Build the Best Parts First

165 Replies to “Build the Best Parts First”

1. BUILD THE DAMN TRAINS!!! BUILD THE DAMN TRAINS!!! Yet they don’t help, all they do is ask and come up with no solutions, all they’re saying is to speed up projects, they’re in together”as one region” (bruh), and and other things I can’t remember because of how underthought the campaign is, FIX THE DAMN CAMPAIGN!!!

   1. I’m pretty sure the “Build the Damn Trains” campaign comes mostly from frustration with what seem like endless rounds of planning, re-planning, review, listening sessions, alternatives, etc.

      I mean, I was going to discussion sessions about all of the Ballard alternatives a decade ago, when we were all clamoring to put the station in actual Ballard. They were very pleasant and gave out flyers and souvenirs and had a coloring table for the kids, and then they went with their preferred alternative which was way outside the prime walkshed anyhow.

      This gives the impression that they’re spending years if not decades on process, but they already know what they’re gonna build, and this is just to tick some public engagement boxes. Meanwhile, as they dither, real estate prices do nothing but rise, which is at the core of the budget issues.

      Like, it’s either they actually listen to citizens and build something maximally useful—get something for all that community engagement—or just come out and say “We are building the thing here, and we are building it like this, and it doesn’t make everyone happy, but in ten years it’ll be in the ground and moving people around.”

      It’s the feeling-jerked-around that the JBTDT people are pissed about.

      1. There is a myth that the delays are due to planning. It goes back to the whole “Seattle process” idea. Somehow we are unlike every other city in America and can’t make a decision. In some cases this is an issue. But in this case it isn’t. The only reason these projects will take a long time is because they are so expensive. We simply can’t spend the money until we have raised enough of it.

         Look at Issaquah Link (https://www.soundtransit.org/system-expansion/south-kirkland-issaquah-link). They are hoping to open in 2041. But that is assuming the manage to close the “affordability gap”. Otherwise they will open in 2024. In other words, with more money they can open sooner. Obviously the issue is not how long it takes to plan it or built it. It is how much money it costs. If we cancelled all the other projects and focused only on Issaquah Link it could be built at least ten years sooner. But obviously that isn’t going to happen and since it is at the end of the line (from a financial standpoint) it won’t be done for a very long time (if ever).

         But if you think the problem is planning and not money you wonder why it is taking so damn long. You figure the politicians are just busy dragging it out with endless debate or red tape. Unfortunately, you are wrong.

      2. The delay is certainly due to planning, plus our unwillingness to incur disruption to accelerate construction.

         ST’s point of financial constraint sits in the late 2030s. Only the final wave of projects (Issaquah and Everett Link) need to wait for ST to have the financial capacity. The Tacoma and Seattle projects are not impacted by financial constraints.

         This presentation shows a pinch point of 2033, several years into Ballard Link construction.
         https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/Presentation-Long-Range-Financial-Plan-Update-COP-11-12-25.pdf

      3. “I’m pretty sure the “Build the Damn Trains” campaign comes mostly from frustration with what seem like endless rounds of planning, re-planning, review, listening sessions, alternatives, etc.”

         It’s frustration at the Seattle Process, or as my friend would call it “consensus through exhaustion”.

         https://www.seattlemet.com/news-and-city-life/2015/08/the-seattle-process

         It was thing he liked the least about Seattle when he did work as a board member for a local non profit. No one would make a decision without needing to ask for everyone’s opinion on something, even though the issue probably only needed consensus from one or two stakeholders or just the approval from a couple board members/department heads to approve it. People will say its more democratic that way to give everyone a say, but at some point someone has to actually steer the ship instead of asking everyone for the 5th or 6th time where we should go, for which just ends up breeding indecision rather than inferred consensus. And only do people come to a consensus once enough are just frankly fed up with the indecision.

         Or to put this another way, it’s to have a meeting about the meeting for when we should decide to have a meeting about when we should have the next meeting. Which is as absurd as it sounds, but you see it play out in local Seattle politics a lot.

      4. The shortfall starts in 2033 because that’s when ST hits its debt limit. Look at page 67 of the 2026 Proposed Budget & Financial Plan update (published in October).

         The fiscal limits are real. It’s why ST planned to start WSLE before BLE – not because the planning was simpler (it wasn’t; they were supposed to finish planning at the same time as “WSBLE”), but because of fundamental constraints on spending capacity.

         ST needs to cut costs or increase revenues. Good luck with getting more revenues authorized in time to break ground before 2030. The only realistic route is to cut costs.

      5. The main gripe that I see of the “build The Damn Trains” is that ST wasted years or ancillary things about WSBLE. They spent much of 2018 debating station locations in West Seattle as ST kept rolling out wildly erroneous cost estimates for the decision (not fully studying Downtown stations at all). Then they defined a preferred alternative for the EIS in 2020 — when some CID interests made such a stick that they changed it in 2022-3 with virtually no public discussion or refinement.

         The thing is that ST CHOSE this process. They served up the topics they wanted when they wanted. They created a stakeholder committee that structurally approached the project as a “nuisance” to be mitigated. ST falsely blamed inflation for the spiraling costs of West Seattle even as the other extensions were seeing way less spiraling costs.

         With years of being bombarded by minor discussions on Link design, it’s easy for transit advocates to be frustrated about planning progress.

         Here we are 9 years after the vote and we are just now getting the first look and fundamental systems planning about how best to tie in a rail connection between UW and Ballard? And it STILL does not examine automation? And the cost problem has been apparent for several years?

         ST could have done better planning. They just don’t want to. And frankly the BTDT presser looks like a PR stunt orchestrated by ST so they can avoid facing a full collapse of West Seattle Link under the weight of the much higher cost. Or maybe it’s countering emerging Board sentiment that the current management needs to go.

         When a football team gets stuck on the field and can’t score because the management team doesn’t understand the fundamentals, those in charge will eventually change the management. They look for someone from the outside that knows what they’re doing! ST is structurally incapable of doing this.

      6. “They created a stakeholder committee that structurally approached the project as a “nuisance” to be mitigated.”

         That’s what the EIS process legally requires. Any change is assumed bad until its merits are justified in the EIS. Those who are negatively impacted by the changes are able to argue for mitigation compensation. Those who are positively affected are ignored, and they may not live in the neighborhood yet. (They may come because of the train, but it’s not there yet. Or they may not have gotten a job in Seattle yet, or they may not be 18 yet and are living with their parents.)

      7. “Here we are 9 years after the vote and we are just now getting the first look and fundamental systems planning”

         Because ST postponed the planning because construction couldn’t start until 2024 or 2030 anyway. (2024: The year ST2 was expected to finish and its bills stop coming in. 2030: When West Seattle Link would open, freeing up its revenue stream for Ballard/DSTT2.)

         “about how best to tie in a rail connection between UW and Ballard?”

         ST hasn’t even started addressing it. It’s not in ST3 so it isn’t ripe until ST4 planning gets underway. There’s the existing study, but it wasn’t selected in ST3 and is not voter-approved yet. You can say it’s important, and I think so, but the ST board doesn’t.

         ST ignored my plea for years to include a transfer stub interface in U-District station to future-proof it and make expansion easier. The reason the rep gave me at a Northgate Link open house for not including it was, a 45th line hasn’t been voter-approved yet, so ST can’t spend money on anything for it at this point. And it wasn’t certain the line would go to U-District station (at the time there was another alternative along Northlake Way to UW station and 520).

      8. Maybe we need the legislature to suspend or castrate EIS requirements for climate-positive infrastructure like transit and trails.

      9. Maybe we need the legislature to suspend or castrate EIS requirements for climate-positive infrastructure like transit and trails.

         While we’re at it with the legislature, get them to start a public bank that can finance infrastructure at preferable rates. Passing streamlined EIS procedures and public banking are admittedly a tad ambitious, but one must first dream.

      10. These might be possible in the future as the legislature has gotten more progressive recently. They haven’t been willing to do them so far, in spite of repeated asking, so that’s why they haven’t been done yet. The legislators have just been too suburban, too car-centric, too worried that weakening EIS requirements would lead to bad urban renewal like the 1960s, afraid of the Eyman-initiative movement primarying them if they raise taxes, and not that knowledgeable or interested in transit because “95% of people drive”. (It’s really 70-ish%. And a third of people can’t drive because of young/old age or disability. They’ve been left out.)

          But we have seen a few surprising reversals recently, like the state being more open to a 4-plex minimum than Seattle is, and even Spokane and some Seattle suburbs surging ahead. Shoreline beat Seattle in BAT lanes for the E and in TOD along Aurora.

      11. Never forget, Ballard to UW was the most popular choice when ST asked people to weigh in (of course ST put a bunch of options for Ballard and only one for West Seattle in order to make West Seattle the most popular choice)

   2. I don’t know what exactly “Build the Dam Trains” means or intends. Would it accept sensible changes that make the lines more usable, more affordable, and open sooner? Or does it mean we have to go with exactly ST’s preferred alignment as it has evolved at this point? That by the way would include the infamous CID/N and CID/S station changes that Harrell/Constantine rammed through suddenly last year against majority public opposition. They got it into the preferred alignment precisely so that it would be in whenever ST decides to stop debating. If only ST had spent that much energy on fixing the ultra-long transfers.

      1. Mike, Build the Damn Trains, not Build the Dam Trains.

      2. This week, it certainly feels like we should Build More Dams…

      3. The Beaver Dam in Longfellow Creek near-ish Delrige station is dearly beloved by neighbors, and has its own Facebook page. The eager beavers build it themselves, and it has a variety of environmental benefits. Martin and I spent an afternoon on the Longfellow Creek Trail and I encountered it then. I thought I wrote an article about it but I don’t see it.

         So yes to more beaver dams.

      4. If you want to just build you have bias for the fastest solution that meets the bar. This means alternatives that delay the project need to be rejected. The way to handle this is to have a standard estimation (that is instant, I mean you just use a form) that calculates the delay cost considering the time required to investigate the alternative, the cost of inflation, the cost to the productivity of the region by delaying.

         I know this sounds like I’m saying it should be simpler, but it probably can be.

         I would also implement a rejection function which allows projects to be sorted if they quagmire. This would mean West Seattle could have been replaced by Ballard earlier.

2. I like this proposal, and while I was initially skeptical about any call not to build the 2nd transit tunnel, the stub line alternative has significant cost savings. Further it appears there is unique opportunity to locate and build the extra maintenance facility required, which resolves the largest concern with alternative. Lastly, with the extra maintenance facility perhaps there is opportunity in the future to extend the Ballard extension even further north. All this considered, I believe the proposal here represents a good alternative that gets West Seattle and Ballard built, with the funds which are available. `

   1. with the extra maintenance facility perhaps there is opportunity in the future to extend the Ballard extension even further north

      Or east. One of the big issues with Ballard-to-UW rail was getting the trains there. This solves that problem.

      You also benefit from having the train from the UW continue towards downtown. Interbay is the main connection point for all of Magnolia. Thus you could have a fast two-seat ride from say, Magnolia Village to the UW. Even a three-seat ride from Greenwood to some place in Magnolia is reasonable (with a transfer at Fremont and Interbay). Obviously Magnolia is pretty small and not very dense. But it could grow (and most likely will over time as Seattle’s zoning becomes more like Spokane’s). This isn’t a huge selling point but with Ballard-to-UW being arguably the next major rail project (before either of these) anything that makes that easier is helpful.

