ST Downtown Tunnel Board Meeting

190 Replies to “ST Downtown Tunnel Board Meeting”

1. Penny wise, pound foolish. That describes Rainier Valley’s decision being repeated again in the name of cost savings. Build the damn second tunnel needs to be a campaign.

   1. Where are we getting the money for that second tunnel?

      And if we somehow did, why should we build it parallel to the first one when so much of Seattle (like First Hill!) remains unserved?

      1. Because… we can’t delay.

      2. There is a tunnel in all the alternatives in case you didn’t notice. This is about saving 4 billion only, and just maybe, if the delays don’t end up costing more because of rising cost of delays. So in the end it solves nothing, it may save nothing, and it will potentially impact operations for years. Penny wise, pound foolish. Just like at grade Rainier Valley

      3. The alternatives that save 4 billion include money to upgrade the existing tunnel to handle more trains and add the passenger capacity that would have come from DSTT2. Dropping DSTT2 would not lead to operational issues if the original DSTT1 is retrofit to have greater capacity and reliability. As Balducci mentions, a DSTT1 retrofit will be necessary in the near future anyway, so why not do it sooner before the cost of such a retrofit also rises with inflation?

         Building DSTT2 also causes its own operational issues with its terrible 9-minute transfers. Today’s north-south trips benefit from a seamless one-seat ride. Building DSTT2 breaks that into two rides with a 9-minute climb through an escalator maze. For the cost of billions of dollars, DSTT2 will worsen trips for a majority of riders by forcing them to climb through an underground skyscraper at Westlake. Due to the aforementioned lack of money, such a DSTT2 likely won’t even reach Ballard! Spending billions to worsen transit with white-elephant infrastructure is a terrible idea when we could save billions to expand transit to Ballard.

         Regarding the cost of delay — as things currently stand, building the entire DSTT2 will require a delay anyway because ST doesn’t have enough money to build it on its originally-planned timeline. During that delay, the cost of DSTT2 will also rise. Such a cost increase may well be larger than the delay cost of building a stub because the full DSTT2-Ballard link is longer, deeper, and more expensive than the stub.

         Furthermore, the 4 billion savings of a stub is in some way a conservative estimate: it assumes that a stub line will be built as light-rail with cavernous stations, inflexible tunnel alignments, and poor frequency. If the stub is instead built as an automated metro with smaller stations, more flexible tunnel routing, and frequent trains, ST stands to save billions more (recall that station size and placement are the biggest determinants of underground transit infrastructure costs). With the design flexibility gained from smaller stations and tunnels, the stub’s Westlake transfer station can be built much shallower (perhaps right underneath 6th & Pine), enabling a proper quick-and-easy transfer to DSTT1.

         Lastly, an automated stub opens the opportunity to serve other neighborhoods (First Hill, CD, etc.) in future extensions. DSTT2 on the other hand burns billions to create a deep, hard-to-access tunnel right next to an existing tunnel begging to be retrofitted. We should build the infrastructure that truly prioritizes future growth — that means building the stub and upgrading DSTT1.

      4. Even with upgrades to dstt there will still be operational issues. If there is a disruption in the rainier valley that busts headways, then other interlined trains will be affected by them. This happens all the time in NYC, MUNI, BART, or even portland if you want a closer comparison. It’s not a good idea to put all three of our critical lines through one single piece of infrastructure.

      5. “a DSTT1 retrofit will be necessary in the near future anyway”

         It’s not “a retrofit” as if it’s one project that will close the tunnel for a few days and then it’s done. It’s a lot of different projects that will close the tunnel at various times. The currently-needed upgrades are one set of projects; the additional upgrades for 2-minute single-tunnel operation are another set of projects.

         The projects have already started. That’s what the recent closures and single-trackings in October and November were for. To upgrade signals in the tunnel, and to replace ventilation components at various stations. The signals are to support an ST2 level of service and to minimize future “signal issue” unplanned outages. The ventilation components are to make the station ventilators more resilient so they don’t fail, because if they fail the station has to be closed per fire regulations until they can be fixed, as has happened several times in the past few months.

         Look at the 2 Line tie-in. In January 2020 there was “Connect 2020”, 10 weeks of single-tracking in the DSTT with a universal transfer at Pioneer Square and three tunnel closures. ST gave the impression that this was all that would be needed to integrate the 2 Line. Instead there have been some two dozen additional DSTT projects for the 2 Line that have closed the tunnel for weekends or single-tracked or such.

         The Pinehurst station work has also led to a couple dozen single-trackings or station closures this year at Pinehurst, Shoreline South, and Shoreline North stations. Most of these started at 5:30pm and caused 12-minute frequency after that, or started at 9 or 10pm so they affected only the late evening so you may not have noticed them.

         With these precedents, it’s likely that the required upgrades now to fix the DSTT’s reliability issues will also be a couple dozen projects over a few years, and the upgrades for single-tunnel ST3 would be another couple dozen projects. I saw something in the report about 2 years, but I’m not sure if that meant 2 years of work for the single-tunnel upgrades. In the committee meeting they said “several years”, but I’m not sure if that means 2 years or more.

      6. > It’s not a good idea to put all three of our critical lines through one single piece of infrastructure.

         Look, if this were SimCity or whatever and we had the infinite money glitch, no one would argue that a second tunnel would be useful. But money is real! And we only have so much of it! So now we have to pick which projects aren’t worth building and which are. I’d rather have a crowded system with extension that go where people want it than an uncrowded systems with extension that only get halfway there.

         Think of it as the Ballard Starter Line. We’d still work on getting the second downtown tunnel built, but we should open the Ballard part first.

      7. And building DSTT2 doesn’t entirely solve the operational issues if something breaks in DSTT1 either. The trains that go through DSTT1 can’t switch over to DSTT2, so DSTT1 passengers will be forced to transfer twice if DSTT1 is out of service. This adds 9-15 extra minutes (or more, given that many people will be making the same transfer in a DSTT1 shutdown), at which point DSTT2 is no faster than a rail replacement bus along 3rd Ave. In other words, DSTT2 won’t make a meaningful difference to passengers if DSTT1 is shut down. It will just cost billions of dollars to accomplish little. Moreover, building DSTT2 means that no funds will be available to retrofit DSTT1 anytime soon, which makes a DSTT1 shutdown more likely. If we defer DSTT2 and build a stub, the savings will be used to retrofit and increase the reliability of DSTT1, benefiting all riders.

         Putting all three lines into the current DSTT1 carries risk, which is why DSTT1 upgrades to minimize and manage that risk are essential in the stub plan. Building DSTT2 doesn’t reduce the risk of DSTT1 breaking down, and because of its terrible transfers it won’t meaningfully add capacity when the un-retrofitted DSTT1 does break down. Truly, to increase the reliability of the system, you must address the source of unreliability, which means upgrading DSTT1 first.

         Also, the stub isn’t meant to be permanent. It’s meant to be extended to First Hill and beyond, so we will eventually get proper two-tunnel redundancy and expand transit’s reach with a modern high-capacity automated metro system.

      8. Even with upgrades to dstt there will still be operational issues. If there is a disruption in the rainier valley that busts headways, then other interlined trains will be affected by them.

         If something breaks in Rainier Valley, you can still run trains north of the disruption at normal headways. The West Seattle and Eastlake lines don’t go through the at-grade MLK section anyway.

         Re. Mike Orr’s point on “retrofit” vs. “upgrades” — point taken. I do think that the fact that some of the required upgrades are underway already is another point in favor of the stub. ST knows how to manage DSTT1 upgrades and associated partial closures. It can get better at it while working on stub-related upgrades. I don’t know if ST can say the same about building something as complex and messy as DSTT2 with its absurdly large stations.

      9. “the stub isn’t meant to be permanent. It’s meant to be extended to First Hill and beyond”

         There are three possible scenarios.

         1. The Ballard-Westlake stub is built, and that’s all that ever is.

         2. The Ballard-Westlake stub is built, and later ST builds DSTT2 down 5th Avenue as in the current alignment. This is an option in the report and on some boardmembers’ minds.

         3. The Ballard-Westlake stub is built, and later it’s extended southeast to First Hill. This is an STB invention that ST hasn’t considered and is in no ST planning scenario.

      10. DM, why would a disruption in the Rainier Valley effect headways for Line 2? Are you thinking of the recovery phase, when trains that were previously stacked up waiting are released simultaneously, creating a slug of trains running through the system?

          The answer to that is always to halt trains at a station and release them from the front to the back so that they have at least one station’s (average) distance between them. And make them subordinate to unaffected Line 2 trains at the junction just south of CID in order not to spread the irregularity. So far as at the north end, wise management will always have a train or two on the tail tracks at Lynnwood to fill in for trains delayed too long to make their turnaround and keep schedule on the inbound legs.

          The same would be true for the south end at Federal Way, but the double-length headways makes the problem much less pressing normally.

          Are there events that make even this futile? Yes, there are, but they are rarer and rarer and there’s a pocket at Stadium to turn Line 1 trains back north from a truly catastrophic crash on King Way.

          Does the RV need safety and reliability upgrades. Of course it does, and SDOT should be spearheading them even if ST looks away. That more than anything else will improve the reliability of the system.

          ——————————————————————————————

          littlefish, YES! Sixth is the answer exactly for the reason you highlight: the Pine Street Tunnel is basically a big concrete box angling upward about eight yards beyond the east end of the Westlake platforms. It can be underrun considerably more shallowly than can the existing station with its enormously wide and heavy mezzanine and vertical supports can be.

          Since the Pine Street Tunnel narrows to two lanes about another ten yards beyond the inflection point of the grade change, the tracks through Westlake could be narrowed to that same separation so that there is no empty central roadway. Doing that would leave enough room for a half-lane’s width opening at the east end of each platform for access to a pair of three-story tall “wing” mezzanines under Sixth Avenue. This opening would necessarily be narrow, because I seriously doubt that the east wall of the station box can be disrupted that near its base. Much wider openings at the upper mezzanine of the existing station are clearly possible, since ST’s plans for the Fifth Street station include them. That would make the many entrances to the existing mezzanine available to BLE riders and reserve the narrow entrances at platform level for transfer users.

          I would include thin “safety walls” between the passageways and the train envelope to keep people walking parallel to the tracks from stumbling or being bumped into the trackway.

          The wing mezzanines would be wide north-south so that escalators down to the center platform of New Westlake would begin at the north wall of the north wing and the south wall of the south wing. It would make sense to have a single return in the escalator stack on each side in order to spread out riders on the platform. The upper bank would be separated so that the lower bank could have the cases adjacent to each other in order to land on the center platform below.

          At the northeast and southeast end of the mezzanines new entrances to the east side of Sixth about half-way to Olive and Pike respectively could be included. That would improve the access to all lines through the wide connections at the existing mezzanine level.

          If TBM’s can be “mothballed in place” , then this would be a great way to avoid a downtown TBM vault. Just put a false wall at the south end of the platform and tracks and leave the TBM’s in the ground, ready to continue to Midtown, Madison/Swedish, Harborview/Yesler and points south.

          When the money comes.

      11. Rainier Valley could affect the 2 Line if both lines are alternating northbound every 4 minutes. If traffic lights and conditions on MLK make it 4 minutes late, then both the 1 Line and the 2 Line would be going north at the same time, and one would have to wait for the other at the CID merge. That would spread the 1 Line’s unreliability to the 2 Line. If it happened repeatedly all day the effects would be compounded, making both lines noticeably unreliable and coming at random times rather than evenly every 8 minutes.

      12. “If TBM’s can be “mothballed in place””

          I have wondered why we can’t just leave the TBM down there.

          I’ve read TBMs are custom built for each job, and afterward while you can extract some parts for the next TBMs, many parts are so worn down and end-of-life they have to be scrapped. So maybe just position it out of the way of any future track extension, and just leave it in the ground.

      13. Mike,

          TBM has some customization but certain parts have value to be reused. That’s why most construction projects lease TBM rather than purchasing one. Normally the tunnel project has two portals, so retrieval is not hard.

          The cases where they buried the TBMs either because it got damaged so badly or an retrieval is just expensive.
          LIRR east access’s tunnel doesn’t have a west portal in Manhattan. Because 63rd Street tunnel was built with prefabricated tube in the 80s, it was also impossible to launch the TBMs from Queens. They ended up creating a launching site completely underground on east end of 63rd St tunnel and transport all the parts across river through tunnel and assembled the TBM there so that they didn’t need to apply for above-ground construction permit in Manhattan. All the dirt they dug out was transported back to Queens. If they decided to retrieve the TBM, they would have to back the TBM all the way out to 63rd St tunnel, disassembled it into parts and then transport the parts to the portal in Queens.

          They actually studied the retrieval plan and decided that’s too expensive to retrieve, so they buried them. I think Seattle’s tunnel is less tricky than that. Therefore leaving the TBM underground is hard to justified and probably won’t cut cost.

      14. Mike, you didn’t read my reply carefully enough. I said “And make them [the RV trains] subordinate to unaffected Line 2 trains at the junction just south of CID in order not to spread the irregularity.”

