This picturesque scene may look like a computer rendering, but it’s a real photo from Sound Transit’s fit-testing of soon-to-be-complete portions of the 2 Line between South Bellevue and Mercer Island. Courtesy of Sound Transit.

Transit & Streets:

Land Use & Housing:

Commentary & Miscellaneous:

This is an Open Thread.

Are you interested in advocating for better transit and/or land use? Reach out to contact@seattletransitblog.com.

100 Replies to “Midweek Roundup: Trending Upward”

  1. In transit-adjacent electoral news, King County Executive Dow Constantine has announced he is not seeking reelection; Claudia Balducci has announced her campaign to run for the seat, and I’ve seen rumblings that Girmay Zahilay might try for it, too.

    1. I called it. I’m not exactly Nostradamus. I never heard any rumors but he has held the seat a long time. He never made a play for governor. I figure he is ready to retire and the right age. If Harris had won he might have made a play for a seat in the new administration, but it would not have surprised me if he had planned on retiring all along.

      With regards to major ST projects, I think he will just run out the clock. I don’t expect any major decisions to be made while he is still in charge. I think he will just accept the large cost overruns and not worry about when or if things get built. I suppose he could be bold now (since he never has to run again for anything) and tell us the emperor has no clothes, but he has never struck me as that kind of guy.

      1. “…and tell us the emperor has no clothes,…”

        I don’t see that happening either.

        It’s too bad though since what the board and senior mgt at ST have needed for a long time is having such individuals involved who WILL tell anyone actually listening that the emperor does indeed need to look in the mirror.

        ST just released its proposed budget for 2025 and updated financial plan for the fall*. IIRC, that newly updated plan called for some additional $3.7B in grant money (as well as more reliance on additional debt obligations to the tune of $27.9B for bonds and $4.3B in TIFIA financing). I can’t help but wonder in light of the national election results if perhaps ST senior mgt will rethink the proposed updated plan.

        *Whatever happened to the annual report that the board now requires per board sanctioned resolution that details the changes to the agency’s entire capital plan? For the last couple of years this report came out sometime in the spring, like during May. What happened to this report for 2024? I have searched for it online and have been unable to locate it to date.

    4. Balducci and WSDOT’s Roger Millar were the one who offered an alternative to ST’s downtown alignment, and who seem to most understand the impact of the Constantine-Harrell transfers on passengers. (For one, it affects her own constituents going from the Eastside to the airport.)

      Where is BLE now? Is the EIS really restarting completely? So maybe we just need to delay any irrevocable decision until after November, and a slightly better board might be in place then.

      1. Curious to see how it all plays out. I think it was this blog and/or Seattle Subway had suggested West Seattle light rail was due to Dow and some ST executives’ residences (as opposed to rider metrics) . Too bad we never got a real debate over Ballard to UW– just the Scott Kubly double tunnel creation not put up for public comment— that Seattle Subway and the former STB editors loved without looking behind the curtain.

      2. The BLE EIS is starting the process (and all the public comment period requirements) from scratch, but I’m expecting a good amount of copy-paste from the 2022 WSBLE DEIS.

        Like WSLE, the planning and design process is cheap but takes a long time and there’s not really a good way to speed it up without making errors. You can’t double the size of the orchestra to play a concerto twice as fast.

      3. Claudia Balducci and Roger Millar (of WSDOT) strike me as the two most open minded and forward thinking on the ST Board, and they seem to listen to each other. Balducci as County Executive and ST Board Chair might be the best opportunity to save us from disaster on ST3. I would support her candidacy enthusiastically.

        If I ran the zoo, I’d turn West Seattle Link into a BRT project, cancel DSTT2 entirely, and rethink Ballard Link as Seattle’s SkyTrain — a frequent, automated, smaller scale system from Westlake to (eventually) UW via Ballard… eventually maybe to First Hill and Mount Baker as Frank C. suggested a while back, but not involving a redundant second parallel tunnel all the way through downtown.

        In this dream I would flat out cancel Issaquah Link, and turn the Paine Field diversion in Everett into the bus shuttle it deserves to be.

      4. Agreed Jonathan. Although I might salvage the 4 line as an Eastgate to Downtown Kirkland line that tied into the 2 line at South Bellevue.

  2. Wow, just wow. Regardless of one’s opinion about the utility of the SLU Streetcar, Sound Transit and SDOT are boldly lying to everyone. I can’t believe that there is no “pushback” to it.

    Does anyone believe that Westlake Avenue between Lenora and John is going to be “closed to traffic” for eight years during construction of the Denny Way Station? Really?

    Of course it won’t be closed. It is too important a north-south arterial entrance to downtown. It will be “decked”, as is true of urban station construction sites around the globe.

    When San Francisco dug the cut and cover Market Street Tunnel for BART and Muni Metro, the existing surface trackage remained in service the entire time. The decking installed over a section at a time of the construction activities included tracks for the PCC cars. Sure there were periodic interruptions for a couple of weeks while the tracks were undercut for the next couple of blocks to be excavated and decking supports were inserted underneath them.

    Such supports would need to be added for the SLU trackage only once, for two blocks, since the only part of the street to be opened is the length of the station vault.

    Given that the streetcar line is such a poor performer, and its right of way along Valley might make a good busway for the J, perhaps the City and ST would like to simplify the decking to be installed over the station site. But “decked” it will be, so this is a “Red Herring” of an argument the Councilor is making.

    Has Trumpism come to the Seattle City Council?

    1. It’s not Trumpism, it’s just basic fiscal responsibility. According to the Urbanist article, the SLU streetcar costs the city $4.5 millions annually to operate for 175,000 annual riders in 2023. Dividing 175,000 by 365 shows an average daily ridership of under 500. This works out to an operating expense of $25.71 per boarding, if I did my math right (4,500,000 / 175,000), which is absurdly high for a line this, especially considering that this figure includes only the operating cost, not even the sunk capital cost.

      One could perhaps justify such a high cost per boarding if the service played an important role in the transit network – for instance, if it’s the only service covering the area it serves (e.g. route 208), or if it saves its riders a large amount of travel time compared to alternatives (e.g. Sounder). But, it doesn’t. The entire mile it serves is already served very well by bus routes (C, 40, 70). The streetcar runs less frequently than the buses it competes with, so most people waiting for whatever comes first are naturally going to end up on a bus. The streetcar also moves slower than the buses it competes with, while covering less of downtown.

