This article is for comments on topics other than the Redmond Link extension. There will be no Sunday Movie this week; instead we’ll have a follow-up article on Sunday after we get back from Redmond.
This is an open thread.
32 Replies to “Weekend Open Thread”
Comments are closed.
Can anyone find a best practices on rules for non-service animal companions on transit?
I liked seeing the Urbanist article about the challenges of stacked flats this week. As middle housing types go, they offer something that similar density townhouses don’t: one floor living.
https://www.theurbanist.org/2025/05/09/the-deck-is-stacked-against-stacked-flats-in-seattle/
I’ve lived in three different stacked flat floor plan units (22 years total) in other major cities. They do offer a level of home convenience that townhouses can’t. It offers a way for multi-generational families to let the senior members age in place at ground level. I hated having noise from neighbors but that’s my main criticism of the experience.
Should we promote them more in our region?
Yes.
I found the nuance around how we define a building as residential vs. commercial, with all the additional codes that come with the commercial designation, very enlightening.
Noise of shared wall is not necessarily an issue for multi-family residential building if American builders don’t always build low-rise as in mass timber.
I believe MAWLA has been lobbying hard in shaping building code in favor of logging industry. Mass timber project has its own benefit of cost-efficiency and resilience in many aspects, but I don’t think it does well in mitigating vibration and sound for a shared wall in multi-family setup.
Back home where most of condo-ish type of residential buildings are built in concrete, I never had as much of noise issue as I had in the US when I living in apartment and then townhouse.
Metro drivers have gotten more aggressive in the past month or two about not waiting for people. Sometimes the bus comes while I’m walking down the block, so I try to run to the back door because I won’t make it to the front door, and either the back door closes in front of me and it goes off, or the bus sits there for a moment with the door closed and drives off. Sometimes I knock on the front or back door but they won’t open it and instead take off. Sometimes I’m even near the front door but the driver doesn’t think I’m taking it, so i wave to the driver, but they don’t open the door and just drive away.
It’s frustrating because I can’t run as fast as I could when I was in my thirties. Each step is slightly painful in my hip and knees, and that can make it hard to move my right leg at full speed, and I can only walk so much a day. Sometimes it’s a hardship to wait for the next bus because there’s no bench so you have to stand the entire time, and sometimes I’m extra tired or have a backpack and bags filled with groceries and there’s no place to put them down so I have to stand carrying them.
The drivers seem to be under a get-in-and-out-quickly order.
It would be easier if more bus stops had BENCHES to sit on or put your bags on. Then I wouldn’t mind as much if I had to wait for the next bus.
I get irritated riding the bus when it’s late and the driver waits for someone waving it down a half a block away. Can you plan your trip better, or just wait 10 or 15 minutes for the next one to arrive?
I can’t “plan my trip better” when I’m transferring from another route. I understand that Metro’s punctuality has deteriorated and it’s trying to make up time. But this is starting to make Metro unusable if it keeps happening this much. Especially if you do everything right, you’re waiting at the stop, but the driver doesn’t let you on. That happened to me with a southbound 132 at Seneca last week.
I’m definitely sympathetic as I’ve benefited from the generosity of bus drivers that wait for me. On the other hand, though, as you’ve mentioned, there are the riders transferring to other routes; I’ve definitely missed transfers because bus drivers have waited for runners or tried to be a navigator for folks who are lost or confused.
I think the only solution here is to run more routes at frequencies where it doesn’t matter if you’ve missed one trip, and to have a grid where you have multiple transfer opportunities.
No, I mean I can’t time my arrival when I’m transferring from another route. The bus stop is around the corner and up three-quarters of the block, and I’m on the block trying to get to it when it leaves.
If the bus is already 5 or 10 minutes late, waiting for people aggravates the problem. It’s not scheduled to be there; your transfer is still 10 or 15 minutes away. I don’t find it hard to distract myself for that amount of time.
https://www.theurbanist.org/2025/05/11/sunday-video-in-praise-of-trams/
I can hear Ross’s teeth grinding all the way down in Tacoma. ;)
Ha ha, that was going to be our Sunday Movie next week. It still will be probably.
