There is a new grass roots movement to fix the often delayed Metro 8.
Jarrett Walker shares his thoughts on an automated bus pilot in Scotland. (Human Transit)
SDOT is planning around the future 130th Station. (SDOT)
Ryan Packer writes about potential Link overcrowding and changes to the 5. (Urbanist)
Sound Transit delays the Real-Time-Arrival system for Link.
Checking in on the BellHop ($), downtown Bellevue’s demand-response circulator. It’s called BellHop, not Bel-Hop like previous circulators in the 80s.
Do flashing pedestrian beacons (RRFBs) make streets safe to walk across? (CityNerd video) I say they help. I looked at two adult family homes for a relative. One was in Burien and required crossing six-lane high-speed 1st Avenue South without a crosswalk to get to the 131 northbound bus stop. I saw people with walkers or walking their dog doing it between 40 mph traffic. But I was afraid that if I went there monthly I’d inevitably get hit by a car someday. Another home in Bellevue had RRFBs on 156th at three residential intersections, so that was one of the reasons we chose that home. I assume the difference is that Bellevue is rich enough to afford RRFBs and Burien isn’t. Still, I’d call 1st Avenue South dangerous like the stroads in the video, and something needs to be done.
Art deco wonders in downtown Seattle. ($)
Downtowns find creative uses for underused office buildings. ($) Breweries, farms, spas…
Homeless people in programs that give cash use it for basic needs ($) such as “housing, furniture and transportation”, and not on “temptation goods” (defined as alcohol, drugs, or cigarette).
Urban planning in communist countries. (Wikipedia) Where did all those commie block highrises came from?
Cars are making our lives worse. A Puerto Rico perspective. (Bianca Graulau video)
This is an open thread.
> A fully autonomous bus is now in regular service in Scotland. It still has employees, two in fact. But if this technology works out, the ultimate goal is probably to run buses with no employees on board. In wealthy countries, the cost of running a bus is mostly the cost of the driver, so in theory, if and when all the bugs are worked out, a driverless bus could be far more abundant, for a given operating budget, than buses with human drivers can be.
https://humantransit.org/2023/09/a-next-step-for-autonomous-buses.html
In general it holds a lot of promise. Especially with Waymo and Cruise as well. The larger question I’m thinking about is what type of self-driving car vision will it be: busses relegated to busways hov lanes/ busses or transit vans on regular raods/ shared cars aka ubers/ private only self-driving cars.
But in almost any case, it does drastically decrease the amount of parking needed at each location. As the self driving car can just after dropping off the passenger park elsewhere.
(also thanks mike for the new open thread)
The first five paragraphs were by Ross. We were both writing open thread articles and combined them.
I believe Jarrett alludes to exactly what I’ve mentioned before in terms of automobile automation. The best analogy is self-checkout at the grocery store. Cashiers haven’t been eliminated, but there are far fewer of them. It is essentially a robot doing the work. We don’t think of it that way, because the change has been gradual, but imagine what it would be like for a modern Rip Van Winkle. Back in the day, the cashier looked at a price tag and pressed buttons on the cash register. They took the cash, and made change. Now machines do all that. The only thing a customer does is bag the groceries (which many of us were doing a long time ago). But it isn’t completely automated. If something goes wrong, then someone else will notice, and do what is necessary to fix it. Sometimes this requires stepping over to the register — sometimes it can be done remotely.
I expect the same thing to happen with buses and trucks. They will be automated, but monitored by a team somewhere else. There will be people in various places, ready to intervene as necessary. The buses (and trucks) can also be remotely operated. Thus you have to have a lot of cameras (along with the other sensors) to see what is going on at any moment. Most of the time, the machine can do the work. Even when there are problems, they are usually fixed by remote control. Rarely do you need to send someone out there, although that option is available.
Some people are nervous about the cameras. Personally, I’m not. Like it or not, people take pictures of us all the time. Sometimes, it is civil libertarians who insist on it (e. g. police body cameras). Google takes pictures of people all the time on the street. It is what folks do with the photos that matter. As long as reasonable safeguards are taken, I have now issue with cameras on buses.
From a labor standpoint, I think it is actually good. Increased mechanization can lead to fewer jobs, but as long as you have a strong union, it can lead to better pay. A good example is longshoreman. As mechanization has increased (and the number of jobs have gone down) the salaries have gone up. It pays really well, as the work has become a lot more technical (it isn’t like people are just hauling stuff off the boats). I could easily see the same thing happen with buses (and trucks). There could be a substantial increase in buses on the street, but far fewer “drivers”, as the nature of their work changes. I see the result as being overall quite positive.
“From a labor standpoint, I think it is actually good. Increased mechanization can lead to fewer jobs, but as long as you have a strong union, it can lead to better pay. ”
You mentioned grocery stores before, and self-checkout. Here’s some anecdotal discussion:
https://www.bizjournals.com/bizwomen/news/latest-news/2019/04/self-checkouts-contribute-to-retail-jobs-decline.html?page=all
And here’s another:
https://www.newamerica.org/work-workers-technology/reports/worker-voices/technology-on-the-job-today/
Let me quote from this one specifically:
The fast food, grocery, and retail workers we interviewed expressed negative views about technology that could replace humans. They strongly disliked self-checkout technology and felt it was already displacing jobs and hours from workers. These perceptions were influenced by the frustration that workers felt with their struggle to get enough hours to pay bills and meet hours-related eligibility requirements for benefits.
Against this backdrop, the introduction of labor-displacing technology like self-checkout lanes was perceived as exacerbating an ongoing struggle to secure sufficient hours and was met with strong resistance. One manager, 45, did not mince words: “We have self-checkout. I despise it. You’ve eliminated four jobs.” A front-end supervisor, 29, said, “I could be coming in at 6:30, but they have those self-checkouts, so they don’t schedule me until 9. I think that we all wish they weren’t there. It takes away from us.” A 55-year-old cashier said the same thing: “It’s sad; it takes away jobs. It’s hard enough to find jobs as it is….If it’s not broken don’t fix it. It’s just another way to cut costs without having to pay people. If they can cut a cost, they will.” Finally, a 41-year-old cashier said, “We have eight self-checkouts at our store, and a lot of people use them there. They use them because they cut us out. Cut our hours, cut our manpower.”
By all means, these are anecdotes. But forgive me for being skeptical of how great the added technology is for workers (and even for customers, as the work is farmed out onto them).
I was a non-fan of self checkout until it became my only option to avoid maskless cashiers. Now, Amazon scanners detect and charge for every store product you take through the door.
I avoid Amazon simply because I don’t want them cornering another market, but the technology seems to work, and does not racially profile customers for inspection.
None of this newfangled scanning technology has come close to running me over.
I am not saying the technology has no benefits. I have used it in the past, too. I was a big fan of it when at UW because I did shopping more frequently and did not want to wait in line.
However, to claim that it does not take away jobs (or does not degrade the quality of said jobs) appears, anecdotally, to be false. Whether that is enough to balance other issues, such as maskless cashiers, is for each of us to decide. I will not judge, and can (and do) empathize with the avoidance thereof.
When I do see a masked-up cashier, I try to go to that line, and use various tactics to maintain a space cushion behind me.
Driving buses is an occupation where there is a labor shortage. I’m not sure it really translates well to grocery store cashiers.
For what it’s worth, EmX bus rapid transit in Eugene has been working on automated driving for some 10 years. Not to replace real drivers, at least not yet, but as an assistant to make the buses faster and better positioned at platforms. Note the driver mostly doesn’t have his hands on the wheel, but really close just in case:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_oKsleOocFM
There’s a shortage of cashiers and restaurant workers too. It hasn’t been as visible in grocery stores, but some restaurants are closed certain days or shortened their hours or eliminated table service or didn’t open at all because they can’t get enough staff.
We don’t need all these super spreading restaurants and bars as much as we need grocery stores. But PCC has been trying to furlough some its employees. I suspect grocery stores on the low end of the pay scale are the ones struggling to hire.
Restaurants are essential to the community; anything that feeds the public is essential to the community. They deserved as supported as much as grocery stores during the pandemic. Our family used them for getting Asian food my mother wanted in her long-term illness, that we were unable to cook.
I’m also not a fan of self-checkout stalls. I was a cashier for a few years, and I’ve had enough of bagging in my life. I much prefer going to the checkout aisles staffed by cashiers, as much to have someone to chat with as to bag up my groceries for me. The only times I go to self-checkout is if I have only a couple of items, or if I’m in a hurry and the express lane is too long.
“Restaurants are essential to the community”
Yep, my family has been going to the same strip mall teriyaki place for 25+ years at this point. We know the owners on a first name basis and they were overjoyed to see my dad once he fully recovered from his fall a year ago.
“I’m also not a fan of self-checkout stalls. I was a cashier for a few years, and I’ve had enough of bagging in my life. I much prefer going to the checkout aisles staffed by cashiers, as much to have someone to chat with as to bag up my groceries for me.”
I’m personally mixed on them, they’re great if an introvert who get nervous with social interactions or as you said just a few items. My gripe with them is how fickle bag area weighted scales are, nothing more fun than “unexpected item in bagging area” as you try to check out.
I perfer how some European supermarkets do self checkout like Albert Hejin (Dutch Supermarket chain) with hand scanners that you can use if you have a bonuskaart (AH Loyalty Card). Then all you do is shop, scan, and then pay at self checkout.
A video from the company (in Dutch) explaining how their system works
https://youtu.be/7MSqE_vt5Po?si=FPXhkGhjKzX01OBh
An easy, no-cost solution to speed up the #5 is consolidate stops not only along Greenwood Ave but along Aurora Ave too. The route is rather long and it’s frustrating to stop-go, stop-go all the way from 160th St. It also doesn’t help that the route is interlined with the #21. A long-term solution would be to split the route into two branches: one ending at Shoreline College and the other going only as far as 130th St or maybe even 105th St/Holman Rd. From [limited] experience, it seems the majority of ridership is south of 105th.
I just realized that the survey closed yesterday. I shouldn’t have included the reference to the article. Sorry about that.
Unfortunately, with the survey gone, so is the chance to even see the changes. I don’t know why Metro does this — it is a pet peeve of mine. You should be able to see the proposal, even if it is too late to comment. To your point, I’m pretty sure the proposal does have some stop consolidation, but I can’t verify that. For what it’s worth, this is just the first phase of changes, so there will be more.
As far as routing goes, there are no proposed changes as part of the Lynnwood Link related restructure: https://kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/metro/programs-projects/link-connections/lynnwood-link/pdf/routes/route5.pdf. I don’t have data for the 5, so I can only speculate on ridership along the route. Turning back half the buses seems problematic, unless a lot funding is found. The savings might result in the bus running every 10 minutes to Greenwood, but that still means 20 minutes north of there (and 20-minute buses suck). My guess is there are quite a few riders to the north as well. You could have the proposed 77 serve Shoreline Community College, and the 5 end at 145th, but that doesn’t get you much. They are basically getting rid of the 16, which is the peak-only express, as they couldn’t justify it. I’m afraid there is no easy way to fix the problem, unless ridership (or funding) increases considerably.
Jordan, for many years, before fall 2012, Route 5 had two variants: full time to/from SCC; Monday through Saturday, to/from Northgate via North 92nd Street. It was paired with routes 54 and 55 in West Seattle, so used the SR-99 Seneca-Columbia ramps. In fall 2012, with the C and D Lines and Route 40, Route 5 was consolidated to the SCC pattern and paired with Route 21; Route 21 got the 15-minute frequency. In fall 2020, as part of of the adjustment to a smaller STBD, routes 5 and 21 got 20-minute Saturday headway.
Wow! I do recall the 5-Northgate, which was partially replaced by the current and much better 40. Totally forgot about that. It has been my experience that ridership on the northern portion of the route is much lower versus its Greenwood/Phinney Ridge segment. Splitting it into 2 branches, I believe, will improve reliability. In a perfect world, decoupling it from the 21 would improve it even greater.
https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/news-events/news-releases/sound-transit-wsdot-break-ground-stride-brt-project?utm_campaign=nr-groundbreaking-20230912&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery
Lots of transit tax money to be spent on a project in Kirkland that will bring marginal real transit benefit but lots of road construction dollars.
The area around NE 85th is car centric and cannot ever be a great walking experience. Big box stores, auto dealers, car-oriented strip malls. And some wetlands. Maybe a bus transfer. But it’s not going to be a dense neighborhood with people walking to transit. And it’s not going to be a good connecting point. And where will service go? To Bothell/Lynnwood and Bellevue, but not to Seattle.
We’ll spend hundreds of millions of transit tax dollars on capital project that is marginally useful.
Doesn’t serve downtown Kirkland. Won’t serve the Totem Lake area well. Won’t connect well to Seattle.
Terrible use of transit funds. If it were highway carpool funds I would not care, but this is Sound Transit transit funds largely poured down the drain.
> The area around NE 85th is car centric and cannot ever be a great walking experience. Big box stores, auto dealers, car-oriented strip malls. And some wetlands. Maybe a bus transfer. But it’s not going to be a dense neighborhood with people walking to transit. And it’s not going to be a good connecting point. And where will service go? To Bothell/Lynnwood and Bellevue, but not to Seattle.
There was two main choices either to use the ERC or the i-405 corridor for this path. The ERC got too much pushback so the i-405 corridor was chosen. Regarding the roundabout honestly it doesn’t look too bad https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/project-documents/i-405-brt-presentation-april-2018.pdf or at least I’m not sure how one would make a freeway hov direct access ramp ‘better’?
> Doesn’t serve downtown Kirkland. Won’t serve the Totem Lake area well. Won’t connect well to Seattle… Terrible use of transit funds. If it were highway carpool funds I would not care, but this is Sound Transit transit funds largely poured down the drain.
Totem lake already has an hov exit at 128th ne street.
I guess if you’d prefer more local service it’d be more Sound Transit funding RapidRide’s like RapidRide K and whatever 255 would be called. Though many seem to prefer Sound Transit’s express transit focus.
“There was two main choices either to use the ERC or the i-405 corridor for this path. “
There really was only one choice, since any use of the ERC for whatever use (commercial trucking, rail, BRT), was removed for consideration during the program’s development of the EIS back in 2001 by the City of Renton.
If you’re a Better Bus Fan, using the whole ERC for BRT would have been a better choice.
ST is building within the confines of the I-405 Programs parameters.
ERC would be a better corridor. But even that doesn’t served downtown Kirkland nor has good transfers to 520 transit.
Neither is going to be effective high ridership transit.
Lots of vested interests that like using transit tax dollars to improve freeways even if the excuse is HOV/HOT
> There really was only one choice, since any use of the ERC for whatever use (commercial trucking, rail, BRT), was removed for consideration during the program’s development of the EIS back in 2001 by the City of Renton.
For kirkland ERC was potentially going to be BRT in 2015/2016.
> ERC would be a better corridor. But even that doesn’t served downtown Kirkland nor has good transfers to 520 transit.
If you really want to serve downtown Kirkland, that has nothing to do with Sound Transit or King County Metro but with Kirkland itself. They could either remove parking along Lake Washington for bus lanes or at least one direction bus lanes for say the 255 or a Rapidride. Or they could convert part of the ERC into a busway for the Stride. But that is up to Kirkland, it isn’t Sound Transit or King County Metro’s fault if they are unable to get dedicated transit lanes.
