An Issaquah-Ellensburg bus route would fill a hole in the transit network between Western and Eastern Washington. (The Transit Bandit) There’s already an Ellensburg-Cle Elum connector, so a new route could have a timed transfer in Cle Elum to North Bend and the Issaquah transfer hub.
This is an open thread.
I think it would be difficult to have a timed connection for a route that long to an infrequent service. On the Seattle end, not going to downtown Seattle makes sense because of traffic on the I-5/I-90 interchange, but stopping at Issaquah and forcing two additional transfers to reach Seattle (post full 2 line opening and bus restructure) feels overkill.
I think the right design for a route like this would run from South Bellevue Station to Ellensburg, with stops at North Bend, Snoqualmie Pass, Easton, and Cle Elem. This new route could run between Cle Elem and Ellensburg halfway between trips on the existing route, allowing additional travel time options for Cle Elem-Ellensburg trips. A transfer to Link isn’t a big deal, what’s painful is transfers between a bus that runs once every hour or two and a bus that might run twice per day.
Of course, to be usable, this route must publish its real time status to OneBusAway.
When Snoqualmie Pass is closed, this route could just run the eastern section (Easton to Ellensburg) and skip the western half.
Yeah, South Bellevue is probably the best option on the west side of the mountains. Another option would be Mercer Island (after East Link crosses the lake). That way the bus stays in the HOV lanes. Another advantage to Mercer Island is that the 215 goes there (more about that below).
As far as timing goes, I see it for buses going westbound. My guess is there isn’t that much traffic in Cle Elum. If a bus is late it just leaves the stop a little later than usual (there wouldn’t be a lot of buses connecting to it). Eastbound would be a bit more challenging but not out of the question. It depends on the time of day and how much float you want to allow. If these are two-hour buses it would be quite reasonable to have the bus be scheduled to leave Cle Elum ten minutes after the bus from Seattle arrives. If the bus from Seattle runs early folks have a longer break. If the bus runs late the bus from Cle Elum to Ellensburg is delayed. The driver can make an announcement and with so many phones people can adjust (e. g. “The bus from Seattle got here early — do you want me to grab anything from the Safeway?”).
Yeah, I think the video had too many stops. Then again I could see this complementing Metro service. Last I checked, the 215 is supposed to run every 30-90 minutes to North Bend: https://cdn.kingcounty.gov/-/media/king-county/depts/metro/documents/projects/east-link-connections/routes/215.pdf. That is a wide range. The bus serves Snoqualmie Ridge and North Bend. This makes sense given this is the end of the route (I could easily see it extended a bit farther east). But for the bus to Cle Elum it would just take the main North Bend exit (Exit 31) and loop around the park and ride and head back (https://maps.app.goo.gl/HVh1ejJvMnTpvqLx7). This also connects riders to the shuttles. Unfortunately this isn’t a trivial detour. It takes about six minutes. But closer alternatives (e. g. outlet mall) don’t save much time so I don’t see a better alternative.
Driving through the Snoqualmie Pass area only costs through-riders a couple minutes (https://maps.app.goo.gl/hbXwMEiYwCv3nNYi7). But managing recreation gets really trick. Hikers (especially through-hikers) have wanted a way to get from there to Seattle for years. I think the Greyhound used to stop there (eastbound) if you asked the driver. People hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) typically hitchhike (I’ve given riders a trip into town before). So you could see some people every day in the summer. Overall they are likely to spread out and just contribute a little to the ridership, so that would be good.
But hiking season is relatively short. It typically starts in mid-July and ends in October sometime. It is also very weather dependent. This is less of an issue for through-hikers but a huge issue for those out for the day or even a relatively short backpack trip (starting at the pass). The trailhead for Kendall Katwalk (which also connects to the PCT) is often overflowing on sunny days and empty on rainy ones. As a hiker a bus to the pass would be extremely attractive — but only on sunny days.
For the winter it is even more complicated. You’ve got skis, which typically require a special bus. Again you have widely fluctuating loads. We don’t even know when the ski resorts will be open each year (it depends on the weather). Nor do we know when they will close.
The more the merrier is a general rule of thumb for transit but in this case it could be problematic. Maybe you could pull it off. Worse case scenario you have some sort of reservation system (if it is too crowded during nice days). Regardless of how you handle the loads I don’t think you stop at the various trailheads. That is too time consuming. It would be better to have a shuttle bus. A shuttle bus would offer other advantages (even to those who drive to the trailhead) like one-way hiking trips that don’t involve two cars or hitchhiking. I have no idea who would pay for that though. Maybe the Snoqualmie Pass lodging companies (as a way to drum up summer business).