I mean, the video is not wrong that the primary value of streetcars over buses is “placemaking,” which is mostly a cultural point but also about wayfinding & permanence – a fully painted bus lane is almost the same but still isn’t as inuitive as a rail line. The question instead is whether the placemaking value is worth the billions in incremental capital cost?
Jarett Walker has been making this point for decades, and trolley bus technology has improved even more since then, in particular with better batteries unlocking more off wire running.
https://humantransit.org/2009/07/streetcars-an-inconvenient-truth.html
It’s certainly a good advocacy video for trams. But every transit technology has its utility — and its drawbacks.
There are some negatives that are treated a bit dismissively. For example, a tram running through a public plaza full of pedestrians looks great on video — but trams cannot do that for very long without sacrificing travel speed and risk the lawsuit when a tram inevitably hits a pedestrian.
I get criticizing Toronto at the end, but it left me wondering how the maker would improve the situation. Is there a reasonable solution?
To me, the video highlights the importance of matching the transit technology with the environment. Any discussion shouldn’t simply be about generic rail vs generic bus. The video makes references to the nuances of different trail technologies but for the sake of video length the maker can’t get too deep.
I would have not included the comment that trams can be fully interchangeable with long interurban trains. (Link trains are as long as two Downtown Seattle blocks.) While there can be track and power compatibility, the different design objectives make it pretty tough to make them interchangeable service strategies.
It is easy for a guy from Amsterdam to neglect one of the big drawbacks with trams: they are a hazard for bikes. Amsterdam is so bike focused that they spend a lot of money making sure that cyclists don’t get hurt on the train tracks. But most cities spend only a little and cyclists get killed (like in Seattle).
It is like someone in Norway saying there is nothing wrong with lots of people owning guns. Yeah, sure, in Norway. Norway has strict regulations on guns. They have a very strong social safety net and a very effective police force so they have a far more law abiding citizenry. But guns are a problem in the U. S. because we don’t have those things and we don’t want to spend money on those things. So for us the amount of guns is a really big problem.
I saw the video before it was on The Urbanist. I was going to comment on it but held off. I just commented (on You Tube). Here is the comment I made there:
No offense but this is absurd. You have confused cause and effect. Consider Phoenix, Sacramento and Montreal. Clearly Montreal is a much nicer city even though the other two have trams. The main reason it is so common for really nice cities to have trams is because they are old cities (with old tram systems) or they have enough density to justify a tram. Old cities and dense cities tend to be attractive. But the trams have little to do with it.
I shouldn’t be so hard on you because clearly U. S. transportation leaders think the same way. They go to Europe, visit a city, walk around, take a tram and think “I want that”. They think the key is the tram. It isn’t. Take away the tram and the city would still be just as charming and just as easy to walk around. Holy cow, you feature Amsterdam! Amsterdam is one of the nicest, most walkable cities in the world! This didn’t just happen. Nor was it the result of the trams. Do you think that if they kept the trams but adopted the Jokinen plan that the city would still be as charming? No way. In contrast if the city was the same but there were trolley buses instead of trams it wouldn’t make much difference. It would cost the agency more (they would have to run more buses) but other than that it would be very similar.
The same thing is true in North America. To actually fix cities like Phoenix and Sacramento you have to spend years making the streets safer, quieter and more pleasant for pedestrians and bicycles (like they did in Amsterdam). Leaders think they can build trams as a shortcut but there are no shortcuts. The main reason that areas around new streetcars in the U. S. tend to be more attractive is because that area suddenly becomes the focus for public works and development. You don’t want to have a tram in the middle of a place where people can’t walk across the street. But you need to do that kind of work (that many cities actually ignore) in the entire city, not just around a particular corridor that has a tram.