The ERC is a trail. People use it heavily – today – as a walk and bike corridor. I walk a section of it myself on my way to the office. Trading Kirkland’s only regional trail for a busway is not a good trade.
Yes, I’ve seen plans that show that with enough grading and tree cutting, it is possible to squeeze in the trail and the busway side by side. But, no thanks. It would completely destroy the aesthetics of the trail, particularly in natural areas such as Crestwoods Park. It would inevitably lead to new fencing that would cut off some neighborhood’s access to the trail. It would displace some newly built park amenities around the Google campus. And, of course, it would inevitably lead to the trail itself being closed for years of construction.
A bus that simply runs on the regular streets is fine, so long as it runs all day with reasonable frequency.
Hey, as long as the unwashed masses of transit aren’t polluting the backyards of the well-to-do, all is good.
@asdf2
> Yes, I’ve seen plans that show that with enough grading and tree cutting, it is possible to squeeze in the trail and the busway side by side. But, no thanks. It would completely destroy the aesthetics of the trail, particularly in natural areas such as Crestwoods Park. It would inevitably lead to new fencing that would cut off some neighborhood’s access to the trail. It would displace some newly built park amenities around the Google campus. And, of course, it would inevitably lead to the trail itself being closed for years of construction.
I guess that is kind of valid, but it does seem a bit of a concerning line of thought. If every right of way that goes nearby density is converted to a bike trail then are we expecting every transitway to be built incredibly expensive underground or at freeways every time?
Transit vs. parks and trails on the eastside is an uneven fight. It is why transit runs along freeways or in Class C areas. It is why Kirkland likes all its transit and TOD east of 405. Of course, transit vs. parks and trails is an uneven fight in Seattle too. Seattleites love their parks and trails. So you run Link along freeways because no one loves freeways, or living or recreating next to them.
I remember they wanted to put some sort of transit on that trail, either light rail or BRT. A lot of Kirkland residents, including me, were for it, and Woodinville especially wanted it because they’d get a mass transit link unaffected by freeway traffic.
As I recall, however, the Kirkland area the trail passes through has approval power over infrastructure things in its neighborhood, a right conceded to them upon its annexation by Kirkland, and they voted no. That shot the transit plan down, to the chagrin of Woodinville and other parts of the NE Eastside, but with the governmental set-up, there’s nothing they could do.
2016:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/eastside/council-votes-to-endorse-transit-on-cross-kirkland-corridor/
2023:
https://www.kirklandreporter.com/news/east-rail-corridor-is-now-eastrail/
Daniel’s link predates subsequent disagreement and eventual exclusion of an ST3 project on the CKC: https://seattletransitblog.com/2016/03/12/kirkland-st-struggling-to-agree-on-st3/
“The area around NE 85th is car centric and cannot ever be a great walking experience. Big box stores, auto dealers, car-oriented strip malls.”
Isn’t some of that being redeveloped?
There had been a proposal to redevelop the Lee Johnson dealership. But the economy as well as NIMBY opposition has pretty much quashed that. And really, is that a great residential environment? Freeway to the west, Lake Washington High School. It would not be a real neighborhood. Probably enough parking underneath that everyone has a car.
It’s dead anyway.
Good sound insulation on the windows can do wonders. I remember visiting somebody’s apartment once in Capitol Hill, directly overlooking I-5. With the windows closed, you could hear nothing.
The region as a whole has a housing shortage, and I’m sure people would be willing to live there for the right price. Maybe the proximately to the freeway would mean the units would have to rent at a discount, but they would definitely rent.
The strip mall on the NE corner, next to Costco, is on its last legs. The Petco is in an all-sales-final clearance, and when that’s gone next week the only active business in the mall proper is a Dollar Tree. (There are a Midas and U-Haul on the property, but not in the building, and they’ll stick around.) That property will become mixed-use housing and businesses/retail.
Google was going to buy the Lee Johnson, but pulled out recently, as buying more property during this work-from-home shift wasn’t a good idea. Something will be done with that parcel, Lee Johnson will probably move to Kirkland’s Auto Row on Totem Lake, but by what we don’t know now. I believe there are also plans to build more housing on the west side of the interchange.
The most crucial factor in that interchange? Now that Totem Lake has received a shot in the arm, Kirkland wants to turn to South Rose Hill, an area that hasn’t received much investment and development as the rest of the city. There’s a lot of potential in that strip of NE 85th. Street (full disclosure, I live near there), but housing is still in the growth stage, there’s not many dining options other than teriyaki, and we need more shopping options than Costco.
Kirkland’s hope is that the interchange will spark more residential and mixed-use growth, while adding transit stops — especially more to Downtown Kirkland from the freeway — and improving traffic flow from 405 with the new roundabouts.
Carl: true. In Sound Move, ST had a center access ramp at NE 85th Street but they were smart enough to reset it and spend the funds on a new KTC, TLTC, the NE 128th Street overcrossing, and sidewalks on NE 85th Street.
They’ve begun work on that interchange now, and I am so glad they are including direct access to the I-405 carpool lanes. Right now, anybody entering 405 from 85th. St. who wants to get onto the carpool lanes either has to loop to Totem Lake or merge several lanes once they get on 405. I’ve been having to take my father to medical appointments in Seattle, and accessing the HOV lanes right from 85th. would be a stress saver.
My other pet peeve today: https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/09/11/sound-transit-braces-for-overcrowding/ This talks about overcrowding for 5+ years on North Link.
First question. When the extension to Lynnwood opens and East Link to Bellevue isn’t open yet, is there really no way for ST to be more creative about storing trains that they cannot put more trains on the property so that they can run 8-minute (or even better 5-minute maybe with shorter trains) service between Angle Lake or Twin Lakes and Lynnwood? If the issue is where do they put them at night, then how about on the not-in-revenue-service branch to the Rainier/MLK station? There should be room to park plenty of trains there. Ideally we just run the line 24 hours like NYC does so we never have to park all the trains and the yard is big enough. But if we need to park more trains than the yard holds there are certainly tracks at Rainier Beach and Stadium that can hold a few sets, and we should be able to park some on the East Link branch (as well as the center track at CID, and frankly that whole space that used to hold buses south of the CID station ought to be available for train storage, too.
It just does not seem like there is much initiative at Sound Transit to think creatively or constructively.
Also a bit frustrating that theurbanist allows for no comments. Are we their comment site?
“Furthermore, the agency’s dire predictions do not factor in event-related crowding. Major events, such as festivals, concerts, and sports games, lead to surges of riders that frequently overwhelm station platforms even before Lynnwood Link brings its projected 47,000 to 55,000 additional daily riders to the 1 Line by 2026.”
This is from Packer’s article. I raised this in another thread. Does anyone think LLE will “bring” an additional 47,000 to 55,000 additional daily riders to Link, not including those who already drive to Northgate Link to catch Link? 55,000 daily riders for this part of SnoCo is only 15,000 fewer than for all of Central Link today that averages around 80,000 daily riders, and no doubt includes many riders who come by bus or car from SnoCo to catch Link at Northgate.
According to Packer, ST’s crowding concerns are mostly during the peak evening commute out of Seattle going north, not event related events that are mostly on weekends. Plus don’t folks going to an event in downtown Seattle from SnoCo today already take Link by catching it at Northgate?
If crowding is not an issue because ridership on LLE is much less than ST is estimating will that get ST to rethink DSTT2? I doubt it, because I think what is driving DSTT2 is not Link capacity.
I too noticed that the Urbanist writer doesn’t understand the difference between riders getting on at at Lynnwood Link station and “additional” riders. The Snohomish riders that use a feeder bus from Northgate today are in the estimate quoted in the article as are those that park at Northgate. There’s double counting going on.
It’s also confusing about the train load estimates in that without the 2 Line going across Lake Washington the estimated loads won’t occur in the first year.
The article seems rather unfocused about the crowding discussion and that misinforms people. There are four distinct time periods here:
1. LLE open but no trains from OMF-E (2-? Months only)
2. LLE open but test trains coming from OMF-E (5-6 months?)
3. Lines 1 and 2 fully open as well as Federal Way Link (2-5 years?)
4. Lines 1 and 2 open as well as OMF-S but no DSTT or TDLE yet.
ST dtaff has done a horrible job at communicating the crowding issues for each of these four time periods to the Board and to the public. They just keep declaring that it’s a problem — yet show no interim forecasts for each of these four distinct periods. No wonder the author is confused!
There will definitely be a huge ridership bump in the tunnel when eastside riders return to the tunnel, probably more so than the Lynnwood Link bump.
Regardless, nearly everyone’s projections will be off.
ST probably has to focus on how to maximize available fleet, and then time it to be full, but not too full, during peak of PM peak. Those wanting a clock-face schedule during peak of peak, I beg of you: Let ST do its job, and stay out of the way.
“is there really no way for ST to be more creative about storing trains that they cannot put more trains on the property”
You’d have to ask ST that. We’re not rail engineers, and we can’t make ST do anything.
I wish there were a way to ask ST to be more creative. I don’t know how to do it. It’s incomprehensible to me that the whole system was allowed to go down to 15 minute headways for a month to replace the platform surface on two stations.
There is apparently no oversight that cares.
The first place to start with the train storage capacity issue is: what are their spares assumptions?
Their agency profile on the National Transit Database shows them retaining a 13% or so spares ratio, with a light rail car fleet only 11 years old in 2019:
https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/transit_agency_profile_doc/2019/00040.pdf
A huge portion of the cars that will be entering service for Lynnwood Link are going to be very, very new. Once the burn in period is over, they should be quite reliable and not need to be taken out of service for weeks on end for heavy rebuilding, etc except for collisions, etc. Those cars which do need to be taken out of service for scheduled maintenance, collisions, etc might be exchanged for those across the lake.
Is there any chance of shuffling the bus storage around and having Link temporarily use space at Ryerson Base? Temporary railroad track in the form of “panel track” isn’t exactly rare, and it really shouldn’t take too long to install a new crossing at this location. Remember, this is all very low speed storage track stuff, so it doesn’t need anything more than what is done at the typical industrial spur throughout SoDo. If you’re just storing cars, you don’t even need to electrify these storage tracks. Just use a trackmobile to shuffle the cars around and get them onto the main line.
As to borrowing cars from other agencies, as of 2021 TriMet has a surplus of some 40 cars
https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/transit_agency_profile_doc/2021/00008.pdf
thanks to the loss of peak commuters.
You’d probably need to reconfigure the static converter (the device on the car on the roof that converts the medium voltage DC to 3 phase AC for use with the various car systems) to operate at Link’s higher voltage. TriMet currently operates at 900 volts in sections, so it may be possible to come up with a way to use these as provided to TriMet, but we’re talking a year before opening. If planning started now, research into a solution should be possible. Even if it means buying 20 or so extra static converters specifically to convert TriMet cars to Link voltage, they could eventually be used on future Link cars as they are built.
Unfortunately, it would take a lot of money to rebuild, but one thing that strikes me about Link’s SoDo Base vs TriMet’s Ruby Junction shop complex is how much space Link wastes in the switch fans that approach the storage tracks:
TriMet:
https://www.google.com/maps/@45.5130262,-122.4571794,157m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu
SoundTransit:
https://www.google.com/maps/@47.5770699,-122.3227271,152m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu
It looks like there’s a hell of a lot of track at Link OMF Central that just wanders around the facility in order to provide various routing options for cars to be moved throughout the facility. It seems like there should be a more space efficient way to deal with that need. It seems like TriMet is doing a whole lot more in the same amount of space.
But, I’ve never been inside either facility and the areal view doesn’t show how they use either space during nightly shutdown.
Carl, several people have proposed that same idea in various options. So you’re in good company.
However, I believe that one impediment is that ST does not want to expose parked trains to vandals. That means that the pockets at Stadium and Rainier Beach are out; they are entirely unprotected. They only hold one train each anyway. That’s eight LRV’s total.
Places they can hold them in relative safety would be the tails at Lynnwood and Angle Lake, the platforms and pocket at Judkins Park, and the pocket at Northgate. All those track segments are elevated.
It looks to me like the tails at Lynnwood are two trains long, but parking two end to end would require long hikes for the operators on an elevated structure not designed for walking between trains. The same is true of Angle Lake. That structure is functionally “infinitely long”, since it is already complete to the 518 extension and probably could hold four or five trains per track, but again the structure is just a double-track railroad with no place to walk between the station and the parked trains.
Using the tails and the pocket at Northgate would require some sort of collapsible barrier across the ends of the stations to keep people off the tails. The whole station at Judkins Park could remain barricaded, of course.
If you total these places up, using just a single train per stub track or pocket, you still get to eight trains, or 32 LRV’s. Use of these elevated stubs would require a live police presence at the adjacent stations throughout the night for vandalism protection. That’s four stations, Lynnwood, Northgate, Judkins Park and Angle Lake. ST will probably want to protect them anyway.
It would also require that operators be shuttled to trains entering service and from those leaving service at the four stations between the various ends of track and Forest Street. That means more crew vans.
However the protective officers plus the extra van drivers wouldn’t cost very much. So, yes, ST can do this for a while until Bellevue MF comes on line if they are willing to think creatively.
@Carl,
“ If the issue is where do they put them at night, then how about on the not-in-revenue-service branch to the Rainier/MLK station? ”
Ah, I assume you mean the part of the 2-Link between IDS and Judkins Park Station. But, for the zillion time! News Flash! That is exactly where the plinth problem is.
I.e., it’s not the floating bridge that is the problem, it’s the fixed bridges. In fact, there aren’t even any rails in place right now between IDS and JPS. So not possible to park a single LRV there.
Additionally, it isn’t just parking that is an issue. Those LRV’s need to be serviced while parked. This is why ST is considering parking some LRV’s mid line at Northgate Station, because they have he required service access there.
Could we get a readerboard in the stations showing the estimated real-time arrival of real-time arrival readerboards?
Years, probably.
Lol. Well put. +10
I just responded to somebody who emailed the contact address about this. I wrote:
That has been an ongoing issue. The “2-minute arrival” announcements
were in the original Link contract and have been maintained ever
since. The contract didn’t specify “N minutes to next arrival”
messages, and ST for years said it didn’t have the money to implement
that, and the 1980s displays in the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel
(DSTT) couldn’t accommodate that. (They only supported long-term
messages, not real-time changes, and had an old communication
interface.)
In the 2010s Sound Transit said replacing the displays with real-time
information was part of ST2. The entire ST2 was supposed to be
finished by 2023 (this year). (Lynnwood, Kent-Des Moines, Redmond Tech, Sounder
South runs, Sounder parking garages, etc.)
Around 2018 ST found a workaround and retrofitted next-arrival
messages into the existing DSTT displays, in the little-used bottom
line. But they succumbed to the same problem that affects Metro’s bus
displays and One Bus Away and the other transit apps/maps: the data
contains errors and often doesn’t know where a bus is or that it’s
running, or can’t predict what future congestion it will be in or how
many wheelchair ramp deployments before it reaches your stop. So the
“N minutes” displays are often wrong and sometimes say implausable
things, like “40 minutes” in a corridor that’s supposed to be every 10
minutes. That could mean there’s a 30-minute delay or the display is
just hallucinating. In practice it was sometimes one, sometimes the other, and you never new which until a train arrived or didn’t.