      I just got an email from Seattle Subway this morning asking me to please sign a petition to the city council to not kill the streetcar. But, I think it undermines their credibility. I like their vision of good, world-class transit throughout the city, but you can’t just ignore money and say anything that runs on rails is automatically good, just because it runs on rails.

      At the same time, eliminating the SLU streetcar has many benefits. No more bikes crashing on the tracks, sending riders to the hospital. Terry Ave. suddenly becomes a good bike route in an important part of town that lacks good bike routes. The J line has potential to get bus lanes on Fairview by repurposing that center space taken up by the streetcar station. The valuable downtown real estate being used as a streetcar barn can be sold off to developers, earning money for the city to pay for other projects (for example, more sidewalks).

      It is also worth noting that nobody is proposing killing off the First Hill Streetcar line, which is much less redundant and gets much higher ridership, compared to the SLU line. So, you can’t accuse the council of simply being anti-transit.

      1. > But, I think it undermines their credibility. I like their vision of good, world-class transit throughout the city, but you can’t just ignore money and say anything that runs on rails is automatically good, just because it runs on rails.

        Well, that’s Seattle Subway’s whole deal, though. Politics is a multi-directional game of tug-of-war where the center flag (aka the Overton Window) moves based on political interests pulling in several directions. Organizations like Seattle Subway adopt the philosophy of pulling as hard as they can again opposing interests in order for the inevitable compromise to be as close to their priorities (high capacity mass transit everywhere) as possible.

    2. I knew this day was coming eventually once Paul Allen passed away.

      If they had enough streetcars to run as often as Link, I bet the ridership would be much higher.

      Removal of the streetcars by a reactionary council will probably be used as cover to open up the lanes to general traffic, judging by their love for more car sewer space.

      The tracks will probably be left, so the bike tire stickings will probably keep happening. There are plenty of dead tracks around South Seattle.

      I don’t expect there is a plan to repay the FTA for the grants received so far for the 1st Ave Streetcar.

      And then, they’ll come for the FHSC, since it was predicated on eventually connecting through downtown. It needs more fleet to be truly useful, but it looks like that will never happen.

      1. Getting more folks like Shaun Scott into the legislature will help with shifting statewide funding priorities away from highways.

    4. asdf2, did you read the words “South Lake Union Streetcar”, stop reading and gin up your platitude generator? I actually used the words “poor performance” in reference to it. The preamble to the comment also says

      Regardless of one’s opinion about the utility of the South Lake Union Strertcar…

      The point of the comment was that a Seattle City Councilor is echoing a Sound Transit lie that excavation for and construction of the Denny Way station vault requires shutting down the streetcar for eight years when that is clearly not the case.

      Of your long list of particular sins that the streetcar commits against the City, the one-time sale of the carbarn property is not going to make a ripple in the broad lake of Seattle’s revenue shortfalls.

      Brent’s rhetorical in his second reply is spot on. We have a nearly veto-proof margin of Democrats in both houses of the Leg and we don’t even have State supported rural transit where it makes sense, except Amtrak Cascades and a couple of Ambus routes. Oregon does much better with a lot less money.

      1. To be fairs that’s on sound transit. I wouldn’t expect saka or any councilor to know that much about transit/road building to refute it

    5. Yeah this stuff about ST is nonsense. But, I’ve been OK with shutting down the SLUT once the estimates for the downtown streetcar multiplied in into the hundreds of millions and Eastlake got done as a bus corridor.

    6. “Does anyone believe that Westlake Avenue between Lenora and John is going to be “closed to traffic” for eight years during construction of the Denny Way Station? Really?

      Of course it won’t be closed. It is too important a north-south arterial entrance to downtown.”

      Actually, it isn’t. As someone who worked and walked on Westlake a lot, it isn’t even a minor arterial. Very few cars drive on it. Turn it in a park, and it would barely be a hiccup in the grid.

      1. South of Lenora and Ninth, yes, it is lightly used because of the crazy lights. But north of Lenora it is a major arterial. Ninth Avenue helps, of course, and SDOT improved the interchange so that it gets used more.

      3. Sorry. I meant Mercer. It’s still under 10000 AWT south of Mercer, though Amazonia has bumped it up a bit. Nothing compare to the almost 30,000 average weekly traffic flow north of there.

        It would be lovely park.

      5. I think the main thing is that there are alternatives. Even if it carried huge numbers of cars (and it doesn’t) people can easily find other ways to get there. This part of Westlake is largely redundant and could easily be closed off. I can’t say that about a lot of streets. Quite often it is the opposite. Close off Denny and people are forced into big detours (typically involving Mercer). In contrast shutting off this part of Westlake is relatively minor.

        It is not like we haven’t done some major changes downtown. Third Avenue was not always a transit mall. I’m sure it carried plenty of cars back in the day. This is what Bell looked like back in the day: https://maps.app.goo.gl/9Tzce8W6sBKPWFts5. Here is what it looks like now: https://maps.app.goo.gl/mQFQpUybgRSkWjQ38. Drivers adjust.

      6. Let me back up here. First thing we have to accept (as a city) is that traffic will be terrible. It is a zero-sum game, and if we make things smooth in one direction it makes it worse somewhere else. Even the improvement is temporary. Eventually drivers figure out the fast route and then it isn’t so fast (as more cars go that way). The only solution is to somehow discourage people from driving (e. g. congestion pricing) or to provide an alternative. That is why bus/BAT lanes are so important — they are the alternative. But ultimately we will have the same amount of traffic with or without particular streets (like Westlake) or extra lanes (like Rainier).

        That doesn’t mean we should transition suddenly. A clumsy set of changes is both bad politically and bad from a mobility standpoint. It does take time for people to adjust (although with more and more people using their phones for navigation the adjustment is much faster than it used to be). But the phones are notorious for sending drivers down residential streets, forcing the traffic engineers to essentially plug these holes (by blocking off travel — https://maps.app.goo.gl/yy87Es5714MPcaVx9). Thus sudden changes can lead to people blaming the traffic engineers for the congestion (and people finding alternate ways) even if the experts will tell you the congestion was inevitable (with or without the change). For example Denny crawls right now, most of the day. If we had added bus lanes ten years ago (which we should have done) then it would have started crawling sooner and people would have blamed the bus lanes. So from a political standpoint it makes sense to make the changes gradually. That being said, the current head of SDOT seems willing to make bold changes despite the opposition. I see this accelerating over time as drivers accept the fact that congestion is inevitable.