As Jarrett Walker put it (https://humantransit.org/2009/07/streetcars-an-inconvenient-truth.html) there are two fundamental advantages of trams. They have larger capacity and they can leverage old rail line. Otherwise a bus can do everything a tram can do. They are electric, quiet, have their own right-of-way, level boarding — you name it. Like trams so much depends on the street, not the vehicles themselves. But a big tram can carry more people than the biggest bus. Does it matter? Sometimes. If Toronto decided to replace their trams with buses they would need a lot more buses. But many North American trams carry fewer people than a bus. In Seattle the capacity of the trams is similar to the bus. But a large tram can carry a lot more people which means that a tram can come less often. This is both a blessing and a curse. It saves the agency money (fewer drivers) but it means more waiting. It doesn’t make sense to replace a bus that is only running every ten minutes with a tram running every twenty. That is much worse for riders.
As Reece Martin put it, trams are a niche mode. They make sense when you have more demand than a bus can handle but you don’t want to invest in a metro. The idea that it is essential for building a really great city — or even a really great public transportation system — is absurd.
While I agree with many of your points, especially about the danger to folks riding two wheels, this serves to highlight a critique I’ve been forming in my head with you and Walker. You think very linearly about the transit.
A city is a living thing, with many dimensions. Time, space, and how development, the built environment, and transit all interact. The interaction can be nurturing, or it can have a negative influence. The cause->effect arrow is actually bidirectional () when it comes to transit and the built environment. It’s actually a temporal/spatial web, where any change in density/zoning/regulations, transit or the built environment (BE) impacts the other things, and how fast or slowly those changes are implemented.
When Walker talks about the appropriate transit for a given environment, he is coming at it from a very static, 1 point-in-time lens, because that is what he is paid to do. Assuming this, static city, this is the transit I recommend, only paying very minor lip-service to the other direction, where transit impacts the other aspects of the city.
But transit actually affects density and BE decisions, and how fast they happen, not just the other way around. We need to think of a city as a living web of inter-dependent features, where changes to one thing to bolster many other things in sometimes hard-to-predict ways.
You think very linearly about the transit.
Nonsense. One of the main things I emphasize when it comes to transit decisions is the important of the network. Holy sh**, I’ve probably drawn more maps of potential transit networks for Seattle than anyone else. I was of course motivated by this brilliant network proposal put together by David Lawson: https://seattletransitblog.com/2013/08/19/your-bus-much-more-often-no-more-money-really/. I read about similar network overhauls done in bigger cities like Houston. I’ve read various books about transit and I’ve discussed transit networks with someone who used to be senior transit planner. Just about every post and every comment has an underlying focus on the network. Why am I so negative about West Seattle Link? Because it won’t do sh** for the network. Why am I so positive about UW to Ballard Link? Because it could transform transit north of the ship canal.
In both these cases I am thinking in the short and long term. The idea that three — three! — stations in West Seattle will be worth 2 billion a piece is just nuts. Of course there will be a lot more density in the future. Will UW move their campus there? Will it suddenly look like Downtown Bellevue? Will they decide to add several stations along the way to justify the insane expense? No!
In contrast it really doesn’t matter what happens where when it comes to Ballard to UW Link. That is the beauty about focusing on the network. Everywhere to everywhere transit is not dependent on a handful of places becoming disproportionately much bigger than everywhere else in the city. Phinney Ridge could go from being this very narrow strip to something much thicker, with apartments and shops several blocks away from the main corridor. Ridership on the 5 would skyrocket. Plenty of those riders would really appreciate a faster, more frequent connection to the UW and Ballard. Same thing goes for every north-south corridor that would intersect that line.
The same goes for streetcars. The reason why Seattle’s streetcar plans are so bad is because the route is terrible. It hardly ever goes straight. It doubles up service where we literally have more than enough buses. Even from a service standpoint it makes no sense. The first test a streetcar should pass is this one: If it was a bus route would it be a good one. The obvious answer for our streetcars is: Hell No!
