Countdown: 52 days until the Downtown Redmond Link Extension opens (May 10).

A Route 2 trolleybus turns onto Queen Anne Ave N from Roy Street in April 1977. Photo by Mitchell Libby, courtesy of the STB Flickr pool. Here’s the same corner in 2024. The gas station became Counterbalance Park in 2008.

Local Transit & Streets:

Land Use & Housing:

Commentary & Miscellaneous:

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

Light Rail Disruptions: Sound Transit wants your input on recent disruptions to Link 1 Line service. Looking ahead, 1 Line trains will arrive every 12 minutes after 5:30pm from March 24 to April 13 due to work at Pinehurst Station. From April 14 to April 23, 1 Line service in Downtown Seattle will be severely disrupted to replace worn rail in the DSTT. Afterwards, service after 5:30pm will be to 12-minute headways again from April 28 to May 30, except during Memorial Day Weekend. More details to come.

This is an Open Thread.

86 Replies to “Midweek Roundup: Ups and Downs”

  1. Two notes:
    1) Today’s historical photo is shared with permission from the photographer. Mitchell operated trolley coaches in Philadelphia in the 1970s-80s. During a visit to Seattle in the 70s, he photographed several models of trolleybuses serving routes across the city. There are some great scenes I hope to share with future roundups!
    2) The upcoming Link disruptions seem to be in flux. ST sent an alert email this morning indicating the evening impacts may not start until after 7pm, but it is unclear. More details to come, I hope.

  2. I wonder how the new operator safety barriers will impact fare payment.

    I don’t see how operators could continue to hand out paper transfers.

    But passengers will need proof of payment, which probably means Metro will have to move forward with ending cash payment.

    Apple Wallet payment is not set up yet. AFAIK, neither is credit/debit card payment, which has its own checkability issues.

    It is also unfortunate that those setting up a plastic-free virtual ORCA account have to pay a $3 setup fee..

    This fee probably can’t be lowered due to cards being allowed to go into negative balance for Sounder. I predict ST will end up flattening Sounder’s regular fares in conjunction with getting rid of competing ST Express service, which may end up turning into operational savings.

    Hopefully Metro can hashtag all the bus stop signs so anyone at a Metro stop can download a virtual ORCA into Google Wallet or Apple Wallet, for free.

    1. I assume the difficulty of passing paper tickets, and the separation from passengers (which many operators don’t like because they actually enjoy talking to riders), is part of the reason the rollout of the barriers has been slow. Metro (and other agencies) could decide to go all-in on tap payments but I’m not sure that would pass equitable impact analysis because not everyone has a smartphone, and not everyone has a tap-enabled credit/debit cards. I wonder what the split between ORCA and cash payments is these days. It will be interesting to see how things change when Metro starts enforcing fares again in two weeks.

      1. I hope fare ambassadors are providing info on ORCA LIFT and SAP already, and not scaring would-be destinational riders out of using transit.

        I’m not sure if Flex actually absolutely requires use of a smart phone, but it essentially does everywhere except where a Flex van is already parked. Nobody has formally challenged the equitability of that service yet, AFAIK.

      2. Fare ambassadors on Link definitely provide information for low-income fare alternatives, and Transit Go as well.

      3. https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/travel-options/metro-flex

        See the “By Phone” and “Online” sections for non-mobile-app usage.

        I once tried to set up Metro Flex for trips to the SeaTac Botanical Garden (0.5+ mile from a coverage route, 1 mile from the 124), but the way to set it up and link it to your ORCA was unclear and I gave up. I may try again someday, as it must be working for other people.

  3. Tomorrow is the first meeting for the Metro Safety Committee. It is open to the public and is at the Machinist Union Hall. I am going.

  4. I don’t know what the Urbanist is seeing but, backdoor tapping is happening everywhere. I see people do it on the 165, 156, and other South King County buses.

  5. On a different post, Brent asked this excellent question:

    Do car drivers headed to Lynnwood have a way of knowing whether the garage is almost full?

    I don’t think so. I think the agency could really use that. It would be quite handy if there was a website (and app) that showed how full each parking garage is at the moment. Then drivers could have a good idea of where to park and ride.

    1. There are only four stations with carpool permit slots: Northgate, Tukwila International Blvd, Angle Lake, and Sumner.

      They say charging for parking is coming to select light rail parking lots. This might be a more effective proxy for carpool slots.

      If they publish a list of how many monthly parking passes have been purchased at each lot, and how many open stalls that leaves, that might help car drivers plan further ahead, hopefully reducing instances of drivers doing research on their smart phones while behind the wheel.

  6. Love the new center shift design. This will slow down trains in the already slowest section after adding unnecessary infills to further slow down operations in an area already speed restricted due to the poor choice of running at grade crossings. I look forward to 1 hour transit time to SeaTac because who needs fast transit when we can spend billions making it even slower. Imagine the federal way and eventual Tacoma riders are totally going to love the additional waste of time in Rainier Valley

    1. And yet, imagine the 4-5k riders who now don’t have to walk 20+ minutes to get to Link! We shouldn’t compromise on connecting folks living around the infill station because it comes at the minor expense of airport travelers and the few folks riding all the way from Tacoma

      1. ah yes, Rainier valley could never support a shuttle or bus along MLK to allow a region already served with more stations than any other to get to any of the existing stations. Why stop there? Let’s add 10 more stations as nobody should walk more than 5 minutes!

      2. Also nice redundant logic: let’s trivialize those that live far away and make transit so slow that they don’t take it. Then we can further trivialize them by saying they don’t take the transit that was handicapped by design to be a non starter because it is so slow.

        nevermind SeaTac monthly boardings are second only to Westlake just north of 300k, and Angle Lake at 150k. Meanwhile no Rainier Valley station even managed get past 100k boardings and this is without federal way even in the picture contributing additional riders.

        but who’s counting right;)

      3. > nevermind SeaTac monthly boardings are second only to Westlake just north of 300k, and Angle Lake at 150k. Meanwhile no Rainier Valley station even managed get past 100k boardings and this is without federal way even in the picture contributing additional riders.

