Better Buses in Seattle

137 Replies to “Better Buses in Seattle”

1. A really cheap improvement for Seattle buses and streetcars would be to adopt the technology used at the Sound Transit and Community Transit websites featuring live-time updated “Arrivals” at each bus or train stop.

   I’ve found the time estimates to be pretty accurate, and a game-changer for knowing when I really should head to the bus stop.

   “Arrivals” are good for local businesses near bus stops, and for sales tax revenue.

   The smart-phone interface is quite simple: Click on the specific stop heading or the header saying “Arrivals”.

   Implementing the technology on Metro is, of course, up to the County. But the City can do it for the streetcars, and hopefully improve ridership as a result.

   1. Seems like we already have this functionality with OneBusAway, though. How would this be an improvement?

      1. https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/rider-tools/mobile-and-web-apps

         KCM lists 12 different apps that they recommend you to download, most of which have real time arrivals data. Perhaps the real suggestion is to consolidate the messaging and have a single app to advertise and get passengers to use.

      2. It doesn’t matter which app they all use the same data

      3. The apps are pretty good! I would suggest a QR code at the bus stops that brings up the information specific to that stop, without having to navigate a map interface. I would suggest this to Community Transit and Sound Transit as well. It’s really not an issue for me to open up the app, use my GPS location and the map to get to the relevant bus stop, but this is much less so for my wife, and of course, visitors are not necessarily going to know which side of the street they should wait and which way is northbound/southbound.

   2. I like every part of Community Transit’s website from its website design, route maps, and functionality.

      1. The CT website even allows you to expand the schedule to show every stop, and see the estimated arrival time for every single stop.

      2. Although the website needs further improvement, mainly lessening the essay-length verbiage when posting news & service changes, CT is far superior in its website layout versus any other transit agency in the area.

         Trimet, LA Metro, Milwaukee and Boston have pretty solid websites too. I’m sure there are other contenders.

2. My problem with your pro-bus argument about West Seattle Link is that it can be used to argue against every light rail extension project, but we don’t seem to disagree other projects that much.

   Lake City lost one seat ride to Downtown Seattle when Northgate extension opened, a few park and ride stations in Snohomish County lost faster one-seat rides to Seattle when Lynnwood extension opened, bunch of east-side destinations lost faster cross-lake service from Seattle to East Link construction, and Ballard Link extension is just like West Seattle Link extension, it probably takes fewer people to their actual Ballard destinations.

   I think West Seattle link’s biggest value is that it prepares for a possible ST4 that extends the line from Alaska Junction to further south. Without this “useless” starter branch, a southern extension would never happen.

   Relying on transit priority on roadway is not sustainable. Today’s Alaska Way/West Seattle Bridge is not congested enough to impact West Seattle service, but that might not be the case 20 years from now.

   West Seattle link extension will encourage more density development in West Seattle around future stations. It is not built for its existing development.

   1. My problem with your pro-bus argument about West Seattle Link is that it can be used to argue against every light rail extension project

      Not to the same degree. Use your first example, Lake City. Lake City lost its one-seat ride to downtown. But it gained much better connections to Roosevelt, the U-District, the UW and Capitol Hill. What is true of Lake City is true of Northgate. Riding the 41 in the morning was actually better than Link. No transfer and a quick ride into the tunnel. But during midday traffic was terrible. Once the express lanes switched the bus was stuck in the same traffic as all the cars. There is no busway from Northgate (or Lake City) to downtown once the express lanes went the other way. Thus the north end gained better midday travel to downtown and connections to a lot of first-rate destinations.

      That is not true of West Seattle. A busway for West Seattle would run 24/7. Much of it is already built. In terms of connections, West Seattle Link doesn’t add a lot. You get to transfer to SoDo and Stadium mainly. Yet the connection to both of those would actually be better with bus improvements! They would avoid a transfer. Someone from High Point headed to Beacon Hill would transfer once, at SoDo (instead of twice). If they are headed to the Stadium station they could just stay on the bus (again, avoiding a transfer).

      If you do a side-by-side comparison it is clear that the only people that would come out significantly ahead with West Seattle Link are those close to the station. Everyone else is much better off with a bus that keeps going to SoDo and then on to downtown. That is simply not true with the other extensions. There was no realistic “bus alternative”. Not one that could billions less *and* provide better service for riders.

      I think West Seattle link’s biggest value is that it prepares for a possible ST4 that extends the line from Alaska Junction to further south.

      Oh, the Seattle Subway myth. Pretty soon we will run trains all over Puget Sound with two lines to Woodinville and four to Tukwila. Sorry, but that is absurd. Even if you accept that there will be an ST4, why would we run trains to the south end of West Seattle when there are clearly bigger needs in Seattle? We still haven’t started a Ballard-UW line or a Metro 8 subway even though those would clearly save a lot more people a lot more time. When I mention High Point it isn’t completely arbitrary. It happens to be the most densely populated part of West Seattle (according to census data). But while it has a bit more than every other census block in West Seattle it is basically average for Seattle. There are huge swaths of the city that are similar. There are also a lot of places that have a lot more density. We can’t possibly directly serve every one with rail. We have to rely on the buses. There is nothing wrong that. Vancouver relies on the buses and they have an excellent transit system. But the best way to help the buses is by connecting the Spokane Street Viaduct with the SoDo Busway and then use the savings to run the buses a lot more often.

      1. Ross,

         I largely agree, but Beacon Hill – High Point is a two seat ride today (either via White Center and the 60, downtown and the 36 or Link, or via the 50). Granted, going via downtown or White Center is slow and annoying, but the real issue is that the 50 doesn’t come very often. That said, I ride the 50 fairly often and I’m not sure it’s busy enough to justify a bump. I would say the best solution for better West Seattle – Beacon Hill transit would be running the 107 to High Point and Fauntleroy/California instead of Beacon Hill station (where it mostly duplicates the 60 anyways). In the long term, if Graham Street station gets built, we should run at least one bus to it, and this route could serve as a predecessor.

         I think an underdiscussed aspect of West Seattle Link is that the route it intends to supersede (the C) is the least productive Rapid Ride line within Seattle proper. Basically any other corridor that has previous rapid ride investment would be a better for cost/benefit purposes.

      2. @blumdrew

         It follows the most productive segment of the C and intersects with the H. The C is dragged down by the jog to Fauntleroy. That’s not to say it’s the best investment but it at least makes sense from that perspective.

         https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/10/15/ridership-patterns-for-rapidride-c-line/

      3. “I ride the 50 fairly often and I’m not sure it’s busy enough to justify a bump.”

         What’s the ridership threshold to justify a bump? The infrequency itself deters some riders. I sometimes think about going to Seward Park or Alki, but if the 50 is half-hourly I’m less likely to because it becomes a time-consuming ordeal, with the risk that you may end up waiting a long time standing at a bus stop.

      4. Beacon Hill – High Point is a two seat ride today

         Yeah, but not a very good one (https://maps.app.goo.gl/wU2rsVsgMWoByyDdA). You have to transfer downtown or walk a long ways from 1st Avenue South to SoDo. Notice that the three-seat option shows up just because some people may not want to walk that far and the transfer downtown is pretty slow.

         Now consider a few blocks to the west at Morgan Junction. With Link it is a straightforward two-seat ride involving a transfer downtown (https://maps.app.goo.gl/fHcmxAgd6HnrAcdQ8). The problem is that takes a long time 48 minutes (station to bus stop).

         Yes, the 50 could run more often and become a sort of “bridge” between the Link and West Seattle buses. But for many trips (including this one) that just means a three-seat ride for this trip unless the bus managed to serve Beacon Hill Station directly. The same is true for Mount Baker. The 50 directly serves Columbia City (there is that). But even for Othello (which it directly serves) it is a pretty slow, looping process.

         West Seattle Link could make these trips better. Riders would take a bus to a West Seattle Link station. Then they would take the train to SoDo. Then they would take the train heading the other way. That would be a three-seat ride but probably faster than today. The point is, bus improvements would be much better than that. Bus improvements would mean that the buses serve SoDo directly (on the way to downtown). It is just as fast but with one less transfer.

      5. Ross,

         Sure, a direct route to SODO helps for getting to Beacon Hill station but that’s not the only part of Beacon Hill with high residential density and places to go. The area the 50 serves between 15th and Beacon on Columbian has lots of apartments and the VA. I’m strongly in favor of a Sodo busway – West Seattle bridge link for the C, H, and 21 but the 50 will still be a more natural connection to Beacon Hill for plenty of West Seattle trips. Not to mention the better choice for trips to/from Rainer Valley.

         My ideal service pattern right now would be extending the 36 to Seward Park on every other trip (for 20/30 minute service peak/off peak), making the 50 run every 15 from Seward Park to the Junction, and routing the 107 to the Junction via Georgetown, Highpoint, and Fauntleroy/Morgan (or maybe truncating it somewhere else in West Seattle if that’s too long). But I’d be keen to look into it more if I had the stop-level data for the 50 (speaking of which, if you can share that with me I’d love to see it)

      6. I’m strongly in favor of a Sodo busway – West Seattle bridge link for the C, H, and 21 but the 50 will still be a more natural connection to Beacon Hill for plenty of West Seattle trips.

         Sure, no question. And the 50 would skip SoDo if the buses served the SoDo Busway. That would basically make it an express from West Seattle to Beacon Hill/Rainier Valley.

         [The 50] is the better choice for trips to/from Rainer Valley.

         It depends on where you are headed. That is definitely true of Columbia City (the station or the neighborhood). But with Mount Baker and Rainier Beach I could see someone just transferring to Link instead of transferring to the 50 and then making another transfer. Then you have West Seattle to SeaTac. In some cases it might be better to head south initially but my guess is a lot of people would take a bus north to SoDo and the train south to SeaTac.

      7. Arguably, a similar argument is being made with the arrival of Lynnwood Link and the re-routing of many former downtown expresses to the rail. Many people regard Link as only faster if you live near a station or can leave home early enough to get a parking spot in the garage. Does this mean Lynnwood Link was not worth it? Definitely not, for all its flaws (e.g., should have ran up Aurora)! Few on here would say Lynnwood Link was not worth it in the end. West Seattle is a spread out area, and the bus hours could be used to give more of the area better connections to the rail, e.g., Alki, Admiral, High Point, e.g., more of a frequent network situation. That would be worth sacrificing a few minutes of travel time and one-seat rides to downtown, IMO. What I would say though is there needs to be more of a focus on making those transfers more efficient. Both the bus transfers to the rail and *especially* the transfers between rail lines. And especially during the period where West Seattle Link would be a spur line.

