Presidents’ Day transit February 19: Metro buses, Metro Flex taxis, ST Express, and Sounder are on Weekday schedules. Link is on Saturday schedule. The First Hill and SLU Streetcars are on Sunday schedule. The West Seattle and Vashon water taxis and shuttles have no service. The Monorail is open 8:30am to 9pm. Everett Transit is on weekday. Community Transit and Pierce Transit don’t say, so they’re probably weekday.
SDOT has Route 40 street improvement designs and a survey. Construction is this year and next year.
Sound Transit wants to hear about your experience during the recent Link reduction.
A light rail network that really works well: Bergen, Norway, population 300K. (RMTransit video)
Junction stations are critical and must have good line-to-line transfers. (RMTransit video)
This is an open thread.
A bicyclist tours and reviews the Overlake Village Station pedestrian and bike bridge.
https://youtu.be/pMLd82PMr5M
Have we ever discussed Poundbury? I wasn’t aware of it until this week.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=duHy_IbJvTc
Another video is here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I6HCD5vvG_0
Is it just a fantasy neo-historic neighborhood or are there some lessons here? I get how it’s not particularly high density urban and great for transit, but the attention to aesthetics beyond plain blocks is very appealing to me. There’s value in having delight in one’s surrounding neighborhood.
I will note that the property was held by a single owner (the Royal Family) that wasn’t out to just make money. That combination of ownership and purpose gives it a unique status that is hard to replicate.
I can’t help but wish more station areas around upcoming Link stations were more appealing. I view aesthetics like this as aspirational, and hope we build more places with character as opposed to the many blocks of new soulless buildings that I see built today. I also like the intentionally walkable design with passive traffic calming rather than a see of humps and crosswalk flashers. I’m hoping that local governments near Link stations can find ways to incentive better walkable areas in terms of both convenience and aesthetics.
I view aesthetics like this as aspirational, and hope we build more places with character as opposed to the many blocks of new soulless buildings that I see built today.
Poundbury seems pretty soulless to me. Or as the Guardian put it “Fake, heartless, authoritarian and grimly cute”. That seems a bit harsh, but it also doesn’t look that special. Retro architecture is fairly common. You can find it across the country. The worst is when they give a place British spelling (“Centre”) or pretend that calling a mall a “square” makes it the same as Piazza San Marco.
I would say the main thing that the king gets right is that we need to mix uses, and get back to a pedestrian focused town (or city). This goes back to the “five minute city” idea, and basically how cities and towns evolved over centuries until people got access to cars and figured they would drive everywhere. Then zoning and government subsidies kicked in and we created the sprawl we often endure today.
Personally I think we hit the low point in architecture with brutalism, although like mid-century kitsch, it can be interesting just because it is different. By the mid-eighties there were a lot of buildings I would consider ugly and cheap, but for the most part things are improving. I think design reviews and requirements actually make them worse. A lot of modern buildings are ugly because they are required to add parking. Other buildings all look the same because they know that will pass design review. I really don’t think you can mandate something like taste, and you are better off just getting out of the way.
For example, look at this building here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/qv1Dsbe4thjvvDgg6. It looks like an Airstream trailer. A bit south of there you have this building with a wavy style and pastel colors: https://maps.app.goo.gl/VxfsgW75di5vPq2u8. Then there is this building, with its rounded corners, and cross-pattern wood: https://maps.app.goo.gl/mv92FSuK1btfQcMB9. These are all weird buildings. I could easily see a design review team rejecting them for their weirdness (to their credit, they didn’t). We would all be much worse off if they did. The Space Needle is weird. The Eiffel Tower was “initially criticised by some of France’s leading artists and intellectuals for its design” (according to Wikipedia). There is just no accounting for taste.
Best thing we can do is allow variety. Allow buildings to be built without parking and with a mix of uses, so people can get around with a car. Like South Lake Union they will build some boring buildings and some interesting ones.
A big difference is in Seattle’s predominance of gridded streets. Certainly a city is easier to navigate as a pedestrian with a grid network. However, it’s often that there isn’t a distant focal point like a clock tower or landmark in the distance. Finally, straight line streets do encourage vehicles to speed — a big reason why Seattle added so many little roundabouts decades ago.
