Regional Transit after Federal Way Link

171 Replies to “Regional Transit after Federal Way Link”

1. As a rider of 574 from Tacoma to the airport, I think this proposal would further discourage the use of public transit to go to the airport for people in South Sound. The added frictions to that trip is significant, especially with luggage, since the Link station is not right at the airport, unlike the bus stop.

   1. Ross kinda forgot to give a bit more context but the current Sound Transit plan is to truncate all (with rare exceptions) Tacoma busses at federal way transit center when federal way link opens

      1. Plans change, and nothing is written in stone. This is not based on a Sound Transit network, but what Sound Transit should run.

      2. Right – the 594 and the 574 basically will become one new all-day route. The 574 was previously the all-day route, but Ross wants the downtown Tacoma loop so he’s converting the 594 to all-day-not-peak; Lakewood loses a one-seat ride to the airport and an express route to FW but gets a better connection to downtown Tacoma; probably a good trade-off because at peak congestion Lakewood also has access to Sounder to Seattle. Unclear to me if this means Lakewood completely loses early morning/late evening connection to Tacoma, which was provided by the 574 but not the 594 (maybe that’s covered by extending the 592 into early morning/late evening to closer match the 574’s span of service?)

         Similarly, the 586 and the 590 are now functionally one peak-only route called “590” terminating at FW station, with travel onwards to Link for both downtown Seattle (previously 590) and UW ( previously 586).

      3. @AJ — Here is what I had in mind for Tacoma/Lakewood/Dupont:

         Peak: Buses to Link. Sounder to Downtown.
         Off-Peak (and reverse peak): Express buses to downtown.

         I thought I had the route numbers to achieve that, but I forgot that Lakewood Transit Center is covered by the 574, but not the 594. This complicates things, to be sure. I would keep peak service the same. Outside of peak I would branch the 594 at SR 512, with half the buses going to Lakewood Transit Center, and the other half going to Lakewood Station and Dupont. I would probably call the bus that goes to the Lakewood Transit Center something different, like the 584. That way if you are in Tacoma you can take the 584 and 594 to Seattle.

         I might also just have the 594 serve the transit center and continue to Lakewood (and occasionally Dupont). Way more people ride from the transit center than the station (even though way more people ride buses to Seattle than to SeaTac). In other words Lakewood Transit Center is a bigger destination (based on existing ridership).

      4. What is the latest status on Seattle Streetcar? Will the two existing sections be connected?
         Connecting the two existing sections would be a boon to summertime tourism.

      5. @Ron Rasmussen,

         “ Connecting the two existing sections would be a boon to summertime tourism.”

         Not just to tourism, but to transit in general.

         At one point the completed SLUSC/CCC/FHSC was projected to carry substantially more riders than RR E. That is a phenomenal accomplishment given the comparative lengths of the two systems.

         Only in Seattle would we build a little piece of streetcar over here, and then build a little piece of streetcar over there, and then argue that streetcar doesn’t work because ridership is low and people have to transfer too much.

         But, I guess for some, the mode wars never went away.

      6. Please move streetcar discussions to an open thread. This article is about south King County and Pierce County.

   2. Maybe, but I can’t see how ST can justify bus service to SeaTac, given the fairly low ridership on the 574. Almost half the riders were either going from Federal Way to the airport, or taking the bus from the south to Federal Way. The former will definitely be replaced by Link (simply because it is more frequent) and the latter will still exist.

      I think luggage is an issue, but a lot of riders are going to work, not for a trip. A lot of those who take trips are frequent travelers — those who carry fairly small suitcases they can maneuver through an airport quite easily.

      The only time I see the 574 running is very early in the morning, when Link is not running. This is when the 574 carried the most riders. The busiest bus (by far) is the one that runs at 2:13 AM. By 3:00 AM it peaks out at 30 riders a bus. Ridership goes down slowly during the day after that. Like midday, really early morning trips are fast as well. I should have mentioned this as a possibility (running the 574, but only very early in the morning). https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/2020-service-implementation-plan.pdf#page=159

      1. What happens to early 592 runs? You may need to keep the 592 not truncated at Federal Way as Link doesn’t run that early. Perhaps the 592 can basically be the ‘night owl’ run between DuPont, Lakewood, and Seattle for early morning (before Link & Sounder)? Given the 592 didn’t stop at Tacoma nor FW, truncating at FW station is a major transfer penalty … though based on the schedule it looks like the drivers sometimes through-ran into 594 trips?

      2. Early morning runs are not really peak, so you would see the 594 (as well as SeaTac buses, as mentioned above). As far as serving Lakewood and Dupont, see my comments above (https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/02/25/regional-transit-after-federal-way-link/#comment-927257).

   3. Would it be too long a route to combine one of these Tacoma – Federal Way routes with the 560, so that there’s a West Seattle – SeaTac – Federal Way – Tacoma route?

      It seems like that might help the above concern about having a one seat ride from Tacoma to SeaTac, and it would also extend the reach of a one seat ride to a route that previously didn’t have it (Tacoma and Federal Way to West Seattle).

      1. There was one talk of 574 Lakewood to Westwood Village after link was built. To make it work and be reliable, moving the 574 to the Lakewood Sounder and removing 272nd & Kent Des Moines would need to happen once Link is up.

      2. That’s exactly what ST is thinking about: extending the 574 to Westwood Village to backfill the part of the 560 that Stride 1 will abandon. It mused about this in the run-up to ST3. It hasn’t come to any conclusions yet (at least not in reports or meetings that we’ve seen) — like everything else about ST Express after Federal Way Link and Tacoma Dome Link.

      3. Rapid H does a much better job and gets much higher ridership than ST Express 560 between Burien and Westwood.

         Extending it to the airport would probably be more effective at getting ridership than having the 574 pointlessly (except overnight) continue to the airport and then to Burien, with only 1/3 the frequency of the H Line.

         The choice for that special Tacoma-Burien rider is between an infrequent 1-seat milk run, and 3 fast routes, each coming every 10 lmonutes.

      4. SeaTac destroys bus hours. Any frequent and/or long bus should avoid serving the airport directly.

      5. Either way rapidride H and A should have a connection somewhere. The current transfer to F line to tibs is awful for any trips in between.

         > Extending it to the airport.

         As AJ noted it’d have quite awful traffic there. I guess it could either extend to TIBS or maybe Angle lake after the 509 extension is complete.

         > The choice for that special Tacoma-Burien rider is between an infrequent 1-seat milk run, and 3 fast routes, each coming every 10 lmonutes.

         I find it more annoying that from west seattle to any other route it’s decoupled.

      6. “SeaTac destroys bus hours. Any frequent and/or long bus should avoid serving the airport directly.”

         Through buses should be using the stops under the Link station. That’s pretty close to serving the airport directly.

      7. Would it be too long a route to combine one of these Tacoma – Federal Way routes with the 560, so that there’s a West Seattle – SeaTac – Federal Way – Tacoma route?

         I guess with the new sr 509 ramps one could have the bus go such a route heading up 28th ave S. The problem is that the road just heads straight to the airport cargo area not to a road that continues on.

         Alternatively I guess it could use international boulevard and then sr-518 but this duplicates both the rapidride A and rapidride F lines/stride 1

         I did have a more farfetched idea about connecting the proposed new seatac elevated (internal) busway to sr 518 through some direct access ramps. But it’d probably too complicated for buses to turn around in the parking garage.

      8. ST could put moving sidewalks on the walkways to and from the Link Station and might double their air-traveler ridership to and from Sea-Tac Station for pennies per rider.

      9. Glen, the RR-A already serves the Link station that way. The A is a great bus route, frequent and linear, so not sure what you are asking for here – to overlay another route on the A? I suppose the H could be extended to TIBS (replacing or overlaying with that part of the F), but that’s fiddling with the local KCM network design. Any STX route that exits I5 to serve SeaTac Link station is either overlapping the RRA or is slogging through local streets elsewhere – for any Pierce county rider it will be faster to simply take Link to FW Station, even with a transfer penalty.

         Tom, not Sound Transit’s property, that’s Port of Seattle. They looked into it and the floor height of the parking garage does not allow for the moving sidewalk (much of the moving sidewalk sits below grade, but the garage floor is load bearing so you can’t under into it), so installing a moving sidewalk would require basically rebuilding the garage. Instead, the Port provides electric cart service between the station and terminal, which seems sufficient for any rider who does not want to walk.

      10. “Glen, the RR-A already serves the Link station that way. The A is a great bus route, frequent and linear, so not sure what you are asking for here – to overlay another route on the A?”

          There has been discussion above about other routes (such as a modified 574) also serving the airport. The 560 and at least one other route stop there other than the A.

          My limited experience with the airport routes is once they go into the terminal mess, they get stuck for long periods.

      11. AJ, Thanks.

          What is an “electric cart”? Does the user ride with the luggage or is it like an electric pallet jack where the unit is powered, but users steer someway from next to it?

      12. > Glen, the RR-A already serves the Link station that way. The A is a great bus route, frequent and linear, so not sure what you are asking for here – to overlay another route on the A? I suppose the H could be extended to TIBS (replacing or overlaying with that part of the F), but that’s fiddling with the local KCM network design

          That’s what I would implement having the H take over that segment of the F line. Then you’d have the three rapidrides, H, F and A all meet at TIBS.

          I guess there’s the problem that the F line is now relatively short, but it’s still 6 miles.

      13. “Then you’d have the three rapidrides, H, F and A all meet at TIBS.”

          That may sound good at first but it breaks the grid, especially for people in Burien going to Southcenter. Southcenter has a lot of on/offs: I suspect more than half of F riders get on/off at Baker Blvd. Not many get off at TIB. Link is so slow and meandering between TIB and Intl Dist that you’re better off taking the H, 150, or 101 if you’re in those areas.

          If people have to transfer, like from White Center to Southcenter, it’s better to do it at a city center (Burien) at the edge of the grid (Burien).

          Extending the H to SeaTac and keeping the F as is wouldn’t have those problems, and would give Burien and areas north of it better access to the airport. It could replace the 161, giving the Burien-airport segment higher frequency and transit priority.

          At that point it might be worth extending the H to Kent to replace the rest of the 161. I don’t know how many Burien-Kent trips there are, but the SeaTac Link bus stops or the stops at the baggage claim are also a lousy place to transfer, while Burien is a better transfer point and a bigger destination for non-airport travelers.

          That would overlap with Metro’s plan to upgrade the 165 to RapidRide just south of there. (GRCC, 132nd, Kent Station, KDM Station, and the 165 continues to Burien from there.) Metro would probably balk at having two east-west RapidRides to Kent when other areas have no RapidRide yet. Still, it would avoid splitting the 161 at SeaTac.

          Of course, a Seattle-Burien-Kent RapidRide may be too long anyway.Any bottleneck in part of the route would be transmitted to the rest of the route.

      14. Would it be too long a route to combine one of these Tacoma – Federal Way routes with the 560, so that there’s a West Seattle – SeaTac – Federal Way – Tacoma route?

          Other than maybe really early in the morning (to serve airport riders) I don’t think so. Even then it probably makes more sense as two routes. For example, the 574 (now only operating before Link opens) and an early-bird extension to the H (consisting of an express from Burien to SeaTac).

          It is worth noting that I am proposing that the Tacoma-Federal Way route only run during peak (peak direction). The rest of the day I run the 574 (which means the bus serves Federal Way and then keeps going until downtown). This means that the bus would be running when traffic is really bad. I also think you spread yourself too thin. You just wouldn’t get that many riders. The 560 got very few riders from West Seattle and Burien to the airport (around 250). Most riders were headed to Bellevue. That is one reason why ST modified their approach. The 574 didn’t get that many riders except that early morning run.

          The bus would lose out to competition for that middle segment. This bus would go from Federal Way to the airport. So does the train. So does the A. That pretty much kills all ridership from that segment. That leaves things like Burien to Tacoma. I just don’t think you get that many riders with that despite using quite a bit of service hours.

          I like the idea in general, but I think the geography is wrong. What you want is for the bus to serve “Downtown Federal Way” like it serves Downtown Tacoma. Except there really is no Downtown Federal Way. Nor is there somewhere to the east or west that makes sense as an extension. The closest thing is Auburn, but Tacoma to Auburn that time of day is covered with Sounder. Federal Way to Auburn is covered with the proposed all-day Puyallup/Sumner/Auburn/Federal Way bus. As Brent suggested elsewhere, I think you are better off extending south (e. g. Olympia) with a few of the runs. That way you have Link/Olympia and Sounder/Olympia as two-seat trips. Done right and this costs next to nothing (it is just the two agencies essentially connecting the different routes).

