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218 Replies to “Midweek Roundup: hope this helps”

  2. Boeing Access Road is an albatross of a station. The City of Tukwila and PSRC may believe that somehow there will be 25,000 jobs in the North Tukwila MIC, but using a very generous 1 km buffer now, I see less than 6,000 (2022, LEHD). Based on the PSRC profile, it seems like most of the jobs are near or with Boeing – nearly a mile from the proposed station. Yes, you can transfer to the 124, but you can also do that at TIBS. Plus, it’s currently 25 minutes to that area on the 124 from downtown – with a 21 minute travel time from Pioneer Square to Rainier Beach, it’s hard to see the 1 Line beating the 124 by much from trips coming from the North.

    The only place that gets obviously better access is the South End of Seattle, since there’s less out of direction travel on a Link transfer. That’s great, but is it really worth $500M?

      1. I don’t think there is much walk-up potential for any station between Rainier Valley and TIBS. That is the drawback with the current routing. It is a low density housing/industrial area close to the freeway. The best you can hope for is to get a lot of connecting riders. But you aren’t going to get a lot of riders locally. Those riders will just take the bus downtown or use TIBS. A few will use the station as a way to get to Rainier Valley but not that many.

        It has the most potential as a multi-modal hub. Ideally it would connect Sounder, Link and express buses. But even just connecting express buses to Link would be worthy. The 101 and 150 could stop there (along with future express buses if they added them). This would make trips to Rainier Valley and Beacon Hill (from places like Kent, Auburn and to a lesser extent Renton) a lot faster. But since that isn’t happening — and the station is being designed so that it wouldn’t work well even if WSDOT added a freeway station in the future — it doesn’t make much sense. They should wait until WSDOT can build a freeway station and then design the Link station around that connection. Add a park and ride and serve it with buses, but that would provide the most benefit.

      2. I think S Boeing Access Rd should be named Duwamish, and Graham St ought to be named Hillman City. Though I do think another station is needed between Rainier Beach and Tukwila International Blvd, possibly at Foster adjacent to Tukwila P&R, I did see someone bring up about the light rail not stopping at Southcenter back in 2009, but I don’t think there’s potential for a station at I-5 and I-405.

      4. “I think S Boeing Access Rd should be named Duwamish”

        Anything would be better than “Boeing Access” or something with “Boeing”. We might as well have a “Duwamish” station somewhere since it’s such a central term in local history, and it is close to the Duwamish River. And I think Tukwila feels some affinity claim to the Duwamish tribe like Renton does. (Renton has a history museum with a lot of Duwamish in it, which I’ve been meaning to visit someday.)

        “Graham St ought to be named Hillman City.”

        That runs into the problem that most people in the past fifty years have never heard of “Hillman City”.

      5. That runs into the problem that most people in the past fifty years have never heard of “Hillman City”.

        That didn’t stop them from naming the station “Pinehurst”. There is another similarity in that it is really at the edge of Hillman City just like Pinehurst Station is barely in Pinehurst. Graham Street is fine just like calling the Pinehurst station “130th” would have been fine. I actually like Graham Street Station because it reminds me of Graham Central Station which was a funk band (the band name was a pun on Grand Central Station). Larry Graham was the bassist and front man — he left Sly and The Family Stone to form the band. I remember playing the album at home and rattling the dishes. Graham is one of the best bass players of all time. Worth checking out if you like the funk (and aren’t familiar already).

      6. Taking the Link to Boeing Access to use the 101/150 is slower than if you just transferred at SODO, especially in the afternoon.

        It may save time in the morning during the worst traffic days though.

        A future parallel line should be built from Boeing Access directly to SODO, with a stop in Georgetown. It should be competitive with bus driving times along the freeway.

    2. The more I’ve looked at the sites the more I agree with you!

      The Board (and some of the public) tends to look at a map and listen to localized interests say merely “let’s put a station there”. Instead, I’d rather there be some sort of minimum number of boardings required in the forecasts before a station gets funded.

      For new and infill station proposals, I wish there was first a requirement to generate at least 4K boardings (threshold may be higher or lower) in order to be eligible for referendum funds. Otherwise, it’s just adding ride time for all the passengers already on the train yet not seeing much station activity.

      1. That would completely eliminate Stadium as a station, since it’s one of the least used on Link in terms of average boardings per day.

        A huge portion of Link riders are transfers from buses run by other agencies, and trying to predict transfer traffic is notoriously inaccurate.

        However, in this particular case, I’m in agreement with most here: the current station plan really doesn’t make sense.

      2. The political structures are such that the counties and cities define what’s needed, and ST follows that. Ridership and density don’t enter into it, because the cities know best. And what the cities want is what they think will increase their own economy and tax base the most.

    3. agreed. no infill. Link is already unacceptable slow due to excess stops in Rainier valley and slow speeds due to lack of separation. Adding another station is pointless.

      1. Link is already unacceptable slow due to excess stops in Rainier valley

        This attitude — which is common — ignores the whole point of mass transit. It isn’t an express train. Express trains (whether they are called “regional transit” or “commuter rail”) only make sense when they are cheap to build (i. e. we already have the tracks). It would be stupid to spend billions on an express train. You would just run express buses. But that isn’t Link.

        Link is light rail that often operates like a metro. Light rail makes a lot of stops. Metros make lots of stops. It is the combination of those stops (in places like Rainier Valley) that make the project worthwhile. That doesn’t mean that every stop is worthy but the ones in Rainier Valley most certainly are.

  3. I am a little confused what Community Transit’s intent is for center-running bus lanes for the Gold Line. In Everett, Broadway is 80 feet wide, currently with (distances approximate) 2 sidewalks (2x 5 ft), 4 general purpose lanes (4x 10 ft), 1 center/left turn lane (1x 12 ft), and 2 parking lanes (2x 9 ft). Broadway currently sees about 1000-1400 vehicles/hour in the peak direction, which is much more than what one lane can handle.

    Center running bus lanes take at minimum, 30 feet of space at intersections, something like 2x 11ft bus lanes + 1x 8 ft side platforms on each side of the intersection (like was proposed for the E Line). Center platforms like on the G Line take even more space.

    At an intersection requiring a left turn lane, there’s not enough space just by eliminating parking. So it seems to me that they are forced to cut general purpose lanes to 1 per direction to fit this. I’m not convinced that Everett would be eager to sacrifice all street parking, 1 lane in each direction, AND a center turn lane allowing left turn access to businesses just to accomodate buses.

    1. Based on the diagrams they have no plans on taking general purpose lanes (only the parking and center turn lane). It does mean that they might need to widen the street approaching some intersections. It is also possible they can squeeze it in without too much effort. The “lane” for the bus stop does not have to be as wide as a regular vehicle lane.

      1. Actually, I think it does have to be “as wide as a regular vehicle lane”, Ross. Since traffic directly behind the platform is going to be traveling at 35 mph and above, you need a pretty strong station shell to protect the passengers, and there has to be some “free space” between the lane and the back of the shell, at least three feet I would venture. Vehicles wander, and trucks take a full lane plus mirrors. With the shell being a foot thick with supports, that leaves seven feet for the platform, which, yes, is wider than usual, but “usual” is usually on a sidewalk, not next to relatively high speed traffic.

        Also, some sort of left-turn bay will be across the cross-street from the stations, which will almost certainly be “farside” to make the most of whatever signal assistance the DOT is willing to give the buses. That’ll have to be a full lane wide, so the station “in front” of it can just fill the same lateral profile.

      1. That would cut down on the number of stations to build (you could share stations) but it wouldn’t help with the width issue.

      2. hmm.. I assumed that if you are running the standard way that you would have to build two stations each so many feet wide, but if you share the station you would only have to use half the amount of space to build the one station – saving that much width of the road from being used. Admittedly I haven’t looked at the documents and am only going on supposition here. heh So yeah.. nevermind.

      3. In the CT video the stations for the single-lane option are contra-flow, so there’s just a single platform. That’s not a good design for a two-lane busway, though. It’s better to put the platforms “farside” and use the platform width (and some space) for a left-turn bay on the opposite side of the cross-street.

        Either design requires that the street be widened through any intersection that hosts a station. As Ross notes below, this is made (a little) easier if the stations are away from the intersection and a center platform then makes sense, but that requires left-door buses. You have to wiggle the traffic around the bulge, but you want the cars to be running slowly there anyway, since there has to be a flasher-style cross-walk or even an ordinary traffic signal.

        Center running busways are definitely the highest quality BRT available on non-reserved right of way. But they do take significantly more room than BAT’s, because you can’t just use the sidewalk for the stations.

      4. “As Ross notes below, this is made (a little) easier if the stations are away from the intersection and a center platform then makes sense, but that requires left-door buses.”

        I don’t get why if the island platform was built mi-block, it would require left-door buses.
        They could still do contra-flow bus lane for station located at mid-block to avoid using left-door transit fleet.

      5. “Center running busways are definitely the highest quality BRT available on non-reserved right of way.”

        It may offer slightly faster speeds and slightly better productivity than a curb lane, but there are other aspects to “quality”. For example, a stop in the middle of a busy street with cars going over 35-40 mph is going to be more noisy for a waiting rider. There are also potential sight distance and safety issues.

        I suspect that in Marysville and Everett there will be pushback from businesses that could lose access from customers on the opposite side of the street if the bus is center running. Is it worth fighting for, particularly if the net travel time reduction is modest? Things like off-board payment and transit signal priority at long, multi-phased signals would seem to offer more travel time benefit. And what could be a generally-supported concept could instead easily hit a political firestorm that could delay a project for years or kill it entirely..

        And left-door buses or contra-flow buses have safety issues and vehicle requirements unique to them. It’s why they don’t often appear on American BRT systems. They are not true gadgetbahn ideas but they aren’t far from it.

      6. a stop in the middle of a busy street with cars going over 35-40 mph is going to be more noisy for a waiting rider

        I think it depends on how they make the stations. If the buses are on the inside and the stations are on the outside then it is similar to Link in Rainier Valley. Not the most pleasant thing in the world but probably better than being curbside. The same is true if they face only one direction. You have cars behind you but the station itself helps block that noise. The main noise is facing the traffic, just like a curbside stop. Having a bus lane is probably the biggest improvement with that design in that at least you have a gap lane. That is also true for a curbside design with buses only. That typically only happens with contraflow lines (since it is pretty hard to tell drivers they can’t make a right).

        The main problem is just the overall surrounding speed of traffic. Being on the curb doesn’t really isolate you from it.

      7. I suspect that in Marysville and Everett there will be pushback from businesses that could lose access from customers on the opposite side of the street if the bus is center running.

        You mean loss of parking? Sure, that is an issue. But that is true if they added BAT lanes as well. Center running doesn’t have much to do with it.

      8. I don’t get why if the island platform was built mi-block, it would require left-door buses.

        It wouldn’t. It is a bit confusing because there are so many potential variations. Assume no shared lanes. If you want a station used by buses going both directions then you either have to run contraflow or have buses with doors on both sides. If you separate the stations (like so: https://i0.wp.com/seattletransitblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/segment3_busway.png) then you don’t need either. The big thing that midblock stations do is separate the turn lanes from the platforms. In the case of this project this makes a huge difference. If you look at the video (https://youtu.be/j-vU0dZaMKk?t=3) it is 8 lanes wide close to the intersection (two bus lanes, a center platform, a turn lane and four general purpose lanes). By moving the set of platforms to the middle of the street you would have seven lanes there (two bus lanes, a center platform and four general purpose lanes) as well as seven lanes at the intersection (two bus lanes, a turn lane and four general purpose lanes). This could be the difference between making the street wider or not.

        If you take the same staggered-station approach and are comfortable sharing a lane close to a station then you basically are taking two transit lanes the entire time. You might as well move the stations back to the intersection. It isn’t hard to imagine by looking at the diagram. The station on the left moves down and takes over the lane heading to the left. The station on the right does the opposite. The buses still serve the same stations. The bus coming from the left serves the stations on the right. It is just that right before serving that station it merges into the upper lane (which is used by both buses).

      9. @al

        Literally lots of light rail lines and brt run in the center and it’s fine

        I don’t know why you continue this odd tirade when there are plenty of real life examples that disprove your claims

      10. “Marysville and Everett there will be pushback from businesses that could lose access from customers on the opposite side of the street if the bus is center running.

        “You mean loss of parking?”

        No I mean the ability to get to a business on the opposite side of the street. Lots of those businesses have their own parking lots onsite. Cars probably will not be allowed to cross center bus lanes except at intersections. If half of the customers must make a U-turn to get to them, they may not be cool with that.

      11. “I don’t know why you continue this odd tirade when there are plenty of real life examples that disprove your claims”

        It’s all about context, WL. That includes both the speed and volumes of traffic. I look at the concept having both advantages and disadvantages and it’s not always better or worse. It seems to work better when there’s lower traffic speeds and volumes adjacent to it.

        As far as light rail goes, compare MLK in Seattle with Interstate Ave in Portland. Both have center light rail. But I don’t see the level of light rail safety challenges expressed in Portland.

        Criticism isn’t a tirade. And it’s not gaslighting an opposing commenter either.

      12. > For example, a stop in the middle of a busy street with cars going over 35-40 mph is going to be more noisy for a waiting rider. There are also potential sight distance and safety issues.

        > It’s all about context, WL. That includes both the speed and volumes of traffic. I look at the concept having both advantages and disadvantages and it’s not always better or worse.

        Sigh and let me guess if it is a smaller 5 lane road then youll complain that it’ll remove left turns. If it is a 4 lane road then you’ll say it’s going to remove parking and require more property displacements at the intersection etc…

        Plus if you really are that worried about pedestrian safety then wouldn’t an effectively giant pedestrian island be better for crossing the street

      13. > No I mean the ability to get to a business on the opposite side of the street. Lots of those businesses have their own parking lots onsite. Cars probably will not be allowed to cross center bus lanes except at intersections. If half of the customers must make a U-turn to get to them, they may not be cool with that

        Lynnwood already enforces that on their sr99

        Actually most stroads across america they are converting to force u turns because the left turns are too dangerous from the side properties onto the main road.

      14. HZ, if the stations are mid-block with staggered with right-side platforms, there is a real problem getting to the far side of the street or there must be two sets of pedestrian crossings. The zig-zag has to be between the platforms.

        So, how does someone who gets off a northbound bus get to the southbound side of the street? It’s pretty straightforward to get from the same side of the street that the platform is on. The cross-walk from the northbound side would terminate somewhere just north of where the wiggle straightens out for best pedestrian flow.

        The same thing is true on the southbound side. The cross-walk has to “land” with at least four or five feet between the two curbs and ideally where the south end of the wiggle ends. But how does someone on the northbound platform get to the southbound side of the roadway?

        Well, the safest way is to have another cross walk that diagonals across the wiggle from the southwest corner of the northbound platform to the northeast corner of the southbound platform. Crossing the busway and then immediately the car lanes would be quite difficult to do safely. Where is the pedestrian going to wait between crossing the busway and then crossing the car lanes?

