Countdowns: RapidRide G & restructures (Sept. 14)
Lynnwood Link Opening Roundup:
Lynnwood Link Opens to Huge Crowds and Night Markets
New Sound Transit light rail stations draw big crowds for first trips (Seattle Times, $)
Video: What it’s like to ride the new Lynnwood light rail train (Seattle Times, $)
How Cities in Lynnwood Link’s Path Prepared for Light Rail’s Arrival
What to know about connecting to the new Lynnwood light rail line (Seattle Times, $)
Light rail to Lynnwood open for service!
Other Transit News:
CHS Pics | Ribbon cut on RapidRide G in a big month for public transit around Seattle — Service starts September 14th; also on Metro Matters and the SDOT Blog
South Lake Union streetcar returns to regular service today
Pierce Transit Cuts Ribbon on Upgraded Bus Shelters
Swift Blue Line and Route 120 will be extended September 14
Understanding Sound Transit’s new three-digit Station Codes
Local News:
Renton Proposes Moving Sound Transit Bus Station, Threatening Five-Year Stride Delay
New Ocean Pavilion gives Seattle Aquarium goers an immersive sea experience
SDOT announces schedule for full Ballard Bridge closures this fall
Other News, Special Interest, and Opinion:
CoworkingCafe ranks Seattle as 5th most sustainable large city in the USA
Seattle’s Downtown Activation Plan Remains Stuck in Low Gear
Upcoming Events:
September 12, 4-7pm, Seattle Central College (1701 Broadway): SDOT is hosting a community workshop regarding the First Hill/Capitol Hill Regional Center under the upcoming updates to Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan.
September 14-21: Pierce Transit is hosting a series of open houses seeking feedback on their Destination 2045 Long Range Plan.
This is an Open Thread.
On my way home from the Lynnwood Link extension night markets, I learned about a bug in ST’s new $3 flat fare policy the hard way. The bug occurs when someone is on the train more than two hours after they first tap on, even if it’s on a different trip. In my case, I first tapped on at my home station around 6pm. After checking out the new stations and night markets, I tapped on for the return trip at 7:47pm. This was counted as a transfer and did not extend my valid ride time. On the trip home Fare Ambassadors checked fares and I was flagged for not having a valid fare. How? It was 8:15pm and my trip expired at 8pm. Even though the Fare Ambassador saw I tapped on at 7:47pm, I got a written warning. I understand the Fare Ambassador was doing his job and is not at fault here. ST needs to either update how they track valid rides or tell Fare Ambassadors to ignore these types violations.
It’s silly of them to have written you a warning.
The two-hour valid fare limit will become problematic as the system gets longer, but is only problematic because of our proof-of-payment system which means riders can get checked, as you did, after their fare has unknowingly expired.
I wonder what the solution could be.
While the Fare Ambassador acknowledged he shouldn’t have had to write me up, he did genuinely recommend that I avoid this in the future by getting off the train, tapping, and getting on the next train when the 2 hr window expires. I’m not going to do that, and no one should have to do that.
I think a better solution would be to separate the valid ride time and the valid transfer time. This would guarantee that a rider will pay at most $3 per two hours, and they will always have 2 hours of valid ride time from their latest tap. Sure, some riders will get up to 4 hours of ride time for $3, but that’s okay.
I think a better solution would be to separate the valid ride time and the valid transfer time.
Yes, that is the solution I would use. You are OK to board any transit system within that two-hour window, but the window for riding is two hours plus the maximum time you could be on the current vehicle. In the case of Link that is an hour and twelve minutes. Otherwise you would need a way to tell the reader that you really do want to pay, even though you are boarding within the two hour window.
I suppose there are other alternatives. One is to only apply the two hour window only to transfers. You can tap a bus then Link (within two hours) and not be charged for the second tap. But if you tap Link and then Link again, you get charged $3 (and get a new two-hour window). So basically no round trips (unless they are quick). The problem with that, of course, is that people are used to tapping off.
I think for now the first approach makes the most sense even though it stretches the riding window quite a bit.
The valid length of the trip after tapping would be more than 72 minutes, as someone could wait up to 10 minutes waiting to board after tapping. And then they need to count a reasonable maximum time to exit the fair-paid-area (the station).
A lot of the riders have passes that cover as many rides as we can take in a month. We better not be subjected to warnings for having a 2-hour window expire while riding, when we tapped most recently within two hours.
This goes back to the need to gather statistics, and have a back-end correction formula at the ORCA Pod, rather than issuing wrongful warnings to passengers.
The software could automatically keep track of how many riders had a transfer window close, but a more recent valid tap, so ST gets credit for two rides within the window, and a larger share of the revenue if there is a ride on another agency’s service within that window.
I’m surprised nobody has been warned in the way Michael was before this. How was it not a common bug in the protocol?
Fare Ambassador seems to become a more and more entry level job that nobody is expected to stick around at, and yet has the power to tick people off from riding again by doing stupid stuff liked what happened to Michael and has happened to many us.
“he did genuinely recommend that I avoid this in the future by getting off the train, tapping, and getting on the next train when the 2 hr window expires.”
That’s completely ridiculous, and I hope the person knew it was nonsense when he had to say it. If you board within the transfer window, that should be the end of it. That’s how the old system worked: you just had to tap in within the transfer window. The purpose of a metro is to transport people: not make them stand outside a station entrance for 20 or 45 minutes waiting for their transfer to expire, or checking their watch and remembering what time they first tapped.
I assume this is an unintendended consequence of ST’s switch to flat-rate fares, and there will be a public outcry and ST will fix the policy.
The whole point of ORCA is you just tap, tap, tap, and it keeps track of when to charge you a fare or surcharge so you don’t have to think about it.
“So basically no round trips (unless they are quick).”
Two hours is enough time to go from downtown to the U-District, have lunch, and come back.
@ Brent:
Those maximum times will be obsolete shortly.
The travel times for both the 1 and 2 Lines will exceed 77 minutes in 2026. I get 84 minutes for 1 Line and 79 minutes for 2 Line in 2026 once the new extensions open. Add up to 13 minutes in top of that (3 minutes from the tap to the platform and then 10 more minutes missing a train), So I get 97 minutes for a 1 Line only rider and 92 for a 2 Line only rider.
And the longest trip appears to be Federal Way to Downtown Redmond because the transfer time adds a penalty. I get 88 minutes of riding plus 26 minutes extra for riding two trains (13 minutes for each train explained above) and a Link only trip maximum goes to 114 minutes.
So even if a rider rides only Link, their trip approaches to 120-minute maximum. Even a slight service delay can push them over the limit.
Most cities that have a flat fare have it only on their inner metro: the regional services are distance-based and often a different agency. New York has the subway and LIRR/Metro-North/NJT. Chicago has the L and Metra. San Francisco has MUNI and BART/Caltrain. Link’s combining the two is what’s making these longer-than-2-hour transfers or future trips happen.
(And we still don’t know whether ST will expect people to tap between Link lines. With side platforms, they have to go up to the surface/mezzanine anyway and pass an ORCA reader. With center platforms, they won’t.)
Two hours is enough time to go from downtown to the U-District, have lunch, and come back.
My point is that this would be charged as two trips. One option would be to simply charge it as two trips unless you tap twice at the same station within say, ten minutes. That way someone who taps and then absentmindedly taps again doesn’t get charged twice but otherwise you do.
This eliminates the situation the author had. He would have simply been charged twice. At that point bumping up the time limit to three hours pretty much solves the problem. A particular trip isn’t going to take that long (from the first tap) so you are OK. At the same time, people aren’t going to use it as an all-day pass because they have to get back.
I wonder if the solution lies in limiting transfers to intermodal transfers, instead of cross-station transfers. Is there a reasonable situation in which someone would exit a “fare paid zone” and not be expected to pay fare to re-enter the same station within a single transfer window?
I think most people understand the concept of paying for a single “trip”, and I assume most people consider it a “glitch” or something if they start a second trip within two hours of starting the first trip and it’s counted as a transfer.
The question then becomes: is there a situation in which someone shouldn’t always be charged to enter a fare-paid zone on Link? Would it be reasonable to assume that if someone taps into a Link station, having last tapped into a different Link station, that they are starting a new trip?
Here’s a couple solutions, though all of have some moderate/heavy drawback.
1) somehow allow transit riders to force tap a new ride. Idk double tapping? but I have no idea how to retrofit that onto the existing machines
2) have a more complicated algorithm for when it interprets it as a transfer versus new ride. Perhaps the second time you tap train it could always be a new ride
3) reintroducing tap off. If you tap off outside of the first 2 hour limit it’ll charge you a second time.
All of you coming up with different solutions are getting ahead of yourself. Email Sound Transit, give the scenario, and ask the policy. If someone boards a train with 15 minutes left on their 2 free transfer hours, and the Fare Ambassador checks your card 30 minutes into the ride after you boarded, are you in violation of the fare policy? I believe the only “bug” in the system is the Fare Ambassador got the policy wrong in Michael Smith’s case.
good ideas…
1) yeah, not sure this is physically possible with the new readers, or reasonably teachable to new or old transit riders
2) this is the strongest candidate in my mind – will there ever be a situation where someone “transfers” between two Link stations that isn’t actually just two different trips? It seems like the ORCA system should be able to tell the difference between a tap on a bus or streetcar and a tap onto a train. Bus-bus transfers happen all the time, and payment is theoretically enforced by the operators; bus-train transfers are common, too. Will there ever be a Link-Link transfer that would require leaving a fare-paid area? Conversely, will there ever be a situation where someone rides for more than two hours on Link that wouldn’t justify paying a second fare?
3) seems difficult to enforce via proof-of-payment
Sam, I think there’s consensus on what the policy should be, but the point is to explore how this edge case (difficulty proving payment after the transfer window has expired) could be prevented with slight changes in policy.
If I ride Link to lunch, eat lunch, then ride Link back to work or home or whatever in less than two hours, should that be charged as one trip or two? Was the “lunch transfer” really a transfer in the spirit of the two-hour transfer window?
