Planned disruptions of the Link 1 Line continue: Shuttle buses will replace train service between U District and Capitol Hill stations this weekend (Feb. 1-2). This weekend is focused on repairing the overhead wire near UW Station which was broken in October.

Transit and Streets:

Land Use and Housing:

Commentary and Miscellaneous:

This is an Open Thread. Are you interested in lending your voice to the Blog as a volunteer writer? Contact us.

97 Replies to “Midweek Roundup”

  1. First he went after spending under Biden’s Infrastructure Act, and now he has issued a more general, across the board freeze (SS and Medicare exempted):

    https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-pause-federal-grants-aid-f9948b9996c0ca971f0065fac85737ce

    I’m sure this will wipe out a whole chunk of transit spending. I’d be worried if I had new projects in the pipeline.

    Thank gawd ST is almost over the finish line on DRLE, Full ELE, and FWLE. Those projects at least will get delivered,

    1. Yeah, if that new bridge over the Columbia was ever going to get built, that’s definitely just evaporated.

      2. @Joey,

        Ya, the crazies in Clark County really did a number on themselves. They scuttled the original CRC proposal because it contained a bridge, LR, and tolls (socialism!).

        But what they are likely to get instead is no bridge, no LR, and tolls (various congestion pricing options under study in Portland).

        So score a perfect zero for Clark County elected officials.

      3. The last CRC rendering seemed to have MAX going into the project area if going all the way through it. Was light rail finally accommodated or is it still excluded?

    2. “State agencies and early education centers appeared to be struggling to access money from Medicaid”

      This could affect elderly people in long-term care homes if it gets extreme. If they get evicted and become homeless, they couldn’t cope with living outside and would die.

    3. The rampage is against wokeism and transgender, so I don’t know if they’d really cut transit grants permanently in this pass. Transit can be seen as a basic service, and that predates the 2020s woke movement.

      1. No Mike. That’s just a pretext. This is about separation of powers. This is the order that invites an injunction, that puts the litigation on a path to the Supreme Court challenging the authority of Congress to direct federal spending. The woke-ism BS is just a tool to keep his mob so amped up that they help him complete his seizure of power. He doesn’t want some of the power, he wants ALL of the power. And what better way to get people to give up their rights willingly than getting them mad enough about someone else that they freely toss the rulebook that’s been keeping order for two centuries.

      2. @another engineer,

        I’m sure this will end up in front of Judge Cannon. That will end this craziness.

        Oh ya, never mind.

      4. “I’m sure this will end up in front of Judge Cannon.”

        The plaintiffs choose the court district. There are no Florida-specific ties, and this is a national policy affecting all states, so they can choose any federal court jurisdiction.

      5. Transit can be seen as a basic service

        That is a true statement, but the last time any Republican cared about “a basic service” was in the Eisenhower Administration. As I said to your scorn a few days ago on another thread, grants for POBS in a few cities that really need it in Red States will continue, but even Red States will get nothing for rail. It’s “socialism” to ride trains; Biden did that! They’ll deny FTA funding to any and all Blue States.

        I expect that the prophecies of doom for the “Interstate Bridge Replacement” are spot on as well, because Helicopter Don Benton scuppered it the first time. Trump appointed Helicopter Director of the Selective Service System which has been moribund since the early ’80’s, but he had Trump’s ear for a while.

        I think we need an “office pool” for the closest date for the formal announcement of the permanent cancellation of Federal Transit Administration grants for Washington State.

        I’m saying February 7th, 2025. Any takers?

      6. > formal announcement of the permanent cancellation of Federal Transit Administration grants for Washington State.

        Oh, the announcement will be sometime this year. Trump has announced that he’s opened the water pipelines from the PNW to CA. But those pipelines don’t exist.

        The actual cancellation is the real question.

      7. @Mike Orr It doesn’t matter that Trump isn’t crusading against transit… what another engineer wrote is correct: the goal is to break the federal government and shift power to the executive branch.

        This playbook started under Bush II (although it was limited to things like Homeland Security, Guantanamo, etc., after 9/11). “Woke-ism” is just the rallying cry and cover, just like “security” and “terrorism” was under Bush II.

        Trump wasn’t crusading against cutting off funding for cancer research, either, but his administration sure doesn’t care if that’s impacted due to these EOs and agency directives.

      11. For what it’s worth, as much as I can’t stand the crusade against “wokeism” in general, I did attend service restructure meetings both in 2015 (for upcoming U-link opening) and 2021 (for upcoming East Link opening), and noticed a huge change in emphasis for the worse, that many would call “wokeism”.

        For example, in 2015, they looked a little bit at race to make sure they were complying with the law, but the primary focus was on moving as many people as possible, as efficiently as possible, regardless of race. In 2021, however, listening to the spiel from King County Metro officials, I left the meeting feeling like, as a person who was neither disabled or of color, that my input did not matter, and also, that service was now all about coverage to areas with above-average percentages of BIPOC people, to the point where total ridership, or ridership among white people didn’t even matter. The fact that Seattle lost service hours to South King during the Northgate Link restructure was also a symptom of this mentality.

        In the ideal world, the Republican party’s crusade against wokeism would mean transit projects being evaluated for grant funding on the basis of maximizing the total riders per dollar, irrespective of race, rather than prioritizing routes that go out of their way to “chase” minority neighborhoods. However, everything I know about the Republican party says this best-case outcome has about a 0% chance of happening; much more likely, they simply don’t bother to fund any transit grants at all. After all, we all know that Elon Musk has a long history of tweets which oppose the very idea of transit (he wants everybody to ride his robotaxis instead).

