Vancouver SkyTrain extensions, at-grade high-capacity transit corridors, and a gondola. (StainerTheFirst) Vancouver has been good at including stub ends for future extensions, thus minimizing disruptions to existing service when/if the extension is built.
The London Overground, established in 2007, now has six lines, and more are proposed. (CityMoose)
This is an open thread.
Boring I know but here it is anyway.
https://youtu.be/QGZFBETuHqk
Right you are; it’s boring.
A tunnel for Tesla cars, with their tiny capacity and difgicult entry and exit for many people, is hardly “public transit”. It’s just more trolling from that warped anti-social monster from Apartheidland.
You didn’t watch all the way through did you? It’s not cars, it’s more like
self driving airport vans.
I just read in the New York Times yesterday, that apparently, controlling American politics isn’t enough for Elon. He wants to meddle in German politics too. He’s using his stature to campaign for the far-right afd party over there. This guy thinks he’s king of the world.
More like king of the universe.
https://youtu.be/3p0mpRsOpqI
That human round trip mission to Mars will beat Everett Link by 4 years.
More like Troll of the Universe. He’s an excellent manager of technologists, that’s for certain. But his “EQ” is negative, and he’s stepped into the realm of politics with a complete lack of empathy and understanding of anything except the anrogen-addled “Bro” culture.
SpeakingOfExpansion, thanks for the video. I like seeing things like this that get the imagination going, and wonder what it one day might evolve into.
The Tacoma Mall is getting 25% bigger! With no plans for better transit or pedestrian upgrades as far as I know. Which is really sad.
https://www.southsoundmag.com/style/tacoma-mall-new-dining-retail-addition/article_2ef3491e-dd04-5a5c-b7f1-c9bda67e8a6d.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawHdnHJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHdlXAT61x4p8F8YaVuWQvYKg27SYE8I8o9sGAu9PaVlxO5rK-lD6_Zgz4w_aem_7P8uvhxOnX0j7jmbj3weYQ
My guess the reason mass transit is never going to be all that important in Greater Seattle is because growth happens and transit tries to keep up. In places where transit works, grown happens along what transit has already built or better yet, where transit is planning on, or already, building.
As a long time follower of Tacoma City Council and City government, I’ve seen the new Simon project coming for about 10-12 years. There’s also plenty of more growth for housing planned in the area. Here’s the City plans if care to take a deep dive….
https://www.cityoftacoma.org/cms/one.aspx?pageId=67757
The problem has been transit advocates and Ms. Walker (our Tacoma ST board member) could never give up on the idea that spending billions on transit downtown or worst, Hilltop, would somehow make investors build there. Simon has no intention of helping out with Hilltop. Because of land costs, access and cheaper site preparations…. the Tacoma IS the place that’s going to see the most growth. I think the whole WFH movement pretty much took any momentum out of any Tacoma Downtown revival. Besides the area around UWT, the place is dead zone all the way to Stadium H.S.
Increasing the mid-day headway for the Tacoma Streetcar to 20 minutes was unfortunate.
If the high school kids had dreams of an every-10-minute streetcar to lunch options, that dream was immediately quashed.
But the peak headway is 12 minutes. Certainly, that could be done during the busiest lunch hours, if restaurants that survive on the lunch crowds from UW Tacoma and other downtown businesses ask for it loudly enough.
I’d agree. Transit isn’t useful if it doesn’t run enough. The T-Link cost a fortune to build and 20 minute trains just goes to show why building something different would have been a better choice. I’d guessing that 20 minutes might fall to 30 minutes during “non peak times” in the future?
The crazy thing about the Tacoma Mall expansion is the Simon Properties has a relationship with Sound Transit! It’s not a company that doesn’t work well with mass transit. It’s not like the City didn’t have huge plans to expand the Mall and add lots housing units to the area. So the question is, why didn’t the Mall expansion plans and Sound Transit plans mesh together into some sort of master plan?
I get sick and tired about reading about how great mass transit is in Vancouver BC without ever delving into the reasons why. Because Vancouver manages to coordinate transit and growth. What Tacoma (and Sound Transit) believed in was the “build it and they will come” myth linking transit to urban renewal. First they built the gawd awful Tacoma Station and failed to spark any real growth around that….. and then built light rail to Hilltop and that’s also failing to spark much growth.
Sound Transit, Downtown on the Go! (that’s the organization ST board member Walker takes her orders from) transit nerds and about half of our elected Tacoma City Council members…. there all just slow learners.
The problem is transit boosters also fancy themselves urban planners and tend to be pretty myopic about what sort of growth is suitable for their “walkable, transit rich” neighborhoods.
So suppose Link gets extended to Tacoma Mall. Just who, exactly is going to use it? People living in Federal Way? I don’t picture a particularly large number of the new residents taking Link to get to Tukwila International Boulevard.
The development patterns around Tacoma Mall dictate it be dominated by auto traffic, which is the very reason it will stay hostile to transit uses.
Happy Valley, Oregon has done a bunch of work to try to create something around Clackamas Town Center too. There’s multi-family housing, two hotels, the shopping center of course, multiple smaller retail areas, a huge hospital complex, and a megachurch all within 1/4 mile of the light rail station. However, the dominant land use is acres and acres of parking and a bunch of huge, busy intersectilns that are unsafe to cross on foot. This means nothing is actually that close to transit, except one dental office, a park and ride lot, and one hotel. Transit users go there because they are forced to during transfers, but actual transit use of the area is maybe a hundred or so per hour.
Lots of places in the USA cooperate on planning transit and development, as you claim Vancouver does. The difference is that in Vancouver they plan the development to allow easy use of transit. In the USA, the vast majority of the time, the planning for the automobile so dominates the equation that transit is unusable.
Sure, I suppose Tacoma Mall could wind up being different, but you yourself just pointed out how building transit to Tacoma Dome, where the vast majority of the land is parking, hasn’t really done much. If Tacoma Mall duplicates this, there’s no reason to expect transit use there to be different.
“The T-Link cost a fortune to build and 20 minute trains”
They run every 12 minutes Monday thru Saturday with 20 minute frequency for early morning, late at night, and Sundays.
Glenn from Portland,
As far a transit between Federal Way and Tacoma, I’d say express buses between Todd Beamer High school area and UWT. Todd Beamer has been the UWT’s biggest feeder high school some years.
Tacoma has its own Applebee’s. Why go to Federal Way? On transit? Now I’m not knocking Federal Way by any means, but in many ways Tacoma and Federal Way are the same town. There just isn’t a need for transit here.
How about local transit so the folks in Tacoma… can get around Tacoma? (and the same for Federal Way). Right now Tacoma is served by Express buses to the airport. Great idea! because people actually want to go to the airport. Light rail just costs a ton more money and the trip the airport will be slower. Nobody
Back to the expansion at the Tacoma Mall. That’s real. It’s happening because people want it. It’s public transit’s opportunity to serve. Or not. Back then the Tacoma Dome Station was built, there was all this talk about housing and retail blooming around it. That was all talk for the most part. Simon Properties actually builds retail and housing. They’re working with Sound Transit in other places… Why the City government, Sound Transit and Simon couldn’t get together before the T-Link disaster, I do not understand.
From the article link I posted above….
Its other Washington properties include Columbia Center in Kennewick, North Bend Premium Outlets in North Bend, Northgate Station in Seattle, and Seattle Premium Outlets in Tulalip. During Simon’s second-quarter earnings release earlier this month, the company said construction began last quarter on a new 234-unit luxury residential development at Northgate Station. The company noted in its 2023 annual report that it continues to add mixed-use components to its real estate with more than 750 hotel and residential units to open in 2024 and 2025 at high-quality centers around the country like Northgate Station.
