How housing became unaffordable. (City Beautiful)
And a followup to last week’s series:
Seattle to Los Angeles on the Coast Starlight (AdamDoesNotExist)
This is an open thread.
128 Replies to “Sunday Movie: How Housing Became Unaffordable”
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The City Beautiful video is really well done. The best part is at the end of the video when he starts hyping the EWU urban planning and then Spokane…. the solution to the Nation’s housing crisis is not likely going to be in big cities that are already completely built out and way too expensive for starting families and raising kids. Solutions that are possible in Spokane are not possible in L.A or Seattle.
One thing the City Beautiful housing video doesn’t touch on is the role of the nuclear family in US housing trends. The number of kids families have and the percentage of intergenerational families certainly impacts the type and amount of housing that gets built. Seattle, for all its jaw dropping generation of wealth over the last 30 years, has become more of an adult City of people living alone. It’s hard to see Seattle continuing its breakneck growth without a next generation to continue. Does Seattle have enough children or public education to turn the corner?
I also believe that contrary to the video, people have always looked at home ownership as generational wealth. Home ownership is a hedge against inflation and hard times. As long as you own a home, the chance of living under the freeway is pretty low. But if you’re a renter paying 50% of your income as rent…. living under the freeway is a very real possibility. Remember that the people currently living in homeless camps were likely not homeless their entire lives and never dreamed they’d be a skid row when they were young.
The solution to the current housing crisis is the same as it’s always been. Build more housing and tap into American’s personal credit to pay for it. The city of Seattle should facilitate some sort of “co-op” housing allowing a group of qualified future homeowners to pool their cash and credit together finance a multi family building they all share ownership of. The idea that government has the money to step in a high priced town like S.F. or Seattle and build enough housing to change market dynamics needs to die. There’s just enough “social money” in Seattle to build 1,000 units of “Social housing” over the next 5-7 years, but there may be a way to bundle people’s personal savings and personal credit into paying to build a lot more “affordable” co-op housing.
City Beautiful’s YouTube channel’s most popular video? The Most Miserable City in America – Gary, Indiana. Which, btw, is ranked one of the most affordable cities in America.
Sam,
At some point you have to grow where you’re planted. Would you rather own your own house in Gary Indiana? Or be homeless in Seattle? Because both are likely possible on the same income. Let’s just say Tacoma wasn’t my first choice, but I have no regrets about buying in there. And there’s lot of places in Indiana that are doing better than Gary and still deeply affordable.
Decades ago I was attending Seattle Central C.C and working construction at night…. I had a lot of City friends back then. When I got married and bought a house in Tacoma, many of my City friends thought it wasn’t the “cool” thing to do… but honestly, my generational wealth is several times that of friends who never left Seattle. I know several construction guys who partied their 20s and 30s away in the “Seattle Boom” and are in dire straights now. Thank Gawd I’m not hanging drywall and living in my van.. because those poor people exist in Seattle and after all the talk…. nobody gives a shit about them.
I think the biggest problem in Seattle is the big “University Con Job”. Colleges pumped these silly ideas that students could grow up and do anything and live anywhere (and not pay back those student loans either). Turns out none of that is true. Many of the true believers in “social housing” also believe that those student loans are going to magically go away as well. It’s a belief system that suspends Jr. High math and the political history of the USA.
I’d guess the thing to remember is…. Nobody really cares if you fail.
“Would you rather own your own house in Gary Indiana? Or be homeless in Seattle?”
What about the existing residents in Gary who become homeless because you’re displacing their housing? Housing prices are increasing faster than local income in most of the country now, including Spokane, Missoula, Mt Vernon, Bellingham, San Bernardino — places people from high-cost coastal metropoli flee to. The problem of insufficient housing due to restrictive zoning is everywhere. You can flee to a lower-cost city or state, but when enough people do that. it makes housing unaffordable for existing residents who have lower incomes or assets because jobs pay less there. It may not be happening in Gary specifically, but it’s happening in at least 80% of the country. Fly until you can buy or rent isn’t scalable in these circumstances. Are the poorest people supposed to move to Haiti or down in the ocean?
“big cities that are already completely built out”
Seattle and similar cities have a lot of room for infill growth before they become as dense as Chicago. The reason it hasn’t happened is restrictive zoning.
“and way too expensive”
Restrictive zoning is what caused that. The housing supply wasn’t allowed to rise to match the population increase, especially walkable inner-city housing. That’s what the video meant about nimbys getting lower-income people excluded in the 20th century, and nimbys getting policies that always increase their property values in the 21st century. Yet you treat it as an inevitable and permanent condition of large cities.
“Seattle, for all its jaw dropping generation of wealth over the last 30 years, has become more of an adult City of people living alone.”
Households have gotten smaller and more childless across the entire industrialized world and in the US. Seattle is just ahead of the US curve. It’s unaffordable housing itself that’s pushing families out of Seattle. As long as Pugetopolis remains a jobs magnet, immigration magnet, and climate refuge (e.g., Hurricane Katrina refugees), its population growth will remain above the US average.
“The idea that government has the money to step in a high priced town like S.F. or Seattle and build enough housing to change market dynamics needs to die.”
The government created the dysfunctional market dynamics. We’re just asking government to fix its problem, and to prioritize housing everyone as every government should do. If it costs a lot of money, well, the government should have fixed it ten or twenty years ago rather than letting it get this bad. Doing nothing just makes housing more expensive and makes the problem ever harder to solve.
“The city of Seattle should facilitate some sort of “co-op” housing allowing a group of qualified future homeowners to pool their cash and credit together finance a multi family building they all share ownership of.”
I’m all for alternative housing financing and ownership models. Another model that has been used a little bit is for a nonprofit to buy the lot and house, and sell it at a low price with a restriction that future sales must also be at a similar price. Another model is to tax just the land rather than the land+building together. Most of the rapid price increases are in the value of the land, not the value or cost of the building. Taxing the land would dampen the enthusiasm for land speculation, or holding onto low density buildings when higher density is allowed.
While generational wealth from owning real estate is a big advantage, there are still taxes, insurance and basic utilities (water, sewer, refuse collection) that a homeowner pays. They aren’t cheap!
And then there are major periodic costs like home repairs and appliance replacements.
Owning a home is a good hedge against inflation in some ways, but it’s still expensive. It doesn’t take too many years for any inherited generational wealth to be drained without a good, steady income source — unless it’s a ridiculously large amount.
Al S.
You are completely right. Home ownership is a great big fat hassle. Taxes need to be paid and shit needs to be fixed. It can be a struggle.
But being a landlord is even worse. I just pass on all the expenses of taxes and upkeep to my tenants plus a healthy chunk of money for all the work I do keeping up the building. Nobody ever rides for free. Renters pay for the landlord’s retirement…. sounds pretty unfair to me, but that’s how the world works.
At least with a 30 mortgage and all the bullshit that comes along with home ownership, you might have a poker chip left at the end of your life. Nursing homes aren’t cheap. Life is a bell curve after all.
” Nursing homes aren’t cheap.”
Why aren’t they cheap? Other countries have housing, old-age care, childraising, higher education, and healthcare expenses figured out so the costs aren’t an extreme burden on individuals. It’s a policy choice to have such high levels of unaffordability, poverty, and inequality, and to blame the bottom 80% for not making enough money to pay these high prices unburdened.
“But if you’re a renter paying 50% of your income as rent…. living under the freeway is a very real possibility.”
Homeowners can end up living under the freeway too, if they lose their job and can’t make their mortgage payments, if their house is destroyed in a non-insurable disaster, or if they get an expensive medical diagnosis.
Insurance companies increasingly can’t cope with climate-induced hurricanes and floods, earthquakes amid expensive housing like the recent Los Angeles quake, etc. They’ve started pulling out of markets. When all the insurers leave a county or state, the homes are uninsurable. This is becoming an ever-closer threat that could be fully manifest in twenty years.
Sorry Mike, but let’s stick to math here.
Let’s say disaster strikes a family 15 years into a 30 year mortgage and the family home must be sold. That’s bad news but the silver lining is likely a big chunk of cash after the sale to deal with whatever disaster is at hand. If the family is renting, maybe they have money saved to pull out of savings…. but most won’t. Tapping a 401K is the path of last resort.
Investment-wise… home ownership is not a great investment, but it is the only investment with a flush toilet. I would never underestimate the impact of home ownership on personal happiness or peace of mind.
There are plenty of people that have $50k in savings and qualify for a $500k mortgage in Seattle who are not in the housing market (yet). Seattle’s challenge is make housing available for this group to buy somehow. Because Seattle has way too many million dollar plus homes and way too few affordable apartments. The “missing middle” isn’t really not a type of housing, it’s a whole income group.
