Sound Transit has published a full Link-reduction schedule for January 13-February 4. All train runs are listed. although the weekend down bus shuttle is still just “every 10-15 minutes”. There are also regular bus routes that may help avoid the gap for certain trip pairs.
Seattle Transit Map has released a night owl update (1-5am). The regular Seattle map with all transit services graded by frequency is also available. These maps are free and are produced by STB’s Oran Viriyincy.
ST explores fare gates ($) at Link stations. “Consultants said retrofitting the five busiest stations — Northgate, University District, Capitol Hill, Westlake, and International District/Chinatown — for $31 million would break even within one to seven years, and reap $88 million-plus over 20 years.” That’s just one concept, and the article cautions that the cost and revenue would have to be verified. The ST board will get a detailed staff briefing on fare gates sometime this year. The Urbanist analyzed the last report in 2022.
An Uptown lowrise ($) may be the first Seattle office building to be converted to apartments. Stream Real Estate has filed a plan with the city to convert the 4-story building to 68 one- and two-bedroom apartments, and add a 5th story on top to leverage the Elliott Bay views. The building would have a small “urban farm” in the outdoor amenities area.
The second edition of Human Transit will be published February 6th. The preface and table of contents are available online.
Amsterdam has a Pruitt-Igoe like urban-renewal failure called the Bijlmer. It’s a cluster of highrise tower-in-the-park apartment buildings connected to highways with a strict separation of uses. The honeycomb-shaped buildings look like the Pentagon unrapped. Many Amsterdam residents refused to live there, and it became a ghetto. Ultimately several buildings were demolished and the remainder were modified. (Hoog video)
RMTransit reflects on the past and future of his transit video channel.
This is an open thread.
I’m super confused on the schedule. I thought on weekends all the downtown link stations were to be completely closed so how is there any schedule at all??
Look at the schedule. Trains run Northgate-Capitol Hill and SODO-Angle Lake. The middle of the chart is a big blank area saying “Stations closed: bus shuttles…”.
Were the consultants paying attention to the upcoming Link extensions, when Lynnwood Station will replace Northgate Station as the northern terminus, and thus the only major station north of U-District?
Can ST guarantee that there will be no accessibility reductions from how faregates will be installed?
Can faregates replace the bike-rack-like obstacles at the west bridge of SeaTac Airport Station?
I do not remember where I heard or read this. It was a long tone ago. Those annoying bike rack style obstacles were to keep Seatac luggage carts from going past a certain point at Seatac Station. If that is true, I would assume they would not get rid of them unless the Seatac Airport wants them gone.
Good point about the impending ridership drop at Northgate coming in the next year once trains go further to Lynnwood. I expect Lynnwood and maybe Downtown Bellevue will have more boardings than Northgate will by fall of 2025 and I don’t see any gates getting installed before then.
Of course, ST has a consistent history of not thinking ahead on many levels. It’s best exemplified by these massive service reductions for maintenance every few months for a system that is less than 15 years old. I think the riders are more aware of the lack of thinking ahead than Board members or their senior executive choices are.
Imagine the political fallout if I-5 capacity from SR520 to I-90 was reduced by half for two whole weeks every few months.
to be fair sr 520/i90 does close down randomly a lot.
520 closes a lot short-term because a major improvement is under construction. I don’t recall I-90 closing much the past few years. There’s an annual inspection/maintenance round, and the controversial closing to transit during the Blue Angels performances.
But Al S’s point is right on: the governments prioritize transit riders way below car drivers. Kirkland riders are supposed to just forego traveling to Seattle every time there’s a Husky game or canoe race or Link reduction or Montlake Bridge maintenance or 520 maintenance. There are a few miles of transit-priority lanes and queue jumps here and there, but not a major investment in them like other cities have.
I just saw an article about Europe’s new “rail renaissance”. That’s ironic because even without the renaissance, Europe’s rail/BRT is twenty times ahead the US’s and keeps improving every year.
> Were the consultants paying attention to the upcoming Link extensions, when Lynnwood Station will replace Northgate Station as the northern terminus, and thus the only major station north of U-District?
Yes, they calculated the ridership based on future ridership.
If you want to read the document: https://www.theurbanist.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Sound-Transit-Fare-Gates-Study.pdf
Note it is highly unlikely Sound Transit will choose to gate all stations, the calculation showed that the capital cost could end up in the negative hundreds of millions to add fare gates to all stations.
>Scenario 3: Top 5 Stations – The top 5 ridership stations (Capitol Hill, Northgate, University Street, University of Washington, and Westlake) are retrofitted with fare gates. This requires the lowest capital investment at just over $34 million. In this scenario, non-gated Link stations retain their current 55 percent fare compliance rate, and Sounder stations are assumed to keep their current 85 percent fare compliance rate
I will highlight under this scenario they wouldn’t gate Pioneer Square nor CID.
It appears to me that the document only discusses data from 2019 and 2021.
Oddly, this report is dated December 2022. Shouldn’t it be updated with more current numbers if the Board is going to make decisions based on it?
You have to live this sentence on page 3:
“It is not clear whether changes to commute habits or the opening of the three northern-most stations drive the northward shift of peak-hour flows.” To me, that sentence exemplifies the ultimate CYA statement of research laziness.
I see no mention of anticipated 2025 demand.
To be fair, adding follow-up gates to one new station (Lynnwood) is no big deal. It’s not adding them to one station that’s expensive; it’s adding them to several stations or all stations.
> It is not clear whether changes to commute habits or the opening of the three northern-most stations drive the northward shift of peak-hour flows.” To me, that sentence exemplifies the ultimate CYA statement of research laziness.
> I see no mention of anticipated 2025 demand.
That section is related but a bit different than what we’re talking about. It’s referring to safety concerns about installing the fare gates and is calculating the peak hour riders going through the gates but that is different from the total daily ridership.
“One consideration for fare gates is the average and maximum passenger flow through stations, in particular in case of an emergency in which people must quickly exit a station.”
For ridership numbers, I assume they are just using Sound Transit provided data.
If past disruptions are any prediction, they won’t be able to keep the 13/26-minute schedule and this PDF timetable will be out the window within a day or two, leaving us to guess when the train is going to arrive with 30+ minute headways.
Then ST will hopefully publish an updated schedule. But I see this service level as achievable. 26 minutes gives plenty of buffer for logistics. 15 minutes is less than the 8-10 minutes the tails normally run, or the 6 minutes they ran in part of the 2010s. In the 2023 reductions, did downtown service every go below 26 minutes? 30 minutes was the weekend pandemic level, and I don’t remember it ever being worse than that. Of course, there are always outages, but that’s different from being unable to maintain frequency outside outages.
Why is the reduction occurring? I’ve forgotten what maintenance has to be done now.
https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/FinalRecords/2023/Presentation%20-%20Passenger%20Impact%20Portfolio%20Plan%2012-07-23.pdf
Main projects
* Bond Box Repair to fix signal boxes embedded in the tracks that were damaged by joint bus-rail operation
* Rail Replacement near Westlake to replace worn rail, resulting in reduced long-term wear on equipment and better passenger experience
Piggyback projects (idk which were actually chosen)
* Passenger Information Management System (PIMS) sign and cable upgrades
* PIMS-associated static sign upgrades
* International District Station (IDS) bird mitigation
* Westlake Station ventilation shaft
* Emergency tunnel system (26kV system) maintenance
* Continue Eastlink plinth repairs
* Clean artwork at Westlake and IDS
> ST explores fare gates ($) at Link stations. “Consultants said retrofitting the five busiest stations — Northgate, University District, Capitol Hill, Westlake, and International District/Chinatown — for $31 million would break even within one to seven years, and reap $88 million-plus over 20 years.
I doubt it’ll gain money but I do like the partial gating idea as it’d be a lot simpler and less costly. I’m slightly in favor of the fare gates more just to uphold everyone’s confidence in the system, but really doubt the monetary benefits.
I agree that increasing confidence in the system is a worthwhile outcome, although monetary benefits seem viable given the current low rate of payment.
It appears to be somewhat normalized to not pay fares right now and I could see generally honest people feeling like suckers for paying with so many others not doing so. If people need to take publicly obvious steps to bypass paying fares, like tailgating or hopping a fence, they will be far less likely to do so.
The option to retrofit the busiest stations and assess results feels like the right place to start. Catching one-end of a trip pair would be sufficient to get most people paying and additional stations could be added over time as needed.
Do we have any idea how it would work when someone who didn’t tap on boards at a station without fare gates, and needs to tap off at a station with fare gates?
Would there be ticket machines in the fare paid area at those stations so riders could purchase a ticket to leave?
What would be charged to the Orca card? The fare based on total maximum distance? Similar to what happens if you forget to tap off now? This is, of course, assuming that a flat fare stucture is not in place once fare gates are implemented.
Overall, I like the concept. A few pretty minor challenges, but I agree that it will help with confidence in the system, and likely produce a sizeable increase in fare revenue. A 7 year payback period makes this a no brainer.
Casey,
Sound Transit recently approved a new flat fare system which will go in effect once the Lynwood Link Extension opens. The new $3 flat fare will not require you to tap off.
The loss of tap-off data is concerning to me. Even though it’s not universally done, it’s enough of a data point to allow ST to analyze trip patterns rather than to merely count the ones and offs at each station.
ST could look into cell phone/ Bluetooth sampling to figure out patterns without the tap-off data. Still, I’m not sure if they would spend the money and commit the resources to do it in this alternative way.
Finally, the irony of considering fare gates while going with flat fares isn’t lost on me. Fare gates can be two-way and that would generate almost complete entry/ exit tables if ST did that.
BART (with distance-based fares) requires fare gate use at both the entry and exit, for example. BART publishes their resulting tables monthly:
https://www.bart.gov/about/reports/ridership
It is stupid for Sound Transit to worry about $300 million dollars more to gate all non-surface stations. The rider experience improvements from doing so will lead to enough more ridership that the extra expenses will be recouped in fare revenues. More people will be attracted to a clean and orderly system than The Fentanyl Express. [Ed note: that’s what the non-riding public thinks, not me]
Sure, there will still be vulnerabilities in the sequential surface stations of the RV and SoDo/Stadium, but I believe that the only “walk-up” stations on East Link will be East Main and 124th Avenue. Ridership between those two stations will be minor.
> It is stupid for Sound Transit to worry about $300 million dollars more to gate all non-surface stations.
The elevated ones are relatively easy to gate. The at-grade ones would have major difficulty and I’m not sure it’d be fire safety/ada complaint without major station overhauls. More importantly for the at-grade stations, it’s kinda absurdly easy to just walk around the gate or climb over the fence so it’s not really much of a deterrent.