        Thus shutting off this part of Westlake is a relatively minor thing. People finding alternate routes is not an issue. Nor is it likely to elicit much sympathy. What the hell are you driving downtown for, anyway? We should be concerned about buses and delivery drivers, but that is where the new freight/bus lanes come in. Traffic is inevitable — we just want an alternative for essential drivers.

    7. If the council shifts the streetcar’s funding to SLU bus service, that may be the way to get RapidRide H extended to SLU.

      1. Yes, absolutely. To quote myself (from this: https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/10/04/replacing-the-south-lake-union-streetcar/):

        The obvious replacement for the streetcar is the RapidRide H. The C and H would then share all of the stops from Alaskan Way & Jackson to Fairview & Valley. With both buses running every ten minutes in the middle of the day, that could mean buses running every five minutes (more or less) along a fairly lengthy corridor. Riders from Westwood Village would have two ways to reach South Lake Union. Riders along Delridge would benefit from having more one-seat rides. Unlike other RapidRide extensions, the cost would be minimal since the Rapid Ride “stations” (with ORCA readers) are already there. You would probably save a little bit in terms of operations (the distances are similar but it is more expensive to operate the streetcar). From a transit standpoint, this would be a huge improvement — at no additional cost — even before we improved the right-of-way situation.

        The only sticking point (as I see it) is congestion along Valley. Basically the folks who ride the H may not want to put up with the delays that folks who ride the C endure. That is where the street changes come in. I could easily see it happening in this order:

        1) Shut down the streetcar (and begin selling off the trains and the land that holds them).
        2) Pave over the tracks next to the lake.
        3) Create bike lanes where the old tracks where (next to the lake).
        4) Replace the bike lanes on Valley with bus/BAT lanes to allow the C to go faster.
        5) Extend the H to South Lake Union (and layover next to the C).
        6) Pave over the rest of the tracks (on Terry and Westlake).
        7) Add bike lanes on Terry between the lake and Denny.
        8) Add a bike crossing (to go with the pedestrian crossing) of Denny at Terry.
        9) Extend bike lanes on Terry to the other side of Denny.

        When I refer to the area next to the lake I don’t mean that literally. It is actually the area just north of Valley.

      2. Ross, there isn’t going to be any paving over the tracks, if anything it’s digging up the streets to remove the trackbed which is no small task. Paving the tracks you’d be running into the issues similar to the G line with accessibility out of compliance having a smear of asphalt on top. It took until a couple years ago to remove the first major in street sections of the Waterfront Streetcar tracks

  3. Bus-bunching is still persistent on the G-Line. Every time I see that route, there’s a following bus within 2 minutes. Yesterday around 7p, I saw three EB buses within 2 minutes of each other on Cap Hill. Does anyone at Metro know how to properly proactively dispatch? On a “BRT’ line, the concept of runs and blocks shouldn’t apply. Instead, dispatching needs to be coordinated constantly by a person.

    1. One difference is Link has their own dedicated control center, and there are only two lines, so someone is always monitoring the train activity on those lines. It’s quite common for the “LCC” to call a train and have them go slower or wait at a station because they are catching up to their leader. They are doing nothing but monitoring headway all day and night and actively managing it. You can hear it if you ever listen to their radio scanner.

      At Metro, it’s the opposite. Metro’s control center oversees every Metro bus route in the system, including ST Express buses in the county, and they are so busy that they don’t have time to monitor individual routes for headway adherence.

      1. That’s precisely what’s wrong with not only the G-Line but with other high frequency routes: there’s lack of dispatching. Metro, and the majority of transit agencies across America, must begin viewing their operations more seriously. There are hundreds of drivers on the road at a given time and only a handful of dispatchers? That’s a recipe for poor operations and ultimately bad service. Metro must expand it’s control center and have dedicated groups & divisions with dozens of personnel closely monitoring and coordinating service.

      2. I assume there’s some complexity I’m missing, but monitoring bus/train headways when they all have GPS seems like a relatively straightforward job for a computer.

        I guess the problem is that a human has to actually get on a radio to relay to the bus drivers what they should do about it, and that doesn’t scale well to a whole fleet of buses? And even if that could be automated, that would be a whole additional layer of technology to deploy to every bus using money that could probably be better spent elsewhere?

      3. There is a software system that does that (I just forget what it is called). People have complained about it, because it often means that the bus you are on is slower (for no apparent reason).

      5. Why not put a visible timer at each station that resets when a coach departs?

        That is not really the issue. Drivers have a clock and know if they are running early or late. But they don’t know what other buses are doing unless you have a system in place.

      6. What should an on-schedule G Line driver do if he knows that the bus in front of him is three minutes behind schedule?

    2. Route 36 has the same problem. I see it every time I am waiting at Beacon Hill Station.

      Part of the problem may be lack of recovery time after each run. Or insufficient planned lunch time.

      Buses starting their route bunched may be an attempt to get one of them eventually back on time. (Or it could be a driver having a bad day, overstaying his break, and pulling out right after another driver running on time, so that the front bus gets all the passengers.)

      Boarding and deboarding a wheelchair can add significant time to a run, compounded by missing lights. The G Line runs through Pill Hill, so it would be odd not to have any buses slowed down by that several times a day. The key to minimizing those delays is to let the wheelchair rider have the front door to themselves, and everyone else in the reserved seating area to get out of the way. Swift-style level boarding also makes a difference.

      Allowing buses to start bunched ought not be happening. Nor does it take an on-site supervisor to order drivers not to pre-bunch. RapidRide has a command center. Someone there ought to be communicating with each driver about when to start their next run.

      1. It is not clear that the buses are bunching to begin the run. That was a problem initially, but my understanding is that they hired more drivers and at least the buses leaving Madison Valley (westbound) are doing so every six minutes. Jordan mentioned buses going east. This means they have already gone through downtown and are heading back. This is classic bus bunching — the result of delays along the line.

        It isn’t clear what is causing the delays at this point. There is level boarding, but that doesn’t mean that people in wheelchairs can board really quickly. You still have to secure the wheelchair. But that still wouldn’t account for that much bunching. Traffic lights are an issue, but my guess is they are fairly consistent (i. e. they delay everyone about the same). There could be more fundamental issues, like traffic downtown. SDOT planners didn’t add bus-lanes downtown — they are BAT lanes. That might be the problem. It is also possible that some drivers are just much faster with the route than others. Hard to say.

