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186 Replies to “Midweek Roundup: NIMBYs in a corner”

    1. I watched at Capitol Hill station at 6:30pm for 12 minutes but didn’t see any “Out of service” or 4-minute trains, just the regular 8-minute trains. So either the testing ended early or I got the times wrong.

      Did anyone see the 4-minute trains? Did it look like the test was proceeding reliably?

      3. It was happening in the evening, at least on Monday. I saw a 4 car out of service train heading north at Westlake on Monday around 5:30P.

      5. Well, Mr. Dow was able to accelerate FWLE, so the wire testing on I-90 now means that East Link is going to be accelerated, so maybe not January, I expect pre-revenue service to start in late January, so maybe in March. Also who is going to perform at FWLE? Is Sabrina Carpenter going to perform?

      6. UW

        The date as of the last meeting where it was mentioned was somewhere around April or May, though it could be earlier if everything goes well. Those dates are if things go wrong, as I understand it could be as early as March if everything goes perfectly. They’ll announce a specific date when they are confident that the project can open on said date. I’m guessing that we’ll learn more in late December or early January.

      7. “Mr. Dow was able to accelerate FWLE, so the wire testing on I-90 now means that East Link is going to be accelerated, so maybe not January, I expect pre-revenue service to start in late January, so maybe in March.”

        I don’t know that Dow had much to do with it; this is all part of the volatility of testing results and construction performance. Those allow the target date to be moved forward and back. It’s more of a board-level issue how aggressively/optimistically to move the target within that ever-changing range.

        Balducci set a precedent by convincing the board to open the 2 Line Starter Line early. That was a great success that has been widely praised. That predisposed the board to open Federal Way in December when the possibility occurred; and it was thinking of a KDM phase if the Federal Way tail would be significantly prolonged.

        The crosslake target has evolved from January to February and March, and in the past month it got as late as June. It sounds like ST is now thinking March might be realistic after all.

        I don’t spend time dwelling on whether the full 2 Line opens in 1 month or 7 months. The important thing is the decades after that. It’s already 4 years late, and will be 5 years if the June target stands. I’ve been suffering without that service all this time, but it got better in the restructure a few months ago with the 226 extension/straightening and the possibility of transferring at South Bellevue (which is a more pleasant transfer environment than Bellevue TC, Overlake Village, or Redmond Tech). So if I have to do 550+226 a few more months, it doesn’t matter that much whether it’s 1 month or 6 months. Not compared to the decades after it when crosslake Link will be much more frequent and have many more one-seat destinations/transfers.

      8. And I wouldn’t call Federal Way accelerated. It opened late due to having to build a special bridge that avoids building in unstable ground. Its opening less late than it might have, but could have gone horribly wrong if they’d uncovered more ground issues.

      9. Mike Orr: I suggested that the north part of Route 226 be revised to serve the three Bel-Red Link stations (OV, 130th, and Spring District). The Metro planners kept it on Bel-Red Road. You could have used Route 226 in either direction to reach Link.

    1. My intuition is that it’s not possible to design a taxi system with significantly less deadheading than this without compromising its ability to function as a taxi system, meaning one that allows passengers to travel from anywhere to anywhere at anytime, with a minimal wait. To reduce deadheading, the system would have to put controls over when and where trips can begin and end, to the point where it becomes more like a bus route than a taxi network.

      That said, the common alternative to a taxi – being driven around by a family member in their private car – the deadheading tends to be similar or worse. For example, to be picked up from the airport, the family member must first drive empty from home to the airport.

      1. I think the point is that the self-driving car companies severely downplay the deadheading as if there isn’t nearly a century of experience from taxi companies trying to minimize deadheading themselves. It turns out self-driving cars aren’t immune to the spatial economics of taxis, so unless cities want to choke their streets with even more traffic, they will need to limit the number of deadheading self-driving cars similar to how large cities limit the number of taxis legally allowed to operate.

      2. The problem with artificial caps is that the amount of congestion that taxis create on streets varies tremendously depending on the time and place. So, the result would be no taxis available at all in neighborhoods with less demand and hour-long wait times during temporary periods of high demand.

        It also feels odd to have a rule system where being ferried around in a family member’s car is treated much more favorably than riding in a taxi, in spite of typically being even less efficient (e.g. 20 minutes of driving, plus 5-10 minutes of waiting in the car, for a 20 minute passenger ride the other way).

        Ultimately, the solution is probably congestion pricing, but it should be targeted to streets and that are actually congested and charged to everyone congesting the streets, not just using taxis as a scapegoat and encouraging the old system where people take an hour out of their day to drive family members places to avoid paying a super-expensive taxi fare.

      3. Yeah the whole selling point of conventional taxi service is that they are cruising all the time so you can catch them easily.

  3. Did anyone here attend Sound Transit’s West Seattle Forum on Monday? I was there. The comments on the West Seattle Blog seem a bit out of touch. My takeaway was that ST is fully committed to the project and is now looking at ways to bring down the costs, like getting rid of Avalon Station. One of the speakers was Kirk from Transportation Choices who wore a shirt saying “Build the Damn Trains” who argued that NONE of the projects should be scaled back, whether it’s WSLE or Ballard LE. The crowd in attendance seemed to be mostly Pro-Link and outnumbered the grumbling NIMBYs. The West Seattle Blog comments seem oblivious to the recent Sound Transit successes over the last 2 years – Link Openings for East Link, Lynnwood, Redmond and now Federal Way. Sound Transit legit gets things done albeit late.

    1. > The comments on the West Seattle Blog seem a bit out of touch.

      Whaaat that’s never happened before

    2. The objection to West Seattle Link is not based on NIMBY attitudes. It is based on cost versus value. West Seattle Link will be extremely expensive. It won’t add much value (especially if it skips Avalon or ends at Delridge). Riders would be much better off with bus improvements. This would not only be a lot cheaper but a lot better for riders.

      2. That is like saying the people pushing for Link are in the construction industry. The contractors want to build those projects. Sure, that is true to a certain extent but it doesn’t represent the way the majority of people feel. Most of the people arguing for and against Link believe their approach is better for transit.

      3. At this point, even with people who I think have good transit ideas or generally agree with, if they are in favor of West Seattle Link instead of West Seattle BRT, I start to question why I agree with them. Like, how can someone who gets other transit issues be so wrong on this one?

      4. The ST staff identified Delridge as the outer end of a MOS (minimum operating segment).

        I suggest the SODO station as the MOS; ST could operate turnback trains from/to the South Forest Street base; the first/last station would be SODO. Lines C and H could remain; most other West Seattle routes could meet Link at SODO; there is the South Lander Street overcrossing; there is an inbound ramp between the South Spokane Street viaduct and 4th Avenue South.

      5. Some are concerned with the displacement of businesses and homes; that is always the case. NIMBY, YIMBY, and value all play a role.

      6. Ending at Delridge would be as close to digging a hole and then filling it up as transit can get.

        It’s a poor place to force a transfer, and requires the construction of the new high bridge and a couple of miles of redundant structure just to add a second transfer to trips which today are largely direct.

        Penny wise, multiple billions foolish.

      7. Metro would not force a transfer for just a bridge-crossing stub. It wasn’t going to force a transfer for an Alaska Junction-SODO stub.

        This is all about whether a SODO-Delridge stub is worthwhile without truncating bus routes.

      8. “Metro would not force a transfer for just a bridge-crossing stub. It wasn’t going to force a transfer for an Alaska Junction-SODO stub.

        “This is all about whether a SODO-Delridge stub is worthwhile without truncating bus routes.”

        Again, ST has not disclosed what stub ridership will be anywhere in recent documentation. It may be in the Ballard EIS as a no-build scenario but we don’t know.

        And because of that, we have no ridership forecast for any stub operation alternative. We are left to speculate .

        And if ST ever published it, they would need to disclose what they would do with the bus routes — as they did in the West Seattle Final EIS Teansportation Technical Report appendix.

        Could it be that ST would be in a quagmire about the continued Metro bus operations? If they don’t assume truncated bus routes, ridership with three seat rides required would be embarrassingly low. But if they do assume truncated bus routes, overall transit travel times go up — with mode share of transit slightly dropping and VMT slightly increasing. So ST just avoids studying that or providing that forecast data publicly — meaning that they don’t want productivity logic guiding their decisions on West Seattle Link. They instead appear to only want emotional, speculative feedback.

      9. “Again, ST has not disclosed what stub ridership will be anywhere in recent documentation.”

        That’s a flaw in the West Seattle EIS for the SODO-Alaska Junction stub.

        The SODO-Delridge phase was only publicly mentioned a few days ago. In order for ST to do it, it would have to be in the EIS or added to it. Does the EIS have a “minimally operable segment” alternative terminating at Delridge?

        “It may be in the Ballard EIS as a no-build scenario but we don’t know.”

        It’s unrelated to the Ballard EIS. It wouldn’t be Ballard non-build, because that would be not building Ballard/DSTT2; i.e., nothing north of SODO.

        “And if ST ever published it, they would need to disclose what they would do with the bus routes — as they did in the West Seattle Final EIS Teansportation Technical Report appendix.”

        That wasn’t ST’s guessing. It was ST asking Metro for representative bus-feeder routes. It put in whatever Metro said. In past Link projects these were custom scenarios for the extension. But for ST3 Metro folded it into the Metro Connects scenarios, a countywide network rethink that it published in 2016 before the vote.

        “Could it be that ST would be in a quagmire about the continued Metro bus operations? If they don’t assume truncated bus routes, ridership with three seat rides required would be embarrassingly low. But if they do assume truncated bus routes, overall transit travel times go up — with mode share of transit slightly dropping and VMT slightly increasing.”

        ST knows full well Metro won’t truncate West Seattle bus routes until the full West Seattle to Lynnwood-or-Everett opens. It was in Metro Connects in 2016. Metro and SDOT have maintained the same stance ever since then. All of their West Seattle restructure scenarios depend on the full 3 Line, not the stub.

      10. Ending at Delridge would be as close to digging a hole and then filling it up as transit can get.

        Ha, yeah. But let’s face it. So much of West Seattle Link is designed to get the foot in the door. Even the argument for the full build (when it was considered affordable) was based on this idea. It is why ending at SoDo was considered OK. Of course it is stupid to build West Seattle Link first when it just ends at SoDo. But give Dow some credit. He knows that. But he also knows that cost overruns happen. He knew there was a strong possibility you couldn’t build all of it. By separating out West Seattle Link and building it first you avoid the last stages of the monorail (where they only wanted to run the trains from Ballard to downtown).

        Of consider the other end. So much of the work in planning has been to make sure the tracks are headed south, as if it is given that West Seattle Link will keep going. I’m all in favor of future proofing the system but it is quite presumptuous. Very little thought has been given to extending Ballard Link (west or north) even though it has far more potential. They never bothered to build stub lines branching from the UW towards Ballard even though that has a lot more potential as well.

        If this is all just one step in the eventual subway line to the rest of the peninsula then it doesn’t matter how small the step is. Once they build this we will be committed to an expansion that direction. Sorry First Hill, Belltown, CD, and most of the city north of the ship canal: We’ve got to head towards Burien first.

      11. “Sorry First Hill, Belltown, CD, and most of the city north of the ship canal: We’ve got to head towards Burien first.”

        Seattle already has Link. Burien doesn’t. That’s the political argument.

      12. Seattle already has Link. Burien doesn’t. That’s the political argument.

        Yes, and it is profoundly stupid. You might as well say “Washington State has Link, so now it is time to build something in Idaho”.

      13. “Washington State has Link, so now it is time to build something in Idaho”

        That’s how Amtrak long-distance routes are justified. They serve senators’ constituencies, which correspond to sates.

      14. This is all about whether a SODO-Delridge stub is worthwhile without truncating bus routes.

        There’s no need to study such a grotesque parody of “transit”. The proposition is absurd on its face without forced truncation.

        The only people who would ride it are those within direct walking distance of the station, all five hundred of them.

    3. The meeting info I read from the West Seattle Blog seemed to suggest that there is still quite a bit of denial about the massive shortfall, and that ST didn’t take input until the last few minutes.

      The presentation slide that showed that almost half of the costs were west of Delridge Station seemed to me to be the most significant fact. Unfortunately, things like stopping at Avalon and simplifying the SODO Station platform to enable level same-direction transfers were not presented. There was not an emphasis on the budget shortfall either. There were a few new cost cutting measures presented like an Alaska Strret cut and cover design, but the account suggested that ST and much of the crowd are still in shortfall denial.

      I thought that the findings alone were big enough to warrant a full STB post for discussion. There is much to unpack and discuss.

    4. WSB commentator Marie made a good argument that ST could choose the “No Build” alternative for West Seattle. Three or more others agreed with this.

      1. Yeah, that makes sense. Here is the link: https://www.whereiamnow.net/post/sound-transit-presents-an-excellent-case-for-the-no-build-option

        The toughest thing about the “No Build” approach is that is it implies West Seattle gets nothing. They live with the same crappy transit that exists now (and exists for most of the region). But that really isn’t the case. ST can pivot and spend the money on buses. That is why I would call it the “Bus Alternative”.

      2. In a real no build option, not theoretical, the ST3 stream of revenue could be spent on better transit project eligible under the RTA enabling legislation. High capacity transit could be improved in West Seattle, Ballard, and the north King County subarea; it could be different than ST3. This could be a topic of the Enterprise Initiative.

    5. ST has raised the possibility of a SODO-Delridge phase if it has to split the project. That would make Link not much more than a second Duwamish bridge, which seems silly.

      However, it has a silver lining in that if the second phase isn’t done by 2040, ST could modify the project to go down Delridge instead of to Alaska Junction. That would serve the proven highest-ridership corridor (evidence from the H and 120), and cost less because of fewer hills and midrises, and get to Burien sooner and with less cost.

      ST also reiterated the possibility of dropping Avalon station. ST says that wouldn’t reduce ridership as people/buses would use other stations. The West Seattle Community was skeptical about that.

      1. Yeah, I was just going to say, if it really costs 3 billion to get to The Junction, turn south and run surface on Delridge, and save a bundle.

      2. I’ve come to believe that the Sodo-Delridge stub is all we’re getting for a long time to come. I assume it will come with a large bus depot and park-and-ride at Delridge, where all West Seattle buses will terminate.

      3. On the one hand I can see clear advantages to going that way. If you added enough stations along Delridge you would get more walk-up riders than you would by ending at the Junction. You also save those riders more time. But you would have to have lots of stops and go quite a ways before it would be worth it. For a northbound bus (starting in Renton) ridership gets smaller as get closer to the bridge. You would probably have to go to Westwood Village (more or less) to make it worthwhile. It takes about fourteen minutes for the bus to get between there and the last stop before the bridge. By being grade-separated (presumably) and having about half as many stops you save about five minutes (and maybe more depending on traffic). Assuming the H no longer goes downtown (e. g. is sent to Alki) riders to the south heading towards downtown could transfer at the southernmost station and not be hurt so much by the transfer. Some would even come out ahead.

        But it wouldn’t do much for the western part of West Seattle. I don’t see buses like the C and 21 being altered to get close to the stations. This is a disadvantage over either the bus alternative or the existing West Seattle Link. With West Seattle Link, someone on California could ride the Rapid C and transfer at The Junction to get to the UW. With the bus alternative they would transfer at SoDo. With Delridge Link they would continue to transfer downtown. They really don’t get anything out of this. The 50 currently connects to Link at SoDo. It could instead connect at Delridge. This is better as it would allow the bus to go more directly towards Beacon Hill but it isn’t a huge improvement.

        Overall I would say Delridge Link is a better project than West Seattle Link. The cost per station would be much lower and riders next to the stations would save more time. But it still isn’t as good as a bus alternative. This benefits *all* riders in West Seattle for *all* trips.

      4. I’ve come to believe that the Sodo-Delridge stub is all we’re getting for a long time to come. I assume it will come with a large bus depot and park-and-ride at Delridge, where all West Seattle buses will terminate.

