Evolution of the New York City Subway 1868-2020 (animation)
Watching this video, I can’t help but wonder what a similar video of Link’s future expansion might look like for our region over the next 150 years. Obviously, it wouldn’t look anything like New York City’s expansion through a dense, large city. But, what would it look like? Example: DT Seattle to Renton via Rainier Ave. Then Renton to Auburn. Then Bellevue to Renton. Then DT Seattle up Aurora. Then Burien to Renton. Etc.
It is important to consider the scale. The lines aren’t that long. There is no equivalent of a subway line to Auburn and even Renton would be about as far as it goes. It is also worth noting that construction really leveled off. In some cases it went backwards. If we built the system like New York (or most systems in the world) then we would add a bunch more lines in the city, and that would be it. Of course there is no telling what our system would look like in the future. The folks in charge seem to be more interested in symbolic expansion (e. g. long distance lines) instead of value-added. So yeah, maybe they will run lines to Auburn, Woodinville and Covington while neglecting Belltown, First Hill and Fremont.
I’m sure in the next 150 years, Belltown, First Hill, and Fremont will get light rail. It took 50 years for NYC to get into central Queens.
I’m sure in the next 150 years, Belltown, First Hill, and Fremont will get light rail.
I think it is impossible to tell. It is easy to assume that 150 years is enough time to build anything you can imagine but that hasn’t been the case in New York, or many other cities. By 1920 New York had built most of the system. There were some big improvements in the last 100 years, but there has also been some shrinkage. It is really striking how much was built before then. This means that someone looking at the system in 1920 could easily imagine most of the city being covered in fifty years, in the same way that the Paris Metro covers pretty much the entire City of Light. But it doesn’t. There are some big gaps in New York and very little in radial service (for the reason Nathan mentioned). The Interborough Express (or IBX) is just now in its infancy despite having much of the right-of-way and rail already.
It isn’t alone. It is easy to imagine that BART/Muni would involve several additional lines in East Bay and in San Fransisco by now, but you’ve got the Central Subway (which is relatively small) and that is about it. DC Metro was an excellent system but it left out Georgetown. You would expect there to be service there by now (fifty years later) but there have only been some discussion — nothing concrete. Sometimes it takes a long time to build what many consider to be an obvious addition (even if the agency expands in other ways). If things go as planned the city will build a second tunnel in downtown, but it won’t cover First Hill or Belltown. The cost is enormous. I don’t see them eager to build additional lines to serve First Hill or Belltown. I could see Fremont though, just because it is midway between Ballard and the UW (and they’ve already looked at that project and found it to be very promising).
Then there is the real possibility of self-driving buses. One of the major advantages of rail is capacity. It takes a lot fewer people to run a crowded train than a crowded bus. But if the buses are self driving then this doesn’t matter. You still want grade-separation, but muddling along with lots of bus lanes and very frequent buses might just do the job just because there is an inherit advantage to surface transit. It is quite possible that most of the trips on the future RapidRide G will be faster with that bus then they would with a subway (just because the subway stations would be very deep). It is quite possible there would be a lot more bus routes like that in the future, making a lot of rail plans seem unnecessary. So much depends on how aggressive the city is with bus lanes and the good news is that the trend is a positive one. They are several projects the last few years that I new thought would happen (e. g. Westlake and Rainier Avenue). But again, it is very hard to predict the future.
We shouldn’t just be thinking about light rail, with all our hills it might make more sense to build people movers or gondolas instead, especially on short east/west routes. I still think a gondola from Belltown to SLU to Capitol Hill and KP (former Group Health) would make a lot of sense.
A rail line through Belltown would only make sense if you continue it through Fremont and up along Aurora.
“The folks in charge seem to be more interested in symbolic expansion (e. g. long distance lines) instead of value-added. ”
This is my core issue with ST3 projects . The whole referendum building saga was not done systemically. It was done as haphazardly as the monorail referendum decades ago. The most expensive segment per mile — DSTT2 — had never been studied (hence the subsequent ID outage that resulted).
In reflecting on the recent discussion about West Seattle here, we even forgot to mention that the project didn’t attract any new system transit riders, for example. It won’t help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
I don’t think any future expansion funds will come without ST Link proving its value better. Instead, I expect the discussion will be more about getting funds to address inevitable existing system problems.
I would agree with Martin that there could be good applications for cable-driven short connections (under 2 miles) to our mammoth system. Vertical steepness challenges are particularly cheaper fixes with cables.
Finally, I expect there will emerge the need to fund tweaks to the current system next. It is already quite long. I would expect to see discussions about fixing problems like train overcrowding, station accessibility like new vertical conveyances, new crossovers and sidings, and station safety features like platform doors or gates — and even infill stations, added station entrances and access paths.
Every major city has had a spurt of major rail transit building that happens — then the momentum peters out. Just look at Atlanta, DC, Dallas, Denver and even older systems in Chicago, Boston and New York (the Second Avenue Subway idea was being planned 100 years ago and it’s still just partially built or under construction). While these other metro areas have new corridors being considered, track expansion plans are very limited. Even much of LA’s ambitious expansion is being portrayed with 20-40 year off opening dates. For that not to be ST’s fate would frankly be surprising.
If we can’t turn the ST3 battleship, low-cost gondolas or similar around it might be a good idea. Belltown to Group Health could probably fit in the Monorail authority’s $1B limit. DSTT2 or the proposed Ballard/West Seattle tunnels wouldn’t.
Political eras are unpredictable. The first phase of the NYC subway was based, not on a government plan for maximum mobility for everybody, but on companies building lines redundant with each other to get each other’s passengers. After WWII, the government got car-happy and stalled expansions for decades. Our competitors in other countries didn’t, or if they did, they switched back to transit by the 1970s. Who knows how long the current era might last, or when the accumulation of public attitudes or enlightened politicians will tip the balance to change. And then, how long that era might last.
I am quite certain that there will not be “another hundred and fifty years”. We untelentingly inventive humans have gotten so far over our skis that a smash-up is inevitable.
Will there still be “people” then? Probably, but “society” will have become a mythical past of impossible glories that can never be recovered. Without oil oozing out of seeps and coal jutting out of hillsides, there can be no second “industrial revolution”.
“WHAT?!?!?” You may say. “Naysayers have predicted the downfall of civilization a thousand times before and have always been wrong!”
True, but they only need be “right” once. Never before have so many ways to destroy civilization simultaneously existed. If the “A-bomb” doesn’t get us we’ll all roast in runaway greenhouse warming. If we escape that we’ll starve because we pissed away thousands of years of petrochemical fertilizer feedstocks running around like narcissistic Guinea Hens.
And finally, if somehow enough people with the brains to maintain modern society survive, our AI-Enabled Robot Overlords will simply strangle them in their sleep.
Enjoy today. It will never again be as good.
While I understand that doing so would have made these videos much more difficult to make, I wish the makers would include some sort of visualization of urban densities during the construction of these lines. In doing so, it would show that the outer limits of these lines, built by private operators in a period of cheap labor and (relatively) cheap materials, built and expanded these lines to connect low-density (and low-value) land on the outer edges of the city with the urban manufacturing and business core of lower and midtown Manhattan. The operators would often collude with real estate developers to boost return on investment for lines which would enable redevelopment and increased land value for the periphery of the city. As developers built tenements, rowhomes, and other higher-density forms, the rail operators would extend to new areas further afield. In this way, high-capacity rapid transit engendered the densification of areas away from the urban core.
For further reading, “The Race Underground” by Doug Most (2014) is an excellent and engaging history of the conversion of the overground/elevated rail systems of NYC and Boston to subways. The interplay of technologists, politics, and construction mishaps makes for a fun read.
Thanks Sam! That was a fun video.
As to how a similar video of Link’s evolution over 150 years would look, it won’t look anything like that video.
All those hard turns and right angles are an artifact of building using cut and cover. Link won’t use cut and cover, and won’t look like that.
Cut and cover is constrained to follow the street grid, and to also follow local topography. That is why you see all those sharp turns — which add construction costs and increase travel times.
Modern TBM built tunnels are not constrained to follow the street grid or local topography. Which is why we have Beacon Hill Station, CHS, UWS, etc.
It’s a major cost and operational advantage of TBM built tunnels. And it will show up on maps like the one in your video link..
But thanks for a fun video.
No, the hard corners are due to the trains being built elevated first above public rights of way, and then buried in the same routing.
We could build a lot more Link for the same money if we encouraged ST to build elevated routes above or even cut-and-cover below our wide thoroughfares. Cut-and-cover is much cheaper than TBM tunneling and the associated station excavation. The problem is the associated impacts on street access during construction.
Thanks. One of the first lines on the video, the Sixth Avenue elevated, gets a mention in Ron Chernow’s book Titan, about John D Rockefeller. He says John D used to ride it from his home near 5th and 54th (now home to the MoMA sculpture garden), to Standard Oil’s headquarters at 26 Broadway. Chernow says the fare was a nickel.
@Sam,
Ya, it was a good video. Really fun seeing all those crazy sharp turns that result from following the street grid with cut and cover. So glad we didn’t do that here.
> Modern TBM built tunnels are not constrained to follow the street grid or local topography. Which is why we have Beacon Hill Station, CHS, UWS, etc.
> It’s a major cost and operational advantage of TBM built tunnels. And it will show up on maps like the one in your video link..
It’s a major advantage to digging the tunnels but also a major disadvantage for building the stations themselves.
That’s why between UWS to capitol hill for example there is no station built in between. It’s also why for the previous thread on west seattle if extended further past alaska junction it’d be very expensive to build more intermediate stations in between on the way to white center.
In any case on your large point I agree. It’d probably be more farther spread out stations more similar to the LIRR aka their regional rail system rather than an urban subway.
“That’s why between UWS to capitol hill for example there is no station built in between.”
Says who? The most likely reason is Snohomish was afraid of longer travel times to Lynnwood/Everett if more stations were added, that there’s no “regionally significant” activity center in that area, and it’s not a separate city but within Seattle.
> Says who? The most likely reason is Snohomish was afraid of longer travel times to Lynnwood/Everett if more stations were added, that there’s no “regionally significant” activity center in that area, and it’s not a separate city but within Seattle.
What? Snohomish was fine with the 130th station.
The main reason why there aren’t other stations is the high cost of installing deep stations. It’s why there’s such wide stop spacing whenever one uses deep bore tunnels. I mean why do y’all think sound transit keeps proposing to drop slu station or interbay (if tunneled) or avalon station (if tunneled) to fund these deep stations.
Since this is an open thread, I’d like to thank Gov. Inslee for failing Steve Hobbs up to Secretary of State, which enabled the committee he no longer chairs to take much bolder action on the climate crisis. Funding youth fare freedom was but a tip of the iceberg.
Having seen Hobbs in action as Secretary of State, I must heartily recommend voting for one of his opponents — even the Republican — to get him out of that position, for which he is not a good fit at all.
Just read Hobbs’ unhinged polemics against ranked choice voting, and it becomes clear: He is a guardian of the drawbridge, not a guardian of democracy.
The state did just fine with multiple decades of Republican Secretaries of State. I want to hear more from his 2024 challengers, but it will be one of them, not him, who will get my vote.
The first sentence doesn’t make sense if you don’t already know Steve Hobbs. What did Inslee do? Who’s running for what?
Inslee appointed Hobbs as Secretary of State in 2021 after Kim Wyman (R) left to be head of the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Hobbs was state senator of the 44th district, and chair of the Senate’s Transportation Committee and co-chair of the Legislature’s Joint Transportation Committee until he became Sec. of State.
Hobbs is running for re-election against a Democrat, a third party, and a Republican candidate. Most people don’t care about Secretary of State and will elect the incumbent.
Fun summary of transportation candidates’ responses.:
Q. How do we fill the highway funding gap as emerging high-mileage and electric cars pay little or no gas tax?
BIRD: Make a list of the needs and pay for it from the general fund. [Implies: I don’t trust the existing list of needs, there will be no disagreement what the needs are, and the general fund has enough money for it.]
FERGUSON: Soak the big carbon polluters. [Implies: That will be enough money.]
MULLET: Use the windfall in the pension fund. Dedicate vehicle sales tax to transportation. [Implies: The pension fund won’t have a bad decade. This is the best non-pension use of the money, and everybody agrees. Cars should get even more privilege in the budget (the gas tax is already dedicated to highways rather than the general fund).
REICHERT: Costs increased and WSDOT projects have overruns. Take it from the carbon tax and the general fund to the motor vehicle fund. Reprioritize projects. [Implies: Bad WSDOT, bad inflation. The priorities are bad, and I know what’s better, but I’m not saying what voters will get if they allow me to reprioritize it. Shift money to the MOTOR VEHICLE fund. Are buses motor vehicles?]
Missing: Any mention of transit. Cascades, bus, or metropolitan rail alternatives that could give people alternatives to driving on highways or having buses stuck in traffic and not enough of them.]
I don’t really find it the answers that useful. Or more accurately WSDOT (and many other state DOT) are basically looking at the mileage tax or using freeway tolls more broadly for maintaining freeways.
But for any one political candidate to support it before being in office would be a political career killer or at least heavy disadvantage so none of them are going to say so now.
@Brent White,
Don’t look now, but I actually heard someone mention Hobbs the other day in regards to the succession plan for the governorship.
Originally the succession plan was 2 terms of Inslee, 2 of Dow, then 2 of Ferguson. But that all got blown up when Inslee went for a 3rd term and Dow got squeezed out.
Now it isn’t clear who is 3rd in line. But I’m pretty sure the D’s haven’t penciled in an R.
I’m curious when the Democrats will look to candidates that are under 45 or 50 today. People like Dow, Patty, Maria, Bruce and Jay became stars decades ago when they were younger. Who will emerge from a younger age group? These leaders will likely retire in the next 5-15 years.
Hilary Franz ran until it was clear that Ferguson was going to beat her (I’m sure she hoped he wouldn’t enter the race). I would put her third. It wouldn’t surprise me if Kim Schrier runs someday (given her track record in a swing district). I could see any of the other congressional representatives running as well. Same goes for whoever eventually leads King County. It also wouldn’t surprise me if one of the mayors gets the job (or someone like Strickland who is now a UW representative but was mayor). It is hard to predict these things far in advance. The last five have been:
1) State Senator, Pierce County Executive
2) King County Councilmember, US House Rep
3) Washington House Rep, King County Exec
4) Washington State Ecology Director, State Attorney General
5) Washington House Rep, US House Rep (two different districts)
There is no obvious pattern. Some have executive experience, some don’t. Some have experience in the state legislature, some don’t.
Who can make a succession plan, much less more than one term out? It all depends on who else runs at the time, who votes, and how voters are feeling that election. I can say I’ll be a legislator next term, and governor the term after that, but that won’t make it happen.
I looked at the ages of the Washington congressional delegation. Most of them are similar ages to these other state leaders with many between 55-60. Gluesenkamp- Perez (36) is the only one under 50. Kilmer is 50. The others are at least 55.
Part of the succession system is the election system.
We used to have the blanket primary, briefly had party primaries, and now have the Louisiana-style primary in which just the top two candidates advance to the general election.
As described above, there is heavy incentive to keep the list of candidates very short in this only-two-advance system.
It is unusual for a Washington Secretary of State to publicly trash an election system. To do so to a system that the voters just passed in Seattle is bizarre.
Most voters may vote for the prefers-D or the prefers-R, but Hobbs has made his opposition to election reform an issue while being a prefers-D, and that will likely make his path to re-election much tougher.
I voted for Kim Wyman every time she ran even though I’m emotionally a Democrat.
A better elections manager does not exist. This used to be a governmental specialty at which Republicans excelled. No longer; since The Don took over their party, New York “methods” have become widespread in GOP circles. Ut’s a huge problem.
I hope she comes back home to Washington and runs for Governor next time. She is fair-minded enough to get elected.
I wouldn’t describe Sacramento’s light rail as obscure. If you live there you know about it. It runs throughout the central areas where government offices are, and can occasionally be seen from freeways.
The video is nicely succinct. I’m surprised that they didn’t mention that it’s getting 22K rail riders on a typical weekday. There are some other issues that some may find interesting:
Their light rail peak ridership year (note RT operates buses too) was 2008, listed as 16.8 million annual rides. It fell to 9.7 million by 2018 and now sits at 6.6 million for 2023. It’s troubling.
The saga of the Green Line extension to Natomas and the airport is worthy of more exploration. In particular, the rail right of way was set aside on much of the alignment beforehand so it could be built on the surface, and long stretches of the alignment are on the side of several arterial roads rather than in the median. However, the area is pretty suburban so its future seems intertwined around how future TOD evolves and some of the developable sites.
The video doesn’t mention that West Sacramento is not in the RT district because it is in Yolo County. Yolo isn’t a typical suburban county because UC Davis is also there (and their medical school is actually inside Sacramento). Keep in mind that sales taxes for transit operations are a subset of a bigger transportation sales tax that is controlled by a third party multi-jurisdictional entity, and are county based rather than district based. So light rail to West Sacramento is politically complex.
The Elk Grove Transit saga is another curious topic. The area left RT in 2005 and rejoined RT in 2021 after RT took over the service again in 2019 (“E” routes on their system map). That saga was possible because the sales tax for transit operations in Sacramento County is distributed by a different entity than the transit operator as noted above. Elk Grove has 180K residents, so it’s got more people than any other city around here except Seattle and Tacoma. To me, the Elk Grove City’s existence and related transit saga is the more obscure transit topic.
It is strange to hear the Sacramento light rail system described as “odd”, or “obscure”, because it was the first urban train system I ever used – I lived in Sacramento while it was being built, and rode it daily for a couple of years while in college.
In fact using Sacramento’s light rail as a reference point caused me a great deal of frustration with Sound Transit in years past; having seen how quickly RT built its first line, and how useful that service was despite its street-running compromises and spartan station architecture, ST’s timetable seemed hopelessly glacial and its stations needlessly cavernous. We ended up with a better system, but we sure did miss out on many years of potential for incremental improvement in which car-dependent sprawl development remained the order of the day.
It’s pretty interesting to see and compare. Especially considering how Seattle link was almost built much more closer to the 2-car streetcar like variant aka like Portland or Sacramento light rail.
Here is another city which may be closer to Link: Helsinki built a spine just like Seattle but as a metro with 2min headway. It also redirected its buses to serve the metro. https://youtu.be/vAygH6SZg28?si=3wmBBP0WyImHUJRz
Some sense seeping into Sound Transit regarding South Sounder. The public outreach was illuminating.
One of the final bullets – Establish regular coordination meetings between ST and BNSF. That isn’t happening now?!?
Key takeaways:
Significant low-income ridership in the corridor mid-day, based on Orca-lift data, so this is major an equity issue. South Sounder runs through some of the poorest areas in King and Pierce County.
80-90% of trips in corridor are occurring during periods with no S. Sounder service. Massive latent demand.
The respondents almost universally request more trips, including mid-day, weekends and evenings, over longer trains, including current, frequent riders.
Get it done. Do it as a 5-year pilot, let people have time to adjust their lifestyles a around a usable train, and watch ridership and density in Kent, Auburn and Puyallup Valleys, and around the Tacoma and Lakewood Sounder Stations blossom.
If it’s successful, pour all the TDLE extension money into track improvements/easements/buyouts.
“The respondents almost universally request more trips, including mid-day, weekends and evenings, over longer trains”
ST has been sensing this shift for a few years now, so it’s been preparing for it. This survey is in some sense a confirmation of that, something ST can point to and say constituents want it.
The issue is always cost. Sounder is unusual. Normally the cost per trip goes down as you run trains in the middle of the day. You don’t need more equipment and it is easier to have a crew do the work throughout the day (rather than just during peak).
However, because BNSF owns the track things get more complicated. The more we use the tracks, the more it costs BNSF. The cost goes up since it becomes more and more difficult for BNSF to work around Sounder.
So the cost per train goes up. At the same time, the ridership per train goes down. At some point the cost per rider is enormous. It is also quite likely you lose the capacity advantage of a train. The trains are carrying only a busload of people.
Then there is speed. Tacoma is unusual in that without traffic it is faster to drive then it is to take the train. The train goes south and east while the freeway takes a fairly straight path. From the other stations it is the opposite. A train takes a fairly straight shot. Buses can follow freeways, but it takes a little effort to get in and out of the stations. Traffic makes things worse for the buses and thus makes taking the train even more attractive. Given all this, I would take this general approach:
1) Extend the Sounder runs a little more in the morning and evening. Early in the morning the trains run every twenty minutes. Then things transition fairly quickly. Trains arrive in Seattle at 8:02, 8:22, 8:52 and 11:27. There is plenty of traffic when Sounder starts running infrequently and there are plenty of who can show up after 9:00 AM. I would keep the schedule the same before 8:30 AM and then run trains so that they arrive in Seattle at 8:42, 9:02, 9:22, 9:42, followed by the big gap.
2) Run more buses buses when Sounder isn’t running. I just don’t think it will be worth it to provide even hourly train service during the middle of the day (or late at night). The buses are going to have to do the work.
Running additional bus service gets complicated. There is not only trips to Seattle to consider but trips between stations. Having a bus mimic Sounder is a double-edged sword. You provide good connections between the stations, but you also delay those headed to Seattle. There are also good alternatives in a lot of these cases. I’m not sure which assortment makes the most sense. I wrote a proposal a while back (https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/02/25/regional-transit-after-federal-way-link/). With additional funding from cancelling the various Sounder Station expansion projects it is easy to see some changes. The easiest addition could be this:
Tacoma/Puyallup/Sumner/Auburn: The 400 is a fairly fast bus for travel between Tacoma and Puyallup, but it runs infrequently during the day. Ideally ST would take over the route, as this would not only make trips between there more frequent, but it would free up vital ST service hours. The problem with that idea is that the 400 makes a lot of unique stops along the way — many of which are close together. This is not typical for ST Express, nor should it be. Meanwhile, the Puyallup/Sumner/Auburn section is basically a dead zone. Thus any service at all (other than Sounder) would be a huge improvement. I think the best bet is to run a bus going Tacoma/Puyallup/Sumner and Auburn. It could alternate with the 400 (each direction) which would provide much better frequency between Tacoma and Puyallup.
Other than that the previous proposal would work. There may be better combinations (that become possible with additional funding) or simply better frequency than what I proposed. I would hesitate to run express buses every ten minutes simply because trips that far are more influenced by speed than frequency. Fifteen minute service seems adequate.
Yeah, a bus mimicking the Sounder is a terrible idea. Expresses simply aren’t expresses in the valleys. The roads suck.
You really just have to bite the bullet and commit to providing round-trip service on the Sounder. Nobody is ever going to start using if it is sporadic and one-way. Only a handful of idiots like myself are willing to subject themselves to that kind of uncertainty. The data and ridership reflect that.
While your prescriptions are economically rational, Ross, you absolutely need to get into the heads, the motivations, the reasons why people who have been subjected to tragically pathetic to no transit for 100 years would be convinced to try it. Often try it for the first time.
And a train downtown at 7am, and a 2 hour bus ride home at 8pm isn’t going to convince anyone to leave their Dodge Pacer in the driveway.
You need to promise them a competitive round-trip out and home again. If you don’t, you will never get any converts but the mentally ill.
> Buses can follow freeways, but it takes a little effort to get in and out of the stations. Traffic makes things worse for the buses and thus makes taking the train even more attractive. Given all this, I would take this general approach:
The sr 167 master plan proposal would add direct access ramps at Kent, Auburn and Sumner. Their proposed brt is:
“Add BRT on SR 167. This project would implement a BRT system on SR 167 that is similar to existing BRT in the region, including Community Transit’s Swift routes and Sound Transit’s upcoming Stride BRT. This project would provide BRT service connections between Puyallup, Sumner, Auburn, Kent, and Renton with a possible extension to Link light rail.”
But one could just emulate sounder and after Kent head direct to Seattle rather than Renton.
(I think I mentioned before but I guess it’s fine to repeat for others)
You really just have to bite the bullet and commit to providing round-trip service on the Sounder.
The problem is at some point the cost per rider becomes ridiculous. We are talking hundreds of dollars per rider (per trip). Why the hell should we spend that kind of money on only a handful of riders?
