The etymology of railroad and transportation terms. (Words Unravelled with RobWords and Jess Zefarris)

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49 Replies to “Sunday Movie: Word Origins”

  1. Approximate walking distances from Marymoor Village Station to various park destinations:
    Cirque du Soleil – 1500 feet.
    Soccer fields – 2000 to 3000 feet.
    Baseball fields – 3000 feet.
    Music venue – 3500 feet.
    Community gardens – 3500 feet.
    Playground – 3500 feet.
    Outdoor Movies – 3500 feet.
    Off-leash dog park – 4000 feet.

    Approximate walking distance saved from station to park if west access opens – 250 feet.

    1. The platform access is east of the front of the train, Sam. The platform is about 450 feet because trains can be 400 feet long. So if a rider is headed directly west of the platform (velodrome; Cirque; trail) it’s between 450-850 feet out of the way (depending on where someone gets off the train) ; not 250 feet.

    2. Right, and observe where most riders deboard the train. It’s not on the extreme west of east ends of the platform, but more toward the middle. To walk east from the middle of the platform to the east exit, then to walk west back to the middle of the platform is about 250-300 feet.

      1. Here’s how I would caluculate it:

        If someone is west of the platform, they have to walk the full length of the platform (not just half way) outside the station to get across the tracks. That’s 425 feet minimum. Then they have to double back on the platform between 25 and 375 feet to the train doors once on the platform.

        I made this very walk in opening day. I walked to the end booth at the festival outside of the platform. I then had to return past all of the booths again to cross the tracks.

      2. Al. S, I’m looking for someone to write a post on this topic. Would you consider doing it? (This will require visiting the park again, taking pics, pace off some walks, etc.). I don’t believe you have written an STB post yet.

      3. If it’s that much of a hassle to get out of the station, you have to walk the entire length of the platform twice, that might become a safety issue, not just a convenience issue. People might well try to trespass across the tracks, especially potentially intoxicated people trying to get home from an event. Also, if there were to be an incident blocking the egress on the east side, that could also cause an issue, especially if the platform is crowded due to an event. You need an alternative emergency egress route, and once you’ve done that, you might as well keep it open all the time (e.g., like the stairs at UW station). And in principle, it doesn’t seem to be terribly difficult to address either, unless I’m missing something.

      4. That is a good point. Often times it is not the distance, but the perception. I was once on a jury involving a civil case against a gym. Lawyers for the plaintiff spent a lot of time showing how it is just human nature to take shortcuts. You can see this all the time with various walkways. The sidewalk makes 90-degree turns and enough people take a shortcut to build a well worn path. If it involves trains it could range from an annoyance (which could spillover into a negative attitude towards the agency) to a real hazard.

    3. 250 feet is longer than the distance between some MAX stations.

      Portland’s original streetcars stopped every block.

      1. “ 250 feet is longer than the distance between some MAX stations”

        Then that is a design problem with Max. It is totally ridiculous to have stations that close. That is only about half the length of a Link platform.

    4. Glenn, let’s say the west gate is open. If walking 250 feet bothers you, how are you going to walk 3500 feet to the music or movie venues? It’s a big park.

      1. It’s not just about the distance, but the annoyance of that distance.

        You wouldn’t catch ST doing the opposite, and make the park and ride lot users go all the way to the other end of the station.

      2. @Glenn,

        For the opening ceremonies of DRLE I walked from Redmond Tech Station to downtown Redmond. I didn’t find it annoying at all. It was sort of fun.

        And by walking I could ensure that ST didn’t have to split any of my fare with Metro!

      3. What I noticed is the Redmond bound train would discharge passengers at Marymoor and they all. Inch up at the crossing waiting for the crossing gates to open after the sermons bound train kesves. The east end would allow passengers to cross the track behind the train in the station. No waiting maybe?

      4. For a visit to the park or a festival it doesn’t matter. But if you live or work in the area it is just one more annoyance. Whether it is the straw that breaks the camel’s back (and you end up driving) depends a lot on what other straws are involved.

    5. Thanks. I’ve been wanting to go back and time the walks to various park activities, but with me having to ration my walking I haven’t been back yet.

      If Cirque du Soleil is leaving the park as I heard, do we know what might take its place? That would be the closest thing to the station, so I hope it’s something relevant to a wide cross-section of people.