“My point is that this would be charged as two trips.”
No, because it’s within the 2-hour window.
“Was the “lunch transfer” really a transfer in the spirit of the two-hour transfer window?”
You paid for two hours; you should get the full value out of it. ST and Metro have never tried to discourage short round trips on a single fare. This isn’t even relevant to the OP’s issue. They weren’t penalized for making a stopover or turning around; they were penalized because the remaining time didn’t cover the entire last segment. Every tap is technically a transfer, regardless of whether it’s semantically a transfer to humans (that depends on the person’s intention/expectation, which a technical system doesn’t know).
I’m saying I believe the policy, and this should be confirmed with an email to ST, is that, for example, if I tap-on at noon, run errands, then board a train again at 1:45 PM for a 30 minute trip … the policy is that my last 15 minutes on the train, even though I will be riding beyond the initial free 2 hour transfer window, is considered valid and not a fare infraction by ST, because I began the trip within the 2 hour window. I believe that is the policy. I believe Michael Smith encountered a Fare Ambassador that didn’t know the policy. If that is the policy, the fact that he tried to pay again before his 2 hour transfer window expired is beside the point.
I’ve reached out to Sound Transit via email to confirm the fare policy in this scenario. I’ll share an update when I hear back.
I agree that Link to Link transfers should not automatically be counted as two trips. I frequently take Link a stop or two to pick up dinner then take Link home. This round trip takes less than 30 minutes and should not cost $6. If anything, we should be encouraging local trips and supporting businesses near Link stations.
Note: this scenario was not covered by the previous tap-off policy either. When I would try to tap back on after picking up dinner, it wouldn’t let me, saying I had already tapped off.
Another idea is to increase the valid transfer period to 4 or 6 hours, but limit free transfers to 2 or 3. This would still result in 9-5 commuters still paying for both trips, and allow people doing errands more flexibility.
Also, I didn’t mention this is in my initial comment, but I was traveling with my wife and we had identical Orca card taps. She was not flagged by the Fare Ambassador. The only difference is that I was using a monthly pass and she was using a pre-loaded Orca card. I cannot think of an explanation for why she was not also given a warning.
“Was the “lunch transfer” really a transfer in the spirit of the two-hour transfer window?”
You paid for two hours; you should get the full value out of it.
That is debatable. It is quite reasonable to simply charge for each “trip”. I seem to remember Metro doing this (although my memory is a bit foggy). You used to get a transfer which would allow you to ride a different bus. Then they changed it to allow you to use it on any bus, including the bus you just rode (as long as you used it soon enough). Hard to say which is more fair.
I think the key is that if you tap twice (at two different stations) you pay twice. (Tapping twice at the same station wouldn’t have any effect at all.) The big issue with implementing the policy now is that there are probably a lot of people who are used to tapping off, and it is second nature. Or they didn’t get the memo. They would be charged twice for one trip.
Once we solve that misunderstanding it solves the problem Micheal had. If you feel like you are within the two-hour window, you don’t tap. If you think it is close, you tap. Micheal would have paid twice and not been hassled by the man.
It also makes sense to just reset the clock every time you tap on a new route. So you can’t just ride Link all day (tapping every 90 minutes) but you can ride different buses all day. Who really cares, since that seems like a very odd thing to do.
Michael, thanks for emailing them. Personally, I’m not interested in the part where you tried to tap again before your two hour transfer period expired. To me, that’s irrelevant. What I want to know is the policy regarding boarding a train before the two hour transfer period expires, and as you are riding, the two hour expires, and then you are checked by the Fare Ambassador. It’s my contention that in that situation, you are not violating any fare rules. It’s my contention that the FA was mistaken in his interpretations of the rules.
“The only difference is that I was using a monthly pass”
They cited the person who had already paid for unlimited trips, but not the person who didn’t?!! This is getting even more Alice in Wonderland. Unless this significantly changes your proportion of ST trips vs other agency trips, it’s not going to generate any more or less money to ST whether you board this run or not.
We’re talking in circles about how ST ought to handle a passenger who is paying per ride. But we have no evidence that ST is getting that wrong,
Mr. Smith has a monthly pass that covers unlimited trips on Link. He tapped before before boarding, which Fare Ambassadors can see on their specialized ORCA readers.
There is no excuse for a Fare Ambassador to have given Mr. Smith a warning. If the ambassador was following ST policy, ST needs to fix that policy ASAP. If the Attorney General’s office has to get involved in ST’s procedural theft of service from monthly passholders, I will gladly offer my testimony as a previous victim (albeit from several years ago).
ST never apologized to me, and certainly did not offer to expunge the wrongful warning, suggesting they don’t think their Fare Enforcement Officer did anything wrong in my case.
That can’t possibly what ST intends. A transfer window is the time you’re allowed to *start* the next leg of your trip, not *complete* it. You should report this to ST.
For example, Google tells me that a trip from Everett Community College to Seatac Airport is 2 hours 10 minutes by transit. Surely that rider’s fare isn’t supposed to expire at Rainier Beach.
I’d suggest going straight to one of the elected officials for whom you are a constituent. ST Customer Service has had 15 years to treat these common cases as a need to update ST’s policies rather than a need to calm down each and every valid complainer.
Yes. At minimum complain to ST through their feedback form. It needs to know this is happening to people. The citation itself may just get buried in paperwork, but complaints may get the attention of wider parts of ST.
The first time somebody gets banned from Link from being in this situation three times in a year, it will be a big deal.
If you were riding Link after your fare had expired, and you hadn’t retapped after your fare expired, then your fare was invalid and you were in violation. I don’t think this has changed with the $3 fare.
The idea is to prevent people from riding all day just by retapping periodically. The rider shouldn’t be able to indefinitely extend their trip by doing this, at least not on the same service.
@Lazarus That’s not the policy. For instance, on ST’s website:
“An ORCA card is the only way to pay for transfers between different services such as trains, buses and streetcars. As long as you transfer within 2 hours, your original fare will be credited toward the next leg of your journey.”
The same message is on websites for Metro, Community Transit, etc. A fare gets you on to a mode of transportation, or transferring to a new mode within 2 hours. But once you’re on a bus or train, your fare won’t expire in the middle of that bus/train trip, which is what happened to the OP.
In this case though, Micheal tried to pay but was denied. He knew he was going to be outside the window when he finished his trip back. But because he started that trip back within the window, the reader wouldn’t allow him to pay twice.
The actual policy does not clearly state what happens if your two-hour transfer window expires before proof-of-payment inspection.
I believe the correct policy should be that if you “board” with a valid fare (paid less than two hours ago), then you’re good to ride until you leave the train. Forcing riders to remember when their transfer expires and expecting them to deboard midway through their trip, exit the station, tap again, and reboard is ridiculous.
I think some compromise between allowing people to “indefinitely extend their trip” and considering people delinquent even if they tapped and it was considered a transfer but expired while they were transiting. Something along the line of a second tap within the 2-hour window extends the 2-hour period by (maximum train travel time + maximum time waiting for train), but the time cannot be extended a 2nd time. I’m sure they could implement some kind of logic like this. And, if they were to re-board during that second 2-hour window, as long as they tapped, they would be charged a new fare and given a new 2-hour period in which to transfer. That wouldn’t be to terribly complicated of logic.
But IMO the most important thing is that the rider shouldn’t have to do anything special to complete their trip. If it’s more complicated than tap your card and get on the train, you’re going to end up with problems.
“The idea is to prevent people from riding all day just by retapping periodically.”
There’s already a built-in remedy for that: retapping only extends the time if you pay a surcharge. So if you board Link and pay $3 you get two hours. If you ride ten minutes and transfer to the 522, you pay the 25c difference and get two more hours (superceding the remaining time of the first window). If you go the other way, you don’t get additional time. The point is when you board the second vehicle, not how long it takes that vehicle to get to your destination or third vehicle.
“I think some compromise between allowing people to “indefinitely extend their trip”
You can’t infinitely extend a trip. You only get two hours no matter how many transfers or stopovers you make, unless you pay a surcharge for a higher fare and you get two hours again. So you’d have to continually pay surcharges.
For instance, start on CT for $2.50, transfer to Link for $3 (pay 50c more), transfer to ST Express for $3.25 (pay 25c more), transfer to Sounder (fare varies up to $5 or so). That’s 2+2+2+2, so potentially up to 8 hours. But it’s not indefinite, and in practice it’s hard to find a trip like that that’s feasible and it’s not a trip anyone would want to do or has to do. That would be like going to Tacoma and back and then doing something else major too. Except Sounder has to be the last part of the trip, because there’s nothing higher-fare to get 2 more hours on, so that’s your last 2 hours.
I think there’s a fairly simple approach that works in most cases.
Within 2 hours of your first tap, you can board as many vehicles as you want.
At the 2 hour mark, you can stay on your current vehicle until the end of the line, but that’s it.
That works for most cases. Link might be trickier, but isn’t so bad.
If someone first tapped more than 2 hours ago, could they have boarded the current vehicle before their 2 hours was up? If yes, let them go. For example, if a fare ambassador on a SB 1 line train knows that train left Lynnwood at 3:40, if someone’s original tap was 1:35, they get a warning because there’s no way they could have been on the train before their 2 hours expired at 3:35. If their original tap was 1:45, give them the benefit of the doubt, because it’s possible they boarded the train at 3:40 when they still had a valid transfer.
Within 2 hours of your first tap, you can board as many vehicles as you want.
At the 2 hour mark, you can stay on your current vehicle until the end of the line, but that’s it.
Yeah, that is the solution discussed up above. The two hour limit is for boarding, not riding. It means that fare enforcers should just add on the potential riding time of the vehicle they are on (in this case Link). So you have two hours to transfer, but three hours fifteen minutes (give or take) to ride. This could be done with the software, but it could also be done by the fare enforcers.
