Countdowns: Lynnwood Link (August 30); RapidRide G (September 14)
Transit Updates:
King County Metro Charts Slow RapidRide Expansion in new project prioritization report.
The Gig Harbor Trolley is running now until August 31.
Pierce Transit is seeking input on its long range plan, Destination 2045.
A couple Link 1 Line downtown tunnel station entrance closures:
– The Pioneer Square Station entrance on 3rd Avenue and Yesler Way (Exit C) will be fully closed until August 9 for maintenance and repair.
– The University Street Station (soon to be Symphony Station) entrance on 3rd Avenue and Seneca Street (Exit C) be fully closed until July 17 for installation of a new electronic messaging sign.
Local News:
The Transportation Levy Committee rejected CM Morale’s bid for a $1.7B Levy, so the $1.55B version will go to voters on the November ballot, but with a last-minute add to finish the Missing Link on Leary, putting an end in sight to a 20-year saga (Seattle Times, $).
An article on transit projects included in the levy is in the works.
SDOT celebrates completion of 100 more blocks of sidewalks than planned under the Levy to Move Seattle.
Sound Transit is collaborating with Sno-Isle libraries to host a 1 Line Safety Poster contest ahead of the opening of Lynnwood Link.
TCC’s Highlights from Ride Transit Month 2024.
Other News & Opinion:
Op-Ed: Seattle City Attorney Is Dropping the Ball on Drunk Driving Prosecution
The American Elevator Explains Why Housing Costs Have Skyrocketed (NYT Gift Link)
High Housing Costs Top of Mind for Voters
Fast Regional Rail: the Mass Transit That Can Move a Megalopolis
Dangerous Road Infrastructure Makes Us Blind to Our Most Vulnerable Neighbors
This is an Open Thread.
Eastside Transit has another Lynnwood Link testing video up:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CWBUmhAIMJU
I drove along the line yesterday and can attest to the fact that everything appears to be running smoothly. It’s impressive to see Link in operation alongside the freeway, especially when the freeway lanes are jammed with traffic.
ST was running a mix of 3 and 4 car trains when I drove the line. I’m not sure why that is, but hopefully it isn’t a “feature” when the full line opens for revenue service on August 30th.
Only 51 days to go until Lynnwood Link opens! Lynnwood Link is going to be absolutely transformation.
And then on to extending Blue Swift on Sept 14th.
Yes, full service testing is exciting! Unfortunately, the mix of 3- and 4- car trains is due to low reliability of the new Link trains and lack of connectivity to OMF-E. ST has been warning for a while now that it will not be able to operate 4-car trains every 6 minutes to Lynnwood until the I-90 section of the 2 Line opens.
What do you mean low reliability of the new Link trains? What’s wrong with them?
Link won’t be operating at 6 min headways. Not now, not when OMF-E opens. It’s not the plan.
And, yes, LRV reliability has been lower than expected. Part of that is due to the LRV’s themselves, and part is due to staffing and experience issues. And part is also due to supply chain issues, which are still with us.
And it should be noted that ST isn’t the only agency that is having reliability issues. Yesterday’s unusual cluster frick in the southbound express lanes was due to a Metro bus that decided to puck its guts out on the freeway. Fluids everywhere.
@Liam
## Running times
• Slower operations in some areas requires additional run time throughout the entire light rail system
## Spare ratio
• More fleet out of service for maintenance to support reliable service
## Fleet contingency
• Needed for unpredictable maintenance and unknown future needs, such as accident repair, warranty work, retrofits/upgrades, further system slowing
For Northgate to Angle lake was expected to only use 74 trains (cars), but ended up needed 92 trains. 8 train cars needed for slow down in runtime. 4 train cars for extra gap train. 6 train cars for increased spare ratio due to them breaking down more often.
ST2 planning
https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/FinalRecords/2023/Presentation%20-%20ST2%20Light%20Rail%20Service%20and%20Passenger%20Experience%2010-26-23.pdf
For the complete ST3, 460 train cars were assumed, but they will now need 550 train cars due to the problems listed above. Or alternatively run the trains less frequently etc…
ST3 planning
https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/FinalRecords/2024/Presentation%20-%20ST3%20Light%20Rail%20Service%20and%20Fleet%20Planning%2004-25-24.pdf
> Link won’t be operating at 6 min headways. Not now, not when OMF-E opens. It’s not the plan.
The ST2 plan during peak times is for 10 minute headways on both lines for a shared 5 minute headway on the combined segment. Originally it was supposed to be 8 minutes but it was changed to 10 minutes with the insufficient train cars.
* 1 Line Trains every 10 mins, 4 car trains
* 2 Line Trains every 10 mins, 3 car trains
* Shared Line Lynnwood to IDS combined every 5 mins, 3 & 4 car trains
When they extend down to federal way they’ll have to shorten the 2 line trains down to 2 car trains
https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/FinalRecords/2023/Presentation%20-%20ST2%20Light%20Rail%20Service%20and%20Passenger%20Experience%2009-14-23.pdf
@WL — According to slide 15, 2 Line trains will have to be 3 cars, not 2, when FWLE opens. (Unless I’m missing something?)
@Catherine
> According to slide 15, 2 Line trains will have to be 3 cars, not 2, when FWLE opens. (Unless I’m missing something?)
Sorry my bad, you’re right. It’s supposed to be originally 4 car trains but then because of the unreliability of trains and extension will now be 3 car trains.
It’s on the 2023 October deck page 19 (1) linked below. Quoted from the pink box “Extending 1 Line to Federal Way requires limiting 2 Line to 3 car trains”
(1) https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/FinalRecords/2023/Presentation%20-%20ST2%20Light%20Rail%20Service%20and%20Passenger%20Experience%2010-26-23.pdf#page=19
I took a trip up to Northgate yesterday, to see how quickly they could clear the train and send it on its empty way to Lynnwood.
I did not have time to take ST Express 512 up to Lynnwood. But I agree with Laz that Lynnwood Link will be such a game-changer that they will get out of their car and take the train to Lynnwood, or at least Northgate, before their next proclamation-of-success comment.
The train rolled into Northgate a little faster than it used to, but not nearly as fast as it does at other stations.
Staff had the train cleared pretty quickly, but the train was still there several minutes before it moved.
A spare train was sitting on the switch track to the north. The northbound train pulled by it at a gingerly pace.
Shortly before that, a southbound train pulled through, out of service. This was toward the end of peak. The northbound train waited for that one to arrive before departing.
The southbound train in service showed up a couple minutes later. When it got going to Roosevelt, it did so at an acceleration one would expect from a non-terminal station.
In short, the trains appear to be mimicking the volume of traffic on the new trackway, but not yet following the new schedule north of Northgate.
