West Seattle by Bus instead of Light Rail

168 Replies to “West Seattle by Bus instead of Light Rail”

1. You need to flesh out some no-3 to 4 seat rides for how West Seattle connects to SeaTac/southbound Line 1, 574 and/or Sounder S without dooming riders to going through downtown Seattle.

   1. This is straightforward and probably needs to be done anyway: move the 560 terminal from Westwood Village to Alaska Junction, adding a grand total of two extra stops (35th/Morgan, and the Alaska Junction terminal). Something tells me that a one-seat ride from AJ to Seatac is likely to add a pretty good chunk of ridership. (I’m a WS resident and I would use it without hesitation — no further questions.) You’ve also connected AJ, White Center, and Burien in a single ride, which is shockingly absent from today’s network as well: IMO this is the primary shortcoming of the current C and H setup.

      This also makes Westwood Village a little easier to manage, which is the WS elephant in the room — it’s a truly terrible place to transfer buses and most of the bus stops have no business being thought of a single “transfer point”. Southbound C and 21 buses terminate not at the station on Barton, but at the layover area as far as two long blocks west at 29th SW. If you have to walk to the current 560 stop, it’s nearly a quarter of a mile — within the same “station”. Good luck making a two or three minute transfer, and that’s just the able-bodied: those with mobility challenges are looking at half an hour if the timing isn’t just so.

      All of which is to say that WS’s existing network also has a bunch of weird micro-issues that also need solving as well (the Alaska Junction bus path via 44th is the other real nasty one, and the 128 college deviation isn’t super either).

      1. I would like something express popping on 509/518 at Cloverdale, rather than the slow-boat through Burien. The Burien connection is taken care of with the RR H.

         Could maybe even use 99, though I haven’t thought that through.

      2. All of which is to say that WS’s existing network also has a bunch of weird micro-issues that also need solving as well (the Alaska Junction bus path via 44th is the other real nasty one, and the 128 college deviation isn’t super either).

         We didn’t mention it in the text but the Alaska Junction mess is eliminated on the map. The buses just follow a logical path (go on California and turn on Alaska). This might take some work, but it shouldn’t be too hard. This proposal eliminates the 128 detour. (This is mentioned in the text.) The Alaska Junction mess could be fixed without a restructure. The 128 detour couldn’t (not without hurting a bunch of riders).

         We never addressed the area around Westwood Village. There are a number of awkward aspects to it. For example the H is pretty much a straight shot on Delridge until it suddenly detours to 25th (via Barton). Then it heads back east but overshoots 16th and uses 15th for a while until it doglegs back west. This is RapidRide — a bus that is supposed to be faster — and yet it is spending its time going back and forth. This is not at the tail of the route, either. If you are trying to get from Burien to Delridge you have to just endure all of this.

         One reason for the detour is to connect to the C and 21. But maybe the best option is to extend the C and 21 east, since that is their tail anyway. Riders on the those buses wouldn’t be hurt by that approach since it is basically the end of the line. They actually benefit from the extension. Then the H could take a faster, more straightforward route (staying on Delridge until 16th). This would likely shave a few minutes off the trip.

         Of course some one-seat rides are lost, but it is probably worth it. You would have to do some analysis beyond just looking at the stop data. Are people getting off near the mall because they are headed to a location around there or because that is where they transfer? For this reason we basically avoided the topic. It could prove highly controversial (more losers than winners).

         In general this is designed to give people an idea of what would happen if you took the money from West Seattle Link and gave people bus improvements instead. For the most part we tried to avoid trade-offs. We wanted to make sure that this was simply better than what exists now. That means that some problems aren’t fixed, but they are mitigated (with better frequency, more direct service, etc.). To be clear there are a few trade-offs. But for the most part this is just a much better network than exists now and much better than West Seattle Link.

      3. As far as I can tell from OneBusAway, the H line detour does not connect with the 21. And the detour street is much worse in terms of lighting and business access than the direct street. The only reason for the detour that I can think of is Kemper Freeman-style White Center business owners lobbying for it – detour the bus in order to divert riders who might commit crimes and preserve 3 parking spaces in front of the store for “real” customers who arrive by car.

         Mostly likely, the same attitude is responsible for why the C line has to detour at Alaska Junction. I personally can’t stand it, and I find it ridiculous that bus riders are supposed to endure a longer daily commute in order to be shoved “away” from businesses; it makes you feel like riding the bus makes you a second class citizen. But that doesn’t make it any less real.

      4. “As far as I can tell from OneBusAway, the H line detour does not connect with the 21. And the detour street is much worse in terms of lighting and business access than the direct street.”

         Do you mean the H jog to 26th & Barton? That seems like the opposite reason: to go right to Westwood Village. The route maps show both routes on 26th between Barton and Roxbury, with stops that must be across the street from each other.

         “the same attitude is responsible for why the C line has to detour at Alaska Junction.”

         That’s a quasi transit center. The buses stop there so that all transfers at at the same stop or adjacent stops. You talk about being near/far from businesses, but it’s more important to be near transfers. And when there’s two alternatives, like the C and 50 eastbound, to have access to both of them when you don’t know which one will come first or which one will be late.

         If the C turned left from Alaska Street to California Ave, then the bus stop might be two blocks away from the other bus stops if Metro judges it can’t get to the curb lane in the block where it turns.

         This happens to me with Capitol Hill buses that turn left from Pine to 3rd. Sometimes they make the 4th & Pine stop, but sometimes they don’t, so I always have to ask the driver whether he’ll stop there, so I can get off at 5th if he doesn’t. Otherwise I end up on 3rd 1 1/2 blocks away away from my northbound transfer at Uniqlo/Macy’s, whereas if it stops at 4th I can just walk around the corner. It’s not an issue at present because the 10 and 11 always continue to 2nd, and the 49 isn’t through-routed with the 7 as much as it used to be, but it was an issue for a few years before Northgate Link, and who knows when it might start again.

         In the C’s case that wouldn’t happen because routes wouldn’t sometimes turn and sometimes not; there just wouldn’t be a stop there.

      5. We never addressed the area around Westwood Village.

         Ignoring Westwood Village is, IMO, a grave omission in your concept. I believe that the incredibly poor layout and transfer environment drag down the utility and ridership of the entire WS network in all directions. I’ve had to change there many times and I think that it’s so awful that it likely creates a disproportionate effect of increased trip avoidance, which is a problem for a network that by-necessity has a lot of transfers and has chosen to concentrate a lot of them there.

         In general this is designed to give people an idea of what would happen if you took the money from West Seattle Link and gave people bus improvements instead.

         My big problem with this network concept is that it levels with the world as it exists today, not as it could be. One of the major promises of light rail in the junction is to create the conditions for growth (rather than respond to growth already occurred). In that respect it’s aspirational and there’s a lottery-ticket element to it to be sure — but is it reasonable to think that a dramatic overhaul in bus networking can replicate the conditions for those aspirations?

      6. as, Avalon and the Junction have seen a ton of housing growth since the C started operation. The same is happening along Delridge Way now that the H is providing reliable frequent service. I don’t think that only light rail can improve a neighborhood. With the proposed bus network this could also happen along 35th and Admiral Junction none of which would be served by WS light rail.

      7. Improving the Westwood Village TC is certainly a great idea, it could make transfers much easier.

      8. “Ignoring Westwood Village is, IMO, a grave omission in your concept. I believe that the incredibly poor layout and transfer environment drag down the utility and ridership of the entire WS network in all directions. I’ve had to change there many times and I think that it’s so awful that it likely creates a disproportionate effect of increased trip avoidance”

         West Seattle Link doesn’t improve the Westwood Village situation either. This proposal was focused on a replacement for West Seattle Link. Maybe a subsequent plan could also address Westwood Village and south to Burien and SeaTac.

         What do you want in Westwood Village anyway? You can start a discussion in tomorrow’s open thread. Then a subsequent restructure plan could incorporate it if the author agrees with your assessment.

      9. “One of the major promises of light rail in the junction is to create the conditions for growth”

         That’s a fallacy though. You need to first serve the existing dense/walkable areas, because those are proven. New neighborhoods tend to have less retail variety, more overscaled modernist architecture, and less pleasant to be in. Examples include Real Ballard (24th to 20th) vs 15th NW, the Ave vs Roosevelt Way in the U-District, etc.

         For West Seattle, the dense/walkable area is California Avenue, so the long-proven pedestrian/commercial area and the Link plan are in the same place. (Link’s problem is a failure to address all of it: Califormia’s potential extends two miles north and south on California but Link doesn’t, and Link doesn’t address the other pockets of density at Alki, Westwood Village, 35th, Delridge, or South Seattle College.)

         Growth in the West Seattle Triangle took off in 2012 because of the large wave of job growth in the Amazon boom. I attended a Feet First walk then that pointed out what’s changed or changing. The ST3 system plan was assembled in 2016, years after the growth had started.

   2. SeaTac: Take the 21, 125, C, H to SoDo and then take Link heading south. You can also take the 50 to Columbia City. You can also take the H south to Burien and then take the 161.

      Sounder South: Take the H to Burien and then the F to Tukwila Station. Or from Burien take the 165 to Kent.

      Tacoma (in a few years): Take the H to Burien and take the F or the future Stride line to Link. Take Link to Federal Way. Take express bus to Tacoma or Lakewood.

      1. Do you have any other suggestions for 4-seat 2 hour odysseys no one will take?

      2. Preferably via Everett?

      3. You mean like a direct bus that no one will take?

      4. Sorry, but transfers are simply part of every system. The farther you go, the more likely you are to transfer. Even some fairly short trips require transfers. For example Lake City to First Hill (a much bigger set of trips than anything you have suggested) is a three-seat ride.

         In this case a lot of the trips require one transfer. If you try and eliminate the transfer you quickly run into alternatives that just won’t work. For example consider a trip from the Junction to SeaTac. The obvious approach (with this network) is to take the C and then transfer at SoDo to Link. The bus ride takes about ten minutes (if that). The train takes about a half hour. But oh, that dreaded transfer. So to eliminate the transfer you just head south. Of course now the bus is doing what buses do, and stopping to pick up riders along the way. Way more than the bus that was heading north because there are a lot more bus stops along the way. This makes it slower than using Link. To solve this problem you create an express. Except now only a handful of people ride the bus. It doesn’t work.

         The H connects directly to Burien. I have no idea why you consider a trip there a “four-seat” two-hour trip. More people from West Seattle work in Burien than work in SeaTac (and way than more work in Tacoma). No, the system doesn’t work for every combination, but the trips that are difficult are often difficult for a reason: very few people take them. Consider the 560. It serves the south end of West Seattle. It connects to both of the RapidRide buses as well as the 21. It goes directly to SeaTac, and operates as an express while doing so. By connecting to SeaTac it also connects to buses that serve far more distant locations, like Tacoma and Lakewood (the type of places you just assume have to served by downtown-to-downtown travel). The 560 is a truly remarkable bus for West Seattle. So prior to the pandemic, how many riders took the bus from West Seattle to SeaTac? Somewhere around 50. Each day. Despite this express nature of the bus, and the reduction in transfers that it offers, there just aren’t that many people riding it.

         Of course you could build a better network for the South Sound area, but that isn’t what this proposal is about. This is about giving West Seattle something that is much better than West Seattle Link (for way less money). Trips to the south are very different (although they too benefit from this network).

      5. “Do you have any other suggestions for 4-seat 2 hour odysseys no one will take?”

         “Preferably via Everett?”

         Capitol Hill to Snohomish. I’ve been wanting to do that to see Snohomish and Monroe and the other cities, which I’ve only been through occasionally by car. I even started out on this last year, but by the time I got to Everett it had already taken an hour, CT 271 had left ten minutes ago, and I’d have to wait 50 minutes for the next one. I was tired by then so I gave up and explored downtown Everett instead, to review my North Everett walk in 2015.

      6. I have a vague recollection that the 560 used to connect Alaska Junction to SeaTac with a one seat ride, but was truncated in the aftermath of the great recession due to very low ridership west of SeaTac.

      7. “This is about giving West Seattle something that is much better than West Seattle Link (for way less money). Trips to the south are very different (although they too benefit from this network).”

         And trips to the south still suck if West Seattle lonk gets built.

   3. Excellent proposal!

      “You need to flesh out some no-3 to 4 seat rides for how West Seattle connects to SeaTac/southbound Line 1, 574 and/or Sounder S without dooming riders to going through downtown Seattle.”

      Line 1 seems clear: transfer at SODO from ” The C, H, 21, 125 as well as the (peak-only) 37 and 57″.

      Sounder may have a slight gap depending on how the buses get from the busway to 3rd Avenue, but at worst it’s not much further than between Sounder and the 1 Line. And should we compromise the overall transit network for Sounder transfers? Most riders from West Seattle are not going to Sounder, and they can’t for 18-24 hours out of the day.

      For the 574, I imagine you mean going south to SeaTac station rather than east to the 1 Line. That’s beyond the scope of this restructure, which is focused specifically on replacing West Seattle Link, In previous comments we’ve debated improving West Seattle-SeaTac service, and maybe somebody could take it upon themselves to flesh that out into an article. Such an article should also address overall Burien/northwest South King County transit, since Burien is right in the middle of it and hasn’t gotten as much STB attention as the rest of South King County.

      Here’s what’s going on around Burien and southern West Seattle:

      * The 560 initially terminated at Alaska Junction. It was truncated to Westwood Village due to low ridership in that segment. West Seattlites at the time said, “It’s not much Sound Transit service,” compared to other areas with freeway expresses between major cities.

      * Metro’s/SDOT’s long-range plans envision restructuring RapidRide C to Burien when it no longer goes downtown. That would mean both the C and H go from West Seattle to Burien. From there, one of them could be extended to SeaTac.

      * Route 161 goes from Kent Station to SeaTac to Burien. It could be interlined with a West Seattle route of some sort.

      * Stride 1 will replace the 560 and will terminate at Burien. it will open in 3-4 years, so extending the 560 would only last a few years. After that, by default there will be no ST service between Burien and West Seattle, or between Burien and the airport.

      * The ST board mused in the mid 2010s about extending the 574 to Westwood Village to backfill 560 service Stride 1 will abandon. It hasn’t mentioned it since then, so I don’t know whether it favors it.

      * Some commentators have argued the 574 should be truncated at Federal Way or Tacoma Dome when those Link extensions open. That would make it unavailable for SeaTac-Westwood Village service.

      1. The 560 initially terminated at Alaska Junction. It was truncated to Westwood Village due to low ridership in that segment.

         Do you recall how long ago this was?

      2. as, I believe most of it happened 2011.

   4. This is a much better solution. Happen quickly. Not billions of dollars. Serves more people. Lite rail to West Seattle is not the solution

2. To expound, let me create an image. I-5 express buses, Link, Sounder and Rapid Ride A create a fast (Link, Sounder, I5), frequent (A, Link), raging-river of transit connecting populations and jobs to the south. We need to build a canal that isn’t travelling uphill to Burien or Downtown Seattle, to connect the population centers of West Seattle (all 3 junctions, White Center, Westwood) to that raging river to population and job centers to the south.

   1. Maybe, but that is basically off topic. This is a substitute for West Seattle Link. West Seattle Link doesn’t do anything for trips of that nature. This helps for those trips to the south, but it isn’t the focus.

      Oh, and how is going to Burien uphill? I get why some in West Seattle don’t want to backtrack and head north when their destination is to the south (even though many do when driving — https://maps.app.goo.gl/3Hzu7q2fPuZf726b9). But Burien is basically on the way for the bulk of the trips going south and is as big a destination as anything else to the south. Before the pandemic, ridership (on the 560) from West Seattle to Burien was about the same as ridership from West Seattle to SeaTac. Burien is not only “on the way” but it is a worthy destination.

      1. We can debate whether it’s off topic or not, but I’ll take your word for it. Carry on.

      2. I think it is better discussion for an open thread. It really gets into regional transit and has very little to do with West Seattle Link.

3. Here we go again, with these ceaseless efforts to cancel West Seattle Link. I wish there was some better transparency on this blog from people, particularly Martin, regarding their long-standing activist stance against building light rail. This has been going on for years.

   The writers of this blog never wanted WS light rail, it was put in ST3 anyway, and it appears as though the writers are going to hold a long-standing grudge about it until they feel they get their way. This is almost a joke at this point.

   It is very telling that this blog rarely engages in this kind of transit routing analysis any longer, except, for SOME REASON, the West Seattle light rail line. Frequently. And often. Maybe it’s time for another gondola article?

   1. Jort, when you get unreserved commitment from the local community that the strip from 35th and Avalon to 46th and Edmunds, which would have two LR stations in the current plan, will look like the blocks around U-District Station by 2040, then come see us. You’ll get a much more enthusiastic hearing.

