Reasonable Transit Expectations

184 Replies to “Reasonable Transit Expectations”

1. I generally agree that service frequency and hours of operation are game changers for transit. I view the function of peak only service is increasingly to offload crowding unless it meets a very niche demand surge like school schedules or worker shifts.

   I will also note that the advent of GPS on buses and real time arrival info like OneBusAway have made the experience of bus waiting much more tolerable. Riders can see when a bus is coming so they can begin walking just before they need to be at the stop.

   That doesn’t solve the missed transfer problem though. The more infrequent the route, the more essential for its reliability to be there — as it is for the bus scheduler to enable transfers without long waits.

   Reply

   1. &Al.S,

      I saw an interesting phenomenon recently. I happened to try to board Link at Roosevelt Station exactly when Roosevelt HS broke for lunch.

      It was a mad rush for Link, and the cars were near crush load. Absolutely packed.

      One stop later? Everyone got off. The kids were just using Link to go to lunch on the Ave.

      Such “peak” loads don’t exist on buses because it simply takes too long to go anywhere on them. This “lunch peak” is purely the result of Link’s speed. Any slower and going to the Ave for lunch wouldn’t be viable.

      Reply

      1. Plus all those students ride free Lazarus. Too bad Link’s future (and present) O&M budget ST just increased by $1.2 billion can’t be funded with 40% farebox recovery, let alone 20%, let alone now realizing ST funded in the levies far too few train cars and OFM facilities. If only Link were free to operate and maintain.

      2. Good observation, Daniel! Not only do they get to ride transit for free, children get to go school for free, walk on sidewalks for free, visit parks for free, and more, while paying a fraction of the taxes you do (if they pay any taxes at all!) for the same services.

         Unemployed children clearly place an onerous weight on society.

      3. I enjoy seeing how different transit submarkets evolve when a higher speed and higher frequency rail service is available, Lazarus. Spare room on a train is like having a blank spot on a painting canvas just waiting to be filled in.

         I have not personally seen Franklin HS students use Link to get lunch at a nearby station but I have seen dozens ride Link to and from that high school every day.

         I’ll be curious if any area private school near a new Link station will rely on the train for access.

      4. Nathan,

         ST’s tax rates are capped, and determined within five subareas, four of which are strained financially. If ST mis-estimated future O&M costs, farebox recovery, and apparently misunderstood the number of trains and OMF facilities it would need, where does ST find the extra revenue in four subareas for those additional operations and maintenance costs? Or where does ST cut? The Board can’t raise tax rates or reallocate subarea equity.

         I am not complaining about ST taxes I pay or my subarea pays, I just have no idea where to spend them responsibly.

         K-12 public education is free for the kids, but under McCleary the state was required to increase state property taxes by almost 30%. ST can’t do that. The state supreme court just ruled local jurisdictions and not the state are obligated for capital school costs which of course will hurt rural and poor districts (last year MI passed a massive capital school levy).

         And if you had kids in the school district you would see nearly every public school district — including MI and Bellevue — is looking at steep cuts including closing schools due to declining enrollment because 10% of parents pulled their kids and went to private schools (even pre-pandemic Seattle was second in the nation with 22% of all K-12 students in private schools). Local districts have to make up any difference, in cuts or somehow more revenue, except McCleary prohibits local levies for general education (but a state law does allow them to “borrow” against capital school levies).

         Some cities are also seeing declining maintenance and capital infrastructure spending in parks due to rising costs, WFH, inflation, and less revenue. Seattle in 2025 has to close a $250 million operations budget deficit, and an additional $225 million more in 2026. Without a doubt some of those cuts will come from parks.

         The mistake you make is you think if there is no charge (you can see or understand) for something it is free to operate and maintain. Classic progressive.

         When you state, “while paying a fraction of the taxes you do (if they pay any taxes at all!) for the same services” you are very naive. Yes I pay more in taxes than some, but if you don’t think I receive more services and better public schools and better maintained parks and better sidewalks on MI you are mistaken. Ironically, WFH has reallocated a lot of money from downtown Seattle to small suburban cities like mine, and we are finally addressing capital infrastructure like sidewalks, parks, bike paths, and so on. God bless online sales tax revenue and WFH.

         The solution for ST is to either pass an operations levy in all five subareas or reduce operations and maintenance to match revenues. But you don’t have to worry. You live in Ballard, and no way Ballard will see Link in your lifetime based on your subarea’s revenue and the exploding costs of WSBLE, and of course the Board Chair lives in West Seattle.

         Because even if folks don’t pay, or have to pay, for Link, it is free to operate and maintain.

      5. Hook, line, and sinker.

      6. the state paid for free youth transit, not ST or Metro.

      7. It was once pointed out to me that learning how to use transit as a child will make attracting riders easier when that child becomes an adult. It’s a skill like learning how to swim or ride a bicycle or drive. So I think of free youth fares as a promotional effort that redeems itself once the child matures.

         I’ve even shown lifelong small town and suburban adult natives how to ride Link. After a few trips, they have become seasoned transit riders..

      8. Such “peak” loads don’t exist on buses because it simply takes too long to go anywhere on them. This “lunch peak” is purely the result of Link’s speed. Any slower and going to the Ave for lunch wouldn’t be viable.

         That is simply not true. Students have been going from Roosevelt to the U-District (on the bus) for decades. The bus is slower, but not that slow. You have to consider the time it takes to get to and from the platform, as well as where exactly you are going to. The very thing that makes the bus slower (stopping) may mean that riders get closer to their destination. Frequency is really the key issue. Roosevelt students were lucky in that regard, as the 71/72/73 combined for decent frequency along the corridor. Now it is a lot more muddled. The 45, 67 and 73 all go to the U-District, but they take different routes. You can wait at the same bus stop for the 67 or 73, but they go different places. If you are headed to the Ave, your best bet is either they 45 or Link, and with Link running more often that is the obvious choice. In contrast, coming back, it is often faster to just stay on the surface, as another bus might come along (https://goo.gl/maps/eGumGpfpXwUby2rb7). If Metro did a better job of combining service along the corridor then the surface option would be much better. Likewise, if Link ran more often (or the stations weren’t so deep) then surface transit would have trouble competing, even for such a short trip.

         It is a whole different story with trips to the Capitol Hill. Roosevelt to Capitol Hill was never fast (nor frequent) on the bus. You could run the buses more often, but it wouldn’t make that trip fast. Roosevelt to Capitol Hill via Link is one of those “faster than driving, even at noon” sort of trips that should be the foundation to your rapid mass transit system. If we are going to spend billions on a subway system, we should try and avoid fast corridors (like freeways) and concentrate on very slow corridors that also have a lot demand (like UW to Capitol Hill, or Ballard to the UW). Unfortunately, folks in charge have largely ignored (or are completely ignorant of) this approach.

      9. The RossB note is correct. Before U Link, routes 71, 72, and 73 combined to provide eight trips per hour per direction to the Ave from the high school; in addition, Route 48 provided four more trips. Today, after U Link and NLC, the routes going to the U District serve different stops; routes 45, 67, and 73 have different pathways.

         Link would be better its headway and waits were shorter.

2. While I understand the desirability of frequency and coverage, I’m not quite sure exactly what you want to implement?

   You’ve called for increasing frequency on the existing routes which will most likely involve decreasing coverage. But then call for extending Pierce Transit’s bus lines out to Graham and Orting will decrease frequency.

   For example from South Hill to Graham is another 5 miles, though I guess the time isn’t that bad since it is a straight shot. Or to reach Orting that’d be from South Hill Mall and checking google maps that takes 8 miles. But most likely it’d just be an hourly bus circulator.

   > If Bonney Lake, where voters rejected an expansion of Pierce Transit’s local service, has a bus connection to the regional network though Sound Transit

   I mean how is that directly relevant to one another? Bonney Lake is not served by Pierce Transit’s bus but by Sound Transit’s bus. That’s why Pierce Transit’s bus https://www.piercetransit.org/system-map/ don’t leave Puyallup. And that Sound Transit 578 is not an hourly bus, it is just a peak-only bus to connect to the Sounder.

   > Sound Transit Express busses have only recovered half of pre-pandemic ridership numbers in May 2023, Pierce Transit’s ridership has stagnated at roughly 75% of pre-pandemic levels throughout 2023, and Sounder has shamefully not even recovered half of its pre-pandemic ridership to this date. Why? … Given that frequent reliable transit in the state is out-performing pre-Covid numbers, might service frequency cuts better explain lower ridership than lingering pandemic concerns and a spiritual inclination towards cars?

   While that sounds nice, that isn’t really true, it isn’t because of frequency but because express commuter trips aren’t as needed. The other King County bus routes running daily (not express/peak only) have recovered a decent amount of their ridership.

   Again I’d like to restate your points are definitely valid, but I don’t know what exactly you want Pierce Transit to implement.

   Reply

   1. It’s easier to apply in more central corridors, like Pierce Transit 1, 2, 3, 4, and 202(?), which are all identified as future Stream corridors, and other strategic corridors like Pearl Street and the 500. This is where frequency is most needed.

      Orting and Graham have atypical challenges. The Pierce Transit service area contracted in the 2010s because southeast Pierce’s No votes were bringing down Pierce Transit levies. The district now ends at Puyallup/South Hill and an enclave east of it, and south of Spanaway (at 288th Street South). So Sumner, Bonney Lake, Graham, Orting, and Buckley are outside it and have no local transit agency.

      When that happened, ST created route 596 to connect Bonney Lake to Sounder, because the Sounder project was predicated on those riders and their taxes.

      ST’s long-range plan has potential high-capacity transit to Orting, which could be realized as a commuter train to Sumner Station or some kind of BRT. But that’s way in the future, maybe in ST4 or later, if there ever is an ST4. Graham is on a different highway (south of Puyallup rather than southeast), so it would need a different route or a route that bends back. The 596 is not otherwise doing much, so it could theoretically be extended to Orting and bend back southwest to Graham. But that wouldn’t be anything at all like “one-pizza transit”; it would be a few times a day weekdays only. ST is not in a position to offer Orting or Graham half-hourly transit, and it’s not really its role; it’s a local transit agency’s.

      Southeast Pierce could reapply to Pierce Transit and somehow guarantee it won’t take down levies (which the tax-haters will oppose), or form their own transit benefit district. But I don’t think a small exurban district could reach one-pizza frequency; look at Everett Transit. Restored PT service should also be restructured: local service to Puyallup, not a slow infrequent milk run to downtown Tacoma. It would depend on stronger frequent service from Puyallup to downtown Tacoma, but that should happen anyway, and is higher priority than small exurban towns like Graham or Orting.

      While Orting and Graham are paying ST taxes, their low density means they aren’t many taxpayers. They’re the margin of error in the ST Pierce subarea. they shouldn’t expect more service than larger, more central cities: that would be the tail wagging the dog.

      Reply

   2. If there’s anything I want, it’s for a change in the meaning of the word “standard”.

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      1. Which is quite reasonable, and a little different than what WL is asking. It may be that Pierce Transit really can’t do anything, unless they spend more money. But it should be acknowledged that most of the system is substandard. Before we focus on a solution, we have to understand that there is a problem, and a county having largely substandard transit is a very big one.

         It suggests a different approach than one taken in King County, let alone Seattle. Prior to the pandemic, Seattle had fairly standard transit. Even before Link, it was close to standard (according to this definition). Thus it make sense to spend a bunch of money improving key corridors (e. g. UW to downtown) which not only have a high proportion of riders, but where so much of our money was being spent. We jumped from being standard, to being good. Buses running every 15 minutes (or better) were common in Seattle. The train ran even more often, and was very fast, making trips (like UW to Capitol Hill) in way less time than before. We built things out of order, but in that sense it was an incremental, and more important, appropriate type of improvement.

         In contrast, transit in Pierce County looks like a complete mess. ST is spending oodles of money on relatively few riders. There are express buses to Seattle, but most of the region suffers from substandard service. All the while, plans continue for building something that will be extremely expensive, and ridden only by a handful (who now ride those same express buses). When the dust settles, it would not surprise me in the least if the county continues to have substandard transit for the vast majority of its citizens, while having spent billions on a train that attracts very few.

3. Exactly why Metro 73 is now effectively dead

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4. Going from hourly to half hourly is a huge difference. My local Community Transit route that used to be half hourly throughout the day still runs hourly much of the day. I can tell you my household’s use of the route didn’t just get cut in half proportionate to the frequency. Rather, it has been practically zero because the route is simply not usable.

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   1. As I mentioned in another thread, I find half hourly routes fairly easy to plan travel around, and the mean wait time if you just show up at a stop or you miss your connection is around 15 minutes – annoying but not horrible. Hourly routes are doable but require a lot more planning. One of the buses I use semi-regularly is hourly except at peak times and I definitely have to think twice about when I leave a place to make sure I don’t have long waits. This is why I was a little skeptical of Mike’s dismissal of that town in Indiana with half hour average frequency – half hour is eminently livable. A lot of us do it in Puget Sound today. I’ll be snarky and say that the Capitol Hill elites should learn to do without, like those of us on the outskirts and in neighboring counties like Pierce have to as well :)

      Also, get off my lawn, etc.

      Reply

      1. Everyone has different standards. To many, half hour service is simply unacceptable. My wife feels that way. Without prodding, she basically said that 15 minutes is OK, but she isn’t going to wait for a bus that runs every half hour. Areas with such service often have very low transit share — they become places that Alon Levy refers to as having “no transit”. What Alon means by that is that transit ridership is so low, it might as well not exist.

         I wouldn’t go that far, but I will say that half hour service is not “freedom” (as Jarrett Walker put it). It isn’t even close. But compared to hourly, it is at least OK, depending on the trip. If you know the schedule, you can get there. But you end up living your life around the schedule, instead of just living your life. The same is true for hourly, but your life is just much worse. At some point, you find some other way to get there.

         Imagine if Link ran every half hour. Would we just shrug and say “well, at least it isn’t hourly”. No, of course not. That would be outrageous, and unacceptable. Even running every ten minutes, it is not often enough. At least when East Link is done, it will run every five minutes on the core.

         To suggest that “Capitol Hill elites” should learn to do without decent service ignores the fact that it isn’t just elites (or even Capitol Hill riders). It is basically the greater Central Area — the heart of the city. These are folks who are basically doing what you want from a transit standpoint — living amongst a lot of other people, close to the major destinations in the city — and they are screwed. I feel sorry for folks who live in other areas with far less potential for transit, but it is much harder to solve that problem. It requires massive subsidies (or everyone to move closer together). In contrast, to fix the problems with the greater Central Area would not cost anything, and the results would help far more people.

         Because that is the other aspect of this that is important. Run the buses a lot more often in sprawling areas, and you increase ridership. But you still don’t get that many rides. Run the buses more often in core urban areas, and you get a lot more riders.

      2. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that all service on Capitol Hill or surrounding areas of the city core should get less service. I just find it a little off-putting when people who do live there claim that it is inhumane to live without. It’s not; millions of people live happy lives without ten-minute service. Your wife, I am sure, would find ways to adapt to being dependent on 30 minute routes as well, and I would never think any worse of her for doing so. Nor would I pity her. So pitying people who do it elsewhere (whether in Granite Falls or in Muncie) is… well, I will use the term “disgusting” because I don’t have time to think of a less strong one, even though it’s probably going a little too far.

         And that was really the point I was trying to make. Let’s not turn this into a values judgment call. It’s okay for people to want to make certain trade-offs, like living in core urban areas where transit service is good, or farther away places where transit is less good. And, yes, sometimes those trade-offs are because of financial reasons. Let’s not put people down by calling the places where they live “inhumane”. I mean, hell, by that token, living in Horizon View in Kenmore is probably inhumane, too. Living in Brier is inhumane – there’s not even any bus service there now! Duvall gets barely any service, is that also inhumane? What about North Bend? I am mentioning those because I have friends and coworkers who live in each place. They’re not traumatized by it.

         One last thing: if people want to see inhumane conditions, I suggest looking at the Soviet Gulag sites sometime. Then they may reconsider just how terrible living in Muncie is.

      3. “Imagine if Link ran every half hour. ”

         We don’t have to imagine. It did run every half hour weekends for over a year during the lockdowns. That, combined with the lack of functioning next-arrival displays, made it literally unusable. Standing a block away, you had to decide whether it was worth it to spend 2+ minutes going down to the platform to see whether there’s a crowd there or you just missed a train, and wait up to 30 minutes. Meanwhile several trip pairs have 15-minute bus alternatives. They may be slower but at least you’re not risking waiting an extraordinary amount of time. And in some cases like Westlake to Intl Dist or Little Saigon, there are overlapping buses every 3-5 minutes. The bus priority on, e.g., 3rd Avenue and the Ave have made these bus alternatives more feasible than they used to be.

         So you can say, “We have buses so we don’t need Link.” But we need to aim higher, and actually keep Link running at 8-10 minute frequency minimum.

      4. We can test the RossB observation this signup; off-peak service on routes 20, 28, 73, 79, 225, 230, and 231 will have hourly headway. In fall 2014, the midday headway of Route 249 became hourly.

         https://kingcountymetro.blog/2023/05/11/metro-will-adjust-schedules-on-sept-2-to-improve-trip-reliability/

      5. Once you factor in transferring from different routes, hourly frequencies become a lot more painful. ( As it could result in several long waits , each direction. )

      6. I just find it a little off-putting when people who do live there claim that it is inhumane to live without.

         I wouldn’t call it inhumane, and I don’t know if anyone did. However, it is inappropriate, and wrong. If our bar is simply to avoid something inhumane, we will have a complete mess of a city. I get why folks in other parts of the region might think “welcome to our world”, but that doesn’t make it right.

         Imagine if the Knicks and Nets moved from New York City to Tuscon and Albuquerque. Folks from Seattle and Saint Louis might say “Welcome to our world”. Folks in Iowa City would say “Hey, you are lucky, at least you had a team for a while”. But that misses the point. It makes sense for New York City to have a basketball team for the same reason it makes sense for them to have good transit: it is where the people are.

         But it is more than that. There is an unwritten social contract. Folks who move to the Central Area (or keep living there) expect certain trade-offs. Higher taxes, higher rents and yes, better transit. It costs Metro very little to provide thousands of people with very good transit there. To try and provide that level of transit in various low-density areas requires a lot more money, and in some cases, is simply impossible. That’s because a lot of people move to low-density areas with different expectations (e. g. easy parking, bigger place for the money, etc.). They won’t take transit no matter how good it is. When it comes to transit, the folks who live in the Central Area are doing everything right, from a personal and societal standpoint. It is Metro that is breaking this social contract.

         It would be easy to dismiss this as a variation of the coverage versus ridership trade-off. Sure, the Central Area of Seattle has worse transit, but at least we’ve covered some area of town where a couple people live. That isn’t the case. Nor is it about some other set of priorities. It would be quite reasonable to say “Sorry, we would like to provide decent transit, but we have to fund basic services, like the fire department”. But it isn’t about that either. It is simply an unforced error — an agency screwing up the system, with nothing to show for it.

