Update: The entire T Line will be replaced by buses from Tuesday January 20 at 6:12pm through Friday January 23 evening to replace broken rails. Saturday January 24 may also be affected if necessary. The shuttle buses will have the same schedule as Link and will be free.

Update 2: Metro is looking for part-time drivers. Apply by January 23.

Transportation:

Land Use & Housing:

This is an Open Thread.

103 Replies to “Midweek Roundup: induced demand”

  1. Good to see Wilson is all in building the second tunnel. Now time to stop talking and build the damn tunnel.

    1. It is not that simple. The money to build the 2nd tunnel isn’t there. If it were there, it would almost certainly come at the expense of other ST3 projects. So, to pay for the 2nd tunnel, maybe Ballard Link ends at Smith Cove and/or West Seattle Link ends at Delridge. And, then, of course, the operational issues it creates for passengers. Trips between UW and Ranier Valley/SeaTac now require changing trains and a likely awkward walk between the stations. The train change for Bellevue->SeaTac gets worse, likely requiring a backtrack to Pioneer Square, which is worse than International District Station as the connection point, both horizontally and vertically.

      And, the argument about resiliency only applies to trips that both begin and end downtown (e.g. the trips that could use the two tunnels interchangeably), which is a very tiny portion of all trips, and are already quite resilient with the choice between the existing Link tunnel and the 3rd Ave. bus spine. The capacity argument only matters under extremely fanciful ridership assumptions and, even then, only during peak travel times, and even then, has insufficient benefit to justify such a huge expense in building the thing.

      No, I think what’s going here, is a problem with so many transit-advocacy organizations. That, any proposed transit infrastructure is automatically a “must build”, regardless of cost, regardless of benefit. And, that anyone who says otherwise risk appearing anti-transit and lumping themselves in the bucket of people Tim Eyman in the eyes of mostly-uninformed voters.

      In the real world, everything comes with tradeoffs. For example, let’s imagine a hypothetical proposal to build an entirely parallel Link line (with new, separate stations), all the way from Federal Way to Lynnwood, just do, if one were disrupted, trains could switch to the other, and if one were over capacity, additional trains could be added on the other. Such a line would increase resiliency, and would have no tradeoffs regarding access or transfers. In a world with infinite money, building it would be a “sure, why not”. But, in the real world, with finite money, such a proposal would be crazy, as the resiliency benefits would be so infinitesimally tiny compared to the billions upon billions of dollars in construction costs, as the existing single line is already quite resilient. This is essentially what the 2nd downtown tunnel does, but in a worse way that also adds awkward connections for riders for a lot of trips.

      1. “And, the argument about resiliency only applies to trips that both begin and end downtown (e.g. the trips that could use the two tunnels interchangeably), which is a very tiny portion of all trips, ”

        No, again, resiliency isn’t about people switching to a different rail line to make the same trip, or trains somehow switching to different tracks. It’s about limiting impact of problems.

        To grossly simplify: one tunnel – 100% of riders are affected by an outage downtown. Two tunnels – 50% of riders are affected. One tunnel – a broken northbound 2 line train at Symphony disrupts my trip from the airport to Ballard. Two tunnels – no issue.

        Of course your opening point about cost and needing to make decisions is still spot on. I’m not arguing that the increased resiliency automatically justifies spending all of ST3’s funding on the second downtown tunnel, and especially not the existing second tunnel design.

      2. Thanks Jackson,

        One reason I don’t think Sound Transit shouldn’t build a second tunnel is it has never been able to take care of the one it has now. Two tunnels doubles the maintenance.

        There is a vanishing point for building new projects at Sound Transit. At some point operating and maintenance costs ballon to the point of eating up all the incoming ST3 tax revenue. At the point the system is “complete”. I can see the board just cancelling the Ballard line in 2055 or something.

      3. @tacomee, I agree. No new tunnels for resilience until Sound Transit demonstrates it can make good resilient use of the tunnel it has.

      4. tacomee

        The issue with DSTT is that it was built with lower standards than a current design, plus it was owned and maintained by King County Metro until 2019. The rest of STs tunnels (that they built themselves) are in pretty good shape.
        Building a second tunnel will allow for a comprehensive potentially multi year rehabilitation/retrofit program to bring DSTT up to a modern standard. Redundancy in the oldest part of the system is critical in order to get it up to the standard of the rest of it.