So even with more modernist buildings, there are some principles applied in Poundbury that could be applied here.
The choices to block off streets or force cars to turn right in older areas like Capitol Hill are post-development strategies to mitigate the straight street layout that our ancestors created. As more places think about TOD, local street layout should certainly be carefully developed.
It would be more inspiring to walk down the street and see a library at the end, or any public building with a tower or clock or maybe a fountain in view as opposed to nothing. In decades past, Mount Rainier was sometimes used as the distant landmark and the results are universally loved to this day. Poundbury doesn’t have our amazing mountain views!
I’ve walked in Paris and while it is common to get lost in a city like that, I didn’t, once I realized how everything was based on a major landmark. It helped that I had a map that highlighted those landmarks (with a little symbol). Thus you could pull out the map, find that landmark and have an idea of where you were.
Amsterdam is more of a grid, and I got lost in Amsterdam. Partly it is the canals. There are a lot of dead ends (unless you want to swim). Maybe the grid gave me overconfidence.
I think both are charming. While very different in nature they are probably two of the most walkable cities on the planet. Amsterdam is considered the leader when it comes to such things, but Paris is definitely catching up. I guess my point is, it is best to just let things grow organically, as long as you focus on pedestrians, transit and bikes. It is easy to focus on the history, but Amsterdam almost became a very ugly city, with freeways dominating the landscape.
As far as Seattle goes, the most interesting single family neighborhoods (at least to my eye) are the ones with the most liberal zoning. The lots are not huge. The setbacks are tiny. This makes walking around them more interesting. Thus the formula really isn’t that difficult. Prioritize walking, biking and transit, while liberalizing the zoning.
Al, let’s leave Poundbury out of it. Let’s make it local. Which Link station area is most appealing to you? Which has the most character? Or, which station area, while not appealing now, has a lot of potential and headed in the right direction?
Good question. I don’t know, do any of them have character? They have “art” in the sense of an arbitrary installation, but most of them are blah or silly, and the station designs are more of the usual modernist crap.
I’ve recently come to appreciate the ceilings and overhead lights and upper parts of the wall in Westlake and Pioneer Square stations. They have an elegance that could be called art deco. I didn’t notice that until recently. So those would be my favorites.
Second is the wall of “found objects” and video clips at U-District Station that looks like a wall of neighbors’ windows. That’s unique, especially the video clips.
Third is going down the escalators at UW Station and having the blue mosaic thing all above you.
I’m going with International District as the station with the most character. Between the partially exposed ceiling and opening onto a plaza that blends in as part of the neighborhood, and connects with the historic rail station without encountering cars along the way (well, save for some County vehicles parked on walkways), it is pretty unique among Sound Transit stations. The immediate area is a combination of “old school” Chinatown and newer hipster stuff. A bit sketchy at times, but not dangerous by any means, and definitely not “sterilized.” I loved coming back to that station when I lived in the area!
One to keep an eye on is 130th Street station, it’s supposed to become the BelRed Arts District, I’m a bit skeptical it will become much more than cardboard apartments above poorly designed retail space that never rents out but it is envisioned as an arts district through policy and initiatives.
I think that Link hasn’t been around long enough to be the catalyst for a great neighborhood. Certainly things have changed near stations that opened in 2009 like Othello and Beacon Hill but the nature of redeveloping an area already in small parcels and a street network in place keeps radical change at bay. Othello has seemed to change the most.
Link is making several neighborhoods nicer. I think it’s been pivotal in making Columbia City what it is. Capitol Hill feels more glued together without the fenced in hole that was there in station construction. Northgate is now being reinvented. Judkins Park has changed lots since 2019 but most is still under construction. The Spring District transition is amazing.
I am disaapinted by several things. In particular, I find missing is a failure to understand the difference between station art and landmark “art” through buildings and plazas. The art requirement for Link is all well and good, but it’s not something that people see two blocks away or brings tourists from other cities. I’d love to see something like the International Fountain or the Pioneer Square totem or a giant Ferris wheel even a clock tower anchoring Link in more neighborhoods.
