Dangerous By Design: Candidate Perspectives on MLK Way

62 Replies to “Dangerous By Design: Candidate Perspectives on MLK Way”

1. The district 2 candidates views are more important because this is their district….. everybody else’s views don’t really matter that much because this project is so low on their “wish list” they’re secretly planning to do nothing that already isn’t planned.

   The key words to look for are “grade separation”. This sounds great to voters, but everybody knows full well Sound Transit cannot do that in the next 20 years, so look at this as a “pie in the sky” copout. This isn’t a financial or political reality. SDOT changes are possible in next 4 years maybe?

   For district 2 voters it comes down to this…. it’s not what the candidates say or vaguely promise, but who can deliver for the district? Who has the most mojo to push though wins in a City Hall that has, in all honesty, stiffed the district for decades?. I’m not a district 2 voter, so I don’t know. Duckworth certain has more juice out of the gate, but Linn seems really smart, even sneaky smart, and that’s got a history of working in Seattle government. Good luck to my friends in District #2 getting a tiger this time around!

   1. I’m disappointed that neither D2 candidate discusses the implications of DSTT2. In particular, how the rerouting of 1 Line severs access to the International District — Chinatown Station from SE Seattle stations even though there is a sizable Asian community in D2. They don’t discuss the awful multi-level transfers being proposed at every transfer station including SODO either.

      I just see predictable feel-good language instead of real leadership. That “don’t make waves” approach however tends to be what our local candidates do generally.

      1. Unless you happen to live very close to an existing station, the 36 or 7 is faster than the light rail to CID. From the map point deemed to be the International District to Beacon Hill station is 14 minutes by light rail (6 minute walk) or 15 minutes on the 36 (4 minute walk). To Mount Baker, it’s 16/16 for the light rail versus the 106 and 7. Columbia City is 3 minutes slower by 106 than by train, while Othello is 8 and Rainer Beach is 13. So it matters, but the specifics of where someone is and where they want to go in C/ID makes the bus on par or much better north of Columbia City. Crucially, transfers from the 36 and 7 to northbound trains at Beacon Hill and Mount Baker respectively offer no time savings for riders.

         Do those listed things stink? Absolutely I don’t want deep level stations or miserable transfers, but I think a big part of backlash to the C/ID station stems from the fact that the buses serve the existing community needs better than the light rail does.

      2. Al S.

         DSTT2? Does anybody really believe that’s going to happen? I mean the candidates sort of have to pretend ST is still solvent and go through the motions this election, but there’s just exploding costs and we’re headed into a recession. Sound Transit is going to look very different next election, so why even worry about it?

         My guess is Seattle goes super progressive this election, then the recession and economic reality set in over the next 4 years….. and Seattle votes in a more centrist government that kills off any progressive projects. This is the political landscape of Puget Sound. I don’t believe most voters really understand the power of the “Seattle Machine”. For example, the Seattle Police Department has a contract for pay and the # of officers on the force until 2027, and the new mayor can’t touch any of that. In 2027 the force will work without a contract (using the old contract) for, I don’t know, 3-4 year negotiating a new contract. So the next mayor gets near zero input on public safety. Between Metro, Sound Transit, the KCRHA and public sector unions, just how much juice to our poor elected officials even have?

         On the transit front, Seattle does not even have its own transit agency! I’d like to see systematic changes in local government across Puget Sound breaking up regional agency in favor of local control, starting with Sound Transit. Rainier Beach deserves to be in charge of its own destiny!

      3. Transit connectivity impacts from “breaking the spine” are somewhat beyond the scope of the candidate questionnaire, which was focused on safety issues along MLK. I think Balducci is the only responsive candidate that’s openly questioned DSTT2, but I don’t think it would have really made sense to bring it up in the questionnaire response.

      4. > To Mount Baker, it’s 16/16 for the light rail versus the 106 and 7.

         Anecdotally, I’ve found that in peak traffic (even with the new northbound bus lanes as they still get blocked all the time), the 1 Line from Mount Baker to the CID is routinely a few minutes faster. Transferring northbound from the 7 to Link eats this savings, but the train is more comfortable so it’s generally worth the extra walk. The southbound transfer is about as good as it gets, so there’s extra incentive there.

      5. Right, we wanted to focus on MLK safety partly to emphasize this issue with the candidates, and also to get their specific thoughts on one challenge. Asking them about everything would have diluted it and we wouldn’t have gotten as useful responses or specific action items.

      6. @Nathan Dickey

         I don’t doubt that peak hour traffic on Rainier makes a 7/Link transfer somewhat competitive on time. But a few minutes isn’t enough to beat the convenience of a one seat ride for most riders. Exactly what that threshold is is personal, but I’d put it at 5 minutes. But even then, for a lot of trips to C/ID, it still makes more sense to ride the bus since it gets closer to more destinations.

         The train is probably an improvement vibes wise at rush hour over a packed bus, but still, we’re talking about vibes and a minute here or there for comparing rapid transit and a bus. The broader issue at hand will always be that light rail was a terrible choice for Link. A regional rail speed system would make this discussion completely moot, as it is for the segments of Link where a bus cannot compete at all. There’s a reason the 49 is an afterthought now, while the 36 and 7 are still workhorses, and it has a lot to do with the general failure of the original Link line to be a time upgrade for riders in South Seattle.

         No project Sound Transit is doing will meaningfully address this, and they are only teeing up infill stations that will make it worse. Sure, the Graham station looks good for access on a map, but will it even benefit current riders? I’d call that one a wash, while the Boeing Access Road behemoth is potentially the worst use of funds imaginable.

2. The thing I most want to know about MLK: Why did ST build it this way in the first place, and how can we prevent a repeat of things like this? Did NIMBYs abuse environmental review? Was it mandated by the FTA? Did a board dominated by suburban interests assume that the number of travel lanes had to be maintained? Did ST staff get fixated on some harebrained notion of lane-mile equity? ST has suffered from all of these kinds of dysfunction, and they’re a big reason why current plans for WS-Ballard are such a disaster.

   No matter what changes are made now, the road was built wrong, and meaningful changes will cost a bunch of money, which is in very short supply all around right now.

   1. “Why did ST build it this way in the first place, …”

      Two words: Portland envy

   2. All kidding aside, surface light rail was in favor nationally between 1980 and 2010. San Diego, Sacramento, San Jose, Los Angeles, Portland, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Baltimore, St Louis, Minneapolis and Buffalo were all doing it.

   3. I explained this at length under the part 1 article.

      TL;DR: ST was following the precedent of previous American light rails, that were 95+% surface to keep capital costs low. Low capital cost was seen as the primary issue. When the MLK and SODO segments were being designed, ST said it couldn’t justify the cost of elevated/tunnel in flat areas without physical barriers. DSTT was a given because of the existing downtown tunnel, and it would be extended to the U-District because of the hills and Ship Canal. But everything else would be surface if feasible.

      When TIB and later segments went through design, political factors by the cities changed the outcomes, so by ST2 the default became grade-separated everywhere. Bel-Red got surfaced due to a unique situation in Bellevue city government. But everything else in ST2 and everything in ST3 is assumed to be grade-separated.

      1. They had enough money for elevated it was tunneled that was too expensive

      2. ST had to compete against other projects for FTA funding. If other metro areas were also going for FTA funds to build a cheaper surface light rail, Seattle had to do something similar to be competitive.

      3. “Calling BART a failure because the DC Metro gets double the ridership is hopelessly shortsighted. BART is great at what it’s designed for: getting suburbanites into the City. Was that a good choice? That’s a subjective question, and it’s easy to say “no” post COVID but I can’t fault planners in the 1970s for making the system the way they did.”

         I agree with you! Every rail system technology, alignment and station spacing should be designed to function well within the regions in which they operate.

         Until Covid, BART achieved a high farebox recovery. That means that much was done right. The data from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio) shows even current data as BART at 50%, DC Metro (includes buses) at 24% and ST Link at 16%. The clear winner is BART on that statistic.

         If the measure was passenger miles rather than just passengers, BART would be much more comparable to DC Metro.

         It’s also notable that DC has a height limit (US Capitol Dome top) that forced the Federal Government to put offices all over the DC area so places like the Pentagon, Crystal City and Bethesda have offices that should be in a central business district elsewhere. The deliberate decisions to put many DC Federal office buildings and jobs at stations across the system obviously results in a nice portion of their daily ridership. As all of the TOD supporters note, station area land use is a big factor in creating rail system success. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio)

         It shouldn’t be ignored that about 30 percent of BART riders are riding in the Transbay tube — and the practical ends of the tube are like the distance of the full Lake Washington crossing of the 2 Line. Until Covid, the crossing was routinely at capacity. More riders go through the Transbay tube than ride on all of Muni Metro’s Market Street subway lines that already cover a large percentage of San Francisco.

         For decades, connecting East Bay residents to San Francisco jobs was a primary concern and the number of skyscrapers in Downtown San Francisco would not have been feasible without BART.
         Ultimately, San Francisco is a schizophrenic city, wanting to protect quaint neighborhoods and hillside views but wanting to be a big employment center with many skyscrapers and host hundreds of thousands of jobs. A regional BART system was the only way to make that happen.

         So how about we pull out the lessons learned from what is best and worst with both systems rather than summarily idolize one and criticize the other?

         And what did both systems do well that ST has not? The biggest mistake is seemingly obvious to a rail user: slow trains that cover long distances. And while the four-mile MLK section is even slower than other segments, the entire 116 mile system will increasingly suffer by the slow design speeds chosen by ST as new extensions open at the ends.

   4. > Why did ST build it this way in the first place, and how can we prevent a repeat of things like this?
      It was cheaper and surface running light rail is essentially the norm for all US rail projects.