      5. The main argument for the second downtown tunnel is that the current downtown tunnel can’t handle the passenger loads, so the second tunnel is needed to support the full system. OK, fine. But somehow the second tunnel is supposed to be able to manage the full passenger load of both tunnels when (not if) the first tunnel needs to be closed? How would they do that?

        That’s not even touching the major problems with transfers. Does anyone remember the crowding during Connect 2020? Can you image the crowds with 2040s ridership?

        Sure, the dozens of riders from West Seattle will be able to “easily” transfer at SODO. But how will westbound 2 Line riders get to the 2nd tunnel? Hiking from ID/C Station to Dearborn and 6th Ave S? What about riders transferring at Westlake, who will be required to traverse an elevation difference greater than UW Station just to get between the platforms?

        Frankly, it’s ludicrous.

      6. “No, again, resiliency isn’t about people switching to a different rail line to make the same trip……. It’s about limiting impact of problems.”

        The current plan for the second tunnel will be some 11 floors lower than the current tunnel. This renders it far slower between any points you care to name m than buses on the surface on 3rd as a backup plan.

        A well located tunnel might serve the resiliency need, but this tunnel isn’t that.

    2. Paul Ventresca,

      Mayor Wilson is “All In!” on a lot of things. Doesn’t mean they’ll happen.

      At some point Mayor Wilson will roll out her entire *Big Picture* agenda and the grownups over that the Seattle Times will come with *ballpark* figures on what it will cost.

      This is the point where the mayor makes her list of priorities of what she really wants to do in the next 4 years. My gut feeling is Mayor Wilson is going to give lip service to Sound Transit, but I don’t see her burning any political capital on it. There are other projects she’ll want to do first and those will suck all of the oxygen out of light rail fire.

      I do believe Sound Transit will end building a second tunnel and everything it has promised…. but maybe decades late?. Sound Transit can only spend what the tax district brings in and has to stay under the debit ceiling. Ballard might get light rail by, oh. 2050?

    3. So she wants the second tunnel and believes the capacity argument that’s somewhat illusionary. And when she talks to the other boardmembers, all except Balducci and Strauss will urge her to stick with the second tunnel. But fiscal limitations may force her to look at other alternatives when the board gets into really deciding what to do in the Enterprize Initiative realignment later this year. And we can keep on recommending no DSTT2 to her and try to get her to see more of its merits. It’s not final until the Board decides on the Enterprise Initiative, and the real irrevokable time is when construction starts.

      1. Mike Orr

        My guess is Mayor Wilson doesn’t give a rip about Sound Transit. This is the safe move because everything about ST is toxic to elected officials. It’s a big loser issue that, because of its ever expanding timeline, can just be avoided.

        Katie gets 4 years as mayor and maybe 4 more after that if she’s successful. She’s over the moon invested in…. better bus service, free child daycare and social housing. Can she move the needle on these 3 things? They’re all big, heavy lifts politically so the new Mayor has her hands full.

        Sound Transit? Why would Mayor Wilson even weigh in on this? She has little control over it and if makes any sort of change, a political fire storm will burn her. So why not smile and let Dow run the whole fucking mess into the ground? Because Sound Transit will be in the same mess it is now 4 years from now…only deeper. Build the Damn Trains! So what if it takes until 2056?

        What Sound Transit has become is a political zombie. It’s has taken on a life of its own and it can’t be changed or killed. It doesn’t matter how bad the finances are or how long projects have to be delayed, ST will just stumble on like it has from day #1.

        I’m also going to guess Mayor Wilson avoids change with the SPD and the the KCRHA for the same reasons she’ll avoid Sound Transit.

      2. “My guess is Mayor Wilson doesn’t give a rip about Sound Transit.”

        Katie Wilson cares about transit. You can’t care about transit and ignore Sound Transit. ST affects what kinds of trips she and TRU members can make, and how easy it is and when.

        “Sound Transit? Why would Mayor Wilson even weigh in on this?”

        You make it sound like what Sound Transit does or doesn’t do doesn’t affect people’s transit options at all. Should she also not weigh in on libraries, parks, urban villages, and policing because it doesn’t matter what happens to them? Why run for mayor if you don’t want to improve things and see your vision fulfilled? Not every mayor is doing it just to have the title for a few years.

        “She has little control over it and if makes any sort of change, a political fire storm will burn her.”

        Little control is not no control. As mayor and ST boardmember he has more clout and opportunity to convince other boardmembers of things and suggest her own ideas. And work with Councilmember Strauss and county officials Zahilay and Balducci in things she wants, some of them want, or all of them want, or SDOT wants. Individuals have one opinion until it changes; then they don’t.