And then during the lockdowns when Link was reduced to 20-30 minutes,
the next-arrival messages became even more inaccurate so ST turned
them off. Later it turned them on again, but they were still
inaccurate and confusing riders, so it turned them off again.
This summer for a few weeks it turned them on to test how many errors
there were and to try to trace where they’re coming from. The displays
were accurate at least half the time in my experience. After a few
weeks it turned them off. That’s all I know. Presumably ST is working
on it, and maybe sometime they’ll come on again and be accurate, but I
don’t know when.
Does anybody have any more information, or a different experience? And when did the next-arrival times first go on in the DSTT? I don’t quite remember.
You can estimate some of that. That’s why the software that does this stuff relies so heavily on the schedule. It’d be great if things like traffic congestion, traffic slowdowns, etc were factored in.
I feel like the awful software that controls all that is why TriMet’s web site now features GPS location of everything. It’s not exactly throwing up their hands and they do have new arrival displays going up, but it seems like it’s a nod to the fact the software doesn’t work as well as would be hoped.
This is SO easy for a rail line to fix. There is real time data of the position of every train in the signaled portions of the system available from the Traffic Control System. Every “block” has sensors that detect the presence of trains, and the trains identify themselves when they enter or depart a station.
It is a nearly trivial programming task to join those two data streams and compute the expected arrival of every train at every station along its future path to its “away” terminus and modify it in real time. Now the TCS vendors may demand a “tax” on the data streams, but that’s a relatively small price to pay for real-time train arrival times.
It is MUCH harder to predict accurately for buses, of course, because they’re at the mercy of traffic and random loading delays that trains are not.
Yeah, it is clear that something like this is a software problem and that the software is garbage. It is also quite possible that whatever outside vendor wrote the software has since gone out of business, creating a vacuum where nobody can fix the problem because nobody has access to their source code.
I know nothing of the technology involved, but I lived in San Francisco thirty years ago and they had real-time arrival boards even then, usually accurate unless there was an incident.
It sure *seems* like a low-tech problem — if the northbound train is at Beacon Hill Station, it should be at Rainier Beach in 12 minutes.
Yeah, it is clear that something like this is a software problem and that the software is garbage. It is also quite possible that whatever outside vendor wrote the software has since gone out of business, creating a vacuum where nobody can fix the problem because nobody has access to their source code.
All code written for the government should be open source. The federal government should also have a large IT department, but also hire contractors to do various work. We have learned nothing from the Healthcare.gov fiasco (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HealthCare.gov). Holy cow, they went from an initial estimate of 94 million to a total cost of over 2 billion! And it didn’t even work well when it opened! Yet we still treat software contracting like it is similar to buying pencils.
“The book I wish every policymaker would read.” ($) Audio interview with Jennifer Pahlka by Ezra Klein. Pahlka was Obama’s tech CIO and the founder of Code for America, a nonprofit where volunteers help government agencies fill in software gaps in their services. In her book “Recoding America” she says the federal procurement and contracting requirements are heavily dysfunctional and need to be overhauled. State and local governments may have similar afflictions.
Speaking of Redmond, apartments, and strip malls, here’s a pretty large affordable housing project that recently replaced a strip mall a couple of blocks north of the Redmond TC. First link, before, second link, after.
https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6797869,-122.1240596,3a,75y,134.87h,83.46t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sxlQiR_z_xvIezlqnKOP0kA!2e0!5s20190801T000000!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu
https://redmondcity.blogspot.com/2023/09/together-center-grand-opening-part-3.html
Looks like the Soviet era housing discussed in the Wiki link. Not a single tree on the parcel is left, and not a single retail store.
One of the complaints of the new multifamily housing boom in downtown Redmond is the monotony of design, and that they are all packed in together. Somebody described it as Cabrini Green for the middle class.
How many trees would need to be removed elsewhere if the project were instead a single family home for each resident with a yard? Answer: a whole lot more.
Also, I have visited Russia before and know exactly what Soviet-style housing looks like. A modern 6 story apartment building is not that.
Commie blocks are worse than that. So are recent buildings in Russia. There are several YouTube videos describing them. They’re as tall and wide as Soviet or Hong Kong highrises. In some cases no amenities are built around them (convenience stores, children’s park, school) — it’s just condos and surface parking. In some cases the developer goes bankrupt and the people’s deposits are gone and the building is half-finished. Some people have to move into half-finished buildings because they spent their savings on the deposit and don’t have money to buy another apartment. Sometimes the government steps in to finish construction. I’ve forgotten which YouTube channels have these but if I come across one I’ll put it in a future open thread.
Here’s one of them. Why Russia plans cities even worse than the USSR. Roman discusses the recent housing monstrosities and how his father was scammed. I’ve been following this channel for a few years to see how Russian cities and life have changed since I was there in the 90s. He’s a zoomer so he grew up in a completely different situation. He’s now in exile in Georgia.
When he said that apartment cost 1 million, it was probably 30 rubles to the dollar then, so the cost would be $333K.
I watched some of that Why Russian plans cities even worse than the USSR video, and if those apts are affordable, and if those towns have no homelessness, I’d say those new, yet shoddily-built buildings are better than nothing. Just like Hugh Sisley’s affordable rental housing was better than nothing. Mr. Sisley, if you are reading this, you are a hero of mine.
Daniel, trees and landscaping are required as part of the project entitlements and right of way improvements. It’s all new plantings so will take time to grow and mature.
No retail but there’s 40k SF of ground floor services for low income folks. If we are trying to improve the lives of those in need, connecting people with services sounds like a win and is the result of tax payer money and philanthropy.
Quotes from the Together Center website:
“- People have a one-stop shop to find the help they need – Nonprofit providers collaborate for better client care and save vital resources”
@Sam.
I don’t know if you are joking, but the Sisley’s? Come on now. [edited]
Regardless, North Seattle will only have three stations outside of the University area. Next to Roosevelt High is exactly where more TOD ought to be allowed. It’s not as if the campus is full of precious Craftsman homes or TOD would gentrify the neighborhood.
If not there, where?
Sam often trolls like that. This is referring to an earlier discussion in Roosevelt. Hugh Sisley, called “the worst slumlord in Seattle”, let his rental houses run down until the city condemned them and forced him to bulldoze them. He was just holding onto the land until it was eventually upzoned and he could make a killing. The Roosevelt Link upzone occurred a few years after that, and some residents tried to stop it or cut down the height to prevent the guy who ruined their neighborhood from making a lot of money. Eventually the upzone went through but smaller than originally proposed. Now some of the lots have smart mixed-use buildings on them, some are fenced-off grass, and one is a parking lot that looks temporary.
I frequently see BelHop whenever I’m in Bellevue. Today I saw two, one that had one person in it, and another other one that was packed. If Kirkland had it I would absolutely use it.
$106 million for 280 units, or $378,000/each. And for $106 million you get cheap design and not a single tree. Is there some kind of rule that subsidized housing, especially multi-family, has to be ugly, treeless, and repetitive, even for $106 million. No wonder cities object to affordable housing in their city if this is what you get.
https://redmondcity.blogspot.com/2023/08/downtown-monotony.html This is one of the links from the article Sam links to (on the right side) with Redmond citizens complaining about the monotony and out of scale architecture. Personally I think Redmond has some of the worst architecture on the eastside. According to my link above that is due to the architectural standards set in place under Mayor Marchione.
“I hear you anonymous. The architectural standards were set years ago during the Marchione Administration. It’s not the present mayor’s fault. The first few cheap bland, cubed 6-story buildings set the standard for the next developers, then the next…and on. The city lost control of them years ago. Now, it is was it is, but there’s some salvation with the Director of Planning write new code requiring a certain amount of building art. They are doing this in Marymoor Village, even with out new code. (See the sidebar of my blog.)”
Lol this always goes back and forth. If it is too beautiful then people complain about the wasted money on the multi family housing.
Also the more outlandish the design the more likely it gets held up the city’s own design/zoning board.
It’s a combination of developers preferring modernism and cheapening out when they can. They spend money on granite countertops because people will pay a high markup for them. They don’t focus on siding because people won’t pay extra for nice siding. Also, some of the parking requirements constrain the building designs so there are few options.
While reducing or eliminating more parking minima has been a tough sell, banning bundling of parking stalls with units might be more palatable, indeed when the City banned bundling, I don’t recall any neighborhoods asking for a carve-out from the ban.
“Is there some kind of rule that subsidized housing, especially multi-family, has to be ugly, treeless, and repetitive…”
Around here, every time they plan something good, the conservatives yell about “They’re building a Taj Mahal” and stuff keeps getting scaled back until it looks like a glorified paper bag.
So it’s nice to hear at least one voice promote something other than making this stuff as ugly and unlivable as possible without making it a tent camp.
(And I have no idea why our local conservatives are so fascinated with the Taj Mahal. Everything from the new library in Gladstone to repairing an existing plaza in downtown Portland gets compared to that edifice.”
$106 million exclusive of land is not a glorified paper bag. Any private development would have had tree and vegetation requirements — plus onsite parking — and for $106 million would have been much more holistic and attractive because the developers would have had to sell the units. This project reeks of the arrogance of the homeless/affordable housing industrial complex that treat tax payer funds — and the low income tenants — as their own and think nothing of dumping a huge turd in the neighborhood — which shock and surprise is a lower income area of the Eastside.
No wonder other cities and neighborhoods reflexively object to affordable housing projects. Take our tax money, waste it, screw the low income residents, but ruin some other (lower income) neighborhood.
If a private architectural firm had designed this project and the private developer/contractor had spent $106 million from investors on the building alone they would never work again But there is no accountability for the affordable housing industrial complex.
@Daniel
> Any private development would have had tree and vegetation requirements — plus onsite parking
I don’t know the details of this project, but many times forced parking requirements onto affordable housing ends up cutting the number of affordable housing units in half. Which is then not even used by those residents. I understand parking is still necessary but I don’t think housing for cars is more important than for residents.
Secondly, the project isn’t complete yet. The tree and landscaping will be in front of the apartment. There is another plaza in the center of the buildings, and this one is just denser because it is right next to the light rail station.
Lastly, what exactly would you prefer instead, and besides just decreasing the height. People always say they don’t like xyz, but then when pressed for what architectural style they’d actually prefer it ends up being nothing.
Parking adds significantly to the cost of a building. Structured parking is tens of thousands of dollars per space. A good reason not to have it in subsidized housing. Not to mention that lower-income people can least afford a car.
Mike, I wasn’t arguing for minimum onsite parking minimums for this project, although the absence of a car really restricts someone’s work opportunities, especially when they don’t work in an urban area or office and now live in remote Redmond with limited transit.
What I was saying is that $106 million exclusive of the land WITHOUT the parking minimums that would apply to a private development (often required by the lender) leaves plenty of money for a more attractive and sympathetic design, when so much of the surrounding architecture is much less high. How would Capitol Hill feel about a 66 story steel and glass tower that looked like the Columbia tower?
If cities think this kind of arrogant and dismissive and unattractive architecture is what they will get with affordable housing — when citizens just like this neighborhood object to these kinds of projects in their neighborhoods anyway that they are trying to gentrify — it makes it much harder to site them, especially on the Eastside.
Redmond is not an urban area. A lot of eastsiders believe these kinds of projects belong in Seattle where there is better transit, it is more walkable, and the inner neighborhoods are less family oriented.
I’d be careful with the argument about who can afford cars. A lot of the working poor pretty much have to have a car to do their job(s). At any rate I hope nobody in “affordable housing” is being charged automatically for a parking space.
@Daniel
> Redmond is not an urban area. A lot of eastsiders believe these kinds of projects belong in Seattle where there is better transit, it is more walkable, and the inner neighborhoods are less family oriented.
This site is literally right next to the train station, it literally cannot be physically any closer….. https://goo.gl/maps/CkeMGGMQsoCmGFuP6
> If cities think this kind of arrogant and dismissive and unattractive architecture is what they will get with affordable housing — when citizens just like this neighborhood object to these kinds of projects in their neighborhoods anyway that they are trying to gentrify — it makes it much harder to site them, especially on the Eastside.
What kind of architecture do you want…. People always say ‘this doesn’t look good’ but then when asked for they want come up with nothing
“Redmond is not an urban area.”
Tell Redmond that. You can literally see the mixed-use buildings in downtown Redmond and the multistory offices on 156th and the apartments on 156th and the construction in Overlake Village. Redmond has been described as the densest city in the state per land area, and sometimes the city leverages that. Redmond didn’t have to woo Microsoft or build up downtown but it wanted to.
I think it’s time to ask the ugly questions:
How did ST screw up the vehicle requirements so badly?
Why wasn’t this known in 2016 or even 2019 when these were other solutions were available?
Why can’t ST use tail tracks south of Angle Lake while we all wait for the FWLE gap to be completed?
Why can’t ST look at ways to get more LRVs delivered here — including maybe borrowing or buying some used ones?
Why won’t ST commit to short turn trains when they run short turn trains late at night today (service no further north than Stadium after 12:15 am)?
On this last bit, I think it’s important to stress that the losers here are North Seattle residents. Southbound trains will be only crowded when North Seattle riders want to board.
Many posters here — many of whom have regularly ridden rail systems in other cities — have asked these things over and over again. ST acts like these questions do not exist. It’s like spitting in the wind. I really hope someone elected reads this and forces ST staff to answer these questions.
Several ST boardmembers and county/city politicians and staff read STB, so they know what we’re saying. It doesn’t hurt to email your councilmember and draw their attention to a particular article or suggestion.
ST can only use above-grade tracks for storage as far as there is walkway (with fencing and other safety features).
Brent, there’s no need for a walkway in the tails as long as only one train per track is stored in them. When parking it the operator of the first train to be stored stops at the platform, shuts down the train and checks that everyone is off while walking to the rear car. S/he then boards the back car’s rear cab, boost it up and backs the train in.
This first train parked backs enough farther into the tail that the operator of the second train to be parked can deboard from the first door on the last car on that train after having backed it in a few minutes later.
In the morning, the process is reversed. The first train out is the one parked thirty feet closer to the platform. The operator boards, boots up the train and moves to the platform. That clears a pathway to the train which is parked farther away.
I think it’s the opposite. Sound Transit just really wants to run less frequency and is just finding excuses to justify it.
Part of it is just from the longer length of the route and the decreased speed in rainier valley but where the solutions of turnbacks or installing say crossing gates are politically unpalatable. The long length of the route is really impacting the cost to provide frequency but they seem unwilling to really look into solutions.
I mean if capacity at peak time is really such a concern around downtown, then just turn a couple trains around at sodo or northgate or judkins park or literally anywhere with a third track rather than running the entire length.
When Lynnwood Link is open, the 1 Line will serve three of the five subareas. The starter line will serve the fourth. The newly-extended T Line serves the fifth.
That covers all the subareas, with 10-minute off-peak headway on all all-day rail lines. Where would support come from on the Board to reduce frequency?
The storage issue will force some short runs, with fine tuning in the weeks following opening of LLE.