In a number of places I’ve been, many families prefer condominium type housing because it’s so much safer for their kids. Playground, friends, some after school activities, etc all easily accessible right there.
By only building single family housing, none of that is an option except among a very select group of relatively wealthy people.
Glenn in Portland,
I think you have a pretty good idea of the problem!
The minute Greater Portland changes the laws and regulations around multi-family housing to promote ownership and individual investment, the better. I wouldn’t hold my breath however.
The PNW is often spilt into 2 camps…. millionaire home owners who don’t want change and renters who believe everything needs to be “affordable” (or free). There’s got to be a 3rd way.
The PNW is often spilt into 2 camps…. millionaire home owners who don’t want change and renters who believe everything needs to be “affordable” (or free). There’s got to be a 3rd way.
There is a third way and it is growing. This article came out in 2012. I had never heard that argument before but it was pretty convincing. Since then just about everything I’ve read — including technical studies — back up the basic premise. Housing costs are too expensive because of the regulations. But things didn’t change right away. It reminds of when various organizations wanted to legalize cannabis in the early 1970s. Clearly they were right but it took a while for most of the country to realize it. In the case of zoning though, things are moving a lot faster. It is a real movement.
But Seattle happens to have a conservative mayor and city council. By “conservative” I don’t mean in the classic left-right standpoint. To begin with, this issue doesn’t neatly fit on that spectrum. It won’t raise taxes or government spending nor will it do the opposite. I mean “conservative” in the sense of being slow to make changes. It is quite clear that the mayor and the city council are proposing minor changes when a majority of the city wants more ambitious ones. Thus the proposed changes are minor compared to cities like Spokane. Basically we are being a lot more conservative — on this issue — than Spokane.
But this is likely to change. Even very conservative people can change over time and it is likely that more liberal members get elected in the mean time. Either way it is likely that eventually Seattle will have a much more liberal housing code which will lead to a lot more housing.
“Even very conservative people can change over time”
The Seattle ones did. In the 1990s it was hard to get just the first urban villages and condos with four stories approved, and the majority of the city was under the control of “No Growth” nimby activists and councilmembers. But by the 2000s a complete “No Growth” position became untenable due to the rising population, rising housing prices, and rising demand for walkable neighborhoods. Now in the 2020s the city is setting a floor of 4-plexes allowed in the least-dense areas, and parking minimums have fallen in some cases. The current debates are over reducing the expansion of urban villages, not blocking expansion entirely or going back to a 4-story maximum.
In the mid 2010s Seattle switched from all countywide council positions to a district-based system. This was pushed by nimbys hoping to get more control to limit growth. They hired a retired UW geographer to draw the district boundaries. He was anti-urban: I took one of his classes in the 80s where he said — he said it would be cheaper to send a public taxi to everyone’s house — a foreshadowing of the “replace-transit-with-Uber” mindset. He drew the districts to maximize single-family influence, by splitting multifamily areas like the 45th corridor or central Seattle, to make multifamily areas a minority in their district as much as possible. But a funny thing happened on the way to the ballot box. When the districts chose their leaders, they unexpectedly chose more urban-friendly ones. Even a majority of single-family homowners in North Seattle chose representatives who would expand urban villages, increase multifamily housing, and reduce parking minimums. People like Ross’s neighbors in Pinehurst, or those around Lake City.
Things continue to evolve. More infill housing, better transit, and more walkability (“15-minute neighborhoods”) is inevitable, because it’s the only thing that’s practical when the population keeps growing, the cost of single-family houses gets further out of reach, people get more concerned about the climate, and people get over their 20th-century US exceptionalism on the feasibility of everybody driving everywhere to strip malls. It may be “two steps forward, one step back” at times — we’re in a backstep right now, at both the urban-village level and the Metro transit and restructure level — but the long-term trajectory is things are getting better.
I read from somewhere saying the developers would rather build super thin townhouse on the site instead of condo because of that requires a different kind of fire code.
You keep mentioning home ownership when it is tangential to the main argument being presented. It misses the point. Rent or buy? Who cares? It doesn’t matter.
Imagine you really do want to buy in a few years. You have to live somewhere before you have enough money to afford to buy. If rent is expensive it just makes it harder to afford to save up to buy. If the cost of buying a house or condo keeps going up you can easily be stuck in a negative cycle. Next thing you know you are paying a huge amount for rent and yet you still can’t afford to buy. The very strategy you propose (which I would generally recommend by the way) is impossible.
The solution to the current housing crisis is the same as it’s always been. Build more housing
Yes! And by far the easiest, cheapest way to do that is to make it easier for the builders to build housing. I really don’t care if they build condos or apartments — either way society benefits. We need more places for people to live whether they want to rent or buy.
Since you brought it up (and it is an open thread) I’ll address your comments about home ownership. You assume it is always the best option. But there are plenty of scenarios where renting is clearly the best option. For example if you have to move after a year. Another is if the price of housing goes down. A classic example of that was during the Great Recession. Think of the millions of people that defaulted on their loan. They would have been much better renting. They would have paid less for housing and had better credit (which would make it easier for them to buy a house later on). Speaking of the Great Recession, it was caused by financial instruments that triggered huge losses for major financial institutions when we had a housing bubble. The housing bubble in part was caused by this very notion — that housing was an investment like buying treasury bills is an investment — rock solid. That clearly wasn’t the case.
This is why you have to be careful with the word “investment”. The word typically means something that increases in value over time. You obviously don’t mean it in that way (although sometimes that is the case). You mean it is a wise financial decision — like buying a car. Most would consider a car a bad “investment”. But at the same time, many would also say it is a wise financial decision over the long run if the alternatives (like walking, biking and transit) are impractical or too expensive (like renting a car for every trip). A quick search for “buying a car as an investment” led to this: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/8-times-car-good-investment-150019153.html which I’ll quote:
First, a car can be a good investment when it significantly saves you on other transportation costs, according to John Lin, owner of JB Motor Works.
“For instance, if you rely on taxi rides or rental cars for your daily commute or business needs, owning a car can drastically cut down these costs in the long run,” said Lin.
I agree completely. The same thing is true of a house. If a house is worth the same over thirty years (adjusted for inflation) it still may be a good investment (in that sense of the word). If you plan on living there forever it may be a good investment for the same reason. But this is different than investing in mutual funds where you really do expect the value to increase.
In general it gets complicated. Taxes, interest rates, equity building as well as alternatives are all issues to consider. In many cases you may be better off renting and then putting the extra money (that would have gone to the bank) into mutual funds (or some other type of investment). There are trade-offs at every turn.
“Most would consider a car a bad “investment”.”
A car is not an investment; it’s just a consumable that depreciates. The automobile mobility it provides may be an investment if it enables you to work (if transit is infeasible), enables certain kinds of work (a skilled laborer porting their tools or merchandise or visiting clients where transit is infeasible), or enables other goals (if you volunteer to invest in your community’s well being). There’s a saying that a new car loses $5,000 in value the minute it’s driven out of the dealership lot.
A car is not an investment; it’s just a consumable that depreciates. The automobile mobility it provides may be an investment
That seems like a bizarre way to put it, but OK. So I guess with a house it provides “housing shelter” along with the value of the house itself (which may or may not go up in value). Fair enough. My point was to make a distinction between these two meanings of the word “investment”.
Yes, some people have argued that houses provide “housing service”, and it would be better policy-wise to think of it that way.
Housing gets bought for a number of reasons. There are large investment groups buying quite large blocks of housing, including some 10% of houses sold in 2021 in the SoundTransit counties:
https://mynorthwest.com/ktth/inflation-nvestors-real-estate-first-time-home-buyers/3576347
Real estate has long been an investment route for money laundering.
In the USA, there’s a chunk of housing owned by foreign investors and businesses people who visit regularly as it allows them to have an investor’s visa. For some, a $500,000 purchase to not go through USA visa headaches is just a cost of doing business.
So, housing services is only one of many services being provided.
There are large investment groups buying quite large blocks of housing
Sure, but there is no reason to assume that this is a safe or good investment. Housing bubbles happen all the time. In contrast buying a place to live (“housing service”) has a fundamental baseline value. If your house doesn’t appreciate any faster than inflation it doesn’t matter at all if you really like living there.
> The solution to the current housing crisis is the same as it’s always been. Build more housing and tap into American’s personal credit to pay for it. The city of Seattle should facilitate some sort of “co-op” housing allowing a group of qualified future homeowners to pool their cash and credit together finance a multi family building they all share ownership of.
If you pool together all the money together you’d need to then have a builder and also banks to finance the loan. And of course it’d be better to have it as a separate company that repeatedly does this rather than a one off. Congratulations you’ve reinvented literally what a developer does.
At this point, he’s talking into the breeze for anyone who’ll listen to his opinion even if said opinion is full of holes, is deeply classist towards renters, and has a bizarre hatred of educated people.
