India’s cities have a few metros, a small and shrinking number of buses — and lots of cars, two-wheelers, and rickshaws. The crisis in India’s transit. (The Quint)
The video uses the Indian number units lakh (=100,000) and crore (=100 lakh or 10 million). These can be rupees, people, or anything. A rupee is worth 1.2 cents. Metro fares for a 5-day work commute are 3,600 rupees/month ($42) based on the report at 12:13, which is out of reach for most residents (more than 10% of income).
This is an open thread.
Great video!
I like how the video points out how development patterns and historical transportation patterns are, oh so hard to change . Getting Indians to stop hiring rides on motorcycles and rickshaws would be close to impossible. Owning a car is freedom! That’s just the truth in every single County in the world. That’s why electric cars are real solution to environmental problems.
As far as mass transit… the video brings out a couple of simple truths that Greater Seattle should think about.
1. If a city doesn’t have good short hop buses to kick start transit…. the system just isn’t going to work that well.
2. Transit needs to be dirt cheap. 3 bucks a ride drives people into car ownership and driving instead. I mean who’s taking the bus at $3 a trip when you can drive for $6 a trip? Parking is the deal maker/breaker as always…..
3. Transit needs to be as safe as air travel…. Not covered in the video was the huge media coverage of gang rapes on mini-buses in India. It’s the same in Seattle…. any high profile crime on a bus drives people into their cars.
Is driving more dangerous than public transit? Yes. Is driving more expensive than public transit? Yes. But in order to move people out of cars and into public transit, transit needs to be much, much safer than driving…. and much, much cheaper than driving. It’s a high bar to get over.
tacommee the car traffic is even worse in india. It is traffic 24/7 not just in peak periods
Even ignoring the environmental concerns literally everyone knows that they cannot just have everyone drive in cars and it isn’t really working
“Getting Indians to stop hiring rides on motorcycles and rickshaws would be close to impossible.”
You’re missing the point. People aren’t riding motorcycles and rickshaws because they feel more like cars. They’re riding them because good transit doesn’t exist in their travel market. If it did exist, many of them would use it. You’d see a lot more buses, and transit-priority lanes, and fewer motorcycles and rickshaws, and people getting to their destinations faster.
Here’s what happened in Utrecht, The Netherlands. It was going in an American car-and-highway direction until the 1990s, when it took a sharp turn toward transit and bikes and pedestrians. In just twenty and thirty years it became a riders’/bikers’/walkers’ paradise. The same thing could happen in India — and the US. I’m not saying India could be completely transformed in thirty years: it’s a huge country with huge cities and developing-world resources. But enough to make a visible difference and increase transit’s mode share.
Mike Orr
I think you’re getting your history a little mixed up. The Low Counties have loved bikes ever since bikes were invented. It’s a 100+ year love affair. I rode a bike from Amsterdam to Lübeck in the Summer of 1988…. had a great trip. Old duffers along the way told me about their bike adventures along the way, starting soon after WWII. Northern Europeans just love bikes…. and make room for them. It’s not like some traffic engineer thought that bikes were the way forward in 1990.
I’ve also rode a bike on every street in Tacoma… besides the Tacoma Mall and getting around the freeways, cycling in T-Town isn’t very hard. So why don’t people ride more? Cultural norms and historical transportation patterns.
This is why the car ownership percentages are flat in Seattle and miles driven per year keep going up. Cultural norms. Even with the world’s best transit system…. I doubt you’d see much growth in transit riders in Seattle percentage-wise. Changing cultural norms is really tough. I support those who try.
“The Low Counties have loved bikes ever since bikes were invented.”
That may be, but the Dutch government was putting most of its transportation resources into highways, stroads, and parking spaces in the mid 20th century. Then they didn’t, and the country was transformed.
“I doubt you’d see much growth in transit riders in Seattle percentage-wise. Changing cultural norms is really tough.”
It’s not cultural norms; it’s access to transit. Haven’t we talked about how most Pierce Transit routes are hourly, and none go directly to Tacoma Mall? Average people won’t use transit in that environment, but a lot of them will if the routes are running every 15 minutes full time. It happens even in the US: ridership goes up and down as bus service is expanded or contracted. We saw that in the mid 2010s when Metro/ST/CT invested in transit and some other cities divested. Ridership went up and down accordingly.
I agree Mike. The video made that clear. It isn’t like this is impossible — you just need to invest in buses (along with the metro). They should also drop the price on riding the metro (that is way too expensive for most people). My guess is the reason there isn’t more pressure to do so is because it is so isolated. The metro only works if you are close to a station and even then it is mostly for longer trips.
That may be, but the Dutch government was putting most of its transportation resources into highways, stroads, and parking spaces in the mid 20th century. Then they didn’t, and the country was transformed.
Agreed. I think it is one of the big takeaways in urban planning over the last fifty years. You can change. Even if your city is moving in the wrong direction you can change. Amsterdam was a car-loving city and they made the transition (https://inkspire.org/post/amsterdam-was-a-car-loving-city-in-the-1970s-what-changed/). This was not only a move away from the current conditions but a complete reversal of plans that had been proposed (https://brilliantmaps.com/amsterdam-2000/).
I feel like Seattle is changing — just very slowly. Unfortunately, we have also grown considerably at the same time. This means that traffic is much worse — we haven’t made the transition fast enough. The buses — which are more important than Link — are actually getting worse. Some of this is the driver shortage and the funding shortage but a lot of it is that traffic (for the buses) is so much worse. For example consider the improvement made for eastbound buses on Denny (https://maps.app.goo.gl/L94WS5zGZLEBJgki8). This is a clever and somewhat effective “fix”. You can see the long line of cars backed up on the right while the bus lane sits empty, ready for the bus to cruise right through to the island bus stop (https://maps.app.goo.gl/Dp7iZMa63TSC6KeeA). Twenty years ago that might have been sufficient to get the 8 in very good shape. Not any more. There has been too much growth and with it too many cars.
Of course it would be great if subway lines criss-crossed the area (like the Paris Metro) providing a great alternative. But like in the cities of India (which have way more density) that simply isn’t realistic. But we can add bus lanes — with enough will. We are starting to do that in areas I never thought were possible. We are taking a lane on Westlake and in Fremont. We just need to do a lot more of that sort of thing.
This is why the car ownership percentages are flat in Seattle and miles driven per year keep going up. Cultural norms.
Nonsense. Study after study has shown that every city responds to an improvement in transit service. It is not the culture, it is the service. Consider the point the experts made in this video:
You need to achieve a level of reliability, comfort, convenience and economy as a two-wheeler.
In Seattle you aren’t competing with a two-wheeler but a four-wheeler. But it is the same basic idea and it also applies to every city in the US and Canada. Consider each item:
1) Reliability. This applies here as well and is consistent with the studies. This is a mixed bag but in general reliability has stayed about the same over the last four years.
2) Comfort. We are doing fairly well here. I would say our buses and trains are quite comfortable. Occasionally they get a bit crowded but typically only for small sections and they are still nowhere near what is common in other cities around the world.
3) Convenience. Like reliability, this is where we struggle. Our buses need to be more frequent and they need to follow more straightforward paths. They need to avoid traffic and weird routing. Riders shouldn’t have to detour to reach places that are straight ahead.
4) I think we do fairly well here. Our fares aren’t the cheapest but the low-income fares help quite a bit. Like some of the other factors you don’t need to be much better than the alternative. You don’t need to be the cheapest option (which in most cases would be a bike). You just need to avoid having the fares be a big issue.
So why haven’t we seen a big increase in transit? Our system sucks. Yes, Link is a huge improvement. I’m sure we’ve seen a slight increase *along those corridors*. But many of those riders were taking the buses before. Bus service to downtown has always been very good. But the overall bus system is just not good. It has failed to fully leverage Link and it also struggling with a major service shortage. The neighborhoods that are most likely to see frequent trips taken by transit (e. g. Capitol Hill) have probably seen an increase — but not nearly as much as they should. Meanwhile, getting to downtown-adjacent places (like First Hill and South Lake Union) remains challenging. Some improvement has been made in the latter, but nowhere near the level that would match the increase in density there. If the growth had all occurred close to the four downtown tunnel stations built in the 80s then we would probably be doing really well (and Link would be really crowded) but we have more places to serve and the transit system hasn’t caught up.
Ross,
Are the percentages of car ownership and transit use about as they were in Seattle, 1983?
If transit was more popular than it is the Seattle public…. wouldn’t our elected officials built a better transit system over the last 50 years?
Our national value system revolves around cars and houses. Right or wrong, it’s hard to change that. Being shoved into a crackerjack one bedroom apartment and riding the bus is OK when you’re 22, but it’s not the long term solution for 90% of America.