“Do we have any idea how it would work when someone who didn’t tap on boards at a station without fare gates, and needs to tap off at a station with fare gates? Would there be ticket machines in the fare paid area at those stations so riders could purchase a ticket to leave?”
Bart has “Addfare” machines inside the exit. BART allows you to enter if your card has the minimum fare, so you have to use the addfare machines if you go a longer distance. It’s unclear what happens if you don’t have money to add the fare. I assume you’d have to ask a station agent to exit, jump the turnstyle, or go back to a station where it would be minimum fare.
If you are willing to tap on exit but didn’t tap on enter, then I guess it would register as a tapin instead of a tapout. At least that’s what happens with the current two-way readers. If you “tapin” and leave the network, then you’d be charged the maximum fare. (Since tapping out refunds the difference between the maximum fare and your fare, and that’s what you aren’t doing.)
But it will be moot when the flat-fare policy starts, which I think is when Lynnwood opens this fall. Then tapouts will be abolished so the issue won’t come up. And there will have to be one-way “exit” turnstyles that are free to go through, like all cities that don’t have tapout.
“The loss of tap-off data is concerning to me. Even though it’s not universally done, it’s enough of a data point to allow ST to analyze trip patterns rather than to merely count the ones and offs at each station.”
An agency that prioritizes Everett and Tacoma Dome over train-to-train transfers and Ballard clearly doesn’t care about trip patterns or ridership. It’s liable to have a blind spot on how much it’s losing by not having exit data, full-trip data, or good train-to-train transfers.
WL, I know that. It’s why I talked about the “vulnerabilities” in the “sequential surface stations of the RV and SoDo/Stadium”. A surface system can’t be made airtight, but South Link will always be the redhead child of the ST system, passing as it does through miles and miles of industrial and airline sprawl and freeway verge. So it probably won’t have all that much ridership. Ever.
Think about this depressing reality. From the interchange of East Marginal Way South and SR599 to Tacoma, the only stretch where it isn’t in a freeway right of way or a couple of blocks away at a station is the short stretch between Sea-Tac Airport Station and the 28th Avenue South and the now-being-built SR509 freeway.
Stunning and oh so incompetent, given the slow technology that ST has chosen. What a colossal folly.
Maybe that’s why ST proposes chopping Line 1 out of DSTT. Give the Good Burgers [sic] of East King, North Seattle and SnHoCo a cocooned and sanitized, upright (and dare we say “uptight”?) “Middle Class Link”. The hippies in Ballard can ride with the tawny folks.
One line from Casey’s reply rang a bell:
“Maybe that’s why ST proposes chopping Line 1 out of DSTT. Give the Good Burgers [sic] of East King, North Seattle and SnHoCo a cocooned and sanitized, upright (and dare we say “uptight”?) “Middle Class Link”. The hippies in Ballard can ride with the tawny folks.”
I’m tempted to delete this as ad homen, against both Rainier Valley, ST, Ballard, and the burgers and burghers of the world. That’s quite an accomplishment, getting five demographics at once. Rainier’s most striking change in the past twenty years is the number of middle-class people who moved to it. ST routed Link through Rainier Valley so that the good burghers there (the entire population) could use it, and the good burgers at the Columbia City Ale House and Wendy’s could too. (Disclosure: I worked at another Wendy’s in high school.) ST should not be routing Link to avoid perceived riff-raff neighborhoods, and I don’t think it does. I’ve never thought of Ballard as hippie, certainly not as much as the U-District, Capitol Hill, Fremont, and Queen Anne.
For some hippie stories, in high school in the early 80s my dad sent me to a counselor on 15th Ave E to cope with their divorce. The counselor and her home office resembled a hippie and new age; she liked 15th because it was “cosmopolitan”; she took me to a folksy restaurant that hippies would go to (the Cause Celebre; I think it’s gone now); and she moved to another job at the Roche Harbor resort on Orcas Island. Later around 2000 when I was living in the northern U-District at 56th, another longstanding folksy cafe, The Last Exit, had moved from 41st to 52nd(?). One day a hippiemobile parked there, a 1970s station wagon with figurines fully covering the roof and hood, and a few longhair tie-dye people got into it. It was like a time warp, and I imagined they’d come from a rural commune for some special event. I can’t imagine these happening in Ballard.
I’m strongly in favor of starting to add fare gates at the stations where it’s feasible to do so (i.e., all except the street running stations on MLK). It will add confidence in the system overall, and will especially increase safety and work to remove undesirables from the train. In my mind this is more important than the incremental revenue.
I’d also compliment this with an increase in fare checks as well – both are important. Paris for example has faregates but also does checks due to folks jumping them or entering through the exits.
I’d like to see the fare checks be more aggressive. There’s a way to do it that is equitable… for example, in Europe it’s common to have 4-5 fare checkers stationed at the exit gates and checking every single person who exits the paid fare area. This is done regardless of skin color, disability, or any other ‘protected class’ that has cried foul with ST’s prior approach. This could be complimented with 1-2 police to promptly cite and/or arrest those who try to evade.
We can have a safe system that is fair and equitable for all. Places with much, much worse social and economic problems and inequities than Seattle manage to run clean, safe systems where people pay and have an enjoyable ridership experience (the metro in Rio de Janeiro and gautrain in Johannesburg are two such examples). It only takes the political will to do it. We can’t risk spending tens of billions of dollars on this infrastructure, only to have people afraid to use it because we insist on tolerating certain types of behavior in the name of ‘equity’ and ‘fairness’.
I don’t know why people think adding fare gates will make things safer, or decrease the number of “undesirables”. Do folks just assume every thief or junkie on Link didn’t pay their fare? Why? Fares are actually free for those 18 an under. So you are saying those 18 and under never commit crimes? They never vomit on the train, or harass fellow riders? Seriously? Get real.
If anything, fare gates will just make things worse. It means spending a bunch of money on security focused entirely on fares, as opposed to behavior. In contrast, fare enforcement does double-duty. They are focused on fare collection, but if someone is doing something illegal, they can step in (or more quickly contact security). The extra money to add fare gates has to come from somewhere, and it will likely come from the same budget as fare enforcement. This means the number of fare collectors would go down, not up.
The sole benefit of fare gates is to increase fare compliance — a problem we may not even have! I have yet to see ST reveal how many people are actually cheating. Instead they talk about the number of people who aren’t paying, which includes those who aren’t supposed to pay (e. g. those under 19). It sounds like propaganda from an agency that really likes spending money on new things (in this case, fare gates) instead of actually making sure the system runs smoothly.
I get how you would want increased security on the train, but adding fare gates is quite likely just a big waste of money.
Seattle is never going to have real fare checks because of current State law and the political environment. Europeans are unapologetic racist. Been to Germany, France, Italy. Watched the police on trains fuck with Black and Brown people. It’s the way it is over there. I once had to pay 75 euros (on the spot) for punching a train ticket wrong in Northern Italy. Yeah, I stuck the ticket backward in the punch machine. Public transit in Europe works backs the transit cops are assholes.
Fare gates might be the solution in Seattle because Left Coast Liberals are passive aggressive racist/classist. We wouldn’t want to see cops toss bums off a train we’re riding, (I watched transit cops literally fling a homeless drunk off a train in Hamburg Germany where he landed square on his head… nobody intervened), but us Northwesties would rather not ride with stinky people.
Fare gates might fit into our political and social realities.
Tacomee – if every single person coming out of the turnstile is checked and potentially fined, I fail to see how there’s any disproportionate effects for black, brown, blue, green, or any other people. If not done onboard then it’s even fairer because every person is checked.
“Europe it’s common to have 4-5 fare checkers stationed at the exit gates and checking every single person who exits the paid fare area.”
That’s another thing that’s missing. Networks with fare gates usually have a station-agent desk at every station staffed full time to handle unexpected issues, disability access, and people stuck inside without money. The roving fare inspectors are to avoid the cost of having full-time agents at every station. But if ST really wants to improve the network and gain maximum ridership, goodwill, and trust, it would just add the full-time agents at every station, so that people can talk with a person if they have problems or questions.
“It means spending a bunch of money on security focused entirely on fares, as opposed to behavior.”
The money is already being spent on fare ambassadors and security guards.
“The extra money to add fare gates has to come from somewhere, and it will likely come from the same budget as fare enforcement.”
Not necessarily. Fare enforcement is an operating cost, while installing fare gates is a one-time capital cost. ST can take it from its ST2/3 capital budget.
> Europe it’s common to have 4-5 fare checkers stationed at the exit gates and checking every single person who exits the paid fare area.
Our stations don’t have enough ridership to make that economically feasible. Well more accurately there’s too much single family homes surrounding them so there’s not enough riders. Granted to be fair, in Europe (generalizing here) for ‘regional rail’ systems they don’t have ticketers at fare gates either. That’s for metro systems.
Though right after I wrote the above paragraph, though about how sound transit does have to pay quite a lot for security officers that other european transit systems don’t. I guess we could try calculating how much it costs in each city’s metro system relatively.
“I watched transit cops literally fling a homeless drunk off a train in Hamburg Germany where he landed square on his head”
Europe has a better social safety net, so most people who would be homeless here aren’t homeless there, and have access to more services and education. So the number of homeless that remain and the hardships they face are less, so flinging a drunk off a train is less of a societal issue.
However, Martin says homelessness in Germany has increased, and Alon Levy has documented how German transit reliability and upgrades have deteriorated the past several years compared to other neighboring countries that have continued full steam ahead. So I’m concerned about Germany losing some of its transit-improvement gains. But still, even if it deteriorates or stagnates, it’s still a quantum level better than transit in American cities.
“Our stations don’t have enough ridership to make that economically feasible. Well more accurately there’s too much single family homes surrounding them so there’s not enough riders.”
That’s probably a myth. Americans severely overestimate how much density is necessary to sustain transit. Canadian and European cities have more frequency and better infrastructure in areas comparable to Rainier Valley or Bellevue or South King County, and it’s successful. So it could be successful here. And even US data shows that ridership increases or decreases in tandem with network improvement or deterioration.
Even if gates may be somewhat porous, it seems to me that it would help with compliance.
It makes a pretty bold statement about fare payment avoidance. Consider that today it could be stated that a rider forgot to tap an Orca card as a defense — and I’ve even forgotten on several occasions. With a gate, someone can no longer say that they forgot. It really gives a fare checker more confidence in handling a fare avoidance scofflaw, too. All the other riders would also witness the fare evading as opposed to today when it’s not obvious.