      12. @asdf2,

        Yes, Metro’s focus around service delivery and route structure has changed drastically over the last decade. “Equity” has become Metro’s raison d’être, and such concerns have become the main concern in route selection.

        Theoretically that would put a great big target on Metro’s back with the Trump admin and the Repugnicans, but I don’t think Metro rises to the level that they will even notice. And locally and at the State level the Dems are in charge. So no worry there.

        If Metro sees its funding cut, it will probably be as a broad brush attack on transit funding. The Repugnicans tend to love cars, hate cities, and generally hate spending outside of the specific, narrow interests of their more rural constituency. All those things could put transit funding at risk.

        But Metro’s current focus on equity can certainly be galling. It was one of the reasons given in internal communications for deleting the #20. The clientele of that route was simply seen as too privileged and not diverse enough to justify retaining a route whose ridership was on the lower end of the scale. But in a more diverse neighborhood with lower income? Not an issue!

        I think this issue has contributed to Metro’s looming financial cliff, but with farebox recovery expected to drop below 8% this year, economic performance of a route hardly matters anymore.

      13. I think that Metro’s pendulum has swung too far. Yes, equity should certainly be a factor when deciding on routes and service levels. But it does seem that Metro has made it the primary factor, more important than maximizing overall ridership.

        Metro doesn’t make these choices in a vacuum though. Their policy goals come from the King County council. So it’s likely the council that would need to tell Metro to make any changes to their route scoring system.

      14. asdf2, thanks for bringing this up as it’s worth discussing openly. I’d draw a distinction between equity (distributing Metro service) and identity politics (obsessing over the ethnic makeup of a board or listening to only minority input).

        It’s unclear that any Northgate hours were intentionally shifted to South King County. The restructure was planned in a recession era when Metro didn’t have the hours/drivers to offer the full feeder service it intended. (That also affecte the 522 truncation.) Balducci questioned the convention of keeping restructure hours in the subarea rather than addressing global priorities, but it’s unclear that ever became policy or affected the final Northgate network. The rise of equity happened at the same time, and the increase in runs in South King County and South Seattle was more of a spontaneous decision than taking it out of Northgate. The East Link restructure doesn’t shift a lot of resources to Renton, just one all-day express.

        Equity-emphasis areas definitely deserve more transit to make up for past neglect, regardless of woke politics. They have relatively high ridership, more transit-dependent people, and more people working not downtown and not 9-5. So they score high on transit best practices alone. This argues for better local service and mid-level service, not stupid things like Link and Sounder to Everett and Tacoma for “equity”. More service on the 7, 36, 101, and 106 falls squarely into the “transit best practices” category. I’ve long thought the 3’s half-hourly tail is underservice and inequitable, so that’s something Metro hasn’t addressed.

        Equity isn’t just a Metro service thing. All levels of city, county, and state government in all Pugetoplis cities jumped on the bandwagon simultaneously. So I wouldn’t single out Metro.

      15. To be clear, I’m not saying that equity emphasis areas should be neglected. For instance, the 7 has very high ridership, and I think should have risen higher in the pecking order for RapidRide conversion than it did (probably instead of the F, which is a total joke of a route). But, I do believe that the ultimate goal of a transit agency should be to maximize total ridership, irrespective of race, so shifting service from high ridership routes to coverage routes, just because the coverage route includes neighborhoods with people of color in them, is a bad idea.

        In any case, I don’t think what goes on at the federal level will have material impact on King County Metro. The feds fund big capital projects, not operations, and Metro’s job is primarily operations. Sound Transit could be impacted, except ST3 scores so poorly, my understanding is that they wouldn’t be getting federal funding for it anyway, no matter who is in charge.

      16. “But, I do believe that the ultimate goal of a transit agency should be to maximize total ridership…”

        Good thing you aren’t in charge, then.

        You do understand that ridership is like money, right? The rich get richer. Those with good service, and therefore high ridership, have a stronger case to continue getting better service and higher ridership. And those that have been neglected in the past, with little or no service and therefore little to no ridership, continue to get passed over for service, because, ….drumroll…., their ridership sucks.

        You seem to get that you have bequeath a smidge for coverage routes. That’s very charitable.

        But I’m talking routes that could potentially be high ridership routes, but have never had the service to prove it, or allow the folks on those routes to trust transit enough to ride it.

      17. Part of aiming to maximize ridership *is* looking at the potential ridership of a corridor, not just what the ridership is right now. But, in evaluating a route’s potential ridership, you have to look at other stuff besides skin color. For example, the shear number of people that live or work next to the route is one obvious place to start. Then, there’s land use. In general, when neighborhoods are walkable and compact, that’s good for transit ridership – something which Seattle is and Kent simply isn’t. Of course, there’s also the element that a person with less money is more likely to ride, all else equal, because a car is a bigger financial burden to them, but you don’t have to look at race to take that into account – you can do that by simply looking at income level and ignoring race. But, even then, land use still matters. Even if many people are poor, you can’t just throw buses down in areas hostile to pedestrians and expect to get good ridership.

      18. “The feds fund big capital projects, not operations, and Metro’s job is primarily operations.”

        In 2023, the federal contribution towards Metro’s operating budget was about the same as towards the capital budget:
        https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/transit_agency_profile_doc/2023/00001.pdf

        In 2013 the numbers were larger, with more going to operations
        https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/transit_agency_profile_doc/2015/00001.pdf

      19. Race? We are talking about transit, those who have access, and those who don’t. Sure, historically poor service may correlate with race, but that is not what I am talking about.

