3 days until the Downtown Redmond Link Extension opens this Saturday, May 10! Sound Transit has more opening day details.
Local Transit News:
- Sound Transit staff will present a review of comments heard regarding the Tacoma Dome Link Extension draft EIS on Thursday’s System Expansion Committee meeting (Sound Transit project update).
- With a station near Marymoor Park opening in three days, Sound Transit is reconsidering its “no pets” policy on trains and buses (The Urbanist)
- Were you affected by the recent severe Link service reduction through Downtown Seattle? ST wants to hear from you (Sound Transit survey)
- “From Deadmond to Redmond”; how the upcoming Redmond Link Extension opening is the next step in Redmond’s urban evolution (The Seattle Times, $)
- Will the new Redmond stations fill the seats? (The Seattle Times, $)
Other Transportation:
- When it comes to transportation progress in the USA, what was old is new again (New York Times “Headway” newsletter)
- Architecture firm Perkins Eastman used new data science to confirm old news: people really like walking where there’s stuff to protect them from busy streets (Fast Company)
Land Use & Housing:
- Apartment sizes had been shrinking nationally until a recent reversal (New York Times, gift link). The average size is now 900 sq ft.
- Seattle Commission Warns Of Adding ‘Poison Pills’ to Middle Housing Changes (The Urbanist)
Commentary & Miscellaneous:
- A discussion of the problems that come with prioritizing “State of Good Repair” with large capital projects (Pedestrian Observations)
- Where Does ‘Motonormativity’ Come From — And Which Country Has It Worst? (Streetsblog USA)
- King County is one of several counties suing the Trump Administration for cancelling grants supposed to be provided by HUD and the FTA (MyNorthwest)
- “A Disillusioned Urban Planning Glossary” translates buzzwords to reality (McSweeney’s)
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The SOGR article is confusing and I worry misguided. The way the New York and DC metros got into trouble was there was no money budgeted for maintenance and fleet replacement. That’s the same situation as the escalators in the DSTT were in before ST took over the tunnel: the escalators were closed for months until federal grants came to fix them because Metro had no money for it. SOGR avoids this problem, so it seems like a good thing that the Link budget has this built in. Levy optimistically says, “maintenance and renewal should be budgeted separately from each other and separately from expansion.” But if that budget is zero, and it’s not politically feasible to increase it because it would cut into operations or new capital projects, then it won’t get done and you end up in the New York situation.
Maintenance and operations should be budgeted together, because they are both indefinitely recurring costs that are required for the system to function.
Predefining the maintenance budget should allow directors to base it off of international standards.
I think one point that Levy is making is that maintenance should be the highest priority, over expansion or even operations. It should not be an extra thing you fund every so often with bonds. I’m not familiar with DC, but in New York, “state of good repair” was just a way for the MTA to say to legislators (very few of whom, even the ones representing New York City, ever use transit) “hey, everything’s falling apart, we need more money!” Then they would go on to waste most of the money they received for special “state of good repair” purposes and continue to under-fund maintenance. By American standards, the New York City Subway has an incredibly high fare recovery ratio. And besides, they automatically get all the toll money for the various bridges connecting the city. If they were doing their jobs properly, they could maintain it without whining to Albany every couple decades.
Sound Transit is not about to go begging to Olympia for money from the state budget – if they ever did, I’m sure the legislature would laugh in their face – so I don’t think this really applies to our situation.
We’d need to analyze what the MTA spends its revenue on and compare it to some ideal to tell whether it wastes money or not. My assumption is its tax rate is too low to do major maintenance/replacement and all its other responsibilities, and fare revenue only partly covers operations. The MTA was stymied from building more subway lines for half a century because New York didn’t prioritize transit enough, and I assume the same happened with maintenance/replacement. You can’t just say there’s plenty of money of only the MTA didn’t waste it, when that may not be true.
If ST went to Olympia for maintenance/replacement money, the legislature would say, “What happened to the money in your SOGR savings account that was being accumulated for that? Did you divert the money? Did you underestimate the cost of maintenance?”
Well, I don’t know the details myself, but the expert I trust – Alon Levy – is somewhat famous for complaining about the inefficiency of the MTA.
There is something clearly wrong with the maintenance in New York. I lived there for a couple years. It’s a very wealthy city, you would think they could find the means to keep things in good shape, but yet the subway is not especially reliable in my experience. You kind of get used to all the reroutings and shutdowns all the time – there’s always an alternative to get where you’re going without resorting to a car – but I never experienced so many disruptions in any other city. And the stations are comically disgusting, with dirt and trash all over, rats scurrying about, and water dripping from the ceiling whenever it rains. (The trains themselves are pretty clean.) The Tokyo Metro is not like that. The Paris Metro is not like that. What is New York’s excuse?
I’m not sure these issues are relevant to us here in Seattle. As far as I can tell, Sound Transit does not have any serious problems with its maintenance budget, either finding the money or spending it. The problems are all to do with building the wrong things in the wrong places.
From Aqua Quip and Grand Peking restaurant to 246 unit apartment building in downtown Redmond. The camera is pointed west. The apt bldg under construction is on the corner of Redmond Way and 161st NE. Downtown Redmond Station is a few blocks behind the camera on the left side.
https://youtu.be/BVEOA_T9eGo
Is it too late to add to Local Transit News the recently posted Seattle Times story, “Will new light rail stations fill empty Eastside trains?”
I just added it.
And I just put it in Friday’s article draft, ha ha.
Sorry Mike, I should have checked with you.
Lots of speculation in the article about when/if full East Link hits the 50,000 projected riders. My guess is once it opens and gets established the line should do very well and hit the target. Then when more development occurs over next decade in Wilburton, BelRed, Overlake Village, Marymoor Village and Downtown Redmond should blow past. Also the doubling of headways on IDS to Lynnwood should induce a lot of ridership in that large segment.
I think a rebranded 542 route should serve as a light rail complementary Redmond-UW BRT route via 520 (it already runs almost exclusively in dedicated lanes) but treat it as a Stride line that provides some redundancy while also being a more direct Redmond to UW. A good transit system has redundancy and alternate routes between major points. Biggest thing I’d suggest for this 542 is just rebranding and improved Link transfers at UW station and Downtown Redmond station.
Why? It’s suburbia everywhere north of Northgate — really, Roosevelt — and ‘burbistas are not known for choosing transit because they can leave five minutes earlier.
You might get a few more people during the rush hours, because the trains will be less crowded, but mid-day and evenings will just be the same riders spread over more cars.
You might get some folks that transfer from the 45 to Link at Roosevelt if they’re headed for Health Sciences and some folks headed to Capitol Hill from central campus will ditch the 49 and walk up to UDistrict,but most potential urban riders are riding. Ten minute headways with the good speed that Link maintains north of Westlake is already very attractive.
Forgot to close the blockquote before “Why?” Oh well.
4-5 minute service is important for south of Northgate, whatever you think of north of Northgate. The US has been in a rut of underbuilding and underoperating transit for almost a century now, and that’s what got us into this situation where people assume “traveling = driving” and there’s no other way. So it would be a breath of fresh air to overserve Shoreline and Lynnwood a little bit to try to mitigate that. Even if it doesn’t add riders, it makes traveling more convenient for the existing riders, and that’s one of the priorities we need to regain. Many trips are multi-seat rides, and all the transfer waits every trip add up. 5-minute Link can be a start to making more 15-minute cities. In any case, if transit if more convenient, existing riders will take more trips on it that they currently ration to miminize the negatives. And they’ll tell their friends about it, and that will lead to more riders over the long term.
STRIDE routes are supposed to run all day every 15 minutes or better. The 542 is planned to run only every 30-60 minutes because ST is cheap. They won’t rebrand the 542 because they don’t want to either dilute the brand or pay the service cost to make the 542 frequent.
You are more optimistic than I am about hitting 50k. I really don’t expect it any time soon.
The legislature’s TOD bill will help, a little bit. Assuming Ferguson doesn’t veto it… he signed a bunch of other housing bills today, but not that one for some reason.
Tom has a point in that the longer the trip the less important frequency is. Suburban travel tends to also be peak-oriented, which is less influenced by frequency. That is why commuter rail is so infrequent (and called commuter rail). It is often criticized in transit circles (“Why the hell are they only running those trains during rush hour?”) but in much of America that is the only time they get decent ridership. Obviously in our case we have another answer (because running them all day costs a lot).
But there are plenty of relatively short but very common trips that can be taken with Link via the north end. Another factor is that north of Northgate (or even Roosevelt) Link is basically a feeder service. This means that a large portion of the ridership transfers from another bus. Frequency is very important when there is a transfer. If you walk to the station you have the potential of timing your trip to Link but if you catch a bus there you can’t. This means you might regularly wait 7 minutes. Instead you wait 2. This makes a difference. Basically you only worry about timing the bus.
We likely won’t see a huge increase in ridership north of Northgate but that doesn’t matter. Ridership was never that high on that stretch anyway. We will see more riders at various stops within Seattle.
It is always hard to estimate ridership. But in this case we have an advantage in that it there will be two phases. We will know how many riders ride just within the East Side. What can we expect for the rest of it?
Most of the ridership will be from folks going over the water. For that we can look at some of the buses. I looked at ridership from various sources and this is what I came up with:
550 — 10,800 (2016) — 4,300
545 — 9,727 (2015) — 5,400
554 — 4,100 (2017) — 2,900
111 — 900 (2019) — 300
114 — 500 (2019) — 0
212 — 2,800 (2019) — 500
214 — 1,200 (2018) — 0
216 — 1,000 (2019) — 0
217 — 200 (2019) — 0
218 — 1,400 (2019) — 300
219 — 900 (2019) — 0
These are the buses that went across the lake to downtown and their ridership. The first number is how many they got at most along with the year they got that many riders. The last number is what they got last month (some routes no longer exist). The most we got was 33,500. (Actually it was a little bit less because I’m taking peaks from a mix of years.) Last month there were 13,700. Obviously that is quite a range. I think it is fair to say that even after the novelty wears off there will be a big increase in ridership across the lake compared to now. Most trips are quite a bit faster and more convenient. But I also don’t think we will reach the numbers we had before the pandemic. I think 20,000 sounds about right. Maybe another 10,000 for everything else (ridership on the East Side, increased frequency, Judkins Park). If I had to pick a round number I would go with 30,000.
Mike, thanks for fixing the close.
If the reversal at Northgate could be done within the constraints of a ten-minute headway on Line 1 off-peak, that seems like the ideal solution. You fellows are correct that five-minute headways will attract some diversion from buses within the city proper, and that’s a good thing, because the buses will run faster and more reliably.
But people are still smoking Acapulco’s finest about future Link boardings. Almost everyone who will ride in the near future is already.
Don’t get me wrong, I would love for Link to get to those rosy projections. The City is certainly doing its part surrounding UDistrict and Roosevelt with large living structures. But outside those neighborhoods it’s still largely little strips and puddles of density among a sea of SFH. That will take a while to correct.
There are multiple numbers to look at. Plus there are big seasonal swings between monthly averages that appear to be as variable as 20 percent.
First of all, there is a difference between 2 Line ridership and full East Link ridership. 2 Line will also gain riders now on the 1 Line between IDS and Lynnwood.
Second, there is a station at Judkins Park. The ST projected boardings estimated that as about 20% of all East Link boardings with many or most coming from Downtown. Some of those will be shifting from other stations if they use Route 7 or 48 or even Route 8, and even some other Metro buses from Downtown like Route 14 will lose a few riders to the station. So tallying up just cross lake riders won’t be the only increase.
Third, I’m expecting an Eastside to UW market to emerge from some people driving today. Similar to the SeaTac ridership growth with the Lynnwood opening, I expect more trips to UW will end up on rail.
Finally, I think some trips between Shoreline + Lynnwood to Downtown Bellevue and Microsoft will be on East Link.
These are a lot of variables! That means the forecasts should also be variable.
I don’t see 50K on East Link in full. I think Ross’ 30K is the most likely result in the first year but it could vary by 30 percent either way especially depending on the month.
And I see the full 2 line getting about 60K (anywhere between 50-70K), with some induced demand because of 5-minute service picking up half of 1 Line riders north of Downtown — pushing the 1 Line boardings downward from about 90K today to about 60K on average.
Finally, I’m expecting to see another 10K boardings resulting from FW Link when it opens — with of course half of those boarding at the three FW Link stations (5K).
East Link will create a full three-leg rail system and the way that people see using Link will change — from shopping in Bellevue Square to going to UW for events or school to nightlife Downtown or on Capitol Hill. People will end up using Link in ways the they don’t today — unless ST really botches things up by unplanned service disruptions, out-of-service vertical devices and restricted hours of operation (like offering both 1 and 2 Line service in all directions from Downtown later than just after midnight).
“five-minute headways will attract some diversion from buses within the city proper”
They’ll come from buses, cars, and trips they wouldn’t have done without 5-minute Link. When transit is ultra-convenient, people make their optimal number of trips, and contribute the most to society (by working, shopping, learning, keeping healthy, and taking care of others).