         It is really another variation on the same problems that Tacomee mentioned. It isn’t that Sound Transit isn’t spending enough money on transit, it is that they spending it poorly. Well, the same thing is true with Metro. Rather than create a network that would provide thousands of people in the Central Area with the transit that they have every right to expect and is appropriate as well as affordable — Metro will create a mess.

      7. Mike called the living in Muncie, IN inhumane, yes. And I extrapolated from that that living in Granite Falls would be viewed similarly. As I have relatives in Granite Falls, I will have to let them know that the government mistreats them.

         I also have acquaintances who grew up behind the Iron Curtain or in China in the 1970s. They did everything they could to escape places like that and move to places like Muncie, IN or Granite Falls. So the idea that they are inhumane is, to those of us who are familiar with worse situations, preposterous and borderline offensive. But hey, you all do you.

      8. Mike called the living in Muncie, IN inhumane, yes

         Where? I’m looking through this post, and the first use of the word “inhumane” is yours (followed by my response and then yours). I’m looking through Mike’s comments, and there is nothing close to the attitude you are suggesting he holds. Quite the opposite:

         I’ve lived hourly service growing up in the Eastside, half-hourly service in Ballard in the 2000s, and 30-60 minute service now visiting my relative in Bellevue. You can survive it, but it’s no way to plan a city.

         Nobody on this blog has expressed the sentiment you are attacking. You have spent a good deal of time erecting a straw man, and then ripping it to pieces. Now you are suggesting that the attitude held by this straw man is more widespread (“But hey, you all do you.”).

         Straw men arguments are logical fallacies. Done in this way — with absolutely no context, followed by the suggestion that one person and then a bigger group holds that view — is downright offensive.

      9. ” Mike Orr
         SEPTEMBER 13, 2023 AT 11:03 AM
         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.”

      10. Thank you, Sam.

          Ross: I mentioned in my first post the context, “Mike’s dismissal of that town in Indiana”, which I assumed it was sufficient context as it was from one or two threads earlier. I was too lazy to include an actual link to the post in question, but you are right that I should have been more diligent in including the explicit connection to the words that triggered me so that other moderators, like you, would not feel the need to attack my comment as a straw argument. I apologize for not doing that.

          In general, I believe that I have not been prone to erecting scaffolding for arguments out of thin air, and instead engaging in good faith. I would appreciate you affording me the courtesy of not making such assumptions about me in the future.

      11. The problem isn’t the town; it’s the fact that most of the US has unacceptably low standards of transit service. Transit needs to be relatively convenient and competitive with driving.

          “Folks who move to the Central Area (or keep living there) expect certain trade-offs. Higher taxes, higher rents and yes, better transit.”

          An example would be, most routes in the county would have a minimum 15-minute service. The Central Area would have 10-minute or 5-minute service. Only a very few routes like North Bend or Enumclaw or Duvall would have 30 minutes or less, and I’m not going to guess what exactly their level should be. The point is that most routes should have 15-minute minimum service so that they provide reasonable mobility and transfers. Metro is far away from that, so a good interim step would be to fill in 15-minute evenings and weekends on routes that are already designated frequent weekdays or were in 2019, because that designation is based on those corridors being the highest-ridership and having the most promise of future growth.

      12. There are places in Europe with high transit use but infrequent service, but those are very certain circumstances. Eg, there is a bus route that connects Berlin to a small community in the middle of the Grunwald forest. It’s only hourly, but

          1. It has good connections at the other end. Picture the CT route to Gold Bar, but instead of ending in an industrial area with several hourly connections to nowhere, it instead ended at a place like King Street Station, with frequent connections to everywhere else in the region and some to the rest of Germany.

          2. It’s a community to outside world type connection, so the type of trip people can usually plan around.

   2. My rule of thumb is that if I can traverse the distance using active transportation (walk, bike) more quickly than the length of the frequency, it’s just not useful.

      When the PT 1 went to hourly after 6:30pm, I could literally walk the 3 miles home work faster than the average wait plus transit time.

      Unusable.

      I understand everyone’s situation, and how they value their time is different. And there are those (including myself in the future, given how fast my body is crumbling) who don’t have that option do to disability. It obviously also depends on how long the trip is. I’m fairly happy with half-hourly service on the 594, because it would take me 3 hours to ride my bike, and it’s easy to plan around.

      But I find the non-car transit alternative to be a much better rule of thumb than how long I’m willing to wait for a pizza. If I’m going to eat a pizza, I generally walk to get it anyway. Earn your grease and processed meats.

      Reply

      1. Yeah, I often did that too, but there are other options, depending on the frequency with which the delay happens. Hour-long delays on trips I do once a week bother me less if there’s other stuff I can do while waiting, like other shopping, etc. On the other hand, daily trips would get old fast. On the other other hand, yes, personal comfort also matters. For me at this stage of life, 30 min frequency is generally fine, hour long frequency is borderline for anything more than an occasional trip, but I am willing to make do and not give into getting a car.

      2. It’s still useful for someone who cannot walk 3 miles.

      3. There are a lot of considerations, but distance is definitely one of them. It gets down to alternative. For example, imagine we build higher speed rail (but technically not high speed rail) to Portland. The train is a bit faster than driving, and makes the trip in two and a half hours. The trains are also reliable — more reliable than driving. How often does the train have to run? To me, hourly is more than sufficient. In fact, running hourly morning and evenings (each direction) while switching to every two hours midday and late at night, would probably be just fine. What is OK for long distance trips is not OK for short ones.

         The same is true for commuter rail. Of course it would be nice if the train ran every couple minutes (like a metro) but most of the folks taking that trip (which isn’t short) are willing to wait a while for what the train offers (a fast trip to the heart of downtown). If you are commuting to the office — the bulk of commuter rail riders — you evolve your commute around the train schedule. Beats being stuck in traffic, or finding a place to park.

         It is basically the same idea. What is the alternative. In some cases, people don’t have a practical one. They can’t afford a car (or a cab). Biking is too dangerous (or they don’t know how to ride). Walking works, but just takes too long. So they ride transit, no matter how bad it is.

         But most of the people in America do have alternatives, which is why transit modal share is usually terrible if transit is terrible. My general rule of thumb is actually much simpler — is this trip in the ballpark for driving. Sometimes it isn’t, and I drive. My guess is the vast majority of people in most cities in the U. S. feel the same way.

         This doesn’t mean I don’t walk or take the bike when transit is bad. It just means that driving would be considerably faster as well.

      4. “My rule of thumb is that if I can traverse the distance using active transportation (walk, bike) more quickly than the length of the frequency, it’s just not useful.”

         That’s my rule of thumb too. A transit system really should not be so bad that walking three miles is faster than waiting for bus, all too often, it is. Even here in Seattle, there are some trips like Phinney Ridge to Ballard where the walk is around the 2-3 mile range and the transit system simply fails to produce a trip combination that is faster than walking the entire way.

      5. Even here in Seattle, there are some trips like Phinney Ridge to Ballard where the walk is around the 2-3 mile range and the transit system simply fails to produce a trip combination that is faster than walking the entire way.

         Yeah, same with Lake City to Bitter Lake. It is the same problem — lack of cross town service, along with poor frequency. You can transfer, but without good frequency, it doesn’t work. The root of both problems is the same: an outdated network that fails to take advantage of the frequency and spatial advantages of a grid system.

   3. I’ve lived hourly service growing up in the Eastside, half-hourly service in Ballard in the 2000s, and 30-60 minute service now visiting my relative in Bellevue. You can survive it, but it’s no way to plan a city.

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      1. No, but money is finite in practice because there is a limit to what people will vote for. So, as I’ve indicated before, I would pick investing in housing over transit at this point in time. I would particularly invest in housing over projects like most of ST3.

         I just wish that more transit advocates were willing to live with substandard transit until we fixed our immediate housing needs.

      2. No, but money is finite in practice because there is a limit to what people will vote for.

         That implies that the biggest thing holding us back is money. Money is a factor, but you don’t need to spend more money to get better frequency. Just read the title of this blog post: https://seattletransitblog.com/2013/08/19/your-bus-much-more-often-no-more-money-really/.

         So, as I’ve indicated before, I would pick investing in housing over transit at this point in time.

         Again, the biggest problem (in Seattle anyway) is not lack of investment in public housing. We are spending plenty of money on it. The problem is zoning (and other regulations) make building housing really expensive. It pushes up the cost of market-rate housing, which pushes up the cost of public housing. So not only is market rate housing more expensive, but we build a lot less public housing (which in turn makes market rate housing more expensive). It means that the public housing that is built does not fill that niche that has always existed in every city in the world (some people can’t afford to pay rent, no matter how low). The public housing serves only a lucky handful that win the lottery. To quote Mike — that is no way to run a city.

         I would particularly invest in housing over projects like most of ST3.

         I would invest in just about anything over most of ST3. I would put the money into better bus service. Just look at this post. Pierce County has substandard transit. Buses don’t even run every half hour! Half hour service on core routes is really bad, and they can’t even reach that level. You can order a pizza and have it delivered to the bus stop before the next bus gets there! That is ridiculously bad, so what it ST going to do? Build a very expensive rapid mass transit line covering a single corridor that doesn’t have that many riders (and who already have express service that is faster). Again, it isn’t lack of money, it is poor management. Pierce County is spending plenty of money on transit, they are just spending it on the wrong thing.

      3. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-median-household-income-hits-115000-census-data-shows/

         [The actual title of the front-page article in the paper version is “MORE SEATTE HOUSEHOLDS MAKE OVER $200K THAN UNDER $50 K”).

         “There are only three cities among the nation’s 50 largest in which the number of households earning at least $200,000 is greater than the number earning less than $50,000.

         “And you guessed it — Seattle is one of them”.

         The others are:

         San Francisco

         San Jose

         After Seattle come Washington D.C. and San Diego.

         And guess what? Average median housing prices in these cities mirror average median income. Just like in the lowest AMI cities, Tucson, Memphis, Milwaukee, Cleveland and Detroit.

         When I hear folks on this blog — smart people — repeat zoning capacity as the cause of high housing costs in Seattle, despite knowing construction since 2010 through 2020 kept pace with population growth, the housing unit to population ratio is the same in 2020 as in 2010, and the GMPC recently noted the region’s EXISTING zoning can accommodate 1 million new residents (who so far don’t look like they are coming), it reminds me of Republicans repeating, “waste, fraud and government abuse”, and “government regulation”, as the cause of problems that have much different causes, and solutions.

         For some I think the sayings are repeated so often many just come to believe them. Or want to believe them. For others, there really is an ulterior motive, like reducing government regulation that is costing their industry money. For sayings like, “waste, fraud and abuse” the motive is it is so much easier than making the hard (and sometimes seemingly impossible) decisions to balance the federal budget, and “waste, fraud and abuse” applies to poor people, so no need to raise taxes (or even make cuts). Many of the folks repeating those statements know they are not true, but they are not looking for actual solutions. They are looking for scapegoats.

         The problem with repeating sayings that don’t reflect the true cause of a problem is we never address the actual causes of the problem, and the painful solutions. We ignore the issues with Medicare, Social Security, defense spending, taxes on the wealthy and tax avoidance, and locally the rising costs of housing — not on the 100%+ AMI residents because they have more housing choices than ever — but on the $50,000/year resident because they have fewer and fewer choices because they will never be able to afford new construction, and that new expensive construction targeting the 100%+ AMI buyer is replacing older, more affordable housing. Gentrification.

         So the state mandates counties under SB 1220 find ways to “stop” displacement, especially among Black Seattleite because those are the ones being displaced because they tend to live in poorer areas, and the county can’t find a real solution, so makes one up, or passes the problem to the cities, or the Democratic legislature repeats SFH zoning over and over, while taking huge amounts of money from the builders and realtors when they know better, just like Republicans know “waste, fraud and abuse” isn’t the problem.

         Meanwhile the builders and realtors repeat upzoning over and over and over, because it profits them although they were the most adamantly opposed to any affordability mandates in HB 1110 — so that some folks who want to believe that even though smart begin to believe it, except the housing AFFORDABILITY problem gets worse each year as AMI increases and more and more older affordable housing is replaced.

         Too often we want to believe the cause is someone else (“waste, fraud and abuse), or there is an easy solution that a simple change will solve. Unfortunately that is almost never true, which is why these problems rarely get solved.

      4. Daniel, please move that to an open thread before it’s deleted. The topic is transit frequency and some Pierce County issues.

      5. Mike, my post was in response to Ross’s on the same thread in which he raises zoning (in response to Tacomee’s post on the same) ST 3, and investments in public housing, along with posts about Tiddly Winks and gaslighting.

      6. OK, everyone move AMI and zoning and displacement issues to an open thread. This is Collin’s first article, and it would be respectful to him to not turn the comments into a smorgasboard.

      7. Will do tomorrow. Go ahead and delete mine. I have it copied. Fair of Mike to give advanced notice.

5. Sound Transit vs. Pierce Transit!

   In the political arena, this is a real fight for a somewhat fixed number of tax dollars. Of course Sound Transit kicked poor Pierce Transit’s ass and spend a billion dollars on a toy train while the rest of the fair City of Tacoma got stuck with lousy bus service. This is why I never supported Sound Transit and never will.

   As bad as Tacoma got messed over, Seattle may get it worse. Mayor Bruce is trying to use those ST “transit dollars” for some ridiculous plan to “save” downtown Seattle, transit riders be damned. Mayor Bruce don’t care about connections to other train lines or Metro buses…. it’s all about TOD and parking baby! And new retail! All the mayor has to do with sprinkle a little low income housing on top and public will eat it up.

   And if you think Seattle subways are immune to political boondoggle, come ride the Tacoma train to nowhere.

   Reply

   1. “Sound Transit kicked poor Pierce Transit’s ass and spend a billion dollars on a toy train while the rest of the fair City of Tacoma got stuck with lousy bus service. This is why I never supported Sound Transit and never will.”

      It was your Pierce politicians who made it that way. Sound Transit in Pierce County could have had different projects if your politicians had prioritized them. Pierce Transit could have been in a different place if your politicians had prioritized more effective local transit, and convinced people to vote for it, and pushed for the state to authorize more resources in Pierce County.

      Your Tacoma and other city politicians and Pierce County politicians demanded light rail from Tacoma Dome to the airport and said that was the best way to serve Pierce County. They ignored the gap between Tacoma Dome and all of Pierce County’s cities and villages, and the large number of intra-Pierce trips that don’t go to King County. They included a lot of exurban land in southeast Pierce in the ST district that’s now becoming sprawl with little transit. Snohomish County has the least exurban land; it probably should have included Marysville because that’s its largest growth area and has a new industrial center. King County is in between; Kent is in but Covington is out.

      Reply

      1. Mike, what would you have done differently in Pierce Co. with the ST tax revenue.

         The subarea voted no on ST 3 but was outvoted by Seattle. To date they have loaned $1.2 billion to other subarea projects (including tunnels from 43rd to Northgate) and now TDLE won’t open until 2035. If then.

         The Link line was always coming from the north and Federal Way. What is south of Tacoma is irrelevant. ST 3 claimed there would be the money to get tovTacoma Dome. Whether to extend Link to the mall or downtown Tacoma in ST 4 is a pointless exercise. It won’t ever pass. Pierce probably doesn’t have the subarea funding to get to the dome.

         It isn’t like ST is a winning political campaign issue in Pierce. No transit is. Ridership on Sounder S is down 50%. Pierce politicos had to have SOMETHING before 2035 to show for the unpopular ST taxes that were all going to N and E King Co.

         Tacomee is dreaming if he thinks Pierce voters if given a second chance would vote yes for ST 3 that would fund Pierce Co. buses. I am not sure there is a harder county to serve with transit than Pierce. Huge, poor, undense, with a demographic that doesn’t carry a briefcase.

         ST 3 was unfair for Pierce. Tacomee is correct about that. Stupid arrogant Seattle progressives thinking they know better than anyone else how to live. It doesn’t matter in E KC because the subarea is rich and no longer needs transit. But ST 3 was really unfair for Pierce and SnoCo.

      2. Have you guys ever regretted voting in favor of a sound transit proposal? I personally was not of voting age when ST2 and ST3 came out but I think had I voted for them I’d feel fairly duped in a way aggregates me whenever I think too much about it

         Because sound transit proposals are usually, when brought to voters, just ideas that have not been professionally designed for definitive alignment decisions yet, it can seem like ST can manage to sell to more transit/urbanist minded people proposals that sound good but do not deliver

         For instance, I think for many who voted for ST2 in the south end it would have been simply a given that link would have traveled along SR-99, possibly/probably elevated due to angle lake station being elevated along SR-99. This would have gone through the most representative centers that the area had with the highest possible TOD and walkshed potential you could ask for with such a route, if lacking in park in ride infrastructure. It’s such a wide road that it seems understandable to assume you could do it with little to no property acquisition

         I don’t think I would have expected town councils along the route to protest this due to traffic disruption and take the less straight, more property acquisition intensive, and less walkshed I-5 route (for a savings of…a couple hundred million on a multi billion dollar project?) but technically we were never given or promised an alignment so we still got what we asked for. I cannot say I would have necessarily been lied to but I couldn’t help but feel mislead.

         These are decisions that I think will hamper the system for years to come from building ridership especially when park and ride model is falling apart post-covid yet they are also decisions that costed billions of dollars so I feel it is suffice to say it would be to expensive for a future alignment “do over.”

         I don’t know how I shake away this hopeless feeling about the people we entrust to make decisions that prioritize riders first

      3. James, I love being a transit rider but I voted No on ST3 in 2016. I have no regrets about that.

         The reason was that I was appalled at the lack of analysis done before including projects on the list. I could see even then things like assuming only a 10 percent contingency was wrong, that DSTT2 was never studied so the inane station depths were not made obvious , that the projects were way underfunded by comparing them to project costs elsewhere in the US, that ST was handing out lump sums to other transit agencies with no analytical logic, that the use of battery EMU trains of 79 mph max speeds in suburbia were never evaluated and instead everything was a more expensive and slower 55 max speed light rail, and that extra Sounder parking garages would benefit many who live outside of the ST taxing district. More selfishly, I felt that the transfers between lines were never made convenient and that many destinations I like were going to be harder for me to reach when 1 Line would no longer be easy to use to get to Downtown or Capitol Hill or UW.

         It’s been pretty disappointingly clearer to me that the Board nor the staff still don’t know how to run a railroad — literally. The Board thinks the purpose of ST is to play footsies with developers and property owners and big civil and construction companies, while the management can’t figure out how to replace station tiles without a huge extended service disruption. It’s like watching a transit version of the Keystone cops — and it would be funny if it wasn’t riddled with expensive mistakes that will hamper rider use for decades as well as fare revenue.

         I felt like ST3 was needlessly rushed and that the promises of fast delivery by cutting analytical scrutiny were manipulative BS. With new delays every few months and new alternatives appearing out of nowhere, that feeling certainly appears valid.

         I naively thought that the monorail debacle and the toy train nature of T-Link and the FHSC would have promoted closer scrutiny by the voters and that ST3 would fail. I was wrong!

      4. I do not regret my “yes” vote on ST2 because I think it has done a lot of good things. Already, light rail between downtown and Northgate has completely transformed transit in North Seattle; once the 1 and 2 lines operate simultaneously and the train extends to Lynnwood, it will only get better.