“Tacoma has its own Applebee’s.” That’s one of the funniest comments I’ve read here in a while. Not sure if you meant it to be.
“Why go to Federal Way?”
Why go anywhere? People in a city of 223K and 98K find reasons to go to the other city, and it’s not for an Applebee’s that’s the same in both places. I go to Bellevue to visit relatives, the Festival d’Lights at the Bellevue Botanical Gardens, and to stores and events that aren’t available in Seattle; others go to Bellevue for work. People in Lynnwood go to Everett and Seattle for similar reasons.
The Pierce ST delegation in the 1990s asked for Link to Tacoma Dome station, presumably for the P&R. The T Line was supposed to address the last-mile need to downtown Tacoma. That may or may not be the best idea but it’s what Pierce officials insisted on. They never asked for and ST has never studied an extension to downtown Tacoma, but Troy Serad has and has written a proposal, which ST has never acknowledged as worth looking at. As for extending “heavy rail” (I assume that means Sounder) to downtown Tacoma, it’s the same issue. The T Line was supposed to address the last mile, so a Sounder extension wouldn’t be needed.
As to why not heavy rail instead of Link or alongside Link, ST rejected that in the 1990s. It said light rail was the best mode because it’s street-running compatible. (“Light rail can do all three: surface, elevated, underground.”) Again we can question that, because Link maxes out at 55 mph, while another light rail spec could get up to 65 and heavy rail like BART could get up to 85.
Later in 2014 in the run-up to ST3, the Pierce ST delegation asked or a long-term Link extension to Tacoma Mall, and said that would be the final end of the Spine. It chose Tacoma Mall instead of downtown Tacoma. Why? To support a growth center and redevelopment there like Northgate or Totem Lake, and supposedly it would reflect Tacoma’s majority travel patterns in the future I guess. That raises alarm bells because downtown Tacoma is where the pre-WWII walkable elegant environment is, and cities have a bad track record with replicating that in new growth (see: Totem Lake), and channeling people/businesses out of downtowns is a destructive 20th-century strategy we should get over. (The same applies to central Ballard vs 15th Ave NW, or Univeristy Way vs Roosevelt. The new development are grotesque (=large-scaled) unpleasant to walk around, even when they’re dense. Developers can build pedestrian-oriented and aesthetic building when they try, as in restorations like the Melrose Market, Pike Motorworks, or the 2000s development on Bellevue Main Street, etc, but 99% of the time they don’t.)
Tacoma says it wants the Tacoma Mall neighborhood to evolve into a real growth center, presumably with dense mixed-use buildings and local transit, but it hasn’t taken one step to do so, and the latest buildings sound like more of the one-story surface-parking chain-store crap it already has, which is what it should be moving away from. That’s Tacoma’s fault for not being more visionary and forward-planning, and encouraging Simon to densify like Northgate and U-Village are doing, and giving PT the resources to properly serve Tacoma Mall. It doesn’t have much to do with Sound Transit or ST3.
“Back to the expansion at the Tacoma Mall. That’s real. It’s happening because people want it. It’s public transit’s opportunity to serve.”
But that’s just it. The proposed Link line will connect Tacoma Mall to Tacoma Dome, Federal Way Transit Center, SeaTac Airport, and Tukwila International Blvd. Anything north of TIBS is going to be so much slower on Link over express buses I don’t see much demand. People will probably drive due to Link being a poor substitute for the buses.
I’m sure there will be some riders from Federal Way to Tacoma Mall, but enough to justify the ≈8,000 per hour all day capacity that will come with the proposed Link line? I just don’t see it. I just see another Clackamas Town Center which TriMet is currently serving with a single light rail car every 15 minutes, with capacity to spare.
If the goal was to serve actual Tacoma Mall users and area residents, I don’t think the first priority would be to build a light rail line where the next three stations aren’t much. Tacoma Dome? Are people living at Tacoma Mall going to go to Tacoma Dome on any sort of mass numbers to justify such transit capacity? Especially considering how difficult it’s going to be to get to and from this station on foot from a large area.
I get they wanted light rail to connect to the airport. Tacoma Mall station will probably be a significant drive and leave off type of place for the airport, but that could have been almost anywhere.
The most important piece of trying to get better transit service in Pierce County is more frequent and faster bus service that could feed a light rail line. It seems to me this is going to be exceptionally difficult to do with a Tacoma Mall centered line.
Many of the shopping center oriented developments you mention are suburban and reliant on driving and parking. Those go hand in hand. This location pretty much has to be oriented around driving to it. Trying to turn it into something that really fills the huge transit capacity delivered to it is going to be an uphill battle there.
“in many ways Tacoma and Federal Way are the same town”
Tacoma has a pre-WWII walkable downtown and architecture and former streetcar-suburb style neighborhoods around it. Does Federal Way have that anywhere?
The lack of Pierce Transit improvements to Tacoma Mall is not ST’s or Link’s fault. The politicians in Pierce County have neglected neighborhood-to-neighborhood connectivity for over a decade now, with no implementation plan or steps toward it. The PT service area contracted in the 2010s to exclude the majority-no-vote areas in the southeast, so that Tacoma and Lakewood could get the local-bus transit improvements they keep voting for. That was supposed to prepare the way for a levy that would pass, but then PT never offered such a levy, so it’s throwing the opportunity away. It’s their own residents who suffer for it, with practically unusable hourly bus service. And not getting close enough to Tacoma Mall according to tacomee.
“What Tacoma (and Sound Transit) believed in was the “build it and they will come” myth linking transit to urban renewal.”
What they’re missing is that people don’t just need access between downtown Tacoma, SeaTac airport, and downtown Seattle; and between downtown Tacoma and the Hilltop district; and from King County to Tacoma Mall. They also need access from all parts of Tacoma to Tacoma Mall, and between all the neighborhoods in Tacoma, Lakewood, Parkland, Puyallup, Fife, and the rest of it. They need 15-minute full-time service between all of those. If that’s too much to do in the near future, start with 30-minute service. The PT route network is generally pretty good in my opinion, and it has a lot of crosstown grid routes. It just needs to increase the frequency to make it usable.
Mike Orr,
I think you understand that 4 members of the ST are Pierce County elected officials. So yes, Sound Transit is partly at fault here. Kristina Walker is a nice lady, but maybe the worst elected official in Tacoma in 25 years? And she’s still stinking up the Sound Transit board. T-Link is her baby…. never mind it goes nowhere and is incompatible with every other train in State of Washington.
As far as King County and Seattle go. Dow is going to be the Big Man at Sound Transit soon enough. Because suckering Sound Transit into buying all those worn out County and City buildings downtown is job #1 now.
“And she’s still stinking up the Sound Transit board. T-Link is her baby…. never mind it goes nowhere and is incompatible with every other train in State of Washington”
You’re letting your own irrational hatred of Sound Transit and Tacoma/Pierce politics cloud your views here.
The T line is doing fine and has been growing ridership since the recent extension last year because it goes to places people want to go to (Freighthouse Square, Downtown, Stadium, Tacoma General/Mary Bridge, Hilltop, and St. Joseph). It’s ridership is currently comparable to the current Kansas City Streetcar, which is currently in the process of multiple extensions that will expand ridership in the coming years.