        I wish I could show you a diagram, but words will have to suffice.

        I would assert that even using the diagonal at the wiggle to cross and waiting on the other platform is a bit dangerous because people will be crossing the diagonal with their backs to buses coming from the other direction of the platform from which they are crossing. Now, yes, the buses will be going fairly slowly approaching the southbound platform.

        But I think that you can see that, overall, staggered platforms are kind of clumsy. But they do have one significant advantage. If you make the wiggle pretty long and can put up with fairly narrow platforms, it requires less street widening than would island platforms, since with the staggered ones there is only a single roadway plus the width of one platform through the station.

        I get that center platforms are great to provide for frequent meeting points, but they require left-side doors or contraflow operation through the stations. And the stations must be wider, because there must be two roadways and the platform.

        The diagrams in the CT proposal show contraflow operations through the stations. The stations are also shown at intersections, presumably because cars are more likely to stop for the light when there may be cross-traffic than if it’s “just a pedestrian” at a mid-block crossing.

      15. Al, the reason that MAX doesn’t generate the same level of pedestrian collisions is that Interstate Avenue and East Burnside are both single-lane streets for the cars. As you’ve pointed out many times, crossing a single lane is by far the safest for a pedestrian.

      16. No I mean the ability to get to a business on the opposite side of the street [in a car].

        But they haven’t actually lost access. It is just a little less convenient for drivers. That is the nature of a central median. For example this is how you get to the Kidd Valley from the other side (https://maps.app.goo.gl/tqT4LPVPk4J93r5WA). Notice a driver has to drive past the Kidd Valley and make a U-Turn. Not that big of a deal. It is just in this case the central median is used by buses.

      17. if the stations are mid-block with staggered with right-side platforms, there is a real problem getting to the far side of the street or there must be two sets of pedestrian crossings

        Not really. For example, take that video again (https://youtu.be/j-vU0dZaMKk?t=1). Now get rid of the cross streets (and thus the turning cars). Now you have two crosswalks (one for each platform). That is unnecessary with that setup. You can have one crosswalk by just squeezing things together (from the sides).

        Now take that same midblock setup but this time assume that we save space by using only two lanes for the buses (as described in the last paragraph of this comment — https://seattletransitblog.com/2025/11/19/midweek-roundup-hope-this-helps/#comment-972588). You can’t squeeze the platforms together because the buses need to swap lanes. This means you need two pairs of crosswalks (one for each platform). This is no big deal. They would be synchronized which means for drivers they would hardly notice. They would be timed so that drivers don’t get stuck in between but even when that happens it isn’t a big deal (you basically have two sets of stop lines each direction).

      18. On most any road that’s busy enough to have a median BRT line, I’m not sure left turns are usually that easy anyway. Having a median and permitted U turns at intersections seems like it winds up being better.

      19. Ross, you’re missing the problem with staggered right-side platforms in a two-lane busway. How does someone who wants to get to the “other side” of the street down it in your proposed design? The pedestrian has to cross two lanes of busway and then however many lanes of traffic. You can’t have a stop light fot the bus inside the station, and you don’t have a refuge between the other bus lane and the traffic lanes without taking another four or five feet for it. Things get wide quickly, negating the advantage of mid-block platforms.

        Center platforms are really all that works safely.

      20. How does someone who wants to get to the “other side” of the street down it in your proposed design?

        Via the nearest crosswalk. It is the same basic idea whether there are cars there or not. Look at the diagram again as the starting point. For the sake argument assume that north is up. So someone from the north side of the street can cross to the south side of the street at either the west crosswalk or the east crosswalk. If they use the west crosswalk they can access the station closest to them (which is for buses heading west).

        OK, so now get rid of those turn lanes. Also get rid of the crossing car traffic. Nothing changes. You have this weird gap and people wonder why there are two crosswalks but it still works. But at the same time, you use less of the street (because there are no turn lanes there).

        Now move the stations onto the BUS lanes. The western station (the one of the left) is moved down (south). The eastern station is moved north. Buses have to share the bus lanes approaching the station and all the way to the a little while after the other station. They weave between the stations. That is easy to imagine given the width between the two crosswalks in the diagram.

        In all likelihood this is overkill. The only place where it looks like it may be tight is where there are left turns. By simply moving the stations midblock you avoid the problem. Basically the buses take up three lanes (two for bus lanes and one for a station). That means there are seven lanes used by vehicles midblock. At the intersection there are no stations so the buses only use the two lanes for bus lanes. You retain those left turns which means you are also using seven lanes. This is one less than what is in the diagram.

      21. @Tom Traffic

        I probably didn’t make it clear. My previous question was actually about why you think island platform requires left-door buses.

        Since we will have sections of bus-only lane being single-laned, it doesn’t hurt to have bus run on the left-hand side at passing section so regular bus can stop at a island platform.
        All the single-lane section will be signalized at each end. This makes it easier to implement contra-flow operation or not at two-lane section (such as a station section with island platform).

    3. Maybe some of those stations are located at midblock instead of far/near side of the intersection where turn lanes need to be provided for general traffic.

  4. Here’s my Swift Gold Line restructure idea:

    Swift Gold Line:
    As proposed by Community Transit.

    Route 109:
    Through Lake Stevens, now uses 91st instead of 99th, serving the Costco, then going to S Lake Stevens Rd to 87th to Bickford Ave instead of its current routing from 30th/Bickford to Lake Stevens TC. Improve headways from 60 minutes to 15 minutes. Making 7 1/2 minute service or better on Ave D in Snohomish despite really not deserving it.

    Route 201/202:
    Delete both routes for the Swift Gold Line, and new 900.

    Route 209:
    Delete this route for new routes.

    Route 220:
    Delete this route for more 230 service.

    Route 223:
    Different from CT’s proposal. This new route runs from Smokey Point to Lake Stevens, it goes down Smokey Point Blvd from the TC, then turns at 116th to Quil Ceda, taking the 209’s path, but turns at Cedar North, then east to Grove, then South to 83rd, then east to 64th, then South to Hwy 9, doubling frequency from Walmart to Lake Stevens TC. Runs at same frequencies as route 225.

    Route 224:
    The new route replaces the 240. Runs between Warm Beach and Arlington P&R, it uses the 240’s old route between Warm Beach and Smokey Point, then going back to 172nd east to Hwy 9, then going up Hwy 9 to the park and ride, serving the high school. This route runs all-day every 30-60 minutes.

    Route 225:
    New DART route from Stanwood to Lake Stevens, starts at Stanwood Station and goes down to Stanwood Downtown P&R, then going down Marine Dr to Warm Beach (taking the 240’s path with the routing through Stanwood becoming DART service area), but continues on Marine Dr to Tulalip, then from Tulalip going to 4th St to Hwy 9 to Lake Stevens TC, replacing a lot of routes, this also makes the routing faster through Stanwood, and restores service to Walmart. This runs every 30-60 minutes.

    Route 229:
    New route replacing the 209, this starts at Marysville II P&R, takes the 209’s path to Quil Ceda Village, but at 88th turns east to 83rd (like the 222), then going down 83rd, taking the 209’s path, serving Lundeen Park and Vernon Rd instead of Hwy 9. This route runs frequently every day.

    Route 230:
    Convert to all-day service, operating 15-30 minutes from Arlington to Smokey Point, and every 30-60 minutes from Arlington to Darrington. Add an Arlington P&R stop. Includes new weekend service, add overnight service too.

    Route 240:
    Delete this route for better bus service.

    Route 270:
    Delete this route for better bus service.

    Route 271:
    This route would now use 30th to Hwy 9 to Hwy 2 rather than using Bickford Ave to Hwy 2. The route would also now serve Jamison Corner, serving an elementary school, a fire station, and a golf course rather than using Hwy 2 from 88th to Roosevelt Rd. The route would now also use Old Owen Rd to Sultan P&R, ending there instead of continuing to Gold Bar, runs every 15 minutes from Monroe to Everett, and 30 minutes from Monroe to Sultan.

    Route 280:
    Delete this route for better bus service.

    Route 281:
    New route replacing the 280, it uses the 280’s path from 91st/20th to Everett Station, it then continues on 20th to 99th (serving Chapel Hill) instead of 91st to Lake Stevens TC, then going on Market Pl to Lundeen Park Way (returning to the old 280’s path), it no longer makes the loop through Lake Stevens Downtown, but makes an L-shaped route up Grade Rd, but instead of turning east, it turns west on Hwy 92 to 113th, ending at Lake Stevens High School. This route runs frequently.

    Route 424:
    Continue service to Downtown Seattle, instead now serving South Lake Union and 5th Ave (overlapping the 256 for frequent service), it would also now serve Woodinville P&R, going up Woodinville Snohomish Rd to Hwy 9 near the Costco, it would also now end at Monroe P&R instead of going to Snohomish, add all-day service to the route.

    Route 900:
    A new route from Skagit Station to Lynnwood, replaces the ST 90X, and CT 201/202. It uses the current 201/202’s path from Everett Station to Lynnwood, with a new stop at South Everett Freeway Station, then the route would go back on I-5 (like the old 201/202), going up the freeway to Smokey Point, with flyer stops at 4th and 116th. At Smokey Point TC it would go up the boulevard to Arlington Silvana Rd, where it turns back on I-5, it would continue up to Skagit Station, with deviation routing to Stanwood I-5 P&R, and a new flyer stop at Freeborn P&R, it would deviate off I-5 to South Mount Vernon P&R, and go back to I-5, reaching Skagit Station. As I think there is collab needed between these two agencies, and this is the way to go so they can change their routes. This route runs 15 minutes every day, with overnight service.

    Route 901:
    Delete route for better 109 service.

    Route 903:
    Delete this route for more service between Lake Stevens and Everett.

    Route 904:
    Delete this route for more express service.

    Route 905:
    Truncate this route, running from Stanwood to Smokey Point. Remove the Pioneer Hwy deviation, and use Smokey Point Blvd from Arlington Silvana Rd to the transit center, overlapping the 900 (like the current 907).

    Route 907:
    Delete this route for more express service. Instead use the ET 18 or 8 or 3 as better options.

    Route 910:
    New express route from Lake Stevens to Granite Falls, uses the old 280’s path from Grade Rd to Granite Falls P&R without the deviation to Granite Falls High School, then West of Grade Rd continues on Hwy 92 to Hwy 9, going to Lake Stevens TC, this route runs every 30-60 minutes, this also helps run a frequent and infrequent bus seperately.

    Route 911:
    This new route runs from Gold Bar P&R to Lake Stevens TC, it uses the 270’s old path from Gold Bar P&R to 88th/Hwy 2, then continuing on Hwy 2 to Hwy 204 to Hwy 9, ending at Lake Stevens TC, this route runs every 30-60 minutes.

    If I missed anything I’ll reply.

    1. The one thing route 424 needs, above all else, is to run all day, as not having it leaves a huge hole, with alternative service being a 2-3 hour detour, depending on the destination.

      I don’t think the 424 needs to run all the way to downtown Seattle either, and I could see Bellevue Transit Center being a logical terminus, once the full 2 line opens. With the current configuration, the 424 is nearly unusable for Monroe-Bellevue trips because the wait time at Totem Lake is too unpredictable, due to not knowing how long the bus will take to crawl through downtown Seattle. But, if the bus were truncated in Bellevue, a 2-line->424 connection would be quite reliable. It would also allow the bus to enter the 405 express lanes at 6th St., bypassing the 520-405 ramps with no transit priority whatsoever.

      1. Well, the plan to truncate it to Bellevue is already planned, I just think that it needs to continue service to Seattle due to the 256, as it’s ancestor was one of the most productive routes, and as the ridership comes from Woodinville to Seattle on the 424 (highest), we can’t have frequent trips terminate there because CT routes can’t run between King and King, so we need another component in order to make frequent service. I think everyone would agree with an all-day 424 though.

      2. Perhaps it can continue to Seattle at peak and terminate at Woodinville (with a Stride transfer) off-peak?

      3. William. Stride is going to end in Bothell, not in Woodinville, I did email Community Transit about possibly saving bucks on truncating their proposed 908 at the UWB/CC campus before Stride and encouraging transfers to the 256, 522, and 535, but they said they’re going to truncate the 908 at the UWB/CC campus once Stride launches.

      4. It would end at the 522/405 interchange transit center. That is basically in the middle of nowhere but technically it is in Bothell. OK, it isn’t horrible in that you can walk from there to UW Bothell but it isn’t Downtown Bothell either. Anyway, that would be a great midday bus as it would connect to Stride 2 and 3 (which means connections to Downtown Seattle, Bellevue, Bothell and Kenmore).

      5. “Perhaps it can continue to Seattle at peak and terminate at Woodinville (with a Stride transfer) off-peak?”

        That could be done, but service cost aside, it would hurt people coming from Bellevue far more than it would help people coming from Seattle. If the bus truncates in Bellevue, you get on the bus at the beginning of the route – whether coming from Bellevue or Seattle – so you know when the bus will leave. But, if you’re boarding a bus in Bellevue that’s coming from Seattle, who knows when it’s going to show up. That’s the problem.

        I agree, there should be a Woodinville-Totem Lake-UW express bus to the 1 line, but I don’t think that bus should be the 424. It should be a separate route. Otherwise, you’re trying to do too much with one bus and it just ends up very slow for everyone.

        I’m not convinced any Eastside-SLU bus is needed at all, even during peak, beyond tech company shuttles that Google, Amazon, and Meta are paying for. Most of SLU isn’t that far of walk from Westlake Station. The parts that are, there are tons of connecting buses with high frequency. The proposed ST 544, that was supposed to be an express from Redmond to SLU, is really just an express from Redmond to Fred Hutch. Just about anywhere else in SLU, the 542 to 1 line is faster.

      6. Yes, Route 424 to BTC. But it could have been truncated at the UW station at any signup after March 2016, along with routes 545, 252, 255, 257, 268, and 311.
        Scooby: Route 256 has no productive ancestor. It is just a weak and poorly designed route; it will fail soon. (Did you mean Route 255?). It should have used the hours from routes 237, 252, 257, and 311 for a two-way peak-only route serving both BTC and UW Link.

      7. I meant the 311 (which had good ridership the one time I rode it), but the majority got off at Totem Lake, it was crowded there was only standing room, but I was boarding at Totem Lake to Woodinville to catch the 522, so I had to sit at the back with two other people. The 256’s OG plan was to run every 12 minutes, but it got reduced to 30 minutes. I think the 424 should complement the 256 by running every 30 minutes all-day (providing off-peak service), we COULD truncate it at U District Station, but I feel like many people want to just keep going to Downtown Seattle, not to mention there’s already the 255, 271 (to be the 270), and the 542, and to Seattle there’s the 256, 424, and 545, so it’s equal which buses go to Seattle and to UW, but maybe one of those routes could be swapped for the 270, restoring the fast connection between Seattle and Bellevue, but I don’t think Metro wants to restore the 255’s connection to Seattle anytime soon, I would love to see that, but I just can’t see it.