        Seattle has opposed park and rides so that isn’t going to happen. It is also likely that buses would serve the station and keep going. For example the RapidRide H could continue on the corridor and serve Alki. Or it could turn and dogleg up the hill (like the 50) before serving The Junction. It could layover there or continue to Alki or Admiral (like the 50 or 128). The 125 would likely be modified to do something similar (maybe combining with the 56 or 57). That’s about it. I don’t think the C or 21 would be modified to serve the station (it would be pretty awkward to do so). It would be like Angle Lake — a station that really doesn’t make sense as a terminus. We will wait for more money so that the line can be extended to where it was supposed to go in the first place. Of course if the money never comes or we decide to spend it on something that is a much better value (which is pretty much anything) then it becomes yet another poorly thought out American transit project.

    6. I don’t think ST tried hard enough to look at what I think are obvious cost reduction strategies. I’m surprised that no one gave them grief about not exploring these things.

      I think these cost savings alternatives should also be on the table:

      1. Simplify the SODO Station. It doesn’t need three platforms all with vertical devices that have to be walked to. The stub operation will have surges of riders when trains arrive from West Seattle. The entire setup could be done with just one center platform and one set of escalators and elevators to the overpass. This would offer level, cross platform transfers. A rider would simply hop off and wait right there for the next train. The West Seattle tracks could be tied in next to the OMF switches too, saving the need to take more property south of SODO. Why wasn’t SODO and OMF examined for cost savings?

      2. Rather than forget about one station, locate the end station between Avalon and West Seattle and don’t bore anything deep. Rather than spend over $3B to go further west than Delridge (almost gave the budget) and dig a station the size of a football field that’s 70-80 feet deep (think the Capitol Hill Link station site in 2010-2016) and takes time to use because the tracks would be so deep, just close the block of Delridge between Alaska and Oregon and build the station right under it. Put entrances at the two ends — so that each is just 700-800 feet or just 2-3 blocks from the planned station entrances in the EIS. With most Link riders expected to come from buses anyway, it would be less effort to have the bus go 2-3 more blocks but have a shorter escalator ride or stair walk to the platform.

      3. A automation scenario. The ridership forecasts look quite low —and they assume a full build of DSTT2 and not the interim “stub” to West Seattle and the multi-level SODO transfer to at least 2045 or 2050. The funding shortfall makes DSTT2 opening date much later if at all. Each West Seattle train car will thus only have a handful of riders most of the day. With automated trains the platforms and stations can be much shorter and also be more frequent. The cost savings would be significant.

      The one thing these three things have in common is that not only would they save capital costs, they actually make Link easier to use and save end-to-end travel time for a transit rider. So why aren’t these on the table?

      1. 1) The elephant in the room is the second downtown tunnel. Without a second tunnel you don’t need a second SoDo station. That may be where they are leaning but it isn’t part of this particular discussion.

        2) I’m not sure I follow you. Where would the stations be?

        3) West Seattle Link trains are supposed to go in the existing tunnel and be sent to the UW. The trains can be automated but they wouldn’t be smaller for that reason. At best you save money in operations but not capital. The only reason Ballard Link makes sense as an independent automated line is because Westlake is an excellent terminus. It is basically the middle of downtown now. You could do something similar with West Seattle but SoDo is not a good terminus. You could pair West Seattle and Ballard Link but then you are back to second tunnel.

      2. “2) I’m not sure I follow you. Where would the stations be?”

        That’s for ST to design. I’m just saying that if a station has one exit near Alaska and Fauntleroy and another one at Fauntleroy and Oregon (a “barbell” station like Downtown Bellevue with 110th/ 112th), it would not be a far walk from either currently proposed station site. ST can choose an “in-between” site rather than one of the two current ones (Avalon or Junction). I note that Shoreline South was moved after the EIS process.

      3. “3) West Seattle Link trains are supposed to go in the existing tunnel and be sent to the UW. The trains can be automated but they wouldn’t be smaller for that reason.”

        ST has said that it won’t put West Seattle trains into the DSTT until DSTT2 opens. It’s supposed to be a stub operation before that. That’s waiting to board two different trains to go between West Seattle and Downtown until at least 2045 or 2050 — and maybe much longer. Reducing the West Seattle train frequency from the currently planned 10 minutes to 4 would go a long way to reducing the wait for one of those trains.

        So why not have two automated, high-frequency “stubs” in the interim — Ballard- Westlake and SODO-West Seattle? Then someday they can tie together — maybe as DSTT2 with shorter platforms or maybe as a diverted line to also serve First Hill with shorter platforms.

        I’m not necessarily recommending it. I’m just saying that scenarios for an automated line seem worthy of study as a cost-saving strategy.

      4. I’m just saying that if a station has one exit near Alaska and Fauntleroy and another one at Fauntleroy and Oregon (a “barbell” station like Downtown Bellevue with 110th/ 112th), it would not be a far walk from either currently proposed station site.

        OK, but that would be worse for riders and I don’t see that saving much money.

      5. “OK, but that would be worse for riders and I don’t see that saving much money.”

        ST just announced that it will cost over $4B to go from Delridge to the Junction — just 1.2 miles. That’s wildly expensive! It’s a higher cost than to go from SODO to Delridge, which is 2.9 miles over twice as far!

        https://westseattleblog-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2025/11/alevers.jpg

        The cost is clearly way out of proportion to everything else ST is doing — just to go a few blocks.

        Any strategy to shorten the last 1.2 miles seems worthwhile to at least study.

      6. Any strategy to shorten the last 1.2 miles seems worthwhile to at least study.

        Sure, but it isn’t any shorter. The reason it is so expensive is because of the altitude difference between Delridge and the plateau above it (Fauntleroy, etc.). You either have to go high in the air or deep underground.

      7. So why not have two automated, high-frequency “stubs” in the interim — Ballard- Westlake and SODO-West Seattle?

        That would be nice but in the case of West Seattle it wouldn’t save any money. Unlike Ballard-Westlake you have to keep going which means the trains have to be bigger. Unless, of course, you are suggesting we go back to pairing West Seattle with Ballard. That’s fine but in the meantime the West Lake Starter Line (if you will) would get very few riders. It would consist of four stations (including SoDo). Not that many people live close to the stations. Very few people will want to make a three-seat trip to downtown (and a four-seat trip to Bellevue, First Hill, etc.). It would definitely be an improvement but it means committing to a new downtown tunnel (of dubious value). Until that tunnel is built it would add very little for West Seattle.

        In contrast the bus alternative would improve transit in West Seattle almost immediately. The biggest transit weakness in West Seattle is not lack of infrastructure, it is lack of service. Run the buses a lot more often and immediately things are much better in West Seattle. Places like Alki, Admiral and High Point could have fast, frequent connections to downtown as well as just much better service *within* West Seattle. For example an all-day 56 would make a huge difference if you are trying to get to or from Alki. This could be possible almost immediately if they went with the bus alternative.

      8. @ Ross:

        I fully agree that the density and terrain issues in West Seattle make light rail generally an unwise investment. Add to that the forecasts suggest that 70 percent of WSLE would arrive on buses anyway — so the place where they board is not going to be that impactful. Even though the Junction station is closest it is also the biggest elevation change which adds walk time for a Link rider.

        I’m not denying that the whole project seems relatively unproductive.

        I am saying that the $4B to go the last 1.2 miles for just a few thousand more daily riders is particularly wildly unproductive.

        Maybe just going to Avalon or a little further but not all the way won’t save much money. But I think it’s really clear that a deep hole as big as a football field in the middle of West Seattle for the Junction station is a huge expense way out of proportion to its benefit. And ST did not provide cost estimates for the option of ending at or just beyond Avalon.

      10. @ Jack W:

        The SODO station cost savings that ST pitched was not reducing the number of platforms and enabling level transfers . It was instead simply reducing escalators and stairs and coverage area. Riders would still have two level changes, but would lose a down escalator — making the transfer even harder for West Seattle riders.

      11. Ross, “running the buses a lot more often” in a everyone owns a car suburbia like West Seattle is just flushing money. The people who will take the bus are already doing so. The others will just keep driving.

        Running buses in dense places usually rebalances mode share, especially if parking can be made expensive. But it really doesn’t help in SFH neighborhoods like West Seattle.

        It’s not a replacement for housing renewal with higher density first. Once that happens, then run more buses.

      12. Ross, “running the buses a lot more often” in a everyone owns a car suburbia like West Seattle is just flushing money. The people who will take the bus are already doing so. The others will just keep driving.

        That is ludicrous. West Seattle transit sucks just like it sucks all over the city. Why do you think ridership is down? Because the buses are too infrequent, obviously. Consider the 21. It serves High Point, the most densely populated part of West Seattle. It also runs by the “greater Alaska Junction” area which includes Avalon. No, this isn’t Brooklyn but it isn’t Medina either. It shouldn’t be too surprising that the 21 performs reasonably well (about average for a bus serving downtown/UW and thus above average overall for Metro).

        But riders on the 21 are getting screwed. The bus doesn’t run express to downtown like the C, H or even the 125. Instead the bus gets on the expressway and then almost immediately gets off so that it can slog its way downtown on the local streets. Not only that, but it only runs every fifteen minutes! If we did nothing else but ran the bus more often we would get a lot more riders. But if we ran it express to downtown (like the other buses) we could get a lot more riders. This is just basic transit science (frequency and speed matter).

        As bad as it is for riders of the 21 they are better off than many in West Seattle. Alki and Admiral lack one-seat rides to downtown. Again, these are not low-density areas. There are plenty of apartments there. But none of the buses that serve those areas go downtown. So riders have a two-seat ride (that isn’t that frequent). The college has a direct bus to downtown (the 125) but it runs every half hour. Of course fewer people would drive if it ran more often.

        Yes, there are areas of West Seattle that are most definitely low-density suburban. But that is true in various other places in Seattle (and of course, the suburbs). But West Magnolia (a similar area) at least has the 24. The 37 doesn’t run at all anymore. The 56 and 57 only run peak. When West Seattle Link advocates complain about transit in West Seattle they have a point. It sucks. Join the club.

        Building this sort of thing: https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/06/07/west-seattle-by-bus-instead-of-light-rail/ would most certainly increase ridership. Of course that seems excessive compared to the rest of the city. And Seattle has service that may seem excessive compared to much of the East Side. But there is a reason for that: Seattle is paying extra for more service. This would be the same sort of thing. But while it would seem excessive compared to other transit in the region it wouldn’t be excessive compared to transit in the rest of the world.

        It is also the type of service many in West Seattle expect when they build West Seattle Link. If you listen to supporters, it is implied. They just assume that Metro will truncate the buses and put the savings into buses that run through West Seattle more often. The problem is, there is no assurance that Metro would do that. In contrast if ST spends money on service then it means more frequent buses. There would be a “West Seattle Transit Benefit District” just like there is a Seattle Transit Benefit District.

        It would also be the type of thing we promised West Seattle. Not exactly the same thing, but better. If the ST plans (put to voters and approved by them) has any meaning then we should spend money improving transit in West Seattle and Ballard. It is easy to argue it should be spent elsewhere (Central Area, First Hill, etc.) but that ship has sailed. We are going to spend extra on West Seattle whether it is worthy or not. The least we can do is provide something that is a much better value than the silly Link extension.

      13. If we did nothing else but ran the bus more often we would get a lot more riders.

        I’m sorry, but you are supposing a large pool of people who drive because they must wait an average of 7.5 minutes for a bus instead of 2.5.

        It’s not true. You’d be spending three times the money for fifteen or twenty percent more ridership. Even if it were 50% more — and why are those people joyriding the bus and not at work? — it would mean that every dollar spent was getting half the benefit as with the fifteen minute buses.

        Why do you think that West Seattle has a large cohort of people slacking the day away, waiting for a frequent bus to take them to Lincoln Park? It’s expensive to live there because of the great views. Residents must work.

        Would running buses more frequently at peaks attract more ruders? Maybe, certainly on crowded routes. But people who are available to ride buses during non-peak periods in West Seattle mostly have a car, and they don’t have to pay much to park at their destination. It’s more convenient to use the jalopy, especially if it’s not one and car payments are still ticking along.

      14. I’m sorry, but you are supposing a large pool of people who drive because they must wait an average of 7.5 minutes for a bus instead of 2.5.

        I’m simply stating a fact. Run the buses more often and you increase ridership. Are you really challenging that idea? Seriously? I can dig up the studies if you want. Jarrett Walker states it as a well-known fact (https://humantransit.org/basics/the-transit-ridership-recipe). Feel free to ask him for the studies supporting that idea.

        Of course the relationship between frequency and ridership is not linear. It is a curve. As you approach running every minute you get smaller increases. But you always see an increase. As it turns out, that is a moot point.

        I never suggested running every 2.5 minutes. Nor are there any buses in West Seattle that run every 7.5 minutes. At best you have buses running every ten minutes and only two buses do that (the C and H). As I mentioned, the 21 runs every fifteen minutes. As I mentioned, the 125 runs every half hour. As I mentioned, many buses don’t even go downtown.

        They force riders to transfer. Transfers impact ridership — again, there are studies supporting this idea. The have a bigger impact when buses are infrequent — which is the case in West Seattle!

        You don’t seem to get it. Transit to West Seattle sucks*. That is why ridership is so low. There is a reason why people in West Seattle see Link as their big savior. They think it will solve their problems. They are wrong. The only thing that will fix transit in West Seattle is to run the buses a lot more often. That is far more likely to happen without West Seattle Link than with it.

        *Just as transit sucks in most of West Seattle it sucks in most of the region. Just as ridership would increase in West Seattle if we ran the buses more often (and had a better network) it would increase ridership in the region if we did the same thing. West Seattle isn’t special. The only thing that makes it unusual is that they were promised a Link extension that was never a good idea and is now extremely expensive. Giving them much better transit instead (by improving the buses) would only be fair. It would also increase ridership on the peninsula.

      15. “you are supposing a large pool of people who drive because they must wait an average of 7.5 minutes for a bus instead of 2.5.”

        It affects people’s decisions at the margin. If people are 50/50 on whether to take the bus or drive, a slight nudge can make a difference. Then there’s the culumative frustration of all the waits in a 2-4 seat ride, or if you travel several times a week and start dreading that wait again. The alternative may not be driving; it may be not making the trip. Or if it limits the number of activities you can accomplish in a day, and you have responsibilities that don’t allow you to reduce your activities from four to two or one.

        And there’s no average 2.5 minute wait. That would require Link or a bus route to run every 5 minutes. None of the proposals or scenarios have that.

      16. Ross, Mike, Ross said “run the bus much more frequently” [emphasis added], so I chose tripling frequency as perhaps an overstatement, but a way to challenge the facile assumption that increasing frequency is somehow “revolutionary”. It’s not. As you said Ross, it’s a curve. Going from thirty minutes to fifteen certainly increases ridership,but not enough to keep the buses equally full, and the gains from ten-minute and even shorter headways rapidly disappear. The only reason to go more frequent than ten minute policy headways is over-crowding, and that is not going to happen in a diffuse suburban neighborhood such as West Seattle unless it has a major educational institution.

        Since many or even “most” lines there already run at fifteen-minute policy headways, that lemon has already been juiced.

        All I’m saying is that your go-to solution to ridership has already been applied and not much more can be done except to speed up the trips already being taken by bus where it’s politically possible to do it.

        That will attract far more “choice” riders than buses coming “much more frequently”. Most people already leave earlier than absolutely required for a time-sensitive appointment whether they bus or drive.

        And, again, there just are not hordes of potential riders out in suburbia during non-peak hours whiling away their hours wishing buses would carry them around more frequently.

        They’re at work.

        I’ll buy an argument that increasing frequency on Saturdays, Sundays and Holidays might very well pay off in increased ridership. It seems to do so on Link, so it’s worth testing.

      17. “…the gains from ten-minute and even shorter headways rapidly disappear.”

        Yes I tend to agree.

        At higher frequencies, I think other factors become more important. For example, if someone has a long wait to cross a street (maybe only 10 seconds of walk start time for a 2 minute long signal cycle) or an investment in time to make a vertical trek up or down to get to a light rail platform, the effort impacts almost every rider and cannot be averaged.

        There is an argument that can be made that time being idle goes by more slowly than time moving. I think that inclement weather can increase that time perception. I think real-time arrival signs reduce the stress of waiting and make wait time less onerous.

