Tonight, 6-8pm: Seattle Neighborhood Greenways is hosting “Community Crossroads” at El Centro de la Raza in Beacon Hill. The event will feature a panel discussion and community engagement opportunities considering the future of Seattle’s most dangerous corridors, including Aurora Ave N, MLK Jr. Way S., and streets in South Park.
The PSRC is taking input on its Regional Transportation Plan at three more events across King County this month. RSVP to an event near you.
Local Transit & Streets:
- King County’s proposed budget for Metro includes more funding for security, behavioral health experts, and bus stop cleaning as part of an effort to improve safety and security across its service network (The Seattle Times, $). More info from Metro.
- Public records show planned safety improvements to Lake Washington Blvd were practically shovel-ready before being abruptly cancelled (The Urbanist).
- The “Salmon Bone Bridge” (a sculptural pedestrian bridge) reopened last week after a second phase of fish passage restoration efforts on Longfellow Creek in West Seattle (the Seattle Times, $).
- If you’re on a Community Transit bus this month, keep an eye out for on-board survey team members seeking input on rider experience and service improvements (CT News).
- Kitsap Transit recently launched real-time bus tracking, customizable rider alerts, and more informational tools for riders (KT Headways).
Other News & Commentary:
- The Trump administration is targeting blue states by rescinding awarded grants, including $18 billion for NYC-area transit projects (NYT, gift link) and $2.1 billion in Chicago-area transit projects (NYT, gift link), citing “DEI” and “anarchy”. Trump’s Dept. of Energy also cancelled over $1 billion awarded for a hydrogen hub in WA (Seattle Times, $), which multiple PNW transit agencies were hoping would make hydrogen-fueled buses economical (covered by STB last year). Streetsblog USA argues these retractions won’t stand up to legal challenge, as funding is controlled by Congress, not the Executive Branch.
- Private transit is not immune to construction cost explosion: Brightline’s estimate to build high speed rail between Las Vegas and outer Los Angeles recently ballooned from $16 billion to $21.5 billion (Bloomberg CityLab).
- Many homeowners in Houston are turning their garages into a new sort of patio (NYT, gift link).
- E-bikes could cut carbon, congestion, and costs if cities enable their widespread use (Grist)
- The Metro Employees Historical Vehicle Association is hosting a Fall Foliage Tour on retired Metro busses though the Cascade foothills. The tour is on October 26 at 11:00 AM and costs $10 per person.
This is an Open Thread.
Y’know, I’d welcome more behavioral health experts and support teams roving. I rode the bus for three round trips over this last weekend, and every single leg of every single trip had one dude in visible mental health crisis cussing/thrashing/throwing things around. That’s six individual buses, all different people.
My mom rode two weeks ago and she, being a retired nurse with some psych experience and a desire to help people, made the mistake of engaging with a dude who was talking at the air, visibly distressed. He got aggro and threatening, and she ended up getting off early to get away from him, and now she’s wary about riding the bus all over again. I’d spent a couple months reassuring her it was safe to ride, and she’d be fine.
The required solution is is bigger than anything KC Metro or even the city of Seattle can provide alone, but we can at least do better at making the balance of riders who aren’t in crisis feel safer.
I’m on the 5 bus, for which I had to wait 18 minutes during morning rush hour. Then it pulled over and the driver announced we’re stopping because we’re 2 minutes ahead of schedule. How is this possible? I feel like I’m in some algebra class puzzle paradox but it’s real life and I’m just trying to get to my job.
I can’t follow the complicated interactions of late buses and bus bunching due to congestion, but it’s possible the one or two buses before it were no-shows and your bus was on time. That would account for an 18-minute wait and a 2-minute early pause. Passenger in general hate early buses more than late buses because they miss them, so drivers are told to wait before major stops if they’re early. The missing buses may come after yours, or they may be so late it merges into their next scheduled run.
I get the idea in principle of waiting if you are ahead of schedule.
Still, if I waited 18 minutes, then presumably the people at the stops after mine were also waiting 18 minutes, so it would make more sense to keep moving and pick up those people, rather than idling on Aurora with a full bus of passengers during rush hour who all need to get to their jobs.
Drivers don’t know what the buses before or after them or other routes are doing. I sometimes ask a driver if they’ve seen another route that hasn’t shown up or have any information about it, or I tell them I had to wait 18 minutes or 30 minutes for this route, but they don’t know anything about it and can’t do anything.
This is a perfect example of bad dispatching that most transit agencies are used to. They don’t mitigate delays and consider customer experience. Most operations centers are reactionary to problems rather than actively monitoring service. A dispatcher couldve told that driver the situation and given him permission to proceed rather than wait.
Plus…the 5 needs a restructure. I feel it doesn’t have to go all the way to Shoreline but can be truncated at 130th and run way more frequently through Phinney and Greenwood.
@Jordan
Agreed.
Like, I get why it goes there – there’s not all that much alternative service to the college, but also it’s a whole lot of very-low-ridership distance. The issue will be figuring out a turnaround.
Plus…the 5 needs a restructure. I feel it doesn’t have to go all the way to Shoreline but can be truncated at 130th and run way more frequently through Phinney and Greenwood.
Or send the bus to Lake City via Pinehurst Station. The 75 could then go to the college via the same corridor. More about that idea in a future post.
@Ross…send the bus to Lake City?!? That would definitely degrade the reliability of the route but already goes all the way to West Seattle.
However, I understand your reasoning. Rather than the 5 crossing over to Lake city, I would much rather see Stride extend to Shoreline College via 145th. But as for the 5, the idea to truncate it at 130th you were capable is to add more frequency along Phinney and the Seattle portion of Greenwood where ridership is the highest.
the idea to truncate it at 130th you were capable is to add more frequency along Phinney and the Seattle portion of Greenwood where ridership is the highest.
Ridership is pretty consistent along the entire corridor (https://seattletransitblog.com/2025/09/29/ridership-patterns-for-king-county-metro-route-5/). It spikes where there are transfer points but is otherwise about the same. For example ridership at 143rd & Greenwood is about the same as 65th & Phinney. It goes way down north of 145th but of course is really high at the college.
Truncating at 130th really doesn’t save you much. That is only a tiny part of the route. You would have to backfill service so the savings would be tiny.
Sending the bus to Lake City doesn’t save any money either. But it would greatly improve the network. You would have a one-seat ride from Phinney Ridge/Greenwood to Lake City. Lake City to Ballard becomes a simple transfer (using the 40). My guess is the ridership per hour of service would increase which means you could justify running the bus more often.
The city should do more to make it faster and they will (https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/09/05/metro-looks-at-speeding-up-route-5/). Whether they do enough or not is a different issue.
The pairing with the 21 is a different issue. I can see them breaking that (and making each bus independent) given it is a pretty long combination as it is. Of course that costs money to.
I’m fine with early buses. I want to get to my destination sooner. This is why we should increase bus frequency. 5-10 mins should be the standard. Schedule should be adjusted to be optimistic.
The frequent 333 provides the best connection between the 1 Line, specifically Shoreline South Station, and Shoreline Community College.
The frequent 333 provides the best connection between the 1 Line and Shoreline Community College.
Yes, but that’s not saying much. Here is the route. If you are trying to get to the college from Mountlake Terrace or North City you take the same 333 across 175th and to the college. That is quite sensible but it is bizarre that the bus manages to skip the 185th station and instead throws itself into traffic. That part is really bad.
But further south it just ends at the station (instead of going all the way across). If you are trying to get from Lake City to the college you have to first take the 65 up to the college. Then you transfer to the 333 which does some weird back and forth to get there. Rather than take a straightforward path like the old 330 it goes down to 145th then out to Greenwood before backtracking on Dayton. But the worst part is that it doesn’t go all the way across. It really shouldn’t be the 333 that makes that connection. It should be the 65 or future 72. Instead of ending at the station they should keep going and and at Shoreline Community College. That wouldn’t cost anything and yet provide a lot better one-seat rides (and fewer three-seat rides).
The business of buses stopping to make all the passengers wait because they early made some amount of sense back in the 1990’s when everyone was reliant on paper schedules to know when a bus was going to show up. But, it doesn’t fit the modern world where people use smartphone apps. Whether is a bus early or late, according to the schedule, the app will know that and tell you when it is going to show up. What makes the app get off is when there is uncertainty about whether the bus is going to wait and, is so, where.
There are exceptions, for example, a local bus in Kent that’s supposed to be offering a timed connection with the Sounder train really does need to wait so that people coming off the train don’t miss their connection. But, that’s the exception, rather than the rule.
The business of buses stopping to make all the passengers wait because they early made some amount of sense back in the 1990’s when everyone was reliant on paper schedules to know when a bus was going to show up. But, it doesn’t fit the modern world where people use smartphone apps.
