King County Metro Corridor 1056, a potential RapidRide conversion of Route 165 — traveling between Kent Des Moines Station, Downtown Kent, and Green River College — was set as Tier 3 priority corridor for future RapidRide expansion. In this post we’ll review the proposed route alignment, planned improvements, and expected ridership.
Alignment
The existing Route 165 operates between Burien and Green River College, passing through Des Moines, Kent and Auburn. There were two main alignment areas investigated with two choices for each.
First from Kent Des Moines Station to Downtown Kent, the existing alignment between Des Moines and Kent on Veterans Drive and Lakeside Blvd has less density than using the alternative alignment with Kent Des Moines Road and Meeker Street. The latter was chosen for both increased density and speed.
From Kent to Green River College, there are two paths possible using SE 240th Street and 132nd Ave SE; or using the more direct Canyon Drive and SE Kent Kangley Rd. The latter was chosen for the faster speed, which will add connections to the apartments and shopping plaza near SE 256th / 104th Ave SE, albeit at the expense of skipping the East Hill community.
Lastly and most importantly, the new RapidRide 165 would truncate at Kent Des Moines Station rather than continuing on to Burien. This will consolidate service hours to the main east-west portion for higher frequency. But unfortunately also transforms a one-seat bus ride from Burien to Kent to a 3 bus ride RapidRide F to TIBS, then Link from TIBS to Kent Des Moines Station, and finally back on Route 165.
Frequency and Layovers
The existing Route 165 operates with a lower infrequent weekday service of 30 minutes from 5 am to 10 pm.
In order to reach RapidRide frequency would require a lot more bus hour investment compared to other routes, requiring 60 additional bus hours over the existing 82 (a 74% increase).
For the new station, buses will layover to the east of the station and turn around using a roundabout.
Delays and Improvements
Most delays are concentrated near Kent Des Moines Station and Kent Sounder Station
To address those delays Metro suggests adding BAT lane treatments some from conversion of existing lanes, shoulder utilization or road expansions. The first is the least politically likely with the latter two somewhat politically easier but with much higher construction costs.
- S Kent Des Moines Rd (Military Rd S to W Meeker St): Add bus-only lane on left or center lane (eastbound), convert shoulder lane to bus-only lane (westbound).
- W Meeker: Add queue jumps.
- SR-516 (Central Ave S to 132nd Ave SE): Add bus/BAT lane from Central Ave S to 132nd Ave SE through widening’.
There are two other relevant documents to check: Kent’s transportation improvement plan and WSDOT’s plan for SR 509 extension.
W Meeker St / 64th Ave S: The project includes bus stop improvements on the north and south side of W Meeker Street east of 64th Ave S, and signal improvements including transit signal priority.
The I-5/SR 516 interchange improvements by WSDOT for the SR 509 extension will add new freeway ramps and extend Veterans Drive under I-5. Though there are no explicit transit priority improvements listed for SR 516.
The increased frequency and transit priority treatments would increase ridership from 2,000 to 5,000 daily riders.
Station locations
The existing stop pair distance is 1,700 feet, with the consolidation implemented will increase the stop pair distance to 2,870 feet or half a mile. Notably there is a large 2 mile skip-stop section on Kent Des Moines Road between Kent Des Moines Station and Downtown Kent.
Conclusion
King County Metro’s proposed RapidRide 165 will improve service between Kent Des Moines Station and Green River College by increasing frequency and implementing bus-only lanes. While truncating the route to Kent Des Moines Station will impact Burien riders, the enhanced frequency provides convenient light rail access to Kent community.
Am I ready the frequency chart correctly that 30 minute frequency from 7 PM onward counts as satisfying the minimum standard for RapidRide? That’s pretty poor, since it means you can’t take the bus anywhere in the evening without a long wait.
Even for daytime commuters, if this route is the last leg of a long trip, simply eating dinner after work before heading home can push the boarding time past the 7 PM mark.
The lack of a north/south connection to an express service outside of very limited Sounder operating hours is also very annoying. It translates into a lot of 2-hour one way trip times between random points along the line and random points elsewhere in King County.
This is just the minimum Metro thinks it can guarantee with existing revenue trends. The project won’t be approved for construction until the 2040s at the earliest (see next comment thread), so that’s a long time for the economy, government policies, and attitudes to change in unexpected ways. Metro may have more service hours then, or may be inclined to distribute it differently. It will be a different generation making the decisions.
I am conceptually glad that Metro has this route connect both Link and Sounder. That lets a rider have an alternative to return if they need to travel when Sounder isn’t running. Of course, Route 150 provides that too. Still, the use of SR 516 will make the segment between the two stations relatively fast.
The 150 will still be fastest, and it will be upgraded to RapidRide before this. Under Metro’s RapidRide prioritization list, the 150 and 36 are in tier 1, the first projects after the I (Renton-Auburn), J (Eastlake), K (Kirkland-Eastgate), and R (Rainier). The last of those is scheduled to open in 2031, so Corridor 1049 (150) might open in the mid 2030s.
The 165 is not in the second but third tier, so it most likely would open in the 2040s or 2050s.
The 150 from Westlake to Kent Station currently takes 56 minutes at 6am, 62 minutes at noon, and 68 minutes at 5pm. Link gets to SeaTac in 37 minutes, Angle Lake in 41 minutes, and will get to KDM in maybe 49 minutes. The 181 takes 27 minutes from SeaTac to Kent at noon. The 165 takes 20 minutes from Highline College to Kent at noon. Assuming the RapidRide shaves that down to 15 minutes:
150: 62 minutes.
Corridor 1049 (150): Faster than 62 minutes.
Link (to SeaTac) + 181: (37+22) = 59 minutes + transfer.
Link (to KDM) + 1056: (49 +15) = 64 minutes + transfer.
Link (to CID) + Sounder: (5 + 20) = 25 minutes + transfer.
This route would work so much better if there existed an all day express bus from Kent Station to downtown Seattle to connect to. And, ideally, a second express bus to Bellevue as well.
Sounder is great when it runs, but utterly useless during the rest of the day, when it doesn’t. Unfortunately, all this new service would be expensive.
I agree. ST should run express buses from the Sounder locations to Downtown Seattle. It does for Tacoma, Puyallup, Sumner and Auburn, leaving Kent as by far the biggest omission.
It would be nice to provide express service to Tukwila, but the station is basically in the middle of nowhere. The fact that the F detours to serve it is probably adequate. It is a two-step trip (150 + F or Link + F) but not a terrible one. An express bus from Kent would save a lot more time for a lot more riders.
The 566 used to be something close to that Kent-Bellevue all-day express. It detoured down Renton city streets, but it was on the freeway elsewhere.
Unfortunately, it had low enough ridership off-peak that off-peak service got cut back to Renton, where you could connect to the 560 to continue to Bellevue. Now, it just doesn’t run off-peak.
Dropping the Des Moines and Burien segment from when converting Route 165 is a bit frustrating. Is this segment suffering from low ridership?
It kind of gets into a question in my mind about what works best for this part of the service area. Between Burien TC, SeaTac, TIBS, the Pacific Highway corridor activity, Highline College and Downtown Des Moines, there are lots of travel needs that seem worthy of a focused transit study if Metro will drop this Route 165 segment.
It’s not “dropping” the corridor; it’s just not upgrading it to RapidRide. The purpose of this project is a high-quality Link feeder from Kent, and one of the the east-west part of the South King County “grid”. Eastern Des Moines will have a Link station. Burien has the F to TIB (and the H, and future Stride 1). Downtown Des Moines on the water will have a bus feeder to KDM Station.
These RapidRide concepts don’t speculate on the routes around the lines, but Metro Connects offers one model of a post-RapidRide-165 network. Frequent route 1085 would go from KDM Station to central Des Moines and Burien.