Complaining it isn’t compatible with other rail is honestly a red herring here and a bit of a strawman. It doesn’t matter that it won’t link up with link at all. What matters is that it actually is the only frequent and reliable service in Pierce at the moment, with 12 minute all day Monday to Saturday. The 1, 2, or 3 generally have 30 minute headway with a few 15 or 20 minute headway for like an hour or two in the morning and afternoon. So really, it just shows that the T is the only transit line in Pierce that is generally concerned with being good.
@Zach — I think you are missing the point. Any transit is likely to get riders. The question is whether it was worth the money. In the case of the Tacoma Streetcar it wasn’t. A bus — following the exact same route — would get just as many riders. This would have saved money.
But it is also quite likely that Tacoma would have been much better off putting the money into a combination of routes. The streetcar route is not a fundamentally strong route. To quote Jarrett Walker:
All other things being equal, long, straight routes perform better than short, squiggly and looping ones.
The route is short, squiggly and looping. It probably would not exist as a bus route — it doesn’t offer enough unique value. It overlaps too much in some areas and is too short. Tacoma would be better off improving the spine through downtown (and to the Tacoma Dome) or just improving frequency throughout the system. The same goes for capital improvements. Speeding up the buses in various places would be a much better value than the streetcar.
It is really kind of crazy that a city like Tacoma builds a streetcar. It makes sense for a city like New York or Vancouver. Vancouver has a bus that carries about 50,000 people a day — converting it to a streetcar is quite sensible. But the entire Pierce County system doesn’t carry that many riders (nor has it ever). There is simply not enough demand for transit to justify the extra expense and route inflexibility of a streetcar. They would be much better off improving the buses.
Of course Tacoma is not unique. This is one of those “Only in America” situations (and not in a good way). Only in America do we spend way too much money on vanity transit projects while ignoring the basics. Everyone else in the world would just run the buses more often. But not us.
Yeah, the T-Link is a terrible route.
I can get off the Link at Union Station, walk up the hill to 19th and MLK and beat the link. The train goes nowhere really. Tacoma has light rail that goes in “U” shape. No real transit expert would suggest that. Pierce County spent so much money on this turkey….. while bus service just tanked. There’s no defending this crap.
Most posters here don’t know Tacoma (honestly, why would they?) or don’t care all that much. But they should. The powers-that-be in Tacoma tried to use the Sound Transit money for an urban renewal project (Tacoma Dome Station to the Hilltop) and honestly it hasn’t had much impact. (UWT and the water front upgrades had much more).
Why should Seattle care about any of this? Because the same forces that messed up transit in Tacoma are lining up in downtown Seattle. The question Mayor Harrell is looking to answer is… “How can I make that second tunnel money ST has into an urban development slush fund?” Don’t say you were not warned.
“The route is short, squiggly and looping. It probably would not exist as a bus route — it doesn’t offer enough unique value.”
It makes a U shape because streetcars can’t go up the steep hill. Buses can and do: there are east-west bus routes on 11th and 19th between downtown and MLK and beyond.
So Tacoma chose the mode without looking at what would give maximum mobility, or whether a streetcar would improve mobility options any more than a bus would. Then it saddled the streetcar with mixed-traffic running, which prevented it from running faster than mixed-traffic buses. To reasons for a streetcar are you need high capacity, or it gives a shorter travel time than buses or cars (which leads to more ridership). The T Line is doing neither of those. (The same problem exists with the SLU, First Hill, and Portland streetcars.)
Another issue is the T Link is the only service going north-south on MLK. The bus routes go east-west across it. It looks like everything on MLK is within walking distance of an east-west bus stop, and MLK itself is only a mile long. So is a north-south route needed to get from somewhere on MLK to an east-west bus stop, or to get from one part of MLK to another (e.g., 19th Street to 6th Avenue). It looks like not.
But all of this is in the context of what many more people in that area and all of Tacoma need: frequent service on all the bus routes.
More of the Greyhound network is disintegrating…
Portland – Boise
https://newstalk870.am/greyhound-sheds-yet-another-major-bus-route-in-pnw/
In the PNW, they might only be I-5 corridor now with a couple buses to Spokane. They do run the state supported Dungeness line but it’s hard to call it theirs.
Greyhound contributed startup funding to the Dungeness Line and the other colorfully-named statewide lines, and it may also make an ongoing contribution.
Greyhound was bought by German Flixbus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qjnzm8izIHI and they keep looking for new opportunities such as taking skiers to The Summit. They also shut down lines if the demand isn’t there.
I ride Flixbus on a regular basis to Vancouver BC and Portland. My wife just took Flix to Spokane to visit a friend. Those routes are always full or very close to it. Flixbus is pretty strategic with their runs.
With all the land-based transit services, except the monorail, set to align their reduced fares at $1, effective March 1, and all the regular land-based fares, except the monorail and Sounder, set to align at $3 or less, also effective March 1, and the $6 Regional Day Pass (and $2 reduced fare day passes) promotion coming to an end, also on March 1, should the ORCA Pod move forward with making the $6 Regional Day Pass “permanent”?
Should the amount the day pass covers be reduced from $3.50 to $3?
Should the reduced fare day passes be “permanently” dropped to $2?
Should the fare covered by the reduced-fare day passes be dropped from $1.75 to $1?
The ORCA Pod is set to take up these questions after February. I don’t know if the pass prices go back up to $8 and $4 on March 1.
RMTransit released thoughts on Cascadia HSR today.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aRYEjl2Q2rM
In it, he suggests designing for rail at only 125 mph and a tunnel bored underneath Seattle for nonstop trains.
He rues that Canada doesn’t have enough. metro Vancouver Amtrak stations too.
Has he been reading the blog?
I understand and recall that the border to Vancouver portion is very slow like 1 hour to 1-1/2 hours. That needs to be fixed along with the border crossing. These alone would do a lot.
Also an earlier departure out of Seattle instead of 8:30 am
Al, I wondered why there would be “nonstop trains” running through Seattle, but when I watched the video it became clear that your were referring to “no stations in the tunnel”, not “no stations in Seattle”.
I think he’s a bit optimistic about room at King Street, but maybe a two-track lower level for the intercity trains could be dug. That would help get the new tunnel deep enough to under-run DSTT1 where it underruns the BNSF tunnel around Washington Street. That makes the station more expensive of course, but it might work.
How far north such a tunnel would surface is a big question that would take intensive research to optimize.
Thanks for clarifying Tom. RMTransit did say nowhere inside the tunnel rather than nowhere in Seattle and that’s what I meant to convey.
A few weeks ago, there was some discussion in the blog about moving freight trains to a new Downtown tunnel and drop new Downtown stations into the existing tunnel rather than bore DSTT2. Then Link could use the existing tunnel and drop stations in. It was a fanciful idea that has not been studied by ST as far as I can tell (since DSTT2 was not studied prior to ST3) so we don’t know whether or not it could be done. The STB discussion was for BNSF freight use but it could work for Amtrak Cascades (and even Sounder trains) too.
Yes, that would be nice if BNSF moved their tunnel entrance and then some west `20 yards and then Sound Tranist take over BNSF entrance and beyond. ST could electrify it for themselves and Cascades.
Also, I wonder what a 20 mile tunnel would cost. Maybe Cascades popup at
Woodinville and run along 9.
I kind of like the idea of using the old tunnel for Ballard Link but it would not serve SLU and Seattle Center. It may still require another line, maybe along Aurora or Dexter.
In retrospect it would have made more sense to build a new rail line along I-5 and run Link along Hwy99. If you build a new rail tunnel, you may want to avoid running the line along the coast as its currently often disrupted by landslides and I think it’s also prone to flooding in the future.