I disagree. If a bus runs early then it can lead to bus bunching. It can also lead to longer waits. People routinely time their life to a bus schedule. Commuters know when they can expect the bus to run by the stop and they plan accordingly. Of course they allow some wiggle room but it is the same idea.
Jessica’s point — and it is a good one — is that the other bus didn’t show up! At that point, all bets are off. The second bus should go as fast as possible to compensate for the other bus. It can’t possibly bunch with an earlier bus because that bus doesn’t exist. Yes, some riders might miss the bus but plenty of other riders are stuck waiting because their bus didn’t show up. As Jordan mentioned, the problem is lack of communication between the drivers. Back before sophisticated GPS systems the drivers used to do everything over the airwaves. They would tell other drivers (or dispatchers) that they were running early or late. It seems like we should do much better now.
“The business of buses stopping to make all the passengers wait because they early made some amount of sense back in the 1990’s when everyone was reliant on paper schedules to know when a bus was going to show up. But, it doesn’t fit the modern world where people use smartphone apps.”
People shouldn’t have to pull out a smartphone every time they want to take a bus. And people transferring from another route have no control over when they arrive. So if they miss the transfer because the second bus came two minutes early, that’s bad. That’s what passengers especially don’t like, and have complained to Metro about. Thus the reason Metro tells drivers to wait or slow down before a major stop if they’re early.
It depends on the situation. Waiting for a connecting bus at a major transfer point is one thing. But there are other situations where buses wait, even though the connecting bus has already arrived, or at a point where there isn’t a connection, or when the bus is already 80% through it’s route, so not too many people are getting on anymore, so bus bunching isn’t a concern.
And as to schedules…I look at them for a bus running once or twice per hour, but for a bus running every 15 minutes, I pull out OneBusAway when I’m getting ready to leave and focus on the when the buses are actually going to come, not what the schedule says. The possibility that an early bus might or might not stop and wait just adds time and complexity, it means I have to arrive at the stop early in case it doesn’t wait, only to just stand there for several minutes if it does.
In the meantime, I have had times where my bus stopping to wait has caused me to miss downstream connections. Connections work both ways.
You must have boarded the next bus that had to depart earlier before the super-delayed one even arrived terminal and ready to start the next run. It happened all the time on 550.
Ooh, I like the fall foilage tour! I don’t get to see the foothills or rural areas much because they have so little transit, and the hills on Trailhead Direct trails hinder me from using them more. But a bus tour to see the trees sounds like a welcome thing.
I would suggest just going to some typical suburban neighborhoods. Honestly, there is very little natural color to our fall in the PNW. The most famous indigenous color is Larches, but they are mainly in the high Cascades, and are basically monochromatic… But a lot of neighborhoods developed in the mid to late 20th century are (for better or worse) heavily planted with non-native trees and shrubs, many chosen particularly for their color this time of year.
There are a lot of native deciduous trees, some of which are quite common. Oregon big leaf maple, Oregon ash, and the Red alder all come to mind. I think there’s a native cottonwood too. The big leaf maple is a particularly common at lower elevations. Of course, plenty of reasons to be annoyed about non native ornamental planting, but the PNW is more than just conifers!
Vine maple, blueberries* and larch are probably the showiest. You have to head east a bit (in the mountains) to see the larch. Most of the really good larch hikes are very crowded. But vine maple and blueberry fall colors are much easier to see.
*Some people call them blueberries, some call them huckleberries, some insist we have both and will argue which ones are which.
I don’t care about the colors per about the natural landscape in general. I walk around Seattle neighborhoods sometimes to see the front yards. More and more people have replaced their blank lawns with environmentally-friendly shrubs, pollination-friendly flowers, and/or edible plants. I especially like 16th and 17th Ave E, and the Columbia Street pollination corridor.
In the suburbs there’s the problem that you can walk ten minutes and the only thing you’ve achieved is passing five houses or fewer, and it’s so far from anything else that it gets depressing. I did so much of that growing up that I don’t want to do it anymore.
Yeah, it is one of the things that makes the single family homes in Seattle attractive (and why some people fight so hard to preserve them). With smaller lots you often have a variety of landscaping. To make matters worse, when they increased density they often had crappy landscaping. In the 1980s they would tear down a house and put up a bland duplex with a giant parking lot in front. Throw in a couple rodies and that was that. So boring. That is one of the many reasons to get rid of the parking requirement — better landscaping. Many of the more recent multi-plexes (and apartments) have nice and more creative landscaping. This is also an argument for more organic growth. There are plenty of places in the city where you see apartments and houses mixed together and it is very nice walking.
But there is also a lot to be said for city trees. These tend to be deciduous because evergreens tend to grow really high. Thus on some streets you have a nice row of Ash trees or showy maples. I especially like the Ash — more of a muted color than the bright (non-native) maples.
One thing I noticed when I started spending time in Seattle neighborhoods in junior high: areas like Queen Anne, Capitol Hill, and Mt Baker have public stairways where it’s too steep for the sidewalk to continue. I never saw that in the Eastside, and I wondered how that was possible when the Eastside has hills too. I finally realized that with the Eastside’s coarse street grid, the streets just go around the steepest patches, because it’s only a few house lots difference either way. Or they just plow through without mitigation because “everybody drives” anyway and it impacts cars less than pedestrians.
The only Eastside stairway I’ve encountered is in downtown Kirkland in the part built up in the early 1900s.
I absolutely love Seattle’s stairways. It’s one the things I miss the most, because Tacoma doesn’t have many.
Are they not building them these days because some laws require the newer ones to be ADA-compliant?
@hz
No Seattle still builds stairways. Usually when a street meets a sharp slope and can no longer continue. Usually in the east west direction. Aka there’s a couple around pike place and also on Dexter
Most of the stairways were built long before ADA. Seattle does occasionally build new ones and they have to be ADA compliant when built. For example, consider Galer. There is a very good set of bridges and stairs that connect Queen Anne with Lake Union (https://maps.app.goo.gl/jKk86tESe1dKTC7G9). But it isn’t ADA compliant. There used to be elevators but they stopped working. They built it but didn’t maintain it. You can probably get up to Dexter during business hours by going through the lobby and taking the elevator. But that’s about as far as you can go. You can’t cross Aurora on a wheelchair which means you can’t access the bus stops on the other side. I don’t think you can even get up to Aurora from Dexter.
Anyway, this is a great set of stairs but it clears lacks functionality when it comes to travel for those who are mobility impaired.
I didn’t know that the MEHVA had started their trips again. They had stopped several years ago for insurance reasons.
It’s fun to ride on the old buses, and there are always transit enthusiasts in attendance with amazing knowledge. My wife and I went on the Fall Foliage Tour long ago and that trip went out to the area around Black Diamond. It’s really more about riding on historic vehicles through the countryside than being amazed by the fall colors.
Great post Yasha!
The biggest reason for owning a car is expanding your life. If you have a car in Pacific Northwest, you can visit the ocean, the mountains, small towns and countless other weekend attractions. The failure of mass transit in the US is its inability to support a life well lived. Most of the transit trips are taken by low income people because it’s their only option. Somehow transit needs to get past the ridership numbers and provide something people actually want instead of desperately need.
That’s why we need to improve transit. In Switzerland and China you can get to all parts of the country on transit, both large and small cities, rural villages, and recreational areas. If Washington had that we’d have hourly connectors to Mt Vernon and Bellingham, Kelso, throughout the Olympic Penninsula, to eastern Washington, between eastern Washington towns, and to recreational sites throughout the state. (A kind of Trailhead Direct to state parks, Northwest Trek, etc.) And the ability to go to events in small towns, without having to deal with “one bus once or twice a day” or “no bus at all” or “not on weekends”.
“If you have a car in Pacific Northwest, you can visit the ocean, the mountains, small towns and countless other weekend attractions.”
You can do some of that by bus too, but it takes some doing.
Eg: Sandy, Oregon transit has a bus route that goes to Timberline Lodge on Mt Hood. Beach towns like Oceanside and Manzanita, Oregon are served by bus. Cannon Beach has both local bus service and a direct bus from Portland ticketed through Amtrak. There’s even a joint pass where you can buy a 3 day or 7 day ticket that’s valid on 5 transit agencies that serve something like 150 miles of the Oregon coast and lower Columbia River (unlimited local trips in Tillamook, Clatsop and Lincoln counties, plus pass through trips in Benton and Columbia counties).
https://nwconnector.org/passes/
Huge swaths of the Washington coast are served by bus as well, including places like Westport and (last I checked anyway) Tokeland. A seasonal bus service goes to Hurricane Ridge. Island Transit serves Deception Pass State Park. Ilwaco has bus service and there’s a paved trail from there into Cape Disappointment State Park.
It’s not Europe by any means. Many of these routes don’t operate very often, but it’s vastly better than you can do in most states.
