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This is an Open Thread.

195 Replies to “Midweek Roundup: growth, gains, and greatness”

  1. We keep getting a drip, drip, drip of ST’s potential cost-cutting strategies. A week or two ago there was the possibility of single-tunnel, and now there’s at-grade in Everett et al. Is there a list of all the potential strategies and estimated savings? Why does the board and the Times and the Urbanist know about several of them when we don’t? ST said it was going to make a list of potential strategies and consider them, but we need the list so we can evaluate them and mix-and-match a potential solution.

    2. ST staff have been presenting examples of cost-savings opportunities but there are apparently hundreds of them. ST staff are reportedly constantly adding and removing “opportunities” from this list as they come up with them and vet them for viability. The full list isn’t public, but staff have highlighted the major cost-savings options in recent presentations for WSLE and EVLE.

      I’ve been waiting for ST to release the overall cost estimates for the Link projects before diving in.

      1. This is the kind of work that is necessary on any project, but will not be sufficient to solve ST3’s budget problems. It merely postpones the inevitable conversations that are better had sooner rather than later. Optimizing the wrong mode is not the right answer. West Seattle Link will never be cost effective. Ballard Link with DSTT2 is a boondoggle and should be recast as something smaller scale and higher frequency that actually yields the same capacity to the same set of destinations.

        We need to have a real conversation as a region about the scope of these projects. Outside of Seattle, the political priority is the Spine. Whatever we may say about the nuances of Tacoma or Everett Link, those extensions are way more cost effective than West Seattle and Ballard Link.

        What we really need is a scope reset in light of changing commute patterns and a decade to understand the folly of our hasty planning way back in the before times of 2015.

        Oh, and on that note, don’t hold your breath for FTA funding on projects that are far from justified on the merits.

      2. I wish the state would put their money where their mouth is on being “green and for the environment” in actually financially supporting transit projects instead of being afraid to piss of Republicans for “austerity” reasons. Give Yakima, Tri Cities, Walla Walla, Spokane, etc streetcar or light rail lines to appease Eastern Washington if you have to and allow ST to properly borrow more in bonds and loans. The best cost savings is letting ST properly borrow funds for these projects so they’re shovel ready quicker instead of forcing them to value engineer good projects because inflation kills any fiscal momentum on future projects.

      3. “Optimizing the wrong mode is not the right answer. West Seattle Link will never be cost effective. Ballard Link with DSTT2 is a boondoggle and should be recast as something smaller scale and higher frequency that actually yields the same capacity to the same set of destinations.”

        That’s the question. Are these strategies on the list? What’s the estimated cost savings per engineers and accounts with inside knowledge on the projects? Is there an item for single-tunnel? Is there an item for automating Ballard? Are there items for canceling West Seattle or replacing it with BRT?

        Another question: how much of Ballard’s cost overrruns are south of Westlake vs north of Westlake? Is DSTT2 bringing Ballard down? Is West Seattle looking artificially better because DSTT2 is in another project and ST decided to put West Seattle in DSTT1?

      4. Dubman is correct. Constantine said everything is on the table. The ST3 reset will be larger than the one for Sound Move in 1999-2001. The Seattle steps will be vastly insufficient; SDOT may save millions and months; the ST3 Link issues are billions and years.

      5. cost cutting would be dropping dstt2 for now (or forever) , and doing ballard link before west seattle.
        my confidence is low.

    3. Mike Orr,

      Once again we run into people (starting with the Sound Transit Board) who do not understand math at the Jr. High level.

      “Value Engineering” is unlikely to drop the current price tag of any of the ST light rail projects. Just a basic Cartesian graph of the cost of projects shows huge cost increases, and it’s a good bet those cost increases will continue into the future. There’s really no way to make that Ballard light rail line cost less than the current 22 billion price tag.

      The smarter people at Sound Transit likely already understand this…. What “value engineering” does is try to hold the line (stop the rising costs). The idea that the graph is suddenly going to go back down goes against the very basic rules of inflation and human behavior.

      If you’re traveling 60 mph in car, you can’t just jam it in reverse. You need to hit the brakes and slow down first… for an outfit like Sound Transit, hitting the brakes and slowing down takes years….

      1. Tacomee, we’ve listed how to make BLE less expensive: automate it and run shorter trains more frequently. The operating costs for the train cars themselves is the same if you run four car trains every eight minutes or two-car trains every four. The cars run the same mileage. The trackway supports the same tonnage. The overhead passes the same kilowatt-hourage. The maintenance staff cleans and repairs the same set of cars.

        The only cost difference is that there is no operator in the cab.

        But the capital costs plummet. Every station — even the elevated ones — is thirty-five to forty percent cheaper. No, not fifty because there are some fixed costs to any large construction project, but size does matter.

        Even if ST chooses to use the same cars for interchangeability on a stub BLE but run them automatically, the cost plunges. Plunges!

        ST can tell Donald Trump and Sean Duffy to pound sand. A BLE stub can be built using North King taxes alone, especially if WSLE is right-sized with an at-grade terminal in Alaska Street.

      2. “Tacomee” not “Tacoma”. “automate” not “automated” “four-car” not “four-cat”
        “The cars” not “Thr cars”
        ‘hourage” not “horage”

        I forgot to proof-read before hitting “Post Comment”. Apologies.

      4. “… I kind of like the idea of a four-cat train.”

        I guess Link would become “Lynx” (Links)! 😂

    4. Major changes cannot be determined quickly in terms of design and cost. However, I think it’s irresponsible for ST to singularly have agenda items on merely doing minor cost trimming to both WSLE and EVLE. If everything is on the table, these expensive projects generating not very many more riders should be too.

      And the Board needs to ask for and discuss technical information like cost per daily rider or aggregate travel time saved. Some rational metrics needs to be given just as much importance as political wants, if not more. A rail system is not a one-time monument to build; it is something that people will use every day for the next 100 years.

      Until the Board adopts some technical performance metrics to guide the drastic cost cutting, the effort will be akin to kids merely shoving each other on the playground without an organized game to play.

  2. There are at least three cases of removing pocket tracks or tail tracks in the Urbanist article. At the same time we’ve identified the lack of these or inadequacy of these at Stadium, Northgate, and Lynnwood as hinderances to having short runs turn back regularly from there, or to making single-tracked segments shorter when one point has to be single-tracked. And the lack of an Alaska Junction tail track would make ST’s own proposed Burien/Renton extension harder and more expensive. So are these instances of removing pocket tracks or tail tracks shortsighted, or are they in places where turnbacks are too unlikely to worry about? But ST was going to turn back East Link at Northgate off-peak, then it decided not to and removed the turnback from the plan, and now that’s problematic. So I wouldn’t want to see even more of these problems built into the network.

    1. That’s completely correct. If we’re looking to save money by cutting provisioning for future expansion today, we make it difficult, if not outright impossible, to extend the line in the future. It’s among the shortest-sighted of a multitude of shortsighted cuts.

      If we must cut things, we should do so as much as possible in a way that will leave space to put them back in the future.

    2. The same thing happened with U-District station, where ST failed to include a stub interface to a cross line. I mentioned this to an ST rep in a U-Link open house.

      He said ST couldn’t spend money on it when the 45th line wasn’t voter-approved yet and it was unclear whether it would go to U-District station (an alternative at the time went along Northlake Way to UW station and 520). That puts it into a chicken-and-egg problem. And it means ST is more concerned about a possible orphan stub than about keeping its options open in the future and lowering future costs.

      Of course the east-west line should serve U-District station: that’s the center of the urban village with the most walkable destinations and housing and a highrise or two!

      A similar thing is happening with DSTT2: ST is designing it without a crossover at the south end that would allow trains to switch to the other tunnel if one tunnel is broken or a different service pattern is desired in the future.

      1. There is no political reward for being forward thinking, minimizing long term costs or long term effectiveness of the system. These projects take so long to plan and build that the feedback loop of electoral politics has an impedance mismatch.

        The way we approach planning these projects forces us to pick winners among losers. We double down on our planning mistakes by committing in advance the tax revenues of an entire generation towards a wildly unaffordable and wildly inefficient plan hastily smashed together in 2015.

        What this really needs is leadership. We have a King County Executive race that is on right now. I think Claudia Balducci could be that leader, but it is going to require some courage and out-of-the-box thinking.

        West Seattle Link is the weakest project, but also the easiest to start, a brutal combination. In all forms, it requires a transfer at SODO until DSTT2 is built, which at the current rate will be never.

        It’s a mistake to think that because ST3 passed, voters would prefer that plan over another, smarter way to spend their money. Voters were given one choice: Build this big system that goes all over, or do nothing. They chose to support transit.

        I think if you asked voters today, would you like to amend the planning process or the plan itself in certain rational-sounding ways, where yes means yes, and no means stick with the status quo (NOT cancel ST3), they’d do the right thing.

      2. Let me add… I think West Seattle Link should not be built. I think it should be bus-based instead, because of the geography of West Seattle, as much as I’d be delighted to be able to board a Link train that gets me there.

        But, I recognize that, for all its flaws,
        – West Seattle Link has its fans, particularly in West Seattle
        – West Seattle Link has a lot of existing planning momentum
        – Backing off a project this far advanced, or any rail line on the map, even for a superior BRT plan, may be seen as a politically untenable defeat for ST

        Therefore, if West Seattle Link is to be built, my suggestion would be to modify it at the SODO junction to tie it into DSTT1, doing whatever track/signal/egress upgrades that we should do anyway, and reducing headways in DSTT1, as discussed extensively on this blog. Then send as many trains there as it makes sense to do operationally.

        But based on the new numbers I don’t think we can afford this West Seattle Link plan, without borrowing funds from Ballard. I think the lack of funds is ultimately going to force a different solution.

      3. Backing off a project this far advanced, or any rail line on the map, even for a superior BRT plan, may be seen as a politically untenable defeat for ST

        I agree, but I think the Sound Transit Board has to face reality. Somewhere along the line they will face defeat (in that sense). The question is where. Building West Seattle Link — in any shape or form — will not only get us very little, it will cost us a lot. As a result, other projects a lot more worthy will be delayed or trimmed back. There has been a lot of talk here on the blog about ending Ballard Link in Smith Cove. Smith Cove! There is nothing there. Ballard Link without Ballard is atrocious. It means spending billions basically replicating the monorail and more frequent buses. But if we build things in the scheduled order, that is the world we will be facing. This would be a much bigger defeat than losing West Seattle Link.

        Consider this, transit nerds: Since the pandemic we have added Northgate Link and Lynnwood Link. We have an East Link “starter” line that is surprising many pundits with its ridership. The regions first “BRT” was completed and while it stumbled out of the starting blocks it has now hit its stride like Usain Bolt. We are on the verge of finally (finally!) running trains to Federal Way and across Lake Washington. But when all that is done, will we then have more transit ridership than we did in 2019? Call me skeptical. Billions spent; many major projects built (some of which are outstanding and what I’d consider essential); a region that is not only growing but become more densely populated. And yet with all of that we can’t manage to get the ridership we did back when more folks commuted to their office job. It is easy to assume that everyone is in the same boat, but they simply aren’t. A lot of cities have fully recovered and they really didn’t do much. There have been a lot of great advancements in the region when it comes to transit, and yet fewer people are taking transit. At some point you have to ask why. At some point you have to realize that you can’t just build a bunch of projects (however worthy) and get great transit. The buses matter. Not only the special ones — all of them. They matter more than any ST3 rail project — even Ballard Link.

        There is no political reward for being forward thinking

        Exactly! That is the big problem. If you on are the board, you may very well be rewarded (politically) by sticking to your guns. You are seen as a staunch supporter of transit. But when the shi** hits the fan you either blame someone else or you’re gone.

        It’s a mistake to think that because ST3 passed, voters would prefer that plan over another, smarter way to spend their money.

        Exactly! It is quite likely that ST3 would fail if they took the vote again. But if you asked voters if they preferred a more sensible plan, that would definitely be more popular. At some point the leaders have to lead. They have to admit that many of the assumptions that drove ST3 were simply not true. Whether it is buses versus trains, ridership of train lines that mimic express buses, or just the cost to build this thing — those assumptions weren’t true. We can do better.

        But I also wouldn’t call it a defeat. I would call it an adjustment. A realignment based on newfound information. Spending your money wisely is not a defeat.

  3. Removing Avalon station: “No notable impact on ridership from full build”. That sounds like the same thing it said about Pinehurst station. What would the 21 do if there’s no Avalon station? From Google Maps it looks like it would have to go several more blocks to Delridge station, adding a minute or two to travel time. That would impact impact passengers’ quality of life and travel time even if there’s no ridership loss, they’d be going to Delridge grudgingly and often thinking how poor-quality the transit network is and they’d be less inclined to vote for transit in the future. And that would affect whether future new riders on 35th take Link or not, no matter what ST’s “no rider impact” assessment says. Or it might make it more likely that Metro continues sending the 21 downtown because its transfer overhead has worsened compared to the representative alignment.

    1. Though from what I’ve seen, “No notable impact on ridership from full build” also applies to building the entire West Seattle Link line…

    2. Over 1-2 minutes? Do you know how much time Metro and Link wastes for other commuters outside of Seattle?

      I don’t think anyone would get disappointed over such a small delay.

    3. Considering that the 21 thru-routes with the 5, it’s not clear that truncating the 21 would even save money – at least not without compromising the ability of route 5 to serve all of downtown. So, maybe – especially in the scenario where Avalon station is cut, the 21 just sticks to its current route, all the way.

    4. No notable ridership impact means the ridership model is not sensitive enough. Of course the proximate transfer between Route 21 and Link would matter. It also does not capture the impact of longer walk access to/from deep stations. But minutes matter to riders and should matter to network designers. Transit has seams; it cannot be seamless; agencies should attempt to minimize seams subject to budget constraints. The split CID station suggested by then board chair Constantine was a terrible solution; the transfer seams between the south and east lines would be about 10 minutes.

    5. The stop spacing with the Avalon station is much more ideal compared to other metro systems around the world. Deferring it would be one thing, but outright eliminating it and preventing it from ever being built is short-sighted.

    1. @AndyL,

      Thanks for posting this! I’ve been watching for more testing on the FB, but with most of it (all?) currently happening at night, I haven’t actually seen any. Don’t know why the 4-car test didn’t make the Midweek Roundup.

      Finishing 2-Link across the bridge is going to be huge. Fast and frequent transit between the Eastside and Seattle will be a game changer, and the added frequency and capacity in North Seattle is desperately needed. And this will be reliable transit too.

      The benefits of reliability can’t be over stated. I-90 WB was once again stop and go this morning, and the HOV lane was feeling the effects too. When 2-Link finally opens it will be completely congestion free and highly reliable.

      This region has never had truly reliable transit service between the Eastside and Seattle. It’s going to be a game changer.

  5. Can someone please explain to me why ST is taking so freaking long to design and prepare for the ST3 projects?
    How did WSLE take 8 years of planning (2017-2025) and will take ANOTHER 3 years for design (2025-2027). These ridiculous timelines apply to all ST3 projects except DRLE.
    I read a comment once that it has something to do with ST waiting for money to be raised before they can spend it. Is that right?
    If the timelines were reasonable (let’s say half so 5.5 years for WSLE) ST3 wouldn’t be screwed like how it is now since they’re taking 15 freaking years to put shovels in the ground for Ballard

    1. ST3 was designed with a set of “early deliverables” (aka finishing parts of ST2 that were planned/designed but unfunded, such as the Downtown Redmond Link Extension and the Federal Way Link Extension). Those projects were supposed to be finished in 2024, and then construction would have started ramping up on Everett Link (EVLE), Tacoma Dome Link (TDLE), and West Seattle Link (WSLE). Once West Seattle was done, construction would start on Ballard Link (BLE) and Issaquah-Kirkland Link. That’s not to mention the construction needed for the OMFs, Stride lines, and the other ST3 projects.

      The later Link projects of ST3 were “transit crayon” lines that needed to be refined with planning and conceptual design, which genuinely takes years of public engagement and environmental assessment. If ST had no other projects, they likely could have finished the planning part in 3-4 years, but they had a longer timeline due to funding constraints because they can’t take out too much debt to pay for construction all at once.

