Electrified Caltrain started in September. (The House of Transit)

There’s also an agency slide deck on the project and technology.

This is an open thread.

65 Replies to “Sunday Movie: Caltrain Electric”

  1. The California High Speed Rail Commission threw in about 23% of the project cost (about 1/3 of the state/ local share) in anticipation of having high speed rail on these tracks

    So one could say that these are the first segments of electrified tracks that CAHSR will be using!

    And when the CAHSR haters complain that it’s only running in the Central Valley, we can educate them that the Bay Area segments are being used too.

    1. I liked the bike emblems on the doors closest to where the bikes are supposed to be kept.

      A luggage emblem could also be considered, but luggage toting is far beyond what the storage areas can hold, especially in the days of SeaTac Airport Station rising to #2 in boardings.

  2. What is the most ST/we know about the issues involving the northbound Link tunnel just south of UW station? Does ST have no idea what the problem is, and still needs to go in and investigate it? Or, do they know what the problem is, but now they are trying to figure out the best time to fix it?

    1. I would like to know why they can’t fix it during the overnight hours that Link is closed. Does this really need to require a full weekend of single tracking?

      1. Exactly. Also, imagine if it wasn’t in a tunnel, but in between Stadium and SODO station, for example. Would ST still say it will take months to investigate and fix? They’d probably have it fixed within a week or two. I think because the problem is hidden in a tunnel, it gives ST an excuse to drag their feet.

      2. I suspect that it’s a bottoms up scheduling thing. They ask staff how long it takes. They don’t give staff a time limit and say “do it”.

        For example, when the replaced Columbia City station tiles a few years ago, they announced single tracking for 2 weeks! They got the work done in about 6-7 days but did not appear to do overtime (no workers after 5 pm). So it took apparently about 48-54 hours max of actual time. If they had assigned double the workers it could have been 24-28 hours. So two weeks of single tracking could have been done with one day of single tracking with overnight shifts — like from 9 pm Saturday to 5 am Monday. Or ST could have done half one weekend and half the next. Of course that would have also meant modest overnight construction noise.

        In so many levels, ST seems to put rider needs and interests behind everything else. It’s very frustrating how ST seems to care little about serving its fare-paying public. They’re more concerned with keeping internal staff happy and playing footsies with real estate interests.

      3. Al, If the inconvenience is too great, one can simply work long shifts late into the night the week before and after, and take vacation during the inconvenience week.

    2. The most we know is in the “Link Distruption” article October 17th, and the last Seattle Times article, which is probably in a recent news roundup.

    1. If only I could watch to this now, but I need something audio-only to listen to while I finish the dishes and get ready to go out to a park before the rain starts. Hopefully I’ll remember to look at this comment again and watch it later. Thanks for the link. I’ve been thinking about Alderwood access, although I haven’t been there much to have my own opinion what it needs.

    2. Had Snohomish interests cared, they could have fast tracked a two station extension with Alderwood and Ash Way stations after ST3 passed. That would have postponed the rest of Everett Link Extension a few years though.

      Had ST done that, it could have been under construction by now. It could have opened by 2028. Granted the alignment around Alderwood would have been politically delicate but it could have been done.

      I’m a little surprised that Stride didn’t include an Alderwood stop. But Stride skips Southcenter and Factoria too. It appears to me like Stride wasn’t designed to serve shoppers at all. It’s amazing how ST throws hundreds of millions at mediocre stops yet says they can’t afford to build connections to obviously more important ones.

      1. Stride N seems okay to me. I think Stride N skipping Alderwood makes sense, at least until it redevelops or until the light rail extension reaches the mall. The Alderwood stops on the 535 don’t get much ridership, and the mall is already relatively well-served by CT.

        The Stride S alignment looks really bad and I think it needs to get entirely redesigned.

      2. I think skipping Alderwood is a bit of a let down personally. I’d be curious to see the ridership numbers at that stop vs. others along the 535 alignment, but the area has seen two apartment complexes come up in the last few years with another in planning. I suspect there’ll be a decent amount of future growth in that area too as Lynnwood plans for West Alderwood station. It’s a bit of a shame that riders in that area will need to double-back to Lynnwood City Center.

