Memorial Day transit information is below the movies.
The evolution of Green Man/Red Man (walk/don’t walk display) in Britain. Includes a square-dance song at 9:51. Comparison to US at 15:58. (Chris Spargo)
Are American hawk crossings better than regular pedestrian crossings? (Evan Edinger)
Memorial Day transit service on Monday, May 26: Sunday schedule for Metro, Link, ST Express, Seattle Streetcars, Community Transit, Pierce Transit. No service on Sounder. Monday schedule for water taxis (West Seattle, Vashon) and their shuttles (773, 775). Seattle Monorail 8:30am-11:00pm. Metro links (includes other King County agencies), Community Transit and Pierce Transit announcements.
The Link 2 Line will have extra late night service on Tuesday, May 27 for the concert series at Marymoor Park. The last southbound train will leave Marymoor Village station at 11:32pm and turn around at South Bellevue station at 11:55pm and continue northbound to Downtown Redmond station.
This is an open thread.
Seattle’s only lot for homeless people living in their RV’s has closed and is about to be developed into a three-story pickleball court complex.
Because everyone loves pickleball!
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/seattles-only-homeless-rv-parking-lot-makes-way-for-pickleball-complex/
This has been the plan for years.
You Earthlings should have paid attention and known your planet would be demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass.
I guess the coverage about the “temporary” RV parking lot while the pickleball court went through permitting was easily forgotten.
I wonder if ST did anything to help relocate the residents of the RV park that ST took over and cleared out to make way for the Federal Way Link extension.
I recall Seattle’s war on parking RVs on the street starting about then.
They sent them down to Burien, Renton, and Kent… Like they usually do.
Not to steal the thunder from the next roundup but this is great news: Aurora Ave N Bus Lane Hours Expanding to 24/7. Folks have been pushing for this for a long time (https://seattletransitblog.com/2014/08/18/full-time-bus-lanes-please/). Now they just have to do that every else.
Agree. Now, it’s time to do the same on Elliott for RapidRide D. Waiting to merge into traffic after every bus stop to get around a single parked car is not rapid.
Yeah, the Seattle Transit Blog article I referenced used Elliot as an example. In general they should do this everywhere. Note that the city made certain exceptions for areas that need load/unload access. That is the right approach. The (city-wide) default should be 24/7 BAT lanes but occasionally make an exception for a load/unload area where there is just no good alternative.
The 24 and 33 would really benefit a lot from that too. It’s ridiculous that many of these places along Elliott have huge surface lots, and yet for whatever reason someone decides they need to block street traffic.
Perhaps the people parking on the street aren’t even affiliated with the adjacent businesses, and therefore are not permitted to use the parking lot. For instance, they could be using the street as a park and ride to ride the bus downtown.
Perhaps the people parking on the street aren’t even affiliated with the adjacent businesses, and therefore are not permitted to use the parking lot.
Not every business along Aurora has a parking lot. The area close to Green Lake has a lot of businesses without parking. Personally I would park on the side streets. I recently did that when I recycled a bunch of old computer junk at Seattle Laptop: https://maps.app.goo.gl/DLbeqLwcJKspdTLT7. It would have been easier to park in front as I had to make several trips (I had a lot of junk). It looks like it would have been legal too, based on the sign and when I went there. But I didn’t want the hassle of parking on Aurora or needlessly delay a bus if it happened to come along.
Personally I think parking on the side streets is reasonable but I can also see why they might make an exception for load/unload, especially if there are issues with side streets. For example consider Duck Island Ale House down the street. Rolling a keg to the Duck Island Ale House wouldn’t be that hard from 73rd (https://maps.app.goo.gl/u6wBDhEojSWaYciZ7) if there was easy parking on 73rd. Then again I can see why the city might make an exception there. Hopefully that doesn’t happen too often.
Perhaps the people parking on the street aren’t even affiliated with the adjacent businesses, and therefore are not permitted to use the parking lot.
I think the peak period BAT lane policy there has already discouraged such activity. The situation as you described are the worst at collector streets like W Nickerson St in North Queen Anne and Thorndyke/Gilman Ave W in Magnolia where there are parking lanes but no parking restriction at all. I’ve noticed a few cars have been there forever.
TBH, the whole parking lane thing was just very unfamiliar to me when I first moved to Seattle. The first time I drove to Lake City, I almost hit some cars parked on the right lane as pavement stripping gave me the impression that the right lane is also a travel lane. I guess this is probably some kind weird local tradition coming from the past.
This should help things. I often notice the busses bunched up and packed at hours when the bus lanes are not in effect, and busses often end up waiting for a break in the traffic to get over when people park there.
Copying the Spokane thread from the bottom of the 206-comment roundup:
I wrote:
spokaneresident, how is housing in Spokane doing? How has it changed in the past three years since the pandemic subsided? Ross has been talking about how Spokane upzoned citywide to eliminate the very low density category. (What are the specifics? Does it exceed the newer state standard?) How has housing responded to that?
spokaneresident wrote:
Briefly – I may be able to come back to this later – I just read in the local forum that building permits for multifamily housing have smashed all records this last year, following on another record the year before. I live close to downtown and can report one large building crane (for luxury units, only 36 of them, sadly) and one large downtown historic building being converted from office to apartments, which will add about 100 luxury units.
I did find the link! Here: https://www.krem.com/article/money/economy/boomtown-inland-northwest/boomtown-spokane-record-housing-permits/293-22876923-aef3-49b8-986c-5b96db285c58
In general, I do not think this will meaningfully improve affordability for Spokane residents, due to capitalist considerations (the companies would not be building if they did not think they could make a good profit). But I think we all know in our hearts that housing prices won’t come down until it all comes down, unfortunately! On the positive side, it does revitalize the housing stock, and adds to the local economy. All in all I am fairly happy with Spokane’s housing policy, and will support the candidates that continue it in this vein.
I cannot speak much to the past as I have only lived here a year so far. But if I come across anything else relevant, I will post it!
I wrote:
They can probably make a good profit with the existing prices. The fact that development is smashing records indicates there was pent-up demand.
Prices are sticky on the way down because nobody wants to take a loss. So it’s easier to slow down or stop price increases than it is to make them decrease. That’s the immediate purpose of all this new housing and why an upzoning was needed: to slow down or hopefully stop the price increases. The citywide and metro-wide average that is. Once we get that, then we can think about bringing them down. And people can try to afford that flattened level, and we can help them attain it, rather than having the prices slip up more and more out of reach every year.
What’s your impression of Spokane’s walkability? Is it still just downtown and around the WSU campus? Are the number and variety of walkable retail still not as much as they could be? Or are there signs of things getting better over a wider area?
How’s the City Line and its corridor doing? We’ve been watching and rooting for the City Line’s various bus and streetcar attempts for over a decade, although most of us haven’t seen the corridor or know exactly what’s there or which Pugetopolis corridor most resembles it. I walked the corridor from Browne’s addition to WSU, partly on the trail, but then I turned the wrong direction (west instead of east) and missed the rest of it to Spokane CC, so I don’t know what that part is like.
Wikipedia says a second RapidRide-like corridor is being built north-south on Division Street, to open by 2029. That feels like some of our recent and upcoming openings (RapidRide G, and near-future RapidRide and Stride lines), so it must be exciting.
Sorry for the delay, I don’t spend a lot of time on the computer nowadays. Baby is playing next to me so will be brief.
Walkability – I live on the bleeding edge of downtown, so find the area extremely walkable, but I suspect it always has been. All new “improvements” to the area decrease walkability, including repavement projects. Nevertheless the only real limit I see to me and my kids walking everywhere we can reach on foot is that damn freeway in south downtown – they’ve made it as porous as possible for pedestrians, I have no suggestions to fix it, but the cars behave so dangerously there that we avoid it, which cuts off the South Hill and all the good cardio it would have given me otherwise! :/ When I do need to get there, the central bus terminal is an easy 15-minute walk and the buses are excellent quality and come frequently. I drive to all other parts of town when needed and can’t comment on their walkability, though there’s been some nice development along North Monroe recently.
The City Line is one block away from my house – I actually don’t use it very much, because I don’t like waiting at bus stops (I walk straight to the terminal instead of transfer) and because they have a rule about taking all babies out of strollers and holding them on your lap. I had some health concerns after his birth and holding a wiggly toddler for 20+ minutes wasn’t an option. But my husband has used it and he has high praise. I will use it more when my youngest can easily walk by himself.
The bus project that would most excite me personally would be running the buses later at night… I’ve done a lot of freezing midnight walks at this point after being on my feet 10+ hours. A bus would have been REALLY nice about then.
Speaking of the Division Line, though, it seems like it’s full speed ahead on that – especially exciting, as my husband is about to become a bus driver himself! :) They’re also staggering along on that utterly useless freeway, too, which is an amazing bonfire of taxpayer money. But I know how the sausage is made at this point – I think the funding for both projects is coming from the same pot, and the suburbanites getting their freeway keeps them out of the hair of the city officials doing their best to revitalize downtown.
In short, I am really optimistic about Spokane! :) There’s a whole essay in me about the streetcar project but I just don’t have the time and energy to write it (I’m paying my elder kid in Youtube videos to watch the younger long enough for me to finish this). I’ll check back in if/when I get a break!
Did anyone catch this paragraph from The Urbanist’s latest Link post?
“Right now, Sound Transit is planning around a January 16 grand opening date — but achieving that date is heavily dependent on how the next few months go, as the agency conducts robust testing on the first light rail line to cross a floating bridge anywhere in the world. After the unpowered LRV tow, the next major phase of testing will be live wire testing, expected by July. If all goes well, trains will enter pre-revenue service testing — running empty along the full line — by late summer.”
If that slips any more could they at least open Mercer Island Station with service to Bellevue/Redmond? Ironically MI was one of the very first stations completed on East Link – about five years ago now. Seems like most of the remaining issues surround the floating bridge, not the East Channel Bridge.
