The Transit Bandit rides all seven transit modes available in Seattle: water taxi, BRT (RapidRide), streetcar, bus (regular), monorail, light rail (Link), and heavy rail (Sounder). City Beautiful did the same in just over three hours back in 2021 – how fast can the Bandit do it?
This is an Open Thread.
Actually 9, if you count the trolley buses and Washington State ferries.
True! I think you could also separate different types of heavy rail; eg intercity commuter (Sounder) and intercity regional/national (Amtrak).
A especially transit-nerdy (and much more difficult) run could be to try to ride on every different model of bus and tram that goes through the city.
It is hard to draw the line between some of the modes. To me the term “mode” implies the actual machinery, not the stop spacing or anything of that nature. With that in mind I would start with these (general) categories:
1) Ferry
2) Train
3) Bus
I think the ferries can be split into two — passenger-only ferries and car ferries. Our trains can definitely be split into different categories, like heavy rail (Sounder) and light rail (Link). The streetcar can be considered light rail, but it is dramatically smaller than Link so I would put it in its own category. The monorail is its own thing, obviously.
The buses are tricky. At a minimum I would consider trolleys to be different than the internal combustion buses (or even battery buses). The trolleys are powered by wires from above (ooh, that sounds mystical). The other buses get their power somewhere on board. So that means:
1) Car Ferry
2) Passenger Ferry
3) Sounder
4) Link
5) Monorail
6) Streetcar
7) Regular Bus
8) Trolley Bus
I don’t think express buses are fundamentally different than other buses, especially since calling a bus an express or not is a judgment call. You could probably list all the buses in order of their “expressness” and it would be difficult to draw a dividing line. So I would reject that idea. There is a clear, physical difference between the articulated buses and the shorter buses. I could see drawing that distinction, but it seems like splitting hairs. At that point you would have to explore the different classes of ferries (super, jumbo, etc.). The video didn’t mention something which is unique to RapidRide, and why it could be considered in its own class: boarding and payment. Unlike the rest of the buses, you don’t pay up front. You can board in the back and either pay before you board or at reader in the middle of the bus. That sets it apart (in my opinion) which is why I would put that in another category (so that gives me nine).
In a few weeks we will have RapidRide G. With that bus you will be able to board on one side of the bus in some stops, and the other side of the bus in others (like the streetcar and Link). I think this is definitely its own category. So I get ten, although it is definitely a judgement call.
The fact that a streetcar counts as a separate “mode” in people’s minds is a big part of why so many people insist on streetcars. They rate a transit system, not by its ability to actually move people, but by counting the number of modes. A streetcar adds a mode. Another bus route doesn’t because the transit system already has buses.
In my mind, the whole business of counting modes is a distraction. Good for the intellectual exercise of planning a speedrun that utilities every mode, but little else. What really matters is how quickly and reliably you can get places, regardless of mode.
Should the SeaTac airport driverless trains be counted as a mode? Or ski slope gondolas? Or private funiculars in Medina?
While they are technologies in our region, none are open to the general public. Even SeaTac’s system can’t be ridden without a plane ticket or employee badge.
I would count a people mover as a separate mode. Same with a gondola. But Seattle has neither. We have some elevators and escalators so I guess you could include those. It would be trivial to ride them inside a Link station and check them off. I suppose you could focus on public elevators that can be used as an independent form or transit. We have a few (e. g. by the waterfront).
“Or private funiculars in Medina?”
Only if they have a rave every weekend so that hundreds of people can use it.
This video was recently released on the Rennes metro:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=njzpqrqXqLk
It’s yet another new driverless transit systems. It seems to be preferred to go driverless when building a new line (except in our region, of course).
Notice in the video that the operation is at 2 minute headways and it’s designed to have trains arriving as frequent as every 67 seconds.
The platform doors are also noteworthy. They’re becoming more common too.
“the operation is at 2 minute headways”
In other words, they prioritize passenger experience, and want transit to get majority mode share and have enough capacity for it.
It’s certainly a different strategy that ST has in project development. Imagine a world where riders matter more than property owners or elected officials using transit capital money to do other things! Of course, the city isn’t known for rapid growth.
2-line map at 1:48. Look at that First Hill-like coverage in the middle between the two transfer stations.