Expresses simply aren’t expresses in the valleys.
Of course they are. That is just silly. You are conflating two different ideas: A bus that mimics Sounder, and expresses to each station. Imagine we just run a bus to every station as an express to Seattle. We already know that the bus from Tacoma and Lakewood is more popular than the train, because more people take the bus when they both run (even though the bus is delayed by traffic). So that leaves:
Puyallup to Seattle express.
Sumner to Seattle express.
Auburn to Seattle express.
Kent to Seattle express.
Tukwila to Seattle express.
Five buses, each independently running as an express in the middle of the day and at night. Run them all every fifteen minutes. Hell, run them all every ten minutes. That would still be cheaper than running Sounder frequently You don’t seem to get that. Running Sounder is extremely expensive. So it begs the question: What will get more riders — these expresses running every ten minutes or a train running every hour or two. Not even close. The buses.
Now clearly running the buses that often (and not trying to combine some of the trips) is a bad idea. It is very wasteful. Well so too is running the trains frequently. We just can’t afford to run the trains as often as we can the buses.
And a train downtown at 7am, and a 2 hour bus ride home at 8pm isn’t going to convince anyone to leave their Dodge Pacer in the driveway.
Neither will a train running every two hours! Besides, who the hell is talking about a 2 hour bus ride? At 8 pm a bus is just as fast as a train. The only reason it would be slower is if it stopped along the way, and even then the time penalty would be minimal. The bus is faster if you are going to Tacoma. Oh, and in the meantime it could serve more of downtown Seattle, which means riders wouldn’t have to transfer.
Are there actual numbers behind your “100s of dollars a boarding” comment?
It takes 40 minutes to get from Seattle to Kent. There is a bus that fast?
I drove I-5 at 10:30am yesterday. A Sunday. No accidents. No big events until 1pm. It was already a parking lot starting well outside the city limits.
Do you really want that to be what we count on for getting people around on regional trips? Really? You are so optimistic that they will just continue to donate space to transit, as becomes a parking lot for cars going forward? That’s your plan?
> Are there actual numbers behind your “100s of dollars a boarding” comment?
Well the negotiations are secret but there are some past estimates:
“In July 2010, Sound Transit reached a new agreement with BNSF, valued at $185 million, which grants Sound Transit permanent access to the S Line corridor, as well as allowing four more daily round trips to begin”
To cover around 12 hours assuming we want 15 minute frequency would be around 12 of these payments or around 2.4 billion before any trains have even started running — unfortunately that would mean basically no freight trains can run so BNSF would likely ask for a much much larger sum of money.
Assuming the above was actually agreed upon, it would also be contingent on some actual capital improvements. I have never seen a document for capital improvements involving 15 minute frequency but I assume the minimum would be triple tracking or maybe even basically quad tracking. It’s at minimum a couple billion.
> Do you really want that to be what we count on for getting people around on regional trips? Really? You are so optimistic that they will just continue to donate space to transit, as becomes a parking lot for cars going forward? That’s your plan?
There was a plan to toll the i-5 hov lanes and combined with a direct access ramp at airpot way it’d be relatively fast. Though idk what exact project wsdot will chose to build next after they are done with the i-405 toll lanes
I don’t think anyone is suggesting or is expecting 15 minute frequency, except maybe peak hour.
Hourly would be fantastic.
It sounds like about the same ballpark costs as TDLE, and much faster and more useful, as it expands the catchment area for dedicated ROW transit by at least a half a million people, and with the right motivation, creates boomtown level dense growth all along a new corridor.
Cancel TDLE, but in a frequent express from Tacoma to FW, and throw all the funds towards Sounder. Pierce politicians will need some sweet talking, but if ST pilots usable Sounder service, and people start realizing it’s usable for not just commuting to Seattle, but all day, evening and weekend trips as well as getting to destinations all up and down the line (last time I tried to get to Kent from Tacoma, it was nearly 2 hours by bus, each way), than support will build to keep and expand the Sounder service.
Link really provides very little for Pierce and south King, except for a few small destinations right on I-5.
You’d likely see improved frequency become a possibly as a cost savings from mitigating dead heading, which is partly why Sounder is expensive to operate currently as they have to pay someone to man those train for the runs they do and its better to use them than not with more runs throughout the day. I’d also point out that frequency would improve ridership as people’s commuting habits have changed and there is more need for midday and evening service as people have complained for years at not enough runs for Sounder service. And would be an improvement to suburban service as well as there are plenty of people going one or two stops in the valley to connect with work, errands, appointments, school as we have two community colleges available to connect to by bus (Green River & Highline)
People wanna bring up ST Express as “faster” but it isn’t inherently faster outside of early or late runs where traffic is low to make speed a plus. I’d also point out that coverage is an important aspect to Sounder as it covers the Kent valley end to end and picks up and drops off lots of people along the way. It also just slogs through Pierce before it leaves directly for Seattle, it can be 40 minutes in ideal conditions and upwards of an hour when traffic is involved between Lakewood Towne Center and Tacoma Dome Station on the 594.
Why are people comparing a reality (ST Express bus service), to an unrealistic fantasy (15 peak, and hourly off-peak S Line service)? What’s the point?
Exactly, Sam.
I’d point out the term “corridor” is rather undefined. Does this only mean trips to Downtown Seattle? What about Bellevue to Auburn or Renton to Puyallup? What about a Stride transfer in Renton or Link transfer at BAR? Why is it only about train sets?
If any agency wants to bargain with BNSF, they have to first create a cogent “Plan B” so to set the upper limit of what can be offered. I don’t see reaching a “Plan B” here. All I see is wishful thinking with limited options.
Plus the survey forces the result. When the question is longer trains or more trains on the tracks and the trains aren’t jammed, of course more trains is what will be preferred.
Frankly, the survey only limits answers to Sounder trains. Other posters can speculate about other modes but that’s not what the survey content was. If all you ask about what flavor of ice cream do you want for dessert, no one is offering cake and pie as alternatives. To me, the survey value is quite limited. It reads to me more of a PR effort.
Lazarus does stress a thing that is right. The billions that we are spending to build Link will be manifested in two years, and the world of local travel will change. Link should be more transformational than a new bus route or a few added train sets. And FW Link is just three miles from Sounder. Much of East Kent is further from Downtown Kent than KDM Link station is! I wish the survey asked about non-Sounder options but it didn’t.
The ultimate question that should be asked is about willingness to pay more for more service through fares or taxes. Everybody likes more trains; fewer will be willing to pay for the privilege of having them available.
Anyway, with no interest by ST to deviate from their shopping list, I predict that nothing soon will change as a result of the survey. That’s why I say that we should wait until FW Link opens and see if demand shifts.
The Metro restructuring for Link should be where discussions should be focused in 2024-2025, and not in this limited survey.
If you think Link getting to Federal Way will be some sort of transformational moment comparable to opening UWS or Northgate, you are delusional.
Link, running along I-5, then slow-boating through Rainier Valley, then dead-ending in Backwater Ballard, cripples it’s usefulness to the South King. It’s a minor upgrade, mainly due to frequency, but certainly not to routing. It misses just about every population and business center it could hope to miss in South King. If it weren’t for the airport and Highline College, it would be of almost no value to South King.
Go down and highlight the population density map by block group. Interestingly, the population centers are nearly all clustered along the Sounder line, not I-5, where link is.
I would hazard to guess the job density is even more pronounced along the Kent Valley. Sure, they aren’t as dense as downtown Bellevue or Capital Hill, but few places Washington are, and those places are already served.
Stop spending money on a silly wrong-mode choo choo that doesn’t go where the jobs or people are, and instead take that money and upgrade the already existing line where they actually are. It’s not rocket science. If you are going to stupid levels of money on rail in South King, at least spend it in the right place.
Hourly would be fantastic.
And hourly means hardly anyone uses it. No one wants to wait forty minutes or plan their schedule around the trip.
You are so optimistic that they will just continue to donate space to transit, as becomes a parking lot for cars going forward?
The more crowded it is, the more pressure there is to convert HOV-2 to HOV-3 (or HOT) lanes. It is a WSDOT standard, which is why various roadways have seen upgrades. It is highly likely it will be HOT lanes simply because the state has major funding issues, and this helps deal with them.
Are there actual numbers behind your “100s of dollars a boarding” comment?
No, but let me take a stab at it. For whatever reason ST is inconsistent when it comes to releasing data. In 2018 the SIP (https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/2017-sip-final-draft.pdf) had subsidy per boarding for Sounder. It was $6.92 for South Sounder. There were about 700 riders per train. I’m sure the cost goes up the longer the train, but not much. Thus if there were 70 people per train then it would cost about $69.20 per rider. But again, the cost per train goes up, so already we are approaching 100 dollars per rider. It is also quite possible that 70 riders per train is optimistic. Even now (with fewer trips) there are trains that get less than that. So it is probably not accurate to say “100s” if it ran hourly — probably closer to “around a 100 dollars” subsidy per trip.
I have never seen a document for capital improvements involving 15 minute frequency but I assume the minimum would be triple tracking or maybe even basically quad tracking. It’s at minimum a couple billion.
It sounds like about the same ballpark costs as TDLE, and much faster and more useful, as it expands the catchment area for dedicated ROW transit by at least a half a million people, and with the right motivation, creates boomtown level dense growth all along a new corridor.
Link really provides very little for Pierce and south King, except for a few small destinations right on I-5.
On that we agree. That is really a different beast. If we really want fast trains from Seattle to Portland we are going to have to have fast trains from Seattle to Tacoma. That means our own tracks for passenger rail, and maybe even passing lanes around the stations (so that Sounder could run at the same time as an express from Seattle to Portland (stopping only at Tacoma)). Now you basically have MARC and Amtrak. You shift costs dramatically from operations to capital. You have economy of scale again. You electrify and automate the trains from Tacoma to Downtown Seattle and costs per train drop dramatically. Now it isn’t the end of the world if you only have 50 people per train. Over time (as you suggest) you have more, simply because you have all the advantages of Link (high frequency) with all the advantage of Sounder (being away from the freeway).
If I remember that is what Troy Serad suggested way back when.
If you think Link getting to Federal Way will be some sort of transformational moment comparable to opening UWS or Northgate, you are delusional.
Agreed. I will repeat a point I made earlier. In the middle of the day, a bus is over 15 minutes faster than a train from Federal Way. That means if the bus runs every 15 minutes from Federal Way, the frequency of Link is meaningless (for trips to downtown). Link could be running every minute and it would be faster to wait for the bus. This also means that buses from Tacoma will be faster than Link, even if they stop to serve Federal Way. It means that someone from Auburn who takes a bus to Federal Way will be better off waiting for a bus to Seattle, even if they just missed the bus and the train is about to leave. The only time that Link is faster than the bus is when Sounder is faster than both the bus and Link. That’s it. That means that Link really doesn’t help with trips like Tacoma, Lakewood, Sumner, Puyallup, Auburn or Kent to downtown. Link is only useful for trips in between. Trips to Federal Way, Angle Lake, SeaTac, Tukwila, Rainier Valley, Beacon Hill and SoDo. That’s it. The only reason it would be worse is if ST decides to underserve the region, and run infrequent or nonexistent buses to the South Sound. If they do that, then very few people will take transit.
“And hourly means hardly anyone uses it. No one wants to wait forty minutes or plan their schedule around the trip.”
I don’t think that’s true. This is regional rail. City to city. Maybe Tukwila doesn’t qualify, but Lakewood, Tacoma, Puyallup and Sumner sure do. Auburn and Kent fall in between.
People plan those trips. Hourly is fine.
I’ve talked to people who live in Kent who say things like “You are going to Seattle!?!?” I haven’t been to the big city in 20 years.” They don’t consider themselves in the Seattle/Metro orbit.
An hour would game changing, particularly if it ran well into the evening, so people weren’t stranded. That is much, much more important. Provide consistent, dependable service and people will plan around it.
With the 594, looking for one at 9pm, I have to get there at least 20 minutes early to be comfortable I’m going to get home before midnight. The apps are riddled with ghost buses, and they are sometimes 20 minutes early or 45 minutes late. Trains don’t generally have those problems. Much more predictable.
My thoughts on this are informed by my experience with friends on Long Island living on the LIRR. I lived in Brooklyn. It was very common to meet friends in Manhattan for lunch, or drinks, or a band. They would hop on a train, often in a small town getting dropped off, cab, or using a surface park and ride, and hop on the “3pm” and meet down in the Village at 4. They knew their last train was the “11pm,” so they had to be up at Grand Central by then to catch their train home.
It worked like a charm.
Sure, you would get more riders with 15 minute frequency, and at some point in might be worth it, but that’s not what this is. This is regional rail. What SHOULD be serving cities an hour outside Seattle, not some stupid highway-running mistake.
Question for everyone here. What are the chances in the next 50 years that the Sounder S Line runs hourly from, let’s say, around 5 AM to 11 PM? I’m trying to gauge how much of this idea is pure fantasy, and how much of it is a realistic option. My guess is there’s a zero percent chance.
Non-zero, in the way that if you had asked a Seattleite in 1970 “what are the chances Seattle will be one of the nation’s fastest growing cities in 50 years, with a thriving core of an industry that doesn’t exist today” they’d say it’s a fantasy.
Also, non-zero in the way if you had asked someone who had just read the news that Forward Thrust had failed to get a 60% majority in 1970, the chances that in 50 years there would be a light rail metro line running from Sea-Tac (currently undergoing the addition of a second runway) to the University of Washington, with expansions to Redmond, Lynnwood, and Federal Way under construction, and planning started for expansions to Everett, Tacoma, West Seattle, Ballard, Kirkland and Issaquah.
> Question for everyone here. What are the chances in the next 50 years that the Sounder S Line runs hourly from, let’s say, around 5 AM to 11 PM? I’m trying to gauge how much of this idea is pure fantasy, and how much of it is a realistic option. My guess is there’s a zero percent chance.
Assuming the amtrak cascades plan that was made with bnsf is realistic then that’d be around 16 round trip trains a day between portland and seattle. (with the large caveat that it would only stop at tacoma and tukwila)
If one can somehow make enough capital improvements maybe the amtrak trains could stop at the middle stations of kent, auburn, sumner (I do highly doubt) but still it would get it pretty close.
Any more frequent than hourly and I don’t see BNSF allowing any more trains short of sound transit just buying the rail line. Or like might as well just build a new rail line on SR-167 median.
Btw, I’m open to being proven wrong in my assumption that this idea is an unrealistic fantasy. So, tell me the steps that need to be taken by all parties to make all-day hourly S Line service a reality. What has to happen, and how much will it cost?
I think it depends on whether we are serious about getting people out of their cars and into transit.
Already you click on the google traffic map, and the highways are dripping blood-red, at all times of the day, and well into the evenings and early mornings: https://maps.app.goo.gl/CEE4kifbFkf8SKGD7
Roads are for suckers. Yes, there are “express buses” in NY, but they tend to go to places that are nowhere near subways and heavy rail lines. They serve the poor suckers unlucky enough to live in places like the far reaches of Queens and Staten Island, they are often private coach lines, and they cost 10 times what a subway token costs. If you are pinning the future of regional transit on I-5 running express buses, you are making a massive mistake.
Even if you just extrapolate the linear trend of population and jobs, we will see another half a million people and 100,000 jobs here, in the next 10-15 years. With our likelihood of being somewhat climate resilient compared to the rest of the country and world, I suspect that line will up an upward curve. If you think I-5 will be sufficient to keep supporting transportation in the region, you aren’t thinking things through very clearly.
If the pressure isn’t on to leverage and upgrade those UP and BNSF rail lines and rights of way right now, it is likely to continue to build.
Look, this is a transit blog. I would think this would be a no-brainer to support. Y’all sure love your roads and highways, in a weird Stockholm Syndrome kinda way.
I think it depends on whether we are serious about getting people out of their cars and into transit.
Already you click on the google traffic map, and the highways are dripping blood-red, at all times of the day, and well into the evenings and early mornings.
Roads are for suckers. Yes, there are “express buses” in NY, but they tend to go to places that are nowhere near subways and heavy rail lines. They serve the poor suckers unlucky enough to live in places like the far reaches of Queens and Staten Island, they are often private coach lines, and they cost 10 times what a subway token costs. If you are pinning the future of regional transit on I-5 running express buses, you are making a massive mistake.
Even if you just extrapolate the linear trend of population and jobs, we will see another half a million people and 100,000 jobs here, in the next 10-15 years. With our likelihood of being somewhat climate resilient compared to the rest of the country and world, I suspect that line will up an upward curve. If you think I-5 will be sufficient to keep supporting transportation in the region, you aren’t thinking things through very clearly.
If the pressure isn’t on to leverage and upgrade those UP and BNSF rail lines and rights of way right now, it is likely to continue to build. This work absolutely need to be done. Why not take the billions from TDLE and canceled expansions of platforms and Dupont, and get to work on that now.
Look, this is a transit blog. I would think this would be a no-brainer to support. Y’all seems to sure love your roads and highways, in a weird Stockholm Syndrome kinda way.
> Look, this is a transit blog. I would think this would be a no-brainer to support. Y’all seems to sure love your roads and highways, in a weird Stockholm Syndrome kinda way.
The problem is that there is no path forward. It is an active freight rail used heavily. It is unheard of to have hourly passenger service on such a freight rail line especially in north america. For example with metrolink in los angeles, it is a similar situation with say the metrolink riverside line only running am peak inbound and pm peak outbound with no trains midday.
You keep stating let’s magically run regional trains more frequently to hourly or more frequently on a freight line as if it is a simple and easy thing when literally there are no such examples on the entire continent. Unless if you are committing to just basically buying the freight line or literally building a new rail line, but of course you don’t because it’d confront the reality of how hard it’d be to actually get those frequencies.
Not simple or easy. And certainly not cheap. Simply necessary, if you support regional transit.
Use the (substantial, but I understand likely not quite sufficient) money allocated towards TDLE, current express buses, and the cancelled expansions to get to work, rather than waste on project with far, far less bang for the buck.
@Cam
And lastly and most importantly you still need bnsf approval for such a large construction project.
Like I understand that you want fast transit but I’m not exactly sure what you are expecting us to say. Do you want us to indulge you and just say ‘bnsf will easily agree to it’ and ‘construction costs are really cheap’ to quad track 10/20 miles of track.
If you really want it then perhaps at least put a bit more effort into investigating and actually looking into how much it would cost and then have a proposal for what it would take. Not just saying ‘spend money’ and then magically more frequent.
I mean earlier you said “It sounds like about the same ballpark costs as TDLE, and much faster and more useful, ” well why haven’t you tried putting in some effort to calculate ballpark costs as well. I’m not sure why you’re placing all the onus on detractors to calculate it when it’s what you want.
“And hourly means hardly anyone uses it. No one wants to wait forty minutes or plan their schedule around the trip.”
I don’t think that’s true. This is regional rail. City to city. Maybe Tukwila doesn’t qualify, but Lakewood, Tacoma, Puyallup and Sumner sure do. Auburn and Kent fall in between.
Yeah I get that. Commuter/regional rail is less influenced by frequency. But very few people take commuter/regional rail in general, especially if:
1) It serves what are essentially small towns/suburbs. Regional rail works well in the Northeast and really well in Europe because the towns and cities are very centralized. Tens of thousands of people can walk to the station, even though the town isn’t that big. But regional rail to the suburbs only gets decent ridership during commute hours (which is why they call it commuter rail). Places like Auburn are not centralized cities. The urban part of Auburn has maybe a few hundred people. The rest of it is low density suburbs. Kent is a little bigger, but if Kent is a city of a few thousand surrounded by a giant sprawling suburb. The only real city is Tacoma and the train doesn’t go to the center of it. Compare this to Baltimore. Baltimore is a major city, with a strong center. The trains serve major urban areas, which means there are plenty of people who take trips from DC (or the surrounding suburbs) to Baltimore, via the train. In contrast, the trains that run from Seattle to Tacoma in the morning are basically empty.
2) There is very little in the way of speed advantage with the train. Consider the opposite: Baltimore to DC. According to Google it takes about a half hour by train, and well over an hour if you drive. At noon! No wonder people take the train. This isn’t rail bias. No one in Baltimore is thinking “I take the train; it is nifty!”. This is just people taking the fastest way there (and it is very fast). The problem is, South Sounder doesn’t offer that kind of speed advantage. Express buses to every spot would be about as quick. In the case of Tacoma, the bus is faster! As I mentioned before, during rush hour, more people ride the bus than the train. Think about that for a second. When the train is running relatively frequently (every 20 minutes) and there is a good chance that the train will be faster, more people ride the bus. Hourly midday trains stand no chance against buses running every 15 minutes — not when the bus is much faster.
3) The cities (or towns) have fairly weak transit. Even Seattle has very weak transit compared to DC or New York. Someone from Kent who is visiting someone who lives in the Central Area will probably just drive. Yes, it is right in the heart of the city, and the buses aren’t that bad. But they aren’t especially fast, and driving is just much faster, end to end. As luck would have it, they are running a train at 11:00 (special event). I put in the trip pair (Kent to a random place in the CD) and it shows 35 minutes for driving, and an hour for transit. Not bad, but you first have to get down to the station and wait for the train. In other words if you left at 10:40 (which I started typing this) you could be at your friends house at 11:10 or 12:05.
Look, if ST owned the tracks we wouldn’t be having this conversation. They would be running the trains every hour, even if hardly anyone rode them. We would be debating things like DMUs, electrification or automation. But it just doesn’t make sense to spend a fortune on so few riders. Consider MARC again. I mentioned how great it is (and it really is one of the best regional/commuter systems in North America). DC is huge. Baltimore dwarfs Tacoma. The train is blazing fast. Yet only about 10,000 riders a day take it. That’s it. With MARC they own the tracks and the only cost is operations. With Sounder the cost goes up and up the more trips we add. It just doesn’t make sense to spend a huge amount of money on so few riders. Not when there is an alternative that offers something that is better in many ways.
Personal story: I used to have a friend who lived in Edgewood. I would drive to visit him. Even though he was dirt poor (and lived in a trailer park) he would drive to visit his friends in Seattle (when his car ran). Of course we would have loved taking a train, but we also would have loved having a bus running every fifteen minutes. It just makes the trip way more flexible. You leave when you want to leave. The combination is nice. You leave when you want to leave. If you end up taking the train, great. If not, you don’t have to wait around a really long time — you just take the bus.
You are right, WL. For sure.
Honestly, I wouldn’t know where to start on the money side. If you want to point me to some docs, I’m happy to put a little time in.
Generally, I am looking here for thoughtful and more informed opinions on a path forward. I am not a transit expert. I’m not a planner. I am not an engineer. Transit is an interest, but I have 10 other things I am as, or more interested in. I just see a need, y’all have convinced me of the error of TDLE, and I see what seems like an obvious, if difficult and expensive, fix.
It may be easier and cheaper than I speculate, though it’s likely harder or costlier. But it doesn’t seem like a bad idea to find out, and it sounds like ST is trying to do that. Which is good.
As an aside, yes it’s an active freight line. But those trains go very near my house every day, and I would estimate over half are either coal or oil. I am hopeful that freight need largely disappears in the next 10 to 20 years.
Link should be more transformational than a new bus route or a few added train sets.
It depends on what you mean by “transformational”. If they ran buses every fifteen minutes from various South Sound locations then Link basically only works for trips between Downtown Seattle and Federal Way. That’s it. It really doesn’t make sense if you are going to Downtown Seattle or most places within Seattle. The Link locations south of downtown are not that popular compared to downtown (and the places you can get to from downtown).
The only way it would be transformational is if they truncate a bunch of buses and force riders to take the slow train into the city. That would definitely be transformational, but in a bad way.
But those trains go very near my house every day, and I would estimate over half are either coal or oil. I am hopeful that freight need largely disappears in the next 10 to 20 years.
That is a possibility. I believe that coal comes mainly from Wyoming, runs through Oregon (along the gorge) then goes north up through Washington before being exported in BC. That is a long ways, and there are a lot of things that can go wrong. Coal is a fairly volatile industry, and the market could easily crash, especially given the way people feel about the environment on the West Coast: https://www.route-fifty.com/infrastructure/2019/11/coal-export-terminals-west-coast-oakland-washington-oregon/161380/.