The cost of driving a gas or electric car in every state. ($).
To drive 100 miles in Washington state, the cheapest is an electric car charged at home, $4.11. Second is a hybrid gas car, $8.48. Third is an electric car with fast charging, $14.41. Last is a standard gas car, $17.64. There are options to change the assumptions; the default assumes the car gets 25 miles/gallon and gas costs $4.41 per gallon.
The cost of electric vehicles can vary substantially.
Eg: last I checked, for standard residential rate, Seattle City Light was charging half what PGE charges in Portland.
PGE has a plan where you can save a significant amount if you shift energy consumption away from 5 to 9 pm.
If anyone has access to such a time of day price plan, it’s an ideal way to save on charging an EV.
This is also, by the way, why transit agencies with electric trains or buses that have line side energy storage systems save some 60% on their power bills.
PSE also offers a time-of-use plan. When using it to charge an EV overnight, current electricity rates translates into roughly 2 cents/mile.
unlocked/gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/upshot/ev-versus-gas-car-comparison-cost.html?unlocked_article_code=1.r08.wCX2.adlP7LY_u8FP&smid=url-share
I saw that article and it was timely for me given that we just had to pay our car tabs renewal. Electric vehicle registrations cost an extra $225 per year. I guess that fee is supposed to make up for the gas tax we don’t pay. We drive our car quite little- probably a few thousand miles per year. So the approximately $100 per year we pay in electricity according to that calculator is dwarfed by the annual registration fee. Not sure how many other states charge that type of fee.
$150 of it is a replacement for the state gas tax. The remaining $75 is a user fee to fund rural charging stations.
I’m curious where you were able to find a description of what the two separate fees are for. It was entirely opaque to me on the registration website and with a reasonable amount of googling.
It feels like it should be a fee on charging, if it’s supposed to replace the gas tax. That way it would be proportional to miles driven. It feels like a flat fee per year is incentivizing the wrong things. We were trying to do the right thing for the environment by getting an EV and driving it as little as possible, but the fee structure doesn’t reward that.
Using charging to collect a fee isn’t really practical because most people with EVs charge at home, and there’s no way to separate car charging from general household electricity use for tax collection. Collecting taxes only at public charging stations is possible, but would raise major fairness issues, as people who are unable to charge their EVs at home would be hit with a much higher tax burden than those that can.
I think the best solution is some kind of odometer reading, the question is how to do it in a way that isn’t too easy to fake, or too burdensome to the driver.
It should be an annual odometer reading, self-reported during the tab renewal, and a reading when you need new plates. I would prefer it take into account weight of the vehicle, to better align with actual impact to the roads.
(Miles driven) x (Time).
It would be good to give low-income folks some sort of break as well.
And maybe some factor applied to gas vs electric, to incentive transition away from fossil fuels.
Sorry.
(Miles Driven) x (Weight)
At least in Seattle, I don’t have to drive as much as I would if living in other places in this country, so the real cost of owning a car from place to place is not exactly proportional to gas price.
Before I move here from Atlanta, I used to go get gas once a week even during the worst time of the pandemic when I didn’t go to office every day. Here with the same car and same type of job, I go get gas up to twice a month. My commute to work now is even longer than before.
UW released their 2024 transportation survey results. I thought the below was of note: the vast majority of people who drive would be interested in taking transit if transit service was improved. That’s not surprising at all but good to see it reflected in the results:
– “Overall, 20% of physical trips to campus feature driving alone as the primary commute mode.”
– “While 20% of respondents who drive alone say they are not interested in any alternative transportation modes, a significant portion are interested in using public transportation (72%).”
– “Among those that expressed an interest in alternative modes, the largest motivator would be to improve transit mobility in the area.”
https://transportation.uw.edu/publications?mkt_tok=MTMxLUFRTy0yMjUAAAGdY7_VM7B7tlDdhHhKufjwlhkKx1cEQRPJ2DeOQupITygZH4eg06Oysypo__U9V_54wq3A9KPUh2-jWl56ZfLtFc8f8C1xv9WejIGd6YJqIAdEZKIR
Also, KCM ridership in 2025 is still down about 20% from pre-pandemic levels, but ridership continues to grow:
https://bsky.app/profile/josephpolitano.bsky.social/post/3m2n3crqcss2u
There are things that are not really considered by Metro and South Transit when they try and get people to ride transit. I have been riding for so long that I am often asked by people I know who want to ride but are unaware of which bus or what time. I try and find the best option. However, more often than you might think, people decide to keep driving because their commute time increases by over an hour, that is if everything is on time. Also, quite often, people have long walks from the stop, or the bus isn’t running when they need to get there, or running when they need to leave.
These things are certainly true, Matthew, but some people like not having to drive enough to put up with them. It really can’t be made a lot better except for folks who are lucky enough to be in walking distance of a premium line that happens to head to their workplace. That’s the dream situation, but it’s only four or five percent of folks, if that.
The great value in transit is study time. If you’re not a reader transit usually doesn’t work very well; at least, that’s my observation.
UW could really use more ST express routes.
What do they have even have? 542/586 are the only good routes that get people onto campus, along with the 1 Line (and soon the 2 Line)
The 556 was always a joke… A one hour trip from Issaquah due to time waste in Bellevue. Much easier to drive up to S Kirkland P&R and take the 255. The 2 Line at least will solve this issue, cutting travel time nearly in half with the 218/556 acting as a connector.
SE King County has the worst access to the UW.
UW has Link, so they don’t need express routes from the north or south. From Issaquah, an express bus to downtown to hop on Link is as good as anything.
On the topic of hydrogen buses, it’s pretty well established by now that hydrogen as an energy storage medium is pretty much a dead end, and that, if you want to power a bus, the three viable options are diesel, batteries, and overhead wire. Simple physics about the energy losses in making and using hydrogen make it impossible for a hydrogen bus to not have several times the per-mile operating cost of a battery bus, not even getting into battery vs. diesel comparisons. In the meantime, the arguments of the battery being too big and heavy are getting weaker and weaker each year, as technology marches forward.
If batteries remain too expensive (in part, due to U.S. government protectionist trade policies), continuing on with diesel buses for a few more years until batteries get cheaper and/or investing in overhead wire/trolley buses is a much better use of money than chasing hydrogen.
Yes, agreed. Only in some wonderful green super-future where renewable sources of energy are powering an Earth with one tenth the number of people we have today will “green” Hydrogen be economical.
Finish 23rd for sure and push wire across the Fremont bridge, over to Stone Way and up to 45th to give a UW-LQA line via the top of Queen Anne Hill. There’s density the entire way.
For the future, hang wire on busy shared route segments and use the batteries to run the separate “tails” for now.
What about where the weight of the batteries is a sometimes deal-killer like for larger planes?
Good point Cam. I’ve done a fair amount of reading about the subject recently. As I see it there are two areas which are nowhere near being “fixed”: jets and food. The rest of it is mostly a matter of logistics. Even without some big breakthrough we are in good shape. I read something recently: Intermittent clean energy (solar and wind) is now the cheapest form of energy in all of human history. Of course it is intermittent. The good news is that heavy batteries (not the type you find in cars or phones) are really cheap. That is why battery-solar is becoming the standard for power generation in most of the world. You have a bunch of solar cells, a bunch of batteries inside a container, plug it in and you are good to go. Installation is remarkably cheap and easy. There are issues with the power grid and all that but it really isn’t a huge problem. Throw in a little geothermal and it seems quite doable.
Even high-heat manufacturing is showing progress. It is the same idea. Heat up some rocks at a power plant, wrap them in insulation, unwrap them in the cement factory or steel plant and you are good to go. Again, this has the potential of being much *cheaper* than what we’ve been using since the industrial revolution. Run battery-electric cars, buses, trucks and trains and things are looking pretty good. Even battery-electric shipping isn’t too far off.
But jets have to be light. Batteries aren’t light — especially the cheap ones. So for jets you pretty much have hydrogen and biofuel. The latter often goes by SAF (Sustainable aviation fuel) but it is the same idea. Like any emerging technology it is hard to tell what will eventually dominate the market. But biofuel is being designed for jets that operate right now whereas hydrogen requires new engines.
Of course not all airplanes are jets. Prop planes could easily transition to battery (although the challenge is getting the batteries light enough).
As for food, we are pretty much hosed as far as I can tell. As long as we keep eating cattle and dairy it doesn’t look good. Maybe food grown in a lab could help.
Of course logistics is a bit part of the problem (as I wrote above). Just because we have advanced technology doesn’t mean we will use it.
Battery weight isn’t as big of a deal for ground vehicles compared to airplanes. While battery weight *is* a huge problem for electrifying commercial flight, hydrogen still isn’t a good solution. Even though hydrogen itself is light, it takes up a lot of space and requires a heavy container to store it (the container must be very strong because the gas is under pressure). And, of course, the cost of making the hydrogen itself is uncompetitive with conventional fuels. Even biofuels for airplanes (an approach I am also very skeptical about at any meaningful scale) still has far more potential than hydrogen.