      8. I will continue to lobby for Stride3 to extend to/from Woodinville instead of beneath I-405 next to North Creek; the made up ST terminal is nonsense. ST3 had the dumb notion of turning back half the trips at UWB/CCC; they noted that would have reliability issues; their solution was to truncate all trips; a better solution would be to extend all trips to a real place. Stride3 will have several purposes: connect with Link and serve as a Northshore trunk line; Metro should have several routes terminating at Woodinville.

      10. Yeah, I’m pretty sure the issue with ST3 going to Woodinville was financial.

        But there are other issues. The whole area is a bit of a mess. The only big destination is the college itself. Not that many people ride the 522 from Woodinville (even though it has no competition from the 372).

        Another issue is that the Stride 2 line will not stop at 195th/Beardslee. This makes some sense as the freeway station requires exiting the freeway (unlike the other freeway stations). Thus longer trips (e. g. Lynnwood to Bellevue) will be faster. But it means that the only reasonable connection between Stride 2 and 3 is at the 522/405 transit center.

        There are a couple ways to do that. One option would be to run through campus to get to the layover. But instead the bus will continue on Beardslee until it gets to 405. Then it will get on the freeway and take the first exit (to SR 522). It can use the HOV lane on-ramp but I don’t think there is enough room for it to work its way over to the HOV lanes. I think the bus will just stay in the right lane and exit (with the other cars). Then at the traffic light it will go straight into the transit center (there is a good map here). By going it this way the bus serves an additional stop on Beardslee but that doesn’t seem as important as getting closer to the campus.

        One advantage of staying on Beardslee is that in the long run it could continue that direction (and avoid getting on the freeway). It would cross the freeway and then take a right on 120th before serving the main part of Woodinville. But that would mean breaking the connection between Stride 2 and 3. I understand why they decided to end in Bothell (instead of Woodinville). But I don’t understand why they decided to go up to Beardslee to get on the freeway just so they can get off the freeway at the next exit. It seems much easier to just go through campus. I know there is plenty of traffic but I think there will be traffic with the route they chose as well. I could also see Bothell making it easier for a bus to access 522.

      11. yes, of course, truncating Stride3 in a nowhere place was related to budget; it was not related to good service design. The ST3 budget is about to be different after the Enterprise Initiative. The board might emphasize service more. Woodinville has multifamily housing and retail and several Metro routes (routes 931, 251, 231) and should have one more, Route 222.

      12. “Woodinville … should have one more, Route 222.”

        Yeah especially that 222 is running empty buses between Woodinville TC and Cottage Lake anyway.
        I heard some people asked if they could continue riding to Woodinville, sometimes operator would agree to take them with.

    2. Route 900:
      A new route from Skagit Station to Lynnwood, replaces the ST 90X, and CT 201/202.

      The 900 series are basically just peak-only routes (although the 909 runs midday). A bus that replaced the 201/202 wouldn’t be called 900. Maybe 200.

      Anyway, the Gold Line basically replaces the north end of the 201/202. Not entirely; you would still need to backfill service on Smokey Point Boulevard. But your proposed 223 would do that. The Gold Line is supposed to run every ten minutes — this is more frequent than the 201/202. I really don’t see them running that *and* another all-day, frequent regional bus route from Everett to Arlington. It is far more likely that the 201/202 ends in Everett. I could see it taking over the Everett Transit 4, 6 or 19*. It could branch and serve two of those (like today). Or it could become one route and cover one of those. Or it could just end at the transit center.

      Regional service like you are suggesting would be nice but tends to be infrequent (hourly would be about as good as you can expect). As you wrote, you really need cooperation from different agencies (or the state to offer it). Skagit Station is not a great terminus. You would really want to continue to Bellingham (if not Vancouver). That is basically just an improved version of Amtrak Cascades.

      *I’ve argued that the ST 510 should take over the 19 while also skipping Ash Way. It is the same basic idea. ST could offer regional service (with some of the buses going up to Arlington or beyond) but that is outside of its coverage area.

      1. And I thought that I was the only one who thinks that the 510 needs to go to College Station, though I think it should take over the 4 and not the 19, making those on and off-ramps one-way similar to the ones in Woodinville on 195th “pretty useful”, as they are designed for buses anyway. Also the 900 bus series aren’t only for peak, CT proposed the 117 to be a 900 route, but for some reason I might have not been the only one that requested it to be a local route, and I think that’s the reason it uses double decker buses. Anyways Bellingham or Vancouver would make the route too long, so let’s stick with Skagit for now. I think Skagit should revise routes, so in return since they barely do changes my guess is because of costs, we’ll trade in the 90X for more Skagit bus service.

      2. My point is that you aren’t going to have an all-day express routes that duplicates the Gold Line (or Skagit 90x). At most you would have a peak-route (to take pressure off the Gold Line and provide a faster peak-only option).

      3. The Gold Line’s frequency makes up for its middle-level stops to some extent. It’s hard to see an express overlay running every 15 minutes or more all day. So if there is an all-day express, you either take the Gold line in 5 minutes, or sit impatiently 25 minutes waiting for the express. Many people will just take the Gold Line even if the in-vehicle time or total travel time are longer, to avoid that longer wait.

        That’s part of the calculation that led to the Gold Line’s existence. It’s “good enough” for a large number and variety of trips in that corridor. The number of people who will be dissatisfied with it, especially off-peak, may be few enough to ignore.

    3. Mike, it was because of ridership projections, maybe also because of what you said.

    4. 5-10 years after Swift Gold Line, Swift Silver Line probably will be online.
      Assume in the meantime Link will open Mariner station, 901 will be redundant.
      201/202 sort of serve has Gold Line’s prototype today, maybe as part of the Swift Gold Line restructure, CT will create the prototype of future Swift Silver Line.

      1. What’s the Swift Silver Line? Is that the Highway 9 route? I can’t think of any other line that’s missing.

        Would the Highway 9 route go all the way from Arlington to Lynnwood? The last time I was there in a car in the 2010s, it was very exurban; i.e., a lot of it hadn’t changed much from its rural past, so it was hard to see how it could support Swift. Has it densified now into something like the Green Line corridor?

      4. @Mike

        It is a planned BRT line from Seaway TC to Cathcart Park & Ride via SR 526 (or Casino Rd as WL suggest), 119th Ave SE, 132nd St SE, and Cathcart Way.

        There is no detail about this planned SWIFT line except for a couple maps from Community Transit and an RTP Project ID from PSRC.
        Based on those information, this route will miss Green Line transfer by one block, which made me wonder if they would actually reroute Green Line to SR 526 and 119th St SE between Murphys Corner and Seaway TC and make Silver Line serve Airport Road and 128th St SE between Seaway TC and Murphys Corner.

        It is too early to discuss exact routing. I am pretty sure planners with CT don’t even know.

      5. What significant retail centers or job clusters or institutions or denser housing clusters are along the proposed Silver Line route, if any?

        Also, 128th-132nd is one street like Seattle’s 130th-125th. Does it make sense that the Green serves west of the Bothell-Everett Highway and the Silver serves east of it? From the map it looks like both routes turn away from each other at the same point, and force anybody who’s going straight through to transfer.

  5. Unfortunately, some of those rural transit groups don’t appear in Google maps, so sometimes those trips require an extra bit of research.

    Eg: Thurston County Rural Transit (formerly a different name) was something I found out about due to a sign in the Centralia Amtrak station.

  6. How does CT expect to make a single-lane busway serve both directions? Would one of two buses headed toward each other merge right to the “fast lane” next to it? How would the drivers know which bus was to “step aside”? Would it always be the responsibility of the northbound bus (for instance)? Would it depend on time of day?

    Seems pretty sketchy, to be honest.

    1. See Lane Transit District EmX in Eugene. It works a lot better than you might expect. It’s basically set up as you might set up a single track light rail line.

      Obviously, you need reliable schedules for this, which is why the one section of MAX that was set up this way got double tracked. In the 1980s they couldn’t make MAX have a reliable enough schedule for it to work due to Steele Bridge lifts (sometimes 12+ per day) and wheelchair lift use.

      (Neither of these are true today on MAX, and shouldn’t be a problem for Swift.)

      https://youtu.be/_oKsleOocFM

      1. Yeah, and that is probably a more extreme example than what Swift would have. It would be more like the beginning of the video, not the rest of it. Note that at the beginning the bus lane is just marked with yellow paint. This allows the buses to use the center bus lane as essentially a passing lane (except when it is close to a bus stop). If traffic is really bad one direction (but not the other) then this would work out well.

        I think my concern is that it doesn’t deal with the main issue which Sunny mentioned up above. The street needs to be a bit wider at the intersections. At best this gives you an extra lane in the middle — presumably for parking. That may be the option they go with if people complain too much about the lack of parking.

      2. I understand single-track operation. But that busway example is far from just removing a center refuge lane. It wanders all over what was clearly a median strip, and still is in some places.

        I guess if the buses have fifteen minute headways, they will go for about seven and a half minutes without being faced with a meet. So dignal timing could be used to give them reliable transit times. But timing works best

        The bus waiting in the station demonstrates the optimal way to accommodate bi-directional operation in a single lane. If stations are close enough and / or schedules carefully enough kept, a truly reserved right of way like in the video can work.

        Accommodating the stations will require the rebuilding of the intersections at which they are placed. A platform and the busway won’t fit in a single refuge lane’s width.

        CT wants to take the center refuge and cars will not so easily surrender it. Unless every block of the single track section is camera-equipped, people will intrude on the “busway” constantly.

      3. As the bus in the video is undergoing self-steering testing in 2013, when that was still fairly experimental, I don’t imagine it’s actually carrying passengers.

        In other words, it’s not something that was planned in the timetable.

        You’ll notice there’s some longer sections of double track on the wider median, and normally they try to schedule the passing in those.

      1. It does do okay, though the frequency is low enough for it to be not too complicated. It’s murder on the peds though. At least, initially, around UNM, the victims didn’t know to look that way.

      2. And the drivers would just bomb through even high ped areas. Life is cheap in the land of enchantment.

      3. Given how pedestrians act on east central (wandering into travel lanes, etc), I can’t imagine it must be easy to be an ART driver unfortunately.

        Ped deaths did go down significantly still with the infrastructure that ART put in place. Like everything it just takes getting used to (and some good signage and awareness campaigns).

      4. Indianapolis’s Red line has bidirectional busways, with passing occurring at the stations, which are generally midblock. I assume this allowed them to retain turning lanes at intersections.

      5. Indianapolis’s Red line has bidirectional busways, with passing occurring at the stations, which are generally midblock. I assume this allowed them to retain turning lanes at intersections.

        I was thinking of midblock stations as a way to deal with the problem Sunny mentioned above. One drawback is a farther walk for transfers. But I could see how it could save a bunch of money in some cases (even though you have to add in signals for the crosswalk).

    3. They did a thorough micro-simulation to prove it should work for a flat 10-minute headway service.
      It might not be the most comfortable idea to engineers from City of Everett and Snohomish County, but at the end of the day the fact that it requires minimum ROW acquisition probably beat everything.
      It is a choice between this kind of bus lane or no bus lane.

      1. I wonder if something like that would work for the Aurora Bridge. Buses in the peak direction use the center bus lane, buses in the opposing direction use general traffic (or if it’s short enough to treat like a single track both can use it). Make the lanes wide enough to fit a bus and cut it to 5 lanes (or fewer, with a bike lane or smth)

      2. at the end of the day the fact that it requires minimum ROW acquisition probably beat everything

        The main benefit would be to retain parking (one direction). Seems like a lot of work for that. It might be easier to just give the existing retailers compensation (for taking away nearby parking).

      3. If it’s substantially faster and more frequent than current service, it’s probably worth it, because there’s always a chance to double-lane it later.

        Is 10-minute headway each direction or both directions? Each direction is good service. Both direction is, ahem, what the Blue Line drops to on Sundays.

        I try to go to the Aurora Village Costco on weekdays, because the Blue Line transfer is 10 minutes weekdays, 15 minutes Saturdays, and 20 minutes Sundays.

  7. I think it is really cool that the Everett Herald (a well respected newspaper) references an article by The Urbanist about RapidRide G.

  8. Miami just opened an incredible-looking BRT line which may be the closest model to real BRT this country has ever seen. Dedicated roadway, actual stations (at some stops), off-bus payment and a railroad crossing arm at a few intersections.

    1. I didn’t watch the video. But, what’s going to make or break the line is where does it go and how often does it run. Houston also has a BRT line (the Silver line) that runs in a dedicated busway, but the route is short as to make it nearly useless. So, nobody rides it, while the regular numbered bus routes in the area who do carry real riders continue to sit in traffic on adjacent streets.

      1. Cleveland and Albuquerque have high quality BRT lines, but with abundant free parking ridership is limited.

      2. Houston Silver Line has good bus-only lane, but now it runs infrequently with 29-ft fleet due lack of riders. This route could have been better utilized if Houston built the LRT line paralleled to US 59 first.

        The BRT in Miami is basically a south extension of its heavy rail and it has been a BRT-lite line for a long time. MDT didn’t really feature the service as BRT but had the kind of right-of-way that probably beats most of the BRT in the country. What they open this time is sort of an upgraded version of that featuring upgraded fleet and stations.
        Its northern terminus/transfer point to heavy rail is like Southcenter or Lynnwood/Alderwood to Seattle. It is not super high-density, but it is a destination with a lot of things going on.

      3. Yeah, that is what it looked like. This is not an urban busway (like Brisbane). It is much more a BRT-as-light-rail project. Even then it doesn’t run through the heart of the city (like a lot of light rail and “BRT” projects). But it has a solid suburban anchor while also connecting to a metro that does run through the city. It doesn’t need the capacity of light rail so the project saved a huge amount of money while providing the same functionality. At the same time, by calling it “BRT” (and not just buses using a busway) they were able to get the state and feds to chip in a couple hundred million (for a project that only costs a little over three hundred million). It is a good mix of practical engineering and politics.

        I could easily see Surrey doing this instead of the extension of SkyTrain. To be fair to Surrey, I think there are a lot more people there. The extension is also a lot shorter. This means it costs less to build an extension but you get a lot more riders per service hour. Throw in the lower cost for operations (due to automation) and it is understandable that they just bit the bullet and extended SkyTrain.

    2. Boston’s silver line has dedicated stations and roadway? LA’s G Line (Orange) has a dedicated busway but unremarkable stations.

    3. Looks like a good project. I understand why you would say it is more like “real BRT” than other projects. I’ve done the same thing. But I’ve come to the conclusion that the terminology is silly. It would be like saying “Real Trams”. Imagine if we took that approach with our streetcars. Someone could say “If we added center travel lanes on Broadway and Jackson the streetcar could be a real tram!” or “For First Avenue it will operate like a real tram”.

      Who cares? What matters is whether the tram (or bus in this case) is good or not. Is it fast and frequent — does it have good stops. How well does it fit in with the rest of the network and of course, how much does it cost to build.