But I also think Link should consider charging for a second tap at some point. Sooner or later they will want to raise fares. If instead they charge every time you tap it gets simpler. For a quick trip you won’t tap, but for a long one you will (knowing that you will exceed the limit).
I see there are three issues:
1. When should a live fare expire? I think the consensus is that if you are on a vehicle when two hours passes you are fine. The instruction that you would hop of an intermediate station just to tap your card is ridiculous.
2. What should the Fare Ambassador do if the system reports a violation? I think that if the official had full discretion nothing should have been said or done. However I don’t know how the software is set up to require a response.
3. What logic and outcomes are required in the software? This is something that we don’t know but it likely needs to be fixed. I think would suggest building in location logic into the checking software (adding where to when) or providing a manual override to the official using it or both.
Finally, the agencies allowing Orca should extend the time period to 2.5 hours. By 2026 a rider could end up inside the Link system for as long as about two hours (114 minutes maximum). All it takes is a broken elevator or some sort of short service disruption to exceed two hours.
If I board the Metro route 271 at 2:50 PM, and show the driver a paper transfer ticket that expires at 3:00 PM, after 3:00 PM, somewhere along the route while sitting in my seat, have I run afoul of the fare rules? I’m now riding on the bus, at let’s say 3:30 PM, and my transfer ticket expired at 3:00 PM.
The answer to that question, I believe, is the answer to Michael Smith’s situation. Which is, of course he wasn’t breaking any fare rules.
If I board the Metro route 271 at 2:50 PM, and show the driver a paper transfer ticket that expires at 3:00 PM, after 3:00 PM, somewhere along the route while sitting in my seat, have I run afoul of the fare rules?
No, because it is not proof of payment. With RapidRide you could be — or at the very least there could be ambiguity. If it is 3:30 it is difficult to tell if you boarded at 2:50 or if you boarded at 3:10. Except, of course, for the fact that you tapped at 2:45. This implies that you boarded the 2:50 bus. Unless you were clever, and tapped at 2:45 then went about your business for another twenty minutes knowing full well that it would enable you to ride the bus at 3:10 for free. Very clever, Sam.
Anyway, yeah, it gets down to what folks said early in the thread. The readers are fine — they have a two hour window. If you tap beyond that, you get charged again. But the two-hour window doesn’t apply to *riding*. There is extra wiggle room. The amount extra should (ideally) be based on the maximum amount of time someone could be on the vehicle. For Link that means an hour and fifteen minutes. This means that someone who gets checked by the fare enforcers won’t get a ticket unless they are 3 hours and 15 minutes beyond the original tap.
People could take advantage of this extra time, but I doubt they will. For example let’s say I ride from Roosevelt to Capitol Hill to meet a friend. We chat for a long time. I get back to the station to head home. Do I check the time and then make an estimate as to whether I will fit within that 3 hour, 15 minute window? Of course not. I tap. Maybe I’m charged, maybe I’m not. Either way I’m fine.
“What should the Fare Ambassador do if the system reports a violation?”
“The system” is a handheld ORCA scanner that merely says the time has expired. A human needs to confirm whether it’s a violation or not. The scanner doesn’t know where it is, what the person’s total trip or intention is, or whether there’s a person taking a trip at all.
“If instead they charge every time you tap it gets simpler.”
The system has been fine for years. You tap whenever you board a vehicle, and it charges if it’s been more than two hours since the last tap or the fare is higher.
If it charges every tap, well first, how much? If every Link boarding cost $3 then if I have two multi-point trips in one day I could end up paying $12. When I go grocery shopping I go to some six places, so that’s all one trip, or about three sets of transit seats. Not all of them are on Link, but the point is that this is a common trip pattern in a city for non-drivers.
“All it takes is a broken elevator or some sort of short service disruption to exceed two hours.”
Or the next train not coming for 20 or 40 minutes due to “mechanical failure”, “signal issue”, “object on tracks”, or “collision”. This is happening almost every other day.
“Do I check the time and then make an estimate as to whether I will fit within that 3 hour, 15 minute window? Of course not. I tap. Maybe I’m charged, maybe I’m not.”
The decision is more whether to take the trip or not. If you have an e-purse you may count pennies and not want to take a short trip if it will cost $3 more and it doesn’t seem worth that. If you have a pass, you don’t think about it because all trips beyond the first 36 are free.
I used to pinch pennies when I didn’t have a pass but I’ve gotten over it. Before covid I rode so much that my nominal $3.75 pass fare was effectively $1.25. Now I ride less so a pass isn’t justified. I can’t walk as far either so I take a bus 2-3 stops to shop to budget my walking. I just watch whether my total monthly cash outlay reaches the pass cost, but so far it hasn’t. That’s in the system we’ve been accustomed to where you’re only charged every 2 hours even if you board more vehicles. If it becomes $3 for every Link segment, then I might travel less or substitute buses for Link when I can.
“All it takes is a broken elevator or some sort of short service disruption to exceed two hours.”
One other very plausible situation is for just one transfer train at International District- Chinatown being too crowded to board, like after a game.
I wondered if this was going to happen. I wouldn’t call it a bug as much as a logic problem for Orca.
It will become more common as it will be happening when a rider gets on a feeder bus and transfers to Link for a longer trip. The 1 Line will soon be 84 minutes in a train from Federal Way to Lynnwood. By adding time on a feeder bus and a little extra time at the station, 120 minutes can easily pass.
I don’t think it’s an easy fix. If the two hour time lapse happens while you are on Link you shouldn’t be penalized for it. Lengthening the time period may reduce the occurrence but it’s still possible. And if it’s a round trip issue a longer time still won’t help.
Plus with center platforms Orca cant know which way you’re going.
It suggests to me that a fundamental change to fare policy logic will be needed. Until that happens, fare ambassadors will have to be instructed to not fine someone for being over the time limit on a Link train.
How is this new? People could be caught like this before, and warned. It’s a bug that existed under the tap-off system, but we have no public complaints about it in the comments thread, bizarrely.
The most likely explanation is that the fare ambassador was not following procedure.
“It’s a bug that existed under the tap-off system, but we have no public complaints about it in the comments thread, bizarrely.”
Most probably it didn’t occur. The previous policy was you just had to tap in during the window, not that the entire ride had to be in it.
With a pass, there were some previous issues. If I’m remembering right, I have been unable to start a new trip after tapping off for the first one and then been warned for it.
One thing I do like about our fare system is that you can leave a station for a quick shopping trip, then continue on a later train, without having to pay twice. In DC and NYC, you can’t do that, as train->train transfers all happen behind the faregates, leaving the whole “transfer-window” concept is specific to connections involving buses. Here, you can leave a station and re-enter it, and still have it count as one trip.
That is part of the issue, definitely. If the ORCA reader simply charged him for the second trip it wouldn’t be an issue. We are hesitant to do that since folks are used to “tapping off”. There would have to be a public service campaign. No more tapping off — if you tap twice you get charged twice.
Why would ST spend money warning riders not to pay them too much? It would certainly be out of character.
Why would you get charged twice for tapping off? I would think it would count as a free transfer (from Link to itself), unless the time on the train would have put you over the two-hour transfer window.
Why would you get charged twice for tapping off? I would think it would count as a free transfer (from Link to itself), unless the time on the train would have put you over the two-hour transfer window.
The point is that it should charge you twice. This makes it easier to fix the problem. Once people realize there is no reason to tap off, they stop doing it. Then the only people who tap more than once are people like Micheal, who are trying to pay twice.
Then it becomes fairly simple. If you think you are traveling within the
two-hour window you don’t bother to tap (no matter how many times you get on and off the train). If you think you are going to exceed the two-hour window you tap again (creating a new two-hour window).
This actually solves the problem with really long trips as well. Each tap resets the clock. You can get on a bus, then another bus, then another bus every 90 minutes and pay for only the first tap. Whatever. But if you tap the same bus twice (or Link twice) you have to pay twice.
Ross, it isn’t clear yet there is a problem. And Michale, in that situation, didn’t need to be charged twice. It’s my contention that the only problem with Michael’s experience is that the Fare Ambassador wasn’t familiar with the rules, and made a mistake in thinking Michael broke a fare rule and needed to be warned. There is no bug in the system. The only bug was the FA was mistaken.
Ross, it isn’t clear yet there is a problem.
Good point. It is quite possible that the fare enforcement people just got it wrong. Normally they would have done the math and realized that the rider not only boarded legally, but couldn’t pay even if he wanted to.
I tried to tap twice last week: once before descending the stairs into Westlake Station, intending to take Link home, and once again twenty minutes later after discovering that the system was hopelessly bogged down and the cars were overcrowded, hoping to “tap off” and undo the paid fare I was not actually going to use. This did not work; alas.
Yeah, it is unfortunate that there is no way to “undo” a tap. After a game I walked by the Sounder readers next to King Street Station, thinking the were Link readers for CID. I realized what I had done a few seconds later, but it was too late.
To be fair, most systems work like that. If you pay for a ticket, you can’t get a refund. If you go through the fare gate, you are charged.
I also think there would be a problem if tapping twice was an “undo”. While navigating the trip from the monorail to Westlake Station I tapped, but couldn’t remember if I had tapped. I guess if there was a sound (and visual) that showed that the second tap was an “undo” it would work fine. In my case I would just tap a third time.
If the rider boards the train while the 2 hour window is still valid, but expires during the trip, the rest of the trip still should be considered valid. I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the rule, but the Fare Ambassador wasn’t aware of it.
That should be the rule!
The tap on before the two hour expiration should be registered as a valid fare in the fare checking software. By giving you a warning, it is the Fare Ambassador had to fulfill a requirement to respond to the faulty software.
Making both you and the Fare Ambassador go through the effort to hassle of registering that warning is to me where the immediate fix is needed. The system should have a way to override the software mistake without the bureaucracy of it all. How much time and effort went with that warning?
I notice that ST has recently been silent about whether Link riders should tap off. Going to the flat fare removes the financial incentive to tap off, and ST implies that no Orca user should or must tap off. ST should be crystal clear about tap offs with the new fare change.