      1. So, the Interbay maintenance facility should be large enough or expandable to include the Ballard – U District line.

         The Ballard stub line should be automatic, with short headway, stations, and trains; this would reduce operating and capital costs.

         The Dickey paragraphs on the Ballard stub use the term “seamless” transfer. Transit has seams; they are of time (waiting), distance (walking, rolling), information (wayfinding, complex fare or network structures), or fiscal (fares). The best agencies can do is minimize the seams. So, with the Ballard stub provide short headway and waits; provide a short transfer distance; provide excellent wayfinding.

      2. Jack, with full automation you don’t need to park all the trains in a lot at night, you just need to take them out of service individually for cleaning. With automation you can use long portions of the tunnels and structures to store trains on one track, nose to tail and unmolested. Infrequent nighttime operations simply use the other track to pass the stored trains.

         You end up needing to store only roughly half the trains (the peak-only and backup “extras” and those ready for deep cleaning or maintenance). The trains that run during base service but not at night can be parked on that storage track. You can put a lot of trains on a track in the tunnel between the Republican street portal and some cross-overs between Denny and Westlake.

         Obviously, this depends on complete automation, because you can’t have a human operator walk alongside other parked trains to get to and from a parked train.

         But it makes no sense to build a heavy maintenance facility for such a short line, even assuming that it hooks back to the U District some day. Do you need more than one wheel-grinding facility for the entire Link system? Why would you? [That’s a for instance. The same is true for heavy motor repair. You need a shop that has heavy motor repair facilities, but do you need more than one? Cars can run dead-in-tow. And so on.] Each of the three currently-planned MF’s should specialize in one or two heavy functions and otherwise just be a place to replace parts and keep the trains clean.

         It would be much better to build a single-track, non-revenue connection to Third and Pine and chew through the north wall of the station box with a TBM. Maybe, since it was not built with chewing through in mind like the vault next to the Paramount and all the North Link underground stations, it would have to be reinforced first. I certainly don’t know that answer to that. And maybe “reinforcing the north wall” would mean digging a big hole in Third Avenue just north of Pine. And maybe you couldn’t even do it with a TBM because of the sharp curve at Third and Stewart so you end up with four blocks of cut and cover, which, fortunately, are four blocks with fairly light traffic volumes. And anyway they can all be decked.

         The point of all this is to say “The Armory lot is big enough for whatever BLE will need, even potentially extended.”

      3. I imagine they might resistant to the idea but the armory property is adjacent to BNSF’s tracks – with a new short spur to connect the original maintenance yard to the BNSF mainline in Sodo ST could simply contract with BNSF to show up with an SD40 to pull cars needing major maintenance down to the OMF. Assuming standard gauge for the new line of course, although you could always strap it to a flatbed car.

      4. Tom T,
         You outline a much less disruptive connection to/from the north than described in the ST staff presentation.

      5. “You outline a much less disruptive connection to/from the north than described in the ST staff presentation.”

         I think that it’s an obvious omission that ST staff ignored any aspects of automation in the report.

         The question is — why?

         Was it that ST staff doesn’t want to do the extra research and analysis?

         Was it that ST staff knows that it would be cheaper in many respects, as well as offer more frequent service, so they suppress it?

         Was it simply that ST management gave them a hard deadline for the report, and that there wasn’t time to assess automation?

         Regardless, the important point is that we all need to provide testimony that the report ignores automation and its benefits, and thus is so incomplete that no decisions should be made based on it when it comes to the stub.

         From the outset, the discussion here was almost always an automated Ballard to downtown stub. ST still has not evaluated it. This report is like we’ve been asking for a basketball arena and all the draft designs evaluate a baseball stadium.

      6. I think it’s simply that the Board has not asked Staff to consider automation. Probably because the central control center is apparently barely capable of managing the current system, and would need to be completely rebuilt with better IT systems before anything like automation can be remotely considered.

   2. And if we have a triangle between downtown, Ballard and UW, that is much more redundancy than a second tunnel provides. If one leg of the triangle goes down, you can always go around.

3. If you really support transit, you cannot support the political fibs of Sound Move, ST2, ST3 and the inevitable ST4 vote. None of these ten year transit plans had the proper funding to build what was promised, so the leftover, unbuilt projects just got rolled into the next 10 year plan (often with expensive upgrades).

   What ST3 actually is now is debt snowball that’s been rolling since 1996. Why just stop building anything and let the ST3 taxes clear the current bond debt before going forward with a new, voter approved plan? This is honestly a good place to stop. What I would guess going forward is Sound Transit has vastly underestimated the costs of maintaining the light rail lines currently running, because Sound Transit vastly underestimates the cost of every gawd damn thing it’s ever done.

   So let’s keep the trains and busses rolling, pay down the bonds and lay off most of the staff. Unless we the fire the people who plan to build a second tunnel, guess what you’ll end up with?

   Build the Damn Trains? Nope.
   Have another public vote to go forward? Yes!

   1. *eyeroll*

      1. Agreed Nathan, it’s such an asinine response to the conversation. Everyday people I talk to are all happy about Link and the expansions, they just want it built faster, stop Seattle Processing it, and make a decision on a path forward. Being a miserable grumpy pants about things regular people are happy with and want more of is so silly in my view.

         Link is busy and its only going to get busier with time.

      2. Nathan Dickey,

         It’s called “Junior High School Math” ? What part of the Sound Move/ST2/ST3 debt snowball to you fail to understand?

         We’ve had 3 big regional transit plans since 1996. All of them failed to deliver the promised transit to the people on time or on budget. That’s not my opinion, it’s a fact.

         There are only 3 politically possible choices now.

         1. Continue on the path we’re currently one until the cash and bond ceilings run out. (my guess what will happen)

         2. Ask the State Government to allow Sound Transit to issue 75 year bonds to raise the bond ceiling so all the projects get built (a plan already in the works)

         3. Throw all the current plans in the dumpster and start over. The difference between my plan and your “Build the Best Parts First” plan is I want a public vote on it before going forward. This whole article is nothing more than your private opinion, sir. Who gets to decide what the “Best Parts” even are? I don’t think you could even find much agreement from the posters on this board!

         The best way forward is the will of the people.

      3. Going back to the voters to ask for more money for projects that are late & over budget has worked out just fine politically with ST2 and ST3. The best thing so far about ST3 was getting Redmond Link open. I see no reason, politically, why ST won’t be able to go to the voters in 2028 or later to ask for more money for a revised set of projects.

         Not sure what finance class tacomee took in junior high, mine were all in college, but ST’s financial forecast still clearly shows the debt being paid off in full with the existing funding mechanism. Unlike the State or Federal government, ST’s legal charter and legal bond covenants will not allow for a “debt snowball”

      4. Thanks, AJ.

         For the record, my lack of rebuttal to tacomee’s “arguments” is not because they irrefutable, but because they are fundamentally illogical and tacomee has demonstrated an inability to accept when he is wrong. I have no more patience for it.

      5. AJ,

         Let me be a little more clear about “the numbers”. Everything Sound Transit is currently financing with bonds is above board and being paid back in the proper way. That’s not the problem. You know that.

         The problem is upcoming projects are so completely over budget that the tax revue coming in isn’t enough to aggressively start them and sound Transit doesn’t have the bonding capacity to fund them in a reasonable time frame. So most projections show West Seattle as the hill Sound Transit dies on. Cost overruns on an already bloated budget push back all the other projects for years. Some of the subareas aren’t as underwater on their projects, but that second tunnel drags everybody to bottom.

         If you think Sound Transit is going to be back on the ballot with ST4 in 2028, I don’t know what to say. It would take a 2 year P.R. campaign that’s currently not underway. I can’t think a single elected official who wants this turd on the ballot. At what point to think voters get tired of tax hikes to pay for shit they were promised last tax hike? Sound Transit painted itself in a political corner it can’t get out of.

      6. “We’ve had 3 big regional transit plans since 1996. All of them failed to deliver the promised transit to the people on time or on budget. ”

         A lot of them have opened and have been benefiting people since 2009, 2016, or 2022. Even if they were late and over budget, they’re not part of the “snowball” now. Once things open, people don’t care about their debt or lateness or overruns as much. With good ones like U-Link, Northgate Link, and the initial segment to the airport, people are very glad they’re running, can’t think how they’d do without them (or are glad that era is long gone), think it was worth it in spite of the cost, and future generations will thank us for building it.

         It’s a tragedy crosslake service hasn’t opened yet, because Seattle-Bellevue-Redmond service will be one of those things people are most glad about after it opens.

         Federal Way and Tacoma Dome are in a different category because Link’s impacts are mixed: it’s not obviously much better than the existing buses like the ones above were, and by some measures it’s worse. Everett is in between. Ballard could have been one of the best, but the compromise in the representative alignment in the ballot measure wasn’t as good as it could have been, and after the vote ST made several design changes that made it substantially worse.

         “Who gets to decide what the “Best Parts” even are?”

         We have as much right to try to convince the ST board and local politicians of our position as you do of your position. That’s how democracy works. As to how well we know what the best parts are, that’s for readers to decide how well we know and adhere to transit best practices.

      7. “If you think Sound Transit is going to be back on the ballot with ST4 in 2028,”

         I never said a year. Nobody has said a year. Certainly not just three years from now. It would be in the late 2030s or 2040s maybe when ST3 is close to completion. ST3 was accelerated from the mid 2020s to 2016, and it was expanded to include half of what was expected to be in ST4. ST did that so it wouldn’t have to go back to voters for twenty-five years and everything would be authorized. I don’t see that acceleration happening again. The end of ST3 is a long time away, and ST3 is less popular now than ST1 and 2 were, and an ST4 tax stream on top of the ST1/2/3 streams would raise the total tax rate beyond what many people think is already high. And ST would have to get the legislature’s permission to increase the tax rate beyond the ST3 limit.

         There could be an “ST 3.1” vote to modify the project scope and delete/replace components. I doubt that would happen, and the board has given no indication it’s thinking of such. It would be a big board fight between the winners/losers of any such changes.

   2. “This is honestly a good place to stop.”

      That’s the best thing you’ve said. Lynnwood, Federal Way, and the soon-to-be-completed crosslake connection to Redmond are the essential part of a regional metro. Let’s call it the Real Spine. It takes the heavy burden of the bulk of circulation, large event crowds, and getting through the central Seattle bottleneck. Ballard and West Seattle indirectly benefit from it even though they have a last-three-miles problem. That could be improved with faster and more frequent bus service on the C, D, H, 21, 44, 50, 56, and 125.

      1. I agree. I still think Ballard to UW is worth building (and should be built next) but stopping here is not the end of the world. Basically finish off everything we are working on (and the infill stations) and then shift focus to the buses. It would be better for most of the people in West Seattle, Snohomish and Pierce County. Folks in South Lake Union and the Seattle Center would lose out but better buses could provide more for the former while an improved monorail would at least help the latter. Ballard would take the biggest hit but there are still a lot of things that could be done (especially if we are willing to take lanes — and we are).

      2. “Ballard would take the biggest hit”

         Even if ST builds its preferred Ballard alignment, the Ballard station will be at the eastern edge of the village, or worse if ST chooses the 14th station location. Ballard would have easy access to SLU, southeast Seattle, the airport and Tacoma. Getting anywhere else would require those arduous line-to-line transfers that may be the worst in the world between the primary three metro lines. All this sets up Ballard Link to be less usable and transformative than it could have been, and thus have less ridership, and wouldn’t fully solve the problem.

      3. Good point Mike. Ballard Link as currently proposed would not be that good for Ballard. So I guess West Woodland would take the biggest hit.