It wouldn’t take long to serve Easton (only a couple minutes: https://maps.app.goo.gl/FeRiet5r7uvWuHXE6) but Easton is really tiny. Hard to see many people using that stop. Maybe they could call the driver and tell them there is someone trying to ride the bus. Otherwise it just doesn’t seem worth it.
They’re probably using “commute” in a looser sense than every Monday-Friday 9-5. Some people cross the Cascades once or twice a week, or once or twice a month.
I worked at Harborview in the room that scheduled the nurses. There were 800 nurses, some as far as Eastern Washington, the Olympic Pennisula, and Victoria BC. They tended to come for a 2-3 day stint of consecutive days, staying with somebody in Seattle. Then they’d go back home for a four-day weekend with their family. If they travel on the shoulder days rather than immediately after their term begins/ends, then they could take any of the handful of runs on that day.
“I think the video had too many stops.”
We’re probably thinking of it from a Pugetopolis perspective. I have heard of Cle Elum and Roslyn, and once had an overnight Greyhound bus stop there on the way to Spokane, and I had a conference at a resort near Roslyn. But some of those other towns I’d never heard of and didn’t know existed.
The purpose of the route is to give coverage connectivity to those towns and Ellensburg, not to bypass them. They seem like tiny outposts unnecessary to serve from a Pugetopolis perspective, but not from an Eastern Washington perspective.
Maybe one middle ground for small towns on I-90 is to have a stop that is served only by request. In the modern digital world, the process of requesting a stop can literally be as simple as clicking one button on the website, without even requiring a login. If a request stop gets used semi- consistently, it can eventually be converted into a stop that is served always, without the need to request.
I think this request stop model would work well for a place like Easton. Delaying the by two minutes to leave the freeway and pick up a passenger is reasonable if there is actually a passenger to be picked up, but too much to do for every trip, even when nobody is there (and most trips, probably nobody will be there).
The key is that the bus stop sign must make it very clear that the stop is by request only, and provide a QR code for quick access to a website to make a stop request.
@asdf2, I like that, and the bus stop sign should also have a phone number for people without smartphones to call.
Yes, that is what I wrote up above. The stop could be next to the post office which (most likely) has a phone for folks who don’t have a cell phone. This would be handy for people who forget to charge their cell phone as well.
Perhaps a way to reconcile the two is to have local/express runs. Local runs serving all the towns, and express runs with only a couple stops between South Bellevue and Ellensburg. There’s already an Ellensburg-Cle Elum route, but there’s a gap between Cle Elum and North Bend (or South Bellevue if you want to plug into the bulk of Pugetopolis).
I’m a little against bypassing Issaquah? Why should tiny North Bend have a stop but regional Issaquah doesn’t?
Would it be possible to have a freeway stop in Issaquah, with a local bus route meeting it? So that the intercounty bus wouldn’t have to detour off the freeway.
I’m a little against bypassing Issaquah? Why should tiny North Bend have a stop but regional Issaquah doesn’t?
A few reasons:
1) It is less of a delay. You can get to the main park and ride in North Bend much quicker than you can get to just about anywhere in Issaquah.
2) You add more value. Riders from North Bend have an additional way to get to Bellevue/Seattle and the rest of the region. Issaquah doesn’t need that.
3) It is about five miles from Eastgate to Issaquah. It is sixteen miles from Eastgate to North Bend.
It has to do with the geography more than anything. At first glance North Bend is a typical sprawling suburban area. What makes it different is that it is a very long way from the city. It just happens to be on the way to Snoqualmie Pass (which itself just happens to be on the way to Cle Elum).
“the 215 is supposed to run every 30-90 minutes to North Bend”
That’s 30 minutes to Issaquah Highlands P&R, with every third bus continuing to North Bend. So North Bend gets consistent 90-minute service.
Schedule-wise, I think the right balance between cost and utility for a route this long is to limit it to what can be done with a single bus. Cle Elem to Mercer Island is listed as 1 hour 12 minutes, nonstop, by Google, so a hypothetical schedule for a one-bus operation might look like this:
– Trip #1 – Depart Cle Elem @6:30 AM, arrive Mercer Island @8:15 AM
– Trip #2 – Depart Mercer Island at 8:45 AM, arrive Cle Elem @10:30 AM
– Trip #3: Depart Cle Elem @11:00 AM, arrive Mercer Island @12:45 PM
– Trip #4: Depart Mercer Island @3:00 PM, arrive Cle Elem @4:45 PM
– Trip #5: Depart Cle Elem @5:15 PM, arrive Mercer Island @7:00 PM,
– Trip #6: Depart Mercer Island @7:30 PM, arrive Cle Elem @9:15 PM
I think this is enough trips to be useful, and I would definitely prioritize running the one-bus schedule 7 days/week over adding an additional bus Monday-Friday for more frequent service.
