Livability in Melbourne, Australia. (CityNerd) The Seattle waterfront streetcars in 1982-2005 came from Melbourne. When an Australian friend who’d grown up in Melbourne visited, I took him on the streetcar. It really reminded him of his childhood. The current Melbourne streetcars ave a green-and-yellow style that looks like a Metro bus on rails. And they’re in mixed traffic, because that’s how they were built a century ago.
New Zealand. (CityNerd) Ray says Australia and New Zealand have a lot in common with the US, including sprawl and freeways and sometimes inadequate transit. But where they’re different or changing, it shows what American cities can do.
This is an open thread.
Shooting at Northgate station this morning right around 8am. Victim was lying on the ground right by the south entrance to the escalators and there had to be about 10 cop cars at the scene.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/man-shot-in-the-head-near-northgate-transit-center/
The alerts this morning said police activity at Northgate during the signal outage in the DSTT. I didn’t know what it was; the alert said one of the entrances was closed. I imagined the police chasing a suspect.
Last week there was a time with three disruptions simultaneously: two maintenance-related and one police-related.
more transit violence. sad.
We don’t know whether it’s transit violence, whether the perp knew the victim, or whether it might have happened anywhere but happened to occur at the station. Link isn’t the only place violence occurs.
A suspect was arrested on Thursday.
Correction: Suspect was arrested on Wednesday.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/suspect-arrested-in-fatal-shooting-at-northgate-transit-center/
At 27:30 in the Melbourne video Ray lists the top 24 cities in his channel’s viewership. #1 is New York, #2 is Seattle.
At 28:47, the streetcar series that the Seattle ones came from now has a museum exhibit, although this one is brown instead of green.
It’s worth mentioning that Ray grew up in Seattle. No wonder Seattle is #2. He has personal connections here.
https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/09/12/meet-ray-delahanty-the-guy-behind-citynerd/
I didn’t know Ray had lived in Seattle. But I like to think our movie links are part of the reason Seattle is #2. How many other cities have transit blogs? How many of those link to TransitNerd episodes?
Over the course of a number of visits to Melbourne, I managed to ride every tram line. It is an impressive system. The narrator’s observation that the “suburbs”–really city neighborhoods–have pretty well developed shopping precincts that promote walkability. One point that I think the narrator missed was that in the past decade, tram lines have been extended! In the city center on tram streets, at least, automobiles and trucks preparing to make right-hand turns, pull over to the left curb lane to await a turn signal thus not blocking vehicles passing directly through the intersection.
Any tram enthusiast should try to spend time in Melbourne–and if there in their winter, don’t miss a footy match at the G.
In the past I’d been hearing Melbourne was a depressed area. I’m glad to hear is’s doing better now
Like everywhere else, I think they got hit pretty bad during the 2008 financial meltdown.
They seem to be doing fine now.
https://www.vic.gov.au/snapshot-victorian-labour-market-2024-publication/unemployment-rate-victoria-remains-low
I visited Melbourne 2 years ago and there was nothing about Melbourne that was depressed! Amazing place! It has become my favorite city and I have also been to Auckland, Sydney, Toronto, and Vancouver in the last couple of years. I live near Seattle and work in Seattle and have witnessed a huge improvement in downtown since the pandemic but Seattle just doesn’t have the vitality of the other cities listed. Unfair comparison?
I think US cities in general lack vitality. It comes from having office building deserts in the downtown core.
The dense mixed use areas you see everywhere else in the world, and to some extent in Chicago and New York City, help spread the vitality around.
With all the recent focus on the waterfront it makes me glad to hear & see comments from people who want the waterfront trolley back. I think a lot of folks who aren’t transit nerds don’t know or remember why the trolley went away. The trolley barn got demo’d for the SAM Sculpture Park. The trolley barn was named in tribute of Eldo Kanikkeberg. He was a true waterfront trolley legend and I grew up with kids from his family. So when the trolley barn with his name on it had to go, it really stung. Also I loved riding that trolley! It was my happy place! Do the people here at STB think we’ll ever see something like the waterfront trolley again?
The Sculpture Park displaced its train base, but King County was going to find a substitute base and never did.