“A few weeks ago, there was some discussion in the blog about moving freight trains to a new Downtown tunnel and drop new Downtown stations into the existing tunnel rather than bore DSTT2.”
Yes, that’s similar to but not identical to Reece’s proposal. Reece discusses a new tunnel’s potential for passenger trains. But the concept here was to move freight trains to a new tunnel and reposition the existing BNSF tunnel for passenger trains and future HSR and an adjacent 4th Avenue Shallow Link station. I’m not sure if Link would also use the existing BNSF tunnel somehow.
In the future CAHSR is suppose to share Caltrains tracks. Caltrain currently runs less than 5 minutes apart. Link trains will run slower but it is a much shorter distance to share with Cascadia than Caltrains with CAHSR.
On 2nd thought Caltrains will probably offer some 3rd track passing options.
This is one of three RMTransit videos I’ve been waiting a few months for. The other two were published recently but I didn’t realize it until a couple weeks ago. They’ll be in a future Sunday Movie. Right now we have a backlog of videos I’m trying to get out to make room for more, and then sometimes a priority video comes out a few days before Sunday and bumps what was otherwise scheduled.
“ I kind of like the idea of using the old tunnel for Ballard Link but it would not serve SLU and Seattle Center. It may still require another line, maybe along Aurora or Dexter.
In retrospect it would have made more sense to build a new rail line along I-5 and run Link along Hwy99. If you build a new rail tunnel, you may want to avoid running the line along the coast as its currently often disrupted by landslides and I think it’s also prone to flooding in the future.”
What you describe here Martin is what happens when an agency skips decision steps. To be so expensive, DSTT2 should have been a targeted study on its own first. ST studied corridors to Ballard north of Westlake and West Seattle south of Stadium but those studies did not take a close look at the most expensive and challenging middle segment.
There are many systems concepts that could have been studied. For example, the tunnel could be used for two Eastside lines — with one branch going to Ballard and the other to SLU (setting the stage for a later extension as Metro 8, or a later extension up the Aurora corridor) and the other going to Redmond or Issaquah (rethinking the 4 Line). Or they could keep the service tied to SODO and split the line between West Seattle and SeaTac through devising new operating scenarios. Or they could have turned the track alignment to the east near Seattle Center and gone around the east side of Queen Anne and then serve Fremont before Ballard.
They could have looked to automated new lines.
They could have negotiated a track swap with the goal to have full control of Sounder tracks even with single track sections.
Of course, the legislature forced the vote to be in 2016 and ST did not want to introduce a new wrinkle in the planning. So ST proposed DSTT2 in ST3 without any advanced study nor community feedback.
Even after the ST3 vote, ST put all the energy into the system ends in Ballard and West Seattle. It’s like they want to study arms and legs on details but won’t assess how the central internal organs like the heart and liver and lungs function.
It’s a lot easier to deal with a serious arm or leg problem than a serious heart, liver or lung problem of course. A body can thrive if an arm or leg can’t be used to its full potential — but if a central organ doesn’t function well thriving or even surviving is much more problematic.
well said, Al!
It’s far easier to brag about the biggest light rail network in the U.S. and new stations and more miles of track than to figure out a great ridership experience such as great transfer experience and frequent service due to automation.
An automated metro in Seattle wouldn’t help people in Everett. That’s the political problem: it doesn’t address the regional transit need that Sound Transit exists to solve.
However, an automated metro could go to Everett. That would obviate the need for high-cost drivers, and eliminate the issue of a 2.25 hour Everett-Tacoma line being too long for drivers. But that would require ST to be forward-thinking. And it may have to be grade-separated in SODO and Rainier Valley. That’s just a small part of the total line.
“An automated metro in Seattle wouldn’t help people in Everett. That’s the political problem: it doesn’t address the regional transit need that Sound Transit exists to solve.”
This thinking is the very essence of the problem. Investing in transit is a smart thing to do for lots of reasons. One is cost effectiveness. Another is equity. And even alternatives to traffic in congested areas.
To be clear, Everett has gotten great ST Express service since Sound Transit began. To “earn an upgrade” to Link light rail, the investment should pencil out with some sort of performance measures. That’s the essence of how the competitive FTA New Starts program evolved and later got honed.
On a per capita basis at the end of ST3, Everett will have more track miles and almost the same number of stations as Seattle will (Seattle @755K/ 21 or about 36K per station versus 111K/ 3 or about 37K per station). And Seattle has been more aggressive densifying, has worse I-5 traffic and has been applying more aggressive parking pricing and parking maximum strategies to encourage transit use. Seattle deserves extra stations and track per capita.
Oops. Miscount on Seattle . It’s 27 stations. 755K/ 27 is about 28K per station. Still it’s not that much better than Everett is and Seattle is going to get more riders per station by far.
“To “earn an upgrade” to Link light rail, the investment should pencil out with some sort of performance measures.”
It doesn’t have to. It’s the largest city in Snohomish County. That’s its reason for getting Link. It doesn’t have to do anything else. The distance is fixed by Everett’s location, and the number of stations or density doesn’t matter. Density is based on cities’ policies; ST has no authority to tell cities what density to have; that’s up to the cities’ elected officials and state policies. Certain neighborhoods are PSRC regional growth centers in the counties’ plans, so that implies a minimum job density, and their status as regional centers is what makes them must-serve by Sound Transit. Downtown Everett is a regional urban center, Paine Field is a regional industrial center (the same designation as Redmond Tech and southern Ballard), and downtown Lynnwood is a regional urban center.
Expansion, yes, it will. Three four or five mile center track sections are planned, all south of the airport. You can check out https://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com for more detail.
“the legislature forced the vote to be in 2016”
Did it? The vote couldn’t happen until after the legislature authorized the tax authority, but I don’t know that the state constrained the vote from happening later. The 2016 date was motivated by two things:
– Liberals (leaning yes on transit) vote mainly just in presidential elections, while conservatives (leaning no on transit) vote in both presidential and non-presidential elections, and might would be enough to tip the balance on ST#. So 2016 would have the largest yes vote, and the next opportunity would be 2020.
– The cities wanted their Link extensions ASAP. They’d already waited thirty years, and it would take 15-20 more years before they’d open, so that’s already 45-50 years, and they didn’t want to wait 4 years beyond that. The cities needed to know whether/when they’d be getting Link so they could plan around the station areas, or make alternate plans if Link wasn’t coming. Cities wanted Link so it would attract companies and residents to locate in those cities and generate tax revenue for them.
“To “earn an upgrade” to Link light rail, the investment should pencil out with some sort of performance measures.”
It doesn’t have to. It’s the largest city in Snohomish County.
Sorry, but that is a ridiculous argument. Imagine they want to run a light rail line somewhere. Based on all the studies this seems like a very bad project. It just isn’t worth it. It adds very little and costs a lot.
But wait. The city just annexed its neighbor. Now it is the biggest city in the county. Well this changes everything! Now you definitely run light rail to the city. Spend whatever it takes to get there.
The distance is fixed by Everett’s location, and the number of stations or density doesn’t matter.
Yes, and the distance is a strong argument against running light rail there. It is too far away from Seattle and too small to justify rail by itself. Nor does the combination add up to enough potential ridership — or rider value — to justify the cost.
