Contractors have pulled up tracks on the I-90 bridge (taken 6/18), does this mean more 2 Line delays?

Local Transit News:

Other Transportation:

Land Use & Housing:

Commentary & Miscellaneous:

This is an Open Thread.

75 Replies to “Midweek Roundup: fancy new trains”

  1. Most of the Club World Cup attendees impacted by the emergency service disruption on June 21 have long since left town. Attendance at the three non-Sounders matches was overwhelmingly fans of the teams playing those days.

    The largest visiting group was from Buenos Aires. River Plate’s fans filled most of the lower bowl for its match against Inter Milan, and had the club’s flags waving all over the stadium.

    But the June 21 match was Inter vs. Urawa, which had 25k attendees. Urawa’s supporter group filled most of the south end zone and was much more energetic than what I have seen of the Emerald City Supporters lately. The Urawa supporters were highly organized, to the point they didn’t even need visible song conductors. They also understood the tactics for messing with the other team’s offense by going into whistling mode when trying to shut down Inter’s attacking sequences. I hope some in the ECS were there to take notes.

    As for finding out the travel experience of these fans on June 21, that would probably require the assistance of Lumen Field and the ticketing agencies to spam the attendees via email and collect responses. Or at least ask Lumen Field to forward responses from its customer service regarding transportation that day (without personal information) to ST.

    If ST is just calling for locals to tell their experiences from that day, then it feels like a publicity stunt to make it look like the 1 Line SODO-to-Capitol-Hill closure was less impactful than it really was. Still, I don’t know of any better plan or timing ST could have chosen. Those turned off to ST enough to not support it politically in the future have mostly self-deported.

    1. Sound Transit has lost my support.

      Fundamentally, they could have built things better so that they weren’t in danger of breaking that weekend. Or, they could have inspected things earlier so that they could’ve fixed them some other weekend. Since they did not do that, I expect future lines to also be built shoddily, and I expect frequent emergency closures to continue.

      But even after they were so incompetent as to catch this at the last moment, they still had better options. They could have behaved as though Link was the single most important line in the transit system which they want us to believe it is. They could have stripped down other routes to run Link shuttles – Link is more important than any bus route (right?) so they could take out 50% of service on some bus route to run Link shuttles. They could have updated us when they knew the shuttles were more frequent than initially believed.

      WSDOT engineers I-5 well so they don’t need to close it unnecessarily. But if they do need to close it, they give us alternate routes, and they update us when the alternate routes change. Sound Transit can at least do that.

      But apparently, they don’t think they need to. So this will keep happening again and again.

      1. The frequency of the Link shuttles was dependent on recruiting Metro drivers to work overtime. ST chose to underpromise rather than overpromise. I can’t blame them for choosing to underpromise when they get raked over the coals every time they overpromise. They basically have to deal with a Goldilocks strategy from their opponents who want to defund public transit, and other opponents who support public transit but not ST3, or those who want only their portion of ST3 to happen.

        I don’t like the idea of reducing the service on other routes just for a day. There are riders who rely on each of those routes, too. Indeed, some expect extra service on some of those routes on game days.

        My main critique of the shuttle plan was the lack of express shuttles between Beacon Hill and Capitol Hill. By the time the train gets to SODO, shuttles have to go through downtown anyway, so they may as well serve the station stops. The three shuttles I saw were crushloaded headed north before they even got to Chinatown, but that was right after the match.

        I don’t think doing the emergency repairs on weekdays would have worked.

    2. Remember that most of the boom towns from 25 years ago don’t have transit systems that incentivize riding public transportation. Everything has to be built to accommodate cars which certainly doesn’t make building cheaper.

      Also, the construction industry as a whole hasn’t modernized its business practices well. Almost every project is a bespoke creation that has to be uniquely designed. Standardization used to be ugly, but companies like Factory OS in the Bay Area are learning how to build good looking, but standardized, projects at much lower cost than other construction firms.

      https://factoryos.com/

    3. > But the real answer is that San Francisco and New York weren’t unique—they were just early. Eventually, no matter where you are, the forces of NIMBYism catch up to you.

      > Although the Sun Belt continues to build far more housing than the coasts in absolute terms, Glaeser and Gyourko find that the rate of building in most Sun Belt cities has fallen by more than half over the past 25 years, in some cases by much more, even as demand to live in those places has surged. “When it comes to new housing production, the Sun Belt cities today are basically at the point that the big coastal cities were 20 years ago,”

      Aka local nimbyism is spreading to the other states as well.

      Though it is encouraging that at the state level, they’ve started to override the overzealous local policies that are blocking housing.

      “The Texas legislature recently passed several pieces of legislation that will, among other things, reduce the minimum lot size of new homes, limit the power of the “tyrant’s veto,” and allow multifamily housing to be built on land currently zoned for offices and retail. ”

      Same with california recently rolling back CEQA

      1. Nit:
        It’s not always NIMBYism.
        Eg: Arizona already has water problems. It would be difficult to put more sunbelt type development there unless there’s a severe rethinking to the water supply issues.

    4. Where will people who can’t afford these rising costs go? To the ocean to drown? To Haiti with its gang-dominated government? How can 30 million people fit into Haiti? Or will they create Hooverville tent cities in all American cities? Seattle’s current 5,000 homeless could balloon to 100,000 if housing-cost burden isn’t addressed.

    5. “Aka local nimbyism is spreading to the other states as well.”

      It didn’t spread; it has always been there. Pugetopolis has been more open to multifamily growth than many American cities. Seattle’s single-family area is 70% of housing-allowed lots; in some cities it’s 90-95%. Seattle has zones where multifamily and retail are allowed by default. In some cities the entire city is single-family only by default, and anything else requires an individual zoning variance. Those variances give nimbys an opportunity to block it.

    6. What has changed is the slack in the market has finally been squeezed out. It’s like a supermarket checkout line. It’s fine when there are only 2-3 people in line, but at 5 or 10 people the waits increase exponentially.

      San Francisco, San Jose, and New York City reached that inflection point in the mid 1990s. Seattle reached it in 2012. San Bernardino, other exurbs, many non-coastal cities, and Idaho towns reached it in the late 2010s. It accelerated in the 2020-2022 pandemic as housing construction stalled. “Loose-development” cities Dallas and Atlanta are reaching it now.

      1. Yeah, exactly. This study came in 2002. The introductory paragraph contains this sentence:

        The price of housing is significantly higher than construction costs
        only in a limited number of areas, such as California and some eastern cities.

        Now this includes a lot of other cities (like Seattle). Eventually it occurs everywhere — or at least everywhere within a reasonable distance of a job.

    7. The recent ICE crackdown is a growing factor in home building and home renovation costs in red state metros, and it can only skyrocket in the next few years because of it. The red state paranoia about foreign-born workers is only now starting to show. There just won’t be a decent supply of them moving forward. It’s going to get much worse in just the next year or two. It’s going to hurt food supply and costs too.