It won’t come back now because the waterfront renovation plan designated all available space for other uses. There’s some potential space south of Columbia when the full West Seattle Link opens and the buses are truncated and the bus lanes are no longer used, but that won’t help north of Columbia. WSDOT won’t allow the car lanes or ferry-queuing lanes to be reduced. The wide sidewalk, cycletrack, and nature strip are a public amenity that shouldn’t be displaced. There’s no other room left.
The waterfront consultant designed four scenarios for north-south local transit on the waterfront. (1) Vintage streetcar, (2) modern streetcar, (3) battery bus, (4) battery minibus. It argued against the streetcars because it said 1st Avenue was a better place for streecars, and putting them on the waterfront would take a significant amount of space that couldn’t be used for anything else (that cycletrack, nature strip, or wide sidewalk). It supported the bus alternatives. Those would run from Intl Dist to the Sculpture Park, with an optional extension to Seattle Center. They’d be in the side lanes in mixed traffic because the center bus lanes don’t have stops. It’s up to Seattle to find funding for them, and so far it hasn’t.
In terms of public transportation, a bus is similar to a streetcar. A streetcar is a good choice when you can leverage existing track and/or you need the extra capacity. In this case they could have continued to leverage the existing track.
The other advantage of streetcars is that they promote an area. They can increase tourism and development. A vintage streetcar along the waterfront would have been ideal for this purpose. Thus the old streetcar checked all the boxes. This was the ideal place for a streetcar and really the only good place for one. Yet Seattle got rid of it and put two streetcars in other places (where they don’t make as much sense). The situation is now completely backwards. North of Columbia Street, we have no public transit (except the seasonal, infrequent shuttle). South Lake Union has a modern streetcar that is completely redundant and a waste of service, let alone precious street space. First Hill has a worthwhile streetcar that unfortunately has flawed routing — and lack of right-of-way — that can’t be easily fixed. It would be better as a bus. So we have two streetcars that shouldn’t be there, and where we should have a streetcar, we don’t. Oops.
Again. You’ be dedicating a lot of limited waterfront space to streetcar lanes. It’s a waterfront with amenities, not a streetcar corridor with a waterfront. Transit is important, and rail transit is good, but natural spaces and a downtown park and shoreline cycletrack are also important. Just as I don’t think a rail/BRT highway should replace the only north/south bike/ped highway in Kirkland or the Burke-Gilman in north Seattle or detract from their quietness and naturalness, I think the waterfront is a particularly bad place for a streetcar. The street is not particularly congested, the bus would rarely be full, and there are parallel transit-only malls a few blocks away (Link and 3rd).
The bus would rarely be crowded because it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s not the primary route to Ballard or Greenwood or West Seattle; those are all on 3rd. It’s a secondary route for the waterfront destinations all those other routes miss, and to go from one part of the waterfront to another without having to go east uphill/downhill. That niche role will never get a lot of people, so a secondary bus route is fine. Rail makes the most sense in the biggest corridors like downtown-UDistrict, Broadway, or Rainier. Connecting large urban villages or many mixed-use neighborhoods where the bulk of people live. Not the waterfront, which is more like a park and the minimal housing has million-dollar views so typical people can’t live there.
How about Beacon Hill for the Benson streetcar? We could repurpose the former center streetcar lanes and put it in its natural historical type environment.
It could put Beacon Hill on the tourist map and bring more customers to expanded retail.
Thanks everybody for the wealth of info and thoughts! Ross said, “The other advantage of streetcars is that they promote an area” – yes! the old waterfront Benson line proved that public transit has utility beyond moving bodies around. It was like a cultural ambassador to people who might not use or think about public transportation like we do. Also what Mike said with, “It’s a waterfront with amenities,” because that streetcar was very much a waterfront tourist amenity. Vibe-wise it was like an Ivars on wheels. Putting an old timey streetcar, or any streetcar, in Beacon Hill would be amazing! Would Jose Rizal bridge hold that weight if it ran across there? Thanks and have a good day!
“How about Beacon Hill for the Benson streetcar? We could repurpose the former center streetcar lanes and put it in its natural historical type environment.”
Beacon Ave doesn’t really open up until the VA Hospital. It’s pretty narrow north of there.
Seattle has lots of glorious days in the summer! They are great for recreating on the waterfront!