I really think we should push for Mercer Island and Judkins Park stations to be opened before the Lake crossing is ready – they previously opened the Eastside starter line before the rest was ready, they could do the same here. Those 2 stations are important for ridership plus by opening Judkins Park station they will enable higher frequency service through Seattle.
It’s a reasonable ask. Once the live wire trains can come from East OMF, ST will have the liberty to open segments without bringing too concerned about rolling stock.
The hassle is that they like 6 months between openings. So I’d think of this as a back pocket strategy if testing exposes problems that require longer delays.
I’ll add that the new diagrams suggest that the 2 Line should already be running between IDS and Lynnwood. This is consistent with my expectation that when full simulation begins 2 months before opening that 2 Line trains will be in service between these stations. It seems possible that we can see 2 Line trains at platforms in Seattle as soon as mid-November or in less than six months.
Simulation should also result in 2 Line trains running later than they do now on the Eastside.
So the outcome is probably to not open the two new stations as long as ST can stay on the new schedule to begin simulation in November. But if a bigger delay arises it makes sense to look into this.
So what would be the next step to getting this to happen? Maybe the Urbanist could publish an article to Garner public support?
I really think we should push for Mercer Island and Judkins Park stations to be opened before the Lake crossing is ready
I’m not sure if that is possible. You would need to have a turnaround spot in both places. We would still have to test things (which is what we are currently waiting for). It would be a fallback position but it would only make sense if they find something really bad in the section between Judkins Park and Mercer Island while everything else seems OK.
@ Delta:
Trains won’t begin crossing Lake Washington on their own power until sometime this summer. It appears that this must be possible to have enough train sets to begin any simulation. Simulation has a ramp up period. So at the very least, ST will need at least three to four months to simulate service the additional stations even if they declared this strategy in the next month. So that means that it couldn’t really happen before November once trains are crossing on their own around July 4 even if ST was gung ho for the service change.
With a mid-January opening — as well as 2 Line service in Seattle but without Judkins Park seemingly scheduled in mid-November anyway, it’s really hard to see a benefit trying to get the two stations open just a few weeks early.
As Ross also suggests, it’s not practical unless some additional major delay occurs with the bridge crossing. The timing of the required simulation is just too tight.
While the majority of comments on the blog seem to lead to the idea that incremental station (JPS and MIS) opening before the floating bridge opens in January (2025) would provide an advantage for only a few months at best for for the two stations opening early, you gotta wonder how solid that January opening is. That being said I would like to see ST actively working on how to open those two stations when the schedule inevitably gets delayed again. There are crossovers serving both stations and the practice for running a Bus Bridge between JPS and MIS will come in handy for the inevitable closure of the floating bridge section during a few years of teething problems.
The shorter Bus Bridge would allow for the slow bus approach to downtown Seattle and Bellevue to be avoided making Eastside to Seattle connections better than the current 550 shuttle connecting the two sections of working rail.
This follow the Balduchi Rule of not sitting on a perfectly good section of rail line while a non dynamic operations group sticks to a constantly degrading schedule.
I was about to suggest a shuttle bus between Judkins Park and Mercer Island. Link has replacement shuttles when a track segment or station is closed. Why not apply that to the 2 Line multi-phase saga? The 550 runs every 15 minutes weekdays and Saturday but 30 minutes Sunday and evenings. That makes it harder to do a multi-seat trip during the 30-minute periods, especially if you’re also waiting for a 30-minute bus route on the Eastside.
I don’t know if I-90 buses can feasibly get to Judkins Park station without a significant detour from the freeway exit or turn around there, but ST could at least look into it.
I’d rather ST just run the 550 more often until the full 2 line is running.
The 550 was going to get 15-minute Sunday service in 2022 The 535 was going to get its first Sunday service (in the Stride 2 corridor), the 522 was going to get 15-minute service, and the 594 was going to get 15-minute service. Those were all swallowed by the driver shortage. Now that the shortage has eased somewhat, and the 550 is only one route in a delayed Link corridor, maybe ST could swing it for that route. Especially with the World Cup coming and it being uncertain whether the full 2 Line will make it in time.
Wouldn’t they have to go through most of the same testing process anyway, just to open up Mercer Island and Judkins Park?
I thought I had heard several months ago that they were running powered trains through Mercer Island and the eastern (non-floating) bridge. This puts Mercer island ~4 months ahead of the floating bridge section, plus it sounds like they wanted more testing time than usual for the floating bridge.
Judkins Park on the other hand sounded like it was only a few weeks ahead of the completion of the floating bridge, based on the timing of dead car tows. But given the significance of opening Seattle’s portion of the 2 line, and the possibility of further delays on the floating bridge, opening this fall would be a great move.
“Wouldn’t they have to go through most of the same testing process anyway, just to open up Mercer Island and Judkins Park?”
I think you are correct, Brandon K.
It’s not like a street that can be opened once the pavement is ready. Not only do the wire, tracks and stations need to be finished, but there are a host of other systems that must be activated and working properly. Train control is the biggest but power, emergency, security, information and monitoring have to be properly working too. Then there is the need for staffing adjustments — not just drivers but all the other jobs that go along with the operation. It takes time to hire and train people.
I don’t see ST wanting to look into opening parts earlier. January is only 7 months away and it takes 5-6 months to open anything partially anyway — even if ST decided to pursue any partial opening starting today (and that’s highly improbable). Getting a month or two of a partial opening is seemingly more of a logistical challenge than it would be a benefit.
It only seemingly makes sense to look at any partial opening if an additional delay arises that delays crossing Lake Washington by several more months. It’s a scenario that no one wants to contemplate but it’s possible. The nature of that further possible delay is of course unknown so we can’t even speculate if any partial opening could happen under that scenario.
I will say that when full “last stage” 2 Line simulation finally starts, that it makes sense to me to activate the bus restructure and have 2 Line trains take riders on the segments between, Lynnwood and IDS and between South Bellevue and Downtown Redmond (ejecting riders in between). The 2 Line trains will be running every 10 minutes until late evening in simulation. To get riders across the lake, I would have a 2 Line “temporary bus bridge” branded to connect CID with South Bellevue at a high frequency — meeting every arriving train with 1-3 bus bridge buses depending on train loads. That would be instead of continuing to run Route 550 (as well as other similar routes) for its current length. I may be alone in this thinking. ST and Metro would of course have to create added layover space for more buses at both ends. It may be a real challenge in the middle of the CID without doing something like fully closing a travel lane.
@ Delta:
“I thought I had heard several months ago that they were running powered trains through Mercer Island and the eastern (non-floating) bridge. This puts Mercer island ~4 months ahead of the floating bridge section, plus it sounds like they wanted more testing time than usual for the floating bridge.”
Yes, I was on I-90 late one night several weeks ago when I saw a train running seemingly at full speed through the Mercer Slough curving overpass.
As I explained above, that doesn’t mean that it’s ready for full simulation. There are other systems to test and verify before a full simulation can begin — and I’ve read that a full simulation is needed for two months prior to any public opening.
550 has been constantly running behind schedule during the PM leak due to terrible delay along Bellevue Way between NE 4th and 112th that almost occurs every Tuesday-Thursday.
I honestly think it is probably for the best to everyone if they just truncate half of the trips at South Bellevue so ST 550 won’t run out of bus for 40 minutes.
I think ST sees 550 as a service that is about to be cancelled, so it just let it on time performance deteriorate without doing anything.
Does the G line have signal priority? It’s frustrating how the G often sits at traffic lights, especially while crossing I-5.
Madison has lots of pedestrians. Most signals have crosswalks that have a walk sign that automatically has the crosswalk countdown for pedestrians.
Many intersections are just two phases. Many that have more — like 23rd and Broadway — have buses on both crossing streets. Many transit signal priority techniques involve automatic swapping of signal phases for but it takes more than two phases to have something to swap.
Finally, it’s hard to develop a logic beyond only the next bus stop. The software has no idea a bus must wait at a stop. It isn’t like Link on MLK where the stops are well over a mile from other ones so several signals can be coordinated. RapidRide G has stops only every few blocks so it’s hard to automatically predict more than the next signal or two when the bus arrives.
The lights at 6th are particularly dumb. As far as I can tell general traffic goes before the bus in both directions
I usually take the G eastbound, and I’m impressed with its speed. It’s significantly faster than any of other frequent east-west corridors (Pine, Seneca, James, Jackson). It waits a bit at the turns and some places downtown, but once it gets to 9th & Madison it just sails. So even if its signal priority isn’t frequent, it’s still the fastest and most pleasant way to go east-west, enough to sometimes attract me from the Pine Street routes. For instance, if I’m going to Trader Joe’s or the library, I might do both so that I can take the G rather than doing the other some other time.
Westbound might have more problems downtown. I see it waiting a while at the 5th and 4th intersections. I don’t see it where it crosses I-5 and I don’t remember that from the times I’ve taken it.
FirstHiller asked a simple question. “Does the G line have signal priority?”
And I didn’t answer because I don’t know, not being closely involved with Metro’s engineering. I thought that was part of the project. It seems like it does, although not completely, just like Link’s signal priority on MLK isn’t always complete (occasionally the train waits at major intersections, which it theoretically shouldn’t have to). But as Al S said, there are many cross streets with a lot of bus passengers and pedestrians, so giving Madison absolute priority would harm those unacceptably. And 2nd, 4th, and 5th are very major streets with hundreds of cars, so we can’t just say they should get zero priority.
The train usually loses its cascade due to either a pedestrian cycle (ada required amount of time prevents the signal from turning), or the operator is too slow — 35 is what the speed is supposed to be, some operators don’t adhere to that out of concern for collision risk.
That being said LINK probably has the best signal priority in the country. I sincerely hope we grade separate and be done with it though.
35 mph is supposed to be the G’s speed? That sounds impossible. Most Seattle arterials were 30 mph when the city reduced them to 25 for Vision Zero.
