“Rethink the Link“: A West Seattle movement advocates the “No Build” EIS alternative for West Seattle Link. This one seems to be not just nimbys but people concerned about effective transit. As this blog has discussed, existing bus routes fan out from the West Seattle Bridge in a stick-shift pattern, connecting West Seattle neighborhoods to each other as well as short one-seat rides to downtown. Link will serve only the middle horizontal bar of the stick shift, serving only a small area directly while the vast majority of neighborhoods require a transfer. And RapidRide H (Delridge) will probably continue running downtown in parallel. All this gives a reason to stop West Seattle Link. Ideally multi-line BRT fanning out from the bridge would replace the existing bus routes. But even lesser bus improvements might be better than an ineffective and expensive Link route. Here’s a manifesto of sorts.
This could be a model for advocacy on the problematic Ballard/DSTT2 project with horrible transfers, and the arguably-unnecessary Tacoma Dome and Everett extensions and the Issaquah line. ST2 Link and the short exensions to Lynnwood, Federal Way, and downtown Redmond are critical for the region’s transit mobility. But the further extensions have diminishing returns, and the proposed bad transfers downtown would cripple the network. A “No Build” alternative is required in every EIS, and people can argue for it. Most no-build alternatives assume incremental bus improvements, and it may be possible to divert some of the project money to them. Of course, it would be a long shot to convince the ST board and subarea politicians and local politicians to cancel the Link projects.
Chile builds metros for $100 million per mile, fully underground and with platform screen doors. Sound Transit spends $1 billion for a mostly-elevated line to West Seattle. A video on Santiago’s network and how it keeps costs low (RMTransit). And Santiago is building a gondola too.
Are turnstyles or proof of payment better? RMTransit weighs in.
Singapore seeks to eliminate the urban heat island effect ($). A V-shaped hospital campus next to a pond with a wooded “courtyard”. Plants on skyscrapers. White buildings like Greece. Trees and wind corridors throughout the city. Rail transit. All to counteract the 10 degrees Fahrenheit urban heat island to protect residents’ health.
Seattle and the Eastside continue to bifurcate into rich and poor with little in the middle. ($) San Francisco went through this twenty years earlier.
Are Link’s next-arrival displays on again? Are they accurate this time? Sound Transit turned them on for a few weeks this summer to quantify the errors and see where they’re coming from. One commentator saw one on this week and it was accurate. Has ST finally made some headway, or is it still as far off as ever?
This is an open thread. Thanks to Martin Pagel for the West Seattle and Chile topics.
As much as I think the logic for walking away from West Seattle Link is there, I don’t see ST ever following through on it. Presenting valid data never changes what ST wants to do.
ST even adopted a radical new preferred DSTT2 station scheme with horrible transfers a few months ago without any Board member even demanding new ridership numbers first.
So I’m anticipating a mere further slowdown on the WS project as there will be few that care whether or not it’s actually running.
The problem seems to me to a be purely political: ST is viewed more like a catalyst to employ engineers and builders and to increase value of nearby real estate than it is a public service to riders. After all, most of the Board will have retired from politics by the time the project opens.
“As much as I think the logic for walking away from West Seattle Link is there, I don’t see ST ever following through on it. Presenting valid data never changes what ST wants to do.”
It’s a long shot, but this is what some CID activists did and got the preferred alternative changed. Even if we have little chance of success, we need to stand up for what would best meet passengers’ needs, so that there is a voice for that, and because people expect us to be a voice for transit best practices.
This is a new factor. Until now Dow Constantine has put his thumb on the scale and prioritized West Seattle Link because he and other politicians live in the district and “people like us” live there. There has not been much from West Seattle residents, just a vague “light rail is good” or “cars and parking are more important”. It has only been RossB and I and a few others on STB suggesting some different transit alternatives. But now there seems to be an organized movement among West Seattle residents with similar ideas, or at least some overlap.
ST made the decision in 2016 to prioritize West Seattle Link before Ballard Link or any other potential North King lines. Since then it has kept reaffirming that decision. But how deep does the support remain? How much of it is just that Dow thinks it would be neat, or did in 2016? A lot has happened since 2016. People have had time to think about what the benefits to West Seattle would really be, and ST is trying to plug significant cost overruns in North King. So a nudge by influential people could get politicians and ST to consider changes to the plan.
Thanks for minimizing those of us in the “few others” category.
Agree Tom. I remember Mike being a huge advocate for WSBLE, and any transit spending, and all of ST 3. When I first began posting on this blog WSBLE would not cost $9 billion (up from $6 billion in 2016) and DSTT2 would cost $4.2 billion, not $2.2 billion (before the recent two-year extension), Mike demanded “proof” and claimed that was just my opinion (actually the opinion of the ETA, I don’t have enough expertise to estimate these kinds of projects), and every time I have indicated subarea funding and exploding project cost estimates looked shaky for everything from TDLE to Sounder improvements to Everett Link to WSBLE Mike would claim I was making it up and ST knew what they were doing, or the Board’s five year extension at the tail end of projects in 2041-46 would somehow raise more money than the delay would cost in a high inflationary market.
The only reason I brought up interlining was because I don’t think DSTT2 will cost $2.2 billion, ST’s ridership projections were always way too optimistic even pre-pandemic, and if WSBLE wants to have any hope of reaching either Ballard or WS serious cuts or design changes have to be made which Mike has always fought, and DSTT2 seemed a good place to start (and you were the wag who noted at this pace there will be one station between Sodo and Westlake, although without CID S you might end up right).
There were others who have questioned the economics of WSBLE, and Martin did the research on the EIS that noted WS Link would move 600 car drivers (according to ST pre-pandemic) to WSL, and another writer noted the cost over 30 years would be between $180,000 and 360,000 for each seat, but I don’t remember Mike until the very end questioning DSTT2 or WSBLE.
“I remember Mike being a huge advocate for WSBLE, and any transit spending, and all of ST 3.”
I’ve always had reservations about the West Seattle project, just as I’ve had reservations about Everett, Paine Field, Tacoma Dome, and Issaquah. What I wanted was Ballard, the three Stride lines, the 130th and Graham infill stations, and the short extensions to Redmond Downtown and Federal Way. I went along with the rest as part of the regional compromise, because we’ll never get anything done unless a critical mass of politicians and voters support it. At the time it was assumed train-to-train transfers would be normal, because even ST understands the importance of transfers and wouldn’t make them the worst in the country. But now that has been broken. And without good transfers, at least half the riders can’t get to Ballard and the U-District in a reasonable way, so what’s the point in having something that’s not very effective?
“Mike demanded “proof” and claimed that was just my opinion (actually the opinion of the ETA,”
You were the only one I heard making a lot of claims, and since you’re not a transit-finance expert or deeply involved in transit planning, I needed more than that to believe it. In any case, you were talking about things that were only potential then, or claiming that certain politicians had certain motiations or knew certain things when it wasn’t clear that was the case or how you’d know without inside knowledge.
I mean the greatest problem is it just doesn’t help transit riders for West Seattle. For many trip pairs it just lengthens the trip time rather than help it.
Like if you are on Fauntleroy (south of the junction) and want to reach either Ballard or say South Seattle is the idea that one transfers from the Rapidride C over to the West Seattle Link and just travel for 3 stops and then transfer again to the link back down south/north? This is worse than the Rapidride C just directly reaching the downtown link stations.
And the same is true in reverse, if one wants to reach West Seattle (beyond alaskan junction) from Ballard, Fremont, Rainier Valley one now needs to transfer to the west seattle link line, and then transfer again to the Rapidride C. The only destination it helps is for reaching Northgate, but really only those around Alaskan junction.
I agreed to Everett and Tacoma and Issaquah out of subarea equity, to let those subareas decide what to get. That doesn’t mean I can’t doubt or criticize them on a transit best-practices basis. I’m not suggesting I should be able to override their decisions; just that I’d advise them to.
While I too doubt the value of the West Seattle extension, I more doubt the value of the DSTT2 segment south of Westlake. While cancelling WS Link would in effect cancel DSTT2 I’m not so sure that the powers that be would forgo DSTT2.
The great irony is that a three line DSTT with a frequent automated Ballard to Westlake line with shorter trains and platforms would save many billions that could then make both the WS and Ballard connections much more fundable.
I don’t see any stub surviving in SODO. West Seattle riders won’t put up with a stub for what appears to be in operation much longer than only another 5 years (to fund and finish DSTT2).
I see this as a plausible outcome:
1. The additional peak hour demand in North Seattle will create a push for more DSTT trains as far as Northgate. The most apparent way to get them is to continue them from West Seattle (assuming that ST rethinks their horrible SODO track connections).
2. Those peak hour trains will create a general interest in daylong through trains from West Seattle.
3. Once those are running as a daylong third line, the push to get DSTT2 opened will subside radically.
I do wish that the SODO connection had cross platform transfers. I just cannot believe how so few people (even other posters here) don’t find this feature to be a much lower cost solution to the brewing transfer hassle and crowd surges (ST still hasn’t revealed the number of transferring riders in their documentation) between the 1 Line south and the 3 Line. A level cross platform transfer (train doors just a 20 foot walk apart rather than a 500 foot walk and use of two crowded and possibly broken escalators) solves many problems including the usefulness of the interim proposed West Seattle stub.
“cancelling WS Link would in effect cancel DSTT2”
I don’t think so. West Seattle can simply go out the existing southern exit and diverge in SODO. Ballard depends on DSTT2 to avoid punching a hole in the underground tunnel at Westlake, breaking the watertight seal. It could have used the Convention Place exit but that’s filled in now and a building overhead. With the current infrastructure ST could have an Everett-West Seattle line by just making arrangements in SODO. The only issue would be overcoming ST’s reluctance to have three 8-minute peak lines in the tunnel, and maing whatever upgrades would be required for it. Whereas it’s a far larger issue to merge Ballard into the tunnel, and canceling West Seattle Link wouldn’t make it go away.
The simplest alternative would be a shuttle line from Ballard to Westlake. Then everyone would transfer to the main platforms. That would be more acceptable than the split-spine ST is planning. The latter will break existing trips between U-District/Capitol Hill and Southeast Seattle/SeaTac, which are the most productive and urban and highest-ridership in the system. But Ballard wouldn’t lose anything existing, and is a smaller destination than the U-District or Capitol Hill, so a universal transfer to Ballard/SLU would be more acceptable, and would still arguably be better than the status quo.
“The great irony is that a three line DSTT with a frequent automated Ballard to Westlake line with shorter trains and platforms would save many billions that could then make both the WS and Ballard connections much more fundable.”
We’ve had articles about that.
“I don’t see any stub surviving in SODO. West Seattle riders won’t put up with a stub for what appears to be in operation much longer than only another 5 years (to fund and finish DSTT2).”
I don’t see why West Seattle puts up with a stub in the first place, or why it doesn’t say, “Come back to us later when you can build the full line to downtown.” The main reason it’s scheduled ahead of Ballard/DSTT2 is because Dow Constantine wants it that way because he lives there and West Seattle has “people like us” who believe they’re entitled.
“I do wish that the SODO connection had cross platform transfers. I just cannot believe how so few people (even other posters here) don’t find this feature to be a much lower cost solution to the brewing transfer hassle and crowd surges”
I don’t see that many people wanting to transfer in the middle of nowhere two stations short of downtown. It’s not like Secasus Transfer Station in Jersey City where regional and mainline trains meet and there’s another direct metro to Manhattan (PATH) in the vicinity.
Mike,
I rarely weigh in here anymore, but part of your understanding is due to misinformation and I want you to know that.
“It’s a long shot, but this is what some CID activists did and got the preferred alternative changed. Even if we have little chance of success, we need to stand up for what would best meet passengers’ needs, so that there is a voice for that, and because people expect us to be a voice for transit best practices.”
This is not true. The N/S of CID stations were not driven by CID activists, and are in fact opposed by the vast majority of CID residents and businesses. The only people who prefer the N/S alternative are Dow, Bruce, and Greg Smith. They just lied and said it came from the community. The Family Associations, Seniors in Action, Uwajimiya, and dozens of businesses have stated explicitly that they want the station on 4th Avenue. They view it as vital for the future of the CID that it not be skipped.
“ I don’t see that many people wanting to transfer in the middle of nowhere two stations short of downtown.”
Ever been to Toronto? Ever been to Paris? Ever been to Montreal? Ever been to Madrid? That seems like a very naive statement. Many systems are not like Boston or Chicago where most activity and transfers are Downtown..
“They just lied and said it came from the community. The Family Associations, Seniors in Action, Uwajimiya, and dozens of businesses have stated explicitly that they want the station on 4th Avenue. They view it as vital for the future of the CID that it not be skipped.”
Jon, you are confusing the position of the CID activists who did represent a majority of CID businesses and residents in opposing a station for DSTT2 at 5th and Jackson because it had no benefit for the CID, no mitigation was offered, and it would have involved a decade of heavy congestion.
The subsequent “petition” from the CID did NOT support a station at 5th and Jackson as originally planned. It supported a station at 4th Ave. S. that would cost $800 million more, PLUS cash mitigation for the CID.
After publicly calling Constantine (and Harrell) and the Board racists I think it will be a cold day in hell before the CID gets that. Plus I think Constantine and Harrell, who would have gone with a station at 5th as their first choice, are now enamored with the idea of somehow “capturing” value from all those vacant and obsolete buildings surrounding CID N.
The offer on the table for the CID from ST was: 1. a station at 5th and Jackson bringing residents from S. Seattle and S. KC (called equity zones); 2. a decade of construction disruption; and 3. zero mitigation when the CID did not see any benefit from a second station even without the construction disruption.
Exact same decision Bellevue made, the DSA made, Amazon made. No thanks. The CID’s victory was amazing because they were considered poor brown patsies, no match for the mighty ST and transit rider groups.
@Daniel Thompson – Sorry the reply chains are confusing on this site. Seems I cant reply to your reply?
No, I am not confusing anything. I am in weekly contact with those organizations as we have jointly pushed the Move Forward on 4th campaign since March. Those organizations have repeatedly shown up to ST Board meetings demanding that the station be placed at 4th, even after the surprise backroom deal that is N/S CID. N/S CID is opposed by the community, they want it on 4th. They are aware of the trade offs. Basically every meeting where anything to do with the CID station siting or DT-Ballard they show up and pack the room and completely dominate the public comments demanding that ST build it on 4th.
You are also mischaracterizing the main concerns that they had with 5th, though construction mitigation was one of them. We could go into that if you are interested in getting involved and actually doing something.
I re-engaged with this space because I have a ton of respect for Mike, and saw him say something that isn’t true, and that was due to misinfo pushed by Dow and Harrell and PSS. I wanted to let him know.
I have disengaged for so long because it got exhausting trying to convince people who (while smart and care about transit) arent interested in actually getting involved when getting involved would provide them with the info that they just can’t accept coming from a comment on the internet. And those conversations went round and round forever because they didn’t believe what was happening was actually happening, but refused to go and see. On and on. You’re probably super cool, but on this issue I am simply informing you that my statement is correct and your perspective is not factually correct. If you don’t believe me, volunteer and ask the CID community groups yourself. I’ve been doing it for 7 months.
Jon, it would be great to have your voice on the blog again. We both share a vision of walkability and transit freedom, even if we’re not always on the same side of particular proposals.
My impression is there’s both a pro-4th and an anti-4th faction in the CID; that’s why I said “some CID activists” instead of “CID activists”. I saw you testify at the ST system expansion committee, and I also noticed that at least half the testimony was pro-4th, which blew the lid off the misleading narrative of anti-station folks who were claiming to speak for the CID.
My preference is 5th & Jackson shallow because that’s the best for pedestrians and bus transfers, and it was the representative alignment in the ballot measure. But that seems to have the biggest opposition in the CID over construction impacts. I wish people would put 100-year pedestrian convenience and and transit-riding customers/workers over a few years of construction, but that’s a common theme in Seattle.
You’re right that CID activists probably didn’t invent the CID N/S alternative; that was Dow himself. But there seems to be one faction that wants 4th as a compromise between convenience and disruption, and another that supports CID N/S because they don’t want any station in the neighborhood.
So, for us the biggest issue is, can we find third-party supplemental funding for 4th & Jackson so that cost is no longer an excuse for CID N/S?
“I wish people would put 100-year pedestrian convenience and and transit-riding customers/workers over a few years of construction, but that’s a common theme in Seattle.”
I encourage you to advocate for the necessary mitigation factors (whether financial or otherwise) the community would need in order to survive the few years of construction, then. Can you let us know what advocacy you have done in that sense, so that the rest of us can follow? Are you writing to ST asking them to throw more cash at the small businesses in the CID? Are you working with the community organizers to figure out exactly what would help them best?
Every Link construction project has a mitigation budget. It’s up to the neighborhood and businesses to articulate what they want. If they don’t think it’s adequate, they can go public with their request. I haven’t heard much about that; the only thing I’ve heard is, “Don’t build it because we don’t want construction impact.” That’s counterproductive and one of the reasons Seattle and the US are so behind in transit service and walkable housing and walkable shopping/job options. People should think more about what’s good for the whole city and generations than just what’s good for them individually right now. We already voted for Link with a CID station. One neighborhood shouldn’t be able to hold the rest of the city hostage over it, and either hold up the project or extract more mitigation concessions than other station areas get.
Jon, why would I get involved in order to tell the CID what is best for the CID? Or act like I speak for them on all white transit blogs. From the very beginning I was the one on this blog who said it was the CID’s call because they have standing. Do you own property or a business in the CID? Is the CID unable to speak for itself? Are you a designated spokesperson for the CID?
Every other stakeholder so far has rejected a station for DSTT2. It is unproductive for white transit riders (let alone eastsiders— Balducci just made sure we use DSTT1) to claim they know what is best for the CID, or the CID did not object to a station on 5th. ST was arrogant, offered no mitigation, and could offer no benefit to the CID for a second station. Game over.
A station on 5th and Jackson is not part of the DEIS. It was a mistake for Balducci to move to include a station on 4th in the DEIS because the subarea doesn’t have the $800 million extra. Mike is correct: 4th will need third party funding. Some transit folks think (other people’s) money grows on trees. Now with WSBLE we know it doesn’t. There are some folks on this blog who still think DSTT2 will cost $2.2 billion, the estimate in 2016.
I read the CID petition. The few hundred who signed it wanted an $800 million station on 4th PLUS mitigation for the CID. If you find the $800 million no one will object to a station on 4th, but Mike is correct: N KC doesn’t have it. . Plus the cash mitigation for the CID.
Even CID N/S will cost $168 million more than the station on 5th (even with no midtown station which I think is a much bigger omission than a station on 5th). Constantine and the Board claim they will “capture” $168 million from developing vacant and obsolete buildings around CID N.
This is so ridiculous you would think Dow is stupid. I went to law school with Dow. He knows WSBLE and DSTT2 are not affordable by the subarea, except Harrell doesn’t want to lose the $1.1 billion contribution from the four other subareas, three of which don’t have their contribution. All Dow wants now is a WS stub. Because he knows the test is not affordable. I suggest you read the 2021 subarea report.
Mike suggests you find $800 million for a station on 4th. I suggest you find an extra $2.2 billion for DSTT2 and $10 billion in N KC for WSBLE and then we can have a serious discussion about DSTT2 or WSBLE. Otherwise this discussion is pointless. You want a station on 4th? Find $800 million in Seattle.
@ Daniel
You are being an example of why I dont engage here. You should not get involved to tell people in the CID what they want. You should get involved to help them get what they want, which is a station at 4th Avenue, as I have done. It is not my fault you are not familiar with their positions. Your view of what they want and are trying to do is factually incorrect. If you acquainted yourself with the people and groups involved you would know that. I’m just telling you. This isn’t a difference of opinion between you and me, its a difference of opinion between the CID leaders and community and you. There is nothing to discuss. Watch last month’s board meeting. Goodbye, hope you have a nice Saturday evening.
@Mike, thank you for the invitation but I must decline. It’s too frustrating to go round and round with people who tell me it’s not raining but won’t stick their hands out to window to actually find out. And I’m out there getting rained on.
Debating opinions can be fun, but going in circles wastes time I’d rather spend organizing. As I said, I only weighed in because I have always really respected your views and wanted to let you know that you had been misinformed. That misinfo was intentional, and was driven by PSS in advance of Dow releasing N/S CID. The vast majority of the neighborhood supports 4th, as measured by in-person comments, written comments from the neighborhood, and business endorsements. Its a problem that the media is not covering it, but not too surprising. I just wanted you to know. If you are interested in further details I think we could chat about it over slack.
“A station on 5th and Jackson is not part of the DEIS.”
It was in the ballot measure. It’s not in the DEIS because ST removed it. It could add it back again. What ST needs to justify is not building it at 5th & Jackson; it has to write a statement about why it’s deviating from the representative alignment. That issue came up with the alternatives to 145th & I-5 station.
“It’s too frustrating to go round and round with people who tell me it’s not raining but won’t stick their hands out to window to actually find out.”
You don’t have to. You can ignore those. There are other people here to engage with and other things to talk about.
I’m not on Slack. You can reach me at the contact address or you can probably find my email.
Jon, EVERYONE would prefer a station on 4th S than at CID N. That isn’t the point. CID N/S were chosen because N KC does not have an extra $800 million for a station on 4th. When the Board included the option of a station on 4th I predicted on this blog this would happen.
Imagine you are on the Board. You know the subarea does not have the revenue for DSTT2 or WSBLE. You had to scrap a station at 5th because the CID called you racists. Now they show up Board meetings or prepare a petition demanding an $800 million station on 4th PLUS several hundred million in mitigation for the CID.
Good luck.
“CID N/S were chosen”
It’s not chosen until ST selects projects for construction. That’s after the EIS is finished.
ST doesn’t have to select the one marked “locally preferred alternative”: that’s just the zero point that the other alternatives are compared to. It can keep its options open and select any of the alternatives, or mix and match parts between them. What it can’t do is build something that’s not in the EIS. But it could add a supplemental EIS to study it; then it could build it.
As further studying of the costs and engineering is done, the cost estimates may change, and the gap between 4th and CID N may narrow or reverse.
Bellevue contributed 1/2 or around $150 million for a short tunnel for East Link. Is there any chance the CID could contribute 1/2 or $400 million for a station on 4th S. I just don’t understand who is going to pay the $800 million for a station on 4th.
I certainly don’t object to a station on 4th if my subarea doesn’t have to pay for it.
“I just don’t understand who is going to pay the $800 million for a station on 4th.”
We don’t know now; that’s a problem to solve. It’s worth solving it rather than throwing away the best station and hindering transit usage forever.
And as you may not have seen when I edited my last comment, these are just preliminary cost estimates. As further studying of the costs and engineering are done, the gap between the cost of 4th vs CID N may narrow or reverse.
“What ST needs to justify is not building it at 5th & Jackson; it has to write a statement about why it’s deviating from the representative alignment.”
Or, better yet, write a statement about why a no-build option for DSTT2 can’t be pursued. Let them show on an FTA Environmental Impact Statement for grant applications how many more transit riders will use Link due to being required to navigate 9-11 floors of partially operative escalators vs just staying in the existing tunnel.
(Hint: this should be a negative number of added riders due to the added travel time.)
Daniel, it would be extremely difficult for the East Side to use DSTT2 as now envisioned. The tunnel is supposed to have a south portal a bit south of Massachussetts Street, three long blocks south of I-90. The existing trackway is on the north side of the I-90 stub, at roughly the same elevation as the upper deck of the highway. But there’s a lower deck as well.
To get to the portal of the as-designed DSTT2 tunnel, East Link would have to rise up starting somewhere east of I-5, attain an elevation high enough above the eastbound upper deck to clear it, turn south at that point and then enter a giant spiral downhill to the tunnel portal.
Claudia Balducci has nothing to do with the reality that East Link will run through the “Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel” that’s been there since the late-1980’s. Or, the catastrophe of pontoons cracked badly enough to endanger the structure or its water-tightness will come to pass and East Link won’t run at all.
I doubt that will happen, sooooooo, Claudia will be riding in the old tunnel forerever and anon. Or until she moves to Sea-Tac. [And even then she ought still to be riding in it….]
“ST is viewed more like a catalyst to employ engineers and builders and to increase value of nearby real estate than it is a public service to riders”
That seems like a baseless claim that some people hold. ST is structurally and and in fact motivated by city/county politicians. These politicians respond to certain neighborhood/public factions, and they have their own ideas about what would be effective transit or worthwhile projects (which are often unsound ideas), and they also respond to large employers and institutions like Amazon and UW. These are far bigger factors than wanting to shovel money to certain engineering/construction buddies.
The big engineering and construction companies don’t explicitly advocate for expensive projects with little benefit. Instead they keep their mouths shut about the wastefulness.
Then when the inferior designs or installations become a problem, they offer solutions as add-ons to their contracts.
Almost every major American rail building firm has an ST contract at this point. None of them will dare lose that revenue by offering any criticism! They are paid to applaud whatever unproductive idea the Board wants!
“You want a station here? It’s gotta be 120 feet deep but let’s just ignore what that means! But we can design and build it for you!”
West Seattle question. ST3 was weak; most is in the piece; the phasing was also odd in that it opened as a spur. The No Build approach misses the ST3 funding. The option would be stronger if the ST3 funds that would have been spent on WS Link were instead spent on different projects. ST3 includes funds for BRT lines C, D, and G (C and D funds are deferred), as well as Stride 1, 2, and 3 (parking is deferred) So, the WS No Build option could be improved by ST3 dollars. Candidates include a revenue Link line between South Forest Street and the north; it would serve the Link station at South Lander Street and have capacity. ST funds could improve the C and H lines, both capital and service. Seattle could improve the degree of priority provided the C and H lines using ST3 funds. SDOT provided the South Lander Street overcrossing in summer 2020; West Seattle local routes could meet Link at South Lander Street. West Seattle Link focused North King County funds on the peninsula; they might be used elsewhere to improve the E Line or the existing DSTT. The No Build improvements could be implemented much more quickly.
Of course, Dow is committed to Link.
No Build on WSLE certainly would still allow improvements of BRT lines which may include an extra Spokane St viaduct exit onto the transit express way so that buses could turn around at Lander station allowing a transfer towards downtown or the airport. An Everett line could turn around at Forest St as you propose further increasing capacity. This may require building an overpass over Holgate.
Ultimately you may want to build the Duwamish bypass, but that may require a new vote.
“The problem seems to me to a be purely political.” I always find this line of commentary perplexing. Of course it is political. Sound Transit is a governmental agency. For ST to make a large strategic pivot, it needs to be at the behest of the Board. Therefore, by definition, the decision to be make is a political decision to be made by politicians.
It would be like writing about tax policy and then shrugging at the end as saying, “but whatever, I guess it’s just a political decision by a few folks in the legislature.”
> The problem seems to me to a be purely political:
> It would be like writing about tax policy and then shrugging at the end as saying, “but whatever, I guess it’s just a political decision by a few folks in the legislature.”
I don’t quite agree with Al S. in this case, but I understand the distinction they are making. I think it is fine to highlight when the problem is more ‘political’ or not.
For a usa example the king of prussia extension was cancelled by the FTA, it was partially “political” but also on technical merits since it didn’t garner enough projected ridership for it’s cost. Or for say the station consolidations sound transit still has to investigate what the ridership impact will be. Or the rapidride selections are partly based on ridership but also partly based on spreading them out to each subarea etc…
Right, but I do have enough faith in our politicians to say they are aware of and account for the technical information when they make decisions. They may not be as in the details as the STB commentariat, but a Board member thinking, “well shoot, this is costs much more than I expected and will take longer to build” is a politician reacting to the technical analysis.
As for your specific example, of projected ridership being an output of technical analysis, I’m with Jarrett Walker & Chuck Marohn that ridership forecasts are mostly a political exercise;
https://humantransit.org/2018/04/to-predict-with-confidence-plan-for-freedom.html
https://humantransit.org/2017/06/can-we-live-without-prediction-the-video.html
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2012/10/1/a-world-without-projections.html
> I’m with Jarrett Walker & Chuck Marohn that ridership forecasts are mostly a political exercise;
It used to be a lot worse. The main problem was that the FTA would trust that future upzonings, plans, and blatant lies would happen from the local cities. Leading to drastically different ridership estimates (like 20% of what was expected). Nowadays they do require a bit more rigor in calculating the future density (No upzoning an apartment zone on a cemetery plot and counting that as future residents etc…) https://www.transit.dot.gov/funding/grant-programs/capital-investments/and-after-studies-new-starts-projects
Also in general Jarrett Walker talks about ensuring transit routes are built along density as well. https://humantransit.org/basics/the-transit-ridership-recipe#density
> It really is that simple. Density means that any given service investment is useful to more people, so of course it attracts more riders…. In fact, density is even more powerful than that.
WL: While it’s true that FTA does put ridership forecasts under the microscope because of “fairness” when choosing to fund projects in different metro areas, the reference to forecasts being political is more how local elected officials use forecasts. When they justify their project, the are important; when they make a project look bad they are ignored. Just look at how ST makes decisions without even looking at demand.
I would emphasize that even though places like Downtown Seattle get a good number of trips on transit, the number of regional trips on transit is still very low. With a small percentage, the variability potential is big.
With so many base assumptions, it’s easy to mathematically push up ridership demand. Maybe the crowding analysis uses data from 2010 or 2000 when peaking was more common. Maybe the walking time between the station entrance and platform is not examined and is artificially low (the newly-opened SF Central Subway is this year’s poster child for that manipulation). Maybe the future parking costs are inflated.
With a transit trip, the “weakest link” often governs the decision to use that particular route and station. It’s kind of notable to me at how much interest goes into reducing train frequency from 10 to 6 minutes (reducing average waits from 5 to 3 minutes) yet the extra 5 minute transfer walk forced upon every rider (longer if one has luggage or a mobility restriction) never ever gets any attention or analysis. As long as level cross-platform transfers are not given explicit time advantages in the forecasts and terrible transfers are not penalized in the forecasts, the issue remains solely a rider experience issue and not a productivity (ridership) one.
I’m waiting to see how worse the system ridership will be with the CID N/S boondoggle. It could actually make West Seattle Link put more cars on the road than leaving the current bus system in place thanks to all the transfer hassles being proposed.
Transit riders are always the last consideration in the design of transit. Even the cyclists have more say… bike-ped stakeholder. It’s all about the voice of special interest stakeholder groups. Transit riders never get a seat at the table to advocate for rider experience and easy transfers.
The Santiago video repeats what many new systems around the world are planning, building and/or operating (with the glaring exception of Sound Transit): Automated lines with platform screen doors.
Can we offer to send the Board an influential senior staff to spend 4 days on an automated system with platform screen doors? They currently seem to think it’s still too futuristic to build in our region (or they just don’t care to begin with).
Heck I wouldn’t be surprised if ST decided to go full retro and suggest that we have staff punching elevator buttons for people next like we did in the 1920’s.
Link is to the heat island study.
Fixed.
Thanks!
I want someone to look into when the three different pedestrian bridges that will connect to Starter Line stations will open. There’s the NE 8th Eastrail Bridge that will connect to Wilburton Station. There’s the Overlake Village Station Pedestrian Bridge. And the Redmond Technology Station Pedestrian Bridge.
It does seem odd that ST still has a number of things still barricaded even though the delay is supposed to be to fix the plinths under tracks (and maybe fix mistakes ( like the South Bellevue tile installation).
I’ve mentioned the sidewalks and bus stops under I-90 at Rainier (including a bus queue jump signal) next to the Judkins Park station.
Maybe it had to do with legal acceptance of completed work? It’s a mystery to me!