      > Did NIMBYs abuse environmental review?
      I wasn’t around at the time, but I do know that it was controversial when being built. Given the project was built more or less as imagined, I’d say no.

      > Was it mandated by the FTA?
      Not specifically, but again surface running light rail is basically the only thing the US has built since the 1980s

      > Did a board dominated by suburban interests assume that the number of travel lanes had to be maintained?
      Maybe, but I’m sure there was plenty of pressure within Seattle to maintain the function of what had at that point still recently been designated as SR 900. Why would someone in Everett or Tacoma care about the number of lanes on MLK?

      > Did ST staff get fixated on some harebrained notion of lane-mile equity?
      What do you mean by this? I can’t even really guess. Like ST thought it would be inequitable to “take a lane away” from drivers in Rainier Valley? I don’t think this is the framing that would’ve been used when the project was being planned.

      As always, the problem with Link is that it’s light rail when it was originally conceived of and is planned as regional rail. Given the needs of the region, Link should look much more like BART and much less like MAX

      1. Given the needs of the region, Link should look much more like BART and much less like MAX

         No. Given the needs of the region it should be more like SkyTrain (smaller, a lot more stations) and they should improve the regional bus system (which is actually pretty good).

      2. Sound Transit would never build SkyTrain, because SkyTrain is a system that primarily serves urban Vancouver first and the burbs second. Sound Transit has always been a regional agency concerned more with regional mobility. I’m sure a SkyTrain style would be great in the urban core, but I think a part of the success of the transit system in Vancouver is related to the lack of expressways, so SkyTrain doesn’t need to be super fast (and can have more stops) to serve regional needs well.

         BART is a bad metro, but an excellent regional rail system. It’s even serviceable by European standards, though not great. Seattle has great local buses, but lacks high speed regional transit. I’d say that Link (and Sound Transit in general) emerged to fill that gap. The express bus system is quite good, and Link has good sections, but there are too many compromises and too many stops to be a proper regional system. Given that lack of money and demand for a Paris Metro/NYC Subway here, a regional rail system that integrated with the existing bus network would be the best large-scale investment bang for buck given the political constraints of regional transit planning in the region.

      3. https://www.seattlepi.com/local/transportation/article/build-south-rail-link-first-schell-proposes-1051629.php

         Around 2000, Sound Transit was run by a bunch of neophytes and politicos who really didn’t have a clue about how to manage a massive infrastructure project. ST was also dealing with a staggering number of lawsuits and threats of lawsuits from numerous NIMBY groups trying to stop the trains. ST didn’t have the political capital or the technical know-how to build the north line first, so they pivoted to building the south line. Even the small tunnel under Beacon Hill was a difficult task for ST. Imagine if they had tried to build the Westlake-Capitol Hill-UD tunnel without the knowledge they gained from Beacon Hill.

      4. “SkyTrain is a system that primarily serves urban Vancouver first and the burbs second.”

         That’s just a warm fuzzy feeling rather than anything technical about SkyTrain or the technology’s capabilities. SkyTrain has several stations in Surrey now and a Langley extension is under construction, and the south line goes to the airport through Richmond. So it serves the suburbs as much as necessary, like MAX and BART do. Vancouver has prioritized all SkyTrain directions to the airport and Surrey, but not to North Vancouver, Tsawwassen, White Rock, or SFU. It could do all those if the political desire were there.

         Regardless of how fast SkyTrain technology can go, light rail can go 85 mph if the network is grade-separated and designed to higher-speed specs (gentle curves and inclines). ST designed Link for a 55 mph maximum, which was arbitrary, and not a good fit for its Everett-Tacoma vision, when the freeway it’s competing against is 65 mph.

         In the mid 2010s some boardmembers mumbled about looking into retrofitting the Rainier Beach-TIB segment for higher speed, but it hasn’t followed up on that as far as we know.

      5. WSBLE, which serves only Seattle city, would work quite well using Skytrain technology.

      6. Mike Orr,

         SkyTrains Vancouver based history matters a lot when considering why the system was built in the way that it was, in the order it was. It serves the suburbs primarily as a connection to Vancouver, as well as all the TOD along the line.

         The issue of light rail isn’t technological, it’s the way the system was built. Light rail trains may be capable of running at 85 mph on elevated viaducts, but a system solely consisting of that wouldn’t be considered light rail by most people. The reason light rail was a mistake for the Seattle region is that light rail definitionally means making compromises like median running on MLK. It also (generally) means more of a local-oriented service than a regional one.

         Would SkyTrain overlaid over Seattle be great? Absolutely. I just think BART is a better comparison for the specific historical need that Sound Transit has sought to fill.

      7. Not agreeing or disagreeing with any of the previous, just a thought.

         A Seattle skytrain equivalent would have been an automated train following the interurban north to Lynnwood via Ballard and Interbay while using the great northern tunnel. That’s essentially how Vancouver built its system at relatively low cost, the majority of the right of way was already vacant and the areas were optimized for rail transit anyway. It always was a suburban train more than city of vancouver subway project. The broadway subway would have been built almost immediately if the priority was service within the city of Vancouver.

      8. BART is quite expensive to operate and has financial problems because it doesn’t have sufficient ridership from the suburbs to financially support its frequency and expensive to operate metro-style stations.

         If the Bay Area doesn’t have sufficient density in its suburbs to make BART affordable to operate, Puget Sound certainly doesn’t.

      9. “BART is quite expensive to operate and has financial problems because it doesn’t have sufficient ridership from the suburbs to financially support its frequency and expensive to operate metro-style stations.”

         BART has operations funding problems because they got 80% farebox recovery before Covid, dropped to 20% during Covid and now has 50% farebox recovery. Ours is so low that we haven’t needed to get 150% more (from 20% to 50% from other sources) non-fare funding like BART has.

      10. It always was a suburban train more than city of vancouver subway project. The broadway subway would have been built almost immediately if the priority was service within the city of Vancouver.

          SkyTrain was built in the wrong order. No question. But if you actually look at the system as a whole it is a regular, run-of-the-mill, ordinary metro. Sure, it is automated. Yes, they took advantage of some existing infrastructure. (So did we with the bus tunnel.) But their metro is normal (by international standards). In contrast, our stop spacing is more like BART’s. That shows average stop spacing and granted, numbers like that can be misleading. The more suburban your system the wider the stop spacing — that is normal. There are bound to be areas — like a lake — that will push the numbers higher. But in our case, there are big gaps between stations even in the heart of the city. There is only one station between Westlake and UW! Meanwhile, the UW has only two stations. The line follows the freeway envelope before it even gets out of the city while also managing to skip the major crossing streets. By doing so it not only forces transfers but long, time-consuming ones. This is the BART model.

          And yes, BART was an experiment. I don’t blame the folks in the Bay Area for thinking that America (with all of its sprawl) needed a uniquely American solution. But it was a failed experiment. It didn’t work.

          What does work? A normal, urban metro. Yes, it can (and often does) extend to the suburbs (like the DC Metro). But as this commenter put it, this is not intercity transit. This is about giving the core of the region the key to the city, by making it easier to get in and then effortless to get around.

          To be clear, this is not the *only* thing you should build, especially if you are a city like Seattle (which isn’t that dense). You also want good bus service within the city. Like Vancouver, you want the buses and trains to be well-integrated. Vancouver is very good at that, we are not. You also want express bus service from the suburbs as well as regional rail running on existing tracks. Do all that and you can be excused for building things in the wrong order.

      11. BART is a bad metro, but an excellent regional rail system.

          Yes, and that is the problem. They spent a fortune on a regional rail system instead of what they should have built — a metro. Had they built a good metro (in San Fransisco proper as well as the East Bay) they would have a lot more riders. This includes those from the suburbs. Yes, BART works for getting into the city. Then what? You ride buses that are really slow. A lot of people just give up and drive into the city.

          Not only that, but the regional rail system costs a fortune. This was not a system that just leveraged old rail lines (like they do in Europe). This was a brand new mass transit line that often follows the freeway. Then, when it got to the suburbs it often served big parking lots. Again, this is very different than Europe. Most of the surrounding cities and suburbs are strongly centered. Thousands if not tens of thousands of people can walk to the station. The buses for these small European cities are focused on the station as well — not for trips into the “big city” but for local trips. But BART doesn’t serve cities in that manner because those cities aren’t built in that manner. Thus the focus was all wrong.

          It was favoring one type of rider (the suburban commuter) over all others. Yet despite that, almost all of the trips are within the core city itself. This is the big failing in BART. To quote this post:
          
          Link, measured in track miles or capital dollars, is a mostly suburban system. Two of every three ST3 capital dollars are invested in the suburban extensions. A close analogue is the BART system in the Bay Area. BART has comparable track miles to the fully built-out ST3 network, and a continuing program of suburban expansions. But just nine stations between San Francisco and Berkeley account for half of all rider on/offs.

          The system was clearly designed to shortchange the urban rider and yet the urban riders use it the most.

      12. “They spent a fortune on a regional rail system instead of what they should have built — a metro. “

          BART paid for and built the entire Market Street subway for Muni Metro between Embarcadero and Eureka Street. So they actually built both a regional subway and a metro. They just didn’t operate that metro. Muni Metro used to run slowly down Market Street before BART built the tunnel for them.

          And more recent BART extensions in suburban counties were funded substantially by sales taxes only in each of those counties and not San Francisco.

      13. I’m probably repeating myself here but I want to make a point. Link is like BART. That is the problem. Sure, it is slower. They used the wrong technology. They shouldn’t have run on the surface through Rainier Valley or SoDo. But it is still like BART in terms of stop spacing and emphasis. This is the problem. This is not what we should build. It fails both the city and the region as a whole.