Mike, that’s about a half joint. People do not make extra trips because they have to wait for a train five minutes less. Yes, especially if parking is an issue, they might divert to the train sometimes from their cars. That’s great, of course. But very few people go larking because “Oh, I can get Link in just two minutes. I think I’ll go to the Market!”
Every little bit of friction loses a few riders at the margin. When you have several bits, they add up. Link may be one part of a multi-seat trip, chain trip, or one of several activities they want to do that day. Those extra 5 minutes alone may not amount to much, but that on top of everything else can turn a 15-minute trip into an hour, and that can make the difference in whether the trip is feasible or not, or whether you can fit as many errands into the day as you need to, or whether you think more about driving to avoid that friction. If you encounter those extra 5 minutes several times a week or multiple times a day, that gets frustrating. We should minimize friction like that, and have transit like countries with comprehensive transit have.
I will be tuning in to hear the comments on the Tacoma Dome Link Extension project.
TDLE deserves far more public scrutiny about its limited benefits and extraordinary cost.
You have more allies here on that score than you have probably noticed. I don’t happen to be one of them.
As a southender, I am actually excited to one day be able to ride the train from Tukwila International Boulevard Station to Tacoma Dome Station. In the meantime, taking the train to Federal Way to catch a hopefully frequent bus to Tacoma will be a definite improvement.
I’m holding out hope there can be a somewhat frequent bus between the southern terminus of the train and Olympia. But that seems unlikely until the train reaches Tacoma.
But what if they built the line to be the correct size for the demand (2019 ST estimates say south of Federal Way only gets 1/4 the ridership of Rainier Beach to SeaTac), and the money saved from smaller stations put into extending the line to downtown Tacoma?
Glenn, how do you do that without forcing a transfer at South FW or FWCentral? It won’t do to couple and un-couple the trains.
Tom:
You either force a transfer at Tacoma Dome, or you force a transfer at some other point.
Federal Way to Rainier Beach doesn’t have 6 minute headway limits that Rainier Valley does.
Run the Tacoma trains north to TIBS to give downtown Tacoma the link to the airport they wanted.
Downtown Tacoma to Seattle is going to be faster with express buses, even if trains ran all the way through.
To minimize the transfer penalty between orange and green line trains, TriMet runs them 1 minute apart. You could do that here to minimize transfer penalty between the Rainier Valley and Tacoma: Northbound, a Tacoma – TIBS train goes through, followed one minute later by a Federal Way – Lynnwood train. Southbound, do the opposite; the Tacoma train goes through one minute behind the Federal Way train.
So, rather than force a transfer at Tacoma Dome, with both lines ending in the middle of nowhere, this at least gets people somewhere with better connections.
Glenn, OK, I like that. So you’d have what, two car high-geared trams for Tacoma-TIBS? Two car trains might be able to navigate the Tacoma Link infrastructure, and that would be a huge win. Keep the low-speed streetcars for the hill up to Martin Luther King and run the speedsters into a pocket on the greenbelt side of Stadium Way.
One thing, though. With that steeeep hill just east of the platforms at TIBS, finding a pocket there would be tough. And another: one minute following for ten miles is not good. Make it three minutes for reliability. The only people that would be making the transfer would be from the casino stops.
Tom:
I’d convert T Link to use Link cars. In my opinion, this should happen anyway no matter if the two are connected.
Portland Streetcar costs more per car to maintain because a small fleet of cars with unique parts are expensive to maintain.
The most difficult part is making space for the extra 4 inches of clearance on each side. It doesn’t look to me as this is impossible.
People have talked about the overhead line voltage difference being a problem, but it’s likely not a problem. TriMet reset many of its substations to put out around 900 volts up from 750 to get better performance. That should be well within the design range of Link cars “1,500 volt” power system. Overhead line voltage isn’t a constant, so the cars and overhead lines have to be designed for a wide range.
I would put the forced transfer at FW or SFW stations. That would give T-Link’s fleet access to the OMF-S. This also works elegantly for subarea equity: Pierce subarea pays for the operation & maintenance T-Link and King & Snohomish pay for C-Link, while still sharing costs for shared assets (mostly administrative overhead like IT costs). Pierce could then build out a 3 line streetcar network (Mall to Downtown, Downtown to FW, and Mall to FW) to pair with PT’s proposed 5 line BRT network.
Otherwise, Glenn has the right approach: make the investment to run C-Link across the full network. This can be done when T-Link’s fleet reaches end of life in a decade or so.
Federal Way would also give transferees a downtown to stopover or do errands in.
Tacoma should probably think about the fact that if people transfer in Federal Way, they’ll be more like to spend money and work in Federal Way than downtown Tacoma, since it will be easier to get to.
“TDLE deserves far more public scrutiny about its limited benefits and extraordinary cost.”
The project is fine, some of yall genuinely need to take a chill pill on this project that is going to do fine for itself. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
Your use of the word “good” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your statement. There are numerous reasons as to why this project may, in fact, be not good and even detrimental to transit progress in Pierce County.
Furthermore, the scope and cost of the project warrants ongoing attention about its feasibility and value.
Not all rail projects are inherently good.
Again, you are getting irrationally angry at a project that is perfectly fine. It’s honestly embarrassing seeing transot advocates who want to torpedo projects because it isn’t a 10/10 perfect project. This is honestly the problem with transit advocacy in Seattle, a genuine lack of understanding that you’ll have to play ball with projects that aren’t a grand slam to reach a concensus regionally. That is how the sausage is made, and sometimes that means you have to be pragmatic to get what you want elsewhere in the region.
Alongside it’s not a project that will be a deterrent to Pierce Transit’s own projects or future planning. Because again, STs transit planning is regional compared to PTs planning being local to county.
After TDLE is built, if downtown Tacoma continues to thrive, there will be a short Link extension to downtown. Of course that extension should have been part of the Tacoma extension, but it will eventually happen if it is important.
Zach B, by clicking my hyperlinked name above you will find a review of the TDLE DEIS that challenges every point you just raised.
I don’t think you are appreciating how costly the project has become at this early stage of design, and how few new riders it is anticipated to carry. Many riders are just shifted from faster buses to the slower trains.
If this project was “only” a couple billion dollars and connecting into the existing Tacoma Link railway for service to Downtown Tacoma, as was once indicated to local voters, perhaps the value proposition would be more favorable. It doesn’t, however. Worse, it does little to benefit the transit system of Pierce County and even introduces new inefficiencies that will cost money to address.
“After TDLE is built, if downtown Tacoma continues to thrive, there will be a short Link extension to downtown.”
That’s not their current plan. It’s supposed to be extended to Tacoma Mall out along I-5 if there’s money available. Downtown would continue to be served by T Link.
Bypassing downtown in favor of Tacoma Mall?! What is wrong with these people?
In that case I agree with Troy: cancel the whole thing.
“Bypassing downtown in favor of Tacoma Mall?! What is wrong with these people?
In that case I agree with Troy: cancel the whole thing.”
Chris
The Tacoma Mall thing is merely setting aside funds in ST3 to study a future extension to the Tacoma Mall. They’re doing a similar thing in Orting for a Sounder extension. To extend Link to the Mall or Downtown Tacoma would require a ST4 like ballot measures to build such an extension.
People want to hate on the TDLE, but in the end the project is fine and Tony is being a bit hyperbolic about how bad it is even though for people like me who live in Tacoma know how much of an actual upgrade it would be to our genuinely lousy ST Express bus service. Some people here just need to let go that TDLE is not the perfect project and see it as a regional project that expands connectivity for the region to new destinations on rail. And that getting cities like Tacoma on board is important rather than fighting against something that people actually want.
Zach B, you are deeply wrong about letting sloppy crap transit be the result of inertia and “giving the voters what [“we” meaning the planners, not “they” the voters] want”.
TDLE could be called the Emerald Queen Express. The connection would take Seattle gamblers away from Snoqualmie.
I’ll be curious to see how the Tribe will want to connect stations to casinos in the future. I wouldn’t be surprised to eventually see several new hotels on casino land either. Could it become Las Vegas Strip NW?
Troy,
I’m going to post links to couple of google maps here. One of downtown Tacoma and the other of the Tacoma Mall area. The amount of retail activity and the amount of jobs around the Mall are much, much higher than downtown. Downtown Tacoma wasn’t doing very well before the whole work from home thing took root. Hundreds of customer service jobs (State Farm and Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield) have left downtown. At the same time, the Tacoma Mall area has been adding jobs for the last 20 years. Right now the sales taxes from Tacoma Mall and the car dealerships on South Tacoma Way are floating the city budget.
The only thing that needs transit in the greater downtown is UWT…. and that’s a great add in the last 20 years! …. the rest of it is like 3 coffee shops, 4 expensive restaurants and 12 bars and a lot of empty off space. Frost Park remains an excellent place to score drugs however…. some things never change.
Here’s the question that needs answered. Is transit for the people already living in a place and businesses already paying taxes? Or is transit a tool for social engineering? Nothing personal Troy, but spendy rail projects and TOD are not going to “save” downtown. In my lifetime I’ve watched the City and Sound Transit pump billons into downtown revival projects and besides a nice university… it hasn’t changed a damn thing.
I’ll always hate Sound Transit because they put a transit center at the Tacoma Dome. That’s the literal asshole of Tacoma. Unless you’re homeless, want to see a monster truck show or hear AC/DC live… you don’t go there. Except every damn bus makes a 15 minute pit stop here. Thanks Sound Transit!
https://www.google.com/maps/place/5221+Tacoma+Mall+Blvd,+Tacoma,+WA+98409/@47.215535,-122.4712452,18z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x5491001d012c5ab9:0xc924755bb1a388e9!8m2!3d47.2094558!4d-122.4635312!16s%2Fg%2F11c15m3csm?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDUwNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
https://www.google.com/maps/@47.2445557,-122.4389192,18.33z?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDUwNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
Zach, Tacoma Mall planning is not “merely setting aside funds in ST3 to study a future extension to the Tacoma Mall” (which we haven’t even done yet, although we continue to plan our railway without the study’s crucial findings). The Mall is the programmed terminus of the light rail system per the ST 2014 Long Range Plan, which is an important fact that constrains planning and design for TDLE today. These decisions have consequences. Alignments have already been rejected because they don’t easily allow expansions to the Mall.
I am a heavy user of the ST Expresses and so I wrote from lots of experience. They are by no means lousy. Riders are grateful for them. For decades they have largely been very reliable. For decades they have largely been very fast. The system could be better, absolutely, and the fact it isn’t is a demerit to Sound Transit and the leaders from Pierce who have overseen it. Some local (non-ST) leaders are unaware that they exist at all. And when the interstate is congested during peak hours, we take Sounder. The “connectivity ” you’re claiming TDLE will furnish for $5 billion already exists in the form of bus and commuter rail transportation that we don’t adequately invest in and support. All TDLE does is force bus riders onto trains for slower trips to Seattle, which is the majority of the I-5 Pierce transit market—not the airport. Then it runs 4-car trains over its ten miles of length, supposedly every few minutes during peak, for an estimated high ridership that will leave the vast majority of trains nearly empty. To top it all off, we then connect it to Ballard for some reason. That is what we are buying into here—along with a Tacoma Dome transfer to a T Line that has a single track and 12 minute frequencies at best. The T Line also stops running by 6p on Sundays, too.
I am really at a loss as to what you think TDLE is supposed to do well that is worth its immense cost and a rejection of alternatives. I don’t know how you can read my analysis of the DEIS and come to the conclusion that the project is good enough to move forward with the present scope. Is it still worthwhile if we can only afford to build the current general plan to South Federal Way or Fife? Because at the current price I suspect we may be staring down that possibility, or a delay in its construction phase.
Tacomee, I am less in support of “bringing the 1-Linein Downtown”, and more in support of making the T Line use the same trams as the 1-Line, or interoperable vehicles.
The T Line should also have level boarding with the platforms, and so changes are warranted. That’s my thinking in a nutshell.
A huge issue is vehicle speed.
Link has a 55 mph max speed.
Tacoma Link has a 42 mph max speed.
These speeds are fine for urban operations. They are lousy for going long distances like between Federal Way and Tacoma.
Too many decision makers see a systems diagram, a track and a vehicle. They don’t see themselves or others moving rather slowly in that vehicle on those tracks.
This is the core “wrong technology problem” with the full Spine. Things most of the day will move slower than the freeway buses.
Making new tracks with either technology longer won’t make them faster. It just won’t.
The State has developed detailed plans to make a Portland to Tacoma Amtrak trip faster and wants to spend billions to make that happen. Why on earth does ST want to build a slow train?
The whole situation south of Federal Way needs a fundamental reset with a new plan based on minimizing transit travel time.
I think both of you see the need to question the planning. But a solution needs to be based on speed and travel time. How could the system be faster? Are there representative pairs of locations that can estimated to quantify the benefits of making a change?
The two best things going for rail are enabling higher vehicle capacity or making travel faster. When the first doesn’t matter in this corridor segment and the second is actually making transit travel slower, the result is pretty sad. And doomed to get good ridership.