      Please don’t think our skepticism about West Seattle Link is anything other than a stance for “good government” probity. The region has already been hamstrung by political horse-trading into throwing away billions connecting sprawling rural hamlets with slow low-floor Light Rail technology running in freeway rights-of-way. We don’t need to waste more by building the stub to West Seattle that will do little to improve riders’ experience other than force them to transfer an extra time,. For most that additional transfer will require a three-story vertical change.

      If the strip I mentioned were providing 40% of the ridership, it would be worthwhile. But the current plans to allow only standard Seattle urban village heights just doesn’t meet the need, and most West Seattleites oppose even the modest upzones planned.

      I expect they’re “support” for building The Stub arises from a hope that the folks living in all the other houses on their block will flock to the train, leaving their drive to work seamless and easy.

      “Don’t plan for me to be inconvenienced….”

      1. “their” not “they’re” in the last paragraph.

      2. I think the expectation is a sort of “build it and they will come” for housing density. It might be a gamble, but I’d bet that the community will support higher density to accompany the stations.

   2. Apologies for the crazy duplicate comment, moderators. Nuke whichever you prefer.

      [edit: duplicate post deleted]

   3. I wish there was some better transparency on this blog from people, particularly Martin, regarding their long-standing activist stance against building light rail.

      No one on this blog is against building light rail. No one.

      It is very telling that this blog rarely engages in this kind of transit routing analysis any longer, except, for SOME REASON, the West Seattle light rail line.

      Yes, it is telling. No one is against light rail. But many are against West Seattle light rail. The reason we are against West Seattle Link is because it offers so little at an extremely high price. I can’t emphasize this enough. People in West Seattle Link are being screwed by West Seattle Link. It will offer them very little. In comparison this proposal offers riders from all over West Seattle:

      1) One-seat ride to downtown.
      2) Two-seat ride involving buses (or the streetcar) to places like First Hill, Central Area, Aurora, etc.
      3) Two-seat ride to the East Side (by making a transfer at CID).
      4) Two-seat ride to Ballard Link (by making a transfer downtown).
      5) Two-seat with minimal overlap to Renton (101) or Kent, Southcenter and Tukwila (150).
      6) Keeps the two-seat ride to Capitol Hill, UW, Northgate, etc. The only difference is the transfer point (instead of in West Seattle, folks would transfer at SoDo).

      In the first five cases there would be an additional transfer with West Seattle Link. For example to get to First Hill a rider would take a bus, then the train, then ride a bus again. Stations downtown are deep and the stations in West Seattle are bound to be high. Thus transfer time will not be trivial. In contrast if the bus kept going then it would run on Third and connect to the RapidRide G on the surface (saving riders a significant amount of time, and more than making up for the speed difference between the bus and the train).

      Just to be clear, there are people who would be better off with West Seattle Link. These are:

      1) People who live close to the stations.

      That’s it. Unless you live closer to a station you are better off with this bus-based proposal. They shouldn’t even call it “West Seattle Link”, but “Link for a handful of people in West Seattle” (while the rest of West Seattle gets screwed).

   4. “ The region has already been hamstrung by political horse-trading into throwing away billions connecting sprawling rural hamlets with slow low-floor Light Rail technology running in freeway rights-of-way. ”

      Yeah this is the fundamental waste inherent in ST3: A blind belief that the “slow low-floor Light Rail technology” is the optimal technology worth considering and the only one worthwhile of building. And not just next to freeways but also in deep, expensive tunnels.

      Regardless of the thoughts on other details in the post, this to me is the original, pervasive sin of ST that needs to be spotlighted.

   5. Jort, if you have a strong case for West Seattle Link, we’d love to hear it. Personally, I would be eager to help you write it if you wanted to help break the “ceaseless efforts” to cancel WSLE.

      > long-standing activist stance against building light rail

      None of the editors are opposed to building light rail where the cost to do so makes sense. We support the Ballard Link Extension but advocate for changes that would make it more affordable and more useful for future riders.

      > The writers of this blog never wanted WS light rail

      The editors of STB are all volunteer transit advocates with a range of nuanced opinions regarding WSLE. Some have always felt WSLE it was a bad project and was only included in ST3 as a political vanity project; others thought it was weak but worth supporting in case it could be done efficiently and effectively. I think it could be made worthwhile but there needs to be significant land use changes around the future station locations. Martin is motivated to write about WSLE, so he does, and he believes that spending a fraction of $4B on buses would be a better transit investment than the current plan for WSLE.

      > It is very telling that this blog rarely engages in this kind of transit routing analysis any longer

      We just hosted a week of posts by Troy that had in-depth discussions of bus and tram routing in Tacoma and Pierce County. Alex discussed routing ideas in response to Federal Way Link in early May. Ross discussed improvements for buses east of Green Lake in March. We had a healthy discussion of potential routing alternatives in the comments of the Waterfront Shuttle article a few weeks ago. If that’s not frequent enough for you, we genuinely welcome your own routing analyses; the blog has lost many of its authors in the last few years and could use new voices.

      The West Seattle and Ballard Link Extensions are of interest to the Blog because they represent extremely expensive projects that need to be done right.

      1. this blog rarely engages in this kind of transit routing analysis any longer

         Yeah, that is absurd. It is mostly what I do. In the last two years I’ve written fifteen articles alone that are basically just transit routing analysis. Everything from South Sound routes to the Lynnwood Link restructure as well as plenty in between (like RapidRide G). Plenty of other people have done them as well.

   6. “I wish there was some better transparency on this blog from people, particularly Martin, regarding their long-standing activist stance against building light rail.”

      What transparency do you want? RossB, MartinP, and I have consistently said we don’t think West Seattle has strong rail potential, and ST’s Link alignment would serve them badly. Other editors (mostly inactive now) supported West Seattle Link more.

      There’s another elephant in the room: ST’s planned downtown transfers. There will be up to a 10-minute, 9-escalator walk between Line 1 in DSTT2 and Lines 2/3 in DSTT1. West Seattle is sitting pretty because it will be in DSTT1 going directly to the U-District and with a same-station transfer to the Eastside. Rainier Valley, Ballard, and the south will be screwed because they’ll be in DSTT1. That conversely affects people going from West Seattle to SLU, Ballard, or southeast Seattle. Currently, you transfer from the C, H, or 21 at a stop next to a Link station, so it’s a shorter transfer. That will go away under ST’s plan. If West Seattle Link is canceled, DSTT2 might go away too, and then transfers would be better. And ST would have a lot of money to upgrade DSTT1, subsidize the bus routes, offer station-area enhancements, and shorten the maximum tax-collection period.

4. The number one complaint I hear from bus riders is that West Seattle destinations take too long to reach. This is especially true for the Westwood and White Center areas. Except for going to the SODO busway I don’t see much improvement in transit travel time to these places.

   Of course WS Link will not help with the travel time either. Hence the reduced ridership forecasts that ST keeps announcing for the project.

   1. Travel times get a huge boost from the increase in frequency. For example consider this trip from High Point to White Center: https://maps.app.goo.gl/HGwXBEkm33ovaJBy7. These are not obscure places. Not only are they relatively popular, but that particular spot in High Point is a transit crossroads. There are a number of different buses that can make that trip. But now look at the travel times. The quickest option gets you there 47 minutes after you leave! The time spent on the bus is actually very little — only about 20 minutes. It is all that waiting.

      There are other trips that are worse. For example in this case you are a few blocks to the south which means you are actually closer to your destination (https://maps.app.goo.gl/kCHr2tkiHV6iCz6B9). But because the 21 is so infrequent you have to wait fifteen minutes just to catch it before transferring to the H.

      Meanwhile, there are huge swaths of West Seattle that have nothing. They used to have peak-only service, but even that has gone away. Obviously these don’t have huge potential ridership, but these aren’t desolate places. Beach Drive has plenty of apartments/condos. The single-family neighborhoods at least have typical Seattle lots (5,000 square feet) instead of the giant lots you find in the suburbs (and even my neighborhood). The houses are fairly close together. Meanwhile, the 22 serves plenty of apartments as well as Sealth High School. Have you seen the schedule? It runs less than every hour! That is appalling. Not only does it mean that the bus is rarely used, but it means it is basically useless when it comes to transfers, despite crossing paths with just about every other bus in West Seattle. This represents a huge improvement when it comes to travel times.

      1. I want to highlight this a bit harder — the 22 schedule isn’t just appalling, it is APPALLING. It could really be a very useful route on its current path…if it ever ran. It would be more useful to just cancel it entirely if there isn’t going to be a major frequency increase in the pipeline.

5. Alki Beach is a wildly messy area to serve because of traffic congestion, especially in the summer. I’ve witnessed traffic there crawling at 9 PM! I think severing Route 50 to run off of it is a good idea because it can really make the entire route unreliable. The corridor also has lots on new housing units on it in the form of beachfront condo and apartment buildings. It’s an issue that exists no matter if WS link is built or not.

   1. Alki Beach is perhaps a good use case for a gondola in West Seattle. NOT as a replacement for Link, but as a complement. Bus lanes are not likely, and light rail/streetcar would likely have trouble with the slopes, and yet the distance from Alaska Junction is not far. Because the current transit options do not avoid the traffic congestion (likely a limitation even with the proposed bus based plan!), and involve a transfer to an infrequent bus, most people drive. The parking is very limited, which leads to people circling around for parking, which worsens the traffic congestion and makes transit an even less viable option.

6. Martin, moving the Rapid Rides to the busway certainly improves their integration with Link, but unless something expensive is done at the north end of the busway (Lower Royal Brougham Way and Fourth Avenue South) it will add several minutes to the trip for CBD-bound riders. You might want to investigate what that “something” would require.

   I agree that it would extend and improve the utility of a very good transit facility from which Link has diverted many buses.

   1. Yes, unless a new on/off ramp is built, its not a viable option. Building such ramp would be expensive but still far cheaper than building a light rail stub and it would bring the advantage of light rail connections to WS buses as it would essentially move the transfer to light rail from a few WS stations to SODO and CID.

      1. I don’t think you understand what I’m asking about. You absolutely would need a new westbound on-ramp to the upper deck on Spokane Street, and you certainly could modify the eastbound off-ramp to Fourth South to have a bus-only stub down to the lower level at the end of the busway.

         But I’m talking about the north end of the busway where taking the former pathway for buses into the tunnel by the LR tracks has forced the busway lines to jog over to Fourth South using Lower Royal Brougham Way. LBWay is not that bad; there isn’t that much traffic on it. But Fourth South between LB Way and Jackson is a zoo because of the I-90 ramps.

         Yes, there are bus-lanes, and that surely helps, but the northbound buses often crawl along waiting for the multiple lights and cross-walks. Even if the crossings at Lander and Holgate were overpassed by the crossing streets so no delays at all occur on the busway, I would expect that it will take at least five to seven minutes longer to get from the interchange of SR99 and the West Seattle Freeway to Third and Columbia. There’s just lots more “stuff” to navigate on the Fourth South pathway.

         It’s not clear how to make that better.

         Quality service from each of the three main activity centers in West Seattle to SoDo needs to be provided, and rerouting the RapidRides to the busway does that. The 50 certainly is not sufficient, if for no other reason than that it does not go south of Alaska Street. But giving better service to Link while taking away better direct service to downtown isn’t necessarily a good trade-off.

      2. @Tom — I considered that issue. Very early on I was ready with a table listing all of the various trade-offs. I had one option for the express (like it is now) another option for using the SoDo busway, and a third for West Seattle Link. As expected there are winners and losers with every choice. But SoDo was the best choice.

         Partly it is because using it isn’t that slow. It is faster than I expected (at least according to Google Maps). Of course there could be improvements made, but Seattle keeps chipping away at improvements of that nature. I don’t know how practical big improvements would be. Martin mentions adding overpasses at Lander St and Holgate St (which would improve the bus and Link speeds). I don’t know if there is a way to improve the busway further (e. g. a tunnel where it ends to somewhere close to Jackson). It is certainly worth considering as ST is big on capital projects. (To be clear I’m not talking about a tunnel with stops/stations I’m just talking about a tunnel that would avoid the dogleg.) In any event what exists now (or what can realistically be expected if we commit to the SoDo busway and just add paint) would not be much slower than what exists now.

         There is also a penalty of sorts with the current pathway of buses like C, H and 21. It skips the south end of downtown. Sounder or Amtrak to West Seattle becomes a three-seat ride (or a long walk). A trip to the East Side means transferring at University. This isn’t that bad, but you’ve lost what you gained with the express. There are similar backtracks with trips to buses like the 3, 4, 7, 14, 36. Visiting the CID means a transfer or a long walk. Trips using the 101 or 150 would involve a lot more backtracking. Yes, there are probably alternatives, but for a lot of people transferring close to the Alaska Way Viaduct would save a lot of time (it would be the way many would drive).

         But the key is really that connection to Link. Remember the overall goal is to replace West Seattle Link. Thus it is essential that it competes well with with for every trip. By using the SoDo busway you do that. If you are going to the UW then the transfer at SoDo is really not that much different than the transfer at the Junction or on Delridge. If you are reversing directions (to head towards SeaTac) then this saves you an extra transfer. There are still winners and losers (compared to West Seattle Link) but the winners with this approach are huge while the losing is fairly minimal.

      3. Sorry, Tom, I misread your first comment. It would be great to improve the north end, too.

      4. Ross, I agree with your points that favor of the busway, but as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I think you can do it by providing a pair of upgraded routes, one of which starts in the northern part of the West Seattle peninsula or at Alki Point, passes through Alaska Junction then goes express from 35th and Avalon to SoDo, redirecting the 125 to SoDo and running both at RapidRide frequencies.

         That gives you both good things: the fastest possible ride to the CBD (and the south end of the Waterfront) and a quick ride to Link for more distant destinations.

         The H is faster from White Center to the stops shared with the 125 near the West Seattle Freeway, so the folks in the section between headed to Link would not be very badly penalized by the transfer and those headed downtown from West Seattle College could just take Link. If there’s no WSLE there’s not likely to be a DSTT2 to divert the Line 1 trains from the good tunnel.

         If moving everything to the busway turns out to be the only thing that could be afforded by Metro — a possibility because ST is not supposed to pay for “local bus operations” — then some sort of separated right of way through the Fourth and Jackson mess would be imperative.

         I don’t know what is planned for the “carpool ramp” from I-90 to Fifth South and Seattle Way, but it looks to me like shaving the rear twenty feet off the parking lots on the east side of Fourth South up to the Turner Construction building would allow a two-lane busway to rise high enough to cross the eastbound Line 2 Link track and swing over to the Fifth South “carpool ramp” intersection at Seattle Way. Then Fifth South could be made bus only up to Washington, with a turn west to Fourth and Prefontaine.

         Some routes could continue in the contra-flow lane to Marion then jog over to Sixth to continue north. Those routes would use Fifth southbound all the way. This would be very popular with folks headed for the office towers and Convention Center area.

      5. @Tom — The SoDo pathway is pretty fast, but it could be faster. Martin mentions that (making the busway faster would help Link as well). The connection between the busway and Third is a bit messy and could be improved. It is quite likely these would go together. You would need buy-off for freight but it might work out well. For example, consider Holgate. It runs on the surface east-west. Let’s say they add a bridge over the Link tracks (and busway) as well as the big set of tracks to the west (like they did at Lander). You would have ramps for 4th as well each side, so this wouldn’t be dirt cheap. That gets rid of one grade-level crossing. This is better for Link, the busway and freight. So much so that you can make another change. Block off Royal Brougham Way (RBW) between 4th and 6th (for everything but transit). This would eliminate another crossing. That means that the only crossing (for buses and trains) is at Lander. This would greatly speed up Link (and the buses). The buses would still need to do a dogleg to Fourth, but there would be no traffic coming from the east or heading west (only buses). This means the first part of the dogleg (SoDo Busway to RBW) would be trivial. You could have a beg button for pedestrians but otherwise the buses wouldn’t stop (either direction). The intersection at 4th and RBW would not be as smooth, but it would still be a lot better, since all the traffic (i. e. the buses) from the east are heading north and no one is going east-west. At that point you just need paint.

         But it isn’t terrible now. There are trade-offs. Again, I initially considered something like that. But when I did the math I found that the SoDo busway is pretty fast.

         The problem with splitting routes is that you lose the ability to share trips. Assume the C is running express while the 21 is running via SoDo. This means that if I’m heading to Avalon from the CID I have ten minute frequency instead of five. Same goes for a transfer to Link. It still works, but not as well.

         Same thing goes for the north end of Delridge. Multiple buses serve the same stops each direction. That is one of the more interesting things about this proposal. For two thirds of the trips riders have a more frequent trip downtown, which very well could make up for the slower speed.