          I believe one of the main reasons BART was built — and why it remains an appealing idea to many Americans — is because we often think in terms of the automobile. If you think of BART as a freeway system it makes sense. If there were no other freeways (and we didn’t care about the drawbacks of them) it would be great. The same thing is true with Link. If there was no other freeway system (and again, we didn’t care about the drawbacks) then it would be remarkably like what they have proposed.

          Except freeways are fundamentally different than mass transit systems. For example, consider 23rd & Madison. I think Link should have a station there. That would integrate well with the RapidRide G on Madison and buses along 23rd. This would save riders a huge amount of time. But what if Link was a freeway? Would the lack of an exit/entrance there matter? No, of course not. You would exit at Capitol Hill Station and drive over to 23rd (or drive to First Hill). It is this auto-centric thinking that led to BART and BART-like systems (like Link). It is why systems of this nature perform so poorly.

      14. BART paid for and built the entire Market Street subway for Muni Metro between Embarcadero and Eureka Street.

          But that is a teeny-tiny metro. Most of San Fransisco doesn’t have a metro. Most of East Bay doesn’t have a metro. Yes, they can get by with BART but there are only a handful of stations and lines. For example Oakland only has 9 stations. There are literally miles between stations. In comparison there are 170 stations in Brooklyn and great coverage.

      15. “Link is like BART. That is the problem. Sure, it is slower. They used the wrong technology.”

          Did they use the wrong technology, or just build in the wrong places?

          With the Bay Area’s large gaps in land use as a result of water and steep hills, they not only had a challenge faced by other dense cities of getting around them but also they had to connect areas that had large natural separations between them. It’s like the challenge of getting across Lake Washington but multiplied in several places.

          At least BART trains go 79 mph. That’s a good technology decision. Granted the wider rail tracks results in train cars having to be bespoke and much more expensive and that’s a technology error in hindsight.

          BART also uses a classic third rail paddle system for power like most urban subways. Had BART been powered by catenaries, the overpasses and tunnels would need to be slightly taller. The grade separation to offer that enabled more automated train control that was cutting edge technology in its time. So I don’t think going to a third rail was a mistake.

          The biggest “mistake” of BART isn’t the technology as much as it’s the alignment and nearby zoning. Following freeways dampens the amount of TOD possible — but much of suburban BART actually doesn’t run along or within freeways. There’s a few miles of BART along 280 in southern San Francisco, miles on SR 24 between Oakland and Walnut Creek, miles on 580 between Castro Valley and Pleasanton, miles on SR 4 between Willow Pass and Antioch (mostly E-BART) and a few other places but most of it doesn’t actually follow freeway rights of way including a stretch from Glen Park in San Francisco all the way to East San Jose or to Downtown Richmond (except a short section near MacArthur BART).

          A problem is more that some stretches aren’t the best for TOD (like industrial zones) or that the cities won’t upzone for more density near many stations or make higher density financially feasible. Even San Francisco itself has land use near several BART stations so tightly controlled that it contributes greatly to its dystopian real estate market.

          I guess I find it’s too simplistic to broadly say that any system was totally perfect or a total mistake. There are good and bad things with every system built. Being able to assess the good and bad in every system built is seemingly a better approach.

          If someone ask me what the biggest Link mistakes are, I would say:

          1. Not designing for faster trains. Even if higher speeds could not be achieved in the DSTT and along MLK, that’s only about 6 or 7 miles out of an eventually proposed 116 mile system. That’s over 100 miles where trains could have operated faster. It’s like designing an entire school curriculum for the slowest child even though all the other children would benefit from a more aggressive one.

          2. Choosing train car designs that lose lots of square feet in empty driver cabs. That significantly reduces capacity — and capacity concerns partially triggered DSTT2. Only in the past several weeks has ST proposed acheiving eventual better train capacity.

          3. Not future-proofing the system for eventual driverless control — or anything else for that matter. ST has a long history of last-minute cost-cutting by not only removing things like escalators and grade separations, but they didn’t configure things to add them later. And the lack of a crossover Downtown is really stupid operational mistake in hindsight. That makes adding changes much more expensive as well as hugely disruptive. (Consider it’s taken Chicago over 100 years to fix the Red-Brown Line crossover problem north of Belmont. Or consider how LA Metro still has not resolved the A/E Line split bottleneck at Washington and Flower.)

          4. Building long Link segments along wide freeways. The one good thing about MLK is that at least it’s not a wide, walled freeway. It’s unsafe because there’s actually pedestrian activity! On a per mile basis, it generates a decent amount of daily boardings because of it. Even the lowest volume MLK station at Rainier Beach has more boardings than every expensive station (with a parking garage) on Lynnwood Link Extension except the end one.

      16. Sorry, that sentence was ambiguous. BART used the right technology for what they built. I meant Link used the wrong technology (for a BART-like system). This is a common complaint. Folks say that Link should not be light rail or should not run on the surface. Maybe, but that isn’t the main problem. The main problem is not the technology we used (or running on the surface) it was in trying to build a regional rail system in the first place. We should not try and mimic BART. We should have built a regular subway (with a lot more stations).

          The same is true for the Bay Area. Again, they picked the right technology for the job. The trains can go really fast and they can carry a lot of people. Great. But there aren’t enough stops or lines.. We can talk about hills and waterways but that is no reason for the really wide stop spacing. It is over 2.7 miles between Lake Merritt to Fruitvale! That means it skips over a huge swath of Oakland — including areas that have lots of *existing* density, let alone potential future density. It means trips like this. From the East Side Cultural Center (a dense area in Oakland) to Japantown (a dense area in San Francisco) and it takes over an hour. Keep in mind, the spot in Oakland is literally one block from the tracks. It would have been trivial to add a station there (since it is elevated). That doesn’t mean it would be a great station (it would be much better if the line was further from the water) but it would have been a lot better than no station at all. But that is what happens when you become fixated on long-distance trips (that not that many people end of taking) instead of actually building a real metro.

      17. Obviously we’ve wandered a bit off topic, but….

          If you want an example of what a regional rail line looks like in places that are serious about developing alternatives to driving, this is Berlin RE1. This is what Berlin has in place of Sounder (OK, this plus a dozen or so more RE lines).
          https://citymapper.com/berlin/db/db-re1?lang=en
          Note that it has quite a number of stations in Berlin, three more in Potsdam alone (which would be something like Kent), scattered stops in rural areas, and multiple stations in smaller cities at the end.

          Average speed including station stops is about 71 mph.
          http://osmtrainroutes.bplaced.net/?id=187767&train=highspeed

          So, RE1 has high average speed, but it also is very accessible because the stations are fairly frequent.

          If BART were organized like this, it would probably extend to Sacramento and be a local overlay of Amtrak California service, have multiple stations in downtown San Francisco and Oakland, and still be quite fast.

          It should be noted the regional trains like this don’t operate often (15 minute headways peak, half hourly during the day).

      18. @ Ross:

          I can’t defend BART’s decision to not build a station between Lake Merritt and Fruitvale (bayside edge of the San Antonio neighborhood). I can say that it is one spot where the line runs near 880 and the waterfront as well as other tracks and industrial buildings.

          There is an active group sponsoring an eventual infill station there.

          https://www.sanantoniostation.net/

      19. Ross,

          To say that Link is BART is deeply wrong. They are both regional systems in scope, but that’s where the similarities functionally end. BART is faster, and actually regional in network design.

          You may and I may think that Seattle needs a proper metro, and it does, but why would a regional transit agency finance that? I doubt Seattle could finance a grade separated metro on its own. And bringing in suburban municipalities and counties makes the political situation deeply disfavor a rail system focused on intra-Seattle trips, regardless of ridership potential.

          And this brings up a larger point: what is the purpose of a regional transit agency? Every region defines it differently, but Sound Transit has a lot in common with BART from a governance and structure standpoint. I think regional rail is a natural choice for an agency focused on regional mobility, even at the expense of ridership.

          Calling BART a failure because the DC Metro gets double the ridership is hopelessly shortsighted. BART is great at what it’s designed for: getting suburbanites into the City. Was that a good choice? That’s a subjective question, and it’s easy to say “no” post COVID but I can’t fault planners in the 1970s for making the system the way they did. And honestly, given the high speeds, long stop spacing, and semi-automation, BART looks like a weird twentieth century American version of a modern high speed metro in China. It just has always faced political problems stemming from reactionaries in non core counties.

          I consider regional rail to be the most important and most expensive thing to get right. If Sound Transit is like BART in that the regional focus biases it toward regional rail away from a metro system, then our plans are phenomenally middling (at best). Berryessa to San Francisco takes about an hour for 50 miles as the car drives – any trip on the future Sound Transit is looking like it will be twice as slow. If BART is a failure, Sound Transit is a catastrophe.

          I think it’s easy to say that designing a system that serves Seattle first and the burbs second is, as a metro would, would be transformative and great for urbanism in Seattle. Of course it would! But we also have to deal with the political realities of transportation planning in the region, and the low density sprawl inherent to it. Good regional rail plus a bus is still transformative for the city, albeit less than a great metro, while also providing the burbs with something they desperately want too.

          That’s why I think BART is the system to model Sound Transit off of. Not because we need to be exactly as oriented around downtown commuters, but because it’s extremely fast and regional in scope.

      20. “ I doubt Seattle could finance a grade separated metro on its own.”

          That’s how the sub-area equity financing thing works though…

      21. To say that Link is BART is deeply wrong. They are both regional systems in scope, but that’s where the similarities functionally end. BART is faster, and actually regional in network design.

