See yesterday’s post for ongoing election updates & discussion.
Transit & Streets:
- Business owners in Federal Way are excited for the upcoming Link extension (King 5)
- Seattle Budget Tweaks Would Add Transit Security Czar, Rescue Waterfront Streetcars (The Urbanist)
- SDOT realized it might have to return nearly $4M in FTA grant funds after a USDOT audit revealed one of SDOT’s consultants may have had an unfair competitive advantage (The Seattle Times, $).
- Driverless cars may never be 100% safe, but the CEO of Waymo thinks they can make their cars much safer than the average driver (Wired). How about being safer than a bus? Meanwhile, Tesla rolled out “mad max” mode for its autopilot feature, and it’s as a bad as it sounds (Ars Technica)
- An interview with Ian Choudri, the new CEO of the CA HSR project (SmartCitiesDive)
Land Use, Commentary, and More:
- Despite the government shutdown, the US Senate passed a bill which would prioritize FTA funding for projects accompanied by pro-housing policy to bolster transit-oriented development (Streetsblog USA)
- What we lost when cars won (Grist)
- The View From Nathan’s Bus: The Harder Thing (The Urbanist)
- Jon Talton thinks the PNW should brace for climate refugees in coming years (The Seattle Times, $). He calls for electrifying Amtrak Cascades and building the 1st Avenue Streetcar, but stops short of calling for denser, climate-adapted housing.
This is an Open Thread.
Safer than a bus would be pretty difficult to pull off! Buses are among the biggest vehicles on the road, so they “win” in most collisions.
I would imagine Nathan is thinking of safety in overall terms. A bus hitting a car is very bad. But not only do buses not get in that many accidents (the drivers are better than average) but the accident rate *per person* is much lower. Thus overall buses are much safer for society (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-11/cities-with-good-public-transit-have-fewer-road-fatalities).
Yes. People who are bad at driving aren’t typically hired as bus drivers, and bus drivers have better training besides. But it may, someday, be possible for automatic driving to be better than the typical bus driver. I assume we are currently nowhere near that point, but if and when we ever do reach it… we should switch the buses to automatic driving.
I think a lot people assume that automatic taxis will replace buses, but that doesn’t really make sense. Road space is at a premium in cities, and buses are the most efficient use of that space.
Yes, I was considering injuries per passenger mile, which are much lower for buses than for cars.
It’s a lot more complicated to drive a bus than it is to drive a car, which is why operation requires significant supplemental licensure. However, partial automation of bus operations might allow operators to take on more of an “attendant” role on the bus. I think fully unattended automation could be problematic if interior issues from unruly passengers become more significant than exterior issues from unruly traffic.
But it may, someday, be possible for automatic driving to be better than the typical bus driver. I assume we are currently nowhere near that point, but if and when we ever do reach it… we should switch the buses to automatic driving.
Agreed. It could be transformational. Even without making additional bus purchases you could run the buses a lot more often. Think of all the routes that *only* run during peak. Or run more often during peak. That is a lot of buses that sit idle most of the day. But it also changes the economics quite a bit. It costs money to buy and maintain the buses. But a high percentage goes into the driving. If that shifts you can run a lot more buses for the same cost. This means the buses are a lot more frequent. This in turn makes it easier for the agency to create a more cost effective network (i. e. a more grid like system) even if it sometimes requires a transfer. There is an economy of scale with buses and if it is suddenly a lot cheaper to operate them then agencies can take advantage of that.
In contrast, there is no economy of scale with taxis. You still have to buy and maintain a lot of vehicles. It becomes like car share systems. Cheaper, but still not really cheap. Then there are the other problem you mentioned. There is a reason why taxicabs were regulated and they limited their numbers way back when. Too many of them and you have a complete mess. Calling a cab doesn’t do you much good if it is stuck in traffic. There is a tragedy of the commons with systems that don’t scale (and taxicabs don’t).
I think fully unattended automation could be problematic if interior issues from unruly passengers become more significant than exterior issues from unruly traffic.
It is not much different than riding a train, especially ones without open gangways (like Link). Each train car is similar to the train. The passengers are on their own. They might have security on their train car, they might not. It is a little cheaper to provide security with a train car because they carry more riders. It is cheaper (per rider). But even so it would be odd to see a security guard in every train car every time. It is worth noting that the drivers play an increasingly limited role in this regard. It is relatively common for riders not to pay when they board a bus. Many of them hop on in the back. The driver doesn’t bother to yell at them, let alone stop the bus and tell them to pay. Now they are being put behind barriers (similar to train operators). It is not quite the same, but similar.
A driverless system would likely have proof of payment (or be free). If the former, then the fare inspectors have a dual role — fare enforcement and security. Maybe not at the level of a normal security guard, but like the bartender at a bar. They are the voice of authority and typically know how to handle the situation (hopefully).
It is also likely to start outside the United States. We are laggards when it comes to transit and this would be no different. I could see Waymo selling their system to, say, Germany so that they can automate the buses.
There is a labor issue but you can slowly replace drivers or buy them out. They can also play other roles (as you suggest). Usually drivers are expected to have a customer service background (unlike truck drivers) so it wouldn’t be that big of a transition to fare enforcement (especially if they are more “ambassadors” then “fare cops”). I could easily see a pairing. One security guard and one “ambassador”. You would have a few dozen pairs of those folks replacing the hundreds of drivers.
Just to give you an idea of the nebulous nature of the term “BRT”, here is part of a FAQ about a new busway in Monterey/Salinas:
Bus rapid transit (BRT), also called a busway or transitway, is a bus-based public transport system with features that include bus-only lanes and priority traffic signaling. These features result in greater capacity, increased reliability, better traffic flow, and fewer vehicles on the road overall. A BRT-centered strategy allows MST to maximize the efficiency of our transportation system.
So basically they are calling a new busway a “BRT”, even if it is just regular buses running on it. To be clear, I think the busway is great. I also have no problem with them calling it “BRT”. Call it “BRT” or a “busway” or a “rabbit-road” for all I care. As long as the buses go faster, that is great. But it also shows how silly the term is anymore. You have buses stuck in traffic being called BRT because they run a little bit more often than other (infrequent) routes and are a different color. But at the same time, any bus that runs in the busway is BRT too.
Isn’t a busway the ideal BRT implementation? Maybe it’s lacking in branding if regular buses use it, but I’ve always felt that the running way portion of BRT is far and away the most important aspect. There’s time savings to be had with off board payment and level boarding, but those are way smaller than the savings for dedicated, separate right of way. The FH streetcar takes the same amount of time between 12th and 5th as the 7/14/36/105 do, despite fewer stops, level boarding, offboard payment, and branding differences.
I guess the issue is mixed route buses with different paint being called BRT – not same paint buses running on a busway being called BRT. The busway is far closer to the spirit of rapid transit than the branding
Bus Rapid Transit implies a distinct line that’s faster and more frequent than a regular bus route. If the 2 and 60 share the G’s center lanes, that doesn’t make them BRT. If there are center between 9th and 15th that only regular buses use, that’s not BRT. The SODO Busway has the physical features of a BRT corridor — exclusive bus lanes — but that doesn’t make the 101 and 150 and other routes that use BRT. Because the entire routes aren’t enhanced. In order for the 150 to be BRT, it would need some amount of transit-priority lanes, stations, and stop-diet consideration along the rest of the route. It wouldn’t necessarily need red buses or a letter, although Metro might need to distinguish the route number somehow such as 150R or R150.
Otherwise it raises the absurd possibility that half a route is BRT and the other half isn’t.
So busways per se need another distinguishing term than BRT. And “busway” is currently too ambiguous because the public doesn’t know what it means. Does it mean no cars are allowed? The term is too new; people don’t know that.
Some bus agencies name their entire agency “___ Rapid Transit District”. That would be like “King County Metro Rapid Transit District”. Many of those districts’ entire bus network is infrequent and slow, so it’s like our Dear Leader saying he won in a landslide and inflation is zero.
“the absurd possibility that half a route is BRT and the other half isn’t”
This isn’t absurd at all. It’s exactly what Muni did for Van Ness, and that’s been overwhelmingly successful (even if it took like 40 years to get built). There are global examples too. In Curitiba (birthplace of modern BRT), the recently opened Linha Verde on highway 476 has buses that run in mixed traffic through run onto the BRT segments.
There is no reason that BRT needs to be exclusive only to specific BRT lines, just like there’s no reason why metro tunnels have to be exclusive to metro lines. In Osaka and Tokyo, privately owned interurban rail lines through run onto the public metro system. There are downsides of this approach (it makes the network less legible for sure), but there are upsides too (better service for riders)
Thinking of BRT as line only, or branding specific, has limitations which the G illustrates well. A BRT alignment on Madison designed to allow for branched operation could have extended G line speeds to basically all of Capitol Hill and Madison Valley out to Madison Park. Choosing one medium intensity node to serve intensively (Madison Valley), while leaving other medium intensity nodes with 20 minute service (15th) was a choice that didn’t need to be made in my opinion.
That is what I’m getting at Mike. The term is meaningless. At least “light rail” implies a certain type of train. But BRT can be just about anything. It can be a bus that is a different color but is stuck in traffic. It can any bus that runs on a busway (making it Open BRT, presumably). It can be a special high-floor bus that can only serve special bus stops. Or not. Oh, and it can have doors on both sides. Or not. It tends to be frequent but sometimes it isn’t. It usually is more frequent than the other buses but even that is no guarantee. It is almost always proof-of-payment so that is the closest thing to a definition. Of course some agencies have proof-of-payment for some areas or their entire fleet, and they don’t them all BRT.
The variance in quality is fine. What gets me is the obsession over the idea. That is the part that is silly. For example the G encounters congestion downtown. At that point the BRT is not very BRT-ish. It would be nice to fix that. But the 8 also experiences congestion. It would be nice to fix that as well.
