Reminder: Link service in Downtown will close early on Friday.
Discussion about the Ballard Link Extension continues on yesterday’s article.

Update: All Metro buses will stop for a moment Thursday at 2:54am and 2:54pm in memorial for slain bus driver Shawn Yim. Details in a comment below.

This is an open thread.

132 Replies to “Midweek Roundup: Unfinished Metropolis”

    4. Testing has already started. Monday and Tuesday had out-of-service trains mimicking the 2 Line between 2:30 and 7:30pm according to the alert. Did anybody see them.

      2. I was going to go down to Westlake and time the trains for fifteen minutes or so, but I didn’t make it.

    5. Thanks for the video.

      I’m betting that pre-revenue service starts the last week of the year, setting up for actual service on the last week of March. Most hyped Link opening ever?

  2. Just reading the USDOT article on the bonuses I was just shocked about how Trump’s name was just plastered everywhere. I also found the quotes about how USDOT supports everyone riding subways very ironic.

    1. Just so it’s clear, those posters are “official” Sound Transit signs designed originally put up for the FIFA Club World Cup tournament this past summer.

      3. Poor installation is rather a hallmark – go check out the “Symphony” signs above the platforms (especially the southbound one) at Symphony Station. Some are so out of whack it’s painfully obvious – I’d have never passed them as complete on a punch walk. A bit off isn’t a big deal, but some of these are just lazy from installer to the contractor/ST people who signed off on them as complete.

  4. Can we just sell the Monorail to metro?
    If they stop honoring transfers, can they at least lower the fare?

    1. Metro has “competing” bus service via Route 4. The Monorail pays for itself with its fares and advertising, so it’s a “premium” service and only costs $1 more than the bus if you’re looking for a one-seat ride.

      1. We can abolish route 4 and with that money, wE cAn bUy tHe mOnOrAiL…

        THAT’S THE STUPIDEST COMBINED IDEA I’VE EVER HEARD!!! ARGH!!!

        It’s better off to just have better service on routes 2, and 3. We can safely abolish route 4, and possibly sell the monorail to Sound Transit instead (possibly running an elevated line above 5th Ave), REALLY!?

      2. Also, Metro is never lowering the fare at this point until Sound Transit does.

      3. “It’s better off to just have better service on routes 2, and 3. We can safely abolish route 4”

        What does this mean? The 3 and 4 used to have different termini at the top of Queen Anne. Metro extended them to an upgraded terminal at SLU following the 13’s path. Last September all #3 Queen Anne runs were renumbered to 4, and the number 3 was repurposed to extend some Madrona downtown-only runs to Summit. So I guess the 3 runs from Madrona that used to go to Queen Anne now switch to number 4 downtown for their Queen Anne half, while the 4 runs from Judkins Park that go to Queen Anne just keep their number.

        I don’t know the merits of having a Taylor-Boston-3rd W route overlapping a QA-3rd W route to SPU, but when I looked at the middle of the Taylor segment walking straight west to Queen Anne Avenue, it was very steep and very far, and going east to the Dexter and Westlake north-south routes is also very steep, so much that I can’t see abolishing Taylor Avenue N bus service.

      4. Actually, I don’t want to abolish bus service on Taylor Ave N because it’s named after me.

      5. “Metro is never lowering the fare at this point until Sound Transit does.”

        Metro has to pay its operating costs. That’s why it raises the fare periodically. Operating costs are not going to go down. Pre-covid Metro’s goal was a 20-30% fare-recovery window, meaning the fare rate was +/- 25% of the average operating cost, and when it went below 20%, the county raised the fare by 25c. During covid that went out the window for social distancing and equity (low-income-rider) reasons. The county’s policy is less coherent now re farebox recovery.

        But the latest thing was that Metro, Link, and ST Express converged on a $3 fare. That’s now implemented. The goal was to simplify the fare rates so people wouldn’t have to remember which agency or service was higher or what the fare was, and more equity for lower-income people displaced to the exurbs due to rising housing prices in Seattle/Eastside, who are super-commuting involuntarily. It’s also supposed to make it easier in the future to offer daily fare caps and daily/weekly passes and contactless payments and such.

        Before the $3 fare, Metro was $2.75, ST Express was $3.25, and Link was $2.25 for one station up to $3.50 Westlake-Angle Lake, with the future possibility of around $5 for Everett-Tacoma Dome (based on 25c per 5 miles). A few years before that, Metro had a higher tier for 2-zone peak-hour trips, and ST Express had a higher tier for multi-county trips.

        So the immediate effect of the $3 fare was that Metro went up 25c, ST Express went down 25c, Link went up for distances up to Westlake-Rainier Beach, and Link went down for distances longer than Westlake-TIB. (Westlake-Rainier Beach was $2.75, Westlake-SeaTac was $3.50.)

        Now with the $3 convergence and it being a whole-dollar number, I don’t know how agencies will address increasing operating costs over the years. Or Link’s long-distance costs when Everett and Tacoma Dome open. Will they all agree to go up to $3.25 at the same time?

      6. I think the 13 should have been positioned as the primary Queen Anne route and numbered 1 or 2. But it was created later than the 1, 2, 3, and 4. Those were successors to streetcar lines. I gather the northern Queen Anne slope had little population then, and SPU either wasn’t there yet or was served solely by the Nickerson route (with no access from Queen Anne).

      7. I like the corridors in Queen Anne. The only thing I’d change is having the 2 follow the path of the 13 rather than branching off. The 13 could just be named the 2 at that point. Kind of bizarre that the heart of Queen Anne has 30 minute service…

      8. Metro has “competing” bus service via Route 4. The Monorail pays for itself with its fares and advertising, so it’s a “premium” service and only costs $1 more than the bus if you’re looking for a one-seat ride.

        So you are saying Link and the streetcar should charge a dollar extra because they are “premium” services that compete with the buses? Sorry, but I think that is a bad idea.

        It is transit, pure and simple. Yes, it has entertainment value. So does the streetcar. So does Link when it is above ground. The only thing unusual about it is that we outsourced the operations to a private company and they charge more than other forms of transit. If we did that with the buses and the streetcar you would see much higher prices on the various routes as they too tried to make a profit.

      9. Several bus routes compete with the Monorail to Seattle Center: D, 1, 2, 4, 13, 24, 33.

        I used to take them to save money because of the Monorail’s higher fare and no transfer credit. Around eight years ago I started riding the Monorail again, figuring I can afford a monorail fare once or twice a year, and counting it as part of my “experience” of going to Seattle Center.

      10. > So you are saying Link and the streetcar should charge a dollar extra because they are “premium” services that compete with the buses?

        No, obviously. I’m saying I think it’s fine that that the Monorail runs as its own service and that’s in large part due to the fact that it pays for itself with its own revenue. If it only achieved a 10-40% farebox recovery like the rest of our transit systems and our goal is to have a relatively seamless fare payment system, then yeah, I’d agree that it should be $3. But it’s a fundamentally a two-stop specialty shuttle and there are many other alternatives to get from Westlake to Seattle Center.

        By the way, until very recently, the Streetcars and Link both typically charged higher fares than Metro.

        Ultimately, fares are usually totally arbitrary point on a spectrum between $0 fares and $0 public subsidy. If the Monorail needs to charge an “extra” dollar to have the title of the only publicly-owned transportation system in WA that actually pays for itself (including all of WSDOT’s work), I say congratulations. It would be nice to have it cost the same as the much larger transit systems, but that’s not a battle I’m going to pick.

      11. I like the corridors in Queen Anne … Kind of bizarre that the heart of Queen Anne has 30 minute service…

        Agreed. It is a tricky areas from a routing standpoint. It is the opposite of Seattle in general. Seattle is an hourglass with downtown in the middle. This is ideal from a routing standpoint. You can run buses infrequently on the outside (where there are fewer people) and then frequently in the middle (forming a spine).

