Countdown: 59 days until the Downtown Redmond Link Extension opens.

Open House: Sound Transit is hosting another South Downtown Hub Open House on April 2 from 5-7pm at Union Station.

Light Rail Disruptions: Link 1 Line service in Downtown Seattle will be significantly disrupted from April 14 to April 23 according to a recent Passenger Impact Program presentation. More details to come.

Local Transit News:

Ferry News:

Other Transportation:

Land Use & Housing:

Commentary & Miscellaneous:

This is an Open Thread.

92 Replies to “Midweek Roundup: 151 Million Trips”

  1. Do we have a date or any info for the spring service change yet?

    I figure that’s when they’ll start serving the Montlake bus stops, is there any other noise on other changes?

    1. Every service change I wish and pray for the 62 to be split.

      The bunching and unreliability for those of us east of Roosevelt Station is painful and seems to be getting worse. Cold, wet, noisy, long waits after getting off Link in the evening and the next bus sign showing numerous ones bunched together 25 minutes away.

      Or ghost buses that don’t arrive and then two leaving Magnuson Park within a couple of minutes of each other. Yes, teenagers cut it close, but kids are late to RHS in the mornings because of the unreliability.

      All sorts of layover room under the freeway just east of the station, or further east in Green Lake.

      1. Would the suggested split be: Magnussen Green Lake and Green Lake Downtown ?

        When I’ve ridden the 62, it seems the majority of east end riders are getting on/off at Roosevelt. Then west of Roosevelt are getting on/off at Wallingford or SLU. It would be nice to see the boarding data for the 62.

      2. Every service change I wish and pray for the 62 to be split.

        That seems unlikely. It is fairly straightforward route. Just about all the combinations work (the exception being 65th to downtown — riders are more likely to get off the bus and take Link). A bus like the 40 is a much better candidate for splitting. It has many of the same issues and does a lot more back and forth. It isn’t just layover space. A split costs money. It also forces a transfer in some cases. For example if both buses ended at the Green Lake Park and Ride (under the freeway) then riders from TangleTown, Wallingford and Stone Way would not have a one-seat ride to Roosevelt. For Stone Way and Tangle Town that would create a fair number of new three-seat rides (e. g. Tangle Town to Northgate).

        It doesn’t really deal with the root of the problem: lack of transit right-of-way. The changes for the 40 will help that bus as well but mostly southbound (which means it won’t really help you). When the Fremont Bridge goes up, traffic on Dexter backs up (northbound). There should be BAT lanes on Dexter northbound starting at the bus stop on Dexter & 4th (https://maps.app.goo.gl/8rKx8FycYJKG29Cj9) all the way to Nickerson. Only cars making a hairpin turn (to southbound Nickerson) would be allowed in that right lane. The BAT lane would be on the right and the general purpose lane would be to the left. It would split into two lanes as it came close to Nickerson with the same pattern as now (https://maps.app.goo.gl/Q9KwVLUHayBrbB369) but with that right lane painted in red. That would dramatically reduce the delays for northbound buses (just as the changes for the 40 will).

        I would also add BAT lanes for Stone Way. There is parking on both sides of the street that could be used for BAT lanes while retaining the bike lanes. Better yet they could add bike lanes/Greenway onto Interlaken, which would be safer for cyclists and remove any issues with BAT lanes. But even if they retained the existing bike lanes they could add BAT lanes (they would just need the island stops like on Dexter).

        There should be bus lanes on 45th (for the 44 and 62) although that would require more work. You would have to get rid the parking and some of the curb bulbs. Some parts of it could be improved without that level of work (by adding “queue jumps”). Of course one easy fix is to implement the changes to the 62 I wrote about here: https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/03/20/improve-buses-on-the-east-side-of-green-lake/. (It is the first one.)

        I’ve been very critical of Metro planners and I think a lot of routes should change. But the 62 is fairly good. The problem is that SDOT needs to make the buses faster.

      3. We might get bus lanes on 45th once Wallingford stops considering the parking lanes to be protected under historic preservation rules.

        /s

      5. It would be nice to see the boarding data for the 62.

        I can forward it to you if you want. For now, here are some numbers for an inbound 62 (starting at Sand Point heading towards downtown):

        874 people board before 12th (the Link Station)
        535 people alight before the freeway

        This means that of the 874 people that board along 65th, 341 stay on the bus past the station (and past the park and ride). Another data point:

        193 riders board next to the station. So that means that over 500 riders (one way) would be hurt if the bus was split into two routes (at Green Lake).

      6. We might get bus lanes on 45th once Wallingford stops considering the parking lanes to be protected under historic preservation rules.

        Ha! That’s funny. Urbanist humor.

      7. That is not a very useful split. But Route 62 does need several changes.

        One. The segment between NOAA and NE 74th Street could be deleted; Transit and SDOT spent capital funds to make the turnaround loop using 62nd Avenue NE work and now only use it part time. The NOAA ridership is low; Route 75 is just outside the gate.

        Two. The pathway in east Green Lake should be streamlined to serve NE 65th Street, Latona Avenue NE, and NE 56th Street. This would put it on the pathway of the former Meridian streetcar line. The Seattle mixed zoning follows the streetcar lines. It would mitigate the deletion of Route 20 in fall 2024. Seattle should chose how to make this happen on NE 56th Street: either shift the parking to the middle where the streetcar used to be and run transit at the curb, or, improve the pavement in the center where the streetcar tracks were removed in 1940.