It is no surprise that the movement towards “BRT” in this country follows on the footsteps of the streetcar obsession. There is this “magic bullet” idea with transit in this country. Build this one thing and everything will be better. It is wrong. Completely wrong. A handful of streetcars won’t save you. A handful of BRT buses won’t either. Neither will a sprawling light rail line that takes the easy way out and follows the freeway (or runs on the surface). The only way to have a really good system is to make all the buses faster, one by one. This means applying all of the tricks you could possible use for BRT but for all the buses. Add as much right-of-way as possible. Apply a proof-of-payment in as many areas as possible. Run the buses more frequently — good God, run the buses more frequently, America. The only part of BRT that is not worth doing is painting the bus a different color. Otherwise just make every bus you can more BRT-like as possible (but without the silly designation).
Choosing one medium intensity node to serve intensively (Madison Valley), while leaving other medium intensity nodes with 20 minute service (15th) was a choice that didn’t need to be made in my opinion.
The terrible frequency on 15th is just bad routing. The 10 and 12 should split later (if at all). But ending the G Line in Madison Valley is quite reasonable. You could branch but sending half the buses to Montlake throws off the schedule. If you branched earlier then you lose the connection to the 48. You could send all the buses to Madison Park but that is overkill. You could turn back half the buses but that really isn’t good routing either. If the G ran out to Madison Park then the riders there have a long trip to Link. A better solution is to either branch the 8 (sending half the buses to Madison Park) or send all the buses there. That way riders from Madison Park can directly transfer to Link, transfer to a streetcar/bus on Broadway, transfer to the G (to get downtown or to First Hill) or ride the bus to South Lake Union/Uptown. All of those transfers are (or should be) very frequent (every six minutes or better midday).
I don’t think a branch makes sense but to your main point about the term “BRT”, it doesn’t matter. By some definition the bus is not BRT when it is downtown. It is not BRT when it is Madison Valley. It is only BRT on that one section where it is running in the middle of the street. Otherwise it can (and does) get stuck behind cars. Thus I would call it Open BRT (although I really don’t care what you call it). Oh, and this is another argument for keeping the route fairly short. The bus is very frequent. The longer the route, the more likely the bus is going to be bunched. The main way you can avoid that — and have a longer route — is to have a fast, bus-only corridor (e. g. something someone might call “BRT”). That exists for part of the route but not all of it. The G is fine. It is the other buses in the area that are poorly routed.
Ross,
The larger point is that only having one Capitol Hill area line using the new busway is a bad choice when there are far more lines that could reasonably use it. The 10 is just an obvious example since it used to run on Madison. Running the G as it exists now every 10 minutes opposite a 10 still on Madison would better utilize the core Madison segment and greatly improve the speed and reliability of the 10.
The G rocks, but does Madison Valley need a bus every 6 minutes while the rest of the area gets one every 20? It just seems like a plan that was too fixated on one single line that checks a bunch of BRT boxes, rather than a holistic improvement to every bus that touches Madison.
The reason I think the Muni project on Van Ness is illustrative is that the 49 kept its route, but got way faster. GGT kept all their routes, but now they are much faster. It was a hugely successful project that should be replicated.
The issue with BRT is that the easiest thing to do (branding a new line) is so far down the list of important things to do that it doesn’t even register. But it’s all agencies do, since few have the political mandate or gumption to reallocate road space. What we need is a G-like speed improvement for as many bus lines for as little money as possible. Having line-agnostic corridors is the most efficient way to do that that I can think of
I think it’s important to note that Van Ness BRT has only right-handed stops. That gives a lot more flexibility to have more than one route stop there. SF offset the stops by direction so southbound and northbound stops are not directly next to the other.
By putting in left stops, SDOT built in limitations to using the Madison corridor stops more strategically.
The larger point is that only having one Capitol Hill area line using the new busway is a bad choice when there are far more lines that could reasonably use it.
There are plenty of lines that could use it but it isn’t obvious that doing so would result in a better network. Having the buses converge on Madison has its weaknesses. Branching at 23rd looks great on paper. There are no more connections to be made. Density drops off on both branches. The problem is 24th is very unreliable. You also force a transfer for riders of the 48 (or overlap, which is worse). You are much better off having the 48 just keep going and asking people to transfer.
Branching at 15th is also flawed. You weaken that connection with the 48. You also weaken the Pike/Pine corridor. At best the only bus that goes through there is the 2 (assuming it doglegs north and runs on Pine, starting at 15th). The 2 would have to run every ten minutes just to provide the current headways along there (which are less than ideal).
In contrast, consider this proposal: https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/08/30/high-frequency-network-surrounding-rapidride-g/. I’m not saying this is the only option. But consider what it means for the area. Without any additional savings anywhere else you are running the 10 every ten minutes all the way to Volunteer Park. But it is also possible the 10 could run every 12 minutes along with the 2. This means the combined 2/10 branches at 13th. This means that the Pike/Pine corridor would have 6 minute headways (or better) from 13th to downtown. Thus you have both corridors (Madison and Pike/Pine) with frequent service.
The point being that there are plenty of obvious flaws with the existing network. The fact that the 10 and 12 branch where they do is just stupid. At a minimum they should branch at 15th & Thomas. But it is not at all obvious that the G should branch anywhere (or be extended).
By putting in left stops, SDOT built in limitations to using the Madison corridor stops more strategically.
At most it just means buying more of those buses, but otherwise blumdrew’s idea would be fine. There are similar limitations with all of RapidRide. We can’t easily modify (or branch) the RapidRide D because the buses are painted red. But I get your point. We could easily just abandon the RapidRide idea and run regular buses on the D route — we couldn’t do that with the RapidRide G.
“does Madison Valley need a bus every 6 minutes while the rest of the area gets one every 20?”
Priorities, priorities, as I argued below. We finally got one east-west route ultra-frequent in east Seattle. The focus should be in increasing the other routes to 10 minutes, not on giving up on the major achievement on one route after just one year. Having one ultra-frequent route gives people at least one place they can go east and then walk a little further to their destination, or choose services, jobs, and a place to live along the Madison corridor until the other routes catch up.
If anything I wish the G’s frequency was better distributed between hours/days of the week. Why is Sunday so much worse than any other day?
As an example if hours were redistributed by reducing trips on Saturday, the G could be run at 10-minute frequencies weekdays 7 PM – 9 PM and weekends 6 AM to 9 PM
If anything I wish the G’s frequency was better distributed between hours/days of the week. Why is Sunday so much worse than any other day?
This goes back to the “BRT” idea. With BRT you can get the federal government to chip in. But only if you run the buses frequent enough. Does that include Sunday? Apparently not. So rather than a sensible mix — even if means dropping the midday frequency to 7.5 minutes (oh, the horror) — we have this ridiculous drop-off on both night and weekend.
“does Madison Valley need a bus every 6 minutes while the rest of the area gets one every 20?”
Priorities, priorities, as I argued below.
Wrong. It is bad routing. For no extra money the buses could run every ten minutes. Is a mix of 6 and 10 ideal? Maybe not, but it is sure a hell of a lot better than 6 and 20. On my map I have transit running on both Broadway and Pike/Pine every 6 minutes (at no extra cost). Just sayin’
“Why is Sunday so much worse than any other day?”
Because Metro didn’t have enough hours for Sunday and evenings. It’s not that Metro didn’t want to. It knows people don’t all stay at home on Sundays. or that ridership suddenly plummets 60% at 7pm for some inexplicable reason. We should be commending Metro for having 6-minute frequency somewhere, not make the perfect the enemy of the good.
What Metro needs is more hours and an end to the driver shortage so that it can fill in all these underservice gaps. And it needs hours for reliability to mitigate street congestion, so that it can add layover time and have standby buses to mitigate street congestion. That’s where Seattle’s TBD should have been higher in 2020, the county should have a countywide Metro measure. and SDOT should be painting the town red because transit-priority lanes make buses more reliable and frequent “for free”. We don’t need to rob Peter to pay Paul. That’s just what Metro has to do when it has inadequate hours.
“With BRT you can get the federal government to chip in. But only if you run the buses frequent enough.”
The minimum is 15 minutes. Several RapidRide lines started with 15-minute frequency, and reverted to it for a few years during the pandemic.
The power of BRT is making buses faster. That’s not only valuable for current riders and attracting new riders, but it lets a bus operator run buses more frequently using the same number of buses.
Madison was redesigned to move buses quickly. That objective has made trips faster, attracted riders and greatly improved productivity! Yay!
That’s just the opposite of what’s happened nearby on Seneca, and especially on Pike and Pine between 6th Ave and 14th Ave. A ton of stop signs and elimination of left turn pockets have slowed buses — so Metro must run less often with the same number of buses.
An outcome of the choice of making streets more pedestrian and bicycle friendly is that buses on them move slower. Even if it’s a bus-only street it may still move slower. Unless a route gets lots more service gets put on the street, bus frequencies have to get worse to account for the bus’ lower round trip travel time.
And this is the tragedy of RapidRide G. It wasn’t designed to carry two RapidRide Lines that branch, taking better advantage of the faster speeds. Nope. It’s just one line that runs no further. And the left door stops mean that adding a second route would require new vehicles — and abandoning the ETBs for any of the parallel routes.
Meanwhile, we await the next move by SDOT to make Metro buses slower and slower and s-l-o-w-e-r — leaving Metro no choice but to lower bus frequencies on their scheduled runs moving forward. And the slower those buses get the less use they’ll get and the less productive they will be.
Our streets are finite resources. When choices are made to change bus route travel speeds faster or slower, buses on them are directly affected.
Too often SDOT touts their latest projects and summarily ignores that they cumulatively make things slower for transit riders and forces Metro to reduce frequencies. Transit interests should be pushing for mitigating the impacts to transit speeds in some way since SDOT routinely yet unintentionally is eroding transit speeds on the many non-BRT streets with bus routes.