          Look, to accommodate three lines’ worth of trains, DSTT1 has to have some form of CTBC. We can hope that full automation and platform doors will be universally adopted between the junction at CID and Lynnwood and eventually Mariner. You have said in several posts that after a large game or concert at one of the stadiums Link trains run as close as two to three minutes apart for a while. And that’s with no automation at all and wayside signals.

          Let the computers straighten things out when there’s a jam up in the RV; they can do it, in real time, if they have control of the trains.

          HZ, thanks for the history of TBM’s left in the ground. So, I guess, any extension to the south will have to be dug from the portal in the south face of First Hill, wherever and whenever that may finally be. That does mean that you can’t just do one or two stations in First Hill when a modest amount of money has accumulated.

          That’s why I was thinking of leaving the TBM’s in place. Do whatever refurbishment is necessary so that the hydraulics don’t leak and start chewing again. But that doesn’t handle disposing of the spoils, so it wouldn’t really help to do one or two stations.

      15. “CBTC”, not “CTBC”.

   2. 11 floors worth of escalators between the north and south ends of the city would be more penny wise and pound foolish than surface running on ML King ever will be.

      1. Or you just take the elevator. It’s the norm at beacon hill, cuatro caminos in Madrid, or a plethora of other deep level stations across the world. Ble is likely going to have 4 elevators from the current mezzanine to the platform for the 1 line. Idk why there isn’t more discussion about how st should, if it’s going to be going with a deep level station, have more elevators and higher speed ones.

      2. The problem with is that elevators they can’t move as many people as escalators. Even if they travel fast, each elevator cab has to stop, unload passengers, load new passengers, and move up/down the shaft, and each shaft can only have one cab in it. For the amount of space it takes up, an elevator can only move ~20 people at a time, forcing others to wait. An escalator can move lots more people standing along its entire length at a somewhat slower speed. For a transit station handling tens of thousands of people a day, you would need an excessive (expensive) number of elevators to keep pace with the demand compared to escalators.

      3. Beacon Hill is designed for elevator access. This station is not designed for the elevator to be the primary access, which means the several thousand people per hour would have to wait a very long time.

         It would be great if they planned to have a dozen or so elevators to handle the traffic, and could make the trip in 15 seconds (Washington Park MAX station travels twice the distance in 25 seconds), but their station diagram does not imply this will be the plan.

         Interesting you mention Cuatro Caminos, because that station has multiple different lines stacked on top of each other, plus a road tunnel added later, Yet, the depth isn’t that much different than Westlake 2. So, they actually have good reason for that depth, and have actually added tunnels later.

         If Westlake were that way, there would be three other lines and a road tunnel on top of the deepest platform.

         But why make the transfers worse than they need to be? If it can be built more shallow as a stub line that doesn’t duplicate the existing tunnel, then so much the better.

      4. It can’t be built shallow though, that’s the entire problem. The top layer of soil is really sandy and soft, which makes construction underneath the existing dstt really risky and potentially much more expensive. After first hill an the original dstt construction issues, playing it safe downtown may actually be the better move. I would prefer a cut and cover style construction but I’m genuinely not sure it’s feasible with the soil conditions that exist there currently.

         Remember, the construction of dstt extends pretty far below the floor of westlake. There are relatively deep pilings to stabilize the structure. This is why it wasn’t feasible to stack the new ids station underneath the existing one at 5th ave either.

      5. Oh and follow up for the transfers question, ble is still in the planning phase, there’s plenty of time to change designs for stations. The blog is still talking about changing the entire alignment so adding a few elevators is an extremely reasonable ask. Given that the mezzanine will be added to in wls2, it could certainly, and probably will be, designed with high speed elevator transfers in mind.

         Acting like it’s a guaranteed 10 minute transfer is silly when there are clearly ways to solve this issue while having a deep level station. Staying on spain, the Torrassa line1 to line 9 station is another excellent example of elevator transfers being an option for stations not originally designed for it. That one even has a stacked platform design to contend with.

         Here is a tour of the station. https://youtu.be/hM0f2zWlf5w?si=-46Lem5o7JpSixPs

      6. You could add more elevators, but that will make DSTT2 even more expensive. If rising costs force ST to value-engineer, they may drop the elevators. As for Torrassa station, there’s tons of escalators and relatively few elevators in that video (he spends several minutes on the escalators) because only escalators can really move the large numbers of people who use a station.

         In order to build a shallow-level stub, we’d have to move the station to somewhere along 6th Ave where there is no station mezzanine. The pilings for Westlake station are deep because the station is large and heavy. The pilings for the existing tunnel cutting across 6th Ave are significantly shorter. An automated metro with third rail power instead of catenary can also use smaller tunnels — we might just be able to squeeze it in above the existing tunnel with some reinforcement. It would require an engineering feasibility survey. Given that ST will have to construction of a full DSTT2 because it doesn’t have enough money, it would be worth it to take the time to do that study and see if we can save several hundered million by building a shallow station.

      7. Pardon me, that last sentence should read as “Given that ST will have to delay construction of a full DSTT2 because it doesn’t have enough money …”

      8. The problem with is that elevators they can’t move as many people as escalators.

         Yes you can, you just need more escalators. And yes it can be more expensive but as mentioned, they did it in Madrid. The Madrid Metro carries 2.4 million people a day. Spain has especially low costs when it comes to building mass transit (they are up there with the Scandinavian countries). I don’t think anyone thinks what they did is extravagant — it was just the best option given the situation. It was unusual but again, affordable.

         It would be easy to assume that the engineers have considered this and it just doesn’t make sense here. But the USA is one of the worst countries in the world when it comes to building transit. It costs way more here than in other countries. There are various theories as to why but poor engineering decisions (such as assuming elevators can’t work) may be part of it.

      9. How do you do cut an cover shallow tunnel under the hill in Seattle??
         It is not like NYC where you can actually find a street that is generally align with the contour line and build subway and build subway 1 story below the ground.

      10. “How do you do cut a cover shallow tunnel under the hill in Seattle??”

          Seattle’s steep urban terrain is indeed difficult for rail transit. I can’t think of another US downtown so prominently covered with steep grades like we have!

          The best way I see to overcome that for rail without deep tunneling is to simply have more segments above the surface and have portals in the system. It’s not aesthetically what neighbors want, but it’s the better practical design approach.

          Another option is to live with cable-pulled systems like funiculars that are designed for vertical climbs. Those are a good solutions when there’s a destination that’s too vertically hard to reach otherwise.

          I’ve seen way too much rail planning here focused on 2D maps and drawings.

          A classic example: Harborview. On a 2D map it looks like an easy stroll from Pioneer Square station. But we know better.

      11. The Portland Max station in Washington Park below the zoo is elevator only just like Beacon Hill and seems to do fine.

      12. The Washington Park MAX station moves about 2-5 people per train, at most, and has 4 high capacity high speed (26 floors in 27 seconds) elevators to move 100 or so people per hour. Westlake 2 will probably have to move 100 times this.

          You’re not going to get there with a single UW station style elevator taking 40 seconds to go 1/3 the distance.

   3. @Paul Ventresca

      The reality is that something must be cut or delayed. If not the tunnel, then Ballard or West Seattle will be truncated and/or pushed back. Arguing to avoid cost cutting measures is arguing for less transit at a later date.

      1. And it isn’t going to be West Seattle that is cut (it’ll just get scaled back to be almost useless)… Ballard is the one to be cut (despite being the most important line in ST3).

   4. Too bad we ripped out an existing well placed branch connection just past Westlake station to build an unneeded third convention center… Penny foolish, pound foolish.

      1. One of the items studied actually used that connection. They rejected it due to a sharp curve and it impacting a couple properties (as if excavating Westlake 2 won’t).

         It wouldn’t be good to use it for regular service, but it could be a useful backup or maintenance connection. My opinion is you wouldn’t want to use it regularly because a 4 car Link train would take a while to get around the sharp curve, and depending on how they build it, that could interfere with the other trains (it might not if they’ve got a long enough separate straight section before the curve).

         Anyway, it was something they looked at and decided to favor the Symphony connection instead – which has its own problems.

      2. Thsts true but if they hadn’t built the 3rd convention center it wouldn’t have had to do this tight infeasible turn. It could have cut across the block in a sweeping curve then could have plopped this convention center or a giant mixed use development on top.

      3. Not really all that well placed considering it was an at grade crossover, which would have been awful to manage with 4 minute interlined headways towards capitol hill.

      4. Glenn, see my reply to you in “Build The Best Parts First”. Use the full length of the stub and deviate underneath the HOV lane; it’s a much easier curve to make, and the junction with The Spine is a straight-through on a new turnout. You’d for sure want to have an active frog there so Spine Trains could travel through at the current speed for the curve. The connection would ideally be used only in off-hours. Also, include a facing-point cross-over just west of Ninth so that out-of-service trains headed for Ballard can run in-direction most of the way through the tunnel.

         This would only be for a single-track non-revenue connection in order to avoid having all “heavy services” at the BLE maintenance facility.

         And I still think that connecting from Third and Pine to Westlake and Sixth would be more cheaper (considerably less tuneling), but ST may not want to demize the north wall of the Westlake station box at Third and Pine.

         This is a useful alternative. More details at: https://seattletransitblog.com/2025/12/16/build-the-best-parts-first/#comment-975353

   5. Penny wise, pound foolish.

      Yes, that describes the second tunnel. Clearly the second tunnel is second-rate. It has fewer stations than the existing tunnel. It doesn’t serve any new areas downtown. That is a very unusual and poor decision. It is hard to find any agency anywhere in the world that does that.

      The obvious alternative was to serve First Hill. The only reason the second tunnel doesn’t serve First Hill was to save money. Thus you have it completely backwards. The second tunnel is a cheap alternative to what they should build. It just isn’t as cheap as expected.

      This conversation would be very different if the second tunnel was designed properly (with at least one station on First Hill). There would be a good case for Smith Cove to CID (via the new tunnel). You would connect South Lake Union and First Hill. Riders on the other lines would transfer just to get to First Hill. But because ST was cheap they have proposed a poorly designed tunnel.

      1. Thank you, Ross. I have always wondered why the First Hill Midtown station was scuttled and resurrected as North of CID (Midtown James St.). ST never answered a member of the Accessibility Committee when she asked why N of CID was called Midtown when it wasn’t in Midtown. Very confusing for those with disabilities.

2. Good. Pushing an actual decision until after Wilson takes office and is able to participate on the board is good. Now, she may be all for a second tunnel, but if she is in favor of additional study then, along with Balducci, I bet that team can make it happen.

   1. I don’t get sense that the board cares what Seattle thinks. Funny turnabout. Seattle/King pushed hardest for 2nd tunnel and are now the most circumspect.

      1. Yeah, I the political puzzle piece I’m missing is why the outer areas care that much about DSTT2. What do they actually gain from it? Are they afraid that if Seattle starts cutting scope to save money, their constituents will ask them to cut scope to save money, too?

         The only interesting question asked during the Board meeting was from Hunter George, who asked for clarification on the potential impacts to other project plans if DSTT isn’t built, because the whole ST3 program assumes the whole ST3 program gets built.

      2. They’re afraid that ditching DSTT2 will cause delays and costs that will delay or prevent the Everett and Tacoma Dome extensions. They don’t really care what happens in North King as long as their extensions open on time.

      3. >They’re afraid that ditching DSTT2 will cause delays and costs that will delay or prevent the Everett and Tacoma Dome extensions.

         I guess I’m missing the parts of the presentations where that’s indicated as a possibility.

         The only thing I can come up with is that they want staff to focus on making their own projects affordable, and there is only so much capacity for staff to work through various aspects of the Enterprise Initiative. Maybe staff dropped everything to crunch on this assessment, and now the rest of the board wants staff to get back to work making TDLE and EVLE affordable.

      4. “I guess I’m missing the parts of the presentations where that’s indicated as a possibility.”

         It’s Somers’s underlying fear that he has said repeatedly both today and on earlier occasions. One or two other boardmembers have said the same thing but I don’t remember who. Just that they’re generally Snohomish and Pierce.

      5. It’s Somers’s underlying fear that he has said repeatedly both today and on earlier occasions. One or two other boardmembers have said the same thing but I don’t remember who. Just that they’re generally Snohomish and Pierce.

         Yes, and they should no better. It is yet another example of a dysfunctional agency*. Various people want to continue with the current plans. I’m not sure why. Maybe they are just tired of the planning phase. Maybe contractors want to start digging. Maybe politicians want to cut the ribbon.

         But just because you start earlier doesn’t mean you can finish earlier. I could start building the Great Wall of China today and it would take longer than the fence I plan on starting next summer. All other things being equal, it is better to start early. But total costs matter. You run across debt limits. You can’t spend too much in any particular year. That is why Issaquah Link isn’t supposed to open until 2044. They can’t spend the money building Issaquah Link (which is a relatively simple project) because they want to spend money on other projects (which happen to be very expensive). The solution is either to get more money or build cheaper projects. This type of thing has happened before. It happened with Pinehurst Station. It would have been cheaper (and easier) to build it with the rest of Lynnwood Link. But that would have meant spending too much money (at that time) which in turn would have delayed the launch. Officials at the agency explained the issues involving bond limits and construction costs (which are often at odds) to the board.