    4. I read it a bit differently. The author says the she’s skeptical of alternatives to abandon the second tunnel. That doesn’t necessarily translate to strongly wanting to build it.

      She also says that she wants to do what’s better for rider experience. One of the big problems of the second tunnel is that it makes access harder because the stations will be 2-3 times deeper and force elaborate transfers that aren’t required today.

      I read it more as a “safe” or diplomatic initial statement than an emphatic declaration of a position.

      Ultimately, the decision to build will require more money ( many billions) as well as taking other transit investments away. Like the Kubly op-ed says (another Urbanist piece referenced here), the deficit is so massive that there’s not a single solution to it. It will be interesting to see how she reacts to spending billions that ST doesn’t have to make transit trips worse for many people by moving riders into DSTT2.

      If anything, I am heartened that she wants to do what’s best for riders and their experiences. It at least suggests that rider experience metrics could be central to her positions — which is a dimension that never seems to get focus on the current ST Board.

      1. “I am heartened that she wants to do what’s best for riders and their experiences.”

        At least she knows about transit and passenger experiences. That makes her more qualified to address Sound Transit, Metro, and SDOT issues as they come up.

    5. I think most people are “all in” on building a second downtown tunnel. They just want to build it *after* we built a line from Ballard to Westlake. I don’t know anyone who feels otherwise. Why would be build anything else first?

      But after that, opinions diverge. Some want a new tunnel that skips First Hill. They want it to serve “Midtown” at about 5th & Madison before getting close to the CID (but not connecting that well to it). So basically a new tunnel with no new coverage downtown. Then, after all of that is built, it would go to West Seattle. Sounds like a poor choice to me but not nearly as stupid as building a second tunnel first (or a stub from West Seattle to SoDo).

      The rest of use want the downtown tunnel to serve First Hill and keep going, to connect to Link at Judkins Park and Mount Baker. This would provide more meaningful redundancy within the system while serving a lot more people. After all that we want it to go from Ballard to the UW.

      Either way, we can’t build all of that. We can’t build a line from Ballard to West Seattle. We can’t build a line from the UW to Ballard to First Hill to Mount Baker. We can only build one thing at a time and chances are, we will run out of money before we build everything we want. Either way we have to figure out what to build next. We should build the most important thing first: Ballard Link. It should be automated to save money and improve the experience for riders. It should be designed so that it can be extended downtown (regardless of which path it ends up taking). After that is well under way we can discuss the next step.

      1. Ross Bleakney,

        I don’t see the ST board changing the order of the projects to put Ballard first. What you’re proposing might sell in Seattle City limits, but the rest of the tri-County board wouldn’t go for that.

        I’d be the first to admit that a regional approach to problems is often a bad idea, but the shotgun marriage that is Sound Transit is what we’re stuck with.

        The biggest problem for transit in Tacoma is…. Pierce Transit. Tacoma needs votes from out in the County to increase service in the City. Sound Transit handcuffs Seattle is the same way.

      2. “I don’t see the ST board changing the order of the projects to put Ballard first. ”

        That’s exactly what the Enterprise Initiative will debate later this year. Dow was the one who pushed for the West Seattle stub first, but Dow is no longer on the board. ST did reorder projects in the last realignment in 2021, including putting parking garages last, overcoming another sacred cow. You’re assuming the conclusion is foregone and nothing will change and nothing can change it. but there’s months to go until they make a final decision. They haven’t even fully debated the issues yet, or fully addressed the cost shortfall. What they do in two months may depend on what somebody argues in one month, what city politicians say in the future, or what else happens in Sound Transit and its environment between now and then. We don’t know that now.

      3. Yeah, they rearrange the order of things all the time. We were supposed to get bus improvements right away but now it is put at the back of the list (which likely means it will never happen).

    6. Just gotta make sure it’s built properly of course. 5th Avenue Diagonal or bust!

      But if it really doesn’t work out… we could always extend the Monorail to Ballard, after all if it’s automated it will suddenly be a lot better option than an actual interconnected transit network! /s

      2. Mr Nugget:
        Totally agree with you to extend the Monorail from Seattle Center to Ballard and beyond. It’s already in place from Westlake to Seattle Center, slice a bit off the Armory (it could use an update) and keep going to Interbay and Ballard crossing over the ship canal on a High bridge. Then maybe head north, say to Northgate. That’s the general idea anyway.