WL,
Here’s the problem I personally have experience with. The investors and big property management companies know just how much housing to add to Seattle while keeping housing prices sky high. They’re not stupid, but yeah, they are greedy. Big landlords have been accused of using A.I. to figure out what percentage of units to leave vacant to keep demand and rents rising.
Do you really think you (or anybody else) can trust these people?
Owner financed and owner occupied housing has always been the answer in the USA. The pent up demand for home ownership is Greater Seattle has billions and billions of personal credit that can be tapped for building.
Public housing on the other hand, has 10s of millions to work with at best.
If you’re ready to sign a 30 year mortgage, that makes you a true believer in Seattle.
Do you really think you (or anybody else) can trust these people?
It has nothing to do with trust. Our entire capitalist system is built upon greed. Of course there are plenty of businessmen who would never act in an immoral way but there are plenty that do. The system takes that into account — or at least it should. Make it easy to build new housing and I really don’t care if the people who build it are greedy.
Consider cell phones. New and used cell phones are relatively cheap even though many of the CEOs of the corporations are quite greedy. But since there is not a limit on the number of phones that can be made (unlike housing) and enough competition the prices are relatively low. It isn’t about trust, it is about allowing more to be built.
Greed has little to do with it. Landlords don’t lower rents out of the goodness of their heart. They lower rents when there is too much competition. This happens when there are a lot of new units being built.
Likewise a lot of developers would welcome the opportunity to build in a lot more places and with fewer hoops to jump through. If they don’t, tough luck. Plenty of other companies will go ahead and build new places.
Ross Bleakney,
Ah, you have no idea of who you’re dealing with here. The “housing shortage” we’re currently having was largely engineered by the housing industry. Do you also believe that eggs that cost 8 bucks a dozen is really caused by the bird flu? History is likely to remember this decade for breath taking collusion and price fixing as Big Business started using A. I. to engineer price hikes.
Of course you don’t “get” it! You blindly support Sound Transit projects that have current price tags that are twice as high as the original promised estimates. You see this as good policy. I see tax payers being ripped off by big construction companies. Only a fool would trust the likes of Terri Mestas . Every fucking government project she’s ever worked on somehow goes way over budget. The key thing here is look for the people like Mestas switching jobs to working for government to working for the big companies overcharging for government contacts.
The “housing shortage” we’re currently having was largely engineered by the housing industry.
Bullshit. The housing industry would love it if we allowed row houses everywhere in Seattle. Do you think they love building these crazy triplexes (technically a house/ADU/DADU) on huge lots with giant setbacks? Seriously, just consider it for a second. A lot of 8,000 square feet. One big house, one ADU and one DADU. Why not just build a half dozen townhouses. Construction would clearly be cheaper. You could mass produce a lot of the work. You would get more for them. Why then did they only build the house/ADU/DADU? Because it was all they could build.
Same goes for apartments and condos. Why the hell did they build a big apartment building on Lake City Way but not a few blocks away? Because they can! The market is clearly being limited by the regulations. Otherwise you would see houses where there are apartments and vice versa (like you see in Japan). Oh, and while people always bring up Tokyo when talking about Japan (because it is an extreme example of how you can build your way out of a housing crisis) the same is true of smaller cities. This is a neighborhood in Kōchi (https://maps.app.goo.gl/2phLnrvVmvqejiDV7). You can clearly see houses. You can clearly see apartments. Move the map around and you can see that the entire city is pretty much like that. The number of apartments increases as you approach downtown but otherwise it is largely a mix. Unlike Seattle there is no artificial line between apartments and houses. That just doesn’t exist in Seattle because the regulations won’t allow it.
Oh, and if the housing industry created the housing crisis in Seattle why didn’t they conspire to do the same in Minneapolis. Why did prices drop after they changed the zoning? Why has Spokane suddenly go through a housing boom after they changed the regulations? Why is Seattle suddenly building a lot more ADUs and DADUs then they once were? It all points to zoning (not some secretive cabal) as the limiting factor.
Of course you don’t “get” it! You blindly support Sound Transit projects that have current price tags that are twice as high as the original promised estimates.
Again, bullshit. Completely untrue. It is disgusting to accuse me of something that I never said. Furthermore it is irrelevant and a violation of comment policy. Even if it was the case that I “blindly support Sound Transit” it has nothing to do with the argument you are trying to make and that is a clear violation of comment policy.
Look, tacomee, you need to stop doing this. I think some of your comments are worthwhile. But you have repeatedly violated the comment policy and I’ve seen better writers be banned for less. Stick to the argument at hand (even though you are clearly losing it). Don’t make personal attacks.
“The investors and big property management companies know just how much housing to add to Seattle while keeping housing prices sky high.”
And they’re crowding out smaller local developers because they outbid them for the limited number of multifamily-allowed lots available. Some of the smaller developers can be more moderate on rent because they don’t have to pay Wall Street investors demanding outsized returns, and they may care more about owning the building long-term and passing it down to their children and keeping a steady long-term profit and maybe even living in a unit, than about making a huge short-term killing and getting out in twenty years.
> Here’s the problem I personally have experience with. The investors and big property management companies know just how much housing to add to Seattle while keeping housing prices sky high. They’re not stupid, but yeah, they are greedy. Big landlords have been accused of using A.I. to figure out what percentage of units to leave vacant to keep demand and rents rising.
They don’t. 1) landlords != developer. 2) what developers are constrained by is the number of land that is permitted to build apartments on. If the city upzones a plot of land have you seen a developer refuse to build on it
developers would be happy to keep building as long as they can keep getting the permits to do so and it is profitable. and virtually almost any single family housing plot of land in seattle and even the surrounding cities if permitted would make money to build on for an apartment
Part of being a “nuclear family” based society is living close to family members. It doesn’t work as well when your family is in Seattle and you can only afford to live in Cleveland. Especially when your parents get older. Are you really going to ask your 80 year old folks to move across the country so you can help them with stuff?
I think the video is a good but basic primer about the housing cost crisis. As stated in the video, lots had to be left out.
I do think that one big issue he omitted is the structural challenge of income distribution. Our taxation policies seem to naturally gravitate towards income inequality without deliberate intervention. As the video points out, housing has increasingly become a financial investment strategy. That points to it being treated more like an investment and less like a social good.
Throughout history, land ownership and its related institutionalization through centuries of royalty, invasions and feudal and slave plantation systems have evolved. New systems seem to arise to resurrect this tendency when enough of the mass public becomes aware of it.
Given how unbalanced our income distribution is becoming, I have concerns that we are drifting into a new royalty system. Housing affordability seems to be a major subset of this bigger challenge.
Al S.
I’ve worked much of my life building housing I couldn’t afford, making mere pennies on the dollar on the total worth of these projects. I tried to never give a minute of thought to those on the food chain above me. I only have one life to live and what profit could be had to fretting about the success of others?
“Income disparity” is a fake issue dreamed up by university Lefties. I’ve brought up the real problem with taxes in Washington State a few times on board…. it’s the State tax system based on sales taxes and occupation taxes (property taxes) without a graduated income tax. Washington State is more than happy to tax the poor at a greater percentage than it taxes the rich and it’s always been that way. Yet lefties get all up in arms about “income disparity”. Why bother?
I wouldn’t hold your breath thinking this horseshit is going to change in your lifetime. Coastal Lefties are also the worst NIMBYs in America. Can’t see that changing either.
The biggest problem Seattle has (and most of the Left Coast as well) is a smug misconception they’re somehow better than say, Gary Indiana. Different? Yes. Better? Ask the bastards living under the blue traps.
““Income disparity” is a fake issue dreamed up by university Lefties.”
The issue is tax disparity. Washington state has the most regressive tax structure as you noted, but the flip side is our total taxes are a third lower than comparable states that also have an income tax.
But the biggest issue is national. The tax laws were changed in the late 1970s to funnel 90% of the wealth to the top 10%, and exponentially higher to the top 1% and 0.1%. The top federal income tax rate went from 95% to below 50%. As Thomas Picketty describes it, it was never expected that many people would actually pay the 95% rate: instead, it gave CEOs an incentive to keep their income below that threshold, which narrowed the difference between the CEO’s income and the lowest-paid workers. The Republicans and Libertarians threw that all away to slash taxes for the richest. That caused inequality to balloon, and is what led to so many house lots becoming McMansions and lower-income people being unable to afford basic or average housing. So we need to reverse that.
Given how unbalanced our income distribution is becoming, I have concerns that we are drifting into a new royalty system. Housing affordability seems to be a major subset of this bigger challenge.