        Three. There is an SDOT bus island on southbound Dexter Avenue North between Roy and Mercer streets that should be demolished; it leaves the south-to-west right turn queue too short; the traffic backs up and blocks the single general purpose lane; Route 62 is too often stuck.

        Four. Extend routes 40 and 62 to First Hill via Yesler Way, 8th/9th avenues, East Jefferson Street. They could lay next to Juvenile Justice. There could be frequent service connecting the Link stations and the 3rd Avenue spine with First Hill (e.g., Yesler Terrace, Harborview, Swedish, SU, and JJ). Much less costly than the G Line.

        Five. Pavement management. Many of its arterials have worn out pavement.

        Six. Stop optimization. The stop spacing is too close east of 20th Avenue NE.

        The first comment is about poor outbound reliability. Metro has data on that. Note that SDOT has narrowed 7th Avenue to a single lane in Amazonia and narrowed Dexter Avenue North to a single through lane. Any blockage may delay service.

        Note that the Route 62 layover on 5th Avenue South could be used by Route 106 and save its going to and from the bases.

      8. Note that SDOT has narrowed 7th Avenue to a single lane in Amazonia and narrowed Dexter Avenue North to a single through lane. Any blockage may delay service.

        I wonder if it makes sense to reroute the bus. That little section on 7th is unique to the 62. Both the 40 and 62 use Blanchard/Lenora but they just keeps going straight onto/from Westlake. The 5, 28 and RapidRide E use Wall/Battery and do something similar (onto 7th Avenue North — not to be confused with 7th Avenue).

        Rather than fight over that little unique section of the 62 (on 7th) we could move the bus over to the same corridor as the 5, 28 and Rapid Ride E. It could dogleg on Harrison like so: https://maps.app.goo.gl/CuAdmPqoT6W5gAqk9. You would have to add special traffic signals (for buses only) but otherwise that looks really easy. If Harrison was a transit street (as planned at one point) it becomes even easier.

      9. If the 62 jogged east (maybe on Roy) it could join with the 40 to reuse much of the bus lane infrastructure and form a frequent SLU-Fremont corridor

      10. Metro created the 62 as a crosstown innovation; I don’t think it will pull back from that.

        The eastern third of the 62 has the lowest ridership, so asking for it to be split to improve reliability east of Roosevelt is the tail wagging the dog. You should be glad you have the route at all, and 15-minute evening service every day to boot. Several other routes that should have 15-minute evening service or 15-minute Sunday service don’t.

        I’ve thought about splitting the 62, but the problem is it serves so many overlapping trips, that splitting it anywhere would harm the grid or North Seattle mobility. Here are some of the trips: Sand Point to Roosevelt, Sand Point to Greenlake, Sand Point to Wallingford, Roosevelt to Fremont, Wallingford to SLU, Wallingford to downtown, Fremont to SLU, Fremont to downtown, SLU to downtown.

        The reliability issue is due to a thousand congestion points along the route. The solution is transit-lane priority as much as possible.

      11. If we have to split the 62. the best place would be Roosevelt. That’s a Link station and a significant retail village. It would really only affect people east of it,. and that’s the lowest-ridership part, so if we have to force somebody to transfer, it should be that part.

        Splitting it at Greenlake or Fremont would be bad. It would force people to transfer at Greenlake for just another half mile to Roosevelt. When the routes are every 15 minute, that means a potential 15 minute transfer wait. Splitting it at Fremont would break SLU-Greenlake or SLU-Roosevelt trips among others.

      12. The RossB Route 62 concept has merit; it would have more blocks on 3rd Avenue and use the Wall-Battery couplet. Several years ago, the Dexter route was on Bell-Blanchard streets; Seattle wanted it to be park-like.

      13. If the 62 jogged east (maybe on Roy) it could join with the 40 to reuse much of the bus lane infrastructure and form a frequent SLU-Fremont corridor

        Good point. By jogging the other way you combine some common trips.

      14. If we have to split the 62. the best place would be Roosevelt.

        The problem is that there is only one layover location and that is a bit too far east. If you look at the numbers and the geography the case for splitting it isn’t very strong. The case for making it faster is.

      16. @Ross… “It doesn’t really deal with the root of the problem: lack of transit right-of-way.”

        In the case of the 62, the real issue is that route is too dang long. Even with spot improvements, such as queue jumps and transit lanes, they’re not going to help against the constant stop-and-go every 3 blocks , SLU congestion and the countless unsynchronized traffic lights the bus has to sit through the entirety of its route. The ridership data provided by this blog suggests there are three groups of riders for this route:

        1) Wedgewood-Roosevelt
        2) Green Lake-Wallingford-Fremont
        3) Wallingford-Fremont-Downtown/SLU

        The losers of a split would be Wallingford-Wedgewood riders who would need to transfer at Greenlake. Based on my experience, this is a slim number of people.
        Metro has split the old 174 into the current day A-Line & 124, the 150 into the current day 150 & 160 for the same reason: reliability.

      17. The 62 is just over an hour long end-to-end. The 150 and 174 were 1.5 hours long two decades ago.

        The 160 was created to prefigure RapidRide I. It’s not shorter than its predecessor 181 (Auburn-Kent-Burien). It’s longer than its predecessor 169 (Renton-Kent), although I don’t remember if the 169 was interlined with another route to west Des Moines.