There will also be the Federal Way Link restructure in the next couple years. That may move toward a network closer to the 2050 one, as the restructure in the 2010s tried to anticipate Federal Way Link, the I, and this line.
Another typical example of the needs of the South End ignored by Metro.
That’s not true. Since 2020 Metro has emphasized keeping up and boosting frequency in South King County and south Seattle for equity reasons. RapidRide I and the 150 corridor are commitments to that. The problem is South King County is starting from such a low level of density: it’s practically unchanged since the 1970s except for small parts of downtowns, while Seattle and the Eastside moved ahead to a more 21st century configuration. That and Metro has such little financial support from South King County voters or cities, support that could have expanded bus service there before now.
Metro has all along tried to spread the upgrades throughout the county: that’s why South King County has the A and F, and is getting the I, and eventually this corridor and the Auburn-Federal Way one.
We have Rapidride A for one reason, to force herd residents on to the light rail. If there was no light rail, there would be no A line. At least not as we know it.
One of the biggest problems with what you wrote is combining south Seattle with the South End. Metro may say they are trying to be doing better for South King County, the problem is that Seattle has more input than we do.
The reason why they have problems with residents voting for increased revenue in the South End is because voters here are skeptical that they will be getting their money’s worth. I talked about this earlier in another post. The response to the skepticism of South King County resident is usually to insult or ignore. If Seattle votes enough for the increases, then the South End’s votes are not needed.
“South End” is an ambiguous concept. To me it means Yesler Way to Lakewood or so, but to others it means different things. I combined South King County with South Seattle because that’s what Metro is doing. It’s keeping frequency up and boosting it south of Yesler Way, and has at least talked about shifting resourcing resources from Central/North Seattle and the Eastside to there. That’s based on its perception that ridership fell the least there during the pandemic, that a larger percent of the riders and population are essential workers, and are historically underserved areas. I was going to say more about South Seattle but I took it out because I thought you’d probably say, “That’s still Seattle, and South King County isn’t getting much of it.”
“the problem is that Seattle has more input than we do.”
Does it? How? Seattle can certainly direct the service hours it pays for directly. I assume you’re talking about Metro’s countywide resources. What is something Metro has done that shows a bias toward Seattle influence. Where does Eastside influence fit in this?
“The reason why they have problems with residents voting for increased revenue in the South End is because voters here are skeptical that they will be getting their money’s worth.”
The reason they tell Metro and ST is that they’re too poor to afford tax increases. I haven’t seen any reporting that skepticism of the amount of benefits has anything to do with it. In any case, they have large influence on the amount and type of benefits based on what they collectively ask for, especially the city governments.
“We have Rapidride A for one reason, to force herd residents on to the light rail.”
That’s completely false. The A connects the 99 corridor together, so that people can get to the shopping centers, Highline College, etc. It’s like ridership patterns on the 7and E. It came out of the 5-line “Transit Now” levy in the 2000s. Before the A, the 174 was less frequent and didn’t have transit-priority lanes. If the A hadn’t been built, the 99 corridor might still have something like that.
To me, the South End is the area north of Pierce County, south of Seattle, and east of the rural areas. That is the region I am fighting the most for in all issues. Not just transit.
When I say Seattle has too much input, I mean in King County Government as a whole, not just transit. The best example of this involves Sound Transit and not Metro, the same principle apply. When the location of where the link was going to run down from the Angle Lake Station to Kent-Des Moines was going to go, the local community, with the exception of Highline College, was the I-5 option. Seattle wanted Pacific Highway. We won that fight. We had to do a lot of fighting. One of the arguments I heard from the people from Seattle fighting us was that we were nit smart enough to know what is best for our area. The only reason it was as difficult a fight as it was is because of the Seattle influence. The local concerns are almost never considered by King County Government.
We vote no because we are too poor. That is part of it. If you would take the time to really talk to residents of South King County, you would find that they are willing to fund things if they see that they will benefit. Even so, the cost of living is increasing here and the quality of life is diminishing. I know too many people who have moved away, are planning to move, or are considering moving, for that very reason. Property taxes are a major factor. One thing said often, with these tax increases, is that it’s just a couple of dollars more, well those dollars add up and make a large bill. I know people who are supposed to be getting a lower rate because of things like retirement or veteran status. They apply for them and are denied because they live in areas exempt from those exceptions.
You conveniently forgot about the 194. When the light rail opened, it was often much faster to take the 194 than the link. Especially if you were starting, or finishing, beyond the airport. The A line started with the link. They got rid of the 174 and 194 because of the link. I was fighting to keep the 194. I was told that it was not necessary because of link. I was told, by the county, that the A line was there because of the link.
> Mathew P Renner
Matthew can you perhaps concretely define what exactly you’d want. Like Sound Transit South King board members choose to fund Link and Sounder. There is no secret cabal of Seattle board members that force South King subarea to fund it. I mean why not blame East King or Snohomish board members too. I don’t understand where this idea that Seattle is secretly controlling the Sound Transit board keeps coming up.
“When the location of where the link was going to run down from the Angle Lake Station to Kent-Des Moines was going to go, the local community, with the exception of Highline College, was the I-5 option. Seattle wanted Pacific Highway.”
Kent wanted Link on 99. It was Des Moines and Federal Way that didn’t. What’s missing is stations on 99 at 216th, 272nd, and there were others in the alternatives such as Dash Point Road. So those are the people who can’t walk to a Link station, and have to take a longer A trip because of it.
The only part of “Seattle” that cared about 99 vs I-5 was a few amateur transit activists. Not the Seattle City Council, not the majority of Seattle residents, not King County officials, and probably not even Auburn or Renton. Most of them probably didn’t even know the issue existed. So it wasn’t “Seattle” or “King County” that was imposing their will on the 99 corridor.
The reasons Federal Way gave for preferring I-5 was greater certainty the line would be built, would open on time, and faster travel time to downtown Seattle. It worried that 99 would cost more and that would jeapordize the project being completed or delay it. Travel time and cost turned out to be non-issues because they were the same for either I-5 or 99.
Property taxes is a reason that’s typically overused, along with taxes in general. Taxes are only a part of people’s total cost of living. The cost of housing, education, medical, cars, and gas are other major factors. It seems impossible to think that property taxes or taxes in general are the largest expense or the tipping point. Rather, some people are just politically inclined to blame them. If we actually raised enough money to build the comprehensive bus network both of us want — or even half of it — more people wouldn’t have to drive and their expenses would go down dramatically.
The reasons Des Moines gave were the same and also to preserve the “auto-oriented” nature of the area between 240th and 316th and the low-cost strip-mall storefronts there that were an entry point for immigrant business startups. (The city’s words.) So the city’s answer to keeping low-cost business opportunities was to keep the area an unwalkable hellhole, and to throw under the bus existing residents and potential future residents who wanted to walk to Link. The city could have explored other alternatives, like subsidizing one or more multistory buildings for existing businesses and low-budget startups so they’d still get the same amount of space at the same price. It didn’t: it wanted to route the trains away from people instead.
Kent supported Link on 99, but ST ultimately sided with Des Moines and Federal Way, and threw transit best-practices out the window. And the opportunity for a station 216th.
“The A line started with the link.”
And the B, C, and D had no Link in their areas, yet they were part of the same project set as the A. So maybe the A was not really about Link either.
“They got rid of the 174 and 194 because of the link. I was fighting to keep the 194. I was told that it was not necessary because of link. I was told, by the county, that the A line was there because of the link.”