It compounds the problem but it isn’t the main source of it. When is the last time you saw someone tear down an apartment to put up a big house? Even in Manhattan where income stratification is clearly an issue it usually manifests itself in the form of new construction. A large building goes up and a rich dick buys up the top ten floors. But the bottom floors are usually available for the rest of us. But the big problem is that in many of the boroughs they don’t allow dense development. 25% of Queens is zoned single-family. This is an extreme example but New York City is generally very restrictive (which is why prices are so high). To quote this New York Times article (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/opinion/editorials/tokyo-housing.html):
In the past half century, by investing in transit and allowing development, the city [Tokyo] has added more housing units than the total number of units in New York City. It has remained affordable by becoming the world’s largest city. It has become the world’s largest city by remaining affordable.
In terms of GINI coefficient Japan and the US are surprisingly close together (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_inequality) they just allow a lot more housing in Japanese cities.
I think there are two different things here. First is the general problem of income disparity in America. This has been a growing problem since Reagan got elected. This is a big problem that seems to be getting worse (as we flirt with becoming a full-fledged oligarchy).
The second is whether this disparity in income has much of an impact on housing prices. In my opinion the impact is relatively minor and generally constrained to a handful of places. For whatever reason the rich don’t just buy up entire blocks in the city and build palaces (yet). The biggest problem is that there simply aren’t enough places to live in cities where people want to live. As a result only the wealthy or rich can afford to live there. But it would be a problem either way.
If 10 people/families on the full range of rich to poor want to move to an area and there are 10-15 vacancies, everybody gets one and prices remain unchanged. If instead there are 5 vacancies, the 5 richest people get them and the prices easily rise, and the other 5 people are shut out.
It isn’t lost on me that the US is approaching a new “growth” reality that will affect the housing market. That is that population increases are fading nationally.
The US population has grown by 50 percent since about 1980 (226M to 344M-348M). That growth has been uneven, with much of rural and small town America not seeing any growth at all.
This past 45 years is what many think is the norm moving into the future. However, projections for the next 45 years is nothing like this. It is projected to be capping at about 370M in the 2070’s. Where we saw about 120M in the past 45 years, we are expected to see only about 35M more in the next 45 years. It’s easier to house this much smaller number.
Much of our recent growth comes from immigration, especially from countries with higher birth rates. Birth rates worldwide a dropping in those places. Plus many of those places can now host manufacturing facilities so residents don’t have to move for economic opportunity. And add to that the increasing difficulty of being either a new immigrant resident or a new foreign worker. So while immigration policies can add growth it is an increasingly less available source.
This shift reverberates through regional housing demand. Each region has different issues. Our region has been a higher growth region for many decades. It seems unlikely that it will continue given that the national population growth will be merely 30 percent of what it has been these past 45 years.
It’s been centuries since humanity saw a world population generationally stagnate, and the US population has never stagnated like this for very long.
Seattle’s population peaked at 550,000 in the mid 1960s, then fell 130,000 over the next decade due to white flight to the suburbs, subsidized mortages for greenfield houses in the suburbs, and the Boeing Bust. When I graduated college in 1989, Seattle’s population was still below its peak so inexpensive housing was everywhere. You could look at an apartment, wait a week to decide, and it was probably still available. 2 BR apartments in the northern U-District were $450; houses were $50K-90K. You could find something on minimum wage.
That lasted until 2003, when the vacancy rate started going below 5%. Then rents started increasing 5-7% while inflation was 2% or below. Houses in Rainier Valley had reached $250K.
In 2008 the economy crashed, many people who had recently moved here moved back to wherever they had come. In the Summit neighborhood every other building had a “For Rent” sign. Rents flattened and decreased. Home buyers basically disappeared, construction halted, and sellers stopped moving.
By 2012 the Amazon boom was in full swing. The last remaining slack was squeezed out of the market, and tired old $650 1 BRs suddenly jumped to $1,000 or more in one step, displacing their lower-income residents. It didn’t matter whether the building was bulldozed and replaced or not: both kinds went up. Houses marched from $300K to $500K and the Seattle average just reached $1 million.
So population loss may have a silver lining if it makes housing in Seattle affordable again like it was in 1966-2003. The issue would be whether you can find a job.
The US population has grown by 50 percent since about 1980 (226M to 344M-348M). That growth has been uneven, with much of rural and small town America not seeing any growth at all.
In general I think that is the bigger problem. Growth has not been equally spread out. Rust Belt cities have shrunk. Various towns have shrunk. At the same time, various cities have grown, but demand has outstripped supply. In the last twenty years San Fransisco added 100,000 people. That is similar to what the overall population grew. But demand was much higher. It could have easily added 250,000 people and even more units (leading to cheaper prices). Throw in the inner suburbs (that have added even fewer people in some cases) and it is easy to see why things are so expensive.
Unless you can somehow convince people to move to places like Buffalo and Detroit this will remain a problem. Some of these places are seeing a bit of growth but they are nowhere near what they were back in the day. Other places continue to shrink, which basically means folks leaving for greener pastures. Quite often that means places like San Fransisco. That being the case the overall population growth doesn’t matter that much. It is a regional problem — it is just a regional problem in lots of places across the country.
Most people who move across the country do so because of job offers. Therefore, the only way to really get people to move to Buffalo, Detroit, Gary is to have job growth there. You would need infrastructure investment to attract the businesses. Infrastructure investment doesn’t happen without taxes. You would need to reform zoning and land use, since the people moving for jobs are looking for walkability and urban amenities. So I question whether the “everybody move to Detroit” crowd is really interested in making these changes to Detroit.
Exactly. It is either one way or another. Either we spend a huge amount of money trying to promote employment in areas that have lost industrial jobs or we allow more growth in the areas that have seen employment growth.
One issue is looking at public spending/taxes vs private spending separately rather than the sum total. Americans often view public spending/taxes as evil and private spending as virtuous. But if you look at the sum total of public and private spending, Americans pay twice as much for healthcare as other industrialized countries and leave a lot of people out and have worse outcomes. That’s partly due to inadequate public institutions (called Medicare/Medicaid here), for-profit insurance companies that fleece consumers and deny claims to line investors’ pockets, and the opaque billing system for hospitals and pharmacies that leaves a lot of room for little-known middlemen taking a cut, plus doctors demanding high fees to cover their expensive education and malpractice insurance. When people are left out and get disabilities, communicable diseases, or mental-health issues, and they get desperate and start misbehaving, that puts a cost on everybody to deal with the economic loss (they’re not productive) and social dysfunction (stress, frustration, theft, people sleeping on sidewalks and loitering in libraries, people lashing out at a government/society that has thrown them away, etc).
Housing is similarly a basic necessity, yet our society is treating it as a commodity and a speculative investment, and not building enough of it to allow everybody to live (A) decently, (B) within 50 miles of where they want to be, and (C) with as much walkability/transit convenience as they want.
Mike Orr,
I’d suggest Strong Towns. https://www.strongtowns.org
What America needs is real answers to problems as soon as possible. There’s been this heavy socialist manifesto floating around since the 1960’s that’s never come close to having political support. I suggest never buying into that.
On the housing front, the USA has been amazing at building housing with personal credit. Other countries do things differently. I think the way forward is doing more of what makes us great, not endless pining for something else.
“I’d suggest Strong Towns.”
I’d suggest that too. Practical walkable housing and more of it is what the “urbanists” on this blog have been saying for a long time.
Yeah, Strong Towns (and Charles Marohn) approach the argument in a different way but reach the same conclusion. Density is good and we should make it easier to be dense. This includes towns as well as cities.
I’m amazed sometimes how we still fall into the core bias of inward commuting.
In the European Middle Ages, villagers went outward to work in the fields. In the US original Industrial Revolution, workers and their large families lived near factories or maybe coal mines and cared less about being close inside a major city center .
Meanwhile, our region committed to build a high frequency-two way light rail network that traverses much of the area, extending out many tens of miles beyond our central employment core.
To maximize this investment, not only does every city near Link need to think about housing density, they need to think about adding employment locations near light rail stations too. And out-of-direction commute is added revenue for ST but at essentially no cost — since those trains would be otherwise underutilized during peak times.
What would need to happen for Lynnwood and Federal Way to look like Downtown Bellevue in 40 years? Can downtowns in Everett and Tacoma add jobs more quickly that Downtown Seattle or Bellevue does? And most importantly, can ST station and corridor planning be more focused to growing employment at the ends of lines by making sure that they just aren’t big end-of-line residential high-density districts, commuter parking and transit intercepts. (An opinion that stopping at employment district edges like Tacoma Dome and Everett Amtrak doesn’t put us there; these rail line ends need to extend just a little further to create more robust employment districts and create more out-of-direction ridership.)