Of course there are areas where a streetcar *might* make sense. The 70 is one of them. They seriously considered it. But at the end of the day there simply aren’t enough riders. Yes, that could change. Fine. So change it when it does. The idea that we should anticipate growth of the type that would be shocking (skyscrapers on Eastlake?) while simultaneously ignoring many areas that could use better transit now is just the same BS that got us into this mess.
The other day when people were talking about how wonderful all the suburban downtowns are I was thinking about the Central Area. Of course this is too broad an area to focus on just one piece but how about 18th & Jackson (https://maps.app.goo.gl/XZnbY2MhaJJetJVh9). Very close to that intersection you have the Langston Hughes Center. That makes it a bit unusual. Otherwise it is really nothing special for the entire swath of the city east of downtown or even for Yesler. But if there was a station going in there, then people would be very exited to see all the development. They would talk about the wonderful new TOD along with the old apartments and the fact that there is a real destination there (the performing arts center). It is surrounded by density in every direction. Sure, there are some empty spots but once that trains gets here it will fill in nicely. But there won’t be a train — probably ever. Instead they have a bus that runs every half hour.
We are too busy thinking of places that someday, maybe might have some potential ridership (like Shoreline and Fife) than we are places that clearly have it right now! Density, proximity, linearity — all Yesler really needs is just frequency! Planning to run streetcars on a terrible route while neglecting to serve areas like Yesler with decent bus service is just bullshit.
Sorry. Maybe linear was a poor choice of works. More undirectionally in terms of cause and effect. Not in terms of networks. I agree you think in terms of networks. I thought that was clear from the rest of my statement, but I guess not.
My point was that Walker, and by extension you, since you seem to feel he is someone to look to for transit planning, don’t think nearly enough about how transit could affect an area’s density and spur investment in the built environment.
So yes, don’t build a tram with poor routing.
But also don’t avoid a tram with potentially excellent routing, which may not quite have the density or ridership currently, but may be ideally suited to spur investment in BE and have a ton of infill opportunities that wouldn’t be taken advantage of without fixed route transit to serve as a catalyst.
[you] don’t think nearly enough about how transit could affect an area’s density and spur investment in the built environment.
Sure I do. But a few things:
1) Why should we focus on spurring density to some place in the future when there are existing needs now? This gets to the Ballard Station debate. Maybe the area around 14th will have a lot of new development. Maybe they will had a hospital there as well. Maybe they will somehow magically create the character that attracts people from all over the region to Old Ballard. But even if all of that happens why aren’t we serving the area that has all that now? Are we expecting 14th to somehow leapfrog 20th? That seems extremely unlikely and even if it did happen why not serve 20th and hope it continues to grow?
2) Transit has a very low influence on most of Seattle because there is overwhelming demand to live in most of the city. Cancel Ballard Link and change the zoning in Magnolia and you would suddenly see a building boom in Magnolia that resembles those in places like Greenwood. There are also places (like Rainier Beach) that haven’t seen much development. Which gets to the next point.
3) There is no reason to believe that the development is likely to be along a streetcar line instead of a frequent bus line. There is nothing really special about a streetcar. The “if we built it they will come” idea has simply not happened. In much of the U. S., even after years of development you can’t justify the streetcar. They aren’t running every five minutes full of riders. In other words you could replace them with a bus and the buses would not be too crowded. There are places that clearly have been seen development because of a metro though and that includes Greater Seattle. But even then it isn’t clear how much the ‘T’ influenced the ‘D’ or whether it was just the zoning.
4) Buses are way more flexible. Again, this goes back to Seattle’s streetcars. There are clear routing flaws that can’t be fixed for a reasonable amount of money. Even dealing with the right-of-way issues (on Broadway and Jackson) is a big problem. This effects the buses as well (that carry way more riders). One of the simpler things that could be done along Jackson (to speed up buses that carry tens of thousands of riders) would be BAT lanes along the corridor. The reason they don’t do it is because the streetcar can’t use them. It would make the streetcar even slower than it is now.