“I’ll always hate Sound Transit because they put a transit center at the Tacoma Dome.”
So you hate them for the dumbest possible reason. No wonder no one takes you seriously, because all your opinions are crackpot nonsense.
One suggestion STBers have come up with is to extend the T Line to Federal Way and have the transfer there rather than at Tacoma Dome. That would cost Pierce less and scale capacity to ridership better. If there’s a risk of crowding, run it every 5 minutes and that would move 1200 people an hour.
Pierce shot itself in the foot by not thinking through what kind of intra-county and inter-county transit would really help the largest cross-section of residents’ and visitors’ trips. Tacoma Dome reaches only the nearest corner of the county, like when north Link just barely reached north Seattle at UW, or if the Snohomish terminus were Mountlake Terrace. There’s nothing for the vast majority of trips within Tacoma or between Tacoma, Lakewood, and Puyallup. Pierce Transit is underfunded and most of its routes are hourly off-peak or weekends. The Tacoma Mall extension will bypass Tacoma’s most walkable, largest, densest business district. Voters elected city/county leaders who either got on or influenced the ST board, and they did this.
MAX orange and green lines were built next to highways with stations a bit distant from actual destinations. Eg: Bybee Blvd MAX station is about 10 blocks from the core of Sellwood.
The result is these two MAX lines have atrocious ridership.
Tacoma Dome Link, as planned, has even worse station locations compared to actual places people want to go, and thus you can expect poor ridership. It might work for wherever you might want to go, but for an awful lot of people it will be like these two MAX lines that it emulates.
55 mph is OK for Tacoma to SeaTac.
It’s not good for Seattle to Tacoma Dome. I think that’s always going to be the realm of the express buses, until they can get train service that’s halfway decent (Eg all day Sounder, more frequent and faster Cascades, etc). In Berlin, you’d handle this distance with a minimum quality service of a Regiobahn train operating at 100 mph (averaging 60-70 mph including station stops about as often as Sounder).
To attract decent ridership, you have to be at least competitive with driving, and that means decent speed but also going to places where people need to go.
Tacoma Dome is ok for a parking structure for parking to go into Seattle on Sounder or express buses, but it’s in the wrong place for a vast majority of Tacoma bus routes to connect to it. To the north it has the BNSF freight yard, to the south a hill with not much in it, to the west it’s parking lots, and to the east it’s highway interchanges.
At the very least, Tacoma Dome Link needs to go about 10 blocks further west, so it connects with the north-south bus corridors that actually go places in Tacoma.
The fact people are complaint the parking structures are full, without Link, indicates just how badly placed this station is. It needs to it’s actually goes places, so that it’s easier to access from actual destinations.
“The Tacoma Mall extension”
Let’s be honest here, it’s merely funding a study for a “possible” future transit corridor, emphasis on possible. It doesn’t guarantee ST will pick it up as an ST4 project in the future, it just provides funding to look into the corridor as a possible extension for the system. And I think people here need to be more honest with what it is instead of getting riled up with a game of telephone as to what Sound Transit said or what they believe Sound Transit said.
Sound Transit even explains so in its own documents when you look at ST3 Documents.
As for the T Line extension to Federal Way. It could be a new streetcar line to complement Line 1, but we shouldn’t realistically look at it as a means to replace TDLE. I get some people on here really dislike TDLE, but we need to be realistic and pragmatic as to what is politically feasible to get politicians and more broadly people on board with. You are not going to get politicians to change their minds on this idea.
This is why I’m more pragmatic and agnostic to TDLE. Because I know it’s better to keep the status quo than futz with it. A lot of these conversations people on STB want to have to be quite frank, should’ve happened in 2014/2015 and not now. The time to advocate for something different sailed away into the sound a decade ago just before the ST3 vote. The inertia to change course just isn’t there.
Zach B, read the blog back in 2013/14/15. We WERE objecting to Tacoma Dome Link.
Tom, you don’t need yell at me. So cut it out with your terrible attitude that you have towards everyone who disagrees with you.
I was in the board meetings in 2015 when the Pierce and Snohomish boardmembers declared their wish to have Tacoma Mall and Everett College be the final termini of the Spine. I sent feedback to ST against Tacoma Mall then and have repeated it ever since. Everett College I’m not bothered by because it would add stations in downtown Everett and a college.
No, it’s not set in stone. Nothing is definite until the construction contracts are signed. There’s still time to convince current or future boardmembers to do something else rather than extending Central Link to Tacoma Mall. If ST4 comes up in the late 2030s, that’s around thirteen years from now.
In my view, having both the Tacoma Mall and Downtown Tacoma extensions together in ST4 would be good. There’s a case for both to exist and it’s not an either or situation from my perspective as they both serve two major regional destinations in Pierce. But yeah, nothing is set in stone yet.
Zach, people were indeed discussing the issues of TDLE many years ago, and I was among them. In fact, Pierce County rejected ST3, of which the project was the marquee deliverable.
There remains time to reconsider elements of the project or the project overall. I understand that you are okay with the needlessly vast expense and poor planning fundamentals, but few others are.
And to Tom and Glenn, yes, we just need to move forward with a version of Sound Transit’s previous plans to use Link vehicles on the T Line. That change could be accomplished when TDLE construction has shut down the T Line, or many years later during the construction of the TCC project. With that accomplished, lots of new rail services become possible, some with new trackwork required at various points along the railway (for reversing movements).
@Troy Serad,
Link LRV’s can’t operate on the T Line. The two systems might look superficially similar to the untrained observer, but they are fundamentally different. And reworking the T Line to accept 1 Line LRV’s would require a near complete rebuild. Ain’t going to happen.
A much better approach is as ST has laid out. Continue the 1 Line expansion to the Tacoma Dome Station and (hopefully) eventually the Tacoma Mall, because that is where the ridership is. And pursue continued expansion of the T Line streetcar to improve local access.
Such a two pronged approach is cheaper, serves a greater geographic area, and would generate substantially higher ridership.
Lazarus, some corrections: the key issue is the width of the vehicles, of which 1 Line trams are a couple of inches wider on each side. New T Line vehicles of an equivalent loading gauge and floor height with the 1-Line should be acquired, and platform, voltage system modifications completed accordingly (unless dual voltage trams are acquired). This was the scope of the ST1 and ST2 conversion for the T Line that wasn’t built because of inadequate funds (and because the T Line had recently been constructed). If the T Line is closed for up to three years for TDLE construction as stated in the DEIS, that is a unique opportunity to make those improvements.
They railways are superficially similar because they are similar. They don’t need to use distinct equipment. That was not the intent of Pierce light rail system. Would you like me to email you ST’s various plans, reports and cost estimates for this work, and the narrative as to why it didn’t proceed despite being in the Long Range Plan and am ST2 component project? Let me know.
It should be noted that not integrating the railways is exacerbating costs by forcing the construction of vast independent stations at Tacoma Dome, along with separate maintenance facilities/operations. I’d also challenge the statement “that is where the ridership is” as there is even less regional ridership south of Tacoma Dome, which already has greatly reduced as compared to north of Federal Way.
I wouldn’t say the 4 inches of required clearance on each side of the car is really a “superficial” difference, nor is the voltage change.
It’s just not as big a deal as people seem to think it is.
The biggest problem I can see is the center catenary supports used in some sections, as they would probably have to be replaced with poles on each side suspended by a bridge cable. It’s a change that would have to be made.
Platforms and other line side structures that need to be cut back a bit to provide clearance? Well, all I can say is, there’s a reason why SoundTransit standard contract language states “Explosives shall never be used as part of this work without the explicit approval of SoundTransit”.
Radius of curves? Sure, T Link has sharp curves. So does MAX in street running, and so does the Atlanta streetcar. The Siemens S700 takes those sharp curves just fine.
The biggest problem would be making the street running compatible with 4 car trains. That’s solved by not running 4 car trains there.
Glenn in Portland,
Thanks for the technical rundown on why T Link can ‘t be changed to fit the rest of Sound Transit trains.
All I know about is the political. T Link is what it is. There isn’t the political will or money to change it. Tacoma has its downtown boosters who never met a project to “revitalize” downtown they didn’t like. Honestly, I can say that maybe downtown has less political support now than anytime in the town’s history. Most of this has to do with the City’s many failed bail out attempts over the last 30 years… that have largely failed…. and the fact that very nature of office work is changing as well.
Continue the 1 Line expansion to the Tacoma Dome Station and (hopefully) eventually the Tacoma Mall, because that is where the ridership is.
That is absurd. Clearly there is a lot more ridership potential in Downtown Tacoma than the Tacoma Mall. Downtown Tacoma is a real downtown with several skyscrapers. It also has a satellite college. It is a regional attraction with various museums and a nice pedestrian-friendly downtown. It is also an existing major transit hub for both local and regional bus service. Even ST runs buses there while they ignore the mall.
Because the mall is just a mall. There is some residential density surrounding it but there is more surrounding Downtown Tacoma. It would likely see more growth but it is absurd to think it would magically leapfrog Downtown Tacoma (I really doubt they will build twenty story buildings at the mall). At best it reinvents itself to be more like U-Village. But Link has the good sense to serve places like Downtown Bellevue and the UW before U-Village because in the grand scheme of things, U-Village is a tiny destination. Same with the Tacoma Mall. Why the hell would you take a train from Federal Way to a mall in Tacoma, given you have your own mall? In contrast there are very good reasons to go to Downtown Tacoma. It has more jobs, more people, more attractions.
It is also absurd to assume that it would be more expensive to retrofit an existing working railway than it would to run to the Tacoma Mall. As the crow flies it is 2.5 miles away but of course they can’t go that way. So instead they assume “Approximately 3.55 miles of light rail in a mixture of at-grade and elevated guideway, as well as a cut and cover tunnel”. In other words, likely billions. In contrast Troy mentioned several of the changes that would need to be done and none of them sound particularly expensive. The biggest question is how far you go and when you turn around. Is it worth it to make the loop? You would get more riders at the stations on MLK than you would with the mall but enough to justify the extra running time? That is the tricky part. It really isn’t about construction it is about operations. Troy has suggested some ideas (involving smaller overlapping trains) and they sound good but the options aren’t obvious.
Rarely, if ever, are there superficial changes in railway engineering (and I was responding to a poster above who used that language). However, compared to the giant civil works of West Seattle Link, the scope of changes needed to bring regional trains into Downtown Tacoma are minor. Although outdated now, there have even been conceptual plans and a cost estimate prepared for that work as it was once *the official plan* for the Pierce light rail system. Glenn, you have identified most of the needed changes to do this, which I have been informing folks about for years. New trams. Platform and voltage modifications. The potential realignment of a curve at 25th/Pacific, which may require the condemnation of a car wash. Heaven forbid! While some transit proponents endlessly promote huge capital projects to small regional centers, for some reason this straightforward connection to Downtown Tacoma over a railway built for that purpose is inconceivable. Well, Tacoma and Pierce County deserve better than that. Regional trains should be able to go to the center of our County’s largest city. Tacoma’s center remains one of the largest infill development opportunities in the region and it is already a large urban center.
4-car trains are indeed a challenge, but my analysis shows that it is feasible (click my name) . What is almost certainly needed is an off-street station that allows for reversing movements and parking along Commerce Street. Incredibly, the City of Tacoma owns a hideous, large parking garage from the 1960s right in the CBD and next to the existing tracks. The site could become a station under a larger mixed-use development, allowing for blended local and regional operations over Tacoma Link in the downtown area where transit connections are most plentiful. We have just lacked the vision and there are a ton of naysayers who think Tacoma is worthy of skipping by regional transit.
Alternatively, I have proposed limiting regional trains over Tacoma Link to 2-car consists, which is the length of trains the railway was engineered to accommodate. Yes, the line was designed to expand to 2-car consists—right now, today—despite the existing vehicles not being readily able to couple. This fact further contradicts earlier claims the railway needs to be rebuilt. The 2-car approach would require peak hour 4-car trains to reverse at Tacoma Dome, as is already the plan. Off peak, this would allow for 2-car trains starting from Seattle, Sea-Tac or Federal Way to operate to anywhere along the Pierce County light rail system. One model is San Francisco Muni, whose street railway network takes advantage of the Market Street Subway before fanning out across the city on surface streets. While Tacoma Link was designed with semi-exclusive right-of-way like in the Rainier Valley, Hilltop Link was degraded with a mixed mode design. Still, it seems to be performing just fine at the present time.
It would be wonderful if people could board a train at the Mall or TCC and travel to Federal Way or Sea-Tac. That is the vision I advocate for.
@ Troy:
The bigger issue that I see is a wholesale denial that anything about Tacoma Link could be changed to be better for riders. ST tends to want to add but not revisit things that ST has built.
It shows that you’re visioning outside of the box to achieve a better result. Even if ideas have technical challenges and sometimes fatal flaws, at least the question gets asked.
Most urban rail system planning elsewhere can have many studied alternatives. ST instead gives us one rail technology for almost every study — and alternatives often are just variations in platform locations at predetermined station areas. The 2016 argument for doing this for ST3 was to get projects built faster because the studies will get done faster, but here we are 9 years later and now TDLE has already gone from a promised 2030 opening to 2035 opening. And there still isn’t the money secured to build it at its current cost.
