SDOT Asks for Input on Latest Plans around 130th Station
Bike/Bus Stop Work on Roosevelt Soon
Open House for New Building Next to Burien Transit Center
UW Researchers Release Study of Second-Hand Drug Exposure on Transit — Transit Agencies News Release
Congratulations to Lisa Nault for becoming Metro’s Operator of the Year
This is an open thread.
NE 130th Street
SDOT first cartoon: does the three lane profile imply that ROW was taken from the current four lane profile to widen the ped-bike facility to the north?
SDOT second cartoon: the south lane is labeled east of the on ramp; west of the on ramp, it has to a BAT lane; there is significant right turning traffic to the I-5 on ramp.
The SDOT text says bus stops would be added at 8th and 10th avenues NE; current service is on NE 125th Street and not on Roosevelt Way NE; is that stop spacing close? Does SDOT plan bus-bike humps? How long would they be?
SDOT is silent of the area west of 1st Avenue NE; that is the west edge of the project area.
SDOT links to the Metro Lynnwood Link P3 website; it shows Route 77 with headway of 15/30, in weekday peak and midday periods; that does not seem adequate; Route 77 also has a loop in Lake City. (Again, why is ST delaying the pathway change to Route 522?). Route 75 is shown serving 5th Avenue NE and not reaching the NE 130th Street Link station.
>> SDOT first cartoon: does the three lane profile imply that ROW was taken from the current four lane profile to widen the ped-bike facility to the north?
I think so, yes.
>> SDOT second cartoon: the south lane is labeled east of the on ramp; west of the on ramp, it has to a BAT lane; there is significant right turning traffic to the I-5 on ramp.
Good point. It may be that the bus lane starts right after the on-ramp, which is just east of Third. Thus from 1st to 3rd it would be one lane, shared by everybody. Traffic splits. Cars heading to the freeway go to the right. Cars heading straight change into the left lane. Buses head straight (in the right lane). So technically it is a bus lane (between the ramp and 5th).
On a related note, I talked to a representative about the section between 1st and 3rd. I mentioned the work that was done by various community leaders to close off 3rd. He was unaware of it. If 3rd is closed to traffic (which is what the neighborhood wants) then this makes it significantly safer. It also means that we don’t need space for a turn lane (between 1st and 3rd). We get by with the existing turn lane (for westbound cars headed south on 1st). This extra space could be used as a bus lane there (or it could be used as a bus lane the other direction).
>> The SDOT text says bus stops would be added at 8th and 10th avenues NE; current service is on NE 125th Street and not on Roosevelt Way NE; is that stop spacing close?
That was my first reaction as well. It is a bit close. It is 300 meters (with standard stop spacing being 400). If you don’t have a stop there, then it is about 600 meters (or too far apart). But there is another consideration. The corridor is at an angle. Rarely do you actually gain anything with the stop at 8th. For example, imagine you are at 130th & 8th. It is just as easy to walk to 5th as it is to walk to 8th. Likewise if you are at 125th & 8th. Thus the effective coverage from this stop is actually fairly small. The main people who would benefit are those very close to the stop.
>> Does SDOT plan bus-bike humps? How long would they be?
My understanding is that this will follow the new SDOT standard, which includes cement curbs (with flexi-posts on top).
>> SDOT is silent of the area west of 1st Avenue NE; that is the west edge of the project area.
When I talked to the representative, he said that they had already starting working on the western side. I’m not sure why they released this as a two-stage thing, but they did.
Other issues: I talked to him about the BAT lane eastbound on 125th, between 14th and 15th. It is a weird BAT lane, as the paint is faded, and it is a sharrow. But it works like a BAT lane (https://maps.app.goo.gl/rbahmyCvY4FGqzL97) and has since the 41 used it (now it is used by the 75). The bus routinely takes advantage of it, skipping ahead of the traffic going straight. According to the cartoons, this looks like it will go away. I told him that is really unacceptable, as the main reason the station was added in the first place was to connect to buses. He agreed, and said that buses are the first priority (with bikes second). He would look into that issue.
In general, there isn’t much here to speed up the buses, and it looks like they could be slower (as traffic in general is slower). It is very tricky, as once again bikes, pedestrians and buses compete for space. But the idea that this should be a major bike corridor (other than the crossing itself) is exaggerated, in my opinion. This isn’t like Eastlake. It is a very steep bike up from Lake City. I also think that whenever possible, bikes should be shifted to parallel corridors along here. West of 1st, the bikes should use 128th to the south, and Roosevelt to the north (along with the aforementioned 3rd, closed to cars). That would be better for bikes and buses.
I agree about the 77. It is very messy, as is so much of the last restructure plans. It almost feels like they went backwards. Speaking of bus restructure, he said that SDOT is working with Metro on the 75. He suggested that north/eastbound (from Northgate to Lake City) the bus would go straight on 5th until Roosevelt/130th (right by the station) then turn. It couldn’t do the same going the other direction (since 5th is one way). Apparently it is difficult to navigate that section around 125th & Roosevelt. My first thought was that this could effectively double the number of buses from 130th Station, but it is awkward, since the first stop they would share would be at 8th (if that station is added). The 75 just seems like a mistake (there are better ways to serve 5th between Northgate Way and 130th).
There remain a lot of details to work out, and other than a few things (like SDOT saying they will continue to ban the left turn from 130th to 5th) I remain quite concerned about the plans for bus integration.
I wish the project area extended west further. A safer bike connection to/from the Interurban Trail is very much needed in this area.
The project area does extend to the Interurban Trail: https://wwwqa.seattle.gov/Images/Departments/OPCD/OngoingInitiatives/NE130th145thMultimodalPlan/20200821_multimodal_mastermap.jpg. It is just that they are focusing on a different piece right now.
@another engineer,
The SDOT plan for 130th St Station is basically a big nothing burger. It’s basically a short road diet with some bike lanes and LPI’s thrown in. Hardly anything to write home to mom about.
The bus infrastructure is particularly disappointing. A single 2-block stretch of a bus lane? And that one bus lane is only eastbound? And it is only on top of a freeway overpass and 100% inside the freeway ROW? Really?
I suspect a lot of the lane number changes have to do with setting up places for the bus stops, but it is still pretty pathetic compared to almost every other station on the system.
I have nothing against road diets, but I’m not sure this plan will make things better or faster for bus commuters, particularly for eastbound commuters.
“I’m not sure this plan will make things better or faster for bus commuters”
Just the fact that you’re busing halfway to Northgate rather than all the way and you’re avoiding the Northgate Way congestion will speed it up.
I note that the 130th Station is the NE 130th St Station in North Seattle.
Will there be a discussion about naming it to something like Pinehurst/ 130th St instead?
How about Haller Lake Station?
While it’s a good name choice, I’m a bit concerned about ending up with too many “lake” stations. We already have Angle Lake, Star Lake and Mountlake Terrace. Ash Way could end up as Martha Lake.
ST has written guidance on station names and avoiding redundancy is the initial goal.
https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/ActiveDocuments/Motion%20M2022-45.pdf
I cannot think of another station that uses either “pine” nor “hurst”. That’s why I suggested it. It’s not going to get confused.
Too many stations have University in their name and especially on NB trains for the announcement for University that a 2nd announcement is made to stay on the train for the University of Washington.
That drives home the point about using University too many times.
The other station is called “Bel-Red/130th”. The obvious solution is to just drop the “130th” and call that station “Bel-Red”. Sound Transit station names are a mess. It seems like they are way too monumental, as if it is an Amtrak Station (e. g. “South Shoreline”) or way too verbose. Often they are both (“South Shoreline/148th”). It is as if they are giving directions(“148th/The-station-you-would-use-if-you-are-coming-from- Kenmore”) instead of just giving it a name, based on the cross street, or something nearby. I’m sure thousands of people get off at the “U-District” Station and walk to the University of Washington, even though the other station is called “University of Washington”. The names don’t have to tell you exactly where they are.
Anyway, I don’t know if they will change the name. But for now it is officially “NE 130th St” (or what I would just call “130th”) while the other station is “Bel-Red/130th”. Calling them “Bel-Red” and “130th” would be extremely simple and remove any confusion. Hopefully they do that.
the Bel-Red area has at least three East Link stations: Overlake Village, 130th Avenue NE, and Spring District. Bellevue has done a good job of fulfilling their plans of 20 years ago. It was a quiet light industrial area.
It’s why I generally advocate for neighborhood or important Landmarks/Transit Centers first for station names before using a street name (espically if its numbered) and if you use a street use cross streets instead of just a single street name unless it’s unique enough that it wont likely be duplicated in the future.
The whole debate over what to change “University Street Station” to mildly annoyed me and just wish they had picked something like “Seneca” or “Midtown” and be done with it instead of needing to do the Seattle Process song and dance for such a small change that most people wouldn’t notice about other than a small group of folks.
As for using duplicate or overly long names. Denver’s RTD where I live currently is super guilty of this as they will use both very unwieldy names or duplicate names for light rail and commuter rail stations. Most egregious case is like “60th & Sheridan/Arvada Gold Strike” or “40th Ave & Airport Blvd–Gateway Park” station here. Sometimes too much information is a bad thing that will just confuse people and better to just keep it simple and succinct.
Calling it….
– “60th & Sheridan”
– “Arvada Gold Strike”
or (other example)
– “Airport Blvd-Gateway Park”
– “Salida-Gateway Park”
tells people enough information to understand where they’re going but isn’t going to be an info dump of white noise.
Numbering does have its advantages though, if lots of the other stations are numbered. You get a clear sense of direction. Imagine you board at the UW, and it is crowded. You are headed to 185th. You can’t quite make out the sign, but you notice the numbers keep getting bigger. You are at the right train. At 145th you figure you are getting close. Sure enough, it is the next stop.
Having complex names, or a mix just defeats the purpose.
“Numbering does have its advantages though, if lots of the other stations are numbered. ”
Isn’t ST already rolling out giving every station a three digit number code to indicate its position rather than keep pictograms? I believe the new code for Tacoma Dome will have a 131 code (expecting placeholder codes for Graham and BAR to be issued).
https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/FinalRecords/2022/Presentation%20-%20Station%20Codes%2011-3-22.pdf
If ST wants to replace pictograms with three digit numbers, it really shouldn’t create more confusion by putting numbered streets on station names anywhere.
I think 130th is still just a planning name. There’s a public process to choose the final name, and I don’t recall seeing any official proposals yet. Pinehurst seems like a reasonable name, or Lake City.
“The whole debate over what to change “University Street Station” to mildly annoyed me and just wish they had picked something like “Seneca” or “Midtown””
I think they finally decided on Seneca Street Station, and it will be renamed in ST2. I would drop the “Street”.
“Isn’t ST already rolling out giving every station a three digit number code to indicate its position rather than keep pictograms?”
That’s still the plan as far as I know.
“duplicate or overly long names.”
A few I’ve seen are:
The DC Metro station I know as “U Street” is in the audio announcements “U Street/African American Civil War Memorial/Cardozo” in the audio announcements and maybe the signs. The map now has “U Street” in bold and the rest in gray.
The LA Metro station I know as “Rosa Parks” was “Imperial/Wilmington/Rosa Parks station”, and is now “Willowbrook/Rosa Parks station”.
I visited “North Shoreline” a couple of months ago and it SO reminded me of the Metrolink Stations on the old Santa Fe main southeast out of downtown LA. It’s like they licensed the design from Metrolink. But, at least it’s not a Skycastle like Northgate, 147th (“Shoreline South”) and Lynnwood.
So, yeah, they are building a commuter railroad…..
A lot of stations use the word “street”. Is there anything wrong with that?
If “130th St” is not used, then I suppose some could get confused and head toward 130th Ave NE.
Just call this one Pinehearst and the other one Bel-red (as ross noted)
I’m not sure why were opting to use streets here especially when it can get confused with another station
“A lot of stations use the word “street”.”
Neighborhood names are better than street names. A street name can itself become a neighborhood name, like “Othello” or potentially “Seneca”, since those areas don’t have a well-known existing identity. What I’m objecting to is “Seneca Street”, not “130th Street”. There’s no other Seneca to confuse it with.
I don’t have a problem with having “Lake” in the name of more stations, though 148th’s claim could be just as strong as 130th to serving the “Haller Lake” neighborhood.
Regardless, it is abundantly clear one too many station names includes “University”.
I saw an “ongoing” elevator outage at Northgate, looked again a few minutes later, and saw the alert was gone, and a new alert was added for an ongoing elevator outage at TIBS.
I don’t expect ST to offer estimates for when vertical conveyances will be back up, but a time stamp on each alert would give a good idea how long a conveyance has been out of service.
The details for how to get to the nearest elevator are great!
Having a link from the top page of alerts to the elevator and escalator outages seems right-sized. Leading with alerts on the front page qualifies as excellent customer service, from my standpoint.
The information on NE 130th is surprisingly hard to browse through with a bunch of random links. I think https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/programs/transportation-planning/ne-130th-and-125th-mobility-and-safety-project is easier to view the streets
> SDOT first cartoon: does the three lane profile imply that ROW was taken from the current four lane profile to widen the ped-bike facility to the north?
Yes for the “NE 130th St: 1st Ave NE to 3rd Ave NE” that new shared use path is from taking one lane.
The “NE 130th St I-5 overpass: 3rd Ave NE to 5th Ave NE ” is a bit more complicated. It looks like that north-most lane of the 4 is larger so they used that extra space to convert it to a larger sidewalk.
The bike lane on NE 130th will actually be a bit annoying considering the other project has the bike lanes on both the north and south side of the street west of 1st ave NE. Then from 3rd avenue to 8th avenue NE its on a north side bidirectional protected bike lane (well shared use path from 1st to 3rd). And then splits back to a north/south each direction lane east of 8th avenue.
I guess if one is going east bound they could also use the bus lane but in general it’s just a bit confusing for east bound bike users
https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/safety-first/vision-zero/projects/n-130th-st-vision-zero-safety-corridor-
WL: thanks for the link to the western project; I had not seen them; I hope they are preliminary. Yes, SDOT has other two-way PBL with awkward transitions. Another awkward SDOT trend is to attempt to provide both cycling and transit priority on the same arterial (e.g., Broadway, Union Street, Pike-Pine streets, NE 65th Street, East Green Lake Drive North, Roosevelt Way NE, and next 11th/12th avenues NE). This means more capital cost; it has meant slower transit flow; it means conflicts between the cyclists and bus riders going between the buses and the curbs. In the J Line plans, the Eastlake Avenue East stations have the sidewalk narrowed.
Another option for the west part: retain four-lane profile, resurface the arterial, improve the sidewalks; so, it is better for pedestrians and transit. Provide bicycle emphasis on Roosevelt Way and 3rd Avenue NE to the north of North 130th Street and to North 125th Street, Stone Avenue North, and North 128th Street west of 1st Avenue NE. Take transit off North 128th Street and the other Haller Lake local streets. Provide very frequent service on NE/North 125t/130th streets.
Another option for the west part: retain four-lane profile, resurface the arterial, improve the sidewalks; so, it is better for pedestrians and transit. Provide bicycle emphasis on Roosevelt Way and 3rd Avenue NE to the north of North 130th Street and to North 125th Street, Stone Avenue North, and North 128th Street west of 1st Avenue NE. Take transit off North 128th Street and the other Haller Lake local streets. Provide very frequent service on NE/North 125t/130th streets.
Yes, exactly. This is much better for transit. A lot of bikers prefer it as well, as they avoid the really busy streets. It sets you up for much better crossing of Aurora as well (at 128th). Make 128th essentially a bike/pedestrian street, like 92nd (https://maps.app.goo.gl/6NXJGsDnf5Uqimcv9). Cars can’t go across. Cars can’t turn left onto 92nd. At most you have someone taking a right onto the street, but of course, there is no right on red. This means that once a pedestrian or bike gets a walk light, it is about as safe as can be. In contrast, you really can’t do that for 130th. Cars have to turn right (from 130th) which means they are going from an arterial to another arterial (where bikes are). Meanwhile, you still have to deal with the buses, which are supposed to be the priority here.
This is a classic multi-modal situation. The buses and bike should run on different streets.
The bike lane on NE 130th will actually be a bit annoying considering the other project has the bike lanes on both the north and south side of the street west of 1st ave NE. Then from 3rd avenue to 8th avenue NE its on a north side bidirectional protected bike lane (well shared use path from 1st to 3rd). And then splits back to a north/south each direction lane east of 8th avenue.
There was a lot of discussion about that at the open house. The SDOT rep said that making it two way along Roosevelt would be problematic, because of the messy intersection between 5th and Roosevelt. With a new light at 8th, they feel it isn’t that big of a deal to cross the street, and then keep going. 8th is a designated greenway. I asked him if there was going to be any work on the greenway (such as closing it off to cars, or making it one way northbound) and he said no (as of now). The traffic light will help though. Since this is a new traffic light, it will mean no right on red, and presumably a walk signal that starts before the car green light.
Ingraham has a popular IB program that pulls from all over the city. When you consider street facilities, you need to consider the minds of teens getting on and off at the station. They will take the quick and easy path, not the safest path. Deviating 2 blocks south then returning 2 blocks north a couple blocks later just isn’t going to happen.
But a naked 5 foot bike lane isn’t great either. Maybe flip the tree and the bike lane, to create a buffer. Though that would add expense, having to move curbs, rather than just paint.
If you had ultra frequent bus service, they might transfer, but thats pretty unlikely for such a short distance.
If I were a student, I’d take 133rd or or 135th. Did anyone ask them?