Do you want us to indulge you and just say ‘bnsf will easily agree to it’ and ‘construction costs are really cheap’ to quad track 10/20 miles of track.
I think the only way it happens is with high speed rail. I don’t think the bullet train idea is realistic. At some point they will look at what it would take to run trains at 100 MPH between Seattle and Tacoma, and that probably requires adding more tracks. Not cheap, but not nearly as expensive as bullet trains (and the sort of thing that could be built in a few years, not decades from now).
When I was a college student, I was told that anything can be built given enough money. It’s not whether the S Line can be run hourly but how much would it cost.
It will require at least one defucated track no matter what. In some instances a single track for passengers can work for a segment, but anything greater than an hour will require adding bypass tracks to that mainline track or a fully second track. It looks to me that ST or WSDOT would have to buy at least a mainline track the whole way. Automation can reduce the amount of double tracks needed but trains will still need to pass each other.
Amtrak ended up owning corridors because some railroads in the 1970’s declared bankruptcy. Caltrain was able to get its tracks by putting SP into a regulatory corner. Railroads today are more savvy and diversified, so it seems unlikely for BNSF would be forced to sell these tracks at a low price. Of course, some corporation could suddenly buy BNSF and that might change the reality. Like Amazon could buy BNSF and repurpose the line to benefit both package delivery and employee transportation. Or a future government dictatorship could abolish private railroad ownership.
A strategy may be to build a new freight track for BNSF in a trade. However there are many freight destinations on the corridor — not only the Port of Seattle but many other places in South King — so I don’t see that happening easily unless it’s immediately adjacent to the existing tracks.
So government could just build completely new tracks. Oh wait! That’s what we are already doing by building Link to Tacoma! Even though ST is too stupidly shortsighted to design and build the tracks for faster trains on the Link corridor, that was our generational investment choice. It’s been decided — and we now have to live with it and try to enhance things to make it work better for the region in the next 30 years. (This is why I keep insisting that Link has to be a big part of better transit delivery in South King.)
Meanwhile, big thinkers propose new tracks as high speed rail but know it’s several decades off. Piggy-backing on high speed rail may be the best way to eventually get dedicated corridor track here. That however isn’t something that ST can lead.
If our regional population adds another 2 million people in the next 40 years like in the last 40, the next generation may be willing to fund a new faster track corridor. National and world population growth forecasts point to that growth possibility pretty unlikely though.
So, unless we are under 30, I think the likelihood that we will see even hourly service on the corridor seems honestly far less than 10 percent before we retire. And if it does happen, I think it would only happen if circumstances of track ownership and kinds of service on the tracks change in ways that we can’t predict.
People on here want to claim striving for better is fantasy and unrealistic. But all I see is a lot of cynical complaining to do nothing to improve things. It’s very lazy from my perspective.
For all the shit people on here like to give Seattle Subway for their ideas, they at least go to Olympia to lobby for better and wanting to improve transportation policy in the state. Can’t say the same thing about people around here where the default is incessantly armchair complaining and “we can’t do anything to change the status quo” or “it’s too expensive” or “buses will solve everything”
Public transit isn’t about making money or ROI, it’s about improving people’s lives so they aren’t so car dependent. It’s truly funny and quite frankly sad how much I see people on here quibble so much about the cost of public transit infrastructure and yet we as a state give highways Carte Blanche to spend ungodly amounts of money on things that won’t fix traffic and haven’t fixed traffic. To me this is a problem with Seattle, it still clings to car and road centric policy to fix transit even though more busses won’t fix every problem and we are in a bus driver staffing shortage that’s unlikely to fix itself for awhile. There’s a uncomfortableness to acknowledge that rail and spending on rail needs to be a higher priority and that we need to quite frankly need to stop giving an effing damm about cost because all that does is lead to the perpetuation of the thing Seattle can’t escape….the Seattle Process.
we are in a bus driver staffing shortage that’s unlikely to fix itself for awhile.
There is a very simple solution to the driver staffing shortage: Pay them more money!
Look no one said that buses can solve all of the problems. It is just that they could solve our biggest problems at this point. They could certainly solve the issues in the South Sound.
Link is coming to Federal Way. Great. I mean that sincerely. I’ve long said that the southern end of Link needs a place where buses (traveling along I-5) can connect to it. At that point all you need is 15 minute buses from Tacoma to Seattle (with that stop in Federal Way) and you are pretty much set. Run buses from Puyallup/Sumner/Auburn to Federal Way every 15 minutes as well. Run express buses to Kent. All of that is much, much cheaper than buying out BNSF, even if you give each and every bus driver a big fat raise.
It is bizarre that something as obvious as paying the drivers more money is seen as an intractable problem and yet spending a fortune on extra train service for a handful of people at the Sounder stations is easy. It is like the folks who think we can’t possibly change the HOV-2 lanes to HOV-3, and the only solution is to build a massively expensive mass transit systems that is much slower most of the day.
> People on here want to claim striving for better is fantasy and unrealistic. But all I see is a lot of cynical complaining to do nothing to improve things. It’s very lazy from my perspective.
@Zach
And I just see lots of complaining as well without much work or effort from those who want more frequent sounder frequency. Why is it that the us the detractors have practically calculated done more work than y’all have done?
You say we are lazy; well then where is your concrete proposal? Even a napkin one would be nice. I have not seen any one advocating for all day frequent sounder service actually go and write an actual genuine proposal. There’s plenty of wsdot documents and other past studies one can reference.
Just saying to ‘spend money’ is not an actual plan.
@ Zach:
I think it needs to be mentioned that ST3 could be delivered probably 50 percent cheaper if it wasn’t for concerns about much of the public being repulsed about seeing elevated train tracks. Even in Downtown Seattle, there is easy willingness to remove a traffic lane for a bicycle track but not columns for elevated rail. While that sounds tangential, it would free several billions to build more transformative transit projects around the region.
Plus, the region signed a mortgage for at least 30 years just to build a low-ball-cost ST3 (and realignment is pushing the end date further away). That may not dampen your hopefulness, but it does dampen many others.
As far as Seattle Subway goes, they are structured to advocate. A blog like this is structured to trade ideas. Frankly, lots of Seattle Subway’s ideas on their fantasy map are not very constructible, and wouldn’t make transit trips faster because they cling to current Link technology (so they aren’t actually as visionary as they could be). I see Seattle Subway as filling a void in systems governmental visioning, but they seem biased towards promoting central and north Seattle projects so much that they even enlarge their diagrams to make north Seattle twice the size of south Seattle. I wish Seattle Subway would put more energy addressing station design and usability (especially transfers) and less on pitching a rail schematic. Until Seattle Subway puts out ideas for using more technologies than manned Link light rail cars for everything, I’ll view them as rather pea-brained.
This blog may not be as optimistic as you would like — but many people who post can get into details that can ultimately make transit investments better for riders. We have disagreements. If we all agreed no one would post much. Dissent however can make things better because none of us can look at everything objectively. Think of this blog as a forum to float ideas for their realism. Brutal discussion here is much better here than paying some engineering consultant to get paid several million dollars to come to the same conclusion (often tainted by their desire to get a bigger design contract later).
I still strongly believe that rider experience remains a diminished topic that needs more focus. The Seattle Process is this odd battle of behind the scenes real estate deal-making and last-minute neighborhood activism (often also motivated by perceived real estate worries) pushing back. The result often makes things worse for us riders that prefer to use transit daily because rider interests are not made highly important in the battles.
Do I have a proposal right now, no because that would take me time to come up with as to what I think would work although as I’ve said and others have said half hourly to hourly service during off peak, triple tracks, move freight to a different corridor in the valley, smaller vehicles like Stadlers, electrification, etc etc etc.
Saying “where’s your idea” when I and others have come up with plenty of ideas on here right now. Including Sounder proposals and all I’ve seen is crap on people’s ideas because they’re “fantasy” and “unrealistic” is truly unhelpful and just discourages presenting ideas in the future. People are unlikely to present ideas because they don’t wanna deal with someone who’ll just be negative at their proposal.
Being negative all the time to me in my view is unhelpful and does not bear good fruit or foster good brainstorming. All it does is make people less likely to propose ideas. There’s never bad ideas and places that discourage brainstorming just make it difficult to foster out of the box thinking and just default to groupthink. Which in my experience with project management just leads to a lot of bad ideas, no ideas, or afraid of change or shake up when forced to change or need to make a move.
This is something this forum suffers from to a degree. It can become an echo chamber and feedback loop to complain and be negative instead of hopeful and strive for better to a degree.
And for the record I’m not about toxic positivity either, it’s just as unhealthy as complaining all the time. I try to balance between being pragmatic and realistic & idealistic and positive. I just find it’s better to be on the side of dream big for what we can do than be chained down to being negative a lot of the time.
> This is something this forum suffers from to a degree. It can become an echo chamber and feedback loop to complain and be negative instead of hopeful and strive for better to a degree.
> And for the record I’m not about toxic positivity either, it’s just as unhealthy as complaining all the time. I try to balance between being pragmatic and realistic & idealistic and positive. I just find it’s better to be on the side of dream big for what we can do than be chained down to being negative a lot of the time.
I am not against bringing up ideas, but I find it odd why you claimed we are lazy when you have not shown your own work or effort.
> Do I have a proposal right now, no because that would take me time to come up with as to what I think would work although as I’ve said and others have said half hourly to hourly service during off peak, triple tracks, move freight to a different corridor in the valley, smaller vehicles like Stadlers, electrification, etc etc etc.
I’m not saying it needs to be a perfect proposal but like if I’m able to google up some wsdot documents and type up a more concrete proposal/ counter argument than either your or Cam have ever written up within like 15 minutes perhaps y’all should put in a bit more effort rather than just claiming we’re being negative.
Like I really don’t understand are you guys waiting for me or ross or Al to write it up for you guys?
AI. S
How I view Seattle Subway is “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars” mentality to their advocacy and thought process. Do I think they’ll get everything, no. Link extension to Woodinville is unlikely but Bothell could happen via Lake City & Kenmore or a line along Aurora etc etc etc. But I think their advocacy long term will likely bear fruit in advocating for corridors that will likely happen in the next 50 or so years. And hopefully convince Olympia to be better in their long term transportation policy. Something I think most of us on here can agree is lacking for a state that calls itself progressive on environmental and climate policy.
I won’t disagree this forum is good for hashing out practical ideas, I think the propensity to complain about the bad over West Seattle and Ballard and to a lesser degree Tacoma and Everett can be a bit overwrought at times from my perspective. Do I think they have problems, yes. But some of their problems I accept as is because sometimes you have to play politics to get the other things you want in a pragmatic sense even if the value won’t bear fruit for a long time. In Denver, the Southeast LR corridor still has a lot of untapped potential that will likely take a few more decades to really reap the benefits from. We still have a decent amount of empty prarieland at the edge of the metro where the line stops that is itching for development and redevelopment of existing infrastructure.
> Being negative all the time to me in my view is unhelpful and does not bear good fruit or foster good brainstorming. All it does is make people less likely to propose ideas. There’s never bad ideas and places that discourage brainstorming just make it difficult to foster out of the box thinking and just default to groupthink. Which in my experience with project management just leads to a lot of bad ideas, no ideas, or afraid of change or shake up when forced to change or need to make a move.
We’ve outlined many of the problems already and neither of you guys (or whoever else supports sounder) have tried to do any calculations to solve it.
Like if I wanted a rail across 520 am I just going to keep saying build it. And everytime someone asks how are you going to connect to u district with tunnel or elevated would you just ignore it?
I mean even say the bnsf payments one that was relatively simple to calculate and have a rough estimate (even if probably flawed) but y’all could have done that anytime. For how much tracks there’s the amtrak cascades development plan to check and the previous ones you guys can use to estimate the capital costs.
Like on the other comment, I’ve seen others for discussing the rainier bus lane of a couple miles we probably debated it more technically than ive ever seen either of you guys do for sounder. You guys are asking for a multi billion dollar project and are surprised when we ask some clarifying questions.
And again this has literally not been done before. Active freight tracks don’t have hourly regional rail running on them anywhere on the usa. It’s just the am peak/pm peak trains.
“Active freight tracks don’t have hourly regional rail running on them anywhere on the usa. It’s just the am peak/pm peak trains.”
Metrolinx
Metra
Metro North
LIRR
NE Corridor (in parts)
NJ Transit Commuter
MBTA Commuter Rail
UTA FrontRunner
MARC
Tri Rail
Trinity Rail Express
Etc etc etc
Oh, and the bus service I’ve outlined here would likely require fewer riders than today. Remember that I eliminate peak-oriented service (since Sounder and Link can do the job). Also note that there would be no buses to SeaTac (riders have to transfer to the train).
The easiest way to think of the savings is via sections. Right now the 577 and 578 combine for half hour service from Federal Way. At the same time the 594 runs every half hour (right by the Federal Way station). Thus if the 594 runs every 15 minutes and you truncate the 578 at Federal Way you have exactly the same number of buses running from Federal Way to Seattle. The same goes for the 574 and 594 between Lakewood and Federal Way. Meanwhile, the 574 runs every half hour from Federal Way to SeaTac, and that goes away. This could then pay for running the truncated 578 (Puyallup/Sumner/Auburn/Federal Way) every 15 minutes (instead of every half hour). At this point you are basically revenue neutral and those in Federal Way, Tacoma and Lakewood are much better off.
That basically leaves the 15 minute express service to Kent/Auburn. It is quite likely that the cuts in peak-only express service would easily pay for that, which means that you would need fewer riders than today. This is not a fantasy map. This doesn’t even require more service. It just requires shifting things around.
Yet the results are dramatic. Riders in Lakewood, Downtown Tacoma (not just the dome), Federal Way and Kent get 15 minute express service to Seattle. Those in Puyallup, Sumner and Auburn would get 15 minute service to Federal Way, where they could then pick up the express bus to downtown (or the train to places like SeaTac and Rainier Valley). Riders in Kent would have a much faster trip to Seattle or Auburn, with buses running every 15 minutes. Those in Auburn retain their one-seat express to downtown, but it would run twice as often (and connect to Link).
There are other variations, but the point is, you can have frequent express service without spending any more money, or even having more drivers than we have today.
@Zach B
The problem is that BNSF owns the tracks.
For example you listed NE Corridor (in parts), well guess what the NE corridor is one of the rare corridors where Amtraks actually owns a large portion of the tracks.
MBTA same thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MBTA_Commuter_Rail
“The MBTA owns all passenger equipment and most stations.[14] Most trackage is also owned by the MBTA. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation (parent agency of the MBTA) owns several portions of the Framingham/Worcester Line as well as the Grand Junction Branch, which is used for non-revenue equipment moves between the northside and southside lines….”
I can check each one, but basically BNSF owns the tracks. And it is heavily using it.
There is no example of hourly passenger service on a rail line route with heavy freight traffic. You’re welcome to try finding such an example though.
“There is no example of hourly passenger service on a rail line route with heavy freight traffic. You’re welcome to try finding such an example though.”
And yet I presented examples to you that has refuted your claim. All you’re doing is digging a hole for yourself in trying to claim I’m wrong when I have presented evidence that shows you are incorrect here. You are welcome to admit your wrong, but you can also continue to die on the hill that what you said is correct despite people pointing out your incorrect. That’s on you to decide.
> Trinity Rail express
“It runs along a former Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad line that the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth purchased in 1983 for $34 million.”
“UTA-owned track parallels UP track until Ogden, where, until August 10, 2018 (date of last train), when service to Pleasant View was “Suspended Indefinitely”, Union Pacific and Utah Transit Authority shared the final 6 mi (9.7 km) of track to Pleasant View.”
So guess what happened on the shared segment:
“The station in Pleasant View, which is north of Ogden, was supposed to open along with the rest of the line in April 2008, but it was plagued by a variety of service problems stemming from the last 6 miles of track being shared with Union Pacific Railroad freight service. Firstly, improvements had to be made to the track to make it suitable for passenger operations, but that work was delayed when railroad workers were diverted to repair tracks damaged by a landslide near Oakridge, Oregon.[14] A bus bridge was used between Ogden and Pleasant View until September 29, 2008, when the track improvements were complete”
…
“Besides the limitations on how many trains could run north of Ogden, low ridership exacerbated the problem.[18] Limited weekday-only commuter service to Pleasant View resumed on December 10, 2012, with two trains picking up passengers in the morning and two trains dropping off passengers in the evening, with no transfers between trains required.[19]
In February 2018, UTA announced they would be indefinitely suspending trains between Ogden and Pleasant View starting on August 12, 2018, both due to new federal safety guidelines and low ridership to that station”
I’m not really sure how many times we can explain to both of you guys that the tracks are owned by BNSF, and that they are actively using it for freight.
> And yet I presented examples to you that has refuted your claim. All you’re doing is digging a hole for yourself in trying to claim I’m wrong when I have presented evidence that shows you are incorrect here.
I’ve already refuted like 4/5 examples. Go through your examples and find one were it is a) owned by the freight company b) actively used for freight c) has hourly frequency passenger frequency.
Sorry if I was too negative about Cam’s idea for more frequent S Line service. Go ahead and discuss it. I’ll butt out. What’s his face is right. Creative solutions shouldn’t be discouraged.
Being negative all the time to me in my view is unhelpful and does not bear good fruit or foster good brainstorming.
Says the guy that is being needlessly negative about a realistic proposal that started this thread. I proposed a handful of extra Sounder runs (at the edge of rush-hour) and a big set of bus improvements. The bus service I have outlined would be a dramatic improvement in regional transit service. It would require no extra drivers. Thus it would require no extra funding. It would be better for many riders than hourly train service. For those traveling to Tacoma it would offer an option that is currently more popular than Sounder (even when Sounder is running frequently).
You are like the folks dreaming about bullet trains to Yakima when what we really need is just decent train service. It is great to dream, but why the hell are you dismissing major improvements in service at the same time? The very thing you are worried about — ideas going nowhere because of negativity — is what you are engaging in when you dismiss the plan I’ve outlined. Making bullshit excuses why it won’t work (a driver shortage even though it requires fewer drivers) doesn’t help. Sound Transit needs to know that people want fast ways to get from the South Sound to Seattle. This can happen if we push for more express service.
On the other hand, I can tell you right now what is likely to happen given your approach. They add a couple more midday Sounder runs (so they run every couple hours). They truncate all the buses at Federal Way. Ridership on Sounder is tiny midday (as it is now). Ridership from Auburn, Federal Way, Tacoma and Lakewood plummets.
This is why we shouldn’t limit our options. It is like Link to the Tacoma Dome. It is easy to imagine something fairly similar, but fantastic. Imagine a heavy-rail system to Tacoma, but double tracked so that you can have an express (with few stops) between Tacoma and Seattle. Also imagine that it goes right into the center of Tacoma (and doesn’t end at the outskirts). Now you’ve got trains that take 30 minutes to get from Downtown Seattle to Downtown Tacoma. That is faster than driving — at noon! At the same time you manage to serve all the various places along the way with “local” service. Fantastic!
Yes, it would be. And I’m sure a lot of people imagine that is what we are building. If you squint it looks very much like it. We are building a train line from Seattle to Tacoma. Not to Downtown Tacoma, but pretty close. It won’t have an express, but it also won’t have that many stops. It won’t be really fast, but oh well. The thing is, once you make all those compromises it is actually worse than just the combination of commuter rail and buses. You have to invest a boatload of money to get something that is actually better. Fall short and you end up with crap.
In contrast if you run frequent buses (and commuter rail) it just works. Fifteen minute express bus service (and Sounder) from Downtown Seattle to Downtown Tacoma is huge. But it won’t happen as long as ST is under the illusion that Link to the Tacoma Dome and the occasional — even hourly — Sounder train is a good substitute. If they think that the only solution is rail — no matter how poor — then they will give us poor rail.
Ross – I don’t say it enough, but I love your ideas. They are really good, well-thought-out ideas. And I generally support them.
I would support your 594+FW idea as a solid interim step, though as someone who takes the 574 through FW, once the construction is done, it has to be substantially faster on and off the highway. I’m confident it will be.
What I’m suggesting above is a replacement for TDLE, not your interim express buses. And it’s obviously longer term. The negotiations and the trackwork have to be done somehow to reach our Amtrak goals, so perhaps we could use the TDLE money to instead fast-track (cough) that work now.
My, I think reasonable, fear in relying exclusively on express buses as a long-term fix is the same as my fear whenever I-5 is part of the plan. It’s a choatic disaster monster for every user far too often to be relied upon for essential regional travel long-term. It destroys reliability for everyone: car, bus, taxi. freight. General lane. Express lane. Everybody. It’s a crap highway, because of it’s fundamental nature that it’s a highway.
So we absolutely, positively need to not rely on it for our long-term transit needs.
What I’m suggesting above is a replacement for TDLE, not your interim express buses. And it’s obviously longer term. The negotiations and the trackwork have to be done somehow to reach our Amtrak goals, so perhaps we could use the TDLE money to instead fast-track (cough) that work now.
Yeah, and that is a good plan. I think we disagree on whether bus service works in the long term but we both agree that TDLE is crap. I hope things evolve this way:
1) Link gets to Federal Way, and ST makes plans to truncate all the ST express buses from Tacoma.
2) People get pissed off, and insist on frequent express buses from Tacoma — if nothing else during the time that Sounder isn’t running.
3) ST responds by spending a bit more money on Sounder and then runs express buses.
4) Things settle in and very few people transfer from the express buses to Link. Since the bus from Tacoma stops there, even riders from Federal Way take it (outside of rush hour). This causes a revelation of sorts within ST. If not that many people like riding the train from Federal Way, why will they like riding it from the Tacoma Dome?
5) At that point they rethink the proposal and look at different options. Maybe “BRT” in Tacoma. Maybe just grant Pierce Transit money (so they can run the local buses more often). Maybe add even more Sounder runs. All of these things are discussed.
6) Meanwhile, the state realizes that its bullet-train ideas are just way to expensive. They dust off the old plans and start working on making smaller improvements. ST joins the discussion (as you suggest).
7) Pierce County gets a mix of improvements (as mentioned in 5) and is much better off because of it.
I can also imagine a lot worse outcomes, but this is the good one.
I’m sorry Sam, Ross, AI, and WL for being prickly and an asshole today, I should have choosen my words better and not been a prickly asshole in my disagreements with you all and your thought process. Again I do apologize for putting you all down.
I share the same frustrations about ST Sounder and Express service and I want it to be better as someone who has lived on and off in Pierce for 30 years.
Pierce County ST express bus service could be better from an operations standpoint so it’d stop being so late so often and handle the passanger loads better because standing room only on the coach busses is a common problem on the 594/590 and generally an awful situation to be in as a rider where you’ll likely be waiting an hour plus in traffic to get off or an empty seat opens up compared to Sounder where within a couple stops crush load pressure is relieved within like 20 or so minutes of it leaving King Street.
I have talked with multiple PT employees who’ve said they have wanted to see investment into better regional express busses and retire the older fleet, like the old Gilling phantoms and older coach buses. So as to have more articulated or even invest in double deckers on the road but seems to go nowhere from what I’ve heard.
574 will likely be better once FWLE is done and will have a more frequent service operation once they can cut the line north of Federal Way TC and won’t have to deal with the airport loop anymore which can be a slog and then it’s only getting off at Federal Way TC.
I don’t see the 586 ever going away as UW will likely pay for it to keep going whether it makes sense or not to keep busses that’ll have to dead head for multiple hours till the evening rush.
I’m hopeful for things to get better, I believe that people in Pierce and South King do want improved service because it’s a crapshoot as to whether your bus will be on time or not. Alongside Kent Valley wanting better connections between Tukwila, Kent, and Auburn alongside better connections to Seattle on weekends because it’s either slow like the 150 from Kent or infrequent like the 578.
It mainly just depends on what BNSF says as ross noted. hopefully it is easy to implement.
It is kind of concerning that we have not heard officially what bnsf thinks about these changes yet, though I do understand they are probably under negotiations.