      4. Yes, stopping here and really looking at the opportunities smaller automated trains (such as REM in Montreal) could bring to Seattle may be a good option. Those plans may look different and may require a new vote.

      5. I’d also kill off the Boeing Access Road infill station as well, since the chosen location really doesn’t accomplish anything worthy of the expense.

      6. “Even if ST builds its preferred Ballard alignment, the Ballard station will be at the eastern edge of the village, or worse if ST chooses the 14th station location.”

         The difference between Ballard and West Seattle is that current bus network is no better than future light rail in terms of providing one-seat ride to every part of Ballard.
         So Ballard is more forgiving about a station at that location. Plus it crosses the Ship Canal, which randomly gives D Line a 10-minute delay nowadays.
         Nothing can beat a light rail going to a poorly located Ballard station. Even if light rail had to go through a draw bridge, that’s still better than bus to Ballard.

      7. The distances from the stations are less in Ballard than in West Seattle, and the topography is flatter and the street grid is more complete.

   3. “lay off most of the staff.”

      There probably aren’t that many to lay off and it wouldn’t save much money. The big cost is construction, and that’s by contractors hired for specific projects. They haven’t been hired yet because construction hasn’t started. First ST has to finish the 2 Line and pay its bills and pay down those bonds somewhat before it can start spending the ST 1/2 tax streams on ST3. Then it has to finish the Ballard EIS, authorize its construction, and negotiate contracts to build it. West Seattle, Tacoma, and Everett are further along but still have to complete some of these steps.

      1. Tacomee must think he can balance the Federal budget by closing USAID & the Education department.

         Mike is right. Staff spend is immaterial to the long range plan.

      2. Mike Orr,

         Anything actually under construction needs to be finished. The second tunnel Ballard, West Seattle, Tacoma and Everett are not under construction and not likely to be so for….. decades? The EIS for Ballard is just crazy. Why?

         The quicker the current unbuilt Sound Transit projects can be shut down, the quicker new, cheaper and better projects can be built. The current EIS wouldn’t support an elevated rail line to Ballard, would it? With a public vote of support, that elevated line might be finished in 5 years! The current plan to burrow to Ballard won’t even start for 10.

         If public transit wants to upgrade in Seattle in the next decade or so, it’s going to take political will and at least one fresh public vote. The reason Sound Transit is failing is it bows to every NIMBY along the way. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with an at grade or elevated train line to Ballard. If it came down to public vote, there’s plenty of support everywhere in the City. Except Ballard… a few home owners and cranky old business owners will insist on the deep bore subway because they don’t want a train anywhere near them. Unless the City says “Hell No!” to the NIMBYs that plague Sound Transit, it’s all over but the crying.

      3. The funny thing is that having fewer staff and personnel for construction is one of the main factors for higher than peer countries’ costs of transit projects. Over reliance on contractors is one of the main non materials drivers of cost. Firing all of the people with institutional knowledge about building in Seattle would increase costs, not reduce them. ST lost a lot of people during COVID due to retirement or other reasons and it kind of shows in the ways that the agency has to relearn a lot of the things that were institutionally known prior.

      4. “The current EIS wouldn’t support an elevated rail line to Ballard, would it?”

         I don’t know, look at the alternatives. It must have a “No Build” alternative by law. The representative alignment in the ballot measure is probably still there. And ST’s currently-preferred alignment. And maybe another one.

         The representative alignment was underground from the CID approach to the west side of Queen Anne (west of Uptown), then elevated north on 15th Ave NW across the Ship Canal to an elevated Ballard station. So ST could certainly reinstate that if it wanted. Elevated in SLU and downtown would be new, and would run into the usual opposition against unsightly concrete and noise and the stanchions displacing street lanes.

         The elevated scenarios in the Alternatives Analysis had a 70′ moveable bridge and a 130′ fixed bridge. There was opposition to a moveable bridge as making trains late, although the STB authors thought that was overblown because a 70′ bridge wouldn’t open much (only for the tallest sailboats). The Coast Guard later nixed a fixed bridge under 200′ I think, and ST wasn’t prepared to go that high.

      5. “I don’t know, look at the alternatives. It must have a “No Build” alternative by law.”

         It will be interesting to see what ST calls the No Build for the upcoming new Ballard EIS. Will it assume West Seattle Link or not?

      6. Here’s the Ballard Link Draft EIS as of 2022. The Ballard Link alternatives are on page 18. Pages 36-61 have the preferred alternative. Page 52 has the No Build alternative. Does somebody want to pore through that and find the range of Ballard alternatives?

         Since then ST has restarted the EIS and made various decisions on adding/deleting alternatives. I don’t know what all those are, and we may have to wait until the next draft EIS next year (?) to see them.

      7. The “No Build” alternatives typically assume the rest of the ST3 projects are completed as planned. They tend to be fairly short and, logically, assume no other improvements would happen instead of the proposed project.

         All of the BLE alternatives assumed a tunnel from SODO to west of Uptown/LQA. There’s one alternative that skips Smith Cove and tunnels all the way to Dravus, but that one’s pretty wonky. The rest have various combinations of elevated/at-grade track along Elliott and 15th Ave W, leading to the various bridge and tunnel combinations to get across the Ship Canal to Ballard. The final terminus locations were either a tunnel or elevated at 15th or 14th Ave NW.

         I don’t recall all the routes ST reviewed during its Alternatives Selection process, but I’m rather certain they never seriously considered an elevated alignment through downtown since that’s nowhere near the “representative alignment” described in the ST3 ballot measure. DSTT2 was a specific candidate project which ended up being incorporated as part of BLE when the WSBLE combined planning process fell apart.

      8. Before the vote there was “Alternative D” that STB favored, underground north across Queen Anne hill, with a station under Boston Street for the upper Queen Anne rideshed, and surfacing in Fremont and taking Leary Way to Ballard. That was Queen Anne’s unique opportunity I wrote about, and it would have put the Fremont urban village on Link too. But Queen Anne wasn’t interested; they were more intent on fighting upzoning, and not enough people noticed how good it would be to get Fremont on Link, and the alternative died.

4. The simple message to the board should be:

   -The second tunnel makes things worse for the majority of suburban riders: South King and Pierce lose their direct connection to the UW, North King and SnoCo lose their direct connection to SeaTac.

   -The second tunnel is extremely expensive and likely to suffer cost overruns on top of that.

   -Keep “the spine” in the existing tunnel and upgrade ventilation and safety systems to permit tighter headways for the regional lines.

   -West Seattle can interline in the existing tunnel and run to Northgate to provide more capacity on the high demand urban segment.

   -Ballard can be a clean slate and the start of a truly modern system not beholden to choices made in 1993 to keep costs down. Automation, smaller more frequent trains, platform doors, smaller stations without giant mezzanines, etc.

   1. I agree on all of your points. A couple things I would add:

      – Build Ballard first. That provides a lot more benefit than West Seattle Link ever will.

      — Make bus improvements to West Seattle soon. Service enhancements (i. e. running the busses more often) could happen almost immediate. But we should also build ramps between the Spokane Street Viaduct and the SoDo Busway. This could eventually become obsolete (if West Seattle Link is built) but there is nothing wrong with that (as long as it doesn’t cost too much money). The Mountlake Terrace freeway station is a good example. It has been largely replaced by light rail. But it was still worth it. It helped a lot of riders for a long time. If Ballard Link is built next it will probably take at least ten years before West Seattle has trains to downtown (under the current plan that would occur in 2039). It shouldn’t take that long to add the ramps.

      1. ST3 includes projects to improve RapidRide C and D in the interim. They haven’t been spent yet, partly because SDOT took years to decide what it wants, and we still don’t know what that is. In the realignment these projects were postponed to the last tier. That’s nonsensical because (1) the need is now, (2) those lines won’t exist after Link opens, they’ll be restructured into something else. So pull those back to the beginning and do something now, and that could be something to start a more general bus-route upgrade from. I might even be willing to give the D’s money to West Seattle as part of a sensible westside Link reform.

      2. Yes, exactly. The money for the C and D could go out immediately. From a legal standpoint I’m not sure how easily they could spend money on other projects (in terms of service or capital improvements) but it should be worth pursuing.

      3. The ST3 funds to improve flow on lines C and D were not spent intentionally; Seattle wanted more funds for the G Line; ST had fiscal constraints with ST3; many parts were delayed (e.g., all the Stride parking, some Sounder parking).

         Just as SDOT has converted some Aurora BAT lanes to full time, the BAT lanes on 15th and Elliott avenues West could become full time. The C and H lines could use better priority on SR-99 and the West Seattle bridge.

      4. Good luck getting West Seattle pushed back. Dow didn’t “take his talents” to Sound Transit just to delay light rail to his hood.

5. I completely agree with that last paragraph. If you don’t build a second tunnel, you can get to Ballard sooner . If we end up building rail to West Seattle, then riders could get from West Seattle to Downtown sooner.

   Even from a planning standpoint this is better. There is no consensus on the stations in the second tunnel. Thus the quickest way to speed up the planning is to simply not build a second tunnel.

   But there is another important aspect of this. There is no consensus on Ballard Link stations, either. A station at 14th is much worse than a station at 15th, let alone a station at 20th. Having the station face directly east makes expansion (towards the UW) more difficult. Crossing the canal (above or below ground) towards the west was arbitrarily ruled out before they could do additional planning. Yet it holds the most promise. Not only would it lead to a better station in Ballard but it would mean that the trains would turn, heading towards the UW. By having the trains based in Interbay you solve one of the major issues with UW-Ballard rail. You provide some additional one-seat connects (e. g. Interbay to UW). You also have the potential of two stops in Ballard, not just one. You could build a station at Leary initially and then eventually extend the line with another station at 14th (about a half-mile away).

   Thus what they see as a bug is actually a feature. We should rethink a lot of the decisions that have gone into the plans. I realize that planning is difficult. I’m sure a lot of people just want the planning stage to be over. But it is very important to get this right. Realistically we only have one shot at this and it is important we get it right. So far the plans for Ballard Link just aren’t right.

   1. I’ve been harping on this a bit as a newcomer to this blog’s comments, but how can we mobilise people to fight for this vision? I like it and I want to see it done, but we need a better strategy to move the ST board into doing it. Are there any neighborhood organizations in Ballard or the greater Seattle region who are/would fight for an automated line? Thomas Einberger commenting in the previous article mentions trying to get the Seattle Storm or Kraken to support an automated line (increased capacity would funnel more people to their games). Are there any other such large corporate interests we could try to get on our side, and who do we talk to in those corporate blobs to get the process started?

      Al S. and Mike Orr in the comments of the previous article mentioned Balducci, Wilson, Zahilay, and Mosqueda as potential board members who we might be able to convince to support an automated line. In addition to directly reaching out to them, do we know any key staffers in their offices who work on transportation policy who could be briefed about the necessity of an automated line? Likewise, who do we talk to in order educate the Pierce and Snohomish board members about just how bad DSTT2 is and how an automated Ballard line + DSTT1 upgrades would be better?

      Sorry I keep asking a bunch of questions. I guess I’m just trying to figure out what we should do differently this time to get ST to do the right thing. We need to build a coalition, and there’s got to be a way to do that in a region as big as Puget Sound.

      1. I appreciate your effort. It’s true that “facts and logic” aren’t actually effective; thorough and consistent advocacy is. A major problem is that the progressive transit advocacy groups have started leaving STB behind. It’s notable that we’re not in the “Build The Damn Trains” coalition, despite being one of the main advocacy groups which pushed ST3 across the finish line.

