In this video Reece Martin (RMTransit) talks about the rail network in Germany’s northwestern megaopolis along the Rhine and Ruhr rivers, which is similar in size and population to the Los Angeles region. The region is split into two comprehensive transit districts, and this video focuses on the northern one. A later video will look at the southern district.
The northern transit district, Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Ruhr, contains the cities of Düsseldorf (pop. 644K), Essen (588K), Duisburg (495K), Bochum (386K), Wuppertal (351K), and other cities. The larger ones are the size Seattle was in the 2000s and 2010s. The southern transit district, Rhein-Sieg Verkehrsgesellschaft, contains Cologne (1 million) and Bonn (336K) among others. (Population sizes source.)
There’s a lot of heavy industry (especially in the northern part), some rural areas, and a very active and diverse music and sports scene. It even applied to host the 2032 Olympics. (It lost to Brisbane.) It’s served by regional rail and local high- and low-floor light rail systems and trams. Several of the light rail systems use a single tunnel in city centers. Reece doesn’t mention any of the many bus feeder lines and rural express buses, but he does mention other transit modes such as several hanging monorail systems (including the famous Wuppertal Schwebebahn).
While the Puget Sound region is smaller with only four major cities (Seattle, Bellevue-Redmond-Kirland, Tacoma, Everett), we have similar modes of transportation: regional rail (Sounder), light rail (Link), streetcars (Tacoma, South Lake Union, Capitol Hill) and the monorail which was supplied and built in that region, close to Cologne. The Rhine-Ruhr region decided to focus on regional rail connections between its urban centers, while we focus on light rail connections. We plan to double up our downtown tunnel, while the cities in the Rhine-Ruhr region tend to use a single tunnel or one per direction (east/west, north/south).
What other things do you see in the Rhine-Ruhr network? Or how it compares to Pugetopolis transit?
This is an open thread…
Looking ahead to our next big opening… Anyone know the plan for the Sept 14 Rapid Ride G line opening, given they already did a ribbon cutting last month? Can we expect some sort of grand opening/ribbon cutting/celebration? Or are they just starting service at the start of the service day?
(I know there will certainly be a more in depth STB post about the G prior to opening)
My impression is it will just start early Saturday morning like other Metro service updates. It would screw up the bus routes to have then changing midday when nobody is sure whether it will start on time or when the exact first run is. (This happens whenever there’s an unexpected midday reroute, or when it’s supposed to end at a certain time but actually ends earlier, and you don’t know whether to go to the permanent or temporary bus stop.) If you move the 12 earlier in the morning, there would be no bus service on Madison until the G starts.
I agree. It makes sense to do it that way. Start in the morning, and avoid any confusion.
The weird part was the ribbon cutting. I would expect it to happen the night before. But instead if happened with very little warning a day before they cut some ribbon for Lynnwood Link. My guess is they originally planned on having the RapidRide G ceremony closer to the opening, but since folks were in town for Lynnwood Link they just combined the two.
I was in SF when Muni opened Van Ness busway, the buses ran normal service at the old curb stops then at 10 AM shifted to the busway and it’s stations. But that was the 49-Van Ness Mission line and the Van Ness segment was simply busway infrastructure (although high profile and $300M) on an existing larger route.
Agree with you and Ross, beginning of the day seems most likely. Although would assume some kind of info booths and promotions during that day. Crazy to open a high profile construction-disruptive brand new major transit line with unique-for-Seattle design and have no public celebration. Usually the opening celebration with its huge crowds aimlessly exploring the area is a way to make amends with nearby businesses for years construction impacts.
Yeah, it is weird to not have a celebration on that day. Maybe they will have something, but I don’t think so. It will just be one of many buses that are starting or moving around starting in the morning. I haven’t seen anything on Metro (https://kingcountymetro.blog/category/news/) or SDOT (https://sdotblog.seattle.gov/) about any sort of event that day. They seem to imply that we already celebrated on the 29th. That was so sudden that a lot of us couldn’t make it. It is also weird to have a ribbon cutting two weeks before it actually opens “It is ready! But we can’t use it for a couple weeks. Go home, it will be ready later. ”
I’m not a fan of the fanfare, but it does seem weird given the importance of the project. Then again, who cares? If the Sonics move back then I’m sure their will be a big celebration with various bigwigs and great players from the past. But the key moment is when they actually play an NBA regular season game in the city again.
I just read on Twitter (X) that there will be a celebration of RapidRide G on the day it opens: https://x.com/KingCountyMetro/status/1831089856585306541:
The RapidRide G Line launches in less than 2 weeks, and you’re invited to celebrate with us on Sept. 14 from 11 am-3 pm! Meet us at 19th Ave. between Madison St. & Pine St. Enjoy refreshments & entertainment, grab SWAG, & sign up for an ORCA card.
Odd that this isn’t on the official Metro blog (yet).
How about ribbon cuttings for the Swift Blue Line extension; new CT routes 117, 121, 905, and 909; new Metro routes 61, 333, and 365; and the major upgrade in frequency for Metro route 60?
This is one example of where you really don’t need a massive integrated tram network when you’ve got the half-hourly or more regional trains.
I was told by my sister that a new Community Ttansit bus route would be running on North Road to 164th. I looked at the restructure and saw they added a new route 121. This is great. This is one of the transit deserts I was complaining about a few years ago on this blog. It will go past Lynwood High School. It is a little late for my nephews and nieces to get the full benefit, but I am happy for the new transit coverage.
Lucky for them. I live in Brier, and after paying many $1000s in ST taxes over the years, we still have one bus run that runs 4 times a day on weekdays, picking up at city hall and dropping off at MLT transit center. That’s it. It would be nice if all the transit fan-boys on this blog who are being massively subsidized by the rest of us would say thank you occasionally, but I’m not expecting much.
How do you like your Lynnwood Link? That’s what your taxes paid for. If you don’t like ST’s particular mix of service, complain to your Snohomish County politicians on the ST board because they’re the ones that made the decisions. Those of us outside Snohomish County aren’t subsidizing you. ST has subarea equity, so all money spent by the Snohomish subarea is chosen to benefit the subarea.
Brier is all single-family last I saw, so there’s not many taxpayers, thus not much tax revenue. People in Lynnwood and Mountlake Terrace pay the same but there are more of them, so having projects there serves the most taxpayers.
Thank you.
I’d take it up with your local representatives, Sound Transit and Community Transit if you feel so strongly and took the time to write here. It’s a fair case you make and with less hours devoted to Downtown Seattle service on I-5, more hours are reallocated to local service tying to nearby stations.
Transit to places like Brier is also really expensive per rider. This is something that a lot of people don’t realize or choose to ignore. I don’t think there is anything quite like it. There are various services that are similar, but people don’t view it that way. For example people in a sparsely populated neighborhood might have to travel a long ways to get to school. They would much rather have a school closer to them. But they understand why the schools tend to be clustered in areas with a lot of people. As long as the bus serves them, it is OK.
But in this case, the bus is the service. It appears like you aren’t getting much of anything when it comes to transit, but there is a reason for that. It is really expensive (per person) to provide transit to the area. But there are plenty of other services that are provided to your area, and it is quite likely that the rest of the county/state/country is subsidizing you.
If everyone in the country started insisting that every service directly served them the country would quickly fall apart. I don’t have kids so I don’t need schools.I don’t need public assistance and I have good private health insurance so I don’t want to pay for social services. I don’t drive — go ahead and privatize all the roads. I am an anarchist and know how to protect myself — don’t tax me to pay for the police or the military.
I guess that isn’t too crazy (that sounds like a libertarian) but it is worth pointing out that this country didn’t create the greatest middle class the world has ever known with that sort of thinking. Quite the opposite. Because of the depression folks realized they could accomplish a lot more by cooperating. No, I don’t have kids but I sure as hell benefit from good schools. The little punks in the neighborhoods grow up to be good adults (instead of just big punks). That goes for all government spending. Rural America was quite libertarian until they got hit with the dust bowl. Then they became New Deal Democrats. You scratch my back, I scratch yours.
So yeah, thank you for paying for Lynnwood Link. You are welcome for the services that I helped pay for in your neighborhood.
(Of course none of that means that the money was well spent. That is a different matter entirely, irrespective of who actually paid for it.)
How much housing has Brier added in the past decade? Is there any multi family zoning in Brier? Still, Brier should at least have a bus that runs once an hour all day. What I would do is extend the 111 to Alderwood Mall along the “back roads.” This would also provide a 1 seat ride from MLT’s budding “city center” to the Alderwood Mall area. Maybe we should advocate for it at the next Community Transit service adjustment. (I would also extend the 117 from Lynnwood to MLT station to combine with 130 or 112 for a frequent connection to light rail and a one seat ride to the mall for the northern part of MLT). This would all involve a significant investment in service hours, though!
If you live south of 228th Street SW, you will be in the Metro Flex zone that serves Brier with service to Kenmore or Mountlake Terrace on weekdays from 7 am to 7 pm. If you live north of 228th, you could always use the Brier Park & Ride. It’s the only park & ride with a hitching post that I know of.
It’s extremely dangerous to even get to transit in vast swaths of Snohomish county due to the high speed crowded roads without even a shoulder, let alone sidewalks.
Much of Brier is set up that way.
Naturally, they expect everyone living in such places to use a park and ride lot, as for most places the only way to get anywhere is to drive.
One of the nice things about Metro Flex is that it would pick you up at the end of your driveway – so no need to walk those dangerous streets.
Also, Brier is known for their strict enforcement of speeding.
If you live south of 228th Street SW, you will be in the Metro Flex zone that serves Brier with service to Kenmore or Mountlake Terrace on weekdays from 7 am to 7 pm.
Wait, what? Holy cow, you are right. Brier is in Snohomish County and yet Metro is serving it. Is Snohomish County paying for this, or should the folks in Brier thank everyone in King County?
Good point Glenn. The expansion included a massive amount of parking. It is one reason it was so expensive. The parking was clearly designed to benefit places like Brier more than it was places that have a lot of density. The places with a lot of density will have connecting bus service instead. The idea that Brier gets nothing out of it is just not true. That doesn’t mean it was a good value or what they should have built — but it was designed to benefit places like Brier as much as anywhere else.
“It’s extremely dangerous to even get to transit in vast swaths of Snohomish county due to the high speed crowded roads without even a shoulder, let alone sidewalks. Much of Brier is set up that way. Naturally, they expect everyone living in such places to use a park and ride lot, as for most places the only way to get anywhere is to drive”.
This is true. 99% of all trips in SnoCo are by car to the final destination and then home. For the other 1% the main access is park and rides, which is why LLE has so many park and ride stalls. Brier is no different than the rest of SnoCo. In fact Brier is closer to Seattle/Bellevue and denser than most of SnoCo. which is probably why Metro Flex serves it.
The land area of Snohomish Co. is 2.2 thousand sq. miles. Same as all of King Co. The 2020 census put population at around 828,000. Anyone can do the math.
One option is to say screw it, and provide no transit for the 1% because how do they get to transit. CT kind of does that by not serving a lot of SnoCo. It isn’t like there are dense areas in SnoCo they can move to, and if they could it would be more expensive than where they live now. Most of the entire ST taxing district has this same problem. If they want to use transit have them move to denser areas in Seattle and earn more. Or buy a damn car like everyone else. Or live in a micro-unit.
Another option is buses because they are generally cheap, easy to shift their routes to reflect ridership, and you can spread out the park and rides. But like 80% of King, SnoCo and Pierce Counties you won’t be able to walk to the bus stop. It isn’t like CT comes to your doorstep, and a lot of folks in SnoCo (like most) have driveways longer than many walks to a bus top along streets in Seattle.
Another option is Flex but that is pretty expensive per rider, although Metro and CT are experimenting with that approach more and more. The number of Uber rides in SnoCo is a fraction compared to East King Co. (also not super dense) because: 1. It is too damn big with too little to wherever you are going so the trip is too expensive; and 2. people are too poor for Uber. Flex generally means Metro /CT have no other option for first/last mile access.
Or you can spend billions to run light rail along I-5 which has some of the worst density in SnoCo (or anywhere) because people don’t like living next to freeways, build zillion dollar park and rides, zone “TOD” a mile away from the station with no retail, and have at least today four whole stops out of 2.2 thousand sq. miles that only make sense if you have huge park and rides at the station or where the feeder buses are, and they are going south to Seattle.
I am sure some on this blog know how much sidewalks cost. Most of N. Seattle doesn’t have sidewalks, and it will take special levies to build them. Spending tens of millions of dollars in a very poor county to build a few miles of sidewalks let alone bike lanes that would only serve the last ½ mile of Link is a non-starter.