      Unfortunately, they’ll blame immigrants for the cost increases rather than their beloved leaders/ bigots. And they’ll be increasingly unable to maintain quality of life because of the costs. They reap what they sow.

      1. The ICE crackdown pushes up the cost of construction, which is a problem everywhere. You can’t get cheaper than that (unless you have a depressed area like Detroit). But in a lot of places — an increasing number as the article pointed out — it is zoning that it is the limiting factor. It is quite likely that many red states are being hit by a double-whammy. Prices are going up because it is more expensive to build. Various places where zoning had no influence on costs are now at the point where it is the key factor.

    8. If housing is expensive in both red and blue states, why leave Seattle where you have more transit and walkability, and the state/local governments try to safeguard your rights rather than suppressing them?

      1. It is all relative. It is still cheaper to live in Houston than it is San Fransisco. It is cheaper to live in Auburn than it is Seattle. What the article is highlighting is that various places that used to be seemingly immune to cost increases are now facing significant ones. It is all the same basic idea. Eventually the zoning becomes the limiting factor. I’ve said this about the “urban village” concept. It worked fine for a while. But eventually you just have too little land for the overall demand and as a result prices are higher than the cost of construction.

      2. Depends. There are some parts of Houston where each house has a lower price per square foot than in Seattle, but the houses are also bigger, so the total price to buy one there is essentially the same as here.

      3. It depends what you want. People want a condo in walkable and transit-friendly neighborhood might not find things so different between Seattle and Sunbelt cities. But people looking for half-acre single family property will find themselves in much better situation in Atlanta/Dallas.

      4. Ross:
        The cost of housing may be lower in Houston, but that doesn’t mean the cost of living is much different.

        Texas relies heavily on property tax. This means housing is more expensive than you might think if basing it on actual annual expenses rather than purchase price alone.

      5. @Glenn — Rent in Houston is a lot less than rent in L. A. or San Fransisco. So whatever impact property tax has is far outweighed by the cheaper properties. I think it is generally accepted that the cost of living is higher in the big cities of California than Texas. But the point of the article is that prices are going up in Texas now as well. There is a limit to sprawl based development.

    9. My observation from my time living in one of those sun-belt cities is that theytend to build bigger house on these days. Probably because some fixed cost has changed in the process of developing real estate, it is more profitable to sell bigger house than a normal starter home. So they will try everything (build bigger house or building more expensive interior) so the house can always sell at certain price.

  3. I haven’t seen or heard of any additional test trains on the floating bridge. Coupled with the significant number of workers that I continue to see on the bridge, it really makes me think that the test train back in late May was for PR purposes more than actually being ready for that stage of testing.

    2. Maybe the preliminary tests in May revealed a number of “variances” that need to be fixed before more testing can continue.

      1. “our next headway test — potentially with passengers aboard — later this summer.”

  4. A lack of bus lanes isn’t killing the reliability of the 40. It’s the route’s extremely long length combined with it’s constant stops every few blocks. Yes, there are chokepoints but only of the newly proposed bus lanes addresses it. Lemme explain:

    The largest chokepoint for the 40 is along Blanchard St as it tries to reach Whole Foods. Ironically, some of this is caused by Metro’s layover spot for the 554 that takes up a lane. The 40 is then forced into general traffic, sometimes taking both lanes to make the left turn onto Westlake. Then it’s blocked by idling cars trying to turn right onto Denny, who are then blocked by crossing pedestrians. On bad days, I’ve sat on the 40 for 15 minutes trying to get from 5th Ave to Denny & Westlake.

    Another chokepoint is WB along Northgate Way from Aurora to Greenwood. The bus can sometimes sit through 3 traffic signals when approaching Aurora and then will get bogged down approaching Greenwood.

    SDOT does address the issue NB along Holman Rd (thankfully). But BAT lanes in Fremont and Ballard aren’t necessary as the bus has free movement – event during peak times. My only recommendation is to remove street parking at certain points for safety reasons as the bus as limited turn clearance and sight distance.

      1. Accumulatively, that’s a 5.5 minute savings per trip that is scheduled to take roughly 63 minutes at peak. Actual travel time can exceed this. After millions of dollars, the best we can do is to shave minutes off an entire trip – prescheduled? Also, I’m highly skeptical of the savings along Westlake Ave. During peak time, the bus has free movement due to relatively high speeds on a two-lane road along Westlake (limit is 25 but most people, including the bus, go 35-40). And in Ballard, pithy bus lanes for a two-block strech along Market St is not going to make a dent versus where they’re needed the most: along Leary Wy between 11th Ave and Market St. Bus lanes are only effective if they’re installed in places that actually need them.

      2. My understanding is that Westlake and 36th are primarily to fix reliability when the bridge opens and traffic backs up. It’s far from perfect but it’s a (relatively) cheap project.

      3. Accumulatively, that’s a 5.5 minute savings per trip that is scheduled to take roughly 63 minutes at peak. Actual travel time can exceed this.

        Which means actual time savings can exceed this. The savings are average. This means if traffic isn’t bad then the savings are lower than these numbers. If traffic is really bad the savings are greater. In other words not only will be the bus faster but it will be more reliable. This is an 8% savings on a route that was by no means the worst in our system. This is huge.

        Oh, and John is right about Westlake. Bridge related backups are notoriously bad. They also make the buses especially unreliable. Peak-traffic is more consistent so you can plan accordingly. But you never know when the bridge is going to go up. This brings up another issue. The focus on the document is peak-travel time improvement. This is the most important but the bridge doesn’t go up during peak. So these changes will improve (average) speed and overall reliability throughout the day. Not only is this better for riders on the bus but it means less money spent on the route (even though it runs just as often and more reliably).

        After millions of dollars, the best we can do is to shave minutes off an entire trip – prescheduled?

        The actual work to make the buses faster didn’t cost very much. This is a multi-modal project. One of the “modes” was water. My guess is the drainage work cost the most. But this had to be done. A lot of the other work had nothing to do with making the bus faster, but justified. For example:

        * Install Accessible Pedestrian Signal (Accessible Pedestrian Signal (APS))
        * Reconstruct curb ramps on NW corner
        * Pavement restoration in northbound curbside lane

        These add up. It also makes sense to do all of this work at the same time. To do the drainage you have to tear up the street. As long as you are tearing up the street you might as well do the other stuff.

        Ironically, some of this is caused by Metro’s layover spot for the 554 that takes up a lane.

        Which will soon go away. It is also outside the scope of the project. This is a shame, but there was only so much money spent on this. The lack of spending is a legacy of bad planning by the Murray administration (which greatly underestimated the cost of the work). Improving the travel time of buses like the C and 40 which go from 3rd to Blanchard to Westlake is certainly justified. Just converting the layover space of the 554 to a queue jump will definitely help.

        Then it’s blocked by idling cars trying to turn right onto Denny, who are then blocked by crossing pedestrians

        As Jason Li suggested (https://seattletransitblog.com/2025/06/23/fix-the-l8-route-8-bus-lanes/) the easiest thing to do is get rid of right turns here.