Most new station areas are thought of as only functional destinations, like high density residential with neighborhood serving ground floor commercial. The new glass and steel and concrete stations look like massive bus shelters or industrial buildings to me — and not memorable neighborhood landmarks. Contrast that with King Street Station or Union Station that present a sense of arrival all these decades after they opened.
I realize that there is more than a great neighborhood than a landmark but I think every neighborhood needs some landmarks to make it great.
Probably the most inspiring area in Seattle is the view from Red Square at UW looking towards the fountain and Mt Rainier. That’s truly inspiring. It was intended to be, having originated from the 1909 Exposition. That attests to the intentionality of good urban design that I see mostly lacking in our local TOD and station design discussions today.
I visited Poundbury 15 years ago and loved it, apparently its gotten even better. I’ll take the aestheics of it any day over most built today.
On your other point, we have got to figure out how to create great new real mixed use places on par with our historic streetcar neighborhoods. We only get these garbage cardboard apartment buildings built by cheap developers who can’t comprehend anything other than crappy commodified apartment units. They don’t do retail and only get dragged into dedicating the bare minimum of leftover ground floor space for some poor quality retail they can’t rent out because no retailer wants it. All we are creating around our stations is transitory housing for renters to live in for a year before moving to the next soulless cardboard apartment building. No one wants to build third places in new construction or places of any value. All these stations from Northgate north where there is nothing other than SF houses should be creating new real places around the stations with great retail, arts, music, entertainment and social spaces where people want to hang out both residents from upstairs and from elsewhere in the community. Even if you dint like the traditional architecture aesthetics of Poundbury, that should be the take away… build complete communities with attention to the details and placemaking.
“All we are creating around our stations is transitory housing for renters to live in for a year before moving to the next soulless cardboard apartment building”
There’s nowhere else next to a station to move to. So for people who want a short walk to good transit, it won’t be transitory. Not until all the bus routes are running every 10 minutes and have transit-priority lanes, which may be never.
> They don’t do retail and only get dragged into dedicating the bare minimum of leftover ground floor space for some poor quality retail they can’t rent out because no retailer wants it. All we are creating around our stations is transitory housing for renters to live in for a year before moving to the next soulless cardboard apartment building. No one wants to build third places in new construction or places of any value. All these stations from Northgate north where there is nothing other than SF houses should be creating new real places around the stations with great retail, arts, music, entertainment and social spaces
The new apartment construction are already mandated to build too much retail relative to the amount of residential. This has been called out explicitly as a problem for financing some of them already. Look one needs a minimum level of density to support third places.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/6/5/whats-up-with-all-those-empty-commercial-storefronts-in-new-mixed-use-developments
https://www.planetizen.com/news/2020/08/110186-developers-want-skip-ground-floor-retail-requirements
Every city wants to build offices, but not the apartments. People want bakeries, coffee shops, grocery stores next to them… but not actually the apartments that are necessary for it to function. It goes hand with hand, if you want the amenities then you have to have some minimum level of density.
Of course there are other solutions, if you’re wondering how say Japan or other countries can have much more smaller shops one large annoyance is the strict separation between retail and residential land. Aka in many US cities you can’t open a shop out of a ground level home apartment or vice versa cannot live out of the store if commercial and thus must rent/own two places.
@WL,
“ All we are creating around our stations is transitory housing for renters to live in for a year before moving to the next soulless cardboard apartment building.”
That is what renting is. It is transitory in almost all circumstances. I don’t think I ever rented the same place for more than 4 years in a row.
But I did eventually buy, and now I’m not at the whim of a landlord. And I can punch holes in walls and do all sorts of fun things without being evicted.
This region is never going to create more SFH homes. The best people can hope for if they can’t afford a SFH is a missing middle townhouse. They are still available in places like Shoreline for less than $800k. Barely.
After that? You are sort of stuck with renting because there basically isn’t a condo market in this state. But that is not Sound Transit’s fault, that is a result of state laws related to condo construction liability.
I fully support changing the condo laws to create another level of ownership below missing middle townhouses. If that was done then I think more of these soulless apartment buildings would actually be built as condo buildings with maybe a bit more soul.
The Route 40 survey is construction-focused, which suggests SDOT made up its mind about the final design.
