ST Express fares will decrease from $3.25 to $3.00 on March 1st. This matches Link’s recent fare change and Metro’s upcoming increase, so all three all three will have the same fare.
Metro closed the bus stops at 12th & Jackson ($), citing safety concerns with the people hanging out at the intersection. (Seattle Times) This is a hub for routes 7, 9, 14, 36, 60 and 106, so you’ll have to find the next stop on the route.
The Tacoma Dome Link extension draft EIS is accepting through February 9th.
Making Link more reliable and replacing escalators and elevators in downtown tunnel stations. (Sound Transit)
Reenvisioning Pace, the bus agency for Chicago’s suburbs. (Human Transit) We recently featured two videos on the Chicago L.
Shoreline eliminates parking minimums, allows more density around transit stations than the state requires, and allows small storefronts on non-arterial streets. Bellingham eliminates parking minimums. Kirkland pursues more “10-minute cities”. (The Urbanist)
WSDOT gets a $50 million federal grant for Cascadia high-speed rail planning. (The Urbanist)
Video: When studies get in the way of building transit (RMTransit)
This is an open thread.
Your link on escalators is the same as the link on reliability.
Fixed, thanks.
The new bus turning loop at FWTC actually opens in March. Link LRV’s on the floating bridge in Q1 of 2025, and self powered testing in Q2
https://www.soundtransit.org/blog/platform/winter-update-link-projects-under-construction
Still no early word on the DRLE opening date. Speculation would be that they are delaying the opening to be closer to the March service change, but that would put it at 11 months since fit and function testing started last April.
Ya, ST has been busy, but 11 months is a long time. I wish they would just open when ready since the system really isn’t reliant on the bus service change. Let the buses catch up later.
Opening before the restructures worked fine for LLE. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work fine here too. Even if it is several months before. But maybe they are worried that people will clog the streets with mis-parked cars or something.
Why do you say opening the DRLE in March would be a delay? From a March 2024 ST Platform article on the Downtown Redmond extension … “About 85% complete overall, we’re happy to report this project is progressing on schedule for an opening next spring.” Spring 2025 starts in March, so I’m not seeing how the DRLE opening in March could be described as ST having delayed the opening.
@Sam,
ST started fit and function testing back in April. Normally that would last about 2 months, followed by approx 4 months of simulated service. That would put the start of revenue service at Nov/Dec of 2024, if ST stuck to a “normal” testing schedule.
It’s pretty clear St hasn’t stuck to the normal testing schedule with DRLE. Eleven months isn’t “normal”.
I can sort of understand ST slow walking DRLE. Clearly getting LLE open was a much higher priority (15k more riders in just the first month!), but waiting until March?
Na. LLE is open and in service. Let’s get DRLE open ASAP. There is no need to wait for the March service change.
@Sam,
One more thing. If ST intentionally delayed the start of simulated service until January, then we are sort of stuck with. March-ish opening date.
But ST could have gone into simulated service shortly after LLE opened. But…..
So we are probably stuck with something like March. Unfortunately.
ST has been saying it will open in the spring of 2025 for quite a long time, so when they do open it this spring, they’ll have opened it when they said they would. Opening this March isn’t a delay opening, it’s opening on schedule.
@Sam,
Eleven months of testing isn’t normal. Particularly for a project so small.
ST obviously planned to slow walk DRLE, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating.
That said,I did notice that ST was still doing a fair amount of training on LLE even well after it opened. So maybe they opened LLE a bit understaffed and had to spend the first couple of months getting up to full staffing levels.
But hey, 2025 should be a good year for Link and regional transit. RDLE and Full ELE should both open and completely revolutionize regional transit.
Can’t wait.
It’s interesting that the Platform piece says that, particularly since the last Agency Progress Report – Capital Programs (now a retired monthly report apparently) from June 2024 still listed the revenue service date as “Before Dec 31, 2024”.
@Tlsgwm,
Yep. That was the original “date” way back when. But at some point ST switched to “Spring 2025” and started the slow walk.
But it’s too late now. The good people of Downtown Redmond will have to wait another full year before they can take the train to see Kemper Freeman’s dancing mice and fake snow.
Oh well.
“But ST could have gone into simulated service shortly after LLE opened.” 100% false. Workers, with work trucks parked on the tracks, have consistently been working along much of the DRLE since the opening of LLE.
Btw, I don’t blame you for not knowing when they could have started simulated service, because you probably don’t get over to the eastside very often, but ST isn’t going to be running simulated service with workers still working on and next to the tracks.
@Sam,
Fit and function testing usually takes 2 months. If ST is still doing that testing after 6 months, it is precisely because they slow walked it. That is exactly the point.
And you often see MOW on the tracks during simulated service testing. Simulated service testing will uncover adjustments that need to be made. It’s a good thing.
Spring is April-June. So if they open it by June it will still be spring.
I don’t see any problem with starting an extension before a bus restructure. Nobody has lost anything: there’s just an additional service running in the background.
I don’t see the Downtown Redmond opening changing train or bus ridership much, or causing crowding or filling P&Rs. The 2 Line will still only go from downtown Redmond to downtown Bellevue, and that little tail to South Bellevue-in-the-blueberry-fields. The 545 and 550 will continue running as usual. Only a handful of potential riders both live at the very end in downtown Redmond AND are going to downtown Bellevue or the Spring District. Most of the potential riders live in between, and already have Redmond Tech and Overlake Village stations. If you start in the middle you don’t get that much out of the Link stub: you can still get there by bus in 10-20 minutes. Or they live in northern/eastern Redmond or Sammamish and drive to a P&R, in which case they can just switch which P&R they go to, or continue going to Redmond Tech if the new ones are full (which they won’t be).