    3. Swift Orange runs every 10 minutes! It’s faster to wait for the next Swift Orange bus rather than walk — even if a rider misses a hits by a few seconds.

      Maybe the lesson is that better info about riding CT is needed at the station or on Link. Of course it doesn’t help that everyone headed to Swift Orange from Link has to walk down 65 steps with no escalator and then has to walk across a decorative plaza with no weather protection.

      1. I think Swift Orange only runs every 10 minutes during the weekday daytime hours when everyone is at work. During the hours that most people have the time to shop, frequency drops to, I think, every 20 minutes. So, it can be faster to walk than to wait, especially if waiting would require a walk at the end, anyway.

      2. He mentioned the bus. He just wanted to walk it (to see if it was a pleasant walk). It isn’t.

      3. I would also add the video isn’t about some guy walking from the Lynnwood Link station to the mall, and complaining about the distance. During his walk, he touches on a lot of topics discussed on this blog. Walkable neighborhoods. TOD. Density. The suburbs. Urban planning. Car-oriented land use. And more.

      4. Having watched some more of the video he was in a hurry to get back and should have taken the bus at that point. He walks right by the Swift Orange bus stop but misses it. Doh!

        Then again he also had time to talk trash about the various places along the way, so he wasn’t in that much of a hurry.

      5. @Sam — Yeah, he goes into the whole thing. It is a much a complaint about suburbia in general as it is the particulars in Lynnwood.

      6. Swift Orange runs every 10 minutes weekdays until 7pm, and every 20 minutes evenings and weekends.

      7. “Swift Orange runs every 10 minutes weekdays until 7pm, and every 20 minutes evenings and weekends.”

        (Sigh). Transit agencies love to tout weekday daytime frequency of their core routes, as if the bulk of their ridership base is working part time or retired. Unfortunately, for anyone who works a full time job, weekday daytime frequency is only useful on a few select holidays (e.g. Christmas Eve) and when taking vacation. The bulk of the non-work trips happen evenings or weekends.

      8. When the first Swift Blue line started, it had a longer 10-minute span. It was cut back in a recession and that became the new Swift norm.

      9. Swift Blue runs 15 minute headways on the weekends midday and Swift Orange runs 15 minute headways on Saturdays.

    4. By the eighteen minute mark he seems to be panicking. He is depressed and comparing it to Soviet architecture (“commie blocks”). Somehow I don’t this will be featured on the Lynnwood Chamber of Commerce website.

    5. With only the half-hourly CT 112 and hourly 103 going between the station and the “Civic Center”, I bet a lot of city employees have gotten used to a long walk to work.

      1. The 103 is half-hourly as well during the day on weekdays. Both the 112 and 103 are slated to get 20m headways during the day at some point in the next two years.

      2. Thanks.

        I wonder what CT has in mind for when West Alderwood Station opens, and having the Orange express between Lynnwood and Alderwood becomes pointless.

        Maybe the Orange switches to following the 103’s path between the stations, serving the Civic Center?

        I’m one of the riders who has used the Orange to get to Alderwood several times, and I cast my vote for switching to the 103 path sooner rather than later.

        That said, there is a large TOD apartment complex south of Alderwood, roughly the size of Terrace Station, that is more worthy of Orange stops than Alderwood is.

    6. “Lynnwood is not a city.” I’ve often felt that. Of course, it’s planning for a downtown someday.

      He complains about the freeway being next to the trail but doesn’t seem to notice the trees and grass around the trail itself.

      If he knew about the history of the Interurban, he’d know it was a streetcar to Everett a hundred years ago, and it was the freeway that followed the Interurban route, not the other way round.

      The commie block comment is about the feeling of depressing concrete everywhere, not the nature of the layout. A real commie block is an arterial with regular intersections, with midrise apartment buildings on both sides all along it. The buildings are tower-in-the-park looking so there’s nothing immediately adjacent to them, but within walking distance are small neighborhood shops and a metro station or streetcar/bus stop. It would be more like First Hill than Lynnwood.

      “This is the American version of the commie block dystopia.” But this is supposed to be the American Dream, what the majority of people want, so we’re told.

      He talks about feeling lost, and of course that’s mainly an emotional response, but if he thinks about it, the trail goes straight back to the transit center, and straight forward to Alderwood, and the trail is unique-looking.