Unlike other extensions, ST has politically committed to both reaching Tacoma Dome and to give the Tribe stations near their casinos. There isn’t an obvious solution like dropping the last station available.
I expect ST to merely just to extend taxes until they have the revenue maybe through 75-year bonds. Not until ST has a political crisis will they do anything differently. But it’s good to have a solid Plan B to pitch when the reality set in.
Ross Bleakney
You really detest malls, I get that. That’s your opinion and you’re welcome to it.
Sky scrapers and high-rise buildings in Tacoma? That’s the past, not the future. The Tacoma government has spent public funds trying to keep several of these “magnificent” high rise buildings from becoming parking lots. The City bailed out the fancy hotel in town (the Murano) twice I think? The Convention center is less than 25% booked? Hotel rooms at the “nicer” hotels cost less than $100. There’s a strip of small restaurants near the college (Zack’s pizza) but pretty much every other retail business is a bar.
Here’s the Tacoma Convention center’s calendar. Dismal isn’t a strong enough word.
https://tacomaconventioncenter.org/event-calendar
Take downtown Seattle’s problems and multiply them by 2. Downtown Tacoma has very little future. Downtown anywhere has no future.
Also let me fill you in on a little bit of Tacoma light rail history and how the Tacoma Dome Station got built. Before Sound Transit, all the PT buses went downtown. Tacoma had a transit center downtown! But this brought the wrong sort of people… Frost park was sort of layover zone for the down-and-out bus riding folks who had no other place to congregate. According to the downtown business set, transit brings in the wrong people.
So the Tacoma Dome Station was born! That way all the bus riding trash could just hang out at the dome. And the people downtown really wanted, well, they could drive their car to the Dome and take the train downtown! So it never was about transit whatsoever.
“Thanks for the technical rundown on why T Link can ‘t be changed to fit the rest of Sound Transit trains.”
That’s not the conclusion I see. I see that it is very possible. It would need some investment and some adjustment of trackside structures and platforms to make things fit.
Eg: the overhead wire problem. You would likely have to eliminate the center support poles, but you really don’t need those. It could just use cable supports like MAX does through downtown Portland, such as this:
https://www.google.com/maps/@45.517959,-122.6735487,3a,75y,65.59h,94.68t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s9YgxrVoexRbDWdD4BsLYuQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D-4.675855008702641%26panoid%3D9YgxrVoexRbDWdD4BsLYuQ%26yaw%3D65.58562184416081!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDUwNS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
As for the voltage change, I’ve not been able to find a data sheet for the power systems on a 1,500 volt version of the Siemens S700, but here’s an example of the voltage limits on a typical system built for 3,000 volts:
https://search.abb.com/library/Download.aspx?DocumentID=9AKK107046A5378&LanguageCode=en&DocumentPartId=&Action=Launch
Note the input voltage can be anywhere from 1,800 to 4,200 volts. This wide input range is required due to the variable nature of the overhead line voltage. It’s how TriMet can raise the voltage on its overhead lines to nearly 1,000 volts and not have problems with their “750 volt” cars.
With a similar wide voltage range, the Siemens “1,500 volt” cars probably would work fine on the same high-end (the near 1,000 volts TriMet is using) of “750 volts” but we would need to find a data sheet to confirm this.
“Sky scrapers and high-rise buildings in Tacoma? That’s the past, not the future”
*Gestures at the Marriott hotel that recently opened*
“Tacoma had a transit center downtown!”
Commerce Street Transit Mall still exists, dude Tacoma’s Downrtown TC never went away like you claim.
At this point, you’re just regurgitating inconsequential points to make your fallacious arguments even if they’re easily debunked by facts. For someone who claims “to know a lot about Tacoma” you clearly don’t from the sound of it.
Zach B
When was the last time you were in downtown Tacoma? I was at the Murano about a month ago. The room was trash, and the rest of hotel seemed pretty run down. There doesn’t seem to be the money for enough staff or to maintain the building. Like I posted earlier…. the City has already spent public funds to bail the joint out and now it just seems in long, slow decline. Almost everything in downtown Tacoma is in a long slow decline. If Downtown Seattle can’t keep its nose above water…. what chance could downtown Tacoma possibly have?
20 years ago, downtown Tacoma was the “back office” for much of the PNW. My Mrs. was a Regence customer service rep when they closed the downtown office in Seattle and moved the whole thing to Tacoma. There were a lot of customer service jobs in insurance back then, and a lot of bean counters as well. All of that is gone now. Tacoma has an awful lot of empty office space.
As far as light rail in Tacoma…. the T-line starts in a dead zone, (Tacoma Dome Station) goes to UWT and the museums (the only “live” part of downtown) them goes to another dead zone (the rest of downtown) then heads the Stadium District (everybody there will tell it’s “Not downtown!!”) then loops back to the Hilltop (another dead zone)
At this point, it is what it is. All of the grand visions old Jim Merritt had for light rail to change the nature of the place just didn’t happen. I don’t know what to tell you.
The Pierce light rail system that was actually supposed to be built has not come to fruition (and likely never will as current plans advance). In its place is a bizarre system of forced transfers, poor stations, and alignment squiggles that are designed by committee.
I don’t think Jim had much control over what has occurred here. Not sure if he deserves that highlight.
“I don’t know what to tell you.”
That’s because you know nothing about about Tacoma. You claim you do, and yet time and time again I have to correct you on your blatantly incorrect information. Maybe take the L instead of digging your heels further because if unable to admit your incorrect.
“Downtown anywhere has no future.”
That’s what some people thought about downtown Seattle in the 1970s. Then it revived in the 1980s.
Downtowns are places to gather and do things away from home. They have the infrastructure to accommodate large numbers of people. In different eras that may be department stores, offices, entertainment, bars, non-work meetings, etc. In all eras it’s to go to large institutions like UW Tacoma, government offices, or museums. Cities need to identify the relevant activities for the early-mid 21st century and renovate for them. That will take some time because people aren’t sure what people will want to do — it’s not as clear-cut as in earlier eras.
One rising factor in downtowns is housing. Downtowns are the most “15-minute city” of anywhere if they’re designed right: people can both live and work and shop and access a range of activities all within a mile or two of each other. It also fixes the single-use zoning of earlier eras: just as there are residential-only areas, there are areas that have too little housing and are largely office-only. This brings downtowns back into balance, back the way they were.
The solution can’t be to throw away downtowns. Then you’re left with gathering at car-oriented malls, or not really having any place to gather so the city loses its cohesion and languishes.
Trying to replicate a downtown in a brownfield mall isn’t as effective as just adapting the downtown you have.
The reason Tacoma Dome station was chosen was parking. Since Pierce County has atrocious intra-county transit, the vision was to drive to a large P&R at the corner of the county.
“So the Tacoma Dome Station was born! That way all the bus riding trash could just hang out at the dome.”
You know what that’s missing? Middle-class transit riders spending money at downtown businesses.
Tacomee,
Because of your frequent comments about the dominant tax value of the Tacoma Mall area over Downtown Tacoma, I did a cursory review of taxable value of properties in the core parts of the city. This included Downtown, the Mall, Allenmore, Hilltop, Lincoln District, Central Tacoma, North End, Stadium, and McKinley Hill, approximately.
In pure value, Allenmore is at $445.30m, the Mall area is $783.06m, and the roughly equivalent area around the central business district is $1.250b. These values are fuzzy as it is unclear where you draw the line, but it is a good approximation for Allenmore and the Mall as they are reasonably defined. That is less the case for Downtown, which spreads out along Pacific Avenue. Its value can be *a lot* higher. Adding the broader Downtown area from Stadium to the Brewery District, bounded to the west by Tacoma Ave and to the east by the City Waterway—an area where regional Link trains will apparently never go—taxable values leap to over $2.2 billion. Please note that UWT does not pay taxes on its huge chunk of land. If anything, Downtown’s extraordinary value is deeply and artificially reduced for various political reasons.
This is just pure taxable value, too. When you normalize the values of these properties by their acreage, the values of the sprawling districts of Allenmore and Tacoma Mall are totally dominated by the concentrated land values of Downtown Tacoma.
Those are the facts.
@Glenn in Portland,
“It could just use cable supports like MAX does through downtown Portland”
Replacing the catenary is just one of the problems with converting the T-Line to full Link standards, and it is not a small problem as you state. It is nearly a complete replacement.
Additionally, Max is known for using a low standard for their catenary, which is why Max has certain operational issues (hot days for example). ST is not going to go down that path. They already have enough operational issues to deal with.
But you are correct in that if you throw enough money at the problem you *could* make it work. But it would be a huge amount of money, and to what purpose? All you would have after spending a small fortune would be rail service where Tacoma already has rail service. No improvement. No expansion of service. No nothing.
The goal of transit in Tacoma/Pierce County should be to expand service and to add real transit value for the residents. This proposal wouldn’t do that. It would simply waste a huge amount of money in a deeply misguided attempt to accomplish pretty much nothing.
Sound Transit is right not to pursue this half baked idea.
@Troy Serad,
I don’t think Tacomee was talking about property values, I think Tacomee was talking about tax revenue. The two are fundamentally not the same thing.
But it is interesting that your data shows that property values along the proposed Link route to Tacoma Mall would be the same, or slightly higher, than the property values in DT Tacoma. That I would not have expected.
So I have to give it to Tacomee on this one. Higher tax revenue potential and the same or higher property values too. The proverbial Win-Win!
And a Link extension to Tacoma Mall would generate higher new ridership too. Another win!
Thanks Tacomee.
Lazarus:
Tacoma Link is never going to operate through the streets of downtown Tacoma that justify full constant tension catenary. A simple support system good for 30 mph will always be fine for their need at those locations.
Link, by the way, also has high temperature problems. Witness the 20 mph running in June of 2021.
Please define what you consider a huge expense. The current plan is to spend multiple billions building a line to a parking garage, separated from downtown Tacoma by half a mile of surface parking, in a location that would require a half mile detour (and related operating expenses) for most Pierce Transit bus routes. It results in many Pierce Transit trips being a minimum 3 seat ride, if they want to use Link: bus to Tacoma, then T Link, then Real™ Link.
For someone that complains about mistakes made by MAX, you sure are overlooking the problematic ridership on the Orange and Green lines, that were built much like the Tacoma Dome Link plan: lots of track that serve mostly parking lots, resulting in fairly dismal ridership.
Your interpretation of what I wrote immediately above are bizarre.
Of course they are different datasets, and I analyzed the one I have access to. My review showed that the Mall area is nowhere near the taxable value of the Tacoma CBD or the broader Downtown area—not whatever you just wrote.
The Mall does indeed pay a significant amount in business taxes, but they appear to report as a partnership, as opposed to individual businesses operating in the City. That would complicate a comparison with Downtown at first glance.
I need to correct my last statement about the Mall partnership reporting. They don’t do that, it appears. I mistook a property value tax detail within a B&O tax report for their business tax reporting. I already covered the taxable value of land.
At least for top 10 city taxpayers, some are near or in Downtown, some are near the Port, and at least one is in the Mall area—a utility.
@Glenn in Portland,
“Link, by the way, also has high temperature problems. Witness the 20 mph running in June of 2021.”
That was a one off. The problem has been fixed. Procedurally Link does not have the operational restrictions that Max does related to temperature. And that is because of the higher quality catenary.
“Please define what you consider a huge expense.”
$1. (One dollar)
This idea of rebuilding T-Link to accommodate full Link scale trains is simply bizarre and serves no realistic transportation purpose. Nor does it solve a transportation problem.
And if the answer is that it avoids a Link to streetcar transfer, then I’d raise the BS flag on that. Because Link operates has 4-car trains, and there is no way in **** that the T -Line would be rebuilt with 400 ft platforms.
So if the answer to that problem is to have passengers transfer from 4-car Link to a 1-car Link, then I really need to ask the obvious question: is a Link to Link transfer any better than a Link to streetcar transfer? And how many billions is that worth?
Na. This concept simply smells. From Troy’s data it is clear that property values in DT Tacoma are deeply depressed. I suspect DT Tacoma business interests are pushing this idea in a misguided attempt to inflate their property values. Everybody wants to spend someone else’s money on their problem. But follow the money.
And don’t get me wrong, I like Max. And Portland has done a great job. There are some mistakes, but that is what happens when you go first.
And I sure wish we had Portland’s streetcar system. Portland has done a very good job on that. As has Tacoma with the T-Line. Seattle could learn a lot from both cities.
Lazarus, perhaps you have not read or understood the many legitimate concerns that exist related to TDLE, the T Line, Pierce Transit services, Tacoma Dome, Downtown Tacoma, etc. I am guessing that is because you don’t live here, don’t use our transit, or grasp the complexities at hand. That’s okay. You share very strong opinions about it regardless, and that is fine too.
But there are a few of us here living in Pierce that are trying to make the system more sensible, more accessible and more effective for those it serves, and ensuring our huge and expensive light rail system pulls its weight relative to the investment is a worthwhile focus of our attention. Right now, the trains aren’t pulling their weight. They won’t in the future, either, at great financial and opportunity cost.