I actually did contact someone in the City of Redmond after the Overlake Village Station Pedestrian Bridge opening date came and went. This was like 2+ years ago. The first reply I got was it will open in about 6 months. After the 6 month date came and went, I checked in with them one more time, and they said, again, it will open in about 6 months. When that opening didn’t happen, I gave up.
Btw, the canopies over the Redmond Tech Station Ped Bridge look almost identical, but on a much smaller scale, to the giant Expo ’74. U.S. Pavilion canopy.
Most of the logic in this “manifesto”, if applied to literally any other construction project, results in a “Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone” mentality.
Should WSLE be built? Probably not, but not for most of the reasons stated in Marie McKinsey’s post. Fundamentally, the incredible monetary cost is not worth the meager social benefit over existing rapid transit options.
Should BLE be built? Ballard is the largest “Urban Village” that’s not an Urban Center or a PSRC regional growth center (it is a “Manufacturing Industrial Center”, but not for growth), and has growth the most of any neighborhood not served by Link. If BLE gets built as currently designed (with a too-deep DSTT2, unnecessary ROW takings in Smith Cove and Interbay, etc.), it should come with a plan for significant upzones in Ballard (and LQA, West QA, and East Magnolia), timed to allow for new workers and residents to plan on taking transit as their primary mode in and out of the neighborhood. The Ballard Bridge is already at capacity, and replacement won’t happen before the 2040’s unless it collapses.
Maybe we can get these people to take their “build absolutely nothing ever” approach to highways as well?
I also wonder what they think about ferries.
To be fair, some people did indeed take that approach to highways. An example could be read about here:
https://www.seattle.gov/cityarchives/exhibits-and-education/seattle-voices/rh-thomson-expressway
Lower QA is already up zoned.
West QA is 250 feet above the station with expensive land. Very few people enjoy walking up that hill on a daily basis.
If so much hadn’t already been spent on FWLE, it wouldn’t make sense either. The SR509 extension along which Link runs could have a wider median between I-5 and 24th Avenue South with bus lanes in it connecting to the HOV lanes, rising up to 24th South for quick, stop-light free access to Angle Lake Station. The buses could even continue into a new bus-only airport stop along 28th South with a little loop at the end.
Or, if Highline College is considered a sufficient anchor, I-5 could have been widened a bit for a few hundred yards south of 240th, a bridge built at 240th for buses only and southside ramps built for bus-intercept there.
But the trackway is essentially complete except for the Green Grand Canyon bridge, so it’s a done deal that FWLE will be a thing.
The main core of the system is Redmond to Lynnwood and will always be Redmond to Lynnwood. There are plenty of people who live south of the airport and west of the Duwamish Valley, but the road system is terrible for transit, so transit’s mode share there will never be very good.
[It’s terrible for the people who live there and have to drive on it, too. But, again, it’s a done deal, quite literally cast in concrete.]
Is it possible a page be created for the many acronyms? I understand what FWLE is but I do not know why it is called that. No big deal as I am merely a voyeur in the world of Seattle Transit living in Tulsa, however as a transit geek, I love the discussions of the minutia of transit systems. Y’all are great!
Folks tend to invent acronyms on the daily, but some common ones for Link:
WSLE = West Seattle Link Extension
BLE = Ballard Link Extension
FWLE = Federal Way Link Extension
LLE = Lynnwood Link Extension
ELSL = East Link Starter Line
ELE = East Link Extension or Everett Link Extension (context dependent)
TDLE = Tacoma Dome Link Extension
> I understand what FWLE is but I do not know why it is called that.
For context the acronym’s originally came from Sound Transit.
https://www.soundtransit.org/system-expansion
As Nathan noted, it’s just named after the extension’s end city/neighborhood. (well except for east link) It’s also usually the official name of the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for federal funding.
“Is it possible a page be created for the many acronyms? ”
See the “Definitions” link in the right sidebar.
The ones Nathan lists are brand new; I’m still not ready to use them regularly. The old one was “WSBLE” (West Seattle and Ballard Link extension). This has sometimes been split into one, two, or three projects in ST’s communications and the EISes (Environmental Impact Statements). But however it’s split or called, it’s Link from Ballard to Westlake, Westlake to Chinatown/International District, CID to SODO, and SODO to West Seattle.
FWLE = “Federal Way Link Extension”
WSBLE = “West Seattle Ballard Link Extension”
ELE = “Everett Link Extension”
BLE = “Ballard Link Extension” alone
WSLE = “West Seattle Link Extension” alone
DSTT2 = “Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel 2” (AKA “The New Tunnel”)
DSTT1 = “Downtown Seattle Transit Tunne 1” (AKA “The Bus Tunnel”)
Line 1 = “Ballard – Tacoma Link Service” (as planned)
Line 2 = “Redmond – Lynnwood Link Service” (again, as planned)
Line 3 = “West Seattle – Everett Link Service” (as planned)
Line 4 = “Issaquah-South Kirkland Link Service” (as planned)
I went to Lanier, Wilson, and Rogers, Class of ’64
Acronyms are the wrong solution nearly 100% of the time. The correct solution is to abbreviate by dropping entire words that are unnecessary because of context.
In this case, we are talking about extending link, therefore Link Extension is unnecessary, so the correct abbreviation is Federal Way
Lazarus: “All modes will be on essentially parallel platforms and the transfers between the various modes will be “easy”. That is the plan.”
Parallel stations do not mean “easy” transfers. Just look at the CID-N station layout or even the original CID station layouts with parallel platforms . It’s horrible! There are vertical changes involved and many involve 2 or more escalators and level changes that will have to serve surges from trains. The estimates are that transfers will take several minutes just in walking and more if elevators are needed.
Admittedly, the current planned Tacoma Dome transfers are not awful — but neither were the original CID transfers. ST has a proven knack for designing transfers to be worse as the plans get refined.
As to what transfers are the most important, the ones to Tacoma Link are as well as local and express buses are. Amtrak involves a different boarding method and Sounder is directional only and parallel to Link and so there is little reason to transfer to Link.
I think it’s terribly short sighted for ST to not add a second Link boarding platform at Tacoma Dome Link station as part of the Link extension. It would allow for a Tacoma Link train to be waiting anytime a 1 Line Link train arrives. It’s a pretty long single track segment from S 21st to well past the Tacoma Dome stop.
Troy Serad,
Why don’t you take a deep breath and list all of businesses that don’t serve alcohol in Downtown Tacoma? The place is pretty much a wasteland of bars and publicly paid for parks, schools and museums. And there’s no free parking. It’s not really a place families go to hang out in.
Tacoma Mall is the heart of Tacoma… not downtown. The Mall area has the people and money… 3x more than downtown. I know it’s not your jam, but maybe Tacoma isn’t your town? If Tacoma got to vote on spending billions for a train to the mall or millions on retrofitting the T-Link for light rail trains… it’s not even close. The Mall wins by a landslide. You think all those poor Hilltop business that suffered through years of construction want a retrofit?
Look, I don’t want to make this a personal attack, but Sound Transit cannot “retrofit” anything it’s built. The T-Link is finally done and paid for. It is what it is and if ST spends millions (and years) tearing shit out before going further… it’s the end of voter approved transit increases. For Sound Transit and or Pierce Transit.
In all the years I’ve lived in Tacoma, I learned one thing and work from home makes it positively clear. There’s no reason to go downtown. Downtown Tacoma has lost over 1000 customer service jobs in the insurance industry sense the pandemic. Regence has everybody working from home and sold their flagship building to the County government. UWT is the last big “in person” institution left downtown. Harmon’s brewery went out of business, the Melting Pot, Pacific Grill…. all of these buildings are empty.
Meanwhile, the Tacoma Mall keeps on growing! Transit needs to serve people where they are…. and stop with the social engineering.
https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/tacoma-mall-new-stage-redevelopment/281-342e7547-763d-4d41-945c-0185d8cc3366
In closing, I’ve said this before and it’s still often true about transit
Trains are White
Buses are Black
Funny how rail advocates see rail in downtown, 6th ave, maybe 19th, and maybe a spur to Point Ruston!….. but it never goes South of the freeways, never to the Lincoln District, or Salishan Projects…. the Great Unwashed sea of South Tacoma can always get by on the bus, right?
Troy, if you really love transit and Tacoma, ask the Pierce County government to sue Sound Transit and prevent any more light rail from polluting Pierce County. Spend the money on buses and call it good for next 50 years.
tacomee;
But does it actually make sense to end Link at the mall?
That whole area is dominated by huge parking lots, spreads out over a huge area, and is otherwise fairly hostile to pedestrian access, meaning also hostile to transit ridership.
The mere fact the city of Tacoma had to start charging for parking in downtown about 10 years ago indicates to me there is more transit demand there than at the mall.
Tacomee, what is downtown Tacoma currently like during AM and PM weekday rush hour? The comment section paints a picture of a city center that is in desperate need of a light rail line to deliver and extract massive workforce crowds into and out of the downtown area on a daily basis. Is that true?
Tacomee, do you even go downtown? I’m starting to get a sense it’s been a while. You seem to have missed the new restaurants that replaced Harmon and Pacific Grill. The new bookstore that is opening up. The arcades. All the shops in the old postoffice, the nearly completed renovation of old city hall. Lots of banks, shops antiques, coffee, bakeries.
Admittedly there are not a ton of the white collar jobs that Seattle has, but that’s kind of a good thing IMHO. No WFH jobs to lose.
Last time I walked through the mall, it was 20 shoe stores, a couple novelty shops a Cinnabon and a dying nordys. Not something to build a city around.
Tacomee, your breathing suggestions are always appreciated.
In many ways you’re preaching to the choir when you chat with me. I get what you’re putting down—I do. I know my little integration proposal is long, but I do not advocate for major retrofits in Hilltop (only along Tacoma Link). However, in 15 to 25 years if we need to shave back the platform edge a few inches in Hilltop, I think the community can handle that, especially if it substantially and permanently improves railway services in the city and county.
Separately, I hope you realize that the present condition of Tacoma’s city center is the consequence of white-dominant and actively racist policies that destroyed its vitality and physical spaces. The construction of the mall and the road infrastructure that supports it was part of that process, and it is interesting to read your modern defense of it from a position of social and racial equity. I fully recognize that the mall today is prominent center for Tacoma and I actively and publicly work to secure transportation improvements to it. But the mall must be well connected to the city center first and foremost, and also properly connected to the neighborhoods around it. I also firmly believe that an environmentally and socially sustainable urban core rooted in the historic Tacoma proper should be our north star. Whether you believe it or not, all of the data from the federal to local level paints a clear picture of it being the dominant center of the South Sound. We should honor that truth with smart and effective transportation investments and stuff the place with housing, particularly affordable housing.
None of the above will be accomplished via the multi-billion dollar Tacoma Mall Link Extension project that officials here are working toward. That project also does not constitute a sensible or equitable investment in the context of the greater mobility needs that you so forcefully and righteously advocate for here.
I want lots more buses for our area. I want to fund them right away. I pressure our elected officials to do so. But we do have to deal with the railways now, especially as they are coming and their current plans will negatively impact the structure of our bus transit network—in my strong opinion.
And to everyone here talking about how great or easy the transfers will be at Tacoma Dome Station, no. I have real concerns about how that all will be executed on 25th Street. I have concerns about the difficulty of the complex, multistory transfer on families and the mobility impaired. I have concerns about accommodating the proposed future streetcar facilities needed for the TCC extension and its headways. Take a look at the current station concepts and their interaction with the rail grade crossings. It is likely going to be too much and the entire area rebuilt. The destruction of Freighthouse Square itself is one of the options being considered by ST, even though Tacoma Link’s tracks were purposely redirected to 25th Street from Puyallup Avenue to support its businesses—again at the expense of the direct bus-rail transfer that could have been secured there.
I guess I don’t know what you are reallying for, Tacomee, if you support a Tacoma Mall Link. I don’t. I support either ending trains at the Dome on Puyallup Avenue—a no-brainer option that isn’t even being studied by the EIS of Tacoma Dome Link—or sent into Downtown on tracks literally built for that purpose. Buses or the T Line should go to the Mall (via Lincoln District) and TCC (via 6th Ave), whatever the ST measure requires as the mode is specified. Everything else should be Pierce Transit buses with at most 20 minute headways.
Deep breath time! I do feel better! :)
@tacomee,
“ Trains are White
Buses are Black”
I’m not sure I’d say that, but rail does tend to get built where ridership is already known to be high and where ridership patterns are well established and directional. It’s basically the only type of situation that justifies the cost.
Buses tend to get deployed in lower ridership areas and in areas where the ridership patterns are more diffuse.
I’m not sure if the above precludes building rail south of I-5, but the data should be available somewhere.
Also, the first place to actually get 1-Link in Seattle was the Rainier Valley, which is definitely more diverse than other parts of the city.
“Funny how rail advocates see rail in downtown, 6th ave, maybe…..….. but it never goes South of the freeways, never to the Lincoln District, ”
I don’t think too much thought has been given to the next streetcar line in Tacoma beyond the direct extension of the Hilltop line to TCC (which is a fairly diverse and lower income destination).
However, as opposed to a second line going down 6th to UPS, it *might* be possible to add a streetcar line branching off the first line at St Joseph’s and going straight south (probably on Yakima) to the Lincoln district. I don’t know if that is feasible or not, but it is at least worth a scoping look.
I also don’t know how the Lincoln district gets represented inside the governmental structure of Tacoma, but at least theoretically you have at least one council member that directly represents your needs. Additionally, there might be a transportation commission of some sort where you also have a representative.
You should contact these individuals and make sure they are adequately representing your needs.
Troy is on the transportation commission, so direct access, Tacomee.
CM Ushka is a transit ally in District 4. I’m sure Tacomee knows her, the nice thing about Tacoma is you do have access, and everyone knows everybody after a while.
I represent District 4 on the Transportation Commission, which includes the Lincoln District and my neighborhood of McKinley Hill. I am no stranger to the charms and strengths of either place, nor the diversity of its people.
Please contact me freely. Clearly I like to chat about Tacoma transit.
Years ago, I went to Federal Way from Seattle. The Google recommendation was some bus or other to Tukwila and ride the length of the A (not sure why it didn’t send me to Link). The time required to ride the length of the A was substantial. The transit center in Federal Way was pretty busy too.
Therefore, I’m fairly certain there’ll be a fair number of riders that benefit from the extension. There are a fair number of transit users in that area.
Further south? I’d make it an expandable single track line with double track segments spaced to allow 15 minute headways, build the stations for single car trains (for now) and operate those single car trains into downtown Tacoma over Tacoma Link, after widening the platforms the 4 inches x required to do that. Or , get Tacoma Link cars with bridge plates to use to allow their use on Link platforms. Either way, make Tacoma Dome Link extend to SeaTac or maybe Tacoma International Blvd.
Making single car trains fit Tacoma Link would be vastly easier than the 4 car trains, and ridership just doesn’t seem like it would justify anything more for a very long time. Tacoma gets its link to SeaTac and a few other places, without the expense of 4 car trains until needed.
However services are operated, if we are to spend $5 billion to extend the regional Link railway from Federal Way to Tacoma, then trains should be traveling into its downtown on an integrated Tacoma Link.
That is why Tacoma Link exists: to fulfill the function of a starter line within the urban core of Pierce County’s largest and most important center. To connect the railways was the Sound Transit long range plan course of action from 1996 to 2014, based off of regional rail plans first conceived in the mid to late 1980s and first put to the voters in 1995. It also remains the wisest plan for Tacoma: the bus network heart must remain anchored in Downtown and not at Tacoma Dome, and our brand new metro system must compliment and reinforce that arrangement.
To not do this would not only be a genuine failure of transit planning and project delivery, but a failure to account for obvious equity concerns about bypassing the heart of the should-be southern spine terminus—actual Tacoma. Not Tacoma Dome. Not Tacoma Mall. Not Lakewood. Not Dupont.
That the Downtown Tacoma spine component of the long range plan was changed before even Federal Way Link was funded is a grave error. If the Tacoma Mall is to be served by the regional railway, it never should have come at the expense of Downtown Tacoma service.
Tacoma is the dominant city of the South Sound. If you don’t believe that it is worthy of core railway services— which Seattle, Bellevue, Alaska Junction, Redmond, and Everett will or already receive—that is more a statement on the troubling weakness of Pierce County cities for light rail than it is a criticism of Tacoma’s strength. Whatever lens you use to evaluate the situation, Downtown Tacoma prevails.
Restore the old Sound Transit vision for Pierce County or change it fundamentally.
(This comment was directed toward everyone, not Glenn in particular).
One edit: “…before Federal Way Link was *finished*”, not funded.
@Troy
> Tacoma is the dominant city of the South Sound. If you don’t believe that it is worthy of core railway services— which Seattle, Bellevue, Alaska Junction, Redmond, and Everett will or already receive—that is more a statement on the troubling weakness of Pierce County cities for light rail than it is a criticism of Tacoma’s strength. Whatever lens you use to evaluate the situation, Downtown Tacoma prevails.
Troy, I read your article and honestly am still a bit ambivalent about whether it heads towards downtown tacoma or the mall. More importantly, I’m a bit confused why you’re trying to convince us (as in people outside Tacoma/Pierce in general)? Or why you aren’t focusing your efforts more on Pierce County/Tacoma city.
I don’t really think the other subareas really care nor have a stake in where the Tacoma link ends up at. If the Pierce subarea area commissioners ask for the Tacoma Link extension to end at downtown instead of the mall as long as it doesn’t cost too much the other subareas board members would be amenable to it. It’s not like the ballard link extension that is using the other subarea’s funds for the tunnel.
The only real people that would object would be Tacoma city itself if they thought it’d impact the street too much for road space or idk some neighborhood vision.
I like it, especially the single-track with periodic sidings. Tri-Met made it work between Gateway and the airport for two decades, though the double track sections were pretty long.
Most of all, put it on the ground!!!!! No more Sky Castles.
The biggest problem TriMet has with single track sections is being able to deal with schedule unreliability due to Steel Bridge lifts. This won’t happen on the Tacoma extension.
WL, it is my opinion that between conventional buses, express buses, potentially BRT, and Sounder, regional Link simply does not need to undergo the Herculean effort to reach the Tacoma Mall. It not only is a bad solution to a perceived (or minor) transportation problem, but a deeply inequitable one for a variety of reasons through multiple lenses.
And I share this here because it is interesting. Because it is relevant to Pierce County and regional transit planning, which this blog covers. Because you get helpful and enlightened feedback from many individuals here. And because very few people are aware of the history of regional light rail planning (which was propelled by Tacomans), the Tacoma Link starter line, and how those plans have diverged from our shared original vision. Why not share it here? It also creates a great public record of sorts.
Separately, this topic does animate my work here in Tacoma and Pierce County, but only insofar as the rail plans now proposed are not what the voters approved and that they harm the structure of the Pierce Transit bus network—our primary mover of people. Sound Transit plans also no longer recognize central Tacoma as the dominant center of a strong local economy, which it is, or that it remains our area’s biggest TOD opportunity by far.
The “ship” that would integrate Tacoma Link probably sailed in 2014 when the board unanimously changed the Link spine at the request of the Pierce County Executive. Even though the Tacoma City Council requested the opposite (to preserve existing Link concepts and its seamless connection to Downtown). Even though it was de facto City policy to integrate the railways, as was clearly expressed in public documents.
There is a lot of blame to be shared for how plans have come to be, an odd mixture of action and inaction during a time of digital and institutional transition. But your suspicion is right: the fact that it will not be integrated is the City’s fault in many ways. And to make better decisions in the future, or to maybe amend current plans, people need to understand the context of these choices and how they came to be. For Pierce County, it is literally the story that the reasons why Tacoma Link were built grew dim in the memory as the decades passed. Tacoma Link’s original messaging, funding, and design reports all occurred before most American adults were on the Internet. It became understood by the public as only a streetcar line, as opposed to a down payment on Pierce County’s most essential section of the regional railway.
Like I said earlier, if regional Link is to go to Tacoma it should go Downtown, as has been planned for decades. If not, it should end at Tacoma Dome, preferably on Puyallup Avenue for direct rail-bus transfers, which is the principal modal transfer to be experienced there. This is especially true should ST Express buses be truncated at the Dome and Pierce Transit buses diverged to it from Downtown. Of course, none of this is happening because the railway is now slated to go to the Mall somehow for some undetermined amount of dollars that will rise into the billions.
There is no real grassroots advocacy taking place in Pierce County that I am aware of. There is no Tacoma Subway (thankfully). I think it is because we are not as wealthy and because transit is currently less central to our lives than for those in King County.
Anyway, those are my thoughts while on the bus.
@Trou Serad,
“ That is why Tacoma Link exists: to fulfill the function of a starter line within the urban core ”
To be clear, Tacoma “Link” is a streetcar, it is not actually Link Light a rail.
1-Link LRV’s cannot operate on Tacoma Streetcar tracks. And rebuilding the Tacoma Streetcar to Link standards is not in the subarea budget for Pierce County.
If you want to advocate for something more potentially possible for Tacoma, advocate for accelerating the already approved TCC extension to the existing Tacoma Streetcar line.
And, if you want a stretch goal, advocate for a second streetcar line branching off the first and traveling down Division and then 6th Ave to the vicinity of UPS, while interlining on the existing tracks in DT Tacoma.
Those two things are possible and would add value for Tacoma. Because Tacoma’s destiny is streetcar with an integrated transportation hub at the Tacoma Dome.
Sorry, “Troy”. A spelling error
From Wiki …
“The T Line, formerly known as Tacoma Link, is a light rail line in Tacoma, Washington, part of the Link light rail system operated by Sound Transit.”
From ST …
“Tacoma Link light rail stations · Tacoma Dome Station · S 25th St · Union Station · Convention Center · Theater District · Old City Hall · S 4th St · Stadium District
Hey Lazarus,
Tacoma Link is a light rail infrastructure completed by Sound Transit in 2003. That it now operates only as a streetcar line is immaterial to that fact. With a voltage conversion (or the addition of a dual voltage motor), T Line trams can operate over the regional Link railway and even serve its stops using their platform gap filler.
One thing to note, you are writing to the current principal advocate for a 6th Avenue street railway extension. I’ve written extensively about it and promote it actively. Tacoma should not be building street railways at their present high cost, but since the TCC extension is programmed, is mandated to be a railway, and funding is ostensibly secured, we should maximize those dollars using 6th Avenue as our alignment of choice. In terms of railway projects in Pierce County, none are more important than this extension. However, simply properly funding Pierce Transit is more important than everything else in terms of transit.
I’m not deluded and do not believe that original Sound Transit plans will be restored. I agree that Tacoma Dome is likely going to be the city’s key station, which is appalling. My role in the local transit planning discussion has been to so doubt about how our long range plans will serve the people, how those plans have changed from original scopes and to our detriment, and how we can do better using our limited resources and work more productively within the constraints of our current long-range plans.
I know that there is presently no budget to integrate the railways, even though it would be literally billions of dollars cheaper to do so than to build the Tacoma Mall Link Extension. I also know that such an integration is a violation of the current understanding of the long range plan. It doesn’t lessen the need to let people know that what is being planned for Tacoma will not effectively serve its people or the people of Pierce County—and not serve them well at an extraordinary cost.
Sow doubt. ;)
One other thing: at its most fundamental, the voltage needs to be converted along Tacoma Link specifically (and at a minimum), and the platform faces shaved down mere inches. Then a 1-line vehicle can operate in Downtown Tacoma. That’s it.
Preferably, the curve at 25th Street would be realigned, which either requires redesigning the street or taking down the adjacent building. However, its radius is compliant with the manufacturer’s minimum, just not ST’s. ST probably adds fudge factor that increases the minimum, or perhaps the coupling of trains necessitates it for various reasons.
Troy! I agree with you on how Tacoma Dome is the wrong end point and how ST is too stubborn to change its mind.
I will note that the CID station shifts do offer an example of how to move station locations. It is regrettable that the motive with the CID is avoidance than opportunity for the most part.
The basic issue is what Link should connect to as well as what should be the walkshed. The current location offers a terrible walkshed. The connection to Sounder and Amtrak is not seamless. T-Link is an awkward level change — and T-Link is single track there so trains can’t wait at the platform for a timed connection. Pacific Avenue seems to be too far to offer a good transfer point (about 1509 feet), and there are no direct HOV ramps to I-5. The ST express buses are placed even further away from things at Puyallup and 26th.
As to some options to consider:
1. Relocate the Tacoma Dome Link platforms further west by 1-2 blocks. Look at the Everett proposal of not co-locating Link with Sounder so it’s not unreasonable. The platforms must be 400 feet long. If the distance to Pacific Ave can be reduced that would help with connectivity to that PT route.
2. To take the idea 1 further, I would suggest proposing a coherent “new union station” between Pacific and 705. Part of the solution when there is no “there” there is to create one. It would be even better if a tall building was placed on top. An example of this is Gateway Transit Center in LA or the new SalesForce Transit Center in SF. This would require taking property and redeveloping it. It would offer a change to make layovers more attractive. Different modes could be assigned to different levels. The ST express buses could be moved to this new center. I’ll even give this idea a name — Tacoma Transit Terminal Tower or the 4T project!
3. The creation of a hub does offer opportunities to connect in other ways — like a cable-pulled automated shuttle (incline? Gondola?) to the UWT campus or to 38th St on a reimagined SR7 redesign or even to St Joseph’s and the current west T-Line terminus. That would ease the pressure of building the Tacoma Mall extension at the expense of not connecting other places.
4. Getting a one station Link extension into Downtown studied more to see if it’s feasible and how much it will cost. Having the project more thoroughly understood would give the idea “legs” that could be leveraged if opportunities for funding happen in the future.
5. At the very least, the T-Link/ Link transfer should be more seamless than it is. ST should be pushed to offer more ways to make it work great! Cross-platform transfers? Room for T-Link layovers?
Finally a systems question: Would a Tacoma Mall extension of Link ever connect with T-Link anywhere west of Pacific Ave or would all the riders on a TCC line still have to endure the time-consuming horn into the Stadium District? It seems to me that all of these little extension projects don’t tie together well as a system. For example, if the Tacoma Mall extension was T-Link rather than Link a better transit-serving system could be devised and the construction costs of tracks and platforms could be greatly reduced (enabling more than just one or maybe two additional stations).
The Tacoma Mall extension is just a last-minute aspiration. Nothing has been committed to or even studied yet. I first heard about it sometime between late 2014 when the long-range plan was revised, and early 2016 when the ST3 ballot measure was finalized. A future board will have to at minimum review and reaffirm that off-hand aspiration. It’s like that other last-minute aspiration at the other end, Everett College. And that’s only if there ever is an ST4. Much of what was expected to be in ST4 is already in ST3, and was put there so there wouldn’t be another period of vote uncertainty on Everett Station etc.
Al, I think your first idea is totally reasonable. It is a fatal flaw that TDLE not only misses the core of Tacoma, it doesn’t even reach Pacific Avenue and interface with its key transit line, the Route 1. Sound Transit station concepts already propose redirecting some buses and adding new bus bays—what could the station have looked like along Pacific Avenue?
However, I am certain that it would violate the long range plan as it does not allow for a trek uphill to the mall. The strict geometric requirements of a Link station that vaults over Pacific Avenue from under the interstate, and which comes from an aerial approach above 25th Street, is just ridiculously complex if not impossible. We will never know.
For the second idea, it also violates the long range plan while also not delivering a major increase in value beyond just integrating Tacoma Link (either through to Downtown or even just Union Station with some pocket track or other turnaround feature).
None of these concepts will be evaluated because the train must go to the mall.
“I am certain that it would violate the long range plan as it does not allow for a trek uphill to the mall.”
The long-range plan was changed in 2008 and again in 2014. Corridors were added and deleted. ST has a tradition before every ST# of changing the long-range plan to match its next package and current long-term ideas. It can’t build anything not in the long-range plan, but it can add it to the plan anytime with just a board vote.
@Troy Serad,
“ With a voltage conversion……T Line trams can operate over the regional Link railway”
Ah, yes, with some changes Tacoma streetcars could operate on 1-Link infrastructure, but that does not mean that 1-Link trains can operate over Tacoma streetcar infrastructure.
Think of it this way, a Cessna can land at an airport designed to accommodate Boeing 747’s, but that does not mean that a 747 can land at an airport designed to accommodate Cessnas.
And there are other issues with running Tacoma streetcars on 1-Link light rail infrastructure. Assuming the FTA would even allow commingling of streetcars and LR LRV’s, why would you? The good citizens of Fife and FW were promised full LR. They are not going to like being downgraded (even partially) to streetcar. There will be substantial pushback.
And the top speed of Tacoma streetcars is less than for Link LRV’s, so even if you could commingle them you would still need to reduce the speed of 1-Link LRV’s to match the lower speed of Tacoma’s streetcars. Meaning longer trip times on 1-Link and lower capacity yet again.
Lower speed on both services, plus lower capacity, is not a recipe for success. And is not something ST should be wasting time on.
Troy Serad,
How do you feel about just canceling all rail projects in Pierce County?
Most voters have turned sour on Sound Transit because of the Hilltop Link disaster. There’s not going to be any ST4. Why waste money on rail that won’t be built in my lifetime? Or yours? Isn’t it time for Pierce County to sue Sound Transit? That’s a winner for Pierce County even if the County loses in court, and honestly I think Sound Transit just caves in for that. Take the money and run.
As a Tacoma guy who lived South of the freeways, I’m so sick and tired of paying taxes for projects for the North End and Downtown. If Tacoma ever gets light rail, (and I don’t want it to) it goes straight to the Tacoma Mall, which really is the the center of Tacoma of much of the town (mostly the non-White residents.. downtown Tacoma is the center for more well to-do White folks in the North End. )
As of now, the political winds in Tacoma have shifted to South. Pierce Executive Bruce Dammeier isn’t going to let North Tacoma rule the roost any longer. The South Tacoma Democrats and the Republicans out in the County are calling the shots now. We have spent millions “fixing” downtown Tacoma over the last 20 years. Not any more.
Tacoma’s problem transit-wise is deputy mayor Walker. She’s a nice lady, but she’s completely worthless. But that’s what you get with political nepotism. Dammeier is the leader, the shot caller… Walker just fallows along like a puppy.
“As a Tacoma guy who lived South of the freeways, I’m so sick and tired of paying taxes for projects for the North End and Downtown”
You’re paying only for projects in your subarea, and a share of all-subarea infrastructure like the downtown tunnels (which Tacoma Dome Link to downtown depends on). You’re not paying for everything in the north end. It was your subarea and the other suburban ones who insisted on subarea equity for that. Contrary to the transit best-practice of having the whole region fund the most essential and productive parts (Seattle) first or only.
@Troy Serad,
“ One other thing: at its most fundamental, the voltage needs to be converted along Tacoma Link specifically (and at a minimum), and the platform faces shaved down mere inches. Then a 1-line vehicle can operate in Downtown Tacoma. That’s it.”
Ah, that is not it. Not at all.
1-Link LRV’s and streetcars have different radii of curvature in both the horizontal and vertical planes. Meaning the radius of Tacoma streetcar curves in the horizontal plane would need to be increased, and grade transitions in the vertical plane would likely have to be adjusted too.
But wait, there is more!
To the casual observer, looking at the tracks from the surface, it might appear that 1-Link tracks and Tacoma streetcar tracks are built to the same standard, but they likely aren’t.
Streetcar track slabs are typically 12 inches thick, whereas LR track slabs are typically 18 inches thick. Meaning even the straight sections of track are probably different.
I don’t know for sure if ST built Tacoma streetcar track slabs to the industry standard depth, but if they did, it would be inadvisable to run full 1-Link LRV’s on that track on more than just an occasional basis.