    4. A silver lining is it could make the public aware that the federal government funds some essential things they wouldn’t want to be without.

    6. I expect the next fiscal federal budget will be a contentious one, which is controlled by Congress and the majority is thin in the house. And I can already see Republican infighting happening later this year as not all Republicans are going to play along with the president’s demands. Transit is fournately bipartisan issue that really isn’t that contentious compared to other parts of the government. But we’ll see.

  2. Oh, and there is another Eastside Transit video of DRLE testing. The LRV actually enters the video at about the 8 sec mark, but it starts in the upper left so it is hard to notice at first:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=39_vd0k-mMk

    But excellent job by the people at Eastside Transit. Good framing on this one.

  3. First look at the effects of congestion pricing on traffic in NYC. Pretty much all positive so far:

    https://www.nbcnewyork.com/new-york-city/congestion-pricing-impacts-fewer-cars-manhattan-fewer-crashes/6121447/?amp=1

    Congestion is down and safety is way up. Not bad at all.

    Pretty much the only people who are complaining are the people in New Jersey, but they always complain. And they shouldn’t have veto power over how New Yorkers govern themselves anyhow.

    Hopefully this becomes a model for other cities in America.

    1. The funniest part to me are the complaints that from drivers that they don’t want to pay the toll, so they “have” to take transit. Working as intended!

    2. > Hopefully this becomes a model for other cities in America.

      I wonder what would be the next likely city in america to add congestion pricing

      browsing online the cities that had formal congestion pricing (urban core not freeway) studies were: san francisco, chicago, los angeles, dc, portland, seattle, and boston. most of these plans were done just pre-covid around 2018.

      Out of those it seems chicago and boston had the most recent actual city meetings/officials discuss about congestion pricing

      https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2024-06-11/mayor-wu-says-congestion-pricing-is-still-an-option-in-boston

      https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-congestion-pricing-new-york-launches-program/3642185/

      > As New York moves forward with the program, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson says he is considering a congestion pricing plan for the city

      1. San Francisco makes the most sense to me. North of I-80 and east of Van Ness is a well-defined area that has great transit connections within it and to every other part of the City. Part of the funds raised could be used to provide photo passes to folks who live within the area that would be good on the Cable Cars. There are quite a few blocks along the Powell-Hyde line that really don’t have other transit because of the grades and tiny east-west streets.

        Boston is pretty similar, since downtown is on a peninsula, but few people drive into as it is already because everything is so historic that there are almost no parking garages. The Big Dig tunnel goes through it, but without a lot of access to the surface and there is an extension of I-90 that uses a tunnel as well to go around the south and east sides of downtown. So a smallish area on the peninsula would work in Boston.

        I don’t think it would work in Chicago because there is a LOT of north-south traffic that passes through. A toll zone would force a good portion of that traffic off Lakeshore Drive west to wherever the zone ended. Folks living there would not be happy.

        To make congestion pricing work best you need a peninsula (like the southern half of Manhattan, Boston’s or the northeast corner of San Francisco which has water on two sides at least. You really can’t have much “through” traffic or its diversion will wreck close-by neighborhoods.

      2. Yes, because the progenitor of modern congestion pricing, London, is famously peninsular.

      3. Yes, London doesn’t have a peninsula. What is does have is Renaissance-era streets in a tangle that forms the tolled zone. Again, there isn’t much parking there, so a good portion of the trips into the zone before the paywall were drivers passing through. Not all or even a majority, of course, but enough for whom the toll makes going around more attractive to make a difference.

        Again, the neighborhoods just outside the paywall are probably unhappy, but folks in Olde London Towne — especially the million or so people walking about — are really happy,.

      4. London has ten times more transit mobility freedom Pugetopolis does. Maybe not ten, but at least four. So not driving to inner London or across it is not as much of a burden as it would be here. Millions of people already don’t every day, and have rapid transit every 2-5 minutes most of the time. The congestion fee goes to giving them more transit access.

    3. Anyways for seattle i think focusing on tolling i5 hov lanes/reversible express lanes will make more sense than a cordon tolling around the downtown core. Or even toll the yale on ramp to free up denny way traffic

      1. Or even toll the yale on ramp to free up denny way traffic

        Yes! That is a great idea. It is simple. You aren’t completely closing the ramp. If there is no traffic (e. g. late at night) then people can use it for free (or for very little). You push traffic to Mercer, which is fine since there are no buses there.

      2. I agree with Ross; this may be one of those really really cheap! remediations that pays off a thousand-fold but never occurred to anyone until one person thought of it. Thank you, WL!

    4. Yeah, it has been used in a bunch of different cities around the world. About time we had it in the US. Maybe someday we will adopt the metric system :)

      Seriously though Manhattan is very well suited for it. I think it would be a lot more complicated in Seattle. Tolling I-90 makes sense (since 520 is tolled) and they have talked about it. But after that it gets complicated. Unless you toll a lot of different places you end up shifting people around. That may be fine in some cases (I really like WL’s idea of tolling the Yale on ramp) but gets tricky in a lot of others.

      1. SODO is the main issue, I think.

        West, you have the sound.

        East, you have I-5. Toll if you cross I-5. Toll if you exit I-5.

        North you have the ship canal. Toll Ballard (and use the money to replace it). Toll Fremont. Toll University. Toll Montlake.

        South, there are a lot of avenues that will be much harder to deal with. But not impossible.