It’s not just transit escalators that have problems:
“RANT to whoever decides to install escalators in the parking garages at University Village. In hundreds of visits there over several years, I always find the up escalators to parking garages closed for repair. As each new parking garage is constructed, nonfunctioning escalators are installed. Is there an escalator repair person in Seattle? Since the answer is apparently no, why install escalators that never work? Just go with stairs and elevators.” (Rant & Rave in the Seattle Times.)
And last week at Walgreens downtown, both the escalators and the elevator were out. I had to go painstakingly up and down the stopped escalators to the pharmacy, where I had to move when the Bartell’s on 5th closed.
Other than that, I’ve hardly ever seen an escalator or elevator closed in a retail store. Only once or twice.
Try the Sears at South Center. No escalator working and no merchandise other than hundreds of the same tool set on display on every shelf. It’s so sad it’s worth a visit.
Sears has been on a downward decline for awhile. You can blame a hedge fund person who was more concerned with enriching himself than reinventing a storied brand that badly needed modernization back in the mid 00s. In some ways, JCPenney is likely to stay around as the middle class department store while Sears dies off for good. Even Kohls is trying to reinvent itself to be more modern and fresh. But regardless something will fill the void in that anchor space at Southcenter once Sears finally dies. What that’ll be is anyone’s guess.
Houses are getting smaller. ($)
“Robert Lanter lives in a 600-square-foot house … a house under $300,000, something increasingly hard to find. That price allowed Mr. Lanter, a 63-year-old retired nurse, to buy a new single-family home in a subdivision in Redmond, Ore., about 30 minutes outside Bend, where he is from and which is, along with its surrounding area, one of Oregon’s most expensive housing markets.”
“Some of his neighbors live in houses that total just 400 square feet — a 20-by-20-foot house attached to a 20-by-20-foot garage.”
For comparison, typical houses built in the 1950s are 800-1000 sf. Now they’re 2,000-3,000. My current 1 BR apartment is 650 sf, so about the size of Lanter’s house. My previous studio was 375 sf.
“Homes under 500 square feet are not taking over anytime soon: They are less than 1 percent of the new homes built in America”
“Hayden [the developer] builds about 2,000 homes a year throughout the Pacific Northwest. Its business model is to deliver middle-income housing that local workers can afford, Ms. Flagan said, and it does this by skipping larger cities like Portland and Seattle in favor of lower-cost exurbs like Redmond [Oregon] (where the company is based).”
I’m just surprised these small houses were allowed by the government and by the developer. So maybe things are starting to get better.
Looking ahead to the bus restructure around Federal Way Link, I’d like to spell out my dream next version of ST Express route 574.
Imagine, if you will, having the line start at Federal Way City Center Station, head down to Tacoma Dome Station via whatever path is fastest, have a stop next to the second T-Line Station to facilitate quicker transfers than at TDS, then head to ST 512 P&R, Lakewood Station, then DuPont Station, and then on to the Capitol Campus bus stop, terminating at Olympia TC. NO DETOUR TO HAWKS PRARIE P&R.
The Federal Way to Lakewood portion is the current southern end of the route. The portion from Federal Way to the airport will not be competitive with Link, even accounting for transfer time, and so ought to be dropped.
Funding could be a mix of ST’s two southern subareas, Pierce Transit, IntercityTransit, and maybe even state grant(s).
Du Pont Station would be upgraded to all-day service, going in two directions, and leave ST Express 592 merely being an express version of the full length of the S Line, and so possibly able to be eliminated, or become a peak 2-way express between Lakewood and Federal Way Station. However, the current ridership doesn’t make a good case for keeping the 592 at all. Nor does the 590 ridership make a case for keeping that route either, while Sounder ridership is still less than half from the Before Times.
As far as frequency goes, I’d love to see the next 574 match Link’s peak frequency, or alternate with a more express route that still goes to Olympia,. Off-peak, I’d like to see the 574 alternate with the next version of ST Express 594 with a stop added at Federal Way Station so every train connects with a bus going to Tacoma.
This is an excellent suggestion, Brent, and might help get more state support for intercity transit. Thank you; I like the “Before Times” reference.
For instance, it’s possible to travel from Vancouver to Kelso-Longview via a private non-profit shuttle. Really? This is the best the State of Washington can do to link together the two largest metropoli on the west side outside Central Puget Sound? A $1 van with one wheelchair position?