      Just about every system (bus or rail) makes compromises. An American metro that skips important stops is still a “real metro” (or “real subway” if you prefer). It just has flaws. The same is true if a light rail line is stuck in traffic or stops at an intersection. Or runs infrequently. There are so many different ways in which you can judge a particular route (whether it is a train or bus) that trying to put a project on a spectrum is ultimately a waste of time. It leads to political bragging rights and nothing more (“Our system is ‘Gold’ according to ITDB. Huzzah!”). There is also the danger of focusing efforts on more of these monuments instead of making more widespread improvements.

      This looks like a good project because the leaders understood the fundamental benefit of rail: capacity. They may have overbuilt the stations but the cost seems relatively low. From what I can tell the corridor is fairly suburban. This explains the frequency (7.5 minutes during peak, 15 midday, 30 minutes weekend) and also the fancy stations. If you have to wait a long time to get into town it is nice to have a comfortable place to wait.

      1. Real BRT is good transit; unreal BRT is perpetuating the same mediocre transit that’s preventing most of the US from becoming really transit-oriented.

        We don’t need a distinction between “real streetcars” and “unreal streetcars” because real streetcars are called light rail and unreal streetcars are called streetcars. That’s the official Seattle/Portland distinction used by local governments and transit agencies: light rail is mostly exclusive-lane or grade-separated, while streetcars are mostly mixed traffic.

        The T Line is an abormality in this terminology, because it was named before any of the other LR or streetcar lines or Paul Allen’s SLU streetcar vision, and ST was eager to plaster the “light rail” name on all its projects even though there’s a vast difference in Central Link’s speed/capacity vs the T Line.

      2. It is more like a rail run by bus just like LA Metro G Line. You can only do that with reasonable cost if you have a rail right-of-way to convert from.

      3. Real BRT is good transit; unreal BRT is perpetuating the same mediocre transit that’s preventing most of the US from becoming really transit-oriented.

        So basically we should make the entire bus system “real BRT”. That way it would be similar to a transit system in Europe.

      4. “So basically we should make the entire bus system “real BRT”. That way it would be similar to a transit system in Europe.”

        The majority of European buses aren’t that good. The ones I rode in Dusseldorf’s suburbs were good — 1/4 mile stop spacing, all-door boarding, I’m not sure if you could pay the driver or had to get a card in a store, each bus stop had a name (apparently the cross street) — but they were still in mixed traffic. There weren’t exclusive busways for all of them or even a quarter of them.

      5. So you are saying we should somehow leapfrog Europe when it comes to transit? That would be great but how about we just equal them for now. Instead of fixating on a handful of streetcars and “BRT” projects we just match them in terms of frequency and coverage. That would require a huge investment. But that is the reason why transit is not very good in this country (not the lack of “BRT”).

      6. “So you are saying we should somehow leapfrog Europe when it comes to transit?”

        No, I’m saying real BRT is not realistic for all bus routes, and it’s not what Europe has. Making all bus routes BRT would be like building subways for all bus routes. BRT means bus rapid transit, as in faster than a regular bus, and it usually implies full-time frequent or ultra-frequent. You have a strategic network of ten metro lines (some of which might be BRT), and a hundred bus routes around them. All the bus routes should be good, but we can’t expect all of them to have busways or be as good as rapid transit. That way the metro/BRT handles the backbone of trips — between the largest villages and nodes — and the other bus routes handle the lesser corridors and lower-demand trips around them.

      7. No, I’m saying real BRT is not realistic for all bus routes, and it’s not what Europe has. Making all bus routes BRT would be like building subways for all bus routes.

        Exactly. That is my point. This runs counter to your previous assertion. You wrote:

        Real BRT is good transit; unreal BRT is perpetuating the same mediocre transit that’s preventing most of the US from becoming really transit-oriented.

        Yet Europe doesn’t have much BRT. Nor is it mediocre. Europe has very good bus service. That should be our goal. Let me it this way:

        The US needs much better bus service — the type they have in Europe. It should start with much better frequency. Then improve the routing and stop spacing. Add right-of-way improvements as needed. At that point it really doesn’t matter if any of the routes pass the magical and largely arbitrary BRT test.

        I would go a step further in my argument. The pursuit of “BRT” is often counter productive. It moves us farther away from good overall transit (like that described in the last paragraph). Sure, we end up with a few good routes in the city (and a lot of ribbon cutting) but we spend a lot of time and effort on the wrong thing. The pursuit of modern streetcars in America is similar. In both cases the agencies are building monuments instead of focusing on the entire system. At best it is building things in the wrong order. At worst it is building the wrong things.

        Consider the East Side as an example. Imagine the RapidRide B was just a regular bus. This would be a big degradation. The B carries plenty of riders and performs well. The off-board payment saves time. Without the RapidRide designation it could end up running every half hour midday. That would suck.

        But now imagine that all buses on the East Side run twice as often. Now the B is back to running every fifteen minutes. A lot of other buses run fifteen minutes. Some buses run more often than that. Given the extra frequency, there is less of a transfer penalty. Metro takes advantage of that and restructures the buses. They add more coverage and even more frequency. The bus from Downtown Bellevue to the UW is running every 7.5 minute midday. It runs in HOV-3 lanes and serves freeway stations. Does that now mean the bus is BRT? Who cares. The East Side now has a much better network — something more like they would have in Europe.

      8. @ross

        i disagree the pursuit of ‘brt’ is still necessary. especially as it allow the public to accept larger construction impacts that they do not for regular bus improvements.

      9. The B was my route to my family’s for many years. Its biggest innovation was frequency. Before the B, two routes overlapped to 8th & 156th for 15-minute frequency weekdays, dropping to 30 minutes evenings and weekends. At 156th they split with the 253 continuing north like the B does, and the 226 (sometimes numbered 230 or 231) continuing east and going to Redmond another way. So beyond that split it was 30-60 minutes.

        Now it’s a dependable 15 minutes full time, so you don’t have to try to arrange your schedule to get the last bus before it drops to 30 minutes or not go on a 30-minute day. It also gives flexibility when transferring to another 30-minute route (550 or 271). And it has next-arrival displays so you don’t have to guess when it will arrive at your stop some eight minutes after the timepoint stop earlier. All that increased my ridership and probably increases others’.

      10. “Real BRT is good transit; unreal BRT is perpetuating the same mediocre transit that’s preventing most of the US from becoming really transit-oriented.”

        “Yet Europe doesn’t have much BRT. Nor is it mediocre.”

        But the US is building unreal BRT that’s worse than Europe’s regular bus routes!!!!!

      11. But the US is building unreal BRT that’s worse than Europe’s regular bus routes!!!!!

        Yes, which shows how ridiculous the process is. The US also builds trams that are worse than Europe’s regular bus routes.

        i disagree the pursuit of ‘brt’ is still necessary. especially as it allow the public to accept larger construction impacts that they do not for regular bus improvements.

        I don’t think it makes much difference. The bus tunnel is arguably the greatest transit project ever built in the state of Washington. Yet it wasn’t “BRT”. The buses that served it were just regular routes. Sometimes those routed didn’t even run in the tunnel. More recently they took lanes on Westlake and Rainier Avenue. Never in a million years did I think we would do that. But we did. For regular buses. Meanwhile we have the very controversial work in Lake Forest Park. I don’t think it matters one bit that this is for “BRT” or the two bus lines that currently use the road. If anything the loss of the 372 along the corridor makes the case for this very expensive (and disruptive) project much weaker. Folks are pushing very hard for bus lanes on Denny for the 8 (a regular bus). We have made some really good improvements for the buses that serve the UW from the 520 corridor — we need to do more. I could go on but you get the idea.

        The main thing driving BRT is the federal matching money. That’s it. It explains Mike’s point. You can build a really bad bus line but by calling it BRT you get the feds to chip in. It explains most of the projects (both good and bad). But it is really a bad process. We should be building additional right-of-way for many buses (like the bus tunnel) or improving frequency for the entire network. But instead we pick a single route and then, after years of tedious planning, make a relatively small improvement. The message is basically “Yes, we know the buses suck. But hey — this one is special! It doesn’t suck nearly as much. Oh, and it is a different color!”

    4. It is an interesting corridor to examine.

      There’s a section on it in the Metro Wikipedia page:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrobus_(Miami-Dade_County)

      It is not actually a new busway, but an upgrade to an existing one. The South Busway opened in stages between 1997 and 2007. The 2025 opening is a package of enhancements to the original one. It needed to be modernized.

      It parallels the original main arterial US1 to the Keys, and uses the abandoned right of way of the former rail line to the Keys. In most places, it runs just west of the original highway, but in Florida City it is not adjacent to US1 but runs between properties. It’s basically running on almost flat terrain its entire length. Because it was originally a rail corridor, minor streets never crossed meaning that the intersections needing special treatment were less than they could have been — even though they’ve had an ongoing problem with bus-car accidents at some of the intersections.

      Miami-Dade (county government) did consider extending the heavy rail (in the same abandoned corridor north of the end) that stops at Dadeland further. Of course, the busway corridor is 20 miles long and is fairly low-density. It would have been quite costly and not cost-effective.

      There is a multi-use trail next to it as the available right of way is quite wide.

      None of our local rail corridors offer this kind of width except maybe the BNSF tracks the South Sounder uses. Of course the freight activity —especially to the port — is so lucrative that BNSF would likely never abandon that.

    5. It is just like LAMETRO G Line. The South Miami-Dade busway has been there for years but they upgraded it and rebranded the service.
      It was part of FEC right-of-way that goes all the way to Key West. MDT used the right-of-way to build the heavy rail to Dadeland South. The original plan was to have rail going all the way to Homestead but later dropped due to budget issue.

  9. Sound Transit posted the October ridership data:

    https://www.soundtransit.org/ride-with-us/system-performance-tracker/ridership

    They appear to update all the modes but ST Express and the main summary page.

    It looks similar to September although a bit higher. Does anyone see an interesting result here?

    With Federal Way Link stations opening in a few weeks in early December it will be interesting to see how South King boardings will change. I’ve had friends tell me that the Angle Lake garage can be full — so there is some suppressed park and ride demand. It’s possible that some new riders may come from ST Express ridership although many of the buses will continue running north of Federal Way so many may not switch. I don’t expect to see many new riders travelling locally between the three stations (especially Star Lake) but I could see more use at SeaTac happening when it opens.

    Kudos to ST to getting the data posted so quickly! Remember when they used to hold it back until the Board reviewed it at a meeting? I’m glad they quit doing that!

    1. Before Angle Lake station opened, I attended a monthly vegetarian dinner at the Mt Baker club. I sat next to a couple from Auburn who said they drove to TIB and took Link the rest of the way, and were looking forward to driving just to Federal Way. There are hundreds of thousands of people in Kent and further south, plus Pierce County, so if even a fraction of them are like this couple they’ll be using all the P&Rs.

      1. The FW Link Extension is reported by ST to offer 3200 parking spaces with about 2000 being new (and the others counted as the existing FW garage). I don’t expect those to fill up with Link riders. My guess is that Link station demand will start out rather low and gradually increase as they get “discovered”.

        I mention SeaTac as a second big unknown. SeaTac traffic can be awful and Federal Way could end up more as a remote pickup and drop off for flyers.

        I was expecting to see casino shuttle buses planned once Link opens to Federal Way. The tribes have yet to say anything though. Muckleshoot and Emerald Queen already have shuttles buses in operation for local trips.

      2. I think the FW parking garages will be pretty popular. I’ve never seen Angle Lake less than 99% full, though I’ve only used it a few times, so small sample size. The garages will be the most obvious way to take transit north for a catchment area of over a million people.

      3. EQC is very, very car-focused with massive garages that are 2 or 3 times as big than the footprint of the actual casino and hotel.

        They will take a free station, sure. But they know their customers will almost all drive. I’ve been threatened by security for even daring to ride a bike there.

      4. “EQC is very, very car-focused”

        That’s a lost business opportunity. Many businesses in the region make this mistake. The casinos are especially bad in having an ultra-unwalkable design. In some sense they have to be in exurban locations because they’re only allowed on the reservations, but then they make it worse with Futurama-like car-dependent design like it’s the 1950s. Why not a “Main Street USA” design that will attract people?

        Still, businesses get more clueful over time. At first there were company shuttles to Caltrain stations. Then shuttles through the Bay Area. Then shuttles in Pugetopolis. And somewhere in there, shuttles to Convention Place station (representing downtown) and to Link stations, and from the Space Needle to ski resorts, and from downtown to casinos, and from the airport to everywhere.

        So eventually one of the casinos will have the bright idea of having a shuttle to Federal Way station or Lynnwood station. And the Everett industrial employers can think about shuttles to Paine Field station, and the Kent industrial employers to KDM station. One would hope they get so enlightened someday.

    2. I would expect an initial surge of ridership for Federal Way Link. After a few months the novelty factor will go away. Things will settle down as people figure out what actually works for them and what doesn’t.

      To your point, I would expect a lot of people switching from Angle Lake to park-and-ride lots further south. There are bound to be people switching from the RapidRide A (to get to Highline College from the north for example). I expect Angle Lake ridership to go down significantly. I also except ridership on the A to go down although not as much.

      ST won’t make any changes in their express buses until next fall. It isn’t clear when Metro will change their routes but it looks to be sometime in early 2026. Hard to say what impact this will have. The 177 is going away but a lot of riders will just switch to the 577/578. The 162 will go away which means those riders will have to take Link. But it doesn’t get that many riders and many are just traveling between places in Kent (they will switch to the new 165). The changes seem to feed Link a little better than they fed the RapidRide A but not by a huge amount.

      Just as some riders will switch from the RapidRide A, others will switch from the 574. But I doubt anyone heading to SeaTac from Tacoma or Lakewood will switch. It may be faster to switch but it is generally a lot more comfortable to just stay on the bus (especially if you have luggage). It will mostly be folks using the 574 in the same manner as the RapidRide A (between the stations). Back when ST showed such information, that made up about a quarter of the ridership (and mostly from Federal Way to SeaTac). So figure another 250 or so switch (or 500 round trip).

      Overall I expect most of the ridership to come from people switching from the A Line and switching to a different park and ride (and mostly the latter). We should see an overall increase in ridership (in the area) but I wouldn’t expect a huge bump.

      1. In hindsight, why is there a station at Angle Lake? Aside from Alaska HQ (which was half the size during light rail planning) and a splatter of low budget hotels, there’s nothing in that area but low density housing to the east and further to the west. There is growing warehouse operations but that’s further south. It would’ve made more sense to place a station at 216th where there’s a cluster of apartments nearby.

      2. You could say the same for almost all the stations south of SeaTac. Even Federal Way walkshed is just a deteriorating 3rd rate mall.

      3. It’s not rocket science. Don’t build along a highway.

        All this money should have been poured into upgrading the BNSF tracks for more frequent service. That’s where the towns with the good bones, and potential for real growth in the station walksheds are.

        Sure, Federal Way will slowly turn surface lots and defunct big-box into apartments, but a car oriented mall with an asphalt-focus is just not an ideal place to site a train station.