        The rainier valley stations get around ~2k daily riders (mount baker, columbia city, othello) rainier beach gets around 1.4k. For comparison lynnwood gets 3k, or northgate gets 2.9k. but also mountlake terrace only gets 1k, shoreline north is at 0.8k and shoreline south 0.6k

        also you do know that the seatac riders must exit somewhere on the other end. it is not as if they can just magically teleport to their destination on the other side.

        if you want to follow your own logic then we should not build star lake, shoreline north/south stations, south federal way, nor fife stations.

      4. “Let’s add 10 more stations as nobody should walk more than 5 minutes!”

        Wait till you hear from Ross. He advocates that more or less, and says most urban subways have that level of stop spacing, and Link is losing riders and mobility effectiveness because it doesn’t have it. As for long travel times to Tacoma and Everett, that’s not an appropriate criterion for an urban subway and they shouldn’t be on it. (They’re the ones who should have frequent express-bus feeders instead.)

        I support longer stop spacing, probably somewhere in between what Link has and Ross advocates. I just wanted to point out the counterargument.

        The infill stations will add a minute or so each. You’d need twenty more stations south of Westlake to reach an hour’s travel time to SeaTac. Sound Transit won’t do that, they haven’t been voter-approved, and nobody has even looked to see where twenty more stations might go and whether they’d be useful.

        “Rainier valley could never support a shuttle or bus along MLK”

        There is a bus actually, route 106. And Metro Flex south of Orcas Street. But the argument is that Link would be optimal if the shadow bus weren’t necessary for in-between stops.

      5. let’s trivialize those that live far away and make transit so slow that they don’t take it.

        But that is precisely what you are suggesting. You are just favoring long distance riders over short-distance riders. It is a reasonable argument except for one thing: The vast majority of trips are short distance!

        Look around the world at the various metros. The stop spacing is typically much closer together than what Link offers. Systems like the Paris Metro and New York City Subway for example. Often these same cities have outstanding regional/commuter rail systems connecting them to the suburbs. Some of them have high speed trains connecting them to more distant cities. Yet in *every one* of the cities, most of the trips are taken in the urban core. For example the Long Island Railroad is arguably the best commuter rail line in North America. It is fast, frequent and one of the world’s few commuter systems that run 24/7 year-round. Before the pandemic it carried an impressive 350,000 riders a day. The subway carries over 5 million. Even the buses (which are not very good) carry over a million.

        That is the thing. It doesn’t even matter how good the comparative systems are. San Fransisco is a great example of this. BART does exactly what you are talking about. It provides very fast trips to both nearby and distant suburbs. Stop spacing is huge and the trains are much faster than ours. Yet more people — for decades now — have taken the extremely slow buses instead of the really fast trains. Even within BART — a system designed to serve distant areas while shortchanging the urban core — more people ride it within the urban core! Just nine stations between San Francisco and Berkeley account for half of all rider on/offs (https://seattletransitblog.com/2019/01/30/link-riders-2040/).

        Yes, you can build a system like you are saying. You can spend billions so that people in the distant suburbs can connect into the city or to the airport. But doing hurts way more people than it helps.

    2. I don’t think the time penalty is very severe. The train is already moving slowly on MLK anyway so the added time to decelerate seems more negligible. The additional time would seem to be mainly the time that the doors are open at the station.

      And that doesn’t even get into how the site works with signal progression. It isn’t clear to me if it makes it worse or not. Trains today sometimes get stopped at Graham or nearby anyway.

      I do hope that safety challenges at Graham and MLK get addressed in final design. I think it’s a terrible place to have both pedestrians going to the station and fully separated movements for both streets. The center platform will even make MLK slightly wider and take slightly longer to walk across. I would suggest banning left turns from MLK there. However, it appears that many MLK accidents come from drivers making illegal turns — so maybe banning them wouldn’t help.

      1. It is already slow so let’s make it slower. How Americans think transit works. No wonder we can’t have good transit with this logic.

      2. We can’t reverse the fact that our leadership has no problem choosing a slower speed technology to use for the 1 Line and plan 19 stops from the ID to Tacoma Done.

        Still the Graham station offers more integration with a community (future destinations; local trip making up and down MLK) than the Star Lake station does — or the Pinehurst Station for that matter.

        And the Shoreline stations appear to rely on ridership coming mainly from the parking garages too. The result of having several consecutive stations designed primarily for parking garage access (Lynnwood Link example) is overcrowding for the very peak times but weak overall daily station use.

      4. Hey, it’s all in jeopardy. I saw an interesting chart a couple of days ago showing, county by county, which parts of the country shifted partisan lean in the Presidential elections from 2020 to 2024.

        The country is essentially a sea of red in that chart, except for a very few blue blobs sprinkled around in cities.

        However, the West Coast states are empty, which says we didn’t change at all. Donald Trump’s factoti will call this insult to his attention, and we won’t get one red penny for infrastructure for the remainder of his term.

        Just because.

      5. Tom Terrific,

        I think it’s wrong to believe that Donald Trump is some sort of 4 year villain and after he’s out of office, it’s all sunny skies and back to unlimited money

        I do believe the GOP will rewrite Federal tax code so the Federal Government just won’t have piles of money to give out to organizations like Sound Transit.

        In 20 years, long after most of the ST master plan is long gone, it’s going to occur to smart people that Sound Transit needed to build above ground rail quickly and cheaply in the 40 year window when the “getting was good”. Portland has Max and that works pretty well for the most part. Seattle doesn’t have the political will to build above ground rail so why should it even happen?

      6. Let’s wait and see what the FTA actually does with grants rather than speculating they’ll all be canceled or all the ones in blue states will be canceled. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t.

    3. If they got rid of all the station it would be really fast! Never mind the fact that there is no station between Rainier Beach and Tukwila — a distance of well over five miles(!) — I want even fewer. Why build a metro when we can build the most expensive commuter rail system in the world! It won’t get nearly as many riders but those riders will be sooooo happy.