Any introduction of the streetcar should look to it being enticing as well as practical. A comparable vehicle to the Blackpool streetcar “boats” in San Francisco would the cool.
https://www.streetcar.org/streetcars/228-228-233-blackpool-england/
However, is a project in the best interest in the public? Is it more important to run along the waterfront or to better connect the waterfront to Link and Third Ave? I tend to lean towards the latter. Something like a pedestrian corridor with vertical devices would seem to be more useful. With the viaduct and its downtown ramps long gone, there seems to be a new opportunity to revisit how people move up and down the hill from the waterfront. Some of this has already happened near the Market — but it seems like more could be done.
Putting in rails seems unnecessary to me. If it were me I would design it as a tourist attraction:
– Make the waterfront shuttle an official route. Run vintage/touristy-looking buses on the route
– Add a nice placard with a map at each bus stop.
– Restore two Benson streetcars. Use them as art installations near two of the bus stops: place one at the waterfront (Pier 56), and one at the Space Needle.
– Add a placard in front of the Benson streetcars with some history and directions to visit the other streetcar via the waterfront shuttle.
Tourists would see a streetcar at one location and potentially ride the shuttle to visit the other
Is it more important to run along the waterfront or to better connect the waterfront to Link and Third Ave?
The waterfront already had rail. That is why the Benson streetcars made sense. I’m afraid that rail is gone, unfortunately. Adding new rail would be a waste of money.
It should be possible to get a Benson streetcar operating over the Ballard Terminal Railroad, since the track is there. There’s a procedure the FRA has in place for light rail lines to convert to legal freight and back to light rail. New Jersey’s RiverLINE does this several times per week as it still has freight service. Same process would apply here, only weekend operation for the streetcar and weekday operation for freight.
Pedestrian friendly waterfront streetcar would be cool. Maybe hop on hop off bus concept, all day $3 fare.
I also think we should have more waterfront rides. A Lake Washington scenic train would have been nice… But we got NIMBYs.
Also a tourist transit pass would get more tourists to use transit versus a rental car. Maybe some benefits could come with it.
To all those who want a waterfront streetcar back, where would the tracks go? What else would be displaced for that corridor?
If it’s in mixed traffic in the outer lanes, what’s the point? That’s what we need to get away from with streetcars. The Benson streetcar era had dedicated track lanes, so it would be a major step backward.
“To all those who want a waterfront streetcar back, where would the tracks go? What else would be displaced for that corridor?”
Personally, I’d prefer it if the monorail was moved to be along the waterfront, and the existing Fifth Ave monorail tracks were rebuilt as a segment of an automated Ballard stub line ending at Westlake (saving many billions even with building the new monorail tracks).
I’d trust the experts to design it to be context sensitive and pick station locations. . The relocated monorail views would be spectacular! Maybe the new monorail piers could be colored and lighted as artwork! Stecststions could be clear glass spheres that lit up at night too!
I know it won’t happen — although it would be such a vivid hit if it did!
(My crazy idea of the day)
Australian doesn’t seem to care where the engineering works are done and whether they are directly creating jobs to build their mega infrastructure projects. I think that definitely helps them deliver things they’ve never built before like Sydney Metro.
I know this is off topic. Just asking a question. Why hasn’t Sound Transit rerouted 522 to stop in shoreline instead of lake city? I thought that was their plan for when Shoreline link opened.
This is an open thread so anything is on-topic. To answer your question: Sound Transit said they are waiting until East Link gets across the water before they do that. There are several theories as to why the two are connected and one of them made a lot of sense, but I forgot what that was.
The full 2 Line has been delayed so much that Lynnwood Link opened first. The 2 Line was supposed to double Northgate-Intl Dist capacity but it hasn’t yet. The 1 Line is already pretty full peak hours. ST thought that moving the the 522/S3 to Shoreline South before the full 2 Line opens might be a tipping point in crowding.
This argument doesn’t make sense because the bottleneck is between Westlake and Capitol Hill or on to UW, and for that it doesn’t matter whether the 522 terminates at Shoreline North or Roosevelt; they’re already on Link. ST may be thinking that moving the 522 will significantly increase ridership, because that’s what Northshore has been clamoring for for years and is why S3 will go to Shoreline South, to get to downtown the fastest (or so they assume). Color me skeptical. But that’s the ostensible reason the 522 is still going to Roosevelt.
