a critical mass before they are useful. But I’d argue Link’s success has far more to do with a 1980s bus tunnel vote and a 2010s Amazon prosperity bomb than any good or bad decision made by the ST board.
But we’ll never know, and the missing stations in First Hill and UW will be a bummer for a long time.
Link ridership’s down 80% and it’s been that way for four months.
Past is past though. What’s the agency’s demand forecasting model show going forward? Remote working will be a big part of governments’ and businesses’ employment models going forward, right?
My guess is that the models will be for after the pandemic, when things will get back to normal. People will work in big office buildings, eat indoors in restaurants, drink in bars, go to ball games and plays, watch movies in a movie theater and do all the things they don’t do now. That includes riding transit at much higher numbers.
I’m not so sure the picture’s as rosy as you paint it, Ross.
Sound Transit’s Link demand forecasts presupposed massive numbers of new jobs in the region, with hundreds of thousands of additional employees commuting five days a week to office towers in a dozen “growth centers” where its stations are (or would be) located.
We’ll see less train transit demand than what ST3 forecast, and that will persist post-pandemic.
Amazon and other tech employees prefer remote working most of the time. They are productive, which is most of what the senior leadership cares about. All the Seattle CBD and SLU Class A office space has been operating at 10% capacity. It can’t be retrofitted at a reasonable cost to allow social distancing. Offices away from growth centers will be preferred by those workers who do need to come in some days (safety aside, they’ve got vehicles and time is money to them). CRE experts are planning more corporate hub-and-spoke strategies. This is especially true for companies in public-transit-dependent dense urban locations, including Seattle (leasing activity in Silicon Valley is outpacing San Francisco post-COVID).
“They are productive, which is most of what the senior leadership cares about.” Data suggests otherwise. We might be building a system for only 3 weekdays of peak ridership, rather than 5, but people will return to the office post-pandemic. They always do. The long term need for the system is unchanged.
The ability to work productively for a few months is mostly unrelated to the ability to work remotely permanently. Bezos will definitely have his teams back in person because he knows it will give Amazon an advantage over competitors that think “this time is different.”
As for the technical question about the models, they will basically have to ignore the pandemic. The stochastic models are meaningless with a paradigm shift, so we’ll be left with what is effectively human judgement until we actually have post-pandemic data, even if it is gussied up into a ‘model.’
I don’t things will return to complete “normal” because some structural lifestyle changes about going to work and school have been accelerated by the pandemic.
Just like face masks for all vaulted as a strategy, the upcoming personal barrier clothing design (think fashion hazmat suits) combined with a vaccine will in my mind probably return things to about 70-90 percent of 2019.
That will be discouraging but not fatal. Maybe longer platforms won’t be needed on Sounder and maybe the DSTT can handle demand without the second tunnel for a few more decades. Maybe Seattle Link riders can board a morning train because it won’t be as jammed as it once was projected to be.
I’m not going to defend Sound Transit’s ridiculous ridership estimates (34,000 riders for the Federal Way section is crazy) but you can’t blame a post-pandemic change in lifestyle for that.
Amazon and other tech employees prefer remote working most of the time. They are productive, which is most of what the senior leadership cares about. All the Seattle CBD and SLU Class A office space has been operating at 10% capacity.
Yes, because the pandemic is worse than ever. You might also notice that there are very few people in the bars. Does this mean that after the pandemic, people will never go to bars? They have experienced the joys of growlers, and will just prefer drinking from home.
Oh, and no is attending the Mariners games. Does that mean no one will ever be taken out to the ballgame? I get it — my couch is far more comfortable, and the food is better. So we might as well tear down the stadiums.
Don’t be silly. All of the companies that have people working remotely could have done so before. The technology is not new. Many of the companies were quite capable of developing it, and some of them even own companies that are leaders in the field (Microsoft bought Skype). Yet before the pandemic, they were still building office space, and expecting people to use it. Nothing has changed. Once the pandemic is over, they will go back to the way things were.