The fundamental key here is all of SnoCo has 828,000 residents but is 2.2 thousand sq. miles. It will NEVER have the urbanism some on this blog dream of for everywhere, and I don’t think most want that. Plus urbanism is very expensive to build the infrastructure.
The problem isn’t SnoCo or sidewalks. It had fewer residents (but the same land area) in 2008 so it shouldn’t be a surprise. People don’t move from New York City to SnoCo, or the other way around for the same thing. Most of SEATTLE is single family homes because most of Seattle likes living in a single family house. People on this blog should ask themselves how many times in the past have they gone to SnoCo, and how many times will they go in the future even with Link? Answer is probably zero.
This isn’t going to change. SnoCo will remain 2.2 thousand sq. miles forever, and maybe over the next 20 years another 50,000 people will move there, maybe not. People who want a vibrant urban multi-family experience are not going to move to SnoCo although Seattleites looking for an affordable house do although they work from home ha ha.
It just is what it is. Personally I would not have spent billions to run Link to Lynnwood, or Everett, and own a car but will take Link to Seattle for a game or to party and will park in a park and ride, so that is it. Sidewalks and bike lanes to LLE are like lipstick on a pig. There are only so many possible Link riders in SnoCo, so don’t spend even more trying to find another dozen or two. Unless Metro wants to offer Flex on King Co.’s dime. It must be nice living in a county with more money than sense.
@NoneOfTheAbove,
Do you live in the area that King County Metro’s new Northshore Metro Flex (dial-a-ride) will start serving on September 14? Its service area includes portions of both counties, particularly Mountlake Terrace Station and east from there.
I’m guessing CT is helping to fund it, but clearly, Metro is the primary funder.
If you live outside the Northshore Flex area, and too far to walk to it, expanding the service area might be something more useful to lobby for than having CT expand service on route 111.
Most of SEATTLE is single family homes because most of Seattle likes living in a single family house.
That is no longer true. The number of people living in apartments/condos in Seattle passed those living in houses a few years ago.
I think your overall point is true though — much of Snohomish County lives in areas that aren’t very densely populated. But simply dividing the land area by the number of people doesn’t give you a good feel for things. A lot of the land inside King and Snohomish County has no one — it is woods, lakes, mountains — that sort of thing. Or it has only a handful of people, like farms. If it was all dense cities, farms and mountains then transit would work fairly well. You could subsidize the rural areas while providing very cost-effective transit in the cities (the bears and fish are on their own).
But that isn’t the case in much of America. There are a lot of people living in low-density areas. The density is high enough to actually account for a lot of people, but low enough to be very difficult to serve with transit.
It is hard to represent this, but this map does a good job: http://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen/#7/33.454/138.801. If you check the checkbox for “Interactive Stats” you can see how many people in a country or city live in each density class. For example in Seoul most of the people live in very dense areas. In greater Seattle (which includes a lot of the suburbs) a lot of people live in areas that are low-density.
In Snohomish County that is even more the case but it doesn’t show up on the map (other than the parts that are included in “Seattle”). I don’t know of graphs like that for Snohomish County, but you can get an idea of the situation by looking at census data. This map gives a rough idea of density, although I wish the scale didn’t end at 10,000 people per square mile. The good news is that you can select a census block and see how the density. In any event, you can see that much of Seattle exceeds this level (and often by quite a bit). There are also a fair number of census blocks that have fewer people but are fairly close. Some of these look like statistical anomalies (e. g. they include a big park).
In Snohomish County there are only a handful of places over 10,000 people per square mile, and most just barely clear the bar. But a lot of places are not desolate either (they show up as light blue, not light green). This means that there a lot of people living in areas that aren’t very dense, making transit very difficult.
Where my friend lives in Snohomish County, it has the density and traffic to support transit, and there’s an hourly bus not too far away, but no safe way to get to it. Huge effort at converting farm fields to houses with little thought to the transportation network.
Three decent parks not too far away as well, but no safe way to walk to them.
Unfortunately Snohomish County doesn’t spend much effort/funds in making street safety improvements aside from the occasional project or two (I understand that there are financial constraints around doing so). Your best hope is that lots get redeveloped and they add sidewalks as part of mandatory frontage improvements.
@D,
The easiest and cheapest way to improve safety on some of these routes is to simply lower the speed limit. And then to strictly enforce that new speed limit.
I have no problem with lowering certain speed limits until such time as physical infrastructure improvements can be made.
Doing so would slow down bus service somewhat, but the increase in safety would be worth it. And with improved Link transfers some of that hit to bus speed could be made up since Link would obviously be unaffected.
The easiest and cheapest way to improve safety on some of these routes is to simply lower the speed limit. And then to strictly enforce that new speed limit.
That is effective but not cheap. Hiring extra police to ticket people costs a lot. You could add speed cameras (like in Europe) but the state has been hesitant to allow local agencies to do so.
If Lynwood Link made it possible to free up busses for this route, then my sister’s neighborhood will benefit from it indirectly.
Rode around lynnwood link today to shoreline south, shoreline north and mountlake terrace. Brought along my escooter to reach aurora ave earlier. Will reach lynnwood city center next
As others have noted there’s thankfully some encouraging apartment construction near the stations.
The escooter ride on 145th was not too pleasant there shrubbery was not cut/maintained on the sidewalk and is barely 1 foot wide (I also tried riding on the street but the cars were going too fast so moved over) as others noted last time shoreline city really needs maintain it better
But anyways using it as a bike/escooter ride time wise from the shoreline stations seem fine to aurora ave. walking it though does not seem that well as it’d take too long. For transit connections I used the to the 348 from aurora ave back to shoreline north station, was on time though the frequency of half hourly is poor (will be increased after lynnwood connections)
Am quite curious how the route 333 will turnout. Also noted the bus transfer connections to the rapidride E seems quite annoyingly far.
If I have time might try a scooter/bus transfer over to lake city just to emulate future routes
The 333 (https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/routes-and-service/-/media/king-county/depts/metro/schedules/pdf/09142024/rt-333.pdf) is basically two routes in one. The southern half is fine, if not ideal. It will go from the 148th station to Shoreline Community College (SCC). I think it is better to go via 155th (and dogleg like the 330). That is what they had in “Phase 2” of the restructure (https://kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/metro/programs-projects/link-connections/lynnwood-link/large/p2conceptnetwork_areamap_lg.jpg). I thought that restructure was better in many ways. Anyway, the southern section is OK if not ideal.
The weird part is the northern half. From SCC the bus will work its way north and then cross Aurora and the freeway on 175th. It will then go to North City and not connect to 185th Station, but go all the way north to Mountlake Terrace. I get why there is service along 15th connecting to Mountlake Terrace. But the rest of it seems at best to be a coverage route. But it is paired with the one bus that connects Shoreline Community College — probably the biggest destination in Shoreline by a wide margin — with Link. The southern half of the 333 is a major, high-priority route, while the northern half is clearly coverage. Worse yet, the connection between the two involves going all the way west and then coming back.
Oh, and I’m calling these sections a “half”, but the bus will spend most of its time on the northern section (between SCC and Mountlake Terrace). This means it will spend most of its time on the less productive section. It gets worse. By starting in Mountlake Terrace and then crossing on 175th it throws itself into freeway traffic before it gets to Shoreline Community College. This means someone trying to get from the college to Link may end up waiting a very long time for this bus.
I just noticed this the other day. The ridership dashboard for Sound Transit now allows you to not only filter by station, but filter by station direction as well. For example I can see how many people rode the train from Kent southbound (heading towards Tacoma). Last month it was an average of 234 every day. This is new and a great addition. The old Service Implementation Plans had this, but this is the first time they’ve released the data since 2020 as far as I can tell.
It gets better. We’ve been able to filter by train for a while now. This seems a bit silly, but it allows us to figure out how many people are taking the train at a particular time. For example you can look at how many people are doing a “reverse commute”. These two can be combined. The schedule lists the trains. The three “reverse commute” trains (southbound in the morning) are 1501, 1503 and 1505. If I pick those trains (and the same “Southbound Kent” filter) I get … 19 riders. So basically the folks in Kent that are heading towards Tacoma (on the train) are going in the afternoon. Ridership is fairly pretty spread out, with the highest southbound ridership from Kent being the early afternoon run (which leaves Kent around 2:55 PM).
Anyway, this is a huge improvement. Just getting the directional data is great. It would be nice to get that with Link stations as well, as this was something they used to release with their Service Implementation Plans ( like this one). They actually had this for every bus stop as well. That would be more difficult to put in an interactive chart (there are a lot of bus stops) but they allow you to filter by Link station now. It would be nice if they allowed you to filter by Link station direction as well.
Interesting new YouTube video by Classy Whale on “Obama’s Streetcars” (a.k.a. Modern Streetcars inspired by Portland) and whether they were a good deal.
Some were good or great, many bad, and many OK that could have been much better (dedicated center-running transit lanes, straighter & simpler routes, more useful routes, etc). I think there’s a place for Modern Streetcars, just wish we could build them better where they can stimulate development AND be good frequent transit for close-in neighborhoods with retail/restaurants and lofts/condos linking to downtown, the major destinations (medical centers, museums, ballparks, universities, supermarkets) located in the center city, and linking to regional transit. A lot of them were built in regions where no one uses transit if they don’t have to (due to poor service, poor land use and hostile transit politics), much of their objective was to warm more of the population to the idea of transit and service as a park-once city center connector.
Yes, there needs to be a significant investment in getting better access to transit stations, especially the older systems where this was never included in the original construction.
Sorry, somehow hit wrong reply. Was supposed to be to Larry, below.
I think one of the big problems with various projects in the US (and not just streetcars) is federal funding. The feds will chip in for a capital project, but not service. This encourages cities to build monuments — splashy projects that involve a ribbon cutting. What most countries around the country need is better routing and higher frequency. This is by far the greatest need, but it is hard to translate that into federal policy. There is a reluctance to pay for service, since agencies can just switch spending around. If the feds gave Metro a grant for better bus service the county could just switch money into building roads (while keeping transit the same). Furthermore, there are worthy projects, of various sizes that the federal government should contribute to. It is a difficult problem.
The streetcars went too far into the opposite direction of buses. Whereas buses did travel farther and perhaps less dense suburbs (speaking generally), the streetcars spent a high amount of capital improving stations and frequent stops near denser locations. Unfortunately building there also meant high construction costs which limited it to few miles and with most only building a mile or two it they all ended up being neighborhood collectors rather than an actually useful line.
Also another important thing is really the utility relocations.
Though I am a bit confused somewhat how “at-grade light rail” like phoenix/seattle/ san diego has had less issues with relocating utilities compared to streetcars.
Sometimes the utility work is essential for the transit project (e. g. they need to widen the street) but quite often it isn’t. Instead it is basically an excuse to work on things that need to be worked on any. This often goes along with the federal government chipping in on the project.
A lot of this is just backwards — the tail is wagging the dog. Transit agencies look for a place to put a streetcar instead of looking for ways to improve the system. Without a doubt there are places where converting a bus route to a tram makes sense. It is just costing the agency too much money to run the buses every couple minutes all day long. But too often they are built when there is no evidence that they are needed. Most of these cities should just improve their bus system.
Or they should be debating whether it makes sense to build a metro or a tram. The fact that this is so rarely a debate just shows how backwards the planning is. In Vancouver they had serious debates in Surrey over whether they would go with “light rail” (AKA a streetcar) or SkyTrain (a metro). I’m sure someone suggested that for Broadway as well (although the plan all along was to run SkyTrain there). Trams are a niche product. They make sense when you have a very busy corridor that has outgrown a bus but you don’t want to invest in a metro. You have plenty of riders (or you expect to if you add some transit lanes) but it is isn’t worth the cost to tunnel or elevate everything. But instead streetcars are used in areas where they aren’t even investing in the buses. Hell, they aren’t even investing in the streetcars. A lot of the streetcars run less often than a typical bus.
I get the tourist/redevelopment value. But it is hard to say that adding a streetcar is any more valuable than any of the other things that a city could do (new sidewalks, landscaping, sculptures, etc.). I also find the idea that streetcars imply a more permanent transit improvement to the area to be a bit silly, given how many streetcars have been removed in this country.
I just got back from a trip to NJ/NY and it’s interesting to compare transit.
Access – mixed bag, but Seattle is overall better. NYC’s subway network is naturally much more robust, unless you have mobility issues. My mom is in a wheelchair, and the sole elevator at a stop in lower Manhattan was unexpectedly out. This required us to walk an extra half mile to catch a different subway line, which then entailed an extra transfer later on. Also, the quality of the NYC Metrocards is poor. At every station, at least 1 of us had a problem swiping our card. At 1 station, I had to swipe 6 times at 2 different turnstiles before my card worked. Seattle’s tap-on technology is better.