         I could see splitting the 125 and H because they wouldn’t be timed as well and because the area where they overlap has fewer people. But I’m still not sure it is worth it. There will be people that prefer the express, but plenty who don’t. The south end of downtown is popular. The transfer to Link is popular. That is key. One of the few arguments for West Seattle Link is that people are going to other Link locations. Fair enough. But with this plan the trip to Link is still very good. They would stay on the bus just a little bit longer (and their bus would be more frequent). Those making a reverse connection (or heading to the East Side or Ballard) save a transfer. All the while they retain their one-seat ride to downtown. That is a very small price to pay for using SoDo (which is fairly fast).

         If I were to run an express it would likely be *within” West Seattle. To a certain extent that is what is done here, with the 56. Instead of cutting over to the Junction, it goes to downtown via Admiral Way (which is much faster). In pure drive time this saves 8 minutes (according to Google). In bus time that is likely bigger.

         Of course a lot of that savings will be eaten by having the bus go via First. If we found an alternative for service on First Avenue (e. g. extended the 5 and just had it layover somewhere close to Spokane Street) then the 56 could use SoDo as well (making it even faster).

         The choice of the 56 for First Avenue was not arbitrary. It is more independent than the other routes. They have nothing right now, so this is a big improvement. But running via First (while skipping the Alaska Junction) likely saves riders more time then if the bus went through the Alaska Junction and then followed the same pathway as the current RapidRide C. If you really want to save time, then *within* West Seattle is how you do it. The SoDo busway is not very slow. There is a reason why no one from Renton wants to get rid of the 101 (and just run the buses to Link).

         Of course we could add more express buses. The 116, 118 and 119 were all expresses. But they only ran during peak. Now they don’t. This means that if we ran expresses only a relative handful of people would use them. The biggest issue with express buses in West Seattle is that density in the peninsula is not that stratified. The dense areas are not that dense (there are no skyscrapers). The lightly populated areas still have plenty of people (the single family lots are not huge). If you look at the census data there is a fairly consistent range for the entire area. These are areas where express buses would not carry many people.

      6. Ross, the more I think about the Fifth/Sixth path I sketched out to avoid the mess at Fourth and Jackson, the more certain I am that it would be a very big improvement to the system. In fact, it’s almost a perfect solution to the loss of Midtown
         That station is the best thing –heck, the only good thing — one can say about DSTT2.

         I know you think that the hike up from Pioneer Square to the high-rise core around Fifth and Marion is not a barrier to transit use, but it is. From the roughly sea-level platform at PSS it’s nearly three hundred vertical feet to Fifth and Marion, and this is one time when “it’s not that far” [laterally] is actually not that good. [It makes it steeper; there’s a reason that there isn’t a tall building where Coit Tower is.]

         But if there were frequent buses using the busway and the Fifth/Sixth pathway, a rider could transfer at Stadium and be at Sixth and Madison in what, eight minutes? People would definitely do that.

         Development along Fourth South may mean that it isn’t possible to get from the west side of the Line 1 tracks at Lower Brougham Way to the carpool ramp entrance at Fifth South and Seattle Way, but if it hasn’t and it can be embargoed for a small investment by Metro and/or the City, it would be great to preserve the pathway.

         People on Link headed to Third or even Westlake Center would simply stay on as they do now, but riders on routes serving the new pathway can transfer to Link to get there.

         Even if WSLE isn’t built, there has to be somewhere for the Everett trains to reverse south of downtown Seattle, so there will be plenty of northbound trains for riders heading to Third to change to quickly.

      7. Oh, no. I apologize. I thought I found all the phone-typos, but I messed up your name. Again, apologies, Ross.

      8. Also, I think I have advocated for closing Lower Royal Brougham Way at least six or eight times in various comments advocating for Line 3 (if built) just use the same tracks as Line 1. You can ask Martin who reads what I write carefully because he is interested in the minutia of rail systems.

      9. @Tom — I wish people had the rights to edit their own comments. It is really not that hard for us though, so don’t worry about it. It is actually easier to use the editor than it is making a regular comment if you plan on adding thinks like bold text, italics or hyperlinks. Anyway, I’ll change the obvious ones but let me know if there are other changes I can make.

7. I don’t see WS Link getting cancelled. The Board is already authorizing property acquisition for it. It’s a noble idea to explore what would happen if it was cancelled — but it’s not going to happen without major unforeseen intervention or shift in funding. (Trump winning in November and a radical cutback at FTA is what I think is probably the biggest threat to the project.) Plus, while there are changes here the core WS bus service retains its general layout so I don’t see proposals like this making project cancellation more desirable.

   I think there is a more likely outcome that ST will end up running the WS line through downtown in the DSTT as a third line from the initial opening date instead. If the project does get put on the ropes due to poor performance, there will be an all out push to save it — and eliminating the SODO transfer seems the easiest service plan change to make that happen. What happens with ridership on MLK after Federal Way Link opens would also be a big factor in determining if a third line is possible in the DSTT.

   Another possible outcome is for the Alaska Junction station to be cut. It’s a significant cost to go just that little bit further, and since so many of the projected riders are coming from buses anyway, those buses could simply go to Avalon or Delridge instead. (Is going one more station to Alaska Junction worth the few riders it would add from only a bigger walkshed?) This seems more possible if an FTA under Trump pulls out. Of course, the Alaska Junction station could be built above ground or even at grade (Alaska Street as a light rail transit mall with no traffic) to save money at the last minute.

   Another more radical bus-only idea is to cobble together a streamlined, longer West Seattle “busway” corridor using the WS bridge bus lanes and using the cost savings to build something like a bus tunnel that gets buses faster through the Alaska Junction area as well as direct bus ramp access to SODO station from Spokane Street.

   Anyway, I think the best bus-only alternative is going to have to be to propose something more enticing than this, like at least one or two more RapidRide lines plus maybe even a Stride line on SR 509. I’m not saying it’s better than what’s presented here; only that what’s presented here doesn’t seem radical enough to garner new enthusiastic support. This is when Burnham’s advice is appropriate: Make no little plans!

   1. Well said, Al.

      > end up running the WS line through downtown in the DSTT as a third line from the initial opening date instead

      If DSTT maxes out at 3-minute headways, that’s 24 trains per hour, then this seems doable:

      1 Line: Lynnwood to Federal Way (10 tph)
      2 Line: Lynnwood to Redmond (8 tph)
      3 Line: Northgate to West Seattle? Certainly a much more enticing proposition than stubbing at SODO. (6 tph)

      But I think the capacity constraints aren’t in the trains per hour, but flow constraints for egress, of which I haven’t seen specific analysis.

      > something like a bus tunnel that gets buses faster through the Alaska Junction area

      That’s an interesting proposition, but why not just turn Alaska transit-only from 35th to California, and then put bus lanes down California?

      1. “ But I think the capacity constraints aren’t in the trains per hour, but flow constraints for egress, of which I haven’t seen specific analysis.”

         New sidings for an added Link line are many orders of magnitude cheaper than a new tunnel as long as they aren’t inside a subway tunnel. That’s especially true where tracks are next to a freeway like I-5 north of Northgate where the air space above the freeway lanes are already in public ownership.

      2. I wouldn’t be surprised if East Link ends up with 6 tph even at peak. It may be that FW may be fine at 8 tph at peak but that seems more likely to get overcrowding.

         Keep in mind that the paltry WS branch forecasts are so low that 4 tph could work without overcrowding although ST likes 6 tph minimums.

         Of course, replacing trains with open gangway vehicles would increase capacity by as much as 20 percent per train.

      3. “If DSTT maxes out at 3-minute headways, that’s 24 trains per hour”

         20 trains per hour is what ST is comfortable with. That’s the problem. Half the third line’s trains would be beyond that limit. Reducing West Seattle’s peak frequency to 10-12 minutes probably wouldn’t go over well with the entitled people that pushed for West Seattle Link in the first place and have political clout.

      4. Wow, I messed up that simple math pretty badly. Of course 3-minute headways is 20 tph.

         Anyways, they could do this:

         1 Line: Lynnwood to Federal Way – 8 tph
         2 Line: Lynnwood to Redmond – 6 tph
         3 Line: Northgate to West Seattle – 6 tph

         I don’t think the folks who pushed for WSLE would care that much about the difference between 6, 8, or 10 tph in 2032; just that they built the train to WS.

      5. Al, I was referring to egress of passengers from the tunnel and various stations, the capacity for which is apparently less than the ridership estimates for the three downtown-running Link lines in 2045. Train throughput doesn’t seem to be the main issue.

      6. @ Nathan:

         You make a valid observation that vertical egress may be an issue. I’ve raised it several times before because I’ve had to wait as much as a minute to get on an up escalator from the Westlake platform.

         I don’t think that should present introducing three lines though. Riders getting off trains every three minutes should presumably clear from a side platform. It may be tighter if it’s a center platform with the trains from both directions, but that’s still a train unloading every 90 seconds. .The impact is from the exiting volumes at a particular station.

         Ridership at high volume stations in other major cities handle more riders easily. Keep in mind that the issue is independent of the vehicle technology so urban heavy rail systems are appropriate for comparison too.

         A further benefit of having all the lines in the DSTT is that it eases an exiting surge concentrated at one key transfer station. That distributed exiting would get doors closing faster and better help trains keep on schedule.

      7. When ST in 2016 selected the DSTT2 project instead of the DSTT1 upgrade project, it gave the impression the limitation was related to signal/track/train issues. In 2023 when it responded to public testimony put three lines in DSTT1 and and cancel DSTT2, it said the problem is platform capacity or escalator/stair/elevator capacity. The ST staff said that off the top of his head from a vague memory, since the issue hadn’t come up for seven years and he may not have been involved with it. So we don’t know what the real limitations are, or how valid they are.

         The ST board refuses to review the issue, or in their terminology, “to confirm earlier assumptions”. They took the position that since a previous board rejected it in 2016, they wouldn’t look at it again.

   2. “I don’t see WS Link getting cancelled. The Board is already authorizing property acquisition for it. It’s a noble idea to explore what would happen if it was cancelled — but it’s not going to happen without major unforeseen intervention or shift in funding.”

      We still need to document what its limitations are and what a robust alternative would be.

      Officials may not be open to it now, but if ST reaches a point that it flat-out can’t afford DSTT2 and that raises questions about the West Seattle-SODO stub, or if Congress zeros out transit grants, then we’ll have an alternative all ready to suggest.

      1. All politics is local. A West Seattle resident, including Dow, really doesn’t care whether Link gets to Ballard.

         The key for WS is to go first, and that is a stub to Sodo. If there isn’t money for DSTT2 then WS Link will interline with DSTT1. Not bad since that is the plan anyway. If there is money for DSTT2 then WS just wants to be in DSTT1. If there isn’t money for Ballard Link what does someone in WS care? They don’t want to go to Ballard or use DSTT2 if there is a DSTT2 anyway.

         There probably isn’t money for DSTT2 or Ballard Link anyway. So WS wants underground stations and tunnels like the rest of Link to Northgate, at least a stub to Sodo, and interlining in DSTT1. There is money for that. Whether that is the best use of the subarea’s available revenue is not WS’s concerns. Or Dow’s.

         It is pointless to argue to a WS resident there isn’t the funding to complete WS to Ballard Link so the highest ridership portions should be built first. They know there isn’t enough money. Why do you think WS is adamant it go first with a stub to Sodo.

      2. A West Seattle resident, including Dow, really doesn’t care whether Link gets to Ballard.

         And most won’t benefit from West Seattle Link. That is the point. We need to make clear that there is an alternative besides “do nothing”. This is better for the vast majority of people in West Seattle. A lot better.

      3. We don’t think it’s the majority of West Seattle residents who are so hot on West Seattle Link or a West Seattle-SODO stub, it’s an influential minority of politicians who are. There’s even a group of West Seattle activists called Rethink the Link that’s against the extension.

         West Seattle residents may not care about Ballard, but conversely, a majority of North King residents don’t care about West Seattle.

         “Whether that is the best use of the subarea’s available revenue is not WS’s concerns. Or Dow’s.”

         It’s both of their concerns. West Seattle residents are North King taxpayers. Dow is King County executive and represents North King as well as East King and South King, and is a West Seattle/North King taxpayer.

      4. Mike, the chair of the ST Board and King Co. exec lives in WS. WS Link is part of ST3 which as you constantly point out is what the voters approved.

         So if you are in WS and you don’t think there is enough subarea revenue you just want to make sure WS goes first, and either way interlines with DSTT1 whether there is DSTT2 or not.

         Al is right: the Board or King Co. (actually N Seattle subarea) residents are not changing ST 3. The only key question in N King Co is which parts go first because there probably isn’t the money for the rest. Dow knows that.

         And don’t expect WS to adopt zoning to try and make WS Link more successful. I really don’t think WS sees Link as TRANSIT. More like political spoils.

         Ross makes the point WS Link will be worse transit for WS, which is a legitimate argument to use on someone from WS, if they really care about Link as transit. Very car oriented neighborhood.

         I just don’t know if they will see that. Link in many ways is whether a city or neighborhood is a player, and that is how the enormous cost of Link and ST were sold. Everett, Tacoma, Issaquah Link to me at least are worse than the (bus) alternative but they see Link in terms of ego. Is any of these cities or WS going to ask the ST Board to change ST 3 for them after so much Link has been built? I doubt it.

         WS just wants to go first because they don’t think there will be enough money for DSTT2 or Ballard Link. If they get to Sodo they think they will get to DSTT1 which has always been there goal. I think this “common good” argument is meaningless to WS.

      5. WS is first because it was supposed to the simplest of the five main Link extensions planned for ST3 (not counting Redmond Link, which will open before the floating portion of East Link, despite being authorized later).

         Then, the costs exploded for all the extensions in part because WS wanted it to go underground at Alaska Junction, which made it more complicated. Plus, getting a shiny (as shiny as concrete can be) new bridge built over the Duwamish for the first time in decades will be seen as a major win and emblematic of how Sound Transit tackles the impossible.

      6. Link in many ways is whether a city or neighborhood is a player, and that is how the enormous cost of Link and ST were sold. Everett, Tacoma, Issaquah Link to me at least are worse than the (bus) alternative but they see Link in terms of ego.

         I think that is certainly part of it. Dow Constantine is by far the most powerful person within ST, and has been for a while now. He made damn sure that West Seattle got theirs even if it is more style than substance.

         I think there is also this assumption that light rail is the answer to transit woes. I get that. It is fast, fairly frequent and goes to several major destinations. It is easy to assume that running Link to your city or region changes everything. In some cases this is definitely true. In the case of the West Seattle, it just isn’t. It adds so little value that it is relatively easy to come up with an alternative that is much better for the vast majority of people who live, work or visit the peninsula (and we did).

         Is any of these cities or WS going to ask the ST Board to change ST 3 for them after so much Link has been built? I doubt it.

         I understand your cynicism. You can see it on this blog. Somehow by proposing a transit system that is clearly better for the vast majority of people in West Seattle we are “anti-transit” or at the very least “anti-light rail”. This is not a good era for subtlety. Heaven forbid we actually make the case that a massively expensive metro makes sense in some areas, but not others. Getting that message to the powers that be will be difficult.

         It is quite likely that we will follow in the footsteps of other American cities* and build something that is extremely expensive and not very good. We will then run out of money to spend on things that are worthwhile. We will have a second rate transit system, while places like West Seattle can take pride in their shiny rail even though almost everyone drives (they have to — transit sucks). That is likely to happen but until then we will at least fight the good fight.

         *This seems to happen exclusively in America. I’m not sure why, other than in general we have no idea what we are doing.

      7. “*This seems to happen exclusively in America. I’m not sure why,”

         It goes back to the anti-urban mindset of some of the settlers. Cities were seen as places of sin, and 19th century industrial cities really were polluting and unhealthy. So people dreamed of a house in the countryside, like the nostalgia for Merrie Old England or Hobbiton. When cars appeared and the US was the most prosperous country on earth, people saw driving as natural and their birthright, a sign of American exceptionalism. This lifestyle also had a sense of higher status compared to living in a city tenemant or in an old world city. Then there was the white/black animosity, where many whites wanted to separate themselves from blacks and differentiate themselves socially from them. And individualism, or pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and driving yourself around in your own car rather than using welfare transit or spending public money on it. These people and the highway lobby had the upper hand, so they wrote the city/state/federal policies to their liking.

         All this played out in the gas-station/freeway-exit/big-box-store suburbs, and in a similar but less complete way in cities. It varies widely depending on the city and neighborhood.

         So generations of people grew up not using transit or without transit, even though their grandparents rode streetcars, but they gradually forgot about that or thought of it as something obsolete. And generations of politicians/policymakers didn’t ride transit, so even when they wanted it and tried to create it, they didn’t understand what would be effective or what passengers need.