      Of course, the pandemic and initial discovery that the cost estimates in ST3 were way less than they should have been resulted in the “Realignment” of 2021, which stretched the ST3 timelines into the 2040s. Now, ST is looking at a total reassessment of their expansion program as the inflation of construction costs due to material costs, labor costs, etc. across the construction industry have far exceeded expectations, and ST’s preferred conceptual designs (which were apparently not associated with any real cost-benefit analysis) have turned out to be ridiculously expensive.

      1. Nathan Dickey,

        Look, you got to call bullshit when you see it. Any big project with a 10+ start date is going be way “over budget” the day construction starts costs will just keep growing the longer the damn thing drags on. So a pandemic hit? Big deal. Setbacks like recessions and natural disasters are not excuses.

        Sound Transit projects have doubled in price, right? There’s no way normal people could have their life that way. A kitchen remodel or new car can’t magically double in price and ordinary families still afford them. And ordinary families for paying for this ST crap. I’d love to see “The Urbanist” post a op-ed stating that “Light rail is so important tax payers should pay double for it!” At this point the whole Sound Transit budget is beyond common sense.

      2. It’s long been pointed out that ST is the only infrastructure agency expected to have a long-range finance plan spanning 30+ years. Cities and counties only have to budget for a few years at a time. WSDOT develops a series of potential projects and the legislature approves them on a biannual basis.

        ST has to build decade-plus delivery plans before it can do any real planning or conceptual engineering.

        So, perhaps the “bullshit” is expecting ST to plan major capital projects more than 10 years out. But that’s a requirement levied by the fiscal conservatives of the region, and few are willing to question it.

      3. ST1 and ST2 were 15-year plans. The first ST3 proposal was also 15 years, but it was widely criticized for having a Ballard streetcar instead of Link (to fit in West Seattle Link) and not reaching Everett Station. Many transit fans including STB staff blew their top and said they wouldn’t vote for ST3 if it didn’t have grade-separated Ballard, because that was the biggest transit need. And Snohomish said we need to finish the northern Spine and not leave it in limbo until who knows when if ever. So ST expanded it to a 25-year plan to include those and other things.

        It looks like our article condemning the 15-year plan was written by Seattle Subway representing the rest of our’s concerns about Ballard: https://seattletransitblog.com/2016/03/31/how-to-fix-st3-so-seattle-will-vote-for-it/ (March 2016)

        Here’s the article after ST did expand it: https://seattletransitblog.com/2016/05/26/sound-transits-updated-st3-plan-bigger-faster-stronger/ (May 2016)

    2. it has something to do with ST waiting for money to be raised before they can spend it. Is that right?”

      Yes. Think of ST1, ST2, and ST3 as three different tax streams. ST2 was based on reusing the ST1 stream when ST1’s bonds were substantially paid down. ST3 is based on reusing ST1’s and ST2’s streams the same way. It can’t access the ST1/ST2 monthly revenue until ST2 construction is finished and its bonds paid down sufficiently. ST2 will be finished when KDM and the full 2 Line open (estimated 2026). Construction bills will stop coming in soon after that. It will take more time for the bonds to be paid down. Only then will ST3 have access to the full ST1/ST2/ST3 streams.

      Right now ST3 only has access to a third of the money. That’s enough for planning, and starting West Seattle stub construction. It’s not enough for Ballard or Everett. So their construction timelines were set based on when money would be available.

      ST also has a debt ceiling, or rather two debt-to-asset ratio limits One is a hard limit set by the legislature. The other is is a lower self-imposed limit. ST estimated it would hit the ceiling from the late 2020s to the mid 2030s. So it paced Ballard and Everett construction expenses to fit within that limit. (This year range was from before the realignment in 2022 (?) and the later cost increases, so I don’t know what the range is now.)

      1. Knowing the waterfall of revenues then, would it save money and make sense to wait for WSLE and the West Seattle freeway replacement to happen at once?

      2. The West Seattle-SODO stub was put first for political reasons, to show a self-entitled constiuency of “people like us” that they were getting Link first. Dow Constantine, then King County executive, lives in West Seattle along with other Seattle and county politicians, and he put his thumb on the scale. The stub never made sense, going from Alaska Junction just a few miles to the middle of nowhere, but it’s what the board wanted.

        Now that Dow is ST CEO, he seems to be more pragmatic and reasonable. One wishes he was like that in 2016 and thereafter.

    3. The early deliverables included capital improvements to RapidRide C and D as an interim stopgap before WS/BLE could open. SDOT was slow in identifying what projects it wanted, and then it got engulfed in the pandemic recession, and the realignment postponed them to the end of ST3. So nothing has improved in the C and D yet.

      Postponing them to the end seems ironic and useless, because the need is NOW before WS/BLE open. After Link opens, the C and D are planned to be restructured away: the C converted to a north-south line to Burien and maybe Alki, and the D to what I call the “Fred Meyer to Fred Meyer line” from Ballard to Lake City. Would the money follow the RapidRide restructures? Or would it be limited to C and D lines that no longer exist?

    4. Part of the long time frame for West Seattle is due to several factors:

      – The plan developed before 2016 for the project was not thorough enough. Lots of complications were not considered — like how to get through Youngstown — and that delayed the process after voter approval .

      – ST spent loads of extra time on how to locate the Alaska Junction station. The result as an underground deep station adds costs that were supposed to not be in the baseline project. For many months, that singular topic was the only one being discussed.

      – The original project combined both West Seattle and Ballard Draft EIS. Had it been just West Seattle, the work would have been through the DEiS faster. ST chose to split the projects after the DEIS. Keep in mind that the West Seattle ridership is still being reported as if all the WS trains go to Everett and DSTT2 gets built.

      – The original shortfall slowed it down by 2 years in the “realignment” effort. That’s because the ST Board was unwilling to do the hard core cost cutting they could have, and instead they just extended our taxes to be paid longer.

      – The decision to change the plan in ID delayed things. It got slowed so that Dow could cone up with the transfer station moving to Pioneer Square as the preferred alternative. Even though it isn’t part of the West Seattle project, the Board at the time was trying to get the entire West Seattle, Ballard and DSTT2 figured out simultaneously.

      – The ultimate way to get through Youngstown requires taking hundreds of homes. Each one has to be bought separately. That adds time.

      I’m probably missing some things. However I will mention that ST sold the public on restricting alternatives for the sake of building a year faster as part of ST3 in 2016. I feel like that was a deliberate lie on ST’s part when it comes to West Seattle because the delays bulleted above were not surprises. Now here we are 9 years later facing projects triple in cost from 2016 and many are still in cost denial, thinking that minor design changes will fix the problem. Until the ones running things get real, the schedule is gojng to move even slower.

      1. All true but the main reason West Seattle Link is taking a really time too build is because it is too expensive. It really doesn’t matter how long it took to figure it out. They could know all this the day after the election and it wouldn’t speed things up. It is too expensive. That’s the problem.

      2. “The plan developed before 2016 for the project was not thorough enough. Lots of complications were not considered”

        Another complication that was not considered was the ultra-deep alignment of DSTT2 and ultra-long transfers between the lines. Everybody including ST assumed DSTT2 would be the same depth as DSTT1 and have comparable stations. But in later engineering after the vote, ST said it would have to be deeper due to building foundations. That didn’t make sense because 3rd Avenue had highrises when DSTT1 was built and that wasn’t an issue then, but that’s what ST says now about DSTT2.

        In my mind, if DSTT2 has to be so deep it has to have 10-minute transfer walks between the lines, that should be a sign the design is unacceptable and ST should go back to the drawing board and create some usable alternative or cancel the project. But it refused to do that.

      3. “Hundreds of homes”? I don’t think there are hundreds of homes in Youngstown in total. The original “ramp to Valhalla” plan would have taken around thirty or forty and a strip along the golf course, IIRC, but the current plan is more like ten and a long-term storage building. Plenty of THOSE around now…

      4. “I don’t think there are hundreds of homes in Youngstown in total.”

        Don’t forget the doghouses!

      6. Al, there may indeed be 160 homes taken by the chosen route, but few if any are in “Youngstown”. Look at the map; the route follows Andover on the north side of the street (by the steel mill) west from the proposed station, then when Andover ends switches to Yancy, again on the north side of the street. There are no residences on the north side of either of those streets where ST will build guideway.

        Yes, some businesses are taken by the station, but in all honesty is any house taken in Youngstown?

        Once the ROW crosses Avalon Way, yes, houses are taken, but that’s not “Youngstown”, that’s “Avalon”.

    5. Can someone please explain to me why ST is taking so freaking long to design and prepare for the ST3 projects?

      It is because the projects are really expensive. It really doesn’t matter how long it takes to plan the projects. That’s because we can’t spend a lot of money all at once. We would exceed the bond limit if we did and that would be illegal.

      1. Ross Bleakney

        The longer you “design and prepare” anything, the more money it costs to build. Residential construction is perfect example. Losing a few months on a housing project (often caused by City or County regulations) adds thousands of dollars per unit.

        Sound Transit projects take years and years to before any actual construction work is done and cost actually goes up by billions of dollars. Any delay just compounds the price.

        If you want to build a cost effective light rail line…. build only one at a time and do it as fast as possible.

      2. “The longer you “design and prepare” anything, the more money it costs to build. Residential construction is perfect example. Losing a few months on a housing project (often caused by City or County regulations) adds thousands of dollars per unit.”

        That was all scheduled out in the ballot measure. Most construction couldn’t start until ST2 finished (then estimated for 2023), and the budget was based on year-of-expenditure dollars knowing construction wouldn’t start for at least eight years. That was all in the total.

        The unexpected cost overruns, covid recession, concrete workers’ strike for nine months, and later board decisions to move stations and add late alternatives to study, were of course not included.

    1. @Mike Orr,

      Thanks for posting this, I didn’t realize that the vote was so soon.

      But Engardio got what he deserved. His constituents were dead set against closing the highway permanently. Yet Engardio didn’t listen.

      Instead of representing his constituents, he worked with the other supervisors to facilitate a city wide vote to overrule them. That is not going to win you any friends or votes.

      A real leader would have worked with his constituents and the other parties involved to come to some sort of compromise, or at the very least a consensus. He did neither. He took the easy way out.

      And there are compromises available. A real leader would have perused them.

      1. Nah, F the nimbys, the great highway is better as a park. I respect him for doing what was right for the city as a whole and the people complaining about it now will not care and benefit from the park and its increase to their property values for decades to come.

      2. Unlike LWB here, there were already wide trail paths on both sides of the Great Highway. The closure was done to create more park space — not to provide a missing multi-use trail. .

      3. Oh… the great Highway is also a terrible microclimate for recreation. It’s next to Ocean Beach — which means that it’s chilly, windy and foggy much of the time — often with sandy and damp ocean spray in the air. It has sand dunes that shift around too. It’s not the kind of place for outdoor recreation.

      4. The Upper Roadway was a freeway to nowhere. Well, not exactly a freeway; there were traffic signals for cross-walks, but pretty close.

        It was a high speed access between The Outer Richmond and Stonestown and points south. It served a limited purpose, but never had much traffic. Sunset Boulevard is a useful and adequate alternative.

        Richmond is a very demanding part of The City.

      5. “ It was a high speed access between The Outer Richmond and Stonestown and points south.”

        Decades ago, San Francisco installed the signalized crosswalks every two blocks and timed/ spaced the signal timings in such a way that a driver had to go at about 30-35 mph or stop at every red light every two blocks. Even though the result was faster corridor driving time, it certainly was not “high speed”.

      6. > A real leader would have worked with his constituents and the other parties involved to come to some sort of compromise, or at the very least a consensus. He did neither. He took the easy way out.

        did you follow this at all? there was a compromise which was closing it on the weekends.

        It was the pro-car constituents that forced a measure of either keeping the road always closed as they didn’t want to pilot program to continue

        anyways the southern portion was going to be closed for cars anyways due to erosion

      7. Al, 30 to 35 is definitely “high speed” in Richmond and Sunset.

        The highway route, Nineteenth Avenue, has a light at every cross-street. It has traffic pulses which work surprisingly well most hours considering it’s two-way, but at the rush hour it breaks down because the traffic in the pulses is longer than three blocks.

    2. I was just in SF and I thought Sunset Dunes was wonderful. I get that closing a street is political dynamite, but I love going out to the ocean when I’m in the Bay Area. Take the N Judah to its last stop and walk one block to the actual Pacific Ocean. You won’t be alone.

      If “windy, chilly and foggy” means that a location isn’t appropriate for a park, I fear what is to become of many of Seattle’s parks.

      1. The L Zoo goes out to the coast too I think? I think I took it in the 90s and walked to the beach. I took the N Judah too but that was to somebody’s house in the middle.

      2. Mike, yes it does. A nice winter loop is either the N or L to the end, walk to the other through the colorful Ice Plant along the Upper Roadway and catch the other line back toward downtown.

      1. SF Board of Supervisors is equivalent to a city council.

        The L does go to the zoo. The N is closer to Lands End and Sutro Baths, however.

  7. On the political front, Everett and Tacoma hold all the cards. Because if the light rail doesn’t go to Everett and Tacoma, why would those subareas pitch in for that expensive 2rd tunnel? If Seattle wants to build a West Seattle-Ballard subway I’m quite sure the subareas would allow this…. but the expensive would need to fall 100% on Seattle tax payers.

    1. The system has been configured so that the extensions to Everett and Tacoma require DSTT2, therefore Pierce and Snohomish should pay for it.

      This is how we treat voters who already tend to get less benefit from the system per dollar invested (because of where they are), who also tend to be more skeptical of public transit investments and less inclined to trust government. It’s a wonder more of them didn’t vote No, but the region is hungry for transit.

      Most of the money raised in Pierce and Snohomish should go towards getting to their endpoints faster, not towards a boondoggle that will forever force them to drag luggage down long corridors deep under downtown.

      The real solution is to cancel DSTT2 outright and use that as a planning assumption to build the rest around. Pierce and Snohomish could contribute a much smaller amount to making DSTT1 work better and more reliably for all. (And who doesn’t want that?) As the overall scope is brought into alignment with fiscal realities, the timelines will come back in.

      As for Ballard, even a light-rail based stub line to a Westlake terminus would be better than the current approach, but an automated SkyTrain-like system like we keep suggesting on this blog would be vastly superior.

      We need some new thinking as well as some structural reform. We should go back to the voters and give them a say in whether or not to stay the course or choose a new and better path.

      1. Jonathan Dubman,

        I’d agree to all of this. Getting rid of the 2nd tunnel is the only thing that will knock a substantial amount off the current plan. Nibbling around the edges provides political cover but little else.

        I think the idea of “future proofing” ST projects needs to go away. The big argument for a second tunnel is that we’ll need the extra capacity in the future. But we don’t know the future! Most transit advocates don’t understand that building extra light rail capacity “for the future” has negative impacts on transit now. Like fixing the #8 bus line.

        Once again, the idea that Seattle has some sort of “right” or “need” for light rail over the rest of the ST subareas is popular with the Urbanist crowd, but it suspends political reality.

      2. Yes, outright cancel DSTT2. Selling Pierce and Snohomish on reducing their contribution shouldn’t be hard. If a politician finds that hard, they are in the wrong business.

        None of this precludes maximizing the value of County properties by building high rise affordable housing or whatever, we just don’t need the regional transportation agency to be the facilitator of that.

        Having no DSTT2 means optimizing the deep underground transfers downtown gets a lot easer, because they simply cease to exist. Except at Westlake, where we should pull out the stops (see below where I propose knocking down Westlake Center!)

      3. All subway networks need a strong center for transfers to everywhere and accessing the biggest downtown. Snohomish riders need to transfer to the airport and Ballard, and they would need to transfer to the Eastside if they didn’t happen to have a one-seat ride line. All that puts strain on both tunnels, so all subareas should contribute to all-subarea infrastructure like that.

        If DSTT2 is canceled, then the other subareas won’t have to pay their share of it. At that point they’d have to contribute to the DSTT1 upgrades to get three lines into the tunnel. But it might be harder to justify having them contribute to the Westlake-Ballard transfer interface, because that would seem to be just a Ballard thing.

      4. “But it might be harder to justify having them contribute to the Westlake-Ballard transfer interface, because that would seem to be just a Ballard thing.”

        If SLU is a regional destination, then people from all over the region will be transferring there. That’s the justification.

      5. « If SLU is a regional destination, then people from all over the region will be transferring there. That’s the justification. »

        Thanks for mentioning SLU. West Seattle Lunk just serves a small area of West Seattle. In contrast, Ballard Link serves SLU and Seattle Center, both with important destinations for the entire region, as well as surrounded by many 20+ floor apartment and condo buildings.