         But now the agency isn’t bothering to talk about these issues. They seem more comfortable trying to avoid conflict. Again, this is common for dysfunctional agencies. As a result, leaders on the board (who likely don’t have time to dig into the various issues) are left assuming that the longer we wait, the worse it gets. All other things being equal, this is true. But all other things aren’t equal. A second tunnel is massively expensive. It is also highly controversial. Do I really need to remind everyone how controversial the CID station is? There is a much higher chance that controversy over it leads to lawsuits and delays than in the rest of Ballard Link.

         *From this study:

         In recent years, there has been a breakdown of trust between Board members and staff. Board members have not been told of critical information about projects in a timely manner, and this lack of information has led some to feel they must engage more deeply in the technical and operational details in order to fulfill their duties. Staff members have noted real concern and hesitation about the consequences of bringing difficult news to the Board, so they delay reporting challenges or bad news, thereby reinforcing the lack of trust.

      6. Reading the above comments, I still don’t get the concern from Pierce or Snohomish.

         For Pierce, TDLE is already the next megaproject in line and can move into construction regardless of what happens with WSBLE. With the OMF-S also progressing, TDLE has no operational dependency on WSBLE. Frankly, Pierce would benefit if North King projects get delayed/deferred and the Tacoma trains simply run to Lynwood and back.

         For Snohomish, I think Somers simply doesn’t understand his own project. Everett Link as a single project is a placeholder for planning purposes. Building that entire segment in megaproject would be foolish & absurd. Link is Everett is several projects away, even if the alignment ends up exactly as planned in ST3. If anything, Somers is missing the political opportunity here to take an initial segment (say, Lynwood to Ash Way) and pull it forward in the timeline as a part of the ST3 realignment horse trading to give his constituents a real win.

      7. “For Snohomish, I think Somers simply doesn’t understand his own project.”

         I think it’s common for elected officials to miss the details of bad transit projects — introducing new terrible transfers — if they don’t often ride transit.

         He keeps talking about the importance for Link to serve Paine Field. Yet the proposed Link station is about a mile from the terminal and it’s also technically deferred because it wasn’t affordable in the ST3 package back in 2016.

         I also think ST has not explained an important detail about ridership for whatever reason. That detail is that SeaTac boardings went up when Lynnwood Link opened. The region’s traffic congestion is high enough and the airport is far enough to make the preferred journey mode to default to Link. That has huge implications for not only Snohomish residents but also on the ability to create jobs in Snohomish County by national and international companies who rely on business travel. Doesn’t Somers see that the terrible 1/3 Line proposed transfer setups will harm his constituents and his county’s economic attractiveness?

         And Everett Link costing issues are minor compared to WSBLE. If he wants the second tunnel enough to help pay for it, he’ll have to agree to then cut sonething big from Everett Link — either the Downtown Everett Station or the diversion to Seaway TC.

         And paying for a full West Seattle and starting DSTT2 will tighten up bonding capacity so much that it will delay any part of Everett Link that does get built because the funds won’t be there.

         When I see an elected official take such a strong stand against his better interests, I have to actually wonder if there’s a backroom reason. Maybe it’s stupidity about riding transit. Maybe it’s a personal relationship with Dow. Maybe it’s heavy lobbying. Maybe it’s blackmail. Maybe it’s wanting the North OMF to get started. But his stance defies decision-making logic.

      8. I still don’t get the concern from Pierce or Snohomish.

         I can think of several reasons, mostly political. It doesn’t look good when ST doesn’t build what they said they were going to build. People are more likely to question other projects, including projects that more directly effect them. It also worth noting that areas outside Seattle were convinced that it made sense to chip in for the second tunnel. The implication is that if the second tunnel didn’t exist, trains to and from Seattle get a lot less reliable or crowded. It wouldn’t surprise me if the general attitude is “I don’t care what you build in Seattle, but if you run more trains through downtown, you better add a second tunnel.”

         I still think a lot depends on West Seattle. Let’s face it, a branch to Ballard is dead. It is just not worth it. Thus you have a couple choices for Ballard: build a second tunnel or a stub from Westlake to Ballard. If you are in Snohomish County, the choice between them is irrelevant unless you build West Seattle Link. Otherwise everything is the same either way.

         Pierce County is in a similar boat. Without West Seattle Link there is no reason to send trains (from the south) into a new tunnel. You could, but those riders would prefer the train keep going up to Snohomish County. Thus without West Seattle Link, a new tunnel really only benefits Ballard riders. Of course they want good transit in Seattle just like they want good transit in Spokane. But in terms of who they represent, a second tunnel only matters if you have West Seattle Link.

         I think the biggest proponent of West Seattle Link (Dow Constantine) is well aware of that. Constantine is also a huge proponent of the second tunnel. This brings up another possible motivation. These representatives — who hold the same job as Constantine once held — don’t want to piss off the CEO. Constantine may see these projects as his legacy. In contrast, going back to a bus solution for West Seattle, a single downtown tunnel or even a second tunnel that includes First Hill would require Constantine admit he was wrong.

      9. Arguing over the second tunnel *at this point* misses the big picture. The Sound Transit engineers had to study the idea, and they did. We now know that a second OMF is not a big issue. This was one of the big arguments used against it. For example consider this op-ed (https://www.theurbanist.org/2025/10/02/op-ed-link-light-rails-success-depends-on-second-downtown-seattle-tunnel/) in The Urbanist:

         Should BLE be truncated early to end at Westlake, a massive problem would arise of how Ballard Link would connect to the rest of the Link system. Sound Transit has not included a new operations and maintenance facility (OMF) in the Ballard Link plan or budget…

         Massive problem my ass. The OMF is so easy to build that ST didn’t even bother to consider a non-revenue connection. So credit to all involved for actually looking at the issues instead of just speculating about them. It is clear that a stand-alone line — using the same inappropriate technology as the rest of the line — would save around $4 billion. If they used automated trains (with smaller stations) it would likely save even more.

         There are two questions now. Not what to build but what to build next and how. Just as Everett Link should not be built as a single project (as AJ mentioned) West Seattle-Ballard Link (WSBL) should not be built as a single project. In fact the current plans are to build it in two stages — West Seattle to SoDo and then Ballard to SoDo. This is profoundly stupid. This is the big problem. West Seattle to SoDo adds very little. Thus between the phases of the two projects you get practically nothing. It is like the East Link starter line on steroids. Except unlike East Link it wasn’t due to a construction mishap but this is the actual plan! Not only that but it is quite common to simply not finish projects. ST1 fell short of both the UW and SeaTac because we ran out money. The same thing is true with Federal Way Link. If not for ST3 there would be no trains in Federal Way. Thus WSBL could very well consist of a train from Westlake to West Seattle (in the new tunnel) or worse yet, SoDo to West Seattle. Not for ten years, but forever.

         They simply have it backwards. Just build Ballard to Westlake first (https://seattletransitblog.com/2025/12/16/build-the-best-parts-first/). That provides by far the most benefit. Build it as a stand-alone, automated line. Eventually it could be extended to West Seattle. There is no reason to officially dismiss the project — it is simply ordered where it should have been all along (at the end of the line). Of course there will be people like me that argue a second tunnel should include First Hill. I will also argue against West Seattle Link (and instead push for the second tunnel to continue to Mount Baker Station). But those arguments can take place at a later date. The main thing to do is build what benefits you the most right now while not ruling out options in the future. An automated line from Ballard to Westlake would do that.

      10. It sure hasn’t been any sort of massive problem to have 3 separate OMF for all the streetcar lines, in addition to the Link OMFs.

   2. Katie is generally knowledgeable and sensible on transit, but we don’t know what her position on this is yet.

      In 2016 it was the entire board wanting the second tunnel. They were concerned that with all the total north-south travel downtown, DSTT1 might get overcrowded in the 2040s. That was the reason for the second tunnel. It’s not something Seattle/King specifically wanted for itself and had to convince the other subareas to approve it. Seattle just wanted them to pay a share of it, rather than assigning it up by which subarea it’s physically in or which lines ST arbitrarily chose to put in it.

      1. She’s going to be for it. Who wants to fight Dow as one of their first political projects and for what, a smaller vision? It’s clear the board thinks the 2nd tunnel is the best option.

         If ST board meetings required in person attendance via transit and rotated between board members areas, would be fun to see their preferences evolve.

         Why are the representatives of Issaquah and Fircrest asking the best questions lol.

3. I absolutely love that conceptual extension south from Westlake to hit First Hill, CD, Judkins Park station and Mount Baker station! Major close in neighborhoods lacking Link and also hitting key connection points. Also avoids complete redundancy downtown.

   1. That is probably the main reason I prefer the stub-end option. Financial concerns aside, the planned DSTT2 is pretty bad. It is geographically redundant with the current DSTT, but will not be operationally redundant (trains cannot switch to the other tunnel during maintenance). It also doesn’t serve any new neighborhoods besides the I-5/I-90 interchange in SODO. Seattle will need a second tunnel at some point, and that tunnel should go to new neighborhoods that don’t have Link today (First Hill, Yesler Terrace, the CD).

      1. And it needs to be something with good transfers, which the current plan doesn’t have.

      2. Yes, exactly.

4. Cutting the 2nd tunnel is a $4billion savings? As in the tunnel would be $4 billion?!? No way that tunnel is less than $8billion… not with the latest increase in the cost of the ST3 package from $55B to $85B, not when its almost a decade away from construction on the current timeline.

   1. The tunnel and westlake, N CID, and S CID stations are estimated at $8.4B. The second Westlake station is estimated at $1.2B, so a stub with a Westlake Station would “only” save $7.2B. But then you have to do a bunch of upgrades to the DSTT, which ST guessed would cost $1-3B. Then ST assumed 2-4 years of planning delay could result in cost inflation of $1.2-2.4B. the Interbay OMF will cost $750M-1B. Hence, likely best savings are $4.5B but potentially $0B.

      The optimistic number seems realistic, so people are sticking with that.

      1. What kind of upgrades are they talking about? I haven’t heard anything, but sounds like something high level is out there.

      2. Basically every kind of upgrade you can imagine. The tunnel would need more ventilation in order to clear out the air faster if more trains are running through it than planned. The stations could need more emergency exits, more platform space, and more stairs/escalators/elevators. The tunnel would definitely need an even more advanced signaling system so trains could run more often. Probably power substation upgrades, too. Crossover tracks. The works.

      3. Here’s a draft technical report with some details: https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/FinalRecords/2025/Report%20-%20Interim%20Resiliency%20-%2012-11-25.pdf

      4. The technical report mentioned CBTC, or communications based train control, which is a type of loving block signaling system allowing for tighter headways. Triple interlining would likely also necessitate replacement of girder rail in the dstt with more conventional direct fixation for easier maintenance, but that’s just me speculating based off of all of the rail cracks in dstt of the last few years.

      5. What does girder rail and direct fixation mean?

      6. Mike

         Girder rail is what’s in DSTT now. The rails are encased in concrete (or now a special epoxy in the most recent repair locations), and were there to support bus operations. They’re harder to replace because they are encased in concrete. They also have more limited speeds relative to other types of track.

         Direct fixation is like what you see at Capitol Hill or basically anywhere else in the system (minus the valley). It’s way easier to maintain and replace than an encased rail, which is valuable in high stress locations such as the tight curve between wls and sys

5. I hope level heads pull through and not what some randoms on the internet have to say about it.

   Build the damn trains.

   1. North – South travel through downtown is an extremely popular use of Link.

      The DSTT2 proposal breaks this at Westlake and makes people travel the equivalent of 11 floors on escalators to complete this trip, which today requires no transfers.

      Why do you support making such a vast number of transit trips worse than they are now?

      1. I hope the Sound Transit board thinks about how the 11 floors will impact seniors and those with disabilities.

   2. I hope level heads pull through and not what some randoms on the internet have to say about it.

      Build the best parts first.

6. Build the damn trains has a catchy sound to it. Sort of like no tax on tips. There are three large tunnels already through seattle. The res no way this new boondoggle doesn’t run afoul of at least one of them during construction. In belltown we will never have link.so I’m some sense it doesn’t make much difference to me on a personal level. For me it comes down to the crappy transfer imposition. Oh and then there’s the money. Bkillbtacoma and Everett if you have tobhave your new crappy tunnel NOW. At least now we can move ahead to the next round of mayhem.

7. I think the discussion shows how really stupid many of our elected officials are.

   1. ST is short $30B to do what they want. It’s simply not affordable. To ignore that is the height of fiscal irresponsibility.

   2. Automation is the world standard for new rail lines, yet the report summarily ignored it. And automation means smaller, more frequent trains and hence smaller stations. And savings of billions more! And where was the instruction to staff to look at the Ballard stub as an automated line?

