On July 18, the Seattle Design Commission met with Sound Transit to review its proposed design (pdf) for the West Seattle Link Extension‘s high bridge over the Duwamish and its landing at Pigeon Point. Although the cable-stayed bridge might end up being the most visually impressive component of the project, Sound Transit also expects to radically reshape Pigeon Point during construction of the light rail extension.
Sound Transit expects Link’s landing at Pigeon Point to require digging deep into the steep hill side and dense canopy, potentially impacting a wetland and federally-protected heron colonies. Sound Transit identified these potential environmental impacts in the West Seattle-Ballard Link Extension Draft EIS, published in 2022. Since then, critics of the project have latched on these issues as reasons to reconsider the light rail extension altogether.
In the meantime, Sound Transit has been meeting with a variety of advocacy groups, government agencies, and community organizations to determine how best to manage these potential issues while achieving the goals of the voter-approved project. Sound Transit reports they met or had briefings with the following groups as part of their engagement regarding Pigeon Point:
- The Pigeon Point Neighborhood Association, Duwamish Alive Coalition and Delridge Neighborhood Development Association
- West Seattle Bike Connections
- Tribes, Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife (WDFW) and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS)
- Community organizations including Birds Connects Seattle, Heron Habitat Helpers, and the Urban Raptor Center
- Property owners and tenants in one-on-one meetings
As the preferred alignment has gone through preliminary engineering, Sound Transit has developed plans for restoration of construction zones after heavy civil construction is finished. Where the route lands on the east side of Pigeon Point, the agency expects to plant greenery and open the land to the public as green open green space, referencing similar under-bridge areas beneath the Aurora Bridge in Fremont and open spaces beneath Skytrain guideway in Richmond, BC.
Construction is also expected to have impacts to the bicycle network at the west end of the Spokane Street drawbridge, which Sound Transit will mitigate by creating new bike connections. The agency is planning to make these new pathways permanent after construction is finished, resulting in small but significant additions to the network there.
The preferred alignment for the Link extension includes a “retained cut” along the face of Pigeon Point, which Sound Transit expects will require significant excavation and regrading of the hillside to protect the route from unstable glacial soils. The agency has the obvious responsibility of restoring greenery to the hillside, but Sound Transit saw an opportunity make intentional improvements to the Point. Considering the current steep slopes and dense canopy as a baseline, the agency looked a few concepts for how to rebuild Pigeon Point after Link has landed.
GALLERY: Sound Transit’s Pigeon Point Restoration Concepts
Click the images to view in higher resolution.
Concepts under consideration included horizontal terraces and a single large wall, but these were discarded in favor a more active concept inspired by the miles of trails within the Duwamish Greenbelt. In developing the “Trail Hillside” concept, Sound Transit sought to create new connections between the hilltop of Pigeon Point and the pathways at the base of the hill.
GALLERY: SOUND TRANSIT’s TrAIL HILLSIDE CONCEPT
Click the images to view in higher resolution.
In the cross-sections, the existing topography is shown as a grey dashed line with the most significant regrading apparent in the central “B” section and the western “C” section. Sound Transit staff noted that the multi-layered retaining walls are necessary due to the instability of the soils around Pigeon Point, and so they sought to create overlapping terraces which would engender a dynamic environment balancing access for people as well as animals, without feeling too artificial.
Next Steps and Alternatives
Sound Transit is studying a handful of alternative routes for the West Seattle Link Extension, but all except one (involving crossing the Duwamish on the north side of the West Seattle Bridge) include carving a retained cut into Pigeon Point. With preliminary engineering and design well under way for the Preferred Alignment, it is likely something very similar to the conceptual design proposed here will end up being the future of Pigeon Point.
The Final EIS is expected to be completed later this year, with the Sound Transit Board expected to select the final route soon afterwards. Design work will continue through 2026, and construction is slated to begin in 2027. If all goes according to plan, service between Alaska Junction and SODO would begin in 2032.
Is Skycastle Transit ignorant enough to think that the herons will sit contentedly in their rookery while earth movers roar around them? Let me be the two-thousand, five-hundred and thirty-second person to disabuse them of that charming notion. They’ll leave and never return.
But who cares about a bunch of grumpy birds wearing hat feathers when there is an opportunity to waste $4 billion in slop for the construction industry’s piggies, amiright?
When politicos sniff the invigorating odor of corruption, their hearts race and hormones bathe their brains with satisFACtion.
I hope the future Public Lands Commissioner reaches into his Inner Ecologist and argues against this fool’s errand of a project as his departing bold stand for The Prople of the Sound Transit District.
“The People”…
West Seattle really brings out the worst in people. The comments are really going down hill.
It certainly seems to get some folks riled up. I am wondering if folks who are supportive of the project have any specific insights on ways ST might improve this plan – more trails? A lookout point? Would it be possible or reasonable to try to connext Pigeon Point to the West Duwamish Trails?
Wasting $4 billion on a project that results in poorer transit for most of its users is what “brings out the worst in people”. This is an enormously wasteful project exactly because of the topographical constraints. As I said, if it were an at-grade branch alongside a simple freeway it would be a great way to turn the long distance trains from Everett. The capacity demands from north of Lynnwood are likely to be roughly balanced with those of West Seattle. Both would run at “policy” headways with no extra trains ever needed except for some football games. But it has to be engineered every foot of the way from the junction with the 1 Line to the end of the line.
It is not worth the expenditure of $4 billion dollars of anyone’s tax money. Nor, for that matter, is the extension north of Lynnwood, but it at least has the potential to shape the development in that fifteen mile gap. This end of the line just changes where people transfer.
This article might be worth a re-read, Tom.
https://seattletransitblog.com/2016/12/27/st3-precinct-map-and-more/
I’m not sure what your point is, Nathan. That article showed that overall, the people who supported ST2 supported ST3. Areas that it could be argued get absolutely nothing from ST3 (e. g. Fremont) still voted overwhelmingly in favor. The numbers shifted a bit — not a lot — around some of the stations, but in many cases that could easily be explained simply be increased density in those areas. Obviously there are some people who voted because of the personal benefit (and some who didn’t for the opposite reason) but overall that effect seems to be minimal.
But I don’t see what that has to do with Tom’s point. West Seattle Link is extremely expensive, and does not add that much value. What difference does it make that people voted for ST3? It is not as if people could choose individual projects. Most of the literature — for and against — was general in nature. Tim Eyman wrote the “No” argument in the voter’s pamphlet. It isn’t clear that it would have made any difference at all what they proposed — they would have got a very similar result.
But assume that it was West Seattle Link that put them over the top. If not for West Seattle Link it fails. OK, but so what? People supported the Iraq War — does anyone really think that is a good idea now? Attitudes change as you get more information.
With that link, I left it up to the reader to find this paragraph:
But winning over West Seattle with WSLE is old news. My overall point is that if the only real change in the arguments against WSLE (and, by extension, against ST3) in the past 8-10 years is that costs have gone up and the projects are delayed, that’s not a very strong argument. Obviously, other issues (like terrible transfer times due to politics hijacking the locations of DSTT2 stations) are somewhat different.
Comparing ST3 to the Iraq War is wild, if not highly inappropriate.
Comparing ST3 to the Iraq War is wild, if not highly inappropriate.
It is an analogy. A is to B as C is to D. That does not mean A and C are the same thing. It means that the relationship is similar. Want another example: In 2008 (the same night Obama was elected President) the State of California passed Proposition 8 which banned Gay Marriage. I remember it well, and thought this was a sad but temporary blip in the arch towards freedom.
Obviously I am not suggesting that the fight for marriage rights is akin to a transit proposal. I am suggesting that people often change their mind. In this case a change of heart (if there is one) is not nearly as profound or important. But we can’t base public opinion on an old vote.
Nor does it mean that there was huge support for West Seattle Link in the first place! The data, based on that post, is very thin and if anything contradicts your argument. You are ignoring a key element:
I asked Oran to create a map showing how each precinct’s vote changed over the past 8 years. The original map was a sea of brown (lower yes votes), because the overall package fared 3.2% worse than ST2.
Now a “sea of brown” may have meant only a tiny bit of green. But the fact that he didn’t present a map showing these tiny green islands (especially if they corresponded to ST3 projects) suggests they didn’t exist. In other words, not a single district went from “No” to “Yes”. Instead he presented a map showing areas where fewer people switched from “Yes” to “No”. This included areas like Fremont, which was probably due to increased density. Thus it is highly likely that West Seattle Link was not particularly popular anywhere!
Then there is the vote itself. This was an up and down vote. Voters were not choosing among several options, like the viaduct replacement. It was quite reasonable to consider many of these projects to be flawed, but vote for the package anyway. I knew plenty of people who did this. More to the point, this was not a case of voting between a bus-based set of improvements for West Seattle or West Seattle Link. You take the bad with the good was their opinion. I agree, to a certain extent. But that doesn’t change the fact that it is quite likely if given the choice between a bus-based solution and West Seattle Link that the vast majority of the city — including those in West Seattle — would support the latter. They were simply never given that choice.
Nathan, WSLE is flawed because of the topographical constraints, not because of who lives in West Seattle and how they vote. Nearly every foot of the extension is on some sort of engineered structure or in a tunnel. That level of expenditure was essential for large portions of North Link. In order to serve the University it required tunneling both to the north and the south, and connecting the south tunnel to downtown through the Capitol Hill elevation require that tunneling be extended through the gap.
All that was worthwhile in order to serve the University from both the north and the south. It’s not for a stub to West Seattle and, really, never has been. WSLE was included in ST3 because “Seattle needs something to spend its tax revenues on.” If North King had no project the plan it wouldn’t have pulled the rest of the region over the line and nothing would have been approved.
And you know what? That would have been better!”
If the bridge works (and lasts….) Lynnwood to Overlake (and Redmond because it’s just a couple of miles farther) would be a great “Spine”. The line to the south makes some sense as far as Highline, because of the Airport and Rainier Valley. But there’s a LOT of empty miles on that freeway-loving train track that will never be very productive.
Continuing to build BART del Norte alongside freeways and on seventy foot tall stilts is egregiously out of scale for the region. Stop now and spend the money on widening roadways for bus lanes in the regions to be “served” by ST3.
I’ll refer to the post I wrote about it.
I’m a little confused about what you are proposing? Although protecting some Herons is important, it’s more important that there is an additional connection to West Seattle as the city grows. Remember we’re not thinking just 5-10 years, we’re thinking 100 years. Let’s focus on connecting the four corners of Seattle with reliable transit and then worry about other priorities. There’s just too much traffic to say no to an alternative. You also need redundancy so when the road is down you can transit, and when the transit is down you can take the roads.
I’ve no idea what this strange reference to pigs or hormones is on topic?
As I wrote earlier this year, a forced transfer will make transit to most places in West Seattle less attractive while other places in Seattle (SLU, First Hill…) would make transit more competitive. So why spend $4b and displace businesses, wild life etc in the process?
I made reference to having stated my opposition to WSLE, but I forgot that it was in the previous article. Yes, the herons are a distraction; the individual birds will fly away and find suitable nesting habitat elsewhere. There are several heron rookeries along the east side of Puget Sound.