          So what? Both have the same basic problem. That is why a lot of people have called Link “Bart Del Norte” (a clever phrase I wish I came up with). They both shortchange stops in the urban core while spending a fortune serving only a handful of riders outside it.

          And this brings up a larger point: what is the purpose of a regional transit agency?

          It depends on what else exists. In our case we already have other agencies (Metro, Pierce Transit, etc.). Thus for a region like ours the best value (obviously) would be some commuter rail and lots of buses. A regional transit agency could also help different agencies cooperate at their borders. For example it could work with Metro and Community Transit to improve buses that cross the King County/Pierce County border. Obviously, for an area like this, the focus should be on buses and commuter rail (and mostly buses). The regional agency should have a much smaller budget than either Metro or whatever agency builds the subway system. Metro should have built the subway system (they could have called it the “Metro metro”). They would have cooperated with the regional transit agency to make sure there is good integration (between the other buses and the subway) and/or extend it out of the county. But it was pretty stupid to have a regional agency build something that is fundamentally not a regional project. To be clear, such a system would benefit the entire region but that doesn’t mean it would have to be managed by it. The state doesn’t own Harborview — the county does (and the UW manages it).

          Calling BART a failure because the DC Metro gets double the ridership is hopelessly shortsighted.

          So we are just supposed to ignore the data?

          BART is great at what it’s designed for: getting suburbanites into the City.

          No its not! That’s the point. Not that many people actually use it for that. Read the data again. Most of the BART riders are using it for urban trips. The idea of BART looks great in paper. Why would someone drive into the city if they can take the train? The problem is, people still drive into the city (or East Bay locations) because they don’t want to drive to a park and ride, take the train and then take a slow bus to their actual destination. So again, the BART idea looked great on paper. But it failed in practice. Riders are not — as was put earlier — “given the keys to the city”. They were given an express to downtown (and a handful of other places). And the numbers I cited by the way were *before the pandemic*. It has gotten worse.

          This brings me to Al’s comment:

          I can’t defend BART’s decision to not build a station between Lake Merritt and Fruitvale (bayside edge of the San Antonio neighborhood).

          You are missing the point Al. This is just one example of the mindset of BART. It doesn’t serve most of Oakland. It doesn’t serve most of San Fransisco. The attitude, from the very beginning, was to run to only a handful of places in distant suburbs based on the assumption that they would somehow get to the station and somehow get from the station in the city to their destination. They figured the “weak link” was the long trip. They were wrong. It didn’t work. The approach was backwards. If they had built a high quality metro (that included Oakland) then getting from Pleaston to some place in San Fransisco (or Oakland) would be much easier. Take an express bus to edge of the system and then ride the train. It might have been marginally slower to get to San Fransisco itself but much, much faster to get to the destination inside San Fransisco.

          I consider regional rail to be the most important and most expensive thing to get right.

          Regional rail is the least important thing of any city. New York City has the best regional rail system in North America. It is outstanding. But it could shut down tomorrow and it wouldn’t be the end of the world. If the New York City Subway shut down it would be catastrophic. It would be terrible for everyone — including those that ride regional rail! If you can’t get around the city then what good is that regional rail system!

          This isn’t a value judgement. It is a matter of ridership and practicality. More people ride inside the urban core than into it. Why the hell should we spend a fortune chasing after so few riders?

          But it is more than that. Think of the amount of time saved per rider. In most cases you can run express buses from the suburbs to the city. In contrast you can’t run an express bus *inside* the city. Thus an express train to Tacoma *making no stops along the way* would not save the rider that much time. In contrast the subway line from Capitol Hill to UW saves those riders a huge amount of time. So much time that they could have added a stop (or two) and it would still be faster than driving — at noon.

          The ridership pattern is different as well. For example, Lexington Avenue Subway is one of the most popular subway lines in North America. It carries more riders than the entire Chicago El or all of the commuter trains in New York City put together. It runs essentially the length of Manhattan, from Lower Manhattan to East Harlem. People take it for dozens of combinations; Harlem to Grand Central, 59th Street to Wall Street. It is an urban subway so every combination (except really short ones) is not only plausible but likely gets thousands of riders. It works for short trips and long trips and huge numbers of people take both. This is commonly referred to as the “network effect”.

          In contrast, that just doesn’t happen in the suburbs. Because of Lynnwood Link, it is now dramatically faster to get from Lynnwood to 185th in Shoreline. How many people make that trip? My guess, less than fifty. I didn’t just pick that number out of a hat. The 512 used to serve Mountlake Terrace (and other areas) and only 27 people would take the bus heading north. Despite the blazing fast speeds to Lynnwood and Everett, only 27 people took advantage of this. This was a bus that ran every fifteen minutes and directly served Everett — a real destination. My guess is the number of people going from say, Ash Way to Mountlake Terrace is in the single digits. In contrast the number of Link riders from Capitol Hill to the UW — just the UW, mind you, not the U-District, Roosevelt or Northgate — was close to 2,000 back when ST reported such things (https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/2020-service-implementation-plan.pdf).

          We can also see this with Sounder. Sound Transit stopped producing those reports and instead has relied on their “dashboard”. Now look at how many take the train from Kent towards Tacoma. Last month there were nine riders a day. Yep, just nine. Again, this is Tacoma! This is a major destination. But apparently the train (which is fast and quite comfortable) just isn’t that attractive. To be fair, they are only three reverse peak trips. But still, nine? Nine?

          This is the basic problem with this model. It is always fighting with itself. Consider a typical urban trip. The type of trip that always makes up the majority of transit trips in any city. Let’s say Capitol Hill to Beacon Hill. Now imagine they add a bunch of stations along the way. How irritating. Sure, it is better for those riders and sure, the train runs more often because it is picking up a lot more people but for me, someone just trying to get from Capitol Hill to Beacon Hill, it sucks. It takes a bit longer. But does it really change my behavior? No. I will still take the train because driving inside the city is really slow. Or I don’t own a car and don’t want to pay for a cab.

          But what if you add a bunch of stations between Tacoma and Seattle? Well now, that is a different story. Suddenly your metro is not only slower than an express bus, but much slower. There just isn’t much point in taking it. Might as well take the express bus. Or drive.

          This is one of the fundamental limitations of regional rail. Ridership is bound to be low for several reasons. The first one is obvious — the trips tend to be longer. In this region (and many others) you serve areas with less density. You don’t save the riders as much time even if you run an express. You have a minimal network effect. Thus regional rail is just a terrible value — unless you can leverage existing rail lines. I want to emphasize that. There is nothing wrong with commuter rail, regional rail, whatever you want to call it. Run trains on the old tracks. Might as well. But otherwise don’t waste your money on such things. Just build a metro and run express buses. It is better for everyone.

      22. “That is why a lot of people have called Link “Bart Del Norte” (a clever phrase I wish I came up with).”

          It’s derived from BART’s El Cerrito Del Norte station name (rather than North El Cerrito).

      23. Ross,

          I think it’s clear that we have a fundamentally different outlook on this. I think it’s generally wrong to imagine that Sound Transit is going to fund the kind of transit that the City of Seattle needs for urban mobility. It’s just not how the agency is structured. It’s why the Spine is sure to be completed before Ballard. That’s clearly not the best choice for ridership, but people in the suburban areas don’t really care about getting from downtown Seattle to Ballard faster, and people living in suburban areas make a majority of the Seattle region.

          > “So should we just ignore the data?”

          Sorry, this is a disingenuous point. Data should not be divorced from its political context. The entire reason the DC metro exists is that the federal government was embarrassed about how hard it was to get around DC. Since the feds have a direct tangible stake in funding capital projects for Metrorail, it doesn’t suffer from the myopic local politics which have plagued BART (and transit everywhere). If there’s a lesson to be had, it’s that the lack of investment in good transit (both local and regional) at the federal level has had horrible consequences for riders. How much more ridership would BART get if the Marin line had gotten built? Or if it took over Caltrain? Or if they built the San Jose extension for a reasonable amount of money? These are all questions that DC hasn’t had to face by virtue of a more unified approach and the role of the feds. Granted, DC faces other issues because of the federal government, but that’s a bit besides the point. The point is that calling BART a failure relative to DC has less to do with network design or operating philosophy than it has to do with political will and funding to build projects.

          > “Regional rail is the least important thing of any city.”

          This is your opinion, and I obviously disagree with it. Talking about “in North America” is obviously going to limit the scope, since even NYC’s pretty good regional system is still at its core a series of commuter railroads set up mostly by the Pennsy a century ago. If NYC had any vision, they would have built a Crossrail project a generation ago, if only to connect Metro-North and the LIRR. The Elizabeth Line is up to nearly 250 million rides a year, which is basically on par with heavily traveled tube lines, and it has transformed regional mobility in London in a way that another tube line probably wouldn’t have. Obviously, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum but the US has never had a well conceived regional rail system – it’s always been last minute efforts to take over unprofitable commuter lines from railroad companies or middling efforts like Sounder.

          >This isn’t a value judgement. It is a matter of ridership and practicality. More people ride inside the urban core than into it. Why the hell should we spend a fortune chasing after so few riders?

          Those are value judgements. Valuing ridership over regional connectivity is a value judgement. What does “practicality” mean in this context other than to frame my thoughts on regional rail as impractical? Is the purpose of Sound Transit to maximize ridership, or is to provide a service to the entirety of the service area? I see Sound Transit as an agency conceived to do the latter, so my issues with it stem directly from it doing a bad job of that. Other issues with transit in the Seattle region – like the City of Seattle lacking a metro – are essentially unrelated (outside the sense in which all transit projects relate to each other).