    4. If you want a fast trip to the airport that’s difficult to access due to the lack of stops, there’s always BelAir. Granted, it only stops in downtown Seattle 3 times per day per direction, but otherwise it meets you criteria: a fast trip only a few people are able to use due to limited access.

      Flixbus offers several more departures per day as well, for added convenience of a fast trip with few stops.

      Groome Transportation offers a bunch of airport vans in a bunch of cities. Maybe see if they’d be willing to start something in Seattle for this type of thing.

  7. I’m not sure if this got mentioned earlier, but I see that the BAR infill station is moving to the East Marginal Way option. That eliminates the usefulness of ever having a Sounder stop at BAR and it makes the station harder to serve from Route 101. On the other hand, it does still create an opportunity to restructure other routes to serve the station including Route 150 — and it would make a Duwamish bypass easier to add in the future.

    https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/ActiveDocuments/Motion%20M2025-14.pdf

    1. Maybe we should just start calling this the Allentown Station? The preferred site is no longer on Boeing Access Road (BAR) and ST has a penchant for choosing station names by referring to nearby neighborhoods.

    2. The only usefulness I see in a Boeing Access station is a dedicated shuttle the operates from the station to multiple Boeing sites and the Museum of Flight. Boeing, of course, would have to pay for the shuttle. Otherwise, the station is utterly worthless.

    3. We have an article draft on it reviewed but the authors haven’t finished the revisions, so it has been sitting there. When/if it gets finished we’ll publish it.

    4. I like this location. It has GRWAT layover xapacity, and a pair of bus-only ramps between SR599 and East Marginal-s bridge would fit perfextly ibto the center lanes of 599 east of the bridge. A fly-up from the NB HOV lane could provide an absolutely guaranteed path both ways for buses to and from SR167. Southbound is already handled.

      I get that having a transfer node in the middle of nowhere is not great, but the transfer at Rainier Beach will never be good because of the placement of the station. Northbound transfers involve crossing two streets. Allentown transfers could be directly under-over.

      If the A were extended to Allentown as some have suggested, it would make some three seat rides between East Hill and Tukwila (and south) two-seat. Buses would come down the hill, call at the new TC, and then continue to Allentown.

  8. Nathan posted the system expansion report a few days ago: https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/system-expansion-monthly-status-report-dec2024.pdf

    It seems to me a lot could be gained just by reordering the projects. The obvious one is building the Ballard extension before the West Seattle stub, but the South Corridor projects seem to be in the wrong order as well. Shouldn’t the TCC link extension and Sounder expansion happen before the Tacoma Dome extension? I suspect that would benefit many more riders much earlier than Tacoma Dome link.

    1. You’re right about looking to order projects to get the most beneficial projects done first. Of course, Ballard Link should come first! The projected station boardings at Ballard Station alone exceed the three West Seattle stations combined! And that’s before the Queen Anne, Seattle Center and South Lake Union riders are added.

      As to Sounder expansion, the garages are still moving ahead. Still, Sounder South ridership is way below pre-Covid levels. Getting more frequent service and a wider span of hours in both directions is probably a better choice than adding more parking garage spaces but that involves tricky negotiating with a private railroad. I think ST is still smart enough to pause in platform extensions though.

      So to repeat a line commonly stated by a friend, “logic does not apply” when it comes to Sound Transit. Yet the only way I see the ST mindset changing is with an embarrassing rating by FTA and further detail of New Starts funds — and the tea leaves seem to be drifting in that direction. Will ST double down on building West Seattle as planned and take funds from other ST expansion projects if FTA tells them no New Starts funding is coming?

      1. The FTA isn’t assessing transit projects based on actual effectiveness anymore, but whether the people who run the city are on Trump’s good side or bad side (usually for reasons totally unrelated to transit).

        So, yes, the FTA will tell Sound Transit it isn’t getting anything, no Sound Transit will not change anything because of that, they’ll just wait until a Democrat is president and try again.

    2. It won’t happen because politics and subarea officials’ priorities. They want the West Seattle stub as an early deliverable, and Tacoma Dome ASAP.

  9. Everett Transit has a fair few interesting stories this week

    https://www.heraldnet.com/news/everett-council-awards-2m-contract-for-mall-station-relocation/
    Everett Transit’s Mall Station (Transit Center) is going to be moved west of its current location for Everett Mall redevelopment. The current transit center will be torn down and become part of a TopGolf facility.

    https://www.heraldnet.com/news/everett-transit-set-to-sell-nine-electric-buses/
    Everett Transit is selling 9 of its Proterra buses now that the manufacturer is defunct and have had reliability issues for years.

    https://www.snoho.com/news/2025/mar/13/everett-transit-to-modify-schedules-routes-and-seeks-input-with-meetings-march-13-20-22-and-24/
    Everett Transit is in the process of public comment for Fall schedule changes, which you can read here
    https://everetttransit.org/418/Fall-2025-Service-Change-Proposal

    https://www.heraldnet.com/news/snohomish-county-transit-agencies-report-increased-ridership/
    Everett has seen improved ridership numbers, making leaps in reaching its 2019 numbers.

    1. I’m in favor of deleting “Mall Station” altogether and extending the 7 to Silver Lake/Bothell Everett Hwy area. This would also mean a complete restucture of any routes operating in South Everett, as the 2 and the 29 would need somewhere to terminate.

    2. It just pains me to see how ST and ET have such different ideas about serving the Everett Mall area. ST has chosen to summarily ignore the Mall area and its concentrated activity density completely in favor of serving the SW industrial area where no one can easily walk to anything and employee parking is plentiful and free. Recently, the ST Everett Link advisory committee even looked into options to serve the Mall area more directly — and tossed them aside.

      It’s just one instance of transit parallel universes that seem to exist around the region. Not only is that geographic, but it’s also in the way that ST is wanting to build a long system of miles of track and thousands of parking spaces for longer-distance commuters while using a streetcar technology better suited for shorter trips and riders going to lots more places than just work.