      8. Arguably, a similar argument is being made with the arrival of Lynnwood Link and the re-routing of many former downtown expresses to the rail.

         Look back as what I wrote above about Lake City:

         Lake City lost its one-seat ride to downtown. But it gained much better connections to Roosevelt, the U-District, the UW and Capitol Hill. What is true of Lake City is true of Northgate…

         What is true of Northgate is true of Lynnwood Link. Northgate was a really bad terminus. There is clear value in adding the connection to 130th, 145th and 185th because of the crossing (east-west) buses. Many of the riders are not just transferring to Link but are headed between urban centers (e. g. Lake City to Bitter Lake). In short, it allows for a much better network in the north end of Seattle. Mountlake Terrace could have made a decent terminus. There would be two options for the buses. They could just keep going to Downtown Seattle. This is extremely slow much of the day. Once the express lanes are reversed traffic gets really bad and the bus is stuck in it. The other option would be have the buses terminate there (as they do now at Lynnwood). This would require a fair amount of freeway work. You might as well just continue to Lynnwood (which is well suited for that). Maybe it was a stretch but there really was no obvious alternative for a bus-based plan or even an obvious terminus short of Lynnwood. So despite the relatively low ridership (that seems to have surprised people) it is a good addition.

         That isn’t the case with West Seattle. There is an obvious bus alternative that would have the buses running on the SoDo Busway to downtown. The Busway operates all day long. It is isn’t very far from there to downtown (which means it doesn’t cost that much for the buses to continue to run downtown). By continuing to downtown the buses make plenty of other key connections (like service to First Hill, Uptown, Bellevue, etc.). By connecting the buses at SoDo you also provide reverse direction trips (Beacon Hill, Rainier Valley, SeaTac, etc.). The main argument for West Seattle Link (over a bus-based alternative) is that you can terminate a lot of buses in West Seattle and thus save a lot of service. But you could do the same thing — for a lot less money — if you made people transfer at SoDo. More to the point, the enormous cost of West Seattle Link negates any savings from truncating the buses in West Seattle. Shifting the money from a multi-billion dollar capital project could keep the buses running frequently for a very long time. Thus it would not only be much better for riders but cheaper.

         It is just a lot harder to make an argument against Lynnwood Link than it is West Seattle Link.

   2. Another problem is that entirely cancelling West Seattle link is a political nonstarter, and there’s never been a real alternative brought to the table by ST.

      I think the most palatable solution would be to argue:
      1. West Seattle Link is useless without the downtown tunnel, and thus should be built after the downtown tunnel is complete
      2. While Ballard Link and the downtown tunnel are being built, ST should invest in C/H improvements so that West Seattle has near-term improvements in transit. This could include things like additional bus priority; additional service; extensions to the H line (to SeaTac or SLU or both).
      3. In the interim, ST should seriously consider multiple alternatives for serving West Seattle. I have no idea what would be realistic politically and financially; maybe a rail-convertible busway or an elevated/surface running rail alternative.

      1. But the second tunnel makes everyone else have a worse trip due to the 9 levels of escalators between the two.

         Sure, it’s nice that West Seattle gets to change at Alaska Junction rather than downtown Seattle if going to UW, but very very few people from Lynnwood are going to West Seattle. Everyone from Westlake and north gets to spend ≈10 minutes per trip on escalators if headed south of Capitol Hill and not headed to West Seattle.

         West Seattle link doesn’t give any improvements with DSTT2, but with DSTT2 most trips get worse.

      2. “cancelling West Seattle link is a political nonstarter, and there’s never been a real alternative brought to the table by ST.”

         ST will have to look at them if it can’t break the cost logjam and opening delays any other way. We’re just waiting to see if/when it does. We’ve offered our suggestions several times.

      3. @Glenn

         That’s a separate issue with the new tunnel rather than with West Seattle Link. They’re related but on the question of “should we build West Seattle Link ASAP” I don’t think it’s that relevant

         @Mike

         What I’m suggesting is that delaying West Seattle link in favor of Ballard and the downtown tunnel is the most realistic path to getting better-designed transit to West Seattle. Suggestions are great but from what I can tell the core issue is that ST (or perhaps the board) are trying to get West Seattle link done ASAP and haven’t taken a step back to see if that is the best path forward.

         In any case if West Seattle link is built as-is it is useless without the second tunnel

      4. “from what I can tell the core issue is that ST (or perhaps the board) are trying to get West Seattle link done ASAP and haven’t taken a step back to see if that is the best path forward.”

         That has been the problem all along. Dow Constantine put his thumb on the scale and championed the West Seattle stub first. Dow also lives in West Seattle, as do a significant number of other current/former city/county politicians, so that may be related to why he wants it first: “people like us” live there. Now that Dow is gone from the board and county executive, that direct pressure is gone, but the stub is living on due to momentum.

      5. Mike Orr,

         The ST3 tax money isn’t a slush fund to do whatever with. Look back to voter’s guide. There’s a hard plan. If transit planners want to change that… let’s have another public vote.

      6. Politics is only one aspect or constraint. In 2016, the ST3 voters faced an all or nothing choice; they could vote yes or no on the plan presented them by the board; the particulars of the ballot were not their doing. Do you want better transit for this set of taxes, yes or no? The voters trusted ST to give them a good set of projects. As it turns out, the set is not as good as needed. The costs are higher than expected; the revenue may be less than expected.

         The Enterprise Initiative is necessary as the ST3 plan is not fiscally or practically feasible. The plan must be changed or greatly delayed or both. Note that ST3 has already been changed in significant ways by the board from the ballot. Most projects are delayed; Stride 1 and 2 will be split; Stride 3 truncated; parking indefinitely delayed; the ST3 contributions for lines C and D were postponed many years as funds were provided to the G Line; ST3 Link is delayed; the leading option for the DSTT2 has a split CID station so added about 10 minutes to transfers between the east and south lines. Now the estimates for the West Seattle and Ballard lines are several billion more than expected.

         This fiscal crisis seems much larger that the one from Sound Move, 1996. There was a stall in 1999-2001. The board made several changes to the plan. Link would be south first; the First Hill and South Graham and BAR stations were cut; NE 45th Street station was put off until another vote; the two-way all-day busway on I-90 was put off; the NE 85th Street center access ramp in Kirkland was canceled and its funds used on other Kirkland projects; north Sounder became one-way peak-only with only four trips in each peak.

         The Enterprise Initiative may lead the board to reset ST3 in very significant ways. Covid may have reset the downtown office market. The second DSTT may be too costly; it may not be worthwhile if it makes network transfers so much worse. (See Reese Martin commentary).

         One possible answer is to delay West Seattle Link to place it in the same time frame as the Issaquah and South Kirkland line (a goofy project). In the meantime, much better service could be provided to Kirkland, Issaquah, and West Seattle by bus networks well integrated with ST2 Link. The minimum operating segment for West Seattle Link could be Link turnback trains from/to the South Forest Street base with service beginning at the SODO station at South Lander Street.

         One possible question for the board is the efficacy of Link for the Tacoma, Everett, Issaquah, and West Seattle lines. Please note that TransLink has changed its train lines with each new line; they are all automated, but they have different sizes and consists (e.g., Expo, Canada, Millennium). They grew and improved over the decades. The second generation Link LRV and better than the first generation ones.

         Operationally, how long should Link line be? Should additional crossover tracks be provided? Could turnback variants be used? Does every train have to have four LRV? Could signal improvements help the DSTT have shorter headway? How can ST2 Link be improved? There are many questions for the Enterprise Initiative. Can the 2016 plan be implemented as is? Is not the negative answer already known?

      7. “In 2016, the ST3 voters faced an all or nothing choice; they could vote yes or no on the plan presented them by the board; the particulars of the ballot were not their doing.”

         This is an important, true point.

         ST3 called them “representative projects”. Then after is passed, they became oddly fixed in stone and the Board ruled that a station closer to Harborview may be legally inconsistent.

         Then the Board went against the ST3 project definition by planning a bored tunnel to Alaska Junction (first needing additional local funds then as a baseline assumption) followed by the great CID design change with the awful transfers at every station. Meanwhile ST did not start disclosing station diagrams with the horrifically difficult underground transfers until 2018-2019. ST3 implied easy — even level cross platform — transfers in its concepts.

         The way the Board interprets ST3 is rather manipulative and arbitrary. But at this point, the argument that ST3 promised a particular station location or mode appears moot. As long as the investment serves the general corridor it appears valid.

         The real question is the money question. West Seattle and DSTT/ Ballard projects appear off by at least 200%. The other subarea Link project costs are higher by 20-40%. Is it fair or logical to expect the other subareas to financially backfill the Seattle extensions, maybe making them scale back their own projects?

         This is a classic example of what happens when there’s no emphasis placed on productivity or ridership or travel time. It’s all about backroom property developer deal making and biases of leaders that don’t ride transit trying to survive the next election. They crave the ridden cutting ceremony of the glass palace Link station but ignore whether or not that station actually gets used.

      8. In any case if West Seattle link is built as-is it is useless without the second tunnel

         West Seattle is useless if the trains end at SoDo. But ST is actually looking at putting all the trains into the existing tunnel. If that happens then West Seattle goes back to being the next thing that is built. If that doesn’t happen then I don’t see how they build any of it. That is what Mike is getting at. A few years back it was clear that West Seattle Link was a poor value and shouldn’t be done next. Now it isn’t clear how it gets built at all.

         Yes, you could reverse the order of things. But I don’t thing that would be easy from a political standpoint. If you assume that the best thing to build for West Seattle is West Seattle Link then of course those riders would be upset. Not only would your dream project be delayed, but it would be delayed indefinitely. You would likely need to pass ST4 to build it (and that is no guarantee). I don’t see that as a big selling point — it kinda misses the point.

         Ultimately we have to convince people that their assumption is wrong; that a bus alternative to West Seattle Link is better. Unless we do that, we are stuck in this mess. If we do that, then I agree, we might as well keep West Seattle Link as a long term option. But real key here is to get more people to realize — or even consider — that a bus alternative would be better (for riders) than West Seattle Link.

      9. “As long as the investment serves the general corridor it appears valid.”

         The specific mandate was to connect the specified regional centers. That’s satisfied by having a station somewhere downtown, somewhere in SLU, and somewhere in Ballard. The debate over moving Midtown station to 8th & Madison (or was it 9th & Madison) is whether that’s still serving downtown. ST said it wasn’t, or that the lawyers would have to debate whether it could be. Alaska Junction is an urban center (Seattle) rather than a regional center (PSRC), but it would be argued that the mandate of West Seattle Link was to serve that.