        We would also encourage SDOT to consider blocking the right turn from northbound Westlake Ave onto eastbound Denny Way. This turn has a dedicated phase, reducing time for other traffic movements, and drivers making the turn consistently block the intersection. This would surely impede a new bus lane on Denny and already mires the existing transit lane for Route 40, RapidRide C, and the SLU Streetcar, so restricting this turn would result in widespread speed and reliability improvements.

        It is likely that traffic would shift to Fairview if we banned right turns there. That is OK, since Fairview is better equipped to handle a lot of right turning cars. Since there is a left-turn arrow from westbound Denny to southbound Fairview you can have a right-turn arrow from northbound Fairview to eastbound Denny (that operates at the same time). In contrast the right-turn arrow from Westlake to Denny doesn’t have a corresponding left-turn arrow. This means that the Westlake/Denny traffic-light cycle would be shorter while the traffic light-cycle for Fairview/Denny would remain the same.

        Likewise they punted in the north end. Like most (if not all) RapidRide projects the work is not complete. There will still be issues with the bus just there are with the RapidRide buses. But the improvements are still big and a good value. Like all of the city they need to do more.

      4. @Jordan

        There will be bus lane at part of Leary Way. I saw SDOT crew installing bus lane on westbound Leary Way south of Market last week. That part of Leary Way will be narrowed to one lane per direction, but the bus lane might not be continuous.

  5. Those SEPTA cuts in Philadelphia are apocalyptic. Looking at the routes I used to take, several of them are getting severe cuts at times when they’re completely packed. I guess that’s the consequence of electing Republicans.

    But I have to say that on the other hand… the fare will still be lower than it is here in Seattle. There are a lot of ways to save costs – one-person-per-train operation, bus-only lanes, signal priority, stop consolidation, route simplification – that have not been seriously pursued there. Seattle has done a lot of this and Philadelphia hasn’t. Of course these changes have been proposed by SEPTA staff, but local politicians (who interfere with transit policy much more than they do in Seattle) stopped all of them.

    The service cuts are bad, but a lot of the route changes should have happened a long time ago. To take one example I’m familiar with, the 47M, which was the closest route to my house, is getting cancelled entirely. I rarely rode it, because it had terrible frequency, and the only reason it ever existed was because certain white people were too scared to go two blocks east to the 47 (or five blocks west to the subway).

    I’m glad to be living here and not there. Sooner or later, we are getting some service cuts too, of course, but they won’t be nearly as bad.

    1. Philadelphia is also dealing with a trash apocalypse as the city’s blue-collar union, DC33, is on strike. Definitely glad not to be living there.

  6. Continuing the theme of multiple posts from last week, I think it would be worth a discussion on the general tradeoffs between rolling out the red carpet for people headed downtown vs. improving service to the rest of the city. This impacts decisions like whether the route the 255 downtown, at the cost of making trips slower to other places or whether to prioritize bus service on 1st ahead of improving frequency on a bus route somewhere else.

    Part of the complication is that there are a lot of people that own cars who will only even consider riding transit if the destination is downtown, so even though downtown may be only a small portion of their overall trips, it might be near 100% of their transit trips. These people could care less about how easy/difficult it is to ride transit to Lake City or Fremont because, they ever need to go there, they’ll be driving anyway. But, then, you’ve got the other set of users, people who don’t have cars, where their transit trips *do* resemble their overall trips (excluding those within walking distance). For the second group, they want good transit everywhere, and are willing to accept a tradeoff where it takes a little bit longer to get downtown, in exchange for better service to other parts of the city they also need to get to.

    As 80% of people in Seattle own cars, the former group is bigger in terms of raw population count, but the latter group tend to ride transit much more often, so make up a larger percentage of overall transit ridership. They also, by definition, have fewer options if the transit system fails to get them where they need to go in a reasonable timeframe.

    Historically, Seattle area transit was focused almost exclusively around downtown, with even basic crosstown routes like the 8, 44, and 48, provoking a lot of skepticism among planners when these routes were first created. Over time, the network has gradually shifted to become more anywhere to anywhere, but relics of the legacy downtown centrism remain, especially among the trolley routes. That’s why Upper Queen Anne still has no bus to Fremont and Magnolia still has no bus to Ballard, for example.

    One nice thing about Link is that it avoids the need to make tradeoffs between downtown vs. not downtown because it does both really well, at the same time. That is, the same train that goes downtown also connects Northgate, Capitol Hill and UW to each other, unlike a bus which must either choose one specific trip pair for express service or run very slowly with stops everywhere. We could, of course, have done better (e.g. the Ballard spur proposed on STB several years back), but what we have is still generally good. Sounder, on the other hand, while theoretically usable for non downtown trips is, in practice, nearly entirely about downtown trips (and is quite expensive to operate).

    I think we could have a whole post on tradeoffs between downtown vs. non-downtown service, what percent of overall systemwide boardings are trips with downtown at at least one end of the trip, and what the best balance is between the goals. I’d also be curious what percent of the people riding transit to downtown are simply using downtown as a connection point, rather than actually going there.

    1. I think the big problem with an “everywhere to everywhere” model is our lack of frequency. A 15 minute transfer just isn’t going to cut it for short distances like UD to Fremont or downtown to First Hill. The shorter the distance, the higher the frequency needs to be to overcome the transfer overhead.

      As far as I can tell, there are two main reasons this happens: we don’t have enough service hours, and service hours are deployed in a way that is less than ideal. From my perspective both problems are largely political; we can’t get more service without more revenue, and we can’t redeploy service without making a bunch of people unhappy.

      What I would like to see is twofold: a continued investment in a few core city center routes rather than “peanut buttering” service all over the city, and more branching routes so we don’t use a bunch of service hours serving lower-density destinations.

      An example of a “core investment” would be the G line. It did unfortunately reduce service in Capitol Hill, but it really does provide high quality service along the route. Though it would have been nice if some of the G line’s service hours could have been redistributed for better headways on Sundays and into the evening.

      A few obvious candidates for re-investment would be high ridership, city center routes like the 44, G, 8, 40, 48, etc.

      An example of a good branching route is the 3/4. There’s some waste there (the tail of the 4), but the core First Hill segment runs at 7.5m headways over the week. I could see a similar thing happening in other locations; a potential 8-11, for example, or overlapping the 60 with either the 49 or the streetcar, or adding an overlay to the 40 that ends in Ballard

      For most riders a bus that ends in downtown eliminates the need for a transfer, meaning that lower headways are less of an issue. Not everyone is headed to downtown, to be sure, but it’s generally the location that people are most likely to ride transit to.

      1. I think the big problem with an “everywhere to everywhere” model is our lack of frequency. A 15 minute transfer just isn’t going to cut it for short distances like UD to Fremont or downtown to First Hill. The shorter the distance, the higher the frequency needs to be to overcome the transfer overhead.

