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134 Replies to “Midweek Roundup: Nervous”

  1. “an inflation adjustment on top of the 7% cap, with a hard ceiling at 10%”

    That’s practically no cap at all. From 2003 to 2008 Seattle rents typically increased 5-10%, and from 2012 to 2018 they often rose 10-15%. Inflation throughout that entire time was 2% or less. Renters need a cap close to inflation, not something that cumulatively destroys their purchasing power. The cumulative effect of large rent increases year after year was to increase Seattle’s overall rents 45% in just five years — while inflation increased 10% (plus a small compounding fraction).

    The only thing this cap will prevent is rents jumping from $550 to $1000+ in one year (100% increase). But that only happens once, and it happened mostly ca. 2012, so the cat’s out of the bag. There aren’t many buildings left that could sustain that big a jump.

    1. The lower the cap, the bigger the interference in the market. It can lead to unintended consequences like larger than normal rent increases right before it takes effect, or landlords leaving units vacant to avoid lowering rents during economic downturns (because the rule would prevent them from raising them again later). Or, encourage landlords to skimp on maintenance, of they’re forced to offer leases at below market, anyway. Or, to not build new housing in the first place.

      1. It’s funny how the only rent control that doesn’t wreck the market is the kind of rent control that doesn’t really do anything. It’s almost like rent control is a bad idea…

      2. There is rent control that works. In Germany the states have statewide rent control with a cap set high enough that landlords can cover maintenance and make a modest but steady profit; the just can’t make a killing. 5% above inflation is a killing. In Germany buying isn’t very common because people know they can remain in their apartments throughout their old age without the worry they’ll suddenly be priced out. Because it’s statewide, developers can’t just go a mile away across the municipal boundary to avoid it. Developers continue to build anyway, because some profit (if they build) is better than no profit (if they don’t build).

        Where American rent control gets into a rut is when the cap is set too low to cover maintenance, when it’s in only one city, or when it only applies to a certain generation of buildings. The bad rent controls like in San Francisco and New York have these flaws. As time goes on, an ever-smaller percent of the population has access to these units, those who already have them, so they end up getting an extraordinary benefit that people around them don’t.

        The problem is state and suburban governments don’t put their residents first and try to have something that works for everybody. Instead they get swayed by what single-family homeowners want or profit-greedy landlords want, and ignore everybody else. That puts a burden on central cities to try to do something humane, but because they don’t have the power the state does and they cover only part of the region, they can only do so much and it isn’t as effective.

        So it’s good Washington state is finally taking some action, even if it’s minimal. One step can lead to another step over time, as the state is also doing with density minimums. And it can find the balance between an effective policy and not burdening landlords too much. The scenario asdf2 talks about is speculative; it wouldn’t necessarily happen if the cap were 6% instead of 7%, or 3% instead of 7%. We need to determine where the threshold really is, not just believe scaremongering that any substantial cap will cause the market to collapse.

      3. asdf2,

        The problem is housing isn’t the real product here… it’s the renters. Landlords have a really good idea of what the market will bear and that’s how the price of rent is set. Renters need to honest about how little control they or anybody but the property owners have on the cost of rent.

        I think the current glut of office space was a real eye opener for developers. 20 years ago I think the motto was “build it and they will come.” I believe most residential developers watch the rental market much more closely know and use software to manipulate rent prices and vacancy rates for maximum return. Housing units are currently being built in Seattle, but it’s sill just a little bit below demand. That’s be design to keep the price of housing (and profits) high.

        Never in American history has it been tougher to buy a home or never has it been worse to be a renter. Even capping the rent increases at 7% to 10% means that a Seattle renter playing out 33% (or more!) of their income for rent ends up sending most of their yearly income increase (that 2.5% or 3% raise most workers get) straight to the landlord. The math isn’t very hard here…. renting is a losing financial game.

      4. Never in American history has it been tougher to buy a home

        tacomee, you have little to no historical knowledge or understanding. Until the establishment of the Federal Housing Authority and the two loan guarantors by the Roosevelt Administration, cities were 70% rental units, and most of them were tenements.

        The high levels of immigration since the financial crisis have made things worse, but basically the problem with housing prices is that all the “inputs” have risen in price faster than other elements of the economy.

        Almost all of the big old trees in the US, both hard and softwood, have been cut, so it takes more complicated “manufactured” structural elements to support the strucrture. Native born folks willing to work outside are increasingly hard to find, so the industry depends on immigrants, and Trump is not unique in fighting immigration. And of course land within a long-term endurable commuting distance of successful cities mostly already has housing on it.

        These are definitely problems, but levels of home-ownership nationwide remain within a couple of percent of all-time highs set during the craziness of the mid-Noughts.

        It’s only the “suprr-cities” with a strong tech presence where prices have gone exponential. That certainly includes Seattle, but even it is cooling.

      5. Tacomee,

        I’ll give you the “never has it been tougher to buy a home” but it is blatantly false to declare that this is the worst time in American history to be a renter. That completely ignores the long history of people fighting for tenant protections and renter rights. There’s a reason the majority of people don’t live in tenements anymore.

        Furthermore study after study show that one of the main reasons that so many renters are cost burdened (spending >30% of their income on rent) is because housing supply has lagged so far behind demand.

      6. Tom Terrific,

        “Never” is too strong of word… sorry I used it. America used to be a nation of farmers and after WW2, the government kicked in to improve home ownership, so it’s been pretty easy to buy a house for much of the last 100 years. Maybe it was too easy when I was young? America might be doing pretty damn well by historical standards, but there’s certainly been a big decline in my lifetime…. as a White guy. Others may see it differently.

        You’re right about the timber of course. Also houses built in the first part of this century often were more like Home Depot sheds than modern houses. Most of Tacoma was built without AC or even central heating. My old house on Bell St. was 850 sq ft with painted fir floors. The shelves in the kitchen cabinets were hacked down to size with a hatchet!

        I blame a lot of the problems we’re having today on over-education. Does everybody need to go to college? Can everybody be “the boss”? I can remember getting cussed out at work at lot when I was young, on fishing boats, construction sites, other stupid blue collar jobs. Kids born in this country don’t want to get cussed at, or work in the rain, or work 12 hours a day. I get that. Mexicans (and other immigrants) certainly put with all of that and more. Trump is a mere bump in the road. The only thing immigrants are better at than doing shit jobs is making babies. America belongs to them now, no matter what the GOP wants.

        I know 2/3rds of American families own homes, but the age of those homeowners is just trending older. I doubt it’s sustainable. Seattle’s seen a lot of growth in the last 30 years, but it’s mostly renters with no kids…. how long can that go on for?

      7. RTB,

        Maybe you’re right. Renters certainly had it bad in the early years of our nation. After WW2 housing certainly was better for most Americans… renting or buying. Maybe we’re on the cusp of hard times for housing right now? I hope not, but isn’t looking all that great.

        One thing that has never changed in America is home ownership is the gold standard. Pretty much anybody who was worth a shit in America owned a home. Even Socialists like Eugene V. Debs. https://debsfoundation.org/index.php/landing/visit-the-museum/
        It’s cool museum! If you’re ever in the central Midwest it’s worth a visit.

        And a little more about Mr. Debs. As America’s leading Socialist he saw an America where working families owned their own houses! Because real estate enables families to control their own destiny somewhat. Socialism in Europe might mean something different, but I’m with Debs on this one. You deserve to own your own home. Period. No substitutes, no social housing con jobs, no university study bullshit, no silly Euro-solutions that will never take root here. The youth of America deserve to own their own homes. Nothing less will be tolerated.

      8. [Houses] were more like Home Depot sheds than modern houses

        LOL! Indeed.

  2. If and when Link goes to West Seattle, assuming many years later an extension will be built going even further south from Alaska Junction, acknowledging it won’t be a straight line, what’s the main corridor it should take? (California, Fauntleroy, 35th, Delridge?). And what should the destination be? (Burien, White Center/Westwood, SeaTac, TIBS?).

    1. Seattle subway has a map going to Tukwila via Morgan Junction Westwood village, White Center, Burien. If I had to guess it’ll be mostly tunneled until White center at least.

      1. That was the ST corridor in the 2015 study. It’s still the most likely corridor because it has the most agency and city buy-in.

        I don’t see any other extension oute that would be better.

    2. Here is a link to the slide deck of some prior planning in the corridor. It’s from a 2014 STB post on the South King County HCT Corridor Study.

      https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1157426/south-king-county-hct-level-2-executive.pdf

      It’s important to remember that this was a sketch planning study so the station locations were decided by committee, rather than analysis.

      It looks like the study suggested C5 before ultimately becoming A5.

      Of course, the cost estimates were laughable. West Seattle Link alone is already more expensive than a full buildout of the corridor for most of these alternatives.

      1. It’s curious noting how the planning had two stops in the SouthCenter area as well as stops on Downtown Renton and Renton Landing. Also, the Delridge station at Andover Street wasn’t there.

      2. 20-30 years from now, the argument might well be: “They did the difficult and expensive part when it was relatively cheap, now it’s up to us to expand and improve upon it.” Even if that looks more like Rapid Ride G and Stride than light rail in tunnels.

      3. AI S.: Yet another reason why Stride South should go through the heart of Renton, with bus lanes and signal priority that Renton has been planning anyway, instead of backtracking to get back on the freeway. It can and should be a precursor to a potential light rail line, and also, substantial transit improvements are not likely to come to Renton for decades after Stride opens. Don’t make the same mistakes as Everett and Tacoma Dome Link (stops “close” to downtown but not close enough to actually serve downtown). Do it right!

      4. This is the study that essentially cooked the books for light rail to West Seattle. They never considered a sensible BRT option. To be clear, I’m not sure it is the best value either. But real BRT starts with a bus tunnel. Then you connect to the bus tunnel using as much of the existing infrastructure as you can. There are several options but I think the best is West Seattle Bridge to Spokane Street Viaduct to SoDo busway. Then make it open BRT. Lots of buses from West Seattle would run on ordinary streets before connecting into the busway. But once you reach the West Seattle Bridge you would run in your own lane (or in a tunnel) all the way to Uptown. It would be a bit of an apples and oranges comparison (it would require more service) but it would be a better comparison. Ridership would be much higher. Riders would save a lot of time. It would be similar to what Brisbane built (https://humantransit.org/2009/11/brisbane-bus-rapid-transit-soars.html).

        Instead they produced two plans, neither of which really made sense. One involved two routes. Both ran on the surface downtown. But that wasn’t the worst part. The bus route from West Seattle ran down Delridge then went up to the Junction, turned around and went down Avalon until it finally got on the bridge. This made it extremely slow — slower than current buses. Since it was so slow it didn’t get that many riders.

        The other plan was more sensible. It was basically the H but extended much further south. They built a connection to the SoDo busway (using elevated ramps) yet they didn’t list the actual travel time from West Seattle to downtown. They simply listed “Alaska Junction to Seattle” which makes no sense since that bus wouldn’t serve Alaska Junction. They have it taking a faster, more straightforward path between Burien and downtown with a lot less stops and yet it is not really any faster than the H. It is also just a very weird approach. Why have BRT with so few stops? If travel time to Burien is so important why not run an express overlay from Burien?

        That is one of the big problems. They were essentially suggesting closed BRT with only a few routes. This makes sense for an independent corridor. Converting the 7 or 70 to “BRT” is fine. But it doesn’t make sense for West Seattle. That is one of the big problems with LRT to West Seattle and it becomes a problem with a similarly designed BRT plan. It isn’t just one corridor — it is several that converge. They should have focused on improving the busway and then putting as many buses on it as possible. To quote Jarrett Walker about Brisbane (from that same article):

        the demand pattern spreads out as you go out from the city, and the route network spreads out to follow it. So the high frequency through this inner busway segment is made of routes that branch out to serve several different corridors further out, without requiring a connection.

