Sound Transit Updates November 14 and Dec 6

115 Replies to “Sound Transit Updates November 14 and Dec 6”

1. What does it mean in the TDLE when there are stretches without a preferred alternative (green line)? Will the DEIS have to have selected one?

   1. Good question, Cam!

      In looking for and then reading up on Federal law, it looks like ST should pick a Preferred Alternative in the Draft EIS but doesn’t have to. They must have one before the Final EIS though.

      It may be that the complications of crossing tribal land could be a factor. This is ST’s first Link project (and maybe the only project) to cross tribal land. The tribe probably has considerable say about what they want.

      Along with that, the soil conditions in Fife are dicey — which already led to cost estimate increases and schedule delays already. It may be that ST cannot pursue a preferred alternative in some places until more details are known. Keep in mind that ST had already been well into Link construction when the land gave way south of the KDM Station and a new more expensive solution had to be designed and funded. They probably don’t want to lock themselves into a specific alignment again without added upfront research.

      Regardless, the reasons why some segments have no Preferred Alternative must be stated in the DEIS release according to what I read in FTA explanations. We should know soon — when it gets released to the public.

      Oh …. ST can change their minds after the DEIS. That’s how the crazy idea of not stopping at Jackson St became the preferred alternative after the Draft EIS for WSBLE was published.

   2. The enchanted parkway station for south federal way was deselected as the preferred alternative because of landslide that occurred. Sound Transit no longer wants to build along i-5 to reach from Federal Way to Fife but go along pacific highway s.

      More details are at https://tdlink.participate.online/#south-federal-way

      the rest of the route from federal way to south federal way station and from fife to tacoma has a preferred alignment

      1. That’s great. Honestly, they should save money and do much of that section along 99 between SFW and Fife at-grade. If you drive it, there is only a few conflicts, mostly small businesses.

      2. “Sound Transit no longer wants to build along i-5 to reach from Federal Way to Fife but go along pacific highway s.”

         Oh my god. If only this had come in time to save the possibility of Pacific Highway between Angle Lake and Federal Way. Instead they’re putting it on the part of Pacific Highway that has the least possibility of walk-ups to stations.

      3. Yeah, scenes of I-5 running Northgate to Lynnwood all over again. Gross.

      4. The reason wasn’t walkability, though. There isn’t anything walkable along that section of Pac Hwy. They needed to dodge an Indian Burial Ground. They’ve seen Poltergeist, apparently.

2. With Dow out, can we reverse his disastrously stupid Chinatown station idea?

   1. I think a lot of people hope that will happen. Hard to say though. There are a lot of people pushing in various directions over the station placement. There are also people (like the majority of the folks who run this blog) who don’t think we should build a new tunnel at all. It is probably unlikely we can stop it, but I think there is a better chance with Dow leaving.

   2. Because there are so many real estate issues with the project getting negotiated behind the scenes, Dow’s leaving may have little impact. Many developer interests have already dressed and arrived at the backroom dance.

      I think the bigger impact is the huge budget shortfall because the current north King Link capital program appears to be well short (at least a doubling if not tripling of the funds are needed to build what was in ST3 — with FTA grant and loan favors seriously in doubt as well as drastically falling ridership/ fare revenue forecasts from 2016) of what’s needed. The “realignment” effort a few years ago tried to resolve the funding shortfall — but even since then the costs have likely doubled again.

   3. @Bruce,

      Yes, Dow will be out as KC Exec. But Sparmann also got a contract extension. Meaning the open ST CEO position now more closely aligns with when Dow will leave his KC Exec position.

      Coincidence? I don’t believe in coincidence.

   4. In the public testimony in the first part of the video, three or four people spoke supporting the 4th Avenue Shallow alternative and *nobody* spoke for CID/N. In an earlier expansion committee meeting it was half and half. Nowadays we can’t find anybody preferring CID/N except Dow Constantine and Bruce Harrell.

      If the 4th Avenue alternatives have a lot of construction risks, well, other countries would find a way. Although I understand that other countries would also publicly own the railroad track and have more authority over it, and wouldn’t have a hostile federal government unwilling to limit BNSF further.

   5. “There are a lot of people pushing in various directions over the station placement. There are also people (like the majority of the folks who run this blog)”

      A lot of people are pushing for various station alternatives for various reasons, but support for single-tunnel seems limited to some STB authors and commentators: I haven’t heard anyone else support it, and I’ve been unable to convince anyone outside STB of it.

   6. There’s also the “5th Avenue Diagonal” alternative. That would relieve our concerns about transfers (it would be a block away like 4th and not a cross-platform transfer, but one block is better than six blocks), although Tanya Woo is opposing it because it’s on 5th (actually between 5th and 6th).

      The appearance of 5th Avenue Diagonal coming just before the decision to restart the EIS makes me wonder if the purpose of restarting it is to switch from CID/N to 5th Avenue Diagonal, and get ST out of the corner it has painted itself into. 5th Avenue Shallow may need more study before it could be part of the final EIS, so restarting the process gives it time to achieve that.

3. Thanks for the summary, Wesley!

   Unfortunately, ST has turned an informative monthly Progress Report with schedules, budgets and status summaries into a picture book with no details. The only way that anyone outside of key staff can get an update is to listen in on Board meetings. So what you’ve done is more informative than what can be read in online documents now.

4. I don’t think we will ever reach the 40% goal for farebox recovery . As we extend outward, we are actually getting fewer riders per service hour, not more. This is not what you are supposed to do. For example UW Link and Northgate Link were the opposite. Ridership per mile went way up — you had a real network effect. Lots of people took advantage of the new combination of trips that were available (UW to Beacon Hill, Roosevelt to Columbia City, etc.). But as the system has grown outward, there is a less of a network effect. For example there is very little travel *within* the Lynnwood Link extension area. It is unlikely riders are taking many trips from Snohomish County to Beacon Hill or Columbia City. It’s not that the ridership of Lynnwood Link is terrible, but it is a long distance, and many of the riders just switched from Northgate to a station further north. So ridership is going up, while ridership per service hour is going down. This hurts farebox recovery.

   While running East Link across the water will definitely help ridership, it is unlikely that it will help ridership per service hour. It takes a while to get across the bridge. The same thing is true of Federal Way Link. Again, I expect a good increase in ridership, but our system will be fairly long, making farebox recovery difficult.

   Long systems often charge more for those types of trips. It is likely this would have raised more money, as lots of riders switched from taking trips from Northgate to Lynnwood. Of course we abandoned that policy, which means as ridership spreads out (but does not increase that much) farebox recovery becomes more difficult.

   Meanwhile, we obviously have a lot of maintenance problems. Our system is not especially short, nor especially young anymore. This means it costs a lot to maintain everything, making farebox recovery even more challenging. At some point we should just acknowledge that the 40% goal is unrealistic and adjust the budget accordingly.

   1. The consensus of having a flat fare could easily fall apart once the pressure arrives to make farebox recovery higher. With so much new additional service soon to be running in low density areas yet most Link riders making trips inside Seattle, a future Board will have to reconsider the flat fare decision. If the Board is forced to raise fares inside Seattle well above Metro in order to keep a flat fare systemwide, they’ll lose many riders inside Seattle.

      They might even be forced to turn half of the trains around early to save money. ST is creating an operation that will be overcrowded in some segments while that very same train may be running for as much as 30 minutes with only a few riders on board.

      In their post-ST3 fantasy world, the Board is still making giant capital as well as operating and fare setting choices that are wildly unsustainable. Reality is going to catch up. It’s only a matter of when.

      1. [T]he Board is still making giant capital as well as operating and fare setting choices that are wildly unsustainable

         Name it and Shame It, Al! Well and bluntly stated.

         This is the result when rank amateurs try to play Ticket to Ride with Monopoly money.

      2. They might even be forced to turn half of the trains around early to save money.

         Of the scenarios you mentioned, this seems most likely. It is quite common for agencies to cut back on frequency (especially in the more distant areas). But the most likely scenario is just shifting money from new construction to operations. The agency is raising plenty of money, it is just a matter of how they spend it.

      3. I guess one easy way to save money is to turn around the line 2 at lynnwood rather than mariner https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/st-future-service-map.pdf

         aka like in https://www.theurbanist.org/2017/08/21/map-week-sound-transits-new-system-expansion-map/

      4. “The consensus of having a flat fare could easily fall apart once the pressure arrives to make farebox recovery higher. ”

         Who would push that? Conservatives and anti-tax people? How would they overcome the complete hold that equity has achieved on all levels of city/county/state government and seemingly every politician? Part of the argument for flat fares is that housing inequality is pushing lower-income people to the suburbs and exurbs, and they can’t afford a $4-6 fare to get to Seattle or Bellevue.

      5. “They might even be forced to turn half of the trains around early to save money.”

         That’s the next stage in Ross’s argument, that operational costs will be so high that ST will have to turn back half the trains. And I similarly don’t believe it without more evidence.