         The Lynnwood Link alternatives analysis had alternatives as wide as Aurora, I-5, 15th Ave NE, and Lake City Way. They all fulfilled the mandate of connecting the Northgate and Lynnwood regional centers. Where they stopped in between was non-essential. The I-5 alternative with stations at 145th and 185th had a presumptive default status because it was the representative alignment in the ballot measure, so if ST wanted to deviate from it, it would have to write a statement listing its reasons for doing so. It decided that deviating from the representative alignment wasn’t worth it. But with CID/N&S, the long downtown transfers, Ballard 14th station, and the West Seattle alternatives that don’t reach Alaska Junction, ST decided those were worth it, or were necessary due to budget limitations.

      10. “but it would be argued that the mandate of West Seattle Link was to serve that.”

          If you look at the West Seattle Urban Center OPCD map, you’ll see that Avalon Station is within the designated boundaries (as well as the Alaska Junction station).

          ST can fulfill serving the West Seattle urban center and stop at Avalon. It’s clear that going to the Alaska Junction site is an extra $2B+ given that it’s $4B between Alaska Junction and Delridge stations.

          And I don’t think Alaska Junction residents are prepared for the years of construction and station excavation removal that’s going to be involved. Those apartment rentals are really going to suffer, and other West Seattle residents will avoid the businesses in the area during construction.

      11. “the two-way all-day busway on I-90 was put off”

          What’s this I-90 busway? How is it different from buses using the center HOV lanes which we did get until Link construction displaced the lanes?

      12. If tunneling under West Seattle blew up the cost of West Seattle Link, then maybe the best value engineering would be to go back to above-grade for West Seattle. That might even improve ridership and business around the stations.

      13. If tunneling under West Seattle blew up the cost of West Seattle Link, then maybe the best value engineering would be to go back to above-grade for West Seattle. That might even improve ridership and business around the stations.

          I think the biggest expense is just getting to The Junction. It sits at about 320 feet above sea level. SoDo is at about 20. So you have to go up 300 feet. You also have to cross the Duwamish and add a station at Delridge. There are all sorts of options but they end up costing a bunch of money. The default is just to stay high. This makes it easy to cross the Duwamish and easy to reach The Junction. But all those really tall pylons cost a lot of money. The station at Delridge (so high in the air) costs a lot of money too. You can cross the river at a lower level (like Ballard) with a draw bridge. But you need enough room to get up to The Junction unless you tunnel. But tunneling is expensive.

          Then there is the distance to the rest of the system. There will be no stations between Delridge and SoDo — a distance well over two miles. This would be cheap if it was all surface running but obviously it isn’t. The lack of stations mean that the cost per station is extremely high. This is just one of the reasons why West Seattle Link is such a terrible value. The other two are the dispersed nature of West Seattle and the existing high-speed infrastructure (that only need a relatively minor improvement before it offers better functionality than Link).

   3. Oh, and assume for a second that we made it our mission to run rail to every significant part of West Seattle. How could we possibly do that? The train is poised to go south of the Junction. That means no service to Alki or Admiral. You can’t possibly serve the college. As you head south it is difficult to provide much of a grid (given the challenging east-west geography). For example imagine a station at Brandon, which is about half a mile south of The Junction. Now look at what it is like to drive east-west through there: https://maps.app.goo.gl/wMf38g1AVRqpKoyS9. It just doesn’t work from a grid-perspective and of course there isn’t anything close to Brandon to justify a station. So you end up skipping stations. You put a station at say, Morgan & 35th. This is essentially High Point, so at least you get some walk-up riders. But not many from Delridge, because of the hill (https://maps.app.goo.gl/ygxLvepaCDpyjHdW8). The only bus connection has to go south and then across on Sylvan. Those riders are better off just taking the bus north to the Delridge Station. Just like the north end of West Seattle, they get nothing out of this addition.

      Thus you only add a handful of stops with limited benefit. Even Seattle Subway’s ridiculously optimistic Vision Map (https://www.seattlesubway.org/regional-map/) has a handful of stops. The cost per rider is enormous. The benefit per rider is minimal. West Seattle is just much better suited for buses.

   4. HZ,

      Ah, the old “20 years from now” argument. Who knows what is going to happen 20 years from now? ST4? You are joking, right? I think voters realize the daisy chain tax increases of ST2- ST3- ST4…. nobody wants a ST4 tax increase to complete projects promised in ST3. Plus the voters are sick of waiting around for promised projects to be finished.

      At some point, transit providers need to stand and deliver on projects that work and are built on time. There’s a lot of moving parts in the political and economic machine of Greater Seattle…. but if there isn’t a big realignment and practical solutions delivered in the next 4 years with Katie Wilson running the show in Seattle…. the next 20 years aren’t going to matter much.

      1. Tacomee,

         Yeah of course it is likely nobody will want a ST4 given ST3 doesn’t go so well now, but we shall let the referendum find out, not your response.

   5. Also, the West Seattle bridge will need to be replaced around 2060*, so having an alternative during reconstruction will come in handy.

      I think the fact that West Seattle link is not needed today, but may be needed in several decades meanwhile Ballard Link is needed today, is good justification for switching their priorities.

      1. *citation that West Seattle Bridge replacement is needed around 2060: https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/programs/bridges-stairs-and-other-structures/bridges/west-seattle-bridge-program/high-rise-bridge-replacement-study

      2. Delta,

         You forgot Seattle lets bridges go 40 years past their expiration date, so the West Seattle Bridge really needs replacing in 2100. Nothing to worry about yet.

         The reason Sound Transit is unlikely to change the firing order of different projects or even drastically alter planned projects is they’ll not want to open up any of this to public scrutiny. Imagine a new reality where a very limited budget could be divided up differently to fund a number of projects huge (and rising) costs? If I was a ST board member, why would I want this?

         Ryan Mello wouldn’t want to support any “radical alignment” because Pierce County could get screwed over.

      3. The alternative to the West Seattle Bridge is the lower bridge (just like last time). The buses operated just fine. Despite the obvious time savings (dramatically faster than driving around) there really wasn’t that much crowding on the buses. They were clearly popular but not overloaded.

      4. Tacomee,
         The same is true for WSDOT. They are working on the Lake Washington Ship canal bridge from 1965; it is falling apart. They are working on the Portage Bay viaduct; it is said to be seismically vulnerable. The Legislature has not provided enough funds for maintenance; they would rather build new limited access highways. The Legislature has not provided local governments with enough gas tax revenue for maintenance; the Seattle drawbridges over the ship canal will probably need replacement before the West Seattle bridges. (In Tacoma, the 11th or Murray Morgan bridge had some issues).

      5. Is needed but it is more likely some kind of rehabilitation will be done to defer a full replacement.
         There are lot of bridges in Seattle that are due for replacement by now. Some of them are not even earthquake-proof by modern standard.

   6. agreed. Literally everything in the article ignores current trends towards even more cars and more people. In the end once buses are snarled in traffic, rail will get built at 20X or more the current cost. Then future urbanists will cry out online at the lack of vision by this generation much in the same way today’s cries out at losing the Seattle subway to Atlanta because the cost at the time was too high and buses were also good enough back then.

      1. Forward Thrust had buses for West Seattle, not rail. You can see it in the picture (https://www.theurbanist.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/17013207411_cce9745488_o.jpg).

         once buses are snarled in traffic

         Did you even read the essay? The whole point is to not prevent buses from being snarled in traffic. Whether it be Denny, Aurora or Montlake between 520 and the UW — we should avoid that. Using your logic the only thing we should for those corridors is build rail. It will all be done in three hundred years.

         The same is true in West Seattle. Rather than wait until fifteen years so that riders can be forced to transfer (on one portion of their trip) we make the buses better almost immediately. With a relatively minor investment the buses could be running in their own lanes from West Seattle to downtown (via the Spokane Street Viaduct and SoDo Busway). The bus would be as fast as a train but you avoid the transfer. With the savings you improve buses in West Seattle (something Light Rail wouldn’t do).

      2. Literally everything in the article ignores current trends towards even more cars and more people.

         That is ridiculous. The trend towards more people and more cars would make the case even stronger for Better Bus Lanes as well as all the other improvements to make the buses faster and better.

3. Regarding working with the County to provide better service, this post focused a lot on Seattle holding things back but there’s also opportunity for the County to do more as well to increase service levels, especially after bus lanes are installed.

   For example, Fix the L8 has had concerns about Metro’s ability to respond quickly to bus lanes and scale up service to meet the demand that they would bring. New bus lanes won’t result in time savings or reliability improvements for a rider whose stop is skipped because the bus was full.

   Luckily, Girmay Zahilay released a campaign video with AMR promising to do exactly that: https://bsky.app/profile/alexis4seattle.bsky.social/post/3m4chpxqyt22u. We also had a great meeting with Metro and who took our concerns seriously and have various short- and long-term levers they can pull to react to this.

   Finally, STM is up for renewal next year and even though it funds a minority of total bus service, it’s a big opportunity for Seattle to start getting closer to the pre-COVID frequencies that I unfortunately never got to experience myself. Hopefully the city goes big and we can see some massive service improvements from it alongside the additional funding the County is investing into service.

   1. Yes, absolutely, it is a two-way street with Metro. But I also think the city has the greatest potential when it comes to improving communication between the agencies. The county is just bigger. Not counting the city at-large district the city districts are smaller (about 100,000 people versus 250,000). From the Seattle perspective there is only one county (and only one state). In contrast the county has to deal with a lot of cities (and unincorporated areas).

      Consider what happened to the 62. The county planners (at Metro) made various suggestions. Apparently the new route for the 62 was rejected by the city. The county could keep bringing up the issue but from the perspective of the county, the case is closed. They really can’t do anything unless the city changes their mind.

      As luck with have it, I managed to talk to Greg Spotts (then head of SDOT) in a small, informal meeting. I brought up the possible change to the 62. He hadn’t heard of it. Thus it is quite possible it just slipped through the cracks. After all, it wasn’t his administration that made that decision (it was the previous one). Now I want to be clear: I really like Mr. Spotts. I think he did an excellent job and feel like we are on the same page. In the grand scheme of things this is small potatoes. But he didn’t refer me to the chief liaison for Metro (probably because there isn’t one). But if there was one (whether they have that role formally or informally) it is a lot more likely to see action on this issue. It is quite likely that there would be no major opposition to moving the 62 — that it could be done quite easily. Everyone from the mayor on down would approve. But getting “easy wins” is a lot more likely if there is better communication between the city and Metro.