      That could be me complaining about the suburbs, as Sam predicted. When I was little I just took it as normal and the only way. My parents drove everywhere so we didn’t have these epic walks. My walk circle was a single-family neighborhood, although luckily a bus stop was five minutes away, and that was the route that went all across Bellevue and to downtown Seattle. I started riding the bus in junior high. But already in elementary school I read books about people who lived in walkable neighborhoods in the 1920s or 1950s, or in cities like New York. That primed me for going to high school in downtown Bellevue, and my dad moved to a series of apartments in downtown Bellevue so I could live with him and walk to school, and when I graduated I moved to Seattle.

      At 38:08, “I need to understand what is the best way back”, and right in the background is a bus shelter.

      “My aesthetic sensibilities have been offended.” The quote of the year. We are not amused either.

      40:30, he got caught in a Link outage.

      1. This guy used great quotable lines that I plan on going back and writing down. I could quibble with some of his misses of using the local transit but I think his mission was in looking for a walkable pleasant environment. And I gotta say it brought back the many times in my youth of trodding along a dystopian suburban hell when I wanted to pick up a book or magazine somewhere in suburban Buffalo of the early 1970s. I now know exactly what I was feeling then. Thanks for posting this!

        On the other hand one evening just at sunset the train pulled in to Lynnwood Station with a beautiful sunset and three high school kids with skateboards offerd to let my old bones off the train first. Overheard as we exited one of the teens commented on how great the train was and they all agreed, freedom of pretty good transit had arrived for them.

      2. It’s a walking channel so his goal was to document the walking experience, and the experience of somebody who knows little about Snohomish County. The Lynnwood Chamber of Commerce may not want to do anything about the stroads and parking minimums, but it should pay attention to how good the signage and wayfinding is for visitors, especially pedestrians who want to spend money at the Chambers’ members.

      3. Maybe the Swift shelters need electricity-capturing wind turbines on top. Seriously, how can someone not see a Swift bus shelter?

        Also, the evergreen tree canopy dominates the landscape north of Northgate. Maybe he can’t see the trees because he is expecting a rainforest?

      4. He said several times he didn’t want to take a bus.

        There’s also the Alderwood Zip Shuttle if you want to take an app-taxi. That’s Lynnwood’s last-mile solution for now. It also shows how few people they think go to the mall area every hour, that they could fit into app-taxis. Shouldn’t a mall have a lot of people going?

      5. I’m not convinced that the Zip serves a large share of mall-riders.

        The 103 and Swift Orange serve the west side and the 166 and 117 serve the east side (along with ST 535). If anything, the mall is one of the better-served locations in Lynnwood.

      6. I watched the video. Here are my responses to our man from Germany:

        1. If you have ever spent any time in Germany you know the Germans are a sour and critical people. The narrator is typical German. The glass is always half empty. Life isn’t so great for them anymore. Who goes from Germany to Lynnwood looking for urbanism? My guess is the video is a plant. Like anyone in Germany cares about Lynnwood.

        2. I could go to Germany today and find plenty of disappointing design and land use, and not just in the east. Have you ever been to Bonn. This is a city that is completely devoid of any joy in architecture or design, and they got to design it from the rubble up.

        3. Link has been open for one month. Maybe if the U.S. had not spent a fortune first destroying and then rebuilding Germany we would have had more money for our transit.

        4. Snohomish Co. is 2196 sq. miles and has 827,597 residents according to the 2020 census. Did he expect Hong Kong?

        5. No one goes to SnoCo for the “urbanism”. They come here for the wilderness which is spectacular when they can ‘t stand being in an urban city for one more second.

        6. Snohomish Co. is poor. This is what poor cities in poor counties look like. But since they are white folks on this blog don’t care if they are poor.

        7. Seattle is rich. So what is Seattle’s excuse for its ugly architecture and design?

        8. There are plenty of places in Seattle I could take a video and find the same design and architecture complaints as in the video, except I would be called a racist because much of it is in South Seattle.

        9. We in SnoCo think things are looking pretty good these days. We are half full kind of folks. We don’t have Seattle’s problems, we just got Link, Link will go to Everett, 96% of people here drive so little change there, plenty of space to breath, and we don’t live like sardines packed into a can.