      2. Residents inside the cordon are allowed to drive for free, I would guess. Though comprehensively and fairly charge for parking. If you don’t have a garage or driveway, you need to pay.

      4. Yeah, drawing the line to the south would not be easy or obvious. Otherwise the lines you suggest would work. It would create a weird situation where Magnolia is considered inside the “downtown core”. This means driving from Ballard to Magnolia would be considered a drive “into town”.

        I think you just don’t worry about it. You don’t need to have a cordoned off area. Toll various bridges because we need the money and it can help reduce congestion. That means tolling I-90 and 520 (which is already tolled) across the lake. Also toll all the bridges that cross the ship canal (as you suggested). They are all aging bridges and they are all congestion points. Toll the West Seattle Bridge. (They already toll the tunnel.)

        After that it gets messy. We have to look at whether it would be helping or hurting. For example we could toll SR 99 between Spokane Street and downtown, but that would likely push traffic to 1st and 4th. Do we want that?

        You also want to avoid charging people to go a few blocks where there is no obvious border. Charging to cross a bridge is obvious and intuitive even if it is a relatively small bridge (like Fremont). But let’s say you charge to cross I-90 in Seattle. That means if you go a few blocks on MLK or 23rd you get charged which hardly seems fair. This means any tolls on the south end would have to be handled delicately (as I described in the last paragraph).

      5. If you leave the stadiums out, and draw the line at Yesler, it’s pretty straightforward.

        Yeah but it also seems unfair. You basically charge people for driving within the Central Area. It means you get charged for a trip like this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/MNgZaFvK3LUjQuTJ8 but not a trip like this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/vZ9u6pNSGycpKJAQ7. This gets back to what I mentioned in my other comment. There isn’t a great way to handle the southern end. I think we have to avoid the idea of a cordoned area and just focus on spot tolling or at most an obvious line that is crossed (e. g. the ship canal).

      7. That’s Uber’s preference, which means where they could get an competitive advantage. That has nothing to do with reducing congestion, making streets more pedestrian-friendly, or not screwing over people in the adjacent neighborhoods who have few street alternatives vs going through downtown. Going from Uptown to Capitol Hill, the CD, or Costco? Drive north to Fremont, east to the University Bridge, go around to 12th, down to Beacon Hill, and west to 4th Avenue South.

      8. @Cam, if you draw the line around I-90 and the stadia, you get tolls on Alaskan, First, Occidental, Fourth, Sixth, and Airport Way. That feels like few enough streets to be workable.

      9. Rather than draw a box around downtown (like the Geekwire example), I would just do the following
        1. Toll I90 between Seattle & MI
        2. Toll I5 between I90 and 520
        3. Toll all the Ship Canal crossing

        I think this structure will be easier to comprehend by the public and technically easier to implement than a cordon pricing like Manhattan. Seattle has a problem of too many vehicles trying to pass through CBD (mostly on 5 & 99), not too many vehicles trying to get in/out of the CBD.

        1 & 2 would be collected by WSDOT and could fund long term maintenance of I5. #3 would be collected by SDOT and would fund long term maintenance of SDOT bridges.

      10. #4 Spokane Street Viaduct should also be tolled. That’s a massive unfunded maintenance issue for SDOT.

        Rather than try to copy NYC’s newfangled congestion pricing, SDOT should copy NYC’s century old pricing of bridges via the MTA Bridges and Tunnels

        SDOT should set tolls above the cost of State of Good Repair and invest the excess toll revenue into transit, which is what the MTA does and is what the Bay Area does with the Golden Gate bridge

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTA_Bridges_and_Tunnels
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Gate_Bridge,_Highway_and_Transportation_District

      11. I think it would be incredible if Seattle empowered someone to build new toll-funded infrastructure as voraciously as Robert Moses empowered himself and his Triborough Authority to build roads and bridges.

        (Suggested reading: The Power Broker)

      12. “Seattle has a problem of too many vehicles trying to pass through CBD (mostly on 5 & 99), not too many vehicles trying to get in/out of the CBD.”

        The afternoon congestion on 2nd and 4th, and Madison and Spring, the DennyWay and James Street freeway entrances, and on Pine Street and Broadway are just my imagination?

      13. No, those ramps are metered. If I5 itself wasn’t congested, the on ramps would clear much faster.

        Yes, of course central Seattle has high demand and plenty of congestion. My point was the greater source of congestion, and certainly the greater source of VMT, are vehicles passing through Seattle, so I would prioritize tolling the freeways over the local street grid.

      14. I’d add the Magnolia Bridge to the list of tolled bridges, with maybe some sort of exception for those working at the cruise ship terminal (taxis and tourists pay full price), the seafood place, or the marina.

      15. Magnolia residents would use Dravus or Emerson Street to avoid the toll?

        That could shrink support for keeping/replacing the Magnolia Bridge.

    5. I know everyone on here loves tolls. And in the case of New York, though flawed, congestion pricing is worth investing in. However, NYC is the ONLY place in America where congestion pricing should take place. Why? No other city in this country has a robust transit network from all corners of the region that offers service every 3-5 minutes, doesn’t require extensive transfers and has consistent reliability. Transit, in most American cities, is non-competitive to driving. It’s simply an overall poor experience.

      For example: if I live in Bothell/Mill Creek and work at Microsoft, there’s no direct service. I have to take the Green Line, walk across a freeway, take a bus to Totem Lake and another bus to Redmond.

      If I live in Kirkland and work in SLU, I have to take a bus to the UW and a very slow one to SLU.