      18. @ Mike… keep in mind, the run times are scheduled and not actual. Yes, Metro builds in time for traffic but real-world factors often delay the bus past its schedule run-time. The 62 is a long route. Just like the 40, it goes through a plethora of neighborhoods and is making constant stops throughout the entirety of the route. There’s not a soul who gets on in Wedgewood and takes it all the way downtown. Therefore, it doesn’t need to and ought to be broken up into two routes for the sake of reliability.

        Also, sidenote: the 181 and other suburban routes don’t experience chronic reliability issues because they’re not going through dense, single-lane urban streets where they have to travel 20mph and stop every 3 blocks with high ridership. And it practically travels on a highway between Federal Way and Auburn at high speeds. And the old 169 was not interlined. (im also thankful that Metro smartened up and combined the 180 and the 169 to what it is today)

      19. It’s an average-length Seattle route or interlined pair. I’m not saying it absolutely must not be splt, but splitting a route increases the number of resources it requires. That would have to come from lower frequency or other routes until Metro gets more resources and the driver shortage ends.

      20. There’s not a soul who gets on in Wedgwood and takes it all the way downtown.

        So what? That is irrelevant. If you are trying to split a route you want to find out how many people would be effected by the split (not where they are going). Of course it matters if it is only a few blocks. But even when you consider that it is clear that a split at Green Lake would effect a high percentage of the riders (https://seattletransitblog.com/2025/03/12/midweek-roundup-mosquito-fleet/#comment-953042). A lot of riders would be forced to transfer. For what? So that a relatively small number of riders could have a more consistent ride? It just isn’t worth it.

        Splitting a route costs money (which means the buses come less often). There are buses that should be split for geographic reasons. The 62 is not one of them. Work should be done to make the route faster and more consistent which would help *all* of the riders (including those west of the freeway which make up the vast majority of those using the bus).

    2. Also, sidenote for the 62: long term plans is to shift the route to Latona Ave, according to a personal DOT source.

      1. The Latona Avenue NE pathway is shown in the Seattle Transit Plan and a former version of the comp plan. It was in the Metro P2 options for the fall 2021 North Link connections project. SDOT vetoed it due pavement concerns. SDOT could solve the issue.

    3. I believe the Spring Service Change will be on March 29 – at least, that’s when Community Transit’s spring service change will be.

    4. The date seems to be March 29, but we haven’t seen anything on what the changes will be. Metro often puts the Rider Alert brochure and new schedules on buses two weeks ahead on a Saturday, so that would be in three days, March 15.

      The East Link restructure has two or three phases. The Redmond Link extension is scheduled for May 10. The first phase is for that, and straightens out RapidRide B, and extends the B and a handful of other Redmond Routes to Redmond Downtown station. It’s unclear whether that will happen March 29, May 10, or sometime before or after May 10. I don’t know what other changes Metro may have in mind for March 29.

  2. It’s wild to me that 8 1/2 years after passing ST3, the headline projects are still in the “planning” phase, not even in the “design” phase yet.

    1. Truly. To be fair, WSLE would be in the design phase right now if the FTA had issued their Record of Decision already, but that’s delayed due because the project is too “woke”, apparently. Or maybe simply because Washington is too “woke” to deserve federal funding for non-military projects?

    2. ST3 was a much bigger and a much longer than ST2 was. One analogy is a restaurant dinner reservation.

      If you reserve a table at a fast diner, you order food and it comes quickly as the ingredients are there ready to be cooked and served. If you went to a restaurant and they haven’t yet determined the dish ingredients or done pre preparation it will take longer — but you’re table reservation is for four hours and you just have to wait it out.

      Finally, the much grander list of projects is like getting a tour bus if customers hit a restaurant all at once — with every order being unique. Cooks get overwhelmed so food can’t be prepared as quickly and some customers must wait longer than they expect. Keep in mind that it’s mostly ST2 projects that are opening now too (some ST3 $ added to complete them) so it’s like the restaurant was already crowded with customers waiting for food when the tour bus arrived.

      It’s somewhat simplistic and maybe not the best analogy.

      And since adoption, ST says that they must tax for a longer period to raise funds to build what they under-costed in 2016 (when they assumed only a 10 percent contingency and unrealistic capital costs). That dinner reservation for four hours has pushed to five and it’s still not enough.

      I see the main issue is the lousy design of ST3 rather than what has happened since. It should have been a shorter time period and less costly. Had it been halved, I could see that the 4 Line would have been dropped, Everett Link would have stopped in South Everett or Mariner, Tacoma Done would have stopped in South Federal Way, and there would be a short automated line between Seattle Center and Westlake or maybe Harborview (no Link to West Seattle or Ballard). It’s just that the dreams of a Spine et al were so powerful that the Board chose to go big.

      1. When you have many projects that have multiple steps to complete, that usually indicates an assembly line process should be used. Focus on 1 or 2 projects at a time, get them planned quickly and moved to design phase, and then plan the next 2. This allows for a more manageable workload, allows planners, engineers, and construction contractors to learn and improve their process for sequential projects, and avoids a spike of demand for services when all projects are in the same stage which increases costs. Of course I’m not a megaproject coordinator, but that’s how I would run the zoo.

    3. Yes, and it is not “the Seattle process” — it is simply because the project(s) are really big. Basically the agency can not go into debt too much (in regards to the bonds they sell). The longer they wait the more money comes in (from taxes) which allows them to spend more. Even if we knew exactly what we wanted to build and it was all approved we couldn’t build all of it right away. This is why projects like Ballard Link get pushed out. It isn’t that they are afraid they won’t be able to figure it out in time — they just don’t have the money to build it (since various projects cost a lot more than expected).