   3. The vertical distances for DSTT2 are so deep that they will be avoided by riders. Even if it opened tomorrow, it’s a major disincentive to the riders to use it. Building a Westlake Station that is 50 percent deeper than UW station will be a century-long burden.

   4. DSTT2 hurts the region’s transit riders because the new transfers being planned are truly more horrible than what we have today. It makes things WORSE for the Link-riding residents that they represent.

   This isn’t some sort of monument to progress. It’s something that must work well every single day for decades. The inability of many Board members to discuss real specifics and instead talk in these vague generalities it shows that they don’t give a crap about what riders will experience. It disgusts me.

   1. Agreed. Which is why Wilson’s ascent to the board brings me hope! Her career has been built on making things better for transit riders, and her expertise seems to be networking and coalition building. Too, ST has frequently shown deference to what the local politicos want.

      Nothing is definite, but I feel there is reason to hope for a good outcome. At least until Wilson and/or ST proves me wrong.

      1. If Wilson greenlights the second tunnel. It will disgust me. The conservative options in our latest mayoral and King co executive race should have won if this is the case. Bruce even seems open to Balducci’s idea to interline and not spend a bunch of money on redundancy.

      2. “ST has frequently shown deference to what the local politicos want.”

         ST believes its mandate is to build what the counties and cities want. They’re the elected representatives. It’s their responsibility to know what their subarea needs in regional transit, and they’re the ones accountable to voters for making the right choices.

         So ST defers to the counties and cities as much as it can, and only pushes back occasionally when the demand is so egregiously bad for transit that it doesn’t feel it can.

         One problem with this structure is a rotating parade of city officials represent the subarea each term. In the Eastside sometimes it’s Bellevue and Redmond, or Bellevue and Issaquah, or Bellevue and Renton. There’s a risk that the official will pursue their own cities’ parochial desires rather than what the subarea as a whole needs, or even try to get something for their city at the expense of the other cities.

         So the Issaquah mayor was red-hot on getting a Link line to Issaquah. Why? Issaquah is not one of the four largest cities in East King. It wanted Link because that would attract employers, and that would bring tax revenue, and make people want to live there, especially affluent people. If it didn’t get Link, it might become a left-behind city economically, and may decline to a future slum. That’s the motivation behind all the non-star-blessed cities wanting Link: Lynnwood, Federal Way, Tacoma. They want to become prosperous like Bellevue, not left behind to decay.

   2. Al, I suspect that the consultants were ordered to ignore the possibility of automation, probably as a sop to the operating union. Which is pretty crazy, since Metro has a hard time recruiting operators.

      Yes, driving a train is a lot less stressfull than driving a bus. It guides itself, and that’s a good thing.

   3. This terrible situation will be compounded many times for those with disabilities, caregivers escorting them, and the elderly. As you all comment to your elected officials and the Sound Transit Board, mention the most vulnerable among us. Staff planners clearly are not thinking of accessibility for all.

8. “11 floors worth of escalators”

   How much does that really matter? The Capitol Hill and Roosevelt elevators go down 5 stories according to the progress display but it feels like 2 stories. The Beacon Hill elevators go down like 8 stories but it doesn’t feel too long. It’s amusing to watch the progression of strange 2-letter acronyms for each floor in the Beacon Hill elevators; some are really quirky like “TF”. Some are straightforward like “B1”, “B2”, “B3”, but then others are unique. And some of them are different going down compared to going up. All that entertainment distracts from the length of the ride.

   In the downtown library the escalators go two levels (1 to 3, 3 to 5, 5 to 7) but it feels like one level. You see it going past the in-between floor but it doesn’t feel like an excessively long trip.

   Even the UW station escalators, you have to go down three of them, and the middle one is unusually long. But I’ve timed it from the surface to the platform several times (it was my commute transfer during U-Link), and all three escalators take less than 2 minutes to traverse.

   So 11 floors may feel like 3.

9. “Beacon Hill is designed for elevator access. This station is not designed for the elevator to be the primary access, which means the several thousand people per hour would have to wait a very long time.”

   There’s something strange with the Beacon Hill elevators. There’s four of them, but rather than all of them being in use all the time and the closest one coming next, several people have said only one or two of them are active off-peak, so you have to wait for those, even though if the other ones were running one of them would have come sooner.

10. I try not to weigh in much about Seattle transit issues nowadays, seeing as I live elsewhere. But for my own mental health, and just to pile in a bit about DSTT2…

    –There’s no money to build it. Saying “we will build it anyway!” just kicks the can down the road towards its cancellation. Worst case scenario, they suck up all the money they can get, get started on it… and then Seattle gets to deal with a giant hole in the ground for a century. It’d be nice if everyone officially involved wasn’t gunning as hard as they could for this exact outcome.
    –The transfers alone should have cancelled this project. It is unacceptable. UNACCEPTABLE. For a city and a transit agency that claims that actual grown-ups run it, to have such unbelievably bad and time-wasting transfers as I have seen in the drafting documents.
    –Related issue, the deepness of the tunnel is also unacceptable, mainly for the reasons mentioned above. It adds to the cost, it makes the transfers untenable, it’s… just too dumb for any more words.
    –I find it so odd at this point in my life, given that I voted enthusiastically for ST3 in 2016, to be praying *on behalf of Seattle* for some form of bankruptcy to hit Sound Transit as soon as possible. But every time I read some review about what passes for official dialog about this topic I come down rather fervently on the side of “only catastrophic failure is going to be enough to clear anyone’s thinking, huh?”
    –Realistically, no one is going to take another crack at this in my lifetime. ST’s incoming failure will clear the board for at least a generation. But in order not to have this be *solely* a downer comment, here’s what I think would best serve Seattle, train-wise: Cut and cover construction, in downtown core only (no suburban train service), only take taxes from downtown residents and maybe feds if available (to avoid suburban thinking poisoning the process), build in pieces as money becomes available, stations with either as small a footprint as possible or combined with new services/residential/retail as they do in Asia, automation if the technology is still available to us. But… again… I don’t think a single thing on this list is even possible without a catastrophic failure so bad that all that once came before is swept away, as if a bad wildfire came through.

    In any case. I’m not super involved with transit in Spokane right now. However, they built a bike lane a few blocks from our house, and recently passed a new tax on surface parking lots in downtown. Small but useful steps! :) It’s remarkable how much more sensible transit policy is when endless money isn’t available. Given the monster I’ve watched ST3 turn into, I’m very doubtful whether a train or streetcar would be appropriate for Spokane right now. If there’s any version of Seattle’s toxic ‘thinking’ involved… I do get emails from a group advocating for it, so I’m kind of keeping an eye on it. If there’s any serious movement on it, I’ll come back and report!

    1. You’re right. Please send emails about your thoughts on unacceptability to the Sound Board meetingcomments@soundtransit.org and council@seattle.gov.

11. ” here’s what I think would best serve Seattle, train-wise: Cut and cover construction, in downtown core only (no suburban train service), only take taxes from downtown residents and maybe feds if available (to avoid suburban thinking poisoning the process),”

    What we should have is a transit authority with transit-best-practices experts, who plan the different tiers of transit where they’re needed and will be most used (metro lines between the largest pedestrian/activity concentrations, bus routes everywhere else), and has the financial resources and authority to fully implement it, and buy-in from the politicians and public so they’ll support it. It can even be a combined transit+roads authority. That’s how things work in Vancouver or Germany or other European and Asian cities. It’s why they have comprehensive transit networks that are highly effective, and better used and loved and supported by the public.

    Instead we have a system where transit decisions are fragmented by city and county boundaries, by politicians who largely have unrealistic expectations of what transit can and can’t do, who miss a lot of what passengers need, and subsume transit decisions to non-transit factors. So the public votes for a Link alignment through a certain city, but then city officials say you can’t build it there because it will impact the character of the neighborhood, and won’t issue building permits unless you move it or add some amenities the city wants, or pay to relocate utilities the city would have eventually relocated anyway, or refuses to upzone around the station because again it would impact the character of the neighborhood and it’s not what neighbors expected when they bought their houses.

    1. Yes, exactly. Well put Mike.

12. Something on my mind: while the transfer situation is genuinely awful between DSTT 1 and DSTT 2, I’m wondering how much it matters. With a 9 minute transfer time at Westlake, essentially every possible trip pair using the current Link line would be better off on the Metro bus that serves their station and downtown.

    – SODO: 101/150 is ~equal in travel time to Pioneer as Link
    – Beacon Hill: 36 is about 5 minutes slower than Link to Pioneer Square
    – Mount Baker: 7 is about 5 minutes slower than Link to Pioneer Square
    – Othello: 36 is about 10 minutes slower than Link to Pioneer Square
    – TIBS: 124 is about 10 minutes slower than Link to Pioneer Square

    The lack of a good C/ID transfer makes things significantly worse (the buses are basically always more time competitive there – since Link is much faster than the slog from 4th/5th/Jackson to 3rd/James), and it means that Columbia City/Rainier Beach don’t have any good option (the 106 is too slow from Rainier Beach anyways, but it would be roughly fine for Columbia City in terms of making a better transfer). And of course, trips coming from SeaTac and points south (other than Federal Way) will lack a bus equivalent.

    This is all to say that for most trips from South Seattle to points north in the distant future, the most likely fastest trip will be bus -> Link in DSTT 1. That’s not so different from today. This is bad, but it’s more bad because we’d spend $40B and only really improve connectivity between South Seattle and Ballard.

    1. “With a 9 minute transfer time at Westlake, essentially every possible trip pair using the current Link line would be better off on the Metro bus that serves their station and downtown.”

       You mention something that I don’t significantly see in the ST staff presentation or Board discussion: travel time.

       The ugly truth about ST3 is that many if not most of the Link projects (if operating) don’t save any travel time once the horribly deep platforms or the top speeds slower than today’s express buses. It may not be as salacious or criminal as the Epstein files, but transit travel time is the major performance measure for using transit and not exposing what travel times are expected to be (once deep transfer times are added) is full negligence by the ST staff and Board yesterday.

       More importantly, the ST3 operation if realized will actually make many of today’s transit travel times worse because of the terrible transfers.

       Paying extra taxes for an entire career only to earn a longer transit travel times is the ultimate indignity. Yet the staff and Board still think they’re merely drawing lines on a map or building monuments to generally progressive ideas.

       1. Glad you brought up travel time. According to the HNTB/VMS reports, N&S of CID stations (2nd tunnel) will result in 12 minute walks and the new South of CID. station (rebranded Midtown James St even though it’s not in Midtown) must be connected in somehow to the Rapid Ride G Line (built for original Midtown at Madison).

    2. “The lack of a good C/ID transfer makes things significantly worse (the buses are basically always more time competitive there”

       I think this is probably only true for northbound. Southbound bus-light rail transfer at CID is not that seemless.

       1. For trips to South Seattle on the 7/14/36/106, there isn’t much difference NB or SB to C/ID (if anything, the SB transfer is easier since you don’t have to cross Jackson). I guess the 124 is a bit awkward heading south though.

       2. I guess I was more thinking of buses on 2rd/4th Ave when I commented that, but yeah I suppose you are right and most transfers people would make at CID can also be made at stations like Symphony Pioneer Square, or Westlake.

       3. “For trips to South Seattle on the 7/14/36/106, there isn’t much difference NB or SB to C/ID (if anything, the SB transfer is easier since you don’t have to cross Jackson).”

          For 7/106, South Seattle residents will soon have Judkins Park as a transfer station option to/ from Link in just a few months.

       4. That’s a good point Al S., I hadn’t thought of that for some reason. But that still is sort of an anti-second tunnel argument in the sense that it will be more convenient for most people to do 7/106 to Judkins Park to Eastside/North Link line, rather than Ballard/South Link line to Eastside/North Link or West Seattle/North Link – both since the 7/106 are generally more convenient to access for most people, and since the transfers are much faster.

       5. @ blumdrew:

          I mention it because I live in SE Seattle and will face that kind of route decision in 20-30 years — assuming that I’m still alive and in my home. (I don’t see DSTT2 opening until 2045-2055 if at all.)

       6. Consider impacts to the eastside. They will be forced to walk north or walk south with luggage to get a line going to the airport and/or points south. In fact, the 41st Legislative District wrote “For Eastside residents, the elimination of the direct connection to the Ballard-SeaTac airport line will add a severe time penalty for connections to SeaTac airport….” And think of the travel burden to those with disabilities, young children, caregiving escorts and the elderly.

    3. My guess is that north/south trips (e. g. UW/SeaTac) would involve a transfer at SoDo. It is not great (and obviously worse than now) but it seems better than the alternatives.

       But there are plenty of other transfers. For example East Link to Ballard Link. Yes, in many cases the riders would be better off just going to the surface and taking a bus. But that isn’t good. You don’t want to spend a bunch of money on a brand new system and find that a lot of people just won’t use it. Likewise we get a huge portion of our ridership on the main line north of Westlake. If you are headed to Ballard itself then it is better (in most cases) to just take the 44 from the U-District. But if you are headed to South Lake Union or Uptown, the new line sounds good. But not if the transfer is terrible. Suddenly all those (very optimistic) ridership expectations for Ballard Link evaporate. People just take the bus.

