A tale of two cities: Utrecht and Fake London (Ontario, Canada). (Not Just Bikes) Both were walkable streetcar towns before cars, both went in a car-oriented direction in the mid 20th century. But in the 1990s Utrecht changed course and is now a walkers’/bikers’/transit riders’ paradise. London is still a hellhole of car-dependent design and minimal transit like many American cities.

The video has several notable quotes. “I’ve been constantly told that we need to design for cars because of families, the disabled, or the elderly. And yet I see all of those people getting around just fine [in Utrecht]. Because universal access to mobility isn’t a fundamental issue; it’s a problem caused by car dependency.” (6:19)

Cable-stayed vs suspension bridges. (Practical Engineering)

This is an open thread.

43 Replies to “Sunday Movies: Utrecht & Cable-Stayed Bridges”

    1. ST may have quietly finished early. It was supposed to finish today. I didn’t go out yesterday so I can’t confirm whether Link was running downtown. I’m going out this afternoon so I’ll check Westlake Station. If this weekend’s work was postponed to next weekend for some reason, it’s not in ST’s alerts. There was a Kraken game yesterday evening, so ST may have restored regular service for that.

  2. Yesterday day I rode westlake to stadium and backso it seems they finished up on 2/23? But yes 12minutes this weekend not 10. Way to take Aapositivewe aren’t disrupting this weekend) and turn it into meh.( we can’t provide 10 monute frequesncies).

    1. I’m guessing they’re still doing tunnel work, just not disruptive enough to close the tunnel. Or a staffing/logistics issue made it unable to switch completely to full service at the last minute.

      1. Rode it Saturday; I’d wager the 12 minute frequencies were due to there being one track open between the Pinehurst and 148th St stations

      2. I got caught in the window of time CT was supplying a bus bridge between Mountlake Terrace and Lynnwood while final safety inspection of recent work between the stations was going on.

        A 103 came along on the through street as passengers were exiting, and nearly everyone around me jumped on that bus. It took less than 10 minutes to get to Lynnwood Station that way.

        Going back south, I followed staff’s direction to the bridge bus waiting in row D. We sat there for about 10 minutes before proceeding on I-5 down to the freeway station where, to the surprise of many on board, we were told to exit there. From there, it took close to 5 minutes to get to the station platform.

        ST provided little notice of the bus bridge, planned a path that minimized moving time on the bridge bus, but may as well have had that bus exit to street level at Mountlake Terrace and drop off along the through street, really close to the station entrance.

        At any rate, I would not assume that all non-daily maintenance in the tunnel, or at the new north stations, is caught up until ST posts about them being done. They could be done, but waiting for inspections.

  3. Utrecht made the right decision at the right time, but it’s now fifty years later. And that means that the fifty years in which something like 40% of American housing stock was built was spent cementing sprawl in forever. [pun intended].

    The future is grim, folks. We’re stuck with personal automobiles as our main transportation mode forever, but, as we’re fond of saying here at the Blog, “Cars don’t scale”. So it will be a never ending run-in-place to keep all the potholes filled out in suburbia.

    One thing is sure, there won’t be any more big transit packages, even if the Democrats win Congress in 2026. The Republicans have a lock on the Senate now for the foreseeable future, they don’t want anything except buses, and only punitive service in Red States at that.

    So we need to be creative if Seattle is to thrive and accommodate the many more people who want to live in it. Any capital expenditures in the city should give transit priority if it is in any way possible, regardless of the mode. Build Ross’s second lane in the cloverleaf at 99 and the West Seattle Freeway [CHEAP!], improve the access westbound from the Busway to West Seattle [eastbound is fine now with some red paint], add service to SoDo for quick access to Link, paid for by ST since it would be the replacement for WSLE and call it good for West Seattle.

    Upgrade the bridges to Ballard (add a 70 foot opening span at 14th Avenue for [eventually northbound] cars and bikes and a similar 70 foot opening span replacement for transit and southbound cars at 15th). Add that intermediate car bridge with a good bike and pedestrian crossing at Third and get a pair of lanes on the Fremont Bridge for the buses. If 15th West is too congested build a busway where Link would have gone between the ball field and Interbay Yard. Add express service along Elliott to downtown Seattle also paid for by ST as it’s “regional” service replacing BLE] and call that good for Ballard.