But the entire project is completely out of scale to the neighborhood, because of the topographical constraints. Unless someone is proposing to upzone the Junction area radically and extend the development up and down California, the thing will simply be an irritant to bus riders who will have to deboard, descend fifty or sixty feet — that’s four or five stories and wait an average of five minutes to depart once they get there.
The bus would be around the loop to SR99 in most cases by that time.
Coming back its climbing those four or five stories, because Skycastle Transit will “value engineer” away the escalators.
“Build it and they will come!” is not a business model.
“Coming back its climbing those four or five stories, because Skycastle Transit will “value engineer” away the escalators.”
ST doesn’t go that far. The common austerity-minded threshold for escalators is is “one floor up, two floors down”.
Note how it’s the opposite for department stores and other retail. There it’s 100% escalators, because otherwise customers will go elsewhere.
I mean I don’t see anything wrong with the approach sound transit is taking here, it’ll avoid all the bird nests. if we are to stop link for it’s alignment near a freeway and for removing trees — we might as well never build light rail in america then.
> I hope the future Public Lands Commissioner reaches into his Inner Ecologist and argues against this fool’s errand of a project
I’m not supportive of citing the wrong reason to achieve an intended goal. if one doesn’t like west seattle link should be using costs not other ancillary topics to stop it.
Well, given the disappointing ridership of every system except LA’s and Link between downtown and Northgate, maybe that’s not such a bad idea. The post-World War II cities that have grown throughout the West and across the Confederacy, especially, are a poor site for them. That includes the Puget Sound region outside central Seattle as well. If the bridge can stand up to the pounding of the trains, Lynnwood to Bellevue will probably be a productive system, but we ought to stop right now on the extension mania, including “WSBLE” at both ends. Both ends replace long stretches of “express” operations with forced transfer to trains which are no faster than the buses over the express sections.
Yes, something needs to happen for SLU, but it doesn’t need to go any farther than Lower Queen Anne, if that far.
And, VERY sadly, the 1550 votes in Stevens County are likely to go four or five to one against Councilman Upthegrove. It will be less than a hundred votes between and there are roughly another 1000 votes from other little counties around the state which will be heavily for Pederson as well.
So we very possibly will be forced to choose between a very nice but totally clueless about forestry former Congresswoman and a missionary for the RR&R boys who wants to cut the forests up into small blocks with “fire breaks” between them.
What a fustercluck. The Leg needs to up the filing fee for statewide offices to $5,000 to keep the no-hopers off the ballot.
Yep, Upthegrove is only nine votes up, King and Clallam pretty much cancel each other out, so it will come down to seven tiny tranches of rural votes, which will favor Pedetson.
Very sad and a huge problem for the forests if Pederson edges Jamie in the General. JHB’s not qualified for the job, but she is something of an institutionalist and might listen ro the professionals.
Sometimes.
@ Tom:
Wow! I just reviewed them and there’s currently only a 4 vote difference! The totals will be slightly changing later this afternoon — but it’s a photo finish.
As of 11:45am, 8/20, Upthegrove is down by 4 votes out of nearly 2 million.
Total votes: 1,901,273
#1: Jaime Herrera Beutler (R): 418,865 – 22.03%
#2: Sue Kuehl Pederson (R): 395,924 – 20.82%
#3: Dave Upthegrove (D): 395,920 – 20.82%
#4-7: Various (D): 688,897 – 36.23%
Write-in: 1,667 – 0.09%
A handful of “1-in-a-million” counting errors are between there being a Democrat on the ballot for this rate and not.
Exactly what policies are the reason some on this blog support Upthegrove. Here is his campaign website. Dave Upthegrove for Washington State Lands Commissioner. It is basically everything and the kitchen sink.
“A progressive environmental approach to reflect our climate crisis, including preservation of mature legacy forests”. What does this mean? Is anyone not in favor of preserving mature legacy forests, most of which are federal since the state has cut down most of its mature forests, including under three terms of Inslee, in part to fund K-12 education that is hemmorghing students and state funding so Seattle is closing 20 elementary schools. Does Upthegrove support less K-12 funding from our harvesting our forests?
“A commitment to good jobs, strong rural economy, and public services”. Uh, “good” rural timber jobs are based on cutting down trees and processing them.
“Centering environmental justice in all that we do”. Who knows what this means. Justice for whom? Trees?
“Honoring treaty rights and strengthening the co-management role of tribes”. Can a Lands Commissioner not honor federal treaties?
“Improving wildfire prevention and response”. How. Thinning forests? Stopping lightening?
“Expanding recreational opportunities”. Passive? Motorized. The real issue is funding to address the huge backlog of access projects, and the harm access does to the ecology of forests.
” I have heard the call for stronger partnerships to improve tree canopy in under-represented communities and to develop affordable housing on surplus state lands.
“I’ve heard the need to improve engagement and transparency — including expanding membership of the Board of Natural Resources to include tribal representation, public representatives, and small forest landowners”.
“I’ve seen first-hand the importance forest practices play in healthy rivers and salmon recovery. I’ve heard the passion for preserving the health of our aquatic lands, and am committed to doing so”.
This is from the uber urban Lakeside guy channeling MLK in his new Eddie Bauer shirt. What role does Lands Commissioner have over tree canopy in underrepresented communities? Is he talking about the forests along MLK. Show me a part of the state less concerned with tree canopy than Seattle.
I am not saying Upthegrove would not be a good commissioner. But other than the fact he has a D at the end of his name I can’t really figure out what is different about him compared to the other candidates.
My advice: stick to transit on this blog. Especially on a thread about pigeon point by a bunch of avowed urbanists.
I’ll admit I contributed to it, but I agree that further discussion of the Public Lands Commissioner race is best saved for tomorrow’s Open Thread.
> My advice: stick to transit on this blog.
Remember that although it’s not in the name, land use is a subject of interest for the Blog.
The King County daily totals are just now in. Upthegrove is now 81 votes ahead with an estimated 65 votes left to count (which includes all candidate votes). Today appears to be the final count day.
While a recount will happen, it looks like Upthegrove will move ahead.
[Off Topic. Moderator note: inquiring into the employment of writers or commentators is against comment policy.]
Hi John – who is your employer? Unless you respond to my question I think we can assume you are the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. Please recuse yourself of any cases in which you have posted blog comments.
Well done Patrick.
Just a retired guy in West Seattle. Care to weigh in Nathan?
https://seattletransitblog.com/who-we-are/
Hey John, Nathan replied. Your feedback on him now?
[ot, again]
Really, blue herons are federally protected? Seems like they’re everywhere.
Under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (https://www.fws.gov/media/list-birds-protected-migratory-bird-treaty-act-2023) and probably other environmental protections.
The issue with the EIS is that there isn’t a viable alternative to an outcome other than to stop the project. ST locked in the choice years ago with incomplete information and deceptive project cost assumptions (ST3 assumed no tunneling for the West Seattle project and assumed a lower cost to build structure from SODO to Delridge).
But here we are. This final design detail feels appropriate and necessary given everything else. So I don’t question that aspect.
The bigger aspect to me is how ST discarded a Pigeon Point Tunnel and bridge a bit further south back in 2018 or 2019. So we don’t know whether it would have been cheaper and less environmentally impactful.
ST pitched streamlining the project development by limiting alternatives in 2016, remember? That was total BS. And it taints the limited alternatives put into the EIS today.
And the big surprise coming is the next West Seattle link issue: The destruction of the Junction commercial district as ST excavates a station vault 100 feet deep in the middle of it. That will take many years (Capitol Hill Station was fenced off for 7 years with platforms at a shallower depth). Its quaintness will be history once finally completed. Plus, riders will have a station as deep as UW there, which prevents challenges to riders easily transferring from buses.
There are several more years of the ugly aspects of this project ahead. And ST is unable to prevent it. Instead, ST is having private meetings with the groups that could sue to stop the project and not being willing to face the broader public.
And notice that none of these groups that they meet with are called “riders”. Riders are not important to them.
Yeah, Al, it would be better to go elevated down the Diagonal Avenue right to way across the rail yards to the Duwamish roughly a half a mile south of the existing crossing and then use a short pair of bored tubes through the hill under SSC. Yes, you end up with having to chew up the edge of the golf course, but the bus transfers can be right underneath the trackway on Delridge and the station would be within walking distance of SSC.
“right of way”
It’d be nice if some of these retaining walls were built with green space on them. One of the wildlife refuges down here (Tualatin NWR, TriMet #12) has some walls built so they can act as planters. This reduces sun heating, and discourages graffiti since the plants quickly shed any painting done to them.
Nice idea, but the walls face North, so not much sun heating. I personally really like the look of the ivy that hangs over the convention center and edges of freeway park above I-5, and merely planting ivy above the wall would be a much cheaper and easier solution.
No ivy. It is invasive. It is climbing up several 100s of trees in the Greenbelt, which kills the trees. The Mayor made a Proclamation about retaining and increasing our green canopy, then SDOT, etc., plants more ivy. Why is it up to the citizens to inform the city departments that they are working at cross purposes to each other?
Agreed. https://greenseattle.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/English-Ivy-Brochure-Web-_reduced.pdf. There are plenty of alternatives, but I’m not sure what grows best in that environment. If it is shady most of the time it seems like there should be something native that words, given that most of the ground cover around here grows in the shade of big trees.
Agree with both of you. Ivy is a scourge to our forestlands.
I for one think West Seattle Link is a good idea, but just too soon. Yes buses serve West Seattle pretty well today, but what happens when its population increases 30%? Gridlock. What about when the high bridge needs replacement in a couple decades? When it closed in 2020 that was a crisis even though most downtown commutes had stopped, so next time it closes for a few years will be worse.
That being said, SLU, Uptown, and Ballard clearly need Link now not in 20 years and so should come before West Seattle, but that ship has sailed.
For those who complain about the cost and believe sound transit will be bankrupted by this, be comforted that a likely outcome might be deferment of issaquah link, since it is the last extension slated to start construction and is by no means critical to the spine.
Issaquah Link comes from east county area funds. The only other north king project is Ballard.
The only way to reduce gridlock on the roads is to do what Europe has done, and build transit that is significantly faster than driving. The current West Seattle plan doesn’t provide this. In fact, there will be very few locations where transit gets better. Even for people living right on top of a West Seattle station (which will be precious few), there will be a transit travel time improvement of perhaps 3 minutes over the existing buses, but an increase of about 5 minutes or more to get from the surface down to the station platform. Then, until the second downtown tunnel gets built sometime in the 2040s, you can only get as far as SoDo, so add another 5-10 minutes to transfer in SoDo. Then, you spend another 2-5 minutes getting to the surface in the downtown tunnel.
So, West Seattle Link will probably be 10 minutes slower than the current bus lines, at absolute best, while adding two transfers (one in West Seattle and one at SoDo).
If, however, the new bridge were built as a transit bridge rather than just light rail (see Portland’s Tilikum Crossing) you could have what you want in terms of an independent bridge, without having to transfer from buses to Link and then Link again in SoDo to get downtown. Then, build West Seattle Link when it’s possible to build a long enough line that the majority of passengers don’t have to transfer twice.