      6. “If SLU is a regional destination, then people from all over the region will be transferring there.”

        Downtown Bellevue and Lynnwood are also regional destinations where lots of people transfer, but their subarea is paying 100% of the cost. The difference with dowtown Seattle is that downtown Seattle the center of the Link network where most LINK LINES transfer, and the geographical/trip-wise center of the region, and the largest downtown in the region by far. Chicago has the Loop, the Bay Area has Market Street, DC has a “Soviet triangle” of transfers instead of one central station or street, and Pugetopolis has downtown Seattle.

        SLU is either part of downtown Seattle or it isn’t, depending on how you look at it, but in any case it’s not the center of downtown where all the transfers happen. That makes it a harder case to justify all subareas paying for the SLU-downtown portion of the Ballard line — it’s more like downtown Bellevue or Lynnwood. But all subareas could maybe contribute to the Westlake side of the transfer interface; that could be interpreted as all-network infrastructure.

  8. One thing I’m worried Abt if I vote for Balducci is her making too many compromises. I’m still upset about the east link alignment, and think she might have sold out to Kevin Wallace. I just honestly think she could have fought harder, anyone have insight on this.

    I almost see voting for girmay as a pause in stupid planning.

    1. A few years ago, I attended a Zoom meeting on East Link bus restructures run by Zahilay and he really rubbed me the wrong way. He droned on and on about social equity, and talked about everything as though the racial composition of a bus route was more important than its actual ridership. And didn’t seem all that enthusiastic about transit in general (at least compared to other social equity stuff).

      At least Balducci genuinely seems to place value on riders gained per dollar spent. And she did deliver in getting the partial 2-line to open when it was finished, rather than sitting mothballed for years until the whole thing was finished. She’s not perfect, but, in my book, definitely better than the alternative.

      1. Tbf I don’t have enough history of how she acted during the east link planning. I remember a shouting match happening between her and Kevin Wallace. But ultimately it seems like they made amends, and I’m pretty disappointed with the wilburton station rather than a station closer to the library and hospital.

        Also I don’t know if this is cuz of nimbys, but there’s missing bus links on the Eastside that need to be addressed.

    2. “think she might have sold out to Kevin Wallace”

      Where did you get that idea? She didn’t support his Vision Line concept for East Link. What else has Wallace done that she might have leaned into?

      “I just honestly think she could have fought harder”

      She fights the hardest of anyone on the board, comparable only to Roger Millar, the former WSDOT boardmember. She has complained about the long transfers downtown in the preferred alignment, and offered a “restored spine” alternative a couple years ago that would have been a better compromise. But the majority of the board voted it down. If Balducci had her way, the Link design would be a lot better and address passengers’ needs more, because she understands them more than most boardmembers do. It’s just that she keeps getting outvoted. My mom has been her constituent ever since she was on the Bellevue city council, and we both think she’s one of the best politicians around. I wouldn’t risk going from her to an unknown, somebody who’s not clearly much better. And Zahilay seems to be mediocre on transit and not as strong an advocate for it.

      The Vision Line was Wallace’s concept for an alignment on the east side of 405 (116th), with moving walkways or such over the freeway to downtown. That was to appease those who didn’t want Link closer to them (Surrey Downs on 112thm, City Hall on 110th), and because Wallace just happens to own a lot of commercial land on 116th and would have gotten a windfall if ST had bought it for Link. 116th was all car dealerships then, “Bellevue’s Auto Row”, with promises to redevelop it someday. Some of that redevelopment has since happened. But that’s what Kevin Wallace proposed, while Balducci went with a more conventional alternative that would put passengers closer to the bus bays and the plethora of downtown destinations that was the purpose of the downtown station and part of the purpose of East Link.

      1. I appreciate your perspective and will probably end up voting for her. I’m a young adult so im probably underestimating the political climate she was up against in 2010.

        I think today it would have been easier to build momentum if she aired him out more about the vision line and using tax paper money to build amenities for his future developments that he profits from.

        If the station was on ne 12th St it would have been closer to existing amenities like hidden valley field house, the library, parks, etc.

        I hope she holds a grudge against him, and if sound transit 4 is built the line doesn’t connect to wilburton, not giving this [ad hominem] any more profit.

      2. I dont mean to be too hard on Wallace though , I shouldn’t have said “[ad hominem]”. It’s probably not a bad thing that the wilburton station itself exists and all the housing that comes with it. But if the 4 line is not altered to provide coverage to northwest Bellevue and ashwood, Wilburton station will have been a net-negative imo.

      3. The reason I felt this way about balducci is cause the only content I have really seen her in, is her getting bullied in a shouting match vs Wallace. This probably made me lose morale, but I don’t think I should have let it change my opinion.

      4. I hadn’t heard of the shouting match you’re referring to. I’ve seen Balducci speak or talk with people at Link open houses and events, speak ST board meetings, etc. I haven’t seen her at city of Bellevue or county events, since I moved to Seattle in the 80s so I’m not involved in the later twists of Bellevue or Eastside politics, just the things that relate to Sound Transit or Metro. Anyway, you want to look at a candidate’s whole performance, not just on one dispute one day.

      6. And Balducci even wrote a comment, 9/29 9:10pm. She comments here on rare occasions, as have Constantine and others. I don’t remember this article, and I notice I didn’t write any comments. Maybe I was out of town then. I think I joined STB some months after it started, around 2008 before the ST2 vote. Or maybe it was later than that.

        It’s interesting that there’s almost no overlap between the commentators in 2010 and now. The only current commentators I see are Lazarus, Sherwin Lee, and Sam. If you go through other old articles you see the lack of overlap too.

        I was originally reading HugeAssCity (Dan Bertolet’s blog) in the mid 2000s, and there I found out about Orphan Road (Frank Chachiere’s project) and read that, and then Frank and others formed STB, but I didn’t find out about STB until some time later. It was immediately my go-to place because I’d been a transit enthusiast since junior high, but I never imagined there was enough other people with such a strong interest in transit and Metro and ST to have a blog about it.

  9. Open thread, I have an idea for you:

    We should purchase/condemn Westlake Center and make that a temporary Ballard terminus.

    That area is now over retailed thanks to Amazon up the road, and Westlake Center has struggled. That area is also now over officed, and space from the 1980s is no longer primo. The formula there worked well through the 1990s but eventually fell into a long decline I don’t think it will recover from. Now it is old, without being old/interesting like Pike Place Market, which is now also new. Condemn Westlake Center and put a great new station there closer to the surface than you could otherwise get, right where it really matters in the system. And then more of what we really need downtown in the new era, housing, with a new food hall, grocery retail and civic space, all of which there would be room for on that voluminous lot.

    Condemn Westlake Center for the Ballard project. Make that the temporary terminus of the Ballard line, which should be a Vancouver SkyTrain-scaled line.

    1. You have to move the Monorail station to do this. That is not the original Monorail station anyway, it’s just the third floor of the struggling Westlake Mall.

      So: Extend the monorail track across Pine Street to Westlake Park, constructing a new elevated Monorail station there that visually celebrates this icon while activating that otherwise chronically forlorn space. It would give Westlake Park a real reason to exist.

      For history buffs, this is actually much like what preceded Westlake Center (but we could design the station much better now)

      1. Right – if Ballard isn’t going into the tunnel, it should just be elevated. The monorail demonstrates there is plenty of ROW in the main avenues downtown to support elevated rail, and with a rubber tired train the elevation changes are easy.

        Ideally it follows the routing through SLU and comes down Westlake, but it would also be fine if it simply replaces the monorail. Closing the monorail for a few years is definitely worth the billions in savings.

      2. So you’re proposing replacing both the Monorail and BLE with a Mexico City / Montreal rubber-tired metro? That’s quite a leap, though interesting, for sure.

        We don’t have snow often, so maybe that would be acceptable. However, it’s important to remember that the elevated guideway would be functionally indistinguishable from Link’s not like The Monorail.

        Rubber-tired PRT’s can have two narrow strips per side because they’re light, but I think that elevated stretches of rubber-tired metro lines have a lane-width roadway up there (actually two, one per direction).

      3. Excellent jokes, guys! Thanks for fixing the reply, Ross.

        Not to be too didactic, but a couple of decades ago some railroads experimented with replacing the EMD and GE diesels in some older units with big Caterpillar prime movers.

        So it is at least theoretically possible to have a “four-Cat train”…….

    2. Wouldn’t that be incredibly expensive? The parcel by itself is valued at 130 million. Also, isn’t the issue the stability of the original downtown tunnel rather than Westlake Center itself? If Ballard Link ended at Westlake with no plans to extend the line, maybe it could get built closer to the surface?

      https://blue.kingcounty.com/Assessor/eRealProperty/Dashboard.aspx?ParcelNbr=9301500000

      I think Westlake Center would do quite well if they could find a few more tenants. Nordstrom Rack and Uniqlo at least seem to do very well

      1. If a stub BLE were built with no possibility of extension, its tracks could be at the depth of Westlake Center’s mezzanine with the bumpers right where the walls are now and a center platform opening directly onto the existing mezzanine. This would make all transfers a single level change.

        Such a super-shallow “New Westlake” could not have a mezzanine of its own so it would also need side platforms with direct access from the street above, like the older stations in the New York Subway.

        Or, it could have the tracks at the same level as Westlake Center’s, which would make transfers to and from southbound trains on The Spine no level change but those to and from northbounds two level changes,like ST’s proposed Skycastle at SoDo.

        But I believe that building it such that it cannot ever be extended southward would be another U-District folly. So what’s really needed is a four level “stacked” station under Sixth Avenue.

        It would have an ordinary mezzanine three lanes wide north-south under Sixth with a direct connection to the east end of Westlake Center’s existing mezzanine. Immediately below that level, at the platform level of existing Westlake would be a pair of small “wing” mezzanines each with direct access to one of the existing Westlake platforms. Below those connector mezzanine would be two more levels one over the other with the platforms along the west side ofcthe street and the tracks to the east.

        This “stacked” configuration would allow the tubes and platforms to stay entirely within the curb-to-curb right of way of Sixth Avenue, avoiding the sub-basements and supports of the buildings on Sixth.

        Note well: No transfer at Westlake would require more than two level changes, because the “hardest one” — lower level BLE to Spine or vice versa — can be accommodated by the rider using the upper level BLE platform to shift north or south before entering the separated wing mezzanines.

        Grant that a rider beginning at Westlake has to descend four levels to access the trains on the lower BLE platform. But they do that at U District and Roosevelt, so no foul.

        This allows BLE over time to grow in stages to connect U Village / “Dorm Forest”, U-District, Wallingford, Lower Fremont, FreLard, Ballard Downtown, East Magnolia (a GREAT place for midrises because there’s really no “view” to mess up), LQA, SLU, Westlake, Midtown (6th and Seneca), First Hill, the western CD, north Rainier, and Judkins Park and Mt Baker stations.

        By offering four connections to The Spine with decent transfers, this urban collector / distributor would massively improve the value of The Spine for the whole region while offering in-city dwellers fast access to the most important trip attractors across the city.

    3. With Westlake’s decline as a retail center, it’s no longer the hub that it was. ST could consider designing for transfers at Symphony or Capitol Hill instead.

      If ST miraculously changes course and pursues a high frequency, automated Ballard to Downtown line, the station vaults can be much smaller.

      Finally, the terrain, building footprint and related issues could be motive for more of the line as aerial rather than underground. That depends on which transfer station gets chosen and the terrain and soils involved.

    4. There is a tall office building on the back dude of Westlake Center. It could be easier and cheaper acquiring the Macy’s block or Nordstrom half-block.

    5. $200M would be a drop in the bucket for a line that is currently projected to be over $20 billion.

      But yes, it’s still $200M.

      Another idea is to use Westlake Park as the Ballard terminus. It is definitely well located. If you abandon the idea of DSTT2 under 4th Ave. and the BNSF tunnel then the new Westlake station can be cut and cover close to the surface.

      Westlake Park would also have more healthy activity and reasons to exist with a welcoming, visible entrance to the transit system. Right now there is no clear visual indication to visitors that Seattle even has a transit system other than the monorail (which itself is kind of hidden on 5th.)

      I think we should put some aspects of this area in play as we explore ways to deliver a transit system that gets us to Ballard. It could use some change.

      1. Retrofit the Times Square building into a transit hub, with the Ballard Line, SLUT, and monorail all terminating there.

      3. @ Cam:

        The monorail piers are now over 60 years old. I’d instead suggest relocating the monorail trains to a museum (like connect the Museum of Flight to Link or Pike Place to some place nearby) and installing new piers that can then support another rail technology.

      4. Isn’t the issue that the tunnel has to travel decently far under Westlake Station? I don’t see how it can rise enough in half a block to be anywhere near the surface.

        If the line ended at Olive it could maybe be built as cut-and-cover under Westlake Ave. I don’t think that would be very good either though.

      5. Yeah, Al. That makes sense. it would solve much of the ROW acquisition costs if you used the monorail footprint, then center-run (or something) elevated up Thomas/Western/Elliot/15th to Ballard. Put in something like the sky-train, which I assume is a narrower footprint, so businesses can’t whine.

      6. “Retrofit the Times Square building into a transit hub”

        Does Seattle have a Times Square building? I think it’s the triangular building where Steward and Olive “Y” out between 4th and 5th. Why that building? How can you retrofit an art deco highrise?

      7. No good reason other proximity to the ends of the monorail and the SLUT. And it’s pretty. We need pretty transit centers.

        I’m sure it would be an absurd amount of money.

    6. I don’t think there is any appetite for going above ground. I doubt anyone wants to consider extending the monorail given the history of that project. Monorails have their place (and this might be one of them — since it is already there) but only a handful of companies build them. Things can get messy really quickly. You could abandon the monorail but follow the same path. That seems plausible. But it is significantly different than the proposed routing. You wouldn’t serve South Lake Union. At best you serve Belltown (and I would consider that a fair trade) but there would be some whining. Meanwhile, that doesn’t mean the project is suddenly easy. You still have to make your way to the other side of the Seattle Center and then down to Western/Elliot/15th. I’m not saying it isn’t an option but it doesn’t strike me as something that would be a much better value.

      I don’t think the station at Westlake is particularly expensive. It would likely be cheaper with smaller platforms. It isn’t clear to me why it is so deep. Is it so deep because it needs to be or is it so deep because the other stations are really deep. Maybe it can be shallower with smaller platforms. Maybe it could go over the Westlake Station. You would cut and cover on parts of Fifth (even if it tunneled in other parts).

      In any event a SkyTrain type station would have the same weakness as the monorail. You are connecting an elevated station with an underground one. This isn’t the end of the world for some transfers but that a big one.

      1. I just meant extend the monorail one block to Westlake Park (near where it used to terminate before Westlake Center) so you could replace Westlake Center with something better after constructing a potential Ballard Link terminus there.

        But maybe it’s easier and cheaper to leave the monorail alone, take Westlake Park instead and dig a station box there for a new Ballard line. At least that’s one option that ought to be on the table when we look for places and ways to construct a shallower and cheaper Westlake station.

        I believe the DSTT2 Westlake station is so deep because the tunnel has to get under the BNSF tunnel south of there, but that constraint goes away if DSTT2 is dropped and Westlake is made a terminus station.

      2. Ross, I’ve concluded from the engineering diagrams that New Westlake is designed deep because it needs to get down to 60 feet below street level at “New IDS”.

        If we get what we want — a stub that can be extended uphill to First Hill — shallower becomes better than deep.

    7. That’s not a bad idea. Westlake Center had several empty storefronts the last time I looked, and I think it just lost Sak’s Fifth Avenue or Zara or something. I did a Pine Street and 3rd Avenue retail inventory in 2023 to document what’s open. Westlake wasn’t spectacular, a shadow of its former self. Pacific Place has been even worse off, with half the building empty. They may have recovered somewhat now — I should do another inventory — but Pacific Place still probably has over a dozen vacancies. That would be a building to repurpose, although it’s not as close to most of the transfers.

      Reimaging the building and lot could of course do many things to improve what’s there.

      Who owns Westlake Center?

      “Westlake Park would also have more healthy activity and reasons to exist with a welcoming, visible entrance to the transit system. Right now there is no clear visual indication to visitors that Seattle even has a transit system other than the monorail (which itself is kind of hidden on 5th.)”