Also worth noting – the big gap my hypothetical schedule has in the midday is intentional. It’s purpose is to space the morning and evening trips further apart so that people have enough time in Seattle to actually get stuff done before having to head back, without needing to spend the night in a hotel. I would also presume that having the bus begin and end each day out in Kittitas county would make the route cheaper than operate, by avoiding King County labor rates
I agree, stopping at every recreational hiking destination along the way adds too much time, but I think Snoqualmie Pass is worth it, and doesn’t add much travel time. One would also think it would be possible to make temporary modifications to the interior of the bus during the ski season to accommodate skiiers (at the expense of a few seats).
As to North Bend vs. Issaquah, the reasons for serving North Bend, but not Issaquah are as follows:
1) It adds less travel time – the bus can make one stop by the factory outlet and turn around to get back on the freeway. Issaquah is a painful 10 minute detour into the transit center, and it doesn’t make sense to undergo the expense of building a freeway station for a single bus route that runs three round trips per day.
2) For Issaquah-Seattle commuters, this service would be nearly useless, as existing KCM routes would run much more often and be very fast. For North Bend commuters, this would add trips during a period where buses only run every 90 minutes, plus act as an express to Link (by bypassing Issaquah Highlands P&R, which is a huge detour), saving riders time.
I knew someone who commuted from Cle Elum to Seattle. This was before it was common to work from home (it was before high speed internet was common). I always thought it was crazy but to each their own. He is probably retired by now.
I’ve met multiple construction managers/operators who live in Cle Elum (even one in Ellensburg) who commuted in for jobs in Downtown Seattle. Never understood that lifestyle, but those guys also never understood why anyone would want to live in Seattle.
I also met one guy who brought his 5th-wheel RV trailer and parked that on a job site for 2 years. He’d live in it during the week and then go home to his family on the weekends.
Connecting such a route to South Bellevue is spot-on. This would eliminate a layer of transfers in Issaquah. However, I would add Issaquah as a stop on this route. It would be awkward to go past it and then force people to backtrack. Skagit Transit forces its riders to do the same, as some riders want to access Stanwood and Marysville but they are forced to transfer in Everett instead and backtrack to their destinations.
Also, the Trailhead route should start/end at South bellevue. Hopefully that would increase the frequency of the route.
I also see South Bellevue as the best I-90 corridor Link transfer point. An argument could be made for Downtown Bellevue but the messiness of any bus getting through the 90/405 interchange goes against it. And frankly Issaquah won’t get Link until well into the 2040’s and a service should ideally be up and running way before then.
Further, the 90 HOV lanes are a straight shot into Mercer Island and Seattle. So it may just be best to go all the way to CID. Mercer Island is actually set up ideally for this — but the locals screaming about seeing too many buses make ending there politically difficult.
An aside: I’m alone right now on this, but I do feel like a transit center with drop-off capabilities inside the freeway loop ramp next to Judkins Park could serve many new functions including this one — if such a center also had a direct and frequent First Hill connection in addition to direct I-90 access. It’s a much more useful place for a drop-off than the Pinehurst Station loop will be and the land is just sitting there vacant and unused.
Because the region has not had something like the Link 1 and 2 Lines operating at amazing frequencies ever before, the ways that intercity buses interface with Link is an evolving opportunity that has not been possible in the past. Any new or better connection outward is going to be an ongoing service concept topic in every direction. I see Federal Way and Lynnwood as those key important hubs northward and southward/ westward, but eastward is still not as apparent.
I think South Bellevue would be the best choice right now but once East Link goes across the water I think Mercer Island is better. This has several advantages (as I wrote elsewhere):
1) You stay in the HOV lanes the whole way.
2) You can easily serve Eastgate if you want to (with a minimal delay).
3) It is what the future 215 (to North Bend) will do. That means that the bus could combine with the 215 for better frequency from Mercer Island/Seattle to North Bend (in the same way that Amtrak and MARC combine for good frequency from Baltimore to DC).
I do feel like a transit center with drop-off capabilities inside the freeway loop ramp next to Judkins Park could serve many new functions including this one — if such a center also had a direct and frequent First Hill connection in addition to direct I-90 access. It’s a much more useful place for a drop-off than the Pinehurst Station loop will be and the land is just sitting there vacant and unused.
Pinehurst has a little loop but chances are the buses won’t serve it. There is no reason to. It is much better to just stay on the main street instead of detouring. I think the little loop is for ADA pickup/drop-off, not buses.
Things are similar for Judkins Park. It will serve buses going north-south just fine. It really doesn’t make sense to end a bus there. The geography isn’t right.
The one exception is the one you mentioned. A bus going from the east side might stop there. This adds some one-seat connections (via the 7, 8, 48 and 106). But I don’t think a turnaround would be trivial. At that point you are also quite close to downtown. Might as well keep going since that would reduce a lot more transfers (you could connect to Amtrak/Sounder along with Link and a bunch of buses).