Yes the extra transfers are bad, but the train-train transfer will only be for a few years. Once again, if they waited to build West Seattle extension, that forced transfer wouldn’t even be a thing.
Sorry to disappoint you, M but it won’t be “a few years” unless someone donate an extra $5B. And the more ST spends on the West Seattle Link project, the longer it takes to build up the bonding capacity for the next phase.
The reason ST could pitch a 2030 opening in 2016/ ST3 was ST said it wouldn’t need tunneling. The measure that the public voted on had no underground station! With a tunnel, I don’t see West Seattle opening to 2035.
The ST Progress Report estimates that the project from beginning of construction to opening will take 8 years and 4 months March 2033 opening). That same report says that construction will begin in just 4-5 months! They also expect the FTA successful Record of Decision in just 3 months (late November 2024).
For Ballard/DSTT2 the Progress Report says it will last 11 years and 9 months and will begin construction in early 2028 — predicated on FTA approval ROD.
The really amazing thing to me is that ST still has never released the ridership forecasts for the new preferred alternative from Spring 2023 when the CID transfer station and Midtow Station were eliminated. This to me will be the tell tale item in the revised DEIS. West Seattle already wasn’t showing any environmentally superior performance for West Seattle in the last draft. It can only get worse. The public has yet to be told how many riders will be lost if/when the transfer station and connectivity changes.
We have created a governmental entity with no public accountability. We really should all be outraged about this. ST is cutting deals in secret several steps ahead of the DEIS release and the DEIS to them is a mere formality.
Who is ST cutting a deal with in West Seattle, and what is it getting in return?
Lots of strong opinions here.
I’ll respectfully bring my own: we need this more than we need NIMBY-ism.
The ‘value for cost’ question is going to vary from station to station. The fact that the ratio is lower than some stations is not an argument on its own. It’s a mathematical observation and one data point.
There are always going to be physical displacements in transit planning. There’s always going to be someone dealing in bad faith on every blog post, and a selection bias of well intentioned people that come to kvetch but don’t represent the public’s views . Complaints about giveaways to “the construction industry “ or whatever.
The fact that Link was built so much more quickly and well, this sets us apart from other big West Coast cities in a good way. We can build something for the future that Northern California couldn’t in 50 years. It’s crazy to have something this reliable for stadiums, the airport, the biggest university in town, commuter neighborhoods.
Ignore the naysayers on this particular peninsula and keep building the new infrastructure the region needs
I’m not saying West Seattle is or isn’t light rail-worthy, but there should be some minimum objective standards a town or neighborhood has to meet to necessitate light rail. Saying it’s for the future isn’t a valid reason an area needs light rail over bus service.
Politics, politicians, and their policies come and go every few years. That’s an absurd way to do 50-to-100-year planning.
The “minimum objective standard” has nothing to do with urban land use policies, and never did: the standard is “win funding in a voter referendum”. ST3 proposed the WS branch with 3 stations and it won at the ballot box. As such the merits of the project were, and still are, irrelevant from that point on. All else is value engineering and horse-trading.
IMO the only possible path for those not in favor to stop the project would be if a subsequent voter referendum reverses course, and even then it’s a pretty bad precedent to say “well we voted for this ten years ago, now we’re not so sure”. No entity would ever lend money to this region at a reasonable cost ever again, and we’d probably be sued from here to the moon for one reason or many.
How ST3 won, whom it was that voted for or against it, are fun details to analyze but are ultimately irrelevant. Just like in sports, the standings only care if you won or lost.
What would those standards be? Especially within each of the five subareas, with the state claiming one million new residents will move here, and ST saying Link is for the future. And don’t forget the environment, although Link will reduce zero carbon emissions.
Which lines or stations would have met the test in 1992? Probably none in the RV. Probably less than half in East Link in 2008 (or today). Sounder S and N don’t meet that standard today. Maybe First Hill but it got cut.
Or what about the fact ST is quietly reducing its boarding estimates for Lynnwood Link and East Link with these huge ranges with the likely actual ridership being the low range, with the high range just marketing. How do you determine the objective criteria before building Link with an agency like ST that is so dishonest about project cost and ridership estimates?
Would ST 2 and 3 have been limited to only those projects or stations that met the test at the time? Or what would the subareas do with the left over tax revenue with current tax rates but half the stations meeting the minimum criteria. Return it to taxpayers? Right.
We had votes. The levies identified projects that would be built. If the subarea has the money then those projects get built. If not, then that is another issue, but something politicians and ST like to kick down the road, but will have to face with DSTT2, Everett Link, and Tacoma Link.
After Covid an argument could be made at least 50% of current and future Link is not worth it. Maybe more But many folks on this blog will never admit it. If you live in Issaquah then Issaquah Link is good. If you live in Pinehurst the station at 130th is good transit. If you live in White Center and can’t even get to WSLE then WSLE is still good transit. Just like some on this blog think ANY transit spending is better than no spending. Who cares if there is zero ridership when the route provides “coverage”. No one wants “their” ST money to some other place. Half the folks on this blog clamoring to cancel projects for “objective” criteria don’t even understand subarea criteria. When you do you realize probably four SUBAREAS don’t meet the criteria.
Maybe the only two honest cities are Bellevue and Mercer Island. Mercer Island simply said we don’t want a station but got one anyway since it sits in the middle of the lake. Bellevue said we don’t want Link so ran East Link to everywhere in Bellevue where the people and businesses are not. Microsoft was a huge booster of running Link all the way to its campus “to save carbon” and then built a 2 million sf garage and after that went to work from home.
My point is you can’t have “objective” criteria for Link when Sound Transit and the stakeholders will never be honest about those criteria because they are just politicians and subarea equity requires uniform tax rates designed to complete Seattle Link and that tax revenue has to be spent on Link somewhere in that subarea despite the fact Link in a place like Pierce (and S. King, Snohomish, and East due to culture) county is absurd and a tremendous waste of transit money.
Kind is surprised Sam of all people would suggest this or think it is realistic.
“…there should be some minimum objective standards a town or neighborhood has to meet to necessitate light rail. ”
This is the cornerstone of the FTA New Starts program. It used to be cost per new rider. Unfortunately, the percent that the Feds contribute keeps dwindling and additional criteria have been added as the cost per new rider calculation favored growing areas with lousy transit frequency. Then local agencies figured out how to tweak assumptions to create unrealistic forecasts, so FTA now has a pretty extensive forecast review requirement too.
It’s not perfect, but I agree that macro standards are appropriate.
I forgot to add the CID, DSA and Amazon to my list of honest stakeholders who said no thank you to a station. My apologies.
IIRC the comment section on this blog was apoplectic over a community not wanting a Link station.
Frank K, I wasn’t really saying anything provocative. I was simply saying that the town or area determines the transit mode. Capitol Hill should have light rail, but it’s the wrong mode for Fall City or Newcastle. I’m not sure where West Seattle is on that spectrum. I guess the most provocative thing I said was “It’s for the future,” isn’t a valid reason an area or town should have light rail, otherwise every place deserves light rail, including Fall City, which I believe would be an absurd thing to suggest.
To those that feel that a referendum is enough, let me ask this:
How bad do the capital cost assumptions of an approved referendum have to be to consider the approval as invalid? ST deliberately low-balled the costs in ST3. At deliberately put in a 10 percent contingency when FTA recommends 40 percent. ST had no technical study or input for the most difficult stretch between SODO and Westlake. ST never promised a deep bored station in West Seattle. ST never presented the cost effectiveness of the projects even with the budgets that were way off. And ST ignored the possibility of driverless trains.
ST conned the public. ST says that the cost problem is due to inflation even though it was clear at the time that similar projects were considerably more costly. Plus inflation and neighborhood whims and environmental mitigation should have been factored in with a higher contingency.
If I shop for a house advertised at $600K that I know that I can afford, I buy it for $600K plus minor costs. I should be able to walk away if the cost goes to $1M after I purchase it.
“I forgot to add the CID, DSA and Amazon to my list of honest stakeholders who said no thank you to a station. ”
To be clear, the CID was never united on losing the station off of Jackson Street. Here is a link to a petition with 4700 signers to ask to put it on 4th:
https://transitequityforall.org/sign-the-petition
The bigger problem was that the segment got added without study or neighborhood discussion. DSTT2 was essentially added to ST3 as a badly cost-estimated impulse buy without vetting in what the project should be.
Sam, I appreciate your comments. Short, and you usually poke holes in some of the blind transit fanaticism on this blog.
But if you have five subareas and subarea equity, and the uniform tax rates were set to afford N. King Co.’s massively expensive (and underestimated) project costs you have to figure out what to do with the money in the four other subareas. Sound Transit has been terrible transit based on Seattle for four of the subareas because the mode they got requires the kind of ST tax revenue North and East KC generate, not them.
Sure, East King Co. can afford all its projects, even Stride 1-3 and Issaquah Link, although no one will ride it. Build it and they will come doesn’t work for rich people with electric cars for every single person and free parking. But I don’t feel sorry for EKC. It’s a lark for them like the starter line. Link is just something they bought, got bored with, and will stick in the back of the garage.
N. King is rich too and can afford these vanity transit projects.
But S. King, Pierce and Snohomish Counties are not rich, and have a lot of folks who have to ride transit WITHIN THEIR SUBAREA. . They got screwed by ST 3 and 2. They poured all their transit money into WSLE type vanity transit projects that don’t serve the subarea. The spine was designed to serve downtown Seattle, in 1992, 2008, and 2016. So not only were these poor residents forced to pay $900/yr each in ST taxes for decades they will get useless transit for their subarea.
There should never have been “regional” transit driven by what works for DOWNTOWN Seattle, like paying half of DSTT2 which is just larceny, or WSLE, and the other subareas should never have been tied to Seattle’s necessary uniform tax rates and something as stupid as the spine for huge areas like Pierce and Snohomish Counties which will never have the density for light rail.
I must admit to some schadenfreude seeing Seattle transit fanatics wringing their hands over the profligacy and stupidity of WSLE when they not only voted for it but advocated for it on this blog because ANY transit spending is better than none to them, except of course ST 3, or RR G, and so on. But hey, like ST they were spending other people’s money, and as usual in that case spent it unwisely.
But the tragedy is in the poor subareas that will waste their transit dollars on a shiny idol. Rather than forcing them to pay half of DSTT2 N. King Co. should be forced to pay them $2.2 billion.
Just look at the proposed West Seattle Bridge. That is a monument, not transit. It is a bunch of ST bureaucrats spending other people’s money, fortunately Seattle’s money. .
Although the Board would never admit it, the decisions to built stations at 130th and Graham St., and to go gold plated on WSLE, is the Board’s cuts: no Ballard Link. MAYBE DSTT2 although many in 2016 called BS on ST’s cost estimate of $2.2 billion and I think the four other subareas will finally balk at contributing. Al brings up the phony cost contingency ST used.
WSLE is finally forcing Seattle transit advocates to understand what Link has done to the other subareas. Build extremely expensive transit that serves few and exhausts a subarea’s transit money. Don’t cry for Seattle or WSLE. Cry of Snohomish, S. King and Pierce Counties who don’t even get massive bridges for the tourists to look at.