         I’m not sure what the exact solution is, but my hope is that articles like this form the foundation of a “pragmatic” middle-ground between the Urbanist and the Seattle Times. Admittedly, being in the “neutral zone” among a highly polarized political environment does not feel like a good place to be, but if someone can say “actually, STB’s idea is good, read this article” then it’s worth it.

      2. Re. STB not being in the Build the Damn Trains coalition — is there something precluding STB from reaching out and joining it? I assume you’ve seen it already, but there’s a little bit of text on their site saying to contact Holden Ringer of Transportation Choices to join the coalition: https://www.buildthedamntrains.com/lets-build-light-rail

      3. It’s less that we haven’t been asked to join the coalition, and more that the majority of STB’s current contributors don’t really agree with the BTDT. Speaking for myself, I think BTDT is an admirable effort, but I also think ST needs coherent community support behind tough decisions instead of folks demanding that they dodge them.

         Lack of consensus around tough decisions results in project delays. Indecision in Bellevue delayed East Link. Indecision around the CID station of DSTT2 resulted in the N/S CID arrangement, which is awful for transit riders.

         Meanwhile, decisive advocacy pushed ST to adopt 15th Ave as the preferred terminus in Ballard, to abandon a medium-height bridge over the ship canal which would have had to open for tall boats, to stop fussing with the Denny Way station location. Decisive advocacy from West Seattle residents pushed ST to adopt a subway terminus there.

         DSTT2 is not worth it. ST can plan an OMF in Interbay, get a federal ROD for a Ballard stub, and get going on BLE now. Meanwhile, it can rethink where the tunnel should go from there.

      4. littlefish,

         There are a lot of posters here at disagree with Sound Transit planning of future projects, and maybe rightly so. The STB hive mind is dang smart!

         Go ask Holden Ringer one simple question. Where on earth is the money to finish all the Sound Transit projects going to come from? Build a big collation of Lefty NGOs….. that’s easy. The money part is hard.

      5. > Re. STB not being in the Build the Damn Trains coalition — is there something precluding STB from reaching out and joining it

         The largest problem with that coalition is that it focuses on ignoring costs completely. Aka it’s the fastest way to get us truncated to Smith Cove for the next couple decades if we keep ignoring costs

      6. Figuring out how to allocate scarce resources is not fun. People want to have everything for free. So of course BTDT attributes everything to the Seattle Process and doesn’t want to think about the spiraling costs. It’s a lot harder to find support for “let’s just build this one thing that offers the most ROI” and get people enthused to advocate for it.

      7. Morgan Wick,

         The reason Sound Transit is in such a terrible place isn’t even the bad financial outlook (and it’s bad!). It’s the lack of any real political support. Nobody on the board believes in it and most board members wish it would just go away. If you were Ryan Mello, what would you do? Remember that Executive Mello has a plate full of obligations to his public that are NOT Sound Transit he’s working night and day on. Sound Transit? who’s got time for that? It’s a political loser nobody knows how to kill. Not a single board member has looked at the numbers and said “We need big changes!” because the political blowback would be enormous. So the projects just sort of clunks along into financial insolvency like a zombie walking off a cliff.

      8. littlefish, maybe you’re a better community organizer than I am or the STB staff are. I’ll give a short history of Ballard Link activism, and then some starting points for now.

         Seattle Subway and transit fans along 45th Street created the momentum for accelerating Link in Ballard, then envisioned as a Ballard-UW line. Seattle Subway members were the ones who convinced me there was enough public support to get it on the ballot and pass it. STB got on board. We got Mayor McGinn the environmentalist elected. He was a streetcar supporter who jumped on the Ballard Link bandwagon, the only prominent politician at the time. But he wanted a Ballard-downtown first, before a Ballard-UW line. He championed it on the ST Board and asked to accelerate the studies and ST3. (ST2 included studies for a Ballard-UW corridor, Ballard-downtown corridor, and others, as potential next ST3 candidates.) The rest of the subareas thought about it and said, “Hey, we want to accelerate our projects too.” So the studies were done, ST selected Ballard-downtown and DSTT2, and the ST3 package was formed.

         Most of the transit advocates were united at this point, because we all thought Lynnwood/Redmond/Federal Way was necessary, and Ballard was the logical next thing to reach Seattle’s 4th or 5th largest urban village and the northwest quarter of the city. Plus we were united on RapidRide projects and other Metro expansions, and more or less on bus restructures needed.

         The ST3 vote was in 2016. By 2019 or so ST started making adverse changes to the Ballard/DSTT2 alignment, that wouldn’t serve passengers as well. The ultra-deep DSTT2 alignment with long train-to-train transfers, and a Ballard 14th station alternative that hadn’t been mentioned in the ballot. Then around 2022 ST moved Midtown and CID2 stations south, so there would be no station at the library or RapidRide G, and no station a quick walk to the center of the CID. And Ballard and West Seattle advocates insisting on peripheral tunnels that they hadn’t mentioned when the ballot measure was being written. And an SLU station at Aurora rather than Dexter or Westlake (as if RapidRide E transfers would be as numerous as highrise walk-ups). And the increasing costs. And lesser concerns about other Link projects.

         All that made some transit advocates sour somewhat on ST3 as then planned. If we can’t get a good Ballard alignment that fulfills most of its goals, how important is it to have one at all? Most of those with that opinion are in STB, whether as staff or regular commentators. So we then found ourselves on opposite sides of Seattle Subway and other advocacy groups that are still gung-ho on whatever ST wants. They have their own reasons and values behind that: they see that as the only way to keep a critical mass of transit fans’/politicans’/public consensus to make something possible.

         STB had internal problems in 2022. Most of the editors/authors resigned due to burnout and other commitments. Ross and I stepped in to keep the blog alive, and built up a new author base. But we don’t put as much time into investigative articles every single day as the previous generation did, because we don’t want to burn out either. And we no longer have a paid reporter to do that. (The paperwork/overhead work for a paid reporter was one of the causes of the burnout.) So we set the standard for transit reporting, but then the Urbanist and the Times and Publicola overtook us with their greater financial and time resources. So they do most of the reporting now, and we add our own perspective and topics that they don’t do. And now our opinions have diverged from most of the other groups, so they don’t tell us about their campaigns as much, and they know we’ll likely disagree on some of them.

         As to what people can do now to spread awareness and put pressure on ST, since Seattle Subway is on the other side, you might want to build a Seattle Subway-like group to promote an alternative. Even if it doesn’t replicate everything Seattle Subway does, doing parts of it would get an organized group on the stage where it can have more clout than a few individuals.

      9. It’s less that we haven’t been asked to join the coalition, and more that the majority of STB’s current contributors don’t really agree with the BTDT.

         Exactly. We’ve joined other coalitions before. Most recently it was Fix the L8. Before that we joined with the Transit Riders Union to fight for lower Monorail fares (we lost). We officially endorsed the Seattle Transportation Levy. There have probably been dozens of similar projects we supported. But no, we don’t support “Build the Damn Trains” effort. We support better transit, no matter the mode. The organization seems naive at best and mode-fetishists at worse.

      10. I think BTDT’s focus on building the trains without considering the costs is an opportunity to work with them. They want an expanded system that reaches Ballard (and West Seattle + Pierce & Snohomish, but let’s set that aside for a moment) and the increased capacity of a second tunnel. However, they don’t have a scheme to pay for it. As Nathan Dickey said earlier, this is where STB’s research comes in. STB’s proposal to build an independent automated Ballard line and upgrade DSTT1 accomplishes BTDT’s goals of reaching Ballard and increasing overall system capacity in a slightly different way that costs less money and time.

          Currently, the BTDT objects to dropping DSTT2 because they think it is necessary to futureproof system capacity and make a good rapid transit system. What they don’t seem to realize is that the current DSTT2 doesn’t accomplish those goals very well at all! It doesn’t increase walkshed, has gnarly transfer-chokepoints, cuts the airport off from the north spine, sandbags the rest of ST3 with costs, takes forever to construct because of said costs, and was rammed past public wishes in a backroom deal. In contrast, the STB automated Ballard + DSTT1 upgrades plan does improve system capacity and connectivity on the cheap, gets us to Ballard fast, and can even connect West Seattle to the north quickly without having to wait for DSTT2 to get built. It also has room for easy extension to First Hill and the Central District neighborhoods that Seattle Subway dreams of serving. My point is that the BTDT coalition could be persuaded to push for the automated Ballard + DSTT1 upgrade plan over keeping the poorly thought-out DSTT2.

          In short, I think there’s plenty of room for STB to work with BTDT. They’ve said they want Sound Transit to consider clever solutions; STB has such solutions that actually meet what the BTDT campaign wants rather well. It would be worth reaching out to them to explore how we could help each other.

      11. Mike, I posted my last comment before I saw your history of BLE activism. Thanks for the background information.

          “littlefish, maybe you’re a better community organizer than I am or the STB staff are.”

          Ahaha, I wish (thanks). Unfortunately I’m a student currently studying out of town, and I don’t have too much bandwidth. I’ll see what I can do though, because I hope to return to Seattle someday.

          As for Seattle Subway and the rest of the BTDT coalition, I can’t actually tell how die-hard they are for a crappy DSTT2 because I haven’t worked with them before (which is why I am naive/hopeful enough to think they can be persuaded). Out of curiosity, do any of you have any recent first-hand experience talking with them that suggests they truly are irrevocably wedded to DSTT2?

      12. Mike

          Good summary of Ballard Link. You forgot to add, the Seattle DOT head Scott Kubly (who was on friendly terms with the previous STB leadership) proposed the two tunnel proposal without public comment (or even a Q & A with STB commenters) and ST accepted Seattle’s proposal. Unfortunately, Kubly did not know (or bother to ask) that 1} the Port of Seattle didn’t want a bridge over 15th 2) the Asian-American community in the International District was not consulted over the second tunnel and displacement effects, etc. So now, there is an opening to revisit the second tunnel.

      13. mdnative, funny you mention Scott Kubly as the one who proposed a second tunnel! He just wrote an Op-Ed in The Urbanist arguing to defer DSTT2: https://www.theurbanist.org/2025/12/18/op-ed-defer-seattles-second-downtown-rail-tunnel-to-save-st3/

          He points out that Sound Transit should be asking how to deliver an integrated rapid transit system under its current financial constraints, not why it can’t.

   2. Ross, I think you can extend that argument to deferring the Ship Canal crossing decision as well (drawbridge vs fixed span, 15th vs 14th, etc.). The minimum viable product is Smith Cove to Westlake, including the OMF. Get that project through EIS and under construction, and a future generation can figure out what’s the best way to serve Ballard directly.

      Smith Cove to Westlake, automated, all above ground, is obviously affordable within ST3 while keeping all of the long term goals of ST3 on the table.

      Same logic applies in Snohomish: get moving on a few station extension (Ash Way or Mariner) and future decisions (where to place OMF-N, how to best serve Paine Field and/or Everett downtown) can be deferred to future leaders.

      Issaquah & Kirkland Link will obviously be deferred to future leaders, even under current timeline.

      The only ST3 keystone project that seems fully baked is Tacoma. Ideally we’d built to Sound Federal Way station and OMF-S and then pause & rethink, but the political stakeholders (Pierce & Tacoma politicians, Puyallup tribe) have a strong consensus on the project as-is. South Sounder, OTOH, has ~$1B of funding that is being held for a future decision on how to best invest (add trips, but when, and longer trains)

      1. “Future generation” I mean like next decade, not literally next generation.