      6. “I guess one easy way to save money is to turn around the line 2 at lynnwood rather than mariner”

         The original ST2 plan was for the 2 Line to turn back at Northgate off-peak and serve Lynnwood only peak hours. ST later extended it to Lynnwood full time thinking it would need the capacity. Now this has been essentially replicated in ST3 with the 2 Line turning back at Mariner and only the 3 Line going to Everett. This still gives Everett 10-minute minimum frequency, which is important to get the most out of our transit investment. So ST might keep adjusting the 2 Line’s extent, and maybe at some point it might turn back at Ash Way. All that is acceptable as long as frequency on each branch doesn’t go below a minimum. I think the minimum should be 10 minutes, or 15 minutes at the very worst. That’s what makes Link better than most American light rails or BART: it has a more European level of frequency. (Most West Coast light rails and BART max out at 15 minutes per branch, and some drop to 30 minutes on weekends either always or during recessions, cough VTA and MAX.) If we want people to ditch their cars more and make it an everyday part of their life, we need to keep up frequency.

      7. > If we want people to ditch their cars more and make it an everyday part of their life, we need to keep up frequency.

         That is fine, the problem is that sound transit does not have many levers to adjust frequency if their only option is to run the train the entire length of the line. They will end up averaging out the frequency — lowering the frequency closer to seattle to maintain some frequency out all the way in everett.

         > So ST might keep adjusting the 2 Line’s extent, and maybe at some point it might turn back at Ash Way.

         It can only turn back at stations where it has the turnback tracks so it’s either lynnwood or mariner.

      8. “ If we want people to ditch their cars more and make it an everyday part of their life, we need to keep up frequency.”

         I agree that a baseline frequency is important if money wasn’t an issue. There are many routes inside Seattle that don’t run at 10 minutes — and yet their boardings are much higher per service hour than this planned suburban Link stations will be.

         ST (and you too, Mike) will someday soon have to face the music about farebox recovery. The only way to significantly save outright recurring costs is to cut service, raise fares or get funds from somewhere else like shifting money from Capital to Operating. Money doesn’t grow on trees.

         And running half the trains to an interim point and the other half the whole way during off-peak hours is a way to save money without a huge political cost. The only other ways to reduce actual cost of operating is to abandon end stations completely or greatly reduce service hours for an entire line during evenings and weekends — and those are not going to happen.

         It’s also why I think a distance based fare will inevitably return. What’s better — paying $6 in stead of $3 to go between Tacoma and Seattle on Link or have trains every 20 minutes off-peak instead of every 10? A distance-based fare by far the easiest and fairest way to pay for high frequency service to long, low demand route segments. Why should a Seattle pay a higher Link fare because only a relatively few number of people ride from Fife, especially off-peak?

      9. “It can only turn back at stations where it has the turnback tracks so it’s either lynnwood or mariner.”

         Ash Way isn’t built or designed yet and there’s no DEIS yet, so we don’t know that it won’t have turnbacks. We also don’t know whether funding limitations will convince ST to build it in phases, and whether one phase might be Ash Way or Mariner. All that will be decided in the next few years, probably at or after Federal Way is opened.

      10. “The only way to significantly save outright recurring costs is to cut service”

          The issue is people are guessing what the cost will be and how burdensome it will be, without any information on what the cost will really be.

      11. > Ash Way isn’t built or designed yet and there’s no DEIS yet, so we don’t know that it won’t have turnbacks

          By default sound transit doesn’t build extra turnback (the pocket track). I emailed them already before and they said there are no current plans to build the pocket tracks at the other stations besides mariner. Unless there is some special circumstance I think it’s a safe assumption.

      12. > The issue is people are guessing what the cost will be and how burdensome it will be, without any information on what the cost will really be.

          It’s not that hard to calculate. one takes the existing travel time and multiple it by how far the trains will need to run in the future. then just multiple the operational budget the same factor. I’ve already done a couple times and posted about it . Or even easier one can just extrapolate from the number of trains sound transit needs which is 5x.

      13. The answer to the frequency problem is to STOP BUILDING!

          If in some Bright Future the land between South Federal Way and the Tacoma Dome fills up with people wanting to take a Light Rail train ride regularly for some reason, build it then. There will always be land along the freeway, and certainly “air rights” over Pac Highway. Planners don’t need “pre-emptive” building in the boonies; they just need to be certain to reserve a way to build later. “Build it and they will come” works to increase density and validate initial steps in that direction. It isn’t a magic wand.

          If the area around Fife doesn’t fill up, the planners will have avoided a monstrous waste of public resources.

      14. The answer to the frequency problem is to STOP BUILDING!

          Yes. This is it. You really can’t have it all. It is a quality over quantity thing. With few exceptions (which I’ll get into) really long systems don’t have good frequency. Not at their extremities. Really short systems often due. So do midsize systems. But really long systems almost inevitably end up having low frequency service outside the core (and sometimes not very good frequency inside the core either).

          The one exception is L. A., but that is because L. A. is true megalopolis. There is widespread density, but never as dense as cities half its size. It has multiple employment centers — not one big one. You need rail to deal with the density, but the rail also has to cover a very wide area. But we aren’t L. A. Quite the opposite. Almost all of the density that is found in the region is right in Seattle itself. Most of the remaining density is in Bellevue. It isn’t just population density. We are very strongly centered, with Downtown Seattle being the biggest destination. The secondary destinations are the UW and Downtown Bellevue. Everything else is at a lower level, and most of those areas are in Seattle (Capitol Hill, Northgate, etc.). Thus the destinations and density are mostly in Seattle (with a bit on the East Side). Why then, are we building the spine?

          Because a group of people thought it would be a good idea. I can only assume they had no idea how transit works, and simply figured it was like a freeway. If you do think it is like a freeway, then the idea is great. It is exactly the type of freeway I would build (if we didn’t have freeways and I liked freeways). But mass transit is not like a freeway. It matters if hardly anyone from Lynnwood takes a ride to South Shoreline. It matters if lots of people are trying to get from Beacon to First Hill. Both trips can be covered quite well with a freeway, but one area makes a lot of sense for a subway line, and the other doesn’t.

      15. “The answer to the frequency problem is to STOP BUILDING!”

          That contradicts the political structure. We can say it would be ideal if Link didn’t go beyond Lynnwood and KDM, but Snohomish, Pierce, and South King have rights under the political structure and are paying for their own projects, and what they want is Tacoma Dome and Everett. They’ve been adamant about that consistently for decades and say it’s their highest priority. Changing the political structure would require the state, ST, and counties to do something unprecedented, and how do you convince them to do that when we’ve tried and failed?

      16. Al S.

          ” If the Board is forced to raise fares inside Seattle well above Metro in order to keep a flat fare systemwide, they’ll lose many riders inside Seattle.”

          I doubt this is true. Metro might want ST to raise rates because Metro would be happy to fallow along. Metro’s already broke, remember? ST is also broke, but can’t seem to face reality.

          $5 for a transit ride isn’t too much to ask, right? I mean the inflationary forces that are pushing transit costs up are 100% real. Something has to give here.

          In a city where people shell out 2 grand a month for a so-so apartment, maybe 3 bucks a ride isn’t reality. Five bucks sounds about right for the economy today. There’s no shortage of bus drivers for Metro BTW, there’s just a shortage of money to pay drivers a living wage in Seattle. Same with mechanics, security, janitors, etc…

          Nice things cost money.

      17. ” Metro might want ST to raise rates because Metro would be happy to fallow along.”

          Metro is not an independent entity. The King County council sets the fare rate and the fare recovery target. They are elected politicians, and do things for a variety of fiscal and non-fiscal reasons. One thing they’re concerned about is not raising the fare beyond what a working-class person can afford: that’s “equity. It’s why there hasn’t been a fare increase for so long. In the past there were fare increases every few years, but that stopped in… I’m thinking 2008 when gas hit $5 per gallon, but there may have been a later one around 2012. The council considered raising the fare again in the late 2010s or early 2020s but didn’t, because it concluded $2.75 was the ceiling for affordability and ridership.

          Now in 2024 it’s finally going to raise the fare to $3. That’s partly because of the post-covid inflation, and partly influenced by Link’s new fare. Otherwise Link would be more expensive than Metro, when it has lower operating cost for some trips (short in-city trips with high ridership). The increase equalizes fares between Metro, Link, and almost-approved ST Express, plus it gives Metro a revenue boost.

          “Metro’s already broke”

          If Metro were broke the buses wouldn’t be running. Metro can obviously pay operational costs at present because it’s doing so, and it’s not getting extra funding from the county to fill a gap, so the money is clearly coming from fares and Metro’s established sales tax.

      18. “If Metro were broke the buses wouldn’t be running. Metro can obviously pay operational costs at present because it’s doing so, and it’s not getting extra funding from the county to fill a gap, so the money is clearly coming from fares and Metro’s established sales tax.”
          Alongside farebox recovery is merely a metric of how much fares make up the total cost of rides, which varies a lot per route as well. Metro has a higher than normal level of commuter express routes compared to other big agencies. So the farebox recovery is going to be lower because of it as some routes are fairly expensive to operate. Example would be the Seattle to Black Diamond Express or Issaquah to North Bend routes. Whereas almost every Seattle or inner suburban ring route generally has decent or above average or even good farebox recovery.

          Anyone who’s worked in transit knows that most transit agencies both here and abroad do not reach 100% or even 50% of fares covering costs. Some do, but it’s unusual in a way. Like even Paris, one of the busiest metros in the world is heavily subsidized by the French, Parisian, and Île de France governments to cover its operational costs. Fares definitely cover a portion, but the €2.50 fare it will soon be come next year does not cover everything that goes into running the Paris Metro.