        10. How about doing what every other tourist who wants to visit SnoCo (or 98% of America) does: rent a car. Or walk around Capitol at night and get robbed.

        11. How surprising a Seattle urbanist found this obscure German video to post on STB so all the Seattle urbanists can look down their nose at Lynnwood. At least Lynnwood is going in the right direct and you can ride Link along LLE without getting robbed or shot.

      7. Paul, his accent sounds like it comes from a Slavic language, to my ear. Are you sure he’s from Germany? Anyway, I did find him to be overly critical. He definitely has a bias against the burbs. I think he likes walkable neighborhoods and towns. I’m much more optimistic than he is. But I also found that he made a lot of good observations and points. He wasn’t expecting Hong Kong, but he also wasn’t expecting that everything surrounding the “city center” station to be so hostile to pedestrians.

      8. “our man from Germany”

        I think he’s Slavic. His accent sounds Russian to me, but other Slavic languages have similar characteristics.

        “Who goes from Germany to Lynnwood looking for urbanism?”

        He lives in Seattle.

        “My guess is the video is a plant.”

        A plant? Who would plant somebody like this to achieve what?

        “Maybe if the U.S. had not spent a fortune first destroying and then rebuilding Germany we would have had more money for our transit.”

        That was seventy years ago, at the same time the US had its biggest jump in prosperity, so there was clearly money for both. The reason the US has such bad transit infrastructure is political decisions: spending the bulk of money on freeways and airports, and building cities without regard to walkability.

        “Snohomish Co. is 2196 sq. miles and has 827,597 residents according to the 2020 census. Did he expect Hong Kong?”

        No, just Amsterdam or Vancouver.

        “No one goes to SnoCo for the “urbanism”. They come here for the wilderness which is spectacular”

        That’s a far cry from wilderness. The wilderness is fifty miles away. What that is is mile upon mile of sprawl that ruined any chance for wilderness or nature.

        “Snohomish Co. is poor. This is what poor cities in poor counties look like.”

        The entire county isn’t poor. It’s mixed income, just with a lower average than King County. Poor cities in poor countries don’t waste their money on eight-lane freeways next to several six-lane arterials; their citizens have more critical demands.

        “How surprising a Seattle urbanist found this obscure German video to post on STB so all the Seattle urbanists can look down their nose at Lynnwood.”

        I’m not sure Sam is an urbanist.

        “Or walk around Capitol at night and get robbed.”

        Tens of thousands of people live in Capitol Hill or go to Capitol Hill every week and don’t get robbed.

      9. Sam, it is LYNNWOOD. SnoCo. Poor and sparsely populated. Who in the world that knows anything about the U.S. would go to Lynnwood and expect to find some walkable urban oasis, especially one month after Lynnwood Link was completed. There was no “city center station” 45 days ago (and appreciate your quotations) let alone a city center.

        Are you telling me the narrator couldn’t google a map of Lynnwood or videos or photos and not know what he would find. That is why I think the video is a plant. I note Gemini is located in Seattle.

        People in SnoCo drive. They have jobs that require them to drive, driveways that require them to drive, kids, lives that require them to drive. Their girlfriends don’t want to take a bus. There are some buses, some with awful frequency, and now a train that goes along I-5. How is that suppose to change Lynnwood, especially in 45 days? We got a train to downtown Seattle and the UW and airport and that is pretty cool but it won’t change life in SnoCo one tiny bit.

        Lynnwood is not the “suburbs”. To us Lynnwood is the “city” although that is a stretch compared to some places, but not Kent or Auburn or Federal Way or Sumner.

        Medina and Mercer Island are the “suburbs”, maybe some of the really expensive single family neighborhoods in north Seattle. [ah]

        I just thought the video narrator was so snooty and so stupid to think he would find Paris in Lynnwood that I think the video is fake, but the Seattle urbanists would lap it up because they specialize in feeling they are superior to their poor neighbors as noted in the comments, which is why they really resent folks from Bellevue and the eastside treating them like poor neighbors.

        Otherwise what a waste of time. Man goes to Lynnwood and discovers Lynnwood STILL is a sparsely laid out town center in a poor county with 99% car usage 45 days after Link opens.