        Queen Anne is the opposite. It is egg-shaped. Back when most of the development was along Queen Anne Avenue closer to downtown (i. e. the Counterbalance) this was OK. But now the middle of Queen Anne has a lot of density. As the 2/13 branches to cover the east you lose frequency along what is now the core. I don’t think there is an easy solution. The 1 and 4 seem OK. I like your idea of just having the 2 continue on Queen Anne Avenue (thus taking over for the 13). SPU is a great anchor. But that leaves 6th Avenue West as well as Galer (areas now served by the 2). That seems like too big an area with too much on it to just abandon. It can be a different route (running every half hour) but then what? The only decent option is to head towards downtown. This is less than ideal because you are mixing a 15-minute route (the new 2) with a half hour route. This would happen twice (along 3rd/McGraw and along the Counterbalance).

        A more radical approach would be this: Have the 4 follow the current routing from downtown to Queen Anne Avenue & Boston. Then turn south (instead of north) before heading west on Galer and looping around to where the current 2 ends. Have the 2 follow the 13 path to SPU (as you suggested). Run both buses every fifteen minutes (under current funding levels — eventually more often). This is a bit clunky but fairly efficient. I think it is more or less revenue neutral. You actually have less overlap than you have now. Instead of overlapping on 3rd West (between McGraw and SPU) you only overlap on Queen Anne Avenue (between Boston and Galer). The Galer/6th area gets fifteen minute service. More importantly, so does Queen Anne Avenue. The 4 is weird (it zig-zags) but existing riders (to the north) just switch to the 2. Other riders (e. g. at Taylor) might appreciate being connected to more of Queen Anne. I’m sure I’m not the first person to think of this. Even though it is weird I actually like it. I don’t like the zig-zag but at least it is at the tail end of the route. You could get off the bus, walk quickly and then get back on the bus. But when you do it will be mostly just you and the bus driver (who will give either give you the stink-eye or a smirk depending on their mood).

      12. I’m saying I think it’s fine that that the Monorail runs as its own service and that’s in large part due to the fact that it pays for itself with its own revenue.

        But it pays for itself by charging more. Imagine if the streetcars were contracted out to some other agency. How much would they charge? Probably a lot more than a bus. Or maybe outsource the RapidRide buses. What would they charge? Probably more.

        But even that misses the point. Assume for a second that a private company runs the numbers and realizes that RapidRide — because so many people ride it — actually runs a profit. Great. They adhere to the same labor standards and now we can brag about how great RapidRide is since it makes a profit. But it is actually better? No, of course not. It probably just means that the county is losing money.

        The only reason this is profitable is because they charge more and happen to cherry pick one of the most cost effective parts of our system. Hell, give me the contract for Link between the UW and Capitol Hill and I would likely charge less! Why not? I’m still making a hearty profit. Of course that would mean that ST would come out way behind since the rest of the system isn’t nearly as profitable.

        The monorail is simply not operated like regular transit because this is not a transit-oriented city. Driving is the default mode. The monorail was always seen as an amusement park. After all, why take it when you can just drive? There is plenty of parking at the Seattle Center. But now things have changed. Lots of people take the monorail to get to various places in Uptown. They Seattle Center has a lot more events and plenty of year-round activities. There is even a public high school inside it. Meanwhile, Westlake is one of the two transit hubs in the entire region (the other being CID). The Link station there — which is integrated with the monorail station — gets more riders than anywhere else. Dozens of buses travel very close to there and most aren’t heading to the center.

        The monorail should be treated like most of the transit systems in the city and charge the same amount.

      13. By the way, until very recently, the Streetcars and Link both typically charged higher fares than Metro.

        The streetcar was cheaper than a Metro bus. Link was either cheaper or more expensive depending on your trip.

        It is just bizarre that we have a mode that actually requires very little in terms of rider subsidy and yet we are OK charging more so that the company we contract with can make a profit. It is just backwards.

      14. If the Monorail needs to charge an “extra” dollar to have the title of the only publicly-owned transportation system in WA that actually pays for itself (including all of WSDOT’s work), I say congratulations.

        That is fine, I’m just saying that is a perverse argument. Huzzah! A private company that we contract with now makes a profit! They do so even though they charge significantly less than similar transit. Oh, wait, they do so by charging more. Well it is still wonderful because the important thing is that this company makes a profit. You wouldn’t want that money to go to the public. Heaven forbid the riders actually benefit.

      15. Rerouting the 4 to Boston-QA-Galer-6th W is an interesting idea, and it makes a clear break between the volume route through the center of the village (13) and the semi-coverage route serving Taylor and 6th. But it does have two problems:

        1. For people on 6th, they have to go out-of-direction to get downtown. With traffic and waiting for stoplights to turn, that could get aggrevating.

        2. It recreates a bad aspect of the former 13/3 routing, where two routes went in opposite directions to downtown, so you had to guess which one would come first in order to decide which bus stop to go to.

        Another alternative would be to serve 6th the other way. The 4 already overlaps the 13 to 3rd W & McGraw. McGraw is a “streetcar suburb” arterial with all the corner stores. So continue west on McGraw, south on 6th, east on Galer, to a terminus at 3rd NW. That’s just two blocks from Queen Anne Ave, so one bus stop distance. The only new trolley wire would be on McGraw from 3rd to 6th, and for the terminal loop. This would recreate the box shape of the old 3’s tail but at a larger size and further west, and without having opposite-direction service on Queen Anne Ave.

        During Ballard Link planning and the 2/3/4 restructure planning in the 2010s I went up there and walked the 2’s route from QA & Galer to 6th & McGraw to see if that tail could just be abolished. I felt it was a longish walk from QA to 6th, and there was more retail on 6th than I remembered from when I visited my friend there in the early 80s. So I think that retail and slight density potential should get at least consideration for keeping a route there.

      16. > The monorail should be treated like most of the transit systems in the city and charge the same amount.

        This is a perfectly fine opinion, but you should understand it’s not inherently or logically justified by any of the points you made or hypotheticals you proposed. Your apparent thesis is that a route’s productivity shouldn’t have any bearing on its fare, which is, again, a totally fair opinion! It’s the exact same logic behind much of the push for fare-free transit. It just doesn’t really have anything to do with why it’s bad the Monorail charges more than buses.

        Ultimately, what irks me about your argument is the implication that any service that charges more than $3 is not “regular transit”. WSF provides vital links across Elliott Bay and charges $11 per pedestrian to depart from Seattle (which becomes $5.50 each way for a round trip). The King County Water Taxi to West Seattle is popular and charges $5. ST only charges $2 for T-Link in Tacoma, and charges a distance-based fare ranging from $3.25 to $5.75 to ride Sounder. There’s nothing magical about $3. It’s just what the buses charge and somehow that’s the baseline for your normal.

        Anyways, it’d cost something like $1.6M per year to drop the monorail’s fares 25%. That’s peanuts relative to many of our City’s programs. The City could easily cover that if it cut the SLU Streetcar and redistribution that operating budget. But that’s not really the point, here.

      17. To be clear, I think there are situations where different fares make sense. Commuter rail for example. Sounder charges more for long distance trips. This is because:

        1) It costs a lot of money to make those trips.
        2) You are providing a lot of extra service for those riders.

        It is the combination that justifies the extra fare. Riders should be expected to pay more — to be subsidized less — if they are being given something more valuable *and* the subsidy would be huge if they charged a flat fare. It also allows the service in the first place. It would be hard to justify trains to Lakewood without it.

        Likewise it would be quite reasonable if ST charged more for their “express” buses if they were all long-distance, poorly performing express buses. But many of them — for example the 550 — operate like regular buses that just so happen to be run by ST. Not only that, but those buses often fail the other test — they are not heavily subsidized. So ST would have to come up with another term for buses like the 592 (which I’m sure is heavily subsidized and quite appreciated by its riders).