      And we, as transit advocates, are gonna tell that’s better than the comfort of your own vehicle? There are many issues I agree with on this blog. Unfortunately, tolling is not one of them. We can’t force people to use crappy service and tell them it’s for everyone’s good.

      (sorry for the rant)

      1. It’s true that our public transportation system is not as robust as New York’s. However, cars cause a host of negative externalities in the areas they drive through including air pollution, noise pollution, water pollution, increased traffic congestion, and auto/bike/ped collisions. These externalities are mostly paid for by society at large rather than by the driver; gas taxes don’t even cover the full cost of road maintenance.

        Tolls are an efficient method to reduce congestion by eliminating superfluous vehicle trips, shifting mode share to more efficient options, and shifting the cost of externalities to drivers. Tolls do not force anyone to commute by transit, drivers are able to pay the toll if they value any time savings compared to other alternatives. If we are worried about tolls disproportionately impacting low-income communities, there could be a reduced fee for low-income drivers.

      2. > I know everyone on here loves tolls. And in the case of New York, though flawed, congestion pricing is worth investing in

        I don’t think cordon congestion pricing is right for seattle and probably tolling the i5 hov lanes is much better suited.

        > For example: if I live in Bothell/Mill Creek and work at Microsoft, there’s no direct service. I have to take the Green Line, walk across a freeway, take a bus to Totem Lake and another bus to Redmond.

        Part of why king county metro doesn’t run some express buses for that route is im pretty sure microsoft already has bus shuttles from bothell to microsoft

        > If I live in Kirkland and work in SLU, I have to take a bus to the UW and a very slow one to SLU.

        yeah i agree that is one major downside with the 255 restructure

      3. The 70 is very slow? It’s been getting ever-more runs and is being upgraded to RapidRide J. If you take Link to Westlake and transfer there, there’s ultra-frequent combined service to SLU on the C, 40, 62, and 70. They aren’t slow.

  4. WSDOT to make significant safety related improvements for pedestrians to the on-ramps and off-ramps near Judkins Park Station BEFORE the opening of Full ELE later this year:

    https://www.theurbanist.org/2025/01/27/i-90-ramps-safety-upgrades-ahead-of-judkins-park-station-opening/

    This is very good news indeed. It’s nice to see the agencies working together proactively to solve safety problems before they get worse or someone gets hurt.

    This is going to be a very good year for transit regionally. RDLE and Full ELE will radically change transit across the region. Im glad the agencies are working together to make sure the changes are safe, efficient, and effective.

    1. This was a nice surprise. As Ryan mentioned, WSDOT still needs to straighten out the ramps so they intersect Rainer Ave at signaled intersections. I’m hoping this sets a precedent that raised crosswalks can be implemented to improve safe access to Link stations. A similar approach would be great for accessing the stations in Rainier Valley along MLK.

      1. @Micheal Smith,

        Yes, I was pleasantly surprised by this too, especially since I hadn’t heard or thought about the problems at this particular interchange before.

        It’s nice to see such safety issues being addressed proactively before Full ELE opens. And I certainly hope lessens learned from this effort can be applied elsewhere in the system.

        We will see. But very positive news so far.

  5. Sean Duffy is the new USDOT administrator according to a press release sent to STB, and his first act is rescinding the CAFE standards on car-mileage efficiency. While we worry about what he may or may not do to the FTA and transit grants, I’m wondering if there’s an opportunity to reconsider hybrid cars/buses as an interim carbon-reduction step over the rush to all-electric vehicles.

    Since I don’t have a car or driver’s license and know little about cars, I’ll have to ask about the basics. Are both plug-in hybrids and no-grid-power hybrids still available? What’s their effective mileage and price compared to petrol cars and electric cars? Do they still have high repair costs? How much grid power does a plug-in hybrid need? How much of Metro’s current fleet is hybrid buses that still have some life left?

    There’s not enough grid power for a major increase in all-electric cars and buses, plus the simultaneous increase of reshoreing manufacturing and building up AI data centers. The federal government and Texas don’t seem capable under their current visions to scale grid power up, since they view government infrastructure as communist/woke. Nor is there enough charging stations, or access to garage outlets for apartment dwellers. And electric cars are expensive, and their subsidies are going away apparently. So the all-electric car revolution will have to wait a bit more. Could a return to hybrids be a sensible pivot?

    1. Electric cars make a lot of sense, and the price gap between electric vs. gas is a lot less than it used to be, particularly at the bottom end of the market. Charging them doesn’t have to impact the grid much because it can be done late at night, when overall electricity demand is very low. Many utilities (including PSE) offer financial incentives for EV drivers to charge their cars at night, and it’s quite substantial – with these incentives, I can drive all the way to Mt. Rainier for about the cost of a KCM bus fare.

      As to charging stations, as long as you charge at home, you don’t need them very often, and when you do need them, it’s usually not in the city, but along I-5 or I-90 somewhere. The interstate highway corridors actually have pretty good EV charger coverage nowadays, and has gotten a lot better recently with Tesla opening up most of its superchargers to drivers of other brands. Also, for what it’s worth, very little of the charging infrastructure that exists is funded by the federal government, so Trump’s plan to eliminate federal money for charging stations won’t matter much. The private money for charging isn’t going anywhere.

      That said, there still are some things that need to be worked out for mass EV adoption, but they are surmountable. The biggest elephant in the room is a plan for how people who live in apartments and condos will charge their cars. Similarly, when taking a road trip to another city, it is often difficult to find charging in the city.