I remember reading somewhere that Madison is too narrow for right side bus stops and the center bus lanes barely fit
Just because the other corridors aren’t as fast as they should be doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with the RapidRide G. If anything, it shows it was the right choice. Again, if you are going to have a branch for Madison, where it would be? There is only one obvious answer: 23rd. Just look at a map. There are no north-south lines east of 23rd. There are no east-west connections between Thomas and the ship canal. That means that with the frequent part of the line (the trunk) you make all the connections. It is also when density drops off. More dramatically with 23rd than with Madison but there is still a drop off (especially between Madison Valley and Madison Park). It is really the only place where a branch would work. So why didn’t they do that?
To begin with, there is traffic on 23rd/24th. A bus coming from the UW could easily be delayed a few minutes and next thing you know, it gets on Madison right behind a bus that started in Madison Park. Trying to maintain consistent six minute headways is hard enough. The last thing you want to do is made the route longer and less reliable.
Likewise, you can’t blame RapidRide G for the slow speed of travel on Pike/Pine. More to the point, just because a corridor is slow doesn’t mean it should be abandoned. The route of the 8 makes sense *despite* its slow speed. The same goes for Pike/Pine. There should be frequent service along the corridor — we shouldn’t just send all the buses to Madison.
The real issue is not the exclusive use of the Madison corridor by the RapidRide G. Put it this way. Imagine the 10 runs every twenty minutes and is sent down Madison. Does that fix anything? No, of course not. It still sucks. The opposite is true as well. Buses like the 10, 11, 12 and 49 can run a lot more frequently *without* sending them Madison. The problem is that Metro has focused on coverage to a ridiculous level. That, and just poor routing. The 2 basically duplicates the RapidRide G from downtown to 15th & Union. And no, I don’t think it should run on Madison with the G. It should run on Pike/Pine. Or consider the 49. If it kept going straight on Broadway, riders would have to transfer to get downtown. But they would have a lot of great options. The bus runs right by the Link Station. If the 2 was modified it would run by buses running every five or six minutes on Pike/Pine. It would run by the RapidRide G running every six minutes on Madison and the 3/4 running every 7.5 minutes from Jefferson. But instead it goes downtown. At first glance this seems to create a nice little spine for Pike/Pine between Broadway and downtown. Look again. Pay attention to the schedule. Unlike a 2/10 combination (which could run every six minutes) you’ve still got ten minute gaps. There are three buses running on the corridor at that point (the 10, 12 and 49). They all run every 20 minutes. You can’t time them to be spaced equally apart. Not if you want the 10 and 12 to be timed together (and you most certainly do).
It is just a really crappy network but putting additional buses on the RapidRide G — which is highly unlikely to happen — wouldn’t magically fix it. There are ways to fix this — and I proposed one. Again, it is not the only possibility. But the problem is not the RapidRide G — it is just the poor routing around it.
I think the 10/12 has a few problems:
1. It’s not long enough. The overlapping segment is only about 1.2 miles long. The routes should probably be through-routed with something and overlap further on the eastern side (perhaps branch at Thomas, as Ross suggests). For trips under a 10-20 minute walk, many people will just walk.
2. It’s not frequent enough. 10 minute frequency is pretty good for longer routes, but a short urban connector needs to be run way more often than that to be useful.
3. It’s not fast enough. I think this isn’t as big of an issue as the two points above, but the Pike/Pine corridor is pretty slow. The buses often get stuck behind vehicles turning right. Ideally the buses should run contraflow or in a dedicated bus corridor, but failing that perhaps the Pike/Pine corridor could get extended to Broadway or so with additional BAT lanes.
We finally got one east-west route ultra-frequent in east Seattle. The focus should be in increasing the other routes to 10 minutes…
I agree. But I would say 10 minutes or better. Broadway should have 6 minute headways from Howell (where the streetcar ends) to Jackson (where the streetcar turns). The Pike/Pine corridor should have 6 minute (or even 5 minute) headways between 13th and downtown. Yesler should have 7.5 minute frequency from 23rd to downtown. All of this is possible if we just reroute the buses. (OK, the Pike/Pine thing is a bit tricky. The 2 runs every fifteen minutes. The 10/12 runs every ten. You can’t just mix them and get good headways. Ideally the 2 runs every ten minutes as well but that would have to come from somewhere.)
One big reason for the appearance of an operator shortage is that Metro is providing the operators for all the Link extensions. In the case of the full 2 Line, that is a lot of operators that will suddenly be needed when full-schedule testing begins. That basically means we can look forward to having even fewer operators available for buses with the Spring 2026 service change.
Correction: “way more often” is overstating it, but the shorter the route the more often it needs to run to be useful.
Ross,
I do really like that proposal (and particularly the 60/49 combination), but think you are overestimating the importance of the transfer with the 48. Outside of a 48-G downtown oriented trip, there isn’t a lot of reason to make the transfer. If you’re starting in Capitol Hill, it’s probably faster to take Link to UW. And if you want to head down south, the transfer at 23rd and Madison is bad enough that Google won’t even suggest it to me. From Pike/Pine/12th to Garfield HS, I get 2/48, Streetcar/4, 8 (lol), and Streetcar/27 as options. Maybe overlap of a G branch and the 48 wouldn’t be too bad. I mean they do serve different areas, but it’s also not a very high ridership area, so that would feel like a pretty pointless branch.
I think the biggest issue with the plan you linked is just that Pike/Pine is brutally slow for buses, which isn’t really a flaw in the plan. It’s more like a flaw with the way Pike/Pine has been envisioned. That said, I would also be interested in the 2 running down the route of the G from Capitol Hill to downtown (if the running way was built with right hand stops). I don’t think it’s worth buying new buses for the 2 just to do that, and obviously there’s the issue of “no trolleys with double sided doors made in America”, so this is idle chatter about something that won’t happen.
Anyways, I just am frustrated that the way the G was envisioned was all about a new BRT line, since it meant making decisions like stops on both sides of the bus, which limits operational flexibility in the long term (and of course has lead to the ditching of trolleys on the route). The question of how service should be distributed between Madison, Pike/Pine, and Union has fewer answers now than it did 10 years ago. Maybe this is good – since its not like the current (or former) set up was without flaws, and fewer options means fewer ways to get it wrong.
But the overall point is less about the specifics of the G, interesting as they may be. It’s about what “BRT” means. For American transit planners, it means slapping paint on a bus, building nicer shelters, and maybe having offboard payment. I think that all of those are incidental at best and actively harmful at worst. The branding focus means that improving corridors that serve many routes ala Van Ness in San Francisco is not generally considered, and low-density branches on local streets are also generally ruled out. Not all BRT projects have those use cases, but certainly some do, and I think the G fits partially into that category – even if the current set up has its benefits with room for improvement without radically rethinking the G itself. Ruling them out because we can only imagine BRT to be a specifically branded line is shortsighted at best, quixotic at worst.
Two more things: I think Pike/Pine might be the best fit for the 2, but Madison is far superior to the existing route. And running the 2 down Madison has the benefit of extending fast service to Capitol Hill to Belltown/SLU, something which is a bit of a gap right now. Maybe that’s better served by the 8 in the long term, but the 8 also bypasses the southern reaches of Capitol Hill and First Hill
And on Yesler – I still don’t see a strong case for consolidating the 3/4 there, as 7.5 minute service from downtown to 23rd would imply. I could be convinced of a Yesler – Broadway – Jefferson route for the 3/4, but would still mildly prefer bus lane treatments on James to resolve the travel time issues at peak hours. Without good service on Jefferson, there’s a big hole in center of Central District. Unless you mean bumping the 27 to 15 minute service and moving the 14 to Yesler from Jackson at 23rd. I could get behind that, though the bump on the 27 would have to come from somewhere.
Metrorail operators and bus drivers are completely different jobs. They’re not interchangeable. Idk where you got the impression that one takes away from the other. Quite a few of the new operators are public hires with no prior metrobus driving experience at all.
RE Pike/Pine:
“Ideally the buses should run contraflow or in a dedicated bus corridor.”
I don’t think a contraflow bus lane would do much. The only way I see it happening is if SDOT took away both parking and a PBL. But even then, the bus would have to stop at several intersections with stop signs and wait for all the other movements including pedestrians every 220 feet. It would be a messy and controversial project that would not yield much travel time benefit.
From a travel time standpoint, I think that rerouting Route 2 to run eventually on Pike and Pine is probably DOA. It would add 5-10 minutes more to ride Downtown, and many if not most of the Route 2 riders from the CD and Madrona are headed to destinations well south of Seneca and they would all have to transfer.
It appears possible to put Route 2 on Madison but use the curb where the median stops are — or skip the stop all together.
However, the effort to add wire for Route 2 on Madison is not a negligible concern.
PS. There are no ETB wires on Pike east of Bellevue or on any streets connecting Pine and Union east of Broadway . A 2 bus reroute would need to wait until they got installed or forgo being an ETB — or experience additional delay as buses switch back and forth between battery and wire.
During busy days/hours the 10/12 gets stuck behind right turning traffic blocked by pedestrians. It can add up to something like a few minutes from Broadway to 3rd, quite a lot of time for such a short trip.
Contraflow or a bus corridor is certainly unrealistic for the near future though since Pike/Pine just got rebuilt
Outside of a 48-G downtown oriented trip
Yeah, that is the trip. It is not just to downtown but to anywhere on Madison (e. g. parts of Capitol Hill and First Hill). It makes it much easier to just get rid of the 43 (something we still haven’t done). It really makes sense for the 48 to just keep going straight north-south and this is where someone would transfer if headed to any of those destinations (especially downtown).
In contrast, an inverted turn doesn’t make sense. To go from Garfield up to John and back would be silly. The G is a diagonal bus and that angle doesn’t make sense. In contrast, from Union it does make sense. You could branch there. The problem is, that would mean cutting frequency at 13th which is way too early. The four stops east of 12th (on the G) account for more than half the ridership. You wouldn’t want to run buses half as often through there. By sending the 2 on Pike/Pine you give riders from Madrona the best of both worlds. If they are headed along the Madison corridor they can transfer to a very frequent (and fast) bus. If they want to go on the Pike/Pine corridor they just stay on the bus. In contrast, right now they go next to the G all the way downtown and the only way to get to the Pike/Pine corridor is via a bus that runs a lot less often than the G.