You also missed the point in your skimming of the text that big improvements here don’t necessarily require 4-car trains in Downtown Tacoma. That is an option though!
Lazrus,
Tacoma has been through a lot of big changes in the last 30 years…. the problem with ST planning is simply it ignores the changes and the current trend lines. That’s also the problem with Tacoma’s downtown boosters…. Downtown is in trouble because it refused to look at the evolving economic and social trends of T-Town.
There’s been a lot of growth at the military bases south of town. This has spurred a bunch of new small businesses in greater South Tacoma. South Tacoma Way, Parkland and The Lincoln district/Tacoma Mall have all benefited. There’s been some big retailers move in (and out) but much of the overall growth has been small family owned outfits owned by some sort of Brown people. South Korean Way is the local joke…. not to cast shade on any Pac Islanders, SE Asians or Latin American folks. I love them all.
Big Transit equals White Power most of the time. Downtown Tacoma was controlled by the “Brew Crew” for much of the last couple of decades. White guys with money who owned breweries or fancy restaurants downtown. Theses guys hired ( controlled?) “Downtown on the Go!” person, Kristina Walker. She talks a good game… but her voting record isn’t all that progressive.
So the powers-that-were had a couple of ideas about “downtown revitalization”. The first thing was to cut out any less funded Brown people from doing business downtown. That meant cutting out any food trucks or Asian style street markets.
Second idea was “Bigger is Better”. If downtown could just land 1 or 2 big time white collar employers, everything would be fine. The idea of using City money to attract big projects or prop up big businesses (Hello Murano Hotel). The City funded a failing grocery store (2X)
Third idea was massive a transit project. Quite honestly…. The City could have just built a transit hub on Pacific Ave, increased bus service to everywhere and put in a few transit lanes and been done with it. Why on earth would a low density city of 220k people need any light rail?
All of this is now a failure. Honestly, Mike Orr couldn’t live in downtown Tacoma…. nobody without a car could. It’s empty, there’s little retail, and transit is slim. Even the stupid little train to nowhere doesn’t run enough to be useful on off peak hours. Taking light rail from UWT to Hilltop Safeway would be over an hour travel time in the real world.
Look at the places in Tacoma that are growing…. the Ruston Waterfront, South Tacoma Way, Proctor District, Tacoma Mall, 6th Ave, even the down-and-out Oakland….. transit isn’t part of any of it. In my mind that’s enough to oppose everything about Sound Transit.
Ross Bleakney
You really detest malls, I get that.
I don’t detest malls. I just think it is absurd to think that a mall would get more riders than a real downtown, especially in this instance. Other than retail and housing what other things are in this mall? Um, nothing. Other than housing and offices what other things are in Downtown Tacoma. Let’s see, there is a hospital, a university, several museums — do I really need to go on?
It sounds to me like you detest Downtown Tacoma. (You probably don’t but turnabout is fair play :)) But if Tacoma stands any chance thriving in the future it will be because Downtown Tacoma thrives. The people in change may be idiots in how they are going about trying to improve Downtown Tacoma but the folks who stress its importance are absolutely right. Cities that spread out can do OK for a while but eventually they just collapse (like Detroit) and spend decades trying to regain their old glory. You don’t want that to happen with Tacoma.
I think there is no question that *right now* Downtown Tacoma is more attractive than Tacoma Mall for people coming from the north. If that changes in twenty years it means the city has collapsed and it doesn’t matter where the train goes. I’m not saying Link should go farther south than Federal Way. But if Link does go farther south it sure as hell should go to Downtown Tacoma.
If Downtown Seattle can’t keep its nose above water…. what chance could downtown Tacoma possibly have?
Who said Downtown Seattle can’t keep its nose above water. Look, cities got absolutely hammered by the Great Recession. Real estate values collapsed. I remember talking to an architect about this when it happened. At the time he said projects that started — started! — were ended. You have big holes in the ground and no one working on it. Eventually they will build those. Then eventually they build the projects they were planning on building. Then eventually they hire architects to design and build new buildings. That is a lot of eventuallys but guess what? Cities did eventually rebuild. It took a long time but it happened.
Cities got absolutely hammered by the pandemic as well. It is still taking time to recover but things have actually gone fairly smoothly in most cities. Some of the cities recovered quickly from the Great Recession have been slow to recover from the pandemic. That is because of tech. Seattle (and other tech hubs) recovered quickly from the Great Recession because the software industry tends to be independent if not contrary to the greater economy. Meanwhile, the work-from-home phenomenon is very strong in tech, leading to lots of people in cities like Seattle (but not say, Minneapolis) working from home.
But Downtown Seattle has basically recovered. Office employment is still below pre-pandemic levels but otherwise it is doing just fine. Hotel rates are up, visitation rates are up. It is only office work that lags. But there is a general transition going on (that has actually been occurring for decades) as Downtown Seattle becomes less of a “9-to-5” downtown and more of a cultural and residential hub. People go downtown to do stuff, not just work. It is not easy to convert an office building to housing but new housing is going up (this didn’t happen during the early part of the Great Recession — nothing was being built). Downtown areas struggling to keep their nose above water don’t look like this: https://www.seattleinprogress.com/project/3026416
Tacoma has been a borderline city for decades. For years it wasn’t clear if it would collapse or thrive. The pandemic hurt Downtown Tacoma like it hurt every downtown. But Downtown Tacoma is in better shape to weather the storm and turn things around than a lot of other cities. There is a there there. It is worthy of visiting (just like Downtown Seattle is worthy of visiting). It is highly likely that it will transition to be more of a cultural hub and less of an employment center although both go together.
Downtown Tacoma office space isn’t as attractive as Downtown Seattle office space but it is still a lot more attractive than typical suburban office space. Look at the old Weyerhaeuser Corporate Headquarters. It is a beautiful building but most of it sits vacant. Who wants to drive all the way there? Maybe it can work as a satellite office for a company with offices spread out around the Puget Sound, but again, this is for an iconic, absolutely beautiful, building. What chance does your typical suburban office park have?
There is a pecking order in office real estate and it really hasn’t changed. Downtown Seattle is the most valuable although Downtown Bellevue has largely caught up. Then you have places like Downtown Tacoma and suburban centers (like Eastgate/Factoria). Below that you have the little office parks scattered around. Those are the places that will eventually lose out. Eventually the owners of the best offices realize they can’t get the money they expected so they lower the price. This trickles down but eventually it just isn’t worth it to own that little office on Aurora so it becomes, I don’t know, a nail salon. Will Downtown Tacoma make the cut? I think so, but again, the key (for all downtowns) is to focus on everything else. Make it the cultural center of town and everything else falls into place.
And if the answer is that it avoids a Link to streetcar transfer, then I’d raise the BS flag on that. Because Link operates has 4-car trains, and there is no way in **** that the T -Line would be rebuilt with 400 ft platforms.
But you think they will run a train down to the Tacoma Mall? Seriously? You think is somehow impossible to make a handful of stations longer in Downtown Tacoma but really easy to run a line to run to the mall. Hell, even Sound Transit estimated that project would cost a billion. Obviously it would cost a lot more. Making a handful of stations longer in Downtown Tacoma would cost way less.
But again, that isn’t the only option Troy is suggesting. There could be two car trains running to Tacoma from SeaTac (outside of peak). This means that riders from say, Federal Way would get a one-seat ride to Downtown Tacoma but riders from Seattle would not. That isn’t that big a deal as riders from Seattle would likely catch Sounder or a bus (both would be faster). But it means that Tacoma Link would actually have a real destination to attract riders (Downtown Tacoma).
“And if the answer is that it avoids a Link to streetcar transfer, then I’d raise the BS flag on that. Because Link operates has 4-car trains, and there is no way in **** that the T -Line would be rebuilt with 400 ft platforms.”
Do please read what I wrote. Having to constantly re-write it is quite tiresome.
The very optimistic 2019 SoundTransit ridership estimate for Tacoma Dome link is less than 1/4 what it is at SeaTac.
Thus:
There is no need for 4 car trains south of Federal Way. One car trains would probably work fine, based on ST’s own 2019 (ie before pandemic) estimate. However, it’d probably be best to plan for eventual 2 car trains. Either will fit in downtown Tacoma.
• This eliminates the need for huge stations south of Federal Way.
• This also prevents Pierce from having to provide their share of the very expensive DSTT2, because the 4 car trains can turn back at Federal Way.
• By separating Tacoma Link from DSTT2, it can be built sooner, because the Ballard extension doesn’t need to be built.
By eliminating what? $5 billion? in Pierce contributions to DSTT2 and further savings in making the stations smaller, Pierce can build what it actually needs in Pierce.
Lazarus: “A much better approach is as ST has laid out. Continue the 1 Line expansion to the Tacoma Dome Station and (hopefully) eventually the Tacoma Mall, because that is where the ridership is. … Higher tax revenue potential and the same or higher property values too.”
“I suspect DT Tacoma business interests are pushing this idea in a misguided attempt to inflate their property values.”
I wouldn’t have expected Lazarus to take the Tacomee position on these.
It’s not “downtown Tacoma business interests” that are pushing to extend the 1 Line to downtown Tacoma, it’s some transit fans. I don’t know that downtown business interests have even thought about it or care either way. Their first instinct might be to oppose temporary construction disruption. Business leaders like government officials often have a blind spot about how much the right kind of transit could improve the city and increase walk-up customers to their stores, and even underestimate how many existing customers are walk-ups.
“having both the Tacoma Mall and Downtown Tacoma extensions together in ST4 would be good. There’s a case for both to exist and it’s not an either or situation”
Creating a Y-shaped pattern would havle the frequency at each end. The 1 Line is already at a minimally-acceptable frequency of 10 minutes. Halving that would be 20 minutes. That would be inconvenient and not really address the problem Link is meant to solve. The full ST3 Tacoma-Ballard line is supposed to run at 6 minutes all day, so that would be 12 minutes each to downtown Tacoma and Tacoma Dome. That’s better, but it depends on Ballard/DSTT2 actually being built in our lifetimes, which is significantly uncertain.
“Big Transit equals White Power most of the time. ”
It’s not White Power. White Power means white supremacy and racial suppression, and ultimately a white homeland. None of the debates about the 1 Line or T Line in Tacoma or business or land-use impacts rise to that level. Using politically inflammatory phrases in comments is not allowed, especially in contexts outside their primary meaning.
“”If Downtown Seattle can’t keep its nose above water”
“Who said Downtown Seattle can’t keep its nose above water. ”
Downtown Seattle is keeping its nose above water. It’s recovery is gaining, even if slowly. Pike Place Market and part of 1st Avenue have fully recovered. Hotel stays and tourists are back. It’s only office commuters that are still low, but even they are increasing if slowly. None of downtown is a hopeless loss. 3rd Avenue has gotten substantially better from its nadir. New pedestrian/bike infrastructure has gone in on Pike-Pine, and RapidRide G on Madison is wildly popular.
“Seattle (and other tech hubs) recovered quickly from the Great Recession because the software industry tends to be independent if not contrary to the greater economy”
In Seattle’s case it was very contrary. Amazon Web Services was introduced in 2008. It unexpectedly turned into a runaway hit that catalyzed the entire 2010s tech boom. The migration of services to the cloud, the maturing of Web 2.0 services, and the rise of mobile apps all followed from it. Amazon was at the center of it, and Amazon was expanding in downtown Seattle, so it created an unprecedented growth wave that dwarfed the impacts of the Great Recession in Seattle. AWS is Amazon’s primary profit generator now (over books and products), and may still be its only profit generator.
With the pandemic tech was hit hard, and is especially prone to work-from-home. No other giant company expansion has come to do in the 2020s what Amazon did in the 2010s. Nor should we expect it, because that was unusual.
“By separating Tacoma Link from DSTT2, it can be built sooner, because the Ballard extension doesn’t need to be built.”
Tacoma Dome is scheduled to open before Ballard/DSTT2. Initially TD was 2030 and Ballard was 2037 or so. Now TD is 2035 and Ballard is 2039. But Ballard/DSTT2 has restarted the EIS process, so that could push back the date further.
I know it is not you who crafted the plan, Mike, but it is hard to believe that 4-car trains will ever be traveling from Ballard to Tacoma Dome every 6 minutes (or even more frequently at peak, per the TDLE DEIS).
Cheers from Downtown Redmond!
I agree with all your points Mike. Seattle has been in its own little world compared to the rest of the country for over a decade now.
“Creating a Y-shaped pattern would havle the frequency at each end.”
Not really, Mike. We could easily see interlining playing out with such an extension, especially if a duwamish crossing byass happens. Alongside some would argue you could easily just truncate one of the lines at SeaTac instead of going the whole way.
Zach:
SeaTac is sorta cramped
I’d run it north to TIBS. There’s enough space there for two additional platforms. This gives a bunch of platform capacity for turning, plus a bunch of connections not at SeaTac.