    6. To be fair, a person can consider the locations of the exits when choosing which car to board in the first place. But, I consider that beside the point. All decisions are about cost/benefit. Even if a person can walk an extra few hundred feet, artificially increasing the walking distance with fencing adds cost to the rider in terms of time/effort, but no benefit. If would be one thing if there was a safety benefit, but the rider has to cross the tracks anyway, so what difference does it make crossing on one side of the station vs. the other.

      Essentially, it comes down to ST thinking all about the parking garage when designing the station, and the park connection was an afterthought. They did, of course, consider the park connection later when they added the connector path, but they didn’t consider it at the time designed the station layout, and there is no good explanation for why they didn’t other than general beurocracy. So, it’s the principle of the issue of having to spend additional time and effort walking further, for everyone using the station to access the park in perpetuity, simply because the beurocrats who designed the station were too focused on the parking garage.

    7. The western entrance controversy parallels the difference between “transit-oriented development” (TOD) and “transit-adjacent development” (TAD). If a large store or institution is built with its entrance facing the transit station/stop and a straight pedestrian path between them, it’s TOD. If instead pedestrians are forced to walk around two or three sides of the building and through a large parking lot to get to the entrance, it’s TAD.

      Examples of TAD include Lowe’s on Rainier, Sky Nursery on Aurora, and the VA hospital. An example of TOD is Harborview.

      Usually the station/stop is already there, and the building chooses whether to consider pedestrians as important or not. But in this case, Marymoor Park was already there, and is clearly a large regional destination. ST chose to not put a public-access entrance on the park side. That suggests ST failed to consider passengers’ needs and park users’ needs. If it does have some grand plan to open it up later, why hasn’t it announced it?

      We might have to invent a new word for this, “development-adjacent transit” (DAT). Transit entrances that are not the straightest path to major destinations the station is supposed to serve.

      1. Marymoor Park was already there, and is clearly a large regional destination

        Is it though? I have probably been there a couple times in my life and I used to work on the East Side. There are concerts — I get that. But there are concerts at the zoo and St. Michelle. The zoo just happens to have decent transit and the winery doesn’t. But those events happen a couple dozen times a year. It is a nice park but it isn’t like Discovery Park, let alone Green Lake or Alki. If live in Issaquah or Lake Sammamish it is hard to see this as being a bigger attraction than Lake Sammamish State Park. It is hard to see anyone crossing the lake to visit it more than once. Maybe if you live in Redmond close to a station it is a destination but I wouldn’t consider that regional.

        I’m not saying people won’t use it for that. They definitely will. But most of the ridership will come from the park & ride and the surrounding apartments (such as they are). I can see why ST focused on the former and neglected the latter when designing the station. As I wrote before, it is a “nice to have” station. If push came to shove they could live without it and end up building a bigger park & ride at the main station in Downtown Redmond. This clearly would have been worse. It would have meant more traffic jams for those times when there is a concert and people complaining (even more) about how far of a walk it is from Downtown Redmond. But the impact on ridership would have been minimal (in the hundreds).

      2. Yes, it’s a major destination. There are a lot of events there, not just the concerts. And it has an enormous dog park – anyone with a dog has probably been there more than once.

        But to be honest, other than the major events, the parking lot doesn’t fill up (and parking is only $1), so I don’t think a lot of people will ride Link to the park. This is why there is currently no bus service there. Most of the ridership is going to come from people using the garage.

      3. When you mentioned “TAD”, the first one top of my head is Eastrail Trail bridge over NE 8th in Bellevue right next to Wilburton Station. They could have built better connection between two structures more seamlessly as they were built almost around the same time but they didn’t, which annoys me every time when I walked off Wilburton station.

        This is probably what happen when agencies draw boundaries on things that should have been consolidated.

  2. Back in the 2010’s it seemed to be the Sound Transit practice to put EV chargers in park and ride lots. For example, Issaquah Highlands, Mount lake Terrace, and South Kirkland Park and ride all have them. But, in the 2020’s as the number of EVs on the road have drastically increased, it seems that new transit garages no longer have charging in them, including very large and expensive garages such as South Bellevue, Lynnwood, and Marrymoor Village. Any particular reason for the policy change? Is 5 or so slow chargers in a 1500-space garage that cost over $100 to build really that expensive in the grand scheme of things? And, even then, you would think that there’s enough EVs now that it would be possible to operate chargers in a place like a transit garage as a profitable business, without public subsidy.