      15. That’s what I would implement having the H take over that segment of the F line. Then you’d have the three rapidrides, H, F and A all meet at TIBS.

          Or you could just extend the H to TIBS, but run as an express between Burien and TIBS. The H is pretty long though — even that might be pushing it. There are other problems. Stride 1 runs from Bellevue to Burien. This would overlap it and not carry that many riders. You could just truncate the Stride line at TIBS, but then the trip from Burien to Bellevue takes longer. This could have some merit if they cancel the TIBS freeway station (as Burien riders would be detoured off the freeway anyway).

          I think this gets back to the problem you mentioned earlier — there are no good hubs in the area. SeaTac is the obvious hub, but it is not easy to serve. TIBS is great from a connections standpoint, but there is nothing there. That leaves places like Burien, which basically split the difference (not that hard to get to, and way more of a destination than TIBS). I don’t see an easy solution without spending a bunch of money. This means a lot of transfers, basically.

      16. The Burien-TIB part of the F is already fast because it runs along the northern boundary of the airport, which has few intersections or stops or on-offs. So you could extend the H to TIB without making it express.

          The frustrating slow part of the F is all the turns between Southcenter and Renton. West of Southcenter it performs admirably.

   4. The lengthy circling by the 574 north of the airport, often sitting in traffic waiting to get to the stop south of the terminal, caps an excruciatingly slow ride from Federal Way etc. Timewise, transferring to the train and walking to the terminal easily beats staying on the 574 in every scenario except night owl and a long stoppage of train service.

      The 574 is much better southbound, but still not as good as walking north to the station and being on your way within 10 minutes and transferring at Federal Way 15-25 minutes later, though more likely 15-17 minutes if the Tacoma-bound bus is timed to pick up the departing southbound passengers to start its run, with an on-site Pierce Transit supervisor making sure no bus leaves early.

      I won’t miss the bus stop south of the terminal at all, just like I totally don’t miss the old Metro 194.

2. Would it be more legible for riders to keep the 578 running into Seattle and use the new 588 number for the truncated route? Simply deleting 578 runs during Sounder (and running 588 instead) I think will be better understood?

   1. I think if the 578 ran to Seattle but skipped Federal Way it would be more confusing. That being said, I think it might make the most sense to just come up with new numbers largely across the board. My initial thought was that it was simpler to keep the existing numbers, but now that I’ve dug into it, I realize that isn’t the case, and as it turns out, I even missed something (the fact that the 594 and 574 cover different stops in Lakewood).

      1. For what it’s worth, I choose the numbers for this essay in part because I wanted to make it easy to see understand. I especially wanted to emphasize the impact on overall service levels. Several buses eliminated. Other buses truncated. This should then pay for better frequency for the remaining ones.

         I don’t really have a strong feeling about the numbering system, and would probably start from scratch with a lot of the routes. The 594 is very similar (if not exactly the same) as the existing bus, so I would probably keep that. But I would probably have new numbers for everything else (590, 592, 578).

      2. For planning it’s generally better to lean toward the existing numbers to keep track of which corridors we’re talking about. The actual rollout if we get to that point can change the numbers.

   2. The Tacoma-Federal Way-Seattle express should have a divisible-by-ten “cardinal” number to emphasize its status as a long-distance trunk route. 590.

      1. ST doesn’t do that. Neither the 512, 535, 545, nor 554 end in zero. Instead they end in what appear to be arbitrary numbers. The numbers are a bit strange to memorize at first, but they have the advantage that they look completely different. The U-District has a small problem now that the 44, 45, 48 and 49 are together and three of them share the same stops and put on glasses or squint if you’re nearsighted. When the 49 there was no problem because the 7 was the only one-digit route. Then the only similar numbers were 43 and 48.

         The 71, 72, 73 also overlapped, but half the route was the same and that’s the half most people took. If you did have to distinguish them, 1, 2, and 3 look more different than 8 and 9.

      2. But the “real express” in the Everett-Seattle corridor IS the 510 and the “trunk line” between Seattle and Bellevue is tye 550. Just because it isn’t universal doesn’t mean that people don’t like such straightforward “signals”.

3. Four of the last six posts on STB have dealt either directly or indirectly with Link Light Rail service expansions over the next two years.

   Last I heard Federal Way Link was still carrying negative float, but it seems like people are really getting excited for these new Light Rail service extensions to come on-line.

   Even if Federal Way Link doesn’t make it in time, two years from now transit in this region will be almost unrecognizable, and vastly improved.

   It’s about time.

   1. People have talked about these extensions for a really long time. One of the reasons is because that once they are done, there will be good bus/rail interfaces from the north, south and east. It will have a profound impact on regional bus service.

   2. The editors have been realizing over the past several months that we need to put more of our ideas into articles rather than just mentioning them here and there in the comments, and to have more summaries to tie things together, and to have reminder articles when we haven’t addressed an issue for a while in an article. And to articulate ideal networks for different neighborhoods, that we can debate, and push the agencies and governments to implement. This is Ross’s ideal express-bus network for the corridors currently served by the 57x and 59x. I’ve been thinking about an ideal network for Bellevue (although it has stalled due to tradeoffs and uncertainties), when this starter line and East Link final-ish restructure proposal intervened and demanded attention. Much of what we care about revolves around Link and RapidRide projects and the opportunities around them, and there are several openings about to come up, so we’ve gone from a low-article lull to a higher-article period.

      These ideas and articles came out of suggestions from a few commentators, including Lazarus and Sam.

      1. I would rather the route 574 not be elimated once federal way link opened

      2. @Mike Orr,

         Everyone has opinions, but most opinions are just that — opinions. And some opinions are definitely more informed than others. Ditto for “ideas”.

         If this blog wants to drive more than just the discussion within the small audience of this blog, then we need more guest posts from people that are actually on the inside. People that are actually driving policy, or are maybe involved in the technical details of transit delivery. People who know their “carp”.

         That used to be more common here, but seems to have completely disappeared over the last few years.

         I’d leave “opinions” and “ideas” as the realm of the commentators in the comment section and keep the actual blog posts to a higher standard — either pure factual reporting or informative posts by people who are actively involved in transit. You know, experts.

         And why aren’t the current editors officially listed on the “About Us” page? I thought the current setup was sort of a temporary caretaker situation to give the official editors a bit of a break, but it seems like they have sort of disappeared.. And it seems like some of the information flow between the agencies and this blog have disappeared with them.

      3. @Lazarus

         If you set the bar that high then you end up with a blog death spiral since there aren’t any articles.

         I do understand your point though and perhaps just label the articles accordingly “guest speaker” “potential ideas” etc…

      4. The old editors are gone; it wasn’t just temporary. They asked Ross and me to step in to keep the blog from dying. Some of them are still active to some extent in the background, but they’ve withdrawn from writing articles and comments except occasionally. They left due to burnout or family commitments. Frank keeps the website running. The “About Us” is out of date because we haven’t gotten around to updating it. It’s a volunteer blog, so everyone is writing in their spare time.

         When the old editors left, we lost the deeper contacts with the agencies and governments. There weren’t as many expert guest articles as you think; maybe once a year or two. For a while we had a series of paid reporters, but managing that was the biggest cause of the burnout. The content has always been mostly our ideas; I don’t think that that has changed.

         Any long followups belong in an open thread.

      5. @WL,

         “If you set the bar that high then you end up with a blog death spiral ”

         Ah, no. The bar used to be that high on this blog, and the blog did just fine. In fact, IIRC, this blog actually had a paid reporter at one point.

         I have it on high authority that viewership of this blog has fallen off among policy makers and people within the agencies. If that continues then the whole point of STB goes away.

      6. it seems like some of the information flow between the agencies and this blog have disappeared

         I routinely talk to an expert that works with Metro. He just doesn’t want to speak publicly. Call him an inside source if you want. That is about it though. If you have sources within Sound Transit that would like to talk (on or off the record) please contact us.

         We report on various statements made by the various agencies. Interviewing officials usually just leads to them repeating those statements. There are exceptions, but very rarely does it lead to real insight. For example, Martin did an interview 8 years ago with Marie Olson, Sound Transit’s Link Transportation Manager for Operations (https://seattletransitblog.com/2015/03/21/capacity-limitations-of-link/). This was very useful and a few myths about capacity were dispelled. But did it change anything, fundamentally? No. The situation is the same as it always was. There are various things ST can do to increase capacity.

         The blog does not have any actual reporters anymore. I think the big loss is in the quality of the writing, not the information that is presented to the public (I’m not a very good writer). There are stories we would like to investigate but don’t (because we aren’t reporters) but that is rare. The rest of the city has increased its public transportation writing. Between Lindbloom at the Seattle Times and Packer at The Urbanist these issues are covered fairly well. Advocacy is as important as just about anything we could report on. That is what this blog post is about.

      7. The blog has multiple roles. (A) To spread information about what the agencies are doing and public hearings. (B) To test and promote ideas on how to improve transit that the agencies aren’t doing. (C) As a transit-fan comment section for articles in the Urbanist/Times/Stranger who have resources to do the kinds of research STB used to do but can’t currently. (D) Because we like to talk about transit even if it’s something minor.

         It’s important to keep it going because something may come up that we’d want its communication ability for. Most cities don’t have anything like STB, and some wish they did. As for the gap in investigative reporting and people who has closer connections to the agencies/governments’ internals and the other advocacy groups, that’s where a volunteer can step in, if there’s somebody reading who has that expertise or inclination to put the time into it.

         Finally, I’m reminded of what Kermit the Frog told a muppet who was complaining about working conditions at The Muppet Show: “If you don’t like your salary, I’ll give you ten times more. ” “But ten times zero is zero.” If you’re dissatisfied with STB, there’s a 100% refund , or you can volunteer to make it better.

      8. Sound Transit has hired some writers. One worked for STB a bit.

         Some elected officials have changed the course of ST3 and have attracted skepticism from some STB commenters. That may lead them to read STB less.

      9. @Mike Orr,

         Regarding the following:

         “ The blog has multiple roles. (A) To spread information about what the agencies are doing and public hearings………..(C) As a transit-fan comment section for articles in the Urbanist/Times/Strange”

         I agree wholeheartedly. Sound Transit is embarking on the largest expansion of real transit service in the shortest amount of time that this region has ever seen. Link track miles will roughly triple in about 3 years time, we finally get about 16 miles of high frequency, interlined service between Seattle and Lynnwood, and the Eastside finally gets connected to Light Rail. And there are additional plans for the more distant future.

         There is a lot to cover there, and that doesn’t even consider the more visionary proposals coming from non-governmental sources.

         “(B) To test and promote ideas on how to improve transit that the agencies aren’t doing”

         Again, the more visionary “ideas” for the future tend to be coming from other non-governmental sources and are covered in (C) above. On this blog “ideas tend to fall into 3 categories: buses, more buses, and even more buses. I find this counterproductive.

         Stated another way, the mode wars are over. Rail is here, buses are adapting. What is important now is for each mode to stay in its lane and support the greater transit benefit. Light Rail will do more of the heavy lifting, buses will provide more connections and feeder like service.

         Unfortunately some people still want to fight mode wars, and that includes within the agencies in certain cases.

         I could get a bit more blunt, but I’ll just leave it at that.

         As per “deeper connections at the transit agencies” being lost with the current editors, I have found that the agencies are very willing to engage, particularly informally. I find it somewhat shocking that STB doesn’t have these connections when several of the commentators apparently do.

         This needs to change.

      10. > I have found that the agencies are very willing to engage, particularly informally. I find it somewhat shocking that STB doesn’t have these connections when several of the commentators apparently do.

          I think you’re trying to sprint before walking. Rather just first see a steady cadence of articles before insisting all articles have to have a special connection to be published.

      11. Lazarus, since you so despise the staff and commentariat here at Seattle Transit Blog, I would recommend that you find somewhere that meets your impeccable standards of “mode war” peace and tranquility.

          Perhaps start another such blog. There your peerless pearls of wisdom can be given their due obesiance by the illiterate unwashed of “the transit community”. My suggestion for a title would be “Fanbois Transit Blog”, or “FTB”. Given your breathless enthusiasm for Everything ST, I’m confident that the Agency will be happy to fill your Inbox with self-puffery that you can publish as the “Inside Scoops” of a hardboiled reporter.