The big change will come when cross-lake service starts. Then people will be more willing to go to a train to travel a longer distance; it will create more one-seat-ride pairs; it will run more frequently all day and evening; and it will be immune from I-90/520/I-5 congestion.
I looked through the ST “progress report” PR piece as well. (To me this is not a real progress report with accountability details.)
The status of the Mt Baker to ID progress gave me the most hope. It looks like ST could activate the tracks for use pretty soon. That may help maneuver more trains early.
It is silent about when trains can be operated out of service from the East OMF. I would think this date is important to them.
I suggested to Metro that the shelter at Broadway & Republican be removed, citing chronic soliciting. It isn’t as bad as 12th & Jackson but the shelter is overrun with non-transit users, forcing actual riders several feet down away from the stop or the next one. Surprisingly, I received a little thought-out response from Facilities. They kindly rejected my suggestion, citing potential complaints from ADA and older riders.
You don’t have to go several blocks away. You can stand right next to the shelter if you don’t need a bench.
I don’t like closing hub stops like 12th & Jackson. It’s like closing a transit center. The village is centered around those stops (that’s why the stops are there).
Metro is suggesting catching the bus at Yesler & Broadway! My partner works at 12th & Jackson and I worry about her safety, but she hasn’t been confronted with any threats or physical violence and seems fine with it right now.
Yesler is quieter than Jackson, but the tradeoff is one route every 30 minutes to two areas, vs seven routes every 3-5 minutes to several different areas depending on where you’re going.
@ Mike…To clarify, I suggested removing the shelter but keeping the stop open. There’s a bench (no shelter) at the next southbound stop and based on my observations, there’s hardly any illicit activity there. Which suggests that a shelter is an attracter of unwanted activity. I protects you from the elements and allows such activity to proceed. Unfortunately, bottom-line is the Republican shelter is used for chronic solicitation. It’s used for drug activity and homeless sheltering. I’d prefer no shelter and carrying an umbrella than waiting at a trashed and unwelcoming sheltered stop.
Transit agencies are not equipped to handle crime. However, it does affect the customer experience. If transit users are to have a safe and clean experience when riding the bus, Metro (and other agencies) must begin addressing illegal activity on their property.
Jordon, in Bellevue there was a route 249 bus stop shelter/benches/garbage can, that was there for years at around NE 30th and Bellevue Way in the southbound direction. A few years ago, a church across the street built some sort of low-income apts/homeless apts on their property. Then some time after that, Metro removed the bus shelter, benches and garbage can, and just left the route 249 bus stop pole. You can see the before and after on street view if anyone doesn’t believe me. I’m not saying Metro removed the shelter because of the homeless apts, only they did remove it. Fearing ADA and older rider complains didn’t stop Metro. They do remove, benches, shelter glass, and shelters when they want to.
” in Bellevue there was a route 249 bus stop shelter/benches/garbage can, that was there for years at around NE 30th and Bellevue Way in the southbound direction”
That was my stop. :) In the early 80s I lived with my dad in a 2-story garden apartment complex on the east side of Bellevue Way at 29th. I can’t quite identify the building in Google Street View, and the businesses and parks weren’t there, but it must be the one with “KittyKat Cat Care” now. The 235 went north to Kirkland and south to Bellevue TC and downtown Seattle. I had a bike so I rode it to my job at Wendy’s on 10th. (The 249 was elsewhere, on Bel-Red Road.)
I haven’t been up there for decades because the 249 is so infrequent and meandaring.
removing benches and shelters and closing stops is part a a race to the bottom. Transit and cities need one another. If societal problems are eating away at access, transit and cities suffer. When Transit finds that bad actors are using shelters too much they sometimes remove benches or walls or even the entire shelter. But the amenities are taken away from the little old lady with shopping bags all the time and not just when used by the encampments.
We hope the stop closures in Little Saigon are short term and temporary. They may need much more police presence more of the time. It may be a whack-a-mole situation; the bad actors may shift elsewhere. But transit riders need the transfer point. Seattle and Transit have spent more effort on 3rd Avenue at Pine and Pike streets. But they have abandoned the former Route 49 layover on Pike Street nearside 3rd Avenue to bad actors.
eddiew,
What difference does it make of Metro takes out a bench or shelter? I mean the druggie losers already took that away from us before Metro stepped in and said enough.
The bad actors do not always occupy the shelter all the time; when the amenity is removed, it is not available for the regular rider all the time.
“What difference does it make of Metro takes out a bench or shelter? I mean the druggie losers already took that away from us before Metro stepped in and said enough.”
So we should make the ride experience worse by that logic instead of making it better. I guess we shouldn’t improve and make the ride worse because a homeless sat in the bus shelter instead of address the homeless problem.
The solution to loiters at bus stops should not be to close the stop. Many loiters are not waiting to get on a bus.
The better solution is to make it a focused spot for monitoring with video cams, bright lighting and law enforcement visits. If possible, the waiting area can be further helped by becoming a paid fare area — enabling fines for those loitering rather than waiting. And law enforcement would ideally hone in on the best times and methods to make each stop safe.
“The better solution is to make it a focused spot for monitoring with video cams, bright lighting and law enforcement visits.”
Pretty much, like you don’t need to throw the baby out with the bathwater on removing the shelter. KCM bus shelters would benefit from a massive design overhaul as many of them are old and outdated to modern needs
Does Seattle have a large number of officers doing foot patrols? In dense neighborhoods within other cities, foot patrols seem to be more common. I rarely see law enforcement walking down the street in Seattle — even in areas where there are clearly street crimes often going on.