        I agree but it can also become a self-fulfilling prophesy. If you favor one-seat rides too much then you end up with a network where the buses are infrequent while common trips involve major detours and time consuming transfers.

        Running buses downtown it isn’t an either/or thing. If you look at this proposal it still has a lot of buses going downtown. A lot of the trips to downtown are better. David Lawson’s map was the same way (but unfortunately the link to the map no longer works).

        An example of a “core investment” would be the G line. It did unfortunately reduce service in Capitol Hill, but it really does provide high quality service along the route.

        But that was the result of bad routing, not the G. We could definitely have a lot more frequent service if we just routed the buses better (see my previous link). Look at the network for a second. There are clear trade-offs. But many of the trade-offs are made up for with frequent service. Or there are alternative ways to get there. For example consider riders in Madison Park. Right now if they want to go downtown they just stay on the 11. But the 11 is both slow and infrequent. It only serves one spot downtown but at least there is a spine through downtown (they don’t have to wait long to catch another bus). So they would lose that. The biggest loss is if they are headed to Pike/Pine west of Broadway. But even that isn’t bad while many trips are better. Trips involving anywhere on Madison are better because the bus from Madison Park is more frequent. A trip involving Link is better for the same reason. Trips to the south end of First Hill are better. Trips to anywhere on Denny or Uptown/Seattle Center are much better. Even places like Belltown are likely better as long as the 8 isn’t stuck in traffic.

        Or consider the 10/12. North of Pine they only run every 20 minutes. There is no good way to get from Kaiser to downtown even though it is one of the busiest places in terms of buses. You have the 8, 10, 11 and 43. Not counting the 43 that is ten buses an hour. The 12 isn’t that far away either — if you throw that in it is fourteen buses and hour. Yet trying to get downtown involves either schlepping your way all the way to Capitol Hill Station (for a very short transit ride) or picking a bus stop and waiting for a bus that only runs every twenty minutes (at best). By simply branching the 10/12 later (at Thomas) you could have ten minute service there. Again, at no extra cost. About fifty riders a day (on 19th between Thomas and Madison) would have to walk a couple blocks to catch a (more frequent) bus.

        It isn’t just consolidation either. We shouldn’t duplicate other service when it doesn’t actually contribute anything. For example, the 7, 14 and 36 all run along Jackson and then north through downtown. This means that from 12th & Jackson you can take any of those buses to say, 3rd & Seneca. According to Google I can take any of the three buses and one should arrive every four minutes (as of this writing). That’s great. There is no obvious flaw with those buses. But what about the 106? It just ends at 5th & Jackson. It doesn’t really add anything along the corridor. There are alternatives.

        That is the way these sorts of trade-offs work. Houston and Miami just have a much better network after all the work was done. It isn’t necessarily about de-emphasizing downtown (although that is sometimes part of it). It is often about lots of little things like consolidation. It requires a lot of finesse and there are definite winners and losers. In a complex network with a messy street grid (like Seattle) you are bound to have awkward areas with no obvious solution. (I’ve spent a lot of time with a senior Metro planner discussing how best to serve Northwest Hospital and still haven’t come to a definitive solution.) There are always trade-offs. That being said I think are network is full of mistakes that could be corrected. As Steven Higashide put it, it isn’t “win-win” but at least it is “win-win-win-lose”.

      2. > If you favor one-seat rides too much then you end up with a network where the buses are infrequent while common trips involve major detours and time consuming transfers.

        That is true, but I am suggesting that a route can get away with providing less frequency if it serves demand directly instead of forcing a transfer

        Examples might be the 545 on weekends, or the 28 in general. Both of them have reasonable ridership despite less-than-adequate frequencies because they serve trips directly instead of forcing a transfer. Both would obviously do better with more trips, but it’s not as necessary because they don’t force a transfer.

        > But that was the result of bad routing, not the G.

        I’m not saying that the current network couldn’t be improved, my understanding is that it took service hours from other routes. The network could certainly be better but I think it was worth it to have one strong route with good frequency and a handful of mediocre ones rather than a smattering of routes with okay frequency. Thus far ridership numbers seem to suggest that it has worked out positively.

      3. “Examples might be the 545 on weekends, or the 28 in general. Both of them have reasonable ridership despite less-than-adequate frequencies because they serve trips directly instead of forcing a transfer”

        That’s the wrong way to look at it. The goal isn’t to run the minimum amount of transit that can fill buses; it’s to run the optimal amount of transit that people feel meets their needs and is most competitive with driving. If you look at cities with far higher transit usage and less than 50% car ownership, they have a higher frequency over more of the week than we do. The two go hand in hand. You may think a half-hourly 545 or 28 is fine, but ask the people who are waiting 25 minutes for it day after day, or have to fit their lives around its pulses, or can’t do as many activities in a day, or forego trips rather than deal with half-hourly buses.

        There are be reasons Metro can’t deliver 15-minute frequency everywhere now, such as lack of drivers or money, but these are problems to be fixed, not a sign that everything is hunky-dory. We should have a good transit network, not a mediocre transit network that waste’s people’s time in waiting and congestion.

      4. I am suggesting that a route can get away with providing less frequency if it serves demand directly instead of forcing a transfer

        Sort of. The longer the trip the less important frequency is (and the more important speed is). The studies show this but it is also intuitive. Imagine trains running every hour to Portland. Now imagine they can either run them fifteen minutes faster or run them every half hour. My guess is people would prefer the former.

        Commuter rail is similar. Spontaneous trips are rare. Frequency still has an impact but it is smaller. For example imagine if Sounder ran every half hour and arrived at Seattle at 8:30 and 9:00 am. For a lot of people this would be just fine. But imagine you are a shift worker and you walk five minutes to your work. That means you show up at work at 8:35 or 9:05. If your shift starts at 9:00 you have to twiddle your thumbs for 25 minutes. Frequency matters even with commuter rail (it just matters less than typical transit service).

        In the case of Sounder my guess is the vast majority of riders drive to the park and ride at the Tacoma Dome. Even so, my guess is a lot of people transfer after getting to Downtown Seattle. So they still have a transfer — it is just that the buses are extremely frequent at that point and even Link is fairly frequent that early (and fast if you are headed up to Westlake).

        Studies have shown that there is a transfer penalty even if there is no time penalty. In other words people don’t like getting off one bus and switching to another one even if there is no waiting. But there aren’t that many trips where the ability to avoid a transfer is more important than frequency. The vast majority of trips within a typical city (and we are typical) are to other places. If you expect no one to transfer then it is highly likely you will end up with a very crappy system. That is because there are too many origins and destinations. You really can’t build a good system without a lot of transfers. That doesn’t mean you should go to the other extreme (like this proposal) but really good systems have lots of transfers. Vancouver seems to have the balance right. They don’t force a lot of same direction transfers for short trips but they also don’t steer everything towards downtown. Their system is definitely a grid (not a hub-and-spoke) and thus is highly reliant on transfers. As a result they have arguably the best transit system on the West Coast and one of the best in North America.