      Thus for a lot of projects it really doesn’t matter how long they stay in design phase. What matters is how expensive they ultimately are.

    4. The pandemic delayed everything significantly. The concrete workers’ strike added 9 months to ST2 projects, and since then there have been labor/parts shortages. ST is still putting a lot of staff/resources into ST2, so it doesn’t have those available for ST3 until those are done. Northgate Link was supposed to open in 2020, Redmond Tech in 2021, Lynnwood in 2022, and Federal Way in 2023. Riders have been living in a holding pattern until all these are finished. ST2 construction also means 2/3 of ST’s monthly tax revenue is not available for ST3: that has to wait until the ST2 bills stop coming in and its bonds get substantially paid down. That’s the primary reason Ballard and Everett weren’t even scheduled to open until the late 2030s.

      East Link went through a planning bottleneck in southern Bellevue that added a year to the EIS process. The Bellevue City Council was obstructionist and demanded several additional alternatives be studied. Kemper Freeman was suing ST to block East Link. Surrey Downs went full NIMBY. An environmentalist threatened to sue ST if the track crossed Mercer Slough anywhere except underground.

      With Ballard Link, ST begged the stakeholders to agree on one or two alternatives to study to avoid a Bellevue-like delay, and the city to streamline the permitting and allow light rail as a general zoning use as Redmond was doing, but those didn’t happen. ST proposed far longer transfers downtown than anybody had expected or that other multi-line subways have at their core, so transit supporters had to argue against that to get something usable. Other stakeholders pushed for different things. Constantine/Harrell famously shoved Midtown station to James Street and CID station to Dearborn Street. There were controversies over the SLU alignment alternatives, Ballard 15th or 14th station, and tunnels in both Ballard and West Seattle. The Coast Guard required a fixed Ship Canal bridge to be higher than anyone was expecting. ST has been adding multibillion dollar options to West Seattle and Ballard that many people think it can’t afford. All that has delayed Ballard’s plannin and design I don’t know anymore how many years, and West Seattle to a lesser extent.

      1. And this is why other countries with extensive rail systems like France or Germany have limited scope in terms of how much community involvement is weighed into design and planning. As most of the work is done by professional planners at like RATP for example. The anglosphere unfortunately has a lot of urban planning habits, laws, and rules that allow for a lot nonsense to fester in the planning phase that really don’t exist elsewhere.

      2. Um, Germany is notorious for environmental reviews stymying public works projects. I’d argue Germany has an even worse NIMBY problem than the anglosphere and a much higher rate of surplus extraction by special interest.

  3. 12:39pm Sound Transit alert: “1 Line trains are sharing one track at Othello Station until further notice due to collision. Please board all trains on the platform to Angle Lake.”

  4. It will be interesting to see if they shut down, or “pause” any of the on-going highway expansion projects.

    They are clearly too far along on the extension of 509 to connect to I-5.

    I’d love to see the Columbia River Crossing, or whatever it’s current incarnation is called, shut down or vastly scaled back to largely stay within the current footprint, and skip all the massive new interchanges.

    The interchange at Rt 18 and I-90 is pretty close to done, but would live to see the highway expansion on 18 stopped in it’s tracks.

    I would also love to see the 167 expansion from the Port of Tacoma shut down. Ditto with the Canyon Road expansion. In the distant past, Fredrickson and Kent industrial areas and warehouses were served extensively by rail. The rail still exists. Lets see how many trucks we can get off the road and get the freight back onto the rails.

    1. The 167 and 509 have tolling in their funding. They are somewhat far along and the materials have been ordered too. So outside of not adding the full freeway width I’m not sure what else could be done without some hefty shutdown costs.

      The projects at risk are likely those not yet contracted and under construction. Many of those are rehab projects.

    2. Yeah, there are a fair number of freeway projects that should never have been seriously considered.

    3. I’d also like all the HOV gaps between Tacoma and Olympia filled with paint, not concrete. Maybe a transit ramp or three, but no new lanes.

    4. There is a lot of opportunity to scale down the Columbia River Crossing project. We know how to build pontons for floating bridges. The process to build an immersed tunnel is very similar (you just flood them by design rather than by accident 😉). Construction would be much cheaper and we could use the existing interchanges as is rather than having to rebuild them higher to reach high above the river. You may even be able to reuse the existing bridge for walking/rolling and for MAX.

      1. Martin, a floating bridge wouldn’t work for the I-5 bridge replacement. There’s WAY too much variability in the river’s flow. It’s not an eight foot tidal range like the Hood Canal Bridge has to accommodate.

        Occasionally the Columbia floods a bit at the bridgehead, over twenty feet higher than the late summer minimum. The mechanics of that great a water height range is why pontoon bridges are not more widely used for permanemt river crossings.

        I like the idea of a “dredge and drop” tunnel also, but the engineers say it would cost twice what a bridge would, and it makes connection to SR14 and downtown Vancouver pretty difficult.

        The reuse idea might be fine for the 1949 span, which is welded. But the 1918 original span is riveted except in “The Hump”. That’s over a hundred years of shaking and loading riveted spans. It’s physical life expectancy is within view.

        The 1949 span alone can’t serve SR14 AND “walking / rolling and MAX”. As a bi-directional structure it could be only one lane in each direction. It’s not wide enough for a zipper” lane.