      1. “ST has chosen to summarily ignore the Mall area and its concentrated activity density completely in favor of serving the SW industrial area”

        It’s not ST, it’s the Snohomish/Everett officials pushing ST. They really want to serve the industrial area because of high-paid aerospace type job growth potential.

      2. @ Al… I’ve never really thought of ST serving the Everett Mall area as i doesn’t fit the “express routing” ideology ST is based on. Let’s say the mall was added to the 512 route. It would have to exit the freeway and loop through several traffic lights in each direction (and make a slow slog through a parking lot) to serve mall station. I remember the original 512 serving Alderwood Mall but I believe that was because neither Ash Way or LTC has HOV access ramps then.

        But I understand the frustration in the “transit parallel universes” that plague our region..

      3. “t’s not ST, it’s the Snohomish/Everett officials pushing ST. They really want to serve the industrial area because of high-paid aerospace type job growth potential.”

        I can read this seriously or sarcastically or both. And it’s rather obvious to me that Snohomish leaders can’t fully grasp how light rail actually works. But the evidence is pretty clear that ample free parking for highly-paid people isn’t going to get much ridership. Our region is full of examples of that. Plus it’s not like an area of several square miles is well served by one light rail station that abuts at least one high-speed car “river” that’s almost impossible to walk across, followed by walking through several blocks of free parking spaces.

        Just go and drive North First in San Jose or Tasman Drive in Santa Clara, and look at its terrible ridership.

      4. It’s serious. It’s why Link is going to Everett, Paine Field, Tacoma Dome, and Issaquah. The county/city officials, which overlap with the respective ST subarea boardmember delegation, insisted on these and pushed St to adopt them and are keeping ST from reconsidering them. It’s the subareas’ decision and money per ST’s structure, and this is what the subareas want.

      5. A lot more people work in the SW industrial area than they do in the Everett Mall.

        The mall’s been hanging on by a thread since the two anchors Sears and Macy’s closed down. Trader Joes has since moved into the mall and it’s the only store there I shop at.

      6. MarkS,

        One of the big reasons I’ve never supported Sound Transit and have a deep distrust of most transit advocates are the deep classist and racist undertones.

        Aerospace engineers and machinists are certainly welcome to take public transit to work, or ride bikes or van pool. As a guy who loves bikes, and walking, I certainly understand. But the truth is most of them will drive to work in their $70,000+ trucks. That’s their personal choice and I’m not angry about it. Although I wish they would at least car pool.

        But many of the “losers” who work at Everett Mall are stuck riding transit because they have no other choice. You see, the “Great Unwashed” of Puget Sound depend on riding buses to get to work. It’s been that way for 100 years!

        Is the Sound Transit masterplan ever about those among us too poor to drive to work? Or is about somehow getting the people rich enough not to take the bus to ride billion dollar trains? (and they’ll never ride them anyway)

        It makes Mike Orr really mad when I write this but (sorry Mike) here’s everything you need to know about Sound Transit.

        Buses are Black and Trains are White.

        And even when Sound Transit does build rail in a neighborhood that’s “less White” like Rainer Beach, it certainly isn’t underground. What’s the difference between Ballard and Rainer Beach? Really?

      7. “A lot more people work in the SW industrial area than they do in the Everett Mall.”

        While that is true, it also covers a much bigger area. How many work within walking distance of the proposed station site? That’s the basic problem. It’s low density employment — unlike a high density area with tall buildings. Having five times as many employees spread out over an area 10 times bigger is a worse place to invest in transit.

        I will also add that workers make a trip to work and a trip back home, often when transit is the most crowded. Serving a retail district provides an additional ridership market: shoppers and diners — in addition to workers.

        When I was coupled, it wasn’t unusual for us to occasionally meet at a restaurant for dinner after work. One of us would have needed to drive to work and the other would have taken transit to work. We then would meet at a restaurant convenient to transit after work and one of us would drive us both home afterwards.

        That’s the real bonus of frequent, day-long transit. It isn’t just for going to and from work at peak hours. But it can only work that way if a community encourages station areas to be hubs of day-long activity rather than merely house a giant garage next to a freeway. The garage station model just creates a surge of riders creating overcrowding for a few hours each day, with the station being mostly barren the rest of the time.

      8. “but the truth is most of them [machinists] will drive to work in their $70,000+ trucks. ” – tacomee

        This is spot-on. This can be seen at every Boeing site, especially in Everett where CT spent million$$$ on the Green Line and new Seaway Transit Center. It has been a dud every since with terrible ridership along in the “SW Industrial” area. Though, I believe, there are alot of Boeing workers who want to take the bus, Community Transit has never grasped the concept that Boeing needs to be served by frequent peak routes rather than 3 trips in the AM and then 3 in the PM. They’re thought-process is still embarrassingly stuck in the 20th Century ‘shift workers’ model.

      9. I’ve never really thought of ST serving the Everett Mall area as i doesn’t fit the “express routing” ideology ST is based on. Let’s say the mall was added to the 512 route. It would have to exit the freeway and loop through several traffic lights in each direction (and make a slow slog through a parking lot) to serve mall station.

        Yes.

        Just to back up here, the mall contains a transit center — Mall Station. It is a pretty big transit hub for Everett Transit as you can see on their map. It is good to keep things in perspective though — Everett Transit is a tiny transit agency. The entire system got about 6,000 riders a day before the pandemic.

        Nonetheless, there would be clear value in serving it with express buses — it is just challenging to do so. You end up doing a giant detour. This adds about 8 minutes (at the time I’m writing this). That makes a bus like the 512 a lot less of an express (and pushes up the cost or running it).