        The Monorail is central to the old 1960’s quirkiness of Seattle, and Ballard epitomizes those values.

        And fix up the Westlake Station!

        Free the Monrail!

  2. Well, there will certainly be no Interstate Bridge Replacement, will there? The two states were very hard-pressed to come up with the funds for the $6-7 billion cost of the project estimated in 2022. If the cost really has doubled, there is no way that they can set toll rates high enough or divert enough other funds to pay for the thing.

    So, Vancouver is in deep trouble. It has had a boom in and around downtown based on expectations that close-in residents would have a dedicated parallel transitway to which they could walk which would carry them jobs in Oregon on a replacement bridge.

    That assumption is now in tatters, and many of those new units may remain unsold and/or unoccupied.

    Perhaps the two states can use their accumulated $2 billion in funds to build a somewhat higher but still opening “bus and freight” four-lane, bridge next to the existing spans. It would have a pair of camera-enforced bus-and-HOV-3+-only lanes and a pair of truck lanes.

    Or, if the cost is now than a tunnel would be, they’ll look at that seriously.

    1. Tom Terrific,

      I’m not sure the current Portland job market doesn’t “fix” the problem of a second bridge. A recession does have it’s “up side”

      Sound Transit has the same problem. All of the projections had the Feds kicking down an endless stream of money, Puget Sound never having a recession and the growth line of Great Seattle continuing to climb at the same rate as the last 20 years. But many fans of the late Murray Morgan still believe that Seattle is the same “boom or bust” town it always has been.

      1. Traffic between Oregon and Washington is pretty bad on I5. I’ve seen it cripple service on CTRAN’s express and local services that cross the bridge on a regular basis as recently as 2025. Even if Portland’s downtown oriented job market isn’t what it was in 2016, there is still a ton of interstate travel demand, and the transit situation is pretty awful.

      2. blumdrew,

        Oh I agree! Something needs to done about 1-5 and bridges spanning the Columbia. I don’t see much political will to do anything about it however.

        Here’s a fair assessment for Portland’s tax woes… I don’t know where a new bridge fits into this political landscape. It’s also ironic that high taxes and high civil disfunction have driven growth to the Washington side of the river.

        https://www.opb.org/article/2026/01/14/portland-taxes-pandemic/

        I think one of the big picture struggles in the PNW now is regionalism. Everybody knows that the I-5 corridor needs to work together on transportation and housing… yet politics are more hyper-local than ever.

      3. Fun speculation: What would two red states do?

        I could see them torn between wanting SOV infrastructure and not wanting billions of dollars in new taxes.

      4. “It’s also ironic that high taxes and high civil disfunction have driven growth to the Washington side of the river. ”

        Clark County is simply a tax haven where residents can avoid both income tax (by living there) and sales tax (by shopping in Oregon). It has long been a magnet for people like that, and has nothing to do with “high taxes” and “civil dysfunction” (whatever that is: I don’t see riots and anarchy); they’re just ideologically opposed to taxes, and that outweighs other issues for them.

        I would look at which city has the best walkability and transit, and locate there, regardless of taxes.

      6. @Mike Orr
        “I could see them torn between wanting SOV infrastructure and not wanting billions of dollars in new taxes.”
        It’s a Simple Equation Mike:
        “I want Premium services, but I don’t want to pay for it!”

        Here’s how to solve the bridge problem:
        Toll it. (everyone)

      7. I just saw this video talking about the I-75/ 71 bridge in Cincinnati:

        https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=csFsrimwca0

        Their overarching approach is to build a new long-distance bridge and repurpose the old one as a local bridge.

        I’ve thought this approach could work well for the CRC. A slimmer tunnel for long distance travel could be bored first. Then one of the current bridges could be used temporarily for local travel while the other bridge is permanently replaced that can then carry light rail and a bicycle track.

        I think the current design tries to do too much. Planning for all the on/off ramps right next to the bridge makes the layout complicated annd wide, and the flight path issue gets in the way of a mega wide bridge. Phasing looks really messy too.

        Maybe this strategy has been considered in the past and rejected. Regardless, something similar to the Cincinnati bridge challenge seems like a great, well-phased strategy that would be advantageous for every concern.

    2. My understanding is that the replacement has to happen soon since the bridge is at risk of collapse. I suspect it’ll get scoped down and built in the next 5-10 years.

      I think the boom in downtown Vancouver is due to the new waterfront park rather than the IBR

      1. The bridge isn’t at risk of collapse in the immediate future, it’s at risk of a collapse during a Cascadia subduction zone mega thrust. While that could happen at any time, I think “immediate” is a bit of an overstatement.