One issue that should be concerning is mechanical durability of the gates. Many ST stations are open air and subject to elements including rain, snow as well as temperature variations. Unless ST selects very durable equipment and maybe considers adding better weather protection, I could see gates breaking down very quickly, rendering the idea as useless. I would hope that the bid specs deal with this clearly, and that ST would add maintenance and repair staff to stay on top of their operation. If gates are broken over 10 percent of the time, the public will decry their installation.
Of course, if significant Link opening delays and escalator debacles and ridiculously long system repair service reductions don’t impact elected leadership, managing this badly won’t either.
“I would hope that the bid specs deal with this clearly”
There are no spec bids yet. ST is still studying whether to install fare gates, whether at some or all stations, and what kind of technology.
“Vancouver installed fare gates and saw an immediate drop in crimes for disorderly conduct and an increase in revenue.” (from the article) That’s actually a compelling argument for fare gates, and that maybe ST should have installed them years ago. It didn’t because it said gates would cost more than the 3% fare loss it was experiencing. Maybe, but that was in pre-covid times when fare loss was lower. I’d like to see more research on other cities that have added fare gates, to see how typical Vancouver’s experience is. The article lists several other cities, but most of them don’t have gates yet or haven’t committed to them, and the few that have added them like LA it doesn’t say whether they improved crime rates or revenue recovery.
My concern is that the gates won’t deter fare evaders. Look at the trouble New York is having with its gates: https://youtu.be/fhaequ28hZU?si=g4lqprxduyHsK2Ej
Anyways onto the next transit master plan — Bellevue, this one was back in 2014
1) The highest priority plans were for bellevue way south hov lanes, which as many of you know have been constructed so not much else to say.
2) 108th ave BAT lanes, also mainly completed
3) Construct a southbound HOV lane and transit queue jump lanes and install TSP on 148th Ave SE between Lake Hills Blvd and SE 24th St. I don’t think that’s been installed. Though checking the transit map only 226 (half-hourly) goes down that section so not too important
Couple hov suggestions
4) Convert one eastbound general purpose lane to a PM peak-only HOV lane on Main St from Bellevue Way NE to 112th Ave NE. Wasn’t done, but does a bus even go on this section?
5) Convert one eastbound general purpose lane to a PM peak-only HOV lane on NE 10th St from Bellevue Way NE to 112th Ave NE. Wasn’t done, the 250 uses this route so that’d help it. (rapidride K would use 8th)
Rapidride B improvements
6) Construct a northbound BAT lane (156th Ave NE) from south of Northup Way to just north of NE 24th St. (implicitly seems to be lane widenings so it would cost millions)
7) Construct a southbound BAT lane (156th Ave NE) from City Limits to just south of NE 24th St.
8) Modify the channelization to allow BAT lanes on 148th Ave NE between NE 24th St and NE 20th St. (Only peak bus 221 goes there so not much use anymore)
On the next page 135, it actually proposed adding a lot of queue jumps to many intersections, I assume this is just adding transit signal priority to the right-turn lane and letting the bus go straight from there. As far as I know, most of these were not completed, and they don’t seem that useful anymore with the eastside bus restructures since then. Most useful seem to be the 8th street queue jumps at important intersections like 148th and 140th.
https://bellevuewa.gov/sites/default/files/media/pdf_document/TMP-Bellevue-Transit-Master-Plan-2014.pdf#page=133
I’ll also discuss a bit about the 2023 planning for transit, though it hasn’t been released yet. These 4 are partially funded.
1) 6th street extension (main one) to the east, where the hov ramp interchange currently can only go west of i-405, that would help busses crossing 8th street to have their own bridge. So far it’s unfunded.
2) Bellevue Way HOV lane/107th Ave SE, they want to extend the southbound hov lane. (though I guess it’ll lose a bit of importance once east link bridge opens and the bus is redirected to issaquah?)
3) 148th Avenue NE Master Plan improvements, mainly what I discussed above about 148th hov lanes. Though note the section will be used by the 223.
4) Bellevue College Connection, one of the more important connections for new routes 220, 223, 226, and 245 The estimated time savings could be as much as six minutes per trip.
Then there’s the vaguely listed “Transit Connection” projects (bat/queue jump lanes) which just say “Evaluate, design, and implement transit speed and reliability improvements along Frequent Transit Network corridors for X to Y”. Of course more importantly out of the 300 million, none of the funds have been allocated to this specific section so I’m going to assume nothing will be built.
https://bellevuewa.gov/sites/default/files/media/pdf_document/2022/City%20of%20Bellevue%202022-2033%20Transportation%20Facilities%20Plan_0.pdf
The list of all draft projects are at
https://www.engagingbellevue.com/tfp > click on “Preliminary 2022-2033 TFP Candidate Project List (198 KB) (pdf)
(east link connections proposed bus map for your convenience)
https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/projects/east-link-connections#gallery-1
The K Line alignment hopefully is not finalized; it can be improved. Today, NE 10th Street seems better than NE 8th Street; the latter has significant congestion from the full I-405 interchange.
“The highest priority plans were for bellevue way south hov lanes, which as many of you know have been constructed”
They have? Why do I get caught in traffic jams on the 550 between SE 8th Street, South Bellevue Station, and the I-90 entrance then? That has happened at least twice in the past year on my monthly trips from Bellevue. It’s complete gridlock,and it takes ten or fifteen minutes to get through.
Sorry I should have clarified the first phase of them south of the park and ride.
There are future plans for more south bound hov lanes from winters house to the park and ride. and second/third phases of south bound hov lanes up to 107th. It’s in the draft plans.
> Bellevue Way HOV lane/107th Ave SE Segment A: Park&Ride to Winters House
> Bellevue Way HOV lane/107th Ave SE Segment B: Winters House to 112th Ave SE & Segment C: 112th to 108th Avenues SE
Though after the 550 becomes the 554, I guess it lessens in importance for bellevue. (though increases in importance for issaquah)
“Construct a southbound HOV lane and transit queue jump lanes and install TSP on 148th Ave SE between Lake Hills Blvd and SE 24th St. I don’t think that’s been installed. Though checking the transit map only 226 (half-hourly) goes down that section so not too important”
Check the route of the north-south RapidRide (245, unfunded), and the proposed 226 restructure. It may be that future routes will use it more.
“Convert one eastbound general purpose lane to a PM peak-only HOV lane on Main St from Bellevue Way NE to 112th Ave NE. Wasn’t done, but does a bus even go on this section?”
Hopefully a future bus will. Passengers have to get from Bellevue Way and Old Bellevue to East Main Station. Bellevue’s/Metro’s concepts haven’t really addressed this, but at least the demand-response shuttle could use it.
“Convert one eastbound general purpose lane to a PM peak-only HOV lane on NE 10th St from Bellevue Way NE to 112th Ave NE. Wasn’t done, the 250 uses this route so that’d help it.”
Both the 250 and 226 use it. The two hospitals and the regional library are all in this corridor, and it’s a gateway to the Spring District, and it crosses 405 without freeway-entrance traffic, so I assume it will continue to be a transit-emphasis corridor. The 226 will likely be split, but I assume another route will take over the downtown Bellevue-Overlake segment, and it will be more frequent than the 226 is now, because it will be the local shadow for Link in the Spring District.
Oh, you did provide a link to the proposed restructure map at the end of your comment. So the 226 is to remain unsplit, and stay on 164th south of Main. That answers a long-term question I had: I couldn’t remember whether Metro proposed to eliminate fixed-route service east of 164th or 156th, and replace it with potential Metro Flex. So the answer is 164th, and there will be service east of 164th north of 24th. It remains to be seen whether Metro Flex happens (the successor to a Crossroads Connects pilot. I grew up in the area east of 164th; I’m glad there was a fixed-route bus there then. But I’m long gone from there now — it’s too single-family residential-only, so I don’t have a stake in it.
What I do care about is 164th & Main, or the second-best 156th & Main. 156th is where the 245 and future 223 will be, and the future north-south RapidRide would be. It’s an uphill walk on sidewalkess streets to 164th, but better than nothing, and the best transfer will be at Redmond Technology Station. There would be about a 4-block gap transferring to Overlake Village Station. The 226 is unchanged in that area so it doesn’t really serve either station. If the route were theoretically split, the eastern half could terminate at Overlake Village Station. But no, Metro isn’t interested in that.
Currently eastbound I take the 550 to Bellevue TC and transfer to the 226, and sit through 40 minutes of meandering and the infrequent route to get to 164th. Westbound I walk downhill to 156th, take the 245 northbound to 10th, the B to Bellevue TC, and the 550 to Seattle. I look forward to the Starter Line and not having to take the slow 226 or B across all of Bellevue.
Continuing a conversation regarding PT sales tax increase, is this something the transit agency would have to initiate, or is there a role for Cities, County Council or citizens to push this?
I have no idea how these initiatives end up on the ballot.
I don’t think it is reasonable to increase the transit sales tax further. Checking the sales tax breakdown, it is already relatively high both the sales tax and the amount taxed for transit. Here’s a couple spot checks I made:
Typically 6.5% is always to the state of washington. Then most cities have a base 1% with 0.85% going to the city and 0.15% going to king county.
https://kingcounty.gov/en/legacy/independent/forecasting/king-county-finance/king-county-sales-tax
(lists all cities)
https://dor.wa.gov/sites/default/files/2023-11/Q124_LSU_Flyer.pdf
Tacoma sales tax 10.3%
can’t quite find the breakdown, but here’s university places:
University place total sales tax 10.1%
* pierce transit 0.6%,
* sound transit 1.4%
* city of UP 0.85%
* pierce county 0.15%
* six initiatives 0.6%
* state of Washington 6.5%
https://www.cityofup.com/366/Sales-Tax
The sales tax in tacoma is already higher than Seattle’s
Seattle sales tax total 10.25%
* metro transit 0.9%
* sound transit 1.4%
* city of seattle 0.85%
* king county 0.15%
* 3 initiatives 0.3%
* other 0.15% for something can’t figure it out
* state of Washington 6.5%
https://dor.wa.gov/file-pay-taxes/file-or-amend-my-return/instructions-completing-combined-excise-tax-return/combined-excise-tax-return-state-sales-and-use-tax
Anyways, if you want better funding for pierce transit, reallocating money from sound transit in the pierce county subarea to local transit probably makes the most sense. 2% for transit is more than enough, if it wasn’t funding all of these commuter rail and expensive light rail projects. If you look at the subarea report https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/2021-subarea-report.pdf sound transit pierce area currently has 1.27 billion just sitting, sure it’s allocated for future light rail use but it’s kinda losing it’s value with bond investments.
https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/2023-financial-plan-proposed-budget-book.pdf#page=14
This is getting a bit more off topic but assuming your goal is more frequent busses/brt’s for pierce transit; sound transit in pierce is just currently planning on spending a lot on commuter rail (3 billion) and the streetcar (1.8 billion). redirect money from those projects and pierce transit has more than enough money.