Judkins Park Station and its switches will be needed when testing begins on the floating bridge. That testing will, of necessity, take longer than past openings. If anything forces a change in headways, it will be the bridge’s tolerance for train speed, train size, frequency, ability to handle two trains crossing at once, or something else the engineers know better than us. We dare not ignore the opinions of the engineers.
> That covers all the subareas, with 10-minute off-peak headway on all all-day rail lines. Where would support come from on the Board to reduce frequency?
Sorry, I noticed Al’s original comment didn’t have the presentation so I failed to include the context. It’s from https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/ActiveDocuments/Presentation%20-%20ST2%20Light%20Rail%20Service%20and%20Passenger%20Experience%2009-07-23.pdf
They are lowering the peak frequency from 8 minutes to 10-minute frequency — implying even lower frequency during (12/15 minutes?) off-peak times for Line 1. The support is because of the lowered number of drivers and train cars needed, and also because they don’t want to break up the 1 at all with any turnbacks.
That’s fine, though fastidious to an insulting degree. People can read schedules and the real-time displays can show destinations. But if you have some evidence that Skycastle Transit has that preference, then so be it.
Just give the turnbacks a different Line designation. They do exactly that in New York for short-turn lines which run the normal span of service. AND they also have peak-only turnbacks with the same number (or letter) as the full-length runs on other lines, or at least, did so before the pandemic.
Let that be the determinant: if a turnback service is full-service span, it gets a different number. If it’s just a few trains at the peak, they keep the same one.
ST also did not have enough LRV in March 2016. It is also an LRV storage issue.
ST did not have enough LRVs to run all 3-car trains, as Seattle Subway wanted, at the frequency Seattle Subway wanted. ST chose to stick with the frequency, Seattle Subway was fine with running all 3-car trains off-peak, and a few 2-car trains during peak.
ST had ample fleet to run its own planned service level. And then it wisely changed that plan and invested in maximizing service quality leading up to the 2016 election.
Brent, as a result, some were concerned about capacity and lobbied against truncating SR-520 radial routes 545, 252, 255, 257, 268, and 424.
@Al.S,
“How did ST screw up the vehicle requirements so badly?”
Ah, ST didn’t score up the vehicle requirements, the contractor screwed up the plinths.
The line north of IDS was always expected to function with both Lynnwood Link and East Link functioning fully interlined. Meaning a base frequency of 8 mins gives you a train every 4 mins. Essentially double the max capacity of one line.
And since all East Link trains get stored at OMF-E, there is no need for more storage. Essentially double the number of OMF’s too.
But without the plinths the result is high demand with half the number of trains and half the number of OMF’s.
That is how we got here. Via the plinths.
If I follow you, the overage is about 50 people per LRV, or 200 people per 4-car train.
That is just one more LRV per cycle. So a one-car, fully interlined, overlay from IDS to LTC would solve the overage problem. And since the overlay doesn’t go south of IDS, the increased storage requirements are somewhat minimized.
Even better if they have excess capacity south of IDS. Then a 3-car train at 8 mins with a one-car overlay would work just as well. And the increased LEV requirements north of IDS would be partially offset by the decreased LRV requirement south of IDS.
Sorry for the spelling errors. Was in a rush to board Link and didn’t proofread. I’ve had trouble posting while in the tunnels.
Fixed (I think) — there weren’t many typos, from what I could tell.
Here is a link to the recent Board presentation:
https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/ActiveDocuments/Presentation%20-%20ST2%20Light%20Rail%20Service%20and%20Passenger%20Experience%2009-07-23.pdf
On page 3, it clearly states:
“Light rail fleet is capped at 214 LRVs until the early 2030s when more fleet and base capacity become available
“There are not enough LRVs to support originally planned service levels as the ST2 extensions are completed”
This shortage has nothing to do with plinths, Lazarus. Sure the plinths affect the initial LLE opening but once trains can cross Lake Washington (a time period that actually should just be a few months since LRV testing on the bridge should begin well before the 2 Line opening day) the issue is not plinths. A major multi-year issue is the number of LRVs that ST calculated and purchased.
Again, how did this screwup happen, and why wasn’t this flagged and addressed several years ago?
[Fixed]
Meaning a base frequency of 8 mins gives you a train every 4 mins. Essentially double the max capacity of one line.
I agree with your overall point. If East Link was built on time, we wouldn’t have this problem, and we would have plenty of capacity. As it is, I think this will turn out to be a very minor problem. I expect crowding for big events, but that is nothing new.
But I quibble with the assertion that the max capacity of a line is every 8 minutes. The main line ran every 6 minutes, which I believe is its max capacity. I believe the same is true of East Link (but I’m not sure). That means that they could interline and run every 3 minutes north of downtown, which would be within the max capacity for that line as well (https://seattletransitblog.com/2015/03/21/capacity-limitations-of-link/). Again, that really isn’t needed, but the system could support it without additional investment.
With investments, it is easy to see us increasing capacity on the lines. The trains themselves could hold more people. We could probably increase the capacity of a train about 15% (https://seattletransitblog.com/2016/12/20/will-link-waste-its-capacity-for-the-sake-of-operational-convenience/) using the same type of seating, but different trains. The trains could be designed for more standing room (and less seating). All of that would be fairly cheap. You could convert the trains to high floor (adding more capacity, and easier access) but that would mean changing every station.
To get bigger increases in capacity would mean further investment. For the tunnel, it means investing in the stations themselves (to allow for more people to exit in an emergency) as well as the things mentioned in the article. In Rainier Valley, you would have to somehow create grade separation, which would be expensive. I’m not sure what it would take on the East Side (if it is limited by the bridge, or the areas on the surface).
You could also increase capacity on one section, without the other. For example, the trains could come every 7.5 minutes from the East Side and the South End, while another train serves the area north of downtown as well (meaning trains every 2.5 minutes along there). That third train could turn back at SoDo, or go somewhere else, like, say, West Seattle.
“The main line ran every 6 minutes, which I believe is its max capacity.”
Link ran at 6 minute peak hours for years in the mid 2010s. We were told that 6 minutes was the limit for MLK to avoid throwing off intersection timings that would make it difficult to go east-west — which would hinder both cars and pedestrians and Link riders going to the platforms. But this year I saw 5 minutes in a planning scenario, so maybe 6 minutes isn’t such an absolute ceiling.
@Al.S,
I wouldn’t worry too much about the LRV storage issue for FW Link. Even ST says it will be minor as compared to the issue with Lynnwood Link. ST is just doing due diligence by bringing up the possibility now.
And the capacity issue with FW Link is really a hangover from Rogoff. He was a pure bureaucrat, and was tough on staff. He didn’t care so much about service levels, he only cared about hitting your metrics.
Meaning, for example, if the line was running slower than normal he didn’t really care why. He just wanted to hit the on-time metric. So his solution was to pas the schedule. So slower service, less capacity, and less customer service. But the new metric was met!
Think the Soviet Union under Stalin.
If Timm is wickedly in resetting the ST culture, then a lot of these “pads” will go away.
So I’m not worried.
@lazarus,
Note to self: I shouldn’t post while in transit.
But this year I saw 5 minutes in a planning scenario, so maybe 6 minutes isn’t such an absolute ceiling.
I think the 6 minute limit is just something they agreed upon with the city. Any more frequent and it becomes very difficult to go east-west. So it seems reasonable to stretch that to 5.
There have been other issues. The trains used to essentially bunch at times. I don’t know if this is because they never invested in a sophisticated monitoring system (to prevent that) or what. It was designed to be light rail, after all, which basically means operating like trams. Now it is basically a light metro (with almost all of it grade-separated) that just happens to have low-floor trains.
It is all very odd. On the one hand, capacity does not appear to be a priority. There has been no talk of reducing crowding by simply buying different train cars, let alone running the trains more often (which has other benefits). On the other hand, the second tunnel is being built purely to deal with crowding (that probably won’t exist). It really makes no sense, but such is the way of Sound Transit.
“I wouldn’t worry too much about the LRV storage issue for FW Link. Even ST says it will be minor as compared to the issue with Lynnwood Link.”
Granted the LLE opening first will have more crowding. However there won’t be more than several weeks of service before the Lake Washington bridge opens for testing unless ST springs another schedule delay upon us. Once that bridge opens, trains can get to OMF-E. ST will need to even have several weeks of 2 Line operational testing (riders kicked off trains between CID and South Bellevue) before the full 2 line opening day.
The LRV shortage after 2026 will last for several years. That’s a problem that will last several years and it affects OMF capacity as well as vehicle deliveries. I don’t think it should be treated dismissively.
> The line north of IDS was always expected to function with both Lynnwood Link and East Link functioning fully interlined. Meaning a base frequency of 8 mins gives you a train every 4 mins. Essentially double the max capacity of one line.
It is kind of a separate problem actually. The real problem is the lengthening of the route means one needs to run more and run trains to maintain the same frequency. Before the travel time was 51 minutes (well like 57 minutes due to the slower than expected speed), with the extensions to Lynnwood and to Federal Way that increase the travel time up to ~85 minutes.
85/57 = 150% travel time, aka sound transit needs to run 50% trains just to maintain the same frequency. And serving the peak time costs even more money if one is just buying an entirely extra train and conductor for a few extra runs. They should have a couple south bound trains just turn around and save that peak-only operational and capital money to use for all day service.
> But I quibble with the assertion that the max capacity of a line is every 8 minutes. The main line ran every 6 minutes, which I believe is its max capacity…. With investments, it is easy to see us increasing capacity on the lines.
I’m worried about the opposite problem… The further and longer Sound Transit’s line gets the more expensive it is to provide frequency. I can see an unfortunate scenario being like BART where it just runs only 15 minute frequency off-peak due to the long length of the route and insistence on one-seat routes.
“But I quibble with the assertion that the max capacity of a line is every 8 minutes. The main line ran every 6 minutes, which I believe is its max capacity. ”
This is one of those things that needs some context.
The 8 minute assumption for peak service was listed in the East Link EIS and FTA FFGA. That scheme had 8 (or 7.5) minutes for both 1 Line and 2 Line.
ST3 referendum promised 6 minute service. That seemingly ups the number of drivers and vehicles needed. However, there remains no official long-range record of decision about having 6 minute service. The WSBLE is still technically a draft EIS.
I’ve often wondered why there isn’t yet a white paper discussing the implications of going from 8 minutes to 6 minutes. What year should it kick in? Do we have to wait for OMF-S or OMF-N? Have we ordered the extra vehicles and provided enough room at the OMFs?
A final point is that there are several operational ways to manage crowding that transit systems use on a daily basis. Some have trains on reserve for that peak 15 minute surge or that unplanned delay that sometimes happens like ST does for sporting events. Others have an express train that runs out ahead of a follow up local train, or some stops are A stops and some are B stops and some are both A+B. Still others short turn the peak service — like having a Northgate – Rainier Beach overlay only during peak hours.
It’s clear to me that these standard operations tools are beyond the current mental capacity of ST staff or they would already be on the table and the added sidings and signal systems would be part of a larger extension project. I really wish ST would bring on a seasoned rail operator advisor from elsewhere (not connected to a large civil or construction firm looking for a bigger contract) to show them how this works.
“I’m worried about the opposite problem… The further and longer Sound Transit’s line gets the more expensive it is to provide frequency.”
I’ve been worried about this too. There are long stretches of low volume ridership north of Mariner and south of Federal Way. It looks very likely that a train may be relatively empty for 50-60 percent of the route but have crush loads for 10-20 percent at another part of the route.
There are however two long-term solutions:
1. Driverless trains. The extra cost of operating service on underutilized segments would drop considerably. Running empty trains is much cheaper if they are driverless.
2. Short-turning (turnback) trains. While not currently envisioned, at some point Seattle riders will probably get frustrated by having infrequent and overcrowded trains and demand through their reps that ST take action. Squeezing in an occasional train that only goes so far and turns around will be one of the easiest way to address this. I could easily see the 1 Line having 6 or 10 minute service to Rainier Beach or Federal Way with Tacoma Done getting 12 or 20 minute service, for example.
The issue that goes ignored is that adaptability is not being better designed into the system now like I think it needs to be. Operations needs change. Disruptions and delays occur. Track closures happen. ST keeps presenting its system like it’s a pretty new thing ready to open, and not a system that will need real-time adjustments once it’s up and running.
I’m expecting that by 2027 the ST Board won’t be as giddy with pleasing developers and will instead will be more frustrated at the barrage of rider complaints that come with day-to-day operations issues.
Love this discussion, and it’s super relevant for the year ahead. I will quibble with the observations about this being a minor issue, or the gap between LLE startup and 2_line startup being only a couple of months.
It is a major issue. Link trains are crowded today. They cannot add four additional stations, one of which (Lynnwood) is a major transit terminal for a county of 800,000 people without adding train capacity and hope fo provide a positive customer experience. Trains entering King County from the north (or Seattle) in the morning will be full. platforms downtown will be jammed in the afternoons. People will be frustrated and confused about how they are supposed to complete their trips. It’s right there in the data for anyone to see.
And this state of affairs will persist longer than people think and get worse as we go. ST isn’t saying when the 2-Line will open, because they don’t know. The depth of the contractor failures and remedial actions aren’t fully understood, and as a result there is zero certainty about how long the LLE system will live in limbo at half service. It won’t be a couple of months, and given the crickets from ST at the moment, I’d guess it will be a year at best, possibly longer.
I agree ST didn’t screw up the vehicle requirements; they have enough trains in the plan. They may have picked a poor vendor in Siemens, but that’s a different issue.
That said, Al S. is asking the right questions about what can be done. No amount a extra bus service is going to solve this. Especially once WSDOT starts closing lanes to fix I-5 before the World Cup in 2026. ST needs to be looking really hard RIGHT NOW at options to move more trains over to the west side from OMF East so they can add more peak hour capacity. They need to get outside their comfort zone and look at storing trains at stations, at tail tracks, in pocket tracks, and anywhere else they can stash some extras. They need to look at shuttling crews out to and from those locations. They need to look at dispatching cleaning crews to do nightly cleaning at remote locations. They need to look at prioritizing the D2 roadway for plinth remediation so they can store trains right upstream from IDS station.
They need to do these things now because we are now inside a year until LLE opens, and the path they are on right now to to lock in their first-ever failed light rail segment opening.
@Another engineer,
You are absolutely correct. Anyone who claims capacity won’t be an issue with a standalone LLE hasn’t been paying attention. Crowding is an issue NOW, and it is actually becoming a fairly routine problem — not just a problem during events.
And anyone who claims that just running more buses will solve the problem is delusional. The ridership data indicates an overage of up to 50 pax per LRV based on the baseline of 4@10. That is 200 pax per train, or 1200 pax per hour.
That is a lot! Just to match that capacity deficit would require on the order of 15 buses per hour, and since the buses are so much slower than Link the actual need based on throughput would be closer to 30 buses per hour. That is huge, and hugely unworkable.
And, ya, there are some people on his blog that think ridership is a zero sum game, that ridership won’t increase much when LLE opens and therefore just running more buses, or delaying the restructures, will solve the problem. They are wrong.
Ridership will increase substantially when LLE opens, and people will vote with their feet. They always do. If added capacity is not provided crowding will occur. ST needs to get ahead of this problem. And solve it with Link, not with buses.