That’s what PSRC’s distributed regional center vision is. Downtown Bellevue, Redmond, and Kirkland are well on their way to it. Lynnwood and Federal Way need to work harder at it, and they should have started densifying ten or twenty years ago when they could have gotten some of the 2000s real-estate bubble money or the 2010s tech-boom construction money. But because they said they’d upzone but dithered and didn’t aggressively try to attract employers and developers until their Link station comes, they’ve left their residents and would-be residents in limbo, missing part of the boat, and playing catch-up for the next 10-20 years.
In the 1980s King County considered three models for growth: “Metro Towns” (distributed suburban centers with natural greenery around them), long narrow corridors of development (Bellevue would have three north-south ones), or concentrating most of the growth in the inner half of Seattle. It chose the “Metro Towns” alternative. That’s what we got, with new job centers in Bellevue, Redmond, Totem Lake, the Kent industrial corridor, etc. The main difference is that the vision had natural green space/open space/agricultural land around these centers, but instead low-density sprawl and gas-station mini-marts and strip malls swallowed up the green spaces.
My issue with the PSRC designation is the size of the suburban growth centers. It strongly implies creating low density employment districts — complete with free parking for commuters.
Reverse commuting via Link is really only practical if the employment is at a higher density. Otherwise that last mile is a big deterrent.
Even the Overlake area has places not conducive to tiring Link. These other areas would need to change their basic forms pretty significantly to be good employment hubs.
“It strongly implies creating low density employment districts — complete with free parking for commuters.”
They’re not low density by definition. They have to have a minimum amount of zoned job capacity, which is only possible with midrise or high-lowrise buildings. Both the Spring District and Totem Lake are examples of that. They’re also focal points for an commute-reduction strategy (meaning incentivizing non-SOV commutes), so that’s why the Spring District got a Link station and Totem Lake is getting a Stride BRT station, and partly why those lines exist. Parking is still more abundant and free than in downtown Seattle or downtown Bellevue, but less than it would be in a regular isolated office park with no high-capacity transit or any transit target.
The net result is that jobs are funneled to all these regional centers, instead of being concentrated in downtown Seattle or peanut-buttered to isolated office parks in random locations like occurred in the 1990s. So it’s a step in the right direction, but not the absolute best step that could be made.
Because of this focus on distributed regional centers, people will have to reverse-commute to them (i.e., not commute to downtown Seattle or downtown Bellevue). This is seen as more geographically balanced, better than putting a huge amount of additional commuting to downtown Seattle, and better for the suburban cities and counties who can get tax revenue out of all that commercial activity. The suburban cities have been pushing for it, in order to get that tax revenue. They’re afraid of being left behind as the next slums if they don’t. That’s why they’re so eager to get a Link line to their city.
The best thing they could do for a public transportation standpoint is build right in Downtown Seattle. Anything else is likely to lead to more sprawl and more traffic. Downtown Seattle is much easier to get to for more people. Think of places like Queen Anne, the Central Area or Fremont. These are areas with plenty of density and it is fairly easy to get downtown and difficult (still) to get to Lynnwood. The only way to get to Lynnwood is to first get to Link and by then you might as well ride the train the other way (to downtown). Think of Calgary. It is a sprawling low-density city. But it does quite well when it comes to transit ridership because it so strongly centered.
That doesn’t mean cities can’t do OK with multiple centers but it requires a lot more work. Consider Bellevue. Downtown Bellevue is huge. It is unlikely that any suburban area will come close to the concentration of office jobs that exist in Downtown Bellevue. Yet over 50% drive and less than 20% take public transit. The numbers are basically reversed in Seattle. The East Side could transform itself to be more like Seattle with a lot more apartments, a bigger downtown and better transit serving it. But that doesn’t seem likely any time soon.
Given we are actually in an office slump there is plenty of room for Seattle to grow. It would be bad policy to push jobs out to the suburbs, even if they are next to Link stations. That being said any development that does occur should definitely be close to Link. If Snohomish County adds a new hospital it would be nice if it was close to a Link Station. New office buildings in Downtown Bellevue are much better than Issaquah.
One thing I don’t want to see is a tax abatement bidding war among nearby cities.
LAX/Metro Transit Center in LA opened on Friday, so you’ll be able to travel to LAX without a car once the people mover opens early next year. Currently served by a bus shuttle system for the time being while the people mover project finishes up.
https://laist.com/news/transportation/la-metro-airport-station-guide
I went to LAX twenty years ago for a trip to Long Beach. I rode the airport shuttle to a transit terminal, maybe another bus to the Green Line, and transferred to the Blue Line at Rosa Parks station. Then I took light rail to Long Beach. It was moderate speed on most of the surface, but a few times it rose up over major intersections and then it was fast. The whole trip took something like 1 – 1 1/2 hours, I don’t remember exactly, for something that was probably half the distance of downtown LA to Long Beach (which itself would take 1 1/2 hours on transit). So it wasn’t fast and many people wouldn’t tolerate it, but it was doable, no taxi required.
I think Flyaway bus is probably still the better way to travel between DTLA and LAX considering the effort of transfer by light rail and the fact that without APM you will still get stuck when entering LAX, but it is definitely a huge improvement for places along LA Metro rail service outside DTLA.
the flyaway bus to downtown la is pretty good. it has the hov/express lanes on the 105 and on 110. the longest part is honestly just entering and exiting the airport loop
Houston to Dallas on FlixBus/Greyhound in two weeks, Thursday, June 26. Buses at 2am, 5:45, 6:30, 7:10, 7:30, 8:20, 10:05, 10:30, 11:20, 11:25, 12:01pm, 1:45, 3:00, 7:00. Travel time between 3:35 and 7:05 hours. Fares between $30 and $62. That’s one more departure than than Seattle-Portland, but slightly higher fares.
Houston to Austin, similar. Minimum travel time 2:30 hours. Minimum fare $31.
Houston to Galveston or Dallas to Galveston: no route available.
Related to this, there is no Amtrak service between Houston and Dallas, at least not without connecting in San Antonio and ending up with a train trip that takes triple the time of the bus option. But, people who want to go between Houston and Dallas definitely have lots of bus options. There are also plenty of flights available as well.
In addition to Flix and Greyhound, the Texas Triangle also has the Vonlane bus, which offers a luxury first class service, in exchange for a much higher fare. I have a trip coming up between Houston and Austin where I plan to take Vonlane one direction, Flix the other direction, so I’ll be able to compare.
I wonder if the concept of a luxury bus would have a market here, particularly for trips like Seattle-Spokane that can’t be done on Amtrak without either arriving or departing at 2 AM.
“I have a trip coming up between Houston and Austin where I plan to take Vonlane one direction, Flix the other direction, so I’ll be able to compare.”
Maybe a guest article?
“I wonder if the concept of a luxury bus would have a market here, particularly for trips like Seattle-Spokane”
I’m wondering what a luxury bus is, and how much higher the fare. Japan has buses with private rooms, at $107 for an overnight Tokyo-Osaka trip.
I could see a larger market for an intermediate “business class” option.
The landlords on the city council conspire a desire to sabotage the integrity of 21dt century developments to make sure they benefit from the supply demand squeeexe
Maybe landlords should be recusing themselves from land use votes.
What’s the landlord to non-landlord ratio on the city council?
A lot of people I know own their house but are not landlords, or maybe rented out their first or second house for a couple years at some point but aren’t ongoing landlords, so I assume most of the councilmembers are like that.
Ryan Packer:
“Next Friday, June 13, Sound Transit will test out how 4 minute peak Link service will operate once the 2 Line opens next year, by running a single-car train in between active trains between Lynnwood and Stadium Stations from 5am to 9am. Riders won’t be able to board the test trains.
According to Dow Constantine, a future test of interlining planned for August will allow riders to utilize the additional trains running north to Lynnwood.”
https://bsky.app/profile/typewriteralley.bsky.social/post/3lqv57fsijc25
According to Dow Constantine, a future test of interlining planned for August will allow riders to utilize the additional trains running north to Lynnwood.
Cool. That is what we were hoping for.
Does anyone know whether trains will be crossing the lake yet? Or are they turning around at Mount Baker?
They will probably turn around either immediately south of CID or at Judkins Park.
The opening of the LAX Metro Center Station this past weekend included a new mega “AI” vending machine called VenHub.
https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/254834/VenHub-Launches-247-AIPowered-Smart-Store-at-Metro-Transit-Center-at-LAX-Leading-the-Next-Era-of-Autonomous-Retail-in-Travel-and-Transportation
I’m curious whether folks think that a transit agency should have a thing like this on a rail station site.
I certainly think there is benefit to offering a place to buy some things at a rail transfer station. The vending machine concept makes the entity much less vulnerable to shoplifting and crime. A rider can buy anything at any time. There is no need to search for a shop a block or two away from an expansive station.