          I think critiquing Sound Transit on the lines of “it’s BART” or “it’s missing out on ridership by not prioritizing service in Seattle” come across as parochial at best. Even if it’s true that the best way for Sound Transit to generate ridership is by serving Seattle proper better, that doesn’t mean it’s a “practical” choice for an agency borne out of essentially suburban issues. Instead of endlessly beating the drum about SkyTrain Ballard Link (something that the agency has no inkling to do), maximizing the value for Seattle by increasing regional connectivity by building actually good regional rail matters a lot more to me. Because good regional rail is transformative. In Germany U-Bahns and S-Bahns carry similar levels of ridership while providing complementary services (or Berlin and Munich anyways, Hamburg is U-Bahn focused while Rhine/Ruhr is S-Bahn focused). No matter what my preferences are, its self-evident that the Seattle region has opted for a regional approach. We should maximize that opportunity within the political context it exists in.

      24. That’s clearly not the best choice for ridership

          Nor any other metric. So why build it? Why favor those riders over everyone else? Look, I get it. I live in Pinehurst and I used to commute to Downtown Bellevue. There used to be a bus that went down 125th (close to where I live) then by Lake City before working its way to the U-District and then to Downtown Bellevue. It was great. It made my commute wonderful. Not that many people took it. I used to call it “my private bus”. Eventually — for this reason — it was cancelled. This was the right decision. Why should be build something that only benefits a small number or riders and even then is not a huge improvement over just running buses?

          You (and Al) don’t seem to understand the ridership patterns. You look at a system like BART and think “Wow, what a great regional system. It must get a lot of riders from those distant suburbs, given how fast it is to get from there to downtown”. But it doesn’t! To quote Dan Ryan again: just nine stations between San Francisco and Berkeley account for half of all rider on/offs. Got it? Before the pandemic it got most of its ridership from stations in the urban core. This big, beautiful regional rail system — which you admit sucks as an urban metro — is being used more as an urban metro than a regional rail system!

          It is like someone who buys a thousand dollar exercise bikes to use as a coat rack. Just buy a coat rack! They are way cheaper and way better at it. Yeah, sure, you had grand plans. You thought it was going to get you in shape. Maybe instead you just try and walk more.

          I realize that is a tortured analogy but the point is BART failed to help the suburbs, too! What the suburbs need more than anything is better bus service. Not just to the city, but within the suburbs themselves. There are a lot of people in places like Federal Way, Auburn, Lakewood and Tacoma that don’t really care about getting to Seattle. They want to get around town. BART del Norte won’t change their world in the least. But better bus service would.

          It is only within the urban core (and that includes the East Side) that rail makes sense. Yes, you need good interchanges for the buses. Someone taking an express from Tacoma to Seattle should be able to transfer from a freeway station to get to SeaTac. The obvious transfer point is Federal Way but it could have been anywhere. Someone in Renton should be able to do the same thing if they want to get to Rainier Valley (that should happen at Boeing Access Road). But other than that, the train line doesn’t need to go out that far. You get diminishing returns. Just run buses — both to the city as well as within the suburb — while building a real metro in the city.

          Those are value judgements. Valuing ridership over regional connectivity is a value judgement.

          Yes, I suppose it is. But that is like saying we should spend money running buses from Buckley to Maple Valley every five minutes. It maybe gets five riders a day but wow, those riders are thrilled!

          The idea that BART somehow was a good value in terms of regional connectivity is nonsense. It cost a fortune. Not that many people use it to get around in the region. It is mostly used as a Metro (even though it doesn’t do that very well).

          Is the purpose of Sound Transit to maximize ridership, or is to provide a service to the entirety of the service area? I see Sound Transit as an agency conceived to do the latter, so my issues with it stem directly from it doing a bad job of that.

          Yes, and that is because it follows the BART model. The common model — used all over the world — is to run regional buses and regional rail (using existing tracks) that connect to a robust metro serving the urban core. But instead we managed to build the worst of both worlds. Buses where there should be rail and (brand new, expensive) rail where there should be buses.

          Even if it’s true that the best way for Sound Transit to generate ridership is by serving Seattle proper better, that doesn’t mean it’s a “practical” choice for an agency borne out of essentially suburban issues.

          Now you are changing the subject. Your original comment was “Given the needs of the region, Link should look much more like BART and much less like MAX”. That is what started this whole thread. You want to talk about the politics of this, fine. But don’t conflate the two. Don’t write about the “needs of the region” and propose something that would do a terrible job at meeting those needs. Just explain that the state came up with this stupid idea and the region went along with it because they didn’t know any better. Fine. Agreed.

          In Germany U-Bahns and S-Bahns carry similar levels of ridership while providing complementary services

          I figured someone would bring up S-Bahns at some point. I almost included it in the previous comment but here goes: There is nothing wrong with the S-Bahn model. They are great. It basically works like this: You take old, existing railway lines that serve small cities (or big towns) and then combine them with a metro. If we actually owned the BNSF lines then Sounder trains could continue through Seattle and become a different metro line with stops at say, SoDo, CID, First Hill, Belltown, Interbay and Ballard. That would be great. But again, notice that even with S-Bahn you serve the urban core. Inside the urban core of their respective cities, the stops spacing of the Berlin S-Bahn (which also has a complementary U-Bahn) is much better than the stop spacing of BART or Link. It is only when the S-Bahn heads out to the countryside that you have big gaps between stations. The S-Bahn model is a hybrid regional rail/metro but they don’t shortchange either one. In contrast both BART and Link do. There are too few stations inside the urban core.

          It is also worth pointing out that in Germany (as in much of Europe) the suburban towns and cities are very strongly centered. A town of 20,000 looks basically like Capitol Hill. A city of 100,000 looks like Belltown. The stations are also in the center of town. This means that thousands if not tens of thousands can walk to the station. It also means that buses serve the area — not just because it is the station but because it is the center of town. You also have “hard edges”. You have dense areas (the city or town) and then farms or forests. There is not the low-density sprawl that is common on the West Coast. As a result, you are bound to get way more riders with a regional rail system — and it is bound to be a lot more useful. You would get thousands traveling between the equivalent of Mountlake Terrace and Lynnwood (not a dozen).

          The S-Bahn model is great when you have the rail (and the strongly centered towns/cities). We don’t have the rail (or at least we don’t own it) and the towns/cities are not strongly centered. Instead we have sprawling suburbs and lots of freeways. This is why the best way to provide a regional transit network for a city like ours would be a smaller metro in the urban core (with a lot more stations) and a lot of buses.

      25. “You (and Al) don’t seem to understand the ridership patterns.”

          Wrong. It merely means that we see patterns and data differently than you. Occasionally differing conclusions does not imply stupidity. It merely implies disagreement.

          I commuted on BART for two decades of my life. I have been personal friends of prior BART Board members and senior staff, and spent hours discussing things — even while sitting across from them back when BART cars had “party seats” that faced each other. I assure you that I understand BART’s ridership patterns and history more thoroughly than you do.

      26. Ross,

          This piece of evidence: “[BART] got most of its ridership from stations in the urban core. [BART] is being used more as an urban metro than a regional rail system!” is not strictly true based solely on boardings. It may be true that ridership patterns on BART resemble a metro, but it’s also true that the urban core will have a more diverse set of suburban trip pairs than any one suburban station. So lots of riders from many different suburban origins are using the same urban core destinations – that’s a suburban oriented system working as intended. Now if all of the ridership is coming only from urban-urban trip pairs, that’s a different story but I don’t think that follows from the data you are citing. And I do think BART does a good job as a regional system, despite the massive gaps. But I’m potentially biased by knowing a lot of people from the East Bay Suburbs who rely on, or have relied on, BART to get them to jobs, events, and other parts of urban San Francisco and Oakland.

          > ” BART failed to help the suburbs, too!”
          This is just not true. Does Contra Costa County need better bus service? Yes, by a mile. But I promise you people in Pleasant Hill and Concord value the fast and easy ride into The City, and that in my experience, it’s a well-used service. And I’m not arguing against better bus service in the suburbs. I’m obviously supportive of that, just that within the suburban Bay Area, access to San Francisco (and Oakland) is more important to the existing residents that I personally know than access to the neighboring suburb.

          > “Yes, and that is because it follows the BART model. ”
          Which it’s doing a bad job of. We are going to get something way worse than BART. Seeing as you seem to have a strong anti-BART vendetta, this seems like an issue! The problem with Sound Transit is that it’s a bad system as conceived. I think that issue is related to taking all the bad parts of BART (ineffective station area design, bad station area siting, hamstrung by local politics in a way that will ultimately undermine it) and none of the good parts of BART (very fast, fully grade separated). The issue isn’t the BART model, it’s the execution.

          > “Now you are changing the subject.”
          I am (attempting) to talk about the generally agreed upon needs of the region as constructed currently. What evidence do you have to cite that a BART like system in the Seattle area would fail to deliver on those needs? I’ve only seen you cite that urban BART stations get more ridership than suburban BART stations, and that the “rest of the world doesn’t do it this way”. Except the fact that Switzerland, most of Germany, all of the UK outside of London, Ireland, most of the Netherlands, most of Scandinavia, all of France outside of Paris, and Australia (especially Melbourne) are all far more reliant on regional rail networks for urban and suburban mobility than Paris or NYC style metros.

          I think a 79 mph regional rail metro hybrid would do a great job of meeting the need that Sound Transit has set out to serve. Would regional buses feeding into a Seattle-based metro serve that same need? Yes, but that doesn’t mean a regional rail system with connecting bus service wouldn’t! And if Sound Transit needs more money than just Seattle can offer, saying “we are going to build a great world class metro in Seattle, and run a bunch of connecting regional buses in the suburbs” hasn’t been politically feasible in the past. I suspect it still isn’t, but don’t have some strong piece of evidence to cite.