Sorry, Link’s speed, not the G line, though the G definitely has operators that send it so it may be more than the 25mph street speed .
It has transit signal priority but not preemption
The next question would be “how much” priority does it receive.
I unfortunately don’t know if there’s an easy measurement to compare how much priority the bus gets, but I’ll see if there’s some pdf/document
Yeah, this concept is often misunderstood. The buses don’t operate like emergency vehicles. The normal traffic-light cycle remains the same. It is just that if the light is about to turn yellow it stays green a bit longer. If the light is going to turn green in a few second it turns green earlier. Drivers going across the path of the bus may not even notice but if they do it is because they are regular drivers and notice that their phase is a bit shorter than usual.
Signal management is complicated. There is a whole section involving various aspects of it here. The “Basic Concepts” don’t seem that basic to me. The traffic signal priority section is a little easier to understand. You are bound to gain more from passive priority but that is difficult to do since there are crossing bus routes as well (as Al mentioned).
That is why it is difficult to create a “Green Wave” for Madison. Even doing so has to take into account the fact that the bus makes a lot of stops. It is fairly easy to time signals so that a car can make each light if they traveling the speed limit. It is difficult to do that with a bus (although not impossible in all cases).
One of the simpler thing that can be done is to reduce the number of left turns. Most of the left turns are controlled left turns (which is a good thing — they are much safer). But it screws up traffic. It makes the cycles much longer. For example you are allowed to turn left (with a left-turn arrow) from Boren to Madison and Madison to Boren. This means there are four phases instead of two. There is no good reason for that. You could get rid of those left turns and just force riders to make three right turns.
Now that Madison is a de-facto transit street we should double-down on efforts there to make the most of this important corridor. The same is true in general. We should try to create transit and non-transit streets. Transit streets should not only have bus and BAT lanes but they should have simpler signal phases so that buses can go faster.
One of the bigger weaknesses with the G is on Spring, close to the freeway. You have cars trying to take a right to get onto the freeway. But the bus is on the right. Thus you have a special signal so that the cars can go in front of the bus. The bus is subject to an extra phase that cars going straight (in the left lane) don’t have to endure. I’ve argued for contraflow downtown since before they started construction. I still think that would be the ideal solution. But one relatively easy way to solve that problem is to put the bus lanes on the other side of the street (and take advantage of the doors on the left side of the bus). There is a bike lane and the bus would travel next to it. You would just need to add raised platform bus stops like on 65th NE. It is unlikely there will be conflicts given a bike would be going uphill. Meanwhile you only have two left turns on Spring (for 4th and 6th). I would ban those turns and make the left lane a 100% bus-lane. These changes would make the bike lane safer. Not only do they have a bus lane as a buffer but no one can turn left in front of them. This would simplify things for drivers as well. Basically they just stay to the right if they are headed to the freeway (which is intuitive). It would minimize violations along with the “I didn’t know” excuse. There would be no reason to be in the left lane (the bus lane) since you can’t turn left. You would still have the same number of general purpose lanes on the street.
I realize that SDOT invested a lot into this project and figured it was done. It is definitely a huge improvement. But projects of this nature can always get better, as they should.
Signal priority is a broad term. For example, an exclusive bus lane signal that lets a bus leave ahead of traffic to go from the median to the curb is giving transit priority. So yes the corridor has some transit signal priority.
The better question is how much priority does it get. The need to stop every few blocks (downstream signal priority is really only logical between stops or at a few blocks at a time given the bus’ need to stop again), The need to move buses that cross Madison and the need to have pedestrian countdowns most of the day also keeps the corridor from getting more visible priority — so it cannot run more pronounced like MLK does with Link. Plus, Madison is not overly wide so the signal waits are shorter.
SDOT originally pitched that the corridor would take about 10 minutes each way (a promise mostly now scrubbed from web sites by the way). The actual Metro schedules say 15 minutes inbound and 18-19 minutes outbound. That doesn’t mean that the service could however run faster with more priority. With 9 bus stops each way, getting to 10 minutes each way (original pitch) looks unattainable and unrealistic . The scheduled 15-19 minutes looks pretty reasonable and successful in context. So I doubt that trying to get more transit signal priority could reduce travel time much more.
Finally, part of the project objective was to reduce bus bunching. Reliability was a big motivator for the project. Faster speeds are not the only use for signal priority; preventing bus bunching and uneven bus rider loads is another big one. So the priority may be targeted more to that rather than to speed, which is why it may seem non-existent to a person on a bus.
Thank you all for the helpful, thoughtful responses. I’ve loved the G for the increased frequency, but it’s been really frustrating to sit on the bus at traffic lights on Spring at both 6th and 7th while waiting for freeway bound cars. I had thought that the lights would switch to green when the G bus approached, or at least not sit through multiple phases. Now I see it’s more complicated.
Found this video today of a ride through the DSTT its opening day. I particularly enjoyed the footage of the Breda busses and the heritage Pullman Standards.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt87iHFbZII
This is some of the only footage of convention place station I have found, so If anyone has more I would love to see it. While I did use the transit tunnel a few times while busses and trains were in joint operation, I never took a bus through it and did not see convention place. I was in middle school when it was demolished, and never using the station is one of my biggest transit regrets.
Convention Place station was all concrete. It was ugly and depressing. It was my closest station for eleven years. Go through Freeway Park and you’ll get an idea of what Convention Place station was like.
Those white buses were a dirt magnet. I’m glad Metro has a darker color scheme now.
There was some change in the bus lanes/bays at Convention Place. All northbound buses used the southern lane, but southbound buses were split between two or three lanes. One of those was fully used initially, but sometime early on it became unused or for northern buses terminating downtown at Intl Dist. It didn’t have its own entrance so you had to walk across a lane to the next bay to exit.
Convention Place functioned mainly as a transition point from diesel to electric operations and as a layover area for buses from the south end. As Mike said, it wasn’t much to look at and the surrounding neighborhood didn’t generate much ridership at that time. The acrylic trolley pole connection devices rarely worked so the drivers usually had to exit the bus to connect the poles to the wires.
In it’s time, convention place station had a direct connection to the I-5 express lanes that made some trips really fast. But, the express lanes being open only one direction at a time and having no access to 520 severely limited its usefulness.
While that original purpose is now superceded by Link, I still think turning the station into part of the convention center was a mistake and Sound Transit could have saved literally billions off Ballard Link construction by leveraging it. In particular, you run Ballard trains on the existing track until the junction point with convention place, then have the train curve left into a new tunnel under SLU. Convention Place Station still gets demolished, but becomes the staging ground to launch the TBM for the SLU tunnels, rather than having to acquire property to do it. After Link construction is complete, the convention center plot can then be used to expand the convention center or sold to a private developer, but not before.
The savings come from no DSTT2, no massive overhaul of Westlake station to provide underground connections between two different tunnels, and not needing to acquire property or dig up streets to stage the TBM’s for the SLU tunnels. Yes, it might mean some occasional 30-second train delays at the junction point, or occasional crowding issues at Westlake station, but that seems worth it for such huge cost savings.
Without use of convention place station, it is still possible to avoid DSTT2 (even though ST won’t acknowledge it) , but the benefits are not as good. The new track would have no way to tie in with the old track, necessitating a new maintenance facility in Interbay, plus you’d still have to modify Westlake station to allow for underground transfers between two tunnels. And, of course, the actual plan with DSTT2, is worse, still.
I never thought the station was ugly, just weird. You were essentially in the tunnel but not really. There are similarities with CID (https://maps.app.goo.gl/YUKAyRcr2F6KBntq6). Utilitarian for sure, but that is true for most of the tunnel. It was as narrow as CID — it contained lots of layover space for buses. It felt like a bus depot (or as they call them, transit center). It never felt particularly dirty or grimy like railroad depots often feel. There was enough air circulation (and the diesel was “clean” enough) to avoid the stink. As a rider it didn’t feel that different than any other station. You still had to make sure to pick the correct side (depending on where you were going). In some ways I preferred waiting in the open air versus most of the stations.
The area surrounding it was a bit of a mix. Parts of the north end of downtown had old, low-slung buildings. But there were also some big, old buildings (like the Camlin and the Paramount) that made it clear that you were definitely downtown. Ridership was similar to the other tunnel stations, maybe a little bit below it. In general it wasn’t that different than the other stations.
The bus tunnel was fantastic if the express lanes were in your favor. It was just a really fast trip from the U-District or Northgate. But if the express lanes weren’t in your favor it sucked. The 41 would get bogged down on the freeway and take creative ways to get there. The express buses from the U-District had to go on the surface streets. Even getting to the tunnel was a pain and nowhere near as elegant as when the express lanes were headed your direction.
And, don’t forget that, on evenings and Sundays, because Metro was too cheap to run the 70, the 71/72/73 had to do local service on Eastlake to maintain coverage. So, even when the express lanes were in your favor, you could not use them to go to/from the U district. That left the 41 to Northgate as a the only express lane route on evenings and Sundays.
That video is really cool, Aiden. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that one. Here is a video of the tunnel under normal operations: https://youtu.be/etT_wVuKy_I. The video is a lot more blurry but one of the more interesting things you can see is how buses could pass buses. As a result overall capacity was quite high even with just buses.
“Convention Place functioned mainly as a transition point from diesel to electric operations and as a layover area for buses from the south end.”
The reason Convention Place station existed in the first place was to have direct-access ramps to the I-5 express lanes. That was seen as one of the primary advantages of the tunnel, a way to make buses more subway-like, and preparation for future rail in the tunnel and express lanes as it was envisioned then.
It was also to promote the convention center and give visitors a direct stop to it from the 194 (SeaTac express bus route, the ancestor of south Link). The idea was that conventioneers would want to go straight to the convention center when they arrive/leave. In hindsight that didn’t make sense because they’d want to go to their hotel first and drop off their bags and change or rest before going to the convention center. Convention Place station never turned out to be popular with conventioneers. Westlake Station was just as close, and closer to their hotel and other destinations.