It looks like it’s mostly a bored tunnel. However the frequent service means that the train does not have to be as long. Frequent driverless trains = shorter stations = lower excavation costs and disruption. Note that the project was just €1.342B or about $1.5B . It’s reporting 80K weekday riders so far. The ridership sounds small until one realizes that the Rennes metro is just 450 K or similar in population to Spokane.
Rennes also appears to be quite compact. The whole new line is 8.3 miles long. So while it looks like it’s a bit serpentine, the distance of the deviations is not actually far. The station spacing looks mostly in the 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile range.
The French do love rubber tired trains!
Yeah. Google Maps shows the two lines quite clearly: https://maps.app.goo.gl/mv9V4JWJFuekHCQJA. The coverage is quite impressive especially when you look at the scale (the freeway ring that circles the city is only about four miles north-south). They built this metro for a city of about a quarter million people. But the city is very dense. You can see that from the streetview inside the city (https://maps.app.goo.gl/aW3UGR1qmQK91SEQ7). You can also see from the satellite view how much of the surrounding area is farmland, not mid-low density housing. There is some of that, and those areas do have bus service (that appears to be very good) but it is much easier to serve those areas because it is a relatively tiny portion of the area. The vast majority of people live in areas that are likely to ride transit (whether it is good or not). As it turns out, it looks very good.
Living in a city with a rail system within walking distance of most of the area that runs every two minutes sounds almost too utopian to be true.
Also impressive is the cost only for 1.3 billion dollars
It makes one wonder why Link is so expensive, doesn’t it?
Some cost saving things:
1. High floor trains make the vehicles cheaper to build than a Link vehicle.
2. The higher frequency means that station platforms can be much shorter than Link.
3. The guide rail and power supply aren’t above the train on catenary wire plus the high floor puts the emergency exits at the wider part of the bore, so the bored diameter can be a bit smaller than boring for Link.
4. With rubber tires, the underneath concrete support doesn’t need to be as deep, sturdy and expensive as steel wheels on Link needs, and it can climb slightly steeper grades and maybe make sharper turns.
I’m impressed that they spent extra money on platform screen doors and advanced train control.
Note that their top sped is 50 mph compared to Link at 55 mph.
5. It’s France. Transit construction costs more in the US.
Mike, I’d add that France has government owned consulting firms for building transit, like SNCF and RATP consulting departments that help bring costs down.
If you look at the video, you’ll see the tunnels really aren’t that small.
These are common, off the shelf airport people mover trains. The stations aren’t monumental vaulted ceiling edifices. The trains are really short: about the length of a single Link car. Stations that small would drastically reduce construction cost.
At this point, these systems have been produced for so many places, track, train and controls are made to order, but off the shelf designs with a production line already set up. Tell them what you want and they enter a few data points and turn the crank.
Small trains like that would also drastically reduce the amount of emergency exit capacity required when building the line.
It looks like they’ve a decent amount of elevated line as well?
Tunnel construction cost depends a lot on what is around the tunnel. This is a fairly small city in Europe, so they may be dense but probably also don’t have many huge skyscrapers with massive foundations to tunnel around. Density in much of Europe is very different: lots of low rise buildings, not many massive structures.
They may also have been lucky enough to have routes that didn’t conflict much with existing infrastructure. Eg: sewer lines on alternating streets, water lines out of the way, etc.
They probably don’t have the same earthquake resistance requirements.
So, lots of different things could be at play.
If you look at total track miles of Link through ST4, and then look at the total cost, doesn’t it come out to somewhere around $3 billion dollars per mile?
Sam, are you including the 30 years of operations and maintenance?
I’m not doing any detailed analysis on the cost per mile. Mine was a very crude guess I spent about 10 seconds on. I’m just looking at total cost of Link, from inception through ST4, and the total track miles of Link through ST4. I simply divided $150 billion by 50 miles of track. Those numbers are probably inaccurate, making my cost per mile inaccurate.
https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/project-documents/st3-system-plan-2016-appendix-a.pdf#page=8
The link capital cost is 31 billion dollars (using year of expenditure) with another o&m cost of 5 billion (till 2041) debt service is 7 billion.
The 150 billion is probably calculated from 2041 dollars and including interest — while kind of technically correct it’s a bit overkill to inflate the number when the existing 31 billion is already large enough.