       There is also the trip from the surface. This is not limited to Westlake Station but involves all of them. For example, imagine someone on 4th & Madison trying to get to Westlake & Denny. They have a short walk (on the surface) to the train (in the new tunnel) and it gets them right there. But if the stations are too deep (and Link too infrequent) then it just makes sense to catch one of several buses heading that way. The same idea applies to transfers from the bus to the train.

       This is one of the big things about Ballard Link. It is fragile. Unlike other parts of our system, it needs to be done really well, otherwise it just isn’t worth the bother. The stations at the UW are definitely flawed but it isn’t the end of the world. You can take a bus but it much, much slower. So much so that you put up with the poor station placement (in the case of UW Station) or just lack of stations in general. The same is true for a lot of other stations farther away (Roosevelt, Northgate, etc.). Once Metro (or CT) stopped running express buses, Link is the obvious option, warts and all.

       At most that will apply to Ballard, Interbay and Smith Cove. Otherwise the surface options become a lot more attractive. This is why it needs to be done well. The stations should be as close to the surface as possible. The transfer from Westlake to the main line needs to be really fast and easy. The trains need to run very frequently (ten minutes midday doesn’t cut it when you are competing with buses that arrive every couple minutes). I think the best way to accomplish all that is to stop spreading ourselves too thin. The main reason the new tunnel doesn’t serve First Hill is because it costs too much. They are too busy building everything else. It was quantity over quality and that has been a big flaw for a very long time. In contrast a line from Ballard to Westlake (and nothing else) could have a very good transfer if we made it a priority. It is by far the best value of anything that at least resembles what they planned for ST3.

       1. Good point about SODO, though I think that most folks in South Seattle will have a roughly time-comparable trip staying on their local bus with one transfer versus a bus – Link – Link transfer to get to UW/points north. But the East Side – Ballard/SeaTac connection is the truly awful one, and it’s especially bad for trips heading south (since the C/ID station placement essentially killed that natural transfer point). I imagine that it will usually be faster to transfer to the 4/7/48/106 at Judkins Park and then again at Mount Baker rather than going through the onerous Pioneer Square DSTT 1/2 transfer, or the Westlake one. But how many people will be willing to do that is anyone’s guess.

          And yeah, I definitely agree that bad station locations and depth is a massive issue for the Ballard Link specifically, since a lot of the travel between non-Ballard stations will be transfers to SLU/Uptown.

       2. “It is not great (and obviously worse than now) but it seems better than the alternatives. ”

          Of course. It’s like Link from downtown to Rainier Valley: it’s not wonderful but it’s somewhat faster than the buses. If you’re going from Seattle to the airport, you really don’t want to take the 124. It’s both slower and often half-hourly, and every minute you’re thinking “I wish there were a better way.” Of course there is, Link, but not when Link is shut down or the 124 saves you one or two seats in a bus bridge between Capitol Hill and SODO. If they build a heavily flawed system we’ll have to use it, except if there happen to be better alternatives in a few cases. A flawed system just makes the overall transit network poorer, and makes people start thinking more about resorting to moving to New York or Chicago or Toronto.

       3. though I think that most folks in South Seattle will have a roughly time-comparable trip staying on their local bus with one transfer versus a bus – Link – Link transfer to get to UW/points north.

          I agree with that. Renton to UW will happen at CID or maybe Symphony (and will only be one-transfer). But SeaTac to UW (train-to-train) will happen at SoDo.

    4. “essentially every possible trip pair using the current Link line would be better off on the Metro bus that serves their station and downtown.”

       Great, so we finally have a subway we can’t use.

    5. “You mention something that I don’t significantly see in the ST staff presentation or Board discussion: travel time.”

       It’s why I’ve been so insistent on short train-to-train transfers.

    6. The Westlake escalator-palooza is a real deterrent for trip ends that are both north of Downtown. The layout at CID-N is just as bad for transferring to make these trips too.

       The next horrible transfer connection is between 1 and 2 Lines to the Eastside. Balducci sees this as an Eastsider which probably is partly why she’s fought the ST3 design decisions so vehemently.

       The SODO transfer hassle is the easiest to fix with a revised track and station that creates cross-platform transfers. Yet ST never talks about it at the Board or in staff reports.

       The significant, proposed transfer hassles are literally severing the function of the beloved Spine itself. That simple fact needs to be often repeated since the mass public doesn’t fully get what ST is designing.

       When I explain it to people, I usually get “Oh! Well that’s stupid!” and shrug.

       1. “Balducci sees this as an Eastsider which probably is partly why she’s fought the ST3 design decisions so vehemently.”

          Balducci has more understanding of passengers’ needs than most boardmembers. It’s not just that she’s an Eastsider. It’s that she can see what the realistic experience would be for her and her Eastside constituents of taking Link from eastern Bellevue to the airport. Other boardmembers don’t seem to have that sense, no matter which subarea they’re in, and thus which projects and transfers would be relevant to their area. Otherwise the alignments wouldn’t be like they are, and there would be better pedestrian and bus access to stations.

       2. Yeah Mike, I agree that Balducci generally gets what riders will face better than the other Board members do.

          It’s actually stunning to me how many quotes I read from Snohomish or other Eastside Board members that don’t dwell on how DSTT2 transferring hurts the people that they represent. I don’t know if they’re just stupid, negligent or successfully lobbied or bribed by interests that push for no changes to a wildly unaffordable ST3.

       3. I think part of it is that they just don’t imagine transfers happening in significant numbers. In their mind, the purpose of the train is go to the downtown core, and those people would not have to transfer. It’s only people who pass through downtown that would be transferring, but in minds of suburbanites, those are car trips, not transit trips.

       4. Balducci has more understanding of passengers’ needs than most boardmembers. It’s not just that she’s an Eastsider.

          I agree. She should be head of the Sound Transit board. She understands the issues better than most (and probably better than anyone else on the board). It isn’t just that. She has executive experience, a lot of experience on boards and yet she isn’t a major executive now. She can spend more time on ST issues without sacrificing her main job. This is not the case with a county executive or mayor. Those jobs are a lot more time consuming.

       5. I think a lot of people just don’t dig into the details. Obviously this is the case with the general public. But even representatives don’t dwell too much on the specifics. Even when they do there are numerous incentives to just assume the best.

          Consider the study that showed that ST was a dysfunctional organization. Among the problems is a lack of trust. Staff feels like the board doesn’t trust them. They were constantly being asked to essentially “show their work”. As a result of the study, it is quite reasonable for the board to just go along with what staff recommends.

          Except this is one of those times when a board should push back. It isn’t about the engineering, it is about priorities. It is like asking the house painter to paint the trim in a different color. That is completely different than questioning their use of a primer. Yes the board doesn’t want to deal with it. Or they just assume that is the best possible outcome (otherwise they would have proposed something else). Meanwhile, staff have been given rather vague instructions and they are basically left guessing as to how best balance cost/benefit. You don’t have to be an expert in bureaucracy to understand that this type of communication breakdown leads to false assumptions and ultimately a poor outcome. Just because you had a study doesn’t mean that problems are somehow magically fixed. (See this comment for the link to the study and one key paragraph I quoted.)

       6. “I think part of it is that they just don’t imagine transfers happening in significant numbers. In their mind, the purpose of the train is go to the downtown core, and those people would not have to transfer.”

          This view just shows how little understanding the Board has about riders. SeaTac (#2 highest), Capitol Hill (#3 highest), Downtown Bellevue, stadiums and UW are destinations that their constituents will also go — in significant numbers.

          Heck the whole reason to have light rail rather than commuter rail or express bus is to offer transit travel anytime during the day or evening. That’s much more than commuters downtown.

       7. Hence the importance of asking people to send emails to meetingcomments@soundtransit.org, emailtheboard@soundtransit.org, and their elected officials, such as council@seattle.gov. Or making public comment on 4th Thursdays at Union Station, 1:30 p.m. in person or online. Written comments are posted on the ST website and in-person comment is part of the video recording posted to YouTube.

13. It’s truly sad that the most upvoted comment on Reddit under The Urbanist’s “Op-Ed: Defer Seattle’s Second Downtown Rail Tunnel to Save ST3” is pro-DSTT2… The level of conformity and ignorance in this city is astounding.

    1. It may reach critical mass, like it did with Pinehurst station. We argued for years for it, and finally a city councilmember or two started thinking it was a good idea, and one of them became an ST boardmember (I think), and finally ST put it into ST3.

       We’re seeing a snapshot in time now. Harrell said, “Four years ago we probably wouldn’t have considered a one-tunnel solution.” That’s truer than he may remember. In March 2022 we asked ST to study single-tunnel as a way out of the bad transfers. It got enough momentum then that a majority of public testimony at an ST expansion committee meeting asked for it. The board members responded by asking the staff rep why the board had decided against it in 2016. The rep said it was because it would have required adding more egress methods (elevators/escalators/stairs) in downtown stations for fire codes. (That’s different than what it said in 2016, that it would need signal upgrades.) And anyway, two tunnels gives more capacity, the ability to add a second line to DSTT2 later, and the ability to use one tunnel if the other fails. After that another boardmember said, “We decided it in 2016, we’re not going to revisit it now”, and that was the end of it. ST didn’t want to go back and change past decisions because it saw that as a waste of effort.

       Fast forward to now. We’re still advocating single-tunnel and automated Ballard, the same as we have for at least five years. A few months ago, CEO Dow Constantine raised it as a possibility. Now two or three boardmembers are for it, or at least leaning toward it. ST didn’t reject the alternatives from further consideration like it has with past good alternatives in Alternatives Analysis or EISes. All boardmembers said, even if they were against it, that it was very good to have this study done and we should keep the alternatives available to keep our options open in the realignment decision-making next year. That’s a major step forward.

       Over the next few months, more people may learn about the Stub-End alternative and agree with it. Katie Wilson is an unknown: she has a strong interest in good transit, so she may support it and advocate for it. That would be a major deal that would have influence on the board. Especially if she and other proponents can alleviate Somers et al of their fears about impacts to Everett’s and Tacoma’s delivery. If more advocacy groups endorse single-tunnel or ask for it to at least be an EIS alternativek, and more politicians support it, and more members of the community talk it up to their ST boardmembers and politicians, that may eventually create critical mass. It might be possible that by June we’ve achieved it, or at least gotten it into an EIS alternative with a fair assessment.

       If we can get it into the EIS, and if it gets a fair write-up (not biased against it), then even if it’s not selected, it will document what we could have had. That will be a reference resource for the future, and may lead to better decision-making in decisions after that.

    2. Harrell knows Wilson is likely to maybe be more interested to these alternatives, so he may be keeping the possibility open as a favor to her during the transition.

    3. I think you’re reading way too much into this as prevailing opinion one way or another. People want a decision made as to how the next stage of Seattle transit will come to be. Maybe it has the second tunnel, maybe it doesn’t, maybe its just the stub, or not. People want ST to stop waffling and just move forward.

       1. I don’t think it’s just impatience. Impatience often turns into conformity when people stop engaging with what the decision actually is and when it’s being made. A lot of the Reddit reaction seems disconnected from the fact that these choices are happening right now, not sometime in the abstract future.

          Wanting ST to “just move forward” without understanding the implications of the options on the table—especially around transfers, equity, and long-term flexibility—basically defaults to accepting whatever institutional momentum already exists. That’s how bad decisions get locked in.

       2. You’re letting one comment get to you.

          A sole comment out of 94 on there, 94 comments that all have diverging opinions of what should be happening. That’s less than 50-75ish people, a small sample size that’d even pollsters would say is too small to be accurate enough to guage how people feel. You need more like 1,000 or 1,500 people to get a good guage of how things are.

          Reddit also isn’t reflective of how the public thinks or feels, its a forum like this that’ll have diverging opinions on the subject and represents a small corner of the broader Seattle community.

    4. Some of the groups supporting DSTT2 get funding from Sound Transit as shown in the public disclosure request by Smarter Transit. I think it’s posted on the Smarter Transit website. The reality is some of those groups have employees whose job it is, is to promote DSTT2 via public comment or meetings with ST board members.

14. I can still see some operational and regional growth benefit by upgrading some high-demand bus transit corridor into rail even if that means no travel time improvement. Average travel time doesn’t really mean a lot of thing if it was not weighted by demand. Light rail can have longer average travel time than bus 16 hours a day but still benefit majority of the passengers because those 4 hours when it is faster and more reliable than bus are when most people are traveling. pre-service analysis doesn’t get into that level of detail. So a comparison of travel time doesn’t really draw an accurate picture.

    That’s all I am going to say for my support to light rail. Debate about pros and cons of building out ST3 in terms travel time or transfer time loss seems pointless right now because there is no money to build ST3. Even if it has travel time benefit, the benefit cannot beat the fact that there is no money.