        You mentioned the 28. It has low ridership. The few riders who do take the bus largely take it to downtown (I am counting South Lake Union as “downtown”). But one of the main reasons for this is that it is too damn infrequent to work for anything else. People will endure crappy bus service to downtown because driving there is so miserable. To be clear, there are people taking it to 8th & Market (presumably then transferring to the 44) but very few people ride it to Fremont because it just doesn’t work. Folks find other ways to get there even if it involves a long walk or a transfer (or both). Or they just ride a bike, drive or call a cab. The 28 — at its current frequency level — is just a crappy route. There is no obvious way to fix it, unfortunately. If you could serve Fremont and then magically end at 39th & Aurora (to a stop served by the E) then you could probably run it twice as often. Despite the transfer it would get a lot more riders.

        Consider the 5. This comparison isn’t completely fair because the corridor for the 5 is stronger (and the route is longer). But between the north end terminus of the 5 and the Aurora on-ramp the 5 gets 825 riders. The 28 gets 110. Even if you throw out the Shoreline College ridership (168) the 5 gets a lot more. Again, some of that is due to the length and strength of the corridor the 5 is serving. But the corridor of the 28 is not that bad or that different. There are plenty of shops and apartments along the way. The 28 connects to more of Fremont but it fails simply because the bus is too damn infrequent.

        As far as the G is concerned, it is easy to assume that we are running more buses on Madison and since that service has to come from somewhere the other buses are running less often. But the buses are also running much faster. When I did the calculations it was largely revenue neutral. The problem is that the other routes didn’t fully take advantage of it. Imagine if Metro was being asked to run Link. So they would pay the drivers just like they pay the bus drivers. Now imagine they finish Northgate Link but decide to keep all the old buses. Given the extra travel time for the trains that money has to come from somewhere. So they reduce service on buses like the 41, 71, 72 and 73.

        This is essentially what Metro did with the RapidRide G but not at such an extreme level. Rather than fully take advantage of the very fast, frequent service they had a muddled, half-ass response. But there are still places — not on Madison — where bus service got better. Often this was geared towards coverage. They resurrected service on Summit (in the form of the 3 instead of the old 47). There is now service on 15th that didn’t exist before. But it wasn’t all coverage based. On Pine you have the combined 10/12 instead of the 11. This is a significant improvement in terms of frequency. The problem is they didn’t go far enough. Combining the 10/12 is great. But branching so early is not. Meanwhile you have the 2 which is now a coverage bus west of 15th to downtown. Like so many of the other routes it isn’t really providing much coverage. It is only a block away from the much more frequent G and sometimes they even overlap! The problem isn’t that the RapidRide G “stole” a lot of service from other buses it is that Metro planners produced a very wasteful network.

      5. I am suggesting that a route can get away with providing less frequency if it serves demand directly instead of forcing a transfer

        I think it is the opposite. If a route is infrequent (and connecting routes are also infrequent) then the only people who ride are those taking direct trips. There just aren’t that many people taking trips like that.

    2. Continuing the theme of multiple posts from last week, I think it would be worth a discussion on the general tradeoffs between rolling out the red carpet for people headed downtown vs. improving service to the rest of the city. …

      Part of the complication is that there are a lot of people that own cars who will only even consider riding transit if the destination is downtown, so even though downtown may be only a small portion of their overall trips, it might be near 100% of their transit trips.

      I think there are several places like this though. For example parking in the U-District and Capitol Hill is now a big pain. Same with areas that could easily be considered part of downtown but traditionally weren’t (First Hill, South Lake Union, even Uptown). These are areas with very high transit potential. When folks talk about the importance of density it is often a shorthand for “population density”. But quite often it is employment density as well as everything else. There are lots of people trying to go to and from a small area. The relationship between density and ridership is not linear, it is exponential. Double the density and you will double the transit ridership (all other things being equal). Partly this is because driving gets worse as (automobile) density increases. Transit is often the opposite. Frequency increases as more people ride the bus. Back in the day downtown had the most density (probably still does) but nothing else really came close. Now a lot of other areas are at least in the same ballpark.

      But it also depends on the quality of the transit. This gets back to the whole “captive” versus “choice” riders idea. This idea is often criticized because it implies a binary situation. There is a much broader scale. Parking in Ballard sucks. But transit to Ballard from my neighborhood sucks even more. So if I have to go there I find a way to park. I am a choice rider but I prefer transit. There are plenty of people who are the opposite. There are also people who would be considered “captive” (they don’t own a car) but they can always call a cab or get a ride from someone.

      For many years downtown was special because it had such density and had good transit. Now a lot of dense areas have weak transit. Transit to those area has lagged behind their potential transit ridership. The same goes for infrastructure. The bus tunnel was added in 1990. Since then there has been excellent transit from what I would now call the middle of downtown (Westlake) to the south end (CID). Trains run through the tunnel and the buses (having been kicked out) go along an excellent transit mall. But that hasn’t happened for that much of the city. You can get from various places to the UW quite well but not from Ballard or Fremont. The Denny corridor has tremendous density and buses that are so slow people are devising various ways to race the bus (you can walk faster than the 8 but can you hop faster?). Getting to First Hill from downtown is very good (at least to Madison) but not great from Link or the south or even from due north. The network is outdated. It assumes that there are only a couple places worth visiting in First Hill or that traffic isn’t that bad on Denny. There is still very good transit to downtown (even if it requires a transfer) but that isn’t the case to other dense areas. Focusing excessively on downtown would likely lead to less ridership and worse overall transit outcomes.

    3. I think one important point is that there should be a distinction between core routes that serve downtown, but they run frequently, all day, long, in a straight line, and serve many other places along the way. These routes are important both for downtown travel and anywhere-to-anywhere travel.

      But, then you have express buses, especially express buses that operate only during rush hour, whose sole purpose is to get commuters to downtown, and nothing else. King County Metro used to have tons and tons of these routes, but one by one, they gradually got eliminated through service restructures, in favor of Link, RapidRide, or other bus routes. But, some such route are still there. One egregious example is CT route 424. It gives people in Monroe a red carpet bus ride to downtown Seattle, twice per day, in spite of no service existing on the Woodinville->Monroe SR-522 corridor, at all, the rest of the day, and running a schedule that makes riding such a bus to a secondary destination like downtown Bellevue or UW nearly unusable in the PM direction. There are others. For example, I think Kent has a bus route (can’t remember the number) that largely duplicates Sounder, and operates only during the same hours of the day that Sounder already runs.