Long term, I see the future of aviation being battery electric for short routes, conventional jet fuel for long routes, and the threshold for how short is “short” gradually increasing with improved battery technology. But, I don’t see hydrogen in the mix, anywhere, nor do I see batteries getting good enough in our lifetime to replace fuels for overseas flights. We will just have to accept that, while the airline industry’s CO2 emissions can be reduced with technology, it’s not going all the way to zero.
The lightest “battery” technology out there is right now is aluminum-air. You use the natural rapid oxidation tendency of aluminum with air to generate electricity. It would probably be capable of powering a propeller driven aircraft, but jet engines require the heat of combustion to get the rapid expansion and high velocity combustion gases. You can’t get there with electricity alone.
There are ways of storing significant amounts of hydrogen as chemical reagents that could power an aircraft, but you wouldn’t want to actually power an aircraft that way. The chemical components required are so unstable they’d cause a massive explosion if any moving vehicle, much less an aircraft, were to impact some other object.
Even if you are using Hydrogen, I assumed any electric plane would still be propellered, with an electric motor. That is why long haul flights (such as between continents) are likely to decarbonize with renewal jet fuel, not electrification, but I thought that shorter flights (even an Seattle-LA) would be electrified as propellered flight.
Reviving passenger ships would give an alternative to hard-to-decarbonize flights.
“Reviving passenger ships would give an alternative to hard-to-decarbonize flights.”
Ships take significantly more travel time than airplane flights do. Plus most destinations aren’t reachable by passenger ships. It could perhaps work to get to Vancouver from Seattle but that’s about the only viable city pair that I could see working. And buses would be cheaper and faster.
High speed rail in high volume air corridors is almost assuredly the more effective way to go in terms of technology in the long run. It’s too bad that the institutional obstacles keep it from happening to the extent that it could.
Ships take significantly more travel time than airplane flights do.
Exactly. Boats are OK for relatively short trips but otherwise people will want to fly. The same thing is true for high speed rail as well. It works well for Seattle to Portland and L. A. to San Fransisco. But for L. A. to New York, forget about it.
The same thing is true for prop planes. It is why battery-electric planes have potential for short flights. This is why it is possible that ultra high-speed trains from Vancouver to Portland might be worse for the environment than doing not-quite-as-high speed rail. You just need to be a bit faster and more reliable than driving (with decent frequency) to get most of the people out of their car. Really fast trains doesn’t change the equation that much. You mostly just eliminate the short-hop flights. But if those short-hop flights are being done by battery-electric prop planes you haven’t saved much carbon. If you used a bunch of concrete in construction (a given for ultra-high-speed rail) you may end up being worse.
Jets are different. Jets are much faster. Again, it is difficult to predict the future but hydrogen powered jet planes are not out of the question. There are definitely challenges (frankly it doesn’t look good) but I wouldn’t say it has “lost” the way that fuel cells have lost to batteries. To be clear I’m talking about hydrogen powered jets (as opposed to hydrogen fuel cells for prop planes). It is confusing because Wikipedia throws them together: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen-powered_aircraft. If I had to bet though I would say SAF is going to win. I would probably give you 4 to 1 odds. In contrast I would say hydrogen in anything but jets is about a 10 to 1 proposition.
For long haul flights, SAF is the closest we have, by far, to a proven alternative to jet fuel. But, it costs significantly more than conventional jet fuel, so would have to be paid for through either government subsidies or higher ticket prices. In practice, I question the ability of governments to stomach this in the long term. Biofuels are also a very inefficient use of land (much less energy per acre than solar panels), so deploying them at scale encourages deforestation.
My personal take is that it’s better to just let long haul flights just continue to burn jet fuel and focus decarbonization efforts on other areas.
My understanding is that most refineries create multiple types of fuel (gas, diesel, marine and jet being the most common), and if they, in some utopian clean energy future just produced jet, there would be massive amounts of unused by-products.
Different types of oil vaporize from crude oil at different temperatures, so the refineries collect all of them. However, without the demand from ground transportation, heating, and electricity generation, some three-quarters of the demand for oil would go away. The remainder may be enough for jet fuel, plastics, and industrial processes. Fertilizer and pesticides could go either way, depending on society’s attitudes to artificial agricultural inputs, the population size then, and how much of the population sustainable agriculture could really feed.
e-Bikes are great, as long as they’re not ridden on shared-use paths, or if so, limited to six miles or eight miles an hour by a speed governor. They have MUCH greater mass, roughly equal to a Vespa and can hurt a pedestrian badly.
Sorry lovers of Spandex, you’re out of place smoking along on shared use trails, too. Six or eight miles per hour, tops when walkers are present.
If separate lanes are maintained then it’s fine for the bikes of any propulsion to go faster.
“e-Bikes are great, as long as they’re not ridden on shared-use paths, or if so, limited to six miles or eight miles an hour by a speed governor. They have MUCH greater mass, roughly equal to a Vespa and can hurt a pedestrian badly.”
According to Google Search, the weight of a Vespa starts at just over 200 pounds. That is more than triple the weight of my e-bike.
Also, the term “shared use paths” includes places like the 520 bridge. And, I would like to be able to cross the 520 bridge in my e-bike in 10 minutes, rather than 30.
Vespa may start with a wet weight around 200 pounds, but what matters for impact is the weight with riders. So as you move to lighter vehicles, it is the riders weight that matters more. And of course as always speed, since kinetic energy increases with the square of velocity. There’s a lot of “bicycles” being sold today that are really motorcycles with pedals, and far exceed the 1hp limit. An even ones that start out as legal are trivial to “hotrod”. It took me all of 5 minutes to figure out how to unlock my Rad.
Actually e-bikes are a lot more unsafe than Vespas. Scooters have motorcycle style brakes and more rubber on road. E-bikes have bicycle style brakes and often not even good ones, plus skinny tires and often riders too chicken to ride in street, so they blast along on sidewalks.
last night I saw an ebike, in the dark, ‘blasting’ along a sidewalk, and had the thought that if anyone was walking on that sidewalk that there would be a nasty collision. No way could that ‘bicyclist’ have stopped in time to avoid a pedestrian – if they even saw them.
One nice thing about e-bikes, compared to manual, is that they generally all have built-in lights powered by the main battery pack.
The larger E-bikes are essentially Electric Motorcycles, and when I worked down on Holgate walking from Colman Dock, I came to the conclusion they do not belong on a shared path with pedestrians.
I’m not sure what size has to do with it.
But class 3 can go pretty much the speed of traffic on local roads (28 mph). I wouldn’t call that a motorcycle, but I also wouldn’t object to keeping them off the multi-use paths if they can hang with traffic on local roads. They are also a tiny fraction of all e-bikes. Almost all are class 1 and 2 (max 20 mph), which I can go faster than on my road bike.
If you run a 7-minute mile (rather common) thats about 9 mph. Isn’t 6-8 mph too slow? I think the current King County speed limits of 15 mph are fine, maybe you convince me 12 mph but not lower than that. Spandex riders are also often going 20 mph right now. I’d rather see rules about minimum passing distance over lower speed limits. And they really ought to widen the Burke a bit where congested, and redo that section with an impassible median.
The average speed of an unassisted cyclist is around 13 mph, and the Lime bikes/scooter-bikes drive up to 15 mph (the scooters are limited to about 12 mph). Class I and Class II e-bikes are legally limited to assisting up to 20 mph.
Yeah, and on various pathways Class 1 and Class 2 bikes are the only e-bikes allowed. For various places the issues isn’t the actual speed limit, it is operating at a reasonable speed. Drive 70 mph on the freeway in heavy fog and the cop will pull you over even though the sign says 70 mph. That’s because there is heavy fog! You are driving at an unsafe speed.
Same goes for going 20 mph over the Fremont Bridge (on a bike). That’s what Tom is getting at. It really doesn’t matter if you are on a regular bike or an e-bike. For certain areas you should go walking speed. Of course places like the Burke Gilman create potential conflicts. The Burke Gilman is a major commuter route for cyclists. It isn’t that they are “training” or “pretending they are on the Tour-de-France”, they are just trying to get to work. Or get home or get to school or the hundreds of other things people routinely travel to in a far more dangerous vehicle (a car). There are places on the Burke where visibility is really good and it is common to see only cyclists most of the year. There are other places where they seem to congregate and act like idiots (walking four abreast). Personally I don’t like walking on the Burke Gilman; I prefer walking on sidewalks. While it is legal to bike on both if I encounter a cyclist on a sidewalk I expect them to be going walking speed. Likewise I expect pedestrians on a pathway like the Burke Gilman to realize it is an important cycling corridor. Of course cyclists should yield to pedestrians but pedestrians shouldn’t act like idiots either.