Wayfinding – NYC. Onboard, NYC trains had a dynamic map of all stops, including train and bus transfers, along with a static 2D map. Compared with Link just showing you what the next stop is, and a static 1D map. And from the surface, it was very clear where a subway entrance was located. And with most subway stations named for the cross-streets, you knew where you needed to be. In contrast, if you’re at, for example, the downtown Seattle library, where do you walk to enter Symphony Link station – 2nd? 3rd? University? Seneca? Corner? Midblock? Both cities were similar for helping people choose which station exit they should walk to.
Footprint – NYC. I was pleasantly surprised how small the NYC subway above-ground footprint is. Most subway stations are just a flight of stairs at each street corner. In contrast, ST’s stations seem way overbuilt, especially if there aren’t any cafes at the surface/mezzanine levels.
Cost – Seattle. We came from ~35 miles away by NJ Transit train. The fare was $17 each way. That’s roughly the same distance as Lynnwood-Angle Lake on Link ($3), or Lakewood-Seattle on Sounder ($6). NYC subway fare is comparable with Link, though NYC transfer rules are more restrictive than ORCA.
Overall, NYC’s train system is better, though it’s also older. Plenty of things that Sound Transit can learn from other cities/regions.
The vast majority of NYC subway stations were built before ADA. Most were built cut and cover, which is why they are quite close to the surface. Retrofitting the stations to be ADA compliant would cost a bunch of money, and the systems has been underfunded for decades. This goes back to my previous comment (https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/09/02/rhine-ruhr-railways/#comment-939659). The federal government is eager to spend money on new lines, extensions, streetcars and even “BRT”. But they aren’t eager to spend money on maintenance or retrofits. In this case though you can make a very good case for the federal government simply bringing all of the nation’s transit stations up to current ADA standards. Most of the money would go to New York, but it would be worth it (in my opinion).
The current project is to add ADA access at 70 stations and upgrade 78 more, for $6 billion.
https://new.mta.info/project/station-accessibility-upgrades
Thanks Glenn. That is good news. According to Wikipedia 145 stations are accessible to some extent. There are 472 stations, so adding another 70 will definitely help.
“the quality of the NYC Metrocards is poor. At every station, at least 1 of us had a problem swiping our card.”
Is that still happening? It was common in the 2000s when I visited NYC several times. A sign at the turnstyle said if this happens to keep swiping AT THAT TURNSTYLE. If you go to another turnstyle you’ll be charged a second fare.
This is really odd because normally if readers are failing they don’t recognize the card at all. In this case the reader does recognize it’s a valid card because it charges a fare to it, but then something happens between that and opening the turnstyle. I read somewhere what the problem was but I don’t remember.
I assumed NYC had a tap card by now. Or if not, why can’t it repair or replace its readers in twenty years?
They use both credit card payments and phone wallets thru the OMNY system. I don’t know anyone in NYC these days who still uses a MetroCard.
Was looking at one of the new service revision maps for Capitol Hill and it struck me the absurdity of the new set up on Pike/Pine. Downtown Seattle along Pike/Pine then the 47/3 branches off north, a few blocks further the 49 branches off north, a few blocks further the 10 branches off north, a few blocks further the 12 branches off north… all parallel routes, all from downtown… Makes a strong case for the 49 becoming a north-south crosstown to provide more grid service but ideally there’d also be service on 12th south of Pine as another north-south crosstown.
When I was living on Bellevue Ave E, the old 14 Summit bus was running about every 20 minutes all day long. The ridership on the 14 really dropped when King County Metro implemented the 43. With the 8 now serving Olive Way and if they made the 49 a north-south crosstown, perhaps the 11 could be moved back to Pike/Pine. This would help ridership on the Summit part of Route 3.
Yes, exactly. I have been complaining about this for months now. You have a bunch of very infrequent buses on different streets traveling very close to each other, all going to the same place. Only for a small segment do they form a href=”https://humantransit.org/2018/09/dublin-what-is-a-spine.html”>spine. It is just absurd. My favorite example: You are at 17th & Harrison and want to go downtown. You are very close to three different buses (the 10, 11 and 12) all of which go downtown. They run a combined nine times an hour, which means you shouldn’t have to wait long, even if they aren’t timed. Except … you have no idea which way to walk. They all run on different streets! They all serve different bus stops. Get it wrong and you have to wait 20 minutes!
Then there is the 2. The 2 is a solid bus that is about to be made obsolete in its most densely populated section. From east of 20th & Union it has basically been replaced by the much faster, much more frequent G. If you are headed downtown, why on earth would you wait for the 2 (which runs every fifteen minutes) when you can catch the G (which runs every six)? Much of the 2 is now redundant — a shadow of a much better bus a block or two away.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We can run these buses a lot more often if we just have better routing: https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/08/30/high-frequency-network-surrounding-rapidride-g/. Yes, this plan is a bit radical, but even if you didn’t go that far you could at least take some steps that direction. At a minimum I would:
* Combine the 49 and 60 while running it opposite the streetcar. This means six minute frequency on Broadway between Yesler and John (and twelve minute frequency north of there).
* With that we can justify running the 47/3 every fifteen minutes — maybe every ten.
* Send the 2 to Pike/Pine.
* Split the 10/12 much later (if at all). In this proposal I don’t split them at all. This means ten minute frequency all they way. But if you must split it (for coverage on 19th) then split at Aloha (which I realize would mean adding a tiny amount of wire).
I would combine the 8 and 11 (as shown) and run the bus a lot more often. Riders from Madison Park would benefit from the increased frequency. They could transfer to the G or Link to get downtown.
If we really need service on MLK, then keep it, but make it a different route. I could see it being a branch of the 27. That would mean double the frequency along Yesler from downtown to MLK, while making a nice one-seat connection within the Central Area.
I’m not saying this is the only option. There are other variations that could work. What is clear though is that this is a mess. The G and 49 cannibalize the 2 and 3/49 (respectively). If you moved the buses they would complement each other. Notice how on my proposal the 49 and 10 both provide one-seat rides downtown and nicely bracket the Capitol Hill Station (which also provides the same connection). Thus it is better for getting downtown. It is better for going to Uptown, Belltown or Madison Park. It is better for going either direction on Broadway. It is better for traveling along Pike/Pine. It is just better.
Being a lover of the trolley bus, I would prefer it be tied to the 36 rather than the 60. If combined with the 60, the route would be getting almost to the point where it would be too long and could cause reliability issues. Anyway, combining it with the 36 could allow continued trolley operation, provided they install a through wire on 12th Ave S at S Jackson St. Since the 36 operates every 10 minutes, every other bus could use the Roy St turn around and service north of there would still be every 20 minutes.
Regarding coordinating the schedule with the streetcar, the routing duplication is such a small segment of a combined 49-whatever route that has terminals much farther than the streetcar segment, it would be difficult to have a reliable even schedule between vehicles.
I don’t find the Route 2 to be redundant after RapidRide G. That’s especially true with all the new residential in the Union Street corridor around 23rd and Union. The time it takes to walk from Union to Madison is longer than half the bus headways from about 19th so everything east of there is less convenient.
Plus most people have realtime arrival info available on their mobile homes. So they easily can know when to leave their residence in one direction to meet the bus. That’s what lots of people do if their first bus runs less than every ten minutes.
It will likely siphon off some riders from Seneca St but I’m not expecting to see many Union St riders move over to RapidRide G.
Finally, riders won’t move on Day 1. More will likely migrate over several months.
@J. Reddoch. Sorry for implying that the 49 would go all the way to Westwood Village. That was not my intent. The blog page I referenced explains it, but my comment did not. Basically I would do the following:
1) Run a bus from the U-District to Beacon Hill. The bus would follow the pathway of the 49 until Pine. Then it would continue on Broadway following the pathway of the streetcar until Boren. Then it would follow the pathway of the 36 until it ended at Beacon Hill Station. In the map I refer to this bus as the 49.
2) Truncate the 60 at Beacon Hill Station.
But I could see a variation as you suggest. Have the 49 take over the southern part of the 36. Send the 60 downtown (turning left at Jackson, like the current 36). That would be the same in terms of service. Overall that seems better but there may be reliability issues on the southern part of the 36.
Regarding coordinating the schedule with the streetcar, the routing duplication is such a small segment of a combined 49-whatever route that has terminals much farther than the streetcar segment, it would be difficult to have a reliable even schedule between vehicles.
Sure, but it is worth a shot. Running vehicles on a six-minute schedule is challenging, but if a bus/trolley is a few minutes late it is still much, much better than what exists now. The fact that they overlap for a relatively small section actually reduces the amount of bus bunching you would normally experience. If the bus is a couple minutes late at John it is unlikely the streetcar will catch up to it by Yesler (where they then go their separate ways).
Edit: I should note that the bus along Broadway should be RapidRide, since that way riders can pay for the streetcar or a bus the same way. They can board at any door. This reduces dwell time and also reduces the chance of bunching.
I don’t find the Route 2 to be redundant after RapidRide G.
I didn’t write that it was entirely redundant. I wrote the most densely populated section was redundant. Everything east of 20th & Union. For that entire stretch — all the way downtown — the bus is very close to the G. But the G is much faster and much, much more frequent.
If the 2 was sent to Pike/Pine then you eliminate that redundancy. You help increase frequency on Pike/Pine starting at 14th, making it more like Madison or Jefferson (which has a lot better frequency). From Madrona you have much better options. If you are headed to Pike/Pine you just stay on the bus. If you want to head down to Madison you transfer to the (very frequent) G. With the current routing you will be able to get to Pike/Pine, but you will need to wait longer and walk farther.
Plus most people have realtime arrival info available on their mobile phones. So they easily can know when to leave their residence in one direction to meet the bus.
So you are saying frequency no longer matters? Seriously? Sorry, but that is absurd. The problem was never knowledge, it was flexibility. I don’t want to check my phone (or look at a clock) to see when to leave. I just want to leave. Furthermore, a lot of people can not time the bus. If my shift ends at 5:00 PM I can’t leave a couple minutes early even though that is when my bus runs. Nor are the transfers perfectly timed. Holy cow, Jarrett Walker has an entire chapter about frequency. There have been dozens of studies (that he cites in the book). His blog has a summary of how important it is (https://humantransit.org/basics/the-transit-ridership-recipe#frequency).
Nothing has changed. We had clocks and paper schedules back in the day. If we took transit often we knew when it was going to go by a stop. But frequency was always important and always will be. It largely explains why there was a huge surge in ridership in Seattle a few years back and why DC has recovered so much better than peer cities. Frequency matters. A lot.
Today is the first day of their new commute for thousands of SnoCo and North King residents. It will be interesting to see how quickly Link gets crowded.
Now on to RLE and then Full ELE. It’s going to be a busy year.
It is a weird period because the buses haven’t been restructured. Both Shoreline Stations have only one (infrequent) bus serving them. At best they run every 20 minutes. Mountlake Terrace has a lot more buses serving it, but they are all infrequent. There are some places where they combine for good service, but not many. Lynnwood is the only station that currently has very good connecting service from various places.
But Snohomish County is still running express buses to downtown and Northgate. Not just Community Transit, but Sound Transit. A lot of these buses serve Lynnwood. If the bus serves Lynnwood and ends at Northgate then I imagine a lot of people will just transfer sooner (thus avoiding the awkward Northgate transfer). If the bus stops at Lynnwood and heads downtown, some will as well (to get to places like the UW) but some will just stay on the bus. Some will likely experiment to see if Link is better for them. The folks who board a bus at Lynnwood Transit Center seem the most likely to switch. In contrast, the riders who take an express that skips Lynnwood TC are likely to stick with their bus.
Then there are folks who park and ride. Since bus service to 148th and 185th is so poor, I think a lot of people in Shoreline will drive to the station. Each station has parking for 500 people. I would expect the parking to get crowded before the train gets crowded. Mountlake Terrace has more parking (880 spaces) and better bus service. Lynnwood has an enormous amount of parking (1670 spaces) and the best bus service by far. I don’t expect that parking lot to fill up.
Of course everything changes in a couple weeks. The Shoreline stations get much better bus service. The express buses from Snohomish County go away. Buses (like the 512 and the 800 series) no longer go to Northgate — they go to Lynnwood (or they get restructured out of existence). This is a very interesting period.
If Metro and CT can collaborate on an inter-county dial-a-ride (or text-a-ride) service, they ought to be able to collaborate on adding a stop on the Swift Blue Line west of I-5 across from North Shoreline Station.