      1. Yes, the type of bus you are talking about (express, especially peak-express or commuter) still exist but a lot of them have disappeared because of COVID and Link. Quite often there were non-express alternatives. You can see that in the report (https://kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/metro/accountability/pdf/2019/system-evaluation.pdf#page=37). The 5 EX was the express version of the 5. Sometimes the relationship was a bit dubious (the 9 is the express equivalent of the 7 even though it doesn’t go downtown). A few buses (listed at the end) had unique coverage (and thus no non-express alternative). It isn’t as if riders didn’t use a bus like the 15 to get from the north end of Ballard to Market, but it was clearly designed to get people downtown. The main reason they operated was because of the high number of people heading there. This type of travel pattern is especially bad for crowding. Ideally you want a bus where people are getting on and off at each stop. If everyone just boards (a bus headed downtown) and doesn’t get off until downtown it can lead to a lot of crowding which then make the express buses a good value. Unlike most express buses they actually save the agency money compared to the alternative. If the RapidRide D is running every five minutes and is leaving people at the curb then it is actually cheaper to run a 15 (since it will be full as well). But with COVID a lot of the crowding went away and with it a lot of these express buses.

        But Link had a huge impact as well. The obvious one was in Snohomish County. Pretty much all the express buses to Seattle are gone now. The 41 was a hybrid express/local but a very high percentage of riders took it to downtown. It is gone.

        Metro has actually swapped out the downtown destination for other places (mostly First Hill and South Lake Union) but only a few buses do that. You can’t take a bus from Northgate to Westlake. But you can take a bus (during peak) from Northgate to South Lake Union, First Hill and Cherry Hill. Link provides the main connection while the other bus runs express to downtown-adjacent locations. In some sense the 9 was basically ahead of its time. The 7 is your basic route to downtown but the 9 eases crowding while providing an alternative express to a different location.

        The remaining express buses to downtown largely come from the south or east. A bus like the 101 is similar to the old 41. It gets some riders in Renton but most of the riders are heading downtown. The 212 is even more of an express geared towards connecting to downtown. The 550 is similar although now it connects riders from Seattle to East Link. The buses from the east will largely go away once Link goes across the water. There will be fewer buses coming from the south as Link gets to Lynnwood. But depending on what ST decided to do though, the reduction could be relatively minimal.

      2. Routes like the 15 actually compensate for peak-hour congestion: the 15’s travel time peak hours is like the D in the off-hours. The D’s daytime travel time stretches to 25+ minutes, which is excessive for the 3-mile distance between Market Street and Pine Street, and puts a last-3-mile overhead on everyone going between Ballard and the region. The 45th corridor doesn’t help because it has the same overhead slowdowns to U-District station. This is one reason people want Ballard Link, which will bring the travel time down to around 13 minutes (11 minutes in one of the unchosen alternatives). That’s more appropriate for a regional center 3 miles from downtown.

        Ideally Metro would run the 15 all day frequently, for those who don’t need the Uptown overhead — which is about everybody, since the 15 stops at Denny Way five blocks from Mercer Street, and less from Seattle Center. But Metro persistently refuses to do this, forcing people to ride the D when the 15 isn’t running or is running in the wrong direction. I’ve wanted to go to/from Ballard occasionally when the 15 is running the wrong way, and it’s frustrating. Or Metro could reroute the D to the 15’s corridor, which it should have done in the first place.

  7. I saw this from some LinkedIn post today:

    “Mayor Harrell Signed Legislation to streamline Sound Transit Permitting and Support Faster Light Rail expansion. “

    1. Federal Way Link is estimated to go into service March 2026. Pinehurst opening is listed for late June 2026.

    2. I didn’t foresee Federal Way and East Link reversing their opening order. This comes after Lynnwood and East Link reversed their order.

      Well, we’ll know how much Federal Way contributes to ridership before the 2 Link complicates things, and whether Rainier Valley/Beacon Hill/downtown get overcrowded peak hours.

    3. Could ST run Lynnwood-Federal Way every 8 minutes all day as a stopgap until the full 2 Line opens? Could it run 6 minutes peak hours or all day? I mean, would it have enough trains and base spaces to do so? It would require more drivers of course.

  9. We should have passed a link extension from South Bellevue to Renton and TIBS as part of ST3.

    1. ST looked at it. It said Bellevue-Renton didn’t have enough ridership yet but might in the future. Stride is an interim service to prebuild ridership and confirm when it’s ready. There was another project for West Seattle-Burien-Renton. South King was keen on it but when the study results came out and said it would be high cost and low ridership, they went silent. We don’t know if they’ll be interested again in ST4, if there is an ST4.

      If they had chosen a Bellevue-Renton-Burien line, it would be a major expensive project, so it couldn’t just be added to ST3. Something else would have to give. South King was adamant that Federal Way must be first, and Pierce wanted Federal Way for the Tacoma extension. East King would have had to give up the Issaquah line. That line has a long history because Issaquah’s mayor was on the ST board for much of the 2010s, and he strongly insisted on an Issaquah line and building it soon, so it became East King’s top priority after the 2 Line. It would take a lot of convincing to get the board to change their mind on that.

    2. Hard to see that project ever making sense. There is a freeway connecting the two cities and not much in between. There are HOV lanes pretty much the entire way including a connection right to the main Downtown Bellevue station. The only tricky part is getting from the middle of Renton to the HOV ramps. But even if you built an expensive set of ramps and a huge busway through town it would still be many times cheaper than adding train tracks from Bellevue to Renton. You definitely don’t need the extra capacity of rail (the buses won’t be full of riders while running every five minutes). Link from Renton to Bellevue would offer no advantages to bus improvements while being a lot more expensive and useful.

    3. You could also run Stride every 10 minutes, which ST should do because it’s positioned as BRT and the primary Bellevue-Renton connector. I think it will be every 10 minutes daytime, dropping to 20 minutes evenings and maybe weekends, from the bits I’ve heard.

    4. Auburn to Bellevue commuter line would be amazing in addition to Stride. Not light rail, but a faster commuter line. There are few stops in between, so I don’t see light rail making sense. From Auburn, Renton, and Bellevue, there are a lot of useful transfers that people can make.

      Bellevue: Stride (to Bothell/Lynnwood), light rail (to Issaquah/Eastgate/Redmond), other local buses (Factoria), company shuttles

      Renton: Maple Valley, Kent Hill, Fairwood, Skyway, Tukwila

      Kent/Auburn: Kent Hill, Lea Hill, Covington

      Stride is a good alternative if people need to commute outside of peak hours or need frequency. We also can throw out STEX 566.

      1. Auburn to Bellevue commuter line would be amazing in addition to Stride.

        That seems like a lot of work for not that many riders. It looks like the rail line merges with the BNSF line at the Black River crossing (https://maps.app.goo.gl/3WsHYNwCS4donmMk8). At that point you would have to reverse direction. To make it actually work you would have to build a spur going the other direction. Then you are running down Houser (through Renton). You would have a station or two there and you would also have to deal with the surface crossing. The train would be moving slow then (because of the station(s) so it wouldn’t be that big of a delay. Then you would make your way north. It is hard to see the ridership being very high given the 566 doesn’t get many riders (and performed poorly). ST doesn’t run the 567 (that skips Renton) any more for that reason. Hard to see it worth the investment.

        Just running buses seems like a much better value.

      2. If you look carefully at the buildings around that area, you will notice they are built at odd angled to accommodate the major junctions that once existed there, and likely BNSF still owns the land where the track used to be.