    2. I’m pretty sure public-facing EV chargers cost 1-2 orders of magnitude more than $100 each to install if the power infrastructure isn’t there in the first place. there’s also the issue of maintenance, as thieves are targeting charging cables for the copper and other metals. Then there’s the utility agreements, the issue of how to charge for charging, and everything else.

      1. The cost of a level 2 charger is higher in a commercial setting than a home setting, but not that much higher. We’re talking about a few thousand dollars per stall, and is generally cheaper if done during the garage construction to avoid the need to cut through concrete to run wiring. So, for, say, 8 chargers, we might be talking about a $50k expense, around 0.1% of the cost of the garage. Sound Transit probably spent more than that just on artwork. In exchange, the stall might generate a much as $10-$15/day in revenue, every time someone parks there and charges.

        There are also companies starting coming out with theft resistant charging cables, which would be perfect for a setting like this (although, they did not exist yet at the time that recently build ST garages were in the planning phase).

  4. The Link April 2025 ridership is out. Click on the Link tab.

    https://www.soundtransit.org/ride-with-us/system-performance-tracker/ridership

    There are some curious things about it.

    There is a general uptick in Link riders. Much of that is a return to demand following the winter Link disruptions. Some is the opening of baseball season. I see this latest month as a good baseline to compare upcoming openings with.

    The clear #2 busiest station in SeaTac. It and Capitol Hill have both held that title in prior months. However, SeaTac demand is almost equal to Westlake demand here and it’s significantly higher than Capitol Hill.

    Any other trends that others see?

    1. I think there are some interesting relationships between average weekday ridership versus average weekend ridership. Overall, Saturday and Sunday ridership is about 82.5% and 61.2% relative to weekday ridership. At Westlake, ridership is nearly equal between weekdays and Saturdays, but at UW Station, Saturday ridership is less than 60% of weekday ridership.

    2. @Al S,

      Month-to-month data is always hard to interpret due to seasonal variations. Much better to compare same month year-to-year data, but even that can have some issues.

      And with all the scheduled service interruptions in preparation for activating Full ELE it is hard to draw just about any firm conclusions.

      I’m actually more interested in the upcoming May data. There will be fewer service interruptions, and we might be able to get our first look at how much the DRLE is going to impact RR-B ridership.

    3. The increase in SeaTac riders is definitely a long term trend. It really started to pick up last spring and while it still fluctuates it is definitely much higher than it used to be. It is quite likely this is the highest ridership ever for the station (going all the way back to when it was the terminus). The same thing is true for the other stations south of Rainier Valley. This is really the only section that has seen a big increase.

      In contrast the downtown stations are still below what they were before the pandemic (despite the big extensions to the north). Capitol Hill is basically flat despite all those stations north of the UW Station. Rainier Valley is a bit below pandemic levels as well.

      As expected the UW is below pre-pandemic levels but the combined UW/U-District numbers are higher.

      It is interesting, to say the least. It appears as though the biggest increase in ridership is actually *between* those three stations in the south. That doesn’t seem like an obvious trip generator but I can see it. SeaTac employs a lot of people and maybe they are using Angle Lake and TIBS to park and ride to the airport. Likewise with airport commuters. Maybe the reduction in people commuting to downtown has led to more room for people to park (for free) if they are headed to SeaTac. It isn’t all just park and ride users either. There are obviously some people who walk to the station. TIBS also has feeder buses (like the 124) that don’t also serve the other stations.

      1. There are a lot of airport contracted staff that park at angle lake and ride in. They also try to ride for free most of the time which is a pain to deal with. Seatac should honestly have fare gates akin to the new BART ones. Between the airport workers and new tourists not knowing where the fare paid zone is, ST actually loses a decent amount of revenue on that station.

      2. Just a mention that Northgate opened in 2021 after the worst of the pandemic. So not only is U District station only from 2021 but aye riders also come from the north now.

      3. @ Al — Yeah, that is what I meant by “all those stations north of UW Station”. Basically U-District, Roosevelt and Northgate (Northgate Link) along with 148th, 185th, Mountlake Terrace and Lynnwood (Lynnwood Link). All of that happened after 2019 (and the pandemic hit the U. S.).

      4. SeaTac demand really bumped higher in just the past year when Lynnwood Link opened. Since ST doesn’t report station pairs, it’s hard to tell if that was the cause or if it was from some change in employee parking policy.

        Anyway, it looks to me like SeaTac is getting riders that don’t want to pay for other expensive options. It’s a great deal to pay $3 for a longer distance trip.