I noticed the mix of 3-and 4-car trains. If ST is planning on 3-car all-day trains, I can understand that. If they are just planning to deploy some during peak, they may as well increase peak headway slightly instead, even if it ruins clockface timing, and be consistent in using all 4-car trains. If they are planning a mix of lengths all day, that just seems wasteful. Please pick a length and use it consistently.
I was not thorough in looking at all the signage, but what I did see or hear was consistently Northgate, not Lynnwood.
The on-board posters were still the old/current ones that show Angle Lake to Northgate. I have a hunch someone at ST reads STB’s Comments, and alerted the graphics department about the errors on the new signs.
I have to say, I still find it utterly useless to just mention “Angle Lake” in the directional announcements. Most directionally-confused riders are going downtown or to the airport. Just “Angle Lake”, “Northgate”, and “Lynnwood” leaves a lot of the explanatory work to other riders and station staff.
One more suggestion: put up relatively-cheap banners at the station soon to be formerly known as “University Street”. Something like “soon to be known as ‘Symphony Station.’” And then replace them with different banners on Opening Day, while we wait for crews to remove the permanent “University Street Station” sign fixtures. But keep the old sign fixtures up for a few weeks until all the various wayfinding sidewalk furniture and bus signage catches up with the name change.
Thank you, ST and taxpayers, for making the dream of a way to Lynnwood not stuck in a traffic reality!
@Brent White,
And don’t forget, when Lynnwood Link opens there will finally be reliable and frequent service to Lynnwood in both directions.
Lynnwood has never had good transit service in the non-peak direction before. Never.
This is going to be a first for Sno Co, and it is going to be very well received.
Regional transit is not all about Seattle.
I agree with Brent that name change temporary banners are needed at Symphony Station. Right now!
Lynnwood has never had good transit service in the non-peak direction before.
Wait, what? They have had all-day 15 minute express service for quite some time now. The first northbound bus of the 512 left downtown at 5:23 AM. Last southbound bus left Everett at 10:30 PM. The schedule is similar now but the bus ends at Northgate (not downtown). The other significant change is that the hours have been extended (last northbound bus arrives in Everett at 1:37 AM — last southbound bus gets into Northgate at 12:13 AM). That sounds pretty good to me.
Looks like Aug 30 is a Friday… technically midweek… does that mean no grand opening/ribbon cutting as is common with a typical Saturday morning opening? Just trains starting early in the morning to/from Lynnwood accepting passengers?
Wasn’t the underground party thing they did for ULink on a Friday evening? So they could then run a full Saturday schedule in the morning?
Mike Lindblom from Seattle Times posted on X about that. There are supposedly ~100 booths at Lynnwood station starting sometime in the morning. From regular opening time until 12:30ish trains are just going up to Northgate as they do right now. After speeches starting at 10A at Lynnwood, two trains will simultaneously come into Lynnwood (supposedly pulled from service creating a huge gap, and yes it’s like what happened at ELSL opening). At 4PM a night market-style thing will happen at all stations.
See here for more: https://twitter.com/x/migrate?tok=7b2265223a222f4d696b654c696e64626c6f6d2f7374617475732f313831313530333131373633343237333239333f7265665f7372633d7477737263253545676f6f676c65253743747763616d7025354573657270253743747767722535457477656574222c2274223a313732313138343732367dc151e0923df8570c36d268441c36ab05
@RedBeaver,
I can’t get to the link you provided, but thanks for informing us. It is much appreciated.
Sounds like a really big party. And as well it should be. Current ST ridership models indicate this should be the most important Link extension opening so far. It’s going to be awesome.
And the extension of Swift Blue to 185th St Station on Sept 14th is also going to be awesome. We’ve been waiting for transit like this for decades, and it is finally happening.
44 days to go. And then it is Party On!
Looks like Mike Lindblom delete his tweet about Lynnwood opening ceremonies.
The ST Rider Experience and Operations Committee is meeting on Thursday and the last item on the agenda is a presentation on Lynnwood Link opening ceremony: https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/ActiveDocuments/240718%20REO%20Agenda.pdf
We’ll know more on Thursday, it seems!
@WL,
Some of what you say is true, but you miss the big picture. Some of those issues are really just management artifacts.
For example, Rogoff was a government bureaucrat. He cared more about meeting the top level metric than he did about service delivery.
So when the 1-Line started having schedule reliability issues he wasn’t much interested in solving the root cause. His approach was simply to pad the operating schedule. Doing that will improve your on-time metric, but it also adds resource requirements that wouldn’t be required otherwise. And it slows down the trip for every traveler.
Ditto for down escalators on Lynnwood Link. Although the metric there was program cost.
The other major problem for ST currently is that they don’t have any dedicated O&M staff. All ST’s O&M staff are actually Metro employees, and they tend to take a bus oriented solution path to reliability and capacity issues.
So they increase spare ratios to paper over reliability issues, and they add gap trains to “solve” capacity issues. A real rail oriented transit agency would focus first on reliability, because reliability is a key attribute of rail transit systems. And improving reliability and capacity delivery actually reduces resource requirements.
Only when all key O&M staff are brought directly under the ST umbrella and become ST employees can some of these problems be solved.
That was supposed to be a reply under WL’s comments. My bad.
I’m not convinced that Laz’ solution will solve the problem.
Did the station architects cheap out on having redundant elevators to each station platform in the new stations because they were (a) working for Metro; (b) working for Rogoff; (c) working for a board of non-riders who lacked the institutional memory to know why cheaping out on the elevators at Mt Baker, TIBS, and, and SeaTac Airport became such an accessibility disaster, and would have mostly been solved, at little cost, with center platforms, if only they had been designed and built that way?; or (d) Other.
> So [the Metro employees at ST’s OMFs] increase spare ratios to paper over reliability issues, and they add gap trains to “solve” capacity issues. A real rail oriented transit agency would focus first on reliability, because reliability is a key attribute of rail transit systems.
… how else would you maintain reliability of the trains, except to maintain enough spares to fill in when a train can’t be used for revenue service? Can you clarify how you think maintenance staff employed directly under ST would somehow be better at fixing the train cars better than maintenance staff employee by Metro and subcontracted to ST?
@Lazarus
> Some of what you say is true, but you miss the big picture. Some of those issues are really just management artifacts.
Sorry to clarify that was copied from the document, I forgot to put quotes around it. Yes I agree they should fix the reliability of the trains breaking down rather than just buying more trains to fix the issue
Mr. Rogoff doesn’t hate me.
Lazarus, my brother was hired by Amazon.
About Al-aqsa and the beisha in there… Sumerian booty twerk video at the wall.
Now about Gladys… Does she enjoy Grays Harbor Transit?