But the overall point is less about the specifics of the G, interesting as they may be. It’s about what “BRT” means.
Yes, and I think we are on the same page there. The concept is either nebulous at best or counter-productive at worse. Call a new busway “BRT” and run a bunch of buses on it? Great! Who cares what you call it. Pick a particular route and shovel money into it while shortchanging other routes? Bad idea. https://marcochitti.substack.com/p/down-with-the-brt-long-live-the-bus.
This does get back to the RapidRide G. I would argue that Madison should only have one bus route on it. At the same time, I think there should be several buses on Pike/Pine. So maybe we should improve Pike/Pine before improving Madison. The irony is, since it would be several buses (not just one) it is less likely to happen with the whole focus on “BRT”. You either create a bunch of BRT routes or it breaks the model.
But this is backwards. Improvements should not be based on individual routes. They should be based on particular corridor segments. For example it would be great if there were bus or BAT lanes on Jackson between Rainier and downtown. Not because of the (potentially future RapidRide) 7 or the streetcar (which is supposed to get special treatment). No, you improve the corridor because there are four routes that combine there impacting tens of thousands of riders. The same thing is true close to the Montlake Bridge (or the Fremont and University bridges). It is the same idea with the SoDo busway or the Third Avenue transit mall. Those improvements save more time for riders than all of the RapidRide projects put together. That’s because they speed up a bunch of different routes. I’m not saying there aren’t particular routes that could definitely use improvement (the Metro 8 stands out) but so should sections of roadway that are shared by buses that will never be RapidRide.
And on Yesler – I still don’t see a strong case for consolidating the 3/4 there, as 7.5 minute service from downtown to 23rd would imply.
No, that is a different thing. Sorry for the confusion. The only reason to move the 3/4 to Yesler is to avoid congestion on James. The bus would be unchanged on Jefferson.
No, what I’m suggesting is what I have on the map — although I got the numbers wrong. The 106 is sent to downtown via Yesler. It combines with the 27 for very good frequency. But I forgot the frequency of the 27 was so poor. Buses wouldn’t run every 7.5 minutes (not unless the 27 ran more frequently). You would have a 7.5, 7.5, 15 minute pattern. Less than ideal but still a lot better than what we currently have.
That being said, I could easily see this: Have the 27 branch at MLK. One branch follows the current route, the other one heads towards Madison Valley, replacing that part of the 8. Now when the 106 is sent to Yesler it can combine with those buses for 7.5 minute headways along Yesler from 23rd to downtown.
I think the 10/12 has a few problems:
1. It’s not long enough.
I disagree but I get your point. The shorter the trip, the more important frequency is. But according to Google it takes about 35 minutes to get from 15th & Aloha to 9th & Pine. At that point you aren’t even in the heart of downtown (you aren’t close to the bus mall on 3rd). In contrast, Google says that trip takes 12 minutes by bus. That is a big time savings. I think a ten minute 10 would get a lot of riders. For that matter, I think a 12 minute ten would get plenty of riders.
But as you get to the middle of the route you would tend to get less. From 13th and Pine to 4th and Pine is a bit over a mile — Google puts the walking at 24 minutes. The bus takes 10 minutes. If you just miss the bus, you may just start walking. Sure, the bus will probably get you a there a couple minutes sooner but walking is a lot more reliable. But that is why branching the 2 and 10 works so well. Just as you get close to downtown (and limit the number of potential trips) you double the frequency. A bus running every five or six minutes is worth waiting for.
I don’t think a contraflow bus lane would do much.
I think it would make a huge difference. It would be like the center lanes on Madison. Speaking of which, that is the biggest mistake they made with the RapidRide G. They didn’t run contraflow downtown. If they had, then then the buses would be considerably faster and more reliable. I know someone at Metro suggested it (I suggested it as well) but it didn’t happen.
Anyway, back to Pike/Pine. If buses ran contraflow then yes, the buses have to wait for traffic lights. But the same thing is true on Madison. That would work for the one-way sections of Pike/Pine. The buses would go down Pike, turn right on Third and head back up the hill on Pine. But that still leaves Bellevue and the two-way section of Pine (east of Bellevue). One option would be to just turn that into a transit mall. There are some driveways there — that might meet with some resistance. Another is to continue the contraflow idea. That allows drivers to access the various driveways (but only one direction). So the one-way section of Pike and Pine could be extended to Madison. This is a lot less disruptive then a transit mall (for drivers) but just as good. The main disadvantage to single-lane contraflow is that buses can’t pass buses. Since these are trolleys it isn’t much of an issue.
I’m not saying a transit mall can’t work. It could. Third Avenue has driveways and it works. You just limit the times when an ordinary car can access the roadways. I would likely pick Pine as the transit mall. This allows buses to just keep going straight on Pine from downtown to Capitol Hill. It is trickier to turn around downtown though. I think the easiest option would be to go all way down to First. Turn right there and then turn right on Stewart. That means adding a contraflow lane on Stewart. The bus could turn right on Second but it might as well turn right on third (with a stop on Third). Then a left on Pine and it would head up the hill. So basically a transit mall on Pine from 15th to the First along with a small contraflow lane on Stewart and it would work out nicely. You would have to add wire of course, pretty much no matter what you did. But it would make a huge difference.
I think that rerouting Route 2 to run eventually on Pike and Pine is probably DOA. It would add 5-10 minutes more to ride Downtown, and many if not most of the Route 2 riders from the CD and Madrona are headed to destinations well south of Seneca and they would all have to transfer.
And that attitude, in a nutshell, is why our system is so poor. We avoid asking a relatively small number of riders to transfer — even to a bus running every six minutes on largely exclusive lanes — and as a result, service on Pike/Pine is way too infrequent. We assume that most of the riders of the 49 are headed to downtown and can’t possibly transfer to Link or a frequent set of buses — so transit on Broadway is too infrequent. This is why it took so long for Metro to even run the 8 — now one of our most successful buses. They just assumed everyone was going to downtown and wouldn’t possibly want to head across town. You can just imagine what would happen if the proposed that now (given the terrible congestion on Denny).
“If you just miss the bus, you may just start walking. Sure, the bus will probably get you a there a couple minutes sooner but walking is a lot more reliable.”
There is a forgotten third option: Link! In fact, it’s probably preferred unless both ends of the trip are more than 1000 feet from a station entrance. Plus, the frequency of Link will go from 8-10 minutes today to 4-5 minutes next year until past 10 pm.
I get how Route 10 does not stop at Link’s Capitol Hill Station. But it’s a mere few blocks to get to it. It has greatly reduced the market for Route 10 already, and next year’s better frequency will be even more appealing.
Surely, if someone misses a 10 bus at Kaiser, they would only need to walk about 5-7 minutes to the Link station, 2 minutes to the platform, an average 2-3 minute average wait for the next train and 2 minute ride to Westlake. It would be reliably under 14 minutes.
“There are no ETB wires on Pike east of Bellevue or on any streets connecting Pine and Union east of Broadway .”
The 2 would transition from Pike to Pine at Bellevue Ave like the other routes. At 12th it would turn south to Union.
If the 2 is on Pike east of Bellevue Ave, that would the same problem the 2 has now: east-west frequency is split between two adjacent streets (Pine-Pike and Seneca-Madison), so you can’t go to one stop and get the first bus that comes and walk a bit further at the end.
“And that attitude, in a nutshell, is why our system is so poor. We avoid asking a relatively small number of riders to transfer.”
No it’s not a relatively small number. It’s pretty significant. I used to ride Route 2 to and from the CD. Between O’Dea, Swedish, Virginia Mason, the skyscrapers south of Seneca and the government offices, it’s probably where most of the Route 2 riders coming from residences east of 14th are going.
It’s important to remember Pine east of Broadway. If the 10 moves to Madison, there’s only the 20-minute 12 there. That’s better than the 30-minute 11 before the G restructure, but it’s still not good for an inner-city neighborhood. There’s strong east-west demand all along Pike-Pine.
With so many routes branching away from Pine Street and the relatively short distance of the corridor, you end up in a situation where you sometimes have to walk 1 1/2 blocks to a stop, the first bus only goes 1 or 2 stops before turning, and your destination is 2 or 3 stops beyond that. So you either wait longer, walk the whole way, take a fucking bus two stops and walk the rest of the way, or don’t make the trip. This is where a full east-west grid route would be best, currently the 12 and formerly the 11. That should be the most frequent route, and should ideally run every 10-15 minutes full time, or even 6 minutes. The other routes can overlap with it in whatever way works best operationally.
“think you are overestimating the importance of the transfer with the 48. Outside of a 48-G downtown oriented trip, there isn’t a lot of reason to make the transfer.”
Metro sabotaged route 48 transfers with the stop locations. Going southbound on the 48 and transferring to the 8, the 8 stop is 2 1/2 blocks away. I sometimes do that coming back from the Arboretum, but I’m glad I don’t have to do that every day. The 43 was supposed to be replaced with grid-route transfers, but good transfers never came.
A Distinct line could be a busway rather than a specific route.
In Guangzhou China, its BRT made the case in a very extreme way. It is basically a transit corridor. When it opened 10+ years ago, they rebranded 30+ routes as B** routes just for that single corridor.
Only two routes use articulated buses and run entirely on the transit-only lane. The rest of routes were just existing service that run partially on the corridor It is more like a monster bus-only lane system but they call it BRT.
I’ll happily call them “rabbit-roads” if the term was “rapid bus transit”, or RBT.
I tend to think BRT is more of a vague concept while busway describe a specific infrastructure this concept often adopts.
It is crazy that this term has been used improperly in many places that some other organizations decide to intentionally avoid branding their BRT-ish projects as BRT.
“Isn’t a busway the ideal BRT implementation? Maybe it’s lacking in branding if regular buses use it, but I’ve always felt that the running way portion of BRT is far and away the most important aspect. ”
I’ve often been amused at how Route 101 or Route 150 are not called RapidRide routes, even though they use the SODO busway. However, the criteria for RapidRide also includes a higher frequency than they offer individually. So I don’t think it’s likely.