        That is exactly what they should have considered. Again, I’m not sure if a bus tunnel would have been the best value. It would have many of the same issues as the second transit tunnel (bad transfers, high costs) although it would have some advantages. Frequency within the tunnel would be much higher. You could leave the other part of Link alone. It could have served First Hill. It would definitely be much better for West Seattle than what they have planned (and cost a lot less) but it would still leave Ballard with issues like crossing the bridge. Still, it isn’t hard to imagine an approach that would cost a lot less, leverage a lot more and ultimately provide more savings for more people than what they built. But it was never seriously considered.

      5. Yet another reason why Stride South should go through the heart of Renton, with bus lanes and signal priority that Renton has been planning anyway, instead of backtracking to get back on the freeway.

        I think this makes the most sense. Just to back up here, who benefits from the backtracking approach? Not Renton. It is the folks that are trying to get from say, Bellevue to Burien. Fair enough. But if there is enough demand for that trip than run expresses on top of the regular route. If there isn’t enough demand then don’t screw over Renton for a small group of riders.

        Express overlays are nothing new. Prior to the pandemic Metro ran dozens of them. These were buses that skipped over the middle of a route to benefit long-distance travelers. Several of these were overlaying routes that were RapidRide (and thus fairly fast). Some were basically expresses on top of expresses. For example the RapidRide E is an express from Green Lake to downtown. It makes very few stops and runs on an expressway. North of there it makes more stops but not like most of the bus routes. Even from the north end of the route (Aurora Vilalge) to downtown it is fairly fast. But the 301 used to run from Aurora Village to downtown using the freeway — it was faster. Thus it was an express on top of an express. But now there just isn’t enough demand to justify that (or any of the other) express overlays. If there really is that kind of demand for Burien/TIBS/Bellevue then run the overlay.

        You still have the issue of getting to and from the freeway though. During rush hour this is a big issue either way. For through-riders it is great if the bus serves a stop close to the freeway — but not if it takes a really long time to actually exit and then get back on the freeway. Same goes for going through Renton. You need to make the appropriate HOV connections.

      6. “This is the study that essentially cooked the books for light rail to West Seattle. They never considered a sensible BRT option. ”

        Yes I agree! It was a biased study to recommend a West Seattle light rail extension.

        However I’m also pointing out that the S1 proposal in ST3 didn’t even follow what ST’s own study called for between Burien and Renton. S1 was instead created in a backroom. The players were looking to spend leftover East King money (after Kirkland-Issaquah light rail which curiously has fewer forecasted boardings than S1 does) and that’s what penciled out. Had East King had more money, surely direct HOV access in Renton would have been included.

    3. I don’t think it will ever be extended. It would not be a high priority or a good value compared to other projects. The region would have already spent a fortune on everything else. Maybe in a hundred years but by then automated buses would be common making the case for it even weaker. We might as well fantasize about light rail to Discovery Park. But yeah, if you are into transit fantasies that involve really long lines carrying very few people then Seattle Subway is a good source.

  3. This won’t have to be done on opening day, but eventually I’m going to want to read an in-person report about the bus situation at Downtown Redmond and Marymoor Village. Marymoor Village seems like an area that’s going to be especially tricky for buses to get in and out of.

    1. I agree. That intersection at 70th and Redmond Way is clumsy, assymmetrical and slow. I see no way to give buses a privileged way out of the Marymoor Swamp.

      1. Also, in the middle of Marymoor Village is a religious center. I think it may even draw people from beyond Redmond, because I was down there one Friday, and I was surprised to find myself stuck in surprisingly bad traffic congestion in the Marymoor Village neighborhood. I think some sort of service just let out. And every car on every road were all headed for the also backed-up NE 70th St., the main outlet out of Marymoor Village.

      2. @Sam, the Friday traffic on 70th St is presumably the Muslim Association of Puget Sound.

        There’s also Sunday traffic from Doxa and Meadowbrook Churches, but that’s mostly on 65th St.

    2. Btw, I checked out Downtown Redmond Station today. All the bus stops and layover space curbs are now painted red and yellow. I was concerned there wouldn’t be enough layover space at the new station, as I have seen the Redmond TC layover area overflowing with B Line, 542, and 221 route buses. But the layover area + bus zones on NE 76th next to Downtown Redmond Station is very long, stretching from about 164th Ave NE to 170th Ave NE. Maybe 250 yards long. So I don’t think there will be a lack of layover space, like there is occasionally at the Redmond TC.

    3. Do buses need to serve Marymoor Village station at all? Seems like it’s simpler to have the buses just serve downtown Redmond, which also has a better walkshed; if you want to go to Marymoor Village, you just ride the train one stop.

      Current plans have only the 269 serve Marymoor Village.

      1. It also looks like the 251 will serve both. I think the 251 is fine. The bus is coverage and it loops around to serve various areas to the east. It might as well end at Marymoor rather than make a complete loop back to the Downtown Redmond Station.

        I’m not sure what the 269 is doing. It looks like it might go up to Bear Creek Park and Ride, turn around and then go to the Marymoor station to layover. Or maybe it does it in the reverse order. Either way it seems like it would be much better off going to Bear Creek and then head to the other station. Better yet go by the station and layover at the existing transit center. That would be a much better way to connect Sammamish to Redmond at not much extra cost. For that matter I would probably just skip the park and ride.

  4. Has there been any information on how the busses will likely be reconfigured when WSLE is thru-running to Lynwood (no longer a stub). IIRC they said they won’t make changes when the stub opens in 2032 but only when Ballard link opens. Although I have a feeling the stub will become not-so-temporary once Ballard link’s true cost comes to light. “Nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution”

    It would be great to change the C line to go from Alki->North Admiral->Junction->Westwood village->White Center.
    TBH I don’t understand why the C line doesn’t go to White Center already.
    Upgrading the 21 to rapid ride or having it run east-west to Delridge after it gets to Morgan Street would be great too.

    1. Metro Connects 2050 has one scenario. Search for “Metro connects concepts” and our article with links will come up. SDOT had a scenario last year with some slightly different routes; we probably have an article with it, either as part of the transportation kevy articles or separately.

      No decision has been made yet. The first restructure proposal usually comes out a year or two before opening.

      All the scenarios I’ve seen turn the C into a north-south line to Burien and Admiral, with some extending to Allki. The H in Metro Connects continued running to downtown, but in SDOT’s it went north to Harbor Ave and maybe Alki.

      The C doesn’t go to White Center because Westwood Village was positioned as the urban growth center for southern West Seattle, so routes converge there. The C’s predecessor 54 terminated in Fauntleroy, so extending it to Westwiid Village was seen as a significant advantage. Nobody suggested extending it to White Center that I heard. It’s rather backtracking for that.

      1. Thanks Mike!
        From looking at it here
        https://platform.remix.com/project/ea35df7d

        WS routes are 1040 – 1043

        Key differences I noticed
        Rapid Ride C (1043) is truncated to Alaska Junction and is extended from Westwood village to Burien
        Rapid Ride H (1041) will no longer go to downtown but will instead go from Delridge to North Admiral to Alki

        1040 looks like 128 but skips South Seattle Colledge
        1042 looks like a new route that will go from Alki along the water to Delridge and then generally south/east toward Tukwila link station

      2. “1042 looks like a new route that will go from Alki along the water to Delridge and then generally south/east toward Tukwila link station”

        1042 is basically 125 going to Alki via Harbor Ave instead of Downtown Seattle on its north end. The Metro Connect appendices indicates that in Table A-18. Part of this document doesn’t seem to match this REMIX network anymore, but the part about Corridor 1042 seems consistent.

        https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B44RYEx3kgpoM0FmNmRwenZSaW8/view?resourcekey=0-YAOy7HlkNPA5exNvKMSsjQ

    2. No information for such a hypothetical date is reliable. Wait until it actually gets near completion to believe anything… assuming it ever gets done

  5. Can’t read the Times article about Seattle’s most densest neighborhood. But I’m not surprised by Belltown’s high ranking. Many transplants I talk to say they move to Belltown when they first arrive to Seattle because they’re attracted by the downtown living…then move as soon as their lease is up after they experience the truth behind “downtown living”.

    1. The article doesn’t say that much, and regular STB readers will know most of it. #1 is part of the U-District near Campus Parkway, #2 Belltown, #3 part of Capitol Hill. It spills a lot of ink with caveats: Montlake is so low because it includes unpopulated Interlaken Park and part of the Arboretum. The U-District tract is so high because it includes student dormitories. These factors skew the results so much that they don’t seem to be worth it.

      The best part of the article is a citywide map. It says what you’d expect: The only areas with more than 42,000 people per square mile are a strip from Belltown to SLU, the Campus Parkway dorms, and the frat row area. (The UW campus itself is not counted, so the North Campus dorms are excluded.) The next-lower level between 22K-42K includes the First Hill/Capitol Hill/CD area east to 15th with an outpost to 23rd, Uptown to the Dexter/Westlake corridors, more of the U-District, and a small part of Ballard. The level below that (12K-22K) includes more of Ballard, Fremont, Greenwood, Northgate, Lake City, Broadview, the West Seattle Triangle around the Junction, the Yesler-Jackson area, Beacon Hill village, Columbia City, and the Graham cluster around NewHolly.

      1. The only areas with more than 42,000 people per square mile … [very few places]

        Yes, this is the big takeaway. There really aren’t that many high density areas. There aren’t that many low density areas either. There are lots of mid-level density areas. This is why an approach that leverages the buses is so important. We have largely covered the high density areas with the trains already (with ULink). There are areas that are left out (SLU, Belltown and First Hill come to mind) but they are fairly close to the existing Link line. Mainly we need to cover the mid-level areas (and remaining high-level areas) as best we can. We can’t possibly serve all those mid-level areas with Link. Even the massively expensive ST3 plans cover only a handful of locations. The only way to cover those areas is with buses. Link lines that complement and improve the bus network would provide the most value.

        Unfortunately we really aren’t doing that. We aren’t building anything like a Link line from Ballard to the UW. A subway of that nature would complement the fast north-south buses with a fast east-west connection. It would transform transit pretty much everywhere north of the ship canal (a giant region with lots of mid-level density).

        Instead we are building West Seattle Link. This line doesn’t really help the buses — it basically forces a transfer from some of the more densely populated areas. Ballard Link helps some, but largely along a fairly narrow path. Queen Anne doesn’t really benefit despite being close to the line as the crow flies (the west side of Queen Anne is a giant greenbelt). Magnolia benefits but they actually have fairly fast transit right now to downtown. Ballard definitely benefits but with only one station most riders will have to transfer and it isn’t clear that it is worth it. It is one thing to take the RapidRide E down Aurora and then take a subway line to the UW. People make that trip all the time (using a slow bus for the second leg). It is quite a different story to get off of a bus headed downtown so that you can wait for a train that won’t necessarily be much faster. It would likely get some riders from parts of Ballard (some will obviously make that transfer) but I don’t see it working at Fremont or Phinney Ridge. The geography is all wrong. It picks up some high density areas closer to downtown but by then the deep tunnel and relatively low frequency of Link (instead of a bunch of buses running on the surface) make it less attractive.

        Despite the huge cost of ST3 it just looks so irrelevant to improving overall transit in most of the city. It seems built for a city that just doesn’t exist. One with big residential towers in only a handful of places and houses on giant lots everywhere else. That just isn’t Seattle. Nor is it likely that it will be the Seattle of the future. Most of the political pressure to change the zoning is the opposite. There is no push for residential towers in Ballard or Interbay. But it is quite likely that areas that are zoned for single family have multiplexes and small (short) apartments. In other words the city has even more mid-level density making the ST3 choices even less important. In order to create a decent transit system that works for most people in Seattle there is going to have to be a huge investment in the buses.