It’s also possible to go north of Kelso to Castle Rock, and that bus used to continue to Chehalis, but does no longer. Why not? Is there no “market” for trips between Kelso-Longview and Centralia-Chehalis? Sure there is, and Amtrak four times a day doesn’t serve it very well.
And finally, the way from Centralia to Olympia today requires one to ride a Magic Bus from Centralia to Gate and transfer to a Grey’s Harbor bus to Olympia. GATE ????? There’s no “there” there.
Look, I’m not opposed to Lewis County running the bus to Gate, because there are a few Lewis communities along it. But, really. What about the I-5 corridor? A bus would be more popular between the two points than Amtrak, even if ATK were FREE, because it stops for “Olympia” in West Yelm. The bus would, presumably, visit downtown Olympia.
The Wingers may claim that “Teh Libs” have driven the Holy Po’ Folks of their Fever Dreams out of Western Washington with our “crazy policies”, but an honest evaluation shows clearly that a WHOLE LOT of people in Western Washington are still poor, and they don’t get much help from their Gubmint, at least not for getting around.
There should be freeway buses shadowing ATK, with additional stops at Woodland and Castle Rock all the way from Lakewood TC to 99th Street in Vancouver. Start with every other hour from 7 to 7, maybe 10 to 7 on Sunday, advertise it!!!!! and see how it goes. Maybe we’ll find that there are enough people who want to take an hourly bus.
Heaven forfend!!!!! [/ethanol snark]
The problem with buses like that is that they are extremely expensive per rider. No matter what you do, you don’t pick up that many riders. Yet the cost is high. Local agencies are loath to spend that much money on so few riders. ST might pay for it, but not if it goes way out of its area*. It really needs to be a state thing, in cooperation with ST.
Part of the issue is Amtrak. If the trains were better, we wouldn’t need to subsidize the buses. Is it better to put the money into better train service or better bus service? I don’t have a simple answer for that, but my point is it complicates the issue.
*Didn’t ST used to run buses to Olympia?
Intercity Transit got a WSDOT Regional Mobility Grant in 2013 (and again in 2015) which funded extension of ST 592 (Seattle-Dupont) to Olympia. The extension was ended in 2017 when grant funding was not renewed.
This is a bummer, because since I’ve started semi-frequently commuting from Seattle to my company’s office in Olympia and would much rather do it on a bus than spend three hours on the road just to sit in that office.
Yeah, that really sucks. I think Olympia would make a better tail. I think one of the big problems is poor local transit. You can take the 594 to SR 512 and then take the 620 to Olympia. But according to Google you would spend 25 minutes waiting for your bus. It looks pretty bad to other destinations as well. For example I look at getting to the American Lake (VA) hospital and it takes about 45 minutes on the bus to get from the SR 512 stop to the hospital (whereas it takes about 15 if you drive). I think part of the problem is that the destinations are fairly spread out. Another is that there is very little interest in trying to improve regional transit by getting the agencies to cooperate. From the SR 512 stop (a regional transit hub) the Seattle bus should arrive and very soon after, a bunch of buses should leave, headed to Olympia, American Lake, Madigan, etc.
Until then, I wonder if the best bet is vanpools. Community Transit has a very good vanpool system, and for trips like yours that might make the best sense. You might end up spreading out the driving (or being subsidized) if nothing else.
That version of ST Express 592 only ran from Olympia to Seattle in the morning and back in the evening. It also had that aforementioned time-consuming diversion to the Hawks Prairie P&R. In no way was it a test of potential ridership from Pugetopolis to Olympia and back.
Intercity Transit still spends a lot on bussing people to and from the middle of nowhere (SR 512 P&R), on a low-frequency erratic schedule. The existence of that transfer point that can take over an hour waiting for the connecting bus makes Amtrak competitive, even with the IT bus that picks up at Cenntenial Station taking an hour to get to the Capitol.
Even a half-hourly 574 to Olympia would be orders of magnitude faster than the mess we have right now that seems to say pedestrians are not welcome at the Capitol.
Ross, I challenge you to try to take a day trip to Olympia completely on transit to meet with you legislators, and the get back home on the same day. Take Amtrak if you wish.