6 mph. That’s funny. I guess if we were all riding tricycles.
ehhh shrug. honestly if we put 10% of this effort into automatically regulating car speeds according to the speed limit it’d probably save tens of thousands more lives.
Exactly. I’m looking at some of that data now. Bike killing or seriously injuring a pedestrian is so uncommon, it isn’t even a category.
I get that no one likes to be surprised or buzzed by e bikes or scooters going too fast on places they shouldn’t be, particularly sidewalks.
But get some perspective.
People driving cars are the apex predators. The carnage and and related costs and societal impacts are immense. The damage equates to basically us nuking a city the size of Yakima annually. That should be were 99.9% of our focus is.
Yep.
OK, so eight is too slow. Fine; I just won’t walk on shared used trails. I hate it when people roar up on us from behind and then call out “on your left”, commanding us to get out of the way.
I actually agree with this, though I don’t think many will. I’ve been yelled at a number of times for not saying “on your left.” People don’t like to be surprised. If it’s adults, though, there is plenty of space, and they are generally tracking a straight line, I won’t say anything, or I may say a quite “morning” so as not to startle them. I’ve actually had a woman jump into my path when I said “On your left,” because she got flustered.
@Cam Solomon, I’ve had multiple pedestrians jump into my path too when I say “on your left.” I say it a lot less than I used to, because of that.
@William — Yeah, that is a common situation. I get it both ways. No one wants to be surprised. Saying “On your left” is just meant as a head’s up. Not “Get outta my way”.
But on the other hand the person biking mostly just wants the other person to keep doing what they appear to be doing. If you yell something, there is a good chance they will turn around or otherwise change directions, right into your path. It is quite common which is why bikers tend to quietly go by, even though it freaks out a pedestrian.
In the Netherlands I said it a couple of times, and people looked at me like I was from mars. I could tell they were thinking, “stop yelling and just don’t hit me.”
People were much more skilled on their bikes there, and were also much more comfortable being passed within millimeters of them, because there was a certain assumed trust that everyone is competent on bike or car, or they wouldn’t be stupid enough to be on a bike or driving a car.
And the only way you get to that point is to have fairly comprehensive transit, where folks who can’t ride or drive have an alternative.
And just to be clear I said “when walkers are present”. There aren’t many, if any really, people walking across the 520 bridge. I like Sunny’s minimum passing distance for sure.
My personal record on a conventional bike (not electric) was 43mph down a steep hill. Don’t worry, it was on a country road, so I only endangered myself, not others.
I’m just glad that Seattle doesn’t have hills so that these conventional cyclists can’t hurt anyone.
Ha! As a teenager I remember one of my bikes had a speedometer. I think I maybe hit 40mph once. Yeah, that is crazy fast. In my early twenties I had a better road bike that didn’t have a speedometer. There wasn’t much for bike infrastructure so I remember keeping up with cars on Nickerson (downhill). That meant I was probably going 30, maybe 35. I’m too old for that sh** now but it was pretty exhilarating back in the day.
Another great video of FWLE testing courtesy of Eastside Transit:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5HrWqlhEpdA
I don’t know who is behind Eastside Transit, but they are doing a really good job. And I’m not sure why they are covering FWLE, which is on the Westside, but more power to them. It’s great that they are doing this.
Balducci and Zahilay on Sound Transit:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/king-county-executive-how-candidates-might-lead-light-rails-future/
Balducci’s approach is exactly why ST is in so much financial trouble today. Our leaders need to listen to technical staff and not just overrule them to score political points and stage nice little Photo Ops.
It should also be noted that Balducci has been sitting on the ST board for most of the time this ST has been struggling, and deserves at least some of the blame. And she was very late to the Early FWLE opening party, yet now she wants to take sole credit for it? Sort of smells like desperation.
On the other side, Zahilay‘s focus on safety in the RV isn’t exactly wrong, but he fails to mention that MLK is actually far safer today, with fewer accidents, injuries and fatalities, then it was before ST redesigned it to accommodate LR. And the current accident rate is actually lower than ST predicted when they chose to go with the surface alignment. That is all goodness.
Zahilay might want a few billion dollar tunnel or elevated alignment, but that funding will come from expansion funds. And the safety argument does not justify the expense.
A crossing arms and gates upgrade might be in the budget and improve safety somewhat, but any decision to go elevated or tunneled will be based on speed and reliability arguments and not on safety arguments.
That said, barring some sort of October Surprise, Zahilay has this in the bag. Balducci has lost, and her increasingly strident comments indicate that she knows this.
But hey, maybe Dow will offer her a job at ST.
About the Times article, I’d say “$1.7 billion” (for elevating through the Rainier Valley) is daunting????? Not in ST’s world. They’re going to spend at least half that on a Skycastle at SoDo so folks can transfer from a two-station (everyone knows they’re going to “defer” Avalon) stub to booming West Seattle that will cost another $6 billion. Then “sometime in the future”, after they spend $7 billion on a tunnel with one almost useless station south of Westlake, they’ll lay a pair of tracks up the rest of the neutered busway for the six trains per hour from the stub to get to IDS and the old tunnel. We all know that “CID South” will never be dug; somebody will whine about losing the Salvation Army building.
Million wise, billion foolish.
Yeah, I agree. Compared to the other projects of ST3, building an elevated line for Rainier Valley is a better value. Based on the initial report (https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24785840/wsp-mlk-separation-concept-estimates-st_task_order_7001_final_memo.pdf) building a trench is a cheaper though. They estimate about a billion. The report is tentative so it might cost a lot more. But that could still prove to be a great value. If the trains are grade-separated then they can be faster and more frequent. The big drawback is that it would be very disruptive. They would probably single-track and/or run shuttle buses for a while. Ideally you actually abandon the corridor and put it where it should have gone in the first place: Rainier Avenue. The stations there would be much better. That would disrupt the 7 but allow Link to operate without much disruption until they did the switch over. That would probably cost more but ultimately lead to a better system.
That would leave only one section without grade-separation in the main line: The SoDo area. I don’t think you could build a trench (I think the trains sit on landfill) but you could could build overpasses for the roads. That would benefit the SoDo Busway as well. If you did all that then you could automate the trains. This allows for cheaper operations, more frequent service and better capacity per train. Yes, this is an expensive set of projects but it seems fundamentally better than most of ST3.
Meanwhile, it would transform MLK. If the train is underneath then you can add BAT lanes *and* bike lanes while making the road *narrower*. At a minimum I would start with bike lanes (and make the road narrower) but at some point it might make sense to add BAT lanes for the 106 (instead of two lanes both directions).
@Ross, if we’re building a new track on Rainier Avenue, we should continue to run both lines and send one of them to Renton instead of surrendering already-built right-of-way.
““$1.7 billion” (for elevating through the Rainier Valley) is daunting????? Not in ST’s world.”
The issue is ST can’t take capital funds from voter-approved ST3 projects for non-voter-approved grade-separating MLK. It would have to come from extra money that comes in anyway from the current tax rate. There is no extra money for this because several ST3 projects aren’t fully funded yet.
But that’s putting the cart before the horse. There is no concrete project proposal to grade-separate MLK yet, nor even a cost estimate, nor a timeline of when it would be built (before ST3 finishes or after?). Zahilay isn’t saying grade-separate MLK now, throwing ST3 projects off-kilter in a potentially illegal way. He’s saying do the small incremental improvements now, and start studying whether grade-separation would be feasible and affordable later and what would be the best alternative for it.
Mike, well then, they can’t take voter-approved money for a station next to IDS and spend it on a station at Yesler, can they? And what about the voter-approved station at Midtown? Poof! That money is going for a non-voter approved tunnel in West Seattle.
Roll out the lawsuits!
The sewer is underneath the tracks, so you’d need to put the trench under one of the roadways. I assume that the sewer is there because it was in the middle of the Empire Way right of way when it was laid. If they moved it there during construction whoever made the decsion should be pilloried publicly.
Can MLK operate with just one side open, or maybe two lanes one direction and one the other and one lane on the other side in that same direction. Then when the trench is finished pave the old trackway for three lanes each direction.
Question, would you agree to cover the trench? I think that would be wise; leaving it open would be a huge temptation for kids to get themselves killed.
“they can’t take voter-approved money for a station next to IDS and spend it on a station at Yesler, can they? And what about the voter-approved station at Midtown?”