      2. The maximum benefit of this project is getting a stable connection across the ship canal/Salmon Bay though. Without that the project is a line from westlake to the cruise terminal. Sure, people might use it, but who the hell is going to sit in line to cross the ballard bridge to get onto a train to downtown when they could just stay on the bus (which is slow) or drive (which is comfortable). This is one of the few projects that beats driving times to downtown that ST can build, it seems foolish to not take that opportunity when it presents itself. In any event a tunnel is the best option for this project into Ballard as having a massive drawbridge would be ridiculously crippling to the line.

      3. The minimum viable product is Smith Cove to Westlake, including the OMF.

         Except it gets you very little, especially as a stand-alone line. It is too short. There is nothing at Smith Cove. That limits the combinations. It is worth noting that South Lake Union is a bit of a misnomer — it is designed as a connection point for buses on Aurora. There aren’t that many people close to it. Consider the various combinations (not involving Smith Cove):

         Westlake to Seattle Center — Competes with the monorail.
         Westlake to SLU — Riders would just stay on the bus.
         Westlake to Denny — Too short to bother with.
         Denny to Seattle Center — Competes with the 8.
         Denny to SLU — Most riders would just walk on Denny.
         SLU to Seattle Center — Would get some riders.

         To be clear, there would be some riders. But not as many as the East Side starter line. It is just a lot less useful. It has trouble competing with buses and walking. For example consider Denny to Seattle Center. This is one urban area to another. But the trip takes 7 minutes on the Metro 8 if there is no traffic (https://maps.app.goo.gl/WYPB7HcajBrMZ1LQ8). The train would be faster (and more frequent) but it also takes longer to get to the platform (and back). More to the point, what if you are a couple blocks west of the station? You wouldn’t bother with the trains since the Metro 8 is right there.

         It would be as if they built the original bus tunnel as a short subway line. There were a surprising number of people that used to take trips that never left the tunnel. They would have taken a similar subway line. But it wouldn’t get that many riders. Now imagine if the line is extended only two stops, to the UW. As it turns out, we don’t have to imagine that. That is how it got built. Suddenly ridership exploded. About 40,000 riders took the train between Downtown and the UW. That’s because the combinations were suddenly worth the hassle. Even the UW station (placed in one of the worst locations imaginable) had plenty of riders. The 43 couldn’t compete when it came to trips between the UW and Capitol Hill. Trips from Capitol Hill to the South end of downtown were of course very popular. Lots of people went from the UW to downtown as well.

         The same idea applies to Ballard Link. You really need to get to Ballard to provide sufficient value (especially with a stub line).

   3. Yeah, that’s the thing that came to my mind reading this, that some of the decisions on the Ballard end of the line are kinda crappy as well. I would support this if the cost savings from not building DSTT2 could be extended to deferring WSLE entirely and reinvested towards re-studying a more westerly Ship Canal crossing or even a tunnel beneath it.

6. Will there be an article describing the specific benefits of automating the Ballard stub? The higher train frequencies would shrink stations, and short third-rail light-metro trains would shrink the tunnels, making the stub even cheaper to build while also future-proofing the system. The 8.4 billion USD Sound Transit’s non-automated stub proposal would save is a minimum: we could save even more with automation. It’s worth exploring how much more we’d save + the extra benefits of an automated line in detail.

   1. We are hoping to have something like that this week. Folks have been pretty busy this week. Normally we have a few things that we’ve been working on a while and then mix them together. This week we are focused on this subject (given the report from ST) which takes some effort.

      I agree with all of your points (as do most of the authors).

      1. Thanks. I appreciate all the hard work you folks at the blog have put into this, especially given how fast things keep changing.

      2. in the meantime, you may want to review https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/02/20/the-case-for-automated-light-metro-technology-for-ballard-and-south-lake-union/ and https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/01/10/focus-on-slu-and-ballard/

   2. It’s on the way. I decided to focus on DSTT2 since that’s the big decision right now. As I mentioned, the Ballard Stub offers an opportunity to test automation without mixing driverless trains with “normal” ones.

      However, I think the opportunity to shrink stations is overstated and short-sighted it would permanently bottleneck the Ballard line with short platforms while the rest of the legacy system enjoys long platforms. Operationally it would be a similarly-permanent bottleneck to the at-grade section in Rainier Valley. I think it would be unwise to plan an entire line around the ability to run half-length trains twice as often based on an operational mode that’s largely foreign to ST right now.

      The first step is to keep deferral of DSTT2 on the table. The second step is to get ST to move faster (but let’s not break things). We automate Ballard, then we can see how to automate the rest. We’ll only be 60 years behind our Canadian neighbors :)

      1. Point taken on bottlenecking future operations with really short platforms. However, we could still move more people for less capital expenditure with platforms shorter than ST Link’s 400 foot/120m platforms. The Expo Line in Vancouver can potentially move upwards of 25000 ppdh with open-gangway rolling stock and 80m platforms. The current Link lines and rolling stock support a mere ~10000 ppdh. Building 80m platforms instead of 120m ones for Ballard and then tripling the train throughput with automation should get us enough capacity for several decades at least.

         The other advantage of shorter trains in smaller tunnels is that it provides more flexibility in tunnel routing. This is also another opportunity to save money by building shallow tunnels and stations that can go around (rather than beneath) skyscraper foundations and other pesky obstacles.

      2. it would permanently bottleneck the Ballard line with short platforms while the rest of the legacy system enjoys long platforms.

         Except the short platforms would have higher capacity. That’s because they would have better headways (and no driver). I see no reason why Ballard should have much higher capacity than other part of the system (like Rainier Valley).

   3. Can we also talk about the stub being elevated through LQA & SLU? Since there is not DSTT2 to tie into, run an elevated alignment, which probably unlocks another billion in savings.

      If we going to automate, that means switch to a different mode, which means we can also consider a rubber-tire metro, which means can climb steeper (Smith Cove to Seattle Center alignment) and turn sharper (SLU to Westlake alignment)

      1. I don’t think elevated construction through Uptown and SLU is viable. It’s not the 60’s anymore – we can’t just Do Stuff like they did when they built the Monorail and tell impacted property owners to pound sand. SLU has too many towers, too many deep-pocketed businesses with litigious lawyers, too many problems. It’s the same reason we’ve abandoned cut and cover.

         Automation does not mean a change in mode, just a change in operations and signals. Tunneling through Uptown and SLU makes sense. The Coast Guard forced ST’s hand in needing to tunnel to Ballard.

         If anything, I think one of the big problems with the BLE route is how it doesn’t use the ROW of Elliott and 15th Ave W. I brought this up during the Community Advisory Group meetings in 2020/2021 and ST claimed it was SDOT who refused to let them put pylons in the middle of the street. So, that’s an unfortunate consequence of an adverse city agency forcing ST to buy its own ROW.

      2. So you want ST to think boldly, but running elevated is “too hard”? Run it down a secondary street like Thomas and take a full lane. SDOT answer to the mayor, there should be no political obstacle here.

         The “we can’t possibly cut & cover our precious street grid” is a very Anglo-American mindset and is one of the reasons we have the highest construction costs in the globe. Spend some time on https://pedestrianobservations.com/ – the bonkers cost inflation that ST is facing is mostly a political unwillingness to remove veto points and a staff that considers state laws and local zoning codes as immutable objects.
         For example, ST staff & board should lobby Greater Seattle’s congressional representatives to work to remove the Cost Guard obstacle.

         The SLU tunnel doesn’t make sense because the 99 deep bore tunnel results in station elevations that as just as terrible as the DSTT2 when it comes to station access.

      3. It’s “we can’t possibly cut & cover because we don’t want to go through the extent of closures that happened when the Pine Street tunnel was built”, and CID station. Because that forced businesses to close, 3rd Avenue has never fully recovered, etc.

      4. AJ,

         While I don’t disagree, permitting and policy fixes at SDOT are easy, changing federal law relating to maintaining clearance for navigable waterways is probably never happening. I mean if railroad corporations of the 19th century couldn’t do it, why on earth would we expect Sound Transit to?

         And there are real political constraints for using cut/cover tunnels that are absolutely not limited to the Anglo/American world. Paris has extensively used deep bore tunneling, as has Tokyo. I’m not saying we shouldn’t consider it more, just that the reasons aren’t limited to bad American transit planning (bad as it may be).

         The real cheap (and not at all future proof) idea for the Ballard Stub is to just rebuild the monorail as light rail. That gives political justification for being elevated through Uptown. And it would probably save a gazillion bucks.

7. Real armchair urbanism going on here…

   1. Shrug I mean sound transits unfundable 22 billion dollar Ballard isn’t getting built either

   2. Would it help if I used a standing desk?

   3. And? Would it be better if it didn’t happen? At least Seattle has urbanists who care enough to write about it and offer suggestions.

8. “Alignment for DSTT2 would result in arduous transfers for most riders of the planned 3 Line connecting Ballard to Tacoma.”

   The 1/3 Line transfer and 1/2 Line transfer (with a DSTT2) hassle is a huge design flaw that needs a major rethink. End stations can be deferred until there’s money. Infill stations can be added when the money is there. However, a bad transfer will plague the system for a century.

   AND IT’S BAD!!!!!

   There are several relatively effective ways to make it better if not seamless. Yet none of this ever gets any attention — by the Board or by the BTDT interests. The topic remains neglected and a lack of focus. Even local transit enthusiasts I meet are unaware of the problem and just assume that ST will build cross-platform transfers for major transfers like most major rail systems have.

   It took Balducci talking about a Ballard Stub to even get this report written. There remains NO REPORT to improve transfers. And ST voted to make transfers WORSE at CID in 2022.

   Meanwhile there is very little pushback about SODO and Westlake transfer hassles.

   Can we get a focus on the transfers? Can technology change help? Will aerial actually be easier for transfers?

   Going from a 20 second transfer walk across a platform as opposed to an 8-10 minute trek (even if up escalators are working and elevators are working and people have to go down dozens and dozens of stairs) is a major degradation in transit service is literally as bad as going from 6 minute trains to 14-16 minute trains once the transfer time is added.

   And it affects every subarea. It’s the heart and aortas of the Link system. Doing “open heart surgery” later to fix things later is not really an option. ST is designing a defective heart and no one seems to care.

   1. Al S.

      Thank you! This is why Sound Transit needs to shut down planning crap projects tomorrow and have a 100% reset.

      Let’s don’t let Sound Transit die from “sunken costs fallacy”. Finish up projects that are already started and toss most of the planning for unbuilt stuff in the dumpster. Yes, it cost a lot of money. Yes, there are poor bastards at Sound Transit that see the West Seattle Subway as their life’s work who will feel crushed watching it go into the dumpster. But no, that’s not a good reason to continue down the wrong path.

      1. Disband ST entirely. It’s beyond repair. We could’ve had such a great transit network.

   2. “The 1/3 Line transfer and 1/2 Line transfer (with a DSTT2) hassle is a huge design flaw that needs a major rethink.”

      Exactly! Good train-to-train transfers should be the highest priority of a multi-line subway and a minimum requirement. Half or more of the trip pairs require a transfer. Having bad transfers tells people you can’t get from here to there and the metro network is not very effective. So you look for another alternative, and if there is no better alternative, then the city is just neglecting the mobility needs of its residents/visitors. That drags down the economy because people can’t take their first-choice jobs, won’t bother going to places where they might spend money, and can’t contribute to the cultural life of the city and social cohesion and health as much as they could. Or they’d be driven to driving, which causes its own externalities and scaling problems.