        Zoom in on this map for a taste of what used to exist there, including the two main lines to Renton:
        https://pastmaps.com/map/seattle-king-county-wa-usgs-topo-1958-p1966

        You could probably make this more popular than the bus equivalent due to it being faster than the equivalent bus from city center to city center.

        The problem is the expense of dealing with BNSF.

        It seems to me a good starting place might instead be extending Sounder North to Renton. You already have the tracks blocked from Seattle north due to the existing trains. You already have the equipment and crews, which you are paying for a day’s work for only two hours of train operation. Capital expenses could amount to just building a couple of temporary station platforms.

      3. If you just wanted to make it a stride auburn, Kent, Renton, Bellevue etc…. Line it wouldn’t be too hard.

        The sr 167 master plan discusses creating a sr 167 brt using the express lanes and center direction access ramps

      4. The problem is the expense of dealing with BNSF.

        Good point. Anywhere south of Renton and you are back to dealing with BNSF.

        If you just wanted to make it a stride Auburn, Kent, Renton, Bellevue etc…. Line it wouldn’t be too hard.

        Agreed. But there would be advantages to the train. A bus can connect very well to Bellevue. It can connect OK to Auburn, especially if it terminates there. The “detour” to Kent is not that bad and only effects riders from Auburn. The big issue is Renton. This goes back to the main issue with Stride 1. Even after you spend a lot of money connecting TIBS with a freeway station and building a new freeway station at NE 44th it is still awkward to serve Renton. It is not the end of the line — it is the middle. Ideally you want something like Bellevue has — the ability to quickly get to the middle of town from the freeway. But it doesn’t look like that will be possible. It looks like there will be a poor compromise that doesn’t serve much of Renton while also being slow for riders who are just passing through.

        A train would be better in that respect. But it wouldn’t be great. Renton is a sprawling city. It is somewhat centered around the railroad tracks but there just isn’t that much there. In contrast consider the city of Ronda, Spain. I have never been there — I just put in “small cities in Spain” and it showed up. It has a population of about 35,000 (according to Wikipedia). This makes it quite a bit smaller then Renton, Kent or Auburn. And yet the only city in its league along that corridor is Bellevue. This is a walk from the train station to the main square. It is four minutes. This is the view from the square. There is density in all directions. Here is another view from the air. It isn’t all density of course. On the other side of the tracks there are warehouses and soccer fields. But it is also obvious that thousands if not tens of thousands of people can easily just walk to the train station. That is not the case with a set of Renton train stops.

        Then there is cost. It costs more to run a train than a bus (even if you own the tracks). You only save money if the train carries more people than a bus could carry. I could easily see how a fast Auburn, Kent, Renton, Bellevue train could some day carry enough riders to justify the cost. But to do that it would likely have to have a lot of riders from Auburn and Kent going to Bellevue and Renton. That being the case there is an obvious alternative: Run express buses from Auburn and Kent to Bellevue (stopping only at freeway stations) and run buses from Auburn and Kent to Renton. (Renton to Bellevue is part of Stride). This is more expensive than running one train but not a lot more. It would also be faster for riders from Kent to Bellevue and probably be faster for riders from Auburn to Bellevue. The bus to Renton could serve a lot more of Renton. A train really only becomes a great value if you have a huge number of riders going along the corridor and even then the alternative isn’t that expensive (and better for the riders in a lot of ways).

        If the various cities (like Renton, Kent and Auburn) were centered around the train stations then it would be stupid to throw away the opportunity to run trains between them and Bellevue. But that just isn’t the case. It makes more sense to run buses. It is just complicated to do so.

      5. It seems to me a good starting place might instead be extending Sounder North to Renton.

        Renton to Seattle would be great value if not for the cost of leasing the line from BNSF. You would basically replace some of the 101 and 102 buses that run during peak. That being said, you wouldn’t replace that many. Peak ridership has really collapsed. At best I think you would replace six buses with three trains. It wouldn’t make any other stops (which is bad). South Sounder is a decent value because there are several stops and each one has a decent amount of ridership. In terms of existing ridership, it isn’t that great during peak. Ridership is spread out during the day and even along the line. The 101 gets about 150 riders in central Renton during peak. The 102 gets about 100. If ridership doubled it would be about 250 riders. That is probably enough to justify a few trains going back and forth (if we owned the tracks) but just barely. Since BNSF would charge extra I don’t see it working.

      6. There is plenty of demand to get to Bellevue, Redmond, Eastgate, and Issaquah offices and businesses from South of I-90. All of these people take cars, and that shows in the congestion along Sr 167 and 405. Buses work but won’t encourage ridership. The 560/566 are embarrassingly slow… You can’t blame it’s low ridership as an excuse for not serving this important corridor. A forced Stride transfer won’t be anymore attractive.

        The low density along Newcastle is why it should be commuter rail. Light rail is for high density. This solution should get people between a few points quickly. Renton/Kent/Auburn are valuable transfer points to many growing suburbs and neighborhoods in South King County where tech workers and new families are settling with the rising costs of housing in East King County. Bonney lake Express bus should go to Auburn as well instead of just Sumner.

      7. I hope Renton to Seattle light rail never happens. Because they’re going to run it along Rainier Beach and it’s going to be even slower than the 101/102. Huge waste of time for commuters. Renton to Bellevue would be nice if we had a train, but Stride is good enough… But missing an essential connection to Factoria, Eastgate, and Issaquah. I would have proposed a Factoria inline stop, with a shuttle through the Factoria office parks, into Eastgate station which can transfer to Issaquah for the few riders that may be going there. Eventually compatible with Issaquah Link.

      8. 566 should also skip Renton once Stride opens. Huge speed improvement since it can use the new HOV ramp onto 405. The main destination of Stride is Renton. Burien to Bellevue isn’t that popular and they can spare the 5 minutes. TIBS won’t also see much, except for airport transfers. Timing should line up with Link, about 3-5 minutes before the train is scheduled to buy them time.

      9. And if Maple Valley is ever added to ST (considering it’s growth, I think it should!)…. A Maple Valley to Issaquah bus should be done. That way Maple Valley to Renton would be less important except for airport and South Seattle. Try the commute during peak hours. You’ll see the heavy traffic. It’s a shortcut for them to get to Bellevue/Eastgate without taking 405. Great option to hook them up to network, take Advantage of the 4 Line and other Issaquah buses.

      10. “And if Maple Valley is ever added to ST…”

        Maple Valley has service to Auburn and Renton today. It’s provided by King County Metro.

        ST is adding hundreds of parking spaces that Maple Valley residents can use free of charge. With Sounder loads down from 2016 when they planned them, I don’t think the garages will fill up.

        The residents of Maple Valley will not be eager to pay more in property taxes, sales taxes and car tabs that comes with being in the ST district. They pretty much can get what they want anyway by staying outside of the ST racing district.