         That’s how you end up with West Seattle Link that’s less effective than any existing bus route. In northeast and southeast Seattle Link goes north-south in corridors that match at least some people’s trips and provide express speed. In West Seattle there are three east-west stations planned. But West Seattle’s long axis is north-south. The only people who really benefit from Link are those within walking distance of the three stations, and that’s few people. If the politicians looked at it from a passengers’ view and asked passengers what they needed, they’d understand that what works in northeast and southeast Seattle, and east-west in Bellevue/Redmond, and along the Stride 405 corridor, doesn’t work in West Seattle. But the politicians rammed it through anyway because it sounded like a cute idea and they can say they provided “high-capacity transit” to West Seattle. And it’s probably mostly politicians who want it, not that many West Seattle residents.

      8. “Settlers” didn’t arrive with some ingrained anti urban bias. There were no cities at that time. Immigrants over the decades were discouraged from locating in the nearby cities and forced farther west. Those that did locate in large cities were relegated to ethnic slums they naturally disliked because those areas received no services.

         To understand the flight from cities simply study the history of zoning in which large cities were the plaintiffs. Laissez faire development had made cities unlivable with incompatible uses in the same neighborhoods (there were no zones) and a lack of impact fees and coordination had made critical infrastructure like water, sewer and roads impossible to coordinate and fund. Large cities at the time were literal shit holes, especially with the horse manure and inadequate sewage systems.

         Cars eliminated the horse manure but also allowed citizens to locate outside the city, but streetcars had already begun that migration, although many of those early “suburbs” have been incorporated, like West Seattle. But part of those neighborhoods’ charm is they still retain a kind of suburban zoning and character.

         The other huge benefit of cars and mobility is they reduced population congestion in the large cities, which were too dense for the infrastructure and tax base during the period before zoning.

         This discussion on West Seattle misses a critical fact: West Seattle is a suburb, and likes being a suburb. Link makes little sense to WS because of the cost and because WS has little intent of becoming less suburban.

         People don’t move to WS for the “urbanism”. No one is ever going to develop the golf course, and that is a decision for WS. There will be upzoning by the Link stations like in every other suburban city surrounded by suburban single family neighborhoods, but at the same time fewer people need to commute by transit and downtown Seattle no longer offers things not available in WS.

         WS like every other city or neighborhood never saw Link as a change agent. They saw Link as a better form of transit to complement the character and zoning of their city or neighborhood. Just like Capitol Hill fights so hard against taller buildings or more density. The CHS was never seen as a call for greater density by the residents. Just an easier way to get to UW or downtown although the station has safety and aesthetic issues that were not imagined.

         The mistake some make and ST made is thinking Link is transformative. Not really, just better than buses in some situations. West Seattle isn’t one of those. Neither is Ballard, another incorporated suburb of people who long ago fled “the city”. The reality is if a city or neighborhood’s character and zoning don’t fit Link today it won’t fit tomorrow so the huge cost, especially across water, is not just unwarranted but UNNEEDED. We spend way too much time trying to make Link needed in a community when it never will be. We need to stop trying to force a square peg into a round hole.

         As a transplant to Seattle I am always amazed at what some consider “urban”. I don’t see any true urbanism anywhere in Seattle, especially outer neighborhoods like WS. So I can’t understand why anyone would consider running a subway to WS.

      9. Ross, Fact Check’s sole purpose for being here is to throw sand in the gears. We all know that WSLE is just a sop to West Seattle’s perennial resentment about not completely controlling the City government. FC is not telling us anything we don’t already know. He’s here to remind us that we don’t count. And crow about it.

      10. “This seems to happen exclusively in America. I’m not sure why,”

          It goes back to the anti-urban mindset of some of the settlers.

          To be clear I’m not really asking about why various parts of America became so car dependent, or why they sprawled. There are some great articles about that. It gets complicated (early embrace of the car and the bedroom community, zoning, suburban subsidies, racism, lack of rural aesthetic, lack of power for farmers, etc.).

          What I’m getting it is why so many America transit projects are bad. Of course this is a judgement call, but I think if you asked transit experts to list transit projects by value America would have some good ones, but they would also dominate the bottom of the list. Canada is just as suburban and car dependent, but they do a better job. Australia also sprawls, but I don’t think they have the long list of failures that we do. Some of it is the really high cost. If West Seattle Link cost as much as the streetcar we wouldn’t be having this discussion. But there is also a tendency in the United States to just build the wrong thing. Not only in Seattle but Denver, Dallas, the Bay Area, Sacramento (to name a few). Some of this may go together. It is much harder to build a system in a suburban area than a really urban one. But DC did it, and DC is nowhere near as urban as a similar city in Europe. I think it is more than just the practicalities, but the politics. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the other Washington has the best post-war metro and is also the nation’s capital. The politics are different.

          I also think ignorance has a lot to do with it, and this goes together with everything else. All countries can be provincial but it is less likely that Italy (for example) is going to completely ignore what is happening in Spain. America is very isolated. We are also arrogant. We assume we have the best, or at the very least, we need to build something different because we are different. The idea that Canada or Australia (with very similar land patterns) built something better is not even considered. “Why would we copy a foreign country?” seems to be the American mindset (with damn near everything, unfortunately).

          You can definitely see this with West Seattle Link. I keep going back to this: Four billion dollars for three stations. That is basically the same as the first phase of the Second Avenue Subway (for a lot fewer riders). The Second Avenue Subway is widely considered to be way more expensive than it should be. But given the ridership it is quite reasonable. So if the area around the three West Seattle stations starts looking like Manhattan then we can say the same thing. Sorry, but it ain’t gonna happen. It is quite likely that we are building the worst transit project in the world (in terms of cost versus value).

      11. WS is first because it was supposed to the simplest of the five main Link extensions planned for ST3

          I think that is part of it, but from that perspective it really doesn’t make sense. The initial line goes to SoDo. That provides next to nothing for riders. It isn’t until it goes downtown that it starts adding value (such as it is).

          I think Dow wanted to get his foot in the door. He remembers what happened with the monorail. Right before that project collapsed the planners decided to shrink the line. They kept Ballard, but abandoned West Seattle. Dow must know that if the train makes it to SoDo it will eventually get to downtown (one way or another). In contrast it is quite possible that Ballard is the one that loses out (if we have a big budget shortfall). Of course there will be future plans to connect Ballard (no matter what happens) but West Seattle might have their train (interlined with the other trains after all) while Ballard has to pass another measure (and wait).

      12. “What I’m getting it is why so many America transit projects are bad. Of course this is a judgement call, but I think if you asked transit experts to list transit projects by value America would have some good ones, but they would also dominate the bottom of the list. Canada is just as suburban and car dependent, but they do a better job.”

          Our positions aren’t that different. Canada and the US have similar land uses but Canada’s transit projects are more effective and there are more of them. Why is that? Things like people’s attitudes, beliefs and government structure. Vancouver’s, Calgary’s, and Toronto’s residents demand effective transit and get it. In the US people are more gullible to arguments that comprehensive transit isn’t needed, or it’s unachievable and unaffordable, or only poor people would use it, or politicians have little experience with transit and won’t listen to experts, or they claim some project will solve the problem but it won’t, and the public accepts it because they think it’ll solve the problem or that it’s the only thing they’ll be able to get. Add to that large lobbyist campaign contributions; i.e., corruption, which come from the fossil-fuel companies and highway lobby.

          The cost of American construction is only an issue to the extent that projects cost more, or conversely we can build less for the same amount. That’s a secondary issue. We can pay more, fix the cost structure, or do lower-cost projects that would be more effective than the ones we do.

   3. what’s presented here doesn’t seem radical enough to garner new enthusiastic support.

      Ha, that’s funny. We struggled with this post because it seemed unrealistic. Way too much service for West Seattle, basically. I kept having to remind folks that while it is definitely huge and arguably overkill, so is West Seattle Link.

      I think the lack of emphasis on frequency has you thinking this is small. It isn’t. I lay out the different frequencies here: https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/06/07/west-seattle-by-bus-instead-of-light-rail/#comment-933469.

      Notice that the 21 gets ten minute frequency(as Martin put it, “RapidRide level”). It would be fairly easy to make it officially RapidRide. It is not the only area with ten minute frequency. Not only the C, H and 21, but also the shared section of the 128 and 126 (https://maps.app.goo.gl/RTMbBjo188ejhVWT6). So that means 10 minute frequency along the three major corridors as well as the main connector route. This is huge!

      Specific destinations also have major improvements in frequency. I’ll start with my alma mater, South Seattle (Community) College. Right now it has a bus that runs from downtown every half hour. It has another bus that runs every twenty minutes connecting it to the south. It short, it sucks. In contrast the first thing we do is run the bus from downtown to the college every 15 minutes. Not only that, but there would be other buses running every 10 minutes towards Alki. It isn’t that Alki is such a huge destination — it is that Alki and the college form east-west bookends to go with the frequent north-south buses. This means that if you need to transfer within West Seattle from the college your first bus arrives every 10 minutes. There are only a handful of places in the county with that kind of frequency. Hell, it is the frequency of Link!

      Now consider Alki. They finally have a one-seat ride to downtown. Like the college that bus runs every minutes. Alki also has the same setup for connecting buses. Every ten minutes there will be a bus heading east. So not only do riders have one-seat rides to places like Alaska Junction, Morgan Junction, High Point and the college, but they have buses running every 10 minutes connecting them to all (frequent) north-south buses. Admiral Junction is similar. Ten minute service south on California. Fifteen minute service directly towards downtown on what is a fairly fast pathway (even with the service on First). It beats the hell out of waiting for a bus to take you south so that you can head back north on the C. There are even sections of the network that have 5 minute headways. Again, that is more frequent than Link! If you are on Avalon you would have a bus running every 5 minutes to downtown. If you are on California between Alaska and Morgan Junction (and a lot of people are) you would have buses running every 5 minutes.

      Meanwhile, there are huge swaths of West Seattle that have nothing (or basically nothing) and they would have half hour service. By now you are probably thinking half hour service sounds like crap. Compared to the rest of West Seattle it would be. But it would be a huge improvement compared to what exists now. The 37 is suspended, but only ran during peak. The 57 runs three times a day (each direction). The 22 runs worse than hourly. Now they finally have consistent half-hour buses connecting them to the major destinations and almost all of the buses. Finally they can get places without driving. It might require a transfer to get downtown, but compared to the situation now it is a gigantic upgrade.

      This is not BS improvements. This is not a “BRT” line that carries a few hundred a day. This is a major upgrade for West Seattle. The vast majority of trips that people actually take would be a lot faster.

      1. Getting more frequent buses is great! I’d consider giving some of the routes RapidRide branding to drive the frequency point home. Transit enthusiasts will study details like service frequency but the average person needs to quickly grasp the power of it in just a few seconds and they will gravitate to visualizing a more frequent network. . .

      2. “Notice that the 21 gets ten minute frequency(as Martin put it, “RapidRide level”). It would be fairly easy to make it officially RapidRide. It is not the only area with ten minute frequency. Not only the C, H and 21, but also the shared section of the 128 and 126 (https://maps.app.goo.gl/RTMbBjo188ejhVWT6). So that means 10 minute frequency along the three major corridors as well as the main connector route. This is huge!”

         That’s what Chicago has all over the city, and San Francisco in many corridors, and a generally European level of transit. So it’s not pie-in-the-sky; it’s what West Seattle’s normal level of bus transit should be. It’s the lack of that that’s part of what’s pushing demand for Link, both in West Seattle and throughout Pugetopolis and the US.

      3. @Al — I made another map and talk about it in this comment: https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/06/07/west-seattle-by-bus-instead-of-light-rail/#comment-933526. It isn’t a great map (I’m not Oran) but I think it emphasizes the big frequency improvement better than the one focused on the routes. Let me know what you think.

   4. I’m a WS resident and I would benefit greatly from all of these plans but I have to agree that this restructure isn’t enough. It’s entirely fair to propose that “bus service is better than light rail will ever be for you” and there’s a lot to like here but the scope isn’t big enough and the same old problems with building bus service will still exist. I contend that as long as the solution is buses then there will remain too many unaddressed implementation problems in the network (problems that exist in today’s network as well). A moderate system restructure isn’t actually solving the underlying problem of getting people to actually use the system in the first place without completely pissing them off. Frequency and routing improvements are a start, but they’re only that: a start.

      There’s a lot of noise here about how, apparently, WS “residents” don’t actually want this thing. Of course there are some political opponents but it’s absurd to consider us a monolith (as with any voting populace) and entirely ignores positive environmental changes that are already occurring.

      Like all classic chicken-and-egg thinking, light rail comes with one absolute certainty: if you don’t build it, they won’t come.

      1. the scope isn’t big enough and the same old problems with building bus service will still exist.

         I’m not sure why you claim the scope isn’t big. This covers pretty much the entire peninsula. As for “old problems with building bus service” there is really only one: Money. Seattle has better bus service than the rest of the county because they pay for it. It isn’t as good as it was a few years ago because they reduced the spending. Snohomish County has better bus service than Pierce County because they pay for it. The result is just as expected — the areas with better service have a lot more riders.

         It is worth noting what happened in the north end of Seattle with U-Link. Metro decided to truncate lots of buses at that point. They also decided to put that money into that area (unlike current policy, which is to spread the savings around). At the same time, the city of Seattle funded additional transit (through the STBD). The results were striking. Ridership went up in the city faster than anywhere in the country. As someone who lived in the area I can testify to the trade-offs. I missed the fact that the 73 no longer went downtown. But I sure as hell appreciated the extra frequency. In this case it doesn’t come with such trade-offs. In fact it is the opposite. Folks in West Seattle get improvements both ways! They have more buses running downtown AND there is a huge increase in frequency. Check out this map: https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1vD1XW53d4i_o97vsDCmIbFdtiaiQgPI&usp=sharing. This is basically the same map, but with colors designating frequency:

         Black = 5 minute frequency (combined)
         Red = 10 minute frequency
         Green = 15 minute frequency
         Blue = 20 minute frequency
         Brown = 30 minute frequency

         One of the first you notice is that there is a lot of red! Not only on the three main corridors (that all run very quickly to downtown) but on connecting routes as well (I decided to color in the overlapping part of the 126 and 128 as red). There are sections that are black (where lines overlap) which means five minute frequency! There are only a handful of places in Seattle with that kind of frequency. In the case of California Avenue it is over a mile (with plenty of stops). In the case of Avalon it means a more frequent connection to downtown than Link.

         Even that doesn’t do it justice. If you look at places like Alki and South Seattle College it appears they are not quite that lucky. They “only” have buses running every fifteen minutes to downtown. Except that isn’t true! They have those fifteen minute buses to downtown, but they also have buses leaving every ten minutes heading across town. It doesn’t show up because the routes don’t overlap. But they often serve the same purpose. If you are trying to get from South Seattle College to just about anywhere in West Seattle you are going to have a bus every ten minutes (if not better) followed by another bus every ten minutes. This is transit that various parts of the city only dream of.

         Will this get people in West Seattle to ride transit? Of course. Every study shows that once you increase frequency you increase ridership. That doesn’t mean that West Seattle will suddenly ride at numbers that resemble Brooklyn, but the same thing is true with West Seattle Link. How is ridership going to increase (with West Seattle Link) if the most common trip takes *longer* than the bus does now? Hell, a lot of people in West Seattle can’t even get there! Are they supposed to drive? Fine, except guess what? There is no park and ride lot! It is highly likely that with West Seattle Link you won’t see an increase in ridership at all. In contrast you would see a big increase in West Seattle ridership with this sort of plan.

         [Edit: I decided to add black on the map to represent five minute (combined) frequency.]

   5. Best way to save the Alaska Junction station in that case is just run at grade along Fauntleroy (OK, technically two blocks from the Junction), which IIRC is more consistent with the original plans. As a bonus you’re not dealing with all the opposition due to tearing down existing buildings (although the same people might play the Construction Traffic Disruption card). Bus transfers would involve crossing one lane of traffic at grade. This really should have been considered during the “realignment” process a couple years ago. Also consider having it be an automated, high frequency, spur running smaller, shorter trains, with an at-grade transfer at SoDo or Stadium, similar to what has been proposed for Westlake – Ballard.

8. Here is what this would look like from a frequency standpoint (midday):

   10 Minutes: C, H, 21
   15 Minutes: 55, 56, 125
   20 Minutes: 35, 126, 128
   30 Minutes: 22, 39
   Peak-only: 37, 57

   Combined frequency (segments):
   5 Minutes: C/21 (Avalon)
   10 Minutes: 126/128 (Admiral Junction to 16th & Austin)

   In addition South Seattle College would have ten minute combined frequency via the 35 and 126. Thus riders leaving the college could easily connect to any other route.

