Month: April 2024

Link Extension Countdown: Lynnwood Link (August 30). What to expect (Sound Transit Blog).

Transit Updates:

In case you missed it, the 2 Line Starter Line started service on April 27, to much fanfare.

The Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI), an infrastructure sustainability certification nonprofit started in 2010, gave awards to the RapidRide H Line (Metro blog) and the Federal Way Link Extension. The ISI “Envision” awards appear to be similar to the LEED certifications given to buildings for efficiency and sustainability.

Sound Transit is seeking feedback on its study of the feasibility of additional alternative locations for the SLU stations of the Ballard Link Extension. Survey closes May 7.

Local News:

Seattle adopts 20-year transportation plan (Seattle Times [$]). P.S. The CCC streetcar is included.

On the Saturday before Earth Day, a coalition of affordable housing advocates, community organizations, urbanists, and others held a rally at Jimi Hendrix Park calling for changes to the proposed Transportation Levy and draft comprehensive plan update to allow for more public transit and more housing (Komo News).

The Seattle Planning Commission, a 16-member board made of Seattle residents, is looking to fill some vacancies (Seattle.gov). Applications are due May 20. Meanwhile, the Planning Commission says the draft comprehensive plan update “does not do enough to change existing unaffordable, inequitable, and unsustainable patterns of development.” (PubliCola)

King County was awarded $6 million to build over 400 electric-vehicle charging ports throughout the county (Cascade PBS [formerly Crosscut]). Approximately 10% of King County’s vehicle fleet is electric. The charging ports will be publicly available at 55 locations, including nine King County charging sites, 13 apartment buildings, and 16 other locations like Metro bus bases and retail centers.

Continue reading “Open Thread 47”

The Link 2 Line opened yesterday with eight new stations on the Eastside from South Bellevue to Redmond Technology. Mike Lindblom and David Kroman in the Seattle Times have extensive coverage of the ceremony, ride experiences, and community reaction. Lindblom’s pre-launch list of the goods and bads of each station area is still useful as a guide.

Several STB staff attended the opening — or tried to attend but couldn’t get there on time. We found an ambiguity in the plan, as some thought it most important to be on the first train from South Bellevue, while I thought it was most important to see Bellevue Downtown open. (I was also hoping my friend in Lynnwood would make it on one of the hourly 535’s, but she couldn’t.)

Nathan Dickey rode the first departing train (car 215B!) from South Bellevue Station. “There was much cheering when the doors finally opened ~30 minutes later than scheduled (due to the ceremony speeches going long) and more cheering when the train reached Redmond after ~20mins.” Nathan continues, “There were excellent festivities at every station, including free tacos at Redmond Technology and free t-shirts from Overlake. ST was also giving out hats with the “2” for the 2 Line at Bellevue Downtown station but I didn’t find out about those until I was halfway to Seattle and saw a few riders with ‘2’ hats on the returning 550.”

Continue reading “Thoughts on the Starter Line”

After decades of ideation, deliberation, and planning, the Eastside finally gets modern rapid transit tomorrow, when the East Link “2 Line” opens for service. But tomorrow’s opening is really to whet riders’ appetites for the full connection to the Central Link “spine,” which is tentatively slated for late 2025, thanks to construction mishaps on the I-90 bridge.

We’ll be at the opening ceremony at Bellevue Downtown Station at 10 am. Wear a hat, and we can be the Hatted Transit Fans. People from The Urbanist and other groups will be there too. When train service starts at 11 am or soon after, we’ll take the 550 down to South Bellevue Station, and then ride Link end-to-end from South Bellevue to Redmond Tech.

The 241 and 249 also go from Bellevue TC to South Bellevue Station, if both Link and the 550 are too crowded.

If you’re coming from Seattle, the 550 leaves 5th & Union at 8:53am (arrive 9:24), 9:08am (arrive 9:49), and 9:23am (arrive 9:54). On top of regular 550 service, Sound Transit is also providing a shuttle from South Bellevue to Bellevue Transit Center between 8:30 and 11am.

The Seattle Times has a good timeline of East Link history, from 1994 to present.

On Sunday morning (the day after) routes 550, 240, and 249 will bypass stops between NE 2nd Street and SE 16th Street due to the “All in for Autism 5K Run/Walk” on Bellevue Way. Metro’s Service Advisories page has specific details on each route.

Continue reading “Eastside Starter Line Starts Tomorrow”

On Wednesday (April 24) I had a chance to talk to Claudia Balducci, King County Councilmember and Chair of the Sound Transit System Expansion Committee and former Bellevue Mayor, about the opening of the 2 Line on Saturday. As the Eastside representative on the Sound Transit Board, she spearheaded the opening of the Eastlink starter line. I thought it would be good to get her perspective on the line and share some of her thoughts (not verbatim).