If there hadn’t been that push to connect to the I-5 express lanes and have a convention center station, the tunnel could have continued north to Denny Way instead. That would have helped the Aurora and Ballard routes, the U-District local route, and a route to Wallingford (now 62).
If there hadn’t been that push to connect to the I-5 express lanes and have a convention center station, the tunnel could have continued north to Denny Way instead. That would have helped the Aurora and Ballard routes, the U-District local route, and a route to Wallingford (now 62).
Yes, that would have been been less oriented towards commuting and just better overall. At the time the biggest concern was too many people driving downtown (during rush hour) and too many buses on the surface as well. That being said the station was a good one. It took up a ton of space (since it doubled as a bus depot) but had good ridership. At the time it wasn’t the busiest part of downtown but any additional station in the general area added riders.
The same would have been true of Denny. At the time there wasn’t that much at Denny & Westlake but every additional station helped. But the main advantage is that it would have been easier to get to from the west. To work properly would have required transforming Denny and even now we are unwilling to do that (https://fixthel8.com/). But if they added BAT lanes on Denny I could see it working well for the buses from the freeway as well. There is already a southbound express lane exit for Denny (marked as Stewart). Just make that a bus-only exit. Northbound would be trickier but not impossible. It would work well all day long. When the express lanes were in there favor it would be a bit slower than what they built but still pretty fast.
Meanwhile, buses from Aurora, Westlake and Eastlake would converge onto Westlake and go straight (into the tunnel) just south of Denny. That would have been fantastic as the area grew.
Of course that doesn’t make it any easier to get to Capitol Hill, let alone First Hill. It is quite likely we still abandon that station although I suppose it could have been designed to be a branch once we committed to a subway. Given current plans to serve SLU that would have worked out well.
It’s always easy to okay Monday Morning Quarterback about the loss of Convention Place station. And yes a track branching should have been developed.
It would be easy to say that it’s because Sound Moves and ST2 didn’t propose it. But the decision to hand over the real estate for the Convention Center expansion was made after the 2016 ST3 vote. That was sheer negligence.
The 2014-5 rail study could face looked into it. That would have been the time to have covehdered it. It didn’t . Every initial alternative ignored looking into a connection to Link tracks so it never even got analyzed : https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/SDOT/About/DocumentLibrary/Reports/B2D_FinalReport%2005-16-14.pdf
It mirrors how ST could have easily modified the East Main station to have a center platform to accommodate the Issaquah 4 Line transfers after the 2016 vote. ST has never wanted to plan ahead or modify what they’ve chosen to build.
“that would have been been less oriented towards commuting and just better overall”
A corollary is that the northern routes would be Seattle neighborhood routes, so Shoreline and Northshore wouldn’t get the benefit of the tunnel. But Metro is a countywide agency, so all the cities and subareas wanted a benefit for their tax money. An early concept drawing of a station had a display with a lot of northwest Seattle, West Seattle, and Burien routes. But by the time the routes were selected at the end of construction, the momentum was for every subarea to get a route or two, and for their peak-express counterparts to also go into the tunnel.
So Seattle got the 71/72/73X and 41. Shoreline/Northshore got the Shoreline peak expresses. Did it get a Bothell Way one? Notably, the all-day 522 didn’t get the tunnel. The Eastside got the 550 and the Issaquah peak express. South King County got the 101, 150, 194 and their peak-only counterparts (or at least the 102). Ballard, West Seattle, and Burien didn’t get anything. Nor did Wallingford, east Seattle, or southeast Seattle.
Well, southeast Seattle got the Rainier freeway stop, as awful as it was.
“But the decision to hand over the real estate for the Convention Center expansion was made after the 2016 ST3 vote.”
Sound Transit or Metro didn’t own Convention Place station; King County did. It was King County who made the questionable decision. The argument was that a larger convention center would make a lot of revenue and retail business forever because the the convention center was turning away large conventions and additional conventions it didn’t have room for. The county didn’t want to pass that up.
There are a lot of parallels between how the tunnel was designed and which routes were assigned to it, and how Link is being designed, and how RapidRide is distributed, and the deal for CID/N station to catalyze the county administration’s building redevelopment.
“Sound Transit or Metro didn’t own Convention Place station; King County did.”
It really bothers me when something as vital as public transit is diminished because the wrong department or agency owned the facility. FTA paid partly for Convention Place Station too.
In King County’s defense, the City and both transit operators could have forced the connection alternative in 2014-15.
It’s also true that a wye near Westlake has been recommended in prior plans as far back as Firward Thrust in 1970.
https://53studio.com/products/seattle-rapid-transit-proposal-1970?srsltid=AfmBOorJz2ucMKn4JUkrebCV75FF1d6sWNJVuM_AN7HSAMwjbPbvReKg
I don’t buy the “we didn’t think about it” logic since a wye there was well-known to anyone paying attention as far back as 1970. It was department selfishness. They have objectives different from a transit operator.
I realize that it can’t be reversed. However, it demonstrates how transit has been begrudgingly treated in recent decades. We need to speak up when this happens today.
“it demonstrates how transit has been begrudgingly treated in recent decades.”
Welcome to the USA. It has been like that since 1925. Why do you think the 1912 and 1970 subways failed? Or why bus frequency is 15-60 minutes instead of 5-10 minutes? Or why we don’t have pedestrianized centers, a complete bike network, and people trip over protruding sidewalk panels? Or why there’s a freeway through the middle of downtown, or the 99 tunnel exists? Or why there’s not the shortest path from Marymoor Park to its namesake station? Or why we have to fight for good subway-to-subway transfers downtown when that should have been an initial requirement? It’s all more of the same. It’s getting better but it’s taking entirely too long.
“While that original purpose is now superceded by Link, I still think turning the station into part of the convention center was a mistake and Sound Transit could have saved literally billions off Ballard Link construction by leveraging it.”
That’s true, but everybody missed the importance of getting rail to SLU if we’re going to have highrises there. SLU has been ready for development since the 1940s, and especially since the 1960s when I-5 was finished and the industrial district was decaying. But the city kept kicking the can on deciding what to do. In the 80s Paul Allen tried to catalyze it with his Commons proposal. That went nowhere but Allen built some things anyway and got the streetcar installed. Finally in the 2000s the city decided what the comprehensive height limits would be. So it should have been clear since the 80s that “downtown” would extend into SLU, and that meant there should be a metro station and beaucoup bus runs there. But everybody missed it, both the city and transit fans.
It was really SDOT’s proposal to reroute Ballard Link to SLU that got everybody to see the necessity of downtown-level transit in SLU. If people had seen that earlier, DSTT1 could have had a Y branch to Denny Way, Convention Place station could have been preserved as an exit for Ballard Link to SLU, and Ballard Link could have included SLU in the first place rather than retrofitting it. If Paul Allen hadn’t gotten us into a tangent with the useless streetcar, all that energy could have gone into proper planning for appropriate SLU transit in the first place. That would have meant subway planning, and in the interim a vast increase in bus capacity akin to what we eventually did (C, 40, 62, 70, Sounder-SLU express (29 or 17X?)).
To the extend this explanation is correct, it seems like there was still a failure of planning. SLU had already experienced a large amount of growth prior to the sale of Convention Place Station and the planning for ST3 and redeveloping CPS occurred roughly in parallel- it looks like the preliminary agreement for the sale was announced only about two weeks before Sound Transit presented options for serving SLU with Ballard Link and the sale wasn’t approved by the King County Council until several months after the passage of ST3.
I don’t recall if there was any discussion at the time of reusing CPS to route Ballard Link into the existing DSTT and maybe there’s some engineering or financial consideration I’m unaware of, but in retrospect it looks like the planning process should have evaluated the option.
Mike’s comment reminds me of how the mere use of the term “Ballard Link” implies that the project is only intended to get to Ballard. It implies a parallel objective to getting to West Seattle — when it’s much more important because it serves the huge high-rise districts as well as Seattle Center destinations.
I’ve long wished the project to either be called the “Northwest Seattle Link” project or something like “SLU/ LQA/ Seattle Center/ Ballard Link”. I get how ST chooses the end station location as the project name mostly (with the East Link project being the notable exception). But given the overriding significance of service such a major employment hub (as well as Seattle Center as a regional destination), it feels to me like it should be called something besides just “Ballard Link”.
It was really SDOT’s proposal to reroute Ballard Link to SLU that got everybody to see the necessity of downtown-level transit in SLU.
Ballard Link is about Ballard. It was bound to serve Uptown along the way but it very easily could have served Belltown instead of South Lake Union. Serving Belltown is just as good as South Lake Union (the areas are quite similar).
I think asdf2’s point is that if you retain that section as a branch it gives you more options. We aren’t talking about ancient history here. Convention Place Station was closed in 2018, after ST3. By then they had committed to South Lake Union instead of Belltown anyway. There was plenty of time (years before that) to figure out how best to leverage the station. But folks were committed to an expanded convention center. If that area could have been leveraged for a branch then it could have saved a lot of money and resulted in better stations for South Lake Union.
But instead they expanded the convention center and the buses were prematurely kicked out. Of course Dow Constantine was a big part of the expansion and the various decisions around it.
Yeah, I agree Phillip, well put.
Mike’s comment reminds me of how the mere use of the term “Ballard Link” implies that the project is only intended to get to Ballard.
Yeah, it is clearly more than that, just as “Ballard-UW” is a lot more than just getting from Ballard to UW. But I don’t agree with the idea that serving SLU was inevitable. As I wrote elsewhere it could have easily gone through Belltown. It really is “Ballard Link” as serving Ballard is the most important part of it. Not the Seattle Center (we have the monorail for that) not Interbay and not even South Lake Union (which explains why it will likely serve South Lake Union poorly). It is quite likely when Ballard Link is finished the vast majority of people get from South Lake Union to downtown the way they do now (via a bus). It would, however, make it much easier to get from South Lake Union to Ballard.