So your idea would require voltage changes, platform changes, curve radius changes, grade transition changes, and potentially complete track slab replacement (dig it all up!)
Oh, and one advantage of the thinner track slab of streetcar is that it sometimes helps alleviate certain utility relocation issues that the thicker slabs would encounter. So add a revisit of utility relocation to the rebuild too.
Ain’t going to happen.
Mike Orr,
Ah, this is Tacoma discussion… not Seattle. Believe it or not, Tacoma has a Downtown and a North End.
The problem with is Sound Transit is something I still don’t think you understand. It’s never been a regional transit organization…. it’s just a revenue bundler for local, State and Federal taxes that it doles out cash for transit projects…. or parking garages in Auburn. The quality and value of those projects often doesn’t matter…. it’s the ST board and local pols who make the choices. Other than the rail spine in Seattle, pretty much every other ST project is a turkey.
At a local tavern, I overheard one of richest and most powerful men in Tacoma (he ran for mayor) explain to two developers how light rail could be used in the Hilltop to bring in TOD development and “clean the place up”. Look at the map of the light rail in Tacoma and tell me what use could it possibly have? It doesn’t go anywhere. If it’s not about land speculation and gentrification, what is it about?
But don’t cry for Tacoma, Mike. Mayor Bruce is going to use ST money for something only marginally useful transit-wise in his quest to “fix” downtown Seattle. And the political stars are aligned for that right now. So it’s Mayor Bruce calling a shot that Seattle lives with for decades. Good luck stopping that… or fixing that.
There was actually a cable car circulator up to Hilltop back in the glory days. between 11th and 15th, it looks like.
https://troyserad.maps.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?webmap=2a98530a77b34762b748d54794c94da1
(Troy is the author)
“Ah, this is Tacoma discussion… not Seattle. Believe it or not, Tacoma has a Downtown and a North End.”
“The problem with is Sound Transit is something I still don’t think you understand. It’s never been a regional transit organization…. it’s just a revenue bundler for local, State and Federal taxes that it doles out cash for transit projects.”
You can look at it that way. The state doesn’t authorize large tax ceilings for Metro or the other agencies or cities or counties for large transit capital projects — only Sound Transit. Community Transit is at its ceiling, Metro is near it, and PT could only raise enough for a frequency increase and maybe a Stream line or two or three. I don’t know what exactly it could afford. But not something like Central Link, Sounder, or Tacoma Link. That requires going through ST. Or getting the legislature to change their minds.
But the legislature is more car-and-highway oriented than Pugetopolis is.
There’s also the dynamic that high-capacity transit was originally a King County issue. Forward Thrust would only have extended to Lake City, Redmond, Renton, Ballard, and West Seattle. The “metro area” was part of King County, not even all of it. The outskirts eventually extended to Lynnwood, but not to Auburn or Tacoma, which were mostly a separate job market. (Except for Boeing workers who drove from everywhere to the plants.) The DSTT in 1990 was a King County project. A revival of Forward Thrust in the 1990s could have been King County only too — and might have been if Snohomish and Pierce Counties hadn’t pressed so hard to be included.
The state recognized that Pugetopolis needed regional transit and multi-county corridors, but it didn’t want to get directly involved in it, so it created Sound Transit to meet that need. Its vision — and many suburban officials’ — was lines parallel to freeways because that’s what car-oriented people think is needed, a way to bypass freeway congestion. But that’s not at all what non-drivers need or what a metro transit network can most effectively do, even though it can do some of it. So the state offered Sound Transit, King County said “Let’s do it”, and Pierce and Snohomish counties said “Me too”.
Another dynamic was that Pierce and Snohomish Counties needed Seattle’s and King County’s Yes votes to overcome their No votes. That’s one reason they were so keep to be included in Sound Transit, because otherwise they would have no way to get significant transit improvements.
Another dynamic was subarea equity. The non-North King subareas insisted on that to avoid all the money going to North King projects first or only. But it’s still a single tax district so the rate must be the same across all of it. Subarea equity is essentially choosing projects that equal what each subarea can raise, and so they can all be finished at the same time, so that the global tax rate can be raised and lowered accordingly.
ST defers mostly to what counties and cities want because may people think that’s it’s mandate. ST was created to build an Everett-Tacoma-Redmond Spine and to do other things the counties/cities want. That’s different from an organization run by transit experts who create a best-practices network (mostly in Seattle, secondarily in the Eastside) and have full authority and resources to implement it. That’s how British Columbia and states in Germany work, and London and Japan and Switzerland etc, but not Sound Transit or Washington state.
So if you’re dissatisfied with ST’s structure and priorities and decision-making process, these are the points you’d need to change.
“ However, I am certain that it would violate the long range plan as it does not allow for a trek uphill to the mall. ”
Unless it is fully funded, the long range plan is just an adopted piece of paper. As Mike said, it can be changed and probably will be once funding is figured out.
Consider how the Board changed the preferred alternative in the CID or considered dropping stations at Avalon, SLU or Interbay. Those were not only in a long range plan but were also identified in ST3. No one even brought up a long range plan fatal flaw if I remember correctly.
“Unless it is fully funded, the long range plan is just an adopted piece of paper.”
The long-range plan is not intended to be fully funded. It’s everything ST thinks it might want in the future. It’s up to future boards to determine whether those corridors still make sense, and whether to adjust the levels (high-capacity BRT, highER-capacity light rail, etc), and which ones have highest priority next, and which ones of those are feasible and affordable.
Your southend? I thought you had moved to Salt Lake, Tacomee….
I agree with you about Walker. She talks a good talk, but takes no risks. Clearly higher aspirations, and doesn’t want to make enemies by spending political capital on transit and bikes, when the voters largely drive.
Hilltop has historically, and still largely is, the greatest density of Black/African Americans in Washington. Whether you view T-Link as providing services to an underserved community or simply gentrification depends on your level of cynicism.
It’s not like they are running trams to Proctor or Ruston. The streetcar serves people of color, the hospitals and UWT, If it really serves anyone at all. Maybe eventually TCC, which serves a lot of poor people of color, often from the Southend.
Hilltop isn’t Ballard. Not be a long stretch.
Cam Solomon,
It’s not that I don’t think the Hilltop community doesn’t deserve good transit, because they certainly do. I just don’t see the streetcar as really serving them well. It’s still hard to go from Hilltop to the East Side and Lincoln District by transit and those ‘hoods are connected by generations of residents. The whole thing just smell like gentrification to me.
There are only 2 neighborhoods in Tacoma that even come close to being a walkable “15 minute” neighborhood. Proctor, up north, and I’ve always liked that place…. and the grand champion of walkable Tacoma, the Lincoln District. The good old LD has the best restaurants and shops and you can even walk to the Tacoma Mall from there. The physical center of the whole city… geographically is… The Lincoln District! But you’ll never hear about a light rail hub there… no sir! Because the business owners are Brown and speak funny languages. People like that in America are never the center of anything.
Downtown Tacoma is mostly about getting drunk, been that way for over 100 years. There’s a Brewery District there, but no grocery store or anyplace to buy a clean pair of underwear. Downtown boosters have spent decades and millions of dollars to change that… (hello link!!) unsuccessfully. Now downtown Tacoma has yuppie bars… that the winos sleep it off in front of. No grocery store however. It’s absolutely not a neighborhood I do love the Waterfront park and bridge of glass however. Anthem is the best coffee shop in town.
Maybe half the City doesn’t go downtown much… and for them the Tacoma Mall is the center of town. But then again a lot of that group are Black or Brown, so they don’t count for much.
While you wrote that I rode from my job at the Lincoln district, across the glass bridge, then walked to a bar on Pacific, amd then took T-Link home. So I get you. I love walking around Lincoln district. I do it almost daily. VietKitchen rocks, the wings at the flying boot are a definite thumbs up, I regularly walk around Lincoln Park and I shop at Hong Kong. I even did a walking tour and learned about its history a few months ago.
But sorry, it isn’t the center of anything other the a number of waves of immigrant communities.
I am a bit frustrated by the t link rollout. They .really should have gone another 6 months free. It was almost all teens riding today, because they are the only ones who don’t have to navigate an unfamiliar orca system to ride it. Some guy asked me if was free while I was waiting, and after telling him it was $2, he said never-ending.
Tacoma isnt Seattle where half the folks have an orca in their wallet. It’s a huge barrier and supressing ridership.
Nevermind, not Neverending.
Cam Solomon,
If the Lincoln District is nothing but waves on immigrants…. it’s definitely the center of Tacoma. All of Tacoma is is just waves of immigrants.
When I moved to the district, there were still Jews there (Zinglers Appliance, Rose Jewelers, Frisbee’s bakery), so it’s changed a bit over the years. I’m the same general age and personally know a few Vietnamese businessmen there because they all started about the same time I moved in. It’s tough to move away.
The City of Tacoma largely has viewed this area as a tax base over the years and provided almost no help or improvements. The Lincoln Project (2018) was the one time the City government did anything meaningful for the district…. I think the whole project turned out really well. Getting the Lincoln Project funded was a huge political fight however. Every time the South End or East Side tries to get funding for something, the downtown boosters endlessly bitch at the City government and try to redirect the money downtown to one of their endless projects. It never ends with the downtown crew. Never. Walker used to work for them in “Downtown on the Go!” and as deputy mayor… and she still does. There are all these local political fights that Sound Transit money should never be involved in…. yet Sound Transit ends up in the middle all of the time, transit be damned.
The Lincoln District is mostly a self made place….. Downtown Tacoma is absolutely not. That waterfront park…. Bridge of glass….. UWT….. T-dome link… all the public art and fancy street lights….. paid for by tax dollars. At what point does this stop? Downtown isn’t the only place in Tacoma, put it’s certainly where a lot of our tax dollars go.
Downtown got the little street car from the T-Dome to the Stadium District. Now downtown boosters are pushing for tearing it and putting in light rail? Extending it down 6th Ave? It’s almost like the part of Tacoma south the freeways doesn’t even exist. Except for paying taxes. We still do that.
Personally, I’m not a big mall guy…. but many of my neighbors certainly were. The Tacoma Mall is a huge shopping center on its way to becoming an urban village of sorts. Looking at just the raw numbers…. the number of people and the amount of money spent there, it should be the place light rail goes in Tacoma, because it’s absolutely the most important place economically in the City. And it’s the cultural hub for many people was well. The problem is transit supporters hate malls.
I’m guessing the the T-dome link ridership drops big time with the stupid $2 a ride fare. Transit nerds may think ORCA cards are cool…. but nobody else does. Before the fare, it was possible for visitors to explore downtown Tacoma for fee on the street car. Now it’s 2 bucks every time they get on? Gosh, that sure says, “Welcome to Tacoma!”
Thirty-eighth is a “Stroad” along which one block has an interesting little miniature “downtown”. Until that changes the Lincoln District will never be a neighborhood. It’s just a place to stop on one’s way somewhere else.
Tom Terrific,
“Thirty-eighth is a “Stroad” along which one block has an interesting little miniature “downtown”. Until that changes the Lincoln District will never be a neighborhood. It’s just a place to stop on one’s way somewhere else.”
Gosh Tom! I lived in that neighborhood for 30 years. What did you do? Drive past it once or twice? Believe it or not, it’s home to great bunch of people, but many of those folks are lower income, Black or immigrant, so you don’t really care much about their “Stroad” or “miniature downtown”. You’re just one of many of the White, college educated, naval gazing men who post here. There’s a reason there’s so few women or BIPOC folks posting here.
Thanks for” keeping it real” buddy!
I don’t think they’ve even driven thru the Lincoln District, because if they had, they most definitely wouldn’t call it a stroad. Aside from the two freeway overpasses, it’s pretty much 20 mph (actual speed, not legal limit) all the way from Tacoma Way to McKinley St, with the road mostly designed for low speed traffic
Lazarus, this is a blog where people routinely introduce and promote complex rail capital projects. Comparatively, integrating Tacoma Link into the regional railway is not only simple, it was once formally approved by the Sound Transit Board as a component project and endorsed by the City of Tacoma. It is fascinating to see pushback in these spaces about integrating Tacoma Link because the technical requirements of this work are rather minor. It is a political decision whether or not we do such an integration, not one related to technical feasibility and cost.
As far as I am aware, Tacoma Link trackways do not need to be rebuilt to host 1-line trains. It was noted during construction that the system was built more robustly than the Portland streetcar, specifically related to depths (there were many utility interactions). So, if you know something specifically then report back, as opposed to using words like “likely” and “I don’t know for sure” while spreading conjecture. ST staff never raised this as an issue in either the 90s or mid 00s, and people associated with the project who I met have said it was engineered to be part of a regional Link railway—and until then remain a vastly overbuilt streetcar line. Numerous documents refer to this eventual regional connection, and they also deliberately refer to Tacoma Link as a light railway.
Again, I have no belief that this work will ever occur, but people should know how local plans have changed, how these changes affect Pierce County transit, and provide new concepts that I believe better serve the public that generally work within our legal and financial constraints. If people here can encourage a new light metro line for the West Seattle Ballard Link extension, then I surely can say that Pacific Avenue deserves a second track, longer platforms, and a doubled voltage for regional operations to Tacoma.
Finally, my little vision proposal—which is just an update and reconsideration of the original Sound Transit proposal—did not recommend running T Line trams on the regional railway.
———-
Al, my imaginary rail extension concept to the mall uses either Pacific Avenue or Jefferson Street as the downtown approach, which would allow rail transfers either at Union Station or Convention Center. Whether to send 1-line or T Line trains to the mall would be a decision of the Sound Transit Board.
———-
Tacomee, the cancellation of railway projects and the reallocation of those monies into bus capital projects and operations—along with commuter rail—would be more beneficial to the people of Tacoma and Pierce County. If you are interested, my ST3 piece on the matter is linked through my name (I was naive then, so read with grace).
While this approach would also have been more socially and racially equitable, I’m also aware that the Pierce County public has endorsed extending the railway to Tacoma more diligently than any other project in our subarea. ST1 and ST2 passed in Pierce County with a majority under a long range plan that featured a Link spine terminus in Downtown Tacoma. Since ST itself was created in service of that goal, at least in part, I accept realizing that objective even if I’m incredibly uneasy with it— but *only* if regional trains terminate in our city center. Without those last two miles, the entire rationale of the project falls apart. We aren’t completing the spine.
One thing worthy to note here is that when the delay to Tacoma Dome Link was made public a bit ago, City of Tacoma and Pierce County officials provided a letter to ST listing transportation improvements they felt should be made or hastened in response to the delay of the railway. That list was actually quite excellent, and it should have been our ST3 plans in the first place. It was basically a broad rundown of what I said our subarea needed back in 2016 and earlier.
Separately, I do not share your grievances with Kristina Walker. I believe that she is a very capable bureaucrat who professionally represents our area. I think she is an ethical individual who understands complex urban systems, is committed to racial equity, and consistently supports policies that will allow Tacoma to densify and become a better city. I believe that directing your ire at her, of all local political figures, is deeply misplaced, but you clearly have your own rationale for thinking the way you do. She is one individual within a broader political ecosystem and has to operate under rules and plans put into place long before she ever came onto the scene.
While she has power in her various roles and, of course, I want her to do more and make substantive changes, she’s also constrained by the limitations of those roles. She can’t just change the ST long range plan alone, for example, and the long range plan is only revised ahead of a new ballot initiative; ST4 isn’t happening anytime soon. So, at least in the ST leadership context, any decision that she makes is going to be constrained by a long range plan established in 2014. She does what she can and has a positive vision aligned with mine, and that is more than I can say about most local political figures.
———-
Mike, respectfully, I feel like we have a very different understanding of how the spine concept is driving rail and transit planning in Pierce County. It also won’t just change, and it is hard for me to imagine it contracting back to the original scope.
The spine terminating at Tacoma Mall is one of the reasons why Puyallup Avenue was eliminated as a potential corridor for service into Tacoma, despite the fact that planners stated it could be at least $100 million more affordable, despite the fact that it offers direct rail-bus transfers, and despite the fact that it would have allowed direct Link service into Downtown Tacoma.
The long range plan matters here.
The Tacoma Mall is a huge shopping center on its way to becoming an urban village of sorts. Looking at just the raw numbers…. the number of people and the amount of money spent there, it should be the place light rail goes in Tacoma, because it’s absolutely the most important place economically in the City.
Oh come on. It is nowhere near as important as downtown Tacoma. Not even close.
“Downtown got the little street car from the T-Dome to the Stadium District. Now downtown boosters are pushing for tearing it and putting in light rail?”
Transit fans on STB aren’t the same thing as downtown boosters. Do you think when one advocates for something in downtown Seattle they’re part of the Downtown Seattle Association and don’t care about anything else in the city?
“Extending it down 6th Ave?”
6th Avenue is not downtown. It’s widely seen as one of the most promising non-downtown corridors.
“It’s almost like the part of Tacoma south the freeways doesn’t even exist.”
I’ve advocated for upgrading PT routes 2, 3, and 4. Those are also the priority routes in PT’s long-range plan and cited by Tacoma politicians. I think many STBers would agree with this idea. They all serve south Tacoma.
@tacomee,
“Downtown got the little street car from the T-Dome to the Stadium District. Now downtown boosters are pushing for tearing it and putting in light rail”
No one with any say in the matter or technical knowledge of the issues involved is promoting the idea of replacing Tacoma Streetcar with true Link level Light Rail. Don’t worry, it won’t happen.
Ross Bleakney,
Despite all the hype, downtown Tacoma is still a work in progress. In fact, it might be going downhill because over saturation of the only industry (brewing beer). The City built a wonderful park, the bridge of glass, there’s a couple of museums… downtown has some charm. Most of it was bought with tax dollars. There’s row of cheap restaurants on Pac Ave by UWT that do alright because of the students. Higher end restaurants tend to fail. There’s no grocery store and I’m hard pressed to even name 5 businesses that don’t sell beer. Good luck finding a pair of socks to buy.
Downtown Tacoma has a college campus (UWT) and 2 high schools (SAMI and Stadium just to the North… and yet there’s still no retail stability. The place is sort of mess. I dropped in at Campfire Coffee often…. I know their ‘hood is struggling in bad way. I want the whole city to be successful.
Look up the sales tax numbers and you’ll see the Tacoma Mall at the top of the heap in Tacoma. By a long, long ways. The Mall is the “downtown” for over half of Tacoma’s population… Mexican and Asian families go there and just walk around and see their friends. Maybe it’s not your scene, or mine, but I understand Tacoma pretty well. MOD Pizza 4ever! I guess?
The Lincoln District has 4 grocery stores (Safeway and 3 Asian places? 2 drugstores, and bargain basement clothing shop, laundry mat, 2 jewelry stores, A big 24 hour fitness place and tons and tons of cheap ethnic food from around the world. We got a Mexican bakery even… bubble tea…. a dentist office… T Mobile Store….and one of last family run 50’d style burger places in Puget Sound. Mmmmmm….. Jubilee Burgers!
Downtown has a brewery district…. and half the places are circling the drain I’m afraid. Now I have no ill will towards downtown Tacoma and wish them well….I love King’s Books and Corina Bakery is the best in town. But downtown isn’t any more important than any other part of T-town.
Downtown on the Go! (the city office in charge of boosting downtown) spends huge amounts of time trying to build community events downtown with little success….. While the Lincoln District does great events with almost zero City help. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS2S-HfFaBY and https://www.lincolndistrict.org
You can’t buy real community.
@Troy Serad,
“this is a blog where people routinely introduce and promote complex rail capital projects.”
Ah, no it’s not. This blog is primarily a bus oriented blog we’re people mainly advocate against rail in general and against all things ST in particular. I find the level of knowledge about rail and program delivery here to be, shall we politely say, nascent?
“Comparatively, integrating Tacoma Link into the regional railway is not only simple, it was once formally approved by the Sound Transit Board”
Light Rail, Sounder, Amtrak, and Tacoma streetcar most certainly will be all integrated together. That is the plan. All those modes will be integrated together at Tacoma Dome Station. All modes will be on essentially parallel platforms and the transfers between the various modes will be “easy”. That is the plan.
But replacing Tacoma streetcar with Link LR is not simple, is not cheap, and is not part of the plan. At least not since the original ST vote back in 1995 got rejected by the voters.
Best bet for more rail in Tacoma? Advocate for accelerating the Tacoma streetcar extension to TCC. That has value. After that, maybe advocate for a second line. Terminus TBD.
Lazarus, thank you for expressing your feelings on the matter.
“Downtown got the little street car from the T-Dome to the Stadium District. Now downtown boosters are pushing for tearing it and putting in light rail”
“No one with any say in the matter or technical knowledge of the issues involved is promoting the idea of replacing Tacoma Streetcar with true Link level Light Rail”
I haven’t heard any group ask ST or campaign to replace Tacoma Link with Central Link. I haven’t heard anyone suggest it at all except a few people in the comments. Troy Serad’s proposal is on Pacific Avenue, so it wouldn’t require tearing up the T line on Commerce Street. Tacoma can think about what to do with the T line separately. Commerce Street is so narrow that I don’t think it could accommodate surface or elevated Central Link, and you can’t expect Central Link to be extended to MLK or 19th.
The southern part of the T line is on Pacific Avenue, but that area is industrial enough and wide enough that I think they could find some way to accommodate both lines if necessary, or share the track.
Thank you for that, Mike.
I want to note that my CTLE project was completed *before* I was made aware (by an area senior planning official) of the original intent of Tacoma Link, which is to be a starter line for the regional system. That sent me down a rabbit hole where I recovered planning documents for the project, some of which I have put on the Internet for the first time since the 1990s—if not ever. Other documents remain only physical copies. I scanned the environmental impact statement at the library because Sound Transit wanted me to pay for them to make a digital copy (which is fair, but frustrating). I’ve been repeatedly surprised by how little people know about the project nowadays.
Ever since, I’ve been promoting a version of Sound Transit’s original vision for our subarea, particularly in light of the disruption that would be caused by diverting proposed “BRT” lines to Tacoma Dome Station, or terminating them there instead of Downtown. The big changes in my plans are for accommodating 4-car trains and not 2, and building a mixed-use railway station building at 923 Commerce St., which is today a large parking garage.
The plans can be seen below.
GIS map here.
CAD plans here.
T Line tram decision tree here
Cost estimate here
Lazarus: I’ve been through much of the parts list of the Portland Skoda streetcars. Most of the parts are not easy to obtain in the USA. There just aren’t enough of them for a good supply line. This is one of many reasons why a MAX car is quite a bit cheaper than a Portland streetcar in terms of cost per hour of operation.
So, there are quite a number of reasons why Siemens S700 cars (what almost everyone is using these days) should be used on streetcar lines. Indeed, Atlanta is doing just that. These cars were built to handle astoundingly sharp curves on European streetcar lines, and do just fine on Portland’s very narrow streets on MAX lines downtown.
The voltage operating difference isn’t that big a deal. There is a LOT of slop on the overhead voltage, as it varies depending on how far it is from the substation and number of trains running and where those trains are. The static converters on the Skoda cars are good for 450 to 900 volts. TriMet operates several MAX substations into the 900 volt range as they get better energy consumption that way, but several of the older substations can’t be adjusted that high.
You’d have to do a complete analysis with information about Link cars I don’t have, but there is a high probability they will operate on the “750 volts” of the Tacoma streetcar, especially considering the operation there would not push the performance of the cars to their limit.
Of course, I also recognize ST isn’t TriMet and may not be comfortable with adjusting operating voltage of its substations beyond the nominal ratings.
In that case, please take a look at the insulators used on Central Link and the insulators used on Tacoma Link. At double the voltage, you might expect them to be larger, but they aren’t. Therefore, I suspect the standard insulators used on all light rail lines in the USA are rated above the 1,500 used on Central Link.
Therefore, in terms of technical challenges, the voltage doesn’t really seem that important to me. There are numerous possible solutions.
The weight of the Central Link cars is more than Tacoma Link, but there are more axles. The result is a matter of about 2 tons per axle, and should be well within the margin of error with this type of construction. Hell, some of the hi-rail maintenance trucks, not to mention semi-trucks operating on the street, probably give the track more impact load than this increase.
As I see it, by far the biggest problem is the fact that Central Link uses cars that are 8.7 feet wide, while the Skoda streetcars are 8 3/4 feet wide. That’s an 8.4 inch width difference, or 4 inches on each side. Accommodating that extra 4 inches on each side might require rebuilding changing trackside signs, moving some line side poles, or converting part of the line to bridge catenary rather than center poles. None of this is particularly outside the realm of possible.
The Link cars are longer than the Tacoma Link cars, but the doors are towards the center. Thus, the platforms shouldn’t need to be longer. Atlanta streetcar platforms using Siemens S70 series light rail cars are about the same length as Tacoma Link platforms. Take a look at the street view.
You could probably make all the required changes to Tacoma Link for the cost of a single 4 car elevated Link station. (OK, so SoundTransit might not be able to, but some agencies probably could).
In retrospect, it was quite stupid that somehow cities in the northwest were conned into building two completely incompatible urban train systems for the “advantage” of only 8 inches.
Mike, it fortunately was not a con. It was actually just a contract decision very early on that resulted in divergent vehicle envelopes and floor heights. The Tacoma Link light rail FEIS covers the rationale behind the separate vehicle order. Check it out by clicking here.
Obviously, the consequences of the choice were not properly mapped and it became a mistake. This is the sole reason we need to have a discussion on integration, even though Tacoma Link was supposed to be part of the regional Link railway. As can be seen in the comments above, it has resulted in a lot of confusion regarding compatibility and intent.
Local and regional trains should be using Tacoma Link and maximizing that investment, in my opinion, as intended.
Oops! I meant Glenn, not Mike.
My bad!
Up until the 1990s or so, in the USA the term “light rail” was widely recognized as being “modern streetcar” as it could be run in the street (Eg, San Francisco, Philadelphia, CLRV cars in Toronto, two blocks of MAX in Portland before even that proved a huge mistake) but really didn’t want to operate it in mixed traffic if you could help it.
The entire streetcar revival thing was a con job to sell cities on a concept that intermixing high capacity transit and highway traffic was somehow a new and good idea.
The rational used in the Tacoma Link design documents are almost entirely an exact cut and paste from the same stuff used to con Portland into building the streetcar here. Eg the whole “smaller cars are more friendly to city streets” was used here too.
@Glenn,
Of course Light Rail can be built to run in the street, just like “streetcar” or anything else. You know this because of Max. And in Renton they run entire freight trains down the street. It is possible.
But there are real physical differences between the streetcars used in Portland, Tacoma, and Seattle, and the LR LRV’s used for 1-Link. And these differences go far beyond just platform size and operating voltage.
The point is that the entire Tacoma streetcar system has been designed around the operating characteristics of the streetcars they are using in Tacoma, and not around the LRV’s that 1-Link uses in Seattle. And upgrading the Tacoma infrastructure to accept 1-Link LRV’s would be basically a complete rebuild at extremely high cost. And for little added value.
And, honestly, there are a whole series of other, non-technical issues with running full 1-Link LRV’s into DT Tacoma. I don’t even know why we are discussing it, it is off the table.
“Extremely high cost”. Compared to what, the Tacoma Mall Link Extension? No, it’s billions cheaper. Compared to one controversial stop in the ID of Seattle? No, it’s several hundred million dollars cheaper. Affordability is relative for such projects and in this region, and a Tacoma Link integration has to be one of the cheapest. Not all of the infrastructure needs to be converted, as noted by the tram decision tree. However, you are correct that modifications are needed—they are just not as daunting as you declare them to be here.
The best part is that it completes the spine, as was the goal of the regional transit effort that my subarea has been party to from the beginning. After the 1996 vote, ST executives stated that Tacoma Link was a down payment infrastructure that could be connected to the regional system if the voters approved it, one of countless references ST made about this merger, and which was codified into the 1996 and 2005 LRPs (and eliminated in 2014).
And I bring this up—along with my work on Pierce Transit funding, BRT, Puyallup Avenue TDS, and the street railways—because Tacoma and Pierce County deserve quality transportation improvements that actually deliver value. And what we build and how we build it—and the order that we do it—has material social and racial equity considerations that must be acknowledged and addressed. Perhaps you disagree with me on integration, but I share the former view of City of Tacoma staff that integrating at least Tacoma Link (i.e., Hilltop Link doesn’t have to be) and ending the spine there makes sense for the conclusion of the Link program in the central Puget Sound.
That program needs to run its course ASAP and let us refocus toward bus investments that actually move the public. Unfortunately, that can’t happen here, really, because all of our machinery is directed toward building a monumental railway of a now shockingly limited purpose and worth.
Also, my response was to Glenn’s inspired revisioning of the railway to Tacoma. That’s why we are talking about it, because this blog talks about railway projects—building them, changing them, cancelling them, envisioning them. You don’t have to engage if it upsets you, it’s that easy.
I really don’t see how this becomes an “extremely high cost project” without knowing what objects would need to move in order to accommodate the change. Other than the 8 inches in width, possible platform stopping locations, and dealing with the voltage difference, I don’t see anything particularly difficult.
One huge advantage would be Tacoma would get a direct one seat ride to the SeaTac airport, which was their entire desire for having Link.
Non-US cities that are serious about transit would fix a mistake like this rather than doubling down on it forever. If Commerce Street is deemed not suitable for Central Link now, they’d run it up Pacific Avenue like Troy suggests, and ensure good elevator access to Commerce Street. In the end it comes down to, downtown Tacoma is one of the four largest downtowns in the region, and the largest in Pierce County. It should have good transit access to the rest of the region. Concerns about low ridership would be alleviated with good transit access directly to the city center, and a commitment to robust walkability in greater downtown Tacoma, and improving the transit and land use situation in South King County where a significant number of workers and shoppers to downtown Tacoma would come from.
As for the T line, I don’t know. It’s already built so it may not be worth ripping it out. Over the next couple years we’ll see what its ridership will be, and then we’ll have a better idea. Obviously if Central Link goes through to downtown Tacoma, the T line would lose those riders. But it would keep whatever riders use it within Tacoma, or Central Link riders going beyond downtown Tacoma.
It would make much more sense to route central Link to downtown Tacoma than to Tacoma Mall. Use the downtowns that have been built properly and are already the largest and proven. Don’t try to build a replacement peripheral downtown like a mall. We tried that in the 20th century. A downtown Tacoma with Central Link would generate more commerce, choices, and life than a Tacoma Mall with Central Link.
Another option would be to really extend downtown Tacoma density to the Tacoma Dome neighborhood, the way downtown Seattle was extended to SLU. Then it would look and function like it’s within downtown albeit at the edge, rather than being a P&R in the middle of nowhere. Tacoma has talked about building a robust Dome neighborhood, but I wonder if it will really be as robust as that sounds, or just one or two buildings.
Don’t rip out the T Line, just procure vehicles in the future that are more aligned with 1-line vehicle characteristics—if not use them outright.
Both services could/should run along Tacoma Link, and the streetcar would operate beyond it. If rail is mandatory, send the T Line to TCC via 6th Ave, and toward Lakewood via the Lincoln District and the Tacoma Mall. Transfers occur at Union Station and Convention Center (and Downtown, too). If rail is not mandatory, uses buses everywhere, all the time.
This is a far more local-scaled and affordable transportation investment than the current LRP framework for Pierce County.
Would ST 4 be necessary to: 1. Run Link to downtown Tacoma; and 2. Convert the T-Link to Link? If so, we are talking what? 2060? TDLE is now delayed to at least 2035. Right now I have doubts Pierce can afford completing Link to the Dome, especially if ST continues with the Sounder capital improvements.