          Fares are not like something you can just throw a random number out and say “this is what I think it should be”. Fares are more abstract in nature and this is why people at transit agencies do studies beforehand for any fare reform or fare increase proposal to understand how it will affect budgets and ridership. There is an equilibrium for most agencies as to what the fare schedule should be. You can’t have it too high or no one rides, can’t have it to low or it’s difficult to run the system well. That’s what transit planners at agencies figure out with their research. Looking at metros fares over the years when adjusted for inflation they have risen steadily with time and only after the 08 recession to 2015 were they more expensive than what current metro riders pay when inflation adjusted.

      19. Mike Orr,

          Maybe lower income people could submit a W2 form and get a highly reduced ORCA card? But $300 a month for a transit pass is not too much money for a transit pass. That’s less than a third of what owning a car costs. Once again, nice things cost money.

          Zack B.

          Here’s a little Seattle transit history for you. Once upon a time Seattle had street cars…. a lot of them. In a perfect world, those would have been upgraded and still running. Here’s why they were scrapped. Stupid politicians controlled the fare rates and refused to raise them…. but once again, nice things cost money. Without proper funding, the streetcar system fell into disrepair….. You think the politicians we have now are any smarter? Even if light rail does make it to Tacoma or the Eastside, There’s no guarantee it stays running for 20 years. My guess is light rail ends up a zone fare system and it costs like $11 bucks to ride from Tacoma to Seattle…. the system has few riders and grinds to halt after 10 years.

          I read this blog because I think articles and posters honestly care about transit and most even live in the real world. Seattle Subway? Not living in the real world. Transit Riders Union? Their ideas are completely wack.

          I’d love to see a real cost analysts looking at the mythical 40% fare box recovery tied to real world inflation. I’m betting $5 fares isn’t outrageous after the basic math is done. It’s not 1992 anymore.

          https://www.kuow.org/stories/seattle-art-museum-guards-hit-the-picket-line

          Here’s an article about SAM (Seattle Art Museum) security guards striking…. The museum management, who are all super liberal progressives I bet, have no problem paying less than $25 a hour to guards. That’s just not a living wage in Seattle. Our education system, transit system, homeless outreach… all these important parts of a working city don’t have enough money to pay a living wage…. and they’re all failing

      20. “Metro might want ST to raise rates because Metro would be happy to fallow along.”

          Apologies, I misread you quote slightly. Of course Metro might *like* ST to raise fares even if Metro can’t raise its own fares without King County action. ST raising fares changes psychological environment and public expectations Metro is living in. It might give Metro some breathing room to raise fares with less criticism. However, other factors would come into play too as we’ve discussed; it’s not the only factor.

          Historically Metro and ST Express have been leapfrogging each other with fare increases. ST raises it and its in-county fare becomes higher than Metro. Then Metro raises it and closes the gap. That dynamic changed the past six years with Metro going to a flat fare, the pandemic, and ST Express going to a flat fare. Link has not been participating in this, but it had its first fare change this year, going to a flat fare (which was an increase from the perspective of passengers traveling the distance of Westlake-Rainier Beach or less).

          So Link flattening $3, Metro going up to $3, and ST Express going down to $3, are all sort of within the tradition, with Link playing the role ST Express previously did. And as we know, ST Express is becoming a smaller part of the pie as Link replaces some of it, so ST Express’s fare is becoming less important.

      21. “Maybe lower income people could submit a W2 form and get a highly reduced ORCA card? But $300 a month for a transit pass is not too much money for a transit pass. That’s less than a third of what owning a car costs.”

          I was about to mention the cost of cars That’s the elephant in the room. Sometimes it’s useful to look at public and private spending together to get the big picture. A dollar of transit spending serves more people’s total trips than a dollar of car spending. The cost of transit fares is dwarfed by the cost of car ownership and use. A lot of the reason people are spending money on cars is because transit doesn’t go where they need to when they need to. So if we theoretically eliminated cars and put that $1,000/month people are spending into transit, that would fund a lot of transit, including potentially frequent buses to most people’s single-family blocks. And we could have some kind of arrangement for working cars, and a lower-cost nonprofit car-rental infrastructure for people transporting bulky loads, going to the mountains, or doing a Sunday drive with the family. Everything is revolving around society’s choice to prioritize the highest-cost, most inefficient, highest-externality form of transportation and to hide the cost to drivers and the public so they aren’t made uncomfortable by it. Transit exists within this environment and constraints.

          I paid $99 when I had a monthly pass, and now it would be $108 for the new $3 fare level. I was glad it was stable every month and less than driving. I also paid maybe $5/month in surcharges (ST Express, long Link trips, Sounder). Currently I don’t use it enough to make a pass cost-effective so I go by e-purse.

          So yes, I could see a $200 or $300 pass at some point, and I could probably pay it. I think people in New York pay around $250, but they get a lot more mobility choices for it. So a $200 pass for a significant increase in service is thinkable, and $300 might be possible someday in the long term.

          But single-ride fares have a different dynamic. Just because a $200 or $300 monthly pass might look reasonable doesn’t mean a $6 or $9 fare doesn’t look like highway robbery. The latter would cause widespread complaints and lead to ridership loss and more driving and ubers and congestion.

          What many cities have done (mostly outside the US) is to keep the monthly pass price low but raise the single-ride cost to make it unattractive. That pushes most riders to get passes, and the remaining single-ride uses are like that one isolated trip to the airport. Some American agencies have a day pass at 2x the single-ride fare, so that attracts most riders too. Pugetopolis may be heading toward that with the $6 day pass, but it would need to be available at TVMs, bus drivers, or off-board kiosks or easy-to-find shops (visible from the bus stop), so that occasional spur-of-the-moment riders or visitors riders who don’t have ORCA yet could participate.

          The pass price also exists within the cross-currents of people’s expenses. Some middle-class people could pay a $200-300 pass comfortably, especially if it could allow them to reduce their car expenses. Other middle-class people don’t have much left over due to raising children, high medical expenses, student debt, etc. That gets into the total inequality and inefficient public/private balance and short-term stock-rate orientation American society has.

      22. “I read this blog because I think articles and posters honestly care about transit and most even live in the real world. Seattle Subway? Not living in the real world. Transit Riders Union? Their ideas are completely wack.”
          I don’t know what you’re talking about. Both are fine as advocacy groups and have pretty solid and clear goals of what they’d like to see out of transit.
          Unless you give examples I can’t really make an opinion on what you’re saying.

      23. > I don’t know what you’re talking about. Both are fine as advocacy groups and have pretty solid and clear goals of what they’d like to see out of transit.

          Seattle subway while they were helpful in getting more transit funding kinda just draw subway lines on the map but don’t really think about how they’d actually be built. They’re also very insistent on underground metro lines which honestly outside of downtown seattle and bellevue really isn’t going to happen. aka “underground kirkland detour”. Their largest advocacy right now is pushing for the ballard underground station.

          Transit riders union group doesn’t really focus on transit (capital) changes that much actually. they focus more on fare such as reduced fare or say uw transit bus but not really about bus routes/ link routes https://transitriders.org/ Or even more off topic about the minimum wage increase or renter protections. Which is fine of course but isn’t really about transit.

      24. “funding kinda just draw subway lines on the map but don’t really think about how they’d actually be built.”
          I’m honestly fine with most of the routes they’ve proposed in ST complete map. People can quibble about the edges of the map like Woodinville or Tacoma Mall, but I think the proposed lines within Seattle city limits are good candidates for long term rail upgrades like Ballard to Sand Point, the 8 Subway, Aurora Ave Link, Ballard to Lake City via Crown Hill/Northgate. Do I wish there was more advocating towards automated metro lines for new lines, sure. But the fact that Seattle Subway does spend time in Olympia lobbying is admirable and something in my opinion STB should be doing as well for how much talk there is about the difficulty of building and funding transit in WA State.

          To me this is I how I view transit advocacy and planning for it.
          “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit”
          It’s an old Greek proverb, but rings true to how civic planning should be looked at rather than in a vacuum like it often is.

          As for TRU, their advocacy seems fine when looking at their albiet dated website. It’s mainly about free or low fares for seniors, disabled, low income, and homeless. There’s some quibbling about how subsidized said fare schemes should be but that feels reasonable in my view. For me, the $1 fare is fine and $36 a month is not too expensive. I know there’s a subsidized annual pass that’s separate from reduced fares for people getting state services. Which isn’t too different from some other systems which have multiple fare schemes for reduced fares like Paris.

          https://www.ratp.fr/en/titres-et-tarifs (Paris)

      25. @zach

          > I think the proposed lines within Seattle city limits are good candidates for long term rail upgrades like Ballard to Sand Point, the 8 Subway, Aurora Ave Link, Ballard to Lake City via Crown Hill/Northgate. Do I wish there was more advocating towards automated metro lines for new lines, sure

          I mean that’s the easy part. I could draw up a couple train proposal maps in an hour for any city. The hard part is advocating for say an elevated light rail line on Aurora avenue or a grade light rail on lake city way and detailing why xyz approach is better. You’ll notice they don’t really have any slightest detail about how the lines would actually be implemented or why they choose each one.

          It is always politically easy to say draw on an map underground metros which have low construction impact and not worry about the cost. I will admit they did somewhat manage to get the money for sound transit. And you noted they advocate in Olympic for more money too

          The root of the problem now however is not money. Sound transit has billions of capital dollars but rather than spending it on extending light rail is focusing on minimizing impacts even further. Optimizing for near zero construction impacts which means nearly infinite construction costs. Though even stb has a hard time talking about accepting more construction impacts for cheaper.