          > “in Germany (as in much of Europe) the suburban towns and cities are very strongly centered”
          This is true, but only to an extent. The German region that most closely resembles a US metro area (Koln/Essen/Dortmund/Rhine/Ruhr/whatever you want to call it) has a heavily used S-Bahn complemented by what we would call light rail. I think that’s a fine model to go off, but the critical thing is the S-Bahn, not the light rail. A regional system within an urban context is essentially an express service, and express services are great for fast trips and mobility in general. In German cities with both an U-Bahn and an S-Bahn, both systems complement each other to provide different types of trips.

          > “A town of 20,000 looks basically like Capitol Hill. A city of 100,000 looks like Belltown.”
          I dunno about this one. The town of Lehrte (outside Hanover, population 40k) looks quaint compared to Capitol Hill. German cities can be relatively sprawling for Europe, and its common to have suburban population densities that aren’t radically different from denser suburbs in the US (random example: Moers, just outside Duisburg – density of 4000/sq mi, on par with Hillsboro outside of Portland). The longer legacy of urban development and railroad ownership differences present challenges for a Seattle S-Bahn, but it’s not something that should just be dismissed out of hand.

          I see no reason other than your personal preference for more comprehensive rail coverage within Seattle proper to be so strongly for a metro. That’s a valid reason, and I don’t mean to belittle it, but it’s also a preference. My preference is for high frequency regional rail, complemented by great local bus service. I think BART is a (partially implemented) example of this system, it just lacks the regional scope from the original vision and lacks good bus service outside of San Francisco and Alameda County. Those are huge flaws for BART, but there’s no reason we have to recreate them. Honestly, I also am fond of the DC Metro, and think it strikes a good balance between regional rail and urban rail, but think the lessons Seattle can learn from BART are far more relevant and salient. And the lesson isn’t “don’t build BART”, it’s “build BART to all the suburban counties and fund high frequency connecting bus service in the suburbs”.

      27. > I am (attempting) to talk about the generally agreed upon needs of the region as constructed currently. What evidence do you have to cite that a BART like system in the Seattle area would fail to deliver on those needs

          We actually do have a couple examples. Dallas DART is basically what many of y’all are envisioning. It sticks to the freeways and it does go really far into the suburbs and is fast. On the other hand it basically has relatively poor ridership.

          Also the BART extensions further into the suburbs have the lowest ridership as previously mentioned. The sections with the highest ridership were mostly build cut-and-cover aka the market street section or also large parts at berkeley.

          > Calling BART a failure because the DC Metro
          The core segments and the original extensions were definitely a success. But the even farther suburban extensions in the 90s have been a failure. BART openly admits and that is why they didn’t want to extend past Dublin. It’s been incredibly expensive for very low ridership. https://www.bart.gov/about/projects/liv

      28. Now if all of the ridership is coming only from urban-urban trip pairs

          Not all, most. Again, you can look at the data. It has trip pairs. Most of the trips are within the urban core. Of course they are. Think about the key ridership factors: proximity, density, frequency. If you are trying to get from Embarcadero to 16th & Mission you have all three. You also have that with a trip from 19th Street in Oakland to Powell Street in San Fransisco. This is the metro part of regional-rail/metro hybrid. The regional-rail part gets a lot less riders.

          I’m obviously supportive of that, just that within the suburban Bay Area, access to San Francisco (and Oakland) is more important to the existing residents that I personally know than access to the neighboring suburb.

          Of course! That is my point. The problem is, it doesn’t connect well with San Fransisco and Oakland. Look at the example I gave for Paris: https://maps.app.goo.gl/xh4UWJWZBqPnyWAs5. This is a suburban bus that runs express into the city. But it doesn’t even get to the middle of town. It just gets to the edge of the city, close to a metro stop. Where can go from there? Everywhere! It is the Paris Metro. It gets you very quickly to where you want to go.

          Now consider the Bay Area. I’ll use part of an example I used earlier. You mentioned Pleasant Hill so I’ll use that as well. So, here it is, from Pleasant Hill (as defined by Google) to the East Side Cultural Center: https://maps.app.goo.gl/AyqNXt33hYw42rWp7. An hour and a half. There are various options, but they all take about an hour and a half. Driving takes about a half hour. Do you really think someone is going to take transit for a trip like that? Get real. Now imagine they ran an express bus to Oakland and then Oakland/Berkeley had a normal metro. Hell, it could just continue the God-awful (but cheap) running next to the old train line — just add some stations. Then what? The ride into Oakland takes maybe 20 minutes. The subway ride — even with the extra stops — takes another 15 (if that). So you shave almost an hour off or your trip. Maybe someone drives but then again, maybe someone takes transit just to avoid the parking.

          What is true of Oakland is true of San Fransisco. For a suburban rider there are two key pieces. You need to get into the city and you need to get around the city. Grade-separated trains do really well for getting around the city. Express buses do a great job of betting you to the city. But you know what BART does that an express bus doesn’t? It gets you to neighboring subways really well. The exact trip that you claim is not that popular is what BART is really good at. I agree, by the way. Not that many people are trying to go from the Walnut Creek Station to the Orinda Station. But BART is really good at that. That is the main advantage over a bunch of express buses.

          So no, BART does not serve the suburbs well. A combination of a metro and express buses — the type of thing other cities around the world would build — would serve those suburbs a lot better.

          The problem with Sound Transit is that it’s a bad system as conceived.

          On that, we agree.

          I think that issue is related to taking all the bad parts of BART (ineffective station area design, bad station area siting, hamstrung by local politics in a way that will ultimately undermine it) and none of the good parts of BART (very fast, fully grade separated).

          Fair enough. But my point is that the good parts of BART are simply not worth it. Not when they come with the bad parts. Not when they are extremely expensive and don’t benefit that many riders. The BART model is a bad model. It was a great experiment. No one had ever done anything like that. It is reasonable to assume that because we have cities that sprawl via the freeway that the trains need to run with very few stations to attract the suburban rider. We would get huge numbers of people to switch to transit. But of course that didn’t happen. Way more people rode the infamously slow Muni buses. Or they just drove.

          So imagine for a second we doubled-down on the BART model. Instead of serving Rainier Valley and Beacon Hill, we bypassed it. So now the trip to SeaTac is faster. What happens? Fewer people ride Link. Yes, riders heading to SeaTac or places south get a faster trip. But lots of people have to deal with buses which are much slower. So not only does ridership go down, but ridership timed saved goes down. You’ve spent an enormous amount of money on an ever shrinking part of the transit riding public: The distant suburban commuter that is willing to drive to the suburban station and happens to work close to the handful of stations downtown.

          Now assume we did the opposite. Build a real metro. This means stops at places like First Hill and Belltown. You have three stops in the U-District, not two. It isn’t a thorough Metro — we aren’t the Bay Area, let alone Paris — but it is integrated well with the buses. So it stops at places like 23rd & Madison. Sure, there are people who walk to the station (way more than walk to a lot of our stations) but the 48 and RapidRide G would connect to it really well. The line to the south runs under Rainier Avenue and makes a lot of stops. It continues to the airport but along the way serves other suburban areas. Stop distance increases as you leave the city but it doesn’t have the enormous gap that exists between TIBS and Rainier Valley. You also build a crossing line (or two) starting with UW-Ballard. Now you can get to the various places inside the city quite easily. East Link is similar to what they built. Ridership is much higher. Not just the trains but the buses as well.

          But riders still need to get into the city from the suburbs. Many want to get right downtown but a lot of people want to go to other places. So you add freeway stations to the metro. This allows express buses to connect to the metro. Thus someone from Everett can take the bus to wherever the train ends and then take the train to the UW. But since it is a metro it might take a while to get downtown. But since our freeways run right into the city we might as well have them run express right into the city (like they do in Manhattan). Thus riders get both a connection to the metro (at the edge of the city) and an express into downtown.

          These buses can cover a much broader area. With the BART model you don’t want too many stations in the suburbs (otherwise the riders from farther away are delayed). But there is no inherit limit to the number of express buses that can run. Not only that, but there is great flexibility with the routing. In many cases it makes sense to go through the neighborhood and then run express (like the old 41). Thus you save a lot of riders a transfer and the buses make their connection to Link *and* their trip to downtown quite quickly.

          The one thing you lose with this approach is that suburb-to-suburb travel is slower. It might require a local, neighborhood bus or backtracking. But we both agree that isn’t that important.

          So now you have a system that enables a lot more suburban riders to quickly get downtown or anywhere within the urban core. Ridership is much higher — even in the suburbs. In many cases you’ve saved those riders a huge amount of time. You are paying more to run those buses from the suburbs but the metro replaced a lot of the buses in the city. You’ve built a system that works much better for the vast majority of riders. Don’t get too excited though — all you did was the same thing that most cities around the world would do.

          And yes, I’m well aware that regional rail using existing rail lines are popular around the world. But there are two big differences. First, when they run into the city they have lots of stations. Look at the RER. Here is a trip within the city using the RER. Remember, this is in the same area as the Paris Metro. It really doesn’t need a lot of extra coverage. And yet the stops are about 800 meters apart. Spread apart compared to the Paris Metro but really close together compared to most of BART (and a lot of Link). Second, they don’t spend billions on brand new regional rail lines to sprawling suburbs before they have a decent metro. They run buses. This is one of the key things you are ignoring. Yes, with faster trains and fewer stops a train going to Tacoma would be faster than Link. But an express bus would be faster! 79 mph is blazing fast for a train. But you still have to stop a dozen times. The only way to make the trip faster is if it ran as an express and for that it would make sense to just leverage the BNSF tracks (like they would in the rest of the world).