Obviously the decision makers think extending Link to the mall is better for Pierce than the Dome. They know more about Tacoma and Pierce than I do, and I assume there are reasons for this choice even if others disagree. Some Tacoma folks on this blog agree with extending to the mall. . So anyone wanting to switch to extending Link to downtown — and converting the T-Line to Link because it really doesn’t make sense to spend billions to run Link one or two T-Line stops closer to downtown — really has the burden for such a large change.
Since we are talking about ST 4 and 2060 we really don’t know the future. Good Link and good transit goes to where the folks/jobs/housing already are. Pierce growth isn’t going to wait for ST 4 or 2060.
So how will WFH 37 years from now change downtown Tacoma. What about growth around Tacoma Mall, especially if the mall becomes a destination experiential mall like U Village or Northgate, and the dense housing that has followed both malls? If one evaluated this today they would say it is the downtowns or urban cores that are failing, although as Tacomee noted urbanists hate this idea (and malls in general). But regular folks love clean, safe, outdoor malls with dense and vibrant retail, and want to live near that, if done well. 2300 new apartments have sprouted by U Village.
And what if ST itself changes, and the subareas go their own ways. The disparity in revenue and projects is striking, and some like E KC don’t need this much ST revenue or more projects like Issaquah Link, while SnoCo and Pierce could feel burned if their ST 3 projects have to be scaled way back before they reach the county seats.
Then you have changes to transit and transportation themselves by 2060. Driverless technology and micro-transit may fundamentally change everything, as Uber is doing today. AI could fundamentally change tech employment.
Another factor is if housing and retail grows and gentrified along T-Link over the next 37 years those “NIMBY’s” don’t want full size Link trains buzzing at high speeds in their neighborhoods. What would Seattleites say if the plan was to run Link down 1st instead of the CCC?
I think the engineering challenges of converting T-Line to Link is the least of the problems. Engineering is not the issue for WSBLE, or stations at CID N/S. So I like the theoretical discussion, but like Lazarus think we should wait until Link gets to TDLE, if it does, to leave this issue for a younger generation with hopefully a ton of money to waste.
It’s a stroad running through an area with small houses sitting on large but mostly unlandscaped and largely unused lots. Its density is obviously very low, and that’s the reason for the tiny retail district; there aren’t enough people to support more.
You can go on and on about how dignified and estimable your Holy Poor Folks are, and I agree that it’s true for most of them. But it’s DAMN certain that there’s no need for a streetcar line up there. And you’re the one who suggested it, albeit oliquely.
There is absolutely no doubt that people of color have gotten a raw deal over and over in the history of this country, and continue to be excluded in many ways even today. But using them as straw men in your class envy eruptions is pretty exploitative too.
Donde, THIS is a stroad: https://www.google.com/maps/@47.2231583,-122.4485663,3a,75y,285.2h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sBUt2jwInL35UWQHTM_L9nQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DBUt2jwInL35UWQHTM_L9nQ%26cb_client%3Dsearch.revgeo_and_fetch.gps%26w%3D96%26h%3D64%26yaw%3D285.20313%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu
(I chose the place just by clicking randomly on 38th in the aerial view) Five will get you fifty that suburban a long block away is already going 40 a block after the light.
As to the topic of Troy’s comments, OF COURSE main-line Link should go to the north end of Downtown Tacoma, not the Mall. Or, as Al I believe it was and Glenn suggest, terminate main-line Link at Federal Way and instead extend Tacoma Link to Federal Way, The gearing on the trams would have to be changed to give a higher top speed, and that would slow down acceleration in the city, but it could reasonably work.
“Would ST 4 be necessary to: 1. Run Link to downtown Tacoma; and 2. Convert the T-Link to Link?”
I don’t think it should. There really shouldn’t be that much needed to convert.
What I propose is not building Link to full capacity 4 car stations south of Federal Way, and probably build it as a single track line in places.
This should result in substantial cost savings.
We would need to know the exact location of the various obstacles along the Tacoma Link line. There are definitely some street signs that would have to move. The line center poles may work fine where they are, or they might have to move. I can’t exactly stand on the track with a tape measure with the line operating.
If the line center poles do need to move, this shouldn’t be a big deal. Just replace them with outside poles and suspend the wire as done on trolley buses or MAX or everywhere else on the Puget Sound streetcar lines. It cost Metro what? $30 million per mile for trolley bus overhead? So the 6 blocks or so with poles between the two tracks shouldn’t be a big deal, if it even needs to be done.
Dealing with the voltage difference between the two lines requires someone with familiarity with the Central Link cars. What’s their minimum voltage? Acceleration on the T-Link line really isn’t that fast, so they’ll never draw their full power if operated on this line. Operating them at 800 volts, or whatever the existing infrastructure will take. The existing T-Link infrastructure is probably built to either 2,000 or 6,000 volts because those are the typical steps for railroad qualified wire insulation.
If it’s extremely complicated or expensive then it shouldn’t be done. I’m just saying there is a very good chance it wouldn’t take much at all to make this conversion.
IF it turns out to be a huge. expensive problem, then there are other ways:
Bridge plates are used when a system has a car design that is used on a platform that is too wide. The 4 inch gap between a Link platform and a T-Link car is probably too large a gap to be safe, so:
• equip the T-Link cars with bridge plates that allow them to use Central Link platforms
• equip the T-Link cars with a static converter that has a wide enough input range to handle both T-Link and Central Link
• Build the Tacoma extension as an extension of T-Link and run the cars to Tukwila International Blvd, or even First Hill if you want. You’d want to make the stations convertible and expandable to full Link stations if needed, but that shouldn’t be that difficult.
(But then escalator operation shouldn’t be that difficult either)
You are right, Tom. It is a stroad. 38th doesn’t carry enough traffic to justify 5 lanes. Narrowing it to 3 would be transformational. The business district would thrive and expand. It would become much more interesting to multifamily developers. They are getting a 5 over 1 at 38th and G, just on the edge of the business district, but they need much more of that.
Tacomee is correct that it is area with a high amount of services. 3 grocery stores, dozens of restaurants, a post office a high school an elementary school and what used be an really nice park. Like Arboretum level nice, before they cut in half and built the high school and I-5 ripped a scar through it.
Aside from the 4 blocks in the Lincoln business district, the road is incredibly unpleasant, fast, and very dangerous. I’ve walked it from McKinley to the mall. Once. The deaths that occur at 38th and Pacific are horrific. 60 mph meet 60 mph.
As far as transit goes, it needs a fast, frequent straight line route from Salishan to South Tacoma Way. The 54 does this deviation, and misses the mall almost completely, presumably to avoid the stroad expansion and traffic jam that is I-5 and 38th. That is a huge mistake. Take a dedicated lane, make it true 5 mile BRT with queue jumps near I-5, and it would transform 38th and be a great first step in fulfilling some of the promises the city made in the Mall Subarea Plan.
Cam Solomon in the last open thread posted this article about the latest openings in Tacoma Mall ($). “Nordstrom Rack, Total Wine & More… a small-format Kohl’s [good for the small format], and Ulta Beauty.” There’s a photo of the “recent development” Nordstrom Rack, and it’s not a lifestyle center with a cozy outdoor pedestrian-friendly area like U-Village has somewhat achieved, it’s a strip mall with surface parking in front. It looks like what dying malls get when they decay and are going out.
Cam also writes two comments before that: “Tacoma mall has lost 3 of its 4 anchors, is a pedestrian and bike nightmare, and I’ll lay even odds that it will be a distribution center in a decade. Link will never get there. Ever.While there are a few surface lots, it is dozens of aging, mostly empty parking structures built in the 60s and 70s to compete with the mall, after downtown lost it’s department stores to it.”
I know Tacoma intends to upgrade the area with apartments and things. That’s how it justifies bringing Link to it. And I’m sure some of that will happen, because it will have to convert or die, just like U-Village did and Northgate is doing and many malls around the country are doing.
But this strip-mall, one-story big-box addition is not a promising start. Stack the big boxes on top of each other like Northgate North if you want to be credible, or have a more pedestrian-oriented core and smaller storefronts like U-Village, or do something.
This is the center of Tacoma? This is the anchor of Tacoma’s economy? This will save Tacoma?
The other thing essential to the revitalization of the Lincoln District is to decommission the route 7 spur clover leaf. This is a bizarre bit of over-engineering that is a solution to a problem nobody had. It’s not hard to get south to 38th, either using Portland, McKinley or Pacific. They are 3 too wide, too fast roads that don’t need some weird Highway-let to supplement them. It creates an incredibly hostile environment for blocks and blocks in all directions, and should be replaced by an urban linear park and greenspace with a rails-to-trails project replacing the Tacoma Rail line at it’s heart. It would be a huge boon and key active-transportation route to vastly underserved communities.
Mike, the article Tacomee links to indicates Simon Properties plans to redo Tacoma Mall like Northgate Mall. From the plans I have seen Northgate Mall should be very popular, especially since so many shoppers and diners don’t want to go to downtown Seattle and Northgate is upstream for North Seattleites and SnoCo folks.
The successful template exists. U Village. Convert surface parking lots and build nice multi-family housing along the perimeter and condense, condense, condense the retail in the center with an outdoor experience and make the mall kid and women friendly understanding 90% will drive there and can’t (and won’t) afford to pay $20 to park. That is lunch for the kids.
When I read about paid parking in “downtown” Tacoma I laughed out loud. Talk about getting out over your skis. Paid parking for WHAT? My wife won’t pay for parking on Bellevue Way. If U Village can’t charge for parking you know downtown Tacoma can’t.
I have to imagine that is the future for Redmond Mall. It costs a fortune to totally redo these old malls (although much of the land is surface parking lots which are cheap to develop) so the demographic has to be able to support it. I was at Alderwood Mall yesterday and the new multi-family housing was pretty cheap looking. That area probably couldn’t afford a renovation like Northgate Mall, and I don’t know about Pierce and Tacoma Mall. Pierce isn’t Sammamish or Redmond.
Totem Lake is another example. WFH has combined housing and the office so a downtown is unnecessary. Mixed use development used to be driven by commercial space. Now commercial is combined with housing with WFH. But these developments are only successful if retail experts lead and housing follows.
If downtown urban areas can’t recover folks still want to dine and shop in safe, clean, walkable places with free parking with concerts in the summer and Santa and Christmas decorations in December. Right now that is not downtown Seattle or Redmond. It is downtown Bellevue, but Bellevue Way started as a mall.
@Troy Serad,
“ No, it’s billions cheaper. “
Things always look cheap, and really easy, until you get into the details. That is just the way things go. Back of the envelope calcs just don’t have any veracity when confronted with the real world.
For a real world example of this look no further than Seattle and our experience with the Seattle monorail. Supposedly real cheap, real easy, and real quick to implement. And it passed multiple times at the polls, had (at least originally) full political support, and had its own dedicated funding stream to make it happen.
Yet it failed when it got to the contracting phase. The costs were simply too high, and the actual plan too weak. It unraveled.
“Compared to one controversial stop in the ID of Seattle?”
And here you highlight another problem with your proposal. To get ST1 passed at the polls Pierce Co, Sno Co, and the burbs insisted on sub area equity, and that means each sub area needs to live within their means.
The bulk of the local tax base is in the N King and E King, and both of those subareas are flush with cash to spend locally. They shouldn’t spend that money wastefully, but at least they have the money to spend.
Pierce Co? Not so much. The tax base is small. There just isn’t enough money in the Pierce County subarea to build Tacoma streetcar, then rip it out while it is still new, and then build something even bigger and even more expensive.
And in building a 1-Link station in DT Tacoma you wouldn’t actually add anything new. Tacoma streetcar already serves DT Tacoma with rail. And that existing service will get better in the future at relatively low cost with planned streetcar frequency improvements that are already being planned.
You can denigrate the Tacoma Mall extension all you want, but at least it is new service in an area that likely could use it. And it would have relatively cheap, surface level stations. Detailed analysis TBD of course.
Just no. The Tacoma Mall Link Extension is presently conceived as a largely aerial railway, with a tunnel, that features exclusively aerial stations. Its estimated cost now trends far lower than ex poste costs for FWLE after inflationary adjustments. As much as I enjoy talking about Tacoma transit, we need to have a baseline understanding of what is proposed by the various agencies, either currently or in the past. Otherwise, it just wastes time.
I have linked project materials on my site and mapped it out. Click my name.
“the article Tacomee links to indicates Simon Properties plans to redo Tacoma Mall like Northgate Mall. From the plans I have seen Northgate Mall should be very popular, especially since so many shoppers and diners don’t want to go to downtown Seattle and Northgate is upstream for North Seattleites and SnoCo folks.”
But will that make it a successful transit station for Link? Much ridership going to and from Northgate isn’t going to the mall, but going to and from the connecting buses. It’s been a transit hub for decades, and has a lot around it that helps the station function as a transit station.
Are people from Federal Way, Fife or Tukwila going to take Link to the mall there? That’s who gets connected to the mall if Link goes to the mall, not south Tacoma or really anywhere in Tacoma itself. The only other Tacoma station winds up being Tacoma Dome, which has far, far less at it than downtown Tacoma.
Look up the sales tax numbers and you’ll see the Tacoma Mall at the top of the heap in Tacoma.
I’m not even sure how to do that. Is there a way to look at the sales taxes per square mile? I’m not sure sales tax revenue is a great proxy for activity density anyway. Used car lots are responsible for a lot of sales taxes, but relatively few people are coming and going every day.
I do know how to look at employment, as well as population (residential) density. From a population density standpoint, there is just a little bit more density around downtown then there is by the mall. The peaks are quite similar (around 10 to 15,000 people per square mile). It is just that there are more places around downtown that are at that level, and the areas that aren’t (the valleys if you will) are much lower surrounding the mall area. https://mtgis-portal.geo.census.gov/arcgis/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=2566121a73de463995ed2b2fd7ff6eb7.
If you look at employment data, it isn’t even close. It is like looking at Mount Rainier versus Mud Mountain. Sure, the mall does have significant employment, but it is nowhere near what exists at Downtown Tacoma. https://onthemap.ces.census.gov/. Note: It isn’t easy to use that website. Here is a quick tutorial:. Search for “Tacoma”. Select the city, then select “Perform Analysis”. Make sure you are looking at “Work” (where workers work) and “All Jobs”.
Then there is existing transit ridership. It is a bit challenging to make a detailed assessment, since I don’t have access to stop data from Pierce Transit. But I do have route data. There are quite a few routes that serve the mall, as well as plenty that serve downtown, and a few that serve both. The routes that only serve the mall (52, 53, 54, 55) have a combined ridership of about 3,000 a day. The 1 (which goes downtown, but not the mall) has about 5,000 a day. The 2 (another downtown-only bus) carries 2,500. Overall, it isn’t even close — way more people take the buses that go downtown. That could be a coincidence — I doubt it.
I could go on, but I really shouldn’t have to. You are espousing a truly radical view: that an ordinary (or even extraordinary) mall is a bigger attraction than a relatively healthy downtown in the same city. To be clear, this happens — but to dying cities. It would not surprise me in the least if Downtown Detroit is not as vital as some mall in the surrounding suburbs. But a city like Tacoma? That is absurd. This has nothing to do with personal preference. It has everything to do with land use. Downtown Tacoma literally has skyscrapers! Height doesn’t equal density, but most malls are not dense, in any respect. A commenter named “d.p.” used to talk about Ballard being dense “in three dimensions”. What he meant was that unlike say, Phinney Ridge, the density extends outward (is not along a line). Nor is it like the apartments at Ash Way, which are fairly tall, but surrounded by lots of empty space (parking lots). Ballard is dense in all three dimensions.
Looking at the Tacoma Mall, you see the opposite: https://maps.app.goo.gl/6ubupCd7SDd5EGhE7. You can see the parking and big streets lots that surround the mall. This is essentially dead space. Nor is it particularly tall. From what I can tell, most of the buildings are only one story, with some maybe two or three (at best).
None of these things are bad. I have fond memories of taking my grand kids to the Northgate mall on rainy day, so they could hang out at a tiny little park inside. But it isn’t dense. Not in any respect. Not in workers per acre, people who live there per acre, or even people who visit there per acre. There is simply too much nothingness (parking lots) to make up for what little density is there.
It is just silly to suggest that the mall is somehow better suited for mass transit than the main downtown area in the city. At best it is a bad choice (i. e. someone is really bad at math, and doesn’t understand density). At worst it is bad planning (someone who doesn’t understand that a healthy mall is no substitute for a healthy downtown — if Downtown Tacoma dies, so will the rest of the city). Fortunately, these poor transit decisions won’t really matter. It is highly unlikely that Link will ever reach the mall (if it even reaches the Tacoma Dome). Of course it would be nice if Link went downtown, but not that many people will ride Link south of Federal Way, anyway. Other factors — like development within the city, the fate of MultiCare (and other medical companies) — will matter more.
How do people who commute into Seattle on Sounder get to central downtown?
Which central downtown?
How do people who commute into Seattle on Sounder get to central downtown?
Great question. I suppose it depends on how you define “Central Downtown”. To many, you are already there. There are a lot of businesses within a five minute walk, including Smith Tower.
If you are trying to get up to Columbia Center, it is about a twelve minute walk. I could see someone walking that, but I could also see someone hopping on a bus, too. Link isn’t out of the question, either. It kind of depends on where exactly you are headed.
It would be interesting to see a study on how people use Sounder (e. g. how they get to a station, and how they get from a station to their destination).
Sounder’s Seattle terminal is King Street Station, at the edge of downtown. So, how do Sounder riders get from there to, say, 4 & Union? And, whatever the answer is, is that a problem? No one in the comments has ever said it’s a problem that Sound riders have to transfer to Link or a bus to reach central downtown. So why would it be a problem for Link riders to have to transfer to the T Line to reach central downtown Tacoma?
The wait time for any bus down 3rd Ave. at 8:00 on a weekday morning is about 1 minute. The wait time for a Tacoma Link train is about 5-10 minutes. That’s a huge difference.
Also, Sounder is an express service; some additional connection overhead at the end is tolerable because you’re already getting to King St. Station pretty fast. But, in the case of Link to Tacoma, you’ve already sat on the train for 75 minutes just to get to Tacoma Dome and you’re being asking to wait for another train on top of that, when the bus that already exists (the 594) offers a one seat ride in around 40 minutes. It’s too much.
Sam, you’re asking the wrong question.
A big problem with Sounder for South Sounder commuters *is* that it terminates at King Street and not in Midtown or Westlake (or beyond, like the RER). Many world cities have undertaken multi-billion dollar rail projects to remove such constraints in their heavy rail passenger systems.
The question for you and Tacoma is: why would you build a brand new metro railway with the same structural deficiencies as a 1906 railway facility?
Or: would Capitol Hill be well served *only* with the streetcar stops, or should it have a Link Station?
Why build a city center Link station at all if we can just connect it by BRT or streetcar, eliminating core station infrastructure and their high expense in Bellevue, Seattle, Redmond, etc?
Rail to Downtown Tacoma is just good planning practice.
FW Link has the Highline Station, which should be excellent. So the debate is if Highline would have been a good southern terminus, and I think I’d argue no, but it’s a good debate. Also, both FW and SFW stations are pulled away from the freeway, so those stations are better than freeway/BRT stations with the opportunity for good TOD, so in that was FWLE is clearly better than just running express buses on the freeway.
FW Link also supports for OMF-S, which is in a good location. Even if WSBLE is never built, getting OMF-S built will be very good for the regional network and support better frequency Link. Even if TDLE also gets cancelled, I would want Link to be extended to SFW and OMF-S.
How long have I predicted that West Seattle residents would turn against WSLE when it got closer to design approval? WS is suburbia. They don’t really care about transit. Even when the bridge was CLOSED they didn’t ride the bus which had priority on the lower bridge, and either stayed at home or drove around. The key to WS is it is NOT connected. That is the key to all suburbia or exburbia.
Sure the WS opponents will seize on the economics, but that is not driving the opposition. After all, there was no opposition when Dow by fiat just extended the WS water taxi despite terrible economics. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/west-seattle-water-taxi-to-keep-all-day-weekend-service-through-winter/
The reality is most people think a subway is something that is built underground with little disruption, and like mole people suddenly the folks building the tunnel bore up to the surface and place a stairway on a small part of the sidewalk to an underground station (like in London). They don’t really care about the transit, but if it is being offered, is free, and won’t disturb anything, what the hell.
Then ST tells them they will need to build massive stations as homage to ST and destroy thousands of homes and businesses and it will take 10 years, and if on the surface you will have a train rumbling by your neighborhood.
CID, DSA, Amazon, West Seattle, and next Ballard. Folks like Nathan will be apoplectic when Ballard stakeholders want the station on 14th so it doesn’t disrupt anything, even though neither WS nor Ballard Link are affordable, and Harrell has made it clear DSTT2 gets funding priority.
I live in a subarea in which what was supposed to be transformational Link is now delayed 5-7 years and no one cares, mostly because they ran the route through areas and greenbelts and in the middle of I-90 and along 405 no one cares about. Now that the state wants us to upzone around the stations we wish we didn’t have it.
You’d be believable if you weren’t so wrong all the time.
The preferred alternative for Ballard is 15th. The entire community wants it on 15th (actually demanded it be further west, but those alternatives had already been scrapped), with the exception of the overpowered Freight Advisory Board.
The only way it ends up on 14th is cost cutting, as always – not community preference. It would be aerial if the aerial alternative wasn’t estimated to cost just as much as (or more than) tunneling, due to the Coast Guard’s onerous height requirements for the Ship Canal crossing.
I think the two are not quite so incompatible as it might seem at first. DT has a pretty decent read on the more vocal local business interests (what is being referred to as “stakeholders”) and it is not unlikely that requests to accommodate their needs will end up costing enough that, to cut costs, 14th will be used, as you noted.
The main disconnect is in the definition of “stakeholders”, but unfortunately having riders be treated as stakeholders is an aspirational thing when it comes to ST, not a given.
ST lumps riders and transit advocates into one “stakeholder”. So a single city government or large employer has the same weight as all of us combined. That’s what’s leading to Link alignments being distorted by non-transit considerations, to the detriment of riders and transit-network mobility.
The group that originally argued for 14th was the Port, so that it wouldn’t veer onto Port property or Fisherman’s Wharf. Since the Port is a government entity and talks about jobs, ST rushed to do what it wished, even though 14th had never been suggested before the vote. Since then a few new apartment buildings on 15th have grumbled about being displaced. I haven’t heard any other support for 14th among other Ballard residents or businesses. In fact there’s a lot of opposition to it, because the bulk of Ballard pedestrians and destinations are between 17th and 24th.
“In fact there’s a lot of opposition to it, because the bulk of Ballard pedestrians and destinations are between 17th and 24th.” Not true. I consider myself to be a Ballard expert. The only difference between 15th and Old Ballard is one area is more national corporate chain store, and the other area is trendy restaurants, craft breweries, and indie shops. Both are equally popular destinations. And, more growth is occurring along the 15th corridor.
“The key to WS is it is NOT connected.”
This is exactly why West Seattle needs WSLE. Bus ridership didn’t go up during the bridge closure because almost all of West Seattle’s buses run downtown and nobody was going downtown in the pandemic, and if you’re going to transfer buses at that point you may as well drive around the detour.
Just because a few dozen car drivers are opposed to WSLE does not mean that West Seattle is opposed to WSLE. You can find 20 people opposed to anything — it turns out there are people in NYC opposed to having garbage cans.
Yes, the interim transfer in SODO sucks and the current extension is largely redundant and the cost is astronomical. And Ballard should be done first. But if we are going to build a train to West Seattle, the preferred alternative is pretty good relative to what has been drawn up elsewhere. At least it actually goes to the commercial center of West Seattle, unlike what is being planned for Ballard.
But WSLE will — wait for it — go downtown! Yes, it will continue to Capitol Hill and the U-District, but really, how many folks who live in West Seattle are headed to either of those places? Some, yes, especially the U-District. But not enough to spend $4 billion on an up-and-down-and-up again roller coaster ride of a train line.
If it were flat, with no navigable waterway bisecting the line and it could be done on the surface for a billion, yeah, sure, it would make sense as a turning stub for trains from Everett. But none of those things is true, and the cost per additional rider will be stratospheric.
The reactionaries in “Rethink the Link” may be anti-social Trumpers, but even anti-social Trumpers get it right occasionally. This is one of them.
> “Rethink the Link“: A West Seattle movement advocates the “No Build” EIS alternative for West Seattle Link. This one seems to be not just nimbys but people concerned about effective transit.
I think Sound Transit will probably only consider it if there’s some other transit alternative to fund. I guess perhaps asking for a ‘real brt’ and just still building a small sodo stub line for turnbacks might be more amenable.
> The only way it ends up on 14th is cost cutting, as always – not community preference.
Honestly I think 14th avenue is the most likely candidate. Sound Transit for the ballard extension does not have the money for a tunnel nor can it build a “modest” high bridge due the coast guard. That leaves one other option — the 70 foot drawbridge as was originally planned. While many here decry the drawbridge option, it is much cheaper to build and the drawbacks of rarely opening the bridge isn’t the end of the world.
A 70′ drawbridge to 15th was the representative alignment in the ballot measure. It doesn’t have to go to 14th.
The bridge on 15th alternative have pushback from the Port/Fishermen wharf as you noted.
Anyways, Sound Transit basically didn’t investigate going back to the drawbridge option in the further studies at all. Most likely whenever 10 years later when they actually try building the ballard link tunnel and have insufficient funds, they’ll scale it back to the drawbridge option similar to what Austin light rail recently did / Sound Transit itself did.
Yes, I’m wondering if cost pressure will convince ST to do other things it has refused to consider so farm like cancelling DSTT2, upgrading DSTT1 for three lines (West Seattle), or converting Ballard to a Ballard-Westlake shuttle or an automated Ballard-West Seattle line. Time will tell. It’s unpredictable now.
“converting Ballard to a Ballard-Westlake shuttle or an automated Ballard-West Seattle line. ” – I think that’s more-or-less what some of the No Builds are advocating for. Use the EIS to halt the current approach and go back to the voters with a new project.
“I think that’s more-or-less what some of the No Builds are advocating for. ”
They’ll have to be articulate and loud on that then. “No Build” on its face means just the incremental improvements in RapidRide, Metro Connects, ST Express, etc, that would otherwise occur anyway. An automated line would require a new EIS because it would be so different from the current plan, and it would not be “No Build”.
The ST3 measure certainly allows the Board to drop portions just like they dropped First Hill in Sound Move, why do you think an automated Ballard stub line would require a new vote?
Early in the run-up to ST3, ST mulled about possibly considering automation for Ballard and other new lines without level crossings. It never pursued it, but it did muse about it. I don’t think the ST3 vote would preclude an automated line. What it mandated was connecting certain growth centers. In any case, ST should at least explore the possibility and have the lawyers look at it.
I wonder if the current boardmembers even remember that they and their predecessors mulled about a driverless Ballard line for a few seconds.
I agree. The existing Ballard Bridge has forty-four foot clearance at mean water, which doesn’t vary much east of the Locks. Forty-four is twenty-six less than seventy. That’s a lot of mast. The CG already allows the 15th Avenue Bridge to remain closed through the rush hour, so there’s no reason to think that same time period would be operated any other way for the new bridge. Commuters will never be affected, and riders at other times will only be affected by pretty darn tall sail boats.
There is nothing wrong with smart value engineering. Putting the thing on the ground through Interbay and just making a shallow tunnel go from Elliott and Harrison to Third and Cedar with a single station west of Seattle Center and a couple of stops at-grade south of there through Belltown is not the end of the world. It might add three or four minutes to the travel time from Third and Stewart to Market Street, but it would save billions.
Others would like a SkyTrain size automated Light Metro, and that would be fine, but cost a couple of billion to five or six billion more depending how it gets from Westlake Center to Elliott.
The truth is that there will be very few Ballard riders passing through downtown, so the question of “where does the train go after downtown” ought to be moot.
ST estimates a 70′ drawbridge would open only a few times a year, much less than the existing lower drawbridges. It’s out of consideration now because so many people don’t want any drawbridge at all no matter how rarely it opens, or they don’t believe it would open so rarely.
Then there was the Coast Guard’s new requirement. But I think that was just that a fixed bridge would have to be a minimum of 200′ high, not 130′ as was previously expected. But I don’t think it prohibited a drawbridge.
> ST estimates a 70′ drawbridge would open only a few times a year, much less than the existing lower drawbridges. It’s out of consideration now because so many people don’t want any drawbridge at all no matter how rarely it opens, or they don’t believe it would open so rarely.
Is it really out of consideration? It was Sound Transit’s original choice and it is much more feasible. It is affordable, buildable, and the coast guard will approve it (their letter said a drawbridge was completely acceptable)
Considering north/south of cid appeared out of nowhere, I am highly expecting the drawbridge alternative to return. Unless if somehow Sound Transit finds a random half a billion dollars laying around for the ballard tunnel.
“Is it really out of consideration?”
It’s out of consideration the way CID 5th & Jackson is not currently being considered. But ST could reinstate it anytime.
I thought that the property acquisition costs for a bridge came in so much higher that a tunnel option is just as expensive.
Martin, I think that’s the high bridge with the big ticket property acquisition costs, mostly on the south side of the waterway. An opening bridge could be confined to the 14th Avenue ROW both north and south of the ship canal. But of course, ST is allergic to building stations in roadway rights of way, even when the roadway right of way is mostly a parking strip!
What fools.
By the way, there’s nothing about crossing at 14th that means the Market Street station has to be at 14th. In fact, I believe it is possible to get down from 70 feet at the north side of the channel to street level just north of Leary way, then turn west at 50th and either run at grade into Russell or descend into a cut and cover tunnel that would also make the diagonal turn into Russell. Fiftieth is mostly parking lots in the block between 14th and 15th NW. There would be a simple elevated station just south of 14th and Leary Way and a “terminal” station under or on Russell just south of Market, right in the heart of Ballard, one block from the hospital and a block and a half from Old Ballard.
It could also be all elevated, but that would be the greatest impact on the community.
I grant that this means no extension to the north, at least along 15th NW, but it’s not entirely out of the question to go north on 14th and wiggle over somewhere around the high school if the turn at 14th and 50th is built properly.
Martin, advocacy against a drawbridge (which would delay the entire line whenever it opened) resulted in the bridge being dropped early in studies of potential alternatives. ST has not published a cost estimate for new bascule bridge.
In addition to the Coast Guard’s requirement for a 200’+ clearance, the DEIS also identified several potentially-very-expensive issues around permitting and impacts to putting pylons in the Ship Canal. Nothing has been built over the Ship Canal or Salmon Bay since the 30’s, so there’s no precedent for navigating the specific mix of water access rights and other “environmental” impacts associated with building a bridge to Ballard. Seems like something that should have been considered in the original cost estimates for ST3, but that dead horse has long been beaten.
They could always redefine Harbor Island as being in West Seattle and end the line there. This has the advantage of spending as much money as budget allows on a line that inconveniences the largest possible number of transit riders.
To do that, they would need to not only end the new line at Harbor Island, but also turn it into the new hub station, thus also terminating there the Lynnwood-Seattle section, the Federal Way-Seattle section, and the stub East Link section on the Seattle side.
It would also need a lot of mezzanines and escalators between each line.
If TriMet shoehorn practices were followed, they could cram a wye into the tiny space just above Stadium station and make East Link – Harbor Island trains a reality, without any pesky transfers in SoDo.
Or, hear me out: make East Link trains reverse on the center stub line inside International District station, so everyone would be subjected to a 5 minute delay in a station they can’t exit.
Harbor Island is all industrial container shipping. It’s probably owned by the Port, so you’d have the same problem as you had in Interbay: the Port doesn’t want it on its property.