Here’s a fun example of dangerous road infrastructure:
https://www.google.com/maps/@47.3784273,-122.2737903,3a,75y,156.73h,89.12t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1suV3j0KfmHFKMxmqGy5K6Ug!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DuV3j0KfmHFKMxmqGy5K6Ug%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.share%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26yaw%3D156.7288628056789%26pitch%3D0.8777902826899293%26thumbfov%3D90!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205410&entry=ttu
Somebody decided to have the sidewalk just end in order to make room for a right-turn lane onto SR-516. Never mind that this is right on the other side or SR-516 is the Green River trail, so anyone wanting to get between home and the trail has to either brave this, drive across, or wait for a bus to go half a mile.
This is SOP for when local roads intersect, go over, or go under, a state highway. The pedestrian and bike infrastructure just disappears. I assume it is jurisdictional clusters. I can provide dozens of other examples in my travels around the Washington. Why Reith needs to be designed as a highway here is another open question.
I am hopeful that the recent complete-streets requirement for State Highways that passed a year or two ago at State will go along way to fixing this issue.
Traffic engineers don’t care about safety and pedestrians. It’s a malpractice/junk science only concerned with maximum vehicle speed and throughput. Don’t take my word for it, there’s a new bestseller… Killed by a Traffic Engineer by a PhD, professor and industry professional that summarizes what many people have felt for decades.
I have some good news for you then, that intersection will be fixed literally this year. They are only adding sidewalks on the “south side” of the street but it’ll still be pretty good.
> This project will change the existing stop sign controlled intersections of Reith Road with S 253rd Street and Lake Fenwick Road to single-lane compact roundabouts to improve traffic flow for people walking, biking, and driving. In between the roundabouts the outside travel lanes will be converted to separated one-way bike lanes while still maintaining needed capacity on the corridor with one-lane in each direction. The bike lanes will provide separated space for people who ride bikes, increase the separation between car travel lanes and the sidewalk, and help fill a gap in the city’s bike network.
> People who walk will benefit from street crossings that will be shorter, simpler, and some will benefit from flashing beacons that flash when a button is pressed. The project will also extend the sidewalk towards Kent-Des-Moines Rd (SR 516) on one side of Reith Road while providing rideable shoulders in both directions for bikes.
Article about it
https://eastlakenews.org/kent-implements-roundabout-project-on-reith-road-to-enhance-traffic-safety-road-closures-until-september/
Kent wa government with detailed design picture
https://www.kentwa.gov/Home/Components/FacilityDirectory/FacilityDirectory/1842/568
This great, WL. Thanks.
Funding comes mostly from the Transportation Improvement Board.
http://www.tib.wa.gov/Dashboard/modules/ProjectSelections/ProjectDetail.cfm?AN=UAP_2023_032
Thank for you the information. This project is badly needed and I’m glad to see that the city of Kent is finally doing something about this!
The TIB is such a lifesaver for so many communities that don’t have enough of their own funding to implement these projects. That’s great news.
Thank you, Nathan, for another midweek roundup. A few additional stories from The Seattle Times I think are interesting are:
1. Seattle Allows Incentives For Turning Offices Into Housing. The regulations exempt certain office buildings from building regulations such as the MHA and offer tax breaks. Exempting the projects from the MHA is the realization that it will be very difficult to convert many office buildings to housing, and even then the cost will make affordable housing nearly impossible to afford for developers. I think the goal of returning some vibrancy to downtown outweighs affordable housing which isn’t possible with a $500/sf cost just for conversion before the cost of constructing the individual units.
2. Microsoft has dropped from number one in Bellevue employers to not even in the top ten as it retrenches to its Redmond campus and does not enforce its return-to-office policy as more and more employees opt to work from home. Not surprisingly this has stressed Bellevue’s downtown office market. Amazon is now Bellevue’s number one employer with 11,000 employees.
3. Northwest data center boom could imperil region’s power supply within five years. This is in combination with an article yesterday noting that 53% of residents throughout the region now have air conditioning. How this will affect the plan to electrify buses and ferries is unknown as more construction and cars move from gas to electric.
4. Gene Balk: “How fast is Seattle growing? It depends on whom you ask?”
There is a wide discrepancy between the state Office of Financial Management and U.S. Census Bureau about regional population growth over the last year, and several years, including Seattle.
“For example, the census data released in May showed Seattle growing by just 0.8%, or about 5,900 people, from July 1, 2022, to July 1, 2023. The Office of Financial Management showed from April 1, 2022, to April 1, 2023, the city grew much faster, increasing its population by 16,700, or around 2.2%”.
2024 estimates have not been released.
The OFM estimated in 2019 1 million new residents will move to WA state by 2040, which they then estimated would need 1 million new housing units. If you go by U.S. Census data King Co. is losing population, and Seattle’s population is basically flat, while most regional cities including Bellevue are losing population. Even accepting the OFM’s growth estimates the GMPC determined in 2022 every regional city except perhaps Sammamish has the existing zoning to accommodate these 1 million new residents.
As Balk notes this is good and bad. Good because rapid population growth has strained affordability in Seattle and parts of King Co. because the new arrivals have such high incomes, and often wealth from selling a house in an expensive market like CA, bad because policy makers from the PSRC to the GMPC rely on these estimates to make planning policies for everything from roads to highways to schools to jobs to housing allocations to transit. Also bad because it feeds the narrative a lot of regional cities have that upzoning is political rather than necessary and based on manipulated population data, which supports their efforts to counter upzoning, at least is the SFH zones. We won’t really know until 2025 when cities begin to draft development regulations to implement their new comprehensive plans which really determine housing and density although under King Co.’s reading of ESB 1220 only housing in the non- single family zones counts toward a city’s affordable housing targets.
Data I think are particularly important are housing permit applications. These have fallen sharply, especially multi-family housing. Builders and developers and those financing them including banks and REIT’s are often the canaries in the coal mine. Interest rates are high right now and that is a factor, but so is the belief the region’s market rate housing supply is reaching a glut.
Unfortunately the vast percentage of that housing supply – especially new housing – is not affordable to someone earning below 80% AMI, which is an entirely different issue that really can’t be remedied with more new market rate housing, even if there is a glut.
Builders and developers don’t follow the OFM vs. Census Bureau discrepancy that closely, but those financing the projects do, including REIT’s and banks that have their own economists. My take from plunging permit applications is they believe the population estimates from the Census Bureau rather than the OFM.
According to Balk, OFM hopes to resolve the different population growth estimates with The Census Bureau in the 2030 census, although builders can’t wait until them. The difference in estimates over 10 years is pretty dramatic from a planning perspective.
Thanks nathan for the updates.
The rapidride’s suffer further delays in https://www.theurbanist.org/2024/07/09/slow-rapidride-expansion-r-line-slips-to-2031
The cost of implementation rises the 400 million for the 7 proposed rapidrides.
The prioritization is:
Tier 1: Route 36, route 150
Tier 2: Route 40, Route 44, route B+271 (east west)
Tier 3: Route 181, route 165, route B (north south)
The urbanist article, generally highlights the same issues I’ve discussed before about how electrification is expensive and doesn’t really help transit riders. “If fully funded, the eight RapidRide lines identified in the report would cost anywhere from $468 million to $513 million, compared to the $782 million that Metro’s current fleet electrification work”.