My point is you can’t have “objective” criteria for Link when Sound Transit and the stakeholders will never be honest about those criteria because they are just politicians
I think that is the basic problem. There are various metrics and estimates that can be made, and I think they should be made. For example, I would love to see the ridership-time saved per dollar spent on these projects. But those numbers can be notoriously unreliable. One reason is that ridership is heavily influenced by the overall network. Canada Line would have a lot fewer riders if the crossing buses were infrequent. Likewise, a Ballard to UW subway line would not get many riders if the various north-south buses (40, D, 28, 5, E) ran every half hour. For that matter, it would suffer if the other subway line ran infrequently.
It is worth noting that Sound Transit did consider a BRT solution for West Seattle, but it was a joke. Basically nothing in terms of right-of-way. The buses would be slower than they are now. Oh, and not a bunch of frequent buses, but one bus. Just one. Of course ridership on that one bus wouldn’t be that high. It misses the whole point. Make the corridor faster and lots of buses can go there, very frequently. Spending just a small portion of what a rail line would cost and you can run a lot more buses a lot more frequently. A fair test would be to compare West Seattle Link with something like this: https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/06/07/west-seattle-by-bus-instead-of-light-rail/. But even then it is difficult to do objectively. The bus plan is based on spending some of the capital savings on service. How long does that last? Meanwhile, West Seattle Link would save some service — how does that compare to just taking the money and putting it into service?
At some point you have to depend on the people in charge to have an interest in objectivity. Under the current system they don’t. I’m reminded of one of the earliest decisions that Sound Transit made. After the first proposal passed, they found that they couldn’t afford a full line. They debated what to do, and the mayor of Edmonds said the choice was simple. A line from the UW to Rainier Beach would get way more riders than anything else, and cost the same as the alternatives. Of course he was shot down.
The biggest problem I have with the board right now is that no one was making those sorts of criticisms during the lead-up to ST3. No one was pointing out that a bus-based solution for West Seattle would probably get a lot more riders, or that the best solution for Kirkland was what the independent consultant recommended: BRT on the Cross Kirkland Corridor. In other words even when there is high-quality, objective data, it gets ignored. There has been a lack of debate — or at the very least a lack of public debate — over these issues. For a very long time they have focused on not questioning assumptions, including very basic ones that they consider central to their mission: the spine. Hire a dozen transit independent consultants to look at the corridor and not one would recommend extending Link to the Tacoma Dome and/or Everett. Yet the board isn’t even debating it.
Now that I think about it some more, I actually have supported a station because of “the future” that awaits the station area. BelRed will have next to no ridership, until the area around it grows and develops, which it will. But, in that case, it was an alignment on its way to somewhere else, namely, downtown Redmond via Microsoft.
Like I said, I don’t have an opinion about West Seattle. The only thing I’m really trying to do is to clarify where the line is between a town or area, perhaps because of its size, requires just bus service, and areas where light rail is more appropriate. It seems like the line is becoming more blurred.
I was simply saying that the town or area determines the transit mode. Capitol Hill should have light rail, but it’s the wrong mode for Fall City or Newcastle. I’m not sure where West Seattle is on that spectrum. I guess the most provocative thing I said was “It’s for the future,” isn’t a valid reason an area or town should have light rail, otherwise every place deserves light rail, including Fall City, which I believe would be an absurd thing to suggest.
I agree. But it is more than just looking at density. It has to do with cost, added value as well as alternatives. West Seattle Link fails in every respect. I know that sounds harsh, but it is just based on the geography.
There are winners and losers with every proposal. But consider something like this as the alternative: https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/06/07/west-seattle-by-bus-instead-of-light-rail/. Clearly there are more winners with the bus-bases proposal. The only winners with West Seattle Link are those who are very close to the station. Even then it isn’t so clear which is better. Taking Link from Avalon to downtown would be a tiny bit faster, but the buses would run twice as often.
So that leaves the riders around the stations at the Junction and on Delridge compared to everyone else on the peninsula. The first group gets something a bit better, while the second group often has a dramatic improvement in transit mobility. It really isn’t that close. There are areas where an investment in rail makes sense, and areas where an investment in bus infrastructure is the way to go. This is clearly the latter.
It is around this point that someone mentions the possibility of extending West Seattle Link. Fair enough. If it was extended, then it is possible that you could provide a significant amount of value compared to buses. But that wouldn’t be cheap. Nor is it clear that it is the part of town that should have it. Why spend six billion dollars to get to Westwood Village (most of which we are spending now) instead of spending it on neighborhoods like First Hill, the Central Area, Belltown, Fremont, Queen Anne and Rainier Avenue.
Furthermore, it doesn’t make sense to build something that provides very little value initially, only to hope that eventually it will be extended to be something great. That is just a bad idea. It means that at best you have decades where you’ve spent a fortune on something that doesn’t provide much value while you wait for the extension. At worst the extension never comes. West Seattle Link is one of those projects that needs to much bigger to actually add much value, which is why it should happen when you can do the whole thing.
BelRed will have next to no ridership, until the area around it grows and develops, which it will. But, in that case, it was an alignment on its way to somewhere else, namely, downtown Redmond via Microsoft.
Yes, there is a big difference between adding a station and adding a whole new line. BelRed Station didn’t cost that much. If it turns out to be a dud, it isn’t the end of the world — the rest of the line is fine. Same goes with East Main. Folks on here love to talk about how bad it will be. But no one has suggested we just get rid of it (we are only saying a better station to the west should have replaced it).
In contrast folks who are critical of West Seattle Link are talking about the line. The reason I keep mentioning “a billion per station” is because of the line, not the stations. If the Avalon Station goes away (a real possibility) it would be close to two billion per station. It just isn’t worth it.
Sam rightfully notes that BelRed is an intermediate station. It would be called an infill station if added later. Plus, it’s a very lower-cost surface station that is very easy to access.
It’s much different than spending several billion for three billion or even spending several hundred billion to go just 1/3 of a mile further to the proposed end station located 80 feet deep and requiring multiple escalators to reach.
We need to stop giving in to ST in West Seattle thinking that the project has unlimited budget. ST made Bellevue cut corners to get their Downtown tunnel. We should expect Seattle to do the same for the last deep subway station.
… several billion for three STATIONS or …
“uniform tax rates designed to complete Seattle Link”
And Everett and Paine Field, don’t forget those. ST3 was expanded 33% not just for Ballard Link (since West Seattle Link had higher priority), but to get all the way to Everett Station before ST4 and add the Paine Field detour. It’s not clear to many people that the distance from Lynnwood to Everett is a similar distance as Westlake to Lynnwood. We did Westlake to Lynnwood in two phases, and now we’re doing Lynnwood to Everett in one phase.
“The spine was designed to serve downtown Seattle”
It was designed to serve the outlying cities. They were the ones that wanted it and demanded it.
@Al/Ross
The implemented betterments policy will (might?) force Seattle to fund the west Seattle extra tunneling costs. Though I guess it could be partially funded by dropping the Avalon station.
“There should never have been “regional” transit driven by what works for DOWNTOWN Seattle, like paying half of DSTT2 which is just larceny, or WSLE, and the other subareas should never have been tied to Seattle’s necessary uniform tax rates and something as stupid as the spine for huge areas like Pierce and Snohomish Counties which will never have the density for light rail.”
This is completely inaccurate. It was the outer subareas who pushed to be included in Sound Transit, and to have a single tax district and subarea equity. They did it in order to ensure Seattle’s Yes votes outnumbered their No votes. They knew they couldn’t get anything like Link on their own, so they latched onto King County’s plans.
The justification for DSTT2 is that a single tunnel would get overcrowded. That doesn’t affect just people going TO downtown Seattle (stereotypically to high-paying office jobs), but also people going THROUGH downtown Seattle. Which is everybody whose trip spans two of south Seattle, north Seattle, and the Eastside. Think Highline to Capitol Hill, Highline to the U-District, Lynnwood to the airport, Mercer Island to the airport, etc. That’s why all subareas are paying for it, because it’s the centerpoint and interchange of both the network and the region’s geography.
“I think the four other subareas will finally balk at contributing [to DSTT2]”
If they want to balk, now is a good time.
Dude, you sound like some Seattle leaders stormed the Legislature and held them at gunpoint to pass the enabling legislation.
That didn’t happen.
What DID happen is that a bunch of suburban legislators wanted easy access to the Seattle CBD for their constituents but which the City wasn’t willing to countenance through further freeway widening. So they decided to mandate that a new transit provider build a “Spine” which was essentially BART del Norte but they wanted to do it on the cheap so they allowed “Light Rail” which would “save” megabucks. All the stupidity in ST3 is directly the result of the hash they passed way back when in the early 1990’s.
I found a better wording. Link in Pierce and Snohomish Counties doesn’t “serve” downtown Seattle, it “goes to” downtown Seattle.
Why does it go to downtown Seattle? Why are we building Link in Pierce and Snohomish Counties? Because that’s what Pierce and Snohomish politicians wanted. Residents in those counties who disagree with it need to look at their own politicians to find the problem and the solution.
Ignore the naysayers on this particular peninsula and keep building the new infrastructure the region needs
The problem is that the infrastructure for the peninsula is inappropriate. Bus-based infrastructure would be a much better value, and provide a lot more benefit (in both the short and long term).
+1000
No offense Ross. Y’all still miss the point. Voters voted for Sound Transit 2 and Sound Transit 3.
“They didn’t understand the costs?!!! The costs were underestimated!!!!”
You think voters don’t know that? You think they fell out of the coconut tree? Cost overruns are the nature of public AND private enterprise. Voters know that and nevertheless voters voted for it.
Why?
Because voters like trains. Voters want infrastructure. Voters in Seattle would rather have an overpriced train than buses or freeway widening
The “Voters voted for it” argument suggests that people chose this amongst a wide range of options. They were give a dozen choices and then finally settled on this one. Except that isn’t what happened. Not at all. In fact, we were not even given two choices! There was only one choice: Vote for this transit project, or no transit at all. Even the viaduct referendum had more choices.
People chose yes to transit, but all evidence suggests they would have voted yes for anything! As this blog post pointed out, the vote by precinct for ST3 was very similar to the vote by precinct for ST2. In general fewer people supported it, but the difference by area was minimal. The urban areas — even urban areas that would get basically nothing from ST2, like Fremont — supported it. The less densely-populated areas — even including places like Issaquah, which had something to gain from this — generally opposed it.
If we are consider this a mandate, then it is clear what the mandate is: Spend more money on transit! That’s it. It doesn’t matter where — just spend it on transit.
That being the case, which do you think voters wanted (or want): Spending money that will provide the most benefit, or wasting money on a poorly thought out project?
Oh, and don’t forget, Seattle voted for ST3 by 69.8%. Without that support it wouldn’t have passed in the region. That is a solid yes vote. But Proposition One passed by over 80% and that money only went to buses (or bus related projects). So you have it backwards. If anything, people prefer spending money on buses, not trains.