I think some posters live in this world where Trump has been elected president (twice). At some point we’ll need transit and housing the majority of America would be willing to buy into.
I’ve been aware of Seattle politics for over 50 years…. it’s a town that claims to be Liberal and yet, votes much more Center to keep the status quo. I’d love to see more Liberal ideas that live in political reality. How about Seattle get’s a single transit outfit that treats all the trains and buses equally?
@tacommee
forcing people to live 20/30 miles away or moving to another state all together because that is your ideal is not “freedom either”
“who’s taking the bus at $3 a trip when you can drive for $6 a trip?”
People who don’t want the hassle and stress of driving, especially in congestion. People who want to forestall mega heat waves and pollution-related illnesses. People who don’t want to circle for parking, or devote a large part of their income to transportation. People who find it hard to get into low-ceiling cars.
Owning a car is freedom!
Ha! I’ve never been to India but I’ve been to Katmandu and that ain’t freedom. Traffic is terrible all day long.
3. Transit needs to be as safe as air travel
That is a ridiculous bar to achieve given the extreme dangers of driving. Road deaths and injuries in developing countries is a major problem. Yes, I know perception is everything but the rate of injury is so high that it is well known. My guess is just about everyone knows someone who has been hurt or killed by cars. For the vast majority of people the alternative is a two-wheeler (i. e. motorcycle) which if you’ve seen the traffic is obviously extremely dangerous. Yes, safety is important — and in some cases very important — but my guess is this plays a very small role. The key is what the author said: You need to achieve a level of reliability, comfort, convenience and economy as a two-wheeler. Matching safety is easy.
The problem is very clear: They haven’t invested in the buses. In fact, they basically defunded the buses at a time when they should have been pouring money into them. Not only running them more often but adding bus lanes. As the video put it so well the transportation system is now not only divided by class (with only rich people being able to afford the metro or cars) but also by trip. There is no public network outside the metro (which only works well for longer trips).
Part of the reason they didn’t invest in the buses is class and class-aspiration (as the video described well). Those with wealth drive cars. Those without wealth want to be wealthy and drive cars. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with that — people in Japan have high car ownership — the problem is that if it is the *only* way to get around then you are screwed. Yes, electric cars will help, but only so much. You need a more efficient system which means investing in the buses.
From a safety standpoint, riding on the back of a motorcycle, weaving in and out of heavy traffic, with a driver you’ve never seen before, and has likely undergone no vetting to speak of, feels extremely dangerous. Much more dangerous than driving your own car (at least with a car, you have armor to protect you) and definitely more dangerous than riding any sort of halfway-decent bus.
I found the travel distance discussion interesting.
I think of shared ride services as a mode transfer. So getting a ride on the back of a mini bike on both ends is what we would call a double transfer. It’s what I would consider a last mile problem but in a different country. It’s where I see automated vehicles playing a role.
I have worked with several people in the US who are of Indian descent. The ones I’ve known usually have a family expectation to live (shared apartments or large homes) with extended relatives — even if it results in longer commutes. I’m a little surprised this wasn’t discussed in the video. Is this cultural norm waning inside India?
Al S.
Yeah, 7 km isn’t much of a commute. Dutch people ride bikes to work much further than that every day. Of course the Low Countries are set up for cycling because of a historical cultural love for bikes. India seems to have the same sort of historical love for hired transport (rickshaws traditionally and now motorbikes). These sorts of historical cultural preferences are really hard to change.
As far as large family groups living together….. I’m not exactly sure what that does, as a plus or minus, for mass transit. Seattle household size has been going down for a couple of decades…. that’s what really upsets a lot of posters are upset about the Seattle housing market. Seattle is a City with fewer and fewer children and fewer and fewer roommates as well. I’d guess back in the 1950s and 1970s single family homes had many more kids living in them. Now a house in Wallingford likely has a couple with no kids, 2 cars and a family income of $300k a year. These sort of folks are not transit people. They’re also pushing up the price of housing.
As Seattle became more wealthy and attracted more and more high income people without kids, there has been a building boom for single people with an income of at least $80k who choose to live alone. That’s made it tough for lower income working people to survive… I can’t remember ever working on a single project building housing I could afford to move into since around 1998? And not much family style housing either.
From all the numbers I’ve ever seen, the percentage of people in Seattle using mass transit isn’t higher now than in the 1980s, subways be damned. I think points to how difficult it is to get people to change from historical norms in terms of transportation.
“India seems to have the same sort of historical love for hired transport (rickshaws traditionally and now motorbikes).”
You literally had an Indian resident say people don’t want to use rickshaws. Some people probably do, but others are doing it because they have no better transportation choices.
Mike Orr,
Motor bikes and cars supplanted rickshaws…. but the idea of being transported around by somebody else you hire never went away in India. There’s cell phones and gas motors involved now, but the system hasn’t changed much. I mean what percentage of the Indian economy is private transportation hire? We’re talking about millions and millions of jobs here.
At the same time, the US auto industry is bigger every year. By design. The only reason voters ever support any public transportation is the myth that once many of the other drivers take public transportation, it’s going to easier to drive on less crowded roads. I mean look at the parking minimums in new construction…. maybe they’re a good idea to keep prices down, but what keeps residents from owning a car and parking it on the street? Nobody in America is going to say “These apartments are only for people without a car”
India has a transportation system that’s hundreds of years old…. with some tech upgrades. Changing that takes a heck of a lot more than building a subway. That’s the takeaway from the video I got.
As far as Seattle progressive types who desire change….. it’s not going to happen with transit…. or even zoning changes…. Because Seattle is pretty much built out and at this point. The present day Seattle is a walkable, Liberal city with really high real estate values. It’s a prefect place for retiring Californians (or Liberals from other States) to move two. It’s a horrible place to be lower income, blue collar or raise kids in. Changing that is likely impossible. Just like changing the motorcycle hire in India.
@tacommee
currently like 7.5% of india owns cars. how exactly is the system supposed to work with another 1200% increase of cars in your “ideal scenario”?
WL,
I have no idea how India is going to fit more cars on the road…. it’s really a motorcycle country anyway, but still, more and more motorcycles will be a problem. I simply don’t care.
As Americans, it’s completely not our problem. The first step of not being a racist is staying outta Brown people’s business. One of the reasons Modi is so powerful in India is he’s always pointing out the West’s bullshit solutions for a country they don’t live in.
India is an old Country. It will find it’s way I’d guess?
Again, it was Indians who brought this up. Indians who said transit sucks, this motorcycle/car/rickshaw thing isn’t working and can’t scale. Indians who said Beijing has as many buses as all of India. Indians who said India had better bus service to decades ago.
@tacommee
Even car lovers in india recognize that it is physically impossible to keep fitting more cars in their cities. And no they do not have the space to build suburban like cities everywhere.
> As Americans, it’s completely not our problem.
I understand that, you are the one that said “Owning a car is freedom! That’s just the truth in every single County in the world.”
> The first step of not being a racist is staying outta Brown people’s business
Lol, when you claim cars are awesome that is fine but when someone else says transit is fine that is now racism?
Also as mike noted and it is also not quite a secret many in india know it is not sustainable to keep adding more cars.
“Of course the Low Countries are set up for cycling because of a historical cultural love for bikes.”
That simply is not the case. There are many, many bits of documentation available about the transformation of these places from auto-dominated hellholes to places with good quality of life.
One of many examples:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vI5pbDFDZyI
In tacomee’s world, the Dutch bike because they have a cultural love of bicycling alongside tulips and stropepfwafel. The Indians commute by motorcycle because it somehow connects them to their Indian culture.
And Americans have mostly car-dependent areas and inadequate housing choices and sleep on sidewalks because the free market chose that. As if American federal/local governments had no coercive role and didn’t put their thumbs on the scale. It didn’t subsidize freeways 90%, or airports, or yank support from local streetcars and buses and intercity passenger trains — leaving passengers with far less with what could be considered a convenient or even feasible mode alternative. Or encouraging mortgages in car-dependent greenfield white-only areas and discouraging them in walkable inner-city redlined areas, and trash-talking those areas and spreading exaggerated fears. Or having street regulations that prioritized SOV thoroughput instead of human trips, and took as absolute a fire-department’s request for streets to be wide enough for two hook-and-ladder trucks to make U-turns simultaneously and for deep corner-curb cuts without consideration of pedestrians’ and transit riders’ needs for narrow streets. Or that gas stations and car dealerships and car-repair shops a de facto industrial policy and the solution for national employment, instead of encouraging businesses and helping train workers for more sustainable industries.
Even the most car-happy sensible government would have led to a transportation/land-use pattern like Vancouver, Finland, Switzerland, or Japan, where cars are allowed and have infrastructure but aren’t essential, and those countries still have democracy and capitalism and aren’t centrally-planned Communist totalitarian states.