Continue reading “Balducci Interview about the 2 Line”

Countdowns: East Link Starter Line (This Saturday! 11am), Lynnwood Link (August 30).

Transit Updates:

Pierce Transit is hosting a ribbon-cutting event at 12pm today at the Tacoma Dome Station celebrating the opening of the Stream Community Line. Service started on April 1, serving as an express route along the Pacific Avenue/State Route 7 Corridor. All Pierce Transit services are fare-free for the day.

Seattle Times ($) writes about the imminent opening of the East Link Starter Line, features an interactive map of the new stations, and reviews the history of the 2 Line.

Sound Transit is sending workers to survey riders onboard Link, Sounder, and ST Express about their experience. The survey effort will continue into the Fall.

Local News:

Ryan Packer writes about the plan to turn Harrison street in SLU into a transit mall but is concerned that capacity won’t be any near the corridor estimates for 2050.

The Seattle Times ($) writes about the 24 “Neighborhood Centers” chosen for inclusion in the draft One Seattle Plan.

On Tuesday, PubliCola and the Urbanist reported on how Seattle’s Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) original draft of the One Seattle Plan was gutted by Mayor Harrell’s office.

Continue reading “Open Thread 46”

The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) recently requested feedback on their plans for the future of Amtrak Cascades service. They call it the Preliminary Amtrak Cascades Service Development Plan (SDP). We (STB authors) responded:

We expect that the region will continue to grow and our airports and freeways won’t be able to handle the traffic increase. We should make sure that we don’t need flights within Cascadia. While UHSR [ultra-high speed rail] service may be nice, the California HSR made it clear what cost/effort/time it takes to do that along the West Coast. Our climate is changing and we don’t have such time and we entice travelers to switch from cars to rail asap! We propose to take a more incremental approach. Germany extended their rail network with specific upgrades and a few high-speed portions which straightened some hilly routes by using tunnels and viaducts. They did not build a whole separate infrastructure as France did. We already have a rail corridor on which we can build upon. We endorse hourly (clockface) service along the corridor as proposed in Alternative E and then make incremental improvements.

Here are some considerations for further studies:

Speed: Faster travel will increase the attractiveness of the service. 90-mph is nice, but we understand the original master agreement with BNSF called for 110-mph service. What would it take to get to 110-mph? That would make a huge difference! Can we rebuild portions where the current track has tight turns and trains need to slow down to 30-mph creating a bottleneck for both passenger and freight trains? Do we need to add tunnels in some places? (May be even reach 125-mph on new track/alignments)

Can we electrify the line to allow for better acceleration (besides reducing carbon output)? That may reduce the advantage of running express trains and avoid express service violating the clockface service.

Reliability: What efforts are necessary to maintain 95% ontime performance? Are there any portions where we need to address issues which cause delays? For example Sounder-North is often canceled, can we elevate the tracks so that runoffs don’t cause delays?

Connectivity: Can we add a Thruway service or even a gondola between Tukwila and Seatac airport to allow for quick transfer between international or long distance flights and Amtrak/Sounder?

PS: A blog post with ideas on how to improve service: There’s No Path Forward for Ultra High-Speed Rail in Washington State; We Are Better Off For It. | Transportation Matters (wordpress.com)

A few weeks back, I decided to exercise my freedom in going into the office more than I needed to and commuted downtown on a Friday. The first thing I noticed was how much emptier my usual bus was. Of course, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Friday ridership is down relative to the other days of the week, although none of the local transit agencies publicly report this kind of breakdown.

Many employers now operate a hybrid working mode, with workers in-office some days of the week, and at home the others. The problem is that “hybrid” is a spectrum: some companies don’t require in-person work but provide an office for those who want it, some companies mandate a few days in-person, chosen at the discretion of employees, and some companies mandate specific days in-person. This lack of predictability makes it difficult to plan for the right amount of service across the week.

Transit agencies have already shown willingness to cut trips and even entire routes for being low-performing. But it raises the question: for commuter routes, especially, does an altogether different schedule for Fridays make sense? This would create potentially four schedule categories for routes that have weekend service: Monday-Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

There are some immediate downsides that come to mind:

• Schedule complexity: riders might have increased difficulty sorting through the right schedule and not mistakenly consulting the wrong schedule.
• Regularity for M-F riders: those who still need to take transit all five weekdays might be unduly burdened by a different Friday schedule. This is particularly true of those in the trades or other professions that do not accommodate remote work.