   This represents a huge increase in service for West Seattle. It is not cheap. But neither is West Seattle Link. Just to get from West Seattle to Sodo is expected to cost $4 billion. Even when you subtract out the money for the ramps you have a lot of money to spend on extra service. I see this as being similar to the Seattle Transportation Benefit District (you could call it the West Seattle Transportation Benefit District). It may seem excessive, but West Seattle Link benefits far fewer people for far more money. This is simply a much better value in comparison.

   It is one thing to tell West Seattle that we did the math again and it turns out that our estimates were way off and it is way too expensive given the number of riders that will actually benefit. It is another thing to tell them they get nothing. We are proposing something that is better and​ cheaper. To get to that point we have to raise the bar in West Seattle just like we raised the bar in Seattle (when we passed the STBD). This does that.

9. Is there any real mechanism by which Sound Transit’s tax revenue can be used to fund these sorts of “local” bus improvements and/or does ST fund service like this anywhere else?

   Could ST take over RapidRide C and H as Stride lines S4 and S5, funding additional improvements to get as close to true “BRT” as possible?

   1. ST3 includes RapidRide C and D improvements. These were intended to be an early deliverable while Link was under planning/construction. It was never specified what these improvements would be, just some kind of capital projects. Apparently SDOT took a long time to decide what to ask for, and now it has apparently done so, but we don’t know the details. In the meantime the post-recession realignment postponed the C and D improvements to the end of ST3. Since both the C and D are to be deleted with WS/BLE and restructured to non-downtown lines, we don’t know whether the money would follow them, or whether ST has thought that far ahead to realize this would be an issue.

      1. My assumption is that all the projects which were relegated to “Tier 4” in the realignment process are just going to be deemed obsolete and cancelled after the other projects are completed.

      2. That’s what I assume, that Tier 4 is the least justified projects, and the most likely to get deleted or deferred in the next recession. The Issaquah line, Tacoma 19th Avenue extension, and several P&Rs are clearly the most questionable projects. RapidRide C/D isn’t in that category: it’s more an issue of ST misprioritizing it or not understanding its potential.

   2. ST is usually described as giving only capital money to local-agency routes, not ongoing operational money. The First Hill Streetcar, RapidRide G, Stream, and the RapidRide C and D contributions are all construction funds. ST can certainly supplement operations as mitigation during construction. Whether it can fund ongoing operations would be a debate about the ST charter and ST3 ballot measure. Conventional thinking says it can’t, but ST sometimes overrides conventional thinking when it wants to.

   3. The simplest approach would be for ST to just grant Metro the money (for operations). But there are alternatives. The 550 never leaves King County. Neither does the 522, 545, 554 or 556. When East Link crosses the lake ST will run some of these. None of these buses are regional in nature. They are the type of buses that Metro would run if ST didn’t exist. ST is essentially poaching riders from Metro with routes like the 550.

      And Metro loves it. With ST running these buses Metro has more money to run other buses. Thus ST could simply take over the operations of the C and H. Rebrand them if you want. This would probably pay for all of this. There would have to be some sort of agreement that the savings go into better service in West Seattle, but that seems fairly easy (Seattle made a similar agreement with the county and STDB spending).

      It would be a shift from capital spending to service spending but at some point that is a given. If Link ever gets to Everett or Tacoma the service costs will be massive, especially if it runs as often as they hope. Fares will pay for some of that, but not that much (and ST has lowered expectations for that). ST has plenty of leeway with all of this. The only thing standing in the way is the political will to do it.

   4. The reason this proposal feels small, and the reason it won’t get mass support, is bus frequency is ephemoral.

      And everyone knows it.

      As soon as the next budget crunch or staffing problem hits, these lower ridership areas that you pinpoint for 10 or 15 minute service go to 20 or 30 minute service.

      That is very unlikely to happen with a 4 billion dollar trains precisely because it cost so much.

      1. @Cam,

         Ya, give it the 20 treatment! Claim the routes aren’t meeting ridership expectations so the current frequency isn’t justified, then cut frequency more. As ridership drops at some point the route just gets deleted. It happens over and over again.

         But let’s face it, we see these proposals for more bus/van pools/BRT every single time a major expansion of Light Rail is proposed. The mode wars still rage in certain corners, and the favorite tactic of the anti-LR expansion crowd is to propose expanded bus/BRT as a cheaper, faster, better alternative, and then not follow through once they have the chance.

         And ST isn’t in the business of providing local bus service anyhow. That is Metro’s job, both currently and in the future.

         It’s ST’s job to provide the high speed, high frequency, high reliability, and high capacity transit on the core routes that justify the investment. After that, Metro should adapt and provide feeder buses and coverage routes where justified.

         It really isn’t that hard, at least conceptually.

      2. That always happens. But even if it falls back, it won’t be worse than current service.

10. I understand where this is coming from: West Seattle does not have a lot of demand for transit and putting a Link line there is putting the cart before the horse. But the alternative I’d rather consider, given the cost of housing in Seattle, would be to upzone West Seattle to the point where light rail makes sense.

    How many more people do we need? Where exactly should they live? How many more businesses, schools, police, etc do we need? What other changes do we need (zoning, permitting, utilities, etc) to allow that to happen? Those are the questions I’d like to answer. Despite our slowing economy, we have not come close to meeting housing demand.

    1. As unpopular as it sounds, the most obvious answer to that is to turn the West Seattle golf course into a new dense urban neighborhood. The golfers can drive to Jefferson Park just three miles away, or the city can find a remote spot for a new golf course nearby on a scenic hilltop.

       Your point is well taken! I’ve longed argued that we should be forcing local cities to plan a minimum station walkshed trip end number in order to “earn” a Link station — with more trips required for underground stations like what Alaska Junction is planned to get. I personally believe that Alaska Junction has not “earned” an underground station.

       1. I agree that if WSLE is to be built, the walksheds around each station ought to be upzoned significantly. Jefferson Square should be rebuilt as a pair of high-rise mixed use buildings once ST is done with it (and so should the Safeway
          and Walgreens lots at 15th and Market in Ballard once BLE is done).

       2. Federal grants require that existing parks not be replaced with non-park uses. So Seattle would have to convert it before ST submits the grant applications.

       3. True thaa as t, Mike.

          The best way to remove the golf course is through a referendum. If the public declares it developable, it can be taken. While there might be litigation to save it if it passes, it would be hard to win.

          It would be curious how the public felt, particularly if ST defined a minimum trip end walkshed policy and Avalon couldn’t meet it or WSLE couldn’t meet it.

    2. The issue is that Link and upzoning are decided by two different levels of government, responding to different constituency districts, and elected at different times. So they don’t always align.

    3. West Seattle does not have a lot of demand for transit and putting a Link line there is putting the cart before the horse.

       It is more than that. West Seattle has a variety of dense pockets that are spread out. Most are nowhere near the three stations. Then there is the cost. It is huge for only three stations. The reason it is so expensive is that you are basically rebuilding the entire West Seattle bridge, Spokane Street Viaduct and much of the old SR 99 viaduct — all for a train (that has limits on grade). Then there is the value added. When a bus reaches any one of the stations it doesn’t take long at all to get downtown (using the various bridges and viaducts). Thus the bus is about as fast as the train. The fastest speed improvement will be from the Alaska Junction to Delridge — a trip that only a handful take. The project would only make sense if there were skyscrapers around each of the stations. Even then it would be questionable because there are only three stations.

       It is really a textbook example of where BRT makes more sense then light rail:

       1) You can leverage the existing (very fast) pathway.
       2) Building a railway is extremely expensive.
       3) The destinations are spread out (and not along a linear pathway).
       4) None of the destinations are huge.

       The only way to adequately serve West Seattle is with rail is to build a massive set of subway lines with branches that serve South Seattle College, Alki, as well as the various junctions and corridors. Of course West Seattle Link doesn’t do this, because that would be even more expensive.

    4. “West Seattle does not have a lot of demand for transit ”
       I know people from West Seattle and they have complained about severe overcrowding on West Seattle to Downrtown Seattle busses for years where it was often crush load during the weekdays. People wanna say this project is purely a political dealing as a favor to Dow but the line wasn’t considered without some merit to the need of connecting the broader peninsula to Downtown Seattle more efficiently and to address severe bus overcrowding and delays on West Seattle routes. We can’t discount complaints by constituents in this situation.

       I’m personally ambivalent towards the project, I think letting perfect be the enemy of good is a problem in trying to talk about this and Ballard Link. They’re in my opinion projects of a pragmatic nature to get enough political cache from voters and politicans to make everyone happy. Sometimes you have to comporise to get the other things you want.

       1. “West Seattle does not have a lot of demand for transit ”

          I disagree, and think that is a red herring (or a straw man). Of course there is demand for transit. West Seattle is no different than any other place. People use transit that works for them and ignore transit that doesn’t. Various studies have shown ridership goes up as frequency goes up. Does this somehow now apply to West Seattle? That is absurd.

          The problem is that West Seattle Link offers very little for West Seattle. This would be a very different conversation if West Seattle Link was supposed to actually cover West Seattle. But that is not the case. There will only be three stations. Just three. Very few people will walk to those three stations. Travel within the three stations would be minimal. The time savings for riders arriving by bus to those stations versus making the same transfer at SoDo would be minimal. But the vast majority of riders would not make that transfer and simply continue on their bus to downtown. Not only is downtown a major destination, but downtown connects to other transit better (like First Hill). In the case of the C the bus directly serves South Lake Union, which means rides avoid not one, but two transfers.

          Speaking of transfers, studies also show that ridership goes down as people are forced to transfer. To be clear, I’m not against transfers. A robust and thorough system is dependent on it. But same-direction and ultimately unnecessary transfers will hurt ridership (and hurt the riders that stick with the system).

          If we build West Seattle Link then we won’t build this sort of bus network for West Seattle. Riders from Alki or Admiral Junction will not have a bus to downtown. Nor will riders of the C, H or 21. They will all be shuttled to the various West Seattle Stations. There is no reason to assume that service will be as frequent as proposed here. Quite the contrary. Metro has made it clear that when they truncate they apply the savings throughout the system. West Seattle will be left with a network very similar to what exists now, but a lot of riders will have to transfer. For lots of riders it will be worse that exists now. It will definitely be worse (overall) than what we are proposing.

11. The C Line doesn’t just serve downtown, it also serves the major job centers in South Lake Union. Putting the C through the busway is a serious degradation for that service path versus 99. The long-term solution to this trip pair is supposed to be…..the 3 line.

    I can’t help but think that there’s this subtext that WS doesn’t actually deserve to be included in proper regional-level connectivity. But if we’re going to ask questions of West Seattle, what about replacing light rail with buses in Issaquah? For Paine Field? Federal Way? Hell, why does Ballard belong but West Seattle may not? Ballard doesn’t have the sought-after “skyscrapers” required to apparently justify light rail either.

    The logical extension of this whole thought experiment is that if urban-and-densifying West Seattle isn’t deserving of light rail, then it tracks that a large majority of our built environment simply doesn’t merit having a rail system at all, ever, and we should gut the whole thing for bus improvements. Addressing that debate is far beyond the (well-meaning) armchair transit planner exercise presented here, but I think it’s a grave mistake to ignore its existence: transportation systems don’t exist in a vacuum and they cannot — must not — be treated as such.

    1. The C will continue to serve SLU at about the same travel time, just along the busway rather than 99. The 3 line will not, as it is currently envisioned to go to Everett.
       I believe a switch to light rail should be driven by ridership (a train can carry many more people than a bus) and whether it can improve transit times (including any transfer penalties). Ballard/SLU meet such criteria while West Seattle, Paine Field and Issaquah could be better served by buses.

    2. The C Line doesn’t just serve downtown, it also serves the major job centers in South Lake Union.

       Yes! Very important point. The C Line would continue to serve South Lake Union (of course). In contrast, if West Seattle Link is built, then the C Line does not go outside of West Seattle. All the buses are truncated in West Seattle and everyone headed that direction has to transfer. That means that the vast majority of riders of the C would have to transfer twice to get to South Lake Union (or First Hill, or anywhere on the East Side, etc.).

       I can’t help but think that there’s this subtext that WS doesn’t actually deserve to be included in proper regional-level connectivity.

       No, it is that the best way for West Seattle to be included in proper regional-level connectivity is to improve the bus system. West Seattle Link will leave the vast majority of West Seattle with very poor transit. They don’t deserve that. They deserve better, and this is better.

       West Seattle Link is largely symbolic. It is a way to tell residents there that they have rail. They have arrived. But it provides very little. Imagine if it was even worse. Imagine that West Seattle Link only had one station, at Delridge & Spokane Street (underneath the freeway). All the buses would go there and then turn around. Does that mean they have proper regional-level connectivity? Is that really better? Of course not. While not quite as bad, West Seattle Link is quite similar. You are forcing the vast majority of riders to transfer and they will get little in return.

       This is a key point. Consider the 41. When it was truncated there were commuters who complained because they were forced to transfer and their trip to downtown took longer. Riders headed to Rainier Valley complained that their trip was no better — they simply transferred at a different place. All valid points. However, there was a clear trade-off: Riders got much faster trips to Roosevelt, U-District, UW and Capitol Hill. Every day thousands of people make trips to those areas from the north and the time savings are huge.

       Now consider the similar trips with West Seattle Link. You only have three stations which means three combinations:

       1) Alaska Junction to Avalon
       2) Avalon to Delridge
       3) Alaska Junction to Delridge

       None of these are big trips and the buses would provide just as good a job, if not better. In several cases they would be more frequent while staying on the surface. Alaska Junction to Delridge might be faster via the train, but when consider the time it takes to get to the platform it doesn’t save you much (especially since the bus will serve more areas).

       Overall the benefits are very small, while the losses (and costs) are huge.

    3. “The C Line doesn’t just serve downtown, it also serves the major job centers in South Lake Union…. The long-term solution to this trip pair is supposed to be…..the 3 line.”

       That’s not what the current ST3 plan does anymore. West Seattle will be connected to the U-District, Lynnwood, and Everett in DSTT1. Going to SLU will require that dreaded 10-minute, 9-escalator transfer between DSTT1 and DSTT2 we’ve been warning about.

       The C proposal here continues to serve SLU, or at least there’s no specific proposal to change it.

12. This is dumb. Super ready for the light rail!

    [Ed: Changed name from “Sound Transit” to “[not] Sound Transit”, to clarify that this is not the agency.]

    1. The mode wars never died, at least on this blog.

       The problem with transit in this region is that the Seattle region has traditionally underinvested in rail and over invested in buses. Sound Transit has been correcting that as they deploy Link, but apparently that is threatening to some people.

       But hey, the Light Rail genie is out of the bottle. And it’s not going back in.

       The next two years are going to see awesome expansions of mass transit in this region, starting with Lynnwood Link opening this August, followed by East Link opening and then, eventually, Federal Way Link. There just is no way in “heck” that this region is going to send Light Rail north, south, east, and then NOT west. Link to West Seattle is going to happen, despite what is said on this blog.

       And thank gawd for that.

       1. You might want to stick to the subject. In what way is West Seattle Link better than what we have proposed?

    2. Please choose a handle that can’t be confused with an agency’s official spokesperson. I renamed this comment from “Sound Transit” to “[not] Sound Transit” in the meantime.

13. Did Dow Constantine resign in disgrace or something? Is the next article build Ballard to UW?

    1. For years we have been making the case that West Seattle would be better off with an improved bus network (even if it came with a relatively small set of infrastructure improvements). But we never had an actual, realistic plan. Now we do.

       It is one thing to waive your hand and say “it would be better with buses”. It is another thing to compare the two plans. For West Seattle Link you only have to imagine the same network (with the same frequencies) but the buses truncated at the various stations. There would be other changes of course, but nothing major. Given that, it is pretty clear that this simply offers more to the vast majority of people in West Seattle.

       For example if I’m in High Point I now have a faster bus to downtown that runs every ten minutes. If I want to connect to Link I can ride that bus to SoDo and transfer (either direction) there. If I’m headed to the V. A. on Beacon Hill I still have to transfer, but both buses run more often and the bus to the V. A. is much faster. I also have buses running every ten minutes headed to California Avenue (between Morgan and Admiral District). This all adds up to a huge improvement.

       In contrast with West Seattle Link it is clearly not as good. I lose my one-seat ride to downtown. Service to California Avenue (or everywhere else) is the same as it is now (poor). I have a faster connection to Link, but it isn’t even that much faster than if I connected at SoDo.

       You can make similar comparisons for various places like Admiral Junction, Morgan Junction, South Seattle College, etc. The only people that clearly come out ahead are those that can walk to the station. They are basically arguing that everyone else should have to transfer just so that they can get a slightly faster trip to downtown. That is an improvement for a few, and a degradation for many.