         ST3, however, is a different story. I voted yes in spite of big reservations. For instance, I thought ST was doing too much rail extensions and not enough bus service, and never bought into the idea that DSTT2 was necessary. What I really wanted from ST3 was more service-hours for ST Express buses that would take effect immediately so that buses could run more often and for more hours of the day. For instance, going back to the main topic of this post, I do not believe 30 minutes to be a reasonable level of service for the 550 on Sunday and the 545 on Saturday and Sunday. Nevertheless, I voted yes because I figured that maybe ST3 passing would do something, but ST3 failing would, for sure, accomplish nothing. And, of course, the fact that all the organizations I supported endorsed ST3 and all of the right-wing organizations opposed it, also pushed me to vote for it.

         Nevertheless, knowing what I know now, I probably would have voted no for basically the reasons that Al. S. mentioned. Too much money for too little value and the mere presence of DSTT2 and awkward transfers between the lines will actually make transit worse for many existing riders. Maybe if ST3 failed, Sound Transit would have tried again with a smaller measure. But, maybe COVID would have made passage of even a smaller measure more difficult. But, anyway, in hindsight, the “go big” approach, is looking more and more like a mistake, and what ultimately gets built is looking to be far inferior to what was proposed, which was never all that great to begin with.

      5. Mike, what would you have done differently in Pierce Co. with the ST tax revenue.

         I can’t answer for Mike, but I would:

         1) Terminate Link at a station with a good freeway interface (for the buses). The logical end to Link is actually SeaTac, as there is very little between there and Downtown Tacoma (which Link won’t serve anyway). The problem is, it is very difficult for buses to get from the freeway to SeaTac. So just head from SeaTac to the freeway, build HOV ramps so that the buses can drop people off and either turn around, or keep going (as an express to Seattle). Federal Way is fine for that, but it would have been much cheaper to cut over sooner.

         2) Spend money on bus service. It is quite likely that when the dust settles, there will be a ridiculous mismatch in areas outside Seattle, with service to downtown Seattle being relatively frequent (although sometimes slow) and service that make up the bulk of ridership being very infrequent. Light rail trains running every 20 minutes sounds miserable and unacceptable to a lot of us, but it is quite likely that is what Pierce County will have. Yet it will be far more frequent than most, if not all of the bus service in Pierce County.

         That is pretty much it. I suppose I would have improved key corridors (like the one) with a lot of BAT lanes (and maybe some off-board payment in places) but the key is frequency. Pierce Transit buses just don’t run often enough, even though they carry more riders (by a big margin) than the fairly frequent ST buses from the south.

   2. “This is why I never supported Sound Transit and never will.”

      So, you voted No in the beginning, and subsequent ballot measures, and you’re pissed that it passed, so that’s the basis of your constructive criticism.

      Makes sense.

      Reply

      1. Jim Cusick,

         Take a deep breath and tell me what Sound Transit ever did for Pierce County? Stupid toy train not connected to anything?

         Then there was the BRT route on Pacific Ave the clowns at Sound Transit spent millions on planning…. only to tell us it’s not possible (after pissing away 5 years on a project that’s never going to happen)

         We’re still waiting for that light rail to the airport (I’ll be dead be the time it happens… if ever)

         Maybe you’re OK with government not living up to the promises it makes. I’m not. One thing for sure, Sound Transit fooled the public once, but there’ll never be a ST4. Overall, I’d say the Puget Sound public generally supports mass transit. Sound Transit has just trashed much of that good will.

      2. No deep breath needed I just don’t give much gravity to your criticisms.

         Screw your gaslighting.

      3. Gaslighting?

         No Jim, man up here. What did Sound Transit ever do for the millions Pierce County tax payers paid in? That goofy little train downtown that goes nowhere and can’t be connected to anything?

         Pierce Transit could have used that money…. for actual transit. I support that. I’d never vote against PT because they have a clear mission.

         And this goes for all of you Sound Transit cheerleaders. What did Sound Transit ever do for Pierce County? Step up…. maybe I’m reading this wrong, but I doubt it.

      4. “Man up”I?

         Now I know to dismiss your comments as useless.

      5. > Pierce Transit could have used that money…. for actual transit. I support that. I’d never vote against PT because they have a clear mission.

         > And this goes for all of you Sound Transit cheerleaders. What did Sound Transit ever do for Pierce County? Step up…. maybe I’m reading this wrong, but I doubt it.

         I’m not quite sure where all this historical revisionism is coming from. If Pierce really wanted Sound Transit to fund busses instead, Sound Transit wouldn’t be stopping them. This isn’t that uncommon for a suburban area to demand using all of their transit funding for a train project and neglect their bus system.

         Has anyone from the Pierce subarea been asking Sound Transit to fund the bus system instead? I’ve never heard anyone asking say Bruce Dammeier (Pierce County Executive), Kim Roscoe (Fife Mayor), Tacoma city mayor during the meetings for that. Or also what are the questions the Pierce Sound Transit committee members ask about, they just keep asking how to speed up the rail to Tacoma, they don’t care much about the bus rapid transit.

         Also Sound Transit has 4 board members from Pierce County, you’re making it sound like it’s some other entity when they are basically the same people. The other non-Pierce subarea Sound Transit board members aren’t going to stop them if the Pierce members really wanted to fund bus service rather than extending link. Or like they could just cancel some sounder improvements if they didn’t want to touch link.

      6. > Pierce Transit could have used that money…. for actual transit. I support that. I’d never vote against PT because they have a clear mission.

         Well why don’t you or someone actually ask Sound Transit about that and the board members. You can email your representatives today about it. One of them is the tacoma deputy mayor. Like have people in Pierce subarea been asking Sound Transit to fund bus service?

         This is not like where kirkland wanted brt on the erc, that one can point to sound transit clearly just ignoring it and building rail to south kirkland instead. But say for seattle it got it’s rapidride G or bothell and kenmore they asked for stride 3 brt.

         When did the Pierce subarea ask for local bus improvements from sound transit? They just kept asking sound transit to implement link and sounder. Or if they did want local bus improvements, that message has clearly not been told to their representatives on the sound transit board.

      7. WL, technically, ST can’t fund the kind of “bus service” tacomee is talking about. The Legislature made certain that the mid-Sound counties couldn’t raise taxes on something that wasn’t functionally a high capacity transit corridor. The legislation is pretty “pro-rail”, but he’s right that it doesn’t categorically exclude buses, BUT, those buses must connect “regional centers” as defined with a bunch of Urban Planner-ese. The responsibility to designate “Regional Centers” falls on the intergovernmental regional agency which is thoroughly “on board” with density and transit modal growth.

         Buses are allowed to serve a corridor which is planned to receive a rail link sometime in the future “temporarily”. Buses are also allowed to be the “permanent” primary vehicle for a corridor connecting two regional centers which don’t have enough heft to require a train between them. What buses can’t be is “POBS” [“Plain Old Bus Service”] which is what tacomee wants, with a soupcon of BRT I think.

         And I totally agree with him that’s what the county needs, far more than Tiddly-Links to Dacoma Tome. But it [the County] can’t do it using the taxing and bonding authority given to the Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority [AKA “Skycastle Transit”]. They can use the standard RTA sales-tax levy, which I’m pretty certain PT already consumes fully.

         The Leg didn’t want to give a bunch of slackers jobs driving mostly-empty buses around all day, so it waved all that MONEY! in front of the counties as long as it would be used to build and operate “high capacity transit” to make their world wonderful.

         They bit.

      8. Tom Terrific,

         Thanks for pointing out the State government’s role in Pierce County’s transit mess. There’s a great deal of local blame to spend around as well.

         But I still believe Sound Transit deserves much, or even most of the blame here. It seems to me that any transit professional should have looked at the ST long term plans and said… maybe rail isn”t a good idea in Pierce Country? Of course the local pols wanted it…. but I’m pretty sure nobody from ST ever had a conversation with Marty Campbell or Mayor Strickland raising any nagging questions about long term plans. In fact Sound Transit staff went out of their way to call out David Boe (a City Councilman at the time) as a hack when he raised questions. He is an architect…. and saw structural problems from the get go. After his little dust up the “experts” at Sound Transit he just quit City Council. That’s when I turned against Sound Transit because Boe might have been the best member on City Council for decades.

         And I see it all happening again with the 2nd tunnel downtown Seattle. At some point somebody has to just stand up and say it’s not economically or politically possible.

      9. “ST can’t fund the kind of “bus service” tacomee is talking about.”

         It’s contributing to a 1 line upgrade right now.

         “those buses must connect “regional centers””

         Lakewood is one of those, and has been a target for Sounder and ST Express. So a bus from Tacoma to Lakewood would be in scope. PT Routes 2 and 3 are already defined as priority corridors between downtown Tacoma and Lakewood, and intended to be upgraded someday. ST could have invested in various bus alternatives there, or even tram alternatives, and funded operations like it does with ST Express.

         Puyallup is another regional center, as is Tacoma Mall, and Federal Way. Maybe Parkland/Spanaway too. ST could connect all these center pairs to each other, following a RapidRide-like or Swift-like model or both, and connecting more centers to each other directly. That would benefit all parts of the Pierce subarea, rather than just building Link to Tacoma Dome, which barely reaches into the subarea.

      10. @Mike — Yes, but what Tom is getting at is that you can’t just have a widespread increase in frequency, the way that Seattle did when it passed the levy a while back. This was huge, really, and meant that various parts of town that had never had buses running more than every half hour suddenly could expect a bus in half the time it takes Dominoes to make and deliver a pizza. ST couldn’t do that, even if they wanted to. They have to focus on specific corridors (as defined previously). So even a plan like this: https://www.piercetransit.org/brt-expansion-study/ (which is probably overkill) is difficult. At best you are forced to juggle things around (spend money on particular projects, while shifting other bus service somewhere else) instead of taking a more straightforward approach.

          You can still do some good things, but it is definitely more limited. The point being, this is very different than handing Pierce Transit a bunch of money. Hand PT a bunch of money and of course they start thinking about BRT plans (every agency does) but it is also quite likely that someone will stand up and say “How about we start by making sure almost all the buses run every half hour, while other buses — on a handful of corridors — run every fifteen minutes?”. That is essentially what Pierce County needs. Not a streetcar, maybe not even BRT — just more frequent buses.

          It is important to consider the ridership of Pierce County buses. You can see this on page 80: https://www.piercetransit.org/file_viewer.php?id=4085. The first thing that jumps out at me is how low the ridership is on each bus. The 1 has over 5,000 riders. The 2 has over 2,000. Every other bus has less than 2,000 riders. With the exception of those two lines, ridership is very spread out. These numbers don’t beg for massive infrastructure improvements. Even building BRT for a bus that has 5,000 riders (spread out over a very long route) seems like a stretch. Bus or BAT lanes — definitely. But special buses, bus stops, kiosks and all that? I’m not so sure. The only reason is seems to make a lot of sense is because it has so much more ridership than every other bus. But again, compared to typical buses in most cities, it just isn’t that high. But a big reason for the overall low ridership is that the buses run so infrequently.

      11. tacomee, We ARE saying “it’s not economically or politically possible.” And we add in “It’s lousy transit too!” because there are people on the Blog who have been interested in the nuts and bolts of public transit for decades and have seen what works. We DON’T see ST adopting those policies and methods.

          Most of us don’t want the senseless multi-billion dollar second tunnel in downtown Seattle; we want all three lines in the existing tunnel with some improvements for ingress and transferring.

          Most of us think West Seattle is the height of folly because of the terrible geography getting there. It wouldn’t be a bad thing in Omaha or Dallas to serve a similar neighborhood with an at-grade tram system. But in Omaha or Dallas there wouldn’t be a hundred and thirty foot high bridge and a two-hundred foot bluff to ascend.

          Most of us think that pushing Link further south than it is — or, since so much has been done getting to Federal Way and it’s only three more stations, that far. Ditto north of Lynnwood. Where’s the beef?

          But your primary “ally” on the Blog just wants to rub transit-friendly people’s noses in the puppy poo that was created by the pretty-ignorant-of-transit-theory Washington State Legislature in the early 1990’s. The enabling legislation shapes the system being built, as it was intended to do. And since they are a Chamber of Attorneys, the legislation they pass is ususally quite effective at forbidding much “slack” in its interpretation.

          That’s entirely appropriate for topics on which the Legislature has a body of institutional knowledge and wisdom. Transit is not one of those topics.

          By the way, your ally doesn’t like buses either, because he doesn’t like bus riders. Except maybe you, because you don’t like ST and are articulate.

      12. Mike, I expect that Parkland is a “regional center”, albeit a relatively minor one. And what ST would be contributing to is the “BRT-ness” of the upgrade; the off board payment, better shelters, and harder pavement in front of the shelters. Maybe the buses themselves.

          But I bet they won’t be funding its operation.

   3. Sound Transit freed up a significant portion of Pierce Transit’s operating budget when it assumed responsibility for the 590 route series.

      That said, TDLE is a terrible waste that will actually result in a reduction in service quality outside of peak commute times.

      Reply

      1. I hereby claim credit for the snark-name “Tiddly Links” for the Tacoma Dome Link Extension project. Say “TDLE” as a word and you’ll understand how PERFECTLY it works with the name of the LR system. Talk about “synchronicity”….

         [Ed note: for those of you younger than fifty or so, there was a very popular game in the post-WWII years called “Tiddly Winks” in which players used thin plastic chips to snap other thin plastic chips (“winks”) toward a target pot. It’s kind of like the bowling game at the Fair with a tiny circle surrounded by larger circles that have different point values for landing a small bocce ball there.

         Here’s a link: https://www.google.com/search?q=tiddly+winks+game&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS1048US1048&oq=tiddly+winks+game&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i10i15i22i30j0i10i22i30j0i15i22i30j0i10i15i22i30j0i390i650l4.7230j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8]

      2. If you have to explain it…

      3. I love it, Tom.

         Do people really not understand what tiddlywinks is? It was not really a thing when I was a kid, but everyone knew about it. They have competitive matches at Cambridge, apparently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiddlywinks

         I think it works well, as the game is often considered frivolous. It also sounds great. I love phrases that seem out of date (I tried to get my grandkids to say “groovy” — it never caught on). Maybe I need to reach further back (“Hey, you kids need to stop playing tiddlywinks, and help your mom with the groceries”).

      4. Ross, thanks. I honestly don’t know if people are familiar with it. Covering the bases; I sure don’t understand “intersectionality” and I do try to “keep up”….

         And yes, Cam, I understand that “if you have to explain it, it’s NOT funny”. Still, it’s almost a homonym, it has “Link” in it and “TDLE” sounds like “Tiddley”. It’s like ALL the powers that be in subconscious land lined up giggling and laid a little hand grenade in the future that would blow up when eyes turned toward the south end of Link construction because of the land slump.

   4. Mike Orr,

      You can spin the history of this all you want, but ST3 lost in Pierce County. Pierce County voters were lied to repeatedly by the Sound Transit Hype Machine…. and yet, the voters saw though the false light rail promises and voted no.

      Nobody is blame here but the clowns at Sound Transit…. Just man up and own it.

      Reply

      1. It’s not a question of whether ST1/2/3 won or lost in Pierce County but what projects are in it. That was Pierce’s doing. Pierce also demanded to be in the ST tax district when it could have been King County only. It did that for the express purpose of having King County’s Yes votes outnumber Pierce County’s No votes — otherwise Pierce wouldn’t be able to get any transit investments. That was Pierce’s doing, so don’t blame Seattle progressives.

      2. But Mike’s point (which has been raised by others) is that the “clowns at ST” include the representatives from Pierce County. I don’t think there is a major disagreement here about how ST has failed Pierce County. But as Pogo famously said “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

         I agree with every other point you raised, but you are suggesting that ST is some outside agency, when it is made up of representatives elected in each area. There is no question that the board has acted with great arrogance and aggression towards officials that dare question their assumptions. It happened in Kirkland, when Kirkland officials paid for their own independent study of the CKC and the consulting firm came to the conclusion that BRT would be best. ST rejected that idea — basically saying it was rail or nothing. It sounds like the same thing happened in Pierce County, as some officials questioned the value of light rail to the Tacoma Dome. But many of those pushing for The Spine were (and are) representatives in Pierce County. It is easy to assume they were simply outvoted, but that wasn’t how things went down. The board vote for ST3 (to put it to the voters) was unanimous. Believe me, opponents would have loved it if even one board member stood up and said “I’m all for transit, but this is a very poorly constructed project. I think we should implement some capital projects, but this thing is so bad, we would be better off just putting the money into more bus service.”. That just didn’t happen.

         Again, I agree with your main point. Pierce County would be much better off if ST just handed the money to Pierce Transit. But as others have noted, that really wasn’t possible.

         Which means we are basically arguing over semantics. Technically, the board is made up of representatives — the same type of representatives that were steamrolled when they raised concerns over projects. On the other hand, the design of the board made it damn near impossible to do the right thing. If you think of ST as just a collection of elected officials who screw up because they don’t know any better, then we are back to the Pogo quote. If you think of ST as a board poorly constructed by the state to implement an inappropriate transit system for the region, then the agency is to blame.

         It is a bit like police misconduct. Sure, there are bad apples, and many cops don’t act that way. But the system itself encourages misconduct, so we shouldn’t be too surprised when it occurs.

   5. > In the political arena, this is a real fight for a somewhat fixed number of tax dollars. Of course Sound Transit kicked poor Pierce Transit’s ass and spend a billion dollars on a toy train while the rest of the fair City of Tacoma got stuck with lousy bus service. This is why I never supported Sound Transit and never will.

      The pacific hwy brt is about the reallocation of lanes and that is up to the City of Tacoma whether to grant them or not. For the rest of the inefficient use of funds, that is why I advocate that Sound Transit should move away from only focusing so heavily on express service, but also provide local service too.

      > As bad as Tacoma got messed over, Seattle may get it worse. Mayor Bruce is trying to use those ST “transit dollars” for some ridiculous plan to “save” downtown Seattle, transit riders be damned.

      That is the danger of transit funds being used as slush funds… For example, for redmond with the danger of not being granted a train station they made sure to expedite all the permissions and upzone to ensure there would be federal funding, for Seattle since it already has the money it just kind of doesn’t think it’s important to actually make it easy to build.

      Reply

      1. Pacific Ave is actually a State highway (#7). That’s making BRT much harder to build for #1 bus line. The engineers at ST must of known for a long that building BRT would involve taking the half the front yards of hundreds of homes by eminent domain (politically impossible). At what point did they tell the City? Or did they keep that part a secret for a few years?

         The State has been reluctant to sign off on simple flashing crosswalks on Pacific for decades…. WDOT just doesn’t work and play well with others.

         A WDOT worker told me the project was impossible to build a couple of years ago (coffee at the Rose Cafe for any local readers). When a dude running a road grader knows more about a local project than the City government, there’s a big problem.

      2. Was it really ST engineers? I assumed it was County.

      3. County & PT engineers. Aside from some consultants used during the ST3 package development with ST’s contribution to the Line 1 was quantified, ST hasn’t done any engineering work for this line.

      4. @tacomee

         Well what about the 4 on 112 st E or route 3 on S Tacoma? Those streets are not controlled by the state/county.