      Do you remember what it was like when the Monorail terminus was where Westlake Park is now? It was an ugly track end taking up most of the triangle, and an ugly old station. It was kind of like being next to a freeway entrance. Take a look at South Bellevue Station for an idea of what it was like. That kind of visibility in the middle of the downtown retail core would be worse than nothing. Subway stations should be discreetly integrated into regular buildings. That’s what the best stations in central London are like, like as Leicester Square.

      And having a park in the middle of the midtown core is a good thing. I wish Westlake Park had more greenery and less concrete.

      “I think Westlake Center would do quite well if they could find a few more tenants. Nordstrom Rack and Uniqlo at least seem to do very well”

      Uniqlo isn’t in Westlake Center; it’s in the Bon Marché/Macy’s building.

      1. I just mean that as far as I can tell retail does okay in the area. The only stores I frequent in the area are Uniqlo and Nordstrom Rack, and they both are fairly busy every time I go.

        I’d expect heavy foot traffic if there were a handful of popular retail chains, since Westlake is so well placed for much of the densest parts of Seattle. The closest alternatives are U Village and Bellevue Mall, which are both fine in their own right but obviously aren’t as centrally located.

      2. I’m not quite as optimistic as you about the retail, but I’ll do that second inventory to at least see what’s open now and how vacancies have changed. That doesn’t tell sales levels though, and foot traffic is based on what I see that one moment.

        Hopefully the downtown Nordstrom is doing OK. And Uniqlo has a unique offering: there’s no other place in inner-city Seattle with such a large range of clothing between the department-store/expensive level and the bargain-basement Target level. You have to go to suburban malls for more, and they’re harder to get to without a car.

      3. Pine Street is the street I walk on almost every day, and I’ve seen the outdoor foot traffic between 4th and 6th. Before covid it was so thick with middle-class pedestrians that it slowed you down significantly walking through, both in the daytime and in the evening. I remember thinking, “How can that many people possibly be going to the stores every day?” But it was also people transferring or going to Pike Place Market or visiting Westlake Park, like I was.

        Lest you think it’s the sketchy people, they’re a distinct group at 3rd & Pine. They spread a couple blocks south and a block east, and they move around on different days and are sometimes a large cluster and sometimes not, but they don’t go as far east as 5th.

        During covid there was a sharp dropoff in pedestrians around 5th & Pine: it looked like what would previously have been a Sunday morning. But the crowds of middle-class pedestrians came back to Pine Street a few years ago, enough to say, “That’s a lot of people”, even if it doesn’t get as extremely thick as it did before covid.

        Pike Place Market is also back to its busy self. The central north-south corridor is so thick with people that you have to slow down there too. Smart people go outside along the side of the building to get form one part of the corridor to another without being slowed down. And 1st Avenue outside the market and extending a few blocks south is bustling with restaurant-goers in the afternoons and early evenings at least.

        It’s just the part in between that’s sketchy, from 2nd to 4th. But you can also go around the sketchiness; e.g., via Union Street or Stewart Street.

      4. I don’t think retailed has turned around yet but I think the area around 5th and Pine is very promising. Foot traffic has picked up again, and I think with a bit more retail density it’s located close enough to glom onto the success of the waterfront and Pike Place.

  10. Clearly, Norfolk Southern settled their case with the DOJ (filed by the Biden admin) to win approval for their merger with Union Pacific. The Crescent actually has pretty good timekeeping when compared to other long distance Amtrak trains. Ridership on the Crescent isn’t great, although there is potential along the route for a number of high(er) speed corridors which would generate much better ridership. The Crescent route connects NYC, DC, Greensboro, Charlotte, Atlanta, Birmingham, New Orleans.

    More important to those of us out west is what Union Pacific will have to concede to win approval of the merger. Just about everything south of the Columbia River to San Diego is controlled by UP, including the tracks used by Cascades trains.

    1. What’s the implications for expanding passenger rail in the future? Union Pacific has been reported as hostile to passenger service, unlike BNSF which is more neutral. I don’t know about eastern railroads like Norfolk Southern.

      You know, Union Pacific could sell its north-south segment in south King County if it’s looking for things to divest for a merger. If the state or BNSF bought it, that could make the case easier to shift more freight to it to free up some space on the BNSF mainline for passenger service.

  11. As I was going through the archive I found a map of where ST3 passed.

    Seattle had a 70+% majority from Greenlake through central Seattle, SODO and South Park, and the middle part of Rainier Valley. Less enthusiastic pockets were Magnolia, upper Queen Anne, and the area north and south of U-Village. But all of Seattle voted for it except Broadmoor.

    Snohomish County had the next-most widespread support, on both sides of I-5 south of 405, but especially on the eastern side. North of the I-5/405 interchange, support remains widespread but more patchy to Paine Field, and in the city of Everett. Patches below 50% are east of Paine Field on the east side of I-5, one precinct in Everett, and one around Brier.

    The Eastside was over 70+% yes in a strip between South Bellevue and Bellevue Downtown stations, and west of Downown Redmond station. It was over 50% in a wide swath around the 2 Line, throughout Redmond, and throughout Issaquah. The area I grew up in has a surprising mixture of both positive and negative precincts right next to each other. I suspect the Crossroads multifamily yes vote (lower-income) spread to its entire precinct average, while the adjacent precincts northeast of it and west of it were no (affluent single-family), and the ones around them were mildly no (also affluent single-family).

    South King County had 60-70% yes in Tukwila and Renton between I-5 and downtown Renton. The yes vote was mostly around the 1 Line, Sounder, and Stride 1 corridors, and western Kent between them. No to stronger no was most of eastern Renton, eastern Kent, and eastern Auburn, around the airport, western Tukwila, and between Link and Sounder south of Kent.

    Pierce County had 70+% yes in downtown Tacoma. 60-70% yes in near north Tacoma and a large area south of Lakewood/Spanaway (JBLM?). 50-60% yes in parts of south Tacoma (especially around the Mall) and eastern north Tacoma, and much of Lakewood, downtown Puyallup, and one precinct south of downtown Puyallup (South Hill?). There’s a large mild no patch between Tacoma Mall and Lakewood. The eastern half of Pierce is almost all no to hell no.

    1. One of the big takeaways from this map that people are, by and large, simply voting based on whether they are for or against transit, not what they’re getting out of the specific project. People in Seattle who already got Link service from ST2 aren’t really getting much out of ST3, but they still voted for it by almost the same margin as ST2, when they gained a lot. There are, of course, exceptions, including some of our own commenters, but not enough to really swing a vote.

      I think it’s worth a thought of experiment of how ballot measures should be ideally set up for major projects like this (simply what you think is most fair, ignoring constraints imposed by federal or state law). In my mind, one of the biggest problems is that are asked to vote yes or no, with only one single alternative, and without knowing any of the details, such as where the stations will actually go. But, to get the details figured out before the vote creates a chicken-and-egg problem because that, itself, would cost money, for which the taxes to pay for it haven’t been authorized yet. And, all of that engineering work would simply go up in smoke if the vote to authorize construction fails.

      I’m not sure what the solution is.

    2. One of the big takeaways from this map that people are, by and large, simply voting based on whether they are for or against transit, not what they’re getting out of the specific project.

      Agreed. The vote looks remarkably like a population density map. Seattle has most of the high-density areas in the region. But there are a few scattered around in other areas, mostly on the East Side. You can clearly see the classic “outside rim” of low-density areas around most of Seattle as well. This voting pattern is consistent with most elections.

      In contrast it is hard to see how the new projects swayed the election. Both Everett and Tacoma Dome Link has poor support from the areas it will go through. In contrast, Downtown Tacoma — especially the north part of downtown — supported ST3 in good numbers. But the train won’t go there. It won’t serve it at all. The Highlands seemed to support the train to Issaquah more than the folks who might actually ride it. Juanita and Totem Lake support the train more than South Kirkland. I’m not saying this is a bad thing. It suggests that they aren’t simply supporting their best interest. But it also suggests that they would be willing to support a similar transit project, especially given the nature of ST3. This was not a project designed by an independent consultant. They did not do a lot of research and say “This is the most cost effective way to improve transit in the region.” It was basically just a lot of lines drawn with a crayon on a map.

      This is why I go back to what I’ve said many times. ST3 was not a vote on specific projects. It was a vote on whether you supported spending money on transit or not.

      In my mind, one of the biggest problems is that are asked to vote yes or no, with only one single alternative.

      Exactly. It is a terrible way to build things. We should simply elect a board and they should have the right to build whatever they think should be built. They should be able to raise and lower taxes as they see fit. If you insist on a levy, fine. But that doesn’t mean they need to specify where the money should be spent before the vote. Think of a school levy*. They basically say “We are going to spend several hundred millions dollars on schools”. Does that mean teachers, administrators, janitors? What about music and sports programs? New equipment? The answer is “Yes”. We will spend money on those sorts of things. What exactly we will spend money on depends on how things go. If the teachers insist on a big raise we will have less money for the other stuff. The transit board should operate the same way. They should be flexible enough to spend it on whatever they decide to spend it on. This gives them the flexibility to abandon a project late in the game without feeling they are “going against the will of the voter” (which is BS to begin with).

      Keep in mind, most of on this blog have gone out our way to keep with the spirit if not the actual projects of ST3. We want to spend a bunch of money improving bus service in West Seattle. Not because it is our greatest need, but because they were promised rail. We want to run trains from Ballard to downtown. But running trains from Ballard to the UW is most likely a much better value. We are not taking a “clean slate” approach but bending over backwards to benefit the areas that at least seemed to be benefiting from ST3. Yet even this compromise is seen as going against the will of the voter.

      The logic is flawed for another reason. It is quite likely that if ST3 were held today, it would fail. Things have changed. Costs have risen and ridership estimates are down. Thus the “will of the voter” argument is flawed in two ways. First it assumes that voters favored this particular set of projects over all others and second that we couldn’t possibly change our mind.

    3. “Both Everett and Tacoma Dome Link has poor support from the areas it will go through.”

      It passed in a large part of the city of Everett, mostly north of Everett Station and extending a way’s south. It’s south Everett between there and the Casino freeway that’s a patch of no, like the patch between Tacoma Mall and Lakewood. I think it’s because downtown Everett and north Everett want the access that Link will provide, even if they’re not right near the station. While south Everett is more “Poo poo, we’re car-driving people or tax opponents.” There doesn’t seem to be any relationship to travel time to downtown Seattle or the airport, because Everett and north Everett have the longest travel time, and even longer since they’re on the far side of the Paine Field detour (estimated to add 10 minutes). You might think support would go up steadily the closer to downtown Seattle and the shortest travel time, and while that’s true up to Paine Field, it doesn’t explain opposition in south Everett but support in central and north Everett.

      1. Everett rejected ST3, but not by a huge margin. Support and opposition was scattered around. Again, this follows the pattern of density as opposed to being based on proximity to a station. This isn’t too surprising. But it also suggests that voters would be just as happy with a different transit proposal. If voters don’t seem to care whether the project is close to them or not, why would they oppose a change that many feel is a better value?

      2. “Everett rejected ST3, but not by a huge margin.”

        Then why is Everett mostly blue? Does south Everett have that many people? I thought it was lower density than north Lynnwood.

      3. “If voters don’t seem to care whether the project is close to them or not, why would they oppose a change that many feel is a better value?”

        I doubt the people who live in between would use the Paine Field detour, so they may not care whether the detour is there or not. The detour is for theoretical industrial workers coming from Lynnwood and King County, and from Marysville/Skagit (parking at at the Everett Station P&R — that was one of the stated reasons for the detour, to decrease congestion on Casino Road and the streets around it between downtown Everett and Paine Field). And for people theroretically going to the passenger terminal for a flight, or to the Future of Flight museum. Those are all different than the people in south Everett not near a Link station.

  12. As far as I can tell the budget to Ballard has always lumped in the cost of another tunnel. If they cancel the second tunnel what is the amount saved? Do we even know this?

    How much would the contribution from the other areas then drop? After all they were bearing a lot of the second tunnel cost for the sake of reliable service to their area.

    Even if the full line to Ballard doesn’t pencil out, does the remaining subarea contribution mean it would be ‘affordable’ to do something like Tom proposed in other posts where northbound connections to a Ballard tunnel might possibly be made through the floor(!) of Symphony, and the southbound Ballard tunnel breaks into the current tunnel just north of Westlake?

    Connecting the lines like this could be a win if they can manage it.

    And would they be able to plan for the future and put in bellmouths/connections where future lines might want to interline or intersect?

    And after all of that how much money just how much is left to build anything to Ballard?

    It kind of feels like we are all pissing into the wind here because we just don’t know what ST knows, and ST has this history of building things that this blog doesn’t think are the smartest things to do.

    1. ST is still working on the DEIS for BLE so the cost estimates for specific segments are not yet public.

      One problem is that there are no alternatives studied under the DEIS that don’t include construction of a duplicate tunnel between Westlake and the ID/C. There are two options if that section of the tunnel isn’t built: breaching the existing tunnel for a branch line (either a “simple” service line as Tom T. has proposed, or a full two-way branch), or building an independent OMF in Interbay. Neither the ST Board or its staff know the costs or construction impacts of either of these concepts, and it would likely take additional years to study and assess them, resulting in additional cost inflation and delays.

      1. Whatever the costs of the four-block connector turn out to be and the “inflation” mooted to result from investigating it will be hugely less than constructing the Underground Temple that is the New Westlake of ST’s dreams.

        You also ignore the significant cost savings on every other station on BLE, even the elevated ones, that can be achieved by having shorter automated trains and those from allowing two other of the five underground stations needed for a stub to be shallower since a future extension would go uphill not downhill to IDS.

        Is all of this easy politically to bring about? No, of course not. But ST will never be able to complete its $30 billion folly in Seattle. BLE must be truncated to a north-of-Westlake stub, and how that is accomplished can be determined in the coming year or two.

        It’s better transit anyway.

      2. A universal transfer to the Ballard line is more acceptable than splitting the 1 Line and breaking the one-seat ride between Rainier/airport and UW. The eastern half of Seattle is the most-traveled axis, so it’s where the one-seat ride is and should be, and will be in the ST2 era. Splitting the 1 Line in ST3 take that away, after two decades of having it. Link attracted riders from the 48 as a faster way than the frustratingly-slow bus trip between UW and Mount Baker/Columbia City. Splitting the 1 Line would take that away, and drive some people back to the 48. That’s a step in the wrong direction.

        Ballard, while it’s Seattle’s fourth- or fifth-largest regional center, is smaller than downtown, the U-District, and Northgate, all of which are on the current 1 Line. So they’re the ones that need the most access to the region, and Ballard is at a second level. Now that the 1 Line exists, Ballardites have the option of taking the 44 to U-District station and transferring to Link to downtown — a shorter distance because Ballard-downtown is the long side of the triangle — and we could speed up the 44. Before the 1 Line, Ballard didn’t have that option, and UW-downtown expresses buses were melting down with overcrowding, unreliability, and I-5/Eastlake congestion. So Ballard is better off now than it was before the 1 Line, and that’s a fallback if Ballard-downtown is unaffordable or infeasable — at least it’s better transit than in 2015 or 2010.

        Since Ballard is a secondary village, and it doesn’t have Link yet, it won’t be losing anything if a Ballard-Westlake line is built and everybody has to transfer. That may not be ideal, but it’s better than splitting the 1 Line downtown.

      3. @Mike Orr

        I agree that a forced transfer is fine but Ballard Link isn’t just Ballard, SLU and LQA are also major destinations. Together they’re likely comparable to UW + Northgate.

    2. If Ballard is built as a spur or a standalone line, and there is no new tunnel between Westlake & ID, I’m very confident the Ballard project will be 100% North King funded. The regional contribution is only for the Westlake to ID segment

      2. I agree. If there is no second tunnel then you can’t expect other regions to chip in. This is a doubled edged sword politically. On the one hand it means Seattle would have to pay a higher proportion of the costs. On the other hand the other regions would love this.

        I really think it boils down to West Seattle Link. Without West Seattle Link it is hard to justify a new tunnel. But branching has issues. By sending northbound trains to Ballard you are essentially where we are now — wanting more trains to the UW (and places north). Those trains have to come from somewhere. Maybe we can run trains more often (from the East Side and the South End). Maybe we can squeeze in an occasional train during rush hour that ends at SoDo. You also have the engineering challenge of the spur, which isn’t trivial (and thus costly). Of course it is much cheaper than a new tunnel but it still costs money.