On the flip side, trimming extremely unproductive trips on Fridays might provide a useful source of hours that can be reinvested in other lines or bolstering all-day service elsewhere, particularly with an uncertain future financial outlook. That said, employment patterns continue to evolve post-COVID so looking at day-of-week ridership will be an increasingly useful tool for planners to consult in the coming years.

Seattle’s bus network used to be focused on bringing people to work downtown. As our city grew, it spread its wings across First Hill, Capitol Hill, Fremont, and the Eastside. Though Amazon was earlier in the middle of downtown, it now occupies South Lake Union (SLU) and Bellevue. While a one-seat bus ride to downtown used to be the norm, once you have more destinations to cover, it becomes more important to develop a network of interconnecting lines. Besides the frequency on the lines, the connecting points between the lines determine how easy or time-consuming the transfer is. We built transit centers to help connect lines. With light rail construction, most stations also became places where multiple bus lines would intersect. Mount Baker Station is a good example where transfers could be much better if the buses would serve the Link station more directly instead of having to walk and cross a busy road.

Continue reading “Connection Points”

Countdowns: East Link Starter Line (April 27, 11am), Lynnwood Link (August 30).

Transit Updates:

SDOT is closing the Spokane Street Swing Bridge (low bridge) for 10 days starting Friday, April 19 (planned reopening on Sunday, April 28). SDOT is offering free rides on Metro or the Water Taxi for impacted users.

Systems Integration Testing will begin soon on the Downtown Redmond extension of the 2 Line.

Local News:

Erica C Barnett (PubliCola) reports on broad-base advocacy for a more ambitious Transportation Levy. Public feedback on the proposed Levy is open until April 26.

Ryan Packer (The Urbanist) reports on King County Councilmember Mosqueda’s efforts to refine the Preferred Alignment for the West Seattle Link Extension to save businesses in North Delridge that are currently slated to be demolished. The owner of one such business, Matt Larson (The Skylark Cafe), has penned a letter questioning whether ST followed its own property acquisitions and relocation procedures appropriately. Erin Rubin, the owner of neighboring Mode Music Studios, has also starting asking for help to prepare for relocation.

Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz writes in The Urbanist about how the Department of Natural Resources is now looking to lease State-owned land to affordable housing developers to help solve the housing affordability crisis.

Opinion/Miscellaneous:

Meet Andre Bacon, the Seattle Central College student who drives the Seattle Monorail (Seattle Collegian)

Tom Fuculoro (author/editor Seattle Bike Blog), parent of a former attendee of Pike Market Preschool, calls for a car-free Pike Place (Seattle Bike Blog). The piece has a neat history of the various changes to vehicle/pedestrian access to Pike Place Market over the decades.

The Seattle Times ($) reviews close.city, the website that lets you build your own walkability map for any city in the USA based on open data.

Reece Martin writes about how many transit plans are stuffed with priority vanity projects, but building transit on a plan that you can actually follow is powerful.

The Urbanist began a deep-dive series on proposed projects in the draft Seattle Transportation Levy, starting with the multi-modal Corridor projects.

Continue reading “Open Thread 45”

Yesterday, I had the chance to join members of the press in a media tour of South Bellevue Station, which will open for Link operations in just a matter of weeks when the East Link Starter Line begins service. As things currently stand, the ELSL will open to the public on April 27th, while the full extension across I-90 is still tentatively set for 2025.

At South Bellevue, the accompanying park-and-ride garage has been open for more than two years and the station itself has been finished for quite for time. However, only recently was tile replacement completed on the platform, which was necessary after quality issues surfaced during the initial installation. According to Jon Lebo, East Link Executive Director, Sound Transit placed full-time inspectors over the replacement work to avoid repeat mistakes.

Operationally, the ELSL has been undergoing pre-revenue testing at the scheduled headways of 10 minutes. Lebo indicated that operator staffing is already at desired levels, with well over 100 operators hired specifically to drive ELSL trains. When the line opens, two-car train service is expected to serve roughly 6,000 daily boardings.

Matt Sheldon, Deputy Executive Director of Planning & Integration, also gave some additional insight into the system-wide service impacts that are anticipated. No immediate service changes are planned for the ELSL opening but once the full cross-lake 2 Line opens, the 550 will be completely replaced, with its Bellevue Way market covered by the rerouted 554. Mike has previously written about the broader suite of changes.

According to Sheldon, Sound Transit is also continuing to look at paid parking options across the system, but the Board hasn’t given direction about specific locations to target. I asked if the agency had looked at updated park-and-ride utilization forecasts, given that many park-and-rides are much barer than they were pre-COVID. Sheldon indicated that no new forecasts have been done (Metro has not updated their publicly-available reports since 2017), but was optimistic that the ELSL will create new ridership markets and that South Bellevue Station parking will gradually fill in over time.