          I can’t emphasize this enough. Outside of the U. S., the BART model is unusual if not unheard of. But inside the U. S. it is common. DART, Denver-RTD, and now Link follow that same model. Maybe not as well, but that’s not the biggest problem. It is following it at all.

      29. @ Ross:

          You seem intent on ignoring that BART built the Muni Metro tunnel for San Francisco and Muni Metro riders benefit greatly from that. Lots of those Downtown San Francisco boardings at BART downtown stations are actually from Muni Metro trains that were running in that tunnel that BART also paid for. Muni Metro riders used to have to slog down Market Street in the early 1970’s before BART built them the tunnel.

          Are you aware that BART also accepts the Muni Fast Pass for free when trips are inside San Francisco? BART basically operates a high frequency train through San Francisco that Muni does not have to pay to operate. BART provides the train service and Muni keeps the pass sales to operate its other transit routes and modes.

          Since you’ve not lived there, I don’t think you fully understand how geographic equity has long been primary with regional officials and transit operators for decades and continues to be. With a few dozen different transit operators and a wide variety of revenue sources at play from bridge tolls to state transit subsidy formulas to a regional transit fare card to transit-dedicated sales tax revenue collected independently by each county, Bay Area transit has evolved in a very complex way that cannot be simplistically criticized by saying that BART a bad idea, especially when it’s still pulling 50 percent farebox recovery that puts both KCM and ST to shame in 2025.

      30. @ Ross:

          I share with you the WestCAT local bus operator audit. It shows that BART directly contributed about 15 percent of local bus operator revenue in 2024.

          Page 12 here:

          https://www.westcat.org/Content/Pdf/WCCTA%20Independent%20Financial%20Audit%20FY24%20corrected.pdf

          Imagine how some of our agencies could benefit if ST was committed to playing Santa Claus like BART does! Tacoma could really use the higher frequency that ST could pay for.

      31. You seem intent on ignoring that BART built the Muni Metro tunnel for San Francisco and Muni Metro riders benefit greatly from that.

          I’m not ignoring that. Nor am I ignoring the political choices that various leaders felt had to be made to build anything in the Bay Area (or here for that matter). If someone writes “This is the only thing we could build” than I would likely agree with them and lament the ignorance of the leaders. We could talk about how DC was lucky because even though they have the same sort of problems as most American cities (sprawl, red-lining, height limits inside the city itself) they managed to build something normal (and thus much better) because it is the nation’s capital. It wasn’t just local interests battling it out. The state (or in this case states) played a smaller role, too. It was largely just the feds and the locals and the feds had tremendous power which is why they did the right thing — the thing most cities around the world would do.

          But when someone writes “Link should look much more like BART and much less like MAX” they sure as hell aren’t referring to the improvements to Muni. They are referring to a system that the same writer admits is “a bad metro, but an excellent regional rail system”. They are prioritizing the wrong thing and glorifying BART. Not “BART the project” that led to other improvements in the area but “BART the train” that has literally miles between stations in very urban areas (and no metro to fill in the gaps).

          Nor did they suggest we build an S-Bahn or something similar to the RER. If they had then I would have pointed out that it would be difficult (since we don’t own the tracks) but at least it would mean lots of stations inside the city. That’s because S-Bahns and the RER have a lot more stations in the city. The Berlin S-Bahn has better stop spacing and coverage *inside the city* than BART, DART, RTD-Denver and Link even though there is also a U-Bahn.

          No, they picked BART because they think it is an excellent regional rail system. This is actually quite common (which is why we have DART, RTD-Denver and the whole of “The Spine” even if the implementation isn’t as some would like). But it is absolutely backwards.

          Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter that much whether the suburbs are served by express buses, commuter trains or ferries. The quality of the system is more important. A lot depends on existing infrastructure. Some cities have a lot of existing rail — building a BART like system for Chicago would be stupid. Seattle — like just about every America city — has a very extensive freeway system. As a result, it isn’t difficult or expensive to provide service for most of the suburban riders that is better than a regional rail system. In contrast, the trip patterns in an urban area are very different. This means that even when you have that infrastructure, you lose potential riders. The 41 was great for getting from Northgate to downtown (when the express lanes were in its favor). But it was terrible if you wanted to get to Roosevelt, the UW or Capitol Hill. This is what a metro offers. A regional rail system offers the same thing but not that many people are taking those kind of trips. Thus Link is a definite improvement for Northgate compared to the buses. The problem is that by having so few stations — by emulating BART in that manner — it isn’t nearly as good. It most certainly won’t meet the needs of the region.

      32. @ Ross:

          There are two ways to look at BART: A technology/ mode or an agency. Being able to articulate the difference is important.

          BART is able to get a high farebox recovery in its technology for two reasons:

          1. By running 25 percent faster the can get 33 percent better farebox recovery (inverse of 75 percent is 133 percent).

          2. By running longer distances which deliver much higher fares per trip, so rather than $3 for riding 30 minutes they can get $6.

          When I read that people wish that Link was more like BART, I think that they’re mainly referring to faster trains. They probably would be okay with higher, distance-based fares too even though no one likes paying higher fares.

          I step back and look at BART differently — more as a transit agency teammate. BART Board and staff don’t expect to brand every transit service they support as ones that they put their name on nor ones that they make sole decisions for.

          Among our transit operators, ST is much more of a mode bully than BART is. BART the agency is objective enough to admit that their rail technology is not the most suitable for every corridor, which is how they ended up with a cable-pulled line (OAK Airport) and a DMU (E-BART). ST in contrast refuses to look at building any urban rail but Link light rail, even when it’s much more inferior once one gets 10-15 miles from the city core.

          Even the ST Express operation — although a useful service — still suffers from ST being more structurally selfish. BART is satisfied handing over funds to local agencies to local bus operators to brand and use as their own local services. ST instead insists that the local bus agencies brand everything as an ST service and does all the ST Express route planning.

          BART, with an elected board, is also participating in decentralized transit decision-making. That results in mandatory cooperation with not only other local bus operators but also countywide transportation planning agencies with sales taxes that fund to both build and operate transit. ST takes our tax money and spends it how they wish — and our only recourse is to complain to the Board for 2 minutes at public meetings or to write letters that both get ignored. The King County executive position is essentially able to be a transit dictator structurally.

          The recent KCM restructured for East King is a good case study. BART the agency would have simply given money to an East King local transit operator and let them offer the service. ST is so insular that KCM had to plan its restructure by guessing which ST Express services would still be run and where they would go.

          The baffling thing to me is your open hostility to BART. BART trains go much faster than Link trains, which is a clear problem with Link that you’ve discussed many times. BART also benefits from an amazing farebox recovery, which is often cited as important . BART corridor expansions are evaluated by local agencies and not forced or limited by BART so that they can get behind an a technology after objective evaluation that isn’t their branded mode — like what you and I have both long wanted for Ballard and West Seattle.

          Certainly every agency can be defined by either its branded transit service or by its operating budget. BART certainly has its major flaws, like failing to build crossover tracks in more of San Francisco. But the entire Bay Area has long been shaped by BART and its operation and its money remains essential to continue for the benefit of transit riders there. And our region could have learned to not make some of its mistakes by critically looking at the good and bad aspects of BART over the past few decades — and not summarily trashing it.

      33. According to Google maps, BART charges $14.25 to get from the SFO airport to Jack London square in Oakland. I’m not convinced Puget Sound is ready for that type of fare structure.

      34. There are a few characteristics of BART that made it largely unique in the world when it was built:

          1) Very wide stop spacing, even in the urban core.
          2) Regional rail service.
          3) Most of it was expensive to build because it was brand new railways.

          The first makes it different than a metro or even S-Bahns. The second makes it like commuter/regional rail as well as S-Bahns. The third stands in contrast with commuter/regional rail as well as S-Bahns. It is similar to very expensive commuter/regional rail with just a taste of the sort of urban coverage an S-Bahn line would have.

          The baffling thing to me is your open hostility to BART.

          OK, I’ll explain it again. BART is better than nothing. It is great that there is a train that crosses the bay. It is great that the trains are fast (especially when crossing the bay). But the DC Metro trains are fast too (they have a top speed of 75 mph). The thing that makes BART special — the thing that makes BART “BART-like” are the three things I mentioned above.

          Again, this is better than nothing but it is second-rate. You have to compare it with what they could have built — what most cities would have built. It would start with a proper metro. If you are going to spend a lot of money, that is where you spend it — it is always the most important thing. It is where you get the most riders. It is where you save the most time. It not only benefits people within that area, but outside it as well. In the case of the Bay Area that means multiple (underground) train lines in San Fransisco. There would be a lot more stations — if not additional lines — in the East Bay.

          Meanwhile, for the more distant locations, there would be express buses and commuter rail. Ridership would be much higher. The amount of total time saved would be much higher.

          BART trains go much faster than Link trains, which is a clear problem with Link that you’ve discussed many times.

          It isn’t that big of a problem. Seriously, which would you rather have, faster trains or a stop in First Hill? Faster trains or a line from Ballard to the UW? It isn’t even close. The same thing is true for Rainier Valley (what is supposed to be the subject of this post). Faster trains aren’t the main issue. The problem is that train runs on the surface and runs on MLK. With a proper metro you run down Rainier. You run underground (cut and cover) or above ground. You have stops every half mile or so. Oh, and since we built this thing this century it should have been automated. You save some time by reducing dwell times (and avoiding surface running).

          But with all of those stations in Rainier Valley (along with Beacon Hill, SoDo, Stadium) it would still take a while to get to downtown from SeaTac. The only way to really make it fast is to build a BART-style system. That would mean two, maybe three stops at most in Rainier Valley. Or you just skip it entirely. The bypass line is your main line. There might be a station in Georgetown and that would be it between SoDo and TIBS.