I don’t think it was crowding. Again, I wish I could remember (and really wish I kept the link) but I think it was just convenience. Keep in mind that the change will not occur in a vacuum. The 372 will no longer serve Kenmore. Now think of the trips that *don’t* involve Link. There are trade-offs. Instead of Kenmore to Lake City you have Kenmore to the 145th corridor. Instead of Kenmore to the UW directly and quickly via the 372 you have to transfer. Overall I would say the network is worse *other* than trips involving Link, especially for those north of Seattle (the whole point of this change).
But Link itself isn’t that good if the train only runs every ten minutes. Being asked to transfer (when you used to just take a direct bus) is more of a sacrifice. There are trade-offs but the trade-off is more attractive when Link is running more often. I think that is why they are waiting.
As it turns out, there is also construction on 145th and 130th which is another good reason to wait. Basically it is like the 255. There would have been a lot fewer complaints if they simply waited until that phase of the SR 522 work was done *and* the trains were running more frequently.
ST has been giving indications that full 2 Line testing will begin in a few months. That will double the number of train runs. ST has said it might allow passengers on them as far as Intl Dist, where they’d be kicked off for the new segment. That would ease north end crowding issues, and make it easier to move the 522 if ST is inclined to.
It’s perhaps just as significant to run the 2 Line in Seattle with full simulation as it is to open the cross-lake connection.
Not only will North Seattle trains start arriving every 4-5 minutes, but the simulation will extend the operating hours of the entire 2 Line.
@ Ross:
When ST3 was put together, U-Link was preparing to open. The public just saw a line on a map and assumed that light rail would be much faster. Elected officials never bothered to think about light rail speeds, station elevations or other relevant analyses related to rider experience. It was too abstract to most leaders and the public. Finally, the public was told everything was a mere “representative project” and that a wider set of alternatives would be studied later — yet also promised to restrict alternatives under the guise of building faster (only to become a sham argument because the project timelines had to be extended in 2020-21 to be much further anyway).
Too much of ST3 was not data driven and it shows. The supporting materials cherry-picked outcomes and avoided real-world factors that influence travel time. ST3 was unreasonably specific as well, preventing easy changes like putting Stride 3 on Lake City Way.
Probably the biggest deception were the light rail speeds themselves. The travel times from ST3 Link extensions are almost universally not saving riders time except for the Ballard / SLU corridor. Few were aware — due in part to not fully realizing the limitation based on local experience — the disappointment of Link speeds, especially for trips where local buses are also used.
At this point, the promise of ST3 looks dire — yet ST chugs along like there’s no problem. The Board, knowing that Federal money is effectively gone and that Sounder demand is only half of what it was and that the capital projects were notably under-budgeted with paltry contingencies and that farebox assumptions are way off to fund operations. The Board even recently chose to put in a politico as its head rather than to put in a level-headed executive that has repeatedly used analysis and metrics to work through making tough financial decisions in austere times.
I was horrified last week when Jacobs was touting winning a $7B design contract for West Seattle Link. There is no cost cutting in the design contract! The fantasy planning continues unquestioned while engineering firms march gleefully ahead designing things that are so out of whack of the budget and the benefits that it boggles a reasonable person’s mind.
Meanwhile, STB articles try to make the best of a wasteful 30 years of building Link — like proposing ST Express route continuations after Link opens because the trains will be unreasonably slow. It’s trying to salvage something that would benefit riders — but it diverts attention away from Topic A: The value-uselessness of almost all of ST3 and the deceptive tactics used to promote the referendum in 2016.
Sadly, there remains many people out there who are as dogmatic as the biggest MAGA loyalist and think that confronting the insanity of ST3 is somehow anti-transit — even though most volunteers writing for STB have seen the dystopian logic of ST3 and repeatedly point it out.
The urbanist argument is half the 522’s ridership is south of 145th, and it’s an important corridor to connect two urban villages. So if ST were going by transit best practices, S3 would terminate at Roosevelt. But the 522’s official transit market is not Seattle (which already has ST HCT in the form of Link), but Lake Forest Park, Kenmore, Bothell, and Woodinville. They supposedly want 522/S3 to terminate at Shoreline South because they see it as the fastest way to downtown Seattle, and they don’t care about Lake City (or Aurora or Shoreline CC, which an alternative concept could serve). So since they’re paying for it, Shoreline North is what they’re getting… someday, when the logistical issues are resolved.