There is a Greenways group that has spent a considerable amount of time on these issues. They looped in an administrator (I believe the principal) of Ingraham. I’m pretty sure they talked to several students there as well.
I agree, high school students will take the shortest path. If they use transit, they will use the sidewalk on the north side of 130th between the school and the station. What happens in terms of bus lanes or bike lanes won’t really matter.
I realize that the plans focus on the importance of people biking to the station, but that really isn’t the issue. Like most stations, very few will. I don’t think that UW Station, for example, gets a lot of riders by bike, despite being on the Burke Gilman. It is more about the buses and bikes fighting for what little right-of-way exists. It is a very important transit corridor, and a significantly important bike corridor. It is one of the few crossings of I-5 for bikes. It has been part of the bike master plan for a long time. The problem is, it is extremely important from a transit perspective, and there is only enough space to go around. It isn’t a trivial thing to pull off, although eddie and I agree that the solution west of I-5 is relatively simple (by building bike paths north and south of 130th). The challenge, really, is the eastern section, where the alternatives to biking on Roosevelt and 125th are not great. You could do it, but it would require folks detour (to the south) quite a bit. Since the street already has bike lanes, I don’t see that happening.
“I don’t think that UW Station, for example, gets a lot of riders by bike, despite being on the Burke Gilman.”
it is not really on the Burke, but the bridge does give pretty easy access. I recall the bike racks being well used last tike I was there.
If you supply routes that are safe and direct, people will bike. Kyoto station hatd acres of bike parking, and even an automated bike elevator to store bikes underground when they ran out of room. Because it was safe and direct to get there by bike, people biked. And people even paid to park their bikes.
The walkshed at both the 130th and 145th stations is horrendous. If you made safe, direct biking routes, the expanded bikeshed would somewhat mitigate the pathetic placement along the highway and next to a fenced in golf-course, and lack of up-zoning around these two stations.
I think strong investment in bike infrastructure will actually do substantially more to increase access than asking people to ride a bus in heavy traffic for a mile or two then transfer, then ride link, then likely transfer again. Especially with the anemic frequencies that are proposed, just let people access it without transfer, safely and directly, via bike. These are mostly residential neighborhoods. It shouldn’t be this hard to carve out a safe, direct route, and supply some basic covered bike parking.
I was at 130th / Haller Lake Station and 148th St Station yesterday.
130th’s walkshed is a big nothing-burger of SFH, open space, and car sewer. But it has a few years before the station gets built and opened.
148th’s closest walkshed is taken up by a parking garage.
The sidewalks on 145th over to 15th Ave NE remain narrow or overgrown by shrubbery. In one stretch, the sidewalk seems to have become long-term storage for jersey barriers. Groundbreaking on the dreaded traffic circle does not appear to have occurred yet.
TOD apartment buildings are being built west of I-5 and north of 145th. There are lots of fenced-off and abandoned houses east of the station, suggesting they will be demolished in favor of something else, and that the neighbors are not into demonizing TOD apartment builders.
North of 145th would be a great place for a lid over I-5.
A lot of TOD has gone up east of Northgate, between 5th Ave NE and 8th Ave NE, with several more buildings under construction. This one rectangle contains more TOD than all of Rainier Valley combined.
> 130th’s walkshed is a big nothing-burger of SFH, open space, and car sewer. But it has a few years before the station gets built and opened.
Unfortunately the 130th area hasn’t even been upzoned yet, so legally one can’t build apartments yet. They are discussing the zoning alternatives for the area:
https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/OPCD/OngoingInitiatives/NE130thAnd145thStationAreaPlanning/130_145_Alternatives__2022_1202.pdf
Though it is still a pretty small upzoning, mainly looks like only one or two apartment buildings on the east side of the freeway along wide a wider area for townhouses.
> A lot of TOD has gone up east of Northgate, between 5th Ave NE and 8th Ave NE, with several more buildings under construction.
It’s been quite exciting to see Northgate have much more housing and the further apartments to be built on the mall land will add more as well.
> This one rectangle contains more TOD than all of Rainier Valley combined.
Unfortunately the Mount Baker upzoning was kind of watered down combined with the odd parcel sizings made few apartments be constructed. Though the judkins park station area is getting more apartments with grand street commons and 900 rainier.
Unfortunately the 130th area hasn’t even been upzoned yet
They will probably upzone it after the election. A lot depends on who gets elected. Regardless, most of the riders will arrive by bus (not on foot). Of course that is true of a lot of our stations (including Northgate). With a lot of the development that is nearby (between 5th and 8th) it is faster to take a bus then walk to the station (https://maps.app.goo.gl/Q7rFKpuKFTRAFYYi9).
nice report. There are stretches where utility poles block the narrow sidewalks for the disabled. The Stride3 project will widen NE 145th Street is a few places, but it will provide only two pair of stations (e.g., 15th and 30th avenues NE).
Stride3
https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/145th-public-outreach-roll-plot.pdf
North of 145th would be a great place for a lid over I-5.
They are going to build a bridge: https://www.shorelinewa.gov/government/projects-initiatives/148th-street-pedestrian-bicycle-bridge
@Brent White,
You are correct, there is not much inside the 130th/Haller Lake Station walkshed, and nor will there ever be. Between the freeway to the west, Northacres Park to the SW, Jackson Park Golf course to the the NE, and the Thornton Creek ravine and wetland to the east, there just isn’t a lot of developable land around the station. And that will remain the case regardless of zoning.
As to what to officially name the station, I vote for “Potemkin Station”. The “P” is reminiscent of the “P” in Pinehurst and functions as a way finding aid, and the name “Potemkin” reflects its origin as a political expediency devoid of actual transit purpose.
Also, you should have gone by the 185th St station to see real TOD in progress. The street is still a total mess, but there is a massive apartment building going up so close to the station that most people don’t even realize it isn’t part of the station itself. And there is a new 145 unit townhouse complex about to start construction near the corner of 180th and 10th. impressive.
Finally, as have you, I have walked the area around Potemkin Station to investigate the construction progress. I will encourage anyone who wishes to do the same to be aware of their surroundings. I’ll just leave it at that, but please be safe out there.
“its origin as a political expediency devoid of actual transit purpose.”
Lazarus ignores Lake City and Bitter Lake.
I realize that some people still don’t understand the 130th station. There have been several editorials, including these, early on: https://seattletransitblog.com/2013/10/07/ne-130th-st-station-a-diamond-in-the-rough/, https://seattletransitblog.com/2015/02/27/op-ed-ne-130th-street-station-will-provide-access-to-undeserved-communities/, https://www.theurbanist.org/2015/02/06/the-case-for-a-ne-130th-street-station/, https://www.theurbanist.org/2018/09/14/opening-130th-street-station-in-2024-would-be-a-big-win-for-transit-advocates/.
If you don’t want to read anything more than a paragraph or two, I’ll try and summarize it as best as possible: Greenwood, Bitter Lake, Ingraham High School, Pinehurst and Lake City have quite a bit of density (combined) as well as plenty of people overall. (The relationship between density and ridership is not linear, but exponential, which is why I call that out.) The station is in the middle of the corridor that connects all of them. So, like many of our stations (including our most popular) most riders will take a bus and then transfer. When they do, being closer to other major destinations (UW, Capitol Hill, Downtown) means that riders have a shorter overall transit trip than those to the north (and many in the south). All of this will lead to good transit ridership, assuming Metro runs the east-west buses, which was always likely, and still is. (That being said, eddie and I both have concerns over the current plans — they are barely adequate, and will likely suppress ridership if they aren’t improved.)
Any development around the station is just a bonus. You could say the same thing about all of the stations north of Northgate. 145th is going to get most of its riders from the 522 bus (which will eventually be BRT). 185th will be the terminus of Swift Blue — by far the most ridden bus in Snohomish County. Other buses will also connect neighborhoods of varying density. Mountlake Terrace is a major transit hub, while Lynnwood becomes the new northern terminus. Many of the buses that are responsible for the high ridership at Northgate will instead serve Lynnwood. The same is true of Mercer Island, Federal Way, and several others. In all these cases the development around there is nice, but the bulk of the ridership comes from (or will come from) buses.
There is nothing impressive about building townhouses within a station’s walkshed. They are an utter waste of the hundreds of millions of dollars the public invested in the station. All they do is pre-empt TOD.
@Mike Orr,
“ Lazarus ignores Lake City and Bitter LakE”
Ah, no. Please remember that ST ridership modeling shows no (zero) ridership gain to the system from adding the Potemkin Station at 130th. All the ridership is estimated to be scavenged from other Link stations. It’s hard to see why that is worth the station investment.
And there won’t be any real bus infrastructure either at 130th. Very sad.
@Brent White,
The 45 unit townhouse development is just outside the zoning boundary for multi story apartments. Literally across the street at the south east corner of the apartment zone.
But I’d say that anytime a developer replaces 7 parcels containing 7 SFH’s with 45 units of new housing it is impressive.
There also is a new apartment building being built in North City proper. On 15th across from Franks Doors, although I’m not sure if I would consider it as being in the 185th St Station walkshed.
“ST ridership modeling shows no (zero) ridership gain to the system from adding the Potemkin Station at 130th.”
Even if it doesn’t add any riders, it makes Seattle’s fifth-largest urban village more accessible on the transit network. That’s what subways are for.
“There is nothing impressive about building townhouses within a station’s walkshed. ”
There are many areas of places like Brooklyn, Boston, Paris, London and other cities built before automobiles that have many townhouse blocks that create enough density to sustain frequent urban rail ridership. I don’t think it’s as much how many townhouses as it is how dense and how big each of them is.
For example, a mid-1800’s townhouse in Upper East Side Manhattan or Back Bay Boston or may be 6 stories tall (street even with level 2 and steps to a level 3 main entrance) and likely has been split into three or four different units by now. Even if it’s still a single unit it may have storefront retail and/or be a guest house.
I’m not sure how these specifically are designed, but new townhomes in the Seattle area come in many different shapes and sizes and heights. The one thing they do however usually have in common is that they can’t be easily subdivided to create even an ADU or a guest house or allow for a storefront business. If a city sets a height limit of 35 feet and requires units to have enclosed parking on lots with street frontage and setbacks, it’s not going to be so great at generating transit use, for example.
So just like any other land use, it’s a matter of density (including height) and layout that determines whether or not they are good for encouraging transit use.
Love it when we re-litigate this station. Lazarus has been right since the get-go: too much money chasing too few riders. (A similar situation brewing with the BRT station at 85th in Kirkland now). Ingraham has/had a direct bus connex to Northgate station. Bitter Lake would have the same plus new connex to 145th. Lake City has frequent bus service to Roosevelt & Northgate, and would have had new frequent connex to 145th.
But alas, the decision is made and the station is nearly done. Those milling about the platforms will have lovely views into the pastoral golf course scenery while gazing across at the youth sporting events in Northacres with the roaring sound of Hurricane Five in the background.
And, as mentioned above, since the deal is done the city might as well put in a PBL between the station and the Interurban Trail.
How can a station that’s located a few blocks east of Old Ballard be a horribly placed station, but a station that’s placed a mile away from Lake City Way, and is in between a freeway, a golf course, and a single family home neighborhood, but a perfectly located station?
@Al.S,
These townhouses will be pretty standard issue. For the most part just seven 3-story units ganged together in each building, and with a single car garage and maybe a bedroom on the ground floor. So nothing too special, and no opp for ground level retail.
But it is still something, and it does still represent a significant increase in local density.
Unfortunately that is about all I know about the project at this time. The developer held an online forum with the neighborhood, and I prepped my sister-in-law with all the right questions to ask, but unfortunately she “fell asleep” and missed the meeting.
@Mike Orr,
“ Even if it doesn’t add any riders, it makes Seattle’s fifth-largest urban village more accessible…..”
Ah, the fact that the ridership doesn’t change with the addition of the 130th St Station indicates that access from Bitter Lake and Lake City is just as good regardless of whether or not the station gets built,
But building the station does accomplish two things:
1). It burns through a pile of cash that could have been spent elsewhere for real transportation improvements. And,
2). It increases the transit time for everyone traveling through this part of the city pretty much forever.
As a Lake City resident at the time and a frequent visitor now, we didn’t want 130th either. We wanted only 145th, at LCW not I-5. Don’t burden us with this useless boondoggle. It is not on our heads.
“There are many areas of places like Brooklyn, Boston, Paris, London and other cities built before automobiles that have many townhouse blocks that create enough density to sustain frequent urban rail ridership.”
Those cities have a lot more subway stations and a lot more apartments around them. We have a relatively small number of apartment units within a couple blocks of Link stations, far less than the demand. So we mustn’t limit the ones we do have to townhouses. Townhouses can go further away.
I don’t think it’s as much how many townhouses as it is how dense and how big each of them is.
Very good point Al. Neighborhoods in Montreal and Brooklyn are extremely dense, despite having buildings that are only three stories tall. I don’t know how easy it would be to convert a typical three-story townhouse in Seattle to three separate apartments.
As a Lake City resident at the time and a frequent visitor now, we didn’t want 130th either. We wanted only 145th, at LCW not I-5. Don’t burden us with this useless boondoggle. It is not on our heads.
You don’t speak for Lake City. At various meetings, with various leaders from Lake City, there was overwhelming support for the station. I honestly don’t remember anyone speaking out in opposition. The official representative for Lake City (on the city council) was elected in large part for her strong support of the station.
Ingraham has/had a direct bus connex to Northgate station. Bitter Lake would have the same plus new connex to 145th.
Yes, they have a bus that runs every half hour, and takes an extremely long time to get to the nearest station (Northgate). Let’s not forget why we are building rail in the first place: To save people time. It takes 24 minutes to get from Bitter Lake to Northgate (https://maps.app.goo.gl/R8U1AQyibutvj2vz5). My guess is the bus will due it in less than ten minutes, for a savings of over 15 minutes. This is huge.
Those criticizing this station are really missing the point. You could say the same thing about 145th. The vast majority of riders will arrive by bus. You could just send those riders to Northgate and Roosevelt. They are both freeway stations, and will have a minimal amount of walk-up riders. So yeah, you could save money, and just not build a station at 145th. But why would you? Why ask riders to go much further on the bus, when the cost for the station is really not that high.
Holy cow, you only need to look at our nearest neighbor. In case no on is paying attention, transit ridership in Vancouver is very high. Some experts have said it has the best transit system for its size in North America, and is competitive with systems in Europe and Asia. How do they do it? By integrating the buses and trains. Train ridership is high. Bus ridership is much higher. They work together really well. We should do the same, whenever possible.
It increases the transit time for everyone traveling through this part of the city pretty much forever.
What??? The people who travel through this part of the city will save a tremendous amount of time. I explained that above — over fifteen minutes on a trip from Ingraham or Bitter Lake. Fifteen Minutes! That is huge when it comes to transit. It is why we build trains in the first place.
At this point, we have no idea whether this will result in an increase in overall ridership or not. But if your theory is it won’t, then the same is true for 145th. All those riders won’t be impressed with the faster bus ride to the station. Those that park and ride will simply change their destination (from Northgate to 145th). The people who drive to their destination will continue to just drive.
There is fundamentally no difference between the stations. They were built as bus intercepts, with little hope for a significant number of walk-up riders. That is the problem when you put the station very close to the freeway. I get why people are excited about TOD, but it won’t ever look like Greenwood. It simply can’t. Theoretically you could build huge residential towers there, but they won’t. You have some infill development, and that is nice, but it will never have a great walkshed (not with the freeway, 145th, and the nearby parks).
So what? None of the stations north of Northgate will have great walksheds. What they will have is great bus intercepts. It is just the reality of Lynnwood Link. Will that result in much higher transit ridership? Time will tell.
How can a station that’s located a few blocks east of Old Ballard be a horribly placed station, but a station that’s placed a mile away from Lake City Way, and is in between a freeway, a golf course, and a single family home neighborhood, but a perfectly located station?
No one is calling 130th Station “perfect”. We are saying if you going to build a rail line along that corridor, it is essential that you add a station on 130th. Not perfect, just essential. To get perfect — to get to the level of U-District Station for example, would cost a fortune. You would have to go significantly east or west. There is an argument for that (that the trains should have gone through Lake City, or cut west after Northgate to Aurora) but that is a very different project, with higher costs (and bigger benefits).
No matter which way you go though, it is essential that they add a station at 130th. I really don’t get why people are arguing for fewer stations, when clearly the biggest weakness within our system is that we don’t have enough! Seriously, imagine a station at Madison and 23rd (which is what they proposed with Forward Thrust). Suddenly RapidRide G looks fantastic, and just about any restructure in that neck of the woods is much easier. It transforms transit in the area, even if relatively few walk to the station. This will result in the same sort of transformation.
As for the Ballard Station, it too is essential. I don’t believe anyone is arguing otherwise. But in that case, moving the station west could very well cost a minimal amount of money, while being much better. This makes it much different than moving Lynnwood Link over to Lake City or along Aurora.
And there won’t be any real bus infrastructure either at 130th.
Again, you are wrong. Look, folks here aren’t thrilled with the proposed 77, but it will serve the station. They will add bus stops along 130th. The idea that there won’t be any bus infrastructure is absurd.
I supported 145th from the beginning because it is the natural bus intercept for Bothell, Kenmore, and the non-rural strips of Lost Forest Park (another over-use of “Lake”).