This doesn’t make sense. If you tapped on within the two hours, it should be OK. That’s how it works on buses.
If you are outside the two-hour window, you are now in the space of having to use the $6 ORCA day pass. That is the policy, and that is reasonable. Imagine if it was a Hawks game instead of a night market. You would take Link to the game and tap. After the game, you would take Link home and tap again. Same if it was Bumbershoot or Folklife or any other kind of big event. Six bucks to ride all day is a bargain.
But you are missing the point. He did tap! He tried to pay but was denied. He boarded within the two-hour window (which is why the ORCA reader wouldn’t charge him) but was riding outside it.
You’d be at a ballgame or Bumbershoot for more than two hours. Some transit agencies have only one-way or single-trip fares, but ST and Metro have never been one of them. I noticed that about Metro in the 80s.
Other cities had transfers that said “not valid in opposite direction” but Metro’s said “valid in any direction”. Metro seemed like a better value. I used to go from Bellevue to the Seattle downtown library, return a book, and come back on a single fare.
Ah– I missed that distinction of starting within 2:00 and riding outside of it.
I noticed the same thing when my wife and I took the train last weekend. I just have a monthly pass so I honestly didn’t pay attention to what it did when I used my card, but when she used her ORCA card, it said it was a “transfer” when we re-boarded to return home and didn’t charge her.
It didn’t seem right but there wasn’t anything we could do but shrug it off and board the train. Luckily nobody checked our fares or we probably would have had a similar experience. Seems people making less-than-2-hour round trips isn’t that uncommon, so this is going to come up a lot if ST doesn’t do something to clarify what people should do in this situation.
This is one reason why I tend to buy day passes
Question for readers: will anyone notice that the SLU streetcar is back up and running?
I will.
It’s really past time that the city builds the CCC. It’s a no brainer.
I view SLU as mostly a vertical office park and apartment district. I have no need to visit so I wouldn’t notice beyond reading STB posts.
That’s a problem with contemporary development, it’s just pumping out shtty real estate products and not building real mixed use communities. It’s an issue with TOD, we can’t build new Capitol Hills or even Beacon Hills around our stations… just a bunch of hideous single use apartment buildings and banal glass box office buildings. SLU is better than most newly developed areas since it has some historic buildings and some existing unique uses.
I wouldn’t notice. I have never used it. Walking is faster than that thing.
A follow-up question, which maybe has been asked several times over the years, but seems worth repeating: if no one noticed the streetcar was broken and its ridership base is a tiny group of commuters and tourists, what could be done to make the SLU streetcar more useful? Other than building the CCC, of course.
When construction of BLE interrupts SLU streetcar operations for several years, are there upgrades Seattle should to do the rest of the route while it is unusable?
What are the odds of renewed local and/or Federal funding for such projects?
what could be done to make the SLU streetcar more useful? Other than building the CCC, of course.
That pretty much leaves just going north, and the city rejected that year ago (https://www.seattlebikeblog.com/2024/08/20/seattle-decided-9-years-ago-to-kill-the-slu-streetcar/).
I don’t think there is much to do, really. It was a silly idea in the first place and it should be removed. There are a lot of ways in which the city would be better if it was gone. I plan on writing something about that (or someone else will) but the quick summary is:
1) Take out the tracks.
2) Make the area north of Valley a bike lane and connect it to the future bike lane west of Fairview (which would create a very good bike route around the lake).
3) Replace the bike lanes on Valley with BAT/bus lanes. This would speed up the C.
4) Turn Terry into a bike street. It already is, but the tracks make it difficult.
5) Run another bus on Westlake. The H would be the obvious choice. This compensates for the loss of the streetcar, and you end up with a system that is better than what exists now (because the stops would be consolidated).
6) Sell off the streetcars as well as the maintenance shed to help pay for all of this.
It could be extended north.
1) one choice could have been going up eastlake (replacing) the rapidride J. The problem was that it required a high amount of capital and I think most would see it as excessive given there’s already U link there.
2) another choice would be to extend it up westlake to fremont and then to ballard. The problem is how to cross the river is even harder here, it’d also cost a billion dollars (in 2014 if i remember correctly). Perhaps it could be extended to just fremont for around 500 million* using the existing bridge.
Beyond that I don’t really know of any other fixes that could be made. extending up denny way east is probably too steep.
3) actually there is one idea i forgot, could do the 4th/5th avenue couplet. If 1st avenue is that expensive, then just skip it. one of those streets will be closed for link construction anyways — though it of course becomes a bit duplicative if it is right above a link station. It could maybe be semi-affordable to connect the two lines. I wonder why Seattle hasn’t proposed this actually?
https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/SDOT/About/DocumentLibrary/Reports/SEATTLE_CCC_LPA_Rpt_FINAL_9-2014.pdf
*I’ll need to calculate it more in depth
As someone who bikes in the area, it would be very useful to me to not have to worry about the hazard of tracks in the street throwing me off of my bike (the first hill streetcar has already injured me thusly)
So I would hope the tracks get filled in or removed.
I was just talking with someone who is moving to Eastlake and working at Fred Hutch. She asked about using the SLU streetcar, and I informed her that the Fred Hutch stop is the northernmost stop, so it will not help her commute. She asked if it would be useful to get downtown, as she could walk to it and ride it to westlake. I informed her that the 70 would be better, since it already goes from eastlake to downtown at high frequency.
@M, unfortunately that also points out how much better the streetcar is at publicizing itself to people who don’t know where buses run!
It could be extended north.
Sure, but as Tom Fucoloro wrote, the time to do that was with RapidRide J. They chose the bus instead. You could do Westlake but the argument for that is even weaker. They are in the process of digging up the street right now and putting down cement — hard to imagine they dig it up again to add streetcar tracks. The dynamic is the same. The main advantage of a streetcar is capacity and it isn’t needed.
It is easy to compare streetcars with buses, but one of the big reasons we don’t need streetcars is Link. We could have built a streetcar network instead of a metro, but we chose the latter. For example imagine if instead of Link we ran a streetcar between the UW and downtown (via South Lake Union). We took lanes or otherwise ensured that it never got delayed because of traffic. We then cancelled the express buses (just as we did with Link) that went from the UW to downtown. At that point the streetcar is basically just a surface version of Link. It has to be big to handle the load.
Now that we have Link, streetcars just don’t make sense in this city.
The main things that could make the SLUS more useful are:
(1) Removing bus lines that serve the same path (which I would not recommend);
(2) Extend the line into the Central Business District, e.g. by building the CCC;
(3) Running the streetcar more often, especially after the Great Conjunction, timed for passengers transferring from the train if doable.
Option 3 would require more fleet, and probably a larger maintenance barn.
Ironically, the plans for the CCC involve no frequency improvement on the existing streetcar lines. So, even building the CCC might fail to make the SLUS and FHSC relevant.
A totally irrelevant side note:
The advertised fare for the streetcar is still $2.25.
I don’t recall who is subsidizing the streetcar’s pay-what-you-care fare collection.
I appreciate the thoughtful replies.
I think the FHSC is still quite relevant, if still quite slow, as its ridership is fairly high at around 4,000 weekday riders.
If the there’s no way to “save” the SLU line (i.e. no way to speed it up to compete better with parallel buses), then there may be no good use. Instead of tearing up the tracks, I wonder if they could be simply filled in with a semi-permanent filler or covered to retain them for future use.
If the CCC/CC were cheap to build, I think it would be worth building. But that would likely require some serious outside cash – cash that would probably be better spent building BLE’s 4th Avenue station (with it’s $1B excess cost)
Instead of tearing up the tracks, I wonder if they could be simply filled in with a semi-permanent filler or covered to retain them for future use.
Yeah, when I write about “paving over the tracks” it could mean ripping out the tracks and filling them in or just paving over them. I’ve heard there are issues with that though. Eventually the tracks start sticking out again. It probably wouldn’t happen if it was just people and bikes going over it, but would probably be the case once cars and trucks go over it. It is often just cheaper in the long turn to pull them out and fill them in.
Once it is used by bikes it is highly unlikely it would ever be used as a streetcar route. Hard to see anyone in the bike community being OK with that, while folks in the transit community at best are ambivalent and at worst think it isn’t worth the political or financial capital. I think Seattle — like many cities — will look at streetcars like these as a fad. As Bruce Nourish once put it — a momentary lapse of reason .
But that would likely require some serious outside cash – cash that would probably be better spent building BLE’s 4th Avenue station…
or just improving the buses.
I think it’s an issue for older streets where they just put paving over a dirt street in the 1910s, with little stabilization done.
The ones in Portland streets that are encased in concrete in the 1920s don’t seem to have an issue, other than the asphalt top wears through eventually, as it does anyway.
In places where they just paved over the track and left the wooden ties from the dirt street era, there seem to be far more problems. When they run across those when doing utility work they usually tear those out.
I’d move its tracks to the center of Westlake Ave and make it a shared transitway with C and 40 buses. Island platforms for right side doors. These are like the transitways in central Amsterdam and Church Street in SF (for J-Church and 22-Fillmore).
SLU streetcar is so unreliable due to auto congestion and can’t stay on schedule. The few times I try riding it from Westlake Hub I never know when it will leave, neither on schedule nor is the departure trackable with real time arrive since it’s at the terminal. I could have walked but instead I’ve waited onboard for 15 minutes for what I think is an imminent departure.
The ones in Portland streets that are encased in concrete in the 1920s don’t seem to have an issue, other than the asphalt top wears through eventually, as it does anyway.
In places where they just paved over the track and left the wooden ties from the dirt street era, there seem to be far more problems. When they run across those when doing utility work they usually tear those out.
Makes sense. The utility work reminds me of how the city likes to do everything at once. They are putting down bus lanes in Ballard. Since they are doing that they might as well fix the sidewalk. Oh, and the buses are starting to wear down the street — they should add concrete. But before they do that, tear up the street because the plumbing is a bit old.