Shelters and stops are part of the pedestrian streetscapes or the sidewalk environment. They are like 3 minute loading zones built for bus service with a shelter being a de facto canopy. It shouldn’t be up to Metro to create and lead sidewalk safety. It should be the City doing it.
Metro should only have to police what’s going on inside vehicles instead.
My solution of shelter removal is short-term. Yes, it takes away amenities for regular riders. And yes, I absolutely agree with all of you the “root” cause must be addressed rather than throwing out the baby with the bath water and affecting regular riders.
However, most of you are not realizing the genuine problem of police shortages this city has and the extreme policy shift away from policing public disorder. Bottom line: public drug use and disorder will not be addressed by the Seattle police department unless there is a political shift back towards (perhaps not all the way) pre-covid mentality. Post-covid, public disorder is rampant on transit, where facilities offer protective incubator for illicit activities.
Metro is not able to tackle crime. However, it can take short-time steps to mitigate it. Removing a shelter, short-term, might be the cheapest and quickest way to deter chronic disorder and restore some sense of quality in the customer experience.
Metro cannot do much more at a bus stop beyond reporting loitering to SPD. The sidewalk is public right of way even if there is a bus shelter. Plus at a bus stop street crime is often outside of a shelter anyway.
Rather than remove a shelter, I think an instant bus stop relocation (“emergency stop relocation”) for several days could be easier. Put police tape around the shelter and put in temporary moved bus stop signs instructing riders to wait 100-200 feet away instead . That is cheaper, easier and quicker to do as well as instantly moves waiting riders away from the “problem”..
To that end, I don’t know how much driver training includes notifying other agencies about problems. Do drivers report signals that are broken so that they wait at red lights when no one is there? Do they get trained on reporting dirty shelters or loiters staying in shelters for hours? Do they get trained on opening doors elsewhere if the front door spot is where suspicious activity is happening? Do they report when lighting is out next to a bus stop at night? I get how it’s “not their job” but these reporting these kinds of things — and other people taking action — can be beneficial in a myriad of ways.
Idlers have been sitting in bus shelters for decades. The number has increased since 2020 but they were there before. It bothers me when a bus rider has to stand because non-rider(s) are occuping the bench. I’ve grown to watch whether they get on the bus when it comes or whether they just keep sitting.
Cascadia high speed rail would be really cool, but I think it is quite impractical. Although Portland, Seattle, Vancouver are an appropriate distance for high speed rail (HSR), the terrain is very challenging, necessitating a lot of tunneling and viaducts, as well as a whatever solution is used to cross the Columbia river. The current railroad right-of-way will not suffice because of tight corners and conflicts with current uses, necessitating a new right-of-way which will force the demolition of thousands of existing buildings. Furthermore, the political structure of the US will force many expensive and time-consuming stops at small towns along the way, which has been one of the greatest failures of California high speed rail.
Arguments have been made that this will be good for the environment by replacing car and plane trips, but the same forces of induced demand will also mean that those car trips will be replaced with other car trips, meanwhile plane trips between these cities is currently a small portion of existing air travel, meaning that replacing those trips is not hugely significant. On the other hand, the incredible amount of concrete needed to connect these cities will cause a huge amount of CO2 production, likely outweighing the benefits of transit mode replacement.
Unless we can truly learn and improve from California’s mistakes, this project will take 30+ years and cost $100 billion+. Alternatively, we could spend maybe 1/10 as much to get about half the benefit by just upgrading our current railway to be higher speed and fix its bottlenecks. Or just take that same money and spend it on local transit, which will garner far more riders per dollar spent.
The article references using the i5 ROW and that there has already been thought put into the making the interstate compatible with HSR, with the exception of the current Columbia crossing project.
Building a new rail alignment in the median of i5 would mean minimal requirements for new land acquisition and separating passenger rail from BNSF (The biggest factor holding it back currently) which seems like the obvious choice.
You can’t put HSR in most of I-5. The curves are waaaaayyyy too sharp for it.
The whole thing is silly, unless the southern part of the US becomes uninhabitable and people rush back north. Higher Speed Rail — e.g. 110 to 125 — is sufficient. It would take a bit more than half as long as driving, without the stress of the congestion north of Olympia and through North Portland. The obvious drawbacks are “You don’t have a car when you get there!”
For a non-trivial number of trips, that won’t matter; they’re going to a destination along MAX. For that reason, the Higher Speed plan adopted a decade ago is a great idea. But most people do want cars available to them at the destination so it won’t be crowded like the Shinkansen are.
FYI one can probably do a combination. Most likely use i5 for the final approach into Seattle as it’s be too expensive otherwise.
And then farther out could build it as a straight line
Alon had a pretty good article about it a couple years ago https://seattletransitblog.com/2017/08/09/seattle-vancouver-high-speed-rail-part-4-terminals/
“ Arguments have been made that this will be good for the environment by replacing car and plane trips, but the same forces of induced demand will also mean that those car trips will be replaced with other car trips, meanwhile plane trips between these cities is currently a small portion of existing air travel, meaning that replacing those trips is not hugely significant.”
This is true about air travel. The sweet spot for actual high speed rail compared to flying appears to be 200-600 miles. The only major city pair that far within this Cascadia corridor is Portland and Vancouver. I’m thinking more frequent trains and Brightline Florida speeds that are 110 mph may be fine. The question becomes if a slight speed upgrade is much cheaper than an ambitious one.
I’ll also say that this is why Californians supported high speed rail. A huge part of both California plane trips are between SoCal and NorCal. Delays are common. So the alternative there if not high speed rail is adding two new airports with transport systems to reach them..