On the other hand, seattle and king county could move forward with more “transit plus” bus route variants. “notably, the report breaks out the individual components of each proposed RapidRide line, with the actual speed and reliability components only ranging from $2.8 million to $19.1 million”*
There’s more details in the pdf with the cost breakdowns and maps of each route with ‘transit priority’ areas highlighted (does not specify what exact treatment but probably bat lanes or tsp signals).
July 17 meeting packet https://aqua.kingcounty.gov/council/agendas/RTC/20240717-RTC-packet.pdf
*I cannot actually find the cost breakdown in the pdf, maybe the urbanist is looking at another appendix document?
We could take this up as a cause: More bus service now! Metro’s 2035 and 2050 network depend on additional funding. The county adopted the plan in 2016 but still hasn’t identified the funding. That’s eight years of planning and construction lost.
The most likely source would be a countywide Metro levy, but (A) would it be large enough to fully implement the plan (and have frequent evening and weekend service on frequent routes), and (B) would it pass?
Diverting most of the resources to electrifying the bus fleet is like a state or national plan to electrify cars without a major improvement in transit. It looks good on paper because you can point to the battery buses or battery cars, but it doesn’t do a thing to make transit more convenient.
It would be more effective to put the resources into world-class frequency and coverage, so that more people want to take transit and find it feasible for their trips. That’s the way to reduce the most SOV miles traveled and thus carbon emissions.
Putting all your resources into electrifying the bus fleet is like putting all your resources into electric car subsidies: it’s not as effective at serving people or decreasing car use as adding more bus runs and coverage.
I’ve always been against King County’s decision to electrify the bus fleet now. The question is whether the county might be open to reconsidering this. And reconsidering RapidRide conversions. If we put all that money into incremental improvements, we could make more routes as fast as RapidRide, serve more of people’s trips, and give people a greater incentive to not drive.
Without that, the county “discussing the RapidRide prioritization report” isn’t going to do much. They can’t implement it faster without more resources. The only thing they can do is discuss which routes to do first. But if none of them will open until the 2030s, that’s not really relevant to now. It just means people will have to do without them for 8+ more years.
My feeling on the topic is that, whatever electrifying the bus fleet would cost today, it will probably cost substantially less 10 years from now and even less 10 years from then. It’s the kind of thing where whichever agency goes first is going to be the one that pays the highest cost and has the greatest risk of problems. But, at the same time, *somebody* has to be willing to go first, otherwise, there will be no market incentive for manufacturers to bother making electric buses or figuring out how to make them cheaper, and the situation will never improve. This means that the first electric bus fleets should probably come from federal or state grant money, not local funds at the expense of bus service.
Then, there’s also the whole tariff thing. Other countries pay less for Chinese battery buses than U.S. agencies do for diesel buses. While we’re captive to one of two companies making buses for the U.S. market.
But, at the same time, *somebody* has to be willing to go first, otherwise, there will be no market incentive for manufacturers to bother making electric buses or figuring out how to make them cheaper, and the situation will never improve.
I disagree. It is not that different to make a bus versus a truck. It is only a matter of time before the various bus makers start making them for European cities (which tend to be way ahead on these sorts of things). There is no reason for a US city to try and be a leader on this.
At the very least, someone should do a bang/buck evaluation of getting battery electric buses vs extending the trolley bus fleet. It seems like there are routes where that would be an appropriate move.
As the trolleybuses cost less per hour to operate than the diesels, it might even save operating money.
Extending the trolley fleet definitely makes sense. But, there’s a limit to how many routes that can be done at reasonable cost. There’s also the looming problem that trolley wire is far from 100% reliable, and it is very common to see Metro running diesel buses on what’s supposed to be a trolley route, particularly on weekends. This means that, to maintain reliable service, there is an upper limit on what percentage of the fleet can be trolleys, in order to ensure that there’s enough spare diesel buses ready to take over trolley routes any day, just in case they’re needed.
I can see battery buses which depend on a functional rapid charger at the layover point having the same issue. Every once an while, a charger on a particular route is going to go down for one reason or another, and to avoid service cancellations, Metro will have to temporarily run that route with a bus that has enough energy onboard to last the entire service day – at least for however long it takes until the charger can be repaired. Right now, batteries are still a bit too expensive for that purpose, so, again, you’re back to the problem that, beyond a certain point, battery buses cannot actually replace diesel buses, but must be added to the fleet, *in addition* to the diesel buses that would be needed without them.
The problem is kind of analogous to how solar panels were a few years ago – great when they work, but not saving any capital costs because you still have to maintain enough fossil-fuel generating capacity to keep the lights on on cloudy days. Right now, that’s starting to change thanks to grid-scale battery storage, but I feel like to really be able to operate a 100% electrified fleet, you need affordable buses capable of lasting an entire service day off of a brief charge during 2-3 hours of nightly downtime. Hydrogen is supposed to be about use cases like this, except, unlike electricity, hydrogen fuel is so expensive that, even when you already have a hydrogen bus, it is cheaper not to operate it and run diesel buses instead. Which means without a zero-emissions mandate from the state, there no reason – essentially ever – for a transit agency to run a hydrogen bus. While batteries, at least have potential, should the cost of batteries and charging equipment drop enough.
There are two incompatible descriptions of the RapidRide 150 coridor (1049). This document says downtown Seattle like the current 150. Metro Connects 2050 says it would be rerouted to BAR and Rainier Beach stations and terminate there. So either Metro is doing something that would preclude the Rainier Beach alternative, or it’s raising false expectations that it will remain on I-5 to downtown when it won’t.
In appendix C there’s additional information about alternative routings for each route. They’ve investigated both options for route 150 and are leaving it open for now. For other’s like route B (north south) they investigated say routing it to Factoria but actually screened it out and stuck with routing it to south bellevue instead.
If you’d like maybe I can help write up a short article on them since there’s quite a lot to list in a comment or at least clean up and provide the pictures for others to view since I know it’s not that fun to dig through 100 page pdfs.
https://kingcounty.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=6743624&GUID=16761628-7984-4279-B190-2884AF1A5BB2
“In appendix C there’s additional information about alternative routings for each route.”
How do you get to the appendixes?
“If you’d like maybe I can help write up a short article on them”
We’ve already started thinking about an article on the RapidRide reprioritization, so if you email the contact address I can send you the notes so far and include you in the preparation.
Hi hi it’s at contact@seattletransitblog.com right?
https://kingcounty.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=6743624&GUID=16761628-7984-4279-B190-2884AF1A5BB2
It’s in the link I cited. There’s appendix A, B, C and D.
A is about the equity analysis
C goes over the route alignments around 60 pages.
D goes into the exact technical improvements (where to restrict left turns or bat lanes) and is 600 pages long
Yes.