          Anyways I’m getting a bit off topic. The point is Seattle subway doesn’t really deal with the details at all. Not even on the surface level. Which isn’t necessarily bad being an advocacy group to argue for more transit funding but isn’t really where one can debate the merits of one alignment over another

          > As for TRU, their advocacy seems fine when looking at their albiet dated website.

          I didn’t say it was bad. I said “ Transit riders union group doesn’t really focus on transit (capital) changes that much actually.” … and focuses on transit fares.

          Which is fine but means you won’t get bus or train discussions there.

      26. kinda just draw subway lines on the map but don’t really think about how they’d actually be built.

          Nor is there any attempt to prioritize based on value. Fantasy maps are fine. They will never get built and anyone with any sense knows they will never get built, but that’s what makes them fantasy maps. So in that sense I have no problem with ridiculous maps like the ones that Seattle Subway makes.

          But there has been a change over the years. When Seattle Subway started, they were focused on Seattle. They produced maps that were just as unrealistic as the ones they make now, but they thoroughly covered Seattle. They envisioned the type of subway map that we might have created if the city got built fifty years earlier (or cars didn’t get built until fifty years later). This sort of thing: https://seattletransitblog.com/2017/03/07/bogue-plan/ but with improvements made over the years. It was unrealistic to assume it could be built now but it would be fairly similar to systems around the world (most of which were built much sooner or for cities with a lot more density).

          But this is something that no one has built and no one in their right mind would build: https://www.seattlesubway.org/regional-map/. At first glance it looks similar — only because the scale is not obvious. So if you are not from around here, have fun looking up places like Tukwila and Woodinville (hint: they aren’t in Seattle). Yet these distant suburbs are well served. Woodinville gets not one, but two subway lines. Tukwila gets four. Oh, and this isn’t leveraging existing rail lines or even cheap right of way. It isn’t even running on the surface! This is completely grade separated in a land that is full of geographic challenges that folks in Kansas can only dream about. This is not greenfield development either. There are major freeways and roadways crisscrossing the area with enough development to add to the cost, but not enough development to actually account for a lot of ridership. If you didn’t know the area (and especially if you didn’t know the scale) you would assume there must be something really special in theses places, so far from the city. A major university — a twin city of sorts. Nope. The density does not spread with full force from the center of the city to places that far away. Almost all of the major employment, education and density is within the city proper. Most of the remainder is well served by East Link. OK, maybe Downtown Bellevue should have more coverage — but this suburban-oriented map doesn’t do that either.

          This would be bad enough if not for the obvious weaknesses within the city. Upper Queen Anne? Nothing. Northern Queen Anne (SPU)? Nothing. Yesler Terrace? I guess the streetcar will do. Eastlake? Nope. Magnolia? Nothing, unless you count Interbay. Now I get Magnolia. Sure, it has proximity going for it but density is fairly low by Seattle’s standards. But you could say that about most of the places on the map. Somehow they can envision Tukwila becoming dense enough to justify four separate rail lines while magically eliminating the obvious lack of proximity and yet they can’t possible imagine Magnolia (or most of the city) being dense enough to justify rail. It is a suburban 14-year old’s vision map. It is the type of thing that someone — having spent almost their entire life in cars, riding on the grand and glorious freeways that cross our region — would build. It ignores mass transit lessons learned over the decades — many the hard way. It doubles down on failed policies, but presents it in a nice bow, as if to appeal to folks in distant subdivisions. Sure, you will never use the system on a regular basis, but won’t it be nice to occasionally be dropped off at the station and then take a train to the airport?

          This is my biggest problem with the vision map. Not that it is an absurd fantasy that will never be built but that it only confirms the stupid assumptions that got us into this mess in the first place. It suggests that “the spine” is a great plan, we just need to build more things like it. No!

          And I get that they are trying to work within the ST framework. Fine. Go ahead and add that to your map. But if for some crazy reason we manage to run trains from Everett to the Tacoma Dome then the last thing we should do is add is train lines mimicking another freeway (like 405). Instead we should build lines within Seattle itself. If you are going to imagine spending billions (trillions?) on hundreds of miles of track then for heaven’s sake at least cover the city.

          It is easy to dismiss the vision map as being not important. Sure, it gets some people excited (the way folks were excited about the monorail) but it doesn’t really matter that it will never happen. It is merely an inspiration. A way to get people interested in the subject, so they can do the dirty work of advocating for more transit improvements.

          Except it does matter! It perpetuates a failed vision that what we are building is the type of thing we should build. It makes it much harder for us to change directions and build what we should be building. If you think that it is only a matter of time before Newcastle is connected to Woodinville by rail (finally!) then you don’t question stupid assumptions like the need for two tunnels downtown — practically right next to each other! You don’t question why First Hill is yet again shortchanged in the process. You don’t wonder why Ballard is served via Interbay even though running trains from Ballard to the UW would be much cheaper and far better from a network perspective. Hell, you don’t even think about the buses much at all. You just kinda assume that some people will ride them, but the vast majority will be taking the train even though this gargantuan vision map pretty much guarantees the opposite. And not in a good way! We aren’t creating another Vancouver, with its marvelous grid consisting of fast and very frequent rail and fairly fast and frequent buses. No, we are talking about about people trying to get from SPU to the UW (a fairly common trip). Folks riding the slow 31/32 or some sort of three-seat ride involving either going the wrong direction (Dexter) or going over the same problematic bridge that is curse of the route as it exists now.

          It is easy for transit advocates to assume that the problem is the anti-transit folks. The commenters on the Seattle Times who love their cars and hate their car tabs. Sure, they are a problem, but they are nowhere near the biggest problem. The root of all the transit woes in the area is ignorance. We don’t question the various assumptions that went into “the spine”. The idea that serving Fife is more important than serving First Hill or Fremont. The idea that building a subway line to Tacoma or Everett is a great idea, even though the Paris Metro, New York City Subway and London Underground (and Overground!) don’t extend that far. The idea that we need a second tunnel through downtown that doesn’t add any coverage at all. All of these failed assumptions are what is sinking us. It will be our downfall. It will only embolden those anti-transit folks as they mock our stupid plans with its rapidly increasing cost estimates and rapidly decreasing ridership estimates. It sure as hell won’t get people out of their cars. And when the dust settles and we are left with trains that run to the outskirts of Ballard and Tacoma while connecting them infrequently and slowly (respectively) to the center of town, we won’t have money to build what we should have built. We will look upon our nearest neighbor and wonder why they got it so right and we got it so wrong. We will credit their “Canadian way of doing things” or find some other BS excuse for why their system is so much more effective. We will wallow in our ignorance while groups like Seattle Subway keep drawing lines on the map with their pretty crayons.

      27. The point is Seattle subway doesn’t really deal with the details at all.

          That is not actually true. They were very active in pushing for better station placement at CID. This is laudable. But it misses the forest for the trees. They never question whether we should build a new tunnel or the general alignment (e. g. skipping First Hill). They certainly don’t question things like West Seattle Link, because they assume the more rail the better. There is no nuance. They aren’t a transit advocacy group, they are a rail advocacy group. Not only that, but they routinely advocate for poor rail projects, which will only make it more difficult to build worthy rail projects. They are at times politically pragmatic if not downright cynical (the board decided to build something stupid, lets make the most of it) and other times delusional in their support of something that just isn’t popular (like the streetcar).

          They epitomize so much of the transit planning in this area. They definitely mean well (and gosh, they try so hard to do nifty things) but they really aren’t helping.

      28. > That is not actually true. They were very active in pushing for better station placement at CID. This is laudable. But it misses the forest for the trees.

          I mean they advocate for station alternatives of course, but not for their alignments on their fantasy map.

          > It is easy to dismiss the vision map as being not important. Sure, it gets some people excited (the way folks were excited about the monorail) but it doesn’t really matter that it will never happen. It is merely an inspiration. A way to get people interested in the subject, so they can do the dirty work of advocating for more transit improvements… Except it does matter!

          To be fair, we (stb) don’t really provide an comprehensive alternative map/proposal either. I’ve mentioned it a bit to mike that i think we should outline what are the near term next rail projects (aka kirkland and small ballard extensions if elevated are obvious) and bus projects (center median) for the other corridors (aurora ave/ southcenter etc.. ) if we don’t think rail will happen

      29. “The root of all the transit woes in the area is ignorance.”

          Many things about our region’s transit are good to great!

          I think that the “woes” that we have are generally restricted to how we’ve recently chosen to expand light rail with little benefit and with little thought and understanding of what the actual rider experience will be.

          The ST decisions made before 2010 were fair to good. The initial RapidRide lines were also a good investment as much as some lines can be belittled. ST2 in concept is good. There are some decisions made then which deserve criticism (like not having two or three Link stations between Downtown and UW rather than one) but overall it’s good to great. The lack of escalator redundancy is to me the dumbest ST cost-cutting choice. And FHSC ended up as a valueless project too.

          Since then, the problem is just that ST system expansion has become a Board game for everyone but the riders. Real estate interests — sometimes posing as neighborhood advocates — are calling the shots behind the scenes. Billions are committed without examining the value of the projects as elected officials thread the needle between extending lines to more areas while designing those lines to keep specific real estate interests happy. Meanwhile, no inquiry about the overall project value is never asked or debated. Neither is how we should be preparing for the inevitable automated rail.