        But the monorail fails this test miserably. It not only operates entirely within the city (much like the streetcar and many buses) but the subsidy is probably quite small. Otherwise the $1 surcharge wouldn’t be enough to allow a profit by the folks operating it. It is quite likely that if it was run by Metro it would have a fairly low subsidy (maybe 50 cents) if they charged what is now the standard fare in Seattle. Raising the fare to magically get to zero subsidy seems rather silly at that point (just as it would be for any bus).

      18. > The streetcar was cheaper than a Metro bus.

        I guess I was misremembering the streetcar fare before Metro and ST squared up to $3.

      19. Mike, I like that idea for the 4; it connects Sixth West to the Queen Anne business district. However, it lops off the terminal loop to Raye on the 2; it’s easily a third of a mile between Sixth and McGraw and Seventh and Raye. It might be possible to extend the 1 to the 2 loop. The bus would layover next to Ray’s. There is non-revenue wire between Seventh West and Raye and Ninth West and Raye and a wire from eastbound McGraw to northbound Sixth West also exists.

        I used to live at Sixth West and Galer before they went to the new slack overhead. It was cool at night to hear your bus coming a couple of blocks away because the wires would start pinging like a sonar. Without a defined period like a sonar, but very similar in sound.

      20. My friend lived at the 2’s terminus at 6th & Raye. We used to walk to Ken’s Market on McGraw and it didn’t seem long then, but I haven’t been up there for a long time.

        The wire between the 1’s and 2’s termini was in use then. On weekends the 2 would go out and return as the 1, and vice-versa. So I had to get off at the stop before the end when that was running.

      21. “I used to live at Sixth West and Galer before they went to the new slack overhead.”

        If you mean with the old generation of trolleybuses, what I remember is they got totally silent when they weren’t charging, with just a faint whine. I loved that; it was so calming compared to the noise and vibration of diesel buses. Then the next generation of trolleybuses in the 1990s or so had a fan that ran continuously and destroyed the silence, and it’s been like that ever since. On rare occasions the fan is off, and then you can enjoy the silence again. But I only encounter that like once every five years.

      22. I guess I was misremembering the streetcar fare

        Yeah, it was not very well know. I remember noticing this when I researched the monorail and it surprised me. Who knew, right?

      23. Queen Anne (like much of the rest of Seattle) just needs more service.

        The northern end of the 2 is close enough to the 13 (5-10 minute walk) that it could be considered covered, though it is separate enough that it would be good to cover it with a separate route as well. It’s kind of similar to the 12 but in a much less dense neighborhood.

        With limited service I’d cut the 2 in favor of 15m service on the 13. With a few more hours the 2 could get run at 30m; with more hours all four corridors could run at 15m; with even more hours the 13 could get upgraded to 10m frequency.

        A few other ideas (probably difficult due to trolley wire):
        – Anchor the northern end of the 1 by turning on McGraw and laying over near Queen Anne/Boston; cover the tail by extending the 2
        – Truncate the 4 at Queen Anne/Boston once the 13 has reasonable frequency. Use the hours to extend the 13 to Fremont

      24. @Mike — I like that idea. I think it is better. So basically the 4 would have a button hook as a northern tail like so. I can see lots of advantages. For those on Sixth as well as Galer you retain the one-seat ride to downtown. It takes a bit longer (and you head the wrong direction initially) but you run the bus twice as often. The tail is also an east-west oriented route. The top of the hill is basically a plateau with pleasant walking. Thus if I’m at the library and want to go to Uptown I would just walk over to Queen Avenue and take the 2 towards downtown. But if I want to get to Valley & Taylor I can take the 4 as it loops around and heads east.

        As you mentioned there would also be a stop (at Queen Anne Avenue & McGraw) where riders would have two 15-minute buses heading downtown. Two buses serve the stop now but one of the buses is half-hour. Transferring between buses can be done at the same stop. For example someone who goes from SPU to Valley & Taylor would lose out with this plan. They would need to transfer. But at least the transfer is trivial. (Going the other way is a two minute walk unless you moved the bus stop).

        Overall this looks revenue neutral — it may even save some money. I only see a couple drawbacks. You lose a little coverage at the north end of the existing 2. This is a minor issue. The graveyard is to the north while the 1 and 4 are fairly close together at that point (to the east and west). It is also relatively flat there. The bigger issue is finding layover space and a turnaround at 3rd & Galer. There is plenty of space to find layover on Galer. Turning around might be the tougher issue. I think you end up using a residential street. Sixth is a residential street north of McGraw so this isn’t without precedent. The best option might be to loop around Queen Anne Avenue, Galer and First West. At most you would need to add wire on First as well as Lee but that is only a couple blocks*. You would get rid of some parking on First but otherwise it looks OK. Probably the biggest question is whether the street is hard enough. This would also serve the same bus stops (not that it matters that much). You would need to find a comfort station but there are plenty of businesses around there. If those issues could be overcome I think it would be a significant improvement for the area.

        *I could see the bus turning around first and then laying over at the Second & Galer bus stop (facing west). It could go off wire at it made the loop from Queen Anne Avenue to Lee. Then it could go back on-wire as it lays over. Since very few people would be on the bus at that point it wouldn’t matter how long it takes to go back on wire. For that matter it really wouldn’t matter how long it takes to go off wire (you would probably drop off a few riders at Queen Anne & Galer but not a lot).

      25. Serving 6th from the north adds a lot of out of direction travel. The east-west segment on McGraw would be nice but if I lived on 6th I’d walk to take the 13 in almost all cases.

        I think if 6th isn’t served from the south it’s not worth serving at all.

      26. Queen Anne (like much of the rest of Seattle) just needs more service.

        That was my initial thought and I almost wrote that. I was going to make the case that the routing is about as good as you can get — it is just a tricky area to cover (because of its egg-shape) and the only good option is to run the buses more often.

        But I think the routing we’ve outlined is clearly better. It is more efficient. The 2/13 branch makes sense geographically but like all branches you get half the service on each end. By backtracking a relatively small amount you can keep good headways on every corridor — most importantly Queen Anne Avenue — for the same amount of money. If we do get more money then we can run these buses every ten minutes midday instead of every fifteen.

        Of course you could just not serve Sixth but I think that would be a mistake. It is about 600 meters to Queen Anne Avenue. That is a ways and farther than most people will walk. On McGraw the 4 doglegs to be a bit closer but that isn’t the case with Galer. As the crow flies it is closer to Tenth (and the Metro 1) but it is very steep street. The area has some density. It isn’t Capitol Hill but there are plenty of apartments and shops scattered about. There will probably be more eventually (especially since we have a pro-density mayor). I think Sixth should have some coverage. Right now that consists of infrequent but direct service. We are proposing the opposite (better frequency but indirect routing). This gives those riders the best of both worlds. Those that want to run over to Queen Anne Avenue and take a bus straight down the hill can do so. Others can take the bus directly downtown. At the same time you create a new east-west connection.

      27. If I lived on 6th I’d walk to take the 13 in almost all cases.

        Except you wouldn’t save any time. Imagine you are at Galer & Sixth. It is about an eight minute walk to Queen Anne Avenue. By then the 4 would have gone north up to McGraw, made the turn east and be heading south down Fifth Avenue North. At that point it is a race between the 4 and the 2 to see who gets downtown sooner. The 4 will win most of the time. At worst it is a wash. So the question is whether riders are willing to walk 8 minutes even though it wouldn’t save them any time. Generally speaking the answer is an emphatic “No”. Ridership generally drops off at 400 meters and the distance is 600 meters.