When I click on Appendix C, nothing happens.
> When I click on Appendix C, nothing happens.
It’s kind of a large file you might need to wait a bit. I’m also on my computer, I’m not quite sure if it works if you’re using your phone. For appendix D I had to wait a couple minutes.
I’ll probably repeat this comment in a latter open thread so it doesn’t get lost, but yeah there’s quite a lot of interesting details in the appendixes.
They’ve detailed the alignments options by looking at the previous studies such as seattle/bellevue transit master plans, metro connects, sound transit plans etc…
Also outlined the traffic counts and specific bat lane suggestions.
Main highlights besides the bat lanes are 1) the extension of the 40 to first hill combined with the 36+49 will create a new transfer point at first hill around boren and braodway. 2) for the B line want to route it to south bellevue instead of eastgate terminus
One of the 3rd/pine entrances to weslake will also be closed for a chunk of July. It’s the Macys/bon marche one I think.
Portland’s Tri-met scored a thirty million dollar FTA grant for ten fuel cell electric buses and related service/maintenance infrastructure .
https://www.opb.org/article/2024/07/09/trimet-add-10-ten-electric-buses-along-portland-most-used-line-transit/
https://bikeportland.org/2024/07/09/39-million-trimet-grant-will-fund-hydrogen-powered-buses-82nd-ave-transit-388404
Echoing points above by WL and Mike Orr and others… all these grants and resources going to gimmicky experimental buses instead of actually making service better for riders and prospective riders!!! Some of these major lines are seeing service drop to 30-60 minutes on evenings on Capitol Hill and other close-in transit oriented neighborhoods. It’s insanity, worthless virtue signaling by people in leadership who don’t use transit to get around while blowing precious transit resources.
Pierce Transit just got a grant for 40 battery buses and charging infrastructure for 30 buses. (I assume it already has charging infrastructure for the other 10 buses.) I haven’t bothered posting these, but the political celebration was yesterday (with Senators Murray and Cantwell and other luminaries).
The ceremony was at 3701 96th St SW, Lakewood. That sounds like an obscure location; let’s see whether you can get there by bus. Oh, come on PT, where is your map? I’ve used it before. Well, here’s Google Maps. Oh, that’s impressive, it’s on the 3, 4, and 48.
Just for giggles, how would you get there from Seattle? Ah, you can even do it right now at 3:30am. 124 from Westlake to SeaTac, 574 to the 512 P&R, 3 to S Tacoma Way and 96th, 4 minute walk. Travel time 2 hours 6 minutes. At 8:18am, 594 from 2nd & Stewart to 512 P&R, and 3. Travel time 1 hour 36 minutes. (Or, how long it took me to get to Lake Hills before the Starter Line.)
https://piercetransit.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=5e122c82aab449f9acf4ce14b596d394
Yeah, that’s their main base on S Tacoma Way. The 594 to the 3 is probably your best bet. The Sounder might also work if you win the lottery, and it is running when you need it.
I was lamenting here a month or two ago that the Lakewood ST Park and Ride, Lakewood Sounder Station, and the Lakewood Transit Center at the Town Center ( and also PT main base) are all within a mile of each other, but not co-located. Makes it really hard for a pedestrian to navigate their service down there.
And buses don’t even serve Sounder. You’d have to walk 4 blocks to the 3.
Or actually you could get off at the South Tacoma Sounder Station and take the 3 south instead.
South Tacoma is one of the communities I suggested might have good potential for walkability, if it got some density. Good retail bones.
They had canceled that new base which could have handled the double-talls and charging stations, when they “paused” the pac ave BRT. I’m surprised they are chasing electrics after that.
Mike,
“Pierce Transit just got a grant for 40 battery buses and charging infrastructure for 30 buses. (I assume it already has charging infrastructure for the other 10 buses.) I haven’t bothered posting these, but the political celebration was yesterday (with Senators Murray and Cantwell and other luminaries). … The ceremony was at 3701 96th St SW, Lakewood. That sounds like an obscure location; let’s see whether you can get there by bus”.
The real question is whether Murray, Cantwell or any of the other “luminaries” took transit to the event. My guess is no. This event had nothing to do with transit, and everything to do about posing for the climate crowd.
If it had been about transit one of the “luminaries” would have taken transit to the event, and asked why is PT spending a fortune on battery buses in a huge county instead of spending it on better transit service? I don’t care how green the buses are, who is going to take one in PT when frequency sucks and so does coverage so you can’t get to a bus stop.
This is just a sop to the Seattle progressive green crowd. It has NOTHING to do with better transit in Pierce, or really anything to do with carbon emissions because even with these 40 incredibly expensive buses you still have to drive anywhere in Pierce, so how do empty battery buses save the planet?
It is exactly the same reason Pierce is getting light trail that runs from Federal Way to Fife to the Tacoma Dome, which also has nothing to do with better transit in Pierce, in about 15 years figuring in the usual delays and assuming Pierce has the money for Link, and Seattle doesn’t need the money and bond limit for West Seattle and Ballard.
Long story short: if you live in Pierce you have to drive unless you live next to a Sounder station (which no one does) and commute 7-6 to downtown Seattle to an office job which fewer and fewer Pierce folks are doing although Seattle and its luminaries continue to insist transit in Pierce be about getting cheap workers to downtown Seattle because they can’t afford to park there because they aren’t the execs, and Seattleites don’t want to do the menial work. Easier to build apartments next to Link for the Troglodytes.
It is all so phony. I read so many Seattle people posting about Pierce on this blog about station placement or transit in Pierce when it is obvious they don’t know shit about Pierce.
“assuming Pierce has the money for Link, and Seattle doesn’t need the money and bond limit for West Seattle and Ballard.”
Tacoma Dome is scheduled to open before Ballard/DSTT2, so if anything I see Ballard/DSTT2 getting delayed, especially because it’s more expensive and higher risk. Tacoma Dome is part of the Spine — ST’s primary mandate — while North King will have its part of the Spine complete when Lynnwood Link opens. The majority of the board is from outside North King, so they’ll want Pierce’s Spine completed in the same way they’d want the other subareas to support theirs.
“I read so many Seattle people posting about Pierce on this blog about station placement or transit in Pierce when it is obvious they don’t know shit about Pierce.”
That’s why we had a 5-part series by somebody who knows about Pierce. You don’t see me pushing much for one particular station alternative or bus corridor, because I don’t know as much about Pierce as Troy or Cam or Tacomee do. (Apologies if I missed any other Pierce experts.) I just think Pierce in general needs better intra-Pierce transit for its major trip patterns whatever they are, and I leave it to the others to identify the corridors.
You aren’t under the mistaken impression that the STB authors are all champions of Tacoma Dome Link, and it before anything else in Pierce? Because that’s absolutely not true, as you can see if you look at Troy’s series. Some of us just went along with Tacoma Dome for the sake of regional consensus, but we never thought it was necessary, and we have a bus feeder alternative we’d rather see, and the rest of the money going into beefing up intra-Pierce service.