         > The engineers at ST must of known for a long that building BRT would involve taking the half the front yards of hundreds of homes by eminent domain (politically impossible). At what point did they tell the City? Or did they keep that part a secret for a few years?

         The Deputy Mayor of Tacoma is on the Sound transit board, it really isn’t a secret or a conspiracy. I highly doubt the other subareas board members are conspiring about the pacific highway bus rapid transit and honestly don’t really care what Tacoma wants to do with the money. More likely they just a) wasn’t paying attention b) pierce county councilmembers knew about the difficulty but didn’t want to resolve it.

         Like I’m not sure why you keep thinking Sound Transit is gatekeeping Pierce County from the money. It is the pierce county members on the ST board that want to use the money for link and sounder trains. If they truly wanted to spend money on busses they could find some legal reason to allow it. Or if a legal reason is blocking it, they certainly haven’t tried or brought it up in any meetings.

         1) suburban political leaders want a train to tacoma
         2) they surprisingly allocate the money from sound transit to sounder/ link train
         3) no citizens are asking them to fund bus service

         On point 3, sure you are talking about it, but have you actually told them? Because I really don’t think anyone has asked them or citizen group in pierce county advocating for it.

      5. My understanding is the Pacific Hwy project ran out of money was more about interchange redesign and a desire to replace a bunch of intersections with roundabouts, which seems like a solid idea but not necessarily a transit requirement.

         Feels like the Pacific kerfuffle was more like the Broadway streetcar, where there were too many competing uses for a limited ROW. Makes sense to shelve most of the capital project until those differences are resolved.

      6. “On point 3, sure you are talking about it, but have you actually told them?”

         I’ve told them.

      7. “Feels like the Pacific kerfuffle was more like the Broadway streetcar, where there were too many competing uses for a limited ROW. Makes sense to shelve most of the capital project until those differences are resolved.”

         In so doing, they have to give back over $150 million dollars to Feds and ST. For local bus service, which we all seem to agree is substandard.

         They say “pause.” I hear “cancel.”

         And so bus service continues to be unusable for the foreseeable future, where that money would have been a huge boon to the main workhorse line in Pierce County. And that just plain sucks.

      8. The Pacific Highway BRT project was a complete fiasco. The obvious solution was to simply take a lane. But instead, Sound Transit decided they wanted to widen the street. This costs a lot more money.

         Some have suggested that WSDOT is to blame. I see no evidence for that. Seattle has taken lanes for buses on state highways at various times. Just recently, on Aurora, they took a lane for bikes. Think about that for a second. Aurora is one of the busiest state highways. They added a bike lane adjacent to Green Lake, where there is a pedestrian pathway (used by bikes) and plenty of room to add additional bike lanes. If the state really had a problem with taking a lane, they would push back. The city could have easily found an alternative. But instead, the project went smoothly. If Seattle can take a lane on Aurora, Sound Transit can take a lane on a much less crowded street.

         In failing to do so, the project cost escalated until it was no longer practical. It is yet another example of Sound Transit pursuing large, grandiose projects, when something simpler and cheaper would have been just as effective (and would actually get built).

   6. Since the word “gaslighting” is being bandied about, let’s look at some numbers.

      2017-2046 in Year of Expenditure dollars. Pierce subarea expenditures:
      Capex/Opex, all in Billions
      Light Rail: $3.5/$0.7
      T-Link: $1.8/$1.0
      Sounder: $3B/$1.7
      Bus: $0.4/$1.4
      Systemwide (e.g. administrative costs like IT): $0.8

      So over the life of the ST program, ST will invest more in Link (i.e. TDLE) and in Sounder than it will on the streetcar, and it will spend more operating Sounder and the express bus network that will spend operating the streetcar. Keep in mind T-link’s capital dollars include the phase III expansion to be spent in the 2030s, of which effectively zero has been spent.

      Tacomee, your fixation on the streetcar as sucking up all of the transit dollars for Pierce is misplaced.

      Page 3, https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/2023-financial-plan-and-adopted-budget.pdf

      Reply

      1. I don’t know enough about Tacoma and Pierce to opine on whether T-Link is good transit value for the dollar. I think it was important for Pierce Co. supporters of ST to have something before 2035, and Pierce has been the most vocal about withdrawing from ST. (And thanks for the total cost on T-Link; Lazarus gets all worked up when I state it will cost $1 billion, which is apparently low). Also no matter what, TDLE ends at the Dome so what good is that for downtown Tacoma without something like T-Link.

         I think Sounder S.’s costs will be much lower because the platform and other capital upgrades will be postponed or eliminated due to low ridership post pandemic (although the new garages were approved). Sounder S. itself should be eliminated based on an 11% farebox recovery, but ST keeps extending the completion of TDLE so Pierce and the region object to ending Sounder S. TWELVE YEARS before TDLE is expected to open, when Pierce thought they would get Sounder S. with platform, station and parking upgrades, TDLE, T-Link for their ST taxes. At least that was the promise in the levy Pierce voted no on.

         I still have doubts TDLE will have the revenue to match project costs. If however capital cuts are made to Sounder S. I think TDLE looks more affordable. In the end however, having Link terminate at the Dome before the downtown or really any Tacoma neighborhoods seems incomplete, but I don’t think there will be a ST 4 to get it to the mall or downtown.

      2. > having Link terminate at the Dome before the downtown or really any Tacoma neighborhoods seems incomplete, but I don’t think there will be a ST 4 to get it to the mall or downtown.

         Definitely the mall extension would be pretty expensive to cross the i5 freeway/ 16 interchange.

         To reach downtown, it’s not actually about money but about if they want to reallocate a car lane and have link running at-grade. The alignment to downtown following the existing streetcar (where link was originally supposed to go) is pretty cheap. Maybe they’ll need to say buy out one property the car wash for that 90 degree turn, but there’s no billion dollar elevated/ tunneled structure needed.

      3. > I think Sounder S.’s costs will be much lower because the platform and other capital upgrades will be postponed or eliminated due to low ridership post pandemic (although the new garages were approved). Sounder S. itself should be eliminated based on an 11% farebox recovery, but ST keeps extending the completion of TDLE so Pierce and the region object to ending Sounder S.

         Yeah, I agree. Honestly Sounder S expansion should be cancelled or heavily postponed.

         (sorry for separate comment clicked post too soon)

      4. AJ,

         When the Sounder fired up, I was told by my city councilman that, yes! more train trips could be added, yes! trips in the middle of the day would be on their way. Turned out this wasn’t true. At the same time I was told the light rail would be rolling out of the Tacoma Dome and headed for the airport. Also completely false.

         Turns out Sounder was a turd just like the T-Link or whatever they call the toy train that goes to the T-Dome from downtown and now Wright park.

         Big kickoff party for light rail in Tacoma this Saturday, BTW. All the pols and ST bigwigs will be there trying to make the best out of lousy transit line. Sound Transit wants $2 per ride on a train that goes just a little over two miles. Oh, that’s value for money right there!

         So let’s do a little score keeping here.

         T-Dome link? Late and over budget, a 2.4 mile line that goes nowhere and can’t link to other ST rail.

         Sounder. 6 trains a day max?

         Pacific Ave BRT. Years of planning and millions spent… for a report saying it’s just not possible?

         What part of this is gaslighting? I’m afraid it’s all completely true.

      5. It’s 13 trains, each way, daily.

         T-Link is 4 miles.

         BRT was and is possible. They simply chose not to build it. The design was too expensive, but it didn’t need to be. Honestly a bit of paint, and a few more buses and it could have been done relatively cheaply.

      6. WL – good point, those figures include the Sounder South capacity expansion, which may or may not happen.

      7. So over the life of the ST program, ST will invest more in Link (i.e. TDLE) and in Sounder than it will on the streetcar, and it will spend more operating Sounder and the express bus network that will spend operating the streetcar.

         Of course. The streetcar is tiny. It is challenging to figure which is the worst value. Is it the streetcar, since it adds so little? Is it Link to the Tacoma Dome, because it doesn’t add much, while costing a lot more? Is it additional parking garages, or the bigger train platforms for Sounder?

         But that misses the point. Is any of it a good value? You are pretty much left with just the bus service, which is the point that Tacomee made from the beginning. Except some of the bus money was no doubt for the BRT project, which they have completely screwed up. So much money spent on so little. The alternative is so simple, and yet would be so much more effective: run the buses more often. Of course there may be a few capital projects worth the money. Often these are cheap, and consist of a bus lane or there. Sometimes they cost more, but often you can get WSDOT to pay for that (e. g. a new freeway ramp). But the money should be focused on what the area needs the most, which is better bus service.

         The ST3 projects were just a bad idea, especially in Pierce County.

      8. > Except some of the bus money was no doubt for the BRT project, which they have completely screwed up.

         Just to clarify, everyone does know that the pacific highway brt project is planned and was to be constructed by Pierce Transit and is just funded by Sound Transit right? Like this isn’t Stride 3 which is made by sound transit.

6. ST is focused on building monuments and not providing service. Their state mandate is high capacity transit. I expect ST could have attract more ridership sooner with BRT networks in the Pierce and South King subareas.

   My father was raised in Parkland on South A Street near 100th so north of PLU. My grandmother was a baker at Phillips cafeteria next to Union Station. She said the fare was a nickel. She baked for 30 years; I have a brass cup her union gave her. The family farm was subdivided after WWII. When I gone past it, there are several cars in the yard.

   Reply

   1. ST is focused on building monuments and not providing service.

      Exactly.

      Reply

      1. “ST is focused on building monuments and not providing service. Their state mandate is high capacity transit.”

         That TriMet is spending less on the entire “Better Red” project than ST spent on the 130th Street Station does not bode well for cost effectiveness of these projects. I get that TriMet budget conscious projects means we get surface runnning light rail in places it probably shouldn’t be, but I don’t think it would be possible to get funding for any alternative here.

   2. typos: “attracted”; “passed” and “were”.

      Reply

7. Generally any bus with frequency > 20 minutes is hard to use. Any bus at 1h frequency needs to be cancelled or have a service increase. 1h is torturous.

   It’s also hard to change routes. If someone depends on a 1h bus cancelling it would be painful.

   However you could apply it like this: there should never be an increase in frequency unless the period is 20m or less. Otherwise that improvement in frequency is pointless.

   Reply

   1. I do wonder how cities with similar suburban fabrics tend to uphold higher frequencies. Is it simply through more sustained service subsidies or is it due to something different entirely? Should we expect demand to increase with future state zoning reforms or is that being too optimistic?

      When I look at a local map of Everett transit bus routes for example any bus route that isn’t an evergreen way / SR-99 route is generally something like 45 minute frequencies that seems awfully infrequent. At all times of the day you can take a bus all the way from Everett to Seattle that is more frequent than most local Everett transit bus routes. I assume the demand has to be much higher but can we ever expect these towns to develop a robust possibly non peak commuter transit base?

      Reply

      1. One thing to keep in mind about Everett, they are not part of CT so the taxes paid by Everett residents are lower but the service is also correspondingly less rich. Not that CT routes are necessarily running with much higher frequency (I discussed the hourly service to Granite Falls, for example) but it is likely that if Everett were part of CT the service would be improved.

      2. If Everett becomes part of CT, some places will see improved service and some marginal areas that the city system serves will very likely have their service eliminated over time. Tacoma Transit ran considerably more service to the Tideflats and Northeast Tacoma than PT ever has. Bremerton Municipal Transit ran to places like Kitsap Lake and Rocky Point that are in the city but are practically rural.

      3. I do wonder how cities with similar suburban fabrics tend to uphold higher frequencies.

         My guess is they simply spend more for it. In some cases it may be the result of being in the same district as a bigger city. In the long run, Shoreline transit is in much better shape because it is part of King County.

         I think what Pierce County experiences is fairly common. What is unusual in the region is Sound Transit. ST has provided regional service that is quite good. Several transit bloggers have noted it. But service within the areas is fairly typical. Cities like Seattle do OK, while lower density suburbs and cities struggle.

         It is this mix that causes frustration. It would be like having high speed rail between cities while buses in those cities run every hour, on dirt roads. While ST service is very good, it is backwards, really. Regional transit is important, but not nearly as important as local service. Underfunded Pierce Transit still managed to get around 30,000 riders a day before the pandemic. All the high quality express service between Pierce and King County added up to less than 20,000 riders, including Sounder. This was all before the pandemic. Now the difference is even larger, as people take fewer long distance trips.

         Of course spending on the express service does help those agencies. This goes back to that first idea, as well as what Mike mentioned earlier. By being part of Sound Transit (which includes Seattle) more money is spent on Pierce County transit projects. This does help Pierce Transit, just not that much. I could easily imagine a different situation (e. g. a streetcar suburb) where it would. Maybe you’ve got enough money to run decent service within your little burg, but those express buses for the commuters drain your resources. Unfortunately, that has never been the case in Pierce (or Snohomish) County. They are too big and too sprawling, with not that many people commuting to downtown Seattle.

         Should we expect demand to increase with future state zoning reforms or is that being too optimistic?

         It is probably too optimistic. It is quite likely that it will lead to density that is still challenging to serve with transit. In my opinion, you really need a change in attitude. In some ways, it is really crazy how various cities react to the potential for growth. Consider Tacoma. Not too long ago, a lot of folks thought it was a dying city. It was too far from Seattle to be much of a bedroom suburb, and too close to compete. It sprawls, and downtown wasn’t doing too well. Sure, it has “nice bones”, but everything else looked pretty bad. Now, of course, it has rebounded. Downtown is doing well, and the city has definitely turned the tide. At this point, given the history of the city, you would expect leaders to be focused on growth. Sure, preserve historical buildings, but otherwise, grow, grow, grow. You aren’t competing with Seattle, really — you are competing against all those other suburbs. You want people and businesses in your city (where you can tax them, and where they will in turn generate more wealth for you). Of course there are “growing pains” but there is an economy of scale with all of it, and the more you add people and businesses (i. e. density) the better. The more centralized it is, the better.

         And yet that hasn’t been the approach by the city. They have made some progress, but there is no sense of urgency, as folks seem fixated on preserving what exists now. It would be like people in Detroit looking at an abandoned neighborhood and saying “Well, good thing we didn’t allow apartments here”. Most discussions have been about “equity” or “affordability”, and not finances. Shrinking cities struggle. Shrinking cities surrounded by sprawling suburbs become disasters. I get why folks think it won’t happen here, but the optimistic estimates for growth in the region are just that: optimistic. People talk about “climate refugees”, ignoring the fact that the Great Lakes area is sitting on essentially unlimited water, and a ton of existing infrastructure that is quite capable of handling all of those people in Arizona who finally decided that very hot is OK, but very, very hot is too much. Pretty much all of the growth in the region has been based on software, and there is no reason to assume it will continue. It might, or like Boeing, the companies largely responsible for that growth may decide to move most of their work elsewhere. The more dense you are, the more resilient you are. Work too hard preserving your nice single-family neighborhood and the more likely it collapses.

         Then again, maybe Tacoma will get there one way or another. The plans they have proposed look pretty good. It wouldn’t surprise me if someone in city hall “gets it” when it comes to density, while using whatever political lever they can use to allow growth. If that happens (and if Tacoma continues to attract people) then yes, I see the potential there. Other parts of Snohomish County are far more challenging. It would not surprise me if transit in Pierce County more or less resembles much of Metro Transit. The big city has transit that is fairly good, while the surrounding suburbs have good transit on a few big corridors, and not much else.

   2. “I do wonder how cities with similar suburban fabrics tend to uphold higher frequencies. Is it simply through more sustained service subsidies or is it due to something different entirely?”

      It’s different values, priorities, and metrics. They see the economic, human, environmental, and efficiency value in having a comprehensive alternative to driving. When the network is robust enough, a large constituency emerges that can’t imagine how the city could live without it, and they push to maintain it and improve it and elect politicians who will do so.

      Reply

      1. “I do wonder how cities with similar suburban fabrics tend to uphold higher frequencies. Is it simply through more sustained service subsidies or is it due to something different entirely?”

         “It’s different values, priorities, and metrics. They see the economic, human, environmental, and efficiency value in having a comprehensive alternative to driving. When the network is robust enough, a large constituency emerges that can’t imagine how the city could live without it, and they push to maintain it and improve it and elect politicians who will do so.”

         The first question is from James, and the answer is from Mike.

         If Mike wants to achieve his dream, at least in E KC, the easy way is Metro subarea equity. All Metro taxes raised in E KC must be spent on Metro service in East King Co. From ST equity, we know the eastside has the tax revenue to build and run even the least productive routes like Issaquah Link, although I guess it will add to the “robust” transit network.

         The problem is Metro and the KC Council claim that even if there were subarea Metro equity, and a massive comprehensive frequent bus system on the eastside were built, eastsiders would not ride it. It would be empty, but affordable. So right now Metro is cutting eastside service because the riders went home, and reallocating that eastside Metro tax revenue.

         Eastsiders (and most suburbanites) ride transit because they have to. On the eastside (and Sounder S.) that was a peak commute to downtown Seattle. They all own cars, and nearly every place they want to go within their subarea has free parking. They have no interest in changing their land use patterns they moved to suburbia for. They have no interest in going to downtown Seattle for a discretionary trip except maybe an occasional event.

         “I do wonder how cities with similar suburban fabrics tend to uphold higher frequencies. Is it simply through more sustained service subsidies or is it due to something different entirely? Should we expect demand to increase with future state zoning reforms or is that being too optimistic?”

         This is James’ post with the rest of his comment. Recent state zoning actually disperses density into every SFH zone, the same zones Metro or CT can’t afford to serve today. ST has built a lot of park and rides in these suburban areas, but not nearly enough to handle the demand if these residential zones do indeed densify. At that point, the eastside will really demand Metro subarea equity which is going to cut everyone else’s transit levels of service because they are subsidized by the eastside, especially S. Seattle and S. King Co.

         There is one missing demographic on this blog: Seattleites who live in Seattle’s SFH zones. If you read this blog you think all of Seattle is one dense multi-family zone with folks buzzing around on transit because that is what they do. Why? Because the folks in the SFH zones in Seattle don’t take transit because they can’t walk to transit, and Metro can’t afford to serve all those remote neighborhoods, so there isn’t transit. Some may drive to a ST park and ride, but a feeder bus is not an option.

         That is why HB 1110 allows cities to require EACH unit on a SFH lot have two onsite parking stalls, because everyone knew upzoning SFH zones would not increase transit ridership, although it could reallocate the local transit funding if powerful areas like E KC that pay way more than they receive began demanding Metro subarea equity.

         There may be only a few folks on each bus on the eastside from these remote areas, even park and rides today, but there will be a few, and so our Metro tax dollars should be spent on them, whether the 255 or better than 90-minute frequency from North Bend which based on subarea equity could have frequency closer to 15 minutes if money is the only “metric”. Because as Mike often states, induced demand will fill those buses to remote areas of E KC during non-peak times, eventually, and “a large constituency emerges that can’t imagine how the city could live without it, and they push to maintain it and improve it and elect politicians who will do so.”.

