Last week, Sound Transit released the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the West Seattle Link Extension (WSLE) ahead of its scheduled publication date of September 20. Although there’s technically one more comment period allowed for the FEIS, the massive document and its findings present a detailed review of each of the potential alternative paths Link may take from SODO to West Seattle.
Although the FEIS is focused on a vast range of potential tangible and intangible impacts the project may have, left unstated are the potential impacts of the project costs significantly exceeding Sound Transit’s assumptions in their 2021 Realignment.
Inflationary Measures
In 2016, the Sound Transit 3 ballot initiative featured the “West Seattle to Downtown Seattle Light Rail” project, with an estimated capital cost of up to $1.53 billion ($2.3 billion in 2023 dollars) for approximately 4.7 miles of grade-separated light rail and service at five stations (Stadium, SODO, Delridge, Avalon, and Alaska Junction). We’ve always known bringing light rail to West Seattle would be difficult, and support for the project became strained after early EIS analyses revealed likely project costs to be nearly double the ST3 estimate.
At the time, several of the more-expensive options were caveated with an acknowledgement the more-expensive options like tunneling under Alaska Junction, would require “third party funding” – that is, additional funding from a municipality or some other benefactor – to be built by 2032. With this in mind, the Board selected a “preferred alignment” which includes a second set of at-grade tracks at SODO Station, a high bridge over the Duwamish Waterway south of the West Seattle Bridge, an aerial station in Delridge, a slightly below-grade station in Avalon, and an underground station beneath Alaska Junction.
After selecting their preferred alignment, the Sound Transit Board requested a handful of “further studies” with the hopes of saving costs, reducing impacts on businesses and residences, and improving rider experience at key transfer points. As noted in the staff memo summarizing the results of these further studies, most of the refinements resulted in additional project costs.
It appears these cost increases, in conjunction with the well-documented inflationary spike in construction costs and similar spike in land values through the region, have contributed to the preferred alternative’s new estimated cost of $4.95 to 5.45 billion in today’s dollars.
Sound Transit wrote in the FEIS:
“Cost estimates reflect increased project costs due to steeply rising real estate prices and other construction expenses, and costs resulting from more advanced design that provides a better understanding of project scope and mitigation […] Sound Transit, City of Seattle, and King County acknowledge there may be shared responsibility to address the additional cost difference between the final project to be built and the realigned financial plan through either additional funding or cost-savings opportunities.”
Yesterday, the Seattle Times ($) published a report including updated estimates from Terri Mestas, Sound Transit’s new Deputy CEO of Megaproject Delivery who shared previously-unpublished preferred-alignment costs between $6.7 and 7.1 billion. These costs are reportedly based on the actual design of the preferred alignment undergoing preliminary engineering. The FEIS cost estimates are derived from a “unit cost” table reportedly developed in coordination with heavy civil construction firms, but the $6.7 to 7.1 billion estimate is a “bottom up” calculation based on designs which have almost reached the stage of 30% completion. It is unclear why the near-30% design estimate and unit cost estimates disagree. From the article:
“The numbers are upsetting to all board members, especially me,” said transit board chair Dow Constantine, a lifelong West Seattle resident. “I am very anxious to leave all of this planning behind,” and finish the design to learn the real costs, he said. “The worst thing we could do right now is be paralyzed and slow the project. Delay decreases the benefit and increases the cost,” said Constantine, who is King County executive.
With Sound Transit’s long-term financial plan expecting project costs of just under $4 billion, the agency, the City of Seattle, and King County seem to have an extremely steep hill to climb to be able to afford luxuries like a skyline-changing cable-stayed bridge or tunnelling to an underground station in Alaska Junction.
Tightening the Belt
Although it’s not the first time Sound Transit’s had to search the couch cushions to afford a project, it may need to consider much more severe cost-savings options. These options include delaying completion of the full extension by building a “minimum operable segment” from SODO to Delridge, considering less-expensive construction methods for the high bridge over the Duwamish, and reverting to an all-above-ground alignment as described by the “representative project” in ST3, but none of these options should be considered low-hanging fruit.
Further changes to the Preferred Alignment would require rework of the preliminary engineering effort already under way. As recently referenced in Sound Transit’s staff recommendation against the addition of yet another alternative station location to the Ballard Link Extension EIS process, taking time to assess new alternatives come with its own significant cost: nearly $50 million for each month of delay. Attempts to reduce cost estimates now by altering the preferred alignment may be negated by the simple fact that pouring concrete tomorrow will be more expensive than pouring it today.
Regardless, there does not appear to be much more space for cost-savings refinements between SODO and Avalon, with the Preferred Alignment adopting the lowest-cost alternatives for the SODO, Duwamish, and Delridge segments. West of Delridge, though, there are a few cost-savings options which are still on the table: 1) building an elevated terminus at Fauntleroy and Alaska; 2) cancelling Avalon Station, and; 3) building the minimum operable segment.
Reconsidering Alaska Junction
Although tunnel stations are attractive due to the reduced short-term construction impacts and fewer long-term displacements, the preferred “Medium Tunnel” alternative (WSJ-5b) is estimate to cost $700 to 750 million more than the “Elevated Fauntleroy Way Alternative” (WSJ-2). Sound Transit summarizes differences in ridership and impacts for each of the studied segments the table below.
Of course, the most striking differences are in the potential displacements; the elevated alternative with a station over Fauntleroy Way would displace over four times the residents (but about half the businesses) as the underground alternative. On the other hand, WSJ-2 is the only alternative to show notably higher estimated ridership than other options, likely due to the station location being two blocks east of the rest of the alternatives. The report notes ridership would be about 5% higher due to higher numbers of walk, bike, and drop-off/pick-up trips.
When faced with this prospect back in 2022, Sound Transit staff reported that due to land acquisition costs associated with going overground, the expense of drilling a subway would only be slightly more expensive than the elevated alternative. Now we can see this is clearly not the case. It seems that once again, the Board must seriously weigh the capital cost of drilling a tunnel against the political cost of demolishing hundreds of newly-built apartments.
And Then There (May Only Be) Two
Another difficult decision lies in the other cost-savings concept: the deletion of Avalon Station. First considered in one of the “further studies” completed in 2023, the Board apparently hoped that by cutting one of the three new stations planned for the line, it might to be able to afford a tunnel to Alaska Junction.
Unfortunately, the apparent savings of $350 to 400 million with alternative WSJ-6 are partially negated by increased costs to start the tunnel in Avalon, with the corresponding Delridge segment (DEL-7) estimated to cost $150 to 200 million more than the preferred alternative. For relatively meager savings of $200 million, this alternative would generate 300 fewer daily boarding and reduce the project to two new stations (elevated at Delridge and underground at Alaska Junction), an expanded SODO station, and a very shiny cable-stayed bridge over the Duwamish.
Sound Transit did not study an option to skip the Avalon station and stay elevated to Fauntleroy, an alternative which may have been prudent to review in the face of high tunneling costs.
The Minimum Operable Segment
If the full project is found to be no longer affordable on Sound Transit’s realigned schedule, the agency has little choice but to delay completion. To continue making progress on the project, the Board could choose to begin work on the “minimum operable segment”, or MOS, which would defer construction west of Delridge to a future date. Sound Transit has already floated this concept for the Ballard Link Extension in its earlier consideration of opening the extension to Smith Cove in 2037 then finishing the extension to Ballard in 2039.
For West Seattle, the segments from SODO to Delridge would be built first, with the rest of the extension to Alaska Junction finished later. How much later would depend on the cost of building the MOS, which is not presented in the FEIS. Based on the costs to build the SODO and Duwamish segments, though, the MOS would cost at least $2.65 to 2.95 billion not inclusive of the costs to build the temporary terminal station in Delridge.
Critical Support
Perhaps this latest cost increase will simply reinforce criticism of the project, but the choice remains between sparing no expense (no matter the cost), delaying for further study, or cancelling altogether. In a city famous for thinking, thinking, and thinking some more before actually doing anything, the return on investment from further studies is swiftly diminishing.
There may be an instinct to question whether voters would have approved a package containing such an incredibly expensive project in 2016; but there is little value in rehashing the same old arguments. The real question is whether Seattle will have the gumption to leverage this transit investment to grow the neighborhoods around these stations even more so than Shoreline, Lynnwood, Mountlake Terrace, Bellevue, and Redmond have around theirs.
Although Seattle should be willing to develop density around existing infrastructure and leverage incremental transit improvements to reduce car dependency city-wide, we must at least be able to plan for significant amounts of transit-oriented development around projects like WSLE to make the most of these major investments.
Looking Forward
In the meantime, the official 30-day public comment period starts on September 20. The Sound Transit Board Executive Committee will be briefed on the results of the FEIS during their today (1:30 to 3:30pm), and the full Board is expected to choose the final project to be built in a subsequent meeting. Once the Federal Transportation Administration issues its Record of Decision regarding the project and preliminary engineering is completed next year, design and pre-construction activities will continue with groundbreaking expected in 2028.
How much Federal and State money have they always been counting on to supplement their own funds?
I recall the State does barely anything for ST including funds. Is there none?
There really should be some financing mechanism at the Federal level where these locally raised funds with tax commitment can be put to work ASAP (back in 2016) and not drag it out over 30-40 years as prices go up in general plus inflation. Ideally also supplemented with additional Federal funds.
The holdup is ST’s debt ceiling, which is a state and agency issue. The state has a hard debt-to-asset cap, and ST has a self-imposed lower cap. ST3 is based on the equivalent of the ST1/2/3 tax streams, but the ST2 stream is still being used for CID-South Bellevue construction and the ST1 stream is paying down is bonds. It’s only when both of them are finished and have substantially paid down their bonds that they’ll be available for ST3 projects. So ST3 is receiving only a third or so of its annual revenue at this point.
ST was projected to hit the debt ceiling from the late 2020s to the mid 2030s (coinciding with West Seattle, Ballard, Everett, and Tacoma construction), so that limits how much construction it could do during that time. That was the reason for the 2022 realignment, to schedule expenditures with when they could be spent. Since then costs and scope have increased and West Seattle and Ballard planning haven’t finished, so I don’t know what period ST will be sliding along the debt ceiling.
ST’s 2024 financial plan (dated Oct 2023) assumes the North King Subarea will generate $4.327B in grant revenue (which is primarily federal grants) from 2017 to 2046. Presumably this is largely divided between the Northgate Link Extension, the Seattle and Shoreline sections of the Lynnwood Link Extension, the West Seattle Link Extension, and the Ballard Link Extension.
It’s unclear how much federal grant funding ST expects to get for specific projects such as WSLE.
My spicy take is that the state government should be blasted and shamed more for their failure to fund transit better in WA State and should be following BCs line of thinking and be contributing in more money towards transit projects or allowing for more revenue sources for ST to use. That’d piss off some of the more conservative austerity obsessed anti Seattle legislators, but to them “don’t bite the hand that godamm effing feeds you.”
Alongside wanting a governor who actually cares about the environment and being green instead of performative. Like I said before in a previous thread, WashDOT gives essentially blank checks to decades long highway projects, but do we see the treatment given to investment in transit, nope. And it’s deeply frustrating because the state should be a hell of a lot better on this.
“In 2016, the Sound Transit 3 ballot initiative featured the “West Seattle to Downtown Seattle Light Rail” project, with an estimated capital cost of up to $1.53 billion ($2.3 billion in 2023 dollars)”
Checked my copy of ST3 — “YOE” dollars only were used in the ST3 ballot measure, and no mention of “$1.53 billion” anywhere in it.
The $1.53B is from this project summary page: https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/LRT_WestSeattletoDowntownSeattle.pdf
Which is linked here: https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/documents-reports/sound-transit-3
The $700-750 million cost of the “Medium tunnel” alternative is close to the $800 million cost of the 4th Avenue Shallow CID station alternative.
4th Avenue Shallow would help everybody going from any 1 Line station to a 2/3 Line station or vice-versa, and would make Link more like a normal multi-line subway with reasonable line-to-line transfers. The “Medium tunnel” doesn’t improve travel time or station access for West Seattle passengers, and doesn’t do anything for non-West Seattle passengers. Yet ST is saying we must build the West Seattle tunnel but we can’t build 4th Avenue Shallow unless third-party money pays for it. That’s backward.
The “minimally operable” SODO-Delridge stub makes no sense. That’s going from nowhere to nowhere. There are a few jobs at both ends but not a concentration. Even getting to Avalon or Alaska Junction using Link would be a three-seat ride. A Smith Cove phase would at least serve SLU, Seattle Center, and the Amgen job center, and would allow riders to bypass the D Line congestion in Uptown and Belltown. A SODO-Delridge phase would do nothing like that.
The MOS doesn’t make much sense from a transit perspective, but it does make sense from a “getting the project started” perspective. The high bridge and tunnel to Alaska Junction are the two “hard” parts of the project; if there’s a mandate to build light rail to West Seattle, I think getting started on the very expensive and first-in-the-region cable-stayed bridge would be better done sooner rather than later.
This would give ST time to refine the elevated alignment in West Seattle, and then the opening of the “full” extension could be done a few years later (~2035-2036?) Then it’s “only” a few years until DSTT2 opens, unless that’s delayed due to similar cost increases.
It also makes sense if you believe that West Seattle Link is essential. It is common for large projects to get cancelled or delayed indefinitely when they become too expensive. But if you have built a significant part of it, it is likely to be finished. I can’t help but think that is what Dow Constantine was thinking when he prioritized West Seattle Link. Remember, he was around when the Seattle Monorail Project was around. The plan was to run a monorail from Ballard to West Seattle. Then, when money was short, the plan was to just run the monorail from Ballard to downtown. It would not surprise me at all if he made sure that West Seattle gets built first in case we have cost overruns and can’t build what we planned on building (which seems likely now).
Not if ST builds Delridge-SODO but then can’t build the rest of West Seattle or Ballard, then we’d be left with an expensive stub to nowhere.
Some additional notes not included in the post:
The FEIS estimates boardings for the project in Chapter 6:
It is also uncertain if Metro would significantly truncate service from West Seattle to Downtown while the Junction-SODO stub (or Delridge-SODO) stub is operating. In the past, folks have complained that potential 1-seat rides will turn into 3-seat rides, presumably referencing a trip on the C or H from WS to Downtown. It’s not clear this would ever be the case.
Construction of the expanded SODO station is expected to fully close the existing SODO station for a year.
“It is also uncertain if Metro would significantly truncate service from West Seattle to Downtown while the Junction-SODO stub (or Delridge-SODO) stub is operating.”
The Metro Connects Interim vision says it won’t. The C and H continue until the 2050 vision when the full West Seattle line will be operating. (Previously these were called the 2025 and 2040 visions, but they essentially mean “after ST2/the WSJ-SODO stub” and “after ST3”.)