I don’t live next to a Sounder Station, and I have only moved my truck twice in the last 2 weeks. And both those times were to go to South King County. Which also happens to have crap transit.
Everybody’s situation is different, and granted, I only use PT sporadically because of its borderline-unusable frequency, but it certainly possible to not drive everywhere in Pierce. Personally I walk and bike most places, with just a smattering of transit in the few times it works for me. Yes, I know walking and biking don’t work for everyone. It could work for the majority of residents, however.
Tacoma has the potential to be a world-class walking and biking town, if we choose to invest in it. And that investment would be a tiny fraction of what is budgeted for TDLE. All we lack is political will.
Seattle times posted an article about grade separating rainier valley and the cost of doing so.
From the document:
“””
This at-grade section is approximately 4.5 miles long and has 18 at-grade vehicular crossings and 10 at- grade pedestrian-only crossings.
“””
Page 26 Estimate totals do not include escalation or inflation and are priced in 2023 dollars.
“””
PEDESTRIAN BRIDGES With the parameters given, there are on the market prefabricated pedestrian bridges available at a cost of $7,350 per linear foot, with abutment/stair configurations on each end. Note, if the pedestrian bridge is made into a “feature” bridge, cost could be driven up dramatically. The approximate cost for a pedestrian bridge would be $1,900,000 in 2023 dollars.
ELEVATED GUIDEWAY An elevated guideway with American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) type concrete beams & structural steel girders for the larger spans as appropriate would be approximately $45,100 per linear foot. The total opinion of cost for the elevated guideway would be $1,712,000,000 in 2023 dollars.
OPEN TRENCH The open trench option would include drainage pipes on both sides of the structure with one pump station. A unit cost of $30,100 per linear foot would be appropriate. The approximate cost for the depressed open trench option would be $1,141,000,000 in 2023 dollars.
BORED TUNNEL Assuming a conservative approach and encountering primarily rock, a unit cost of $101,400 per linear foot would be appropriate. The approximate cost for the bored tunnel option would be $10,705,000,000 in 2023 dollars.
“””
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/sound-transit-struggles-with-costs-to-make-light-rail-line-safer-in-south-seattle-is-sound-transit-ready-to-make-its-most-hazardous-light-rail-stretch-safer/
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24785840-wsp-mlk-separation-concept-estimates-st_task_order_7001_final_memo
My thoughts, I guess first off as I thought, bored tunneling would cost at least 5 billions is correct, well actually an underestimate . (Context for others some people disbelieved my estimate on previous open threads that tunneling would cost multiple billions) Either way bored tunneling is basically not feasible, though the construction impact would be less.
The trench option is pretty cheap and possibly could be done, but would involve the most construction impact. I’d advocate for just trenching it, though unsure if the community will be accepting of it. There’s also the elevated approach which it looks like they’ll try building support columns on the outside in rather than median support columns.
With the trench or elevated either of them would involve multi-year train closures and use shuttle buses instead. Or alternatively can single track but it will increase the cost further for either alternative
Not my money (well not all my money anyway LOL) but as a regular traveler on the corridor on multiple modes – I think elevated would be a lot better than a trench. Getting that space back in the middle of the street for other uses, getting rid of the train/other mode interaction problems, feel like OK tradeoffs for the shadows from elevated trains. That’s just my opinion – but the difference between the two options doesn’t feel that ridiculous cost-wise to me. Not like the bored tunnel (which would definitely be my first choice).
These all seem like a huge amount of money and time for minimal gain. Bored tunnel is clearly off the table, and elevated or trenched would take years of construction. I imagine streetscape improvements (options include: RR crossing lights, closing some cross streets, RR crossing bars) would be orders of magnitude cheaper for the majority of the benefit
“These all seem like a huge amount of money and time for minimal gain. ”
Depends on who you ask within ST. ST Ops and Drivers from what it sounds like have hated operating the Rainer Valley segment since it opened. It’s where most train delays in the system happen and that does have a knock on effect for riders and drivers. As it causes backups and delays for trains caught behind the accident who either have to slow down to wait for the accident to clear or a no show happens.
While expensive, this just shows how much better this project is than the silly “bypass”. A trench is the best option in the long run:
1) A lot more trips get better. Not only would it be faster, but it could be more frequent. This means all the trips get better. In contrast, it is quite likely the bypass would make things worse for Rainier Valley and Beacon Hill.
2) MLK can get a lot nicer. You can significantly narrow the street. There would be enough room for bike lanes, transit/freight lanes (for the 106) and some landscaping. By being more attractive you get more development as well.
I would add stations as part of the work. Not only Graham, but a station north of Graham. Orient Graham to the south and put a station just north of Orcas. That would still leave a pretty big gap between Columbia City and Mount Baker, but there is not much there (it abuts a greenbelt half-way in between). I could see squeezing in a station at Kenyon though (although the case for it is weaker). So two, maybe three stations.
From a rider standpoint, a surface stop is ideal, although a cut and cover option is almost as good. Anyone who has taken the New York Subway gets this. It just doesn’t take long to get from the surface to the platform.
I’m not saying any of this is worth it. But the project is not only much cheaper than a bypass, it is much better.
Agreed, trench seems the best option between elevated, trench and bored plus the bypass. I didn’t read the article but I don’t know how this would work without shutting the line, building a 4 mile “shoofly” somewhere (where there isn’t room), shutting MLK street down to build over/under that portion. Assuming any trench or elevated would be down the center, almost all of the impact would be to Link. I can’t see how this would work at all for construction logistics plus riders, neighborhood, businesses, other street users.
“This means all the trips get better.”
And we could focus on a suitable transit strategy for Georgetown, namely faster buses.
It looks to me that the simplist way to reconstruct MLK is to close one side, move all traffic to the other side, and dig a trench and cover it where the closed lanes are.
After that, there are a few concepts:
1. Rebuild the lanes on top. Have the trench be an express. Leave the current stations in place as a “local” line.
2. Build new stations in the trench. Close the surface tracks. Move the traffic lanes next to each other by putting one direction where tracks were (shorter pedestrian crossing distance), and put a trail on top of a covered trench where the station entrances would go (no need for a mezzanine.
I’m curious if the study chose a preferred option.
What about grade separating the cross streets? Elevating or trenching just 3~4 east/west streets will resolve the vast majority of the grade conflicts with less cost and less disruption to Link, plus will allow for the stations to remain at-grade and therefore avoid any need for ramps/stairs/elevators for pedestrians.