If Link terminates at Harbor Island, I predict at least one person will suggest truncating the West Seattle buses there. Not me. There’s no reason to truncate buses in the middle of nowhere just two miles short of a major activity center.
Yeah, okay, reversing the trains there also works. It has the advantage of being kind of like what is done at… SFO, I think, on the BART? So there’s even precedent they can point at!
Mike, I hope you do realize that we’re both being silly here.
If West Seattle Link gets canceled, better BRT won’t happen, West Seattle residents will argue that since West Seattle won’t ever have link they should never build housing there and instead build it every other corner of Seattle that will have it. West Seattle will remain cut off from the rest of the city and transit system. I like busses, S Kirkland to Issaquah is the dumbest thing ever and should be busses or nothing, because both are better than it. But canceling West Seattle Link and bowing down to locals is ridiculously shortsighted. Also it may be when we’re all dead but eventually the stub can be extended further south and serve more neighborhoods.
> If West Seattle Link gets canceled, better BRT won’t happen,
The problem isn’t that better BRT won’t happen — the problem is that it is worse than the existing RapidRides. To get from West Seattle to Ballard, Fremont or South Seattle would now take an extra transfer. Rather than just going from the RapidRide C/H to RapidRide D/E now you’d have to get on transfer onto the West Seattle link and get off again downtown to transfer to the bus. Or going to the airport same problem you’d get on the bus, transfer at alaskan junction and then half to transfer again to go southbound on the link. The only trip that is actually faster is if one is traveling to Northgate and mainly only if one is already in Alaskan junction.
We’re arguing for multi-line BRT, which would replicate the C, H, 21, 55, and maybe 50 or 56 corridors in some form. ST studied only single-line BRT for West Seattle Link, but it studied both for Stride 2 (North), so it’s aware of what multi-line BRT is.
“If West Seattle Link gets canceled, better BRT won’t happen, West Seattle residents will argue that since West Seattle won’t ever have link they should never build housing there and instead build it every other corner of Seattle that will have it. West Seattle will remain cut off from the rest of the city and transit system. I like busses, S Kirkland to Issaquah is the dumbest thing ever and should be busses or nothing, because both are better than it. But canceling West Seattle Link and bowing down to locals is ridiculously shortsighted. Also it may be when we’re all dead but eventually the stub can be extended further south and serve more neighborhoods.”
“I’m looking forward to the West Seattle Junction having a Link Station. I believe it would be a game changer for the neighborhood. It would accelerate the transformation to a younger and more diverse part of the city. That could finally be the catalyst to getting rid of those archaic parking lots and getting legit TOD. There has been much development in the last 15 years but is still not living up to its potential. Light rail is the missing part of the puzzle.”
These two comments IMO highlight a misunderstanding of West Seattle, and Issaquah. Let’s look at Issaquah Link vs. WS Link.
West Seattle’s current population is around 80,000. It is almost an Island, and any increase in population would come from increased density not expansion, except WS is not very keen on increased density, although urbanists on this blog may be. According to Martin’s research, even ST (pre-pandemic) estimated WS Link will switch only 600 car drivers to transit. WS Link really runs only one place, downtown, which is declining with WFH and crime. Really, WS is more like Mercer Island than Seattle’s urban neighborhoods. It values low density, likes the access but also isolation from a fantastic bridge, and has a fairly non-transit demographic. Why does anyone on this blog think this will change, over the wishes of the folks who actually live in WS. You don’t see Dow telling his neighbors we are going to upzone WS.
Issaquah serves an area including Sammamish, North Bend, Snoqualmie and Issaquah, which has a population of around 150,000 with huge park and ride lots and better access by feeder buses than WS, which can easily grow without increased density because the area is so huge and mostly undeveloped, and will grow in population more than WS. Although Issaquah Link is much longer than WS Link the price is not much different because Issaquah Link runs in mostly ROW’s and is above ground and does not cross water, and arguably goes to a city and area with more vibrancy than downtown Seattle, especially if Amazon begins to move SLU workers to Bellevue and Microsoft returns to in office work.
Plus the E KC subarea can afford Issaquah Link, and N KC cannot afford WSBLE. Arguing for a stub until most of us are dead isn’t going to be a catalyst for densifying or urbanizing WS; just the opposite since residents will see WSL as a joke, and my guess is transit will be totally different from today by the time WS connects to anything other than a stub.
So why are both Link projects bad transit?
Because first you have a demographic that is not interested in upzoning and becoming “urban”, both have a sizable demographic who can WFH, both have excellent freeway access, both have strong car ownership levels, both have residents who go to many different areas their Link lines won’t serve even with several transfers, and finally both will have extremely high dollar per rider mile averages.
Adding “Seattle” to West Seattle does not make it urban. The biggest problem ST has made is thinking it can change places Link will run to in order to manufacture the ridership to validate the cost. If “Seattle” were added to “Issaquah”, or just “Bellevue” it would not suddenly make Issaquah urban or any different than it is, and plans to be.
“West Seattle won’t ever have link they should never build housing there and instead build it every other corner of Seattle that will have it”.
That is exactly what WS residents will say. They are saying it now, and I predicted this long ago. Every neighborhood objects to changing the character of their neighborhood for Link, or for renters. No one signed up for increased density that will change the character of their neighborhood for a stupid Link line or station, especially in suburban areas like Issaquah and WS. WS LIKES what WS is. Folks just have to learn to accept that. Same with Issaquah. No one moved to either for the transit.
Many of us will be dead when WSBLE is completed, which will take ST 4 and 5. If someone wants to live in TOD within walking distance of Link today in an urban area Issaquah and WS are not very good choices.
Link doesn’t change anything. Even a neighborhood like Capitol Hill, or downtown Seattle, were not changed by Link (although Fesler thinks reorienting urban bus routes to feed Link degrades urban bus service). Look at downtown Seattle: it has the most Link service and stations and yet other forces have changed Seattle, which only makes it much harder to convince places like West Seattle or Issaquah to adopt housing or other policies that reflect Seattle or urban Seattle.
But in the end WSBLE is not even remotely affordable. My guess is Harrell and Constantine see DSTT2 as the primary part of WSBLE and will have to cut at the ends. I have always said that will be pretty easy in WS because now (like Issaquah) they are finally paying attention to WS Link they are saying, no thanks. Actually, if capacity were the issue ST claims, downtown Seattle and SLU recover, and DSTT2 had its original stations at CID, midtown, and SLU I would agree DSTT2 should be funded first. It at least is urban rail.
“WS is not very keen on increased density”
West Seattle doesn’t make the decision; the city government does.
“ Link doesn’t change anything. Even a neighborhood like Capitol Hill … (was) not changed by Link …”
Statements like these seem pretty darned clueless. It reads like the poster hasn’t been walking around Capitol Hill in years. Capitol Hill is very different than it was in 2010 when Link construction began. Much of the change is within walking distance of the Link station there. It’s a common topic among longtime resudencts to discuss how different things are today. I’ve never even chatted with anyone on Capitol Hill that says it is anything like it was 13 years ago.
It used to be a more gay-friendly artsy relaxed village kind of place. Nowadays it’s overrun with young office workers (especially from Amazon) and UW students who view it as a nightlife playground for everyone (not just gay folk). There is block after block of new apartment buildings where houses once stood.
It just goes to prove that even with typing with authority, no one knows everything about everywhere.
Al, you assume the changes to Capitol Hill are due to Link, and would not have occurred without Link. I disagree. Transit serves; it does not create.
Just look at the demographic changes you note: “It used to be a more gay-friendly artsy relaxed village kind of place. Nowadays it’s overrun with young office workers (especially from Amazon) and UW students who view it as a nightlife playground for everyone (not just gay folk).” Do you think that changing demographic is because of Link? Did Link drive out the gay population? Or Amazon?
Probably one of the most common demographic changes is a distressed community of mostly Black or minorities is discovered by the gay community and artists, it becomes hip (and white), and then the yuppies move in driving up housing costs which gentrifies the retail which then attracts the (white) UW crowd and monied crowd forcing out the artists and gay community.
I would agree that Link serves Capitol Hill probably better than any other non-downtown station except may U. Dist., mostly because road access to Link is difficult and the next two stops are UW, but it is one station in a large community. My son when he was at UW was part of the changing demographic you note, and they all Uber.
Look at the changes in Bellevue, or Issaquah, or Kirkland, or Ballard, Bothell, Totem Lake, or around U Village. None of those areas have Link. Those changes — including those you mention on Capitol Hill — are due to population growth and AMI growth, mostly from the tech industry and transplants. It wasn’t like Capitol Hill had no transit before Link. The Link station on Capitol Hill opened in 2016; the changes you mention had started well before then.
“ Link doesn’t change anything. Even a neighborhood like Capitol Hill … (was) not changed by Link …”
“Statements like these seem pretty darned clueless.”
Agreed. I read that part of DT’s comment above and immediately said to myself, “what planet is this guy living on?”. Geesh.
Cap Hill was better before Link. I could used to go for drinks well past midnight there and feel safe walking. There’s way more decay today in the neighborhood than before. You’d have to be blind to not see it.
““ Link doesn’t change anything. Even a neighborhood like Capitol Hill … (was) not changed by Link …”
“Statements like these seem pretty darned clueless.”
“Agreed. I read that part of DT’s comment above and immediately said to myself, “what planet is this guy living on?”. Geesh.”
So is that why Link has so fundamentally changed the CID in the same way it supposedly changed Capitol Hill (despite the upzoning)? Look at all the areas in the region that have seen the same kind of changes Capitol Hill has seen — increased population, density, construction, higher AMI, wealthier demographic, more upscale retail — that don’t have a Link station and explain why those changes occurred without Link.
Al and Tisgwm make the same mistake ST makes: Link somehow will change a community and its desires and character, usually more urban because that is what they favor.
I have always agreed with one of Ross’s first principles: if transit spending is limited, begin by running it to where the folks are, not where you hope they will be. The folks were already on Capitol Hill in 2016, and the demographic changes had begun way before 2016 when the Link station opened. If anything, the new demographic Al describes is less transit oriented, and more Uber oriented. Like my son, a UW student.
I know I complain that this blog has too few women posters, but it doesn’t have a lot of young folks either and I think we don’t understand that demographic very well, although I have two of them.
“Cap Hill was better before Link. I could used to go for drinks well past midnight there and feel safe walking. There’s way more decay today in the neighborhood than before. You’d have to be blind to not see it.”
According to Al and Tisgwm’s understanding of cause and effect that increased decay and crime is due to the Link station, although I don’t think it is.
“It just goes to prove that even with typing with authority, no one knows everything about everywhere.”
And nobody can type with self-defined authority as well as Sam.
“Cap Hill was better before Link. I could used to go for drinks well past midnight there and feel safe walking. There’s way more decay today in the neighborhood than before.”
It wasn’t Link that increased the crime rate. It was the pandemic and people losing their housing and stability, and new drugs more potent and addictive and cheap than anything before, and the emerging consequences of society not addressing is social issues and rising inequality for so many years, and the complicated attitudes toward the police. None of that was caused by Link or buses.
“If West Seattle Link gets canceled, better BRT won’t happen, West Seattle residents will argue that since West Seattle won’t ever have link they should never build housing there”
That’s just one faction. The housing and jobs have been coming for ten years now and won’t be stopped. Seattle won’t retract the urban village status from the Junction (substantially built out already) and Westwood Village (not built out yet). The overton window keeps moving, and “no growth” in an entire district with existing villages can’t get traction anymore. They’re fighting just to keep their single-family areas now, and those have already been relaxed with ADUs and 4-plexes. The next big battle will be expanding the villages’ area (possible but not certain), and re-allowing lowrise (e.g., courtyard apartments and some retail) in shoulder single-family areas (less likely). Seattle is in the middle of updating its Comprehensive Plan, so we’ll know next year which direction it will go.
There has been plenty of construction along Avalon/Junction. RapidRide-C provides a great transit connection, they didn’t wait for Link to arrive. Expansion of the urban villages and transit frequency will be more important than a rail connection which is more difficult to reach (multiple escalators, fewer stations in particular if the Avalon station gets eliminated), less frequent and will require painful transfers.
You are forgetting the cost per additional rider. As I’ve said elsewhere, if West Seattle could be reached by a two mile long, at-grade but reserved ROW line it would make a great place to turn Everett trains while adding a bit of urban infrastructure to that corner of the city. That might cost a billion including the trains, stations and trackwork.
But of course the line has to cross a navigable waterway on a high bridge then swoop back down to serve a small neighborhood and some bus intercepts. It then would climb back up a couple of hundred feet to a neighborhood which demands a pair of underground stations. It will cost $4 billion at least and only attract a few hundred additional riders per day, unless the Junction neighborhood is turned into Roosevelt.
There are better uses of transit funds for the Central Puget Sound region.
Kind of weird. Transfers required for people in North Seattle or Kirkland but West Seattle wants a one-seat ride?
And a fleet of buses stuck on the bridge and slogging through traffic in the south of downtown?
Focus on fixing CID and that transfer instead. Or maybe interlining West Link into the existing 1-line. Who says the central tunnel cannot achieve 2.5 minute headways?
The only reasonable place for a bus from West Seattle to go to Is downtown because you can’t really get anywhere else without passing through downtown first. This is not the case for the 255, where the U district is on the way to downtown.
The analogy here would be if west Seattle had a one seat express to the UW that bypassed downtown, which of course, it doesn’t and shouldn’t.
“Who says the central tunnel cannot achieve 2.5 minute headways?”
Sound Transit. Specifically it says the tunnel could support 1.5 minute headways, but that it would need capital improvements to maintain reliability beyond 3 minutes. We assumed that meant some signaling details, but this year ST brought up a new argument of platform crowding, so that may have been the issue all along.
“Reliability” means the trains keeping to their expected spacing more or less. If you have too many trains, or unusual station dwell times, or a Y junction that causes trains to merge to a shared track and there are too many trains, that can lead to train bunching where several get stuck together waiting for a bottleneck to clear. That would throw the trains off schedule.
Cologne does not have a single downtown tunnel but a single central bridge over the Rhine. They just announced that they will increase frequency to 24 S-Bahn trains an hour (2.5 min headway) over that bridge with improved control systems. Why can’t Sound Transit do the same?
Because it wanted a second tunnel. The ST3 candidate project list had a project for DSTT2 and a project to upgrade DSTT1 to 1.5 minute frequency. ST selected the first and deselected the second.
I’m looking forward to the West Seattle Junction having a Link Station. I believe it would be a game changer for the neighborhood. It would accelerate the transformation to a younger and more diverse part of the city. That could finally be the catalyst to getting rid of those archaic parking lots and getting legit TOD. There has been much development in the last 15 years but is still not living up to its potential. Light rail is the missing part of the puzzle.
I see all these Link stations under construction alongside the freeway in the suburbs. West Seattle should have come first IMO. It’s a close to downtown established urban neighborhood that has a long history with streetcars. Link is a modern way to connect WS back to its history.
If WSLE is canceled, is the idea that the funds are returned to the taxpayers?
There’s no need for DSTT2 if West Seattle is scrapped, so the Ballard spur can be built with existing ST3 funds.
Or is the plan to rescope the project entirely, which would put delivery dates on anything well into the 2040s? Still build DSTT2, but send the southern terminus somewhere other than West Seattle? Which would require an extra decade of planning to figure out where that should go. And maybe another vote, since the voters approved those funds going to West Seattle, not somewhere else?
I don’t think there is a ‘what’s next’ plan, though most people involved probably have opinions. “No build” is often popular because it is an empty vessel into which everyone can imagine their preferred projects.
WSBLE could be deferred by the board, either for financial reasons or because the EIS process recommends a no build. The North King subarea would continue accrue funds through the existing ST3 taxes, but that money cannot be repurposed into new projects until there is another vote.
Build the Ballard spur and rescope the rest. SDOT just published the draft Seattle Transportation Plan (STP) which shows a 2nd tunnel east of downtown to Mt Baker station. The Ballard line could be extended along Boren or 12th and meet the Rainier line at Mt. Baker as was discussed on STB earlier.
Instead of a West Seattle line, the current 1 line could branch at SODO for a Duwamish bypass connecting to the existing line at the Tukwila station and adding capacity/frequency to the Federal Way line kind of like STP suggested.
But West Seattle is in the STP as well. So let me understand this correctly — we want to scrap something that’s in everyone’s long-term plan and is already at 30% design with a completed FEIS and is fully funded. Then go back to the voters after that massive failure and ask them to fund entirely different projects within the city of Seattle with delivery dates that would be in the mid-2040s at the earliest? One of which is simply an express bypass? And somehow promise that the same political process will yield different results?
Or, we can accept WSLE for what it is and have it completed in less than 10 years.
The biggest thing we need to do is, if DSTT2 is built, push to improve the downtown transfers. Or push for an alternative to DSTT2 that avoids the ultra-bad transfers. Everything else — whether West Seattle is built or Ballard is built — is secondary.
If you have a multi-line network with bad train-to-train transfers in the middle, then half the passengers can’t get to half the destinations in a reasonable way, and it becomes one of the worst networks in the world. When people were glad for Link so they wouldn’t have to take the 48 and 9, but are now looking at taking the 48 and 9 again if Link gets crippled as planned, then something is seriously wrong.
WSLE does not have a FEIS yet, that’s planned for next year. Since voters approved this project, Sound Transit has dropped their ridership estimates from 37,000 daily riders to 27,000 daily riders by 2040 and probably even less due to the changes caused by the pandemic. Alignment and impact has become far more complex than anticipated and transit time estimates show that most riders will travel longer than currently. In the meantime, cost estimates have increased from $1.7b to 3-4b and construction related carbon emission have been estimated at 614,000 tons.
So just because we have started the design, we should build the line? A Sound Transit planner told me years ago that’s when you want to evaluate feasibility and make a decision – before you spend the big construction budget!
“But West Seattle is in the STP as well. So let me understand this correctly — we want to scrap something that’s in everyone’s long-term plan and is already at 30% design with a completed FEIS and is fully funded”.
What makes you think WSBLE is fully funded? Otherwise why is ST building a stub to nowhere?
The price tag for WSBLE has nearly tripled since 2016 and is still low. If just the WS Link stub is built then yes the subarea does have the funding for that, but then not DSTT2 and Ballard Link as well. The Board claimed extending ST taxes five years from 2041 to 2046 would help cover a massive deficit, but not if the Board concurrently extends project commencement and completion.
Whether it is good transit, or the dollar per rider mile makes any sense (ST could buy three $60,000 Tesla’s over 30 years for each seat/rider on WSL alone) is debatable, but ST has to be certain it can complete whatever it begins with WSBLE because there won’t be a ST 4, the Board can’t raise ST tax rates, and Seattle does not have any money to contribute, certainly not billions.
I know Dow wants the WS Link stub to go first, and for a damn good reason: there isn’t the money for the rest of WSBLE although he and Harrell think the city and county are going to make hundreds of millions of dollars from property development from DSTT 2 and CID N. What if the WS stub is it, and that is where WS Link ends forever?
It isn’t fully funded. That is the whole point.
“I know Dow wants the WS Link stub to go first, and for a damn good reason: there isn’t the money for the rest of WSBLE although he and Harrell think the city and county are going to make hundreds of millions of dollars from property development from DSTT 2 and CID N. What if the WS stub is it, and that is where WS Link ends forever?”
If there’s no money for more than the West Seattle-SODO stub, then there will be no DSTT2 and no ST3 dollars going to the CID N site. Instead, West Seattlites will transfer at SODO, or more likely continue riding the C/H/21/55/56 which will still go downtown. And everyone will have to hope the potential overcrowding that some predict in DSTT1 doesn’t happen.
“If there’s no money for more than the West Seattle-SODO stub, then there will be no DSTT2 and no ST3 dollars going to the CID N site”
I am predicting DSTT2 goes first. I think Dow is going to run into resistance in WS over the construction and disruption from WS Link, and both are desperate to revitalize the economic engine of downtown Seattle. If I thought DSTT2 could do that I would start with DSTT2 too. Always begin with the urban rail. West Seattle and Ballard are remote residential neighborhoods. It never made sense to spend the money to run Link to either through miles of nothingness but Interbay and industrial Seattle.
Canceling WSLE would require adjusting the remaining plans. If it’s coupled with a Ballard-Westlake shuttle line (which would cancel DSTT2, but some argue would overcrowd DSTT2), that would drastically reduce costs. If Ballard is replaced with an automated line to; e.g., Stadium, that would somewhat reduce costs, since an automated line would have no driver expenses and could be built with smaller cars and stations and tunnel yet have high frequency (5 minutes, or even 2, which would increase ridership and fare revenue).
That would not “return” money to taxpayers; it would just shorten the period of future taxes. The taxes will automatically be rolled back to operation/maintenance level (roughly a third of the total) when ST3 construction is finished and the bonds are substantially paid down. That’s if ST doesn’t pursue more capital projects beyond that (“ST4”), which would also require another vote to authorize them.
Note that ST is a single tax district, so the tax rate must be the same throughout it. So finishing ST’s capital projects finishing all of them in every subarea. If one subarea finishes early, its taxes would accumulate, and could be spent on other things later. ST can redefine the endpoint by canceling/downsizing/deferring projects out of ST3. If a subarea has extra money left over after its ST3 projects are done, it can spend it on something without a vote, but it can’t divert money from an unfinished ST3 project to a non-voter-approved project, or keep the full ST3 tax rate so high after the designated capital projects are finished and the bonds are substantially paid down.
“Note that ST is a single tax district, so the tax rate must be the same throughout it. So finishing ST’s capital projects finishing all of them in every subarea. If one subarea finishes early, its taxes would accumulate, and could be spent on other things later. ST can redefine the endpoint by canceling/downsizing/deferring projects out of ST3.”
The issue Mike is there are some subarea ST 3 projects I don’t think can ever be completed with the current tax RATES.
The problem is project costs are rising faster each year a project is delayed than extending the taxes from 2041-2046 (or more) will raise. The outside consultant recently noted each month of project delay costs ST $50 million. For this Ponzi scheme to work requires either ST 4, or the Board’s ability to raise tax rates. One is very unlikely, and one is not legal.
If ST didn’t extend project commencement and completion and then extended the taxes at the back end that could work, but instead the Board keeps extending project commencement/completion the same number for years as extending taxes. In that case ST goes backwards. I think the Board knows many of these ST 3 projects can never be afforded with current rates and ST revenue, so doesn’t want to start, while extended the commencement kicks the can down the road for a subsequent board.
So some subareas like E KC — especially if it cancels Issaquah Link — will continue to accumulate huge amounts of ST 2/3 tax revenue without really any place to spend it, especially post pandemic, while subareas like SnoCo and maybe Pierce — depending on Sounder upgrades — will never accumulate enough tax revenue because ST so underestimated project costs and overestimated subarea revenue.
It is the same for WSBLE. Before the ST 3 vote ST estimated it would cost $6 billion. Then $9 billion. Now $15.2 billion, and if built as currently designed (w/o a station at 4th S. but with DSST2) really more than $20 billion with the most recent two-year extension. The tax rates and current economic activity the tax rates apply to can’t afford that, and were based on WSBLE costing maybe $9 billion with contingency.
The tax rates were lowballed in the levies to pay for lowballed project cost estimates with lowballed cost contingencies in order to sell ST 3, while farebox recovery that goes toward O&M was overestimated. The Board can’t increase the tax rates, other than E KC the subareas are not seeing massive economic growth to increase ST tax revenue with the set rates, so Everett Link, WSBLE, and TDLE (depending on Sounder) can never be funded with current ST tax rates no matter how long they are extended.
ST 2 depended on ST 3, and ST 3 really depends on ST 4 and some optimistic federal funding. At least the Board so far has not started any of these ST 3 projects it knows it can’t complete, although the DEIS processes pretend they are affordable.
“The issue Mike is there are some subarea ST 3 projects I don’t think can ever be completed with the current tax RATES.”
That’s a separate issue from what we’ve been discussing. It would be addressed by this part:
“ST can redefine the endpoint by canceling/downsizing/deferring projects out of ST3.”
The same thing happened in ST2. The 2008 recession hit and gutted South King’s sales-tax capacity. In the run-up to ST2, Link was planned to Federal Way (320th). The ST2 budget couldn’t fit that, so it terminated at 272nd (one station short). After the vote the full recession impact hit, and it was truncated to Angle Lake (200th). Later in the recovery it was re-extended to Kent-Des Moines (240th); i.e., partway. Then in 2016 ST3 superceded it, and KDM was rolled into ST3. (KDM was going to open in 2023, but in ST3 it was postponed a year to open with Federal Way in 2024. This is all per the original ST3 schedule, of course.)
If ST3 hadn’t been proposed or approved, Link would have terminated at KDM and Lynnwood. All the ST Express planning scenarios had all routes truncated there or at U-District or Mercer Island or Northgate, etc — none would continue to downtown Seattle. ST never followed up on those early scenarios because ST3 superceded it, but that’s what we would likely have gotten without ST3.
“I think the Board knows many of these ST 3 projects can never be afforded with current rates and ST revenue, so doesn’t want to start, while extended the commencement kicks the can down the road for a subsequent board.”
Some boardmembers may think that, and the board may be in denial, so it’s kicking the can down the road and hoping it all works out, or that they’ll be retired before a future board has to make the decisions.
The biggest thing is, I think the board is avoiding discussing which Link/Sounder projects would be deferred or downsized. (“Defer” means moving them out of ST3, so they’d be unfunded unless a future ST4 revives them.) It did some rescheduling by putting P&Rs and the least-justified lines (Issaquah, Tacoma 19th Avenue) last. But if it starts talking about canceling or deferring projects, then it will hit some subareas more than others, and nobody wants to tell another subarea to cancel a project or take a disproportionate reduction. Remember, it’s the subarea boardmembers, and their county and city governments, who really want the projects, and don’t want to see theirs canceled while another subarea’s goes forward. Because then their voters will say, “Why didn’t you stand up for us? Why did you betray our vote? Why did you agree to a hit while another subarea(s) get their extensions?”
And beyond that issue, ST1 was nominally a 15-year program. ST2 was a 15-year program. ST3 is a 25-year program. (This is all per the original schedules, for comparison.) It expanded it from 15 to 25 years because Everett, Ballard, and Bothell wanted their projects included in this vote so they wouldn’t have the uncertainty of another vote in the 2030s that may or may not be proposed or passed. The cities wanted to go ahead with their growth-center plans, and improve their streets and bus networks, and wanted to know for sure whether Link/Stride would be there and when and where the stations would be, so they could plan around it, rather than just languishing without infrastructure and not knowing whether they’d get anything or when or what.
Now that all the ST3 projects are voter-approved and nominally funded, ST doesn’t want to throw any of that authorization away. It struggled hard to get all those projects approved and funded, and it doesn’t want to go through that again. It only wants another vote for TBD additional projects beyond that, later in the 2040s, maybe. Or maybe the subareas will say, “Everett Station and Tacoma Dome is the Spine we most wanted; we don’t want anything more.”
“The biggest thing is, I think the board is avoiding discussing which Link/Sounder projects would be deferred or downsized. (“Defer” means moving them out of ST3, so they’d be unfunded unless a future ST4 revives them.) It did some rescheduling by putting P&Rs and the least-justified lines (Issaquah, Tacoma 19th Avenue) last. But if it starts talking about canceling or deferring projects, then it will hit some subareas more than others, and nobody wants to tell another subarea to cancel a project or take a disproportionate reduction.”
These deferrals had less to do with affordability but more to do with exceeding the debt ceiling. As the cost of WSBLE soared so did the debt to build it, so other projects had to be delayed. E KC could probably afford Issaquah Link and the park and rides now (although neither are needed, and so this delay is actually good for a rethink). The E KC subarea’s revenue is $600 million/year, with only $600 million in debt with East/Redmond Link almost completed.
I agree though with Mike’s comment politically. To tell Pierce and SnoCo that after all these years of gold-plated Link in “Seattle” they now have to cut their meager Link would be a tough sell, even if they understood subarea equity or admitted their subareas are poor. Both subareas have big inferiority complexes with Seattle, in part because Seattle treats them that way.
The key with Issaquah Link is to tell the subarea nothing, just “delay” the projects forever. No one cares, but Issaquah wants to still feel they are important enough to qualify for Link although they will put it on the outskirts and won’t really ride it. Stride might actually work on the eastside, but it is delayed too, but is probably the best of the rest of ST on the eastside.
“And beyond that issue, ST1 was nominally a 15-year program.”
Minor correction: Sound Move was ten-year program.
As far as the West Seattle EIS being completed and the project fully funded, as others have pointed out both claims are inaccurate.
In the May 2023 Annual Program Review Report, the agency wrote this in regard to the long-term financial plan affordabilty gaps:
“As of spring 2023, the target and affordable schedules for the West Seattle and Ballard Link Extensions are the same, because the Downtown to Smith Cove portion of Ballard Link now has a forecasted service date of 2039, as opposed to 2037.
“Because of this updated project timeline, staff need to revisit the project-level affordability gaps to account for the Ballard Link Extension delay and evaluate the methodology. This is because the gaps calculated in the realignment resolution assumed all four projects would be accelerated to the target schedule at the same time. Staff will provide an update at the 2024 Board Annual Program Review.”
“Both subareas have big inferiority complexes with Seattle, in part because Seattle treats them that way.”
Where do you come up with this crap? The quality of your posted comments lately is leading me toward just skipping over them.
Your second paragraph is the crux of the matter. Without DSTT2, Ballard-Westlake is affordable, assuming land for a smallish MF for light work can be obtained and some sort of single-track, off hours only connection can be established between the stub and the existing system for LRV’s needing heavy work, Without the tunnel segment south of Westlake, the egregiously redundant second pair of tracks down the busway and the stub to West Seattle itself, Ballard to Westlake is eminently affordable, even in its most expensive version with an underground terminal station in the heart of Old Ballard. There might even be enough money for a one-station extension to Boren and Spring / Madison.
Call it “Midtown East” because it, too, would have to be pretty deep.
Well, I wonder how this latest tragedy impacted the celebratory events planned for this morning at MCO for Brightline’s inaugural run to Orlando. (A sibling of mine who sits on the council of a neighboring community was planning on attending one of the events so I’m anxious to hear back.) Up until recently, I hadn’t known that there have been so many fatalities on segments of the line since its been in operation.
https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/local/delray/2023/09/22/brightline-train-strikes-kills-pedestrian-in-delray-beach/70928703007/
Brightline in Florida happened by overlooking many safety features. It’s a case study in the hazards of higher speed rail on the cheap. I’m wondering when the liability insurance carrier for Brightline axes their coverage because the claims will be in the hundreds of millions over time.
Trespasser strikes (i.e. people in places they shouldn’t be, or at the wrong time (ignoring warning lights and gates)), would be analyzed to make sure accidental incursions would be minimized.
That said, 4-quadrant crossing gates should be a requirement for any new rail system, in my opinion.
I do consider myself to be a Brightline expert, and in my opinion, if Brightline were public, and not privately owned, they wouldn’t be criticized as much. Some don’t like them because they are privately owned. If Link kills someone, people say “still safer than cars, or rare occurrence.” If Brightline kills someone, people say it’s unsafe, because they are outraged it’s private.
This article explains how Brightline is the deadliest train line in the US.
https://a-z-animals.com/blog/what-is-the-deadliest-train-in-america/
If we built a road this dangerous (a death for every 37K per vehicle mais mile traveled) we would have dozens of deaths daily on I-5 within Seattle.
I will note that the circumstances on today’s death isn’t yet known. Suicidal and drunk/ drugged people are more likely to be killed by a train. We shall see.