      4. We could have had both Angle Lake and 216th. I’m not sure why Angle Lake was chosen; probably for an interim terminus P&R, for Alaska Airlines HQ, and for TOD which was planned to happen at SeaTac station too but fell through because the hotel owner refused to sell for a civic center complex.

        216th was one of the potential stations in the 99 alignment alternative. Kent wanted the 99 alternative, but Des Moines and Federal Way pushed for the I-5 alternative. It could also have split north and south of KDM, with the northern part on 99. But Des Moines didn’t want tracks changing its car-oriented retail (“inexpensive for immigrant startups” it said, never mind that it could have given them subsidized spaces in mixed-use buildings). And Federal Way thought the I-5 alignment would be completed faster and with more certainty; it was afraid of the extension not being completed due to costs if it went on 99.

      5. You make a valid point, Jordan. Let’s look at how/why people would use the station by mode.

        Walking: the station area has some density but it’s not profound. It’s height limited by the runway proximity. It’s in an area that isn’t very flat so the walkability is limited beyond a few blocks. Surplus land for TOD has been developed but it’s not profoundly large in scale. There are a few restaurants and convenience stores/ gas stations but they’re not relying on Link riders.

        Apparently the Port has several vacant parcels near the station that could still be developed. But what would they be used for in a way to add lots of new riders?

        The nearby Federal Corrections Center does seem to give the station area a bit of a cloud too.

        I think that the station area’s best hope is probably as a hotel district — but the market may have already reached what it can as the station has already been open 9 years. It also lacks a “Main Street” to draw visitors or residents to restaurants and shops.

        Bicycling: The station isn’t easy to use due to the nearby street slopes.

        Metro: It’s not intended to be a hub for local routes so it’s just RapidRide A, which will be stopping at every station except Star Lake.

        Daily Parking: With a flat fare and more spaces from KDM and Star Lake, it’s best potential is to either serve a narrow market of northern Des Moines, southern SeaTac or Normandy Park.

        Overnight Airport Parking: There is an overnight parking lot across the street from the station. A market for flyers could grow but it’s a high bar for a private overnight garage to pencil out.

        Drop offs and pickups: It’s not going to offer an advantage beyond what the other Link stations offer, outside of shuttles to nearby hotels or offices. Many of those getting dropped off or picked up there will move to nearby stations that are more convenient.

        Generally, ST has put together station plans like this one for Angle Lake in 2015 (https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/seatac-angle-lake-station-area-plan.pdf). However what’s discussed doesn’t seem likely to attract lots more riders.

        Barring some big new unanticipated nearby destination to draw riders (Medical campus? Arena? Convention complex? Nightclub district?) , the potential future ridership looks pretty dang weak. Many that park there today will shift to the other garages, and it’s unclear how full those new garages will be so that they’ll return to Angle Lake. Nearby new residential projects will bring some new riders but I don’t see them offsetting the riders that the station will lose to the station parking garages further south.

        I feel like every Link station area needs a TOD strategy where ridership growth is the primary goal. So many times, the plans are either geared to merely enable more affordable housing or to address the base-bones limitations of a station area with basic investments like sidewalks. It’s certainly much more difficult to incentivize projects that actually significantly increase station boardings than it is to merely declare parcels as “opportunity” in a planning document map. And really it’s up to each local jurisdiction to decide how proactive they want to be (after a plan adoption with a colored map) to manifest station area development in a way to grow ridership.

      6. Metro: It’s not intended to be a hub for local routes so it’s just RapidRide A, which will be stopping at every station except Star Lake.

        There’s also a Des Moines to Angle Lake local route. You don’t necessarily need much infrastructure for transfers.

      7. @cam

        I mean there is money earmarked for improving the sounder tracks but it’s been very hard to construct it

      8. I reviewed the Federal Way Link DEIS independently today. I was reminded and surprised to read that a about 2/3rds of the extension’s boardings were expected to come from just Federal Way Station in 2035. It’s shown in Exhibit 3-4 here:

        https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/03_FWLE_Chapter_3_Transportation.pdf

        Curiously, the mode of access for this is that about 3/4 are supposed to be from other transit (Figure 3-6 pie charts). With ST now not cancelling many ST Express runs that forecast seems overly optimistic.

        The same exhibit predicts that Angle Lake will lose about 35% of its ridership when the extension opens.

      9. “I mean there is money earmarked for improving the sounder tracks but it’s been very hard to construct it.”

        What is it going to cost to get from SeaTac to Tacoma? 10 billion? 15 billion? I bet BNSF would have bit if they had been offered half that to buy the tracks for them, with guaranteed leased freight slots for a hundred years or something.

        I know there are supposedly very difficult construction challenges on some parts of the route in Kent to add tracks, but I suspect it isn’t anything a few billion dollars couldn’t solve.

      10. I also suspect that freight demand on that route is going to decline as the demand for coal and oil decline. I don’t know where to fix the freight mix for BNSF, but my eyes watching the trains go by make me think more than half are carrying oil and coal.

      11. “I feel like every Link station area needs a TOD strategy where ridership growth is the primary goal. ”

        A lot of the goal is a cachement area for the neighboring cities of Kent and Auburn. Link is nominally intended to serve most of South King County, not just the 99 corridor.

      12. The main benefit to Federal Way Link is the connection to I-5. Buses can easily serve the station and continue (express) to Seattle/Tacoma (or other places). This could have been accomplished a lot cheaper by turning a lot sooner. Either way, once you’ve decided to connect to the freeway, you might as well add stations along the way, even if they are bound to be flawed. In the case of Federal Way you at least serve Highline College along the way (a decent destination).

        All this money should have been poured into upgrading the BNSF tracks for more frequent service.

        And bus service/improvements. The train is much better for several towns (Auburn, Kent, etc.) but it isn’t especially great for Tacoma. A bus can more easily connect to Link (for trips to SeaTac). It can serve Downtown Tacoma and more of Downtown Seattle. When there is no traffic, the bus from Tacoma is faster (that is not the case for the other stations). The train and bus complement each other. Even if we owned the tracks it is cheaper to run a bus than a train. A train only makes sense when you can carry a lot of riders. That is only going to happen during rush hour. So even if we owned the tracks they would probably run Sounder South frequently during rush hour and hourly the rest of the day (if that). They could run express buses from Tacoma every fifteen minutes (stopping at Federal Way) to complement the trains.

      13. Sure. Bus operations could use a boost, but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to building out the infrastructure. Sure, you can add a transit-only ramp or 3 to speed things up a bit, but the main things that would improve buses is improving frequency and getting them out of traffic. HOV-3 is free.

        Yes, Tacoma wouldn’t benefit as much with increasing frequency, span and speed on the tracks as the string of cities in north Pierce and south King. But it also isn’t just Sounder. I would hope ST partnered with Amtrak to do that work, because they might benefit the most.

        Being in Tacoma, Amtrak is the fastest way to Vancouver WA. It’s the last, slow, 30 miles into Portland and Seattle that make it less competitive with driving. Investing those 30 miles would be a game changer.

      14. Sure. Bus operations could use a boost, but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to building out the infrastructure. Sure, you can add a transit-only ramp or 3 to speed things up a bit, but the main things that would improve buses is improving frequency and getting them out of traffic. HOV-3 is free.

        Agreed. That is basically my point. A relatively small investment in buses and you get quite a bit. To be able to get from Downtown Tacoma to Downtown Seattle very quickly and without worrying about the schedule would be huge.

        I would hope ST partnered with Amtrak to do that work, because they might benefit the most.

        I think that is how it is most likely to happen. The state is still pursuing bullet trains which is just not a good value. Hopefully the come to their senses and adopt the kind of improvements outlined years ago (https://www.aawa.us/site/assets/files/7322/2006_washington_state_long-range_plan_for_amtrak_cascades.pdf). If they did that then Sounder would improve along with it.

      15. I recently took a walk around the Angle Lake Station and in some ways the TOD building activity reminded me of Othello Station. There are a number of new apartment buildings going in within reasonable walking distance to the station, the exception being the crossroads of 99 and 200th but I imagine those properties will be seen as a good target for more TOD. Throw in a public beach at Angle Lake Park and proximity to a major employment center (SEATAC) and I think it will be a good performer.

      16. I’m sorry folks, but HOV-3 anywhere on I-5 is a pipe dream. People are not stupid; that’s essentially embargoing all traffic except buses and vans from lanes which were, at least in part, built with Federal HOV support funds. With what’s left of WFH and twenty years’ more sprawl built, the probability that more than a handful of people in South King County or Northwest Pierce County will live within reasonable collection distance of two other people on the same schedule at the same company is approaching zero.

      17. “I’m sorry folks, but HOV-3 anywhere on I-5 is a pipe dream.”

        There’s a separate legal requirement that WSDOT must keep the HOV/HOT lanes running at least 35 mph. In some cases it’s falling below that because of too many 2-person cars or toll payers. That’s the reason activists are pushing for HOV-3.

      20. I visit Angle Lake Park from Angle Lake station. It’s at 192nd. I take the A one station or walk.

      21. “I wonder why Metro did not revise the network more to meet Link at Angle Lake.”

        Des Moines is paying for the route. It may not be interested in it going to Angle Lake Park in the opposite direction. And who needs it to when there’s the frequent A?

      22. You might be able to upgrade the HOV lanes on I-5 to HOT. People would be angry about it, but they have accepted them on I-405 and SR167. Enough people are willing to pay the toll to help the traffic in the general purpose lanes, at least a little bit.

        But embargoing essentially all passenger cars by HOV-3 would be political suicide to whichever party passed it.

      23. I think most of those who will commute by light rail from/to FWLE stations are probably existing transit commuters.
        There won’t be much of shift from car-dependent commuters when FWLE opens, but none-work transit trips could see some increase because of the off-peak frequency bump.

      24. “In some cases it’s falling below that because of too many 2-person cars or toll payers. That’s the reason activists are pushing for HOV-3.”

        I didn’t mean to suggest changing HOT lanes to untolled; I merely meant that if 2 are currently allowed free in HOT lanes, it would be increased to 3. Separately, the toll ceiling needs to be raised enough so that there aren’t too many toll-payers slowing it down below 35 mph.

  10. The same-day Access rides is huge news. Metro has been working on it for several years; it will be liberating. It may be using the computing power of the Metro Flex vendor for a better purpose.

  11. I got very chilly standing on the Link platform at SeaTac the other week. I realized that the north-south orientation was getting wind from the prevailing SW direction so the clear panels on the east and west sides didn’t block the wind.

    And the new station platforms opening at Federal Way and Star Lake seem even more directly oriented to get prevailing direction winds. Lynnwood Link stations (including Pinehurst) seem a bit oriented to prevailing winds too.

    With so many new aerial stations opening recently or soon, has anyone noticed this design effect? What stations seem the worst? Are there design remedies that could help? Does a perpendicular orientation like Downtown Redmond seem better?

    It feels like the wait time is exponentially longer when a cold, damp wind is blowing to me. 5 minutes feels like 15!

    1. MLT is pretty exposed to the elements too. And I was there during last year’s epic windstorm when service north of Northgate was knocked out all night.

      Also, SODO station has strangely poor rain shelter. Only half of the platforms are covered, which forces riders to huddle in the covered parts or near the TVM’s when raining.

      1. RE “rain shelter”:

        Yes it still irks me how ST builds platform covers for only a percentage of the loading area. Why not the whole waiting zone? And some of the East Link platform covers end just shy of the train doors so I rider walks through a little waterfall when getting on or off a train.

        I get how too much shelter may invite loitering, but security guards and cameras would address that.

        I think ST-hired architects could pay better attention to the platform covers and environment than they do. Looking pretty for a portfolio is what they seem to care about as opposed to the waiting rider experience.

      2. Al,

        It’s almost certainly a value engineering measure. Less material means lower costs. I think there are ways to do it so that it’s less noticeable, where you have shelters around where the entrances are and empty areas at the farther flung areas of the stations, but it is annoying in rainy Seattle.

    2. I have often wondered why the stations don’t have better wind screens on aerial stations. Ideally, you would use platform screen doors to nearly enclose the station, both to improve safety and the inconvenience of inclement weather, although I recognize this would add significant cost.

      I’m hugely grateful that we’re building out the Link system, but it boggles my mind that we’re spending so many billions of dollars to reach from Everett to Tacoma and then cheap out on the small stuff that improves rider experience. I was shocked the first time I stepped off the train at Northgate into the rain and noticed the roof doesn’t extend the full length of the platform. And in a notoriously rainy region, no less. Or how the mezzanine and platform have separate elevators, increasing the time it takes to move through the station.

      There’s also small things such as wayfinding that would cost almost nothing to improve. My personal minor pet peeve is elevator buttons labeled “P”, “M”, and “S” with no further clarification, and sometimes arranged horizontally so you can’t tell which one goes up or down. Many times I’ve seen people stare blankly, unsure what to press. How many nonnative speakers would know “M” is “mezzanine”? Is “P” “parking garage”, “plaza” or “platform”? Is “S” “subway”, “skybridge” or “street/surface”?

      1. South Bellevue’s garage elevators could also use a hint at which floor has access to the link platform. If you hit the lowest floor you end up in the basement of the garage, and not at the point to reach the Link Station. (I know, first world problem!)

    3. Like you say, platform doors would help, probably more than anything else. Assuming that the ends are also capped, you have no wind on the platforms, except “leakage around the train” when the doors are opened.

      1. Also, platform doors are a great safety addition, and a schedule helper. The PFD’s can close five seconds earlier than the train’s do, stopping people from pulling the train doors apart.

  12. There will be 1/2 Line overlap testing Monday and Tuesday in the PM peak and early evening.

    “””
    On Nov. 24 and 25, from 4:30 to 9:30 a.m., Sound Transit will test 4-minute run times for 1 Line trains. Test trains displaying “Out of Service” will run alongside regular service trains.

    Test trains will run alongside in-service trains between Lynnwood and International District/Chinatown stations. The test trains will pause at stations, but doors will remain closed. Please check train head signs before boarding.

    Regular service trains will arrive at stations every 8 minutes during the testing period.

    This testing will help us prepare for more frequent service after the 2 Line crosses Lake Washington, extending to Lynnwood City Center.
    “””

    One thing to beware of is, what do the next-arrival displays during this and later 2 Line testing? Do they ignore the extra trains, or say “Downtown Redmond”, “Chinatown/Intl Dist”, “TEST Redmond”, “Out of service”, or such? This could confuse occasional/new riders on the platform.

  13. Yesterday I saw something even more confusing and permanent at Roosevelt station. The southbound platform signs now have 2-line text:

    (^%^) Federal Way Downtown (1##)
    Downtown Redmond (2##)

    “^%^” is an airplane icon for SeaTac. “##” are the station numbers, which of course I don’t remember.

    The confusing thing is people might interpret “Downtown” as Downtown Seattle, or the first one as “Federal Way and downtown” rather than “Federal Way’s downtown”. That ambiguity is OK at Roosevelt because that’s also the direction for downtown Seattle and both lines go to it. But it will be problematic south of downtown, where Federal Way is the opposite direction from downtown Seattle.