Going to Judkins Park gives you more than just ending at Mercer Island, but not that much more. I don’t think it is worth going to Judkins Park seeing as Mercer Island is very well set up for this sort of thing.
@ Ross: to be clear, I agree either way you completely about Mercer Island. That’s why I called it ideal.
As far as a Judkins Park transit hub and drop-off goes, it’s kind of a chicken or egg problem. As long as it’s not there, creating something there seems abstract and useless. But consider these things about the station:
1. There are no drop off zones on Rainier at Judkins Park for anyone except buses. I’m sure shuttle and car drivers will use the bus lanes to drop off and pick up people but it is technically illegal and seemingly unsafe.
2. There will be a drop off zone at 23rd, but turning around any bus or shuttle or car there is very circuitous and involves using narrow residential streets.
3. There will be times when the I-90 light rail crossing will be closed. Without a turnaround, a replacement shuttle has nowhere to go to both serve the station and get back to I-90 without a long trek on Seattle local streets. Closures happen often as we see with the rash of closures these past few weeks that require replacement bus shuttles — so it will happen more often than for an unusual weather event.
4. There is an ongoing process now occurring to reconfigure the ramps and a general understanding among all the parties involved that change is needed. If anything like this is to ever happen, now is the right time to discuss and do something about it!
That’s a good point about Mercer Island enabling the bus to stay in the HOV lanes. Mercer Island also enables an intermediate stop at Eastgate Freeway Station, which South Bellevue does not (too many lanes to cut across in too little distance). So, maybe the best service pattern would be to serve Eastgate Freeway Station, followed by Mercer Island. I feel like very few people willing to ride the bus across the mountains are headed to Issaquah, that their actual destination is probably Seattle and, if not Seattle, Bellevue. Issaquah is also time-consuming to serve directly – a single stop at Issaquah Transit Center adds as much as 10 minutes to the trip. It’s a lot of lights between the transit center and the freeway.
” the bus could combine with the 215″
I could just see a bus a sign “215 Ellensburg”.
It might make sense to convert a proposed two-phase route into a three-phase route. So you’d have three patterns:
– Mercer Island – Issaquah Highlands P&R
– Mercer Island – North Bend
– Mercer Island – Ellensburg
Since the author suggests a joint endeavor by Metro and Central Transit, it would make as much sense to number the route 215 as something else.
Two issues though:
– The Ellensburg runs would be much less reliable than the other runs. That could throw off the even headways at the P&R and North Bend.
– The pass requires heavily snow-capable buses. The examples in the video are lower-capacity than a regular single Metro bus. So would that be adequate to serve Issaquah and North Bend?
Mercer Islanders may not have thought ahead enough to:
– Some of the trailheaders may spend money at Mercer Island businesses on the way.
– Some Mercer Island residents may want to go to the trails.
Issaquah TC would be more compelling if it was directly off I-90 AND had destinations next to it. The blunt truth though is that it’s time consuming to get to (signals with long cycles) and there’s nothing much to walk to while waiting for an infrequent bus across the Cascades. At least Eastgate is an easy pull-off.
“ Some of the trailheaders may spend money at Mercer Island”
I dream of the day when bus riders are welcomed because they’re good for business there, rather than eschewed because they are “outsiders” and the buses are “safety nuisances”.
I roll my eyes when someone complains about seeing one or two more buses an hour.
We don’t know that Mercer Islanders think trailheaders are riff-raff criminals. I highly doubt it, since the kind of people who go to trails are Eastside middle-class residents among others. Asdf2 is an Eastside tech worker and trail enthusiast, so is he a riff-raff criminal? I can imagine many Mercer Island residents like him, thinking “love the trails, love my bike, love the outdoors”.
Mercer Island has a certain level of adversion against density and outsiders, but it’s not absolute. The opposition in the 2010s to a lot of peak express feeders terminating at Mercer Island doesn’t necessarily translate to opposition to a handful of Trailhead Direct runs or this cross-Cascades concept.
Mercer Island and Metro agreed on a certain maximum of off-island feeders. The 215 and friends are some of them, and Trailhead Direct and this cross-Cascades concept can be another. I’m wondering if they can all be consolidated to a 21x “family” of coordinated routes, including Trailhead Direct.
When I was at the Pine & Boren park waiting to meet another STB author, I met a young skater from Mercer Island who was working maintenance at one of the bathhouse businesses and waiting for his shift to start. He liked to drive, bus, bike, and skateboard, and could see himself using Link. So there’s more variety in Mercer Island residents than people sometime assume.