Sometimes a private company cuts corners to maximize profits. I don’t know enough about Brightline to say whether that’s the case here. But there are safety laws and regulations, so if they did cut corners, they might have some explaining to do to the feds. Unless DeSantis or Trump becomes president in 2024 and shuts down the regulatory agencies.
Level crossings intrinsically increase the likelyhood of train-ped-car collisions. That should be an argument against level crossings. The cost of collisions — both lives lost, property damage, time wasted waiting for the line to reopen or finding a workaround, hinderences to the economy when people can’t get to work/shop/healthcare/cultural activities — all that cost should be included in the budget estimates for level crossings. Then they wouldn’t look so much cheaper compared to elevated or underground, and there wouldn’t be so many unfunded cost externalities.
I found this article interesting.
https://www.floridabulldog.org/2020/01/before-brightline-became-nations-deadliest-railroad-owners-rejected-safety-fixes/
In the comparison between CalTrain and Brightline, they note that Brightline has 4 times as many RR crossings.
Would part of a solution be to eliminate a number of those crossings? (i.e. consolidate them into crossings where there can be more economical use of improved safety systems)
I also notice that fatalities due to inebriation are blurred with the suicides.
I would suppose the RR and coroners reports would clear that up. (Engineers would know who is committing suicide, give the level of sobriety as determined by the coroner.)
Actually, there was an earlier study:
https://www.floridabulldog.org/2014/04/how-many-railroad-crossings-will-close-for-new-downtown-passenger-train-service/
Which recommended just that, closing crossings.
The cities and towns objected.
It looks to me that the tracks are not fenced on most of the route. The trains run through the middle of many established communities and these communities are all flat. So multiple street crossings are expected.
Florida is also a very different place to drive. They get things like intense lightning storms, heavy downpours that reduce visibility to maybe 100-200 feet, and drunk drivers. They also get “hidden homeless” that live inside their lush tropical vegetation they find near the tracks. All of these factors make it riskier to run faster trains.
Like I said, it was built on the cheap. Sacrificing building grade separations is a very big cost savings. Not building sturdier crossing barricades is a very big cost savings. Not having a low fence to warn anyone nearby to not wander in front of trains is a big cost savings.
CalTrain in contrast has slowly been eliminating at-grade crossings during the last 30 years. Many no longer exist, there are a few more to go but the busiest ones were pretty much eliminated years ago. San Mateo County wisely funded hundreds of millions to eliminate them through local sales tax.
“Sacrificing building grade separations is a very big cost savings.”
If the tracks, ROW, and trains were already in place, why would Brightline be required to grade separate? Driver and pedestrians already deal with train movements on that line.
“Not building sturdier crossing barricades is a very big cost savings. Not having a low fence to warn anyone nearby to not wander in front of trains is a big cost savings.”
While I’m in favor of the 4-quadrant crossing systems, you’d be surprised at how cavalier people are around train tracks.
Fences are good for stopping the elderly and infirm from crossing where they aren’t supposed to.
Maybe planting thorny foliage alongside the tracks would be a deterrent?
I’m not a big Brightline fan. They could have done many things better.
However, there is a culture of ignoring grade crossings in Florida. The current Federal Railroad Administration rule about the amount of horn blowing before a train enters a crossing and strictly regulating the application of quiet zones was set when CSX or some other operator on the state attempted to rationalize the use of horns, and resulted in a huge number of crossing collisions.
This increase was seen almost exclusively in Florida, but not elsewhere on their system.
Therefore, it seems to me to be a Florida safety education problem and not a Brightline problem.
In the meantime, the rest of the country has suffered a lot more and louder horns at crossings for the past 20 years because of collisions in one state.
Jim, I think that top speed in territory with level crossings — even those with four-quadrant gates — is 110. That’s a Federal Railroad Administration rule. So, I hope that at least north of Palm Beach where the FEC trackage is out in the country at least some of the time, that Brightline at least has a plan to build grade separations.
Re: public/private: Florida was supposed to get a publicly funded high-speed rail line more than a decade ago. The Florida High-Speed Corridor was to have run along Interstate 4 between Tampa and Orlando, with the intention of extending to South Florida. It got federal funding in 2010. However, in 2011 then-Gov. Rick Scott cancelled the project, deeming it too expensive for the taxpayers, and the US Transportation Department withdrew the funding.
A private entity that became Brightline then tackled Florida HSR. Interestingly, Scott apparently had investments in a trust that worked with that company, and knew people involved with it. Make of it what you will: https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/gov-scott-killed-high-speed-rail-project-later-invested-in-all-aboard-florida/
I’ve been following Brightline’s progress on YouTube. Here’s what the creators and commenters have been saying.
— Brightline is using the same Florida East Coast Railroad line/right of way built by Henry Flagler in the 1910s. I believe the only new track Brightline had to build is the east-west segment between Orlando and the Space Coast.
— Brightline also has to share its track with freight in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. That limits its speed in that tri-county area, and prevents it from electrification. I think the freight lines may also have balked at the lengthy construction delays grade separation on their tracks would have caused; therefore, you get a high-speed rail line stuck with at-grade in major metropolitan areas.
— Despite the double-digit speed limits in South Florida, and other municipalities on the new track between Palm Beach and Orlando limiting Brightline to 85 MPH, Florida drivers have an insane belief that they can beat train crossings, even when the barriers are down. In fact, one of the first Brightline trains Friday was delayed 20 minutes because a truck driver thought he could beat the train crossing barriers going down, and got stuck between them. (Yes, “Florida Man” is not a stereotype; he’s real.)
— The consensus view is that the Brightline trains have very little, if any, blame for all these deaths. Most of these tragedies have resulted from suicides (tragically) or reckless drivers/pedestrians thinking they could beat a higher-speed train, even when the guardrails were going down. As for the grade separation issues, you’d have to talk to the freight lines … and maybe the politicians and executives who wanted to get this done quickly, to show HSR can be done in America privately and profitable (and maybe stick it to CASHR as well?)
Did you say with a straight face that a local Tacoma group would try to kill the Tacoma extension? Or that an Everett group would try to kill Everett? Or an Issaquah group would try to kill that project? Seriously?
Those straightforward freeway alignments are absolutely nothing like the engineering challenges for West Seattle to serve a small portion of the neighborhood.
“Did you say with a straight face that a local Tacoma group would try to kill the Tacoma extension? Or that an Everett group would try to kill Everett? Or an Issaquah group would try to kill that project? Seriously?
“Those straightforward freeway alignments are absolutely nothing like the engineering challenges for West Seattle to serve a small portion of the neighborhood.”
ST sold ST 2 and 3 to cities on the basis that if they didn’t have Link they were not players. Issaquah was not Renton for example. The actual construction was years or decades away so who paid attention. Issaquah first pays attention in phase 3 of the eastside transit restructure after MI has been litigating for five years trying to get Issaquah’s attention.
So, no, these cities don’t “kill” Link projects (if project cost doesn’t kill them). When the time comes, they just shunt the lines and stations to places that don’t count, either Tacoma Dome, 112th-Wilburton-“The Spring Dist.”– CID N/S, no midtown, no SLU, 14th, who knows in WS (probably nowhere), I-5, and who knows in Everett but not in the core.
WS residents have no intent of actually using WS Link, certainly as a stub. 90-95% of trips are by car today. But they also have no intent of bulldozing their neighborhood for Link, removing thousands of homes, eliminating car lanes, God forbid limiting their bridge to car access, or upzoning. They won’t change WS for Link.
Dow was always going to come to this moment. He forced Link on WS becauase he lives there and thought it made WS a player, WS thought it made WS important, it was all theoretical, now WS residents are taking a look (post-pandemic), insist it be underground, and insist it not change WS in any way, and of course they don’t transfer to DSTT2, which of course is impossible just due to construction.
It isn’t as if there will be a ground swell of WS residents (especially property owners) who will support changing WS for Link (and they are still euphoric over the bridge reopening which taught them what is existential for WS), or who will raise their hand and mean it when they say I will ride WS Link, to a stub in Sodo. That will be WS’s WTF moment, when they pay attention which they are just starting to do.
This happens all the time with essential public facilities, which is why state law allows agencies to shove these down the throats of cities and neighborhoods that don’t want them. But some of these same cities and neighborhoods have real power, others know how to organize and use the press, and the rest have learned to litigate. They want Link as much as they want a freeway through their best areas.
It is just that an agency like ST lies when selling something like WS Link or Issaquah Link, no one pays attention at the time because construction is decades away, but when the time comes — for any EPF — they look at it, and say no thanks, the benefit isn’t worth it. Where do you think Issaquah will site its station? Probably far away near a huge park and ride, with the rest of the stations along I-90.
That is where WS is getting to, and where the CID, DSA, Amazon/SLU, Queen Anne already have been, and next up is Ballard which will be fascinating pitting 14th vs. 15th vs. 20th. Ballard is another one of those neighborhoods that urbanists think is a lot more urban than it is. Like Kirkland. Transit advocates think the Ballard stakeholders along these different streets will compete for Link, when I think in fact they will compete to stick the other streets with Link.
“ST sold ST 2 and 3 to cities on the basis that if they didn’t have Link they were not players.”
Those cities were the ones who pressed ST to get Link to Tacoma, Everett, and Issaquah. It wasn’t ST pressing the cities; it was the other way around. They think they need Link to attract employers, especially after other cities have Link.
““ST sold ST 2 and 3 to cities on the basis that if they didn’t have Link they were not players.”
“Those cities were the ones who pressed ST to get Link to Tacoma, Everett, and Issaquah. It wasn’t ST pressing the cities; it was the other way around. They think they need Link to attract employers, especially after other cities have Link.”
With subarea equity a subarea had to allocate its revenue someplace. Not surprisingly, the more powerful cities or neighborhoods got first dibs whether that was the best route or not. The problem is ST overestimated revenue for some subareas and underestimated project costs (and ridership), so most subareas chose projects they can’t afford to build today, and never should have been approved.
“With subarea equity a subarea had to allocate its revenue someplace.”
The only one that might apply to is East King. I know you live there and you think the world should revolve around what “people like you” want, but all the other subareas are maxing ST3 out.
* Snohomish: Desperately wants Everett Station and Paine Field. A smaller ST3 would have only reached Mariner (128th).
* Pierce: Desperately wants Tacoma Dome and more Sounder and secondarily the T line and Stride 1. It thinks it must have Link to the airport to remain economically competitive.
* North King: Desperately wants Ballard, after Constantine put West Seattle for it, meaning it needed more money to include Ballard.
* South King: The poorest subarea. It has enough trouble funding its modest Federal Way extension, Sounder, and Stride 1.
“WS residents have no intent of actually using WS Link, certainly as a stub. 90-95% of trips are by car today.”
I don’t know if it’s so high, but assuming it is for argument, the reason it’s so high is the transit options are so limited. If you had a significant increase in service — less than Link, but more than today — then you could get the rate down to 80%, 75%, or by a long shot 50%. Examples would be the multi-line BRT I suggested, increasing bus frequency across the board, more incremental improvements to speed up buses, better intra-district connections (e.g., Alki-Junction, Alki-Westwood Village, 125th-Junction), better service to southeast Seattle, etc.
“I don’t know if it’s so high [90-95% trips by car from WS], but assuming it is for argument, the reason it’s so high is the transit options are so limited. If you had a significant increase in service — less than Link, but more than today — then you could get the rate down to 80%, 75%, or by a long shot 50%. Examples would be the multi-line BRT I suggested, increasing bus frequency across the board, more incremental improvements to speed up buses, better intra-district connections (e.g., Alki-Junction, Alki-Westwood Village, 125th-Junction), better service to southeast Seattle, etc.”
Mike is there anywhere even in Seattle with a 50% or 75% trip percentage by car? Even with Link? Maybe Capitol Hill, and downtown Seattle pre-pandemic, but we are talking about West Seattle is really suburban, and I don’t think plans to urbanize.
“Mike is there anywhere even in Seattle with a 50% or 75% trip percentage by car?”
I actually sent that to the regular authors after my comment to see if somebody wants to pursue an article on it. I’m not great on research and statistics as you know. But the car mode share is certainly less than 90% and it may be around 80 or 75, and could go down with transit investments, as it has in practically every other city that has done it. I’ll see if somebody can quantify the current transit/car mode shares in various local environments, and what would be a realistic expectation based on cities with comparable investments in RapidRide, ST2, ST3, Metro Connects, and or other potential models.
One big difficulty regarding transit in West Seattle is that, the way the geography is set up, in order to go anywhere, you have to first pass downtown, then go through downtown to go almost anywhere else.
The highway network comes with all sorts of (albeit, often congested) options to get around downtown. For example, you can take SR-99 through the tunnel to Aurora. Or, you can take the West Seattle Bridge to I-5 and either go east on I-90 or north down I-5 through downtown to wherever the destination is beyond.
On transit, however, every trip you have to not only go right through the middle of downtown, but also go through downtown on a bus, with all those stoplights and bus stops, on top of the transfer overhead to switch to another bus (or Link) to where you actually want to go.
With buses, there isn’t much a transit system can do at reasonable cost to make things better beyond simply running the C-line more often. Express buses that bypassed downtown could in theory riders save a lot of time, but in order to do any good, you’d need a separate bus route for every destination people might want to go, and the cost per rider quickly balloons out of control. (That is, to make the cost of this approach affordable, you need to reduce the number of trips and riders served, to the point where you’re running 5 special express buses a day carrying a grand total of 30 people. Whoop de do.)
Link, on the other hand, can do things that buses can’t to speed up this mess. The pathway into downtown can be in a dedicated transit tunnel, avoiding those long stoplights that make that 4-block slog of Columbia take seemingly forever, even with bus lanes. Link also goes through downtown much more quickly than a bus can, while still serving it. Link can provides a one-seat ride past downtown without compromising schedule reliability. To put a concrete example on this, West Seattle Junction to downtown may end up only slightly faster on Link than on the C-line. But, West Seattle Junction to places beyond downtown, such as Capitol Hill or the U-district, become a lot faster. Fast enough that, given chronic congestion on I-5 around downtown, the train option may even put transit at time-parity with driving from West Seattle Junction to University of Washington, something which is definitely not the case today. Even H-line passengers making the trip from Delridge could still see big benefits, if traveling beyond downtown, if the truncated bus means that the H-line runs every 5-8 minutes rather than every 10-15 minutes. Even today, you’ve got to transfer to Link anyway; shifting the transfer point away from downtown into West Seattle saves you time by avoiding the slog getting into downtown on a bus.
Now, of course, the construction of West Seattle Link is not cheap, and one could make a reasonable argument that the cost maybe exceeds the benefit. And, I agree, DSTT2 is making many transit trips worse for Rainier Valley riders. But, I disagree with the argument that West Seattle Link makes transit worse for West Seattle riders. It provides a little bit of speed and a lot of capacity in getting downtown, it allows for transit trips to and from stadium events that don’t get stuck in event traffic, and it saves a lot of time for anyone going to the entire northern half of the city. For someone who will be living in West Seattle by the time this line finally opens, this seems like a good deal to me (even if Rainier Valley riders might not like it).
If you’re looking for a link extension that makes transit worse for its own riders, the place to look is not West Seattle, but Tacoma. 75 minutes to downtown Seattle, replacing a bus that takes 45 minutes, on top of a one-seat ride to downtown Tacoma being replaced with a forced connection to a streetcar for the last mile that Sound Transit is unwilling to run more often than every 12 minutes (20 minutes on Sunday).
The car mode share for downtown Seattle commutes got down to 30% for the latter half of the 2010s. That’s what the existing investments in Link, Sounder, peak-express buses, local buses, P&Rs, bike lanes, sidewalks, etc, achieved.
“Hate crime assault and armed robbery reported at Capitol Hill Station. Posted on Thursday, September 21, 2023”. Capitol Hill Blog.
“Capitol Hill Station bias assault and armed robbery: A man said he was hit in the head with a skateboard and robbed of his phone at gunpoint in an altercation early Tuesday morning at Capitol Hill Station. According to the SPD report and East Precinct radio, police were called to the station just before 12:30 AM and found the victim with an injury to his head. The victim said he was assaulted by a group of five suspects as he exited the light rail station. The group assaulted the victim and one suspect brandished a firearm and robbed the man of his phone after he had called 911. Police say the assault and ripoff may be a bias crime. “The victim reported the group used racist and homophobic slurs and he believed he was targeted due to his race and sexual orientation,” the SPD report reads. The suspects were last reported northbound on Broadway but could not be located. Seattle Fire was called to the scene to treat the victim.”
I hope this doesn’t happen at Starter Line stations. I hope ST hires off-duty, full-time police officers to patrol every eastside Link station.
Has been discussed on this blog before, but I haven’t seen it yet on this thread: If WSBLE ends in a no build and ST comes back to the voters with a better project (e.g. a WS-Ballard[-UW?] standalone automated line with smaller vehicles & higher frequency), Toronto’s evolution from the Relief Line to the Ontario Line is evidence this optimistic outcome is possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relief_Line_(Toronto)#Ontario_Line
It’s quite telling that to me at least that all of sound transits past alignment and decision making mistakes (I will call them mistakes) would only need a bandaid really to fix if they practiced engineering and procurement practices that allowed them to not have absurd project costs.
Decades down the line as the park and ride model becomes ever more outdated if sound transit could build a subway at higher than average global standards but not “this cost would get every planner fired in a Canadian or German agency standard” they could probably do things such as shift link from Northgate to lynwood down 15th ave cut and cover with a handful of stops along the way for $600M total.
Hell federal way link being shifted to SR-99 should be even cheaper given that the thing is elevated
Don’t even get me started about Seattle core routes. UW – Ballard may very well be one of the more difficult routes to build that couldn’t take advantage of the cheapest construction types but even at more expensive construction types if sound transit had in-house planning and procurement in order the project probably wouldn’t just be in discussion. It probably would already be slated for being built under ST3 (along with other Seattle routes)
But sound transit listens to outside experts, takes that information, and does nothing with it. They say they have a “good relationship with their consultants”. A good relationship with your consultants doesn’t get you above average global construction costs
Even with high construction costs the current scope of certain sound transit packages should continue to be questioned. That being said the questionable scope and alignment decisions wouldn’t be nearly as financially painful if our construction costs weren’t so absurd
The state has felt 100% comfortable in the past meddling with local transit politics in this region whether it’s funding, projects, etc. Could the state maybe step in again this time but to do something good for transit? What’s stopping them from consulting with the NYU Marron institute and coming up with a bill that would force or incentivize reform for every agency currently undertaking large construction projects from Sound Transit, to King county metro, to WSDOT, and beyond?
Even without high construction costs*
As for the “Rethink the Link” folks, I personally do not think we should be taking them seriously at all. Bus routes are easy to change, and the new Avalon and Delridge stations are going to be near enough to the bridge to route all of the bridge crossing busses to stop there first. Retaining the RapidRide busses to downtown would be perfectly sensible as a transit redundancy. This new argument about busses is merely the latest in a long string of train-hating NIMBY nonsense – first it was “build a gondola”, when that was proven inadvisable it became “think of the salmon and beavers that live next to the steel mill and how much trains going overhead will effect them”, and now that it has been pointed out that it won’t effect them at all, the argument has shifted to the evident “impossibility” of making sensible bus route changes. It’s stupid and it costs the taxpayer more money in the long run in terms of research studies and prolonged bureaucracy than just building the darn thing and getting it over with.
So if we continue to run the buses downtown for redundancy, why would we spend $4b and 614,000 tons of carbon on a light rail project but delay Ballard for lack of funds? Is this the best use of taxpayer money?
Why is a gondola inadvisable? Because Sound Transit doesn’t like to look at what other transit agencies do?
https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/sound-transit-feasability-report-regarding-aerial-gondola-from-west-seattle-20220407.pdf
They did look at what other transit agencies have done. And concluded that it wouldn’t work for West Seattle because gondolas fit fewer people, are more suited to places where rail can’t physically go, and would also have to be shut down completely every time it was windy. It’s also worth noting that a fairly significant amount of taxpayer money had to be wasted to pay engineers prove that this obviously ludicrous idea was, in fact, just as stupid as it sounds, so thank you to its proponents for that particular waste of time and money.
Duncan, are you speaking for your employer, Sound Transit?
Sound Transit’s chose to lowball the capacity of gondola systems in their “feasibility report”. Their own report referenced a gondola report by the World Bank which listed installations with higher capacity than what Sound Transit concluded. They also failed to mention gondola feasibility studies in Kirkland and San Diego which Sound Transit had reviewed. Have you reviewed https://westseattleblog.com/2022/04/gondola-west-seattle-skylinks-response-to-sound-transits-feasibility-report/ ?
For the most part their feasibility study was a slight update of their mode study from 2014 and still ignored current installations. They did not even consult with the SkyLink team who had proposed the gondola. I cannot imagine that it took very much effort on their part to prepare it.
Martin, do you really think Duncan is commenting on behalf of his employer?
I understand you have a bone to pick with ST regarding their dismissal of SkyLink, but background-checking new commentators seems inappropriate.
> Retaining the RapidRide busses to downtown would be perfectly sensible as a transit redundancy.
The problem isn’t that it is transit redundancy, the issue is that keeping the rapidrides running to downtown is better than transfering to use the west seattle link. Even after West Seattle link through runs to northgate, for anyone going to ballard or towards Seatac it’d be faster for them to stay on the rapidride C/H reaching the downtown link station and then transferring.
I just don’t understand the utility of this line considering for most use cases it makes one’s transit time worse not better.
(Facetiously)
ST: Oh transfers are no big deal! Who cares how deep the stations are or how many possibly broken escalators there are or how many hundreds of feet of walking will be required! We don’t need to worry about hundreds of people getting off a single train and forced onto a single escalator that may be broken! We don’t even bother to tell anyone how many riders we’ll lose by making transfers take longer!
Let’s get our priorities straight! We need a new county building even with office vacancies skyrocketing since Covid and WFH — and we want transit money to make it happen!
I had no idea that almost no one in West Seattle goes anywhere other than SeaTac and Ballard! Of course we should ignore literally anyone going anywhere else! I mean, why have a train at all when there are certain specific journeys that would be faster by bus! In fact, why don’t we extend that logic and just eliminate the existing 1 line entirely because it’s faster to take a bus from Mt Baker to Capitol Hill! No one uses the train for anything else at all! (Sarcasm.)
@Duncan
It isn’t great when after installing the west Seattle light rail 2 out of the 3 directions gets worse for west Seattle transit travelers not better.
let’s look at a specific example. For say Downtown to Westwood village currently one can take the C or the H line. With the west Seattle link you’d now have half the frequency with either taking the west Seattle link to alaskan junction and then transferring to the rapidride c there. Or taking the rapidride H at delridge.
And then if you are coming from Ballard rather than rapidride D to rapidride C/H now you’d need to take the rapidride D then the link and then the rapidride C or H but the frequency is halved as mentioned before.
Even in the most optimal scenario of traveling to northgate, you’d have half the link frequency since only one branch would be at west Seattle. Whereas if the rapidride C/H reached university street station you’d have double/triple the frequency from the combined lines.
It’s just a failure of an extension when every trip pair I can imagine is severely hampered by having west Seattle link exist not benefit
…. you do realize that trains to West Seattle are planned at a standard frequency equal to or better than the RapidRides, right? I think you may be fundamentally misunderstanding how train schedules work
To clarify, the West Seattle line is not going to be half of the 1 line. There are going to be twice as many trains going through the downtown tunnel than there are now. During peak hours there will be a West Seattle train every 8-10 minutes.
West Seattle Link *could* operate trains every 10 minutes or so, but that doesn’t mean they will do so. The estimated ridership is pretty low compared to what is currently happening on the UW to Rainier Beach segment.
At the other end of the line, there is little on the Everett segment that will generate that much ridership. Have you seen how few people use the Everett Transit and Community Transit buses that go where this line is supposed to? I spent some time last month riding through that area, and it is very, very bleak. Link might bring something, but it is really difficult to imagine how that area ever supports extremely frequent train service.
I therefore find, given a fixed operating income, that it is highly likely West Seattle train frequency would be cut to resemble the current MAX green line frequency of every 15 minutes day, 30 minutes evenings. Ridership on the existing line through Rainier Valley is simply too brisk to not keep them well funded.
Well I mean I think you’re forgetting induced demand there. I lived in Everett for a year and the reason ridership on Everett Transit is low is because Everett Transit is a terribly slow and infrequent and geographically awkward system. If I wanted to go from where I lived at the time to the Everett Mall, for example, I would have to take a bus that ran once every half hour and then wait 20 minutes at a benchless bus stop to transfer to a bus that ran hourly. It was faster to go to Seattle from Everett than it was to go from North Everett to South Everett. Abysmal service means abysmal ridership.
I don’t have exact figures, but I’d bet you $20 there are more people riding the existing 1-Line from U District to Capitol Hill on a regular basis than there ever were riding the bus between those two. Trains are just better, and the more frequent they are the more people will ride transit.
> you do realize that trains to West Seattle are planned at a standard frequency equal to or better than the RapidRides, right?
> During peak hours there will be a West Seattle train every 8-10 minutes.
And what do you think happens during off peak hours? It’d be like 12/15/20 minutes. and you’re still having to transfer a second time.
And again for the northgate one one could have the bus go directly to a route with 4 minute frequency during peak time or 6 /8 minutes during off peak at worse.
Like actually think about the trip start and end destinations almost all of them are worse with west Seattle link. And the few that are better even those are debatable with the worse frequency
Off peak (which, btw, is only after 10 pm) is every 15 minutes, same as the RapidRide. I honestly don’t understand why you think it would be slower. Currently, if I am in West Seattle and I want to go to SeaTac, I have to wait for the bus for at least as long as I would wait for a train, not to mention any added wait time caused by traffic further south or transplants who don’t know how to drive, then ride a bus that makes multiple stops, some of which might be prolonged if anyone with a physical disability requiring deployment of the ramp happens to be waiting (another case where trains work better and are more equitable) before hoping that the bus does not get caught in traffic on 99 and knowing that it will almost certainly waste another 15 minutes of my time at stoplights downtown, and then finally get off, walk all the way down the block and all the way down the stairs into the tunnel, and then get on a train. Even with an awkward inter-train transfer at SODO, West Seattle Link would still be faster than the bus.
“West Seattle Link *could* operate trains every 10 minutes or so, but that doesn’t mean they will do so. The estimated ridership is pretty low compared to what is currently happening on the UW to Rainier Beach segment. At the other end of the line, there is little on the Everett segment that will generate that much ridership.”
There’s a minimum baseline frequency to be a useful metro regardless of ridership. That level is 10 minutes, or at the very worst 15. ST has always kept to 10-minute minimums until 10pm since 2008 when Link started, even when it was ruynning 1-car trains in the evenings the first few years, except during the lockdown when it reduced service to a shockingly low level, and then this year when it had the three maintenance reductions and didn’t try too hard to mitigate the single-tracking. Some people have been speculating for years that Link’s frequency to Everett and Federal Way will go below 10 minutes due to low ridership, but ST has given no indication of that. And the people who say that have never said what they think the ridership threshold should be to have 10-minute service. Maybe their notion is reasonable, maybe not.
> Off peak (which, btw, is only after 10 pm) is every 15 minutes, same as the RapidRide.
Most likely even after 6pm it’ll be dropped to 12 minute frequency
> Currently, if I am in West Seattle and I want to go to SeaTac, I have to wait for the bus for at least as long as I would wait for a train, not to mention any added wait time caused by traffic further south or transplants who don’t know how to drive, then ride a bus that makes multiple stops, some of which might be prolonged if anyone with a physical disability requiring deployment of the ramp happens to be waiting (another case where trains work better and are more equitable) before hoping that the bus does not get caught in traffic on 99 and knowing that it will almost certainly waste another 15 minutes of my time at stoplights downtown, and then finally get off, walk all the way down the block and all the way down the stairs into the tunnel, and then get on a train.
Outside of Alaskan junction which is most of west Seattle you’d still be on the bus with the rapidride C or rapidride H so you’d be waiting that same time for the bus. You’d then have to wait and transfer to the west Seattle link. And then at sodo station then wait again for the link train heading southbound. And you’d then have to head up the escalator and come back down there as well. You’d be waiting more time than before.
I still would not be waiting in downtown traffic on a bus. Additionally, I might add that the idea that coming from, say, Morgan Junction, for example, might still take a while, is why SDOT has officially recommended that Sound Transit include a southerly extension to the West Seattle line in the next light rail expansion (Alaska Junction to Burien via Morgan Junction and White Center). However, in order for an extension to be built, the line being extended has to be built first, as otherwise there will be nothing to extend. This brings me back to my original point, which is that ST needs to stop dithering around with the demands of NIMBY naysayers and just start building the thing already. The engineers have said it can be done, the majority of voters have said it should be done, the only reason nothing is being done is because there are a few people making ever-changing bad faith arguments about it.
> Additionally, I might add that the idea that coming from, say, Morgan Junction, for example, might still take a while, is why SDOT has officially recommended that Sound Transit include a southerly extension to the West Seattle line in the next light rail expansion (Alaska Junction to Burien via Morgan Junction and White Center). However, in order for an extension to be built, the line being extended has to be built first, as otherwise there will be nothing to extend.
Sure, but if after spending a couple billion dollars it’s still not useful and requires spending even more couple billion dollars to just become barely viable as a transit option — is this really a good line?
Additionally I am well aware of the extension plans of the South HCT studies. You do realize that even in those extension plans to reach Burien/Renton it costs 4~6 billion dollars in 2015 dollars. And it didn’t even use alaskan junction, that route went down Delridge Way SW. And then for the tunneled option using Alaskan Junction due to the geographic limitations for the next station would be at White Center there would be no stations in between so basically you’d be back to using the bus to actually get to the light rail station.
The tunnel option for that would be 6 to 8 billion dollars in 2015 dollars or around around 9~10 billion dollars in 2024 dollars. I’m sorry but there is just no way they’re building an extension further down West Seattle at more than double the cost of what East Link (4 billion dollars) cost.
Alternatively there is the cheaper elevated option which might make it viable to actually reach White Center, but West Seattle has opted against it for tunneling. And this same nimbyism that exists also means it will be unlikely to have enough density to support further extensions.
I mean, why have a train at all when there are certain specific journeys that would be faster by bus!
No, what we are arguing is that the vast majority of trips will be faster by bus. Why? Because the vast majority of potential riders live nowhere near the stations, and Link would require a transfer.
With situations like this, it is best to consider what would happen if they ran both. Imagine you are on the RapidRide H, headed downtown. Maybe your destination is downtown, or maybe it is someplace like First Hill, or South Lake Union. Do you get off the bus, just as it is about to get on the freeway? No, of course not.
Thus the vast majority of riders would be better off just staying on the bus. It really doesn’t matter how often they run the trains. No one is going to get off the bus even if they run them every couple minutes (which they aren’t going to do). Even in your most optimistic proclamation, you assume ten minute frequency. Why get off the bus when there is a good chance you will be forced to spend time getting to the platform, then wait an extra ten minutes for a train?
That is the fundamental problem. If you continue to run the buses, then very few people take the train. If very few people take the train, you’ve wasted a ton of money (that should have gone into making the buses faster and more frequent). If you truncate the buses, then the vast majority of riders are worse off.
If you truncate the buses, most trips would be slower, with only a handful being faster with the train. If you are close to a station, then the train is faster (barely). If you are headed to SoDo it would make sense to transfer. But very few people are headed to SoDo. Very few people will ever live close to the three stations they are adding. Every other trip would be roughly the same, or significantly worse. Overall, the average rider would be worse off.