      10. Lynnwood is not the “suburbs”.

        Wait, what? I used to live in Lynnwood. It is most definitely the suburbs. The video showed an area that most people would consider a typical American suburb (it isn’t Cambridge, MA). Just about everything he said could be said about similar suburbs.

      11. “Lynnwood is not the “suburbs”. Wait, what? I used to live in Lynnwood. It is most definitely the suburbs. The video showed an area that most people would consider a typical American suburb (it isn’t Cambridge, MA). Just about everything he said could be said about similar suburbs”.

        It depends where you are coming from. Here is how Wiki describes Lynnwood:

        “Lynnwood is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. The city is part of the Seattle metropolitan area and is located 16 miles (26 km) north of Seattle and 13 miles (21 km) south of Everett, near the junction of Interstate 5 and Interstate 405. It is the fourth-largest city in Snohomish County, with a population of 38,568 in the 2020 U.S. census.[5]

        “Often characterized as a suburb or bedroom community, Lynnwood has the highest concentration of retailers in the region and a growing core of businesses, anchored by the Alderwood Mall. The city also has a community college, a convention center, and a major transit center. It is headquarters for several major companies, including Zumiez”.

        I would call that a city in SnoCo (not sure if the bedroom part is for Everett or Seattle). Suburbs to me are the single-family neighborhoods with houses. Lynnwood is our main commercial area other than Everett which is up north or Edmonds to the south (Bothell I think of as King Co.). I also wouldn’t call Marysville, Bothell or Edmonds suburbs either, except for their single family neighborhoods.

        What about Shoreline or Mountlake Terrace (half the people on this blog don’t even know how to spell “Mountlake”). Are those “suburbs”?

        I imagine people from Chicago or Atlanta or Boston or New York or LA or Miami or a lot of international cities would call Seattle a suburb, and in fact something like 80% of Seattle is single family zones. I know a lot of Seattle urbanists like to go around calling Seattle “urban” but other than downtown what part is urban? Is West Seattle or Ballard or Capitol Hill or Leschi or Beacon Hill “urban”? Is Everett or Tacoma “urban”? Is Belevue “urban”? What about the cities in east Pierce like Auburn or Sumner, or Kent or Federal Way or Tacoma? Or Olympia?

        It would help me if someone on this blog could identify those areas in Seattle they think are really urban and not faux urban.

        How are you defining urban?

        My guess is folks who want to think of themselves as “urban” define urban as like where they live, and people who don’t like to be called “urban” like to call where they live suburban or rural. A lot of people think “urban” is a pejorative.

        I think Lynnwood for me and the other folks in SnoCo is pretty urban because that is where the commercial and retail and colleges are. If you are a snooty Seattle urbanist like in the video and wear all black Lynnwood is really rural, not suburban, or really SUB sophisticated is what he really meant.

        I think the video narrator knew exactly what he would find on LLE when he got to Lynnwood and if he didn’t [ah]

        Now whether ST should have spent billions running Link to Lynnwood is a different question, but I can’t imagine ST was SHOCKED at what they found when they reached Lynnwood. After all ST did build a 1900 stall park and ride and big concrete plaza on the other side of the station.

      12. “Wait, what? I used to live in Lynnwood. It is most definitely the suburbs.”
        I agree Ross. Back in the day, Almost Live roasted Lynnwood as “a non descript suburb” on their Lynnwood Beauty Academy segment.
        https://youtu.be/cclhqdQqbeQ?si=A_M_vyPL-NB0tRey
        I’ve considered Lynnwood a suburb that also happens to be a local regional center, like Tukwila/Renton. Tho Lynnwood is definitely more indistinguishable compared to it’s neighbors. Reminds me a lot of Centennial, CO and Lone Tree, CO, which also ironically also has one of the regional malls for Denver.

      13. The word “suburban” is too vague if one wants to use it for comparisons. Some are talking about the density while others are referring to it’s relation to other cities.