In the past, folks have complained that potential 1-seat rides will turn into 3-seat rides, presumably referencing a trip on the C or H from WS to Downtown. It’s not clear this would ever be the case.
Probably not. But there would be other three-seat rides that would be likely be introduced when West Seattle Link is complete such as trips from West Seattle to South Lake Union, First Hill or Bellevue.
Ok, West Seattle to SLU is basically the only case where a 1-seat ride (via RR C) becomes a 3-seat ride with two seats on trains.
For the other destinations, those seem to be 2-seat rides already, which would become 3-seat rides where the bus-on-freeway sections are replaced with a train. I’ve specifically seen folks complaining about the change from 1-to 3-seat rides as if every West Seattleite wanting to leave the peninsula after 2032 would have transfer at least twice.
> after 2032 would have transfer at least twice.
Well technically if you are talking about using the stub line it can become a four-seat ride.
Westwood to Bellevue =>
1) C or H line to downtown Seattle.
2) 2 line link to Bellevue
Westwood to Bellevue 2 =>
1) C or H line to Alaskan Junction / Delridge
2) West Seattle Link to Sodo
3) 1 line Link to Chinatown
4) 2 line Link to Bellevue
If when the west seattle link through runs, that’d be when be when ballard link opens in 2039 — though given west seattle has cost overruns that’d probably be pushed back assuming they stick with the current project design.
I am rather surprised that there isn’t discussion about through routing the West Seattle trains through the DSTT in this document. Maybe it’s because it would be a new alternative so it can’t be a Final EIS.
Anyway, given the overcrowding going on in North Seattle on Link this week, the lingering doubt that East Link will never need trains every six minutes as well as the real-time bridge crossing restrictions that may be required and the apparent ability for the DSTT can handle more frequent trains. It seems like an obvious operations strategy. That’s especially true if the cash flow challenges push DSTT2 out further. A stub for 5 years is corny, but a stub for 12-20 years is ridiculous.
“I am rather surprised that there isn’t discussion about through routing the West Seattle trains through the DSTT in this document. Maybe it’s because it would be a new alternative so it can’t be a Final EIS.”
It’s because ST steadfastly refuses to consider it no matter how many times we ask them to.
This could be another way the EIS is incomplete. ST is asserting DSTT1 will not have capacity. It had a candidate project to upgrade DSTT1 to support 1.5 minute trains instead of 3-minute trains but it deselected it when it selected DSTT2.
WL, it’s fairly clear the buses won’t be truncated until WSLE’s connection to DSTT1 is finished as part of BLE, so a four-seat ride isn’t necessary for that route. It may mean more train time, but would also mean going up-n-down to change trains at SODO.
We don’t need to speculate on C/H truncations before West Seattle is interlined with downtown until/if Metro or SDOT makes concrete proposals/plans to do so. That’s very unlikely, because Metro Connects suggests the opposite, and forced transfers with no shiny new amenity to point to would be a PR nightmare. A stub is not a shiny amenity that would excite people and make them feel they’re gaining more than they’re losing. It’s why the East Link restructure is delayed until the full 2 Line opens.
West Seattle to SLU is basically the only case where a 1-seat ride (via RR C) becomes a 3-seat ride with two seats on trains.
Yes. The majority of trips would only see one extra transfer. To be clear, I’m assuming a complete building of West Seattle Link and the truncation of buses. As WL pointed out, if they truncated with a stub, then there would be another transfer on top of that.
The continuation of bus service through to downtown Seattle would be an excellent idea, but it also shows just how bad the current plan is.
It also shows how, if they really wanted to throw $7 billion at solving a problem that doesn’t exist, they could just make the new bridge a transit bridge for both light rail and buses.
One thing about this is that that ST is issuing this as a “Final EiS” rather than a revised “Draft EIS”.
This is potentially challengeable, given how NEW things have been revealed such as the cable stayed bridge. I don’t think any cable stayed bridge in the US has been built without having a draft environmental study first. I’m not a land use attorney, but I would advise that anyone looking at litigation to pounce on this.
This really makes me wonder if ST even cares about environmental impacts. This should be issued as a supplemental Draft EIS or a completely new Draft EIS — and not a Final EIS.
The biggest cost issue with the elevated alignment is the need to take property for the station envelop, so I’m perplexed on why there is not an option that places the stations within the public ROW. In Chicago the Loop stations are entirely elevated over the public road and that seems to work just fine.
It’s worth mentioning that SDOT has recently proposed to close Alaska Street to all traffic — and allowing only buses, bicycles and pedestrians on the segment between California and Fauntleroy.
At least for the junction station, ST said that the distance between the elevated station and the buildings would violate fire code, which they said was unlikely to make an exception.
And it couldn’t move the station a bit….
My understanding was that this was in the case where an elevated link station was above the road between two buildings. Shifting the station left or right only trades one clearance for another while shifting north or south only changes which buildings have clearance issues. So there ends up being no situation that doesn’t demolish at least one building.
Elevated above Fauntleroy would avoid this though? Seems to be a Pretty wide ROW. And you could always run at the surface a few blocks is you have to terminate *at* Alaska Junction.
Does Sound Transit have any legal obligations based on the public vote to complete a light rail segment, or does it have discretion without another vote to spend the money on BRT improvements instead? West Seattle light rail was always a bit questionable but at this point, it’s looking like a really bad deal.
I suppose even aside from the legal issues, there’s a public trust issue if this project is canceled. But perhaps if a case was made about spending the money differently to get better results, the politics could be moved. Especially if someone like Dow Constantine could be persuaded that it’s time to change the approach.
> I suppose even aside from the legal issues, there’s a public trust issue if this project is canceled.
The project will probably be heavily modified given the scope creep.
> Especially if someone like Dow Constantine could be persuaded that it’s time to change the approach.
Dow Constantine lives in West Seattle and advocated for it, they are probably the last person who would cancel it. More likely the other subarea board members who fear their light rail lines would get cancelled are more likely to adjust west seattle
I know he’s a huge backer of West Seattle light rail to this point, but it seems like to move the local politics, someone who has previously been a big supporter and has local credibility needs to change their mind. I don’t know enough about West Seattle politics to come up with other names, but at some point you’d think even Dow would be worried about the return on investment.
Unfortunately, I don’t think any of the board members calculate/consider in terms of cost per ridership. That’s only what the sound transit staff, federal government and transit advocates talk about.
Typically the board members care more about coverage (more than frequency) and timelines.
I’ve listened to a couple meetings and pierce and snohomish council members bring up timelines for the cost overruns, they would be the ones most likely to try stopping west Seattle cost overruns for fear of their projects being pushed further back
“Rethink the Link” didn’t exist when ST3 was passed; there was no known organized West Seattle activists against Link. Since then ST has deviated from the representative alignment and made it worse, costs have risen, and West Seattle activists have emerged arguing against West Seattle Link from a passenger-experience perspective rather than just nimbys or anti-tax people. So Dow can put that in his pipe and smoke it, and see if that gives him any reason to revise his ideas and priorities.
It’s not just Dow that lives in West Seattle, it’s other prominent politicians and former politicians.
I don’t see the project getting cancelled. I only see it getting scaled back.
A good example is how the DEIS for East Link went to Downtown Redmond — but the last segment wasn’t funded until ST3 happened.
Just dropping the last segment (stop at Avalon/ 35th), not building that expensive showy bridge and reconfiguring the SODO station to use existing platforms would drop the costs by about $1B to $2B.
And let’s not forget that Ballard plus DSTT2 is making this cost overrun look like peanuts.
Well, there’s also a case for canceling DSTT2, and instead doing the upgrades to the existing tunnel to support 2-minute headways to save money on that project.
“And let’s not forget that Ballard plus DSTT2 is making this cost overrun look like peanuts.”
SLU, Seattle Center, and Ballard dwarf West Seattle’s ridership and walkable destination opportunities.
The EISes have to consider all reasonable alternatives, and in the past they’ve included BRT alternatives like in Lynnwood Link. But ST has recently been arguing that no BRT alternative is reasonable, and it’s up to somebody to sue ST and argue it is reasonable and the EIS is incomplete without it. Then it would be up to a judge to decide. That hasn’t happened with any of the EISes so far.
The specific mandate is for high-capacity transit between the downtown regional center and the West Seattle Junction urban growth center. Similarly, with Ballard it’s to have a station in SLU and a station in Ballard. Light rail is the presumed minimum level of service because that was in the ballot measure. ST could argue that light rail is infeasible or unnecessary and revert to BRT, but that would face a challenge that light rail was in the ballot measure, so I don’t know how ST could reconcile those two, or how a judge would.
We have plenty of cost-saving ideas for ST when/if it’s ready to consider them, both light rail, automated metro (cheaper, smaller cars, more frequent), and BRT. We’ve written articles about several of them over the past year and beyond.
Dow has been the one putting the West Seattle SODO stub first, and West Seattle before Ballard, and refusing to consider any BRT alternatives for West Seattle. Maybe these costs will convince him to change his mind, but so far nothing has.
Thanks for clarifying. I’m aware of most of the alternatives, as I’ve been following this site nearly from its beginnings. I just hadn’t thought about canceling because despite the bad design decisions that have been mounting, it seemed like badly designed WSLE was a foregone conclusion. But with the change in costs, maybe the political establishment and Dow in particular will finally wake up.
I’m generally one who would rather spend extra money to do things right, but when you are spending lots of money to do things wrong, that’s a different conversation.
In the past the BRT alternatives were a joke. Little to no investment in infrastructure, which means buses stuck in traffic. This led them to conclude that it would be especially slow. A true BRT option was never considered.
At a minimum I would build ramps from the Spokane Street Viaduct to the SoDo busway. That gets you 90% of the benefit for 10% of the cost (and provides things that the train doesn’t — like a one-seat ride to downtown). A bus tunnel would be BRT, but it is highly unlikely they go that route, even though it would provide a lot more in the short run.
Minimum Operable Segment, eh? Keep an eye on that one.
What does this cost per station? Like $2.3 billion? How much incremental TOD opportunity is there in, say, Avalon with this project? Maybe, with the giant guideway and station and bus transfer facilities required, less than there is now! Things don’t work this way, but think, what would that $2.3 billion buy if spent on constructing affordable housing directly?
What does this project cost per new rider? How many riders would actually be new? Are there even any new riders? I can’t even run these numbers, it’s enough to buy them all a downtown condo. It might be undefined.
Since we can’t, as a region, possibly acknowledge an error and reconsider it, it’s time to start calling this project what it will soon become, the Delridge Stub.
The Delridge Stub will connect a bus intercept facility situated at the the industrial north end of Delridge to all that is SODO.
It will create a carbon debt it will never pay off to construct the the Duwamish Crossing, the most expensive and environmentally damaging part of a project that is, overall, both unnecessary and unhelpful.
Because this would force a 3 seat ride for most, direct bus service to downtown would have to continue. To spend this much public funds on something this irresponsible will eventually (and should now) be seen as scandalous. And still avoidable.
The obvious solution is actually much simpler than building West Seattle Link. Develop a much better alternative plan that self-evidently wins on the merits. Build new ramps from Spokane to SODO busway or whatever tweaks we need. Get a fleet of clean electric buses and run them on an upgraded version of the route network. Take maximal advantage of what we already have, West Seattle Bridge, SR 99, bus lanes. Paint more if need be. Run direct service to SLU through the tunnel. Stuff we can do incrementally, much more quickly and effectively, with super low construction impacts and disruption.
Or, carry on and build The Delridge Stub. Which is what I predict we will do now.
I knew this huge cost run-up would happen when all those large apartment projects went up in the zone where this line was already envisioned, same with Ballard. It’s all entirely predictable, as is the ultimate folly and futility of this politically motivated extension.
If we just build a flyover ramp for buses from the WSB to NB SR-99, tens of thousands of daily transit commuters from all over West Seattle would have a faster, more convenient ride to downtown than the Link route will ever provide. And then if we could get SDOT to spend a single afternoon tweaking the (baffling) signal timing on Alaskan Way, we’d probably even have bus commutes to downtown as fast as they were in the glory days of the viaduct!
Agreed. Another alternative is to build ramps from the Spokane Street Viaduct to the SoDo busway. The advantage to that is that not only do you avoid the areas that are really slow, but you connect to Link fairly early. This is the best of both worlds. You have your connection to Link but you also have a one-seat ride to downtown. This means trips to northern Link destination (Capitol Hill, UW, Northgate) only take a little bit longer than if would if you built West Seattle Link. But it means you avoid a transfer (or two) if you are going to Beacon Hill, Rainier Valley, SeaTac, downtown, South Lake Union, First Hill or anywhere on the East Side. Overall it is just better and cheaper for the vast majority of riders.
West Seattle Link doesn’t actually serve major destinations. It is just a connection between the buses that serve West Seattle and Link. If Metro decides not to truncate buses, then it will get a few thousand riders. Ridership at each station will be similar to Beacon Hill. Not desolate by any means, but not huge either. If Metro does truncate the buses (as expected) then a lot of riders would be better off without it.
Thanks Ross. I’ve never really considered the Sodo busway instead of 99, but at least in terms of physical space for new ramps, it seems more feasible than the already tangled infrastructure around 99. Maybe they could put a fork in the 4th Ave exit, where a bus-only ramp drops straight down to a left-turn into the bus way, similar to the 1st Ave exit? And I guess buses could still use 99 SB, since that is rarely congested.
I assumed the Sodo busway would be much slower than 99 due to the traffic lights at Spokane, Lander, Holgate, Royal Brougham (x2), and Seattle Blvd, all in the distance before 99 hits the first light at Dearborn. Nowadays the buses fly smoothly along that whole span at highway speeds in the bus lane.
Plus the buses would have to travel further east on the Spokane Street viaduct, into some risky interactions where cars lurch over to the exit lane from the parking lot of the I-5 queue.
Would it really benefit UW-bound riders to transfer onto Link at Sodo/Lander, compared to transferring at Symphony Station after a ride along 99? I’m not sure how much time it would save them, since they’d still have to ride through the stadium, ID and P Square stations. And I can say from experience that it’s easier to find room on a Link train to step in and sit down if you board at Symphony or Westlake, compared to trying to board at Sodo, which will only get more true once Link is running from Federal Way…
I assumed the Sodo busway would be much slower than 99 due to the traffic lights at Spokane, Lander, Holgate, Royal Brougham (x2), and Seattle Blvd, all in the distance before 99 hits the first light at Dearborn. Nowadays the buses fly smoothly along that whole span at highway speeds in the bus lane.
I think either one would work, and not cost a huge amount of money. There are trade-offs:
1) Via Busway — Makes an early connection with Link. It is basically the counter-argument to what is probably the strongest argument for West Seattle Link — people are going to places like Capitol Hill, UW and Northgate so they want the fastest connection as possible. The pathway is the same pathway that Link takes, which means that investments in additional overpasses (e. g. at Lander and Holgate) would benefit both. It does get messy at Royal Brougham Way, but if you throw a bit of money at it then it seems like it would work out just fine. Basically this is the best option in terms of connections (reverse direction to Link/Renton, closer to Sounder, Amtrak, East Link) even if isn’t necessarily the fastest way to get downtown. Oh, and it benefits other busway buses (from Renton, etc.).