Keep in mind, they had similar thoughts after 9-11. People were going to avoid the big skyscrapers, especially in Manhattan. It didn’t happen then, and there is no reason to believe it will happen after this.
Even now there are plenty of bosses trying to convince people to work downtown again. They are still building skyscrapers. That is because everyone assumes that folks will go back to the office when this is done. That is a safe assumption.
I agree, RossB. The old habits are still there, too: getting on the 62 after going to the grocery store, I saw someone move their bag from the blocked-out seat next to them to their lap, despite the seat having a sign on it and there being plenty of other seats. Once people feel safe going out, they will go out, and they will be OK with crowded venues and transit. It’ll be weird at first but getting used to this year was weird at first too.
I also agree that, when this is over, people will go back to transit, provided that the transit is there for them when the time comes.
The biggest long term risk to transit is lack of funding, not people afraid to ride.
“ (34,000 riders for the Federal Way section is crazy)”.
That does seem kind of unrealistic — but it is important to realize that this is about 17,000 – 18,000 boardings for three stations or about 6,000 a station. The truncated ST Express routes are part of this. It’s not a direct halving because trips between the three new stations shouldn’t be counted twice.
I would speculate that 20,000 to 25,000 riders (10,000 to 13,000 boardings) is more likely.
Not sure people will be afraid to ride as much as I figure they won’t have as many reasons to ride.
More WFH, less in-person shopping, fewer large events, and a general move to suburban and rural areas are all very plausible outcomes of this. None of those are positive for transit use.
More WFH, less in-person shopping, fewer large events, and a general move to suburban and rural areas are all very plausible outcomes of this.
Let me break those down one by one:
More WFH — I don’t see it. Working from home was available before the pandemic. Nothing changed — we are just enduring working from home, just like we are enduring empty baseball stadiums. It isn’t what people want, and that is obvious when you look at office construction.
Less in-person shopping — Maybe. This was a trend that had started before the pandemic, and accelerated during it. Grocery shopping especially has gone to the delivery or pickup model. But I think there are a lot of people that don’t like it, and are waiting for the day that they feel safe to go the grocery store again. Likewise, there are tons of people who enjoy shopping for clothes or other stuff in person. For many, it is part of a larger social experience that can’t be replicated on line. You get together with friends, shop for clothes and grab something to eat. Overall, I think most of the people who avoid going out to buy things have been avoiding it for quite some time (which is many malls died a long time ago) while grocery shopping represents a tiny part of transit use.
Fewer Large Events — I think it will be the opposite. That is like saying there will be fewer trips taken overseas, or fewer trips to the pub. There is a pent up desire to get out, for events large and small. Again, people predicted the same thing after 9/11, yet within a very short time, people still attended huge events (Super Bowl, World Series, Cher concerts). For most, their world wasn’t disrupted (there was no pent up desire, like there is now).
A general move to suburban and rural areas — The long term trend is towards the opposite. Even now, in the middle of a pandemic, rents are high in the city, while a bargain in the suburbs. That will only accelerate after the pandemic, as those who have *temporarily* sought refuge in the country return to the city.
A big downturn of the local economy is way more likely to hurt than anything. But it appears that tech is going to continue to be very strong. I’m not bullish on Everett though — Boeing is going to take a very big hit, and they may emerge with a lot fewer local jobs. But Seattle and the East Side (as well as inner suburbs) will likely continue to do really well. That bodes well for urban transit, which is always the biggest part of transit. Again, I don’t expect a lot of riders from Federal Way or Lynnwood (I never did) but from Northgate to Rainier Valley or downtown to Redmond, there will be a bunch. Anything from Lynnwood or Federal Way will just be a bonus (like riders from Tukwila).
There’s been a fundamental change. People were forced to get over the learning curve and many skeptics now know that it can happen on a large scale. Lots of global companies have announced permanent work from home options. Of course it won’t be at the same level as during the pandemic but the change is permanent and profound.