The 194 is a vastly different issue from the A/174. The 194 was a limited-stop route that directly competed with Link. Its travel-time advantage between downtown and the airport was 10 minutes. The tradeoff was it was in freeway traffic so you never knew if you’d miss your flight. It stopped running at 9:30pm, was half-hourly in the evening, and it may not have had Sunday service. The 194 stopped at intermediate P&Rs between the airport and Federal Way, so it was like the 574. Sound Transit created the 577 and 578, which brought off-peak nonstop service between downtown Seattle and Federal Way for the first time. So you got that too in exchange for the 194.”
“I was told, by the county, that the A line was there because of the link.”
Who said that, when, in what situation? One official may have said that at an open house, but that’s not the full picture, and it’s arguably not even accurate. The A exists because South King County had a “quota” of two RapidRide lines, and Metro felt the 99 corridor had the highest ridership and potential compared to the only other conceivable corridors (68th or 108th Avenues, KDM/KK Road or 320th Street). The 174 had long been half-hourly full time, while the other routes were half-hourly daytime at most but mostly hourly, bolstering 99’s claim.
To me, the South End is the area north of Pierce County, south of Seattle, and east of the rural areas.
Fair enough. This is a sprawling, low-density area. These types of areas are very difficult to serve with transit, or any other service for that matter. For some services this is obvious. It is cheaper to maintain a hundred miles of road instead of a thousand. But the same is true for police, fire, sewer, electricity, schools, social services — you name it. The more compact you are, the cheaper it is (per person) to provide the services. This is a very important concept that I think people often ignore. The suburbs are very expensive to maintain. The cities typically subsidize them and when the don’t, they are either wealthy enclaves (like Medina) or areas that struggle (like East Saint Louis).
Transit is especially cost ineffective in this environment. Transit costs go up the more you sprawl, while the ridership goes down. For the area you are talking about this is the biggest problem. But it gets worse. If this area was largely independent then at least almost all of the travel would be within the area. But instead you have lots of people who travel a long ways to Seattle (as well as other distant locations). Most of the people in Seattle wouldn’t be bothered in the least if service to Auburn was ended, while people in Auburn would complain bitterly if they couldn’t get to Seattle. This dramatically adds to the cost to provide transit.
In short, the problem with the area you mentioned is the built up environment. The area can not be served efficiently. It is a high cost (or low quality) area. You can try and blame Seattle for that, but that misses the point. Imagine it was a completely independent county. That solves nothing. In fact it would be much worse. The particular problems (transit or otherwise) have everything to do with this fundamental inefficiency.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t mistakes being made, but consider the one you mentioned:
The best example of this involves Sound Transit and not Metro, the same principle apply. When the location of where the link was going to run down from the Angle Lake Station to Kent-Des Moines was going to go, the local community, with the exception of Highline College, was the I-5 option. Seattle wanted Pacific Highway. We won that fight. We had to do a lot of fighting. One of the arguments I heard from the people from Seattle fighting us was that we were nit smart enough to know what is best for our area.
OK, but it wasn’t just “Seattle people”. It was simply anyone who knows anything about transit. Running a light rail line by the freeway is a bad idea, and there is a lot of research behind that (https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/economics-of-urban-light-rail-CH.pdf). Adding station after station by the freeway will result in low ridership.
But this also ignores the big question: Why are they even building a subway there in the first place? It is not an area well suited for that (for the reasons I mentioned). The folks who decided this were not trying to screw over the suburbs — but we will. The problem is, we will screw over the city at the same time. It is not malice or a problem with regional power — it is just ignorance.
It is definitely not what we should have built, and it is a radical departure from what most cities around the world would have built. Just about every transit consultant — even the American ones — would say the same thing: It won’t work. It is a terrible waste of money. Instead they should have done the following:
1) Build a subway for the urban core.
2) Try an leverage the existing railway for regional/suburban service (we do that to a certain extent with Sounder, but it gets complicated because we don’t own the tracks).
3) Run buses.
4) Integrate the buses and rail as best you can.
That is it. It would mean that the South End (as you define it) would have a lot better bus service. Not to the level of Seattle (unless they wanted to spend way more on transit than Seattle) but still a lot better than today. Some of those buses would connect to the subway system. Some would run express to downtown. Some would do both. A lot of them would serve more local areas.
Again, this is standard stuff. This is what every transit expert would recommend. The fact that we aren’t building it has little to do with the idea that “Seattle has too much input” and everything to do with the fact that folks just don’t know what they are doing. To quote PoGo, we have met the enemy and he is us.
We have Rapidride A for one reason, to force herd residents on to the light rail. If there was no light rail, there would be no A line. At least not as we know it.
It would be different, but my guess is most of the ridership has nothing to do with Link. It is people going along the corridor. Without Link I could see the bus skipping Tukwila. I could also see it running express from SeaTac to downtown (like the 41 ran from Lake City to Northgate to downtown). But again, my guess is most of the riders aren’t transferring to Link.
We don’t have to guess. Before Link existed, the predecessor to the A was the 174. South to North, it first followed the A route, albeit with no bus lanes and tighter stop spacing. Then, it took a huge detour to serve SeaTac airport, adding some 20 minutes to serve a bus stop a mere 1000 feet away from International Blvd. anyway. Then, the bus headed north to downtown Seattle, following the path of today’s route 124, but with no detour into TIBS, as that station did not exist yet. The route finally ended by passing through the SODO busway and the downtown transit tunnel.
If you wanted a faster ride from Federal Way to downtown Seattle, you had the 194, which took I-5 and skipped most of the stops. But, it still took a big detour to serve SeaTac, so much slower than today’s 577. However, on evenings after around 8 PM (5 PM Sundays), the 194 stopped running, so leaving the 174 as the *only* route between Federal Way, SeaTac, and downtown.
I think the 577 ran also ran then, but was peak-only. There were also some peak-only King County Metro routes which ran similar routes, but added various local tails to maximize the number of neighborhoods with a one seat ride to downtown Seattle (albeit one with a very limited schedule). The 578 did not yet exist.
So, the ride to downtown Seattle from places served by the modern A line was one-seat, but it was very slow and not express, except for rush hour.
1000%, Mr Renner.
For all of the others. Please look at a map of King County. The midpoint of the county is around SR 518. The south half of Seattle is part of North King County. Burien is North King County. Half of Renton & Tukwila are North King.
Yes, there have been some minor incremental changes lately, but to get S King up to similar service levels per capita compared to Bellevue, Seattle, and Redmond, it is going to take a massive increase in service hours. Never mind the fact that for the far-south portion of the county, roughly half of us work in Pierce County, and, yet, there is zero Metro service to Puyallup, Tacoma, Port of Tacoma, Fife, or Frederickson. Sound Transit is offering sparse service to Tacoma-only with nothing going to the numerous jobs at the Port of Tacoma. Community Transit at least offers their tax base direct routes to downtown Seattle. This tax payer is paying attention. Enough years of paying in, voting yes, and getting nothing but empty promises. I was told 15 years ago that our neighborhood peak-only route would be upgraded to an all day route at 30 or 60 minute headways, within 5 years. This was at a City Council meeting. It’s still peak only. I’m fed up. Take my no votes from now until perpetuity. Too many broken promises.
That would make a good article, what Metro’s service level is per capita in each subarea.
When Metro was created in the 1970s, Seattle got a grandfathered subsidy for its Seattle Transit level of service. Metro had a 40/40/20 policy for expansions so that most of the increase would be outside Seattle to gradually equalize the service level, and a contraction policy that did vaguely the reverse so that half the loss would come from Seattle. That was in place until 2012.
After that the county council directed Metro to use its new performance metrics to guide additions/contractions, shifting service from the bottom 25% of routes to the top 25% and underserved corridors, while still maintaining some amount of coverage in low-density areas. Even that was skewed toward the suburbs because there were two separate scales: routes that had some part in Seattle vs routes that didn’t. That put the peak expresses on the Seattle scale, making them look like better performers than they would otherwise and detracting from what would otherwise be more Seattle service.