2) Fix the current pathway. This is actually the way I was leaning for a really long time. I don’t think it would be that expensive either. Like you said it is pretty fast except for a few little messy areas. Might be the cheapest way to get the fastest speeds (since you don’t need to mess with overpasses in SoDo or Royal Brougham Way). Awkward connection to King Street Station, but just fine for Link. Maybe a bit slower for trips to the East Side (and quite a bit slower for reverse-direction trips) but not as many people take those trips (and it would still be better than West Seattle Link since West Seattle Link would force an additional transfer).
I’m leaning heavily towards the first option just because it seems like the strongest argument against West Seattle Link. There are trade-offs with every approach. But this one has just about all of the advantages of West Seattle Link and then some. In contrast the current pathway is more apples and oranges.
I think both should be studied. I think both are much better for West Seattle riders than West Seattle Link. West Seattle Link is a sledgehammer being used on a tack. Not very effective and way too big.
The effort to transfer matters as much as the transfer itself.
The Junction station will be so deep that it will take 3-5 minutes to get from a bus to the platform, for example. One advantage to SODO is if riders could transfer at the same level without crossing a wide street.
Which bridge technologies are possible for the Duwamish? Would an ugly bridge that looks like a regular elevated segment be feasible? It could always be painted an interesting color(s).
I don’t like the look of cable-stayed bridges, especially that design with concrete “needles” and a modernist look. The needles look as bad as any elevated segment or freeway. So I don’t see the point in spending extra money for a design like that.
Not only are cable stayed bridges more expensive, but this one is on the edge of the flight approach path for Boeing Field. The height of the tower could make it or the cables more at risk if an airplane collision — if only a private aircraft.
They are popular for really long spans over 2000 feet. This crossing is nowhere near that distance.
From what I’ve read, these bridge designs have more sway than an arch or box girder bridge. So it’s not required. There are plenty of rail arch bridges at this distance. They’ll not have a tower endangering the flight path.
Someone thinks it’s pretty. The political term for that is “signature bridge”. But it’s not only not needed, but it’s a riskier and more expensive design choice.
Good article Nathan.
Why would anyone think Dow Constantine would rethink WSLE because of cost? He always knew costs for WSBLE were lowballed, which is why he put WSLE first. If he has objections he would have started before the FEIS was issued.
Who is going to sue under the FEIS and have standing? To sue ST you better be a major stakeholder, and they tend to work from the inside and ST usually caves (i.e. UW, Bellevue).
The whole point of the new alignment is to remove standing, mostly property owners along an elevated line. I can’t imagine someone or group from another subarea would have standing because they are not paying for WSLE. Could Ballard sue because WSLE will likely make Ballard Link unaffordable? Probably not, who would fund the expensive litigation, and ST will claim there will be plenty of money for Ballard Link which by the way Ballard wants underground too.
Some ragtag group from West Seattle would not have standing to sue based on cost. They are benefitting at the expense of others. Re: the bridge who could have standing there? Maybe the Port or affected businesses but they are already on board.
When you see a draft FEIS the cake has been baked by the stakeholders. No one on the Board will complain because it either isn’t their subarea, or because like Harrell and Constantine they WANTED this. Dow and Harrell will argue to the other subareas their subarea paid to run the spine to the county lines which is true. Balducci doesn’t care.
We can go home. The cake is baked. This will be the final alignment, even if it exhausts the subarea’s funding. Of course does it really matter with Ballard Link and DSTT2 now estimated at $15 billion? Is WS suppose to have an elevated eyesore when Ballard Link isn’t affordable anyway? I wonder if ST didn’t release the $15 billion estimate for BLE to make WSLE look reasonable. I remember not long ago some posters on STB arguing the actual costs for WSBLE would be $20 billion and Mike and the comment section going apoplectic on such “speculation”.
WSLE will be it, along with Graham St. and 130th, and I think the Board knew that when they added 130th and Graham St. stations. The Board is not transparent, but I am sure someone asked in private can we afford WSLE, DSTT2 and Ballard Link, and were told no, so chose one and 130th and Graham St. If Ballard Link would cost $15 billion what other options are there? I don’t think the enhancement program is designed to cover $10 billion for BLE.
Unless Harrell objects because of funding for DSTT2 I see no change to the alignment, and Harrell isn’t objecting for whatever reasons. Probably because downtown and SLU stakeholders don’t want 10 years of disruption for DSTT2 and Amazon is moving a lot of Seattle workers to Bellevue.
“Why would anyone think Dow Constantine would rethink WSLE because of cost?”
Because people sometimes change their mind over time. Because the feedback politicians get from constituents changes over time. Public attitudes change and evolve over time. What may have been a political advantage in the 2016 may be a disadvantage in the mid 2020s or 2030s.
“Why would anyone think Dow Constantine would rethink WSLE because of cost?”
“Because people sometimes change their mind over time. Because the feedback politicians get from constituents changes over time. Public attitudes change and evolve over time. What may have been a political advantage in the 2016 may be a disadvantage in the mid 2020s or 2030s”
Mike, do you have any evidence that Dow is getting feedback from constituents, especially those in WS, opposing this alignment, or that public attitudes over WSLE have changed since 2016 except there is less enthusiasm overall for transit? Or Harrell?
The only basis to complain is cost, and they don’t see themselves paying for it. Instead they paid for Link from the Snohomish Co. border to S. King Co. and now they are getting their fair share. I’ve rarely if ever have seen a community object because the government project they are getting costs too much. The folks on this blog complaning about the cost don’t live in WS. Just like Issaquah Link or RRG, it is always someone else’s Link or transit that costs too much.
If Dow was having second thoughts for some reason other than cost he would not have waited until the FEIS was released to deal with those concerns. That was my main point. Don’t rely on Dow to change the FEIS. Or Harrell. Not sure who else there is.
What is the option you are advocating for? Save a billion or two with an elevated alignment for WSLE, or shave a station off the alignment, and then what? Ballard Link is estimated now to cost $15 billion. A billion or two from WSLE isn’t going to make Ballard Link affordable.
The N. King Co. Subarea has only so much ST revenue and grant funding, probably around $10–$12 billion through 2046 plus $1 billion from the other subareas for DSTT2 (based on the original estimates cost of $2.2 billion). At $15 billion Ballard Link isn’t affordable, period even with no WSLE. So, do you use the money to bury WSLE to avoid backlash over an elevated line and build stations at Graham St. and 130th and skip Ballard Link, or what? Where else would you spend the extra $1–$2 billion in savings from WSLE because it won’t afford BLE.
I don’t see the other subareas complaining about not contributing to DSTT2.
Don’t get me wrong. I have deep reservations about the cost of most ST 3 projects and RR G based on cost per rider. But if Ballard Link — suddenly — is unaffordable at $15 billion even if no other ST projects are built in N. King (except 130th which is under construction) then where do you spend the $1 to $2 billion in savings from an elevated WSLE that would be politically very unpopular?
Without a compelling alternative where else to spend the money from an elevated WSLE telling Dow or WS an underground WSLE costs too much will fall on deaf ears.
There have been a few posters on this blog predicting this for years. I don’t understand why it should suddenly be a surprise. The subarea reports predicted this since 2020.
“Mike, do you have any evidence that Dow is getting feedback from constituents, especially those in WS, opposing this alignment, or that public attitudes over WSLE have changed since 2016 except there is less enthusiasm overall for transit?”
Do you have any evidence what feedback he’s getting? You’re the one saying he will definitely do certain things.
“The only basis to complain is cost, and they don’t see themselves paying for it.”
You’re reducing hundreds of thousands of people to a single viewpoint. I know different people think differently and have different concerns because I see them and talk with them. When you get a large number of people like 10,000 or 100,000, they don’t all think the same thing.
We don’t know everything somebody else thinks, especially somebody we don’t know and don’t see all day or every day. They may not even know themself what would make them change their mind until it happens, They may be sure something wouldn’t change their mind, but then suddenly it does.
Mike, many public comments have already been received by ST for the WSLE. You don’t need to take my word for it. Here is a link to the FEIS section summarizing those comments and ST’s responses. West Seattle Link Extension Final Environmental Impact Statement – Comment summary (soundtransit.org).
Generally, I take an agency’s “summary” of public comments with a grain of salt, especially ST. The comment summary is broken down into segments with an overview of the comment per segment, followed by a grid with comment and responses. It isn’t clear how many individual comments make up a “summary”, or whether ST excluded comments from individuals who don’t live or work in WS. I didn’t submit written comments because I don’t live in WS or the subarea so don’t think my comments are relevant.
I don’t see any comments about the cost of WSLE except “Some support for removing Avalon Station to save cost” and an at grade alignment at Sodo to preserve the busway. Mostly the comments as expected have to do with residential displacement, construction impacts, impacts to businesses, bus transfers, freight and maritime industries, preserving neighborhood character, impacts to the golf course, road closures (temporary and permanent), support for tunnels and underground stations, and “Building a gondola instead of light rail to reduce costs, shorten the project schedule, minimize greenhouse gas emissions, and minimize impacts” which sounds like Martin and which ST’s response noted is not consistent with ST 3.
If I had to give one summary of the comments it is WS residents would like an underground Link alignment with no disruption during construction and no disruption or changes to the existing surface businesses, houses, and amenities like parks or golf courses. Pretty much the same comments the DSA had about a midtown station, Amazon has about a station at SLU, Ballard has about a station on 20th, and the CID had about a second station for CID at 5th and Jackson.
If there is one complaint I have about Nathan’s excellent article it is he states a community must change its zoning or character in order to receive a Link extension, especially when the voter approved extension has a high cost per rider, when the public comments are pretty much the opposite. If I glean anything from the summary of public comments it is that WS does not see WSLE as “transformational” or worth a change in character, zoning, or construction disruption (although the last one is not really an option).
Which is exactly why WS wants it underground. Theoretically these public comments helped select the preferred alignment. If I can read that so can Dow.
I had a longer response but decided to cut it short. Such is the life of a writer.
I’m not saying West Seattle or any other community must legalize significant new development to “deserve” their ST3 project. I’m saying it would be a terrible waste, especially at these construction costs, if they didn’t. Why build a rail line capable of comfortably moving over 6,000 people each direction per hour between West Seattle and Downtown if you don’t let builders sell housing and workplaces to anyone who wants to use it?
There’s feedback directly to politicians outside the EIS, and what they read in news articles and social media and STB. The EIS’s is structurally limited to certain kinds of issues and focused on mitigating impacts. There’s a whole area beyond the EIS where ST considers cost, worthwhileness, and political factors in making what are ultimately political decisions.
I would support West Seattle being required to legalize significant new development as a condition of moving forward with the ST3 project. I believe this is how transit funding works elsewhere in the world, and it is a hot topic in the Canadian national political debate, with the opposition party advocating for exactly these kinds of strings to be attached to federal funding.
Given that so much of the ST3 taxes are funded by development (construction is a big chunk of sales tax revenue, plus all the new people/businesses paying taxes thereafter), a flurry of high/midrise development surrounding every single ST3 station actually helps with affordability of each project.
“Harrell isn’t objecting for whatever reasons. Probably because downtown and SLU stakeholders don’t want 10 years of disruption for DSTT2”
Wouldn’t avoiding disruption be a reason to not build DSTT2? The stakeholders could say that.
“I remember not long ago some posters on STB arguing the actual costs for WSBLE would be $20 billion and Mike and the comment section going apoplectic on such “speculation”.”
It’s one thing when an amateur commentator says something that may or may not be accurate, and cites no sources or experience they have in the area, vs a reputable report or somebody whose job it is to study these issues or has been a former expert in a similar field who clearly knows what they’re talking about. It’s also one thing to say “I think X will happen” vs insisting “X will happen” when the future is uncertain and we don’t know what other people will do. I object when when somebody asserts something without evidence, or when they assert the future is more certain than it is.
“…the choice remains between sparing no expense (no matter the cost), delaying for further study, or cancelling altogether.”
Option 2 is the only reasonable choice. They did a smart thing by going to a zero-base estimating process for the preferred alternative. But they need to toss all the alternatives and apply that thinking to find the least expensive way to do this project. If they can’t then shelve it.
8 more years! 8 more years!
Two simple things:
1. Why is there no alternative where they simply run elevated along Fauntleroy and Alaska with the support beam in the center of each street and the station elevated above Alaska. Wouldn’t that significantly reduce displacement? Why does the elevated alignment shown meander along Fauntleroy while bulldozing through buildings instead of simply running down the middle? There’s plenty of room on Fauntleroy especially! Even Alaska is 4 lanes. The beam would need 1 lane, maybe 2 max? Vancouver BC does this all the time, see latest Surrey-Langley skytrain project.
2. Why is the WSLE going to be a stub to SODO? Why can’t they run trains all the way to Lynwood? Wouldn’t that save on costs of upgrading SODO when those upgrades will no longer be in use after 2nd downtown tunnel opens while significantly improving ridership? Before someone says ‘that would be too many trains!!’, it really wouldn’t. Assuming peak 1/2/3 line frequencies of every 8 minutes, that would mean a train every 2.5 minutes on average, no? Vancouver BC manages just fine with frequencies of 87 seconds during peak. Even ignoring Vancouver, please set a stopwatch for 2.5 minutes and sit through it then explain how a train at the beginning and end of that period is too much to handle.
1) From my participation on the Community Advisory Group panel for the Interbay/Ballard segment of WSBLE, SDOT was the one opposing putting elevated guideway pylons in the middle of the road. The other problem is constructability: since ST’s contractors don’t know how to build on top of an active roadway, the roadway would presumably have to be closed or significantly reduced for the duration of construction, which would probably give SDOT’s traffic engineers an aneurysm.
Obviously, running the train on top of wide roads (like the monorail runs above 5th Ave), would be the most prudent choice for reducing property impacts.
2) It’s not entirely clear why ST planned to stub the line at SODO instead of finishing the connection to Stadium Station and the DSTT as part of WSLE, and you’re not alone in thinking it’s possible to run three reduced-frequency lines through DSTT until the new tunnel is finished.
“since ST’s contractors don’t know how to build on top of an active roadway” – maybe they should talk to whomever built the Alaskan viaduct. Or the monorail. Or just go visit Chicago, Philly, or NYC where there are literally miles of subways running directly over city streets.
1) SDOT could easily change their mind. SDOT is doing things they wouldn’t have done a few years ago (like just taking lanes on major corridors and giving them to buses or bikes). Likewise, ST can figure out how to build on the roadways. I should mention that this is basically what people voted for. It was the only way they got the cost estimates they did. It is just fundamentally cheaper to run in the roadway then take a bunch of property next to it.