      12. > Again, the more visionary “ideas” for the future tend to be coming from other non-governmental sources and are covered in (C) above. On this blog “ideas tend to fall into 3 categories: buses, more buses, and even more buses. I find this counterproductive.

          I’m not sure what you are expecting. If you wanted draw light rail proposals with a crayon without thinking about they’ll be built nor the ridership — there’s Seattle Subway already. Or the urbanist if you love streetcars.

          Secondly didn’t you just state you only want ‘official’ articles? I’m having a hard time squaring you wanting more visionary articles while also wanting only official articles?

          > Light Rail will do more of the heavy lifting, buses will provide more connections and feeder like service.

          Uhh… okay if we’re not talking about busses do you want us to be making fantasy light rail extension proposals? Those will be all the way out in like 2050/2060. I find it useless to talk about items that far out when we are unsure if the board can even build the ballard extension.

      13. TT, while there are occasional commenters who have clearly derided STB and its commentariat, I don’t think Lazarus’ comments indicate they “despise” this blog.

          Lazarus may be a cheerleader for ST and clearly prefer investment in rail over bus infrastructure, but I don’t think that warrants such an acerbic tone in deriding their commentary, and certainly doesn’t warrant instructing them to leave.

          Such serious in-fighting serves no one and only degrades the community.

          As Mike notes, further discussion that is not focussed on the topic of the main post belongs in the current Open Thread.

      14. “ I have it on high authority that viewership of this blog has fallen off among policy makers and people within the agencies. ”

          I view that agencies, particularly ST, do not have the need nor desire to ask open questions like in the recent past. In particular, a few things happened in the last decade:

          1. There is not a need to get input for a new referendum to expand transit in the near horizon. Any upcoming votes are to continue existing revenue streams .
          2. Capital project costs have grown to the point that agencies (especially ST) fear the judgement of their low original cost estimates. So rather than rescope the project, the decision is to ignore it and see if the money eventually gets raised (“realignment”).
          3. Ridership is down, due not only Covid but a cultural shift to more work from home jobs that began hitting many US transit operators 2016-19. The task of scaling back puts the agencies in a more defensive mode — and less likely to take input from anyone.
          4. Obvious advantageous bus and rail transit projects (strong ridership and low expense to improve travel times) have been mostly done.
          5. Agencies are not expected to roll out new technological applications to improve transit. Innovative things like signal priority, off-board fare payment, pre-paid fare cards, realtime transit arrival apps and pilot micro-transit trials have already been institutionalized to the point that they no longer build excitement. Future applications like driverless trains or slow-moving driverless shuttles aren’t being explored generally.

          So while one could point to STB content as the issue, it’s the overall state of possible transit expansion (or lack of expansion) in our region that I believe is the much bigger driver of the lack of interest among our operators or among our elected officials to take input on anything from anyone .

          I don’t find it that problematic. Transit change has historically had ebbs and flows in almost every region in recent times. We are just in an ebb in our region.

          STB has seemingly shifted as best as it can in this setting. The big open topics for 2024 are the status of Link openings in the next two years and transit restructures surrounding that — and that consumes most of the STB posts.

      15. @Nathan D,

          Thanks, I think you get it. And I most certainly don’t despise this blog — wouldn’t be here if I did.

          And I am not a cheerleader for ST, but I am a cheerleader for the rapid and large scale expansion of fast, reliable, and frequent transit in the greater Seattle area — and that means rail. And that also means ST.

          In regards to the Federal Way Link restructure, in general restructures are zero sum games. They represent a rearrangement of the puzzle pieces, but they don’t represent a large scale expansion of total service. As such, I tend not to get too excited about them.

          Additionally, bus routes by their very nature are ephemeral. Metro/CT/ST/whoever can get it very wrong on their first restructure attempt, but can immediately fix the problems on the next service adjustment. So I tend not to spend a lot of time worrying about the minutia of this or that with a restructure. Eventually they will get it right.

          If I remember right, you have a background in geology. I too have a technical background. As such, I appreciate discussion based on facts and data. Or at least based on a detailed knowledge of policy and project delivery. My recent criticism is based on exactly that. This blog doesn’t need more ideas and speculation, it needs more fact based discussion with real data and real metrics.

          Bringing experienced experts back into the fold is a great way to accomplish that. Even when the experts are extrapolating into the future, it is better to extrapolate from a foundation of facts and data, not ideas and speculation.

   3. Getting the extensions open should be a high priority for ST. I don’t think many people have a problem with these ST2 projects. If anything, ST may need to force as many riders as possible to save face on the ridership of the ST2 system.

      I think the role of regional express bus is in general in decline. ST Express nor Sounder are carrying the number of long distance trips that s they were five years ago. Sure some of the drop is due to Northgate truncations — but overall demand has also dropped precipitously.

      I’m afraid that spreading ST Express bus hours thinner will reduce some route frequencies to be so low that there won’t be a critical mass of riders. I think it would be more strategic to fully guarantee a few routes that run most hours of the day, rather than promote niche routes at certain times or to certain places. Once the “core service” subsidy is fully funded, the best ways to use leftover resources could be considered.

      1. > I think the role of regional express bus is in general in decline. ST Express nor Sounder are carrying the number of long distance trips that s they were five years ago.

         Agreed. I’ve been kinda wondering about alternatives for ST Express with Link taking over many routes.

         ST Express basically has a couple different variants
         * A) 5/10 mile stop spacing aka tacoma to federal way to seattle (route 590) and the everett counterparts (510)
         * B) 1/2 mile stop spacing typically right-side flyer stop busses aka route 574 with star lake, kent des moines, seatac etc… or kinda say route 510.
         * C) some st express routes have a large portion of arterial road rather than freeway. Aka Stride 3 is kind of one or ST 554 kinda runs a lot on arterials of bellevue way and in Sammamish

         Type B routes that are along where Link is going to run basically are all going to be eliminated, I don’t see much use for them. Some type A super express routes might still make sense, especially if wsdot ever converts the hov to toll lanes.
         For type C routes, I’m not sure if sound transit wants to jump into this fully or leave this to king county metro

      2. >> ST Express nor Sounder are carrying the number of long distance trips that s they were five years ago.

         True, but the more peak-oriented the trip, the more ridership is down. For example the 594 is not down nearly as much as the 590, 592 or Sounder. But South Sounder is still popular enough to justify during peak. It is expensive to run those trains but even with half the riders they are still worth it (during peak). There is really no good alternative. It is actually interesting how little has changed despite commuter ridership being down, and longer distance commuter trips being down the most. Some of the projects that were a bad idea (expanded platforms, gigantic park and ride lots) are still a bad idea — it is just that it is easier for people to see that. The approach I’m suggesting here hasn’t changed either. You might see a bit less service on the edges, but not a lot. Sound Transit is used to subsidizing riders — holy cow it still runs an express from Tacoma to the UW — so this is really nothing new in that regard, even if the subsidy is a bit higher than it would have been before the pandemic.

         I think it is important to note that the savings from this proposal would still be substantial, even though you are running express buses to Seattle. There are several reasons for this:

         1) No express buses to Seattle during peak. This is when a lot of express buses run, and it is when it is most expensive to run them. Not only because they take longer (and are more likely to be delayed) but also because peak-only service is more expensive (https://humantransit.org/2017/08/basics-the-high-cost-of-peak-only-transit.html). This manages to leverage Sounder the one time of day when it is actually even close to cost effective: during peak.

         2) Combining service along the same pathway. Buses run north from Tacoma to SeaTac as well as Federal Way. Buses from Federal Way run to Seattle. All of these are combined into one route.

         3) No buses to SeaTac (except for early morning). I realize this will be a hassle for some riders, but relatively few.

         Thus you have a lot of savings, even though you still have plenty of express buses and they will run more frequently along the corridor.

      3. I think there are very big regional differences when it comes to regional transit. As I wrote up above, the big change over the next few years is that there will be excellent bus/rail connections in every direction. This has a dramatic impact on regional bus service. There are basically two different models:

         1) Have the bus terminate at the bus/rail stop (outside the city). Riders then take the train into town. This saves the agency quite a bit of money. The drawback is that some of the trips take longer.

         2) Have the bus serve the bus/rail stop (outside the city) but keeping going to downtown (or some other major destination). This costs more, but it the best of both words for riders. Riders get an express into the main destination, but have the ability to transfer to other locations (on Link) if they want.

         You can see both of these right now. The 512 is truncated at Northgate. Riders heading to major destinations (the UW or downtown) have to transfer. In contrast the 302 is an express from Richmond Beach to Downtown Seattle. It stops at Northgate Transit Center so that Richmond Beach riders can connect to Link to get to other destinations.

         It is a judgment call as to which is more appropriate for each area. In my opinion the first approach (truncation) makes sense for the north and east, but not the south. There are several reasons for this. I think it is easiest to compare the north to the south but the same principles apply to the east.

         1) There is a lot more ridership from Tacoma (and places south) to Downtown Seattle than there is from Everett.

         2) The time savings for an express bus from Tacoma are greater than they are for Everett.

         3) The total time for a trip from Tacoma is significantly longer than the total time for a trip from Everett. Basically you reach a point from Tacoma where people simply don’t take the trip via transit.

         4) The destinations to the north are more significant than the south. The north has the UW, and nothing to the south comes close to it.

         5) To the north, buses connect to Link for just about all regional trips. There will be a handful of buses that run next to the train, but very few. In contrast, the 101 runs every 15 minutes throughout the day from Renton to Downtown Seattle. It intersects Link but basically ignores it. Thus to serve Renton (and a lot of other places to the south) you need different regional bus service (such as Stride).

         The fifth reason actually stems from the other four. Metro could take the same approach to the south as to the north, and send all the Renton buses to Rainier Beach Station. But they don’t, for every other reason I listed. Basically it takes to long and they get little out of it. The same is true for much of the South Sound, which is why I wrote this post.

      4. I agree with your idea of a Tacoma-Federal Way-Seattle frequent service express, Ross. There is no reason to force long-distance riders from Tacoma (and beyond) to make the detour through the Rainier Valley at 25 mph with all those station stops.

         In the Best of All Possible Worlds, your “all day 590” (it should have a divisible-by-ten number) will make people realize the unnecessary folly of Tiddly, and Link will stop at the South Federal Way MF permanently.

4. Interesting proposal. It’s hard to imagine ST will take on duplicating Link with ST Express since technically ST Express is supposed to be an interim service for future HCT. But in practice that isn’t always the case.

   I know ST is planning on truncating all the routes except 595, I guess implicitly admitting the travel time is slower enough on Link to make it unacceptable, or if not, that the added transfer time and complexity would break a commute that is already stretching the limits of practicality.

   One thing that sounds like a better use of the 578/588 to me. Make 588 a full Sounder shadow (Seattle, Tukwila, Kent, Auburn, Sumner, Puyallup, and why not Tacoma too?) every 30 minutes, and make the 577 run from Federal Way to Auburn, Kent, and Renton, replacing the suspended off-peak 566 and work like a shorter version of the old 565. That would not only connect places to multiple transfers to Seattle and everywhere else, but it would connect FW to Kent and Renton, something that sort of works now with the 183-153 being through routed but is really slow. It’d also give would-be off-peak 566 riders a connection to the 560 to Bellevue. These are low ridership scenarios, but of course combining them might make a viable service.

   1. Note: For this comment when I write “Tacoma” I mean Tacoma and places to the south (like Lakewood).

      I thought about a full Sounder shadow. There are several aspects to this, starting with Tacoma. I don’t see an extension to Tacoma viable for several reasons:

      1) It takes a lot longer to get from Tacoma to Seattle if you detour to Puyallup, Auburn and the rest of the Sounder stops. From Tacoma the freeway path is a lot straighter than the path taken by Sounder.

      2) By sending Tacoma buses to Federal Way you do several things. You connect riders from Tacoma to Link. You give riders from both Tacoma and Federal Way an express into Seattle (which would save them somewhere around 15 to 20 minutes each way).

      3) By splitting off Tacoma you avoid crowding on the buses. Prior to the pandemic the midday buses were pretty much where you wanted them in terms of crowding (not too full, not too empty).

      You could run both the 594 and a Sounder shadow from Tacoma, but it would be very hard to justify. Very few would take the Tacoma bus that shadows Sounder.