Tacoma certainly isn’t booming, but also isn’t the deserted wasteland Tacomee is depicting. I don’t know the history of the convention center, but it honestly doesn’t do that part of the city any favors. Lots of blank walls and glass, that makes a few square blocks pretty inactive (including around the Murano), unless a convention is going on. It also blockaded the street-grid, disconnecting UW-T with the more active parts of downtown north of 11th Ave. If all Tacomee’s experience is around this area, I can see why he thinks its dead. The downtown area north of 11th is much more vibrant. The area south of 17th, UWT to 27th is also starting to blossom.
The incredible amount of surface parking and parking structures between 11th an 17th also doesn’t do that area any favors. But the nice thing about surface parking is that it is easy to convert to apartment towers with spectacular views of the bay and mountains (and mountain).
There are definitely white collar jobs down there, but my main experience is that they are small. Government agencies, non-profits, and law firms a bit up the hill, and architectural firms that really like the marginally historic buildings. I am not sure why Tacoma struggles to attract larger staffed white collar industry. Those central 5-10 blocks from the Museums all the way up to hill to Bates and the jail needs some infill residential development, and some human scale retail development, so that city can feel a bit more connected.
A frequent, good-span train that makes the trip between Seattle and Tacoma in under an hour would certainly help to make Tacoma more attractive to some of the huge white-collar industry. A satellite of Amazon, Microsoft, Google or Kaiser would be much more likely to become interesting, if the gauntlet of a daily I-5 nightmare were removed.
But the idea that there is some local business cabal that is conspiring to make that happen is nonsense. I deal with the some of the few folks who might actually be thinking about the intersection of commerce and transit in Tacoma, and Sound Transit is barely on their radar.
Hope then that such so called scrutiny includes refunding RTA taxpayers from any scale down or elimination of voter approved RTA levies. If Seattle elitist want to alter the deal, well let’s then alter the taxes
Consider some travel-time math on the 1/2 Lines.
When the 2 Line crosses Lake Washington, it will be ca. 73 minutes long. The 1 Line is currently 72 minutes long.
When Federal Way Station opens, the 1 Line will be ca. 84 minutes long. If the 1 Line were then turned back at Northgate, it would be ca. 70 minutes long.
Exactly; reversing Line 1 at Northgate during non-peak times is the right solution.
Unfortunately four-car trains that may have gotten late in the RV are pretty hard to reverse with a single driver inside the time allowable for ten-minute headways. If there were two pocket tracks with a scissors allowing entry to either track and exit from either track, it would extend the allowable time to reverse. Adopting this strategy with a single pocket would probably require assigning a reversing operator to Northgate.
Now maybe adding a single reversing operator lets frees two or three others; I don’t know what the rules are. But I doubt it.
Sadly, ST didn’t think through what it would take to reverse at Northgate reliably.
ST has been storing trains at Northgate for years now, including since the Lynnwood extension opened. That is an even more complicated maneuver than merely reversing a train using two operators.
That said, I cannot attest that ST can reverse one of the lines all day at Northgate. I’m just offering the thought experiment that if the reversal can be done smoothly, would the savings outweigh the inconvenience for some riders?
The shortened line could always be re-extended if the northern stations hit a ridership benchmark. That might be an incentive to build up more housing around the stations.
At any rate, Federal Way to Lynnwood will not be a forever one-seat ride under the current ST3 plan. But it will be politically more difficult to implement the Northgate turnback if it is not done with the Great Conjunction.
I’m just offering the thought experiment that if the reversal can be done smoothly, would the savings outweigh the inconvenience for some riders?
Probably not. It is highly unlikely that you would do that during peak. ST has been concerned about crowding since the day Lynnwood Link opened. It has put off changes (like sending the 522 to South Shoreline Station) before they ran more trains. It is quite possible that simply running twice as many trains between Northgate and downtown alleviates the crowding north of there. But I doubt ST would do that.
So it would only effect non-peak. This is when it hits riders the hardest and you gain the least. Here is the math (please correct me since I’m not that confident in it). Assume it takes 40 minutes to go from Northgate to Redmond and that we truncate the East Link trains. So instead of the trains running 55 minutes one way they run 40. Now consider it as a continuous loop (110 minutes versus 80). To fulfill the full loop we need 11 trains (each ten minutes apart) while a shorter loop needs 8. So we save three trains (and three drivers). This assumes everything is perfect in terms of turning around and timing the trains. It might save only two driver/trains.
Meanwhile, riders of the 522 are hurt by this. Instead of taking a bus to Roosevelt (which is just about as fast midday if they are headed south) they take the bus to South Shoreline. Except now they transfer to a bus running every five minutes instead of ten. Same goes for Pinehurst Station when it is built. It isn’t the end of the world but it really isn’t a great fit.
The turnarounds really aren’t in the best locations. Nor are we doubling up service in areas where turnbacks could save a lot a time. If we were running trains down Rainier Valley every five minutes then I could definitely see half of them turning around at Rainier Beach or at the very least SeaTac. In the north end the obvious turnback is South Shoreline. There are only three stations to the north despite a fairly long distance. But even then it isn’t clear that it would be worth it.
Turnbacks are like branches. You have to think very carefully about whether you want to halve the frequency beyond there. It should be designed that way from the beginning. Otherwise it is agencies doing so out of desperation (they just aren’t getting the riders they hoped). I don’t think Link is anywhere near that level.
There are some good reasons to not turn around 1 Line trains at Northgate. For example, SeaTac Link ridership jumped more significantly than other stations when Lynnwood Link opened.
It also takes time to get a driver from one end of the train to another. There isn’t much time buffer to that with the siding holding just one train at a time.
I’m more concerned about ST wanting to turn around all Tacoma Dome trains at SODO and making riders transfer to / from West Seattle Link (3 Line) trains. The driver assignments will be really long upon a TDLE operation. West Seattle Link advocates would rejoice at having faster, direct service into Downtown and UW — and it would mask the awful ridership that a West Seattle stub is expected to generate.
And even though ST won’t currently consider it, a Northgate turnaround could be more doable for the West Seattle stub. The ridership wouldn’t ever need the frequency of the 1 Line — and operating fewer and shorter trains between West Seattle and Northgate seems doable depending on how many trains can get pushed through the DSTT. Reversing a 3 car train every 12 or 15 minutes seens much easier than reversing a 4 car train every 6 or 7.5 minutes from a siding at Northgate with the longer time gap between trains.
I’ve posted before about the frustrating experience of being on a crowded 1 Line train at rush hour where the operator has roped off the elevated seating area next to the operator compartment, despite there being no obvious spill or biohazard. This blocks off 16 seats and the standing area for no apparent reason other than that the operator doesn’t want anyone sitting there. It’s happened to me enough times now that I complained to ST about it, and I assumed that they’d tell me they would talk to the operators and address the situation.
I was disappointed to learn that, in fact, ST allows its operators to do this, per policy. This seems ridiculous to me. Here’s the reply I received from ST:
“Passengers may have noticed that occasionally seats near the 1 Line Operator cabin doors have been blocked off. Operators are protected by OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) to block off these seats that surround the operators’ cabin as they deem necessary. We understand that this may cause limited seats in the lead car and for that we apologize. Passengers are encouraged to locate additional seating further down the rail car line, as the last cars are typically have more seats available
The seats are roped off for the safety of our Link operators. This has been on ongoing practice because of drug use and smoke affecting the drivers while operating the Link light rail trains. We’re in the process of hiring and training more security to be onboard 1-Line, but for now, you may still encounter seats behind the operator taped off.
As a rider myself, I can understand the inconvenience limited seating and possibly having to stand while riding causes. However, standees are a common practice throughout the industry. I know this is not ideal and for that I am sorry.”
ST can’t override federal safety regulations. It would probably require a determination by an OSHA arbiter that the drivers’ concerns are illegitimate or exaggerated. Who would pursue that? ST would probably rather keep up the appearance of maintaining drivers’ safety. Who other than ST or the drivers would have standing to challenge it?
Is OSHA even functional anymore under Trump? The thought of this administration actually enforcing any rule to protect train drivers…I just don’t see it.
We had major holes in train safety before the Trump administration. One particular catastrophic derailment may have contributed to the departure of a former ST CEO.
I have to go with Mike’s more cogent analysis. ST isn’t going to try to get away with breaching OSHA rules just because they think nobody is watching. And ATU is watching. And there are state and federal judges who could get involved.
All over a few seats on a train. ST is not going to risk litigating that.
I doubt that as soon as a Link Operator starts their shift, they immediately ask for the area next to the Operator cab to be roped-off. I’m sure in most cases some event preceded the request: A passenger repeatedly knocking or pounding on the cab door/wall. Smoking. Loud music. Yelling, talking very loud next to the door. An extremely unhygienic rider, and the odor penetrates into, and fills the Operator cab.
I don’t know this for a fact, but I’m sure they tried the other way. Not roping-off the area, and security just asks the rider to stop playing music, for example. And as soon as security gets off the train, the rider turns the music back on. Or starts smoking again. Etc.
Also, maybe the roped-off areas gets left in place longer than needed. If a Link Operator requests that rider area to be closed at 7 AM, and they switch Operators at 1 PM, does that rider area stay roped-off for the 2nd Operator’s entire shift, even though they didn’t request it?
The operators are the ones roping off the area, not ST security — and to be clear, it’s a limited number of operators, not all of them. Three times now, I’ve been in a train with a roped-off section that has changed operators at the usual spot between Sodo and Beacon Hill. The operator leaving the train takes down his rope/tape/chain/whatever, and brings it with him (my strong sense is that these are homemade barriers, not “official” ST things). The new operator doesn’t mind anyone sitting there, so suddenly the closed upper seating area becomes open again.
At a minimum, operators should not be allowed to rope off areas during rush hour. Maybe during off hours, when the train has lots of room, but not when the train is packed. In any case, if someone is going to do nefarious activity, they’re probably not going to do it on a packed train anyway.
I’ve only occasionally seen roped-off areas since the pandemic. I wouldn’t call it a common occurrence. Although maybe other people happen to get those trains more.
I have rarely encountered the closed off areas, except for biohazards (for which I assume the train gets switched out as soon as practicable).
The last time I saw the end section chained off for non-biohazard reasons was for a group of dignitaries.
Needs to be zero tolerance for any drug use on transit. This is a huge deterent of transit use for many people and is extremely dangerous to operators and riders a few feet away. Throw these junkies in jail every time they light up on a bus or train.
It’s more annoying than dangerous, and jail seems a bit harsh to me, but yes, it’s totally unacceptable. We need to do something about it.
Maybe divert some of the security staff from the Eastside Link? There is way more than we need over here. I guess someone at Sound Transit bought into the idea that transit breeds crime, but it really doesn’t work like that…
Is it because of drugs or is it because they’re afraid of passengers spreading covid or other diseases?
The response I got from ST calls out smoking and drugs specifically. I haven’t been able to ask any of the operators directly why they’re doing it, but the next time it happens to me, I will try.
ST says that they’re trying to hire more security officers (these are folks who are supplied by a security contractor, aren’t they? Can ST just, like, ask for more of them?), with the implication being that once there are enough of them, the roping off will end. If it’s fear of Covid / other disease, then having more security in the train won’t do anything to improve hypothetical operator safety.
Operators afraid of COVID will do more to protect themselves by wearing an N95 mask, and staying up-to-date on vaccinations. The chain won’t protect them once they mingle with the outside crowd.
I see lots of bus operators, and usually at least one other passenger per bus, wearing a mask on a typical trip.
That said, I think the big freak-out these days is over the presence of airborne fentanyl, for which there is ongoing testing, and fewer privacy issues getting in the way of transparency.
I make it a point of commending fare ambassadors who wear masks. They are usually the only ST employees who get close to me. They are also the employees most at risk for respiratory viruses.
This is a KC Metrorail thing not an ST thing, unfortunately. The agency is beholden to the wants and whims of our contracted operators and they have a pretty powerful union that can get unreasonable things out of Metro such as allowing operators to rope off the front. It’s only two or three operators doing this as well, and sometimes they only do the first or second row. It’s particularly egregious when they block the entire bulkhead though.
@DM,
Another reason to have ST emps be direct employees of Sound Transit.
But the operator’s environment on a Link LRV is already much, much safer than on a Metro bus. And the operator can always solve a problem by calling ahead to security at the next station. This simply isn’t needed and shouldn’t be allowed.
Too bad these operators can’t be reassigned back down to Metro buses. That would solve the problem!
And, for the record, I have never seen this. I almost always board at the last car. Much less crowded.
Are Metro bus drivers allowed to block off the first few rows of seating (and standing area) in the bus for the same reason? I can’t imagine this would work given that the front of the bus has the seating for disabled passengers, but I also encounter more smoking and drug use on the bus than I do on light rail — and the drivers are more “exposed” on the bus than in a light rail operator compartment. I’ve never seen a whole seating area roped off on the bus, but presumably the same OSHA rules would apply (?). I have occasionally been on buses where the operator won’t open the front door for non-disabled passengers, effectively requiring everyone to enter via the a rear door, and I wonder if that’s an attempt to achieve a similar goal.