        I would probably draw the “neglible effect of better headways” line at about 7 or 8 minutes for short trips and 10 minutes for long ones.

        I’ve also heard some people say that if frequencies are less than 20 minutes, people nowadays more rely on real-time arrival info on their phones before leaving for a bus stop. Of course that really only works with a direct trip or maybe a deliberate, reliable timed transfer.

      18. I chose tripling frequency as perhaps an overstatement, but a way to challenge the facile assumption that increasing frequency is somehow “revolutionary”. It’s not.

        OK, great. While you are at it, why not address global warming. Is it real? Have they done enough studies?

        Seriously Tom, you are refuting basic science as expressed by experts. You are claiming that Jarrett Walker (and many others) are wrong. That’s fine. But before you do that, look at the studies. I’m not the one making the audacious claim so I shouldn’t have to do your homework for you. Yes, there is a curve — something I brought up! But again, the curve is not as dramatic as you suggest. The elasticity of going from 7.5 minutes to 2.5 minutes is not zero. You will get more riders. Of course you will. Why do you think they run the RapidRide G every six minutes? To get more riders. Sure, it is out of whack compared to the rest of the city but it is a nice little local experiment showing that of course better headways leads to higher ridership.

        But more to the point your whole claim was bullshit. Buses don’t run every 7.5 minutes in West Seattle! Most of West Seattle has infrequent buses to downtown or they don’t have them at all. This includes the most densely populated part of the peninsula. And yes, unlike you this is a claim I can back up. Look at the census maps (https://maps.geo.census.gov/ddmv/map.html). Census tract 105.01 (in High Point) has the most people per square mile (over 16,000). They have an infrequent and very slow bus to Seattle (the 21).

        You made an unfair, bullshit claim about West Seattle riders (they live in an “everyone owns a car suburbia like West Seattle”) and a bullshit claim about the buses in West Seattle. Then you made a bizarre assumption about why ridership goes up with frequency (they are joyriders who aren’t at work). It is both insulting the people in live in West Seattle and nonsense.

    7. A significant issue is that the ST concepts would save millions and the fiscal gap is billions.

      1. So far the only proposal that would save billions is to end the train at Delridge. It is possible that other options (not yet explored) would save quite a bit of money. For example ending at Avalon. Then again, maybe not, which is why they haven’t considered it.

      2. Ross Bleakney,

        Sound Transit hates the word “phased” because it’s the first step to “no build”. It will interesting to see what happens politically in West Seattle in the coming year. Will the locals stand with Sound Transit or lean towards “no build” ? The whole idea of building 1/2 the stuff in the voters guide is a political minefield.

      3. I think it would be more valuable for ST to approach this from the other direction: State how many billions they can spend, and then propose 2-3 alternatives at each ballpark level. What would $4B buy? What about $5B? What about $6B?

        I tend to think that typical ST cost cutting that saves $100K here or $200K there isn’t useful at this point. I view these things as a way to instead message to folks that no more bells and whistles can be added — as opposed to what they need which is a basic rethinking of the transit connectivity.

      4. “Sound Transit hates the word “phased” because it’s the first step to “no build”.”

        How do you know what Sound Transit thinks? Do you know somebody on the board or staff who told you? The official ST2 Redmond and Federal Way projects were phased because they terminated at Redmond Tech and Star Lake; the 1-2 station extensions are ST3 money. In the 2008 recession south Link was truncated at Angle Lake, then later re-extended to KDM.

        In ST3, ST had a KDM phase in its pocket in case Federal Way and its viaduct took too long, based on the precedent of the 2 Line Stater Line. ST is considering phased Everett at Mariner/128th, and phased Ballard at Smith Cove. There aren’t official proposals for these yet but boardmembers have been saying it’s a possibility to get something open in 15-20 years.

      5. “State how many billions they can spend, and then propose 2-3 alternatives at each ballpark level.”

        That’s not what the people with the most influence want. They want Everett Station, Tacoma Dome, Ballard, and Alaska Junction for their own reasons, mainly because they think it will greatly increase transit circulation for their areas (all of them) and bring employers/jobs (Everett, Tacoma, maybe Ballard). So the primary goal is the full extent, and the cost is secondary. You do whatever it takes to complete it, if at all possible. Putting the spending amount first implies those alternatives are just as good. So ST may explore what it can do under certain cost scenarios, inspired by the existing cost estimates, but it wouldn’t go all the way to “Let’s see what we can do for $2 billion or $4 billion”. Because those wouldn’t include the things the influential stakeholders want, the ones who are driving this process.

      6. Mike Orr,

        Whatever Sound Transit builds in West Seattle (if anything) is all that’s going to be built in West Seattle for next 50 years. There’s no phase 2.

        So who in their right mind would believe any of this “phased” crap? Who would believe that Sound Transit is going to build half the planned light rail and then “circle back” after completing other wildly underfunded light rail projects and finish West Seattle? I laugh at all the crazy talk about “Phase 2” light rail projects in Tacoma as well. Sound Transit revenue vs. general inflation points to operating costs gobbling up all the expansion money for any project after Ballard. Not that the funding is there for Ballard? Or even West Seattle? What part of broke is hard to understand?

      7. “Whatever Sound Transit builds in West Seattle (if anything) is all that’s going to be built in West Seattle for next 50 years. There’s no phase 2.”

        Let’s not put the cart before the horse. There is no final alignment decision or cost estimates yet; just preliminary tendencies. What you think ST can afford and what it really can afford may be two different things. Until we have a concrete “This is the phase 1 that will be built, with this kind of bridge and these total costs” and “This is the phase 2 that will be built, with these design features and this total cost”, we can’t fully be sure what phase 1 and phase 2 fully mean, much less whether phase 2 can be built and when it would be finished. So a blanket statement like “there will be no phase 2 in 50 years (or ever)” is assuming too much.

      8. Truncating Ballard at Smith Cove — basically a bus intercept that would allow the D to skip the time sink on West Mercer — and Westlake or Capitol Hill is the only ST3 project in North King that makes any sense whatsoever. South Lake Union is a regional employment center, so should be served. Ballard is just another semi-urban neighborhood that can be served in thirty years if it and Seattle continue to grow.

        To maintain the desire for businesses to locate in SLU it needs a way out of its commuter congestion sooner rather than later. A four station stub (with “SLU Station” moved northeast a few blocks) is a decent project, perhaps with some Monorail capacity improvements and an intermediate station are ways to accomplish that.

        Until Ballard and the West Seattle plateau are re-zoned for significantly higher density over a significant percentage of their footprints, buses with priority are sufficient.

      9. “Truncating Ballard at Smith Cove — basically a bus intercept that would allow the D to skip the time sink on West Mercer”

        Metro has never said it might truncate the D if a Smith Cove phase is built. None of Metro’s restructure scenarios contemplated a Smith Cove phase. Since Metro won’t truncate West Seattle until the second phase, it’s likely it won’t truncate Ballard until the second phase either.

        The D doesn’t need Link to skip the West Mercer/Uptown bottleneck; it can simply follow the 15X path on Elliott. We’ve been asking Metro to do that ever since the D was created, and it has always refused.

        The Delridge and Smith Cove phases aren’t about bus truncations. They’re about getting a partial Link segment open before Metro can afford the rest of the project. The Smith Cove phase is for downtown-SLU, downtown-Uptown, and downtown-Expedia trips. The SODO-Delridge phase is for… we’re not sure if it’s for anything.

      10. Truncating Ballard at Smith Cove and Westlake or Capitol Hill is the only ST3 project in North King that makes any sense whatsoever.

        Not really. It is too short, the stations are too weak and it is too similar to the monorail. You can go through the stations and see their weaknesses:

        1) Denny. Good station but very close to Westlake. This wouldn’t matter if all the trains went that way but they won’t. Very few people coming from the north (e. g. UW ) would bother with the transfer. They will just walk a few blocks.

        2) South Lake Union. Terrible station location for walk-up riders. Could get some riders transferring from Aurora buses but since the lines go to the same place it has limited value for that as well.

        3) Seattle Center. Good station but does much the same thing the monorail does.

        4) Smith Cove. Terrible station from a walk-up standpoint. It does work as a transfer point for those heading to Uptown. It might allow Metro to “straighten” out the D Line but as Mike mentioned, there is no guarantee of that.

        A lot depends on how it is integrated with the rest of the system. As a standalone line it has limited value. Go back to the Denny Station. Now riders from Bellevue won’t bother with the transfer either (they will just walk). That really leaves “Seattle Center” — a station that competes with the monorail. I’m not saying it doesn’t add value but it doesn’t add a lot because we already have that. There would be added value in general (somebody would use the South Lake Union stop) but just not a lot.

        A second tunnel is also poor. The downtown stations aren’t as good. Frequency is bound to be poor (ten minutes midday). You gain extra trips (e. g. Beacon Hill to Denny) but you lose plenty of trips as well (UW to SeaTac). A lot depends on the transfers but it is quite likely those will be poor.

        The best bet for such a short extension is to run all the trains in the same tunnel. Then at least the transfers are really good. Same direction transfers (like UW to SeaTac) would be trivial (a same platform transfer). Even reverse direction transfers (UW to Seattle Center) would be fairly easy (just go up and over using the mezzanine). But that doesn’t mean that you would get a ton of riders. There are only a few stations and for many trips it is still easier to just take the bus.

        It is only as you get further away that the speed advantage of a metro (like Link) starts making up for the hassle of going down into a tunnel (and the weaknesses of the stations). Of course a lot depends on what Metro does. But consider Magnolia. It is highly likely that if they built Ballard Link then all the Magnolia buses would go to the UW. At most they would have one (infrequent) bus going downtown (a Link “shadow”). No one likes to transfer but the speed of Link would help make up for it. Everyone in Magnolia that wants to go downtown would transfer to Link and if they ran the buses in Magnolia frequently enough it would plenty of riders. Now obviously Magnolia doesn’t have that many people. About 20,000. But with riders in Interbay walking to the station and *everyone* in Magnolia headed anywhere south transferring to the train it gets used by a fair number of people.

        Now consider the train to Smith Cove. Metro would probably just keep buses the way they are. It wouldn’t make sense to truncate them in the middle of nowhere. Magnolia would get a connection to Link for trips to Uptown or Denny but they have that now (with the C and 8). You’ve added very little for the area.

        What is true of Magnolia is even more true of Ballard. Unlike Interbay, Ballard has a lot of walk-up ridership potential (similar to Capitol Hill). But it also has potential for feeder bus service. Again, it seems highly unlikely that they’ll run buses across the Ballard Bridge if they build Ballard Link. The main question is where the Ballard station is. 15th is OK but not ideal. It takes longer for someone to the west to get to the station. You reduce the walk-up ridership. But it isn’t terrible. 14th is terrible. 14th makes the bus transfer from both the D and 40 awkward. It hammers potential walk-up ridership. I guess that is one argument for ending at Smith Cove — at least it gives them time to build the station in Ballard properly.

        But I think we can build an automated line from Ballard to Westlake (with a good stop in Ballard). Not building a second tunnel saves a lot of money (as does smaller stations).

      11. “Now consider the train to Smith Cove. Metro would probably just keep buses the way they are.”

        You might get your Smith Cove-Uptown-Denny-John-Madison route. It would be compatible with the phase and not impact Ballard-downtown.

      12. “Now consider the train to Smith Cove. Metro would probably just keep buses the way they are.”

        You might get your Smith Cove-Uptown-Denny-John-Madison route. It would be compatible with the phase and not impact Ballard-downtown.

        Yeah, sure, and we might get the Boren bus and a restructure of the buses in Capitol Hill at the same time but one doesn’t follow from the other. A Smith- Cove Link doesn’t change things much. Truncations don’t make sense because you are either too close to downtown (in the case of Uptown or South Lake Union) or you are in the middle of nowhere (in the case of Smith Cove).

        This is in contrast to various other extensions. Metro aggressively truncated buses at the UW because the UW was a major destination. They have truncated buses as the trains keep going north because it is farther and farther away. Truncating the buses at Smith Cove would be like truncating the buses at SoDo. Too close to downtown and there is too little there.

        As Tom suggested the only thing that is plausible is having the D stay on Elliot (and not detour to Uptown). But as you pointed out, that could happen tomorrow if they had enough money or decided to do a restructure.

        I could easily see the 8 running more often (and a lot faster) and then ending (you guessed it) at Smith Cove. Then the D could skip Uptown. Riders trying to get from Ballard to Uptown would take the 8. Riders trying to get downtown from Uptown would take any of the buses coming from upper Queen Anne. Riders trying to get from Ballard to Denny would actually come out ahead (it is faster to go Elliott/Western/Denny than Mercer/Queen Anne Avenue). But mostly you speed up the D.

      13. “Yeah, sure, and we might get the Boren bus and a restructure of the buses in Capitol Hill at the same time but one doesn’t follow from the other.”

        A Denny-Boren route to Smith Cove would fulfill a Metro Connects corridor, and I think it was even a RapidRide candidate at one point. So Metro might do it given the opportunity for a Smith Cove station transfer point. A Boren route would terminate in SLU or Uptown: there’s no precedent in any of the scenarios I’ve seen that would extend it to Smith Cove.

      14. “Truncating Ballard at Smith Cove — basically a bus intercept that would allow the D to skip the time sink on West Mercer — and Westlake or Capitol Hill is the only ST3 project in North King that makes any sense whatsoever. South Lake Union is a regional employment center, so should be served. Ballard is just another semi-urban neighborhood that can be served in thirty years if it and Seattle continue to grow.”

        I think the biggest chokepoint along D Line will be Ballard Bridge. A Ballard Link Extension that only goes to Smith Cove might put this Link extension to a more vulnerable position. Build the remaining part later won’t save any money. You mention SLU is a regional job center and it needs to be served, but who are you serving here. A lot of them actually live north of Ship Canal.
        Once ST scale back Ballard link to Smith Cove, some people will jump out and kill the entire link citing the travel time saving is too little. You probably can just run a bus line to achieve similar travel time.

        “Until Ballard and the West Seattle plateau are re-zoned for significantly higher density over a significant percentage of their footprints, buses with priority are sufficient.”

        Ballard and West Seattle have higher Density than any place along Federal Way Link Extension and future Tacoma Dome Link Extension. Does that mean those link extensions are not necessary?

      15. Mike, the D jogs through Lower Queen Anne because a bunch of people want to travel between Ballard or Interbay and LQA not because Metro thinks it’s a good idea. Plenty of people get on in the jog and go up 15th West.

        Since BLE is expected to have a station at First West and Republican or Harrison though, it’s reasonable to have people transfer to and from a frequent, automated train in order to travel that one station. Also, it might make sense to repurpose the current 15’s hours to a Blue Ridge to SLU and Boren peak hours line via West Mercer so that commuters don’t have to transfer.

        The LQA station would be within four blocks of all of the D’s stops in the neighborhood for non-peak trips. I realize that northbound the transfer would be worse because the D will probably never run more frequently than every ten minutes..

      16. A Boren route would terminate in SLU or Uptown: there’s no precedent in any of the scenarios I’ve seen that would extend it to Smith Cove.

        It is all theoretical at this point. The 8 could be extended to Smith Cove. A new Boren bus could be extended to Smith Cove. They could keep the D and run an all-day 17 that gets downtown faster. Anything could happen.

        The main point I want to emphasize is that it could happen with or without Smith-Cove Link. A train doesn’t really change anything. Imagine this scenario:

        1) We add bus lanes on the 8, making it much faster. It becomes the most cost effective bus in terms of ridership per service hour.
        2) We decide to split the 8 and merge the northern part with the 11. Now there is a bus that runs between Uptown and Madison Park.
        3) We run that bus every 7.5 minutes midday (like the 3/4). That is overkill for Madison Park so we end half the buses in Madison Valley (Madison Park gets 15 minute frequency).
        4) We decide to extend that bus to Smith Cove and have the D follow the 24/33 pathway to downtown.

        Now consider the ramifications:

        1) Riders from Ballard and Interbay have a faster trip to downtown.
        2) Riders from Ballard and Interbay have to transfer to get to Uptown.