        I think neither ST leadership nor the general public have wrapped their head around the benefits of a stand-alone line in Ballard ending in Westlake. This is by far the cheapest way to get to Ballard. You avoid the cost of a new tunnel and the cost of a new spur. It also means you continue to have twice as many trains heading to Lynnwood than Federal Way or the East Side. Thus the folks from the north should be solidly in support. Meanwhile, trains from the Sound End would continue to serve the UW. Again, that is better for them. I could also see support from First Hill. This puts them next in line for a station. In contrast if they build ST3 as planned, I don’t see them ever building a train to First Hill. People from Kent and Renton are probably not aware, but they too come out ahead. They retain their busway down SoDo.

        The only folks that are likely to complain are from Ballard and West Seattle. But again, many would come out ahead. Most of West Seattle would be better off with bus improvements. Many riders of Ballard Link would benefit with more frequent trains. With smaller stations they might be able to get closer to the surface and closer to the heart of Ballard.

        You can’t please everyone but the approach that represents the consensus for this blog seems like it would be the most popular across the region. Unfortunately most of the ST leadership (and most of the citizenry) is unaware of what we want.

      3. We just don’t know the cost savings of an automated stub line between Westlake and Ballard. The basic problem is that ST has never undertaken any effort to find out. They act like the technology alternative doesn’t exist.

        This scenario played out in Toronto several years ago. TTC wanted the Downtown Relief Line using existing technology. The Province of Ontario proposed the technology change and studied it. They actually threatened an agency takeover unless TTC went along. At the time, the technology change was pitched as saving money — but the different alignment meant that Downtown Toronto would get a full new tunnel that would serve places that some stakeholders wanted. So the automated Ontario Line is under construction.

        The cloud over it is that the Ontario Line costs have since grown from $11B to $27B. The purported cost savings haven’t exactly been realized.

        *****

        One thing about the Ballard Line that won’t get mentioned enough on the Board is that the Ballard Station alone is forecast to get more riders than the three West Seattle stations combined. And that doesn’t even count for ridership at the other five stations north of Westlake.

        Yet the Board never looks at these kinds of metrics. That is to me the huge, basic, overall problem.

        For an automated line to get assessed, ST needs to do two key things:

        1. Identify what performance measures will they make decisions using. Until this is done, the logic of Board cost cutting is arbitrary and uninformed. The board has been in systemic denial for a long time now about using performance measures so that others think this is how rail transit planning works. Whether it’s new riders or aggregate transit travel time savings or GHG reductions or whatever, we should take a strong stand on making decisions based on quantifiable anticipated outcomes. Can we all agree to that as Step 1?

        2. Add multiple new alternatives to the BLE based on automated technology like Skytrain or DLR, and study them with a targeted completion date in two years. These new alternatives can vary about where the tracks go vertically (Less deep? Aerial?) and maybe where the DSTT intercept station should be.

        The problem with the second thing is the Board timetable. They want to drag out the difficult ST3 reduction another year but not study ways to significantly save money outside of deferring end stations and making trivial design reduction decisions in the mean time.

        In other words, the Board now sees the money problem but is still not yet willing to give up on what the technology and alignment already decided for West Seattle, Everett and Tacoma Dome projects. That pretty much sets up an untenable deadend for the Board to do anything else but continue to plan for DSTT2 and ultimately fund a shorter project — maybe no further than Denny or even just Westlake — as well as build the Downtown rail transfer hell that the most recent plans propose. It would truly be a shame and a huge public waste of money — but that’s the path the Board seems to be headed.

      4. We don’t know what the cost savings would be from a Ballard-Westlake line, but we do know they would be extreme.

        Also extreme would be the cost savings of making the trains lighter, the tunnels smaller and the stations about half the size, like SkyTrain (which, despite its name, is being tunneled under Broadway in Vancouver right now.)

        Then there is the operational cost savings of reduced labor for the lifetime of the system because of automation. OF COURSE we should automate a brand new line — we have self-driving taxis picking up people right now on the streets of American cities. They have had automated SkyTrain in BC for 40 years now and it is a wild success. This is not some speculative technology, it’s just different from Link. But the line would be 100% distinct from Link so it isn’t a problem unless you pretend it is, which we seem to be really good at doing.

        As for delays, we’re looking at 2039 now for a project we can’t even afford. That 2039 deliverable is a convenient fiction. The idea that somehow “it’s too late” to consider these “out of the box” solutions is equally fictional.

      5. I agree Jonathan with all of your points.

        This really shouldn’t be that hard politically. You just need to level with people. There plan ‘A’ (ST3) and plan ‘B’. Each region has a lot to gain from Plan B:

        West Seattle: We can build you that train to SoDo. But it probably won’t go downtown until well after 2040. It will only have three stations in West Seattle — maybe only two. Or we can start running the buses more often tomorrow. By the end of the year we can have a major restructure in place for West Seattle. Things like an all-day 56, a 128 that runs every fifteen minutes and a 21 that takes the fast way to downtown (and runs more often). Meanwhile, we start working on the ramps from the Alaska Way Viaduct to the SoDo Busway. That really shouldn’t take too long. Five years I’m guessing. By then you will have your cake and eat it too. You will have fast buses running from your neighborhood to downtown *and* be able to connect to Link (at SoDo) very quickly.

        South End: Guess what? Your life won’t get worse after all. Folks from Renton and Kent won’t be kicked off of the busway and onto slower streets. Hell, we might even decide to work with WSDOT and make your trip into Seattle better by connecting I-5 HOV lanes to the busway. The people who take Link from the south end will continue to see their trains running to Capitol Hill, the UW and other north end destinations. Oh and if you are headed to West Seattle and planned on using Link to get there, chances are you have one less transfer to worry about. For example to get to Alki you just take the train to SoDo and then the (fast) bus to Alki.

        Ballard (and other Ballard Link places) — We’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is the train won’t go to the south end of downtown or out to the airport. The good news we can actually build the train to Ballard. It will also be a lot more frequent. It may even serve the heart of Ballard. It will also be done a lot sooner; you won’t have to wait until the mid 2040s for a train.

        North End — Guess what? You retain that one-seat ride to the airport you like. Same goes for one-seat rides to Beacon Hill and Rainier Valley. But you won’t get a one-seat ride to the three West Seattle stations. Instead you get better bus service to more than make up for it (see “West Seattle” above). Headed to South Seattle College — the bus runs every fifteen minutes and you can transfer at SoDo or downtown. Headed to Alki or the Admiral District, that bus does too. Yet you don’t have to wait until the 2040s before transit to West Seattle is actually decent (and in many cases it would be better).

        East Side — Getting to most West Seattle destinations requires one less transfer. The trains to Ballard or other Ballard Link destinations will run a lot more often. Plan ‘B’ seems like a clear win for you.

        Everyone outside Seattle — You no longer have to chip in for the new tunnel. You might want to think twice about your projects (and come up with a Plan ‘B’ as well) but that’s up to you.

        The only thing holding back the board is ego or ignorance. They don’t want to admit that ST3 was stupid (or they still don’t realize its flaws). But guess what? They can blame it on the engineers. They told us this would be cheap. Or they can blame it on the pandemic. The world has changed. Or they can just level with people and say they’ve changed their minds. Doing so is not shameful. It is honorable. It is the right thing to do.

      6. “We just don’t know the cost savings of an automated stub line between Westlake and Ballard.”

        Hopefully “The List” will have it when it’s published.

        We really have two advocacy paths when all the cost-saving candidates come out. Things we want that are in the list, we can simply advocate for by project number, and the board will be more inclined to grant them since they’re already in the list. Things we want that aren’t in the list, we’ll have to convince the board to add to the list and have engineers/accountants estimate their cost. That would be a harder lift and a longer shot.

        So it makes a big difference whether canceling DSTT2, upgrading DSTT1, automating Ballard, and replacing West Seattle with BRT are in the list or not. And that’s what we don’t know until more of it come out.

        The fact that a couple boardmembers have started talking about the possibility of canceling DSTT2 and upgrading DSTT1 suggests they’re in the list, because where else could they get a cost estimate from or the courage to suggest it? We’ve been advocating these for three years now, and ST has always said it wouldn’t consider them. Now it’s considering them, so that must be because of the list. But has the list studied automating Ballard? I don’t recall boardmembers getting a recent inspiration about that, so it may not be. If not, it’s very important to try to convince the board to study it and get a cost estimate, rather than making bad decisions blindly without the facts on it.

      7. What the region could use is a poll that shows that politically, ST3 Plan B has legs. I don’t know who would champion such a thing.

        ST3 Plan B would include:

        – Better service to West Seattle that does not include light rail to West Seattle. Instead, BRT for West Seattle with service frequency and coverage better than proposed with Link, with one seat rides from West Seattle neighborhoods to downtown via SR 99, also to SODO as Ross has suggested, and also direct through the tunnel to SLU (with electric buses!)

        – No DSTT2. Instead, the line we have discussed from Westlake to Ballard, extensible, smaller scale, higher frequency, same or higher capacity than planned, with optimized station locations. And completed years earlier than it would be as a light rail line.

        – No DSTT2 contributions from Pierce and Snohomish. Instead, acceleration of what is most important to them, which is completion of the Spine. Also, no transfers for Snohomish to get to Sea-Tac.

        As for Line 4 (Issaquah to South Kirkland), I don’t know, it seems ridiculous, but traffic on the Eastside is terrible, East King is rolling in dough and politically maybe it’s easier to just let that be. I don’t know what else they would do with the money because they sure aren’t going to pay for Ballard-UW.

        DSTT2 with a line that terminates at Smith Cove until some mythical ST4 is almost the worst of all outcomes. Because Ballard is the real ridership generator, you’d still need RapidRide D, and the downtown transfers with the deep tunnel would be horrendous.

      8. So, if someone were to advocate for something with the Pierce contingent (Mello, Walker, George), how do you convince them?

        Lack of a second tunnel and not having to pay for it, obviously.

        But selling them on more frequent buses as a replacement for a train is likely to fall very flat, in how you would use that money savings. Frequent all day Sounder is sexier I think, but how possible it is and costs are unknown.

    3. Originally there were three separate studies: Ballard-Westlake, DSTT2 to SODO, and SODO-West Seattle. So the Ballard project ended at Westlake with the default assumption it would be a universal transfer, until later in the process would decide if it continues further south and how.

      Then ST joined all three together for a single WSBLE EIS.

      Later, when it emerged that DSTT2 would be ultra-deep with 10-minute transfer walks to DSTT1, and the board started toying with the idea of moving Midtown and CID2 stations further south, and the controversy over CID2’s location, and some SLU businesses/activists opposed the preferred alignment in SLU, and there was the Ballard-15th-or-14th controversy, and DSTT2 was ballooning in cost, and the Coast Guard said no to a fixed bridge lower than 130′ — with all that — ST split the unified EIS at SODO, because it thought that part could be finished quickly and it didn’t want the rest of the corridor’s issues delaying it.

      So with that, DSTT2 is part of the Ballard project, and not part of the West Seattle project.

      It’s a very good question how much of the Ballard-SODO’s cost increases are south of Westlake (including the station) vs north of Westlake. I’ve also asked that; e.g., in another comment. ST doesn’t break it down that way, so we can’t tell. We can only add up the cost of the things we know about south of Westlake vs north of Westlake to make a guess.

      1. You just know that without true leadership from the Board, ST as a structurally conservative organization would continue to reflexively resist the suggestion to use anything other than the tried-and-true assumptions of Link light rail technology. They would be inclined to treat the idea of Ballard-Westlake automated line as if it’s the reincarnation of the Seattle Monorail Project, already screened out, too risky, not high capacity. But none of these things would be true.

        SkyTrain has headways as short as 108 seconds. That is 1 minute 48 seconds. The system has ridership on the order of half a million a day and is very fast and reliable. Each platform is 69% the length of ours and the finished bores are like 88% of ours in terms of cross-sectional area.

        So, savings come from shorter trains, savings come from smaller bores, savings come from labor costs as it is driverless. Then huge savings come from no DSTT2 and presumably a shallower tunnel. A maintenance base is required regardless, and smaller trains would require less space there too. Just like East Link is today, this system would be physically separate from the existing Link system. Unlike East Link, this system would not interline. But it doesn’t actually need to.

        To the extent the Line 1 runs get too long for humans with bladders with Everett and Tacoma terminus, let me say, first, it’s by definition a good problem to have, because it means have finally completed the Spine. It also has a variety of operational solutions.

        It is not necessary to construct a nonsensical line to West Seattle just to turn a Link train around. Link trains could easily turn around at, like, Stadium or, with a little bit of work, SODO. Also, we swap drivers today. We could swap drivers tomorrow too. I mean, by the time we complete the spine, we could probably just hire a robot to drive the train.

      2. The ST refusal to at least explore automated trains is terribly arcane at this point. Most new transit lines are automated these days. That includes lines in Toronto (under construction) , Honolulu and Montreal. DLR in London has been around 38 years, like Skytrain in Vancouver has been around 39 years. Even SeaTac has had automated rubber tired trains for decades.

        It’s pretty much similar to thinking that elevators have to be mind even though automatic ones are what building owners install.

        The timeline perspective is also like they insist on giving everyone typewriters rather than computers to prepare documents.

        And yet they believe they know what’s best.

      3. “Skytrain in Vancouver has been around 39 years”

        That’s because it was lightning in a bottle of circumstances

        – Vancouver was planning for a rapid transit system in some capacity since the 50s

        – The Urban Transportation Development Corporation, an Ontario Crown Corporation (government entity) was developing the ICTS or Intermediate Capacity Transit System. Which was one of the first prototypes for a fully automated metro back then and they were shopping the idea around to different North American cities to see who’d be interested in the idea, which included Vancouver.

        – BC Government secured the 1986 World Expo in 1980 which was going to have a theme of “Transportation and Communication: World in Motion – World in Touch” and in turn SkyTrain was to be a legacy project of the Expo alongside the rehabilitation of False Creek area from the former railyard it was at the time.

  13. Ryan Packer needs to read Seattle Transit Blog and start passing along the good ideas he would find here. There is NO reason for Lines 1 and 3 not to share the existing tracks through SoDo.

    Even if one agrees that DSTT2 is necessary — we largely don’t, but if we did — the pocket track south of Stadium could provide the space for a ramp up to the surface for re-routed southbound Line 1 trains to merge into the existing trackway without a level crossing.

    Northbound Line 1 trains would just diverge as planned, which will involve moving a few of the supports for the Seattle City Light transmission corridor adjacent to the trackway. Perhaps the pocket track would need to be longer to accommodate the rise to the surface junction, but that would only mean moving an additional support or two. To accommodate the existing plan with side-by-side tunnel portals, a stretch of the poles will have to be moved east anyway. Using the pocket track only changes the southbound side of the trackway, not the northbound side.

    South of SoDo Station, southbound Line 3 trains can simply diverge at the top of the ramp up to the elevated structure and head south alongside the Busway.

    Northbound Line 3 trains would descend to grade between Hanford and Forrest Streets and use the bikeway right-of-way to a merge with the northbound Line 1 tracks under the to-be-built in the new ST dual station model anyway overpass.

    Yes, this would require strengthening the existing structure at the curve from the busway into the Forest Street ROW to accomodate the southbound turnout, but that’s a minor detail that can be accomplished at night over a few weeks’ construction.

    This ALONE saves a billion dollars, far more than the nipping and tucking ST is attempting with the Skycastle they have proposed for this station in the middle of nowhere. It also retains the busway for future use.

    Of course, if ST (and Packer) were willing to consider a three-line DSTT1, then no “north junction” at all south of Stadium would be required.

    A fully-automated small-train, short-station Ballard-Westlake stub, with designed-in ability to be extended south through First Hill in the future would also save billions north of Westlake.

    Boring between stations is not free, obviously, but it is a tiny fraction of the cost of a five hundred foot station box at great depth.

    Every smaller underground station planned for the project — five total north of Midtown — makes the cost of the project less, and the three which can be shallower — “South Lake Union” [really “East Seattle Center”], Denny Way, and New Westlake — make the project less expensive. They could be shallower because the eventual extension to the southeast into First Hill would go uphill rather than downhill toward IDS.