    So what they really should focus is what 1) What are the cheaper options or 2) How can we fund it if we insist on building everything as promised.

    1. Yeah, the reliability and peak demand benefits of rail are generally something worth investing in – though this is more an “exclusive right of way” benefit. The G has a lot of dedicated right of way and is fast and reliable enough all day that when I go to the Central Co-op after work, I’m biased towards walking all the way to the G rather than getting on the 10 – even when the 10 would be leaving exactly as I arrive. The G is always more reliable, even if it isn’t always faster for the specific trip.

       This is part of why I find the generally anemic design of most Rapid Ride lines to be so frustrating. It’s entirely possible to have light rail like benefits, it’s just a matter of reallocating road space away from general traffic for buses. So we don’t do it for political reasons, and then we end up with projects like the Rapid Ride J, which is more like a water main replacement project masquerading as a transit project than a project interested in creating a dedicated right of way for buses.

       For the purposes of a regional transit system, I’m biased towards rail – but against light rail. A heavy rail akin to an S-Bahn would have allowed ST to build infrastructure that is compatible with future intercity rail expansion, something which would allow closer collaboration with the state government (allowing for more funding thanks to the distributed benefits of intercity rail). But that’s more of an issue I have with decisions made 20 years ago, and there’s basically no chance of redoing the spine from Everett to Tacoma unless high speed rail gets some actual federal government involvement.

    2. HZ, there is plenty of money to build some of ST3. The taxes are rolling in. There’s not enough to build all of ST3 as designed.

       But ST could get very close with a fully automated, short-train, small and shallow station version of a BLE stub starter segment of the The Snake!. It might even be able to do West Seattle by terminating it in a surface station on Alaska Street just east of California and thereby serve every neighborhood planned in the vote. Include the beginning of a divergence just south of Delridge Station for a future elevated line along Delridge to Burien should a need for it arise.

15. It is very hard to reason about this because there are many unknowns.

    1) If the board made all the alignment decisions tomorrow for the current plan, when would we actually get delivery?

    2) How is that affected by further stalling by the board?

    3) How much planning delay is incurred by a stub? Does not building CID and Midtown eliminate the board indecision about station locations?

    4) Does pushing back delivery dates increase or decrease the ability to deliver the project (accumulating capital/retiring ST2 debt vs. construction inflation)?

    I don’t have the answers, but I suspect the answers are much, much larger than the $4B capital savings of a stub.

    1. The planning delay doesn’t matter. Sound transit doesn’t have the money now for all of Ballard link as planned in st3

       The real choice is between Ballard to Westlake stub. Or continue with the current st3 plan and truncate at smith cove

       1. “The real choice is between Ballard to Westlake stub. Or continue with the current st3 plan and truncate at smith cove.”

          That’s still way too expensive to realistically happen the way things are still on go with West Seattle Link.

          The added costs to West Seattle Link are so much that getting DSTT beyond Westlake appears unaffordable.

          If West Seattle Link stopped at Delridge it may be enough money get to Denny. If West Seattle Link was fully cancelled, it might be enough money to get to Smith Cove. But even those are quite the financial stretch.

    2. 1) If the board made all the alignment decisions tomorrow for the current plan, when would we actually get delivery?

       It may have been implied. But just as importantly: What actually gets built (without additional money)?

       I think we all just assume that we will pass an ST4 or somehow get the money to extend this. But that doesn’t always happen. Agencies often reach a wall — especially after spending a bunch of money. Cities decide they want to spend money on other important things.

       2) How is that affected by further stalling by the board?

       I see no evidence that planning has any effect on delivery dates at this point. There are projects that are clearly “shovel ready” that have been delayed or cancelled indefinitely. For example King County Metro was supposed to get money for the C, D and H. They didn’t get anything. Some of the Stride projects were supposed to be done by now. Some have them have barely started. Planning isn’t the problem, money for construction is. These are cheap projects. The projects folks are discussing are not.

       3) How much planning delay is incurred by a stub?

       This should be a very low priority. Again, this has a minor impact on the delivery date. More to the point it is far more important that we get it right the first time. Which would you rather have, UW-Link being built three years sooner or having it include First Hill? I think the vast majority of people would prefer the latter.

       Does not building CID and Midtown eliminate the board indecision about station locations?

       It does for those stations. It puts it in the same category as Ballard-to-UW stations. Yeah, maybe some day we have to figure that out but not right now. Hint: Go to First Hill.

    3. “How much planning delay is incurred by a stub?”

       Most of it is already planned! They just have to reconfigure Westlake2 station to be a terminus, and add an OMF.

       All this started with a Ballard-Westlake project, since they hadn’t decided what would be south of it yet; that was another project. Then they joined Ballard/DSTT2/West Seattle together into one project if I recall. Then they split it at SODO so that West Seattle’s EIS and construction could go through sooner while they decided the harder issues of DSTT2’s alignment and costs.

       1. Yeah the planning delay reason seens illogical and a red herring.

          And automation would entail scaling back the station sizes so that doesn’t seem like much more of a delay.

          And with the bonding capacity issues a delay is going to happen anyway.

16. Ryan Packer at The Urbanist is more pessimistic about the outcome of the board meeting than we are. Sound Transit Board Sets Aside Idea of Skipping Second Downtown Tunnel.

    Not, “Sound Transit didn’t allocate resources this meeting to study it further but might in the future”, but practically saying the idea is dead. He does list some counterarguments in the article, and the arguments and counterarguments and attitudes are more or less the same as what we have above, but he draws different conclusions from them. “[A] plurality of board members concluded that both of those paths were too risky to spend time studying further.”

    I would counter that they were against Pinehurst Station until they were for it, and they haven’t fully addressed the financial shortfall and the decisions they will have to make in the Enterprise Initiative realignment. And Zahilay and Wilson weren’t there.

    But he does raise the point that Somers, as board chair, could strong-arm the process to block these alternatives. He already routed the report through the Executive Committee rather than the more usual and subject-expert System Expansion Committee. He could do more next year to prevent it from getting study resources and keep it out of the EIS and proposals. Hopefully it won’t be that way though.

    1. Mike Orr,

       Putting all the transit part of this aside for a minute, although I understand it’s important…..

       My guess is the second tunnel gets built, come Hell or high water. At this point it’s likely politically impossible to stop. Citizens have been promised this stuff for decades and now it’s all going to rolled back? What a victory for Seattle Subway! and “The Build the Damn Trains” team and even Katie Wilson! What a socialist bong hit! We did it, Yaaah!! We stopped “them” from cutting back OUR light rail!

       I also guess that the numbers Sound Transit are using that point out a lack of revenue to complete the ST3 promises… are also optimistic. Good luck passing an ST4 bailout plan in 2033.

       1. Only a tiny number of people want to own Seattle Subway and the Seattle progressives. This isn’t a deep red state where a lot of people have spiteful grudges. Hardly any of the public knows Seattle Subway exists. None of the alternatives are socialist, and none of them is more socialist than another.

          It’s odd you think maximalist rail is a conservative or anti-progressive choice. It’s slightly conservative because it follows a 2016 precedent, but wait, no it doesn’t, it has radically unprecedented long transfers, and radical new Midtown and CID2 station locations. And there’s the cost, and the fact it’s more rail than the alternatives.

       2. Mike Orr,

          It’s really not about conservative values at all being there are no real conservatives involved in the political landscape of this mess.

          There’s the “promised” problem. I mean how freaking long as that second tunnel been talked about? planned? pined for? Doesn’t matter it’s a bad idea. It’s tough to roll back something like this. Tacoma wants light rail! We don’t care if slower than the bus!

          The second problem is “Lefty protest culture”…. which is having a moment in Greater Seattle. It’s a great tool for bringing in a higher minimum wage or extending renter’s protections. It’s a lousy tool for planning transit. I’m guessing it’s a lousy tool for running a city too, but that’s Mayor Wilson’s problem.

          The “Build the Damn Trains” team knows exactly what they’re doing politically. It’s now likely impossible for the new mayor to support “cutting back” any rail project. “Lefty protest culture” strikes again. But, as you are keenly aware of… Sound Transit has lots of engineering and finance troubles. Those can’t be bullied or protested away. Katie Wilson is already in bad place with transit.

       3. “Doesn’t matter it’s a bad idea. It’s tough to roll back something like this.”

          Of course it’s tough and a long shot. That doesn’t mean it it’s not worth trying.

          “It’s now likely impossible for the new mayor to support “cutting back” any rail project. “Lefty protest culture” strikes again. But, as you are keenly aware of… Sound Transit has lots of engineering and finance troubles. Those can’t be bullied or protested away. Katie Wilson is already in bad place with transit.”

          Let’s wait and see what the politicians do and think. It’s not worth trying to guess. Guesses will be either right or wrong, and once we know, the guess won’t matter, it will have been wasted effort. The politicians themselves may not even know what they will do, or they may think they do but in the end they turn out to be wrong, due to some factor in the future or if they’re persuaded by something or other.

       4. The Build the Damm Train people clearly have an opinion on what they’d ideally like to see but realistically they just want local leaders to stop waffling on what to do and just make a decision regardless of outcome.

          There’s no political ulterior motive like your implying here. Seattle Subway and Transit Riders Union people just want things to move forward instead of continuing to dance around the topic for much longer.

          At some point people want the Seattle Process to just simply end.

       5. Zach B

          The “Seattle Process” isn’t the problem here and it never was. The problem is there’s not enough money. The “Build the Damn Trains” team have no idea of the math problem. None of them understand (or I’d guess even care?) there’s a 30++ billion shortfall at Sound Transit. I haven’t heard of their plan to “close the funding gap” at Sound Transit and I doubt I ever will.

          And yes the “Build the Damn Trains” team does have a political agenda. Seattle Subway and Transit Riders Union also have political agendas. All of these outfits engage in sort of “middle school socialism” where there are ton and tons of ideas tossed about…. and no price tags are ever applied.

       6. The Build the Damm Train people clearly have an opinion on what they’d ideally like to see but realistically they just want local leaders to stop waffling on what to do and just make a decision regardless of outcome. There’s no political ulterior motive like your implying here.

          Well, the ulterior motive of the “Build the Damn Train” groups could be just that. They may very well be contractorss eager to build something. They don’t care what it is or where it goes — they get paid either way. Of course it usually isn’t that blatant. But I’ve heard the following about TCC and the “Build the Damn Trains” group:

          They have evolved into the establishment advocacy organization. Many of their alumni have risen through the planner, manager, and elected ranks. Some are quite smart. They do not seem to question much. They advocate; they are not good at making choices despite their name. They are aligned with the construction firms and establishment politicians.

          Again, I’m not saying everyone is motivated by construction. But I think it is quite reasonable that many are. It is like the Military-Industrial Complex. Plenty of people support the project for good military based reasons. But plenty of people just want the money to be spent.

       7. Ross, don’t go looking for conspiracies.

          Or else someone might point out that people who oppose West Seattle and the Second Downtown Tunnel sure do sound like NIMBYs

       8. There’s a bit of a difference between

          • “don’t built that, it will inconvenience the neighborhood for 6 days” from someone living 2 blocks away

          and

          • “Don’t build that, it will add at least 10 minutes to almost all light rail trips in Puget Sound while spending billions of dollars rhat could have made transit better” from someone living miles away but will still suffer through the result for the next 120 or so years.

          We’ve already seen what the impact is like of having a deep level station at Husky Stadium and how it’s impacted a number of trips.

          Why would you repeat that if it can be avoided?

       9. I’m not looking for conspiracies. That is a direct quote from someone who used to work for Metro and probably knows more about the behind-the-scenes transit world than anyone I know.

          There are bound to be people who oppose a project because they are NIMBYs. No one is suggesting otherwise. But likewise it is quite plausible that people within the “Build the Damn Trains” movement work within the industry. Either that or they are just ignorant. It is pretty clear by now that we can’t build what was in ST3. So what is the point of starting work you can’t finish? One motivation is that you just want them to build things for the sake of building them.

          If instead you are motivated by a desire to see at least some of it completed as soon as possible, shouldn’t you focus on the parts that are most important and get those done first? Using the logic of the “Build the Damn” trains group we will end up with a downtown tunnel but no Ballard or West Seattle Link. We will have a line from Downtown Everett to Mariner or the Tacoma Dome to Fife. The order in which you build things is always important but is especially important if it is highly likely you can’t finish the project. Either the group is ignorant of this or just doesn’t care.

17. Can somebody explain why dropping DSTT2 has any bearing at all on the environment impact statement for Link to Tacoma and Everett. These are separate processes, and the construction out there will be exactly the same whether DSTT2 is built or not.

    Is it essentially a legalistic argument about how projects are officially grouped, or is the argument that Tacoma and Everett Link extensions would get fewer riders if DSTT2 is not built (how?)?

    It would be nice to have some clarity on this.

    1. EIS assess the impact not just from construction, but from planned operations, and also establishes the need for each project. Each project is planned as part of the larger ST3 system, so each project bases several assumptions of purpose, need, and operational impacts on transportation needs served by the entire system. Every construction alternative for every project assumes the second downtown tunnel will be built *eventually*. If ST begins treating no second tunnel as a real alternative, then it might have to reopen every other EIS.