2) Why can’t they run trains all the way to Lynnwood?
Lots of people have been asking that question for quite some time. To be clear, not all of the trains would go to Lynnwood. Some would turn back before then (probably at Northgate). This would deal with the biggest crowding issue (between Westlake and the UW). In contrast, the new downtown tunnel wouldn’t help crowding at all.
As Mike put it, we aren’t really sure why ST objects to running all three trains in the tunnel. Nor have they been responsive when it comes to considering or studying alternatives. ST considers the issue settled, despite the fact that it potentially costs billions extra and is worse for riders.
Mike’s comments: https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/09/19/west-seattle-link-costs-keep-climbing/#comment-941393
https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/09/19/west-seattle-link-costs-keep-climbing/#comment-941405
Nonsense. Sound Transit engineers are building the world’s first light rail on a floating bridge. They are building an extra long bridge span to bypass unstable soil for Federal Way. They know how, or can figure out how, to build the thing right above Fauntleroy while maintaining most of the capacity for cars. Let’s be clear, it ls the reluctance of SDOT to temporarily inconvenience motorists that is to blame here.
RossB two: how many minutes does it take to turn the trains around at Lynnwood and what is the impact to Link headway?
1. Mike mentioned above that the tracks above Alaska could be too too close to apartment balconies. Of course, an initial surface alignment is possible. The likelihood of an extension is decades away so the end station could easily be a surface level. Just a cross street or two would need to be blocked off. Of course, ST could just end things at 35th/ Avalon or combine the two end stations to be halfway in between with an entrance at Alaska/ Fauntleroy and Oregon/ 37th. There are plenty of other ways to even reroute Fauntleroy traffic so it could be built as a cut and cover station under Fauntleroy.
2. Yes to three lines in the DSTT. Many of us have been saying this for years. ST’s answer has always been that the DSTT lacked capacity. However it appears that ST never analyzed what it would take to have three lines in the DSTT. It seems that 6 trains an hour would work just fine for each line, and 7 or 8 a hour could possibly work. We don’t know and ST won’t analyze and report on it.
The hurdle is not trying to improve the project technically. It’s to get ST to quit being so bureaucratically stubborn on design — followed by the Board approving major sudden design changes on the preferred alternative like moving the transfer station with no prior study. It’s truly dystopian.
“Mike mentioned above that the tracks above Alaska could be too too close to apartment balconies.”
M said that, and didn’t cite balconies; they just said “fire codes” with the building in general. I said ST could consider moving the station slightly to get out of the fire zone. I don’t know whether it’s too close to a fire zone or balconies or not.
For reference, the fire code excuse was quoted by the Urbanist in 2022: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/04/11/sound-transit-unveils-cost-savings-concepts-for-west-seattle-and-ballard-light-rail/
“ST’s answer has always been that the DSTT lacked capacity. However it appears that ST never analyzed what it would take to have three lines in the DSTT. It seems that 6 trains an hour would work just fine for each line, and 7 or 8 a hour could possibly work.”
What ST specifically said in 2016 is it doesn’t want to run more than 20 trains per hour (3-minute frequency) in the current DSTT1 because it would be prone to unreliability and train bunching, and it mentioned something about needing “signal upgrades”. In 2023 it gave another reason instead: the platforms would get too crowded due to not enough escalators/stairs/elevators. Which is true? Are any of these true?
So going with ST’s preference for 20 trains max:
8-minute peak 1 Line (7.5 trains) + 8-minute peak 2 Line (7.5 trains) = 15 trains.
+ 8-minute peak West Seattle trains (7.5 trains) = 21.5 trains, round up to 22.
So you’d have to delete two trains to keep the number within the 20 limit. If we delete two from West Seattle, that’s 10-minute peak frequency. West Seattle may object to that, and may think it would get crowded, and it would contradict West Seattle privilege. Or we could take them out of SeaTac and/or Redmond, but that would be even less justified.
Responding to Mike:
As a WS junction resident I would much prefer 10 minute frequency WSLE that goes all the way to lynwood over 8 minute stub to sodo.
Also LOL at the 2023 reasoning from ST. They don’t want to run too many trains cuz that would mean too many people would use the system! What a horrible problem to have!
Also that doesn’t really make sense. People disperse from stations pretty quickly. In vancouver during my visits I’ve never seen crazy busy platforms or stations despite the fact that they get way higher ridership than link light rail and run trains crazy frequently.
The platform crowding and limited egress would violate fire code supposedly.
Then change the fire code. For a project of this scale, pointing to the fire code as a fixed object is lazy engineering. The fire code is not Gospel from On High. There are plenty of dumb requirements standard in American fire codes that should be change – point access block (single-stair) residential buildings is a great example The Urbanist highlighted last week (https://www.theurbanist.org/2024/09/15/sunday-video-are-fire-concerns-about-point-access-single-stair-buildings-right/)
“Then change the fire code.”
We can’t change state or federal regulations. They won’t listen to a few transit fans in Seattle.
Mike is correct. The fire code is under the jurisdiction of the fire marshal and is governed by the International Fire Code. The marshal has very little discretion to deviate. No marshal in their right mind would grant a waiver to Sound Transit for WSL because if something did go wrong they would be the first one deposed and their career toast. Fire marshals take this stuff seriously, too seriously sometimes IMO. A big part of multi-family housing costs is the fire code, and the cost of mandatory upgrades is forcing older more affordable housing to sell for redevelopment. The fire code is also one of the main impediments to converting office buildings to housing.
I think the bigger problem with running WSL down the center of the main arterials is the West Seattle Bridge handles around 100,000 cars/day and something like 20,000 bus riders. WSL is supposed to carry 5200 riders/day to a stub. West Seattle residents made their views on transportation well known during the closure of the bridge. I don’t think taking two lanes of the major arterials for Link above ground would fly politically because 1. it would be above ground, and 2. would take too much car/truck capacity.
I just get the impression that the problem is West Seattle wants “Link” but doesn’t really want it. I read the summary of the public comments to date and West Seattle wants Link to have no impacts on their community which they think is special (and for some reason some on this blog think West Seattle residents are privileged although I don’t understand what they mean). So West Seattle wants Link fully underground with no construction impacts and no zoning changes.
I would be interested what those outcome would be if a vote were held in WS that asked either Link above ground and in the arterials or no Link. I think a majority might choose no Link.
The video is specifically about stairways in apartment buildings, not transit. I won’t watch the whole video to see if it’s the same as a previous video that said the two-stairway minimum is what made recent multifamily buildings large, wide, and boxy, such that neighbors particuarly dislike them and rally against them. Because two stairways require a significant amount of space, and there’s inevitably space between them; whereas with one they could be two separate buildings in the footprint. It said Seattle is at the forefront of not requiring this, and Canada is actually worse than the US in this.
While that’s partially true, most fire departments don’t really deal or know about rail operations that much. Or like you can actually ask for exemptions or modifications. It’s not as if the small/medium municipal fire department regularly write or think about rail operation.
> The first reason is that the fire safety regulation in the United States for train stations, NFPA 130, has been exported to a number of other countries, none of which has American costs or the specific American tradition of overbuilding stations. China uses NFPA 130. So does Turkey. Spain uses a modification. We can look at their designs and see that they do not build oversize stations.
Like the large station mezzanines sometimes sound transit cites.
https://pedestrianobservations.com/2023/12/12/janno-lieber-lies-to-new-york-about-costs-and-regulations/
Or even the “only one train can be in a ventilation zone at a time” (NFPA 130) that sound transit cites for the max frequency — other countries metro systems deal or work around it for instance ensuring the train can still reach the next zone/station, they don’t just give up on increasing train frequency and build a new tunnel.
> For reference, the fire code excuse was quoted by the Urbanist in 2022: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/04/11/sound-transit-unveils-cost-savings-concepts-for-west-seattle-and-ballard-light-rail/
But that’s what it really is — an excuse.
While of course some modifications might need to be made, I’d bet if we asked other transit agencies around the world that also follow NFPA 130 if it makes sense to build a new tunnel rather than increasing frequency past 3 minutes they’d all laugh
I think there’s a brewing battle to fight against over-empowered Fire Marshalls who levy the fire code to routinely block progress on street design (for long ladder trucks) and building codes (setbacks, heights, and egress).
What would be necessary for the transit tunnel to handle more riders and satisfy the fire code? More elevators, escalators, and emergency staircases? Wider platforms? If it really is impossible to run all three lines through that tunnel, it would be good to know specifically what the critical issues are. It would be worth a independent study, if anything to clarify what exactly the safe operating capacity of the tunnel is and what would be required if it could be expanded.
“What would be necessary for the transit tunnel to handle more riders and satisfy the fire code?”
Unfortunately, they’ve not been particularly open about sharing that. We have to speculate.
The mezzanines are pretty large, and look to me as though they could handle a lot more people.
It looks to me as though the big problem is the narrow side platforms. That’s not too difficult to fix: add center platforms. There’s a huge space available between tracks there.
The only problem is International District, where they’ve decided they need a center track for turning out of service trains going between the Eastside and Rainier Valley lines. It seems like there’s plenty of other ways to accomplish that. Hell, For the cost of the second tunnel you should be able to build a single track elevated line above 6th Ave or something to connect the two if you had to. It seems like there has to be a cheaper way, but even if there’s not, it’d still be a savings over the second tunnel.
@Nathan
The fire marshall’s are the next battle. I believe Not Just Bikes had a recent episode on this.
I think the nearer term battle is to defeat the traffic engineers especially as its coming out how that that profession is a junk science based on 100 year old flawed myths that no one ever questioned… until now. The new book Killed by a Traffic Engineer has really exposed the fraud of that profession.
I get the sense its a bit too much for urbanists to take on both the traffic engineers and fire marshalls at once.
Tin foil hat time. Property taking is part of ST’s strategy. Less property taking means less surplus property. Less surplus property means less property to develop into TOD. Surplus property is not something to be avoided at all costs. It’s part of the plan.
It’s not that convoluted, it’s just sound transit is trying to avoid car impacts and avoids building on the road, that’s all there is to it.
ST can’t sell or otherwise meaningfully profit off excess property.
I was answering Ian’s first question. They want to take property, if possible, so that surplus property can later be developed into TOD by others. I’m not saying that’s the number one motive for property taking, but I think one of the reasons behind it. I think in the big picture, they see it as an altruistic act. It’s for the greater good. I know most will disagree it’s a motive, and that’s fine.
got the hat stuck on your head, huh
“Why is the WSLE going to be a stub to SODO? Why can’t they run trains all the way to Lynwood?”
Because upgrading SODO to interline West Seattle is part of the Ballard project and Ballard EIS, which is scheduled later and taking longer. And because Dow wanted the West Seattle-SODO stub as an early deliverable to show respect for West Seattle privilege.
Ouch
Thank you all for your responses. My conclusion from reading them is that ST doesn’t have the teeth it should considering it’s budget and multi county scope and a general incompetence/lack of motivation to actually maximize ridership. It’s really a shame considering how long llr is meant to last (100 years?)
We nominally say it’s for a hundred years to get the governments thinking long-term. I don’t know that it’s an official ST goal. I find it hard to believe our high-energy-dependent, high-polluting, climate-vunerable way of live will exist in a hundred years or even fifty years. We may end up with trains and buses that have no power to run, and office towers nobody goes to because those jobs don’t exist, and a lot of unused infrastructure white elephants, and people doing whatever urban farming and animal raising they can. But if 20th/21st century civilization still exists then, we’d better have robust transit and walkability.
Ian, welcome to the cognoscenti; you are preaching to the crowd. Everyone who is a “regular” here has read the three-lines-in-the-old-tunnel precis dozens of times, and all of us, barring a couple of folks deeply in the tank for Skycastle Transit, agree fully.
But you didn’t complete the analysis on point 1. If there’s enough room on Fauntleroy for supports, and SDOT is essentially making Alaska a “bus-only” street, there’s room enough to step down from the supports after turning off Fauntleroy and maing the “Junction” station at-grade. That’s another $100 million saved on a Sky Castle.
Tom – I ask these questions because I never see them discussed here or anywhere else. I didn’t know if there was maybe some non-obvious answer for the questions I raised. I figured this community would answer. Turned out the answer is what I was hoping was not the case – ST and SDOT just don’t seem to actually care about maximizing ridership .
My conclusion on question 1 is that the reason ST can’t be bothered to even provide an alternative as part of the EIS along the lines of my suggestion is that they don’t think SDOT would be supportive. Why ST isn’t run by Washington state I have no clue considering it’s a multi county project.
ST and SDOT just don’t seem to actually care about maximizing ridership .
ST and SDOT are very different agencies. SDOT is in charge of all transportation within Seattle. They fix potholes, bridges and sidewalks. They add bike lanes, bus lanes and adjust traffic signals to try and prevent gridlock. They have a big, somewhat competing set of interests (freight, people in cars, bicyclists, pedestrians, etc.). They don’t run the buses — the county does. They don’t even run the monorail even though they own it (the monorail is run by a private company that contracts with the city). Likewise, the city owns the streetcars but they are operated by Metro.
Of course SDOT wants to see higher transit ridership. That is one of the reasons they have spent a bunch of money on projects to make the buses move faster. But they don’t control the frequency of the buses or the network. They have to work with Metro on that. There is also the Seattle Transportation Benefit District. Basically Seattle taxes itself at a higher rate and spends the money on transit. But again, this isn’t like Everett Transit — we don’t have our own transit system. Most of the money goes into running the buses more often (so in that sense it is definitely ridership based) although some of the money has gone into other projects.
Sound Transit is a completely independent organization. It is similar to the Port of Seattle (which is a bit of a misnomer) in that it is not under a different agency. The port doesn’t work for the city or state, and neither does Sound Transit. Unlike the port, the board members are appointed and not directly elected. Wikipedia has a good page on the management (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Transit#Management). I don’t believe ST has a mandate to consider ridership (or ridership per dollar spent) with their proposals. It comes up, but ultimately they can put whatever they want on the ballot.
To be fair, focusing on ridership alone doesn’t say much. Imagine for a second that ST took over the Metro 7. Suddenly ST ridership would see a big jump. But nothing would change, except maybe the color of the buses. One consideration is whether you increase overall transit ridership. Another is modal share (which is similar). But you also have to consider the time saved. Assume for a second that the 7 is much faster, but gets about the same number of riders. By those metrics it didn’t do to well (ridership didn’t increase) but at the same time, those riders saved a lot of time. This is valuable. Then there is cost. Give me (or even ST) enough money and we definitely add riders and save those riders a lot of time. One metric that used to be commonly used to analyze projects is rider time saved per dollar spent. This basically looks at every rider (after the work is done) and adds up how much time they save compared to the system before the changes. Then they divide by the cost. This has fallen out of favor — this is an interesting analysis of some of the issues: https://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2016/04/22/which-riders-matter/.