I’ll even point out that Routes 101 and 150 could be included in the Stride branding as frequency promises would be lower. The thought of ST taking over those routes and implementing some enhancements (like bus access ramps on and off I-5 as well as better local transfer stops at Link or S1) in a Stride conversion is a curious idea to ponder.
It all comes down to branding and what promises are made with branding. I see BRT is a generic umbrella term for transit speed improvements packaged together to achieve a bigger, cumulative benefit. In contrast, RapidRide is a service brand created by KCM that comes with more specific operating promises.
“Mad Max Mode”, and he’s not even trolling us.
Elon, get on that next rocket to Mars and stay there with Matt Damon in the poo-tent.
Talton is correct about the climate refugees. It is not long before people start dying in the streets in Arizona and Texas. But BNSF is not going to hang catenary over their main between Seattle and Portland; they — and UP — have too many intermodal trains that run that way.
Anyway, Amtrak Cascades is far too infrequent to make the enormous cost of electrification worthwhile. The freight trains won’t be electrified; you can be certain of that. There’s no way that BNSF and UP will change locomotives at Portland/Vancouver and Everett to forward trains east from Seattle.
The way solar technology advancement is going, I am expecting to see it replace other power sources more and more. The expense of catenaries is made higher by moving power from long distances. It’s not unlike having to carry diesel fuel.
The ultimate is of course solar power cells on train roofs. But alternative sources like in the tracks or above rhe tracks or next to tracks like remote solar farms or solar panel fences seem like eventually worthy investments. I could also see how a system could be developed with small, ready to go, battery packs set up along a line to provide some to most of the battery backup. Even nuclear power is getting so miniaturized that it could be a power source.
A few decades ago, the general thinking was that people needed land lines and modems attached to them. Nowadays, many people don’t have land lines anymore — and phone companies can offer wireless cheaper.
Maybe I sound like an overly optimistic futurist but I frankly don’t think I am. It won’t happen overnight but I could see a day in the next 50 years when catenaries are historical relics.
The problem is the energy density just isn’t there. Even at 100% conversion rate, solar alone can’t provide that much energy in that small a surface area.
What Glenn said. “Solar panels on the roof” will not move a passenger train fast enough to get it out of the way of fossil-fueled freights.
That’s not to dis the idea of lining the right-of-way with solar panels to boost remote generation where the ROW’s are wide enough, especially on the east-west lines that dominate American railroading. And even adding batteries to every passenger car in a locomotive hauled train probably makes economic sense too, in order to make use of regenerative braking throughout the train. But achieving even “higher speed rail”-level velocities will require catenary forever.
BN and UP did look at electrification in the not too distant past (1990s). Both concluded there were significant advantages, but the limiting problem was the sheer amount of investment needed. They’d have to electrify at least $5 billion worth to make it work, and they didn’t think the shareholders would go for that.
If some sort of government backed low interest loan became available, they might consider it. This is especially the case with BNSF and the Cascade tunnel, as they are capacity limited there due to exhaust in the tunnel. It’s really quite hazardous as operated now.
As for the double stacks, both were operating double stacks then when they looked at electrification. China currently operates double stacks under wire just fine. It can be done. It’s a challenge, but didn’t seem to be the dealbreaker.
India is also operating electrified double stack trains.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QBNIpLiwdYo
Thanks, Glenn. That is one TALL pan on that Indian Railways locomotive.
So, I have to admit it can be done, but there just is not the volume of passenger trains and short-run freights and sufficient elevation change over the relevant trackage (Eugene to Vancouver BC) to make electrification of the freight rails economically viable. They will continue to use diesels, so they will continue to resist electrification for the passenger trains because it makes their life more complicated.
“Amtrak Cascades is far too infrequent to make the enormous cost of electrification worthwhile.”
So make them frequent. The Netherlands electrified the entire country. Caltrain electrified partly to make it more frequent. Don’t let bad transit service be an excuse not to have good transit service. The fundamental thing is people’s mobility; that’s what allows them to contribute to society, and everybody benefits from it.
With what money?
The same source of money used to pay for electrification?
Nathan, why of course. “The same source of money used for electrification.”
Will people please come down to Earth? The Federal Government is run by rural Yahoos who don’t give a rodent’s hindquarters about de-Carbonization. Tuesday night nothwithstanding, the structural biases in our system scream, “That ain’t going to change!!!”
The State is teetering on insolvency because it’s hitting the inflection point on the Laffer curve for business and consumption taxes. Voters aren’t going to vote for a some new tax that makes the privately-owned freight railroads richer.
What “source of money for electrification”?
Why ask Mike “with what money” regarding more frequency but not for electrification?
You said electrification wasn’t worth it because the trains aren’t frequent, not because we don’t have the money. If someone came up with the money to string wire, why couldn’t they come up with the money to run the trains more often?
“With what money?”
The issue is priorities. If the city, state, and federal governments had the right priorities regarding transit, they’d find the money, or at least commit to trying to find it, or find lower-cost ways to do it (like reforming the procurement and construction process that drives up costs). This is the key to everything: a robust metro network, a comprehensive bus network that’s always frequent everywhere and doesn’t get stuck in traffic, a complete bicycle network, etc. Countries with less resources than the US manage to do it.
It doesn’t cost any money to change your priorities.
Nathan, I didn’t say that we should electrify but can’t because of the money, for the very good reason that the freight trains won’t be electrified. BNSF and UP are not going to change locomotives at Eugene, Portland, Vancouver and Everett to forward and receive trains to and from the east. As I said downthread, maybe dual-mode freight locomotives can be used to avoid the loco swap, but the rails like to have a consistent fleet so they know exactly how many engines to assign to a terminal and get the trains originating there over the line on schedule.
The Russians have done it on the Trans-Siberian, so, sure, it’s possible and would be a “good thing” emissions-wise, at least here in the Northwest. However, at this point in time neither the State of Washington nor the Federal Government is interested in subsidizing the rails to electrify, and they are just not going to spend the money necessary — if it was $5 billion each in the ’90’s as Glenn reported, it’s $15 billion each now — to electrify. And that’s obviously not for all of their trackage, presumably just the highest-volume, hilliest sections. Glenn didn’t report on how far the modeled electrification would have spread. If it was just the Cascades corridor, the cost to get all the way to Chicago on their four main routes would be ten times that.
Given that emissions per ton mile on rails are already lower than anything else other than barges, and particulate emissions are strictly controlled these days — no more “Black Smoker” Alcos allowed — you’re not going to get great reductions in emissions of either greenhouse gases or PM2.5 from it. Back east where a good amount of electricity is still coal-fired, you might even end up with a bit higher greenhouse emissions per ton-mile.
Mike, this is not “transit” that you’re advocating making more frequent, it’s the Amtrak Cascades, and the economics are quite different. Track rental is much more expensive than adding a bus running on a public right-of-way.
Sure “if we owned the tracks” makes for great hypotheticals including “running Cascades much more frequently”, but we don’t, and the rails are not excited about selling.
“but can’t because of the money,”
Not really, we call this problem as the kids would say today a skill issue. US Freight companies are in many ways, archaic companies that are unwilling to adapt to modern international freight rail standards. They have a lot of old guard people in upper management who are unwilling to be open to changes in rail technology and modern rail practices because “That’s how we’ve always done it” and is what is going to hobble these companies eventually when they can’t keep running freight like its the early 20th century.
US Freight companies are in many ways, archaic companies that are unwilling to adapt to modern international freight rail standards.
Agreed. But it is more than that. Imagine two different paths:
1) The railroad company invests in infrastructure, spending billions in hopes that they can carry a lot more freight in a few years.
2) The company carries less and less freight, focusing only on the most cost effective lines and cargo. They make no major investment and shrink the company.
At first glance it would seem the first choice is the obvious one. Bigger is better right? But it turns out, investors would prefer the second choice. The second one leads to huge payouts for investors and management. If the companies were involved in something else (like say, making beer) it wouldn’t matter. Other companies would come along and provide the service they are abandoning. But that isn’t the case with railroads (unless you count trucking companies, but they aren’t the same).
Zach B, what “international rail freight standards”? We invented the most important international standard, the shipping container. Since we interchange equipment with only three other countries (assuming the interchange between Mexico and Guatemala is even open) who cares how other nations couple and brake their equipment?
At least 60% of that ton-kilometer total for Eorope is trans-Alpine freight over two routes, much of it in containers which are trucked from the origin if domestic and trucked to the destination if not for export.
Europe doesn’t do loose-car railroading on rural spurs either.
Every mode has its excellence and its limitations. Barge is powerfully fuel efficient, but um, requires water on which to float. Trucking is super flexible, but uses lots of fuel and congests the roadways. Air is really, really fast, but consumes fuel like a thirsty logger and, well, requires a 7000 foot runway next to the shipper and consignee. Rails are in the ballpark with barges on fuel and go lots of places like trucks, but suffer from ruinous labor and capital costs that destroy their ability to serve small shippers or consignees without ridiculous subsidies from someone.
So unless the lading is dangerous or too heavy for the road structure, rails are not the proper mode for single shipments of any commodity, even relatively benign bulk items like grain or cement.
Ross, the railroad whose stock I inherited from my father (NS) states proudly in its Annual Report to Shareholders, that it invests about 50% of its pre-tax net income after direct operating expenses in plant and equipment. It does so year after year.
If investors were just vultures feeding on the carrion of bygone investments they would sell the stock or replace management.
Now, they do have regular fights between operations-focused management and “activist investors” who generally want them to buy out another railroad!
That’s not exactly what I would call a “divestment strategy”. Jes’ sayin’.
Has the US rail plant shrunk in the past one hundred years? Yes, by about 40% in route miles. But as trucks have gotten larger and rural roads have gotten better, it no longer makes economic sense to incur the significant costs to maintain trackage for a small volume of outbound grain shipments few months a year.
Not to mention that it takes three crew members to serve those rural spurs, and trains rarely exceed ten cars at any point in their journey.