Timm needs to set the culture to make this happen. People will need to get out of their comfort zone and deal with the problem, and Timm can help with that by letting her emps know upfront that she isn’t Rogoff. That she won’t punish people for missing a metric during difficult times. The focus needs to be on flexibility and adaptability, and on the customer.
Unfortunately pretty much all these issues land squarely in the lap of Ops. Timm needs to start by working with Ops to rationalize their gap train and spares policy. It can be done, and reduced spares/gap trains would yield huge benefits. Start there.
“Just to match that capacity deficit would require on the order of 15 buses per hour, and since the buses are so much slower than Link the actual need based on throughput would be closer to 30 buses per hour. That is huge, and hugely unworkable.”
There are additional factors here. Different freeway segments have different levels of congestion, and some origin/destination pairs have non-freeway alternatives or one end not on Link. The biggest chokepoints will be between University Street and Northgate. Not everybody’s destination is exactly those stations. So we can look at more than just express buses from Snohomish County to downtown Seattle. We can identify other routes that will drain maybe not the majority of people, but enough people to give substantial relief. We just need to make the destinations and travel times compelling enough to overcome that average half-speed disadvantage. For instance, Northgate to downtown. Northgate to 15th/Pacific in the U-District. Northgate to SLU. The 23rd Avenue Express (U-District to Mt Baker). Metro can figure out where the largest subsets of riders in the bottleneck are going and tailor alternative express routes to them. It doesn’t matter whether the buses are green or blue.
“The focus needs to be on flexibility and adaptability, and on the customer.”
“Unfortunately pretty much all these issues land squarely in the lap of Ops. ”
I agree with these statements. ST needs to quit being mostly a stakeholder focused agency and be a mostly rider focused agency instead.
That includes having an executive that prioritizes riders over a staff that obsess about problems without framing them correctly nor looking harder for solutions, or over real estate interests.
So many of the ST issues seem to me to be traceable to riders tacitly being given a lower consideration than others.
This tile replacement disruption is a current example:
1. No attempt to look at doing part or most of the work overnight or on weekends only.
2. No attempt to assign more workers to reduce the disruption period.
3. No willingness to short turn trains in SODO as a solution to the capacity problem combined with the vehicle shortage problem in North Seattle.
(This would also greatly ease the anticipated crowding when LLE opens without the LW bridge connection.)
4. No willingness to find and put out of service vehicles onto tracks without active revenue service for the short time that will lapse between LLE and the beginning of 2 Line bridge testing. (Vehicles needing major repair can be taken apart and moved to OMF-E on a flatbed truck and switched out for new vehicles that don’t need repairs.)
Ops staff will say these things can’t be done. The crazy thing about that is that solutions like these are implemented all the time on other rail systems around the world. Staff doesn’t appear to pursue solutions here that are so common elsewhere that even a casual citizen can see them.
Ultimately, Timm is not experienced at guiding different Ops approaches. The Board seems to have chosen her instead because she’ll adapt to their crazy ideas that hurt riders and not have the backbone to challenge the culture of thinking there is only one way to do things — make excuses..
engineer, those folks you’re worried about flooding in at Lynnwood are (mostly) already on the trains south of Northgate! Yes, the folks on the 510’s and CT’s direct expresses will be new riders, assuming they’re truncated. But that’s the thing; they don’t all (or really any) have to be truncated. A subset of them can run alongside Link until Line 2 opens across the Lake.
This has been explained by Ross and others over and over. The answer to over-crowding on a freeway-adjacent rail line is to run buses on the adjacent freeway. It won’t cost ST a dime for CT to continue running some 400’s if people from Snohomish County are feeling too crowded on the northbound trips and demand it.
None of the ST CEOs have had an engineering/operations background I think. Rogoff was chosen because he came from the FTA and would make us more competitive for grants. Timm was chosen partly for her skills at staff relations because that had broken down under Rogoff. Timm did manage a transit agency which included operations and openings, but don’t think she has specialized in it.
There’s also the general problem that ST listens to politicians, large companies, and landowners more than it listens to passengers and their concerns. That’s partly due to the board, and the CEO has limited influence in it.
@Tom, you may indeed be terrific and have written many insightful things on this blog. However I fear you’ve got this one wrong. Those folks are NOT on Link today. Many are still on the one-seat express bus because the transfer penalty doesn’t work for them with the Northgate segment length. When Lynnwood opens, that calculation changes. 28 minutes on congestion-free rail is a difference-maker for folks whose trips originate further north. There’s a big choke point on I-5 between UW and downtown, and there are also others further up the line in Shoreline, Lynnwood and South Everett.
There is a reason part of the New Starts evaluation has focused on how many NEW riders a project will attract to a system. It’s real– rail projects bring new and more people to transit than adding more bus service. We’ve seen that again and again. the Link initial segment and U-Link both hit their 2020 and 2030 forecasts well ahead of time, respectively. So there will be a lot of newbs trying the system as well.
Factor in CT and KCM are implementing network changes that will feed more people to those stations. Factor in a bunch of new free parking at stations. ST is going to get hammered by a flood of trip-seekers with the same amount of already-crowded service they’re delivering today
Adjacent service? Not really going to help much. The trip will be slower and less desirable. you may be right it would not cost ST anything for CT to change CT service…. because it’s CT Service! Are you overlooking that fact that CT has adopted a plan to re-deploy ALL that service into Snohomish County and flow people to Lynnwood? For CT to continue operating service downtown would mean foregoing increased local frequency and new express connections to Link at Lynnwood from places like Stanwood, Arlington, Marysville and Lake Stevens. And adjacent service will be useless once WSDOT starts re-building I-5 in 2025, in time to beat the World Cup. No, the only real solution here is ST finding ways to add more rail capacity to the system sooner than the 2 Line will open. Otherwise we’re headed for an imbalanced system full of grumpy people.
“CT has adopted a plan to re-deploy ALL that service into Snohomish County and flow people to Lynnwood? For CT to continue operating service downtown would mean foregoing increased local frequency and new express connections to Link at Lynnwood from places like Stanwood, Arlington, Marysville and Lake Stevens”
CT may end up partly delayiong that restructure for the same reason ST Express and Metro are. Express access to downtown Seattle is more important to CT taxpayers per capita than it is for Metro, because it’s lower density and further away and has fewer local destinations. When CT was putting together cuts for the 2008 recession, it offered an alternative preserving most downtown expresses or redeploying the hours to local service. Most respondents said keep the downtown expresses. That probably hasn’t changed much, as we see the 4xx continue to go downtown during Northgate Link. The massive switchover is predicated on Link being able to take on all those commuters, and that assumes no severe overcrowding. If Link isn’t able to deliver that until sometime between when Lynnwood Link opens and the full Line 2 opens, then CT may delay the restructure. Especially if ST begs CT to keep some expresses running.
I imagine CT will definitely keep the Swift Orange opening on schedule in 2024, so that may take some express hours. But it may not do the entire restructure or all the local additions.
Yeah, the congestion from the express lanes ending can extend north all the way to Marysville sometimes. The trip I attempted a couple weeks ago took 2 hours longer than it should have because if you’re dealing with Skagit Transit and Community Transit routes that are extremely infrequent (Eg, Skagit 90x or 615) the 15 minutes delay between the 512 and Link can really ripple out.
engineer, Mike answered your objection well and covered most topics. I’ll amplify his reply ust one bit. I agree with you that rail with wide stop spacing [BART-style] does attract more ridership than express buses for suburban commuters. But it doesn’t do so in the beginning of its period of service. It takes a while for folks who don’t already take a bus to hear from neighbors and friends that it’s safe and reliable. So Linkmaggeddon won’t happen immediately, except possibly on Day 1 when people take a Test-Ride.
I also agree with you and Lazarus that ST needs to get the plinths issue SOLVED not just papered over. Once a genuine solution has been developed, they should direct the contractor to finish one track’s worth of them first, in order to open a non-revenue pathway to Ovedlake MF so that trains can be transferred for storage and maintenance at least for one round trip a day.
Eventually the bridge pathway to the East Side will be opened fully. Once that occurs there will be plenty of LRV’s to carry any practical load to and from Lynnwood.
Running parallel express buses for a few months to a couple of years in the worst case is good transit practice, and will allow those who now do use the 400’s to commute to and from Seattle to continue to do so, regardless that they’re using a less-than-ideal vehicle.
As a follow-up, I’d like to point out that is ONLY in the afternoon and only when the 400’s are carrying passengers only in the northbound direction. Some of CT’s routes use the old “Blue Streak” path through Seattle in which the buses use the HOV ramp to Fifth and run collection / distribution”out of direction” on Second and Fourth. Others run “in-diection” and use the express lane ramp to Stewart and from Howell. In either case the buses carrying passengers are in the express lanes in the peak direction through that bottleneck, so anyone riding as a passenger whizzes by the congestion. The 413, for example, has a twenty minute run time between Fifth and James and MLT Freeway Station.
Yes, there’s a bit of a line up for the buses to squeeze through the single-lane ramp to the main lanes northbound in the afternoon, but it’s usually only a couple of minutes’ worth of delay. And north of there, yes, the HOV lanes fill up pretty badly as you allude in the following clauses. But there’s a VERY easy fix for that: HOV3+ with some teeth.
ST certainly needs to take seriously all of the things you and many others have suggested: parking on tails and in pockets (though except for Northgate the pockets are a grade and hard to defend), shuttling operators and having roving cleaners at those off-site parking places. Yes, yes, and yes.
So, while I expect that all of us would very much prefer that ST have all its Ducks in a Row come the LLE opening, if it doesn’t it won’t be the end of the world. If push comes to shove and CT says “we will not continue to run the expresses at our own expense”, ST can pay for them.
It’s a certainty that the 510 will be truncated to Lynnwood; it’s ST’s bus and it wouldn’t want to make its flagship line look bad. But the CT expresses all are “negotiable”; they have the Double Talls for half of them in the garages, and there isn’t much for them to do once Link opens. Very few people other than tourists and kids who want to make out climb the stairs on the double-deckers in London. Even less will they want to do so on a local “feeder” route with little to look at on the way in the winter in Snohomish County.
There are 71 runs which use the express lanes into and out of downtown Seattle and two (the 424’s) which use the main lanes and are therefore at the merce of WashDOT. Run as many of them as are necessary to avoid Linkmageddon until Line 2 is fully open, even if ST has to pay for the drivers and maintenance.
“There’s a big choke point on I-5 between UW and downtown”
“As a follow-up, I’d like to point out that is ONLY in the afternoon and only when the 400’s are carrying passengers only in the northbound direction.”
No, no, no! Southbound it’s 1pm to 7pm with bottlenecks at Northgate, 45th, SLU, and at the Stewart/Denny exit. It’s not solid the entire way and the bottlenecks move around, but it’s essentially every day for much of the afternoon. Traffic went away in 2020 but by 2021 it was back. I was in several 41 and 522 runs that got caught in it. The only reason passengers aren’t affected as much is Northgate Link is open and bypasses it. But if express buses have to keep running in 2024 and more routes added (e.g., reinstating the 41) because Link is over capacity, then more buses and passengers will get caught in it again.
I don’t know as much about the northbound bottlenecks because I travel northbound earlier. I see the I-5 clogged northbound downtown or in the U-District or at Northgate but I don’t have a feel for the time span. But it’s probably similar to southbound, or all afternoon.
Your first question (which leads to the others), was answered by Stephen Fesler at the Urbanist in July: https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/07/19/sound-transit-cant-deliver-planned-st3-link-service-levels-without-major-changes/
The article summarizes a June presentation to the Rider Experience and Operations Committee: https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/ActiveDocuments/Presentation%20-%20Long-Term%20Light%20Rail%20Fleet%20and%20Storage%20Challenges%2006-01-23.pdf
Changes since this presentation include the Board’s decision on the timing of openings of the ELSL, LLE, FWLE, and full ELE. Delayed opening of the cross-lake connection between OMF-E and the 1 Line further worsens projections of crowding.
I don’t remember if this article was posted to any of the July or August open threads, but ST has officially known about this issue since June.
The Financial Diet – McMansions: How The Ultimate American Dream Became A Nightmare
https://youtu.be/zj4gQJOJZqw?si=3-023SBi2WBdyblW
She’s primarily a financial youtuber who focuses on finances for young millenial/gen z men & women but sometimes talks about other social issues that affect finances and well being like McMansions in this case.
Good video on the problems of McMansions as housing, but also why the suburbs and exurbs just suck as a place to live and raise a family like the genuine lack of third places for people.
Oh Zach B!
You hate suburbs and exurbs…. but gosh! The people who live in these places love them. And anybody who bought a “McMansion” in the 1990s and managed to make the payments is sitting on a whole lot real estate wealth heading into retirement.
It’s a free country Zach, you (or me or anybody else) can’t stand in way “McMansion culture”. I’m with you! It’s completely insane to buy a perfectly good 1800 sq ft home in Seattle and bulldoze it and build a 4500 sq ft home, but it’s not my house or my money.
The word for today is “bootstrap”. It’s time for younger progressives to go build the world they want to see. There’s no government help coming, so you’ll have to do it on your own. Seattle has been taken over by well-heeled yuppies, so you’ll have to find a new frontier.
The funny thing about Seattle progressives is how easily they exempt their own behavior from the code of ethics and values they wish to impose on others. I’ve finished up the last paint and tile work in a new 5000 sq ft home in Seattle while listening to the owners gush about the neighborhood and how they didn’t want their daughter growing in “McMansionville” As I was packing up the van, I noticed the new owners planted a “Black Lives Matter” sign in the yard. The suburbs didn’t fuck over Seattle, Zach, stupid progressives with waaaay too much money did. And they’re not done yet! Many of the small “starter homes” in Seattle, the ones that are bought by younger folks in a healthy city, are getting tore down for a new McMansion and a ADU for two. It’s bullshit and it’s going to change Seattle forever (in a bad way). Run, run away if you can!
I post these links on this blog from time to time because it’s good to remember Seattle isn’t the only great place in America. The Midwest certainly has some cities that are more affordable and could use some love. Every time I post about moving out of Seattle to someplace with more opportunity, Mike Orr loses it and goes off about “walkable cities with transit” like Capitol Hill is the only place worth living in America. It’s not. Go buy a house in shadow of Ball State University and start living. Unless you have a whole lot of cash, Seattle is played out.
Here’s your house,
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/917-W-North-St_Muncie_IN_47303_M31138-36300?from=srp-map
Here’s your transit system,
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/917-W-North-St_Muncie_IN_47303_M31138-36300?from=srp-map
Here’s your new town,
https://www.muncie.in.gov
Good luck!
Here’s the transit system link:
https://www.mitsbus.org/mits-bus/routes-schedules/
Service ends at 6:45pm weekdays, 6:15pm Saturdays, no service Sundays. The first route shown is half-hourly weekdays, hourly Saturdays. I don’t have an opinion on the map because I don’t know the city or where destinations are. This is typical of transit in most smaller American cities, and why I really don’t want to live there, and why I think it’s inhumane to force lower-income people to live there.
Inhumane, really?
Granite Falls service is hourly up to 6:45pm with a single bus showing up two hours later, on weekdays. I suppose that you would call that inhumane, too? Note that it’s hourly service, not half-hourly as in the Indiana town. I’d gladly sacrifice Sunday service for half-hourly route 280, myself – but I see it as a trade-off, and can appreciate the different perspective. However plenty of people live in Granite Falls and some of them even take the bus. I might even venture to saying that it’s growing. If it continues to grow, the tax base will allow better service, too.