    ST really shouldn’t have allowed “Downtown” in the suburban station names. And especially not the inconsistency of “___ Downtown”, “Downtown ___”, and “___ City Center” in different cities. Just call Bellevue downtown “Bellevue”, Redmond downtown “Redmond”, Federal Way downtown “Federal Way”, and Lynnwood downtown “Lynnwood”. Those are all the primary stations in their cities, where the most people’s destinations are, and where bus transfers to everywhere around them are. That’s all implied in the bare city name.

    1. GEEZE the signage gets WORSE.

      I’ve suggested to Sound Transit to leave out the station numbering in directional signage. It’s okay to place the station number at station entrances. But when you’re inside the station looking for your platform, the end destination station number looks like a route number. For instance, 1-40 or 2-65. I’ve actually overheard tourists at Westlake looking for “Line 1-65”. Also, despite the airplane sign, tourists are still confused which platform to use for the airport. Signage looks like Angle Lake Airport rather than SeaTac Airport.

      With the introduction of the 2-Line and the format of including end-station numbering, signage is going to get cluttered and confusing.

      1. I don’t have a problem confusing “1##” with route numbers, but I find it hard to keep track of when it means THIS station and when it means a terminus station far away. I look at these destination signs and think the “1##” means this station, and then have to consciously think about it and compare it to the number on the other signs, and realize it’s for the terminus station.

    2. And of course, you’d better not wait at Roosevelt for a 2 Line train to Redmond, because it won’t come for 4-6 months. Hopefully no visitor does that.

    3. Yes that’s indeed confusing!

      Just like there was confusion with “University” there is confusion with “Downtown”.

      I would suggest that when a train is in a different city, the end city should only be the city name — so “Federal Way” and “Redmond” in this case. (Drop “Downtown”) I’ve already noticed that ST audio announcements say just “Lynnwood” rather than the full station name.

      I would also suggest that any train headed through DSTT should say “Seattle” when outside of the city and “Downtown Seattle” when inside the city limits. That’s similar to what BART has done for years.

      Another option is to run an additional scroll that explains “Federal Way and Redmond trains operate through Downtown Seattle”.

      What I don’t know is if ST can program the system to change the destination sign as a particular train moves down the tracks.

    4. ST really shouldn’t have allowed “Downtown” in the suburban station names. Just call Bellevue downtown “Bellevue”, Redmond downtown “Redmond”, Federal Way downtown “Federal Way”, and Lynnwood downtown “Lynnwood”.

      Agreed. That is so simple and so much better.

      I would also suggest that any train headed through DSTT should say “Seattle” when outside of the city and “Downtown Seattle” when inside the city limits.

      I also agree. It has to be a bit confusing for someone from SeaTac to hear the train is going to Downtown Lynnwood — although with any luck they just hear the “downtown” :)

      1. But it helps them know which part of the cities, I completely disagree, and it’s not Downtown Lynnwood, it’s Lynnwood City Center (which I think is good because Lynnwood Downtown or Downtown Lynnwood doesn’t sound right). Anyways they’re doing it with Everett, they’re going to call the northbound terminal of the 3 Line just Everett.

      2. it’s not Downtown Lynnwood, it’s Lynnwood City Center

        That is even more redundant. The name “Lynnwood” without anything else implies “City Center”. The same is true of “Downtown”. Google any city. Now choose maps. The map is centered at the downtown area. There is a big label for the city and the label is over the downtown area. Calling the Lynnwood Station “Lynnwood City Center” or “Downtown Lynnwood” or “The main station in Lynnwood, actually the only station in Lynnwood but we hope to have more in the future” is a waste of energy. It is just “Lynnwood”. As in, the main Lynnwood station.

      3. Lynnwood doesn’t have a center. Google maps labels “Lynnwood” to be a massive 7 lane highway intersecting another massive 7 lane highway, with a Jiffylube and a Chick-Fil-A. Nobody would know what you mean be “downtown” or “city center,” because neither exist.

      4. Rather than use “Downtown” so widely, I prefer “Central”. If just the city name cannot work, describing where in the city it’s located seems like a logical way to go.

        Consider that Downtown Bellevue is expanding towards Wilburton and East Main Stations. So there will seemingly be three stations for Downtown Bellevue. If it was named “Central Bellevue” there would be no confusion.

        And there’s a difference between a station name and the end-of-line name. I usually just see “Lynnwood” on the front of a Link train and not “Lynnwood City Center”. Certainly it’s best for them to be the same but they can be different.

        Another confusion is that it’s “Federal Way Downtown” and “Downtown Redmond”. In which order should it be?

        Anyway, the original comment is that clarity is needed for an unfamiliar rider about where a train is headed. While station naming is underlying dilemma, just simplifying things by only stating which city the train is headed towards would seem to be the easiest remedy. That way the station names don’t have to change for now.

      5. “Lynnwood doesn’t have a center.”

        Lynnwood promises to have a center like downtown Bellevue someday. It just hasn’t pursued it very effectively, and has missed opportunities. Link is partly predicated on it being built someday.

        Ditto for Federal Way, although I assume its ultimate maximum size would be smaller than Lynnwood. Federal Way is just so far, so suburban, and uncentral, that I can’t see it growing that big even if it has excellent land use and incentives.

        The problem is we don’t know when or whether they’ll ever get serious about it, or if it’s just hot air.

        (Lynnwood is central, because Seattle, Bellevue, Bothell, and Everett are around it in all directions like an oval wheel. That’s a major part of what makes Lynnwood Link so compelling: its location makes it a good terminus station and transfer point.)

      6. Bellevue and Redmond have proper downtowns as as well as multiple stations within city limits. Lynnwood however does not. At least not yet.

      7. Sure. Lynnwood and Federal Way are both the victims of car-centric sprawly land use. Both can recover, and build a dense downtown area, but currently neither have one. I totally agree Lynnwood has a better shot than FW. Their mall is somewhat better, but mostly the train is much faster to downtown Seattle than Federal Way.

        30 minutes to Westlake on Link makes it really attractive as a commuter town.

        But we were talking about signage and naming conventions. Telling people, at this moment, before they built something resembling it, that a train is going to “downtown” Lynnwood, and nobody would have any idea what you are talking about.

      8. All this is about cities’ egos. Bellevue, Redmond, and Federal Way are like “I’m as big as Seattle or Chicago.” Lynnwood is like, “I’m so European, I have a clean, pleasant city center instead of an grimy unsafe homeless-infested downtown.”

      9. Both Lynnwood and Federal Way have opportunities for redevelopment. Both have updated their zoning codes to allow for taller buildings too.

        Certainly, Lynnwood has a head start with some new blocks of apartment buildings. However, the Lynnwood City Center station site is right next to Scriber Creek with I-5 close by so there’s really only about a quarter-pie of a walkshed available there.

        In contrast, Federal Way has potential of a full-pie 1/4 mile walkshed with only I-5 cutting off the eastern edge and that’s still about 1,000 feet east of the station, so a 1/2 mile walkshed pie is still about 3/4ths of a full pie.. There are bigger surplus parcels next to Federal Way Station too. And having the Commons owned by a single, big real estate developer provides opportunities to redevelop into something more transformational. I’ve seen some people speculate that the SeaTac runway approach may limit Federal Way, but the station is about as far from a SeaTac runway as Downtown Seattle is (and Downtown Seattle also has Boeing Field runways to consider) so that’s a non-issue for anything under 50 stories.

        Ultimately, it’s a developer game along with market demand that will determine which ends up more urban. But I think the TOD opportunity fundamentals are better for Federal Way, especially if the Commons owner spearheads the effort.

        Whatever happens, I hope that both can have regional draw destinations as opposed to being mere high density residential areas.

      12. I agree Cam. Lynnwood has more potential. It is closer to Downtown Seattle and much closer to the UW. Federal Way is closer to SeaTac but SeaTac is a smaller destination than the UW. Whether that eventually leads to taller buildings in Lynnwood is hard to say. The city tried to promote a business hub with skyscrapers (like Bellevue) but didn’t find much of a market. Hard to see it happening now, given the huge glut in commercial real estate. They could build residential towers (like Vancouver) but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

        Federal Way is not that far from SeaTac but Rainier Beach is still closer. Other than the available lean nearby, the fundamentals seem better for Rainier Beach. It is much closer to the rest of the city and closer to Lake Washington. Federal Way would zone for commercial buildings but again I don’t see that happening anymore. Federal Way has got a lot of big parking lots while Rainier Beach Station is hemmed in by greenbelt so there is that. But I don’t see residential towers being built in either place.

      13. Rather than use “Downtown” so widely, I prefer “Central”.

        I agree. That makes a lot more sense. But it really is only needed if you have other stations with a similar name. In the case of Bellevue, you do. There is a “South Bellevue”. Likewise if there was a station between “South Shoreline” and “North Shoreline” then “Central Shoreline” would be reasonable. But there is no North, South, East or West Lynnwood Station. Nor is there one for Redmond. Eventually there is supposed to be a “South Federal Way” station so “Central Federal Way” would make sense.

        A lot of it goes back to what Mike said. It is ego or promotion. This is our downtown (in the case of Bellevue, Redmond and Federal Way) or city center (Lynnwood). Lynnwood didn’t want to go with just “Lynnwood”, lest someone assume it is the only station in town (sure, it is now, but someday we will have many fine and wonderful stations in our fair city). The same is true with neighborhood or city names instead of streets. For 145th and 185th they want you to know that you are now in Shoreline. Instead of “45th” and “65th” (which benefits riders in a lot of ways) they went with neighborhood names. It is like a real estate agent promoting a neighborhood instead of just telling you where the house is.

      15. “However, the Lynnwood City Center station site is right next to Scriber Creek with I-5 close by so there’s really only about a quarter-pie of a walkshed available there.”

        There’s a lot of room for infill development in the mile west to 99, south of the station, and in the Alderwood Mall area.

        Could anything be done about the I-5 barrier? Like lids or something?

    5. Yeah, ST’s choices for these signs are baffling. No design is going to be perfect, but since regular riders will know how to navigate the system, the signage should be geared to orientating new/infrequent Link riders, and the design they chose is likely to confuse someone unfamiliar with Link or the geography of the Seattle metro area.

      My first thought would have been to do something like:
      1 (^%^) Downtown/South suburbs
      2 Downtown/East suburbs

      Alternatively, maybe next stop and terminus:
      1 (^%^) U District/Federal Way
      2 U District/Redmond

      Maybe add directions (NB, SB), but that gets confusing with the 2 line.

      I agree the terminal station numbers are useless here- I don’t think many people who aren’t employed by Sound Transit remember them.

      1. The terminal station numbers are meant for folks who don’t speak or read English. It is much easier to remember a set of three numbers than something like ᆺ이ᄆᇂ오네.

      2. ” It is much easier to remember a set of three numbers than something like ᆺ이ᄆᇂ오네.”

        Well, yes, but everybody can read “Redmond” even if they pronounce it differently. Chinese and Japanese have Latin alphabets now that they use to teach children the ideograms with. Everybody learns the Latin alphabet in school for mathematical variables and things like “kg”.

        The last two digits are useful for telling how far away a station is, and (once you realize which direction is ascending) which direction it is.

      3. @Philip…I agree with your structure of signage but not quite the verbiage. “Suburbs” for some city-snobs (which I’m friends with many), think that’s Ballard or Northgate because it’s outside of the immediate downtown/Cap Hill area. Some people think anything north of the ship canal is no longer Seattle (it irks me every time I hear this and I go on a rant lol)

        Rather, something along the lines of…

        Anything outside of downtown but still in Seattle:
        (1) To Downtown / Airport
        (2) To Downtown / Redmond
        (1) To Downtown / Lynnwood

        Anything outside of Seattle:
        (1) To Seattle / Lynnwood
        (2) To Seattle / Redmond
        (1) To Seattle / Federal Way

        Anything in downtown (customized for tourists)
        (1) To Airport / Federal Way
        Possibly add stadiums? (1) To Airport / Stadiums / Federal Way
        (2) To Redmond
        (1) To UW / Lynnwood

        Despite the airplane icon, people are still confused as to which platform to use (I know cuz I’m a nerd and stood for 30 min at Westlake observing summer crowds). Current signage looks like Angle Lake Airport. The word
        Airport” is pretty universal. ST underestimates world travelers proficiency in English and don’t recognize there are certain key terms that even the most basic ESL person will understand.

      4. Technically, there is more than one local airport. I think — rather than a mere airport symbol — it would be clearer as a square rectangle with a plane symbol and the letters SEA inside it. Then it doesn’t have to be spelled out — which would take less room on the sign . BART uses “SFO” but using just “SEA” seems too generic for our region as it can appear to also be an abbreviation for Seattle — or maybe just the sea!

        Perhaps Downtown Seattle needs an icon like the airplane symbol.

        Otherwise I would generally agree with Jordan. Again I’ll highlight that I think that the train destination can be just the city name rather than the name of the end station.

        There are trains that don’t run the full length of the line. How would those be handled?

      5. @Mike — Even if you know the alphabet it is still a lot easier to understand
        “256” instead of “Zvbao Ilsslcbl”. It is the same idea with pictograms. The numeric code replaces the pictograms.

      6. @Ross Bleakney, I actually disagree. “Zvbao Ilsslcbl” instantly sticks in my head as “Z-something Il-something.” If you have a “Zralteu Ilfariska” at the end of another line, that might be a problem – but if not, I could pick it out every time in a minute.

        Meanwhile, “256”… well, that number specifically sticks in my head as two-to-the-eighth, but something like “259” I’d need to think up mnemonics about. And I know that from the last years of finding it really hard to remember specific streets on the numeric grid around here.

      7. That’s because the English Language alphabet is something you’re used to.

        Suppose you were trying to remember the difference between the Portuguese words avó and avô? Or Japanese 東京都 and 東 市都?

        Arabic numbers have become pretty universal across the world, so they are easier for those not used to the printed English language.

        Ideally, these numbers would also become the stop ID numbers for OneBusAway, and OneBusAway would be changed to allow entry of stop ID numbers to quickly obtain next arrivals.

      8. “That’s because the English Language alphabet is something you’re used to.”

        Yeah letter acronym of longer words/phrases is something unique to language like English.

      9. When I was in Russia that had only Cyrillic station signs, the advice to visitors was to write down or memorize the first two and last two letters of the name and its general shape (short/long, number of words). It’s a lot easier to distinguish “ZBV…CBL” or “РИ…АЯ” (p backward-n a backward-r) from other stations than “東京都” vs “東 市都” (it looks like only the middle character is different). Do “avó” vs “avô” occur in station names and the only thing distinguishing them?

        I’m not questioning the usefulness of numbers or ST’s choice for the “1##” pattern. I’m just saying English station names aren’t that hard to write down or distinguish visually even if your native script is Chinese or Korean or Thai or Amheric.

      10. “Despite the airplane icon, people are still confused as to which platform to use (I know cuz I’m a nerd and stood for 30 min at Westlake observing summer crowds).”