Density is based on cities’ policies
Of course. But mass transit should serve dense areas. If you are going to just ignore current density then you might as well run trains to Magnolia (it would be cheaper). But assume that you take that sort of approach and that the areas actually build around the transit. What about the areas with existing density? Why should the agency ignore an area with lots of ridership potential just so that an area might someday have enough density to get a few riders?
Getting back to Everett, the routing lacks density and proximity. It also lacks stations. Thus the ridership potential is poor. But what about added value? Maybe not that many people use it but those people would have a much better trip. In the case of at least one trip (Everett to Lynnwood/Seattle) it adds very little. The bus would be faster (especially if you aren’t starting out right next to the Everett Station). Some of the trips to Boeing are done with express buses now. Some of those riders would have to transfer thus negating any speed advantage with the train. Of course there would be other trips that would be made faster, but only a handful. There just aren’t that many stations.
Ultimately it is just a very weird thing to do. Consider the second video — the one about the London Overground. It is regional transit. It leverages old, existing railways. Very little of it was built recently. It extends out into the hinterlands of one of the largest cities on earth. Yet it still doesn’t go out that far! Here is a map of the London Overground: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Overground#/media/File:Overground_Route.svg. It is a nice map but it lacks a scale (what is it with map makers these days?). But it looks like Watford Junction is about as far away from Central London as you can get on The Overground. Here it is on a Google Maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/wzszP5GG9sTHcHZR8. It is only about 16 miles to Central London! Again, they leveraged existing railways to build that. We built ours from scratch! It is just unheard of in the rest of the world to build what we are building. Oh, and in the US we have the highest construction costs in the whole world.
So just to review here. It lacks density and proximity. There are very few stations. It adds very little value. It doesn’t work well for getting to Seattle. It doesn’t work that well for getting around to various places in Everett or the rest of Snohomish County. Yet it is fairly expensive. It is the type of thing that only the US builds and the US is dead last when it comes to transit (we tend to spend the most and get the least).
But it is probably a better value than some of the other ST3 projects. So there is that.
“ ST has no authority to tell cities what density to have; that’s up to the cities’ elected officials and state policies.”
While ST cannot overrule local development restrictions, ST can choose to change what was in a referendum based on cash shortfalls and bad cost estimates . ST has the ability to set up criteria about where to spend its money and not build the original project when criteria are not met.
So technically they have “authority” to choose where to spend precious capital and operating dollars. However, most of the Board gets that the referendum promised things and they interpret cancelling extension track or stations as wrong — even if the numbers prove it’s a wasteful project.
And the truly odd thing to me is how ST cannot simply choose cheaper technology to keep their referendum promises. They also can’t seem to design cross platform transfers easier which would make a technology change more palatable.
I’ve long felt that ST should do what FTA did decades ago and set some thresholds about ridership and station use before allocating Link funds for those things.
We’re preparing an article for Wednesday on the Cascades video and other Cascades content we’ve collected.
I don’t know how much Reece reads the blog but he’s aware of it. Partly because I tell him which draft videos I want to feature when they’re published. That’s on top of the videos I see on YouTube and then decide to include in the Sunday Movies.
Reece says Cascades should have preclearance, but it already has immigration preclearance southbound. Customs is handled by officers boarding the train southbound between the border and Bellingham. Northbound, all of it happens at Pacific Central Station in Vancouver terminus. So Cascades is already partly there.
To celebrate the 8th year channel anniversary, City Beautiful released a Seattle video today on the new Pike Place to Waterfront pedestrian bridge:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X6C2hSSUqhw
While he enthusiastically likes the project (and trashes the Hudson Yards climbing sculpture called the Vessel as a climb to nowhere), I’m not sure if he’s as specific as he could be.
One of the power of videos is how they can “show” good public spaces rather than just talk about them. While he does some wonderful camera shots here, it seems too brief.
SkyTrain shows how transit networks are built properly: you have a long-term vision and then you execute where the demand justifies it and leave connection points where potential expansions may happen.
Sound Transit has done that at the end of lines, but I wish they would have a longer-term vision and for example add branches and places for fill-in stations (e.g. between UW and CHS) in their tunnels. Once the tunnel is built with a TBM, the concrete rings are very difficult to breach to add a branch or station.
This. People have no idea how difficult it is to do and how disruptive of existing services. ST should bore bell-mouths to the north and east between Denny Way and South Lake Union stations. Since providing for a diversion requires that the two tunnels be vertically offset, allowing for two branches between the same pair of stations is a wise strategy. The greater cost and complexity of the “stacked” stations on either end of the segment can be better justified if two branches are accommodated.
I think ST has a long term vision. I just think the vision is silly. If your goal is to build a subway line (using light rail) from the outskirts of Tacoma to Everett then ST is doing it right. If your goal is to improve transit as much as possible with the available money than ST is failing miserably (in every region).
It never occurred to them to build a stub for an extension from the UW to Ballard because the idea of mass transit from Ballard to the UW never occurred to them. They were too busy trying to get to places like Fife and Ash Way.
I consider Tacoma/Everett mid-term, but an UW/Ballard line should have been planned as well as an Aurora branch line or what Tom suggested.
Translink seems to have a much better long-term vision.
Sorry Martin, but Tacoma/Everett is ridiculous. I explained why in a different thread just now: https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/12/29/sunday-double-feature-major-expansions/#comment-948360. What I wrote about Everett also applies to Tacoma.
It fails the basics. It adds too little value for the money. It lacks density and proximity. It offers little compared to express bus service. It is really expensive. It is a model that is uniquely American and has been shown to underperform more traditional investments (a standard metro along with improvements in the bus system and the existing rail network). By “existing rail network” I mean rail they put down decades ago. The London Overground is a great example. In our case it would mostly mean investing in the buses.
An Aurora branch also doesn’t make sense. It would be way too expensive to run rail on Aurora. You would spend a fortune just to get over the canal. Then what? If you run on the surface you aren’t adding anything in terms of speed improvement. If you run elevated you are spending even more money. Then there are the stations. Aurora doesn’t have big destinations (other than downtown). It has lots of little destinations. This makes station placement challenging. Ultimately you end up with (at best) a line that has all the existing stops and it not that much faster than the existing bus. Or you skip stops and most of your riders would just ignore the train (it isn’t worth the transfer). Because it is a train it also probably less frequent. You are adding very little value. It is hard to see that being worth the money. In contrast if you build this you dramatically improve transit mobility along the corridor.
There are a lot of considerations when it comes to mass transit, but here is one: build a metro so that a lot of riders can have a dramatically faster trip*. Aurora fails the test. So does Lynnwood, Tacoma Dome and West Seattle Link. Ballard Link passes — just barely**. It would pass easily if it extended into First Hill. UW to Ballard passes easily. Not because of the density next to every station (although it isn’t shabby) but because of the network. A lot of people (along the major north-south corridors) would have a much faster two-seat ride to the UW.
* If a potential rail line fails this test then you should invest in the bus and existing rail system. (Put aside ferries and gondolas for now although there is some overlap in thinking).
** Bus service to Ballard is not especially fast right now. But we could easily invest in an all-day 15 to go along with the D. I would actually run an all-day 15/40 hybrid. Start at 32nd & 85th (only because that is the closest layover spot) and then go over to 24th and follow the pathway of the 40. Except once you get under the Ballard Bridge you then go over the bridge and head to downtown as the 15 did (skipping Uptown). That gives people on 24th a one-seat ride to Interbay (for a two-seat ride to SPU and Magnolia) as well as an express to downtown. It would be expensive for Metro to run this routes but peanuts for ST. Ballard Link would definitely be faster for a lot of people — but just barely.