“I don’t think it is reasonable to increase the transit sales tax further.”
I don’t agree. The same argument was made in 2015 here in SnoCo and Prop 1 was passed, increasing sales tax by .3% for CT.
One thing is for sure. If PT doesn’t ask for the increase, then local transit in the district will continue to languish as it does today.
Btw, if you want to see the entire breakdown of the various components of the local sales tax for a given jurisdiction, please see the links I gave in the last open thread. (The linked table included in the narrative will fill in the missing pieces for you. The DOR site overall is helpful but needs work imho.)
https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/12/30/free-transit-new-years-eve/#comment-923184
I meant more as in the sales tax is very high. Either cut something else first or probably easier id campaign to redirect sound transits funds. At this rate Tacoma will reach 11% sales tax
“[sales tax] is already relatively high both the sales tax and the amount taxed for transit”
We don’t have a state income tax. Our total taxes are a third lower than many states. There’s room for total sales tax to reach 10-11% in Pierce County like it has been for several years in Seattle and Snohomish Counties. There can be compensating discounts for lower-income people, but knee-jerk tax haters in Pierce County need to be overridden.
“if you want better funding for pierce transit, reallocating money from sound transit in the pierce county subarea to local transit probably makes the most sense”
I wouldn’t be opposed to it, but it would probably require legislative authorization, restructuring part of Sound Transit’s policies, and voter approval to use the money for local transit instead of the regional transit approved in ST3.
The PTBA would ultimately be the sponsor of the proposition needed for the ballot. Getting the other jurisdictions you’ve mentioned on board with the idea would certainly be beneficial toward the goal, but again the board members of the PTBA, PT in this case, would need to formulate and approve the resolution to get the proposition on the ballot. Check out the process that SnoCo’s PTBA, i.e., Community Transit, went through in 2015 as an example.
Sorry, but that comment didn’t nest correctly. It was meant to be a reply to Cam’s query just above.
Thank you.
It is unfortunate that ST is only running the north overlay trains between UW and Northgate. I bet the UW platforms are going to get crowded with riders who got on a short southbound train and got forced off at UW, and that could pose a safety hazard.
The lack of a tail track/ siding around the former Convention Place station will plague riders for decades. So does the lack of crossover tracks inside the University St Station. Of course, ST will likely never look to admit or solve these structural problems that they created out of their own short-sightedness (and certain aggressive politicians who wanted the Convention Center Expansion so badly that they avoided thinking about these things).
Al, you could have a short stub track or a pair at the curve into the TBM vault next to I-5, but the tunnel under Pine down to Westlake is not wide enough for a siding. Unfortunately, the stub(s) would be too short for four-car trains. The existing running tracks occupy what was about 1/3 of the old tail pair east of the bus connection to CPS. Then the main line curves into the vault. So only 2/3 –actually more like 60% with clearance — of the old stubs could be used. They basically end at the freeway so they can’t be extended on East.
Besides, getting one from the north would require a backing move, fouling the main for a good while.
“getting into one”
I’ve been thinking a lot lately how transit riders in Seattle are considered second class citizens by ST. For a city that prides itself on respecting diversity and promoting equity, our political system is treating riders as if we aren’t important.
Consider how non-chalantly ST accepts delays to extension openings. Or how ST doesn’t show urgency at shortening service reduction times for inevitable maintenance needs. Or how the entire discussion around building both WSLE and BLE focus on property owners being mitigated as if transit riders are some sort of insects and aerial transit segments are verboten — forcing riders to go down than up over 100 feet at many other planned stations. Then there is the systemic lack of pedestrian circulation considerations both inside ST stations as well as surrounding access paths. Just getting an up escalator is a major feat and ST is willing to cancel one administratively at the last minute (as they did with Lynnwood Link stations).
Imagine how bad a school would be designed or operated if what the School Board cared more about was placating neighbors. Imagine if half a school building was closed for several weeks every few months for repairs. This is analogous to what I see ST doing.
Riders should be ST’s main constituents. Not property owners. Not contractors who don’t want to manage double shifts to get work done quickly. Not whiny NIMBY types. Not elected officials lobbied more by these folks rather than by every day riders.
What needs to be done to give us riders a major place at the table when these decision makers screw with our daily lives as we rely on transit?
“Consider how non-chalantly ST accepts delays to extension openings. Or how ST doesn’t show urgency at shortening service reduction times for inevitable maintenance needs. Or how the entire discussion around building both WSLE and BLE focus on property owners being mitigated as if transit riders are some sort of insects”
That’s true. It doesn’t cost anything to show concern, or to say that these are a high priorities an unmet needs, and at least look at potential ways to mitigate them.
“Imagine how bad a school would be designed or operated if what the School Board cared more about was placating neighbors. Imagine if half a school building was closed for several weeks every few months for repairs”
Imagine if a department store skipped down escalators, or left the escalators broken for months or years. Customers would take their money elsewhere.
@Mike Orr,
“ Imagine if a department store skipped down escalators, or left the escalators broken for months or years.”
You know plain well that the lack of down escalators in the DSTT is the result of a Metro design decision that was made well before ST ever came into existence. ST had no part in that.
And that the lack of escalator maintenance in the DSTT was the result of Metro maintenance decisions that ST had no part in either. At the time ST was finally “allowed” to take over maintenance in the DSTT, escalator availability at PSS was only 26%. Somehow Metro found that to be acceptable. Judging by their repair efforts, ST does not..
“Customers would take their money elsewhere.”
Ah, that is sort of what happened.
There are many reasons that Metro was not entrusted with building rail regionally. One of those reasons was that Metro wasn’t exactly over performing with the one major piece of infrastructure that they had control over.
Of course there are other valid reasons that Metro was not given an expanded role regionally, but the debacle of the DSTT didn’t exactly help Metro’s cause.
Things are much better now – thank Gawd and ST.
“Department store” is an illustrative choice as your example. Most people don’t shop at department stores – they are too expensive. They shop at supermarkets (Wal-Mart, Coscto) or dollar stores, where the built environment is less nice, the service quality is inferior, but the prices are lower.
I want my public transit to be more like a supermarket – cheap & efficient – and less like a department store – boutique and expensive.
Lazarus: You are applying a decision made in the mid-1980’s (almost 40 years ago before ADA) at only four of ST’s 28 stations with vertical devices (by 2026). So blaming Metro of 40 years ago for recent design decisions seems rather lame. Plus, Lynnwood Link had down escalators until their last minute removal by a major design change without discussion in about 2015 (with no discussion to instead remove a few dozen garage spaces in the corridor). The origin of the negligence is not the issue; the current attitude about cutting escalators first after deciding to build a wildly budgeted system is.
AJ: I’ve been in several Targets with down escalators. They are not luxury goods stores. There are escalators in many other places — from SeaTac Airport to new parking garages in U Village to several lobbies in buildings Downtown.
I guess that depends on one’s definition of “department store”, doesn’t it? Wal-Mart and Target, for example, began as strictly “value-oriented” department stores and only later on expanded into the groceries arena. There may be a generational aspect to this as well (see the link below). Heck some here locally would argue that Chubby and Tubby would qualify as a department store even, my spouse included. Lol.
See how many you can remember….
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_department_stores_of_the_United_States
The “value engineering” for the Lynnwood Link extension project happened in late2017/early 2018 once ST finally went public with the blown cost estimate in Aug 2017. But, yes, your larger point is quite valid. The agency targeted the station design in a desperate attempt to cut costs, including down escalators.
“ Imagine if a department store skipped down escalators, or left the escalators broken for months or years.”
You know plain well that the lack of down escalators in the DSTT is the result of a Metro design decision that was made well before ST ever came into existence. ST had no part in that.
First of all, Mike didn’t mention the tunnel. Your infatuation with the tunnel is bizarre. You somehow have in your mind that it was a complete disaster, and ST rescued it from irrelevance. You have it completely backwards. It was the most cost effective, successful transit project ever built in the state. It definitely had its flaws. Cost concerns caused them to skip a station at Madison. But that still leaves five excellent stations that are fairly close to each other. No other part of Link comes close in terms of stops spacing. Not in the U-District, not between Westlake and Capitol Hill (where the Convention Place Station was replaced by
the First Hill Stationnothing). It is the only place where we have proper urban stop spacing. Maybe ST could have done the same, but given their history (past and present) I really doubt it.Just look at the new downtown tunnel. The initial plans had three stations south of Denny, none of which actually increase coverage. This is shocking, really. It is as if Sound Transit just isn’t interested in serving the city. When people pushed for a station on First Hill with this new tunnel, the board rejected it (even though First Hill was supposed to have a station years ago). The new tunnel will be much worse than the old tunnel in every respect, and yet it won’t actually complement it. Now, of course, the plans are to make it worse.
As far as stations with down escalators, it is a mix. Some have them, some don’t. Sometimes they are in one part of the station, and not another. This is true downtown, and true elsewhere. Personally, I don’t think it is that important.
I do think keeping the escalators working is more important. And even more important than that is to have a good backup system. You need system redundancy. If the escalators are down, then mobility-challenged people need to be able to take the elevator. You can’t have them all down at the same time (which has happened). Nor should you try and force everyone to take elevators if they have limited capacity. That was the case at the UW, when the escalators failed. This was a clear design flaw — walking down the stairs is a lot better than having to wait fifteen minutes to get on the elevator. Fortunately, ST was able to adapt, and convert emergency stairs to regular stairs.
As for outages, they were not limited to the downtown tunnel. There have been problems at stations that are fairly new (like UW and Northgate). As far as the downtown stations are concerned, many of the problems occurred after ST officially took over the stations. You can blame Metro for not maintaining them, but ST new they were going to take over the stations. They could have contributed more money into maintenance if it was a priority. They could have required Metro to do a better job. You imply that Metro is solely responsible, and yet both agencies knew what was going on, and had other priorities.
In the case of Metro, it was clear what those were. Funding problems forced them to either cut back maintenance or eliminate service. It is easy to say we should focus on the tunnel, but cancelling a bunch of routes (or running buses infrequently) is worse.
In contrast, ST is loaded with money. But unfortunately, operations is not a priority for them — they are constantly focused on expansion. This compounds the problem. The larger the system, the more you have to maintain. We have a system that is based on quantity, not quality.