Generally speaking though, ST doesn’t have to consider any of that. Neither does SDOT (but then SDOT is not a transit agency). ST definitely isn’t concerned with coverage though, which makes them an odd transit agency. They aren’t concerned with coverage and yet they aren’t especially focused on ridership either. They have goals that were chosen for reasons that have nothing to do with transit efficacy (e. g. “the spine”). Did a bunch of transit experts sit down and decide that the most cost effective way to improve transit in the region was to build a subway line (using light rail trains) from Tacoma to Everett? Of course not. But that is what they are trying to do (and have been trying to do for a really long time).
Ian, as I said, please read the old posts. There have been literally scores of articles and hundreds of comments focused on the DSTT2 issue, and most of the articles and associated comnents in the past three or four years have been strongly in support of the three lines in DSTT1.
It’s just not true that we have “never discussed” these issues. I’ll grant that we need an index to the blog to make past articles more accessible, but they are there.
Tom, it’s generally helpful to actually provide references worth reading, instead of just telling folks to “read the old posts”. There are thousands, and each with dozens of comments discussing multiple threads.
Also, I’m not sure we’ve ever had a posts specifically propose interlining WSLE through to Lynnwood or specifically advocating for pylon-in-road construction, although both have been discussed much in the comments. Since our search function doesn’t search the comments, there’s no way to find those discussions.
It would be great to have some sort of central index of post and commentary, but that’d require great efforts and an archivist-minded volunteer.
It is actually harder to find the blog posts about the subject than I thought it would be (using Google). There is this: https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/02/17/ask-sound-transit-to-study-sending-ballard-and-west-seattle-trains-through-the-existing-tunnel/. This proposes sending all three lines from the south into the tunnel and then branching the Ballard Line before or after Westlake. I wrote that, and have since changed my mind on the idea of branching. I support the other option, which is have the Ballard Line simply end at Westlake as described in the following two posts. There is this: https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/01/10/focus-on-slu-and-ballard/. Maybe not the best title in this case, but “One Downtown Tunnel” is pretty clear. There is this, which makes the case for an automated line to Ballard: https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/02/20/the-case-for-automated-light-metro-technology-for-ballard-and-south-lake-union/. Since this would be stand-alone line, it implies that the other (two or three) lines would use the existing downtown tunnel.
I would say the majority opinion of the people who post on the blog (and quite close to a consensus) on the West Seattle/Ballard Link situation is basically this:
1) Don’t build West Seattle Link. Make bus improvements instead (https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/06/07/west-seattle-by-bus-instead-of-light-rail/).
2) If you do build West Seattle Link then have all three lines (from the south) interline and head towards the UW. They would not all go to Lynnwood. Some would turn back (presumably at Northgate). If Link goes to Everett a second train would probably turn back at Lynnwood.
3) Make Ballard a stand-alone, automated line with smaller trains and smaller stations (as Martin described in his two posts above).
4) Design the Ballard Line so that it can eventually serve a few stops on First Hill and then keep going to connect to Judkins Park and Mount Baker. But first just get from Ballard to Westlake (via Uptown and South Lake Union).
[Al politely pointing out a stupid mistake made by Ross.]
I would just throw in the comment that Ross’ summary is pretty much what I conclude too. There are variations to analyze that us armchair advocates can’t answer so we have minor differences of opinion — but overall the “3 Line DSTT + Automated Ballard” solution looks feasible, much cheaper, easier for transfers, better for ID construction traffic impacts, and higher frequencies. We don’t know for sure what it would take to reverse a train at Northgate or how many trains per hour can fit into the DSTT or what the maintenance facility for an automated Ballard- Westlake line would be, for example.
However, ST won’t even consider these things. They deny the reality of automated train lines completely. They deny that they need to analyze three trains in the DSTT. The ST party line is that such things are incompatible with ST3, but they ignore that argument when they want — like tunneling in West Seattle or moving the transfer to Pioneer Square. Such is the dystopian planning that ST does.
Add to that there is a considerable push to get Board members out of the planning minutae. So Board members are being encouraged to not question what staff say. The conundrum is that this change is major enough so it really needs to be advocated in the Board.
So until a small group of Board members care (more than one) and are willing to force the issue, the default will happen — an inefficient local system will be for riders use beset by unaffordability. And let’s be clear that rail system mistakes take decades if not centuries to affect if it does finally open in 20 years. So those that are 40 today are damaging the transit rider environment for not only them but their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Bus routes can be changed. But any rail track in a tunnel is permanent for over 100 years! The region gets one shot to do it well — and ST isn’t aiming their sights on rider benefit.
[Ross fixed the mistake that Al pointed out.]
I agree with all of your points Al.
“We don’t know for sure what it would take to reverse a train at Northgate”
ST would have to build one hell of a station at Lynnwood and Northgate for it to be more expensive than DSTT2. Even then, it’d be worth it due to the horrible transfers DSTT2 forces.
Anyway, I’d think you’d want a siding with platform at Northgate, Lynnwood, and Mt Baker. Triple track stations have worked very well for TriMet in turning MAX trains in cases where they are running close headways. Among other things, they use the third track as a buffer for getting trains into proper slots. You’d want to have shared platforms, like they do at Gateway, Park, Beaverton or Rose Quarter. Say you’re at Northgate, and you need to go south. You have the option of two platforms: the center platform on both main lines, or the siding platform that serves both the siding and the southbound main line. The train on the center track opens doors on both sides, and serves both platforms, so if you want to be certain to get a southbound train you go to the outer platform, but if you’re on the center platform you can still get a southbound train. The outer siding would be mostly used for turning trains or laying over for driver breaks.
I’d also like to see the old 5th Avenue ramps on EastLink turned into a special events platform, so extra trains to and from the Eastside could stop there to serve the stadiums, and also serve as a stub end station for east side trains when the tunnel is closed. I don’t know how easy it will be to get ST to do that though.
Oh, and the extra track at Mt Baker: you can’t run frequent trains in the Rainier Valley due to current policies. So, that’s for turning surplus trains that won’t fit in Rainier Valley, and also allow Everett – Mt Baker trains when other areas (Eg, Rainier Valley or West Seattle) needs to be closed.
> ST would have to build one hell of a station at Lynnwood and Northgate for it to be more expensive than DSTT2. Even then, it’d be worth it due to the horrible transfers DSTT2 forces.
they already have pocket tracks at lynnwood and northgate. they might have to modify the procedure for how they change drivers, and maybe some slight extra trackage, but I don’t really think it is a huge thing to implement.
They have pocket tracks, but not with platforms aligned with the rest of the station. To work well in operation, it needs to act just like the rest of the station. That way, someone can go up to the platforms, and if there is a train on the layover platform they can get on that, but if not then get one of the regular trains at the other side of the same platform.
I get how having a third platform at Northgate would be nice! But it’s not really necessary.
I would rather see ST build a fourth siding at Northgate like above the TC or above I-5 which is extra wide at Northgate. Then at some point the third line that terminates there could even branch just one more station to the east (Lake City or to the West (Aurora near Northwest Hospital).
Speculatively, it could even eventually make a “U” to end in Ballard so riders could transfer to the automated line there.
Why is there no alternative where they simply run elevated along Fauntleroy and Alaska with the support beam in the center of each street and the station elevated above Alaska.
That is basically what people voted for. Look at this old report (https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/project-documents/west-seattle-ballard-link-extensions-level-2-alternatives-evaluation-matrices.pdf#page=11). Notice on page 11 they have several different options for West Seattle. The “representative project” is the one in red. This is basically the starting point.
However, after the proposal was approved by the voters, the Sound Transit board felt it was essential that the line be facing south, so that it could eventually be extended towards Burien. As a result, it couldn’t just follow the main pathway, even though it was what voters voted for. You’ll notice that every alternative (then) involved going above or below houses (both of which are expensive). It does seem possible that the train could just go on Fauntleroy although that puts the train quite a ways from the Junction (then again, they plan on doing something similar in Ballard).
I really don’t think SDOT is the problem. Keep in mind, SDOT has taken a lane of Aurora and given it to bikes. It has taken lanes on Rainier Avenue and Westlake and given it to buses. It could definitely take lanes here and give it to the train, especially if there was pressure from the public to do that. But there really isn’t. No one wants a station at Fauntleroy, even though it would be the cheapest option at this point.
Oh, and ST has also rejected surface options. This limits the options considerably.
I think the main opposition to an elevated WSLE using the center of arterial roadways which would use at least two lanes, maybe more when you add in the huge stations ST is fond of, is the fact the West Seattle Bridge carries 100,000 cars/day and around 25,000 bus passengers.
The WSLE is estimated (pre-pandemic I believe) to carry 5200 riders/day, none of them new riders switching from cars. Although this alignment was never proposed, I would think it would receive a lot of opposition from the people who live in West Seattle or own businesses there.
If the acrimony during the bridge closure is any indication, West Seattle prioritizes cars, and if ST estimates are to believed WSLE will not change that one driver. Even with buses allowed on the lower bridge but not cars people would drive south all the way around to get to I-5.
Plus there is plenty of money for an underground line and stations.
https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/SDOT/BridgeStairsProgram/West%20Seattle%20Bridge/2021_0924_WSB_PublicMeetingSummary_final%20(1).pdf#:~:text=Historically%2C%20the%20high%20bridge%20is%20the%20city%27s%20most-used,over%20100%2C000%20cars%2C%20trucks%2C%20and%20buses%20every%20day.
When a private developer sees the cost of a project increasing to the point where it no longer makes sense, they back out. Why is the public sector incapable of this?
Part of the problem is how the ST3 vote happened.
TriMet does a lot of preliminary work before it goes to the voters with a project. That way, they know how much to ask. Sure, they ran into an unexpected blob of Columbia River basalt when drilling the west hills tunnel. However, there have been very, very few hiccups on all of their projects.
Yes, the results are usually not great. Much of this can be blamed on Oregon’s Metro, which is the agency that draws the lines on the map and says “Put light rail somewhere along here.” That’s how we get light rail lines along freeways, and so on. It’s not up to TriMet to locate some of that.
Metro has the same “Elected for other skills” problem that the ST Board does.
Stephen Fesler suggests rethinking ST3: https://www.theurbanist.org/2024/09/19/op-ed-sound-transit-should-rethink-light-rail-extensions-beset-with-overruns/. I agree. We can do so much better by spending our money in other ways.
“spending our money in other ways” suggests Stephen is proposing cancelling much of ST3 as some have proposed in the comment here, but his Op-Ed is much less severe; he calls for going back to the drawing board on extension alternatives to look at building all in-ROW (either elevated with center-running pylons or shallow cut-and-cover tunnels), simplifying routes, and shelving ST3’s weakest projects like Issaquah-Kirkland Link, BAR, and some parking garages.
It’s a fine proposition – and now that several major ST3 projects have blown out of affordability, the Board is likely going to have to face a choice between another Realignment, or going back to the drawing board on these projects as Stephen suggests.
Agree – good approach. They’ve done enough syptudy and spent enough money at ST to learn the politically least harmful project is unaffordable. Now go back and start over from a least-cost perspective.
Fesler must be reading The Blog, finally.
Ryan Packer on the various issues plaguing the RapidRide G rollout: https://www.theurbanist.org/2024/09/19/metro-works-to-smooth-out-bumpy-rapidride-g-launch/. This is definitely worth reading (Packer has the best reporting on the subject so far as I can tell.)
To me, ST3 was a “hold your nose and vote for it” situation from the start. The good (SLU/Ballard, Redmond and the infill stations) were good enough to offset the dubious (Everett, Tacoma and West Seattle) and the unnecessary (Issaquah).
As the years have passed, costs have risen and timelines have slipped. Both were predictable, although the magnitude probably wasn’t. What really hurts is how much worse projects have gotten for riders.
This feels like the train is rolling and for better or worse, endpoints on the map will be delivered. It will end up pretty different (not in a good way) from what voters understood when they voted in favor back in 2016 though. West Seattle is the latest example, but it is far from alone.
As a region, we’re spending tens (hundreds?) of billions of dollars on ST3 and the return on investment in terms of lives improved is far too low.
“As a region, we’re spending tens (hundreds?) of billions of dollars on ST3 and the return on investment in terms of lives improved is far too low.
Compared to what other transportation infrastructure?
Sound Transit (and other transit investments) have a price tag and scope presented to the public to be voted on.
It’s the only type of infrastructure improvement that is dealt with that way.
So I ask again,
Compared to What?
It is the most sustainable improvement (Save for the NIMBY costs)
… as in …
LONG TERM Investment.
Compared to what other transportation infrastructure?
Move Seattle type projects. Sure, it had some of the same issues (a lot of the projects were way more expensive than they promised). But in terms of value, they are just better.
In terms of Link, the obvious answer is UW to Ballard rail. That was deemed the best value (in terms of ridership per dollar spent) before they just decided to build what they are going to build. In terms of ridership time saved (per dollar) it is quite likely a lot better.
Well, I’m definitely aligned with the idea that the costs associated with West Seattle are out of control, simply because of the idea that the only way to bring the c/b ratio in line, is apparently to spend even more money to satisfy NIMBY complaints.
Anyone not looking for a less expensive rail solution and saying they still want rail to West Seattle is being disingenuous.
Also, not going with a 4th/5th Ave shallow IDS station transfer for a second tunnel is just a way to sabotage public support.
It’s as if we’re putting up a worthy Christmas tree, and then hanging so many ornaments on it that it’s going to topple, and then saying “Ooh, look, it fell over, ergo Christmas Trees are EVIL!”
I’m saying that the Ballard/West Seattle extensions are worth it, but all the players need to help get it to work.
Having the NIMBYs as the drivers is going to run us all into the ditch.
While some of the lines might have been a good investment had they better penetrated the cores of the various urban centers, the glancing approach to Bellevue and complete omission of Tacoma downtown make the system to be built a very poor investment.
Plus, building BART del Norte with low-floor, catenary-powered LR technology is transit illiteracy.
It it was much cheaper to the build rail in the country (and this region) then sure, a West Seattle subway might be worth it. But it isn’t what you build next, nor do you just end it right next to the expressway that connects riders to downtown very quickly. You build it through West Seattle, where you add significant value. Basically West Seattle Link is a “starter line” that is massively expensive (before the cost overruns) and will be massively expensive to extend.
Imagine if East Link did not go to Bellevue or Redmond, but simply ended in Mercer Island. Mercer Island has a nice little town center. There are plenty of apartments there. I could see it growing into a fairly good size neighborhood with some cultural activities that would attract people from both sides of the lake. Would this be worth it? No, of course not. Would it be worth it there were a couple more stops on Mercer Island? The answer is still no. There just aren’t enough people close to those stations to justify the cost. The time savings for those riders (compared to existing bus service) is minimal. Ultimately It is just too expensive to just get there.