      Another alternative would be to extend the bus to Sumner and Puyallup. Unfortunately, Sumner and Puyallup have low ridership on the 578. It is hard to justify express service to both Link and Seattle. I suppose you could flip the tails (extend the 578 to Sumner and Auburn) but that has issues as well:

      1) That makes the 588 just an express from Auburn to Federal Way. Now you have the opposite problem (not enough riders).

      2) This makes for a three-seat ride using Link (e. g. Puyallup to the airport).

      I don’t feel very strongly about this particular area (unlike Tacoma) but I think the combination I came up is probably best.

      1. To be clear, what I suggest is
         588 – Tacoma, Puyallup, Sumner, Auburn, Kent, Tukwila, Seattle
         578 (maybe change to 568) – FW, Auburn, Kent, Renton

         588 to Tacoma is more about connecting Puyallup, Sumner, and Auburn to Tacoma than anything to Seattle. Express service to Tacoma existed in peak as the 582 a long time ago but now is really overshadowed by Seattle. 578 actually used to go to Tacoma during peak, but that was before the PT 400 started. PT 400 does a decent job on weekdays, but doesn’t go east of Puyallup and doesn’t run at all on weekends. Sumner and Puyallup do have low ridership (taking the 402 from Puyallup to FW is actually faster than the 578), but having an express bus from these places anchored on both ends by Seattle and Tacoma might make it serve enough people to be more popular.

      2. >> 588 – Tacoma, Puyallup, Sumner, Auburn, Kent, Tukwila, Seattle

         OK, but would you still run the 594? If so, only a handful of people would take the 588. If not, then Tacoma transit riders are screwed.

         >> 578 (maybe change to 568) – FW, Auburn, Kent, Renton

         So it wouldn’t connect to Seattle, and riders would only connect to Link at the tail end? Seems like that would get hardly any riders. Very few people ride between these cities. Maybe it they were more centralized, or had better connecting transit they would, but that isn’t the case. Almost all of the ridership is from the various places to Seattle. Without that trip to Seattle you really can’t justify a lot of these connecting routes. It basically has to form a tree branching from Seattle, it is just a matter of who you leverage Link. Focusing everything to Link is one option but it is slow. Express service to Seattle would be more popular (although more expensive).

      3. “So it wouldn’t connect to Seattle, and riders would only connect to Link at the tail end? Seems like that would get hardly any riders.”

         Doesn’t your 578 not go to Seattle either? From my read it’s truncated at FW. The difference with my idea is that Puyallup and Sumner lose the 578 to Federal Way and get a proper Sounder shadow to Seattle with no transfer. The reworked 578 would be about bringing people everywhere but Seattle, with connections to Federal Way for local destinations or short Link transfers, and connections at Renton to get to Bellevue.

         But the idea of a 588 from Tacoma to Seattle doesn’t preclude a 594. It’s not about Tacoma to Seattle, just like PT having the 501 isn’t about connecting Federal Way to Tacoma, or the 40 isn’t about connecting Northgate to downtown. It’s to connect to the places along the way, and in every case there’s a faster service from one end to the other. Could be that there isn’t enough riders to make it pencil out, but then again Kent never had a off-peak express to Seattle, and Auburn, Sumner, and Puyallup never had a good 7-day connection to Tacoma, so as with all these concepts, it’s an idea worth exploring.

      4. >> Doesn’t your 578 not go to Seattle either?

         Correct, but it enables same-direction two-seat rides using Link. For example, someone going from Puyallup to the airport would take the 578 and transfer to Link. In contrast, no one from Renton would ride the 568 to Federal Way and then backtrack to get to the airport. The combination doesn’t work for Link.

         It does work for regional bus service though. It basically treats Federal Way as a regional hub. But that becomes redundant with your Sounder shadow. If I’m trying to get from Kent to Tacoma I would just use the shadow instead of transferring at Federal Way. Sorry, but I just see enough added value from that route.

         But I could see the shadow, or some variation of it. I think the 578 and 588 (as I described it) provide the most value while also complementing each other. Consider the trips:

         1) Tacoma to Puyallup and Sumner. Pierce Transit bus.
         2) Lakewood to Puyallup and Sumner. Pierce Transit bus.
         3) Tacoma/Lakewood to Auburn. Fairly straightforward two-seat ride (594 to 578).
         4) Tacoma/Lakewood to Kent or Tukwila. Three seat ride involving the 594, Link and Metro bus.
         5) Tacoma/Lakewood to Renton. Three seat ride involving the 594, Link and Stride bus.
         6) Lakewood, Tacoma, Auburn, Kent or Tukwila to Seattle. Direct ST express bus.
         7) Lakewood, Tacoma, Sumner, Puyallup, Auburn, Kent, Tukwila to Link. Straightforward bus.

         I think that is pretty much everything and I think it is covered fairly well. The weak points don’t seem like they are worth bothering with. For example, it would be nice to have a direct express bus from Tacoma to Auburn. This could be done fairly easily by extending the 588 to Tacoma. It would then be a Sounder shadow, but one that skips Puyallup and Sumner. That would make trips from Tacoma to Auburn, Kent or Tukwila two-seat instead of three. It would likely save some time as well. Would it be worth it? Maybe. Hard to say. The one advantage of it is that you would have more people getting on and off at each stop instead of being so Seattle focused. So yeah, I could see that — maybe. But I don’t think it is obviously essential.

         Other than that though, I just don’t see it. It is worth noting that many of the trips are already covered now. For example a truncated 578 makes sense because there are people who use it to travel outside of Seattle now. Somewhere around 20% of the riders on a northbound bus get off at Federal Way (or Sumner or Auburn). The rest are headed to Downtown Seattle of course, but not enough for them to have both the connection to Link and express service to Seattle. You would swap the tails, but then you have the problem I mentioned earlier.

   2. I-5 continues to slow down in congestion. In the late 2010s Federal Way and Tacoma Dome Link were substantially slower across the board compared to the 57x and 59x. Now Link has caught up for Tacoma Dome, and for Federal Way peak hours (or rather, the buses have slowed down to match Link). It’s only Federal Way off-peak where Link is still substantially slower.

      In the run-up to ST3, a couple boardmembers said I-5 congestion would continue to incrementally get worse and slow down the buses more and more, so even if Link wasn’t time-competitive at the time, in several years it would be. That time has now arrived, so their predictions were correct.

   3. We’ve asked ST for an all-day Seattle-Kent express for over a decade but it has always refused. Pretty much all the cities have ST Express (Renton has the 101 and Kirkland has the 255) — except Kent. Kent has only the 150, which takes 45 minutes to reach Seattle when Southcenter is closed, or 65 minutes when Southcenter is open. (Not that it’s all Southcenter’s fault, but the congested period coincides with its open hours.) Metro Connects has a Metro express on Seattle-Kent-Auburn to replace the 578. It’s unclear whether or when that will be fulfilled.

   4. > One thing that sounds like a better use of the 578/588 to me. Make 588 a full Sounder shadow (Seattle, Tukwila, Kent, Auburn, Sumner, Puyallup, and why not Tacoma too?) every 30 minutes, and make the 577 run from Federal Way to Auburn, Kent, and Renton, replacing the suspended off-peak 566 and work like a shorter version of the old 565.

      It’s in WSDOT’s SR-167 master plan actually to run a SR-167 BRT route from starting at Renton and via Kent, Auburn and Sumner to Puyallup. After adding tolling for the hov lanes, they’d build direct access ramps at Kent, Auburn and Sumner. While not everything listed in it will *actually* get built, some of it typically does. It’s kinda similar planning they did for the i-405 that eventually became the Stride BRT project.

      One alternative suggested as I noted above:
      “Add BRT on SR 167. This project would implement a BRT system on SR 167 that is similar to existing BRT in the region, including Community Transit’s Swift routes and Sound Transit’s upcoming Stride BRT. This project would provide BRT service connections between Puyallup, Sumner, Auburn, Kent, and Renton with a possible extension to Link light rail.”

      Another alternative said:
      “This strategy would refine the frequency and span of service of three planned routes from Sound Transit and King County Metro (based on Sound Transit’s 2023 Service Plan and Metro Connects) that are already planned to operate along SR 167. Additionally, this strategy would implement a new bus route along SR 167 between Puyallup, Sumner, Auburn, Kent, and Renton to provide all-day, bi-directional transit service along the corridor. With all four routes, a bus would be traveling along SR 167 in both directions with frequencies of 15 minutes or better throughout the day and evening.”

      ST 567 from Auburn via Kent to Bellevue/Redmond would stay
      new route: MC 2402 New express route between Seattle CBD and Auburn via SR 167
      third existing route: I’m not sure what third route it is talking about but maybe it’s 578 at least between Auburn to Sumner.

5. > 4th & Pine – Tacoma Dome (bus only): 53 minutes
   The travel time depends on the time of day. Even in the published schedule early in the morning it only takes 45 minutes, but degrades the trip length to 1 hour and 4 minutes at 8 am. Midday goes back down to 53 minutes

   > Federal Way has an excellent interface to the I-5 HOV lanes
   I guess if there was i-5 had toll lanes, Seattle had the industrial way hov direct access ramps, and Tacoma dome had their direct access ramps one could maintain 45 minute travel throughout the day.

   Though it’d be costly and would probably only be worth it at the cost of replacing some other large capital project.

   1. >> The travel time depends on the time of day

      Yes, the times listed are midday.

      >>I guess if i-5 had toll lanes, Seattle had the industrial way hov direct access ramps, and Tacoma dome had their direct access ramps one could maintain 45 minute travel throughout the day.

      The biggest difference would be HOV-3 lanes (whether tolled or not). There were WSDOT plans at one point to connect the HOV lanes to the SoDo busway. I don’t remember it being especially expensive. Likewise, I don’t think building HOV ramps to and from the Tacoma Dome would cost a huge amount. It would be nothing compared to Tacoma Dome Link. In any event, the idea here is that folks from Tacoma would take Sounder during peak, even if it is a bit slower than express bus service. They would ride the bus when traffic is a lot lighter (and bus speeds are a lot better).

6. I used to be afraid that Link would be too crowded in the Beacon Hill tunnel, so the express bus to Tacoma would be a good way to ease the problem during the peak hours. With the dip in SE Seattle Link boardings, I’m not sure if it’s still a potential problem.

   I would however caution that if the 1+2 Line operations necessitates a lower 1 Line frequency combined with additional FWLE new riders, this could be an issue.

   I get how the suggestion is to not run into Seattle at peak congested hours. However even then, the additional express bus service to Tacoma could be needed due to possible overcrowding.

   1. I doubt there will be that many riders from Federal Way (and places north). From the places to the south you would have Sounder during peak. It is worth noting that Metro will probably continue with peak service from Federal Way to First Hill during peak. Like Sounder this serves part of downtown, but unlike Link (or some of the other buses) not a lot of it.

7. Any thoughts on using the new SR 509 freeway segment between Burien and Kent, or the new SR 167 segment between Fife and Puyallup? WSDOT is spending big time on these projects. I wonder about how to use them advantageously for express buses once FWLE opens.

   1. Good point, it might be faster for Express buses to take SR 509 and follow RR C/H into downtown than to use I-5 and the SODO busway.

   2. It’s a bit faster.

      Originally I was going to say one could have a Burien – Angle Lake – Kent line (using sr-509 and i-5). But actually the sr-509 off/on ramps to 24th ave S only work in one way direction. Northbound off ramp and southbound on ramps to sr-509 so one can’t stop at angle lake.

      https://www.seatacwa.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/30193/637493397333470000

      Alternatively it could stop at kent des monies station but it’ll mean a large detour. Or most likely use the on/off ramp bus flyer stops like https://www.google.com/maps/search/I-5+Ramp+%26+Kent+Des+Moines+Rd/@47.392047,-122.2883987,346m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1?entry=ttu

      Probably makes more sense to extend it to Seattle but then it kinda competes with other express bus variants.

      1. Burien doesn’t have an express to Seattle. In the past it had peak expresses but not off-peak. The H takes 49 minutes. That’s one of the reasons I don’t live in Burien. In the time it takes to get to Burien you could be in Shoreline, Lynnwood, South Everett, Bellevue, Redmond, Issaquah, Angle Lake, or Renton with time to spare. There should be an alternative with a 30-minute travel time. 509/99 is a back way into Seattle so it would be a good place for an express route. People in Angle Lake and Kent wouldn’t use it because they have faster alternatives, but people in Burien would use it.