Which brings up the idea of Metro building our mass transit system. I think most would agree that Forward Thrust has a better design than what ST is building. The biggest improvement is just station density. This makes sense, given the priority of each agency. With Forward Thrust, they wanted to build the most cost-effect mass transit system for the county. With Sound Transit, they wanted to build a spine. Thus Link short-changes areas like First Hill. I’m not saying Forward Thrust is ideal — it is outdated in Rainier Valley (Boeing moved) — but the priorities were clear (transit). In contrast, Sound Transit is building an extremely expensive mass transit system without bothering to consult with the largest transit agency in the region. It is a bizarre combination of arrogance and ignorance that lead to these decisions. Getting to Everett and the outskirts of Tacoma is a priority. Serving the urban core of Seattle is not.
Even something as simple as 130th Station (in Seattle) would have been a requirement for Lynnwood Link had they bothered to consult with Metro. Of course Metro wants an east-west bus line there. Of course it will save a lot of riders a lot of time. If you look at the actual transit network, it is obvious why you add the station. Yet ST had to be convinced to build the station there, and as a result, costs are higher than they would have been, and it will open later than the other stations. This in turn complicates Metro planning.
This wouldn’t happen if Metro was building things. Of course this is pure speculation, but all evidence suggests that if Metro had built the mass transit system, it would have been a lot better. They would have started with the most important piece (U-District to downtown). Everyone at Metro knew this was huge (just as everyone who knew anything about transit knew this huge). It would have added a lot more value a lot sooner. Then they would have expanded north and south, with a lot more stations. The focus for the suburbs (other than Bellevue/Redmond) would have been making a good bus intercept, not miles and miles of new track. To get to Al’s original point, it would have been a lot better for Seattle, and thus would have a lot more ridership than what we will end up with. Sound Transit is based on the premise that what the area really needs is a large, very expensive, built-from-scratch regional rail system. That simply isn’t the case. Building a mass transit system serving the urban core — while also integrating well with the buses — is a lot more important.
In the 1970s there were “department stores” like the Bon Marche, Frederick & Nelson, Nordstrom, and at a lower level Sears and JC Penney. Then there were stores below that that didn’t really have a name: Fred Meyer, KMart, Value Mart, Jafco. They clearly had many departments, but they were too low-end to be called department stores. When I struggled to describe them I finally settled on “discount department store”. That would at least convey what they sold and how they were designed, even though their departments and prices didn’t fully match a “department store”. Target and Walmart, at least in the form they were when they arrived here, are descendants of those discount department stores, now with a supermarket (food store) included in them. And Fred Meyer went on to copy Walmart, doubling or tripling the size of the store and adding a supermarket.
The Lake City Fred Meyer has escalators, or is it the Greenwood one? There’s an up escalator and a down escalator. The Target and Walgreens downtown also have escalators. You can dismiss the downtown ones as urban-format and higher-end, but the Lake City Fred Meyer is in a lower-income area and presumably the lower-income residents shop there.
> What needs to be done to give us riders a major place at the table when these decision makers screw with our daily lives as we rely on transit?
Need to change the board of directors structure. Or alternatively have a much more active transit riders organization that also is good at politics with all the city mayors.
Al S.
Well, if you voted “yes” on ST3….. you can only blame yourself. Sound Transit is a funky taxing district with no directly elected officials or board members and there’s no way to have another vote on the regional transit system for decades. That ST3 vote? One and done. Live with whatever shit Sound Transit builds for the rest of your life. I’m being an asshole here, but that’s just the way it now.
“What needs to be done to give us riders a major place at the table when these decision makers screw with our daily lives as we rely on transit?”
I guess you could email your Sound Transit board member(s)… who doesn’t use transit…. and gets hundreds of other calls and emails from other voters about stuff that isn’t transit…. As a guy who’s dealt with local politics a fair bit…. I feel you.
For the record, I emailed Pierce Transit and all my elected officials about getting better transit service for the poorest sections of Tacoma for decades. I had no successful whatsoever, even though I engaged in petty bribery from time to time. ($100 campaign contributions = limited political access). Sound Transit is much more insulated against change than Pierce Transit is. Good luck interacting with them.
How much cash you think the posters on this blog could come with to “buy” access to the ST board? Because that’s how it works I’m afraid.
I voted NO on ST3. My logic was that I didn’t want to pay 30 years of taxes to build a relatively unproductive system that made rail connectivity to my neighborhood in SE Seattle worse . Plus, I felt that ST2 needed to fully open before agreeing to committing to another 30 years of pre-defined station locations ( and I would have been happy to support a more modest 10 year commitment for modest expansion that would allow for us to find out how ST2 stations would perform first).
@Tacomee
That’s twice now you’ve tried to “gotcha” someone with the “you get what you voted for” line, and you’ve failed both times. Are you gonna go for the trifecta?
Matt,
There’s no “gotcha” here dude.
Either you voted for ST3 and or you didn’t. What side are you on?
This blog is full of Sound Transit cheerleaders who were 100% in support of ST3 and actively shouted down all opposition as “anti-transit” . Now that ST3 is proving to be an expensive failure that’s actually hurting transit as much as supporting it…. posters are hiding their ST3 pom poms. Transit activists made this bed, we all have to sleep in it.
I believe that anybody who voted yes on ST3 and yet complains about the results 10 years into a 30 year plan…. needs to understand that voting has consequences. The silly ideas about we have the power to somehow change the overall ST3 plan or the make-up of the Sound Transit board just needs to stop. It is a regional rail spine plan. The people voted yes. We’re stuck with whatever happens.
And the crazy thing is this same “activist class” that cheered on ST3….. believe they know something about urban planning and zoning. Heaven help Seattle! Of course after zoning changes do irreparable damage to Seattle, the “activist class” who pushed this crap though…. they’ll just melt away and take zero responsibility for the mess. Just like nobody is really supporting the hot mess that ST3 has become…
@ Tacomee:
Your view of what it means to be “pro-transit” is too simplistic. Most posters here are more “pro-productive transit” and routinely present opinions backed by facts that criticize both general corridor investments and especially user-hostile details. When scarce transit project funds get spent on relatively wasteful or tangential things it hurts transit in several ways.
I think too that a more nuanced poster understands that what ST3 has become something worse than what voters were promised in 2016 — and that ST could still change project details if they want.
Al S.
I’d be the first to admit I’ve voted for things to didn’t live up to expectations. Democracy isn’t easy.
I’m not the least bit mad about anybody’s “yes” vote on ST3. What gets me is the nonsense that that there’s a way to fix it. Let’s review. Regional rail spine, 3 Counties. 30 year plan. Unique taxing district. No directly elected board. One single vote. Sound Transit was set up a way that makes it impossible to change.
There’s no way to unwind this. I think a lot of transit activists thought they’d have a seat at the Sound Transit table or the ST board would…. I don’t know… read this blog and take its advice?
I believe that many supporters voted yes on ST3 even though they knew about 50% of it was bad, thinking they would have the power to change things midway though. That’s just not the case.
As light rail pushes farther North and South, it will only junk up service times in Seattle. It doesn’t take much of transit expert to figure that out…. and yet the “transit experts” never brought that up on the eve of the ST3 vote.
Regarding Tacoma/pierce transit funding I think there’s been lots of discussion already on how it isn’t possible to fund local transit since it’s the rail initiative/xyz. But assuming it was possible to fund it what exact projects would one be building? I haven’t really heard much about what the plan there would be
Fair point. I think such a topic would make for a nice discussion on a dedicated thread. Perhaps the editors here would indulge such a pursuit?
I don’t travel down to Tacoma enough to weigh in on the matter in any educated sense but would certainly love to hear what others have to offer. I do have a nephew who lives down there now but he and his partner no longer use transit since moving from Seattle. From my understanding, it just isn’t feasible from their location.
Most people who live in Pierce County also work in Pierce County, shop in Pierce County, and attend activities in Pierce County. So the regional transit they need is one that connects the regional centers of Pierce County to each other: downtown Tacoma, Tacoma Mall, Tacoma College, Lakewood, Parkland, Puyallup, JBLM. When you do that, you naturally include Federal Way and Auburn, the gateways to King County. The gateway to Thurston County is Lakewood, so building up the transit center there will address that, and Intercity Transit can expand its Lakewood-Olympia service. All this needs to be faster than regular PT service and run every 15 minutes at least.
The T Line was supposed to be the first of a six-line network throughout the city of Tacoma. Or there are routes 1, 2, 3, 4, and 202. ST is upgrading part of route 1 to Stream BRT, but there’s still the other part, and the other four routes. So those are starting points.
What Pierce County and the cities have done is pushed for ST service from Tacoma Dome to King County, but how are 99% of Pierce County residents supposed to get to Tacoma Dome on transit? Stream will go to Parkland and Spanaway, but that still leaves out most of Tacoma and the county.
The ST network is oriented as if everybody in Pierce County goes to SeaTac airport every day and never goes anywhere else. That leaves almost everything out. And it still doesn’t address how people can get to Tacoma Dome without driving to the P&R.
“The ST network is oriented as if everybody in Pierce County goes to SeaTac airport every day and never goes anywhere else”
That probably arises from the perception that SeaTac airport is the only place a car owning person in Pierce County will ever take transit to, even if it’s just a tiny fraction of all trips. Since the politicians are, of course, thinking of travelers, not airport workers, the answer of how they get to Tacoma Dome will be getting dropped off in a family member’s car, hence no local transit required.
Or course, somebody who lives in Pierce County without a car would be calling this line of thinking bullshit, but they’re not numerous enough or wealthy enough to matter to Pierce County politicians.
asdf2,
Yeah, if you’re living Pierce County without a car…. you’re really broke and nobody in power gives a crap. I personally care…. I feel bad for Pierce Transit riders.. but then I’m not in power.
The worst thing about transit in the USA is that if want to live “car free” in transit rich neighborhood, you’ll have extremely high housing costs. The further out in the ‘burbs you go…. or even the boondocks, the more you need a car but the cheaper housing is. Many of the posts on this blog really have nothing to do with transit…. it’s often these wild ideas/schemes to somehow make housing in Seattle affordable though zoning changes or social housing. Like the powers that be…. the rich developers and landlords… would ever let that happen.
What transit advocates miss is there’s a “U” in suburbia. You own a car… you own a house… you have a credit score… you take personal responsibility for your life. You don’t handcuff yourself to bad transit and hope the fucking bus does eventually come.
There’s grood transit in Seattle…. but little opportunity for working class people to have own a home or start a family. Those are the important things in life. Riding the bus? Not so important. So a young family’s best bet is to buy a rundown split-level house in Spanaway.