There’s other habits that will also show long term changes. Again, the learning curve, many more people have discovered the advantages of shopping online. The convenience combined with many brick and mortar stores going out of business means less trips. I heard today Simon Group is in talks with Amazon about converting some of the large “anchor” mall tenant stores into warehouses (JC Penny was mentioned specifically).
Hi Ross,
A couple of articles that disagree with your assertion that everyone will want to go back to the way things were (working from home-wise):
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53580656
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/business/pandemic-work-from-home-coronavirus.html (paywall)
And I will add some anecdotal examples in the form of three of my friends and my own significant other :) All of whom are introverted to some degree or another. One of my friends put it best – I’m paraphrasing, but essentially he pointed out that for the first time in a very long time, introverts are in their own happy environment, while extroverts get to see what being on the wrong side feels like.
Does that mean that knowledge workers will no longer have offices? No, likely not. But it likely does mean that the balance will shift, and even a (say) 20% reduction in knowledge worker office space patterns may have significant implications on cities. So I think we should not be quite so cavalier to dismiss the implications just yet.
Again, this is all predicated on having swift medical solutions to the outbreak (beyond wearing masks and test-and-trace, which it appears that the US at least is incapable of doing). However, there is no guarantee that we will have such a solution yet. HIV did not have any meaningful treatment for decades. There is certainly an argument to be made that HIV affected fewer (and, in the eyes of the people in power, largely the “wrong kind” of) people, and so there was less effort to find a treatment or cure… but even so, it is not impossible that we will be facing this for a while. So we may as well prepare for the worst. But I’m an introverted pessimist :)
Also, “more work from home” could mean double the number pre-pandemic … or still less than 10% of the workforce.
This post lists a number of major companies that have announced permanent changes in work from home policy. This isn’t about controlling the pandemic. Having been forced into this work from home experiment they’ve found that not only can it work but sometimes it works better and it means less expensive office space and free parking that can be added directly to the bottom line. I will never work full time from an office location again. I do look forward to going into an office for meetings and collaboration when appropriate but the home office is permanent.
When you arrive at a percentage of work from home then you have to add the multiplier effect. Say it’s 30% in cubical land. Now you’ve got 30% less people filling out the lunch business or stopping in for after work happy hour. The service area workers won’t be working from home; they just flat out won’t have work. Eventually people will change jobs but in the short term it’s less transit demand and the retraining process is going to be a drag on consumer spending for quite some time.
“many brick and mortar stores going out of business means less trips. I heard today Simon Group is in talks with Amazon about converting some of the large “anchor” mall tenant stores into warehouses”
Malls have been closing even before Amazon. The US built up more malls and big box stores than the market could bear, and has two or three times more of them than other industrialized countries. They were all trying to take market share from each other and overbuilt and tried to keep customers with newer flashier buildings, abandoning the older buildings or leaving them to lesser corporations. The rise in online shopping is just accelerating it. Smart mall owners are looking for new business models beyond more instances of the same chain shops. Northgate is adding an NHL practice rink, offices, and housing. Others might well look toward Amazon warehouses.
@AM — Yes, there is no question that many people prefer working from home. My point is a very high percentage of those people were either doing that already, or were prevented from doing that because employers didn’t want that. Companies like Amazon have had employees working from home for years. The technology is not new. They reluctantly accommodated those that wanted to work from home. I used to work in software, and even though my company was nowhere near as sophisticated and technologically advanced as Amazon, we had several employees that primarily worked from home (and this was ten years ago).
Yet Amazon has made an enormous investment in office space. Of course Amazon considered just having people work remotely. It is crazy to think otherwise. If they really felt that working from home was a viable alternative then they would have just gone that direction (and benefited from the pandemic in yet another way).