      As to hybrids and plug-in hybrids…yes, they exist, but you lose out on most of the cost and maintenance savings you get with an EV. Plugin hybrids end up needing to run on gas a lot more often than drivers realize, and the dual drive trains makes the vehicles expensive, often costing more than their full-EV counterparts (compare a RAV4 Prime with a Tesla Model Y, for example). And, of course, as long as the gas engine exists, you still have to do regular oil changes. There are also a lot of ignorant drivers who buy plugin hybrids, thinking that their car is powered mostly by electricity, only to never plug it in, and end up running it exclusively off gas. A plugin hybrid used this way actually gets *worse* gas mileage than a conventional hybrid, due to the larger battery weight.

      All that said, the economics of switching to battery power for buses is very different than for cars. Overall production volume is much less, which means higher prices, and setting up the equipment to charge hundreds of buses overnight in the same place, at the same time, is going to be very expensive, something that isn’t an issue when you’re just trying to charge one car. Then, there’s the problem that buses simply require much more energy to move per mile than a car does, and the fact that transit is a critical service, which needs to be kept online at all times, so any major changes to the vehicles need to be done gradually and cautiously, so that, if unexpected problems do occur, the impact on the riding public is kept as small as possible.

      1. @asdf2,

        Excellent summary of vehicle propulsion tech. Thanks.

        Your comment about PHEV owners often not plugging them in is 100% accurate. I’ve just never understood why people don’t understand this, but you just won’t get the full potential out of your PHEV unless you actually, you know, plug it in. Even using a simple Level 1 charger would provide huge benefits since most cars spend most of their time just sitting.

        A variation of this is my friend who recently bought a RAV4 Prime. After a lifetime of filling his gas tank he tends to approach his RAV4 Prime as if it has two tanks. I.e, he only plugs it in when the battery gets down near its low limit, the same as you would with a gas tank. So he also isn’t getting the full potential out of his PHEV.

        There is one thing I might add to your comments though. Hybrid power trains aren’t always more complex. The Toyota Power Split Device (PSD) is actually fairly simple, and much simpler than a typical automatic transmission. So hybrid tech isn’t always “that” much more complex.

        The most complex part of the system is still the ICE.

        There are some limitations to PSD type tech though. I have an older PSD equipped hybrid, and it has the simpler gearing. As such, my car is limited to a top speed of 120 mph. Going faster than that would over rev the bearings on one of the motor generators, so doing so is governed out. But I don’t find myself driving that fast much anymore, so I’m not too concerned about the limitation.

        And don’t get me going on diesel electric locomotives. Why they aren’t moving to mate those with battery tenders is beyond me. Seems like low hanging fruit.

      2. The thing about PHEVs is that, even for people who do plug them in every night, they burn a lot more gas than many people realize. At a minimum, the car will force you to burn through a tank of gas every couple months or so in order to keep the fuel from going stale. For someone that doesn’t drive a lot, this forced gas consumption can equate to 30-50% of their total driving. Many PHEVs also don’t have an electric heater, which means you’re forced to burn gas for *every trip* in winter, if you want heat.

        PHEVs also come with relatively small batteries, so even a drive like Seattle to Everett and back, close to half the mileage (depending on the car), you’re running off gas. By contrast, even a relatively cheap EV can repeat this trip 4-5 times before having to charge. The small battery of a PHEV also means that it’s going to charge much slower than a full EV, which, practically speaking, means charging a PHEV anywhere other than home or work almost never makes sense. This means that PHEVs contribute no financial support to the EV charging industry, so they’re depending on others to make charging better.

        Another factor that’s going to start to become big in the next 5-10 years is the ability to use the giant battery pack in an EV to power other things while the vehicle is stationary. This is useful for home backup power (even a whole home air conditioner draws less power than is needed to drive an EV on the freeway, so an EV battery can easily handle it), but the real killer will be V2G, which is stationary cars exporting power to the grid when electricity is expensive, then buying that power back late at night when electricity is cheap. This can result in the car being a net *decrease* on your home electricity bill, rather than an increase, while also helping the utility to maintain reliable electrical service. People working from home will even be able to use their cars to absorb excess solar energy during the daytime and send it back to the grid during the evening peak, both saving money and making the electricity grid cleaner.

        At the moment, the technology to export power from an EV is still in its infancy, filled with warts and very expensive. But, the fact that it will get cheaper and easier to use for non-energy-nerds over time is inevitable.

      3. @asdf2,

        “At a minimum, the car will force you to burn through a tank of gas every couple months or so…”

        Yep, but a tank every few months is a vast improvement for most people. At one point in my life I was burning about a tank a week. When I bought my hybrid that dropped to about once a month (mileage improvement and tank size increase). It saved me a lot of money, but I also spent a lot less time standing next to the car waiting for the tank to fill.

        “ PHEVs also come with relatively small batteries…”

        Yep, at least when compared to full electric vehicles. But the average commute in the US is about 30 miles RT. The average trip is actually less. So a PHEV battery sized to provide 30 miles of range will cover a lot of the typical need. And if charging is provided at the intermediate destination, then a 15-mile battery can accomplish the same thing.

        Many of the PHEV batteries are near this amount of range, and getting better. The RAV4 Prime has about 45 miles of electric-only range, so most trips can be accomplished fully in electric mode.

        “ Many PHEVs also don’t have an electric heater, which means you’re forced to burn gas for *every trip* in winter, if you want heat.”

        True, but many of the longer range PHEV’s are adopting the approach of the full electric designs and are repurposing the AC unit as a “heat pump”. This significantly reduces the impact on electric-only range. Below about 15 F these vehicles revert to using a resistive heater, so you lose the advantage at very cold temperatures.