I’m glad both stations are getting built, even if 130th was placed to minimize its walkshed. I’m assuming ST came up with a legit reason not to build it between 125th and 130th. It will still have more utility than (Boeing) Access Rd Station, which will either be built several blocks away from the Sounder tracks or several blocks away from the nearest north/south road.
“ Even if it doesn’t add any riders, it makes Seattle’s fifth-largest urban village more accessible…..”
“Ah, the fact that the ridership doesn’t change with the addition of the 130th St Station indicates that access from Bitter Lake and Lake City is just as good regardless of whether or not the station gets built,”
Or it means ST ridership estimates are faulty, or that it wasn’t allowed to count likely future density that hasn’t been approved yet. As time goes on people are getting more and more interested in transit and concerned about climate change. ST can’t include such uncertain psychological factors, but I can.
Lazarus, please quit your jihad against 130th Station. ST’s ridership estimates were made before any cross-town bus was planned for 130th/125th, as they have specifically and repetitively noted. You have NO DEFENSIBLE IDEA what is going to happen at 130th. Neither do I. Neither does Ross. And neither does ST.
All any of us knows is that in places where bus intercept is done well rapid transit stations without much urban infrastructure around them can and do attract ridership using buses to get to the train. Now there is an egregious omission in the connections to eastbound buses to and from the station; there should be an overhead bridge. Period. So I doubt 130th will live up to its greatest potential, but it will certainly be the preferred access to Link for people in Lake City and Bitter Lake.
I know it’s probably too expensive to operate, but I’d like to see two buses run between Aurora and Lake City Way on 125th/130th, one to and from Greenwood and Shoreline CC and one that goes up Aurora and boxes back to 147th. At the other end the one from Greenwood would turn south on LCW and bend back to Northgate. The one from Aurora would turn north and bend back to 147th. This would give you a “loop” between 130th and 147th. That would allow folks on either side of the giant Stroads of the North End, LCW and Aurora, through their long commercial strips between 125th and 145th to access either side of the street without crossing it, by choosing at which station to transfer.
A bus might go around the north loop twice before stopping at 147th for a break.
Brent, it’s the northbound off-ramp. There’s just no room between First and the diverging off-ramp. I would have preferred the station to straddle 130th, but that would have been more expensive.
@Tom Terrific,
The FTA funding application process specifically forbids the use of expanded bus service in most cases when estimating ridership for something like a Link station. The reason for this is obvious – to prevent the applicant agency from gaming the system by assuming high levels of feeder buses that then just sort of magically disappear after the grant is awarded.
So I wouldn’t call it “ignoring buses”, it’s more like being “FTA compliant”.
As per ST not knowing what will happen with the 130th St Station, I would say that they do. Remember, ST recommended against the station until politics intervened.
And even if ST doesn’t know what will actually happen at 130th, that is hardly a reason to spend $200m on it. If they really don’t know what is going to happen, then they shouldn’t spend the money. This is not a science experiment.
You are right about the FTA restriction, and that’s why ST has repetitively stated that its estimates do not include passengers from mooted bus service. That’s also exactly why you should be quiet about the station. North King has sufficient ST2 funds for the station, and Seattle has asked for it. There are no other ST2 projects that it could be spent on.
There will never be a station at 80th and 4th NE, though that would be a great place for a bus intercept as well, because the trackway is rising sharply northbound. Buses on Eighty-Fifth could go straight at Wallingford and be at the intercept in two minutes tops, instead of taking the slow, congested tour along East Green Lake Drive North.
There will never be one around Fifty-Fifth and Brooklyn because ST has not bought properties for a headhouse and the neighborhood has filled up with large structures. There won’t be one in North or Southwest Capitol Hill, for similar gradient and access reasons, even though such stations would much better align with “urban metro” station spacing standards.
The very best urban metro alignment in Seattle has been squandered building a hyper-expensive commuter railroad wherein benefits to relatively high density established in-city neighborhoods have been ignored in the desire to give commuters from fifteen miles north priority. You want to continue the practice of throwing Seattle riders into the bus instead of getting them on the train.
Oh, and I did not say you or ST were “ignoring buses”. For you to assert so is an example of the strawman creation you indulge in frequently.
“And even if ST doesn’t know what will actually happen at 130th”
You need to stop looking at 130th & I-5 and start looking at Lake City. There’s tens of thousands of people in a dense village that should have reasonably good access to the rest of the region, and the rest of the region should have good access to their businesses. That’s what high-capacity transit is for.
Lake City is a de facto urban growth center so it should be must-serve for Link. It wasn’t recognized as such because of a flaw in the county’s formula: it counts only amount of zoned job capacity and not housing. Lake City and Ballard have a more even balance of jobs and housing, so that makes them well-functioning villages, but it means they didn’t have quite the number of jobs to meet the county’s threshold. Kirkland and Bellevue and Issaquah didn’t want to get into that trap so they made sure Totem Lake, the Spring District, and northwest Issaquah had enough job capacity to meet the threshold. And in the Spring District at least they didn’t focus enough on housing, so there’s an imbalance and people will have to commute from Woodinville and Snohomish County to make up for it.
The Lynnwood Link representative alignment was I-5. The other alternatives in the Alternatives Analysis were Lake City Way, Aurora, 15th Ave NE, and BRT. LCW would have required bending back to Lynnwood, but might have been doable.
At the time people just gave up on Lake City and thought it just wouldn’t have Link access better than a bus to Northgate or 145th. But ST’s Aurora alternative had an extra station at 130th. When the I-5 alignment was chosen, transit fans realized that if Aurora could have an extra station, I-5 could too. And that that would at least mitigate leaving Seattle’s fifth-largest urban village out of Link.
The difference between Lake City and Ballard is, Ballard is an intact pre-WWII walkable urban neighborhood. Lake City still has some highway-surface-parking-and-freestanding-big-box-store problems to get over. But having a station close to Lake City will help it to grow into more of a transit-oriented village. It already has a lot of multifamily housing that should be served.
another engineer used the term relitigate the station. To do so, we should go further back to the alignment. The I-5 alignment is a problem. Freeways are to pedestrians as dams are to fish. ST2 would have been better on SR-99 north to Lynnwood. ST only studied it deviating back to I-5 for Mountlake Terrace. SR-99 could have had Link as well as its two BRT lines; see south King County. SR-99 would have been much better for land use. I-5 could have had express bus: Everett to Northgate via Mountlake Terrace (might have had a a center station at NE 185th Street). Once I-5 was chosen the stations could have been NE 185th, 155th, and 130th streets. NE 145th Street should have been excluded due to its full interchange and additional traffic. But even after NE 145th Street was selected, a station at NE 130th Street makes ridership sense IF it has frequent service; I suggest two 15-minute headway routes.
Besides some bus lines, I bet there would even be enough ridership from Bitter Lake and Lake City and the RR-E to justify a gondola line for a more frequent connection and an accelerated transfer.
The FTA funding application process specifically forbids the use of expanded bus service in most cases when estimating ridership for something like a Link station. The reason for this is obvious – to prevent the applicant agency from gaming the system by assuming high levels of feeder buses that then just sort of magically disappear after the grant is awarded.
So I wouldn’t call it “ignoring buses”, it’s more like being “FTA compliant”.
Either way it is inaccurate! By their own definition it is inaccurate. They know it, you know it, and yet you keep ignoring this little fact, and pretending like it is a meaningful estimate. I don’t know how many times we have to write this:
1) Most of the ridership for the 130th Station will come from folks who take the bus.
2) Sound Transit estimates do not include people who take the bus.
Therefore, the Sound Transit estimate is bound to be inaccurate.
The very best urban metro alignment in Seattle has been squandered building a hyper-expensive commuter railroad wherein benefits to relatively high density established in-city neighborhoods have been ignored in the desire to give commuters from fifteen miles north priority. You want to continue the practice of throwing Seattle riders into the bus instead of getting them on the train.
Yep.
Freeways are to pedestrians as dams are to fish.
Well said.
a station at NE 130th Street makes ridership sense IF it has frequent service;
Yes, and you can say the same thing about most of the other stations north of Northgate. Even Northgate is highly dependent on frequent buses connecting riders who live along 5th. A fair number walk over to campus, and there are some clinics and businesses in the area, but clearly it gets most of its ridership from feeder buses.
Here are some thought experiments:
1) Send Stride 3 to Roosevelt instead. Suddenly the bus restructure looks very different. There is no need for Metro to backfill service along Lake City Way. You still have service along 145th, but that is about it. So now ridership at 145th Station is based on the folks who walk to the station, and those who take the bus along 145th. Some might go north from Lake City Way, but very few like to backtrack.
2) Swift Blue continues to end at Aurora Village. Metro runs the 348, but only every half hour.
You get the idea. It isn’t that you wouldn’t get anyone at these stations, but that you would be almost entirely dependent on the park and ride lots. Of course there will be people who walk from the surrounding development to the stations, but these developments are simply not big enough to make up for the space that is taken up by the freeway (and various greenbelts). What development exists is also almost entirely residential, which makes it different than U-District, Capitol Hill and Northgate (all of which have plenty of residential density, along with plenty of destinations).
Shoreline will be building a new ped/bike bridge across I-5 from the “South Shoreline” station. There’s also their “Trail Along the Rail” project to connect the two stations as well.
What?? Nothing here about the screwed up tiles being found in Bellevue even before any of it opens. Another sound transit unforced error. I think it warrants at least a passing mention here…
I think it’s more noteworthy that no elected leader is making an issue of it. With long delays for Hilltop and East Link as well as the tile replacement turned major service disruption and the remarkable failures on new Northgate Link escalators — not to mention the huge WSBLE cost estimation mistakes (bluffed as inflation rather than lowball early design requirements and unrealistic early real estate requirements), ST isn’t demonstrating that they know how to build a rail transit line with all these more recent problems.
It may be that the media and public have just accepted that ST routinely screws up and they just don’t care enough to discuss it.
> I think it warrants at least a passing mention here…
We kind of already brought it up in both the east link starter thread and in open thread 17. Granted it wasn’t in the top level thread description.
More importantly the east link started line is more heavily blocked by the plinth reconstruction which will take longer rather than the station platform tile reconstruction so there’s not too much to talk about. Or at least I hope the tile reconstruction doesn’t take that long lol.
I’m with WL. I guess I don’t see much of an issue. This isn’t going to delay things. It will cost about $3 million to fix, on a sub-project that cost over $300 million (while East Link costs $3.8 billion). Small potatoes, really. It is not like the plinths, or the mistakes made in Federal Way or Lynnwood, which resulted in delays, and a huge increase in spending.
The issue isn’t the time or cost to repair the tiles. The issue is it’s a red flag. It’s a sign ST isn’t double-checking what the contractors are buying or doing. And if they aren’t doing that, look for more problems to come.
Fair enough. But I think there have been enough red flags already. One more really doesn’t matter. Obviously ST has problems when it comes to building out the system, and that has been the case for years. If this was the first problem, then I would be concerned, and think it might mean that we could be in trouble after years of great governance. Instead this is just the latest in a series of problems, and by no means a big one.
Sam, you’re right. I don’t know what’s happened to Americans’ pride in doing a good job, or is it that contractors in the Northwest just do shoddy work? Whichever it is, it is disheartening, and certainly not limited to Skycastle Transit’s efforts. Road work has to be redone; it seems every contract ends with big over-run charges.
I think the State needs to hire its own cadre of public spirited engineers, pay them well so they stay, and start leaning on the contractors from the first day. Will some drop out of bidding? Yep, and we can view that as a mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa plea for any later investigations of their former work.
It’s across the board a problem in large North American institutions. 99% of my employer’s customers are private railroad companies, and the tangles are every bit as bad as is rumored to happen in a government agency.
The cutting of staff with technical ability as part of cost reduction is a huge problem for both public and private organizations we work with.
Yeah, I can think of a few worse mistakes like:
• not checking the under-car clearance so trains kept getting their wires damaged
• not having a good communication system in place so that when maintenance personnel found the torn up wires on the cars, it was never fixed before a catastrophic failure
• the whole deadly Point Defiance Bypass fiasco, which was successfully blamed on an Amtrak engineer at first but investigators found the line having been put into operation without a mandated Positive Train Control
TriMet down here certainly has its issues, but nothing like these.
The PTC wasn’t turned on? Or wasn’t tested and working properly? That sounds like criminal negligence to me.
Thanks for this information.
Read the NTSB Train 501 Derailment
Final Report.
There were so many points of failure, each of them in themselves not the critical factor, but cumulatively leading up to the failure.
It reads like the commercial airline crash scenarios.
Thanks, Jim. So the PTC wasn’t yet turned on at the time of the inaugural run. Shouldn’t there then have been a requirement for two-persons in the cab? I thought that was required for passenger trains outside commuter territory before PTC was in operation. I guess that’s incorrect.
Technically, there were 2 persons in the cab, there was a conductor doing a qualifying trip.
However, in this case, that might not have been the more experienced 2nd set of eyes that should have been there.
@Jim Cusick,
I really don’t understand why Amtrak doesn’t have more standardized aural warnings across their various locomotive cabs. This engineer had never heard the aural for overspeed in this particular locomotive type and didn’t recognize it. Shouldn’t happen. Even with adequate training, warnings should still be standardized.
And no voice warning system? Those have been standard on airplanes pretty much since gawd invented the transistor, and they were even available in some cars in the 70’s.
It’s pretty hard to misinterpret the situation when the warning system tells you “Overspeed!”
Although it sounds like this engineer figured that out eventually, but was concerned first about being in a penalty. And was too late.
Thanks, everybody.
YES to a loud audible warning system, but I’m not certain how the engine would know it’s “overspeed” in order to give it without the PTC system working.
It certaintly can’t “read” the wayside speed indicators.
But bottom line, how in the world could both guys not remember that the track crosses I-5 less than a mile west of the overcrossing at Dupont? The conductor must not have been paying attention. If they passed that overcrossing at regular speed, the train would have had to be “big-holed” to get down to proper speed. [Yes, I know that the Talgos have disc brakes, but they still work on air pressure].
The conductor in the cab was doing a familiarization trip. He didn’t know the line that well.
Voice indicators would be great. They’ve used them for decades with line-side talking defect detectors. Unfortunately, currently nobody offers them as options on cab signal systems.
The entire reason why the FRA required PTC for this line to be put into operation is because they recognized the relatively featureless landscape along the line in the area where the train would need to slow, and that the risk of this type of crash to be extremely high.
There is also a rather odd phenomenon that happens with concrete ties: the light-dark flashing at certain speeds creates an odd mixture of vertigo and hypnosis. If Sounder ever runs it’s old cab cars at the end of trains, try sitting in the rear window of one and see how it impacts you. I’ve only done a few cab rides, and only once in Sounder, but during that one cab trip on Sounder I’ve experienced this first hand. You really should experience it first hand, if possible, to really understand it.
@Glenn,
Voice warning systems aren’t that hard. Some aircraft types had them going back to the 1950’s (mag tape based), and the smoke detectors in my house even talk to me.
Probably the main reason they aren’t offered is that they aren’t required. The FTA needs to require them. And, if they expect to plug and play operators across various locomotive types, then they really do need to at least attempt to standardize the aural tones currently in use.
Everyone looks to PTC as a magic tech solution that will solve all these problems, but almost all of these accidents started with human factor issues in the cab. Even with PTC, the human factors need to be addressed.
There were some 50+ findings in the final report by the NTSB on the Amtrak derailment and crash in Dupont in Dec 2017. This included:
3.1 Findings
…
5. Had the positive train control system been fully installed and operational at the time of the accident, it would have intervened to stop the train prior to the curve, thus preventing the accident.”
That part is pretty darn black and white.
“3.2 Probable Cause
The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the Amtrak 501 derailment was Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority’s failure to provide an effective mitigation for the hazardous curve without positive train control in place, which allowed the Amtrak engineer to enter the 30-mph curve at too high of a speed due to his inadequate training on the territory and inadequate training on the newer equipment.”
Yes, there was plenty of blame to go around, as the final report makes abundantly clear, for this completely avoidable tragic accident. However, despite all the other factors at play and the parties involved with those matters, the NTSB concluded that fully implemented and operational PTC would have prevented the accident from occurring.
“… the probable cause of the Amtrak 501 derailment was Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority’s failure to provide an effective mitigation for the hazardous curve without positive train control in place, which allowed the Amtrak engineer to enter the 30-mph curve at too high of a speed due to his inadequate training on the territory and inadequate training on the newer equipment.”
Trains can operate without PTC, they’ve done it for years, but that bold part (mine), just has that feeling, and maybe its from my years in computer programming, of a rushed project. It seems as if they were trying to beat a deadline .
But that’s just the Grumpy Old IT Guy talking.
Lazarus: sure, voice indicators would be easy to implement. It took decades to get positive train control implemented.
Given that Norfolk Southern had to deal with a multi-state debacle involving human waste in plastic bags before they decided locomotive toilets were a good idea, I’m not sure how well that would go without a hell of a lot of foot dragging by the industry.
Tlsgwm hit the nail on the head: a functioning PTC would have stopped the train!!! That’s why the word “Control” is in its name; it can override what the engineer is otherwise doing.
Glenn, yes, I’m an NS stockholder through inheritance; my dad worked for the Wabash, and then N&W and of course it was subsumed into NS. The potty bags were, to say the least, “an unforced error” and a GINORMOUS “black eye”. The crews still resent it.
NS was the Class A (“big railroads”) Harriman Prize winner for twenty-seven straight years from 1989 until the Wikipedia list ends in 2011. Things have gone straight down hill since then.