Then there is Expedia. They are spending almost a billion dollars building a new building for employees, because it is closer to downtown Seattle. But is not in downtown Seattle. If they really felt like working from home was a viable option — and a general trend — they would have gone with a much smaller investment in an office downtown. They would have simply moved into a building that Amazon is moving out of.
So you are basically saying that these companies, that spend millions of dollars to spot trends, completely missed the new working-from-home trend, and will now be caught flat footed with thousands of empty offices. Sorry, I don’t buy it.
It is worth pointing out that office space in downtown Seattle and downtown Bellevue is by far the most valuable in the region. Yet it isn’t the only office space. There are offices spread out across the region. There is value in being close to downtown (ask Expedia). Not only so the workers can get there easily, but also because business (with other companies) can be done in person. Even if there is a minor downturn in the amount of office space used, it will manifest itself with vacancies outside the two downtown areas, not in the core of either city. Absent a local recession, both downtown areas (and the UW for that matter) will have plenty of in person employees.
Which brings up the UW. All their classes are currently online. Again, online classes are not new. Highly respected Arizona State University has had online classes for years. Many people prefer it. Many people hate it. For some classes, it simply doesn’t work (e. g. nursing). But like working from home, there are some who were reluctant to try it, but now prefer it. But that number is so tiny that you don’t see any change in the way the UW is working. There are no long term plans to say, make the math department 100% online. Because for *most* students it isn’t a good way to learn.
Then there are brewpubs. A brewpub is a small brewery that operates like a pub. Like all pubs they were hammered by the pandemic. Before the pandemic, a lot of the smaller breweries sold most or all of their beer in the pub. They had to adjust. They have survived by selling growlers and crowlers. Growlers have been around for years. They are basically just big jugs that you fill with beer to drink at home. A typical size is four pints — a bit much for one person to drink before it gets stale. Crowlers are essentially just big cans of beer. They represent part of the technological revolution in beer canning. Crowlers allow a bartender to just fill a can, and seal it up on the spot, or easily can a few every few hours (and keep them in a fridge). One can is usually a couple pints — enough for one person (or maybe two). Thus a consumer can just stop by a brewpub grab a can (or several) and then drink them at home, at their convenience. They get all the brewing advantages of a brewpub — small batch beers with something new every day — but without spending time in the pub. For many, this is a great discovery. I’m sure there are people who love crowlers, and even a handful who’ve just now discovers growlers. These people may never go back to the pub. But it is crazy to think that they are the majority. Pubs like Big Time, Hellbent and Elliot Bay are holding on by a thread right now. Once the pandemic is over, they will be thriving, as huge numbers of people go back and enjoy the atmosphere of the pub, as well as the beer.
People want to be with people. Even introverts (like me) prefer working with other people, and going to a bar. There will be some permanent behavioral changes caused by the pandemic. But as they relate to transit, their effect will be minor and hardly noticeable.
Bernie wrote:
This post lists a number of major companies that have announced permanent changes in work from home policy.
AM wrote:
though “forever” is actually an easier policy to change on a whim than the more firm dates given by Google, Microsoft, Amazon and the like
Bingo! AM is right. A “permanent” policy can just as easily be undone as it was done.
@RossB:
Thank you for the thoughtful response. In general I agree with you, though where I disagree is in this part (using this specific part of your comment as the anchor point though I could have latched onto any number of similar points made throughout):
“Of course Amazon considered just having people work remotely. It is crazy to think otherwise. If they really felt that working from home was a viable alternative then they would have just gone that direction (and benefited from the pandemic in yet another way).”
This is a tautology similar to the one you complained about in a different post made by someone else, regarding lack of evidence on ST considering a different schedule for the various projects. In any case, I do not disagree that they may have considered it and chose to not go there (full disclaimer, I am very familiar with dozens of people who worked at Amazon prior to the big campus expansion in the mid 2000s; at no point have I heard of any plans being considered to allow major percentages of their employees to work from home; in fact, Amazon in the mid 2000s was notoriously “worse” about allowing WFH access, to the point where their VPN was slower and more cumbersome to use than others’. This was, is my understanding, in great part due to a belief that any work performed remotely could be construed as endangering customer data, and thus antithetical to the company’s stated core principles. But I digress.)