       1. It’s also possible that the federal and state authorities which review the EIS’s would not force ST to reopen them if changes happen to system elements outside the scope of the EIS. The likely middle-ground is an addendum which assesses the nature and extent of impacts from changes to the ST3 plan, if there are any.

    2. I imagine that having a third line in the DSTT changes ridership projections and operating principles for the line going to Everett. For Tacoma, it directly changes the route the train will take through downtown Seattle so I presume that is a larger issue. An EIS has to be very specific, so changes like this mean new EIS. But I’m not specifically familiar with how the Tacoma or Everett extension EISs are structured, so that’s a bit of guesswork

    3. They’re saying it may have an impact. It depends on what assumptions are in those projects’ EISes and grant applications. For instance, West Seattle Link assumes DSTT2 will be built, even though it won’t use it, because that’s part of the project that gives it the connection from SODO to DSTT1. I don’t know what Everett and Tacoma Dome assume; it may be nothing. They may have to address issues with potential overcrowding in DSTT1 if DSTT2 isn’t built.

       But the concern go beyond their EISes. It’s that changing the Ballard/DSTT2 project might suck up so much of ST’s time and money that it will use up the resources and debt capacity so that there’s not enough to build Everett and Tacoma Dome on time or at all. Having to adjust their EISes is part of that.

       That might look illogical since the reasons for the alternatives are to save money and make the system better for passengers. But in those boardmembers’ minds it’s an avoidable risk.

18. Beyond dstt2 something ive been wondering anout for awhile is Why do we need so much omf infrastructure? Are we that bad at operations?

    1.Sodo of os in service
    2.East omf is coming soon
    3 South omf is on the way I guess
    4.Now we ALSOneed a 4th in interbay. As a pretty casual outside observer it seems a little ludicrous.

    1. I assume it’s because an OMF needs space to store the trains, and the more trains you have, the more space you need store them. Absent room to expand an existing facility, that means building new OMFs as the system expands.

       Having OMFs be distributed throughout the area, rather than one giant one also reduces deadheading distances and increases resiliency in case of local issues like a power outage or a downed tree blocking tracks.

    2. Portland has two OMFs for the MAX (after skimping on a third when the Orange Line was built), and it leads to some issues – most notably that its hard to have good early morning frequency on the Orange line since its so far away from the two OMFs (one in Hillsboro, one in Gresham). It used to be 30 minute service until 8 AM from the station I used to live by, a time when the buses were running every 15 or better. Portland also has their tracks set up in a way that requires all trains entering service on the Orange line to cross the Steel Bridge (since there are no connecting tracks between the West side line and the other lines on the west side of the river), which makes reliability worse too – especially if there is an early morning issue.

       This is all to say that it’s better to have too many OMFs than too few.

       1. The first orange line train leaves Milwaukie at 4:41 am. At that time in the morning, there is 0 reason to have any sort of high frequency on the orange line. The most important connecting bus hasn’t even started operating.

          The demand for early morning trains elsewhere is enough for repositioning moves to bring early trains to Milwaukie.

          And keep in mind Milwaukie city center is about half the size of downtown Snohomish. Post-2020, they’re lucky to see more than about 30 people on an orange line train except a few peak trips.

          It would be a waste of service hours to put any more trains on the orange line. Whats badly needed is earlier trips on the 33 that connects to it.

       2. Sure, I’m not saying it needs to run every 15 minutes at 4:41 AM, but when I lived in the Brooklyn neighborhood it would be every 30 minutes until 8:00 AM or so. It wasn’t the end of the world, since the 17 would be running every 15 by then, but it was annoying. I just looked at the schedule, and it seems like this has been sorted out.

          The larger point is that the Orange line’s service patterns are constrained by the locations of the operation and maintenance facilities, and that the specifics of Portland’s trackage makes them prone to delays if there’s an issue on or around the Steel Bridge. That’s bad. TriMet should dedicated a small amount of the Center Street facility to MAX operations when the Orange line was built, and added a stub connection, if only for operational flexibility.

          Agree that there are other needs in Portland, not sure where the 33 ranks among those and how it will be prioritized during the cuts to come.

    3. To fit all the trains. And because the Ballard stub would be detached, with no track connecting it to the other OMFs. More OMFs isn’t necessarily bad. SODO OMF certainly wasn’t sized for ST’s needs: ST3 wasn’t voter-approved yet and wouldn’t be for decades if ever (from 1996’s perspective).

    4. asdf2, if BLE is fully automated and has a non-revenue connection to The Spine, technically you don’t really have to have a true “Maintenance Facility” like the other three on it. You have to have a place to clean the trains, for sure, but with the non-revenue connection you can send cars needing heavy work to the appropriate full MF.

       So far as “parking for the night”, with an automated system you only need to park those which represent the difference between peak and base levels of service. One train can simply run all night as an automated shuttle using a single track between the end points. You just run the shuttle only as often as it takes a train to make a round trip. At 2 AM that’s a great level of service.

       The rest of the trains toddle down the unused track until they come to a parked train, park themselves nose-to-tail with the one in front and shut down. In the morning they “wake up” in reverse order and enter service. Yes, they need to pass through the cleaning facility in the evening before “going to bed”.

       During ramp-up and ramp-down when a few trains are needed but not all, the active trains run in a hybrid system where they use cross-overs to meet at intermediate stations with one track between the cross-overs and the next station holding trains for later cleaning and/or parking.

       Much less dedicated parking needed.

       You can’t do this with human operators because they can’t walk through the tunnels for blocks. Automated trains can drive and park themselves.

       1. I should have added, “Grant, all these cross-overs does increase the construction cost, because the station boxes need to be a bit longer than they otherwise would be. But, we’re thinking of short-trains so the stations start out shorter, and SOME stations in a Link-train model are going to have cross-overs anyway.

       2. The OMF needs of the automated trains used in the airport people movers is really, really tiny. It seems like that should be the baseline for automated Ballard

       3. I’d like to see a train toddle.

       4. if BLE is fully automated and has a non-revenue connection to The Spine, …

          That reminds me. This is an option that wasn’t studied. It may be that the OMF at Interbay is a good enough option. No need to figure a non-revenue connection.

       5. I’ve been in the SeaTac OMF. It’s small, but it’s not tiny. The fleet is something like 8~10 cars, much smaller than Ballard Link needs for decent frequency.

       6. The line is separated from traffic and should be fairly quick. Safe to say =20 minutes from Westlake to Ballard?

          20 minutes / 1x 2 car train every 3 minutes = 14 cars.

          So probably about 34 cars total including ST’s usual spares amount.

    5. Ballard Link had assumed access to OMF-N, which would be accessed via Everett Link extension. If Ballard Link doesn’t have access to OMF-N (either because OMF-N isn’t built yet, or Ballard Link is simply disconnected from the rest of the network), there is a need for more OMF footprint to handle the expanding fleet.

19. It truly looks like “momentum” will dictate that North King ends up with West Seattle trains in DSTT1 with Redmond’s and Tacoma’s in a version of DSTT2 built as far as Denny Way where trains will terminate for decades.

    What a colossal waste of money.

    1. Redmond will be in DSTT1 with West Seattle to Mariner. Only Tacoma will be in DSTT2.

       1. Is it a hat there was no vote because there was nothing proposed to be voted on?

          I don’t know how the board works but could it be possible for Balducci to introduce an official motion to study the stub more in depth if she thinks the votes are there to support it?

       2. It was in the Reports section of the agenda. Reports are simply presented and discussed; no action is taken. Action would require somebody to write up a motion before the meeting that the board could vote on, something like a bill in the legislature. Since the report was brand new, there was no time to know what was in it before the meeting, much less write an action about what it contained. Now that the board has been familiarized with the study results, it could introduce a related motion next month or in a later month.

       3. I should have put an apostrophe-s after “West Seattle” and a comma after “Redmond’s” as:

          with West Seattle’s trains in DSTT1 with Redmond’s, and Tacoma’s in a version of DSTT2 built as far as Denny Way where trains will terminate for decades.

          You are right that it was worded confusingly.

          I’m sad you thought I didn’t know that.

       4. Darn, didn’t close the quote properly. The text hould go back to ordinary after “decades”, dear reader.

    2. Yep that’s what the West Seattle power brokers want to do.

       And they want to never admit the $4B in cost to just go a short distance from Delridge to Alaska Junction to serve a modest number of apartments while much of the walkshed has single family homes and most riders will cone from forced bus transfers to a deep station.

       And they never, ever discuss being concerned or doing anything about the planned sucky transfers to deep stations in DSTT2.

20. What’s striking is how strongly groups that identify as progressive—like TRU and BTDT—have rallied behind DSTT2. If Executive Zahilay or Mayor Wilson ultimately support it, that alignment would raise serious questions about equity goals. From an operations and rider-experience perspective, DSTT2’s key effect is to impose an additional transfer between the Eastside and South King County, disproportionately impacting longer, lower-income trips.

    In that light, Claudia Balducci stands out as a genuine advocate for regional connectivity and liberal values, despite often being characterized as merely representing Eastside interests. She seems uniquely willing to support investments that actually build bridges across class and geography.

    1. Honestly, ST3 is about the most equity-poor transit referendum I’ve seen. Link is going mostly to upscale places and skipping poor places in almost every subarea. Alaska Junction but not High Point? Stride 3 skipping Lake City? South Federal Way but skipping central Auburn? Eastgate and Issaquah over rail to Renton?

       And ST’s touted “Equity Toolkit” is focused on construction impact mitigation. When new rail lines don’t go to disadvantaged communities, they don’t get construction impacts! It’s set up to more legitimize skipping disadvantaged communities.

       1. I agree, and those that are housed from the transit-oriented development are placed next to highways because that is where developers like Kevin Wallace own property, very anti-free market.

    2. Zahilay will definitely have a lot of say in what goes forward, and it will be very interesting to see how he lands on the subject. Did he speak at this last ST meeting does anyone know?

       1. Zahilay was not present at Thursday’s board meeting for personal reasons.

       2. Hopefully he’s able to go meta and isn’t stuck in his South Seattle bubble and improving things for those constituents. That will only isolate his community imo. But who knows maybe were not even developed even as a society yet to blur historical race boundaries.

       3. Zahilay’s family just had a baby.

    3. [off-topic thread on socialism and housing prices, with 2 replies]

       1. [off-topic. Move to an open thread. We need an article dedicated to this major downtown tunnel board discussion and the tunnel debate.]

    4. “What’s striking is how strongly groups that identify as progressive—like TRU and BTDT—have rallied behind DSTT2.”

       It makes sense if you’re thinking generally “maximum rail, maximum transit, Seattle and the US are far behind”.

       If Executive Zahilay or Mayor Wilson ultimately support it, that alignment would raise serious questions about equity goals. From an operations and rider-experience perspective, DSTT2’s key effect is to impose an additional transfer between the Eastside and South King County, disproportionately impacting longer, lower-income trips.”

       That’s a blind spot for those progressives and most of the politicians. They think any transfer is like any other, and Link’s will be like typical multi-line subways. They don’t know about the diagrams, don’t look at them, or can’t intuit the experience of walking through that until they see it on the ground.

       1. Also makes sense if you consider the progressive omnicause is mostly around funneling money to the relevant parties, which in Seattle are the public unions (bigger Link = bigger KCM *and* bigger KC council staff), private unions (public megaprojects = jobs jobs jobs), and sundry activist groups and professional organizers, who get to be busy busy busy during the indeterminable EIS process.

          (the EIS process is long, sprawling, and expensive when is the process is run by people who professional perspective around environmental work is the only thing better than a lengthy multistakeholder process is more time, more studies, and more stakeholders).

          It’s quite clear that Dow’s primary goal in the CID-North station is catalyzing redevelopment of the county’s property. Tacoma’s interest in the streetcar has always been around neighborhood placemaking & redevelopment. Pierce and Snohomish county leaders have described Link as a key investment to attract jobs to their county … with the focus on creating the jobs, not connecting workers to those jobs.

          Shoot, the Washington Legislature directed some of the ST3 taxes into education funding as a part of the political bargain to create ST3 in Olympia. So it really shouldn’t be a surprise that key decision makers mostly see ST3 has a bucket of money to be directed to the causes they hold dear (benevolently or corruptly, or usually a murky combination because they are human), and those causes rarely include ridership or accessibility.

          Seattle’s progressive establishment simply does not value transportation as a key public service to be improved. This is why much political capital is expended on fare discounts but little is expended on bus lanes.

    5. DSTT2 is a deliberate bypass of the CID, with North and South of CID stations that according to HNTB and VMS, cause extra transfers, longer walks, displacement of low income/no income clients in social services. No equity considerations here and quite an irony considering the communities of color in the CID and to the south are used as reasons for Need and Purpose of light rail. Never mentioned by the Sound Transit Board are those with disabilities, how building the inferior DSTT2 serves accessibility and connectivity not at all.