The problem in East Palestine was that there was a twenty-mile gap between hotbox detectors just before the site. If the typical placement of a detector every ten miles in heavy tonnage territory had been in place, the missing detector almost certainly would have alerted the crew in time to save the train. How much would strong audible detectors throughout the fleet cost compared to the BILLIONS NS will spend in remediation and health care costs from the derailment there.
Penny wise, pound foolish.
@Glenn,
“ I’m not sure how well that would go without a hell of a lot of foot dragging by the industry.”
Industry foot dragging should never be allowed to interfere with safety. At some point the Feds just need to tell the railroads to get their act together.
And it really isn’t that hard. Other industries have done it for decades now. There is nothing that unique about a train cab that would prevent them from doing it too.
“Disasters don’t just happen, they’re a chain of critical events…”
https://youtu.be/SVqNsvm-YMQ?si=5T338FrauvOGEL2A
I’d say the 1988 Paris Gare de Lyon train crash is another good example of this.
Basically a Paris commuter train inbound from the Paris suburbs to Gare de Lyon collides into a packed commuter train due to the runaway train’s brakes failing.
There’s not exactly one thing that was smoking gun but rather a series of events that created a domino effect till the inevitable collision of a runaway train into a packed commuter train at Gare de Lyon.
– Passanger pulling the emergency chord due to confusion over the new summer schedule. Causing the brakes lock up and needing to be reset.
– Improper reset of brakes caused the locomotive brakes to be cut off from the rest of the train set rendering the brakes to be non operational
– Runaway train driver panicked and communicated poorly to central command at Gare de Lyon that the train cannot stop. Including sending out a “radio alarm”, which created choas at central command as they couldn’t figure out which train initiated it. And as the train driver didn’t indicate which train he was operating and many train operators were calling in wondering what is going on when the “radio alarm” signal was pushed, This ensured difficulty in trying to figure out who needs emergency assistance.
– The “General Closure” procedure caused a cease of all rail signals and SNCF operations including track switches. Had the track switches been able to be operational during the emergency, they could’ve saved many lives as the train could’ve been redirected into an empty platform and at most the train would’ve been totalled and minor injuries to passangers on the runaway train.
In light of the disaster, France modernized its operations and procedures to signaling. Along with moving to electric brakes and doing away with air brakes.
“Passanger pulling the emergency chord due to confusion over the new summer schedule.”
What was the confusion? Did it skip a stop it used to serve?
Mike Orr, yes basically. The passanger was wanting to get off at Le Vert de Maisons station to pick up her children from school. She didn’t realize that the schedule changed as some runs from Melun to Gare de Lyon skip the stop during the summer schedule so she pulled the emergency chord in a panic.
The woman was later fined 1,000 Francs (around $150) for her actions and they removed emergency chords from trains after the accident to prevent a similar incident. Though there is still one for the operator to use in emergencies. Along with installing an intercom system for allowing communication between the operator and passangers.
In general, the accident was a wake up call to SNCF to fix their operations to be much safer and have stronger communication when an emergency goes down.
Gosh, could that Community Transit press release be any worse? Second hand smoke from people doing hard drugs isn’t harmful? Maybe true. Does this press release actually want to make anybody try riding public transit? Or get a job driving the bus?
I must of missed the video of Julie Trimm saying “Absolutely no using drugs on transit”.
This just isn’t good. https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/public-transit-new-drug-den-whats-being-done-keep-you-safe/X6GLQLCLXZGOXOH655KPJ23RJM/
Second hand smoke from people doing hard drugs isn’t harmful? Maybe true.
Maybe? The whole point of the study was to determine whether there was much risk or not. (They concluded “not”). Are you calling for another study?
I’m not sure why you have any problem with the press release, since it is consistent with the scientific study. Are you saying they should just ignore the study they funded? That would be very weird.
Smoking of any substance is still prohibited. Always. Whether folks get away with it or not is a different matter. Does the study make me feel safer? Not really, because it simply came to the conclusion I would have guessed. But I do know people who feel safer, given the results of the study.
I’ve read the study and it’s pretty damning for bus drivers. Although the residue might not be a huge problem, it’s still an extremely toxic workplace for divers and the UW study is clear about that.
Right now Seattle transit has been hit with, 1) cutting service. 2) delays and shoddy work on rail projects, 3) public safety trouble on transit. That’s a lot of bad news when ridership is down.
The worst part of it is Community Transit, Pierce Transit, Metro and Sound Transit are not on the same page here. There needs to be a joint resolution and plan for public safety across the transit providers and a realistic funding plan.
Same for driver shortage. Sound Transit needs to develop a base and school for providing drivers for all the local agencies. Without investments in safety and more drivers… why keep building more light rail projects nobody is going to ride?
I was late to seeing the headline ($, below) from last week (September 20), but it wasn’t shared in the previous news roundup:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/south-bellevue-light-rail-isnt-open-yet-but-somethings-already-broken/
“Bellevue light-rail line isn’t open yet, but something’s already broken”
“Within the South Bellevue Station, at least one yellow edge tile came loose. The entire set was rated for interior use, with smoother surfaces than the desired outdoor station tiles, [Jon Lebo, executive project director for East Link light rail] said. In addition, several gray ceramic tiles jammed together as the materials expanded in hot weather, and expansion joints in the surface didn’t absorb the motion, he explained. A slow-motion collision between tiles caused the surface to become uneven.”
Al S. referenced this issue in a comment from last week in discussion of a different topic, so it didn’t go any further. I wonder if ST has the capacity to review the designs for finishes at the Lynnwood and Federal Way stations for similar issues, or if ST’s “Approved” stamp is too binding. This seems to be another symptom of the same insufficient specification that gave us mid-grade escalators on U-Link, which prompted several updates to the design standards manual. If indoor-rated tiles meet the contract specification, “upgrading” the installed/planned tile to an outdoor, heavy-traffic tile seems like a juicy change order for the shrinking pool of contractors willing to work with ST these days.
Should have refreshed the page before hitting send, I guess.
Regarding the shared-use path (larger than standard sidewalks), I was actually kind of wondering if it would be a viable path to implementing more bike friendly infrastructure on other streets. For example on larger avenues such as marginal way, 25th ave?, on mlk (south of mount baker) or rainier avenue in certain sections. There are certain sections where there’s this dead shrubbery or with new apartment construction I’ve wondered why don’t they just add a bike lane while they are reconstructing the sidewalk.
On the other hand, I do kind of see it as a slippery slope where it could mean on other streets where it is more viable to take away car lanes, one ends up having a shared use path with too much pedestrian traffic, so I’m a bit hesitant to advocate for this approach.
I don’t think there is an approach that works in all cases. We ran across this at Eastlake. This is a major bike corridor. There is potential for an alternative, but it would cost a bunch (to have bikes hug the shore). It is a very important transit corridor, but not as important for transit as it is bikes. So they really had no choice but to focus on the bikes, and do what they can for the buses. For the most part, I think they got it right. I’m actually impressed with what they have south of the bridge (I am still concerned about congestion north of the bridge). It took way too long, but I think they nailed it.
In other cases though, I believe it does make sense to push the bikes into other streets. Mixing bikes and buses is problematic. It can be done, but it takes up a lot of space (that could otherwise go into making the bike lanes wider, or adding bus/BAT lanes). So whenever possible, I think the city should move bike lanes to other streets. Sometimes this means moving bike lanes to residential streets. I think this is one of the weaknesses in our system — almost all of the bike lanes are on arterials. Frankly, I would have done that with the 35th NE bike project, after it looked like they couldn’t build it. Don’t build “sharrows”, or add signs saying this is a greenway. Put up real bike lanes. Make streets one way (for cars) with parking only on that side of the street. Close off the street (to cars) every couple blocks, so drivers can’t use it as a cut-through. It is actually what many were calling for. Of course many of those people weren’t sincere — they would push back against those changes — but at that point, you simply present each option. Bike lanes on the main arterial, or bike lanes on the side streets.
Part of the problem in that case was that the other streets were hillier. It would have been an extra burden for those biking (although it would be a lot safer). The same is true in Rainier Valley. The big streets are the most level (they built them that way). So the residential pathway (which they just completed) zig-zags its way, not following the most straightforward (and level) pathway.
This is why both eddie and I mention the area around 130th, wast of the station. If you did the work on both sides, it would actually be significantly better for most riders. If you are south of 130th, you route to the Interurban is shorter. The crossing of Aurora would be much better than 130th. The pathway is just as level as 130th. If you are north of 130th, you can now follow one of the few parts of Roosevelt (a fairly level road) that isn’t crowded. It navigates through the neighborhood. Side streets again connect across Aurora to the Interurban. Everyone is better off. It is rare that you can find a solution like this — one that doesn’t require a huge compromise between bikes and transit. It would require some spending, but still not a fortune.
I am always curious if the people that use the bike lanes are satisfied with the projects. I support the expansions but I do not use them. So I really do not know which projects are useful or safe. I hear some are great and some are not. The 11th Ave project looks good to me. Is it? I would love to hear the opinions from the ones who might use it.
In general, some common problems I see:
1) bike lanes that extend for only one block, particularly on a street which is already traffic calmed and doesn’t even need bike lanes.
2) Bike lanes that switch back and forth between different sides of the street in a short distance. Rather than crossing the street all those extra times, many cyclists will just take the car lane instead.
3) Bike lanes that leave no room for cyclists to pass other cyclists. Normally, you’d use the car lane for passing, but the plastic posts intended to keep cars out of the bike lane also keep bikes out of the car lane, which makes it very difficult to pass.
4) Bike lanes that offer no good option to turn left.
However, many bike lanes in Seattle are quite good. Green Lake outer loop is a great; so is 2nd Ave. downtown. Roosevelt will be good, once a parallel bike lane exists in the opposite direction.
I’ll also note that the mere presence of a bike lane is good for anybody walking down the street, including people who never bike, simply by adding a few extra feet of separation between the sidewalk and the street. It doesn’t seem like much, but it really makes a big difference in comfort level. Bike also provide opportunities for joggers to pass people on the sidewalk without needing to dart out into traffic.
The ST survey on fare options for Link is now open. Bring your best arguments for why the fare system should be complex, and why those living close to the middle of the line deserve to pay less.
Helpful links:
Press Release:
https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/news-events/news-releases/sound-transit-hosting-online-open-house-about-potential
Online Open House (open now through October 22):
https://soundtransitfaresandparking.infocommunity.org/
> Bring your best arguments for why the fare system should be complex, and why those living close to the middle of the line deserve to pay less.
It’s the same system used for metro/light rail systems worldwide? Not sure why there is this weird implication that distance based fares are some oddity.
Additionally I don’t see why we should have people traveling short distances subsidize those traveling farther.
Also with the link extensions, our light rail which will eventually travel to Everett to Tacoma is very long, much longer than even many subway systems acting basically much more like a regional rail system. I’m sure you’ll bring up New York’s flat fare, but Sound Transit will end up much more like Long Island Rail Road.
I’m not quite sure why you think ST’s distance based fares are “expensive”, when compared against say Metra or LIRR it is cheaper or just comparable cost for the same distance, where they are charging 5,6,7,8+ dollars one way. One is already receiving basically subway cheaper prices rather than regional/commuter rail at the comparable distance, and now is complaining for an even steeper subsidy
I’m reminded how WMATA set peak and non-peak fares to encourage more non-peak incidental travel so the trains would be less crowded. Not only were fares higher, but a few hours every afternoon anyone leaving station parking had to pay for the privilege.
I checked the WMATA web site and see that they only apply a flat minimum fare after 9:30 pm and on weekends, with a distance based fare normally applied. The parking seems to be no longer time limited generally but many stations have meters.
Most flat-fare networks are smaller than Link is becoming. MUNI and Chicago’s buses and L are flat fare, while BART and Metra and Caltrain are distance-based. We could have had a two-level system like that, but instead we have an intermediate hybrid system like BART. That makes distance-based fares more necessary. Link is planned to go out forty miles from Westlake. People going from Beacon Hill to Rainier Valley or from Capitol Hill to the U-District shouldn’t have to pay a much higher-than-normal fare to subsidize people going from Everett to downtown or to SeaTac airport. Especially if the fare is higher than Metro’s. The point of a high-capacity subway is to be people’s first choice in the areas it serves. High fares for trips of less than ten miles discourage them from doing that; it’s like throwing away our investment in high-capacity transit.
Why is almost everyone in King County subsidizing Pierce County and Snohomish County residents with a $3.25 express bus fare? Same fare to go 8 miles between Bellevue and Seattle and Seattle to Lakewood (35 miles?). And Sounder costs more than twice as much.
And who was “subsidizing” whom when bus rides within downtown Seattle were free?
A: The sales taxpayers, same as now. And businesses who pay for their employees’ passes, same as now.
The fare system just can’t be based on who has the highest sense of entitlement.
I don’t understand the public policy that justifies sending buses every 5-10 minutes on congested I-5 during rush hours, which buses either have to deadhead empty or get parked, with drivers paid for a shift to drive one trip, and fares that are less than half the price of a Sounder train which has capacity for those riders. Or is it only Pierce County riders that are entitled?
The free ride area is long gone. I think it was subsidized by the Downtown Seattle association. It does increase mobility for people who don’t have a monthly pass since we don’t have fare capping which might be a better way to encourage riding transit for occasional riders.
The downtown Seattle Ride Free Area was established in the 1970s and paid for by the city. By 2012 the city’s contribution only covered part of it, and the county council abolished the ride free area.
If you are BIPOC, a refugee or immigrant, Sound Transit will pay you $75 for your opinion.
> 2). It increases the transit time for everyone traveling through this part of the city pretty much forever.
> The ST survey on fare options for Link is now open. Bring your best arguments for why the fare system should be complex, and why those living close to the middle of the line deserve to pay less.
I guess with both of these comments, it sounds more like there’s a fundamental underlying question of whether Link should run more like a ‘regional rail system’ or like a ‘urban subway’. Either way, we’ll find out the real test when Link starts running longer routes from Lynnwood to Federal Way/Redmond Technology. That’s when it’ll start considering opting for more ‘regional rail’ ideas if it lacks the funding to run.
I don’t think many realize that when Sound Transit reaches Everett and Tacoma it’ll cost it 800% operationally cost to run just the same frequency as when it went from Westlake to Seatac. Flat fares, super long routes, and high frequency sound nice on paper; but it really doesn’t work combined together well.
* Westlake to SeaTac/Airport (2009) 35 vehicles
* Northgate to South 200th (2021) 102 vehicles
* ST2 – Lynnwood, Overlake TC, Kent/Des Moines (2023) 180 vehicles
* Core Light Rail System Expansion – Everett, Tacoma, Redmond 286 vehicles
https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/projects/OMSF/OMSF_Task_2.3B_Core_Light_Rail_System_Plan_Review.pdf
If you implement flat fares either a) it’s too low and then you have too low frequency (especially with the long routes) b) implement high flat fares, now the people with short trips complain and then you end up implementing some zone system recreating distance based fares c) implement turnbacks but then now people traveling farther away have to wait for the next train.
If you really want flat fares the only way I’d see it working is stopping any further extensions. It can maybe work up to Lynnwood/Federal Way, but any further and you’d just end up with the scenarios I discussed above.
Regarding the slow total travel time, maybe one can implement a limited form of skip-station service during peak times or when there are multiple branches such as the A-B station form that CTA used to have. But given they just recently stopped using it, not sure if that is best option.
Currently Tacoma has a bus that goes to SeaTac airport and another bus that does to downtown Seattle. There was never a reason to change this in my lifetime.
Now Sound Transit wants to build a damn train to the airport and downtown….the trip will take much, much longer and now you want to tell riders they need to pay 3x the fare? Does anybody who supports this actually support transit? From the social justice front, I think the answer is cristal clear…. the White affluent riders/voters who pushed us into Sound Transit no longer believe they should subsidize the poorer, less White riders who live father out of the City center, mostly because they can’t afford places like Capitol Hill.
Pierce County voters are stuck with this even though they voted against it, due to a huge “yes” vote from Seattle.
Please stop bringing up multilevel pricing is places like the Bay area and Chicago, because these places are racist and classist AF. Greater Seattle needs to rise above this.
The only way this works for social justice is the inner core riders pay a buck or two extra per ride to support Federal Way riders. Sound Transit needs to have a flat fare. Black Lives Matter! Remember?
Okay, tacomee, you’re beginning to talk me out of supporting a flat fare. Can you point to ST’s proposal to charge $9.75 to ride the train from Tacoma to the airport?
@tacomee,
The Tacoma extension wouldn’t be from Tacoma to the airport or DT Seattle, it would only be from Tacoma to FW were it would tie into the existing system. So not such a monumental task.
But, because of other discussions on this blog, I’ve been puzzling over why someone would propose terminating Link in DT Tacoma instead of Freighthouse Square, and the only answer I came up with has some bearing on your comments.
Link definitely is viewed by the business community as a stimulus for growth, and many municipal governments share this view. It isn’t just South Sound communities, but also places like Everett. It’s clear if you look at some of the routing decisions in Everett that this is their view.
So I am sure the Tacoma business community doesn’t want to be left out of the Link “bonanza”. They don’t want to be the only community without the supposed economic stimulus of Link LR.
What does this have to do with where the terminus is in Tacoma? Because I can see the DT Tacoma business community wanting the increased foot traffic that Link would bring, but also wanting to lock-out any possibility of a future Link extension to West Tacoma and the Tacoma Mall.
Essentially the DT Tacoma business community *might* view a DT Tacoma terminus as an opportunity to increase DT business while also eliminating any possibility of future competition via easier access to the mall.