Yes, people thought Convention Place station was useless because the Capitol Hill tunnel couldn’t use it (the angle to cross I-5 was too sharp). Nobody realized the station box was well positioned for a tunnel line to go out the existing portal pointing directly to 9th & Denny. The existing buses didn’t do that: they came in from the express lanes or turned from Stewart Street. If any transit fans realized it, it didn’t penetrate into the comment section’s consciousness or any politicians. So the politicians sold Convention Place station to the convention center. If ST did publish Link alternatives two weeks before the vote, it was too late. It was only sometime later that transit fans made the connection that 9th & Stewart was a straight line to 9th & Denny and had an existing tunnel portal, but by that time the portal and the land for a track were gone.
The reason for the myopia was that SLU’s growth was so new and the existing bus routes didn’t go that way (from Convention Place station to SLU), so it took a while for people to realize all the ramifications of the highrises and how both ends are at the same 9th Avenue.
“It implies a parallel objective to getting to West Seattle — when it’s much more important because it serves the huge high-rise districts as well as Seattle Center destinations.”
Sorry, what do you mean by West Seattle, or did you mean something else? The Ballard concept was originally a Ballard-downtown-West Seattle concept, true, but West Seattle doesn’t have much to do with whether the Ballard half goes to SLU or not. It would be a nice one-seat ride from West Seattle to SLU, but West Seattle doesn’t have a lot of density so West Seattle-SLU trips shouldn’t be a driving priority. West Seattle doesn’t have highrises either.
Maybe you meant Belltown, the highrise district that lost out when Ballard Link was rerouted to SLU.
It’s called Ballard Link because it serves the northwest quarter of the city, and Ballard is the biggest thing there. The 1 line serves only the eastern half of the city. That’s appropriate because it has a higher population and three regional centers and more destinations. But with only it, northwest Seattle has a 30-45 minute overhead to get to a transfer station (Westlake or U-District), and southwest Seattle is in a similar boat. So Ballard-West Seattle Link was intended to address that, as was the Monorail project before it.
SLU doesn’t figure into this per se because the need is to address the western half of the city, and SLU isn’t in the western half of the city. SLU has a separate need for high-capacity transit, which was overlooked by everybody. It could be addressed by the Ballard line or by some other line. The powers that be chose to incorporate it into the Ballard line because that’s the one that would be on the ballot in nine months.
The original Ballard Link proposal would have served Seattle Center and Belltown, so Seattle Center would get it in any case.
“Convention Place Station was closed in 2018, after ST3.”
2019 I think.
Wikipedia claims it was 2018 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_Place_station).
So the politicians sold Convention Place station to the convention center.
Yeah, but that didn’t happen until after the ST3 vote. To quote the Wikipedia section (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Convention_Center#Second_expansion) about the second (and most recent) expansion:
A preliminary agreement with King County to acquire the Convention Place transit station for $147 million was signed in November 2015 and finalized in June 2017 for a total cost of $162 million.
The ST3 vote was November 2016. So all of this was happening at the same time. The head of the county is also the head of Sound Transit. To be fair, U-Link construction started earlier. But they didn’t actually start operations until March 2016 (just a few months before the ST3 election). It is really hard to imagine that no one considered using that as a possible branch. But by then they had committed to a new downtown tunnel. I see several explanations for this:
1) Dow likes to “think big”. He was committed to an expanded Convention Center even though plenty of people thought it was a dubious project.
2) ST3 was designed to come after U-Link. The politics could not have been better. Not only was the vote during a general election but it was soon after the most important expansion in the system.
3) Maybe they did some preliminary engineering and realized that it either was not worth it or would delay U-Link. They didn’t want to risk losing the ST3 vote.
4) By then they were committed to a new tunnel. The whole idea with the new tunnel was that it could carry more people and yet be fairly cheap. The Convention Center Station doesn’t help much with a new tunnel.
Did I see it right that there were tracks laid on one of the bays in ex-Convention Place station?
There were symbolic tracks laid through the whole tunnel.
So, that is correct, … your eyes did not deceive you.
Convention Place Station tracks. September 1990.
https://bytesandboxes.org/2019/03/21/building-the-dstt/#jp-carousel-11580
Sorry it’s not video but here’s some recollections of Convention Center Station:
I used Convention Center buses almost daily from when the tunnel opened (ngl was looking for me and my friends in the video you posted!). Used it extensively in 2010’s in early mornings to catch ST 550 to work in dt Bellevue. Westlake Station was more convenient to my home. But I liked being one of the first riders to board at the start of the busy 550 route. Convention was the first stop in the tunnel and many of the good seats would be taken by the second stop at Westlake. Even though it was considered part of the tunnel, Convention Center stop was very exposed and out in the open. It was like a concrete platform with narrow escalators on both sides, and not much else. Did it even have an elevator? I have fuzzy memories of southbound route 41 riders that required elevator needing to get off at Westlake for one… It was nice to get some fresh air and cell service there when cell service didn’t exist in the rest of the tunnel then. Also made friends with some of the neighborhood late-night restaurant workers that I’d pass on my walks to the station.
Weird drawbacks I remember about the Convention Center Station – bus connections to it were funky. Like the 8 was still really infrequent and unreliable back then, but it was one of the only east/west routes that connected to that station IIRC. Also that station was treated like the half floor in Being John Malkovich. Like it was a real tunnel stop but wasn’t always treated as such. Unless you signed your firstborn over to the driver they might decide not to stop there. Then you’d have to get off at Westlake if you were southbound and somewhat lucky, or at Northgate Transit Center if you were northbound and very unlucky.
Where did the route 8 connect to Convention Place Station?
Where did the route 8 connect to Convention Place Station?
Good question. Maybe the author meant the 43 (which overlaps part of the 8 and used to go downtown). From what I can tell the 8 has always stayed north of downtown: https://seattletransitblog.com/2014/08/18/the-creation-of-route-8/
It’s neat that people remember quirky little Convention Center Station or wish they did.
I started my trip from Queen Anne Ave N & Denny Way on Metro route 8 when Cafe Minnie’s was still there. Route 43 has never ran in that part of town. I got off the 8 at Denny & Stewart then zig-zagged on foot through alleys, like behind Romeo’s Pizza. My neighbors and coworkers who rode with me back then still remember that ride on the 8, and how full and wacky it could be even at 6:30 am. So maybe not connecting directly outside of the station entrance as good connecting buses should. But back then for folks traveling from the north part of Belltown, LQA and SLU to Convention Center that 8 “connection” was pretty much it.
Didn’t the 10 also connect to Convention Center, or come close? And was there an elevator or not at Convention Center? Or am I misremembering that and my many struggles with the kid’s stroller?
Thanks, and happy riding!
The comment section said it’s important that the Federal Way Link Extension is open in time for the World Cup. It seems to me, it might be nice if the Link extension open in time, but isn’t a big deal if it’s not. What am I missing?
And don’t tell me “Cuz they promised it would be open in time.” That’s not an answer. What’s the downside if it’s not open in time? Some attendees will have to take the bus instead of the train? One commenter said something about people flying in from all over and staying in hotels and taking Link to the venue. I doubt many fans will be staying in hotels south of Angle Lake. So what’s the big deal if it’s not open in time?
The comment section is wrong; it’s more urgent to get the full 2 Line open because more World Cup fans will be coming from the Eastside, both visitors and locals.
Actually, it’s not the comment section’s fault; it’s your fault for treating the comments section as monolithic and ignoring the majority of comments.
The Eastside has a larger cachement area and more density, meaning more potential people. It has higher average income, meaning more people able to afford three-figure sports tickets. It has more prestige and recognition and Microsoft, meaning more visitors know it exists and would want to stay there.
Federal Way, sorry, doesn’t have density or many people able to afford sports tickets, and visitors want to be in an area with people able to afford sports tickets. Federal Way Link is irrelevant to the majority of South King County’s population in Auburb, Kent, and Renton, who would get to he stadium other ways. Even if Auburn could take 181+Link, that’s not that much better than 160+161+Link or 160+165+Link — not enough to make a big deal about rushing Federal Way Link over.
Pierce County is a large cachement area for Federal Way, but Pierce County alsodoesn’t have density or wealth, and everybody would have to take an express bus to Federal Way station. That’s not that much better than taking the 194 to SeaTac or the 194 directly to the stadium — again not enough to make a big deal about rushing Federal Way Link over.
If ST has extra Sounder runs for the World Cup — which is likely because it has long had extra runs for existing games — that would blow Federal Link out of the water for Auburn, Pierce, and Kent residents. I could even see BNSF ceding some freight capacity for such a major short-term event.
P&R drivers might care about Federal Way Link, but I don’t care about P&R drivers.
it’s more urgent to get the full 2 Line open because more World Cup fans will be coming from the Eastside, both visitors and locals.
Agreed. There are several reasons why it is more important. There are bound to be more riders from the East Side. There is a strong contingent of first generation Americans on the East Side — people more likely to be soccer fans. They tend to be a bit wealthier than South Sound residents, which means they are more likely to be able to afford tickets.
It is quite possible that some of the people who visit Puget Sound to watch the games stay in the East Side or down by the airport. But Link already goes to the airport. It doesn’t go across the lake. When Link gets across the lake they can run the trains more often to the north to alleviate crowding. For those south of the airport (e. g. Tacoma, Auburn, Kent) there is Sounder. It is a given they will run those trains for the games (since the run it to Sounder games).
It is worth noting that Seattle is hosting the FIFA b>Club World Cup* as well. This is Sound Transit page for one of the games: https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/news-events/calendar/fifa-club-world-cup-sounders-fc-vs-atletico-de-madrid-2025-06. So several extra Sounder runs from the south and an extra run after the game. Routes 594, 545 and 550 will be operating extra trips as needed to alleviate crowding. There is actually nothing extra for Federal Way. If Link was running from the East Side to Seattle they wouldn’t need those extra trips on the 545 and 550. If Link ran to Federal Way they would probably still run the 594 and the extra Sounder runs.