        But that doesn’t mean that the buses have to bunch. With proper control they can all be delayed about the same amount so that they arrive within a regular interval. There are systems that enable this (I forget what they are called). Of course this comes at a cost — riders may wonder why their bus is moving so slowly (or waiting at the stop so long). It is because some other bus is running behind schedule.

        A simple option (which is basically a variation on this) is to build in more float and have the buses wait at various stops if they are running ahead of schedule. Again this means that buses won’t run as fast as possible. For example the bus is supposed to take 16 minutes to get from Madison Valley to 1st & Spring (which is essentially the half-way point). Now assume that the buses usually take somewhere between 14 and 22 minutes. But 22 minutes is rare — even 21 minutes is unusual. Furthermore, if a bus is two minutes late it isn’t the end of the world. So assume that almost all buses can make that trip in 20 minutes. So, leave that stop after 20 minutes. If the bus gets there early, it sits. It may sit there a long time, but it won’t leave before 20 minutes.

        Stopping at First has the advantage of delaying relatively few riders. Bus bunching (and train bunching) can occur on any route. But typically the route is linear. For example a northbound Link train might find itself getting too close to the train in front of it at Beacon Hill. It begins taking a long time at each station and moving much slower. Those on the train are out of luck. It will take a while for it to get to downtown. In this case though, a “reset” in the middle wouldn’t be the end of the world. I’m sure a few people “round the horn” but not a lot. They can still do so — it would just take longer. That is the trade-off. Those folks get delayed by people waiting for their eastbound bus have a trip that is more reliable.

    3. The answer to bus-bunching is to allow operators to pass waiting passengers at stops for which no one on the bus has requested a stop. The driver throws raises his fist with the thumb pointed back to acknowledge that the waiting rider has been seen and drives on by when there is a follower within a couple of stops to the rear. This is SOP on Muni’s high frequency trollies which can’t skip-stop.

      That obviously doesn’t work for BRT where every station is served by every bus. People on the bus aren’t expected to announce their desire to alight, so buses can’t skip a station to make up thirty seconds. Drivers have to manage their headways in real time, usually by delaying departure from the layover turnback proactively. Management needs to be lenient about that.

      1. Yeah, leap frogging only makes sense under certain circumstances. If a bus is full, then an empty bus can jump in front. The empty bus can then skip a few stops (assuming no one is getting off at those stops) in order to get way ahead of the other bus. Even then it isn’t great. If you are waiting at those stops (that the empty bus skipped) you likely have been waiting a while. Now you still wait.

        But yeah, it doesn’t even work for this route.

    4. There is somebody at the eastern end dispatching buses; that was one of the strategies Metro adopted after it melted down the first few days. If there’s still some bunching, that shows it’s hard to eradicate. Buses are subject to car traffic in the mixed segments, and cars illegally encroaching into the bus lanes after turning or to pass another car. Sometimes cars turn left but the GP lane is full so they end up partly in the intersection or partly in the bus lane until they get into their lane. If there’s a bus behind them, the bus has to wait until the car clears the way. Sometimes that means the bus has to wait another light cycle to cross the intersection. Then the next bus catches up to it. With 6-minute frequency it doesn’t take much delays like that for buses to bunch. When I’ve ridden the G a few times I looked for major bottlenecks. There doesn’t seem to be one major bottleneck, just a lot of little slowdowns all along the line that add up.

    5. “Part of the problem may be lack of recovery time after each run. Or insufficient planned lunch time.”

      Metro also added two standby drivers at the eastern end, who could take over a run immediately so the incoming driver could go on break.

      So it’s not like Metro isn’t doing things. It just isn’t enough yet.

    6. The problem seems to be that Metro can’t know when it dispatches a bus what slowdowns will affect it in the future. I’m not sure if anyone is radioing in slowdowns back the eastern end, so I don’t know if they know where the buses are on the rest of the route or they only see them coming back to the terminus.

    7. And like the SLU Streetcar, runs neither on schedule nor provides real time arrival. So you wait at the stop and hope it shows up. Perhaps they’ll propose ripping the G out in 15 years too after it doesn’t live up to expectations due to simple operational issues?

  4. I’ve said it before and I’m gonna say it again. When the SLU Streetcar is closed, take the opportunity to do something good: remove more blocks of Westlake Avenue.

    Westlake used to go all the way in to 4th Ave. Now we have Westlake Park and Westlake Center (the mall and office tower). Not only are these good and useful places, removing a street that cut across the grid made intersections smaller and simpler. That benefits everyone moving around, but especially pedestrians, who don’t have to follow excessively long crosswalks across off-angle intersection faces.

    There are surprisingly few needs for direct access to Westlake Avenue (for vehicles or people) inbound of 8th/Lenora. We really could just close most of the road, put in normal sidewalks with solid curbs across where the intersections used to be, and let people finally walk in peace without half their walk being in a crosswalk. And I think that’s the best thing to do. Don’t try to preserve the ROW as a bike or walking path. There’s a perfectly fine street network in the area with nice right-angle intersections once Westlake is removed. We don’t need a bunch of awkwardly-spaced, weird-angle intersections or intersection extensions mucking things up. We don’t need more curb-ramps across sidewalks or raised crosswalks across bike or bus routes beyond what we may want to do at grid intersections. Make it simple for once!

    There are plenty of options to make bus and car access to the area work once Westlake is removed. Contraflow bus lanes, additional couplets, maybe full two-way conversion of some streets. I don’t want to get too bogged down in them because I don’t have the expertise. I just know getting rid of all these big stupid intersections is such a benefit that just about any option is fine.

    1. Yes to this. The right-of-way south of Lenora could become a pedestrian parkway with views toward the lake and outdoor seating for restaurants along the way.

      1. Oh, you were assuming that the roadway would be re-used for buildings. That would result in a lot more strangely shaped structures, but it might lead to filling in the gap between downtown and SLU highrises, so it might be a different way to use the neighborhood space.

      2. The way I see it the benefit of removing and simplifying intersections is bigger than trying to make a continuous parkway out of the space, especially for walking. Some of the extra spaces would be big enough to build buildings that face the other streets and some wouldn’t; little corners with seating or art are fine, and some could be combined with other parcels, possibly sold to combine with adjacent ones when some future redevelopment is happening.