Per capita and coverage are not the only factors though. Denser and more mixed areas have a tendency to use transit more than areas that aren’t like that. People who want to use transit have a tendency to move to those areas. Buses get higher ridership per mile in those areas, which make the best routes pay for themselves. I’m not talking about downtowns but about secondary residential areas like Ballard or the Central District, which get more ridership than just a per-capita graph would suggest, and which don’t have equivalents outside Seattle. (i..e, there’s nothing like Ballard or Fremont or Capitol Hill in the Eastside or South King County). That’s a case where the land use outside Seattle is hindering transit ridership.
The Eastside probably has the same per-capital transit level as South King County. In Bellevue the only full-time frequent route is the B. Only a few have other routes have 15-minute service Saturdays. The number on Sunday is probably zero or at most one or two. Evening service is 30-60 minutes. This includes not just Metro but also the 550 and 545.
“roughly half of us work in Pierce County, and, yet, there is zero Metro service to Puyallup, Tacoma, Port of Tacoma, Fife, or Frederickson”
It would take a King County policy change for Metro to provide service to those areas. Metro’s service-area policy was set in the 1970s when Tacoma was mostly a separate job market from Seattle, as was even Auburn, and the population of Auburn and Federal Way were much lower. It would take nonexistent service hours to fill in both the gaps within South King County and service to those Pierce County job clusters.
And we can’t count on Pierce Transit, because that’s subject to Pierce Transit’s funding and its taxpayers’ willingness. Pierce residents are even less willing to fund a usable level of transit, and the eastern half of PT is pulling Tacoma and Lakewood down, and PT hasn’t been willing to have a levy in its now-contracted service area, which was contracted precisely to exclude the no-voting Sumners, Ortings, and Buckleys of the world. PT can’t even think about routes to King County beyond the Federal Way and Auburn transit centers until it can get its internal service level up to Metro’s.
@Mike
Sure they can calculate it if they want — but I don’t think they will really be happy even if they calculated the truth. We’ve discussed in past threads about redirecting south king’s current large sum of allocation to rail projects of link/sounder and the most common outcry was that pierce and south king want rail as well. But then they are surprised when the bus service is not improved when everything’s been allocated to rail.
https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/project-documents/st3-system-plan-2016-appendix-a.pdf#page=8
We can go over the subarea spending, but again it’s not a secret.
For capital spending:
South King out of 4 billion will spend 3 billion on link, 700 million on Sounder, 80 million on st express and 250 million on brt. Pierce out of 5 billion will spend 3 billion on Link, 1.4 billion on Sounder, 250 million st express
For operational spending South King will spend 600 million for link, 170 for brt , 120 million for Sounder. Pierce will spend 300 million for link, 400 million for st express, 200 million on sounder
(Year of expenditure dollars calculated starting from 2016)
“Sure they can calculate it if they want — but I don’t think they will really be happy even if they calculated the truth. We’ve discussed in past threads about redirecting south king’s current large sum of allocation to rail projects of link/sounder”
We’re talking about Metro, not Sound Transit. RennDawg cited the A and 165.
If South King wanted to put its Sound Transit money into buses instead of Link and Sounder, it could have asked for those in ST2 and ST3. Instead the subarea said its highest priorities were Federal Way Link, BAR Station, the West Seattle-Burien-Renton Link extension (which wasn’t selected in ST3), Stride 1, and more Sounder service.
“I was told 15 years ago that our neighborhood peak-only route would be upgraded to an all day route at 30 or 60 minute headways, within 5 years. This was at a City Council meeting”
In order to evaluate this we’d need to know which route, who said this, and what the topic of the meeting was.
15 years ago would have been 2009. Five years later would have 2014, the year the 2008 recession hit Metro and forced 20% service cuts and laying off all the planning staff and gutting everything that wasn’t bus-operations related. When the economy recovered substantially in late 2015 and 2016, it was a new planning world planning the routes around ST3, and that route may have been forgotten or deprioritized. Is it the Lakeland Hills route?
That would make a good article, what Metro’s service level is per capita in each subarea.
Ridership per service hour is a good starting point. The routes that have high ridership per service hour are those that are cost effective. The ones that aren’t are those where the county is spending a bunch of money on a roue but not that many people are riding the bus.
This is a report from before the pandemic: https://kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/metro/accountability/pdf/2019/system-evaluation.pdf. Ridership per service hour starts at page 22. They break it into two-categories — urban and suburban. “Suburban” are routes that don’t go downtown or to the UW (which is why the 50 is considered “suburban” even though it is completely within the city). The “suburban” routes are generally lower than the “urban” ones. Thus some of the “high performing” routes that never go downtown or to the UW would be average if they were all lumped together.
In terms of the regions what is clear to me is that almost all of the high performing routes are within Seattle. Almost all of the low performing routes are in the south end. The East Side is more of a mix. There are exceptions. The A performs really well. But in general it is Seattle riders who are subsidizing those in the south of the county, not the other way around.
“I was told 15 years ago that our neighborhood peak-only route would be upgraded to an all day route at 30 or 60 minute headways, within 5 years. This was at a City Council meeting”
It’s hard to see an official say this, so I’m trying to figure out if it was really a commitment or what was behind it. A Metro official would typically go to a City Council meeting only to discuss a large project like a RapidRide line or a multi-route restructure. They would promise only what Metro has announced in writing. They wouldn’t make a commitment about a single peak-only route, especially if that were the only commitment. So I wonder if it were really a Metro official, or a city councilmember who didn’t know what they were talking about, or referring to a city funding plan that was the city’s responsibility, or it wasn’t really a guarantee (especially a higher guarantee than other route plans at the time), or you misunderstood what they said. I also don’t know which route or neighborhood this is, so I can’t guess how likely this upgrade was from other sources or whether it was part of a larger restructure.
I’m guessing it’s the Lakeland Hills route, because it’s the only neighborhood I know of that’s so isolated, and has dealt with at different times a Metro route, a PT route, no service, and plans for an all-day route that keep getting deferred.
When I took the 180 to southeast Auburn to see what was there — or maybe it was when I walked the Interurban Trail to Pacific and over to Auburn (I wanted to walk the White River trail but there was a flood wall blocking it) — I saw the entrance to Lakeland Hills from A Street, and my thought was, “I wouldn’t want to walk up that big hill.” So I can see why it needs all-day transit.
At the same time it’s so isolated and low-density that it’s one of the lowest priorities in South King County. It’s hard to justify it when the 165 still doesn’t have 15-minute full-time service — the hours should go to that first, because that serves the larger centers of East Hill and GRCC and connects Kent to Des Moines and 99.
“In terms of the regions what is clear to me is that almost all of the high performing routes are within Seattle. Almost all of the low performing routes are in the south end. The East Side is more of a mix. There are exceptions. The A performs really well. But in general it is Seattle riders who are subsidizing those in the south of the county, not the other way around”.
I am sure this is correct, but the extent of any subsidy from one area to another has to do with the amount of Metro taxes the area pays vs. the amount of service it receives because ridership/farebox recovery is a very small percentage of Metro’s O&M funding (15%).
1. Probably the biggest subsidies come from the eastside. The eastside’s economic engine is equal to Seattle but it receives a lot less Metro service, in large part because they don’t ride transit as much. It is a disparate area with many areas with little density, and some places like Medina, Mercer Island and Sammamish pay a lot in Metro taxes but receive very little service because they are so undense in the residential neighborhoods you can’t serve them. The transit routes are too slow and too expensive. The good news is they don’t care. When was the last time someone from Sammamish complained on this blog about lack of bus service?