I’m sorry, Ross, it doesn’t. The 44 runs ten minute headways, mostly with 40 footers. That’s 360 people per hour in each direction. Even if it ran artics, it would be six hundred. You can’t “count” potential riders on the 31/32 because that would mean adding at least 30% to the length of the line. More buckos yet, and you lose the connection to the 5, 62 and E. At the very least you’d make the connection in Fremont either extremely different in elevation or a huge double-back.
In any case, getting to and from the U-District faster isn’t going to multiply the ridership ten-fold.
Now if ST extended Line 1 to UDS it would re-establish the link between the Rainier Valley and airport with the U District, but it would surely be all-way-round-Robin -Hood’s-Barn
Still, it might draw through riders, at least southbound.
Would it get the line to 6000 per hour? Very unlikely, and you aren’t proposing a surface line, you want a subway. More buckos demands more riders.
Finally, we don’t even know if ST included a demising wall somewhere in the UDS mezzanine to connect the lines efficiently for transfers.
Chances are good that’s a negative.
“UW to Ballard passes easily”
I’m sorry, Ross, it doesn’t.
According to Sound Transit’s own studies — which notably have always underestimated indirect ridership due to bus transfers — it would get more riders than the other projects (including Ballard Link).
You have to consider the overall network. That is the (ridership) mistake that Vancouver made when designing the Canada Line. Existing ridership was poor. New ridership was expected to be a little bit better, but not a lot better. Then ridership blew the socks off of the estimates. Why?
Transfers. The Canada Line doesn’t have that many stations. There isn’t a lot of development around them. But holy cow, it fits into the network really well. One-seat rides are a bit better, but two (and even three) seat riders are much better.
The same is true with a Ballard Line. The UW is a major destination. People coming from the north have to transfer. Some use the 45, some use the 44. But a bus that runs infrequently and is extremely slow makes a transfer very painful. A train is different. If this train ran independently it would be automated (and frequent). If it connected to the main line then it would be a better connection to Capitol Hill. Rather than going all the way downtown and then back (via Link) you would transfer in the north end and ride through the UW to Capitol Hill. If it connected to the main line then it would work for trips from Ballard to Downtown (about as well as going via Interbay). Thus it works for both. Even with a transfer it would for both if it was automated (and frequent). Unlike with so much of what we are building, there would be a major network effect.
Thus you have to look at the ridership of various parts of the D, 31/32, 44, 45 as well as Link transfers to Capitol Hill. Then throw in the fact that it would be *dramatically* faster. Consider a trip from Northgate to Ballard. It takes about 40 minutes if you take the 40. I’m sure a lot of people just drive. With Link that goes to around half that — including transfer time. For many trips it would be faster than driving — at noon. You really can’t say that about much of Link. The parts where you can say that have very high ridership. Like it or not this is still a driving town — it is the default for most trips for most people. But when offered a transit alternative that can compete (or even beat) a car then people will use it. A UW-to-Ballard line would do that.
Oh, and the Fremont situation is tricky, but not impossible. You have a station under 36th, close to the troll. You have an entrance here, next to the little park (https://maps.app.goo.gl/YZcAB8CM5eMNLXwk9). From the 5 it is a fairly short walk (https://maps.app.goo.gl/7WXUFRTLN5aFi4tW7). You rework Aurora (already in the plans) to add a bus stop there as well (and a traffic light so folks can cross the street). The distance and change in elevation for those who transfer is minimal (until you get to the station and hopefully that wouldn’t be that much either). You also add an entrance at 36th & Fremont Avenue. It is not an ideal stop but it isn’t bad at all. You can still easily access the heart of Fremont without a major climb. This also works fairly well for a transfer from the 62. Right now riders from Dexter have to transfer to the 31/32 or the 44 to get to the UW. Instead they would transfer to Link in Fremont. It is not a perfect transfer but it isn’t that bad either (the 62 runs on 35th and I’m proposing an entrance to the station at 36th).
Of course none of this is cheap. That particular station might be really expensive. But we are much better off spending money on quality rather than quantity. The problem we have now is that we are spending a fortune on something that adds very little value. A Ballard to UW Line would not be cheap, but at least it would add a tremendous amount of value.
Tom, the 44 was mostly 40′ coaches during the depths of COVID and the vehicle shortage, but is now 92% 60′ coaches according to Pantograph. I complained a couple times to Metro about 40′ coaches at standing-room-only capacity turning away riders back in 2021 and 2022, which was especially egregious given that the 20 was running mostly empty with mostly 60′ coaches at the same time.
Its ridership is off its peak of almost 10k/month pre-COVID, but is still rebounding and, given how much density it travels through and is still being built up, will certainly continue to rebound. Boosting its frequency and reliability would be an excellent way to accomplish that, but given how constrained Market and 45th are, grade-separated rail would be even better.
As for a hypothetical Link station at 36th/Fremont, that would be so much more of a game-changer than the anemic Ballard Link alignment is now, since it could change the bus route landscape in North Seattle dramatically. Most importantly, you could have no in-service buses crossing the Fremont bridge. The 31/32 could be truncated or, even better, have their service hours folded into other Magnolia and Queen Anne routes to fill in service on Nickerson. Instead of going downtown, the 40 could fill in service on 40th in Wallingford and terminate at UW Station or Children’s Hospital, or just be connected to the 62.
The current Ballard Link plan has some transfer opportunities, but has a lot less potential to make a better bus network.
Skylar, you need 8000 per day, not “per month” to make a subway pencil out.
I agree with both of you about the theoretical excellence of a Fremont Station, but I think that you, Skylar, are sort of proposing to run the Ballard-Downtown line through there. That’s the only way to revamp the bus infrastructure of north Seattle that you mentioned. I personally prefer that for just the reasons you mentioned, but it would really irritate Expedia and Lower Queen Anne.
So far as that Fremont Station optimized for transfers, it is extremely difficult to build shallow under 36th at the Troll. Extremely difficult. If one is talking “subway” from Ballard to UW, including west of Fremont, it is simply too steep to get up there from essentially sea level within the confines of the hill. You can’t start rising until Fremont, and it’s only two blocks to Aurora to get from right about sea level (in the best case, and probably considerably deeper in “reality”) up to about 100 feet. Presumably we’re talking about steel wheels on steel rails.
So one of three things would have to happen:
1) The alignment is elevated west of Fremont. That works very well but requires one of those hideous fenced transitions from elevated to tunnel in the lovely blocks between 35th and Fremont and 36th and Aurora. No; just “NO!”
2) The actual station is built much closer to sea level, requiring elevators for the transfer; or
3) You wrap the tunnel into a tight “horseshoe” around the Aurora “point” and use the much greater distance along 42nd or so to get down to subway under Leary Way. You have to curve sharply north to stay within the hill to the east of the station in option 1 anyway if you want to serve Wallingford, so that’s a wash.
I really like the idea of a belly down to Fremont, but it would add quite a bit of cost and the station would be kind of off to the side of the neighborhood if one were optimizing the 5 & E transfer as above.
And I’m not sure that it would mean that you could get rid of the 31 anyway; some bus has to serve South Wallingford.