          It’s akin to putting out a map and drawing lines with a permanent marker. It’s planning at an elementary school level. It’s “big picture” but it’s not followed up with honest discussions of value and making changes to the program based on fact-finding to improve value.

          And we are all prone to ignore value. The love for the Pinehurst 130th St Station is an example. The Shoreline Stations are only getting around 1,000 boardings a day, and they also have parking! Early analysis showed terrible ridership forecasts for the station but the drums beat “Build! build!” So here we are.

          As light rail operations becomes the center of consciousness more and more, I expect a bigger emphasis on value and rider experience will happen. It is like how we mature from elementary school when we ask “what do you want to be when you grow up” to adulthood when we are actually living with our careers on a daily basis.

          Transit is not a piece of art. Transit is a public service. Most STB commenters increasingly already get that. It’s the political system that hasn’t yet changed. But as operations problems will never go away, the political system is due for a shift in perspective.

      30. “[Seattle Subway does’t] question things like West Seattle Link, because they assume the more rail the better.”

          I think it’s more than that. They don’t question ST’s things like West Seattle, Everett, or Tacoma Dome Link because they don’t want to lose the yes votes of people who voted for those things or the politicians that support them. It was a regional consensus based on what could get the most yes votes and politicians’ support. If that breaks down there may be less support for any kind of rail or regional transit, and we’d be back where we were when Forward Thrust failed and we had to wait twenty years before another coalition could reach critical mass.

          You may think everybody thinks rail should be concentrated in Seattle, or having DSTT2 going to First Hill is better than 5th Avenue, or canceling DSTT2 and putting three lines in DSTT1 and making Ballard-Westlake separate is bes, but these aren’t as widely shared. Nobody except some STB staff/commentators seems to be for single-tunnel or rerouting DSTT2 to First Hill. Neither The Urbanist nor The Stranger nor Seattle Subway nor CID activists have picked it up, and I can’t find anyone else. Not any politicians or voters, and that’s what you’d need to make a change.

      31. “I’ve mentioned it a bit to mike that i think we should outline what are the near term next rail projects”

          You did? I’m all for it. I’ve asked if we could come up with comprehensive regional+local transit visions for the various parts of King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties as our alternative to Metro Connects and the other agencies’ long-range plans. What better way to articulate our values than with a vision map of what we’d most like. I don’t feel I can do this myself, deciding all the routes and making the maps, so someone in each area would need to champion it. So far we’ve got Troy Serad’s five-part Pierce County series, which he had already written for his own blog.

          If you want to suggest better rail concepts in Seattle, that’s what STB is here for and we’d be glad to publish them. Sorry if I didn’t make this clear earlier.

      32. I did make my own ideal Lynnwood Link restructure map back when the extension was going through Alternatives Analysis and early planning. It was hand-drawn on paper and never published. I didn’t pursue further it after we got more concrete indications of what Metro and ST were intending and other people like Ross started making more detailed proposals; I left it to them.

      33. “Many things about our region’s transit are good to great!”

          Yes, we tend to take our good things for granted and complain about the flaws, like people everywhere do. Other people including visiting transit experts and politicians praise how well we’re doing compared to most of the US.

          A) We have high bus ridership on Metro, ST Express, and the other agencies. Metro won an award in the 1990s for the biggest bus-only network in the country (back before Link).

          B) We have a relatively high concentration of jobs in downtown Seattle (most cities lost that after WWII), and a low SOV mode share to commute to them, because of our longstanding extensive peak expresses to downtown and now Link/Sounder.

          C) The suburbs are at least building mixed-use regional centers and increasing support for BRT and ridership, even if they won’t touch their vast single-family areas.

          D) Link is doing well and is taking people to the airport and colleges and other activities besides work commutes. It’s the most effective American light rail, even if that’s because heavy rail is in a separate category.

          E) ST Express, oh people love ST Express and wish their cities had it. It’s unusual to have all-day (semi-)frequent express service between all the cities in your metropolis. Cities with all-day commuter rail do; others don’t. Those New Jersey visitors who raved about Sounder to Everett and the 512 back to Northgate said New Jersey has the legacy community rail, but they can’t get their act together as well at creating new BRT/express-bus routes to fill the gaps.

      34. ” It’s the political system that hasn’t yet changed.”

          It has changed, just not far enough. When I was growing up in the 1970s and early 80s, Metro was a bunch of peak-express routes to downtown and hourly ultra-long slow milk runs stopping at every single-family block along the way. I dreamed of a subway between downtown, the U-District, and Northgate, and frequent bus corridors along and between denser areas, but I was told there was no longer public support for spending money on that, the only thing that could get support was highways and P&Rs and P&R expresses to downtown Seattle.

          Then in the 1980s we got DSTT1 and some semblance of all-day semi-express bus corridors and the aspiration of rail “someday”. (It didn’t open until 1990, but this was when it was approved and constructed.) In the 1990s we got Link’s initial segment and Spine goal (opened 2009), and the first urban villages with appeared. In the 2000s we got the first RapidRide lines (opened 2010?). Bellevue’s dense downtown was planned in the 1950s but only started becoming visible in the 1990s. Later Link segments have some different design choices from the earlier ones, for both better and worse.

      35. >> To be fair, we (stb) don’t really provide an comprehensive alternative map/proposal either.
          > If you want to suggest better rail concepts in Seattle, that’s what STB is here for and we’d be glad to publish them. Sorry if I didn’t make this clear earlier.

          No worries, I think back then it was about if we as a group should talk the further extensions.

          In any case I do think Link not building anything at-grade does leave the region in a conundrum now (and us). It’s just way to expensive to build underground for most other routes and most areas don’t want to build elevated light rail even if it does make the most sense. but I don’t think it means we should just say don’t build any improvements for many of these routes.

          whether light rail, streetcar (tram), or buses it’d have to be at-grade center median for most of these other alignments.

      36. I mean they advocate for station alternatives of course, but not for their alignments on their fantasy map.

          Agreed.

          To be fair, we (stb) don’t really provide an comprehensive alternative map/proposal either.

          Fair enough. But I think we are primarily a blog — a poor man’s newspaper. We cover transit news (sometimes really well — https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/04/25/balducci-interview-about-the-2-line/) but we are mostly a bunch of columnists each with our opinion as to what should be done. If you read the various columns (blog posts) and follow along, you should be able to form some sort of an educated opinion as to what is the best coarse of action. Not necessarily the particulars, but at a broad scope.

          There has been moves to consolidate these sorts of ideas into some sort of post “from the editorial staff”. But that is problematic because not everyone agrees (nor should they). Even so, it is hard to imagine you would regularly read this blog and just assume that West Seattle Link is clearly the best possible way we can spend our money or that building the second tunnel as planned is a obviously a great idea. I’m not saying you agree or disagree with the various posts we’ve published (they are often contradictory) but at least we’ve clearly laid out the case that there are flaws in the plans.

          In contrast Seattle Subway is an advocacy group. That is their only function. The problem is their overall plans lack nuance even though nuance is the most important thing you can add to the discussion.

      37. Many things about our region’s transit are good to great!

          Or course they are. They were great thirty years ago. Many things have gotten a lot better. But we are spending enormous amounts of money for a system that in my opinion is simply not that good. We are spending first-class money on a second-rate system. Even before ST3 we were spending more per capita than any other American city. It is easy to then claim the problem is that other US cities aren’t spending enough, but if you look at the huge transit boom in Canada, they are simply spending less and getting more. The problem isn’t (just) construction costs either. The Broadway SkyTrain extension is now slated to cost almost $3 billion, way more than originally thought. But West Seattle Link will cost around $7 billion! If you aren’t familiar with the Broadway extension it will replace a bus that carried over 50,000 people a day. They expect somewhere around 135,000 to 150,000 riders — more than the entire Link system! We just aren’t building the right things.

          And it isn’t like everything is great. Ridership is still down from the pandemic levels. Think about that for a second. Since 2018 we have extended Link from the UW to Lynnwood. This means the core of our system — the part that every transit expert said was essential and many said should be built first (U-District to downtown) — is done. It means that various north-end workhorses — express buses from the UW to downtown or the mighty 41, which carried over 10,000 riders a day — have been put out to pasture, and replaced by rail and feeder buses, running more often. Common trips (e. g. Roosevelt to Capitol Hill) that used to take forever now can be done in a few minutes. It has been, in many ways, a huge improvement.

          And yet overall transit ridership is down.

          You can say this isn’t ST’s fault. This would happen even if Link had way more stations. You can say the problem is that Metro funding is down. Sure, fine. But this still proves my point: We are spending money on the wrong things. Clearly bus service is important. It isn’t clear at all whether West Seattle Link will lead to a noticeable increase in transit use in the city. But doubling Metro service sure will. We are not only building the wrong rail projects but we are spending way too little on the buses. This will only perpetuate the transit stratification that exists now. Want to take a train from a Lynnwood parking lot to downtown? Things are great! Want to get from Uptown to Capitol Hill? Not so much. Oh, you can take a bus — it is just that it is notoriously slow and way too infrequent. That is because we are spending money on the wrong things.

      38. I think that the “woes” that we have are generally restricted to how we’ve recently chosen to expand light rail

          I think it is more fundamental than that. I think that as ST’s vision has come closer to reality the flaws become apparent.

          ST2 projects were fundamentally strong. They included pieces that we should have started with (but better late than never). It made various key connections. It was the type of system that would not raise eyebrows outside the US. But there were still some big flaws. Not enough stations and poor integration with the buses. But these flaws were excusable given the enormous value added. It is only with ST3 that the fundamentals could not support the flawed particulars.