       1. Look at the political realities, West Seattle rail is being built whether we like it or not, unless you are a West Seattle property owner who wants to sue Sound Transit.

          If you remember, I was one of the few people who begged Martin Duke and the previous STB editors to try and ask Scott Kubly what he had in mind as Murray’s SDOT head before SDOT gave us the two tunnel proposal that did not go out of public comment (Duke seemed to be on good terms with Kubly) . STB blew its chance, now we’re stuck with it (much like we are stuck with Federal judges appointed from 2017-2020).

       2. “Look at the political realities, West Seattle rail is being built whether we like it or not”

          I’d rather talk about how we could do better or how we could avoid an ineffective Link line, than to just do nothing for 8 years (AJ-SODO) or 15 years (AJ-Lynnwood) assuming nothing can change. A lot of volatile factors are in play, and we don’t know how one might go one way or the other in the future and tip the balance. We’re one small factor, that may gain momentum if other compatible factors rise in the future. If an opening appears, we need to be ready with an alternative. Even if ST’s WS/BLE plan goes through as planned, it’s still valuable to have a long-term reference of what we missed out on and what wrong decisions were made. Maybe that could help improve decision-making in future projects.

    2. The editors this year have been gradually identifying recommendations we’ve mentioned in scattered comments or piecemeal older articles, and organizing them into a proper proposal article that can be debated, shown to politicians, and used as a long-term reference. This is one of them. Others include the Pierce County series, the Federal Way restructure ideas, DSTT2/SLU/Ballard/Boren Ave, the future of Amtrak Cascades, Connection Points, etc.

14. Ooh ooh do Ballard next! Since West Seattle is so geographically challenging, it seems like it would be comparatively trivial to replace Ballard Link with adequate bus service. Maybe then we can finally see the true vision of Link as a slow suburban commuter train that exclusively stops at park and rides along the highway. Seems like peak ROI to me, since land acquisition and building in the city is so expensive. Hooray for pragmatism.

    1. Our best Ballard idea is here: Focus on SLU and Ballard. This would cancel DSTT2, put three lines in DSTT1, and turn Ballard into an automated Ballard-Westlake line with an optional extension on Boren Avenue to Mt Baker Station. If you want to discuss that proposal, you can do so in tomorrow’s open thread.

       Ballard and SLU have a higher justification for rail because their villages are larger, denser, and have a wider variety of destinations, and will continue to outpace West Seattle. We transit advocates spearheaded the push to accelerate ST3 mainly because of Ballard. I’d long wanted to connect Ballard, Seattle Subway convinced me there was enough public support for it, Mayor Mike McGinn was the first politician (although he put his thumb on the scale for Ballard-downtown while we wanted Ballard-UW), and then the other subareas/cities said, “Hey, we want to accelerate Link to our areas too.” So it’s a disappointment that ST has made so many adverse changes to BLE/DSTT2 since the vote, to the extent that it threatens to sabotage its usability.

       We wanted Ballard Link or a 45th line in 2016, but ST has since made it so bad that advocates like me have started wondering if we should cut our losses and fall back to a bus alternative. We’d lose 13-minute Ballard-downtown travel time, but we could at least make it better than current service. I’m not ready to start a crusade against BLE/WSLE, but if they fall under their own weight or the powers that be change their mind, I’m ready to go with bus alternatives.

       “Maybe then we can finally see the true vision of Link as a slow suburban commuter train that exclusively stops at park and rides along the highway.”

       Link is already not that. It has stations in the U-District, Broadway, Roosevelt, Beacon Hill, Rainier Valley, downtown Bellevue, and the Spring District.

    2. Ballard at least has the benefit of having SLU and the Seattle Center area be on the way (not to mention being glacially slow to get to by bus). West Seattle could have done something similar by running up 1st Ave. instead of building redundant stations in SoDo, but that was never the plan.

15. I think the core issue with WS Link is about the general approach to light rail that ST takes.

    Bluntly put, the slow low floor vehicles are manned streetcars being put on tracks and inside stations that are designed to emulate higher speed and higher capacity rail systems. It’s like putting a tiny motor in a muscle car. And to make matters worse, there isn’t nearly enough money to pay for using it anbd the only destination it serves is Downtown.

    However, this alternative merely feels like the solution is to buy nothing new, and live with what is already there.

    I really wish all this energy put into a post questioning a general already-made decision about sending rail to West Seattle would shift from walking away from it to making it much more cost effective and useful.

    For starters, I really feel that there are two very obvious relatively inexpensive changes to WS Link that U think need to be the focus moving forward:

    1. A reconfigured SODO Station with cross platform transfers.
    2. A service plan that puts three lines into the DSTT (even if it eventually can’t be more than every other train).

    A third focus should be to get the Board and senior staff to embrace the cost effectiveness of automation and quit living in 1996. Automation would allow for the future system to do many things currently deemed a problem or too difficult. Every investment today should be in anticipation of future automation. Look at what automation could do for just a West Seattle stub! Station footprints would be smaller. Trains could run every three minutes! The new automated line could eventually be run into DSTT2!

    Finally, I think there should be a revisiting of any portion of this project being underground as a fourth focus. I doubt few fully grasp that the Alaska Junction station is to be as deep as Capitol Hill, making it terrible for easy bus transfers. Plus, if the neighborhood wants it underground, the neighborhood should pay for it. Not me over in SE Seattle who already gets a huge additional time penalty from lousy transfers in the future (in addition to the huge time penalty and added physical effort of using lots of broken crowded escalators).

    There are many who are giddy about bringing light rail to West Seattle. But ST doesn’t educate them on how bad their Alaska Junction station will be, and how bad their second transfer to SODO will be too! Two bad transfers for a trip that today required no transfers! Sadly, I don’t think ST cares at this point. They just salivate to cut the ribbon — but will rarely use Link because it’s going to be a huge hassle to use the stations.

    1. “1. A reconfigured SODO Station with cross platform transfers.
       2. A service plan that puts three lines into the DSTT”

       We’ve already done that. SODO Station articles: 1, 2. Three lines in DSTT1: 1, 2, 3. Automation: 1 and the first three-line article.

    2. I would add having the Alaska Junction station be at grade following the right of way of Fauntleroy. It costs less. It resolves the complaints about demolishing building to build guideways. It faces the right direction for further extensions. Bus transfers are simply crossing a lane of traffic at grade.

    3. We do support putting West Seattle Link on Fauntleroy Way if it’s going to be built. I’m not sure if that has gotten into an article.

16. I’m wondering when the issue of parking intrusion will emerge in West Seattle. The tradeoff of having a light rail station near your home being served by less than frequent buses is to have everyone living within a few miles drive to your neighborhood to park. It’s really common for evening or weekend events around SE Seattle stations today. Note that many areas have restrictions on parking over two hours until 6 pm on weekdays, so parking after 4 pm means no ticket.

    1. It’s inevitable. But, I think fear of other people parking in your neighborhood is a terrible reason to oppose a light rail station.

    2. There’s a simple way to solve that problem: charge for the parking.

       1. Yeah, I was thinking that. Another option would be to just get rid of a lot of the parking along the waterfront. BAT lanes would be ideal but they might not even be necessary. My guess is people are trolling for parking spaces. Remove the parking and they go somewhere else. But either way you have to have an alternative. Good bus service (and a good bike path) is essential.

17. You haven’t addressed the source of funding. A dollar from local taxes isn’t the same as a dollar from a federal grant.

    1. Federal grants are certainly a factor, but most of ST3 will still be paid by the taxpayers. Federal grants are not restricted to rail. Metro could get federal grants for an upgrade of the 21 to a full RapidRide line. They could also get federal grants for the on/off ramp from Spokane St viaduct to the busway. We may also be able to accelerate Ballard/SLU Link and get grants for that.

18. What is lacking is 10 minute rides to certain destinations instead of rides every 10 minutes.
    Other areas would benefit from robo taxis that would shuttle you to the 10 minute high speed stops.
    Other than that, there are a couple of tourist attracting features that are gaining popularity in other locations.
    Some of these popular features include elevated bike paths with above the rooftop views, raised garden beds, electric bike charging stops, vertical bike parking, food courts, and other features that encourage more bike going activities.
    Another attractive feature includes above the rooftop view
    trams connecting waterfront destinations such as the boat ramp/water taxi with Admiral Junction, Alaska Junction and the Fauntleroy Ferry/Lincoln Park (the view is amazing for large portions on this path)

19. All of these anti WS link pieces are incredibly short sighted. Eventually (who knows when), WS link will be extended to other areas. From the latest long range rail plan it would go down all the way through morgan junction to White Center and then to Tukwila.

    Also the ridership complaint is hilarious. The best places to build new infrastructure is where there are fewer people, so that you can build it for relatively cheaper than in the future when it’s super dense. Most of the cost is to build the bridge, which is obviously seen as a necessary cost by anyone who endured the WS bridge being out for 2 years. Imagine if we had light rail when the bridge was out! Ideally Seattle will upzone the station areas once the extension starts construction.

    IMO they should’ve done the Ballard extension first and built the 2nd tunnel first then done WS. It will be stupid for the 5 years when it ends at SODO. But that’s temporary. As long as they actually build out the full line 3 I’m all for it.

    Also good like convincing WS suburbanites to give up more road space to make bus lanes. Like it or not grade separated rail is the only realistic option since NIMBYs get rabid as soon as someone mentions taking away any parking or car lanes (see recent Constellation park bike-lane circus for what amounted to 0.25 miles of 1 side of street parking being taken out).

    1. The best places to build new infrastructure is where there are fewer people, so that you can build it for relatively cheaper than in the future when it’s super dense.”

       The reason we’re less enthusiastic about West Seattle than other neighborhoods is opposition to density. There’s a strong movement of residents that want it to remain relatively low density and suburbanish, and are getting their way in the zoning debates. The California Avenue strip drops off to single-family just one or two blocks west and east. Nobody is even proposing highrises because we know they won’t be approved. So you could end up with high-capacity Link but still stunted density.

       1. Mike good point unfortunately WS is filled with NIMBYs in their cozy single family homes. I think that’s a big barrier for building any kind of major transit besides grade separated rail. Imagine if they tried to take away a lane on California Ave or the ones proposed by this article for busses

       2. MDNative and Ian,

          Be careful or Tom Terrific will have his nineteenth nervous breakdown and claim you are “throwing sand into the (imaginary) gears” of something.

          But to be serious. Yes WS is a suburb. I imagine those folks moved to WS because it is a suburb close to downtown, at least when downtown was a downtown. What makes anyone think WS residents want to change the character of their neighborhood?

          I think Ross makes the ultimate point. WS will upzone around the Link stations. But the rest of WS no matter how dense won’t be within walking distance of Link. I don’t see WS building huge park and rides like more suburban Link stations.

          So WS Link riders will need to take a bus to Link to mostly downtown when downtown is only a few miles away and there are several excellent highways from WS to downtown. So a one seat bus is the much better and faster choice, certainly than a Sodo stub.

          IF this was about transit. It isn’t. WS isn’t keen on transit. WS Link — and of course zillion dollar underground stations and tunnels — is a status symbol. Just like Issaquah. Or Tacoma. Or Everett.

          If WSLE really was about transit WS would have never voted for ST 3. Or Issaquah. Or Tacoma. Or Everett. Billions for buses? No way.

          I wasn’t here in 2016 when ST 3 passed and so don’t know why a majority voted yes but ST 3 isn’t going to be changed now, unless there isn’t enough money which is why Dow wants WS to go first.

       3. If WS really would upzone around Link enough to provide a significant portion of the ridership as walk-ups, and there weren’t a hundred-plus foot high bridge required followed immediately by a drop of fifty feet to an inconvenient transfer station followed by another hundred foot rise, all on stilts — IOW if it were on the ground as Light Rail technology was developed to be constructed — it would make sense.

          But since neither is true, and 70+percent of the riders will add a transfer to a ten-minute headway vehicle, lengthening and complicating their trips, it’s stupid transit.

          On this we agree apparently.

    2. Eventually (who knows when), WS link will be extended to other areas.

       Right, and we’ll all have jetpacks. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but let me repeat: Four Billion Dollars. That is how much it will cost to just run a line from West Seattle to SoDo. That is about as much as they’ve spent on the first phase of the Second Avenue Subway. Four billion is a huge amount of money for a city this size to spend on anything, let alone a transit system that you are now billing as a starter line.

       The rest of ST3 is also extremely expensive. It is a massive expenditure. After all of that, why would we would focus on West Seattle, given much bigger needs? Every new station would cost a fortune. You would have to build a branch for Delridge, which means extending the extremely high ramps to the south. Then what, run on the surface? I thought you just said the “WS suburbanites” don’t want to give up road space. So now you are talking about elevated or underground rail throughout West Seattle. We are talking billions on top of billions. Meanwhile the other line still doesn’t serve Alki or Admiral Junction, but at best just duplicates the C except with fewer stops. (The C only carries about 7,000 riders a day, by the way. With fewer stops it would serve fewer. )

       This of course would be after we built everything else. Ballard to UW. The Metro 8 subway. A line down Rainier Valley replacing the 7 (which would be much cheaper and get a lot more riders). Various lines for the Central Area which have way more ridership per mile than anything in West Seattle despite extreme slow speeds in comparison. This means spending tens of billions of dollars building the most expensive system for a city its size (anywhere in the world) and then extending West Seattle Link. So in the year 2525 I guess West Seattle finally gets their fantasy rail.

       Speaking of which, even Seattle Subway doesn’t think that will happen! Holy cow, their vision map (https://www.seattlesubway.org/regional-map/) gives Woodinville two train lines (and TIBS four!) yet it only envisions one train line for West Seattle, with a measly seven stations. Seven! Somehow we are going to spend tens of billions of dollars building a rail line for seven stations? Get real.

       The truth is, this is it. That is the problem. If we build the train to West Seattle that is all they get. They don’t get lots of buses (to cover the bulk of the area) they get this one train line. The idea that this is somehow a “starter line” is just absurd and ignores similar projects in the United States. At some point they just stop building. Even when they have really good things that they could build, they just don’t build them. They run out of money.

    3. The best places to build new infrastructure is where there are fewer people, so that you can build it for relatively cheaper than in the future when it’s super dense.

       What part of four billion dollars don’t you understand. This is not cheap.

       which is obviously seen as a necessary cost by anyone who endured the WS bridge being out for 2 years

       The bridge was out for cars! The buses used the lower bridge just fine. If people wouldn’t use the buses when it gave them a direct connection to downtown (and a much more direct route than driving) why would they take the bus and transfer to Link?

       Also good like convincing WS suburbanites to give up more road space to make bus lanes.

       No one is suggesting that. There is nothing on here about adding bus lanes on the surface streets in West Seattle (although that is a good idea as has been done in places). But guess what? West Seattle Link doesn’t do that either! If you want to get from High Point to Avalon it will be as slow as ever. The only thing Link does is replace the section that is just as fast with a bus. The only infrastructure we have proposed is ramps connecting the SoDo busway with the Spokane Street viaduct. The SoDo busway is there already. The viaduct is there already. In fact the bus lanes actually head towards the busway but then fade out. Are you saying that people in West Seattle would complain about the ramps to SoDo or the extension of the bus lanes?

       1. Ross – As I mentioned, Ballard + 2nd tunnel should’ve been the priority. But what are you proposing, that in the year 2088 West Seattle has 0 passenger rail? It has to be built at some point unless Seattle gets obliterated by some disaster.
          Also you’re making a lot of pessimistic assumptions that this is it for the rest of the century when it comes to West Seattle. You have no clue (neither do I) if they will actually ever extend it. I was just pointing out that it’s supposed to happen at *some point* in the future. Maybe 50 years who knows.
          If no one is proposing adding bus lanes then how is that a real transit solution? Even the C line despite having many bus lanes is often inconsistent/late.

       2. I can understand extending light rail to SLU, with or without a second tunnel. The monorail serves Seattle Center.

          But why prioritize Ballard over West Seattle for Link? West Seattle has around 80,000 residents and Ballard has 27,000 residents. Both Link lines would run through long stretches of little density until reaching their destination. Is it because West Seattle has good freeway access?

       3. @ Rail Skeptic:

          “ But why prioritize Ballard over West Seattle for Link?”

          ST’s own projections after the full system opens shows more boardings at Ballard Station than at the three West Seattle stations COMBINED. Both cross navigable waterways, but Ballard is quite a bit closer to the next planned stations so it’s going to be cheaper.

          And population comparisons like this are irrelevant. That’s because neighborhoods can be drawn different ways. A better way would be to tally the neighborhood populations only within a mile or maybe two from the new stations.

       4. in the year 2088 West Seattle has 0 passenger rail?