        More to the point, things are actually better for those riders. Sure, the existing bus is more direct but it runs every half hour. Think of it from a coverage standpoint. We are used to buses running infrequently because an area can’t justify better frequency. So I guess this qualifies. Well the same thing is true when it comes to directness. This is just giving those riders an indirect route instead of an infrequent one.

      28. Mike, no, I was talking about the “singing overhead”. The wires were pulled taught in all places then, so they transmitted the sounds of the contact slidiing along the wire, kind of like the “pinging” of sonar.

        So far as the silence of the buses themselves when they were not moving, yes, that was one of the nicest things. Onboard then had a quiet whine when they were moving, but it was quieter than any diesel; kind of like a hybrid with a full charge.

      29. @Ross

        The areas that really need the extra coverage are roughly around 6th/Crockett to 4th/Galer. I agree that a loopy 4 would generate some ridership, and in the short term it’s probably marginally better than not serving the corridor at all. At the end of the day though it’s papering over a problem generated by a lack of service hours.

        If there were no political/capital costs to moving a route that might be fine, but don’t I think the loopy 4 is better enough to justify the inefficient routing. To be fair though cutting the 2 to run the 13 at 15m is not realistic either.

        In an ideal world Metro would just find the service hours to run the 13 at 15m (some of the through-routes would need to get rearranged as well). Maybe some of those service hours could be found by truncating the 4 at Boston/Queen Anne, though it might be too difficult to find space for a layover around there.

      30. “Turning around might be the tougher issue. I think you end up using a residential street.”

        That’s what a lot of the existing/former trolley routes do. 2, former 3 North Queen Anne, 10, etc.

      31. If you’re on most of 6th it’s only a few blocks north to McGraw. It avoids turning on Queen Anne Ave, which caused the slowdowns that plagued the 3 East Queen Anne. If you’re on Galer and don’t want to go through the button-hook, you walk a few blocks east to the 13. The worst point is right at 6th & Galer. That’s not a big enough area to make a big deal about.

        I thought about just terminating at 6th & Galer and not serving Galer Street, because from either 6th or QA you can walk to the middle in between. I kept it just to serve people a little better and because it has always had service.

        The 13 should run every 10 minutes minimum because it’s the primary route on Queen Anne and goes through the middle of an urban village. 15 minutes is the bare minimum, not a goal. I understand Metro can’t do 10 minutes everywhere when it can’t even do 15 minutes full time on many primary and secondary routes. But that should be its goal, it should take incremental steps toward it, and the 13 should have obviously the highest frequency on Queen Anne rather than people having to decide whether to go to the 13, 2, or 4 stop if they’re just going north-south.

      32. Part of the difficulty with the 2N is that it is just close enough to the 13 that many would walk to the 13 if it were more frequent, but just far enough that the 2N probably needs a coverage route.

        I think Metro’s interim concept for QA is quite good: combine the 2N with a different coverage route, in this case a north Cap Hill (Aloha) route. That way it is still covered, but the coverage is used to provide a unique connection rather than duplicating more-frequent neighboring service.

        https://platform.remix.com/project/7063754e (route 3028)

        @Mike

        I agree, the 13 should really run at 15m minimum and ideally at 10m.

    2. Metro used to operate the Monorail for years. It was outsourced to a private operator because, I don’t know why. Privatization and limiting the city’s subsidy I guess.

      Seattle owns the Monorail and I don’t see why it should sell it. But it could have Metro operate it again. Metro is operating the Seattle Streetcars and Link.

      1. Yeah, I think Metro should operate it. They should charge the same fare as the buses. Metro buses, the monorail and the streetcar should all be the same price.

  5. I do think we are at the mercy of the federal government as far as improving Rainier Ave goes. There is funding and support at the local and state levels, but the project to reconfigure the I90 ramps won’t go through without federal funding and I’m not sure if it makes sense to completely repave Rainier until the I90 ramp project is ready to start in unison. I’m guessing that’s part of the reason why the RapidRide R project was pushed out.

  6. The bot delivery scooters are yet another invasion by technology corporations of the human space. They listen and even command us through out “smart” devices. They peer through our Ring cameras. They record our reading preferences as we swipe the pages.

    They’ve ruined trail walking with electric “bikes” ridden by incel punks yelling “On your left!” just before they swoosh by. Now they’re commandeering the last relatively safe and reserved space for free outdoors exercise and recreation.

    Kick the bastards to the curb — literally — when you see one. Turn it on its side (gently so as not to “damage” the little invader) so the techies have to send a “savior” to right it. Raise their cost of doing business so high they’ll throw in the towel — or is it the grease rag?

    1. Actually, the fastest bike riders on the burke gilman aren’t even using electric bikes. They’re the spandex-clad people using the carbon fiber road bikes and treating the trail as their training ground for the Tour de France.

      1. That’s true too. They can be pretty domineering as well, but they are usually better riders and don’t hit people nearly as often.

  7. Why is the LA gondola so contentious? Won’t it lessen traffic in the immediate vicinity of Dodger Stadium? Are people worried that the cars will fall on them? That does very occasionally happen, but they aren’t going to be that big so the chance that someone is right below is pretty vanishingly small. Will it run over streets or diagonally over peoples’ houses? That might make a difference.

    I just wonder what people are so incensed about. The article in the LAT doesn’t say.

    1. The LA Gondola is contentious because LA is full of NIMBYs across the political spectrum. In this case, the left-NIMBYs think it would engender more gentrification and displacement in LA’s Chinatown while only serving to enrich the owner of Dodger Stadium.

      Imagine this hypothetical alternate history: T-Mobile park was built at the north end of Beacon Hill after forcibly displacing thousands of people. It has a fairly popular shuttle bus which operates from/to King Street Station before/after games but otherwise no direct transit service. The Seattle socio-political sphere is (still) primarily polarized between anti-development leftists who think market-rate construction is a capitalist handout and your typical “moderate” liberals who only support transit so all those other people can get off the road.

      Then imagine the owner of this alternate T-Mobile park says they want to build a gondola with a max capacity of 5,000 people per hour moving event goers to and from their 56,000-seat stadium. The gondola starts at King St Station with a stop on the south edge of the CID before crossing the freeway up to the stadium. They also have a plan to convert portions of the massive parking lot into a market-rate (“luxury”) mixed-use mid-rise development. By state law, the regional transit agency (either King County Metro or Sound Transit, reader’s choice in this hypothetical scenario) has to lead the EIS, so it takes Agency resources to complete the environmental impact assessment work but the Stadium Owner promises to pay for the actual construction costs.

      Do you think this Alt-Seattle would support this project?

      1. Nathan Dickey,

        Alt-Seattle would raise a stink, but the gondola would still get built. Seattle isn’t much different than L.A. or any other California city. In fact, why does Seattle have incredibly high housing prices? Cali money rolling in. Cali tech jobs rolling in. Seattle is more like Cali every day. If California wasn’t so completely oversaturated with NIMBYs, Would Seattle have seen the runaway growth of the last 25 years? L.A has a much better climate for “walkable neighborhoods” right? I didn’t support this “Cali Colonization” by the way, but money talks. A place like Capitol Hill is appalling to urban folks making $150,000+ and that means “peasant class” folks making $70,000 a year might think about moving to Kent. Or Wisconsin. Someplace where $70,000 isn’t a poverty wage.

        I understand how some “locals” are upset about the gondola project (I might be), but then again rich people do whatever the fuck they want in America. Look at South Lake Union! I’m a little surprised they even let a person like me go there. I’m some point it might be a gated community you need an “Amazon I.D.” to get into. Colonization is the American Way after all.

      2. tacomee, I’m not sure what your point (“rich people do whatever the fuck they want”) has to do with why Tom’s question (“Why is the LA gondola so contentious?”).

        Your pattern of off-topic ranting about the same subjects (in this case, wealth disparity) is pushing the limits of the Blog’s comment policy.

      3. “why does Seattle have incredibly high housing prices? Cali money rolling in. Cali tech jobs rolling in.”