      2. We could cover a lot more territory with Link if we built it more cheaply. Build the lines at-grade, elevated, or in open cuts. Our current practice of tunneling in the city and hugging the highway in the suburbs is a dead end. We’ve just about exhausted that approach.

  6. I’ve seen enough: WSLE is a boondoggle in its current form, and spending another $68 million is fool hardy,

    They won’t learn anything about cost savings that can be applied system wide. That’s literally magical thinking. What drives cost is scope (materials, labor, and design risk): number of stations, length of guideway, horizontal profile, etc. Once those are set, there aren’t any major cost savings possible. And, once those decisions are made in the planning phase, the die is cast.

    The reality is ST is pushing forward an unaffordable/unfunded scope that will deliver marginal benefit, denying resources to the region to make more effective investments.

    A WSLE project scope with all those turns, that river crossing, those underground stations…. it will cost what it will cost, most likely well in excess of $7.2 billion once design is complete in a few years. Big projects ONLY get cheaper if their scope gets cut substantially.

    Frizzell has it right, spending $68 million now just builds momentum toward the folly and makes it harder to take a different approach later.

    1. Utilizing the SODO busway, making the needed connection to the West Seattle Bridge, utilizing but enhancing the existing bus lanes on the WS Bridge, building a busway to 35th Ave SW in the bridgehead mini-freeway. Adding bus lanes around West Seattle. Operating it as an open busway with 5 or 6 lines branching out to all corners of West Seattle then feeding into this busway trunkline into Downtown Seattle. Maybe you run all these West Seattle buses on 1st Ave in Downtown Seattle to function as a very frequent corridor and alternate to 3rd Ave (and give them dedicated lanes on 1st). Some routes continue to SLU (similar to now) while others go thru Belltown to Queen Anne/Seattle Center.

      1. Exactly! One big advantage is that it can be done fairly quickly. Shifting money into service can happen almost immediately. Within months you could have a restructure that takes advantage of the extra service. Various infrastructure improvements (like bus lanes) could happen very fast as well. Even something big (like ramps from the Spokane Street Viaduct to the SoDo Busway) would happen within five years (ramps shouldn’t be that expensive). In contrast the soonest West Seattle Link could be connected to downtown is 2039. And even that isn’t that good.

        This is the fundamental problem with West Seattle Link. It will take too long, cost too much and add too little.

      2. Consider this example: Imagine you are commuting from High Point to First Hill. You leave your apartment around 8:00 AM and get to work a few minutes before 9:00 (https://maps.app.goo.gl/tyYFi7bFY1RTZBbW6). This is a really long commute, obviously. But it also typical. First Hill is a major employment center. High Point has the highest population density of any neighborhood in West Seattle (according to the census). So the plan is that almost fifteen years from now you will:

        1) Take a bus to Avalon and wait for Link.
        2) Take the train to Symphony Station.
        3) Walk a couple blocks and take the G.

        This is faster, but not by a lot. You get to the Avalon Station at 8:14 (according to Google) walk to the platform and wait. By 8:20 you are on the train heading to downtown. By 8:30 you have reached Symphony Station. It takes a couple minutes to leave the station and another couple minutes to walk to the bus stop. So instead of being at 3rd & Madison at 8:39 you are there around six minutes sooner. You manage to catch an earlier bus which means you save six minutes and arrive at 8:49 instead of 8:55. Hooray! It only took fifteen years for you to shave six minutes off of your trip! Maybe you can leave later. Wait, no you can’t because the 21 is infrequent and the next bus would have you arrive in First Hill just a couple minutes after your shift starts. Oh well, at least you have more time to hang out in the break room.

        Now imagine a bus based approach. First make the 21 faster. Find a different bus to cover that part of SoDo and have the 21 follow the current path of the RapidRide C. Again the bus makes it to Avalon around 8:14 but this time it just keeps going and follows the path that the C would take. This means it would get you to your destination at 8:44 (https://maps.app.goo.gl/U6GyN8UDcXsrvfs6A). This is actually faster than than the train!

        But there is more that can be done. We could run the 21 more often. As Poncho suggested, we could send it onto the bridge much sooner if we some red paint. Thus two changes — which could be done fairly quickly — would mean that a rider could save a considerable amount of real time. Instead of leaving your apartment at 8:00 you could leave at 8:15 — maybe later — and still get to work on time. This is a bigger change than West Seattle Link and it could happen at least a decade sooner. None of this would be free (service costs money) but $7 billion can buy a lot of service.

        Eventually you build the ramps from Spokane Street Viaduct to the SoDo Busway. This wouldn’t save a huge amount of time but it would make the bus more reliable (especially during rush hour). It would also make additional connections. It would basically offer the same advantages of West Seattle Link except you simply transfer later. If you are trying to get from High Point to the UW then you transfer at SoDo instead of Avalon. But there are other advantages as well. If you are headed to Rainier Valley or SeaTac you avoid the extra transfer. If you are headed to Renton or Kent (via the 101 or 150 or some future express Kent/SoDo Busway/Downtown bus) you avoid a transfer. But plenty of people wouldn’t have to transfer before downtown. So instead of a three seat ride to First Hill, Uptown or Bellevue you just stay on the bus until you are downtown and transfer once. Because instead of spending a fortune on a rail line that duplicates an existing expressway we would spend it making the buses faster and more frequent.

        And yes, I realize that West Seattle Link would save Metro service hours which could be used to make the buses in West Seattle more frequent. But the savings really aren’t that big. You’ve got the C, H and 125 that essentially run express to downtown. The 21 (as mentioned) has a unique coverage area that would have to be backfilled somehow. But just as importantly, there is no reason to assume the money would go to West Seattle. Assuming the savings are spread out in the county you would likely see minor improvements in frequency and coverage. In contrast if ST shifted towards bus-based improvements in West Seattle there would be a commitment towards faster and more frequent buses in the area. It would be weird but not unprecedented for West Seattle to have better service than you would expect. That already exists for Seattle. The Seattle Transportation Benefit District allows Seattle to provide better service. Metro runs buses more frequently in various parts of Seattle than they would otherwise. There is no reason why we couldn’t do the same thing for West Seattle. Spend a billion on infrastructure (which would likely easily pay for all the red paint and the ramps to the SoDo busway) and that leaves six billion to pay for service. That is a lot of service.

        Some areas make sense for busways, some areas make sense for subways. West Seattle is the former.

      3. RossB: Is there any expectation that busses will generally run with the same travel times after 15 years of increasing traffic congestion? Now RapidRide G, and perhaps another 2 or 3 bus lines, will probably be about the same, as it has extensive infrastructure to go along with it. But definitely not busses in general. In general, we have to consider that the busses are probably running faster today than they will for the rest of our lives.

      5. In general, we have to consider that the busses are probably running faster today than they will for the rest of our lives.

        It depends on the bus. Right now buses are very slow. Traffic is terrible. The city is moving in the right direction, but very slowly. But eventually they get there. They add more and more right-of-way for the buses. Things that would have been considered absurd a decade ago (Take a lane on Westlake?!! Rainier Avenue?!?) have already happened.

        Some areas will likely remain without any special treatment. These could easily get worse. But that would be the case either way. That is one of the fundamental issues with West Seattle Link. It doesn’t address the areas that are slowest — it simply speeds up the areas that could easily be sped up with a relatively small investment. Getting to the stations could remain bad. For example consider High Point to downtown:

        1) Buses are slow getting to a few blocks to Avalon but then the bus runs in its own lane all the way onto the West Seattle Bridge. It then travels in its own lane until it takes a bus-only exit to the SoDo Busway. The bus then goes on the SoDo busway to downtown (in its own lane).

        2) Buses are slow getting to a few blocks to Avalon and then goes in its own lane until riders get out of the bus and wait for Link.

        The second option is not better. The slowdown involves getting to the stations, not getting the rest of the way. This is true for all the corridors. Getting from Alki or Admiral Junction to downtown won’t be faster if you through Alaska Junction since getting to Alaska Junction is not fast. Not only that, but it probably is faster to just skip Alaska Junction and follow Admiral Way. This is precisely the type of section that is bad during rush hour and could be worse in the future. But it also the type of route that SDOT could easily make a lot faster (for buses). Admiral Way is two lanes each direction — similar to big streets in Seattle that have added bus lanes. It is also quite possible that they could allow buses in the right lane to go straight (making it a “skip-ahead” lane) which means it would be considerably faster as a way to get downtown, even when traffic is really bad. That is the type of thing that SDOT has been doing and will continue to do. It really isn’t that expensive yet it can be very effective.

        Then there is the politics. West Seattle Link hangs over all the discussions. It likely drags down potential improvements in the meantime. Why add those bus-lanes that Ross mentioned when eventually West Seattle will have its own light rail line? This attitude permeates the entire region. HOV lanes on I-5 are way too slow and not in compliance with state and federal regulations but there is little interest in improving them because “eventually Link will get there”. This is one of the key aspects of West Seattle Link that a lot of people don’t get: West Seattle is getting screwed as a result. Instead of wide spread improvements to make buses faster and more frequent they will only improve a section that is currently fairly fast (and could be made as fast as rail with a few relatively cheap fixes).

      6. Whoa up. It is very difficult to get from the SoDo Busway to First Avenue! If you’re going with the First Avenue trunk concept just use SR99 and add Ross’s second lane to the WS Freeway Eastbound to SR99 Northbound ramp. .

      7. It is very difficult to get from the SoDo Busway to First Avenue!

        Only because of current traffic. Add some bus lanes or BAT lanes and I could see it working. I would probably dogleg at Jackson. That way you connect to Sounder and Amtrak. You could dogleg at Lander but then the connection to Link is a bit awkward. If they added a bridge over Holgate (similar to the one at Lander) then you could dogleg there. I could also see some of the buses doglegging while others kept going straight. For the south end of First Avenue (currently covered by the 21 and 50) I would try and find layover to the south (which seems quite plausible) and then have one of the northern buses extend farther south (the 5 would be the obvious choice).

        The main point is that it really isn’t that difficult to come up with a system that is far superior to what they have planned even though it would be much cheaper. Only a handful of people would be better off with West Seattle Link (the folks who walk to and from the station).

      8. South Lander Street overcrossing provides a great transit pathway between 1st Avenue South and the SODO busway. I opened in summer 2020.

      9. Wait a minute, Ross. I thought we were discussing your proposal to add ramps from the West Seattle Freeway to and from the SoDo Busway at Spokane Street. The buses would use the busway to get to downtown Seattle instead of SR99 and the Columbia Pathway.

        Short cutting over to First Avenue South anywhere south of Jackson seems insane. You’d go a 1/3 of a mile east then the same 1/3 of a mile west. And, the buses would be subject to the stadium chaos. Using Jackson would also be subject to large pedestrian volumes on game days and using it would require northbound buses to turn left at Fifth or Fourth (depending whether a connection to Seattle Way was included). And finally, it would force buses through the narrow, pedestrian-clogged streets of Pioneer Square. Ditto using either Main or Washington.

        So the cutover would probably be Yesler, which means many more buses down narrow Prefontaine Place and a left turn from it to Yesler.

        If you’re going to establish a new transit spine on First Avenue — a fine idea — just use SR99 and the Columbia Pathway! Anything else is a huge waste of bus hours. The second lane on the cloverleaf from WSFwy Eastbound to SR99 Northbound can’t be more expensive than two new ramps just east of Fourth Avenue.