        There are more specific phrases — but unfortunately they aren’t quite widely used. Some are “suburban activity center” or some use “edge city” (further divided into retail/office variants)

        https://www.brookings.edu/articles/activity-centers/#42660

      14. Suburbs to me are the single-family neighborhoods with houses.

        A suburb is simply an outlying district of a city. They exist all over the world and there are many different types. But your description of it is the type of thing he mentioned in the video. If it is a single family neighborhood with houses, then how do you walk to the store? How do you walk to school or walk to the pharmacy? The simple answer is you don’t. You drive. Everything is based on driving, and that is why a random walk through the commercial center of this suburb is so pathetic, yet typical for America.

        A suburb can be a city, of course. The fact that Lynnwood incorporated really doesn’t change anything. More people in Lynnwood work in Seattle than work in Lynnwood. Over three times as many (as of the last census). In fact less than 10% of the people who live in Lynnwood work in Lynnwood (plenty work in Everett, Bellevue, Edmonds, Bothell, etc.). You can dig into the figures using https://onthemap.ces.census.gov/index.html.

        There is very little in the way of a civic or commercial center. The video emphasized that. If you look at the history of Lynnwood you can see that it started as a suburb and has always been a suburb. This isn’t like Edmonds, which was a small town that became a suburb (or Cambridge MA which was a big city before becoming a suburb of Boston). It is a classic American car-based suburb.

        Oh, and Lynnwood has plenty of single-family neighborhoods with houses.

      15. Back in the day, Almost Live roasted Lynnwood as “a non descript suburb” on their Lynnwood Beauty Academy segment.
        https://youtu.be/cclhqdQqbeQ?si=A_M_vyPL-NB0tRey
        I’ve considered Lynnwood a suburb that also happens to be a local regional center, like Tukwila/Renton.

        I love that Almost Live skit.

        Anyway, yes, absolutely. It is worth noting the history of Lynnwood (which you can read on Wikipedia). The first major settlement was built in 1917 called “Alderwood Manor”. It was a series of farms marketed to urban dwellers. From the very beginning it was suburban. That particular area was close to a rail line. Eventually development shifted over to SR 99, when the highway was built. It wasn’t until relatively recently that Lynnwood started trying to build a “city center”.

        In other words, it wouldn’t exist without Seattle. That is a classic definition of suburb. I agree about it being a regional center — but I would say it is a lot more like Tukwila then Renton. What makes Lynnwood significant is its location. That’s it. It includes parts of SR-99 and I-5. It also skirts I-405. Now, of course, it has Link. There are many (fast) ways to get to Seattle and all the suburban areas along the way.

        In contrast Renton has a long history and a significant natural geography. It was a cultural center for the Duwamish and an important area for salmon fishing. Europeans settled there fairly early and it became a city in 1901. Of course Boeing put it on the map. It is a suburb but it is also easy to imagine it being a small town (if there was no Seattle) just given its history and natural geography. Sort of like Roslyn.

    8. “How many Germans does it take to change a light bulb? One; we are efficient and have zero humor.”

      1. There clearly are different ideas of what “urban” means. If someone that lived in New York City came to Lynnwood they would not think it is urban, but they probably would not think Seattle is urban either. Or any other city in the Pacific Northwest.

        For me personally who lives outside Lynnwood I think Lynnwood is urban. It has grocery stores, post office, government offices, college, office buildings that are taller than most places in Seattle, shops, gas stations, pharmacies, shoe repair places, tailors, restaurants, apartments, bars, coffee shops, repair shops for cars and other things, bike shops, bookstores, vets, doctor and dentist offices, plus a huge and vibrant mall. I can meet all my daily needs in Lynnwood if I want to.

        I could also rent an apartment in Lynnwood if I wanted and walk around or take the bus, but most people in SnoCo don’t want to live in an apartment, and the apartment complexes built in Lynnwood are a lot cheaper then complexes built in Seattle or Bellevue.

        ST decided to build Link along I-5, and decided to place the Lynnwood station next to I-5. People don’t build cities next to I-5 if they can help it (although I-5 runs through the middle of Seattle). ST put a 1900 stall park and ride on one side of the station and a very large concrete plaza on the other side. So obviously the area around the Lynnwood Link station is not going to have a lot of offices, apartments or retail. Like most other Link stations.