    Then focus any future rail on the strip from Smith Cove through Uptown, SLU, First Hill and the CD. Use the Monorail if it’s the only thing that can be done elevated; people love riding it and, with dogbones at both ends and fully automated operation, it could be as cheap to run as the Sea-Tac people mover, but with views!

    I grant that leaves SLU without direct rail service but it’s so close to Westlake Center that simply by making Westlake bus-only with stop signs for the crossing traffic except at Virginia and Lenora, maybe that’s good enough.
    `

    1. Agreed. And stop with the 100 million dollar vanity rapid rides. If you want to give a bus a dedicated lane, slap down some paint. If you want to increase stop spacing, take an angle grinder to a pole. 100 thousand gets it done.

      1. $100,000 doesn’t come close to the cost of fleet replacement involved in rolling out a new RapidRide line.

        Hopefully we are done buying new diesel buses.

      2. Why do you really need new buses? Skip the bells and whistles of expensive platforms and off board payment. Get yourself 90% there by keeping buses out of traffic with good stop spacing. For a tinny fraction of the cost.

        Tomorrow, not 10 years from now.

      3. Fleet replacement has to happen over time, anyway. Metro may as well keep that part of the ask to the FTA (when the FTA does have money to grant), especially if that is the largest line item in the RapidRide rollout budget.

      4. “stop with the 100 million dollar vanity rapid rides.”

        I argued that earlier.

        But we’ve lost that battle so far. Although route 40 is doing just what you suggest. If Metro won’t switch from creating RapidRide lines to Transit+ lines, it’s better to have the RapidRide lines than nothing. What people need is full-time frequent service regardless of how it comes about.

        “Hopefully we are done buying new diesel buses.”

        Because battery buses are less expensive?

        What we need is more buses, period, regardless of the type. You save more carbon emissions by getting a few drivers to switch to transit than by the bus type. If people have 15-minute service near their origin and destination, they’ll start using it, like they have with the existing RapidRide lines and all over the world. We need a network of full-time frequent service, so that all parts of a multi-seat ride are frequent. That’s when we’ll get the biggest ridership gains.

        You can say RapidRide sucks up money from a larger number of route conversions, but only if the powers that be are willing to do those conversions instead of RapidRide. We’re not there yet.

        But don’t worry, RapidRide K and R are still in planning. They haven’t reached the point of no return where red buses are ordered and it’s too late to save any money. RapidRide I and J are probably too late since they’re about to start construction.

      5. > And stop with the 100 million dollar vanity rapid rides
        > “Hopefully we are done buying new diesel buses.”

        The South Annex Base will cost $400 million base for 250 battery-electric buses. the 100 million rapidride’s really aren’t that expensive relatively to battery bus infrastructure.

        Note the battery bus base cost does not even include the battery buses.

      6. Assuming you are talking about the G route, that cost $100+ million because it was just as much a clever way of getting the Feds to pay for a lot of deferred maintenance along the Madison corridor as it was a rapid transit project. The result is really great: it’s the first bus service I’ve ever found myself *trying* to ride whenever I can, on purpose, like a train, and not just putting up with when I have to like any other bus. Money well spent as far as I’m concerned.

      7. I think there are a few things here which can easily get conflated. A lot of what is involved with making a numbered route a RapidRide route (like more BAT lanes, a stop diet, better headways) can be done without RapidRide. There are only a couple aspects that are essential to RapidRide:

        1) Off-board payment. This does speed up the bus. But it does cost money for “stations” which have ORCA readers. You also need to have some level of fare-enforcement but the overall speed of the buses and increased fare-compliance usually pay for the extra enforcement. It is worth noting that you can have off-board payment without RapidRide — we have (or at least had) that downtown on Third at a few bus stops. San Fransisco has 100% off board payment for their buses.

        2) Different colored buses. I don’t think it costs more for the buses but it does limit the flexibility. While I think we gain little with the special “RapidRide” brand, it does make off-board payment easier to handle. If I see a 32 I know I have to pay in the front. If I see a RapidRide bus (the D Line) I know I don’t.