This is the problem with basing your network on ignorance. Imagine this from the perspective of someone in Kenmore:
ST: Would you rather the bus go to 145th station or the UW (via Lake City Way)?
Rider: 145th. I can always take the 372 if I’m headed to Lake City or the UW.
Metro: Just so you know, the 372 will no longer go to Kenmore.
Rider: Wait, what? Is it too late to change my mind?
ST: Yes it is. Sorry.
So not only do you have parochial interests (the needs of the Kenmore rider outweigh those in Lake City for some reason) but they aren’t even doing a good job of looking out for Kenmore riders. It is a bad network and bad networks are bad for everyone. Metro is left trying to patch together something and that means cuts across the board — including those in the northeastern suburbs. The resulting flawed network is much worse than the minimal amount of time savings from going via 145th — even for folks north of Seattle.
It isn’t even clear that it will work out well. Instead of improving the Lake City Way corridor they have to deal with 145th. But 145th is a shared corridor and Shoreline doesn’t want to add BAT lanes, so they are basically doing nothing. In contrast Seattle would love to see more BAT lanes along Lake City Way, especially if it came with additional funding. Seattle has shown that it is more than willing to take a lane.
Another sad tale of King County Metro and Sound Transit screwing over bus riders because of Link. This sounds similar to the 271 situation. They really hate UW riders despite the U District being the most dense neighborhood in Seattle.
Why does the 522 have to go out of the way to get to Shoreline? I think S3 could go to Shoreline, but we still need 372 as well as peak hour 522 runs.
Why does the 522 have to go out of the way to get to Shoreline?
It doesn’t, but for whatever reason ST figured they might as well send the 522 to the same place as S3. They are basically the same bus.
I think S3 could go to Shoreline, but we still need 372 as well as peak hour 522 runs.
Running the 372 to Kenmore (or Bothell) is a huge waste of service hours. It means overlapping on a section that doesn’t get many riders. It is not really the problem — the problem is the routing of S3. Run S3 to the U-District and the 72 can layover in Lake City. Riders heading to the UW can just stay on the bus. Riders who don’t want to walk from the U-District to the middle of campus can take a bunch of buses from there. Riders heading to Sand Point or Children’s Hospital can transfer in Lake City. You’ve saved a considerable amount of service which then goes into running the buses faster. The 65 becomes the only bus covering 145th (and connecting 145th to Lake City). I would run both S3 and the 65 along Lake City Way (for better combined frequency) but running along 65th (especially northbound) is not the end of the world. Running S3 (and the 522) to Shoreline south messes up the network.
“They supposedly want 522/S3 to terminate at Shoreline South because they see it as the fastest way to downtown Seattle…”
Let’s look at how this time “savings” pencils out for Stride 3.
It’s about 14 minutes on Route 522 between 145th and Roosevelt Stetion today .
It’s 9 minutes from Shoreline South and Roosevelt Stations on Link. When trains begin ti stop at Pinehurst Station that will take it to 10 minutes.
It appears to be about 5 minutes according to a Route 65 schedule between Shoreline South Station and SR 522 on 145th.
Of course congestion can affect the travel times but these time are what’s scheduled as midday.
But the bigger point is that it doesn’t appear to save the Lake Forest Park rider any time. The tine savings justification as based on personal opinions of leaders from those cities and not actual facts.
It looks as though there were other motives at work that have nothing to do with travel times savings. Among them could be:
1. The program was a backdoor attempt to wider 145th with transit money if possible.
2. Lake City residents on the bus made riders from riders riding further out “uncomfortable”.
3. Headed towards Downtown, a rider is more likely to get a seat if they can board further north than Roosevelt.
Sure it’s East King money being spent — so East King gets to pick the intercept station. But Shoreline is in North King along with Seattle so either path still travels into North King.
@Al — I double checked your numbers and you are right. The savings from going via 145th are minimal if they even exist. I would not have guessed that. I don’t think most people would. I think most people would expect that getting to the 148th station is considerably faster. I think this was the main reason people preferred it.