        So I thought it was unfair of the narrator to get off at the Link station in Lynnwood that has been open for 45 days and expect some kind of urban oasis right there. How if one side is a park and ride and the other a concrete plaza? It would be like someone driving to Lynnwood, taking the main exist off the freeway, and immediately parking on the off ramp and then walking toward Lynnwood wondering where all the retail and offices and apartments are. They are not there. They are in the center of Lynnwood.

        The narrator could have easily taken a bus to the mall where there are over a hundred shops, restaurants, bars, etc., more than in downtown Seattle I would guess. He could have taken a bus to Lynnwood’s downtown, or an Uber, or ridden a bike, like many people do. He could have driven to the mall or downtown. I don’t believe that driving a car makes someone suburban. Seattleites have something like 500,000 cars. The key is can you drive or take a bus or walk or bike to an area that has everything you need. You can do that in Lynnwood. It isn’t how you get there that determines whether a city is “urban” it’s what’s there when you get there. It doesn’t make Lynnwood Link any less valuable because people drive to the station.

        Instead the narrator wanted to preen and act superior because he was from Seattle and apparently had lived in Europe (who knows where no one knows because Europe has a ton of towns that have little urban vibrancy). He knew damn well what he would find at the Lynnwood Link station if he had read STB or looked at a map. So did the comments on the blog (which has a total of 732 subscribers) and Seattle urbanists on this blog, because Lynnwood makes them feel like Seattle is urban when it isn’t even close. I think it this superior attitudes by Seattle urbanists that makes so many people dislike them.

        For someone from Chicago or NYC or Atlanta Seattle is Renton to them. Maybe downtown Seattle (the rest of Seattle has lower building heights than downtown Lynnwood) but downtown is pretty dead these days and Seattle is not in a good place retail wise.

        I could take Link to Seattle and get off at the U. Dist. Station, or Capitol Hill, or downtown, or 12th and Jackson, with a video camera and film all the druggies and homeless and crime and narrate with a superior tone, which of course is what a lot of social media does every day like Nextdoor that makes Seattle look like it is a dangerous slum. The Seattleites on this blog would probably claim that is unfair and doesn’t include the areas of Seattle that are not drugged out or high crime areas filled with graffiti, but that is how the video would come across.

        Here is the interesting part. People in SnoCo and Lynnwood think our area is moving in the right direction, where most Seattleites think Seattle is moving in the wrong direction. Which is why so many people are moving from Seattle to SnoCo although they are not moving into apartments. Lynnwood isn’t perfect but pretty good for our needs and getting better.

        I do agree though that more jobs that go to Seattle each day need to stay in Lynnwood, and my understanding is that regional planning hopes to keep more jobs that go to Seattle in Lynnwood which would really boost Lynnwood. Once all the jobs that people have to commute to Seattle for are relocated in the cities where the workers live those smaller cities will really improve, although Seattle will decline.

    9. One thing he doesn’t say is that Lynnwood is too far out for a metro line, or this line is too long, and he seems OK with it going to Everett too. He also didn’t comment on the type of trains, 55 mph speed, or the capacity hit of the interior cab ends.

      1. I think his main issue is walkability and being welcoming to pedestrians. Even if it’s just a small, one or two block section of town, like when he did a video tour of the Beacon Hill station area. I don’t think he liked Lynnwood because it seemed like the entire city, even right next to the station, is built exclusively for autos. He’d probably give Everett’s downtown higher marks. Same with downtown Redmond. But, he’d probably criticize downtown Federal Way as much as he did Lynnwood. I do think he’s overly negative, and seems to be unable to see the potential growth a Link station may bring.

    10. The core of the video’s critique, though it spends a lot of time on specific parts of the experience of walking around Lynnwood today, is of building the biggest transit stations (and planning most “transit-oriented” growth) right next to freeway interchanges. You can call development “transit-oriented” but the balance of the infrastructure is still car-dominated, so everything around is still car-oriented.