Then you have the transfers at Mercer Island. Metro basically has two choices: it can truncate the buses there or ignore Link. If it ignores Link then hardly anyone transfers. There is no point. They are going to the same place. So Metro truncates. There is value in this. The buses can run more often to Mercer Island. Sure, it takes longer to get from Issaquah, Downtown Bellevue or Bellevue College to Seattle but riders get more frequent service to Mercer Island. Is that worth it? No. The area around the station may be a relatively big destination for Mercer Island, but it still isn’t a big destination. In contrast, consider previous restructures. After UW Link, Metro truncated the buses at the UW. This was a huge success. But that was because a lot of people were headed to the UW. That just isn’t the case with Mercer Island.
Nor is it the case in West Seattle. The Junction is a significant destination. But it is at the same level (roughly) as South Seattle College or Alki. It isn’t like a huge portion of the people on the peninsula want to go there on a regular basis. It isn’t the UW. Furthermore, even UW Link had something the express buses didn’t: An extremely fast way to get to Capitol Hill. A lot of the riders who took those buses to the UW and were thrilled to transfer — not because they wanted to go downtown, but because they wanted to go Capitol Hill.
West Seattle Link just doesn’t offer that. There are no destinations along that couldn’t easily be served just as quickly with a bus. In the case of Delridge, it is practically identical. If you built ramps to the SoDo busway, there would be no stop lights from Delridge Station to the SoDo station. That means that a bus could get there just as quickly. Thus even if you wanted to transfer to Link you could, and do so just as quickly. Given the height of the proposed Delridge station (and fact that the SoDo station is on the ground) it would probably be faster to transfer at SoDo.
Think about that for a second. Imagine they build the ramps to the SoDo busway and truncate the buses there. If you are used to riding the H, this is actually better than truncating the bus on Delridge! You come out ahead. You have a better transfer and might go the other direction on Link (to Beacon Hill, Rainier Valley, SeaTac, etc.). To be clear, I’m not suggesting we do that. I think it makes way more sense to continue to run the buses downtown.
But it is clear that the only people that benefit from West Seattle Link (instead of SoDo Busway ramps) are those that live near a station. There just aren’t that many people who do.
OK, that last comment of mine was really long. If you feel like skimming it, here is a quick summary:
West Seattle Link is billed as being “for West Seattle”, as if the entire peninsula benefits. That simply isn’t the case. The only ones that come out ahead are those that live close to the stations. Everyone else would be better off with ramps to the SoDo Busway. This is just a ridiculous amount of money to spend on so few people.
“Imagine if East Link did not go to Bellevue or Redmond, but simply ended in Mercer Island.”
Such a line would provide faster trips to a significant number of people due to the Judkins Park station. Even Mercer Island gets you some halfway decent restructures with buses being able to use it as a transfer point, and go to Bellevue rather than downtown Seattle.
West Seattle has no equivalent to the 7, nor does it have an equivalent to Bellevue, Issaquah or Redmond. Restructuring the C to go from Fauntleroy to The Junction to Alki Point doesn’t do the same as a 500 series express from Issaquah to Mercer Island Link to Bellevue.
Light rail was supposed to be cheaper because it could be built right in the street.
However ST decided not to build it in the street so that it could be grade separated whenever possible.
Now, we have this ‘light rail’ train that requires larger tunnels for the overhead wires pretending to be ‘heavy-rail-like’.
How much cheaper would it be if from West Seattle to Ballard if they did a third rail type system with smaller tunnels and smaller stations? Sure they would need to modify, or create space in the OMF, but I’m willing to bet they would save some billions that could be put toward that use.
I also like the urbanist article where they talk about making it an automated line with smaller trains and smaller stations.
ST is going to have to start thinking out of the box to get anything done. 7 billion for a couple of miles and three stations is just not supportable.
Yes, our “light metro” is leveraging neither the flexibility of trams nor the capacity of heavy-rail metros.
Bingo. Either built this as a light rail line, including at-grade stations in WS, Interbay, and Ballard, or build it as a new line with smaller trains & stations. I’d prefer the later, but either is superior.
Street-rail at the ends of lines which are not likely ever to be extended makes a lot of sense. Access is enhanced and transit becomes a way-finder in its own right.
We also have had authors suggesting an automated line.
Third rail is more of an distraction and a philosophical issue.
There is nothing inherently cheaper about 3rd rail. You don’t have the poles to install, but you have a lot of other complex hardware to install, including double siding the conductor rail around track switches.
As far as the tunnel diameter goes, it’s not that big a problem. Some of the tightest clearance tunnels in North America have overhead conductors. Eg: Baltimore & Potomac. If you want to go snaller, you could go with direct mounted overhead contact.
Even then, making the tunnel slightly less in diameter wouldn’t get you that much cost reduction. The expensive part is the tunneling part, dealing with all the underground obstacles, and building stations.
You could save vastly more with shorter trains and simpler stations. It gets really complicated to do all the specialized construction around the stations. Also consider things such as emergency exit plans required by the fire department.
I think that’s fair. Even sticking with Link trains but modifying WSBLE to run 2-car trains at a higher frequency should results in a much cheaper project via smaller station footprints, more than offsetting the higher operator costs.* Particularly if they pivot to at-grade stations, running 2-car Link trains in a standalone tunnel would be a strong improvement, plus the double frequency allows for those Link lines to easily branch in a ST4 extension.
*and if Link gets automated, the different in operating costs becomes immaterial.
How much of what is suggested in the Urbanist article is even legal? The big red flag I saw was the suggestion of ending sub-area equity. I’m hoping that was built into the enabling legislation so that it could not be changed without another vote of the entire taxing region.
Legality is a function of political support and lawyer quality.
CM Balducci has suggested weakening subarea equity – ST3 already breached the subarea barriers by having all five subareas contribute equally to DSTT2, calling it a “regional asset”.
That’s not breaching subarea equity; it’s identifying which parts of the system benefit all subareas. The spine wouldn’t be possible without capacity in the center and interchanges between lines where the largest bulk of riders from all subareas go.
It’s a corollary of the fact that Redmond and Bellevue can’t exist without Seattle, but not the other way around. Or at least, they’d be smaller and less prosperous if they were all alone.
Given we literally opened a light rail line that currently runs only between Redmond and Bellevue, I think they can exist without Seattle.
Obviously any rail network works best with Seattle as the anchor and hub, but we aren’t Chicago with a single downtown that the entire metro rotates around. Subarea equity works because it allows other important nodes in the regions to invest and grow, rather than leverage the wealth of the suburbs to give politicians enough cash to avoid having to make hard decisions on WSBLE.
Any “asset” that takes well over an hour to get to, plans to shunt you to backwater Ballard and forces you to eat Lutefisk, is an asset in a lawyer’s brief only.
When they come for 90% of Pierce’s banked transit dollars for this boondoggle, I hope out spineless politicians finally grow one.
Cam, Pierce’s moment to have a version of this conversation is coming soon with the publishing of the draft EIS for Tacoma Dome Link. As is the case with West Seattle Link, I suspect the publishing will be followed by renewed commitments from our officials to deliver the project regardless of the findings.
And for all of its profound issues, including what I believe are serious equity concerns, at least West Seattle Link will bring riders to the center of Alaska Junction and intersect the area’s principal streets. Tacoma is not so fortunate.
Thanks for the heads-up, Troy. I’ll reach out to our reps on the ST Board after I see the DEIS for TDLE.
Thinking that Seattle or the Eastside could exist without the other is absurd. We’re all in this together.
The relevant quote: “The balkanization of funding can lead to balkanized decision-making, pushing the agency to pursue bad alignments out of deference to the local subarea and to lose sight of the bigger picture: creating the most effective transit network for the entire region.”
Here I disagree with with Stephen. I’m deeply skeptical the problem with Link in Seattle is “we don’t have enough money.” Frankly, for most public works across the USA, the problem is Other People’s Money driving bad decision making, and therefore the solution cannot be to throw more money at a broken process.
If the full region’s budget was channeled into WSBLE, as The Urbanist would prefer, we would just make the same bad decisions, and perhaps even worse decision as Seattle leaders (Dow Constantine, etc.) would be able to Christmas Tree even more non-transit requirements on to the project. Having a budget ceiling is an important forcing function to get leaders to say no to what would otherwise be an unlimited request from special interests.
The same is true for all subarea. Stephen is bitter that Snohomish politicians are enthusiastic & genuine in their desire to serve Paine Field, but at least Snohomish is constrain by their subarea’s financial capacity.
Further, if subarea equity was dissolved, in most American cities (LA, Denver, Dallas, San Diego, Bay Area, etc.) that results in capital spending to skew away from the urban core and into more spending for suburban projects. I’m skeptical Seattle has a unique political alignment that will favor Seattle’s transportation interests over the rest of the region.
There are problems that are caused by subarea equity, but this isn’t one of them. West Seattle Link is a Seattle project. Seattle is one of the areas where spending this kind of money on transit infrastructure makes sense. I suppose you could say that building West Seattle Link in the first place is due to “deference to the local subarea”. Does Auburn get anything out of it? No. But should they be heavily involved in the decision making, given they aren’t paying for it? I would say “No” as well.
It doesn’t get to the heart of the problem, which is just bad planning. The problem with West Seattle Link is not that it is a bad value for the region, but that it is a bad value for Seattle and a bad value for West Seattle! It is quite likely that this is a much better deal for everyone: https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/06/07/west-seattle-by-bus-instead-of-light-rail/.
It is worth noting that the problem isn’t just deference to local preference, either. When the City of Kirkland wanted BRT on the Cross Kirkland Corridor, Sound Transit opposed it. So now Kirkland will get something a lot less useful (but a lot more expensive).
The root of the problem is that the board doesn’t know much about transit, and won’t defer to people that do. Before the City of Kirkland suggested BRT on the CKC, they hired a private transit consultant who researched the idea. He considered alternatives (like light rail) but based on his knowledge of the subject (which greatly exceeds that of anyone on the board) suggested they go with BRT. It would be a worthy project — good value for the money. But again, the Sound Transit board rejected that notion — just because.
With West Seattle it was a bit different, but it had the same basic problem. It was an arbitrary choice. There was no study to support the idea of spending extra money to improve transit in West Seattle, let alone the idea that the best way to spend the money was on a new rail line. The board simply chose it, the way I would pick out a sweater (“hmmm, I think I’ll go with the blue”). This is not like downtown to the UW (where a study would confirm what everyone understood — this is the most important transit corridor in the region). This is just an arbitrary choice and an arbitrary mode.
The board should rethink the assumptions that went into ST3. Every one of them (including the spine). They should hire a consulting firm (maybe two) to get an idea of what would be the best value for the region. This should include investing in bus infrastructure, more bus service, improvements to Link, expansion of Link, more Sounder — all of it. At that point we can debate what we should build next. My guess is it wouldn’t be West Seattle Link.
I think generally the subareas are hands off on project details outside their area, which is both good politics & good policy. I agree WS Link’s problems aren’t due to subarea equity, but the broader unaffordability of the full WSBLE project(s) certainly is bleeding into subarea equity issues.
I would support a complete pause on WS & Ballard Link to rethink & go back to the voters, but not for the other regions. TDLE is a mediocre project, but it has consensus support and is far enough along that I’d say leave it be; at minimum OMF-South and SFW station should be built, and politically I don’t think it’s possible to build that segment and not the Pierce segment. For Snohomish, the Paine diversion is clearly something people disagree on, but I think that full project should get through EIS and at least move forward with a phase 1 (to me, a 2~3 station extension is a strong project, certainly better than WS Link) with perhaps the rest deferred to be wrapped up into whatever Seattle’s next steps are.
Hopefully, Stride 522 & 405 North can be good templates for what ST should build throughout the region. Getting that project in operations as a proof-of-concept for our local leaders will be very helpful to break out of the “Link or bust” mindset that Ross highlights.
“ It doesn’t get to the heart of the problem, which is just bad planning. The problem with West Seattle Link is not that it is a bad value for the region, but that it is a bad value for Seattle and a bad value for West Seattle! ”
I think a pretty good case could be made that it’s terrible planning! Projects selected without looking at cost effectiveness measures in the first place. Corridor options being narrowly defined for years — with a suddenly new preferred alternative that was not even on the table earlier. Intentionally planning-level cost estimates along with unrealistic low contingencies to begin with. A “stakeholder committee” of everything more important than riders. A design team that creates pretty things that make transferring and platform access worse with each refinement.
Honestly, it was hard to not make the ST2 system not be useful. But these ST3 projects have always seemed like they lacked addressing major needs and they more were just doling out candy to places and people that don’t understand transit as a daily experience.
I figure that it’s going to take a year of operating the ST2 system before the mindset markedly shifts from fantasy to daily reality of using transit . Unfortunately, that could be too late to change the direction WS Link is going.
“I would support a complete pause on WS & Ballard Link to rethink & go back to the voters, but not for the other regions.”
I wouldn’t cry if that happened. What we need is good transit to Ballard and West Seattle and good inter-line transfers. Good transit to end the 30-45 minute overhead of getting to/from Ballard from the nearest regional transfers (Westlake or U-District). Good inter-line transfers because half the destinations or more are on a line different from the one you started on. The case for rail to Ballard is much stronger than the case for rail to West Seattle.
But if we can’t have an affordable WS/BLE or one without bad transfers, then a bus fallback doesn’t look so bad. We’ve got Lynnwood Link now, so it’s much easier to get from Ballard north, east, or south than it was when WS/BLE was first being planned. Even with the bus overhead of getting from Ballard to the U-District or Westlake transfer points, the rest of the way is much faster (or will be when cross-lake service and Federal Way open in a couple years).
With that in mind, we could just make a substantial investment to speed up the D, 40, and 44 and make them more frequent. It may not reach the 11-minute travel time of Link to Westlake, but anything is better than the 25+ minutes it currently takes.
In West Seattle, RossB has outlined a multi-line BRT alternative fanning out from the bridge. It would basically upgrade the C, H, 21, 55, 56, and 125. That would get faster transit directly to people’s neighborhoods rather than just to the Fauntleroy-Avalon-Alaska axis.
I would support a complete pause on WS & Ballard Link to rethink & go back to the voters, but not for the other regions.
I would take it, mainly because I live in Seattle. But I would feel sorry for the folks in other regions since they would be making the same basic mistake. West Seattle Link is the wrong tool for the job. Same is true for the areas south of Federal Way and north of Lynnwood. All three projects have a lot in common.
Legal: In short, yes. There is clear precedent for the Board to delay & defer projects. A broader re-think of project scopes would require a fresh vote, at which point Board has very wide latitude to propose a totally new set of projects to replace the prior voter levy.
The Board is mostly stuck with the taxing approach as the 30 year bonds have covenants that require the various taxes to be in place over the life of the bonds (this was a key argument against repealing the MVET), but for a project that doesn’t get beyond an EIS there is no legal requirement to complete the project as proposed.