Since we’re transit enthusiasts, we asked him what he thought about transit and Mercer Island, the coming of Link, etc. I said I’d like to see a 15-minute frequent island route or two connecting all neighborhoods to Link and to each other. I then said, “Some people say that won’t work on Mercer Island because a lot of house driveways are down a hill from the arterials.” He said, “My house is one of those.” So that was interesting. He didn’t think that made bus routes un-doable, it just meant there was some level of effort in getting from houses to the bus stops that wasn’t an issue on the mainland.
> Issaquah TC would be more compelling if it was directly off I-90 AND had destinations next to it.
I’ve always found it shortsighted that they cancelled the hov direct access ramps in issaquah
” the bus could combine with the 215″
I could just see a bus a sign “215 Ellensburg”.
To be clear I’m not suggesting an extension of the 215. The 215 covers Snoqualmie Ridge on the way to North Bend. I think that is overkill for a route like this. What I’m suggesting is that they combine in the way that the 75 and 65 combine from Lake City to the UW. They follow completely different routes but you can catch either bus from the same bus stop.
That would be the case here. From the park and ride you could catch either bus to Mercer Island (and vice versa) even though they would take different pathways. This helps improve the effective frequency for North Bend (even if they aren’t timed perfectly).
Much of the opposition to buses serving Mercer Island was based on scale. They didn’t want the park and ride being used by outsiders (which really isn’t an issue in this case). They didn’t want dozens of buses clogging up the streets. In this case it would be an additional, fairly infrequent bus. Given that some of the estimates were based on pre-pandemic levels of use, I don’t see this as much of a problem.
I like this a lot, because it starts to knit the local system around Ellensburg into a potential state-wide and state-subsidized transit system. The cost is so tiny in our nearly $80 billion state budget, it wouldn’t warrant a footnote, but it would be a huge benefit for people in Central Washington.
This fits in with the Apple Line, and YT #11 connects to Yakima where there is a decent system. One bus route would improve three other systems and make them work better.
If the state were to subsidize it, it would be a first step toward a decent statewide system. It’s a pretty big jump across to Spokane, but maybe someday….
I don’t think it makes sense for a bus going all the way across the cascades to be doing coverage loops on Snoqualmie Ridge. The purpose of this bus is to connect people in the towns of eastern WA to the greater Seattle region. None of them are headed to Snoqualmie Ridge, so adding a detour there just makes the trip longer and less attractive. Covering Snoqualmie Ridge is the job of the 215.
Another factor, any cross-cascades route really needs to be operated by Kittitas county transit, not KCM. Labor rates are much lower east of the mountains, and it doesn’t make sense to pay a wage that supports Seattle cost of living if you don’t have to.
A super long route like this needs off-road layover space, so that would be S Bellevue, not Mercer Island. MI is perfect for live loops, i.e. frequent all-day buses.
This route should be operated by WSDOT. Belair Charters already operates inter-city service along I90, so they have the assets and labor force in place.
https://wsdot.wa.gov/business-wsdot/grants/public-transportation-grants/grant-programs-and-awards/travel-washington-intercity-bus
A super long route like this needs off-road layover space, so that would be S Bellevue, not Mercer Island.
Mercer Island has layover space as well. It is the better connection to Seattle (where most people are headed). It is more reliable which in turn means a potential transfer in Cle Elum is easier to manage. It makes it possible to serve Eastgate.
It is really the better overall connection point for I-90 buses and the folks at Mercer Island realized this right away. That is why they fought back and pushed some of the buses to South Bellevue. They didn’t want Mercer Island turned into a huge regional transit center. But in this case we are talking about very few buses. Given that there will be fewer buses during peak than originally planned, this should be OK.
South Bellevue is an inferior connection points for buses that are traveling in the HOV lanes of I-90 (like this bus). It makes sense for a bus coming from 405 south, Factoria or the western part of Eastgate Way. Buses like that aren’t express in nature; they will not spend much time (if any) in the I-90 HOV lanes.
Mercer Island is also better suited for a long layover. If they have a lot of time they can walk over to one of the nearby places and grab a coffee or a sandwich. South Bellevue doesn’t offer that.
I don’t think it makes sense for a bus going all the way across the cascades to be doing coverage loops on Snoqualmie Ridge.
Yes. I don’t think anyone does, really. I think Mike just misinterpreted what I wrote. I do feel it is necessary to serve North Bend — just not in the way the 215 does. By doing so you complement the 215. Even riders to Snoqualmie Ridge may benefit. If they just miss the (very infrequent) 215 they might be able to catch this bus to North Bend and then a shuttle back to Snoqualmie Ridge. The two buses probably wouldn’t be timed, but even with random timing riders in the area benefit.
I said a 21x family of routes. Some of them could skip Snoqualmie.