        You forgot the part about Cali bigwigs competing with local residents for the same housing units. If we’d built enough housing, the richest half would go to new units, the rest would go to the other units, and if there were a few more vacancies beyond that landlords/owners wouldn’t be able to make increases stick because people would just go a couple blocks away to somebody who isn’t doing that.

        But because restrictive zoning prevents enough units from being built, especially where people want to live and close to their jobs, the wealthier newcomers and current residents are competing for the same units and only one of them can get it (like musical chairs), so the lower-income person is displaced to the suburbs or, if they can’t afford even that (because they’re rising faster than Seattle because they started from a lower base), they become homeless.

      4. ““peasant class” folks making $70,000 a year might think about moving to Kent.”

        Why should somebody making $70,000 have to live twenty miles out, in an unwalkable car-dependent neighborhood with big-box stores and strip malls with parking lots in front, or move to Wisconson?

        If they move to Wisconson, the same insufficient-housing problem exists there, so they’ll raise the housing prices and a Wisconson resident will be displaced to Kentucky, and a Kentuckyite will be displaced to Missisippi or Alabama. Then what will the Missisippi resident they displace do? Move to Haiti? Throw themself into the ocean?

      5. Nathan Dickey,

        How about why ID/China Town seems pretty solidly against “Big Transit” building anything in their area? How about why “at grade” rail is the right call for Rainier Beach but not Ballard? Those are real transit issues in Seattle are certainly related to the Dodger Gondola.

        And I’ll give you another… how come 2 huge ball parks get built in the old “SODO” area and yet housing isn’t allowed because much of the area is zoned “light industrial”? Except if you’re a billionaire team owner…

        One person’s Urban Renewal is often another person’s Urban Colonization.

      6. Every single sentence is nonsense.

        > How about why ID/China Town seems pretty solidly against “Big Transit” building anything in their area?

        Basic respect starts with using the right name, which is “Chinatown International District”. Their reasons for opposing construction impacts are well known.

        >How about why “at grade” rail is the right call for Rainier Beach but not Ballard?

        Why was at-grade rail the right call for the Eastside?

        > Those are real transit issues in Seattle are certainly related to the Dodger Gondola.

        Not related at all.

        > how come 2 huge ball parks get built in the old “SODO” area and yet housing isn’t allowed because much of the area is zoned “light industrial”?

        So many reasons. Why fight to change industrial zoning to residential instead of change low-density residential zoning to medium-density? Nonsensical.

        > One person’s Urban Renewal is often another person’s Urban Colonization.

        Who’s calling for Urban Renewal??

        Touch some grass, man.

      7. “If they move to Wisconson, the same insufficient-housing problem exists there, so they’ll raise the housing prices and a Wisconson resident will be displaced to Kentucky, and a Kentuckyite will be displaced to Missisippi or Alabama. Then what will the Missisippi resident they displace do? Move to Haiti? Throw themself into the ocean?”

        Pretty much, also the job market is completely different in Wisconson. While they have their major players, the market is much smaller to find comparable work and pay.

        Also the complaining about Californians ruining the Seattle housing market is such a red herring.
        Seattle folks have been complaining about them for 40 years at this point that it was a joke on Almost Live back in the day.

        https://youtu.be/4dj7nkEj8ZM?si=G_gHI_0EwQVSJFSD

        No, Californians didn’t ruin Seattle housing market and it’s a frankly really wrong answer. The answer and is the one he always ignores despite people telling it to him hundreds of times at this point is that land values went up significantly and that zoning didn’t keep up to growing population to accommodate new density. So of course you’re going to have expensive real estate if you don’t build enough.

      8. “How about why ID/China Town seems pretty solidly against “Big Transit” building anything in their area?”

        You’re taking one faction at its word that it represents all of CID, when there’s an opposite faction on the other side that gave more testimony to ST, so it’s at least as large as the transit-nimby one and probably larger.

      9. Mike Orr,

        Working in construction, I’m about the most “Let’s Build it!” dude you’ve ever met. Currently there are something like 40 million people in California and a bunch of them want to leave. I think Washington has over 8 million now? I get the feeling that no how many units Washington builders crank out (and let’s go!) it’s might tough, maybe impossible even, to keep up with out-of-State demand. Over the last 25 years, California Cities shunned growth and put a lot of pressure on Seattle… the most friendly and pro growth city on the Left Coast. Move to Tacoma? https://movetotacoma.com

        I got no solution for you however. Look who’s running for President on Dems side now. Newsome has such an awesome track record saying no to NIMBY’s

        Earning $70K (pretax) there’s no way to rent an apartment in a desirable neighborhood for $25K or even $20k per year long term. Over time your rent will go up faster than your wages, and saving 10-15% percent for retirement will be impossible. I don’t want to make this a personal attack on anybody, but these sort of finances will leave you homeless at 65. Guys I worked with “back in the day” are now pushing 70, living in their truck and cleaning up job sites for a few bucks for beer money. It’s goddamn sad. Buying a house in
        Tacoma wasn’t my first choice… but it’s worked out for me long term.

        The one thing ST3 was suppose to do with connect cheaper housing to jobs, right?

      10. “Why was at-grade rail the right call for the Eastside?”

        Because the City of Bellevue asked for a short tunnel in front of City Hall, because it was afraid surface trains would interfere with car circulation (such as shoppers going to Bellevue Square). That wasn’t budgeted in ST2 so the city had to find funding. It agreed to pay half of it, begged North King to pay for Judkins Park station, and asked ST to economize elsewhere in East King for the rest. That led to lowering the Bel-Red segment to the surface to save money there.

      12. “Earning $70K (pretax) there’s no way to rent an apartment in a desirable neighborhood for $25K or even $20k per year long term.”

        Let’s stick to monthly rents. Mine is $2050. It was $1175 in 2010 when I moved in.

        “Over time your rent will go up faster than your wages,”

        That should be a national emergency and the government should be fixing it. Housing prices should be at 33% of wages and remain stable. We can’t allow the price of housing, healthcare, food, education, utilities, and even cars to keep rising faster than wages. If you run that forward fifty years, nobody will be able to afford anything except the top 10%. Then you’ll have tens or hundreds of thousands of homeless people and Hoovervilles like in the Depression.

      13. Thanks, Nathan. So it isn’t the folks near the stadium who are objecting so much as region-wide anti-Dodger leftists?

      14. Tom, my read is that most of the opposition is a mix of defending Chinatown against gentrification and a general “screw you” to a high visibility project funded by a rich guy because the vocal minority assumes anything that’s not publicly funded is evil. LA’s political machine is really weird, though, so results can be unintuitive.

      15. Thanks. I found a text description of the route and it sure looks to me like it will stay close by the LRT tracks through “Chinatown”. Wikipedia says:

        A spokesperson from LA ART claimed the route runs mostly along public property and city streets and would not displace residents.[17] The route connects to Union Station at Alameda Street which it follows before it runs along the perimeter of Los Angeles State Historic Park where a station will be built close to the Chinatown station on the A line. It continues along the Metro rail line alignment to an angle point where it heads up Bishops Road to the stadium, crossing the freeway near the Stadium Way crossing.

        The schematic on the Wikipedia page shows the LAUS station between the station and Alameda and the Chinatown station just west of the LRT station there. There’s not much room there but I guess they think they can do it, but otherwise it pretty much follows the LRT tracks for another four or five blocks before turning up the hill on Bishops Road, which isn’t really “Chinatown”.

        So it sounds like a really good project to me. I expect it will be
        too anemic to meet the demand.

    2. How much resources could one short stadium gondola EIS take? It’s not like a fifteen-mile rail line going through South Bellevue wetlands or across a river or down the middle of a street.