Likewise, hopefully Metro routes 330 and 333 have stops at the massive TOD south of Mountlake Terrace Station.
And maybe CT can collaborate with itself to have stops on the Swift Orange Line serving the TOD apartment city center south of Alderwood Mall.
If Metro and CT can collaborate on an inter-county dial-a-ride (or text-a-ride) service, they ought to be able to collaborate on adding a stop on the Swift Blue Line west of I-5 across from North Shoreline Station.
Agreed. The agencies should have cooperated — I blame both of them for dropping the ball. It is possible that CT just refused to do the sensible thing but then Metro should have made that decision public.
Likewise, hopefully Metro routes 330 and 333 have stops at the massive TOD south of Mountlake Terrace Station.
The 347 currently makes all the local stops in Snohomish County. My guess is any Metro bus that serves Mountlake Terrace will do the same.
The 333 will stop at those apartments. As far as I know swift blue will not be making any stops in between Aurora Transit Village and the mountlake link station.
@WL,
The Swift Blue extension will be between AVTC and Shoreline North/185th. There is no plan to send it to MLT. And there will be no intermediate stops (thank gawd).
As per Metro service, Metro plans to retain the 346 on Meridian, but to truncate it at Shoreline North/148th instead of at NGS.
Metro will then add new route 365 which will run from Shoreline North/185th to Shoreline South/148th along 5th Ave on the east side of I-5. New route 365 will then cross over I-5 on 145th and continue south on Meridian to North Seattle College and NGS, essentially picking up the deleted part of old 346.
Of course these are only plans. Who knows what Metro actually does. And Metro of course can’t run the new 365 as planned anyhow because of construction on 145th.
hi lazarus thanks I got it mixed up with the rapidride e extension to mountlake terrace.
@WL,
RR-E is not being extended to Mountlake Terrace either.
RR-E riders are not going to have access to Link unless they transfer to a different bus first.
@Lazarus
yes I know, it’s a future proposal
@WL,
The street grid doesn’t allow for efficient travel between AVTC and MTS.
The best Metro could do with RR-E would be to copy the CT Swift Blue routing to 185th St Station.
Only a relative handful of people are trying to get from the Aurora corridor to Mountlake Terrace or Lynnwood Station. However, plenty of people are interested in continuing on the same corridor (State Route 99) since there are significant destinations along there (Swedish Edmond and Edmonds College). Thus transfers from Swift to RapidRide E are common (and will remain common).
These riders are victims of the same failure that is the subject of this thread. If CT had worked with Metro (or just thought about it) they would have realized how much better a transfer would be if it occurred on Aurora. The Swift bus would get to 185th faster (by traveling in the BAT lanes longer) while riders would have a same-stop transfer. At a minimum they should have done that. But the whole reason Brent mentioned this is because the agencies could have done better. Just as Metro has several bus stops inside Snohomish County, Community Transit could add a bus stop (or two) inside King County, along Aurora. A stop at 192nd & Aurora would get a lot of riders and provide a nice connection for those riders to Link. It would cost the agency practically nothing. In fact it is quite likely they would come out ahead (because of additional fare revenue).
An extension from Aurora Village to Mountlake Terrace would be a lot more expensive. It would add value, but so would dozens of potential extensions or new routes. It isn’t at all clear that an extension is worth the money. Community Transit missed an easy opportunity to improve transit for a lot of riders at no extra cost. Metro didn’t.
@lazarus
It’s in the current proposed king county documents is what I meant not what I am proposing.
The Rapidride prioritization documents talked about it as well though we didn’t include it in the articles
Ross, CT plans to reroute Swift Blue along Aurora and 185th once Shoreline completes the 185th St Multimodal project, which will add BAT lanes to 185th St. They will add a stop at Shoreline Park & Ride when they do the reroute (I assume near the existing RR E stop).
https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/WACOMMT/bulletins/3836ec9
@D,
“CT plans to reroute Swift Blue along Aurora and 185th once Shoreline completes the 185th St Multimodal project, ”
Not really. Last I heard such a switch would only occur if the level of infrastructure investment on Aurora was high enough to justify the change. And I was specifically told that BAT lanes alone would not be enough.
Additionally , last I heard the Multimodal project was still unfunded. So it is hard to imagine the situation changing anytime soon.
But the routing via 220th and Meridian is actually excellent. I don’t see CT changing it, at least in my lifetime.
And all the deficiencies in transit service on Aurora in King Co are the purview of Metro anyhow. Any complaints about such service should be directed to Metro.
[Ed: Corrected typo]
And all the deficiencies in transit service on Aurora in King Co are the purview of Metro anyhow. Any complaints about such service should be directed to Metro.
WRONG! You missed the entire point of the thread. Metro is running buses to Mountlake Terrace (in Snohomish County). It will stop along the way, just as the buses do now. Without the Metro bus, people who live close to the border would have nothing. Thus riders in Snohomish County will benefit from service provided by King County. This is as it should be! People shouldn’t be in no-man’s land just because they are close to the border. It is much easier for Metro to run a bus along that corridor than CT. Adding stops along the way — instead of ignoring those riders — is the right thing to do.
Meanwhile, Community Transit is running a very similar bus. It is running into King County. All it needs to do is the exact same thing Metro has been doing for years: add a few stops along the way.
@D — Wow! That is great news. I don’t think they should wait for Shoreline to add the BAT lanes on 185th but at least it will eventually go that way. I also think it is good that BAT lanes will be added along 185th (every bit helps).
I suspect CT wants to avoid any construction-related traffic when expanding Swift to new areas.
Ex. In this case, they won’t run buses on 185th until there’s BAT lanes.
But, the Swift Green extension to UW Bothell will also happen closer to 2027 after the Bothell Way Multimodal project wraps up (which IIRC just adds one more travel lane in each direction, I didn’t see anything about BAT lanes).
Swift Orange also opened up with no BAT lanes of any sort (aside from a tiny stretch on 196) when it really could’ve benefited from it on 164.
“If CT had worked with Metro (or just thought about it) they would have realized how much better a transfer would be if it occurred on Aurora. ”
Do we have any evidence that Metro wanted ST to do this or asked it too? Just because some STB commentators think it’s a no-brainer doesn’t mean it has ever occurred to Metro. Metro is not in the business of imagining what CT should do: its business is King County’s network and working around what CT and ST do.
At one point there was a proposal to move the Aurora Village transit center to 192nd & Aurora, so all the routes would have come along with it. That was apparently abandoned. The P&R is still subject to redevelopment according to a Shoreline or Metro source I talked with at the time.
CT asked the public about two routing alternatives: the current one, and the Aurora/185th one RossB wants. It got feedback from some lower-income Snohomish residents who shop at Aurora Village and said they’d be harmed if Swift Blue no longer serves it. That’s the most specific reason I’ve heard from CT as to why the 200th/Meridian alignment was chosen. Best not to delete a shopping center destination that CT taxpayers use, so the thinking goes.
I just saw D’s citation that CT is pursuing the Aurora alignment medium-term after all. That’s good news!
My point on Metro’s motivation is still valid. We can’t assume Metro is pushing other entities to do something good just because we think it’s good: that doesn’t necessarily mean Metro thinks it’s good or that Metro has thought about it.
“And all the deficiencies in transit service on Aurora in King Co are the purview of Metro anyhow. Any complaints about such service should be directed to Metro.”
BAT lanes and other street features are under the preview of Shoreline and WSDOT, not Metro. Metro can only ask for things to be done, not override the city’s authority.
@Mike Orr,
Providing local bus service inside King County is 100% the purview of Metro, and not the responsibility of anybody else. Any complaints we have about local bus service in KC should be directed to Metro.
I get that there are some circumstances where Metro will be dealt a bad hand. For example, they currently can’t run anything on 145th just west of I-5. That is understandable.
But that doesn’t mean we should give Metro a pass when they provide poor service somewhere in the county, and we certainly shouldn’t expect Metro to do nothing while waiting for other agencies to come to their rescue.
I get that there are a lot of Metro apologists on this blog, but the basic responsibilities of the various agencies are pretty clearly defined. And those responsibilities and roles are clearly defined the way they are for some very obvious reasons.
I don’t see anything of that changing.
@Lazarus
Swift blue is managed by Community Transit not KCM
> Providing local bus service inside King County is 100% the purview of Metro, and not the responsibility of anybody else. Any complaints we have about local bus service in KC should be directed to Metro.
As Mike noted, the bus lanes are owned by Shoreline city, I’m not sure why you have this irrational hate for KCM. It’s honestly kind of ludicrous how much of a pass you give to sound transit and hate king county metro.
@WL,
“Swift blue is managed by Community Transit not KCM”
Exactly! And that is the point.
Nobody should expect CT to spend SnoCo money inside KingCo by backfilling Metro service on Aurora. If there are major deficiencies in KCM service in Aurora, then it is KCM’s responsibility to correct those deficiencies.
And, for the record, I absolutely love KCM. Metro is by far the best local, government funded, transit agency providing local bus service just inside King County.
I just wish KCM was a little more open and transparent. And I wish they were a little more data driven and less politically driven.
Lazarus, after the north county bus restructure, what KCM Aurora deficiencies do you think there will be?
Lazarus, the purpose of a Swift station at 192nd & Aurora is to facilitate same-direction north-south transfers at the same stop. That benefts CT and Metro taxpayers equally. In fact, it probably benefits CT taxpayers more because there are more business destinations on Aurora in Shoreline and north Seattle. Transferring from Swift to the E gives Snohomish residents access to: Fred Meyer, an ice rink, the 155th shopping district, and indirect access to Shoreline CC and Greenwood, among others. There’s nothing like those on Swift Blue except Edmonds CC. While you can do the transfer now and under CT’s initial plan, there’s an overhead in detouring to Aurora Village and back. Again, this benefits both CT and Metro taxpayers because it’s NEAR THE COUNTY BORDER WHERE THE NORTH-SOUTH CORRIDOR SWITCHES AGENCIES. It’s the same as the inter-agency transfers at Mountlake Terrace and Auburn.
The transfer can be at Aurora Village TC or at 192nd & Aurora: it’s just an efficiency decision by both agencies and Shoreline, not some legal constraint or CT serving Metro’s responsibility. The issue is where’s the most efficient transfer for the agencies AND FOR THE PASSENGERS’ TIME. That clearly is at 192nd & Aurora.
PT 500 serves stops in King County south of Federal Way TC because IT’S ON THE WAY, not as a giveaway to Metro. Metro can’t really serve trips from south of Federal Way TC to Tacoma, because again, it’s near the county border south of the transit center. So it’s not Metro’s fault, and it’s natural for PT to serve it.
Nobody should expect CT to spend SnoCo money inside KingCo
Even though King County is expected to spend money in Snohomish County? What sense does that make? You scratch my back and then… you are on your own.
What King County Metro is doing is normal. It is sensible. Instead of treating Snohomish County like some hostile foreign land they continue the buses (that are heading that way) to Mountlake Terrace, since it is a transit center. They stop along the way, since there are potential riders there. The funny thing is, so does Community Transit. CT has been running buses inside King County for decades now. Using your logic, they shouldn’t. They shouldn’t bother to serve Aurora Village (since that is in King County). If someone wants to transfer from Swift to RapidRide E they just have to walk to 234th.
That is just absurd. Again, we aren’t asking much from Community Transit. We are simply asking them to stop on Aurora because it on the way. It would cost them practically nothing! I think it is highly likely they would make money from it.
It is just bad routing, plain and simple. Metro makes routing mistakes, and so does Community Transit. In this case though, it is clearly Community Transit making the mistake, since it is their bus.
Oh, and the people paying the price for this are not just in King County! Transfers between RapidRide E and Swift are much worse, which means that people in Snohomish County (headed to King County) are much worse off. There is a YMCA at 192nd (and other destinations) which means that riders just riding Swift (from Snohomish County) are worse off. Riders in both counties are losing out because of the poor routing.
> I just wish KCM was a little more open and transparent. And I wish they were a little more data driven and less politically driven.
I’m pretty sure if KCM followed your advice we’d have freeway buses only with giant parking structures
Any Lynnwood Link field reports today? It’s clear that the weekend events were well served. But today is the first “typical” day.
It will be particularly curious to know how crowded the Link trains and the parking garages are. The effect on other transit routes won’t be apparent this week.