Backtracking sucks but we have to put things in perspective. The bus starts in Cle Elum. Backtracking a few miles is not that big of a deal for a trip that far. I also don’t think there will be that many people going from Cle Elum to Issaquah (or vice versa). I’m not sure how easy it is to serve Issaquah or which part to serve. Serving the Highlands costs about 7 minutes if there is no traffic (https://maps.app.goo.gl/fn3xr1H3zhuGKDij8). The transit center is similar. Going through town is just a minute quicker (https://maps.app.goo.gl/AkRiAMB9uoJ11Ev98).
One of the reasons why it makes sense to serve North Bend is that you add frequency to the Seattle/Bellevue to North Bend trip. That isn’t really the case with Issaquah as there will be plenty of buses from South Bellevue and Mercer Island to Issaquah. A bus running every couple of hours wouldn’t help much.
That being said I could see the buses stopping at the Eastgate freeway stop since that really doesn’t cost anything. Basically you never leave the HOV lanes. That is another argument for serving Mercer Island instead of South Bellevue though (as I don’t think you can serve that stop and South Bellevue).
I was thinking of the Eastgate freeway stop too. Why not?
Perhaps Issaquah people could take the previous “via Snoqualmie” bus and change in North Bend. If they run on a thirty minute headway, the longer route through Snoqualmie might take twenty minutes longer than freeway express, putting the folks at a common stop with just ten minutes to wait.
A bus over the pass should just serve Eastgate freeway station. It’s an easy transfer from there to Issaquah routes.
A number of the mid-day buses to and from Issaquah proper stop at the Eastgate P&R rather than the Flyer Stop. I guess they could make the walk up there; it isn’t very far.
So, OK, just Eastgate P&R and the Outlet Mall. The important thing is to get State funds in its operation, to set the ball rolling on further long-jump state support. You can have that Airporter company so the actual work, or, as somebody else mentioned, there’s the Kittitas County Connector which is the run between Cle Elum and Ellensburg. That might make the most sense, since it would otherwise take two transfers to go from E’burg to Seattle or Bellevue.
IIRC, there is an elevator to get between Eastgate TC and the Freeway stops, which helps greatly with the transfer.
Only “local” routes serve the TC directly. All the express routes (554, 21X) stop only at the freeway. An intercity route would certainly do the same, even if it exits the freeway at North Bend and/or Cle Elum.
“Trailhead route should start/end at South bellevue. ”
We’re assuming it likely will when the full 2 Line starts. Or it should, and we’re hoping the officials are forward-seeing on this.
I think it definitely should. And I think a move like this would make trailhead direct much more attractive to people on the east side. You still have the park and ride option, but add in a direct rail connection to the areas where people without cars are most likely to live. Plus, the bus will be much more punctual than it has been, you’re not last priority for getting a seat on the bus, and south Bellevue is simply a much better place to be waiting for a bus than the median of a loud freeway.
For Seattle riders, some would have an added connection, but it’s a connection to Link, rather a bus, and I suspect a large chunk of TD riders are already riding Link anyway to reach the TD bus, so they can just stay on the train a few more stops and have no additional connection. And, even with an extra connection, trip times are more reliable by bypassing the traffic.
How do people feel about the housing measures 1A and 1B? I’m still undecided. I lean toward a Vienna-style solution, but this measure’s sticker shock and the small number of units it would build for that give me reservations.
I’m generally in the social democratic region of the political spectrum, and I’m in favor of an all-of-the-above approach to housing, so I should be thrilled by Proposition 1a, but I’m stuck on the fact that it would only fund the construction of about 200 units annually- around 1% of the total number of units the city should be adding to our housing stock each year. More housing is always better, but this small number of units would be swamped by the year-to-year variation in private housing construction.
I would be much more excited if the program was about 10 times larger, but that would require some combination of reducing the per-unit cost, broadening the tax base, raising the tax rate, or making the tax more progressive, each of which would have issues either politically, or in implementation.
Maybe it’s good to start small, gain experience, build capacity, and if the program is seen as successful, there would be be a push to expand it, but I dunno.
The real problem is that housing costs too much. If each person you build housing for costs $X00,000 per unit, that means $X00,000,000 to house just 1000 people, and $X0,000,000,000 to house the 100,000 or so people it would actually take to solve the homeless problem.
$X0,000,000,000 is roughly the size of ST3 over a 30-year period, which gives you an idea of the scale of taxes needed to properly fund this, which is already far more money than you can get just by taxing the rich. Except, it’s even higher because $X0,000,000,000 is for just Seattle and the ST3 tax baseis over a much larger region. Plus, land appreciates a lot over 30 years, so the cost of housing will only go up and up.
In a nutshell, this is a problem with pretty much all subsidized housing measures. You can either make a big difference to a small number of people or a tiny difference to a large number of people, but making a big difference to a large number of people is cost-prohibitive.