I may be in the minority, but I could see FW Link affecting the SR 167 travel market. If someone wants to take Sounder in one direction but needs to get back to their car in midday, Link + a short bus ride would do it if the bus was frequent enough. Sure the travel time would be longer, but the frequency of Link is every 10 minutes — so a bus running at least every 10 minutes along with that would be very enticing. With Sounder service missing 90 percent of the market getting to Link seems to me to be the way to go. Even if midday service rss was every 2 hours, someone could be at their South King destination well before the time the next train leaves King Street.
With FW Link just 24 months away, it would seem silly to develop an expensive capital program until the impact is apparent in the real world.
What’s the estimated travel time from Westlake to FWTC again?
mhmm not quite sure if it’ll affect it as much. At least when I test it on google maps.
for kent to seattle for example starting at 3pm, the 150 will take from 3:11 pm to 4:23pm. Whereas to use the link one would take the 165 which will take 25 minutes (it leaves at 2:55pm but let’s pretend it leaves at 3 pm) and then reach there at 3:25pm. Using the seatac to downtown seattle times takes 32 minutes from 3:31 pm to 4:03 pm but that’d be more like 4:09 given we need to actually start from highline college.
For auburn to seattle also leaving at 3pm. From 3:02 to 3:50pm the 578 can reach downtown seattle. Regarding traffic, it does add say 10 minutes but is still faster. Or if we really wanted to spend capital dollars could say add the airport way direct access connectors. For transferring one would be from 3:02 to 3:17 to federal way transit center. Federal way to pioneer square takes 44 minutes. Let’s say one waits for like 5 minutes and 2 minutes transfer time so 3:24 pm to 4:08 pm.
I guess it’s actually not so bad for auburn. the long time it takes to get from kent to highline on the bus really hurts it. Though it is a bit unfair since i calculated auburn using an express bus whereas kent was using a local bus to reach it.
@cam
Using westlake as 0 i wrote down the original travel estimates time as (though these times have been lengthened and are longer than this)
seatac 34
angle lake 38
kent des moines 41
federal way 47
fife 53
Thanks, WL. I had thought they were worse than that. Still a long time for the first leg of a bad, infrequent, slow transfer, as you noted.
It’s not just the travel time. It’s also the frequency. If a transit combination is 20 minutes faster but you must wait an extra 20 minutes, it’s not really a time savings.
I am highly skeptical that Route 578 will continue to run every 30 minutes all the way to Downtown Seattle when Federal Way Link opens. See, that’s the exact situation I’m describing — where 578 stops at Federal Way on the north end but ST increases it to run every 15 or 20 minutes.
Kent with Route 150 is closer, and that route runs every 15 minutes. So I could see that connecting on Link to get to Kent is less advantageous from Downtown. However it may be somewhat better for a UW Seattle student.
The advantage of having multiple transit trip options most times of day is huge. That’s a benefit of having several choices when using transit.
I think it is possible that Link will become the lifeline for some trips, but the point is it will be very slow. It really wouldn’t take much for an express bus to be over 15 minutes faster. If the bus ran every 15 minutes than it doesn’t really matter how frequent Link is — the bus is a better bet. Of course if the bus runs every half hour it is a different story.
Keep in mind the express from Federal Way is over 15 minutes faster than Link (in the middle of the day). Thus you could truncate the 578 in Federal Way and run the 594 every fifteen minutes. Then riders from Puyallup, Sumner and Auburn would transfer to the 594 while riders in Federal Way would catch the 594 and riders in Lakewood and Tacoma would just stay on the 594. Link really only becomes useful at that point for trips south of downtown (e. g. to the airport). During rush hour people would take Sounder (where Sounder runs) or Link (where it doesn’t).
That leaves Kent and Tukwila. The case for serving Kent is stronger than Tukwila. The 150 is fairly fast to Tukwila, and quite slow to Kent. But Tukwila is on the way and it wouldn’t take too much time to stop somewhere (to connect to the F). That is probably the best bang for the buck. Run that bus every 15 minutes (along with the 578 and 594 every 15 minutes). Extending that bus to Auburn would be a bonus, as it would be an express version of the 160, and give riders from Auburn a one-seat ride to downtown (again).
The rainier ave northbound bus lane is moving forward (page updated june 14)
Notable changes, they’ve proposed adding a new traffic signal to grand and college street. There’s also a new map showing the proposed changes and new traffic signals.
Honestly still a bit pleasantly surprised sdot managed to choose the bus lane with center lane versus maintaining two travel lanes in each direction alternative, but of course they haven’t started construction yet so we’ll see how it goes.
* Establishment of a continuous northbound bus lane from S Grand St to S Walden St.
* Implementation of one northbound general travel lane while preserving the center turn lane.
* Installation of a new traffic signal at S Grand St to enhance transit reliability and facilitate safer crossings.
* Anticipated time savings of nearly five minutes for buses during periods of higher congestion.
Honestly still a bit pleasantly surprised sdot managed to choose the bus lane with center lane versus maintaining two travel lanes in each direction alternative, but of course they haven’t started construction yet so we’ll see how it goes.
Sure looks like they are doing it. Same goes for Westlake. The longer this continues the more likely it will happen. Of course they could pull a last minute change but I don’t think anyone wants that. Spotts would be pissed. He might even resign. Harrell is conservative. This bothers those that want to see big changes (in zoning for example) but it also means he isn’t likely to pull the plug on these projects at the last hour.
It’s a bit different though. For Westlake IRRC the traffic impacts were like less than a 1 or 2 minutes. Whereas for the rainier avenue one the traffic impacts were up to 9 minutes during am peak. I am a bit concerned it might even be reverted to option 2 (with 2 general lanes northbound) by outcry after implementation if it is that bad.
Though I will note that option 1 and 2 are the same for most blocks they only differ north of college street to grand street around 5 blocks. Especially with the addition of the traffic lights at both grand street and college street it might not be that big of a safety concern any more to be missing the center turn lane.
I think the biggest difference is just the variations. In this case they have committed to bus-lanes, and it is then just a matter of whether there is a middle turn lane or two lanes each direction. They could reject everything and just keep things the way they are but that would be a big mess:
People who ride the bus frequently are likely to be older and/or Black, Indigenous, or a person of color (BIPOC) who commute for work and live around Rainier Ave S. People who ride the bus occasionally, rarely, or never are more likely to be white, middle aged, and primarily travel through Rainier Ave S for personal errands and shopping.
No politician in their right mind would favor cars given that. With freight wanting the middle turn lane (as a place to temporarily double park) it was then pretty easy to go ahead and keep the middle turn lane.
> No politician in their right mind would favor cars given that. With freight wanting the middle turn lane (as a place to temporarily double park) it was then pretty easy to go ahead and keep the middle turn lane.
I’m unaware of any freight using rainier ave to double park in the middle. Or at least the 2 travel lanes and high speeds makes it practically impossible to bring goods off a truck in the middle lane to the sidewalk.
> In this case they have committed to bus-lanes, and it is then just a matter of whether there is a middle turn lane or two lanes each direction
Yeah agreed. Honestly it’s a pretty good fallback plan if political pressure is too high since they still get to keep the bus lanes just changing the 4~5 blocks from a center left turn lane to a general lane
Rainier Ave serves lots of cars all day. It’s not a rush hour only busy street. It seems busier at 11 or 2 pm than at 8 or 5. Where SDOT eliminated a lane at Charlestown traffic often waits through three or four lights. And MLK dumps lots more traffic on Rainier north of Mt Baker station.
Finally, the MLK bike lanes went in north of Rainier this month. That adds traffic to Rainier north of MLK.
I don’t think those SDOT engineers have prepared themselves for the midday future gridlock coming on Rainier Ave. With things moving ahead it won’t be a theoretical topic. It will be a real world situation.
The 2 travel lanes and high speeds makes it practically impossible to bring goods off a truck in the middle lane to the sidewalk.
I’ve seen people do it on other five lane roads (they just wait for a gap in traffic — usually after a signal change) but I’m probably thinking of a different survey. In this case it was more about businesses wanting customers to be able to easily turn into their driveway (and for people to unload that way).
I don’t think those SDOT engineers have prepared themselves for the midday future gridlock coming on Rainier Ave. With things moving ahead it won’t be a theoretical topic. It will be a real world situation.
On the contrary, I think that is why they want to add the bus lanes. There will be gridlock either way (look at Denny or Mercer). By adding bus lanes sooner rather than later the buses are faster before things become a real mess. This in turn reduces overall congestion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_paradox).
with the addition of the grand street traffic light, I wonder if they’ll keep that bus station for rapidride R. for context originally it was going to be i-90 bus station then walker skipping the grand street and plum street stops. Especially now that there’s the grand street commons apartments on that street. Though I guess this will slow down the buses with every stop kept.
The college street traffic light is also kinda interesting. college street is the east-west street on north beacon hill, but once it reaches rainier ave it is cut and doesn’t connect well with the other east-west street of walker. It definitely makes it a lot more easier to go beacon hill down east to the valley with the protected left. And in general even for biking and walking.
Though somewhat ironically i think the largest relative benefit still goes to cars considering how hard it is to make the left there.
County Auditor raises red flags about Metro’s electric bus conversion plans:
What isn’t surprising here is that there are red flags with Metro’s fleet conversion plans (we all knew that), but what is surprising is the shear number of red flags the auditor raised. For example, I didn’t realize the charge time problems with converting RapidRide to BEB’s.
Also, having half your fleet of New Flyer BEB’s out of service in March is not a good sign.
It is interesting though that Metro is now investigating Hydrogen Fuel Cell buses. I would have thought they would wait and see if they could learn anything from the CT trials, but I guess that isn’t how Metro works.
Thanks for the information
“The current battery technology doesn’t have the range, and the time to charge is too long, to accommodate these routes at this time.”
“Metro began service of 40 battery-electric buses from New Flyer in 2022. However, half of its New Flyer coaches were out of service on any given day this March, according to the auditor. The agency has purchased 89 battery-electric buses from Gillig, scheduled for delivery in 2026.”
It’s a bit sobering but it is also what I was afraid of. Transit dollars being spent on electrifying over actual transit service.
I forget who debated about this a couple weeks ago but this just solidifies my thought that the battery electric buses are just not ready yet and we should not sacrifice both transit riders trips nor our transit capital dollars on this until the technology is ready.
“Transit dollars being spent on electrifying over actual transit service.”
It was a political decision by King County in the 2010s. “Electrify the bus fleet” is what they hear environmentalists saying they should be doing. The decision was also before the pandemic, so transit service and overall revenue were looking better then.
I always opposed it because even diesel buses emit a fraction as much as if all those passengers drove SUVs. The best thing you can do to reduce transportation-related carbon emissions is to increase bus service to attract people out of their cars, even it it’s diesel buses. Keep running the existing buses until they each reach their end of life, then replace them.
@Mike Orr,
“ It was a political decision by King County in the 2010s”
Ah, it doesn’t matter if the goal is politically mandated or internally developed, it is Metro’s responsibility to develop a proper plan to achieve that goal and to deliver on the plan. And that is exactly where the auditor is raising red flags.
“The decision was also before the pandemic, so transit service and overall revenue were looking better then”
Metro still isn’t running anything near 100% of their pre COVID-19 route structure. But that should make achieving goals like this easier, not harder.
Metro never got a lot of money from farebox recovery, so that is pretty much immaterial. But the reduced route structure means fewer buses on the road, and therefore fewer buses that need to be converted to electric. That makes the zero immersions goal more attainable, not less.
Community Transit isn’t doing anything that other bus companies around the world have done. So there is nothing to learn, really. I’m not sure why CT or Metro is doing any of that. Grant money, perhaps? Publicity (look at us, we are so green)? Sorry to be so cynical but all of these projects are a waste of time. Of course you want to electrify your fleet as much as possible. But making promises as to when you’ll be able to do it is just making bets on how fast the technology will progress, or making a commitment to waste money. You are much better off just evolving in the right direction. As buses get replaced you can covert the routes best suited for battery operation. Take advantage of the opportunities, but don’t assume you will reach a goal at a certain point.
Unfortunately this is not how public agencies operate. There is interest in creating monuments versus making incremental change. It means lots of ribbon cutting and grants. It extends into other areas as well. RapidRide or Swift. Streetcars. Even various Link projects. It is backwards. We should be taking a look at the system and saying “what is the biggest problem and how can we solve it” or better yet, “how can be improve the system the most with the least amount of money”. Often it means little things and then doing those little things over and over until you have a really good system. There is a natural evolution of things that so often gets ignored. Run buses more often. Address the biggest bottlenecks. Repeat. At some point you get to where BRT, a streetcar or subway line makes sense but way too often we leapfrog, and then wonder why not that many people take advantage of the big investment.
The problem with the battery buses is someone has to pay for domestic manufacturers to ramp up their production. If there’s no market, then they’ll never be available, because the privately owned companies that make them won’t ever do the necessary work.
The situation is similar to where we were with light rail cars in the 1970s: nobody here was building them here, so until the awful Boeing LRV was developed the few remaining streetcar lines in the USA were making do with 40 year old PCC streetcars.
Then there was the low floor light rail car: tram lines in Europe had them, but until TriMet was willing to buy them in the 1990s, nobody offered such a thing made here.
Today, you can get really good battery electric buses, if you are London or Hamburg. MTR Western uses battery electric buses on its Bellingham to Seattle Amtrak Thruway route, but they’re a private contractor. They use Vanhool CX45E from Europe.
If you want the US bus manufacturers to get their collective heads out of the sand and offer transit agencies something similar, you have to start shoveling money their direction. Otherwise, they’ll continue to do nothing in the development of these vehicles.
@Glenn
The problem is that this is beyond just capital but even technology is not there yet. In europe they are usually going for shorter bus routes or they have much higher ridership and can afford installing the bus chargers at many stations if they are shared with many other bus routes.
From the article:
“The current battery technology doesn’t have the range, and the time to charge is too long, to accommodate these routes at this time.”
Lazarus, did a Metro bus run over your puppy?
Yeah, waiting on BYD BEBs in Albuqerque delayed ART by over a year, giving ammunition lots of ammuninition to the “No to ART” crowd. When they did arrive they were riddled with problems. They eventually just went out and bought diesels from New Flyer.
They sued BYD. I don’t think they still make them.
Most of it is around is just a repeat of what seattletimes said but there are a bit more brief snippets of information
“In terms of the fuel cell buses themselves, details remain thin at this point. Metro’s blog post from last week offered little insight into the vehicles. The Urbanist sought information on topics such as make and model, how they would be funded, where they might be based from, if this foreshadows a major shift in the agency’s recently formulated electrification plan, and whether an updated transition plan would be pursued. Metro communications staff mostly declined, saying it was “just too early in the process to provide an answer.”
But from the tea leaves seems like the battery electric buses are not ready yet.
@WL,
That Urbanist article is about the most negative article I’ve read yet on Metro’s zero emission plans.
It’s hard to imagine Metro making any substantial progress toward being 100% zero emissions when they have only been able to get 4% of their fleet converted in the last 7 years. And when 50% of that zero emission fleet is down for maintenance at any given time.
And the article gives the impression that Metro’s conversion to Hydrogen Fuel Cell buses is just a reaction to the auditors report of last week. I certainly hope that Metro’s plans are more well thought out than that.
And the problems with hydrogen go beyond just supply. There are significant infrastructure needs around developing fueling stations, and Metro will need a plan for that too.
And hydrogen isn’t easy. Just ask Lewis County Transit and Community Transit. They actually have hydrogen FCE buses on hand right now and are dealing with this issues.
Maybe Metro should make fewer statements about “leading the way” and just ask these other agencies for advice.
Has anybody considered using more of the available electric technology while we wait for battery technology to come to the U.S.? We have trolleys but we could also replace frequent lines such as the 8 with a people mover or gondola. Yes, that may push out the 2035 deadline, but we wouldn’t need as much charging infrastructure (and automation would reduce the need to hire drivers a bit).
Has anybody considered using more of the available electric technology while we wait for battery technology to come to the U.S.?
They are doing some of that, but not enough. The problem is the goals. If you are trying to get to 100% electric, then the issue isn’t a bus like the 8, it is a bus like the E. So instead of just running wire for the 8 (a relatively cheap thing to do that would likely save the agency quite a bit of money) they are focused on charging stations, long layovers and buses with capabilities that don’t exist yet. This is the problem with micromanagement. Metro won several awards for the way they were managed (before the pandemic). But if you ask an agency to do a bullshit task, you will get bullshit results.
The rapidride K line was reviewed on june 13 with the bellevue city council. They are planning on the “Final concept / LPA (Q3 2024)”
Notably on page 4 there’s a detailed map showing the alternatives nearby the east main station.
As an aside, it is somewhat exceedingly difficult to find the conslidated information on the rapidride k with king county not updating their main page. instead having to find these pdfs/powerpoints in random city meetings.
I see Metro is finally coming clean about it’s ability to go all battery.
looks like the same littany of issues in Edmonton and zaustin but they’ve been sitting on it instead of working on solutions like more effectively using existing trolley bus infrastructure. And people don’t understand the mistrust and disdain for govt??
How NYC’s Most Dangerous Street Became a Popular Public Park | Walking Tour | Architectural Digest
Travel time comparisons in Sounder South/Link South corridors. All are from King Street Station/Intl Dist Station/Jackson Street. Bus ranges are at 5pm and 9pm southbound. Link times are based on WL’s list, subtracting 5 minutes for Westlake-Intl Dist.
KENT: Sounder: 20 minutes …. 162 (peak express): 50 minutes …. 150 (local): 47-58 minutes …. ST Express: no service … Link to SeaTac + 161: (32 min) + (26-34 min) + transfer = (58-66 minutes) + transfer … Link to KDM + future RapidRide: (36 min) + ?.
AUBURN: Sounder: 27 minutes … 578: 45 minutes … Link to Federal Way + 578 (representing a future feeder): (42 min) + (17 min) + transfer = (59 min) + transfer.
Though the times have degraded and you’ll notice the official numbers currently on the sound transit website are around 2~3 minutes longer than this tables estimates.
Tacoma Dome, Amtrak Cascades: 50 minutes
That help describe travel times, but it only tells half of the story.
The other half is told in wait times (frequency) and transfer efforts. Sounder may be faster but does a rider have the luxury of waiting one or two or three hours for a train? Not everyone wants to leave at 5 PM.
I would add 5 minutes to Link and about 8-10 minutes to express bus to get from Westlake, with Sounder at 10-15 (longer transfer walk and a rider wouldn’t want to miss a train!).
Through all the discussions here, I think what emerges is – as Ross proposes— that ST would be better supplementing service with Express buses as opposed to more Sounder runs. After all, added Sounder runs are requested away from the height of congested commute hours so the time advantage shrinks. If the Express routes are planned as three “markets” — Tukwila to Kent, Auburn to Puyallup and Tacoma to Lakewood — it would still seem easier than paying for three buses with drivers than one train that requires lots more staff. The added advantage is that the two southerly markets can also stop at FW Link.
One other side question that I have is about getting to the Eastside. Should the riders be told to transfer once or twice to get there or have direct service? None of these Seattle-bohnd express buses nor Sounder meet up with Stride. That suggests that they should just ride the 2 Link Line.
What should be the fate of ST Express 566? Should it be extended to Federal Way to directly connect the Eastside and South Sound buses (maybe adding riders)? Should it run more often — even all-day? Is there demand for it? Should it become a Stride Route? I don’t have a strong opinion on what to do.
One other side question that I have is about getting to the Eastside. Should the riders be told to transfer once or twice to get there or have direct service? None of these Seattle-bound express buses nor Sounder meet up with Stride. That suggests that they should just ride the 2 Link Line.
Hard to say. Even for trips to Seattle I go back and forth in terms of who should have a one-seat ride to Seattle and who should have to transfer. To be clear, this is all outside of peak; my thinking goes something like this:
1) Federal Way benefits from being the transfer point (and being on the way).
2) Tacoma has the most riders and the most to gain from adding 15-minute express service. The bus should stops at Federal Way (to allow people to transfer to Link) and then keeps going (which also then serves Federal Way).
3) If you are going to serve Tacoma, you might as well service Lakewood. The bus should go through downtown Tacoma. This is basically the 594, just twice as often, and with a stop at Federal Way.
It gets a lot harder after that. A few things though:
4) If you are running express from Auburn, then Federal Way is on the way.
5) A bus from Federal Way should be extended to Sumner and Puyallup (might as well). An express from Sumner or Puyallup to Federal Way would be faster, but there isn’t enough ridership to justify it.
6) Other than Tacoma, Kent probably has the most to gain from an express to downtown.
7) It isn’t essential to serve Tukwila Station, but there is value in connecting to the F (for trips to Renton and Burien).
8) A bus from Kent to Seattle that detours to somewhere in Tukwila costs about 3 minutes. Should the bus detour to Highline College instead? That would mean an express from Highline to downtown instead of an express from Tukwila to downtown (Tukwila would get by with the 150).
9) There is value in connecting the various stations, although not a huge amount. Some of the connections exist but are slow. Others don’t exist.
I think I basically came up with:
594 — Every 15 minutes (stops in Federal Way)
Puyallup/Sumner/Auburn/Federal Way — Every 15 minutes
Auburn/Kent/Tukwila — Every 15 minutes.
This means Puyallup and Sumner riders have to transfer to get downtown. It also means they have to transfer to get to Auburn or Kent. There would be some three-seat rides in there, but not a ton. You could eliminate several by running an all day 566.
I’m not following, Ross. I’m specifically asking about thoughts on Eastside connectivity — not just Seattle.
Stride does not connect with Sounder or ST Express buses on I-5. It doesn’t connect with Metro 150 either. (Actually none of these four services connect with each other between Kent and Seattle). Ideally, there would have been a connecting point somewhere near Southcenter. Stride goes from South Renton to TIBS in a gulch nonstop.
Part of the Express 566 ridership from Renton to Bellevue will shift to Stride when Stride opens. If I lived in North Kent and wanted to get to Bellevue using a parking garage, I’d probably drive to South Renton to get 10 minute Stride service than drive to Kent to get 30 minute service on the 566.
I see ST Express Route 566 entering a period of ridership and service decline as it appears to be mostly a Sounder connector yet it takes about an hour to get between Kent and Bellevue today. Once 2 Line opens, it would be faster to ride Sounder all the way between Auburn southward and Seattle and take 2 Line to Bellevue rather than hop on a 566 bus in Kent from Sounder there.
Finally, Route 566 overlaps with ELSL from Redmond Technology to Bellevue as of April 2024.
It looks to me that the route hours could be better allocated to doing something more strategic but I’m just not sure what. Maybe only run between Federal Way, Auburn, Kent and South Renton but at a higher frequency? Maybe the Auburn tail should go to KDM (and maybe further) instead? Its usefulness is being diminished because of other investments by ST coming on line. It’s already got over 60 percent fewer riders compared to 2019 and its demand recovery has plateaued beginning last fall.
I see this challenge as just another outcome of poor systems thinking when building the ST3 program. It’s awkward to think of incremental changes because all the service disconnects in South King are so pervasive, and there is not pot of capital money to build anything more than what’s in ST3 — so the only solution available is bus service.
I didn’t realize the Sounder cut those Kent Valley trips into and out of Seattle so dramatically.
And Link just doesn’t work for Kent and Auburn even with instantaneous feeders.
Metro Connects has a Seattle-Kent-Auburn express to replace the 578. So if Metro ever gets more service hours or can recycle enough from peak-express truncations, it may go that direction. It would go on I-5+405+167. That may be faster than going on I-5+KDM Road? Although I’m concerned about 405 bottlenecks. I’m not sure if the route is intended to stop at the future Renton TC on the way.
Evolution of the New York City Subway 1868-2020 (animation)
Watching this video, I can’t help but wonder what a similar video of Link’s future expansion might look like for our region over the next 150 years. Obviously, it wouldn’t look anything like New York City’s expansion through a dense, large city. But, what would it look like? Example: DT Seattle to Renton via Rainier Ave. Then Renton to Auburn. Then Bellevue to Renton. Then DT Seattle up Aurora. Then Burien to Renton. Etc.
https://youtu.be/vP0J6xPvPBg
It is important to consider the scale. The lines aren’t that long. There is no equivalent of a subway line to Auburn and even Renton would be about as far as it goes. It is also worth noting that construction really leveled off. In some cases it went backwards. If we built the system like New York (or most systems in the world) then we would add a bunch more lines in the city, and that would be it. Of course there is no telling what our system would look like in the future. The folks in charge seem to be more interested in symbolic expansion (e. g. long distance lines) instead of value-added. So yeah, maybe they will run lines to Auburn, Woodinville and Covington while neglecting Belltown, First Hill and Fremont.