The US is a huge laggard when it comes to train electrification (as it is in many fields). I’m sure future historians will find it very interesting that we have the world’s best universities and yet some of the worst policies. Anyway, here is an article about the trains. Then there is this followup article. I don’t have a subscription from Medium but I get the gist of it. Here is the key piece:
In the initial article, I pointed out that three geographical regions with similar geographic extents, similar extremes of weather, similar extremes of geography, 25% of the world’s GDP and 45% of the world’s population, had all looked at all of the data on rail and reached the same conclusion: electrification with grid-tied catenary overhead lines and some batteries was the answer for everything except some tiny edge conditions.
Note that is mentions both grid-tied catenary overhead lines and some batteries. It is the same idea as the trolleys. If you have batteries then you don’t need to have wires everywhere. Depending on the situation, one approach (all wire) or the other (a mix) might be better. Back to your point:
The freight trains won’t be electrified; you can be certain of that.
Right. But why not? Back to that first article:
the US has one other way it’s unique compared to these regions. All of the rails are owned by private companies, not the government, and they refuse to electrify them. The real solution would be for the US to either nationalize the rails — not going to happen, one assumes, although hydroelectric dams are nationally owned and rail nationalization has occurred multiple times in the world — or to rationally incent the rail owners to electrify.
That’s the real problem. Not technology. Not the cost of transition. But the fact that the railroads are owned by provide companies that are only interested in short term gains and have no incentive to do the right thing. But if the government steps in — either with incentives or nationalization — then the situation changes and we join the rest of the world in electrifying the trains.
GN had the Cascade tunnel electrified but ripped out the catenary because of the cost of changing engines. Once diesels reduced the smoke issue enough they abandoned the electrification.
The Milwaukee was electrified in two stretches and wanted to “fill the gap”, but ended up changing engines four times per run. They went bankrupt.
That wasn’t only because of “the gap” — for the last four or five years they did not change engines and just ran diesels under the wire. They just didn’t have enough of a feeder system in Washington, no friendly connection and no real access to tidewater.
I’m not against electrification of railroads. It would be a GREAT thing even just to capture the power generated by braking a long-heavy train on the way down from the Cascade summit. But the cost is enormous, and it means that every train that enters or leaves the electrified territory has to undergo a locomotive change.
And one thing that has to be reckoned with but is frequently overlooked. Electrification makes every derailment potentially much more damaging to the operation of a line, because it might take out the catenary supports. If the line is predominately for passenger service with a little freight service at night, it’s less hazardous.
Passenger cars are generally maintained to a higher level of safety than freight cars, simply because the railroad doesn’t want to get sued by injured passengers and the loads are far lighter. So they derail less often than freight cars, and that difference will probably always remain.
The railroads in Europe are mostly for passenger service. With the exception of the two major Trans-Alpine routes, freight is mostly an afterthought. And, the distances between places are much shorter. So it’s no surprise that Europe “leads” North America in electrification of railroads. It makes less economic sense here. If BNSF wanted to electrify one of its lines, it would be the “Southern Transcon” from the Port of LA to Chicago which has well over one hundred trains per day between Barstow and Amarillo. It rises seven thousand feet in about two hundred miles between the Colorado River crossing in Needles and the “Arizona Divide” west of Flagstaff. Which means that it descends those seven thousand feet in those two hundred miles for westbounds. That’s a lot of hot wheels, but at least the section over which trains from the Central Valley to Texas, which would have to change locomotives twice, at Barstow and Amarillo, would be over a thousand miles.
Electrifying the Amtrak Cascades route and Stevens Pass would give BNSF three hundred and thirty miles under wire to Spokane but only twenty-nine hundred feet of elevation gain. Yes, it would solve the smoke problem and increase the capacity of the tunnel, but it’s likely that they could bore a parallel tube with a TBM these days for less total cost than three hundred miles of electrification from Everett to Spokane. And they wouldn’t have to change engines at Yardley.
UP for sure would run diesels under the catenary, and BNSF’s unit coal trains to Vancouver BC, the oil cans to Cherry Point and its grain trains to Kalama would keep their diesels. Maybe some local freights would run with electric motors, but switchers wouldn’t because spurs won’t be electrified.
It is just a huge complication for a freight railroad to electrify just a part of itself.
Addendum, I guess that battery-assisted switchers could serve spurs, so that objection is moot.
Is it possible to run on diesel between stretches of catenary wire?
jd, of course. But you either end up changing locomotives all the time or you drag the diesel through the electrified parts.
Now there are have been “dual-mode” locomotives in the past, but really only used on passenger trains. However, the basic technology would be identical for freight haulers. They would have diesel prime-movers AND some sort of power pickup. When they’re in electrified territory they would use the power pickup and then switch on the diesel when they leave. The diesel engine and alternator would be dead weight on electrified stretches, but they are a small fraction of the weight of a full freight train.
So I have to admit that it might be acceptable to the freight rails to electrify — at government expense — if that subsidy also included new dual-mode freight locomotives. That would make a lot of sense for BNSF’s Central Valley and Texas services assuming the Southern Transcon were electrified. The extra weight for the power pickup equipment would be negligible compared to the total weight of a diesel-electric locomotive and so wouldn’t be a significant penalty in non-electrified territory.
UP might even surprise everyone by electrifying Ogden to Chicago and the Powder River line. They could run electrified under the BNSF wire between the Port of LA and Barstow and Seattle to Portland in Cascades territory and use diesel between those places and Ogden or Green River. Both UP and BNSF would benefit from electrification of Cajon, which is a brutal grind, albeit a fairly short one.
Another correction. Since electric locomotives actually haul around large slabs of steel to make them heavy enough to develop tractive effort, the weight of the diesel and alternator in a dual-mode freight locomotive would probably be welcome.
Could hybrid locomotives be net positive in the longer term? In Washington, diesel is expensive and electricity is cheap. I imagine using electricity to handle acceleration and deceleration would save quite a lot of money on fuel costs.
So it’s no surprise that Europe “leads” North America in electrification of railroads.
Look at the map again. Europe is a laggard too. India is the leader, followed by China and Europe. Then Russia. Then, finally, at less than 1% is North America. The author goes through every excuse used by the apologists until it finds the real culprit — the railroad companies. They aren’t investing in electrification because they aren’t investing in their core business (https://washingtonmonthly.com/2024/10/29/train-drain/). The companies are trying to reduce the amount of goods they ship — of course they aren’t investing in wires.
This is like people who try to find a reason why our health care system is so messed up. “Yeah, sure, it works better in other countries, but they don’t have the unique problems we do”. Nonsense. They just approach the problem differently. I’m not saying there is one great solution but clearly ours is the worst. We have excellent doctors and nurses and yet our health care system is terrible.
The same thing is true with the railroads. I’ve come to the conclusion (reluctantly) that the best solution is nationalization. I would consider myself far more of a New Deal man, not a socialist. In this case though, I think it would be simpler and easier to just nationalize the train system. But the New Deal approach might work as well. Go back to regulating the railroads. Then, as part of the work, provide incentives to electrify.
Twenty-five percent of global ton-kilometers (ton-miles by our reckoning) travels on US freight lines for 6% of the world’s population. For reporting year 2024 31.7% of Union Pacific’s revenues came from haulage of plastics and industrial chemicals. If that is not “support” for industrial America I can’t imagine what that might look like. [I chose them because they are the big kahuna of chemicals transportation since they have a steel necklace from New Orleans to Brownsville along the Gulf Coast.]
That article grossly overstates the problems that American railroads face. The physical plant on through routes has never before been in as good condition as it is today. Recently Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern merged, bringing a new competitor to the previous duopoly of BNSF and UP between Texas and the Lake States. Similarly, new pathways between the southeast and southwest are being established on what used to be very secondary or even tertiary track. Railroads are investing nearly half their revenues after direct costs in improvements.
There’s a big fight between NS and CPKC over use of the “Meridian Speedway” right now. CPKC owns 2/3 and NS 1/3 from an investment in the early 2000’s. They used to be friendly connections for each other, but since NS has agreed to be bought by UP, which short-hauls CPKC on shipments out of Mexico at Laredo on an enormous scale, CPKC is dead set against the UP-NS merger and fears that a flood of California-Southeast trains that run (slowly) through New Orleans and Memphis today will come to the Speedway.
CSX bought an old streak of rust in central Alabama, the Meridian & Bigbee which connects to the end of the Speedway at Meridian, Mississippi and with CSX near Montgomery. The merger application has made CPKC and CSX “buddies” against NS, so CPKC is trying to force NS off the Speedway. Hey, all’s fair in war and capitalism, right? But they certainly can’t fill it with their own trains from Laredo to the Southeast, and it wouldn’t be anything without the investments that NS made as its part of the ownership.
So clearly rails are investing in fixed plant where it makes economic sense. Are they “turning away business”? Yes, if by “business” you mean single-car shipments. It just costs too much in labor to provide that service unless the lading is some enormously valuable substance or extremely toxic so they’re the only option.
So, if the chicken farmers want to get reliable service, they need to order enough feed to fill a large enough cut of cars to make it worthwile for the rails to handle it or centralize the delivery point at a town with a railyard and grain storage and truck the feed from there. Single-car railroading used to be a staple of the business, but the US built the Interstate system that makes it completely obsolete. Branch lines all over the country have been pulled up because trucks are more responsive, quicker and cheaper than a peddler freight waddling down Class 2 track at twenty miles an hour to deliver a single hopper car.
“Single-car railroading used to be a staple of the business, but the US built the Interstate system that makes it completely obsolete”
Trucks on rubber tires on asphalt highways are less energy- and space-efficient than trains. So we should have expanded the rail network so that it could fit all those and existing freight and current and missing passenger service, rather than building so many highway lanes for trucks and using their existence as an excuse not to shift to rail.
Mike, you have no idea how expensive it is to do single-car railroading. That’s why it died; it’s not economical. Let’s imagine that the old NP spur along the south side of the Ship Canal and around the west side of Lake Union still existed and there was, say, a cement distributor along it somewhere near Galer.