The reason mass transit is never going to catch on with most of America is transit advocates never figured out how to make it make it part of the American Dream.
One of the reason why transit works in most places is that most countries have ways of keeping housing affordable, even in urban areas.
Large investment firms are buying up suburban housing too, so it’s not like housing will forever be affordable in suburbs.
High housing prices have begun to appear in other countries like The Netherlands. The UK has had a problem with it since at least the 1990s, and Vancouver BC since the mid 2000s. In Russia the highest prices are near metro stations, and then it goes down if you have to take a streetcar or bus to the metro. The difference between all these countries and the US is, even if you live in a less expensive peripheral neighborhood or suburb or rural area, you can still get around on transit and meet several everyday needs on foot. In some cases it’s somewhat lacking, like the UK outside major cities, but it’s still better than Washington state.
Drove by the new 148th St Station yesterday and it appears that they are working on the support column for the east landing of the new pedestrian bridge over I-5. Didn’t notice any activity on the west side though.
This is good news in general, but has no impact on the opening of LLE because the ped bridge is not required prior to opening the station.
We are only about 9 to 12 months out on the opening of LLE, so just a few months out from the start of formal testing. We should begin to see LRV’s more frequently on the line now. I already saw one a few months back (being towed very slowly just south of 148th St Station).
Progress is being made. It will be nice to be able to go visit the in-laws at 185th St without having to drive.
“The worst thing about transit in the USA is that if want to live “car free” in transit rich neighborhood, you’ll have extremely high housing costs…. What transit advocates miss is there’s a “U” in suburbia. You own a car… you own a house… you have a credit score… you take personal responsibility for your life.”
This is a very important problem and I don’t know if I can fully articulate it. But, why is good transit only in a few rich areas? Why can only the top 20% get around without a car without facing extraordinary hardship? Why not have transit everywhere so that everybody can get around? Why not have the default design be mostly middle housing in villages so walking and transit can work more easily? Why take a basic need and deprive people of it, and then blame them for not having it, and tell them they have to spend thousands of dollars a year on a big behemoth just to participate in society? Many industrialized countries less wealthy than the US still manage to have more or less good transit everywhere and mostly middle housing, so it’s not like we can’t do it. It’s a choice to structure society this way, and it’s a destructive choice.
There are two ways to address this if we don’t change the general land use. One is to extend transit everywhere, so that Pierce and Snohomish Counties have the same level of service Metro does. The other is to expand the middle-housing villages and plant many more of them, so that it’s not such a scarce resource that only the top 20% can inhabit, or that you have to live in Seattle to have.
Replacing low income housing with mansions lowers the murder rate.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12938717/murder-capital-california-east-palo-alto-zero-homicides.html
There was also “a community-based [policing] approach” and “A succession of mayors and police chiefs fostered better relations with locals”.
What’s the point of posting this Sam?
Let me translate the article into easy to understand terms.
Seattle, like East Palo Alto, is very desirable place for rich Liberals to live.
Over time, the rich tech folks will buy up everything.
No matter how much housing is built, there’s always a rich Liberal to move in.
Working class people should just find someplace to live.
Did I miss anything?
How safe a city is should not be primarily determined by how many murders happen in a year. The finer the categories, the more easily parts of data sets can be manipulated to make a point.
Consider how murder rates skyrocket from a single mass shooting occurrence in a small city, for example.
I would rather see a total violent crime rate perspective in articles like this. Better yet, a combined perspective for both violent and property crimes seems even more insightful.
I question the relevance to transit and land use, frankly.
+1
Great article in the Herald about how this is the year that Link finally makes it to SnoCo:
https://www.heraldnet.com/news/as-calendar-turns-lynnwood-light-rail-is-no-longer-next-year/
The article says that ST is still targeting the third quarter of this year for opening Lynnwood Link, but that remains to be seen. There is still time for a meltdown on Balducci’s ELSL.
The article also highlights how Lynnwood Link will improve the commutes for many people by eliminating the bus leg of their current two seat ride. That will certainly be the case for my sister-in-law who will completely ditch the bus (or sometimes Uber) leg of her commute in favor of a one seat ride on Link.
It’s going to be an exciting year.
In order to open the East Link Starter Line in March they’d have to start implementing it now, hiring drivers, doing any finalization of the stations, preparing schedules to publish, generating marketing materials. If they’re still saying March now, it must be ready to go.
Lynnwood has more wiggle room because ST has not committed to a month yet; it just says “third quarter”, which could slip into fourth and potentially open December 31. But it would also have to start pre-opening preparation six months ahead. So if it opens in September ST would have to start finalizing the opening plan in March and start hiring drivers in June. If it slips to December, everything is three months later. But in either case it will have to start in 3-6 months, which means ST must be pretty sure it’s almost ready to go and all major failures have been ruled out.
@Mike Orr,
Yep. And I believe all that work is underway as we speak, although I’d quibble with the importance of publishing schedules. It’s just isn’t that important with frequent and reliable rail.
As per operators, ST can just pull them out of the Metro operating pool if they need to. There are plenty of operators who would rather work LR than a Metro Bus. All ST has to do is plan far enough ahead to get the operators properly transitioned.
The drivers are there in the pool, but they need training before switching from bus to rail. Also, the drivers remain KCM employees – KCM Rail is a contractor to ST, so it also comes down to KCM’s ability to execute on ST’s schedule.
“I’d quibble with the importance of publishing schedules. It’s just isn’t that important with frequent and reliable rail.”
It has to give the operators schedules even if it doesn’t publish them publicly. Otherwise there’s no standard to be “reliable” to.
“All ST has to do is plan far enough ahead to get the operators properly transitioned.”
That’s what I said. It takes three months to put bus drivers in place on new routes and schedules, so I’m assuming it takes the same amount of time with Link operators.
“I’d quibble with the importance of publishing schedules. It’s just isn’t that important with frequent and reliable rail.”
They’re needed as lookup tables for the real time arrival system, among other things.
@AJ,
Yep, all ST needs to do is plan far enough ahead to get the transition training done and problem solved.
And, yes, technically they remain KCM employees. As do the O&M employees.
That is part of the problem at ST right now — unclear reporting lines. There are low level “discussions” about changing that, but for now they remain under the KCM umbrella, even though they supposedly work for ST. This is one of the things that needs to be cleaned up in the future.
Why? What problem are you trying to solve? Is it really something that needs to be solved, or that we need to care about?
@Mike Orr,
Running an operation where all your key personnel actually belong to a completely different organization with different reporting structures is a horrendously bad operational model. Even more so since that “other organization” predominately uses a different tech and isn’t exactly known for operational efficiency or innovation.
I suspect this problem will be corrected sometime in the future.
I agree with Lazarus – having worked directly in that part of the org, the org structure isn’t optimal and increases coordinating costs.
There was a discussion around Federal Way station area development on an earlier post but couldn’t find it. From the DJC today on Merlone Geier, owner of The Commons:
” the developer has far more advanced plans for adding apartments to its revamped retail properties near Overlake Village Station in Redmond, near Lynnwood City Center Station and at Shoreline’s former Aurora Village. The latter has been rebranded as Shoreline Place, and also entails the repurposing and/or demolition of a vacant Sears store.
Multifamily partners are being sought for all three developments, which might total over 4,000 units. “All three of those could move forward concurrently,” says Gwilliam. “We’re patient in terms of waiting for the capital markets.”
Merlone Geier has undertaken similar makeovers — and removed empty, obsolete big-box stores in the process — at its NoHo West in Southern California and The Village at San Antonio. ”
So an owner that is clearly willing and able to invest is midrise residential TOD, but only once the rents justify. Bodes well for the FW station area, albeit on a timeline TBD.
https://www-djc-com.ezproxy.spl.org/news/re/12161405.html
Here is what that property owner has planned for his parcels near the Overlake Village Station. For those familiar with the area, if you know where the B Line makes a turn from 24th to 152nd, it’s those strip malls that house Mayuri, Jersey Mike’s, Macy’s Furniture, etc. It’s a few block south of the Link station.
https://www.redmond.gov/DocumentCenter/View/30612/Overlake-East-Neighborhood-Mtg-Staff-Presentation
@Sam,
That looks like a complete nothing-burger. There appears to be more redevelopment underway in North City right now than in this proposed future redevelopment.
But I suppose there is still time for them to go bigger.
Thanks for the info!
The Commons property is very large. That allows for a major project when the time comes. Shopping centers are mainly asphalt parking lots and concrete floors with steel framed buildings that can be disassembled, making repurposing relatively easily — possibly easier than untouched land since drainage and urban systems have already been accommodated.
Also, it appears that ST will need to take some of the Commons property for TDLE construction assuming it begins in the next 4 years. That gives the developer a bargaining chip to work with.
It is good that the developer has an eye to seeing Link as an asset for redevelopment elsewhere . The challenge is in the details. The bigger risk thus seems to be if the sells the property to an anti-transit investor.
@Al.S,
Good comment.
And you are correct about the developer maybe wanting to bundle future redevelopment with TDLE construction staging. I can see how that would be a savvy move on their part.
I would hope that the TDLE team can coordinate with FW city and trade an upzone for a Link easement. The Link alignment will be elevated, should be possible to build Link through the parcel(s) and then redevelop with negligible loss in developmental potential .
@AJ,
“Bodes well for the FW station area, albeit on a timeline TBD.”
I concur 100%. This developer has a good track record on redevelopment, and the rents in their FW properties are sure to justify redevelopment around the time Link arrives. The future is bright!
On a related note, the redevelopment of the PAR at Northgate has begun. I was there today and the NE section of the old parking lot is now fenced off and under construction. The worker I spoke with said “apartments”, but I don’t know the details. But more good TOD news near Link.
Now if they can just get rid of that bus layover area. It’s a crime against TOD to lock-up that much prime land next to a LR station just to park buses.
Also, when my in-laws were looking for a house to buy they actually looked at the Aurora Village area. They eventually ruled it out based on transit (they don’t drive). They choose North City instead because they can have a one seat ride on Link to most of the places they want to go.
Just when you thought it was safe to count on Link’s frequency and get a recreational trip in before the reduction January 13:
“1 Line trains to Angle Lake are arriving about every 20-25 minutes until further notice”
This one has been resolved, but it has happened at least two or three times in the past week, and maybe other outages too. Not counting the one due to “police activity” around Northgate Station. Several of them in the past six months have been due to “signal issues”. This seems like a lot of outages.