I’m sure in the next 150 years, Belltown, First Hill, and Fremont will get light rail. It took 50 years for NYC to get into central Queens.
I’m sure in the next 150 years, Belltown, First Hill, and Fremont will get light rail.
I think it is impossible to tell. It is easy to assume that 150 years is enough time to build anything you can imagine but that hasn’t been the case in New York, or many other cities. By 1920 New York had built most of the system. There were some big improvements in the last 100 years, but there has also been some shrinkage. It is really striking how much was built before then. This means that someone looking at the system in 1920 could easily imagine most of the city being covered in fifty years, in the same way that the Paris Metro covers pretty much the entire City of Light. But it doesn’t. There are some big gaps in New York and very little in radial service (for the reason Nathan mentioned). The Interborough Express (or IBX) is just now in its infancy despite having much of the right-of-way and rail already.
It isn’t alone. It is easy to imagine that BART/Muni would involve several additional lines in East Bay and in San Fransisco by now, but you’ve got the Central Subway (which is relatively small) and that is about it. DC Metro was an excellent system but it left out Georgetown. You would expect there to be service there by now (fifty years later) but there have only been some discussion — nothing concrete. Sometimes it takes a long time to build what many consider to be an obvious addition (even if the agency expands in other ways). If things go as planned the city will build a second tunnel in downtown, but it won’t cover First Hill or Belltown. The cost is enormous. I don’t see them eager to build additional lines to serve First Hill or Belltown. I could see Fremont though, just because it is midway between Ballard and the UW (and they’ve already looked at that project and found it to be very promising).
Then there is the real possibility of self-driving buses. One of the major advantages of rail is capacity. It takes a lot fewer people to run a crowded train than a crowded bus. But if the buses are self driving then this doesn’t matter. You still want grade-separation, but muddling along with lots of bus lanes and very frequent buses might just do the job just because there is an inherit advantage to surface transit. It is quite possible that most of the trips on the future RapidRide G will be faster with that bus then they would with a subway (just because the subway stations would be very deep). It is quite possible there would be a lot more bus routes like that in the future, making a lot of rail plans seem unnecessary. So much depends on how aggressive the city is with bus lanes and the good news is that the trend is a positive one. They are several projects the last few years that I new thought would happen (e. g. Westlake and Rainier Avenue). But again, it is very hard to predict the future.
We shouldn’t just be thinking about light rail, with all our hills it might make more sense to build people movers or gondolas instead, especially on short east/west routes. I still think a gondola from Belltown to SLU to Capitol Hill and KP (former Group Health) would make a lot of sense.
A rail line through Belltown would only make sense if you continue it through Fremont and up along Aurora.
“The folks in charge seem to be more interested in symbolic expansion (e. g. long distance lines) instead of value-added. ”
This is my core issue with ST3 projects . The whole referendum building saga was not done systemically. It was done as haphazardly as the monorail referendum decades ago. The most expensive segment per mile — DSTT2 — had never been studied (hence the subsequent ID outage that resulted).
In reflecting on the recent discussion about West Seattle here, we even forgot to mention that the project didn’t attract any new system transit riders, for example. It won’t help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
I don’t think any future expansion funds will come without ST Link proving its value better. Instead, I expect the discussion will be more about getting funds to address inevitable existing system problems.
I would agree with Martin that there could be good applications for cable-driven short connections (under 2 miles) to our mammoth system. Vertical steepness challenges are particularly cheaper fixes with cables.
Finally, I expect there will emerge the need to fund tweaks to the current system next. It is already quite long. I would expect to see discussions about fixing problems like train overcrowding, station accessibility like new vertical conveyances, new crossovers and sidings, and station safety features like platform doors or gates — and even infill stations, added station entrances and access paths.
Every major city has had a spurt of major rail transit building that happens — then the momentum peters out. Just look at Atlanta, DC, Dallas, Denver and even older systems in Chicago, Boston and New York (the Second Avenue Subway idea was being planned 100 years ago and it’s still just partially built or under construction). While these other metro areas have new corridors being considered, track expansion plans are very limited. Even much of LA’s ambitious expansion is being portrayed with 20-40 year off opening dates. For that not to be ST’s fate would frankly be surprising.
If we can’t turn the ST3 battleship, low-cost gondolas or similar around it might be a good idea. Belltown to Group Health could probably fit in the Monorail authority’s $1B limit. DSTT2 or the proposed Ballard/West Seattle tunnels wouldn’t.
Political eras are unpredictable. The first phase of the NYC subway was based, not on a government plan for maximum mobility for everybody, but on companies building lines redundant with each other to get each other’s passengers. After WWII, the government got car-happy and stalled expansions for decades. Our competitors in other countries didn’t, or if they did, they switched back to transit by the 1970s. Who knows how long the current era might last, or when the accumulation of public attitudes or enlightened politicians will tip the balance to change. And then, how long that era might last.
I am quite certain that there will not be “another hundred and fifty years”. We untelentingly inventive humans have gotten so far over our skis that a smash-up is inevitable.
Will there still be “people” then? Probably, but “society” will have become a mythical past of impossible glories that can never be recovered. Without oil oozing out of seeps and coal jutting out of hillsides, there can be no second “industrial revolution”.
“WHAT?!?!?” You may say. “Naysayers have predicted the downfall of civilization a thousand times before and have always been wrong!”
True, but they only need be “right” once. Never before have so many ways to destroy civilization simultaneously existed. If the “A-bomb” doesn’t get us we’ll all roast in runaway greenhouse warming. If we escape that we’ll starve because we pissed away thousands of years of petrochemical fertilizer feedstocks running around like narcissistic Guinea Hens.
And finally, if somehow enough people with the brains to maintain modern society survive, our AI-Enabled Robot Overlords will simply strangle them in their sleep.
Enjoy today. It will never again be as good.
While I understand that doing so would have made these videos much more difficult to make, I wish the makers would include some sort of visualization of urban densities during the construction of these lines. In doing so, it would show that the outer limits of these lines, built by private operators in a period of cheap labor and (relatively) cheap materials, built and expanded these lines to connect low-density (and low-value) land on the outer edges of the city with the urban manufacturing and business core of lower and midtown Manhattan. The operators would often collude with real estate developers to boost return on investment for lines which would enable redevelopment and increased land value for the periphery of the city. As developers built tenements, rowhomes, and other higher-density forms, the rail operators would extend to new areas further afield. In this way, high-capacity rapid transit engendered the densification of areas away from the urban core.
For further reading, “The Race Underground” by Doug Most (2014) is an excellent and engaging history of the conversion of the overground/elevated rail systems of NYC and Boston to subways. The interplay of technologists, politics, and construction mishaps makes for a fun read.
Thanks Sam! That was a fun video.
As to how a similar video of Link’s evolution over 150 years would look, it won’t look anything like that video.
All those hard turns and right angles are an artifact of building using cut and cover. Link won’t use cut and cover, and won’t look like that.
Cut and cover is constrained to follow the street grid, and to also follow local topography. That is why you see all those sharp turns — which add construction costs and increase travel times.
Modern TBM built tunnels are not constrained to follow the street grid or local topography. Which is why we have Beacon Hill Station, CHS, UWS, etc.
It’s a major cost and operational advantage of TBM built tunnels. And it will show up on maps like the one in your video link..
But thanks for a fun video.
No, the hard corners are due to the trains being built elevated first above public rights of way, and then buried in the same routing.
We could build a lot more Link for the same money if we encouraged ST to build elevated routes above or even cut-and-cover below our wide thoroughfares. Cut-and-cover is much cheaper than TBM tunneling and the associated station excavation. The problem is the associated impacts on street access during construction.
Thanks. One of the first lines on the video, the Sixth Avenue elevated, gets a mention in Ron Chernow’s book Titan, about John D Rockefeller. He says John D used to ride it from his home near 5th and 54th (now home to the MoMA sculpture garden), to Standard Oil’s headquarters at 26 Broadway. Chernow says the fare was a nickel.
@Sam,
Ya, it was a good video. Really fun seeing all those crazy sharp turns that result from following the street grid with cut and cover. So glad we didn’t do that here.
> Modern TBM built tunnels are not constrained to follow the street grid or local topography. Which is why we have Beacon Hill Station, CHS, UWS, etc.
> It’s a major cost and operational advantage of TBM built tunnels. And it will show up on maps like the one in your video link..
It’s a major advantage to digging the tunnels but also a major disadvantage for building the stations themselves.
That’s why between UWS to capitol hill for example there is no station built in between. It’s also why for the previous thread on west seattle if extended further past alaska junction it’d be very expensive to build more intermediate stations in between on the way to white center.
In any case on your large point I agree. It’d probably be more farther spread out stations more similar to the LIRR aka their regional rail system rather than an urban subway.
“That’s why between UWS to capitol hill for example there is no station built in between.”
Says who? The most likely reason is Snohomish was afraid of longer travel times to Lynnwood/Everett if more stations were added, that there’s no “regionally significant” activity center in that area, and it’s not a separate city but within Seattle.
> Says who? The most likely reason is Snohomish was afraid of longer travel times to Lynnwood/Everett if more stations were added, that there’s no “regionally significant” activity center in that area, and it’s not a separate city but within Seattle.
What? Snohomish was fine with the 130th station.
The main reason why there aren’t other stations is the high cost of installing deep stations. It’s why there’s such wide stop spacing whenever one uses deep bore tunnels. I mean why do y’all think sound transit keeps proposing to drop slu station or interbay (if tunneled) or avalon station (if tunneled) to fund these deep stations.
Since this is an open thread, I’d like to thank Gov. Inslee for failing Steve Hobbs up to Secretary of State, which enabled the committee he no longer chairs to take much bolder action on the climate crisis. Funding youth fare freedom was but a tip of the iceberg.
Having seen Hobbs in action as Secretary of State, I must heartily recommend voting for one of his opponents — even the Republican — to get him out of that position, for which he is not a good fit at all.
Just read Hobbs’ unhinged polemics against ranked choice voting, and it becomes clear: He is a guardian of the drawbridge, not a guardian of democracy.
The state did just fine with multiple decades of Republican Secretaries of State. I want to hear more from his 2024 challengers, but it will be one of them, not him, who will get my vote.
The first sentence doesn’t make sense if you don’t already know Steve Hobbs. What did Inslee do? Who’s running for what?
Inslee appointed Hobbs as Secretary of State in 2021 after Kim Wyman (R) left to be head of the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Hobbs was state senator of the 44th district, and chair of the Senate’s Transportation Committee and co-chair of the Legislature’s Joint Transportation Committee until he became Sec. of State.
Hobbs is running for re-election against a Democrat, a third party, and a Republican candidate. Most people don’t care about Secretary of State and will elect the incumbent.
I guess election season is kicking off. Seattle Times ($) has an article in today’s paper on the transportation priorities of candidates for Governor: https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/in-their-own-words-gubernatorial-candidates-on-transportation/
Fun summary of transportation candidates’ responses.:
Q. How do we fill the highway funding gap as emerging high-mileage and electric cars pay little or no gas tax?
BIRD: Make a list of the needs and pay for it from the general fund. [Implies: I don’t trust the existing list of needs, there will be no disagreement what the needs are, and the general fund has enough money for it.]
FERGUSON: Soak the big carbon polluters. [Implies: That will be enough money.]
MULLET: Use the windfall in the pension fund. Dedicate vehicle sales tax to transportation. [Implies: The pension fund won’t have a bad decade. This is the best non-pension use of the money, and everybody agrees. Cars should get even more privilege in the budget (the gas tax is already dedicated to highways rather than the general fund).
REICHERT: Costs increased and WSDOT projects have overruns. Take it from the carbon tax and the general fund to the motor vehicle fund. Reprioritize projects. [Implies: Bad WSDOT, bad inflation. The priorities are bad, and I know what’s better, but I’m not saying what voters will get if they allow me to reprioritize it. Shift money to the MOTOR VEHICLE fund. Are buses motor vehicles?]
Missing: Any mention of transit. Cascades, bus, or metropolitan rail alternatives that could give people alternatives to driving on highways or having buses stuck in traffic and not enough of them.]
I don’t really find it the answers that useful. Or more accurately WSDOT (and many other state DOT) are basically looking at the mileage tax or using freeway tolls more broadly for maintaining freeways.
But for any one political candidate to support it before being in office would be a political career killer or at least heavy disadvantage so none of them are going to say so now.
@Brent White,
Don’t look now, but I actually heard someone mention Hobbs the other day in regards to the succession plan for the governorship.
Originally the succession plan was 2 terms of Inslee, 2 of Dow, then 2 of Ferguson. But that all got blown up when Inslee went for a 3rd term and Dow got squeezed out.
Now it isn’t clear who is 3rd in line. But I’m pretty sure the D’s haven’t penciled in an R.
I’m curious when the Democrats will look to candidates that are under 45 or 50 today. People like Dow, Patty, Maria, Bruce and Jay became stars decades ago when they were younger. Who will emerge from a younger age group? These leaders will likely retire in the next 5-15 years.
Hilary Franz ran until it was clear that Ferguson was going to beat her (I’m sure she hoped he wouldn’t enter the race). I would put her third. It wouldn’t surprise me if Kim Schrier runs someday (given her track record in a swing district). I could see any of the other congressional representatives running as well. Same goes for whoever eventually leads King County. It also wouldn’t surprise me if one of the mayors gets the job (or someone like Strickland who is now a UW representative but was mayor). It is hard to predict these things far in advance. The last five have been:
1) State Senator, Pierce County Executive
2) King County Councilmember, US House Rep
3) Washington House Rep, King County Exec
4) Washington State Ecology Director, State Attorney General
5) Washington House Rep, US House Rep (two different districts)
There is no obvious pattern. Some have executive experience, some don’t. Some have experience in the state legislature, some don’t.
Who can make a succession plan, much less more than one term out? It all depends on who else runs at the time, who votes, and how voters are feeling that election. I can say I’ll be a legislator next term, and governor the term after that, but that won’t make it happen.
I looked at the ages of the Washington congressional delegation. Most of them are similar ages to these other state leaders with many between 55-60. Gluesenkamp- Perez (36) is the only one under 50. Kilmer is 50. The others are at least 55.
Part of the succession system is the election system.
We used to have the blanket primary, briefly had party primaries, and now have the Louisiana-style primary in which just the top two candidates advance to the general election.
As described above, there is heavy incentive to keep the list of candidates very short in this only-two-advance system.
It is unusual for a Washington Secretary of State to publicly trash an election system. To do so to a system that the voters just passed in Seattle is bizarre.
Most voters may vote for the prefers-D or the prefers-R, but Hobbs has made his opposition to election reform an issue while being a prefers-D, and that will likely make his path to re-election much tougher.
I voted for Kim Wyman every time she ran even though I’m emotionally a Democrat.
A better elections manager does not exist. This used to be a governmental specialty at which Republicans excelled. No longer; since The Don took over their party, New York “methods” have become widespread in GOP circles. Ut’s a huge problem.
I hope she comes back home to Washington and runs for Governor next time. She is fair-minded enough to get elected.
I wouldn’t describe Sacramento’s light rail as obscure. If you live there you know about it. It runs throughout the central areas where government offices are, and can occasionally be seen from freeways.
The video is nicely succinct. I’m surprised that they didn’t mention that it’s getting 22K rail riders on a typical weekday. There are some other issues that some may find interesting:
Their light rail peak ridership year (note RT operates buses too) was 2008, listed as 16.8 million annual rides. It fell to 9.7 million by 2018 and now sits at 6.6 million for 2023. It’s troubling.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacramento_RT_Light_Rail
The saga of the Green Line extension to Natomas and the airport is worthy of more exploration. In particular, the rail right of way was set aside on much of the alignment beforehand so it could be built on the surface, and long stretches of the alignment are on the side of several arterial roads rather than in the median. However, the area is pretty suburban so its future seems intertwined around how future TOD evolves and some of the developable sites.
The video doesn’t mention that West Sacramento is not in the RT district because it is in Yolo County. Yolo isn’t a typical suburban county because UC Davis is also there (and their medical school is actually inside Sacramento). Keep in mind that sales taxes for transit operations are a subset of a bigger transportation sales tax that is controlled by a third party multi-jurisdictional entity, and are county based rather than district based. So light rail to West Sacramento is politically complex.
The Elk Grove Transit saga is another curious topic. The area left RT in 2005 and rejoined RT in 2021 after RT took over the service again in 2019 (“E” routes on their system map). That saga was possible because the sales tax for transit operations in Sacramento County is distributed by a different entity than the transit operator as noted above. Elk Grove has 180K residents, so it’s got more people than any other city around here except Seattle and Tacoma. To me, the Elk Grove City’s existence and related transit saga is the more obscure transit topic.
It is strange to hear the Sacramento light rail system described as “odd”, or “obscure”, because it was the first urban train system I ever used – I lived in Sacramento while it was being built, and rode it daily for a couple of years while in college.
In fact using Sacramento’s light rail as a reference point caused me a great deal of frustration with Sound Transit in years past; having seen how quickly RT built its first line, and how useful that service was despite its street-running compromises and spartan station architecture, ST’s timetable seemed hopelessly glacial and its stations needlessly cavernous. We ended up with a better system, but we sure did miss out on many years of potential for incremental improvement in which car-dependent sprawl development remained the order of the day.
It’s pretty interesting to see and compare. Especially considering how Seattle link was almost built much more closer to the 2-car streetcar like variant aka like Portland or Sacramento light rail.
Here is another city which may be closer to Link: Helsinki built a spine just like Seattle but as a metro with 2min headway. It also redirected its buses to serve the metro.
https://youtu.be/vAygH6SZg28?si=3wmBBP0WyImHUJRz
Some sense seeping into Sound Transit regarding South Sounder. The public outreach was illuminating.
https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/ActiveDocuments/Presentation%20-%20Sounder%20South%20Strategic%20Plan%20Updates%2006-13-24.pdf
One of the final bullets – Establish regular coordination meetings between ST and BNSF. That isn’t happening now?!?
Key takeaways:
Significant low-income ridership in the corridor mid-day, based on Orca-lift data, so this is major an equity issue. South Sounder runs through some of the poorest areas in King and Pierce County.
80-90% of trips in corridor are occurring during periods with no S. Sounder service. Massive latent demand.
The respondents almost universally request more trips, including mid-day, weekends and evenings, over longer trains, including current, frequent riders.
Get it done. Do it as a 5-year pilot, let people have time to adjust their lifestyles a around a usable train, and watch ridership and density in Kent, Auburn and Puyallup Valleys, and around the Tacoma and Lakewood Sounder Stations blossom.
If it’s successful, pour all the TDLE extension money into track improvements/easements/buyouts.
“The respondents almost universally request more trips, including mid-day, weekends and evenings, over longer trains”
ST has been sensing this shift for a few years now, so it’s been preparing for it. This survey is in some sense a confirmation of that, something ST can point to and say constituents want it.
The issue is always cost. Sounder is unusual. Normally the cost per trip goes down as you run trains in the middle of the day. You don’t need more equipment and it is easier to have a crew do the work throughout the day (rather than just during peak).
However, because BNSF owns the track things get more complicated. The more we use the tracks, the more it costs BNSF. The cost goes up since it becomes more and more difficult for BNSF to work around Sounder.
So the cost per train goes up. At the same time, the ridership per train goes down. At some point the cost per rider is enormous. It is also quite likely you lose the capacity advantage of a train. The trains are carrying only a busload of people.
Then there is speed. Tacoma is unusual in that without traffic it is faster to drive then it is to take the train. The train goes south and east while the freeway takes a fairly straight path. From the other stations it is the opposite. A train takes a fairly straight shot. Buses can follow freeways, but it takes a little effort to get in and out of the stations. Traffic makes things worse for the buses and thus makes taking the train even more attractive. Given all this, I would take this general approach:
1) Extend the Sounder runs a little more in the morning and evening. Early in the morning the trains run every twenty minutes. Then things transition fairly quickly. Trains arrive in Seattle at 8:02, 8:22, 8:52 and 11:27. There is plenty of traffic when Sounder starts running infrequently and there are plenty of who can show up after 9:00 AM. I would keep the schedule the same before 8:30 AM and then run trains so that they arrive in Seattle at 8:42, 9:02, 9:22, 9:42, followed by the big gap.
2) Run more buses buses when Sounder isn’t running. I just don’t think it will be worth it to provide even hourly train service during the middle of the day (or late at night). The buses are going to have to do the work.
Running additional bus service gets complicated. There is not only trips to Seattle to consider but trips between stations. Having a bus mimic Sounder is a double-edged sword. You provide good connections between the stations, but you also delay those headed to Seattle. There are also good alternatives in a lot of these cases. I’m not sure which assortment makes the most sense. I wrote a proposal a while back (https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/02/25/regional-transit-after-federal-way-link/). With additional funding from cancelling the various Sounder Station expansion projects it is easy to see some changes. The easiest addition could be this:
Tacoma/Puyallup/Sumner/Auburn: The 400 is a fairly fast bus for travel between Tacoma and Puyallup, but it runs infrequently during the day. Ideally ST would take over the route, as this would not only make trips between there more frequent, but it would free up vital ST service hours. The problem with that idea is that the 400 makes a lot of unique stops along the way — many of which are close together. This is not typical for ST Express, nor should it be. Meanwhile, the Puyallup/Sumner/Auburn section is basically a dead zone. Thus any service at all (other than Sounder) would be a huge improvement. I think the best bet is to run a bus going Tacoma/Puyallup/Sumner and Auburn. It could alternate with the 400 (each direction) which would provide much better frequency between Tacoma and Puyallup.
Other than that the previous proposal would work. There may be better combinations (that become possible with additional funding) or simply better frequency than what I proposed. I would hesitate to run express buses every ten minutes simply because trips that far are more influenced by speed than frequency. Fifteen minute service seems adequate.
Yeah, a bus mimicking the Sounder is a terrible idea. Expresses simply aren’t expresses in the valleys. The roads suck.
You really just have to bite the bullet and commit to providing round-trip service on the Sounder. Nobody is ever going to start using if it is sporadic and one-way. Only a handful of idiots like myself are willing to subject themselves to that kind of uncertainty. The data and ridership reflect that.
While your prescriptions are economically rational, Ross, you absolutely need to get into the heads, the motivations, the reasons why people who have been subjected to tragically pathetic to no transit for 100 years would be convinced to try it. Often try it for the first time.
And a train downtown at 7am, and a 2 hour bus ride home at 8pm isn’t going to convince anyone to leave their Dodge Pacer in the driveway.
You need to promise them a competitive round-trip out and home again. If you don’t, you will never get any converts but the mentally ill.
> Buses can follow freeways, but it takes a little effort to get in and out of the stations. Traffic makes things worse for the buses and thus makes taking the train even more attractive. Given all this, I would take this general approach:
The sr 167 master plan proposal would add direct access ramps at Kent, Auburn and Sumner. Their proposed brt is:
“Add BRT on SR 167. This project would implement a BRT system on SR 167 that is similar to existing BRT in the region, including Community Transit’s Swift routes and Sound Transit’s upcoming Stride BRT. This project would provide BRT service connections between Puyallup, Sumner, Auburn, Kent, and Renton with a possible extension to Link light rail.”
But one could just emulate sounder and after Kent head direct to Seattle rather than Renton.
(I think I mentioned before but I guess it’s fine to repeat for others)
You really just have to bite the bullet and commit to providing round-trip service on the Sounder.
The problem is at some point the cost per rider becomes ridiculous. We are talking hundreds of dollars per rider (per trip). Why the hell should we spend that kind of money on only a handful of riders?
Expresses simply aren’t expresses in the valleys.
Of course they are. That is just silly. You are conflating two different ideas: A bus that mimics Sounder, and expresses to each station. Imagine we just run a bus to every station as an express to Seattle. We already know that the bus from Tacoma and Lakewood is more popular than the train, because more people take the bus when they both run (even though the bus is delayed by traffic). So that leaves:
Puyallup to Seattle express.