      2. I’m not suggesting a floating bridge, I’m suggesting an immersed tunnel and just saying the construction is actually similar.
        WSP wants to build a big bridge. So they produced a report which says a tunnel can’t be built! They miscalculated the amount of dredging by an order of magnitude and had some other nonsensible arguments in that report. When this was pointed out to them by the public, they had to pull that report. I have no confidence in that report, it’s time to hire some independent experts to look at the feasibility. As a tunnel is far shallower than the proposed bridge is high, I bet that it is possible to connect SR18.

      3. it’s a lot of lanes for an tunnel, even one that is immersed. it’d be incredibly expensive.

        > So they produced a report which says a tunnel can’t be built! They miscalculated the amount of dredging by an order of magnitude

        No I agree with them. it’s way too expensive.

      4. The Columbia River Crossing project need has been obvious for decades. Could it be that the problem isn’t a technical one but is instead a political one?

        I’d think that a combination of reduced outcome expectations to bring costs down combined with a taxation and funding/ tolling proposal to generate the needed revenue could get the replacement underway, yet the details are so complex that a strategy would have already been implemented by now. Us Seattle transit fans aren’t not going to resolve the conundrum — and even if we had new ideas, would anyone actually look into them?

      5. The Columbia River Crossing project need has been obvious for decades.

        Sure, but there is no need to build a massively expensive gigantic monstrosity of a bridge. First step: think smaller. There are options (besides just an immersed tunnel) that would be much cheaper and still fix the underlying issues.

      6. I sometimes think that the CRC saga mirrors the Link saga:

        1. Assume one solution (one bridge; one station and one technology) to serve a variety of travel needs and distances.
        2. Pike on every travel need and mitigation that stakeholders want (every possible mode; every possible treatment to mitigate visual and sound issues).
        3. Find out that the solution that does everything has both gotten too costly and still leaves some stakeholders frustrated that it doesn’t do everything everyone wants.

        In the case of the CRC, I think a great case could be made for a tolled higher bridge for longer trips (maybe only 4 or 6 lanes total), followed by a second less high “local” bridge that still has a drawbridge span but can serve bicycles and pedestrians, all trips between Iregon and Downtown Vancouver or SR 14, and someday light rail. That second bridge could be the newer span (1949? 1958?) for a bit longer until there are funds to build a replacement and the first bridge is open. Maybe the locals can enhance the second lower brudge yo make it a signature one.

        Functionally, it would be similar to how we have the two West Seattle bridges, the Aurora/ Fremont bridges or the Ship Csnal I-5/ Eastlake bridges.

        The advantage to two bridges is redundancy. An accident would not paralyze the transportation system.

        It would also do a great job accommodating pedestrians, bicyclists and rail transit vehicles that have restricted grades.

      7. I think you’re right, Al. It was 1958 that the welded bridge was built, not 1949.

      8. Martin, no, there is a channel trough in the middle of the river which is on the order of 60 feet deep from mean slack water. You have to have at least twenty feet of overburden to protect against the admittedly infinitesimal chance of a vessel sinking right on the tube. So we’re talking 80 feet of depth at the top of the tubes through the channel, and of course that means eighty feet immediately on either side of the channel, slanting up to probably fifty at the shoreline.

        But then, on the Washington side, there is a hill. It’s not steep, but it’s also not tiny. This tunnel wouldn’t have to dive as (relatively) deep as the Deep Bore does from the SLU entrance, but probably half as far, and it takes the DBT a mile to get there. So figure a half mile for the north approach on a Columbia Dredged Tunnel.

        So, the north tunnel portal would have to be between Mill Plain and McLaughlin in order to get down far enough. That’s a very big double back for downtown Vancouver and SR14. I suppose you could have spiral ramp tunnels like Detroit does at the west end of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel and Manhattan has at the end of the Holland Tunnel to make the connection, but that means you have to have a southbound merge extending at least partway under the river, requiring a fourth southbound lane. In truth, you probably want a fourth “auxiliary” lane to continue on to Marine Drive on the Portland side. There would be no connection to Jantzen Beach possible.

        It also seems pretty difficult to state the north side tunnel portal. There isn’t much room between the Fort and downtown Vancouver; that’s been a problem for engineering the high bridges, too.

        I guess you could put a shoo-fly for the northbound lanes in the park north of Mill Plain, dig the northbound portal ramp, bore down to the riiver, drop the northbound tube and bore to the south portal under Hayden Island. Throw a shoo-fly for the northbound lanes around the portal just south of Marine Drive, and then shift the southbound traffic into the northbound tunnel. Then do the whole thing over for the southbound side.

        Such staging is normal in a highway project, and of course a replacement bridge will do the same thing.

        Ross, Al,

        You are right: the problem is political. Oregon does not want a new bridge, period, really. It just means more cars on their freeways and arterial roadways. But they’ll agree to fund half of the state-level requirements in order to get MAX over to Vancouver, which they see as a major plus for regional integration. YMMV, but they hold all the high cards. Six to eight times as many people commute south as commute north in the morning, and, really, nobody goes from Oregon to Vancouver to shop. Ilani? Hell yeah! but you can go there at 2:30 in the morning.

      9. “I sometimes think that the CRC saga mirrors the Link saga:”

        I think this is very true, but there is one important point you didn’t mention: plan around the existing limiting circumstances.

        The last bridge went through some hundreds of millions of design work before being rejected because the Coast Guard ruled it too low for the river traffic, and the high bridge option was ruled too much of an obstruction for the airport approaches for two airports.