    The entire project in North King becomes more affordable and more usable by its riders because the great depth at New Westlake in ST’s plan will make transfers miserable

    I get that The Urbanist needs to make money in order to operate. But by acting like Seattle Subway is the only “loyal opposition”, the “paper” is doing its readers a disservice. I personally wouldn’t mind if Packer claimed the ideas we bat around as his own as long as they get adopted by ST. If The Urbanist were to become the mouthpiece that gets credit for rescuing the Board from its folly of disinterest and lack of experience, so be it.

    1. In the late 2000s and 2010s, we were the ones doing most of the investigative reporting on transit, and we had solid articles every day for fourteen years, and at times we had a paid reporter writing investigative articles or covering all the agency meetings/hearings once a week at least. STB was the one that spurred the Times and the Urbanist to start covering transit more. (And one of our paid reporters (Lizz Giordano) went on the Everett Herald, and another (Erica C Barnett) is writing more in Publicola about it.)

      But that broke down in 2022 when several of the old-time editors and authors got burned out or acquired more family responsibilities or moved away. There was a month of no articles, and the comments close after so many days, and without an open comment thread nobody can communicate and the blog dies. So Ross and I were asked to step in and take over ridership write at least a weekly roundup to keep the blog going. And over the next two years we were able to recruit some new regular authors and editors and columns.

      But we’ve never recovered the previous level of lots of investigation and daily articles, and then the Urbanist and Mike Lindblom at the Times began eating our lunch on investigative articles. We decided that’s fine; we don’t want to put the lots of time and effort to do that, or to restart ads or become commercial. So we stick to what we do best, the “voice of middle-class transit fans” as it’s been called (compared to the Transit Riders’ Union, the “voice of working-class transit fans”), and putting some time into the blog as a hobby. And that’s where we are now.

  14. I started giving some thought to Ballard Link again. Here is a pretty good description. On page 35 it shows the preferred alignment as well as the alternative. It got me thinking. Why so deep? To put it another way, if the train ends at Westlake, how close to the surface can you get?

    In general there are some challenges with running close to the surface. You have to deal with everything that is underground. This includes skyscrapers. This is why cut-and-cover lines typically follow the street grid. But that appears to be the case from Westlake to Fifth. There is nothing along that pathway to worry about. One challenge is the turn from Westlake to Harrison. The map shows this as a very broad turn. I don’t think it has to be. There are actually relatively short, old buildings on the corner. My guess is those buildings are not very deep. Thus you could go under those buildings which means that you would not have to go very deep. That leaves places where there are tunnels. Checkout page 25 of that same document, where they detail the plans for the very deep station at Westlake. It seems quite plausible to me to put the new platforms *above* the existing train line. You are probably going to have to cut-and-cover to build the new station, might as well just cut from the top but don’t go that deep. That leaves the SR-99 tunnel. Can you go above that tunnel? That seems harder. The southbound tunnel is quite close to the surface. Those who defended the SR-99 tunnel should know that it pushes up the cost of Ballard Link dramatically. There are other possible crossings. I’m not sure how quickly the tunnel goes down. It is possible that it is much deeper under Thomas than it is under Harrison. If so, that could work. The turn from Westlake to Thomas is similar to the other turn in that there is a short brick building on the corner. Another alternative would be to turn at Mercer. This is part of the “Sixth Avenue” alternative but I see no reason why you can’t mix the two. For this turn there is a tall building at the corner (unfortunately). But Mercer is very wide. I could see trains going under the north part of Mercer (close to the surface) and then turning to the east side of Westlake and then on to Westlake Station. The transfer from an Aurora bus to the train would be awkward but that is pretty much a given. If and when Aurora is “reimagined” it would be much easier to access the station. It would not be a great station (that is a given as well) but at least it wouldn’t cost so much. A station centered at First Avenue North Mercer is better in a lot of ways than Republican & Warren. You are farther away from the Seattle Center which means you are closer to most of the people. It also means you complement the monorail better. From there you work your way to the surface anyway (since the train will be running above ground on Elliott).

    As I see it you should be able to dig a tunnel close to the surface (if not cut-and-cover) from east of SR-99 at the worst. But it seems like you could run close to the surface pretty much all the way until Elliott.

    1. Tunnel design has so many considerations that it’s hard for anyone outside of a rail track designer who has access to underground utilities (especially large pipes), soils, other tunnels, and other things to figure out how to thread them within slope and radius requirements.

      As visually undesirable going aerial is, I do think it needs to be put back on the table. The platforms will be closer to the sidewalk vertically than the deep station platforms will be. The cost savings can be as much as 40-70% going from an underground station to an aerial one (less savings for tracks between savings). It may not have the visual appeal — but major modifications will be needed if anything close to what the public was sold in 2016 happens.

      Skytrain is beloved by Vancouver and most of it is aerial. Is it really so offensive that its work the extra expense here?

      1. Much of SkyTrain is tunneled (despite the name). Most of the elevated sections are in the suburbs or next to old railway lines. The Canada Line is mostly cut and cover. The Broadway Line (just now being built) is being tunneled. I agree, it would be great to run elevated but underground (including cat and cover) seems far more realistic for downtown.

        Above ground has the same issues as near the surface. You can’t go over tall buildings — you have to go around them. Thus you have to follow the streets. Since Westlake is underground an above ground station would be particularly bad. It seems way easier to just go close to the surface. The only place where above ground might help is the crossing of Aurora. I really hate that tunnel. This wouldn’t be an issue if they had gone with the surface option instead.

    2. The depth of a tunnel is no issue for boring, but it is for cut-and-cover stations. And those stations are expensive. So making them smaller and shallower would save a ton.

      Serving South Lake Union is vital, but frankly, the station just west of SR 99 that we calling “South Lake Union” in this plan, isn’t really SLU, it’s East Seattle Center. The life, the restaurants, the urban energy and the center of employment are all several blocks to the east. A lot of this station’s walkshed is roadways, ramps, vent stacks, and the suburban office park known as the Gates Center. The destinations in that area are served today by the monorail. As discussed here, transfers to the SR 99 buses are redundant and that isn’t even a good place to do it.

      Being able to serve First Hill and Ballard-UW are not just good ideas, they are ideas that were approved decades ago in Sound Transit’s long term plans; First Hill was on the ballot passed by the voters and Ballard-UW was on a map long before West Seattle got slotted in. Ballard-UW was there for good reasons then and there are better reasons now because both of them are urban centers that have seen (and will see) tremendous growth.

      What we should do is build Westlake-Ballard using SkyTrain-type technology such that it can be extended south someday to connect to First Hill and then to Link at the Rainier Valley. If that turns out to be simply too hard to do, I would be willing to forego that future extension and retain Westlake as a permanent terminus like the Waterfront Station in Vancouver, but the First Hill connection would be really compelling.

      We should also build it so it can eventually go east from Ballard to UW, ideally to U Village, which is actually a major employment center in the area and gaining thousands of large scale apartments on its periphery.

      Link to West Seattle, as discussed here, should be turned into a BRT project that includes the early action of direct service through the SR 99 tunnel to SLU, not in 2039, more like 2027. West Seattle would be spared all of the displacement, disruption and construction from Link, and retain its one-seat rides to downtown.

      1. The depth of a tunnel is no issue for boring, but it is for cut-and-cover stations. And those stations are expensive. So making them smaller and shallower would save a ton.

        I agree. But I also think cut and cover is usually cheaper than boring a tunnel. It is just more disruptive. That’s really a different issue though.

        I agree with your other point. The “South Lake Union” station is a dog. But if we cross at Harrison then I don’t see a better alternative that is very different. Not if we go up Westlake. For example a station at 9th & Harrison is better, but that puts if very close to the “Denny” Station. So then you compromise and put the station at Harrison & Dexter which is basically the same station. In contrast if you kept going and turned on Mercer you could actually put a station on say, Westlake & Republican. Again, the idea is that it is close to the surface (and maybe cut and cover) which means the station isn’t that expensive. This is a bit close to Westlake but nothing out of the ordinary (Westlake and Symphony stations are closer). If Mercer wasn’t such a nasty street you could add a station there. Roy is much nicer but turning from Westlake to Roy is challenging unless you are deep underground. Mercer seems the simplest.

        We should also build it so it can eventually go east from Ballard to UW

        I agree. I don’t think there would be a ton of added connections compared to two independent lines (although it would be great for Magnolia). Mainly it just set the table for something we really should add in the future. That is why I would try and approach Ballard from the west and then line up east-west through Ballard (even if I only add one station initially).

      2. The Snake! Ballard-Westlake is phase 1, but later phases south through First Hill, and connecting to the other lines at Judkins Park and Mt. Baker. East or north from Ballard and transfers at U-District or Roosevelt before heading to U -Village or Lake City. Automated system with 3 minute headways would be amazing!

    3. Early in the WSBLE the idea of moving the SLU segment northward as far as Roy Street was considered (as opposed to go under the 99 tunnel). For some reason it was dropped. There remains a crossing at Mercer Street in the EIS due out soon — so even though it’s not preferred there should be some idea of cost. Still, I would expect ST to still assume a deep station on that alignment.

      I do wonder if streets in SLU could be closed for cut and cover construction. There are several east-west and north-south streets which could be closed for a few years without too much apparent traffic disruption. ST did not do a thorough job assessing how to thread a cut and cover option years ago because everyone was on-board with boring a deep tunnel at the time.

    4. What I was implicitly suggesting by criticizing the “South Lake Union” station location was, we should rethink this alignment. If we are rethinking the technology (and we really should!) we should reevaluate the alignment in light of the new (surely more relaxed) design constraints of a smaller-scale system, as well as, all that we have learned about growth and travel patterns in this area in the last 10 years.

      The current Ballard alignment has weak coverage of SLU. Denny Triangle exists, and is largely forgotten despite now being full of 40 story towers quite unlike the area around the “South Lake Union” station. Imagine the following:

      – Westlake hub
      – Denny/Boren or Denny/Fairview, with exits on both sides of the canyon of traffic that is Denny (why focus on Denny/Westlake? It’s just a Whole Foods) Note discussion on this blog of a potential bus on Boren that directly serves First Hill. This serves the Denny Triangle as well.
      – Mercer/Westlake Mercer/9th or Mercer/Dexter, with station exits on both sides of the canyon of traffic that is Mercer
      – Continuing west from there

      In general, I would seek dramatically better ridership with the same number of stations, even if it takes adding a few blocks to a line that would get dramatically cheaper per mile by switching to smaller trains and smaller stations with higher frequencies, like SkyTrain.

      1. Furthermore I would design stations at Denny and Mercer such that the station itself can be used as a pedestrian pass-through for what is otherwise a brutal crossing where you wait for 2.5 minutes in the rain watching traffic slowly roll by before you get to slalom through it on foot.

        UW Station turned out pretty nice. Notice how that integrates the bike/ped crossing of Montlake Blvd. not just for Link riders, but for all.

      2. “we should rethink this alignment. If we are rethinking the technology…”

        Good point. Automation and smaller tunnels/trains may give opportunities the current technology doesn’t have.

        But the ballot measure said it would serve the SLU PSRC regional center. That makes it one of the strongest mandates and must-serve. So it can’t divert to the Denny Triangle or Belltown and not serve SLU; it would have to serve both or just SLU.

        There are perhaps other possibilities. d.p. (an earlier commentator) convinced me that an underground 45th line could zigzag down to lower Fremont and back to upper Fremont and still have good travel time, because a bored tunnel doesn’t have to follow the street grid or the narrow rights-of-way. So a detour to the Denny Triangle or Belltown between SLU and Westlake might be OK while still giving Ballard-Westlake an 11-15 minute travel time.

      3. I do really wish UW station had a tunnel to the other side of the road. I’ve spent some time in the area and there’s a constant stream of people between the hospital and the Link station. It makes many of the transfers much more painful than they need to be as well (notably the 255)

      4. I think there’s a tunnel already between the triangle garage and the montlake campus (hospital).

        probably mike might remember better but was there some discussion about an underground entrance into the garage but uw didn’t like it?

      5. A curious thing about automation: trains can be quickly, automatically reversed. The line does not have to be run on a through track.

        If the SLU segment is further east at Denny, the Westlake transfer could be under Olive Way parallel (a block away) to existing Westlake platforms. An eventual First Hill extension could be operated by trains stopping at say Olive and 4th and then reverse direction up Olive before crossing over or under the existing DSTT east of I-5 in order to go further south. Or the line could dead end under 4th or 5th, then run back out and continue with a sweeping U-turn so that it could pass over the current Link tunnel east of I-5 to go south towards First Hill.

        It’s probably not ideal, but it seems very doable for an automated train

      6. “ I do really wish UW station had a tunnel to the other side of the road. I’ve spent some time in the area and there’s a constant stream of people between the hospital and the Link station.”

        A pedestrian tunnel should have been built to connect the hospital building with the station mezzanine. I wasn’t around when the station was being designed, but I’ve heard others say that UW Medicine didn’t want it. They thought it would encourage the wrong people to walk into the hospital (as if They couldn’t design it for safety or monitoring). It’s also a cost that ST probably didn’t want to incur. There’s also something about the underground garage and access too. I’ll leave it to others to explain further.

        I will say that if there’s ever interest to connect the station better, it should be led and funded by UW. ST doesn’t have gravy to spend on things like that. And UW should own up and pay to rectify this station access problem. If hospitals and universities can spend money to improve their street access, they should be just as willing to spend money on transit access as well.

      7. “I think there’s a tunnel already between the triangle garage and the montlake campus (hospital).”

        There is a “Triangle Parking Garage” tunnel from the front of the hospital across Pacific Street to an entrance on the eastern sidewalk near the bus stop. If you go further east in the tunnel you go through the parking garage, and at the eastern edge of the garage there’s another exit to the west side of Montlake Blvd’s sidewalk, near the elevator to the station bridge. There also used to be a northern exit at the lower level to the middle of a then-lowered part of Rainier Vista, but that was removed in the station-area renovation. (Just as well, because it was an ugly concrete mar in the bucolic Rainier Vista, and I never saw anyone use it.)

        The tunnel was already there when I did summer work study at UW in 1988 and took it across Pacific Street. Myy colleague took it to his summer job at “Mount Safeco” (the highrise at Brooklyn & 43rd).

        “probably mike might remember better but was there some discussion about an underground entrance into the garage but uw didn’t like it?”

        STB’s and transit fans’ suggestion was to extend the existing tunnel across Montlake Blvd to an underground station entrance. UW refused to allow it, saying it would increase the university’s security costs to have non-UW people in the tunnel.

        Of course, there are non-UW people in the tunnel already, those going across Pacific Street. But the westernmost entrance is out-of-the-way from the sidewalk, so it’s a longer walk than crossing at the sidewalk. And a station access would bring a lot more non-UW people. Still, it was a lost opportunity for a win-win for the overall pedestrians in the area.

        UW likewise wouldn’t allow a station at the HUB, only at the very edges of campus.

      8. “I’ve heard others say that UW Medicine didn’t want it. They thought it would encourage the wrong people to walk into the hospital”

        It wasn’t the hospital that I heard, it was the university in general. The university owns the medical center. My impression was they were concerned about people walking from the station to Pacific Street, whereas the purpose of the tunnel is to serve the parking garage.

        The western entrance is set back from the sidewalk, but it’s outside the hospital entrance, not inside it. You can see it from the sidewalk: it’s like a little shelter thing sticking up for the staircase on the hospital side.

        “(as if They couldn’t design it for safety or monitoring).”

        UW would have had to pay the ongoing operational cost for more security guards. That’s what it was unwilling to do. And it may have overestimated the number of miscreants and criminals, as people do a lot about Seattle.

      9. If we are rethinking the technology we should reevaluate the alignment

        I agree. Ballard Link has many flaws. We should reconsider some of the choices that were made.

      10. “we should rethink this alignment. If we are rethinking the technology…”

        Good point. … But the ballot measure said it would serve the SLU PSRC regional center.

        I agree. But everything Jonathan suggested seems like it accomplishes the same goal. If you look at the official alternative (shown in blue on the map) it isn’t that different. The idea being that not everything is on the table. The train wouldn’t go via Belltown. But things like moving the stations around in what is generally considered South Lake Union and Ballard seems like it should at least be explored.

      11. The UW station should have been built in the triangle with an underground connection from the UW Hospital (which already exists). The combination of security issues and losing parking (which generates money for the UW) killed off that idea.

      12. The crossing from the light rail station to the hospital with 6000 employees and lots of visitors with mobility impairments, that requires crossing two major arterials at grade one of which is (Montlake Blvd.) is a state highway, is pretty dumb. There should be a tunnel. Just down the rod, there is (or was, briefly, and will be again!) a tunnel under Montlake Blvd. at the SR 520 trail, and that did not become an instant hot bed of crime.