        Some would like the change, some would not. Now imagine they build Smith Cove Link and have the D follow the 24/33 pathway to downtown. It is basically the same trade-off!

        There are differences but they are subtle. Depending on where you are headed and the nature of the stations the transfer could be better or worse. The 8 serves pretty much all of Denny. Link would have one stop there. The D has three stops in Uptown — Link would have one. Link is faster but not necessarily more frequent and it might take a while to transfer or exit the station. In contrast with a bus you would transfer at the same stop and it would drop you off at the surface.

        The point being that Link wouldn’t be much more attractive as a transfer option than a bus that is extended to Smith Cove. Either way you have the hassle of the transfer. Link is better in some ways, worse in others. But there aren’t huge times savings with Link for those destinations. Uptown is very close to Smith Cove. It takes about five minutes by bus (according to Google — https://maps.app.goo.gl/yp7MoxKjjb1AR52u9). Not counting the transfer it takes about ten minutes to get to Westlake and Denny (using the 24/33 and 8 — https://maps.app.goo.gl/QFkrWm655LP7cHUG7). Link would be faster but not that much faster when you consider the walking involved with the transfer.

        You don’t have the dramatic time savings of trips like Northgate to the UW via Link. As a result the trade-offs for changing the D are similar whether it is connecting to Link or a bus.

      17. Mike, I didn’t say “truncate the D at Smith Cove”, I said swap its route with that of the 15 in peaks and depend on the frequency of a stub shuttle to make trips from 15th West / Northwest to LQA tolerable in the off-peak.

        Grant, that would make the reverse off-peak trips from LQA to 15th less quick because the transfer is from a more-frequent (the shuttle) to a less-frequent service (the D). But some people would just walk down to Queen Anne and Denny or Elliott and Republican for the return trip.

      18. I was too vague in my reply..

        I should have said “swap its [the D] route with that of the 15. In the peaks run the 15 up West Mercer and across to the rest of SLU and maybe even Boren through First Hill to maintain direct service. In the off-peaks the shuttle’s high frequency would make 15th to LQA trips acceptable with a transfer,”

      19. “Some would like the change, some would not. Now imagine they build Smith Cove Link and have the D follow the 24/33 pathway to downtown. It is basically the same trade-off!”

        Whether building Ballard Link or not, I think KCM should look into the feasibility of running some No Queen Anne D Line trips during peak period. There are so many options between Downtown Seattle and Queen Anne. I would think only people who depends on D Line to cover Queen Anne are those trvaeling from Queen Anne to Ballard. I cannot imagine there are a lot of them.

      20. Whether building Ballard Link or not, I think KCM should look into the feasibility of running some No Queen Anne D Line trips during peak period.

        That is basically the 15. It did really before the pandemic. Then it was shut down and hasn’t returned. Lack of money is driving the decision. There is always a balancing act and even though ridership might be better with a 15 there are plenty of buses that don’t run often enough and are borderline. The assumption is that the “detour” for the D to Uptown isn’t that big of a penalty.

  4. While I’m broadly sympathetic towards workers, if you work at Sound Transit, you probably should live in Seattle or a surrounding suburb. You know, a place that is served by Sound Transit. Maybe it’s true that they have “successfully opened light rail extensions during the pandemic”, but they also botched a station in the neighborhood their office is located in. Maybe the folks who live and physically work in Chinatown/ID would trust you more if you worked from the office.

    Like yeah, if you moved out of town in 2020 and are being compelled to work from the office on short notice, that sucks and I feel for you. But come on, you work in public transportation for an agency focused primarily on regional transit and commuting. Have some skin in the game!

    But of course, management only being able to vaguely gesture at “revitalizing Seattle” as a reason for office work is maybe even more ridiculous. Like geez, can’t even gesture to being more invested in the transit system at a personal level? Or being a part of the communities you serve? Seems like a total failure of vision or guiding principles to me.

    1. I would imagine it is not just people who moved out of town in 2020. They took the job in 2020. Or anytime between now and the pandemic. It is pretty common to take remote jobs and assume they will stay remote. The ability to work from home may be why they took the job in the first place. Remote work should be handled on a case by case basis (which is how companies dealt with it for years before the pandemic).

      It sounds like isn’t the main issue but an example of the problem. There are communication issues. There is a mistrust between management and staff. Of course that might all be overblown — who knows how big the problem really is.

  5. “ST reliance on consultant”

    It appears to me that in Washington state, a lot of agency’s consulting contract involves staffing full-time in agency’s office and work 100% under specific contract, so there is really no difference whether you are agency’s employee or consultant.

    1. Nah, consultants are often trash. The #1 job of a consulting firm is making sure they don’t run out of work. Look at just how slowly Sound Transit has come to grips with revenue short falls. Sound Transit is always 2 steps behind and the consultants like it that way.

      I suspect consultants are a big part of the problem here. Things need to change.

      1. tacomee, you should consider the possibility the word “consultant” might mean something different in this context than the professional services consultants you’re probably familiar with.

        But I suspect you’ll say “nah” to me, too, given your apparent omnipotence.

      2. Nathan Dickey,

        Consultants certainly have their place as outsiders who come in and solve problems. But only in the short term. Any project that uses them for years and years is going to way over budget. Go ahead and prove me wrong! From Sound Transit to Boston’s “Big Dig” consultants have just driven up the price these big mega projects. No big city mayor ever said… “Gosh, the project was so over budget until the consultants came in. They saved us”

        And here’s a little something about the politics of Sound Transit to think about. Maybe ST3 was built to fail? Think on that is weekend. Let’s look back to the history of Sound Transit. 2008 was the ST2 vote. Did Sound Transit build the list of projects on time? Or on budget? https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/documents-reports/sound-transit-2
        Nope, but Sound Transit just conveniently rolled much of the unfinished ST2 projects into ST3 in 2016, eight years later. Now we are 10 years out in ST3 and the costs and timelines are completely out of reach for the promised project list. Do you see a pattern here? Gosh, of you had a T-84 graphing calculator or even some graph paper, and charted the cost of Sound Transit projects, do you think they’d have about the same “rise over run” as general inflation? How about the cost of tuition at the University of Washington? The cost of medical care?

        Seattle has about as much chance of getting a subway to Ballard as degenerate gamblers have of paying off their loan shark. Hiring a bunch of outside “consultants” doesn’t change the math. The correct term is “political cover”.

        When’s the ST4 vote? No really, it’s the pattern Sound Transit has taken. The trouble is the board knows they don’t have the votes to pass it. Nor the money to complete the project list. What’s next? Let’s ask the State Legislators to sign off on 75 year bonds without voter approval? I wish I was joking!

      3. Another meaningless screed dodging the prompt.

        You’ve contributed nothing to this discussion.

      4. Nathan Dickey,

        Go read the West Seattle Blog post about the public meeting. Please tell me what was accomplished? Was there even a new idea that made one bit of sense? Except maybe the “no build” crowd?

        I know political theater when I see it. Public meetings without any revised numbers or new ideas on a project? Political theater. “We’re bringing in consultants and everything is on the table” more political theater.

      5. “Go read the West Seattle Blog post about the public meeting. Please tell me what was accomplished? Was there even a new idea that made one bit of sense?”

        None of the STB staff were able to make the meeting for various reasons, but from the description in the West Seattle Blog, it was eye-opening, and ST revealing some narrow-minded thinking that I’ve only seen in survey wording before. Namely, ST knew full well what this group wants and what it wanted to talk with ST about. It could just read the STB articles on the previous forums; e.g., MartinP was a transit-expert panelist in the last forum and I attended it. ST could have presented those alternatives more concisely and left more time for public questions. The problem with one-on-one Q&A/feedback is the information gets fragmented: only the half-dozen people standing around the questioner+rep can hear it, and if different clusters are doing it simultaneously, you can hear only one of them at a time.

        There is an organized “Rethink the Link” group advocating No Build; that came up in the last forum. ST should have at least been prepared to discuss No Build.

      6. I would point more to the consulting firm and staff assigned to the project.

        Unfortunately, most consulting firms that can handle big ticket light rail projects will have thousands of employees — but they are often organized by office for profit calculations. So there is often no internal incentive to not keep the work in a local office. There may be a really amazing rail designer in LA or Chicago or London within that firm, but the profit center manager would rather use cheaper and less talented staff in the local office. And local agencies don’t like paying for travel expenses. So that amazing talented staff resume shows up in the proposal but they never even get involved in the project.

        Then there is a matter of scope. Telling a consultant to design a light rail station is a different task than to analyze if that station will have enough riders to make it worthwhile. Certainly design and ridership have a symbiotic relationship — like long treks to the platform will suppress ridership especially every level change — but the task assigned to the consultant by ST matters quite a lot.

        Finally, many firms have senior management meetings with ST senior staff to keep the ST managers happy. If ST staff wants to avoid going down a particular road (let’s say automation as a hypothetical), the firm won’t push for it because it may hurt their credibility and keep them from winning subsequent ST work. It’s kind of like how some people avoid offending their boss because they need the job and can’t work elsewhere easily at their salary and skill level.

        Would direct public hires be better? I don’t think it would have much impact. I think the bigger impact would be for an agency like ST to change its culture at the management individual Board level to ask different questions and seek different skills from consultants.

      7. “So there is often no internal incentive to not keep the work in a local office.”

        Al, trust me consulting firm has more interest to keep their staff who charges to ST projects local so they don’t need to spend their Sound Transit budget on business trips unless it involves some rare expertise. Public sector clients also have control on how their contractors staff for their contract. For example, they could require them to come to the project office three days a week. The easiest way is to require the position to have Washington State driver’s license or Washington State Professional Engineer license.
        In this industry, most business trips occur when Spokane wanted to build a BRT line or BrightLine West is building high speed rail between SoCal and Las Vegas. Seattle office of many firms are usually the locations sending experts out rather than the other way around.

        I know people would jump to the conclusion that tacomee jumps to and I don’t blame them because sometimes he was not wrong. That’s why I said what I said in my original response, but he doesn’t seem like reading.
        The truth is that the engineering consultants in Puget Sound region functions less like consultants but government employees because agencies like WSDOT and ST make consultants to do so. It is not hard to keep majority of the staff are local because this is not first time Seattle has this kind of projects.

        “Would direct public hires be better? I don’t think it would have much impact.”

        I am not sure whether there is an impact, but I know public sectors massively out source technical workforce because they don’t really have a choice. Their position is just not as attractive as consulting firm’s. It is not just because consulting firm sometimes pay slightly better, but because consulting firms have access to a good variety of works. Getting to work on different things is important for junior/mid level staff and they happen to be the people who do the most of actual design/analysis work in projects.

  6. “SDOT also finished its refresh of the Ballard Bridge and 15th Ave NW including taking away a traffic lane, adding pedestrian signals, and red paint.”

    I think 15th Ave NW northbound BAT lane between bridge and NW Market is a nice addition. The BAT lane seems to make up D Line’s time loss to cars that takes the flyover over Leary.

    But I cannot say the same for Ballard Bridge. It doesn’t matter what kind of capacity (car, bike, or transit). This corridor needs more capacity.
    Without that, it will just hammer the potential for Ballard to be fully developed to the level recommended in the growth plan.

    1. Well, to do that, you have to build a whole new bridge, which SDOT doesn’t have the money for. They are doing what they can with the bridge they have.

      1. If you drop it to a single general purpose lane, there is plenty of space on the bridge. Make the outside lanes Bike and Transit only. Eliminate conflicts for pedestrians on the walkway. Worst case scenario, buses end up going 15 mph over the bridge behind a bike or 20. Better than being stuck in traffic behind single occ vehicles.

      2. If you drop it to a single general purpose lane, there is plenty of space on the bridge.

        Exactly. You can also improve things for bikes and pedestrians without building a new bridge (or asking them to share space with buses). The Seattle Bike Blog has been covering the issue for a while. This post talks about the study Seattle did. I really like Tom Fuculoro. He understands trade-off and subtleties. It is kind of funny how different the math is for bike projects. He is right, some of the projects are expensive — but only compared to other bike projects. Compared to other SDOT, WSDOT or SD projects spending it is peanuts. The most expensive project — ten feet of walking/bike paths on both sides — would cost around $50 million. OK, not peanuts but still much cheaper than building a new bridge. For around $20 million you could build a path on one side (presumably the west side). To be clear, the bridge itself wouldn’t change. But that isn’t that big of a deal — Fremont Bridge itself isn’t great for bikes or pedestrians either. As long as the approaches to the bridge on both sides are much better than a rider or pedestrian can handle it. Tom also wrote about other ideas for making it safer for bikes in the meantime.

      3. Oh, and eventually the bridge will need to be replaced. When that happens it should definitely have a wide pedestrian path on both sides as well as bus lanes.

      4. Yeah, I remember that article. And I agree, Tom is a great, thoughtful writer.

        Dropping the lanes on the bridge likely wouldn’t increase traffic that much at all. It would take longer to clear after it opens, but absent that, the bridge capacity itself isn’t generally what causes backups. It’s the intersections further along in both directions.

      5. “Seattle doesn’t have the money [for a new opening bridge in the 15th West corridor].”

        Yet “North King Subarea” (which is maybe 88%Seattle) has the money for a grade-separated Light Rail line with a 140 foot high fixed bridge in the same corridor.

        This is nothing more than malpractice by the Legislature. The SAME people and businesses will have to come up with the money for either or both projects. However, the Leg grants the power to levy taxes to pay for either project to a “regional” government which is composed of distracted politicians from the entire region with a singular mandate, rather than letting the politicians who live in and serve the region affected levy the taxes.

        Those local politicians would come up with a blended project that gets transit across the Ship Canal in its own right-of-way and refurbishes the old bridge.

        The combination would cost about what either would cost alone.

      6. “If you drop it to a single general purpose lane, there is plenty of space on the bridge. Make the outside lanes Bike and Transit only.”

        It will be very difficult to prove this won’t backfire. It is over-optimistic to assume if you drop a lane then the travel demand will fold . It is no better than assume if we add a lane, the travel demand will still be the same.

        Nowadays, whenever something comes up, cross-canal traffic always switch among Ballard/Fremont and Aurora Bridges, dropping a pair of lane at Ballard bridge will discourage vehicular travel for sure, but it won’t drop the demand by one lane. More likely it might drop demand by 20-30% and then the other 20-30% will be redirected to Fremont Bridge and Aurora Bridge and make them hell.

        The another problem is if you make outside lane bike and transit only, will it carries convincing number of vehicular trips? I am not so sure about that. If D/15/17/18/29 are all still running, you probably can justify that the lane is well utilized. Right now there is too few transit volumes on the bridge. When drivers see that, they will break the lane restriction wide open like bus-only lane on Westlake Ave. Also, bike mixing with transit is not efficient and safe either. Two vehicle modes may have similar average travel speed, but they pace differently.

        Plus Ballard Bridge is not even ideal for bike path because of its high clearance and poor accessibility on each end. Rebuilding Lake Washington Canal Bridge or creating a similar low-clearance crossing for bike and transit probably works better. Bike traffic is less susceptible to frequent bridge open.

      7. I wasn’t saying anything about reduced demand. I’m saying, with the exception of clearing openings, traffic volumes, even right now, aren’t high enough to hurt throughput on the bridge. It’s the intersections that matter for throughput, and there are no intersections on the bridge.

      8. “ If you drop it to a single general purpose lane, there is plenty of space on the bridge.”

        Rainier Ave is reduced to one lane northbound and it has similar traffic volumes to the Ballard Bridge. And Rainier Ave has signals that decrease the throughput where the bridge does not. I will say that the single-lane segments of Rainier Ave can spill back several blocks and take multiple cycles to get through a major intersection. However that’s caused by having to wait at red lights for seemingly longer than when it’s green.

        So not only has SDOT already has a history of removing traffic lanes at similar volumes, the impacts of doing that can also be assessed.

        Freeway lanes are similar albeit with somewhat higher speeds. Most of them work fine at 20K daily volumes per lane. With less than 40K volumes on the Ballard Bridge in both directions, it doesn’t look like traffic would be severely disrupted at one lane for traffic.

        BUT…..