9. DSTT2 never made any sense. It’s somewhat gratifying to see the establishment transit community come around to the logic they rejected 10 years ago based merely on who it came from.

   If we actually wanted driverless trains, as we urgently should, we should never have allowed ST to build the Bel-Red segment at-grade, nor to plan another in Everett, nor to extend the line further south while MLK continues to fester. Talk about the importance of doing it right the first time…

   “America can always be counted on to do the right thing–after it’s exhausted all other options. –Winston Churchill

   1. You can have full automation between Lynnwood (or eventually Mariner) and CID (or South Bellevue) and save millions of dollars on operations per year and still have at-grade outside that segment. Operators simply board outbound and alight inbound a stations or two within the fully automated operations limits. The train does not need to be delayed.

      With an overpass at Holgate and closure of Lower Brougham Way and suitable fencing, the at-grade portion to SoDo can even be included, allowing automation to continue to Mount Baker.

      1. The at-grade Bel-Red segment precludes that. Because ST doesn’t know or care the slightest thing about fast, frequent, safe, reliable, or profitable transit. They refused to learn from the MLK mess which continues to be lethal. Yet they claim to back Vision Zero.

      2. The at-grade Bel-Red segment precludes that.

         You’re just wrong. I said “or South Bellevue” as the southern limit to automation on Line 2. Not to mention that there’s at-grade between South Main and South Bellevue which is just as limiting as the Bel-Red segment.

      3. There are at-grade pedestrian crossings at Judkins Park and East Main stations too. They’re both needed to access the platforms.

10. 60 comments in 6 hours.

    1. 10 CPH puts us in the range of a suburban coverage route

       1. I had like 6 comments in the first hour. Does that make me the Uber circling the block waiting for a rider?

    2. 137 comments in 16 hours.

       1. Imagine if we started talking about gondolas, lol

11. I agree with the conclusion. If a good DSTT2 can’t be built now, then the stub is the best option.

    But, a good DSTT2 should remain the long term goal. That’s the only way you get trunk capacity for rail on Aurora via Fremont. Of course that’s another point in the stub’s favor. #stubthestub

    Also, this is a repeated misunderstanding or straw man: “The main selling point of DSTT2 has become its ability to continue operating if there are issues with the original DSTT. However, that won’t help 2/3 Line passengers…”

    Of course it will, if the issue is on the 1 line running via DSTT2 and doesn’t affect them, rather than on a shared 1/2/3 line in DSTT1. A train stuck on the tracks at SODO only disrupting one line instead of three (or let’s say 35% of riders instead of 100% of riders) is a significant boost to redundancy. None of this requires moving riders or trains between tunnels.

    1. Hence the other half of my argument which is that the original DSTT should be upgraded to be more reliable. ST has improved reliability of the elevators, escalators, and fire safety systems, and is working on finally installing Automatic Train Protection signal systems, but the tunnel is already strained for capacity and we haven’t even opened the 2 Line yet. What if we could pump $1-3 billion into fixing up DSTT instead of having one “old tunnel” and one “new tunnel”? Could we get more escalators, more elevators, better ventilation? What about proper center platforms at CID and Westlake? These are the sorts of projects that would be real improvements for every Link rider, not just hoping that a train every 4 minutes manages to move enough people.

    2. While a new tunnel would have benefits in cases where the original tunnel isn’t usable, the benefits only extend to the lines using the new tunnel. Operational redundancy would allow for any line to use any tunnel, and would be far more useful in that kind of situation. When a road closes, the benefit of having a robust network means that trips that previously used that segment can now use other segments as they please. For large rail systems, this kind of operational redundancy is important, but not often discussed. But it’s why NYC can shut down lines and parts of lines for maintenance without too much issue. There’s a lot of redundancy in a big system, and there are enough connections to allow things to function. Of course, a second tunnel would be a first step in network redundancy, but it doesn’t really achieve much as planned, since there is only one connection (SODO).

       The only good reason to build a second tunnel downtown is capacity. If the current tunnel can handle the immediate capacity needs of the system, then we don’t really need a second one. We’ll see how things look with platform crowding and the like when the 2 Line opens, but I’m optimistic that it’s possible. But still, even in the case where crowding is unbearable the answer should be to look at platform extensions, widening, and passenger flow before boring a new tunnel.

       Trunk capacity for a line down Aurora via Fremont doesn’t even rank in the top 10 reasons to build a second downtown tunnel. We don’t even have the money for the already voted on extensions, we certainly don’t have one for that line either. Even if it may be a great line from a transit perspective, unless there’s a funded or planned line, it shouldn’t be a factor in what we build now.

       1. You make good points, blumdeew.

          I just don’t want to lose sight of the “SODO connection” that you mentioned as not being designed as an occasionally-used seamless train operation. For example, none of the SODO tracks are set up for the two northbound tracks to be next to each other with easy crossover tracks. It’s not really a “connection” for in-service trains operating on the line. Yet way too many uninformed people keep thinking that trains could just quickly switch to the other tunnel.

       2. Al S,

          I haven’t looked in depth at the proposed track layout, but as long as a train can get between either downtown line at SODO that’s good enough for most riders, who could transfer at the next station up the line in a tunnel closure situation. But it all is an academic exercise since ST running trains from West Seattle to Ballard only during tunnel closures seems pretty unlikely.

          I think the issue isn’t that SODO isn’t designed well for this purpose (its other design issues are more pressing anyways). It’s that the network isn’t designed for either/or tunnel operations. An “old” tunnel shutdown will be just as catastrophic for eastside and north side riders no mater what with our current plans.

       3. blumdrew, Sound Transit’s current plan do not allow for real redundancy. There is no switches planned in SODO for trains to switch from the tracks serving the old tunnel to the new tracks serving the new tunnel. Even if they would add such, the signaling in the tunnels currently don’t support 3-line headways. Riders would still need to switch trains, as there is NO connection between the tunnel lines at Westlake.

12. “The main selling point of DSTT2 has become its ability to continue operating if there are issues with the original DSTT.”

    I can’t stress this enough. THIS SELLING POINT IS A LIE AS CURRENTLY PLANNED.

    The tracks as planned do not allow trains to easily switch platforms in SODO. So if a DSTT train stops, the trains can’t just switch to the other tunnel. And of course there’s no connectivity between the lines north of SODO.

    So please quit carrying this argument forward unless it’s accompanied by a qualifying statement that it’s not possible in the current design of SODO tracks without running through the OMF and its impractical connectivity.

    1. You wouldn’t reroute trains, you would just transfer at SODO and at WLS. A 5 minute transfer would still be faster than waiting an hour+ for bus replacement service to start up and then get to you. It also means that the 2 and 3 lines aren’t affected by a crash in the valley, for example. It isolates the 1 line until it can be grade separated in a more comprehensive fashion. When did anyone ever suggest that reliability came from switching trains to the other tunnel? That doesn’t even make any sense operationally.

       It’s not a lie, you’re just twisting the definition of redundancy to fit your own definition rather than looking at the advantages holistically.

       1. That redundancy exists today with Third Ave and SODO busway. And it’s actually fewer level changes than changing to the other line would be.

          And the statement is ambiguous. What is meant by “continue operating”? I interpret that as meaning that trains would continue to operate but in the other tunnel.

       2. There are no such advantages.

          If you need redundancy between Westlake and CID, you already have that with dozens of buses per hour on 3rd. The tunnel isn’t redundant any other places.

          The second Westlake station is 9 levels and approximately 11 floors under the existing Westlake station. It’s going to be more like 10 minutes just to get to the platform. It’s much faster to get to the surface and get one of any number of buses already there, with no additional waiting.

          Other than Westlake, none of the other stations are redundant, and the new ones will also be exceptionally deep. This again favors the surface buses already there.

          Which leaves the problem of collisions on ML King, which could be solved cheaper than building DSTT2.

       3. The issue with this is that most disruptions in the DSTT force truncation at SODO, so no 3rd avenue capacity. 3rd is also already full of people on buses going wherever they need to go. There simply isn’t enough room on the buses to adequately handle everyone using the 1 line and not stopping in downtown. Having that be multiplied by 3 will be catastrophic. A second tunnel provides necessary redundancy in the most used (and most failure prone) part of the system. Saying it doesn’t or is a lie is asinine. Also, even a 10 minute transfer is STILL faster than waiting an hour + for a shuttle bus.

       4. D M,

          I don’t fully disagree, but bus capacity isn’t really an issue along Third Avenue for routes that are terminating downtown. If a Link were shutdown downtown, provided a rider could get to C/ID, routes like the 7 and 36 are often only mildly busy on Third. Of course, that’s only in one direction, but going the other way buses like the 40 and 70 that terminate near C/ID empty out pretty quickly after Westlake-ish. This is all besides the point, since none of this applies to SODO, but a byproduct of Metro terminating a lot of buses downtown (which is very different than how it works in Portland) is a lot more capacity for intra-downtown trips.

       5. There are still large areas of Seattle which don’t have light rail service, and we don’t have infinite dollars. Is it better to double-up service in downtown, or to bring high-capacity light rail to unserved areas?

          Let’s say we were always planning to build Ballard as a stub, and then ST4 rolls around and ST asks where they should extend the Ballard line, it would be crazy to say we should send it to SODO with a long transfer at PSQ and a new station on the south end of the CID. Instead, we’d want to send it to First Hill or the CD, and maybe connect it back down to the Mount Baker Station with a transfer at the 2 Line. There’s some real redundancy!

          Another question: if we built DSTT2 and DSTT1 broke, and service had to be truncated at SODO (as it often does), how would 2 Line riders transfer to DSTT2? A shuttle from Judkins Park?

       6. Let’s say we were always planning to build Ballard as a stub, and then ST4 rolls around and ST asks where they should extend the Ballard line, it would be crazy to say we should send it to SODO with a long transfer at PSQ and a new station on the south end of the CID. Instead, we’d want to send it to First Hill or the CD, and maybe connect it back down to the Mount Baker Station with a transfer at the 2 Line. There’s some real redundancy!

          Exactly.

       7. Link does get shut down downtown occasionally downtown and Link Shuttle buses run on 3rd Avenue. We don’t have to guess their capacity or whether they get stuck in gridlock because we can see it on the ground. There’s no congestion bottleneck. The shuttle buses have room for more people. Last time I saw five shuttle buses one after the other coming down Pine Street toward downtown, so it was apparently five buses to one train.

          The shuttle buses don’t get packed because many people choose alternative routes when Link is closed, or when they reach the shuttle transfer point. Maybe a bus route goes closer to your house. Maybe the 67+49 is acceptable from Roosevelt to Capitol Hill occasionally rather than waiting for the shuttle. My friend in north Lynnwood coming to visit me on Capitol Hill, gets off at U-District, has a coffee, and takes the 49 the rest of the way. If I’m going northbound at SODO, I know I can go to the busway and catch any of several routes. If I’m downtown and need to catch Link at SODO, I can take any of the busway, 4th Ave S, or 6th/Airport Way routes to Lander Street and walk to the station.

          The biggest problem with the Link replacement shuttles is they’re not frequent enough. They should come at least every 10 minutes like Link does. ST does people a disservice when it runs them every 15 minutes, or with 10-15 minute variable frequency. It once even did hourly frequency late evening if I remember.

       8. The issue with this is that most disruptions in the DSTT force truncation at SODO, so no 3rd avenue capacity.

          No, you have SoDo Busway capacity (as Al mentioned).