Memorable quotes in the Utrecht video.
6:20 “I’ve been constantly told that we need to design for cars because of families, the disabled, or the elderly. And yet I see all of those people getting around just fine. Because universal access to mobility isn’t a fundamental issue. It’s a problem caused by car dependency. // Would this guy [pushing himself in a wheelchair] be better off in a car? Maybe, I didn’t ask him. But it’s not like he’s unable to get around independently here, like would be the case where I’m from [London, Ontario].”
Some bicycle safety items from the Netherlands:
https://swov.nl/nl/publicatie/achtergronden-bij-de-staat-van-de-verkeersveiligheid-2023
“ Cyclists are also (by far) the largest group among the serious road injuries (70% of the total), and the number of casualties among cyclists has been increasing for years. Most of these casualties occur in crashes without motor vehicle involvement, such as single-vehicle crashes or crashes with another cyclist.
“Older road users are also the largest group among the seriously injured, and the number of older casualties increases over the years.”
Bicycling in the Netherlands has risks that have nothing to do motor vehickes. . The risks are magnified in older adults. So there is valid concern about seniors on bicyclists even in the Netherlands.
OK, let’s think about transit and cars here in the USA a little bit.
Let’s say Washington State built a completely new city…. with light rail and bus transit baked in from the beginning. So every housing unit has great transit access, walkable neighborhoods and one parking space. Perfect plan, right? Transit access for everyone!
Because housing costs are so completely out of wack, filling the new city would be pretty easy. I believe that transit use would be high in the beginning, but I doubt car ownership would be less than Seattle, because cheaper housing drives more spending on cars. Over time, we’d start to see cars parked in every possible place on the streets…. as households bought more and more cars….. everybody would pretend to love transit…. and yet most people would have some sort of personal reason not to use it (kids, medical problems, lack of time, etc….) As the first crop of kids reached driving age in the new city, the “too many damn cars” problem would mushroom, because all those kids need cars to get around too. “Little Jimmy doesn’t have time to take the bus” Who didn’t want a car at 16? Damn few of us.
So many the problem isn’t trains or buses, or bike lanes or any transit solution? Maybe it’s us? America loves cars. Jesus, didn’t anybody else go to the movies in the 90’s? Watch “Singles” and that will explain a lot about Seattle.
What I fear the most is self driving cars… robo-taxis clogging the streets…. and rich families getting a self driving car for their 12 year old kid. Little Jenny needs to get to dance class after all!
What bothers people like me is is getting this myth shoved down our throats as an excuse not to do sensible infrastructure improvements. It’s possible to have both: both comprehensive transit and some car infrastructure for those who really want to drive or for whom even a comprehensive transit/pedestrian infrastructure doesn’t work. Vancouver, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia, the UK, France, Spain, Japan, China, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, etc, all have that to a greater or lesser extent — more than the US.
“America loves cars.”
Germany loves cars too. That doesn’t prevent them from having transit infrastructure so that people don’t have to drive.
“didn’t anybody else go to the movies in the 90’s? Watch “Singles” and that will explain a lot about Seattle.”
Some Seattlites want cars. A lot of people don’t, but they’re forced to because of the lack of alternatives. India is different from the US in a lot of ways, but it has a similar trend that the top 1%, who disproportionately like cars and can easily afford them, got the government to prioritize car infrastructure and to hell with any other mode. You can point to Link and RapidRide and Caltrain and say they’re doing something, but it’s a drop in the bucket and it’s never enough to really transform things… unlike Utrecht. You don’t know how many people want to own cars or drive or take Ubers until they have a viable alternative so they can choose. Everywhere that has good transit infrastructure, a lot of people have chosen to use it — including in the US.
Mike Orr,
Oh, I don’t disagree with you for the most part about transit. We do need a better system, but we need one that people buy into. Sound Transit and Tacoma pissed away huge amounts of tax money on Tacoma Dome Station… and nobody wants to be there. Nobody wants to live there, nobody wants the damn train or bus they’re riding stopping there (wasting 10 minutes their time) It’s a total bust.
Top down transit and housing solutions is what made the USSR. Home and auto ownership made the USA. Until transit is promoting home ownership, the majority of America will have no interest in it. If I can’t buy a home near transit…. why would I do it?
I think the biggest myth here is the “car free lifestyle” being for lower income people. Housing costs in nice walkable neighborhoods are the highest. The people who get to live car free on say, Capitol Hill, are mostly high income, order lots of stuff delivered in trucks and cars (starting with food), have the money to rent cars on the weekends and fly places in vacation. Poor people don’t live this way…. it’s housing in Skyway with a car to get around and go shopping in. The less money you have in Puget Sound….. the more you’re going to need a car.
@tacommee
> I think the biggest myth here is the “car free lifestyle” being for lower income people. Housing costs in nice walkable neighborhoods are the highest. The people who get to live car free on say, Capitol Hill, are mostly high income, order lots of stuff delivered in trucks and cars (starting with food), have the money to rent cars on the weekends and fly places in vacation. Poor people don’t live this way…. it’s housing in Skyway with a car to get around and go shopping in. The less money you have in Puget Sound….. the more you’re going to need a car.
Look tacommee you need to make a consistent argument. You literally just argued above that no one wants to live in these apartments. But now you argue that people do want to live in them.
> Top down transit and housing solutions is what made the USSR. Home and auto ownership made the USA. Until transit is promoting home ownership, the majority of America will have no interest in it. If I can’t buy a home near transit…. why would I do it?
If the zoning near the transit stations is still single family homes how can there be enough housing for people.
Also make up your mind if you are going to argue that people don’t like living in apartments or not
If you look at the stats, car ownership rate generally increases with income. This is to be expected, after all, the more income you have, the less of a financial burden car ownership is. But, if you look closely at the chart, around the $100-$200k income level, the car ownership rate actually *drops* slightly as income continues to increase. This blip is most likely due to people with higher incomes being more likely to afford housing in neighborhoods where car ownership is less essential. And, yes, most of these car-free people do, in fact, ride Ubers somewhat regularly, fly places on vacation, and rent cars on occasion to get out of the city.
But, the reason why housing is so expensive in car-optional neighborhoods is that they’re rare, and insufficient in number to meet demand. If there were more of them, prices would drop, and more people would be able to afford them.
“I think the biggest myth here is the “car free lifestyle” being for lower income people. Housing costs in nice walkable neighborhoods are the highest… Poor people don’t live this way…. it’s housing in Skyway with a car to get around and go shopping in.”
Why is that? You’re using neglect of poor people as a reason poor people should be neglected. That’s begging the question. Of course we should have comprehensive transit, affordable market-rate housing in a wide range of locations and densities, universal healthcare, etc. The Scandinavian countries have figured this out. The government needs to be for the people and build something that works for everybody, not just for the top 10% or those who choose to drive.
Why are housing prices the highest in walkable, transit-rich areas? Because they’re walkable and transit-rich! When only 20% of the land is convenient to live in, people flock to it, and the affluent outbid everyone else. But if everywhere is walkable and transit-rich, there’s a lot more of those kinds of areas go around, so it doesn’t have as much of a price premium. Why does Skyway exist in its current state? Why does Tacoma? It’s because they’ve been neglected and the government has ignored people’s needs.
The US has a high inequality problem, and the bottom 50% have a horrible lack of essentials. The solution is to fix the floor so that everybody can have a decent standard of living. Not to act like high inequality and scarcity is inevitable and the bottom 50% are doomed to drive in residential-only areas with inadequate services and 1% of the population is homeless and sleeping on sidewalks.
“Look tacommee you need to make a consistent argument. You literally just argued above that no one wants to live in these apartments. But now you argue that people do want to live in them.”
I don’t think he’ll ever make a consistent argument at this point. He just shoots from the hip with whatever comes to him in the moment rather than thinking with clarity and facts to how things actually work.
Zach B, maybe a new “handle” is in order: “trumpcomey”?
Did you watch the movie? The narrator contradicts you. The transportation experts contradict you. He rides an e-rickshaw to the metro because he has no other transit choice. He rides a shared motorcycle similar to Uber because the alternatives are so bad and time-consuming, not because he loves motorcycles or feels more culturally fufilled with them. Hundreds of millions of Indians want to take transit but it doesn’t exist or they can’t afford it.
nyc congestion pricing started today
https://apnews.com/article/nyc-congestion-pricing-manhattan-traffic-5a8a6de4495d687079290918f5a499c2
It’ll be 9 dollars south of central park from 5 am to 9pm weekdays and 9 am to 9pm weekends. outside of that period it’ll be 2.25
I noticed. And, as recently as yesterday, I was still expecting a last-minute court order that would postpone it. Even now, I wonder how long it will last, given how much Trump and Republicans hate it, and the fact that they can do what they want via budget reconciliation.