This again is why the polling can be very misleading. Assume for a second that going via 145th saves two minutes on average. Also assume that the 372 remains unchanged and there are two choices: Either go to Roosevelt or go to South Shoreline. It is quite likely that more people prefer going to South Shoreline. It saves them two minutes. But there are a several reasons why that is flawed reasoning.
First, you save those riders a couple of minutes but you screw up all the other riders. Riders heading to downtown outnumber riders heading to Lake City, but riders heading to Lake City are much worse off, while riders heading downtown get delayed a couple minutes.
You not only screw up those riders, you screw up the entire network. These changes do not exist in isolation. Every change leads to another. That is, arguably, the worst part of Sound Transit. They aren’t focused on the greater network because they aren’t responsible for the greater network. To paraphrase someone who knew a lot about transit: the worst thing you can do is have your train people not talk to your bus people. The same is true for ST Express.
Lastly, the assumptions were incorrect. The 72 will no longer go on Bothell Way. It will instead turn and serve the same station as Stride 3. Stride 3 can (and should) go to the U-District. This changes everything, including how the polling might turn out. The U-District is a major destination. The 372 gets about as many riders as the 522 north of Seattle. Thus if you told people the 372 was going away and they had the choice of a bus to 148th Station or the U-District, it is quite possible they would choose the latter. No matter how you cut it, it was a really bad decision.
“The urbanist argument is half the 522’s ridership is south of 145th, …”
This doesn’t bode well for Stride 3.
When service cuts are needed, lower ridership routes are first in line.
Stride 3 is about connecting people to Stride 2 and Link. Doesn’t necessarily need higher ridership. Articulated buses are probably overkill imo. They could have used a smaller bus and run peak hour 522 (articulated) and local 372 parallel.
I could see people using Stride 3 to get to UW Bothell also.
I don’t think it will matter. In terms of ridership-per-service-hour (or fare recovery) it will do OK, especially by ST standards. Ridership will go down, but it will be shorter. So the impact on those numbers will be muted.
The big failure is with the network. There will be three buses running along 145th between Lake City/Bothell Way and the station. That is a lot of overlap on a relatively weak corridor with no significant anchors on either side. Meanwhile, you are forcing a transfer just as the bus gets close to one of the biggest destinations along the corridor (Lake City). You also force a transfer to get to UW (and Roosevelt). So not only do you have waste, but you have extra transfers to major destinations.
If the 522 goes to the U-District you solve these problems. You give the route a major southern anchor. Instead of ending in the middle of nowhere (South Shoreline, famous for … uh … a nice bike bridge?) it ends at the U-District (the second biggest destination in the region). You also make transfers to every other destination much easier. At 145th, 130th, Northgate Way, 65th and 45th there would be frequent bus(es) heading east and west. You also enable efficiency. Does the 65 *and* the 72 have to go to South Shoreline Station? If the 522 goes to the U-District the answer is no. But with the proposed routing, they pretty much have to overlap just to prevent double transfers for relatively short trips.
Yet even with that redundant service they manage to create awkward trips. For example consider this trip. Now obviously there aren’t a ton of riders making that trip. It is quite reasonable to expect riders to make a transfer. But two transfers? Just to travel north-south on one of the most productive transit corridors in the state?
It is ironic that while Metro is finally eliminating a lot of the really awkward trips (e. g. Bitter Lake to Lake City) ST seems determined to make them awkward in perpetuity. Consider Kenmore to Bitter Lake. Obviously this is terrible. Yet when the dust settles it won’t be much better. Riders will take the 522, then take Link for one stop, then take the 77. (Or they will just drive.)
When they finish investing half a billion dollars making the bus just a little faster (and electric!) and Metro tries to patch up the big network hole, it just won’t be very good. To be clear, I’m not excusing Metro in this. It is crazy that there will be three buses from Lake City/Bothell Way to South Shoreline Station and yet not one will continue to Aurora and Shoreline Community College. But ST is just making things so much worse with their routing.
Stride 3 is about connecting people to Stride 2 and Link.
Yes, it is just that it could do so much more at the same time. The more a route does, the better. Sending it to the U-District (also a Link station) via Roosevelt (also a Link station) and Lake City Way would have been so much better.