          3rd is also already full of people on buses going wherever they need to go.

          Yes, that is the point. If the main line ends at SoDo then people transfer to buses like the 101, 150 and the ST buses from the south (590, 594, etc.).

          There simply isn’t enough room on the buses to adequately handle everyone using the 1 line and not stopping in downtown.

          Of course there are enough buses to handle that load. Neither the trains nor the buses carry that many people.

          Having that be multiplied by 3 will be catastrophic.

          Why would you multiply that by 3? The train from the East Side doesn’t go to SoDo. If they actually built West Seattle Link and truncated the buses then maybe you multiply by 2. So I guess this is basically an argument against West Seattle Link. Either way though, crowding is not likely to be a big problem.

          A second tunnel provides necessary redundancy in the most used (and most failure prone) part of the system.

          But it is the part of our system with the most buses. That is the point. It is by no means the worst place to have a failure. Imagine the trains can’t run between SoDo and Westlake (while East Link buses turn back at CID). This is really bad. A major outage involving the core of our system and six stations. Except it really isn’t that bad for users. There are plenty of existing buses making that same trip. In contrast imagine the trains can’t run between the UW and Capitol Hill. This is a much smaller outage (there aren’t any stations in between). But from a rider standpoint it is much worse! An outage north of downtown basically cripples the most important connection we have with rail (UW to downtown). This is where the bulk of the riders use Link and there are only a handful of buses that can provide that functionality. If they actually leave the station at Capitol Hill (hoping to go north) they have only the 49 — a bus that runs every 20 minutes at best! ST has no other alternative but to go into panic mode and send out a bunch of shuttle buses.

          Also, even a 10 minute transfer is STILL faster than waiting an hour + for a shuttle bus.

          Who the hell is waiting for a shuttle bus when you have all those buses providing the same service? Just imagine an outage that wipes out *all three* of the lines. The biggest would be CID to Westlake. Again, this is a major outage. Well guess what? We literally have a bus spine that provides that service! It carries tens of thousands of riders and can carry tens of thousands more. That is because when a bus from the south reaches CID a lot of people get off (leaving room for people to get on). The same things happens when a bus from the north reaches Westlake. It is why they instituted the “free ride” idea years ago — there was plenty of unused bus capacity.

          The point about switching tracks involves through-riders. Imagine there is an outage at Pioneer Square. The trains turn back at CID and Symphony. This sucks. But if riders are heading downtown (e. g. Northgate to CID) it is no big deal. They get off at Symphony and take a bus to the other end of downtown. It is only riders who are going say, UW to West Seattle. If the main line is down and if there was a second tunnel and if they could swap tracks then those trains would still keep running. Then of course you have trips like UW to SeaTac. Once they add the second tunnel those riders would be screwed every day (not just on special occasions).

       9. The biggest problem I see with Link shuttles is an unwillingness to use the surface when DSTT1 is out of service. Instead of turning back at Westlake and making the existing trains frequent, they try to do single track operation through a partially closed tunnel, so everything north of Westlake becomes half hourly.

          This problem will still exist with DSTT2, because the problem is their plan when things get shut down. No matter what happens with DSTT2, the busiest section of line still winds up being Westlake to UW.

          Capacity in DSTT2 will be constrained by train operation on Line 1, which will probably never be more than every 10 minutes in full operation due to ML King and the storage limit for light rail cars.

       10. “Instead of turning back at Westlake and making the existing trains frequent, they try to do single track operation through a partially closed tunnel, so everything north of Westlake becomes half hourly.”

           That hasn’t happened since around 2022 or 2023. Later reductions have done just what you said: northern frequency remains normal 10-minute. A bus bridge serves the closed stations. The southern frequency is either normal 10-minute or reduced 12-15 minute. Single-tracking at a Rainier Valley station doesn’t have as big an impact on the schedule as single-tracking downtown.

           There have been several single-trackings this year at Pinehurst, Shoreline South, or Shoreline North station. ST announces that trains will be at 12-minute frequency starting at 5:30pm or later. So 12 minutes instead of 10 minutes. That’s better than 30 minutes.

    2. Seems like a very solvable problem using proven technology railways pioneered a century ago. No reason to stop the project when a simple track revision in sodo would do.

       1. It makes one of 4 trunk lines able to use the second tunnel as needed. But since there’s no connection on the other end, ST would have to run the West Seattle trains to Ballard (unless another intermediate stop is workable for short turns).

          The issue isn’t that it’s not a fixable issue at SODO, it’s that the project as designed only provides redundancy is a very limited sense – which is more that Ballard trains wouldn’t be disrupted. Without a connection at the other end of downtown, a connection at SODO is not relevant operationally.

       2. Here’s the thing Paul Ventresca,

          Sure, we’ve been able to switch trains for 100 years, but nobody has ever figured out how to put 10 pounds of poop in a 5 pound bag.

          Both proposed tunnels have trains with schedules to keep running in them. If there’s a breakdown in one tunnel, that’s too dang bad, because the other tunnel is already full of trains. Maybe the people could move to other tunnel and ride the “wrong” train and make it home somehow? Smart money takes the surface bus however. Or Uber. Or just walk a mile or two.

          Oh, wait! You mean we can fit ALL the trains into one tunnel? Why on earth build a second one right now?

       3. @ Paul:

          I asked ST to look at switching the track configurations in 2017 or 2018 when I saw the first drawings. Other people have too. Repeatedly.

          ST has summarily ignored the suggestion even though it’s obvious to most that’s studied a multi-line rail system that a different configuration is needed and that level transfers are the expected gold standard around the world. .

          And ST continues to plan three expensive sets of of escalators and elevators at SODO rather than consider changing the track configurations. They could have one northbound transfer platform island and one southbound platform island (each with level cross-platform transfers) at SODO to make life easier for Line 1/3 transfers — or they could simply build a mega center platform and serve every train with one platform.

          This is a microcosm of something dysfunctional about ST system expansion design: Overbuilt expensive stations with too few escalators and elevators that actually make it harder for riders to transfer. It’s spending more capital money to penalize transferring riders.

13. I’d actually like to know more about st staffing. How much staffing is there? How many are making over $100k? Does st pay rhe jump-start tax?this article seems very complete.. there are many decisionmakers who need to read it…

    1. If anything, ST needs more staff instead of paying outside consultants making 10-20% profit on every billable hour.

    2. 100k is a poverty wage

       1. More than I’ve ever made!

    3. Sound Transit employes a lot of outreach staff, to a large extent they are an advocacy organization. They subcontract operations to Metro etc. I wish they would do their own engineering rather than outsourcing all the design and construction planning.

14. If we want a good outcome, one obstacle to overcome is suburban board members who don’t care about transfer quality, or whether Link ever gets to Ballard. They only care about two things, which is 1) that the spine gets finished and 2) capacity downtown (because in their mind, the whole purpose of public transit is to go downtown).

    For them, the strongest argument might be that not needing to contribute to DSTT2 means more money available for spine work in Tacoma and Everett.

    1. Absolutely yes.
       Or more work at making the spine actually do something in those places.

       The Tacoma situation isn’t a whole lot better than West Seattle: 2 transfers to get anywhere.

    2. a simple solvable problem with better station design to switch trains. Switching lines is common across the planet. Why is this a problem in Seattle?

       1. It’s mostly because the Westlake Station box is on somewhat squishy ground and it has a large number of splayed outward piers supporting it. They are too close together for a crossing tunnel to be very close to the station in depth, so it has to under-run them at least ten or fifteen feet.

          That’s why the “nine story” elevation change of a “New Westlake” under Fifth Avenue is so extreme.

          However, it’s not impossible to swap horizontal distance for vertical, by moving New Westlake to Sixth Avenue. It still has to be somewhat deep, because the cut and cover tunnel east of Westlake is heavy too, and has supports. But they are not nearly as long, because the tunnel is not a ponderous structure with a Mezzanine.

          Sixth has been considered, but it was pretty much rejected, I guess because it’s farther from “the center of things” and forced Midtown station (as orginally planned) into a more crowded part of the business cluster. Now of course, “Midtown” as planned is a joke three blocks from the nearest skyscraper.

          BUT, if you want to swing into First Hill with an extension south, instead of duplicating DSTT, Sixth is better, because it avoids one block of building foundations at the curve eastward. In fact, if you delay that curving as far as Seneca, there are no building foundations, just the freeway supports to worry about.

       2. Please see the plans for Westlake, as shown in this article, illustration # 9 showing the escalators.
          https://seattletransitblog.com/2022/03/25/notes-from-a-vancouverite-revisited/

          • Note the new platform is at -13 feet elevation.

          • Note to get to the current platform involves going to the existing mezzanine, which is given as an elevation of 100 feet.

          • Note the surface level is 126 feet elevation (130 at the other end, according to the diagrams).

          In places like Atlanta, to change trains you only travel about 25 vertical feet. Here, we’re talking at least 113 feet upward and then another 20 or so back down to make this transfer. This 113 feet is equivalent to 10-11 floors, but as the escalators run the equivalent of several floors it’s fewer escalators than equivalent floors.

          As to weather there is a way to make this better or not would certainly be a good question, but the fact remains the current plan is terrible.

          (As part of this DSTT2 discussion, it might be useful to republish this “Escalatorpalooza” [the authors word] illustration so people can see how bad this plan is.)

       3. “It’s mostly because the Westlake Station box is on somewhat squishy ground and it has a large number of splayed outward piers supporting it.”

          Interesting! I was not aware of this. Perhaps the way that the Ballard stub tracks and station platforms are laid out needs to be revisited rather than accepting the report diagram at face value. ST could even look into moving the transfer station to Capitol Hill or Symphony to avoid the problem.

          There’s nothing sacred about transfers happening at Westlake. It’s not on Third Ave. The retail life there is greatly diminished since 2015. It has historical relevance but it doesn’t have the importance that it used to have.

          And when I take tourists to Pike Place Market I exit at Symphony under Benaroya. It exits on the mezzanine level (closer to the platform level) and it feels closer to the narket even though there’s a bigger slope.

       4. Glenn, I think Sound Transit had simplified the Westlake design a bit in the meantime, I would have to dig into the more recent designs. It still is quite deep but not quite as bad.

       5. Al, you can’t have a transfer at Symphony without keeping BLE down low. There’s no way to turn up the hill from there and get shallow enough to dig useful stations. Sixth Avenue rises significantly between Pine and Seneca so a tunnel under it can do the same.

          And you really can’t divert the Ballard-Downtown Seattle line to Capitol Hill and force transfers there. Westlake certainly isn’t in the middle of the office center, but a station under Sixth and Seneca just north of a turn up the hill to the hospital complex would be an easy walk to the towers. Not to mention that it would add a whole bunch of riders between Symphony or Westlake and Capitol Hill, the segment that’s forecast to be the most crowded.

          If you want to give up on Ballard-Downtown ridership and have an SLU-only stub, then your idea is fine. It’s possible to envisage the line coming out of Capitol Hill a block north of Denny, passing over I-5 and then descending on structure down to run through SLU in the air. That would be pretty cheap and very spectacular, but where does it go from there? [So “spectacular” that some people wouldn’t ride it, jes’ because.] At Capitol Hill station it’s already east of all the destinations on First Hill, and looping backward west to serve them would be pretty oblique.