Still, the longer it does last, the harder it’s going to be to remove. If it survives four years of Trump, it’s probably here to stay. And, hopefully, it won’t be too long before bus and subway riders start seeing some benefit.
Plenty of non-Republican groups fought congestion pricing. One of the main groups who fought against it is NYC’s teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers. Also, the Governor of New Jersey, a Democrat, filed a lawsuit against it. To suggest the issue is divided along partisan lines is inaccurate.
There is definitely opposition to it on both parties. But, the supporters are almost all Democrats, therefore, it is divided along partisan lines.
If most of the supporters are Democrats, and most of the opposition are Democrats, how can it be divided along partisan lines?
@Sam,
If all the Democrats are for it, then by definition it is divided along party lines.
As Will Rogers said when asked about his political affiliation, “ I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.”
But I’m all for more tolling and more congestion pricing. Bring it on.
The fact that New Jersey is so up in arms against NYC congestion pricing feels ridiculous. This is narrowly targeted to lower and midtown Manhattan. Transit within there and to there is very abundant. There are buses and trains going into Manhattan in all directions. Drivers passing through Manhattan to get to other, more car dependent parts of New York are not even tolled, so long as they stay on the highways. I don’t know what percent of New Jersey residents actually drive into Manhattan with any kind of regularity, but I would expect that number to be small (most New residents probably don’t even go into Manhattan regularly, regardless of mode).
I’ve heard some people arguing that local residents who don’t own cars are going to have to pay for this when they need a plumber or a moving truck. Which is true (assuming the congestion charge is passed down to customers). But, we’re talking about a few dollars out of a bill that’s several hundred dollars or more. It’s chump change, and a small price to pay for having a better bus and subway system.
My New Yorker friend moved to Jersey City, and he sometimes drives into Manhattan on weekends, but never weekday daytime. Otherwise he takes PATH.
To my fellow 2 Line Riders, does it feel like a Series 2 train hasn’t run for more than a month?
Transit vs. Cars arguments are like the movie Groundhog Day.
Same old stuff shoveled back and forth.
If you want to find out what people want for transportation, let the market decide.
If they move out to the boonies, then they have decided that they want to pay the cost of using cars.
Works fine, except they really couldn’t afford to pave the roads all the way there. That’s what the gas tax is for, to be able to collect a tax with no boundaries (no subarea equity constraints), and the allocate resources based on politics.
Now when there are enough people who have the same idea, the complaint is – we need more road capacity (too much traffic congestion).
Who pays for the extra lanes?
The gas tax that is collected isn’t enough to pay for that road expansion because the users of the road don’t burn enough gas.
Where does the money come from?
Everyone else is paying that high gas tax to support whatever group has the most political influence. (I-405 expansion for instance).
How do you decide?
Privatize the expansion. That would
answer whether a road pays for itself.
If you don’t lime that market based solution, then any road expansion
must be voted on .
That way, we would know what the people want.
Do another regional “Roads and Transit” ballot measure sans the Transit part.
Have it go through the same public scrutiny as the Sound Transit measures.
> Transit vs. Cars arguments are like the movie Groundhog Day.
for usa we kinda have the land that “technically” we could pave over half the nation as parking lots, freeways, single family homes and it’d “kinda” work. One can still make some fanciful arguments
For india, there is no serious argument to be made for continuing down automobiles. More cars will not work anymore. nowhere near a majority of the population drives and the road system is already completely choked 24/7.
WL,
India aside for a minute, let’s just look at the reason mass transit doesn’t have a future in America.
As a blue collar worker who spent 40 years working in Puget Sound, married to women who has no formal education…. we bought a house in Tacoma and saved around 15% of our income for retirement. 20 years in, I saved enough cash to invest in rental property. I’m not a genius and I have no magic formula to make money, but I’m not worried about my retirement.
My old roommate in Seattle has a PhD and is a college professor…. he’s also a renter and has lived hand to mouth for years and terrified of losing his retirement though his work. He’s a total Lefty… and Seattle punched him in the face with a left hook. It’s every man for themselves I’m afraid.
Relying on transit promotes economic instability for most people. How will I know my bus service won’t get cut? Or my rent won’t go up 20%? Better buy a car and house and look out for myself. That’s why everybody in India plans on getting a motor bike. Self preservation. Is it good for everybody in long run? I doubt it is…. but it’s the way things work.
Owning a house is the American Dream. It’s become a “pocket ace” for the GOP every election…. the type of “transit rich” lifestyle proposed here doesn’t win elections…. even in Seattle. You think Mayor Bruce is onboard with higher taxes for transit? Social housing? Big zoning changes? Nope.
The sort of Lefty transit led changes you see for Seattle….. not likely to happen because Seattle can’t even elect a Lefty city government. What’s that mean on the National level?
Transit isn’t Lefty, it’s centrist.
Harrell and the Council were elected mainly because of safety, tents, fentanyl, and empty office buildings. Not because people don’t want transit. In 2020 Seattle voters renewed their Transit Benefit District tax. They probably would have voted for the original (higher) rate if the last council had given them that choice.
The problem with that argument is that cars, themselves, cost money, and incur depreciation and insurance costs, even when not being driven. Furthermore, even if you don’t have a car right now, you can always get one later if and when you need it.
So, if transit is adequate (for now), the financially-optimal move is not to buy a car to rust in the driveway, just in case transit gets cut someday in the future. It’s to wait, enjoy the savings of several hundred dollars per month now, and if transit service does get cut in the future, well, you can always go by the car then. When transit service does get cut, it doesn’t just suddenly disappear without warning (absent emergencies, such as COVID). There is always a period of at least a few months between when service cuts are announced and when they actually go into effect; that’s more than enough time to complete the car shopping process.
Of course, if you choose to buy the car now so you have great speed or comfort in your daily commute now, that’s fine, but that’s consumption, not investment – spending money for the sake of comfort and convenience, knowing full well that you will have less money over time because of this, and being ok with that. As long as you earn enough money to be able to afford it, there’s nothing wrong with that, but you should be honest with yourself about what’s luxury consumption vs. a necessity, and not try to rationalize what is fundamentally just paying money for comfort and convenience with arguments like “what if my bus service someday gets cut?”.
“Relying on transit promotes economic instability for most people. How will I know my bus service won’t get cut? Or my rent won’t go up 20%?”
How do I know my property tax won’t go up? Or gas or car repairs? Or that my refrigerator won’t stop working or the roof leaks and I have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to replace it? A flat $109 per month for a transit pass gives more stability and is more affordable than volatile $500-1000 car costs.
tacomee, I guess you have a choice about whether you depend on transit. A lot of people don’t, like me, but I have time to devote to advocacy to help make sure transit remains a priority for politicians. Fortunately, the people who understand how cities work understand that transportation—including good transit, pedestrian, and bike infrastructure—underlies every successful city.
> Owning a house is the American Dream
Tacommee, how about you explain the “American Reality” that single family housing only means forcing many Americans and their children to leave their region/state and see how many really love your idea
Skylar,
Let me tell you about the ghost of 409. Pierce Transit route 409… ran from the transit center on 72nd to the warehouse district in Sumner. Lots of dudes from my neighborhood rode the bus to their warehouse jobs…. and then “BAM”! The route was cancelled (2009 I believe). I would never advise planning on using transit if it’s your only means of getting to work.
Now let’s look at the T-line light rail in Tacoma. Supposed to have run every 10 minutes, cut back to 12 week days, 20 minutes on the weekends. It’s only a matter of time before 12 minutes drops to 15 minutes, 30 on weekends. T-line has no future really, right? It’s just less riders and slow death.
There are people on this board who believe Metro won’t cut back like that in Seattle… but those people would be totally wrong. It’s only a matter of time before “work from home” and a recession double team Metro into pulling back. The City has a deficit problem right now… imagine if Trump tanks the National economy next year? Another heavy round of inflation would hit Metro hard. Then what?
Then let’s look at renting vs. buying. Anybody who owned a home the last 20 years of increasing prices was a big, big winner. Renters? Not so much.
So if you’re renting and riding transit…. you don’t win when the economy is good….. and you lose when the economy is bad. You take all of the risk, and win none of the rewards.
Over the last 20 years, America pulled a huge scam and on young people. We conned young people into big student loans and didn’t let them buy houses with reasonable mortgages. Nevermind…. you can just rent forever and take transit! I’m calling bullshit here. Skylar, you deserve to buy a house and build generational wealth. Don’t buy into the bullshit Lefty Life downgrades.
@tacommee
Ah yes those famously affordable single family homes right?