        I fear the new bridge will have much the same fate, as the new bridge seems to have not included much in the way of design changes to satisfy those previous rejections.

      10. @ Tom:

        My idea of a high bridge could also work as a deep bored tunnel as well. Since it would be for longer distance traffic, the bore could begin a mile from the river or even a bit further if needed. A stacked design like the 99 tunnel would seem to work.

        The important element of what I’m suggesting is to not design a single crossing for everything — especially for interchanges near the river. There are just too many design constraints and political constraints to do it without blowing wads of money and taking years to complete. So an express deep bored tunnel first, and a shorter signature bridge built after that opens seems like a reasonable alternative to consider too.

      11. @Tom, where can I find out more about the slack water? It didn’t appear in the WSP study. I was told they have to dredge the channel as it keeps filling up and that an immersed tunnel could be built far shallower as shown in https://x.com/BOrtblad/status/1897097598399578250
        @Al, I like your bored tunnel idea or separate bridge for long distance travel. The current bridge may still be sufficient for local traffic.
        A separate bridge could have an integrated gondola like proposed for Sicily:
        https://wordlesstech.com/scylla-and-charybdis-bridge-to-connect-sicily-and-italy/

      12. Tom:
        The Columbia River isn’t that deep in most places, including around the bridge. It’s dredged to 43 feet up to the Port of Portland, but up river from the ocean going areas it’s mostly around 30 feet or less.

        It’s one of the reasons I think they need to at least look at a tunnel: they need really long approaches to get sufficiently high above the water, but not as much to go under. 180 feet or so to go over, and perhaps 60 or so to go under.

        Furthermore, after the hill you mention, I-5 actually drops into a gulch as it heads north. If the tunnel effort started in that area, it wouldn’t need to climb that much to go under.

        Yes, tunneling would be very expensive. However, if you want to eliminate the drawbridge (one of the primary goals), there aren’t any good options due to the FAA not wanting anything in the airport approach space. Even the existing bridge would not be legal today.

        This leaves a tunnel as one of the very few viable options that actually will accomplish what everyone says they want, even though it was rejected.

      13. OK, I give up, everybody wants to build DBT2. Good luck. However, Oregon has made it clear that it will never agree to a tunnel, because they want MAX to get to Vancouver in order to link in the last regional center that isn’t connected by some sort of rail transit. A tunnel absolutely cannot host MAX, simply because it would of necessity bypass downtown Vancouver, the only reason for it to cross the river.

        The last bridge was never formally rejected by the Coast Guard or FAA. Both raised a lot of objections, and either (or both) might have blocked it, but the Washington State Senate, at Helicopter Don Benton’s urging, refused to appropriate the State’s contribution and beat them to it.

      14. Martin, don’t be suckered by some jerk on X. That Ortblad guy is a “No Tolls” MAGAt. They’ll tell lies all day long to get a transit project stopped.

      15. Glenn is right; I5 should be in a tunnel, emerging somewhere north of Mill Plain road. The I5 mainline would then miss the 14 interchange, which is good because WSDOT should shrink/eliminate that interchange, whereas the current plan is to supersize that interchange.

        In addition, there should be a bridge for local traffic. That bridge can have lanes for MAX, lanes for HOV/buses, or both. This “local” road will still be a major arterial, but the I5 Row between the river and Mill Plain road can be resized to reduce the barrier between downtown Vancouver and Fort Vancouver, mostly by rightsizing the interchanges.

      16. Just realized Al had also made all my points already: 2 crossing for 2 different purposes; smaller or less interchanges.

      17. It would be such a boon to Vancouver to remove I-5 from it’s proximity to downtown. Highways have no business in cities.

      18. A massive freeway tunnel would bankrupt los angeles let along have portland attempt to build it.

        > Glenn is right; I5 should be in a tunnel, emerging somewhere north of Mill Plain road. The I5 mainline would then miss the 14 interchange, which is good because WSDOT should shrink/eliminate that interchange, whereas the current plan is to supersize that interchange.

        No, stop trying to waste so much money on a huge freeway tunnel. the i5 tunnel there is like 3 lanes plus you need a shoulder so in total would need like ~8 lanes worth of tunnels. Idk probably like 20 to 40 billion dollars since you also need new interchanges.

        If portland has that much money lying around go build a subway system instead.

      19. Why would it cost so much? And why do you need 8 lanes? There is a massive bridge just up the river with a ton of capacity. Yes, traffic. That’s a feature, not a bug. But it a HOV-3, express buses, and tell single occupancy drivers they now are being asked to pay for their externalities with their variably valuable time.

        Leave all the other interchanges alone. Turn 14th into a skate park. Turn the old bridge into a giant shared-use path. Call it a day.

      20. > Why would it cost so much? And why do you need 8 lanes? There is a massive bridge just up the river with a ton of capacity. Yes, traffic. That’s a feature, not a bug. But it a HOV-3, express buses, and tell single occupancy drivers they now are being asked to pay for their externalities with their variably valuable time.

        Why wouldn’t it cost so much. I have no idea why y’all think building a massive freeway tunnel would be cheap. Freeways are much wider and also have a shoulder lane.

        there’s a reason why for freeways most of the time we don’t even build them elevated but just embank them dirt and trench them with a short bridge for overpasses/underpasses.