Sumner to Seattle express.
Auburn to Seattle express.
Kent to Seattle express.
Tukwila to Seattle express.
Five buses, each independently running as an express in the middle of the day and at night. Run them all every fifteen minutes. Hell, run them all every ten minutes. That would still be cheaper than running Sounder frequently You don’t seem to get that. Running Sounder is extremely expensive. So it begs the question: What will get more riders — these expresses running every ten minutes or a train running every hour or two. Not even close. The buses.
Now clearly running the buses that often (and not trying to combine some of the trips) is a bad idea. It is very wasteful. Well so too is running the trains frequently. We just can’t afford to run the trains as often as we can the buses.
And a train downtown at 7am, and a 2 hour bus ride home at 8pm isn’t going to convince anyone to leave their Dodge Pacer in the driveway.
Neither will a train running every two hours! Besides, who the hell is talking about a 2 hour bus ride? At 8 pm a bus is just as fast as a train. The only reason it would be slower is if it stopped along the way, and even then the time penalty would be minimal. The bus is faster if you are going to Tacoma. Oh, and in the meantime it could serve more of downtown Seattle, which means riders wouldn’t have to transfer.
Are there actual numbers behind your “100s of dollars a boarding” comment?
It takes 40 minutes to get from Seattle to Kent. There is a bus that fast?
I drove I-5 at 10:30am yesterday. A Sunday. No accidents. No big events until 1pm. It was already a parking lot starting well outside the city limits.
Do you really want that to be what we count on for getting people around on regional trips? Really? You are so optimistic that they will just continue to donate space to transit, as becomes a parking lot for cars going forward? That’s your plan?
> Are there actual numbers behind your “100s of dollars a boarding” comment?
Well the negotiations are secret but there are some past estimates:
“In July 2010, Sound Transit reached a new agreement with BNSF, valued at $185 million, which grants Sound Transit permanent access to the S Line corridor, as well as allowing four more daily round trips to begin”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sounder_commuter_rail
To cover around 12 hours assuming we want 15 minute frequency would be around 12 of these payments or around 2.4 billion before any trains have even started running — unfortunately that would mean basically no freight trains can run so BNSF would likely ask for a much much larger sum of money.
Assuming the above was actually agreed upon, it would also be contingent on some actual capital improvements. I have never seen a document for capital improvements involving 15 minute frequency but I assume the minimum would be triple tracking or maybe even basically quad tracking. It’s at minimum a couple billion.
> Do you really want that to be what we count on for getting people around on regional trips? Really? You are so optimistic that they will just continue to donate space to transit, as becomes a parking lot for cars going forward? That’s your plan?
There was a plan to toll the i-5 hov lanes and combined with a direct access ramp at airpot way it’d be relatively fast. Though idk what exact project wsdot will chose to build next after they are done with the i-405 toll lanes
I don’t think anyone is suggesting or is expecting 15 minute frequency, except maybe peak hour.
Hourly would be fantastic.
It sounds like about the same ballpark costs as TDLE, and much faster and more useful, as it expands the catchment area for dedicated ROW transit by at least a half a million people, and with the right motivation, creates boomtown level dense growth all along a new corridor.
Cancel TDLE, but in a frequent express from Tacoma to FW, and throw all the funds towards Sounder. Pierce politicians will need some sweet talking, but if ST pilots usable Sounder service, and people start realizing it’s usable for not just commuting to Seattle, but all day, evening and weekend trips as well as getting to destinations all up and down the line (last time I tried to get to Kent from Tacoma, it was nearly 2 hours by bus, each way), than support will build to keep and expand the Sounder service.
Link really provides very little for Pierce and south King, except for a few small destinations right on I-5.
You’d likely see improved frequency become a possibly as a cost savings from mitigating dead heading, which is partly why Sounder is expensive to operate currently as they have to pay someone to man those train for the runs they do and its better to use them than not with more runs throughout the day. I’d also point out that frequency would improve ridership as people’s commuting habits have changed and there is more need for midday and evening service as people have complained for years at not enough runs for Sounder service. And would be an improvement to suburban service as well as there are plenty of people going one or two stops in the valley to connect with work, errands, appointments, school as we have two community colleges available to connect to by bus (Green River & Highline)
People wanna bring up ST Express as “faster” but it isn’t inherently faster outside of early or late runs where traffic is low to make speed a plus. I’d also point out that coverage is an important aspect to Sounder as it covers the Kent valley end to end and picks up and drops off lots of people along the way. It also just slogs through Pierce before it leaves directly for Seattle, it can be 40 minutes in ideal conditions and upwards of an hour when traffic is involved between Lakewood Towne Center and Tacoma Dome Station on the 594.
Why are people comparing a reality (ST Express bus service), to an unrealistic fantasy (15 peak, and hourly off-peak S Line service)? What’s the point?
Exactly, Sam.
I’d point out the term “corridor” is rather undefined. Does this only mean trips to Downtown Seattle? What about Bellevue to Auburn or Renton to Puyallup? What about a Stride transfer in Renton or Link transfer at BAR? Why is it only about train sets?
If any agency wants to bargain with BNSF, they have to first create a cogent “Plan B” so to set the upper limit of what can be offered. I don’t see reaching a “Plan B” here. All I see is wishful thinking with limited options.
Plus the survey forces the result. When the question is longer trains or more trains on the tracks and the trains aren’t jammed, of course more trains is what will be preferred.
Frankly, the survey only limits answers to Sounder trains. Other posters can speculate about other modes but that’s not what the survey content was. If all you ask about what flavor of ice cream do you want for dessert, no one is offering cake and pie as alternatives. To me, the survey value is quite limited. It reads to me more of a PR effort.
Lazarus does stress a thing that is right. The billions that we are spending to build Link will be manifested in two years, and the world of local travel will change. Link should be more transformational than a new bus route or a few added train sets. And FW Link is just three miles from Sounder. Much of East Kent is further from Downtown Kent than KDM Link station is! I wish the survey asked about non-Sounder options but it didn’t.
The ultimate question that should be asked is about willingness to pay more for more service through fares or taxes. Everybody likes more trains; fewer will be willing to pay for the privilege of having them available.
Anyway, with no interest by ST to deviate from their shopping list, I predict that nothing soon will change as a result of the survey. That’s why I say that we should wait until FW Link opens and see if demand shifts.
The Metro restructuring for Link should be where discussions should be focused in 2024-2025, and not in this limited survey.
If you think Link getting to Federal Way will be some sort of transformational moment comparable to opening UWS or Northgate, you are delusional.
Link, running along I-5, then slow-boating through Rainier Valley, then dead-ending in Backwater Ballard, cripples it’s usefulness to the South King. It’s a minor upgrade, mainly due to frequency, but certainly not to routing. It misses just about every population and business center it could hope to miss in South King. If it weren’t for the airport and Highline College, it would be of almost no value to South King.
Go to Troy’s map:
https://troyserad.maps.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?webmap=9a9bfba5f90c491396150972a25dcdca
Go down and highlight the population density map by block group. Interestingly, the population centers are nearly all clustered along the Sounder line, not I-5, where link is.
I would hazard to guess the job density is even more pronounced along the Kent Valley. Sure, they aren’t as dense as downtown Bellevue or Capital Hill, but few places Washington are, and those places are already served.
Stop spending money on a silly wrong-mode choo choo that doesn’t go where the jobs or people are, and instead take that money and upgrade the already existing line where they actually are. It’s not rocket science. If you are going to stupid levels of money on rail in South King, at least spend it in the right place.
Hourly would be fantastic.
And hourly means hardly anyone uses it. No one wants to wait forty minutes or plan their schedule around the trip.
You are so optimistic that they will just continue to donate space to transit, as becomes a parking lot for cars going forward?
The more crowded it is, the more pressure there is to convert HOV-2 to HOV-3 (or HOT) lanes. It is a WSDOT standard, which is why various roadways have seen upgrades. It is highly likely it will be HOT lanes simply because the state has major funding issues, and this helps deal with them.
Are there actual numbers behind your “100s of dollars a boarding” comment?
No, but let me take a stab at it. For whatever reason ST is inconsistent when it comes to releasing data. In 2018 the SIP (https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/2017-sip-final-draft.pdf) had subsidy per boarding for Sounder. It was $6.92 for South Sounder. There were about 700 riders per train. I’m sure the cost goes up the longer the train, but not much. Thus if there were 70 people per train then it would cost about $69.20 per rider. But again, the cost per train goes up, so already we are approaching 100 dollars per rider. It is also quite possible that 70 riders per train is optimistic. Even now (with fewer trips) there are trains that get less than that. So it is probably not accurate to say “100s” if it ran hourly — probably closer to “around a 100 dollars” subsidy per trip.
I have never seen a document for capital improvements involving 15 minute frequency but I assume the minimum would be triple tracking or maybe even basically quad tracking. It’s at minimum a couple billion.
It sounds like about the same ballpark costs as TDLE, and much faster and more useful, as it expands the catchment area for dedicated ROW transit by at least a half a million people, and with the right motivation, creates boomtown level dense growth all along a new corridor.
Link really provides very little for Pierce and south King, except for a few small destinations right on I-5.
On that we agree. That is really a different beast. If we really want fast trains from Seattle to Portland we are going to have to have fast trains from Seattle to Tacoma. That means our own tracks for passenger rail, and maybe even passing lanes around the stations (so that Sounder could run at the same time as an express from Seattle to Portland (stopping only at Tacoma)). Now you basically have MARC and Amtrak. You shift costs dramatically from operations to capital. You have economy of scale again. You electrify and automate the trains from Tacoma to Downtown Seattle and costs per train drop dramatically. Now it isn’t the end of the world if you only have 50 people per train. Over time (as you suggest) you have more, simply because you have all the advantages of Link (high frequency) with all the advantage of Sounder (being away from the freeway).
If I remember that is what Troy Serad suggested way back when.
If you think Link getting to Federal Way will be some sort of transformational moment comparable to opening UWS or Northgate, you are delusional.
Agreed. I will repeat a point I made earlier. In the middle of the day, a bus is over 15 minutes faster than a train from Federal Way. That means if the bus runs every 15 minutes from Federal Way, the frequency of Link is meaningless (for trips to downtown). Link could be running every minute and it would be faster to wait for the bus. This also means that buses from Tacoma will be faster than Link, even if they stop to serve Federal Way. It means that someone from Auburn who takes a bus to Federal Way will be better off waiting for a bus to Seattle, even if they just missed the bus and the train is about to leave. The only time that Link is faster than the bus is when Sounder is faster than both the bus and Link. That’s it. That means that Link really doesn’t help with trips like Tacoma, Lakewood, Sumner, Puyallup, Auburn or Kent to downtown. Link is only useful for trips in between. Trips to Federal Way, Angle Lake, SeaTac, Tukwila, Rainier Valley, Beacon Hill and SoDo. That’s it. The only reason it would be worse is if ST decides to underserve the region, and run infrequent or nonexistent buses to the South Sound. If they do that, then very few people will take transit.
“And hourly means hardly anyone uses it. No one wants to wait forty minutes or plan their schedule around the trip.”
I don’t think that’s true. This is regional rail. City to city. Maybe Tukwila doesn’t qualify, but Lakewood, Tacoma, Puyallup and Sumner sure do. Auburn and Kent fall in between.
People plan those trips. Hourly is fine.
I’ve talked to people who live in Kent who say things like “You are going to Seattle!?!?” I haven’t been to the big city in 20 years.” They don’t consider themselves in the Seattle/Metro orbit.
An hour would game changing, particularly if it ran well into the evening, so people weren’t stranded. That is much, much more important. Provide consistent, dependable service and people will plan around it.
With the 594, looking for one at 9pm, I have to get there at least 20 minutes early to be comfortable I’m going to get home before midnight. The apps are riddled with ghost buses, and they are sometimes 20 minutes early or 45 minutes late. Trains don’t generally have those problems. Much more predictable.
My thoughts on this are informed by my experience with friends on Long Island living on the LIRR. I lived in Brooklyn. It was very common to meet friends in Manhattan for lunch, or drinks, or a band. They would hop on a train, often in a small town getting dropped off, cab, or using a surface park and ride, and hop on the “3pm” and meet down in the Village at 4. They knew their last train was the “11pm,” so they had to be up at Grand Central by then to catch their train home.
It worked like a charm.
Sure, you would get more riders with 15 minute frequency, and at some point in might be worth it, but that’s not what this is. This is regional rail. What SHOULD be serving cities an hour outside Seattle, not some stupid highway-running mistake.
Question for everyone here. What are the chances in the next 50 years that the Sounder S Line runs hourly from, let’s say, around 5 AM to 11 PM? I’m trying to gauge how much of this idea is pure fantasy, and how much of it is a realistic option. My guess is there’s a zero percent chance.
Non-zero, in the way that if you had asked a Seattleite in 1970 “what are the chances Seattle will be one of the nation’s fastest growing cities in 50 years, with a thriving core of an industry that doesn’t exist today” they’d say it’s a fantasy.
Also, non-zero in the way if you had asked someone who had just read the news that Forward Thrust had failed to get a 60% majority in 1970, the chances that in 50 years there would be a light rail metro line running from Sea-Tac (currently undergoing the addition of a second runway) to the University of Washington, with expansions to Redmond, Lynnwood, and Federal Way under construction, and planning started for expansions to Everett, Tacoma, West Seattle, Ballard, Kirkland and Issaquah.
> Question for everyone here. What are the chances in the next 50 years that the Sounder S Line runs hourly from, let’s say, around 5 AM to 11 PM? I’m trying to gauge how much of this idea is pure fantasy, and how much of it is a realistic option. My guess is there’s a zero percent chance.
Assuming the amtrak cascades plan that was made with bnsf is realistic then that’d be around 16 round trip trains a day between portland and seattle. (with the large caveat that it would only stop at tacoma and tukwila)
If one can somehow make enough capital improvements maybe the amtrak trains could stop at the middle stations of kent, auburn, sumner (I do highly doubt) but still it would get it pretty close.
https://wsdot.wa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-03/2024-ACSDP-Draft-Final-Report-public-review.pdf
Any more frequent than hourly and I don’t see BNSF allowing any more trains short of sound transit just buying the rail line. Or like might as well just build a new rail line on SR-167 median.
Btw, I’m open to being proven wrong in my assumption that this idea is an unrealistic fantasy. So, tell me the steps that need to be taken by all parties to make all-day hourly S Line service a reality. What has to happen, and how much will it cost?
I think it depends on whether we are serious about getting people out of their cars and into transit.
Already you click on the google traffic map, and the highways are dripping blood-red, at all times of the day, and well into the evenings and early mornings:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/CEE4kifbFkf8SKGD7
Roads are for suckers. Yes, there are “express buses” in NY, but they tend to go to places that are nowhere near subways and heavy rail lines. They serve the poor suckers unlucky enough to live in places like the far reaches of Queens and Staten Island, they are often private coach lines, and they cost 10 times what a subway token costs. If you are pinning the future of regional transit on I-5 running express buses, you are making a massive mistake.
Even if you just extrapolate the linear trend of population and jobs, we will see another half a million people and 100,000 jobs here, in the next 10-15 years. With our likelihood of being somewhat climate resilient compared to the rest of the country and world, I suspect that line will up an upward curve. If you think I-5 will be sufficient to keep supporting transportation in the region, you aren’t thinking things through very clearly.
If the pressure isn’t on to leverage and upgrade those UP and BNSF rail lines and rights of way right now, it is likely to continue to build.
Look, this is a transit blog. I would think this would be a no-brainer to support. Y’all sure love your roads and highways, in a weird Stockholm Syndrome kinda way.
I think it depends on whether we are serious about getting people out of their cars and into transit.
Already you click on the google traffic map, and the highways are dripping blood-red, at all times of the day, and well into the evenings and early mornings.
Roads are for suckers. Yes, there are “express buses” in NY, but they tend to go to places that are nowhere near subways and heavy rail lines. They serve the poor suckers unlucky enough to live in places like the far reaches of Queens and Staten Island, they are often private coach lines, and they cost 10 times what a subway token costs. If you are pinning the future of regional transit on I-5 running express buses, you are making a massive mistake.
Even if you just extrapolate the linear trend of population and jobs, we will see another half a million people and 100,000 jobs here, in the next 10-15 years. With our likelihood of being somewhat climate resilient compared to the rest of the country and world, I suspect that line will up an upward curve. If you think I-5 will be sufficient to keep supporting transportation in the region, you aren’t thinking things through very clearly.
If the pressure isn’t on to leverage and upgrade those UP and BNSF rail lines and rights of way right now, it is likely to continue to build. This work absolutely need to be done. Why not take the billions from TDLE and canceled expansions of platforms and Dupont, and get to work on that now.
Look, this is a transit blog. I would think this would be a no-brainer to support. Y’all seems to sure love your roads and highways, in a weird Stockholm Syndrome kinda way.
> Look, this is a transit blog. I would think this would be a no-brainer to support. Y’all seems to sure love your roads and highways, in a weird Stockholm Syndrome kinda way.
The problem is that there is no path forward. It is an active freight rail used heavily. It is unheard of to have hourly passenger service on such a freight rail line especially in north america. For example with metrolink in los angeles, it is a similar situation with say the metrolink riverside line only running am peak inbound and pm peak outbound with no trains midday.
You keep stating let’s magically run regional trains more frequently to hourly or more frequently on a freight line as if it is a simple and easy thing when literally there are no such examples on the entire continent. Unless if you are committing to just basically buying the freight line or literally building a new rail line, but of course you don’t because it’d confront the reality of how hard it’d be to actually get those frequencies.
Not simple or easy. And certainly not cheap. Simply necessary, if you support regional transit.
Use the (substantial, but I understand likely not quite sufficient) money allocated towards TDLE, current express buses, and the cancelled expansions to get to work, rather than waste on project with far, far less bang for the buck.
@Cam
And lastly and most importantly you still need bnsf approval for such a large construction project.
Like I understand that you want fast transit but I’m not exactly sure what you are expecting us to say. Do you want us to indulge you and just say ‘bnsf will easily agree to it’ and ‘construction costs are really cheap’ to quad track 10/20 miles of track.
If you really want it then perhaps at least put a bit more effort into investigating and actually looking into how much it would cost and then have a proposal for what it would take. Not just saying ‘spend money’ and then magically more frequent.
I mean earlier you said “It sounds like about the same ballpark costs as TDLE, and much faster and more useful, ” well why haven’t you tried putting in some effort to calculate ballpark costs as well. I’m not sure why you’re placing all the onus on detractors to calculate it when it’s what you want.
“And hourly means hardly anyone uses it. No one wants to wait forty minutes or plan their schedule around the trip.”
I don’t think that’s true. This is regional rail. City to city. Maybe Tukwila doesn’t qualify, but Lakewood, Tacoma, Puyallup and Sumner sure do. Auburn and Kent fall in between.
Yeah I get that. Commuter/regional rail is less influenced by frequency. But very few people take commuter/regional rail in general, especially if:
1) It serves what are essentially small towns/suburbs. Regional rail works well in the Northeast and really well in Europe because the towns and cities are very centralized. Tens of thousands of people can walk to the station, even though the town isn’t that big. But regional rail to the suburbs only gets decent ridership during commute hours (which is why they call it commuter rail). Places like Auburn are not centralized cities. The urban part of Auburn has maybe a few hundred people. The rest of it is low density suburbs. Kent is a little bigger, but if Kent is a city of a few thousand surrounded by a giant sprawling suburb. The only real city is Tacoma and the train doesn’t go to the center of it. Compare this to Baltimore. Baltimore is a major city, with a strong center. The trains serve major urban areas, which means there are plenty of people who take trips from DC (or the surrounding suburbs) to Baltimore, via the train. In contrast, the trains that run from Seattle to Tacoma in the morning are basically empty.
2) There is very little in the way of speed advantage with the train. Consider the opposite: Baltimore to DC. According to Google it takes about a half hour by train, and well over an hour if you drive. At noon! No wonder people take the train. This isn’t rail bias. No one in Baltimore is thinking “I take the train; it is nifty!”. This is just people taking the fastest way there (and it is very fast). The problem is, South Sounder doesn’t offer that kind of speed advantage. Express buses to every spot would be about as quick. In the case of Tacoma, the bus is faster! As I mentioned before, during rush hour, more people ride the bus than the train. Think about that for a second. When the train is running relatively frequently (every 20 minutes) and there is a good chance that the train will be faster, more people ride the bus. Hourly midday trains stand no chance against buses running every 15 minutes — not when the bus is much faster.
3) The cities (or towns) have fairly weak transit. Even Seattle has very weak transit compared to DC or New York. Someone from Kent who is visiting someone who lives in the Central Area will probably just drive. Yes, it is right in the heart of the city, and the buses aren’t that bad. But they aren’t especially fast, and driving is just much faster, end to end. As luck would have it, they are running a train at 11:00 (special event). I put in the trip pair (Kent to a random place in the CD) and it shows 35 minutes for driving, and an hour for transit. Not bad, but you first have to get down to the station and wait for the train. In other words if you left at 10:40 (which I started typing this) you could be at your friends house at 11:10 or 12:05.
Look, if ST owned the tracks we wouldn’t be having this conversation. They would be running the trains every hour, even if hardly anyone rode them. We would be debating things like DMUs, electrification or automation. But it just doesn’t make sense to spend a fortune on so few riders. Consider MARC again. I mentioned how great it is (and it really is one of the best regional/commuter systems in North America). DC is huge. Baltimore dwarfs Tacoma. The train is blazing fast. Yet only about 10,000 riders a day take it. That’s it. With MARC they own the tracks and the only cost is operations. With Sounder the cost goes up and up the more trips we add. It just doesn’t make sense to spend a huge amount of money on so few riders. Not when there is an alternative that offers something that is better in many ways.
Personal story: I used to have a friend who lived in Edgewood. I would drive to visit him. Even though he was dirt poor (and lived in a trailer park) he would drive to visit his friends in Seattle (when his car ran). Of course we would have loved taking a train, but we also would have loved having a bus running every fifteen minutes. It just makes the trip way more flexible. You leave when you want to leave. The combination is nice. You leave when you want to leave. If you end up taking the train, great. If not, you don’t have to wait around a really long time — you just take the bus.
You are right, WL. For sure.
Honestly, I wouldn’t know where to start on the money side. If you want to point me to some docs, I’m happy to put a little time in.
Generally, I am looking here for thoughtful and more informed opinions on a path forward. I am not a transit expert. I’m not a planner. I am not an engineer. Transit is an interest, but I have 10 other things I am as, or more interested in. I just see a need, y’all have convinced me of the error of TDLE, and I see what seems like an obvious, if difficult and expensive, fix.
It may be easier and cheaper than I speculate, though it’s likely harder or costlier. But it doesn’t seem like a bad idea to find out, and it sounds like ST is trying to do that. Which is good.
As an aside, yes it’s an active freight line. But those trains go very near my house every day, and I would estimate over half are either coal or oil. I am hopeful that freight need largely disappears in the next 10 to 20 years.
Link should be more transformational than a new bus route or a few added train sets.
It depends on what you mean by “transformational”. If they ran buses every fifteen minutes from various South Sound locations then Link basically only works for trips between Downtown Seattle and Federal Way. That’s it. It really doesn’t make sense if you are going to Downtown Seattle or most places within Seattle. The Link locations south of downtown are not that popular compared to downtown (and the places you can get to from downtown).
The only way it would be transformational is if they truncate a bunch of buses and force riders to take the slow train into the city. That would definitely be transformational, but in a bad way.
But those trains go very near my house every day, and I would estimate over half are either coal or oil. I am hopeful that freight need largely disappears in the next 10 to 20 years.
That is a possibility. I believe that coal comes mainly from Wyoming, runs through Oregon (along the gorge) then goes north up through Washington before being exported in BC. That is a long ways, and there are a lot of things that can go wrong. Coal is a fairly volatile industry, and the market could easily crash, especially given the way people feel about the environment on the West Coast: https://www.route-fifty.com/infrastructure/2019/11/coal-export-terminals-west-coast-oakland-washington-oregon/161380/.
Do you want us to indulge you and just say ‘bnsf will easily agree to it’ and ‘construction costs are really cheap’ to quad track 10/20 miles of track.