      2. Sure then it looks feasible to have a bus express if one wanted one.

         Probably bus-on-shoulder operations near the on/off ramps.

         Kent Des Moines freeway off/on ramp bus stops already exist so might as well use them.

         I guess maybe reroute the 162 to sr 509? Though it’ll be longer for kent bound travelers if it needs to reroute to burien. One question is whether to enter burien transit center, or use flyer ramp stops

         https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kent+Des+Moines+Rd+%26+I-5+Ramp/@47.3919629,-122.2913722,470a,35y,19.19h/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x54905bba28e9947f:0x72b8185b38528c01!8m2!3d47.3918!4d-122.29156!16s%2Fg%2F11g6wwvlbp?entry=ttu

      3. For much of Burien, heading east to TIBS is actually faster, especially considering average wait time for the old 121 that ended up as two runs an hour apart. The arrival of STRide will probably make sure the 121 is gone for good.

8. The Sounder was proposed to have midday and weekend service recently, is that still on the table? I feel like that would be better then adding more ST Express buses in the exact same places it serves.

   1. > The Sounder was proposed to have midday and weekend service recently, is that still on the table?

      It would most likely be like a couple train trips midday/evening probably spaced out like 2 hours or 90 minute intervals at best. Otherwise ST would basically just be building a new rail line to decouple Sounder from freight traffic.

      1. Yes, and it would likely have only a handful of riders, like other midday trips. You would have to run Sounder a lot (i. e. every half hour) to get decent overall ridership and would cost a ridiculous amount of money. Even the cost per rider for the occasional train is extremely high.

   2. ST3 includes some additional Sounder South service. ST finally finished negotiating with BNSF and had a rider survey to determine whether people wanted more peak service, longer trains, or more off-peak service (midday, evening, and/or weekend), and whether to shift some peak runs to off-peak. The majority of respondents said more off-peak service, and shift peak service to off-peak (thus reducing peak frequency from 20 minutes to 30). This was just a month or two ago, so we haven’t heard any more yet. It’s unclear how many additional runs there would be. Apparently BNSF is willing to trade some peak timeslot leases for off-peak; otherwise ST wouldn’t have offered it in the survey.

      This is all Sounder South. Sounder North is not expected to expand.

      Our scenarios are based on current Sounder service, since we don’t know how, when, or whether it will change.

9. I Would Rather Suggest Route 574 To still be what is it like today i will not let route 574 go away even if they get the light rail running to federal way i will still not let 574 go away especially for the early morning airport passenger and riders who wish not to use link and for rider along south 188th street between i5 and sr 99

   1. I could definitely see the 574 early in the morning, and I probably should have mentioned that in the original post. But outside of that early morning period (before Link is running) it just doesn’t make sense. The ridership is just way too low. Prior to the pandemic (when ridership was higher) the 574 only had one bus run that had over 30 riders on it: the first one of the day (leaving at 2:13 AM). About half the riders would use it to get to Federal Way. So outside of that first run a bus would benefit somewhere around 15 people per bus — way to small to warrant the service. Folks should just transfer to Link for trips to the airport.

   2. The Redondo stop should be eliminated in any case. The bus has to get off the freeway to get to it, there’s nothing there, and cars will be able to park at Federal Way, KDM, or Angle Lake.

      1. Similar arguments apply to KDM, except KDM also has night owl A Line service, and Star Lake Station (a very long walk from Redondo) does not.

      2. Stake Lake should not have express bus service. That P&R garage can be used by Link riders. There are plenty of other P&R options for very early transit riders – P&Rs may fill up, but they fill up by 7am, not 530am.

   3. Given the choice between having the 574 and A Line run half-hourly overnight, and running one of them every 15 minutes, I bet ST would rather see Metro run the A Line frequently.

      Then, ST could still have a 572 running with frequency between Federal Way and points southeast, with the A Line and 572 trading passengers in Federal Way.

      Or, if they want to avoid the wait in Federal Way altogether, through-route the A Line and STX 572. Yeah, I know, one is operated by Metro and one by Pierce. Pick one agency to operate the night owl through-route.

10. I could maybe support this if the 594 was reliable (which it currently is not), meaning:
    – Every 15 minutes, and every 30 minutes from 10-midnight. I am very skeptical that they would or could run it that often.
    – The on/off at FW was massively streamlined. Right now it can sometimes be 20 minutes.
    – They planning, outreach for HOT 3+ on I-5 starts now, so that when he 594 starts substantially degrading (> 1 hour + off-peak) we are ready to flip that switch.

    1. This calls for running the 594 every 15 minutes. The FW transfer should be better. Either way the obvious alternative is to truncate *all* the buses at Federal Way, which would mean the transfer experience would be even more important. As far the speed of the 594 goes, if folks think it is too slow, then they can always transfer. My guess is the hours for the hours in which Sounder isn’t running it is still considerably faster than Link.

       1. I would rather see the 594 run every 10 or 20 minutes, to time better with the 1 Line for Tacoma-FederalWay connections.

    2. The alternative, in my opinion, isn’t “transfer for your hour an a half Link Odyssey.”
       No, I don’t believe 71 minutes will be the actual experience, when you throw multiple transfers (you have to actually get to The Dome), I-5, and the Rainier Valley into the trip-salad. And I don’t believe you do either.

       The alternative is to invest all that TDL Extending, station lengthening, parking garage building money into buying/upgrading the tracks, and doing what other inter-city pairs do all over the world, and run heavy rail at reasonable frequencies. That’s the alternative you are measuring against. Not an hour and 15 minutes vs an hour an a half. But the reasonable goal of hourly, 45 minutes of a single-seat comfortable ride. All day. Weekends. Evenings.

       1. run heavy rail at reasonable frequencies.

          That would be ridiculously expensive per rider though. We are talking somewhere in the range of $100 per rider. It is just not worth it. The reason why other agencies around the world run their trains often like that is because they own the tracks or get a lot more riders (or both). Those that don’t tend to do exactly what I am proposing: running buses to supplement the trains.

       2. You are saying $100 a rider because you are basing the numbers on what ridership you get with incredibly crappy service. You have absolutely no idea what the ridership would be with usable service. We can go around and around on this, but we won’t know until we try. It’s “nobody swims that river so we shouldn’t waste money building a bridge.”

          We should definitely try. We are one of the richest regions in one of the richest states in one of the richest countries in the world. A country with a huge responsibility to go above and beyond, because our world is burning primarily due to us.

          This isn’t a money problem, it’s a political will problem. As transit advocates that should be our focus – changing the political will to do the hard, but important stuff.

       3. And even if it is $100 a rider, so what? I firmly believe those numbers will get vastly better with time and people adopting the vastly superior mode to buses AND cars, but it’s not the end of the world.

          Right now we are spending close to that on expanding point-to-point vans in Pierce County. $80 a boarding. And that’s often just to get people a few blocks some times. And those number have no chance of getting better. It simply doesn’t scale.

          But for Sounder to get cars off the 40 miles from Tacoma to Seattle, with the added benefit of finally giving all the Puyallup and Kent Valley residents usable service? Sounds like a bargain.

       4. > And even if it is $100 a rider, so what? I firmly believe those numbers will get vastly better with time and people adopting the vastly superior mode to buses AND cars, but it’s not the end of the world.
          > But the reasonable goal of hourly, 45 minutes of a single-seat comfortable ride. All day. Weekends. Evenings.

          We’d basically need to build a new rail line to separate freight traffic from passenger rail. Or bribe bnsf with a giant sum of money.

          You can’t just hand wave away how we’d actually run more frequently Sounder South when there is a notable constraint.

       5. I’m not waving it away, I’m suggesting repurposing the money for:

          – TDLE
          – Parking Structures
          – Platform expansion
          – Dupont extension
          – All the 5XX expresses

          And yes, adding track is fine.

          We also need to play hardball with the railroads. The Feds granted the franchise. The Feds can take it away.

          Look, I’m a supporter of good, well run freight on steel wheels, but that’s not what we are getting. We are getting massive trains with little flexibility. And they are often transporting coal and oil. Start with bribes, end with threats.

          And yes, we should also count on spending another billion or 3, but that is money well spent.

       6. “The alternative is to invest all that TDL Extending, station lengthening, parking garage building money into buying/upgrading the tracks, and doing what other inter-city pairs do all over the world, and run heavy rail at reasonable frequencies.”

          We’ve been asking for that too for years. We can’t hold our breaths waiting for things ST won’t consider. The are two approaches to talking about transit: (A) ideals, (B) the best next step we can most likely convince ST/Metro/governments to do. Having an ideal network and advocating for it is important, but it’s also important to make incremental improvements by nudging the agencies toward something they’re more likely to accept now.

       7. I don’t think you really understand still.

          Even after repurposing all that money, it is not enough to run hourly sounder south trains. Even the current analysis for more sounder south trains outside of the commuting period is just adding one train trip outside of the commuting time.

          Scenario D “This scenario added three more round trips, two within the existing commute periods and one in both directions during mid-evening”

          And that’s including track improvements.

          > And yes, we should also count on spending another billion or 3, but that is money well spent.

          If you want hourly all day. We’d basically need to build a new rail line along the entire 30+ mile segment. It’s not a billion or 3, but like 7/10 billion. It’s basically on the scale of building a new link line alongside the bnsf corridor.

       8. Given little to no right of way acquisition, that seems really, really high. And what others have said here, it triple-tracking the who corridor didn’t seem necessary. But this is not my area of expertise.

       9. My understanding is the corridor is already mostly triple tracked.

       10. > Given little to no right of way acquisition, that seems really, really high. And what others have said here, it triple-tracking the who corridor didn’t seem necessary. But this is not my area of expertise.

           It’s not as simple as just number of tracks. The freight trains need to slow down and exit or are slowly entering along the line. If one just ran sounder trains more frequently with the same amount of freight trains you’ll just end up stuck behind freight train traffic as well. Even in the most recent study it increases sounder trip time.

           > But this is not my area of expertise.

           Both the amtrak study and the sounder south studies talk about freight traffic and capacity limitations as well as the delay added from running more trains both to freight trains and even themselves just from overall traffic.

       11. Even if one could run the trains that frequently hourly — they would have to every so often stop for freight trains. It would be probably be as slow as the freeway buses when running the same time freight trains are running.

           I think you guys have this mistaken impression that one can like interline passenger trains and freight trains like two different bus lines. It’s not like that at all and even more complicated along this section the freight trains are exiting and entering where they’ll be moving very slowly.

           The amtrak cascades proposal one only barely works by — not stopping at all between seattle and tacoma, skipping kent, auburn and sumner.

       12. You are saying $100 a rider because you are basing the numbers on what ridership you get with incredibly crappy service.

           It is not incredibly crappy. We actually have a very good regional bus system. It is probably the best part of our entire transit system.

           But just assume for a second that ridership on the midday Sounder runs matched that of the peak trips. So the trains would run every 20 minutes a day all-day and carry about 300 riders a trip. First of all, that would be incredible. No one would expect ridership to be that high — it would be a miracle, really. Except guess what? It would still be extremely expensive per rider! We can’t afford to run Sounder that often! BNSF would charge a fortune.

           But hey, maybe that’s not what you are proposing. Maybe hourly service. OK, that would still be extremely expensive, but not as expensive. But why would ridership surge, when the buses from Tacoma and Lakewood run more often and are faster? Sorry, that just doesn’t make sense. The more trains we run, the fewer will ride a particular train (even though overall ridership goes up). Since ridership per train — even at best — is still not that good right now, the ridership per train in the middle of the day would not be high.

           There is no way to thread the needle on this one. Midday trips won’t carry as many riders as peak-direction trips even if they are running as often. This is just common sense, but you can see it on the bus ridership. Look at the *current* numbers:

           590: 1,217
           592: 287
           594: 1,525

           The 590 and 592 (combined) still have about as many riders as the 594! Riders prefer taking the bus peak direction — right at the time when Sounder is clearly poaching riders (and the bus is at its slowest). This isn’t the Metro 7. The pattern was a lot more peak-oriented before the pandemic — things are a bit more balanced. But not because midday ridership has increased. The 594 is still down from where it was before. It is just that the 590 and 590 (as well as Sounder) are down even more. But don’t be mislead — it is still a very peak-oriented ridership pattern. The 590 and 592 don’t run that often yet they carry about as many riders. The 590/592 only run five hours a day northbound and three hours a day southbound. The 594 runs about fourteen hours a day northbound, and twelve hours a day southbound. Ridership is still dominated by peak-oriented travel. You simply won’t get that many riders to travel via Sounder in the middle of the day, no matter how often you run the trains.