         The other subareas are just going to have to pay for their own service when Metro levels of service are subject to subarea equity. The pie stays the same, it just gets reallocated, although that may seem contrary to the Council’s (especially Balducci who represents the eastside) view of “equity” as being determined by race or wealth, or just ridership itself.

      2. “If Mike wants to achieve his dream [of improving baseline frequency], at least in E KC, the easy way is Metro subarea equity.”

         No, it requires a values shift. No subarea meets this frequency threshold. it would require additional operations funding, as well as an end to the driver shortage, and however many buses and bases would be necessary. Even if subarea equity (i.e., all Eastside operations taxes going to Eastside routes) created a windfall for the Eastside, they would still have to to decide how to distribute the hours. Even if they did, this is a quirk that would work only for the Eastside subarea and under current conditions. We need something that works for all areas, to get them to the frequency baseline levels.

         This will be a long-term thing. It’s not directly related to ST2 or ST3 or Metro’s current restructures or any short-term issue. It’s about redefining the goals and priorities of city/county governments, putting together a plan and phases to implement it, and following up on those to make sure it happens. Metro’s/PT’s/CT’s long-range plans is a start. Metro would need to redefine “Frequent” from “15 minutes weekdays until 6pm” to “15 minutes every day until 10pm”. And then set up an implementation plan, and the county would have to collaborate on funding it, and maybe ask the state legislature for more flexible and less limited tax authorizations where necessary.

      3. ““If Mike wants to achieve his dream [of improving baseline frequency], at least in E KC, the easy way is Metro subarea equity.”

         “No, it requires a values shift.”

         Let me see if I have this correct. I have to change my values to your values if I expect the taxes I and my subarea pay toward Metro to go to service in East KC?

         I’ve read about “induced demand” ad nauseum on this blog. Let’s see if it truly works (outside N. Seattle). No one needs to change their “values”. Simply give E KC the Metro taxes raised in E KC (just like for ST) and allocate those for service in E KC. Let’s see if increasing frequency on the 255 or from N. Bend (from 90 minutes) increases ridership.

         Because coverage and frequency depend on MONEY, not values.

         Even if increased bus service doesn’t increase ridership it is our Metro tax revenue. Just like WSBLE, or tunnels from 43rd to Northgate, or Issaquah Link, we have the right to spend it — even wastefully — as we see fit. Metro can’t set up an “implementation plan” in E KC if all our Metro tax revenue is going to other subareas.

         What if I said no Metro tax revenue raised in E KC could go to any other part of the county unless that area agreed to change their values to those in E KC? (Ironically S. KC would be pretty close except they are more politically conservative; the only area that would have to change is urban areas in N. Seattle).

      4. Mike Orr,

         Reasons transit is going to have reduced funding in the next decade.

         1. Work from home
         2. Housing crisis
         3. inflation
         4. Sound Transit being gawd awful with tax money (ST4 is a no!)
         5. Local pols who only give transit lip service only
         6. The G.O.P eventually gains control in D.C and guts Federal funding for mass transit.

         Right now transit advocates need to focus on how not lose more service, not think about getting more.

      5. “I have to change my values to your values if I expect the taxes I and my subarea pay toward Metro to go to service in East KC?”

         The government has to change its values and policies if we’re ever going to get to a robust universal frequency baseline. Subarea equity is a separate issue.

         The cities that have a robust baseline frequency, have it because they’re committed to it. Or they were committed to it in the past, and they’re maintaining that level of service. Examples: Most Chicago bus routes run at least every 10 minutes daytime, 20 minutes evenings, and there are 30-minute night owl routes a mile apart. El lines run every few minutes, maybe down to 10 daytime/evening. Most San Francisco bus routes run at least every 20 minutes, or at they did before covid. The New York subway reached a high level and continued incremental improvements until WWII and then stalled, but it has maintained its service level since (at least pre-covid), and has started working on expansions again off and on. New York buses I don’t know their history, but when I was there in the 2000s most of them were frequent.

      6. “Right now transit advocates need to focus on how not lose more service, not think about getting more.”

         It’s possible to do both. Not losing service or managing reductions is a short-term issue. Having an ultimate and pushing for it is a long-term issue, and the only way to get there is to have the goal and advocate for it and try to convince politicians and the public to support it. Otherwise you’ll get nowhere. Also, public attitudes are gradually turning more pro-transit over the years.

8. How do Pierce transit and community transit compare when it comes to current to future service plans?

   Of course Tacoma is a large city that Pierce transit serves and community transit does not serve anything of comparable size. It seems like community transit is expanding a not-infrequent Swift bus network of some kind. They don’t have dedicated lanes as far as I’m aware but their relative frequentness and directness I supposed is something to be appreciated in an environment that seems quite suburban

   I think both agencies networks probably have lots of room for improvements but I’m just curious about what the current trajectory of each agency is.

   I think we often expect much more from king county metro but how could these agencies at some point wish to have bus grids similar to suburban Toronto for example? Could it eventually pencil out financially? Could it pencil out now even?

   Reply

   1. Both Pierce Transit and Community Transit have impressive long-range plans. Community Transit is building it out. Pierce Transit is stalled for funding.

      Reply

9. In my opinion, 30 minute buses are usable if and only if they are reliable.

   Before Northgate Link, the 522 ran every 30 minutes outside of rush hour. And it was NOT reliable. Maybe it would come 6 minutes early. Maybe 8 minutes late. And good luck getting accurate data on any apps. Metro (who operated it) repeatedly said that all stops are estimates so the bus comes when it comes. That made it very frustrating to use to make plans or run errands.

   I am very skeptical about buses that are scheduled every 30 minutes.

   Reply

   1. 30-minute buses are also only usable when it’s one bus going all the way from origin to destination. The moment you have to transfer, the wait time in the middle becomes too variable, and usability shrinks.

      A transfer between two 30-minute buses is something you can get away for maybe a once-per-year trip to the airport. But, for an everyday commute, completely unreasonable.

      On the other hand, when you start bumping up the frequency to levels like 10 minutes, then the transfer penalties fall considerably, as does need for one-seat rides.

      Reply

10. “If there’s anything I want, it’s for a change in the meaning of the word “standard”.”

    Let’s flesh this out. Metro and PT have already identified higher-level/lower-level corridors and routes. Some Metro routes have 10-minute midday or had it in the late 2010s. Others have the RapidRide standard (15 minutes until 10pm every day). Others have 15-minute daytime weekdays and maybe weekends, or did in the late 2010s. I think we can generally say these are the higher-priority routes and corridors.

    I’d suggest a standard of raising 10-minute midday and RapidRide standard routes to 10 minutes full time (until 10pm). 15-minute part-time routes would become 15-minute full-time routes. Hourly routes and segments would get at least toward half-hourly on some routes. That would be a good standard, and consistent with cities that have comprehensive transit.

    Pierce County is harder to say, both because the above standard is unimaginable to reach right now, and because I haven’t lived in Pierce County so I’m not the best one to say exactly which routes or what frequency. But we can start with PT’s long-range plan. The core routes in that should run at least every 15 minutes full-time, and with an eye toward making major transfers feasible. Most of the rest should be half-hourly full-time. How’s that?

    The Sumner/Bonney Lake/Graham/Orting issues will have to wait until they rejoin PT or make their own transit arrangements.

    Reply

11. The topic of reasonable transit expectations ultimately comes down as to whether one subscribes to the view that people who ride transit have a right to demand good service when their fares are only paying for one quarter of operating costs; or whether it’s a “better cannot be choosers” situation, meaning that anyone who rides the bus should be grateful that the taxpayers are feeling generous enough to run the bus at all. Under the latter viewpoint, people who don’t like the service have no right to complain about it, since they aren’t paying for it; they can either suck it up, or go buy their own car.

    In most of the U.S., the “beggers cannot be choosers” argument dominates, which results in a transit system that sucks, with no political will to ever make it better. Seattle has generally been better than this, but all that “equity” talk since the pandemic has reinforced the “beggers cannot be choosers” argument, and we’ve been backsliding since.

    I’ve said this before, but the only way to get any kind of political will to improve a transit system is if it has middle class ridership. Not ever middle class person needs to actually ride it, but a large majority of middle class people should at least be able to name one person in their family or social circle who rides it. If you want a system that only poor people ride, you end up with a system that hardly anybody who isn’t poor has any desire to improve. Or, to put it differently, people will not vote for a ballot measure that increases their taxes so that some abstract “poor person” has a bus that comes every 15 minutes rather than every 30 minutes. But they might vote yes if there is actual person they can name who would benefit from the increased frequency.

    Reply

    1. There are also economic, environmental, and resilience benefits to the entire society if there’s robust transit service, and that naturally lets ridership reach its potential.

       Economic: More people can work, shop, and participate in society. People can spend the money they would have spent on a car and maintenance on something else, or save it for retirement. People who can’t drive (under 16, elderly, disabled) can get around on their own.

       Environmental: Less air and water pollution. Less raw materials used.

       Resilience: Less energy dependency. Less dependency on authoritarian or unstable countries. Less climate impacts. If the supply of gas gets blocked or electricity gets limited, it will be easier to keep a transit system running than everybody’s cars running.

       Reply

    2. Asdf2’s post is incredibly perceptive, although many bristle at his comments — which he has posted before — when ironically almost all of them are middle class north Seattle riders, many of whom own cars who thought transit would change society.

       Beginning around 2004 Seattle began to skyrocket. Everyone from every corner of the region who wanted to be important had to commute to downtown. After work that was where you wanted to be.

       That is exactly when momentum began for middle class plus commuter transit: Link. Not surprisingly E KC was the swing vote for ST 2 and 3. These were middle class white peak transit riders.

       But then two things happened:

       1. WFH. Turns out middle class suburban workers didn’t like spending two uncompensated hours of every day commuting to a cubicle to work on a computer.

       2. Middle class — especially white women — are incredibly sensitive to danger right around the time downtown Seattle went in the toilet and suburban peak buses were kicked out of the tunnel. So they SAW the decline and have never changed their perception because they have never been back.

       So they went home to suburbia and took their sales tax and B&O tax and retail spending and eyes on the street with them.

       And never looked back.

       So ST 4 is dead when ST 3 was necessary to complete ST 2 and ST 3 was dishonestly priced in the levies when tax rates are capped. ST 4 is critical to finishing ST 3, both capital and O&M.

       The KC Council recognizes Metro is returning to a system to serve the poor. Link simply can’t switch to serving the poor because it’s design and route are so middle class. Eastside peak service is being slashed and reallocated to who knows where. N Seattle is unhappy but those are the last middle class folks riding transit.

       If downtown Seattle were still the true vibrant urban world class hub things might be different. Or if so many suburban commuters’ last memory wasn’t so negative when they won’t go back. But retail vibrancy has dispersed and isn’t coming back.

       At least the KC council is realistic although E KC gets screwed: transit has to get back to its roots serving the poor, and that begins with those who had to ride transit during Covid. The “grid” is dead and transit will never change society. Transit serves, and today that is the poor.

       Reply

       1. The poor are served best when they are served by a system that also serves the middle class. Any system in anything (housing, schools, you name it) that serves exclusively the poor, serves them terribly.

          Also, transit is not a service that can be microtargeted at the poor, even if you wanted to, unless one assumes that poor people have radically different sets of places they go to than everyone else. While housing costs may force many poor people to live in cheaper areas, they still need to travel all over the region for all sorts of reasons, and transit is only useful if it serves both ends of the trip. And also, not all poor people even live in areas with the greatest concentration of poor people, again, for a number of reasons. Again, the transit system that is designed to serve people of all income levels and has support from the middle class is the one that serves poor people best.

          This business of “get back to the roots and focus on the poor people” is really just the words of somebody who wants transit to wither and die, but wants to say it in a more politically correct way that, at least outwardly, sounds sympathetic to the poor.

       2. Tens or hundreds of thousands of middle-class people ride Metro and Link each day. Routes that go through middle-class neighborhoods like the 5, D, and 40, naturally have mostly middle-class riders. It’s only your demographic — or rather, the demographic you notice — that has fallen heavily. And fallen 45% still means that 55% are still riding — and that number is climbing month by month and year by year. Like Metro and Link were doing before covid, growing month over month and year over year.

          Several STB editors, authors, and commentators live in single-family houses, and some live in southeast Seattle or the CD or or outside Seattle, or both, or did in the 2010s. Some who live in single-family houses nevertheless support more multifamily, middle, and infill housing.

       3. “The poor are served best when they are served by a system that also serves the middle class.”

          This is a common refrain by the middle class. The middle class if organized can create political pressure and spending, although the poor will tell you that spending favors the middle class. Hence Link and ST Express buses.

          The problem is much of the middle class now works from home and left transit. They didn’t like spending two hours of uncompensated time each day commuting to an office to work on a computer. So I don’t think they are coming back to transit, and the ratio of poor to middle class on transit has increased, and their are fewer middle class riders demanding a share of the pie.

          “Also, transit is not a service that can be microtargeted at the poor, even if you wanted to, unless one assumes that poor people have radically different sets of places they go to than everyone else”.

          According to the KC Council and Metro — and the Bipod communities themselves — transit levels of service can be targeted to the poor. Begin with an area’s AMI, then racial breakdown in a community, and then measure ridership during Covid among those communities to determine folks who have to ride transit. After that, it isn’t hard to determine where they take transit to from their neighborhoods with ORCA and ridership data. My guess is not many riders from the RV are heading to Kirkland.

          “This business of “get back to the roots and focus on the poor people” is really just the words of somebody who wants transit to wither and die, but wants to say it in a more politically correct way that, at least outwardly, sounds sympathetic to the poor.

          Well, this is the approach the Bipoc communities, KC Council, and Metro want to take. With the loss of the middle-class rider (peak commuter) they think this is the time to allocate limited resources to poor communities who truly rely on transit since the middle class no longer needs it, especially since that lost middle-class rider doesn’t care anymore.

          If you are talking about me, I don’t make the decisions, and as I have pointed out before my city effectively has no bus service, and my Metro “subarea” pays way more in Metro taxes than in services received.

          If you are asking me whether we should have Metro subarea equity — which is really what you are arguing for since you are a middle-class rider complaining about Metro spending being reallocated to non-middle class areas and routes — I don’t know, although I would like more transparency on how much each subarea raises in taxes and how much is spent in that subarea, and where any excess goes.

          If the excess revenue goes to the “equity” areas based on AMI, race and ridership during Covid, I can live with that. I think it is hard for a dwindling number of middle-class transit riders in wealthy areas like Kirkland or N. Seattle to claim that tax revenue should be spent on them and their transit trips north of Yesler and on the eastside because somehow that benefits the poor who live south of Yesler and in S. KC.

       4. “The problem is much of the middle class now works from home and left transit.”

          No they don’t. Only a quarter of jobs are telework-compatible. You’re looking at rich tech workers and lawyers and assuming that’s everybody.

       5. “According to the KC Council and Metro — and the Bipod communities themselves — transit levels of service can be targeted to the poor.”

          Those are areas they live, not necessarily places they go to. Every trip has two ends, and only one end may be in an equity-emphasis area. An equity-enhanced route across the area is still useful, like the 48 on 23rd or the B between Crossroads and Redmond, because it will serve some people’s entire trip, and other people’s part of their trip.

       6. “My guess is not many riders from the RV are heading to Kirkland.”

          But they are headed to First Hill and Ballard and Bellevue.

       7. “If you are asking me whether we should have Metro subarea equity — which is really what you are arguing for since you are a middle-class rider complaining about Metro spending being reallocated to non-middle class areas and routes — I don’t know, although I would like more transparency on how much each subarea raises in taxes and how much is spent in that subarea, and where any excess goes.”

          There’s another important factor: how much revenue a subarea can raise doesn’t necessarily map to how much transit it needs. Taking any frequency metric — i.e., the density/destination threshold for 15-minute or 30-minute service — a city may deserve more or less transit than their own taxpayers can raise. South King County is a poorer area with 850,000+ people (more than Seattle), so it obviously deserves more transit than it can raise alone.

       8. “Those are areas they live, not necessarily places they go to. Every trip has two ends, and only one end may be in an equity-emphasis area. An equity-enhanced route across the area is still useful, like the 48 on 23rd or the B between Crossroads and Redmond, because it will serve some people’s entire trip, and other people’s part of their trip.”

          Mike, the point I was making was Metro’s and the KC Council’s equity focus begins with identifying the neighborhoods or areas that need equity in transit. They do this by evaluating AMI, racial makeup, and ridership during Covid. This determines where the route originates and where more transit should be allocated.

          THEN they use ridership data to determine where these folks take transit to. That I don’t know, but can guess. For example, how many transfer from the 7, and to where? Those routes would then receive more frequency or more coverage based on how many originating trips from equity zones went to those destinations. If the data show lots are going to Redmond or Crossroads then maybe better frequency on the B. But I doubt it. I bet someone like Ross can already tell us where the vast majority of these trips that originate in equity zones are destined for.

          I didn’t come up with the formula, or even the equity focus. Just another outcome of the summer of 2020 like SB 1220. On the flip side, for all those middle class riders living in Redmond or Kirkland or N. Seattle who are heading to the RV frequency will be better for the second half of their trip to the RV or S. KC or any equity zone.

       9. “I think it is hard for a dwindling number of middle-class transit riders in wealthy areas like Kirkland or N. Seattle to claim that tax revenue should be spent on them and their transit”

          You may find it hard to believe, but lower-income people also live in North Seattle. Lower-income people who live elsewhere also also work, shop, and recreate in North Seattle. Parts of North Seattle are designated equity areas, like part of Lake City, Broadview (north end of the 5), some part of “Northgate” north of the mall, the Magnuson Park low-income housing area, maybe somewhere between U-Village and Lake City, etc. They disproportionally use the North Seattle buses compared to other North Seattle residents because it’s less expensive than driving and they don’t have money to waste.

       10. Some politicians have made statements forgetting about the equity areas outside the stereotypical South Seattle and South King County, but a thorough look corrects it, and when the people in the other equity areas become so vocal they can’t be ignored.

       11. “There’s another important factor: how much revenue a subarea can raise doesn’t necessarily map to how much transit it needs. Taking any frequency metric — i.e., the density/destination threshold for 15-minute or 30-minute service — a city may deserve more or less transit than their own taxpayers can raise. South King County is a poorer area with 850,000+ people (more than Seattle), so it obviously deserves more transit than it can raise alone.”

           Mike, that is Metro’s and the KC Council’s (esp. Balducci’s) equity program in a nutshell, although we don’t use it for ST.

           I am not opposed in principle to this approach for Metro because so much of transit should be focused on the poor, although dollar per boarding for these suburban areas is much, much higher. I would like to see the numbers, at least if my subarea is one that raises more Metro taxes than it receives in levels of transit service. For example, how many more riders do we get in S KC for each dollar per boarding?

           If transit service is being cut in East KC because it is a large and expensive suburban area to serve, and so many suburban riders are no longer riding, does it make sense to reallocate those Metro dollars to S KC which is probably more expensive per boarding, and these are some of the same kinds of suburban riders who are no longer using transit in E KC? I would at least like to see the numbers. It may be that more transit dollars in S KC will not generate more transit riders anymore than it will in E KC, at a very high cost per boarding.