I know that Muncie is much bigger than Granite Falls, by the way. The point is though, it’s not like just because it’s in Indiana it’s automatically bad. And we shouldn’t sneer at those who suggest it as a place to live. We should embrace that diversity and support them. If a bunch of urbanists move to Muncie, or to Granite Falls for that matter, the place will become more urban, in time. That’s a fine thing to aim for.
You hate suburbs and exurbs…. but gosh! The people who live in these places love them.
That is nonsense. Of course some people love them, but in cities like Seattle, many people are simply resigned to living there. Offer them a straight up swap — a house in Seattle and a house in Auburn — and the vast majority of people will pick Seattle. Seattle is so popular that the city passed laws making it damn near impossible to live here! I live in Seattle (and not a particularly popular part of it). Our house sits on a decent size lot. I’m sure there is a developer out there who could build a nice little apartment, with room for a dozen families who would love to live here. Or maybe they build a half dozen good size town houses, with room left over for the a few trees, and a nice shared playground. People would love that, but the city won’t let me — or any of my neighbors — do that. So people end up in the suburbs.
The whole idea that this is because “it is a free country” is BS. No, it is because the law prevents people from doing what they do in other countries. This is nothing new. Historically, zoning was designed to keep people out. People of color, or Jews. Then it became more about class (keep the poor people out, so that property values stay high). Well great, mission accomplished I guess. A lot of white people got wealthy by buying up land, and then excluding poor people. But don’t pretend this is actually just “the free market”, or personal preference. The laws have a lot to do with it.
Although Zach paints “suburbia” with a broad brush — as do most on this blog — I don’t think it is unusual, and he makes some points I agree with although he misunderstands WHY, or who is to blame.
First, Zach is young, male like 99% on this blog (women LOVE suburbia), and single (suburbia was designed for raising kids). It is easy to insult something you don’t even know let alone understand except from watching videos in your tiny apartment or dorm room, especially if you actually think land use will even out society’s wealth divide rather than reflect it.
At Zach’s age, even though I grew up in suburbia, I didn’t want to live there. Not because I thought it was evil like some on this blog, but because it was boring.
During those single years I lived in the most “urban” neighborhoods in Seattle, to the extent Seattle can be “urban”, like Capitol Hill, UW, lower Queen Anne, and Pike Place Market, and in some truly urban cities around the world. And guess what? Urban cities have their downsides too, even if single, especially if you don’t have a lot of money. It is like being in a candy store with no money. Who cares if there is candy everywhere. Then I got married. Next stop: suburbia.
Zach and the video hate McMansions. I hate them more, and spent four years of my life fighting to amend the MI code to prohibit them. But neither Zach nor the video define or explain a McMansion.
A McMansion is not a moral failing. It is a regulatory zoning failing.
There are two regulatory limits that prohibit McMansions:
1. Gross floor area of the house and garage to lot area ratio (GFAR). This determines “massing”, or the feeling the size of the house is out of scale for the lot. A 5000 sf house is not a McMansion on a 15,000 sf lot, but it is on a 9000 sf lot. GFAR really measures the volume of the house because most houses are more than one story. At 50% GFAR you begin to get McMansions. So the key, at least on MI, was to remove ANY deviations to the regulatory limits, and to cap GFAR at 40%, because only a very naive planner doesn’t know that in the building world maximums really mean minimums. Every new house was going to be 40% GFAR, which was fine.
2. Lot coverage limits, also known as impervious surface limits, which are also determined by yard setbacks, and determine the building envelope on the lot. This determines lot vegetation, and the “space” between houses your eyes can see through.
GFAR and lot coverage are actually in conflict with each other. Generally, height is considered the most important factor in determining massing, so to reduce height you can expand the building envelope and reduce yard setbacks, which then increases massing and the feeling the house takes up too much area of the lot. But generally a single-story house closer to the lot lines has less massing than a four-story house with larger yard setbacks if both have the same GFAR. Except cities like Seattle have very small SFH lots, so have to allow large height limits to allow a house that is large enough to function for a family.
So how did Seattle suddenly get so many more McMansions?
First is wealth, and the reality that it is often easier and cheaper to tear down an older 1800 sf house and build a new house. 1800 sf is considered too small to raise a family in, especially on an $800,000 lot, so does an owner start with new construction or try to add onto an old 1800 sf house that under the new international building code will need every single system totally replaced with less flexibility in design than new construction for around the same cost?
Second is naive Seattle planners and progressives. They actually thought the 2017 code amendments would produce a lot of new, affordable, three dwelling projects on SFH lots, that when combined are worth around the same as a new SFH on the same lot with the same GFAR, in a very wealthy city when women LOVE SFH’s, and if you are married you know who determines where you live.
The urban planning departments at most universities don’t attract the sharpest knives in the drawer. There is no Nobel Prize category for urban planner, and the young urban planner lives in a micro-unit in Seattle while the successful developers and builders live in Medina.
So to hopefully make those three dwelling projects on a single SFH lot pencil out planners went to 50% GFAR and reduced yard setbacks (they wanted to go higher but neighborhoods like Queen Anne fought tooth and nail) WITHOUT REALIZING A SFH HOME WOULD GET THE SAME GFAR AND REGULATORY LIMITS.
How many SFH lots were converted into three dwellings per SFH lot? Very few. How many older 1800 sf houses were torn down and replaced with a new house that had 50% GFAR and went to the yard setback line? Lots and lots, because Seattle has a lot of money, and couples don’t need three dwellings, and maximums become minimums. In fact, Seattle is getting so wealthy they don’t need ADU’s to afford a SFH.
To blame owners, or builders, is stupid, and misunderstands why we have zoning to begin with. It is even stupider to blame suburbia for McMansions, because places like MI have minimum lot sizes between 8400 sf and 15,000 sf so don’t need a 50% GFAR, and even better don’t allow it for ANY structure(s).
There are large houses on MI today, but no more McMansions. All the McMansions are in progressive Seattle because Seattle was stupid enough to allow 50% GFAR on many very small SFH lots, thinking builders really wanted to take a small SFH lot and build — and finance and sell — three small units rather than a huge, new SFH on the same lot for a couple banking it all, with no risk and no speculation, because builders are always attracted to the folks with the most money, and that ain’t someone buying one of three units on a small SFH lot with no yard and no space.
If you are a city or progressive in that city and see McMansions then look in the mirror, and then look in your development codes. It is all right there. You wanted it and the GFAR, although you didn’t get the construction you thought you would.
Daniel Thompson,
Great post! Thanks for putting numbers to what any normal person walking down the street can easily see. 5,000 + square ft homes don’t belong on small city lots. The idea that an affordable triplex was ever going in on a lot worth at least 400k and in some places a cool MIL is just goofy.
I don’t think some posters understand how marriage, family and happiness can be so tied up in home ownership. Not for everybody of course, but for a lot of folks (starting with me) buying a house is a step towards stability and even bliss. I wouldn’t take that opportunity away from anyone.
Mike Orr,
“This is typical of transit in most smaller American cities, and why I really don’t want to live there, and why I think it’s inhumane to force lower-income people to live there.”
Dude, you need to get out more. Seattle housing costs are among the worst in the nation and it’s a terrible place to be lower-income. And nobody is forcing anybody to live anywhere. If you’re happy on Capitol Hill, so be it.
Anonymouse,
If all the younger progressives I know who are currently priced out of the Greater Seattle housing market would move en mass to the Midwest, it would be a good thing for everybody. Ball State rocks! And the White River greenbelt is nice too. Trying to change Seattle is like trying to push rocks uphill. Everybody should keep an open mind and do what’s best for themselves. It’s a Big Country….
> How many SFH lots were converted into three dwellings per SFH lot? Very few. How many older 1800 sf houses were torn down and replaced with a new house that had 50% GFAR and went to the yard setback line? Lots and lots, because Seattle has a lot of money, and couples don’t need three dwellings, and maximums become minimums. In fact, Seattle is getting so wealthy they don’t need ADU’s to afford a SFH.
It’s not because of money but because of zoning. The lots where it is legal to build townhouses that is exactly what has been done. Builders have converted single family homes to town/rowhouses. Where it’s not legal to or very hard to they will just opt to build a giant house instead, though typically its from some existing single family home that is in disrepair since it’s much cheaper to buy those.
“Oh Zach B!”
“The word for today is “bootstrap”. It’s time for younger progressives to go build the world they want to see. There’s no government help coming, so you’ll have to do it on your own. Seattle has been taken over by well-heeled yuppies, so you’ll have to find a new frontier.”
Can you please stop being passive-aggressive and patronizing. This is something you’ve done to me and others before multiple times and I don’t really appreciate it when I’m sharing something that is still a good observation or conversation to be had about like bad land use in this case.
I respect your opinion, even if I don’t always agree with it. At the same time, can you please try to stop being condensending when other people say something you don’t agree with them on. It’s unhelpful and not productive when trying to have a good constructive conversation about the issue presented here when you do it while talking down to me or others when we are trying to raise good points or find issues with the foundation or pillars to your argument.
And before you say “well I’m just being honest to the younger generation” there’s being tactful in what you say and how you say it. Telling me as a gay and disabled person to move to rural Indiana because “its cheap” is something that comes off as really tone deaf without any regard for whom is on the receiving end of that. Sundown towns still exist across America and telling a bunch of queer or bipoc people (which make up a larger segment of the younger generations compared to previous ones) to just “move somewhere cheap” without any regard for why people are where they are or the communities they are a part of is a bit of a callous thing to say on your part.
I’d also point out that “bootstrapping”was literally sarcasm and parody in its origins.
https://uselessetymology.com/2019/11/07/the-origins-of-the-phrase-pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps/
If you want to say to me and my generation we are not working hard enough for what we want. Sorry to say, but that is not true based on personal experience and statistics we have on labor and work hours.
I have spent nearly 10 years on getting my bachelor’s degree in the business field, specifically Hospitality. I’ve had my fair share of failures and accomplishments in that time to reach this goal, alongside challenges being educated during the pandemic. I also studied abroad in Italy for 9 months during the 2021-2022 academic year, which was difficult to be away from family for so long other than face time and heating their voice over the phone. Am currently on my last year of undergraduate and will be graduating in May. Moving back to Seattle to stay with family as I pay down student debt and figure out my next step for the future. Whether that’s in Seattle, somewhere in the county, or abroad in Europe to complete my masters studies and do long term residency then citizenship in another country.
I am fortunate enough to have a support system that can help me with my needs. But not everyone is in that situation and you need to acknowledge that not everyone has the luxury of choice to live anywhere like you and I can.
Sometimes you need step back from what you want to say and ask if what advice you give to younger generations is genuinely helpful or is just actually unhelpful and callous to the problems that the younger generation faces as personal and societal issues.
Zach, you did write this:
“Good video on the problems of McMansions as housing, but also why the suburbs and exurbs just suck as a place to live and raise a family like the genuine lack of third places for people.”
I let it go due to ignorance and youth, and because the McMansion is a regulatory failing, not specific to any one city, although high AMI and small lots with unfortunate GFAR limits are why Seattle still sees McMansions but MI does not. But your advice for Tacomee that, “Sometimes you need step back from what you want to say ” before posting works both ways.
Obviously due to the population in the “suburbs”, which includes most of Seattle by the way unless you distinguish exurbs and suburbs for places like West Seattle or Madison Park or Beacon Hill or Seward Park or Leschi or the RV, and the astronomical cost of property in the suburbs, they don’t suck as a place to live, certainly not to raise a family. In fact, raising a family is the entire allure of the suburbs due to public safety, schools, and green/open spaces. Boredom for younger, single men is one of their downsides. I don’t think anyone would consider the eastside suburbs “sundown towns”. Don’t believe everything you see on YouTube.
Whether the suburbs or any place have “third places” — the new term du jour a la Brooks for planners Roy Oldenburg coined in 1989 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Oldenburg although Ray didn’t know shit about the suburbs — is a discussion for another day, although “third place” really applies to dense, vibrant walkable retail.
“Oldenburg suggests that beer gardens, main streets, pubs, cafés, coffeehouses, post offices, and other “third places” are the heart of a community’s social vitality and the foundation of a functioning democracy. They promote social equality by leveling the status of guests, provide a setting for grassroots politics, create habits of public association, and offer psychological support to individuals and communities.
“Oldenburg identifies that in modern suburban societies time is primarily spent in isolated first (home) and second (work) places. In contrast, third places offer a neutral public space for a community to connect and establish bonds. Third places “host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work.”
[Old Roy also didn’t see WFH coming].
There are few better “third places” in Seattle than U Village, for example, but very few in downtown Seattle. The irony is if the eastside had not had SFH only zones that prohibit retail and commercial uses we would never have the retail density to create retail vibrancy which is the definition of a “third place”, whether Bellevue Square, Old Main St., the MI town center, or just a big lovely grocery store which are some of the most important third places for any community, and why poor and bipoc communities so desperately want those kinds of grocery stores without having to drive to MI for them.
One advantage to having young progressives move to smaller states and rural areas means that these areas will become more progressive over time. This will have a meaningful impact on the political environment, __over time__.
Let me emphasize the last two words. OVER TIME. Not right away. And yes, asking someone who is queer or BIPOC to move to a sundown town is literally asking them to risk their life to help the rest of the country. No one should have to make that choice.
But that’s the tragedy of the commons. It will help everyone if SOMEONE makes that choice (or, more pointedly, a lot of someones do). Some of us who advocate for it do it with that broader goal in mind, while having the understanding that many people are not in a position to do so safely (and that may well include ourselves, some of those of us who advocate for it).
Daniel, you can say what you want to me without it being patronizing towards me.
There is no need to call me ignorant because my opinion slightly differs from yours in how I view the problems of McMansions, how we there, and how to fix it. Just say “I disagree with what you are saying and here’s why with points x, y, and z.”
Or needing to call me a young male urbanist in a previous post to say basically “this is where someone perfers to live their life.” Because for all intents and purposes I am just a person who is also an urbanist due to circumstances beyond my gender and age like my vision impairment disability I was born with, Stereotyping me by what gender I am in relation to being an urbanist is unhelpful and honestly really hurtful to me as a person. Because it implies I’m only an urbanist advocate because I’m just a young dude and not because it’s a means to live, function, and survive as a member of society for myself. There are many men, women, persons etc like me in a similar situation. I am just fortunate to be able to have a support system that is able to be there to help me with my rough patches compared to some other disabled people I know.
Trying to slot opinions of people based on gender is something that feels very outdated to the modern day and ignores the other layers of a person exist and as to why they are x or y on an issue because nothing is black or white its shades of gray on a gradient. Especially now that trans men & women are a more visible part of population and they are just as varied on their opinions.
> There are few better “third places” in Seattle than U Village, for example, but very few in downtown Seattle. The irony is if the eastside had not had SFH only zones that prohibit retail and commercial uses we would never have the retail density to create retail vibrancy which is the definition of a “third place”, whether Bellevue Square, Old Main St., the MI town center, or just a big lovely grocery store
Daniel, do you think cities without single family homes zoning just have their retail collapse? It is not the norm to have single family zoning that excludes all retail to the point of even a small cafe.