        But it would be relatively cheap to build HOV ramps from the freeway to the mall. If you look at that map again you can see that the freeway is quite wide there. It narrows a bit to the north but is still fairly wide. There is not only an HOV lane to the inside but a shoulder. There is also a fairly big gap between overpasses (the one to the north is far enough away to not be an issue). Building bidirectional HOV ramps (like they did for Lynnwood) would not be trivial but it wouldn’t cost a fortune either (like they would at I-90/405).

        The mall would have reinvent itself with housing (much like Northgate is doing) to justify that kind of expense but I could see that working. Either way I could definitely see them building HOV ramps to the mall as this would be a much better value than extending light rail to anywhere in Everett.

        The problem is that Everett lacks density. There are pockets of moderate density but they are fairly spread out. The routing they chose is probably as good as you can get. Yes, the train would be slower than an express bus for trips between Downtown Everett to Lynnwood — that is the nature of mass transit in a region with an excellent freeway system. The goal would be to serve those places *within* Snohomish County. The problem is, it is just too expensive to serve those places. The stations don’t have enough density and there aren’t enough stations. The entire Everett Link project has only seven stations. That is including the provisional station at SR-99 and Airport Road.

        Consider that for a second. Lynnwood Link has four stations and they have about 6,000 riders. Most of that is comes from Lynnwood Station itself. The main reason it has so many riders is because a lot of the cars and buses funnel into Lynnwood Station from the north, east and west. If it unlikely that any station north of there would have that many riders and it has less than 4,000. But assume for a second that with less than double the stations they somehow manage to get double the ridership of Lynnwood Link. Everett Link gets 12,000 riders. Is it worth it? I don’t think so.

        Again, the problem is lack of density. If there was more density and more stations it would stand of success but the former is unlikely and they aren’t even planning for the latter. Which brings me back to Boeing. Yes, there are quite a few jobs there. But as Al pointed out, they are spread out. Thus riders have to transfer to a shuttle bus anyway. If you are coming from Seattle it doesn’t make that much difference if you are transferring from Lynnwood or some station close to Boeing. A bus from Lynnwood could get on the freeway, go right to the plant and then circulate around it. Likewise if you are coming from Downtown Everett it is the same thing. That leaves a handful of stations where riders would have a significantly faster ride to Boeing — it just isn’t worth it. Link serves Snohomish County. Consider it done. We are much better off investing in the bus system at this point.

      10. There’s some apocryphal story from back in the 2010s in which a European (German, if I remember correctly) aerospace manufacturing company looked to open facilities in the Everett industrial area, and they cancelled or reduced their plans when they found out there was no plan to serve the area with effective mass transit. This seems to have been the main motivation for Snohomish County and Everett municipal leaders to push for Link service to the neighborhood, despite distinctly anti-transit attitudes among suburban Americans.

      11. “If you are coming from Seattle it doesn’t make that much difference if you are transferring from Lynnwood or some station close to Boeing. A bus from Lynnwood could get on the freeway, go right to the plant and then circulate around it. Likewise if you are coming from Downtown Everett it is the same thing. That leaves a handful of stations where riders would have a significantly faster ride to Boeing — it just isn’t worth it. Link serves Snohomish County. Consider it done. We are much better off investing in the bus system at this point.”

        That’s a good way to explain it, Ross! For a rider going to a job in the Southwest Industrial area, most will need to switch to a different last mile access mode to reach their destination anyway .

        And if Link gets to Mariner (the planned end station for 2 Line while 3 Line continues further), that makes any last mile shuttle bus to this low density employment zone even closer to a Link station.

        I also like how you note that Lynnwood City Center Station gets more riders because it is the end station today and that the station volume will shrink just like Northgate did once Link started going further. Not only has ST often publicized inflated ridership forecasts for extensions, they often imply that the riders are all new transit riders to Link when the evidence is that they are already on Link but are simply going to a different station.

        Finally, ST avoids discussing how difficult it will be to get tracks above 128th St SW and Airport Road between SR 99 and I-5 because homes will need to be taken.

        The proposed set of future ELE stations north of Mariner will not perform well even though that’s how local leaders drew their lines and dots for the project map. They drew their lines and dots without data or a good understanding of the challenge. What could have been a wonderful new urban corridor with redeveloped villages between Downtown Everett, Everett Mall Area, the Mariner area and Lynnwood is instead planned as this empty, circuitous train ride through an endless sea of employee parking lots and flat warehouse and industrial buildings.

      12. Nathan Dickey,

        There’s a big push in Utah to bring many more aerospace jobs to that State, mostly at the cost of the Left Coast. The plan centers on Hill Air Force Base (already a big aerospace hub) and opening up the Federal lands around it to build houses on. Nice 3-4 bedroom houses, with high wage jobs nearby, and a SUV and Daddy’s huge pickup truck in every driveway. This is the American Dream.

        The GOP will just transfer the money Sound Transit was going to get to support building new housing in Utah (and other Western Red State areas). Politically it’s a no brainer.

        https://www.deseret.com/politics/2025/03/19/utah-governor-spencer-cox-praises-trump-housing-initiative-to-use-public-lands-like-senator-mike-lees-houses-act/

        And I wouldn’t say this is truly a “Red State” issue. There’s talk about building houses on Federal land all over the West. Eastern Oregon would be a prime target because lots of Portland employers already have one foot out the door now. By moving jobs and housing to Eastern Oregon (or Washington ) it changes the political metrics of the State and even National governments.

      13. “ By moving jobs and housing to Eastern Oregon (or Washington ) it changes the political metrics of the State and even National governments.”

        It looks to me like many of the Federal workers currently being canned are actually in more remote places. I’m thinking of forest rangers and other field positions. That looks like they’re moving jobs away from more remote areas.

      14. Al S.

        One of the problems Trump has is there aren’t as many Federal workers as the general public thinks and most of them work for only a few agencies, like the VA, Homeland Security, various law enforcement agencies (like ICE) and the USPS. The Department if Agriculture and Forest Service have a pretty small footprint on the economy. They may have a bigger footprint on the quality of life however.

        Cutting Federal employees doesn’t really save the tax payers much money.