          That is because ST3 is simply the second stage in BART del Norte. Speaking of which, the same thing would happen if BART was built out that way. Imagine if stage one was to start at 24th & Mission in San Fransisco and cross the Bay with two tiny branches in Oakland; the northern branch containing a station at 12th and 19th while the western one serves Lake Merritt, not that far away. Looks great at this point. You would get a huge number of riders for the amount of rail you added. The future would look very bright as well. You can just imagine a dozen stations spreading north and east thoroughly covering the East Bay the way those three stations cover that part of Oakland.

          But they didn’t build it that way. They went north and east all right, but almost immediately started skipping stations. The distances between stations grew to the point that it resembled commuter rail, even though it was clearly in the heart of the city. It is obvious that in their zest to get to places like Antioch and Pleasanton they shortchanged the people that always make up the bulk of the transit ridership.

          We are in the same boat. The plans have been remarkably consistent, it is just that skipping First Hill wasn’t the end of the world when we added the UW. Now we are ignoring First Hill (and various bus connections) while going to places like Fife and Ash Way. It is the same flawed mindset, it is just that the problems aren’t as obvious until you get further along.

      39. “[Seattle Subway does’t] question things like West Seattle Link, because they assume the more rail the better.”

          I think it’s more than that. They don’t question ST’s things like West Seattle, Everett, or Tacoma Dome Link because they don’t want to lose the yes votes of people who voted for those things or the politicians that support them. It was a regional consensus based on what could get the most yes votes and politicians’ support. If that breaks down there may be less support for any kind of rail or regional transit, and we’d be back where we were when Forward Thrust failed and we had to wait twenty years before another coalition could reach critical mass.

          That is absurd, for several reasons. First, it is more likely that ST3 plans will screw up worthy rail projects than the other way around. What do you think the chances are that we get Ballard to UW rail if we spend billions upon billions on rail projects that benefit only a handful of people? Based on what has happened in other city: very slim. That is the problem. Many transit people have said this: If you build the wrong thing, you end up not building the right thing.

          Second, there was no consensus to build what we planned on building. Far from it. Somehow West Seattle jumped to the front of the line. Somehow Kirkland was denied a very good BRT plan (that the city supported after hiring their own transit consultant). Somehow “the spine” just keeps on growing, as if God himself declared it to be essential.

          Oh, and how do you explain support for the streetcar? Because there was a consensus that we should build it? Please.

          Suggesting you might lose people by clinging to crappy plans is naive at best, cynical at worst. You are depending on the ignorance of the populace. You are hoping they have just enough enthusiasm to support your cause, but not enough to question what is behind the curtain.

          Or it is simply people who honestly believe this is not only plausible, but what we should actually spend our money on. Supporting ST3 and that plan is entirely consistent. We can’t ignore that. They are not a group of realpolitik advocates shrewdly gaining support why they fight the key political battles. They are a group of folks who support ridiculously long rail systems while ignoring what is actually needed in the region.

   2. Yep. Link north of Northgate is an “Interurban”, with all the problems that led to their extinction, except for the Norristown High Speed Line, by the end of the 1950’s. Ditto Link south of Sea-Tac. The only line that is really NEEDED is Northgate to Redmond.

      1. “Link north of Northgate is an “Interurban”, with all the problems that led to their extinction”

         You mean private ownership? Politically capping fares at 5 cents? Turning toward cars and subsidizing them more than the Interurban?

      2. “The only line that is really NEEDED is Northgate to Redmond.”

         Link is *unnecessary* beyond Lynnwood, Redmond, and KDM, but it’s not a *bad* to have a full Spine. It will make some trips easier and more convenient, even if it’s unnecessary and the greater need for a city-scaled circulator in Seattle is being ignored.

      3. Of course it isn’t bad, Mike. Not at an abstract level. The Detroit People Move is not bad. Various poorly performing streetcars aren’t bad. But wasting money on transit that only benefit a handful of people and only saves those people a little bit of money is bad. It means we aren’t spending money on things that would do a lot more good.

         Consider the 19 to West Magnolia. It isn’t running right now. Prior to the pandemic, it only ran during peak. This means that riders to West Magnolia have to sit while their bus winds around on its way to downtown. Worse yet, the substitute bus (the 24) only runs every half hour. We know how to fix the problem. It is easy. Just have Metro run the 19 every six minutes, all day long. Would this be bad? No, of course not. It would be very nice people who live or visit there. Ridership would go up.

         But is it a good use of money? Of course not. It is absurd. There is no way that Metro would do something like that. There are way better ways to spend the money they have.

         Yet Sound Transit is doing something very similar, but much bigger. That is bad. Very, very bad. Because if you spend money on things that are a bad value, you end up not spending money on good things.

      4. Well, fares are being capped at $3, and five cents in 1920 is certainly more than $2 now, so not really that different. True, Link does not have the limited financial capacity that bedeviled the interurbans but yes, cars are still massively more subsidized overall that any form of transit.

         So, not as different as you seem to think.

      5. “fares are being capped at $3, and five cents in 1920 is certainly more than $2 now, so not really that different. ”

         We have a dedicated tax stream contributing to operations; the private streetcars didn’t.

      6. FWIW, the South Shore Line is an interurban still running. I’ve ridden it a few times, the rolling stock is ancient but it does the job well, particularly if trying to get into Chicago without a car.

   3. You keep saying distances like Lynnwood or Tacoma have a high incremental operational cost compared to terminating at Northgate or Federal Way but I don’t believe it. Link can’t use that much electricity, and one train replaces several buses, and every bus has a driver with salary and benefits.

      1. `@Mike

         Currently link had like 100 train cars for northgate to seatac. Once it reaches everett and tacoma sound transit needs almost 500 train cars.

         It’s not just the distance but also the relatively high frequency to a very far distance that’s a bit unusual. for example even in japan’s JR trains that travel as far as everett or tacoma it’s really just 10 minute frequency at peak and they’re have much denser neighborhoods.

         if sound transit really wants to build a ‘commuter/regional train’ system then it needs to learn how to use turnbacks and branching. It’s just blindly trying to run subway service but with a commuter train alignment.

      2. You keep saying distances like Lynnwood or Tacoma have a high incremental operational cost compared to terminating at Northgate or Federal Way but I don’t believe it. Link can’t use that much electricity, and one train replaces several buses, and every bus has a driver with salary and benefits.

         I think you are conflating two different things. I’m not talking about running buses instead of making extensions (not this time, anyway). I’m talking about running the trains less often, especially the parts away from the core. There would be no supplemental bus service. The trains just show up less often.

         Running a train is expensive (typically more expensive than running a bus). There is the cost of the driver, but also the wear and tear on the trains. The more trains you have in operation during the day, the more it costs to keep them in working order.

         This explains why ST doesn’t run trains every 7.5 minutes all-day long. We know they can do it (they run them that often during peak). We know it would lead to an increase in ridership (based on the science). We know it would make life better for existing riders. But they don’t, mainly because they are trying to save money.

         Fundamentally, ten minute midday service in Rainier Valley is not that different than twenty minute service from SeaTac to Federal Way, let alone Fife. The farther out you go, the less impact a frequency reduction has. Not only that, but a trip like SeaTac to the Tacoma Dome not only costs a lot*, but won’t get that many riders in the middle of the day (no matter how often you run the train). Crowding is not going to be an issue (far from it). So cutting down frequency on the far-flung extremities is a common way for agencies to reduce costs.

         *For perspective, the trip from SeaTac to the Tacoma Dome will take 35 minutes. The trip from Northgate to Mount Baker takes less time than that (and get a lot more riders).

      3. “I think you are conflating two different things. I’m not talking about running buses instead of making extensions (not this time, anyway). I’m talking about running the trains less often, especially the parts away from the core. There would be no supplemental bus service.”

         I’m talking about the buses that Link replaces. You need several buses for one train. Multiple bus routes have to go to different destinations to reach the travel time and station equivalent of one train line.

      4. “This explains why ST doesn’t run trains every 7.5 minutes all-day long.”

         We don’t know why ST isn’t running Link every 7.5 minutes or 6 minutes all day. It has never indicated it’s because of cost or that it can’t afford it. It hasn’t given any reason at all. From what it has said, it seems like it’s mainly that ST thinks ridership isn’t enough to “justify” it. That gets into thresholds again: what threshold is ST basing that on? How full do the trains have to be to justify more frequency? What is ST’s position on that? It hasn’t said a word about it; it just changes frequency occasionally when it feels like it or when overcrowding forces it.

         But there’s another factor too, not just full trains and overcrowding. It’s passenger convenience, and making Link feasible for more kinds of trips, and making it frequent enough that it convinces people at the margin to use it when they just need a little nudge either way. We don’t know ST’s position on that. But we know from actual operations that it doesn’t think this is a big enough factor to increase frequency now, or it would have done it. Or at least it would say that it wants to do it, and make a plan with milestones to implement it and to convince politicians/public to support it and help with it, and maybe convert some capital money to operations for it. That’s what an agency and politicians who really understand transit would do.

      5. We don’t know why ST isn’t running Link every 7.5 minutes all day.

         What else could it possibly be except money? Again, we know that trains run just fine every 7.5 minutes during peak. We know it is possible, and we know that is is better and we know that it costs more money. Obviously the problem is money.