           Look at Sounder S. Will more service increase ridership on Sounder S.? Probably not, and the cost per boarding is prohibitive. So why is Metro cutting peak service in E KC based on the fact those riders are not coming back no matter what levels of service are provided, but then reallocating that service to S KC which has also seen a steep decline in peak service.

           My guess is N. Seattle is also a net contributor, although I don’t know. There is a lot of service, and gold-plated service, in N. Seattle (and a lot of ridership at a low cost per boarding). But I would think you would want to see how much of N. Seattle’s Metro tax revenue is going someplace else, even outside Seattle since you guys vote for additional Metro funding, and how many boardings you are getting per dollar, and how much each boarding costs.

           Ross has often noted that transit ridership IS equity. That argument becomes a lot more cogent if each boarding in N. Seattle (LCW) costs $1 and each boarding in S KC costs $6. I agree the peak eastside rider is likely never coming back. But will those dollars create a lot more riders in S KC? And at what cost.

       12. My friend that now lives on a drug-addled road in suburban Snohomish County lived in Magnolia from 2009 to 2016. She did so not because she was particularly wealthy, but because weaved in among the various huge lots are an assortment of backyard cottages, small apartments, and other housing that is quite economical (at least for close in Seattle). When I would take the 31 from her place over to the UW, I was at first surprised at the number of students on it, but realized there’s a whole group of houses in Magnolia that rent spare bedrooms and otherwise participate in an entire market that’s non-quite-legal for an SFH zone.

           So while the loop-de-loops the 24 does through Outer Magnolia represent a bit of a waste of money, there’s actually more demand for decent transit service there than home owner income or house value may indicate.

       13. “So why is Metro cutting peak service in E KC based on the fact those riders are not coming back no matter what levels of service are provided, but then reallocating that service to S KC which has also seen a steep decline in peak service.”

           Metro is making only minor equity changes to overall service. The peak-route hours in the Eastside didn’t go to South King County; they were subtracted from the total. The reason for the cuts was Metro didn’t have enough drivers to operate all promised service. So it couldn’t reallocate the hours because it didn’t have drivers for them.

           A few small boosts had been made earlier in South Seattle. E.g., the 7 and 36 had been raised from roughly 10 minutes to 7 minutes, both for equity and capacity and “essential workers”. In the latest cuts, Metro was going to reduce the 36 but Seattle’s TBD redirected some of its money from the 10 to it.

           The vast majority of routes and runs have had no changes throughout all the equity moves.

           The politicians aren’t about to eliminate Metro service from entire cities like Kirkland. Equity doesn’t go that far. And Kirkland may even have an equity-emphasis area somewhere. Bellevue, Redmond, Issaquah, and Snoqualmie do.

    3. asdf2,

       Nice post! Let me add, you get what you pay for.

       The reason transit doesn’t work that well in Puget Sound is local government is willing to keep pouring millions into large capital projects like light rail and yet…. not pay bus drivers a living wage. So there isn’t enough bus drivers and transit system flounders. Seattle Subway and most posters on this board are all in on big capital projects…. but there’s never going to a call for higher wages for transit workers…. or more of them. Let’s hire more security and janitors and have the cleanest and safest buses in North America!

       Public schools are in the same basic death spiral BTW. Over 25% of children in Seattle have opted out of public education because it sucks. Teacher pay is joke and schools get snared in these crazy, no-win political fights.

       The root of all this is Progressives have trouble forking out money for good people. Especially blue collar people. I won’t go into it here, but this bias against blue collar workers is why Seattle can’t move the numbers on our homeless population.

       Reply

       1. SPS pays teachers better than the vast majority of private schools in Seattle, even the top ones.

          SPS is in a death spiral because of its suicide mission of equity of outcomes above all else, in a city that depends so heavily on STEM. The district used to have a robust system of tracking and advanced classes, and while always bureaucratic, at least had some good options for high achieving students. It has completely disbanded that in the last couple of years in the name of equity. It has basically removed all tracking at the elementary and middle school levels, even trying to push algebra out of middle school. Highly capable services are now in name only with zero acceleration offered at the neighborhood level for the new cohorts. SPS has sacrificed whole swaths of the city for about 4% of the student population (SPS: “By focusing on students of color who are furthest from educational justice, especially African American males, we will make the greatest progress toward our collective vision. We believe that an intentional focus on African American males will ultimately benefit every student. “) Look, this is an admirable goal, but where are the outcomes showing it’s working for this 4% of the population? It’s purely performative with no outcomes to show for it, but the cuts to advanced classes north of the shipping canal is very real, all in the name of equity.

          Parents with advanced degrees and who you know did algebra in middle school are paying attention.

       2. I can’t speak for the region, but the schools in Seattle don’t suck. Teachers are paid fairly well. The only reason so many kids are sent to private schools is because there are a bunch of entitled rich parents that feel like their precious little darlings need every advantage they can get. If they don’t get into a high-end preschool, their life will be ruined. This attitude just continues through life, including private universities. Better bribe your way into USC, otherwise your kid will end up being a loser.

          I know about forty kids that went to Seattle public schools (my grandkids are attending right now). They all went on to good colleges, and are all successful (by standard measures). I have personally known several teachers, administrators (everything from vice principal to superintendent) and school board members. They will all say the same thing, the key is parental involvement. If the parents care about school, and things are OK at home, things will be OK at school. Otherwise, you are bound to have trouble. Oh, some place like Lakeside might spend a little extra time with you, but they might just kick you out. At O’Dea they will deal with you, and you can find plenty of people who are in the same boat. You can do drugs with them and maybe develop good taste in music.

          A few years back I visited a school my niece taught at. This was in exactly the environment I figured would be a problem. It was a Middle School in the southern (low income) suburbs of Seattle (not in SPD). It was rather striking. The kids were well behaved, and their presentations varied from absolutely brilliant, to a few friendly jocks basically phoning it in. Even then, when prodded I could tell they were capable of making a decent argument. I could tell it wasn’t a show, either — those kids were doing well. They were going to be successful — or if they weren’t, it wasn’t the schools fault.

          Almost all of the teachers I’ve known teach in public schools. The one exception is someone I haven’t known very long. She is a teacher at a private school, and has been married to one of my best friends for a couple years (so I get the low down on what is going on). Like most private school teachers, she is paid less than the public school teachers. I doubt she could get hired at Seattle Public School (not without going back to school). Don’t get me wrong — she is smart, and a good teacher, but they raised the standards. Meanwhile, the school she works at is a mess. The board is focused on making money (imagine that). They have gone through several idiot CEOs, who BS their way into the job. Time will tell if the school gets better, or all the good teachers leave.

          It is not like any school is perfect. Schools sometimes hire bad principals, or put up with crappy teachers. Funding in areas with low property values can be terrible (the way we fund public schools is horribly unfair) but schools like those in Seattle are just fine. The folks who complain about public schools tend to be outside the area, have some sort of political axe to grind or are trying to get money out of it somehow. Or they are just ignorant of how education works. I remember someone deciding to enroll their kids in a private schools based on the looks of the school (it reminded her or her childhood school). The school was excellent (my kids went there, and they had way more problem then her kids). It reminds me a bit of the anti-vaxxers. Yeah, most of the idiots are on the right; but there are plenty of anti-vaxxers on the left, and have been for a long time. If you don’t trust government to handle something like vaccines, it is unlikely you will trust them to teach your precious little darlings.

       3. Oh, and Seattle is more than willing to pay their teachers well. Every levy passes easily. This wasn’t the case in the past, but it is now.

       4. “Public schools are in the same basic death spiral BTW. Over 25% of children in Seattle have opted out of public education because it sucks. Teacher pay is joke and schools get snared in these crazy, no-win political fights.”

          Unfortunately, Tacomee I think that figure is a little low.

          Pre-pandemic Seattle was second in the U.S. (after San Francisco) with 22% of all K-12 students in private schools. Probably the key reason is the high AMI. No matter how progressive a parent may be, they are a lot less progressive when it comes to their kids, and safety is a DEAL breaker, way more than with transit (especially if the kid has to ride public transit to and from school). The suburbs basically were born due to local control over schools and public safety for basically kids.

          The big change was McCleary. Legislation to even out school funding prohibited local levies for general education because poor and elderly areas (Port Ludlow for example that is next to Chimicum which is the district that brought McClearly and my wife attended) would never pass local levies, so instead the legislature went to a state funded system per pupil, with a “regionalization” rate for more expensive areas (for example, MI gets $1.18 for each state funding dollar per student; Seattle also gets a very high regionalization rate).

          Then the pandemic hit. This caused a few things (I had kids in school during the pandemic, one H.S. and one in college).

          The online education was shit, and dismissive, and the parents got the feeling it was all about the teachers’ union. Kids had almost no risk from Covid even without a vaccination but the schools were suddenly closed and stayed close forever so parents couldn’t work and the kids were going crazy, and so parents (including MI and Bellevue) moved their kids to private schools they had been told for years were inferior to public schools (at least districts like MI and Bellevue) due to less funding.

          Guess what: parents liked the private schools despite the extra costs, where education was back to the basics, kids wore uniforms, and “deportment” (a term you will know if you attended Catholic grade schools) was enforced.

          The other thing is the parents could now see the education online, and a lot of conservative and religious parents (and not just Christians but Indians and Chinese who tend to have traditional family values) — and folks on this blog might be surprised but there are a lot of religious parents where God and church are the center of their lives — were not happy about the “equity”, lack of AP courses, rigor, discipline, sexuality, and H.S. rankings for applications to the best colleges. MI still has some of the top ranked elementary schools, but the H.S. fell precipitously when they hired a superintendent from a poor LA school dist. who took a high achieving school dist. for a hard left into equity (she is now gone, and so is the school board, but the damage has been done).

          So even high achieving suburban school districts lost around 10% of students who haven’t come back. That means 10% of state funding left with the student. The crummy thing is the state keeps that money; it doesn’t reallocate it somewhere else. The state is the real bad actor here. The state allowed districts to “borrow” from capital levies for general education but that borrowing is mostly exhausted, and of course that benefitted wealthier districts.

          Generally these things work out over time. MI goes through baby booms and baby busts, but in the past the school dist. did rash things like close schools and sell off the property only to come back to the citizens with a $100 million bond to build a new elementary school, and the one middle school is crowded when once there were two. What is different this time is so many parents believe the private schools — even on the eastside — are better despite the public schools having so much more money per students (on average around $18,000 per student in just state funding) because they think the kids are healthier, better behaved, safer, and better educated. Of course, now you have to be able to support the huge state property taxes for public education and private tuition.

          This is why so many states are now going to a system in which state funding follows the student to any school — including private and religious — after the Supreme Court allowed that.

          The biggest national problem is many of the kids who left public school during the closures never came back, and they were mostly poor and minority, and right now we are seeing a breakdown in society among the young, especially teens, and a rise in crime and lawlessness. It could take an entire generation to solve this. Over the next 50 years we will have a very large group of poor and minority citizens who never even obtained a H.S. degree when so many blue-collar jobs will likely disappear, including driver.

          The effects of the pandemic and closing the schools is just beginning.

       5. I am pretty sure I didn’t take algebra until high school. My guess is it was pretty rare until recently. It was pretty customary to take algebra the first year in high school. If you did well in math (as I did) you would keep going, and do calculus by the time you were a senior (or a junior in some cases). You could then get college credit. This was rare back in the day though. Not that many got college credit coming out of high school (running start didn’t exist). Yet this was the era which was considered especially good.

          Hard to compare, since math is taught very differently now. You get bits and pieces of concepts as you go along. My grand daughter is in 5th grade and there is some algebra. That doesn’t mean she knows it very well, only that she has been introduced to the basic concept.

          I’ve known plenty of kids in AP classes, and I’m sure they help some. But I also think parents and students often put way too much emphasis on them. They grew out of the “gifted idea”. To be clear — some students really are gifted. But most of the kids in those programs aren’t special — they are just putting more time into it. Does it pay off? Call me skeptical. The people I know who were absolutely brilliant at math didn’t go that route. They probably would now, but it is like saying Micheal Jordan would be even better if he had AAU training, like all the great basketball players today. Maybe, or maybe he would be very similar, and all that training is just picking out the best players (many of which now reside in Europe).

          A big part of such programs is to appeal to the very kids you don’t want to lose (the ones with upper middle class, highly educated parents). It is great to rub shoulders with really smart kids. But there are other ways to attract those kids (e. g. have a really good music program). My biggest worry is that the district doesn’t have enough of those programs (the result of a combination of federal and state laws).

       6. Virtually nothing that DT has written above is true.

          Private schools have frequently shown to not have better education.

          Covid19 has been repeatedly shown to cause severe health impacts in young people, including what is likely permanent organ damage. They just don’t develop symptoms while this is happening. These are two different things.

          This stuff really needs to be discussed on Nextdoor or some other web site that isn’t devoted to transit.

          I would usually not respond to this but felt disinformation really needs to be called out.

       7. How many kids do you have Glenn, and how many have you put through a public school system recently? How many K-12 school board meetings have you been to recently? Or once again is this something you “read” about. Do you have any medical or epidemiological training at all? One of the biggest problems during Covid was hysterical folks like you who spread fear and misinformation. If it were up to you we would still be sheltering in place, and transit would still be empty.

          The loss of students in the public school systems is objective, including suburban school systems that generally are the best. The fact 22% of Seattle parents put their K-12 students in private schools — before Covid — is objective. The loss of state funding for kids who are now home schooled or attending private schools — education taxes parents pay no matter what that are now kept by the state — is objective.

          If you research the highest rated K-12 schools in the state most are private, but then they are exclusive. If a city like Seattle has an AMI of $115,000 it is hardly surprising they would seek out — and research — the best options for their kids, by far the most important thing in life for them, even their own lives.

          I put my kids through the MISD and thought it was very good, until around 2017 when a very progressive school board took a hard turn left that the more conservative parents (you know, the folks who actually have and are raising kids) saw it, and didn’t like it, which is their right. They didn’t decide to pay an extra $15,000/year in private tuition per kid on top of property taxes for public education for fun. When conservative parents noticed, they pulled their kids, and the $18,000/year the district received for each of those kids stayed with the state.

          Even uber progressive parents I know put their kids into private schools during the closures, and discovered they like it better, and so do their kids. These are very involved parents.

          Putting aside your Covid fear mongering, every study showed school aged kids have virtually no risk from Covid despite lurid claims of “organ” or brain damage. We are now learning so many steps we took in the U.S. compared to other countries based on Covid hysteria — like shutting down K-12 schools for so long — a hysteria you want us to continue — were a mistake.

          Maybe K-12 education is not germane to a transit blog but I didn’t raise it. You know what else isn’t germane to a transit blog today: Covid. It’s over. Even Fauci recommends against mask mandates — or even mask usage right now based on infections and complications — because of the herd immunity from vaccines and just getting Covid.

          Get out of the house Glenn. Breath the air. Enjoy society. Take Link. Before you will be dead, probably with a mask on. But don’t use the kids for your Covid agenda.

       8. Well said DT. When Western Europe had proven to the world that schools could be opened safely by the beginning of 2021, we still closed our public schools in the name of our kids and “science,” based on BS data and pure propaganda. And I make a very fine living analyzing medical data. When I see the people holding up “Believe the Science” posters, I just want to cry at our idiocracy.

          Public schools across the region are still on their equity of outcomes at all costs mission. This combined with funding declines is creating a second wave of exodus from public schools. As an elementary school parent, my goals are simple: I want my kids to be in class and learn the foundations of reading and math, and what I saw so far has been abhorrent at achieving the basics . I don’t need politics injected in every discussion at the elementary level.

       9. I have a question for those who know the ins-and-outs of Private School, prompted by this statement: “many parents believe the private schools … are better … because they think the kids are healthier, better behaved, safer, and better educated.”

          What do they do with challenged students? Are the ones that aren’t ‘healthier, better behaved, safer’ given special education at that private institution?

       10. “The suburbs basically were born due to local control over schools and public safety for basically kids.”

           It was paranoia about colored people more than actual safety. Some districts and neighborhoods were truly unsafe, but that was a tiny fraction of the districts sububanites left.

           Redlining was also a factor. In the 1940s the federal government scored neighborhoods, and any one where the assessor saw 25% or more nonwhite people was considered “blighted” and assigned the lowest category (“red”), and were ineligible for FHA-backed mortgages. So homeowners couldn’t get loans to maintain or replace their houses. The money went to the highest-level areas: greenfield tract developments on the edge with white-only exclusions. And since the redlined buildings then decayed, the area couldn’t generate much tax revenue, so they and their city got less services. Therefore, both the anti-minority folks and those who simply wanted a high-quality house and more services and a well-off school district went to the suburbs. And they used “local control” to shut the door behind them.

       11. I find there’s realistically 3 or 4 categories for why parents send children to private based on my experience being in two different K-12 private schools in Tacoma.

           1). They are wealthy and can afford it no problem

           2). Religious reasons, so as to have a “belief or faith based or focused education” for their children. Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Islamic private religious schools being the most common in this category.

           3). Special needs or disability friendly compared to the public school system with smaller class sizes, integration into normal classes, special needs classes for certain subjects like reading and math, and dont have to deal with public school IEPs (I fit in this category as I was a special needs child and why my mother decided to send me to private school after doing pre K to 1st grade in TPS).

           4). School’s reputation in the local area for x y or z like technology, speciality classes, college preparatory (both of my schools were this), etc.

           Now are there other reasons beyond that, sure. But I find these are the 4 most common reasons that people pursue putting their children in private school in the Seattle area from my own experience being in one.

           Safety exists as a problem, but that’s more dependent on school to school within the district. Sometimes there’s an issue with gangs at certain district schools sometimes there isn’t at others, its pretty variable as a problem. My older half brother went to Mt. Tahoma over Lincoln in TPS for partly this reason alongside them having better special needs help at the time he went (early to mid 90s).

           At the end of it, I would say the difference between public vs private in the Seattle region is for most part indistinguishable for most people’s cases. The main difference being tuition costs at private.

           The main issue as it is, is funding school through property taxes. It can create education disparity among schools in the same region. Alongside having to vote on school levies to addressing funding deficits. That creates a lot of volatility if funding dries up and the voters aren’t interested in paying more property taxes. It creates a system of haves and have nots based solely on the zip code you were born in or raised at the time.

       12. That is very well written Zach and I agree.

           One point: post McCleary legislation prohibits a school district from passing a local levy for general education. You are correct that in the past wealthier districts would pass levies and poor areas would not and that would create a disparity in education due to the difference in funding levels. The state supreme court found that disparity unconstitutional.

           So today each school district in the state gets a base amount from the state per student for general education, plus there is a “regionalization” rate to account for the different costs of living in different districts (Seattle vs. Walla Walla for example). So a rural area gets $1 for every $1.18 MI receives.

           The problem is when a student leaves for home schooling or a private school the state funding for that student stops. School districts have to plan years into the future, and can’t really pivot to suddenly account for a 10% loss of students. 1% yes, 10% no.

           The other unfair thing is the state collects property taxes for education (both the base education tax AND the McCleary surplus which accounts for about 1/2 the property tax bill) based on all potential students. So the state collects the taxes for that student who no longer goes to public school, but keeps it for things other than education when the overall costs for general education don’t go down when a student leaves. It isn’t like when that student leaves it suddenly costs a school $18,000/year less to educate all the rest of the kids.