The only way to fix it is to get rid of bureaucratic impediments that drive costs up. For example, affordable housing should not need parking, and should not be subject to height limits, and should accept below-average unit sizes to house as many people as possible in a small space. But, the reforms needed to make affordable housing, well, affordable, are precisely the stuff that that would make neighbors fight the project tooth-and-nail. This gets into another problem, which is that affordable housing is full of nimbyism – everybody wants affordable housing to go somewhere, but nobody wants it – especially large amounts of it – anywhere near where they live. So the cost of affordable housing goes up through a mixture of concessions and lawyer fees to deal with the NIMBYs. Maybe Seattle could build affordable housing towers in SODO, which has no neighbors and good transit – but I think the industrial businesses on adjacent property would object strongly to that.
Another option could be to build the affordable housing out in rural king county and use the saved money to fund special bus routes to serve it, but even in rural areas, there’s neighbors, and those neighbors would never stand for it.
I don’t know what the solution is, but having the housing authority paying higher and higher land prices to outbid private developers for what slivers of land in Seattle allow multi storey apartments, doesn’t seem very scalable. Ultimately, in order to solve the housing problem, we need to first solve the nimby problem.
“Maybe Seattle could build affordable housing towers in SODO, which has no neighbors and good transit – but I think the industrial businesses on adjacent property would object strongly to that.”
That’s happening right now. The city is proposing adding apartments in the Dome district, 50% of them affordable. The port is pushing back saying it would harm jobs and logistics.
1A would certainly build more housing than 1B, which takes money away from established affordable housing pipelines instead of allowing the SSHD to operate with new revenue. Also, the “sticker shock” only impacts people making more than $1M annually.
If you support social housing, vote Yes and 1A. If you don’t, Vote No and leave it at that. Voting 1B just takes $50M from existing affordable housing funds and does nothing to increase the city’s ability to build new affordable housing. Actually, it would make it worse, because it slice up the affordable housing funding pie into even smaller slices.
Any thoughts on what the new tariff for aluminum and steel mean for Sound Transit? I could see this hitting sound transit hard on both track construction and train purchases. While the heavy ST3 work won’t happen until Trump is out of office, there is no guarantee these tariffs will be removed, as national politicians on both parties are much more concerned about the profits of aluminum and steel companies than about the cost efficiency of transit systems. And I think ST might have a big order of trains coming up during the Trump years to cover the Redmond and Federal Way Link extensions.
It may last as long as the tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China. In other words, two days.
Yeah the tariff threats seem a bit disingenuous for the long term. Too many corporate interests will scream!
A lot of infrastructure and buildings in the US need steel, not just transit systems. Could American manufacturers produce enough? Especially in the first 10 or 20 years?
@asdf2,
Hard to say.
But the good news is that all the steel and aluminum required to open DRLE, Full ELE , and FWLE are already onsite and installed.
So pretty much exactly zero impact on the next 3 extensions to Link, and those 3 extensions are going to be awesome. The next year or so is going to be amazing for regional transit.
Ah, good. DRLE, Full ELE , and FWLE is what I was worried about. Trump will be long gone before West Seattle Link opens
@asdf2,
Ya, there might be some trim pieces here and there that are yet to be installed, or beauty crete that is yet to be poured, but the quantity of metal required is minuscule compared to what is already done.
And the supplies required to complete any open tasks should already be on hand anyway. I see zero impact.
Just a general comment that there’s lots more steel in structures than with the actual rail. That’s especially true for the concrete encased rebar in every support pier as well as throughout any bored or excavated tunnel or vault.
And don’t forget how much steel goes into that planned signature cable-stayed Link bridge over to West Seattle.
ST’s floating bridge work mostly used GFRP Rebar, not metal Rebar, for corrosion protection.
Lazarus is right that the “heavy civil” work is largely over for the Link extensions opening this year and next. I expect the work planned for Stride BRT on I-405 and SR-522 will see some construction cost inflation. I don’t see the tariffs lasting much longer than this federal administration, so construction kicking off after 2028 should be largely unaffected. WSLE is supposed to go to construction in 2027 and TDLE in 2028, though, so it will be interesting to see if the Board baselines those project with inflated steel costs.
One interviewee on NPR said steel supply would be OK, but the US doesn’t have enough electrical capacity to produce most of its aluminum. So how much is aluminum used in transit vehicles or infrastructure?
The video triggers a broader topic for me, and that’s the role of the State in providing intercity transit service.
It strikes me that the state already has a role when it comes to ferries and Cascades trains. Why not long distance buses too?
For that matter, why not intra-state airplane flights? Wouldn’t a replacement for buses not crossing the pass be an added set of shuttle flights, for example?