         I’m talking about the buses that Link replaces. You need several buses for one train. Multiple bus routes have to go to different destinations to reach the travel time and station equivalent of one train line.

         No one is arguing that. What we are saying is that same train can run half as often (in various places) and still replace all the buses. Link runs every ten minutes to Lynnwood in the middle of the day. This replaced the following midday buses: the 512. That’s it. Just that one bus. Now imagine if the train turned back at Northgate in the middle of the day. It runs every twenty minutes north of Northgate. Do we need to resurrect the 512 to handle the load? Of course not. In terms of crowding it doesn’t matter.

         I’m not saying we should do that. But I am saying that sort of thing is quite common. The train replaces the buses (which weren’t that frequent) in some distant place. Initially they run the train relatively frequently (e. g. every ten minutes). But over time they run into money problems and they end up turning back the trains and running less often (e. g. every twenty minutes).

         I could easily imagine the following midday frequencies within our system and the elimination of express buses:

         CID to Northgate — Five minutes (as planned)
         Northgate to Ash Way — Ten minutes
         Ash Way to Everett — Twenty minutes
         CID to SeaTac — Ten minutes (as planned)
         SeaTac to Tacoma Dome — Twenty minutes
         CID to East Side — Ten minutes (as planned)
         Issaquah Link — Twenty minutes

         Again, this is quite normal. If this were to happen, transit experts in the rest of the country would yawn. Yet another agency that built a really long system with infrequent trains. What else is new.

      6. You need several buses for one train.

         Not if the train is nearly empty, which it will be south of Sea-Tac and north of Lynnwood.

         Maybe the train won’t be empty in 2070 — if folks are still around and technological — but it will be in 2039 and in 2049, and probably in 2059, too. Don’t build into the boondocks with a high capacity system until the boondocks start bringing a big game. It’s just that simple.

      7. “We don’t know why ST isn’t running Link every 7.5 minutes all day.”

         “What else could it possibly be except money?”

         I said several things, and you don’t know it’s money, you’re just assuming it.

      8. I said several things, and you don’t know it’s money, you’re just assuming it.

         Several things? You mean like they never thought of it? That is silly. Of course they have considered it.

         From what it has said, it seems like it’s mainly that ST thinks ridership isn’t enough to “justify” it.

         Yes, because it costs money. The word “justify” is just shorthand for “justify the cost”. If it was free they would do it. To be clear, there may be many reasons why they don’t do it. But I’m saying they all boil down to money. Whether it is the cost of drivers, maintaining the trains, maintaining the tracks — it all boils down to money.

   4. I don’t recall anyone predicting that Lynnwood Link would lead to more rides per vehicle service hour.

      But Lynwood’s opening has correlated with a steep increase in boardings at Westlake. SeaTac Airport Station. Capitol Hill, Beacon Hill, Mt Baker, and TIBS.

      Of course these apparent network effect improvements also correlate to the rolling out of flat fares.

      1. Good point about flat fares. This could explain the big increase in areas like TIBS. Capitol Hill could have been influenced by the bus restructure. Then there is the UW, which likely is a big reason ridership is up since August.

         But it could also be random fluctuation. For example TIBS is up, but Angle Lake is down. I understand why Northgate station would be down, but Roosevelt is down as well. Go figure.

      2. Link’s flat fare was an increase for riders traversing half of Seattle or less (Westlake-Rainier Beach, Northgate-Beacon Hill I think). Those were previously the same as Metro’s fare or less; now they’re 25 cents higher than Metro. That forced riders to consider quitting Link, so it would tend to reduce ridership.

         If Capitol Hill increased sharply in spite of that, that’s more likely to be the bus restructure or access to Lynnwood and Shoreline, or people from Lynnwood and Shoreline going to Capitol Hill. Capitol Hill is the gateway to First Hill from the north, so people going to medical jobs or clinics may have started using Link.

         SeaTac’s increase may be related to Lynnwood, plus the general increase in air travel this year. When I attended the early Lynnwood Link planning workshops, people from Lynnwood and Mountlake Terrace were very excited for a better way to get to the airport, and have been waiting all this time. So they may be enthusiastic adopters.

         Especially with the flat fare. Before it cost me $3.50 Westlake-SeaTac, so the fare from Lynnwood would have been $4.50 or so. But when Lynnwood opened and the flat fare was implemented at the same time, now it’s just $3 Lynnwood-SeaTac. That looks like a very reasonable deal.

5. What is a ” train wig wag headlight”?

   1. That’s an interesting question.

      It sounds like they’re talking about MARS headlights, which haven’t been available in the USA for decades.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Light

      Wig-wag usually means swinging crossing signals, which also haven’t been made for decades. Oregon DOT required everyone here to remove theirs as they consider it a non-compliant traffic control device, as it’s not in the standard handbook of traffic signals.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigwag_(railroad)#/media/File%3ARoundPrairieWigwag.jpg

      1. @Glenn in Portland,

         Ya, those old Mars lights were fun, but a maintenance headache. They went away decades ago. However, it seems like a fully electronic approximation of such a light should be doable without the maintenance issues.

         As far as real wig wags, I haven’t seen an operating one in forever, but I saw one 5 or so years ago in E WA. Couldn’t tell if it was operating or not though, and the line didn’t seem to be getting much service. But again, a modern electronic version should be doable.

         Wig wags have the advantage of being in the line of sight of someone traveling perpendicular to the rail line. No need to face the approaching train to see them.

         I don’t know if ST uses flashing ditch lights or not, but that is another layer of protection.

   2. It’s usually when the train headlights bounce back and forth from left to right. That attracts more visual attention compared to a constant headlight beam.

      It’s an idea that has long been used on emergency vehicles. It’s just that it’s the white headlights on trains as opposed to red, yellow or blue lights on other vehicles.

      Here’s a video of one for Minneapolis light rail:
      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AuYOBJlNfhc

      1. @Al S.,

         Those are flashing ditch lights, not a wigwag.

         The original purpose of ditch lights was to add something to the front of the train that would give a distance perspective for crossing traffic. At the time they were discovering that train headlights were so bright that crossing traffic was having a hard time determining the distance and speed of the approaching train. Accidents were occurring because crossing traffic was misjudging the situation and attempting to cross in front of the train.

         Ditch lights minimize this problem by putting 2 lights lower on the locomotive and to the side. The lower position keeps the lights visible even with the glare of the headlight, and the spread position sort of mimics the distance between headlights on a car, and gives an indication of speed. Both the distance between the ditch lights, and their height over the rail, is regulated for that reason.

         Wigwags are different. They were mounted on the crossing and not on the locomotive. And they were designed to simulate the hand signal a railroad signalman would give to a locomotive for “Stop”.

         The hand signal for stop in railroading is to swing a lantern in a low back and forth arc. By putting a light on a hanging/swinging arm the wigwag effectively reproduces a signalman’s hand signal for “Stop”.

         So they are different things serving different purposes. But both aimed at improving crossing safety.

      2. I get that the original idea of wig wag are hanging, swinging lights.

         The thing is though that AJ said “HEADlights” so I looked for headlights rather than just wig wag lights. And I found that Minneaopolis’ Metro calls them wig wag headlights.

         I didn’t misunderstand. I’m merely reporting how the term is being used in US light rail transit industry. If you have an issue with that, complain to Metro in Minneapolis.

      3. @Al S,

         That wording for alternating flashing lights is common British terminology. Not North American terminology

         I don’t know why anyone in the US would use such terminology, but maybe Minneapolis has a British supplier and is just unknowingly repeating British slang.

         Me? I’ll stick with standard North American terminology and call them flashing ditch lights.

      4. @Lazarus

         It’s what sound transit is officially calling them in the document…

      5. @WL,

         Sound Transit is just quoting Minn Metro, and the terminology is incorrect.

      6. @Lazarus

         Uhh well I guess you should email sound transit and get them to correct it as that’s the term they’re using in the documents. Aka:

         > Sound Transit, in partnership with SDOT, has completed work in the Rainier Valley Corridor, including pavement markings, LED signs, traffic signals, additional studies on treatments, and analysis of risks and costs. Sound Transit has many active studies, pilot projects, and projects underway in the Rainer Valley Corridor, including but not limited to an eye-tracking study/analysis, a signal reprioritization pilot, an audible warning modification pilot, paint to enhance trackway visibility pilot, a pilot for automated pedestrian gates at station locations, and light rail vehicle wig wag headlights, as well as traffic modeling.

         From the at grade crossing program.

      7. “Sound Transit is just quoting Minn Metro, and the terminology is incorrect.”

         If two American transit agencies use it in official documents, then it becomes American terminology. Maybe more agencies will adopt it later.

6. Thanks for the visual upgrade to the Blog, guys. Wesley, is this your doing? Whoever, THANK YOU! It looks clean and interesting, with more graphics and photos. Well done.

   1. Thanks all the authors for the high quality and number of articles the past few weeks. And we’ve got four future articles already in the publishing timer, 13 active article drafts since November 1, 9 staff authors, and 2 recent repeat contributors. That’s the most we’ve had since Ross and I took over editing in, 2021 was it?

7. Reading into the presentation material for the ST Express fare decrease, the ORCA Pod is expected to approve changing the Regional Day Pass to $6, covering the first $3 of fare. Look for both to roll out in March.

   Per usual, ST staff presents the costs of delaying the decision a month, namely, that the fare decrease could not happen until April.