      1. The streamlined Route 62 in east Green Lake or Tangletown is known. It was in the Seattle Transportation plan from the Spotts era; it was in the Comp Plan from land use planning; it was in the P2 network from Metro for the 2021 North Link Connections project. It needs pavement planning and funding; the levy has several funding pots; this could come from the pavement management and transit flow pots. It needs a champion to get it on the spend plan.

4. I like bringing a bus route back to 1st Ave. It could extend further south past the stadiums, perhaps even to Museum of Flight, and Northbound it could serve all of Queen Anne . The new Waterfront along with Pike Place Market is seeing even more of an upsurge in visitors and locals, and is the funnest best vibe downtown neighborhood.

   1. One route pair that has been suggested is moving the 1/14 to 1st Avenue. That would result in 15 minute weekday, 30 minute weekend/evening service on 1st going north to Uptown and south to Jackson Street.

      New additional routes depend on waiting for expansion funding, sufficient resolution of the driver shortage, and competing with other corridors that would serve more people, so there are tradeoffs.

      1. Mike, the Metro planners put that concept in their response to council provisos about service for the waterfront and north Belltown. It is not a great concept as it requires costly new ETB overhead between Lenora and Broad streets. It would separate Route 14 from other South Jackson Street routes; it would separate Route 1 from other west QA routes. A better network has been suggested.

   2. Robert, in summer 2023, you suggested that I help some Pike Place Market folks on that issue. We have suggested a better network to Mayor Harrell (2023) and now Metro (2025). The Council struck the CC Streetcar from the CIP (2024).

   3. There are a bunch of options for buses on First Avenue. There are all sorts of trade-offs. I wrote about them here.

      Personally I would go with the 24/33/124 option. It would not require any new wire. The transfers for those who like the old routing would be good. Plenty of buses would connect on each end. From a “common market” standpoint there isn’t much of a hit. The buses have unique coverage area or they are essentially part of a “spine” and really aren’t needed. I would run the buses in the middle of the street on First Avenue but in a weave pattern like this diagram for Aurora. The 24 and 33 seem like borderline buses. They run every half hour but I could easily see them running every fifteen minutes, especially if Seattle passes a big STBD levy. That would mean 7.5 minute headways on First Avenue through Belltown which seems quite good and better than the streetcar plans.

5. One problem unique to Seattle is that we have three different agencies planning our transit.

   I know ST contracts with KCM for operations and some elected officials sit on both boards. And both agencies give lip service to coordination and cooperation. However, when they make bigger, long-term decisions they still seem to look primarily inward — and make choices based on their own realities.

   On top of that, SDOT has their own ideas of what to do. They’re the shadow third transit planning agency. And their forays into transit have had issues like the slow FHSC. You can really tell that they don’t actually operate buses and streetcars sometimes.

   I feel like the problem is as much or maybe more organizational than it is geographic. It’s particularly true when the people making decisions don’t ride transit every day. Even if they did, they don’t drive the buses or trains. To many leaders, it’s more of a political chess game than a matter of affecting their daily lives.

   Before things can get better for riders, I think some sort of new institutional layer is needed to force transit to work better as one system. I don’t know what form is best. It probably should be PSRC doing it — but Seattle, Sound Transit and KCM do not look to PSRC to guide their decisions. It’s crazy when ST plans stations with awful layouts for bus transfers (especially when elevators or stairs are involved), for example. But until that happens, Seattle will still have suboptimal transit for many.

   I’ve really liked the idea of a Rider’s Committee to review all the major projects no matter which agency is the project sponsor. How much power it has and how the committee is assembled is a subsequent debate. But I really feel that we should be addressing the structural problem that better looks at the reality of transit riders and drivers before getting into what projects are needed.

   The mass public doesn’t see the agency differences. They just expect a great transit system to ride and don’t really care which agency develops or oversees the change.

   1. Unofrtunately, I can’t think of a single city of any significant size anywhere in the world where everything is done by a single agency. Cities like Philadelphia, Portland, and Lousiville come very close, but they are all right on the state border, and service to the other side is provided by separate agencies.

      Maybe we could be the first, though. Especially as we’re not near a state border. The legislature has all the power they need to do this.

      Just creating another administrative layer would not be an improvement, though. An agency that covered the entire metropolitan area should have the power to override decisions made by others. Otherwise, it’s just another veto point slowing everything down.

      1. Every region has its own quirks. But it’s very rare to have two operators overlap in geography like ST and Metro do — with neither operator nested in city government in charge of streets.

         And even in a place like LA, the sales tax for transportation is collected by a different governing entity than the transit planning even though they’re both nested inside LA Metro. That ensures some level of checks and balances that we don’t have in Seattle.

         The only major example that’s I think is somewhat comparable to Seattle is BART — yet the BART board is directly elected so that’s a different dynamic. Maybe New York — but the main subway is nested within city government that also oversees the streets and carries most of the riders — and the suburban services tend to be corridor specific.

      2. Can you name another large urban county in the US where 70% of the boardings are one operator, 30% are another operator with both service areas essentially overlaid on each other — with neither governed by a city. And with the 30% operator given billions to build projects to get closer to 35-40%?

         Before the FWLE opening, ST was getting over 31% of all King County transit boardings. That will tick upward with FWLE, cross-lake opening + Judkins Park, Pinehurst and 3 Stride lines by 2030. A full-build ST3 would raise that percentage further if ST could afford to build it.

         It’s just crazy to me that the decisions on transit are made one agency at a time.

      3. FWIW, Metro ridership is still growing faster than ST ridership, even amidst all these openings. Having both the numerator and denominator grow is a good thing.

         Metro’s boom can probably be assigned mostly to recovery from the pandemic. It is harder to parse out what gets how much credit for ST ridership growth.

6. Always a fan of when the blog jumps to “cancel voter approved plans” because they think they can play transit planner better.

   /s

   1. [ad hominem fallacy]

      1. With all due respect, stating two facts, that are not accusations, is not an ad hominem attack.

         Posts here are the opinions of the authors, not of the blog as a whole. That is a straightforward neutral fact, pointed out to alleviate confusion.

      2. I agree, Brent.

      3. I’m not sure who moderated it or why, but it may have been an overreaction. I don’t quite remember the original message, but the feeling I got from it was it was a little pointed but not that bad.

      4. From Wikipedia:

         Ad hominem (Latin for ‘to the person’), short for argumentum ad hominem, refers to several types of arguments where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than the substance of the argument itself.

         That is exactly what you did. You did not address the argument, you addressed the person (or people) who were making it.

      5. Well, I will address the argument, if you insist. We had the chance to vote for buses as the future for the network, by voting down ST3. The buses-are-better-than-rail side lost the election.

         Who vocally campaigned on what side is a matter of internet record.

         I still don’t know anyone who wants to go back and change their vote, though there is plenty of open-mindedness on implementation.

         The blog’s editorial board supported ST3. I suppose I should have stated that in the first place, since some are confused about where the blog stood vs the views of the author.

      6. Who vocally campaigned on what side is a matter of internet record.

         And irrelevant to the discussion.

         The buses-are-better-than-rail side lost the election.

         Oh bullshit. That is complete nonsense and you know it. Holy cow, I thought you would just let it go but OK, we are having that discussion even though it really has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

         Voters were not given a range of choices. It was simply ST3 or nothing. It is quite likely that a more sensible set of improvements (such as that proposed by Doug Trumm — https://www.theurbanist.org/2016/01/11/ballard-spur-and-metro-8-subway-serve-seattle-better-than-interbay-light-rail/) would have been a lot more popular in Seattle. I would have fully embraced Doug’s proposal. But we weren’t given a chance just as we weren’t given a chance to “vote for buses”.

         It is worth noting that the last proposal to increase taxes and spend it on buses passed by a higher margin in Seattle than did ST3. But voters in ST3 were not told “if you vote ‘No’ you will get better buses”. They were basically told “A no vote means you don’t want to spend money on transit”. Tim Eyman wrote the anti-ST3 editorial. Tim Eyman!

         There were plenty of people — myself included — who thought the major projects of ST3 were flawed. (This was not the case with ST2 or ST1.) We were left with a couple tough choices. Just vote yes and accept a poorly thought out plan because it at least has some good ideas (like Ballard Link). Or oppose it in hopes that they will regroup and propose something better. I don’t blame anyone for taking one approach or the other.

         But to actually bring this around to the topic at hand, the idea that ST3 was a well thought out proposal is absurd, especially given what we know now. 8 billion for an estimated 20,000 riders, many of whom would be better off with an existing bus (let alone something we could could provide for a quarter of that cost)? It is just a bad idea that never had any science behind it. There was never a study that recommended West Seattle Link. The choice of improvements to West Seattle was arbitrary. The choice of rail was arbitrary (there was never a comparison with a bus alternative).

         There is simply no evidence that the planners knew what was best for the region. Their entire approach is wrong. Remember the one key element of Sound Transit rail: The Spine. Not only do they want to build a 70 mile subway line in the middle of suburbia (mostly next to a freeway, of course) but it is their core project! If built it will stretch out farther than the New York City Subway, the Paris Metro, The London Undergound and Overground! In a fairly small city that is actually rather centralized and has only a handful of dense pockets outside the city limits (most of which exist on the East Side and are served by Link). It is absurd. No one who knows anything about transit would have come up with the idea. It violates every principle we know about successful transit systems (https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/economics-of-urban-light-rail-CH.pdf) and just plain common sense. Yet we are supposed to just assume that the same folks who stick strongly to that absurd vision somehow came up with an ideal plan for Seattle (and the East Side) despite all the evidence to the contrary? Why?

      7. I would go back and change my vote. I supported ST3, but frankly the plans have been so bad and so much more expensive that if given the option, I’d want to force ST to go back and rethink. I still want rail in most places (maybe not West Seattle, but I don’t live there or go there, so not really my biggest concern), but I want good connections between lines.

   2. ST may have to cancel or modify them anyway given the cost overruns. It can do that in a better way or worse way (i.e., whether it helps a lot of passengers or not). For instance, automating a Ballard-Westlake line would both save money and provide ultra-frequent service (potentially 2 minutes on that line). Deleting DSTT2 would save a lot of money, probably much more than enough to upgrade DSTT1 to 1.5 minute frequency capacity (which three lines would use most but not all of). West Seattle is just not a very effective project in the first place. Reverting CID/N and CID/S would help people going to walk-up destinations in the CID and to the library and RapidRide G transfers. So these are examples of better things ST could do to address the cost overruns and its blind spots re passengers’ needs. We have a public duty to publish articles explaining them and promoting them.