      1. As always with California, it’s more about the principle of the matter than the material aspects.

      2. How much resources could one short stadium gondola EIS take?

        I’m sure someone will try really hard to win that particular challenge.

      3. Unless the Feds get involved, it likely would not need an EIS.

        Instead it would need an Environmental Impact Repirt (EIR) which is a California state thing.

        The supplemental EIR was accepted unanimously earlier this month by LA Metro (Mayor Karen Bass on that Board). It seems that its fate with LA City Council remains contentious, as they passed a resolution last month to oppose the project. .

        https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/metro-board-of-directors-to-recertify-environmental-documents-for-dodgers-gondola/3811559/?amp=1

        https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/dodger-stadium-gondola-la-city-council/3804101/?amp=1

        It would be as if ST approved an EIS but the City of Seattle said no.

        Yep it’s a political and procedural mess.

    3. I don’t know much about the project but I think there are three factors:

      Resentment about public investments and contributions for a pro sports venue.

      Aesthetics to the neighborhood.

      Fear of accidents due to the wires getting cut somehow.

      With each reason, there’s a logical argument to refute it. But that doesn’t make it go away.

    4. Zach B,

      Close your eyes and imagine every person in Tacoma (and Ruston and U.P) moving to Seattle. That’s the sort of growth and change I have seen in 30 years. Seattle was a mid size city that added another small city to it. All of those people came from somewhere, right?

      Construction was so booming in Seattle in the 2000s anybody who showed up had a job with as much overtime as you could tolerate. It was insane sheer amount of stuff that got built. I painted units all night on Friday so the rental agent (and 20 house cleaners) could move people in at noon Saturday.

      In the end, construction sorta caught up with demand (there’s still a lot of work out there however). But zoning or NIMBYs or nothing else got in the way. They still aren’t getting in the way. Interest rates and a slowdown in demand are a little I guess. I’m all for changing the zoning to build more, but that doesn’t bring in more capital or construction workers.

      The last 30 years of Seattle have been about outsiders colonizing the City. There’s a lot to unpack there, but that’s what it was. I was right in the middle of it. There were winners and losers, stories of people making it big (home owners) and people pushed out (poor renters, fixed income)

      I’m going to slide on out of here and quit trolling you kid. But one last thing. The only thing I’ve learned about America is It’s better to be the Colonizer. Go any make your way and if push somebody out, that’s not your problem.

      1. “I’m going to slide on out of here and quit trolling you kid.”

        You could’ve just decided to not do that, but you did anyway.

      2. > The last 30 years of Seattle have been about outsiders colonizing the City. There’s a lot to unpack there, but that’s what it was. I was right in the middle of it. There were winners and losers, stories of people making it big (home owners) and people pushed out (poor renters, fixed income)

        If you look at San Francisco which didn’t build as much housing much more people got pushed out.

        You always come to the wrong conclusion tacommee

    5. It’s contentious at least in part because it’s objectively stupid. A gondola is a good transit choice for a route with consistent low to medium demand, since it’s relatively low capacity and you can’t easily add peak trips.

      This is the opposite of how demand at stadiums work. I recall reading years ago that it would take something like 6 hours to clear the stadium with the proposed service. In typical LA fashion, it’s a vapid project that doesn’t serve a transit need.

      1. But you’re not trying to “clear the stadium”; just provide another alternative. Dodger stadium averaged 50,000 people per game last season. The Los Angeles Aerial Rapid Transit (LA ART) claims a capacity of 5,000 per hour each way. Reasonably you could expect maybe 5-10% of the crowd to use it. That said, with only 81 games per year they must be counting on selling a lot of sight seeing tickets to make it pencil out. That might work. Crystal Mtn has a line of people all summer. It’s a great view of Mtn Rainier but a heck of a drive to get there just to ride the gondola. LA has a steady stream of tourists year round. Look how much people are willing to pay just to ride a big Ferris Wheel in Seattle and London (and where else?). I can see the stadium selling parking for people wanting to visit DT.

      2. But you’re not trying to “clear the stadium”

        Exactly. It is weird that people criticize a project because it will carry too many people. In what world is that bad? That is like saying the Lion King Musical is terrible because too many people want tickets.

        If it gets a lot of rides then it is has to be considered a success. Meanwhile, you will still have other forms of transit that go to the stadium.

  8. re Rainier Avenue South piece:
    – it has two segments of note; the north part with a two-way left turn lane; the south part without one
    – there are several other stroads in Seattle; see Aurora Avenue North, Lake City Way NE, 15th Avenue NW, 15th and Elliott avenues West, East Marginal Way South, 1st and 4th avenues South
    – for safety all the stroads need better access management (e.g., channelized left turns and driveway consolidation)
    – all the stroads have frequent transit today
    – the I-90 interchange is difficult; there are several others in Seattle on different arterials.

  9. I started to assemble the end-of-year review post and I think it’s noteworthy that our two most-discussed articles (by number of comments) are the West Seattle Link Forum article at the start of the year and the Ballard Link Alternatives article from Monday.

    1. That always happens with major Link project articles. It’s been happening ever since year-end article-comment counts started being ranked around fifteen years ago. Some Link articles reached 350 comments, usually one or two per year, and the next-highest articles were a third lower or just half that.

      With the rise of mobile-device reading, counts above 75 get increasingly cumbersome to navigate or reply to, so I’ve been trying to keep the count below 100 or so with more open threads and splitting articles. That’s part of the reason for having open threads every Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday, to spread out the comments. With a major Link structural decision looming, there’s no way to keep it to that level, and the last two articles are at around 180 each.

  10. All Metro buses will stop momentarily Thursday at 2:54pm in memorial for Shawn Yim, a Metro driver who was stabbed by a passenger exactly a year ago. There will be another pause before this at 2:54am (affecting night owl routes), the time of the incident. Each bus will stop not at the exact second, but at the closest time where it’s safe to stop.

    A few weeks after the incident, there was a memorial procession of buses downtown and a memorial service, with cancellations of several regular bus runs to enable drivers to attend it.

  11. oh Link is down this weekend because some work in the tunnel? wow imagine once that shuts down 3 lines if they don’t build the second tunnel. Maybe the entire purpose for Seattle is to serve as a warning to others about not putting all your trains in one tunnel.

      1. They won’t. But the people coming from Ballard or Rainier Valley/airport won’t also be screwed.

        That said, budget realities have made me a stub believer until such time as a better second tunnel can be delivered. Just don’t interline or you’re stuck with it forever.

    2. Let’s look at all the November-December closures. (Linked in the 12/10 open thread.) The DSTT one this weekend and the other two are to upgrade the signals. The others (some in the DSTT and some elsewhere) are to make the system more reliable so it doesn’t break down as much. That will lead to fewer closures in the future.

      So currently ST typically turns back the 1 Line at Capitol Hill and SODO, with a bus bridge downtown. With the 2 Line it will likely do that at Capitol Hill and, we don’t know, Judkins Park? Mercer Island? South Bellevue? If there’s infrastucture to turn back at Judkins Park, then the shuttle could get to it and turn around via surface streets, or maybe via the I-90 Rainier exit. If it turns back at South Bellevue, that’s essentially the situation we have now, except with a 10-15 minute shuttle instead of a 15-30 minute 550. In that case the shuttle may bypass Judkins Park station, like it sometimes does UW station at night.

      In ST3 it gets more complicated but the same pattern might hold. The northern 2/3 turn back at Capitol Hill, the eastern 2 turns back at Judkins Park or South Bellevue, and the southern 1/3 turn back at SODO. Ballard can’t use any of the existing turnbacks so it might have to use Denny if possible. But that would leave the line so short that ST might just bag it and run a shuttle the whole way. In that case it could theoretically go from SODO to Ballard.

      1. Mike, there is excellent infrastructure for turning back at Judkins Park. There’s a center pocket track just west of the station, probably included for just this eventuality. That gives three holding points for trains reversing from the east, the two platforms and the pocket.