        And to me it really points to the foolishness of. It building a cross-platform level transfer at SODO for people with luggage. It’s a huge mistake to not add one and it will haunt the region for a century. It just amazes me how North Seattle, Shoreline and Snohomish interests don’t see this future long-term hassle.

      6. “There are a lot of airport contracted staff that park at angle lake and ride in. They also try to ride for free most of the time which is a pain to deal with. Seatac should honestly have fare gates akin to the new BART ones.”

        Given how acute transit and parking issues are at the airport, we should be paying staff, contracted or no, to park at Angle Lake and ride in. It’s a broad benefit to anyone using SeaTac. It’s actually shocking that that SeaTac wouldn’t hand them a free Orca card upon hiring or signing a contract. Commute Trip Reduction is a thing.

      8. No idea, and not sure why it matters. I assume so. That doesn’t eliminate all the increased congestion, pollution, and all the other negative externalities that single occupancy driving causes.

        Enticing people out of their cars with subsidized Orca cards shouldn’t just be for white collar workers in the downtown core.

  5. can we please start running the bus routes that connect to the part of link thst is open now (Redmond to S. Bellevue)?
    ie 251, 222, 270. etc

    1. I accidentally spent some time this morning with a few individuals who are still upset about the deletion of the #20. That bus provided just such a feeder service to Link, and Metro decided to delete it anyhow. Absolutely crazy.

      But such setbacks are only temporary. Metro will continue to move towards more of a Link feeder service, and Link will continue to take on more of the regional heavy lifting for transit. It might be 2 steps forward and one back sometimes, but things will get better.

      I’m cautiously optimistic.

      Now if we can just get Full ELE open……

      1. Your comment makes no sense. You are decrying the loss of the Metro 20 and then saying that Metro should move to more of a feeder system. At best those arguments are superfluous and at worst a contradiction.

        Just to back up here, the section of the route between Northgate and Lake City still exists (as the 61). But the section between Northgate and the U-District does not. Thus the section that was focused on feeding Link still exists while the section that competed with it does not. If anything your argument is completely backwards. Metro decided to focus their efforts on feeding Link and since the 20 didn’t do a good job of that it was cut.

        The reason the 20 was replaced was because it did not perform well. It took too much time to serve too few riders. It was basically a coverage route. While there is value in coverage it is difficult to justify them when times get tough. It wasn’t the only route in a similar position. The 73 is gone. The 17 has lost all-day service. Numerous buses in West Seattle have lost service. This has nothing to do with Link (or Metro’s failure to run feeder buses to it) and everything to do with Metro not having much money to run coverage routes.

        As luck would have it though, the area that lost the most in terms of coverage has a simple solution. Just modify the 62. Doing this would make the bus faster. This would be one of those rare “win-win” situations. You improve your ridership (per service hour) while improving coverage. Everyone Wins! Unfortunately the folks in that neighborhood are too disorganized to actually lobby the city and Metro for that change.

        It is worth noting that the 61 now carries about as many riders as the 20 despite taking significantly less time to operate. Thus it is a more efficient bus. Just like truncations these savings can be put into running other buses more often. I criticize the planners at Metro a lot but that particular change was a good one. They just need to fix the 62 as well (with the help of SDOT if they are the ones holding it up).

    1. I think this a very long-winded yet information-poor press release. It won’t even estimate when trains will first appear on the bridge for initial testing.

      The whole attitude about taking time to get it right rings hollow to me. The system pretty much has to be working correctly no matter what as I understand how Federal grants and liability insurance work — rather than be a choice on ST’s part.

    2. “Construction on the middle segment, across the Homer M. Hadley floating bridge, is almost done, and we’re preparing to start train testing on the bridge over the coming months.”

      “Once testing begins this spring and on through the summer, we’ll have more information, and therefore more clarity, on a target date for welcoming you aboard. ”
      Spring ends on June 19th. So it sounds like some testing will occur between now and then. Not full simulated service, but they’ll begin running some trains across the bridge.

      I appreciated the update.

      1. @Sam,

        I think when they say “testing” they are referring to the dead tow test. I wouldn’t expect any live wire testing until well after that. And certainly not anything approaching simulated service for several more months,

        My big concern is that additional delays to opening Full ELE could then become delays to opening FWLE. We really need both to be open by the World Cup, and ST is running out of time.

  7. New maps onboard trains showing the cross lake connection with sticker saying “1 & 2 connection coming soon”

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