I’m curious what Northgate looks like. Anecdotally I heard people saying that ridership around the station was way down. Maybe it was mostly just people driving to the station. It is quite possible those people were driving to events (ball games and concerts) and they switched to a different park and ride. I would expect the same sort thing to happen for a weekday. I have no idea what percentage of Northgate ridership comes from park and ride, but overall ridership will certainly take a hit. Likewise it will lose a lot of the riders from the 512 and 800-series buses (if it hasn’t already). Eventually it will grow again (you can see a lot of construction close to the station) but it will take a while.
This month will be really slow, but when the college is back in session it’ll pick up quite a bit (not to prior levels, of course). I was once a student at Shoreline CC and there were some classes only offered at North Seattle, hopefully the northern extension can be useful for cases like that.
That’s a good point.
Just visited (01:30pm) the parking garage at Lynnwood Station and it was 4/5 full. Only the top floor had parking spaces available.
@Brian C,
4/5ths full on the very first commute day of LLE? Wow, that is impressive.
Maybe ST should have made the garage bigger.
Maybe ST should have made the garage bigger.
I can’t tell if you are serious. Just in case someone assumes you are, I will argue against this. Lynnwood has a gigantic parking garage, with 1670 spaces. Parking does not scale. It does not get better as you add more spots. In fact it gets worse. Instead of traffic to the destination (e. g. downtown) there is traffic to the transit center. In contrast, feeder buses scale. They become more effective the more people use them. They allow for more bidirectional travel. The answer to crowding at Link parking lots is to improve bus service to the lots. While service to Lynnwood Station is not that bad, it will get even better in a couple weeks. Eventually people figure out the buses and get to the station using them instead of just driving to it.
Garage was already open, how was it in prior weeks?
Whether a park and ride is too big or too small is not an ideological question. Size is simply determined by how full the park and ride is, taking into consideration ST is predicting significant future population growth (which many on this blog agree with) and significant ridership increases, at least from rider levels today.
Before the pandemic the eastside park and rides were too small. There was even a golden time in 2019 when ST announced they would charge for the park and rides to restrict use and crowding, which seems pretty arrogant today.
Now they are too large, although the full Line 2 has not opened across the bridge or the extension to downtown Redmond. Being too large can be worse systemically than being too small because ST spent the money on a new park and ride but the riders are not there, and so even the old park and rides are too large. It isn’t like eastside riders switched from park and rides to feeder buses. They switched to work from home and not commuting to downtown Seattle. That calls into the wisdom of spending so much on high capacity rail, not the wisdom of building a large park and ride, although the pandemic was transformational for work and travel. Virtually every suburban light rail system has very large park and rides. Some on the east coast are 5000 stalls or more.
It is a little surprising that the Lynnwood park and ride is nearly full so early, but that may be because CT’s bus restructure does not occur until Sept. 14 and so the only way to get to Lynnwood station is by driving. But it does show former Snohomish Co. bus riders are willing to switch to Link right away. That is a good sign.
Some want to approach first/last mile access ideologically when it isn’t that at all. Some bus fans worry Link relegates buses to the dust heap. In a place like Snohomish Co. the trip from doorstep to first form (and ideally last form) of transit is rarely going to be walking or biking. So they have to drive and park SOMEWHERE if they are going to access transit. But they didn’t build LLE to add a transfer and bus trip. They added LLE to eliminate a bus trip, unless to their destination.
Even in the “TOD” along the four stations the distance between the stations and housing means most of those residents will still drive to the park and ride. But they won’t take a bus for that short trip. Talk about awful “TOD. Two transit trips in a very short distance.
I can’t imagine many in those TOD living without a car in Snohomish Co. in station areas that have very little retail. What these station areas really prove is the folly of thinking that using or limiting first/last mile access will transform how people live, or get to transit, or can create “urbanism” because housing rarely can create vibrant retail unless truly dense, and that is not Snohomish Co. Too often planners arrogantly believe they can determine how people should live or get to transit when all they do is turn people away from transit, and that isn’t something ST can afford to do today. Link is about better travel, not housing.
If you are ST you are desperately hoping all the park and rides along LLE are full, because too full is better than too empty. If full, then in these undense areas feeder buses begin to compete, if they also have easy to access, free park and rides at the feeder buses.
Basically all we are talking about is where to place the park and rides. Some will argue along feeder buses is cheaper, but then you add a lot of stops to feeder buses, and add a transfer or two to a trip on Link, and ST cannot afford post-pandemic to do anything to make riding Link less competitive. Some think this is just antiquated transit dinosaurs hoping to keep buses relevant in areas served by rail.
The old 2019 arrogant days of charging for park and rides are over. ST is going to have to fight tooth and nail (i.e. bus truncation and TOD) to capture each rider because the work commuter is leaving transit. Full park and rides at Lynnwood Link is something ST should celebrate, although I doubt the park and rides will ever be full again on the eastside because the buses are so empty and unlike Snohomish Co. East King Co. has everything Seattle has except for some stadiums.
Some will argue along feeder buses is cheaper, but then you add a lot of stops to feeder buses, and add a transfer or two to a trip on Link, and ST cannot afford post-pandemic to do anything to make riding Link less competitive.
Using that logic you don’t build Link at all. You just build giant parking lots at every station, that way people avoid riding transit completely.
Park and ride lots are a niche service. They have their place, but they should be small and cheap (like ones from a church). They can help bolster feeder buses. Many riders walk to the bus, but other can drive (a much shorter distance) to the park and ride and catch the bus.
In contrast bus service scales. If you can justify a large park and ride lot you can justify good feeder service. It is clear that people are coming from somewhere — some corridor — and driving to the station. Find that corridor and add frequent bus service there. Ultimately this leads to *more* ridership, not less. You build a better network. It is the network that will ultimately determine the success or failure of Lynnwood Link, not whether you have enough parking.
The biggest problem is that there is a disconnect between the funding of ST and the funding of CT. Community Transit doesn’t have a huge amount of money and they have a very large area to cover. They can only run so many feeder buses. Sound Transit on the other hand has spent a fortune on these stations and will continue to spend a fortune on similar infrastructure. They don’t spend much money on buses, let alone feeder buses (although the buses in Snohomish County operate that way). ST should be sending lots of frequent feeder buses to their train stations, but instead it is just easier for them to build gigantic (very expensive) parking garages and telling riders they can use those.
@AJ
“Garage was already open, how was it in prior weeks?”
Usually just shy of 2/5
@AOJ
The parking garage can only hold so many cars 1,670 with the giant garage built. Also it’s not as if these are free, they cost 50~100 thousand dollars per garage spot.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/as-people-work-from-home-sound-transit-bets-350m-on-3-new-parking-garages/
the most recent ones for sounder cost 200k per parking spot.
More importantly just check out the vancouver sky train park and rides.
Sure a couple have a 1000 but most are just like 100 car lots.
https://www.translink.ca/rider-guide/driving/park-and-ride
> If you are ST you are desperately hoping all the park and rides along LLE are full, because too full is better than too empty. If full, then in these undense areas feeder buses begin to compete, if they also have easy to access, free park and rides at the feeder buses.
It doesn’t really garner that much ridership than you’d think. Even if the garage is completely full, for single occupant drivers that’s 1,650 daily riders as no one else can use it until someone else leaves. It’s not really scaleable to just keep building more garages.
We can discuss it more, but beyond a certain point this model does not work and more importantly — it’s already been tried and doesn’t work that well in other american cities. Most of them are now trying to build apartments on the parking lots if at-grade and not focusing on building new garages.
“Using that logic you don’t build Link at all. You just build giant parking lots at every station, that way people avoid riding transit completely”.
I do agree with this to some degree. I am not sure building Link to some of these less dense and more remote areas is the best use of funds. But if you do, very large park and rides are necessary as a form of first/last mile access. As I noted, some park and rides on the east coast are much larger than Lynnwood’s park and ride. ST is not unique in the use of park and rides outside the most urban areas. ST knows how much park and rides cost.
Even with buses and especially express buses these areas have had park and rides. For the most part these pre-Link routes were peak commuter oriented, and the bus was one seat from park and ride to walkable destination, either downtown Seattle, UW or Bellevue as there are few other walkable destinations. Pre-pandemic these bus routes and park and rides were very popular and the park and rides oversubscribed, which made riders who had to take transit as part of their commute very angry. Now they don’t need to take those buses/trains as part of their commute, so they are a much pickier customer.
“In contrast bus service scales”. That depends. On the area served, whether the park and ride is full, cost, agency budget, ridership, and how it is used. Not every park and ride stall is a 8-5 work commuter. In fact, less and less so today, so the same stall can accommodate three different cars/riders in a day/night, maybe more because their trip is 3 hours, not 8-10 hours. This means Lynnwood’s park and ride alone can accommodate nearly all the boardings the station will have (1670 stalls X 3). This area’s history shows that until the park and rides are full the feeder buses are empty in more suburban areas.
“It is clear that people are coming from somewhere — some corridor — and driving to the station. Find that corridor and add frequent bus service there. Ultimately this leads to *more* ridership, not less”. Not necessarily. You are assuming the bus stop will be within walking distance of the rider’s home. If it isn’t, how does the rider get to the feeder bus? In areas like Snohomish Co., how they used to get to the one-seat bus that took them to their destination: a park and ride. But better feeder bus service doesn’t necessarily mean reducing park and ride capacity. Ideally you need both, but today we still haven’t filled the park and rides, and the feeder bus is slower and less convenient.
The reason people drive directly to the Link park and ride is because it eliminates a seat and transfer on a feeder bus and the transfer wait, so it is faster and more convenient, the two main things ST is selling with Link over buses. If you are ST and demand someone drive from their house or apartment to a park and ride to catch a feeder bus to wait to take them to Link (which has a huge park and ride right next to the station) with many stops along the way they probably will just keep driving to their final destination, especially if parking is free.
The feeder bus, and demanding people use it, is pre-pandemic thinking when so many had to ride transit to work in an urban area with limited or expensive parking. As so many have noted on this blog, this rider is being replaced by a discretionary transit rider who has a higher probability their trip will end with free parking. Today the lure of Link is traffic congestion, but that is only peak and in one direction when transit patterns are changing.
The key is to offer both: adequate park and ride space and frequent feeder bus service if the local agency has the funding (ST isn’t going to pay for it as you note) and let the rider choose. More often than not they choose the park and ride if there is one, but once the park and ride is full feeder bus service becomes more necessary and relevant, at least if you own a car and the park and ride is free as is the feeder bus.
ST is desperate for riders on Link. Make getting to Link as easy as possible, because if the destination is not walkable they probably won’t take Link and transfer to a bus after taking Link. Think of it this way: you get one “transfer”, to or from Link. Since most have to drive to a park and ride or take a feeder bus in less dense areas that means the destination has to be walkable, which is why so many trips from Snohomish Co. are going to U. District, Capitol Hill or Downtown, or even the airport although that trip is very slow. If you add a transfer at the end of Link you probably won’t get many riders, and if you add two before Link, drive to park and ride to catch feeder bus, you also won’t get many riders if that ride is discretionary as so many are today.
Riders will choose. Let’s see how full the park and rides are along LLE after CT’s restructure. Data over ideology. I doubt ST is upset the Lynnwood Link park and ride is almost full so soon.
But anyways in a broader sense I have been considering maybe we could talk about parking in a larger sense. From the
1) everyone drives household park everywhere
2) 1 car household park less often
3) park once consolidated
4) paid parking / shared parking
5) no parking using transit
Even for these parking structures, it seems a bit of a waste when they are empty outside of 9 to 5 and might as well let them be used for retail or allow shops nearby to somehow use them rather than forcing a nearby shop to build their own parking lot/garage when there’s a gigantic parking garage next door.
> The reason people drive directly to the Link park and ride is because it eliminates a seat and transfer on a feeder bus and the transfer wait, so it is faster and more convenient, the two main things ST is selling with Link over buses.
This is one of the disadvantages of a freeway train compared to a bus that can exit and have a tram-train pattern to maintain a single trip. A good example is for Tacoma where the bus could travel directly into downtown tacoma but now one must transfer.
@Brian C,
Going from 2/5ths full to 4/5ths full in 2 days is a huge shift. And a quick shift.
There is probably also an increase in passenger dropoffs and in transfers from CT buses.
All-in-all, good news.
Park and rides seem like the reality of building a suburban light rail line. They are very expensive, but I don’t see how feeder bus service could be provided to Snohomish’s sprawling suburbs
It would be nice to see more creative use for the parking spaces as the parking garage fills up. A few examples:
– Monthly parking permits so that nearby apartments can underbuild parking (perhaps for ST’s TOD?) and/or so that regular commuters can reserve a parking space
– A daily or hourly charge for parking. Perhaps this could be credited against any transit trips made, so that the garage could function as “free” parking for anyone taking transit and a paid lot for nearby businesses
– Multi-day parking permits so that people can use the lots for multi-day trips (short business trips, for example)
“I don’t see how feeder bus service could be provided to Snohomish’s sprawling suburbs”
Just like it is everywhere else in the world. CT has already identified the main corridors with its upcoming restructure: it just needs to raise the frequency to 30 minutes full-time and eventually 15 minutes. Then it can fill in missing arterials and other corridors to reach at least the majority of houses within a mile or two of a supermarket plaza. It can’t reach every isolated house but it can reach the arterials, and that would reach most residents.