*The FIFA Club World Cup is not to be confused with the FIFA World Cup. The former has teams like Real Madrid and Barcelona while the latter is the national teams. Likewise the Sounders FC (a soccer team) is not to be confused with Sound Transit Sounder (a commuter train).
More reasons for the Eastside to get the full 2 Line in time for the World Cup: access to the stadiums is via two bridges that are congestion bottlenecks. Access to the airport has a third 405 option, but that’s also a congestion bottleneck.
Federal Way has nice, less-congested Pacific Highway, with a nice RapidRide A that can get to Angle Lake station pretty easily. Auburn, Kent, and Renton have a plethora of other highways to choose from.
How do freight trains work? Do they run at the same time every day like passenger runs? If BNSF reassigns a 9am timeslot to a World Cup train, would freight customers say, “Hey, that train normally runs at 9am but this day it’s not and that causes me a hardship.” Or are freight trains more like airline reservations, where you fit each run in in the available times and work around any unavailable periods?
Yes, modern freight railroads have tried to evolve to operate according to schedules, but it’s not as rigid as passenger railroad operations. The practice is called Precision Scheduled Railroading and it’s been adopted by most Class I railroads–except for BNSF. Thirty years ago, the freight roads didn’t use schedules. They assembled consists in freight yards according to commodity and destination. When they had enough cars, they dispatched the train. Today, you are more likely to see mixed trains (outside of BNSF territory).
Search for articles about Precision Scheduled Railroading. It’s the latest scheme in freight railroading.
As a personal favorite podcaster once put it (as a twist on the old famous line), PSR is neither precision, nor scheduled, nor railroading.
Just the fact that most of the country is single tracked basically forces some amount of scheduling. Without it, you’d have opposite direction trains heading towards each other, with no way for them to pass without one of the trains having to backtrack dozens of miles to the nearest siding.
It’s still very unscheduled.
Other than Amtrak and a few intermodal trains, they’ll send them out whenever they are assembled. As they make progress, the dispatcher will toss them onto a siding at whoever looks like it will be convenient. Sometimes, it’s lucky and they only need to wait an hour for the train coming the other way. At worst, they wait so long they hit the 12 hour rule, and can’t work any longer. Then, a new crew has to be brought out to take their place.
Meanwhile, that siding can’t be used because it’s got a train on it, so the next meetup has to be planned at a different spot, so that increases the amount of delays to the other trains.
Supposedly, this is the most profitable way of doing things.
How frequently can trains go through? It’s hard to believe the tracks are so packed a known freight train would have to wait 1-6 hours for a gap in order to continue.
That depends on the number of sidings and how messy things are.
In many areas a number of railroads have reduced the number of sidings in a number of places to cut down on costs, so seasonal stuff like crop harvests and other occasional traffic makes things messy.
That’s really what “precision scheduled railroading” is about: short term shareholder speculation at the expense of actual long term revenue.
How many trains per day can the Seattle-Portland segment handle?
As long as they don’t hold the Garbage Train next to me at work.
Actually, the short haul local trains like the garbage trains have the closest thing to a schedule.
Freight movement is apparently very multimodal. Nothing can be delivered door to door solely by rail.
So I am not sure when BNSF have to change its schedule, it will give its logistic partner like JB Hunt or Schneider or other railroad companies such a detailed explanation.
BNSF probably would dismiss some requests to alter their schedule for commuter train simply because they could. I don’t think it is really about capacity of their main line sometimes.
There’s a YouTuber named Noel Philips that is a popular air and travel vlogger. He’s made over 750 videos. The vast majority of his videos are of air travel. A small percentage of are of train travel. And I’d guess that less than 1% of his videos are of bus travel. His most popular video? “I Spent 5 DAYS on America’s Longest Greyhound Bus. It was HELL.” 4 million views. His next most popular video has 2.7 million views.
I have a transit psychology question. If most of his videos are of air and train travel, both good and bad experiences, why is his most popular video about a bad bus experience? Again, he has made videos of miserable air and train experiences.
It looks like his second favorite is “71 Hours in Economy!”. Third is “How Can This Plane Still FLY?!”
He is no Rick Steves. It is clear that the most popular videos are ones of him having a really bad time. I get it. It is kind of funny to see people in miserable situations. I think most of can related to bad Greyhound trips as well as bad flights but the Greyhound trips are just longer. There is bound to be a lot more misery. A bad flight is like having a filling. A bad Greyhound trip is like having a root canal.
I think you are right. Viewers want to see misery. And maybe viewers are subconsciously thinking, even a bad plane ride is better than a good bus ride. So if one wants to really see travel misery, check out the bus trip video.
In the video, he did lament how Greyhound treated its customers. He said they treated them like trash. He said he was lucky. He could afford to stay in a hotel one night when other passengers slept on the bus station floor. Or he could have even just gone home. Others didn’t have that choice. And at the end of the video, he felt a sense of relief and accomplishment. If he could survive that trip, he could survive any trip.
The social roles of planes and buses plays a role. People hate airlines because the airlines squeeze every penny out of them for ever-crappier conditions. People hate intercity buses because the governments don’t support people who don’t travel by plan or car, and at times they demonize intercity bus riders as lazy loser brown illegal immigrant criminals. You could say Greyhound is at fault for not investing more in its network, but why should Greyhound have to carry 95% of the burden of intercity bus travel? Why don’t the governments make it easier for private bus networks to operate?
I rode Greyhound extensively between 1987 and 2015. Service quality went up and down repeatedly over the years. Sometimes stations were clean, sometimes not; sometimes staff were snappy and impatient, sometimes energetic and caring; sometimes passengers were obnoxious and loud, sometimes quiet and responsible; sometimes Greyhound had flexible monthly passes, sometimes not; sometimes when a bus was overbooked a second bus was right there or came within half an hour, sometimes not; sometimes it offered through tickets including segments on other Trailways carriers, sometimes not.
So because bus travel is the least supported and most demonized mode, and working-class people ride it, and it’s so awful compared to what it could be, people like to watch the worst Greyhound experiences.
What surprised me about Greyhound was how many truckers take it to/from jobs that are several states away from their home. And how it takes breaks at truck stops like the one in Central Washington, and how many truck drivers used to be bus drivers or vice-versa. It made me realize that bus drivers and truck drivers were more similar than I thought.
P.S. Next week’s movie will have something to do with intercity buses. A little gem I found.
The only mass transit experience most Americans have is airplanes. Most Americans have never been on a bus. But most people have been on a plane. Why do they need to watch a video about riding in an airplane? They’ve already experienced it firsthand. But a bus? That goes for five days? That’s interesting!
Personally, I have been on Greyhound buses enough to have no interest in watching a video about it. Greyhound – it’s slow, unreliable, and the passengers are often ill-behaved. But I already knew that, because I used to ride it quite a bit. Never more than eight hours, but I can guess what it’s like to be on a bus for five days straight.
I have watched videos about riding the Trans-Siberian Railway, and the night train between Vienna and Paris. Those are interesting to me because I’ve never ridden them.
“Most Americans have never been on a bus.”
I rather doubt that. In much of the US, school buses are common, especially in small towns, suburbs and rural areas. Even if a child never had to ride a bus to school, they almost certainly made class or group trips on a school bus.
Maybe memories of school bus antics as children actually leave many adults today with unresolved negative feelings about buses in general.
My great-aunt, who lived in Petaluma, California, said Greyhound was her favorite way to travel.
I would imagine Christopher probably meant intercity buses but even then I think that is unlikely. It may very well be the opposite. There are plenty of people who prefer taking the bus but to a lot of people it is just the cheapest option and thus the last resort. Greyhound is a huge part of American culture (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcqZkUvcxO0). My guess is lots of people can relate to at least some aspect of this even if they have never endured anything quite so bad.
There are a few companies aiming at challenging bus stigma by operating luxury buses, which pick up and drop off at fancy hotels and charge much higher fares than Greyhound to keep the riffraff out. I have plans to try out one of them this summer between Houston and Austin. The selling point is that it’s much more pleasant experience than air travel, after considering security, ground transportation, etc.
Of course, this business model only works for the most popular routes, with lots of business travelers. You won’t see it on long haul routes across the country – for that, anyone with the money will be flying on an airplane.
Well, Greyhound is gradually losing its part in American culture. It has abandoned many corridors it used to be in, some of the remaining ones are only once a day, it has been through several owners in the past twenty years, several alternatives have appeared, and now it’s abandoning some of its stations and switching to curbside (like in Spokane I’ve read). It’s not clear whether it will still exist in ten or twenty years.
All that means I’ve had less experiences with it than my great-aunt and I don’t think about it as much, and I suppose GenZ has even less. It becomes an abstraction, something people hear about but never ride, and increasingly never even see. So when the media says, “Greyhound is like being in a homeless shelter”, it’s just an abstraction for them, not a bus they’ve had much experience with, so they either believe the media line or not based on other factors.
On a trip from Seattle to LA, the most common reason a person chooses the bus, train, or plane? Cost, comfort, time?
Plane, due to time and cost.
“On a trip from Seattle to LA, the most common reason a person chooses the bus, train, or plane? Cost, comfort, time?”
Time, certainly. Most people consider 24-hour travel time unacceptable so they choose a 2-hour plane.
A few people drive. The most common reasons I’ve seen are because they’re moving long-term or for a college semester, they want to use the car while they’re there, they want to stop arbitrarily along the way, they’re going as a group, or they prefer to drive. I’ve also heard that the rising cost of gas makes it no longer cost-effective to drive further than some number of miles, so the cost is higher than other modes, at least if you’re driving solo.
Train or bus riders usually prefer it, or driving is not an option. Fares are all over the map, so while bus may be cheaper than train, it’s not necessarily so, and flying is often cheaper than train and may be the same or less than bus. But bus usually has the most availability for short-reservation or same-day trips, and prices don’t rise as much as they do on planes and trains for last-minute reservations.