The ballot measure has flexibility. The mandate was it must serve the specified regional centers (downtown, SLU, Ballard). Stations must be somewhere close to their specified location. For Lynnwood Link, the representative alignment in the ballot measure was along I-5 with stations at 145th, 185th, MT, and Lynnwood. The alternatives in the EIS were as wide as Aurora, I-5, 15th Ave NE, and Lake City Way. All of them served Northgate and downtown Lynnwood so they were OK. ST could have moved 140th station to 130th, added an extra station at 130th, or split 145th station to 130th and 155th. All of that is serving the general transit market. ST would just have to write a statement listing its reasons for deviating from the representative alignment. It was unwilling to do that with Lynnwood Link. With CID/N and CID/S, ST is arguing it’s just moving Midtown and CID2 stations a few blocks south, so it’s still within scope of BLE’s intention. But it refused to move Midtown to 8th & Madison when we asked to get some of the First Hill walkshed, because it said it was out of scope (serving First Hill instead of downtown). The distance of all these moves is about the same, but ST said its two were OK but ours was not. That just means it’s what ST was willing to commit its lawyers to defend. But there’s no way MLK grade separation could be construed as helping downtown north-south transit.
It’s always curious to try to resolve the MLK safety and speed problems. But there’s way too many other Capitol funds needed to serve people who don’t have any service before starting to “fix” Link mistakes.
One big unknown is what the passenger loads will be like. We will have a much better idea when Federal Way Link opens in a few weeks. TDLE likely won’t add that many more riders beyond what will Federal Way can. It’s important here because overcrowding could be a new reason introduced to “fix” the MLk segment.
Finally, I’ll note that there isn’t even fencing along much of MLK. It’s very porous. It’s no surprise that it gets accidents. And there is a visual fence at Oregon St and the accident rate there is much lower at that intersection than at others. I feel that treatments to make the trains more visible will help — but they have to be the right ones. Not addressing what to me is the most obvious need of simple fencing seems like a very low-cost opportunity missed.
But there’s way too many other Capitol funds needed to serve people who don’t have any service before starting to “fix” Link mistakes.
But using that approach there would be no Link expansion at all. Ballard, West Seattle, Everett, Tacoma — they all have service. It is just a matter of quality. Getting from Fife to SeaTac is less than ideal. But should that be a higher priority than running trains faster, more often and more reliably down Rainier Valley? If you are going by number of people who benefit it favors Rainier Valley. If we are talking about overall time saved it probably still favors Rainier Valley. There is a pretty strong case for burying the trains in Rainier Valley instead of Tacoma Dome Link. It could very easily be the best value for a Link project to the south of downtown.
Now if you want to talk about “bang for the buck” then you would probably just add a lot of bus service all over the place but that’s a different thing.
if we’re building a new track on Rainier Avenue, we should continue to run both lines and send one of them to Renton instead of surrendering already-built right-of-way.
Great idea. It does seem like a reasonable place for a branch. If trains are running every five minutes down Rainier Valley then they would be running every ten to Federal Way and Renton.
Question, would you agree to cover the trench?
Absolutely. I think that is assumed. Land is too valuable in that area to just waste it. That is one of the advantages of running underground. It would also be one of the advantages of running above ground but you wouldn’t get as much “free land”. A pillar is not as wide as the two lanes but they still take up space. Here is one from Vancouver: https://maps.app.goo.gl/kkqp1e8LDz4GMRPW7. It looks like they take up a little than one lane.
Lazarus,
You’re completely right. Both politicians here are complete fools when it comes to Sound Transit. But then who or what is Sound Transit? Balducci IS Sound Transit, right? Poster girl for doing jack shit.
But Balducci isn’t the root cause for our Sound Transit disaster. It’s any citizen who voted for it in the first place. You broke it, you bought it. There are plenty of Sound Transit supporters on this blog who believed Seattle would get its light rail first and then somehow Sound Transit could be modified into something else. It just doesn’t work that way I’m afraid.
And let’s be honest about politicians now. None of them are going to “fix” Sound Transit. All of the agreed upon light rail lines in the voter’s pamphlet will be finished, come hell or high water. You’ll be dead by then I’d guess, but the slow train to Tacoma will get built eventually. The Ballard line will end up costing between 35 and 40 billion?
I’m going to post a link to State of Illinois public pension system, which is even in more trouble than Sound Transit. At this point, the State Government would need to double the state property tax to bail out the pension system…. but guess what? the politicians don’t have the stones for it. So the disaster costs at least 20% of all State revenue and drags on and on for decades. https://www.illinoispolicy.org/selling-every-nba-team-wouldnt-be-enough-to-fill-illinois-pension-hole/
This is why Sound Transit will just limp along getting deeper and deeper in the hole.
@tacomee,
“There are plenty of Sound Transit supporters on this blog who believed Seattle would get its light rail first and then….”
Ah, no. Tacoma got “light rail” (streetcar actually) first in the form of Tacoma Link. Seattle didn’t get the SLUSC until 4 years later, and had to wait a full 6 years to get a starter segment of Central Link that didn’t even go to the airport.
And Sounder started even before Tacoma got T-Link, but that was mainly to serve Tacoma and Kent Valley riders commuting to Seattle. Seattle had to wait years for the first reverse commute Sounder train. So again, Tacoma benefitted first.
Tacoma really came out ahead in this, particularly since the Pierce County tax base is so small, but the benefit they are receiving is so large.
“There are plenty of Sound Transit supporters on this blog who believed Seattle would get its light rail first and then somehow Sound Transit could be modified into something else.”
False. The authors and biggest commentators on this blog knew ST’s project timelines and budget flow outline in 2016 and in the 2022(?) realignment. We knew 75-89% of the boardmembers are outside Seattle and would outvote any proposal to schedule Seattle first. We knew major construction couldn’t start until at least 2024 (when ST2 construction was expected to finish and free up more money for ST3 projects). So, besides the short RT-Downtown Redmond and KDM-Federal Way extensions, the West Seattle stub was the earliest any construction could be scheduled. We knew that Ballard/DSTT2 would be built in parallel with Tacoma Dome and Everett, and Tacoma Dome would open first. Ballard and Everett were within 1-2 years of each other, so they could easily leapfrog each other in which would be finished first. There was no way the board could be convinced to postpone Tacoma Dome and Everett construction to after Ballard and all the other North King projects, or that North King could get its own first and convince the rest of the board to cancel everything else. That’s a strawman: no real person believed that.
We said we think ST should reprioritize the projects in an urbanist/ridership-minded way, but that’s different from expecting ST would do it or that it wouldn’t be a longshot to convince them to. We always knew it would be a longshot with little likelihood of success. Because, again, the majority of the board is suburban, wants their subareas’ projects the most, and has little understanding of passengers’ needs or transit best practices.
Balducci’s approach is exactly why ST is in so much financial trouble today.
That seems like a stretch. The main reason we are in so much trouble is because we simply can’t afford ST3. I don’t think she deserves much blame for pushing West Seattle Link, “The Spine” or a second tunnel. Dow deserves most of the blame but others capitulated. Overall I would say it was a group failure. Everyone was focusing on quantity over quality. They all thought that once you add a station in your little burg your transit problems are solved. It was like a throwback to the 1800s. Every town wanted the train to serve them. But a metro doesn’t work like that. It serves neighborhoods, not towns. It competes with cars and buses not horses and walking. Quite often, the best thing for your city or neighborhood is good express bus service, not a Link station.
I agree that they didn’t listen to the experts. They never listen to the experts. Most of the time they don’t even ask them. If you were to ask an independent transit firm to come up with the best way to spend $50 billion dollars on transit they sure as hell wouldn’t suggest ST3. Even when the City of Kirkland did hire experts to look at the Cross Kirkland Corridor they ignored its recommendation. The board (led by Dow) wanted rail, not BRT. I suppose you could blame her along with everyone else (outside of the Kirkland reps) for not fighting harder for bus service there but that seems like a very broad brush to paint with.
She did have the good sense to fight for an early opening of East Link even when a lot of people (including you if I remember correctly) were hesitant if not downright hostile. Yet the early opening is clearly a success and it didn’t cost that much. Unlike a lot of ST3 projects the early opening has been a good value.
The one thing I like about her approach is that she seems willing to rethink a lot of the stupid assumptions we’ve made in the past. Right now that is focused mainly on the tunnel but hopefully that will extend to other aspects of ST3 like West Seattle Link.
Balducci has been flexible, and willing to take on issues that other politicians were either uninterested in, or afraid of, and for that she will have my vote.
All to often politicians do nothing for fear of losing votes, even a small subsection of votes, and the fact that she has put herself out there to get some things done is noteworthy in my opinion.
@Lazarus
ST isn’t a priority for Zahilay. It’s quite obvious if you look compare their campaign web pages, and he gives generic non-answers during interviews. He’ll most likely just leave it up to Dow.
https://www.electgirmay.com/priorities/
https://www.claudiabalducci.com/platform/
@jd,
Zahilay Is a very smart guy, and he is also way ahead in the polls. As such, he is doing what every smart politician with a huge lead attempts to do, don’t say or do anything to strident or controversial, and try not to make any mistakes.