If one is talking “subway” from Ballard to UW, including west of Fremont, it is simply too steep to get up there from essentially sea level within the confines of the hill. You can’t start rising until Fremont
Yes you can. Look at a topographic map of the area (https://caltopo.com/map.html#ll=47.65619,-122.34643&z=16&b=t). We are assuming deep bore (not cut and cover) if we go underground. From Ballard you head east (on Market). Between 8th and 3rd you curve southeast (somewhat paralleling Market as it heads up the hill). A little while after leaving Market you cross the 25 meter contour. Then you are between the 25 and 50 meter contour west of BF Day (shown on the map). Around that point you curve more easterly (SSE) so as not to drop below 25 meters. Then another curve to go southeast followed by one final turn to line up the station east-west (under the bridge next to the troll). Above the tunnel it is always 25 meters (or higher).
You also don’t need to gain that much elevation. The troll sits between 30 and 35 meters. The lowest you get on Market is between 15 and 20. There is plenty of room to make a gradual ascent as you curve around the edge of the hill. The big altitude gain would occur as you go from there to Wallingford. My guess is the Wallingford station would be quite deep. But it probably still wouldn’t be as deep as UW Station or Beacon Hill, let alone some of the really deep stations they are proposing for the second downtown tunnel. In general the stations would not be close to the surface but they wouldn’t be really deep either — not relative to the stations we have.
For now let’s put aside the “what should have been” aspect of UW to Ballard. We don’t have an easy way to branch from the main line. Thus it really doesn’t make sense to build UW to Ballard as a branch. At most it has a non-service connection to the main line. This adds to the cost, but isn’t nearly as tricky as a service branch. So the new line is basically independent which means it should be automated (and not light rail). The trains and platforms would be half the size and yet have more than half the capacity. There would be less of a surge as well.
Now assume that most of the stations are indeed quite deep. Not as deep as Beacon Hill, but similar to UW Station. At this point it is probably cheaper to just run elevators (along with stairs). You need to handle a surge (as folks get off the train) but nowhere near what you have with a bigger train running less often. They would probably need a little more capacity than Beacon Hill, but not a lot more. It wouldn’t be like trying to handle the huge loads at Westlake with elevators. It is quite possible it would be cheaper than building escalators in most of the stations. The one exception would be UW. It would be both a major destination and a transfer point. But the rest of the stations would be just fine with elevators (as long as you have enough of them).
This is in contrast with the new downtown tunnel. It is intended to handle all the commuters to the south. This train can only run every six minutes. So thus you have a really big train running infrequently. It becomes really difficult to handle the rush-hour surge with just elevators. At the same time, the stations are really deep. Now it is the worst of both worlds from a cost perspective. It is really deep and you need escalators. Lots and lots of escalators. This adds considerably to the cost.
Sorry, Tom, I meant 10k/day. Currently it’s at around 6500/day with gains every month. That’s at 5 buses/hour, pre-COVID was 6 buses/hour, and is one of the few North Seattle routes that Metro has indicated as needing substantial service hour investments. Given the current density it travels through, and the substantial build-up in the U-District and Ballard, more frequency will definitely bring more riders.
Given the current density it travels through, and the substantial build-up in the U-District and Ballard, more frequency will definitely bring more riders.
Agreed. It is a core route. It should be running every 7.5 minutes but 10 minutes would be an improvement. Meanwhile they need to keep chipping away at relieving congestion. It is still pretty slow, although there is a limit to how much they can do. It is a fundamentally slow corridor (unlike the north-south corridors).
Ross, you basically outlined option 3 but assumed that the line would go straight across Market to the foot of the hill. I assumed that if ST is going to splurge on a train across there it would serve the significant buildable area west of Third NW along and north of Leary along the way. Market around Eighth is still SFH. Expensive SFH unlikely to be torn down for TOD.
But your route would certainly work.
I am not saying “it can’t be done”, just that to be funded it would have to replace WSLE or BLE completely. West Seattle would hold pitchfork and torch parades if they lost “their” train in favor of Wallingford even though it’s true that most of the residents won’t use it for anything except ball games, festivals and (maybe) Christmas excursions.
SLU, LQA, Expedia and Ballard would be angry about losing acess direct to downtown if BLE were axed.
And, in all honesty, would that many more folks ride a train that terminated west of Brooklyn instead of the 44’s ride along the perimeter of campus? Without some sort of direct connection as close to platform level as possible, switching to North Link to hop to the hospital might not be that much quicker than a 44 with some decent priority.
UDS is pretty deep, and I very much doubt that ST would bore the new tunnel above the main line tubes. So the line might be “Fourth Avenued” and end west of Brooklyn.
Or, the BUD bores might pass under the main line tubes. If you did that, the platforms could be east of Brooklyn, making the walk to campus shorter, but it would make time between the surface and the platform two stories deeper.
It would make the service connection to the main line easier, because you could connect under Montlake Boulevard just north of UWS, though that would require mining the junction box.
Continued.
If you went ahead and built Ballard-LQA-SLU-Downtown as we on the blog generally agree (automated Light Metro of short train and small stations), it would be a very good idea to make it into a fishhook by extending it on east to UW, preferably via Fremont using one of the Option 3 routes through Fremont.
But that would probably have to be funded by the State or the State would have to give the City more taxing authority.
Perhaps by the time that BLETrain reaches Market Street, the new Nation of Ecotopia will be sturdily enough on its feet to help with the funding.
But that would probably have to be funded by the State or the State would have to give the City more taxing authority.
I think the latter is way more likely. It also just makes sense in the long term. Seattle has major needs when it comes to adding expensive subways. The other areas do not. This was really the case with ST2 as well (but folks have held on to the silly “spine” idea). Not only that, but Seattle is far more likely to approve a transit measure than the other areas. Seattle has passed every transit measure by a good margin. This includes all of the ST projects but also extra money for the buses or extra money for bus/bike/sidewalk/safety spending. They just need to have the rights to do that.
West Seattle would hold pitchfork and torch parades if they lost “their” train in favor of Wallingford
I’m not saying doing this would be easy — I’m saying that is what we should have done. It really should have been the next project.
And, in all honesty, would that many more folks ride a train that terminated west of Brooklyn instead of the 44’s ride along the perimeter of campus?
Yes. 45th & University (next to the U-District Station) is by far the most popular stop on the 44. It got about 600 riders*. The next bus stop (15th and 43rd) is not that far away and it is second highest in the U-District at 220. The rest of the stops in the U-District definitely add up (to around 700 riders) but about a hundred of those riders boarded at the U-District. In other words the stops closest to the U-District Station make up the bulk of the ridership in the area.
Not only that, but there is a spine there. It isn’t the end of the world that riders have to transfer to a surface bus. The 44 is not the only option for getting around campus — nor it necessarily the best one. If I’m actually coming from the middle of the campus (and don’t want to walk) then the best option is to take the 45, 67 or 372. This is something folks are used to. Link does not serve the entire U-District. People from the north are used to taking the train to the U-District Station and either walking (or catching one of the buses that combine for frequent service to the southeast). But the U-District Station is the main station for the area and one of the best that ST built. A similar station (coming from the west) would make a very good terminus (even without the connection to Link).
Of course it would be better if the train had more stops, but you could say the same thing about Link now and yet no one is arguing that we would have been better off with just running the 67 more directly from Northgate to the UW. Link is much, much faster for trips like this and the same is true for the east-west corridor. I know I am repeating myself but the train would be faster than driving at noon. That makes a huge difference. It does get people out of their cars. People tolerate a little extra walking or a transfer (especially if both the train and the buses are frequent). We really don’t have that many corridors like that. Aurora is extremely fast. The West Seattle Bridge and various viaducts surrounding it are extremely fast. The freeways are extremely fast. Even 15th/Elliott would be really fast if the bus didn’t have to exit at Dravus or detour to Uptown (although you still have the bridge). But east-west travel is slow and very difficult to make fast. From 24th & Market to the U-District Station is about 3.5 miles. As of right now (11:30 AM on a Saturday) it takes 19 minutes by car. A train would probably do it in about 6 minutes.