This is assuming that there is no change in the buses (other than truncating them). They would run just as often. To be fair, it is possible that truncating the buses would lead to running them more often, but even if you do, the transfer penalty still exists. There is also a much better and simpler option for running the buses more often: Spend more money on the buses. Instead of spending a fortune on the train, just run the buses more often. Spend capital as necessary to make the buses faster, of course, but mostly just run the buses more often. Doing so would be better for the vast majority of riders.
I don’t live in West Seattle but I can tell you that I sure as hell wouldn’t stay on the bus. The ride down 3rd avenue is miserable, especially at the north end where there’s five four way stops in a row
West Seattle Link has several flaws. Just to back up here, a grade-separated rail line (i. e. a subway) does really well if you have lots of big destinations along the line. Northgate Link is a good example. If you are headed to downtown from Northgate, you would be better off with the old 41 (at least in the morning). But several other trips are much better. A trip to the UW, for example, is much faster than with buses. So is a trip to Capitol Hill or Roosevelt. These are major destinations, and the combination of trips between them is what makes that section so successful.
West Seattle Link doesn’t have that. Only three stations will be added. Trips between the stations are fairly rare, and in the case of The Junction to Avalon, likely faster with a bus. West Seattle Link will make it faster to get to SoDo, but that is a minor station, and the 50 (which serves all three West Seattle Stations) makes that trip fairly quickly. There is really very little added before you get to downtown, which makes it strikingly different than Northgate Link. The new combinations that are significantly faster will be taken by very few riders. I just don’t see someone thinking “I can’t wait — this will make it so much easier to get from The Junction to Genesee & Delridge”, the way folks talked about Northgate to the UW, or Northgate to Capitol Hill (or Roosevelt to Capitol Hill, etc.).
Meanwhile, the trip from any of the three stations is very fast on the bus. The bus goes on a freeway, and then exits downtown. This again, sets it apart from some of our stations (e. g. Capitol Hill). Thus you really aren’t saving riders much time, even if they are starting by one of the few stations that will be added.
Making matters worse, the stations themselves are not major destinations. The Junction is a moderate destination; it isn’t like the UW, or even Capitol Hill. It is akin to Roosevelt, or maybe Othello. Avalon is a little smaller. Genesee & Delridge is even smaller. I would expect some growth, but nothing major. The will be no branch campus there. The college that is in West Seattle is nowhere near the station. There are no plans to transform this into something that looks like Downtown Bellevue (with big office and residential towers). Thus you have, at best, three stations with moderate retail and residential density.
Yet even with only three stations, it is extremely expensive. The cost per station on this project is extremely high. The fact that the stations themselves are not major destinations just makes things worse.
This is really the wrong choice of mode, given the existing transportation infrastructure and development pattern in West Seattle. Consider some destinations: Alki, South Seattle College, Alaska Junction, Morgan Junction, Admiral District, High Point, Westwood Village, the ferry dock. These are all significant destinations, but none of them are huge, and they are spread out. Meanwhile, the main connection to the rest of the city is a freeway, with basically nothing in between (nor are there plans to serve that nothingness). Since these buses act as expresses, the average speed of them is blazing fast, making the speed advantage of Link minimal. It is a pattern where bus improvements are way more cost effective (and ultimately much better for riders) then light rail.
Is it not a bit misleading to day that when West Seattle opens, only one of its corridors will have good transit? First, West Seattle Link itself doesn’t go down the peninsula, and indeed could never go down any of those corridors if it does not first cross the Duwamish. Secondly, those bus lines are not going away any more than the I-5 express busses will go away when Lynnwood Link opens. The routes will mostly just be truncated at the rail stops.
It has been said on here that Northgate Link is not mainly about Northgate to Downtown (which is actually slower than the former 41 express in some cases), but about being able to connect directly to the U District, Capitol Hill, etc. on the same rapid line, at a consistent good frequency. By transferring to Link, those riders coming from West Seattle do not only have downtown and Lake Union as options, they now have many more easy-to-get-to destinations along the Link system*. For example, living in the Junction or even the Westwood Village while going to classes at UW or working in Bellevue is now more feasible. Extremely difficult to achieve this with bus improvements, especially given the constant block-by-block battles for bus priority in this town.
*How advantageous this is does CRITICALLY depend on the situations with transfers. This cannot be stressed enough! To me this is THE major battle that will determine Link’s long term viability. Neighborhoods can always grow, but rail transfers are literally set in stone.
“Is it not a bit misleading to day that when West Seattle opens, only one of its corridors will have good transit? First, West Seattle Link itself doesn’t go down the peninsula, and indeed could never go down any of those corridors if it does not first cross the Duwamish. Secondly, those bus lines are not going away any more than the I-5 express busses will go away when Lynnwood Link opens. The routes will mostly just be truncated at the rail stops.”
The winner will be those going to West Seattle’s largest urban village (the Junction) or to the two station walksheds east of it. The losers will be those who don’t live within walking distance of any of those stations, which is 99% of West Seattle residents, including those in the outskirts of the Junction, in the Admiral District, Westwood Village, and in the High Point low-income area. They’ll have to transfer to a 10-minute train, which will turn a 15-minute trip to downtown into one with an up to 10-minute transfer, going up escalators to the patform, and with only a slightly faster train ride to compensate. It’s all relative to the total trip distance, the percent of the trip that’s transferring/waiting, the percent of the trip on fast nonstop highway, and the number of people in the stations’ walksheds. The only thing people hate more than a 20-minute transit trip is a 10-minute trip with a 10-minute transfer wait (50%), or when the transferring/waiting is more than the traveling. When the total trip is a longer distance or longer time, or one segment is long and one segment is short, then a transfer is more reasonable and people who resist it can suck it up. But West Seattle is right in that middle area, where the fast express part is just two miles and feasible by both train and bus, so at that point the 10-minute transfer overhead becomes a signficant issue — a significant percent of the trip.
Link will have an advantage in one-seat express rides to Capitol Hill, the U-District, North Seattle, and Lynnwood. That’s where a transfer to Link in West Seattle has even more value than just for a trip to downtown. But West Seattle is not particularly populous or dense, and does not particularly attract shoppers/students/visitors/etc from other areas, relative to other villages, so it’s not a particularly high priority to provide a Link level of service there.
If they build DSTT2, there will be some 9 floors of escalators and/or a series of time consuming road crossings between West Seattle Link and South Lake Union trains.
The only people it might help would be those living right next to one of the three stations and headed to the UW or Northgate. People from the other areas of West Seattle would probably better off on the C.
Compare this to Ballard Link:
Properly built, the restructure either the could be rerouted into downtown Ballard, with the D taking over the 40 route and gong to South Lake Union. This one change, made possible by Link, could improve a huge number of different trips. A dozen other bus routes could be reworked to provide better one seat rides and connections.
There isn’t that type of opportunity for West Seattle. Everything either comes from the south or goes over the bridge. What other corridor do you switch the C to provide West Seattle riders a different set of options for one seat rides? Capitol Hill?
When TriMet built the Orange line, it made the mistake of building much like the West Seattle line: a glancing pass at somewhat near actual destinations, but not really serving any of them well, except for a couple park and ride lots. At the same time, route 33 turned into an L shaped route instead of going into downtown Portland. The ridership on this route is probably now higher than the orange line. It combines two corridors that were once reasonably busy but required a transfer, but is now a one seat ride.
I don’t see what you do to West Seattle to create that type of restructure. To do what TriMet did, you’d put the C line on the 50 routing and connect the ML King corridor to the West Seattle corridors, but there just doesn’t seem to be any sort of pent-up unsatisfied demand for those two corridors to be tied.
Are there any other potential restructure opportunities that would increase ridership on the whole network?
The only thing I can think of is build a full wye at the west end of East Link, and run half the trains to Bellevue. That’s at least something that isn’t being done now.
Glen, about the experience of riding Link between West Seattle and SLU, that’s exactly what I mean by getting the transfers right is THE critical factor here. If the transfers suck, West Seattle Link becomes MUCH less useful. Indeed, it makes transit for West Seattle worse if the busses are to be truncated on the West Seattle side, which is what I would expect. I would envision having the C and H transferring to the rail at the same station, which may make it easier to get between some parts of Delridge and the Alaska Junction/Faultleroy side, and if you’re going to Westwood Village you could still take whichever one comes first. You should be able to increase the frequency using the service hours spend crossing the bridge and getting through downtown Seattle. Maybe you send one of them up to Admiral and the other down to Alki for more frequent one-seat rides.
I do tend to agree with Mike that West Seattle is not big enough to be a priority for rail transit *today*. Neither is much of Sound Transit 3, unfortunately. But when you look closer to 2040 – 2050 when all this eventually gets done, is West Seattle the most likely place to be the next Ballard or U District, or is it South Kirkland, Mariner Boeing Field, Fed. Way, Tacoma Dome, and the like? I’d put my money on West Seattle. Has the walkable “bones” and the proximity going for it.
I do tend to agree with Mike that West Seattle is not big enough to be a priority for rail transit *today*. Neither is much of Sound Transit 3, unfortunately.
Yes, but that is really bad company to be in. Most of ST3 is really bad; the fact that you have a line in Seattle that is bad is well doesn’t make the case for it stronger.
But when you look closer to 2040 – 2050 when all this eventually gets done, is West Seattle the most likely place to be the next Ballard or U District, or is it South Kirkland, Mariner Boeing Field, Fed. Way, Tacoma Dome, and the like? I’d put my money on West Seattle. Has the walkable “bones” and the proximity going for it.
That is missing the point. There are three stations. Three! That is a huge amount of money for three stations, even if each one becomes “the next Ballard”. (And no, it won’t be the next U-District, as it won’t have a major university there). More to the point, you have to look at the combination of trips, and whether this is much faster than the alternative. It is highly unlikely there will be huge demand between the stations, and the alternative for each station is an extremely fast express bus to downtown.
If you start looking at things in that manner, there are existing trips that will be a much better value than West Seattle Link, even if the area around the three West Seattle stations becomes “the next Ballard” (which seems highly unlikely). For example, Ballard to UW. You have several stations right in a row: 24th NW, 15th NW, 8th NW, Fremont (connecting to both lower Fremont and the express buses on Aurora), Wallingford and the UW. That is five new stations along a corridor that is extremely slow by any other means. It would be faster to take the train than it is to drive — at noon. Can you say that about any of the stations in West Seattle? Of course not. Some of the stations are aspirational (there isn’t much at 8th NW) while others (24th, 15th, Fremont, Wallingford) are not. The line itself is a huge improvement — there are a lot of common trips along there that are much better. If you look at the overall network (including the buses) it is dramatically better. Going from say, Licton Springs or Phinney Ridge to UW or Ballard would be much faster. Again, you just can’t say that about West Seattle Link. It doesn’t do much for the network at all.
Or how about a line from Westlake to First Hill, connecting to Mount Baker Station. First Hill is so loaded with potential stations, you just space them out, about a half mile apart. Run the train under the hill, then continue it to connect to Judkins Park, and Mount Baker. You could add four stations, easily, each surrounded by skyscrapers, major hospitals and/or housing developments.
Or how about the Metro 8? You wouldn’t follow the 8 exactly (it would be underground) but you would be replacing a bus that is extremely slow, and yet carries lots of riders. Serve the Central Area (finally). You could actually serve the heart of South Lake Union (instead of just skirting it, as with Ballard Link). Again, you dramatically improve the network — Eastlake to Capitol Hill is no longer an awkward trip, but very fast. So is Greenwood, Phinney Ridge or anywhere on Aurora to Capitol Hill or the Central Area.
There are all sorts of options, but what you generally don’t want to do is exactly what they are doing — try and replace a very fast trip with something that is at best a little bit faster, while forcing a lot of transfers. As I wrote elsewhere, it would be different if we were talking about replacing the H with a train. We would wonder if it is worth it. We would question whether it makes sense to serve an area we hope will grow, instead of areas that actually need better transit now. But there would no question that it would have potential, in that it could be significantly faster for a lot of riders in the future. That simply isn’t the case with what they are building.
I get why some would consider it a “starter line”. Eventually the train would continue, serving areas like High Point. But to actually serve a significant set of West Seattle destinations would require a massive investment. Remember, we aren’t talking Rainier Valley style light rail. This is all above or underground. To serve all the various places (like Alki, Admiral, South Seattle College) you would have to have numerous branches, with a bunch of stations. This wouldn’t make sense for “the new Ballard”, but for the new Brooklyn! Will West Seattle have a couple million people anytime soon? I doubt it.
Meanwhile, there remain places that make more sense to serve, while we are still trying to pay for the massive expansion that is ST3. Keep in mind, before ST3, we were paying more per capita on transit than any other city in the country. ST3, meanwhile, is huge. West Seattle Link won’t get bigger anytime soon. It will simply be a bad idea, pushed by people that really didn’t understand transit, but thought it made sense to spread things around, regionally.
> . For example, living in the Junction or even the Westwood Village while going to classes at UW or working in Bellevue is now more feasible
As Mike noted, getting to Bellevue (or Ballard) from Westwood Village would take longer not shorter with the West Seattle Link. Also on the reverse trip your frequency would be cut in half as now you’d have to decide between taking the rapidride H (at delridge or downtown) or the rapidride C at alaskan junction. Or alternatively if the rapidrides kept going all the way to university street station then sure one’s frequency hasn’t changed — but now the best option is to not use the west seattle link at all.
I was thinking the C and H might transfer at the same station to be able to take whichever one comes first to get to Westwood Village. Plus the frequency on both could be better by reallocating the service hours from the bridge crossings and downtown. Should also make it easier for some parts of the Delridge side to get to the Junction side. Might even be able to send one route up to Admiral and one to Alki.
As far as Bellevue, it may be slower than many H+550 trips, similar to how Northgate Link is slower than many 41 trips were (slower, but more reliable and more easy to reach destinations). How much slower depends critically on the transfer experience. To me, the transfer experience is a much bigger battle! FWIW, the 3 line to 2 line transfer within the same tunnel downtown looks comparable to the H transfer to 2 line. The transfer penalty on the West Seattle side remains, but may be compensated by more reliability and fewer downtown traffic delays, especially events which we all know what happens to 3rd Ave.
Plus the frequency on both could be better by reallocating the service hours from the bridge crossings and downtown.
But why would they? It is easy to assume that a truncation comes with increased frequency to that particular area, but Metro has shown that it isn’t always going to do that. Nor is it necessarily the best approach.
Besides, why not just put more money into increasing frequency, instead of hoping that a transfer will entice more riders? It would be much cheaper, and better for just about everyone if they did. Of course there are exceptions, but they are so few that even proponents are saying typical trips “may be slower” with light rail.
It isn’t just the transfers, either. If you are at Avalon, you have both the C and the 21 for getting downtown. It is quite possible that frequency will be better on the bus combination than on Link.
Again, the fundamental problem with West Seattle Link is that only a handful of trips are significantly faster. Northgate Link made trips from Northgate to the UW much faster. U-Link made trips from the UW Hospital to Capitol Hill much faster. These weren’t the only trips, either. But West Seattle Link has none of that. The only trips that are fast are those that are already fast (e. g. Avalon to downtown) or rarely taken (the Junction to SoDo). When you throw in the transfer — to a train that even proponents assume will be running every ten minutes in the middle of the day — it is quite likely that overall, it is will be worse for riders in West Seattle. It may be better for Metro (in that it saves service hours) but lots of West Seattle riders will be worse off.
As far as reliability goes, clearly Link is not infallible. We also have a clear trend in the city, with more and more bus and BAT lanes. This is one of the more conservative administrations in recent memory (he is no McGinn) and yet they are embarking on major improvements to various bus lines (like the 40). It is easy to criticize them for not moving fast enough, but the direction is clear. It isn’t two steps forward, one step back; it is two steps forward, followed by a pause. I can’t think of the city ever getting rid of a bus or BAT lane once it has been built. Quite the opposite.
All of which is to say that it is quite likely that by the time they finally connect West Seattle Link to the rest of the system, the buses will be preferred by the vast majority of potential riders, even without a major new investment in service or right-of-way. But that is not what people are proposing. For even a tiny portion of the money they are planning on spending for West Seattle Link, you could make the buses even faster and more frequent. Eliminate the weave on the West Seattle Bridge. Maybe build a ramp (and bus lanes) from the Spokane Street Viaduct to the SoDo Busway. There are multiple options, but if you spend even a fraction of the West Seattle Link money on bus infrastructure, you end up with much faster service AND no transfer. Then it is just a matter of running the buses more often, which is not that difficult (or expensive). Unlike Northgate Link, you are basically talking about two corridors to cover all the stations.
This would be dramatically different if the trip from West Seattle to downtown was slow, or if there were more things in between. But as it turns out, even from the actual station, the trip to downtown is remarkably fast, and there is nothing much in between. For a typical trip, the part of the journey that is actually slow is getting to the station, not getting from the station to downtown. In that sense, it is backwards. It would be one thing if the train went to Delridge and served a few dozen stops along that corridor. But that isn’t what is happening. We are making the part of the journey that is already an express, an express that will require a transfer (for the majority of riders). Then there is simply taking the train, as opposed to taking surface transit. At noon on a weekday, it takes about 12 minutes to get from 3rd & Seneca to the future Delridge Station (https://maps.app.goo.gl/XpCoRUjx64vR6nVQA). There are four stops in between. Will a train be faster? Not necessarily. From Beacon Hill to University Street Station (i. e. 3rd and Seneca) takes 10 minutes. Beacon Hill looks about the same distance (maybe a bit closer). But don’t forget the time it takes to get to and from the platforms. Suddenly it is a wash. Once again, we don’t know what is faster — the existing bus, or the train — from the actual station location to a station in the middle of downtown! The times savings — if there are any — are minimal, even if you never transfer.
It isn’t that way with all the trips. There are trips that will be faster. But the vast majority of trips will be slower, or at best a wash. Spending billions building out a system that isn’t clearly a big improvement — while simultaneously screwing over those in Rainier Valley because ST doesn’t want to mix the lines — is just a very bad idea.
“If you are at Avalon, you have both the C and the 21 for getting downtown.”
Technically yes, but I tried the 21 once and discovered that the travel time advantage of the C over the 21 is actually much greater than it seems – enough that it would be nearly always faster to let the 21 go by and wait for the C. Enough that even people already on the 21 bus would actually get downtown faster by getting off and transferring to the C. And, of course, replacing a transfer to the C with a transfer to Link would be faster still.
The reason why the 21 is so slow is a combination of several factors. It takes the lower bridge instead of the upper bridge, which adds a long stoplight at a 5-way intersection that takes several minutes to turn green. SODO adds more lights. The 21 is thru-routed with the 5, which makes travel within downtown slow, as every stop has people getting both on and off, compared to the C-line, where people are only getting off. The thru-route also forces people on the 21 to wait out a heavily padded schedule in SODO, less than a mile from their destination, in order to avoid arriving at bus stops early for route 5 riders.
The reason why the 21 is so slow is a combination of several factors. It takes the lower bridge instead of the upper bridge, which adds a long stoplight at a 5-way intersection that takes several minutes to turn green. SODO adds more lights. The 21 is thru-routed with the 5, which makes travel within downtown slow, as every stop has people getting both on and off, compared to the C-line, where people are only getting off. The thru-route also forces people on the 21 to wait out a heavily padded schedule in SODO, less than a mile from their destination, in order to avoid arriving at bus stops early for route 5 riders.
Interesting. My brother used to take the 21 all the time (from High Point) and he liked it. He felt like there was too much fuss about the C — that the buses from West Seattle were generally pretty fast (as long as you weren’t on the other end of the line).
It does seem like a mistake to go on the lower bridge. I get that it covers more, but it seems like there are better ways to do that. Since it goes over a bridge that might open, that means a lot of extra padding. Going down First (instead of SoDo Busway, or the path of the C/H) is also a tough choice. I guess you need coverage in those areas, but I’m not sure it is the best bus to do it.
I’m not sure the best solution. It depends on whether there is extra money or not. I would look into splitting the 5 and 21 (which costs money). It seems like there should be layover space around SoDo Station, where the 5 would end. It would follow the current path (down First) then cut over on Lander and layover by the station. The 50 covers the other end of First. The 50 also connects riders from West Seattle to the SoDo Station (along with other buses on 4th and the busway). This means that the 21 could simply take the fastest path to downtown, which is (I assume) what the C and H are doing. Midday, the C runs every 10 minutes, while the 21 runs every 15. This is not an ideal combination. If money is available I would run the 21 every ten minutes, opposite the C. From Avalon, that would mean 5 minute headways to downtown (in the middle of the day).
That still leaves a couple stops on Spokane Street (in West Seattle, under the big bridge) without coverage. One option would be to just not cover it. I have no idea what the ridership of those stations are, but I doubt it is high. It also isn’t that far a walk to the other stops. It is about a 5 minute walk from the stop at 26th to the 773, which now runs all-day (albeit infrequently). It is about 8 minutes to the last stop on Avalon (which the 21 would still serve). It is about a five minute walk from the stop at Chelan & Spokane to the last stop for the H.
If it is absolutely necessary to serve those stops, then I would run a local bus (that doesn’t leave West Seattle). The 125 runs every half hour. Maybe run a bus from South Seattle College to Alki every half hour. It would serve those stops along the way (connecting them to the H if they want to go downtown). It could run along Harbor Avenue and Alki Way (since the 773 and 775 are infrequent) or run up and over Admiral Way (like the 56, since it doesn’t run midday). Either way the 50 would still be the main connection for Alki itself, but this would increase coverage in the north end of West Seattle, while giving college students and faculty 15 minute headways. If you are headed to the college (from somewhere besides West Seattle) then you try and catch the 125 — but if you don’t, then at least you don’t have to wait a full half hour for the next bus. You take the H, and then make an easy transfer.
At this point, you’ve improved things for a lot of people, and you really haven’t broken the bank. You’ve got a more frequent (but faster) 21, the 5 is now split with the 21, and this new coverage route in West Seattle. This is not hugely expensive — it would be tiny compared to the amount they plan on spending for West Seattle Link. Transit has improved dramatically for the peninsula, and for many riders, it will be better than Link. Riders on the C and H don’t have to transfer. Avalon has better headways. The 21 is faster and more frequent. You have good connecting service (to Alki and the college). Some of these things can be done with Link (e. g. that coverage route) but for riders, the transfer to the H (or C) is really no different than a transfer to Link. If anything, it is just a bit better, as the H doesn’t require going up to a big platform (but instead would be a same-stop transfer, the best of all transfers).
This is all before you spend major capital on making the trip from West Seattle to downtown faster. Doing that work would be expensive, but a couple hundred million, not billions. It is also before we automate buses, which at this rate, seems quite likely before West Seattle Link is complete (https://humantransit.org/2023/09/a-next-step-for-autonomous-buses.html). Once that happens, things could get dramatically better for riders, as the cost to operate a bus goes way down. For areas like West Seattle (where the buses aren’t very crowded) the increase in frequency due to automation would be dramatic.
The fundamental advantage of trains (of any sort) remains capacity. The only way you get the trains close to capacity in West Seattle is if you ask people to transfer, which means that the vast majority of riders would be worse off. It is just the wrong tool for the job, in the short and long term.
For the last couple of years, Skagit Transit has been using the UMO transit payment app. I notice now that BC Transit is using this in the Victoria area.
How many of you have used a system that uses this? Any advice or tips?
One item I’m interested in: how well does it handle foreign payments? That is, if your account is handled in US dollars, how well does it work if you try to pay in Victoria into a system that wants Canadian dollars.
Any other thoughts?
Language question. When ST sends an alert that Link trains to Northgate are delayed 20 minutes, does that mean A) each train is leaving Angle Lake 20 minutes late or B) the trip from Angle Lake to Northgate is taking 20 minutes more than usual?
It means a 20 minute delay, which can be a 20 minute delay in leaving Angle Lake or it can mean the next train will be waiting elsewhere for 20 minutes (for example, if there was an accident on the track between Othello and Columbia City, the next northbound train might very well be waiting at Othello for the trackway to be cleared before continuing, although this will also translate to a similar delay for any trains further south, including Angle Lake).
Link next-arrival displays are on! SODO northbound 8:40pm: “7, 18, 27 minutes”. I didn’t time it to the minute but it came at around 7 minutes. At Capitol Hill my sign had “10 minutes” and the other sign had “5 minutes”. So they appear to be accurate.
Walked by Pioneer Sq and the Civic campus today on my way to the ferry. It’s really beyond idiotic that we are contemplating spending billions building a second downtown tunnel literally two blocks away from an existing station and view the North CID station as some sort of catalyst for development. There’s nothing in the Civic Campus that the current Pioneer Sq station can’t serve. It’s not even an overly steep hill. The reason there’s languishing development there isn’t because of the lack of Link. It’s because of all the DESC and emergency services located there.
There needs to be a bigger movement to kill this stupid second tunnel now or it will be in the history books for being one of the biggest boondoggles in the country.
Also, a city that runs on a north-south axis should not be partitioned in half into north and south lines. The highways already do this with downtown congestion, it is mind boggling to do the same artificially with mass rail transit. This is creating segregation by transit. There’s got to be another way to solve the long trip issue for Link drivers.
Some of ST’s recent planning scenarios have had a Tacoma Dome-Northgate line, so that indicates it doesn’t think that is too long. That must have been in the Balducci/Millar restored-spine alternative? Most of the operational models we’ve come up with for a single tunnel have three lines, one of them likely Tacoma Dome-Northgate.
I think the idea of the DSTT2 is to leverage sound transit to pay for the demolition of an abandoned building downtown the county doesn’t know what to do with. To redevelop the lot on its own, the county would be on the hook for the demolition cost.
I personally find this argument extremely lame, as demolishing the old building is a few million dollars, while DSTT2 runs into the billions, but that’s the argument.
ST would also pay part of the construction cost for the new building, because the station would be integrated into it.
“*before* I was made aware (by an area senior planning official) of the original intent of Tacoma Link, which is to be a starter line for the regional system.”
Is this true? Then why is Link terminating at Tacoma Dome? The first I heard is that the Spine is Tacoma Dome to Everett Station, and the T line was intended to be part or a larger multi-line streetcar network for Tacoma. When they were planning the T line there was a six-line or so vision, like the Seattle Monorail would have been.
This is true! I was not involved with original Metro Transit or Sound Transit light rail planning. It was also well before “my time”, and before the era when files were reliably uploaded to the net. So, I was unaware like everyone else. I don’t want to identify the official here, but it was their little tidbit during a meeting that piqued my interest. The tranche of ST documents that I now possess, some of which I have added to the net, paint a clearer picture. I have also since met with various local and State leaders who helped deliver the project and ST itself, and they affirmed the content of the documents.
Tacoma Link was *always* supposed to connect with Central Link. The where and the how was unknown, as was the type of service that would be provided to Downtown Tacoma (especially the number of cars in a train). The plans diverged over the passage of the decades and when all the original players left politics.
It’s been fascinating to have people tell me this history is make believable. Okay then!
Troy, would it perhaps be more accurate to say “Tacoma Link was originally supposed to connect with Central Link” ? You’ve done excellent sleuthing, but I think your research shows the ST planning documents & technical assumptions now assume T-Link and C-Link will operate distinctly. This decision may not have been made consciously & transparently (and is a reversible decision, as you articulately advocate), but by the time of the ST3 vote the internal plans & public facing documents all have T-Link not connecting to C-Link.
@AJ,
You are correct. Originally (pre-ST1 voter approval) the thought was that Tacoma Link would be the same tech as Central Link and the two systems could be combined someday. That changed however to streetcar after the voters rejected the first ST vote.
Then conversion of Tacoma streetcar to full Central Link level was looked at again for ST2 (just a quick look), but that time it was rejected at the request of Tacoma officials who thought full 1-Link size multi-vehicle trains were too big for the downtown Tacoma street scape. ST listened to them and went with expanded streetcar.
So ST listened to the voters, then got voter approval for streetcar, and then listened to Tacoma officials again before expanding streetcar.
And now, after all that, it is proposed that ST reverse course and absorb the costs of conversion back to full 1-Link? At a much higher cost now than if it had been done differently in the first place?
Na, Tacoma got what they wanted and it actually does work. Freighthouse Square is a better multi-modal hub than King Street Station in Seattle, the transfers are relatively easy, and Tacoma streetcar does work and is expandable at modest cost.
It’s too late to change direction. That train has left the station. Tacoma got exactly what they wanted.
AJ, that is a valid correction, yes. Thank you.
Today, it is universally understood that the T Line and the 1-Line will be separate railways and operations. The history of the project is only now starting to percolate because I bring it up here and there.
The 1-Line will end at Tacoma Dome either over 25th Street or the location of the old Freighthouse Square building. It will be prepped for an uphill run to the Tacoma Mall and then toward Lakewood and Dupont under ST4.
The joining of the railways almost certainly will not happen, but it has been a fun exercise and exploration.
AJ, please note that other commenters are not fully aware of the facts, nuance, and history of the original Pierce County light rail vision and the Tacoma Link light rail project. Respectfully.
There would definitely be challenges with running bigger rail to Downtown Tacoma. But the same can be said for Link. Just getting to the Tacoma Dome won’t be cheap. Backing up here, there were several options, involving both Link and Sounder:
1) End Link at Federal Way. Federal Way makes a good terminus simply because it has a nice connection to express buses from south of there (via the HOV lanes on the freeway).
2) Extend Link to Downtown Tacoma. This is a stretch in my opinion, but at least it is a good terminus. Downtown Tacoma is the biggest destination between SeaTac and Portland. The only drawback is that like all of Tacoma, it is a fair distance away from Seattle, and not that big a destination.
3) Extend to the Tacoma Dome. This is the worst of both worlds. It is very expensive, and a poor terminus. It is like buying a Ferrari and putting on cheap tires. You really don’t need a Ferrari, but if you are going to get one, at least put on tires that enable you go to go faster than a Prius.
4) Extend to the Tacoma Dome in hopes that one day you will go to the Tacoma Mall. This is quite similar to option three. It would cost a huge amount, and get you very little.
5) Extend Sounder to Downtown Tacoma. Likely very expensive, but probably cheaper than extending Link to the Tacoma Dome (by a big margin).
6) Make Sounder faster (as part of service from Seattle to Portland). I’m not talking about Very High Speed Rail (which is what the state is studying) but Higher Speed Rail.
7) Run Sounder Trains more often.
8) Run more express buses. ST had planned on doing this, but was stopped because of the driver shortage.
For Link, I would choose the first option. Link to Federal Way is still very long, extending from the center about as far as much bigger systems serving much bigger cities. Seattle is not especially big, and almost all of the density is close to the center. Tacoma is just not close to Seattle, and there is very little in between. It is better served with express buses or regional rail.
Which gets me to the other ideas. At first I would put money into the buses. These will do the heavy lifting for quite some time. From a topographic standpoint, Tacoma is in an awkward place. There are too many hills between Tacoma and Federal Way for the railroad to go that direction, which explains why it initially goes south before heading north. This adds to the distance the train must travel (compared to cars). Unless the train is significantly faster than driving (e. g. 80-100 MPH) the buses are faster for most trips. The buses also provide a one-seat ride to Downtown Tacoma, the biggest destination in Tacoma. However, if you made the trains faster and if the train went into Downtown Tacoma (items 5 and 6) then the train becomes the preferred mode, by a pretty big margin. You could still run some express buses to Federal Way (for the connection to SeaTac) but if you are going from Tacoma to Seattle, Sounder would be the way to go. At that point, you might be able to justify more all-day service on Sounder (e. g. hourly outside of rush-hour) along with more reverse-peak service. It is difficult, because the line is privately owned, which means the more trains you run, the more expensive it is (per train). This is the reverse of how it would be if the tracks were owned by a public agency.
I agree with the finding that running 4 car Link trains in downtown Tacoma would be a huge undertaking, but also don’t see any reason to operate anything that size south of Federal Way.