        That’s about it for a typical RapidRide. Other aspects are quite similar. The city/county basically has to decide whether to just make the improvements to right-of-way or make bigger changes (as part of the work). As mentioned, if the project is big enough they can get the federal government to chip in for what is essentially utilities work. Even without the federal grant it is common for agencies to combine projects. This was the case with the G and is the case with the 40. Look at the latest update to the work for the 40. The caption for the picture is : “Crew members perform trenching work for new pipes and cables with the help of an excavator in the Ballard neighborhood.”

        That is not really transit related. But it goes together with everything else. The buses are expected to run more often. Better to do the work now then wait until later. That is especially true if the street needs to be hardened (because of all the buses). Before you poor down cement we should do all the utility work. This is why a project that is fundamentally fairly cheap looks fairly expensive. Oh, and the same thing happens with bike lanes. Some of the numbers are ridiculous — it doesn’t cost that much money to add some paint a few posts (especially cheap plastic ones) but they use it as excuse to do utility work or general road work.

        RapidRide G was a little different. They did need to get specific buses (with doors on both sides). But those buses are just part of the overall fleet. At some point we would need more buses anyway (as Brent mentioned). So ultimately it doesn’t cost us much extra. For the level of service (which is very good) the capital was money well spent. The buses are very fast compared to what they were before. This means that running them (that often) is much cheaper than it would be without the improvements. Whether we should run buses that often on that street is debatable — I think it is worth it, but I’m sure some disagree. But the capital spending clearly adds value.

      8. There’s also the caveat that off board fare payment only meaningfully speeds up the bus for routes that get lots of riders. With the 7, I think it would make a big difference. With some of the proposed RapidRide routes, like K, it’s impact will be negligible. This is why the decision on what routes to make RapidRide needs to be based on actual ridership, not politics.

      9. Purchasing red buses for RapidRide frees up the previous buses for other routes, so it’s like ordering more buses anyway. The additional cost is the difference between red buses and green buses. That’s higher than zero because the order is so small and a different spec, but it’s probably only a small fraction higher. Unless you have to get buses with left-side doors, which so far only one short route has.

      10. It doesn’t cost any more to have a different fleet with different colored buses. It simply limits flexibility. You don’t want a RapidRide bus on a regular route (or vice-versa).

    2. You aren’t going to be getting giant grants for fancy RRs anymore. Spend the limited funds on ops. Pay the drivers mechanics $50/hour. Keep the buses on the road, fast and frequent.

  4. Trump is only president for 4 years, not forever. The next time a Democrat is elected, the federal grant money will start flowing again. Trump can delay stuff by four years, but can’t kill it completely, just like Biden could only delay oil infrastructure for four years (but could not prevent it).

    1. But Trump can bankrupt the country with tax breaks far larger than any cuts to existing programs. Indeed that seems to be where the budget is headed.

      1. It appears to me that the current version of Trump is setting up the US to have royalty through large scale property ownership by billionaires. The Federal government holds ownership of large amounts of valuable property that they want to be sold off to raise money after going bankrupt. Then they’ll set up borders, hire guards that evolve into the military, and soon we’ll have King Don, King Elon, King Jeff et al — each with a piece of the former US.

        The Senate and House Republicans could stop this march to ending democracy but they don’t see why they should — at least not yet.

      2. Exactly. The goal of the current Administration and Congress is to make the 2017 cuts “permanent”. That means that the current tax level is considered a baseline against which future tax actions are “scored” for future deficit effects. Once made permanent, raising rates loses the value of reducing planned indebtedness. Rises in government revenues become “windfalls for the government” to “return to the taxpayers” in the next Republican Congress.

        The current baseline, which assumes that the 2017 cuts expire this year shows the accumulated debt reaching 110% of GDP within four years, so — for now — Congress is legally required to “offset” any extension with “savings” elsewhere. Now both parties have been guilty of egregiously overstating the “savings”, but Republicans simply don’t give a damn anymore. They are hell-bent of making the government insolvent so that the services it provides to all an sundry can only be provided by for-profit monoplies owned by the TechBros.

    3. I’m not putting it past Trump to push for a third term, 22nd. Amendment be damned.

    4. Well fortunately billionaire development firms love transit, they may be the thing that saves transit at the Federal level. We shall see.