So far he has done a masterful job and, barring an October surprise, he will be our next KC Exec.
@jd,
Oh, and Dow is the head of ST, not Zahilay.
Zahilay will certainly have a voice, but the buck stops with Dow. For better or worse, Zahilay actually should leave a lot of the ST carnage for Dow to straighten out.
That’s just smart.
@Lazarus
Zahilay is the favorite, but it’s far from a shoo-in. It was a crowded primary and primary voters are only a subset of general election voters.
I think he would do fine as KC Exec, but it seems pretty clear to me that transit is not a priority for him. Have you seen his interviews? Below is a small selection; you can find many more online.
https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2025/06/candidate-soundings-girmay-zahilay-talks-to-npi-about-his-campaign-for-king-county-executive.html
On Dow: “Yeah, when I think of Dow’s legacy, a couple of areas stand out. First one that comes up for me is public transportation. He might be one of the most consequential people in our region’s history when it comes to public transit because of his work in King County Metro and Sound Transit. So, that is an area where I feel he has done an exceptional job”
https://publicola.com/2024/12/31/publicola-questions-king-county-executive-candidate-girmay-zahilay/
On West Seattle cost overruns: “I’m in favor of extending to West Seattle, despite the cost overruns. And we need to do way more to predict and respond to these overruns and make sure that we’re not going over overboard with costs. I think that happens through better oversight. When there’s more oversight and more checkpoints and more reporting-out requirements regularly and early enough, we are more accountable with our costs and our dollars.”
Lazarus,
You’re right about Zahilay winning. I’d put his handicap for winning bigger than Katie Wilson winning. So there’s your new leaders.
As far as Sound Transit I don’t think anything really changes. It just stumbles along like it has and financial hole just gets deeper. Maybe Dow got the CEO gig because anybody who really has a handle of transit wouldn’t take the job?
What is the upside for any pol to try to bail out Sound Transit? So the pols will just ignore it and nothing changes
Dow is the head of ST, not Zahilay.
Right now Somers is the chairman of the board. Dow Constantine is just the CEO. The board decides major decisions while the CEO helps implement them. This is similar to a school board and the superintendent. The board has all the power (including the ability to hire and fire the CEO).
The winner of this race will not necessarily become the chair of the board. But the ability to nominate 9 of 17 positions gives them a fair amount of power. It is unlikely either will do anything radical. It is highly likely that both will continue to serve on the board (just as the loser will keep their county council seat). The impact could be subtle. Somers may continue to be chair of the board and only a few people change seats.
It feels like Zahilay is barely even aware of what the county government actually does. (Hint: it’s mostly courts, jails, hospitals, and buses)
Hopefully he will quickly move on to whatever he really wants – congress, governor, whatever – so someone who actually cares about transit can get a shot at the job.
“It should also be noted that Balducci has been sitting on the ST board for most of the time this ST has been struggling, and deserves at least some of the blame.”
The capital funding and operations disruptions problems at ST can’t be put much on Balducci as one of many board members. If anything, it’s much more on Constantine who has been hard at work at backroom deals for years — and only when the deals finally have been crafted, it goes public and the Board and public find out about it.
If she’s more responsible for anything, I think that it comes down her role in deciding who the Board hired to run things. The Board hired staff leadership who have never run another rail system. The Board hired staff leadership who have never brought another rail system into success. The Board hired many people who don’t have instincts developed to see when something is a good or terrible value, how to defend riders from getting a lifetime of bad station layout just because of a few whiny property owners, how to pursue actions to reduce service disruptions or how to steer expert consultants to invest in things for riders rather than monuments (escalators before signature bridges, for example) for their portfolios and corporate revenue.
It’s hard to know what she said behind the scenes. However, she has at least questioned some things at meetings that otherwise would have not been questioned.
It’s hard to assess what kinds of noise Balducci or Zahilay have made or will make behind the scenes for rider benefit. Who wins will be the most powerful ST Board member as well as Metro Board member. The one we choose needs to be more beholden to riders and less to bending to Constantine or non-riding stakeholders. There needs to be someone makes decisions based on accurate numbers (costs and rider benefits) and not just go along with Constantine’s backroom dealings. And part of that is demanding accurate numbers first — even hiring outsiders who can critically review what’s being planned and point to bad assumptions and outcomes .
Platforms are carefully written PR pieces. But I will make my judgment based on who discusses things who don’t refer to light rail transit as a physical thing to look at but as a service for rider constituents. Saying “we will support fully building Link” isn’t persuasive to me. I much prefer those who say “we will try to maximize how we use our available transit capital and operating dollars for the benefit of RIDERS”.
The EIS’ quantify things like costs, ridership, transit travel time, overcrowding and other things. The fact that I’m still not seeing open discussions by either one in ther materials about this published content disturbs me.
@Al S,
Previously Balducci was Chair of the Sound Transit System Expansion Committee.
Certainly the Chair of the System Expansion Committee deserves some blame when system expansion goes off the rails, right?
Either she was asleep at the switch, or she simply mismanaged it. But either way, it is a problem.
“Either she was asleep at the switch, or she simply mismanaged it. But either way, it is a problem.”
Anything put in that committee’s agenda that I’ve seen have been decided in back rooms before it gets there. Most agenda items are approving negotiated contracts and amendements to spend more money. For whatever reason, I haven’t seen that committee asked to steer anything.
Whether Balducci could have changed that isn’t clear. Consider too that ST quit taking meaningful input at committee meetings way before Balducci chaired it.
“I think that it comes down her role in deciding who the Board hired to run things.”
Did Balducci play a major role in deciding who the CEOs and other staff leaders would be, and in not hiring transit-network expert consultants? How do we know this? What evidence is there that she had significantly more influence than other boardmembers?
“Did Balducci play a major role in deciding who the CEOs and other staff leaders would be, and in not hiring transit-network expert consultants? How do we know this?”
Hiring discussions are highly confidential (and rightly so) so we just can’t know. And even if she wanted another professional on the short list hired instead, it wouldn’t have been disclosed later in public — especially at a System Expansion Committee meeting which does not involve itself with hiring .
The comment was meant to merely highlight how important hiring the right staff leaders are — and not as a comment on her performance.
However, if she gets elected, she could force the bigger Board to refocus what are the best qualifications for top executive leadership when positions get vacated or changed — and that could have a profound effect on who even makes any open position short list.
“Balducci’s approach is exactly why ST is in so much financial trouble today.”
Why are you blaming Balducci when she’s been proposing good ideas that have been voted down by the majority of the board? You should be blaming the people who voted against them, because they’re the reason they haven’t happened. Her biggest flaw is is being unable to convince them to change their minds. That’s not a realistic expectation to put on one person. An extraordinary person can do it given favorable circumstances, but you can’t expect everybody to do it. There is no extraordinary person we’ve identified who could do that and could get to that influential position.
What in the article is “Balducci’s approach” that’s so had? Constantine was the King County executive and head of the ST board for several years. What has Balducci done that’s uniquely worse than what Constantine did, or worse than the average of the boardmembers?
Balducci is the one King County/ST official who understands the most about what passengers need and what makes a transit network effective. In other words, transit best practices. The only other one who even comes close was Roger Millar, the former WSDOT representative on the ST board. They’re nowhere near as good as Jarrett Walker or other transit experts, or politicians in excellent-transit countries, but they’re better than all the other politicians in Pugetopolis or the state.
Balducci has been uneasy for at least three years about the long transfers to ultra-deep DSTT2, in part because it affects her and her Eastside constituents directly going to the airport. She and Millar proposed a “restored spine” alternative a few years ago that would have kept southeast Seattle connected to northeast Seattle on one line. I don’t remember everything it would have done but it was better than the current plan. The majority of the board rejected it. That’s not Balducci’s fault. I don’t want to put words into her mouth, but she may have been uneasy with all of DSTT2’s flaws and cost for longer than last week, maybe even going back to the split-spine proposal and before. I get the sense that she might have been. In that case, she should have been louder on it earlier, but the board’s average was worse, so singling her out for that seems wrong.
Regarding Balducci’s and Zahilay’s current first priority, or campaign slogan as I think of it, the real news is that both of them voted for each other’s sensible proposals in the past. So voting for Balducci doesn’t mean we’ll automatically lose MLK safety improvements, and voting for Zahilay doesn’t mean we won’t get consideration of single-tunnel. We could get both with either one, so I wouldn’t vote based solely on that.
But I do think Balducci has long proven to have the clearest thinking and best judgment of any ST boardmember or county executive currently available (whether they’re running now or not), so that’s who I strongly support. Zahilay, I’m sorry, hasn’t convinced me that he’d be at least an average or above-average executive or boardmember or some similar position. Maybe he might have a chance to convince me in the future, or if he wasn’t running against such a strong opponent, but that’s how I feel right now.