Al S. What do you mean by ‘Junction commercial district’? The preferred plan right now is to locate the station at Jefferson Square, which would not impact the rest of Alaska Junction significantly.
ST will have to excavate a giant hole and pour a gigantic amount of concrete to have walks for a deep vault.
Note that this will be as deep as U District Station (80-85 foot deep platform depth) and deeper than Capitol Hill (65 feet depth).
That will mean a fully fenced block for many years (about 7 in Capitol Hill’s case). Then there will be a parade of dump trucks hauling away dirt then a parade of concrete trucks and steel delivery trucks to create the walls. There will be multiple street closures and parking removals for truck activity.
Recently, Seattle presented a plan to remove all traffic from Alaska Street upon station completion. (Note that Seattle could do that for a bus only alternative, by the way.) all Alaska Street traffic will be on Oregon and Edmunds Streets. When completed, the neighborhood circulation will be much different.
So the Junction will be much different after several years of construction along with permanent changes. It will put major stress on current local businesses, who rely on good local access to sustain their profitability each month.
Many thanks for this. We West Seattleites have been given no real information since the 2022 DEIS was issued. We were allowed 90 days to comment on that document – not ask questions, not discuss or have a back and forth dialogue. The final EIS is coming out around September 27th. We will have 30 DAYS to COMMENT. Sound Transit has been drilling, assessing, coercing people into signing Right of Entry and Early Property Acquisition agreements but is coyly keeping the route a secret until the final EIS. Although we have repeatedly asked for a town hall here, the only community outreach by Sound Transit has done is in the form of propaganda distribution, e.g. Sunday Market booths, and throw-the-dog-a bone “station planning” events where we are asked whether we want ‘tables and chairs or benches’ at our Alaska Station. How about asking us whether we want to sacrifice our community for four miles of track that will take us only to SODO – after 6-8 years of upheaval.?
My 2 cents: Seattle area traffic congestion is getting alarmingly worse every year, especially in and around the city center. The idea that enough people would be working from home such that traffic would be manageable, dead in the water. We need to get as much access to the city center and between the neighborhoods out of traffic, especially surface streets, as possible. You can only install so many bus lanes, and even then, any significant event or traffic disruption makes the bus lanes useless. Many of our bus routes that have bus lanes remain unreliable routes (e.g., RapidRide E). By the time West Seattle Link is built, traffic between the West Seattle bridge and Westlake may well cause a bus to run ten minutes slower then it does today, and run even less reliably. So even if West Seattle Link takes ten minutes longer relative to *today’s* transit travel times, the more relevant comparison is with “no build” transit travel times in 2032 (at the earliest). No build with the current busses would clearly be slow. Could a BRT solution connecting to, say, SoDo be faster? Perhaps, but perhaps not much. Name a recent BRT project that hasn’t been watered down by BRT creep. Perhaps the most productive thing we can do is focus on the rider experience and advocate for the most efficient station access and most efficient transfers as possible. Shave off as many of those critical minutes as we can. Station access and the flow of people transferring deserves at least as much depth of study as how to rebuild Pigeon Point.
Name a recent BRT project that hasn’t been watered down by BRT creep.
The Seattle Bus Tunnel. It was much closer to an ideal alignment then just about any Link project. In other words, “Link-creep” is much bigger than “BRT creep”.
Agreed about the bus tunnel. That thing really was a workhorse. Impressive how well it tied into the SoDo busway and the I-5 express lanes.
Regarding the west Seattle elevated alignment was there really no way to build it in the junction without knocking down a building? I wonder if there’s some document sound transit has of another elevated proposal. I just find it incredulous there’s no way to build an elevated line that doesn’t destroy an apartment building or say down 41st or 44th or some other street
I mean that’s the 80s, I wouldn’t exactly call that “recent”
There is a way, in the middle of Faunteroy Way. ST refused to consider that.
It’s hard to think of the bus tunnel as BRT. On the one hand, it’s higher level like a grade-separated subway. On the other hand, it only goes 1.5 miles and then dumps buses in congestion beyond that. Even getting to the freeway entrance required navigating several blocks if the express lanes weren’t going your direction (71/72/73X) or you could never use the express lanes (255). And being oriented toward freeway entrances isn’t exactly a positive: it’s perpetuating a cars-first mentality and which areas get served (those on the freeway).
I mean that’s the 80s, I wouldn’t exactly call that “recent”
OK, sorry. I forgot about the recent part.
Let’s see: the 520 project (HOV lanes leading right to the bridge). That is very recent (they aren’t even done yet). The HOV lanes connecting 167 and 405 were done fairly recently. I’m pretty sure the HOV lanes connecting westbound 405 and northbound I-5 were done recently as well (although I could be wrong). There are probably a dozen more examples, I just don’t follow those sort of construction projects in much detail.
Are these “BRT”? Who cares! They are major improvements that the buses can take advantage of. Once WSDOT commits to them, they build them. If WSDOT (in cooperation with ST) decided to build a ramp between the Spokane Street Viaduct and the SoDo busway it won’t get watered down. It will get built.
In contrast, many of the Link projects have been watered down. Instead of running where the people are in Rainier Valley (Rainier Avenue) they ran it down MLK. Then one of the first things they did is water down the Mount Baker Station. The line to the north was dramatically watered down — not First Hill Station! The “UW Station” is about the worse corner for that station. East Link was watered down (East Main instead of a station on Bellevue Way). Meanwhile, it is pretty clear that various aspects of ST3 will be watered down, from West Seattle to Ballard and of course — in between. We can pretty much kiss the idea of “world class transfers” goodbye.
If anything it is Link that is far more likely to be watered down compared to what is basically a freeway construction project.
> Name a recent BRT project that hasn’t been watered down by BRT creep
The stride 2 brt was actually upgraded from bus shoulder lanes to center median express lanes and using center bus stations.
Route 7 actually has more bus lanes than the Seattle transit plan originally planned and will add another set of northbound bus lanes on rainier Ave.
Of course that’s not to say other brt projects haven’t had the opposite happen say stride 1 problems with tibs station or route 255 montlake bus station going away (albeit replaced with the direct access ramps)
Could a BRT solution connecting to, say, SoDo be faster? Perhaps, but perhaps not much.
Why? The SoDo busway is exclusive to buses. Cars are not allowed. Add a ramp from the Spokane Street Viaduct and you connect the bus-lanes on the bridge to West Seattle. Meanwhile, midday and reverse-peak traffic to West Seattle is basically nonexistent, which is why so many people in West Seattle drive. It is basically the default for the peninsula, which is why so many people freaked out when they couldn’t drive over the bridge. They could take the bus, but they didn’t want to. The idea that traffic will suddenly be horrible in the middle of the day (when most people ride) and be so bad that the bus lanes will be overflowing with cheating traffic just seems ridiculous. Bus lanes work.
If you can easily get to SoDo then the argument for West Seattle Link collapses very quickly. Never mind the cost. Never mind the savings that could be then put into running the buses more often. Overall, it is just better. You have some winners and losers, but with the busway approach you have way more winners. Those heading downtown avoid a transfer. Those who are reversing direction at SoDo (e. g. headed to the airport) avoid a transfer. Those who are headed to the East Side avoid a transfer. Meanwhile, the gains are minor. Those who are headed to a Link destination that is the same direction (e. g. the UW) can transfer at SoDo (which is basically a wash) or they can wait and transfer at CID (where the trains run more frequently). The only people who come out clearly ahead with West Seattle Link are those that are really close to the stations and there will never be enough people close to the stations to justify the exorbitant price.
Is there a reason that West Seattle trains will terminate at SODO before Ballard is built? Isn’t the plan to send the West Seattle trains through the existing tunnel anyway?
No, the plan is explicitly not to send West Seattle trains through the tunnel before the new tunnel exists because of the lowered frequency it would force on Line 1 from Lynnwood to Seatac. Before the new tunnel is built transit riders from West Seattle are expected to transfer at sodo station.
> Isn’t the plan to send the West Seattle trains through the existing tunnel anyway?
After the second transit tunnel to ballard is dug, Sound Transit will reroute Line 1 from SeaTac to Ballard, Line 2 from Redmond will continue traveling to Lynnwood/Everett, while Line 3 from West Seattle will no longer truncate at Sodo and now continue on to Lynnwood/Everett.
The policy headways on Line 3 — ten minutes that the West Seattle end will never ever fill — would not materially harm riders from Lynnwood to the Airport, even assuming that the south end of Line 1 would have enough all-day ridership to require shorter headways than the policy. That’s because rides to the airport are infrequent enough that people pad them willingly.
Let’s be optimistic and agree that Lynnwood-Downtown requires four minute headways to accommodate the demand. In the as-planned ST3 world that would be Line 1 every eight minutes and Line 2 every eight minutes, essentially the capacity limit for each of the at-grade branches. ST is supposedly going to allow only one train at a time on the floating span, which just about guarantees eight minute headways. The RV has run at six in the past, but the City strongly prefers eight.
My assertion is that Line 2 probably won’t really need that much service. Cross-lake ridership is one of the most severely damaged elements of ST’s operations.
Now, Line 3 will never, never, never, never, never need headways more often than policy — every ten minutes 6 AM to 10 PM. So what you do is you cut Line 2 back to every ten opposite Line 3, and run every other train on Line 1 all the way to Lynnwood, with every other one turning back at Northgate. North of the flying junction just south of CID the system is fully grade-separated and amenable to full automation. Trains could in theory run every minute and a half, more than twice as frequently as ST will be allowing.
Yes, I know that the ingress and egress at the DSTT stations is relatively limited, but the point of the “whatabtout” was the “through riders” who won’t be adding or subtracting from the station loads.
That gives you six trains per hour on each of Lines 2 and 3 and half of seven-and-a-half trains per hour (e.g. three then four then three per hour), or fifteen trains per hour north of Northgate. That might be too little in a few years at the peaks, in which case just extend the Line 1 turnbacks up to Lynnwood at the peaks giving you 21 trains per hour. The system can handle trains every three minutes. It can; have faith in our technology.
Most people will be fine with an additional seven-and-a-half minutes at the airport and would probably take the earlier train “just in case” if all Line 1 trains ran to Lynnwood.
Or if that’s just too weird for ST, just turn the Line 3’s at Northgate — all of them — and run sixteen trains per hour all the way to Lynnwood.
Just don’t do the stupid stub thing, and for sure don’t sacrifice the busway for six trains per hour in each direction. What a colossal blunder!
What Wesley says is the plan.
It’s been suggested that ST could run trains through the DSTT as a third line in the interim. However, there is a lot of juggling about vehicle orders that would be needed. It’s also unclear if ST would consider it.ST has said that they don’t have enough vehicles in the pipeline for 2028 operations already. They’ve had recent motions to buy more vehicles.
Finally, the track switching required north of SODO is unclear right now. The DEIS should make it clearer, but ST has not been sharing track diagrams and plans. The average citizen would think that they would build the flexibility to do that — but ST has yet to consider it. Instead, from Day 1, everyone transferring at SODO coming from West Seattle will have to go up and back down again. I’ve been talking about how ridiculous this is and saying that at least the transfer should be a simple walk 20 feet on the other side of the platform. No one else seems to care.