Mike makes a good point that if the goal is to have financial certainly, car ownership creates a lot of financial uncertainty. At any time, something in the car can break, causing a big repair bill. Or, you might have an accident that isn’t entirely covered by insurance. Even if you never have an accident, auto insurance companies are known to jack up rates because they can, just like landlords do. The cost of gas is subject to random, unpredictable spikes. The list goes on and on.
In the meantime, as long as you have the financial means to buy a car at any time you are never truly transit dependent. Even if your bus service gets axed, you can always buy the car then, but no reason to pay for the car pre-emptively, just in case your bus service someday gets axed.
There you go: put your car money into savings, and then you can buy a car any time you want to, or enjoy the investment if not.
Of course that only works if you have other transportation available.
If you want to find out what people want for transportation, let the market decide.
I don’t think that works very well. You quickly get a tragedy of the commons situation. You also have class problems (clear in this video and prevalent throughout this country as well). You can try and tax gasoline and add tolls to pay for the “true cost” of using the automobile but such taxes are inevitably regressive and controversial. You are essentially charging this generation for the mistakes of our ancestors. I don’t blame anyone for buying a car in say, Lynnwood. Quite often it is the only decent way to get around. The problem is that we made Lynnwood quite affordable and places like Seattle very expensive. People often live in suburbia not because they want to drive a long ways to work every day but because it is the only place they can afford. Changing that could take decades.
I’m not saying I am against gas or carbon taxes (I think they should be a lot higher) but people also need alternatives. We need to provide much better transit in the city and the suburbs.
I agree about road expansion. It shouldn’t happen unless a lot of people vote for it (and I don’t think it should happen). The 509/167 expansion was stupid. So is the new bridge over the Columbia. With 405 my understanding is that they are just adding HOT lanes. I would prefer they just take a lane (it is much cheaper) but this is better than adding a general-purpose lane.
The I-405 FEIS only specified adding 2 General Purpose in each direction between Tukwila and Bothell (SR522).
The Bellevue to Renton segment is being worked on first in what was referred to as “lane balancing”. That’s because the segment north of Bellevue already had been expanded prior to the study and they could wait a little longer for their 4 lanes.
How WSDOT is interpreting GP lanes is the question. They definitely are considering the 2nd lane of the HOT lanes as one of them. That wasn’t studied in detail for the FEIS.
I haven’t been down I-405 to Renton in ages so I haven’t been able to see how they are executing that.
That is not how I interpret it. This is the northern section: https://wsdot.wa.gov/construction-planning/search-projects/i-405sr-522-vicinity-sr-527-express-toll-lanes-improvement-project and this is the southern section: https://wsdot.wa.gov/construction-planning/search-projects/i-405renton-bellevue-widening-and-express-toll-lanes-project. It looks like they are adding one lane and plan on having two HOT lanes each direction. Overkill in my opinion, but at least they are HOT.
I think they’re getting a bit squishy on the “2 GP lanes” definition, with the hot lanes.
Which is great!
Plus I love that the toll is up to what, $18 now for the end to end trip?
On i405 between Bellevue to Renton it’s currently 1 hov lane and 2 general lanes in each direction. They are adding 1 toll lane and converting the existing hov to toll lane as well for 2 toll lanes
https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/f15e5c6e-df9e-11e7-a9ef-47f49177639e.jpg?d=375×630
You can see the above diagram
Thanks for the link WL.
Remember, the EIS didn’t get into detail. The cost/benefit analysis treated the ‘new’ lanes as available to SOVs. I wonder if they still had to do any property takes through the Kennedale Neighborhood?
@jim
Im a bit confused what exact eis you’re talking about. The original one was done in 2002, afterwards they added an addendum one for adding the toll lanes
https://wsdot.wa.gov/sites/default/files/2021-11/I405_RecordOfDecision_Final.pdf
That’s the document.
Look on page 15 and 16.
That’s where they compare elements in each alternative
Alternative 3 is what was chosen.
The last row on page 15 has 2 GP lanes,
The first row on the next page shows “Express lanes” (GP or HOT).
Notice what columns are checked.
@Jim
> Alternative 3 is what was chosen.
Part’s of alternative 3 brt was chosen but also “The Selected Alternative would widen I-405 by up to two lanes in each direction”
But anyways that was just the 2002 EIS. There were later EIS in 2008, 2018, 2020 for the express lanes. if you want to read the addendums
https://wsdot.wa.gov/construction-planning/major-projects/i-405sr-167-corridor-program
There’s
I-405 SR 522 Vicinity to SR 527 Express Toll Lanes Improvement Project (2020-21)
I-405 Downtown Bellevue Vicinity Express Toll Lanes Environmental Assessment (2018)
I-405 Tukwila to I-90 Vicinity Express Toll Lanes Environmental Assessment (2018)
Attachment A the transportation discipline shows them adding the toll lanes.
I mean most of it isn’t really that different from the original EIS as it’s just changing from general lane to a toll lane.
I can’t help but think when I hear the statements about how the metro works only for long trips that this sounds a lot like “build the spine” type thinking. After all, from the perspective of many people out in Lynnwood or Everett, light rail for trips like Ballard->UW or Queen Anne to First Hill is a waste of money because no one will go through the trouble of driving to a rail station and parking their car in a giant garage (because, in their mind, that’s the only way to access light rail) just to ride a train 2 miles. In their mind, the only trips that make the access overhead worth it is when the trip is very long…like Everett to downtown Seattle.
Of course, this line of thinking has many flaws, starting from the fact that people in places like London, Paris, or New York ride subways for short distances all the time. But, for people with a very suburban mindset, the thought of that being possible just doesn’t compute.
Their “long trips” are 7 kilometers or 4 miles. That’s the distance of downtown to the U-District, or Bellevue Downtown to Redmond Tech or Mercer Island. Not Seattle to Lynnwood or Issaquah to Bellevue (three times longer), much less Seattle to Everett or Tacoma (six times longer).
Subways have a sweet spot for trips of 3-15 miles. That’s right within the Indian model, the UDistrict-downtown Link trunk, Lynnwood-Federal Way-Redmond Link, and subways all over the world.
We shoudn’t take “long” meaning “longer than two miles” to be “ultra-long” or “epic length”.
My interpretation of the video was the narrator claiming that 7 kilometers was too short a distance for a subway to be effective, due to the time overhead in having to ride a rickshaw to and from it in both directions; that for a subway to work, it had to be a much longer distance, like Everett to downtown Seattle.
They are basically talking about two different things although they are somewhat related. The problem with the trip he was taking is a “last mile” problem. He could take the subway but then he has to walk too far to get to the subway and walk too far to get back. There is little in the way of connecting bus service. It is a network problem not that different than ours. It is basically the opposite of what Vancouver has.
The other problem is more subtle and perhaps overblown. Subways have a “sweet spot” as Mike put it, but it depends a bit on everything else (frequency, distance to the platform, distance from the station to the destination, etc.). With old subways (Paris or New York) they have a lot of stations and they were built cut and cover (which means they are close to the surface). It is quite reasonable to walk down a few stairs, wait a couple minutes and catch the train a mile (or less) to your destination. It is also easy to see the opposite. You have a really deep tunnel with an infrequent train and not that many stations. It takes a while to get to the platform, you have to wait a long time and it is unlikely that you will be close to your destination. The subway may work for short trips, but very few.
In the case of India I get the impression that most of the tunnels were built with boring machines and that many of the stations are fairly deep. I also think it is relative. Delhi, for example has a metro that has over 200 stations and carries over 4 million people a day. Coverage can’t be that bad. It is just that the city is enormous and without a decent bus system it struggles. Smaller cities (that are still very large) may have much smaller metros (I don’t know).
Cost may also be a factor although my understanding is that they have variable fares. It still wouldn’t surprise me if some people feel like it isn’t worth riding the metro unless you save a lot of time (which would require a long trip).
“My interpretation of the video was the narrator claiming that 7 kilometers was too short a distance for a subway to be effective”
My interpretation was 7 km was where it starts to be effective.
The 7 km is just anecdotal. Here is a snippet from the transcript:
so my home is about 7 km from my office if I commute via Metro then first
I’ll have to catch an EA that will take me to the metro station from where I’ll
board the Metro cross three stations and then get on a sharing EA that will drop me at the nearest Junction to my office which is another 200 M of walk this whole journey will cost me some 40 rupe and quite a lot lot of energy so instead of doing this cumbersome commute I simply book a bike …
The sentence appears to be a run-on because of how Google generated the transcript. From a search this is the only mention of 7 km. The transit consultant actually mentions a much larger distance (15 km):
the second key factor is that the trip distances are long so when you have long distances over 15 km metros work brilliantly because there is a substantial amount of walking or accessing a Metro that is required and to offset that unless overall trip length is very high like 15 km or more uh you Metro doesn’t actually turn out to be the fastest mode from door to door
But again, this implies a long walk to actually access the metro. I don’t think Gali is suggesting that the metro can’t work for trips that are shorter. It is just that the metro really doesn’t get a huge number of riders until the trips start being really long. Otherwise it isn’t worth the hassle. It isn’t surprising in the least that other options are faster. New York City has notoriously bad traffic yet people have been taking cabs for decades. This is for a city that has stations close to the surface and coverage that is quite good (and a main area that is quite linear).