        The big exception comes with a draw bridge opening. Some creative traffic management would be needed until a new, higher bridge is built.

    2. To be fair, ST is supposed to build a new crossing parallel to the Ballard Bridge with the capacity to move up to 8,000 people per hour in both directions, but it’s having a hard time affording it.

      1. Hmm, you could equip every single seattleite with an e-bike for about $1 billion, and spend another billion on a bike-only Ballard bridge and fixing the missing link. This alternative to Ballard Link will take riders about 30 minutes from Ballard to Downtown and will cost only $2 billion, a huge savings!

      2. I have A LOT of issues with your proposal, Delta. One of them is the time (not even Seattle to Lynnwood takes that long), the other is WHY WOULD A BRIDGE COST A BILLION TO BUILD!? I doubt it will cost the same as buying nearly a million e-bikes, I just can’t compare it. Anyways I’ve proposed to add infill stations on the Sounder North (and cancelling Ballard Link Extension), you would basically increase frequencies to every 6 minutes (and run it all day), and have the infill stations at Everett Junction, Richmond Beach, Blue Ridge, Ballard, Magnolia, Interbay, possibly Elliot Bay, Belltown, Symphony, and Pioneer Square (I know a lot), but still to increase ridership. A typical day carries 57 passengers per trip (a lot compared to buses), but still isn’t surprising compared to the southern variant, but here’s my idea. We could either build new tracks adjacent to the BNSF right-of way tracks (converting into less-expensive eco-friendly light rail), or sharing the current tracks, 6 minutes is too short to share with BNSF trains, so maybe 10-15 minutes could be good. I still also believe there needs to be more collab between ST and Amtrak. A light rail line between Vancouver and Portland would be cool, but it needs more thinking. These aren’t my final ideas, but are just a brainstorm.

      3. Also I doubt all of those e-bikes will cost 1,000 dollars each. But I agree that those billion dollars need to be better invested, 2 billion isn’t shocking, but still these ideas aren’t really good at replacing Ballard Link.

      5. “I’ve proposed to add infill stations on the Sounder North (and cancelling Ballard Link Extension), you would basically increase frequencies to every 6 minutes (and run it all day), and have the infill stations at Everett Junction, Richmond Beach, Blue Ridge, Ballard, Magnolia, Interbay, possibly Elliot Bay, Belltown, Symphony, and Pioneer Square”

        This is really not going to happen, and would really not serve northwest Seattle very well.

        1. BNSF owns the track and right of way. It’s focused on more lucrative freight. Local politicians want to keep freight flowing for the living-wage jobs it provides. BNSF would charge exhorbintant rates for those dozens of timeslots. 6-minute passenger frequency would leave little or no room for freight trains. I don’t think long heavy freight trains can run every two minutes like subways do.

        2. All those station locations are several blocks west of the village centers/maximum ridesheds at Leary Way (Ballard) and Aurora (Shoreline). That’s the problem with the default Ballard 15th station and awful Ballard 14th proposal: you’d just make it west instead of east. West, which doesn’t have the eastern Ballard/western Wallingford/western Fremont rideshed.

        3. A BNSF Symphony station? Are you serious?

        4. 6-minute frequency is what ST plans to run Ballard Link at. So we don’t need to convert BNSF for it.

      6. “Infill stations on Sounder North” are stupid. Period. Everything “slot” costs tens of millions, the right-of-way is on the edge of the service area, and the supposed station at Symphony would be a diesel-soaked nightmare.

      8. Sounder corridor’s location in Seattle is just not good for transit accessibility. Ballard sounder station is something Seattle should only consider if it had trouble finding project to spend money on, which is unlikely to happen.

      9. “ Hmm, you could equip every single seattleite with an e-bike for about $1 billion, and spend another billion on a bike-only Ballard bridge and fixing the missing link.”

        To some extent, bike and cars are only feasible transportation modes by those privileged.

        You need your be healthy and fit to ride bike. You are most likely to work on a white collar job to still have the energy to bike home.
        If your jobs involves heavy labor and long hours, you probably would prefer taking bus home after work not to mention biking is not a very weather-proof option, so that’s not a fair investment in transportation system if it requires rapid transit level spending and only benefits those who bikes.

      10. Mike and Tom, those were just my old ideas, also they’re not stupid because they can increase ridership, and you can save at least some money by having riders use this alternative during the peak hours when it’s hungry, I respect Delta’s idea, but not everyone is able to ride a bike, and I still doubt the city would be willing to gift everyone that, so possibly another option you could consider is have a bike vending machine at each station, this way we can also earn money by saving the planet. I’ll email ST my new ideas, the main reason I oppose Ballard and West Seattle expansions are due to redundancy.

      11. I’ll repeat here my suggestion that one way to do this with Sounder would be to extend Sounder South northward to the Fremont Fred Meyer. You’d have to rebuild the old Northern Pacific bridge that was northwest of Seattle Pacific U and convert the Fred Meyer parking lot into a parking structure.

        Bridge location shown here:
        https://www.bridgehunter.com/bridge/57618

        Unlike if Sounder North were used, this puts more frequent trains into somewhat of a core population area (between downtown Fremont and Ballard), and because trains continue south of Seattle, it provides decent through-town connections.

      12. Fremont has no Fred Meyer (I think you meant Ballard), but I think that’s a weird terminus for a Sounder line coming from the south, but it could be good though. If Sounder were made into light rail (just a saying) and we have the S line end there, it would be nearly redundant and not much difference, so if I were you I would look into extending it via the Burke Gilman tracks to Shilshole, but again but it’s just saying.

      13. The area between 1st Ave NW and 8th Ave NW is ambiguous; some call it Ballard and others Fremont. Fred Meyer is from 8th to 11th, so that’s more clearly Ballard, and it’s called “the Ballard Fred Meyer”. There’s another Fred Meyer at 85th & 1st Ave NW; that could be Greenwood or Ballard. In between around Market Street, 1st to 3rd NW is part of the western slope of Phinney Ridge and is residential like it, while some have started calling the area east of 15th West Woodland, but these can also be called Ballard.

      14. Frelard.

        I think that’s a great idea, Glenn. Use existing tracks. But we probably couldn’t rebuild the bridge. Because. Megayachts, ya know.

      15. And you might be able to simply turn right and follow the old track ROW all the way to UW following the ship canal. For much of it, there is The Burke, and this unmaintained bike lane weirdness below it. Use that. Knock of two of the best projects left in Seattle without building another inch of shitty light rail.

        No, you wouldn’t be serving the downtown megalopolis of the Kingdom of Ballard, but 29 thousand people shouldn’t be getting 40 billion dollar trains anyway. Give Ballard a new bridge with dedicated, frequent buses both to downtown and the Fred Meyer and call it a day.

      16. “we have the S line end there, it would be nearly redundant and not much difference, so if I were you I would look into extending it via the Burke Gilman tracks to Shilshole”

        Redundant with what?

        The D? During peak periods the D takes 27 minutes to get from 15th and Market to Pike & Pine. Even with fairly low speeds and an intermediate station, Sounder should be able to do this in half the time.

        The E? It’s up on the Aurora Bridge, and doesn’t hit much of real Fremont.

        The Ballard Link line that ST will likely just build to Olympic Sculpture Garden due to lack of funds? If that gets built, this might be a decent feeder.

        Fremont (Ballard to a much lesser extent), has a number of offices as well as residences and retail.

        Any station at Shilahoe will require a bunch of transfers to bus routes to actually get anywhere. At least the Ballard Fred Meyer is between Fremont and Ballard, so that a bus route between the two could also hit the station.

        I don’t think there’s enough available land near the south side of the Fremont Bridge to rebuild the extension from the Ballard Bridge to the south side of the Fremont.

      17. What is the point of extending South Sounder beyond KSS to anywhere? There will never be a “station” underneath Symphony; as I said, it would be a “diesel-soaked nightmare”. Yecccch! Maybe a station just outside the north portal would attract a little interest, but it’s a nasty climb up to the Market above and there really isn’t that much employment along the waterfront.

        A station at Expedia would make some sense, and if the trains followed Glenn’s suggestion and crossed the Ship Canal to 45th and Leary they might attract some interest as a short-cut to the south end of downtown.

        But to get into the tunnel at all they any run-through train would have to use the “through” Amtrak platform, and I doubt that it can handle the load for two-way service. You certainly can’t stack the trains up at Freddie’s through the rush-hour. They’d have to turn back immediately.

        And this is not to mention that the line is pretty busy and is only double-tracked. BNSF would not just ask for a couple of pounds of flesh; it’d be more like an entire flank steak. Ouch!

        Sorry, Scoobie, but extending South Sounder is indeed a stupid thing to do.

      18. “But to get into the tunnel at all they any run-through train would have to use the “through” Amtrak platform,”

        The current Sounder platforms are east of the ones Amtrak uses for northbound trains. Sounder, both north and south, are actually positioned to be closer to the tunnel than Amtrak’s northbound platform.

        The main line south of King Street Station is already occupied by Sounder trains. Because most freight traffic goes through Seattle, BNSF already has to work around Sounder anyway. The slots are expensive because they create a hole in the mainline that extends well north and south of Seattle.

        The tunnel is two tracks, but it takes a train only several minutes to get through it. North of the tunnel, the line quickly expands to 3+ tracks, and once you get to Interbay the line that used to go to Fremont and South Lake Union is a separate branch.

        Places outside North America tend to operate their regional trains through the central station rather than terminate there because it winds up being cheaper and because they get better ridership.

  7. The SDOT headline editor should strike “seamless”. Transit has seams; it cannot be seamless. Seams are of distance (walking, rolling), time (waiting, in-vehicle speed), information (complex fare or network structures), or fiscal (fares). This project that adds longer BAT lanes and addresses the margin of in-vehicle speed.

    Agencies can work to minimize seams. SDOT and Metro recently shifted the northbound Broadway stop to nearside from farside at East John Street; that reduced the seam of the transfer walk between Link and routes 49 and 60. In fall 2024, Metro increased the Route 49 headway to 20 minutes, increasing the seam of waiting.

    1. Driving has some “seams” too, for example, searching for parking, waiting in a long line of cars to pay for parking, or trying to find your car in a giant parking lot.

  8. Vancouver v. Seattle. I would focus on different margins, both land use and transport. Vancouver chose not to build a limited access highway network and Seattle has one; see I-5, I-405, I-90, SR-99, SR-599, SR-509, SR-520, SR-522. In the Seattle MSA, the limited access highways have induced sprawl; in Vancouver, the SkyTrain network has fostered density and walkability. The transit networks are different; Vancouver’s has shorter waits, shorter transfer walks, longer spans of service, better fare integration. In Vancouver, bike infrastructure is better and separated better from transit. Both have great ports, rivers, hydro power, electric trolleybus; both have environmental issues. The governance is different. There is and will be in migration in both metro areas. In the Seattle MSA, we will need variable tolling, better and more transit, and big investments in sidewalks, pavement management. We have a history of allowing transportation infrastructure to fall into decline due to poor maintenance. (The NYT has a story on the BQE highway; a much bigger issue that our AWV).

    1. Vancouver has a ton of rich Asian people move in who actually wanted to live in expensive high rise buildings. That certainly has a big effect on what got built in the last 30 years.

      There’s a big push for this sort of density from urbanists in the USA, but there isn’t any capital investment to push it forward.

      1. There’s a big push for this sort of density from urbanists in the USA, but there isn’t any capital investment to push it forward.

        Yeah, youse gotta watch out for dose slick sales guys. Dey conned a whole buncha folks into buyin in dat Millennium Tower scam thing gonna tip ovah.

        Youse knows dat real people don’t wanna live in dat kinna big building, right?

    2. Cities without internal freeways like Vancouver and London are better-functioning than cities with them. The reason US cities have them is freeway mania in the early/mid 20th century. Part of that was when development was diverted to the greenfield fringe rather than building up the inner-city cores. That was mostly a vision of Futurama mania, combined with neglect of redlined minority areas (which were mostly adjacent to downtown). After that came freeways through the middle of downtown, to attract suburban-flightees back to shop downtown, but it didn’t really work, and it partly destroyed downtown and adjacent neighborhoods in the process, and we still have I-5 noise/pollution/congestion/unwalkability/ugliness downtown a half century later.

      It’s like Pike Place Market. It was a typical farmers’ market in the early 1900s. In the 1960s there were proposals to replace it with office towers and a sports rink or something. In the 1990s people were really glad it wasn’t replaced, and they worked hard to restore it, and it’s now one of Seattle’s top-two tourist attractions and icons (alongside the Space Needle).

      The same thing happened in cities without freeways: the renaissance of the neighborhoods and downtown that weren’t maimed by freeways.

    3. The area most similar to West Seattle is West Vancouver. Both are broad areas (not neighborhoods). Both areas are close to downtown as the crow flies but there is no contiguous development between them. (In the case of West Vancouver you have the sea as well as Stanley Park. In the case of West Seattle you have a large industrial area with very little potential development.) In both cases you have a fast expressway connecting the areas to downtown. If there is no traffic then driving (or taking a bus) to downtown is very quick. Both areas sprawl although there are areas of density as well. While both areas are relatively suburban by nature, given the relative proximity to downtown, there is a feeling of “being in the city”.

      Yet they aren’t going to run SkyTrain to West Vancouver*. The reasons are obvious. It would be extremely expensive just to get there. You can’t add many stops along the way making the cost per station very expensive. Once you get there, you aren’t adding much value. The buses can do just as good a job crossing the bridge and a much better job covering various places in West Vancouver.

      The similarities are striking. There are various options now on the table for West Seattle Link. All of them have very high costs per station. Just building to Delridge would save billions of dollars but it would still cost over $3 billion — for one station. Dropping Avalon gets you to $6 billion — for two stations. The cheapest cost per station is to well over $2 per station. At the same time, you add very little. With or without the other stations, the Delridge stations is not a good value. This is in contrast to something like the UW station. Riders are better off with express buses. So, like the mythical West Vancouver SkyTrain you have very high costs just to get there, very little value added and riders would be better off with buses.

      *OK, it is theoretically possible that West Vancouver will eventually get SkyTrain. There is planning going on to serve the North Shore (https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/north-shore-vancouver-rapid-transit-study-route-options). This is mainly aimed at North Vancouver (which is far more urban). But it is quite possible that it just ends in North Vancouver or they never run rail to the North Shore (and rely on the SeaBus as well as regular buses). It certainly isn’t the priority that West Seattle has become.

      1. “The area most similar to West Seattle is West Vancouver. Both are broad areas (not neighborhoods). Both areas are close to downtown as the crow flies but there is no contiguous development between them. (In the case of West Vancouver you have the sea as well as Stanley Park. In the case of West Seattle you have a large industrial area with very little potential development.) In both cases you have a fast expressway connecting the areas to downtown.”

        What do you mean by West Vancouver? The Broadway/Kitsilano area or the West End? The West End (adjacent west of downtown) has continuous midrises throughout it. The retail is concentrated on the Robson/Denman/Davie/Granville street rectangle, while the interior is more residential and maybe less dense (but still midrise in many places). There’s no expressway there, and Stanley Park is at the west edge.

        In the Broadway/Kitsilano area it’s more duplex/missing middle housing, with 7-story buildings limited to the arterials. There’s no expressway. If you mean the Grandville Street bridge connecting it to downtown, that’s just a bridge and a bit of extended elevated viaduct around it, not an entire expressway, and not going through the district to UBC for instance.

      2. What do you mean by West Vancouver?

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Vancouver

        It is a district municipality so it had hard borders. If you search for “West Vancouver” on a Google map it will show you the borders. It is part of the North Shore. You can read more on Wikipedia about the regions that make up the North Shore.

    4. “Vancouver has a ton of rich Asian people move in who actually wanted to live in expensive high rise buildings.”

      1. You don’t need highrises; you just need 7-story buildings. That’s a lesson urbanists learned in the late 2000s when they realized the success of lower-rise Paris, Boston, Edinburgh, and the new neighborhoods/towns in The Netherlands. (Paris/Boston/Edinburgh all have good urbanism/walkability with 2-5 story buildings. What they don’t have is space-wasting setbacks and parking minimums and dead open space pushing things apart.) Even Mahattan, which is assumed to be all highrises, is actually mostly in the 10-story range: the highrises are in a couple clusters downtown and midtown.