        The only serious problem is that without automation the operator has to shut down the train, alight, walk the train, board and then boot it up. There is no provided walkway as there is at Northgate, so it’s ballast-walking, which is slightly hazardous.

        Reversing therefore may require double-seating west of Mercer Island to maintain ten minute headways. The second operator would board the trailing car at MIS, go into the cabin and ready the panel to take over from the front-end operator in the stub. When the rear op (now front-end) op receives the handover from the front-end op (now rear-end) and a clear signal at the east turnout of the pocket, they would pull the train up to the eastbound platform

        The formerly front-end operator (now rear-end) would alight at MI to have a break and take the rear-end operator position on the next train after the break.

        You could try boarding and alighting right there at Judkins Park, but the rear-end operator might not be ready to take the train out from the pocket on schedule reliably.

  12. Has anyone seen the Federal Way extension since opening day, especially peak hours? How full are the trains compared to Lynnwood or north of Angle Lake? Are the 577 and 578 emptier?

  13. SoundTransit considers a 100 degree curve coming off the existing Westlake station, using the existing leftover Convention Place tunnel connection, to be a non-starter.

    Just for the record, TriMet operates trains over this curve every 15 minutes. Obviously, it’s far from ideal, but so is an 11 story transfer between light rail lines. Sometimes, given limited options and budget, there’s only so much that can be done.

    1. Glenn, you are right that the busway originally wiggled northward to be outside the Pine Street envelope in order to enter Convention Center station between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. That “vestibule” in the Pine Street tunnel probably does still exist, because a building, the Nine and Pine Apartments was built over it. You can see a short stretch of “forever concrete” on Ninth Avenue just north of Pine using StreetView that probably covers the tunnel. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Seattle,+WA/@47.6136088,-122.3321577,3a,75y,321.51h,63.49t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sh-GwNuBYMWqvs6eP0JpIIQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D26.509425244485143%26panoid%3Dh-GwNuBYMWqvs6eP0JpIIQ%26yaw%3D321.506103645561!7i16384!8i8192!4m6!3m5!1s0x5490102c93e83355:0x102565466944d59a!8m2!3d47.6061389!4d-122.3328481!16zL20vMGQ5anI?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTIwOS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

      I think that given the frequency of Spine trains, using that vestibule for the diverging route from a level junction with the required tight turns into the Ninth Street ROW used every eight minutes during rush hours would be a major bottleneck. I’m not at all surprised that ST rejected it out of hand.

      However, there is a way to connect at the east end of Pine Street that requires a much less abrupt curve which might be useful for a single-track non-revenue connection to BLE if demising the north wall of the Westlake station box at Third and Pine is deemed infeasible or too destructive. Here is a description of it:

      First, let me say that I don’t know what has happened to the “tail tracks” that continued on east on Pine a bit beyond the TBM vault east of the Paramount. Certainly the pair of straight tracks that allowed stub reversals there have been severed and replaced with new curved trackage at the curve into the TBM vault. The remnants to the east were probably taken up as well.

      I have to imagine that the tunnel headed a bit on east is still there, so, the current double-track curve into the vault could be modified with a trailing point turnout in the southbound track to what used to be the northside stub track.

      Pine would have to be dug up from the end of the existing tunnel to the edge of the freeway (if it doesn’t reach the freeway wall already which is likely) and the Pike/Pine HOV ramp closed for a while. During rehabilitation of the tunnel a single-track stretch the HOV ramp would be dug to Minor and Olive and then decked over with a new ramp roadway. I expect that the Pine Street tunnel is too shallow for a TBM to be used underneath the off-ramp. The existing curve into the vault is only a few dozen yards from the freeway, and the curve only another twenty at most. While it’s true that the pit in which Convention Place sat was pretty deep (30 feet or so IIRC) and the stub tunnel would ipso facto be the same depth, so too was the connection between the station and the HOV ramp. So tunneling beneath the HOV ramp with a TBM is simply not feasible; the tube would be too shallow.

      But that cut and cover, from the end of the existing Pine Street tunnel to Minor and Olive, could be descending northbound for the full block and I think it would attain a great enough depth that a vault in the grassy space just south of Olive could be created for transition to TBM tunneling.

      From Olive and Minor a TBM would tunnel north under Minor to Denny and then pass under the substation and Onni Park to the John Street ROW and head west toward “South Lake Union” station. If a stub with connection here is chosen then the station box for South Lake Union will have to be a bit longer than otherwise and trapezoid shaped in order to accommodate three rather than two TBM incursions.

      I would include a facing-point crossover in the Pine Street tunnel between Eighth and Ninth. That would allow out-of-service trains headed to Ballard to run in-direction all the way through the tunnel past Westlake and only run against traffic for a block or so to a single turnout at the TBM vault curve where in-service trains are already moving somewhat slowly.

      I got this basic idea of swinging east from a new fellow whose name I don’t remember now who suggested it using the Ninth Avenue curve idea. I’m sorry I don’t remember who he is to credit him by name. I don’t believe that there enough room to do it with a curve into Ninth as he suggested, but the oblique angle of the HOV ramp crossing Pine makes it possible another block east.

      Suggestion for the Admins: I know it would not be simple programming, but it would be nice for us to be able to find our specific previous posts, perhaps with a “search by phrase” or something like that.

      1. I feel like that’s something worth advertising — one of the original creators of the second tunnel concept now thinks its a bad idea to build it first.

    2. Thanks. I like the Urbanist but I’ve never gotten into the habit of reading it regularly because there are only so many sites I can check every morning. So I see articles when somebody links to them here.

    3. Wow! I assumed from your description he’d argue DSTT2 is the only way, since he had a hand in selecting it. But the article says the opposite.

      1. In his defense, the CID proposal has drifted dramatically from what he would have had in mind, which he summarizes into probably the best critique of the DSTT2 as current proposed:
        “the second tunnel that the agency proposes today does not fulfill its original intent: a regional transit hub in the Chinatown-International District (CID) and a Midtown station, near Seattle’s Central Library. A single tunnel restores the promised regional transit hub and high-quality access to the CID, with a fraction of the local impacts.”

        The poor station location & access is a point that has been hammered on this blog, so good to see him echoing that point.

    4. It’s incoherent, unfortunately. He prominently says we will need a second tunnel eventually (which I agree with), but then endorses the interlining option instead of the stub which would make a second tunnel a much harder and more expensive to take advantage of. Missed opportunity for clear advocacy for the best remaining option.

      1. “Needing a second tunnel eventually” could allow for it to be a First Hill loop, coming back to either CID or Mt Baker.

      2. I did not like that he pointed to MLK as the key throughput constraint. IMO, if we need a 2nd tunnel for capacity reasons, it is because demand on the UW-Seattle-Bellevue axis exceeds capacity, not because we need to run more TPH down the Rainer Valley.

      3. Missed opportunity for clear advocacy for the best remaining option.

        Eh, someone ought write a follow-up op-ed that argues for the stub then. I do wonder if he was writing under a time constraint with the ST board meeting happening today.

        As for AJ’s comment about Kubly’s MLK argument, I think Kubly brings MLK up because that’s what DSTT2 will connect to. As such, MLK will limit the capacity of the new tunnel. This means that the total capacity of DSTT2-MLK and existing DSTT1 will be the same as a DSTT1 upgraded to carry three lines (or two lines with extra traffic if we build the stub instead of interlining all three lines).

      5. it’s funny that Levy didn’t mention WMATA which is a sort of “bent” Soviet triangle because of the Red and Blue lines bending back in the same cardinal direction from which they came, sort of. But it meets the definition in that every line crosses every other line, mostly with interchanges in the center of the service area.