ST’s 2024 financial plan has the latest totals: https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/2024-financial-plan-proposed-budget.pdf
The long-term financial plan shows an estimated total of $148.2B in year-of-expenditure (YOE) dollars from 2017 to 2046. $74.85B (51%) is capital projects, $40.6B (27%) is in O&M, $9.9B (7%) is SOGR, and $21.4 (14%) is debt service. Due to inflation (over 17% since 2021), the total cost in YOE will always exceed the budgeted baseline.
Meanwhile, ST’s YOE income over the same period is $93.7B (63%) taxes, $27.6B (19%) in bonds, $15.3B (10%) grants, $6.1B (4%) in fares, $4.3B (3%) federal loans, and $1.1B (1%) investment interest.
The financial plan notes that since nearly all of ST’s tax revenue is from the 1.4% sales tax, ST’s income largely scales with inflation. So, while the numbers get bigger and scarier over time, the real impact is minimal unless project costs increase due to factors other than inflation.
When ST 3 is completed ST will have 116 miles of light rail with five lines and six projects (Line 2 is East and Lynnwood Link) according to Wiki. Current estimated costs through 2044, including the extension, are $154 billion according to the Seattle Times which I believe does include operations and maintenance, but assumes a 40% farebox recovery rate which currently is 15% with some of the outer lines about to open that will have lower ridership. However, not all Sound transit is light rail, and there will be cost savings for some subareas like East King Co. when it eliminates cross lake ST buses EKC pays 100% of, or around $64 million/year.
According to ST capital projects will cost $62.4 billion for Link and O&M $40.6 billion, plus miscellaneous costs. Funding regional transit | Sound Transit’s funding | Sound Transit
Ross raises a point in another post, and that is whether future ST tax revenues will exceed project costs, and whether O&M costs will exceed ST tax revenues and farebox recovery. Very hard to say because predicting inflation is difficult, although historically it has been between 2% and 3% with sudden short-term spikes that don’t retreat, like the last two years, and much of ST was estimated during historically low interest rates. Obviously farebox recovery won’t return to 40% of O&M costs. ST hopes to return farebox recovery to 25% in 2029 but that depends heavily on how much O&M costs increase.
This is complicated by ST’s history of underestimating project cost estimates, and as Al notes using an unrealistic cost contingency of 10%, plus recent admissions that future O&M costs were underestimated by $1.2 billion, and ST failed to order or budget for enough train cars due to maintenance issues being higher than estimated.
The final question is how all this plays out per subarea. N. King Co. has and prefers the most expensive projects but has the highest subarea revenue, tied with East King Co. ST revenue is based on sales tax, vehicle tax including rental cars, and property tax. According to the conservative Washington Policy Center ST has racked up an additional $50 billion in costs from 2017. In five years, Sound Transit has racked up an additional $50 billion for rail plan » Publications » Washington Policy Center. The extension was supposed to pay for this gap, except projects also got extended five years which means higher project costs depending on construction inflation. My guess is the large contractors have also figured out ST underestimates project costs and lowballs contingencies so now include a 30% or 40% cost contingency in bids.
In 2018 this blog had an article noting the booming economy had resulted in higher than expected ST tax revenue except for car rentals. Sound Transit revenues are up—but so are costs – Seattle Transit Blog.
The ST revenue and ridership estimates were also based on some pretty optimistic population and growth estimates. For example, the Wiki article notes ST was estimating 750,000 boardings by 2050.
It is hard to know how tax revenue today compares to estimates, but more importantly per subarea. Seattle has seen a steep decline in sales tax revenue and property tax revenue due to work from home and the decline in retail sales and commercial property values. This would suggest the subarea with the highest project costs, N. King Co., will see maybe the biggest decline in ST taxe revenue compared to estimates, while East King Co. will see an even bigger surplus in a subarea revenue when that subarea is not very transit enthusiastic and ST 3 has a lot of marginal projects in East King Co. because the money had to be spent and the subarea grew faster than estimated in revenue.
If I had to guess, the cost per rider mile will be much higher in East King Co. despite more tax revenue and lower projects costs than in N. King Co. because ridership will be so low if East King Co. ends up spending all its subarea tax revenue (which will likely require projects beyond those in ST 3).
Which is why Ed Murray wrote an editorial in the April 25, 2013 Urbanist opposing subarea equity and advocating for having a majority of all five subareas’ ST tax revenue go into Seattle, although I think the other subareas would never go for that, and West Seattle Link proves them right. But it also probably means we will end up building light rail to Issaquah but not to Ballard.