           Oh, and this brings up another point. It is easy to say that “people just prefer the train” but that clearly isn’t the case. Again, at a time when the bus is really slow and Sounder is actually faster — a lot of people still catch the bus. ST doesn’t release stop data anymore, but prior to the pandemic, more people rode the peak-direction express buses from Tacoma than rode Sounder. Why would they then prefer the train at a time when the bus is faster?

       13. And even if it is $100 a rider, so what?

           So it isn’t a good use of money when ST can just put it into buses. That is the point. It is just a lot cheaper to run the buses more often. Imagine two scenarios:

           1) Do what I’ve sketched out here (15 minute all-day Tacoma-Federal Way-Seattle bus service).

           2) Do what you have sketched out. Run Sounder trains every hour in the middle of the day. Truncate all the Tacoma express buses at Link, but run them every half hour (opposite Sounder).

           The first option is way more expensive. The second option would get way more riders. Why then, should we favor the first option?

       14. The only transit lines I know of that run hourly and manage to survive are the ferries. Car drivers’ only alternatives are to drive around a much longer distance.

           A bunch of hourly peak routes reached the end of the frequency death spiral in September, and were euthanized.

           If Sounder runs hourly, its average wait+travel time between Tacoma and Seattle is 90 minutes. A frequent 594 will still beat it mid-day. A frequent 1 Line will also beat it, at about 70 minutes wait+travel time.

           Basically, riders would only take Sounder if it were about to take off, or to get to a suburban station.

11. I also like a proposal, weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic started, is that Route 577 be extended to Auburn Station (this may complement well, given the fact stated earlier, that Sumner and Puyallup had low to very low ridership, while Auburn retained enough ridership for the Outlet Mall, Downtown Auburn and Auburn Way corridor, and instead run local service (Bonney Lake-Sumner-Puyallup-Tacoma or Auburn and Federal Way).
    As also may be deleting 596 Pierce Transit Route Lake Hills Auburn Station and extend more local service all day, everyday, to run a local all-every-day route to the new local PT/ST Route Bonney Lake-Sumner-Puyallup-Tacoma.
    Delete as well local peak Route 497 Lakeland Hills-Auburn Station, to ensure an all day everyday corridor (FW-Auburn Station-Lakeland Hills-Sumner-Puyallup) and possibly through-route every 15/30 minutes during peak and midday.
    There is many potential on these routes to perform better than nowadays and provide more express service in the Auburn area and NE Pierce County.

    1. As for the Sounder Train service for all day (potentially everyday… even weekends), peak should be cut out to every 25/30 minutes, and redirect earlier and later trips during the day. Like the first trip from Lakewood at 3:40 to ensure it arrives at Seattle at or before 5AM and this trip reverse peak at 5:30AM and run every 25/30 minutes other trips, and extend trips, so we have trips midday departing either Lakewood/Tacoma at 8:15/8:30 to arrive at 10 and other one at 9AM before the last one at 10AM ish from Lakewood…
       Then during evenings, last reverse peak from Tacoma to Seattle be at 5:45/6PM and 6:15/6:30, and the last two trips from Seattle for the night, be at 7:10 and 7:40/8PM for those working 9-6 or 10-7 or even longer shifts.

       1. It is quite likely that would cost a lot more and get fewer riders. It also wouldn’t work with this plan. This plan (to truncate all peak express buses to Seattle) is based on the idea that riders have a good alternative (Sounder). If Sounder is running every half hour, then it isn’t a good alternative. People are back to wanting their buses. If anything I would do the opposite. It is quite possible that BNSF blocks out the peak period. Thus increasing peak frequency to every 15 minutes might not cost that much. Right now there is a huge mismatch between peak and non-peak ridership. Basically only a handful ride the trains outside of rush hour (and only then, peak direction). This is partly due to bad frequency, but that only bolsters the argument. Even for something like Sounder it is difficult to time the trips. It is better to have a solid block of time when the train runs frequently than to run infrequently during the day. Given that this also corresponds to peak demand and when buses are slow, it makes sense to focus efforts then.

    2. There was a Metro 152 that ran from Auburn to Seattle express. It did poorly in the performance measures, and was eventually cut.

       Hopefully, we don’t reinvent the flat tire.

       At any rate, Link’s travel time from Federal Way to Westlake will be ca. 52 minutes, which will be not much slower than the 577 during peak.

       Even before Link draws some of the current ridership away, the 577’s lowest headway is 10 minutes. I don’t know how much the south subarea is willing to pay for a bus that is only slightly faster than the 1 Line, and serves a lot fewer destinations.

       1. At any rate, Link’s travel time from Federal Way to Westlake will be ca. 52 minutes, which will be not much slower than the 577 during peak.

          Yes, which is why this approach makes sense. The 577/578 is slower (and less consistent) during peak. After peak though, things have reversed. In the middle of the day it takes 33 minutes to get from Federal Way to 4th & Pine. It will take about 53 minutes to get from Federal Way to Westlake. So the savings from the bus will not be trivial.

          There was a Metro 152 that ran from Auburn to Seattle express. It did poorly in the performance measures, and was eventually cut.

          Yes, but that is Metro. ST has a dozen buses that would be cut if they were part of Metro. ST provides regional transit. The bar is set much lower. It is like intercity transit. Imagine the state ran buses every hour from Seattle to Bellingham. I think a fair number of people would like this. But even if the buses were full (and they wouldn’t be full) the cost per rider would be higher than anything Metro runs. If a bus spends a lot of time on the freeway it means it is spending a lot of time not picking anyone up.

          The point being that a bus that mimics Sounder in the middle of the day would not have to get great ridership to justify its existence (the way that a Metro bus would). I also wouldn’t skip Kent or Tukwila. I would expect extra riders from that (including some that travel between stations).

    3. Isn’t a 577 extended to Auburn just a 578? Or are you saying the split should occur at Auburn instead of Federal Way? I could see that. Basically one bus: Puyallup/Sumner/Auburn/Federal Way/Seattle. Other bus: Auburn/Federal Way/Seattle. Basically you would be doubling the frequency for Auburn, but not for Puyallup and Sumner. Sounds reasonable, but things change once Link gets to Federal Way.

       I am proposing 15 minute service from Tacoma to Seattle (via Federal Way). I can’t justify service that is better than that for Federal Way. Thus I would definitely truncate the 578 at Federal Way. But it would run every 15 minutes.

       I also propose a half hour bus that mimics Sounder. This does not go south of Auburn. Thus Auburn would have 15 minute service to Link, and half hour express service to Kent/Tukwila/Downtown Seattle. I could see swapping those tails — that was addressed elsewhere (https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/02/25/regional-transit-after-federal-way-link/#comment-927264). Basically I don’t think an Auburn to Federal Way bus would get enough riders. It needs a little bit more, and Puyallup/Sumner help (even not that many ride from there).

       I didn’t address shuttles (like the 596) or more local service.

12. Those early morning runs on the 574 that start at 2:30 a.m. are typically full of airport workers. ( Mostly TSA agents.)

    You’re going to still need a direct bus to the airport because the Link light rail won’t be running that early in the morning.

    1. You are the third person to mention that and I agree. I apologize for not mentioning this on the post. There would still need to be supplemental early morning bus service. I’ve updated the post to mention this.

    2. I suggested a night owl 572-A Line through route upthread. The days of buses sitting in gridlock trying to get past the airport terminal need to come to an end.

13. How would this proposal impact people making reverse-peak trips – that is, people who live in Seattle and work in Tacoma?

    While Sounder does offer reverse peak service, it’s only three trips per day over a much shorter span than peak direction. For example, the last train leaves Seattle around 8AM southbound and leaves Tacoma around 5:15 PM northbound.

    Under your proposal, would the express buses still be running during peak hours in the reverse peak direction?

    1. Yes. When I mention “peak” in this post it is in the context of “peak direction”. So reverse peak trips would be treated like midday trips. The 594 would be running southbound all morning long (and northbound all evening). They do that now.

       It is worth noting that reverse-peak Sounder trips do extremely poorly. It is somewhat surprising (I personally would prefer taking the train) but for whatever reason, very few people ride the train during rush-hour in reverse peak direction. I wouldn’t necessarily cancel those trips, but I would definitely continue to run frequent reverse-peak buses.

       1. Doesn’t that create a bunch of deadhead trips? The 594 will run out of PT’s bus base, so it flows well with demand, morning inbound (to Seattle) trips starting ~1 hour before outbound, and at night the last outbound (from Seattle) leaving late.

          But when the peak inbound trips go away mid-morning, the return routes will then disappear a midday because there won’t be a bunch of STX buses sitting around in Seattle if the outbound trips earlier in the day are meeting the 15 minute frequency. Or am I misunderstanding something about operations?

          It may be simpler to keep the bus in service but let frequency naturally degrade during congestion and as some bus rotate in/out of shifts, rather than introduce a ‘break’ in service. So during peak congestion, the 594 might still be running but there’s a 30 minute gap in trips while the next 594 slogs through traffic to get into position. A few 594 could be left in layover in Seattle, but the drivers still need to deadhead back to the base at the end of their shift.

       2. The 594 runs only half-hourly reverse peak.

       3. For the sake of argument I’ll focus on the mornings.

          We would still have more peak buses than reverse peak. The 590 and 592 (now truncated at Federal Way) would run peak. The 590 runs every ten minutes and I assume that would continue. The 592 runs less often (every half hour) but is still in addition to the 590. If the 594 runs every 15 minutes reverse peak (which is the plan) then that means 4 buses an hour heading south, and 8 running north (in the morning).

          The reverse-peak buses help reduce the dead-heading for the peak buses (although they don’t eliminate it). A 594 that ends up in Lakewood in the morning can turn around and become a 592 express to Federal Way.
          This means you have dead-heading from Federal Way to Tacoma/Lakewood (of some of the peak buses) and dead-heading from Seattle to Federal Way (for the reverse-peak 594).

          But there are other regional routes. For example the 566 runs peak-direction from Auburn to Bellevue. So a bus driver could drive the 566 from Auburn to Bellevue. Then deadhead from Downtown Bellevue to Overlake Village. Then drive the 544 to Downtown Seattle. Then drive the 574 to Lakewood. Then turnaround and drive the 592 to Federal Way. Then deadhead to Auburn and do it all over again. (Although by then rush-hour may be over). Obviously I am painting with broad strokes here — I’m sure managing the buses gets fairly complicated. But I don’t see this as necessarily creating additional dead-heading. It may actually reduce it.

14. The post compares travel times. We ought to include wait and walk times for a more complete story. The running times, reliability, and waits vary by time period with traffic congestion and service levels. Short headways lead to short waits.

    If transfer points are well designed, the walk distances and times should be small, but they can be significant. Waits can vary if the schedules are random, frequent, or timed.

    Some running time variation is caused by service design. Some bus routes weave on and off I-5 serving multiple stops. Service the airport roadway leads to running time variation.

    ST and Metro have two approaches to/from downtown Seattle, via the SODO busway and via the Seneca ramp (inbound). Link serves SODO. Should two approaches be maintained? Does the southend pathway provide a third option? Could the Angle Lake Link station become a transfer point?

    1. > Some running time variation is caused by service design. Some bus routes weave on and off I-5 serving multiple stops.

       I briefly talked about it above at ross’ comment

       “ST Express basically has a couple different variants
       * A) 5/10 mile stop spacing aka tacoma to federal way to seattle (route 590) and the everett counterparts (510)
       * B) 1/2 mile stop spacing typically right-side flyer stop busses aka route 574 with star lake, kent des moines, seatac etc… or kinda say route 510.
       * C) some st express routes have a large portion of arterial road rather than freeway. Aka Stride 3 is kind of one or ST 554 kinda runs a lot on arterials of bellevue way and in Sammamish”

       For type A ones they can use the hov lanes and the direct access ramps at say federal way and lynnwood. For type B as you noted they have to weave in and out of traffic constantly if they want to use the hov lanes.

       There’s two fixes, 1) build lots of direct access ramps/in line stations — kinda expensive and not really worth if it we’re already building link light rail stations which stop at the same places. 2) potentially we could do Bus-on-Shoulder (right shoulder) operations for some of these type B bus routes.