This is very shortsighted, but business often is shortsighted.
The above is only a theory, but so far it is about the only theory I’ve been able to come up. So please take the it with a large grain of salt.
Downtown Tacoma is the biggest single destination in Pierce County. Transit normally serves the largest cities. It doesn’t make sense to terminate just two miles short of downtown, or to bypass it for a peripheral mall. There’s good places to force a transfer, but Tacoma Dome is not one of them.
@Mike Orr,
“ Downtown Tacoma is the biggest single destination in Pierce County. ”
That might be, but it is also immaterial.
As a proxy for actual TDLE ridership data just look at the adjacent freeway. Traffic and congestion on I-5 is still heavy and highly direction, and the direction of travel is FROM Pierce County in the morning and traveling up into King County and returning in the evening. Meaning the majority of Pierce County travelers are traveling from Pierce to King and not to DT Tacoma. Ditto for Sounder.
This ridership pattern won’t change with TDLE. The major usage will still be by travelers heading from Tacoma/Pierce to King County. Ridership from KC to DT Tacoma will be a small minority of total ridership.
So what does a DT Tacoma Link station do for the majority of the Tacoma ridership base? Nothing. Almost all riders will access TDLE at Tacoma Dome and and head north. And they won’t spend the extra effort to go into DT to transfer at more distant station that probably doesn’t contain as much parking.
The DT Tacoma Link station just doesn’t serve the majority of the ridership base,
What a DT Tacoma does is burn through funding that could be used to actually do something productive. Like maybe add a second streetcar line that expands the system to more neighborhoods while doubling capacity and frequency in DT Tacoma and halving the transfer time penalty at Tacoma Dome station. And such a second line would serve riders from Amtrak/Sounder/bus/Link, and not just from bus/Link.
A terminus in DT Tacoma also prevents a future expansion of the system to anywhere else, for example Tacoma Mall. And again, given the travel patterns we see on I-5, it is easy to postulate that many West Tacoma, South Tacoma, and South Pierce residents would find a Link access point at Tacoma Mall highly useful. More useful even than the Tacoma Dome station.
Why would you continue to extend an already over-extended line? There is no reason light rail should ever go beyond downtown Tacoma.
If there were trains that would continue south to serve Lakewood, JBLM, Dupont and beyond, that would obviously be Sounder, as we already own the track there.
“the majority of Pierce County travelers are traveling from Pierce to King and not to DT Tacoma. Ditto for Sounder. This ridership pattern won’t change with TDLE. The major usage will still be by travelers heading from Tacoma/Pierce to King County. Ridership from KC to DT Tacoma will be a small minority of total ridership.”
So what; that’s irrelevant. What’s important is that a regional transit line nominally for Tacoma/Pierce County actually goes to downtown Tacoma rather than terminating just two miles short if it. That allows people who actually do travel to downtown Tacoma to have a station within walking distance of their destination, as all subways/metros should be. That’s how you build a transit network and a strong city for the long term. Not by terminating at a P&R in the middle of nowhere next to freeways.
As for commuters going to King County, what matters is the total proportion of jobs to residents in Pierce County. Snohomish County has a imbalance of too many Snohomans commuting to King County and too many Kingans commuting to Snohomish County, rather than people both living and working in the same county. It’s trying to alleviate that by attracting jobs for its residents. What’s the situation in Pierce? You can’t just look at the freeways and Sounder and say you know. Intra-Pierce commutes aren’t visible by that measure, and Kingans may take back roads into Pierce for work and not be counted. In any case, Link goes only from one part of Pierce to one part of King, so it’s not the whole story.
“So what does a DT Tacoma Link station do for the majority of the Tacoma ridership base?”
It’s a building block of a stronger city/county, that will have economic benefits in Pierce and bring more jobs to Pierce in the long term.
“The DT Tacoma Link station just doesn’t serve the majority of the ridership base,”
That’s a separate issue. PT/ST/Pierce should address the rest of the ridership base too. It’s not either/or.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting Sound Transit in its current structure reverse course and replace Tacoma Link with Central Link. I’m saying that’s what a region/state with its head screwed on right would do. But that requires more far-reaching changes than just ST adding a project and finding funding for it. It requires a change in the prioritization and design of transit at all government levels. ST or its successor would have to focus on a best-practices transit network rather than on what city/county politicians say they want. The latter is what led to this. It requires more support at the state/county/city level to unlock funding resources that are going to counterproductive things (e.g., highway widening) or not being used. Cities and countries all over the world that are less wealthy than Pugetopolis and the US can do it, so we can do it too. When Mexico has better transit networks than the US, something is wrong in the US.
There is some tool at the census bureau that shows the resident’s county of employment. Don’t have time to look at it now. IIRC, Pierce does have a lot of jobs in King, but also a surprising amount in reverse.
In any case, there has been, and continues to be, a huge apartment and condo building boom in downtown Tacoma and Hilltop. If many of those folks are going north for jobs, why are we making them transfer to link when should be able to just walk to the station?
Aside: Where did the follow this comment button go?
“There is some tool at the census bureau that shows the resident’s county of employment.”
Yes, that’s correct. It’s on the Census Bureau’s OnTheMap page. I have posted data utilizing said tool on this blog before, as has RossB. It’s awesome. I’d dig into the matter myself but I’m a little under the weather and struggling just to get my real work done today. Perhaps Ross can give it a go. :)
Frankly, I think Pierce County PTBA needs to take another bite at the apple and ask its constituents for more funding by putting a ballot proposition together for 2024 that would increase their sales tax by another .3%. I believe they qualify for the max rate of 1.2%, where Snohomish County PTBA currently sits.
@Mike Orr,
“ What’s important is that a regional transit line nominally for Tacoma/Pierce County actually goes to downtown Tacoma rather than terminating just two miles short if it. ”
Ah, it’s more like a half a mile to a mile, depending on where you actually put the stations. But……
I like your use of the phrase “nominally for Tacoma/Pierce County”, because that is a lot of the problem.
The small number of riders that actually use the DT Tacoma stub will be coming mainly from King County with a smaller number coming from Fife. If I was a Tacoma taxpayer who wasn’t getting service I’d be sort of pissed if ST changed the plan to favor King County commuters over Pierce County residents, and that is what this proposal would do.
Ya, I like “regional” planning, and we need it. But there isn’t as much money in the Pierce County subarea, and they have very legitimate needs that aren’t currently being met. Spending scarce subarea tax dollars on a plan that mainly favors out of county residents sort of seems wrong to me.
“ , as all subways/metros should be”
The proposal is not to build a subway or a metro in DT Tacoma. This would be surface running LR in the street. That means that there will be exactly zero difference between LR and streetcar. All modes will be street running with exactly the same route, same speed, and same trip time. The only advantage might go to buses that may have more stops along the route and therefore slightly shorter walk times, but at the expense of more dwell time and longer trip times.
The real advantage would go to streetcars if a second line was built. That would double frequencies in DT Tacoma and half transfer times. Saving 5 to 6 minutes (max) would be a real advantage, and that advantage would apply to transfers between all modes. Amtrak, Sounder, LR, buses and SC.
“It’s a building block of a stronger city/county, that will have economic benefits in Pierce and bring more jobs to Pierce in the long term”
And I think that is what is driving this discussion of a DT Tacoma stub. DT Tacoma business interests view the arrival of LR as an economic stimulus and they want that stimulus in downtown for their own benefit. This is understandable, and a commonly held view of LR.
But it is also a very poor way to plan a LR line. LR shouldn’t be built somewhere purely as an economic stimulus, nor should it be built somewhere with the hope that it stimulates enough growth to eventually produce adequate ridership to justify the investment.
No, LR should be built where there is a reasonable expectation that there is enough ridership demand “today” to make the line successful out of the gate. No hopes and prayers for the future, just a reasonable expectation that the line will be successful “today”.
That is what ST did with Central Link. By routing the line through the 3 highest ridership areas in the state (DT Seattle, the RV, and the UW) ST basically guaranteed that the line would be successful. And it worked.
But if ST had routed Central Link somewhere else and simply waited for its economic stimulus effects to produce ridership growth, we probably wouldn’t even be having this discussion. We’d still be waiting for ridership to catch up to the investment.
The small number of riders that actually use the DT Tacoma stub will be coming mainly from King County with a smaller number coming from Fife. If I was a Tacoma taxpayer who wasn’t getting service I’d be sort of pissed if ST changed the plan to favor King County commuters over Pierce County residents, and that is what this proposal would do.
Why would anyone in Tacoma complain about extending service to Downtown Tacoma, given that so many buses serve Downtown Tacoma? I don’t remember people in Seattle complaining because Sounder ended in Downtown Seattle, instead of Sodo. Quite the opposite. King Street Station isn’t that easy to get to, but it is a lot easier to get to than SoDo.
Same with the Tacoma Dome. Keep in mind — we aren’t suggesting we get rid of the Tacoma Dome Station. But way more buses carrying way more people go to Downtown Tacoma than the Tacoma Dome, and Downtown Tacoma has a lot more people nearby, making Downtown Tacoma the obvious choice for the southern terminus of Link (assuming they want to go as far as Tacoma in the first place).
It is really simple. If you want to go south of Federal Way, then at least go to Downtown Tacoma, otherwise you really aren’t adding much for the people of Tacoma.
I think it’s again an opportunity to point out TriMet is building the ENTIRE Better Red project for slightly less than SoundTransit built a single Lynnwood extension station. It’s $215 million for the entire project, which includes expanded platforms at the airport (a complicated process that required moving part of the airport structure) and at Hillsboro Fairgrounds. A new station platform and entirely new “wye” junction at Gateway too, with about a mile of new track on elevated fill plus a new bridge over I-84.
$215 million.
3 years of construction.
https://trimet.org/betterred/
Shorter, simpler stations and surface running in places could do a lot to “right size” the Tacoma – Federal Way section of line, providing more for various other projects.
So, Tacoma gets its airport connection, but also some useful stuff too.
The current plan doesn’t even run Link to the UW Tacoma campus, which has potential to be a significant transit node in itself.
Instead, the current plan is $4 billion to a park and ride lot and car museum.
“Now Sound Transit wants to build a damn train to the airport and downtown”
It’s not “Sound Transit wants to”. It’s Pierce politicians who insisted Sound Transit do this, and insisted repeatedly it was their top transit priority. Blame them.
Mike Orr,
Wrong answer Mike. Your silly blanket statement of “blame Pierce politicians” is complete bunk. Sound Transit was a public vote… the taxing district was gerrymandered to get a yes vote. ST 3 failed in Pierce County but we’ve been over this. A huge Seattle “yes” vote carried the day.
So Mike, do you believe the Pierce County aught to sue to get out Sound Transit? I mean you can’t possibly believe that the whole County should be held accountable for the actions of politicians back in 2012 for next 50 years?
Somewhere along the line, you seem to left your Sound Transit Cheerleader pom poms on the train. You, and most posters on the blog, have been 100% light rail supporters for years.. and now that the truth comes out….that light rail outside of King County is a money losing turd.. you’re going to blame “Pierce County politicians” . Nice try, but this blog has been blindly pro-light rail– Admitting that blunder is the first step towards a reasonable working transit system.
Man up Mr. Orr. If you really don’t believe in light rail to Tacoma, write an article spelling it out. Or go the other way…. write an article of support. You seem to have an opinion on every other Sound Transit plan. If rail outside of King County is a bad idea, step up and say so. Blaming politicians for ST mistakes is just lame sauce…..
Tacomee — You literally have no idea what you are talking about. The ST board delegation from Pierce County has insisted for DECADES on developing a “regional spine” of high capacity rail transit connecting Tacoma to the airport, Seattle and elsewhere. It was in the very first ST Long Range Vision from the mid-90’s, and every update of that vision since. It’s as solid and lasting bipartisan consensus as you’ll find.
Here, I’ll help: see page 13 and note the date.
https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/1996-long-range-vision.pdf
“ You, and most posters on the blog, have been 100% light rail supporters for years.. and now that the truth comes out….that light rail outside of King County is a money losing turd”
We’d have to take a vote, but my perception is most of the people on this web site hated the light rail running everywhere concept and produced several alternatives.
If Pierce residents don’t like the plan hatched by their own elected officials, then why not demand they produce a realignment that meets their needs?
another engineer, ST considers both T-Link and C-Link to be High Capacity Rail.
“Wrong answer Mike. Your silly blanket statement of “blame Pierce politicians” is complete bunk. Sound Transit was a public vote… the taxing district was gerrymandered to get a yes vote.”
That doesn’t say anything about what PROJECTS are in ST1/2/3. The projects are there because Pierce politicians insisted on them. If they’d asked for other projects, they would have gotten other projects. The rest of ST and King County doesn’t care; they just went along with what Pierce insisted on.
“So Mike, do you believe the Pierce County aught to sue to get out Sound Transit? I mean you can’t possibly believe that the whole County should be held accountable for the actions of politicians back in 2012 for next 50 years?”
You’re getting what your politicians decided on between 1994 and 2016. The same as every other subarea. In other words, your politicians screwed you and left you a bleak transit future. That wasn’t all of ST’s fault or King’s or Snohomish County’s fault. For non-drivers on the ground, the best option may be to move to King or Snohomish County.
As for suing to get Pierce out of ST, that’s a separate issue. There may be advantages or disadvantages to it. But that won’t erase Pierce’s existing bond debt. And it would leave Pierce without any plan for regional transit even though it has grown substantially and is sprawling in Spanaway and south of Puyallup. If they just leave it with the existing Pierce Transit services only, that will increasingly become problematic, and people will become even more wedded to their cars, as happened in the 20th century when we went through this car-dependent growth before.
I’m just not seeing a huge market for commuting between Lynnwood and Federal Way, so few riders actually riding the distance charged by that top fare, or even the next couple levels.
However, I do foresee lots of riders failing to tap off, and ending up paying close to the top fare. If they complain, the cost of customer service for processing the complaint will eat up the fare.
I foresee the fares that are cheaper than Metro going away, because ST has a system to run, and is unlikely to lose more than a few rides over charging the same as Metro. Right now, they are leaving lots of money on the table from riders who were unlikely to be dissuaded by charging as much as Metro.
And then there is the $3.25 ST Express fare. Any ideas what ought to happen to that? Should a Link ride cost more than an express bus ride for the same trip?
I can see ST going with the $3.25 flat fare under the guise of fare consolidation, but mostly because it might bring in more revenue. But I don’t see Metro immediately raising its fare to keep up. Nevertheless, Metro is overdue for increasing its fare to $3 to keep up with the cost of paying its drivers.
ST isn’t planning for a top fare based on riding all the way from Tacoma to Everett because there is no plan to ever have trains run in service all the way from Tacoma to Everett.
“I foresee the fares that are cheaper than Metro going away, because ST has a system to run, and is unlikely to lose more than a few rides over charging the same as Metro.”
Link is more efficient than Metro. One train line does the job of several bus routes, has fewer operators, requires less energy, and the parts last longer. At a certain ridership level Link’s costs go below Metro’s. It reached that in the early 2010s when Metro’s fares continued to increase but Link’s were able to stay at their initial levels.
> ST isn’t planning for a top fare based on riding all the way from Tacoma to Everett because there is no plan to ever have trains run in service all the way from Tacoma to Everett.
Uhh there’d still be a fare? One would just transfer to the next train that reaches it. It’s not like one exits the train station and re-enters for a second fare.
I’m not arguing that ST’s costs per rider are as much as Metro’s, though the revenue has never reached the 50% of operational costs goal.
I’m arguing that ST would lose very few riders (because its service is better, ignoring the contagion and air quality issues) by raising the minimum Link fare to the same as Metro’s.
Indeed, lots of riders opted for the $2 train ride in the tunnel over the free ride on the buses.
The ride between Tacoma and Everett would charge the higher of the two fares for the two rides to complete the trip. That’s already how it works today if you ride twice within two hours.
If ST tries to implement distance-based fares between 1-Line-only stations and 2-Line-only stations, riders will defeat the higher fare by tapping off and back on at ID/CS.
@Brent White,
My wife is one of those people who rarely taps off, although I’ve been working on this with her.
Why doesn’t she tap off? Because she really didn’t understand the concept at first, and because she has an ORCA card provided by her employer. It doesn’t cost her anything not to tap off, it just saves her time.
I supported distanced based fares in the ST survey, however I added the following caveats in my comments:
1). ST needs to do a better job explaining the system – both with improved signage and with audio announcements.
2). ST also needs to cap ORCA daily charges at the standard day pass rate level, and also make this clear to the ridership base. Any poor soul that gets stuck making multiple long distance trips in a day shouldn’t be charged more than the day pass rate.
You can’t tap out and in at the same station to start a new trip; it just continues your original trip. So people probably won’t tap to transfer downtown, and Tacoma to Everett fares will apply. You’d have to wait 12 minutes to tap in again for a separate trip. You can’t even tap to cancel your trip under the new ORCA system, because it just says already tapped.
Lazarus, yes, absolutely. Most systems now have this “automatic promotion” logic. Many even have if for monthly passes.
Why doesn’t she tap off? Because she really didn’t understand the concept at first, and because she has an ORCA card provided by her employer. It doesn’t cost her anything not to tap off, it just saves her time.
This seems like something her employer could mention as well. An HR notice (to those with monthly passes) explaining how failing to “tap off” costs the company money would be worthwhile.
2). ST also needs to cap ORCA daily charges at the standard day pass rate level, and also make this clear to the ridership base. Any poor soul that gets stuck making multiple long distance trips in a day shouldn’t be charged more than the day pass rate.