        As a guy from Montana, I think nobody is going to mind those “college boys” at the ranger station getting canned. Now we can cut firewood and hunt wherever we want! Maybe Trump should pass a new “Homestead Act” and let citizens claim and settle on Federal land? That would be wildly popular I’m afraid. But then the Federal Government owes 2/3rds of the State of Utah. That’s not going to continue forever either. Utah is open for development!!

        Historically, all the growth in America has centered around the nuclear family and home ownership. When posters on this blog talk about living car free and building “apodments” as a solution…. I honestly wonder what country they’re living in. That’s not the America I know. All Trump needs to do is have the Federal government allow for new houses people can afford and he’ll be forgiven for all the other bullshit he’s doing.

        Life is about finding a home, getting married and having children…. and Trump’s team totally gets that. Seattle is turning into a cluster of single people living alone… where is the future in that?

      15. tacomee, what does Utah’s hopes to attract aerospace industry have to do with SnoCo leaders feeling burned by a European company expecting transit service to a manufacturing center?

        > Historically, all the growth in America has centered around the nuclear family and home ownership

        I guess this is technically true if you ignore about 200 years of American history before 1945. Are you a Last Thursdayist?

      16. “Buses are Black and Trains are White.”

        Sure, tacomee.

        Haha, yeah… go ride the L in Chicago and come back and tell us that.

        Clueless.

      17. “Buses are Black and Trains are White.”

        Sometimes there are posts that make no quantitative sense. All it takes is comparing Seattle area demographics to Seattle area transit ridership to see how silly and inaccurate this statement is when applied to our region.

        One thing that’s often true about people with solid racist training is that they automatically see lots more minorities than are actually there. There are still Prudence Pingletons in this world.

      18. Nathan Dickey,

        The whole idea that some big aerospace company skipped over Everett for building a plant because of a lack of transit is just bunk. Big business doesn’t care about mass transit. Big business cares about big houses, and big cars and…. Big Consumption. These things are not healthy or sustainable, so if you’ve personally opted out of some them, good for you. Although buying a house is never a bad idea, I’d skip the new Ford F150.

        Boeing is on the out in Puget Sound. Maybe not right away, but the housing crisis makes working at Renton or Everett much less appealing than it did in 1985. Boeing needs workers pay to equal a 3 bedroom house. Otherwise there is no stable workforce. Unless you have a family income of something like $200K, is there any future in Greater Seattle?

        So when Governor Cox and Senator Lee (both from Utah) have a plan to build affordable housing (owner occupied, 30 year mortgage houses) on public land, you don’t think guys like Boeing CEO Ortberg aren’t listening? Trump has no qualms about giving all sorts of free land and tax shelters to companies to move to Red States. This is why the Federal money for transit is now 100% in weeds. Things change and Sound Transit was 25 years behind in 2015. The housing crisis is the only game in town now.

        And I know Trump is crook and bully and lot of bad things….. but he isn’t stupid. All he needs it fix housing and he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. The minute Federal land is released for housing in Utah, every governor in the Western US is going to be begging the White House and singing Trump’s praises, regardless of Party. “BOOM!” they’ll be building houses all over the West! From Ritzville to Bend, the Pacific Northwest will change once again.

      19. “Haha, yeah… go ride the L in Chicago and come back and tell us that.”

        Just ignore him, he likes to get on his soapbox to cart out his tired stump speech talking points for anyone who’ll entertain his rhetoric. Even though half the stuff he espouses is factually wrong or is him making fallacious arguments.

        He honestly shouldn’t be throwing stones from glass houses when he claims Sound Transit is classist or racist (even though he really hasn’t brought forth a substantive argument on that claim).

        Even though he himself harbors classist attitudes or rhetoric about tenants/renters. Viewing them as not neighbors or fellow city residents who’s voice matters on city matters because to him in his worldview they don’t own land and pay taxes like he does in the city. Which is a load of classist bull if I’ve ever seen it. Renters are taxpayers and pay property taxes like everyone else. The difference is that said taxes are built into the rental price rather than a yearly tax bill someone receives in the mail. At that point you are just complaining about semantics than anything substantive.

        It honestly reminds of the times I’ve seen adults who quite frankly should know better discredit the opinions of children or high schoolers from civic participation at city hall meetings because “they’re not taxpayers”. Even though many high schoolers have part time jobs who pay SS or income taxes like everyone else. They pay local sales taxes on things they buy with their paycheck. Pay for car tabs when they start owning a car. Etc etc etc. It’s ironic because said people often espouse freedom and democracy matters, but then turn around and go “not like that” when it threatens their view from being challenged against. Democracy is not a buffet where you can pick and choose as to how citizens young and old involve themselves in the process. If you believe “kids these days aren’t engaged enough in the process.” Then you can frankly take a seat and be quiet when they speak their opinion and let it be heard. Same with renters, as they’re often the backbone of a city to keep it running. Their opinions matter as much as homeowners.

      20. > Big business doesn’t care about mass transit. Big business cares about big houses, and big cars and…. Big Consumption.

        What does this even mean tacommee? Do you think people in apartments or townhouses don’t buy stuff. Or europeans or asians don’t consume goods? I’m pretty sure you’re just writing satire at this point

      21. “I’m pretty sure you’re just writing satire at this point”
        He’s just being a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian at this point, tbh. Even though the story about the foreign company choosing somewhere else than Everett is true. I’d also point out that iirc Sound Transit actually did have a proposal for splitting the route at Mariner P&R to reach Everett Station so it’d serve multiple neighborhoods and job centers (like the mall) then come back together at the terminus. The I-5 alignment got deleted at some point.

      22. wl,

        Satire? Try on REI for that. An outdoor company that imports plastic shit from Asia…. so customers can enjoy the great outdoors and later throw the overpriced gear in landfill. Sure, they care about the environment.

        What some more satire? Spending billions and billions for a subway in a city regular people can’t afford housing in. Then having the Federal government pull their part of the funding and still muddling on with bloated projects for years.