        The RAV4 Prime has a heat pump.

    1. Is there a good write-up somewhere of why we have such a severe budget shortfall? We’re not in a recession, so tax receipts should be pretty good. I think I’ve heard through the grapevine (but I wouldn’t trust the sources necessarily) that we grew outlays considerably through the pandemic thanks to federal support programs that are now gone, but I don’t have much in the way of details of what grew or why in a way that’s adjusted for population growth and inflation.

      1. “Increasing construction costs and falling gas tax revenue have blown a billion dollar hole in the Washington state transportation budget”

      2. Sorry, I crossed a wire and broadened the scope of the conversation. I’m asking about general budget shortfall, whereas your comment was focused specifically on the transportation budget. Sorry for that.

      3. Also, it’s amazing to me that that article cites the switch to EVs as the reason for declining gas tax revenue without noting that, as an EV owner, I get an extra $200 fee in my registration to compensate for the fact I don’t pay gas tax.

      4. I don’t know about general budget issues or shortfalls, and if there is anything to say about them, we should keep them in separate threads from transportation programs and transit programs, so that people can keep track of the latter two.

      5. >Also, it’s amazing to me that that article cites the switch to EVs as the reason for declining gas tax revenue without noting that, as an EV owner, I get an extra $200 fee in my registration to compensate for the fact I don’t pay gas tax.

        The article’s sole mention of electric vehicles is a direct link to a New York Times article about how electric vehicle owners are being charged fees to make up for lost gas tax. The article explicitly notes the decline in gas tax revenue is due to people driving less.

      6. The transportation items are in the article

        > That increase comes from the $630 million added to the now-$1.375 billion Portage Bay Bridge and Roanoke Lid project (to be finished in 2031) and to complete Highway 520’s reconstruction from Interstate 405 in Bellevue to Interstate 5 in Seattle; $271 million needed for the new, $1.5 billion north-south highway being built in Spokane; $137 million added to the ferry terminal electrification project in Seattle and on Bainbridge Island, part of the larger $4 billion project to electrify the ferry fleet; $91 million more for widening Interstate 405 between Renton and Bellevue, originally estimated at $705 million; and more.

      7. “Also, it’s amazing to me that that article cites the switch to EVs as the reason for declining gas tax revenue without noting that, as an EV owner, I get an extra $200 fee in my registration to compensate for the fact I don’t pay gas tax.”

        The revenue problem was hastened with the entry of hybrid vehicles into the vehicle mix — long before EVs had a share of the market. Hybrid vehicles don’t have a surcharge.

  7. I’m hoping to get constructive criticism. I’ve been griping to Metro and Sound Transit about how their Lynnwood Link restructure hurts local bus frequency and coverage in order to focus on feeding Link. I’ve crunched some numbers about how changes to the 372/522 would impact me and my neighborhood.

    Commute to/from work:
    Currently averages 39 minutes, including 6 minutes of walking
    2025 restructure would give me 2 options. 43 minutes, including 12 minutes of walking. Or 36 minutes, including 16 minutes of walking.

    Bus to the local supermarket:
    Currently averages 12 minutes, including 6 minutes of walking
    2025 restructure would average 18 minutes, including 10 minutes of walking

    Getting to Sound Transit’s headquarters – not a trip I make, but it’s a downtown Seattle benchmark:
    Currently averages 57 minutes, including 12 minutes of walking
    2025 restructure would average 51 minutes, including 14 minutes of walking

    My primary gripe has been that their plan to reroute buses and close stops reduces bus frequency and substantially adds walking time for anyone in my neighborhood who wants to use transit. And for trips to places not served by Link, total travel time is increased. But looking at my numbers, am I tilting at a windmill here?

    2. What changes are coming in 2025? I thought the next round isn’t coming until East Link and Fed Way expansions. I also know that ST is going to nix the 5XX out of Lynnwood when East Link starts up. I guess it also depends which area/neighborhood you reside..

      1. I’m not sure there will be any changes in far north Seattle/Shoreline when the full 2 Line opens.

        What do you mean by nixing the 5xx out of Lynnwood? They go north, outside the scope of the full 2 Line. There’s just the 535 from Lynnwood to Bellevue. I assume that will remain as-is until Stride 2 opens in the late 2020s. It was never ST’s intention to delete that, as it also serves Bothell and Totem Lake which aren’t on Link, and indirectly Woodinville which has limited other transit options. And has anyone compared the travel time between Link and the 535 for Lynnwood-Bellevue trips?

      2. @Mike.. lemme clarify: ST plan is to eliminate the 515 when East Link starts service. The 515 was put in place to offset the Link vehicle capacity issue caused by the delay of East Link. I can’t recall the fate of the 510.

    3. He mentioned the 322 and 522, which serve Bothell Way/Lake City Way. The 522 will move to Shoreline South station at some point, and Stride 3 will replace it in the late 2020s. The 322 is the last remaining peak express on Bothell Way, now going to Northgate Link station, 9th Ave/Boren Ave on the edge of downtown, and First Hill (Harborview, 12th Ave).

      The 522’s move will create a gap in Lake City between 145th and Roosevelt station. A new route 77 will replace 125th to Roosevelt station. I’m not sure about LCW between 145th and 125th. The 65 restructure connected 125th on 30th to Shoreline south station, so you could get off the 522 westbound and cross the street to the 65 eastbound, although that’s not ideal. If you’re going to south of Lake City, you’d probably want to stay on the 522 and transfer to Link. I don’t remember all the other details of the restructure.