      10. Short cutting over to First Avenue South anywhere south of Jackson seems insane.

        Not for the 101 or 150. Those buses started to the east so they wouldn’t be backtracking. It would come with BAT lanes both directions the entire way (of course). It still wouldn’t be as fast as running on the busway but riders could transfer to Link (at SoDo) or one of the other many buses going straight north on the busway if they want to avoid the dogleg to First. I’m not saying that would be an ideal setup but it is a possibility in the very long term. My guess is the best option (if we want buses to head over to First) is to just dogleg at Spokane Street. That gets you the connection to Amtrak and Sounder.

        There wouldn’t be that much value in cutting over sooner. A bus (e. g. the 5) would be extended south on First (probably to Spokane Street since that is what is covered now). So buses that dogleg sooner would not add unique coverage, they would double up service. I don’t see that much value in doing that south of Jackson. To make it worth it you would probably have to make that corridor really fast (e. g. bus lanes not BAT lanes).

        In the mean time what they need is HOV ramps from I-5 to the Spokane Street Viaduct so that the 101 and 150 can get to the SoDo Busway without dealing with congestion.

      1. But that vote was a decade ago. I believe that if another vote was today, Sound Transit would lose.

        W’e’re looking at a projects with exploding price tags and less political support by the day. The whole “We voted for that” argument is wearing mighty thin.

      3. I agree with tacomee. Another point: voters weren’t given many options. In fact they were given two: Vote for this project or get nothing. It is really absurd to state that voters wanted this project over all others when they weren’t given a choice. It is quite likely that voters wanted to spend more on transit, but they wanted something else. It is worth nothing that voters in Seattle voted at a higher percentage to fund the Metro buses. Thus it is quite likely that a well designed set of improvements to the bus system would have been preferred over West Seattle Link.

        To spend nothing on transit would be a clear repudiation of voter intent. To spend the money on different transit projects could very well be what people want and what they wanted all along.

      4. Voters approved a stream of taxes. That stream may materialize; it depends on the economy. The promised projects may get built, depending on costs and feasibility. There is too little consideration of whether the promised promised projects still make sense, if they ever did.

        Yes, ST has deferred many projects. But in Sound Move, they did kill some projects: north Sounder became one-way and peak-only with only four trips per peak period after negotiation with BNSF; the NE 85th Street center access ramp on I-405 was dropped (foolishly revived in ST3); the First Hill Link station was dropped (we will miss it forever); the two-way all-day busway on I-90 was dropped.

    3. Largely not true, there are plenty of areas to save money if they are willing to put the money into studying it. Paper is always cheaper than steel. Some examples include :

      – Study ways to reduce materials used in station or track construction,
      – Study updates to standard design elements to find more efficient and alternative materials,
      – Look at alternative bridge designs,
      – Obtain value engineering input from contractors,
      – Consider construction scheduling and efficiency improvements which save time

      These are just some examples, and as a “Another Engineer” I would think you should understand that.

      Although construction costs have risen, it’s also important to remember this is a long term investment, which will pay dividends to the community over the next 100 years. It will only get more expensive over the long haul, and this project should have been done 20 years ago.

      1. Peter– I disagree. They are spending another $68 million on Final Design of a final project to be built, now the subject of a ROD. The tactics in your list are mostly issues you would normally study during CE and PE before locking in the scope of the final project decision.

        The first three on your list — standardization, materials, alternative design concepts all should be looked at in the planning phase, and perhaps chased with PE dollars. All are relevant pre-decisional considerations. They actually did this for WSLE, but instead of opting for lower cost concepts, they added more complex and intensive scope at every major milestone.

        Value Engineering and construction scheduling as often as not result in higher, not lower costs. and when they do result in lower costs, it’s just nipping around at the edges. It might get you 10 million here, 20 million there, but that’s budget noise for ST.

        The ST financial plan is billions — with a B — under water. The only way you move the dial appreciably at that scale is to fundamentally re-think the scopes of these giant projects. No one should expect Brad Owen’s design efforts to result in substantially lower costs.

      2. Peter,

        Ross has had the right answer for some time. More buses.

        Trains cost way too much money. Looking at the current unbuilt rail projects.. we’re not looking at, say, a 20% increase in price. There’s just no way forward.

        This happens all the time in private business. Whole shopping centers are planned, and never built because the money just isn’t there.

        Our problem is Sound Transit is a political monster. We can’t kill it, but man, we should.

    4. “Big projects ONLY get cheaper if their scope gets cut substantially.”

      This is the historical way that ST has reduced budgets. It’s why KDM and Downtown Redmond were deferred initially, as well as the U District Station from Sound Moves as well as the First Hill diversion with station.

      However, I’ve not seen any serious similar cost-cutting proposals for WSLE put on the table. The project approach has instead to make it increasingly more expensive since 2016 — adding tunnel sections, a signature bridge and overbuilt stations. All the while the weekday boarding forecasts at the three stations fell from about 17K in 2040 forecasts from ST to 13K in the current West Seattle FEIS (with a full system build and not just the stub interim prior sure to last many years).

      It looks to me that WS gets built because of political clout that uses transit money for other development objectives — even if nothing else in North King does.

      There are a host of cost cutting measures often debated among us. They range from shorter automated trains to dropping stations to cable technologies to rebuilding SODO station with just two tracks and a center platform to putting three lines in the current DSTT. They all generally make sense at some level. We debate them — but the Board never even asks for and the staff never even present them even as options. They die here on STB.

      And it’s not as though the Board is clueless. Public comments at meetings and written comments have stated these same things repeatedly for years now. Yet the vibe on the Board is still that every comment is worthy of denial.

      The hiring of Dow Constantine as CEO is to me perhaps the ultimate sign of denying the inevitable cost problem. Surely the Board sees that with any CEO but Constantine the ridiculousness of the money situation gets forced. Rogoff tried through realignment and it didn’t work. Timms came and left without confronting the dilemma. It’s perhaps as if the Board has given Constantine an ultimatum — prove it can be done.

      Sadly, the entire ST3 program achieves token rider benefit, and for many riders it makes trips take more time as well adds effort in new transfers especially at deep stations. The ultimate indignity is to pay for 40 years of taxes just to make using transit take longer and be less user-friendly for many if not most of us if it ever opens. That’s the cash-eating monster called ST3 we’ve created and there seems no way to tame it or kill it.

      Is there anyway to stop the spending madness? Outside of a new ballot measure referendum or state legislation simply capping the time extension to the original 30 years I don’t see one. In the meantime, we still have an uncontrolled, Constantine-led shopping spree going on in the West Seattle aisle of the store.

      1. Aside from the First Hill station, ST typically defers projects. Sound Move still technically funds a standalone bus base, which continues to sit in the long term capital plan (taking up financial space), but has been blocked by the KCM union whenever ST staff has tried to move it into design to service ST Express (there is a good reason the Stride bus base is in Snohomish county).

        ST will continue to chip away at ST3 until there is a political movement for an ST4. Link to Tacoma Dome and West Seattle will move forward, some subsection of Link north of Lynnwood will get built, Stride will be completed, and Sounder will get a few additional round trips. Everything else will get deferred until there is a new political consensus.

      2. Given the recent legislative proposal to extend loans to 75 years as well as the Board’s decision to extend ST3 taxes way beyond the proposed subset period if 30 years in 2016, it looks to me that ST will just extend ST3 taxes for another 45 years before returning to the voters in an ST4.

      3. It is really two different things. Some projects get deferred but the board is confident it will get built. Other projects are essentially deferred until they can raise more money. That is because there is a limit to how far you can defer a project and still expect it to be built. It is like buying a house. You look to buy it with a fifteen year mortgage and realize the payments are too high. So you push it out to thirty. But there is a limit to how far you can push it out. Eventually you are not paying down the principle and simply accumulating more debt. Unless you expect more money in the future it just won’t work.

        It is quite possible that various projects will get deferred indefinitely because they are too expensive. What they build in the mean time is the big question. In the past it wasn’t a huge issue. Yes, it sucked that Federal Way Link ended at Angle Lake (instead of Federal Way) but at least it ran that far. But West Seattle to SoDo is not worth much at all. At a minimum you need to connect it to downtown and for that ST assumes you need a second tunnel. So it is quite possible they build a line from Midtown to West Seattle unless they pass an ST4.

        But ST4 is not a given. ST3 passed on the heals of one of our must successful, important periods in Link history. U-Link had just opened months earlier and it was a rousing success (as everyone with any understanding of transit fundamentals would expect). Sound Transit seemed to solve their earlier construction problems. Things were going well and it was easy to be excited about the importance and future of Link.

        But ST3 barely won in Snohomish County and lost in Pierce. It got 54% of the vote. This is a comfortable margin but not a landslide. It is about what Inslee got against Bill Bryant and not as much as Patty Murray got against Chris Vance (statewide). A statewide measure to increase the minimum wage passed by more. If ST4 involves the same area I could see a lot of problems. It isn’t clear what large scale projects would attract voters in either Pierce or Snohomish County. Even with the East Side there is nothing too attractive that I can see. Meanwhile, a lot of projects (even projects that are typically fairly cheap like BRT) have had huge cost overruns. West Seattle Link (if it was built at the time of the vote) would not be getting many riders. It is hard to see how people would have faith in the agency given everything that has happened. Seattle would have to vote overwhelmingly in favor and for the most part it would be to simply build what we said we are going to build before. We could add on other projects but then the disconnect between the value of big capital projects in Seattle and those in other areas just increases.

        The best chance would be a stand-alone Seattle project which I could see. The state would have to give voters the right to do that but that could pass. If the board continues on the current path then it is quite likely that most of ST3 gets built (at least in Seattle). It just could take a really long time. Of course by then we may have a system of automated buses (like much of the world) and folks may have frowned on major rail projects of this nature. Hard to say.

      4. The big problem here is leaders looking at Seattle as some sort international world class city and that’s not what it really is…Greater Seattle is a provincial city that’s been tied to boom and bust cycles for over a hundred years. Current it’s looking like bust.

        The ST3 and Seattle Subway vision has a projection of growth in population and revenue that’s unrealistic. Seattle isn’t NYC. Ross is correct pointing out that other than a small dense core, most of Greater Seattle would be better served by a good bus network. Maybe we could spilt the difference with gondolas or some other cheaper product…. but honestly, West Seattle is backwater.One of Sound Transit’s biggest problem is the residents of West Seattle like the backwater they live in and don’t want light rail lines ripping it up. And there’s no money for a tunnel. Not building another subway is a correct answer…. nobody is going to miss not having the damn thing in 40 years.

        I think Greater Seattle is, and will continue to be, a pretty conservative city. The boom and bust nature of Greater Seattle makes a truly progressive city just out of the question. Right now the Seattle is flat broke. The State is flat broke. Sound Transit is flat broke. The Feds are not coming to the rescue.

        So every progressive project pitched over the last 20 years gets downsized. This isn’t anything new. Here’s a great understanding of the “how” and “why” of Seattle. https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295743493/skid-road/

        Seattle will remain a city of Liberal ideas without the longer term funding to enact them.

      5. “Greater Seattle is a provincial city that’s been tied to boom and bust cycles for over a hundred years. Current it’s looking like bust.”

        We may agree on lots but Seattle is not in a “bust” period.

        King County recovered their population loss from April 2020 census in 2023. In the 2024 estimate released in March King County gained another 69,000 people.

        https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/kingcountywashington/PST045224

        The Census bureau estimates for the City of Seattle for 2024 are due out in the next few weeks. Between 2020 and 2023, Seattle was estimated to gain 18,000 people compared to King Coubty’s 2000.