Redmond made many smart choices and had grown significantly long before Link. ST2 was in 2008. The Redmond Transit Center was reopened in February 2008; Route 540 truncated at Kirkland and its hours and buses shifted to Route 545. With good frequency and strong two-way all-day demand, Route 545 ridership boomed. Redmond has a tight street grid; it allowed denser development; it converted Redmond Way (SR-202) and Cleveland Street back into two-way arterials to help pedestrians. Microsoft expanded. Redmond would have been strong with or without Link.
If you’re saying downtown Redmond would have developed into the downtown Redmond of today with our without Link, that’s not what the Deadmond to Redmond article says. According to the former mayor of Redmond, it was the possibility of getting Link that set in motion the city going all-in on wanting to see downtown transformed. But, yes, Redmond overall would have been strong with or without Link. But, downtown Redmond would look nothing like it does today without Link. Same with Marymoor Village. Without Link it wouldn’t be the Marymoor Village of today.
Link itself hasn’t done anything, yet, since it doesn’t run downtown yet.
Redmond decided to change itself. It is totally possible to make these changes without a train! If you doubt this, I suggest you take a look at Bothell, which has made some big changes as well, and has little hope of any train service any time soon.
Chistopher Cramer, my comments on this subject are based on the Seattle Times Deadmond to Redmond article. Did you read it? If so, give me your summary of the article.
According to the former mayor of Redmond, it was the possibility of getting Link that set in motion the city going all-in on wanting to see downtown transformed.
But there could have been another trigger. Or it could have happened somewhere else. The key to Redmond transitioning from a sprawling suburb with empty malls scattered around to having more centralized, dense development was Microsoft. A city with that kind of money coming in is not going to become the next Auburn, let alone East Saint Louis.
It is worth noting that a lot of the development in the area is clearly too far away from the station to walk (https://maps.app.goo.gl/hxBT3gupuNy8Z87MA). Link is largely irrelevant in terms of growth there. Link taking credit for development in that part of Downtown Redmond is like crediting Pinehurst Station for the development in Lake City and Bitter Lake that has been going on for decades. Clearly the station will be good for the neighborhood only a short bus ride away but it isn’t why the neighborhood developed.
Put it this way: Imagine that Redmond Link got cancelled five years ago. Would the place look any different? Would it look any different five years from now? Probably not. It is highly unlikely the city council would suddenly chance the zoning back to what it was. It is highly unlikely that developers would abandon the place either. Link would have been the “Stone Soup” of Downtown Redmond development.
The point being that it all about what the city leaders decided to do. If they believe it is important to develop around a station then they change the zoning and allow it there. There are parts of the world where development follows the transit but those places tend to be less zoning dependent. Rainier Valley has grown but it has grown as more along the pathway of the 7 than the Link pathway. I’m sure in both cases transit had an influence but mainly it was because they allowed growth there. Bothell and Kenmore are both examples of areas that have become very similar to Downtown Redmond despite no plans for rail. Again you could say it is because of the good bus service but it is also quite possible that transit oriented development doesn’t need the transit (https://www.accessmagazine.org/fall-2015/does-transit-oriented-development-need-the-transit/).
A question to think about in Redmond Saturday: What percent of the downtown has been made walkable, inviting for pedestrians, and mixed-use? I applaud the few blocks next to the downtown station and north of it, but east around the Safeway plaza (near Marymoor Village station) fills me with dread of huge parking lots, one-story strip malls, and crossing the wide Redmond Way. Further east the Fred Meyer area is completely car-oriented (although it has sidewalks). And on the west end there’s that two-story office park that depresses me. I haven’t been to Redmond Town Center enough to have a definitive opinion of it.
I keep hoping the western office park will be redeveloped, but it hasn’t happened in fifteen years. Will we have to wait another fifteen or twenty years? How much hope is there for the Safeway plaza? Safeway has gone into some mixed-use buildings like 22nd & Madison. When might it do so in Redmond? Even a halfway step like putting the stores in front of the parking lot rather than behind would be better than nothing.
I actually like the sharp contrast between the in-progress urbanism of downtown Redmond and the car sprawl to its East. It will be a good lesson in urban planning for everyone to see.
Even right in the middle of downtown Redmond, there’s a fair amount of poor land use that hasn’t been redeveloped yet. Consider this escape room building (https://maps.app.goo.gl/1TS4YxAA4HpAcrEf8), or this bank (https://maps.app.goo.gl/vw9awUXuLLxTzQE67).
To be clear, I do expect both of these parcels to get redeveloped at some point, but when the land is occupied by a functional business, it can take quite awhile for that to happen.
Unless land ownership is held by one or a few landowners who are also developers, no new rail station’s surrounding land use will be in place on opening day or month.
We have already witnessed how most Link stations open with many vacant or underutilized parcels that become much more developed after 5-10 years. If you remember what TIBS or Othello looked like 15 years ago you know it looks much more developed today.
And because land use needs change over time, it’s probably good that different station areas become developed in different decades. It wasn’t that long ago when mega cinema complexes and mega bookstores were trendy; now we don’t see new ones and many have closed. (I could see potential for more hotels next to Link stations.)
So it’s probably just important to have a good pedestrian circulation plan and flexibility within the zoning code to allow taller buildings and require less parking. After that, a city probably should just be patient for the first decade and let the free market do its thing. After that intervention may be advisable.
Communities also don’t usually think about how public investments can enhance a station area. The locations of libraries and post offices seem like great matches next to or within Link stations. Other public things like police precincts, community centers, adult education facilities, and small gathering parks and plazas also seem like good additions. It’s certainly a possible component in station area redevelopment.
Occupation by a functional business doesn’t seem to have blocked a lot of development around there. Nearly all of the 5-over-1s built around downtown recently have displaced existing businesses. There’s very little unused land around there.
Just by looking at things from above you can see quite a bit of land that is used for parking. But a lot of these surface lots change fairly quickly. It is much easier to see that kind of leapfrog development than it would be to see a small building get replaced. Banks seem especially resistant to changing. Redmond Town Center looks like a fairly healthy mall but there are plans to tear down the parking garage and replace it with a mix of housing and retail (https://www.redmondtowncenterproject.com/home). So while the station area clearly is not that developed it is likely there will be more in the future (and it is come a really long way).
The station location is very good but is still a bit limited. A five minute walk south of the station and it is essentially a dead-end. The existing Redmond Transit Center (https://maps.app.goo.gl/eCtC2A2Gsb2sFTkQ6) is a little more central. I fully expect the area to the north to develop just as the area close to the station develops even though it would be a long walk to the station. For example it seems highly likely that the Bella Bottega shopping mall will see the same sort of redevelopment (into a mix of housing and retail) even though it is a long walk to the station (https://maps.app.goo.gl/TjyH1D6MDmpSzAxX8). Thus feeder bus service (and just bus service in general) will be important as the area grows.
Speaking of which, I don’t see any BAT lanes in the area. Maybe I just can’t see them but that would be a definite weakness that should be addressed sooner rather than later. It is much better to add them before traffic gets really bad, not after.
There’s poor land use kitty corner from Capitol Hill Station.
You mean the Broadway theater/RiteAid site and the dry cleaner west of it? The theater building is pedestrian-friendly and just needs a new tenant. The dry-cleaning site is ugly 50s style but doesn’t have a large parking lot in front. So neither of them are remotely like the suburban hell in parts of downtown Redmond. If you don’t like them, you can walk ten or twenty steps and you’re past them. Try doing that with the Redmond strip malls, or even waking into a business in the Safeway plaza. That’s what I used to do to get to Cartridge World after the Seattle shop closed.
Dicks, which ironically does strong business from Capitol Hill station riders and urban car free residents in Capitol Hill. Plus drunk drivers hitting it up on the way home from the bars.
I wouldn’t call it ”poor”. I would simply call it “vacant”. The prior occupant was a drug store with convenience store features and that was an excellent business to have available near a rail station entrance.
The Broadway Dicks is lovely. The parking aisles go front-to-back rather than requiring people to walk past or through rows of cars. That’s a good way to provide some parking without making it pedestrian-unfriendly. There’s a large pedestrian area in front that gets a lot of foot traffic and makes the neighborhood feel friendly and lively.
I wish the other Dicks were like that. I went to the Kent one, and you have to walk in a driveway uphill and past the parking to get to the kiosk. That’s the opposite of what it should do. Design it at least partly for walk-ups on a RapidRide line, and you’ll get more walk-ups.
If the examples asdf2 gave of poor land use near a not-yet-open Link station in downtown Redmond, which is a neighborhood in transition from car-oriented to denser TOD, then the one-story commercial building that is across from 9 year old Capitol Hill Station is absolutely poor land use. The Redmond properties have an excuse for still being one-story, the Capitol Hill property doesn’t.
Sam, the Broadway Rite-Aid building is small. There are two two-story buildings on the same block, and two other one-story buildings between them. Any of them could be densified independently of the others. In contrast, an entire Redmond strip-mall block would have to be renovated in one step.
I give your Capitol Hill-Redmond comparison 0.5 for trolling. (Where 1 is a total troll and 0 is an honest good-faith inquiry.) You haven’t trolled much recently, so I give you credit for that.
If I trolled all the time, I’d be banned, so I only do it sometimes. And less than I used to.
With this land use topic, I do feel it’s unfair to criticize Redmond for having parcels where land use is called into question, and minimizing how much they’ve done right. Like your original comment. Most of it focused on complaints you had … The Fred Meyer area, the Safeway area, some office park on the west side of town. I’d like to read more about what they are doing right, rather than which areas of town are pedestrian unfriendly. Keep in mind, it’s the suburbs, so much of it is going to look like the suburbs, i.e., stores with large parking lots. Personally, if I had to live in downtown Redmond, I wouldn’t want to live near the station. There’s another areas of town just west of the TC that is quieter and less traffic-ey, with apartments over restaurants and cafes, and in easy walking distance of the QFC, etc. I like the vibe of the area. The only downside would be the walk to the future station would take about 8-10 minutes.
Btw, the great thing about the Downtown Redmond Station area is, if a pedestrian wants to avoid most roads and traffic and sidewalks, they can walk along the Redmond Central Connector trail. Much of the trail near the station is directly underneath the Link guideway and along the long station plaza. Parts of the Redmond Town Center are also car-free. The worst road in downtown Redmond is Redmond Way, which is, admittedly, a busy mess.
I’ve written a lot about what Redmond has done right, and how it punches above its weight. I’ll have more of it on Friday. It has done better than Bellevue or Seattle in some ways, especially for a smaller city. My question was because of comments and the Times article that seemed to portray downtown Redmond as an urban paradise with density everywhere. I wanted to take a step back and look at, how much of downtown Redmond is like that? How much does it have left to go? Because when I walk around downtown Redmond, to Cartridge World or Stone Korean restaurant or Goodwill or the parks and trails, I see both walkable urbanism and sad suburbanism.
As for the mindset that “Now we’ve got Link, we’ll infill the rest of the density over the next twenty years”, my question is, “Why didn’t you infill it ten or twenty years ago? You could have gotten a cut of that real-estate bubble money that was frothing around in the 2000s, or the boom in the 2010s.” That’s the question I have for Lynnwood and Federal Way too.
“That’s the question I have for Lynnwood and Federal Way too.” You should be asking that about every city and station area, including Seattle.
If I trolled all the time, I’d be banned, so I only do it sometimes.
Your trolling is usually amusing and not mean spirited. I don’t think anyone has ever considered banning you.
Every station is bound to have places nearby that are less than ideal from a ridership standpoint. In the case of Capitol Hill it is the park. Should we redevelop the park then? Of course not. The park is very important from a neighborhood standpoint — it makes living in the area a lot more attractive. Ridership isn’t as high as it would be if there were big buildings there but the station is otherwise excellent. The Dick’s in question is a cultural landmark. It was the Dicks that Sir-Mix-A-Lot referred to (in his classic “Posse on Broadway”) when he rapped “Dick’s is the place where the cool hang out”. It is a bit of old-school car culture in the middle of one of the most pedestrian-friendly, least car-dependent parts of the city. It also takes up a relatively tiny bit of the overall land mass. If you look at things from the air you can still find small parking lots here and there that would ideally have bigger buildings but overall it is really good.
Downtown Redmond is not there yet, but the city has done a remarkable job of transforming the area into a place where people want to walk. There are plenty of little urban villages scattered around in the suburbs (e. g. Totem Lake) but very few that are as attractive for walking as Downtown Redmond is now. I would say Kirkland is the only one that is better and it had a lot more going for it before it improved. While Downtown Bellevue has a few good pathways and the nice park it is still way too hostile to pedestrians considering how big it is. So not only does Redmond have a lot more development than it did before it is a lot more attractive than it used to be which should (over time) lead to more development. Parking lots are cheap. They are a great way to make money without spending much. But as property values increase you’ll see more and more get turned into big buildings.
Sam, a parody of a troll. A legend in his own mind.