        If anyone wants to meet in Tacoma and ride “the light rail to nowhere” and tell me why on earth the T-line was ever built, I’m game.

      23. “If anyone wants to meet in Tacoma and ride “the light rail to nowhere””
        Yes, the T Line. The supposed “light rail to nowhere” that serves *checks notes*

        – St. Joseph Medical Center
        – Hilltop Neighborhood
        – Tacoma General
        – Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital
        – Evergreen State College Tacoma
        – Wright Park
        – Stadium District
        – Stadium High School
        – Elks Temple
        – Theater District
        – Commerce Street TC
        – Tacoma Convention Center
        – UW Tacoma
        – Federal Courthouse
        – TAM/Museum of Glass/Washington State History Museum
        – Tacoma Amtrak/Sounder/Transit Station
        – Freighthouse Square
        – Tacoma Dome

        So really it isn’t a train to nowhere like you supposedly claim it to be.

      24. You can take the the 1 if you hate trams so much. It goes places. Even your beloved Lincoln district. And it’s down to every 15 minutes for a good part of it’s span now. So usable!

    3. Looks like I’ve been overlooking the Everett Herald and Everett Transit – time to add them to my regular news bookmarks. Thanks for sharing!

  10. Are the trolley routes the best option for Seattle in 2025? After seeing that amazing photo of the vintage Route 2 trolley, I’ve realized that most (if not all) trolley routes have been around for generations. If we had a completely blank slate, does the routing for the 1, 2, 3, 4 and etc meet our 21st century needs today? If there wasn’t trolley wiring, would these routes exist as they do today?

    1. The big advantage to electric trolley buses is overcoming the slow grind of climbing steep hills. Even with a blank slate, those corridors would probably still emerge as best-served with the electric trolley buses. I could see how some through routes could be matched differently but the routes running today seem reasonably productive as well as probably the best places to run using overhead wire. I could also see how some modest changes to better connect to Link would be good (Route 7 to Rainier Beach link for example), but that’s not a blank slate perspective.

    2. Most of the trolley routes were converted from the original streetcar routes, which provided the transportation framework needed for a quickly growing Seattle in the early 1900s. Before restrictive zoning, housing built up around these routes and generally defined the historic neighborhood centers we enjoy today. So, I think it’s more fair to say that with a blank slate, there wouldn’t be a Seattle to route trolleybuses around in the first place.

    3. If there wasn’t trolley wiring, would these routes exist as they do today?

      Probably not, but you could say the same thing about a lot of things. Without the Yukon Gold Rush it is quite possible Seattle would be the size of Bellingham. If the timing was better, Tacoma would have been the main city in Washington State. If Microsoft didn’t strike a deal with IBM then Redmond would still be a sleepy suburb. But things happened the way they did. We almost got rid our trolleys but then reversed course and built a good system. It makes sense to leverage it.

      does the routing for the 1, 2, 3, 4 and etc meet our 21st century needs today?

      I would certainly make changes but that is true of every part of the network. Inertia plays a part when it comes to the various routes, but that is true of both trolley and regular routes. For example they wanted to move the 3/4 to Yesler (to get around the traffic on James). But the resistance had little to do with trolley wire and everything to do with people not walking farther to their stop.

      I think a restructure that “started from scratch” would still mostly cover the same corridors. Even with such an approach it makes sense to err on the side of the status quo. We know that those corridors can support buses, already have layovers, etc. As a result it is quite likely that any restructure would place buses on streets that already have wire.

    4. Metro did modify the 3 and 4 on Queen Anne in the 2010s to consolidate the 3, 4, and 13 at SPU rather than three obsolete locations. That allowed renumbering the 3 to 4 on Queen Anne, leaving 3 for the CD. It was assumed the 4 would be consolidated into the 3 into the CD. That was later stalled over concerns about deleting the 4’s 23rd tail: equity, a blind services organization, a Judkins Park station feeder, and south 24td First Hill trips. Still. It shows Metro sometimes restructures trolley routes.

      If we hadn’t built the trolley network in the 1930s, it would run into the headwinds facing new tran/metro/regional rail networks in the US today: there’s a bias toward car-based infrastructure and secondarily buses. When neighborhoods object to new trolley routes over the aesthetics of the overhead wires, throwing would-be trolley passengers and environmental benefits and energy-efficiency benefits under the bus, you see how much harder it would be to create a trolley network now.

  11. I started up a discussion on a non-open thread about eliminating ST Express 512 and replacing it with all-day 510 service that only stops at Lynnwood Station and in Everett, when the Great Conjunction arrives.

    Other than nomenclature, who has arguments against this?

    I’m beginning to doubt CT’s ability to deliver all the approved local service improvements by the end of 2026. The switch to all-day 510 service ought to enable a chunk of the local improvements to move forward faster.

    1. I’ll repeat some of my points:

      First I would call the bus the 512. The 510 is a peak-only express bus from Everett to Seattle and has been for a very long time. The 512 is an all-day route (and has been for a long time). It has also gone through many changes. Having the 512 skip Ash Way (and thus change once again) would be more consistent. I could also consider changing the northern tail of the route. I would dogleg over to Colby and then go north, ideally to the community College. That would connect to several Everett Transit buses (and Swift Blue) while adding a lot more connections.

      Other than that it sounds fine to me. You lose some of the “bus bridge” between Ash Way and Lynnwood but if that is really important then ST could add another bus in there. Just to explain here: there are several routes that run between Lynnwood Transit Center and the Ash Way Park and Ride but only the following are expresses: Community Transit 201 and 202 along with ST 512 and 513. If the 512 skipped that stop then you would have three buses each running every half hour. Right now the 201 and 202 are timed to run opposite each other (for a combined 15 minutes between Everett and Lynnwood). The 513 also runs every half hour. So you would want to run an extra bus opposite the 513 every half hour (if you wanted to give riders from an express from Ash Way to Lynnwood TC every 7.5 minutes).