* The numbers are of the period 3/30/2024 to 9/14/2024 and for a bus heading from Ballard to the U-District.
Yes, Ross, the 44 is slow. But it’s not that long either, especially from Upper Fremont and Aurora, where it gets its main UW transfer feeds. Aurora is very fast, but it is long.
I would assert that given the cross-town services on 85th, 110th, 130th (coming), and 145th (and the big gap between 115th and 125th along the cemeteries), not all that many people along the E don’t have the option of walking a few blocks to one of those east-west feeders and then getting on the 737 to swoosh down to the U District from Northgate, North City or Shoreline South. The only people who won’t do that live south of 80th, and it isn’t a very long catchment area to 62nd where the E goes express through the park.
As you advocate for West Seattle, “running more buses” on those east-west feeders (particularly one on 85th that would go to Northgate Station instead of Roosevelt, which you advocate for — correctly — all the time) would be a LOT cheaper than adding just Ballard-U District.
As I said in my addendum, if BUD were an extension of a “Smart BLE” it would snarfle up riders from as far as SLU (especially considering the rotten transfer at Westlake), LQA, Expedia, West Queen Anne and Magnolia headed for the U District, greatly expanding its catchment. But “Standalone BUD” would just replicate the 44’s and the eastern 1/3 of the 31’s “local” ridership.
If it’s built it needs to be the full fish-hook.
Now THAT might excite enough people in Seattle to get over the inertia driving WSLE and BLE.
I’ve seen the argument presented here that planning and building for unfunded branches are ineligible for Federal funds. The timing of ST referenda has been unfortunate too from a station design perspective.
Similarly, ST seems allergic to future planning for cross-platform transfers where they’re expecting high rail-rail transfer volumes. For some reason ST doesn’t balk at boring for a one station extension of about a half-mile for the Alaska Junction station (adding several hundred million to the project cost) which will mainly have transferring Metro riders having to descend 100 feet and take a few extra minutes rather than go to a less deep Avalon yet getting ST to even spend well less than 100 million to create cross platform transfers in SODO for transferring riders (forecasted to be higher than Alaska Junction activity every day) can’t even be studied because a few extra warehouse buildings may have to be purchased to do it.
And certainly had ST designed a branch just north of Westlake (the former Convention Place station area) for a line to SLU and Ballard during the U-Link planning done 20 years ago (or even a stub at U-District to enable an eventual branch towards Aurora and Ballard), the design and cost problems of adding DSTT2 in Downtown and the ID would not have existed.
And let’s not even get into how ST built East Link as ST3 got passed yet did not redesign East Main as a center platform station (for cross platform transfers) or add track switches or track stubs for the 4 Line to Eastgate and Issaquah. There was ample time to do that back in 2017-18 as a change order similar to the Pinehurst/ 130th St infill change order .
Or how ST is now currently designing Tacoma Dome station without a heightened objective to add a cross platform transfer between 1 Line and T Line if not make the project able to operate through-running light rail vehicles.
Al S.
Yeah, commuter rail is 100% dead on arrival in Tacoma. Let’s review here….
The Sounder has limited runs and isn’t all that useful.
The T-Link is some sort of funky toy train that doesn’t work or play well with other regional light rail.
Sound Transit spends billions making a super long light rail line to Tacoma…. was there ever any plan to just have a heavy rail link to UWT (the old train station is across the street after all) and spend the billions in a joint venture with BN to upgrade tracks between Tacoma and Seattle to move both freight AND people?
Because any city in Europe would have upgraded the heavy rail all the way to Portland, built nice train stations, improved bus service in all towns south of Seattle and called it a day.
“planning and building for unfunded branches are ineligible for Federal funds”
The feds don’t have to fund that part. It’s just a tiny stub. Are the feds paying for any of the planning? I thought the feds were only paying for construction.
“The feds don’t have to fund that part. It’s just a tiny stub. Are the feds paying for any of the planning? I thought the feds were only paying for construction.”
ST has made a tacit assumption to not build stubs. The topic never shows up on an agenda. There is no longer even a long-range future system diagram to guide ST where stubs and infill stations on unbuilt segments should go. ST is set up with this “vote and build” model of system expansion that thinks that future-proofing is superfluous and wasteful.
Just look at the Graham St saga. ST rebuilt MLK between 2001-2010. They could have simply designed the corridor to possibly drop in platforms later. But they did not. Their lack of future-proofing the system now results in a much more expensive and difficult effort.
Here’s the Board motion from 2000 that refused to future-proof MLK for a Graham St Station:
https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/FinalRecords/2000/Reso%20R2000-07.pdf
very sad, adding a bit of space would have made it so much easier to construct the station later.
There’s a difference between Skytrain just adding an elevated stub, and ST widening the road and acquiring land for an unlikely surface station.
What are the alternate improvements ST, Metro, and Seattle have done to improve the Graham area’s access to Link? Or is this another empty promise and abstract word salad? There’s the 106, but I’m pretty sure the 8 was already 15 minutes daytime before Link. And a one-seat ride to Renton and Chinatown can’t be “improving Graham neighborhood access to Othello and Columbia City stations”.
This is actually a concrete reason to run Link at 6-minute frequency all day. THAT would improve access for Graham residents, as they wouldn’t have to wait 10 minutes for a transfer if they’re unlucky.
The longer this idiocy continues, the clearer it becomes that the “reuse the elected officials of the region” plan for The Board was a ginormous fuster-cluck. [ed. note: Balducci excepted.]
It’s not that the Board members are bad or even incompetent people. The problem is that they have a huge guaranteed income stream that will last until everything they promise to build is complete even if it takes an additional ten or fifteen years.
The funding is assured regardless how much waste occurs or how many erroneous assumptions are made.
So naturally they focus on the problems for which they bear more immediate electoral responsibility and let the “Consultants” act like kids in a candy store during a “free candy” sale.
I have to admit that the idea of direct election of The Board is the correct one. There will be a Member fron Concrete (not the town), a couple from the Road Builders’ Caucus, and let’s not forget the Member From Big Steel.
But maybe transit nerds can get at least one seat and start talking sense from a platform of consequence.
Does anyone remember this ST Express bus crash in downtown Seattle on June 22nd? Here’s a link to the story and onboard video of the crash. In the story, it says the investigation into the cause of the crash will take weeks to complete, but I still haven’t been able to find the results of the investigation anywhere. Has anyone here heard anything more about this?
https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/only-kiro-7-on-board-video-out-control-seattle-bus-crash/6E7ELYPZEJB7FOKHM7X4LUANGM/
It’s so refreshing to see systems where their planners collectively seem to know what they’re doing and where there are fewer roadblocks to getting it done. It’s sad what the Seattle area has been saddled with by comparison: “the Seattle way,” or endless discussion by politicians who don’t ride the service in search of 100% agreement-even if forced, adhering to decisions from 30 years ago-a.k.a. lack of flexibility as the environment (employer mix/employees, residents, work/life balance, travel patterns) changes, caving to the expensive and impractical demands of local politicians and businesses (sticking the riders with numerous inconveniences), parochialism and back-slapping to the nth degree, decisions to appease and enrich special interests at taxpayer expense, not owning up to mistakes, and on and on. A simple comparison is the time that it took for Link to put in its line to the airport vs. Link to extend its line to the airport. Night and day.