      The Lynnwood Link restructure is in three phases. The first phase was last September when Link opened. The second phase is when the 522 moves to Shoreline South. The third phase is when Pinehurst station opens. (Stride 3 is beyond that scope, and may trigger another restructure later.) Only a few routes will change in phases 2 and 3, most notably the 77.

      In order to evaluate other gaps in north Seattle/Shoreline/Northshore/Snohomish circulation, we’d need to know which corridors/locations people might have a hardship with.

      1. To clarify, I’m around 145th street east of Bothell Way, so it relates to routes 372 and 522 as they evolve into the 72 and S3 and are both routed down 145th street.

        But my question wasn’t really about the specific routes. It was whether others felt the increase in travel and/or walking times that I described above was significant enough to complain about. Or if it’s just the nature of relying on transit.

      2. Yes it’s significant. I have a 4-seat ride from Capitol Hill to east Bellevue, where the first seat is optional (saving a 15-minute walk), and a mandatory 20-minute walk at the end. I’m not thrilled with that, but that’s what east Bellevue is like. On weekends the last seat is half-hourly so I try to avoid that; otherwise it would add significant waiting time. With the full 2 Line and a route 226 restructure, I’ll have two better options. (2 Line to Redmond Tech + 245 + 20 minute walk, or 2 Line to South Bellevue + 226.)

        We on the blog want to know how well transit generally meets people’s needs in areas like far north Seattle, east Bellevue, and other areas. And how much restructures make things better or worse. Your input is valuable for that. And anything you can say about your neighbors’ trips in general, or what they’re saying about their transit experience or restructures.

        But with a shift to feeders, some peoples’ experience having to walk further for non-feeder trips has to be weighed against other people’s feeder trips for us to get a complete picture of overall transit quality in far north Seattle. The biggest issue is what I call “transit holes”: trip patterns that transit doesn’t serve, either always or after a restructure. The restructure appears to make a lot of kinds of trips better in far north Seattle, but there seems to be a potential hole for trips along Lake City Way between south of 125th and north of 145th or right at 145th. But I’m just an outsider so I don’t have full knowledge of what the local travel patterns there up there. That’s where we’re trying to get a fuller picture with residents’ input.

        The goal is to quantify the trip patterns where the current/proposed network is especially good, and any transit holes that remain and should be addressed.

  8. ST has set a date to announce the date. It will announce the Downtown Redmond Link extension opening date tomorrow.

    1. Well it is “tomorrow”, and still no word on RDLE. Not a leak, nor even a time or place for the announcement.

      When I first heard they were actually going to announce a date, I thought it must imply that ST had I confidence in the progress they are making on Full ELE.

      But with the way they are soft pedaling this announcement, now I’m not sure.

  9. disappointed to see Pinehurst be the name. It should have been golf course station as that will be all there is there.

  10. December ridership has been added to the Sound Transit Dashboard

    https://www.soundtransit.org/ride-with-us/system-performance-tracker/ridership

    2 Line ridership has fallen off a cliff. Less than 3,000 average weekday boardings with Redmond Tech leading at a measly 891 :(

    Overlake, BelRed, Spring District, Wilberton, and East Main all clocked in with <250 daily boardings.

    The full opening of the 2 Line across the lake can't come soon enough. Hopefully the opening of the DRLE injects some life into the system in the intermediate.

    1. For some reason, ST lists November 2024 ridership on the main page but it’s missing on the Link page. It appears that there are problems with reporting the most recent data.

      Plus December is a weird month because of holidays, school breaks and people taking time off work. It’s probably best to compare it with a prior December rather than a different month. Of course the 2 Line and Lynnwood Extension opened during 2024 so there is no direct data from December 2023 to compare.

      1. @Al S,

        The November data has been missing for a long time. At least since they uploaded the December data.

        I keep expecting this to get corrected, but nothing yet.

        Maybe they will fix it when January data gets uploaded.

      2. Yeah its shown on the graph but not the table for some reason. As someone that has to create a lot of Power BI dashboards for work, sometimes this stuff just breaks and its understandable.

        I get that ridership will always be down in the winter and January especially, but down 50% from the summer peak is no bueno. I’m especially surprised that Bellevue Downtown is as low as it is, considering it probably has the most destinations and origins in its walkshed.

      3. The Times had an article a week or two ago saying, it’s not your imagination, everybody did go on vacation in December. It argued that many people took longer vacations or more vacations or traveled somewhere this December than in previous Decembers, so downtown was emptier than its normal post-covid low. I don’t remember if it said traffic was lighter.

        If more people did spend a 1-3 weeks at home just doing Christmas shopping or traveling outside the region, that would translate to lower commute ridership or maybe lower overall ridership.

        I didn’t see a decrease in foot traffic in the midtown area in December. Maybe the shoppers and tourists masked it.

  11. Good news for the Cascades: https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/amtrak-cascades-vancouver-seattle-portland-ridership

    Particularly excited about this part:

    “The December 2024 report noted that discussions will begin in early 2025 between Amtrak, WSDOT, BC Ministry of Transportation and Transit, VIA Rail, BNSF Railway, Transport Canada, Canadian National Railway, and BC Business Council on exploring short-term and long-term railway upgrades within BC to improve Amtrak Cascades’ performance and potentially allow for future additional daily service serving Vancouver. This includes the Pacific Central Station platform upgrades, and other potential upgrades along the railway in Canada.”

    I hope these talks go well and we can improve that part of the track

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