It would not surprise me if they do that on Terry, but just pave over the section next to the lake (if they convert it to a bike lane). I honestly don’t care that much. Of course it is interesting, but I look more at the finished product. Is it a smooth surface (for bikes and pedestrians) or not. I figure the folks in charge know what they are doing and can make the appropriate choices. Just to avoid confusion in the future I think I’ll write “pave over the track” even if they end up being ripped out.
Ballard Bridge FULLY closing nearly every weekend through October?? So pretty much don’t ride the D-line on the weekends. That’s gonna suck for alot of workers and stadium-goers.
Yeah, it is going to take a lot longer. Too bad the work on the 40 isn’t done (although that would only help so much).
iirc SDOT is waiting to do the Westlake work for the 40 until the Ballard Bridge work is done
They started the work for the 40 in Ballard a while ago (https://content.govdelivery.com/bulletins/gd/WASEATTLE-3b1b384?wgt_ref=WASEATTLE_WIDGET_420) but they may suspend some of that work during these weekends. They aren’t working on the Fremont section until next year while they may start working on the Westlake section in the fall. The Ballard Bridge work may be responsible for the late start but my guess it is mostly just money (the crews aren’t available until then).
Right, to prevent weird traffic issues around the Fremont Bridge when the Ballard Bridge closures are happening.
Both projects went to planning and design around the same time. The 40 TPMC took a long time due to lots of protest in both directions around the bus lanes; the Ballard Bridge project was fairly efficient but asphalt paving can basically only happen in summer.
Concrete paving can happen in winter – I’ve heard contractors say they appreciate the “free water” for mixing.
Has anyone else noticed that the crossover on the approach to Lynnwood City Center station is over 1.5 miles before you get to the station? This seems pointlessly bad to me for 2 reasons:
1) The train has to slow down after already getting up to speed in order to make the crossover safely, then get back up to speed again, wasting time
2) This limits the frequency of trains that can terminate in Lynnwood CC station. The 2 preceding trains will have to finish round-trips from the crossover to the station (not to mention dwell time, waiting for the switch to change, etc.) before the next 1 train.
Neither of these problems existed when the crossover was placed a couple hundred meters (at most) before the terminus, as was the case at previous and current termini such as Northgate, University of Washington, Tukwila, SeaTac Airport, and Angle Lake (my source: my memory confirmed by OpenRailwayMap). Why did Sound Transit place this crossover so far from the terminus it’s supposed to serve?
Crossovers need to be located in sections of tangent (or straight, level) track. The tail track north of LCC is curved. Most of the alignment between MLT and LCC has curves. I have not done a deep dive on every inch of the guideway, but would hypothesize that it’s located in the area with the best available tangent.
There’s a crossover north of LCC – I’ve seen trains using that crossover to switch tracks in pre-revenue service. I’m not sure when they choose to use that crossover vs. the one closer to MLT.
I’m talking about the crossover *south* of Lynnwood City Center station, around 222nd St SW. It looks like there’s plenty of straight track at most 200 yards southwest of Lynnwood City Center station, I don’t know why they wouldn’t put the crossover there, instead of over a mile away from the station.
“Crossovers need to be located in sections of tangent (or straight, level) track.”
They don’t necessarily NEED to be. They’re easier to build that way, but if necessary you can cram them into curves.
This is the new MAX junction between the new section of the red line that the crammed into the existing Gateway junction. It’s only the northern part of a crossover (formed by the middle track) joined to the new northbound track, but illustrates that curved switches are very possible:
https://www.google.com/maps/@45.5317978,-122.5643047,97m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MDkwMi4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
The crossover at Lincoln and 4th uses straight switches, but does so on a curve. Each switch uses a slight section of straight while everything else curves. The total amount of straight track they used was only about 30 feet of straight for each switch.
https://www.google.com/maps/@45.5079703,-122.6814464,49m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MDkwMi4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
This is the approach into Lynnwood.
https://www.google.com/maps/@47.8127957,-122.2983404,369m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MDkwMi4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
It is obvious that Link has somewhere around 300 feet of straight track at the transition between the left and right curve. This is some 10 times the amount of straight track available at this location over what TriMet had available for a crossing at 4th and Lincoln.
If they used curved switches like TriMet did at Gateway, they could easily use some of the curve to extend the crossover if they needed to.
This location next to the station
https://www.google.com/maps/@47.8151103,-122.2958487,184m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MDkwMi4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
may have some very broad curves to it, but it also has enough straight to it that they could have added a crossover here as well, if they used the 4th and Lincoln approach and installed the switches on the straight sections, and adjusted what they did elsewhere to account for the curves.
And here is an example from Scotland showing how they build a crossover into a curve:
https://www.google.com/maps/@55.0702746,-3.601902,3a,19.5y,129.46h,87.19t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sl69MVz1IS0_B2xZ3oOXjZg!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D2.809691600500628%26panoid%3Dl69MVz1IS0_B2xZ3oOXjZg%26yaw%3D129.4649522167645!7i16384!8i8192?authuser=0&coh=205410&entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MDkwMi4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
That’s the crossover for the potential 220 st sw infill station*. The lynnwood crossover is just north of it, they can travel north and then reverse back through the crossover.
You can view both on https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ if you zoom in enough.
(I didn’t verify myself with the sound transit documents but the website is generally pretty correct updated by others)
* By the way does anyone know if the infill station is still buildable there? I notice the wikipedia says so and the 2016 documents do but I haven’t found any recent documents. Or if anyone has a chance to ask a sound transit representative that would be nice to clarify.
Buildable? I’m pretty sure if pre-enginerring was already done. And if I recall, wasn’t 220th a “for-sure” station in the early stages just like East Margial was? *Should* it be built? For the sake of speed, no. However, there is some dense housing on within .5 miles on both sides of the freeway. And nothing but retail between I-5 and Hwy 99. Eventually you run into Swedish Hospital.
No doubt, 220th St would have to be reconfigured – just like 145th is currently. 200th St is a nightmare, not just during peak. Adding a massive rail station over it would, I feel, add onto the mess.
I’m a bit ambivalent on whether it is a good or bad idea. Mainly I saw how Edmonds wants it for an east west bus connection to their downtown. Mountlake terrace surprisingly didn’t discuss it much in their transportation document
But either way before we get into that would like to double check if it is buildable as in did sound transit make some preparations for it rather than this site is not level/ straight at all and would require rebuilding the rail versus just building the station. I know originally sound transit made plans for it and the old EIS said they would prepare the location but defer now I just want to check what the status is now
It’s still a deferred station. It just needs to be funded. There’s disagreement over whether it’s worth it for the current land use (a small office park). In ST2 ST thought the ridership market wasn’t there yet. But the station area may get redeveloped someday, or a general population increase in Snohomish County could make the station justified. There’s no idea when/if that might happen, since Snohomish County/Mountlake Terrace are still recovering from the real-estate convultions of the pandemic and now in filling in their actual new station areas.
I zoomed in as deep as I could, and didn’t see any crossovers between the one I mentioned (around 222nd St SW) and Lynnwood City Center station. If such a crossover exists, that would be really weird because my train to Lynnwood crossed over around 222nd and ran on the left for the last ~1.5 miles.
I do see a crossover *north* of LCC but trains don’t seem to be using that to switch tracks (by going past the station, then coming back on the crossover, like they used to do after Westlake when it was the terminus).
Can you drop a Google Maps link to where this Lynnwood crossover is? (I am also using OpenRailwayMap, but as far as I know, you can’t share links to specific points on the map)
There’s only one north of lynnwood.
> but trains don’t seem to be using that to switch tracks (by going past the station, then coming back on the crossover, like they used to do after Westlake when it was the terminus).
Odd they aren’t doing that. When I used the lynnwood link this monday I didn’t notice that though perhaps I wasn’t paying enough attention.
I too noticed the early crossover. It was almost immediately after we left Mountlake Terrace northbound.
I was wondering why ST even built the tail track if they weren’t going to use it.
Maybe it has to do with the temporary storage arrangement for 1 Line trains until the East OMF can be reached?
When 2 Line trains begin they seemingly have to use the crossovers north of the station. Trains will arrive every 4 minutes and it doesn’t seem to offer 8 minutes of time to use the crossover so far south of the station, stop at LCC, reverse the train direction and return (especially if the driver needs a short break).
Yes, I’m already worried the round-trip time to the crossover, (plus the usual boarding & alighting at the terminus, as well as time for the switch itself to change), will put a hard floor on time between trains.
So even a fairly small delay could impose knock-on delays on later trains because of the bottleneck at the crossover before LCC.
I hope (and think) they’re not using the tracks north of LCC for train storage, so they can switch to using that crossover to switch trains from NB to SB tracks.
> I hope (and think) they’re not using the tracks north of LCC for train storage, so they can switch to using that crossover to switch trains from NB to SB tracks.
I believe they are using the tail tracks for overnight storage, which will only be the case until they can run the full 2 Line. There will probably be some hiccups during pre-revenue service testing of the full 2 Line next year, but once they can get out-of-service trains across Lake Washington, they won’t need to use the tail tracks at LCC anymore, and the problem goes away.
> I believe they are using the tail tracks for overnight storage
If they are only using LCC’s tail tracks for *overnight* storage, why can’t they use it as a crossover during the day, when all trains are actually running?
Connor, they do use the tail tracks during the day to reverse trains. I saw trains using it today.
I think the strongest evidence that they intend to use the tail tracks when East Link opens is that the current signs on the NB platform say “Lynnwood City Center”, not “Angle Lake” as you’d expect from a terminal station.
I have ridden again recently and I’m happy to report that this time the driver did not use the crossover around 220th street, and instead switched tracks by continuing past Lynnwood CC and switching over there. I’m not sure why they used the 220th street crossover when I first rode on the Lynnwood Link extension.
Are there websites like this or The Urbanist that report on transit elsewhere in the region, like Portland and Vancouver?