        And yes, “The Snake” (UW-Ballard-Uptown-SLU-Westlake-First Hill-Yesler Terrace-Judkins Park-Mount Rainier) would have great interaction with Lines 1 and 2, interchanging with each three times.

        Build The Snake!

        [In segments]

  15. Constantine at the ST Board meeting: Pre-revenue trains will start cross Lake service on Monday!

  16. Watching the board meeting now. I’ll write an article afterward if there’s enough content. My written testimony is copied in a comment at the end of the Best Parts article. I won’t mention everything here, but anything that’s major or too peripheral for the article.

    Departing boardmembers: Nancy Backus (Auburn mayor), Bruce Harrell (Seattle mayor), Christine Frizzell (Lynnwood mayor).

    New boardmembers: Teresa Mosqueda (King County representing part of Seattle, Burien, Tukwila). Steffanie Fain (south King County around Renton). Both are present at the meeting. Girmay Zahilay is absent due to the birth of a new baby.

    The Federal Way extension opening day had 16,000 riders.

    Crosslake 2 Line testing is finished. This weekend it’s doing something. Pre-revenue service starts Monday. (I don’t know if that means passengers can use it Lynnwood-CID.)

    3 written public testimonies support the Ballard Stub-End alternative (including mine). In-person comments start now, 16 people.

    1. Now doing several irrelevant motions and actions. The downtown tunnel report is last.

      The in-person comments were too all over the place for me to summarize or listen closely too. At least two people asked for more non-English-language outreach for service changes, evacuations, and the Ballard EIS text, and not just on station signs (which people don’t see until they get to the station).

    2. Faregate study and potential pilot report, with slide deck.

      Fare revenue down $4 million since 2019. Compliance increased again 5% since Fare Ambassador launch in 2023. Annual revenue loss: $1.5 million now, $3 million (?) potential future. (page 4)

      Best return are adding fare gates to highest-ridership stations. 83% of riders use only 10 stations in AM peak (pre-Federal Way estimate). (page 6-7)

      Photos of other cities’ gates, both waist-height and tall. (page 9)

      Fare Ambassadors’ hours is currently 50% inspection, 33% helping passengers navigate or get social services. (page 11)

      Boardmember comments: What are other agencies’ experiences with gating only some stations? (speaker?) What about examples/experiences outside North America? (Mosqueda)

      Motion approved to pursue futher study and pilot.

    5. CEO Constantine will forgo a bonus or pay raise this year. Board members emphasized the lack of bonus/raise not due to poor performance, but in recognition of CEO Constantine’s intention to refuse a bonus/raise in the face of ST’s financial headwinds.

    6. Downtown tunnel report, with slide deck. Page numbers are approximate if they’ve already left the screen.

      Compared New York, consulted Deutsche Bahn. (page 3)

      Other DSTT1 resiliency like crossover tracks is being pursued anyway as part of the Enterprise Initiative, (page 8)

      Ballard extension ridership: 139,000 by 2046. I assume this includes DSTT2 riders who don’t go north of Westlake. (page 11)

      Interlining would “most likely” require upgrades to Symphony, Pioneer Square, and CID stations. But it would eliminate the cost of Westlake2, Midtown, and CID2 stations. (In the current DSTT2 preferred alignment, both Midtown and CID2 stations are shifted south: Midtown from Madison to James, CID2 from Jackson to south of Dearborn. This eliminated good access to the library and RapidRide G/ex-12 that DSTT1 omitted, and lenthhens the walk to Intl Dist destinations.)

      Either alternative would require investments earlier than planned, delaying opening and longer construction downtown.

      The short 35-page report is already at its conclusion, and has no new information that I see compared to last week’s committee report.

      1. Surprising comments from Dan Strauss. Paraphrasing: two tunnels is better than one, but the N King Subarea cannot afford a second tunnel. N King is responsible for 51% of second tunnel. The choice is between getting to Ballard on time, or building a second tunnel. If we had committed to the Monorail system, it would be built by now, but the flatforms would be a quarter the size of the Link stations, and we need Link’s capacity. Planning delays means we don’t have a Record of Decision from FTA, which means we have flexibility on planning. We can reconsider tunneling at all if we don’t need to tunnel through downtown. “If the region wants a second tunnel, the region needs to pay more then 49% of the share.”

        ST Staff confirm: outer subarea cost responsibility based on projected ridership in 2016.

      2. Angela Birney (Mayor of Redmond) and Cassie Franklin (Mayor Everett) call to stop studying downtown tunnel alts and move forward on BLE planning.

        Claudia Balducci reminds the board that lots of very difficult decisions are ahead, and questions why board members would want to remove an opportunity when its tradeoffs are no worse than other options under consideration. New tunnel would only provide resiliency for less than half of future riders; other half would need bus bridge.

        Hunter George (Fircrest City Councilmember) asks staff about potential impacts on planning efforts for other extensions. EIS for Tacoma, Everett, WS assume completion of second downtown tunnel; would those need to be reopened? Staff says its unclear.

        Balducci reminds the Board that DSTT1 will need upgrades sometime in the future regardless of whether DSTT2 is built or not.

        Harrell reinforces Strauss’ point that if outer subareas want a second tunnel, they need to pay for it. Offers that the Board needs to question the “underlying assumptions” as part of seeking creative solutions.

      3. Harrell repeated the phrases “one-tunnel solution” and “two-tunnel solution” a few times. Hopefully the Board finds better phrasing.

        Strauss reminds the Board that King County handed over DSTT to ST for “$1”. CEO Constantine admits they also handed over a lot of deferred maintenance. SnoCo Exec Somers jokes that it would have been “interesting” to try to get SnoCo’s buy-in on DSTT in the 80’s if that were needed.

      4. Someone needs to remind these people from north of the city that if they build a second tunnel they will ALL lose their one seat ride to the airport.

        And likewise remind people from Tacoma that they will lose their one seat ride to Stadium Station.

      5. It seems like Seattle is offering the suburbs a deal where we still build the second tunnel, but the suburbs pay more for it. I guess I haven’t been paying close enough attention to who wants what, because I thought it was Seattle that wanted the second tunnel, not the suburbs.

        If such a trade makes sense financially, then I say go for it. I can only speak for myself, but I would gladly trade, for example, the Issaquah-Kirkland line for a second tunnel in Downtown Seattle.

      8. “It seems like Seattle is offering the suburbs a deal where we still build the second tunnel, but the suburbs pay more for it. I guess I haven’t been paying close enough attention to who wants what, because I thought it was Seattle that wanted the second tunnel, not the suburbs.”

        ST argued in 2016 that the second tunnel was necessary to avoid long-term overcrowding in DSTT1. That’s for all uses in aggregate: going to Ballard, West Seattle, Lynnwood, Redmond, Tacoma, and trips within downtown. It wasn’t fair to make just North King pay for it, or to base it on which lines were arbitrarily selected to be in the second tunnel.

        Strauss et all aren’t “offering” anything. They’re suggesting that if the other subareas insist on DSTT2, given all its post-vote costs and tradeoffs that have appeared, they should contribute more to it than the 51% agreed in 2016. It’s not a formal proposal or offer to change anything yet. It’s just moral advocacy.

      9. Speaking to jas’s comment about reminding the Pierce and Snohomish County boardmembers that DSTT2 would ruin their single-seat rides to major destinations: are there any transit riders associations in Pierce and Snohomish Counties that could coordinate a campaign to educate those counties’ boardmembers on the transfers issue? I’m aware of the TRU, but I was wondering if there are any other groups like it that have a greater focus on Pierce/SnoCo transit issues.

    7. Finished meeting. I’m writing a short article. There was no decision to stop pursuing these alternatives, but further substantial work on them would require the board to allocate resources and contracts for it.

  17. The three new FWLE stations (Kent Des Moines, Star Lake, and Federal Way Downtown) had a collective 16,000 boardings on opening day.

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