        To build like 3 lanes in each direction they’d need like 3 travel lanes plus a shoulder for around like 44 feet width.

        sometimes people say we just need tunneling to be cheaper for subways. I’ve always countered saying it’s about priorities and if tunneling was cheaper americans would just tunnel more for freeways. this thread is a perfect example of that.

      21. Or to put it differently, in order to build that tunnel, it’d be the same cost as tunneling 3 subway lines.

      22. “A tunnel absolutely cannot host MAX, simply because it would of necessity bypass downtown Vancouver, the only reason for it to cross the river.”

        The current plan puts MAX along I-5, making it skip downtown Vancouver as well, and the Hayden Island station will be far from anything worthwhile and difficult to get to on foot.

        To really be useful, it needs to be about 1/2 mile west of the freeway.

      23. Glenn, the current plan is to have a high station at the east end of the Waterfront development and a terminal station in the empty lot behind the Vancouver Library, right next to the Vine Green Line, 25 and 32 entrance to downtown Vancouver. The Red Line could continue along Ft Van Way to the street through the Fort and also pass by that station and send the 25 over to Midtown.

        The Highway 99 Vine (whatever color they choose) is supposed to loop around the Waterfront like the 71 does now. It will pass by the high station. So the bus intercepts will be pretty useful.

        I agree that it would be optimum for a MAX line to cross farther west to put the first Vancouver station close to the canter of the development, but that would put the Hayden Island station a lot farther away from the residential end of the island.

        And, would the Coast Guard stand for a third opening bridge right between the railroad bridge and the highway? That makes the navigation path trickier.

      24. Tom, I talked to Bob several times, he is not trying to stop any transit, he is trying to stop the two states wasting money building another oversized car infrastructure which will provide dangerously steep approaches. Rebuilding all the interchanges along the approach will drive up the cost. He is an engineer who has studied immersed tunnels around the world including ones with trains. He determined that MAX could either run through the tunnel with a shallow tunnel station or across the old bridge. With the proposed bridge, the stations would be so high in the air, I’m not sure how they could build the platforms and provide access to them.

      25. I may be in the minority here but I don’t think it is absolutely necessary for MAX to cross the Columbia. HOV lanes would do. Right now there is pretty good connecting bus service to Max (at Delta Park). There are also express buses that go from Vancouver to Downtown Portland. Extending Max would help alleviate the need for the first set of buses but from what I can tell they are fairly quick (and cheap). An HOV lane costs nothing. Extending MAX may not be worth it.

        It wouldn’t have to be all or nothing, either. Extending Max to Hayden Island may be adequate and fairly cheap. You could have a fairly low drawbridge. At that point the buses could get off the freeway and just connect to MAX there. If the new freeway didn’t have exits on the island (as a way to save money) then the bus could just skip Hayden Island every time (which is what it does half the time anyway). Riders heading to Hayden Island from Vancouver would backtrack using Max.

      26. I like the idea of running MAX to Hayden Island. You could always add a gondola across the Columbia River if buses don’t provide sufficient reliability or frequency.

  5. Everett Transit has a survey up for potential Fall service changes in South Everett.

    1. I saw that yesterday!

      I really like the new connection from South Everett P&R – Silver Lake – McCollum, and Option A’s new connection from South Everett P&R – Paine Field.

      It’s good they’re being creative with their Mukilteo service while the Edgewater Bridge is closed for replacement, but I wonder what they’re thinking they’ll do when it’s reopened. If the Route 18 is restored to Mukilteo Blvd, what will happen to its route in Everett?

  6. “A two-part piece describing a train engineer’s prospective on what it’s like to pass through the Cascade Tunnel (Trains Magazine):”

    Minor correction needed here. I think you meant to write “perspective” here.

    An aside….
    Keep up the great work on the articles folks. A while back I thought this blog was at death’s door, which would’ve been truly sad for this frequent reader. (Yes, I’m still here reading the posts, but just not commenting like I used to.) Great job on the midweek roundup collection of articles as well. Love how you have organized it, Nathan. And always love checking out your Sunday videos, Mr. Orr.

  7. Couple of recent PNW-related videos.

    — The debate on how to replace the I-5 bridge between Portland and Vancouver, Wash. The vlogger, “Road Guy Rob”, tends to focus on highway and road projects, but because Max may be part of the new bridge, he does spend a bit of time interviewing the engineer about mass transit’s role in whatever replaces the bridge. https://youtu.be/CRlZwDQUa9A?si=Egpa_FZ_uJizqXYu

    — Why Seattle, and not Tacoma, became the Northwest’s prominent city, even though Tacoma was originally designed for that title. Interesting bit of history. And the vlogger, “Geography by Geoff”, used to live up here in our corner, so he has first-person experience with the topic. https://youtu.be/4M-VodkNj2k?si=nZMMyOhekQAhJMvH

    1. This was interesting. I hadn’t thought about agriculture’s impact. Though as someone who claims to be from PNW, he should really get some guidance on pronouncing the rivers/tribes!

    1. It’s so refreshing to see a nearly empty LRV, and with only 2-car trains too! Good for Portland.

      I’m getting really tired of Link’s packed trains. No place to sit and you often have to jostle around just to find a comfortable place to stand. I can’t wait for Full ELE to Open later this year so we finally get some added capacity in the urban core. We need it.

      1. I’m getting really tired of Link’s packed trains.

        It would be nice if they had trains with more capacity, but ST wanted operational consistency instead (https://seattletransitblog.com/2016/12/20/will-link-waste-its-capacity-for-the-sake-of-operational-convenience/). Link is basically a metro (largely grade-separated, very expensive to build) and yet they aren’t using normal metro train cars (with open gangways). This not only hurts capacity but also security (a much bigger issue now than it was before the pandemic).