        It may not be at the pace of a decade ago but it’s still showing healthy growth. And people mainly move here for jobs.

      6. Al S.

        If Seattle isn’t in a “bust” period, why is the city flat broke? I believe you that 18,000 people moved to the Emerald City… but wouldn’t that influx turn the tide on the sea of red link the city is facing?

        Poor Tacoma just tried to pass a levy to fix its broken down streets. The tax payers thought, wrongly I guess, that the taxes they already paid went to fix the roads. Now City Council has their undies in bunch, but it doesn’t matter. There’s no more money. Visionary people, like Councilperson Hines (Tacoma), hands are tied now… for years. Tacoma just doesn’t have the money coming in to change a damn thing.

        Looking at all the growth over the past 25 year boom… how can Seattle be so messed up? Adding more people in the short term actually might make the problems the City has worse? There’s endless talk about housing and transit, but absolutely no money to do any of it.

        I don’t work in tech, but it seems to me the industry is changing. Between that and the City or State attempting to jack money out of big companies or millionaires, the high times are going to end.

        Jeff Bezos messed up Seattle and at some point he’ll get sick of it and move on.

        And I’m not so sure many of the people reading this wouldn’t be better off when Seattle tanks. I moved to Seattle in the lean years… life was easier for people like me then. Asshat tech bros adding thousands of jobs to Seattle? Are you sure that was a good thing? Because Seattle without Big Tech would Minneapolis with less snow.

      7. @ Tacomee:

        The Census estimates for Tacoma and Pierce County and Tacoma as not as robust as Seattle and King County are. They do show slight growth.

        Housing unaffordability is a result of economic growth. Otherwise Seattle housing would be as affordable as St Louis or Detroit (two “bust” cities).

        I can’t speculate on why the City of Seattle has a revenue shortfall except to say that there is a likely structural reason. Cities generally have been underfunded for years as the infrastructure inevitable deteriorates because of deferred maintenance, like the failure of gasoline tax revenue to pay for street upkeep.

      8. Yeah, I don’t think Seattle is currently in the bust part of a boom/bust period. We seem to be in the leveling off period (after our big boom). Downtown has certainly been hit hard but that is true everywhere (the pandemic changed commuting). But overall the city is fairly strong.

        Nor do I think the plans were “too big for our britches” although the budget is kind of crazy compared to the number of people who live here. I think the big problem is just the overall design. For example a Ballard to UW Line would probably have many of the same problems that the other lines have. It would likely be much more expensive than initially thought. Ideally it would be automated, with smaller stations. But you still have a couple of key places where it needs to work really well. The connection to the main line (at the U-District) needs to be a good transfer. In Fremont you need to make the connection to the Aurora buses while also serving the main part of Fremont. In both cases I can see how to pull it off but I can also see how it is delicate. You can’t just be “close enough” as they were with the UW Station (where is put in just about the worst possible place* but is still a very good station). This pushes up the cost or you end up with second-rate solutions (as we have now with the second tunnel). But through it all you would have a fundamentally strong line. Even as prices went up you would have few naysayers. The 44 can only get so fast. It is a fundamentally slow corridor but one with thousands of potential riders. It makes sense for a subway line even if that line is more expensive than it should be.

        But that isn’t the case with West Seattle Link. It is barely the case with Ballard Link. In both cases the problem is that it doesn’t draw from enough of the outlying areas. There is very little synergy with the bus system.

        This is all in Seattle. For the surrounding areas it is even worse. It makes all the same mistakes as BART but for an area with a lot fewer people. There is just way more density (in the city and the surrounding suburbs) in the Bay Area than there is in greater Seattle and yet BART hasn’t been a great success. It was an experiment that failed. Now various cities (Dallas, Denver) have copied the same basic model and failed in a similar fashion. If there is a model appropriate for cities like those (and Seattle) it is the Vancouver model. Build a subway (with automated trains) but make damn sure they work really well with the buses. Then run those buses often. Add bus-lanes and things of that nature. You end up with a bus system that is outstanding — with eye-popping ridership — while your subway system complements it with fast, frequent lines with lots of stations. The stations are where you would expect them for a subway line and not so spread out (like BART or Link). It is really not that different than a typical subway line you would find in most parts of the world it is just geared a little bit more towards integrating with the buses.

        *I think the best location in the area for a UW station would have been the triangle itself with underground pedestrian tunnels to the hospital (that already exist) and the main part of campus. Let folks headed to the stadium go up to the surface and cross the street. On game days traffic cops block off traffic anyway. The campus would have been good as well. Same with the hospital. The worst option is where they put it (oops). But again, it is still a damn good station because the fundamentals are so strong. Things like West Seattle Link are the opposite (it has to serve the station areas really well, be really cheap and yeah, not gonna happen).

    5. Much of the “scope” that drives up costs is driven by ST’s design criteria manual, not by text in the ST3 plan, and the design criteria manual is entirely within ST’s control. The biggest culprit is grade separation; the ST3 levy specifies “high capacity transit” and “light rail,” but the board separately has required 100% grade separation. There are real lessons to learn from the Rainer Valley segment’s safety issue, but 100% grade separation is the easy button that is driving enormous cost. The lack of engagement with rail operations outside of the anglosphere results in a poorly written & overly prescriptive design criteria manual. If I had a dollar for the number of times I was told “but this is how TriMet does it” or “well when I was at Minneapolis METRO” ….

      In my experience, ST staff treat the design criteria manual as gospel, which leads to high cost solutions – I remember being in a discussion around “fire code” requirements for the DSTT driving some capital expense – I challenged the cost as unnecessary because buses no longer ran in the tunnel, KCM staff said it was necessary to meet code, and after further digging I figured out that the specific part of the code was written by KCM itself because there is only one transit tunnel in the state!

      A smaller dollar but still impactful driver of cost is vertical conveyance, so I repeatedly post the link to Yohan Freemark’s article about the importance of frequency and the unimportance of VC in project scope.

      https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/documents-reports/design-criteria-manual
      https://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2016/05/10/frequent-service-not-escalator-access-is-what-attracts-transit-users/

    6. I think the most obvious thing to do is to reorder the projects. Assuming ST moves forward with the current design, Ballard should get built first, the downtown tunnel second, and West Seattle Link last.

      Ballard Link ends in downtown and will be useful even just by itself. The downtown tunnel adds two additional stops in the interim.

      West Seattle Link, on the other hand, is useless without Ballard Link and the tunnel completed, since it will just truncate in SODO until then.

      1. If ST revisited the technology plan, SLU and Ballard could come first. The problem is that there needs to be a track connection to make it work.

        ST has shown no interest in even assessing this approach. A number of us have suggested ways to make the project more doable — but ST has not picked up any of those suggestions. Speakers have even presented going with smaller automated trains to save costs between Ballard and Westlake. The Board summarily dismisses these ideas.

        We have a bunch of arrogant people at ST that believe that whatever they recommend is the right way to go. Alternatives only change when Constantine wants them to. He behaves like a transit dictator and the Board just gave him his castle.

        If this was a one-off situation it would be different. But it’s been like this for a decade now. There are so many repeated stories of how the ST3 corridors only get more and more costly and less user-friendly as the giddy sponsors keep spending more billions as they want — without regard to rider benefits. Instead they cherry pick only ride times between certain Link station pairs and disregard both the time to get to the station by walking one feeder bus and the time it takes to go up to 9-10 floors deep underground to get to a platform.

      2. ST is already run by incompetents. Just because we’re better than the rest of the nation doesn’t make us good
        We’re hardly doing the basics.

        Dow Constantine is the most insufferable corrupt person I have ever seen as well. Him taking the helm will not fare well for us.

      3. With a change in technology, SLU/Ballard could have a small OFM in Interbay; not need for a direct connection.

  9. What is wrong with King County Metro this week? Many routes are suffering significant delays and “no show” buses.

    Lots of buses running 10-20 late, and even a few as insane as 30-40 minutes. Some of these drivers are horrible too. They drive too slow and slow down at traffic signals on purpose to miss the light. They should be trained to get people to places on time. Road traffic is not the issue. Riding these buses, it’s clearly a driver issue.

    1. That’s May Day for you. The protests blocked several key transit corridors at various point of the day, including 3rd Ave in Downtown Seattle. My E Line coach got held up for an extended period around 3rd/Pine.

      2. There may be another one blocking 2nd this afternoon. I walked past it at the end a 5pm and they were chanting they’d “be back tomorrow”. 2nd Ave buses turned to 3rd for a few blocks, and the 131 I took right after that was on turned from 3rd to 2nd (south of the protest where 2nd was empty).

        Earlier at 4pm I took a Pine Street bus to downtown, and they were all 5-45 minutes late, so OBA said they’d start coming in 5 minutes and come every 1-2 minutes thereafter to clear up the backlog. The 3 (Summit) was supposed to be the first, but its delay kept stretching and stretching. I thought maybe the Cal Anderson Park protest had blocked Olive Way, but then the 11 came on time. It was the only on-time run on OBA. The Pine Street routes have been consistently 5-10 minutes late every day for the past year, but never as bad as this. The Seattle Times said a crowd walked down from the park across I-5 around 1:30pm, but I was at home a block away and didn’t hear them, so they must have been unusually quiet.

      3. Terrible evening for transit heading west on SR 520.

        There are currently five 271 buses stacked up on the Montlake exit. One of the buses is running nearly an hour late.

  10. Today, while walking my dog on the Sammamish River Trail over in Woodinville, I could not help but notice that there’s a lot more high-density housing around there than one might think. Not just at the town center, but there’s some huge apartment buildings under construction around SR-202/145th. Currently, this area has no bus service, but that’s about to change when route 251 gets introduced as part of the East Link service restructure.

    The question is, will anyone in these new developments ride it? Unfortunately, the proposed frequency of this route is not great – every 30-60 minutes during the daytime, hourly in the early evening, and no service at all after 9 PM. A Redmond-Woodinville connector would be a lot more useful if it ran every 15 minutes, but, of course, it won’t.

    Speaking of which, Woodinville has always been treated as a backwater when it comes to transit, in spite of having quite a bit of activity in its town center. The 522 bypasses nearly all of homes and businesses, serving only the park and ride and a couple of freeway stations, plus only every other bus even goes to Woodinville at all. The bus to Kirkland runs once an hour and, until recently, forced riders into a very circuitous route (remember the old 236?). And, of course, until route 251 gets added, a bus trip between Redmond and Woodinville takes about as long as jogging the trip down the Sammamish River (biking the trail beats the bus handily).

    The 231, by the way, is another route that ought to have some decent potential, as it connects two major activity centers in a straight line, but it runs only once an hour, and not many people are willing to plan around a bus that runs so infrequently.

    1. They’re doing the same here: huge apartment complexes way out in the middle of nowhere because that’s where they’re allowed.

      1. I wouldn’t consider Woodinville the middle of nowhere. There’s some “there” there.

      3. I wouldn’t consider Woodinville the middle of nowhere. There’s some “there” there.

        Sure, but it is still pretty weird that they build apartments in Woodinville but they aren’t allowed in places like Magnolia or Madison Valley. I think the “urban village” concept for places like Woodinville is great. It is an excellent way to try and reverse the sprawling mess that they created in the past and build something similar to what is common in Europe. But it makes no sense for Seattle.

      4. “it is still pretty weird that they build apartments in Woodinville but they aren’t allowed in places like Magnolia or Madison Valley.”

        Ross, I’m going to assume you misspoke. You must know that Magnolia and Madison Valley have apartments.