          BART also benefits from an amazing farebox recovery, which is often cited as important

          Yes, because the part of the BART that acts like a normal metro is quite cost effective. There are a lot of people that want to cross the bay (or even just within San Fransisco). It is just that it would be a lot more cost effective — the farebox recovery would be much higher — if it had a lot more stops.

          And yes, I realize they charge more for the longer trips. But it also costs a lot more to run that far. The trains are really fast but it still takes 45 minutes to get from Dublin/Pleasanton to the first stop in San Fransisco. There are also a lot fewer riders the farther out you go.

      35. “. You have to compare it with what they could have built — what most cities would have built. It would start with a proper metro.”

          But BART DID build the appropriate “metro” for Muni Metro and its five lines that operate as surface streetcars outside of the urban core when they built their initial line under Market Street. Please quit implying that they didn’t!

          Just because Muni Metro is not a branded BART service doesn’t mean that BART didn’t build it (and gave it to Muni which greatly improved Metro service).

   5. I think there are several, somewhat related reasons:

      Sound Transit was focused on distance. They were more interested in quantity than quality. One of their key goals is a subway line from Tacoma to Everett. This is absurdly long for most cities — let alone a city where almost all the density is within Seattle. As a result, compromises had to be made.

      We built things in the wrong order. It would have been quite reasonable to *only* build a subway line from the U-District to downtown. That certainly makes sense as the starting point. Build it like a normal subway, with lots of stations. It would be the type of thing they would do in Europe. It would be designed so that it could be extended (of course) but it would at least get people to understand what this is actually like. Remember, Seattle is a very provincial city. It seems crazy that people wouldn’t understand these things or at the very least compare ourselves to Vancouver (our nearest neighbor). Instead we compare ourselves to Portland (which has a light rail system).

      As a result, a lot of Rainier Valley businesses didn’t know what to expect. Remember, Rainier Valley had every reason to suspect that it was getting screwed over (again). As a result, local business interests got them to shift the line from Rainier Avenue to MLK. They also (apparently) wanted elevated or surface options. I assume this was because cut and cover (the obvious choice) would have been too disruptive. Or maybe they thought a subway line isn’t as attractive as a surface line. I know that seems bizarre but American attitudes towards transit are very complicated. On the one hand there is outright opposition from some locals. On the other hand some people romanticize certain modes (somehow a streetcar will turn your city into Vienna). Would mass transit be good for business? Bad for business? What type of transit are we talking about, anyway? Thus they ended up with surface running light rail on MLK. The wrong street, the wrong mode — oh well.

      There is another advantage to starting to the north: They could have kicked out all the buses the day it opened. You still would have had some buses running on the surface (as we do now) but all the UW buses would be replaced by rail. The 520 buses would be truncated at the UW. This happened anyway but there would have been no joint (bus and train) operations in the tunnel. This means that there would have been no reason to build the line as (low-floor) light rail. An automated light metro would have worked the day it opened if they started to the north.

      So yes, there were particulars but mostly it was the philosophy of distance versus stations (and provincialism along with good old American arrogance). Building these sorts of very expensive, freeway-adjacent hybrid commuter/metro systems is a uniquely American way of building transit. Like all uniquely American transit approaches it has failed, miserably over the years. BART, DART, Denver RTD — all pretty poor systems given their cost. The same goes for the obsession with streetcars and light rail. They definitely have their place but typically not where they are built in the USA. It isn’t like Canada is great at transit but they are just so much better than us.

      Reference: https://seattletransitblog.com/2025/06/21/past-plans-1980s-2000s/ — Wesley gives a great history of Rainier Valley rail (about half way through the post).

3. I think the questionnaire responses help reveal subtle (but potentially important) differences between candidates in races where the candidates are very similar at the surface. Perhaps it’s too late for many voters who have already decided, but if I were still undecided on certain races like Seattle D2 and KC Exec, I think I would details like different priorities for minor and major improvements rather illuminating.

   For KC Exec, while Zahilay’s response hits all the right notes prioritizing safety over throughput and does a good job recognizing the tragedy of each individual incident, I think Balducci’s response shows a deeper understanding of the technical and political complexities surrounding MLK as a major transportation corridor. For that race, perhaps it’s worth keeping in mind the KC Exec has a lot of responsibility and I don’t know how much time Dow Constantine spent thinking about which intersections should have left turns and which shouldn’t (and similar minutiae), but when it comes time for ST3.5 or whatever, who would be more likely to convince the rest of the ST Board that the cost and impacts of grade separation on MLK would be worthwhile? Who would be better at working with Seattle’s leadership to get SDOT to allow trains more often than every 6 minutes in the meantime?

   For Seattle D2, the most significant difference between the Ducksworth and Lin (regarding MLK, at least) is apparent in their rankings of potential major changes MLK. Ducksworth ranked removal of track crossings and install bus lanes above grade-separating Link (and ranked repurposing traffic lanes for parking ahead of prohibiting left turns), whereas Lin ranked grade separation first and repurposing traffic lanes for parking last. Again, Ducksworth seems like the more pragmatic candidate regarding transportation projects, but Lin provided more context on his rankings I think demonstrates a willingness to be transparent about his thought process and openness to input from transportation experts and community groups. I don’t think D2 will be poorly served by either of them.

   1. Nathan Dickey,

      Second, candidates say all kinds of crap that never happens. In Seattle most candidates use the same progressive boiler plate so it’s even tougher for voters to tell candidates apart. Seattle politics are not much different than our High School elections… the popular kids win.

      Nobody living in Rainier Beach believes that Sound Transit is ever going to “grade separate” light rail. There’s a list a mile long of other projects Sound Transit is on the hook for that’s a mile long. A Rainier Beach rebuild doesn’t even make that list…..

      1. tacomee, you know nothing about the Rainier Valley.

         >the popular kids win.

         yes… this is how elections work. Are you new here? The important part is to pay attention to what is popular. Today, safety improvements on MLK are popular. Slowing down traffic and speeding up the train on MLK are popular. This wasn’t always the case.

   2. Naively, I would like to see some real leadership. Zahilay’s response that he would ‘seek community input’ is code speak for ‘it ain’t my problem, you guys figure it out’; and signals to me that he is more aligned with Harrell’s way of doing things which results in keeping things status quo for fear of losing votes.

      As if there hasn’t been plenty of community involvement already! Just ask all those people killed or injured if they feel ‘involved’.

4. Sure is too bad transportation and bike champion Bruce Harrell couldn’t be bothered to chime in on the most important transportation issue in his own neighborhood.

   Thanks for these questionnaires Michael. Seems like a lot of consensus on next steps, at least directionally. I hope the lane reductions get done sooner rather than later. Paired with raised crosswalks I think would have the biggest impact for the neighborhood and is achievable within the near-term.

5. Ah yes, now to see how much history gets redefined through modern glasses.

6. And the same mistake now being considered for Everett. I rather like the solution of turning this into a street car and rerouting Link on the Boeing side while grade separated. It would improve service for the airport which is the second most used station and will likely become the first after the line 2 bridge opens, but also reduce travel times for the entire South segment to Tacoma. There’s no reason the entire system needs to be crippled by Rainier valley which still has stations like Rainier Beach with little to show for.

   1. The system isn’t “crippled” by Rainier Valley. It is the main reason it goes that far south. Without Rainier Valley it would be hard to justify running the trains that far.

      I find this attitude so weird. The biggest weakness in our system — by far — is our lack of stations. Yet many people want fewer stations. I don’t think they understand how mass transit systems work. They don’t realize that subway systems *always* outperform regional/commuter rail systems. They do so by creating trips that are not oriented to one destination. Trips like Northgate to the UW or Roosevelt to Capitol Hill. Or Rainier Beach to SeaTac. If we were to do anything radical (like adding a new line) it would be add a bunch of stations between SeaTac and Rainier Beach — not bypass Rainier Valley.

7. On BART…

   “With the Bay Area’s large gaps in land use as a result of water and steep hills”

   That’s not the problem. There’s no problem with running nonstop across a bay, protected natural area, or industrial area. That’s one of the things metros are for: to bridge gap bottlenecks. New York City would be much worse off if subways weren’t allowed to connect Manhattan with Queens or go through the Queens industrial area. The areas around BART stations should have gotten infill density either before or after the stations were built.

   What is the ten minutes of green emptiness in the middle of the Dublin/Pleasanton line around Castro Valley station? It looks like a protected natural area with a few farms. It’s pleasant to go through like riding a ferry, but it was so surprising the first time I rode it.

   “To say that Link is BART is deeply wrong. They are both regional systems in scope, but that’s where the similarities functionally end. BART is faster, and actually regional in network design.”

   Link is better than BART in some ways. It runs all the way through Seattle’s long axis and serves the eastern half, which is the densest and highest-ridership part. Seattle was lucky UW is in the city rather than Berkeley in the suburbs. BART serves only the southeastern quarter or San Francisco, and that’s mainly just downtown and two stations in the Mission District. In contrast, Link has nine urban stations outside downtown connecting four urban villages (Northgate, Roosevelt, U-District, Beacon Hill, and Rainier Valley) over a ten-mile distance, greatly improving travel times for a large percentage of Seattleites. Out to Redmond, Lynnwood, and the airport, Link is comparable to BART. Beyond that, Link’s slowness becomes a disadvantage relative to BART.

   What is the reason

8. Top & Best Smart Lights & Bulbs make home lighting smarter and more energy-efficient. I love how these bulbs combine style with technology. Great post — very helpful for choosing the right smart light!

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