  5. Back to the mundane and rounding-error debate over flogging passholders who get caught failing to tap, and then making the huge mistake of presenting their ORCA card…. I hope D M stuck around for this part…

    If ST is trying to use “social shaming” to get more riders to pay, how does inflating “fare evasion” data by throwing fully-paid passholders who managed not to tap into that category help? It certainly works against the aura that everyone else pays.

    1. Do Line 2 trains creeeeeeeeep along like in the video regularly? That train is going about ten miles an hour.

      1. This is the slowest I’ve ever seen them. East Link trains seem to me a slight bit slower than the 1 line, but nothing like this. They are either testing four-car runs (East Link has always been two-car), or there’s construction at the Bellevue Transit Center station that is requiring slow speeds.

      2. I was at Redmond Tech today, and can report that every train was four cars, every train was going regular speed, and every train that pulled into Redmond Tech continued on to the Downtown Redmond Link Extension. So they are now conducting full simulated service. Also, the Redmond Tech garage was over 80% full. There are three floors for parking. The 2nd floor was full. The 3rd floor was full. And the top floor was around half full.

      3. I don’t know what the deal is but they always creep into Bellevue Downtown station, have since it started operation.

      4. “they always creep into Bellevue Downtown station”

        There’s a 90 degree turn right next to the station. Trains always slow down at sharp turns.

      5. Someone in the comments said they were replacing pandrol clips at the Wilburton station. That would explain why the trains need to be so slow there.

  7. KOMO online poll results … What’s your biggest concern about local public transit?
    Cost – 3%
    Isn’t convenient where I live – 15%
    Safety – 79%
    Cleanliness – 3 %

    1. The argument I hear from more reactionary Vancouver, WA, residents about opposing accommodating Max to the much-needed I-5 bridge replacement between Van and Portland: All light rail does is bring crime.

      On videos about East Link’s progress, I’ve even seen Seattle residents tell Eastsiders to get ready for the vagrants that will invade once Link finally crosses the lake.

      Sigh.

      1. “I’ve even seen Seattle residents tell Eastsiders to get ready for the vagrants that will invade once Link finally crosses the lake.”
        I tend to take said opinions with a grain of salt because often it’s hyperbolics laden with layers of classism and racist undertones rather than situations where someone was in legitimate danger. There’s often a conflating of “I felt uncomfortable” with “I felt unsafe” among said group when often it’s the former rather than the latter.

        Are there legitimate safety concerns on transit, yes. I dealt with it a couple weeks ago when we had a mentally unwell person having an episode of screaming and yelling at no one on the bus and getting fairly physical with themselves banging on the bus walls. But in my experience, these situations are not as common as people think (depending on the route) and most are resolved by either the driver or another passanger telling the person causing problems to leave without getting police involved.

      2. “I’ve even seen Seattle residents tell Eastsiders to get ready for the vagrants that will invade once Link finally crosses the lake.”

        As if the 550 hasn’t been running on almost the same route for forty years. Vagrants turn up their nose at buses too?

    2. @Sam,

      Yes, safety is almost always cited as one of the top concerns about transit. And the perceptions of safety do impact ridership.

      Which is one of the reasons that Metro’s plan to pay for fare enforcement by reducing security staff is so aggravating. Restarting fare enforcement (finally) is the right thing to do, but paying for fare enforcement by reducing security is just wrong. Metro security needs to be improved AND fare enforcement needs to be restarted. Both should happen.

      That said, don’t put too much faith in the actual numbers in that poll. Sinclair likes to beat the crime drum a little too much.

    3. Hmm numbers add to 100%. There really was no-one who answered “none of the above”? I think there may be some problems with teh design here.

    4. The poll is likely dominated by respondents who never came ride transit, so their only experience about it comes from komo news, which has a financial incentive (by boosting ratings) to portray transit as a crime-ridden hellhole.

      1. And KOMO is owned by Sinclair, which has a right-wing bent, even if it doesn’t have control of the station’s newsrooms. I suspect (though I haven’t compared it systematically), that KOMO’s story/emphasis selection is a bit more conservative and doomsday than KING or KIRO (thus dwelling on transit crime more, which scares car-driving suburbanites that don’t have independent knowledge of the situation).

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