      2. White people live in those Vancouver highrises. I visited some of them extensively in the late 90s and early 00s.

      3. Vancouver’s turn toward highrise residential towers and compact walkable urbanism started in the 1950s or 1960s when city planners went that direction. The big Asian influx was in the 1990s when Hong Kong was being returned to China.

      Both Vancouver and The Netherlands had similar trajectories. Vancouver originated as a small town in the 1800s like Seattle. In the early 20th century it grew in a car-oriented, low-density manner like Seattle and Los Angeles. In the 1950s/60s, city planners rechanneled Vancouver’s growth to a highrise/compact/walkable model. In the 1980s and 90s it became visible on the ground.

      Also in the 90s, Surrey was still semi-rural/rural, and the government planted a new city/downtown there. I visited a church there in the early 90s a few times, when Cloverdale was rural and the Skytrain only went to Scott Road, and the new downtown was just being started. The government went hard on a compact walkable downtown and good transit, like it had done previously in Metrotown and New Westminster.

      The Netherlands started with medieval cities and villages when horses were the only transportation. In the mid 20th century it also went in a Los Angeles direction, with freeways and car-oriented low-density development. In the 1970s Europe went through the oil-price shocks, and didn’t have much domestic oil resources like the US had, so it committed to transit to be more resilient against foreign pressure and environmental problems.

      In the 1990s The Netherlands had a public backlash against cars killing schoolchildren. The public demanded more bicycle infrastructure, walkability, compact development, and transit to give a viable alternative to driving or being hit by cars. That’s what led to the transformation of The Netherlands between 1990 and now.

      1. Belltown? South Lake Union? It’s not like Seattle hasn’t had a ton of downtown residential growth. I’d guess Seattle had be the urban growth champion of US cities in the last 25 years.

      2. Vancouver has a ton of rich Asian people move in who actually wanted to live in expensive high rise buildings. That certainly has a big effect on what got built in the last 30 years.

        There’s a big push for this sort of density from urbanists in the USA, but there isn’t any capital investment to push it forward.

        …

        Belltown? South Lake Union? It’s not like Seattle hasn’t had a ton of downtown residential growth.

        You seem to be arguing with yourself. I’m not sure who is winning. Is Seattle keeping up with Vancouver in terms of urban towers or not?

        The point the rest of us is making is that it doesn’t matter. I realize that when we think of big cities we think of skyscrapers — whether they are office buildings or residential towers. But as Mike pointed out, that isn’t Paris. Paris is most definitely a dense, vibrant city and it is not based on towers. Even cities that have their share of big towers (Montreal for example) are not really based on that. It is more about the typical part of the city. Throw a dart and see it where it lands. Now look at the area around it. In Paris or Montreal you are bound to get midrise housing. Places that are remarkably dense even though it doesn’t seem like it. Sometimes there are only three story buildings but there is very little “waste”. There are no large open spaces for cars. The streets are narrow. They manage to pack people in (quite comfortably) and achieve high density that way.

        This is what is lacking in Seattle. It isn’t even that great in Vancouver either (given the demand for housing). We both follow the same stupid model of drawing little circles where we allow density (a so called Grand Bargain). But these areas that allow development only make up a tiny portion of the overall land. The dart isn’t likely to land there. In both cases you are bound to land in a “single family” neighborhood. But Vancouver is still ahead of us. In Vancouver those areas have a lot more people. That’s because they entered their “ADU” phase a lot sooner than we did. They went on a building boom years ago (in part because NIMBYs didn’t notice what was essentially a loophole). Seattle is doing the same thing now — there is a huge boom in ADU/DADU construction. This helps increase density (and reduce costs) but it will only get you so far. As long as demand is really high, you need to go farther. We need to abandon the “Grand Bargain” approach and do what Minneapolis did years ago and Spokane recently did. Allow a lot more housing across the entire city.

        Which is why from a housing standpoint, Seattle is not particularly urban. Parts of Seattle have become a lot more urban but most of the city is as suburban as always.

        Of course housing is only part of the picture. As Mike pointed out, there is a lot more to a city than just building places to live. I feel like we are moving in the right direction but as Mike described, we still way behind other cities.

      3. “Belltown? South Lake Union? It’s not like Seattle hasn’t had a ton of downtown residential growth. I’d guess Seattle had be the urban growth champion of US cities in the last 25 years.”

        Guess what else SLU has? A huge ass freeway entrance at Mercer Street and a neighborhood-slicing stroad to get to it. And mega congestion on Denny Way that’s been the focus of a whole series of L8 articles. Neither of these would exist in a city without internal freeways.

        The impacts of I-5 are more clearly visible downtown, Capitol Hill, and First Hill. I-5 is a total gash through the middle of that area. It requires walking across no-man’s-land overpasses at Denny, Pine, Madison, etc. If you walk on Hubble Place between Pine and Spring, it goes right along the freeway and has one advantage of no level crossings, but it’s a depressing nightmare of concrete that nobody wants to be near, and it had a cluster of homeless tents/sidewalk sleepers/abandoned possessions during the pandemic because nobody else wanted to be there. I used to walk past them going to the library, but that street is so depressing I don’t know.

        When I-5 was built it slashed through the Capitol Hill, Cascade, First Hill, downtown, and International District neighborhoods. That displaced houses/apartments/retail, divided the neighborhoods, separated the neighborhoods into smaller and less vibrant units, and you have to walk across it (or take a bus to avoid walking across it). The fancy Sorrento Hotel was orphaned on the wrong side of downtown. The Summit bus route corridor lost most of the western half of its walkshed.

        Cities without internal freeways have wide boulevards instead. The freeways exit to boulevards at the edge of the city. The boulevards’ design may vary from good (street-like) to bad (stroad-like), but at least they have regular intersections so that they’re not like walls.

      4. Mike Orr,

        So Seattle has a lot of freeways? So does every other City in the USA.

        As far as density, Seattle has added more over the last 25 years than any other city in America. There’s over 425,000 housing units in the City now. At this point in time, I see the construction industry not adding near as many units as in the last decade in the next 10 years. I just don’t see the financing and labor to build more 4,000 units of housing a year in Seattle IF the economy continues to be moderately good. Zoning or urban planning really have no impact on any of this.

      5. “So Seattle has a lot of freeways? So does every other City in the USA. As far as density, Seattle has added more over the last 25 years than any other city in America. ”

        The US is not a good standard of comparison. That’s why I keep bringing up peer cities outside the US. If we just did the average of what other industrialized countries are doing, we’d be a lot better off.

        The American urban renaissance since the 1990s is a lot better than the nadir in the 1960s and 70s. But it’s still only a kind of token or incomplete urbanism. Look at all the suburbs. Bellevue has a dense downtown and a growing corridor toward Redmond. Parking minimums and garages put a ceiling on walkability. The rest of the city (66-75%) is left in its 1970s backwardness, including adjacent to downtown (Surrey Downs), NE 8th Street, and Lake Hills. Factoria/Eastgate has growth but it’s not very walkable; it feels like where big-box stores and tower-in-the-park office parks go to die. Renton and Kent have a few buildings with potential downtown or at The Landing, but it’s just a couple blocks, and not a complete 15-minute neighborhood. The eastern half of the cities where most of the population lives stagnates in its 1970s hellhole.

        Seattle too has small urban-village islands in a vast sea of residential-only low density. We should expand the villages and connect them together. Chicago’s northern half is mostly 3-10 story buildings with a few single-family houses and some row houses scattered here and there. What if we made the whole area from Ballard to the U-District and the Ship Canal to Greenlake like that? That would give a lot more housing, and more destinations and a wider variety of destinations to walk to or take transit to without leaving the urban area.

        “I see the construction industry not adding near as many units as in the last decade in the next 10 years.”

        Of course Seattle won’t grow as fast as it did in the 2010s. That was a unique period. No company has been identified that will have a growth wave as big as Amazon’s in the 2010s. Even if there were, Seattle hasn’t zoned a place for a second Amazon-sized headquarters. It had the opportunity with the Northgate regional center but it failed to.

        “I just don’t see the financing and labor to build more 4,000 units of housing a year in Seattle”

        The same amount of labor can be channeled to more useful designs.

      6. @tacomee

        Given the current permit pipeline I’d expect 5-6k units a year for the next two or three years. After that it may slow down.

        Wilson needs to make housing policy a priority in her first year if she’s going to make a difference in private construction during her term.

      7. jd,

        Has Seattle ever hit 6,000 new units in a calendar year before? The construction industry doesn’t seem that busy to me right now, but I’ve not looked at the permit numbers in years, so I don’t really know.

        Katie Wilson shouldn’t make housing a big deal in her administration because it’s really not something she has much control over. Let’s say the construction industry does manage to add 15,000 units over the next 3 years. That would be a great number, but it all depends on how many jobs the city adds and how many people move in. And if the Seattle economy starts a downward turn, the builders and money people will go away. Housing is a free market and it’s tough for the government to control. Public housing is controlled more by the government, but the same people building private housing also build public housing. So building public housing, something the City really needs, could depress the private housing numbers. It’s tough to add 3% more housing in 3 years even in the best of times with low interest rated and booming jobs market. Deporting workers isn’t helping either.

        Mike Orr,

        Cities are imperfect places. Even with the big tech boom of the last 25 years, most of Seattle is pretty much unchanged. And if the endless Amazon money couldn’t change most of the city, maybe nothing can?

      8. Net new housing units are summarized through Q3 2025 in this report: https://seattletransitblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/UCUV_Growth_Report_2025Q3.pdf

        Downloaded from here: https://population-and-demographics-seattlecitygis.hub.arcgis.com/apps/SeattleCityGIS::urban-centers-and-villages-indicators-report-housing-and-jobs-dashboard/explore?path=

        New new housing units:
        1996 to 2005: 26,041 (2,604 per year, average)
        2006 to 2015: 47,673 (4,767 per year, average)
        2016: 6,684
        2017: 8,974
        2018: 8,495
        2019: 10,162
        2020: 5,734
        2021: 6,673
        2022: 9,770
        2023: 7,549
        2024: 11,892
        Q1 – Q3 2025: 8,115

        Averaged over the last decade, Seattle gained more than 8,000 new housing units each year. Permit issuance has slowed but there are over 14,000 unfinished units in the pipeline.

      9. I don’t know how many thousands of units Seattle does or could do, but that’s not the point. The point is that if the units are designed in a walkable, convenient, destination-rich, transit-rich, pleasant way, they’re more viable for people without a car to choose. Many of the units/neighborhoods are not like that, so even if they exist they’re not a practical choice. Also, people have asked for more 2+ bedroom units for larger families.

        A third of Americans want walkable urbanism; a third want driveable suburbanism; and a third can go either way. But the vast majority of the built environment is driveable suburbanism. In most US cities the entire city is like that, or all except a token amount. That’s the gap between what people want and what exists. 13% of people are living in lower density/walkability than they want, and a full 66% supermajority would be satisfied with walkable urbanism if they had that option. And some of those in the either/or category would probably prefer convenient walkability after they’ve experienced it. If we’d just build what other cities internationally do, then the gap between what people live in and what they want would diminish, and the price premium for walkable neighborhoods over average neighborhoods would diminish.

        “Cities are imperfect places.”

        That’s not an excuse to not make it better, especially when your city is below average.

      10. @tacomee

        Seattle can’t drive housing construction directly but it has a large amount of control over the maximum number of units that can be built every year.

      11. Suppose Katie and the council allow small apartments and retail on the 5 blocks west and east of California Ave SW. That would open up new options throughout the west side, and on the east side in the Admiral District. Some lot owners would choose to build to the limit, or at least beyond the ADU/4-plex allowed now. Say that labor capacity is at its limit, so a larger building there replaces a duplex/townhouse in a more remote location that would have been built otherwise. That’s a net win for walkability, and it’s only possible because the zoning has changed.

        Ross has talked about how in his neighborhood of Pinehurst, not one of the famous villages, people are building to the zoning limit, and they’re still going up despite any labor-capacity limit. When zoning allows three stories, you get three stories. When it allows six stories, you get six stories. And if it allows only houses, you get one larger house replacing a smaller house.

        The one larger house adds zero to housing capacity. There’s a good chance it will be occupied by one or two adults, because houshold sizes are shrinking both here and nationally. The new larger house costs more then the old smaller house, so the net result is a smaller cross-section of the population can live in the neighborhood, and you haven’t added any housing capacity.

        This is one if the biggest problems. If you don’t upzone, small houses will be replaced by larger houses and McMansions anyway. Once the new house is built, even if the city upzones in the next ten or twenty years, it’s unlikely it will be densified because the house is so new. That’s a lost opportunity. If the house is a block or two from a Link or RapidRide station, that’s a lost opportunity for more people to live within walking distance of the station and the commercial destinations there.

      12. Mike, if “Katie” does that, and ST can get it through it’s thick organizational head that while surface LRT is toxic in the middle of a route, at the ends of one it makes enormous sense, then WSLE might become a useful thing.

        Think of the L Taraval Line in San Francisco; it swooshes through the Muni Tunnel to West Portal and immediately goes “trolley” out to the zoo. Slowly over time it is receiving more and more exclusive right of way on that stretch, and the sides of Taraval Street are blooming with three and four story apartment buildings and flats, which are sort of the native flora of San Francisco.

        But of course, those are two pretty big “ifs”.

      13. Going trolley on Delridge would make more sense, beyond just cost (which would be substantial). You aren’t going to convince the locals to substantially upzone west of California with those multi-million dollar views, and quaint neighborhoods full of “character.” and the rich, politically-connected.

        The Delridge Depression on the other hand, with no views to speak of and poorer folk happy to demo, is already popping with housing to the limits of zoning up the hill to the east and west. Housing stock is half the price of the California ridge, and far more inventory is turning over.

        There are also a bunch of low-slung old apartment buildings that could turn into substantial density with the help of a bulldozer.

        And once you get further up the hill, Home Depot and Westwood parking lots can fill up quickly with 10 to 20 story apartment buildings with little whining about stolen views.

        And then White Center and it’s incredible diversity of mixed use retail, restaurants and bars would absolutely thrive without the restrictive zoning hell on the other side of the Seattle border.

      14. “ Going trolley on Delridge would make more sense, beyond just cost (which would be substantial). You aren’t going to convince the locals to substantially upzone west of California…”

        Rather than dance around the issue and devise expensive rail services and upzone blocks over neighbor objections, how about considering what I think is the obvious if WSLE goes ahead: repurposing the golf course after Seattle moves it to a nearby ridge (that’s less suitable for urban development)? The current property could be at a higher density that would be difficult to manifest elsewhere in West Seattle with the progressive NIMBYS of West Seattle property owners.

        Just swap the South Seattle College site for the current golf course site, and rethink the current golf course site with a new college campus, an urban village and a classy, high-use village-green-type park for West Seattle.

        It may sound expensive, but it would probably be easier and cheaper to build and the area could replace Alaska Junction as the “city center” of West Seattle.

  9. If ST proposes a SODO-Delridge phase or a Ballard Smith Cove phase, how should we react?

    I’m not very plussed by a Smith Cove terminus, but at least it would improve service to the SLU highrise district and Uptown, and give people a dilemma whether to take Link or the monorail to Seattle Center.

    But SODO-Delridge is idiotic. Who would do a 3-seat ride from middle/lower Delridge to downtown or anywhere on Link? The middle seat is only 2.4 miles or 3-5 minutes. That’s too short to force two transfers. Is it worth even operating this stub? Or just build it and leave it idle until it can be incorporated into a longer line? It would make more sense to redirect this money to Ballard/downtown, and come back to West Seattle after that.

    1. The piece that is still coming is whether or not DSTT can handle three lines. That will really clarify what to do about West Seattle.

      The stub makes sense mainly for political reasons. But Delridge to Lynnwood would have much more utility than Delridge to SODO. It would provide two tracks to reverse trains at Delridge.

      And even the SODO to Alaska Junction stub is not particularly advantageous for a rider.