I’m surprised they don’t have this already. This is pretty standard, and should be across agencies (it should be more of an “ORCA” thing, not an “ST” thing).
And then there is the $3.25 ST Express fare. Any ideas what ought to happen to that? Should a Link ride cost more than an express bus ride for the same trip?
No, and chances are it won’t. I see two possible things happening:
1) Buses are truncated at Link stations. I am quite sure this will happen at Lynnwood, and will likely happen at Federal Way. East Side buses across the lake will of course be truncated (or restructured out of existence).
2) ST runs buses that duplicate Link, but charges more for them. It seems quite reasonable to charge the top Link fare for a bus from Downtown Tacoma to Downtown Seattle. It gets a little tricky though. First, you have the fact that you are charging more than any other bus. Then there is the issue of riders not going all they way from Tacoma to Seattle. If they transfer to Link in Federal Way (e. g. to get to SeaTac) it really isn’t an issue. They have to tap on and off Link, and so that should do it. But if they are heading to Federal Way itself, they would need a way to “tap off” there.
Then there are other riders, like someone just going from Downtown Tacoma to the Tacoma Dome. It is the same idea. If they are transferring to or from Sounder, it isn’t an issue. But if they are just taking the trip within Tacoma, it becomes an issue. However, as with Federal Way, it is only an issue on a northbound bus. Realistically, they could add a reader for tapping off at the Tacoma Dome, and that would sufficient for Tacoma. Other than a trip to the Tacoma Dome, very few people take the 590 within Tacoma (only three a day).
Riders taking the bus northbound while heading to any other location (other than Federal Way or the Tacoma Dome) would be charged the full fare. Same with folks heading northbound who forget to tap off. Heading southbound, the fare is based on where you board. Board in Seattle, it is full fare. Board in Federal Way or Tacoma, it is much lower.
Thus you would need special branding (to make it clear that you will charge more in some cases) as well as ORCA readers in Federal Way and the Tacoma Dome. The hardest part would be getting the word out, and explaining all of it, but I could see it being reasonably popular. That being said, I only see that happening if folks complain a lot about the loss of express service. Most likely, ST will just truncate the buses at Federal Way.
It is worth nothing that Sounder charges a distance based fare. With a flat fare, you get into the same issue. From Seattle to Tacoma on Sounder costs $5.25. If you charged $4.00 to ride anywhere on Link, it begs the same question: Why is it so much cheaper to ride Link than ride Sounder? Do we really want to discourage people from riding the roomier train?
There is a balance, of course. Distance based fares can be difficult to implement (Metro gave up). But in this case, it makes sense to keep them, and adjust them accordingly. It is really not that complicated with Link, and we’ve had them for a long time. They are common around the world for similar trains. The S-Bahn and RER have zones. BART has a system like ours. If the train never left Seattle, you could make a strong case for a single fare, but as our system goes farther out, distance-based fares make more sense than ever.
ST is studying Link fares, not ST Express fares. They are trying to improve revenue, not ask what other goodies (like fare capping, which the ORCA pod recently rejected) that some think would be really neat, but revenue negative.
Holding onto distance-the-train-travels fares may be about holding onto the bonanza ST makes when riders fail to tap off, and increasing that bonanza, since few riders commute beyond downtown.
Nor does the upcoming study on the ST Express Federal Way Link restructure list all the routes that could be truncated at Federal Way Commons Station. It takes just a little time studying the timetables to see why riders would heavily resist such truncations. Distance-based fares with a single-tap fine won’t help convince riders to accept transfers to the 1 Line.
I’d like to see a ceiling set on the Link fare that (1) is no larger than that for the longest trip starting from downtown; and (2) is no larger than any competing ST Express fare.
I’d also like to see the floor raised to Metro’s fare, or no lower than 25 cents less.
ST should charge riders as advertised, not make bank off of $1-$2 single-tap fines. But if the single-tap fine remains, the new ceiling would make the fine more equitable, so someone taking a short ride in South King County gets roughly the same fine as someone riding in the north end.
If a rider starts at Tacoma Dome Station, exits at Istanbul Station, gets back on at ID/CS, and then proceeds to Downtown Everett Station, they will still be charged just the higher of the two fares, even if they miraculously make the transfer in under 12 minutes.
There could still be a published $7 fare for this trip, in a series of bite-sized triangle charts, but the riders paying this fare would be those who tapped on at TDS, and forgot to tap off at FWCS.
Until the late 2010s ST Express had a county-zone system. That was good for people going Seattle-Bothell and Seattle-Federal Way but was bad for people going a short distance across a county border. Then both ST and Metro flattened their fares to an average between their short-distance and long-distance trips. That led to an imbalance in that Seattle-Bellevue and Roosevelt-Lake City is 50 cents higher than Metro, and Metro trips within Seattle are subsidizing Issaquah peak expresses even more than before. But those are only for a few years until ST2 Link is finished.
In all the ST Express planning scenarios in January 2016, all routes were truncated at Federal Way, Lynnwood, UW, Mercer Island, etc: none went to downtown Seattle. ST hasn’t released any full-network scenarios since, so we don’t know if it will really truncate everything. But precedent says it will. And that would drop ST Express’s cost substantially, enough to potentially lower the fare. ST Express and Link shouldn’t cost more than Metro for trips of less than say fifteen miles.
@Ross B,
“ This seems like something her employer could mention as well. ”
Her employer doesn’t care, because they have piles of money and this isn’t their concern.
They don’t care if an employee uses their corporate pass for private, non-work trips on the weekend, so why should they care if an employee fails to tap off and they get charged an extra 50 cents?
And they just write the cost off on their taxes anyhow.
Her employer doesn’t care, because they have piles of money and this isn’t their concern.
So …. why should she? Seriously, I get it. I hate to overpay for anything. It is the Scottish in me. But in this case, it is easy to just see it as a contribution. More money for Sound Transit. If I was Bill Gates, would I tap out? Of course not. But I would tap in. Could you imagine getting dinged if you were Bill Gates for not paying your fare? Holy cow, that would be embarrassing.
It’s very charming that people think that “writing X off my taxes” is some huge windfall. For corporations it reduces actual taxes by about 20-25% of the deducted amount. For people it can range from nothing [very rare] to 35% [also rare], but it’s never more than a minority of the expense.
“It’s very charming that people think that “writing X off my taxes” is some huge windfall….”
I agree. It’s kind of a silly way of thinking about such employee expenses for any enterprise, private or public.
ST is planning for a turnback in Snohomish County south of Paine Field, even with distance-based fares.
> ST is planning for a turnback in Snohomish County south of Paine Field, even with distance-based fares.
That’s already traveling a very long distance. More like turnbacks at Lynnwood/Northgate, with only the West Seattle train traveling up to Everett.
Aka like https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/projects/OMSF/OMSF_Task_2.3B_Core_Light_Rail_System_Plan_Review.pdf#page=9
Obviously it’s a bit different/complicated with the ballard/west seattle lines, but the point is the trains could turnback earlier.
Though I’m sure if that was done a) there’d be complaints about low frequency for both the north/south b) so then they’d end up running more trains up there and then running low on money they’d have to increase the flat fare c) we would end up back at the scenario I discussed previously.
The turnback will be at Mariner/128th, and that phase may open earlier than the rest.
It 2023 why can’t we have working real time arrival on Link? This is disgraceful, especially the announcements saying incorrect information may be shown because they are testing (and have been for at least 6 months). Incorrect information is worse than no information. I’m really getting sick of the pure incompetence at Sound Transit and this comes from someone who has been a strong advocate for them in the past including ST2 and ST3. Get your sht together!
It is stunning to me that the systems are still not working correctly. BART, Muni, WMATA and others have had arrival info for 30-40 years. If a person was hired to develop one of those systems right out of college, they would probably already be retired.
I also wonder how the system will work when both 1 Line and 2 Line are operating through the same stations. If ST can’t get a single line right, two could be too hard for them.
The next-arrival signs are on again! They went on a week or two ago. And they’ve been accurate when I’ve spot-checked.
One new thing is they’re only at the platforms. The Westlake entrance and mezzanine doesn’t have them. That may be specific to the DSTT stations.
Kirkland really gets screwed in losing direct bus service to Seattle.
The promise when route 255 got truncated to the University District was that in return for the truncation and transfer needed to travel to/from Seattle, that there would be 15 minute headways daytime and into the late evening.
That promise has now been discarded, first by reducing weekend daytime service to 20 minute headways, and now in the recent schedule change weekday evening service drops down to 30 minute headways starting at 7:30pm outbound and 6:30pm inbound. This was justified by operator shortages and ridership and the promise of greater reliability. But 30 minute headways are already a pretty bad experience to complete what was once a 20 minute total travel time from Seattle to Kirkland.
Now…Route 255 trip to University District scheduled at 8:00 PM from Totem Lake Transit Center – Bay 2 (WB) and three other trips are not operating today.
Affected trips to Totem Lake TC:
to Totem Lake TC scheduled at 8:59 PM from NE Campus Pkwy & University Way NE – Bay 2,
to Totem Lake TC scheduled at 11:34 PM from NE Campus Pkwy & University Way NE – Bay 2,
Affected trips to University District:
to University District scheduled at 8:00 PM from Totem Lake Transit Center – Bay 2 (WB)
to University District scheduled at 10:23 PM from Totem Lake Transit Center – Bay 2 (WB)
So the schedule is 30 minute headways and Metro is still cancelling trips which means 60 minutes between buses.
Are there still apologists who support how Metro handled this. RIP route 255, former workhorse route.
This is really bad. But, keep in mind that had the restructure not happened, the trip cancellations would have still happened anyway.
“now in the recent schedule change weekday evening service drops down to 30 minute headways starting at 7:30pm outbound and 6:30pm inbound.”
It was hourly before the truncation, and it would probably be hourly without it now. That’s what the truncation gained you.
No, that is not correct. When 255 operated directly from downtown Seattle, it was 20 minute headways in the 7pm hour and 30 minute headways 8-11, and a final trip after midnight. I used to ride it to/from Paramount & Fifth Ave events and when going out to dinner. It was easy to come home after events downtown on the 255. It’s become unusable and useless. And trip cancellations when it’s scheduled every 15 minutes are bearable. They are not bearable when the schedule headways are 30 minutes. But the comparison of walking from the Paramount over to 8th & Olive and then getting to Kirkland in 15-20 minutes vs walking over to Westlake station, descending to Link, waiting for a train, getting back to the surface at UW/Husky, crossing Montlake Blvd… it was already painful at 15 minute headways with inconsistent operator schedule adherence (some coming 2 minutes early, some coming 10 minutes late because they knew they’d make it up en route)… Not planning to try it any more at 30 minutes evenings. RIP 255.
For some trips it is definitely worse, and will always be worse. You could say the same thing about the 41. For someone commuting from north Northgate to a job close to the convention center, it is worse. The difference is, it isn’t that bad. The rider now has to transfer, then has to deal with a different station (that is farther away) but it still isn’t that bad.
In contrast, it is bad for 255 riders. Really bad. The thing is, it would be bad even if they kept the route the same. The bus would come less often. I get how you aren’t impressed with current headways, but they would be much worse (maybe worse than ever). Meanwhile, you still have to serve some place close to Montlake. That means the bus would have to exit 520, serve a stop, and then loop back around and get back on the freeway. Every time the bridge closed, it would have to make some sort of detour to somehow get to that stop, and then back back across the lake. It would be a huge mess, just a different mess. I think overall it would be worse.
The good news is, it will eventually get better. The 520 work will end soon. Getting to the UW will be better than ever. Link will be more frequent (5 minute midday, 7.5 at night). Losing Convention Place Station is tough, but overall, it will be better than it is now, and in many ways better than it ever was.
I don’t see anything that makes returning to the Eastside from downtown Seattle on route 255 better than it was pre-truncation. It’s materially worse for the primary cross-lake destination. Riders seem to agree because while other cross lake buses are at 70% of pre-Covid ridership, the 255 is at 30% of pre-Covid/pre-truncation ridership. But our leaders don’t seem to care about that. Next time they need to cut service be prepared to lose daytime headways. It already went to 20 minutes on weekends. RIP 255.
Really says leadership doesn’t care about riders when headways were doubled in the name of fewer cancellations and within the first week there are cancellations during 30 minute headway operations.
We don’t get a redo but our transit leaders could have insisted that WS-DOT maintain an SR-520/Montlake transit stop when the freeway was being dramatically widened. But they didn’t. Still seems crazy that we built great stops at Evergeen Point and Yarrow Point/Clyde Hill and couldn’t be bothered to do the same at Montlake. And nothing addresses congestion across at the Montlake Bridge nor UW stadium & HecEd events.
The old 255 did run every 30 minutes on weekday evenings (it was hourly on weekend evenings). But, I think it’s highly likely the driver shortage would have reduced that to hourly if the route were not truncated, so you can thank the truncation for the fact that it (mostly) runs every 30 minutes.
The real problem here is the lack of good connections from a major east-west corridor (520) and Link.
Trying to address that would be really expensive. A railway tunneling contractor I talked to in Germany in 2016 said you’d really need a careful analysis of what’s in the ground to see how difficult/expensive adding platforms there would be. Systems have done stuff like that, but it’s places with significant ridership demands (Eg, London Underground) that do that.
Diagonal elevator between the 520 freeway platform and the Link platform?
All of this is expensive, but might be a better value to Eastside riders than Kirkland – Issaquah Link?
The real problem here is the lack of good connections from a major east-west corridor (520) and Link. Trying to address that would be really expensive.
It would definitely be now. It might have been, even if it was done as part of U-Link and the 520 project. But I do think they should have studied it.
That being said, it is still quite possible that it would have been very expensive. Either way you are going to send the bus to the UW. It is just too expensive to send the bus downtown, and ask riders headed to the UW to transfer instead. It is really a question of the transfer quality. A station below the 520 freeway would be better, but it would still be a very deep station. Without congestion, the station saves a couple minutes, if that (https://maps.app.goo.gl/JDro344ENLH5ufPE7). The problem is, there is often congestion. The bus is stuck in it during rush hour, and stuck in it after the bridge opens. All of this could be avoided if we built a new station in Montlake, but I don’t know if it would be worth it. I think they should have studied it, but it is quite possible it would have been just too expensive.
The main thing to do is address the congestion. The 520 freeway project will help, as the HOV lanes will connect right to the main road. I think — but I’m not totally sure — that the bus will be able to make it from the HOV lanes of 520 to the bridge itself in its own lane. Likewise going the other direction. More can be done, but it wouldn’t be that expensive — it can easily be an iterative thing.
Glenn, I understand that the profile under the Ship Canal is sort of “U-shaped”. So I would expect that the profile under SR520 is inclined with “down” pointing north. Yes, ADA allows a bit of incline for platforms, but the operators don’t want much even if FTA allowed more. And, as you yourself noted, it can be nosebleed expensive to add a station to a bored tunnel.
A box has to be built around the tunnel for the station, and especially in this instance, would need to be heavily sealed to keep water out of the station. Then the tube has to be supported and the upper 270 or so degrees of the compression rings removed to expose the trackway to the station. Then the station is completed and opened.
It can be done, but man is it expensive!
For a LOT less than that a second bridge can be built across the Montlake Cut and bus lanes provided in both directions. Oh, and c’mon ST, build a damn connection under Montlake at Huskey Stadium Station. Even better, extend it under Pacific to the hospital.
Seattle Mayor Harrell announced his budget proposal. https://harrell.seattle.gov/2023/09/26/mayor-harrell-announces-2024-budget-proposal/
Skimmed the transportation portion, as while there’s always the fancy ‘seattle transportation plan’ what is more important to note is what actually gets funded. Though 2025, 2026+ a lot depends on the Move Seattle levy, so it appears most of the other projects just aren’t allocated with money yet. So the long range plan is a lot less useful than I thought to browse through.
The largest ticket items for 2024 is unsurprisingly on the RapidRide Roosevelt and RapidRide Madison around 25~35 million each. 5 million for rebuilding east marginal way for freight trucks (a lot of the other money is from federal grant funds). Medium sized items of the ongoing route 40 and 44 improvements, protected bike lanes and general transit improvements of around 7~10 million each.
A new program the “safe streets and roads for all” will be funded for 5 million in 2024 and then 10 million every year after. Though it seems to do very similar stuff to the sidewalk budget and protected bike lane budget.
The streetcar still has a shortfall of 92 million, currently 140 million allocated for it.
(For 2024)
https://openbudget.seattle.gov/#!/year/2024/capital/0/deptname/Seattle+Department+of+Transportation/0/bclname/Mobility-Capital/0/projecttitle
(Long term plan for 2024 to 2029)
https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/FinanceDepartment/2429proposedcip/SDOTCIP.pdf
Warning about ORCA vending machines at Link stations.
“Sound Transit Ticket Vending Machines are experiencing an intermittent issue with loading money onto ORCA cards.”
This week I tried to buy my October pass at Capitol Hill Station. When I tapped my ORCA to start, it took an unusually long time to display the card information. It said I didn’t have a September pass when actually I did. I walked away and decided to reload my pass online, which I rarely do, but I didn’t want the TVM to swallow my money or something. I don’t know if it would do that or if the transaction would just fail, but you can’t tell with this uncertainty.