Was browsing random meetings in SDOT, it seems they are actually, actually moving forward with the harrison transit street idea (december 2023 short presentation) and are starting 10% design https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/SDOT/BoardsCommittees/TAB/Seattle%20Transit%20Board%20Briefing%20-%20Harrison%20PPT.pdf
Most interesting bullet point was:
• Harrison/Mercer corridor planning could be tied to larger area planning effort
• No plans to stop serving Denny Way. Long range plan has frequent service on
both corridors.
I’m a bit confused, are they planning to run two east-west busses? But anyways this is the first time I’ve seen them propose running busses on both harrison and denny way rather than choosing one of them.
Also was funny to see the OPCD (zoning office) complain about the traffic department saying:
> From our initial briefings on this project, the Planning Commission has understood that the STP will serve as an update to previous transportation master plans, as well as a replacement for the individual modal plans. Upon reviewing the draft, we are disappointed that the Plan does not articulate and demonstrate how the plans are integrated. While this Plan was intended to create an integrated vision, the draft STP appears to be a compilation of modal plans into one document, rather than an integrated strategy with clarity of prioritization criteria for decision-making where modal plans still overlap.
I remember the OPCD’s letter (here, for the curious: https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/SeattlePlanningCommission/Seattle%20Transportation%20Plan/Final%20Approved%20STP%20Comment%20Letter%2010.12.23_letterhead.pdf). I also remember the draft plan being met with similar complaints from this blog and other outlets. It will be interesting to see how significant the revisions are to the final draft.
The Draft STP includes high-frequency service on both Harrison and Denny, but it isn’t clear whether the idea is to divert an existing route somehow, or to create a new one. This presentation seems to imply creation of a new route making use of the transitway, which would be exciting.
Here’s Metro Connects 2021 update. Pages 23 and 24 have representative maps of the “interim” and “2050” networks, but the images don’t scale so I can’t even see the individual corridors in the SLU tangle. Pages 27 and 28 have the RapidRide networks. Page 36 has the frequent network, and page 39 the express network. Perhaps somebody can make something out from these or elsewhere in the report. (Page numbers are the PDF, not the numbers in the document.)
I thought the 2020 map moved Denny service to Harrison. It had the 8-Madison Park concept, and restructured the 2 and a route from Magnolia to Harrison, the Denny I-5 viaduct, Roy & Broadway, Aloha & 15th, and Garfield High School. I don’t recall any other east-west routes on Harrison but there might have been.
The executive summary (pages 6-10) is worth reading. “The update recognizes that many changes have been made since Metro Connects was first adopted in 2017”, an orange box on equity, and “Metro Connects is an intentionally unconstrained vision” (meaning it may or may not match anything that might be financially feasible).
https://kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/metro/about/planning/metro-connects/appendices-011717.pdf
It seems its route 8 (id 1061) they’d have the 8 go east west from uptown to slu to Madison park taking over the eastern portion of the 11.
Though I haven’t seen any plans about keeping both Denny way and harrison
The old map was detailed. Unfortunately, it was also dynamic, which means that the Wayback Machine doesn’t have a working copy of it. I’m afraid it is all blurring together, along with some ideas I proposed. I remember particular segments, and I’m not sure how they connected:
1) Madison Park to Uptown (via the 8/11)
2) South Lake Union to Uptown via Harrison/Mercer.
3) A western extension from Uptown to Smith Cove.
4) South Lake Union to Mount Baker Station via Boren.
5) An east-west bus from Capitol Hill to South Lake Union via Aloha/Belmont/Lakeview.
6) 106 sent up to First Hill.
I think segments 1 and 3 were combined: https://maps.app.goo.gl/xk14v7GMJThj2WK1A. I think segments 2, 4 and 6 were combined. But again, it is all fuzzy. I definitely borrowed these ideas when suggesting some restructures, like this one: https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1z77_UZ0p-jIhfys48pONPThtomml2x42&usp=sharing.
I’m all for a Harrison transit street, but it presents several issues. First off, the biggest problem with our system in that area is poor frequency, not coverage. If you are adding routes, then the service has to come from somewhere. If anything, we should be consolidating routes to improve frequency. I feel very strongly that we should have bus service on Boren, eventually. But none of my recent proposals for Capitol Hill include it, as I think we need to focus on better headways. This is a similar issue.
Second, I think it is critical that we improve Denny by adding bus lanes on it. If this leads to more traffic on Mercer, so be it. Mercer doesn’t have any buses east of First Avenue North. Maybe adding service between 1st and 5th wouldn’t matter (as the biggest traffic problems are closer to the freeway) but I’m a bit hesitant to send a bus there.
Similarly, I do not want to send a bus over there and back even if it would avoid some of the congestion (https://maps.app.goo.gl/7r5hzdPcKHZidBD97). That is basically surrendering the street grid to cars. Nor do I think that the Denny/Harrison/Mercer path should be the only route in the area (i. e. I don’t want to send the 8 that way). Denny is a vital transit corridor — it needs bus lanes, not a detour.
Thus I do think the only way to use Harrison is with a different route (not the 8). I think the best option is with a brand new route, but that means spending additional money, and we simply don’t have it right now. In the long run I see it as a good thing (you can certainly justify both routes) but right now I’m not sure how to use it.
ST published their latest progress report on Jan 4th. This report represents agency progress as of Nov 2023.
It’s interesting that no one in any official position has even suggested a date for LLE opening, but the report seems to indicate an opening date of July 17th, 2024. And this date assumes that all schedule float is consumed, which might not actually be required.
Hopefully this schedule sticks, because this is very good news for transportation locally.
And a little bird told me that solid progress is being made on the storage capacity problem too.
Very good news all around.
Oh, here is the link to the full document (not the fluffy summary):
https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/Agency-progress-report-capital-program-Nov-2023%20Final.pdf
Lynnwood Link schedule is on page 75 and shows an opening date for revenue service of 2024-Jul-17. This date assumes all schedule float is absorbed.
This is very good news indeed. Hopefully this schedule sticks.
Also, if you poke around enough you can find a picture of a Link LRV being towed on Lynnwood Link.
Finally we have real transit progress! This will be a good year.
Link is replaced by shuttle buses in Rainier Valley tonight due to the third car crash in a week to interrupt service: https://x.com/jrock08/status/1744947994695524502
The cost of crashes and service distruptions and lost passenger time should be included in the total cost of surface vs elevated/underground alternatives before the alignment is chosen. If it were, surface wouldn’t look so inexpensive compared to tunnels.
Rainier Valley seems to be particularly bad, compared to the average surface running segment.
Honestly, if there was an ST4 proposal to pardon my french “unf**k the Rainer Valley mess” and just elevate or tunnel the damm thing, I’d be all for it.
@Zach B,
Are we sure this event actually happened? Because I don’t trust a random post on Elon’s “X”, and I couldn’t find any independent confirmation.
On top of that, the post says Thistle St, but the image says S Henderson St. Those two streets are about a third of a mile away from each other. And the image sucks.
And if that isn’t strange enough, Link is basically grade separated at Thistle. It runs on a curb-height platform with NO street or ped crossing. Traffic approaching on Thistle cannot cross either Link or MLK. Traffic has to turn right.
So how a car accident would shut down both directions of MLK at that spot is beyond me.
Of course anything is possible, but I’d like more info before I spend billions based on this report.
> tunnel the damm thing, I’d be all for it.
I think people forget how long that section is. If you wanted to deep bore tunnel and build that many stations for the 5 mile segment it’d probably cost more than the second downtown transit tunnel which is around ~3 ish miles.
The only way Seattle metro area could afford it would be elevate it (which sadly most american cities hate) or to cut and cover it, or at least cut and cover the stations.
> If it were, surface wouldn’t look so inexpensive compared to tunnels.
Given that university link cost ~2 billion and northgate link cost another ~2 billion that’s around 4 billion total. Adding inflation and random construction costs, it’d probably be like at least 5~7 billion to tunnel that section.
@myself.
Sorry for the s-word. That was a spelling error.
Fixed.
“Given that university link cost ~2 billion and northgate link cost another ~2 billion that’s around 4 billion total. Adding inflation and random construction costs, it’d probably be like at least 5~7 billion to tunnel that section.”
How much is the cost of lost lives, their productivity, compensating people, and passengers’ time stuck at platforms or working around the outage? It’s not just one occurrence, but dozens in Rainier Valley and SODO, and more in the future endlessly.
> How much is the cost of lost lives, their productivity, compensating people, and passengers’ time stuck at platforms or working around the outage? It’s not just one occurrence, but dozens in Rainier Valley and SODO, and more in the future endlessly.
I’m not quite sure why it is the assumption that at-grade light rail must cost lives. It’s not as if in other European cities they’ve closed all of their light rails and trams. Is there really no way to make light rail safer on mlk way than just jumping straight to tunneling/elevated?
Secondly I’m not sure why light rail is held to such a higher standard than cars. If the at-grade light rail wasn’t built we’d have the same deaths but exchanged with cars on mlk way. Plus, I find it pretty deceiving that people here assume if light rail was tunneled there would have been less deaths when most likely mlk way would kept many more car lanes.
I understand this is a somewhat touchy subject but it feels quite odd to me that we’ve completely given up on light rail at-grade when that is literally the point of using such a mode.
I want to suggest that the problem with Link on MLK is that it’s just too wide of a street. Its width ends up requiring long waits at red lights for impatient drivers and sometimes Link vehicles. Even with small refuges, pedestrians don’t want to wait either and will ignore “don’t walk “ signals. Then the width gives drivers a sense of vastness that ends up encouraging them to drive aggressively and fast.
It would be good to look where on MLK problems occur. They appear to occur in commercial areas. That’s where most pedestrians, most turning, and station placement happens.
Solutions would need to be context sensitive. That said, I wonder if the corridor should have the traffic kept on one side with a bicycle/ pedestrian path on the other, maybe with a one way local access street. Or maybe stations need to be separated without separating the tracks in between.
It all needs careful and objective study.
Do other comparable US light rail systems have this issue? Minneapolis, Phoenix, and some of LA’s light rail lines are very comparable to Link on Rainier – do they have this issue?
it feels quite odd to me that we’ve completely given up on light rail at-grade when that is literally the point of using such a mode.
Agreed, although to be fair, we kind of stumbled into the mode. Unlike say, Portland, our goals with regards to light rail were more appropriate for heavy rail. In any event, I agree with your main point — surface rail has trade-offs, and it is quite appropriate in many cases.
This brings up AJ’s point. Lots of cities have light rail — including lots of Canadian and American cities. Do they all have the same issues?