For example, by raising/lowers Alaska street at MLK, SDOT could then eliminate crossing traffic & left turns at Oregon & Edmunds as well. Pedestrians can still have at-grade crossings at Oregon, Alaska, and Edmunds streets, but cars on MLK would only be allowed to turn right off MLK and would need to use the Alaska under/over pass if they are trying to turn left (possible traffic flow: SB on MLK, vehicles turn right onto Columbia and turn left onto Alaska; NB on MLK, vehicles turn right onto Edmunds, left onto 32nd, then left onto Alaska.
I’m curious if the study chose a preferred option.
I don’t think so. They wanted a rough idea of what it cost. They sketched out some options, but didn’t pick a favorite. There are trade-offs with every approach. The cheapest and fastest option probably involves the most disruption.
What about grade separating the cross streets?
I don’t think they looked at that, which is too bad because it might be the cheapest option. As you pointed out, there aren’t that many cross streets.
“What about grade separating the cross streets? Elevating or trenching just 3~4 east/west streets will resolve the vast majority of the grade conflicts …”
The issue with street grade crossings is whether to elevate one street (a cross street) or both streets (a cross street + MLK). Either way, it would be a major effort and cost. Keep in mind that the catenary design requires a pretty big vertical clearance for any overpass — much higher than even street traffic.
One possible grade separation could be to build a “hump” in the street tall enough to let pedestrians walk under the street. It might be helpful at minor streets that have station entrances. It wouldn’t need the vertical clearance that light rail vehicles or traffic does. If it was an isolated crossing issue at one location it could be viable. However there are safety issues along the entire corridor that remain and a pedestrian underpass could become an easy vagrant camping location.
The impact of surface light rail inside a street boulevard has three major impacts: train speeds; street congestion; and overall safety. The biggest concern of the three is overall safety — not just train collision safety but overall safety. A street overpass would be nice — but it doesn’t really get at the overall safety primary problem.
If there is a lesson to be learned, it’s that building urban rail transit needs to be built with very careful deliberation. When it gets built, it is very difficult to change. It really points to building urban rail carefully — and not cheap out on too much value engineering. It has to be built well before service starts!
“Either way, it would be a major effort and cost” – right, but probably still an order of magnitude less than rebuilding the entire MLK alignment. Improving a specific interchange is a $100M of the scale/complexity of a Lander street overpass, while elevating/trenching the entire RV segment would be >$1B and of the scale/complexity of a Link expansion project.
“a pedestrian underpass could become an easy vagrant camping location” – my vision was the road would be an over/underpass, while the pedestrian access would remain at grade. Something like the car underpasses at the various traffic circles in DC (Dupont, Thomas, etc.), where pedestrian access would be prohibited. The goal is to keep the pedestrians and trains at-grade for a more vibrant and more accessible urban fabric.
@ AJ:
It’s much cheaper and easier to build a car underpass/ overpass for just a cross street than for both a cross street and MLK. I’m not sure which version you’re suggesting.
If the major cross streets don’t have an intersection with MLK, local traffic will use narrow neighborhood streets to get to the grade crossing. Otherwise, MLK will need more right of way for connecting ramps to the overpass — or MLK itself will have to be elevated to be even with the cross street.
To create a safer street, the traffic lanes in MLK would have to be separated . As I said before, safety is the primary goal as opposed to easing traffic congestion.
I guess MLK traffic could be moved to a long overpass that runs above the Link tracks. The serial street would function like an express lane. Then the existing MLK could be reduced to low speed traffic and one lane. It would need occasional ramp connections between the two street levels. I’m not sure what Metro buses would do. Is that what you were envisioning?
I am proposing the underpass only for the cross streets. Link doesn’t move, so station access remains at grade. North/south vehicle traffic on MLK also does not change, but left turns on/off MLK are (mostly) eliminated.
My understanding is the safety problem is not car traffic on MLK per se, but vehicles interacting with the Link ROW while turning.
“Local traffic will use narrow neighborhood streets to get to the grade crossing.” Yes, exactly. These crossing streets are all minor streets (Alaska and Othello are “principal arterial” only west of MLK), so the volume of turning traffic that is to be rerouted is small. Yes, some of these neighborhood streets may need to be repaved, have parking eliminated, etc., but the impact & expense is tiny compare to the impact & expense of raising/lowering MLK itself.
Let’s take Othello as another example. The project could be
1. Othello street underpass under MLK, 1 GP each direction
2. Convert 39th (Myrtle to Othello) to southbound 1 way; eliminate parking, upgrade 39th & Othello to a signalized intersection* with a left turn lane on 39th
3. Convert 43rd (Webster to Othello) to northbound 1 way; eliminate parking, upgrade 43th & Othello to a signalized intersection* with a left turn lane on 43rd
4. Put up a permanent barrier and prohibit vehicles from crossing the Link tracks at Myrtle, Othello, and Webster. Signalized intersection will remain to provide the pedestrians with a walk cycle (and the ped at-grade crossings of Link remain, include the at-grade station entrances), but the left-turn light cycles for vehicles are eliminated. From Myrtle, Othello, and Webster vehicles can turn right onto MLK, but cannot turn left.
*a roundabout would be better but ROW seems too tight.
“My understanding is the safety problem is not car traffic on MLK per se, but vehicles interacting with the Link ROW while turning.”
So you are proposing underpasses that only handle cross-street through traffic that doesn’t turn but admit that it’s the turning that’s the hazard? It seems to me that’s not addressing the hazard.
If the goal is to improve safety, they could go with full gates and fences, such as used by Chicago where the L still runs in street median strips.
While MAX has its issues, it seems like places such as Portland’s SE Holgate have had a lot less trouble than Seattle’s ML King, and it might be worth looking at the entire street design.
I still don’t understand why there are not crossing gates at some of the major intersections in the RV.
It looks like in the short term there will be. While a lot of these plans are extensive and would offer other long term benefits, they can make the street safer for a lot less money.
I don’t want pedestrian bridges with stairs I won’t be able to use.
For ADA reasons, I don’t think they can do that. All new pedestrian bridges in Portland have elevators or ramps to allow everyone to use them.
The article goes into more detail. Most likely it’d be circular ramps (5%) grade on the outside with one elevator in the middle. However it also cautions that the pedestrian bridges have very little appeal to most users.
> The primary challenge with pedestrian bridges will be adoption. A pedestrian bridge directly adjacent to a station, while at-grade crosswalks are maintained, is unlikely to be used by pedestrians, and thus will not significantly reduce pedestrian collisions on tracks. This has been seen along Calgary Transit’s Blue Line. At Whitehorn Station, a mid-block pedestrian bridge connects to an at-grade median-running LRT line, with at-grade crosswalks at each adjacent intersection. Calgary still sees frequent pedestrian collisions and fatalities near the station (7).
> Even when near an intersection, pedestrian bridges have struggled to see community acceptance. The pedestrian bridge less than 100 ft from Seattle’s Delridge Way SW & SW Oregon St crosses 5 lanes of traffic, including dedicated BRT lanes. Prior to 2021, there was no at-grade crosswalk at the intersection. In 2017, the community requested the installation of a crosswalk next to the bridge. SDOT agreed to install the crossing, citing the bridge’s inaccessibility to disabled and elderly pedestrians (8).