I was way off on the future track milage. 116 miles sounds about right. Not sure what I was thinking by saying 50 miles. Tacoma to Lynnwood might be about 50 miles by itself.
Anyways bringing it slightly back on topic if you want to view the numbers in todays it’s on page 65, adding it up it’s around 40 billion dollars of 2023. For year of expenditure it’s 140+ billion, which would be inflation adjusted to the future dates.
The former number is more consistent to discuss for comparisons.
https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/2024-financial-plan-proposed-budget.pdf#page=65
To be clear, that’s 116 miles of in-service double tracked rail. The actual total miles of single track including sidings, tail tracks and OMF tracks would probably be somewhere between 250 and 300 miles.
How can non-service track more than double the total? That implies shadow track the length of Seattle to Portland. Where could it possibly fit without doubling up on Everett to Tacoma two or three times?
Al, Link is a bargain — especially for the concrete, steel, and construction industries and a bonanza for the extort-all-you-can-from-the-public specialty of the legal profession.
@ Mike:
It doubles because I’m counting each single track in the mileage. The 113 miles seems to be counting double tracked mileage. So 113 double track miles is 226 single track miles.
For those that visit Portland, here are the August service changes:
https://trimet.org/betterbus/servicechanges-fy25august.htm
Includes:
• launch of red line service to the east side of Hillsboro coming after a week or so of test trains
• replacement of some late night MAX service with buses so there’s a longer service window.
It’s a pity they moved the inbound Red Line trains at Gateway TC to a new platform. Soon, if you’re at Gateway heading toward downtown, you’ll need to pick whether to wait for a Blue/Green train or a Red train – and the platforms look like they’re >400 feet apart. Hopefully they have clear “Next Train” signs outside both platforms.
That said, given the inconvenient track geometry, I can totally see why they did it this way.
Question for someone who regularly rides Link, RapidRide, or the streetcar. How many times in the last year have you been checked to see if you paid your fare?
My experience on Link that it’s about 15-25 percent of the time.
I’ve never been checked on the streetcar. Just as well, I frequently bypass the card reader in a hurry.
I’ve been checked twice. To be fair, I mainly ride between Northgate and U District, occasionally down to Westlake. I’ve seen fare enforcement on board, but usually they’re not checking additional riders as they get on the train, they must just check whoever is already on board when they get on.
In Bellevue/Redmond, the only two proof of payment routes are the Link 2 Line and the B Line bus. I’ve never seen Fare Enforcement on the 2 Line, and I haven’t been checked, or even seen Fare Enforcement, since around 2018.
ST announced there’s platform inspectors in the downtown tunnel peak hours. Has anyone encountered them?
Fare inspectors need to carry flat, paddle-like Billy Clubs ans an app on their phones which randomly green-lights application of the inspector’s club to the backside of a non-payer.
I got pasdlwd a couple of times in Junior High and find ir an effective corrective with no lasting effects except to my pride as I howled.
The key is the randomizer; there’s no possibility of racial bias.
Incomplete thought. The app gives a greenlight OR allows issuance of a citation.
Vancouver, BC based youtuber, About Here released a video talking about “The REAL problem with “Luxury Housing””
https://youtu.be/pbQAr3K57WQ?si=7dTR2iMDWwVJ3DW5
It’s a pretty fair and nuanced video on the complexity of why housing can be unaffordable one place and affordable somewhere else. And that not all housing redevelopment are created equal in terms of benefits to housing market & neighborhood and each one will lead to different results.
Link has been down for the last couple of hours due to a power outage somewhere between Mt Baker and Rainier Beach. It sounds like they are preparing to resume service soon.
Under my interpretation of the rules for a transit speedrun (no minimum ride length, except that you must get on and off each ride at different stops, ok if the overall run starts and ends in different locations), I think I would plan it out like this:
1) Begin the trip at Seacrest Park with the 3:45 PM weekday sailing of the West Seattle Water Taxi. Delay boarding the boat until just before departure, so as little of the wait time as possible happens “on the clock”.
2) Take whatever bus comes first from Alaskan Way to 3rd Ave. (120, 125, or C-line).
3) Get off on 3rd Ave. and transfer to another 3rd Ave. bus of the other type (e.g. if you’re on a RapidRide bus, switch to a non-RapidRide bus, or vice-versa). Get off the second bus as close as possible to 3rd/Pine.