In any case, thinking of life as a non-ergodic continuous-time (and smooth, absent external discontinuities) random process (as I tend to do :) ) – essentially, “past performance is not an indicator of the future” – I think that it is important to consider most recent evidence more strongly than older evidence. For this particular point, yes, many companies were in fact not as supportive of full-time working from home earlier on; currently, a lot of these companies have been forced to re-evaluate that position, and some are fully on-board with a significantly increased WFH policy. On the other side of the equation, many people who wished they had a better WFH setup now have the opportunity to try to obtain it, and are actively doing so.
Where will we land when (or if) the outbreak is over? I suspect that you are right, and that we will largely revert to something close to what we had before. But I do think – and hope, I guess :) – that we will have significantly more flexibility than we had before, at least for those of us who are actively appreciating the all-WFH setup. Which, as I mentioned from anecdotal evidence, does encompass a significant minority of the population. And I think that everyone would benefit from that extra flexibility, overall. But we will have to see when we get there.
Thank you again for the thoughtful discussion, I greatly appreciate it.
One of the interesting things is that work-from-home doesn’t necessarily lead to less travel:
https://cal.streetsblog.org/2020/08/04/what-benefits-telecommuting-may-bring-are-still-very-much-unknown/
People still need to go to doctor’s appointments (and that staff still needs to travel to the clinic too!), get their kids to school (when it’s back in session, at least), run errands, etc. They’ll also want to go to restaurants, movies, bars, see friends, go to a park, go for a hike, etc. Commuting is only one part of travel, and it’s not really clear whether work-from-home eliminates travel, or just shifts it. Then there’s all of the people who still need to commute for work (probably upwards of 80%, at least some days of the week), so all work-from-home might do is spread the peak (“flatten the curve” in today’s vernacular) rather than reduce the total need for transit. This means transit could become more efficient (no more deadheading peak-direction expresses), so could end up being a positive rather than a negative.
Seattle’s traffic congestion pre-pandemic was all about peak capacity. When it’s spread out as it is now there’s a huge decrease in congestion. If people are able to work from home or have more flexible hours there’s less congestion; or the “peak” becomes compressed. This will make it more desirable to drive. Especially if there are fewer people working as before and therefore less demand for parking.
I wonder what the percentage is of people working from home vs people who are just not working. Even if the majority of DT workers return to the office it’s going to take a long time for permanently closed restaurants and bars to be replaced with new businesses. Boeing employment is unlikely to ever replace the thousands that have been laid off or retired. And it’s a larger number than just the direct Boeing number.
How can ST have definite ridership predictions when nobody knows when infections will go down enough for Phase 3 and 4? It partly depends on what the politicians in Washington DC do or don’t do. Did you predict there would be an unemployment extensnsion and aid to the states in July? Will there be in August? How certain is it? To find out what the commuter load will be, ask the large employers what their plans are. Amazon has consistently been the one projecting the furthest forward. I think it said employees can work from home until the end of the year at least. That doesn’t tell us anything about 2021 or 2022. Other companies haven’t made announcements even that far. Yet you demand ST predict what they will decide in the future?
There has been SPECULATION that many employees will telework permanently, or will move to less-dense exurbs where they can have an additional home-office room, or will move to smaller cities away from the coastal tech hubs. There has been a trickle of this but not a flood. Even if a significant number of people end up doing it, it could still be a minority of workers. House prices and rents haven’t started going down in Seattle yet, and rents have fallen just a bit due to the recession and West Seattle losing its bridge. Both would go down more definitively and construction would halt if there’s a mass exodus to the exurbs and out of Pugetopolis. Amazon hasn’t announced it’s vacating more downtown buildings.