I really wouldn’t read too much into the numbers, other than they seem quite depressing. Normally shorter trips dominate with a metro. For example with the Paris Metro: The average distance people usually ride in a single trip with public transit is 10.8 km (6.7 mi)*. This is average which means lots of people take much shorter trips. But that isn’t fair to India. The Paris Metro is one of the finest in the world and city itself it relatively compact. I really think there is nothing wrong with the various metros and the fact that it only seems to get longer trips is simply a symptom of the overall transit problem in India: the buses suck. To me that is the big takeaway. They really need to invest in the bus system instead of hoping that the metros will do all the work.
*Wikipedia
Thanks Ross. To be clear, 15 km is 9.3 miles or the distance from Westlake station to Shoreline South, South Bellevue, south of Rainier Beach, or south of White Center.
Or from downtown Bellevue to Little Saigon, north Renton, Totem Lake, Marymoor Village station, or Lake Sammamish State Park.
Well, a lot of people ride Link for shorter distances than that. Everywhere between downtown and Roosevelt is bustling, and to Beacon Hill and Rainier Valley are no slouches either.
And Link has unusually wide station spacing, which makes it less suitable for short trips and a long walk between stations. Yet still it’s used for 1-6 mile trips. So the transit planner may have overestimated. Or India’s extreme density and congestion make it even harder to get to stations.
Maybe we’re still misinterpreting the distance thresholds or the AI summary isn’t reliable. I’ll watch the video again and note what they say.
Besides distance, employment and activity density also plays a big factor in urban rail usefulness. It may be a bigger factor. If central employment is more dispersed like Houston or Phoenix, rail ridership will be lower. A related factor is the cost of daylong parking too.
Seattle features a pretty dense Downtown employment district and so does Bellevue. These places are more like Midtown and Lower Manhattan, and Downtown Chicago as well as San Francisco’s Financial District. Workers both near and far will ride transit to reach jobs in dense employment districts.
On the other hand, the Microsoft campus or Boeing plants aren’t in standard dense Downtowns so they’re less likely to be good for rail.
No 2 Line station currently gets over 1600 weekday average boardings. That’s likely because the line’s distance isn’t currently very long and that there aren’t many buildings with expensive parking. (It is curious that Redmond Technology has more average weekday boardings than Downtown Bellevue does but that may be due to having a parking garage or some sort of bus transfer demand.)
I’m not sure how employment density looks in India. The major cities have some skyscrapers but the skyscraper districts may be less dense and extensive compared to other comparable-sized metros elsewhere.
“It is curious that Redmond Technology has more average weekday boardings than Downtown Bellevue”
I’m one of those. I transfer at Redmond Tech to the 245 going south. I used to transfer at Bellevue TC between the 550+B or 550+226. I’ve been surprised that I’ve never used Bellevue Downtown station after exploring it the first day. South Bellevue just has a better Link+550 transfer, and Redmond Tech is a good transfer, and I haven’t been to downtown Bellevue specifically for anything since the 2 Line started.
“the skyscraper districts may be less dense and extensive”
That has been a longstanding complaint about Mumbai, that the severe height restrictions are more suited for Kirkland in the 1970s than a city of millions, and that has forced widespread sprawl since the businesses and residential units have to go somewhere. It feels like Indian cities are like suburban King County but without universal cars, and with a large number of people packed into the residences
Or was it Shanghai instead of Mumbai? Or both?
Drove the wife to work DT today. Took the express lanes since the regular lanes were slow.
Traffic getting off at Mercer and at Stewart was horrible. Worst I’ve seen. Backed up almost all the way to the Ship Canal Bridge. And today is Monday. Normally Mondays and Fridays are light traffic days.
Then it occurred to me – this is the first real day of Amazon being 100% in the office 5 days per week. And it really showed.
I suspect Link was heavier than normal too. But thank gawd we have it so we have at least one traffic free option. Because I saw at least one Metro bus stuck in the backup, and it was barely even moving.
Now if we can just get Full ELE open so we have more capacity. Because if today was any indication, we are going to need it. And need it soon.
The Times said downtown foot/car traffic was still light last week, even with bundled-up Amazonians dashing into/out of the offices but not doing anything else downtown. Still, it may take a few weeks or longer for a clear pattern to emerge.
What/where is Amazon’s footprint in downtown? I wouldn’t think of an Amazonian going downtown other than for transit. Downtown, unfortunately, is still on life-support
Amazon owns several (potentially “many” depending on how you count) large buildings in SLU, which is generally considered part of downtown in these discussions.
@Mike Orr,
“ The Times said downtown foot/car traffic was still light last week”
Yep. But don’t believe the Seattle Times click bait. Last week was a holiday week, with New Years Day squarely in the middle on a Wednesday. Most people would just take the whole week off. Particularly if they were dreading the whole RTO thing.
So this week will be more telling than last, and it is telling a completely different picture.
Can we just get Full ELE open ASAP.
“Downtown” is ambiguous, but I was referring to Amazon’s the cluster of buildings in the Denny Triangle and SLU.
“Downtown” can varyingly mean Yesler Way to Stewart Street, Yesler Way to Denny Way, Yesler Way to Lake Union, or south to Weller Street. Thus it may or may not include Belltown, the Denny Triangle, SLU, or the International District.
The eastern boundary might be I-5, Broadway, or 12th Ave.
The city’s recent marketing term for greater downtown is “Center City”. This definitely goes out to Valley Street, Weller Street, and either Broadway or 12th.
@jordan
People are using downtown in two different contexts.
There’s the “larger downtown” from belltown to Westlake to pioneer square and cid. This is the more typical one. This would include part of the Amazon offices. Slu isn’t quite included but it’ll impact traffic around the same.
While others sometimes are referring to the “downtown core” specifically around Westlake. Usually for articles around crime
@Mike Orr,
I was going into downtown proper. Pretty much directly into the core. But the traffic was a complete CF at both the Mercer and Stewart exits SB, as I stated.
As to what the Seattle Times meant when they said “downtown”, who knows. But whether they meant to include SLU or not, the point is the same. Traffic was really heavy today. Much more than normal.
Heavy traffic like this is only going to lead to more demand for Link heading into “downtown”.
The Times was specifically referring to the blocks around Amazon’s building entrances, where workers largely didn’t go to restaurants or stores. I don’t remember whether the article used the word “downtown”. I just associated Lazarus’ experience with the Times’ experience. I called Amazonville “downtown”, which perhaps wasn’t precise and not how I’d usually phrase it. I’d usually say “Amazon is in SLU”.
ELE’s going slumming in SLU? Who knew?
I’ve been to India three times: twice to Bangalore and once to Mumbai. Their buses and trains are beyond capacity. It was standing room only every time I went. Mumbai has commuter-style trains that ran pretty effectively and efficiently. There was hardly any slowing. The downside was the frequency. Service was every 15-20 minutes when it should be every 3-5 minutes.
I took a bus from outside of Bangalore to its airport. In ideal conditions, the trip should only take 3 hours. But it took 4 hours with the last hour moving through gridlocked traffic.
Aside from the transportation issues, India is a mind-blowing place that I recommend visiting : )
Any updates on Montlake Blvd Transit Station opening? It’s supposed to be sometime January 2025.
When I was last there, I saw a sign that said February. Why it’s taking so long, I have no idea. The sidewalks are open. The fences are down. All that’s missing is a pole in the ground with a “bus stop” sign. Why the sign pole has to take so long, and why they can’t use one of their temporary “bus stop” cones in the meantime, I have no clue.
@asdf2,
I have no idea why it is taking Metro so long to open those stations. Maybe Metro is deferring to SDOT to tell them when it is OK to open? Who knows.
However, I did walk across the new bicycle bridge over Sr-520 the other day. Very impressive, as is the new bicycle tunnel under Montlake Blvd so that the bicyclists don’t need to wait at a signal to cross.
Most of the bicycle infrastructure is now open and in use. So whoever is responsible for the bike lanes is definitely doing a better job getting things open compared to whoever is responsible for the Metro bus stops.
I’d promote the person responsible for the bike lanes. Job well done.
I have no idea why it is taking Metro so long to open those stations.
Maybe Sound Transit is in charge. ST buses use that stop as well and ST has a reputation for doing things rather slowly. (I’m kidding.)