           Now that the wealthy suburban school districts are beginning to suffer under post McCleary legislation I would not be surprised to see the state allow local districts to levy themselves again for general education, but cap the levy and maintain the McCleary tax. Seattle may pass any transit related levy, but the eastside will pass any education related levy.

           This will again create a disparity between wealthy and poor districts but not too significant. Otherwise I see the powerful suburban areas pushing to change the post McCleary legislation completely, or even a push to have the state funding follow the kid to private school.

    4. @ASDF2: I am one of those middle-class transit riders you mention.

       I took transit regularly when I commuted to Seattle University from the Eastside, using the various Park-&-Rides (we didn’t live near a regular bus route). Those were the days when there were about four Seattle bus routes linking each of the P&Rs I used, so frequency was similar to today’s Link runnings, give or take 5 minutes.

       If I had ever landed a job in Downtown Seattle, I would take the bus, to avoid fighting for parking spaces and battling traffic. Nevertheless, I still use Metro for sporting events and sometimes a “night on the town” (dinner, drinks, the performing arts, etc.). I anticipate more trips to Seattle once full East Link launches, as I love the ability for rail transit to avoid road traffic.

       I can’t use public transit as much as I’d like, as I need to drive to work for several reasons, and I haven’t been able to hang out this year (family members with long-term illnesses). But In different circumstances, I’d be a robust middle-class Metro/ST user, despite needing my car.

       Reply

12. Ross Bleakney, Algebra in middle school has been a thing since the 1990s. It’s very hard to get to calculus in the current sequence if you are only starting algebra in freshman year, without doubling up math in high school (which can also be logistically impossible for some schedules). Coming from a very lax middle school program with almost no homework, it’s not easy to just double up.

    SPS used to actually offer algebra in 7th grade, as well as geometry in middle school. Your friends had better experience with SPS, because SPS was objectively better then than it is now and the trends are looking even worse.

    Are there snowflake parents who want their kids absolutely coddled who are leaving SPS? Sure. But there are also a lot of parents in SPS who are not happy that schools are closing, there’s a $120 MILLION budget shortfall, and some schools (like my own kid’s) are merging classrooms for DIFFERENT GRADES. It’s like we live in rural Nebraska, when we are actually in the center of a 4 million metro area. Do you think that’s acceptable? Do you think parents are acting prissy for wanting out when they find out their 2nd graders are in the same class as 1st graders with one teacher?

    Reply

    1. Also the blunt of these combined grades classrooms and school closures will be impacting north Seattle areas, due to equity tiers and demographics. Basically impacting areas with families who are most able to leave and who pay the largest taxes and levies. This will lead to a death spiral for enrollment.

       Reply

       1. $120M annual deficit for SPS is no joke. And no amount of platitudes from true believers of public school can easily consolidate that. Even with devastating school closures and teacher cuts, we won’t be able to easily fill that $120M deficit. The impact is even more brutal when the pain isn’t even distributed and mostly put on Tier 4 schools in more affluent neighborhoods.

          So given the reality of having my 2nd grader be in the same class as 1st graders, of course I’m going private. I was actually one of the morons who believed in the merits of public schools and bought in Seattle proper despite the redflags everywhere.

    2. I’m sure we can all express opinions about what it means to look at enrollment in public schools versus private schools versus home schooling. I’m sure we can see how Covid has created different parental decisions and how this may change.

       But guys this is a transit blog. We can’t seem to move the needle in transit investments even with this focus. So let’s try to not get into tangential topics too deeply.

       Reply

    3. If we are going to trash algebra education, let’s first find out which school educated the ST staffer who failed at applying the algebra behind calculating the needed vehicle fleet size in 2026.

       Reply

    4. It’s very hard to get to calculus in the current sequence if you are only starting algebra in freshman year, without doubling up math in high school

       I took algebra freshman year. Then geometry, then algebra-trig, then calculus senior year. So did our mayor. I only know that because my sister was in his class (at Garfield).

       So clearly, it wasn’t necessary to take algebra in middle school. Why would it be now? Of course things have changed — as I noted, they are introducing algebra to kids in 5th grade — but that doesn’t mean you will fall behind and be unable to take calculus in high school if you don’t take algebra in middle school. There is a sequence, and they sure as hell don’t want kids to miss out on it, and find themselves unable to get college credit before leaving high school (oh, the horror). Seriously though, Running Start was simply not available when I was a kid. At best, Bruce and I took a test and got college credit for calculus. Now kids take actual college classes while in high school. It is a model nationally (https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/at-25-running-start-a-success-but-how-to-bring-in-more-minority-and-low-income-minority-students/). That is from five years ago, and yet you can bet your ass that someone back then was saying the same thing then as now (about how things were so much better back then). Do you really think Seattle Public Schools would screw that up? Please.

       Your friends had better experience with SPS, because SPS was objectively better then than it is now and the trends are looking even worse.

       Not just friends, but relatives as well. Kids, nieces and nephews, grand kids, etc. I’ve had a steady stream of people from all over the city who have had experience with Seattle Public Schools. It isn’t just the students. My mom was on the school board. I have other relatives who are teachers and administrators at various levels. I’ve talked to them at great length about the Seattle Public Schools. I’ve seen the ups and downs, and while I think the current board has had its share of missteps (as did my mom’s frankly) the overall state of the schools is still very good. In many ways, I would consider it better than back in the day. Levy failures used to be common. When is the last time one failed? Do you remember? Exactly.

       As for math, I find the subject especially interesting. I’ve looked at my grand kids math books, and the first thing that hits me is how different it is. Clearly the approach is different. Having been especially good at math, and having once toyed with the idea of teaching, I find it fascinating. It certainly doesn’t look worse. Just different. The approach is more broad, and less focused. Personally, I think that is great. I know I would have thrived with that sort of thing. Some kids wouldn’t. They struggle with the ideas, and can’t easily fall back to simply memorizing things. Eventually they get there though — they figure it out, one way or another. Personally, I think it is more appropriate than ever. I still remember how my college physics professor graded a test. There are several steps with every question. You go from physics to calculus, algebra and then arithmetic. Make a mistake on the arithmetic and the penalty is minor. It is a little tougher on the algebra, followed by the calculus and finally the physics (screw that up and you get zero). This was the early days of scientific calculators and yet is so appropriate now. The machines can do more and more of the “easy” stuff — what they struggle with is the bigger concepts. Theoretically, a kid never needs to know how to use the quadratic formula, as long as they understand the concept.

       Interestingly enough, there was only one time where someone I knew “fell behind”, and struggled. Her dad had a teaching assignment at Oxford, and she went to school there. She was fine in most subjects, but the way they taught math was different, so when she got back, she was basically a year behind. She had to hire a tutor to catch up. I really don’t think that is happening at the Seattle Public Schools right now. Maybe they aren’t challenging the really smart kids often enough. Maybe they won’t have as many college credits after graduating that they would have otherwise (Oh, the horror!) but if a kid applies themself, then their is ample opportunity to excel, simply because there are still boatloads of brilliant teachers, and plenty of brilliant fellow students to challenge them.

       Reply

13. I give up; it’s impossible to moderate all of the school and equity and other diversions.

    Does anyone have anything more to say about transit frequency?

    Reply

    1. Transit frequency is good, if you can afford it.

       Reply

    2. I was actually a bit curious about what Tacomee said about redirecting Sound Transit funds say to Pierce Transit.

       Using napkin math it seems if one say cancelled the Sounder extension that would provide around the funding to double Pierce Transit’s frequency. If one cancelled both the Sounder extension and the Link extension to Tacoma one could triple/quadruple the frequency every year (Or at least as long as ST3 has funding). (510million+150million)/150million ~= 4.4. (Of course though you’d need to buy busses so some would need to be capital expenses)

       https://www.piercetransit.org/budget-finances/

       In 2020-2023 the operational expenditures were around 150 million annually. (100 million personal, 50 million maintenance and operations). Operating revenues were around 150~200 million with 100 million from sales tax, 5 million from fares, 40 million already from sound transit to provide ‘regional transit service’.

       Capital expenditures fluctuate much more wildly but around 50 to 250 million annually. (though a lot of the most recent money allocation was from Sound Transit to build the supposed BRT on pacific highway).

       https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/2021-subarea-report.pdf

       Currently Pierce subarea generates around 550 million annually, 200 million are already being used 113 million for capital improvements and 70 million existing operations (40 million to that previously mentioned pierce transit funding so can’t double count that money) . Then there is an additional debt interest charge of 60 million so remainder of 270 million annually that is currently being kept for future link/sounder capital projects.

       I’m not quite sure how to parse out say sound transit 2 versus 3 for funding/revenue purposes but considering there isn’t an actual light rail link in pierce county I don’t think it changes much?

       Reply

       1. “I was actually a bit curious about what Tacomee said about redirecting Sound Transit funds say to Pierce Transit.”

          Understood, but is that really the mission for Sound Transit to supplement an underfunded local transit agency?

          Pierce Transit needs to find a way to convince district constituents to raise their sales tax rate. I believe it’s currently at .6%. The Snohomish County PTBA, aka Community Transit, is double that at 1.2%, and thus brings in much more sales tax revenues by comparison. I believe the Pierce County PTBA can raise their rate to be on par with CT’s under the current statutes governing such districts (see link below).

          The districts are of similar size population wise:

          From PT’s latest 6-year TDP:
          “Pierce Transit provides public transportation services for Pierce County, Washington’s second largest county with approximately 917,000 residents. The defined service area, or Public Transportation Benefit Area (PTBA), covers nearly 300 square miles in Pierce County’s urban area and contains about 70% of the county population. The service area includes the incorporated cities and towns of Auburn, Edgewood, Fife, Fircrest, Gig Harbor, Lakewood, Milton, Pacific, Puyallup, Ruston, Steilacoom, Tacoma, and University Place. It also includes multiple population centers within unincorporated Pierce County.”

          From CT’s latest 6-year TDP:
          “As of April 14, 2023, Community Transit’s service area had 621,930 residents, about 74% of Snohomish County’s 844,400 population (Figure 2-1). The remainder of the county’s population resides in Everett and in less populated areas of north and east Snohomish County.”

          Oh, and for the record, sales tax receipts are NON-operating revenues for the purpose of the income statement. Just to correct the record on your comment above.

          https://mrsc.org/explore-topics/transportation/integrating-transportation-modes/public-transportation-systems

          https://www.piercetransit.org/budget-finances/

          https://www.communitytransit.org/budget-and-finances

       2. PT tried back in 2011 to increase transit tax, but it was defeated and PT hasn’t done another local tax proposal since. I was only finishing up high school when it happened so I can’t really say why it failed. Tacomee would probably be able to give better insight since he seems to have been more involved back then as a local constituent.

          All I know is that PT consolidated many underperforming or duplicate routes and some routes like the military base ones wnded up being taken over by JBLMs own transit van system GO a couple years later with the exception of the Lakewood-Madigan Milk Run, Route 206.

       3. WL,

          Nice post! Something to look into.

          Well Sound Transit just funded a study or plan for building BRT for the PT #1 route. That’s a long route that’s actually “regional transit”….. it serves Tacoma, Parkland and Spanaway. If Sound Transit declared the #1 route “regional transit” and funded running it…. Pierce Transit could run more buses on other routes, making the system instantly better for everyone.

          Maybe the Sounder trains go away for better long distance bus routes? I don’t know really, I’m not a transit expert. But I do understand politics and most of the barriers in transit funding (agency to agency) can easily be changed at the local or State level. (The Feds are a different matter)

          Tlsgwm,

          “Pierce Transit needs to find a way to convince district constituents to raise their sales tax rate. I believe it’s currently at .6%. The Snohomish County PTBA, aka Community Transit, is double that at 1.2%, and thus brings in much more sales tax revenues by comparison. I believe the Pierce County PTBA can raise their rate to be on par with CT’s under the current statutes governing such districts (see link below)”

          This Saturday the T-Dome link expansion comes on line. One year late and waaay over budget. Last week Sound Transit dropped a turd saying it spent millions on a BRT plan for Pacific Ave that can’t actually happen. Sound Transit fuck-ups mean the voters in Pierce County aren’t too keen on raising taxes for more transit. We need Sound Transit to stop peeing in the pool before voters give more money to transit. Blame Pierce County voters all you want, but it’s the ST mistakes that are the real problem.

       4. In regard to the last PT tax election, I’m pretty sure it was 2012. There were two attempts. The first was with the full PTBA as it had existed for a number of years. When that failed, there was a transit conference convened, as provided in RCW, to redraw the district boundaries. Unincorporated areas where there was no chance of the vote passing were left out, and cities such as Bonney Lake, Orting, and Buckley mutually agreed to leave the PTBA.

          Initially the odds of passage looked good. IIRC, they were even having difficulty getting anyone to write an opposition statement for the voter’s pamphlet. Then there was a last-minute push against the measure, funded mostly by Puyallup car dealers.

          At the end the vote split along I-5 lines, mirroring the general political split of the county. West of the freeway, the measure passed, to the east it failed. I believe the Peninsula was mostly against, except perhaps in the precincts in the city center of Gig Harbor.

       5. In regard to “fuck ups” by Sound Transit, the mismanagement of the BRT project is in the lap of Pierce Transit. ST basically gave them a blank check.

       6. > Understood, but is that really the mission for Sound Transit to supplement an underfunded local transit agency?

          I mean it’s their sub areas money. If they want to fund more busses instead of light rail why should we stop it. Granted while tacomeee would like it, I’m not actually sure the the rest of pierce county actually prefers funding busses more rather than the light rail. And Seattle/Bellevue for better or worse does not care too much if the rail does not reach Tacoma.

          More importantly sounder commuter rail extension doesn’t seem necessary and that eats up a lot of capital/operational cost for little benefit. I don’t see why to force a commuter rail line that no one really wants

       7. T.K.

          I don’t the real story about the BRT plans for Pacific Ave…. but if you say Pierce Transit is to blame, I’ll believe that. Pierce Transit has big time plans for the future on its website…. yet can seem to figure out how to run buses in the here and now. They’re not getting new funding for that.

          That’s really Sound Transit’s biggest problem as well. Over the years, the Sound Transit dog and pony show went around promising big things. Now they don’t have the money and projects are years behind…. news outlets run stories about crime on transit and broken escalators. Pride cometh before a fall.

          I want all the transit outfits to fix the driver shortage, hire some security and mechanics, get the current system running correctly…. and we’ll talk about more money.

       8. Yes, Pierce Transit Prop 1 was in 2012. Wow, I had forgotten how close that vote had been:

          Approved
          100,239 49.83%
          Rejected
          100,943 50.17%
          Total Votes 201,182 100%

          Voter turnout for the entire county had been nearly 79% since it was a Presidential election cycle. Interestingly, the undervote on the Prop 1 measure was 15,513, meaning a whole bunch of voters within the district never bothered to weigh in on the matter.

          The ballot measure read as follows:
          “Sales and Use Tax Increase
          The Board of Commissioners of the Pierce County Public Transportation Benefit Area (commonly known as Pierce Transit) adopted Resolution No. 12-021 concerning a proposition to increase the sales and use tax. If approved, this proposition would authorize Pierce Transit to impose an additional three-tenths of one percent (0.3%) sales and use tax, for a total sales and use tax of ninetenths of one percent (0.9%), to fund restoration and provision of services including, without limitation: Special event and commuter service, services for people with disabilities and capital improvements, all as authorized by Resolution No. 12-021. Should Proposition No. 1 be:
          Approved
          Rejected”

          I live within the CT district and voted to approve Prop 1 when it appeared on the ballot in 2015. The measure passed narrowly:

          Community Transit Proposition 1

          Approved
          51,452 51.11%
          Rejected
          49,219 48.89%
          Total Votes 100,671 100%

          The undervotes were 8,737. Turnout was pretty bad at less than 35% countywide, hence the low tally shown above. As I mentioned previously, this measure increased the sales tax rate for CT by .3% to a total of 1.2%.

       9. That was a very close vote for PT in 2012. Demographics have changed substantially in Pierce since that vote; it has gone from a high teen % with a college degree to a bump of 5 or so percentage points to low to mid 20s. Largely due to the housing affordability crisis, we can assume.

          If there were usable transit that could be shown as useful to that presumably more transit-sympathetic demographic, the next vote might not be a struggle to pass. Stream could have been that demonstration. Alas.

       10. “Oh, and for the record, sales tax receipts are NON-operating revenues for the purpose of the income statement. Just to correct the record on your comment above.”

           Could you please explain why that distinction is important, tlsgwm?

           Thanks!

       11. > “Oh, and for the record, sales tax receipts are NON-operating revenues for the purpose of the income statement. Just to correct the record on your comment above.”

           > Could you please explain why that distinction is important, tlsgwm?

           I can explain it, though it doesn’t matter too much for a transit agency nor my point, I was just focusing on what money can actually be used between operating versus capital. Basically for most transit agencies (and other companies like say utility companies) they usually divide up the budget.

           For Pierce Transit they have operating expenses (bus drivers, maintenance) and then capital expenses (new busses, bus base, bus rapid transit) and as well as the corresponding operating revenue and capital revenue. This is especially important for funding because a lot of it comes from state/federal funding where they don’t want to mix the funds (aka say one using say link expansion capital funds on increased frequency rather than actually building the line)

           For within the money able to be used for operating expenses it is further divided into operating revenue and non-operating revenue. With a normal business the terms mean something like ‘operating revenue’ would be like selling lemonade revenue while ‘non-operating revenue’ could be selling a one-time used lemonade stand.

           However the distinction doesn’t quite matter here legally. Like yes sales tax is considered non-operating revenue, but if you see in the pdf Sound Transit money “regional transit service” is considered operating revenue though that is eventually coming from taxes as well. It’s like nice to place it under the correct bucket of just sales tax and advertising under the operating revenue then one can calculate the fare box recovery ratio correctly, but it doesn’t matter for purposes of allocating what funding can be used for what service.

       12. “Stream could have been that demonstration. Alas.”

           That’s an excellent point.

           One of my nephews is part of that growing demographic you mention. He and his fiance moved down to Tacoma from Lake City last year when they purchased their first home, essentially priced out of the Seattle market for what they were looking for.

           Re the minor correction I made for WL’s comment, it’s just an accounting thing. On a transit agency’s financial statements, the operating revenues come from fares, advertising and providing transit services to other entities (the other side of purchased transportation expense for that other entity). Thus, a transit agency will show an operating loss on its financials prior to the non-operating revenue sources being netted. The latter are what folks like commenter DT frequently refer to as the agency’s “subsidy” amounts. The booked operating loss (or ratio) is just another metric for the agency to assess its operating performance.

           Hope that helps!

       13. Sorry, WL, and not to beat a dead horse here, but the proper accounting does matter. The agency’s auditor would not sign off on the relevant financials if these other revenues from tax sources were listed otherwise.

       14. > Sorry, WL, and not to beat a dead horse here, but the proper accounting does matter. The agency’s auditor would not sign off on the relevant financials if these other revenues from tax sources were listed otherwise.