          If we do things the right way, yes. There are plenty of places that are better values (as I mentioned up above). Most likely we won’t build all that — we will run out of money. Look at cities around the country. They go through a boom, then they stop building. It doesn’t seem to matter whether they build the right thing or not. BART was built over fifty years ago. They clearly shortchanged the East Bay (not enough stations in Oakland). Yet the only thing they’ve added is a people mover to the airport. DC built a very good Metro. But there are places where improvements could be made (inside the city). They are still thinking about it. These are now old systems. Much older systems (New York) get fairly small upgrades that take a really long time.

          We need stop thinking that the subway system will go everywhere. It is just too costly. There are plenty of outstanding transit cities with relatively little rail. Vancouver is a classic example. Like Seattle it is not old. The city didn’t get built when the main form or transportation was walking (like in Europe). It sprawled with the car like Seattle. Vancouver has an excellent train system but they also have an excellent, complementary bus system. More people ride the bus than the train which is common in a lot of cities (especially North America).

          As I wrote elsewhere West Seattle is a textbook example of where BRT makes more sense than new rail:

          1) You can leverage the existing (very fast) pathway.
          2) Building a railway is extremely expensive.
          3) The destinations are spread out (and not along a linear pathway).
          4) None of the destinations are huge.

          Of course things could change in sixty years. But the existing pathway isn’t going away. It will have to be replaced but they will replace it (they aren’t going to just put the cars and trucks on the low bridge). They have already established bus lanes there, and they aren’t going away. If anything the move towards bus lanes is increase. There are areas of the city (Westlake) where they will take a lane and run only buses (and maybe freight). By the way, Westlake is another in a long list that would make more sense for light rail than West Seattle, but I digress.

          It might bet cheaper to construct major infrastructure but again the trend is moving the other way. Meanwhile, it is quite likely that in sixty years we’ll have automated bus service. That means the frequencies listed here would be conservative. Might as well run the 22 every ten minutes and the 21 every five. You would have to buy and maintain more buses but those aren’t that expensive. Oh, and once you get into that kind of frequency you might as well run express buses. Sure, they aren’t full, but that’s OK — you can run vans if you have to (saving money). Side note: I find it weird that people who live in areas where 90% of the people already drive think that automated cars will be a huge change. Sure, there are some aspects of it that will be very different. But if you drive to work every day (alone in your car) then there really isn’t much difference. In contrast automated surface transit would be revolutionary.

          The destinations will continue to be spread out and I don’t see any of them becoming huge. West Seattle isn’t going to build skyscrapers. If anything we are moving away from the “urban village” concept. The density will be a lot more spread out. I still expect places like Alki and Admiral Village to have more density than your average West Seattle neighborhood, but not by a huge amount. Meanwhile, nothing in West Seattle will have much more than those places. In other words I don’t think it is realistic to have rail to all of the areas with moderate density, and I don’t think they will be any places with high density (or even that many places with really low density). Oh, and then there is the college. It is one of, if not the biggest attraction in West Seattle. But it is a pretty tiny college. I could definitely see it getting bigger. Again, I don’t see the train serving it.

          Just to be clear, I’m not trying to predict what they build, only what they should build. Most likely they will build West Seattle Link and it won’t go any further. Riders will have pretty crappy transit until the buses are automated. Once that happens they can run the buses a lot more often. At that point they force people to transfer or they run the buses downtown. The former means that transit would still be worse than it should be (no one like to transfer when going the same direction). The latter would mean that very few people would ride the train.

       5. @ Ross:

          I do think there is a different and more relevant lesson from BART, which is that the technology choices matter, even if rail is generally preferred. We are spending public money to create tracks and stations designed to be for a Metro with 400 foot long platforms underground — only to serve a slower, low-floor four-car streetcar train.

          BART trains are very long so that new stations are big and expensive. That includes infill stations.

          BART chose a different technology for the airport connection because they knew staying with their bespoke rail trains would be several times more expensive than the cable powered airport connection. The BART Board was honest about that cost reality in making that choice; the ST Board refuses to look at any other form of rail technology to this very day for any of its ST3 Link corridors except a T-Line extension.

          And BART was smart enough to build level, cross-platform transfers at MacArthur, 12th and 19th, and the new airport connection has just a one-level change with only one escalator required to transfer (compared to 9 for the Dow transfer station plan or the 2 at SODO).

          In other words, BART today seems to me to have a much better grip on rider reality than ST does.

       6. West Seattle has around 80,000 residents and Ballard has 27,000 residents.

          And Kansas has more residents than Athens. The difference is that Athens is about 15 square miles while Kansas is 81,000 square miles. This is why people rarely talk about the total number within a particular area. They focus on density. Even this can be misleading if you are trying to figure out whether a station will be good or not. Maybe an area has good density, but the station isn’t close to it. There are several ways of looking at it, but I would go with this:

          1) How many live close to the station and can reasonably expect to walk to it?
          2) How many will visit the station for some other reason (work, education, entertainment, etc.).
          3) How well does it connect to the overall network (in our case the buses).
          4) How much of a time improvement for riders is there compared to just running the buses (or driving).

          The first three contribute to ridership. But they don’t mean much without the fourth. The feds used to grade projects based on ridership-time-saved per dollar spent. In the case of West Seattle the numbers are terrible. Ridership is pretty low and the time savings are minimal. There is some density around the stations, but they aren’t Belltown or First Hill. The Alaska Junction is the only real destination and it is a pretty minor one. The network benefits are minimal. Very few people will walk to and from the station and even then the time savings are not that great. Those that arrive by bus would actually lose time in most cases.

          For all its flaws (and there are many) Ballard is just better. Crossing the Ballard Bridge costs riders a lot of time. The detour to Uptown costs riders a lot of time. If you skipped Uptown (like the 15 used to) then getting from Ballard to Queen Anne takes a lot longer. The train will save a lot of riders a lot of time, especially if they build it right. The network effects at Ballard are pretty minor (which is why Ballard to UW is a much better project) but Magnolia and the north end of Queen Anne (SPU) still benefit greatly.

          Here is another way to look at it: Imagine they built both. Imagine they build this bus network AND West Seattle Link. Very few people would ride West Seattle Link, and the times savings would be fairly low. From a system standpoint the main benefit of West Seattle Link is that it allows us to truncate buses in West Seattle. A lot of West Seattle riders will be worse off, but other riders (in other parts of the city) will be better off. There would be a case for this based on the operational savings if it wasn’t for the fact that running this little stub train is extremely expensive. It is much better to just spend the money on buses (and some infrastructure improvements as Martin proposed).

       7. “a Metro with 400 foot long platforms underground — only to serve a slower, low-floor four-car streetcar train”

          Our articulated 4-car trains are comparable to some older systems’ 8-car trains. You can’t just compare the number of cars.

       8. BART chose custom trains (and that was a mistake). They have a lot of capacity though and that is the right choice (for crossing the bay). They are high speed which is nice for crossing the bay, and good considering the extremely far distances between the stations.

          But the extremely far distances between the stations was its downfall. I don’t want to get into it (you’ve heard it all before). Other (better) writers have written about it (https://web.archive.org/web/20120218185821/http://www.ctchouston.org/intermodality/2006/05/06/tale-of-two-subways/).

          In any event, in this case I don’t think it matters much that our trains are light rail. It is less than ideal, but in this case it wouldn’t matter. An automated light metro (like Vancouver) would be better, but it would still be just about as expensive. Likewise a system with lots of surface stops (like Portland) has drawbacks as well. The problem is that West Seattle is just very difficult to serve with rail yet it is extremely easy to serve with buses. The existing roadway (that the bus takes) is amazingly fast*. Any rail system would be extremely expensive. You could run on the surface (light rail is good at that) but you still have to cross the Duwamish. That basically leaves you with Delridge. That is fine, but again, why would anyone from most of West Seattle want to head over to Delridge just to take the train when they can head towards downtown via a bus and be there much sooner. It replaces the H and the 125 and that is about it. Don’t get me wrong — it is a much better plan than what they have now — but it is not much faster than the bus (since it has all of the issues with the bus).

          To serve anywhere else requires massive spending. It doesn’t matter what type of train you have. Sure, there are some ways of making it cheaper, but it wouldn’t be cheap. Three billion is better than four billion but it is still one billion dollars per station.

          * As I write this it is just as fast from Delridge to the middle of downtown on the bus as it is driving. Average speed is 30 MPH. Holy cow that is blazing fast! Try to get from the Central Area to downtown and the average speed (by car) drops to about 12 miles an hour. For a bus it is about 7. Even just regular trips around town are much slower than that. West Seattle has an expressway right into downtown that can not only compete with driving, but is extremely fast for a trip within the city. It is also not that far. Oh, it is a long ways to go without having a station, but it is not far enough that the speed of the vehicle makes much difference. You don’t need high speed rail to West Seattle from downtown. The time savings are minimal. The biggest problem with West Seattle transit is not the speed. It has the same problem as all of Seattle: The buses don’t run often enough.

       9. “in this case I don’t think it matters much that our trains are light rail”

          It only matters in the sense that the total network could have had faster service and higher capacity for a lower cost if we had gone with heavy rail like in Forward Thrust, or automated trains like emerged later.

          It isn’t even that light rail is inherently slow. Light rail can run at least 65 mph and maybe 80. Link is limited to 55 mph because that’s the spec ST wrote. Faster trains would have been more expensive to withstand higher speeds, and the track would have to have had wider turns and more gradual inclines, so that would have put more limitations on the alignment. It matters for Everett (60 minutes with the current Link spec) and Tacoma (75 minutes). It doesn’t matter for West Seattle, where the entire Westlake-Alaska Junction travel time must be around 20 minutes, and faster trains wouldn’t make it noticeably faster.

       10. Ross/ Mike:

           You both are right in that it’s not light rail per se but is instead the ST specs.

           ST chose a low floor spec. Why? Mainly that was done to operate in the DSTT because it was initially planned to be shared with buses. But the buses were kicked out by 2016 after just six years of sharing. Plus, ST could have converted the platforms back when demand was lower by using two car trains or installing temporary platforms until the new ones were permanently installed and a few escalators were changed. Of course, the Link specs were written and the vehicles were ordered before the 2008 vote.

           ST could have chosen another approach. ST could have budgeted platform conversions in ST2 or ST3. ST can still spec Everett and Tacoma Dome for different vehicles. They can still spec Ballard for automated vehicles — and frankly can still spec West Seattle for automated vehicles. I’d agree that West Seattle probably would benefit least, but the project could still be almost the same with automated vehicles that eventually fed into an automated DSTT2.

           It’s admittedly a huge disruption with a cost to retrofitting existing stations.,but if Mrs not if only a few stations need retrofitted or new platforms.

           Of ST could just say “our trains are basically streetcars at heart so let’s save money as well as take advantage of that” — and run last mile segments of these new extensions on city streets. To me it would have been more appealing and much cheaper to turn the last mile or two inside Central Everett, Central Tacoma, Market Street in Ballard, Alaska Street in West Seattle and even Central Issaquah as surface median trains for Link. It would have made sweeter lemonade out of the lemons of slower trains the spec’d.

       11. I agree with Al’s comment immediately above: both West Seattle and Ballard would benefit enormously from at-grade running between their respective water barriers and their terminal stations. Yes, yes, it adds a little randomness to the schedule, but it saves megabucks and most importantly, makes transit visible and quickly accessible.

       12. It only matters in the sense that the total network could have had faster service and higher capacity for a lower cost if we had gone with heavy rail like in Forward Thrust, or automated trains like emerged later.

           Let me break down the ideas here:

           1) Faster service. A little bit, but not much. Trains spend most of their time speeding up and slowing down. Top speed matters very little.

           2) Higher capacity. This rarely matters. We could have higher capacity with different constructs but they want the flexibility of going with trains that have “operational convenience” (https://seattletransitblog.com/2016/12/20/will-link-waste-its-capacity-for-the-sake-of-operational-convenience/). Which gets to the last item:

           3) Cost. The main reason they choose the lower-capacity train setup is to lower cost. It is quite possible that a heavy rail setup would cost a bit more to operate. In terms of the station platforms most would be the same. But there are two exceptions: First, the downtown transit tunnel would have to be rebuilt. Second, they would have to build ramps up to the various surface platforms. Thus cost would probably be a bit higher, although capacity and speed would be better.

           It is not obvious if it is worth it. In contrast, design decisions are huge, and have a much bigger impact on the network. Imagine you have two choices:

           1) Change the trains we use to heavy rail, but keep everything else the same.
           2) Add stations so it is more like a traditional metro. This means stations at places like First Hill (or more stations in the U-District).

           The second has a much bigger impact. Now automation is a different story, but even then there are issues. Initial cost is higher (no running on the surface) but you get to run the trains a lot more often. Even then though you can’t escape the realities of the network. Imagine if we magically swapped systems with Vancouver. This means Link trains would run more often, and SkyTrain trains would run less often. This would make a huge difference. But Vancouver would still have a much better network.

           I’m not saying that the hardware isn’t important, but the network is much more important.

       13. Ross, while I will agree thst you are presenting the choice fairly, I would point out that the travel time between downtown Seattle and downtown Tacoma will be seventy minutes. The interurban was a bit faster, mostly because it didn’t go down Empire Way [using the contemporaneous name…]

           The fact is that Link north of Northgate and south of BAR will have long runs between stations. The train reaches full speed pretty quickly after leaving a station and then holds a steady 55 for two to seven minutes to the next one. Curves and the big hill up to TIBS do slow things down.

           Low-floor cars are rougher-riding than those with classic bogies, and that makes the long ride seem even longer.

           I’m glad that ST used at-grade running some in East Link. Good for them, but most of the system is indistinguishable from SkyTrain except in the trains themselves which have to get their power from expensive to build and maintain overhead distribution rather than third-rail.

       14. The fact is that Link north of Northgate and south of BAR will have long runs between stations.

           I’m not saying it wouldn’t be better. I’m saying it wouldn’t make that much difference. Of course it is better to arrive at your long distance trip a couple minutes earlier, but:

           1) Not that many people are going really long distances.
           2) The big time savings on any transit trip come from avoiding going really slow.

           That is why BART never squared the circle. Trips from the distant suburbs are blazing fast. The trains hit 70 MPH. They make very few stops. But because they make very few stops they don’t carry that many riders. Add a bunch of stops and you get a lot more riders. But now it isn’t that fast for long trips. The only real answer is to double track for the long trips. But that makes building and running the system extremely expensive. That makes sense for New York (a very large, fairly sprawling city) but Seattle? Get real.

           Cities that know what they are doing split the focus. They spend money on the core (since that is where you get the biggest benefit) and then either leverage existing rail outside it, or run express buses. In very rare (mega-city) cases they add new (really long) lines to other cities, but even then they are likely to be part of a big high speed network (which means they just skip over the suburbs).

           The point being that no one that knows what they are doing even thinks about doing any of that before running a subway to places like Belltown, First Hill and the Central Area. BART is the absolute right technology for BART. BART still sucks compared to what they would have built in Europe, Asia or even Canada. The choice of trains is nowhere near ST’s biggest problem.

       15. The Los Angeles C line operates at 65 mph. So, you could make Link faster if you wanted. However, the stations are so frequent Link would rarely get up to that speed.

           If you want something fast for the longer distances, you want Cascades or Sounder trains, that stop at places where it makes sense.

       16. Ross, Glenn’s right, and you’ve said the same thing, too. Link should stop at Midway or — since there’s a lot of sunk money sitting alongside I-5 between there and Federal Way — Federal Way. And Lynnwood to the north.

           The right thing to do is to repeal ST3 — that stops the extensions to Tacoma and Everett, the craziness that is “Line 4”, and WSBLE / Second Tunnel cold. There would be lots of money that North and East King would have to reimburse Pierce for killing Tiddly. South King and SnoHoCo would come out about even I’d expect, because their extensions were supposed to be in ST2.

           Then have some sort of major discussion of what exactly should happen for South Lake Union and First Hill, both of which are genuine assets for the rest of the region. Maybe the Monorail can be spiffed up to take the Westlake route to Seattle Center and Lower Queen Anne. Everyone knows that the existing guideway needs serious work; it’s getting bumpier and bumpier all the time.

           The trains are antiques at this point.

           Some kind of dogbone loop at each end would be needed to provide the capacity required, but Puget Sounders loves them some Monorail. Maybe they’d be fine with the south end dogbone being around Swedish, Seattle U and Virginia Mason. If the guideway were moved to Sixth Avenue south of Westlake there would be sufficient room to make the turns up the hill at Marion and down the hill at University.