      There would be several options. One is to just run the 513 every fifteen minutes. Another is running the bus every half hour between Ash Way and Lynnwood Station every half hour (opposite the 513). I would run a bus like so: https://maps.app.goo.gl/oBvN9FqoQeGWjaXe9. (Note: It would use the HOV lanes but Google doesn’t let me do that). Anyway, there are quite a few apartments along that route. That would connect to both Swift Blue and Green as well as the 101. It would be an express (similar to Swift) but still enough stops to get plenty of riders.

    2. Are you talking about an all-day express bus to downtown Seattle, or one that terminates at Lynnwood station?

      1. The ST Express routes heading south of Lynnwood (510 and 515) will cease to do so with the Great Conjunction. My proposal would be to make 510 the all-day express route between Lynnwood and Everett, but it can keep the stops at South Everett and on Broadway.

        Some peak 511 short runs between Ash Way P&R and Lynnwood Station might help with the parking situation.

        I would not call the new Everett-Lynnwood express the 512 because removing the time-consuming Ash Way loop-de-loop stop could confuse the riders who are actually trying to get to Ash Way P&R, and would have taken 201/202 had they known.

        Before the 512 replaced the 510 and 511 off-peak, the 510 did not stop at Lynnwood or Ash Way. I chose 510 as the number to use because that is the most-express ST Express route heading south from Everett. But the best way to get all impacted riders’ attention would be a new number, e.g. 514.

      2. Numbers 514 and 516-599 are available and wouldn’t cause confusion. 510 to me means “super-express from Everett to downtown Seattle”.

        If ST actually truncates the 510 and keeps the number, that’s a different matter, because people will see it on the ground and get used to it. But before that when it’s just an armchair suggestion and 510 still connotes the most expressy express to Seattle, it’s confusing.

        512 has always connoted the most local express (really a limited-stop corridor route), and the default way to go when the other routes aren’t running, so if it changes its endpoint or adds/changes stops, it’s not that big a deal, because it’s still “the most local express”.

      3. I would not call the new Everett-Lynnwood express the 512 because removing the time-consuming Ash Way loop-de-loop stop could confuse the riders who are actually trying to get to Ash Way P&R, and would have taken 201/202 had they known.

        Except having the 510 end in Lynnwood would confuse them more.

        The 512 has changed repeatedly. It used to run to downtown. Then it used to run to Northgate. Now it runs to Lynnwood. These are all big changes and people got used to it. That is because it was always served the same basic function. Want to get to the UW in the middle of the day? It is your bus.

        The 510 has been even more consistent. The only change I know of was very minor (they added service to the Mountlake Terrace freeway station). But it has *always* gone to Downtown Seattle. It has *always* been a peak-only express. You want to get directly downtown during rush hour from Everett? It is your bus.

        Now things would be flipped around. Want to get to the UW in the middle of the day — take the 510. Wait, I thought that was the express bus to Seattle? Not anymore. Want to take that express bus to downtown you’ve always enjoyed? It is gone. But wait, there is a 510 right here? Sorry, that bus doesn’t go downtown any more.

        You are really conflating two different things. We could make the 512 skip Ash Way and keep the 510 the same. We could get rid of the 510 and keep the 512 the same. Just because you are proposing combining these two things doesn’t mean it makes sense to borrow a number from a very different bus.

        If you are going to use an existing number then it makes sense to use the number of the bus that is most similar to it. Obviously that is the 512.

    3. Which routes would the 512 connect to by continuing to downtown Everett, that don’t already also serve Everett Station?

      The one destination along the future Gold Line that I am not sure whether it will be served well by that line is the hospital.

      1. I meant to include the phrase “without a detour”. I think I left it out because it was awkward and then forget to write something that meant the same thing. My point is this: A bus that went like so: https://maps.app.goo.gl/UrBHou7HEH2uePEU7 would connect to a lot of buses coming from the south. For riders then heading north it would mean a very straightforward trip up Colby to places like the hospital and community college. You avoid the huge back and forth detour to Everett Station (even if this bus continued to serve Everett Station). Those riders wouldn’t care about the detour.

        Right now the Everett Transit 19 serves Colby (https://everetttransit.org/DocumentCenter/View/2511/2024_Route19)*. But that bus runs infrequently because Everett Transit has very little money. Things might change if and when it merges with Community Transit but CT doesn’t spend much money on buses either. Making this a tail of the express bus would alleviate the need for the local agencies to provide service along there while also allowing plenty of people to avoid an extra transfer.

        *For some reason the 19 isn’t on the latest map: http://everetttransit.org/DocumentCenter/View/2081/System-Map-September-2022.

  12. I have noticed that recently the track before and after Wilburton Station is effectively a slow zone, with trains coming to a complete stop before the area and then crawling into the station. Is there any reason for this?

      2. You’re kidding, right? The line has been open about a year and the rail clips are wearing out?

        They were not properly installed or they are made from abysmally poor materials. The guideway stresses from a passing LR train are tiny compared to those of freight trains, and Pandrol clips are expected to last at least twenty years on high-volume main lines.

        Glenn, cool machine. The guy who runs it has to be VERY strong…….

  13. There are always calls on this forum to increase service but Metro needs to work on being able to operate their current schedule as each day there are notifications that trips on different routes are cancelled. Most of the time there are alternatives for passengers so there is minimal effect but sometimes there is no alternative.

    For example tonight Metro announced that a number of trips on the Rapid D line and that includes night owl trips leaving downtown at 1:05 and 3:05 am and Ballard at 1:53 and 3:52 am are cancelled.

    Obviously ridership at that time of the night is light but what about swing and graveyard worker or those who workers who have an early day shift. If they depend on those trips there are out of luck tonight.

  14. I saw a couple of signs of progress for East Link across the floating bridge on the way home this evening:
    – There was a train sticking out of the tunnel just east of Judkins Park station
    – The signals on the east end of the bridge were lit. I don’t remember having seen that before

    I remain hopeful that we’ll be riding across the bridge by the time 2026 arrives!

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