   The only ORCA services that charge more will be Washington State Ferries (which only honor WSF-only passes), Kitsap cross-sound water taxis (which do. not honor the RDP), King County water taxis, Sounder, and the monorail.

   In particular, the monorail will go from fully-covered by the RDP to a $2 round trip upcharge. I predict monorail ridership will go down.

   1. How do you get a Regional Day Pass? Do Link TVMs have it? Can you get a physical card for it or put it on ORCA? Or is it only available through a phone app or online?

      It’s odd that the regional day pass is so little publicized that even transit fans don’t know how to get it, and can’t suggest it to visitors because they don’t know what to tell them.

      1. You can upload Regional Day Pass(es) to your ORCA card at TVM’s. But you can’t pay for them out of e-purse. I have not tried purchasing one over an app.

      2. How do you get one?`

      3. Are you saying you can get an all-agency day pass at a Link TVM if you don’t pay by e-purse, or or you have to get the day pass elsewhere first and then take it to a TVM to put it it on your ORCA.

      4. I’ve successfully purchased the day pass online for my ORCA card. It’s VASTLY better than it used to be. It used to be you’d have to wait a day or so for it to be available to drop onto the card. With the new ORCA system it now works almost instantly.

         You can’t pay for it out of the ePurse balance, but you can add it to your card just like adding ePurse or any other pass to the card.

         You can put the pass on the card using a TVM at a Link station, but I find that process more complicated now that it’s possible to do it on the web site and have near instant use of the pass go onto the card.

   2. Prediction: the $3 fares will all be raised to $4 sometime in 2026

      1. That would be unprecedented. The last several Metro fare increases have been 25 cents each. Link has never had a fare increase (its initial fare in 2009 was set with some breathing room), but it has now increased 25 cents from the perspective of typical Seattle riders, so we can call it within the tradition of 25 cent fare increases. (The rate change was more for some riders, and a decrease for others.) ST can’t just raise the fare to any level; beyond a ceiling it loses ridership and thus revenue. $4 seems above the ceiling even by 2026. Unless you think inflation will be high for the next two years, so that $4 is the new $3.

      2. Certainly fares will increase at some point.

         My concern is how does transit rectify equity issues about trip distance.

         Should transit fares be flat no matter the length or should fares reward people that live in denser areas and need less time on transit, creating more use and better productivity?

         I’ve even made the argument that a truly car-free lifestyle needs to reward short trips that go beyond just traveling to and from work.

8. The video has a bit more about fare targets than got into the article. Balducci asked staff member Ryan Fisher what Link’s fare target, fare recovery, and fare compliance are at. He didn’t have the target on hand but said he’d get it. He said farebox recovery is below target, and fare compliance (I assume that means non-evasion) is around 55% and has been steady the past few years, and they expect it to tick slightly up next year.

   Balducci said she asked that because she’d just gotten out of a King County budget meeting, and one of the topics had been Metro’s farebox recovery. It’s well below target and is not expected to increase anytime soon. She said she keept asking, “What are we going to do about this?”, and not getting an answer. She feels it’s urgent for Metro to have a plan to fill the gap. So far they haven’t figured one out.

   1. There’s more stuff about fares in general just in the other past meetings. Sound Transit has been talking about fare gates, fare capping, regional fare cappings, and increasing the fare in future years, etc…. Most of it is still in the preliminary discussion phase so I didn’t think many wanted to know about it yet until it’s closer to some implementation as it might be another year or two. I can write up a summary though if people are interested.

9. By 2026, it will be possible to ride Link from Federal Way to Downtown Redmond. That’s a travel time that will involve over 80 minutes just riding on a train. Adding wait times for two trains much of the day (up to 10 minutes per train) and another 5 to transfer Downtown will mean that a single 105 minute trip isn’t unreasonable.

   And this doesn’t even account for a wait to catch a connecting bus! One additional wait and ride can easily exceed two hours — and that’s a trip still contained within King County..

   Rather than have time limited fares, maybe we should be encouraging day passes by default. Single trip options should be available but perhaps discouraged with a slightly higher fare.

   One challenge becomes the design of an Orca E-Purse card. It always assumes single trips.

   The agencies using Orca should lobby to fix this system accounting. For example, the initial fare could be a $4 single ride but a second card tap within say 20 hours could trigger an automatic conversion to a daily $6 pass on the Orca card.

   1. Rather than have time limited fares, maybe we should be encouraging day passes by default.

      That would certainly make enforcement easier. It would be similar to some of the ferries which only charge passengers one direction (they assume you will ride back). I wonder if it would change much in terms of much money they raise. They would likely lose a little from people who take transit three times a day (and spread out enough that they get charged three times). But they would gain a little from people who take transit one direction but get a ride going the other way. Those people might be upset, but as long as they view it as a “round trip” it is quite understandable.

      1. Yes, not requiring riders to tap in & out will make enforcement easier, but then the transit agencies will lose a bunch of really powerful data about trip pairs. Instead, I would propose simply expanding the time window for one trip, perhaps to 3 hours.

         Automatically capping out at the day pass price is good policy either way.

      2. But do we actually use the data for trip pairs? I’ve never seen it (not for Link and not for Metro). You are right, it wouldn’t be that hard to assemble. A riders takes the train from Northgate. Later that day they take the train from the UW. We can assume that is the trip pair (Northgate to the UW). But I’ve never seen it.

         You are right, expanding the window to three hours would solve the problem. It would also be a bonus for those who take quick round trips (they would be free).

   2. It’s unclear whether people will tap to transfer. If they do, tapping at CID will be well within the 2-hour window. As for the transfer expiring before they get to Redmond, there was already a case like that. Somebody’s transfer expired while they were on Link and a fare inspector cited them. They complained in STB comments and made a formal complaint to Sound Transit. ST apologized and canceled the citation. It confirmed that you just have to tap to board within the 2-hour transfer window: it’s OK if it expires before you deboard.

      In most subways you don’t tap to transfer because you’re still within the fare-paid area, and it’s not your fault how the lines are arranged and which trips are one-seat and which are two-seat. The agency should incentivize transfers, not penalize them, otherwise ridership will suffer. So most likely you won’t tap, you’ll just transfer. ST hasn’t said one word either way.

10. Regarding “Renton Transit Center”

    For a while, I thought existing Renton TC will co-exist with expanded SRTC.

    Any idea what will happen to existing Renton TC? Will its site be redeveloped?

    1. The reason the transit center is moving is Renton wants to get the ton of through-running buses out of downtown Redmond to beautify the neighborhood. The Metro Connects 2050 network still has a half dozen routes calling at the old transit center, so I assume at least some of the bus bays and infrastructure will remain.

       https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/02/01/metro-connects-concepts/

       1. Do we have an article about Renton transit center moving? I couldn’t quite find a good/recent one about it. Or also what the bus routes will move to be like. Perhaps it’d be a good future article

       2. They can beautify the neighborhood without removing the Transit Center from downtown. It’s a very asinine and overly car centric decision from a city that would benefit from having a nice walkable downtown and good transit serving it.

       3. That explains why many routes were moved to South Renton, joined with other routes, or extended, but Metro Connect plan doesn’t seem to say what will happen to Route 160/I Line.

       4. @HZ and @Mike

          is there some official draft from KCM or sound transit how the bus routes will be restructured after the south renton transit center is built?

       5. is there some official draft from KCM or sound transit how the bus routes will be restructured after the south renton transit center is built?

          I’m pretty sure there isn’t. It would likely go through the same process that other restructures went through. Usually there is an initial outreach (phase 1) then a tentative proposal (phase 2) then another proposal based on feedback (phase 3). Here is an example: https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/programs-and-projects/lynnwood-link-connections.

          But it is also possible they make very minor changes. They could keep the same routes and schedules, but send the buses a few blocks this way or that.

       6. @Wesley Lin

          KCM and ST are now working on network restructure plans for Federal Way Link Extension. Based on this pace, soon they will start working on a similar but probably smaller-scale effort to prep for STRIDE opening if they haven’t started. Most STRIDE project information released so far spares details that how existing service will be replaced or revised. I believe that’s because they haven’t seriously looked into that. When they start working on the bus network restructure plan for STRIDE open year, I believe they will incorporate elements that address Renton TC relocation.

          I believe SRTC study was analyzed based on network assumption from Metro Connect and (maybe) some engineering judgment. Every time a project like SRTC study was kicked off and you asked transit partners for some future condition reference, they share those REMIX webpages.

11. Folks, please take what’s reported as “farebox recovery” with a grain of salt, for the numerator is the fares collected and does not include the high costs of obtaining those fares, some of which are: fare ambassadors, ticket vending machines (cost and maintenance), armored car companies (to collect cash), staff (to collect, separate tickets and junk from cash, and to tabulate revenues), highly-paid staff and managers (to regularly discuss fare policies with the other transit agencies, each protecting their own interests/turfs), analysts (of how much revenue is garnered and to the limited extent they can, where, which has been watered down by the higher-ups, who see that as unfavorable and reporting the sheer number of riders more impactful on the voting public), and more.

    1. The costs of fare collection are included in the operations and maintenance costs, aka the denominator of fare recovery.

    2. “highly-paid staff and managers (to regularly discuss fare policies with the other transit agencies, each protecting their own interests/turfs)”

       I doubt there are high-level managers and staff whose primary job is fare policy. So it’s part of some people’s jobs, not an entire department that talks fares all day.

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