I don’t know of any. Pugetopolis is a bit unique in having so many people commenting on transit and land use in social media. Streetsblog is a national site with transit/complete-street articles on six metros and the rest of the country, so you might find a link to a local blog in some of their articles, or find somebody in that area to ask. Whether it gets into Canada at all I don’t know; I’ve never read it regularly, I just respect it from a distance.
One place to look is neighborhood blogs. E.g., the West Seattle block has been covering Link’s expansion pretty extensively. They also would have links to other transit blogs, or their staff could advise you.
here’s a couple that I know about
LA mostly uses reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/LAMetro/
Minneapolis has https://streets.mn/
Vancouver I’ve seen https://buzzer.translink.ca/
Though I’ll note most of them don’t have as much commenting
I want to try to convince ST to not build Boeing Access Road station, which I believe will be a thorough waste of time and money. Any suggestions? Can I attend ST expansion committee meetings and give feedback? If so, what stage is the best time to do so, perhaps once the alternatives have been developed so I can advocate for “no build alternative”?
Good luck with that.
The only way I’ve seen ST not do sonething is if a major entity tells them no or offered them a major financial incentive.
Even simple things like adding new pathways or elevators or escalators are ideas that they refuse to consider.
Their public involvement staff is trained to send you a courteous response — and throw your comment into the trash. They don’t even make the summary feedback notes that get dicumented.
In well-organized advocacy groups, the current theory is that it is more effective to advocate for something, rather than the advocate against it. In the case of trying to stop an action or reverse a policy, the best way is, theoretically, to argue for a viable alternative, and explain how the alternative is superior.
For example, the anti-5th avenue station advocates were not very effective until the CID N/S station alternative was created to support that demand. Now, folks who oppose construction of a new CID station at Jackson street (either at 4th or 5th) can say “we support this alternative” and have a much stronger case.
The case of BAR, you’d need to come up with a viable alternative which provides benefits similar or greater than the real and/or perceived benefits expected from construction of BAR. Then, you’d probably want to share that idea somewhere with a advocacy base supportive of the cause. If the idea is acceptable, you’ll start to grow support. If the idea is unpopular, then it will die on the vine like so many other proposals dreamed up in this comment section.
In the meantime, there will be community feedback meetings and other opportunities to express your opinion to the System Expansion Committee. You might be well-served by reviewing Committee agendas as they are posted, keeping an eye out for BAR-related agenda items. I don’t think the Committees pay much attention to “off-topic” commentary.
To clarify a bit. The main people to convince is not sound transit but the sound transit board members (Seattle mayor, Bellevue county councilmembers) If you send a general comment to sound transit staff members that is generally not useful if you are asking for a large change
While I can see some benefit for arriving buses with the south of Grady Way site, departing buses would be faced with a long wait for a bus-only left light. The traffic engineers are going to make those buses wait.
They’d have to exit northbound with a left turn onto Grady Way and then turn left again onto Rainier. Yes, buses exiting the currently planned site have to make that left turn from Grady onto Rainier, but at least they are turning right exiting the planned site. Most of the time they’ll have to wait for a light, but during light traffic they can just right-on-red and be on their way.
One good thing with the double lefts from the southern site is that buses exiting would turn directly into the left turn bay rather than having to migrate over to it from the right-hand curb lane.
Either facility would presumably have a light-controlled entry to Grady.
The venerable STB comment section! It has already identified two problems with the Lynnwood Link and flat-fare rollouts:
1. Elevators and escalators breaking at all four new stations within the first three days. And a TVM at Mountlake Terrace.
2. Confusion over how the two-hour window applies to flat-rate transfers near the end of the window.
Take a bow, comment section.
> https://www.communitytransit.org/news-and-events/article-detail/2024/09/02/swift-blue-line-and-route-120
The swift blue line extension will be pretty exciting. It’ll connect shoreline and edmonds along Aurora Avenue to lynnwood link. Though just the northern edge of shoreline given swift blue will not have any stops in between, I guess I’ll have to transfer to the 101 or the rapidride E once at aurora avenue.
(I escooted to and from the avenue to the light rail station last week since there is no bus route yet.)
The Urbanist talks about the Lynnwood Station curent redevelopment proposals, Northline Village & The District that are pending approval to put shovels in the ground.
https://www.theurbanist.org/2024/09/04/lynnwood-city-centers-growth-aspirations-hinge-on-two-slow-moving-megaprojects/
Just curious, how was ridership on the Tuesday and Wednesday commute looking?
LLE Report Out for Wednesday, Sep 4 at 9 AM:
Still plenty of room heading south from LCC and MTS. Lots of seats available.
Picked up some standees at 148th. Lots of standees departing NGS.
Pretty full departing UWS. But still survivable. Didn’t go further south.
3-car trains are absolutely crushed. Don’t know why ST is running them.
But all-in-all, pretty good ridership. I was impressed.
Note: ST expects peak loading to be around CHS, so my observations were right in line with their modeling.
My guess is peak ridership will pick up next week. Some people took the week off.
I would add that the most likely place for crowding will be in the evening with an outbound train between Westlake and Roosevelt. Ridership is generally higher in the evening (as those out and about mix with rush-hour commuters). Once a train gets to Roosevelt there are a lot more people getting off the train than on. Likewise at Westlake a lot more people get on than off. If we have crowding it is likely to be somewhere in between there.
I’ve heard that many employers have a day a week where everyone is expected to be in the office. It’s often a Wednesday. They can often work from home on Mondays and Fridays. Or some employees work 9 hour days but get every other a Friday off.
It may be that the stats show less than true overcrowding on an average weekday but some days may have a problem..
I’ve heard that many employers have a day a week where everyone is expected to be in the office. It’s often a Wednesday. They can often work from home on Mondays and Fridays. Or some employees work 9 hour days but get every other a Friday off.
The agencies now have separate data for weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Now I want data for each day of the week. I’m greedy for data :)
Will be interesting to see ridership after September 14th, when Metro starts running bus routes to serve the Shoreline S / 148th St station. Until then, it’s not easy to get to the station ( I’ve made several 2 mile walks from 145th & Greenwood)
Yes, absolutely. I don’t think ST publishes daily ridership, so it will be hard to figure out the numbers. There will be some clues in terms of October versus September. Another set of clues will be Metro bus numbers. Some buses are new and some old buses are going away. It isn’t a complete story though, since most of the buses have multiple uses (e. g. the 333 connects Link to Shoreline Community College, but it also connects the RapidRide E to the SCC).
With the current crowding on Link at capitol hill station, it’s a good thing the 49 still goes downtown, as it’s more pleasant to get a seat than being packed in like sardines
Reading the sound transit rationale for why they station code numbering reversed north to be increasing and south to be decreasing seems a bit funny
> Why do the station numbers decrease going north and increase going south? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
You might wonder, “If interstate highway exits decrease in number traveling southbound, why do Link station codes increase when traveling south?” Good question! During our cultural review, we discovered that in some communities and the languages they speak hold certain beliefs or superstitions about specific numbers.
> For example, many English-speaking Americans consider the number “13” unlucky. In some East Asian cultures, the number “4” is considered unfortunate. For some Afghani communities, the number “39” has negative associations.
> Hence, we sought to avoid any potential negative associations with the neighborhoods and communities we serve. Designating a station in a neighborhood with high Chinese and East Asian populations with codes containing 4 could have been offensive.
I guess the numbering doesn’t matter that much since it’s just reversed but station code 47 would have been fine for cid. If it was 44 perhaps it would have been a problem, lol. and I guess 39 would have been at tibs?
Gee why is Westlake not station 75? That could put all of the Bellevue and RV stations in the 80’s for good luck! IDC would be 78! There would be a handful of stations ending in 4, but no 4# stations.
tbf, I get it. I’ve met people who are truly very superstitious.
Like if you visit Hong Kong, a lot of building design is centered around superstition and Feng Shui.
In Chinese culture for example, there is the belief that dragons are associated with strength, power, good luck, and protection.
Which is why in Hong Kong you see new buildings with many holes in the middle of them and lobbies with lots of windows and staircases at angles to allow dragons to flow through them with ease.
Engineering people who aren’t superstitious would argue that said design elements do have practical purposes like air flow and breaking up wind tunnels from forming, which is a big problem in most big cities. So it’s beneficial to both even if to most normal people it can sound a bit out there with the superstitious explanation.
Would be nice to see very robust east-west crosstown service for North of Downtown Link. An east-west route roughly every 10 blocks from the Sound to Lake Washington, and feeding into it’s closest station. It would cast a high coverage net over the entire area from Seattle to Lynnwood. Could scale back many local north-south routes for more frequent local east-west crosstown/feeder service.
It is tough to do in a lot of places, given the natural (and unnatural) geography. There are also gaps with Link stations. For example 85th is a major corridor to the west, but not to the east. At best you are forced south to 75th or 65th. There is no station in that area. So a bus that went across 85th/Banner/75th would skip Link. Instead the buses on 85th curve north and south (to the station) and the bus on 75th curves south to go to 65th.
Which is another point — we already have a lot of that. Likewise, the areas where Metro runs buses downtown (often to a fault) are areas where Link is largely irrelevant (or has plenty of connecting service). What exactly are you thinking of?
Unfortunately the street grid is skewed at best and disconnected at worse. I’d have it try to keep the straightest route but jog to hit the stations taking some liberties for important destinations, areas with no ridership potential, for example a few crosstowns..
-Richmond Beach/185th/Perkins Way/180th/Lake Forest Park
-145th
-130th/Roosevelt Way/125th
-Holman/Northgate Way/110th
Some fun ridership stats from today’s CT Board Meeting, pre-restructure:
Swift Orange Line numbers, WoW:
– over 3000 boardings on Friday, up 77%
– Saturday up 59%
– Tuesday up 26%
I imagine the Friday and maybe Saturday numbers could be a bit inflated from the opening celebrations and Tuesday perhaps a bit lower due to the holiday weekend.
Commuter Services that go to King County are down 36% WoW on Tuesday, and Local routes servicing Lynnwood City Center are up 7% WoW. It’ll be really exciting to see how ridership changes after the restructure. Hoping to see more people take transit with all the new routes + frequency improvements!