On the other hand, it’s effectively an unmanned store. That makes it plausible that purchasers will be less responsible eating, drinking and in packaging things on-site. It could add to maintenance challenges at the station and on trains. And I would think that there would be some technical flaws over time too.
Right now I feel like a preferred strategy should be to provide convenience shopping with staffed stores adjacent to stations if possible, like how some stations have places to shop right at station entrances (like with several Seattle Link stations). I see VenHub as a potentially useful addition in some circumstances where getting out of a station to buy even a bottle of water is difficult (example: South Bellevue).
It will be interesting to see how this works going forward. Will it be popular and lead to mega vending machines at rail stations, or will it fail due to technology, maintenance or profitability challenges? I don’t know what to expect.
Does anyone else have thoughts about this?
The main downside is that you need an app to buy something. I’d like a variation with a touchscreen and a credit card slot — or even a dollar bill feeder — if I want to buy something small like a root beer or bag of Doritos; I don’t want to yank out my phone and scroll through selection and checkout pages.
If the machines are selling more expensive stuff like books, souvenir T-shirts, even burner phones (like those kiosks in European train stations and spy novels)? Sure, an app is reasonable.
I’ve also seen the Amazon Go concept — tap your card to go in, grab what you want, and your card gets dinged when you leave — increasingly used at stadiums and event places like the Cirque du Soleil in Marymoor. They have staff there to guide people through the process and keep an eye on things, but it’s automated, and I presume security cameras are there too.
We could also bring over Japanese-style hot food vending machines, the type that serve udon, katsu and the like; those are all over YouTube. A recent trend is pizza vending machines, which either reheat frozen pizzas, or make them from scratch in 3 minutes. Probably not the best tasting pizza, but if you’re getting off the train or in your college dorm at 11:30 p.m., you’re starving, and even Taco Bell is closed, it’ll work.
I’m not sure about VenHub specifically but I think vending machines or small concession stands would be great at Link stations. They might be profitable enough to pay for any additional cleaning.
Sound Transit published a retail strategy report a while back: https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/02/13/sound-transit-now-has-a-strategy-for-bringing-retail-into-stations/
I drove down I-5 this weekend and noticed some Link trains parked in the under-construction Federal Way and Tacoma Dome stations. Are those cars there for testing/engineering purposes, or promotion of the eventual line?
You mean Star Lake station (rather than Tacoma Done)?
They w been there for at least three weeks.
I live in the Eastside, this was my first trip south of Kent in a few years.
1 Line trains are running every 15-20 minutes tonight due to “higher than normal temperatures”. But it’s only 80 degrees – other cities with light rail face these temperatures every day for half the year. Does anyone know why our system is less resilient to heat than others?
Did you see the alerts today for the 2 Line?
“Update:2 Line trains are arriving about every 30 minutes between Bel-Red Station and Downtown Redmond Station until further notice due to power issue
In effect: June 9, 11:18 a.m.”
“Update: 2 Line trains are sharing one track from Bel-Red Station to Downtown Redmond Station until further notice due to power issues. Please board all trains on the platform to Downtown Redmond.”
That actually started Sunday afternoon, and I was unlucky enough to be stuck at Marymoor Village then. They ran shuttle buses but the schedule seemed unreliable and the driver pulled into the wrong bay.
(Trains were completely out of service due to “power issues” then)
Five weeks after opening. That didn’t take long.
They were fine this morning
Seb, the 2 Line is still single tracking.
I meant on the morning of the 9th, sorry.
Rapid temperature swings can affect rails and is likely the cause to delays, Trimet has a similar problem during certain times of year when Portland gets too hot or too cold too quickly and Trimet has to adjust MAX service accordingly.
Two different issues with MAX:
1. Temperatures in Portland have become too warm for the tension system in the overhead lines. So, they have to make manual adjustments to them to compensate for some temperature changes. It is hoped a new tensioning system will solve this.
2. Any system that gets too warm runs the risk of kinks in the rails. Continuously welded rail is fine in the cold, when it’s under tension, but above a certain temperature they will go into compression and be dangerous to use. Other than installing expansion joints or reinstalling the rails at the newer, higher temperatures, there’s not too much that can be done. Everyone using welded rail shuts down at some or other temperature.
Welded rail does this when it gets too hot, if not given an expansion joint:
https://m.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=Rail+kink
Link 2 Line trains will be truncated at Overlake Village station Tuesday, July 10 for inspection. A bus bridge will serve the stations between Overlake Village and Downtown Redmond. When the inspection is finished, the bus bridge will be replaced by single-tracked shuttle trains until normal service can be restored. ST recommends passengers plan additional time for their trip, and consider using RapidRide B for trips involving Redmond. –ST email alert.
Related to the power outage?
ST posted the May ridership for Link. This contains most of the Downtown Redmond Extebsion.
Interestingly, Downtown Bellevue is now the busiest station with Downtown Redmond just behind it. Redmond Technology is now third busiest. Also, 2 Line ridership almost doubled from April.
1 Line saw lots more riders too. And SeaTac is second busiest after Westlake rather than Capitol Hill. I guess summer baseball and tourist travel season started in May.
https://www.soundtransit.org/ride-with-us/system-performance-tracker/ridership
Click on the Link tab for the data.
@Al S,
Regarding the 2-Line data, the DRLE opened May 10th. Meaning the data represents only 2/3rds of a month of real ridership. There will be some looky loos of course, but these are solid numbers for a system that was only in operation for about 20 days. But June data will paint a better picture.
I’m also curious to see ridership data for RR-B, but Metro is slow to get that out.
Regarding the 1-Line, it just continues to gain more ridership. And it really is too crowded now. It’s sort of getting uncomfortable at various times of the day. We really need that second line.
As per SeaTac being such a big draw, it really is sort of amazing. It will be interesting to see what happens when FWLE opens and people start accessing the airport from the south on Link. Right now it just doesn’t make much sense to transfer from RR-A (for example) for the short run to the airport, but that will all change when FWLE opens.
Expect even more gains.
June data will paint a better picture
August and September will probably be a lot better. It usually takes a couple months for the novelty to wear off and then you get relatively consistent numbers. There is always some seasonal fluctuation but consider Lynnwood Link Station ridership:
August (partial): 613
September: 5,146
October: 3,884
December: 398
The numbers are up the last three months but it still hasn’t reached the high of September. The same thing happened with Bellevue Downtown:
April (partial): 67
May: 1,108
June: 1,367
July: 1,221
August: 871
Even though it was a different season it followed the same pattern. Ridership was quite high the first couple months and then started going down only to rebound more recently. But again, while May of this year was very good it still hasn’t reached the peak of June last year (soon after it opened).
I’m also curious to see ridership data for RR-B, but Metro is slow to get that out.
Metro is fairly consistent with their data. It comes out in the middle of the month. ST has had trouble. Sometimes they get it out there on time, sometimes not at all. Sounder data has been especially problematic and it looks like it is having trouble once again. I’m getting an error just going to the page.
In case you missed it, Sound Transit is now stating that trains to Downtown Redmond must be single tracked for awhile with reduced frequencies for the new segment. It looks like June and July could easily be worse for the two new stations for this reason.
It will be interesting to see what happens when FWLE opens and people start accessing the airport from the south on Link.
My original assumption was that FWLE would see a big jump because of all the people who work at the airport and live to the south. Now I’m not so sure. I think a lot of that ridership is already built in. Angle Lake has very high numbers — much higher than in 2019. In contrast Downtown Seattle still hasn’t reached the level of 2019. Those new riders are going somewhere other than downtown. It seems highly likely they are just using Angle Lake as a place to park while commuting to SeaTac. If so then the numbers for Angle Lake will go down as those drivers just switch to a station further south.
But one source of ridership will be the 574. It has close to 2,000 riders a month. It is likely that most of those riders are headed to SeaTac. It is also highly likely that the 574 will be truncated at Federal Way which means those riders will have to transfer to Link if they want to get to SeaTac. That alone should account for at least 1,000 riders even if overall transit ridership is unchanged.
Of course the big question hanging over Federal Way is whether the express buses from Tacoma to Seattle will continue. If they don’t then riders will be forced to transfer to Link. This will lead to an increase in Link ridership while overall transit ridership goes down.
I’m less bullish on FWLE adding lots more riders.
Angle Lake demand is rather high for a suburban station which suggests to me that it gets a bump as the end station. I expect over half of the FWLE boardings to shift from there (similar to what happened with Northgate when LLE opened).
Of course, some riders must move from ST Express if routes are eliminated all the way to Downtown. Some may move from Sounder South too — although I’ve been surprised that more didn’t move from Sounder North. It may be that Sounder North has a core loyal following where any Sounder South loyal following could be less pronounced proportionally.