I think it’s a bad idea to go final on the operations until the 2 Line fully opens. The ridership across Lake Washington may be low enough to warrant opening six trains an hour. With 8 trains from SeaTac that makes 14 trains. ST had promised 20 in the DSTT. So I think 6 trains an hour from West Seattle is very doable through Downtown.
Getting ST to go another direction is tough. But I can see how West Seattlites will ramp up pressure to go through Downtown Seattle as the opening date gets closer — assuming that the track connections in SODO would enable it.
No one else seems to care.That is a big mis-assertion, Al, and you know it. Both Martin and I have been advocating for sharing the tracks from the SoDo platforms north since forever. You just refuse to countenance the flying junction a block south of SoDo.
You’re right, Tom.
I should have said that no one at Sound Transit seems to care.
Although there are likely some posting to STB that don’t seem to care either.
We will surely have some sort of idea what other operations are possible with the revised DEIS release.
“It’s been suggested that ST could run trains through the DSTT as a third line in the interim. However, there is a lot of juggling about vehicle orders that would be needed.”
Actually, some of us have suggested this interim plan be the permanent plan.
The maximum possible number of trains in the Rainier Valkwy is 10 per hour.
Supposedly, the bridge over Lake Washington is limited to 8 trains per hour.
Some systems manage 24 trains per hour just fine, so considering the low ridership estimates for West Seattle, that should be enough capacity.
Ideally, they’d just build the new bridge as a rail convertible bus bridge and not do any ridiculous double transfer stuff.
> The maximum possible number of trains in the Rainier Valkwy is 10 per hour. Supposedly, the bridge over Lake Washington is limited to 8 trains per hour.
The issue is not with running trains to West Seattle itself but that there’d be such a heavy mismatch of frequency the rest of the time as well. You end up with similar issues BART or VTA had with short stub lines with millbrae station or almaden shuttle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Line_(VTA)
For example during peak times Sound Transit probably wants to run like 5 minute trains (12 tph) in the tunnel. 6 trains to rainier valley, 4 to east link and 2? to west seattle? maybe it could increase the frequency up to 3.75 minute (16 tph) trains for 6 trains to rainier valley 6 trains and 4 trains to west seattle.
But then off peak it becomes even worse. Sound Transit isn’t going to run all day 3 minute service throughout the system just for west seattle. It’ll be trying to run the minimum possible number trains on west seattle to avoid wasting so much frequency there. Probably something like 2/3 trains per hour ( 30/20 minute frequency) to west seattle. 5 trains to rainier valley and 5 trains to east link for 12 trains per hour. And even that is still a bit high.
it’s why it will decouple it and just have west seattle trains turnback at sodo so it isn’t forced to run more trains running the entire line up to lynnwood just for west seattle
Can’t the trains turn back somewhere earlier than Lynnwood? Or are there logistical problems with that?
If Line 1, for instance, turned back at U District, it might be possible to run:
UD/Lynnwood: line 1/2/3
– 16/10 tph: 6/6/4 (peak)
– 14/8 tph: 6/4/4 (off-peak)
– 10/6 tph: 4/4/2 (night)
> Can’t the trains turn back somewhere earlier than Lynnwood? Or are there logistical problems with that?
You can kinda finagle some frequency with turning back the rainier valley or east link trains earlier. But it’ll still decrease the frequency of bellevue or rainier valley.
The crux of the problem is that link is just an overkill capacity for west seattle. If the destination there was more like southcenter or uw it’d make sense to maybe run a line from lynnwood to west seattle and then turn around rainier valley or east link trains at ud.
But for west seattle there just isn’t enough riders that sound transit wants to spend that much operation cost + buying new trains + larger O&M site, and then decrease frequency elsewhere on the line.
“ The issue is not with running trains to West Seattle itself but that there’d be such a heavy mismatch of frequency the rest of the time as well. ”
Operationally, it would be one trunk with three branches (Maybe one branch reverses at Northgate).
In a low frequency scenario (say a train every 15 minutes for every branch or 4 tph) sure each branch should probably have the same frequency and evenly spaced. Even 6 tph or every 10 minutes that’s probably preferable. However train frequencies on one single line could be higher if demand warrants. Each line does not have to be exactly evenly spaced except in an OCD world.
An example: Let’s look at these arrivals southbound at Westlake in a 6/6/8 tph scenario..
Line 2 East 00-10-20-30-40-50
Line 3 West 06-16-26-36-46-56
Line 1 South 03-08*-13-23-27-33-38*-43-53
The asterisk trains would be the scheduled extra reliever trains. That means that ST would need to accommodate 2 minute headways for 2 trains twice an hour. At worst it slows down the following train by a minute. But it only happens twice an hour.
ST is already planning on reliever trains to be made available next month! The notion of reliever trains is not unusual. Plus, over time, ST should be able to see realtime load needs and know when best to send through a reliever train. Note too that ST will run trains every 2 minutes after games. They can do it occasionally with little problem. It certainly stresses the system more if it’s constantly at 2 minutes but it can be done occasionally.
That’s the theoretical operations side. The next challenge is what capabilities the tracks themselves have to reverse trains. Drivers need breaks. Drivers need to walk from one end of the train to the other. This is where partial automation comes in. ST could fully automate everything north of UW or Northgate or even just the reversal maneuvering at Lynnwood. Automated trains are pretty standard and have been safely running for at least a few decades (like in Vancouver). It can be done — IF ST would spend money on it (as opposed to monolithic stations or bridges).
That leaves the track configuration at the branches. That’s the unknown. ST has still not revealed the track diagrams for the WSLE. It may not be possible for both 1 Line and 3 Line trains to stop at the same platform. Several of us feel like they should have that capability for all sorts of reasons — but ST has yet to show that it will lay out the tracks for this flexibility. A lay person would think that they would — just like ST has crossover tracks throughout the system when circumstances require single tracking. But NOOO! ST has yet to show that they will build this flexibility in the SODO area track diagrams.
It’s the second thing I’m checking when the new reduced DEIS is released (after the ridership projections).
It may sound a bit wonky to focus on the track diagrams — but it’s very important. Every diagram that I’ve seen suggests that it’s not yet designed into the system.
Is ST planning to run near max capacity through downtown when the 2 line is connected? It makes sense to me that 20 tph (which is the limit to my understanding?) might not be enough in the long term if it were split between three lines, but it seems like a waste to build the West Seattle extension and then stop the trains at SODO for multiple years. I don’t think many (if any) trip pairs would be better served by the stub-transfer versus existing bus service. Even squeezing out something like 20-30m trains from West Seattle to UD seems more useful to me than running it as a stub
It’s a reasonable strategy, John D.
I think it’s only a matter of time before West Seattle interests decide that it’s worth pursuing. As people look more at how it operates ( as opposed to how it looks), it’s only going to grow as an idea. I hope it’s not too late though; ST does not backtrack unless forced noisily and strongly.
I will add that West Seattle interests should push ST to at least enable same platform or cross platform transfers at SODO. Making every West Seattle rider make two level changes at SODO is unnecessary, time consuming and burdensome — yet this is the current ST design for SODO station. ST is even moving the existing platforms — yet not making the transferring level.
> I don’t think many (if any) trip pairs would be better served by the stub-transfer versus existing bus service
It’s not the problem it’s what we’d have to ask the other segments to sacrifice. Most likely it’d be like SeaTac to northgate turn around. Would lynnwood appreciate their line heading to west Seattle now?
During peak times sound transit will want the trains to head to rainier valley — already split once to east link, and then during off peak there’s just not enough frequency to split off. Unless if west Seattle has some 20/30minute frequency.
There is no magic solution here you can just look at how Bart does the shuttle for millbrae or how vta had low frequency for alamaden station
Perhaps we could talk about times transfers for the west Seattle interim state and the bus transfers at smith cove. Especially given that the Ballard extension is tending towards a larger delay
Timed* transfers aka where the train waits for the other one to come before leaving
Can’t the trains turn back somewhere earlier than Lynnwood?
I see no reason why not. There are various turnbacks.
Just to back up here, ST said (quite a while ago) that they could run trains every three minutes, with no additional work. The signaling system is designed for a minimum 90 second headways, although it would require an investment in Traction Power Substations and even after that there could be some train bunching.
But according to ST, 3 minutes is fine (right now). Running every three minutes means that each line would run every nine minutes, which is more often than most of the day now. Ten minutes is basically the standard for every inch of the line right now. The only time it runs more often than every ten minutes is during peak, and the only reason it does that is because of potential crowding.
But the crowding is a much bigger issue in the north than the south. It is quite likely that the trains could run every 9 minutes during rush hour and there wouldn’t be a problem. Furthermore, running more frequently is just one way to improve capacity. Right now the trains run every 8 minutes. Going from 9 minutes to 8 minutes increases the throughput by about 10%. But if you had a train thatcould carry more people you increase capacity by 12 to 17%. Not only that, but you deal directly with one of the big problem when you have crowding on Link: the inability to change trains. It is quite common to have one-train car that is full, while another train car has plenty of room. But unless you want to hop out at the station and take your chances with another car, you are out of luck.
It is also not as if running every three minutes is smooth, but running any less than that leads to complete chaos. It is just a matter of how many potential delays you want to deal with. If we ran the trains every 8 minutes (instead of 9) it means they combine to run every 2 minutes 40 seconds. It is quite possible this is not an issue at all. Thus it is quite likely they could run with the current schedule and mix all three lines.
Of course there are other issues and trade-offs. A train running every 8 minutes is better than one running every 9 minutes. This is just one of the trade-offs (and a trade-off ST is comfortable making most of the day). It is pretty hard to argue that riders during peak shouldn’t have to wait an extra minute even though the agency is comfortably having off-peak riders wait an extra two.
Another issue is a service mismatch. Running trains every 3 minutes to Lynnwood seems like overkill. This gets back to what WL and John mentioned. The alternative is jut to turn back at Northgate. That creates an odd 3-minute gap followed by a 6-minute gap for everyone north of there. This is fine, and basically just as good as running every 5 minutes.
If Ballard Link ended at Westlake, then riders heading to the south end of downtown would have to transfer. This is unfortunate, but Westlake is basically the center of downtown now. Many riders will have to transfer there, no matter what we build. Bellevue to South Lake Union, West Seattle to Ballard — that sort of thing. The best we can do is focus on making that transfer as easy as possible and run the trains as often as possible. Blending the lines and making Ballard Link a stand-alone, automated, very frequent line does that.
The biggest drawback is that it prevents us from easily bumping up frequency on the three lines. Again, I don’t see that a major problem. Two of the lines are constrained anyway. We won’t have trains running every 5 minutes down Rainier Valley unless we make a major investment there. It is quite likely that never happens. If it does, then that would be the time to build a new tunnel (or otherwise change the structure of the system). In contrast there are some big problems that the second tunnel creates, such as:
1) A long delay before the West Seattle train goes downtown. West Seattle Link will look a lot like the East Link stub (only worse) for quite some time.