I think there is a stronger argument that our big mistake was being penny-wise and pound-foolish when it comes to the safety around the train. The cost of these improvements is minimal compared to the cost of going under or above ground: https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/03/08/safety-strategies-abound-for-rainier-valley-link-yet-urgency-to-implement-lags/
@AJ,
Yes, most systems that run at grade through intersections have this same problem. As do cars and buses when operating in the same environment.
My understanding is that Link is actually on the safer end of the scale, with MSP and Houston being more on the bad end of the scale. But it is hard to get a direct comparison.
Usually accidents and fatalities are reported on something like a 100M VRM basis, but since Link is highly grade separated it’s only natural that Link’s numbers would be low given that so many of the systems VRM’s are grade separated.
But a direct comparison of just the RV section to a similar section in a different system? I haven’t seen such an analysis from a reputable source.
“it feels quite odd to me that we’ve completely given up on light rail at-grade when that is literally the point of using such a mode.”
ST’s original vision was a lot more at-grade. Previous American light rails were 95%+ at-grade (Portland, San Jose, San Diego, Hoboken). That was their selling point: construction costs are low per mile compared to elevated/tunnel. It was assumed that that might make the difference in the public voting for Link. It was always known that Link would use the existing DSTT, and when Broadway was chosen over I-5/Eastlake, that the tunnel would continue north through the U-District because of the hills and Ship Canal. Beyond that it would be surface as much as possible. The initial concept went around the northeast side of Beacon Hill and would remain surface to SeaTac, and presumably to Federal Way and Tacoma. Nobody seems to have calculated the travel time of a Tacoma-Seattle trip in that scenario.
So MLK and SODO were surface because ST said it couldn’t justify elevated/tunnel in flat areas; people wouldn’t vote for it. But after that, as other segments went one by one through design, opposition to surface increased. Tukwila objected to rebuilding 99 after it had just rebuilt it, and to taking a corner of Southcenter’s property. So ST deferred to Tukwila and elevated it south of Rainier Beach. Roosevelt objected to an I-5 elevated station, and asked for an underground station in the neighborhood center. And then the collisions and deaths and service interruptions on MLK and SODO started adding up, and ST vowed no more surface anywhere. At one point ST2 was entirely grade-separated. Then Bellevue wanted for a downtown tunnel, and asked ST to economize elsewhere in East King to pay for part of it. That led to lowering down to the surface in Bel-Red and south Redmond with at-grade crossings. But everything else in ST2 and so far in ST3 is grade-separated.
ST chose light rail in the 1990s because it was street-compatible, “It can do everything: surface, elevated, tunnel, for all environments.” And because surface would have low capital costs. It assumed illogically that surface light rail would be appropriate for thirty miles out to Tacoma and Everett. Or it just didn’t connect the dots: “Spine + surface = slow”. So it backed into the current Link system, which is different than envisioned.
The current/future Link system is the longest, most grade-separated light rail. That means it has the highest cost per mile (bad), but is also the fastest (good), and has the widest station spacing (controversial), as limited capacity compared to heavy rail (bad potentially), and costs more than heavy rail (bad) or automated trains (bad). ST is also hindering capacity by not having walk-through trains (which would add 20%). It’s been like this ever since it opened in 2009, and will always be like this. (Assuming Ballard isn’t automated,
I don’t know what the collision rates are on other American light rail or international trams. But it’s a geographic fact that people can walk onto or drive onto the tracks no matter how many gates ST installs. In contrast, people would have to climb up or down to elevated/underground tracks, going through rooms or stairs that are obviously “authorized personnel only”. The biggest problem is level crossings. We could lower MLK into a trench, build east-west overpasses, or Link underpasses. That would at least ensure that people walking onto the tracks wouldn’t be coming from cross-streets.
> ST’s original vision was a lot more at-grade. Previous American light rails were 95%+ at-grade (Portland, San Jose, San Diego, Hoboken). That was their selling point: construction costs are low per mile compared to elevated/tunnel. It was assumed that that might make the difference in the public voting for Link.
I mean that is what I’m debating. There’s been a bit of an assumed ‘link completely tunneled/elevated’ with banning at-grade is better. When really sound transit cannot afford it.
> But it’s a geographic fact that people can walk onto or drive onto the tracks no matter how many gates ST installs.
Has ST installed any gates in rainier valley? Or at least I’m unaware of any, they are only on sodo.
New $700,000 fare gates defeated by simply waving hand over sensor
https://nypost.com/2024/01/10/metro/hack-defeats-mtas-700k-subway-gates-to-keep-out-fare-beaters/
https://pedestrianobservations.com/2024/01/07/small-metros-arent-lean-theyre-underbuilt/
TL;DR – rule of thumb is a “city should have on the order of 30 km of metro and new commuter rail per million residents. ”
Link will have 187kms once built out, which would rule-of-thumb to 6.2 million people. Seattle is currently at 4 million, but 6 million would put 2040 Seattle to the size of a Philly, DC, Atlanta, or Miami today, which seems very reasonable. Greater Miami is probably the best comp: Dade county is only 2.7 million of MSA’s 6 million, as Broward and Palm Beach counties have their own distinct urban centers but have sprawled into one linear agglomeration, much like Tacoma-Seattle-Everett have sprawled into one multi-county agglomeration.
So Greater Seattle needs robust growth to merit the built-out ST3, but broad brush the network seems rightsized to what the region should aspire to be mid-century. Of course, where the rail is built also matters (which Alon highlights in the post), so if the growth is all in Seattle proper the suburban rail will be underutilized, but if we can add tens of thousands of housing units within the walksheds of the non-Seattle station areas, the full network will be appropriately sized to peer cities.
What about just in Seattle? That’s where a metro is the most appropriate and would be most used, and is most comparable to the international situation. Wasting money on suburban extension is not a reason to not build more in Seattle, and applying this model to that can skew the numbers for what matters.
Well, Seattle is ~1 million, so 30 kms of rail, which is roughly what we have today, which makes sense, particularly once 135th, 147th, and Judkin stations open.
In the same article, Alon talks about the Bay Area:
“But there’s very little density of lines in the core, and too much expansion far out. On net, what the Bay Area needs is small expansions as measured by route-length densifying the core network: the Downtown Extension, a second Transbay Tube, a Geary subway, maybe an expansion of the Central Subway northwest if Scott Wiener gets to rewrite the city’s zoning code.”
So basically, *not* what we are building. The opposite, in fact. Like the Bay Area, we have plans for “too much expansion far out” and not enough “densifying the core network”.
You just can’t ignore density and proximity. Alon writes that “Hong Kong is a city of 7 million” and you write that “Seattle is currently at 4 million”. Yet there is a world of difference. You can compare densities using this tool here: http://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen/#7/47.484/-116.257. Here is snapshot comparing Hong Kong with Seattle: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qNv_-qFp7rQYLy3-NaOtw3_Z6aLDB2ov/view?usp=sharing.
It only makes sense to build new rail when you have the ridership to justify it, and for that, you need density. Hong Kong has a lot, Seattle has very little. It is reasonable to define a city as an area with a certain level of contiguous density. Depending on how high you set the bar, Seattle is either a small city, or not a city at all.
The idea that Fife or Ash Way are part of Seattle in the same way as Fremont or Belltown is absurd. They are low-density suburbs that have a loose association with Seattle. The fact that they are adjacent to other low-density suburbs doesn’t change the fact that they are very far away, and still low-density.
if we can add tens of thousands of housing units within the walksheds of the non-Seattle station areas, the full network will be appropriately sized to peer cities.
No, it won’t, because it will still be a long way from Seattle! Proximity matters. Each area would have to be large and attractive in its own right. Ash Way would have to become Downtown Bellevue. Fife would have to be the next UW. There are only a handful of cities that spread out that far, and most are massive (e. g. Tokyo). The idea that we will spread outward to become this huge conglomeration, with great density along the spine, while the central city (Seattle) stays roughly the same is absurd.
If ST3 is built out as planned, we will have a system very similar to the one in the Bay Area (although in some ways worse). We will have overbuilt in terms of distance away from the core, and underbuilt in the city. Buses like the 7, 8 and 44 will carry more people per mile (despite battling traffic) than various parts of our very expensive rail line. Outsiders will say “Yeah, but it is light rail, so it at least was probably fairly cheap to build”, only to find out that it wasn’t. Certain segments, like West Seattle Link, will have good metrics, but only superficial ones. Ridership per mile or even ridership per dollar spent will be decent, but time saved will be minimal, and might even be negative.
Who said Seattle needs to remain roughly the same? I was modeling +2 million people – Seattle would double in size (+900K) and the majority of the growth would still occur outside of Seattle city limit.
What is absurd is thinking Crown Hill and Columbia City are going to look like First Hill in 30 years but Ash Way is going to remain unchanged, which seems to be your vision.
The region needs to avoid the land use mistakes of BART. You want Ash Way and Fife to be left to rot, but I think we have many cities in this region that aspire to have vibrant, urban, walkable neighborhoods and we have the incoming growth for that development to occur throughout the region.
*Seattle *could* double. I’m skeptical Seattle is capable of growing that fast over a 20 year time span. Once Denny Triangle & U-District tower neighborhoods are built out, I’m predicting most growth will occur outside the city limits as midrise development spreads alongside Link, unless there is a dramatic expansion of the current urban villages footprint.
System expansion meeting had two presentations today if ya’ll want to view them, first one is about planning, and second one is about current performance. Nothing too surprising that hasn’t already been said. Interesting highlights:
* Sounder Double-Track and Signal Projects Next Board action: Q1 2025, Amend consultant contract for PE
– seems like they might actually move forward with double tracking?
* OMF south is completely overbudget and behind schedule
– wouldn’t be surprised by some cost engineering? but on the other hand they need more space for trains so I’m not sure what’s the solution here
* Graham Street & Boeing Access Road Infill Stations Next Board action: Q3 2024
– surprisingly they are actually moving forward with some planning here. most likely public surveys in 2025
* Everett Link Extension Next Board action: Q3 2026, Confirm/ modify the PA
– Next public engagement in mid-2024 for station area planning.
– still seems pretty unsure which stations
West Seattle finishing final environmental impact statement Q1 2024 and moving forward with preliminary engineering Q3 2024.
Ballard Conceptual engineering for SDEIS (supplemental draft environmental impact statement for the modified westlake station) Q2 2024
https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/ActiveDocuments/Presentation%20-%20Quarterly%20Projects%20in%20Planning%20Board%20Update%20Q1%202024%2001-11-24.pdf
https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/ActiveDocuments/Presentation%20-%20Project%20Performance%20Tracker%20Update%201-11-23.pdf