I believe Google has officially announced WFH until June 2021 (presumably to align with the school year in the US jurisdictions) and a few other companies like Zillow and Twitter are allowing WFH forever (though “forever” is actually an easier policy to change on a whim than the more firm dates given by Google, Microsoft, Amazon and the like).
I have not been following the real estate market very closely, but it seems like there is just not enough inventory to have a flood of Seattleites moving to the suburbs/exurbs. Sales are still pretty strong both in Seattle and in (at least) Bellevue and Kirkland, from what I can tell, though, and I assume that that is just due to fairly low inventory and the demand that remains pent up.
For rents, I have only one datapoint – my old building in Seattle seems to be keeping theirs steady this year (but so far not reduce). Since they usually increased with inflation, that amounts to a slight de facto reduction. They did the same thing during the last recession, except for one period in late 2009 or so when they gave us a 1.5 month deduction for renewing.
To go back to the broader point, ST cannot make good predictions because no one knows what the future holds, no. But so far there have not been great reasons to believe things will return to normal “anytime soon” either though. We have some evidence that vaccines may be somewhat effective for some period of time – there is a lot of hedging in that statement, though, and thus a lot of room to go wrong. I am a pessimist by nature, but I think it would be really wise for most of us to assume the worst, and be glad to be proven wrong. :) More concretely, people went back to spending a lot after the Great Depression, too, but that generation I believe was proven to be permanently more thrifty than those before or after, and we may yet be seeing a similar situation with our generation also, but with social distancing measures instead.
“Tap-off” trouble? Easy. Have the firm that did the Seat-Hog give her a cute furry cousin called the “Tapmunk”, on a large poster taped to the wall over all the “readers” on the way out.
Tearfully reminding people to do their part for THEIR trains.
“Please make your Daddy tap off!” No lady passenger under forty will be able to resist doing their sworn duty. And Superior Court will thank you with an acquittal for any crime of your choice.
Also: Anything to be lost by turning the 550 at the tops of the Fifth Avenue escalators at IDS? If BOLT still stops there maybe make it move. Considering 550’s ridership and general importance, could be an incentive to put rush hour Link headways closer to ten minutes than twenty. Fifteen just fine.
Mark Dublin
2020 Q2 data has been portrayed on this agenda report:
https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/ActiveDocuments/Presentation%20-%20Rider%20Experience%20Metrics%20Report.pdf
It’s not pretty — but the data here doesn’t yet describe the cost per rider or lots of other measures.
That report is strange in that they don’t have ridership per weekday for Link (but have it for ST Express and Sounder).
I also think it is interesting that the downtown escalators fail more than many of the other ones. The difference is that they have stairs in those stations. The problem with the escalators at the UW and Capitol Hill wasn’t the escalators themselves, but the fact that they didn’t have stairs.
Yeah I noticed the DSTT escalator problems too. I’ve long argued that vertical circulation in those stations needs a major rethinking and modernization. After all, the stations are 30 years old, built before ADA and not designed for surges coming from a 600-person train suddenly going out of service with another one just three minutes behind.
I did read in an agenda that ST started assessing the DSTT stations. Of course, the work has not gotten much publicity or outreach.
I was under the impression that the DSTT was over engineered exactly for that purpose. The stations always felt way more like train stations than bus stations to me, they even built places where turnstiles and vending carts were obviously meant to go. Besides the horrible escalators what problem would the DSTT have with handling large train crowds?
Generally, the station levels seem adequate for frequent rail. The problem comes in at the frequency of trains arriving. It only takes one bottleneck to hinder riders.
I wasn’t here in the 1980’s but I seriously doubt that the issue of vacating full trains arriving every three minutes — with at least one broken escalator (2 escalators at 5 percent failure allowed for each means one broken 10 percent of the time or 3 days a month) — was a consideration. After all, the designers would have added a space for crossing tracks in the DSTT had future-proofing been a consideration.