I think the only way it happens is with high speed rail. I don’t think the bullet train idea is realistic. At some point they will look at what it would take to run trains at 100 MPH between Seattle and Tacoma, and that probably requires adding more tracks. Not cheap, but not nearly as expensive as bullet trains (and the sort of thing that could be built in a few years, not decades from now).
When I was a college student, I was told that anything can be built given enough money. It’s not whether the S Line can be run hourly but how much would it cost.
It will require at least one defucated track no matter what. In some instances a single track for passengers can work for a segment, but anything greater than an hour will require adding bypass tracks to that mainline track or a fully second track. It looks to me that ST or WSDOT would have to buy at least a mainline track the whole way. Automation can reduce the amount of double tracks needed but trains will still need to pass each other.
Amtrak ended up owning corridors because some railroads in the 1970’s declared bankruptcy. Caltrain was able to get its tracks by putting SP into a regulatory corner. Railroads today are more savvy and diversified, so it seems unlikely for BNSF would be forced to sell these tracks at a low price. Of course, some corporation could suddenly buy BNSF and that might change the reality. Like Amazon could buy BNSF and repurpose the line to benefit both package delivery and employee transportation. Or a future government dictatorship could abolish private railroad ownership.
A strategy may be to build a new freight track for BNSF in a trade. However there are many freight destinations on the corridor — not only the Port of Seattle but many other places in South King — so I don’t see that happening easily unless it’s immediately adjacent to the existing tracks.
So government could just build completely new tracks. Oh wait! That’s what we are already doing by building Link to Tacoma! Even though ST is too stupidly shortsighted to design and build the tracks for faster trains on the Link corridor, that was our generational investment choice. It’s been decided — and we now have to live with it and try to enhance things to make it work better for the region in the next 30 years. (This is why I keep insisting that Link has to be a big part of better transit delivery in South King.)
Meanwhile, big thinkers propose new tracks as high speed rail but know it’s several decades off. Piggy-backing on high speed rail may be the best way to eventually get dedicated corridor track here. That however isn’t something that ST can lead.
If our regional population adds another 2 million people in the next 40 years like in the last 40, the next generation may be willing to fund a new faster track corridor. National and world population growth forecasts point to that growth possibility pretty unlikely though.
So, unless we are under 30, I think the likelihood that we will see even hourly service on the corridor seems honestly far less than 10 percent before we retire. And if it does happen, I think it would only happen if circumstances of track ownership and kinds of service on the tracks change in ways that we can’t predict.
People on here want to claim striving for better is fantasy and unrealistic. But all I see is a lot of cynical complaining to do nothing to improve things. It’s very lazy from my perspective.
For all the shit people on here like to give Seattle Subway for their ideas, they at least go to Olympia to lobby for better and wanting to improve transportation policy in the state. Can’t say the same thing about people around here where the default is incessantly armchair complaining and “we can’t do anything to change the status quo” or “it’s too expensive” or “buses will solve everything”
Public transit isn’t about making money or ROI, it’s about improving people’s lives so they aren’t so car dependent. It’s truly funny and quite frankly sad how much I see people on here quibble so much about the cost of public transit infrastructure and yet we as a state give highways Carte Blanche to spend ungodly amounts of money on things that won’t fix traffic and haven’t fixed traffic. To me this is a problem with Seattle, it still clings to car and road centric policy to fix transit even though more busses won’t fix every problem and we are in a bus driver staffing shortage that’s unlikely to fix itself for awhile. There’s a uncomfortableness to acknowledge that rail and spending on rail needs to be a higher priority and that we need to quite frankly need to stop giving an effing damm about cost because all that does is lead to the perpetuation of the thing Seattle can’t escape….the Seattle Process.
we are in a bus driver staffing shortage that’s unlikely to fix itself for awhile.
There is a very simple solution to the driver staffing shortage: Pay them more money!
Look no one said that buses can solve all of the problems. It is just that they could solve our biggest problems at this point. They could certainly solve the issues in the South Sound.
Link is coming to Federal Way. Great. I mean that sincerely. I’ve long said that the southern end of Link needs a place where buses (traveling along I-5) can connect to it. At that point all you need is 15 minute buses from Tacoma to Seattle (with that stop in Federal Way) and you are pretty much set. Run buses from Puyallup/Sumner/Auburn to Federal Way every 15 minutes as well. Run express buses to Kent. All of that is much, much cheaper than buying out BNSF, even if you give each and every bus driver a big fat raise.
It is bizarre that something as obvious as paying the drivers more money is seen as an intractable problem and yet spending a fortune on extra train service for a handful of people at the Sounder stations is easy. It is like the folks who think we can’t possibly change the HOV-2 lanes to HOV-3, and the only solution is to build a massively expensive mass transit systems that is much slower most of the day.
> People on here want to claim striving for better is fantasy and unrealistic. But all I see is a lot of cynical complaining to do nothing to improve things. It’s very lazy from my perspective.
@Zach
And I just see lots of complaining as well without much work or effort from those who want more frequent sounder frequency. Why is it that the us the detractors have practically calculated done more work than y’all have done?
You say we are lazy; well then where is your concrete proposal? Even a napkin one would be nice. I have not seen any one advocating for all day frequent sounder service actually go and write an actual genuine proposal. There’s plenty of wsdot documents and other past studies one can reference.
Just saying to ‘spend money’ is not an actual plan.
@ Zach:
I think it needs to be mentioned that ST3 could be delivered probably 50 percent cheaper if it wasn’t for concerns about much of the public being repulsed about seeing elevated train tracks. Even in Downtown Seattle, there is easy willingness to remove a traffic lane for a bicycle track but not columns for elevated rail. While that sounds tangential, it would free several billions to build more transformative transit projects around the region.
Plus, the region signed a mortgage for at least 30 years just to build a low-ball-cost ST3 (and realignment is pushing the end date further away). That may not dampen your hopefulness, but it does dampen many others.
As far as Seattle Subway goes, they are structured to advocate. A blog like this is structured to trade ideas. Frankly, lots of Seattle Subway’s ideas on their fantasy map are not very constructible, and wouldn’t make transit trips faster because they cling to current Link technology (so they aren’t actually as visionary as they could be). I see Seattle Subway as filling a void in systems governmental visioning, but they seem biased towards promoting central and north Seattle projects so much that they even enlarge their diagrams to make north Seattle twice the size of south Seattle. I wish Seattle Subway would put more energy addressing station design and usability (especially transfers) and less on pitching a rail schematic. Until Seattle Subway puts out ideas for using more technologies than manned Link light rail cars for everything, I’ll view them as rather pea-brained.
This blog may not be as optimistic as you would like — but many people who post can get into details that can ultimately make transit investments better for riders. We have disagreements. If we all agreed no one would post much. Dissent however can make things better because none of us can look at everything objectively. Think of this blog as a forum to float ideas for their realism. Brutal discussion here is much better here than paying some engineering consultant to get paid several million dollars to come to the same conclusion (often tainted by their desire to get a bigger design contract later).
I still strongly believe that rider experience remains a diminished topic that needs more focus. The Seattle Process is this odd battle of behind the scenes real estate deal-making and last-minute neighborhood activism (often also motivated by perceived real estate worries) pushing back. The result often makes things worse for us riders that prefer to use transit daily because rider interests are not made highly important in the battles.
Do I have a proposal right now, no because that would take me time to come up with as to what I think would work although as I’ve said and others have said half hourly to hourly service during off peak, triple tracks, move freight to a different corridor in the valley, smaller vehicles like Stadlers, electrification, etc etc etc.
Saying “where’s your idea” when I and others have come up with plenty of ideas on here right now. Including Sounder proposals and all I’ve seen is crap on people’s ideas because they’re “fantasy” and “unrealistic” is truly unhelpful and just discourages presenting ideas in the future. People are unlikely to present ideas because they don’t wanna deal with someone who’ll just be negative at their proposal.
Being negative all the time to me in my view is unhelpful and does not bear good fruit or foster good brainstorming. All it does is make people less likely to propose ideas. There’s never bad ideas and places that discourage brainstorming just make it difficult to foster out of the box thinking and just default to groupthink. Which in my experience with project management just leads to a lot of bad ideas, no ideas, or afraid of change or shake up when forced to change or need to make a move.
This is something this forum suffers from to a degree. It can become an echo chamber and feedback loop to complain and be negative instead of hopeful and strive for better to a degree.
And for the record I’m not about toxic positivity either, it’s just as unhealthy as complaining all the time. I try to balance between being pragmatic and realistic & idealistic and positive. I just find it’s better to be on the side of dream big for what we can do than be chained down to being negative a lot of the time.
> This is something this forum suffers from to a degree. It can become an echo chamber and feedback loop to complain and be negative instead of hopeful and strive for better to a degree.
> And for the record I’m not about toxic positivity either, it’s just as unhealthy as complaining all the time. I try to balance between being pragmatic and realistic & idealistic and positive. I just find it’s better to be on the side of dream big for what we can do than be chained down to being negative a lot of the time.
I am not against bringing up ideas, but I find it odd why you claimed we are lazy when you have not shown your own work or effort.
> Do I have a proposal right now, no because that would take me time to come up with as to what I think would work although as I’ve said and others have said half hourly to hourly service during off peak, triple tracks, move freight to a different corridor in the valley, smaller vehicles like Stadlers, electrification, etc etc etc.
I’m not saying it needs to be a perfect proposal but like if I’m able to google up some wsdot documents and type up a more concrete proposal/ counter argument than either your or Cam have ever written up within like 15 minutes perhaps y’all should put in a bit more effort rather than just claiming we’re being negative.
Like I really don’t understand are you guys waiting for me or ross or Al to write it up for you guys?
AI. S
How I view Seattle Subway is “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars” mentality to their advocacy and thought process. Do I think they’ll get everything, no. Link extension to Woodinville is unlikely but Bothell could happen via Lake City & Kenmore or a line along Aurora etc etc etc. But I think their advocacy long term will likely bear fruit in advocating for corridors that will likely happen in the next 50 or so years. And hopefully convince Olympia to be better in their long term transportation policy. Something I think most of us on here can agree is lacking for a state that calls itself progressive on environmental and climate policy.
I won’t disagree this forum is good for hashing out practical ideas, I think the propensity to complain about the bad over West Seattle and Ballard and to a lesser degree Tacoma and Everett can be a bit overwrought at times from my perspective. Do I think they have problems, yes. But some of their problems I accept as is because sometimes you have to play politics to get the other things you want in a pragmatic sense even if the value won’t bear fruit for a long time. In Denver, the Southeast LR corridor still has a lot of untapped potential that will likely take a few more decades to really reap the benefits from. We still have a decent amount of empty prarieland at the edge of the metro where the line stops that is itching for development and redevelopment of existing infrastructure.
> Being negative all the time to me in my view is unhelpful and does not bear good fruit or foster good brainstorming. All it does is make people less likely to propose ideas. There’s never bad ideas and places that discourage brainstorming just make it difficult to foster out of the box thinking and just default to groupthink. Which in my experience with project management just leads to a lot of bad ideas, no ideas, or afraid of change or shake up when forced to change or need to make a move.
We’ve outlined many of the problems already and neither of you guys (or whoever else supports sounder) have tried to do any calculations to solve it.
Like if I wanted a rail across 520 am I just going to keep saying build it. And everytime someone asks how are you going to connect to u district with tunnel or elevated would you just ignore it?
I mean even say the bnsf payments one that was relatively simple to calculate and have a rough estimate (even if probably flawed) but y’all could have done that anytime. For how much tracks there’s the amtrak cascades development plan to check and the previous ones you guys can use to estimate the capital costs.
Like on the other comment, I’ve seen others for discussing the rainier bus lane of a couple miles we probably debated it more technically than ive ever seen either of you guys do for sounder. You guys are asking for a multi billion dollar project and are surprised when we ask some clarifying questions.
And again this has literally not been done before. Active freight tracks don’t have hourly regional rail running on them anywhere on the usa. It’s just the am peak/pm peak trains.
“Active freight tracks don’t have hourly regional rail running on them anywhere on the usa. It’s just the am peak/pm peak trains.”
Metrolinx
Metra
Metro North
LIRR
NE Corridor (in parts)
NJ Transit Commuter
MBTA Commuter Rail
UTA FrontRunner
MARC
Tri Rail
Trinity Rail Express
Etc etc etc
Oh, and the bus service I’ve outlined here would likely require fewer riders than today. Remember that I eliminate peak-oriented service (since Sounder and Link can do the job). Also note that there would be no buses to SeaTac (riders have to transfer to the train).
The easiest way to think of the savings is via sections. Right now the 577 and 578 combine for half hour service from Federal Way. At the same time the 594 runs every half hour (right by the Federal Way station). Thus if the 594 runs every 15 minutes and you truncate the 578 at Federal Way you have exactly the same number of buses running from Federal Way to Seattle. The same goes for the 574 and 594 between Lakewood and Federal Way. Meanwhile, the 574 runs every half hour from Federal Way to SeaTac, and that goes away. This could then pay for running the truncated 578 (Puyallup/Sumner/Auburn/Federal Way) every 15 minutes (instead of every half hour). At this point you are basically revenue neutral and those in Federal Way, Tacoma and Lakewood are much better off.
That basically leaves the 15 minute express service to Kent/Auburn. It is quite likely that the cuts in peak-only express service would easily pay for that, which means that you would need fewer riders than today. This is not a fantasy map. This doesn’t even require more service. It just requires shifting things around.
Yet the results are dramatic. Riders in Lakewood, Downtown Tacoma (not just the dome), Federal Way and Kent get 15 minute express service to Seattle. Those in Puyallup, Sumner and Auburn would get 15 minute service to Federal Way, where they could then pick up the express bus to downtown (or the train to places like SeaTac and Rainier Valley). Riders in Kent would have a much faster trip to Seattle or Auburn, with buses running every 15 minutes. Those in Auburn retain their one-seat express to downtown, but it would run twice as often (and connect to Link).
There are other variations, but the point is, you can have frequent express service without spending any more money, or even having more drivers than we have today.
@Zach B
The problem is that BNSF owns the tracks.
For example you listed NE Corridor (in parts), well guess what the NE corridor is one of the rare corridors where Amtraks actually owns a large portion of the tracks.
MBTA same thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MBTA_Commuter_Rail
“The MBTA owns all passenger equipment and most stations.[14] Most trackage is also owned by the MBTA. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation (parent agency of the MBTA) owns several portions of the Framingham/Worcester Line as well as the Grand Junction Branch, which is used for non-revenue equipment moves between the northside and southside lines….”
I can check each one, but basically BNSF owns the tracks. And it is heavily using it.
There is no example of hourly passenger service on a rail line route with heavy freight traffic. You’re welcome to try finding such an example though.
“There is no example of hourly passenger service on a rail line route with heavy freight traffic. You’re welcome to try finding such an example though.”
And yet I presented examples to you that has refuted your claim. All you’re doing is digging a hole for yourself in trying to claim I’m wrong when I have presented evidence that shows you are incorrect here. You are welcome to admit your wrong, but you can also continue to die on the hill that what you said is correct despite people pointing out your incorrect. That’s on you to decide.
> Trinity Rail express
“It runs along a former Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad line that the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth purchased in 1983 for $34 million.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Railway_Express
> UTA Front runner
“UTA-owned track parallels UP track until Ogden, where, until August 10, 2018 (date of last train), when service to Pleasant View was “Suspended Indefinitely”, Union Pacific and Utah Transit Authority shared the final 6 mi (9.7 km) of track to Pleasant View.”
So guess what happened on the shared segment:
“The station in Pleasant View, which is north of Ogden, was supposed to open along with the rest of the line in April 2008, but it was plagued by a variety of service problems stemming from the last 6 miles of track being shared with Union Pacific Railroad freight service. Firstly, improvements had to be made to the track to make it suitable for passenger operations, but that work was delayed when railroad workers were diverted to repair tracks damaged by a landslide near Oakridge, Oregon.[14] A bus bridge was used between Ogden and Pleasant View until September 29, 2008, when the track improvements were complete”
…
“Besides the limitations on how many trains could run north of Ogden, low ridership exacerbated the problem.[18] Limited weekday-only commuter service to Pleasant View resumed on December 10, 2012, with two trains picking up passengers in the morning and two trains dropping off passengers in the evening, with no transfers between trains required.[19]
In February 2018, UTA announced they would be indefinitely suspending trains between Ogden and Pleasant View starting on August 12, 2018, both due to new federal safety guidelines and low ridership to that station”
I’m not really sure how many times we can explain to both of you guys that the tracks are owned by BNSF, and that they are actively using it for freight.
> And yet I presented examples to you that has refuted your claim. All you’re doing is digging a hole for yourself in trying to claim I’m wrong when I have presented evidence that shows you are incorrect here.
I’ve already refuted like 4/5 examples. Go through your examples and find one were it is a) owned by the freight company b) actively used for freight c) has hourly frequency passenger frequency.
Sorry if I was too negative about Cam’s idea for more frequent S Line service. Go ahead and discuss it. I’ll butt out. What’s his face is right. Creative solutions shouldn’t be discouraged.
Being negative all the time to me in my view is unhelpful and does not bear good fruit or foster good brainstorming.
Says the guy that is being needlessly negative about a realistic proposal that started this thread. I proposed a handful of extra Sounder runs (at the edge of rush-hour) and a big set of bus improvements. The bus service I have outlined would be a dramatic improvement in regional transit service. It would require no extra drivers. Thus it would require no extra funding. It would be better for many riders than hourly train service. For those traveling to Tacoma it would offer an option that is currently more popular than Sounder (even when Sounder is running frequently).
You are like the folks dreaming about bullet trains to Yakima when what we really need is just decent train service. It is great to dream, but why the hell are you dismissing major improvements in service at the same time? The very thing you are worried about — ideas going nowhere because of negativity — is what you are engaging in when you dismiss the plan I’ve outlined. Making bullshit excuses why it won’t work (a driver shortage even though it requires fewer drivers) doesn’t help. Sound Transit needs to know that people want fast ways to get from the South Sound to Seattle. This can happen if we push for more express service.
On the other hand, I can tell you right now what is likely to happen given your approach. They add a couple more midday Sounder runs (so they run every couple hours). They truncate all the buses at Federal Way. Ridership on Sounder is tiny midday (as it is now). Ridership from Auburn, Federal Way, Tacoma and Lakewood plummets.
This is why we shouldn’t limit our options. It is like Link to the Tacoma Dome. It is easy to imagine something fairly similar, but fantastic. Imagine a heavy-rail system to Tacoma, but double tracked so that you can have an express (with few stops) between Tacoma and Seattle. Also imagine that it goes right into the center of Tacoma (and doesn’t end at the outskirts). Now you’ve got trains that take 30 minutes to get from Downtown Seattle to Downtown Tacoma. That is faster than driving — at noon! At the same time you manage to serve all the various places along the way with “local” service. Fantastic!
Yes, it would be. And I’m sure a lot of people imagine that is what we are building. If you squint it looks very much like it. We are building a train line from Seattle to Tacoma. Not to Downtown Tacoma, but pretty close. It won’t have an express, but it also won’t have that many stops. It won’t be really fast, but oh well. The thing is, once you make all those compromises it is actually worse than just the combination of commuter rail and buses. You have to invest a boatload of money to get something that is actually better. Fall short and you end up with crap.
In contrast if you run frequent buses (and commuter rail) it just works. Fifteen minute express bus service (and Sounder) from Downtown Seattle to Downtown Tacoma is huge. But it won’t happen as long as ST is under the illusion that Link to the Tacoma Dome and the occasional — even hourly — Sounder train is a good substitute. If they think that the only solution is rail — no matter how poor — then they will give us poor rail.
Ross – I don’t say it enough, but I love your ideas. They are really good, well-thought-out ideas. And I generally support them.
I would support your 594+FW idea as a solid interim step, though as someone who takes the 574 through FW, once the construction is done, it has to be substantially faster on and off the highway. I’m confident it will be.
What I’m suggesting above is a replacement for TDLE, not your interim express buses. And it’s obviously longer term. The negotiations and the trackwork have to be done somehow to reach our Amtrak goals, so perhaps we could use the TDLE money to instead fast-track (cough) that work now.
My, I think reasonable, fear in relying exclusively on express buses as a long-term fix is the same as my fear whenever I-5 is part of the plan. It’s a choatic disaster monster for every user far too often to be relied upon for essential regional travel long-term. It destroys reliability for everyone: car, bus, taxi. freight. General lane. Express lane. Everybody. It’s a crap highway, because of it’s fundamental nature that it’s a highway.
So we absolutely, positively need to not rely on it for our long-term transit needs.
What I’m suggesting above is a replacement for TDLE, not your interim express buses. And it’s obviously longer term. The negotiations and the trackwork have to be done somehow to reach our Amtrak goals, so perhaps we could use the TDLE money to instead fast-track (cough) that work now.
Yeah, and that is a good plan. I think we disagree on whether bus service works in the long term but we both agree that TDLE is crap. I hope things evolve this way:
1) Link gets to Federal Way, and ST makes plans to truncate all the ST express buses from Tacoma.
2) People get pissed off, and insist on frequent express buses from Tacoma — if nothing else during the time that Sounder isn’t running.
3) ST responds by spending a bit more money on Sounder and then runs express buses.
4) Things settle in and very few people transfer from the express buses to Link. Since the bus from Tacoma stops there, even riders from Federal Way take it (outside of rush hour). This causes a revelation of sorts within ST. If not that many people like riding the train from Federal Way, why will they like riding it from the Tacoma Dome?
5) At that point they rethink the proposal and look at different options. Maybe “BRT” in Tacoma. Maybe just grant Pierce Transit money (so they can run the local buses more often). Maybe add even more Sounder runs. All of these things are discussed.
6) Meanwhile, the state realizes that its bullet-train ideas are just way to expensive. They dust off the old plans and start working on making smaller improvements. ST joins the discussion (as you suggest).
7) Pierce County gets a mix of improvements (as mentioned in 5) and is much better off because of it.
I can also imagine a lot worse outcomes, but this is the good one.
I’m sorry Sam, Ross, AI, and WL for being prickly and an asshole today, I should have choosen my words better and not been a prickly asshole in my disagreements with you all and your thought process. Again I do apologize for putting you all down.
I share the same frustrations about ST Sounder and Express service and I want it to be better as someone who has lived on and off in Pierce for 30 years.
Pierce County ST express bus service could be better from an operations standpoint so it’d stop being so late so often and handle the passanger loads better because standing room only on the coach busses is a common problem on the 594/590 and generally an awful situation to be in as a rider where you’ll likely be waiting an hour plus in traffic to get off or an empty seat opens up compared to Sounder where within a couple stops crush load pressure is relieved within like 20 or so minutes of it leaving King Street.
I have talked with multiple PT employees who’ve said they have wanted to see investment into better regional express busses and retire the older fleet, like the old Gilling phantoms and older coach buses. So as to have more articulated or even invest in double deckers on the road but seems to go nowhere from what I’ve heard.
574 will likely be better once FWLE is done and will have a more frequent service operation once they can cut the line north of Federal Way TC and won’t have to deal with the airport loop anymore which can be a slog and then it’s only getting off at Federal Way TC.
I don’t see the 586 ever going away as UW will likely pay for it to keep going whether it makes sense or not to keep busses that’ll have to dead head for multiple hours till the evening rush.
I’m hopeful for things to get better, I believe that people in Pierce and South King do want improved service because it’s a crapshoot as to whether your bus will be on time or not. Alongside Kent Valley wanting better connections between Tukwila, Kent, and Auburn alongside better connections to Seattle on weekends because it’s either slow like the 150 from Kent or infrequent like the 578.
It mainly just depends on what BNSF says as ross noted. hopefully it is easy to implement.
It is kind of concerning that we have not heard officially what bnsf thinks about these changes yet, though I do understand they are probably under negotiations.
I may be in the minority, but I could see FW Link affecting the SR 167 travel market. If someone wants to take Sounder in one direction but needs to get back to their car in midday, Link + a short bus ride would do it if the bus was frequent enough. Sure the travel time would be longer, but the frequency of Link is every 10 minutes — so a bus running at least every 10 minutes along with that would be very enticing. With Sounder service missing 90 percent of the market getting to Link seems to me to be the way to go. Even if midday service rss was every 2 hours, someone could be at their South King destination well before the time the next train leaves King Street.