Or consider the 70 again. It will be replaced by a RapidRide line. The long term plan was to originally send it to Northgate. Then that got scaled back to just run just north of Roosevelt station. Then they ran out of money to even build that. Eventually it will probably go to Roosevelt (which makes a lot more sense) but for now it goes over to the U-District. This means that part of the route will no longer be used when it gets extended. Instead of the bus cutting over to the station (and cutting back) it will simply keep going along the main corridor. This means that whatever RapidRide “stations” they build to connect to the U-District Station become obsolete. But this is nothing compared to the cost of the rail that they would then abandon.
Or consider the routing of the “good” streetcar. In the past I’ve suggested we leverage the First Hill streetcar rather than replace it. But what if the streetcar was just a bus line. We could take the 49 and instead of turning at Pine it kept going on Broadway and turned on Jackson (to go downtown). The 49 would replace the streetcar but serve more places along Broadway. Riders from the north end of Capitol Hill would retain their one-seat ride to downtown. Now have the 60 run straight along Broadway and you have a couple of frequent, overlapping routes. Add the BAT lanes and off-board payment on both Jackson and Broadway. This would be a huge improvement for people going on Broadway and Jackson. If transit impacts development, wouldn’t this have a bigger impact on development than the existing (flawed) streetcar?
Streetcars are a niche mode, like gondolas. The don’t offer the kind of speed advantages of a metro or the flexibility of a bus. They really only make sense when you have a corridor that needs that extra capacity but can’t afford a metro. We don’t have any corridors like that now and guessing that one of the corridors will be like that in the future seems like a fool’s errand. We are better off improving the bus system (bit by bit) and leave the more permanent planning to the enhancement of the metro (which in our case is Link).
The benefits of trams are not just capacity, as the video points out. The two big ones to me, are that it’s a signal to developers that the transit benefits are permanent, and it’s just a substantially superior quality ride.
Yes, in central Seattle, due to zoning, just about everything that can be built, will be built. But that’s the exception, not the norm. If they built a tram down Pac Ave in Tacoma, you don’t think that would improve the built environment by making the road substantially safer be dropping car traffic to one lane, and spurring development? It’s happening on Hilltop Stadium District, and St. Helens as we speak. I’m not saying that I would advocate for that, because need for frequency boosts everywhere is so acute. But when a degraded BRT is 350 million, if it’s that or a tram, perhaps tram.
@Cam Solomon,
You are correct. The benefits of streetcars are many, and capacity is just one of those benefits. And quality sells, which is why rail systems almost always generate higher ridership. And with higher ridership comes improved operating economics.
Tacoma has the nexus of a really good streetcar system in the T-Line. They would do very well to expand the system and expand transit coverage, as opposed to wasting limited funding replacing the existing system with LR.
The two big ones to me, are that it’s a signal to developers that the transit benefits are permanent, and it’s just a substantially superior quality ride.
Nothing is permanent in a city — nor should it be. OK, maybe some historic old buildings but definitely not transit. Hell, even Link isn’t permanent. Riders from Rainier Valley have a fast train that directly connects them to places like Capitol Hill, the UW and Northgate. If things go as planned they will lose that and be forced to transfer. Thousands of trams have been removed over the years in cities across the globe. Seattle is seriously thinking of removing the South Lake Union Streetcar. I would support that so that we can build something that has a much better urban form (https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/10/04/replacing-the-south-lake-union-streetcar/). Better for people biking. Better for people walking. Better transit.
The difference between riding a bus and a tram is minimal. Most riders don’t care. If a bus and tram serve the same area most will take whatever comes first. There is a tourist appeal to trams but you can achieve much the same thing (for a lot less money) by running free tourist shuttle buses (which Seattle does).