        Some of the parcels might have good public uses, whether they’re outdoor spaces or public buildings. I wouldn’t be mad about some true park space as long as we simplify the intersections. The block between 7th and Lenora does have buildings that front the street, so maybe a narrower street with expanded sidewalks, outdoor seating, public art, or green space would fit there (sometimes I forget about that block — it doesn’t have much need for direct vehicle access but its sidewalk frontage is used for business access and the block probably has delivery needs. So 8th/Lenora probably has to stay a bit of a mess, but maybe less so with a narrower Westlake that’s not trying to carry through-traffic.

      3. Here’s what to do: Assuming South Lake Union streetcar is a goner… Close that southern section of Westlake and let it become the construction staging area for Ballard Link (which, again, should be a smaller scale, high frequency SkyTrain style system that serves SLU and Ballard en route to UW) and a place to extract the tunnel boring machines, like they did at UW for Link.

        Westlake is not a place to extract spoils from tunneling, it’s the place to extract the TBM itself. So retain the shaft to extract the two TBMs that construct the extension S/SE from there. And then, after all that is over, put something on top that improves the urban qualities of that transit hub. There, ST fixed it for you…

      4. The way I see it the benefit of removing and simplifying intersections is bigger than trying to make a continuous parkway out of the space, especially for walking.

        Fair enough. Hard to argue otherwise since it would negate the other goal. For example if you wanted to make a contiguous bike path, then you would keep the crossing at Virginia. But then buses along Virginia are delayed.

        In terms of buildings, I don’t think there is enough space to add them. Most of the little triangles already have them. The exceptions are already parks (which would be made bigger). I could see adding some buildings if we really wanted to, but I don’t think we do. I think places like Westlake Square go from being tiny triangles to being triangles (or quadrilaterals) that are a bit bigger. But they are still isolated little islands. These still have value as parks. Ever visited Harold Square? It is tiny. But it is still awesome. It is even better since they closed that part of Broadway (essentially expanding the park).

        It is easy to argue that the main benefit is increased parkland or simplified intersections. Ultimately I don’t think it matters. Either way it is a win.

  5. Been riding the MTA rails in NYC the last few days. There are some real issues with it.

    Not all connections are there. I consulted the web thing the other day on how to get from A to B. Oddly enough, it did not give me a rail option.

    Option one was to walk. Total time? 19 mins.

    Option two was to take a bus. Total time 24 mins.

    So the bus was projected to take about 25% longer than just walking. And the bus would be less healthy and less interesting.

    So I just walked.

    1. “I consulted the web thing the other day on how to get from A to B. Oddly enough, it did not give me a rail option.”

      That happens here too.

      “So the bus was projected to take about 25% longer than just walking.”

      There are these wonderful car-free lanes called sidewalks. That’s probably why walking is faster, given New York’s traffic.

      I would first look at a subway map, which of course I carry around with me. 99% of the time that’s all I need in cities with multi-line subways. The only time in New York it wasn’t enough was going to someone’s family’s house in southeast Brooklyn, and I just followed them there. We took the L to some station, and a non-MTA bus the rest of the way. (I asked if it took MetroCard; it did.)

      1. That is a great map. Thanks for the link. I wish there was something like that for this area. I don’t know where to get any of the information though. I would assume that SDOT has a list of where they have added bus or BAT lanes, but I don’t know where that is. Same goes for other cities.

    4. In the 4 years I lived there, I took maybe 5 buses. Either commuters to the outer burbs to bowl, or airport expresses to Newark.

      If you have a good rail system and healthy legs, a place like New York with chronic traffic congestion, buses are useless to you.

  6. Claudia Balducci needs to take 1/2 billion from WS waste and put toward CCC once in for all. No way WS and it’s low ridership projections is gonna get fed funds especially from Trump. Take any other projected funding for WS and apply it to Ballard and 4th Ave station. Ridership here might be eligible for fed help in 2028.

    1. Interesting looking at past grants:

      Sound Transit snags $1.2B from feds for Lynnwood.
      FTA awards $790 million grant for Federal Way light rail extension
      University Link light. Sound Transit secured an $813 million federal grant for the $1.8 billion project.

      7 billion for WS. Feds contributioin 0.

    2. I have a high suspicion there will be a huge fight over sanctuary city/state status with local/state officials having to pick sides. Potentially a lot of federal money will be on the line and Washington state/Seattle will reject the money.

      1. How can you reject something you’re not offered? There needs
        to be a pot of money made available by congress before they can dole it
        out. There will not be a IRA or Infrastructure Act like we recently
        saw with the Biden admin.

      2. There’s all the existing money in the budget that goes to states. Containing wildfires, highway funding, Medicaid, etc. In the first Trump term I think California had some wildfire relief money delayed or rejected because the state didn’t vote for him.

      3. He also took a 1 billion grant for inner-city rail from California. Biden
        eventually restored it but no guarantee dems will return to power in
        our lifetime.

      4. “Potentially a lot of federal money will be on the line and Washington state/Seattle will reject the money.”

        We better get busy amending the constitution to allow for income tax then. Sales tax is maxed, and a huge burden on the poor and lower middle class, contributing to one of the highest costs of living in the country. 1% cap on property tax isn’t keeping up with inflation. Capital Gains is insufficient to replace the loss of all that federal income tax transfer to red states.

      5. “Sales tax is maxed” – Seattle’s total sales tax is 10.1%, right? VAT in most Nordic countries is 20~25%. And Seattle continues to approve the doubling of various property tax levies (transpo, parks, etc.). There is plenty of room to raise taxes without touching income.

        Given we have a progressive Federal income tax but no Federal wealth tax, I’ve always thought that PNW Progressives should focus on taxing wealth, not income, at the local/state level, with our existing property tax levies a powerful existing tool. IMO, the next Sound Transit levy should a simple land value tax on the RTD.

      6. “Sales tax is maxed” – Seattle’s total sales tax is 10.1%, right? VAT in most Nordic countries is 20~25%.

        By “maxed” folks mean the legal limit. Nordic countries can raise taxes as high as they want. Seattle can’t. We are limited by the state. That is part of the reason why the schools are in the mess they are in. If it was allowed the school board would just raise taxes. Same goes for the city.

        I’ve always thought that PNW Progressives should focus on taxing wealth, not income

        That is difficult to do, especially at a local level. Property taxes are a form of wealth tax but it only taxes one type of wealth. We have begun to tax capitol gains (at the state level) and the city council is considering doing that at the city level. This isn’t quite taxing wealth, but it is at least taxing the acquisition of wealth.