Zach B
Sorry if I came over as overbearing. I have nothing but sympathy for the younger generations– because I’m aware that things are much, much harder now than when I was young. A good deal of that is because us boomers rigged it that way for our own profit.
Over the years, I’ve wrote a couple hundred emails to local officials trying to get better service for East Tacoma and the South End from Pierce Transit. I don’t think that did one bit of good. Getting anything done in the political theater is iffy at best, but I’ve always tried.
I feel a great deal of pain for the young people I know when spent time and effort on passing I-135 (house our neighbors) in Seattle because anybody who’s been around politics understands it’s unfunded and the politicians will not support it in the end. I know young folks who actually believe “social housing” is going to change Seattle. I hate to see the rug pulled out from under people. Any political solution… like more transit or changing the zoning… will have a moderate impact at best.
I know young people who have spent more time and effort on progressive political causes than I spent buying my first house. At least I got craptstic 850 sq ft house on the wrong side of T-town out of it. There’s no progressive cavalry coming to save them. Just massive student loans and political disappointment.
Anonymouse,
Oh, Jeeze! Have you ever been to Muncie…. or Ball State? It’s a really queer friendly place! https://bsu.campuslabs.com/engage/organization/spectrum Jump in! The water’s fine!
> There is a new grass roots movement to fix the often delayed Metro 8.
Unfortunately there just isn’t many easy opportunities to extend that eastbound bus lane further west of Fairview Avenue. https://goo.gl/maps/pt4ckRFFt5NfaeTr5
I feel it might be easier to get Aurora Ave to have center bus lanes than this.
The only areas I can see are potentially removing that small section of left turn movement from Denny Way to Fairview Avenue N converting it to a small bus right lane (moving the one of east bound lanes into the previous left turn lane).
Barring that to extend it further some kinda complicated reversible lanes configuration. I’m not even quite sure how it’d work with the bus stops in the right lane.
The only other easy semi-politically acceptable idea I could think of is an hov, freight, peak hours right lane heading eastbound on denny way (besides that people are forced to make a right turn). Though this sounds so watered down to almost the point of uselessness
Close Yale Avenue access to the southbound I-5 ramp. Or toll it.
It’s unfair to tax & toll motorists without giving them a viable alternative. Anything less than a single seat-ride at high frequencies would be a disservice to SLU workers coming from the south end. Currently, the only transit option is express routes from a limited number of park & rides that require a transfer in downtown. I’m all for congestion pricing – but only after we have an actual, fully functional and complex transit system across all parts of the region. And we’re FAR from that.
And where would the traffic on Denny Way go if they can’t get to the entrance to SB I-5 from Yale Avenue. They would go south on Stewart to either 7th or 5th Avenue to get to the next entrance at Spring Street causing traffic to back up on those streets and delaying transit there.
> Close Yale Avenue access to the southbound I-5 ramp. Or toll it.
> It’s unfair to tax & toll motorists without giving them a viable alternative.
I mean currently the Yale Avenue access is just serving as a very weird parking lot at peak times. I could see a peak-only hour toll for that ramp.
> And where would the traffic on Denny Way go if they can’t get to the entrance to SB I-5 from Yale Avenue. They would go south on Stewart to either 7th or 5th Avenue to get to the next entrance at Spring Street causing traffic to back up on those streets and delaying transit there.
People would probably just wait and leave later or earlier. For the ramp closure (at peak time) it wouldn’t actually change that much. At peak time, the people on the ramp are limited by the i5 southbound capacity, whether they wait on yale or some other street doesn’t really change much. The spring street one is already congested, but it wouldn’t make it more congested, it is all leading to the same line.
Actually you’ve given me one inspiration that could partially work, and might be politically feasible as well.
The current problem with Denny Way eastbound on peak times is that cars end up blocking both eastbound lanes to get onto i5. We could add some cones or small barrier that if one is in the left lane must continue straight to capitol hill, while only the right lane can continue to turn right to i5 south.
Then the bus could just use the left lane which would probably be much emptier most of the time. Though one large problem is the bus stops on the right side, you’d have to after the denny way/westlake ave bus stop then skip the denny way/fairview bus stop .
People may not have a choice about leaving earlier or staying later as that may be controlled by their employer and/or job requirements. People also have families and the obligations that go with that.
@Jeff
I think you aren’t understanding the bottleneck… they’d most likely have to leave early anyways to get onto the on-ramp in any timely matter. Currently they’d be stuck in traffic anyways. If this was a free flowing on ramp we wouldn’t be having this discussion
@WL
I do understand the situation on Denny Way but to say that people can leave their job earlier or stay later will resolve the problem may not be the answer. Employers in most cases set start and end times for employees so the flexibility may not be there to lessen the traffic on Denny Way.
The same with saying close Yale Avenue but traffic on Denny Way will stay as drivers will use other streets like Stewart to go to other entrances to SB 5.
I understand the Denny traffic situation but making statement like this which may not be practical won’t resolve the problem.
WL: southbound traffic could access the deep bore via Harrison Street and 6th Avenue; SR-99 connects with I-90, I-5, SR-599, and SR-509.
I watched the RM transit video, but I didn’t care for it. The video essentially implied that what makes transit “good” is when it runs on rails, which immediately brings to mind the useless Seattle streetcar routes and the CCC.
What really matters is does it go where you want to go, does it run often enough, does it take a direct route with reasonable speed, and is it reliable. Not rail vs. rubber tires.
I like RM Transit. He does a great job in general of understanding the nuances. But he tends to focus on the mode, rather than the areas that are served. To be fair, doing the latter is just a lot more difficult. To some, it is a lot less interesting. In this case, he implies that Seattle or Denver is the size of Warsaw. By some measure, they are roughly the same size, but in terms of people living in dense areas, it isn’t even close. I made a little chart, based on the world density map: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YvaLYn6MJqpaYMb5tQpfwNeMXaL_rqu3/view?usp=sharing. In Warsaw over a million people live in density over 5K (people per square kilometer). About half a million over 10K. In Seattle and Denver combined, there are less than a hundred thousand people living in areas with over 5K density. Denver and Seattle are “big”, but only if you consider the city to include the sprawling, low-density suburbs. To be fair, Seattle has increased its density, but not that much.
Of course this effects the mode. Warsaw is full of dense neighborhoods, and corridors with lots of riders. You can run buses along those corridors, but they fill up very quickly. It makes sense to run trams. In contrast, both Seattle and Denver simply don’t have that. Seattle’s really busy corridors are essentially “spines”. The buses aren’t full, because you have so many of them. You can’t replace them with (fewer) trams, because they serve other areas (the basic nature of spines). You can ask everyone to transfer, right before they reach their destination, but people hate that, and you end up losing your riders. As it is, Seattle has a metro serving the main spine anyway (it is called “light rail”, but it is essentially just a metro, or subway, or mass rapid transit).
The trams in Warsaw have an interesting history, and I’m surprised that Reece didn’t mention it. They go way back (and were originally pulled by horses). They grew after World War 1, then were destroyed by the Nazis (along with most of the city, as retaliation for the uprising). Then they were rebuilt after the war, and became the backbone of the system. During the 1960s though, newly developed districts were connected with the city center by buses rather than trams, and some of the existing tracks were closed. There has been new investment (in terms of operations and new lines) more recently, but most of the work has been on the metro.
Reece mentioned the metro, for good reason. It is about 25 miles long, and gets about 700,000 riders. There are two lines, and it doesn’t extend very far (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Metro#/media/File:Warszawa_metro_plan1.svg). For perspective, the Kabaty Station — which is really an outlier for being so far from the center of town — is 7.5 miles from the center (a little more than Northgate to downtown). Like most metros around the world, the thing is focused on the urban center, with stops fairly close together.
I think Reece raises some very good points in the video. The stations don’t have to be grand to be very successful. The metro doesn’t have to be very long either. His point about multiple vendors is a very interesting one as well. But if the takeaway is “more trams”, then that just doesn’t make sense for most North American cities — certainly not Seattle or Denver. We just aren’t those types of cities. We should have better bus service, a compact Metro (similar to Warsaw’s) and good integration between the two. If anything Vancouver is a much better model for Seattle (and probably Denver) simply because the buses and rail integrate really well.
@RossB: With the emphasis of yet. The system only opened in 1995, but serious planning went way further back. Construction actually started on a segment before the Second World War (Something that it shares with Rome, St Petersburg and Munich). Warsaw is planning on building at least one more metro line over the next 2 decades, and has another one on the books.
And the Metro isn’t the only part of the Rapid Transit system to consider, there’s a regional rail system (What Link is supposed to be), which while kind of mediocre compared to other European systems, is still better than most American ones.
I also thought there was a bit too much rail emphasis and bus neglect in the video. But the point is the level of transit: the number of places you can go and the freedom to go when you’re ready regardless of the mode. He also said that cities should make incremental improvements rather than moonshots, and that’s what Warsaw did. It was lucky not to throw away its rail infrastructure in the 20th century so it had a better starting point.
What’s missing in the US is continuous incremental improvements that add up to a lot in ten or twenty years. RapidRide A-F were a good start but weren’t immediately followed up with five more lines, then five more lines, etc, until the full Metro Connects network was running in twenty or twenty-five years. That would have been more comprehensive transit that would serve all the larger neighborhoods that need it and are underserved now. It could also look at filling in the compromises that were made initially (e.g., adding more miles of transit-priority lanes to speed up the buses). If we’d been doing these all along, the calls for rail to Ballard or West Seattle or Aurora or Renton wouldn’t be as strong.
The point is that most American cities should aim substantially higher, like their international peers. Frequent transit should be commonplace and expected. High-quality trams can have a much bigger role in smaller cities than Americans imagine. But they have to be high quality to be effective; i.e., not stuck in mixed traffic or running along freeways and missing neighborhood centers, or running less than every 10-15 minutes, or small, or without future expansion capability.
What’s missing in the US is continuous incremental improvements that add up to a lot in ten or twenty years.
I agree. We really should focus on the problems at hand, and how to improve it. For example, take the 8. It is too slow. What are the issues? Well, dwell times could be faster, so adding off-board payment would help. Maybe the stops are too close together, so we need a stop diet. But mostly, we just need to get the bus out of the traffic congestion. This is why I’m so excited about the work they are doing for the 40. No, it isn’t RapidRide. There won’t be off-board payment. But avoiding traffic will be huge, and lead to a big improvement.
The same is true as you look beyond a particular route to the overall system as a whole. What are the biggest problems, and how can they be solved. In some cases, the answer really is “a streetcar”, but rarely in America is that the case. In our case, my guess is we get the biggest bang for the buck by adding BAT and bus lanes. Next is probably stop diets, followed by off-board payment (maybe system wide, or at various areas, as opposed to being focused on routes). For example, let’s say that we make Northgate Transit Center all off-board payment. Now the buses take off very quickly. Very few people would cheat, since most arrive by the train anyway. Now you’ve made the buses a little bit faster, and it hasn’t cost you that much.
That has never been the approach around here, and it is one of the many problems with American systems. We look towards giant projects, instead of incremental ones. An incremental approach would have lead us to a rapid mass transit system connecting downtown to the UW (and eventually further north and maybe south) but Everett or the Tacoma Done? No way. Meanwhile, we have RapidRide lines that are clearly just symbolic, and meant to show that everyone in the region should have the RapidRide joy, when BRT (or BRT-light) is really not appropriate there, and what they really should have is more frequent buses (and maybe the same sort of fixes as the 40 will have).
We have too few incremental projects, they’re too small, and they get watered down for non-transit factors.
Why does Metro hate the 255 so much?
I think I’ve taken the 255 from Seattle to Kirkland after 10 pm six times in the last month, and three times, the driver has not known the onramp to 520 from Montlake is closed after 10 pm – requiring the driver to call their supervisor to get directions. Inevitably the driver then has to drive their large bus through Montlake and/or Eastlake to eventually get the bus back to 520 via I-5. (the “standard” reroute here is for the driver to turn onto Pacific before the canal and get on I-5, rather than crossing the canal twice to do so).
The 255 also experiences basically infinite weekend reroutes due to 520 construction, Huskies games, construction in Kirkland, and seemingly whenever Metro feels like it. It’s not uncommon for half of Metro’s Weekend Update email to be about reroutes on the 255.
So…what gives? Why can’t Metro run the 255 properly? Why is the 255 routed in a way that’s seemingly uniquely in need of frequent reroutes? I’m not even trying to get to UW (nor, I think, are most riders from Kirkland) – I want to get to something on Link or a RapidRide, making every reroute to “somewhere else at UW” just a complete waste of my time.
I think I’m gonna start driving to Redmond to take the 545, or South Bellevue to take the 550, instead of taking the 255 from my house.
What you are describing is some bus drivers don’t know the reroute, as well as describing the general mess that is 520 Montlake project. What exactly do you want Metro to do with regard to the route 255?
I mean, it’s happened 3 times this month (that I was on the bus for) and never happened in the dozens of times I’ve taken the 255 prior to August. So something’s changed, and I doubt it’s that bus drivers recently got worse at reading posted reroutes. But I don’t know. When I’ve bothered submitting complaints online, Metro blames the drivers for not reading, but I kind of doubt that it’s actually their fault every time.
I don’t really know what I want Metro to *do* (although a bus that goes to downtown Seattle would be nice, much better transfers if there are reroutes), but it just feels weird and frustrating that the Kirkland-Seattle bus situation is so much worse than the Bellevue-Seattle or Redmond-Seattle bus situation.
After having worked for CT, I can attest to their poor communication and training of drivers – especially for reroutes. Yes, drivers are given turn-by-turn instructions on paper. But those instructions are often given at the start of their shift and they never conduct a dry-run, leading to missed turns (and people) and off-route incidents. Or even worse, the info is posted on a measly whiteboard where they check in. I recall when Northgate opened, one veteran driver for route 512 (who never driven the new route), turned into the parking garage for the mall and immediately got stuck. There was no on-hands training for her, just a paper to read.
A new driver or a fill-in driver only compounds the issue.
I highly doubt Metro is no different when it comes to reroutes and training, which leads to incidents jordan7 is referring to.
The construction itself is outside of Metro’s control. Anytime ramps or bridges are closed, it creates a situation where the quickest route to get to a Link station in Seattle would require serving completely different stops in Seattle.
In general when a detour is required, Metro tries to error on the side of having the rerouted bus serve as many of the regular stops as possible, even if it means driving a longer or nonsensical route. The alternative can produce a more efficient route, at the cost of making things more complicated for the user. Here’s an illustrate of what such a system could look like:
1) Rebrand the 255 into three distinct bus routes:
– route 255 (follows existing route end to end)
– route 256 (follows existing route 255 between Totem Lake and Evergreen Point, then takes 520 to downtown, stopping in front of Westlake Station for a Link connection)
– 257 (follows existing route 255 between Totem Lake and Evergreen Point, then takes I-405 and I-90 to downtown, stopping at 5th and Jackson for a Link connection).
Route 255 would follow the existing timetable, but operate only when the 520 bridge, Montlake bridge, the ramp from Montake to 520 eastbound, and the ramp from 520 westbound to Montlake are all open simultaneously. Route 256 would replace the 255 when the 520 bridge is open, but either the Montlake bridge or any of the Montlake ramps are closed. Then, route 257 would replace the 255 when the 520 bridge is closed.