I was under the impression that the DSTT was over engineered exactly for that purpose. The stations always felt way more like train stations than bus stations to me, they even built places where turnstiles and vending carts were obviously meant to go.
Exactly. They were designed for massive numbers of people passing through turnstiles. That won’t happen. They are fine.
The mezzanines were intended to be places to buy tickets and have turnstyles. This was in the 1980s when trains were high-floor and other innovations hadn’t occurred yet or weren’t widespread. I don’t know where they intended the turnstyles to go: some of the elevators are at such odd side walls that it’s hard to see how a turnstyle could be in front of both the escalators and elevator. Or would the elevator have its own turnstyle? Maybe they just didn’t think it through enough and had an unworkable layout anyway. Nobody knew when or if trains would come, it was some vague long time in the future, so they may not have taken it totally seriously, like how they installed shoddy rails that had to be replaced before they could be used.
It is also worth noting that turnstiles could have worked for the buses as well, instead of having the “free ride” area.
I don’t think the DSTT design anticipated turnstiles. At Westlake, some fare machines are almost right across from the stairs and escalator (only going up). With turnstiles, fare machines would have had to be located outside of turnstiles. Keep in mind that the Downtown free-fare zone was created in the 1970’s and Portland MAX (a model for other West Coast systems) was already opened with proof-of-payment assumed when the DSTT plans were finalized.
Of course, moving fare machines is a relatively low-cost fix. If ST pursued clearer paid fare area treatments, moving some machines should be a no-brainer — although ST will probably dig its heels in rather than simply moving them.
There’s no mystery about the North-South decision. We probably inherited less existing transit-covertible railroad than anyplace else in the industrialized world, certainly in the United States.
And worst-deprived space happened to be where transit needed it most, Downtown Seattle. We had no surface rail route out of there in any direction but south. East required adding rail to a floating bridge, whose older sibling already lay on the bottom of Lake Washington.
E3 plus I-5 gave us Sea-Tac speed long before the trains came. Link straight-shot to Sea-Tac, I’m pretty sure planners just assumed, though Rainier Valley population gave it temporary mean-time priority. My own call is that it may not be long ’til a new generation of vertical-takeoff jetliners require some fast lateral transfers between Sea-Tac and King County INTERNATIONAL airports.
We’d best be careful how much bandwidth we waste on recriminations over the pre-Covid Era. My evil sweetheart the goddess might think we’re ungrateful for the challege of an upcoming situation whose chief demand is we get flexible fast and stay there.
Since we have no idea whatever where vaccine-relieved life will leave us, or doing what, we the people had best concentrate on getting ourselves together, which medicine might finally enable us to do, and putting ourselves in the position to build whatever transit system we end up needing. A country too, but transit’s what this blog’s for.
What to call its form? There’s a reason “Ideology” and “Idiot” sound like the same language family. Sanitary waste flows one way, and has to be pumped the other. But really wish somebody twitter-familiar who’s really sweet will give Dow the chance he deserves to rephrase about transit’s relation to employment.
Franklin Roosevelt had the Golden Gate Bridge provide them both. And thanks to fortune, timing, and the SAT-free new generation, add Education too. High school and Community College both, lot of Government will BE de facto”Student.”
Give Link its MLK undercuts and I’m ready to give Lake Washington Tech its shot at repurposing its every driver to fare inspection, security, and information combined under job title, and really sharp uniform, of “Conductor.”
Mark Dublin
And per observations above about the DSTT’s intended purpose, it most certainly was designed to be the centerpiece structure in the beginning of a regional electric rail transit system.
What the voters turned down Federal money for in two consecutive elections, we were going to build in stages, starting with buses, and proceeding through joint-use to trains.
I’ve always thought that through events we couldn’t control, the trains arrived ten years later than planned.
Mark Dublin