They also reported that the LCC garage was ~70% full on Tuesday – a board member made a quip that they’d like to see that occupancy fall and ridership increase 70% instead. A good target to aspire to, and hopefully the additional service improvements coming in 2025 help CT get closer to that number.
https://www.youtube.com/live/9Hgwpj5v8iI?feature=shared&t=417
@D,
Thanks! It’s great to see some real numbers on this blog for once.
The 36% decrease in usage of CT services to King Co is amazing, especially considering it is for the first commute day of the new system. I’d assume this is an average over the 400 and 800 series routes. On some of those routes I’d expect to see a bigger change than on others. Routes like the 402 would probably see the biggest drop.
The 7% increase in usage of local service to LCC is also a good sign, especially on the first day after a holiday when you would expect some commuters to be absent due to extended holidays.
But very good numbers. Kudos to CT for publicizing them so quickly.
As a side note, headway management has been an issue. CT attributes that to learning pains, and I’m sure that is at least partly correct. However I would also be interested in knowing if ST has deployed any of their gap trains during this period.
Gap trains will introduce a certain element of chaos into what would otherwise be a fairly reliable system, so it would be interesting to know if they have been deployed, and if the headway management issues align with the periods of gap train operation.
Kudos to CT for publicizing them so quickly.
I find it very difficult to find any numbers for Community Transit. Of the Northwest agencies, I’ve found them to be the most challenging. Unlike the other agencies, I’ve never seen a listing of ridership by route. At best they’ve grouped them by categories (Swift, commuter, corridor based, local feeder and suburban/rural). Thus you are left guessing how much of the “corridor based” ridership is the 201/202 versus the 101. The latest Transit Development Plan (https://www.communitytransit.org/docs/default-source/pdfs/programs/adopted-2024-2029-transit-development-plan.pdf?sfvrsn=e05472b8_3) doesn’t seem to even have that. Ridership on the buses was a little over 20,000 in the Fall of 2023 — but there is no hint as to how ridership is distributed. Occasionally you do get press releases like this one though: https://www.communitytransit.org/destination-guides/seattle/2024/03/20/community-transit-ridership-increased-23–in-2023. It isn’t as good as what other agencies (including Pierce Transit) release, but at least it is something.
Speaking of which, does anyone have a link to the data they mentioned in the meeting?
Ross, are you asking for a link to an article with the ridership numbers? I linked the timestamp of the video where it’s discussed.
Agreed on CT not being as public with ridership numbers as the other agencies generally though, wish they would provide a dashboard or even a table.
Ross, are you asking for a link to an article with the ridership numbers?
Yes. You copied the info from the meeting (thanks for that) but I was hoping there might be more information from a report.
@D,
CT is in the process of switching to PowerBI for their data management system, but apparently that is a few months out for the public facing part.
Apparently Swift has exceeded pre-2019 performance, which is really impressive. All others lag.
And note that CT counts customers, not boardings. So double their # for daily ridership that you can compare to the other agencies. Don’t ask me to explain that, I can’t.
Also, CT reports out on ridership weekly. Which is sort of impressive.
Lazarus, that’s great to hear! Looking forwards to seeing that data.
I came across this breakdown of CT service ridership from their 2023 Financial Report (page 100 in the report, but 105 in the PDF). Local route ridership in 2023 is down only 19% compared to 2019, but commuter ridership (CT and contracted service combined) is down 68% over the same time period. I think this further strengthens the argument for investing into more local service hours with the upcoming restructure.
Forgot to link the PDF: https://www.communitytransit.org/docs/default-source/about-us/budget-and-finance/2023-annual-comprehensive-financial-report.pdf?sfvrsn=4828cbe5_1
@D,
You are correct, commuter bus ridership has been slower to recover than other CT transit modes. But it also represents a fairly small slice of CT’s total ridership.
As of mid-August 2024, CT’s commuter bus ridership accounted for approx 11% of CT’s ridership base. The only modes that were smaller were vanpools and demand response, which together combined for an additional 7%.
The remaining 81% of CT’s ridership was split between Swift and local buses.
Interestingly enough, ridership on Swift buses is actually higher than the ridership on local buses. This is despite the fact that there are only 3 Swift routes, and despite the fact Swift Orange is designed to work with LLE, which of course wasn’t yet open in mid-August.
All this bodes very well for CT ridership after the restructure. CT will be putting their resources back into the modes that are most productive, and the Swift Blue extension to SNS in particular should garner high ridership.
It’s a brave new world in SnoCo.
You are correct, commuter bus ridership has been slower to recover than other CT transit modes. But it also represents a fairly small slice of CT’s total ridership.
It represents a fairly small slice of CT’s total ridership because it has been slow to recover. Prior to the pandemic, commuter routes were the largest category for CT’s ridership with over 30% of the ridership. Now they are much lower. But it isn’t because non-commuter buses are doing so well. They are still below what they were in 2019. It is just that they are close to fully recovered, while the commuter buses are nowhere near their previous levels.
By the way, it is very hard to find the old reports. The pdf I have was downloaded, so I don’t have the URL. The Wayback Machine only has more recent ones (using the current URL). The closest I found was this: https://www.scribd.com/document/428701027/2019-Transit-Development-Plan. It is a draft, and for some reason they list the numbers monthly (instead of yearly like the report I have) but the ratios are the same (see page 25).
“despite the fact Swift Orange is designed to work with LLE”
It also connects most of southwest Snohomish County’s most urban neighborhoods. It’s precisely the kind of area you’d expect ridership to increase most in, with or without Link.
It also connects Swift Blue to Lynnwood TC, which people have been clamoring for for decades, and where you could transfer to the 512 even before Link. When I attended events at Edmonds College I always had to choose between Swift Blue and 512+local bus. Now I can choose between Swift Blue or Link/512+Swift.
“despite the fact Swift Orange is designed to work with LLE”
It also connects most of southwest Snohomish County’s most urban neighborhoods. It’s precisely the kind of area you’d expect ridership to increase most in, with or without Link.
Maybe, but that assumes the 512 (or something similar). Lynnwood TC is a transit center, but not much of a destination. As a transit center it connects to many local routes. But the connection between those local routes would likely exist just fine without the center. The main value of the transit center is as a connection to Link (and before that the 512).
The Orange Line covers some areas, but the main connection it makes is the one you mentioned: Lynnwood TC to the college (and to a lesser extent the Blue Line). But if not for the transit center — and its regional connections — you could have very different routing. For example there are a lot of apartments on 164th. It would make sense to just run a bus from Mill Creek Boulevard (or further east) to SR-99 and then go south by Edmonds College and Swedish Edmonds and then end in the area or head west again towards Downtown Edmonds. Instead 164th is tied together with the college in a roundabout way simply because of the importance of Lynnwood Station. You can’t skip it, but serving it (with this route) becomes awkward.
@Mike Orr,
Yes, Swift Orange was designed around a connection to LLE. That is why Swift Orange serves LCC Station and doesn’t stay on 196th. And it is why Swift Orange saw such a large jump in ridership on the first commute day with LLE open.
As of the third week of August commuter routes only made up 11% of CT’s ridership. That places commuter routes third in ridership behind Swift buses and local buses. That is just data.
But even if commuter route ridership returned to its former levels, it would still be third behind Swift and local routes, and by a substantial margin. That is a reflection of advances CT has made in its other services.
Swift in particular has seen major advances. Swift green is only a few years old, and Swift Orange is only a few months old. That is why Swift ridership is so high, because CT has made major investments in the service. And those investments are paying off.
And those investments will continue in the future. Swift Blue gets extended to a highly anticipated connection to LLE on the 14th, Swift Green gets extended to UW Bothell in 2027/28, and a fourth Swift line will open sometime after that.
And CT will improve its local routes too as it redeploys resources freed up by deleting its commuter routes into Seattle.
All these things will vastly improve service in Snohomish County, and that is a good thing. And the data says it is working.
> Maybe, but that assumes the 512 (or something similar). Lynnwood TC is a transit center, but not much of a destination. As a transit center it connects to many local routes. But the connection between those local routes would likely exist just fine without the center. The main value of the transit center is as a connection to Link (and before that the 512).
Agreed. I suspect some folks might consider taking transit to LCC now that Link runs there – what might’ve been a 3-seat ride for some folks (local bus / Swift Orange + 512 + Link) could be 2-seat now which may seem more reasonable for many commuters.
I’d be curious to see ridership of Swift Orange by stop – I feel like Edmonds College, LCC, and Alderwood Mall are the busiest stops. I wonder how many folks will consider Link + Swift Orange as a more convenient commute to their school/jobs/shopping rather than Link + 512 + Swift Orange (or its predecessors)
Commuter Services that go to King County are down 36% WoW on Tuesday, and Local routes servicing Lynnwood City Center are up 7% WoW.
Since a lot of people took the week off (or at the very least Tuesday off) it is a good sign that routes that connect to Lynnwood Station are up. I am bit surprised that around 2/3 of the riders still take the bus to Seattle. There are a lot of different routes that do that, but most of them run only once or twice a day. One of the most frequent (the 402) is now redundant. The only route (or set of routes) that run more often than that are the 413/415 which serve 164th (and a couple park and rides). Most of those riders do have the option of taking the Orange Line to Link, but they may just prefer the one-seat ride to downtown. Of course not everyone has a one-seat ride to Lynnwood Station (yet). For example riders of the 412 can go from 132nd SE to Seattle five times a day (each way). But the local bus (the 109) only goes to Ash Way. In ten days the 412 will be replaced by the 901 (which ends at Lynnwood Station). So it makes sense that riders of the 412 continue to ride the 412 until CT makes that change.
Even though I’m critical of CT for the way they release their data, it is very nice that they have weekly data, as things are changing very quickly. This is an odd-period that only lasts two weeks. Lynnwood Link is here, but so too are the express buses. Comparing next week’s numbers (when riders are probably back from vacation and we still have the express buses) to the week after (when the express buses go away) will be very interesting. Hopefully they release that information.