        There are issues if a city raises their taxes too high. One is that people move. If the tax is small enough you aren’t likely to see people move, but with a high tax rate you will. The same thing can happen at the state level, but is less likely to happen in a state like Washington. It is one thing to move from Seattle to Bellevue or Kansas City, Missouri to Kansas City Missouri. It is another to move from Washington to Oregon (or Idaho).

        For all these reasons it needs to happen at the state level. The state needs to increase funding (for various things) or at the very least allow cities (like Seattle) to tax itself at a higher rate.

      7. Federal income tax and other taxes took a sharp turn downward in the 1970s due to conservative/libertarian ascendancy. 90% of the benefit went to the top 1%. That was the origin of the extreme inequality and poverty and lack of infrastructure maintenance and transit we have now. So all those who are complaining about taxes being too high are just blowing sand. Taxes are much lower than they were in the 1970s or in most other industrialized countries.

        And in Washington state they’re especially low since we don’t have a state income tax. And initiative 601 caps city/county general tax increases at 1% per year (below inflation), plus a bonus for population growth (which is like a ponzi scheme), and requires everything else to be short-term levies.

        The income tax rate used to have a 90% maximum until the late 1970s. As Thomas Picketty described it, it’s not like the government expected people to pay that much. Instead it was an incentive for CEOs to keep their salaries below the high-bracket level, closer to their workers’ salaries. That went out the window when the maximum rate was lowered, and now CEOs are making $1 million or several million a year.

        That coincided with a shift in what was seen as a corporation’s responsibility: it used to be a balance between shareholders, workers, customers, and the community. But shareholders managed to grab everything for themselves, and the anti-trust guardrails that were supposed to prevent it didn’t work under conservative/libertarian neglect. And CEOs, getting a lower tax rate, managed to get more of what was left after the shareholders took their huge cut.

        And now those same shareholders and CEOs are complaining about high taxes, which are actually low taxes? Somebody has to pay for infrastucture, maintaining social stability, keeping government functioning, etc.

  7. Nathan mentioned something on a very long thread that I figured I would copy here. It concerns who should fund transit (local agencies, the state or the federal government).

    At an abstract level, I think the case for federal operations is strong. But then I feel the same way about all sorts of things. For example public schools should be paid for at a federal (not local) level. It is crazy that rich districts have better schools than poor districts.

    With transit you run across various political issues. For one, it is simply a lot more cost effective to run transit in some areas (urban areas) than it is in others. You get a lot more (per person) if you spend money in Seattle than you do Wenatchee. Second, folks in Seattle are also more willing to spend more (in general) then in suburban areas. This creates political friction, especially in this, the misinformation age. It is hard enough trying to convince the low information voters that Haitian immigrants are not eating their pets — try and convince them that the best bang for the transit buck is to spend more in the big cities and less in small towns and suburbs.

    Of course that doesn’t mean it can’t be done (and hasn’t been done). During the worst of the pandemic it kept many transit systems afloat. Of course that was also when few people were taking transit (and it probably made sense to invest in more long-term infrastructure projects). When we finally recovered from the pandemic (more or less) the money was gone. From a political standpoint this was terrible. It was like the The American Rescue Plan. It cut childhood poverty in half, leading to the lowest rate in history. But then it ended, and by the time the next election rolled around, people had forgotten about it. So whatever goodwill came from it was lost in the minds of the ignorant, mentally lazy electorate.

    Timing is critical. For example Obama basically just got lucky with Obamacare. It was unpopular in November of 2012. But as time went it on it got so popular that it became untouchable. Which is a long way of saying that unless we get lucky (like we did with Obamacare) we are probably best off leaving service to the states or local agencies.

    1. Yeah, if day to day transit operation were funded by the feds, the result would be wild swings in levels of service every time the party in power changes. For instance, imagine waking up on November 6 and learning that Trump’s win means the bus you rely on that runs every 15 minutes will actually only run once an hour, and if a Democrat wins in 2028, it goes back to every 15 minutes again. I am extremely grateful that our real transit system is not run that way.

      Also, from the employee standpoint, who would want to drive for Metro if every election incurred a large chance at being laid off, depending on which wins? The driver shortage is already a big problem today, subjecting transit to national politics would only make it worse.

      1. I believe federal operations grant would probably be less suseptible to swings in my opinion than people think. As it’d likely be similar to what’s going on with Amtrak long distance rail in terms of generally being bipartisan issue that most politicians agree on is good policy. People say “But Republicans are against transit” some truth there, but it’s not cut n dry. Many rural areas rely on state or local funding for transit and some republican senators and reps have spoken in support of transit in said areas like they have for Amtrak. Bigger cities would have better frequency but more rural would benefit from coverage and some improved frequency on core lines. It’s a moving of the Overton window in a way.

      2. I don’t think it would swing so wildly. It’s one thing to cancel and restart large capital projects whose benefits are years or decades into the future, and another thing to cancel service people are using right now and need to get to work. There would be widespread outcry including in red states. The conservatives know this, which is why they’re trying to prevent it from getting started.

        Laying off and rehiring drivers is a big problem. We’ve been through it twice now in 2014-2016 and 2020-2022. The first time it took Metro two years to get back to the staffing level it had. The second time it coincided with the boomers retiring and Metro still hasn’t reached its full level.

      3. I think the swings would be much larger in big cities, particularly big cities in non-swing states, where pissing off a bunch of Democrats costs them nothing. Small town/rural agencies would have much smaller swings, as service would already be cut to the bone, anyway.

        In Trump’s world, there’s also the dimension that everything would be transactional. Meaning that the frequency of Seattle’s bus service would be dependent on the city rescinding it’s “sanctuary” status and refraining from using Trump when they don’t like his policies. And s little bit of public praise from mayor also wouldn’t hurt.

      4. “In Trump’s world, there’s also the dimension that everything would be transactional. Meaning that the frequency of Seattle’s bus service would be dependent on the city rescinding it’s “sanctuary” status and refraining from using Trump when they don’t like his policies. And s little bit of public praise from mayor also wouldn’t hurt.”

        People say this, but from our experience with the first term that’s pretty unlikely. For one, the secretary was Elaine Chao during the first term.
        Who was Labor secretary during the Bush Jr. administration and Deputy Secretary of Transportation during the Bush Sr. She also had extensive experience from her work in private and public sector.