There is an excellent article by Ryan Packer about Move Seattle: https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/09/28/finding-the-legacy-of-the-move-seattle-transportation-levy/. I would say the biggest problem is the expectations. I agree that we are moving in the right direction, and that setting a high bar and then coming close is better than the opposite, but I also think it changed the dynamic. Packer did an excellent job of explaining why. They knew they couldn’t meet expectations, or even finish all of the projects. So when it came time to prioritize, they focused on the projects that looked good on paper.
There were other problems as well. They assumed they were going to get big block grants. They didn’t. At that point things were a bit of a mess, and they weren’t sure what projects would move forward. Then, when grant money was available, they weren’t ready for it. Again, I feel like poor expectations were to blame, in part. With a smaller set of projects (or more money) I don’t see them having that problem. They were spread too thin.
While I think the article is great, it didn’t focus on the person most to blame: Kubly. He left the next administration a mess, both in terms of the promises he knew couldn’t be kept, and quite likely, a dysfunctional agency. Things have gotten better, and I have a lot more confidence in Spotts, but there is a lot to do, and not enough money to do it. In terms of transit infrastructure, it is especially frustrating, as we are nowhere near where we hoped to be at this point.
Thanks for bringing up the article.
> Again, I feel like poor expectations were to blame, in part. With a smaller set of projects (or more money) I don’t see them having that problem.
I agree perhaps there needs to be a bit more focus, but I’m a bit afraid that aiming lower well end up with even further compromises lower. For example, the following wouldn’t have happened if they had promised less: “Due to the levy’s commitment to build 110 miles of new bike infrastructure, funds were moved over onto projects like the Georgetown to Downtown bike route.”
> There were other problems as well. They assumed they were going to get big block grants. They didn’t. At that point things were a bit of a mess, and they weren’t sure what projects would move forward. Then, when grant money was available, they weren’t ready for it.
Though for other projects like “What happened to Accessible Mount Baker?”, I think the issue is that the change was too great/abrupt. The problem wasn’t really lack of funding here but political pushback. If they had proposed BAT lanes or just bike lanes on mlk it might have been implemented 5/7 years ago. Or like, while a lot of the rapidride’s weren’t completed, the bus routes still got some bus lanes which is arguably more important.
Maybe setup a direct “additional bus lane miles” target this time? But yeah overall I’m not sure of the best approach/suggestions this time around.
Good topic. There have been so many disappointments on not just Move Seattle, but also ST3, the expected Metro and ST Express frequency boosts than never happened due to covid and the driver shortage, RapidRide C/D/E not getting as much street priority as they might, etc, that disappointing results from every measure just seem normal, and we’re constantly fighting just to keep service rather than continuously improving it.
I didn’t know Graham Station depended on partial Move Seattle funding. I guess that will have to be part of the next Move Seattle if it’s to happen, and that will crowd out another project.
The Kubly SDOT lobbied for ST3 funds for lines C and D to be shifted to the G Line project; later, ST3 was reset and the funds for lines C and D were deferred. Kubly like monuments and did not understand budget constraints. The Kubly SDOT work on the CCC Streetcar was a disaster. The Kubly phasing of Seattle RapidRide lines was a failure.
Congratulations to Lisa Nault. My understanding is that they have drivers (operators) voted on 3 times a year by their peers at each base. At the end of the year, the rewarded drivers get to vote on the driver (operator) of the year. So she got the votes by people already respected by many. I think the employee of the year is good. There are so many good drivers. So again, Congratulations.
SF at tU brings up fare zones as a third general approach for Link fares. He drives home how much simpler that would be than distance-based by showing the unwieldy chart for 34 stations plus the downtown zone vs a much smaller chart for a handful of zones.
I’ve had the joy of living next to a zone line and getting charged a 2-zone fare for going a half mile to the nearest grocery store. In my case, walking there used to involve walking in the breakdown half-lane across a freeway. Eventually, the lanes were restriped to include an unprotected pedestrian/bike lane. But I digress.
The sample zone chart smartly doesn’t upcharge for the first zone crossing. I hope ST is taking notes on that feature.
I still find the lowest fare to be lower than necessary, and the highest fare to be too high.
Plus, trying to charge a one-seat fare for a 2-seat ride goes against how the ORCA system works: The cardholder is charged for the highest fare within the 2-hour transfer window. That feature helps reduce the resistance to turning a one-seat ride into a (hopefully more frequent) 2-seat ride. Have the basic rules of ORCA changed?
Fare zones screw over people who live near the boundary and their destination is just on the other side. Metro used to have a 2-zone system at the Seattle boundary, and ST Express had zones at the county boundaries. That screwed over people in Shoreline, where the entire city is within three miles of the boundary, and trips between White Center and West Seattle, Skyway and Rainier Valley, or Mountlake Terrace and North Seattle.
London has six fare zones. I don’t know how locals feel about it, but since London is a dense mixed-use city there are many more destinations within each zone. Many people can remain in zones 1 and 2 most of the time, and I imagine people outside those zones can remain outside for everyday needs.
London’s fare zones are pretty granular and centralized around one point. https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1eIjWEQyO-PchgJUttxBBkYqvPxE&hl=en_US&ll=51.486188297339716%2C-0.25317044613623385&z=10
> Fare zones screw over people who live near the boundary and their destination is just on the other side.
Agreed and the fix of ” smartly doesn’t upcharge for the first zone crossing.” I mean basically one just ends up implementing more granular fare zones and since link is just one/two lines we would just reimplementing a broken distance based fare system. There’s a reason most regional rail systems/ longer distance metro systems use distance based fare, I really haven’t seen a reason why Link is unique and why we should move away from the norm.
RTD has 4 zone system (Local 1-2 zones, Regional 3 zones, Airport zone) where they tried a compromise of “one free zone” for local fares if you have to cross a zone for their rail system and Flatiron Flyer (Boulder-Denver Hwy BRT). Tho this has created confusion and now are going a simple 2 fare system (Standard & Airport) this coming January.
The Urbanist proposed a tariff zone like proposal as a possible option to change the fare system. Which is common abroad in like Germany & Denmark
https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/09/27/sound-transit-weighs-two-link-fare-reforms-but-a-third-is-needed/
https://www.vrr.de/en/tickets-fares/tariff-zones-regions-fare-categories/
@Zach B
The german way of small fare zones I’m aware of but I don’t see any advantage of it over just simply using distance based fares. And honestly it seems even more confusing. Fare Category A “Fare category A is generally valid for trips within a city or town.” Fare Category B”In fare category B, select a central fare zone from which you can travel into the directly adjacent fare zones. and Fare Category C”Fare category C covers moderate travel distances. You can choose between 19 different regions within the VRR network.”.
I mean I guess we can group 2~4 stations together into fare zones, like (Tacoma Dome, East Tacoma, Fife) or (NE 145th , NE 130th, Northgate) etc.. maybe more stations in denser areas and it’s fine but I don’t really see that much benefit over distanced based fares.
When I as in Ratingen in 1998, there were three categories. C didn’t exist, and D was called C. A was Düsseldorf, B included adjacent cities (including Ratingen), and C was the entire transit district. We got C so we could go to Wuppertal, Essen, etc, without complications.
The Urbanist link has a chart of the ST2 fares under the current system. Federal Way to Lynnwood would be $4.25. Federal Way to Redmond would also be $4.25. Westlake to Bellevue Downtown is $2.75, to Redmond Downtown $3.25, to Lynnwood $3.00, to Federal Way $3.50. Lynnwood to SeaTac airport would be $3.75.
Fare zones get tricky if transfers are involved. BART sets the four SF Market Street stations at the same fare to discourage fare-based transfers, for example.
Should fares be set between stations or between communities? Transfers are a huge fare issue.
The german way of small fare zones I’m aware of but I don’t see any advantage of it over just simply using distance based fares.
I think it was easier to implement. You buy a ticket for the zones you plan on visiting. For example, you buy a ticket for A and B. Like our system, it is proof-of-payment, so someone comes along and checks your ticket. If you are in zone C, you pay a fine. It isn’t that different than the model that railroads have used for a very long time. You buy a ticket for a trip from Seattle to Spokane. If you are still on the train in Montana, you are in trouble.
I would guess that having a system where you do something as you exit is a fairly modern thing. It just doesn’t make sense with a manual system, while it is actually easier to handle for an electronic one. I would much rather “tap off”, then specify where exactly I am going every time I get on. I suppose it works OK in Germany simply because almost everyone rides in the same zone. Those that don’t are used to it.
Transit systems with zones usually don’t charge if you cross one. Metro was unusual in that sense, as they tried to simplify things. But it wasn’t that simple, and was often wrong. Then there was “pay as you exit”. That was designed to spur development downtown (and reduce the number of cars there) by establishing a “ride free zone”. Interestingly enough, it would be trivial to establish that with Link. If Seattle wanted to get people on Link for their travels from one end to the other, they could make that free. Likewise, if the buses go to proof-of-payment, it wouldn’t be hard to do the same thing. For buses heading into downtown, ask for payment before you get there. Once in downtown, everything is free. As the bus leaves downtown, begin enforcing again.
Proof-of-payment along with electronic systems (like ORCA cards) make various options a lot simpler on the agency (and the rider).
@Brent White,
The old Metro fare zone system was dumb, and it was dumb by design. It was an attempt to set up distance based fares in an age when there really weren’t computer networks, the hottest chip and the talk of the town was the 8080a, and “wireless” usually referred to some guy in his basement on a ham radio. 50 years later that is not the world we live in.
ST has the systems infrastructure to make distance based fares work, and Link already has them implemented. There is no advantage to resurrecting the Ghosts of Metro Past and putting in a clunkier, more cumbersome, and harder to use zone system for Link.
And anyone who cares can look up their Link distance based fares right on the ST website. The fares are published in table format. If the user can’t use a table, well then I seriously doubt they can use a zone map either.
For multi-model trips like Link/Sounder and Link/Streetcar I suppose ST could build a “fare estimator” into their existing trip planner, but that is about the only improvement that I can see for ST.
Metro? I don’t see any reasonable way Metro could put in a multi-zone system with X zones. Metro just doesn’t have the systems in place to do such a thing, even after all these years.
And with Metro pretty much not enforcing fares anyhow, what difference would it make if Metro had multiple fare zones? Not paying is not paying, regardless of how many zone boundaries the scofflaw crosses.
I am most certainly not advocating a zone fare system for Metro.
I would support an express fare, though, that everyone would pay on that route uniformly (except for those paying a reduced fare). 10 miles between stops is a good break point for stepping a route up to the express fare. The opening of Federal Way Link would be a good time to implement such a change, as Metro’s and ST’s remaining true expresses would have an alternative option of transferring at Federal Way.
It would be an own goal for ST to charge more to take the train between Federal Way and downtown Seattle than to take STX 577.
The sample zone chart smartly doesn’t upcharge for the first zone crossing. I hope ST is taking notes on that feature.
There is nothing to note. They both have the same feature. There is a base fare, and then it goes up from there, depending on how far you go.
He drives home how much simpler that would be than distance-based by showing the unwieldy chart for 34 stations plus the downtown zone vs a much smaller chart for a handful of zones.
Right, but most riders don’t look at things in that kind of detail. They just know that it costs more to ride farther. Very few riders know exactly how much. They just tap on and tap off. If they are making regular trips, they might know — if they can’t figure out the chart, they can always look at their ORCA account.
For riders who are paying by cash, it is very simple. You put in your destination at the kiosk. You need to look at a chart, or a map showing stations and zones. You just need to know where you are going. Once you enter that, you know how much it will cost.
Zones wouldn’t really get us anything. A zone system is really set up for when you don’t “tap out”, and must specify the zone you plan on traveling within before you board.
“doesn’t upcharge for the first zone crossing ” – I think that’s notable because it avoids a rider having to pay a higher fare for a short trip simply because they crossed an arbitrary zone border, as Brent notes. Helps with support for zoned fares for regular riders who live adjacent to zone barriers, which is important. Aside from Lake Washington, the subarea boundaries are all very arbitrary compared to how people actually live/work/play and move around the region. Paying a premium to travel between Shoreline and Seattle, between Kent and Renton, or between Bothell (downtown) and Bothell (canyon park) would all be very irritating.
What makes London zones bearable is there are often alternatives that don’t require crossing a zone boundary. Shoreline, Kent, and Renton don’t have much so there’s often no alternative to crossing the boundary.
Why the new demand to “subscribe” to WordPress?
I don’t know. I emailed Frank to find out what it is and see about disabling it. I went to STB in a private browser window and got it. But when I went in again in another private window, I didn’t. It suggests subscribing to STB for updates, but we have no updates like that. Unless it’s an automated notification when a new article appears. It may be a WordPress plugin.
Thanks; it seems to have stopped. Maybe a bug at WordPress itself?
Frank changed the configuration. That’s for confirmation that it’s fixed.
Did we lose the subscribe button to follow the comments of a particular post via email?
I rarely used that. Is it gone?
For me.
The two features are tied together it seems, so Frank turned them both off and has a support request with WordPress. I think the popup is so intrusive and misleading we can’t have it (because we don’t have a newsletter or announcements to send to subscribers), while the comment-email feature is a minor convenience. Or does anyone think it’s more than minor?
Any announcements we have are in articles. Or maybe unimportant ones in a top-level comment.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I use it, or used it, frequently. I
jump from phone to tablet to desktop to several laptops when reading STB. It’s nearly impossible to identify new posts, given the, um…, limitations of the comment section. The blue-highlights only work if you use the same browser all the time.
Yesterday’s meeting decided on the early acquisition of the Christian Faith Center for the south OMF. Assuming it goes smoothly, this mainly closes the chapter on the south OMF site selection and hopefully means also in the future sound transit will have enough light rail vehicles.
> Resolution No. R2023-26: Authorizing the chief executive officer to acquire certain real property interests … secure properties for construction, operation, and maintenance of the Tacoma Dome Link Extension and the Operations and Maintenance Facility South project.
Notably:
> The Christian Faith Center sent a letter to the board earlier in the year outlining the hardship the OMF South project has caused, and it requested that Sound Transit begin the property acquisition process.
https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/ActiveDocuments/Resolution%20R2023-26%20Potential%20Boardmember%20Amendment.pdf
That hardship letter from the group is going to be an important part of the documentation ST includes with its request for the Uniform Act exception for the early parcel(s) acquisition. It’ll be interesting to see if the FTA pushes back at all.
The Urbanist has a good article about some of the looming challenges in electrifying the King County Metro bus fleet: https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/09/28/metro-unveils-new-bus-branding-if-not-more-service/
Particularly concerning is the need to buy twice as many buses (on top of each bus being more expensive) to maintain the same level of service, on top of not even having enough storage capacity to hold all those extra buses, on top of a huge one-time cost to install charging equipment. (On a prior post, I recall reading that the current load from charging hundreds of buses overnight at the same time in the same place would require the construction of a whole new electrical substation, just for the bus base).
My takes on this:
1) With any new technology there will always be an “early adopter” penalty. Meaning that any agency, individually will probably save considerable money and headaches by waiting for things to iron out, but somebody has to be willing to buy into the technology first, otherwise, it will simply die for lack of customer demand and never have a chance to improve. If advancement of a new technology is important for climate reasons, the government needs to be willing to subsidize the costs for the early adopters (and take the risk of getting egg on its face if the technology ends up not working).
2) The problem is greatly exacerbated by trade restrictions. Electric buses are already widely used in China, but Buy America rules prohibit the importation of Chinese buses, so we have to pay far more for American-made buses.
3) If limited range is forcing King County Metro to buy twice as many buses, this seems like a sign that the buses don’t have big enough batteries. Ideally, it would be possible to simply ask for buses with bigger batteries, rather than buying more buses, but it sounds like battery buses are only produced by a tiny number of vendors, so KC Metro is limited to a handful of options they chose to offer, none of them really meeting their needs.
4) King County Metro needs to be very careful that whatever charging equipment they do install follows a standard that is likely to stick around for a long time. It would be a very expensive mistake to spend a boatload of money on bus chargers, only to have to rip out and replace all of the chargers in 10 years simply because standards have changed and the new buses aren’t compatible. Waiting a bit for the electric bus market to stabilize might reduce this risk.
5) Committing in advance to an arbitrary date for bus electrification – regardless of costs – seems like a bad idea. It’s something that should eventually be done, but it should be done when (after taking government incentives into account) it is a net improvement to passenger service, not to meet some arbitrary deadline. It is also not necessary to electrify the entire fleet all at once. They can start with routes that relatively short distances at low speeds, saving the freeway express routes for last.
6) Another piece of low hanging fruit that doesn’t seem to have been considered is the trolley network. Some routes can be electrified with just a few miles of additional trolley wire, without the need for huge batteries. Still others can possibly be electrified with a hybrid approach where, maybe, the bus travels half the route under wire and uses batteries for the other half. Or, you could even take the step of installing pantographs on some of the diesel buses. Burn diesel on the highway, switch to trolley wire for that long, slow slog through downtown. Routes like the 101 and 150 seem like they would be excellent candidates for this. 3rd Ave. already has trolley wire. It could be added to the SODO busway for relatively cheap.
If they need to double the number of buses, they’re not doing it right. There’s no way to make it affordable that way.
All city bus routes lay over at the end of their route. Most of the battery buses I saw being demonstrated in Berlin in 2016 had quick to connect chargers for use at layover locations. All were rooftop mounted pantograph type devices, so that all the driver had to do is press a button when under a charger and the bus took care of the rest.