As many of us have repeated, WSLE would be “poor transit” for a majority of its riders, even if it were free. Since as designed it reaches laterally into the California Avenue population corridor at only a single point, many of the riders from the Plateau using the C will be forced to take a relatively short bus ride to a vertical transfer requiring three or four minutes to negotiate with an average five-minute wait for depature once they reach the platform. Folks coming from the Delridge / Burien corridor on the H will face a similar barrier in Youngstown.
By time they negotiate the transfer, their existing bus would have reached the West Seattle Freeway interchange with SR99 which could have an exclusive bus-only ramp added for two or three hundred million dollars, guaranteeing free flow of those buses forever.
Riders who currently transfer to the C from secondary routes on the Plateau do already have the five-minute average transfer penalty so only will suffer the time lost to the vertical element of the transfer, but they are a relatively small minority of West Seattle riders, and it would certainly not be prohibitively expensive to return the north branch of the California Avenue corridor to direct service via SR99, perhaps using the tunnel to SLU and on to the U-District for a few tens of millions of dollars per year. Riders transferring at the Junction or 35th would have a choice of destinations via a fast express bus for only the capital cost of the interchange enhancement.
But when balanced against the $5 billion in capital costs of the extension as now envisioned, WSLE becomes sheer folly. This is a real “Steal” and ought to be stopped in its tracks!
[multiple puns intended]
This is the kind of garbage democratic cities throw at its residents. In-competent to the point of edging shady practices. How do you under estimate 2(TWO) BILLION dollars on a project? It’s so corrupt to “promise” something, vote for it, then be on the hook for whatever it cost. Yuck. People need to wake up. This is coming out of our pockets.
> democratic cities
I, for one, support the concept of democratic elections, despite the problems associated with non-specialist elected officials being required to understand and decide on complex issues like mass transit for the future.
He doesn’t mean “democratically run cities”. He means “cities run by Democrats”. He’s just another Capitalization-challenged Seattle Crimes troll.
you’re right, maybe it’s unfair to assume they understand difference between democracy and Democrats. The shameful result of underfunded public education.
You’re asking the impossible. You’d have to detailed engineering before the vote to make better estimates, and even then you may be surprised by soil conditions. The government doesn’t believe the public is willing to spend more on detailed planning for a project that isn’t approved yet — the money would be wasted if it’s not approved. Agencies can’t foresee a pandemic, inflation rate changes, real-estate rate changes, labor and supply bottlenecks, or other unknowns, all of which afflicted all our local transit projects.
What ST can do is not authorize expensive feature upgrades that weren’t in the ballot measure. That’s where it’s failing the most. What cities and neighborhood activists can do is not say something inexpensive is OK for the ballot measure (e.g., elevated segments, a 70′ moveable bridge in Ballard), and then come back after it passes and say only more expensive tunnels are acceptable. What cities can do is not use permitting as a lever to force expensive upgrades.
You’re asking the impossible. You’d have to detailed engineering before the vote to make better estimates, and even then you may be surprised by soil conditions.
I wouldn’t consider that impossible. I see two different ways of doing it.
One would be to skip all planning before the vote. They simply came up with a proposal to spend several billion dollars on mass transit in the area. Or maybe there was no vote at all. The agency could vote to tax (or not tax) as they see fit.
This changes everything. Sure, you look into West Seattle Link. Maybe you even go this far. But at some point you realize that it just isn’t a good idea. It isn’t worth the money. The parts you hoped would be cheap just aren’t cheap. So you go back to the drawing board and look into other projects (for West Seattle and the region as a whole). You keep planning and exploring options until you are ready to build something.
Or you do the opposite. You explore everything in detail before the vote. This means you do all the studies they have done (and maybe more) before you settle on a *detailed* plan. Of course you would run into some last minute snafus. But you don’t have major, last second changes (like swapping out a low bridge with a high bridge and moving stations several hundred feet from the planned location).
What they have instead is the worst of both worlds. They are committed to this plan because “this is what people voted for” although it really isn’t. There are significant differences. The cost is much higher. Some of the increase in cost is due to significant differences (like orienting the station to the south) that have nothing to do with soil issues. It is merely an add-on, after the vote. Meanwhile, any negotiation is based on the assumption that this will be built. This in turns leads to higher costs, as reasonable compromises (e. g. taking a lane) are ruled out. ST could easily say “either we run it down the street or we can’t afford it” but it is highly unlikely they do that now. People see that as going against the will of the voters, or at the very least a failure. This would not be the case in either of the alternative processes mentioned above. Instead we succumb to pressure from folks who want a tunnel and next thing you know it is way more expensive.
Ross, in fairness to Mike and the various County Electeds, the Legislature as much as mandated BART del Norte when they passed the enabling legislation.
It’s one thing to miss the cost estimates at the beginning. That’s why FTA recommends a 30 percent contingency even at the EIS stage.
For ST to assume a 10 percent contingency in the 2016 vote was to me basic deception. It was done to say that the spine can get completed. But by putting in such a low contingency in the cost estimates, ST knew that they were lying to the public in 2016 without good contingencies.
I don’t accept the often-stated excuse that the cause is inflation. The cost data from other projects was available at the time of the initial measure drafting.
The original concept was for a project that was quite different. Eg: the demand to build another tunnel.
You can’t really call it an error in estimating. It’d be like cursing your plumber for charging a huge amount to replace your toilet when what you ended up asking him to do was replace three different sinks and the toilet.
This type of thing really isn’t that unusual in public or private sector projects. Sometimes directions have to change, or some executive gets a bee up his butt about some nonsensical thing or other that winds up costing a pile of money. Ask BNSF sometime about the $15 million in shareholder value they spent repainting locomotives in the 1990s due to executive mood swings by a guy with a golden parachute.
Here, you’re dealing with an entire neighborhood that wants a bunch of different stuff to mitigate what they see as damage to their neighborhood, all of which add cost to the project.
Right on Cam Solomon. No one is changing subarea equity so Seattle can build gold plated underground Link. Unless Seattle wants to give its money to other subareas LOL. Seattle has been trying for 20 years to get its grubby hands on the other subareas money.
I read Nathan’s article and Fesler’s article. This has nothing to do with the four other subareas. East King Co. can build whatever they want with their ST money including Issaquah Link and all the park and rides they no longer use. Their advantage is they don’t think Link is “transformational”, or even like it, so they build it cheap above ground in cheap areas or public rights of way. I think Link from Judkins Park to Redmond cost around $5 billion including the mess on the bridge. If they say Issaquah Link will cost $3.2 billion it will cost $3.2 billion. Everywhere else gets a bus.
I don’t know what some are talking about with Pierce. Pierce raises 2/3 the ST revenue Seattle does and has over $1 billion in the bank. Its sole Link project is an above ground Link line to Tacoma Dome all above ground. Plenty of money for that and the parking garages along Sounder and T-Line. If you are going to do a spine, running to Tacoma Dome makes sense. Whether to continue to downtown Tacoma or the mall is a question for another day.
S. King Co. only raises around 1/3 the ST revenue Seattle does but it has almost no projects, just a single Link line through it that is nearly done. SnoCo. I don’t know much about, but I do know it was able to complete Lynnwood Link with just ST 2 and Lynnwood Link is 90% of what SnoCo. needs. They will get to Everett albeit maybe with a different route.
I think Fesler and Nathan live in Ballard and both see the writing on the wall and so are understandably unhappy. Link is never going to Ballard. Imagine spending $20 billion to run Link to Ballard that has 28,000 people living there. I wouldn’t spend $20 billion to run Link to downtown Tacoma. I don’t think it cost $20 billion to run Link from Tacoma Dome to Seattle.
This new CEO is tearing off the band aid with some honest accounting rules. It had to happen although the transit crowd is SHOCKED. Even with no West Seattle Link there isn’t $20 billion for Ballard Link so get used to it. Dow just got the news early and so made sure West Seattle went first, but even then might as well go big on West Seattle because Seattle can’t afford Link to Ballard no matter what. Good news is without a second tunnel the four other subarea pocketed $250 million OF THEIR OWN MONEY.
When Mike writes to support changing subarea equity “It’s a corollary of the fact that Redmond and Bellevue can’t exist without Seattle, but not the other way around. Or at least, they’d be smaller and less prosperous if they were all alone” I wonder what decade he is living in. Bellevue and Redmond don’t need Seattle. I don’t think Microsoft has any office space in Seattle and in ten years over half of Amazon’s employees will be in Bellevue. Tacoma doesn’t need Seattle. It is this arrogant view of Seattle and the region that has gotten Seattle into this mess, and the realization Seattle is a much different place than 10 years ago. Seattle is so special all Link must be underground, including U. Dist. to Northgate, West Seattle, and Ballard Link when current economics suggest Seattle’s subarea revenue will stay flat or decline going forward.
I don’t live in N. King Co. so not my problem to solve, but I think Dow has already solved it. I don’t live in the other subareas either but they seem ok, and were never keen on ST 3 anyway. I live in Pierce, we built the T-Line which is shit, some park and rides to make east Pierce happy, subsidize Sounder which no longer makes sense with so few people going to Seattle, and can afford Link to Tacoma Dome which on its own is shit too. But not $20 billion or $7 billion shit.
Usually when people have to spend within a budget they make better choices. Let’s hope this happens with Link in Seattle although they just spent $100 million on a bus line that is suppose to be 2 minutes faster than the old bus. Ballard Link is out. Start with that. Then ask whether the savings from West Seattle Link are worth it which means you have a better place in N. King to spend $1 or $2 billion. I don’t think Seattle transir people can do this so they will build gold plated West Seattle Link which they CAN afford.
“I wonder what decade he is living in. Bellevue and Redmond don’t need Seattle. I don’t think Microsoft has any office space in Seattle and in ten years over half of Amazon’s employees will be in Bellevue. Tacoma doesn’t need Seattle.”
I grew up in Bellevue and have relatives there and know people in those companies, so I’m living in this decade, thank you. Microsoft and Amazon could not have become the tech giants they did if you subtract Seattle’s population, commerce, and education. Bellevue was farmland until the 1960s, and Redmond only grew after 520 was built in the 60s and 70s. Much of Amazon’s and Microsoft’s tech talent comes from the University of Washington and other Seattle universities. Seattle has more total jobs in a wider variety of industries than Bellevue and Redmond do, that do innumerable necessary things that fly under the radar. The world isn’t just Amazon and Microsoft. When out-of-town people choose to work at Amazon or Microsoft in Bellevue, it’s partly because the region has Seattle with its history, tourist attractions, services. And for some people, pre-WWII walkable neighbohoods to live in.
> It is this arrogant view of Seattle
Is an arrogant view worse than a vindictive one?
In a normal metro area that prioritizes transit properly like Vancouver or many cities in Europe, the money is collected regionwide and high-capacity transit goes where it’s most needed and would be the most used; i.e., in the central city mostly. That’s what you don’t want and what subarea equity was intended to prevent, but that’s transit best practices, and how to build a well-functioning region with robust non-car mobility between everywhere. ST’s problem is not concentrating service in Seattle (as much as it can with only North King money and the shared services (e.g., the downtown tunnel and transfers)), but in specific bad decisions it made in Seattle.
Everett and Tacoma insisted on a light rail spine to them, even though other lower-cost options could have served their cities better — and more of their cities. So now they want the Spine completed, not surprising.
All true, although the biggest problem with subarea equity is that every area has to have the same tax rate. Simply put, Seattle has much bigger projects than any in any of the surrounding areas (especially as East Link is completed). More money should be spent in Seattle on transit, one way or another. If that means just Seattle, so be it.
The second big problem is assuming that rail to distant areas offers the same value as rail inside a center city. That is not true, anywhere. It doesn’t offer the same value for a couple of reasons. First it won’t get the same number of riders (even though it is expensive). Second, it won’t provide the time savings that a normal mass transit system offers. A normal mass transit system gets a lot of its riders from a large combination of trips. In our case that is things like Northgate to Capitol Hill, Roosevelt to Beacon Hill, UW to downtown, etc. This is sometimes called a network effect. In contrast, regional transit tends to be heavily oriented to getting to the main city. For trips of this nature the best option is either express buses or regional/commuter rail (using existing tracks). It is harder to get places along the way, but not that many people are going to those places. Very few people ever took the 512 north from Mountlake Terrace (I think the most it ever got was about 27 a day).
Thus the thing to build a metro for the city, and express buses (and regional rail) for outside it. That way, people in say, Tacoma, can quickly get to Seattle and then once in Seattle they can quickly get around it. This is all fairly standard stuff that ST was either ignorant about or just plain ignored when they fell in love with the “spine” idea.
Even with subarea equity you could make it work, but it would require a major change in mindset for ST. Places like Pierce Count spend a lot more money on bus service (they could use it) as well as money making the buses faster. Same with every other place outside Seattle, now that ST2 is almost finished. It is bizarre that we are building an extremely expensive mass transit system to areas that have really bad bus service.
What is interesting about West Seattle is how similar it is to those other projects. There is no network effect. Three new stations will be added, but there is very little travel between them. It is also fairly quick (using express buses) to get from West Seattle to downtown most of the day. With a little bit of work it could be really fast. Like the areas north, south and east, it is the wrong thing to build.
“the biggest problem with subarea equity is that every area has to have the same tax rate”
That’s not subarea equity; it’s because ST is a single tax district. You could split the subareas into tax districts and then they could have different votes for different rates at different times. The suburban subareas didn’t want that because they needed Seattle’s yes votes to outweigh their no votes. If it’s only Pierce or South King, everything would fail. Snohomish and East King are more iffy, but their politicians probably feared they’d get more no votes than they do.
Sound Transit came right after the wave of anti-tax movements that started with California’s Prop 13 and then the spate of Eyman initiatives in Washington.
And exurban growth was still very new. As recently as the 1980s the Seattle metro area and job market was mostly within the Kent-Renton-Redmond-Bothell ring, and it’s debatable whether to include Lynnwood. Outside that area were separate job markets, and their population was much lower. The exception was Boeing workers, who drove from everywhere to all plants, and got transferred willy-nilly so they couldn’t move every time they were transferred. It was the 1990s and 2000s growth that made Pierce Snohomish Counties more into suburbs and substantial cities. So they were a relatively new voting block in this new three-county job market, and that made it less certain which way they’d vote.
If you split the tax district into five, it’s unclear what structural impacts that would have on ST. It may have to split the board into five boards. Or only subarea boardmembers could vote on proposals in their subarea. It might affect the rest of the agency’s operations too, or require splitting the agency. ST has not looked at those issues as far as we know.
I agree that this has little to do with subarea equity.
But suburbs depend on their cities. Cities don’t depend on their suburbs. I can’t think of any city anywhere in the world where the center collapsed, but the suburbs were all fine. Cities basically collapses if the main city collapses. At best you get a few rich enclaves, but not a thriving city.