Routes 256 and 257 would be assigned only one timetable, regardless of day of week, under the assumption that bridge and ramp closures happen only on evenings or weekends. Routes 256 and 257 would get bus stop signs at each stop they serve, just like any other bus.
Now, you get into the trickiest part, which is communicating to the customer which of the three routes is in effect at any given moment. You’d need to get Google Maps, One Bus Away, and all of the other trip planner tools updated each day so they know exactly which trips are being run under which route (e.g. if 520 closes at 11 PM on a Friday evening, does the 255’s 10:38 departure from Campus Parkway run, or do you need to go downtown and catch the 257?).
I, myself, would actually prefer such a system, and I think most people on this blog would too. But, can see somebody with cognitive difficulties getting really confused by having three sets of routes and stops to remember, especially if they can’t even handle using a smartphone, and are able to do little more than walk to the same bus stop they use every day and wait for something to show up. Of course, Metro being Metro, where universal accessibility trumps all else, the person (real or imaginary) with cognitive difficulties trumps all other consideration, and the bus does what it does for the sake of keeping the “where do I wait to catch the bus” problem as simple as possible.
Loved the RRFB video in my old stopping grounds. It was really amazing the reminisce about all the places I almost died. I hadn’t realized he moved to Albuquerque. Kinda a crazy place for an urbanist to settle.
I think he’s in Seattle this week.
Was able to grab the ear of some planners, pols and engineers last week in Tacoma, about the value of HAWKs, or the lack there-of. Real infrastructure please.
I think there are a couple problems with them. First, they aren’t common, and as such, they should be intuitive, and based on what people are used to already. Green, Yellow, Red. Why reinvent how to tell cars they need to stop? Just because they are stopping for a bike or ped rather than another car doesn’t change or diminish the need for 100% compliance. Quite the opposite.
In the absence of that, don’t expect good compliance on 35 (real speed often 50-60) mph 5 and 7 lanes roads. Any ambiguity about what they should be doing increases the chances that a driver will just ignore it and blow through the light.
They probably work pretty well in the 2 lane 25 mph world, but that’s not really where expensive infrastructure treatments are needed.
Who’d you talk to? I know most Tacoma pols…. they all talk pro-transit, but all of them have a “to-do list” and a “hidden agenda list” that pretty much puts transit last. The top three issues in Tacoma are housing, crime, and more housing… it’s tough to get past those into anything else.
DM, a couple of City Councilmembers and a planner and a couple engineers with the city. They are doing great work, but they just seem a little too enamored of the HAWKs.
https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/09/12/meet-ray-delahanty-the-guy-behind-citynerd/
Delahanty will be in Seattle this weekend.
I think CityNerd lived in Las Vegas recently, to experience what it’s like living in a low-transit, low-walkability city. I think he said he was able to bike around. I don’t know Albuquerque and it may be somewhat better, but he may just be continuing his phase of living in low-convenience cities.
Interesting experiment. If you are a YouTuber and can live anywhere.
I would say Albuquerque is marginally better than Vegas. ABQ has a real BRT, where Vegas has a toy monorail. They both love their 7 lane stroads, but ABQ is at least attempting to fix them around the edges. ABQ does have a decent network of trails along their ditches and along the river. They don’t go where you really want to go, but they are better than anything I’ve seen in Vegas.
Also, the weather is substantially better, though still hot AF, because it’s a mile high.
Their planners get it, their engineers mostly don’t. Or didn’t.
They brought in Jeff Speck to do a walkability analysis.
https://documents.cabq.gov/planning/development-process-manual/XSections/Downtown_Walkability_Analysis-2014.pdf
The main problem is that it is a very poor city. They often have the right ideas, but no way of realizing them. It takes a lot of resources to undo the massive damage that 7 lane stroads every 5 blocks, both E-W and N-S, do to a city.
NE 130th Street. RossB provided a link to the P3 network. Route 77 serves the North 130/125th streets corridor; it would have 30-minute off-peak headway; that does not seem adequate. It has a loop in downtown Lake City; it would miss most of the bus stops of the Lake City hub.
The awkward Route 77 seems related to the ST decision to delay the Route 522 pathway change. Why does ST want to delay? I read the Urbanist story, read to ST briefing material, and watched the committee briefings. Why are Link headways to be so long? Why stick with four-car trains? The current Route 522 loads are pretty modest; why does it matter much to Link loads whether Northshore transfers at South Shoreline or Roosevelt? The briefing implied that ST is trying to improve the LRV spare ratio and keep more in service.
Brightline Orlando now has an opening date, next Friday, September 22. https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2023/09/13/brightline-train-service-orlando-maimi-start-date/70841060007/ I want to see how this and the all-but guaranteed Brightline LA-Vegas route goes while we consider Cascadia HSR.
in correspondence about Ballard Link and Climate Pledge Arena loads, staff said the south line could handle 5.5 minute headway. Before Covid, the line had six-minute headway. So, a response the LLE issue could be six-minute headway with three-car trains. The staff presentation moved in the opposite direction, toward 10-minute headway; see slide nine. My hope is that in 2025, post plinth, ST will provide two six-minute headway lines, combining for three minutes north of IDS. Shorter trains may be okay for the east line.
This recent video goes through mostly TOD affordable and market residential projects that are planned for various Link station areas and P&R’s using mostly public and surplus land. You can scroll through the video to see the different locations and potential developments. It looks at: 45th & Roosevelt, Federal Way Station, Mt Baker Station, Marymoor Village Station, Kenmore P&R, Bel-Red/130th, Wilburton Station, and others.
https://youtu.be/RuCZUQywzEc?si=7M3h_rHVwpZ5rmGY
I would be an urbanist if the urbanists actually gave a damn about crime, open drug use, and enforcing the laws we have.
I think a lot of us enjoy living in cities. But we don’t enjoy living in cities where tents are on sidewalks, encampments and junkie gunfire are spitting distance from elementary schools (most recently Cascadia Elem in Greenwood, one of the best schools in the state), and anyone can just light up meth on the Metro bus with impunity.
Urbanists have and are dropping the ball by not putting property crime, open drug use, graffiti on their priority.
What makes you think these things are not a priority?
This web site is for discussion of transit, so the stuff people complain about on Nextdoor or wherever used to be considered off topic for here. These are problems that happen in all the other 3rd world countries, so until the USA gets its act together they will continue to exist here.
Come on. Has Metro banned open fentanyl and meth drug use on the buses? Is there a policy or protocol to remove such a passenger from the bus?
In what world do you think there is priority given for that? This is a discussion on transit, and it is pertinent to transit and widespread adoption of public transit. You can’t get rid of more car lanes and force everyone onto buses while Metro condones public drug use on its buses. It is an active choice that Metro does not enforce public open drug use on its buses. Just because social ills exist in our society, doesn’t mean it is not the responsibility of the transit organization to stop what it can from happening on its own buses and trains. I’m so tired of this “nothing can be fixed, until we fix everything in the wider society” mentality. That is exactly the Third World mentality.
If we want public transit to be supported and funded by the wider public, and make it truly something people will take and not as last resort, then you absolutely need to do something about the public drug use on our buses. This shouldn’t be controversial. It’s so cowardly for an organization to say, well this is a societal problem, and until America figures it out, it’s not my problem. Metro should still be doing all it can to enforce fares, kick off passengers who are actively using drugs on the buses. Urbanists need to also speak out more about this if they wish to see their pet projects ever go anywhere and be supported by the public in the long run.
Regular Link service returns September 16th (Saturday). 8 minutes peak, 10 minutes off-peak, 15 minutes after 10pm.
September 18th may have one evening of single-tracking for work between Columbia City and Beacon Hill stations. One email said it would start at 8:45pm and have 20-minute service, but then another email said “All Clear” in the subject line but had the same text. This has happened before and it’s unclear whether the project was really canceled or superceded or the second message is erroneous/misleading. So the reduction may or may not happen.
It would be nice if ST could figure out how to keep OBA updated with all of their maintenance-driven schedule changes, especially if they also can’t figure out how to limit said schedule changes to the area where he work is actually occurring. At least if Link were working with OBA, a rider could just look up the station they’re planning on using and see when the next trains will actually be arriving (including variances from delays), rather than trying to read the tea leaves of the sporadic and cryptic email and website announcements.
I think it’s been mentioned in previous posts that Link uses PTC, so some central system definitely knows where the trains are even on their modified schedules, even if the data aren’t publicized. Maybe it would be easier if we just crowdsourced this to train spotters, though?
Beyonce announcement: “The last northbound [Link] train will leave Stadium Station at 12:20 a.m. and the last southbound train will depart Stadium Station at 12:54 a.m.”
Late comment for the Coty Nerd Video. Are there any opinions of the effectiveness of the yellow strobes embedded in the ground at crosswalks. There was one a half a block north of Lake City Way and Ne 125th street. I think it is not on any more. But I saw a lot of cars and trucks stop for it about 2 years ago. Last time I was there, there were no lights. It seemed to do a better job of stopping traffic than overhead strobes.
The ST staff presentations on LLE have changed in recent months. In April, they forecast eight-minute headway and four-car trains; in September, 10-minute headway with four and some three car trains. Troubling. Both storage and maintenance may be issues (see June). They want two gap trains; they could save two LRV by using three-car gap trains rather than four.
The “2026 problem” does indeed appear to be a new one that staff has flagged. It’s not about the several weeks before OMF-E can be reached — but is instead about several years when the overall numbers of available LRV’s that are purchased as well as room for those purchases aren’t enough.
I’m really mystified why this wasn’t known and addressed during the years of “realignment”. Was it kept secret or was staff and management just too stupid to realize the problem in 2020? Had the problem been apparent in 2020 new vehicles could have been ordered and modifications to the available storage could have been made.
Add this as just one more example of ST treating transit observers as beneath them yet never checking their own work — only to reveal their mistake very late in the process. And of course trying to spin it as some sort of recent refinement rather than admit that they previously made a huge calculation error.
I wonder if ST just forgot to purchase and plan for more vehicles when they got Redmond and Federal Way extensions funded from ST3. I think it’s more than that though because the miscalculation appears to be off by at least 20 percent.
It’s also telling that ST staff can only present one operational solution that has fewer trains or train cars. Why not ask Siemens to add cars to the order? Why not look at whether modifications are possible to store more trains at OMF-E? Why not look into implementing some train runs that turn back early (like between SODO and Northgate) to offload the most crowded segments with fewer vehicles? The Board should have several choices on which way to go rather than be forced to accept the one that hurts riders the most.
It’s still clear to me that ST staff still has a culture that riders are cattle and that the only humans that matter own investment property. Otherwise ST wouldn’t roll out strategies like the one they present here.
> It’s also telling that ST staff can only present one operational solution that has fewer trains or train cars. Why not ask Siemens to add cars to the order? Why not look at whether modifications are possible to store more trains at OMF-E?
The problem is with the reliability/lack of maintenance of the existing train cars. Even if they were to buy more link trains, if they can’t maintain them, they’d end back up with the same number of actually working trains.
> Why not look into implementing some train runs that turn back early (like between SODO and Northgate) to offload the most crowded segments with fewer vehicles? The Board should have several choices on which way to go rather than be forced to accept the one that hurts riders the most.
They should definitely look into using turnbacks more, both for peak time and off peak usage.
What’s a gap train?
Assuming it’s the same as before, it’s a backup train that’s sometime also used as peak-only train ”
“Gap” trains are assumed to be ready for service in case of any service disruption. Two gap trains are assumed each for the Everett‐Airport and Northgate‐Tacoma lines. One gap train is assumed for the Northgate‐Redmond and Lynnwood‐Overlake TC lines. These could be stored
at OMFs or in pocket tracks along the lines.”
From: https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/projects/OMSF/OMSF_Task_2.3B_Core_Light_Rail_System_Plan_Review.pdf
Also actually this 2012 document does show case a multiple turnback layout of ST2 operational pattern. And it actually explicitly uses Northgate for turnbacks, though not sure if that is still true?
Very interesting it uses a 4 line pattern.
Everett to Seatac 12 minute frequency
Northgate to Tacoma 12 minute frequency
Lynnwood to Overlake TC 12 minute frequency
Northgate to Redmond 12 minute frequency
It would then interline providing 3 minute frequency from Northgate to Chinatown.
Page 17 of https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/projects/OMSF/OMSF_Task_2.3B_Core_Light_Rail_System_Plan_Review.pdf
That service pattern makes sense to me. It would be even better if it could be squeezed to 19 minutes per pattern (DSTT trains at 2.5 minutes rather than 3).
Then if the Lynnwood to Overlake went as Lynnwood to West Seattle we would not need DSTT2 (and Ballard could be a stub line).
It never fails to amaze me that ST plans were much more realistic before 2012.
It’s also yet more evidence of how the West Seattle line really screws things up.
It also shows there’s plenty of capacity to run the West Seattle trains to Bellevue or Redmond.
I could maybe be convinced of this, just to have New York-like frequency on some part of the system and show how transformative it would be. But I hesitate to let down on ST’s existing standard of 10 minute minimum on every part of the line. That’s what makes Link above average compared to other American light rail lines and BART. I’d hate to lose that when we’re finally making some headway.
… 10 minutes per pattern…
“ But I hesitate to let down on ST’s existing standard of 10 minute minimum on every part of the line. ”
Crowding notwithstanding, I would much rather wait an extra 2 minutes (go from 10 to 12 minutes) for a train than take over 5 minutes to transfer every time at Pioneer Square/ Constantinople or Westlake stations.
I also would note that a four car train has the capacity of something like 10 articulated buses or 15 regular ones. So even at 12 minutes per train the capacity is almost as high as a bus every minute or so.
I saw an unfamiliar drug. A woman had a small white plastic bottle similar to a travel-sized lotion bottle or an old brandy container. It had a small hole as if for liquid or vapor. Inside the hole was blue. Nothing visible came out of the bottle, but when she inhaled or sipped it, she breathed out white smoke. The smoke was odorless. The smoke may have had a slight feel of chalkiness but I’m not sure if it did. This all took no effort on her part, unlike with a joint or fentanyl where it takes some effort to light it and hold it in an optimal position and keep the wind away. What could it be? And how toxic is it to bystanders?
Probably just disposable nicotine vape?
https://discountvapepen.com/product/lava-box-5k-puff-rechargeable-disposable/
If so, not nearly as bad as regular cigarette 2nd-hand, though you are exposed to nicotine.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24336346/
Results: The study showed that e-cigarettes are a source of secondhand exposure to nicotine but not to combustion toxicants. The air concentrations of nicotine emitted by various brands of e-cigarettes ranged from 0.82 to 6.23 µg/m(3). The average concentration of nicotine resulting from smoking tobacco cigarettes was 10 times higher than from e-cigarettes (31.60±6.91 vs. 3.32±2.49 µg/m(3), respectively; p = .0081).
Conclusions: Using an e-cigarette in indoor environments may involuntarily expose nonusers to nicotine but not to toxic tobacco-specific combustion products. More research is needed to evaluate health consequences of secondhand exposure to nicotine, especially among vulnerable populations, including children, pregnant women, and people with cardiovascular conditions.