I’m not sure where the stop is you are talking about but it is quite possible it is owned by the state (and not the city) and they haven’t officially finished the project and allowed the agencies to put a bus stop there. It is highly unlikely it is owned by Metro or ST, so they can’t actually add a stop.
Had dinner with the sister-in-law last night in Edmonds. She doesn’t own a car and was bemoaning how hard it is to get to Redmond to visit her friends who live there.
The sister-in-law lives in Shoreline, so her friends drive over to pick her up and then take her back to Redmond for the evening. Then they drive her back home at the end of the day. So 2 RT’s across the Lake (they take SR-520) and a total of 4 tolls paid. The sister-in-law says it sucks for her friends so she doesn’t visit often.
So I told her about DRLE. She was shocked. She had never heard of it before and didn’t know that she will be able to take a train from her house at North Shoreline Station direct to downtown Redmond. And she was even more shocked to learn that it should be all open by the end of this year.
And the kicker? Her friends live in an idyllic SFH in a nice little suburban development, but their home is only 0.41 miles as the drone flys from the Downtown Redmond Station. And the street grid aligns to make it a nearly direct walk from the station. So it is a nearly perfect transit situation for her.
So she was very happy, and she will be one of those Link riders who will be making new non-work trips on Link once Full ELE opens. Better for her, and more Link ridership!
Good all-around. Now if we can just get opening dates for DRLE and Full ELE. That will make her even happier.
Come on Goran. Just get ‘er done.
“… bemoaning how hard it is to get to Redmond.”
Except it’s not hard to get from Shoreline to Redmond. It’s a just two-seat ride. Link+545.
Or Link+542.
Yeah, it really depends on what part of Shoreline and what part of Redmond. If you are going from somewhere close to Link to somewhere served by the 542 it about an hour: https://maps.app.goo.gl/kj5y9F7qhNAN5uuX6. If you are going from somewhere else in Shoreline to somewhere else in Redmond it can take a while (https://maps.app.goo.gl/hpM6dDwpxmKCvNQ16).
Link really isn’t going to change that. She can avoid a transfer but she won’t get there any faster than she could today.
Link to 542 should save around 15 minutes compared with Link the whole way around (when it opens). The transfer is quite bad right now though since the bus runs at 30 minute frequency
“ She can avoid a transfer but she won’t get there any faster than she could today.”
The transfer step in the example is a problem. ST Route 545 doesn’t connect at UW Station. It also only runs every half hour today. Its fate will be changed with full ELE and a new ST 542 will run from UW instead. However that route won’t connect to Downtown Bellevue and will travel on 520 to Downtown Redmond instead. Metro Route 270 (271 path today) will instead run every 15 minutes and go to Downtown Bellevue.
Also, transfers at UW Station take time. The station is very deep. If one escalator is out, it takes even longer to transfer. So the combination of waiting a longer time for a bus to the Eastside with the station circulation time uncertainty may inspire someone to just stay on the train. (Note too that the second wait is a bigger hassle going to the Eastside than coming from the East side as UW to Shoreline on Link will have both 1 Line and 2 Line trains or 4-5 minute service!)
Finally, a Stride 2 + Stride 3 in a few years may be a good choice depending on the end point in Shoreline.
I think that in many cases just staying on 2 Line will be easier and possibly faster when the transfer hassle and second wait are added in headed to the Eastside yet possibly slower when returning from the Eastside.
But as others say, it really matters where the end points are and what time the trip is being made. And having several options when the full 2 Line opens is a wonderful thing!
Because ST has had many recent service disruptions and escalator/ elevator disruptions, a savvy traveler may end up choosing the best path for the trip based on realtime escalator, elevator and frequency status.
@Sam,
Yes, she could trade her fast, reliable, 1-seat ride with friends, music, and singing, for a slower, less reliable, 2-seat ride with strangers and no singing.
Or she could just stay home and talk to her fiancée on the phone.
Lately she has been opting to just stay home and talk to her fiancée on the phone.
But now she is also happy about the prospect of a fast, reliable, 1-seat ride to DT Redmond on Link.
@John D,
Yes, in the future she could potentially save 15 minutes by taking an unreliable 2-seat ride. The downside being that she could actually lose 30 minutes on the transfer.
But she is not a transit gambler, she will take the reliable, 1-seat ride every time. Most people would.
And the other consideration is that she is a bit of a night owl. So the prospect of waiting 30 minutes on the sidewalk, in DT Seattle, late at night, and alone, while surrounded by people doing the fentanyl flop, is not something that interests her.
And she is young, slightly built, and unarmed.
And the transfer to the 542 isn’t much better. Remember, that is where the Metro operator recently got stabbed to death.
She is going to wait for Link.
The transfer step in the example is a problem. ST Route 545 doesn’t connect at UW Station.
Irrelevant. The transfer step I showed involved the 542 (which does connect at the UW Station).
However that route won’t connect to Downtown Bellevue and will travel on 520 to Downtown Redmond instead.
Which is where she is headed. By the way this is what the 542 does today.
Also, transfers at UW Station take time.
Yes, and that is incorporated in the Google time estimate.
If one escalator is out, it takes even longer to transfer.
Yes, and if Link is running infrequently south of the UW or breaks down on the way it takes even longer. Stuff happens.
So the combination of waiting a longer time for a bus to the Eastside with the station circulation time uncertainty may inspire someone to just stay on the train.
Of course, but that is different than the idea that rounding the horn via the train will be the fastest option. It is common for people to prefer a one-seat ride even if it is a bit slower. No one is arguing that taking the train will be more convenient. We are arguing it won’t be faster.
And the transfer to the 542 isn’t much better. Remember, that is where the Metro operator recently got stabbed to death.
No it isn’t. Enough with the anti-bus propaganda. It isn’t like Link is immune to violent behavior or people don’t die in traffic accidents every day.
The downside being that she could actually lose 30 minutes on the transfer.
So your basic argument is that they should run the buses more often. I agree.
@Lazarus
I am simply letting you know that she can save a significant amount of time by transfering to the 542. The bus takes 30-35 minutes from U District; taking Link from there will be about 50 minutes. Staying on Link is fine if she doesn’t want to transfer. Your post reads like a Seattle Times comment.
@John D,
I’m glad you know how my sister-in-law thinks, because I actually know her and I still can’t figure it out half the time.
But I can assure you, she is not going to do the 2-seat ride with the potentially long transfer wait late at night. That is precisely why she doesn’t do the Link-545/542 thing today. Because she doesn’t want to do the 2-seat ride.
So, ya, maybe the 1-seat ride on Link will be a little bit slower. But it is a sure thing, and it is safe. She is very excited about having the new Link option.
And the 542 ends at the Redmond Transit Center anyhow, which is a bad fit for her needs. The Downtown Redmond LR Station is much better located for where she needs to go.
Maybe ST will change the 542 when DRLE extension opens, but they could just as well eliminate all the redundant 500 series routes. Or maybe give it the 20 treatment, make some changes, let it whither on the vine for a while, and then kill it. Only time will tell.
The takeaway is a lot of people still don’t know about Link or about existing Link+bus opportunities. It has always been like that regardless of the project or mode.
This is also why long-term ridership isn’t clear immediately when an extension opens. It takes months or years for people one by one to realize the new feature exists, or that it would help their trip, and to try it. People who would like to live in those areas and use that transit can’t just terminate a lease mid-term or sell a house or yank their kids to a different school immediately: they do it one by one over months or years. Other people don’t live in the region yet but will in the future, and may be attracted to that station area if sufficient transit exists.
@Lazarus
Why do you feel the need to be so abrasive? I’m not trying to argue with you here; I’m also excited for the full Line 2 to open.
Once East Link opens the 542 will get more frequency and will be extended through downtown Redmond to Bear Creek P+R. It’s not a redundant route; the 542 is significantly faster than Link from U District to Redmond.
https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/programs-and-projects/east-link-connections
My experience with Redmond Tech station is an example. I’ve lived in Bellevue or been associated with it for fifty years but I never went north of NE 24th Street much because there wasn’t much there. So I knew Redmond Tech station was there but I couldn’t see myself using it. Before the 2 Line I had to transfer at Bellevue TC to a long milk-run bus because there was no express-level solution in Overlake. When the 2 Line started I tried transferring in the familiar Overlake Village to the 221, but I found the walk long and the bus stop minimal and uncomfortable. So I backed into transferring at Redmond Tech to the 245, which has a much better transfer and the route is more frequent (although it leaves a longer last-mile walk). Asdf2 suggested taking the 545 to Redmond Tech from Seattle, and that had literally never occurred to me — because I was so unfamiliar with Redmond Tech station or the area north of 24th.
This is similar to Lazarus’s relative’s situation, and hundreds of thousands of other people who aren’t regular transit riders.