        The plan that we (as Montlake community, Better Bridge org, Sustainable 520, et al) very publicly put forward back in the day (circa 2005) was a configuration that lowered the Montlake/Pacific interchange itself a few feet and extended Rainier Vista as a raised pedestrian/bicycle accessible lid all the way across to the SE corner of the intersection. The bridge in this case was essentially part of the Vista extension pointing towards Mount Rainier. With this, you could simply cross from the station to the hospital on a grade separated lid. It was the purest expression of the Olmsted vision, not cheap.

        UW balked in part because it would use real estate they had other plans for, and in part because of the change (diminish?) to the vehicular approach experience to the campus. But everyone ended up going for a more modest version of this same basic plan that extended the Vista to the Triangle, grade separating the Burke-Gilman trail, with the bridge to the station. Nobody had money to pay for that bridge at first, but our civic groups got city and state legislation passed to mandate a better transit connection there, and that helped set the stage for funding, planning and building what’s there now, which I view as a success even if the crossing at Montlake/Pacific is imperfect.

  15. Given the cost overruns Maybe we will bring back the light rail center running for Ballard and west Seattle?

  16. If only one tunnel….

    It seems to me that if ST can figure out how to connect the Ballard line to the One Line then the other subareas would still have to contribute money to upgrade the tunnel, and to help make that connection.

    If it’s only a stub line they might not have to.

    I could be wrong about this, but aren’t there rules about how subarea money has to be spent proportionally?

    1. If there is no DSTT2, then upgrading DSTT to handle more trains would be needed. The funds for that should come from all subareas.

      It could involve all sorts of throughput and speed upgrades. Everything from more escalators and elevators to platform screen doors to more crossovers to more advanced signaling to full automation north of the ID-C Station could be made eligible.

    2. The new segment north of Westlake can handle 1.5 minute trains. The 1980s segment between Westlake and Intl Dist, ST said in 2016 if it goes beyond 3-minute frequency, there’s a greater risk of train bunching and unreliability, and that it would need a signal upgrade to support 2-minute or 1.5-minute trains. In 2022 it changed its tune and said the problem was a risk of platform overcrowding and not having enough escalators/stairs for evacuation. Who knows which of these is true, if any are.

      3-minute trains translates to 20 trains per hour. The planned ST2 level is 8-minute peak hours on 2 lines, so that’s 15 trains per hour. Earlier in ST3 planning it was 6-minute peak hours, or exactly 20 trains per hour.

      If you add a West Seattle line, that’s three lines in the tunnel instead of two. E.g., West Seattle to Everett, Redmond to Mariner-or-Ash Way-or-Lynnwood, and Tacoma Dome to Lynnwood-or-Northgate. All three would be in DSTT1. If all of them run at 8-minute peaks, that’s about 22 trains per hour, over ST’s preferred limit. If West Seattle had half-frequency, it would be 20 trains per hour, but then people in West Seattle would be waiting 16 minutes for a train, which is bad for a metro network. So to get a full 3 lines in the tunnel you’d need to do the tunnel upgrades. And even more so if each line has 6-minute peaks someday.

      If ST upgrades DSTT1, all subareas would probably pay for it, because it’s for service to all of them in aggregate, and so that their constituents can transfer to the other lines to reach the entire network’s destinations.

      1. 7 + 7 + 6 =20

        So each line could run every 9 minutes just fine (21 trains on a 63 minute schedule or a train every 3 minutes combined).

        Note too how ST is proposing high capacity trains just recently. The better capacity at 9 minutes is as effective as having a train every 7.5 minutes using the current vehicles.

    3. It seems to me that if ST can figure out how to connect the Ballard line to the One Line then the other subareas would still have to contribute money to upgrade the tunnel, and to help make that connection.

      I think once they abandon the second tunnel, everything is on the table. This ends the legal agreement. The other areas would have to agree to chip in all over again for anything else. But I think they would chip in for a branch and the various upgrades. That’s because they wouldn’t have to chip in as much.

      If it’s only a stub line they might not have to.

      I agree as well. But I could also see people from Seattle making the same argument. The only real value of the second tunnel is that it preserves frequency on the existing tunnels. It means that existing trains running to every subarea can run just as frequently. Now we accomplish the same goal by a combination of bus service and an automated rail line that ends in Westlake. Put it this way: Let’s say we substitute a bus tunnel instead (https://seattletransitblog.com/2015/02/18/westside-seattle-transit-tunnel/). Would you expect the various subareas to chip in? Of course. Even though it is a very different proposal it seems only fair.

      Ultimately it depends on how they negotiate. But regardless of what they decide, the other subareas would save a lot of money. So would North King (Seattle).

      It is hard for Seattle to argue that folks outside Seattle should chip in for Ballard Link. I suppose they could make the same argument: We are not sending trains from Ballard through downtown to preserve frequency along the existing corridors. No matter what, the thing is negotiable. It is whatever the board decides.

  17. The other day, I was fantasizing with someone about, what if the 2 line, after U district station, branches off and went to Ballard, with stops along the way.

    There are lots of reasons why it didn’t happen and never will happen, including the Snohomish representatives on the ST board believing that the 2 line’s capacity is rightfully theirs, but if only. I think such a branch would have gotten very good ridership for the money, serving both east/west trips to the UW and north/south trips to downtown, all at the same time, and in a way that would be a big improvement over existing buses, for example, slogging all the way downtown on the 40 or 62. If only!

    1. Sure it would have gotten great ridership. ST certainly should have configured U-District Station for such a through branch, or at the least to accommodate transfers to and from a crossing line without going to the surface.

      But it didn’t.

      And that means that the north end of BLE must be configured to accommodate a turn to the east and extension through the edge of Fremont and Wallingford to U-District and on to U-Village.

      With an extension south of Westlake to First Hill, the Central District, and along Rainier to Judkins Park and Mt Baker, transfers to and from SLU could be made earlier than at Westlake.

      Yes, the line would look like a backward question mark, but it would emphatically be an urban system, not Light Rail Commuter service.

      1. “And that means that the north end of BLE must be configured to accommodate a turn to the east and extension through the edge of Fremont and Wallingford to U-District and on to U-Village.”

        One of the advantages of automated lines is that they can be programmed to head into a station then after boarding riders they can reverse to leave on the same tracks before branching to continue in a new direction. So automated trains could go from Westlake to Ballard, automatically reverse direction and switch to a different branch towards Fremont and even eventually UW. The high bridge makes it possible to add that branch on the north side of the Ship Canal curve to go underneath the higher bridge and continue to head east (and vice versa).

        From tighter frequencies to extra long runs to automated reversals, automated lines offer advantages in operations that can free a line from the constraints of human train drivers. It really should be on the table.

        In other words, the tracks don’t have to turn in Ballard. It can be a dead end station.

    2. Al, you are correct that, assuming a fixed high bridge at Fourteenth NW that satisfies the Coast Guard, making the Ballard Central Station a a stub with a fly under for the eastbound track of an extension east would work very nicely. That may indeed be the only build able way to cross the Ship Canal.

      However, I really believe that the Dravus Station would be better placed west of Interbay Yard at tge base of the Magnolia east slope.

      There are only rather uninteresting views for four of five blocks up the hill, so the bottom three could be the site of a high-density cluster that simply won’t happen on the other side of the yard. The playfield takes half of the walkshed there.

      Yes, the large sewer main that crosses the Ship Canal in Salmon Bay is a possible unavoidable blockage, making only a high bridge or tunnel at Fourteenth the only plausible alternative, but it would be remiss not to study a western crossing with an east-west station under Fifty-Sixth and use of the wide right of way on Fourteenth to transition from deep to shallow open cut tunnel and then, if necessary for costs, to elevated for the run to Lower Fremont.

      Doing an elevated stub station would almost unavoidably force the Ballard Central Station to Russell or Tallman south of Market. That’s considerably better than a single station at Fourteenth and Market, but not as good as one underground at Fifty-Sixth and Twenty-Second.

      I grant that a western crossing would be more expensive than the high bridge also, in addition to possible engineering impossibilities. I’m just concerned that the reversible stub would be yet one more mental obstacle to getting a “fishhook” BLE all the way to U District, with all the possible rapid trips it would make possible throughout northwest Seattle.

  18. Skagit Transit has decided the ridership on its demand-response bus service on Guemes Island isn’t high enough to continue service.

    https://www.skagittransit.org/guemes-island-service-pilot-discontinuation/

    I just used it today to try it out. The problem I had with it is sort of inherent with trying to do demand response with one vehicle: you have to call ahead and let the dispatcher know the bus is coming.

    Since the primary travel destination is the ferry, it seems like scheduled service, coinciding with the ferry, would have been a better choice.

  20. I wonder just how important ST considers the service model of West Seattle -> Lynnwood, and Tacoma -> Ballard.

    In the context of possibly cancelling a second tunnel, and deciding whether to build a stub line to Ballard, or trying to connect DSTT1 to Ballard it seems to me that it could be this question that decides the issue.

    Does anyone remember if this service model was part of the ST 3 ballot measure for instance?

    1. The idea was introduced late in the game but it was part of the official proposal that went to voters. The actual measure was fairly vague and didn’t mention it (https://info.kingcounty.gov/kcelections/Vote/contests/ballotmeasures.aspx?cid=90060). It would not surprise me if the vast majority of voters (including the vast majority of voters who supported the proposal) don’t know that the plan involves sending trains from the south to Ballard. I don’t think the change will be popular. Lots of people from the north will dislike having to transfer with luggage when they head to the airport. Lots of people from the south will dislike the new downtown stations as well as the transfer to get to Capitol Hill or the UW.

      People who oppose a second tunnel will sometimes bring up the issue but it often gets lost in discussion. There is often a feeling that if we don’t build everything we planned on building we have failed. An alternative can’t possibly be better, for anyone. This is absurd, but few people in power are pointing out that the advantages — for riders — that would come with cancelling the second tunnel. They instead focus on costs or lack of disruption.

    2. ST considers “breaking” the spine to be critical because labor rules prohibit a single operator from sitting for the whole run from Tacoma to Everett. As of today, LA Metro operates the longest light rail line in the world (the A Line, from Long Beach to Pomona), and they make it work by changing operators at Union Station, which can 5-10 minutes.

      1. Perhaps once the current operations leadership, which considers automation impossible, retires, ST staff will realize it will be much cheaper to automate Link rather than break the line in 2.

        LA Metro should do the same. Only obstacle is labor unions, which require drivers for BART (already automated, the drivers simply open/close doors) and for NYC’s Line 7 (MTA’s best candidate for automation for 24/7 operations).

        Like most opportunities to save billions of dollars, the primary obstacle is political, not technical.

    3. Splitting the spine was introduced to the board in December 2015 at a meeting I attended. In the same meeting ST revealed the list of candidate projects for ST3, which included one project to build DSTT2 and another to upgrade DSTT1 for 2.5 minute frequency.

      ST says Tacoma Dome – Everett Station with around 2:15 hour travel time is too long for drivers to go without a break. That was the reason it gave for splitting the spine. But as we have said several times, Tacoma Dome could turn back at Northgate or Lynnwood, and might fit within the driver window.

      Balducci and Millar proposed a “restored spine” concept that would have avoided severing northeast Seattle from southeast Seattle, but I don’t remember all its details. The majority of the board voted against it.

      1. Mike, Tacoma Dome does not need to go to Everett!. Nobody in their right mind would propose service every five minutes between Lynnwood and Everett for twenty hours per day. Some service will turn back at Lynnwood or Mariner even if Line 1 is forced into a new tunnel.

        In a three-line DSTT1 Line 1 could turn back at Northgate, making the run for its operators shorter than going to Ballard. There would be nine stations north of SoDo to Ballard versus eight to Northgate, and the three between New Westlake and Smith Cove are quite close together, limiting the speed the trains will attain through that section.

        Line 2 would end at Lynnwood, while Line 3 would continue to Everett. That is the current plan.

        Both the West Seattle end and the Everett end of Line 3 will require only policy headways for fifty years at least — assuming as the old song says that “Man is still alive”.

        This obviously assumes that the center pockets at Northgate and Lynnwood are each adequate to the task of reversing a train in eight minutes. But if Lynnwood will work for Line 2 — the formal plan now in place — Northgate ought also to work. The layout is the same.

        P.S. This is another argument for complete automation north of IDS on The Spine. SDOT will never allow full automation down Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, West Seattle ought to end on the surface, and Line 2 has its own at-grade median section. So automation south of IDS will not happen.

        But it could very easily happen north of there with a station modification to Pioneer Square allowing operators to board and alight in a center platform station that could also improve reversing transfers between Line 2 and the others.

        A three-line DSTT1 would certainly gain from the greater reliability automation would provide, though platform doors are likely to be necessary for reliability also.

        Or, the operators can just ride along as they do on BART if deboarding and reboarding is considered too disruptive.

      2. Tom, so SDOT will allow for driverless taxis but not driverless trains on MLK? Just automate 100% of Link.

        Center pocket at Northgate will require closing the line for re-construction, right? At that point, I would just build a junction, not a turn pocket, and have have a short spur to Lake City.

        The same should happen in Snohomish, where there is a junction with only one branch terminating in Everett. My crayon maps has a junction at Mariner (b/c that is where ST staff proposes for line terminus). One line turns west and terminates at Airport Way (the ST3 provisional station), with a short non-operational extension to connect to OMF-North, and the other line continues up I5(ish) to Evertt. So the Line pairs would be:
        1) Tacoma to Lake City
        2) Redmond to Airport Way (or Paine Field, I suppose)
        3) West Seattle to Everett
        Three lines interlined ID to Northgate, and two lines interlined Northgate to Mariner.

        Regardless of the specifics, each of the lines should end in a spur, not a mainline turnback, to maximize the value of branching. ST did this well in ST2 south of ID, needs to apply the same framework north.

  21. If West Seattle and Ballard really are unaffordable and ST is unwilling to downscope/modify them to make them affordable, then we don’t have to do anything: they won’t get built.

    In a normal situation this would be a major loss: losing two light rail segments to the other half of Seattle. But in this case, the essential part of the Link network will be finished: Lynnwood, Redmond, and KDM-or-Federal-Way. That’s enough to give us a metro circulation core that we’ve been missing for so long and that other cities have. We can live without the secondary expansions beyond it: we’re FAR BETTER OFF than we were in 2008, 2015, or 2021. Even Ballard and West Seattle benefit from indirect access to the 1 Line and soon-opening full 2 Line. Ballard has a second path to downtown, and both Ballard and West Seattle have much better access to several non-downtown station areas. Like West Seattle to UW for instance, or West Seattle to Roosevelt.

    If it’s decided not to pursue WS/BLE or to modify them, or if a critical mass of impatience emerges that they’re not likely to be finished in our lifetimes, then there would be space for the politicians to consider what kind of fallback can be done to improve transit to the western half of the city significantly.

    1. Excellent analysis, Mike. BLE, especially one extended eventually to U Village on the north end and Mt Baker to the south would be a huge improvement to mobility in Seattle. However, the city can still thrive without it, though something must be done for the buses to and from Ballard in its absence.

    2. ST3 already has capital dollars set aside for RR-C & D improvements, right? If WSBLE was deferred, I think it would be very straightforward for the board to grant $100M to SDOT for bus improvements.

      I think the most likely outcome is the project is deferred, re-thought, and then comes back in a new form in a future vote. This is very common with megaprojects. The Ontario Line in Toronto is a good example. That corridor had ideas back to the early 20th century, there was a major project (“Relief line”) that had lots of issue and was rebooted as the Ontario Line, an automated line with a better alignment, better frequency, and much higher ridership projection.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relief_Line_(Toronto)#Ontario_Line

      I suppose some project could move forward that are ‘future proof’ for rail. For example, if the EIS is complete and there is a set alignment through Interbay, ST could pay for a rebuild of the Dravus interchange (new bridge, etc.) such that the bus gets dedicated ROW that will later be handed over to rail.

  22. Yes, automated trains can change direction…
    If we want to revisit the SLU alignment, earlier I had mentioned on an old idea: a Y line from Westlake to Ballard and UW with a tunnel under the ship canal in Fremont where it splits west/east. We could add a stub (may be even single track) to serve Seattle Center and Lower QA. It could provide a real alternative if the 1 Line ever has an issue.
    This could even be an elevated line replacing the street car along Westlake.