      Or ST could choose other worse ways to close its budget gap. Two of those are a SODO-Delridge stub, or a Ballard phase terminating at Smith Cove. The West Seattle one would be a train to nowhere. The Ballard one would address SLU mobility but not Ballard. If the second phases end up never being built (Delridge-AJ, Smith Cove-Ballard), that would leave us with little.

   3. The plan approved by voters (the revenue approved versus the routing approved) is not possible to implement. Maybe we need another vote, but the plan needs to change.

      1. Christopher Cramer,

         I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Sound Transit was built from the ground up to do one thing better than anything else. Resist change. Sound Transit is, first and foremost, a tax district. Sound Transit was voted in with a “pie in the sky” projects list, much of it regional light rail, that the voters won’t ever forget. Subareas are baked in to make sure taxes collected in one place can’t be easily transferred to Seattle. There is no elected board to Sound Transit and pols that sit on the board all have put Sound Transit business on the back burner of their political careers.

         Let me give you an example from real life. Daddy has one too many beers after Thanksgiving and promises his 8 year old daughter a pony for Christmas. Stupid idea, right? Because the family can’t afford a pony, has no place to put it or the time to take care of it. But can dad really explain all of that to an 8 year old? Nope, he’s just the bastard who didn’t keep his promise about the pony. His kid will give him grief about that for decades.

         Now Sound Transit is going to build a light rail line from Seattle to Tacoma for billions and billions of dollars that is going to be slower than the current bus ride. Let that sink in for a moment. Billion dollar light rail that’s slower than the bus. Stupid idea, right? And here’s the absolute worst part. Tacoma was promised a fucking light rail pony for 25 years! What the Hell could poor Ryan Mello do here? Publicly admit the light rail would slower than the bus and call the whole project off? Pierce County voters want their light rail pony, thank you very much. Doesn’t even matter if it’s lame.

         I brought up T-Town because I know the project well, but I think you’ll find that every other ST project suffers from the same problem however. Looking at the budget, both West Seattle and Ballard *could* get ground level or maybe elevated spur lines easy enough. That’s what’s in the budget. The problem is both places were promised subway stations…. over and over for 10 years. How can the board walk that back? Because everybody wants their pony!

      2. “Pierce County voters want their light rail pony, thank you very much.”

         I thought you said they didn’t want it. It was Pierce County politicians who wanted Tacoma Dome Link. Pierce County voters voted against ST3, so they didn’t want it.

      3. “The problem is both places were promised subway stations…. over and over for 10 years.”

         They weren’t promised it. They just hid their demands until after the vote and then demanded it, and ST let itself get pushed around by them too easily.

         And “they” isn’t all the good people of Ballard and West Seattle, just a few loud groups claiming to speak for them.

      4. The express bus from Tacoma to Seattle will always be faster than the train with 16 stops along the way. During bad traffic, the train with 5 stops along the way might barely beat it.

         And so it was a bad idea to give people living in Puyallup, Sumner, Auburn, Kent, Tukwila, Des Moines, SeaTac, and Rainier Valley a faster way to get to downtown Seattle, Capitol Hill, UW, the airport, and almost-downtown Tacoma or other places in the above list faster than backtracking to express buses amongst Tacoma, Federal Way, and downtown Seattle.

      5. The express bus from Tacoma to Seattle will always be faster than the train with 16 stops along the way. During bad traffic, the train with 5 stops along the way might barely beat it.

         Wait, are you comparing South Sounder with Link? Seriously? OK, just some basics:

         1) Sounder uses existing tracks. This means that the cost to actually build it was minimal.

         2) Sounder is competitive with driving for plenty of trips, even without traffic. For example Auburn to Seattle takes 33 minutes by Sounder. At 3:00 am it takes about 30 minutes to drive. Realistically, even with HOV-3 three lanes, Sounder would beat the bus most of the time.

         3) Sounder does not hug the freeway. It tends to serve the civic centers (such as they are). Places like Auburn tend to sprawl. But even in Auburn there is the semblance of an urban center there, close to the station. Kent actually has significant destinations not far from the station.

         The only exception to this is Tacoma itself. That’s because the train curves south when it leaves Tacoma (even though Seattle is to the north) and then basically overshoots Seattle by going too far east to serve Puyallup. But again, that is where the train goes. The agency saved billions by leveraging the existing railway. This is a common approach taken all over the world.

         Every other station has a fairly direct trip to Seattle. If they really wanted to speed up the rail trip from Tacoma to Seattle they would just make the trains faster (something Troy Serad wrote about).

         In contrast, Link is basically just a metro:

         1) It has plenty of stops like a normal metro (although it should have more).

         2) It leverages no existing tracks which explains why it is so expensive.

         3) It runs close to the freeway in the suburbs as a way to save money.

         4) By running so close to the freeway (and having plenty of stops) it is not competitive with driving.

         5) Like all metros it is bound to get a lot of ridership from a combination of trips within the urban core. There will be very few trips between suburban locations.

         This last section is key. Of course Tacoma Dome Link will make travel between Fife and Tukwila much faster. So what? Very few people make that trip. In contrast there are plenty of people who take a trip from say, Roosevelt to Capitol Hill. Just like most cities in the world, Seattle is well suited for a metro inside it along with commuter rail outside it. Everything else should be done via buses (both regional express and local). What we are doing is very weird (and not very smart).

   4. the plan approved was to only spend 1.5 billion dollars on west seattle. it never said to spend 7 billion

   5. This is one of Ross’ more nuanced calls to reconsider the ST3 plans, and I think it’s actually fairly reasonable. STB is not a monolith in regard to the plans; I wrote a defense of WSLE last year and much of those arguments hold for the rest of the ST3 program. However, it’s a fact that under the current funding situation, ST cannot afford to build either of the extensions planned for Seattle. So, anything the agency does will fundamentally have to defy the voter-approved plans. There’s already a valid argument that the voter-approved plans have been defied to a significant extent, so what’s to be said about that?

   6. “Always a fan of when the blog jumps to “cancel voter approved plans” because they think they can play transit planner better.”

      Please explain what benefit you see in splitting the core north-south line at Westlake, and making a large portion of the existing passengers spend ≈ 10 minutes traveling 9 escalators down for a trip that used to be a one seat ride?

      Because that’s the current plan.

      I don’t think that, or many other parts of the current plan, would have passed the ballot box had there been details presented,

      For West Seattle, the plan isn’t quite as bad, but the stations will be as deep as UW. To me, however, it looks like any time advantage Link would have over the existing bus service would be lost getting to and from the stations, not counting the fact the majority of the bus passengers don’t live within walking distance of the proposed stations.

      So other than “this is the plan and we should stick with the plan” what advantage do you see with this plan?

      1. In fairness, SODO is intended to be an easier place to transfer — although many transfers can’t be made there.

         I think though that the voters were never told about the awful rail line transfers. I think ST3 may have even gotten voted down if they had.

      2. SODO would be an easier place to transfer, except for eastside riders, if the second SODO Station is designed with that principle in mind. But I have not seen any documents that ST has that principle in mind.

         As some have pointed out, eastsiders could use two transfers at Chinatown and SODO to avoid a more time-consuming transfer.

         Riders coming from the north would probably do better taking the 44 RapidRide to get to Ballard. Fixing the (future) 45th bus lanes would probably be orders of magnitude cheaper than fixing the Westlake-to-Westlake transfers, and simultaneously give Ross a victory over the Ballard-UW deadenders (Martin’s common phrase).

      3. “I think though that the voters were never told about the awful rail line transfers. I think ST3 may have even gotten voted down if they had.”

         ST didn’t know about the awful rail transfers until after the vote when subsequent engineering studies discovered the infeasability of a shallow alignment under 5th. ST had a choice then, it could have said “Good train-to-train transfers are essential to Link’s success and the sine que non of any multi-line subway” and explored other alignments with better transfers, or just plow through anyway with bad transfers. It chose the latter.

      4. “ST had a choice then, it could have said “Good train-to-train transfers are essential to Link’s success and the sine que non of any multi-line subway” and explored other alignments with better transfers, or just plow through anyway with bad transfers. It chose the latter.”

         ST still has a third option, albeit not as popular. That would be to build the tracks and operate the trains in SODO to allow alternating platforms and destinations. While 12 or 15 minute frequency is theoretically a problem, waiting for the next train would be about the same amount of time (if not less) as transferring from the first train is — and standing casually at the platform is easier than dealing with lots of escalators or stairs.

         Unfortunately, the track layout as currently planned in SODO doesn’t allow for this. It also doesn’t allow for trains to shift easily to another platform or destination, which incidentally renders the whole downtown Seattle tunnel “redundancy” argument moot when it comes to trains.

      5. Of course a fourth option is to forgo the second tunnel entirely.l and squeeze three lines in the DSTT.

      6. Why are we still talking about a new set of platforms at SoDo? Remaking the existing station to have a center platform is doable under traffic, though there would be a couple of two- or three-day interruptions probably. Do them over New Years and the Fourth of July.

         The 1 Line is limited to trains every six minutes. If we build WSLE, it will always run at policy headways, never more frequently. Never. Ever. Unless of course everyone who now lives in the SFH in West Seattle dies off and their heirs want high rise living.

         EVEN if there has to be a bypass some day or Ross gets his four block away underground express, and the single line has to handle all that, it can.

         In truth, with either form of multiple paths for “Line 1” all three services would probably run policy headways. That means three-three-four on the SoDo main. Instead, they’re going to spend most of a Billion for a TOTAL, both ways, of twelve trains per hour. What an enormous waste of resources!

         Just chop the rear ten feet off the backs of a couple of buildings adjacent to the bike way between Lander and Forest and take the bikeway for the northbound track from WSLE. Lander is going to overpass the tracks no matter what solution is adopted, so having a trailing point merge turnout right in the middle of what is now Lander is No. Big. Deal.

         Diverge the southbound WSLE at the curve into Forest. It can be done; there’s some tricky engineering to strengthen the outside of the structure which will suddenly be asked to support a whole train every few minutes, but gosh, last time I looked, concrete sticks to itself.

         This is SO maddening. A LOT of money has to be wrung out of both projects or nothing useful will be built. A half a billion can be saved on WSLE just on this damn station and then another half billion will be saved later by not subsuming the busway up to Lower RBW.