Then you could have much smaller P&Rs or dial-a-ride for the remaining areas. You may not even need a dedicated garage or lot: just use church lots that are empty during the week. If a bus serves it frequently, it’s sufficient last-mile transit access. You can add a substantial amount of transit service for what the agencies are paying to build garages.
Vancouver is a good example. Here are the ridership numbers from before the pandemic:
SkyTrain: 475,000
Buses: 770,000
Park and Ride space close to SkyTrain: Less than 5,000 (total).
The park and ride spots are largely irrelevant. You could close all of them tomorrow and SkyTrain would be just as busy. At the same time, the buses are clearly *very* important. It is quite possible that well over half the ridership of SkyTrain also involves a bus trip.
You aren’t going to get a world class metro by spending a bunch of money on park and ride lots. You get it by building a network. In the case of Lynnwood the only way to possibly justify the expense of going that far north is to have a good network that far north. Of course it isn’t cheap, but neither are really big park and ride lots.
“Just like it is everywhere else in the world. CT has already identified the main corridors with its upcoming restructure: it just needs to raise the frequency to 30 minutes full-time and eventually 15 minutes. Then it can fill in missing arterials and other corridors to reach at least the majority of houses within a mile or two of a supermarket plaza. It can’t reach every isolated house but it can reach the arterials, and that would reach most residents.”
“Then you could have much smaller P&Rs or dial-a-ride for the remaining areas. You may not even need a dedicated garage or lot: just use church lots that are empty during the week. If a bus serves it frequently, it’s sufficient last-mile transit access. You can add a substantial amount of transit service for what the agencies are paying to build garages.”
So Mike, you are not arguing for reducing the number of park and ride stalls, just creating more but smaller park and rides and moving them away from the light rail station, and move the cost for the park and rides from ST to the local agency or community, as well as the cost of doubling frequency.
The frequency on these feeder buses could be 15 minutes or 5 minutes, but you still have to get to one. A tiny, tiny fraction in Snohomish Co. will be able to walk to a feeder bus. A tiny, tiny fraction can walk to the four light rail stations. The “dial-a-ride” you suggest would apply to most of the riders and is never going to work in Snohomish Co. It doesn’t work in King Co. It’s called Flex.
What is the point other than cost, which is a sunk cost now, of building the park and ride for Link riders AWAY from the station, so someone now has to add a feeder bus trip to their drive to a park and ride. Why not just drive to the park and ride right next to the light rail station, and have ST pay for it since ST has billions and the local bus agencies are running on fumes (no pun intended)?
This is pre-pandemic transit thinking when the rider is much more discretionary now. Ask them to drive to a remote park and ride to wait for a bus in the dark on roads with no sidewalks to take them to Link and they will just drive to their location. Then you have no bus and no Link. They did not build Link to add seats and transfers to their trip. ST needs more riders, not less.
If the point is this area did not support the cost and limited coverage of Link I can understand that. But once the decision was made to build it, the only first/last mile access that works is very large park and rides next to the stations. Not surprisingly they are filling first. If they fill completely then there will be a case for feeder buses, but pre-pandemic riders hated full park and rides and the idea you take a bus to catch Link.
In any case the park and rides for LLE are built and were part of the levy. At least it looks like they are filling. Better than S. Bellevue.
I do think that the park and rides are overbuilt, and it would have been nice to get bus improvements instead, but I think that’s just the political reality of building light rail out to Lynnwood. And are some “soft” benefits to park and rides in that they build support for transit even among very suburban constituents. Perhaps once the garage fills up people will start to demand more bus service (hopefully they won’t ask for more park and rides)
I doubt that people would be happy with 30 minute feeder service. A 3-seat park-and-ride (drive, bus, link) is almost a nonstarter. Honestly, those are the kinds of things that turn people off of transit, because it is so much more painful than just driving
I don’t know if Vancouver is a fair comparison. Vancouver is denser and has a better street grid than the Lynnwood station area, which just makes it far easier to provide service. It would be great to reach that level of service, but I think it would take decades of growth for that to happen
> This is pre-pandemic transit thinking when the rider is much more discretionary now. Ask them to drive to a remote park and ride to wait for a bus in the dark on roads with no sidewalks to take them to Link and they will just drive to their location. Then you have no bus and no Link. They did not build Link to add seats and transfers to their trip. ST needs more riders, not less.
No, that was the older 70s/80s/90s thinking as well to focus on commuters and park and rides. With the pandemic and some work from home I am confused how you come to the conclusion to focus on park and rides more.
Lynnwood link will of course have more park and rides being the terminus, but I hardly see that as a calling to build massive parking garages at link stations. Most Sound Transit parking garages have had a drastic decrease not increase in use.
> I don’t know if Vancouver is a fair comparison. Vancouver is denser and has a better street grid than the Lynnwood station area, which just makes it far easier to provide service. It would be great to reach that level of service, but I think it would take decades of growth for that to happen
The main point was refuting that AOJ’s other transit agencies use park and rides to garner lots of ridership. I mean to be clear we can use los angeles instead for a different example
https://www.metro.net/riding/parking/lotsbyline/#a-line
Most of the lots only have a couple hundred only union station has a 2000 garage — and it is not free.
I mean let’s play devils advocate or aka say we’re back in the 1980s, what exactly is the plan. Surround Lynnwood City Center with 2~4 more parking garages? And you can’t just build a parking garage without more access for cars otherwise the cars are just waiting in a line. Are we going to widen the avenues in and out of them and then expand the direct access ramps to 4 lanes total?
Or build a giant surface lot, where you’ll need to walk probably 10~15 minutes to reach the train station anyways.
Vancouver isn’t an exact 1 to 1 tbh. They have P&Rs but they’re mostly at fairly suburban bus exchanges (like even far away from SkyTrain) and commuter rail stops. Bridgeport, Scott Road, Moody Centre, and Coquitlam Central are the only P&Rs on the SkyTrain system currently. With a couple more to be added once the SkyTrain extension to Langley is done.
Currently ST has 10 P&Rs, soon to 15 or 16 P&Rs with the next extensions coming in the next couple of years. Though some have already existed like Federal Way and Mountlake Terrace.
I’d say ST has been better about P&Rs compared to RTD which has 40+ P&Rs on their light rail and regional rail system. Which is actually considering selling their lots as they’re not making money to justify keeping them. And to improve TOD in Denver.
So Mike, you are not arguing for reducing the number of park and ride stalls, just creating more but smaller park and rides and moving them away from the light rail station … What is the point other than cost, of building the park and ride for Link riders AWAY from the station, so someone now has to add a feeder bus trip to their drive to a park and ride.
You build a better network. That is the point. You allow the system to evolve. For example consider the old 41. It used to be mainly used by those who would drive to one of the large park and ride lots and take the express bus downtown. As time went on, however, more and more people just walked to the bus as apartments were added along the corridor. The park and ride lots became surplus and have now been replaced by housing and a park. But not all of the park and ride lots. This is a lot of about 30 spots (https://maps.app.goo.gl/iJHQhf1G5ZXQqvVn9). The cost for this lot is minimal as it is rented out from the church (who otherwise doesn’t need the space during the week). But for those who use it, this saves them a longer drive.
So not only have you provided a park and ride experience that is better in some ways (less driving) but you also have a better *network*. I keep emphasizing that word, because it is critical here. Lots of people ride buses along that corridor both directions — including some who never get on Link. But by being bidirectional you get more riders. Some people take Link to Northgate and then take the bus somewhere. Others take the bus to the Northgate Station. The same thing could easily happen in Snohomish County, with similar (inexpensive) park and ride lots along relatively dense corridors.
No one is seriously talking about removing the park and ride lot, but we are saying that a lot that has 1,678 spots is plenty big — well past the point in which you look for other solutions rather than just spending money on more parking at the station.
I don’t know if Vancouver is a fair comparison. Vancouver is denser and has a better street grid than the Lynnwood station area, which just makes it far easier to provide service.
Vancouver has more density, but there are plenty of neighborhoods — right within the city — that are no different than greater Seattle. It is not as if the system is designed around the handful of dense areas. Far from it. The system is designed as a network, with the buses and trains working together. SkyTrain is also not a solely urban system. It extends out to suburban areas. A few of those stations have park and ride lots. But those lots are largely irrelevant when it comes to the success of the system. It is all about the buses.
You just can’t get really good transit ridership by building bigger and bigger parking garages — not that many people bother with them.
Vancouver isn’t an exact 1 to 1 tbh.
I never said they were. But my point is that Vancouver has built the best transit system on the West Coast and their park and ride lots are largely irrelevant. In contrast their metro is highly dependent on their buses.
It begs the question: Has anyone built a metro that is heavily dependent on park & rides? Not that I know of. A few commuter rail lines (which carry relatively few people) are dependent on the park and rides, but in general you never get that many riders.
That is because park and rides are most useful when you have low ridership. They are best with a low-performing bus (or commuter train) that could otherwise not justify frequent service (or service at all). They don’t make sense as a key element of a multi-billion dollar metro system.
Since they only make sense when ridership is low, it only makes sense that they be small — or cheap and easily replaced. This is why I call them a niche product. Once a park and ride gets a lot of riders it is time for a better solution — a transit solution. A multi-story park and ride is by its very nature contradictory. You are admitting that demand to the station is large — large enough to spend a huge amount of money on a large structure — but at the same time saying that it too small for good transit to the station.
Ideally park and ride lots are leased. But if you can’t lease, then build cheap lots that can ultimately be converted to a more dense use. For example Kenmore Park and Ride. It is big, but it is completely on the surface. It didn’t cost much to build (and was probably put in when land was cheap). The 522 — which serves it — could be considered a feeder bus. The bus connects several neighborhoods but it doesn’t connect to a major destination (like the UW or downtown). Thus hundreds of people every day park here and then ride a bus only to then transfer to Link. If the Lynnwood Park & Ride is overflowing then they should add similar routes (and lots) in Lynnwood.
One of the advantages of lots like these are that they can evolve. When that park & ride went it, there was very little in Kenmore. Now there is a lot more development in the area. While still useful, the parking lot is gradually becoming less important for the 522 and in turn Kenmore. At some point it would not surprise me if the lot (or part of it) is eventually sold off for development. That is what is happening at 192nd and Aurora — the giant parking lot is being replaced by apartments.
The main value of park and ride lots are in areas that would not otherwise have service. If smaller lots are added (or leased) it becomes a tipping point for potential routes. For example there is no service for a good section of Juanita Drive (https://maps.app.goo.gl/shfMj7PA8HsVPaqV7). Metro has considered running a bus along that corridor, but it is borderline. I could easily see leasing a park and ride lot at the LDS church at 132nd (https://maps.app.goo.gl/aJzZb9ndA625WtG56). For many that would be much easier than driving to Kenmore. This isn’t the only way you get riders (there apartments and condos up the road) but you get enough to justify the route.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with park and ride lots, but they are only really useful in supplementing poorly performing routes.
To the person who wrote that was the older 70s/80s/90s thinking as well to focus on commuters and park and rides, LOL. We’re talking about SnoCo. It IS the 70’s/80’s/90’s. Some of you need to come up here once in a while. LLE was all about people commuting to work in Seattle.
But seriously, there is no way I am parking my truck at some remote unlit park and ride along a feeder bus with no security. Like locking a nice bike to a rack in Seattle, when I get back my truck will be stolen or vandalized.
Maybe I am missing something but why would I drive and park at a park and ride to catch a bus to go to Lynnwood Link when it has a huge parking garage right next to it? I don’t plan on taking it every day but do plan on taking it to Seattle. When I get back I will be beat. I want to get to my car and get home, not wait for some empty feeder bus making a bunch of stops to take me to some remote park and ride in the dark, if my truck is still there. I want a covered park and ride that is well lighted right next to the train with a lot of people using it to keep my truck safe. Or I am not using it.
Maybe I am missing something but why would I drive and park at a park and ride to catch a bus to go to Lynnwood Link when it has a huge parking garage right next to it?