21. Takeaways based on the above reporting:

    -The Everett mayor is living in Fantasyland where money just magically appears. And they don’t seem in any way concerned or informed about the resulting quality of the system (like so many others).

    -Dow is great at not saying anything meaningful. Personally, I’m really disappointed at the direction he’s gone the last few years in terms of leadership, or lack thereof.

    -Somers is also living in a dream world where money grows on trees. The “I don’t want to deviate from the current plan” folks don’t seem to want to accept that the current plan is not affordable and can only be built by making it even worse.

    These are the kinds of politicians that make bad leaders. And bad leaders make bad decisions.

    I echo the comments of Ross and others: ST is a dysfunctional agency. I’m not optimistic ST will make the right decision to get out of this mess but at least I’ll be retried/not living in Seattle or dead by that time and won’t have to deal with a horribly designed and absurdly expensive half-assed system. Sadly, the next generation is likely going to end up with a bunch of crap.

    1. Matt,

       You’re completely right about Dow. Greasy politician if I ever saw one. Good old “Double speak Dow” does a lot of talking, but actually says nothing.

       But you got to laugh over people getting so upset of light rail that *might* be built in 20 years! What we just witnessed from the ST board was a “let’s just punt this turd down the road when we’re not in office any more” And because all the choices are bad, who can blame them?

       1. This was just a report. ST doesn’t have to make a decision right this minute today. It just needs to make a decision over the next six to twelve months in its Enterprise Initiative reset, the usual bureaucratic speed. It can’t act on a report in less than an hour after receiving it; that would just be a first-instinct knee-jerk reaction that may not be the best choice.

22. The record should also show that one of the in-person commentators spoke in support of the 4 Line (South Kirkland – Issaquah) and complained that the 4 Line seems to be omitted from ongoing conversations about project affordability.

    Later in the meeting, Claudia Balducci recognized the comment and mentioned that she had spoken with the new mayor of Issaquah and the city is excited for the 4 Line extension, and that the commentator was “not the only eastsider” in support of the extension.

    1. Gotta love Claudia!

23. What is not been clear to me in all this discussion is, what exactly is the financial position of ST3? So the current estimated costs of the projects is running way ahead of the costs in the original projections sold to us voters. Got that. But what does it really mean? Does it mean that the promised ST3 projects can NEVER be completed given the current and projected tax revenue, and projected inflation rates (and ST bonding capacity)? Or does it mean that the projected tax revenue/bonding capacity is enough if the board simply extends all the project deadlines by 5, 10, or 20 years? If the later is the case, I would assume that there is some inflation rate that would simply kill the projects (after all, inflation seems to always be the excuse for the current situation). Any idea of what that rate might be?

    1. The read I’m getting from it all is that most of the ST3 projects will eventually happen in some capacity. It’s now become a matter of which priorities matter more first, the second Downtown tunnel or future planned link extensions because they can only pick one to go first.

       Boardmember Strauss emphasized something important in the meeting, all the boardmembers need to come to a consensus and stop waffling on which priorities matter for the next stage of regional transit. Pointing out that either the other subareas pitch in more money from the money they have banked for their subareas planned extensions and put it towards the second Downtown tunnel while delaying their own subareas future extensions or defer the second Downtown tunnel and move the money to other ST3 projects like Tacoma, Everett, and Issaquah link, T Line TCC extension, JBLM/DuPont Sounder, etc within their respective subareas.

    2. Yeah it’s quite notable that the presentations never reviewed just how bad the shortfall is expected to be. Had ST included that, the Board discussion could easily have gone differently.

       Instead the staff approached the situation as if money is no object. And of course that a technology change would save money.

       The Board prefers to live in a universe where the funds are there. It’s quite hard for any of them to admit that they really screwed up badly when the trusted the cost estimates for ST3 back in 2016 for both West Seattle and Ballard (although decisions to go underground substantially increased the costs of each beyond what ST3 was based upon).

       Deny and stay the course is unfortunately the model of elected officials these days. And that’s what they did.

    3. All that is complicated and interacts with each other. We’ve only gotten pieces of the picture: one cost overrun here in one project, one in another. ST’s Enterprise Initiative next year is supposed to do a big reset based on all those, so there will be a more complete picture in a board report for that. But generally what we know:

       1. The legislature caps ST’s tax rates and debt-to-asset ratio.

       2. ST’s current tax rates are close to but not at the ceiling. (Because one of them is a payroll tax, which is unpopluar, and the cap is so low it wouldn’t raise much.)

       3. ST has a self-imposed soft debt limit, lower than the state requirement.

       4. There are three sets of tax streams, one originally set in ST1, one in ST2, and one in ST3. The ST1&2 ones are currently being used to pay ST2 construction bills and pay down ST1&2 bonds. When the full 2 Line opens and the bonds are paid down sufficiently, those streams will be available for ST3 projects. (Extending the old streams for ST3 was approved in the ST3 vote.) This is why ST3 projects are scheduled so late, because only a third of the monthly revenue is currently available for ST3.

       4. In 2016 it was assumed ST3 would scrape against the debt ceiling from the late 2020s to the mid 2030s, when Ballard/DSTT2, Everett, and Tacoma Dome were under constuction simultaneously. With all the changes since then and the Realignment reset and the upcoming Enterprise Initiative reset, I don’t know what the year ranges are now.

       5. ST can extend the taxes indefinitely into the future to finish all the voter-approved projects. However, doing that far beyond the initial 2041 finish date becomes politically questionable.

       6. When all voter-approved capital projects are finished, the tax rates will automatically be rolled back to the level needed for operations, maintenance, fleet replacement, and debt service. That’s estimated to be a third of the current rate. It hasn’t happened yet because ST2 & 3 superceded the earlier expected rollbacks.

       7. I don’t know how inflation factors into it. But if you want to get into that, there’s inflation, rising land values for property acquisition, rising materials costs, rising labor costs, especially with a national labor shortage, and rising healthcare costs, most of which exceed the inflation rate.

       8. If ST has another vote to give more money to ST3 projects, how would that work? It’s already close to the state tax-rate caps. Many people think the combined ST1/2/3 rate is already high. It would have to ask the legislature for permission to add a “fourth” stream on top of it. The legislature is already dissatisfied with ST expanding ST3’s scope 50% beyond the assumptions in the ST3 legislation. (The original ask was for a 15-year phase, the same size as ST1 and 2. ST later expanded it to 25 years after public pressure to fit Ballard Link and the full Everett extension into it. (Since ST had insisted on funding West Seattle Link before Ballard Link, thanks Dow.) The public has been souring on ST3, and transit fans are now half and half on it. So there’s less public support for an ST4 or 3.1 than there was for the previous packages.

    4. “the presentations never reviewed just how bad the shortfall is expected to be”

       The presentation was about alternatives to DSTT2. It couldn’t get into all of ST’s finances and the other projects. Those are far outside the scope, and are rapidly-moving targets. All that is what the overall Enterprise Initiative is supposed to decide. The board has had a couple workshops in this, and will have more workshops and meetings next year on it, and will probably make a decision next summer or so.

       By that time, momentum for the Stub-End or Interline alternatives will have either increased or not. By that I mean boardmembers’ attitudes, and politicians’ and public pressure on them. If it increases, or if boardmembers take a month and think Balducci/Strauss is right after all, and we don’t know what Wilson’s or Zahilay’s positions will be or their negotiang skills, then Single-Tunnel will have a chance. If it doesn’t increase, it won’t. If ST stays the course on DSTT2, then it will either have to economize in other ways, truncate or delete projects, or kick the can down the road for another fifteen years and then decide what to do about everything it hasn’t finished.

       1. It feels like they need both the enterprise initiative and at least one or two more big savings. My opinion is that the enterprise initiative will result in incremental, evolutionary changes; but they will also need some revolutionary, out of the box thinking to get where they need to go.

          Zahilay, Wilson, Fain, McLeod and Mosqueda we are looking to you new board members to get up to spied quickly, and to not let sound transit’s inertia stand in the way of good decisions that support good transit outcomes.

    5. “Instead the staff approached the situation as if money is no object. ”

       It has cost estimates. It’s up to the board to decide whether these are realistic, and decide which one to pursue, and the options for each one that would affect the price.

       For instance, we think the $0 savings for Stub-End in the low estimate is unlikely.

       The board has a blind spot re automation, and the report did nothing to alleviate that. We’re trying to get ST to study an automated alternative.

24. One interesting thing out of the report is that it estimates the Ballard- Westlake stub at $14.6B. And that can be cheaper with an automated, high frequency train because platforms can be smaller.

    So I see these scenarios in the $15B range:

    A. Alaska Junction to Westlake (1/3 Lines)
    B. Delridge to Denny or Seattle Center (1/3 Lines)
    C. Ballard to Westlake stub (5? line)

    Is this about right? Are there others?

    1. Al, options “A” and “B” include DSTT2, with “A” including the deep Alaska Junction station, with Line 1 the occupant of DSTT2, right? IOW, the ST3 plan in all its details only without Ballard or South Lake Union. Am I understanding correctly?

       If so, that does indeed seem like a Titanic waste of money. Line 1 riders get really screwed; they don’t even get a single-seat ride to South Lake Union; they get NUTTIN’. NUTTIN’!

       West Seattle riders, though, hit the jackpot; at least, the hordes of them headed for UW. The speedy, one-seat ride to Yew-Dub is such an amenity that it might create a mini-tower forest of gentrified student housing on the Peninsula, No?

       But there’s not much else about it worth tooting any horns.

       Option “B”, though difficult to believe, is even worse! There’s no room around a Delridge terminal station to build MIT/Hahvahd-ish student housing. In fact, there’s just plain no room to build much of anything, except maybe more steel mill. Perhaps some of the steel-workers will take night classes because it will be so easy to jump up there after work!

       So that means pretty certainly that if the ST Board has any sense, they will choose Option C as a down payment on The Snake!. Seattle should chip in a couple of hundred million to make moving the expresses from SR99 to the busway painless and a no-brainer. See my comment in the Weekend Open Thread adjacent this article “New Bus Path Through International District” in the previous article at: https://seattletransitblog.com/2025/12/20/weekend-open-thread-3/#comment-975859

       1. Well yeah Oltion A seems to be the way things are headed.

          Welcome to our lovely city of “limousine socialists”! I guess it’s worth something that rail transit is sexy enough to move (or “steal”) the direct train line to UW from the minority neighborhoods to the trendy upscale one.

          I do think ST will soon come looking for more taxes. They’ll cry poverty and say that the new taxes are needed to get to Seattle Center and Ballard, when the truth is that West Seattle just got in line first. The Board meeting does show that they would rather get more money than scale back with the billions that they already have coming.

          And I do think that members of the Board and some advocates believe transit as a fundamentally good thing to expand. It’s just that they want to expand it to either benefit them or their developer friends first. Otherwise, they’d be probing about public benefits like travel times including transfers, forecasted ridership, performance metrics like cost per rider or system capacity with trains or station flows — and they aren’t. It is more like an aesthetic beauty contest about what goes first, and West Seattle is the looker.

          And if someone dared to ask which option I laid out is the most productive, I’m pretty dang certain many of us would state that it’s C. It’s just the Board doesn’t care to use metrics to make choices (which they should be doing out of basic fairness to public investment). They’d rather play out these decisions purely on whims and backroom meetings. And no one in power except Balducci even begins to question it.

25. Deferring a new tunnel saves money and completes the 1 Line with a one seat ride from Tacoma to Everett. It serves the CID, which the 2nd tunnel will bypass. A 2nd tunnel as planned, will deprive Seattle’s last remaining minority community of transit access and economic benefits. Sound Transit’s reasons for getting federal funding is to connect and benefit communities of color, which won’t happen with the current plans for N&S of CID station plans for a new tunnel. Also harmed will be people with disabilities, who with ridership in general, face extra transfers, longer walks and a broken “spine” (HNTB and VMS reports of 2023).

    1. I agree with all of your points. A second tunnel provides very few benefits and does quite a bit of harm.

    2. Unless ST invest in automation, it’s unlikely Everett to Tacoma will be a 1-seat ride. The train from Everett will go to WS or Redmond, and the train from Tacoma will likely terminate at Mariner.

       Nonetheless, a rider traveling from Everett to Tacoma will have a same-platform transfer, which is the benefit of interlining in a single tunnel and as good as it gets for a low effort transfer.

       1. the train from Tacoma will likely terminate at Mariner.

          Mariner Station is in Everett, so technically she is correct (assuming that happens). But rides from Everett to Tacoma aren’t that important. Only a handful of people will make them. It is all the trips in between. Thus the phrase “Everett to Tacoma” is good shorthand for all of those trips that are taken. If you split the current line (which runs from Lynnwood to Federal Way) you force a lot of transfers for existing trips; Roosevelt to Beacon Hill, Northgate to Rainier Valley or UW to SeaTac would all require a transfer. At the same time, buses that run on the SoDo Busway would likely be sent to a different street, where they would encounter more congestion.

Comments are closed.