         Even if DSTT2 somehow gets resurrected and the RV trains are routed into it, there is enough room to have a burrowing junction replace the pocket track south of Stadium. The pocket might have to start a bit further to the south so maybe the busway loses its eastside shoulder north of Holgate. Whoop-te-doo. It’s hardly ever used, and professional drivers can get around a broken down bus safely using the opposite lane.

         For those who haven’t been here for long, the idea is that the southbound tube for the DSTT2 would stay down a couple of hundred yards beyond the
         portal for the northbound track and would rise up between the north and southbound Spine tracks in the space taken by the pocket track. This would be a grade-separated junction. Trains going the same direction would contest their track to the south where all trains are hosted, but trains going the other way would be insulated from each other.

         Why is everyone not singing this song? Is it that you didn’t think of it? So, OH MY GOD we can’t do that! Is that what it’s all about? It sure seems that way. This is a big reason why women get so much more done, even though it seems to men like they waste a lot of time listening carefully and caring for each other.

         Here’s a secret, Bros: IT’S NOT WASTED!

      7. Addendum. I’m assuming that everything north of IDS (of “El CID”) will be automated, at least to Mariner and the stations will have platform doors to control door grabbers. So trains will be running at two-minute headways north of the junction with East Link.

         With proper revamping the tunnel can handle the load.

      8. Heck Tom! I’ve stated several times that I’m cool with a single platform SODO Station too. And it’s ridiculous to buy more land just a few hundred feet west of the OMF when the OMF land can simply be changed to allow for the West Seattle tracks — and tie in to the current operations with virtually no operations disruption.

         I think we both agree that ST hasn’t tried hard enough at the SODO station design to save the busway, trail, hundreds of millions in cost, track flexibility and transfer difficulty. They just don’t seem interested.

         I hope that a scaled back SODO Station evaluation comes out in the shared DSTT scenario that they’re now working on — but I doubt it. The last round of cost cutting adjustments presented several days ago still didn’t reduce the three sets of vertical change proposed at SODO even though it’s obvious to many of us that they could have.

         And it’s truly sad and frustrating that this key transfer station could be done differently at much less cost and make transfers so much easier and make train operations more flexible for decades to come — yet ST hasn’t maintained a blind eye to even considering it despite much nudging by many citizens. It screws riders for decades to so many places, including anyone headed to SeaTac north or east of Downtown Seattle.

         Anyway, I was just responding to Mike’s notion that implied that there were only two choices if ST was committed to the second tunnel.

      9. I hate transferring to the 50 in the SODO concrete jungle middle of nowhere. I don’t see why anybody would want to.

      10. Al, thanks.

          About using the MF, I think I’m not getting what you’re referring to. Are they buying land for the connection to WSLE? I thought it was going to run down the Horton Street right-of-way. I guess to make the wye at the busway end the building in the southeast quadrant of the busway and Horton would have to be taken. Google maps says that it’s A-One Ornamental Ironworks, but the building is seriously tagged in StreetView, so it looks abandoned.

          So it seems that building will have to go even if you use the outer loop for the northbound connection. There has to be a low-speed curve to connect the north-south revenue trackage with the access to the MF.

          Can you elaborate? Thank you.

      11. @ Tom:

          Here is an aerial overlay of the track alignment:

          https://westseattlelink.infocommunity.org/img/AE-0036-17-West-Seattle-Project-to-Build-rollplot.pdf

          I grabbed this quickly. I’m sure the actual property take maps are in the Final EIS appendices .

          Notice that the line will take out many industrial buildings in SODO to make the curve. Then they’ve proposed a new direct connection track between the OMF and the West Seattle tracks too.

          Finally, the Board is buying properties for West Seattle Link now. The Board authorized staff to begin the real estate acquisition already.

      12. After digging online a bit, I found drawings with the properties that ST intends to take indicated by a double border:

          https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/14a-WSLE-FinalEIS-AppendixL-supportinginformation-part1.pdf

          The takes begin well north of Horton. Notably ST wants to take properties on the east side of the SODO busway too.

7. In terms of transit fanboyism, my favorite extension is Tacoma Dome, partially because I’m a southender, and partially because that would get me to the next Amtrak station to the south.

   Next would be Everett, partially to reach the next Amtrak Station to the north. Stopping at the Paine Field terminal would also be important, presuming the airport becomes much larger. It will certainly have a lot more than 8 destinations by then.

   Ballard would be next, though I can’t see it being affordable as a subway.

   West Seattle would be nice, but I don’t see it happening until neighbors allow it to run elevated.

   South Kirkland to Issaquah is hopefully a budgetary placeholder for something else that actually makes sense.

   1. Generally, I personally view SLU and Seattle Center as the most important ST3 planned Link extension destinations — and the stations I’m most likely to visit.

      After that, I see Tacoma Dome as the most strategic because it reaches both Emerald Queen casinos, Tacoma Dome, and Amtrak — and it’s hopefully possible to get to the Capitol from there via a direct transit route someday.

      All the others strike me as more local serving. I’m sure that they’re important to those nearby, but Link will be slower than current buses in most of these cases.

      ST Express is actually pretty awesome on speed. It shows up Link in that way. The frequency and reliability of Link is of course better.

      1. I see serious reliability issues for Link, still. It needs more crossover tracks to keep daylong surprise closures from becoming a single point of failure. ST Express buses can detour. I do see significant improvement in speedy deployment of emergency bus bridges, and in putting boots on the ground to redirect passengers.

         I think the monorail serves the Seattle Center well, and has a pretty quick transfer from Westlake. It will probably outlive all the aforementioned bridges needing replacement.

   2. until neighbors allow it to run elevated

      Ding! This.

      Or even descend to the ground along Alaska Street. If it’s never going to be extended, having an at-grade terminal station (like Oak Grove on the Orange Line MAX) does not hurt reliability or punish through-riders.

      Now I grant that it might be extended south so maybe an at-grade Junction Station is too much limitation. So a good long discussion should precede a final decision. But bridging over on structure or cut-and-covering under the Fauntleroy and 35th intersection, turning into Alaska and then ascending or descending to grade would make a very nice little urban center.

      The bottom line is, subways are not needed at the periphery of a system. They just aren’t. They are needed in the cores where most riders can get faster trips on them.

      1. Yes it could save at least probably a billion and forgo years of construction disruption for a deep excavation for the last station.

         And the great irony is that SDOT has recently proposed closing Alaska Street between 42nd and 39th Avenue for a transit mall anyway. With a majority of Link riders to and from buses, the buses could simply stop and give riders a level short transfer.

         But no! ST has committed to digging a station as deep and big as Capitol Hill and making all the transferring riders descend five or six stories in the ground to reach the Link platform.

         Then when the value engineering comes, they’ll remove the down escalators and install too few elevators that then will break down routinely — like what happened with the FWLE stations on opening day this past weekend.

         Yeah I know I sound cynical. But I was there at opening day and witnessed the multiple vertical device disasters twos days ago.

         And nary an outcry about the situation. The public expects vertical device failures at this point — and no one with power dare to berate the ST system that leads to this.

      2. Were both FWD elevators out of service at the same time?

      3. The south FWD was in service when I used it in Saturday. It’s just that it wouldn’t begin working until I punched the close door button — after the doors had shut.

         Someone else described it as “wonky”.

8. Let’s not get sidetracked by ST3. That’s only one-fifth of Ross’s recommendations. The primary issue is improving Seattle’s bus routes, as the title says.

   1. Mike Orr,

      Light rail. It’s a hella of a drug.

      Any outside expert looking at transit in Greater Seattle would point out that maximizing bus service would be the quickest (and cheapest) way to better transit.

      The problem is light rail is always going to suck up all of interest (and money). Some of it is what vision a person has of Seattle. Is it larger version of Portland? Or the next NYC of the West Coast? As a long time Tacoma guy, I can tell you that delusions of grandeur have long plagued the City of Destiny. Tacoma has spent the last 75 years believing that huge transportation projects would fix the City’s problems. None of it was true however. The 520 freeway, the 705 spur and the T-line light rail haven’t changed much.

      History will likely show that “Seattle Subway”, the “Transit Rider’s Union” and the like kept pumping light rail as the transportation solution no other could help to match. Of course those who actually read and understand history might see the push for light rail, (regardless of cost or benefit) as parallel to the push for endless freeways in the last century. There is always, “Too much of a good thing” . Maybe digging a 10 billion dollar hole to West Seattle is just as much of a bad idea as digging a tunnel to Downtown, Capitol Hill, University District and 85th was a good idea?

   2. Thanks Mike. It is odd that people are fixated on ST3 since it isn’t the core of the argument.

9. Yeah I’m sure buses were good enough when we lost the subway to Atlanta too. I’m sure it seemed pennywise just like it seemed pennywise to run Link at grade in Rainier valley…and here we are still paying for both those mistakes. Pennywise urbanism rarely is.

   1. The problem isn’t the cost. The problem is that sometimes a rail system is not as good as a bus system. West Seattle is one such example.

      Another example is the bus tunnel. Maybe not the best example because it was eventually converted to rail. But for decades it only served buses. Now imagine instead it was a rail line that went from Westlake to CID (instead of a bus tunnel). Obviously the bus tunnel was a lot more useful. Riders didn’t have to transfer when going to the far end of downtown. If you actually were trying to get from one end of downtown to the other the buses were more frequent.

      Or consider the Brisbane BRT system. It is similar to the bus tunnel but more extensive. Jarrett Walker wrote about it here: https://humantransit.org/2009/11/brisbane-bus-rapid-transit-soars.html. It is worth focusing on the last couple paragraphs. He makes a very good case for the idea that sometimes a bus-based system is better than a rail-based one. That is my argument here. Oh, and West Seattle is one of those times.

      By the way, Forward Thrust didn’t have rail for West Seattle. It had BRT (https://www.theurbanist.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/17013207411_cce9745488_o.jpg). Even with a massive investment in rail infrastructure (much of which was going to be paid for by the federal government) it made more sense to run buses to West Seattle.

10. we shouldn’t get rid of the streetcar. we should connect the two streetcar lines together along 1st ave. and then remove cars from all the lanes where streetcar rails are. right now neither streetcar is particularly useful, but if we connect them, both lines will go somewhere no other mods go (1st ave near Pike Place)

    1. That would be an improvement but it wouldn’t be as good as bus service along First Avenue. There are several reasons for this. One is cost. Never mind the cost of actually building streetcar lines. There is no money to actually operate them. You would have to run buses less often to provide service on First. In contrast if you moved some buses to First Avenue it wouldn’t cost anything.