There used to be someone on this blog who advocated for subarea equity for Metro. The problem on the eastside is even with greater frequency because their Metro taxes would have to be spent in that subarea they are not going to ride Metro, which is why Metro cut a lot of eastside routes. People stopped riding, not because of frequency but because they no longer needed to ride transit.
One interesting bit of data among the subareas would be the number of Uber trips originating there. The eastside would probably be the highest.
So all subarea equity would do is force Metro to run routes on the eastside no one would ride, which is not productive. It is the same issue with former Mayor Murray’s idea in 2013 that subarea equity should be abolished. But if the data is collected the subareas subsidizing others will object if there isn’t subarea equity. Since the eastside doesn’t really object to reduced transit because they are not riding it it is not a hot button issue for them so best to leave the data hidden and use the money somewhere else.
2. Next is Seattle, but I don’t know how to score downtown. Mike suggested the north/south line is Yesler which means he lives north of Yesler. Downtown generates so much Metro tax revenue and so many buses from north and south go to and through Seattle I think the best thing is to just share downtown between north and south Seattle.
Next then is North Seattle. N. Seattle is wealthy and so pays a lot of sales tax for Metro. Plus there is a $60 car tab fee for Metro, and separate levies funded by property taxes, and I have to believe those special levies allow Metro to move service dollars out of N. Seattle while maintaining service. Although N. Seattle is probably the highest ridership per service hour and the densest, its taxes also pay a very high share of Metro’s O&M, which is why Metro has moved some service south.
But as Ross has noted in prior posts, the problem there is Metro didn’t move service out of the wealthiest parts of N. Seattle (which like the eastside don’t tend to use transit so don’t get much) they moved it from dense and not wealthy areas like Lake City Way. The problem with reallocating service at least in N. Seattle is the service was there for a reason, ridership, which generally does not mean a wealthy neighborhood.
3. South Seattle is poor so the amount of Metro taxes it pays is low unless you count part of downtown. It has high ridership, because that is because many residents are poor. They pay the same special levies and car tabs as N. Seattle, but South Seattle is definitely subsidized by N. Seattle and the eastside. High ridership when Metro gets very little O&M funding from farebox recovery in a low tax area means someone else is subsidizing the service levels.
4. South King Co. is simply huge. It is spread out. The demographic is not transit oriented no matter what some say on this blog unless you work in downtown Seattle. You don’t take a bus to the local tavern on Friday night to rumble. You take your truck. Many have to drive for work. There is no there “there” when you get off your transit trip, and like the eastside most trips start at a park and ride unless you are in downtown Tacoma.
Each trip in S. King Co. costs about 3X what the same trip costs in N. Seattle, and probably double what it costs in East King Co., except the area does not generate much Metro tax revenue.
In the end reallocating Metro tax revenue from one subarea to another is a judgment call. Easy on the eastside if the people stop riding transit. Harder in N. Seattle where the reallocated service comes from an area that is subsidizing others and the reallocated service is from lower income high ridership neighborhoods.
Service should be subsidized in S. Seattle because ridership is high, density not terrible, they should get credit for ½ of downtown even if they do the menial jobs, and racial inequities which is why so many minorities live there and not in N. Seattle.
S. King however is a head scratcher. Transit there makes less sense than on much of the eastside, except others are paying for it. But the Council apparently thinks these areas are equity areas and need the subsidy, and if from east King Co. I can see that, but not from Lake City or places like that.
I get the impression some N. King Co. residents on this blog have the same motivation as the Eastside person who at least wanted the subarea data collected for Metro: so those being subsidized but demanding more service said thank you once in a while. Or pass your own special levy.
“When was the last time someone from Sammamish complained on this blog about lack of bus service?”
You’d be surprised. There was a Sammamish resident in this very comment section for a few years.
“Mike suggested the north/south line is Yesler which means he lives north of Yesler. Downtown generates so much Metro tax revenue and so many buses from north and south go to and through Seattle I think the best thing is to just share downtown between north and south Seattle.”
I’d say the “North End” goes south to the Ship Canal. Others might say the city limits or something else. These terms probably stem from a time when Seattle was much smaller. They’ve always been ambiguous. If you treat central Seattle as neither one, then it’s natural their funding would overlap there, since that’s there the most density is and the most north/south transfers are. With Link now you can transfer at any station, but in the pre-Link network there were only a few good bus transfer points, such as at Campus Parkway.
I should have also mentioned that on the Eastside some of the longer, more expensive bus routes are paid for by the East King Co. ST subarea including those that serve Seattle.
“I get the impression some N. King Co. residents on this blog have the same motivation as the Eastside person who at least wanted the subarea data collected for Metro: so those being subsidized but demanding more service said thank you once in a while”
I only suggested analyzing it because you and Engineer brought it up. I’ve added to the list of article ideas, “What are Metro’s subareas? What policies does Metro have regarding keeping hours in a subarea or shifting it to another? How have these evolved since 2010?” (Two potential inflection points are 2012 [the end of 40/40/20 and the beginning of ridership-based metrics] and 2020 [the beginning of putting equity near the top].)
I don’t think the subsidizers are demanding thank you gestures or a strict chart of how much the poorer areas are receiving. It’s like healthcare. Urban liberals think everybody should have it, even red states who poo-poo the idea. So when blue states subsidize red states, that’s fine. They get annoyed at red states claiming they’re subsidizing big blue cities when it’s the other way round, but that’s just an annoyance; it doesn’t shake their conviction that even red-state residents should get healthcare and a social safety net. What urban liberals really object to is when red-state conservatives try to take away the healthcare/social programs the urban liberals have.
Similarly, I think middle-class and up North Seattlites and Eastsiders are fine subsidizing South King County and South Seattle, and think those areas should preferentially get more service because they need it and will ride it (and we need the work their essential workers do). And some sense that the Eastside can spare a few hours because they underuse the hours they have. But when it comes to making the Lake City-Northgate feeder non-frequent, or Capitol Hill non-frequent — areas that very much use transit — to shift hours south, they object to that.
My reason for suggesting the articles is more informational: to clarify what the situation is. Both for academic curiosity, and so that the issues Frank K and Engineer raise can be discussed in a more informed context. I don’t have the skills to do this research myself, but some of the other authors may pick it up. Or not.
many areas with little density, and some places like Medina, Mercer Island and Sammamish pay a lot in Metro taxes but receive very little service because they are so undense in the residential neighborhoods you can’t serve them.
Yes, and that is what I was getting it. Some areas are extremely expensive to serve. Some of those areas have very little service, some areas have some (Medina has had a very frequent bus route running through it for quite some time). Transit tends to be more responsive to cost than most. If I live in Belltown I am basically subsidizing roads, police, fire department, and a lot of other services. If the city (or county) all had density like mine than everything would be a lot cheaper. Furthermore, the various agencies have an obligation to provide most services across the region. Transit is an exception. In some areas they basically just give up. It is too expensive.
But measuring such things on a regional basis misses the point. For example consider the city of Mercer Island. By some measure it has very good transit. There is a frequent all-day bus that connects riders to Downtown Seattle and Downtown Bellevue. They also have connections to Eastgate (BCC) and Issaquah. Pretty soon they will have an excellent connection to Link and all-day frequent buses to Eastgate and Issaquah. But this only serves a tiny part of Mercer Island. Thus you could claim that Mercer Island has excellent transit while at the same time conclude that the vast majority of the island has terrible transit. You can’t lump it all together.
Which means it is true of even larger regions (e. g. the East Side). The dense areas (Downtown Seattle, Downtown Bellevue) pay the most in taxes but they also get a lot of transit. Does it balance out? In some cases yes, in some cases no. There are a number of different factors, like the one in Mercer Island. The only reason transit in (that one tiny part of) Mercer Island is so good is because it is “on the way”. You can’t say that about Sammamish. You used to say that about Medina, but now they don’t. Does that mean that Medina is getting ripped off?