30-minute service to Portland is only necessary if it’s part of a longer trip. We don’t need to support 5-day-a-week commutes from Portland. WSDOT’s incremental plan to increase Cascades’ speed to 90-125 mph is enough. That would bring Seattle-Portland down to 1.5-2.5 hours (currently 3.5), and similar to Vancouver (plus BC not upgrading its side of the border). That’s enough for regional trips. It would be much less expensive, finished much sooner, and more certain.
+1 for Mike
I’d much rather see that $50mil for additional trains on current service. Even if it’ll only last a couple years. Or add service wen it’s needed most, like during the summer, Christmas and spring break.
What is it about the political structure, specifically, of the US that would force HSR on the West Coast to stop at lots of small towns? Normally I’d think you were referring to the federal system, but even the most minimal Cascadia HSR would link all three states/provinces in the PNW, and California HSR is obviously all in one state.
Morgan Wick,
You think tax payers in any little town is going to pay taxes for a high speed train that blows by their town without stopping? The biggest mistake big Blue cities make in America is the idea that the rest of the Country needs to pay for their transit (or housing affordability ) . If San Francisco and L.A. want a high speed train between them with zero stops… all San Francisco and L.A. can pay for 100% of the costs.
In Europe there’s ICE express trains, but also local trains that make a whole lot of stops.
Cascadia doesn’t need high speed rail at all… it does need much, much more rail, both for moving people and freight, with major upgrades to the tracks at many places.
Rural roads are built with tax dollars collected from big cities.
asdf2
Wrong answer. Without a robust road network surrounding Seattle, the City doesn’t have the resources to thrive. You can’t live car free and keep ordering shit from Amazon to be delivered. Seattle is not some self sustaining island.
“If San Francisco and L.A. want a high speed train between them with zero stops”
It’s not zero stops: it stops every 50 miles or so. There are cities of 300,000-400,000 people in between, like Bakersfield and Fresno.
The issue is very small cities like Kelso or Stanwood. Should HSR stop there? Maybe not. On the other hand, HSR could replace Cascades, but then it would have to make the Cascades stops.
This is why Shinkansen has both local high speed and express high speed trains on the same lines…
Where trains stop is certainly a tricky political choice anywhere in the world. The US west tends to have large areas with few people living in them compared to the East coast. So where the trains stop is less debatable but can still be an issue.
Building a train line for high speeds is expensive. That’s because the geometry must be designed more broadly. A curve for a 200 mph train has to be much gentler than for a 100 mph train. So a combination of regional and express trains is a good value to get more trains on a single expensive track. Of course, high speed express trains would need a “bypass” to allow them to speed around a local stop like adding a third track or with a local stop being served on a track that’s a siding track.
Because many non-downtown high speed rail stops would include lots of parking for overnight trip-making, smaller cities may not want an express train stop.
So the theoretically optimum strategy for a virgin track corridor is to be wide enough for at least three tracks with curves and grades for a maximum speed train. The challenge becomes what to do when the land is valuable and people live nearby.
A theoretical Seattle-Portland trick would have two service types on virgin new tracks. An express service between Seattle Downtown and Portland may only stop at Tacoma, Olympia and Vancouver (WA) while a regional one may additionally stop in South King, JBLM, Centralia and Kelso. A train operation analysis would be needed to figure out where bypass tracks would be needed. So if a base regional service is hourly, the periodic express train would leave first 15 minutes before a regional one. I doubt that that the express train would catch up to the regional train that left 45 minutes earlier — but it’s a function of track speeds and number of additional stops. A pro operations specialist would analyze these things and devise schedules and train signal and track block operations.
That sounds like a fun job for a rail geek who loves math!
“The biggest mistake big Blue cities make in America is the idea that the rest of the Country needs to pay for their transit (or housing affordability ) ”
Big cities subsidize the rural areas and poorer areas with having the abundant tax base and economic drivers of big cities. So no, that is pretty wrong.
@Zach I’m not too sure about that. The rural communities keep the
lights on so that Boeing factories and Microsoft data centers can stay in business, and so that food is kept on Puget Sound tables. And the small communities contribute substantially to tax revenue for these and other industries.
If any area is a tax drain it would be the islands. It’s insane
how much the state subsidizes the ferry system.
“The biggest mistake big Blue cities make in America is the idea that the rest of the Country needs to pay for their transit (or housing affordability )”
It’s not specific to blue cities. Everybody should have access to transit and housing they can afford. The idea that we should leave people sleeping on sidewalks because housing prices have gotten out of control is ridiculous. Or that people should be stuck in their houses or forced to drive or have to make 2-hour trips that others can drive in 30 minutes for necessities or the regular things in modern society. The difference is that blue cities/states try to do something about it and red cities/states don’t. Except when blue cities don’t (California housing) and red cities do (Utah housing).
This is where walkability comes in. If you build neighborhoods walkable, people can use the mobility mechanism built into humans, and they can meet their needs without subsidy and simultaneously maintain their health.If you don’t, you’re arbitrarily forcing everyone to use vehicles unnecessarily. Likewise, if you have comprehensive transit, everybody benefits because everybody else is working and shopping and not wasting time in congestion or too-long bus waits or having to put $1000 a month into a car. And you’re not spending gobs of money on six-lane highways and arterials so that some people can get around in cars while others are stuck.
“I’m not too sure about that. The rural communities keep the
lights on so that Boeing factories and Microsoft data centers can stay in business, and so that food is kept on Puget Sound tables. And the small communities contribute substantially to tax revenue for these and other industries.”
Research has been done as to where tax dollars flow, and more often than not more tax dollars are used in rural areas compared to urban areas for a variety of reasons. It’s why the economy exists in a symbols towards rural and urban. At the same time, it’s still important that people remember that urban areas are what keep the economy flowing and makes it as diverse as it is. Cities are the centers of commerce and trade. The Ports of Tacoma and Seattle, are some of the most important trading ports on the West Coast next to the Ports of LA and Long Beach.