       > Service the airport roadway leads to running time variation… Could the Angle Lake Link station become a transfer point?

       It ‘kinda’ can with the upcoming SR-509 interchange at 24th Avenue S/26th Avenue S.

       The only problem is it’s not a very strong anchor. I’ve talked about it in some previous comments that the south king area has the problem that there’s too many mini transit hubs but not one great one consolidating the buses at one location.

       1. the south king area has the problem that there’s too many mini transit hubs but not one great one consolidating the buses at one location.

          Which is where Link comes in. Three seat rides will be a lot more common. For example Kent to Burien will involve a trip to Highline College (a good anchor) followed by Link, followed by the express from Tukwila to Burien. Or Kent to Tacoma. Same type of deal: Bus to Highline, Link to Federal Way, bus from Federal Way to Tacoma. Three seat trips are not ideal, but they are common, even for much shorter trips. I have taken several for trips in the city that are all within the north end (e. g. Pinehurst to Wallingford). If you think of potential hubs in the area, SeaTac probably stands out. But then you are running extra buses to serve the hub along with serving local destinations (e. g. Kent to the college). You stretch yourself too thin. Having multiple hubs (and core connecting service) is how you can build a good regional transit system, while not breaking the bank.

       2. South King Link has actually done well to pull Link stations away from the freeway envelope (unlike Snohomish Link), improving station walkshed but making access from freeway bus worse (though FW will still be a strong transfer due to the dedicated HOV ramp, which is why FW will be an important truncation point, not simply because it is the terminus).

          Oddly, in some future state when Link runs all the way to Tacoma, for Pierce-Seattle express runs, the most convenient Link transfer point will be at Star Lake. It will be ironic if in 50 years, there is an inline freeway bus station at Star Lake, and for I5 express bus riders (e.g. from Gig Harbor, Lakewood, Olympia, etc.) Star Lake will be the primary transfer to SeaTac, Highline, etc.

       3. > But then you are running extra buses to serve the hub along with serving local destinations (e. g. Kent to the college). You stretch yourself too thin. Having multiple hubs (and core connecting service) is how you can build a good regional transit system, while not breaking the bank.

          I disagree, the current system in south king is very scattered. I’d just select perhaps two of them as hubs. Currently there’s Burien, SeaTac, TIBS, Southcenter and South Renton all as minor hubs, but this really cuts the overall frequency of routes and adds more transfers than necessary.

    2. I compared travel times to emphasize how much slower it is to take Link. Even if you time it perfectly, it would take somewhere around 15 to 20 minutes longer to get from Tacoma to Seattle via Link. But yes, during midday (when the express buses would be running) the train would be running every ten minutes. Thus forcing a transfer could cost riders up to around a half hour versus an express bus (although I doubt it would be that bad very often). In contrast, those who take Link during peak would often come out ahead. Link runs more often then, while the bus encounters significant delays. That is why I suggested the pattern I listed here.

       The times savings with the express bus has ramifications for Federal Way riders as well. If the 594 runs every 15 minutes (which would be the current schedule if ST had an adequate number of bus drivers) then it really doesn’t matter how often the train runs. It is always faster to take the bus into Downtown Seattle.

       This improves the value of the 574. In midday I would expect a significant number of northbound 574 riders to get off the bus and transfer to Link. But at the same time, I would expect a significant number of riders from Federal Way to get on the bus as well. This would boost the 574 ridership without increasing crowding, which is ideal.

15. Keep in mind, for the sake of commentors and ST’ future plans, the 574 starts running at 0200a daily. This is to carry airport workers who have shifts that start between 3a-5a. Any truncating at Federal Way needs to accommodate airport employees and their pre-sunrise work schedules.

    1. Thanks for the context.

       > Any truncating at Federal Way needs to accommodate airport employees and their pre-sunrise work schedules.

       I guess probably they’ll run the 574 or some variant earlier in the morning then. But I find it hard that sound transit wouldn’t try to truncate some form during the day as it really heavily duplicates a lot of the stops.

       https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/schedule-574.pdf

    2. ST published three ST Express planning scenarios in January 2016, for the post-ST2 world when the ST3 candidate projects hadn’t been selected yet. The levels were high, medium, and low service hours (more than current, same, or fewer). All three scenarios truncated all south-end routes at KDM, all Eastside routes at UW or Mercer Island/South Bellevue or 148th, and all north-end routes at Lynnwood. The 574 would have continued to SeaTac, or in an alternative suggested by ST boardmembers, extended to Westwood Village to backfill part of the 560. I don’t remember about the 566 (167-Redmond Tech); I didn’t pay attention to that corridor.

       ST never made a decision on this because it was superceded by ST3. The 2023 KDM opening was folded into the 2024 Federal Way opening, so presumably the truncations would move with it. Federal Way has now been delayed to 2025/2026, so ST may not make a decision on truncations until then. Some advocates have arisen to not truncate, claiming the suburbanization of poverty and the long South Link travel times. Some ST boardmembers may sympathize with that position. ST hasn’t released any later scenarios or said whether it leans toward truncation or not. But Metro Connects has some clues, since ST talks to Metro about that. In Metro Connects, a Metro express replaces the 577, and another Metro express has a Seattle-Kent-Auburn alignment to replace the 578 and to address the long-missing Kent express. These are all we know.

    3. I’ve updated the post to reflect that. See comments above. As in the very first comment (and my response to it: https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/02/25/regional-transit-after-federal-way-link/#comment-927251).

16. I was a bit curious what the original federal way link eis stated for travel times.

    It estimated travel times from federal way link. surprisingly (or perhaps not really?) almost all destinations had the travel time from federal way aka to seattle took 47 minutes using express busses versus 46 minutes using the light rail.

    The highest benefit one was seatac airport taking only 15 minutes using the light rail versus 45 minutes via express bus

    Northgate would take 65 minutes via link versus 74 minutes using express bus (transfering at chinatown)

    It did not analyze tacoma to seattle trip times at all. Or at least I cannot find any such analysis within the document.

    https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/03_FWLE_Chapter_3_Transportation.pdf#page=18 (warning 64 page pdf)

    1. I’m kind of astonished the document didn’t analyze Tacoma to Seatac/Seattle travel times at all if buses were truncated at federal way.

       > All build alternatives would have travel time comparable to bus service between downtown Seattle and the Federal Way Transit Center and would be noticeably faster between Federal Way Transit Center and all regional destinations north and east of Seattle.

       The analysis basically only looks at federal way.

    2. we used to estimate the TDS to Seattle as Link, 72 minutes, Sounder, 60 minutes, and bus 50 minutes without congestion. Link has slowed. Congestion is worse?

    3. As of this writing Google says it will take 33 minutes from Federal Way Transit Center to 4th & University. So maybe ST was estimating times during high traffic? In any event they estimate the train takes about 34 minutes from SeaTac to University Street Station. This is right in line with my estimates for midday ridership.

       1. ST was estimating the worst case during PM Peak

       2. Which routes are scheduled based on worst-case travel time?

17. It sounds like we are spending 50 billion dollars to make transit objectively worse, bordering on unusable, for a substantial number of riders. Nobody is going to subject themselves to multi-transfer 3 hour roundtrip absurdities.

    They will drive.

    “Sound Transit: Spending vast sums to force people back into cars.”

    Has a nice ring to it.

    1. @Cam,

       You’ll need to describe exactly what trip pairs you are talking about that suddenly become “ multi-transfer 3 hour roundtrip absurdities”. Because that is not what is happening.

       ST is adding high capacity, reliable, and frequent service in the corridors that serve the most riders and benefit the largest number of the traveling public.

       Isn’t that the way it should be?

    2. t toWell, Tacoma to Seattle and back, since that is what I most often ride, and they are the two largest cities in the State (fine, Spokane will be number 2 for another couple years). Currently, the 594 offers 45 minutes each way, with poor reliability. Or the Sounder offers an hour each way with poor non-peak coverage.

       This proposal recommends degrading the 594.

       Transferring to Link will be off the table for only the desperate or confused. And only once.

       1. This proposal recommends degrading the 594.

          That is simply not true. I am proposing that we run it every 15 minutes throughout the day. That is a big improvement.

          Transferring to Link will be off the table for only the desperate or confused.

          Not if you are headed to the airport, Highline College, Rainier Valley or several other regional destinations. That is one of the reasons why the stop makes sense. The other is that it picks up riders from Federal Way who want an express to Seattle.

       2. I hear a lot about the trade-off of adding transfers but balancing that by increasing frequency. But frequency often is the first think on the operations chopping block.

          I remember you Ross insisting, a decade or so ago, it would be fine to truncate the 522 at Northgate, because that would come with vastly increased frequency, making up for the loss of a 20 minute ride to downtown with greater reliability.

          Where is that increased frequency plans for central Lake City now? Sounds like they are F’ed again, from what I’ve read.

          The lesson I’m learning is don’t too easily give up your one seat ride for promises of high frequency. That may never come.

       3. > I hear a lot about the trade-off of adding transfers but balancing that by increasing frequency. But frequency often is the first think on the operations chopping block.

          Just to clarify it’s slightly two different things. The typical scenario is about removing the circuitous hourly long bus routes for straighter bus routes that are more frequent aka 15/20 minute routes

          Most of those easy ones have already been removed.

          Converting diagonal/direct/L shaped bus routes for an east west route doesn’t save as much. Or say about peak express routes, its not usually tied into running another local east west line

       4. I remember you Ross insisting, a decade or so ago, it would be fine to truncate the 522 at Northgate, because that would come with vastly increased frequency, making up for the loss of a 20 minute ride to downtown with greater reliability.

          Not really. The 522 runs every 15 minutes. I think most people would consider it a huge success. It has made travel along the corridor much easier. Getting from Lake City to the U-District, for example, is much simpler even though the 522 doesn’t go that far. You just get off the bus and take another bus (or take Link). Getting to Capitol Hill is also much easier. Overall, I think it yet another example of why truncating for better frequency is a good idea (usually).

          But there are exceptions, and this is one. Imagine the 594 is running every 15 minutes (which it would be, if not for the driver shortage). It should be easier though, with some of the other savings implicit with this proposal (truncating peak-express, ending the 594, etc.). So at that point you could take it a step further and truncate the bus at Federal Way in exchange for more frequent service (e. g. every ten minutes). If you are headed to downtown, do you get anything out of that? No. The frequency improvement is less than the time difference.

          Put it another way — imagine they run both. Would you ever take the new 522? Yes. Absolutely. In fact, most of the time (if my math is correct). In contrast, would you ever take the truncated 594? No, never. Even if you just miss the old 594, it is better to wait for the one-seat ride to Seattle. It is that much faster.

          I agree that agencies tend to cut frequency when there is a driver-shortage, but hopefully this is a one-time thing. It also doesn’t change the situation — if anything it makes the case for truncations stronger. Go back to the at 522 situation. Imagine they cut frequency. Now your choices are:

          1) A bus every hour from Kenmore to Seattle.
          2) A bus every half-hour from Kenmore to Green Lake.

       5. I’m talking about in the future, when East Link opens and the 522 is rerouted onto 145th.

       6. OK, yeah, although that is a bit different. It really has nothing to do with truncations, and more to do with routing. I argued that the routing was fine, because there is a big mismatch in ridership as well as funding. Basically the city has a ton of riders and extra money to spend on transit, while the areas outside the city don’t.

          I still contend that is the case, but I’ll admit it is harder to make that argument. So much so that I do wish they send the bus to Roosevelt (or to 130th). I assumed that the city would have more funding than they do. I also assumed that Metro would propose an efficient restructure (as they did with UW Link). Unfortunately neither is happening and it is biting us in the ass. Buses that run through Lake City will not be as frequent as they should be for the same reason that buses in Capitol Hill will not be as frequent as they should be: the restructure sucks.

          If ST ran the bus on Roosevelt it would make life easier for the planners who did the restructure work. It would shift some of the funding away from Metro and to Sound Transit (an agency that is loaded). So while 15 minutes service (what I presume Stride 3 will have) is not appropriate (let alone ideal) for Lake City Way, it is what Metro is proposing anyway. If ST paid for that, at the very least Metro would have more money to run the other buses more often. Unless, of course, they diddled around and somehow managed to mess up the restructure some other way.

18. I guess one possible project is adding pedestrian overhangs to the federal way direct access ramps. This would allow express busses stopping at federal way to continue on immediately like how Totem Lake does it.