      ST has not clearly stated how many riders the stub only will carry in any of the discussion. Not providing what is basic information about just the stub is suppressing the public discourse. And I think ST is afraid to put ridership forecast information out because it will make the project look extremely wasteful (and Ivsuspect Dow doesn’t want to lose his pet station in Alaska Junction).

      The thing about the three-line option is that it’s not whether the tunnel can handle three lines. It can ! It’s instead about how many trains can each line operationally have and whether it is enough capacity for future ridership.

      1. The stub makes sense mainly for political reasons.

        Absolutely. There is no way that an independent transit firm would suggest West Seattle Link be the next thing we build.

        But Delridge to Lynnwood would have much more utility than Delridge to SODO.

        Definitely. It would get 800 riders a day instead of 80.

        OK, to be fair it would get more. I think it is fair to say that if the train continued to downtown that Metro would stop sending H Line to downtown. All of the riders who take the H downtown would have to transfer — that is about 2,000 riders. Then there are the riders of the 128 and 50. Figure another 400 (combined). This is all based on existing bus ridership. Round up and you have 3,000 riders. Triple that number based on nothing more than a wing and a prayer and you still have one of the worst projects ever built from a cost/ridership standpoint.

        But my point is less than a thousand would actually benefit. The vast majority of riders on the H and 128 wish the bus just kept going downtown. You can see this from the ridership tables. The obvious transfer point to get to a northbound Link train is 3rd & Union. About 500 people get off the H Line there. Not everyone is going to Link (and not everyone boarded in West Seattle). But at most you’ve got about 500 riders on the H headed to north end Link destinations. About 150 riders from the 50 transfer at SoDo (they would transfer at Delridge at Delridge instead). Throw in a handful of riders from the 125 and you get around 800 riders that would benefit. So $3 billion to benefit less than 1,000 riders.

        Oh, and the benefit wouldn’t be huge for H Line or 125 riders. You still have a transfer but the train to West Seattle would run every ten minutes while the train downtown runs every five (towards Lynnwood). So less time on the bus and more time waiting. Most of the time you would save time but not always (from what I can tell). So yeah, this is definitely being done for political reasons by people that don’t understand transit or don’t care.

      2. The piece that is still coming is whether or not DSTT can handle three lines. That will really clarify what to do about West Seattle.

        I don’t think it will make much difference as far as West Seattle. Assume they say it is OK to run all three trains in the existing tunnel. Great! This is much better. Transfers are better, we retain the SoDo Busway, riders from the south keep their good stations downtown, riders from the north keep their one-seat ride to SeaTac. Wonderful. We also save money in SoDo. But we are still billions of dollars overbudget in West Seattle. Maybe the savings from avoiding a second tunnel would make Ballard Link cheap enough to pay for West Seattle — I doubt it. To allow all three train lines in the same tunnel is definitely a better approach and is bound to be much cheaper but it still costs extra. You still have questions about how to handle Ballard (branch or build an automated stub). The argument for the branch gets stronger but it is still messy from a timing standpoint, expensive and disruptive.

        Now imagine they basically say it can’t be done. West Seattle can’t fit. We are back to building a second tunnel. Or we decide that West Seattle just isn’t worth it. We still have questions over Ballard Link either way. Should it run just to Westlake (and be automated) or go in the new tunnel while we screw over riders from the south end.

        It is also quite likely that the question won’t really be answered. They will give us a rough cost and a view of the drawbacks. Go back to what the experts have said in the past. Check out the interview Martin Duke did about ten years ago:

        Although going below 3 minutes is possible, due to the variability inherent with human factors and surface operations it “wouldn’t give our ridership as reliable a service.” The small windows to fit in delayed trains might cause them to bunch up, delaying riders.

        That is from Marie Olson, Sound Transit’s Link Transportation Manager for Operations. This is what just about any engineer would guess. Sure, you can go more often than that — 90 seconds is plausible — but you are bound to get bunching. Is bunching acceptable? Should we spend billions to avoid it even though it means a much worse experience for riders? These are not technical questions, they are trade-offs. To be clear, with more investigation we can figure out how much it costs to provide better headways and how often they would experience a delay but ultimately it comes down to trade-offs.

        Of course if you do what most of us here want (no second tunnel, automated stub from Ballard to Westlake, bus option for West Seattle) then it has its set of trade-offs. One of the big advantages is that the existing Link system (by then going from Lynnwood to Federal Way and Downtown Redmond) would remain untouched. Those riders could transfer (to a much improved bus and secondary rail system) but otherwise their trip remains the same. There is a lot to be said for that given it is likely to have way more riders than the additions.

      3. “I don’t think it will make much difference as far as West Seattle.”

        If ST wants to keep the West Seattle Link service as a stub it makes a big difference!

        The difference would be in how the train would ultima operate. Take the Eastside Starter Line saga. ST ended up limiting the hours of service. If that line didn’t get enough riders, they would probably have dropped the service frequency and hours more. If the stub got awful ridership like we both have expected, ST will start to reduce service after a honeymoon period.

        Since there is nowhere near enough money for DSTT2, the stub could easily be in operation for well over a decade or two. There’s a real possibility that it might get dubbed by critics as “the train to nowhere”. The public could even lose faith in ST and vote down any future referenda.

        I think ridership needs a more prominent role in the discourse about West Seattle Link. It’s amateurish for ST to debate what option has the best value until the ridership forecasts are known with only the stub in operation.

      4. “If that line didn’t get enough riders, they would probably have dropped the service frequency and hours more.”

        What’s enough riders? ST could have one rider and still run it every 10 minutes. That’s Link’s minimum day/early evening frequency, and it’s what makes Link better than most American light rails and BART with 15-30 minutes on each branch. Longer waits lead to frustrated riders and people not able to accomplish as many activities in a day. It compounds with 2- and 3-seat rides. Because it’s only a starter line, every trip beyond Bellevue-Redmond is a minimum 2-seat ride. Low frequency in itself suppresses ridership

      5. I’m sure that ST would initially run 10 minute service. That’s the honeymoon period I referenced. However if that service level continues for several years with low ridership, surely ST will look to cut back the service. ELSL is only for 2 years rather than 15 or 20 years.

        Keep in mind that ELSL is now getting 11K weekday on average. WSLE is projected at 29.2K (24.8K for just going to Delridge) per the Final EIS. But the EIS doesn’t have ridership forecasts for just the stub operation.

      6. That’s still just guessing and assuming what ST might do. It mostly depends on the attitudes and values of the boardmembers and staff. It can afford to keep running it every 10 minutes: operations cost much less than construction. ST has never run Link at less than 10 minutes except during the pandemic.

        ST could probably run the 1 Line every 30 minutes after 8pm and in the late morning and still fit all the current passengers without crowding, if it has extra service on ballgame days. But it would lose riders because those 30-minute pulses don’t work for some people or they’re unwilling to put up with it. If you have the option of driving, you don’t have to wait 15 or 30 minutes for your garage door to open or a gate to access the street: you go when you’re readi. ST knows that lower frequency deters riders: it’s one of the reasons the 535, 545, 550, and 554 have lower ridership than they could be.

        Edit: This is all about the 2 Line Starter Line. The SODO-AJ stub would get less, and the SODO-Delridge stub hardly any. That doesn’t necessarily mean ST will run it less than every 10 minutes. The trick is that in West Seattle passengers have alternatives: the C, H, and 21 make roughly the same trip to downtown with roughly the same travel time. That’s not true in the Eastside where Link created new transit corridors that have no direct bus service, and Link is significantly faster than intra-Eastside bus routes.

      7. “ WSLE is projected at 29.2K (24.8K for just going to Delridge) per the Final EIS. But the EIS doesn’t have ridership forecasts for just the stub operation.”

        Why would anyone take a 3 seat ride on the stub line when they can do the same trip with a one seat ride on the existing bus service? You’re looking at what? 10 added minutes to each trip when you count having to go all the way down into a deep level station at The Junction, then wait for a 1 Line train at SoDo?

        I can’t see that level of ridership for this thing, as proposed.

      8. @Al — I’m not arguing about whether it would be more or less useful. I clearly state that it would be more useful in the rest of the paragraph. But my point is it doesn’t change the fundamental questions surrounding West Seattle Link. Will it get built? What stations will it serve? None of that changes.

        Note how rarely the SoDo ending even comes up. Folks on comments talk about West Seattle Link by 2032. I have repeatedly corrected them on various forums. Under the current plan, West Seattle wouldn’t be connected to downtown until the second tunnel is complete. Does that cause people to suddenly pause and rethink the whole project? No! Of course not. Supporters don’t seem to care.

        Of course the ridership estimates are based on the full build out. It would be stupid to look at the numbers before then. Of course this is misleading but ST routinely lists ridership estimates in the distant future. This is based on the hope that there will be a certain amount of TOD and the expected network effect. But it isn’t clear it makes any difference in how people view the project. For all we know the vast majority of those wearing “Build the Damn Trains” in West Seattle are well aware it won’t actually go downtown until the second tunnel is built (in 2039? 2045?). They don’t care. They just want them to start building. It is very similar to the monorail. They didn’t care about the various cost overruns and technical issue. They just wanted the damn monorail.

        Being able to send three lines in the existing transit tunnel would be useful — but only if we actually build West Seattle Link! Otherwise it is purely theoretical. It is definitely not what is slowing up work in the area. If West Seattle Link itself was under budget they would probably have started construction by now. It would be designed as a stub to SoDo. It could exist as a stub for years but that was the original plan.

      9. Since there is nowhere near enough money for DSTT2, the stub could easily be in operation for well over a decade or two.

        Come on Al. Let’s look at the facts here:

        West Seattle Link was inexplicably chosen as a project to be included with ST3. The head of the ST board at the time was a strong proponent. He is now CEO of ST. West Seattle Link was chosen as the first project to be built despite Ballard Link have much higher expected ridership.

        It doesn’t take a chess grand master to figure out the next move after West Seattle Link gets to SoDo. The tunnel gets built as a standalone project. They build it to Westlake (or Denny) with turnback tracks. Keep in mind, people in charge of ST operations have asked for more turnback tracks in general. So trains from Federal Way run back and forth to Westlake. Eventually those tracks go to Ballard but as you wrote, that could take years or even decades (or not happen at all). The second tunnel is a very expensive project but it isn’t like running all the way to Ballard.

        So it is quite plausible that Link runs trains from Delridge to SoDo in 2032. Then the trains from Delridge to to Lynnwood (and the trains from Federal Way go to Westlake) by 2039. This matches the current time estimates for West Seattle and Ballard Link — the lines would just be a lot shorter.

      10. It is really hard to say how the trains will be operated during the stub years (when West Seattle Link ends at SoDo). The first thing to consider is Metro. My guess is Metro doesn’t change much of anything. If that is the case then ridership will be really low. It only makes sense for riders who are close to station and only if they are headed to a Link location that isn’t served by the buses. For example I might live close to the Avalon Station and want to get to the UW. I might as well take the train (instead of RapidRide C) and transfer in SoDo (instead of downtown). Based on current ridership that is well less than 1,000 riders. How often would Link run trains to get 1,000 riders?

        Hard to say. But it is a fairly short section. I think it will take 10 minutes (one way). East Link takes 25. Ridership would also be very sensitive to frequency. If you are headed to the UW and just miss the train you might end up taking the bus. I could easily see it entering the frequency-ridership death spiral (which is what Al is suggesting). But I could also see them just biting the bullet and running it every ten minutes. Even though it is a fairly short distance I don’t see them running the trains more often than that. That just hasn’t been their style.

        On the other hand if the train ends at Delridge then I could definitely see it running less often. Fifteen or twenty minutes (all day) is a possibility. There just isn’t that much development near the Delridge Station (and it is only one station). Even if you ran it every couple minutes you would probably get less than 100 riders a day. Given that, it wouldn’t surprise me if they run it infrequently.

      11. @ Ross:

        If I was reading the current decision-making trajectory, I would agree that it would be the 3 Line to West Seattle would come from Lynnwood or Everett, and the 1 Line north end would be as far north as the money can carry ST — maybe to Denny or a Westlake or even just the County buildings near Pioneer Square. And we would all lament how it has awful transfers, adds travel time for current riders and has horrible ridership.

        The issue I’m explaining here is a bit different. It is more about disclosure.

        To me, ST has increasingly not been frank with the public about many things in recent years. The opening years from the realignment a few years ago are no longer realistic given the cash flow shortage and higher capital costs that they project and a better understanding of how the project would get built. The timelines for West Seattle and any tunnel in Downtown haven’t been updated since 2021 — even though much more design has been developed and ST has generally admitted that they know opening years should be changed, but won’t say what the revised years should be. ST has also recently shown that there is an anticipated shortfall to build what they want during the years that they want, and explain generally that this will delay project construction.

        Even if the ultimate buildout is used for designing tracks and stations, the EIS should be disclosing interim conditions rather than summarily not publishing them, if it’s just in operation for 7 years or 30 years . That’s simply because the stub is a condition already defined as an interim operations assumption.

        Generally, an EIS is a bit like grading your own test. A sponsor has to identify the likely scenarios including related project assumptions. ST could have been asked by the Board to disclose what happens without DSTT2 as part of the revised EIS scoping but it did not happen.

        There is a difference between designing the future and reporting future impacts. Certainly, ST should be designing stations and systems for full build-out! But reporting on interim conditions like the stub or announcing realistic updated completion dates based on a few more years of analysis and design should be told to the public.

        Even though I’m pointing to the omission in the final EIS, ST has an obligation to disclose anticipated updated opening years and ridership impacts from likely different operations in the future beyond just an EIS. It’s just that the EIS requires disclosure legally.

        So here we are looking at a situation like the Enterprise Initiative that is underway to fully reframe ST3. Yet here is ST not giving the Board or the public important information to inform their upcoming major choices on how to handle the shortfall.

        With all that said, what gets disclosed in the upcoming Ballard Link EIS that includes DSTT2 will be critical. (So will the separate three-line DSTT reassessment.) It may be that the stub operation appears as the “no build” in that document and I hope that it is. The thing is, this undisclosed information should already be informing the Enterprise Initiative now! Within that long presentation last week, ST still avoided disclosing and discussing these important elements. They did what they typically do — slant the meeting content to make them continue to look in control, and ask for feedback without new data and instead try to assess emotional sentiment in a quick 20-minute emotional gripe session at the end.

      12. “It may be that the stub operation appears as the “no build” in that document and I hope that it is.”

        “No Build” is legally defined as what would happen anyway without the project. So if other agencies or ST are also planning a bus network expansion at the same time or adding HOT lanes, that would be included, along with increased population and car congestion. But a several-billion-dollar subset of the project being reviewed can’t be “No Build”; it would have to be another alternative.

    2. “I can’t see that level of ridership for this thing, as proposed.”

      Exactly, Glenn.

      ST should have disclosed the stub operation forecast in the Final EIS. It appears that they did not. They appeared to assume that every West Seattle (3 Line) alternative goes through Downtown and 1 Line goes to Ballard. Assumptions are all referenced in the Transportation Report as background assumptions even though it’s not specified (a generic statement about an expanded Link system is instead referenced).

      https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/16a-WSLE-FinalEIS-AppendixN1-transportationtechreport-main-body.pdf

      https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/16b-WSLE-FinalEIS-AppendixN1-transportationtechreport-attachments.pdf

      I really wish sone one with clout would force ST to disclose the stub operation ridership forecasts as there is no way that DSTT2 will be open by 2042 given the huge financial shortfall.

      By the way, those forecasts assume a Line 3 Link train every 6 minutes at peak times.

      And for detailed wonks, there are maps showing all the feeder bus assumptions in the appendix. It appears that they’re sending RapidRide H to Alki rather than Downtown, for example.

    3. The logic of SODO-Delridge is pretty basic to me. It’s spend somewhere between $6.2B to $7.9B for 29.2K daily riders or spend $3.3B to $3.4B for 24.8K daily riders (or 85 percent).

      We may bristle at not having direct access to destinations in West Seattle Junction, but the data suggests getting those extra 4.6K daily riders (15 percent) may not be worth the $3B to $4B that it would cost to go the last 1.2 miles.