We can say “But the rural areas provide the food and energy” and it’s like “yeah, but where did that need come from in the first place, cities”. It’s why I don’t care for the anti Seattle sentiment the rest of the state has to be frank. To me, you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Which in this case is Seattle. If you don’t take care of Seattle’s needs equally to needs of the rural areas then you’re shooting yourself in the foot as a state.
“ If San Francisco and L.A. want a high speed train between them with zero stops… all San Francisco and L.A. can pay for 100% of the costs.”
You do realize that no one is advocating for or designing for an exclusively non-stop track operation between San Francisco and Los Angeles? They never have!
@Zach But even if the majority of flow of tax dollars is from west to east it is
in Puget Sounds best interest to do so. Those dam turbines, wheat farmer roads, grain storage towers, rail lines, transmission lines, wind turbines and etc are used to move items to the west and they don’t come cheap. If the west side wants these benefits they should be paying for them otherwise
they won’t get them.
If you draw a line down the center of the US, 80% of Americans live east of the line, and only 20% live west of the line. We are the eastern Washington of the US.
“But even if the majority of flow of tax dollars is from west to east it is
in Puget Sounds best interest to do so.”
“If the west side wants these benefits they should be paying for them otherwise they won’t get them.”
Again, till the Eastside of the state has their own massive metro of 4 million, they honestly shouldn’t be complaining about Seattle spending too much money on necessary infrastructure. Like, I’m sorry if that’s harsh, but at some point people in Eastern Washington need to understand that Seattle and Vancouver/Portland are the primary reason their own region isn’t in truly economically dire straits as well.. And this is why I honestly loathe and truly detest the anti Seattle sentiment. It’s genuinely very childish behavior from people who should know better about how economics works. They shouldn’t blame Seattle for their own economic hardship, that’s the problem of local leaders not diversifying their economy enough like Seattle metro has done. Seattle primarily was a fishing and trading port, but grew beyond that with time.
This is why I honestly don’t care for the complaining about the HSR project in terms of cost to taxpayers, everyone benefits from said project both directly and indirectly. It’s not an either or situation where one benefits more than the other. It is a project that benefits people from all over the state. And the fact that we’re so deeply concerned about “but what the rural areas” speaks to our own indecisiveness to actually building projects that any other place would do in a heartbeat.
Both cities and rural areas are needed and can’t exist without each other. Food and farm equipment don’t travel on high-speed rail, so they’re irrelevant to the issue of whether there should be high-speed rail and what the threshold should be for stations. Innovations generally start in cities, because cities are where strangers are most likely to unintentionally encounter each other and exchange ideas. Jane Jacobs argues that agriculture started in cities, and then expanded to the rural land around them.
@Zach
Actually, the eastsiders I know love things like Link when they come visit. I don’t know of any that would feel strongly against a HSR line. I think the heart of their resentment is things like C&T and all that is associated with it. An eastsiders average road trip distance is much longer than your typical urban drivers and hence gas cost, which the westside politicians have a big influence on setting through taxes, can be brutal. Your typical Walmart can be 100 miles rt for many, and when you require bulk, you need a large vehicle. Gas cost can make or break many of these families. And forget about public transportation options for even close trips, it just doesn’t exist. Throw in things like the views wind turbines ruin so that west siders can have electrical power and this only creates more resentment. And I can think of many other issues caused through westside political clout that cause resentments. So if you pile enough issues on, the resentments soon get directed toward anything the westside does that appears
exorbitant. They feel little control because of westside politicians and I can’t say I blame them.
Dense, rural roadways are about 80% subsidized by commuting drivers in the cities and intercity drivers on the freeways. To some degree they do receive support from property taxes from the surrounding farms and cabins.
There are just not enough fuel taxes raised in thinly populated areas to maintain the existing roads, much less build new ones. This has always been true of the Federal Highway Tax. Urban drivers spend much of their driving time on city streets, which receive almost no support from the fuel tax.
Sure, when they leave the city they drive on fuel-tax supported roads. Ones they (largely) paid for while knocking around on municipal streets.
My opinion is that HSR should be viewed primarily as an economic development project. By making it easier for people to travel between cities, people will do so more often, in ways that are beneficial to both city’s economy. For example, more travel means more people patronizing hotels, restaurants, Powell’s Books, etc. But, it also makes it easier for people to find employment, as sometimes the job in the other city is a better fit or offers better pay, but is too much hassle under the current transportation system – even if you have a car to drive yourself, even if you’re able to work semi-remotely and only make the trip once or twice per week. One can debate whether the economic development value is sufficient to justify the speed HSR price tag, but it is pretty clear that, whatever the economic value of improved travel between Seattle and Portland is, it’s something greater than zero.
However, all too often, I see the promoters of HSR ignoring the economic development altogether and pitching the job as a climate project, to reduce carbon emissions by getting people to take trains instead of cars. While, yes, it is true that a train is more energy efficient than the fleet of cars needed to carry the same passengers, the difference gets a lot less once the cars get electrified (which looks likely to happen in less time than the many decades it would take to get an new HSR line planned and constructed), and must be offset by the huge up-front carbon emissions needed to construct the line. Furthermore, not every rider on the train is even a car/plane trip avoided in the first place. Many riders will be “induced demand” riders that would not be taking the trip at all if HSR were not available. Many riders will be people that would have taken today’s Amtrak, without the HSR upgrades, or even a bus. And, of course, many riders will be families traveling together that would be carpooling under the “car” option.
Overall, the way I see it, if the goal is to spend move to improve the economy, then HSR *might* (or might not) make sense, depending on how the costs and benefits pencil out. But, if the goal is to spend money to reduce carbon emissions, the state is probably going to get more carbon bang for the buck simply spending the money on solar panels and heat pumps, instead.