With FW Link just 24 months away, it would seem silly to develop an expensive capital program until the impact is apparent in the real world.
What’s the estimated travel time from Westlake to FWTC again?
mhmm not quite sure if it’ll affect it as much. At least when I test it on google maps.
for kent to seattle for example starting at 3pm, the 150 will take from 3:11 pm to 4:23pm. Whereas to use the link one would take the 165 which will take 25 minutes (it leaves at 2:55pm but let’s pretend it leaves at 3 pm) and then reach there at 3:25pm. Using the seatac to downtown seattle times takes 32 minutes from 3:31 pm to 4:03 pm but that’d be more like 4:09 given we need to actually start from highline college.
For auburn to seattle also leaving at 3pm. From 3:02 to 3:50pm the 578 can reach downtown seattle. Regarding traffic, it does add say 10 minutes but is still faster. Or if we really wanted to spend capital dollars could say add the airport way direct access connectors. For transferring one would be from 3:02 to 3:17 to federal way transit center. Federal way to pioneer square takes 44 minutes. Let’s say one waits for like 5 minutes and 2 minutes transfer time so 3:24 pm to 4:08 pm.
I guess it’s actually not so bad for auburn. the long time it takes to get from kent to highline on the bus really hurts it. Though it is a bit unfair since i calculated auburn using an express bus whereas kent was using a local bus to reach it.
@cam
Using westlake as 0 i wrote down the original travel estimates time as (though these times have been lengthened and are longer than this)
seatac 34
angle lake 38
kent des moines 41
federal way 47
fife 53
Thanks, WL. I had thought they were worse than that. Still a long time for the first leg of a bad, infrequent, slow transfer, as you noted.
It’s not just the travel time. It’s also the frequency. If a transit combination is 20 minutes faster but you must wait an extra 20 minutes, it’s not really a time savings.
I am highly skeptical that Route 578 will continue to run every 30 minutes all the way to Downtown Seattle when Federal Way Link opens. See, that’s the exact situation I’m describing — where 578 stops at Federal Way on the north end but ST increases it to run every 15 or 20 minutes.
Kent with Route 150 is closer, and that route runs every 15 minutes. So I could see that connecting on Link to get to Kent is less advantageous from Downtown. However it may be somewhat better for a UW Seattle student.
The advantage of having multiple transit trip options most times of day is huge. That’s a benefit of having several choices when using transit.
I think it is possible that Link will become the lifeline for some trips, but the point is it will be very slow. It really wouldn’t take much for an express bus to be over 15 minutes faster. If the bus ran every 15 minutes than it doesn’t really matter how frequent Link is — the bus is a better bet. Of course if the bus runs every half hour it is a different story.
Keep in mind the express from Federal Way is over 15 minutes faster than Link (in the middle of the day). Thus you could truncate the 578 in Federal Way and run the 594 every fifteen minutes. Then riders from Puyallup, Sumner and Auburn would transfer to the 594 while riders in Federal Way would catch the 594 and riders in Lakewood and Tacoma would just stay on the 594. Link really only becomes useful at that point for trips south of downtown (e. g. to the airport). During rush hour people would take Sounder (where Sounder runs) or Link (where it doesn’t).
That leaves Kent and Tukwila. The case for serving Kent is stronger than Tukwila. The 150 is fairly fast to Tukwila, and quite slow to Kent. But Tukwila is on the way and it wouldn’t take too much time to stop somewhere (to connect to the F). That is probably the best bang for the buck. Run that bus every 15 minutes (along with the 578 and 594 every 15 minutes). Extending that bus to Auburn would be a bonus, as it would be an express version of the 160, and give riders from Auburn a one-seat ride to downtown (again).
The rainier ave northbound bus lane is moving forward (page updated june 14)
https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/programs/transit-program/rainier-ave-s-bus-only-lane
Notable changes, they’ve proposed adding a new traffic signal to grand and college street. There’s also a new map showing the proposed changes and new traffic signals.
Honestly still a bit pleasantly surprised sdot managed to choose the bus lane with center lane versus maintaining two travel lanes in each direction alternative, but of course they haven’t started construction yet so we’ll see how it goes.
* Establishment of a continuous northbound bus lane from S Grand St to S Walden St.
* Implementation of one northbound general travel lane while preserving the center turn lane.
* Installation of a new traffic signal at S Grand St to enhance transit reliability and facilitate safer crossings.
* Anticipated time savings of nearly five minutes for buses during periods of higher congestion.
Honestly still a bit pleasantly surprised sdot managed to choose the bus lane with center lane versus maintaining two travel lanes in each direction alternative, but of course they haven’t started construction yet so we’ll see how it goes.
Sure looks like they are doing it. Same goes for Westlake. The longer this continues the more likely it will happen. Of course they could pull a last minute change but I don’t think anyone wants that. Spotts would be pissed. He might even resign. Harrell is conservative. This bothers those that want to see big changes (in zoning for example) but it also means he isn’t likely to pull the plug on these projects at the last hour.
It’s a bit different though. For Westlake IRRC the traffic impacts were like less than a 1 or 2 minutes. Whereas for the rainier avenue one the traffic impacts were up to 9 minutes during am peak. I am a bit concerned it might even be reverted to option 2 (with 2 general lanes northbound) by outcry after implementation if it is that bad.
Though I will note that option 1 and 2 are the same for most blocks they only differ north of college street to grand street around 5 blocks. Especially with the addition of the traffic lights at both grand street and college street it might not be that big of a safety concern any more to be missing the center turn lane.
I think the biggest difference is just the variations. In this case they have committed to bus-lanes, and it is then just a matter of whether there is a middle turn lane or two lanes each direction. They could reject everything and just keep things the way they are but that would be a big mess:
People who ride the bus frequently are likely to be older and/or Black, Indigenous, or a person of color (BIPOC) who commute for work and live around Rainier Ave S. People who ride the bus occasionally, rarely, or never are more likely to be white, middle aged, and primarily travel through Rainier Ave S for personal errands and shopping.
No politician in their right mind would favor cars given that. With freight wanting the middle turn lane (as a place to temporarily double park) it was then pretty easy to go ahead and keep the middle turn lane.
> No politician in their right mind would favor cars given that. With freight wanting the middle turn lane (as a place to temporarily double park) it was then pretty easy to go ahead and keep the middle turn lane.
I’m unaware of any freight using rainier ave to double park in the middle. Or at least the 2 travel lanes and high speeds makes it practically impossible to bring goods off a truck in the middle lane to the sidewalk.
> In this case they have committed to bus-lanes, and it is then just a matter of whether there is a middle turn lane or two lanes each direction
Yeah agreed. Honestly it’s a pretty good fallback plan if political pressure is too high since they still get to keep the bus lanes just changing the 4~5 blocks from a center left turn lane to a general lane
Rainier Ave serves lots of cars all day. It’s not a rush hour only busy street. It seems busier at 11 or 2 pm than at 8 or 5. Where SDOT eliminated a lane at Charlestown traffic often waits through three or four lights. And MLK dumps lots more traffic on Rainier north of Mt Baker station.
Finally, the MLK bike lanes went in north of Rainier this month. That adds traffic to Rainier north of MLK.
I don’t think those SDOT engineers have prepared themselves for the midday future gridlock coming on Rainier Ave. With things moving ahead it won’t be a theoretical topic. It will be a real world situation.
The 2 travel lanes and high speeds makes it practically impossible to bring goods off a truck in the middle lane to the sidewalk.
I’ve seen people do it on other five lane roads (they just wait for a gap in traffic — usually after a signal change) but I’m probably thinking of a different survey. In this case it was more about businesses wanting customers to be able to easily turn into their driveway (and for people to unload that way).
I don’t think those SDOT engineers have prepared themselves for the midday future gridlock coming on Rainier Ave. With things moving ahead it won’t be a theoretical topic. It will be a real world situation.
On the contrary, I think that is why they want to add the bus lanes. There will be gridlock either way (look at Denny or Mercer). By adding bus lanes sooner rather than later the buses are faster before things become a real mess. This in turn reduces overall congestion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_paradox).
with the addition of the grand street traffic light, I wonder if they’ll keep that bus station for rapidride R. for context originally it was going to be i-90 bus station then walker skipping the grand street and plum street stops. Especially now that there’s the grand street commons apartments on that street. Though I guess this will slow down the buses with every stop kept.
The college street traffic light is also kinda interesting. college street is the east-west street on north beacon hill, but once it reaches rainier ave it is cut and doesn’t connect well with the other east-west street of walker. It definitely makes it a lot more easier to go beacon hill down east to the valley with the protected left. And in general even for biking and walking.
Though somewhat ironically i think the largest relative benefit still goes to cars considering how hard it is to make the left there.
County Auditor raises red flags about Metro’s electric bus conversion plans:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/auditor-raises-red-flags-in-metros-push-to-electrify-bus-fleet-by-2035/
What isn’t surprising here is that there are red flags with Metro’s fleet conversion plans (we all knew that), but what is surprising is the shear number of red flags the auditor raised. For example, I didn’t realize the charge time problems with converting RapidRide to BEB’s.
Also, having half your fleet of New Flyer BEB’s out of service in March is not a good sign.
It is interesting though that Metro is now investigating Hydrogen Fuel Cell buses. I would have thought they would wait and see if they could learn anything from the CT trials, but I guess that isn’t how Metro works.
Thanks for the information
“The current battery technology doesn’t have the range, and the time to charge is too long, to accommodate these routes at this time.”
“Metro began service of 40 battery-electric buses from New Flyer in 2022. However, half of its New Flyer coaches were out of service on any given day this March, according to the auditor. The agency has purchased 89 battery-electric buses from Gillig, scheduled for delivery in 2026.”
It’s a bit sobering but it is also what I was afraid of. Transit dollars being spent on electrifying over actual transit service.
I forget who debated about this a couple weeks ago but this just solidifies my thought that the battery electric buses are just not ready yet and we should not sacrifice both transit riders trips nor our transit capital dollars on this until the technology is ready.
“Transit dollars being spent on electrifying over actual transit service.”
It was a political decision by King County in the 2010s. “Electrify the bus fleet” is what they hear environmentalists saying they should be doing. The decision was also before the pandemic, so transit service and overall revenue were looking better then.
I always opposed it because even diesel buses emit a fraction as much as if all those passengers drove SUVs. The best thing you can do to reduce transportation-related carbon emissions is to increase bus service to attract people out of their cars, even it it’s diesel buses. Keep running the existing buses until they each reach their end of life, then replace them.
@Mike Orr,
“ It was a political decision by King County in the 2010s”
Ah, it doesn’t matter if the goal is politically mandated or internally developed, it is Metro’s responsibility to develop a proper plan to achieve that goal and to deliver on the plan. And that is exactly where the auditor is raising red flags.
“The decision was also before the pandemic, so transit service and overall revenue were looking better then”
Metro still isn’t running anything near 100% of their pre COVID-19 route structure. But that should make achieving goals like this easier, not harder.
Metro never got a lot of money from farebox recovery, so that is pretty much immaterial. But the reduced route structure means fewer buses on the road, and therefore fewer buses that need to be converted to electric. That makes the zero immersions goal more attainable, not less.
Community Transit isn’t doing anything that other bus companies around the world have done. So there is nothing to learn, really. I’m not sure why CT or Metro is doing any of that. Grant money, perhaps? Publicity (look at us, we are so green)? Sorry to be so cynical but all of these projects are a waste of time. Of course you want to electrify your fleet as much as possible. But making promises as to when you’ll be able to do it is just making bets on how fast the technology will progress, or making a commitment to waste money. You are much better off just evolving in the right direction. As buses get replaced you can covert the routes best suited for battery operation. Take advantage of the opportunities, but don’t assume you will reach a goal at a certain point.
Unfortunately this is not how public agencies operate. There is interest in creating monuments versus making incremental change. It means lots of ribbon cutting and grants. It extends into other areas as well. RapidRide or Swift. Streetcars. Even various Link projects. It is backwards. We should be taking a look at the system and saying “what is the biggest problem and how can we solve it” or better yet, “how can be improve the system the most with the least amount of money”. Often it means little things and then doing those little things over and over until you have a really good system. There is a natural evolution of things that so often gets ignored. Run buses more often. Address the biggest bottlenecks. Repeat. At some point you get to where BRT, a streetcar or subway line makes sense but way too often we leapfrog, and then wonder why not that many people take advantage of the big investment.
The problem with the battery buses is someone has to pay for domestic manufacturers to ramp up their production. If there’s no market, then they’ll never be available, because the privately owned companies that make them won’t ever do the necessary work.
The situation is similar to where we were with light rail cars in the 1970s: nobody here was building them here, so until the awful Boeing LRV was developed the few remaining streetcar lines in the USA were making do with 40 year old PCC streetcars.
Then there was the low floor light rail car: tram lines in Europe had them, but until TriMet was willing to buy them in the 1990s, nobody offered such a thing made here.
Today, you can get really good battery electric buses, if you are London or Hamburg. MTR Western uses battery electric buses on its Bellingham to Seattle Amtrak Thruway route, but they’re a private contractor. They use Vanhool CX45E from Europe.
If you want the US bus manufacturers to get their collective heads out of the sand and offer transit agencies something similar, you have to start shoveling money their direction. Otherwise, they’ll continue to do nothing in the development of these vehicles.
@Glenn
The problem is that this is beyond just capital but even technology is not there yet. In europe they are usually going for shorter bus routes or they have much higher ridership and can afford installing the bus chargers at many stations if they are shared with many other bus routes.
From the article:
“The current battery technology doesn’t have the range, and the time to charge is too long, to accommodate these routes at this time.”
Lazarus, did a Metro bus run over your puppy?
Yeah, waiting on BYD BEBs in Albuqerque delayed ART by over a year, giving ammunition lots of ammuninition to the “No to ART” crowd. When they did arrive they were riddled with problems. They eventually just went out and bought diesels from New Flyer.
They sued BYD. I don’t think they still make them.
There’s been an article on urbanist on the topic as well. https://www.theurbanist.org/2024/06/18/metro-hydrogen-buses/
Most of it is around is just a repeat of what seattletimes said but there are a bit more brief snippets of information
“In terms of the fuel cell buses themselves, details remain thin at this point. Metro’s blog post from last week offered little insight into the vehicles. The Urbanist sought information on topics such as make and model, how they would be funded, where they might be based from, if this foreshadows a major shift in the agency’s recently formulated electrification plan, and whether an updated transition plan would be pursued. Metro communications staff mostly declined, saying it was “just too early in the process to provide an answer.”
But from the tea leaves seems like the battery electric buses are not ready yet.
@WL,
That Urbanist article is about the most negative article I’ve read yet on Metro’s zero emission plans.
It’s hard to imagine Metro making any substantial progress toward being 100% zero emissions when they have only been able to get 4% of their fleet converted in the last 7 years. And when 50% of that zero emission fleet is down for maintenance at any given time.
And the article gives the impression that Metro’s conversion to Hydrogen Fuel Cell buses is just a reaction to the auditors report of last week. I certainly hope that Metro’s plans are more well thought out than that.
And the problems with hydrogen go beyond just supply. There are significant infrastructure needs around developing fueling stations, and Metro will need a plan for that too.
And hydrogen isn’t easy. Just ask Lewis County Transit and Community Transit. They actually have hydrogen FCE buses on hand right now and are dealing with this issues.
Maybe Metro should make fewer statements about “leading the way” and just ask these other agencies for advice.
Has anybody considered using more of the available electric technology while we wait for battery technology to come to the U.S.? We have trolleys but we could also replace frequent lines such as the 8 with a people mover or gondola. Yes, that may push out the 2035 deadline, but we wouldn’t need as much charging infrastructure (and automation would reduce the need to hire drivers a bit).
Has anybody considered using more of the available electric technology while we wait for battery technology to come to the U.S.?
They are doing some of that, but not enough. The problem is the goals. If you are trying to get to 100% electric, then the issue isn’t a bus like the 8, it is a bus like the E. So instead of just running wire for the 8 (a relatively cheap thing to do that would likely save the agency quite a bit of money) they are focused on charging stations, long layovers and buses with capabilities that don’t exist yet. This is the problem with micromanagement. Metro won several awards for the way they were managed (before the pandemic). But if you ask an agency to do a bullshit task, you will get bullshit results.
https://bellevue.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=13020841&GUID=78DF9298-5D30-4E42-9A8A-EBE7D5713FEF
The rapidride K line was reviewed on june 13 with the bellevue city council. They are planning on the “Final concept / LPA (Q3 2024)”
Notably on page 4 there’s a detailed map showing the alternatives nearby the east main station.
As an aside, it is somewhat exceedingly difficult to find the conslidated information on the rapidride k with king county not updating their main page. instead having to find these pdfs/powerpoints in random city meetings.
I see Metro is finally coming clean about it’s ability to go all battery.
looks like the same littany of issues in Edmonton and zaustin but they’ve been sitting on it instead of working on solutions like more effectively using existing trolley bus infrastructure. And people don’t understand the mistrust and disdain for govt??
How NYC’s Most Dangerous Street Became a Popular Public Park | Walking Tour | Architectural Digest
https://youtu.be/m88-IUjDLq4
Travel time comparisons in Sounder South/Link South corridors. All are from King Street Station/Intl Dist Station/Jackson Street. Bus ranges are at 5pm and 9pm southbound. Link times are based on WL’s list, subtracting 5 minutes for Westlake-Intl Dist.
KENT: Sounder: 20 minutes …. 162 (peak express): 50 minutes …. 150 (local): 47-58 minutes …. ST Express: no service … Link to SeaTac + 161: (32 min) + (26-34 min) + transfer = (58-66 minutes) + transfer … Link to KDM + future RapidRide: (36 min) + ?.
AUBURN: Sounder: 27 minutes … 578: 45 minutes … Link to Federal Way + 578 (representing a future feeder): (42 min) + (17 min) + transfer = (59 min) + transfer.
TACOMA DOME: Sounder: 55 minutes … 590/594: 47-69 minutes … Link: 70 minutes?
FEDERAL WAY: Sounder, no service. 577/578, 28-37 minutes. Link, 42 minutes.
Fyi the numbers are from this list http://stb-wp.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/10143005/Screen-Shot-2015-08-09-at-9.07.39-PM.png
Though the times have degraded and you’ll notice the official numbers currently on the sound transit website are around 2~3 minutes longer than this tables estimates.
Tacoma Dome, Amtrak Cascades: 50 minutes
That help describe travel times, but it only tells half of the story.
The other half is told in wait times (frequency) and transfer efforts. Sounder may be faster but does a rider have the luxury of waiting one or two or three hours for a train? Not everyone wants to leave at 5 PM.
I would add 5 minutes to Link and about 8-10 minutes to express bus to get from Westlake, with Sounder at 10-15 (longer transfer walk and a rider wouldn’t want to miss a train!).
Through all the discussions here, I think what emerges is – as Ross proposes— that ST would be better supplementing service with Express buses as opposed to more Sounder runs. After all, added Sounder runs are requested away from the height of congested commute hours so the time advantage shrinks. If the Express routes are planned as three “markets” — Tukwila to Kent, Auburn to Puyallup and Tacoma to Lakewood — it would still seem easier than paying for three buses with drivers than one train that requires lots more staff. The added advantage is that the two southerly markets can also stop at FW Link.
One other side question that I have is about getting to the Eastside. Should the riders be told to transfer once or twice to get there or have direct service? None of these Seattle-bohnd express buses nor Sounder meet up with Stride. That suggests that they should just ride the 2 Link Line.
What should be the fate of ST Express 566? Should it be extended to Federal Way to directly connect the Eastside and South Sound buses (maybe adding riders)? Should it run more often — even all-day? Is there demand for it? Should it become a Stride Route? I don’t have a strong opinion on what to do.
One other side question that I have is about getting to the Eastside. Should the riders be told to transfer once or twice to get there or have direct service? None of these Seattle-bound express buses nor Sounder meet up with Stride. That suggests that they should just ride the 2 Link Line.
Hard to say. Even for trips to Seattle I go back and forth in terms of who should have a one-seat ride to Seattle and who should have to transfer. To be clear, this is all outside of peak; my thinking goes something like this:
1) Federal Way benefits from being the transfer point (and being on the way).
2) Tacoma has the most riders and the most to gain from adding 15-minute express service. The bus should stops at Federal Way (to allow people to transfer to Link) and then keeps going (which also then serves Federal Way).
3) If you are going to serve Tacoma, you might as well service Lakewood. The bus should go through downtown Tacoma. This is basically the 594, just twice as often, and with a stop at Federal Way.
It gets a lot harder after that. A few things though:
4) If you are running express from Auburn, then Federal Way is on the way.
5) A bus from Federal Way should be extended to Sumner and Puyallup (might as well). An express from Sumner or Puyallup to Federal Way would be faster, but there isn’t enough ridership to justify it.
6) Other than Tacoma, Kent probably has the most to gain from an express to downtown.
7) It isn’t essential to serve Tukwila Station, but there is value in connecting to the F (for trips to Renton and Burien).
8) A bus from Kent to Seattle that detours to somewhere in Tukwila costs about 3 minutes. Should the bus detour to Highline College instead? That would mean an express from Highline to downtown instead of an express from Tukwila to downtown (Tukwila would get by with the 150).
9) There is value in connecting the various stations, although not a huge amount. Some of the connections exist but are slow. Others don’t exist.
I think I basically came up with:
594 — Every 15 minutes (stops in Federal Way)
Puyallup/Sumner/Auburn/Federal Way — Every 15 minutes
Auburn/Kent/Tukwila — Every 15 minutes.
This means Puyallup and Sumner riders have to transfer to get downtown. It also means they have to transfer to get to Auburn or Kent. There would be some three-seat rides in there, but not a ton. You could eliminate several by running an all day 566.
I’m not following, Ross. I’m specifically asking about thoughts on Eastside connectivity — not just Seattle.
Stride does not connect with Sounder or ST Express buses on I-5. It doesn’t connect with Metro 150 either. (Actually none of these four services connect with each other between Kent and Seattle). Ideally, there would have been a connecting point somewhere near Southcenter. Stride goes from South Renton to TIBS in a gulch nonstop.
Part of the Express 566 ridership from Renton to Bellevue will shift to Stride when Stride opens. If I lived in North Kent and wanted to get to Bellevue using a parking garage, I’d probably drive to South Renton to get 10 minute Stride service than drive to Kent to get 30 minute service on the 566.
I see ST Express Route 566 entering a period of ridership and service decline as it appears to be mostly a Sounder connector yet it takes about an hour to get between Kent and Bellevue today. Once 2 Line opens, it would be faster to ride Sounder all the way between Auburn southward and Seattle and take 2 Line to Bellevue rather than hop on a 566 bus in Kent from Sounder there.
Finally, Route 566 overlaps with ELSL from Redmond Technology to Bellevue as of April 2024.
It looks to me that the route hours could be better allocated to doing something more strategic but I’m just not sure what. Maybe only run between Federal Way, Auburn, Kent and South Renton but at a higher frequency? Maybe the Auburn tail should go to KDM (and maybe further) instead? Its usefulness is being diminished because of other investments by ST coming on line. It’s already got over 60 percent fewer riders compared to 2019 and its demand recovery has plateaued beginning last fall.
I see this challenge as just another outcome of poor systems thinking when building the ST3 program. It’s awkward to think of incremental changes because all the service disconnects in South King are so pervasive, and there is not pot of capital money to build anything more than what’s in ST3 — so the only solution available is bus service.
I didn’t realize the Sounder cut those Kent Valley trips into and out of Seattle so dramatically.
And Link just doesn’t work for Kent and Auburn even with instantaneous feeders.
Metro Connects has a Seattle-Kent-Auburn express to replace the 578. So if Metro ever gets more service hours or can recycle enough from peak-express truncations, it may go that direction. It would go on I-5+405+167. That may be faster than going on I-5+KDM Road? Although I’m concerned about 405 bottlenecks. I’m not sure if the route is intended to stop at the future Renton TC on the way.