           Since it would be massively unpopular to put even a single track elevated beamway on Marion or University which are quiet residential streets mostly, it would have to be tunneled from east of Seventh through the entire dogbone. There’s a parking lot just east of the freeway on the south side of Marion that could host the dive, and taking roughly half of the Paul Piggott walkway just west of Ninth could get the northbound “return” trackway high enough to clear Freeway Park. To make the curve to Sixth would require passing over the corner of the plaza of the building in the northeast corner of Sixth and University. This would be an aesthetic disruption to Freeway Park, but the Monorail is aesthetic and popular.

           At the north end the dogbone should just go around Mercer, First West and back east across the Lenny Wilkins / Thomas corridor. There would have to be a connection to a maintenance facility somewhere along First West, probably an entrance at the curve from First West into Thomas and an exit onto Harrison.

           I’d put southbound stations on First West between Mercer and Republican, in front of Climate Pledge, on Thomas between Sixth and Seventh, on Thomas just east of Ninth, on Westlake just south of Denny, at Sixth and Pine, Sixth and Spring, Eighth and Marion, and Minor and Marion. Only those last two would be subway, and remember this would be for two- or three-car Monorail trains, and therefore much shorter.

           Northbound would continue from Minor and Marion to a station at Broadway and Madison, Summit and University, Terry and University and Sixth and University just before the curve north, then continue north as a double beamway along Sixth to stations at Pine, Westlake just south of Denny, Westlake just north of Thomas, Ninth and Mercer, Mercer just east of Sixth, and Mercer just east of Third. Only the first three would be underground.

           This would have very frequent stations, serving the densest parts of Seattle and gigantic trip attractor sites without (much) tunneling. Maybe one or two of them in the dogbones could be removed, but having lots of stations makes the whole thing much more useful for more people, and it isn’t that far between any two points on the dogbone to make it a problem.

           I expect that single beamways between First West and a two-way elevated beamway above Elliott out to the maintenance facility north of the Magnolia Bridge and west of the BNSF Interbay Yard would work well.

           I know, I know, this is a fantasmagorical vision, but the City could probably swing it if the State Leg gave it more Monorial bonding authority.

           It says “Seattle!” all over it, and it falls into the City’s specific bonding authority.

           Think about it.

20. There’s a Link route walk Sunday at 10am between the West Seattle Health Club and the Spokane Street Bridge (the lower bridge). This covers only Delridge Station, not Avalon or Alaska Junction stations. It’s sponsored by Rethink the Link, a West Seattle group that supports the “No Build” alternative for WSLE, but “All opinions are welcome”.

    The starting/ending point is the West Seattle Health Club, 2629 SW Andover Street, halfway between RapidRide C and H. The nearest stations are: C “Bradford” southbound, C “Yancy” northbound, and H “Andover”. MartinP recommend the C, then walk on Yancy Street eastward downhill to 28th, and the club is on the left.

    The north end of the Longfellow Creek Trail is right there if you want to explore it, as MartinP and I did in November, although we skipped that part.

    You can also look around at the surprising 7-story density on a small north-south street one block west of Delridge. I don’t remember exactly how far south that is. but it’s probably just north or south of the Delridge Playfield.

    Delridge Way itself also has more apartments and businesses than you might remember from ten years ago. It’s still relatively residential though compared to California Ave. It’s no longer a food desert; there’s some kind of food co-op, although not full-sized like PCC.

21. A relatively minor point: I know it overlaps the 128 90% of the way, but the 126 doesn’t leave the city of Seattle yet still has a 1 in the hundreds digit. (Yes, the old 116 did the same but it was laser-focused on Vashon commuters.)

    1. Yeah, the numbers (for the new routes) are pretty arbitrary. You are right, it probably wouldn’t be 126, bus a two-digit number. I chose 126 because it is similar to 128. The number 28 would be ideal, but 28 is already taken. So is 18. I think 58 would work.

       I also think that the 35 would probably be a (fixed route) DART bus, which means it would be in the 700s.

       1. I was thinking another number in the 20s. Maybe 29 would work (assuming that’s not a technically-active-but-suspended route).

       2. Yeah, the West Seattle numbers are a bit all over the place. If you think of the buses that are to the north of Henderson and west of Highland Park you haveL

          21, 22, 37, 50, 55, 56, 57, 116, 118, 119, 125, 128, C, H (and the DART buses in the 700s). There are some patterns, but they aren’t strong:

          Buses that don’t leave West Seattle: 22, 128.
          All-day buses that go downtown: 21, 125, C, H
          Other buses that don’t go downtown: 50
          Express buses (peak) from the ferry: 116, 117, 118
          Other peak-only buses: 37, 55, 56, 57.

          The only great pattern are those buses in the teens (from the ferry). There is some similarity between the other peak-only buses, but that goes away if the 56 runs all day. Even before then the 37 is weird (why not 54 or 58?). With the other buses it is fairly random. The 50 is not a peak-only bus (nor does it go downtown). With the other buses it is mostly just a bad luck. Once the bus leaves the city it gets into the 100s. RapidRide has letters.

          It is always good to have buses that spend much of their time on the same pathway to have a nice pairing. The 3/4 is a nice branch that is easy for people to remember. Same with the 345/346 or the 347/348. The 65/75 works well because they both serve Lake City, Children’s Hospital, U-Village and the UW (even though they take very different paths between there). The proposed 126 and 128 does that, and yet it breaks the rules. In this case it is mostly just bad luck. If the 128 was called the 125 then it would be a trivial choice for the new route (the 25). Actually, “25” is not a bad choice. From Alki it pairs well with the 35 (take the 25 or 35 from Alki to the college). All the buses that end in 5 go to the college (25, 35, 125). It doesn’t pair well with the 128, but probably as good as you’d get.

       3. The 128 goes to Tukwila International Blvd Station and serves Boulevard Park, a suburban coverage area. This proposal doesn’t specify any changes to the routes outside West Seattle, so questions like truncating the 128 or C would be separate issues.

          The 125 doesn’t go outside Seattle, so I don’t know why it has a three-digit number. Maybe it’s a legacy of an earlier routing.

          The numbers in the proposal are chosen to be close to existing route patterns, to make comparisons easier. The final numbers if all this were implemented may be different.

       4. “Even before then the 37 is weird (why not 54 or 58?). ”

          The 37 comes from the 1970s when the route numbers around it were different.

          The 15 went to Alki like the 56, and had an all-day local counterpart, and went to 15th Ave NW in Ballard like the D.

          The 18 went to Fauntleroy like the C, and to Uptown like the D, and to 24th Ave NW like the 40.

          The 20 went on Delridge Way to White Center, like part of the H. The suburban part of the H was other routes, sometimes called 131 and 132 or other times 136 and 137 I think. There was a route to Arbor Heights; I don’t remember if it was a 20 extension or 21 extension.

          I don’t remember if the 125 ever had a suburban extension.

          So the route numbers were generally 15, 18, the 20s, and 37, and the daytime 55 express to the Junction and Admiral.

          The 60 ended in Georgetown if I remember. It was extended to South Park, and again to Westwood Village, to provide east-west service.

22. “As a transplant to Seattle I am always amazed at what some consider “urban”. I don’t see any true urbanism anywhere in Seattle,”

    It’s all relative. I knew a New Yorker who loved her First Hill highrise apartment and neighborhood because it felt like New York to her. I lived in the U-District for 18 years and found I rarely had to leave the neighborhood for anything except maybe work, and others I knew feel likewise. We can either be depressed about the low level of urbanism, or we can be glad Seattle grew for forty years before cars took over and some islands of that still remain. That’s a better experience than many cities that never had that or it was completely obliterated.

23. “wasn’t here in 2016 when ST 3 passed and so don’t know why a majority voted yes”

    Very few voters take the time to think about the nuances discussed in this blog. Instead, people are either for light rail or against it, in the abstract, and where the light rail will go or how much it costs doesn’t matter.

    I myself had big reservations about ST3, but could not bring myself to vote no with all the groups I support endorsing the yes vote and all the groups I oppose endorsing the no vote.

    Another element is fear that if the vote fails, you don’t know when or if there will be another chance. For instance, if ST3 failed and they planned to try again in 2020 (conventional wisdom says you need a presidential election to get enough young people to vote to give it a chance to pass), the pandemic would have intervened, and we would have ended up with nothing.

    1. Very few voters take the time to think about the nuances discussed in this blog.

       Agreed. That is the problem. It is basically just “transit yes” or “transit no”. Is a “No” vote meant to signal that we oppose any spending on transit, or is it meant to signal that we can do better when it comes transit spending. At least with the viaduct they were given three choices (although none got a majority).

       I would rather have several votes. First decide how much money to spend, then decide what to spend it on. Of course that gets very messy, which is why decisions of this nature should be handled via a representative democracy (a republic). We shouldn’t have a vote in the first place.

       The problem in this particular case is that the board is not qualified to make transit decisions. They are also focused on issues that will decide their political fate. It is a bizarre situation, really. If ST had a small budget and their decisions did not have a lasting impact (e. g. like the ST express regional bus service) then it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. We would criticize and praise their decisions in the same way we do with Metro, Community Transit, Pierce Transit or any local agency. We would describe which network decisions we like and which ones we don’t (and why). But ultimately the choices would not be huge and they wouldn’t be permanent.

       In this case though the stakes are gigantic. We are spending more than anyone else in the country on transit (per capita) and likely more than anyone else in the world. It is really a bizarre situation. Schools are underfunded — there are plans to close schools despite the city growing. People want to spend more and more money on public housing. The mayor and city council want to spend a lot more on policing. Yet somehow we can afford to spend massive amount on transit projects that will benefit very few.

       Then there is the permanent nature of these changes. Unlike bus routes, light rail lines are permanent (or close to it). A stop at First Hill would probably get more riders than anything they are building (or planning to build) and yet there are no plans to backfill the station. We had our chance. Likewise if we build something that doesn’t provide much benefit then we won’t have money to build things that do. It is a very expensive “measure twice, cut once” proposition and the folks doing the measuring aren’t very good at it.

24. If Link remained completely on Fauntleroy Way with a surface station at Alaska & Fauntleroy, would that be close enough to the Junction to put the entire village within a pleasant walk and close enough to human-scaled (not car-scaled) buildings? It’s three blocks east of California & Alaska. That would also leave it pointing south for an extension.

    1. Mike, there are a few factors that affect the idea.

       1. The single family zoning begins south of Edmonds and west of between 44th and 45th Avenue. The single family homes start about 600 feet south and 1400 feet of Fauntleroy and Alaska. From the current preferred site, the single family area begins about 400 feet south and 600 feet west of the planned entrance. In other words we are building a deep station (not just a Link station but a very expensive and deep Link station) for a catchment area of about 25-30 percent single family homes. And almost all the recent new development on Alaska is closer to Fauntleroy than they are to California Street and the one story businesses there.

       2. The depth of the station adds both time and hassle to using the station. That’s understood when the station has elevation challenges like Beacon Hill and even Downtown Bellevue, but there is no topographical reason to build a deep station there. It there mainly for pure neighborhood vanity (“quaintness”). So why it looks closer to California Avenue in 2D, it’s further in 3D that many people realize. Surface stations generically provide a wider coverage area than deep stations do.

       3. And let’s be frank about the proposed bus transfers there. There aren’t ideas to keep major routes on California Avenue. They will all be on Alaska Street no matter what . The bus riders are a huge share of the anticipated station boardings. And having the transfer stop east of Fauntleroy means that it will actually be easier to cross the street. As someone who crosses at MLK and Alaska all the time I can say that crossing the street is scary, but it is an order of magnitude less stressful because it’s level. With an end surface station, the train will be sitting there within visual distance of transferring bus riders.

       4. Construction would be so much easier! No boring! No messy long-term Alaska Street closures! Detours to the many side streets would make it possible to close the street segment between Iregon and California. It would probably result in WS Link opening 1-3 years earlier!

       Sadly, ST has not studied a surface alternative in detail. ST downplays the station depth. ST won’t te the public how much of the $4B is just because of this one station (my guess is that it’s at least (10-20 percent of the entire capital cost). So the idea remains outside of the circle of further rational discussion. Instead we get the Jefferson Square developer getting free demolition and value increase instead at the taxpayer’s expense.

    2. I’m not sure a surface station could be extended in the future as Fauntleroy makes a tight after Alaska St. Originally Sound Transit had proposed an elevated line along Fauntleroy and take over a tire dealership across from Whole Foods, but then a huge apartment complex got built instead. Later they proposed an elevated station right behind the new apartment complex (37th Ave or 38th?), but that would probably require tearing down a school and many houses if it ever gets continued.
       Another alternative would be to put elevated light rail on 35th which is straight and wider. Or use shorter automated trains (smaller stations) or even smaller guideways like TSB maglev.
       You could serve the Junction with a short funicular or gondola along SW Edmunds St. – still cheaper than a tunnel.

25. A premise of the post is that the ST3 West Seattle Link is pretty silly: very costly, with odd phasing, low projected ridership, and controversial. The second tunnel is very costly and headed toward very awkward and long transfers (I wonder how well the split CID stations matches the ballot measure). ST3 is in fiscal crisis; much has already been deferred. Changing it would probably require a two-third vote by the ST board, as was done to reset Sound Move. So, it is very unlikely, even if sensible. Legally, it could be done, as interim express bus and BRT are legal under the RTA legislation. Seattle controls the relevant roadways. There are many possible bus networks. They should include a very frequent and reliable connection with Link at SODO station; the South Lander Street overcrossing opened in summer 2020. There is an inbound ramp from the South Spokane Street viaduct. I wonder about extending the H Line to SLU and rehooking lines C and D. ST3 funds could be used to improve other RR in the North King subarea (e.g., lines D, E, G, J, and R). It is not clear the R line needs to be a radial Route 7; Link can carry the radial load and has several stations along the R corridor. With the fiscal death of the CC Connector, frequent bus service should be provided on 1st Avenue.

26. God this is so stupid. We are building light rail.

27. I wish that ST had done this for southwest Everett instead of allowing the county executive to steamroll his appeasement to Boeing by cajoling everyone to spend another $1 Bn and 5 more years of construction in the dogleg to Boeing/Everett that blows by the region’s secondary airport at Paine Field. A much better choice would have been to extend Community Transit’s Swift Green Line to downtown Everett via SR-526 and Evergreen Way, where it could share Swift Blue’s stations, meaning that it could have opened within 18 months, but then the county executive would have needed to ride BRT, and he ghosted invitations three times. Meanwhile, light rail should have stayed along I-5, get close to the Everett Mall, which is underway with a substantial redevelopment including Trader Joe’s, where Everett could have benefited from the tax dollars from a rail station that’s well before Alderwood Mall from the north. Maybe ST-4 will extend the 2 line north from Mariner P&R?

    1. There are some similarities between West Seattle Link and Everett Link.

       I think one aspect of mass transit that is often ignored is competition. What are the alternatives for making that trip. Consider a fully built out East Link. If you are in Issaquah and want to get to Seattle, the bus is just as good. There is no transfer and it is quite fast, making the exact same number of stops. However if I’m close to the Bell-Red or Spring District stop then the train offers a significant speed advantage over a bus. It is competitive with driving, at noon.

       Then there is the network effect. A good example of that is the Northgate Station. The Northgate Transit Center is in an awkward location. There is only one thing that is really convenient: the express lanes. The old 41 used to drive through the streets of Northgate (where most of the riders came from) and pass by the transit center before almost immediately getting on the freeway*. From there it would quickly get downtown and go into the tunnel. It was faster than driving and faster than the train*. However, not everyone is going downtown. There are other stops along the way that are major destinations (like the UW). For trips of this nature the train is much faster than the bus. The more stations the bigger the network effect. You can see this while riding Link from Northgate. At every stop there are people getting on and off the train.

       The problem with an Everett Link line that runs in the envelope of the freeway is that it is no faster than the bus, and there is no network effect. ST doesn’t release the data anymore but you could see this in the old reports (https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/2020-service-implementation-plan.pdf#page=98). Look at the data for the 512. Notice that hardly anyone ever got on a northbound bus after Seattle. Very few people from Mountlake Terrace are taking transit to Everett, let alone Ash Way. I don’t see anything changing even if the areas by the stations become bigger. There is good evidence showing that approach doesn’t work.

       West Seattle Link has the same fundamental problem. The train offers no significant speed improvement over the bus and there is no network effect. I would say that Everett Link is not a good idea in general, but deviating from the freeway is the only chance of success. That is the only way they will get both a network effect and a speed advantage over a bus. That seems unlikely, given the cost and lack of stations, but it at least has some chance of success. Whether the specific route and station locations they chose are good or not is a different matter.

       * This example only applies to when the express lanes were in their favor. Buses traveling “reverse peak” were especially prone to congestion. Traffic is quite common going into downtown from the north in the afternoon and evening. There are no HOV lanes on the mainline (south of Northgate) so the bus was stuck in it.

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