2) When the second tunnel is built, riders from the south end are much worse off. Instead of a bunch of really good stations downtown, they have only a handful, and they are worse. Instead of a direct ride to the UW they get a direct ride to Uptown. It is a clear degradation for those riders. This is much worse than the difference between trains running every 9 minutes instead of 8 (which only happens during part of the day anyway). Likewise, anyone headed to the south is worse off. UW to SeaTac, for example, requires an awkward transfer.
3) You have a different mismatch in the system: Ballard and the South End. The line to the south is very long, and has ridership per mile that is not very good. It is also limited in how often it can run. In contrast, the Ballard Line will be completely grade-separated. It is an entirely urban line, with expected high ridership per mile. So not only is it more cost effective to run the Ballard part of the line more often, but it responds more to an increase in frequency. A train running every couple minutes all day long will get people off the bus (and out of their cars). A bus running every ten minutes won’t.
4) It severely limits the options for building the Ballard Line. Given the nature of Ballard Link (a short, urban line) it should be automated and run very frequently. It should be high floor (unlike Link) which makes it easier to board and move around the train. With more frequent, shorter (but more space efficient) trains you can get by with smaller train stations. This would greatly reduce the cost to build everything. It might also make building the Westlake Station (where the two lines meet) easier. None of this is possible if the line is tied with the south end.
5) It makes a future expansion of Ballard Link (to First Hill) extremely difficult. Theoretically you could build a branch stub somewhere, but there are no plans to do that. A branch there would be problematic, as it it would mean half the frequency on First Hill, which is clearly not what you want. In contrast if Ballard Link is a standalone line, you simply end it at Westlake, aiming (more or less) towards First Hill.
6) It costs way more money. Ballard Link is a lot more expensive and you are building a new downtown tunnel with stations that are inferior to those that already exist.
There are trade-offs with every system you build. But rarely is a system so much more expensive, and so much worse in so many ways.
Would Lynnwood appreciate their line heading to west Seattle now?
That is basically the plan (if they build a second tunnel). From Lynnwood one line goes to West Seattle, the other line goes to the East Side.
It would be the same thing, except that instead of the SeaTac line going to Ballard, it goes to Northgate (and turns back). For Lynnwood riders, things are largely the same, but better. Trips to the East Side or West Seattle (and the places on the way, like downtown) are the same. But a trip to Rainier Valley or SeaTac are much easier. It is the easiest of all transfers — a same platform transfer. You take a train to Northgate (or anywhere south of there) and then get off the train. Then you wait for the train going to SeaTac, and board the train at the exact same spot. In contrast, with the current plan those from Lynnwood have a much worse transfer. The best option is probably SoDo, but even that is not trivial.
Except it isn’t just the people north of Northgate that have to make this transfer. It is basically everyone north of downtown. UW to SeaTac is much worse. Capitol Hill to Rainier Valley is much worse. Even downtown to SeaTac is worse, because the downtown stations are worse.
Turning back one of the trains at Northgate is really no big deal and a big improvement for most riders. The only people that could possible come out worse are those on the Ballard Line. But that assumes we don’t interline that as well. If we do interline then it is better for everyone. The transfers are much easier and the stations downtown are much better.
If Ballard is a separate line then it should be automated and run more frequently. It is quite likely the stations would be closer to the surface. But simply running more often would make up for the train not running through downtown. Of course if the train eventually gets to First Hill then it is much better overall.
During peak times sound transit will want the trains to head to rainier valley — already split once to east link, and then during off peak there’s just not enough frequency to split off.
I think you are assuming a 50-50 split at CID (as East Link splits off) and another 50-50 split at SoDo (as West Seattle Link splits off). I don’t think they would do that. It makes more sense to just split it into thirds. Think of a train heading through downtown southbound. The trains are three minutes apart. One goes to West Seattle, another goes to the East Side, another goes to SeaTac. Each line runs every nine minutes. For those places that is only one minute less frequent than peak, and two minutes more frequent then midday (and evening). From a capacity standpoint that is trivial — you could increase capacity more by simply getting better train cars.
It does means things are weird in sections. At SoDo and Stadium the trains would run with a gap of 3 minutes, then 6 minutes. Big deal. Same goes with a turnback north of Northgate. If I board at 130th, I see a schedule like so:
12:03 — West Seattle
12:06 — Redmond
12:12 — West Seattle
Again, big deal.
I’ve been wondering if the opening of the Tacoma Dome Link Extension — adding 20 minutes one way — will force ST to stub 1 Line trains at SODO before DSTT2 opens. Getting up to Lynnwood may be too far for a driver without a break. There are ways around that, but ST has not looked favorably to things like automation or changing drivers routinely mid-route to address the challenge.
It’s an issue for Eastside riders especially. They would have to make two Link transfers to get to SeaTac — both requiring two level changes.
Note too that except for Downtown Bellevue, using Stride to get to SeaTac from the Eastside would require two transfers as well — with TIBS being particularly unpleasant.
Speaking of Link trip length, I talked to a 2 Line starter Link operator, and he told me some 1 Line operators came over to the starter line because they thought Angle Lake to Northgate was too long.
> Think of a train heading through downtown southbound. The trains are three minutes apart. One goes to West Seattle, another goes to the East Side, another goes to SeaTac
The problem is that provides a capacity to ridership mismatch. Most riders southbound are heading to eastside or seatac.
> That is basically the plan (if they build a second tunnel). From Lynnwood one line goes to West Seattle, the other line goes to the East Side.
Yes i know that is the future plan, but that is in exchange for having a ballard line. To tell riders they will just head to west seattle — I don’t think everett/lynnwood board members would approve it.
> I’ve been wondering if the opening of the Tacoma Dome Link Extension — adding 20 minutes one way — will force ST to stub 1 Line trains at SODO before DSTT2 opens. Getting up to Lynnwood may be too far for a driver without a break.
I’m not sure why tacoma to lynnwood is a concern? It’s a bit long at around 95ish minutes but it’s not like exceedingly long for a transit line. Plenty of subway lines/ train lines travel that far around the world. The yellow line in sf travels that far/for around an hour and a half as well.
Or alternatively could turn around a bit earlier tacoma to northgate.
@WL
I don’t see why the lines need to have even frequencies. For example at max capacity trains could be run at 8/7/5 TPH on lines 1/2/3. There would be some uneven arrivals (every 6 or 9 minutes on lines 1/2) but I don’t see that as a big deal.
If they share one tunnel forever, the lines could be something like Rainier Valley-Northgate (or maybe U District), West Seattle-Everett, and Eastside-Mariner. I think that is an upgrade for everyone involved except Ballard, though maybe the cost savings could be used to accelerate construction or improve the line.
Example of possible scheduling at 8/7/5 TPH: https://pastebin.com/raw/JStnrYBu
Ross’ suggestion of all 9 minute headways could also work. The big unknown is how many riders will be added with Federal Way Link Extension and then Tacoma Done Link Extension openings. We will have a pretty good idea of at least half of that once Link goes to Federal Way in 2026.
The most important thing right now is to pitch for operational flexibility as well as easy transfers. ST seems to approach system expansion as a fixed physical investment rather than one that is dynamic where travel demand can shift from one decade to the next. For example, ST3 was planned when Westlake was the primary hub of Downtown activity rather than just one of many hubs.
> Example of possible scheduling at 8/7/5 TPH: https://pastebin.com/raw/JStnrYBu
Sure this might work during peak times — but then what is expected to run during off peak? Sound Transit is not going to be running 20 trains per hour all day just for west seattle to have semi decent frequency.
“Sure this might work during peak times — but then what is expected to run during off peak? Sound Transit is not going to be running 20 trains per hour all day just for west seattle to have semi decent frequency.”
ST runs both 1 Line and 2 Line today at 10 minutes each. West Seattle will easily have more riders than the current East Link Starter Line does currently. That base frequency is what the plan is for 3 Line.
By putting all three lines in one tunnel, ST actually wouldn’t need to have more staff patrolling and operating the added platforms Downtown. Right now, ST plans to have three trains going south into the evening every 3.3 minutes — except one will be at a different platform than the other two.
They can just run whatever was originally planned? As long as trains fit during the peak period the frequencies can always be cut
In this scenario there’s additional service from Westlake to Northgate, but otherwise frequencies remain the same:
– CID to Westlake: 1+2+3 (same)
– Westlake to Northgate: 1+2+3 (originally only 2+3)
– Northgate to Mariner: 2+3 (same)
– Mariner to Everett: 3 (same)
1 Line trains could turn back at U District instead, and there would only be additional service from Westlake to U District.
anyways to give a concrete example since I don’t think people are actually understanding what i’m saying.
Let’s say sound transit runs two lines off peak 10 minute service from lynnwood to federal way (say around 73 min) and 10 minutes from lynnwood to redmond tech (60 min). Heavily simplified calculation in they’ll need like 26 trains.
Sound Transit isn’t going to run an extra 7, 8, 9 trains just for West Seattle so it can through-run increasing the operational cost by 30~40%. What they’ll do is just run two or three trains that will go from Avalon to sodo and turn around.
for travel times:
https://stb-wp.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/14151500/Screen-Shot-2015-08-14-at-8.12.45-AM.png
For a single tunnel I think the main question is if there is enough capacity for the peak period. I don’t know where that stands; does anyone know what the planned frequencies are?
sorry i mean from alaskan junction to sodo
If the West Seattle trains are extra, depends a bit on where the peak demand might be.
Right now, the concern is that Lynnwood to ID might not have enough trains, so they’re running extra buses.
If this continues to be the case, then running the trains to West Seattle actually decreasss the costs, because they don’t need to run a train all the way to Federal Way or Redmond to satisfy the extra demand.
This is, by the way, the reason TriMet built the entire “better red” project. Post pandemic, there is no longer enough demand on the eastern part of the blue line for the 7.5 minute headways they had there. However, there is still strong demand between Portland and western Beaverton. There isn’t really enough demand between Gateway and the airport to justify the frequency they want, but it winds up being cheaper than sending the increased frequency trains to Gresham or Clackamas.
The West Seattle line could be used in this same fashion: allow an increase in frequency from SoDo to Northgate or Lynnwood, without the expense of running the trains further. They might be partially empty, but still a savings over the alternatives.
Here’s an article from pre-pandemic days about where the Link ridership is thought to be.
https://seattletransitblog.com/2019/01/30/link-riders-2040/
It looks to me as though the West Seattle trains will be quite important to balance the need north of downtown, because that’s where the crowding will be.
@WL
Do you mean that interim (pre Ballard) changes need to be revenue neutral? I think some of the confusion is coming from talking about a theoretical one-tunnel system
Looking at travel times, SODO to Lynnwood takes roughly 35-40 minutes.
Northgate to Lynnwood is 13. Truncating 6 TPH at Lynnwood would be enough to run 2 TPH from SODO. In this scenario that means 8 TPH to from Northgate to Lynnwood and 14 TPH from CID to Lynnwood (versus 12/12)
Northgate to U District is 18. Truncating 6 TPH at U District would be enough to run 3 TPH from SODO. In this scenario that means 9 TPH from U District to Lynnwood and 15 TPH from CID to U District (again versus 12/12)
To me it would make sense to truncate Line 1. West Seattle would get terrible service but at least there wouldn’t be a forced transfer at SODO. And the highest frequencies would be where the highest ridership is, rather than heading all the way up to Lynnwood
@John
Yes im talking about the interim state.