      5. Sam, I’m going to assume you misunderstood (and aren’t trolling). You can only build apartments in a handful of places in Madison Valley or Magnolia. In most of those neighborhoods it isn’t allowed. The same goes for restaurants, shops, you name it. They basically only allow low-density housing.

        This is the “urban village” approach. Again, this is fine for Woodinville. It makes sense given the area is surrounded by farms and sprawling subdivisions. But it makes no sense in the city. They should allow a lot more development everywhere in Seattle so that it can evolve to be the type of city you would see in Europe or Asia. Meanwhile, Woodinville could try and mimic towns in those areas by continuing to embrace the “town center” approach as they’ve done.

      7. I didn’t misunderstand anything. You said apartments aren’t allowed in Magnolia or Madison Valley. That statement isn’t true. I wasn’t sure if you realized it or not, so I asked. Now I realize you meant to say apartment aren’t allow in many areas of Magnolia and the Madison Valley. Numerous apt bldgs are especially found in Eastern and Northern Magnolia. Magnolia Village, less so. And the Madison Valley has had apartments for years. One large apt bldg is currently being built near the G Line terminal, on the site of a former nursery. It may even be completed, but I’m not sure.

      8. Two things that Woodinville and the Madison Valley have in common. Both will see apartments built on the sites of two former nurseries. Molbak’s in Woodinville, and City People’s in Madison Valley.

        If stuff has to be converted into housing, I wish it wouldn’t be nurseries.

      9. I didn’t misunderstand anything

        Clearly you did (or you were trolling). It was pretty obvious to everyone what I meant but apparently not to you. Do you honestly think I don’t know about apartments in Magnolia and Madison Valley, Sam? Honestly? How long have you been on this blog? Do you think I’m completely unaware of where the apartments are in Seattle, the city I grew up in and live in now? Do you think I have no way of finding out and wouldn’t bother to double check my statement? More than once I have referenced this website which lists apartments in Seattle (although it appears to be down right now). I have repeatedly referenced the zoning maps and county parcels, explaining how certain areas allow apartments to be built and other areas don’t. At the same time I’ve written about apartments that have been grandfathered in. Yet you think I will just ignore all that. Holy shit, Sam, I’ve lived in an apartment in Magnolia! But you think I’m just going to say that there are no apartments without bothering to do any research at all. Seriously?

        Besides, that just doesn’t make any sense given the rest of the paragraph. If Magnolia doesn’t allow apartments how the hell can they have an urban village? That is an obvious contradiction. But rather than admit your confusion you just ignored the point I was making.

        Here, let me try again. The “urban village” concept exists in Magnolia. It exists in Madison Park. There is a similar concept in Woodinville. But it really only makes sense in Woodinville. Do you understand now?

      10. If stuff has to be converted into housing, I wish it wouldn’t be nurseries.

        Yeah, think of the children! Oh wait, different kind of nurseries.

    2. Woodinville will be much easier to serve once the 522/405 interchange is rebuilt, creating direct access to the 405 HOT lanes, and the Stride transit center is built. That TC will be a great anchor for a local route that serves Woodinville directly and/or a solid transfer point for peak oriented express routes.

      Also, Woodinville has great bike infrastructure, so the last mile between Woodinville town center and Stride is an easy bike ride. It will be simillar to Factoria, which is tricky to connect to East Link by bus and is a bit too far to walk but is an easy 10 minute bike ride to the SB Station

      1. Yes, Woodinville has gotten the short end of the transit stick in recent years. In 2002, Route 522 was implemented; Route 307 was deleted and routes 41 and 372 improved. Over 20 years, ST added peak period peak direction trips to Route 522. In the very late teens, they even cut an evening trip to add to the peak; the evening peak service was less than it had been with Route 307 in spring 2002. With U Link, March 2016, Route 372 was truncated at UWB/CCC and Route 238 provided to Woodinville. In March 2020, Route 238 was deleted and nothing replaced it in the North Creek area; new Route 230 served a different corridor. In the fall 2014 reductions, routes Route 931 became two-way peak-only and the span of Route 236 was reduced. With ELC, to be implemented when the 2 Line crosses the lake, new Route 222 will terminate in Cottage Lake and not reach Woodinville.

        Before Covid, all the East P&R were full except for Houghton and Woodinville. In 2016, after U Link, a concept was advanced to consolidate routes 237, 252, 257, and 311 that would have provided more service to Woodinville; it was not advanced. With ELC, new Route 256 will be a consolidation, but it will have minimal service and a very poor design.

        Woodinville should have better service than it does. It has a street grid and services come together there.

        ST3 Stride3 created a supposed reliability issue by having half the trips each to the UWB/CCC and Woodinville. The obvious answer was to extend all the trips to Woodinville. Instead, ST will have Stride3 terminate beneath I-405 in a made up transit center in the North Creek swamp.

    3. Woodinville has always been treated as a backwater when it comes to transit

      Probably for good reason. Woodinville has some places with moderate density — I’ll give you that. But it is unlikely that there will be a lot of transit trips just within Woodinville. The urban area is just too small. It is dependent on trips to other places and most of the big destinations are a long ways away. Longer trips tend to be more expensive and get fewer riders. This explains why the 311 performs so poorly (as a commuter bus). The 231 performs much worse. To be fair it only runs hourly (one of the few Metro buses that do that). It would definitely get more riders if it ran every half hour or every fifteen minutes. But it is highly unlikely it would ever perform well no matter how often it ran. The 522 serves it (although it only runs every half hour). There is very little travel within Woodinville. The most popular stop is the park and ride with about 80 riders. Everything else (combined) east of 405 gets about 100. This not terrible but it isn’t an area that is clearly underserved.

      AJ is right, the interchange is going to help. Woodinville has that going for it. It not in a good spot as far as normal transit is concerned but it is in a good spot for regional transit (which is what ST is focused on). It also isn’t far from UW Bothell (and the main part of Bothell). Unfortunately for Woodinville it won’t be part of Stride 3. I understand the decision but it means Woodinville will likely be isolated for a while. I’m not impressed with the plans from ST. Partly it is the geography. For the eastern tail I would do something like this instead of what they have planned. That means more back and forth but it is at the end of the route — just the spot to do that sort of thing. It needs to try and serve every bit of density it can.

      The plan is to run the express to Bellevue during peak and the shuttle the rest of the day. Fair enough. I think the weakness is the destination for the shuttle. It would be a lot more useful if it went to Bothell itself (where there are real destinations). It could easily do a live loop. Of course that is more expensive but not a lot. As a shuttle it is pretty much entirely dependent on transfers and neither it (nor the other buses) are going to be that frequent. The shuttle will run every 20 minutes and who knows what the Stride Lines will do in the middle of the day (my guess is 15 minutes). That is probably fine if you are headed to Downtown Bellevue or Seattle but really bad for trips to Bothell or Kenmore. I don’t think the shuttle will be very effective. When the Stride lines open I could see a small boom in bike sales as folks realize it is the only decent way to get anywhere outside of town.

      1. Shouldn’t that just be an extension of S3, with every other bus or so sent to Woodinville? I thought that was part of the plan for S3

      2. Yes, ideally it would be. See my comment below (https://seattletransitblog.com/2025/04/30/midweek-roundup-nervous/#comment-955786). But unfortunately ST couldn’t figure out a way to get to Woodinville without dramatically delaying buses to the west. So they punted and came with the combination of express (during peak) and local bus to the interchange. While I would prefer a better (and more reliable) routing to Woodinville I can understand why they omitted Woodinville from Stride 3. The problem I have is with the shuttle. I just don’t think it will be very effective. If both the Stride lines were frequent (in the middle of the day) then it would be OK but I really doubt they will be. I think the buses will run every ten minutes during peak (which is what they brag about) which usually means every fifteen minutes in the middle of the day (at best). I suppose it is possible that ST will run Stride 3 every ten minutes midday but I wouldn’t bet on it.

    4. In the eyes of the ST taxing district, Woodinville is on the very edge. Parts are outside of it.

      https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/stdistrictmap07_10.pdf

      It’s also on the edge of the county line, meaning that there are challenges for Metro too.

      That’s not to diminish what it could become. However, the ST boundary on the Eastside is remarkably tight (Redmond, Issaquah, Covington, Maple Valkey). The place where I think it’s most apparent is when us ST taxpayers build large parking garages for those outside of the district to use. I would like to see how many of those expensive garage spaces are filled with cars not paying for ST3.

      It will be a politically messy item — but at some point the ST taxing district boundaries first set in place almost 30 years ago will have to be adjusted, especially on the Eastside. There’s an aspect of fairness that needs to be revisited.

      1. I don’t think ST paid for any of the I90 parking garages? Those were built by KC (or KCM?), which covers the full county, so I don’t really have an issue with drivers outside of the RTA using those garages. Eventually ST or KCM will charge to park at all these garages.

        I would say the eastside boundary is pretty reasonable, because all of Sammamish is within the taxing district. I’m not really worried about Duvall or Snoqualmie free riding. The Snoqualmie valley urban growth boundary is pretty tight – the growth in Woodinville is within city limits and so is within the RTA. Even the big development at 145th st & 148th Ave is within city limits & the RTA. Also, the RTA is written that if a constituent city annexes land, the RTA expands alongside the city.

        The boundary issue is more with SE King county, which misses out on Covington & Black Diamond where there is significant growth, both retail and residential, and significant sprawl. In theory there is some free-riding , particularly for the Sounder garages, but I’m not sure that juice is worth the squeeze.

      2. I’m thinking about the new Sounder garages for Kent, Auburn and Sumner, AJ. I should have been more specific.

        ST admittedly did not build garages at Issaquah or Eastgate. ST is opening a giant Marymoor garage next month though — and some of those users will have cars registered outside of the RTA. ST doesn’t seem to want to disclose whether the percentages will be monitored or not.

        Tracking down license plate numbers is certainly a big effort. However there are now Bluetooth tracking companies that can estimate what proportions of people parking there are headed to or from destinations outside of the RTA district.

      3. Interesting. I’m not sure how much that played a part in the various decisions though. Woodinville is at the end of the line and thus bound to have less ridership. But the real problem is the traffic (that is why ST punted).

        The plan is to go up Beardslee, get on the freeway and then immediately stop at the interchange. That is probably the most reliable option given the existing (and planned) infrastructure. There is an HOV lane for vehicles heading south on 405 at that entrance. So the bus will just hug the right lane and exit. But it is a shame there is no way to go on Campus Way and onto 522 again to get to Woodinville (e. g. https://maps.app.goo.gl/g6M46Ajh3oBAAc8r8). That would serve the campus better and has the potential of being an excellent way to get to Woodinville. I know there are traffic issues but I think 405 backs up much worse than 522 (east of there). A few bus lanes and I think it would work out fine. For example there are three lanes to go from Campus Way to SR 522. The left lane is left-turn only. The middle lane is used to turn left or go straight. You could make that middle lane “Straight Except Transit”. Very few people are going straight (it is a dead-end serving a fairly small housing development) which means that a bus would basically get to the front of the line to turn left. Then the bus would move to the left lane (avoiding traffic heading to 405) and get to the Woodinville exit without too much trouble. There are plenty of other issues, I’m sure. But it seems like they just gave up (in part because of the various cost overruns elsewhere).

        Since that isn’t in the cards I think the best option is to embrace the shuttle but make it more useful. ST should spend a little bit more and run the bus every fifteen minutes. It should loop through Bothell (e. g. https://maps.app.goo.gl/Y9Mvy27Y9LSBAHqUA). That is not a cheap route but it seems like a good one. Since it would do a live loop there would be some riders who just stay on the bus (from Woodinville) to get to a stop closer to their class. Riders going the other way would definitely benefit. It would serve the interchange and could be timed to run opposite Stride 3. Thus riders from Bellevue or Lynnwood would have a frequent transfer to get to the main part of Bothell. Riders on Stride heading to Woodinville could transfer in Bothell instead of the interchange (which would be a much more pleasant wait). The bus would probably be stuck in traffic at various times but it wouldn’t effect the Stride line.