Going in the other direction, I’m not sure how Highline College will attract riders. Another factor is how better connected Pierce County may be perceived by both bus riders and drivers from that county.
SeaTac may attract some additional riders to/from the south too. I’m not so bullish on getting lots more though. The LLE impact on SeaTac suggests to me that adding airport demand relies on train rider at least 15-20 miles to make a big difference. Federal Way is perhaps not far enough away to get dropped-off flyers to shift.
I do wonder when a rental car office will locate next to the Link station in Federal Way too. Renting a car at Federal Way could eliminate the need to pay the added airport rental fees. There are several hotels within walking distance of the platform there too, making a rental car office there more viable.
A final component may be casino shuttles. Federal Way to the EQC casinos or Muckleshoot casino isn’t that far. The tribes may look into adding shuttle services that they don’t offer now, bumping ridership a bit more.
In sum, I could see a pretty big variation in boardings from the three new stations for the factors mentioned above. My speculation is that Star Lake boardings will be horrible (well less than 1000 average weekday) with KDM at about 2000 and Federal Way at about 5000). I expect Angle Lake boardings to drop about 3000. So that’s a net of 4000 more net boardings. Of course the larger system will see more boardings too, so the net system effect would seem to be about 8000. The variability though could mean that it could range from 6000 more system boardings to 12000.
@Al S,
“ It looks like June and July could easily be worse for the two new stations for this reason.”
I haven’t seen anything from ST indicating that this will be a multi-month disruptions. But I guess in some people’s worlds the sky is always falling.
But I wouldn’t expect this disruption to last that long. ST has pretty darn good access to the damaged site, 24/7 really if they either single track or have the shuttle buses running. And the circumstances of the event give some pretty strong clues as to what happened. As will inspection of the damaged components.
If I had to guess – and this is only a guess – I’d guess that this is a heat related failure. Basically that the high temps caused the tensioning system to either bottom out or lock somehow, Once the contact wire loses tension the pantograph could snag a dropper or registration arm. At that point all heck could break loose.
But we will see.
@ Lazarus:
The pessimism is coming from ST itself. This is what’s currently stated on the ST service alert, for example:
“Once one track is complete, single tracking service will begin on the open track with trains running every 30 minutes. Updates will be provided as they become available. We appreciate your patience during this time.”
Since ST would not state an end date, it’s reasonable to assume that reduced service (only 30 minutes) through June will happen at least, and July seems almost likely.
I will add that this Downtown Redmond problem looks embarrassingly bad for ST. The stations have been open five weeks — and now they need to undertake a major inspection? What the heck was ST doing these past six months with extensive testing? Why is ST putting in wording that suggests that a large scale general inspection is needed so soon after opening? Shouldn’t they have a pretty good idea in what the problem is?
“I do wonder when a rental car office will locate next to the Link station in Federal Way too. ”
While it would make logical sense to have a rental car company located next to a Link station not too far from the airport, I can see reasons why not. There’s enough transit snobs out there and people with heavy luggage that they would still probably feel compelled to run shuttles anyway, even if the shuttle bus would get stuck in traffic and take considerably longer than Link does. Plus, every mile they are away from the airport makes the shuttle buses more expensive to operate, since you need more of them to maintain an acceptable service frequency. They’d also have to outbid housing developers for limited land next to a Link station.
I’m guessing when all is said and done, it’s more cost effective to either be at the rental car center, or somewhere off-site away from Link that they can just run their buses to.
Airport parking is kind of similar. There’s a parking lot right across the street from SeaTac Link station, and my last trip, I intentionally chose them over the competition so that I could walk right into the terminal, without having to mess with shuttles or pay $45/day to park in the garage. However, the layout of the parking lot strongly conveyed that the owners weren’t expecting anybody to do what I did, instead their expectation was that everyone would be riding for a shuttle bus to get stuck in traffic to go literally across the street. Most likely, the parking lot was built back before the Link overpass existed, and never updated.
There’s another private airport parking lot next to Angle Lake station I’ve never used, but I’m expecting it to be similar, with nearly everyone waiting 20+ minutes for their shuttle bus to crawl through traffic when they could just hop on Link for one stop – even people traveling light enough that a small amount of extra walking wouldn’t be that big of a deal. People’s brains are just conditioned to look for a private shuttle for access to an off-site parking lot or rental car office, not a train.
@Al S,
“ Since ST would not state an end date, it’s reasonable to assume that reduced service (only 30 minutes) through June will happen at least, and July seems almost likely.”
No, it is not reasonable at all to make an assumption like that. I’m sure that ST hasn’t given a firm end date simply because they are still assessing the situation. But that is understandable.
But hey, as long as you are conjuring up apocalyptic scenarios, why not assume it will be July of 2026 before service is restored? Or 2027? LOL.
Na, I suspect ST will get this handled relatively soon. And that is good news.
But hey, time will tell, right?
Lazarus, I agree. I think Link service to downtown Redmond will resume within a day or two.
If they are including May 10th’s opening day ridership in the numbers, then the claim that Downtown Redmond is the second busiest station is unreliable.
@Sam,
Of course this data includes opening day crowds. We won’t know for sure what the ridership actually is until we get a full month of “clean” data, but this is encouraging.
That said, if the huge bump in DT Redmond ridership was simply due to opening day crowds you would expect to see a similarly large amount of ridership at MVS, and the data doesn’t show that. So clearly something is up.
And, as previously reported in this blog, RR-B boardings at Redmond TC are pretty darn pathetic. So any sort of major bump in boardings at Downtown Redmond Station would indicate a substantial amount of new ridership coming into the transit system. And that is a good thing.
The extension opened on a Saturday. The celebration was on a Saturday. So it should be less impacted by the novelty factor than if it opened on a Friday like some other recent ones.
I agree that it’s not fully reliable.
Marymoor Village Station demand was very disappointing by the way. It’s a reason why I felt that the opening day surge wasn’t that impactful to skewing ridership.
My office is in Bellevue and I have a handful of coworkers who tried the Marymoor station P+R. They were saying it wasn’t really worth it since the garage traffic backs up so badly.
@John D,
“They were saying it wasn’t really worth it since the garage traffic backs up so badly.”
Translation: “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded!”
LOL.
@Lazarus
It’s traffic from 520 backing up and blocking the entrance to the P+R
John, there is no “garage traffic.” The station garage is around 10-15% full on weekdays.
@Sam
See my comment to Lazarus. I wasn’t clear, it’s 520 traffic backing up and blocking the P+R entrance.
As Al pointed out, if you just look at weekday numbers than it wouldn’t include opening day. By those numbers his statement still stands. In other words even if you throughout opening weekend (Saturday and Sunday) Downtown Redmond is the second busiest station.
That still may be novelty factor. Someone working in Bellevue may decide to “check out Link” and ride to Redmond. They may find the trip so enjoyable that they do this on a frequent basis. Or they may do it a few times and go back to what they usually do during lunch (e. g. wander around Downtown Bellevue). We won’t know for a few months (when the novelty factor tends to wear off) but it stands to reason that for trips within the East Side, Downtown Redmond would be a major destination. A lot of people live there and it is a good place to visit. It wouldn’t surprise me if Downtown Redmond continues to be the second most popular East Link Station until they get across the lake.
Johh, ok, I see that now. So what do your coworkers do? During peak hours, they don’t want to drive to the Marymoor Village garage because congestion. So they drive to and from the Bellevue office from Redmond?
assuming they are driving east on redmond way they probably are stuck waiting for people to get on the ramp. once they reach the south(west) bound sr 520 ramp they probably think to just get on rather than continue on redmond way to the parking structure.
@Sam
Yeah they just drive Redmond-Bellevue
It’s traffic from 520 backing up and blocking the entrance to the P+R
Wow. There are a lot of disadvantages to having a station so close to the freeway but I haven’t heard of that one. It seems a bit surprising to me. If you are approaching from East Lake Sammamish then you would likely take a left at 65th to avoid that traffic (e. g. https://maps.app.goo.gl/8XJuqq2k3VgBN2Jr8). If you are approaching from Redmond-Fall City Road I think the key is to stay to the left (since drivers heading to the freeway are in the right lane). Maybe East Lake Sammamish backs up all the way past 65th. I could see that.
But more to the point, what is the alternative? It seems like you are going to drive by the traffic anyway if you going to drive to work. There are no good bus alternatives that I can think of and even if there were the buses have to slog through the traffic as well (I don’t think they added BAT lanes). I supposed you could go around the other way but then what? Park in Issaquah and ride the 556. It doesn’t seem like there are great alternatives no matter which way you go.
[Update: OK, I see. They are coming from the other direction. That makes sense. ]
520 is also really fast and rarely congested east of Bellevue. If you’re next to 520 by the time you get to the parking garage, why not just get on 520 and drive directly to your destination?