Who insisted on West Seattle Link and put it at the front of the line? Constantine. Who moved Midtown and CID2 stations to CID/N and CID/S? Constantine and Harrell. Not Balducci. She may have gone along with them but she didn’t spearhead them.
I don’t know who was most influential in pushing for DSTT2 in 2016, but I bet it wasn’t Balducci.
Yeah. Dow is the main guy that got us into this mess. Both Balducci and Zahilay voted to make Constantine the CEO. So from that perspective they are both to blame. But Zahilay joined the board after ST3 so he can’t be blamed for ST3 while Balducci can. You can also blame the ignorant voters for supporting a really bad plan. Oh, and publications like The Stranger that doesn’t understand transit. Or the Seattle Times that opposes all transit plans (even good ones) and thus lost all credibility. Or the state that created this mess and gave way too much power to an ignorant board, leaving voters with an up and down vote and little actual power.
There is plenty of blame to go around but Dow Constantine is by far the worst culprit.
In my opinion, by far the best outcome for transit will be for both Balducci and Wilson to win their elections.
“Both Balducci and Zahilay voted to make Constantine the CEO. So from that perspective they are both to blame.”
But Constantine has been getting better ever since he became CEO. One wishes he had his current attitudes earlier when he was on the board; then the board might have made better decisions, and studied more of the things that needed studying.
“Zahilay‘s focus on safety in the RV isn’t exactly wrong, but he fails to mention that MLK is actually far safer today”
The problem with Zahilay’s top priority is he’s not addressing far bigger issues. We can improve MLK with incremental strategies, and we can study/plan grade-separating it in parallel with the other things. The by far biggest issues he should be addressing are the passenger-hostile transfers downtown, the costs of WS/BLE, and the opportunity for Ballard automation. And we can add, security and reliability throughout the Link network.
@Mike Orr,
“We can improve MLK with incremental strategies…”
Correct. But again, safety doesn’t justify a huge investment. MLK is safer today than it was before Link arrived, and the accident rate is actually lower than ST estimated.
Is the accident rate zero? No, of course not. But people always find ways to injure themselves. Zero simply is not attainable under normal conditions.
That said, an incremental approach focused on safety might be to simply identify the crossing/intersection with the highest accident rate and install crossing arms.
After a couple of years of operation it should be clear if that modest investment had a large impact on safety. If it did, then the program could be expanded.
But people tend to race to beat crossing arms, so it is important to get real operational data in the specific operating environment.
“safety doesn’t justify a huge investment.”
What huge investment? Why are you railing against a grade-separation concept that has no vote before the board now or in the near future? Even if you’re opposed to spending billions to build it, there’s no reason not to study it and quantify the potential cost. Objecting to that is being hysterical. Studying and planning cost little compared to construction: and give us data to make a more well-informed decision with, or show what we could have done differently.
But again, safety doesn’t justify a huge investment.
But nobody is arguing that. They are saying that with a relatively small investment the area can be made safer. With a big investment it can not only be made safer but grade separated. This would lead to faster, more frequent and more reliable trains. If we did the same thing in SoDo (which would be a lot cheaper) we could automate the trains which would mean a reduction in operating costs and higher capacity trains.
There’s an intrinsic reason why grade-separated transit is safer. Even with crossing gates, people can still walk around them and onto the tracks, or climb a short fence, and cars can reach the tracks. But if it’s elevated, it’s a lot harder to climb up to, a lot more obvious you’re in an unauthorized area, and it takes longer to get there so more time for security guards to stop you. If it’s underground, there’s no way pedestrians or cars on the surface can just run/roll/fall onto the tracks. You actually have to go down an escalator/elevator/stair to reach the platform. Cars aren’t going to just accidentally fall down an escalator, or collide with each other on an underground platform.
I don’t think is the place to determine which candidate can make MLK safer or what ST could afford to do about it in the next few years.
The bigger thing to me though is which candidate is best poised to see Link and Metro as something to be managed more than something physical to be built.
Example: Consider the recently rolled-out ST overnight service proposal and how that integrates with Metro’s overnight services. That easily could have been highlighted on the candidate platform web sites. Was it? Apparently not.
Look at it this way: we definitely should implement the incremental strategies short-term if they’re good. That will probably happen anyway. Longer term, we may or may not want to grade-separate it. It depends on what the specific grade-separation project is, what its impacts are, how much it costs, and how affordable it is. We won’t know that until a specific project is proposed and has that information. But it’s worth studying the situation so that ST can identify a potential project or two, and then we can decide whether they’re a good idea or not. There’s no need to prematurely rule anything out now, or to not study it so that we don’t have that option.
Ross, I don’t think the trains would even need to be elevated through SoDo to make things safer to match a Rainier Valley elevation project. Lander and Holgate just have to have overpasses with decent walkways on them and the trackway has to be fenced. The overpass would give access to the southbound platform from the bus intercept to the east.
The one place that would be touchy is Lower Royal Brougham. It would have to be closed to traffic, which would be no big loss, but pedestrians would have to cross the trackway to access the opposite platform, and that’s sub-optimal. Of course, that will be happening in a few months at Judkins Park Station, so it could still happen at Stadium. And, truth told, the same thing could happen at SoDo, as long as an at-grade crossing was at the north end of the station, away from trains that might be less visible running under the overpass.
I don’t think the trains would even need to be elevated through SoDo to make things safer to match a Rainier Valley elevation project. Lander and Holgate just have to have overpasses with decent walkways on them and the trackway has to be fenced.
I agree. That is what I had in mind. I should have used the term “grade-separation” as that is what I was getting at. It is worth nothing the overpasses would help the SoDo Busway as well.
The one place that would be touchy is Lower Royal Brougham.
I agree again.
It would have to be closed to traffic, which would be no big loss
I want to add that in general I’m not a big fan of pedestrian overpasses. They were studied (along with other options) in Rainier Valley. I don’t think they add much. Rainier Valley runs through real neighborhoods — places where lots of people are walking around, maybe of them having nothing to do with Link. To force them up and over is a real pain. In contrast the SoDo and Stadium stations are in an industrial area. The vast majority of people close to these stations are taking transit. Having to go up and over isn’t that bad (it is what they are used to at CID).
Agreed.
but pedestrians would have to cross the trackway to access the opposite platform, and that’s sub-optimal.
True, but they could add a pedestrian overpass. They don’t cost that much.
At Lander the new (road) overpass becomes the pedestrian overpass but I could also see them adding one that is similar. I feel like this is a more likely reverse-direction transfer point for buses and trains.
“Lander and Holgate just have to have overpasses with decent walkways on them and the trackway has to be fenced. The overpass would give access to the southbound platform from the bus intercept to the east.”
I’ve wondered if the pedestrian paths should go under the light rail tracks rather than over them. (What the British call “subways”.) Pedestrian clearances don’t have to be as tall as vehicle clearances. It’s hard to assess without knowing what’s under the surface though. It may even be possible to build ramps up to the Link platforms so that there wouldn’t need to be elevators and escalators. And some sort of security patrol would be needed to the walkways from becoming blocked by homeless or ICE agents.
Al S.
” Saying “we will support fully building Link” isn’t persuasive to me. I much prefer those who say “we will try to maximize how we use our available transit capital and operating dollars for the benefit of RIDERS”.
What the hell does this even mean? Honestly, maximizing our available capital and operating dollars for the benefit of riders wasn’t in the ST voter’s guide for ST3. “Build the Spine!” certainly was…
@ Tacomee:
Sarcasm understood.
I think what Al is saying, and I agree with him by the way, is that it is one thing to build a light rail line to check the box that it is complete. It is another thing to build a light rail line that that works well for the people that use it.
In other words someone who builds a line with deep stations, poor access, inconvenient transfers just to say ‘it’s built’; is not as desirable as someone else who keeps their eye on how people will use the system while it is being designed and built.
Maria Cantwell got Sean Duffy to promise not to cut transit funding. She must be very surprised by how this turned out.
https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2025/1/cantwell-statement-ahead-of-commerce-committee-vote-to-advance-sean-duffy-s-nomination-to-be-transportation-secretary
Christopher Cramer,
Seattle is one of richest cities in the entire world. The idea that somehow Federal funding money needs to prop up Sound Transit is just nuts. Time to start living in the real world.
I get so tired of excuses from progressives… transit, housing, drug policy, whatever. At what point does Seattle come up with workable solutions with the local tax money on hand?
I don’t mind the excuses as long as it gets us to change behavior. For example, if I was on the board I would say something like “Look, we all assumed that commuter trips would dominate transit travel. Obviously the world has changed. Our transit plans should as well.”
Is that a BS excuse? Yes, of course. But if it gets you out of a jam, go for it.