      1. Do you live or work in West Seattle? Would you use a SODO-Delridge stub? Why? If you don’t spend time in West Seattle, it’s unrealistic to say other people will use that stub without them saying so. These 29.2K or 24.8K riders are just what ST says: it’s not necessarily what people will actually do. Nobody knows what people will do: they’ll make individual decisions, and their last-minute decisions may be different than they predicted beforehand.

        ST or Metro has never offered a route that goes just two miles across a bridge between industrial(ish) areas. It’s hard to believe people will use this, especially for a 3-seat ride. The number of people going to the Delridge/Andover or SODO walksheds is vanishingly small, much less one-seat rides between them.

        But West Seattlites can tell us and the public if they will use it, if they want the mini-stub, and if they’re OK if the mini-stub is all they get until the 2040s/2050s/forever.In the meantime, I’m skeptical.

      2. @ Mike:

        From what I can tell reading the details from the West Seattle Final EIS transportation report appendices is that most West Seattle Link riders in the assumptions are forecast to come from feeder buses. That how a Delridge end station alternative gets 85 percent of the riders versus the Alaska Junction end station alternatives even though there’s not much going on at that station.

        And again ST did not present a stub ridership forecast.

        I will add that West Seattle doesn’t strike me as that much more remarkable than Upper Queen Anne and less remarkable than University Village is. It’s nowhere near Ballard’s size or number of regional attractions like medical offices or museums or SLU’s density with well over a dozen buildings at least 30 stories tall that cover a wide area next to a busy Seattle Center.

        If West Seattle residents were endorsing 50 story buildings and 2-3 times more high-rise district land coverage, a subway would seem more than justified. But ultimately it’s just an 85-foot district about a quarter-mile wide that ends just 600 feet west of the proposed station entrance. Seattle has several similar villages at that scale that aren’t even getting a streetcar — yet some think this district deserves a subway station at the end of a $4B line extension of 1.2 miles?

      3. “From what I can tell reading the details from the West Seattle Final EIS transportation report appendices is that most West Seattle Link riders in the assumptions are forecast to come from feeder buses.”

        Let’s unpack that.

        1. That’s assuming a West Seattle-Lynnwood line.
        2. Most riders will have to come from buses because most of West Seattle is beyond the station walksheds, and the bus routes will be truncated.
        3. The bus routes won’t be truncated in any stub phase. As you said, we don’t have any ridership estimates for just the stubs alone.

        What’s driving West Seattle Link is that the Alaska Junction area and Westwood Village are designated urban centers. The reason West Seattle Link is going to AJ is it’s “the biggest and most important retail/village center in West Seattle, and centrally located for transfers in several directions”, and we might add that that’s where affluent people are most likely to live or shop. Delridge wasn’t chosen because it’s not any of those, even though it has higher ridership and would be less expensive.

      4. What’s driving West Seattle Link is that the Alaska Junction area and Westwood Village are dedicated urban centers.

        Yeah sure but you are talking about a couple thousand riders per station at best. It is basically like the Graham Street infill station. Nice to have but would we really add the station if it cost billions? Of course not.

        There are never going to be that many walk-up riders. The only way you get decent ridership is via the buses. There are only three stations and none of the stations are major destinations.

        They will get very few riders when it connects to SoDo unless they truncate the buses. But that would be extremely unpopular. SoDo is not a big Link destination. A three-seat ride to get downtown (or just about anywhere) is just not going to be popular. You would see an overall decrease in transit ridership to and from West Seattle. You would increase ridership on Link but still not get that many.

        Once the train goes to Lynnwood you would get more riders. Again, most of these would be from the bus. If the buses continue to go downtown then you get riders heading to other Link destinations (like the UW). But this still wouldn’t be that much — (see my other comment) — it would just be a lot more than if the train ends at SoDo.

        The only way to maximize ridership is to have the train go downtown *and* truncate the buses. That forces all the riders off the bus and onto the train. It might take longer to get downtown but not a lot longer so you wouldn’t lose that many riders. You might have an overall net increase in transit ridership of a few hundred. That is the only way you get close to that 20,000 estimate for West Seattle.

      5. “The only way to maximize ridership is to have the train go downtown *and* truncate the buses. ”

        Exactly, Ross!

        This is why I earlier said that the three line study in the DSTT is important even for just West Seattle. It’s not to only possibly save the DSTT2 cost and hassle, but also it would prevent ST from making any West Seattle stub line looking mostly worthless. If West Seattle Link trains are going to have utility at all, they pretty much should have to continue into Downtown Seattle (or maybe have a very seamless transfer) from Day 1.

        Building a stub to run just to SODO and just every 8-10 minutes with multiple level changes required in both places doesn’t help ridership at all. The West Seattle stub looks to me as if it’s designed to get very few riders until it can go further into Downtown (likely well after 2045) — unless it runs so frequently that there’s no noticeable wait (hence my earlier suggestion to study automation).

        In other words, the stub as currently proposed for operation is set up for ridership failure. It’s quite regrettable.

      6. In other words, the stub as currently proposed for operation is set up for ridership failure.

        Of course. But that was always the case. That is what voters approved. The plan was to build West Seattle Link first and then build the second tunnel. That meant that for years there would be this silly little stub that ends in SoDo. The only thing that has changed is that we may have to live with that stub for a lot longer. And it may not even get to the Junction (and end at Delridge).

      7. “Yeah sure but you are talking about a couple thousand riders per station at best. It is basically like the Graham Street infill station.”

        The West Seattle Junction has several times more retail and community services than MLK & Graham has, or will ever have if the current village hierarchies remain as is. I don’t see Seattle turning Othello into an urban center when that’s what Mt Baker is and Columbia City is nearby.

      8. Do you live or work in West Seattle? Would you use a SODO-Delridge stub? Why? If you don’t spend time in West Seattle, it’s unrealistic to say other people will use that stub without them saying so.

        I’ve spent plenty of time in West Seattle but I think the ridership numbers are more important. We can also infer some things based on just looking at the network. Such as:

        1) Not that many people use the bus stops downtown on the C or H that are closest to Link. This means that not that many people are transferring to Link to get to the UW, etc.

        2) While the SoDo stop for the 50 has a lot more riders than most of the stops it still doesn’t have that many riders (less than 200). About as many people go from Alaska Junction towards Alki as from SoDo Station towards West Seattle.

        3) Transfers have a ridership impact. There is an impact regardless of how easy it is and how frequent service is but it is worse if the transfer is time consuming and there is a lot of waiting*.

        4) It is likely the transfer would be time consuming and there would be a lot of waiting.

        5) The vast majority of riders on buses like the C, H, 21 and 50 do not come from the three proposed West Seattle Link stations, let alone the Delridge Station.

        6) There is very little around the Delridge Station (although that could change).

        7) Downtown is a much bigger destination and transit hub than SoDo.

        Yes, we are inferring things but I think it is safe to say that a SoDo-Delridge stub would get very few riders. If you are on the RapidRide H and headed to downtown (or transferring from downtown to someplace like First Hill or Bellevue) you are going to stay on the bus. Otherwise you are transferring twice. Even if it was faster (and it probably wouldn’t be) studies have shown that the vast majority of riders would just stay on the bus*. So that leaves riders from the Youngstown neighborhood. This is only one stop and even if it gets built up (which I would expect it to) there won’t be residential towers there. There are also limits to what can be built (given the various greenbelts and steel plant). Even if Seattle has a complete change of heart and decides to build Toronto-style towers in West Seattle the walk-up riders are still looking at a two-seat ride to downtown and a three-seat ride to Bellevue, First Hill, Queen Anne, etc. It is also quite likely that eventually Metro pairs the C and H, sending both of those sweet lines to South Lake Union. This would make the stub even less attractive. You could get to South Lake Union with one bus instead of two trains and a bus. Very few riders would choose the latter.

        The stub just doesn’t add up. It never added up. It was always a place holder — a temporary project that waited for a connection to downtown.

        *I can try and dig up the studies but this is intuitive.

      9. ST disclosed to the Feds that they only expect 5400 riders as long as WSLE stops at Sodo. The fact that ST has not disclosed this forecast to the public shows ST’s desperate attenpt to sell this line to the public,

      10. “What’s driving West Seattle Link is that the Alaska Junction area and Westwood Village are designated urban centers.”

        Just a note that Westwood Village is over 3 miles from the proposed West Seattle Link stations.

      11. I brought up Graham Street because it is an infill station and it won’t have much in the way of bus-Link ridership.

        The West Seattle Junction is like Columbia City. The reason why stations like Roosevelt get more riders is because they have a lot more people transferring from the buses to Link. West Seattle Junction just won’t have that many walk-up riders.

      12. “ ST disclosed to the Feds that they only expect 5400 riders as long as WSLE stops at Sodo. ”

        Thanks for the info, Martin!

        Was this in a document that can be referenced?

        I was surprised that the EIS assumed a six minute frequency at peak hours for 3 Line. Buried in the detailed reports, the 1 Line was even listed as five minutes.

        I get how ST3 promised trains every 6 minutes — and that the capacity is needed through Downtown and northward. However, the stub would be so empty at 5400 riders (2700 in each direction daily) that two-car trains every ten minutes is more than sufficient. That’s a ridership volume similar to ELSL before the Downtown Redmond Extension.

      13. “West Seattle Junction just won’t have that many walk-up riders.”

        The EIS forecast for arrival + departure mode are here in Tables 3-13 and 3-14:

        https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/16a-WSLE-FinalEIS-AppendixN1-transportationtechreport-main-body.pdf

        They list 700 for Delridge, 1400 for Avalon and 2100 for Alaska Junction in the preferred alternative. Because Avalon and Alaska Junction have overlapping walksheds, dropping Avalon is projected to have 3000 daily riders arriving or departing this way for Alaska Junction.

        The forecast also includes those getting picked up or dropped off, or bicycling to or from the station. In other words, it’s everybody who isn’t transferring to or from another transit vehicle.

        I’ve found it interesting how — despite how Seattle has long pushed the urban village strategy — Sound Transit has not presented how many people are expected to just walk to and from each Link station. The data would seem useful — not only in comparing station areas in this discussion but in helping to guide station area investments like shorter walking paths or bigger drop-off zones.

        ST total ridership information puts Columbia City at average of 2544 boardings in September or 5100 total riders. Similar data for Othello is 2896 boardings or about 5800 total riders. I’m not sure how many of those are coming from Route 106 or Route 50 (either station) or Route 36 (just Othello) but I could see that the number of people walking or getting dropped off at these stations being similar to what ST forecasts expect at Alaska Junction.

      14. “Westwood Village is over 3 miles from the proposed West Seattle Link stations.”

        Westwood Village figures into the Burien extension and RapidRide H.

      15. They list 700 for Delridge, 1400 for Avalon and 2100 for Alaska Junction in the preferred alternative. The forecast also includes those getting picked up or dropped off, or bicycling to or from the station. In other words, it’s everybody who isn’t transferring to or from another transit vehicle.

        Exactly. In other words it is like a station in Rainier Valley. Those stations have a bit more but in the same ballpark. The only way you get 20,000 riders is if a lot of people transfer from a bus. The only way a lot of people transfer from a bus is if the buses no longer go downtown *and* the train continues to downtown. Thus a high percentage of riders — if not most — would prefer they just keep running the buses downtown. A very high percentage of potential riders would prefer they actually improve the buses and send a few more downtown.

    4. The West Seattle extension (if it’s not a stub) would be useful in the following ways:

      1. Another cheaper way to Alki without taking the water taxi + shuttle

      2. An option from the north to SODO (after the 1 Line is rerouted to Ballard), which has transfer options to express buses for commuters from South King County to Capitol Hill/UW/Shoreline etc. also really easy center platform 1 Line transfer at Stadium station to continue to the airport (unless the 1 Line is not using the same tracks… I’m not sure of the design)

      1. 1. West Seattle Link won’t go to Alki. Riders will have to take a bus from a Link Station in West Seattle. This is not fundamentally different than taking the 50 from SoDo. In contrast if you went with a bus alternative it could include a direct bus from Alki to Downtown. This would eliminate a lot of transfers. Not only for trips between Alki and downtown but trips to First Hill, Queen Anne, Bellevue, etc.

        2. West Seattle Link doesn’t change the nature of those express buses. SoDo already has Link service and it already goes to the main destinations (downtown, the UW, etc.). If riders are trying to get from say, Tacoma to West Seattle they could backtrack. But they would be better off if the buses from West Seattle went on the SoDo Busway (via a ramp connecting it to the Spokane Street Viaduct). That way riders could get to various places in West Seattle (like Alki) without having to transfer again in West Seattle.

        The only riders that would benefit more from West Seattle Link than a bus alternative are those that can walk to the station. They would have a faster trip downtown. Everyone else would be better off with better buses.

  10. Years ago Seattle built the bus tunnel and said at the time it would eventually be for trains.

    They should now build the bus bridge to west Seattle. Make it so trains can eventually use it but for now leave it as buses and save billions.

    One fear I have is that the study of the downtown tunnel will say that they really can run multiple lines in one tunnel, and they take the money saved by not digging a second tunnel, and by cancelling Ballard, to fully build out west Seattle, and connect it to the current tunnel right away. (In other words no temporary transfer stop at sodo). Oh they will say Ballard will happen in st4 but given the cost overruns I doubt an st 4 vote would pass.

    1. Building a new bus or bus/train bridge over the Duwamish would cost as much as or more than a train bridge. The reason rail infrastructure tends to cost more is it tends to be more exclusive-lane or grade-separated. DSTT would have cost less if it had just been a train tunnel. For instance, the center breakdown lane in the stations wouldn’t be needed. But King County in the 80s wasn’t in the mindset to finance a rail network to go with a rail tunnel so soon after Forward Thrust was voted down.

    2. A bus bridge to Seattle already exists. Why would you build another one?

      We can (and should) take as many lanes as we need and make dedicated lanes, and build a dedicated offramp to the busway in SODO.

    3. They don’t need a new bridge for the buses. All they need is new ramps. There are different options but I think the best one is to connect the SoDo Busway with the Spokane Street Viaduct (https://maps.app.goo.gl/friwBRq2oPQoG7hP8). This doesn’t look particularly difficult or expensive. This would be massively cheaper than a new train line to West Seattle. By connecting to the SoDo Busway riders get the best of both worlds. The buses would continue to go downtown quickly and reliably. In addition, riders would get a quicker connection to Link. Thus it is not only cheaper but simply better than West Seattle Link.

      For example, consider someone on Delridge. The first day they are headed to the UW. With West Seattle Link they transfer at the Delridge Station. With the bus alternative they transfer at SoDo. There isn’t much difference. They likely get to the UW at the same time either way. The second day they are headed to First Hill. With West Seattle Link they are forced to transfer at the Delridge Station. They ride the train to Symphony Station and then walk a few blocks and catch the G up the hill. So two transfers with a fair amount of walking. With a bus alternative the H Line continues to go downtown. There is only one transfer and it is a short one. The rider is considerably better off with the bus alternative — they could easily save ten minutes.

    4. While we don’t need a new bridge, this was the basic idea behind the West Side Transit Tunnel (https://seattletransitblog.com/2015/02/18/westside-seattle-transit-tunnel/). The idea being that we can’t afford either Ballard or West Seattle Link and are therefore better off building a bus tunnel that can eventually be converted to rail. There is a lot to be said for that idea, especially in West Seattle. It wouldn’t take much to get buses from West Seattle running quickly through downtown. From the last stop in West Seattle you would not encounter any cars until the other end of the tunnel (at Aurora or Elliott). There would be a handful of intersections in SoDo but the train has to deal with those as well. Even for West Seattle riders close to the proposed stations it would be as fast as West Seattle Link.

      For Ballard you would have to do more work to be as fast as the train. You would need to add a lot of red paint and probably add bus stops under the Dravus overpass. Meanwhile you improve things for Aurora (something ST3 wouldn’t do).

      But there are bound to be issues. The transfers need to be really good and ST has struggled with that. The CID station is still challenging. Ideally the new tunnel would serve First Hill but that might add to the cost. But the biggest challenge would be political. So many people assume that expanding light rail is always better than improving the bus system. That is the basic problem we are dealing with right now.

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