      4. Metro built a surface P&R at South Bellevue in the 1970s. I don’t remember if Island Crest Way had a P&R in the early 80s; the P&R may have been part of the freeway upgrade in the late 80s before ST existed. I think ST paid for the garages at both stations.

      5. Al, I agree the Sounder garages will likely draw significant ridership from outside the RTA.

        Charging for parking for cars with license plates outside the RTA (since that is how you pay for MVET) seems reasonable. Even if someone actually lives outside the RTA, if they choose to register their car inside the RTA and pay a few hundred bucks for MVET, that seems like a reasonable free to access 1 parking space. It would also penalize all the people who live in the RTA but register their car at a family/friend’s address outside the RTA.

      6. I agree that non-RTA vehicles should pay to park at ST garages.

        Since the tax is paid through tag renewal, all it would take is a special sticker design or additional sticker (maybe for a windshield) to indicate laying the RTA tab.

        Or use the HOT lane technology at garage entrances to toll every entry, then refund any vehicles that has already paid the RTA tab.

        It seems doable to charge for parking selectively with a modest investment.

    1. It’s amazing to me how often workers at public agencies, which are subject to public records requests for anything they make at any time, will produce draft products and then put it in writing that it shouldn’t be exposed to the public.

      1. Nathan Dickey,

        And the coverup is actually worse than whatever crap is being covered up.

        The whole reason for building light rail to West Seattle first instead of Ballard has always been West Seattle doesn’t have the political firepower to fight back that Ballard’s packing. Look at the Burke-Gilman trail decades long fight. I think the rail supporters always believed that the ST projects would be so successful that every neighborhood would want one. And that’s just not true.

        The crazy thing I can’t understand… why is anybody even working for Sound Transit at all? Once the neighborhood is against a project and it’s 3X over budget and the City. State and Feds aren’t bailing the project out, why would anybody with any honesty or self respect even go on? Why feel the need to hide environmental reports about shit that’s not even getting built?

        What’s the “cost” of the West Seattle light rail now? Over 7 billion? And if Sound Transit is dishonest enough to hide environmental impact statements, I’m sure they’re hiding millions and millions in cost overruns past the 7 billion.

        It’s all over except the crying. Just stop the charade!

        I guess nobody at “The Stranger”, “The Urbanist”, “Publicola” has the journalistic integrity to bring in outsiders (a retired WDOT person ? a road construction manager? accountant? civil engineer? ) to give an honest informed opinion about the impending disaster.

      2. The whole reason for building light rail to West Seattle first instead of Ballard has always been West Seattle doesn’t have the political firepower to fight back that Ballard’s packing.

        I don’t think that is it at all. The Burke Gilman fiasco could have happened anywhere. The city was basically blindsided (they thought they had a compromise but the other side went back on the agreement at the last second). Link is different. They expect legal challenges but they have plenty of people who can dot the i’s and cross the t’s along with plenty of lawyers willing to defend their work.

        No, the reason that folks wanted West Seattle first is two fold. First there is a symbolic victory. You get to build something first. West Seattle (to SoDo) is a much smaller, cheaper project than going north (at least that was the thought). It seems silly but ST is big on symbolism.

        The other reason is practical. Dow Constantine and other advocates remember what happened with the monorail. When push came to shove the planners were ready to abandon West Seattle (at least initially). There is a very good reason for this: It isn’t as good a value. Ballard is bound to get a lot more riders. This is even more true now as Ballard Link includes South Lake Union which (if tied into the main line) is bound to get a lot of riders. Or at the very least it appears like it will which makes it easier to sell to the feds. Thus if they build it from Ballard to SoDo (or even Ballard to Westlake) there is a very good chance that West Seattle gets nothing. They run across the usual cost overruns and it ends there (unless they pass another levy). By putting West Seattle Link first they are forcing the agency to include West Seattle in the long run. It would be like building Everett Link to Ash Way. Of course ST would eventually complete the “missing link” and connect Everett to the rest of the line.

      3. “Once the neighborhood is against a project and it’s 3X over budget and the City. State and Feds aren’t bailing the project out, why would anybody with any honesty or self respect even go on? ”

        The backroom answer is real estate interests .

        We want to believe that Link is supposed to benefit riders. Yet time and time again ST decisions are made to hide tracks underground, pick station sites that are ripe for reuse, avoid areas where some property owner doesn’t want tracks or a station, and design stations as glass palaces with many escalators and elevators to go up and down. These things don’t help make it easier for riders. It just makes the projects lots more expensive — and often even makes rider use more difficult and time consuming.

        There has been a backroom parade of reps of property owners making the rounds to staff and Board members since ST3 passed. Tunnel here! Buy my property! But next to my property! Don’t make me look at a train! I’ll convince some of my neighbors that it’s an equity issue when really it’s all about my property value! And new asks to mitigate construction impacts are on the horizon costing even more money.

        Then there are the big civil companies looking at padding their design and engineering budgets. They sell signature bridges, bigger staging zones and more dirt moving — all adding tens of thousands of labor hours that they get profit from.

        We aren’t aware of these conversations. We prefer to be altruistic about transit projects. But good transit advocacy includes attention to maximizing benefit-cost for riders. That’s just not happening. It’s instead powerful people making as much money as they can off the new public revenue source even to the point of way overcommitting that resource by 200 percent — and any force trying to change the project is labeled “anti-transit” or worse summarily ignored.

        Twenty years ago, many transit projects were described in terms of cost per rider or cost per new rider or increase in mode share or reduction in GHG. Today no Board member will even ask about these metrics. This is partly due to the really awful metrics most ST3 projects have so there seems to be a gentleman’s agreement not to raise the metrics topic. That’s illustrative of how misguided the ST3 cash cow has become.

      4. I guess nobody at “The Stranger”, “The Urbanist”, “Publicola” has the journalistic integrity to bring in outsiders (a retired WDOT person ? a road construction manager? accountant? civil engineer? ) to give an honest informed opinion about the impending disaster.

        The Stranger has been fairly ignorant of transit issues for a long time. I could see the folks at Publicola writing something but they are a pretty small operation. The Urbanist is mostly focused on making the current plans better (e. g. making sure that the new stations in the new tunnel are in good spots). Most of the writers there don’t seem to be willing to step back and look at the big picture (and question whether West Seattle is worth it, let alone the best thing for West Seattle). It doesn’t help that they no long allow comments. I like The Urbanist and think some of the writing is outstanding but they seem quite comfortable in their own little echo-chamber. The Seattle Times have lost all credibility because they hate every project that involves spending tax dollars. Don’t expect any nuance from them.

        And that is the world we live in, unfortunately. In general things are seen in black and white. You are either for transit or against it. It doesn’t occur to people that someone might be fully in favor of adding more light rail but still think that adding it in West Seattle is a terrible value.

      5. In 2016, the pitch was that Ballard and West Seattle would be built together — but West Seattle could open sooner because no complex tunneling would be required.

        It morphed from a tunnel option if Seattle could find more money to the baseline project. Of the $7B at least $1B can be attributed to that. Of course, ST could probably save $1.5-2B if they just made Avalon the end station. The Avalon Station is just as close to the Junction Station as the planned Ballard Station is to Ballard Ave. And most boarding at the Junction Station are coming from Metro bus riders who would actually benefit from having a rail station platform closer to the surface.

        And if that wasn’t acceptable, consider this: SDOT wants to make Alaska Street between Fauntleroy and California a transit only street. The street could simply be a surface light rail transit mall for a few blocks.

      6. I think alleging a “coverup” is extreme, and I think KUOW’s reporting is a bit overblown in terms of what Seattle “hid” from their letter.

        But, putting “City’s strong comments about FEIS shortcomings might be fodder for public lawsuits” in a writing in a public record is really funny.

      7. Once the neighborhood is against a project and it’s 3X over budget and the City. State and Feds aren’t bailing the project out, why would anybody with any honesty or self respect even go on?

        It isn’t clear the neighborhood is against it. There are plenty of people complaining but there are plenty of people who want it. Again, if you honestly believe that it is a good transit project I can see why you would be discouraged but still want to keep going.

        I’ve made this analogy before. Imagine they had decided to build a subway from Ballard to UW instead. Now imagine it was similarly overbudget. Would I abandon the project? Probably not. I feel it is fundamentally strong enough to warrant the investment. I think it is critical for us if we want a high-quality transit system in the city. I think it would be very difficult to provide the same functionality with buses.

        Thus I am not surprised at all that people are sticking to their guns on West Seattle Link because they actually believe in it. They think that it is important in the long run or they think that we can’t possibly build anything that is as good with buses. Part of the problem is that no one in power is seriously talking about alternatives. The “Rethink the Link” folks mention buses as an alternative but it is rather vague. Of course it is. It is tough to even recommend a realistic alternative without a real study (although we did anyway: https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/06/07/west-seattle-by-bus-instead-of-light-rail/). That is probably the biggest problem. Lacking a specific alternative, people think the only choice is between the current situation (infrequent buses stuck in traffic during rush hour with poor connections to Link) or West Seattle Link.

        If you look at the comments on the West Seattle blog you can see plenty of people criticizing the project. Almost all of the rebuttals to that criticism don’t apply if you were to then funnel the money into improving the buses. Again, there is this assumption that you don’t want to invest in transit or that the biggest problem is that this is too expensive. It’s not. The biggest problem is that it is not a good transit value. But it is hard to make that point without a concrete alternative.

    2. To me it confirms that politically it is far more important to Seattle to keep the construction companies busy and collect business taxes than it is to solve transit needs and strike a balance on the environmental impact.

      1. To be fair, my guess is the vast majority of people who wanted to sidestep the regulations probably believe that WSLE is a great thing for transit and the environment. I think that is the biggest problem. There is very little doubt when it comes to the plans. It is just assumed that it is a worthy project and no one has bothered to even consider (let alone study) whether alternatives would be a better value.

      2. The City clearly decided that it would be more effective to leverage its permitting authority to get ST to improve its environmental mitigation measures rather than delaying the EIS. It’s important to remember that the FEIS is a documentation of impacts, not an impact mitigation plan, so there’s no real obligation to document mitigation except for PR.

    3. If anything, this leak underscores how broken our EIS process is and how the environmental review process is little more than a veto point for special interest.

  12. At least eventually, it’ll be useful to connect Rapid Ride E with Link on the north end for people who’re continuing further north. Several ideas have gotten proposed in this comment section, but here’s one I haven’t seen before:

    From Aurora Village, continue east down 200th St. Turn north on Meridian; turn east on 205th. Continue under 5, then turn north on 244th and north again on Van Rye. Take that to Montlake Terrace Station. Along this route, have a stop at Montlake Terrace Station, one on Van Ry at the apartments there, and at least one more along 205th. I’m sort of torn between 1st and Meridian, so maybe both?

    This will serve two apartment complexes en route, as well as connecting Aurora to northern Link stations and thus to all the transfers at Lynnwood TC.

    Thoughts?

    1. Such an extension would be a very poor use of scarce transit capital, hours, coaches, and operators. Instead, consider the E Line and Link as the parallel rails of a ladder and the local network as rungs of the ladder. If Swift Blue used the Aurora Avenue North pathway instead of Meridian, the two BRT lines would provide common stop transfers at North 192nd Street. The Aurora pathway would be better for CT, Swift, and its riders; it would be faster and have one turn rather than three; it would attract more riders; it would serve the Shoreline P&R. The service resources needed for an extension through the empty interchange area would be better used making the E Line or the local routes more frequent. Before Covid, the E Line often passed riders in north Seattle. Transfers are much easier with short waits.