Per their externally-searchable websites, CT and PT are indeed on regular schedule today. Kitsap Transit, however, is on “holiday schedule”.
Did the City ever get rid of its policy turning some bus lanes into parking lanes on minor holidays?
I’m going to take a moment to rant about one of my pet peeves with transit systems in general, and that’s this knee jerk assumption that transfers need to happen at transit centers, and that connections at transit centers require every bus to detour into the bus loop vs. simply stopping on the street next to the transit center.
For example, on another thread, Mike Orr told me that the 245 and B line now detour into the Overlake Transit Center bus loop. Who benefits from this detour? What connections are people making that they can’t do with a stop the street? How much time, if it any, would the detour even save people connecting to Link, and at what cost to people who aren’t? For example, if somebody lives near Crossroads and works at one of the Microsoft buildings at Red West – a straight shot on the B line – now, every commute is going to be some 5 minutes longer, each direction, not due to actual picking up passengers, but time crawling at 5 mph through the bus bays and waiting for stoplights to get in and out of then.l.
This may be why the northbound 245 and B Line aren’t dropping off on 156th across the street from the Redmond Tech station, and instead detouring inside the transit station. I saw for myself that side of the street is under construction. It’s not possible for buses to make stops there. The question is, is the bus detour temporary until the construction is complete, or is it permanent? That I don’t know.
https://www.redmond.gov/1538/156th-Cycle-Track
A simpler temporary solution would just be to stop on the street just on the other side of the 156/40th St. intersection – especially given that the train that Overlake Transit Center is supposed to connect to hasn’t entered service yet.
There are lots of hard-to-justify loop-de-loops that don’t even involve formal anti-transit cul-de-sacs.*. I wrote a screed shortly after the Before Times listing a whole bunch of them.
The best strategy is to listen to Jarrett Walker and “Stop building this. [anti-transit centers]”. Once they are built, the buses have to divert into them, because sunk-cost fallacy.
At least some of them will go away, such as Federal Way anti-TC and Ash Way P&R.
I still don’t know what the final outcome will be for bus transfers at Lynnwood Station. I’ll be curious to see if there are pricey temporary stops for the Orange Swift Line when it opens on March 30.
* Riders readily ignore the signs not to exit the center in a direction other than the approved one.
I don’t know what exactly the Orange Line will do around the Lynnwood Station, but it appears that it will detour to the Ash Way Park and Ride (https://www.communitytransit.org/images/default-source/about-images/projects-images/swiftorangelinemap_may122023.png?sfvrsn=d4a55e99_0). This seems far worse than anything it might do close to the Lynnwood Transit Center (although who knows).
Edit: OK, now that I think about it, this detour may be unavoidable. The 201/202 doesn’t go on 164th. It manages to use the HOV ramps to access Ash Way Park and Ride. Simply adding a bus stop would be a long detour for anyone heading north (https://maps.app.goo.gl/wzFutT1QKYBxwyVo9). It is unfortunate, and the only way to completely avoid the detour would be to split the Orange Line somehow. This gets tricky, and you might lose some of the functionality. This may be the only solution (as ugly as it is).
I completely agree asdf2. I made reference to this before, but look at this spot here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/49u47KvEpqetmWaX6. This is the intersection between the most popular bus in Anglo North America (if not all of North America) and two of the three subway lines in Vancouver. The bus carried 57,000 people while the two lines carried about 400,000 riders before the pandemic. It is probably one of the biggest transit centers involving buses-train transfers in North America. The only one that I know is bigger is the Port Authority Bus Terminal, in New York. It may very well be the biggest bus-to-train transfer station for a city its size in the world. And it consists of:
A bus stop. That’s it. Just a simple bus stop, and a simple entrance to the subway.
Look at the picture again. Notice how many people are waiting for the bus. I count at least 20. This is for a bus that “operates on a 2-minute headway in the morning peak direction, with a 4.5 minute day base headway.” Holy Cow! The bus runs every two minutes peak, and less than every five minutes in the middle of the day. In other words, those 20 or so people have not been waiting long. Again, outside of New York City — freaking New York City! — this is probably the greatest bus-to-train transfer point in North America and it consists of a bus stop and a simple entrance to the subway. The bus doesn’t detour to make that connection. It just keeps on rolling.