“Wrong answer. Without a robust road network surrounding Seattle, the City doesn’t have the resources to thrive. You can’t live car free and keep ordering shit from Amazon to be delivered. Seattle is not some self sustaining island.”
Great point, but more importantly urban life depends on daily deliveries of food grown in rural areas. As well as water and power (although those don’t usually arrive by road/rail) from rural areas. We also depend on daily removal of waste and disposal of it in rural areas. What does Seattle produce anymore? I would argue that with the movement of manufacturing to Asia, Seattle produces very little if any of what humans need to survive, and in the future when food, water, or power run short (and eventually one or all of them WILL run short) the urban/rural accounting spreadsheet will look quite different.
I found this Wikipedia entry on fuel efficiency of aircraft by seat.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft
The data show fuel efficiency by seat. It’s generally 70-100 mpg. I was surprised that it was that high!
I would note that many times planes don’t fully fill up with people although many do. And it doesn’t show the full trip fuel use because flyers have to get to and from airports.
But clearly it’s better than even a hybrid car that runs in the 50-60 mpg range.
So while high speed rail is great for trips over 300 miles (or airplane trips), getting people on a train rather than driving between Metro areas closer together (under 300 miles) is going to achieve better GHG reduction until cars are all-electric.
I don’t think it’s healthy to get into the weeds of city versus rural. It’s a systemic relationship like the human body. The benefits and costs are multi-dimensional.
The long history of human settlement has been that people are drawn to form larger and larger cities as work becomes more and more removed from self- sufficiency (hunting, gathering, farming). And mechanization reduces the staff sizes needed in farming. And specialization results in needing to journey further.
So rather than separate the world in them as “bad guys” and us as “good guys”, we need to think instead about how we can reduce our personal carbon footprint in our uniquely specialized lifestyles.
And ordering online for everything isn’t addressing this at all. It’s probably making things worse as a one box of 500 tees going to a mall store is systemically more efficient than 250 boxes of tees (2 per box) going to 250 different locations. Truck traffic on our cross county interstates is growing significantly on top of the increase in delivery vehicles operating on local streets.
And paying for a paper sack at the store is illogical when we don’t pay for a cardboard box carrying our delivered online item.
I was kind of excited Wednesday to see the link real time arrival signs working again, at least at Westlake and Stadium. If they can keep rhem running it’s a big win versus waiting into 2025 for them to function again.
I was going to say, I saw them working on Tuesday, and they were accurate. Somebody said the Link next-arrival displays were off until sometime next year, but that’s not true.
Any one know why there were off-line? Speaking of real-time, i’ve been having issues with OBA. So I switched to Google. Any experiencing the same?
Were they offline? Somebody said they were, but they were working when I used it that time and the time before. That’s for the station displays; I don’t use apps for Link so I don’t know if they were interrupted.
They were offline starting around the first week of December and lasted a couple weeks.
Another day, another stabbing. This time at a Metro bus stop in Federal way. This is getting tiring.
https://www.king5.com/article/news/crime/stabbing-federal-way-bus-stop/281-fc4a7d96-632b-4612-8973-58295b431283
It should be noted that closing bus stops is not the answer. Nor does armoring the operators seat do anything to protect the passengers.
I am relieved the suspect in the operator’s murder is now in custody.
If the guy who gave a significant head wound to a random 1 Line passenger was ever caught, I saw no reporting on it.
I saw the video of the hour-plus presser by ATU and electeds from Thursday. It was the president of ATU 587 who requested the closure of the bus stop at 12th & Jackson. He hopes it only has to be temporary. I’ve used that stop many times. It was clear large crowds were hanging out there, for purposes other than riding a bus.
When the southbound stop on 12th north of Main was closed, the crowd disappeared. Then an even larger crowd emerged at the eastbound stop on Jackson east of 12th. The stop closures seem like an exercise in pushing on a balloon.
That said, closing an even more major stop on 3rd Ave between Pike & Pine does not seem to have dissipated the crowd of hangers-out.
“closing an even more major stop on 3rd Ave between Pike & Pine does not seem to have dissipated the crowd of hangers-out.”
They’re not there because of the bus stop. They’re there because the customers are there. It’s the crossroads of downtown where a lot of people pass to go to the retail shops, have a bite at McDonald’s, transfer buses, go to an office, or go to Pike Place Market.
12th & Jackson is a neighborhood center location, as is 43rd-47th & University Way. That’s why they hang out there, not because there are buses or bus stops there. There are bus stops a couple blocks away at 41st-42nd and on 15th, but they don’t hang out there.
It may be that closing one bus stop on 12th made them move, but there was a study saying that across cities, it’s McDonald’s that has the biggest correlation with sketchy loiterers. It cited a couple cases where the McDonald’s closed and the loiterers vanished. So about that McDonald’s at 3rd & Pine…. It would be nice if it closed and we could see if it makes a difference.
Maybe it would help to redraw the beat-precinct boundaries of the SPD near 12th and Jackson. The immediate vicinity is known as the border of two precincts and four beats.
https://www.seattle.gov/police/about-us/police-locations/precinct-locator
What would people think about a Cascadia HSR skipping King Street station to avoid tunnelling, connecting somewhere like South Bellevue station instead? I actually don’t think it’s substantially worse for Seattle residents (a little worse for south Seattle residents, much better for drivers in the area), the hardest hit people would probably be Seattle visitors who are forced to take Link downtown instead of just walking.
I’m not sure if getting to Bellevue is much easier. 405 has several miles of tightness.
Doing that would seem to require joint Link transfer stations in Snohomish and South King as well as in Bellevue.