It won’t be revenue neutral, but will be proportional to the amount of ridership it gets. Obviously it’ll need a bit of a ‘subsidy’ but these proposals calling for a 30/40/50% service increase for west seattle to get both decent frequency and through-running are doubtful to happen.
Guys, don’t forget that ST still has not demonstrated that the West Seattle branch can access the existing Downtown tunnel yet. This operation must be possible fire any through routing can proceed.
And any intermediate train reversal needs to occur on tail tracks. That’s because a driver has to turn off the train and walk to the other end of the train. That blocks the next train from moving ahead for up to 3-5 minutes. That pretty much makes the only reversal point at Northgate because there is an extra track just north of the station.
ST had previously identified that the heaviest load is between Pioneer Dqyare and CID but hasn’t provided info on the Beacon Hill tunnel crowding yet. We don’t know how crowded the trains are under Beacon Hill. ST has not provided a peak direction description of crowding like the one shown on Slide 3 here: https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/FinalRecords/2024/Presentation%20-%202024%20Service%20Plan%20Phase%202%20-%20ST%20Express%20and%201%20Line%20Capacity%20Improvements%2003-07-24.pdf
Finally, we are just a few weeks away from knoeing in realtime what the general impact of adding Lynnwood riders will be. Because extensions beyond that are several years away before even construction starts north of Lynnwood, the result is not final but it will be much of the cause of ridership increase on the segment through North Seattle (adding 2 Line trains in 2026 may indice more demand).
The big unknown is how many riders will be added with Federal Way Link Extension and then Tacoma Done Link Extension openings.
There are a lot of improved trips with Federal Way Link, but as far as crowding goes, most don’t matter. What matters is the increase in people heading to downtown in the morning, and out of downtown in the evening.
For that it once again depends on the buses. It is pretty much a given that Metro will get rid of the 177 (the express that serves all three stations). It has yet to exceed 200 riders a day since the pandemic. Same goes for the ST Express 577, which carries around 800 riders from Federal Way. ST also runs the 578 (from Auburn/Sumner/Puyallup) but not during peak. It is assumed that riders from Auburn, Sumner and Puyallup would rather take Sounder to downtown (during peak, when it is running). There is also the 590, which only runs during peak-only from Tacoma. It gets abound 1,000 riders a day and could be truncated in Tacoma. But again, if ST did that, then riders heading to Seattle would likely just switch to using Sounder. Any potential crowding also becomes an argument for keeping the bus. This would be similar to the 510 in Everett. Once Lynnwood Link opens, riders from Everett can take an express bus to Lynnwood (and then catch Link to Seattle) or they can take the 510 directly to Seattle. They are keeping the 510 to avoid crowding (which means they assume it will remain popular).
So basically you are looking at roughly 1,000 riders switching from the bus to Link during peak (or roughly 500 each direction). Given that there isn’t a huge improvement in speed, that is about it. That is just not that much. Again I want to emphasize that this is peak-only into Seattle. The overall ridership of Federal Way is something very different and harder to estimate (and probably bigger).
Let’s say sound transit runs two lines off peak 10 minute service from lynnwood to federal way (say around 73 min) and 10 minutes from lynnwood to redmond tech (60 min). Heavily simplified calculation in they’ll need like 26 trains.
Sound Transit isn’t going to run an extra 7, 8, 9 trains just for West Seattle so it can through-run increasing the operational cost by 30~40%. What they’ll do is just run two or three trains that will go from Avalon to sodo and turn around.
What we are saying is that we simply run those trains to Northgate, instead of SoDo. That means three lines running every ten minutes equally spaced apart: Federal Way to Lynnwood, Redmond to Lynnwood, West Seattle to Northgate.
Now the math: Assume it takes ten minutes to go from the Junction to SoDo, and twenty five minutes minutes from SoDo to Northgate. So (given the numbers you’ve provided above) for all three trains it means 73 + 60 + 10 or 73 + 60 + 35. That means going from 143 to 168. This is less than a 20% increase (not 30~40%). It is quite possible you could turn around at the UW, which would save some money on top of that.
Of course you don’t have to have that pairing. You could give the drivers a break and send the trains from Federal Way to Northgate. That way riders from Lynnwood get used to the fact that they won’t have a one-seat ride to SeaTac once the second tunnel gets built. They get to go West Seattle, just like they’ve always dreamed.
The argument for the West Seattle stub is just bizarre. It goes something like this: It is essential that we build West Seattle Link. It costs well over a billion dollars per station, but it will be worth it. It is priority one — the next thing we build in Seattle. But then once we build it, we can’t actually run it downtown, because it would cost too much to operate it. Instead we should wait maybe another decade for another project to be completed. That project won’t make it cheaper to run the trains — it will actually cost just about as much money. Meanwhile, we are building other extensions that will cost a bundle in terms of operations, but we shouldn’t worry about that. This is the plan and we should stick to it — because it is the plan.
For a single tunnel I think the main question is if there is enough capacity for the peak period.
In my opinion, yes. I mention it on one of the comments up above* but it is a long comment so let me just repeat some of the key points:
ST says it can run trains every three minutes** (through the tunnel) without any issues. If three lines were combined each line would run every 9 minutes. (The three lines would be West Seattle to Northgate, Federal Way to Lynnwood and Redmond to Lynnwood.) The plan is to run trains every 8 minutes (at most) once East Link is completed. Running 8 minutes instead of 9 minutes gives you roughly an extra 10% throughput. You could get somewhere around 12 to 17% increase in capacity by simply changing the types of trains***. I get that changing trains is expensive, but holy cow, so is building a new tunnel. In any event, trains with open gangways also help deal with one of the big problems with crowding: It is common for one train car to be full, while other cars have extra room. Being able to move between cars would help alleviate that problem. Not that I am suggesting we need this anytime soon. It is highly unlikely we will have a lot of crowding even if trains ran every 9 minutes instead of every 8.
As some have pointed out, it is also quite possible that the most crowded section will be between downtown and the UW. With three lines you can get three minute frequency quite easily. With two lines it means running each line every six minutes. This is a big problem if you are running trains from just Rainier Valley and Bellevue to the north. It has been a long time since ST ran trains every six minutes in Rainier Valley (and they didn’t like it). It isn’t clear to me that you can run trains every six minutes to the East Side either (that certainly isn’t the plan). But it is essentially trivial to run both of those lines every nine minutes and then run a third line from Northgate to SoDo. But if it runs from Northgate to SoDo, it might as well continue to West Seattle. Again, I don’t think this will be an issue anytime soon — I’m just saying that we don’t know exactly where the crowding will be, or whether there will be crowding.
If crowding is ever an issue it should be dealt with in an iterative manner, just like every other agency in the world. Buy better trains. Run them more often. Look to alternatives (like commuter rail and express buses). If you eventually run into a hard limit, then invest in a second tunnel. But building a second tunnel — only for crowding — long before it appears like there will be any is a really bad idea, especially since it will be much worse for a lot of riders. Imagine explaining this to someone in Rainier Valley when Ballard Link opens:
“So why is Link no longer going to the UW?”
“They were worried about crowding downtown.”
“Is crowding really a big issue?”
“No, not really. Although sometimes it is for a train heading north around Capitol Hill.”
“So this helps with that?”
“Well, no. Not at all really. There are things we could do to help with that, but we didn’t do them.”
“Because it was too expensive, right?”
“No, it was probably a lot cheaper then building the second tunnel.”
“The tunnel that isn’t needed.”
“Now you’ve got it. ”
When folks say “ST isn’t interested” this is what they mean. They have completely avoided the subject. They are simply building the second tunnel (and making West Seattle a stub line) because that was the plan.
* https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/08/16/reshaping-pigeon-point/#comment-938603
** https://seattletransitblog.com/2015/03/21/capacity-limitations-of-link/
*** https://seattletransitblog.com/2016/12/20/will-link-waste-its-capacity-for-the-sake-of-operational-convenience/
“Guys, don’t forget that ST still has not demonstrated that the West Seattle branch can access the existing Downtown tunnel yet. This operation must be possible fire any through routing can proceed.”
That’s the plan though: West Seattle gets trains to Everett, and Rainier Valley gets switched to trains 11 floors under Seattle that wind up in Ballard.
So West Seattle will have to run in the existing tunnel, possible or not.
Maybe it’s worth trying to publish article(s) in TheUrbanist? They have a much larger audience
“That’s the plan though: West Seattle gets trains to Everett, and Rainier Valley gets switched to trains 11 floors under Seattle that wind up in Ballard.
“So West Seattle will have to run in the existing tunnel, possible or not.”
Yes that’s the plan once BLE opens. However the prior DEIS assumed both extensions open so that it wasn’t clear that the West Seattle only period would connect. The ultimate configuration had ST merely putting both 1 Line tracks underground starting at about Holgate, severing the 1 Line connection — with the original tracks shifted westward to align with 3 Line tracks on the surface.
As they run parallel at and south of Holgate, each adjacent track will run in the opposite direction. So any crossover will have to connect across two tracks rather than one.
It’s not clear what ST plans to do. It’s not clear when ST will build the Holgate overcrossing (in addition to Lander). That overcrossing would be needed in a two-line SODO track operation unless Holgate is fully closed because there would be lots more light rail interruptions than exists today.
I have no idea what happens to Royal Brougham street crossing if both lines get put into the existing DSTT.
(Side note: It’s kind of amazing how the wide S 4th Avenue crosswalk situation between the stadiums and Link never gets discussed in any of these expansion ideas.)
@Ross
Perhaps there’s enough to talk about the west seattle interim state a bit more. I do know that we recently had an article about it but we could go into possible frequency pairings and an estimated operational cost into more detail.
> The argument for the West Seattle stub is just bizarre. It goes something like this.
My main concern is just protecting the frequency of rainier valley / seatac. I don’t see why to sacrifice that line’s frequency for west seattle. I know some will say it’s a “separate” concern but that has not historically been the case with American transit.
If Sound Transit was to through-run West Seattle during the interim phase, it’ll take part of that frequency from the Rainier Valley segment.
@Al
They discuss narrowing it at the south downtown hub meeting https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/SDH-briefing-book-traditionalchinese-english-202407.pdf
@WL:
Interesting presentation.
It looks like ST is hellbent to give Dow his county building station rather than one at S Jackson Street.
The county building station is now called “Midtown” rather than “CID-N”. They are also playing up the Sounder walking path to the Dearborn Station.
Finally, they don’t provide anything 3-D. I think Sat knows how unpopular deep stations are — so they just won’t illustrate it to the public. It’s very manipulative.
Is the only reason for discarding the alignments north of the bridge to avoid another battle with the port of Seattle? It seems to me that the obvious solution is to save all the money mucking about with pigeon point costs by building a quick and easy elevated bridge over the entrance to the port. Doesn’t damage port traffic and doesn’t harm trees or houses. It’s truly unfortunate that many west Seattle residents can’t seem to think past the immediate future.