That’s why it seems to me Federal Way would be a better separating point than Tacoma Dome.
I can’t argue with anything Ross wrote. I would choose that first option, too.
Regardless, there are multiple pathways to providing better transit to Pierce County residents that are not being advanced.
Glenn, agreed.
Pierce County does not require 4-car trains nor the 6-minute headways currently detailed for Tacoma Dome Link. And once we remove such silly constraints, what possibilities present themselves to us for a revisioning of our railway system?
Well, quite a lot, actually, including many original service concepts put forth by ST and endorsed by the City and County.
It goes back to writings that I believe Ross posted some time ago: Tacoma is not a suburb. Its transportation offerings should reflect that truth.
One of the problems I see with the current set of solutions is it really doesn’t solve one of the basic problems with using transit in Tacoma: a lack of integration.
East-West service is currently oriented around Tacoma Dome and I-5, but the north-south service is oriented around downtown going straight south.
It doesn’t look like much on the map, but when actually using transit on Tacoma I’ve found it necessary to transfer twice just to get around in small areas of Tacoma.
If T-Link were integrated into Link with trains connecting downtown to Tacoma Dome and Federal Way (and possibly operating as far north as Tukwila over Link tracks) a bunch of this goes away, and a fair number of three seat rides become two seat rides. Eg, it would replace current trips that would need 574 -> T Link -> any of about 20 bus routes that connect downtown Tacoma with points north and west that don’t go to the Tacoma Dome.
Ideally, there would be a central transfer point for all the bus routes, but there’s too many freeways that obstruct good options.
@Glenn,
“ That’s why it seems to me Federal Way would be a better separating point than Tacoma Dome.”
Ah, OK, so what exactly do you propose?
1). Status quo. Run partially empty LRV trains from FW to Frighthouse Square and do the transfer to bus or streetcar there. A two-seat ride.
2). Transfer from a multi-LRV Link train at FW to a single car Link LRV train that goes to DT Tacoma, and then transfer to a bus or streetcar? A three-seat ride.
3). Instead of running Link south to Tacoma, instead run Tacoma streetcar north to FW. Result: a two-seat ride, but the trip from FW to DT Tacoma is at streetcar speeds instead of Link speeds.
Clearly #1 is the preferred solution. #2 is slower because of the extra transfer, and #3 is slower because of the lower running speeds of streetcar bs Link.
So I think ST got this one right. And it aligns with what the electeds in Pierce County wanted at the time. I don’t see the problem.
I’d be fine if there was a Tacoma to SeaTac Link Line (as they have the ability to turn back vehicles at Seatac), as that is the primary intention by leaders of Tacoma and Pierce for what they want out of the extension right now.
I propose looking at 2 options:
1. Modify T-Link to use the same Siemens cars as 1-Link. However, only run them as single car trains. Run them to Tukwila International Blvd or some other location that makes sense over the existing Federal Way to Seattle line.
Or end the line at Federal Way, if necessary but some overlap would probably be good.
This acts as a replacement for the 574 Tacoma to SeaTac bus, but provides a lot more connectivity between the various routes in South King and Pierce. It also for travel beyond Tacoma Dome by one station, into the area where there are a lot of north-south buses.
Build the stations on this new section of Tacoma to Federal Way line as easily expandable if necessary, but otherwise don’t build a full 4 car station.
TIBS might need an extra platform for turn around space. It’s got a lot of space that wouldn’t require additional property taking, so probably not too big a problem, especially if it’s built as a one car length platform to start.
2. If modifications to the T-Link line to allow wider stock is not possible, then extend T-Link to Federal Way.
If you extend the cars operation further north on 1-Link, You’d need cars that could deploy bridge plates to clear the gap, and you’d probably want something with a higher maximum speed than the 45 mph of the Skoda cars.
Either way, you wind up with better connections.
I think TDLE is going to happen because of the political support behind it, but based on what I’ve learned from Troy, I think the best outcome now might be to pivot the TDLE from C-Link to T-Link, and sell it as a cost reduction move while still fulfilling the ST3 scope. The Tacoma Dome C-LInk station would disappear, and T-Link would likely run at grade to the East Tacoma station before elevating as some point to cross the river.
I’ve proposed SFW, rather than FW, as the mode change point. That would allow both T-Link and C-Link to access the OMF-S (T-link will need more rolling stock), right-sizes the train size to match projected ridership, and creates a clean break at the county line. While the apolitical technocrat would consider the county line arbitrary, I think it would be very powerful politically and for network legibility: each county’s Board representatives would then be focused on the success of their respective modes, rather than T-Link being an afterthought for even the Tacoma representatives.
This extended T-Link could evolve into a multi-line network (Mike’s original question), or simply be Pierce’s segment of the regional spine.
You might as well run T-link to SeaTac, creating an overlap that doesn’t force transfers for short trips
I believe a wide variety of alternative rail proposals would serve the Pierce County public better. And contrary to some repeatedly inaccurate commentary here, I am not aware of any non-ST government body that endorsed the Tacoma Mall Link Extension or the change of the Link spine from Downtown. It was the request of one county executive, authorized in a unanimous ST Board vote along with a bunch of other LRP changes in 2014, and we have been on our current path ever since. Tacoma’s council advocated for the exact opposite of what we got, and Lakewood and Fife did not even broach the matter. University Place advocated for a pause on light rail extensions beyond Tacoma. I have not seen a letter from the Pierce County Council.
Today, of course, people here rally behind the current LRP because we are thirsty for good transit. But to pretend that our current scheme is the result of a democratic process that featured all of the facts is not only wrong, but verifiably wrong.
….in my opinion, of course. ;)
The problem of productivity for the Tacoma Dome Link is that it’s 8 miles from East Tacoma Station to South Federal Way Station — with just one stop in Fife all while moving at a 55 mph max speed. For comparison it’s only 6 miles from Judkins Park to South Bellevue.
That suggests to me that a faster technology would be better to at least study. Since ST provided Sounder tracks it seems possible to use that investment and take it to an end station on Link in South Federal Way that would be both cheaper and faster.
I see a Pierce County battery EMU line as a more strategic transit investment. It could go a maximum 79 or 80 miles an hour and run from South Federsl Way to DuPont and JBLM. Trains could run every 20 minutes all day with short single track sections if needed. That would connect near lots of key destinations with automated shuttles (like sideways elevators) to connect the Tacoma Mall area. EMU trains have good acceleration and deceleration too.
Constructing a trunk that I’ll call the “P-Line” with a battery EMU seems like an effective solution that doesn’t come with all the costly Link power and track and station investments. It would also have good two-way use all day with JBLM, redeveloped transit villages, the edge of the mall area, Downtown, the casinos, UWT and easy transfers to SeaTac. It’s a full Pierce spine!
@Troy Serad,
“ I am not aware of any non-ST government body that endorsed the Tacoma Mall Link Extension or the change of the Link spine from Downtown”
Just to level-set a bit, when the decision was made to pursue expanded Tacoma Streetcar and to not pursue terminating Link in DT Tacoma, both ST board representatives from the city of Tacoma and the ST board member representing Pierce County were all in agreement. They recommended the current scheme. They recommended keeping Link LR out of DT Tacoma, and the rest of the ST board listened to them.
That is the way it is supposed to work, and it worked.
Now if you don’t like what your representatives recommend, then I suggest you either work more closely with them, or you work to get different representatives. That is also how it should work.
But keep in mind, rail is fairly permanent and represents a major infrastructure investment. The more Tacoma streetcar that gets built the more expensive it will be to suddenly change course to something else. I think the door has already closed on major mode changes.
As per what University Place wants, I suspect they would be happiest if ST never set foot in the county.
Lazarus, we are inching closer to an understanding.
It is true that ST2 included a streetcar expansion project that is diametrically opposed to the staff and political recommendations of the City from just 1-2 years prior. That presumably required some local support that was channeled to the ST Board.
It is also true that in 2010, after ST2 passed and it included a streetcar expansion project to Tacoma General, the local streetcar stakeholder group recommended a Tacoma expansion as opposed to a systems conversion (that would prep for an integration) or an extension to Sea-Tac—explicitly because of the extended timeframes for getting the regional railway down to Tacoma.
I argue that these changes are rooted in pragmatism and a belief that Tacoma’s regional connection would never occur—or occur decades later. Indeed, the latter is certainly true, and the former remains possibly true. We have a more functional street railway in the interim because of these choices.
It is also true that local leaders that helped deliver Tacoma Link and ST had left government by this time, and Tacoma did not have a transportation master plan guiding its development, leaving plans vulnerable to change from various groups and councils over time. Also true, based upon recorded conversations and record documents, was the presence of a general confusion as to what was possible with the railway systems, or how they should interact with the bus network (if that was addressed at all).
Altogether, yes, plans were advanced by Pierce County elected officials and citizens in a strange and piecemeal fashion, often times with the guidance of avowed “roads people” who were skeptics of transit. Also true was that the plans have morphed into something else entirely, which is a distinct railway in Tacoma with no seamless operational capability with the 1-Line, and which will divert key local transit to the Dome from the city center. This just wasn’t the original plan and I doubt Ruth Fisher would have been in approval.
Personally, I think this does real harm to Tacoma and Pierce County transit and I have clearly articulated how and why in public. Others here clearly share that view, too. Link should be blending into the existing transit system of Tacoma and not upending it, just like how the PSE interurban shared road and rail infrastructure for its approach into Downtown and secured connections in the most transit rich and urban sections of my city.
But new and clever solutions cannot be entertained because the LRP was changed in 2014—without local support expressed through official channels that Sound Transit has made available. Now all changes that prevent regional trains from accessing the Tacoma Mall violates that plan and prevents their consideration. But to your point, the mayor of Tacoma did sign off on that on the board, so….
I don’t know if we are in major disagreement on some of your points. I just want to detail the history—the why and how of things—articulate paths forward as both a planner and thinker, and see if we can make a better system with some of those ideas.
It’s not easy down here. Instead, we are matching toward decades-long, multi-billion dollar rail extensions that serve very few and which poison the well for increases in sales tax support for baseline Pierce Transit services. That’s wrong.
Marching toward, not matching!
Definitely an autocorrection.
@Troy,
I think we agree that Tacoma got exactly what they requested of ST, what we most certainly don’t agree on is whether or not a change of course is warranted.
“ It’s not easy down here. Instead, we are matching toward decades-long, multi-billion dollar rail extensions that serve very few and which poison the well for increases in sales tax support for baseline Pierce Transit services. ”
It’s not easy anywhere. Tacoma is not unique in that regard.
As per poisoning the well for future future tax increases, nothing poisons the well faster than perceived government incompetence. And your idea would certainly be perceived that way.
Think of it, Tacoma just built a new streetcar extension that they actually requested. But suddenly “the government” shuts that down and rebuilds it to handle LR instead? People get upset when they see a street get repaved and then torn up a week later to fix a water leak. How do you think the good citizens of Tacoma will respond when they see their “new” Tacoma streetcar get torn up and rebuilt to Link standards.
And it isn’t as easy as you seem to think. Back when it was looked at, just the voltage conversion part of it was a few hundred million dollars. That included converting the streetcars and upgrading the catenary and poles to Link standards.
That is money wasted and it certainly would poison the well.
And the other way to poison the well is to focus too much on DT and to ignore the neighborhoods. That is often perceived as coddling big business, and the neighborhoods hate it. Look no further than some of the comments already posted on this blog.
Na, if you want to build consensus around improved transportation look to increasing coverage. Use the money that would be wasted running Link into DT Tacoma and instead build a second line somewhere. That brings more people into the system, serves more neighborhoods, and provides increased frequency and capacity in the DT urban core. And it makes more voters more happy.
Or just accelerate the currently planned line to TCC.
And there is another problem with running Link into DT Tacoma that we haven’t even discussed yet – it is a literal and figurative dead end. Basically, after reaching DT Tacoma, there is no conceivable expansion path that Tacoma has any hope of ever affording. Tunnels aren’t in the Tacoma subarea budget.
Your understanding of the scope and costs of these projects is not rooted in any analysis that I have ever seen. Nothing related to voltage conversion was “a few hundred million dollars” ever. Literally just make-believe there. The “high” estimate for the entire Tacoma Link conversion was $30.4 million in 2005. That’s it. I don’t know where you get your facts and figures.
Nor has anyone advocated for ripping out rail facilities in Hilltop. You invest a lot of time to write about things that are not proposed nor envisioned.
You would see if you read my plans or chatted with me that I seek to expand coverage dramatically. It is hard to do that, though, when singular railway projects that require huge capital and delivery timeframes exhaust our capacity to plan and expand.
Like I’ve always written: end the trains at Tacoma Dome (preferably on Puyallup Avenue to simplify transfers, which isn’t happening). If not, send Link into Downtown as was the original plan. Every other local major capital project by ST should be BRT or streetcar, whichever mode is mandated. Express buses supplement.
Let’s just agree to disagree.
@Troy,
I don’t post things that I don’t know for sure, or that I haven’t obtained from reliable sources I trust.
I ran the trap-line.
I agree with Donde. Yes to ending Central Link at Federal Way; as most of you know I think Midway — Highline College — with a new bus-only bridge and ramps at South 240th would have been better, but the biggest tranche of money is already spent. Rebuild the T-Link tracks and stations to LRV, not tram, standards as far as 11th or so (three stations in) and have two-car trains run as far as TIB as Glenn suggested. Then add the bridge plates to the existing T-Link cars and do something creative with the south end of the line. I don’t know what that is, because there’s a heck of a hill right south of there.
I say “two-car trains” because you can run one-car trains in two-car stations, but you can’t run two-car trains in one-car stations. So it makes sense to build the stations for double capacity first, instead of expanding them later.
And everything at-grade please, unless there’s another Green Grand Canyon.
Al, that’s a good idea, too, but I DO NOT get your obsession with battery EMU’s. Why haul around all that metal and suffer the recharging delay? Just hang wire; there’s no place on the route where overhead would interfere with double-stacks; nowhere. And Amtrak bi-levels can run under wire. Yes, the pans have to be fairly tall.
You’re suggesting an entirely new railroad from Federal Way to the Puyallup River instead of a Link trackway, so no freights on that! There are freights on the stretch from East Tacoma Junction to the junction just west of the station where Tacoma Rail turns south but the passenger trains head on west, and the VERY occasional peddler freight between the point at which the line up from BNSF by the old station joins the newly rebuilt line on south to Dupont. Those peddlers don’t have high cars, and there wouldn’t need to be wire above the junction into JBLM at Dupont. The DuPont station will probably be at the Wilmington Drive T/C, and military shipments have already diverted into the ladder track west of there.
So I don’t think that wiring the Bypass to Dupont and of course the new stretch to Federal Way would limit freight service notably. If there is a customer on Tacoma Rail south of the junction who needs to receive a high car, the car could be delivered to TR at Centralia.
“ but I DO NOT get your obsession with battery EMU’s.”
I’m not obsessed with battery EMU generally. It just appears strategic o. This situation for these reasons:
1. 79-80 mph rather than 55 mph light rail.
2. Operational compatibility for Sounder tracks between Tacoma Dome and DuPont since ST apparently owns them.
3. No need for electrified caternary wire and its power supply system.
When stops are sited on average at least 3 miles apart like TDLE or ELE north of Mariner, it looks relatively unproductive to build the more rigorous and expensive infrastructure for slower trains that light rail requires. It’s like buying a fancy car that runs too slow for freeways.
Al, I gave you credit for understanding that when I wrote “just hang wire” and included the stretch to Dupont, that I was agreeing with the “MU” part of your suggestion, but replacing the ‘B” with an “E”.
But then you went all anti-Link in your reply, so I guess I was wrong.
Please let me correct the statement to “jusdt hang wires and run EMU’s.
Thank you.
I recently looked at Google Maps with the public transit layer on. The colorful lines designating public transportation are only for lines on tracks or the Monorail. I did not see until now the light blue and dark blue lines representing the Sounder north and Souuth lines. The Orange T-line does not have the extension yet. This is funny. The 1 line, the one they wanted to call the red line is actually red on the map. It is actually a squiggly red line on a map. I guess Google does not care about Redlining. Or the naming of the red line never mattered. But it is humorous that it is there in 2023.
“Redlining” versus “the Red Line” has been a problem with various agencies that use colors for their transit lines. At some point, you are going to want to use the primary color, and next thing you know, it looks bad. It is odd that it seems to be the default.
I think Google Transit has gone back and forth when it comes to the “transit” layer. At one point, I think they included buses. Now it is just trains. It is odd that they don’t have Sounder.
Daniel is gone. That exchange with Jon Cracolici above really got to me, not because of anything Daniel said in it per se, but because I know Jon and he would be a good contributor and would help us reach our goals, but Daniel is driving him and others away, with his thread hijacking and repeating inaccuracies and ultra-long tomes that overwhelm the threads and ad hominem attacks. Ross and Frank and I agreed it was time for him to go.
At the same time I want to recognize that Daniel did bring some contributions and information, and articulated the position of tens of thousands of our fellow residents who have what I call a suburbanist outlook. I learned some things from him, and I think he learned some things from his contact with transit fans.
Thank you for letting us know.
I get the logic behind it, but I also find communities which ban people for anything short of direct personal attacks unwelcoming, myself, so I find this saddening. I disagreed with that particular poster many times, but found ways to benefit from the long, convoluted messages, as the perspective is one the community needs to find ways to engage with. I was always able to move past any inaccuracies they introduced, often in regards to my own posts.
I hope that the community will grow stronger over time. But I am sorry for this particular moment, nevertheless. Wish everyone else here all the best.
Thank you.
The attack on Erica some months back for having a lifestyle not in agreement with him, and then complaining that no women participate here after driving at least a few of them away, was particularly obnoxious.
You can’t have a diversity of opinions if one person is allowed to chase away a variety of others.
That really rubbed me the wrong way every time he said it. It’s also hurtful as someone who is disabled because it basically told me that my opinion was invalid for being a young adult male instead of just the fact that I am an urbanist and transit advocate out of necessity and the circumstances I am born with and that it has nothing to do with my gender at all in how my opinions are shaped.
I know a decent few transgender or non binary transit advocates who want a better more walkable and safe cities to live in. So advocacy is not just a gendered or “boys only club” thing, but a societal thing and that’s how I try to see it instead of an either or affair.
Is there a problem of not enough diversity in urbanism advocacy circles, yes. I believe that’s an issue of who was going into study urban planning or ability to advocate with soft power for multiple decades. At the same time, I am definitely seeing more Women, LGBTQ+, and BIPOC doing transit and urbanism advocacy nowadays. So I am seeing headwinds of change towards having more nuanced discussions with more diverse voices available to share and discuss ideas and opinions.
https://info.kingcounty.gov/kcelections/Vote/contests/candidates.aspx?cid=6616&candidateid=6434&lang=en-US&pamphletson=true
He was a candidate for Mercer Island city council in 2019.
https://www.mi-reporter.com/news/rosenbaum-and-thompson-race-for-for-mercer-island-council-pos-1/
More from MI Reporter; note passage on the bus intercept. The bi-lateral agreement between MI and ST bans off-island buses south of I-90; ironically, this leads to many transferring riders having to cross North Mercer Way to access the station. Alternatively, if buses could use the streets south of I-90, bus stops could have been placed at the ends of the station on SE 77th and 80th avenues and the transfer walks shorter.
Thanks, that was a decent, thoughtful platform he had. I think we may have brought out the worst in him by refusing to be convinced.
I know it had to be a tough decision but I think we all get it.
While randomly looking at documents found this very interesting one from Dave Peters (independent consultant to Sound Transit board May 26 2022)
1) Talks about buying real estate early rather than waiting until an apartment is built on the station location (aka west seattle), and more importantly not waiting for environmental impact statement to complete. “Real Estate issues are also chronic; recommend early parcel acquisition prior to the FEIS”
Though I was under the impression Sound Transit wasn’t allowed to buy the parcels before the EIS, was it always allowed to do so?
2) Talks about the parking garages Sound Transit is building is a waste of it’s talent and should be left to private developers. “The program includes extensive parking garages, built on ST’s account, but: • Private developers routinely build parking and at less cost. • Leased parking could free up needed financial capacity. • Staff with specialized transit expertise are underutilized on generic parking
structures. • ST’s organization imposes a cost burden on these relatively simple structures. ”
https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/FinalRecords/2022/Presentation%20-%20ST%20Annual%20Program%20Review%20Dave%20Peters%205-26-22.pdf
Nooooo. I love DT. You need both sides and over the months I’ve even come to agree with a lot of what DT says.
Academia is doing the same thing, banning any opposing voice. It’s all so sad.
Daniel, if you are reading this, create your own blog! You love to write. I suggested it to you once before, but you said no. Maybe now?
Btw, another commenter who was banned by STB also had the initials DT. Weird.
Ooops, that other dude’s initials was d.p., not d.t.
Again, he wasn’t banned for his opposing voice. He was banned for repeatedly violating the comment policy (https://seattletransitblog.com/comment-policy/). I can assure you, this was not a decision that was taken lightly, or in haste. Management discussed it at great length, and everyone agreed that he should be asked to leave. Again, not for one violation, but for a series of them.
I am a sometimes reader and rare poster.
I am a manager at a startup IT company. We see our future as creative destructors.
I seek out and encourage the contrarian voice in my group. Yes, that voice is often less polite than the rest of the group, but that is what I want. What I don’t want is to tell my boss I was blindsided because everyone in my group agreed with me and we didn’t see or anticipate something, and I was too sensitive to listen to someone say I might be wrong. My boss likes to say creative destructors don’t need rearview mirrors.
I went back and read the thread between Jon, Mike and Daniel about a station on 4th Ave. S. that will cost an additional $800 million according to Sound Transit. I didn’t see any ad hominin attacks as Mike mentions which I don’t tolerate. Basically in the end Mike and Daniel agreed that some third-party entity will have to find $800 million outside the Seattle subarea or the whole conversation is pointless, plus a station at midtown, when County Exec. Constantine and Mayor Harrell believe a station on 5th and James will be very important to revitalizing downtown and will generate $168 million in development revenue. Mike then went on to post that if a second tunnel through Seattle is not entirely scrapped Link to West Seattle and Ballard isn’t affordable anyway, which makes a station at 4th Ave. S. moot either way.
I also remember the Erica Barnett article on the CID petition. I don’t remember Daniel attacking Erica personally, and doubt anyone could scare off Erica who is a seasoned journalist and hasn’t posted on this blog in years. What he did state was Erica should have made clearer the CID petition was for a station on 4th, not 5th, which The Urbanist had misinterpreted, and Jon was not clear about either, along with tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in mitigation for the CID on top of the $800 million.
I don’t remember Daniel being very knowledgeable about transit, but he was knowledgeable about politics, money and housing. I believe he was a lawyer, and this blog has very few lawyers or people in positions of power, or folks who actually ran for city council and lost by 40 votes. I remember Mike writing a post in which he stated Daniel’s views although contrary to many but not all on this blog were valuable because they represented the vast majority of citizens in the region and on the eastside, where I now live since our company moved to the eastside. These are the folks who generally determine whether a county levy passes, and transit and housing advocates need to understand how these folks think if we are ever going to communicate with them or educate them on the importance of transit and affordable rental housing, because they don’t generally think about these issues or participate on this blog or blogs like The Urbanist. Nextdoor on the eastside reaches tens if not hundreds of thousands of eastsiders and is an entirely different world from this blog. Probably a majority of ND posters are women. They are not as delicate as some on this blog think :).
Anyway, I respect the decision of the blog’s administrators although the blog will become even less diverse which is hard to imagine. I worry this blog is isolating itself even further from the majority of citizens. As I said, I rarely post but felt censorship of a different voice is something that is important enough to post and think about. I stopped reading The Urbanist when it stopped allowing comments from its own readers and thought that was a mistake by The Urbanist, and made it more of an insular social club than an educational publication.
@R.E.M.,
I have told the story before on this blog, but I once had an engineering professor who said, “the skill of an engineer is inversely proportional to the amount of paper he uses.” I have always remembered that.
Why does it matter?
Because there are a few people on this blog who post excessively long comments over and over again, and DT was one of them. But what I find is that the longer the post, the less likely it is to contain any real point worth reading.
So I find myself self censoring certain authors on this blog. And again, DT was one of them. Excessively long posts usually aren’t worth the time it takes to read them, and the authors who have a penchant for making long posts are often somewhat monotheist.
So, while I found DT somewhat annoying sometimes, I really don’t know the specifics of why he got banned. Because I rarely read his posts past the first or second paragraph.
He didn’t get banned because his posts were long. This isn’t Twitter. He got banned for repeatedly violating the comment policy of the blog.
Length is a difficult thing to codify. Both Ross and I write long sometimes, and I’ve been working on being more concise. But the issue wasn’t just the length. It was injecting long rants on his four or five pet topics into the middle of threads, which derailed the discussion and forced others to refute inaccuracies, and turned everything into a Sound Transit issue or “Is ST3 justified?” or 3rd Avenue crime, making it hard to get beyond those or to explore the articles’ original topics. There’s so much more we need to do than just argue in circles about those three topics.
I don’t agree with part of the decision as to why they did it. They partially did it to appease someone outside of this blog, who I think is associated with Seattle Subway, presumably in the hope that he, and others, will contribute here in the future. If that was part of the reason for the the Dan ban, it’s a pathetic reason. It’s impossible to gain respect through appeasement and capitulation.
> They partially did it to appease someone outside of this blog, who I think is associated with Seattle Subway,
I’m unsure if there was a larger reason, but I don’t think Seattle Subway contributors are that “thin skinned”, you should see the comments they get on their facebook posts.
I can assure you, this was not done to appease anyone outside the blog. This was a management decision, and everyone agreed that this was the right thing to do. He was respectfully — with great tact, in my opinion — asked to leave. It was bound to happen sometime, given his history of violations.
This is about a lot more than the exchange above. Daniel has violated the comment policies several times and has long been on the edge of being banned. Stricter moderators would have done it long ago. In almost every article he injects his pet issues into the middle of threads, with long volumous essays, and then half the comments become repeating the same issues and refuting his same inaccuracies again and again, to the point we can’t address the original issue the article was about and people stop reading. It’s not simply about having additional viewpoints and skeptics — we need them and we have them among the commentariat.
But we also have goals: implementing our transit and land use vision. We need enough cohesion that we can pursue those and collaborate with partners who are also pursuing them or overlapping things. That’s what was being lost. We’ll still have discussions about whether our visions are the right ones, or what we might be overlooking, or how much we should compromise with residents who think differently. That’s all part of normal blog discussions we’ve always had.
STB is not a monolith of one view only, and I am not a monolith of one view only. I think we’ve shown that in our writings and in our light moderating. If you still think it’s a one-view echo chamber or in danger of becoming so, I don’t know what to say, because I don’t think it is.
this blog has very few lawyers
Hmmm, you might be surprised. Not that I’m a lawyer (although my mom was, and one of my kids is, and my brother in law…).
In any event, him being a lawyer doesn’t make the case for him stronger. It anything, it makes it weaker. He violated the policies of this blog numerous times. He was warned numerous times. As a lawyer, he should know better. The policy is not that complicated. I get why folks might not have noticed the violations, as many people (like Lazarus) simply skipped the really long comments. I don’t blame them. I often skipped them as well. But when I did read the comments, you could often find the violations. As Mike mentioned, he was routinely warned about this. At some point, you reach a final straw, and that’s that.
As far as diversity of opinion, you can still find it. Many of the reasonable points he made are shared by many of those who have commented here. It may be that some of the reasonable arguments he made were unique, but I doubt it. But a big part of what he wrote was simply not reasonable, and often at odds with our comment policy (https://seattletransitblog.com/comment-policy/).
There is always the danger that a forum like this will devolve into groupspeak. Transit itself is controversial in this country. So much so, that proponents of transit find themselves fighting for any form of it, the way that folks want national health care, without bothering to explain which type (Canada, U. K., Germany?). As a result, every transit proposal can be seen as good. Yet I see nothing of the kind here. There is opposition, and quite often, nuance.
It may have been A Joy he attacked, rather than Erica.
Who he attacked and their ability to deal with the attacks isn’t the problem. The problem is the personal attacks, and the hostility this creates.
If you want diverse voices, you aren’t going to get them by having one loud person bullying those who disagree with them. In fact, that discourages all but a very few who are willing to tolerate it from participating.
“this blog has very few lawyers”
“Hmmm, you might be surprised.”
I’m still here as well. :)
Thank you Ross and Mike for taking the time to fill us in on what has transpired with regard to one of our fellow frequent commenters, as well as giving the rationale behind this decision. It is unfortunate that Mr. Thompson did not heed the warnings he was given and continued to violate the blog’s commenting policies. Given these circumstances, the action taken by the blog’s management seems appropriate, imho.
Additionally, I just wanted to take a moment to thank you guys and Frank as well for all that you do to keep this blog up and running. It’s a great resource for us transit nerds and anyone else interested in the topics of transit and land use. I may not always add any commentary to the posted articles and open threads, but I remain tuned in to the discussions nevertheless. One of the critical things I learned early on in my legal career was when to do more listening and reading/researching and less talking and opining.
And you are VERY welcome, Tlsgwm. You have sound observations about the transit system up in Snohomish County and opinions about Link expansion that focus on measurable goals. In other words, you’re a thoughtful supporter with questions and a point of view that are useful for all of us.
I personally thought that Daniel might be a genuine asset for raising the issues we have to the political leaders who control things. He mentioned several times that he had been Dow Constantine’s classmate at UW Law. He appears before the King County Courts regularly. He must cross paths with Executive Constantine occasionally.
Well Gollicky Moe, uncle Dan, Dan, maybe you could suggest to your buddy Dow that he read a discussion on STB about the second tunnel? Maybe a couple or three? It would take only a few minutes of his precious time.
Daniel deflected, over and over. I don’t think he was hostile to idea of transit, just too skeptical of its possible benefits and way too insular [NOT an intentional pun] in his view of possible lifestyles.
Dow Constantine reads STB. He said so in a public forum. He said he sometimes takes articles to his staff and says, “This! Can we do this?” And some of the staff read it. So they know what we’re saying, even if it doesn’t translate much into policy because they also have other factors they prioritize. They may not read every single comment but they know the direction of the articles. And occasionally (rarely), a councilmember pops in and makes a comment. Politicians and staff tend to read silently, probably due to conflict-of-interest reasons and political reasons.
If Dow Constantine does indeed see value in the discussions on this blog, he needs to trust me (being the expert in transportation issues, and having my finger on the pulse of the inter-county travelers), so…
Don’t Screw Up the Transfers for Travelers Going to The Airport!
[Ed: Adjusted boldface, guessing your intention. -MO]
It’s a shame that this decision had to be made.
I’m a lurker, but a very regular reader. I found Daniel’s posts to be interesting, at times, albeit usually way too long and frequently repetitive. That said, diversity of opinion is important, and he certainly provided a perspective that was different from many of the usual posters here. However, repeated violation of the comment rules, and ignoring repeated warnings is not justifiable, and there is no doubt that Daniel knew better. He’s an attorney; he understands rules, and why we have them.
Again, it’s a shame that it came down to this, but the people who run the blog get to make the decisions, and it doesn’t appear completely unreasonable.
I do appreciate the work that is required to keep this website functional and interesting.
Screw that, I want light rail in West Seattle. The BRT services are decent, but the travel times compared to completely separated rail, along with integration with the rail network will allow for getting to other neighborhoods much more easily in a way that BRT cannot (BRT with full separation gets close, but that is often sacrificed in the design process)
The travel times are the same or worse for most travel trips. What exact trip pairs are better are you thinking about