        Yes, you are right. Things will get a bit better (for some riders) when East Link makes it across the lake.

      2. Mostly empty trains is most certainly not good for Portland. Two MAX lines are down to single car trains most of the time, and the blue line is only running every 15 minutes when prior to 2020 there were times they’d have it at 4 minute headways, with everything else usually 15 minute headways but sometimes 10 minutes on the red.

        It’s what happens when a line is designed primarily for the commuters and the commuters stop being there. There are so many better ways they could have gone.

  9. The 2024 Census estimates for Washington Counties has been posted online.

    https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/popest/tables/2020-2024/counties/totals/co-est2024-pop-53.xlsx

    The Census estimates that our state grew by 101K people just in the past year. Of this, King County was 43K higher, with Snohomish at 14K higher and Pierce at 10K higher.

    The trend is that our region continues to grow in its proportion of the state population. More importantly, it’s an annual growth pattern that resembles more of what we saw a decade ago.

    The Census city data doesn’t get released until May, but with King County growing at a rate faster than other counties it seems very likely that Seattle in turn will be a decent share of this 43K new resident growth.

    1. I love the G. Take it a few times a week and its always packed during the morning and evening commutes. But how the hell did they think this route was going to get 12,000 – 18,000 daily riders?

      1. “But how the hell did they think this route was going to get 12,000 – 18,000 daily riders?“

        Math!

        When transit is only carrying 10 percent of all trips, assumptions about parking rates, congested travel times to drive, maybe garage capacity and other tweaks can make that share grow by a few percent.

        Going from 10 percent transit to 20 percent transit would mean 100 percent more transit riders! A small share change results in a big ridership change. That’s often why ridership forecasts can appear way off.

        Even so, it’s still not as off as Lynnwood Link is. ST was saying that the extension would have 47-55K riders each weekday by 2026. That number now is optimistically 15K today. Doubling frequency and adding in direct Eastside connectivity with the 2 Line opening will increase that — but it seems unlikely that it will reach the 20K needed to match the Rapidride G’s current 43 percent of predicted performance by 2026.

      2. But how the hell did they think this route was going to get 12,000 – 18,000 daily riders?

        The question can be interpreted two different ways (based on your previous sentence):

        1) How can a bus that is really crowed during rush hour get two to three times as many riders?

        The simple answer is more riders outside of peak. Another possibility is if more riders take short trips. Short trips don’t add to crowding as much as long trips but it adds to ridership just as much.

        2) Why did they expect so many riders?

        The estimates were made before the pandemic. Overall transit ridership is still much lower than before. There are some similarities with the First Hill Streetcar and that streetcar continues to be below pre-pandemic levels. There is also the influence of the network as a whole. Overall I would say it is worse than before the pandemic (because the bus network is worse). The only significant improvement has occurred via Link but that is all to the north. The bus is less valuable as a Link transfer option coming from the north (riders are likely to transfer at Capitol Hill). Meanwhile, the bus network has not fully taken advantage of the very fast, frequent service. The 48 is not particularly frequent. At one point it was going to be a “RapidRide+” route which could have led to significant speed and frequency improvements. That didn’t happen. The 11 still goes downtown (if it was merged with the 8 then plenty of riders would transfer to the G). Same goes for the 2 which runs parallel (and very close to the G). Throw in really infrequent buses like the 10 and 12 and it is not nearly as useful as it could be with a better network. Even if some people might not like those changes it would still lead to higher ridership on the G.

        There are similarities with Lynnwood Link in that respect. Community Transit and Metro got rid of their express buses but Sound Transit did not. The 515 mimics Link. The 510 continues to run express to downtown. The 522 still connects to Roosevelt Station (not 148th). (All of this was done to avoid rush-hour crowding.) That should add up to around 3,000 new Lynnwood Link riders. The vast majority of those riders won’t have a choice (if they want to take transit) — but it will increase Link ridership.

      3. In think the “10% of all trips” figure is a region wide average. Where th G line runs, the transit mode share should be higher than that.

      4. @ asdf2:

        The 10 percent reference is generic. I used it to make the math example easy to understand.

        In places like First Hill, many trips (especially midday non-commuting trips) are made by walking. Not all non-transit trips are in a car.

  11. My partner spotted a light rail vehicle yesterday between ID and Judkins park station. First time either one has noticed one in that segment. Seems like a good step forward.

  12. Kudos to everyone who contributes to The Blog, especially the staff. Streetsblog is a catastrophic shambles in every place it attempts to cover, with one person writing all the articles and essentially no comments.

    The folks here are, really, the standard for citizen activists for transit nationwide. Nothing else comes close.

  13. “Canyon Park Freeway Station elevator is out of service until further notice. This station is inaccessible to passengers requiring elevator service.”

  14. Observed earlier on this Blog was the incredibly slow speed the four car 2 Line trains were maintaining in either direction between Wilberton and Bellevue Downtown stations. I noticed the same slow speed several times recently and while the speed always seemed slow on this section these new slow speeds were painful to look at. Not a good advertisement for rapid rail!

    Just a few days ago passed by again and a two car train was seen creeping by very slowly. Does anyone have an idea what’s going on?

    1. Someone had an explanation earlier but I forget what it was. Some sort of work being done.

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