To deliver a car of pre-mix cement a crew of a minimum of three people, (conductor, engineer and brake/switchman) would have to gather in Auburn, then “make up” a train containing that car and others destined to northwest Seattle. Because there aren’t all that many passing opportunities on this long urban spur, they have to figure out the order in which they’ll detach the cars when they get to the destination area. They go back and forth in the yard “making up their train”, taking cars from several tracks. No, this is not a job for a “hump yard” if you happen to know what that is. Hump yards make up trains for distant destinations. Local switch jobs make up their trains in real time.
Once there, the train pulls out of Auburn and runs up the NP main toward Seattle. The dispatcher has two options to get to Lake Union; he — in those days, the DS was a “he” — can send the train straight to King Street Station and pay GN “trackage rights” fees, or he can send the train through Bellevue to Woodinville, back down what is now the Burke Gilman Trail and across the 13th Avenue lift bridge to the little yard that NP had east of the Ballard Bridge by Nickerson.
At that point the engineer and conductor have to make a decision, the quick and dirty way to serve the trackage is to back down the spur, leaving the cars in sidings by backing in, uncoupling them and pulling back out, backing again until the next destination and so on until the train is consumed. If a car is destined to a customer who ALSO has an outbound car, the engine will push the train past the siding, uncouple at the engine, pull back to the switch, back in and get the car, go back out, back down to the parked train, couple, pull the entire train back past the siding and then deposit the car.
Yeah. It sucks.
But backing is slow and somewhat dangerous. The brakeman has to hang onto the rearmost car and in those days would swing a lantern when the engineer sounded the horn or whistle. So the operating manual might have said, “The locomotive must lead to the West Lake Union Yard.” (which is a passing siding)
So the engine has to change ends and pull the train to that passing siding east of the Fremont Bridge and change ends again there. I don’t know if that’s what it said, but things like that were required some places to avoid repetitive backing.
When the train is all distributed the engine starts back and picks up cars at sidings that have only outbound freight and the train retraces its path through Fremont, Wallingford, SandPoint, Woodinville, Bellevue and Renton, though the engine absolutely has to “run around” the train south of the 13th Avenue lift bridge.
It’s a LOT easier just to send a truck.
Except, it takes between 3 to 5 trucks to carry what you can put in a railroad car.
Which is why operations like the Ballard Terminal continue to be an important part of freight movement.
Glenn, yes, of course it does. But the labor cost for a Class One to transport and deliver that single hopper car is much higher than the labor costs of those four or five trucks.
It’s really a matter of orientation and organization than the labor required itself.
Before 1993, the branch from Tigard to Brooks used to see about 5 cars per day. After it was converted to shortline ownership and through freight service to Eugene reorganized, it’s not unusual to see 100 car trains on that line now, a fair amount of which is fairly local.
Class 1s once had an entire organizational structure to work with shorter distance traffic like that, but today a lot of that structure is gone.
If you look at the actual financial statements by BNSF and others, you’ll see that the volume of money coming in from intermodal is fairly high, but it’s mostly low profit margin. The profit margin is actually higher on carload freight.
Glenn, yes, single-car tariffs are much higher than the contract haulage of a well loaded with a pair or three containers for a logistics company. But the railroad only has to marshal the well car into a unit train — at the best ports itself doesn’t even have to do that. The wells are loaded sequentially like unit coal trains are a block at a time. Then four or five two-person crews sequentially forward the train across 2/3 of the country to an I/M facility, sometimes on a connecting railroad, where the containers are lifted onto truck frames and driven to the consignee. The rails essentially serve as pipelines, not common carriers. Since their contribution to the movement is opaque to the shipper, they receive a lesser revenue for the movement than they would had they contracted for it with the shippers of the containers.
A car of chemicals moving from Lake Charles to a manufacturer in Ohio yields much higher revenue to the railroad. First, it’s probably hazardous, so trucks can’t safely haul it all that way. It’s valuable, so the shipper is willing to pay for the safer option. So the rails can, and do, charge more. They incur more risk, so it’s fundamentally fair that they do so.
But that shipper has almost certainly located its plant directly on a line close to a classification yard and sends many cars a day to various destinations. The consignee’s facilities are also probably located fairly close to a yard and receives shipments from multiple sources as well.
So using the railroad makes sense because whole trains can move between the two yards that do the shuffling of the cars, again playing to rails’ efficiencies by dividing the labor, fuel and maintenance costs over many shipments.
Short lines like the W&P can offer single-car shipments some of the benefits of rail at a lower cost than the Class Ones, because their labor costs are lower and they often receive subsidies or tax breaks in order to continue service to captive shippers. They are a very important element in the rail system, but they are not a reason to lament the demise of boxcar railroading.
People die already in every city due to exposure. So nothing actually new
Is this a reply to a different thread?
So, what is the opening date for the 2 Line between downtown Seattle and South Bellevue Station? I’m asking because I live just on the edge of the new Residential Parking Zone for Judkins Park Station and have to buy a parking permit by December 1 if I want to park my car on the street for more than 2 hours. I have off-street parking, but for my convenience, I’m going to spend the $95 for the permit. I am slightly perturbed, however, by the fact that the parking restrictions start December 1, but the 2 Line won’t be serving my neighborhood until…when?
Nobody knows yet. Current statements have announced “early 2026”
The last ST progress report said June 30 with the earliest as May 31 for the station opening.
Given the few thousand new apartments in the area and how building owners charge rent for garage spaces, I could see benefit to having the RPZ start earlier. What I’ve witnessed in Columbia City is that many new building tenants don’t want to pay for parking in their building and will instead park on a nearby street. It seemed to happen almost instantly.
I also witness afternoon Link riders parking on side streets in RPZs if the visitor time limit is 4 hours. Sometimes it happens with 2 hour spaces. I don’t think SDOT ultimately patrols that closely.
Glancing at the RPZ map, I see areas east of MLK are not in the RPZ even though they are closer than some areas that are. Since the elevation change is modest on the I-90 trail, that’s where I think hide-and-ride will happen.
I can confirm the SDOT patrols are generally pretty lax. I moved to RPZ 17 (by the PacMed building) about two weeks ago, and haven’t gotten a permit yet. I’ve left my car in the permit zone on accident well past the two hour limit on a few occasions and haven’t gotten a ticket.
I think the RPZs are generally good, and I get why the permits all start/expire at the same time for ease of enforcement reasons, but man it is annoying when you are moving at the permit expires in a few months.
Can we look forward to grandstanding by a certain state senator to charge Sound Transit for all the RPZs, even if the City offers to make them free? I think he still does not get how his obnoxiousness on that issue (while not keeping up with what the City was doing) tanked his mayoral campaign.
But he can plagiarize Mamdani’s speech with “parking will be FAST and FREE and paid for by SOUND TRANSIT!”
June 30th?!?! What is going on?
The latest progress report was released on October 6 and described progress through August, which was before the overhead power system was activated and ST began overnight systems integration testing. Since that testing appears to have been generally successful, the next progress report should show some improvement in the potential opening date.
Anyone know what happened to metro’s dot matrix realtime bus arrival screens? All the ones I have seen in the past year or two just say “Refer to Schedule”
I don’t know why, but those digital boards along N 46th for Rt 44 are always like that at least at night. Not sure if they are functioning during the day.
We’ve got an article in our city’s biggest newspaper predicting that the city is going to balloon in population, and the main transit systems it considers are Amtrak Cascades and the First Avenue Streetcar?
This is so perfectly emblematic of a city where most of the transit and land-use decision-makers live in detached houses and drive everywhere that it oughtta be framed.
Every day I inch closer to cancelling my Seattle Times subscription and increasing my contribution to younger newsrooms.
KG Wilburton Master Development Plan and Phase 1 Design Review
Why does the Rapid K Line have no planned improvements along the Eastgate to Bellevue TC stretch, particularly along Lake Hills Connector that gets heavily congested?
Their estimated travel time is 25 mins on that stretch, compared to only 10-15 mins on other similar length segments.
Why even call it a Rapid Ride? It’s going to be slower than the existing 271, unless you’re going to Kirkland.
@UWBus
Where are you seeing that? As far as I know the K line should be at least as fast as existing routes. You can see the planned improvements below.
https://cdn.kingcounty.gov/-/media/king-county/depts/metro/documents/travel-options/rapidride/k-line/k-line-task-120-speed-and-reliability-upgrade-report.pdf
I am afraid that UWBus was not wrong that there was no improvement mentioned in this report along Lake Hill Connector, but I don’t know how UWBus made the conclusion that K Line will be slower than 271. I think it is just no improvement.
I know 271 got stuck at Lake Hill Connector a lot these days, so when more K Line detail came out this year, I was looking for improvement around there as well, but I didn’t find anything.
This only means there is no improvements scoped in K Line projects. The issue there is not just a transit issue, City of Bellevue has been looking into that for years. They tried the roundabout idea a few years ago for safety improvement. The most recent information comes from Bellevue’s Transportation Facilities Plan
(2026-2045).
It appears that City of Bellevue has worked on some turn lane improvement for Lake Hills Connector at SE 8th, which is one of the chokepoint along future K Line.
When the Lake Hill Connector off-ramp was built in the early 2000s, this was supposed to divert 90% traffic from eastbound left-turn at SE 8th at Lake Hills Connector, but till today they still keep 1.5 left-turn lane there. According to recently adopted Bellevue’s Transportation Facility Plan (TFP) (2026-2045 TFP Preliminary Project List
), there is a project TFP-276 which proposes to finally take out the dedicated eastbound-left lane and reverse it as westbound lane so that they can have two northwestbound left-turn lanes from Lake Hills Connector westbound. After that, they can re-optimize signal a little bit and save a few seconds. The project description cites that it is on the anticipated route of future K Line.
It looks like there are a few changes to Main St and a roundabout near Bellevue College that are expected to save some time. Nothing major though.