Geneva was working with something like that, only with fast chargers at frequent stops along the route:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NLNQcEzLrY4
They are pursuing an insane and inefficient goal without considering the full environmental impacts. The full lifecycle cost of the electric battery buses including mining the minerals for the batteries and disposing of them and generating the electricity and having the buses idle for maintenance and charging means that it is a wasteful use of infrastructure funds while doing little to impact climate change. Far better to expand the trolley network and to purchase more buses and run more frequent service making transit more accessible and taking more cars off the road.
Every transit system that operates EV buses has experienced excessive downtime of the vehicles and range limitations. It turns out that transporting tons of batteries around town also consumes energy.
Knee jerk feel good actions versus objective decision making. Best thing we can do for the environment is to deliver the most service hours possible for the spending, and EV is a foolproof way to deliver 40% less service for the spending.
If distance-based fares are to be kept, may I suggest some modifications:
(1) Measure distance from station to station as the crow flies, rather than the length of the track. This would help flatten the difference between the bottom and top fare, and make the fares a little more justifiable.
(2) Treat rides on different lines as the separate rides they are, which is more in keeping with the spirit of the ORCA rules.
It also better recognizes that the trip is an inferior (but still great) service, relative to those getting a one-seat ride. The primary beneficiaries would be those having to deal with a transfer at ID/CS between the less-frequent portion of the 1 Line and the less-frequent portion of the 2 Line, or the trick some will learn to catch a frequent bus between Mt Baker Station and Jimi Hendrix Park Station.
The top fare would also end up being about 50 cents less, reducing the nuisance feel of the single-tap fine.
The fare charts would also be more legible, with 24 “stations” in the 1-Line chart, 23 “stations” in the 2-Line chart, and a 12×13 chart for interline fares, with a statement that tapping off and back on at ID/CS is not necessary. (That statement should be included regardless of how the two-seat fares are accumulated,)
(3) Raise the bottom fare to at least $2.75. If ST needs operating revenue, what argument is there against doing that? If Metro raises its fare to $3, then move the Link floor up to $3.
(4) Offer day passes good for the whole system at the station ORCA vending machines.
(5) Adjust the regional day pass pricing so it covers all trips on Link, or offer multiple levels on the RDP.
(6) Negotiate with Metro on getting rid of its paper transfers.
@Brent White,
You are making this much more complicated than it needs to be.
All the really matters is the min fare (base) and the max fare. After that it is just a matter of ST setting the per mile rate to get between the two, and rounding to the nearest 25 cents of course.
As per ST raising their min fare to match Metro’s min fare, why on earth would anyone do this?
Link is the better service with lower operating costs per passenger mile and higher fare box recovery. Setting the min fare to match Metro’s higher costs and lower fare box recovery would artificially encourage people to use the less efficient Metro service. This is exactly what we don’t want as a region.
Metro provides a necessary service in areas not served directly by Link. That is as it should be. But overlap and competition between the two services should be discouraged. And we certainly shouldn’t be putting our thumb on the regional scale to artificially level the playing field for short trips where overlap does exist.
So, if Link has a lower operating cost per passenger, why should it have to charge higher fares than Metro?
“Raise the bottom fare to at least $2.75. If ST needs operating revenue, what argument is there against doing that? If Metro raises its fare to $3, then move the Link floor up to $3.”
Link is more efficient than Metro, so above a certain ridership level Link’s operating costs are lower than Metro’s. That threshold was reached in the early 2010s. Metro raised fares repeatedly in the 2000s and 2010s to keep it within the council’s 20-30% recovery window. Link’s initial 2009 fare had a built-in cushion for near-term cost increases, and it has been able to remain at that level for 14 years even as Metro shot past it.
That’s one of the reasons we built Link, to handle the central bulk of ridership more efficiently. Fares should reflect that, and incentivize people to take Link if they can, and not fill up less-efficient buses for things Link can do.
At the same time, Link needs a reasonable cost-recovery level, and that might mean it needs to increase fares now. But if Link’s and Metro’s relative costs are still the same, then ideally Metro would raise its fare when it reaches the same need, and Link’s base fare would remain 50 cents below Metro’s wherever Metro’s fare lands. Part of the problem is this is being proposed in a vacuum. We know Metro will have to raise its fare soon, but we don’t know when or how much. That makes it difficult to tell what a reasonable Link fare for passengers will be in two years or five years, because we don’t know whether Metro will raise its fare or not.
If Link’s minimum fare reaches Metro’s standard fare, so that trips like Westlake-Mt Baker or Westlake-UW are higher than Metro, that would be a bad thing. Maybe it’s necessary given Link’s and Metro’s near-future costs, but we can’t tell that from the information provided. And it would be a shame to do that unnecessarily. That would be sabotaging the light-rail service we just built.
Would a $4 Link fare between downtown and Federal Way, a $3.25 STExpress 577 fare, and a $2.75 Metro express 177 fare be sabotaging Link?
I’m assuming the 577 will be deleted and the 578 truncated at Federal Way. That was in the last ST Express planning scenarios we got. Metro Connects has a downtown-Federal Way express, but it was never clear whether it would be all-day or peak-only, and now with its financial constraints and driver constraints I don’t know what it will do. A too-low 177 fare is less important than a too-high short-distance Link fare. The former affects only Metro’s budget; the latter affects passengers’ urban transit mobility.
I agree with Mike. I would also assume that the 177 gets truncated as well. I don’t expect any bus to run as an express from Federal Way to Downtown Seattle. The same can be said for Lynnwood and the East Side (as it was for Northgate). Metro and ST really don’t have an interest in running express buses that duplicate Link.
There are exceptions that basically skip the station — for example the 510. But that seems less likely with the good freeway bus/train interfaces. These buses carry few riders, so they really don’t have an impact on Link ridership. They can hardly be considered “sabotaging Link”. At worst they are highly-subsidized buses that exist to please the small group that ride them (like the 586). I believe the fares should reflect that subsidy, but realize it complicates matters (which is why I think ST will simply truncate everything).
This item is on the agenda for the next ST Rider Experience and Operations Committee meeting set for next week:
“Motion M2023-86
“Changes the name of the Bel-Red/130th Station to BelRed Station and the Spring District/120th Station to Spring District Station within the East Link Extension.”
There’s been some discussion about these station names in previous STB posts fairly recently, so I thought I would share this info with the gang here.
Great. Now if we can just get to one station with the name “University” in it, one station with the name “Shoreline” in it, and one station with the name “Redmond” in it.
But I guess progress is progress.
My put:
“Redmond Tech Center” becomes just “Tech Center”
“University Street Station” becomes “Seneca Street Station”
And ask Shoreline which of their two stations they would rather have be called “”Shoreline”. But only one gets the name.
Just “Seneca”. Too may stations have “Street” in the name. Which station wins the lottery to be called “Street”?
I think stations are fine to be named after streets, but only numerical or alphabetical streets. Looking at the NYC subway, stations like “72nd street” or “avenue U” do immediately provide context about where you are in the system. While stations like “Canal Street” or “Junction Blvd” not so much.
Redmond Tech Center” becomes just “Tech Center”
“University Street Station” becomes “Seneca Street Station”
Agreed. Much better.
And ask Shoreline which of their two stations they would rather have be called “”Shoreline”. But only one gets the name.
How about neither. Just just drop the “Shoreline” from the names. That means 145th and 185th Station. If Shoreline insists on having one of their stations named after the city (which I think is fairly silly*) then 185th is the obvious choice, since the other station is essentially at the border.
* Are there any stations called “Seattle”?
Chicago Transit Authority has 4 stations named Western, 3 named Belmont, and several other exact duplicates.
It would be good to nip the station name problem in the bud, before they become so institutionalized that nobody can possibly change them.
Yeah, but when the stations with identical names are on different lines, it shouldn’t be an issue, right?
For the record, I don’t get worked up very much over this station-naming business in general. I learned to navigate the trains in NYC as well as the buses in Brooklyn and Queens as a kid and for me it’s always been something that just comes with taking transit to get around. One can always ask other riders at the station or on the train/bus for help if needed.
@Tlsgawm
It’s not a big issue for now. Well part of whole station naming policy was also to prevent cities/neighborhoods from continually adding items.
Aka like how DC progressively added titles to their station names ending up with: “U Street/African-Amer Civil War Memorial/Cardozo“ or “Archives-Navy Memorial-Penn Quarter”
And now it’s politically impossible to fix the station names since it feels bad to shorten it. That’s why the sound transit station naming scheme is a bit strict and didn’t want to add on Microsoft or benaroya.
I mean otherwise we could have ended up with like Wilburton/Hospital/Surrey Down station, Overlake Transit Center/Microsoft , or NE 130th/Pinehurst/Jackson Golf Course lol.
ST doesn’t need to be repeating the errors of other systems. We have a chance to get things right. We should do it.
– “Redmond Tech Center” becomes just “Tech Center”
I expect that to be what people will informally call the station anyway. People likely prefer shorter, distinct names!
Unfortunately, ST isn’t likely to make that change if it isn’t done with these other station names changes.
They released the upcoming service plans now (2024 Service Plan Phase One). I don’t think any of it is a surprise but just repeated below anyways:
Spring 2024
* 2 Line (Redmond Technology Station to South Bellevue Station): new service to eight stations with trains operating every 10 minutes weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays for approximately 16 hours per day.
Fall 2024
* 1 Line (Lynnwood City Center Station to Angle Lake Station): extends the 1 Line north with four new stations: Shoreline South/148th, Shoreline North/185th, Mountlake Terrace and Lynnwood City Center. On weekdays trains will initially operate approximately every 10 minutes during rush hour, 10 minutes midday and evening, and 15 minutes early/late. Based on operational performance, rush hour service may operate between 8-10 minutes in the future. On Saturday and Sunday trains will operate approximately every 10 minutes during the day and evening, and 15 minutes early/late.
* Sounder N Line: restore two weekday roundtrips in 2024 to offer additional transit capacity and travel options in the north corridor in response to anticipated 1 Line crowding and construction impacts. An exact schedule will be developed in coordination with operating partners, with a priority of offering service at times when travel demand and crowding are anticipated to be highest on the 1 Line.
https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/ActiveDocuments/Resolution%20R2023-31.pdf
There was a rider experience and operations committee meeting notes for September 7 published recently. Most of it is pretty banal or already discussed in the previous presentation, but there’s a couple tidbits I thought the rest of you guys might find interesting.
> Chair Walker asked why extending 1 Line to Federal Way required reducing the 2 Line to 3-car service was specifically mentioned and asked if that service could eventually reach 4-car service. Mr. Shelden replied that was mentioned because of the fleet limitations until the agency received the new Series 3 vehicles in the early 2030s. Once those new vehicles were received, that would then allow 4-car train series. At that time, there would be additional service extensions and staff would be required to investigate service again to reach the service desires.
https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/ActiveDocuments/230907%20Rider%20Experience%20and%20Operations%20Committee%20minutes.pdf
So is ST implying that they will not meet their July revenue service date (RSD) target for Lynnwood Link?
As of the July progress report, it was still listed as mid-July 2024:
“The Lynnwood Link Extension was baselined with 245 days of project float. Currently, the project is calculated to have 51 days remaining between completion of work and the July 17, 2024 revenue service date. The float reported continues to be an area of focus for improvement. ST continues working with the contractors to re-examine the schedule duration, logic, and work sequences to find opportunities for improvement. The target revenue service date is unchanged at this point. An ST Board decision regarding formal opening dates, is not expected until later this year.”
We are now in Q4 2023; the agency needs to clarify whether opening the East Link Starter Line is indeed going to push out the RSD for LLE or not.
@Tlsgwm,
I think it is pretty clear that the ELSL will delay the opening of LLE by at least one Q. All you need to do is listen to Timm. As soon as the ELSL was approved she changed her verbiage on LLE from “July 2024” to “fall 2024”. That sure sounds like a slide of at least one Q to me.
And, in reality, I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up seeing LLE open in early 2025. Just my guess.
And it is sad because Timm is sandbagging a bit on the “6 months between openings” thing. The 6 months of testing is really in two distinct phases: verification (fit and function) testing of about 2 months, and demonstration (simulated service) testing of about 4 months.
Those two phases are not the same, and the staff involved are not exactly the same either. There is no reason that the staff involved in the verification phase of ELSL can’t transition to LLE as soon as they complete their work on ELSL. That would shorten the gap to about 4 months instead of 6.
And I’m not too worried about hiring and training for ops. ST can just pull as many operators as they need directly out of Metro, and training staff should be available on a 4 month cycle and not a six.
Lazarus, Lynnwood Link should open at the service change of the local operators; this was done in 2016 and 2021. It was not done with the initial line in summer 2009 and winter 2010. With Lynnwood, the networks will change a major way. So, summer 2024 was not a great time as it would be in between the operator changes.
Fall 2024 seems to be six months after spring 2024.
I looked at the service plan. I was surprised to see Sounder N service increased.
The increase may however be the “we tried what we could” step to see if the train loses riders to Lynnwood Link once opened or maybe it’s to keep riders off of Link until 2 Line opens. We shall see!
@Al.S,
I suspect the increase in Sounder N is a tacit admission that ST doesn’t think more buses on I-5 is an adequate solution to the capacity issues with stand-alone LLE. Particularly since the whole Revive I-5 thing won’t be delayed that long.
If Revive I-5 hammers car traffic on I-5 during the lane resurfacing project, then it is going to hammer bus traffic on I-5 too. The only modes that won’t be affected are Link and Sounder. So I think ST is hoping that N Sounder helps just enough to keep things functional.
I wasn’t happy to see that at all to be quite frank. There are a few Sounder North supporters (that includes commenter AJ I believe, but if I’m mistaken about that please do indeed correct me), but I’m not in that camp at all.
Anyway, doesn’t this change in the service plan for Sounder N just restore the runs that were eliminated a couple of years ago?
There is one interesting sentence in that Sounder N bullet-point:
“An exact schedule will be developed in coordination with operating partners,…”
Don’t know if that gives ST wiggle room on the schedule, but some months ago, Amtrak’s westbound Empire Builder (#7) changed to detrain-only in Everett and Edmonds, along with moving that schedule to arrive around 5 minutes after the Vancouver BC-Portland train comes through both stations. (~10am time frame)
That means there is the old time slot for #7 is open. (~9am time frame)
I have no idea what that means in the whole process, but heck, that’s what STB is here for, …
Wild Speculation and Rumination.
Yeah, I’m a Sounder North supporter. I think it has a TOD problem at Mukilteo and Edmonds stations rather than being an intrinsically bad service offering.
I also I think the typical STB commentator undervalues the 1-seat ride to Seattle given how poor the 2-seat bus options are from those station areas. Once Lynnwood Link opens, I would support ST re-purposing Snohomish’s Sounder O&M budget to provide good STX bus service (Mukilteo-Link and Edmonds-Link) in lieu of continuing Sounder service, but given the crowding concerns on L1 until L2 interlining, and the regional shortage of bus operators, I think it’s reasonable to continue the train service for a few more years and see if ridership recovers.
WL: those 1 Line headways seem too long in the peaks and at off-peak times. ST could use shorter trains and six-minute headway. Shorter waits would make integration easier.
Not sure if this will get seen by that many sets of eyes, but since this is the most recent open thread this seems to be the most appropriate placement….
A new article on the Urbanist site has this prescient warning:
“But when that step occurs, preliminary engineering already being well in progress will give the preferred alternatives established this spring and summer momentum. Backers of skipping Chinatown and Midtown will paint their option as expedient and other alternatives as triggering delays. But this is precisely how they designed the process.”
https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/10/05/obstacles-mount-for-chinatown-and-midtown-station-options/
Perhaps this discussion will get picked up on the next open thread.
Read two interesting Seattletimes articles about real estate changes near the east link stations.
One about Spring District, where the slowed Meta hiring pace has meant a lot of the offices are unsure about construction. Though in general there are still a lot of apartments still being built.
> But all has not gone according to plan. The Spring District has been slow to fill retail spots, and the entire development now faces uncertainty over Meta’s plans for its sprawling office campus…. “They have yet to decide when they are going to occupy,” Johnson said in an interview. The social media giant leases or owns most of the office buildings in the development.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/bellevues-spring-district-grapples-with-metas-shifting-office-plans/ (https://archive.ph/NLuTq)
A second article about the redevelopment on rainier ave in between i-90 and mlk way.
> As many other Seattle neighborhoods saw dramatic overhauls, including parts of Rainier Avenue (see Columbia City), this stretch mostly treaded water. Zoned for a gritty mix of retail and light industry, it retained some of its unpretentious, quirky and community-oriented character…
> The area in question is part of the North Rainier-Mount Baker “urban village,” one of more than two dozen neighborhood hubs that the City Council upzoned in 2019 to allow denser housing with affordable-housing requirements. Previously zoned for shorter commercial buildings, the new rules paved the way for apartment buildings with six, seven or eight stories…
Also talks about the new construction. While I already knew about the apartments from the zoning change (and the cranes), I didn’t quite realize there are that many private schools looking into the area.
> The area in question is part of the North Rainier-Mount Baker “urban village,” one of more than two dozen neighborhood hubs that the City Council upzoned in 2019 to allow denser housing with affordable-housing requirements. Previously zoned for shorter commercial buildings, the new rules paved the way for apartment buildings with six, seven or eight stories.
> Private schools are clustering in the area because they want easy access to freeways, buses and light rail, added Stacy Turner, head of school at Hamlin Robinson. The French American School of Puget Sound plans to develop a new campus off Rainier Avenue and move there from Mercer Island.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/shuttered-stores-new-housing-whats-happening-on-rainier-ave/ (https://archive.ph/9z6oG)