There is mixed evidence about whether a tram spurs development: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/11/27/streetcars-and-development-its-complicated. To quote from that article:
The lesson for cities is that there are better incentives to spur development than simply using the “If we build a streetcar, they will come” approach, said Brown and Mendez.
It is worth noting that there is similar evidence that suggests building BRT spurs development: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/01/12/new-evidence-that-bus-rapid-transit-done-right-spurs-development. There is also plenty of evidence that neither is that important — it is the things you add when you typically invest in major transit projects that is the key (https://www.governing.com/archive/transit-oriented-development-doesnt-need-transit.html).
But streetcars are almost always more expensive than providing the same quality BRT (the exception is when there is existing rail). Thus there is an obvious alternative: Provide the same level of service using buses and spend the left over money on other urban improvements. That is one of the big flaws with so many of the streetcar plans — they compare it to nothing. No street level improvements, no transit improvements — nothing. Yeah, of course a streetcar is better than nothing, but that doesn’t mean it is the best way to spend money (if your goal is spurring development or improving transit).
If they built a tram down Pac Ave in Tacoma, you don’t think that would improve the built environment by making the road substantially safer by dropping car traffic to one lane, and spurring development?
Sure, but the same thing is true of bus improvements. That project died because they didn’t want to take a lane. But it being a tram wouldn’t have helped. The agency took the wrong approach and it had nothing to do with mode. This is typical. Look how little of Seattle’s streetcars have their own right-of-way. The streetcar runs in the middle lane on Jackson but it shares the lane with cars. Same is true on Broadway. Just look at Madison & Broadway: https://maps.app.goo.gl/9DBSGsM373F3X6NCA. All that red paint (signifying transit-only) — that is for buses. For the streetcar there is nothing. Mode and quality are independent.
Pacific should have better transit. The bus (or buses) should run frequently. They should take existing lanes (BAT lanes if nothing else). But part of the reason that isn’t happening is because Sound Transit is too busy focusing on novelty projects (like a streetcar or what they call “BRT”) while Pierce Transit is broke.
That is another advantage of buses (although Sound Transit completely ignored it). Bus projects scale down quite well. Imagine for a second the agency planned to take lanes but got too much opposition. Then they found that widening the road would be too expensive. So they punted and just decided to run the buses a lot more often. Run them every ten minutes all day long. Maybe throw in a stop diet as well. Nothing radical — nothing that would require a “shadow” — just stops mostly following international instead of U. S. standards (e. g. 400 meters apart). This would be a huge improvement and yet it wouldn’t cost that much. The same thing could happen with a streetcar but the baseline costs are a lot higher.
Buses scale up as well. I gave several examples up above. The 40 will be made faster by doing unusual things (like making a left turn from the right lane). To do that with a streetcar is a lot more expensive. With streetcars you really have to do it right from the beginning and they rarely do it right. With buses you can make mistakes and fix it over time.
The politics surrounding a streetcar encourage half-ass improvements. An agency is more likely to declare victory when all they’ve done is laid a bunch of tracks. This definitely happened in Seattle. The First Hill streetcar was considered compensation for losing the Link station. But instead of asking the city and Metro what would be the best way to improve transit in the area (or hire a consultant to do studies) they just settled on a streetcar. It is something tangible and concrete. But it is not nearly as good as a combination of bus lanes and better service.
OK, the Redmond stations had me thinking. What is the 269 doing? Specifically the route around Marymoor. It looks like the Gordian Knot. After following the main corridor in Sammamish towards Redmond it stair steps to the north to pick up some areas over there. Fair enough. (For want of a better term I’ll call that the “Bear Creek area”.) But then it goes up to the Bear Creek Park and Ride and turns around. Then it goes under SR-520 on 76th and finally seems headed towards Downtown Redmond. But then it makes a fake that Marshawn Lynch would be proud of (Ha! Juked ’em) going back under the freeway on Redmond Way, headed towards Sammamish. It turns once again (to serve one stop?) before turning around yet again and finally getting on 520 to head towards Overlake.