The clearance required above the catenary wires is extremely high. I don’t see anyone willingly using a crossing that high. I’m thinking it’s about 45 to 50 stair steps as a minimum — like walking up three levels in a building and back down on the other side.
It shouldn’t need to be especially high. The catenary can be lowered above standard street height where needed, as long as there isn’t a vehicle crossing nearby that a truck or high load can hit it.
Even a spiral like the existing bridge at Mt Baker station is hard to go up and down now. Turning the cross streets into over/underpasses could be the same, which would affect not only getting to the station but getting to the other side of the neighborhood.
Let the cars or trains go up and down; it’s easy for them. Don’t create artificial hills for pedestrians; Seattle already has too many hills.
@Al S,
“The clearance required above the catenary wires is extremely high. ”
This is absolutely not true. Not even close.
In fact, the clearance required for Link catenary under structures is less than the clearance required for road vehicles under structures.
Don’t believe me? Look up the next time you are in any of the Link tunnels. The catenary is direct mounted to the tunnel roof – no fancy support wires required!
Additionally, Link has the capability of operating with the pantograph partially retracted to minimize clearance.
Don’t believe me? Again, look up the next time you are in the tunnel. Link operates with the pantograph partially retracted to reduce clearance. This is done to reduce tunneling costs, and is pretty much standard practice all over the world.
So why the higher pantograph position outside of tunnels and structures? It’s to provide clearance for road vehicles.
Stated another way. It’s the road vehicles that set Link catenary height in the street environment, not Link itself.
“This is absolutely not true. Not even close.”
So why is the Downtown Bellevue light rail tunnel 27 feet 10 inches tall?
https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/news-events/news-releases/east-link-tunnel-construction-underway-downtown-bellevue
The FHWA highway minimum clearance is under 14 feet.
That looks like a pretty big difference to me!
So prove me wrong. Don’t just accuse me. That’s not constructive.
@Al S,
The reason the Bellevue tunnel is so high has nothing to do with the catenary. It is a fallout of the tunnel being SEM’d to accommodate two side by side rail lines.
But hey, last I checked the Roman compression arch was still an engineering thing. Same as it has been for 2000+ years.
But again, next time you are in the DSLRT, check out the tunnel height. It is nowhere near as high as 27 ft.
This is the MAX west hills tunnel. Even here, they’ve used two wire catenary, in a compact form, and if they really wanted to compress things they could direct mount.
https://www.gettyimages.dk/detail/photo/portland-oregon-max-train-tunnel-at-washington-park-royalty-free-image/458535829
I don’t know the exact height, but it’s nothing like 27 feet. That’s an absurd height.
The minimum required over a mainline railroad in Washington is 23.5 feet, but that includes things like double stack containers. You’d hope they’d be able to reduce that for much smaller light rail trains.
https://wsdot.wa.gov/publications/manuals/fulltext/M22-01/720.pdf
@Glenn,
I don’t think the pantographs on Siemens S700 LRV’s are even physically capable of extending to 23.5 ft, let alone a height of 27 ft. Any tunnel with a height over rails of 27 ft is clearly not being built that way because of the catenary.
And you are correct. In locations with tight clearances the contact wire is direct mounted to the structure. With appropriate electrical isolation of course. It’s pretty standard though out the entire Link system,
Additionally, I believe the contact wire height in Seattle’s old “bus tunnel” is around 13 ft.
Oh I would agree that 27 feet is almost certainly not needed. But if the height isn’t needed, why did ST design it that way?
The tunnel wasn’t bored, so it doesn’t seem like it’s a diameter width issue. It doesn’t seem like it’s an issue with the height at the corner of the train car either. And there isn’t some sort of overcrossing safety issue like someone reaching from above and getting electrocuted. And given how the tunnel was modified through cost saving value engineering step anyway, I would have thought that a shorter height tunnel would have been built to get cost savings.
It’s somewhat tangential to whether or not to build pedestrian or vehicle overpasses in the first place, but it would be good to fully understand the choice. If ST has a compelling reason for it, it should be known before looking at building any overpass anywhere. I hate the idea of agreeing to build and fund tight overpasses that must be changed at the last minute, increasing cost and disruption.
ST has way too many instances of making choices early in the design process — only to have to accommodate changes that significantly add to the cost later.
@Al S,
“ But if the height isn’t needed, why did ST design it that way?”
The article you linked is a fluff piece designed for public (aka layperson) consumption. It is not an engineering specification. Not even close.
Who knows what the quoted individual is referring to. It could even be the raw tunnel dimension before the lining and the invert are installed. Who knows, but it is not the height required for Link. Not even close.
And again, the Bellevue tunnel is a single bore, SEM’d tunnel designed to accommodate two side-by-side tracks. The height in the middle is obviously going to be higher because of that whole compression arch thing.
Link TBM’s have an OD of 21 ft. After adding the lining and pouring the invert, the ID is significantly less. And those tunnels accommodate Link LRV’s just fine. And they are the same LRV’s.
The old bus tunnel has a height to the contact wire of 13 ft. And the old bus tunnel accommodates Links LRV’s just fine. And they are the same LRV’s.
So forget the 27 ft height number. It is not the minimum height to support Link. Not even close.
“These all seem like a huge amount of money and time for minimal gain.”
Finally we have price estimates though. ST could have studied and published that in 2012 rather than keeping us in the dark and guessing.
Have at it, West Seattle light rail fans/haters
https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/west-seattle-businesses-hold-rally-ahead-light-rail-decision/281-6d5c418b-f8b3-4a0e-8192-c96637efc006
NIMBY’s!
Oh wait, they are right. “Four billion dollars for four miles that doesn’t add that much to ridership what is that about”.
ST’s reply the same reply many of this blog make about any transit project. You voted for it.
You can’t stop “progress”, or at least Link.
Metro Flex is going to be expanding into West Seattle later this month:
https://westseattleblog.com/2024/07/transit-metro-flex-test-run-starts-soon-two-bus-routes-to-add-trips/
One area I’m excited about is West Marginal Way – there’s destinations like the Duwamish Longhouse that are hard to get to without a car or bike right now, but will be served by Flex.
We have an article in the works discussing this news, pending a reply from Metro regarding some specifics.
At Northgate, trains seem to empty out then wait for quite a few minutes as well as the new timetables showing travel times of 16 minutes from Northgate to Lynnwood… is this amount of extra time expected in revenue service?
@RedBeaver,
Dwell time will be less when the line opens all the way to Lynnwood. Currently they have to do a car by car security sweep to insure all riders are off the train. But once it is in revenue service this won’t happen.
It will be quick, fast, reliable, and frequent. It will be a game changer for travel on the corridor.
44 days to go!