    The downside is now there’d be a 0.4 mile walk from the direct access ramps to the federal way link station. So I’m not sure if it’s worth it.

    1. You could do it, like how the Eastgate freeway station is a bit of a hike from the Eastgate transit center. Some freeway buses ‘truncate’ at Eastgate (212) while others simply passthrough. FW TC was definitely sited assuming bus routes terminate there, and there will be important non-Link non-freeway bus transfers to the A and various local routes (PT 500, 501, & 402, KCM 18Xs). It will show up in the ridership data: if this proposed all-day STX route’s ridership shows little transfer activity, drop the detour to the TC, but I imagine there will be solid transfers, both from STX to Link for multiple good destinations (airport, Highline college) but also from the various local buses feeding riders into the express bus route (which Ross is assuming will be valued by riders over Link). After Link is extended further south, the STX to FW TC connection will become less important, so if the express bus is retained, I could see pedestrian overhangs added then.

       1. > You could do it, like how the Eastgate freeway station is a bit of a hike from the Eastgate transit center. Some freeway buses ‘truncate’ at Eastgate (212) while others simply passthrough.

          Mhmmm. I kinda wonder if one could have a super express bus from everett to lynnwood to seattle to federal way to tacoma if wsdot ever implements the hov to toll lane conversion…. And I guess also somehow two way hov lanes on i-5 seattle to northgate section.

    2. It would also be a worse place to wait (like Mountlake Terrace). It would be better in some ways, but worse in others. My guess is a round trip will take a couple minutes longer than if you had a freeway stop. Part of my reasoning with this proposal is that Federal Way riders benefit as well. Tacoma ridership (on the existing 574) just isn’t high enough on its own to justify bus service every 15 minutes. But with Federal Way ridership tacked on (and a nice connection from Tacoma to Link) it all works out. So yeah, I agree, a freeway station is probably not worth it.

       I think if you were to ever build such a thing you would build it at Kent Des Moines Station. That means the bus would skip over Federal Way and stop there. But that station is closer to the freeway, so there would be less walking. It is also a bigger attraction (since it has the college). Riders from Tacoma would have to backtrack to get to Federal Way. It would also mean that buses that are truncated spend a little more time on the freeway. That still doesn’t sound that bad, given the stronger attraction of the station.

       One of the big advantages of truncating (or even serving) Federal Way is that the infrastructure is basically there. It is perfect, but it is pretty close.

       1. > I think if you were to ever build such a thing you would build it at Kent Des Moines Station. That means the bus would skip over Federal Way and stop there. But that station is closer to the freeway,

          For Kent Des Moines intersection, you’d have to build a direct access ramp from scratch which would cost a lot.

          The federal way direct access ramp is already wide enough for 4 lanes (it’s 50 feet) for 2 outer bus lanes and 2 inner general lanes, similar to the totem lake one. All that’s needed is the pedestrian sidewalk overhangs to be built(also similar to totem lake)

19. If the 594 goes from half-hourly to every 10 minutes all day, with the stop added at Federal Way, then the average wait + travel time from Tacoma to Seattle is not degraded.

    However, there are other options, like having the 594 stop at Star Lake P&R Station, or at Highline Station. Pick whichever adds the least time to the route.

    But keep in mind that 578 would still likely be truncated at Federal Way.

    And the 574 would be more likely to go away completely, so we’d have to wait another decade for trips to Olympia to cease being lengthy overnight excursions. Oblivious legislators will still be wondering why transit advocates don’t show up in large numbers in Olympia.

20. Extending the 592 to Olympia, with 2-way service this time, would be a big win for riders in Olympia, DuPont, Lakewood, and Tacoma.

    Truncating it at Federal Way would be a big win for south King County and southeast Seattle riders, and really, north King too, since the route would travel in the peak direction for Capitol commuters for the first time.

    It still isn’t as good as all-day Olympia-to-FederalWay, but a couple slices, instead of no loaf at all, is a good start.

    1. I didn’t address Olympia, but those suggestions sound plausible. Just to back up here, absent extensions the transfer point for midday Olympia trips is the SR-512 stop. At that stop, riders combine the 594 with the 620 for trips between Olympia and Seattle. From what I can tell, the buses aren’t timed very well. I put in a trip from Seattle to Olympia and it had me wait 45 minutes southbound and 20 minutes northbound. If nothing else, just increasing the frequency of the 594 would reduce the transfer time to a minimum of 15 minutes northbound, while riders could try and time the southbound connection.

       During peak (peak-direction) it would make sense to combine the buses as you suggest. The 592 would be truncated at Federal Way Transit Center. It goes by Lakewood Station, so that means that it would connect Olympia to both Link and Sounder. I could definitely see value in that, as Dupont Park and Ride is a fairly weak anchor. It also doesn’t seem especially long (Federal Way to Olympia). If nothing else you could have a few of the runs extend to Olympia.

       Reverse peak gets a little bit trickier. I was assuming the 594 runs reverse peak (while the 590 and 592 do not). But Sounder does run reverse peak (albeit not that often) and of course, Link runs just as often in reverse-peak direction. So I could definitely see a few reverse-peak 592 buses. Once you do that, you might as well extend them (since again, the Dupont Park and Ride is a weak anchor).

21. Consider a grand bargain for 590 and 592 riders: Both of these peak-direction routes would go away, in exchange for dropping the Sounder fare to a flat $3.25 or $3.

    The numbers show that the entire ridership of these two routes could be absorbed by Sounder, and still be way below Sounder ridership from the Before Times.

    But then, would that incentivize a lot more Tacoma-Seattle riders to leave their cars behind and take Sounder? (collective freak-out gasp) I will leave it to Laz to explain why that would be a wonderful problem to have.

    At any rate, if the purpose of high Sounder fares is to ration seats, it is working way too well. If it is to incentivize taking ST Express, isn’t that a perverse incentive? Don’t we realize by now that Sounder is a sunk cost, and ST Express trips that merely offer a lower fare for the same trips are a high marginal cost?

    1. But then, would that incentivize a lot more Tacoma-Seattle riders to leave their cars behind and take Sounder?

       I seriously doubt it. The cost to drive is quite high. Sounder (or the buses) either work for them or they don’t. Sounder only has one stop in Seattle. Employment is spread out everywhere. For example, someone who lives in Tacoma and works at the VA in Seattle probably drives. If they take transit they most likely take the 590 and then the 50 (https://maps.app.goo.gl/JMGdTYk4T42ziNJp8). In contrast, if Sounder works for them they probably take it. If I lived in Tacoma and worked downtown I would definitely take Sounder. If I took a bus it would be because of the timing. Sounder is not especially expensive given the distance (it is cheaper than Greyhound).

       Taking away the express buses may reduce overall ridership (people ride the bus for a reason) but I don’t think you gain it back by dropping the fare. I would expect Sounder ridership to go up simply because it now becomes the best option (for some). For others, they switch to Link. I really don’t think the fare for such a long trip would play a big factor. The only time I see that happening is for big events. For example they run special trains during the Puyallup fair (along with free shuttles from there). I could see someone deciding not to do that, and drive instead.

       1. There were 62K reasons to ride the 592 last year. That comes at to ca. 130 round-trip passengers on a typical weekday, or 15 riders per run (and fewer than that between Lakewood and Seattle). I think ST could easily survey those passengers and find out if they could be enticed to switching to Sounder, if they are headed to Seattle, and what would entice them.

          In particular, it would be interesting to find out from the DuPont riders where their destinations are (aggregated, not individually).

       2. I don’t think it matters. My point is that once Federal Way Link gets here, we really can’t afford Link, Sounder and express bus service running at the same time. The combination of Sounder and Link are “good enough”. Of course there will be people who lose out, but that is true whenever we make a change. A lot of people used to take the 41 downtown in the morning and Link costs them time. But not so much that it makes sense to run the 41 then (or at all). The transfer to Link is good enough.

          In this case, if they get rid of express service to downtown, it really doesn’t matter whether riders switch to Link or Sounder.

22. I would encourage ST to be liberal in renumbering significantly-altered routes.

    For example, renumber the 594 as 591, in recognition of the major new stop at FW Station.

    The route connecting FW to Tacoma, Lakewood, DuPont, and possibly Olympia could be 572.

    The truncated 595 could become 575.

    If there is a peak route between downtown Tacoma and FW, 570.

    578 could probably just stay 578, even if it terminates at FW.

    Ross’s 588 I would number 568.

23. Is sum, ST is right to create several connections to Federal Way Station to dramatically reduce travel time to the airport, with a transfer. Current riders on the daytime 574 will also have reduced travel time, even with the loss of the one-seat ride.

    The saved service hours can do wonderful things like create a one-seat ride between Federal Way, Tacoma Dome, east Lakewood, DuPont, and the Capitol Campus in Olympia, if PT, IT, and ST put their heads together and end the SR 512 anti-rider chaos.

    Overnight 574 service should remain, and its span expanded so that airport workers have no more than a half hour to wait for the bus to get to any shift start time.

    Delridge riders working at the airport or nearby work sites should get a one-seat ride to work before someone from Tacoma gets a one-seat ride to Burien anti-transit-center via the painful timesuck of a loop-de-loop to get to the airport south terminal stop. Nobody from Tacoma will want to ride that route again to get to Burien after they’ve experienced it once, and been late to work for having taken it.

    The 560 west of the airport is a ridership dud that avoids bus stops where blue-collar workers might get on it. Few will miss it, and some of those who do for all the wrong reasons. The path, sans the airport terminal loop, deserves 10-minute headway on a single route, and RapidRide H is a perfect fit for it.

    And, oh yeah, getting rid of off-peak bus service between Federal Way and Seattle would result in dramatically-increased travel time for hundreds of unique riders, so don’t do that.

24. We were promised that the 1 line extention from Angle Lake to Federal Way, with a stop in Kent-Des Moines, would be completed and opening in 2024. Now, they are saying 2026. When 2026 comes what are they going to say? The only board member willing to have a conversation on this is the Mayor of Puyallup. So, why the lie?

    1. How do you expect them to answer when it will open when they don’t know? It will open when it’s finished. 2026 is their best estimate at this point. They had to redesign a viaduct that wouldn’t have worked as expected. That’s done and they’re now building it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the date slips again, but it sounds like the biggest contingencies that might have delayed it are behind us now, so that suggests it will open in 2026.

       1. I want to know what the reasoning behind the Sound Transit lies. Since I do not live in Seattle or Olympia they are not interested in answering my questions.

       2. What “lie” are you talking about?

       3. Lying means deliberately saying something false in order to deceive. There’s no evidence that occurred in this case. ST’s slipping timelines are due to overoptimistic budgeting, the 2008 recession that hit Metro in 2012-2016 and probably hit ST in a similar timeframe, the covid disruption, the months-long concrete delivery strike, maybe delays in siting a south base and deciding on the Midway superfund location, and the viaduct that had to be redesigned. Some of those are due to ST’s negligence, and some were external factors ST had no control over. None of them rises to the level of lying that I can see.

    2. Nathan D. That it was supposed to be done this year. Now the have changed it. The construction has been a real pain where I live and now it is going to be going on for another two years. No accountability.

       1. Have you read the news on the Federal Way extension where they had soil issues on a section on the line and needed to redo to ensure a safe ride and be compliant with state and federal safety regulations or just wanna continue pulling stuff out of thin air just because you wanna complain, because it’s clearly the latter.

       2. @Mathew,

          Actually, the first piece of it does open this year. They are going to activate the first few thousand feet of the guideway for use in storing LRV’s in support of Lynnwood Link. Non-revenue service though.

          The rest of the line will open when they get the new bridge span finished across the unstable soil area. Probably 2026. Reference the Sound Transit website for information.

          There is an opportunity however to open a Federal Way Link Starter Line in 2025 as far as KDM Station. This would be possible shortly after the full East Link opens.

          You should contact your elected representatives and see if they won’t support you on that. I’m sure they will listen. They did in Bellevue.

    3. Projections are not “promises”.

25. Also, last week I was told someone would call me with an explanation within 2 to 3 business days. Again, a pure lie.

    1. There was the rockslide on i-5 so they had to build a new bridge for the light rail on that section. I’m not sure what else you are expecting them or us to say exactly.

    2. Maybe you gave them the wrong number?

       But use that webby thing that Al Gore invented for us. There is a fair amount of detailed information on what is going on with Federal Way Link on the ST website. And it is also covered on various other news sites.

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