HSR is the gadgetbahn solution in the PNW.
Delta’s reply: “Alternatively, we could spend maybe 1/10 as much to get about half the benefit by just upgrading our current railway to be higher speed and fix its bottlenecks.” concurs with a speech given by DJ Mitchell at an All Aboard Washington meeting years ago.
We should have been following that path a long time ago.
(DJ Mitchell is BNSF’s Passenger Rail liason)
Agreed. But first a little terminology. I’ll use the American terms (found here): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_the_United_States#Definitions_in_American_context. Based on that, we should focus our efforts on “Emerging High-Speed Rail”. This means “Top speeds of up to 90–110 mph (140–180 km/h) on primarily shared track (eventually using positive train control technology), with advanced grade crossing protection or separation.”
This would be appropriate for the geography. The cities aren’t that big, the physically geography is very challenging and the distances are relatively short. Trains that are faster than driving will attract plenty of drivers. This is by far the best bang for the buck.
Positive train control is already required most places carrying passengers. It’s absence, even though required for opening day operation, was why SoundTransit got into hot water with the FRA after the 2017 DuPont crash.
Cab signals used to be required above 79 mph, but with PTC now required I don’t know how that changes. I think they have a signal display as standard. They have a cab display of some sort, as I’ve seen photos of the one they put in their 2816 steam locomotive. I don’t know if anyone has ever tried to get the FRA to approve it as a true cab signal system though.
“hardest hit people would probably be Seattle visitors who are forced to take Link downtown instead of just walking”
The hardest hit is Seattle tourism if people don’t come or don’t come to Seattle because the HSR station is in Bellevue. People who like Bellevue’s high-end shopping and cleanliness and tech business meetings will just go there, while people who like Seattle’s history and urbanism may go to San Francisco instead.
Still, that’s not enough of a reason to definitively rule out an eastside alignment. But, logistically, if a new ROW follows 405, it would be easier to have a freeway lid station near NE 4th Street than to detour to South Bellevue station. That would require crossing the Mercer Slough wetlakd, which would invite lawsuits and may make it ineligible for federal grants. And then how would it get back to 405? Back up? Go through Surrey Downs?
There are several decent Bellevue Link connecting station options. It depends on whether the train routes will stub end at the station or run through the station — as well how long the trains are. Other HSR trains can be quite long.
Trains are not airplanes. To attract the most riders, there should be stations in both Seattle and Bellevue.
Please see Shinkansen service in Japan, where stations really aren’t that far apart. Some express trains only stop at a few, but there are also high speed regional trains that stop at more stations.
If you are going to put this type of money into infrastructure, it needs to be used more than every half hour. Having a mixture of local and through trains helps improve the ridership.
“We should have been following that path a long time ago.”
Yes, the problem is the sensible people are suggesting this, but the majority of lawmakers and tech execs aren’t. If they did, it would happen.
Skipping the premier city in the NW to detour to a glorified mall? I assume this suggestion is some sort of joke or troll.
It’s an attempt to get around a ten mile tunnel through North Seattle and Shoreline.
Understood.
But if I were sold on HSR (which I’m not) in the PNW, it not even serving by far, BY FAR. the most important metro area, means you have immediately failed. It should never even be pondered.
If we had a first-class subway, people would think nothing of taking Link from the South Bellevue HSR station to either downtown Seattle or downtown Bellevue. But when we have light rail pressed into a role as the primary metro, it looks like we’re not being serious about transit. “Just throw a streetcar at it, or add a few queue jumps; that will solve everything.”
An Eastside HSR alignment has some merit. It could go full-speed without disrupting so many dense neighborhoods and historic areas or requiring a miles-long (expensive) tunnel.
Similarly, there are suggestions to make 405 the primary freeway and downgrade I-5. Or that 405 should have been the only north-south freeway in the first place. Bellevue was still semi-rural when it was built, so it would be like the Vacouver/European freeways that go around cities or turn into a boulevard at the edge of cities.
The two biggest urban mistakes is (1) putting I-5 through downtown Seattle, and (2) allowing the Eastside to sprawl around 405 with big-box stores and strip malls and low-density neighborhoods.
where do the HSR dreamers think the right of way and funding will come from? Would we not be better off spending funds on speeding up the existing ROW? Is the California example inspiring?
There’s that dirty word again, BNSF. Do you think they’re gonna let Cascadia
take over their ROW? Amtrak and Sounder pretty much have passenger
rail maxed out on their lines.
https://solutionaryrail.substack.com/p/how-rail-can-reconnect-america?r=navx8&triedRedirect=true
Reclaiming rail for the public interest.
Trying to figure out what the current zoning limits mean for lots adjacent to frequent transit, but outside of regional and urban centers.
https://one-seattle-plan-zoning-implementation-seattlecitygis.hub.arcgis.com/pages/zoning-map
If it’s LR3, does that allow 5 story buildings, or merely six-plexes?
And what exactly is a “stacked flat?”
A “flat” is generically a common British term for an apartment.
https://www.essentialliving.co.uk/blogs-insights/the-difference-between-flat-and-apartment/
I usually think of it as having a larger housing unit all on one floor laid out like a 2 or 3 bedroom house, with a similar sized unit above and/ or below it — or “stacked” like pancakes. These are common in older cities.
Boston’s Dorchester is full of them, typically called “triples”. This one linked below sold in 2022. The pics at the end show the building exterior and floor plan. This street appears to be all triples.
https://www.redfin.com/MA/Dorchester/8-Hallam-St-02125/unit-1/home/12431964
It may be the holidays and/or the unfortunate death of the Metro driver but it seems that Metro has had more trips on many lines cancelled the last several days. and the cancellations have been throughout day and evening hours. The number of cancellations is higher than they have been over the recent times.