        I commented on a few people at the Westlake Angle Lake platform asking whether this was the right side for the airport. I told them yes. They still didn’t quite trust it until I said, “Angle Lake is the next station after the airport, and Lynnwood is fifteen miles north of Seattle.”

      11. It might be a good idea to add “EAST’, “SOUTH”, “NORTH” to the signs along with a recognizable city. So “EAST: Redmond”, “SOUTH: Seattle, Federal Way, Airport”.

        Note that all the Redmond stations are together in the same direction on the same line. It’s more important to say this line goes to “Redmond” than this line goes to “Downtown Redmond” station.

        Directions would be problematic for inbound 2 Line trains. If you’re at Spring District, should it say “WEST”, “NORTH” or “WEST/NORTH”? But the primary issue we’re trying to address is where the 1/2 lines overlap, or which direction goes toward downtown Seattle or away from it.

    6. I’m not averse to adding wayfinding signs for tourists and other infrequent riders. Maybe it says “Major Destinations” at the top, with two columns — right one listing the destination (Downtown Seattle/ UW/ Stadiums/ SeaTac Airport) and the left one with the train number and typical destination name listed on the train). It could be fixed, or it could be electronic and changed based on language.

      It’s rather revealing that us amateurs have to debate this since it appears so poorly thought out by ST and they appear to decide everything internally without coordinating with other agencies. ST, the Port, the Stadiums and the Convention/ Visitors Bureau annd even WSDOT all have paid staff that should have been all over this years ago. ST in particular has 23 new stations opening between 2021-2026 that cost many billions — yet wayfinding has been either an internal afterthought or ignored entirely. I’m not aware of a multi-agency working group on wayfinding. There should be better signage directing drivers off the freeway to station garages (working with WSDOT) or off the nearby arterial to drop-off zones (working with cities) or pedestrians to new station entrances (working with cities), for example. Branding, clear signage and wayfinding to use Link should be part of many paid jobs — and ST should have their recommendations be reviewed and implemented by multiple agencies (giving some credit to the Port for directing patrons to Link inside the terminal)!

      1. “giving some credit to the Port for directing patrons to Link inside the terminal”

        After we complained for a couple years. The port did have initial signs saying “Link light rail”, but visitors don’t know what “Link” is , and “light rail doesn’t say it goes to Seattle; it could also be the airport subways, which look like light rail to non-foamers.

      2. I think “Link Light Rail” is less helpful than “Train to City” or “Train to Seattle”. Nobody cares how ST is calling its light rail service.

  14. So what is the TCC solution to “build the damn trains” given the fiscal and practical realities?

    1. We’re waiting to hear. ST has been in a denial position with every boardmember wanting everything in their own subarea, and not wanting to talk about cutting things in other subareas because other boardmembers might pressure them to cut something in their subarea, and then their voters would be made at them for allowing something in their subarea to be cut.

      Over the past six months the board has started realizing it has to look at the whole system and make hard choices, and consider things it wasn’t willing to look at before, like single-tunnel.

      Now “Build the Damn Trains” seems to be pushing ST into its denial position again. I’m afraid that might reverse the progress it has made in the past six months, and put it into a hopeless case of wanting everything in all subareas soon.

      However, it depends on what Build the Damn Trains really wants. Does it really mean “ST’s preferred alignment and only that”, with DSTT2 and ultra-long downtown transfers and CID/N&S stations? Or is it open to sensible modifications like single-tunnel or an automated Ballard line or other alternatives in Everett? We voted for ST3, but we didn’t vote for ultra-deep stations downtown or an 8-10 minute transfer walk. Does BTDT take the position that ST’s preferred alignment is the only acceptable outcome? That really makes the difference in whether STB authors can agree with the Build the Damn Trains coalition or not.

      1. Maybe the “right thing to do” is to look at IDS-Northgate and its amazing productivity and claim victory for North King. IOW, bag Ballard also.

        Instead, build a little stub with as shallow platforms as can be engineered at Westlake and with the consensus expansion plans to First Hill, Ballard and eventually U District designed in. Do the single-track connection tunnel at Third and Pine for heavy maintenance at Forrest Street, and simply clean the out-of-service trains in the stations where they’re parked. Dig it as far into SLU as the ten to twelve billion North King has to spend will cover and call it good. Or, if you’re lucky you can get to the west portal and build the guideway as far as a little cleaning and light MF in Interbay.

        If that can’t be done but the the trains are automated one can just run all night using one platform at each station with a train in the other platform, like the Monorail does. That would allow storage and cleaning of four trains total at the four stations between Westlake and Uptown. I cannot imagine that an automated stub a mile and a half long would need more than five trains even in the peak.

        Really, that’s all that is really going to attract new ridership at this time.

    3. It’s a reasonable question.

      It irks me that TCC and those at the BTDT presser are still advancing the myth that inflation is primarily to blame here — as opposed to deliberate low-balling of the ST3 project costs to make the math work in 2016. They even mention things like “…we’re here today to urge the Sound Transit board to look for very real cost savings measures: these might be smaller things like eliminating parking garages or standardizing station design, but it also might take some revisiting of some hard choices around alignment to make sure that we can deliver projects on time and in an affordable way.”

      They may complain that ST has delayed things — but they really need to first admit that the ST3 project costing was mistaken before they will have credibility. Were they not paying attention in the 2020 realignment? Were they not paying attention when every interest group pushed ST to tunnel in West Seattle or build a signature Duwamish Bridge or put in deep bore stations Downtown or reshape the CID planning to satisfy a an activist property owner there?

      Then they need to stop with the minor cost savings pitch too. The shortfall problem is much bigger with Ballard , West Seattle and DSTT2– and there is no garage as part of these projects. Stating these things actually creates a bigger waste of time because it postpones the inevitable reality of massive unaffordability.

      These BTDT people are not helping and may be making things take even longer by not being frank about the scope of the problem.

      They need to quit with Seattle’s polite avoidance of unpleasantries and say the obvious truths: ST3 was poorly assembled. ST3 was developed with little regard to travel time savings or ridership growth. The ST3 cost estimates were way low because they did not include all the inevitable, unbudgeted features needed to make the planned Link extensions palatable and didn’t assume enough contingencies to cover them. The shortfall is now so massive and the benefits are so weak that the basics like vehicle technology that allows for smaller stations and tunnels to please neighbors and low-volume stations and alternatives to the 55 mph Link maximum speeds have to be reconsidered.

      Snap out of it, BTDT!!!! Point some blame!!!! Throw Constantine under the train as the primary ST3 consensus builder in 2016!!!!

      And it’s time for Constantine to publicly admit he is substantially to blame for his role in this problem — as opposed to assemble his fan club called BTDT to have a presser try to whitewash the mess he created and keep him from being hit by criticism.

      1. I don’t think we can say the cost estimates were deliberately lowballed..

        Some of it was scope creep. Eg: West Seattle was originally thought to be elevated, but is now on the books as a deep tunnel.

        Some of it was drawing lines on a map and assuming they would be easy rather than be allowed to do detailed analysis before the vote: eg, the huge complexities and very deep nature of DSTT2 is very unlike DSTT1.

      2. Forecast of cost and demand are just hard to get right sometimes. You cannot measure their performance by checking the numbers again 5-10 years later.
        I am sure they tried their best with the data they had back then.

        That’s why in my opinion sometimes they should really simplify the pre-construction planning process and focus on macroscopic things like population and job growth because assessment in microscopic level won’t be accurate anyway.
        Sometimes the analysis is spot on just because they got lucky. You can never foresee things like contractor making a mistake and pandemic.

    4. Thanks for the replies. TCC may not know. It may be unknowable. I hope Mayor-elect Wilson had nothing to do with BTDT.

      In 1999-2001, the main fiscal crisis was in the North King County subarea. The board rejected a solution proposed by Sims-Schell. In 2001, they opted to build south-first. Changes were made to the plan in several subareas: north Sounder was reduced to one-way peak-only with only four trips in each peak; this may have been due to the BNSFRR cost; the East subarea had its NE 85th Street center access interchange changed to more sensible projects and the I-90 busway delayed; in North King, NE 45th Street station was delayed until ST2 and 2021; First Hill was dropped; South Graham Street dropped.

      It seems the fiscal and feasibility crisis touches all five subareas in ST3. Dow says that the Enterprise Initiative will question everything. The voters approved the tax increases; they will continue. Perhaps after serious study, they will start over; ST2 Link and the DSTT1 need improvements; they could be more and better bus service. I would delete West Seattle and South Kirkland to Issaquah quickly. Why does Pierce County want Link extended to the Tacoma Dome station? As a mode, Link is huge and should serve pedestrian centers. Have there been no good transit thinkers in Pierce County? PT used to have some.

      Note that TransLink has changed its SkyTrain mode a few times. Is it time for ST to revised its mode?

      1. “Why does Pierce County want Link extended to the Tacoma Dome station? As a mode, Link is huge and should serve pedestrian centers. Have there been no good transit thinkers in Pierce County? PT used to have some.”

        It’s politicians advocating for it and making the decisions, not transit planners. Tacoma Dome Link was pushed by various Pierce executives, Tacoma mayors, and a University Place mayor on the ST board or from their mayors’ offices. I don’t know that PT planners were ever asked or listened to.

        Specifically, these politicians think the Tacoma Dome extension and Link to the airport are essential to attract employers, workers, and shoppers/tourists to Tacoma and Pierce County. Initially they talked about a better/more reliable connection for Pierce residents to downtown Seattle, but when Link’s long travel time became more widely known, the rhetoric shifted more to the need for Link to the airport and for South King County residents going to Tacoma.

      2. It is politically untenable for Pierce to advocate against TDLE at this point, unless you replaced it with 125mph Sounder every half hour, or something. But nobody on the ST board has the kind of experience or vision to tackle that. I wasn’t here when things were decided back in the mists of time, but I’ve been told the plan was to actually reach, well, Tacoma.

        It morphed into the current shitty alignment, with a poor station location and a future theoretical station at the mall through some sort of game of telephone with the past, where the initial vision of “Stations in Downtown Tacoma” got garbled into “Castle in Industrial Wasteland” poorly connected to a toy train with lowish frequency and span.

  15. What to do when STB is on the opposite side of the other transit/urbanist activist organizations? We’ve been called “anti-transit” before on social media for not following ST’s maximalist intentions or the 1st Avenue streetcar. We’re probably being called that right now somewhere.

    1. The nature of an open-format blog is to be a forum for differing viewpoints. So STB is going to naturally attract comments that question things — and express frustrations when agencies do things that appear off. It’s almost a riders’ suggestion box!

      We currently have a problem nationally right now that certain leaders don’t like to be questioned or disputed — even trying to get some people fired or silenced when they don’t agree. I think we all see the importance of freedom of speech and open dissension. We may always agree with a blog comment but at least we can make a suggestion or ask a question.

      Finally, STB is the only place I know where realistic solutions to the ST shortfall have been explored. None of these other transit advocacy groups have dared to suggest specific actions on how to adjust ST3 to fit anywhere near the available funding. “Build the damn trains” is not a solution. Because of their silence about facing the major shortfall reality, they strike me as nothing more than fantasy chasers. In contrast, the STB comments have not only proposed constructive ways to not only save billions but make transit travel times (in trains and inside stations and accessing stations) better for riders than what ST3 has proposed. It’s a forum to be proud of!

      1. Agreed, Al. We (mostly) know something about what we yammer on about. CalTrain-Blogspot is the closest analogue for actual transportation knowledge in a lay commentariat, but they have no moderation and one very foul-mouthed, supercilious guy ruins it for everyone else.

      2. “The nature of an open-format blog is to be a forum for differing viewpoints.”

        The issues is STB’s articles and editorials are not ST-maximalists or Seattle Subway-maximalists or Streetcar-maximalists. This confuses some people who think “more is always better” or “Sound Transit’s choices are always right”, and they thus see our skepticism as “anti-transit”.

        It’s really ironic. I would like to give them the Human Transit book and talk about how our transit ideas would meet more people’s needs more effectively than Link to Everett or West Seattle. But it never gets that far because they dismiss us as NIMBYs or highway fans.

      3. “I would like to give them the Human Transit book and talk about how our transit ideas would meet more people’s needs more effectively than Link to Everett or West Seattle.”

        I like the idea — but it’s not something I think they want to read.

        Jarrett Walker is a career pragmatist. He not only gets that transit is mostly subsidized by taxpayers and we can’t and shouldn’t build and run transit everywhere 24/7 at high frequencies, his career has always been advising how to design transit systems to operate for maximum benefit given limited resources from taxpayers given to his transit operator clients. He is much more like an investment advisor rather than a dreamer advocate. Even his comments on land use have a common theme of making transit more productive and faster.

        In contrast, many of Seattle’s transit advocates are just not very pragmatic. For example, the fantasy expansion map by Seattle Subway is probably 4-10 times more costly than even the underfunded ST3 expansion is. Rather than judiciously pare back their proposal to match levels of public funding and likely demand, they intentionally pitch an overly ambitious system map that ignores grades and doesn’t suggest station sites. I’m guessing that they want to portray that we need to fund lots more rail lines than we do — but it’s so out of proportion to what can be afforded that it comes off looking dystopian, making it much less strategic and influential. And where is the companion diagram showing how tall or dense station area walkshed buildings need to be to make their fantasy system reasonably productive?

        And the other advocates often don’t even take a sincere stab at maximizing transit funds for public benefit. Things like free fares reduce dollars available for operations. It feels like some think that transit is something that they think other people should use — but not them personally. Maybe call some of them “non-riding advocates”? They seem to focus way too much on fun things like where lines are placed in a regional map — and way too little on how to physically travel through a Link station to get to a bus or other Link line or just the street, or how fast a particular technology can go. I even wonder if some want expensive rail subways so that they don’t have to drive behind a bus or see a pedestrian on the street.

        The BTDT mere broad declaration that rail is faster than a bus — yet ignore the nuances of vehicle and track speeds kind of highlights their disconnect and naïveté. It feels like some are mostly acting out on their childhood toy train fantasy with other people’s tax money. They don’t seem to care much about how fast a train goes or how many riders will want to use it.

        And sadly, much of the current Board doesn’t seem to care about these things much either. Why spend billions on extensions to Tacoma, Everett or Issaquah or even most of West Seattle that will ultimately add total transit travel time to Downtown Seattle?

        I may have offended some members of these advocacy groups. It’s not meant as a personal criticism. It’s instead an institutional criticism of what the local advocacy groups are doing these days.

      4. In contrast, many of Seattle’s transit advocates are just not very pragmatic.

        Agreed. But there is also mode fetish. There are a lot of people who just assume one mode is better, even when poorly applied. This is absurd. Imagine if Link consisted of a train going back and forth between Westlake and CID. Would this have been as good as the original bus tunnel? Of course not. It would be much worse. This is a basic concept: the application of a mode is often more important than the mode itself. Yet so many “transit advocated” become fixated with a mode and ignore this concept.

        As a result we have both West Seattle Link and a First Avenue Streetcar. The former is too limited to provide much value. The latter has a terrible route. In both cases we would be better off using buses to provide a more widespread benefit.