Comfort, well, trains have the most comfort. More room, more free baggage space, electric outlets, better bathrooms, a bistro and a dining car (if dining cars and non-burger menus are back), an observation car, maybe a one-hour tour guide through a national park, more ADA space, the ability to walk around more, and sleeper options. They travel through older towns, industrial areas, and rural areas off the freeway; many people take the train for that reason.
But most people choose time over comfort, especially when the difference is a large as 2 hours vs 24 hours, and Amtrak is notoriously unreliable, sometimes 8 hours late.
Amtrak dining cars in the 2000s and 2010s had you share a 4-person table with whoever showed up at that time, and it was always a chance to meet interesting people, learn about things you never would otherwise, and it was sometimes the highlight of the day. The meals were two or three choices similar to a diner, and complete meals with salad, a roll, and coffee/tea/milk. And real plates and metal utinsels.
I heard they were suspended as a cost-cutting measure and replaced with what sounded like horrible prepackaged bistro to-go food. Not what I want when I’m spending one or two days on a train, so it has been one reason not to take Amtrak. I’ve heard different things about whether dining cars are back and whether they’re the same as they were or not.
https://www.amtrak.com/dining-car says “Traditional Dining” is back on the Coast Starlight and the Empire Builder.
There are a few companies aiming at challenging bus stigma by operating luxury buses, which pick up and drop off at fancy hotels and charge much higher fares than Greyhound to keep the riffraff out.
It is not about stigma or riff-raff, it is just the market. There is just very little market for buses in the US. There are a number of reasons for this but it has nothing to do the attitude people have towards buses. Many of our cities are very car-dependent. You just can’t get around very easily without one. A lot of people know how to drive as well. This is why cities (like Seattle) often have huge car rental places right next to the airport.
Look at how Rick Steves describes buses in Europe: https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/transportation/boats-buses/long-distance-buses:
In most countries, trains are faster, more comfortable, and have more extensive schedules than long-distance buses. But in some places … buses are often the better (or only) option.
I use buses mainly to pick up where Europe’s great train system leaves off. Buses fan out from the smallest train stations to places trains can’t get to.
Does that sound like America? Of course not. In America the first question would be “but how do you get around town?” because much of America is a big sprawling mess with poor transit. So people just rent cars. There is one similarity though:
Bus trips are almost always less expensive than trains — often significantly so.
Which brings us back to Greyhound. In most of this country we can’t possibly support two different bus companies. With one company it will tend to be low-budget. It is like having one chain restaurant in town — it is probably McDonalds, not Nobu*. Greyhound is fine. It is adequate. It is just not high end.
Once you get competition — even at the low-budget end of things — quality starts improving. People will pay a little bit more for special amenities. They will eat at a Taco Time instead of settling for Taco Bell. But in most of America we are nowhere near that. We just drive. The one general exception for this is the Northeast. This is precisely where you have the most bus companies in this country. It is not the attitude towards buses — it is the market for them.
*I had to look up “high end chain restaurants”. I’ve never been there.
“It is not about stigma or riff-raff, it is just the market. There is just very little market for buses in the US.”
It’s not the market, as you yourself say below. People can’t take buses that aren’t there. People won’t put up with a bus once a day or when it’s only stop is in the middle of the night. They won’t put up with trains that are slower than driving. Many European rail routes are faster than driving, like London-Glasgow or London-Cambridge.
The US has a handicap of car-dependent city design and bad local transit once you get to a city, but that doesn’t eliminate the potential for intercity bus service to be plentiful and widely used, it just makes it harder, so we should work harder at both intercity transit and fixing the cities. If you take visible incremental steps to improve bus and train service, ridership will increase. We can at least get to something that would be a D in Europe rather than an F, and then work up to a C.
The decades-long neglect of surface transit, and the car-dependent stranglehold on cities, makes people gradually give up on the possibility of anything other than driving or flying being feasible. Fewer and fewer people are alive now who remember how comprehensive transit was in the 1920s or even 1950s. So it has to be presented as a “new” innovation. There are already signs of shoots arising…
Amtrak is at record ridership and the fullest trains if I’m not mistaken, even with its dismal service and unreformed cities. Seattle has more private bus companies with scheduled service, from more dropoff locations and one-seat rides to more cities like the airlines. Looking at the FlixBus website showed me there are daily pickups from UW to San Francisco, separate from the ones from the Greyhound station to Oakland. There are even runs from SeaTac airport to California. The companies wouldn’t offer this if they weren’t used, so ridership must be robust. It’s not all the hordes of people who want to go to/from California or Spokane or other states, but it’s enough to fill the few bus runs they have.
When I traveled by Greyound from New York to San Francisco twice in the 2000s, two buses left New York at the same time in the evening because there were more riders than would fit in one. The buses ran together to Chicago and St Louis (changing drivers a few times a day), then split around there with one going to Los Angeles and the other to San Francisco. Each bus’s capacity was 55 people. That means 110 people per day could travel across country or within that corridor (say Chicago to St Louis, or St Louis to Denver). I remember thinking, “How is it possible that in a country of 300 million people they think only 110 people a day travel across country or in the middle of the country?” It doesn’t make sense. But the government puts major support only into flying and driving. The bus companies in particular have to do it all on their own, with little in the way of bus infrastructure. For instance, those HOV lanes that all freeways should have around cities, they could be open to private passenger bus carriers. Then Greyhound wouldn’t get stuck in traffic in Pugetopolis or the Bay Area. That would help make them more competitive with driving.
There are also the statewide bus connectors and grants for rural counties to provide connector service to neighboring counties. Some of those replace corridors Greyhound used to provide, but some of them are new service or more frequent service. So that’s another positive sign. It’s just too little service, but it’s a start.
My best Greyhound experiences on average have been on the lesser-used corridors: Seattle-Denver, Seattle-Missoula, and local runs when there’s an express overlay. The I-5 corridor is so heavily used it somehow gets a higher percentage of obnoxious passengers, and they choose the express runs when they can like everyone else does.
I noticed that SDOT has installed left turn barriers on N 80th St at Ashworth Ave., to help prevent cut-thru traffic and dangerous turns. There are gaps in the barriers for pedestrians to cross too. I think it’s a good improvement, and one they should also implement at Stroud Ave. And add dedicated left turn phases at Wallingford, the arterial (each west-eastbound direction can go straight or turn left with a green arrow, but only one direction at a time). Preferably before the peak Green Lake summer season kicks in. Currently it’s a mess of impatient motorists trying to cut through the narrow side streets because turning left at Wallingford is not very, safe and they don’t want to wait for the light at Aurora.
The whole area is a mess for all modes, pedestrian, bike, bus, car alike. I especially dislike 85th across I-5 being a highway ramp that only cars can use, along with both 80th and 85th across I-5 being one way. It needs a major rethink.
It is not pleasant but you can walk across the freeway at 80th and 92nd. You can’t walk across 85th. That basically leaves a gap between 80th and 92nd but I don’t see them doing anything about that for the foreseeable future. There are more important bridges and caps over the freeway to add.
I think a higher priority is creating a good north-south pathway north of Green Lake between the freeway and Aurora (as I wrote about in the other comment). A lot of the streets don’t line up which means they don’t work as well for crossing. Ashworth is an exception (it is a straight shot) which is why I suggested it. You still have to get around Robert Eagle Staff school (if you are going north). There are sidewalks there so they basically just need to add bike lanes. If they only want to them to one side of the street they could make a shared use path (like on 1st Avenue NE) next to the school. This could then connect to bike lanes on Wallingford. Unlike much of Wallingford it is wide enough there to support them. Stone Way is already a Greenway. 92nd has bike lanes (and sidewalks) so it works for crossing the freeway. It would be nice if there was a Greenway east of Wallingford and the only good option is Meridian. You would need to add a light and crosswalk across at 85th. You might be able to get by with just a marked crosswalk at 80th and maybe 92nd (or add those flashing lights).
There is pretty good east-west bike/pedestrian pathways at 83rd and 92nd. They need to improve the crossing of 3rd NW and 8th NW on NW 83rd but at least you can cross Aurora and Greenwood fairly safely. East of Aurora the 92nd Greenway connects really well to Licton Springs and the college to the John Lewis Bridge. 83rd connects well to Green Lake. It is really just in between those areas (north-south) where they need major improvement.
From a transit perspective I would add BAT lanes on 85th from Wallingford Avenue to 15th NW. Traffic might build up a bit heading west from the freeway (as the general purpose lanes converged from two to one) but that is a long distance. Going east to get on the freeway would be just fine. The road would widen from one lane to two just as you neared the freeway ramps (at Wallingford). If you are driving west on 85th you would just have one lane from Wallingford until 32nd so it would be fine. Heading east starting at 15th there might be additional congestion but the roads should be able to handle it just fine. It is basically one lane on 85th east of 15th. It widens to two as you approach 15th from the west but that is mainly just to deal with cars turning. I would change the lanes so that the left lane is left-turn only. For the most part that is how people treat it anyway (note the imbalance). Thus drivers trying to go straight would be in the right lane. After going through the intersection they would move to the left lane (since the right lane would be a BAT lane). It wouldn’t really alter traffic on 15th much either even if it backed up. The far right lane is mostly for people turning right or maybe for those about to turn right into Safeway — otherwise they have to merge left in a half block. That right lane on 15th (part of three general purpose northbound lanes) is really long. Overall it might push traffic to 80th. So be it. 80th doesn’t have any buses.