       Another is routing. Connecting the two lines would improve the route but it still wouldn’t be good. It would form a giant ‘U’. Routes like that underperform. Jarrett Walker put it this way:

       All other things being equal, long, straight routes perform better than short, squiggly and looping ones.

       This would short, squiggly and looping. It isn’t hard to see why routes like this underperform. There are fewer potential trip pairs. For example, you would never take the streetcar from Broadway & Pine to First & Pine. In contrast consider moving the 24/33/124 to First Avenue. Every trip pair is plausible (just as it is today).

       Finally there is the South Lake Union Streetcar. Biking is worse because of the streetcar. To try and compensate they added bike lanes on Valley. This makes the RapidRide C worse. The bus carries more riders than the streetcar ever will. Not only that, but a C and H combination (with both buses going to South Lake Union) would provide a much better connection from the waterfront to South Lake Union (and stops along the way).

       1. And if it were me, I’d extend the C to UW, convert it to trolleybus, and make RapidRide J just part of the C.

    2. Both streetcars would be a lot more useful if they were more frequent. The plan for the 1st Hill Streetcar calls for them overlapping on 1st Ave, but not adding more frequency on the existing routes. That’s why I am so uninterested in boosting the 1st Ave Streetcar.

       If the plan were to have 5-minute headway all day and 4-minute headway during peak, then the actual riders (not to be confused with boosters) would have something to get excited about.

       If there is a plan for where to store the fleet, then take the baby step of building that larger barn, and bumping up frequency on the First Hill Streetcar. Build that ridership first, and then the 1st Ave Streetcar becomes more useful.

       1. Both streetcars would be a lot more useful if they were more frequent.

          Sure, they would almost be as useful as buses while being more expensive to operate.

          Sorry for the snark but I just find it silly. Imagine if someone proposed the South Lake Union Streetcar as a bus route. They would be laughed out of the room. Why would you do that when you can just extend one of the buses? It costs the same but provides a lot more functionality.

          With First Avenue it is even worse. You are talking about a bus following a tiny route that is parallel to a spine that has more than enough buses. It is silly to run a short route so close to Third. It makes way more sense to just move a few buses over. That provides more functionality *and* it saves you service money.

          The best way to get good headways through downtown is just use the buses that are already there.

       2. Okay. We’ll just move some buses over to Broadway. The riders on those routes won’t mind.

       3. We’ll just move some buses over to Broadway. The riders on those routes won’t mind.

          Are you talking about the 60? If so, I agree. It should just stay on Broadway and combine with the streetcar to provide six-minute midday headway there. That would be a lot cheaper than running any of the streetcars more often.

          Or are you talking about replacing the First Hill Streetcar with better bus service. Again, I think that would result in a better network. The 49 could keep running on Broadway and then turn on Jackson and head towards King Street Station (downtown). It would run every twelve minutes. You would have six minute headways on Broadway. You would also have nothing but buses on both Broadway and Jackson. This would make it much easier to improve the transit right-of-way. Broadway is tricky but you could add BAT lanes and bus lanes here and there. For Jackson you could implement BAT lanes almost immediately. It would take a little bit of effort but you could add center bus lanes using the weave approach. (This means regular buses running in the center.) You would get rid of the tiny button hook which would improve the connection between Jackson and upper Broadway. The bus would go farther north (all the way to the UW) giving riders more stop combinations. So yeah, it would be better routing, faster, more reliable and more frequent for a lot of trips.

          But it would be difficult politically because it would likely be the last streetcar. It would make no sense to get rid of the First Hill streetcar (which isn’t that bad even if it would be better as a bus) before getting rid of the South Lake Union Streetcar (which really is bad). But if you are advocating for getting rid of all the streetcars be my guest. I’m right behind you (although I’m ducking to avoid the tomatoes).

    3. As long as the vehicles are so small and never run as two-car trains, the streetcar in Seattle will seemingly always be a novelty no matter where it goes. And running it in mixed traffic for much of the distance makes it slower than a bus.

       I would expect traffic congestion with left-turning vehicles on First Ave to sometimes not fully clear the streetcar route, and end up blocking the streetcar even if it has an exclusive set of lanes.

       I’m not a fan of them. At least buses can run through Downtown Seattle and continue further, unlike a streetcar. They can also jog around disruptions in the route path where a streetcar cannot.

       1. The street cars also make the streets dangerous for bikes, create tripping hazards, and worse.

          The novelty of the street cars is not worth the headaches and problems it creates.

          Recycles them, fill in the rails, and put the money towards busses. This should be entirely obvious.

          The tourists who use them? Give them free bus passes, that should be novel enough.

    4. honestly if I had to spend 500 million dollars i would rather have the streetcar extended to fremont and ballard rather than just connect it to the existing first hill one

11. It’s frustrating how terrible some of the very busy stops on 3rd avenue downtown are. I boarded a bus at 3rd & Pike (125, 131, H, etc) last night in the pouring rain — there is absolutely no shelter, aside from a few doorways, at what is likely one of the top 10% busiest boarding stops in the city.

    I’m well aware of the long-standing challenges with public drug use and disorder in the area, but making it even more inhospitable for transit users isn’t the right solution.

    1. That’s crazy. I don’t know why they removed the shelters. You can see them in this picture from 2019: https://maps.app.goo.gl/PzaKazeL6vPT75MY8. The city needs to put them back.

    2. I think of that southbound stop as “the worst bus stop in Seattle”. I use it taking the 131/132 to Costco, and whenever I occasionally take the H. Actually, there’s a better stop the next one south at Seneca Street, with a bench and canopy (though the canopy isn’t over the bench). I use that stop when I’m coming from the library or transferring from another north-south bus. The stop at Pike Street tends to collect litter and people doing annoying things. The reason it doesn’t have benches is that would encourage even more homeless people to use them. It’s a non-transit issue the city hasn’t solved yet.

12. I agree with the Jackson Street suggestion; it’s been needed a long time. But, (there’s that word), where are you going to put a stop for Union Station? Right now eastbound buses stop right in front of the station and westbounds directly across the street. I don’t see any “excess” width to take for a center platform, but I do think a stop is mandatory there, for access to Link. I guess you could narrow the south sidewalk to put a center platform in.

    Do remember that if you go contra-flow to avoid left-side door buses as you have suggested in previous posts (and with which I agree), the buses headed into downtown will have to turn right onto Fourth from the south side of the island platform. That might be dangerous for tourists who aren’t familiar with the operation.

    It does have the excellent aspect of allowing outbound buses from Second South Extension to cross just one lane of traffic to get to their eastbound land. That would be one complicated intersection…..

    Fremont really can’t be addressed unless and until that Third West auto bridge is built. Then you can get bus lanes on the bridge and probably all the way to 35th.

    Overall, though, bus lanes are pretty useless without camera enforcement, ideally a permanent camera in each block with a lane.

    1. Running contraflow on a two-way street is inherently dangerous. It is an option but I doubt they would take it. There are other options:

       1) Get buses with doors on both sides.
       2) Move the tracks of the streetcar and have the buses run either curbside or using the weave pattern in the middle (this sort of thing: https://i0.wp.com/seattletransitblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/segment3_busway.png).
       3) Abandon this streetcar as well and redo Jackson (and much of Broadway).

       The last option would be the cheapest and likely result in the best transit system. But it would be very controversial. There is a tourist value in having a streetcar and the First Hill streetcar is much more functional than the other one. The first option might not cost that much money. It is probably just a management and maintenance issue (maintaining all those different types of buses). The second option is probably too expensive.

       1. “There are other options:

          “1) Get buses with doors on both sides.”

          I’ve long suggested that RapidRide G could turn northward and run up First Avenue to at least Belltown if not all the way to Seattle Center and LQA.

          I think there’s enough room for median stops by removing parking. Buy more fleet and build the stops and it’s done without years of construction and disruptions as well as at a much lower cost.

          I cannot say how powerful a new, high-frequency service between 12th and Madison and Seattle Center could be.

          The potential big compromise is with reliability that comes with a route extension.

          Of course it would also skip Pioneer Square.

       2. I’ve long suggested that RapidRide G could turn northward and run up First Avenue to at least Belltown if not all the way to Seattle Center and LQA.

          It is the same issue though. You have to come up with extra service (and in this case, extra buses). You could try and restructure based on the new routing but I don’t see any potential savings. Put it another way — what buses would you truncate (or run less often) to pay for this extension?

          In contrast, if you move buses from Third to First the service comes for free.

       3. I agree that shifting a route from Third to First saves the most service hours.

          But if the tradeoff is new streetcar service or new RapidRide G service on First, I’d suggest the latter. It would move faster and provide more useful connectivity.

       4. We already know that there are no left-door trolleys. That’s RR G is hybrid.

          So to have bus lanes on Jackson we have to give up a big piece of the trolley network or rip up the streetcar. It will not be rebuilt in the curb lanes.

          What a lousy choice. I guess I’d rather have slow ETB’s than fast hybrids.

          So far as First, the entertainment district north of Stewart is very congested in the evening, with serious double-parking abuse. Consigning trunk routes to it would be very unpopular with their riders.

       5. We already know that there are no left-door trolleys

          That is not true. New Flyer could build them but it would essentially be a custom order. The smaller the order the more expensive it is per bus. Since they only needed a relatively small number of buses it just wasn’t worth the extra cost. However, the combination of the 7 and RapidRide G would be a bigger order. Note this quote from the article (https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/metro-and-seattle-promised-electric-trolleybuses-on-a-new-madison-rapidride-turns-out-that-wont-work/):

          Madison BRT could begin with diesel-hybrids, then upgrade to a battery version or even some new wire trolleybus, McIntosh said.

          There is also the possibility of other companies building them (depending on the “Buy America” provisions which are probably relatively fluid).

       6. I like the contraflow idea – it allows for multiple bus routes leverage the center island stations on Jackson, which is a major junction. Unless Jackson is completely closed to cars, the right turn from Jackson to 4th and 5th is always backed up and a BAT lane won’t fix that, but a center bus lane will bypass those turning vehicles.

          The value of a streetcar ROW, rather than light rail, is it allows for interoperability with bus lines. We should leverage that, either with contraflow lanes or left hand door vehicles.

          If Metro went all in on left hand door trolley buses, the CCC streetcar on 1st could evolve into center running trolley bus route. The ROW and station improvements could be of the same quality, but SDOT can skip expanding the streetcar fleet and instead Metro can run the 7 or whatever on 1st, and Madison BRT can switch to trolley as well.