       6. Thanks for linking the cross-sections, Glenn. Al, look at the “Facing West” diagram and you’ll see the dashed lines of the supports hanging below the “Existing Station” structure. Also, in the Plan View it shows clearly that the end of the existing station box is west of Sixth Avenue. The only obstruction on that street is the Pine Street Tunnel which fits entirely between the sub-basements of the facing buildings.

          I believe the airspace goes essentially all the way to five or six feet below the surface, though there may be some intermediate “ceiling” structures for air-flow and to make it less like an enormous tomb. That is, it’s not so much a “cut-and-cover” tunnel as a “cut-and-roof-it-over” one.

15. I’m deleting several spam comments with my name that are not by me. The first indication was my name was a link, which doesn’t normally happen because I don’t put in a website URL. I’m copying the messages’ content below so you can see how it differs from what I normally write:

    Everett would be the best bank for the buck, they should build that. Keeping the buses would also be good as an alternative for overcrowding and it serves a different portion and community than 3rd ave for link light rail

    It looks like there were two of them and the both had the same content.

    1. Everett and Tacoma make no sense for light rail. They should be commuter/regional rail with higher speeds, wider stop spacing, more seating, and food and bathroom amenities. Light rail should be limited to Lynnwood (if on 99, otherwise Northgate) and SeaTac, with an actual network of crosstown lines and distributed transfers that aren’t all downtown.

       1. Light rail should be limited to Lynnwood (if on 99, otherwise Northgate) and SeaTac

          Well, Jon, that train, as they say, “has left left the station”, because Link is in Lynnwood, but it doesn’t get there “on 99”.

          I do agree with you, though I think that just ending at Sea-Tac would have been a mistake. Some sort of easy freeway bus intercept is necessary and Highline is the obvious place for it. You could do it north of the airport along I-5 or 599, but then you’ve gotten close enough to Seattle that the diversion down King Way really does insult riders who were literally in sight of downtown Seattle on their buses.

16. The big problem at this point is that the consultants were clearly ring-fenced from considering fully automated, frequent short-trains with less expensive shorter stations. Rather than admitting that being wedded to old technology is codemning them to exorbitant costs that cannot be “Value Engineered” away, the “experts” could and should have said, “Look at Skytrain. Forget six-hundred foot long trains with enormous underground cathedrals. Build small and run like the People Mover at Sea-Tac.”

17. What if we’re thinking of DSTT2 all wrong? I mean, sure the current plan has terrible transfers and probably a windfall for a few connected real estate interests, but is there anything anyone who is interested in transit likes about it?

    But a Ballard DSTT2 line that connects to the Spine at Westlake and Mt. Baker (through First Hill) and to the Eastside at Judkins Park seems like it would provide a lot of the same regional connectivity of the current plan. And eventually connecting back to the Spine at either the UW, Roosevelt, or Northgate (elevated through Greenwood and on to Lake City) in a future extension…Build the Snake!

    1. Exactly! The only defense of DSTT2 is that it would increase capacity and provide redundancy for the original DSTT. But both of those problems could be fixed with affordable upgrades to the original tunnel! Meanwhile, going back to the drawing board on the original tunnel would provide an opportunity to serve new communities and actually provide a redundant connection to downtown for both the 1 and 2 lines, instead of just helping riders from North Seattle.

    2. Andrew, do you mean what I proposed in: https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/01/10/focus-on-slu-and-ballard/ ?
       The proposed stub could extended such way but even better would be station on 6th Ave.

    3. uhh i mean sound tranist cannot afford the current st3 plan. how is it going to build this even more expensive version

    4. The ST3 vote didn’t authorize a First Hill loop. We argued that it could bend slightly from Westlake to 8th & Madison (Midtown but closer to the hospitals) and back to CID. ST said it was “out of scope” for ST3: voters mandated it serve the downtown financial district, not First Hill. Other times they said it was too early to bring it up: there would be time for that in a later phase, but then the later phase came and ST said it was too late, we should have argued for it in the earlier phase. So a Catch-22 or Kafka.

       What we’re advocating and ST now has a potential alternative for is a Ballard-Westlake stub. If ST future-proofs the design to keep its options open, that could be extended in an ST4 vote to First Hill, Little Saigon (12th & Jackson), and Mt Baker station.

    5. Andrew, agreed. “Build the Snake!

       It links a string-of-pearls of high-density neighborhoods, three very large employment clusters, two major entertainment districts and intercepts every north-south bus running in the space between Lake Union and Shoreline.

       Martin, yes, but it really ought to scoot the “Spring” station down to the curve for a real “Midtown” and add another at Madison for the northwest’s biggest hospital cluster. We need to embrace frequent stations in places where there are lots of trips beginning and ending. Remember, it’s faster than a bus or car through these dense neighborhoods, and if it comes often people will ditch the alternative, even if they have to go into a tunnel.

       WL, ST doesn’t build it all at once; it builds the stub now, with short trains, small, shallow-as-possible stations, and fully automated trains running more often as the Sea-Tac people mover if necessary. Four two-car trains have the same capacity as two four-car trains, so the trains would have to run only every five minutes to equal BLE’s projected base service level of every ten minutes. They could run as often as every minute and a half.

       The Snake is a line that can be built in segments, because each extension will make the previous construction more valuable. The densest neighborhood, South Lake Union, is first — Westlake to Ballard is close to being affordable as a stand-alone Link stub already and with smaller stations would certainly be. The next densest through First Hill would be second, and then the “tails” to the U District and North Rainier promote densification and radically increase the usability of the entire system. The city might fund Ballard-UW since there isn’t much of a “regional” need for it, but there’s a good argument for the North Rainier tail to be an ST project eventually. It gives quick and easy-transfer access to the hospitals of First Hill to the region.

       Mike, read above: the first extension could have that “financial district” station, at least on its periphery. Lots of folks working in those big towers would “Take The Snake” to “Midtown” and walk down to work, then walk down not up to Symphony and Pioneer Square to go home in the evening. Yes, it means a transfer one way or the other, but a station at Sixth and Pine could be shallower than one at Fifth and therefore easier to access. The Westlake Station box ends right at the edge of Sixth Avenue: https://www.google.com/search?q=downtown+seattle+transit+tunnel+map&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS1048US1048&oq=downtown+seattle+transit+tunnel+map&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCDYzMDNqMGo3qAIIsAIB&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#vhid=5xl5sDH1TXrjJM&vssid=_p2VCaYaJKYKb0PEP_9zy-AY_50

       So squeeze the tracks together in Westlake so that there can be a passage through the east wall of the box, at platform level, half a road lane wide on each side of the platform level to allow folks to walk a few yards to a pair of “wing” mezzanines, one on either side of the Pine Street tunnel, under Sixth. From there they’d escend to a shallower-than-Fifth center platform for New Westlake under Sixth.

       Yes, I get that this means digging up Sixth and Pine for the wing mezzanines and the station box for New Westlake. But streets can be decked, and it’s worth it for a symmetrical station that allows direct platform-to-platform interchange with only probably three levels between them.

       And yes, there would be a bottleneck at the east wall. The opening available would be just one half the center roadway’s width less the thickness of a safety wall to keep people off the tracks directly adjacent on the other side. It would behoove ST to have a central barrier keeping people to one person in each direction at a time.

       But you could do the same thing at the Mezzanine level as well, because ST is already planning to puncture the wall at that level for openings to the underground tower it plans for Fifth Avenue, so it must have determined that it’s a safe thing to do.

       Overall, that’s NOT a “bad transfer” either direction.

       1. Darn, when you follow the link you have to click the third image from the left in the first row to see the schematic. I thought that once the photo was up the URL would automatically select it. It doesn’t.

18. #BuildTheDamnStub. I think the main issue is lack of merch.

    1. Ha!

19. If the problems are that the new tunnel is complicated to weave around the existing tunnel and infrastructure, what if we instead send the second tunnel down First and Lenora to SLU, or somewhere in that vicinity, avoiding the need to underpin the existing tunnel?

    1. I’m not sure how you’d go about getting the line from SoDo to 1st and Lenora?

       However, even at 1st and Lenora you have to deal with the Highway 99 tunnel, as well as passing under the foundations of all the existing buildings, so I don’t see how you’d route it to avoid those.

    2. The Great Northern (BNSF) tunnel also complicates things.

20. My written testimony to ST’s board meeting today:

    Continue studying the Ballard Stub-End alternative for Ballard Link, and study an automated Ballard-Westlake line.

    The most critical thing in a multi-line subway is good line-to-line
    transfers the center, because half or more of the trip pairs require
    that transfer. A good transfer walk is under 1 or 2 minutes or so.
    That should have been a minimum requirement for Link. When ST
    discovered the second downtown tunnel would have to be ultra-deep and
    have transfer walks in the range of 9 minutes and several vertical
    levels, it should have gone back to the drawing board to try something
    else. The Ballard Stub-End is a “something else”.

    ST2 has it right: the largest bulk of riders are going between
    southeast, northeast, and the Eastside. Rainier Valley to UW, Eastside
    to airport, north Seattle and Lynnwood to airport, Des Moines to
    Capitol Hill, etc. The second tunnel as planned would break these
    trips, even though fewer people are going to/from Ballard/SLU or West
    Seattle.

    I urge ST to study an automated Ballard-Westlake line. That would reduce capital costs AND allow ultra-frequent 2-minute frequency like the Vancouver Skytrain with no more operational cost than conventional 6-minute or 10-minute Link. That would greatly improve Ballard/SLU’s mobility options and passenger satisfaction, and mitigate everybody having to transfer at Westlake. Automated lines have been the international standard for many years now, like Hawaii’s recent line.

    Finally, an automated Ballard-Westlake stub creates the future possibility of extending it southeast to First Hill, Judkins Park, and Mt Baker stations. That would serve many more travel needs than going south on 5th Avenue next to the existing tunnel. At least keep the option open.

    Thank you for your time.

    1. You hit all the major points, Mike! Thanks!

       The only additional points I see missing are the huge cost savings and design flexibility with automation.

21. Well put: “Many transit advocates are calling for Sound Transit to simply Build The Damn Trains, apparently expecting the agency to magically find a progressive pot of gold to fill the hole”
    In reading through the comments here, I thought I was working in Ballard again, for so many comments were about it. The two biggest financial problems seem to be with Ballard and West Seattle extensions, both involving going over water and both duplicating, to some extent, Rapid Ride bus routes, which seems to be ST’s deliberate objective, the same in southwest Everett. The amount of money for so little benefit seems long past being worth it, a lot due to the parochial nature of who’s on the ST board: hand-picked members with day jobs that they can’t help but represent those on the ST board, for their day jobs are where they get re-elected. That’s why the “S” curves in Renton got financially stiffed with buses while Issaquah to Google gets light rail despite asking for buses.
    Unfortunately, ST’s plans are generally set in stone, most notably in West Seattle, where its biggest advocate lives there and where fiscal responsibility never permeates when it comes to public money. The ST board is inflexible and unwilling to vote outside of what were, in reality, only concepts that were approved, taking them for being cast in stone. New developments since that vote, such as commercial air service to Paine Field, don’t change their mind about having a station at its terminal which would make more sense than duplicating BRT stations that have been there for six years.
    It would obviously seem to build the most productive parts first, scale back their grandiose plans, consider alternatives such as automating trains or BRT with dedicated lanes, but given the history of ST to date, I have no belief that anything other than the same old, same old will prevail, no matter the cost.

    1. Yes, the likely result for WSLE is truncation at Delridge, with the rest of the extension deferred until additional funding is obtained, or they pay off enough of the debt issued for other projects that they can issue more bonds.

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