I happened to be biking in that area for the first time in decades (if ever). I was approaching from the north. I crossed the bridge by the Northgate Station and went by Licton Springs. I was actually planning on heading over to Greenwood, a path I’ve taken while walking. This is a great route — extremely safe and pleasant. I figured there would be something similar to the south, towards Green Lake. I was wrong. From what I can tell there is only one signal between Wallingford and Aurora north of Green Lake. If you want to cross 85th (a four lane roadway) you either have to hope people stop for you or work your way over to Stone Way. Stone Way isn’t even a normal street — it takes a jog. So you have to go over to Stone Way, ride on the sidewalk for a half block, press the beg button and cross. It isn’t clear what you are supposed to do then. Stone Way intersects Green Lake Drive (a two-lane arterial). At least they have red flags there (I’ve never used them biking — first time for everything). At this point (since I was heading more east anyway) I could dogleg that direction. But that doesn’t really help. There are no signals until Wallingford. Speaking of which I did end up going up Wallingford on the way back. I was behind a bus part of the way which actually made me feel safer (I knew no one was going to try and pass me).
They should make Ashworth a Greenway, with signals and beg buttons on 90th, 85th, 80th and Green Lake Drive. 90th is a ‘T’ intersection so drivers can’t go straight on Ashworth. In the other cases they should be prevented from doing so. They should be forced to turn like on Fremont & 85th. Better yet they could prevent left turns as well which allows them to add barriers like on Aurora & 92nd. At a minimum they should add signals for the crossing at 85th and painted crosswalks on 80th and Green Lake Drive (with more red flags). Just adding stop signs at the other locations might work. It is worth noting that Green Lake Drive has protected bike lanes so if you can get past that intersection you can follow the bike lanes over to Green Lake and pick up the circle track there.
I did some poking around and found that FlixBus, which owns Greyhound now, has a website flixbus.com with both Flix and Greyhound tickets, and it does offer through tickets across the country including segments where neither FlixBus nor Greyhound operate (like Missoula-Minneapolis). I tried Chicago and Denver and it supported all three.
In the past Greyhound operated in all of these. In 2004 it dropped Missoula-Minneapolis but still offered through tickets on the replacement carriers. Then it stopped doing that, and for my next trip to Chicago it routed me through a Denver transfer. So I went that way to see what it was like, and had an above-average experience this side of Denver, even though the total travel time was longer. Sometime later it wouldn’t even do that, and its website said a trip to Denver or Chicago from Seattle wasn’t possible. So then you’d have to figure out who the other carriers were in the gap and buy tickets long distance if you even could, and hope they’d still honor your ticket if the first bus was late and you missed the transfer. I didn’t bother. But now FlixBus has through tickets again. And its website is straightforward, at least for looking up trips, and it highlights the alternative with the shortest travel time and the one with the lowest price. And it has several starting points, both the Greyhound station, Amtrak station, UW, and SeaTac airport, all on different runs. So things are better since the last time I took a bus around 2015.
I don’t understand why FlixBus and Greyhound are still running as two different brands, when their destinations and fares overlap so much. Is the riding experience different between them? Would you prefer one over the other?
Because the Greyhound is so associated with undesirables, they needed a new brand that wasn’t.
So why not make them all FlixBus?
I think the FlixBus is meant to be a higher end brand. I’ve always considered Greyhound to be the cheapest option. Quite often you don’t have a choice but other bus lines (like Trailways) were consider upscale (even though they aren’t nearly as nice as some bus lines in other parts of the world). Flixbus ran for three years in the US before taking over Greyhound so they may just want to keep both brands.
It may be higher end but the ticket prices are sometimes the same.
Hope it is ok to ask this here.
I wonder if anyone had successful experience loading your Corporate-issued ORCA card to Android Pay? If so, is your physical card still valid afterwards?
Secondhand info: someone I know specifically did not load her corporate ORCA card to android pay because she wanted to be able to pass it to others, but an official website stated that transferring the card to android pay would deactivate the physical card.
I saw the TDLE DEIS comment presentation on the ST meeting documents website . It’s here:
https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/ActiveDocuments/Presentation%20-%20TDLE%20DEIS%20Comment%20Report%2005-22-25.pdf
Perhaps the most interesting change is how ST is not only moving the alignment away from I-5 between South Federal Way and central Fife, but the preferred South Federal Way station site is the furthest from both I-5 and 348th.
348th is a huge higher-speed and overly wide arterial. I would not want to cross it as a pedestrian. However, there are some destinations north of 348th that will be even further away from Link.
The new station site could be great or could be awful, depending on TOD evolution. At least it’s now proposed about 4/10th of a mile from I-5 so the catchment area loss from the interstate land is minimized.
It also puts the Fife Station and SFW Station closer together. They appear to be just under 3 miles apart.
Thoughts?
I like that the recommended Tacoma Dome station is a “fully integrated, seamless regional transit hub”
That’s what should have come with the new International District station…
I dunno. The transfer between the T Line and the 1 Line could have been level. ST refused to consider having a cross-platform level transfer in any alternative.
It’s also tragic that ST has not considered a stop closer to Pacific Ave buses. The buses will have to deviate to serve the station instead.
Some other posters here have suggested that the same platform could serve both T and 1 lines. However that would require that the power and train car widths need to match. Is it worth it? After all, the T Line just has one track at TD so a train can’t lay over very easily. ST has neglected to include a second T Line track in the TD Station design.
In contrast, I see very few if any transfers between Sounder and 1 Line at Tacoma Dome. The 1 Line transfers will almost certainly be much heavier between PT buses, ST Express buses and the T Line. Being “close to Sounder” just seems silly and wasteful to me unless it’s wildly cheaper. Sounder is only running in one direction and generally at peak — and both lines are going to Downtown Seattle so any transferring is backtracking unless it’s someone headed towards or from Lakewood on Sounder. Would someone really ride from Fife to TD to then wait for and catch a Sounder train to Seattle, or just take a 1 Link train directly to Downtown Seattle?
I see very few if any transfers between Sounder and 1 Line at Tacoma Dome.
I think the idea is Lakewood to SeaTac or Lakewood to Seattle (assuming they no longer run express buses). I’m not saying there would be many who do that (or prefer that over an express bus that stops in Federal Way) but I would imagine that is the thinking.
At least it’s now proposed about 4/10th of a mile from I-5 so the catchment area loss from the interstate land is minimized.
But isn’t the catchment loss due to wetlands much worse?
Just to backup, there is practically nothing there. The hope is that they will build a station and then developers will build a bunch of apartments there. Fair enough. But the area is basically hemmed in by the freeway on one side and the wetlands park on the other. At 352nd the width for development is about a half mile (or 800 meters). If you put the station next to the freeway (which is an option) you can’t possibly live a quarter mile to the east. If you put it next to highway at 352nd you can’t possibly live a quarter mile to the west (unless you are a frog). The idea that this has the “Highest TOD potential” seems ridiculous. If by saying “Highest TOD potential” you mean the best chance for TOD then I don’t think it makes any difference. They will either build in the area between the wetlands and the freeway or they won’t. If you mean the closest to potential TOD then I think it is just wrong. Your best bet would be to put in the middle. The purple option seems to do this the best. The light blue option (16th) looks to be almost as good and better than the one they seem to be favoring. In general this seems like they are trying to hard to put lipstick on this pig. As long as you avoid building the station right next to the freeway it is all about the same. Do whatever is cheapest.
I’m not sure it is actually better for buses either. It is better for buses coming along the highway. There is very little along that stretch but it is not completely deserted. Someone at the Sitka Heights Apartments (https://maps.app.goo.gl/QJczdowdjLJheva87) could be headed towards SeaTac or Highline College and transfer in South Federal Way. This would save them five minutes of walking versus putting the station at 16th. But 16th becomes Kits Corner Road which connects to Edgewood (and a few places along the way). This corridor has a bus just like the other one (https://maps.app.goo.gl/eMtRYA5mZWb5m1ji7). Thus those riders would save five minutes if the station was at 16th. At best this seems like a wash.
It is worth noting that even if the rail line reaches the highway it will go back to the freeway for the next stop. So it isn’t like this makes it easier to build a bunch of stations along the highway (like a light rail line). It may be that building next to the highway is cheaper than building next to the freeway. You might have to buy out some businesses but you avoid the overpass at 375th. The main approach they should take is to just find the cheapest way to add the station (other than building it next to the freeway). Or scrap the whole thing and build something a lot more useful for the area (like better bus service).
I can’t dispute what you’re saying, Ross.
Here’s another aspect that isn’t indicated on the maps in the presentation — the South OMF. Why didn’t ST look to putting tracks over the land above the rail yard to reach SR 99? Then the station could be placed just north of 348th and further from wetlands. Right now, the trackway runs diagonal through some pricey commercial real estate.
It’s really telling that the maps don’t show the South OMF.
How bad is ST’s preferred “close to Sounder” alternative compared to the other Tacoma Dome alternatives? The first thing most people will need to do is transfer to the T Line or a bus to get to their destination. Sounder runs only a few times a day so only a tiny fraction of Link riders would transfer to Sounder. Does it make much difference whether ST chooses this alternative or not? From the map it looks like it’s next to the “Tacoma 25th East” alternative, a quarter block from “Tacoma 25th West”, and 1.5 blocks from”Tacoma 26th”.
Tacoma 25th West looks like the best alternative because it’s the closest to the T Line and the bus bays.
The 26th alternative is all alone, so I doubt it would be selected. It’s the furthest from the T Line, Sounder, and Tacoma Dome buses. It’s slightly closer to the Pacific Ave bus routes, but you’d still have to walk two blocks, cross 705 which must be horrendous, and walk two more blocks. And 26th looks like a freeway entrance, so it might get congested.
Close to Sounder wipes out most of what little retail is in the area by demolishing Freight House Square.
They should never have eliminated Puyallup Ave/24th alternative in the early stages. That’s where the buses and transit center are, and that’s how most people will be accessing Link. That would take a drastic intervention at the Board Level, or the City of Tacoma or Pierce County having a complete hissy fit. Which they don’t have the interest or appetite for.
They should absolutely be dropping to at-grade coming into the Tacoma Dome area. Save money. Make transfers easier. Keep to human-scale, rather than a castle in the sky. Allow for an extension of the line to connect to Pac Ave, which is where many more buses are, and it a primary transit corridor.
It’s just a complete cluster. Burn it down.