Which brings me to the the Port Authority Bus Terminal. It is the busiest bus terminal in the world by volume of traffic*. It is basically a transit center, and buses loop around to serve it. But the key word here is “terminal”. PABT serves as a terminus and departure point for commuter routes as well as for long-distance intercity bus service and is a major transit hub for residents of New Jersey*. The buses don’t go through. They connect to the New York City Subway (and bus) system. The buses go there and turn around.
It really isn’t that complicated. The main value of a “terminal” or “transit center” is that it allows buses to layover or turn around. That’s it. Everything else is just BS marketing. In the case of New Jersey bus service to New York, there is value in having that. In the case of the stop I displayed for Vancouver, there is not. The problem is, way too often we just assume that a bus should end there, when it shouldn’t. Or a bus doesn’t end there, but still makes a silly loop around the area, as if it just might.
This glorification of transit centers (or bus terminals) has lead to a great misunderstanding of their purpose. Imagine if the New Jersey buses didn’t end there, but kept going, serving Manhattan. Hurray! Hundreds of thousands of New Jersey riders would be ecstatic. They don’t have to transfer!
Yet somehow people think going to a transit center is a good thing, when it is basically just a necessary evil. The bus has to end somewhere, and we just can’t send all of those buses from New Jersey onto Manhattan. It would be great, but … Fuggetaboutit.
The same is true here. The RapidRide E and Swift Blue (the too most popular buses in King and Snohomish County) both end at Aurora Village Transit Center. Is this a good thing? NO! It is actually costs a lot of riders a lot of time. If you are just trying to stay on the same corridor is a huge delay. It may not seem like it, but turns take time. When you add extra time, you increase the chances of a mixed transfer. A lot of people have spent a lot of time waiting at that transit center simply because there is no overlap — no chance of a simply same-stop transfer on Aurora. Even for their stated purpose — easy transfers — they are inferior. Again, the main reason for transit centers (or the better term, “terminals”) is so buses can layover and turn around. That’s it.
This sort of mentality influences bus networks. It is really bad when buses make detours to serve transit centers. It is even worse when they force transfers in the middle of nowhere as a result. We see this with 148th Station. There will be seven bus routes serving it, and not one will go east to west, connecting the corridors. It is bad enough that the 365 — the only bus continuing by the station — will likely make a big loop by the station. It is even worse that so many people will be forced to transfer there, in the middle of nowhere.
I get why various agencies persist with the marketing. It makes sense. You have to have a place to put the buses if they end there, and you might as well make it pretty, and try and attract riders that way. But it is only a place for buses to end. It is not a good place to make a transfer or worthy of a detour in its own right.
*Wikipedia.
Some cool art is coming to in front of Wilburton Station.
https://flickr.com/photos/startsoundtransit/albums/72157702870251072/
“IN DEVELOPMENT
PROJECT: Plaza
ARTIST: Phillip K. Smith III (Palm Springs, CA)
DESCRIPTION: Smith’s landmark for the station will be a 40-foot tower that responds to the color of the sky and the changing light over the course of a day. An x-shaped column of mirrored surfaces will reflect the sky and station surroundings during the day. Internal lights will transform the sculpture into a column of colors during the darker hours of the day, changing and combining from early morning until full daylight, then again from dusk to the end of service in the evening.”
If you’ve been by there recently, on the east side of the station, and the north side of NE 8th, you’ll see a giant, rectangular structure, covered in white material. It’s taller than the elevated guideway. I always wondered what the white material was covering, so I looked it up.
King County Metro had a meeting today about their long range plan as well as rapidride prioritization. Notably they have to decide by June 30th a new list of routes to prioritize for the next rapidrides.
Most of it isn’t too surprising but I guess to recap for others
* rapidride G and Rapidride I are under construction
* rapidride K and rapidride R “locked in” and already chosen the next ones to be implemented.
They are deciding which rapidride should be implemented next after those 2. Though by default with ridership metrics that would be seattle so reading the tea leaves it seems they are trying to choose one of the routes in South King after building Rapidride R in seattle and rapidride K on the eastside.* The new metric calls for weighing of equity and sustainability more; copying San Francisco Muni’s approach.