It looks just as bad (if not worse) with the future restructure. From what I can tell the bus never crosses SR-520. Anyone trying to get to Downtown Redmond has a long walk or a transfer (or both). The weird part is there will be another bus serving that Bear Creek area (the 251). It seems like it would be much simpler and better to just head to the Redmond Transit Center (via the Downtown Redmond Station). That way you serve more of Downtown Redmond while also connecting just fine to Link. Make stops along the highway so you can go to various places on either side. So basically this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/xE8tcoYHanXNtc618.
To be fair the 251 doesn’t cover all of that Bear Creek area. It leaves 188th and 65th. I think just adding bus stops would be sufficient but if you really want to cover it, so be it. Just make a little detour, like so. Note that it takes 9 minutes to serve the station (before the bus would continue to serve more of Downtown Redmond). In contrast, from what I can tell the bus will do this, taking ten minutes to get to the station. So even though the station is closer it takes longer. WTF?
Folks on here have talked quite a bit about how Downtown Redmond is now a real destination. If that is so then it would attract people from Sammamish. Yet the only way to get there using transit would require a transfer (at Bear Creak Park and Ride). For a bus coming from that direction ending at the transit center is pretty much perfect and yet they won’t do that.
I think they’ve run out of idea how to cover all those places, so they invented this 269 checking every boxes. Route 269 is all over the place now. It shouldn’t really be one bus route’s job to cover all those places…
Sorry if this has been discussed last week. I just notice that on SeattleTimes coverage on Redmond link extension opening over the weekend, it mentioned that
“Dow said Thursday the segment (2 Line cross-lake) will miss the latest goal, which was to open Dec. 27, 2025, but is now on course for “early 2026″”.
@Hz,
I think “early 2026” should be interpreted as Q1 2026.
And here comes FWLE. Late night closures of Link at Angle Lake start May 19th and potentially last a month:
https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/news-events/news-releases/late-night-closures-angle-lake-station-link-1-line-begin
This is good news as it means solid progress is being made. Hopefully ST can phase the testing on Full ELE and FWLE so they don’t need to be fully sequential.
And hopefully the problems on Full ELE don’t result in a delay to FWLE too.
But this is very good news.
New link map showing the connection of the two lines: https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/s/b2O7f27gxl
@Seb,
Great catch. I didn’t even check the maps on opening day of DRLE since I don’t really need them.
Can’t wait to see some of those overlay stickers being removed. It’s almost like we are becoming a real city now.
Thanks for posting.
Interesting.
I wonder if this means that the 2 Line will start running between Lynnwood and the ID soon. I was surprised that ST didn’t already start doing this as a way to ease North Seattle train crowding at peak hours. The 2 Line in Seattle can operate without crossing the bridge if needed as long as vehicles can be made available and the communications system is in place. That’s especially true when testing starts to operate without crossing the simulated schedule several weeks before the opening.
> From early-morning school drop-offs to seniors booking rides to the hospital, from suburban commuters seeking a faster link to the metro to families visiting ancestral graves, Shanghai is rolling out a new kind of public bus — one that’s designed by commuters, and launched only when enough riders request it.
> Branded “DZ” for dingzhi, or “customized,” the system invites residents to submit proposed routes through a city-run platform. Others with similar travel needs can opt in or vote, and if demand meets the threshold — typically 15 to 20 passengers per trip — the route goes live.
https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1017072
Kinda interesting. It’s somewhat like a much faster turn around feedback loop with surveys. Or also somewhat like a large uber pool but on the scale of hundreds of passengers. I guess the closest analogy in usa might be when parents survey/vote for bus routes or commuters for work shuttle routes.
Though of course it’s probably only possible one the scale of shanghai with much higher ridership. still it’s quite interesting to know if this will concept will continue