    1. When you advocate a “Y” at Fremont are you proposing that the base of the “Y” points toward Ballard or towards downtown? I assume you mean “toward Ballard” given the context of your mentioning auto-reversing (presumably in Ballard) as Mike did.

      However, you also say “where it [the line] splits west/east”, and that sounds like the base would point toward downtown Seattle.

      Would you please clarify? Thank you.

      1. My inclination would be downtown with a transfer opportunity in Fremont, but I could also imagine a triangle where trains can go east/west or downtown.
        I like Mike’s vision of the Wallingford line going to UVillage. One challenge is the where to place an OMF.

      2. Yeah, folks talked about a ‘Y’ in the past. Basically the trains start downtown and head to Fremont (usually via Westlake). Then the trains split. Some go to the UW, others go to Ballard. A triangle would mean trains running from Fremont to Ballard as well.

        I think once you connect to the main line you don’t have to worry about an OMF. The connection to the main line would be strictly for maintenance — the train would only make that connection when Link is shut down. For example you could connect Westlake and Symphony. This is far less complicated and disruptive than a service branch. With a service branch you need to be above or below the tracks going the other direction.

        Personally I think the best bet is to head to Ballard as planned (west of Queen Anne). I would cross the canal to the west and curve east. Then eventually continue running east until you get to the UW. I don’t think a train to the U-Village ever makes sense but it doesn’t hurt to have tracks heading that way. You serve Fremont via the east-west line. It is tricky to both serve Fremont and connect to the Aurora buses but I think you can do it. Run underneath the troll. Have an entrance at 36th & Fremont and another close to the troll. Add a stop for the RapidRide E next to the bridge (something we’ve wanted for years). It isn’t that far of a walk from the troll to that bus stop. 36th & Fremont is not the heart of Fremont but close enough. There are plenty of apartments on the other side as well (closer to Stone Way).

        By going west of Queen Anne you have another option for an OMF (Interbay). That might be cheaper and would certainly be less disruptive than connecting to the main line.

      3. Eventually, they’re going to want an OMF on the north end anyway. Otherwise it takes too long for the start of service trains to get that far north.

        If an elevated line is politically possible, I’d run that all the way up to Northgate following the D/40 or E, and make Northgate the maintenance connection. No expensive changes to the existing tunnel that way.

      4. I agree with Ross on the west of Queen Anne and the alignment through Fremont. But I want to remind folks that we’re assuming automated trains!

        Thrre’s no “morning start-up” with automation. The TCS just turns a couple of trains off in each of the “away” terminals at 1:15 and 1:30 AM and turns them back on at 5:15 and 5:30. Away they go.

        Yes, the away terminals and the trains have to be swept for stragglers and miscreants. But rent-a-cops driving their own cars home from the station around 2:00 AM are a lot cheaper than bringing the trains back to the MF, only to send them back three hours later..

        Grant that those “remote” trains will need to be phased out of service right after rush hour for cleaning.

        Glenn, a line in the Ballard-Fremont-Wallingford corridor would serve a lot more UW-bound trips than one across 110th. While folks north of 85th might well go north on their buses to it, change, and then change again at Northgate because of the speed of the trains, riders south of there would be stuck with the 44.

        I do like your point that the maintenance connection would be outside any tunnel. That’s a huge advantage.

      5. Ross, it isn’t U Village particularly that would drive ridership of a short stub to the east. It’s the Dorm Forest sprouting on both sides of Montlake just south of 45th. Yes, it’s possible for folks in them to walk to UW Station or U-District, but they’re both a half mile. It would also be a decent bus intercept with an overpass to the east side of Montlake.

        There has to be reversed cross-overs at the end. They could be “in the air ” instead of in the tunnel if the terminal station straddled Montlake.

        It’s a “nice-to-have” though, not core.

      6. OK, here is my reasoning behind serving U-Village.

        The biggest destination on a UW-Ballard line is the UW. It is not even close. Ballard is similar to Capitol Hill. Worth serving but small potatoes compared to the UW or Downtown Seattle. The UW has another thing going for it: An existing connection to Link. The two lines would complement each other because one is largely north-south while the other is east-west.

        Getting to the UW from Ballard or Fremont is very time consuming. Even as they chip away to make the buses faster there are fundamental challenges. The street is narrow in places which means it takes more effort than getting rid of parking or “taking a lane”. There are a lot of cross streets as well.

        Speaking of which, that is where Ballard-UW really shines. The UW is a major destination that is only surpassed by Downtown Seattle. Buses run fairly quickly and frequently towards Downtown Seattle from the north. Thus by connecting to all of these north-south corridors you provide outstanding two-seat rides to the second biggest destination in the area while providing a good one-seat connection to the biggest. That is Ballard-UW Link in a nutshell. It isn’t that the main set of stations along the corridor are huge. It is that the stations are big, the connections are big and the times saves are really big. The combination is huge and thus worth the expense.

        So how would U-Village fit in? In short, it really doesn’t. Obviously you add value but the dynamic is different. All the buses that serve the U-Village also serve the UW. They do a better job of serving the campus than Link. It is also a short distance. The time savings for taking the train to either UW station would be minimal. Station location is not obvious. Ideally you want to serve an area that connects to buses heading south on 25th and east on 45th. You can do that, but that puts the station in the middle of nowhere. I think your best bet is to go connect to buses going down 25th (e. g. 25th and 47th). This means riders heading to Children’s Hospital (from Ballard) will transfer at the U-District, even though the U-Village station is closer.

        At best it can be thought of as an extension of UW service. A way to better serve the overall U-District (instead of two stations we have three). Fair enough. That is a worthy goal. Serving other areas in the U-District is challenging. A station in the middle of campus is out (we tried that already). I would like a station at Campus Parkway & Brooklyn (more or less). Too late for that on the main line. You could add it to this line, but that probably only makes sense if connecting at the U-District is too difficult and you want to connect at UW Station instead. So adding a station at U-Village seems reasonable but it also doesn’t seem cheap or easy.

        Just to back up here, how exactly do you connect to the U-District Station? That station is pretty deep. It is deep because the UW Station is really deep (and that station is really deep because it needed to go under the ship canal). So maybe you can actually go above it. This saves money and is just better for everyone. If you can pull that off then you would have to suddenly go much deeper to get down the hill to the U-Village. You might be able to do that by turning north immediately after the station. That gives you room to go deeper before turning east again, with a station at maybe 47th & 25th. I could see it, but it might also be too expensive.

      7. Ross, I went down into U-District Station today with a good camera and got lots of shots of the north wall at platform depth. Wikipedia says that the platform level is 85 feet below street level, and I believe it with those two long escalator banks.

        I am certain that and east-west station can be placed under NE 45th either east or west of Brooklyn. I don’t think it would be a good idea to have it straddle the existing tubes, because of the weight of the station box.

        So my proposal would be to have a pair of tubes that cross above the existing ones just north of the station box, with enough earth between them that they absolutely will not harm the existing tunnels. This would probably require something like fifteen feet of undisturbed soil.

        If we figure that the catenary wires are about eighteen feet from the track, which is about a foot deeper than the platforms, the top outside of the tubes should be about about sixty feet below grade. Add another fifteen feet and you get a bottom of the crossing tubes about forty-five feet below street level. It seems that that is (just barely) deep enough to have a small mezzanine within the bounds of the NE 45th Street right of way and a central platform just below it for the crossing tubes.

        It would obviously require the closure of 45th for however long it would take to dig down far enough to deck it over and continue digging.

        This would allow movement between the two lines without going to the surface, but it’s not ideal because of the looooooong escalators between the existing platform and mezzanine. The new platform would be a level shallower, but it’s still three levels of change.

        But, what if the north wall of the station at platform level could be punctured to allow a folded stair bank to rise up to the level of the new platform between the footprint of the existing tubes? This is constricted space for the first flight of stairs, because the stair bank must stay between the existing tubes until it clears them (about 22 feet). It could then turn back toward the existing box on a flat level to the center between the new tubes. It would then turn either east or west and then resume rising, and has to fit between the new tubes as well because there has to be headroom for the people using the stairs.

        That means the the stairs have to fold back quickly.
        The biggest question I would have is “what is behind the Emergency Exit doors at the north end of the platform?” It looks like the station box is about two feet thick and was penetrated by the TBM’s at each end for each tube. See pictures P-01, P-02, and P-03 in the following Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100094556210035.

        Then look at picture P-04 and P-05 in the same post to see the vault above the trackway at the north and south endwalls of the station and the detail of the penetration of the station box next to the Emergency Exit.

        The two last photos are very crude drawings I made to explain the verbage about where the potential platform to platform transfer would be placed.

        I don’t have a schematic of the station to reference, but it looks to me like the depth behind the door to the Emergency Exit is too thin to include a stairwell, so it looks like the Emergency Exit may already penetrate the station box at the platform level, and if so Hallelujah! We have a way to make a connection to another platform!”.

        And finally, I would just have the line go east along 45th to the crest of the hill down, then wiggle a bit to the south and come out into the air north of the dorm forest at an elevation that would allow a station above Montlake to have a small mezzanine below the tracks.

        And yes, you are absolutely correct that this would be a poor bus intercept for downtown-bound passengers. They’d simply continue down to UW Station and change as they do today. But folks headed into the Ave or points west, even as far as SLU perhaps because of the better transfer and one less vehicle, would make the transfer from their buses at Montlake.

      8. And yes, you are absolutely correct that this would be a poor bus intercept for downtown-bound passengers.

        I really wasn’t concerned about downtown-bound passengers. My point is that the ideal point for a bus-rail transfer is a terrible place for walk-up passengers. If you’re only goal is to connect to riders coming from the north and east (riders on the current 65, 75 and 372) then you put your station somewhere around the intersection of Pend-Orielle Road and 25th. That is where the buses converge. The problem is, there is very little there. To the east you’ve got a giant parking lot, tennis courts and a golf course. U-Village is to the northeast but that requires a long walk in one of the nastiest places for pedestrians within miles. Directly north you have some sort of UW plant services building — a low-slung building with a lot of parking. It isn’t until you get up to NE 47th that you get into an urban area (student housing on one side, mall on the other). To the west you have greenbelt. There are some big dorms in there but they are literally surrounded by forest. The closest big building is a nuclear lab. That means there are research issues (they may not want the trains nearby).

        I agree that if you turned to the southwest and then had a station somewhere close to the Stevens/Pend intersection (say, here) it would be great. That would be close enough to the center of campus to get a lot of riders. But I think the UW would shoot that down.

        For what it’s worth, this is a common problem. It is often difficult to have a station have both an excellent bus connection and serve the a dense area. U-District and Roosevelt stations both do that very well. With Ballard Link, the future “South Lake Union” station will be a good bus-intercept but a poor station for walk-up riders. A future station in Ballard at 20th (on the same line) would be excellent at both (while a station at 14th would be poor at both). Fremont was always considered challenging — there was an assumption that you had to choose one or the other. Either you intercept the buses coming from Aurora really well (at 46th) or you serve the dense, culturally significant area of Lower Fremont. But I think we can manage an excellent compromise in Fremont by putting the station close to the troll. Not the best for either but still very good. I don’t think we can pull off such a station in the U-Village.

      9. Maybe UW has changed its plans, but at one time they had an elaborate diagram showing new classroom and residence buildings lining the space between Montlake and the wetlands east of that “giant parking lot”. Indeed, the parking lot would host the new academic buildings while more dorms were to be added to the dorm forest. A map showing that master plan can be found on Page 7 of the document at https://facilities.uw.edu/files/media/2019-04-02-uw-cmp-final-plan-reduced.pdf

        Twenty-fifth and Pend-O’Reille is exactly where I would site the station. I misspoke when I said “over Montlake”, though it certainly could have a pedestrian plaza over Montlake to access the buildings which were to go in the parking lot. U Village would just be a very short walk the other direction under the NE 45th Street viaduct, crossing no arterial.

        Now the UW may have abandoned that plan; I’m not an alum and haven’t “kept up”, but I’d bet something big will replace that parking lot even if the U isn’t the builder. The views and location are far too valuable to keep it a parking lot.

      10. Yes, if the area was redeveloped that would certainly help. It is still a bit of donut hole though (not much nearby but more density as get farther away). But it would be ideal from a bus-transfer standpoint. I could see that working (if it wasn’t too expensive).

    2. Long term is there be no use in a Ballard-UW line turning north on 25th after UW to get to Lake City Way?

      Or is it better to get to Lake City via Ballard-Holman Road-Northgate?

      Or more likely – Lake City never gets light rail?

      1. I think the ST would deem it too close to the parallel Spine Main. It conceivable could go to Childrens’ if the area further developed, but it’s unlikely. I like getting to Montlake because of the walk-up ridership and the thing has to be reversed and it’s cheaper to do that in the air.

        Maybe not enough cheaper, though.

      2. I think the problem is the general gap in density south of Lake City. The closest significant neighborhoods are Northgate and Roosevelt and they already have stations. Wedgwood is not very developed. You pretty much have to go all the way down to Children’s or U-Village to find some place with a significant number of people east of the existing line. Sand Point maybe, but then you are looping around and you still end up with very few stations for the distance. Maybe if you ran cut and cover but my guess is no one would want that. The best bet from a station standpoint would be to basically follow the current path of the 65 and hope for a lot of Transit Oriented Development. So that means a station at Children’s and then a bunch of stations on 35th NE (I would go with NE 65th, 75th, 85th, 95th, 110th). Then curve back northwest (serving 125th & Lake City Way) along with a station at 30th & 135th as well as somewhere on 145th (before looping around and connecting to 148th Station. It wouldn’t be cheap (not with the way we build things) and probably wouldn’t pan out (even though it makes more sense than most of the ST3 projects). We assume that neighborhoods next to the freeway (and greenbelts) will have TOD but not places where people actually want to live.

        Lake City via Ballard-Holman Road-Northgate seems more plausible. But it still has issues. You are following a relatively fast road but not taking advantage of it. I guess if it was elevated it could be pretty cheap. But east of Aurora the road curves north while the station is to the south. I don’t see elevated working. You would have to go over the existing line (and the freeway). You also have buildings on the other side to worry about. Maybe you could dogleg over to 103rd and cross above the Northgate Station (very high above the street) but then what? You still have to curve around to reach Lake City.

        I think you have to go under Northgate Station. This isn’t easy. You would be underground from Lake City to Northgate. You could maybe add a station at Roosevelt and Northgate Way. The good news is that you would be working with the hill as you approached Lake City. The train might be really deep at Northgate but closer to the surface in Lake City. To the west it is the opposite. You are running elevated up 15th, follow Holman Road and then at some point you have go underground. The hill is working against you. You have to go downhill quite quickly. This means you turn earlier. I suppose you don’t have to serve Northgate Way at all. Maybe you turn at 103rd (directly lined up with the station). That means a stop at 103rd & Greenwood as well as 103rd & Aurora. But this means the connection between the two lines is terrible. You are going from an elevated station to an underground station.

        I could see it, but realistically I think Lake City never gets rail. That’s OK as most of the city will never get rail. Even Vancouver (which has a much better rail system than we will ever build) gets a lot more riders on their buses. We should definitely improve the rail system but that also means building lines that work really well with the buses. Ballard-UW does that. But we also need to invest a lot more into our bus system. Folks ignore this simple fact: despite dramatically improving our rail system and despite adding the first bus line that can honestly be called BRT, ridership is below what it was before the pandemic. It is easy to blame “working from home” but the main problem is that our network sucks. Our buses aren’t that good and the rail system doesn’t work that well with them. The worse part is, none of the things we are building will really change that. The increase in ridership will be minimal. In contrast if we invested heavily in our buses (by adding a lot red paint, running them more often and designing a better network) we could see a big increase in ridership. Building Ballard-to-UW would also lead to a lot more riders. Some of the other potential projects would as well, but most (like Lake City) won’t be affordable.

      3. There was an idea about P-09: HCT Study: Light Rail from Ballard to Bothell via Greenwood, North Seattle, and Lake City

        > This study would examine a future extension of a Ballard to Downtown light rail line from Market St. to destinations north and east, and the
        potential future operational configurations that could feasibly connect these smaller centers.

        It’d likely use 15th ave, holman road, northgate way etc…

  23. more mistakes like Rainier valley. lack of foresight to save a meaningless amount when the real culprits is Ballard and West Seattle

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