“Every station is bound to have places nearby that are less than ideal from a ridership standpoint. In the case of Capitol Hill it is the park”
Not if you think about the density of all the people in the park. On a sunny day it’s similar to the number in the same footprint of businesses. There are soccer matches and basketball and skateboarding and water polo every day. It’s like a mini Central Park. It’s my favorite park in Seattle. It can be a destination in itself, with people coming via Link, especially if they’re gathering for a game or with friends. If only some other parks were as well-used.
“It is a bit of old-school car culture”
There’s that. It’s like how McDonald’s was back when it was an independent restaurant. The first parking lots were small one- or two-row strips that didn’t overwhelm the walkability of their main streets. As I said, I wish all Dicks were like that.
Btw, when I say things like I’m this blog’s only Capitol Hill expert, and this blog’s only Pinehurst expert, I’m not joking. But rather than sitting back, shutting up, and learning from, Mike and Ross lash-out, and call me a troll.
@ Sam:
A Bohemian Rhapsody movie quote: “There’s only room for one hysterical Queen in this band!”
It takes being really outrageous to wrest the tiara away from a certain other prolific, often unnecessarily insulting and hysterical poster — even temporarily.
Most people will like the progress downtown Redmond has made.
The northbound Broadway bus stop at Broadway & John has been relocated a block south. This puts it right in front of the Link station entrance, so people don’t have to cross the street to transfer. This is a small but notable win for making the city more transit-oriented.
I haven’t transferred northbound there, but I do transfer eastbound at the 8/11/43 stop. I’m glad that one is right around the corner from the station entrance, and has a next-arrival display.
That’s great news! I know far side stop are generally preferred over near side stops, but I’ve noticed that a majority riders exiting at this stop are headed to Link or other locations south of John. There are times the bus waits at a red light at John, then by the time you exit and double back to the intersection the light has changed again. Waiting through two extra light cycles when transferring to Link is pretty frustrating.
Great news, hadn’t noticed this. This needs to be made a policy that bus stops always be located as close as possible to a station to minimize, to the greatest extent possible, needing to needlessly cross a street. Its both a safety and convenience thing. Every second counts with making transfers and if you can make a transfer even 10 or 60 seconds faster could save you 10 or 15 minutes by making a connection.
Almost always the delay to a motorist saving 3 seconds at a traffic light supercedes a transit rider saving 15 minutes by making a transfer with greater pedestrian priority at a traffic light. All this current prioritization does is encourage driving by making it more convenient and faster at the expense of making transit less convenient and slower. Then people wonder why traffic is so bad while SOVs are rewarded.
Yes bus stop placement matters more than most realize. I was glad when the Olive/ John stop on Broadway was moved from the west side to the east side.
Placement is a notably bigger problem with median running stations like Link on MLK. Every Link rider has to cross MLK and many also have to cross a busy side street too. Alaska at MLK often has jaywalkers. It adds time and adds danger.
It’s why I hope that planners don’t put in a similar setup on Aurora. It’s great for moving vehicles — but terribly dangerous for access.
In general, far-side is best for bus stops because it’s better at keeping the bus moving. Near-side bus stops tend to lead to situations where the bus is stuck waiting an entire light cycle to get through – after serving the bus stop. The tradeoff is that the near-side stop may better for passengers getting on/off at that particular stop *if* their destination is on the near side (but still worse if their destination is on the far side). In a case like Broadway/John, where the connection to Link is such a big deal, I think a near-side stop (for the northbound bus) is justified. But, this should be the exception, not the form.
One additional note on this topic – if the bus is blessed with a dedicated bus lane, near-side stops aren’t so bad. That’s because, if the bus arrives at a near-side stop while the light is red, it can load/unload passengers before waiting for the light, and actually clear the intersection in the same amount of time as a car, which doesn’t serve the bus stop at all. But, this only works if the bus has a dedicated lane – in mixed traffic, cars waiting for the light block access to the bus stop until the light turns green, which means the bus must sit at the stop ahead of a green light, which means the bus misses the light after serving the stop, and must wait again for the red. Even a BAT lane, near-side stops can still present a problem, as cars waiting to turn right block the bus’s access to the bus stop during the red light.
Balducci is right that pet transit policy needs to be reworked. My 2 cents is that Dogs should require leashes and cats require carriers, and operators/security should have the discretion to have unruly animals removed. I also think that while fare for larger animals makes sense because they take space away from passengers, this is not feasible to enforce if ORCA cards can’t pay multiple fares at once (has this changed with the new no-tap-off policy?)
Won’t be enforced just as it isn’t now. There are often fierce pit bulls barely undercontrol of some barely alive junkie on buses that jump up on the seats. Everyone just looks the other way to avoid the situation. Its only a matter of time before someone gets mauled. A few years back a dog was mauled to death on the Portland Streetcar but a pit bull.
As much as I love dogs, it is very dangerous for dogs on trains and elevators. If the doors close the dog can be on one side and the owner on the other side of the doors still connected by leash as the train or elevator cab moves away. Dogs have been killed this way. Its very hard for train operators to see the leash going through the door.
It’s the responsibility of the pet owner to avoid these situations. The safest option is for the human to just carry the dog through train/elevator doors. If that’s not possible, the human should walk directly alongside the dog so it’s physically impossible for the door to close and leave the human/dog on separate sides.
Escalators is another potential hazard. I personally choose stairs over escalators when possible when I have my dog with me and, if it’s not possible, I just carry the dog up and down the escalator.
But, none of this is a reason to categorically bar humans with dogs from riding transit altogether. It just means it’s the human’s responsibility to understand the hazards and make sure the dog gets through safely.
“There are often fierce pit bulls barely undercontrol of some barely alive junkie on buses that jump up on the seats.”
Often? I’ve seen dozens of people with dogs on Metro, and all of them were well behaved (both the person and the dog). I don’t recall any pit bulls, maybe one or two. I’ve never seen a junkie with a dog on a bus. And pitbulls are no more violent than other dogs; that’s a stereotype.
Pit bulls may not be more violent in terms of how often they attack – but when they do, it’s much more likely to result in serious injury or death because of their powerful bite force. That’s why they make up a disproportionate amount of fatal dog attacks in the US – roughly 28%. Other large dog breeds, like Rottweilers, are also overrepresented.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_dog_attacks_in_the_United_States
“A few years back a dog was mauled to death on the Portland Streetcar but a pit bull.”
How many hundreds of thousands of people have ridden the Portland Streetcar since then? How many tens of thousands of others rode it that day without incident?
Well, the King County Metro policy is that dogs (that aren’t sitting on a lap) need a separate fare. It seems simplest to just have Sound Transit use the same policy as Metro.
On the other hand, a few Link stations are in Community Transit territory, and they don’t require fares for animals. I’ve never seen a full CT bus; maybe they don’t care so much about rationing space.
I was on Link with my dog a few weeks ago and got fare checked. The fare ambassador asked if my dog was under 18 years old and because he is, he got a free ride. I’m 90% sure the fare ambassador was joking, but I thought that was an interesting interpretation of the rules.
Cute
Can anyone give me a brief explanation why T link was built to the hilltop neighborhood instead of continuing up Division Ave onto 6th Ave? The current route seems horribly circuitous.
Delta, yes. If you click on my hyperlinked name here, you will see a serious of posts about the Hilltop project and future related projects. It is heavily sourced.
Equity. It would supposedly bring jobs and prosperity to a lower-income area.
DEI. Sufficient number of BIPOC there.
IIRC, the project had dedicated funds. So the studies were more about how to spend dedicated funds rather than how to enhance transit. I don’t think merely sitting on the money was an option politically.
Timing also played a factor. The long list of alternatives were all T-Link extensions. The outcome may have different if an alternative to extend 1 Line to Downtown Tacoma been an alternative. But it was studied before an adopted ST3 could have made that possible.
And 6th Ave is a neighborhood commercial street surrounded by single family homes. It’s fun — but the area is not particularly dense residential. Going to a large hospital and medical center gives the line a more active end station anchor.
Like others mentioned, Hilltop was chosen for economic development and equity reasons—and largely in that order. It was the goal of leadership at the time to connect Hilltop and Downtown to the Dome, and that goal was achieved. With regards to mobility equity, even before light rail was extended to it, Hilltop was one of areas best served by transit in all of Pierce County. Local mobility was further enriched by light rail, however circuitous the line is. That’s beating a dead horse, though.
Al, I do want to disagree with your assessment of the 6th Avenue corridor, particularly when you include the connection to TCC via Mildred Street. In comparison to 19th Street, the representative rail alignment to TCC, 6th Avenue has far more people living nearby, it has notably higher population densities, far more existing transit usage, it is consistently urbanized and more walkable, has a nearly equivalent number of jobs (or more, depending on your buffer area), and serves a wide variety of uses.
It’s more than just a fun area. It is a fundamental transportation corridor within the city of Tacoma.
“Hilltop was chosen for economic development and equity reasons—and largely in that order.”
It also has multiple employment centers and regional destinations along the extension as well. So it already had some pieces that justify it’s existence than just being there for economic and equity reasons.
– St. Joseph Medical Center
– Evergreen State College Tacoma Campus
– Bates Technical College (sort of)
– Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital
– Tacoma General
– Wright Park
– Stadium High School
Zach, statements of equity and economic development are pulled directly from reports that ultimately led to the construction of Hilltop Link. It is also worthy of note that ST2 initially funded the railway only to Tacoma General, which by itself captures many of your listed destinations. An MLK alignment was not presumed at the time—that came about later. 6th Avenue was the representative alignment under the 2005 Long Range Plan and had been the prospective alignment west for about a decade before that. I know I thought the railway would eventually travel down 6th at the time, but leadership had other thoughts.
A presumed surplus of funds allowed for an extension beyond Tacoma General, and the planned tracks were turned south toward MLK and St Joseph.
“statements of equity and economic development are pulled directly from reports that ultimately led to the construction of Hilltop Link.”
And I’m pointing out that equity and economic development was merely a bonus for why the MLK alignment was picked. Serving the county’s two largest hospitals was likely the bigger reason for why the T line went down MLK, for both present and future build out reasons of the Tacoma Streetcar system.
Troy,
Multicare and Franciscan Health are the two biggest non-government employers in Tacoma. Hard to tell just who’s at work these days, but there is likely more staff at Multicare on any given day than non-government office workers downtown. Most of the white collar workforce in Tacoma has just evaporated with work from home.
There’s never going to be light rail down 6th ave in Tacoma because the 6th Ave business district said no. Over and over. No. I’m not sure what part of that you’re failing to understand. There is little popular support for building light rail anywhere in Tacoma…. and even less on 6th Ave.
The parts of Tacoma south of the freeways have no interest in paying for endless projects north of the freeway. Things have changed now. The North End and Downtown do not have the political power they used to. Look, the whole “road safety” bond thing just failed….
Look, the whole “road safety” bond thing just failed….
That may have been the result of having an election at such an odd time. Votes such as those trend to the right. It might not matter in Seattle (where failing levies* are a distant memory) but it matters in other places. Measures like that should take place during a general election (if the supporters want it to pass).
*I grew up at a time when school levies routinely failed. The last levy in Seattle that failed was I believe for a new jail (showing how far we’ve moved to the left — at least with ballot issues).
Tacomee, I suspect you’re generally right about a lack of institutional support for street railway along 6th Avenue and Mildred Street—and perhaps even public support. I think 6th Ave offers a far better far transit project than a railway on 19th Street and so I will continue to push for it. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
However, for the reasons expressed in this thread, I think integrating the light railways is a far more important goal overall.
I think the short answer is that they didn’t care about the circuitous nature of the line. I agree, I think it is silly. But if you assume that things like that don’t matter then the routing is fine. There is plenty of existing density as well as potential for development along that corridor.
I think that is the fundamental problem with the routing. If you assume that it is the only transit in town then it is a good choice and quite likely the best you can do. If it was underground it could be reasonable as well since the detour wouldn’t be so time consuming and each station looks pretty good. But at the end of the day this is just surface transit, like a bus. From a public transportation standpoint it isn’t a great route. It doesn’t really help address the basic problem with transit in Pierce County which is lack of service. Like most streetcars in this country the goal is really not to improve transit — it is to spur development. Doing so along MLK seems quite reasonable in that regard.
I think the streetcar was flawed from the very beginning. It would be one thing if it was an extension of the main Link line. That would be intuitive and create plenty of one-seat rides. But as a stand-alone line it is unnecessary and a waste of service, let alone capital. The first thing Tacoma should do is build a spine through downtown. The 1 already does this. Several buses from the south (41, 42, 400, 500, 501) go through the Tacoma Dome and come close to covering it — they just need to be extended to Stadium. Consolidate the buses along Pacific and you have a solid spine through downtown for very little money.
That still leaves MLK. There are several options. One would be just have the 45 or 48 (or both) dogleg over at St. Joseph’s hospital and cover MLK instead of Yakima. They could keep going (running through Tacoma General in the process) and end at Stadium as well. Or maybe the 11 and 16 could go south on MLK and then east on 19th and end downtown.
But mostly what Tacoma needs is just more service. There are improvements they could make with the routing but it is generally pretty good. The problem is the buses don’t come often enough.