I must admit that I found the effort to get between the Link platforms and the buses at Lynnwood City Center was much greater than it should have been. The only redeeming thing that I noticed was the artistic treatment on the adjacent weather barrier to the stairs providing a bit better weather protection.
65 steps down without a down escalator for a major transfer point was a stupid cost-cutting last-minute design choice. I am pretty sure there is only one elevator at that end of the station too, right?
I wish ST staff and Board cared more about the hassles of changing levels when transferring. ST claims to care about “rider experience” but their level change designs sure don’t show it. It rings hollow to me.
I’ve been riding the Lynnwood Link this week, and I’m wondering if anyone knows what’s causing the delays on the north section?
I’ve both experienced and heard this from others. Heading back north around 6, I’ve had delays at the N Shoreline, and MLT stations, with the MLT once turning to an “extended delay”. Today was both a short delay and some slow running, which gobbled up the 5 minutes I was hoping would be enough to catch my transfer home. At least I had my bike.
Any ideas? Will the upcoming transit reshuffle help? Can ST improve this? 4-car trains?!?
Usually such things are because a train ahead needs to clear. It’s been mentioned that the trains are crossing over a bit far south of Lynnwood City Center Station so that’s likely the issue. If there are two trains at Lynnwood a third train cannot enter.
I will note that there was a loud electrical discharge while the train I was in was at Shoreline South Station on Friday. So maybe there’s some other systems issue like electrical communications. I kind of doubt it but that would also create delays of a few minutes.
Anyway, I admit I don’t know the actual cause. I’m just mentioning the most likely causes.
Thanks Al,
Yes, all of the times I saw it happen were related to waiting for trains heading back south.
The electrical discharge – yikes! I know there are usually things that crop up, so I’m hoping they’ve got all of that sorted.
I just want to know what to expect, especially if trying to make a transfer!
Community Transit partners with local travel writer and tv host Rick Steves to do a video series of local Snohomish county destinations in the style of a Rick Steves Europe episode
General
https://youtu.be/cHPPJjxFcYg?si=4Ro2KvOsDIpc0LFS
Edmonds
https://youtu.be/gIwvb_AbRX4?si=PVYC7QxTTdU0g7El
Mukilteo
https://youtu.be/Fw5WU2Ba7Gw?si=6a1i7EldFsQGwzRk
Lynnwood
https://youtu.be/2nx-LTqr4_s?si=AKjS6wMHMfCns0Eg
I think it’s great!
I suggested that ST engage him for the train announcements a few years ago. I guess CT was thinking along the same lines!
Pat Cashman of Almost Live! would also be another good candidate for the job
https://youtu.be/h_AqTdHxQCU?si=2Ie-GczZlzZ6k23M
Can someone please explain why Metro is trying the Advanced Service Management experiments on two South King County routes, Rapidrides A and F, resulting in delays and longer arrival times for the A line at least, and not in different regions? According to customer service, the A and F are the only routes that are being used for this horrid experiment.
What’s Advanced Service Management?
It was in a document/website I saw a couple months ago, though I unfortunately cannot find it at the moment.
> Metro is taking another look atthe RapidRide A Line’s service area. To make sure the A Line can continue to provide the most high-quality service for riders, this improvement project will measure the area’s current needs. This work is starting in 2023—more information and a full project schedule will be provided to the public at a later time.
https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/travel-options/bus/rapidride
this is only link I can find at the moment, though I think? I saw some more detailed information somewhere else. I’ll update if I see it.
> Improve and modernize how we deliver service. Through service modernization, we will be able to better meet the evolving needs of our customers, employees, and the region—and be a model for transit agencies nationwide. Advanced Service Management aims to test delivering high frequency bus service using headway management (buses arrive at a set frequency rather than a schedule) and fall back operations (buses continually in service while operators take breaks) to increase the reliability of public transportation and reduce bus “bunching” (two buses arriving at a stop at close to the same time or simultaneously). Goals are to improve customer and operator experience by changing operational processes, testing headway management technology, and investing in route break spaces and comfort stations to better manage headway.
https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/about/policies/long-game
It is when you send buses out at a frequency instead of a schedule. That has resulted in A line buses being delayed between 8 to 15 minutes between 2pm and 7pm.
When RapidRide started Metro tried to use headway management instead of a schedule when it was 15 minutes or better (i.e,, not late night). So if a bus was late, instead of having two buses go almost at the same time, one would be held back to maintain 15 minute spacing. That resulted in even longer delays for passengers and maybe crowding.
There was a huge outcry, including on this blog, saying headway management is only appropriate when headways are 10 minutes or less. People can’t plan multi-seat rides and transfer timings when RapidRide is unscheduled and has 15 minute headways. Metro relented and published a full schedule.
If headway management is back, it may the new staff not knowing the lessons the old staff learned. This, we suspect, was the problem in the latest restructures. So I’d complain to Metro and it may be necessary to recreate the outcry, to remind Metro that unscheduled headways and holding buses back are unmanageable for passengers.
I have done just that. What started this for me was a bus that was scheduled did not arrive and the next one was extremely late because it had to pick up the slack of the bus that was canceled. When you are waiting for a bus in what is known as a high crime area, it can make things complicated.
When I called to find out what was going on, the response is where I found out about all this. I filed two complaints about it. The first one was about how this was causing delays during the afternoon and evening peak hours every week day, and the second was about how there was not a reasonable notification process and no reasonable path to learn about what was going on.
It’s my understanding that when Metro at first did try headway management for RapidRide, they didn’t fully commit to it. From the Control Center side of things, they were often too busy with other daily transit issues to monitor headway. And from the driver’s side of things, if their headway wasn’t being monitored by the Control Center, they didn’t adhere to it.
I’m a bit ambivalent on headway management. I think a light form of it is fine, it’s when transit agencies use it too much that it ends up becoming a large problem.
Currently most buses will already wait at fixed time points, the idea of the headway management is to remove the fixed time points and turn it into “dynamic” waiting points.
I don’t see how headway management is helpful.
As a bus rider, I generally want to get going as soon as possible. If a bus is late, that delays me getting to my destination. Or it might make me miss a transfer. I’d be especially annoyed if a bus was artificially delayed because a prior bus I’ve never seen was running late.
And if a bus on a busy route is late, it’s more likely that some people will be left behind at a stop, so they’d want the next bus to come asap.
And buses are an unstable equilibrium – bunching tends to happen spontaneously. It seems like headway management is just fighting the inevitable without much real benefit.
@Larry
It might make a bit more sense with some examples. Let’s say I have bus traveling from A to B (timepoint) to C and it’ll take 40 minutes. But I’m not exactly sure since there might be some traffic so Metro will actually label it as a 50 minute route and pad an extra 10 minutes at the end. Then from point A starting at 00 minute once it reaches point B it if it arrives there too early the bus will wait until 25 minute before continuing on. And then once it arrives at C, the bus will the layover and wait until 60 minute mark before turning around.
You need to do this otherwise with long bus routes if you just let the bus continue on the actual frequency experienced will be all over the place. If the bus travels too fast then there could say be a 30 minute gap. But on the other hand it kind of “wastes”* 20 minutes of time.
*(well some of the time is for the driver break at the end technically)
For instance if you look at Route 40 map https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/routes-and-service/schedules-and-maps/040#route-map there’s timepoints at Fremont, Ballard and Crownhill.
The idea of the headway management is to turn these fixed “timepoints’ into variable timepoints depending on how far or slow the buses are. Also hypothetically can run more buses slightly more frequently.
Of course it has limitations and isn’t magic. It’s like a 5~15% frequency gain at the cost of travel time. And some cities like new york abuse it too much to where you might as well just reallocate the bus coordinators into more bus drivers.
It is designed to reduce (or eliminate) bus bunching. I’m surprised it has had such a negative effective on the A Line. Isn’t the A Line all off-board payment? One of the key elements of bus bunching is boarding and dwell times.
Think of three buses: A, B and C. They are equally spaced and leave the layover in that order. Bus A is running just fine. Bus B gets delayed for a couple minutes for some reason. Now bus B carries more riders than it would normally as it is picking up riders that normally catch C. As a result, it gets delayed even more. This causes a vicious cycle as the bus gets slower and slower. Meanwhile, the gap between B and C is smaller, which means bus C picks up fewer riders. So it is actually running faster than usual. Next thing you know buses B and C start bunching.
With active management you delay buses that are running too fast to prevent bunching. In this case both A and C could be delayed to match B. That way B will carry a normal amount of riders (as will C) and they are equally spaced apart.
But it also means you are delaying other buses. The trip takes longer. It is actually better if you are in bus B, but worse in buses A and C. But if you are in bus B you still aren’t thrilled because the bus got delayed for some reason — it just isn’t as bad as it would have been without the system.
It has value, but if it is a problem (and causes significant delays) then we need to deal with the route cause of the delay. Why is the bus (and bus) delayed so much, especially one that is RapidRide?
With the advent of realtime arrival information I find that frequency based realtime schedule management to not yield much. It was a great idea before smart phones — but technology has made it much less effective.
With smart phone info, a regular rider will look at the schedule for the next bus if it’s running every 10 minutes or less. Over time they’ll rely on catching a bus about that time.
If that rider discovers that a bus is too crowded, they will see what time the following bus arrives using their phone. It hopefully would be catching up to the first bus. Some systems even allow a mostly empty bus to skip ahead of a full bus if there are no wires.
Bus bunching can be remedied by having an electronic sign on the lead bus saying that the bus is not boarding passengers until it catches up and simply keeps the front door closed. It’s a much easier and direct communications system than trying to manage a complex algorithm for every active bus on a route regardless of crowding.
Another thing is to have buses sorted in realtime as early, late or on time. If it’s late, the signal system could try to help by keep a light green or allowing an extra turn phase out of sequence.
The other place headway based management can be useful is if there aren’t enough bus riders.