      In Lynnwood’s case the “city center” the station name refers to essentially hasn’t been built yet. So this guy instead walks along to the freeway to the existing mall and sees the hardest edge of this. OK. I think as Americans we have to acknowledge that a huge amount of our people live and work and take care of all their daily needs in places that look a lot like Lynnwood today. Places like this are often “the city” that people have — hosting a wide variety of economically interdependent activities, just in a form that we call “suburban”. If we want a better transportation future — if we want less emissions, if we want more pleasant surroundings, if we want freedom of access for people that can’t drive… we’re going to have to figure out what to do in these places, which aren’t going anywhere. Lynnwood’s city center plans, extending from the station away from the freeway, are something… and all the highway infrastructure limits what that something could be. Of course we can say the same of a lot of our neighborhoods. It’s our constant frustration that Sound Transit seems most interested in building stations whose pedestrian environments will always be dominated by the biggest roads in our region, rarely interested in how we can bring regional access to places where people are freer to walk than drive. This video might miss some of the more hopeful parts of Lynnwood’s future but it captures this frustration with its vision.

    1. Lucid Stew doesn’t say the obvious bluntly, but he basically proves that any high speed rail proposal for Cascadia cannot rely on using I-5 heavily. The geometries just aren’t there — and the expectation for local stops just reduces speeds further.

      I have seen Cascadia HSR proposals with different service patterns. However those too would have to deal with curves and grades in this hypothetical.

      It suggests to me that the better strategy is to develop an Acela speed system. Since Seattle is the predominant metro and both Vancouver and Portland are under 180 miles away, there just doesn’t seem to be the bang for the buck to go to significantly higher speeds. These are much shorter distances than Dallas to Houston, San Francisco to Los Angeles, or Ontario to Las Vegas are.

      To get trains faster, it would likely require lots of tunneling and major greenfield land takes with massive structures — only to make things about 20-40 minutes better to either big city at best.

      A better use of that money would seem to be to build short tunnels to create state capitol walkability for both Oregon and Washington.

      1. He did mention that this would be like the NY-DC Acela. I would certainly accept that, a not-quite-HSR between the cities that would make day trips more pleasant (this would be great for the MLS teams and Huskies-Ducks games). And in the meanwhile, improve the current Cascades service for the in-between towns like Albany, Kelso and Mount Vernon.

      2. You could make the trip quite a bit faster if light weight trains with high curve cant deficiency allowance. Amtrak illustrated this in the 1970s with the turboliner demonstration.

        The only effort at exploring that further that was made was to purchase Talgos, then put them behind locomotives as heavy as freight locomotives so that this advantage couldn’t be used.

  6. One thing I’ve not seen mentioned in the video or elsewhere:
    they went with a low floor train design that means they don’t have to use the multi-level platforms that Sounder and similar operations using Bombardier tri-levels.

  7. Another single-tracking ($) Saturday brings the list to six significant outages in the past seven months. (Counting four bullet points, the last containing two, plus Saturday.)

    “Saturday’s incident occurred in the northbound side of the tunnel between Roosevelt and Northgate stations, said transit spokesperson John Gallagher. Operating crews responding to a report of smoke found damaged cables and conduits, and the trackway needed to close for repairs to begin, he said. The cause is being investigated but appears unrelated to other glitches this year with power lines, he said.”

      1. It seems that most of these problems are happening between the UW and Northgate and you wonder why.

        Until ST can figure out what the problems are and fix them the 1 line has become not reliable and that is frustrating considering the billions of dollars spent to build the system.

      2. A lot of the final installation of Northgate Link occurred roughly the same time as the remotely-“inspected” plinths on the 2-Line bridge.

    3. It’s an electrical issue according to the email alerts, which I finally saw when I got home. It’s still ongoing as of 8:45pm.

      ST did send two alerts with specific alternative bus routes, subject: “Looking for other transit options during the disruption?” I’ve never seen that before. It suggests:

      “Sound Transit Express routes available:
      – ST Express 515: Downtown Seattle to Lynnwood
      – ST Express 510: Downtown Seattle to Mountlake Terrace/ Everett

      Sound Transit Sounder N Line: Downtown Seattle to Everett
      – Transfer at Edmonds Station to CT 102 or CT 166 to access Lynnwood City Center
      – Transfer at Edmonds Station to CT 909 to access Mountlake Terrace Station

      King County Metro routes available:
      – Route 67: UW, U District, Roosevelt, and Northgate stations
      – Route 45: UW, U District, and Roosevelt stations”

      Now we know what the 515 is for.

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