    5. One of the great opportunities lost with the current 405 rebuild was that there were no provisions to add light rail into the project design. It will be virtually impossible to add it now — with the ERC too narrow and compromised for double tracking and the highway lanes so restricted that only a hugely expensive deep bore light rail tunnel is seemingly the only other way to do it. Then again, Newcastle loves their big estates that won’t generate much ridership.

      I could see a “Stride 4” between Bellevue and Auburn. However, I see Stride is not connecting at Factoria or SouthCenter — seemingly the two biggest activity nodes in that corridor as well as places where other transit lines could intersect for transferring. The South Renton stop is also awful for maintaining a healthy route travel speed. As long as Stride is missing these places and having to divert from freeway Express lanes, Stride will never generate the ridership to better build a case for a Bellevue- Auburn service.

      Maybe RapidRide I will end up being the consolation, especially if it ever gets eventually extended to connect with Link at BAR or Rainier Beach.

      1. And, for some historical reading pleasure concerning the ERC.
        Don’t forget, the communities involved in the I-405 Corridor Program Master Plan signed of on that Master Plan the year before, in 2008.
        I will remind everyone, there was never any side-by-side evaluation of the use of the corridor vs. STRide style BRT vs. Link. (Use of the ERC (for any reason) was eliminated from consideration before reaching the cost benefit analysis)

      2. @Jim

        > side-by-side evaluation of the use of the corridor vs. STRide style BRT vs. Link.

        It was analyzed no? The i405 analysis talked about utilizing the erc as a busway vs light rail

      3. @ Al S.
        Within the scope of the I-405 Master Plan (FEIS completed in 2002), the City of Renton sent a letter to the Executive Committee asking that use of the ERC not be brought forward. That’s all it took, any municipality had veto power. (Kemper Freeman’s “Reduce Congestion Now” plan was also kicked out of the study before that.(by who?… I only have suspects, but no verification))
        Later, the PSRC and Sound Transit evaluated commuter rail (my “historical reading” link) in that corridor.

        BRT on the freeway was the decision.

        That’s how things moved forward.

        If you are referring to some specific Kennydale/Renton BRT on the ERC, could you point me towards it? I’ve been browsing the STB threads, and Sound Transit’s documents, but I’m not seeing it yet.

        My point is – this was a done deal way back when for political reasons, not based on actual numbers.

        The preliminary numbers for commuter rail were right there along with BRT (within shared segments) which is obvious, since they used the same modeling process/software.

        My predilection for commuter rail iin that corridor is based on two things, it’s cheaper than BRT, and with the connection to south Sounder the ridership numbers made it cost effective.
        By the way, the Black River Junction connection is a wye. The roadbed is there, just no tracks.

        I always appreciate the effort of this blog to “put lipstick on the pig” (STRide) to further eastside transit options.

        But the whole “transit on the ERC” discussion is more humorous to me, because this region is ruled by NIMBY politics.

      4. One of the great opportunities lost with the current 405 rebuild was that there were no provisions to add light rail into the project design.

        Running trains on the ERC is one thing. That is classic commuter rail that could eventually evolve into regional rail. It is a shame that didn’t happen.

        Running Link along 405 is another. It would cost billions of dollars and not provide much. Imagine it runs entirely within the envelope of the freeway. Clearly this won’t work for Renton. So you build a major light rail line through Renton in addition to all the extra work building a line along the freeway. Meanwhile you haven’t gotten to Tukwila or Burien. That is billions more.

        If you are going to do that then just build a busway through Renton and connect it to the freeway. Sure, it costs a huge amount too but nowhere near as expensive. You’ve already got the first-class connection in Bellevue. Getting to Burien is no problem either. The connection to TIBS will be built as well. The only significant advantage to Link would be capacity and it is unlikely that will ever be needed. The plan is to run the buses every ten minutes, at most. This is not a corridor with overflowing demand, where the agency is forced to run buses every couple minutes during peak and every five minutes throughout the day. Quite the opposite. The agency is being generous (and bragging about) the fact that it will run these buses every ten minutes during peak.

        The big weakness with the expansion is that they didn’t properly address potential HOV access. They basically got it backwards. There are two types of freeway stations. The stations along 520 (Evergreen and Yarrow Point) are one type. They allow a bus traveling along the corridor to pull into a bus stop in the center of the freeway. Riders access the stop via pedestrian bridges. But buses can not enter the freeway at those points. The other type is what exists at places like Totem Lake. These offer all of that functionality *and* the ability for buses to get right into (or out of) the freeway HOV lanes there. These tend to be more expensive.

        The new freeway station at 44th will be the second type. This dramatically pushes up the cost. Yet it is hard to see much value there. Right now no bus runs on 44th. Not even close. Not only that but there will be another similar interchange further north, at Newport Hills. If a bus does run along Lake Washington Boulevard (or over from May Creek) it could just keep going north and get on the freeway there. It is also easy to see how a bus like the 240 (or a peak variation) could cut over to the freeway there and get to Bellevue sooner. For now the only thing similar is to have the 111 cut over to the freeway at 27th — where there is no special access ramp.

        Worse yet, there is no special ramp at Southport Drive (https://maps.app.goo.gl/YpnUex1vcnbfjYNUA). This is the key connection at the north end of Renton. The 560 and 566 both get on the freeway there. The RapidRide F ends very close to there. It wouldn’t take much to extend the F onto the freeway and run express to Downtown Bellevue (stopping only at the freeway stations). I could also see the 111 getting on the freeway there as well.

        But that isn’t happening even though there is room and they are tearing apart the roadway for the HOT expansion. That is the big mistake here. Not that they failed to accommodate a massive, multi-billion dollar light rail expansion that doesn’t really make sense. But they failed to rebuild that interchange to provide direct access ramps to the HOV lanes (and a bus stop) when it would be the cheapest to do so. From what I can tell they aren’t doing anything for the south end of Renton either. But in this case they aren’t tearing up the road to expand the HOT either (at least not west of 167). At the very least they should have added a direct access ramp to the North of Renton, where it would provide a lot of value (instead of at 44th, where it provides very little).

    1. Hard to imagine the speed making much difference. The boat is fast right now. According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Doc_Maynard) the ferry has a cruising speed of 28 knots (32 mph). It is a short trip (about 2 miles) — hard to imagine a faster ferry making much difference.

      Cost is another matter. It is possible that the part of the cost includes the diesel. While running that fast can use a lot of diesel these are relatively efficient catamarans. But it would not surprise me if the cost is tied to boardings and alightings. Thus the more trips you make the higher the cost.

      It is also possible they just want to run on a clock face schedule. Counting breaks they could probably do a round trip in 45 minutes. But that is a lot harder schedule to remember. Doing a round-trip in 30 seems too difficult.

      My understanding is that these ferries aren’t faster than other high speed ferries. They are just electric. In the article they show a boat going 25 knots. The MV Finest (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Finest) which runs between Seattle and Kingston goes 35 knots.

    2. We had a Sunday Movie about it last December, and Martin has been following it excitedly. Candela has been testing its model P-12 electric ferry in Stockholm.

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