Not in my book. We often pay for services we don’t personally use (e. g. single people pay for public schools). It also makes sense to try and make the system as effective as possible. Every parent wants to walk their kid a couple blocks to school. Should we then build schools every few blocks? Of course not. That would be way too expensive. As a result, some kids can walk to school, while others take the bus.
It is simply unrealistic to assume that we can have good transit everywhere. Even within Seattle there are plenty of neighborhoods that are a long way away from any transit. The micromobility options provide something, but they end up being a very poor value — they simply don’t scale. Either you spend a fortune on it, or you end up with crap of a different sort. Yes, it serves your block, but you have to wait a really long time for it. At best it is very good transit for some, while other areas have worse transit.
There isn’t as much difference between regions as there is between neighborhoods. The reason Downtown Bellevue and Downtown Seattle have good transit is simple: It is worth it. It is highly effective there. The reason various places (from Broadview to Cottage Lake to East Hill-Meridian) have such terrible transit is because it isn’t. If it seems like some cities or some regions do not have good transit it is because they have a lot of areas that are really hard to serve.
For some context, y’all, most people who live in South King County do so because it is all they can afford. I would *LOVE* to live in Capitol Hill or Central District or Fremont. Heck, or even Phinney Ridge or Shoreline!!! When I lived in Seattle, I often took the bus, as a choice, to get around. But, life happened, marriage, children, and the need for more space. Also, we’ve had a recession, a pandemic, and insane inflation around real estate. In that time, we bought a home and what we could afford involved a 90 minute commute to work. So… we both changed jobs. But, here we are, still paying for Metro when we get literally zero service. Yes, Lakeland Hills. FWIW, we bought in the recession, a home that was on the verge of foreclosure, with homes next door and across the street that were both vacant and both fell into foreclosure within the next year. The one we landed had original base-level builder-grade everything, zero upgrades, failed windows, failed siding. But, we got a bargain! That’s pretty much what we could afford.
Also… we’ve started the discussion again of permanently relocating to a lower-COL state. The region seems hellbent on only providing amenities to the wealthy who can afford Seattle and the Eastside, and never to the working class. (We started our adult lives completely broke/in-debt, and with the added burden of caring for aging parents at a very early stage in life, on top of our own families… so no breaks despite good educations and careers.) Personally, New England is looking good. Zero transit, but also minimal traffic, cheap real estate, and equally beautiful mountains (arguably more beautiful in the autumn). Good progressive values, even in the rural areas. Take our 401k-s and our home equity, move there, take the minor pay cut, and be able to leave the rat race where our skills in healthcare and actual engineering (not computer coding) aren’t valued by society (at least not monetarily) in the PNW.
> That would make a good article, what Metro’s service level is per capita in each subarea.
> The region seems hellbent on only providing amenities to the wealthy who can afford Seattle and the Eastside, and never to the working class
> But, here we are, still paying for Metro when we get literally zero service.
Sure, but what exactly concretely do y’all want. Auburn is 20 miles away from downtown Seattle, it is just a fundamental geometry problem at that point for transit. And it is not just American transit, look at say Berlin or other similarly sized cities they aren’t having transit server low density suburbs that far. If the town is served it’d be townhouses and apartments — and you wanted more space right?
Like would you all prefer Seattle metro area copies the texas transit model of focusing on express buses even more? I could go and spend some time calculating the subarea split if one really wants to know — but I really feel like you all will just be disappointed. I doubt there is some hidden pot of transit money lurking in the details.
Plus Sound Transit South King/ Pierce subareas rail/express buses are already catered to the far suburbs. If one really wants to complain about not enough money on bus services it seems odd to not first at least complain to your board members for choosing to spend all the money on Sounder / light rail if what one wants is local bus service.
In the “best case” scenario let’s say South king is underserved by say some hypothetical 500 platform hours (roughly 2 full rapidrides) it would be highly spread thin. Like for instance for Lakeland Hills — it is 5 miles away from Auburn. Probably need to spend as much as existing route 181 (100 platform hours) to run 15 minute service from Auburn to Lakeland Hills, and that is just for one of Auburn’s neighborhoods. If we were to run buses to all of Auburn’s neighborhoods we’d probably be back to 30 minute service and then to actually run them throughout the rest of south king subarea it’s just back to 45/60 minute bus lines added.
“New England is looking good. Zero transit, but also minimal traffic, cheap real estate,”
In the rural areas maybe. Boston would beg to differ.
I had a friend who moved to Burlingtion, Vermont in the 2000s to open a youth hostel in the New York to Montreal backpacker corridor. I got the impression there was transit there: the guests would mostly come by transit, and he didn’t have a car. He had grown up partly in Ireland where he said people walk more than here, so he didn’t have any problem walking from around NE 62nd Street to classes at UW every day. I lost contact with him so I can’t ask him what local transit exists in Burlington or Vermont, but I assume it’s above zero.
If you’re moving to a rural area, that’s quite a different change in lifestyle, not just downsizing like anybody could do.
I’ve had a bit of experience with rural areas. My family had a second house on Vashon Island when I was in junior high/high school in the 70s and early 80s. It was a 100 years old so we went there weekends to fix it up. I met people on the island, and went to the library and bookstore and the small downtown, and the annual fair. It was a 10-minute drive from the main road with some woodlike areas in between, and a rocky beach. I walked throughout that off-road area, but my parents drove everywhere beyond it. I remember being stunned at the fair to find out that the library was part of the King County library system so I could use my card there and and this was still King County — it felt so far-away and remote. I never attended school there so I wasn’t fully an island resident. But I saw what full-time residents did and what things were like for them. Some people spent most of their time on the island; others commuted to Seattle.
Mike: Burlington, VT has transit with Green Mountain Transit being the main transit agency in the area. Alongside having Greyhound & Megabus intercity bus service within Vermont and to big cities like Montréal, NYC, and Boston and Amtrak has two different lines, Ethan Allen Express and Vermonter which serve the Burlington area (although you catch the Vermonter at Essex Junction).
“Similarly, I think middle-class …Eastsiders are fine subsidizing South King County and South Seattle, and think those areas should preferentially get more service because they need it and will ride it (and we need the work their essential workers do).”
I’m not sure I would agree with this Mike. The Eastside fought for Sound Transit subarea equity and they don’t seem keen on relaxing subarea equity even if it means spending $4 billion on Issaquah Link.
The few eastsiders who understand the East King Co. subarea pays all the costs of the cross lake ST buses don’t seem happy about that on Eastside social media (especially since that was supposed to end in 2021 when East Link was to open across the lake and the Eastside is paying all the costs to run East Link across the bridge).
My point was eastsiders don’t know or understand a large chunk of their Metro taxes are going to other subareas. Yes, folks in Medina, Sammamish or Mercer Island who don’t use Metro might feel noblesse oblige but maybe not those in Renton or Crossroads.
So probably best to not gather and publish Metro subarea data on Metro taxes raised in a subarea and the value of Metro service received or the Eastside might want a Metro equivalent to Issaquah Link (or just better frequency than every 90 minutes to North Bend from Mercer Island when East Link fully opens).
And maybe N. King Co. areas like Lake City might be more vocal if they saw the actual numbers, not those in Laurelhurst who don’t really care because they don’t wait for a bus.
My point was eastsiders don’t know or understand a large chunk of their Metro taxes are going to other subareas.
My guess is very few people (including us) have any idea where the money goes. We pay state taxes. We pay county taxes. Some of us (who live in a city) pay city taxes. How does this relate to my particular block? In other words, how much of the taxes paid by my particular block are going to services on my block. Am I subsidizing other neighborhoods, or is it the other away around? My guess is the vast majority of people have it wrong.