      1. I agree. It is tempting to think that there is significant “reverse flow”. Instead of folks going down SR-99 in Snohomish County and cutting over to Link (to get to various Seattle locations like the UW and downtown) you have the reverse. People from Aurora headed up to Lynnwood or Mountlake Terrace Transit Centers. There are probably some, but only a handful. There are only two stations to the north and neither are significant destinations. They are both largely just places to transfer or park your car. The bigger destinations are on SR-99 (for example the hospital and the college). Thus the transfer from RapidRide E to Swift Blue remains important. Unfortunately Community Transit messed that up.

        There are some potential transfers to other places of course. For example some place on Aurora to Downtown Everett. But a bus to 185th is just about as good. Again, this is where Community Transit made a big mistake. Riders have to do an excessive amount of backtracking because the only transfer location is Aurora Village (it isn’t even on Aurora itself). For a lot of destinations, Swift Blue is fine. For example if I’m heading from some place on Aurora to Alderwood Mall I could transfer to the Blue Line and then the Orange Line. Some sort of express to Mountlake Terrace would be faster but not that many people are taking that trip. The main weakness is the connection between the RapidRide E Line and Swift Blue as well as just weak frequency in Snohomish County. For example the trip from Aurora to Downtown Edmonds is actually pretty good: https://maps.app.goo.gl/XvjALi8Vvmsgfdr89. You leave at noon and get there before 12:30. Great. But if you leave 5 minutes later you have a forty minute trip that involves two transfers (https://maps.app.goo.gl/pmi37XC6SZd9y9A99). Or you end up waiting a really long time for the second bus. Just running the 130 more often would be a lot more valuable. Personally I would like to see ST run a bus from Downtown Edmonds to Aurora and the 185th Station (every fifteen minutes). This would replace the 909. That would give the folks in Edmonds an express to Link along with a fast connection to Aurora (and the RapidRide E). It is quite likely such a bus would be a much better value than an extension of the E.

        Just for perspective consider ridership of the 512 back before the pandemic. It ran from Downtown Everett to Downtown Seattle. Yet only 27 riders a day took the bus north from Mountlake Terrace. Even though it was an express to Everett (a real destination) not that many people rode it that direction. By and large there just aren’t that many people taking trips in the “reverse” direction.

  13. “at some point the ST taxing district boundaries first set in place almost 30 years ago will have to be adjusted, especially on the Eastside.”

    Snohomish County has the tightest ST boundary. Pierce has the loosest. King is in between.

    The Snohomish boundary ends at Everett and Bothell, and maybe Mill Creek. Notably missing are Marysville and Arlington, which are the fastest-growing areas and have new industrial growth center. Monroe and Snohomish (city) are also excluded.

    The King boundary ends at Woodinville, Redmond, Issaquah, Renton, Kent, and Auburn. Excluded are Covington, Snoqualmie, Black Diamond, and Enumclaw.

    The Pierce boundary includes Orting, Spanaway, and Dupont. That’s a gigantic exurban area that’s just getting car-dependent sprawl.

    Armchair analysts speculate the Pierce politicians were the most savvy in getting a huge swath of exurban land included to subsidize its sprawl. Most of the development there has been since 1990.

    Snohomish should have included Marysville and Arlington, or not channeled growth there. The fact that it did neither means tens of thousands of quasi-urbanized residents and businesses don’t have the resources for regional transit. Community Transit can only do so much: it can’t run a full suite of all-day expresses when its core local network is still 30-60 minutes outside Swift lines.

    I’ve never head anything about changing the boundaries to bring entire cities in. There are micro-changes of a few blocks at a time. Since those areas are more exurban and car-minded than the core, they’ll inevitably object to ST taxes, and they can look to ST3 mismanagement as something they don’t want. I can’t really see Arlington or Monroe being so keen on all-day ST Express to be willing to join the district.

    There have been studies for regional DMU rail lines in Everett-Bellingham and Auburn-Maple Valley. These would presumably be outside the ST district and paid for by the local cities and Skagit/Whatcom Counties. But after the studies, they didn’t want to pay for them, so they never materialized. If Arlington is annexed, then I assume Sounder North could be extended to Marysville or Arlington. I think the track goes to Marysville at least, although it may pass west of Arlington. But they’d probably be uninterested in ST taxes, Sounder North’s track limitations, or its frequent mudslide outages. That leaves ST Express or a never-articulated Stride concept.

  14. I marvel at the blasé attitude gripping The Blog that the Feds will meet the commitments made during Biden’s term.

    Whether Trump wins or loses at the Supreme Court on Impoundment, the DOGiEs have put their payee-specific blocks in the Federal Payments System, and you can be double-darn betcha certain that Sound Transit will be on the embargo list. The promised Federal Funds will not arrive.

    He’ll dare Congress to Impeach him, depending on his majority in the Senate to Acquit. The Republican Senators who have forfeited their cojones to MAGA will indeed vote to Acquit, nearly all of them, secure in the knowledge that they’ll have seats for life.

    1. I don’t think west Seattle Link is scheduled to start construction anyway until after Trump is out of office. So, the funds will depend on his successor.

      1. asdf2,

        One of the biggest problems Greater Seattle are these huge, bloated government bureaucracies in charge of the things we need fixed, (The public school system, the homeless industrial complex and Sound Transit) that can’t come up with reasonable solutions.

        How on earth can a project be planned to cost less than 3 billion and then suddenly cost over 7 billion? In the real world, projects just get abandoned for this sort of bullshit. I believe voters have a right to get good value for money in public transit spending. What we often see from transit supporters is an all consuming light rail fetish at ignores all fiscal reality.

        I call COVID the gift that keeps on giving for Liberals because it was (and still is) the one-size-fits-all excuse for the Public School system or the homeless industrial complex for poor performance. As the old saying goes… “Never waste the opportunity to use a good crisis” Blame it on COVID! But if you or your family are counting on public education…. excuses don’t matter.

        Now Trump is that “gift that keeps on giving” for Liberals for the next 10 years. Trump is going to pull funding from a plethora of Big City Boondoggles (like Sound Transit) but the sad truth is…. most of those Big City Boondoggles were on life support before Trump got into office. How convenient for Sound Transit! All the pols in Greater Seattle, starting with Dow and Bruce, are going to blame Trump for everything that’s wrong.

        And honestly, Trump didn’t mess up Sound Transit… Dow did. That clown has been at the wheel for how long? But he’ll never take responsibility for any of it.

    2. Nothing is certain until it happens. I stick to the realignment opening dates because no other specific date is more likely. There are many factors, and we don’t know how they’ll all interact and play out. Often people say such-and-such will happen, like the feds will reject the West Seattle grant because Trumpism, but then it didn’t.The Record of Decision was issued a couple days ago.

    3. Even if it’s certain the feds will eventually cancel transit grants or all federal transit funding to Washington state, what would you have us do? How could we be non-blasé? Is there any point in having an article saying “West Seattle/Ballard Link won’t happen” or “We’re all doomed”?

      1. Well, strictly speaking, we are all doomed, but that raises a solid question. In the time before our doom arrives, what can we best do to help Seattle-area transit draw closer to the no-monetary-or-political-limits ideal?

        We’ve been doing many of them: it’s consensus, here at least, that WSLE is a disaster that will make transit worse for most West Seattle riders. We pretty much agree that BLE ought to be a fully automated system with smaller stations for shorter trains running more often and that it eventually should be extended into First Hill and then to UW / U Village from Ballard. We don’t think that any of ELE, TDLE or KILE (“Kirkland-Issaquah Link Extension” Alias “Line 4”) is worth the money. We do like STRide as a concept but have plenty of “nips and tucks” to enhance the pattern that will improve the garment when it’s worn. [mixing metaphors freely]

        But one thing that would make our general position clearer is some sort of statement that you guys who do the editorial work come up with along the lines of a “disclaimer”. Something like “Seattle Transit Blog is reporting the statements of the leadership of Sound Transit and the various counties and municipalities accurately to the best of our abilities. However we do not believe that the fiscal assumptions made by the various agencies are likely to be met in a timely manner such that the plans outlined here will be executed in full.”

        Surround it with a black box and append every story about major construction project plans with it.

        Yes, that probably means that your reporters won’t be welcome next time, but most of the time they just get a flack that recites the talking points of the day anyway.

        [Ed Note: My personal point-of-view about the two extensions to BLE mentioned above is that the City should fund them itself since the vast majority of riders will be city dwellers. This avoids the hassles of Sub-Area Equity and the perils of a region-wide vote. With small stations the city can afford it over the next few decades.]

      2. Mike Orr,

        For what the West Seattle subway is projected to currently cost…. that’s around 15,000 units of low income housing.

        The tax payers deserve value for money.

      3. Who wrote this Ed Note? I didn’t. Did Tom write it in the original? In any case, I just wanted to make it clear I wasn’t the Ed, since Tom was replying to me.

      4. We’re maybe doomed, but we may not know for two or three or ten years until something becomes certain. In the meantime, we do what we always do: advocate the most pragmatic and cost-effective transit that best serves passengers’ trips for the largest cross-section of the population. “Classic fashion never goes out of style.”

      5. I tend to agree with your sentiments, Tom. The more problematic issue I see is how does the region procedurally change the system planning.

        For starters, would ST be willing revisit what “electric light rail” means? The issue with ST3 that I see is that these are good corridors but the investment uses the wrong technology. Yet every ST study is just Link technology (glorified streetcar with very costly grade separation and long trains and platforms) or a bus.

        Take ELE for example. Its cost could be cut by more than half by stopping Link at Mariner. But Snohomish locals really believe that it needs to be built much further for a very small predicted ridership that doesn’t warrant 10-minute all day light rail on a path that would be slower than an express bus from Downtown Everett. It’s wishing; not logic. The remainder of the corridor could easily be served by a faster, 79-mph battery electric single train track with sidings that makes a V between Downtown Everett and the employment area, stopping at Mariner in between. Even with a transfer at Mariner it would be faster for riders.

        The jam is that ST won’t even merely assess changing technologies. They have hard-wired a technology to build what they planned in 2016 no matter the costs or benefit or the willingness to accept the 2016 original cost estimates as accurate when it was so easy to prove how bad they were originally..

        That leaves the only solution as finding more money. Hence, discussions about extending the taxation period and considering an ST4. They simply don’t want to see a better way out by merely changing technologies.

        We as outsiders cannot realistically estimate what technology change requirements would be. That must come at Board direction and staff support. But this problem has been apparent for at least 7 years and yet ST has not adjusted its perspective. It should have happened in realignment — but even then the debate was cutting stations rather than changing technologies and system design.

      6. “would ST be willing revisit what “electric light rail” means?”

        Of course not. We’ve been trying to get it to switch to more optimal technologies for the almost twenty years STB has been in existence. First we said heavy rail would get to Everett and Tacoma faster. Then we said U-Link and Northgate Link should order open-gangway trains, which would raise capacity 20% “for free”. Then we said Ballard or Ballard-West Seattle should be automated. That would be much cheaper and serve passengers better (because it could run every 2-5 minutes “for free”). ST refused to consider any of those. In 2016 the board mused about considering automated trains for Ballard and future lines, but it never did.

      7. I apologize, Mike. I didn’t intend to make the note confusing or pre-empt your “editor” function. I originally put it in the paragraph about BLE, but it made it too long and convoluted.

        I’ll use the term “Aside: ” for explanations in the future.

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