        The DOT is also more or less one of the least contentious agencies in the government, so it basically runs itself no problem as people mostly understand what it does (it handles roads, airports, and rail) and rarely has controversy arise. There was slowness on some grant dispersement a few times during the first term, but nothing that really killed funding persay and generally got resolved within a few months.

        I know some people are expecting the worst with who’ll be transport secretary. But my gut feeling based on the picks being floated or announced for his cabinet is that it will be one that will be a fairly boring pedestrian pick for transport secretary.

        Rep Sam Graves (MO – 6th) of Missouri is the one being floated as a possible pick. He is currently the chair for the House Transportation Committee and before that chaired the House Small Business Committee from 2011 to 2015. He’s a well respected member of Congress and is a licensed general aviation pilot. So he has some experience to be had and wouldn’t be going to someone with relatively little or no experience (tho Pete Buttigieg came in with little experience and is doing well as transport secretary).

      5. It is really hard to say. Amtrak is not cut to the bone because it is considered essential service. But Amtrak is also not funded as well as it should be because of the same dynamic I mentioned with transit. We should spend a bunch of money in the Northeast on high speed rail, but in places like the Dakotas, this makes no sense. Back in the day this would be handled with a old-fashioned trading amongst the power brokers in Washington. People in rural areas get more service while the Northeast gets a huge investment in faster trains. Now things are a lot less effective.

        So at best I could see it operating like Amtrak — or the way Amtrak should operate. At worst I could see it operating like the department of education. Spending can be quite volatile (https://www.statista.com/statistics/200486/outlays-of-the-us-department-of-education-since-2000/). Spending can be influenced by political theories (e. g. “No Child Left Behind” and its obsession with testing). It isn’t hard to imagine a system that initially gave lots of cities extra money for transit service (so they could run the buses more often) morph into huge spending on mictro-transit. This would benefit the private contractors and their lobbyists (Elon Musk would love it). It would sidestep the unions. It would be seen as a huge technological triumph — a way for the government to promote a superior system. For some people — especially those that hardly every take transit — it would be superior.

        Like education this would lead to the states or local districts scrambling to fund the essentials (running the buses) which means you are back to where you started.

        Fifty years ago I would have more faith in the federal government pulling it off, but I think Congress is dysfunctional now, and this is best left to states.

      6. “huge spending on mictro-transit. This would benefit the private contractors and their lobbyists (Elon Musk would love it). It would sidestep the unions.”

        Ooh, that’s something to watch for. Will the federal government get more involved in microtransit, or pressure cities to switch from fixed-routes to microtransit?

        Fortunately Musk is not being talked about for anything transit-related. Although if he gets a department of eliminating waste, that would be a place for him to argue to not invest in transit operations (which he would consider waste).

        What do you think of Chris Hayes’ contention that even if Musk identifies programs to eliminate, he would still have to convince Congress to remove them from the budget, and Congress wouldn’t necessarily be as extreme as he is.

      7. It looks like Republicans will control all three chambers, but they will barely hold on to the House. Given the general wackiness of many Republican members, it wouldn’t surprise me if they end up having to reach across the aisle to get things done. Hard to say though. It would not surprise me if every House Republican is loyal to Trump and will approve everything he proposes.

      8. The Project 2025 transit section makes it sound like the goal will be taxis and ride hailing services.

      9. I think you look to their Feds for capital funding but stick to local (and potentially state) for operations. One time funds align well for capital but are too volatile for operations.

      10. If past precedent holds, Republicans will have to rely on mostly Democrats to get the debt ceiling raised, and Johnson will lose his speakership over it. But, the actual budgeting will get done through the budget reconciliation process, where Democrats will be told to go pound sand.

        Fortunately, though, transit service allocation is a local decision, not national, so Republicans won’t be converting our transit to microtransit.

  8. The recent ST ridership stats now show the ridership for STX 515 in September – 9645 riders, which works out to about 877 daily boardings.

    If I counted properly, there’s 45 daily trips – 23 southbound and 22 northbound, so that makes for about 20 people per trip. That’s a fair bit more than I would’ve expected, almost as many riders as the 510 that gets 956 daily boardings, though that has fewer trips.

    Lynnwood and MLT (the two LLE stations the 515 stops at) have ~6400 weekday daily boardings, so we could probably expect to see an increase of ~900 Link boardings at those two stations from the 510/515 when the 2 Line connects, assuming ST sticks with the plan to cancel both the buses.

    1. What are some reasons someone would go to Lynnwood City Center or Mountlake Terrace and opt for the ST Express route 515 over Link to downtown Seattle? I’ll thrown out a few ideas. 1, Less crowded. 2, 5 Ave bus stops are closer to work than the DSTT. 3, Different vibe. The route 515 might have more office worker riders. Link might have more of a variety. Some people may prefer the former. Just a guess. Anyone have any other reasons they can think of?

      1. You’d have to ask them to know for sure. When I saw a 515 Tuesday most of the lower seats were occupied and half the upper ones were, so that must be more than 20 people.

        I’d guess “less crowded” is a major reason. It’s not just less crowded, it’s very less crowded. It’s the difference between having to stand vs having a double seat to yourself so you can spread out, and the next person is maybe two seats away. Sparsely-populated buses are quiet and less likely to have loud or unruly passengers. When I’ve had the opportunity to take the 47, 27, 43, or 226 over busier parallel routes, I’ve enjoyed the quiet, low-stress ambience.

        “Close bus stop” likely means they’re continuing out of habit. They’re risking a traffic jam that may prolong their trip 30 minutes. Walking one more block to Link is more than worth it to avoid that. So they may be taking the bus just because they always have.

        We don’t know that 515 riders never take Link. Maybe they take both. Maybe they take the 515 when the experience crowding on Link or it has one of its outages, and then it takes a while for them to try Link again.

        Another issue might be if they’re transferring from another bus and the 515 is in a nearby bus bay.

        But all this is just guessing. Some people always prefer Link, others prefer express buses, others aren’t sure and sometimes use one or the other, and others are spooked by Link’s crowding, outages, and single-tracking.

      2. The 515 has much less capacity than Link, so the percentage of passengers that need to choose the 515 over Link to produce a mostly-full 515 is not very high.

        And, as said, there are reasons. There are some sections of downtown where the 515 stops a couple blocks closer. The 515 starts running before 5 AM, and at that hour, the 515 is probably faster than Link just by virtue of skipping stops, and never hits traffic. It’s less crowded. There could also be some people pulling up OneBusAway, discovering they just missed a Link train but a 515 is right around the corner.