In most places in the country it is the dense, urban (and quite often poor) places that subsidize the suburbs. I see no reason why Seattle would be different. So yes, from a county perspective it is quite likely that Lake City subsidizes the sprawling subdivisions of Auburn. Of course it would be interesting to see a report that confirmed this (like this one) but I think everyone in the state just accepts the fact that our tax system is regressive. Oh well.
“In most places in the country it is the dense, urban (and quite often poor) places that subsidize the suburbs”.
Yes and no.
Urban commercial cores generate a tremendous amount of local, county, state and federal tax revenue because of the business taxes, from income taxes to B&O taxes, head taxes, sales taxes including on commercial construction, tourist taxes, and property taxes on office towers. Seattle’s commercial urban core generated 2/3 of the city’s total tax revenue pre-pandemic. But not the poor people, and not housing density because Seattle’s urban core has little housing.
Although people have been leaving the urban area to live for over 100 years — and remember 80% of Seattle is low density suburbia — they still commuted back to the urban core for work which was a huge advantage for the city with the dense urban core because of the tax revenue.
With work from home some of that business tax has relocated to the suburbs where the workers live, many in different cities. So starting in September the Seattle City Council will need to cut $260 million from the general budget (according to The Seattle Times the biggest cut will come from housing assistance) while suburban cities are flush right now with that reallocated business tax. Seattle residential property owners will also see an increase in their property taxes as the property levy shifts from office buildings to residential properties to make up for declining values of office buildings.
What is more true is the wealthy pay most of the taxes. 50% of Americans pay no income tax. If poor folks live in rural areas they are subsidized. Lake City isn’t subsidizing them If rich people live in Medina or Laurelhurst (but maybe work in Seattle or Redmond) or Jackson Hole they pay more in taxes than services received despite the density of their housing. .
Because dense urban cities have more poor residents than undense rural areas and a higher cost of living their financial burden for the poor is greater than the rural area. In the past the tax revenue generated from the commercial core subsidized this cost. It still does — whether Seattle or Bellevue — just less so today so some tough cuts and more efficiency are needed by councils.
This budget reset is expected to continue into 2026 when Seattle will need to either cut another $250 million from the general budget or raise taxes.
I expect King Co. to try and balance out the financial situation between Seattle and the wealthier suburbs due to work from home but King Co. is also looking at budget deficits although only around $35 million/year. King Co. is terribly inefficient so could close that gap just with better efficiency which would likely need a new executive and council.
One of the best methods for subarea equity is incorporation. In the past this benefitted Seattle because most of Seattle’s tax revenue stayed in Seattle. Cities like Burien or Kent or Auburn saw little of that tax revenue. So it is unlikely these poorer cities will end up being able to help Seattle.
Seattle’s urban core and wealthy citizens will still generate a tremendous amount of tax revenue, but less than before so the council is going to have to scale back its ambitions until that tax revenue returns. The council’s cuts this fall for next year’s general budget will be interesting and for some painful, but a look at new city priorities. Life in the suburbs outside Seattle will go on as in the past with little change, in part because their city budgets are so less complex and they have had to learn to be more efficient, except finally dealing with some infrastructure needs with the additional tax revenue.
But not the poor people, and not housing density because Seattle’s urban core has little housing.
Wrong. You ignored the data I cited. I realize it is counter-intuitive. It is easy to assume that rich people pay more taxes. They certainly pay more income taxes.
But that is not what we are talking about. We are talking local taxes (which in this state doesn’t include income taxes). So property taxes, sales tax, that sort of thing. To quote this article:
Poor neighborhoods subsidize the affluent; it is a ubiquitous condition of the American development pattern.
There are bound to be exceptions. It is quite possible that some wealthy — but very urban — neighborhood pays more then it gets back in return. Belltown maybe. Or even South Lake Union. But in general, this is the pattern. This is why I mentioned Lake City. It is both dense and low income.
But one of the common misconceptions about Seattle is that all the poor people left. Or at the very least they left neighborhoods like the Central Area (as gentrification took hold). That is simply not true. The ratios have changed, but there are still a lot of low income people in those neighborhoods. Quite often there are more low income people per acre in those neighborhoods than there are in various low income suburbs, simple because overall population density is high. Not only that, but the low income people who live in those areas are more likely to subsidize everyone else as they are more likely to live in a dense area. It is the same pattern, just at a really tiny scale.
This is (yet another reason) why I think it is nuts that cities resist development. I get it — if you own a house you don’t want an apartment built next to you. But when they build that apartment, you end up paying less in taxes. So not only does the lower overall cost of rent (which in turn leads to a lot of other good things like fewer homeless) but it lowers your tax bill.
Ross, you misunderstand where a city like Seattle gets its tax revenue.
As I stated in my prior post 2/3 comes from the downtown commercial core. Poor people in Seattle are not subsidizing anyone because they consume more in services than the meager or no taxes they pay.
All taxes to some extent are progressive (except B&O tax which is the number one revenue source). The wealthy — and businesses — pay the lion’s share of sales tax including on construction. And property tax that is number 2 and is heavily subsidized by office towers. . I doubt the poor are paying the head tax.
No one, at least me, said the poor people are leaving Seattle, although they are being relocated to lower value areas. The poor remain in urban cities because that is where the services and subsidies are. The people leaving Seattle are the middle and working class because they don’t receive subsidies except maybe public K-12 education the wealthy don’t use (and maybe Link) while the cost of living has increased along with average incomes.
You are trying to use poverty to support housing density but it isn’t applicable. Yes, it is cheaper to house the poor in small units in large tenement style buildings, and that was the policy in the 1960’s — 1980’s under HUD but the living conditions were deplorable. But that didn’t increase the taxes those poor residents paid because they lived in dense housing because they paid little or no tax (but were cheaper to house per capita). .
Business and the wealthy pay the lion’s share of all taxes at all levels and subsidize the poor. That is how it should be. But housing density has nothing to do with that, and it is the poor who rebelled against dense subsidized housing in the tenements.
The poor want what the rich have but can’t afford it. Still a SFH in the RV is preferred. Three realities of subsidized housing are it will be small (or packed in a SFH), in a dense building, in a marginal area in the city. Those folks in Seattle are not subsidizing anyone, let alone a similar poor person in another city.
There are arguments for housing density if that is what someone wants, and it creates urban vitality. But tax revenue and subsidizing others isn’t part of that unless they are rich people living in expensive multi-family housing that almost ALWAYS excludes someone earning less than 80% AMI. Tax revenue comes from business and in Seattle property taxes.
Some like housing density and some don’t, in every income bracket. It has no impact on the amount of taxes they pay (if property values are equal) or who is subsidizing whom
Ross, you misunderstand where a city like Seattle gets its tax revenue.
I’m ignoring nothing. I keep citing studies, and you keep ignoring them. Of course downtown Seattle raises a lot of money. Everyone knows that.
But what people ignore is that outside of downtown, a lot of the money is raised in dense areas — including low income, dense areas. Look at the diagram from the article again. See the spike for downtown. That surprised no one. But look at the other places where people are paying more but getting less. This is not what was expected! People just assume that places like Laurelhurst are paying more than they get, but that simply isn’t true. It is the other way around!
Business and the wealthy pay the lion’s share of all taxes at all levels and subsidize the poor.
Wrong! Holy cow, man, read the article. This is a direct quote from it:
This might strike some of you as surprising, yet it is important to understand that it is a consistent feature we see revealed in city after city after city all over North America. Poor neighborhoods subsidize the affluent; it is a ubiquitous condition of the American development pattern.
So you are basically saying the researchers are wrong, and yet you provide no counter evidence at all!
All taxes to some extent are progressive (except B&O tax which is the number one revenue source).