          A left hand door trolley bus order that was several lines would be reasonable, but you still need diesel fleet backups when the wires are down?

       7. We are running into terminology issues. When I think of contraflow I think of a bus going one direction and all traffic going the other. This happens on Fifth Avenue downtown for a short stretch (https://maps.app.goo.gl/nKUfcCpp3RxFNBb87). It is one-way for most vehicles but buses and transit can go in the single lane the other direction. Contraflow is similar to center-running in that transit doesn’t share the road (that direction) with cars.

          I’m pretty sure Tom is talking about something a little different. Basically the buses swap sides to serve a center platform. This is more common in bus tunnels. In part that is because bus tunnels are completely cut off from normal pedestrian traffic. The only reason you are there is because you want to catch the bus/train. It isn’t hard to figure out that the bus/train boards on the opposite side than you might expect.

          In contrast it is pretty rare to do this sort of thing in the middle of the city. Pedestrians are used to a certain pattern. When they cross a two-way street (say, north to south) they would expect the traffic to go west then east. Even if one lane is contraflow it is basically the same thing.

          But in this case the traffic would be going west, east, west, east. This is very different. It is inherently more dangerous. I get the idea — you are bending over backwards to accommodate the streetcar and its limited ability to change — but I really doubt it would work. It would be the cheapest option but it doesn’t sound very good. I think one of the other alternatives seem a lot more likely.

          The value of a streetcar ROW, rather than light rail, is it allows for interoperability with bus lines. We should leverage that, either with contraflow lanes or left hand door vehicles.

          Or the streetcar tracks should be designed from the very beginning to allow regular buses to use them. Oops, too late I suppose. How expensive is it to move those tracks, anyway?

          If Metro went all in on left hand door trolley buses, the CCC streetcar on 1st could evolve into center running trolley bus route.

          Why would Metro do this when they can build center-running stations that serve curbside buses for very little money? That seems like the way to go.

       8. “But in this case the traffic would be going west, east, west, east.”

          I tend to think that “contraflow” is an exclusive bus lane running opposite a one-way traffic street too.

          The reversal at an island isn’t that rare though. Bellevue Transir Center has buses operating on the left. If the reversal is at the loading platform only it doesn’t seem unreasonably dangerous.

          Buses could have a special signal that freezes all other traffic so that they can cross over to the boarding platform. Then they could have another special signal to cross back. So the journey between stops would be in the left but not contraflow, like Madison is.

          That said, I think it’s easier for everything of the bus stops on the right. Maybe the bus lanes have to jog and the boarding platforms have to alternate by direction. That’s how Van Ness is set up in San Francisco. But it’s certainly doable.

          The Madison median boarding islands are fairly long. It looks to me that they could have been two right boarding islands with a jog in between. Or they could have been offset across the intersection from one another. But instead we got the designs that SDOT insisted, gadgetbahn buses et al.

13. Customer Service, facilities and tech can make a huge difference in the rider experience. We focus so much on actual service, i.e. frequency, routing & projects, we forget that information & troubleshooting also can make a difference. The following improvements and additions can have such tremendous impact on rider experience:

    -Having live human beings to either talk to, chat with and respond quickly daily to questions and complaints really helps (this is something CT is really good at).

    -Complaints should be resolved within 7 days rather than the current 14-21 days.

    -Customer service & lost & found should be open daily and in-person locations expanded outside of Seattle

    -Developing a single app to handle fares, vehicle-tracking and submit feedback would be helpful rather than having to dig through the internet in multiple locations.

    -cleaning crews stationed at strategical terminus’ to perform a quick turnaround cleaning of bus interiors

    1. Thank you for the back-office suggestions!

       On the matter of quick cleanings, I would add this: install vinyl seat covers at the end of each LRV, and wipe them down after each trip. It has been my observation that those are the far-most likely seats to need a cleanup.

       The cleaning crews can stay busy by taking turns cleaning the restrooms and making sure they don’t run out of toilet paper or soap. Soap is essential to interdicting the spread of Norovirus.

       1. Portland and SF have cleaning crews at the end of the lines that perform quick turnaround cleaning of the trains. Nothing heavy duty, just picking up trash and wipe-downs if time permits. I’ve suggested to ST that we should have the same. Airlines have cleaning crews who perform 10 minute cleanups when aircraft are at the gate in between flights. With soon-to-be 4-5 min headways, debris pick-ups and wiping up spills is doable. Also, this gives them a chance to report biohazards and collect lost items.

          And yes, ST really needs vinyl seating fleet-wide. I’m not sure what they were thinking with cloth seats.

14. Getting back to the First Hill Streetcar, allow me to offer a modest suggestion: Redo Japantown Station to be the southern terminus. Then bump down the headway to 10 minutes.

    During crowds before and after events, the streetcar is effectively shut down. If it only goes as far as Japantown, it will avoid the crowds in a way most buses can’t, and will be crushloaded after events when headed north.

    1. It is not the crowds that are the problem, but the increased vehicle traffic during events.

       Trams in Europe have no problem with high pedestrian volumes in places like Alexanderplatz in Berlin, or Amsterdam Centraal. Both of these places see hundreds of thousands of pedestrians easily coexist with busy tram lines.

       I think if we instead closed Jackson to vehicle traffic (excluding deliveries of course) from the 2nd Ave Extension to 1st Ave or at least 2nd Ave, the lack of through access on Jackson would significantly cut down congestion and therefore speed up the streetcar.

       1. @RTB… I’m all for (sensibly) restricting traffic for transit. However, closing Jackson from 2nd Ext to 1st means all the traffic from 4th Ave (and keep in mind some of that is actually I-90 traffic) that needs to access the King Street, Pioneer Sq or the ferries would have to go through T-Mobile park or all the way to Holgate. This is an absolute nightmare on gamedays. A potential solution would be to 1) make 2nd Ave Ext two-way or 2) make Main St two-way or one-way WB.

       2. @Jordan Fair point. Although I think I-90 traffic heading to Pioneer square can manage the extra 2 blocks to Washington or take the Edgar Martinez Exit.

          I was thinking a compromise would be to close the 2 eastbound lanes and one of the westbound lanes (the one with the streetcar tracks) between the 2nd Ave Ext and 2nd. This would create car-free access from King St Station to the streetcar BUT there is no stop in front of the station and the tracks are too close together for a new center platform. Man the FHSC was really designed poorly…

          I will concede there’s probably not much that can be done besides converting the center lanes to transit only, and as other commenters pointed out, that has drawbacks for the routes on Jackson.

          I do however think that Broadway should be closed from Denny to Pine. No businesses would lose driveway access, and it would only come at the expense of a few dozen parking spots.

    2. By “Japantown” station, are you referring to 7th Ave?

15. On “Better Bus Lanes”, the biggest problem for transit advocates is that no one knows where specifically along routes speed and reliability problems exist and how severe they are. We only have route-level data from Metro and speed isn’t even reported. Problems certainly exist isolated to times of day, routes, or regions that don’t get documented or end up on social media. Ex: all eyes are on Denny Way and Route 8 because Ryan Packer decided to write about it and I personally got mad about it. And iirc, a few years ago, SDOT installed the bus lanes in U District on Campus Parkway during the Montlake Bridge closures because Daniel complained about it a lot on Twitter.

    In my opinion, the best value activists bring are helping solutions get over political barriers but we can’t do that without metrics on all these problems so we can understand which ones are most urgent.

    1. @Nick

       UW did a study on this a few years ago. Their visualization looks like it is broken. If you reach out to the team you may be able to get the data from them

       https://mic.comotion.uw.edu/projects/transit-corridor-performance-study/

       1. Good point. It used to be live at transitvis.com/ but fixed in time in 2023. I’ve talked to them before but someone needs to pay for the AWS costs and cache all the data and such so the conversation didn’t proceed. Maybe if I (or someone else, please reach out) has time, I’ll try to see what it would take to get that up and running again.

    2. “all eyes are on Denny Way and Route 8 because Ryan Packer decided to write about it and I personally got mad about it”

       All eyes are on Denny Way because that’s where the worst and most consistent delays. Passengers can tell without data because they experience it if they ride the 8 and other routes often enough to tell that “this happens on average days or every day”, “I want longer for the 8 than other routes with the same frequency”, and “I see the 8 two blocks away stuck in gridlock and taking several minutes and light cycles to reach the stop”. We had a “Race the L8” test where even people sauntering leisurely were faster than the bus. Other routes like the 10/11/12/49, 131/132, and 62 also have reliability issues but not nearly as bad as that.

       Freeway expresses may rival the 8 on delays, with them sometimes 30 or 60 minutes late when there’s a big collision or multiple large events happening, but that’s outside Seattle’s control because only WSDOT can create transit-priority lanes on freeways.

16. the biggest problem for transit advocates is that no one knows where specifically along routes speed and reliability problems exist and how severe they are.

    That is a very good point. I was thinking the same thing (and probably should have had a paragraph about that). That is one reason why I didn’t choose a handful of corridors to focus on. I am not sure how we can best spend our money.

    However my guess is Metro has that data. They have route-level reliability numbers. It wouldn’t surprise me if they know where those delays occur. At that point you can see how many people are directly or indirectly effected. Someone waiting for a bus suffers as much from congestion as someone on the bus (if not more). You can also look at how often the bus runs. For example, making the RapidRide E faster would save Metro a lot more service money than making the 17 faster.

    Then there is the cost of fixing the issue (both from a political and budget standpoint). This doesn’t involve Metro, it involves the city. This is why Metro and the city need to communicate really well. Metro should be able to present a spreadsheet containing a list of potential fixes including the severity of congestion and their impact to riders and the system as a whole. SDOT should be able to take that list and figure out which ones are relatively easy to fix and which ones are really difficult. Based on that the agency should be able to make the most cost-effective (and politically effective) improvements.

    1. Metro has a speed and reliability dashboard that measures cumulative rider delay but it’s internal to them and SDOT. I’ve tried to public record request it but because it’s software, it won’t help without the data too so I gave up. Link of a report referencing it is attached.

       From what I can tell, Metro and SDOT do talk a lot and there isn’t as much friction as you’d think (maybe I’m wrong) but what’s missing is us on the outside being able to understand which solutions aren’t being proposed because they’re seen as too radical, like a bus lane on Denny.

       https://drive.google.com/file/d/10s8jO7t0TI3G1ooHMLmydarCW97mxMqi/view?usp=drivesdk

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