3) Hoof it up the Westlake Center stairs as fast as possible and board the Monorail to Seattle Center.
4) Upon arriving at Seattle Center, reboard the same Monorail train back to Westlake (faster than walking to a bus stop and taking a bus).
5) Ride Link from Westlake Station to International District station.
6) Ride the First Hill Streetcar for one stop. Then, turn around and retrace on foot.
7) Descend to King St. Station and board Sounder to Tukwila Station.
8) After arriving in Tukwila Station, stop the clock. Speedrun complete.
What about water taxi, walk to first hill streetcar, get off at King street, take Link to Westlake, monorail round trip, any combination of bus + RapidRide depending on what comes first through downtown and back to king street for Sounder?
My thought is that on a weekday afternoon, the buses will run often enough that catching the bus right on Alaskan/Columbia would be faster because it’s less walking, plus Columbia St. has bus lanes.
Another factor is that my approach offers more options to get the streetcar mode in, which means, less chance at having a long wait. For instance, from 4th/Jackson, you could ride the streetcar either west or east, whichever direction comes first. You also have the additional option (if the wait is short) of getting the streetcar mode in by riding the SLU line one stop from Westlake, rather than the First Hill line.
If you’re riding a streetcar just one stop,that shows the futility of this exercise. If you want a streetcar experience, ride it from CID to Little Saigon at least. If you want to experience seven modes, give yourself four hours at least so that you can ride each one twenty minutes like real passengers do.
Less than a month till the 73 is permanently deleted.
It wasn’t that long ago that 15th Ave NE had the 73, 373, and the 77. We were told that the buses would get truncated to Roosevelt Link to make for a more efficient network of Link and all-day service. The transfer would be a worthwhile trade for frequent all-day service to get to the very frequent train.
How far is the 67? Is it within a 10-minute walk circle? Consolidating service on one corridor allows it to be the most frequent. Metro is challenged now due to the driver/maintenance/parts shortage that’s gradually dissipating, but I expect 10-minute frequency will eventually return to the 67.
It’s only several extra minutes walk to the 67, but that’s pretty far from Lake City Way and the 67 isn’t as good of a route. It does a big U-turn into Northgate Station instead of continuing up to Pinehurst / Jackson Park.
Southern Lake City Way is also losing the 322 with this restructure, so going north from Roosevelt Station during peak, you’re going from 3 buses currently to just 1 bus after September (plus the 67 if you count that).
The new 77, which replaces part of the 73, isn’t coming for another year plus, so in the interim we’re out of luck.
It’d be one thing if the service was getting piped into better core routes like the 67, but so far it’s really not. What’s left of the transit service has seemed to get shipped out to Kent and Shoreline.
The 67 is slooooow at 80th, while the 73 in the inbound direction makes a diagonal right turn. Outbound is less optimal because of the dogleg.
Plus, once you get near Thornton Creek there’s a notable rise up to Roosevelt.
This might not be so good for the $133.4 million Rapid Ride G. Saw this on the greater Seattle Nextdoor.
80-year-old woman killed in Madison Valley carjacking. KOMO
80-year-old woman killed in Madison Valley carjacking
Yesterday posted was a video of old Asian ladies waiting to transfer to a bus at 12th and Jackson to get to Beacon Hill. Truly terrifying even if young, fit and male.
What does a carjacking have to do with RapidRide G?
You don’t get carjacked if you’re on the bus! Lol
“What does a carjacking [and murder in Madison Valley] have to do with RapidRide G”?
Hmm, let me think.
I think it is kind of sick some think the murder of an 80 year old woman is some kind of bus/car joke.
My partner and I have stopped riding transit in Seattle. Simply too dangerous. Which is a shame because driving around the city is a pain and we enjoy living in an urban city, and love transit in Europe. I would rather the city focus on making streets, transit hubs, and transit safe before spending $133 million on a bus route I won’t use because the stops are too dangerous.
Al’s tone is a bit inappropriate – but I’m still unclear how a carjacking affects transit.
Are you saying that the mere fact that an awful violent crime has happened in a neighborhood would deter people from riding transit to or through that neighborhood? That seems a bit severe, and seems to me that violent crime would equally deter visitors in cars as visitors in buses. Unless you think the bus is somehow correlated with crime?