Same reason someone parks at the Kenmore Park and Ride and rides the 522 to Roosevelt instead of driving all the way to Northgate. It is a shorter drive. It is easier to find a spot. This whole thread was based on the idea that the Lynnwood Park and Ride wasn’t big enough. If that is the case then parking somewhere else and riding a frequent bus seems quite reasonable.
Juanita has the Kingsgate P+R. It would be nice if the nearby freeway station had regular (even hourly) service to UW or Seattle. The 311, for example, gets fairly okay ridership for a peak-only commuter line.
Lines to Bellevue or within Kirkland don’t offer that much, since they are relatively close to one another and it’s generally fairly easy to just drive and park.
> To the person who wrote that was the older 70s/80s/90s thinking as well to focus on commuters and park and rides, LOL. We’re talking about SnoCo. It IS the 70’s/80’s/90’s. Some of you need to come up here once in a while. LLE was all about people commuting to work in Seattle.
Sure, the question was should we build even more parking garages next to the lynnwood station. You might also note that the 70s/80s/90s transit projects focusing on park and rides didn’t really quite fix traffic. ST3 will extend the train up farther north and some more park and rides will be built, but to build an even more garages at lynnwood is not a smart move just repeating the mistakes of others.
Other american cities have tried this approach and realized while some park and rides works it cannot be scaled any further.
> Maybe I am missing something but why would I drive and park at a park and ride to catch a bus to go to Lynnwood Link when it has a huge parking garage right next to it?
It is fine to have some park and rides that is not what at least I am questioning. What I do not advocate and am against is the idea we should just completely surround the light rail station with only parking garages. Perhaps AOJ or others might say “we’re just asking for more garages not banning other stuff” but when you build garages it destroys the walkshed around the station pushing everything else much farther away from the station.
I mean let’s say in the future someone gets on the everett link station and travels south, at every single link station are we just going to have parking garages surrounding the stations with no destination?
I understand the easy mentality that “parking means riders => build lots of garages”. But the problem is where are you traveling to if it’s only garages. All the other transit agencies are looking into infilling their parking lots into apartments or retail. I really don’t see how Seattle metro area is so unique that building even more garages compared to what we are building now is secretly better.
“This whole thread was based on the idea that the Lynnwood Park and Ride wasn’t big enough. If that is the case then parking somewhere else and riding a frequent bus seems quite reasonable”.
Ok Ross, agreed. Lynnwood Link has four stations with four large park and rides. So I will drive to one of those if Lynnwood Link is full, and hopefully there will be an app. letting me know where there is available parking at one of the stations. All the stations and park and rides are on I-5 so no big deal and I plan on going to Seattle, not one or two stops on LLE.
I don’t think the 522 is a very good example. It is an express ST bus that will become Stride I think and will go a long ways to connect to Link on non-freeway roads. Why would someone drive from Kenmore to Northgate to go one stop on Link to Roosevelt? They will just drive to Roosevelt in that example. My guess is very few riders on the 522 are going from Kenmore to Roosevelt, or will transfer to Link for one stop to Roosevelt.
But I do agree that if all the park and rides are full on LLE then someone will have to find another way to get to the stations like a drop off, or just drive to wherever they are going, or in my case stay in SnoCo and party.
I am just saying what I will do and what I think most other folks up here will do if riding Link. The fact the Lynnwood park and is already full makes me think I am right. It will definitely be a bummer if all four park and rides are full, which means ST should have added a few more stories at each for parking, but I am hoping fewer work commuters and the times I plan to take Link south will mean there are spaces available at one of the park and rides. I think people in SnoCo will be pissed if they are told to park in some unlit and unsecured rural park and ride to catch an infrequent bus to Link. I don’t think that was what was promised for our taxes.
WL, I am not saying ST should build other park and rides next to Lynnwood station. If the park and ride is full, which I doubt it will be, then ST should have added a story or two to the current park and ride building or just create an app. saying where there is available park and ride space along LLE. ST probably overbuilt the Lynnwood park and ride because a lot fewer people commute to work in Seattle today. But better too big than too small.
I agree a station should not be surrounded by parking garages. I also don’t understand the huge concrete “park” or plaza on the other side of the Lynnwood station. That is where some retail or other stuff should go.
But Lynnwood Link is about us, not Seattle. We are taking Lynnwood Link someplace else. I don’t want to party at some lame SnoCo retail or bar next to a train station. I want to get on Link to go to Seattle to party.
Who will take Link from Seattle to Lynnwood Link to party next to the station? No one. Maybe a coffee shop makes sense for the work commuters but that should be next to the park and ride, not the other side of the station.
I just think this idea that even if zoned the area where the plaza or park is next to Lynnwood station would be something like Ballard, or even Edmonds, is crazy. Link riders are going to and from the station to get to someplace better, not party down at the station after parking at the park and ride.
Link won’t change Lynnwood. Link will make it easier for us to go someplace better.
Retail and restaurants are already pretty lame in Lynnwood. Anything next to the station would be even worse, and right next door is a train station that will take you to Northgate, Roosevelt, U. Dist., Capitol Hill, downtown Seattle, even Bellevue I guess if you like Bellevue or are someone from SnoCo who can afford Bellevue and rides transit. Someday Everett but why would anyone in Lynnwood go north to Everett unless you absolutely had to and don’t own a car. Same reason no one from Seattle will be taking Link TO Lynnwood Link. Why? So I just don’t see this fascination on this blog about developing the areas around the stations on LLE. What do you expect to be there. Very low income apartments because they’re next to a freeway and train station. Ok, but not my first choice to visit or party.
> So I just don’t see this fascination on this blog about developing the areas around the stations on LLE. What do you expect to be there.
Urbanist talks about it more but yes lynnwood is redeveloping the area https://www.theurbanist.org/2024/09/04/lynnwood-city-centers-growth-aspirations-hinge-on-two-slow-moving-megaprojects/
I mean sure one will travel to Seattle or Bellevue for larger items but there’s no reason why for other amenities it couldn’t be closer to lynnwood. It’d be convenient for those coming from shoreline stations or from buses. Or also the opposite those living in apartments could just walk to the lynnwood station as well, also helping to support the retail that opens there
@Paul From Up North,
“We’re talking about SnoCo. It IS the 70’s/80’s/90’s. Some of you need to come up here once in a while.”
LOL. thanks for the humor, this blog needs more of that.
I get the impression that most people on this blog think the arctic tundra begins at 205th. Nothing could be further from the truth.
While I don’t get up into SnoCo as much as I used to, I still get up there periodically. The development patterns aren’t my style (too car dependent), but there are good places to go and things to see. And there are places where you can spend your money.
As per being stuck in the 70/80/90’s, yes and no. In some ways yes, but at least the transit picture in SnoCo is pretty good. You have multiple Swift lines, and now you have modern Light Rail.
And I wouldn’t worry much about parking in ST P&R lots. The security presence at ST stations is pretty strong. You are much more likely to have an issue at an unguarded bus P&R.
Gee the comments are touching on several very different topics.
First, park and ride is a “necessary evil” to fund rail transit in the suburbs. Voters need to feel like a system investment is worth it. Sure an agency could compensate with driverless taxis or shuttle buses but politically they needed the votes.
Second, park and ride should ideally not be the only function of a suburban station. Just like residential should not be the only function of a suburban station. When people have potential destinations at most stations, the ridership is not too peak oriented and that makes the operation perform better financially. It’s why NYC built Coney Island! It’s why Playland got built near Bitter Lake in North Seattle! The concept is about as old as light rail itself. (Side note: I always liked how DC build station exits in opposite directions or “barbell layout” with on me end headed to massive parking and the other to dense activity.)
Third, station parking garages should be designed to have multiple functions for a community rather than just serving transit riders. They are great to serve things after hours like restaurants, movie theaters, gyms, flea markets and farmers markets. If a developer can build with having so much parking, it makes the development both denser and cheaper to build. A restaurant can have a much smaller lot footprint. Silo driven attitudes often result in declaring that garage users should be only for transit riders (like how BART will only accept parking fee payment if you are inside the fare gates), but that approach deters parking to access a nearby urban village.
Fourth, there are many ways to manage garage supply and demand by time of day and day of week. Gates, parking fees (daily paid parking or monthly passes or meters, for example) can always be useful options. (I’ve even suggested a radical notion that local cities should manage the parking inside ST garages so that a Link garage could be more accountable to the city that it sits in to better match its goals. )
Finally, it’s difficult but not impossible to make a suburban rail station be a destination in a free market . It usually doesn’t happen gradually. It must be planned and incentivized. Things like new hospitals/ medical offices and colleges are probably the best. Some residential should exist near any station — but there should be more too.
We haven’t built a directional commute service with Link, but instead we built a high frequency two direction all day service. It should have all day two direction use. It’s already a sunk cost so it’s now just a matter of making or letting activity happen.
Thanks Brian.
I think Al sums it up well, but I’d add:
Rather than “necessary evil,” I’d label parking as simply a part of the station access toolkit, alongside feeder bus service, TOD, and bike/pedestrian infrastructure. It has some advantages, such as very low operating costs ( good for station access at weird hours since the garage can be open 24/7) and highly flexible (people can drive in from anywhere, which makes it very powerful for a rider who accesses transit rarely, such as for a flight, concert, or appointment, and otherwise would have bad access to good transit), but it has some downsides, primarily very high capital costs but also often negative impact on the walkshed & street vibrancy.
All this means that parking is niche – it should exist, but not everywhere. Link in Seattle, Bellevue & Redmond did well to have parking at only specific ‘suburban’ stations, leaving other stations as ‘urban’ focused on bus transfers and TOD to drive ridership. Ideally, Lynwood Link would have followed the same format. However, it is important to remember that Lynwood TC was designed as a terminus station, which is generally* the correct spot for parking; only in the context of ST3 extending Link further into SoCo does structured parking at Lynwood TC look like folly.
*SE Redmond is the ‘suburban’ terminus for Link, with a large P&R to serve the suburban catchment area beyond Link, even if downtown Redmond is the literal terminus. This was good design, providing parking at the ‘end’ of the line while also still supporting a urban station in an urban neighborhood of Redmond.
“There is nothing fundamentally wrong with park and ride lots, but they are only really useful in supplementing poorly performing routes”.
I am not sure I would agree with this. Before the pandemic, eastside ST and Metro buses were some of the best performing routes, like the 550 and 554. The articulated buses were packed, and so were the park and rides. Today the park and rides are empty, but that is because the buses are empty. I think a more accurate statement is that in these suburban areas park and ride usage mimics transit ridership. You can’t blame park and rides because people are not riding transit nearly as much today.
It isn’t as if the eastside park and rides are being subsidized by others. We pay for them. I live in Issaquah. Issaquah generates a tremendous amount of sales tax that subsidizes Metro throughout the county, and ST, but we don’t get back a fraction of that in service. In fact, Metro keeps cutting service. What ever happened to “induced demand”? Issaquah Link got delayed five years even though our subarea has the money to build it earlier because Seattle doesn’t have the money or debt limit for WSBLE. What is up with that?
When someone writes, “The main value of park and ride lots are in areas that would not otherwise have service” I think what they mean is would not otherwise have first/last mile access, and this is pretty axiomatic. If you can’t get to and from transit you can’t use it (and it doesn’t help when our transit service keeps getting cut). First/last mile access is the key issue with all transit.
The point is those cities paying the transit taxes should decide how to spend their money on transit because they understand their residents and travel habits. I don’t think it would hurt either if riders paid more in fares so their voices had a bigger stake in the decision making. Some place like Issaquah that subsidizes so many other areas, east, west and south, and gets pretty crummy transit until Issaquah Link is built should at least know how much of their transit taxes are going to their service, and how to spend their transit taxes. It doesn’t really matter how many people are riding transit in Issaquah or how full the park and ride is if it is our transit taxes and we are not getting our fair share, which includes park and rides that were built ages ago on the cheap and cost nothing today.
Now maybe if you live in an area that is subsidized for transit and park and rides you should have less say in what transit infrastructure you get (if there is no subarea equity), but if you live in an area that is paying for its transit infrastructure AND subsidizing others then you get to call the shots and what you want.
I don’t think most of us are arguing that park and rides have no value, just to what degree are we going to build them.
To give an contrived example
park and ride
small lots 10k
small garage 30k
medium garage 50k
large garage 125k per space <= lynnwood / federal way
two/three large garages 100*k per space <= AOJ advocating here
*(+30/50k buying more land)?
the more garages you build the more space it'll cost, and you'll need to buy the land too. Also the lost opportunity from building an apartment instead or some retail. And I mean the lynnwood link garage cost 200 million dollars (1600 spaces) for comparison the infill station's cost 200~300 million dollars.