      5. “Imagine if Link consisted of a train going back and forth between Westlake and CID.”

        We don’t have to completely imagine!

        That’s what the streetcar/ culture connector literally does — except slowly on surface streets. And it actually is intended as an extension of an existing streetcar line. It’s pathetic planned speed makes it a wasteful investment — and the reason it hasn’t been killed is because some feel like it has other value — with little to do with improving travel time or transit operations. All in a corridor with (soon) two Link lines, four RapidRide lines and multiple other bus routes.

        If it wasn’t a steel-wheeled tram it probably would never have been proposed.

        It’s the mode fetish poster child!

      6. Yes, the South Lake Union Streetcar is similar. To be fair, the First Avenue Streetcar would make the route a little bit longer but it is still not a good route. It loops around, like a circulator. Thus it has the drawbacks of a longer route (less reliability) without the advantages (more trip pairs).

        In contrast any bus that ran along First Avenue would provide a longer north-south trip. Not only that but it would come at basically no service cost! In contrast the streetcar would be additional service. But if you can’t get the basics (in terms of routing) then it is unlikely you can follow the argument about service.

    2. It is a problem. Unfortunately people just make assumptions. These include:

      1) West Seattle Link would be better than a bus-based alternative.
      2) The main reason we oppose West Seattle Link is the cost.
      3) We don’t think it is worth investing in improvements for West Seattle.
      4) We oppose all Link projects.
      5) We think that it If it isn’t a perfect plan then it isn’t worth pursuing.

      None of those statements are true. Consider the main line of Link, from Federal Way to Lynnwood. There are definitely flaws. But given the choice between a bus-based alternative and Link (with all of its flaws) we would say “Build the Damn Trains!”.

      But West Seattle is different. It is especially well suited for buses and especially poor for light rail. This is the heart of the matter. Things have gotten worse with the various cost overruns but this issue still remains. West Seattle riders would be better off with bus improvements.

      To folks who associate rail with higher quality transit this is not intuitive. That is part of the problem.

      1. As an example of this line of thinking, consider this quote from Kirk Hovenkotter, executive director at Transportation Choices Coalition:

        Nearly a decade after this region approved Sound Transit 3, transit riders deal with unreliable and infrequent busses.

        This is a profoundly ignorant statement. Mr. Hovenkotter seems willing to throw up his hands in defeat when it comes to making the buses faster or more reliable. He is ignoring the fact that we have done numerous things in the past to make the buses better — including building a massive bus tunnel that eventually become the cornerstone of Link. He seems to dismiss the importance of buses within the overall transit system. Without good bus service the network can’t function properly. This is especially true for West Seattle Link. How are people supposed to get to the station if not by bus? Does Kirk Hovenkotter think that most of the people in West Seattle live close to those three stations? Is he willing to accept a transit system that only works for a small subset of trips that exclusively involve Link? That is a very depressing idea.

        More to the point, he ignores the alternatives and the inherit trade-offs with them. He lumps all rail projects together, ignoring why Link has been so successful in various places. For example, Northgate riders now have to transfer to go downtown. For many, this sucks. They would prefer the old 41. But as a trade-off, they get dramatically faster trips to Roosevelt, U-District, UW Hospital and Capitol Hill. These are major destinations. You can see from the ridership estimates that thousands of people take trips every day in the north end that don’t involve downtown. What then, would West Seattle Link offer that a bus alternative wouldn’t? Nothing! Not a single stop between Delridge and SoDo will be added. No one expects people to make trips between the three West Seattle stations and even if they did a bus could provide the same functionality just as well (by being on the surface).

        This is why a bus-based alternative is just better. You offer everything that West Seattle Link offers and then some. Consider the two alternatives for someone at Alki. If they are headed to the UW they transfer to Link. The only thing that changes is they transfer at SoDo instead of someplace in West Seattle. For a trip to downtown the bus alternative would be better (no transfer). The bus alternative is better for trips to Bellevue, First Hill, Queen Anne or dozens of places that have downtown as a hub. Instead of two transfers there is one. The same is true for trips to Rainier Valley, Beacon Hill, SeaTac or other destinations to the south. For Alki, the bus alternative is clearly better. The same is true almost the entire peninsula. The only place where West Seattle Link would be better is close to the three stations. West Seattle Link makes life better for just those riders. By connecting the Alaska Way Viaduct to the SoDo Busway you benefit everyone in West Seattle.

        But there is more. Not only are the bus improvements better but they are cheaper. With the extra money you can run the buses more often. That means frequent, reliable busses to and within West Seattle. You also have it much sooner. I have no doubt that if they build West Seattle Link that Metro will eventually truncate the buses. This will save Metro some money in operations. But Metro has made it clear that they won’t truncate the buses until the trains get downtown. That is slated for 2039. Nor is it clear that the savings would be focused on West Seattle. Metro has changed their policies — the savings that come from truncations are now spread around the entire system. Thus people in West Seattle might not see a significant improvement in service until 2039 and it may be relatively minor. In contrast if West Seattle Link is replaced with bus improvements then ST would have a moral obligation (if not a legal one) to focus the additional service to West Seattle. The money could be allocated almost immediately. You could have more frequent buses while they plan and build the connection between the Alaska Way Viaduct and the SoDo Busway. The project would not cost a fortune, either. This means it could be built within five years (not fourteen).

      2. “This is a profoundly ignorant statement. Mr. Hovenkotter seems willing to throw up his hands in defeat when it comes to making the buses faster or more reliable.”

        Several statements in the presser are odd. To me, the event looks like it wasn’t planned — and was seemingly hastily called to react to something else major happening behind the scenes. Given where different projects are in development, that appears to be West Seattle.

        One possibility is that West Seattle Link extension support has deteriorated to the point that some Board members want to pause the project. The tripling of costs and the shrinkage of forecasted riders in the latest EIS give the project a much worse cost per rider evaluation — so maybe FTA has already determined that the project won’t get Federal grants or loans because of this. Maybe the real estate acquisition for West Seattle (or the South OMF needed to add any extension) isn’t going well. Maybe there’s a new cost problem that will drive the price tag even higher.

        I think there is some sort of bad news shoe to drop about ST Link expansion — most likely with West Seattle — and we don’t know what it is yet.

  16. “standardizing station design” (a cost-cutting strategy suggested by Build the Damn Trains)

    Aren’t ST’s stations already standardized? Each one has different art, but that comes from a dedicated art sub-budget for each station, and a state law sets a minimum “1% for art”. What else can be standardized?

    Some STB commentators think the non-surface stations are oversized or have unnecessary mezzanines. But eliminating those is not “standardizing”, it’s “downscaling”.

    1. The more I think about it, I’m wondering who actually organized the BTDT presser. It was seemingly quickly organized and the points seemed rather half-baked or irrelevant to me.

      The station “standardizing” is a particularly odd way to propose reducing costs. How can an agency “standardize” digging a 80 foot hole in the ground the size of two city blocks?

      It’s also notable that they mentioned things like dropping parking garages to save money in the presser. The big shortfall is in North King which is not building any garages with ST3 money.

      The whole thing has me wondering about palace intrigue at ST and if it was organized as a pre-emptive action to counter some backroom rumblings.

      In most settings, a Board will face years of inaction stemming from a greatly underfunded capital program by pushing the “old guard” out and getting a fresh look by an outsider budget hawk who can be much more objective. Surely this has crossed the mind of some ST Board members.

      1. “Standardize” to me sounds like using the same design patterns and materials, like the yellow stripes on the platforms, the escalator vendor, the walls, etc. What isn’t standardized that could be?

      2. “a Board will face years of inaction stemming from a greatly underfunded capital program by pushing the “old guard” out and getting a fresh look by an outsider budget hawk who can be much more objective.”

        Do you mean old guard on the board or among the staff? The three county execs appoint the rest of the board except the WSDOT member. The best potential for a new board direction we can identify is Balducci, and she lost the county exec race, so now it depends a lot on Zahilay’s attitudes and whom he appoints. I don’t know as much about the Snohomish and Pierce delegations; I assume their attitudes will remain as is.

        To the extent the staff aren’t studying the right things or aren’t weighing the factors right in their recommendations, it’s really the board’s responsibility to give the staff better directions, so it comes back to the board again.

        What I’m generally seeing is all subareas want all their projects. A split has emerged with Snohomish and Pierce not wanting WS/BLE’s shortfall to delay Everett/Paine and Tacoma Dome, and North King wanting Everett/Paine’s and Tacoma Dome’s money to finish WS/BLE first.

        Dow as county exec was the biggest problem in North King, pushing for West Seattle Link to be in it and first, and pushing for CID/N&S stations, and acquiescing to neighborhood demands for more tunnels in Ballard and West Seattle that weren’t in the ST3 ballot measure. Dow as CEO has surprisingly shown some promising signs, saying “everything is on the table” and being willing to consider things ST previously wouldn’t like single-tunnel. It remains to be seen how much he/ST is serious about this or it’s just hot air.

        Meanwhile, Snohomish has opportunities to save money by (A) rerouting Link to I-5 or Evergreen Way and giving Paine Field alternative service (which could serve more of the businesses), (B) a “Y” shape with half the trains going to Paine and half to Everett, or (C) truncating at Paine or Mariner and frequent buses beyond that. But so far the Snohomish boardmembers have rejected all those.

        In Pierce, the only cost-saving measure I could see is canceling the Tacoma Dome extension. Pierce will say “Over my dead body” about that. What the Tacoma Dome project most needs is an extension to the Pacific Ave bus transfers or an extension north to downtown Tacoma, but those would cost more money, not less.

        Seattle will have a new mayor and council, so some “new blood” boardmembers. Other cities had unexpected progressive wins, but I’m not sure how many of those are potential board candidates.

        But right away we see a contradiction in the new blood. Katie Wilson is seen as having a better understanding of passengers’ needs and transit best practices than most of the existing boardmembers. But her own organization the Transit Riders Union endorsed “Build the Damn Trains”, which we’re afraid might be pushing for a status quo stalemate. How much was Katie herself behind creating BTDT? Does that mean there’s no hope, if she’s pushing for the opposite of what we thought she would do? My hope is my underlying trust that Katie is more creative and pragmatic than BTDT suggests or than her campaign’s lack of ST3 specifics suggest. She has proven that in the past, so I hope she proves it in the future.

        “palace intrigue at ST and if [BTDT] was organized as a pre-emptive action to counter some backroom rumblings.”

        I’m not sure what that means. Are the mumblings sensible reforms, and BTDT an attempt to restore the status quo? (Status quo = every subarea wants all its projects and resists any attempt to downscale/delay/modify them.)

      3. “getting a fresh look by an outsider budget hawk who can be much more objective”

        That’s only part of the problem. The other part is for the board to rank all the expenses by their passenger/transit network benefit, so that the budget hawk can put a threshold line at the affordability limit, and we can see what would be left behind beyond that limit. Just putting P&Rs beyond the threshold is not enough. A budget hawk alone can’t do this, because that would end up with an affordable package that doesn’t work for passengers. E.g., somebody needs to say that passengers need short transfer walks and down escalators: accountants don’t know that, only transit experts do.

      4. The other part is for the board to rank all the expenses by their passenger/transit network benefit, so that the budget hawk can put a threshold line at the affordability limit, and we can see what would be left behind beyond that limit.

        Agreed. This is the biggest problem facing Sound Transit and the major ST3 projects. Even if you reduce costs in a careful and thoughtful way it is highly likely you end up with projects that are a terrible value. West Seattle Link was a terrible value even as originally designed and budgeted. The same is true for Everett, Issaquah and Tacoma Dome Link. That leaves Ballard Link as the only project that could be finessed into something worthwhile. But there are no signs they will. Ballard Link has simultaneously become more expensive and significantly worse. To fix these problems you need more than a budget and civil engineering expert. You need someone who understands transit and the fundamental trade-offs with things like mode, station placement, frequency and transfers.

      5. RE “palace intrigue”:

        It wouldn’t be intrigue if we knew, right? lol

        I have no inside info. It’s just odd to me that an organized set of groups would have a presser but not have a consensus solution that addresses the shortfall problem beforehand — and instead is pitching typical, vague cost savings measures that won’t change the over project budgets much or solve the problem at hand. And it also seemed to be a hastily organized event — rather than these organizations having first honed responses by openly discussing the cost issue with their members.

        It may just be a reaction to the “Enterprise Initiative ” meetings. But if it was, why didn’t they not pitch a framework or performance indicators by which to make choices? Most of the times, a multi-advocate presser like this is created to either support something or oppose something. If they haven’t offered a plan to react to, to me there appears to be something that they DON’T want to happen that’s being considered amongst the Board.

      6. “A split has emerged with Snohomish and Pierce not wanting WS/BLE’s shortfall to delay Everett/Paine and Tacoma Dome, and North King wanting Everett/Paine’s and Tacoma Dome’s money to finish WS/BLE first.”

        Looking at the current costs, it appears that TDLE so far increased from $2.9B to $4.6B. ELE so far has grown from $6.6B to $7.7B. These pale in comparison to WSLE, growing from $2.3B to $4.6B to now $7.7B. DSTT2+ Ballard has seemingly gone from $7.1B to $30.5B.

        So even if ST fully dropped TDLE and ELE AND WSLE, ST would still be well short of the funds needed for just DSTT2 and Ballard.

        The tea leaves look bad for DSTT2 and Ballard, yet the riders and the travel time savings expected from the project are much higher than these other three extensions now in project development combined.

        Keep in mind that there are also wealthy development interests behind the scenes that are based on all these extensions. Because this involves hundreds of millions of private investment, these interests are knocking on doors of our elected officials.

        I have to wonder if the automated technology companies are pitching their technologies to ST already but we aren’t hearing about it because it’s being done in private.

        And ST has yet to analyze if automated, more frequent trains can significantly lower costs of any or all of these projects (maybe even at faster speeds). I’m actually wondering if it is this missing analysis that the BTDT presser is trying to stop.

      7. Maybe it had been in the work with other name but the catch phrase “BTDT” suddenly came out and that was just appropriate for their campaign.

    2. “Standardize”

      I think the design of newer link stations is pretty standardized. Of course DSTT stations look different because they were built at different time.
      It is pretty lame they call this out which makes me wonder whether those people really understand the challenge here.
      Frankly, if they can just choose the damn alternative, I am pretty sure station design won’t be the thing holding project back whether “standardized” or not.

  17. “The tea leaves look bad for DSTT2 and Ballard”

    Lucky for us, the essential core of the Link network will be finished next summer: downtown, Lynnwood, Redmond, KDM-or-Federal Way, U-Distict, Capitol Hill, southeast Seattle. Ballard would have been a helpful improvement giving better access to northwest Seattle and SLU, but ST’s after-vote changes have sabotaged some of that potential (long transfers, no CID station, Ballard 14th station). That makes it less important whether it’s built or not.

    1. Ballard Link was the only part of ST3 which mattered, in this Seattleite’s opinion. Failing to build it means that the entire effort works out to a poor use of money.

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