Another story. I’d been going to the Ballard farmers’ market occasionally for years on the bus, from southwest Capitol Hill (8+15/18). This was in the late 2000s before the Broadway farmers’ market became year-round or RapidRide D started. My friend who lived a few blocks away wanted to go to the market, but he was used to driving everywhere so he insisted on driving. After several weeks of this, I got tired of circling for parking at the Ballard end, so I started getting a parking space in a pay lot (which he was too cheap to do), and I finally convinced him to try taking the bus with me. He didn’t have an ORCA card and didn’t think he’d ride enough to justify one, so that was one issue. But we finally went there on the bus. And he said, “Wow, this is convenient!”, and I told him how frequently the buses run (every 15 minutes), and we took Metro to the market ever after. He still drove everywhere else, but at least I didn’t have to get in a car, and he had a seed planted for possible transit use in the future.
ST has already said it will shift some of the 545’s resources to the 542 when the full 2 Line opens. It’s not redundant any more than the 271. A curving or U-shaped rail route has some trip pairs it’s competitive for, and others where a bus route is much faster. UW-Redmond is one of those pairs optimal for an express bus. So when the full 2 Line opens and the 542 is increased, we should see ridership increase on both services, for people making different trip pairs or tradeoffs. There’s also all the new housing going into downtown Redmond, which should increase ridership on both services.
The takeaway is a lot of people still don’t know about Link or about existing Link+bus opportunities. It has always been like that regardless of the project or mode.
I agree. This gets into the whole notion of a culture for transportation. The default for a lot of Americans is to drive. They may explore taking transit for a while but if it doesn’t work for them they tend to ignore it. So even if it gets better they just drive.
But history has shown (in every city) that cultures change. If you build something works really well for a lot of people then lots of people will use it. Vancouver had the same driving culture as Seattle and yet has a lot more people taking transit then it did not that long ago. A lot of people come from other parts of the country and are often much more open to using transit (at least at the time they arrive) because they don’t have a preconceived notion of what it is like.
It’s not a redundant route; the 542 is significantly faster than Link from U District to Redmond.
Exactly. At the same time there will be people who decide to follow the loop around once they are already on Link. Yeah, maybe making the transfer is a bit faster but staying on the trains is easier. I could also see people deciding at the last second. You get to the station at Northgate (or Shoreline) and take the first train that arrives. It is the one to Redmond so you stay on it. If it is the train to the South End you get off at the UW and catch the bus.
I think the big takeaway is that this isn’t a huge game-changer for folks at the UW or to the north. It is for people downtown. The trip from Downtown Seattle to Downtown Bellevue will be better than ever (and much better than it is now). It will be as fast as if they had run an express to Downtown Bellevue (which for some reason ST didn’t want to run). No more slogging on Bellevue Way and no more surface running through downtown (which has been a problem since they kicked the buses out years ago). The same goes for stations in the south end of Seattle although they will likely take the 7 (or 106) and connect to East Link at Judkins Park.
With trips to Redmond it isn’t such a huge time savings though. The 545 is pretty fast. Depending on which stops you use I think it can be significantly faster in the middle of the day than the train. The train will be more frequent though.
“ I could also see people deciding at the last second.”
While there are personalities who learn one route and never deviate from what works, others are savvy enough to make choices based on factors other than average travel time. Maybe it’s weather. Maybe there is a friendly coworker on the same vehicle. Maybe the bus or train is overcrowded and they can’t get a seat. Maybe it’s dark or maybe the vehicle is an uncomfortable temperature. Maybe it’s smart phone reception or they don’t want to stop in the middle of reading to make a transfer. Maybe it is to avoid an out of service elevator. Maybe a bus gets stopped in traffic. Maybe there is a stadium event or an accident on the path.
Trying to proscribe only one single path involving transfers is simplistic thinking. Redundancy is good for transit! Let’s embrace the power of traveling when we have choices!
While there are personalities who learn one route and never deviate from what works, others are savvy enough to make choices based on factors other than average travel time.
Agreed. Until recently the fastest way to get from my house to the U-District was on the 73. I would walk to the bus stop and hopefully catch it. But if I saw a 347/348 headed to Northgate I would take that. I wasn’t going to wait around for the 73 unless I could see it (One Bus Away is not reliable enough).
With the 73 (and 347) now extinct I now take the 348 if I’m heading south. But if I’m heading the other way it depends. I get off at Northgate and I have three choices. I can take the 75 or 348 — they are about equal distance to my house. Or I can take the 61 — it is just a longer walk. I make up my mind at the last minute (after I get from the platform down to the street).
I think a lot depends on whether you are taking a regular trip (e. g. to work every day) or an unplanned trip. I’m retired so most of my trips are basically spontaneous. Once in a while I look at Google Maps to work out the timing if I have to be there at a particular hour but I basically just wing and make my decision based on when the vehicles arrive. Commuting is a different beast and people tend to be dialed in — they know exactly what to expect.
@John D,
Just to level set, the option of travel between Seattle and DT Redmond using Link+5xx exists today. Yet she chooses not to use it.
Why? Because she doesn’t want to do the 2-seat ride, and she doesn’t want to do the late night transfer in DT Seattle or the U District. Such concerns are common among the traveling public.
And it is not like she is somehow magically ignorant of the option, or is somehow stuck in a rut like some people on this blog want to assume. No, she is a young, tech savvy woman with multiple transit apps on her phone. She knows about the option, but she simply chooses not to do the 2-seat ride.
That won’t change in the future. If she avoids the 2-seat ride today, she will avoid it tomorrow too. It’s just that simple.
@Lazarus
I’m not sure what you are reading out of my comments. I’m not trying to say she needs to take the 542 even after the full line is complete, or that she should take the 542 today. In the long term it’s perfectly reasonable to skip the 542; it’s added overhead compared to just sitting on the train. And I would also try to avoid Link to 542 today because 30 minute frequency is awful when you are forced to transfer.
I am saying that the 542 is not a redundant route because it is much faster. I suspect that a lot of people will continue to take it when the frequency is bumped up to 15 minutes.
Man trapped inside driverless taxi circling parking lot.
https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c70e2g09ng9o
I’m still not convinced these things are going to be transit ready any time soon.
This is obviously a big glitch. It is worth noting that some “automated” cars have assistants. Basically a bunch of people somewhere in an office looking at computer screens responding to cars that notify them that something weird is going on. They then steer the vehicles until the computer is happy. It is far more likely that a bus — going on the same route today as it ran yesterday — will make the computer happy. Of course things come up, but it is much easier to deal with such problems then try and deal with an essentially limitless array of potential roads (and their associated quirks). These vehicles will be transit ready long before they are taxi ready. Whether society accepts that is a different story.
By “transit ready” and “these things” I was referring to the concept of using dark-driving taxis to do microtransit stuff.
Microtransit only makes sense after macrotransit has been fully built out (with automated vehicles) which will be a while.
My mother-in-law lives in Delhi, so I’ve had many chances to visit and use all forms of transportation. Some thoughts:
Delhi traffic is indeed horrendous. That said, it is odd that they use the Delhi metro as the central example for discussing the failures of India’s metro systems in terms of ridership. It’s gone from non-existent to the 9th busiest system in the world (more daily passengers than NYC) in twenty years. That’s mind-boggling. Nothing outside of China (and maybe Seoul?) has grown anywhere near that fast.
Regardless, the last mile problem is indeed the big issue for even more ridership. What’s interesting to me about the video is that it reflects a framing that I find common there – there’s almost no discussion of walking as a potentially important component of the mix. And that’s because, as things stand now, walking there is unpleasant, dangerous, and at times downright toxic. I suspect the folks there all take this so for granted (I know my in-laws all do) that they don’t even think to talk about it. If you haven’t been to South Asia it’s hard to comprehend the intensity of this. (I’ve been to big poor cities elsewhere in the developing world, e.g. Lima and Nairobi, and South Asian cities really are a different league). Once you leave the neighborhood streets, you are stuck walking along major arterials where the narrow sidewalks are broken beyond recognition, and yet still are covered with every form of humanity engaging in every activity imaginable – sleeping, hawking, begging, pooping, etc. The car fumes are awful, even if it’s not during toxic pollution season. On top of all that, there are so many gated communities that what could be a short walk to the nearest station becomes a long one.
Tackling all of this feels insurmountable, but there are lots of small things they can be doing to make things better here and there, and chip away at the issue, and which don’t cost a lot. And Delhi is so big and dense that every tolerable walking corridor you carve out will bring in 10s of thousands of new riders. Is it a panacea? No. But I wish folks would realize that it’s a pretty important tool in the toolbox that they’re mostly ignoring.
I just cleared this comment from the spam filter – sorry it got stuck in there for so long!