These are big picture questions that go way past route stops. Still, I think it’s good to remember that any state role in connecting Kittitas County with King County would need to be made clear on its appropriateness given how the state already has a role in connecting other counties to King County.
WSDOT does subsidize some intercity bus service: https://wsdot.wa.gov/business-wsdot/grants/public-transportation-grants/grant-programs-and-awards/travel-washington-intercity-bus
Although the legislature has historically seen WSDOT as a way to move cars, it seems there’s some interest in transitioning WSDOT to a more multi-modal focus. The Urbanist wrote recently about WSDOT’s potential expansion of intercity bus service: https://www.theurbanist.org/2025/01/06/wsdot-intercity-bus-network-expansion/
There are two intercity trip markets that seem to me to have particular relevance to a state role in intercity connectivity: medical trips and college students. I could see each of these being a factor in connecting Kittitas to King County.
I’m reminded of how Illinois subsidizes a twice-daily train service connecting Chicago to Champaign and Carbondale, or how I’ve seen many college students on the Northeast corridor or on intercity buses.
Transit service subsidies usually come with quantitative analysis to justify their creation and continuation. I could see that recognizing these markets would be a part of that. It’s natural to think that the discussed service is to get to King County destinations but there are a heck of a lot of CWU students from the Seattle metro.
Out of curiousity, I looked up what CWU says about their student body and found this:
“About 92 percent of CWU students are state residents, with more from King County than all of eastern Washington.”
Source: https://ofm.wa.gov/budget/state-budgets/gov-inslees-proposed-2023-25-budgets/agency-detail-budgets/375#:~:text=Central%20Washington%20University%20(CWU)%20),than%20all%20of%20eastern%20Washington.
The State has helped BN update the Stampede Pass rail route and that should allow for a state subsidized passenger train service serving the Seattle, Auburn, Cle Elum, Ellensburg, Yakima, Tri Cities route. Probable a higher subsidy but I can imagine much more popular for excursions like wine tasting in the Yakima Valley. Unfortunately the state study seems to indicate they want years of infrastructure improvements. Too bad as I’ve looked at the track and it pretty high quality, back when Amtrak started in the 70’s they would dream up some new route and if it worked out gradual improvements to the infrastructure were implemented. ( the Adirondack and newer services in Vermont come to mind). Seems like a good service could open up real fast if there was the will.
https://www.aawa.us/impact/current-projects/east-west/
Yeah, this would be another of the state’s regional transit lines. Maybe the Cascade Line.
Running a train would have some potential advantages. One is that it is easy to match the expected load with the demand (just add trains). The big question in this case is if you have enough demand to justify frequent rail service. A train and a bus would not be mutually exclusive. I could see the train running in times of bigger demand and the bus running the rest of the time.
Here is another potential advantage: An auto train (or motorail). I personally would love to be able to skip the I-90 part of the drive when I hike on the eastern side of the mountains. It could also be very popular during three-day weekends. Of course that might just trade one traffic jam for another. I doubt that Seattle would want to have a bunch of people driving into the center of town to load their cars on the train to head east. Maybe in Renton (or some place in between). That would be consistent with the Amtrak auto train (https://www.amtrak.com/auto-train-experience). That train goes between Lorton, Virginia near Washington, DC and Sanford, Florida near Orlando.
I think a subsidized bus across Snoqualmie Pass makes more sense than a Stampede Pass rail route. It would run more trips while costing less, and getting people to to their destinations faster.
I agree that this is the right strategy. It will take decades to get using Stsmpede Pass to provide passenger rail at a decent speed.
A bus could be set up rather quickly (in bureaucratic terms). Nothing would begin operating until full East Link is open. Running a bus would be a good way to test the market for a few years — and hone the best times, stops and other things. If demand proves notable, then investing in Stampede Pass passenger service would make more sense.
One question would be whether all the towns are on the rail line.
@Mike Orr – Snoqualmie Pass, Issaquah, and North Bend aren’t; but instead you’ll hit Tukwila and Auburn. All the other towns are.
That said, I agree with asdf2 that a subsidized bus is probably going to give more transportation per dollar than a subsidized train.
Yeah, you really aren’t going to get many riders in between Puget Sound and Cle Elum with a train. Easton is tiny. There is practically nothing at Stampede Pass (although it would work fine as for PCT hikers). That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be worth doing. The big question is whether you would get enough riders to justify it. The bus is probably a better value unless Yakima or Ellensburg boom (or it becomes just part of a Seattle-Spokane train).
A train is better because of the “last mile[s]” speed & reliability advantage over a bus for the urban part of a route. In this case, a Snoqualmie Pass bus that terminates at S Bellevue Station, Link is doing much of the “last mile[s]” heavy lifting to connect riders to their actual destinations within Greater Seattle, and I90’s HOV lanes generally work well.