It is understandable if these cancellations are happening because drivers are afraid after what happened this week.
There have been a spate of cancellations on the 11, two days with over a half dozen trips canceled. But surrounding routes had only two trips canceled. I took it to mean they were one driver short on the 11.
Even today, Saturday there have been multiple cancellations on lines throughout the Metro system.
Right after I submitted this, another 8 trips on the 11 got cancelled, although they were restored at 4:30pm.
Seeing how one of the advantages of HSR over air travel is the ability to have a conveniently located station where the population is most dense, a station in Bellevue would not maximize ridership. I see that Washington’s first studies have Stadium and Tukwila listed as possible sites. Stadium would be a much better choice for ridership than moving it to the fringes.
I don’t really see how Stadium is any better than South Bellevue. From South Bellevue, visitors get to look at beautiful Lake Washington on Link to their hotel. From Stadium, they save maybe an extra 10 minutes at best, but see nothing but industrial land and freeway interchanges, and we still need to construct an extremely expensive tunnel through all of North Seattle and Shoreline.
I’ll also push back that HSR must locate stations at city centers. While preferred of course (holding everything else equal), there are successful systems to typically locate HSR stations farther out, like in China. It’s meant for occasional trips, not commuting, so it’s not disastrous to put the station a little farther away. The time savings comes from no airport security, and actually sane boarding/unboarding procedures.
@Sunny If they want to see Lake Washington they can easily take Link to see it. The typical passenger most likely will not be using HSR to see Lake Washington from Bellevue. The majority of King county lives closer to the Hill districts then Bellevue, and that being the case, will most likely be doing business or pleasure trips to Portland or Vancouver with return trip and vice-versa and thus wanting a closer station. Statistically speaking the closer the station is to the population’s density center the more likely a person will use the system. And China has much denser and larger cities then we have, they can afford to put them further from a city center.
If we want to maximize ridership and return on investment it’s wisest to
go where the density is.
My feeling is that if an HSR line were to serve Bellevue instead of Seattle, the only justification for doing that would have to be drastically reduced construction cost. But I think the construction cost would actually be cheaper if the train just ran to Seattle and served King St. Station. Going to Seattle, the track can be built alongside the existing Souder tracks and serve an existing train station. Going to Bellevue, you’d have to build and entirely new right-of-way, plus a whole new station.
(Of course, all this is approaching Seattle from the south; from the north, I think it’s cost-prohibitive now matter how you do it).
I’m not sure of the importance of serving Vancouver with faster trains under Seattle. Those 7-10 miles to get north of Seattle would be quite expensive and it could just run slower on existing tracks. I could instead see a two-mile deep bore tunnel from the Carkeek area to I-5 to get to I-5 where it could pop out and be an aerial track northward.
And going between Bellevue and Renton above I-5 is not a slam dunk. It’s hilly and curvy and the nearby wealthy residents may be quite influential. So it may have to be an even longer bored tunnel there than it would be under Seattle between Downtown and Northgate.
The idea of going to Bellevue may be awash in its capital cost savings.
There’s a vigil tonight for Shawn Yim, the bus driver who was stabbed. I don’t know when or where; Ross said the information is on the Transit Riders Union members wall but that’s behind a login wall.
It was at the location of the tragedy at 15th Ave NE and NE 41st.
Ok here me out is it possible to convert the huge parking garages that is at this point at nearly every single new station to apartments? I am no expert at building buildings but I feel like it shouldn’t be that hard. I would imagine the only hard part would be getting utilities connected up. Also knowing the city governments in the seattle area zoning would probably also be a pain. But think of the benefits, you already have a premade skeleton meaning that there is no need to displace people and they are all incredibility close to the station. I could see this being particular useful at South Bellevue Station and most of the S Line stations.
Many garages have sloping levels covering 1/3 to 1/2 of the floors. Plus many garages have too much mass to create windows for both living rooms and bathrooms without demolishing a light well in the middle and that may compromise the structural integrity of the building. Finally, the structure would need a major rethink to create plumbing and things like that.
It could be easier to just build around the building if possible.
The thing to do would be to retain the middle section of the building as parking for residents and have the outside edge be for conversion for some other use.
Hmm, if a P&R is partly converted to housing after 10-20 years, what would the amortized capital cost of the remaining parking spaces be? If it’s zero or half what a new space would be, that would allow the apartment to offer lower rents and parking fees than brand-new competitors.
Some new mixed-use buildings in Woodinville do this. The units wrap around the parking garages, so residents on upper floors can pull up right in front of their doors (a big help after grocery trips), with other spaces reserved for business clients and customers. Here’s a Google Maps view of a cluster of them; I used a small market/coffee house at the ground level of one building as a reference point. https://www.google.com/maps/@47.7516752,-122.1590811,224m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MTIxMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
I’ve heard the TIB P&R was designed to be convertible to housing if that was desired later, and maybe South Bellevue P&R and others. The lot at BelRed is explicitly designated as temporary until Spring District multistory growth reaches it. That growth has been faster than expected but the area still has a lot of one-story buildings, so it may happen in a decade or two.
Google Streetview from Nov 2021 shows that law enforcement patrol transit stops around this intersections pretty hard with two police vehicle seen next bus stop. I guess KCM is trying to pressure SPD to do that again.. Hope it won’t take long for them to come to some agreement regarding what to do with these stops without at transit riders’ cost.
I liked the article about elevator and escalator repairs in The Platform. I believe they did a good job about being very specific about this ongoing problem. Many of the articles I read seem more like a self congratulating advertisement. This one was very detailed and answered a lot of my questions or concerns. I hope their future articles are more like this.