This is no “transit crowd” on whom you’re vomiting out your prejudices. It is people who know how effective transit works and are screaming for the elected leaders — who understandably do not — to change a foolish course, level with people, and make well-targeted, cost-effective improvements throughout the region instead of building BART del Norte in an urban region with 40% of the Bay Area’s population and no “core” city with the gravity of San Francisco.
And that most assuredly does not include recreation of the Seattle-Tacoma and Seattle-Everett interurbans.
Nor does it include “WSLE” or “BLE” as proposed by ST, though it ought to include some sort of automated “Light Metro” line between Smith Cove and First Hill with stubs to continue in the future should the city further grow and densify.
If you’re going to run your Pierce County Inferiority resentment case here, at least read some of the articles and comments before you hurl.
Whoa. ST3 already uses funds from the outer subareas to cover the cost of DSTT2.
Does anyone remember back in 2016 that West Seattle was assumed to open five years before DSTT2 and Ballard would open because no tunneling would be needed?
Then a few years later ST estimated that tunneling and aerial costs were comparable. So ST added it into the base preferred alternative — and now that’s been proven wrong.
And more and more real estate is being needed for the project as designs get honed.
Is there anyone in the ST Board who will admit that the agency was not honest with the public? Contrition is needed to revisit this now unaffordable project.
ST also asked the cities and public in 2016 to unite on one or two EIS alternatives for Ballard and West Seattle to avoid the debacle in south Bellevue where different factions demanded a dozen alternatives and that added a year to planning. ST also asked cities to follow Redmond’s example and streamline permitting and make light rail a categorically allowed zoning option, rather than trying to leverage permitting to get more concessions. All this was so that the lines could open quickly and on time.
But Seattle didn’t rise to the occasion. Neigborhood groups that had said elevated was OK to get the measure to pass, then insisted on the tunnels they said they wouldn’t insist on. And when ST made decisions that were harmful to passengers, like long transfers downtown, a CID/N station further from the CID’s walkshed, or a Ballard 14th station, we had to oppose them.
I don’t think it was a lack of honesty. The reality is that keeping the cost low is not a priority. And in fact, I think that despite our generally excellent job market, most of the board would prefer to spend more money, because it means more jobs.
Anyway, the priorities are, in order:
1) do not inconvenience drivers, businesses, or residents
2) hopefully reduce traffic, so that more people can drive faster (of course this isn’t how it works at all, but…)
3) provide a train for those poor unfortunates who can’t afford to drive
4) pretend like we’re saving the environment
Saving money doesn’t even make the list.
I note that your list makes no mention of serving the users of transit well, and I’m convinced you are right. How riders of light rail will use the system is given scant import by ST, if any at all.
Oh, and the I-405 construction happening in Bothell and Renton this weekend is an evil plot to force drivers out of their cars.
The subarea infighting is embarrassing to the commentariat and the Blog.
I’m tired of ST’s bad design decisions. From putting the Ballard station on 14th, to moving the 2nd tunnel station away from the international district, to not designing same direction transfers at sodo, to skipping first hill (more than once), to .. meh.. there are too many to list…
They need someone in charge with a vision and some courage to make some tough decisions, but the process wouldn’t allow it even if that someone existed. The only one with any sort of clout seems to be Dow, and he seems to be focused on things other than building a system that is going to work well for its riders for the next hundred years.
What it all means is that I have no confidence in the outcome after ST has had a chance to digest this budget news.
Inbox: After voting on whether to officially extend the appointment of Goran Sparrman as ST’s Interim CEO to May 15, 2025, the ST Board will consider a motion “directing the chief executive officer to develop a workplan on measures the agency will pursue to address rising project costs and inform future baselining decisions on the West Seattle Link Extension project.”
Will the former HNTB Vice President be able to come up with a palatable coating for what must be an enormous bitter pill? Will the workplan describe an effort to go back to the drawing board on WSLE, or will it be a workplan to develop more workplans? Will Sparrman be able to save WSLE (and by extension, the rest of ST3’s megaprojects), or will the project founder on the shoals of extreme cost inflation?
Why not skip the bridge altogether and bring the line north from Tukwila ? At least riders could get to the airport and Federal Way. Build the rest later.
That hadn’t been thought of but there’s a reason against it: travel time from Westlake to TIB is already 34 minutes, so it couldn’t possibly get to West Seattle with acceptable travel time. It’s the same reason Link can’t serve Renton or Kent and we need the 101 and 150. The line is surface in SODO and Rainier Valley so it can only run at 35 mph instead of 55, and it detours east to Rainier Valley and back west to TIB. Those add about 12 minutes to the travel time.
I do think Stephen Fesler made a mistake bringing up abolishing subarea equity. That isn’t the problem, it isn’t going to happen, it got people in other subareas who normally are pro transit worked up, and took focus off the main issues Stephen was trying to make. He would have benefited by waiting a day or two to publish his article to calm down and organize his arguments.
The questions I have reading his piece and the comments on this blog are:
1. Stephen uses $20 billion for BLE. Is that correct? I know ST has recently increased the cost estimate to $15 billion which alone is a large increase in a short period of time apparently due to a new (and more honest) accounting system.
2. Can N. King Co. afford $15 billion let alone $20 billion to build BLE even if WLE is scrapped? The station at 130th is under construction and I believe a station at Graham has been green lighted.
3. Does anyone really know how much ST would save if it adopted some of the value engineering ideas some on this blog are proposing. Elevated is generally less expensive than tunneling, but not always according to ST when it came to BLE, and not when very large takings are necessary for an above ground line. My understanding is that is why Link from U. Dist. to Northgate was buried. The savings from an elevated line plus the takings, disruption, and aesthetics were not worth the savings.
4. Where would these savings from an elevated line in WS be spent in the subarea? Any savings are not nearly enough to fund the massive cost estimates for BLE, or get WLE close to its original cost estimate that was clearly lowballed in the levy. . Maybe a DSTT2 that ends at SLU (but clearly without an $800 million station at 4th Ave. S.). Another station or two? I think WS will demand to know where the savings will go if they have to accept a surface or elevated alignment.
5. Would the enhancement program help for either WLE or BLE. Bellevue had to pay $150 million for its tunnel and the subarea paid the other half. But West Seattle and Ballard are small poor neighborhoods compared to Bellevue and each neighborhood could be asked to contribute $1 billion or more for the enhancements they want. But the enhancement program could be a way to get WS to agree to scrap Link. Ballard Link is likely unaffordable for the subarea as a whole anyway, but pointing out how much each Ballard resident would need to contribute (easily over $100,000 each) to complete BLE might take away the sting Ballardites are naturally feeling at suddenly being told BLE is not affordable despite the promises in the levy while West Seattle is getting “gold plated” Link to borrow a term.
0) I agree. This has little to do with subarea equity. Mentioning it is a distraction.
1) I have no idea but it doesn’t seem crazy.
2) My understanding is that we can build practically anything if we wait long enough. Of course there is a limit. At some point the costs increase faster than we can raise money, but ST has the ability to tax indefinitely.
3) No. It is all based on estimates. But nothing has surprised me about what has happened so far. None of this is like “bad soil” in Federal Way or “Oops, we didn’t measure the slope of the hill correctly” at 130th Station. Most of the increase in costs are because they are adding things that cost more money and everyone would have guessed they cost more money. If you want to run elevated, run in the middle of the street. You own the roadway. If you start buying up property, it costs more money. Generally speaking, tunnels are more expensive than elevated which is more expensive than running on the surface. Bigger stations are not only more expensive to build, but there are more limitations on where you can put them. This means they become even more expensive, especially if they are underground.
Link from UW to Northgate was buried because the folks in Roosevelt wanted the station closer to the high school. The original plan was to pop out of the ground under the freeway. That would have been significantly cheaper (although not as good, in my opinion). I don’t think elevated was studied for downtown to UW — it just didn’t make sense given the existing transit tunnel downtown. They could have skipped everything in between there (and run elevated close to the freeway) which probably would have been cheaper, but not nearly as good.
4. If WS Link was completely elevated (as was the original plan) all it means is that the cost overruns are not as big as they would be otherwise. It would basically mean that the various projects that follow (Ballard Link being the big one) would not be delayed as much as they would be otherwise.
5. ST has kept open the possibility that Seattle will chip in for these projects. For example a tunnel to Ballard. Personally I don’t see it, since none of the plans look especially good. I could see the city chipping in for a station at 20th, but not 15th. In general folks in Ballard don’t mind big infrastructure (it is part of the character of Ballard). Years ago I remember the city asking Ballard to consider burying the utility lines and the general attitude was “Hell No, We are Ballard!”.
If the city is asked to contribute a significant sum to any of these projects there would be plenty of second guessing of these projects. This is easy to do with West Seattle Link. Then there is the second tunnel. Without West Seattle Link, there is no second tunnel*. This means that Rainier Valley trains continue to the UW. It means that folks heading to the airport (from places like Northgate or the UW) avoid an awkward transfer (they just wait for the train headed to the airport). So not only do you have lots of neighborhoods asking “Why are we paying so much money for this?” but also “Why are we paying for this since things will get worse for a lot of people?”. Hard to see that winning over a lot of people.
* Many of us here has suggested that we don’t need a second downtown tunnel (even if we have West Seattle Link). But without West Seattle Link, it definitely goes away. The line from Ballard would end at Westlake. It could go further, but there would be no reason to go to CID. It would make way more sense to go First Hill (although that could come later). Oh, and the train should be independent, automated and have smaller stations (as folks here have explained). This saves money while providing a better transit experience. It is what the smart agencies are all doing now.
“My understanding is that is why Link from U. Dist. to Northgate was buried. ”
The difference is extending a tunnel vs building a new tunnel, and the specific geography of the alternative.
The northern tunnel was originally going to emerge at Ravenna Blvd (63rd) with an elevated freeway station. The Roosevelt neighborhood asked for it to be rerouted with an underground station in the center of the neighborhood. It was assumed that would be more expensive. But when ST did further engineering, it found that extending the tunnel to 95th was less expensive than weaving up, down, and around I-5’s foundations as in the earlier proposal. I-5 is very old, so any jostling of it could damage it, and ST would have to pay the repairs. (That’s also why I-5 will have big closures next year, to do the major renovations to allow it to last another fifty years.)
The northern tunnel hadn’t been built yet (at least not north of UW station), so extending it just meant using the same tunnel boring machine (TBM) further. Each tunnel requires an expensive TBM, which is custom built for one job, and when it’s finished the TBM is too worn out to be reused. So extending a tunnel you’re already planning to build is relatively inexpensive, whereas starting a new tunnel is expensive. The ST3 tunnels are all new.
“But West Seattle and Ballard are small poor neighborhoods compared to Bellevue and each neighborhood could be asked to contribute $1 billion or more for the enhancements they want”
Bellevue is a city with autonomous taxing and permitting authority. It prioritized a tunnel in front of city hall as part of its civic center goals for the entire city. West Seattle and Ballard can’t raise taxes on their own. Seattle has other capital priorities besides these neighborhood centers. Theoretically Seattle could set up transportation benefit districts in those neighborhoods for this. They probably couldn’t raise as much as needed, and their residents may not want to spend that much on that.
It’s important to mention that the preferred alternative eliminates the SODO busway. Even the other alternatives require a long-term closure.
That really makes the routes that use it have to take several minutes longer to get through or around SODO.
It’s just another negative impact to transit travel time regionally. Routes 101, 102 and 150 carry over 9K riders on an average weekday.
I can’t find a table showing how the closure of the SODO busway impacts other transit riders.
I have started reviewing the FEIS. It’s notable in what is not presented in the statement.
Detailed transportation impacts are in this technical report:
https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/16a-WSLE-FinalEIS-AppendixN1-transportationtechreport-main-body.pdf
Right away, even though Downtown Seattle transit capacity is listed in the Purpose and Need, no table that I can find in the FEIS documents this.
The most I can find is a discussion of train loads north of South Lander Street. It lists overcrowding on the 1 Line (LOS E) at peak hours but an excess and pint of capacity on the 3 Line (LOS A). That happens whether or not the project plus DSTT2 happens or not. (Table 3-21)
In other words, it’s pretty clear that there isn’t a need to run 3 Line trains more frequently to ease overcrowding while 1 Line has a potential future capacity issue that is summarily ignored.
I’m reviewing the data for a host of other issues like overall VMT reduction and auto trip reductions, assumptions about transferring difficulty, percentage of users transferring from buses and other things.
Overall, the authors have chosen to obfuscate the DSTT issues in these latest reports. The document leans heavily on 2042 ridership as the end state background assumption. However there’s clearly not enough money to get the full WSBLE open by that date.
I could see that anyone wanting to legally challenge the FEIS validity could prevail on the basic logic gap going on here. ST has not demonstrated that the need for West Seattle Link nor its full impacts.
There’s not a realistic way to dig the Alaska Junction Station pit (100 feet deep the size of a football field) along with bore the deep tunnel and get the track infrastructure installed by 2032 either.
The track drawings are here:
https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/12a-WSLE-FinalEIS-AppendixJ-drawings-part-1.pdf
Something notable is that ST drawings show a temporarily relocated set of existing 1 Line tracks and platforms to the east of SODO station.
By doing this, ST is showing that they don’t need to have to build three platforms at SODO station. They could easily build two center platforms rather than three platforms (two side and one center).
The SODO transfer is critical to get right. If ST is going to shift the existing tracks anyway, they have no reason to make the transfer easier.
I just don’t get why these rail designers ignore transfer difficulty.
When it comes to “other people’s money,” Sound Transit and many other publicly-funded agencies have no upper limit to spending. One can get a gist of the culture of a transit agency by the percentage of monies spent on PR: ST and CT far outpace the others in the region, including the behemoth KC Metro. ST has kept the money-losing and considerable cost/passenger Sounder North afloat for decades despite it serving no origin or destination that express buses don’t (Everett, Mukilteo, Edmonds, Union Station). This practice has continued, they even added trips back, though the corresponding bus trips are interlined with Link light rail to supposedly improve speed and reliability. But, rather than plow those millions into getting Link further north, completing the north side of the Ash Way/164th direct access ramp that would save bus riders considerable time and the agency money (or thinking about having line 2 extended to the South Everett Park and Ride), ST’s board continues to throw the public’s money at a smattering of Sounder north passengers who they think are above riding a bus. And, when light rail does go north to a low-density loop that extends the completion time and costs m/billions more to appease Boeing, ST won’t save costs by making those less-frequent trains automated.
What makes the West Seattle cost issue “dead on arrival” is that ST Board Chair Dow Constantine lives there. Similar to when a ST Vice Chair lived in Issaquah, light rail going to/from there was chosen rather than the long-time bottleneck of the Renton “S” curves and its 100,000+ residents. The ST’s board makes parochial and political decisions, not ones that are necessarily the best for the region.