Snoqualmie River Rd really needs to get prioritized and completed. I’m surprised it isn’t part of the K line. That would save a significant amount of time for quite a few routes
It looks like momentum on Snoqualmie River Rd is picking up. Bellevue is working on 60% plans. Maybe that will be done by the time the K line begins service in 2030ish.
In terms of transit it must be one of the highest cost:benefit projects available to Bellevue. From the page, “The estimated time savings could be as much as six minutes per trip.”
https://bellevuewa.gov/city-government/departments/transportation/projects/transportation-capital-projects/bellevue-college-connection
In terms of transit it must be one of the highest cost:benefit projects available to Bellevue.
Agreed. It will make a huge difference to a lot of riders on a lot of buses.
Following up on priorities, one of the frustrations with Sound Transit and Metro is that we don’t know when/if it will make changes that address problems passengers currently have.
For instance, in 2022 ST was going to fill in 15-minute Sundays and evenings on the 550, 15-minute service on the 594, Sunday service on the 535, and 15-minute service on the 522 (the latter in the Northgate Link restructure). All that got swallowed by the driver shortage. What passengers needed was to know when it would implement these, or what milestones would indicate it’s coming, or reassurance that ST was prioritizing this. Instead we got nothing. So passengers were left in limbo for years wondering if they’d ever get those improvements. So ST didn’t recognize the need for years, then tried to address it, then seems to have forgotten about it as if it didn’t matter. But it matters to people who would like to travel on Sundays, go to/from Tacoma, or get from Bellevue to Lynnwood on a Sunday.
Metro has similar problems. People have wanted a frequent Broadway north-south route forever, one that continued north of Roy Street and south of Pine Street and Jackson Street. Currently there’s a spaghetti of routes that do different parts of this, but the only route that does all of it is the sometimes-infrequent, sometimes part-time 9 (currently peak only unidirectional). Metro Connects has had a route concept that does it since 2016 (going from the U-District to Beacon Hill). But we never hear when it will be implemented or what it’s waiting for. We thought it was waiting for RapidRide G, but that came and went and no sign of it.
ST Express 594 will soon just be for northenders going to Tacoma. Southenders will be taking the 1 Line to Federal Way to connect to Tacoma, but may have to wait until 2027 for frequent connectivity between Federal Way and Tacoma.
Now that the election is over, the Board ought not push the World Cup service plan into 2027.
ST Express 510 ought to be truncated at Lynnwood Station and replace ST Express 512 as the all-day express service between Lynnwood and Everett.
ST Express 594 ought to add a stop at Federal Way Station, and be promoted to 10-minute or 20-minute off-peak headway. If it is 20-minute headway, ST Express 574 should be kept (with Federal Way as the northern terminus) and fill in the gaps to create 10-minute headway between Federal Way and Tacoma. Riders ought not have to wait over a year from the opening of Federal Way Station for that to happen.
DELAY the fall 2026 service plan until the new board members are installed.
Metro should add an express bus that takes people directly from the airport to Seattle/Stadium, we don’t want to frustrate all the visitors with Link, trust me. Reserve HOV for buses or 3+, and Have the cops strictly enforce that.
A 40 minute Link ride, insane crowding, and constant breakdowns will be an embarrassment to any tourist who values their time and energy. They’ll probably take an Uber if they can already dish out thousands on tickets.
The unbelievably long walk from the airport terminals to reach Link itself will be a joke for most people.
“The unbelievably long walk from the airport terminals to reach Link itself will be a joke for most people.”
Link to SeaTac has been open almost 26 years. That’s more than enough time to have better connected the station. The Port did add some better weather protection for the walk — but given the huge about of airport construction that has happened since 2009, the lack of doing something better is apparent.
And yet I talk with tourists that use it all the time. The cheap fare and high frequency are so enticing that the walking distance is just a mere annoyance to them.
It’s amazing how people walk a mile or more to ballgames, both at the downtown stadiums and at Husky Stadium. They’re not walking just from transit stops, they’re also walking from their cars. So I think World Cup fans will be like the mass of sports fans and airport visitors: many of them will walk to Link. They won’t just be like a small elite who won’t go anywhere without a small shuttle vehicle.
The biggest thing ST needs to focus on is making Link reliable. These tons of visitors shouldn’t have to put up with hour-long or four-hour-long delays, or transferring to a 15-minute shuttle and back to Link.
I didn’t realize that ST wasn’t planning on implementing any changes to the buses until Fall or 2026. The proposals are timid enough. But changing the bus routes ten months after Link opens is just bizarre. This means that for a long time, the 574 will only run every half hour and yet continue to offer one-seat rides from Federal Way TC to SeaTac (along with the A Line and Link). Metro will change their routes (which should help increase Link ridership) but it is still very weird. ST runs buses and Link. ST should be (over time) the major feeder for this extension of Link. Yet it is ST that is basically ignoring this change (as if the extension was a big surprise). Good going Dow Constantine! No wonder the board picked you. [snark]
ST Express 510 ought to be truncated at Lynnwood Station and replace ST Express 512 as the all-day express service between Lynnwood and Everett.
Or just keep the 510 as a peak-only route to Downtown Seattle and have the 512 skip Ash Way. I can see the case for eliminating express service from Everett to Seattle but it really doesn’t cost that much and probably saves those riders quite a bit of time (depending on traffic). If they are going to get rid any express service from Everett it should be North Sounder. (They should do that and offer all-day express service from Edmonds to 185th Station.)
The 594 should definitely stop in Federal Way. I like the twenty-minute idea. Twenty minute all day service connecting Seattle, Federal Way, Tacoma and Lakewood would be a big improvement. Ten minute connections between Federal Way, Tacoma and Lakewood seems like overkill. Twenty minutes seems like a good compromise for regional transit. In most cases it is significantly better than what exists now. It is not what they promised but going from twenty minutes to fifteen is not the end of the world. I could see twenty minute service for a midday “Sounder bus”. Same goes Auburn to Federal Way. Most of the riders on such buses are headed to Seattle. That is a long trip. Twenty minute headways for long trips is fairly good. For shorter trips it isn’t. But in this case it is highly likely a high percentage of the shorter trips involve Link. Running buses every twenty minutes (midday) is easier to time with Link (since Link runs every ten minutes midday). I could see twenty minute service being the baseline for midday ST Express in the south end.
The only drawback to running buses every twenty minutes is that branching leads to awkward headways but I don’t see that being common for routes in the South End. And if you are going to branch it is probably to areas that would be happy to have a bus at all — forty minute frequency is better than nothing).
But there is also subarea equity to consider. Imagine we are running the 594 every twenty minutes (with a stop at Federal Way). What next? A bus from Tacoma to Federal Way every twenty minutes (to give Tacoma a ten-minute connection to Link) or an express bus running every twenty minutes from Auburn and Kent to Seattle. They are different subareas (one is “South King” and the other “Pierce County”). This might impact service choices beyond just overall benefit.
Metro should add an express bus that takes people directly from the airport to Seattle/Stadium
I don’t think there will be many visitors going directly from the airport to the game. Maybe a few from BC and Portland but they’ll manage (just like they manage for hockey, baseball, football, etc.). Everyone else will just stay somewhere — mostly likely in a hotel in Seattle.
The biggest thing ST needs to focus on is making Link reliable.
Agreed.
The ST Express restructure survey is open until November 11. Here’s our overview of the proposal and Alex’s alternative.
ST clearly wants to keep the existing routes as a fallback during the World Cup and 2 Line rollout in case Link has hiccup or gets overcrowded. With Link’s reliability yet to prove itself (and another collision in Rainier Valley yesterday), one can see why.
“DELAY the fall 2026 service plan until the new board members are installed.”
The second proposal will be in “early 2026” and the board vote will be in “Februrary/March 2026”, so that gives plenty of time for the new boardmembers to get established and make their preferences/concerns known to the staff.
“The unbelievably long walk from the airport terminals to reach Link itself will be a joke for most people.”
It’s not as bad as some places, and compared to the tangled maze on the security side of things, it’s not too far.
However, it’s absurd with all the infrastructure investments made at that airport that is the best they can come up with. The Kahului, Hawaii Airport has a “train” (basically a guided electric bus with a trailer and a center running guide rail and driver controls at both ends) between the airport and the car rental office, which is something like half the distance between the SeaTac terminal and Link. One of the airports I went through as a kid in the 1970s had these ridiculous horizontal elevator things going from the airport terminal to the parking garage across the street, basically all of about 200 feet.
Oops!
16 years of Link to Seatac.
“The unbelievably long walk from the airport terminals to reach Link itself will be a joke for most people.”
It’s not that long of a walk. I’ve walked from the trains at both Heathrow and O’Hare and there is nothing “unbelievably long” about the walk at SeaTac, other than people will always find something about which to complain.
The walk distance is also heavily dependent on which airline your are flying on, and that would be the case at ANY airport.
I’m digging into the East Link “improvements” that Metro proposed.
Most of them are pretty bad. The only good addition was Route 203, but losing the 271 is still a problem since that area loses access to Eastgate and Bellevue College.
Also Route 111 is the best route they added. Whoever lives in Renton Highlands is incredibly lucky to receive such a service. An actual usable and reliable bus that takes you directly to a useful destination that requires only a single transfer to reach Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, Bothell, Seattle, Eastgate, Issaquah, UW, Shoreline, and Lynnwood?! Unheard of in suburbs. It’s a shame South King County cannot get such routes. Instead our routes get axed to a couple miles with 200 stops and 30 minute service, no parking, and about 3-4 transfers to get anywhere useful. Yes, we are farther but we have light rail and Sounder, yet still inferior and incredibly slow connections.
South King is currently getting a restructure with additional service hours.
https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/programs-and-projects/south-link-connections
“I’m digging into the East Link “improvements” that Metro proposed.”
It’s not just a proposal, it’s final. It’s being implemented in phases, mainly because of the full 2 Line delay.
Here’s our coverage of the South King county Metro restructure proposal. It’s dated last June but it seems to be the most recent one.
The Capitol Hill station closure is still active after the 2pm end time per an alert at 2:03pm. A shuttle bus is still running between U-District and Westlake stations.
Link is back to normal.