The bus is not correlated with crime. It is an inanimate object. The bus is the victim of crime because it loses the ridership it needs.
Yes, violent crimes like this discourage people from driving through this neighborhood, and obviously from waiting for a bus or walking to a bus in this neighborhood, which already suffers from a reputation of danger and has lost retail/restaurants because people are afraid of driving through the area or taking transit.
This isn’t a car vs. transit issue. But transit always has the bigger burden of safety because transit is based on a walkable, urban, dense environment. People see cars as much safer than transit because the driver is not on the street (which is why underground parking garages are unpopular because it puts the driver on the street, and why Uber is popular because there is no walking on the street at all).
I am unabashedly pro transit. I love transit. I Love walking urban streets to the bus, and being able to watch the scenery. I hate the aggravations of driving and parking a car in the city, and the loneliness of driving, or the cost of Uber. I WANT to take transit. I WANT to walk. It is all we do in Europe. But we are too afraid to do so here.
This was already a part of the city we would not visit. But it has made us worry if it is safe to take transit anywhere in the urban part of the city where we want to go. And it makes me made we spend so many billions on transit and I don’t feel safe using it or walking to it or waiting for it, even in Greenlake let alone our destination.
Yeah the laugh is inappropriate. It’s. Rrtdoy awful about the victim.
With so many transit haters often thinking that crime on transit is a bigger problem than it is, I did think the irony should be mentioned.
“Rrtdoy” = really
The media focuses on one person who was carjacked today in the Madison corridor, and not on the 50,000 people who weren’t. RapidRide G was planned in the 2010s. You can’t turn projects on and off on a dime based on short-term conditions. The long-term conditions are that the Madison corridor has sufficient density for BRT, has had major growth since the project was started, is continuing to grow, and something had to be done about the slow unreliable service on the 2, 3, 4, and 12 — we couldn’t just leave First Hill with just that. How many other carjackings have occurred in Pugetopolis? Should people move away from Pugetopolis to avoid them? Oops, other places are more vulnerable to hurricanes and/or heat waves.
It’s just hard to know what to do with the idea that the safety issue is ten times worse than it is, and people shouldn’t visit large parts of the city. I’ve lived on the Capitol Hill/First Hill ridge for 20 years,and in the northern U-District for 14 years before that. The sum total of crime that’s affected me during that time is two break-ins and one stolen package. Tens of thousands of people ride the bus every day and walk in the neighborhood, and it’s safe enough for them to do that.
But yes, the city should do more to keep the streets and transit safe. There’s no reason not to. They’re just hard-to-deal-with problems, and the city has limited resources, and it recently had political issues (all that “defund the police” stuff).
I still don’t really understand how a carjacking is relevant though.
I mean on a freeway expansion project would one bring up car accidents on i405? Or are we going to cite i5 shootings https://komonews.com/news/local/i5-freeway-shooting-king-county-driver-shot-tukwila-i405-drive-by-victim-critically-injured-2015-ford-mustang-suspect-unknown-vehicle-gun-violence-crime
If you were citing a crime on a bus or at a transit stop that’d be relevant but in this case the person was in a car already. How would using or not using transit support your case?
> But it has made us worry if it is safe to take transit anywhere in the urban part of the city where we want to go.
That is unfortunate. I think the antidote to this is actually taking transit to places you want to go and realizing that it’s more often a comfortable and enjoyable experience than not. However, that comes with the understanding that there is rarely a transportation experience more reliably comfortable than taking your own car (or being driven privately) – that’s why they’re so popular!
Somebody was murdered in Lynnwood. Terrible, obviously, but I don’t think that will effect Lynnwood Link.
That Shoreline incident is probably crime spillover from Snohomish county, which has the worst crime rate in the region:
https://crimegrade.org/safest-places-in-washington/
Riding public transit is safer than traveling by car: https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uploads/Resources/resources/reportsandpublications/Documents/APTA-Hidden-Traffic-Safety-Solution-Public-Transportation.pdf
If we’re sharing anecdotes, I live a couple blocks from Route 12/future RapidRide G. I currently use the route to take my toddler to daycare when we don’t have time to walk, and I’m looking forward the increased frequency and dedicated bus lanes making the trip a bit nicer.
Yes, there has been an uptick in violent crime since the pandemic, but rates are still far lower than they were in the 1960s-1990s. Yes practice safety, but don’t live in fear.