@ross
its the second downside of just building a light rail next to a freeway. when it’s off peak time the light rail provides little travel time benefit versus cars. it’s why vancouver’s transit lines garners a lot more riderships as the parallel street it runs along are predominantly avenues not freeways.
As far as I can tell there’s not that much value in Redmond-Bellevue trips unless you are walking distance from a station on both ends. That should slowly change in the future as Bellevue/Redmond continue to urbanize around the light rail stations.
I think ridership will jump once Link connects across the bridge. Trips into Seattle take much longer by car and can be fairly expensive (due to the 520 toll and parking).
“As far as I can tell there’s not that much value in Redmond-Bellevue trips unless you are walking distance from a station on both ends.”
I see most park-and-ride trips not so attractive unless a distance (measured in travel time) is sufficiently long enough to warrant the extra mode change hassle — or parking at the destination is very expensive.
2 Line ridership today is much lower than it will be in 2026. Going the extra distance into Seattle will attract many more to the park and ride garages.
its the second downside of just building a light rail next to a freeway. when it’s off peak time the light rail provides little travel time benefit versus cars.
There is a third, related drawback. To quote this report:
Two species of overexpansion in U.S. cities deserve special mention. First is an overemphasis on serving transit-oriented developments. Many cities have seen new developments on “New Urbanist” principles: apartments with mid-rise units and a mix of commerial and residential development aimed at satisfying most residents’ daily needs without having to drive. Many of these developments are also transit-oriented, to allow for travel outside the development, such as to downtown jobs.
Because of strict zoning laws in developed areas of cities, these developments often must be built miles from established downtowns. As such, transit-oriented developments frequently disappoint. New, isolated developments are rarely large enough to be self-contained or offer the amenities of true city centers. Residents who want to travel to specialty stores or jobs not readily accessible by the existing transit network—and in typical low-density U.S. cities, this is almost all of them—will need to own cars. Once they own cars, there’s no reason not to use them for all trips, especially if zoning policies guarantee copious parking.
Thus someone who lives near the Lynnwood or Shoreline Stations are more likely to own a car than someone who lives in Roosevelt or Capitol Hill. They are more likely to drive to Northgate, let alone Ballard.
As far as I can tell there’s not that much value in Redmond-Bellevue trips unless you are walking distance from a station on both ends.
I think that is true of most trips taken on East Link right now. My guess is one-seat rides dominate. The exception is probably South Bellevue. I think some people transfer from the 550 to East Link. I’m sure there are some other transfers as well but the buses tend to serve the main destinations along there directly. If I’m in Kirkland and want to go to Downtown Redmond I’m just taking a bus that goes directly there (not a bus that requires a transfer to East Link). Same goes for park and ride users. I’m sure there are people who park at South Bellevue or Redmond because parking in Downtown Bellevue costs money but I don’t think parking in Downtown Bellevue is that difficult. It will be very different once Link goes across the water.
Yeah, looks like good numbers for May. An increase of 11% for Link and 9% for ST Express. Numbers for Sounder are unavailable (the website is broken). As mentioned we won’t know the numbers for Metro for a few days. The U-District had its best month ever (it opened during the pandemic). The UW/U-District combination also hit a record (I think). SeaTac and Capitol Hill set records as well. None of the downtown stations did despite the big extensions that occurred since 2019. Ridership per mile is still below 2019 levels I assume. Overall it appears that the massive expansion that has taken place has led to a significant increase in Link ridership while overall transit ridership still hasn’t recovered.
@Ross
Sound Transit’s Sounder data has been broken for a few months now. It’s still available as NTD data but that won’t be released til early next month. Sounder ridership this year seems to be stagnating and hasn’t grown much relative to last year.
https://www.transit.dot.gov/ntd/data-product/monthly-module-adjusted-data-release
Thanks John.
Yeah the Sounder Ridership page tab has been messed up off and on for several months.
The summary page tab does have Sounder data too.
ST doesn’t seem able to resolve the technical glitch for that tab. It works on some days but not others.
“ST doesn’t seem able to resolve the technical glitch for that tab. It works on some days but not others.”
Sounds like Link service. (Grumble.)
@ Mike:
The time when ST is measured much more by ifs daily operations than by its rosy expansion plans is only about a year away, say a month after FWLE opening.
It’s like buying a new house or car. Someone can get giddy about all the newness before purchasing, but that giddiness fades within weeks or months after daily use — and that person mainly notices design flaws and malfunctioning.
The time when ST is measured much more by ifs daily operations than by its rosy expansion plans is only about a year away, say a month after FWLE opening.
I agree. That will be a very big landmark when it comes to Link. East Link will finally be completed. Issaquah Link would not add much value in comparison. Most of the Spine will be done along with the essential and outstanding connection to feeder buses. Any extension will have limited, diminished returns. Even within Seattle there won’t be a huge improvement until 2039 and by then it may pale in comparison to bus improvements made in the meantime. By then it is quite likely that we will have finally added bus or BAT lanes on streets like Jackson, 45th, 85th, and Denny. It is also possible that frequent self-driving buses could be running all day, every day following the current routes of the 15, 17, 40 and D making Ballard Link a “nice to have”. Link will still be very important but any expansion won’t be as important as the reliability of Link and our buses.
After the openings by mid-2026, the next openings for Link stations are stated as 2032 for West Seattle, 2035 for Tacoma Dome and 2037-2041 for Everett.
I note that Ross said 2039. Even though ST says differently, I think it’s a plausible outcome.
In particular, the higher costs and Federal spigot combine to create a basic cash flow problem.
But even if the money is there, I don’t see any new Link station opening (after 2026) before 2037. In particular, there are just too many challenging construction aspects to West Seattle Link to get it open in five years (2032). There’s a deep tunnel with a station and a tall cable-stayed bridge! Even the Tacoma Dome Extension has risky soils issues in Fife, and Everett Extension has many open design questions remaining.
And it’s not line any of these next three extensions are serving any major regional destinations. They fall into the “nice to serve” categories and will interest few who don’t live in the corridors. (Serving SLU and Seattle Center will be delayed past 2040.)
It’s going to be a rough adjustment for the Board and for agency PR at a fundamental level. They are all predisposed to building Link – not operating Link. I expect that once the 2026 ribbon cuttings for Link are history, Link operations will take center stage.
ST can either rise to the reliable operations challenge, or fail and tarnish its image. ST shouldn’t be having the current operational problems that they do on the extensions. It doesn’t bode well.
I wrote that Seattle won’t get a huge improvement until 2039. I should have wrote “significant improvement”. West Seattle Link will run from three stations in West Seattle to SoDo but I wouldn’t consider that a significant improvement (let alone a huge improvement). It won’t be until 2039 that the trains from West Seattle will go downtown. That is the same time that the trains from Ballard get to downtown as well. That is if everything goes as planned. Things could get delayed further.
[Edit: I was talking about Link (not transit in general) when I made the statement about Seattle and 2039. That was clear with my original statement but not the reference I made to it here.]
2027: RapidRide I (Renton-Auburn), J (Eastlake)
2028: Stride S1 (South), S3 (522)
2029: Stride S2 (North)
2030: RapidRide K (Kirkland-Eastgate)
2028-2031: Swift Green Bothell extension
2031: Swift Gold (Everett-Smokey Point)
“Once one track is complete, single tracking service will begin on the open track with trains running every 30 minutes”
That’s much worse than the email alert yesterday. I assumed it would run every 10-15 minutes. So you can take Link north to Overlake Village, wait 30 minutes for a transfer, and continue toward Downtown Redmond. No wonder ST recommended RapidRide B as an alternative. 30-minute service is what Link had on weekends during the pandemic, and during various downtown closures.
ST said yesterday the single-tracking would continue “until normal service can be restored”. I assumed that would be a couple hours. ST didn’t say how long so I avoided speculating on anything further. But if the single-tracking will last for more than a short time (which we don’t know yet), then we’re back to how the 2 Line was before the extension. But worse, because Redmond Tech is excluded. Redmond Tech is where the good transfers to the B, 245, 542, and 545 are. Overlake Village has only bad transfers to the 221 and B. Bad as in, it’s a 3-6 minute walk uphill to the 221 stops (I don’t remember how long) and then you have to stand outside because there’s no bench or shelter, and it’s half-hourly and often late. The B is now four blocks further away on 156th.
That really busts Link+bus transfers. Going to Lake Hills, I’ll have to fall back to 545+245 at Redmond Tech, returning 245+545/542. Or the dreaded 550+226 at Bellevue TC, which I did before the 2 Line. But that’s much worse, especially now that it’s on 156th instead of 164th south of 8th. So I’ll stick to 545+245, and wave a kiss to Link at Redmond Tech as I walk across the tracks on the 2nd floor passage above them.