The south king routes for rapidride upgrades would the 150, 165, and 181. Seattle routes of 44 and 40 are probably suppressed in prioritization under the new metric. route 36+49 travels through CID and I guess maybe students in uw count as low income?? so maybe it’s not weighed as unfavorably; Alternatively the 36+49 rapidride could be funded by the next seattle transportation levy.
Lastly there’s the eastside routes of north-south “B Line and 226”; and east-west “B Line and 271”. It’s far off 10 years away but it’s probably the least likely to be chosen given the east link extension starter line then full line in a year.
https://aqua.kingcounty.gov/council/agendas/RTC/20240221-RTC-packet.pdf#page=37
*(Not saying whether that’s good or bad, Seattle did just implement a pretty expensive rapidride G)
“The new metric calls for weighing of equity and sustainability more; copying San Francisco Muni’s approach.”
Sustainability? Extend RapidRide I to Rainier Beach station so that the thousands of people between Kent and Renton can access Link without a 3-seat ride. Extend it on MLK to replace the 101 for faster travel time, and leave the Renton Avenue path for a future Rapid Ride to Renton and the Renton Highlands (another high-pedestrian area that needs access to Link).
“north-south “B Line and 226”
What what what? Would that solve my access problem to 164th & Main? I can’t believe they’d put RapidRide on 164th instead of 156th. This is probably sloppy wording for “B Line and 245”.
It’s the same line 1999 Rapidride Candidate described in the remix interim map.
> What what what? Would that solve my access problem to 164th & Main? I can’t believe they’d put RapidRide on 164th instead of 156th.
It’d travel down 156th since that’s where the Crossroads mall is. Most likely they’d reroute the new 245 (kirkland, redmond tech, eastgate) to use 148
> This is probably sloppy wording for “B Line and 245”.
It was referring to the “current” 226 which travels on 156th not new 226 which travels on 164
Other goodies on pp. 25-26:
* E Line extension to Mountlake Terrace TC. Yes! Connect Aurora to Link.
* C Line extension to Burien and [truncate at WSJ]. That would serve lower-income South King County. The truncation couldn’t occur until West Seattle Link, but the extension wouldn’t have to wait for that.
* H Line [reroute] to Alki. That would also have to wait for West Seattle Link. It may also contradict SDOT’s recent list of potential corridors for the next Move Seattle, where I think Alki was downgraded from this and reattached to another route.
“Not saying whether that’s good or bad, Seattle did just implement a pretty expensive rapidride G”
There’s just, y’know, transit best practices. Put upgrades where they’ll be most used, and most lead to a transit-oriented population that won’t drive as much. But we always knew Metro would balance the investments across the subareas: it did that with the A, B, and F. Equity shows its new emphasis.
I don’t know what Metro means by “sustainability”. Let’s see. Page 30, “Environmental sustainability”. Page 43, San Francisco’s “Environmental sustainability and liveability” metric. OK, it’s something about the environment and liveability.
Could it be… putting RapidRide in the most walkable areas? No, that would be Seattle. Could it be… maximizing trolleybus routes? No, again, that would be Seattle. Could it be… suburban buses pollute less than buses in Seattle for some unknown reason? That must be it.
There were some interesting remarks about transporation by Roger millers in the psrc transportation meeting (Executive Board Thursday, February 22, 2024 • 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m)
1 hour and 34 minute mark about safeety
Roger Millers talks about how there’s 1100 miles of these ‘legacy highways’ or ‘orphan highways’ aka like Aurora avenue where it’s high speeds and no sidewalks that have twice the fatality rate and three times the serious injury rate against state average. Mentioned he talked to the state about some funding to improve it .
1 hour 37 minute mark
About teleworking briefly and how the planning needs to meet the reality that there’s a lot less commuting
1 hour 44 minute mark
Bob kettle talks about how pedestrian deaths from drivers purposefully driving over pedestrians
Lastly they talked about a new regional centers map tool https://psrcwa.shinyapps.io/centers-monitoring/ that provides population/job overview and in 2025 talking about adding new regional centers
https://psrc2.granicus.com/player/clip/775?view_id=1&redirect=true