Or to put it more crudely, the 200 million/1600 ~= 125 thousand is basically housing for cars. It is alright to connect some amount of transit users outside of the station area but at a certain point it does not really make sense.
“The main value of park and ride lots are in areas that would not otherwise have service” I think what they mean is would not otherwise have first/last mile access, and this is pretty axiomatic.
No, I mean that the route wouldn’t exist (or it would be a lot less frequent) if not for the park and ride lot. As a result other people — who do not park and ride — would have no service. The park and ride tips the balance (in favor of the route).
See the example I gave. This is a real-world example. Metro originally proposed running a bus that way but changed their mind later in the process. Clearly it is a borderline route (and there are a bunch of them in our system). It would get riders, but just not quite enough to justify the route. With a (relatively inexpensive) park and ride it tips the balance and you run a bus there. Maybe only during peak, but at least there is a bus.
But as a park and ride grows, it outgrows it’s value. At some point, it just isn’t worth the cost. That is why it is a niche service. Look at this way. Imagine you have parking for 100,000 people at the station. Does that make sense? No, of course not. But what if 100,000 people are taking the bus to the station. Great! That is because transit improves the more people take it. The cost goes down as the quality goes up. That is what people mean when they say it “scales”. But with park and ride lots (and just driving in general) it is the opposite. Costs go up, while the experience gets worse. Parking in a small, local, open air parking lot is a breeze. Parking at SeaTac is a pain in the ass. The bigger the lot the more time it takes to actually park and walk to the station and the more likely you are to get caught in traffic driving to and from the station.
It is worth noting that there are dozens if not hundreds of small de-facto park and ride lots around the region, including in Seattle itself. A lot of times these park and ride lots simply make parking a bit easier (and make folks along the pathway complain a lot less).
I don’t have a simple answer for when a park and ride lot is bigger than it should be (and the agency should transition to something else). But there is clearly a point and in the case of all of these stations I would say that point has already been reached. Building more parking would be a huge waste of money (that could be better spent elsewhere).
Just a quick note that I wrote “necessary evil” in quotes. I was implying that some consider them bad on their face and others find them essential.
Frankly, I think that a rail station needs as many riders as possible to justify it (unless the train becomes too overcrowded). The mix of land used in the station area will vary. Sometimes the market can be only park and ride and sometimes it can be only TOD and bus feeders. But generally all modes have a role in suburbia. And that’s especially true when asking for taxes increases.
Note too that ZEVs eliminate one of the traditional negatives with park and ride.
Finally, I don’t want to merely skirt over idea of the local jurisdictional management with park and ride. A Link station is ultimately a gift to a city — even though many can spin it as a liability instead. But with that gift, there should be strings attached. Without the park and ride, nearby street spaces would fill with parking train riders. Even with garages they still might. I even sometimes think that ST should quit defining park and ride space numbers in the measures and let cities fund, build and maintain them. I’d rather see ST say something like they’ll acquire and clear land for parking and maybe give seed money to a city, but a city has to take in the effort to build and maintain them as well as set their size.
I tried to do some research on park and rides, specifically whether there are any formulas or rules about when to build a park and ride, and how big, but didn’t really find much. It seems the decision is mostly political, and depends on the host city, which depends on land use and bus service.
But I do want to comment on the economics of park and rides because that seems to be the main complaint by some.
Seattle has made the political decision to prohibit new park and rides except at Northgate. That means someone either walks to Link, or takes a feeder bus to Link although most transit trips in Seattle are by bus. Based on other posts, Metro and ST split the fare when someone uses a bus to get to Link. 53/47 cents of each dollar is the split, with 53 cents going to ST. That means in other areas with park and rides where the fare is not shared those riders are subsidizing Link for those who take a feeder bus, while in Seattle that split fare is subsidizing Metro but requires the cost of two different transit systems to use Link.
Taking Lynnwood Park and Ride, here are some assumptions:
1. Assume all 1670 park and ride stalls are full. Based on ST boarding estimates and early results that is not unlikely. Pre-pandemic park and rides were regularly full.
2. Assume each stall is only used once every 24 hours, which is unlikely. Stalls could be used two or more times per 24 hours.
3. Assume each person using the park and ride pays the full $3 Link fare, which is possible since they own a car so may not qualify for a subsidy unless a senior.
4. Each trip is a round trip so a fare is paid at both ends, which is reasonable since just the outbound trip is 30 minutes to get anywhere.
So 1670 stalls X $6 round trip = $10,020 in Link fares per day = $3,657,300 in fares in one year which equals $73,146,000 over 20 years less maintenance on the building and utilities, with no split. I would think the Lynnwood Link park and ride structure has a 60-year life expectancy.
It’s true some of those park and ride users would have used a feeder bus if there were no park and ride, but then ST loses 47 cents of every dollar in a split fare. I think the number of walk ups anywhere along LLE is small.
This is pretty much the calculus businesses like a Costco use when determining onsite parking. The parking does not generate revenue, but without it the business loses a great deal of customers and revenue from the actual business, whether that business is light rail or groceries.
I suppose if I have any complaint it is that Link fares are too low. If the farebox recovery assumption in the levies is 40% you set fares to equal 40% recovery, when today farebox recovery is closer to 15% of REAL O&M costs.
Seattle has made the political decision to prohibit new park and rides except at Northgate.
Yes, and that was is due to a legal fight. Basically the city (and the community) didn’t want it, but there is some law preventing the removal of park and ride lots (I think you have to replace it with a similar number of spaces).
It’s true some of those park and ride users would have used a feeder bus if there were no park and ride, but then ST loses 47 cents of every dollar in a split fare.
Right, unless ST is providing the bus service. I could see them doing that. They could basically poach the best feeder service from Community Transit. I doubt CT would mind. They are more focused on just serving as many areas as possible. Metro was happy to let ST handle the Bellevue to Seattle run even though it was probably one of the more cost effective routes.
This does bring up some interesting issues. A typical transit agency has to balance ridership with coverage. ST is no different, it is just that their coverage is not quite the same. They aren’t interested in running buses to remote areas as a transit lifeline to the area. But they are interested in running long distance routes which tend to be less cost effective. Even Link is not really geared towards maximizing riders (otherwise it would have a lot more stops inside the city and not go so far outside it). But the mission is to bring rail coverage (as well as bus coverage) to much of the region. In that sense spending more money on bus service (and less on park and rides) would mean more coverage (obviously) and quite likely more ridership per dollar as well.
Another issue is just the different agencies involved. Quite often the same agency runs the buses and the trains. This makes network decisions a lot easier. It would also make budget decisions like this more straightforward. They might make some estimates and figure out that a small park and ride makes sense, but as it gets really big it is better to increase the frequency on routes you are already running (or run new routes). Having different agencies complicates things.
@Al S,
The wife had a big meeting at her office downtown today.
Normally she would take Link in to work, but she was worried about not being able to get on due to overcrowding with LLE in operation. So she had me drive her downtown instead. Lucky me…..
She did take Link home though, and she reported that it was more crowded than normal, although she wasn’t able to quantify it very well.
We will get a better idea of how it is going in the next couple of weeks, but so far it appears that all is going well and the uptake of the service by SnoCo residents has been Swift.
Now onto the next big transportation event locally — the extension of Swift Blue to 185th St Station. That is going to be awesome.
Now onto the next big transportation event locally — the extension of Swift Blue to 185th St Station. That is going to be awesome.
No offense, but that is minor league compared to RapidRide G, which is opening the same day. I suppose you could make the case that the various restructures (of which Swift Blue is one) are a bigger deal than just one new route, but that new route is arguably the first and only BRT in the state. Just from a physical standpoint it stands out (buses running in the center). But also in terms of midday frequency (6 minutes). Throw in the fact that as a corridor served by only one bus (unlike the spine downtown) it is probably the most urban — it stands out in a way that no other bus around here does.
From https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/news-events/news-releases/sound-transit-fall-2024-service-change-under-way:
> Changes effective September 14:
> Link 2 Line – schedule adjustments to accommodate pre-revenue activities and simulated service between Downtown Redmond and Redmond Technology stations.
Looks like we’ll get started testing soon!
I am thinking that ST will announce the opening date this month. Keep an eye out on meeting agenda materials and press releases for the date.
The last progress report hinted at the last week of December for the opening date.
The last progress report shows the last week of December as the opening date, but there isn’t a whole lot of confidence there:
“The February schedule update is shown below. A subsequent, acceptable update has not been received; ST is currently working
closely with the contractor on a recovery plan due to some work slipping beyond required milestones.”
“The May schedule was returned and a recovery schedule requested, which has not yet been received by ST. Float calculations will be updated when an
acceptable schedule is received. ”
An updated progress report should be uploaded in the next few days. Hopefully that offers more clarity on the overall East Link schedule, including Redmond.
This is an exciting time with regular planned openings over a couple of years with Lynnwood, Redmond, the full 2 line and Federal Way.
Also, the August edition of the Sound Transit newsletter is referencing “the opening of new stations at Marymoor Village and Downtown Redmond next spring.”
https://www.soundtransit.org/blog/platform/get-ready-upcoming-changes-to-sound-transit-service
The 2 Line Starter Line date was finalized two months before opening. Why should we think an estimate 8-18 months in advance is set in stone?
Spent some time in Dusseldorf late last year and it was great to get around. My hotel wouldn’t be considered close to the nearest S-Bahn station but it wasn’t too far of a walk to the tram line. Those spread out all over the city and made it easy to get to the local places. Walking the extra bit to the S-Bahn station opened up so many more destinations. I went to Wuppertal one day to ride the Schwebebahn and also went the other way from Dusseldorf to Monchengladbach and spent a nice afternoon at the Christmas market and walking the main street with department stores and shopping centers. When you know you will reliably have a way to get from city to city every half hour, it really takes the hesitation out of making day trips like that because you arent going to get stuck somewhere with either an expensive ride or a long bus trip back being the only options.
Thanks for this. I was in Düsseldorf in 1998 and rode all around the Rhine-Ruhr region, and down to Cologne, Bonn, and Bad Godesberg.
I stayed in a suburb that didn’t have rail at the time — Ratingen, between Düsseldorf and Essen — so I used buses there. Two S-Bahn lines went in a V around it, one to Düsseldorf airport in the west, and one to the eastern outskirts. I could take the Düsseldorf-Ratingen bus, or go to any of three S-Bahn stops and take a bus from there. Now there’s a light rail line from Düsseldorf to the middle of Ratingen and on to Essen, that I would have taken if it had existed.
To add to a week of odd openings in the northwest, TriMet started operating Red Line trains to Fairgrounds on Wednesday. I guess this freed up Friday and Saturday for the federal folks to visit the Link opening.
https://news.trimet.org/2024/08/trimet-fta-and-partners-celebrate-a-new-era-for-the-max-red-line/
Of course, just adding 10 existing stations to another route isn’t exactly stunning.
Kinda surprised it doesn’t go all way to Government Center. Has Trimet ever given a reason why they choose Hillsboro Airport/Fairgrounds instead of Downtown Hillsboro for this Red Line extension.
The ridership apparently drops off quite a bit west of there.
One of the stated reasons for the project was to be able to run the central core of MAX at a higher frequency, rather than have the blue line serve that function.
Pre pandemic timetables would show red, green, yellow and orange trains operating every 15 minutes with a few random additions (Eg a couple of orange line trains were 2 minutes apart because a shift change at OHSU demanded an extra train) but blue line would have a bunch of random times. Some were 15 minutes apart, but some trips were all the way down in the 4 minute headway range.
However, the blue line trains are kind of expensive to run because they go all the way to the outer ends of the system, and they don’t necessarily need that much service that far east or west.
So, from the sounds of it, the idea is that the red line would now become the line that gets all the random extra service, keeping the costs down. That’s why they built the extra layover track at the airport: so they can run trains more frequently there.
I think one of the TriMet press releases about the project said something about focusing service at the core of the system, or some such.
You know how there’s the discussion about having spares for Link operation to Lynnwood and the spares ratio? In 2019 MAX had 19% spare vehicles.
https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/transit_agency_profile_doc/2019/00008.pdf
Today, with each line operating only every 15 minutes, its 79% spares
https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/transit_agency_profile_doc/2022/00008.pdf
This gives you some idea of how much extra service beyond the base 15 minutes on each line was being provided. Most of that went to the blue line.
The outer ends of the blue line just don’t have the level of demand they used to though. Putting those extra trains into the red line, when ridership through the core of the system demands it, will make things a bit more cost effective.
Take what you will as far as lessons go about planning for the demand for high frequency trains an hour away from the core of the system.
it only cost 200 million dollars so I’d say still rather a win.