        As I said, it doesn’t have to be that many.

      3. I think you nailed the main reasons, Sam. I think you could put “less crowded” in a the general category of “more pleasant”. In that regard there is also the view. The bus stays up above longer. I haven’t been on those buses (I keep meaning to) but sitting in the top level sounds kind of fun.

        But I think the biggest influence is the stop location. I find it interesting that prior to the pandemic a lot of people took the bus from the Tacoma Dome instead of Sounder (into Seattle). In that case it is the opposite. Riding the (big) train has to be a lot more fun. It seems like it would be a wash in terms of speed (unlike taking Sounder from Kent). But the bus stops at a lot more places. You avoid a transfer or a long walk. I think the 515 is especially convenient for those who work at the north end of downtown (at ninth for example). The bus gets there before it gets to the heart of downtown and it saves quite a bit of walking (or a transfer). I would love to see the stop data. It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of people are riding it to the north end of downtown.

      4. “I haven’t been on those buses (I keep meaning to)”

        I haven’t been on the 515 but I rode the 512 occasionally when it went downtown, and there’s also my friend in north Lynnwood’s experience. It feels nice how it just goes, goes, goes, and before you know it you’re approaching Mountlake Terrace and Lynnwood, at least when there’s no traffic or only one or two small bottlenecks.

        When my friend moved from Seattle to Lynnwood (to live with relatives after a rent increase), she was impressed with how quickly the 512 got to Lynnwood and ran every 15-20 minutes in the daytime: she thought it wasn’t bad at all. (And better than some routes that meander and slouch interminably.)

        But the one thing she didn’t like about the 512 was misbehaving passengers. Apparently the druggies, loud phone-talkers, and people who didn’t learn manners from their mama are in Snohomish County too. So she preferred to take the 415 instead when it was running, to avoid all that. She also said the 512 got very crowded, so the 415 avoided that.

        Since the 515 is now the secondary peak-only route and is not very full, it may have more of that ambience the 415 used to have. A way to avoid riff-raff and “problems”.

      5. Now that you mention it, I have been on the 512. I stayed on the lower level though. I’m quite sure I haven’t been on the upper level, where I think the view would be nice, especially on a sunny day. I do remember the seats in general were fairly comfortable (which I think is true of all of the ST Express buses). The buses are designed for long trips — they are designed for sitting, not standing (or a lot of people getting on and off at each stop).

      6. The upper level is short. I’m 5’10” and I had to stoop to walk to my seat. Since it’s hard for me to walk stooping, I never went upstairs again. And now it’s hard to go up/down stairs too.

    2. Yeah, that is a lot more riders than I expected. My guess is the vast majority board at Lynnwood. The freeway station for Mountlake Terrace is effective, but it is also a longer walk and a lot less pleasant.

      As far as the numbers go, it is worth noting that they are counting riders both ways. So if it gets 900 riders a day, that probably means 450 board in Snohomish County and 450 board downtown. So that means an increase of 450 at the Snohomish County stations when they cancel the bus (not twice that). But overall Link ridership should go up around 900.

      1. Yes – likely an increase of 450 from the 515, but another 450 from the 510 as I expect those riders will switch to taking the 512 and Link.

      2. Yeah, I’m not sure when they are going to get rid of the 510 though. The 515 is clearly temporary but who knows about the 510.

      3. The original 2024 ST Service Plan planned to eliminate the 510 as well. When concerns were raised about a lack of capacity, they decided to restore the 510 and introduce the 515, so I expect that ST will eliminate both routes when the 2 Line connects to Lynnwood.

        I’m having trouble finding the original 2024 service plan but this article summarizes it: https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/07/13/sound-transits-draft-service-plan-for-2024-charts-some-service-growth/

        The final 2024 service plan also says that they’ll restore the 510 temporarily on page 6: https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/2024-service-plan-phase-two.pdf

      4. Fair enough. It makes sense that they want to get rid of the 510. But at the same time it wouldn’t surprise me if they keep it, just like they’ve kept the 586 all of these years. On the other hand, the 515 is clearly temporary and they will likely get rid of it at the first chance they get.

      6. One improvement on the ridership tabs is that the stations are ordered by position rather than alphabetically. And the 1 and 2 line data can be separated.

        It will be interesting to note how this format works when 2 Line begins full testing in about a year and 2 Line trains run all the way from Downtown Redmond to Lynnwood and back.

      7. Looks like Sounder N ridership is basically flat despite restoring 2 trips. Not really surprising – I feel like the money spent to operate those trips could be better used to improve STX bus service.

      8. One improvement on the ridership tabs is that the stations are ordered by position rather than alphabetically. And the 1 and 2 line data can be separated.

        Yeah, that is a big UI improvement. It is much easier to read. Big thing I wish they had now was direction. This would meaningless unless you specified a station, but very useful if you did. For example, how many people took the train north from Capitol Hill and how many took it south?

        It is worth noting that you can calculate this with Sounder. You can filter by run as well as station. For example I can choose the North Line and then pick all of the even runs. These are trains heading north towards Everett. This can tell me how many people are taking the train from Edmonds or Mukilteo to Everett. The answer: 14 and 4 (respectively). This gets to this comment:

        Looks like Sounder N ridership is basically flat despite restoring 2 trips. Not really surprising – I feel like the money spent to operate those trips could be better used to improve STX bus service.

        Agreed. Several of these runs are carrying as many people as a bus. For example the 1701 carried 33 people (in total). The travel between stations is practically nonexistent. They would be way better off putting into express service to Link. Everett and Mukilteo are already covered fairly well for express service, but Edmonds is not. A bidirectional, all-day, 15-minute express bus that ran from Edmonds to 185th would be a much better use of money.

  9. Sound Transit has a passenger experience survey through December 20th. There’s an optional lottery to get a $250 or $100 gift card. From the description it asks about “accessibility, availability, dependability, cleanliness, safety, passenger care, maintenance, passenger information”. I don’t see routes or frequency listed, but “dependability” sounds like reliability so you could put delays or cancellations there. What along these lines would you highlight in your feedback?

    1. How to describe passenger information during unplanned outages? Barely existent I’d say, and the people on the platform are the last to know what’s happening or why and when the next train will come.

    2. They focused on the route you use the most. I’m pretty evenly split between T, STX, Sounder and Link. But I had to chose one. That was disappointing. Maybe I’ll submit 4 responses.

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