           It literally doesn’t matter for what we’re talking about. The thing that matters is what can be spent on capital versus operating expenses.

           > Thus, a transit agency will show an operating loss on its financials prior to the non-operating revenue sources being netted. The latter are what folks like commenter DT frequently refer to as the agency’s “subsidy” amounts. The booked operating loss (or ratio) is just another metric for the agency to assess its operating performance.

           The sound transit funding is placed in the operating revenue bucket but you wouldn’t calculate farebox recovery ratio with that, so even with your example it is still incorrect. Like yes I understand for a normal business it matters a lot which bucket it is placed under, but it doesn’t matter that much.

           > “Oh, and for the record, sales tax receipts are NON-operating revenues for the purpose of the income statement. Just to correct the record on your comment above.”

           Also I double checked, the pdf does label sales tax as “Operating Revenue”, I was never wrong from the start. It separates out “Operating Income” and “Non-operating Income” but both are under “Operating Revenue”.

           > “Operating Revenues include both Operating Income, Non-Operating, Income, and Contributions to pay for ongoing transportation operations”

           https://www.piercetransit.org/budget-finances/

           Also I’m not sure what you are trying to prove by being pedantic here, it’s not as if anyone is trying to prove Pierce Transit’s farebox recovery ratio.

       15. Though I will fully admit, it is very odd they call stuff that is ‘revenue’ as ‘income’. The financial document from Pierce Transit is using the wrong terms it should actually be labelled the way you suggest. As like what sound transit does below.

           https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/2022-financial-statements-single-audit-reports_0.pdf

           But again it doesn’t really matter as long as they spend the money in the correct bucket of operating vs capital.

       16. I’ve also wondered why PT hasn’t had a more recent levy. It has just been letting the network languish, with no effort to improve it other than this one Stream line and a few app-taxi areas (e.g., Ruston). This is the fault of both Pierce Transit and the cities’ politicians and county politicians. They’re the ones who should be articulating the need, showing how it’s important for their cities, and trying to convince the public to support it, and pushing PT to hold another levy or providing their own city funding like Seattle does. If there’s been no levy attempt since 2012, then it’s not a case of “the voters don’t want it” but “We don’t know if the voters would want it because they haven’t been asked.”

           Bellevue wrote a smart new transit master plan that’s better than anything Bellevue has ever had. But then it didn’t do anything to try to get it realized. It just waited for the Metro Connects levy. That levy was supposed to be in 2020 but it got dropped when officials were scrambling to respond to covid in the spring. And then in the summer the county wanted the Harborview levy alone on November ballot. And since then, nothing. Just noises that they want to do it someday but they never say when, or it just perpetually remains a year or two in the future. The cities could make it an issue to accelerate it, or step in with their own stopgap funding as Seattle has done. But Bellevue and the other cities just seem to be waiting for somebody else to do it. They support ST3 when it comes around, but then they do nothing about the non-ST routes in their long-range plans, which would have a greater everyday benefit to more of their constituents and neighborhoods. Pierce Transit is stagnating the same way, and the Pierce politicians should be doing something about it.

           That’s on top of the Pierce politicians advocating for Link that reaches only one corner of the county and Sounder that runs a few times a day, and ignoring vast other needs like the 2/3/4 corridors, 6th Avenue, Tacoma-Puyallup, etc, that would bring transit benefits to more Pierce County residents and for more of their trips. ST3 could have had different projects in Pierce, or maybe less Sounder improvements and more other things. It was Pierce politicians who chose the ST3 projects; the rest of the board just went along. And Seattle progressives just went along: they didn’t force those projects on Pierce or prevent it from choosing others. Pierce politicians could have chosen different, and given the huge amount of unmet transit needs in Pierce County, it was a neglect of their constituents’ interests not to.

       17. I think it would be difficult for any one Eastside city to propose a transit levy because there is very little intra- city only transit routes on the Eastside. Plus I think the vote from Seattle would be necessary to pass a transit levy today, although S Seattle and S KC will likely vote NO.

           So the Eastside cities that want more transit will wait for a Metro wide levy.

           Some cities like MI do plan to subsidize service like the 630 as Mike suggests but then gets slammed on this blog for doing so. Urbanists and transit advocates think that if eastsiders don’t adopt their values and design a transit system that doesn’t include cars which means changing their land use it isn’t enough.

           Other cities like Issaquah that speaks for its surrounding cities and has the park and rides and Bellevue see the pool of ST money as their “subsidy”. They can change routes like the 554 to be Eastside only, or add frequency to ST routes if they want.

           I also think the Eastside was waiting to see how East Link and Stride changed things, with money already raised by the subarea, but those are many years behind schedule. Eastsiders might ask why are we being asked to raise transit taxes when we spent a fortune on ST, so let’s wait and see how that turns out, whether anyone rides East Link, or Stride, or whether it can run across the bridge. It isn’t like transit has a lot of credibility on the Eastside, and I am not sure how many really distinguish Metro from ST (which isn’t good for Metro, but then Metro is still cutting Eastside service).

           Plus there is so much change when it comes to transit on the Eastside. Peak routes are being cut. The Eastside transit restructure reoriented Eastside transit to the Eastside rather than Seattle.

           With the steep decline in transit ridership on the Eastside I am not sure any city transit levy would pass. If I were Metro I would be concerned the swing Eastside vote would be no on a Metro levy. It is pretty clear whatever Metro tax revenue is being raised on the Eastside isn’t being spent here. Yes, that probably makes sense with the steep decline in ridership, but that doesn’t mean the Eastside should tax itself for more Metro revenue that will obviously go someplace else.

           ST 2 and 3 passed on the Eastside — the swing vote — because of subarea equity. Any Metro levy would need to be specific about where on the Eastside the eastside’s levy money would go. Today there is a belief on the Eastside all our tax money goes to gold plated Seattle projects, whether transit or housing. Why would someone from MI vote yes for a county wide Metro levy? Or Sammamish that has over 80,000 residents who vote.

           If I were Metro I would want to see the park and rides fuller before I put a levy on the ballot. If transit ridership returns on the Eastside it will begin in the park and rides because they are our best and often only first/last mile access, and today they are 50% full at best. People generally don’t vote yes for a levy for something they don’t use, on top of ST taxes and current Metro taxes, especially when service is being cut.

           I would suggest Seattle stick to its own Metro levy. Better chance it will pass, although more if that money is going to S Seattle as part of equity.

       18. Well said, Mike Orr. I couldn’t agree more.

       19. I don’t know Mike. It sounds like you are conflating ST and PT in Pierce Co.

           Pierce Co. is difficult to serve. It is huge, most is very undense, and the county is poor with a small demographic who can commute by transit.

           The projects Pierce chose for ST 3 made sense back then, even with Tacoma back then and before Seattle imploded. . The goal was to connect to the region and to downtown Seattle. Sounder rails already existed and accessed the centers of cities to the east from Sumner to Auburn to Kent (which are considered “urban” in Pierce) to Seattle.

           The region was spending a fortune to run light rail to Pierce’s doorstep, even through S KC. There was never a debate to continue past the dome to either downtown or the mall — or anywhere — because the money only got Link to the dome. Over $3 billion for TDLE is a lot for Pierce.

           Obviously things changed with the pandemic, and ST projects are written in pre-pandemic stone because ST believes some day we will return to a pre-pandemic, urbany, non-WFH world.

           I bet those same politicians are glad they built T-Link. Otherwise Tacoma would have nothing to show for its money until at least 2035, and ST would have provided no “urban” transit to the only urbanish area in 2200 Sq miles.

           When it comes to PT the mission is impossible. Ridership is low, costs per boarding probably 6X that of north Seattle, the area huge and undense, the is is no urbanism, and poor. A lot of Pierce residents don’t have $200k AMI like north Seattle so can’t vote yes on any levy.

           Ridership on Sounder S despite $3 billion in planned upgrades including parking garages in Sumner, Auburn and Kent has plummeted. TDLE is now scheduled to open in 2035 but I have real doubts the subarea will have the funding to complete it, especially if the Sounder S upgrades are completed.

           If I lived in Pierce and someone (from Seattle) came to me and asked for another dime for transit I would say you must be kidding me. Why not just throw the money down a hole. I understand Tacomee’s lament that Pierce was sold a bunch of Link/Sounder/rail magic beans and that money should have realized what Pierce Co. really is rather than a regional urban utopia, but that chance has passed.

           Sure, I suppose if Sounder ran more often and was full, and same with TDLE, some folks in Tacoma might be keen on more transit funding, but ST blew its chance to sell transit to Pierce, already a jaded customer. With the very high costs per boarding in Pierce you just get very little additional transit for the money. Same on the Eastside which has money and Metro revenue to burn (by others in other areas) but when you factor in the low income in Pierce more transit funding is not the best use of the money when ST has and will consume so much subarea wealth.

       20. I don’t agree that a PT funding increase ballot measure can’t pass in the district. My lord, the last measure came up short by just some 700 votes. And there were 15,000 undervotes on the measure!!

           Sure, they’ll have to overcome the stink of the ST shitshow but I think it’s doable with the right campaign.

       21. “Some cities like MI do plan to subsidize service like the 630 as Mike suggests but then gets slammed on this blog for doing so.”

           I don’t slam Mercer Island for funding a First Hill peak express. I would just slam Metro if it came out of base funds. Why should Mercer Island be the only Eastside city to get an express to First Hill? Why should Metro fund a First Hill express when Mercer Island has hardly any local service? But if the City of Mercer Island wants to fund a First Hill express, that’s between the city and its residents, and the main losers are Mercer Island residents who don’t get an all-island local service but voted for the express.

           By the way, you said Islanders wouldn’t ride a local bus, and many of them have steep driveways up to the arterials that they wouldn’t walk up. But Andrew and I met somebody from Mercer Island this summer who said he would, even though his driveway is one of the steep ones.

           “I think it would be difficult for any one Eastside city to propose a transit levy because there is very little intra- city only transit routes on the Eastside.”

           I didn’t think enough about how Eastside cities are so small that most routes serve two or more cities. But there are routes like the 226 that’s entirely in Bellevue. Seattle and Burien collaborated on the cost of additional runs on the 120, and the RapidRide H upgrade that replaced it. Multiple Eastside cities could collaborate that way on routes like the 240, 245, and 250. If Bellevue wanted to boost the 271, it could ask Seattle’s TBD to contribute to the small part in the U-District. Likewise with Kirkland and the 255.

           “If I were Metro I would want to see the park and rides fuller before I put a levy on the ballot.”

           Most of the routes I’m thinking of don’t serve a P&R, or nobody would drive to a P&R to take them. These are for the other kind of trips: intra-city or between adjacent cities or nearby cities.

       22. @WL
           “I was never wrong from the start.”

           I don’t know what to tell you, friend. You’re simply not reading the financials correctly. I’m not going to even bother to explain the capital spending side and how that mostly involves the balance sheet since we would really be getting into the weeds on this then. I’ll just say that how each agency chooses to spend its revenue sources, on operations vs capital projects, is a reflection of the goals and directions the agency has laid out in its overall planning and further defined within its annual budgets. The accounting treatment just follows the rules. One of those protocols is that sales tax revenues are reported as non-operating revenues, as illustrated here:

           King Co Metro, 2022 ACFR, pg 32
           CT, 2022 AFR, pg 27
           PT, 2021 ACFR, pg 17*
           ST, 2022 Annual Report, pg 13

           My only intent here was to correct the record on your original comment so that other folks don’t misunderstand the details. For the record, receipts from other agencies for contractual transit services should be and are reported as operating revenues. Where the payor gets those funds from is irrelevant to how those funds are booked on the payee side.

           *The graphic presented on page 18 is misleading as is the associated narrative

       23. > I don’t know what to tell you, friend. You’re simply not reading the financials correctly.

           I literally quoted the Pierce financial report. If you think Pierce Transit messed up the report that is fine, but I read nothing incorrectly.

           > Operating Revenues include both Operating Income, Non-Operating Income, and Contributions to pay for ongoing transportation operations.

           I find it odd they label Sales Tax as under “Non-Operating Income” which is under “Operating Revenues” as well, but that is what the report states.

           > *The graphic presented on page 18 is misleading as is the associated narrative …
           > For the record, receipts from other agencies for contractual transit services should be and are reported as operating revenues.

           It is more than just the graphic that is wrong if you want to call it errors in the report. If you wanted to fix the report it should also label the “fares” and advertising as under “operating revenue” rather than “operating income”. The receipts from the other agencies are incorrectly reported as “operating income”.

           You really aren’t quite noticing the errors in the report. If you think calling “sales tax as under operating revenue” for Pierce Transit is incorrect you’re finding fault with the report not with my interpretation of it.

       24. Also for

           > For the record, receipts from other agencies for contractual transit services should be and are reported as operating revenues. Where the payor gets those funds from is irrelevant to how those funds are booked on the payee side.

           Okay sure, so then is operating revenue (What Pierce Transit labels “operating income”) a useful measure then? You said:

           > Thus, a transit agency will show an operating loss on its financials prior to the non-operating revenue sources being netted. The latter are what folks like commenter DT frequently refer to as the agency’s “subsidy” amounts. The booked operating loss (or ratio) is just another metric for the agency to assess its operating performance.

           But look now it is muddled because now the operating revenue looks better than expected because those from taxes not fares. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

14. Lake Washington School District had 60 national merit semifinalists this year. SPS? 9.

    And SPS has 20,000 more students than LWSD.

    Reply

    1. The Eastside and Northshore have some of the best school districts in the country. Seattle is average. It just looks underperforming because of its neighbors.

       Reply

15. Sorry I started the whole public vs. private off-topic discussion. What I meant to start is a discussion about how inflation has hurt transit coverage (it’s also hurting public education for the same reasons, but let’s hold off on that one).

    First, let’s look at housing– Greater Seattle has been hit with high inflation on housing for a couple of decades. As rents have went up, so has the cost of labor to build new units because workers need someplace to live. In some more affordable housing markets, not only is it cheaper to buy a house, but it’s also cheaper to remodel a bathroom, or even build an apartment building, because labor is cheaper. Seattle has so many high income people, who aren’t affected by this housing inflation much, who are buying up whole parts of the construction industry to build stuff like 5,000 sq ft houses and $100,000 kitchen remodels, This makes building anything affordable near impossible. It also plays a large role in why Sound Transit projects are late and over budget, and why Metro can’t hire enough drivers or mechanics.

    There’s not really a bus driver shortage…. there’s a complete unwillingness of transit outfits to pay the prevailing wage for CDL drivers. The construction industry just pays whatever it needs to finish jobs and passes the increase on to the buyer. This is why a new apartment rents for 2K a month. Metro, CT, PT, ST…. they’re not currently living in the real world when it come to employee pay. And maybe they can’t, due to political reasons. This sort of inflation is what killed Seattle’s original streetcars BTW.

    I easiest way to help solve this transit problem is to stop money sucking capital projects (like light rail) and try to pay for decent transit service levels with the money saved. Yeah, I know that means letting go of “free” Federal funds. Yeah, I know some people here think Sound Transit is actually bound by laws to only fund regional transit…. but the T-Dome link isn’t regional transit and that’s Sound Transit. Leaving the Feds out of it…. I’m pretty sure the State government would rubber stamp whatever Sound Transit decides to change.

    The problem with ST3 is it is too big and goes too long. At some point a recession or inflation or big changes in the regional economy was sure mess it up. And here we are.

    Reply

16. https://apnews.com/article/675f6f7a6e550a2ec8113bda5b001ffa

    Interesting article about a city that scrapped its public transit “grid” for an on-demand transit system, which I think is the future but may require driverless technology to pencil out.

    Reply

    1. The other big issue with doing this is the requirement of needing data/ internet service and a smart phone.

       We may be moving to a situation as a society where we may have to provide limited smart phone functionality to everyone, and that could be cheaper than trying to accommodate those not able to be included with alternatives. It’s difficult to participate in society without a smart phone and data service these days.

       It also begins to wander into the realm of privacy laws. Cash transit fares and cars without gps allow us to travel anonymously. It seems technically possible to track people if we want these days as even property thieves probably have smart phones.

       I think the “end state” of this is that everyone will be in possession of a smart device kind of like how we all have ID cards today. So it’s only a matter of time before government creates a system to make it happen. Then systems like these will predominate in rural and small towns for transportation services.

       Reply

    2. That may be more worthwhile in smaller and more isolated rural towns. Wikipedia says Wilson, NC, is 40 miles from Raleigh. The Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill metro (the Research Triangle) is 2.1 million, so like King County alone. The distance is like Seattle to Marysville or Lakewood. I don’t know how much is in between or how much interaction there is with the metro.

       But a few other closer-in suburban cities have replaced their fixed-route transit with a subsidized Uber contract, and the result was a steep fare hike that lower-income residents couldn’t afford. So lower-income neighborhoods went from having bus routes to effectively having no transit, while Uber served higher-income neighborhoods.

       The last paragraph says Wilson will probably restore fixed-route transit someday. Jarrett Walker in Human Transit has written extensively on how app-taxis cost more per passenger to operate fixed-route buses, because once you add up the deadheading and detours, app-taxis can serve only 2-4 riders per hour while even low-level coverage bus routes usually get 10 or more.

       Reply

    3. “We may be moving to a situation as a society where we may have to provide limited smart phone functionality to everyone”

       We tried at least four times to get my elderly relative on a cell phone. We bought her one iPhone, one Android phone, and two flip phones. In all cases she was able to use it when we were there to tutor her, but then she’d be out somewhere and it would ring and she’d try to answer it, but she couldn’t get the gestures or buttons right or it would go into some incomprehensible mode (e.g., to arrange the icons on the home screen) and she wasn’t able to answer. And this was just receiving and making voice calls. We were never able to get to more complicated things like One Bus Away or entering her own contacts or SMS or other apps.

       Reply

       1. Yeah, my grandmother is like that. In theory she has a phone but in practice mom has two phones, one of which gets used only when grandma needs something.

          However, there’s an unspoken “eventually” there that does a lot of heavy lifting. It’s not something that is true today, but it is likely something that will be true in two decades, if not sooner. And it’s worth remembering that cellphones were still used heavily by only a minority of people about two decades ago.

       2. I do have a smartphone, know how to use it, And use it regularly. But, I have had occasions where my smartphone battery died while I’m out and about. With a dead phone, I can’t use OneBusAway or even looking schedules, but I can at least walk to routes that I remember come frequently and know that at least some bus is going to show up within the next 15 minutes.

          But, if a smartphone were required to access any form of transportation, now I can’t go anywhere without first charging the phone – which is easier said than done, given that the charging cable is back at home. So now, in order to get home, I have no choice but to approach stranger after stranger and say “excuse me, my phone’s battery died, do you mind if I use your phone to order a transit ride home?”. And I would call needing to do that just to get home completely unreasonable.

    4. Even with driverless technology, it’s still going to be really expensive due to the maintenance costs of only having one rider.

       The Los Angeles effort at Micro Transit costs $43 per ride:
       https://www.masstransitmag.com/alt-mobility/shared-mobility/news/53072364/ca-the-1-ride-that-costs-metro-43-why-some-want-to-keep-it-going

       Reply