That is simply not true. There are a lot of taxes that are flat as well as taxes that are regressive. https://apps.irs.gov/app/understandingTaxes/student/whys_thm03_les02.jsp
Bothell did an Urban3 study a while back. It doesn’t cover Seattle tax revenue but you can see Seattle in the background (1:31:45). There’s a more in-depth overview of Bothell around 1:48.
I think tax revenue has more to do with density than wealth, though higher wealth tends to correlate with lower density. In the video below, you’ll notice that low-density residential areas (west side of Bothell) generate the least amount of tax revenue, followed by denser residential (east Bothell). Dense residential does exceedingly well; two of the highest revenue locations are a town home complex to the west of downtown, and a mobile home complex just to the south.
If you subtract out services the disparity is even larger, since denser areas are much cheaper to serve with infrastructure.
Looking at it again, I think it’s the condo complex that’s popping out, not the mobile home park. In any case: dense housing generally generates more revenue.
“Widening roads for BAT lanes” is an excellent example of what could have been done in a saner “ST3” instead of pushing Link farther south at 55 mph alongside a freeway with existing HOV lanes operating at 65 to 70 most times.
More people would benefit from improvements to this very important east-west link in Kent than will be advantaged by moving the vehicle in which they are riding — at a slower speed — seventy feet to the west.
But, the Leg in its wisdom chanted “Build That Spine!” and here we are.
It was Pierce, Snohomish, South King, and East King that said “Build the Spine!” The legislature just went along with it. Nothing in the legislation prohibited ST from building Link just out to Lynnwood and KDM (or Federal Way) as feeder intercepts, and BRT-like services beyond that.
Yes, it’s silly to stranglehold Link to 55 mph when the competing freeways are 65 mph. That’s just one of the problems with ST’s Link configurations.
Let’s not widen roads for buses
Take away a lane from single occupancy vehicles for buses
That is the best approach, but sometimes that is difficult from a political or practical standpoint. In this case it appears that they want to add bike lanes and BAT lanes on the same corridor (https://maps.app.goo.gl/csRFWFtH4zAabWpU7). Thus they are taking regular lanes, but since they are adding both BAT and bike lanes the road has to be a bit wider. That seems reasonable to me, as there appears to be no good alternative for a bike path. It also seems relatively cheap to widen the road through there.
East of there though it seems like they should just take a lane (since they aren’t adding bike lanes there).
The 165 is the route that I use the second most. Rapidride A being the one I most use. I ride the 165 from Highline College to Burien and back to see friends and see one of my doctors. Their is a criticism that the bus doesn’t have a lot of people riding it. That is not true. What it does have is a lot of people riding short distances, relatively speaking. I see lots of people get on at Highline College, but ride less than five stops. Plenty of people do that for the 165. It is the only bus that serves the area that goes to Burien. If they make the 165 stop at the Kent-Des Moines Station, then a viable new route is needed to replace the 165 to Burien.
That makes it like the E,7, 24, 48, or 245. The average trip on those is not quite a short as 5 stops, but it’s still only a small part of the route, and the trips all overlap so somebody is constantly getting on or off.
Since you said above the A exists for one reason, “to force herd residents on to the light rail”, is that how you use it? Do you ever take it for trips not involving Link? If not, why not? Is it because it doesn’t go to where you want to go? Well then, where do you want to go? Or more generally, where do riders near Pacific Highway want to go for their everyday essential and frequent trips? What are the gaps between that and what the A and other local routes do?
The 165 does seem to have decent ridership per service hour, but it is hard to gauge. Metro doesn’t have a report yet for last year. So the latest one — this one: https://cdn.kingcounty.gov/-/media/king-county/depts/metro/documents/about/data-and-reports/2023/system-evaluation.pdf was when the area was still pulling out of the pandemic. But the numbers then were decent, and based on the gradual rise (that most routes experienced) remain pretty good.
That is not surprising. It serves two colleges, as well as a couple regional transit centers. It is odd to lose the western end (the connection to Burien/Des Moines). Maybe that section didn’t perform as well. I can see how Link + Stride could eat into some of that ridership, but it doesn’t seem like it matter that much.
“It is odd to lose the western end (the connection”
It makes sense if the purpose of the line is to serve Kent. Extending it to Burien would cost substantially more, when the Auburn east-west route is a higher priority, and Burien already has the F and H. I don’t the western half has low ridership; it’s just that the eastern half has a high population that’s poorly served without it.
Burien already has the F and H
Sure, but those are different. If anything the H complements the 165. If I’m in White Center and want to get to Highline College, that is how I would do it.
But the big loss (compared to just running the 165 more often) are those traveling along the corridor. I have to assume it doesn’t get that many people (per service hour). The only other reason I can think of for the split is the belief that the corridor will be weakened by competition (Link/Stride) while the rest of it is stronger because of the Link extension. That seems like a bit of a stretch.
We’d have to know more about the area and travel patterns. The people affected are those who ride from the eastern part to the western part of the split. That would be people in Kent going to central Des Moines or vice-versa, or people taking it from northwest Des Moines or Burien to Kent. Do a substantial number of people do that? How does it compare to the number of people going from GRCC, East Hill, or Kent just to Highline College/99, or from Burien or central Des Moines to Highline College/99?
If you look at Renton for comparison, it’s bad that the 101, 106, 107 terminate in downtown Renton, and a completely different set of routes go to the Renton Highlands and eastern and southern Renton. Because the vast majority of Renton’s population live in the eastern/southern part, and they have a minimum 2-seat ride just to continue west/north to Seattle, Southcenter, Rainier Valley. Burien, or the Eastside. Just extend one of those routes to the Highlands to replace the 105, and that would make everybody’s life better for no cost. And that’s what Metro intends to do in the future.
In contrast, if you’re going east-west on the 165, the split is at one of the largest nodes (Highline College, 99, Link), and there’s nothing comparable to Seattle, Southcenter, or Rainier Valley beyond it to go to. So are there really a lot of people riding past the split, and if so, why (what kind of trip are they making)?
One answer might be to go from central Des Moines to the north Kent industrial area. That’s already a 2-seat ride, and it would become 3-seat. But are a substantial number of people doing that?
It can’t be to go from Kent to Burien, because currently there’s a shorter and more direct route to it, the 161. That would also be split in Metro Connects 2050. But it might still be faster then going via Des Moines, and we don’t know what the routes around the splitted 165 RapidRide will be.
165 has alright ridership across the board from my experience, but then again I don’t ride it regularly. From what I saw East Hill had a lot higher ridership than 1st Ave S, but there were a couple ons/offs while I was along there too.
I doubt that Highline-Des Moines-Burien will lose service; it just won’t continue on past Highline. Or if it does, it will end somewhere else.
The RapidRide policy headway plus the shorter, faster route betwen East and West Kent will probably make the total travel time from somewhere between Burien and Des Moines and Kent take roughly the same time as it does today.
I doubt that Highline-Des Moines-Burien will lose service
No, but it won’t get the frequency bump or capital investment of the rest of the route. Sometimes a split of this nature is fairly obvious. For example the 271 is being split, with the Downtown Bellevue to UW section running more often than the other pieces. The section from Issaquah to Eastgate was always an odd-ball, and it makes sense for that to be its own (far less frequent) route. It isn’t as obvious that this section of the route is weaker than the rest of it.
Welcome back 164 and 166! It’s been a while since we’ve seen you.
Re Metro subareas, the feedback I’m getting from the editors is that Metro doesn’t have formal subareas, either like ST’s Seattle/South King/East King subareas or smaller divisions, and it doesn’t have service hours assigned to such areas. It groups things by urban, suburban, and rural. So we’d have to calculate the service hours per capita ourselves, and nobody is likely to do that, and few people think the results would be interesting or inform any of our debates.