      2. @blumdrew

        Thanks for the clarification, “risk of collapse” is overstating it, maybe “seismically vulnerable” would’ve been more accurate.

      3. Out of curiosity, would a long/high light rail bridge across the river or a pair of deep-bore tunnels under the river be safer?

      4. Brett,

        The piers need to be like 250 ft below the riverbed for seismic reasons apparently. I think a tunnel is generally a more seismically secure option but it would be hard to connect WA 14 with a full interchange doing a tunnel. A deep bore makes it impossible, and immersed tube makes it very expensive. Of course, WSDOT could just not have a full interchange with WA 14, but that’s a nonstarter.

        This is all half remembered from a whole bunch of tunnel study drama related to the IBR that I haven’t read much about in about a year so grain of salt.

      5. Brent, either structure would be designed to meet or exceed current structural engineering standards which account for seismic hazards. I don’t think either form of structure is inherently safer than the other.

        Earthquakes are “fun” because you have to deal with lots of cyclical 3-D motion passing through the structure from wherever it touches the ground. In the case of bridges, these points include the foundation of support towers/pylons and where the deck connects to the ground. In the case of tunnels, it’s practically continuous along the entire length but variable ground conditions can lead to different frequencies of motion along the length of the tunnel.

        In an extreme event, the main concerns with a tunnel would be failure of the seals between tunnel segments, water intrusion, and difficulty of clearing blocked sections to rescue any trapped people.

        Conversely, a bridge might experience failures of towers/pylons or collapse of deck segments. However, people could be rescued from blocked or separated segments from the air, water or land around the bridge.

        The main hazards with The Big One (whether from the Cascadia Fault or closer surface faults like the Seattle Fault) are not imminent collapse of whatever structure you happen to be in at the time. If we estimate a 1-in-ten-thousand chance of failure for any given structure, that’s fairly good odds for wherever you happen to be. However, that’s terrible odds for infrastructure which only works if all million parts are operating. The hazard of The Big One is the highly-likely collapse of primary supply chains for food, water, and energy.

      6. The one company that required a high bridge is now owned by the Vigor ship building company. I doubt very much they’ll ever need 200+ foot clearance again. I would think their large object fabrication would be moved elsewhere.

      7. The current bridge design is huge and requires a lot of changes on the approach as all would need to be far higher whereas an immersed tunnel could be shallow, less disruptive to the waterfront and could use the existing approach bridges. Vancouver BC and many other cities have built these successfully, it turned out to be cheaper. Seismically they are far more stable. Due to the fact that a tunnel would be shallower, transit station access would be far easier. We may even be able to reuse the existing bridge as a pedestrian/bike bridge so that we don’t need to include that in the tunnel (though it would be far easier than on a high bridge).
        Why has this alternative not been studied yet? Maybe because the project manager worked for the same company who plans to build the bridge.

      8. A tunnel is also less complicated in this case. A tall bridge runs into many design issues because there are two airport approaches that cross right at the bridge. You have to be tall enough for river traffic but low enough to not upset the FAA.

        If you go under the water, you eliminate the whole mess of designing a bridge that meets the limits of either..

      9. Martin, when you say “immersed tunnel” you mean something like the BART tubes, right? I would note that there is a very deep channel that was gouged out by the Missoula Floods and is now filled with pretty un-consolidated muck about 1/3 of the width of the River. Can you support an immersed tube in ooze? The BART tubes are actually in trenches which are dug down about five yards to firmer stuff that is pretty immovable.

  3. On the topic of induced demand for non-driving modes, it’s not just physical infrastructure, it’s also quality of service. For transit, induced demand is just a fancy way of saying that people are more likely to ride a bus when it runs more often.

    1. The issue is people meeting their travel needs and wants. Good transit options allow them to do so in the most efficient way. Each person chooses their optimal number of trips, and that keeps the economy running and provides services and minimizes social problems because they can take care of relatives, see people, and take healthy recreation breaks. So transit “induced demand” means making transportation frictionless for efficiency.

      If a lot of them instead get into SOVs, that doesn’t scale, and highways and stroads take up enormous space that harms communities, and each car needs 2.5 parking spaces (one at home, one at work, and a shared one at stores) and the space around them in order for them to move safely and get out of parking spaces.

    2. I can see how improved multimodal access can result in additional trip-making demand. I assume that more often North Seattle college students visit Northgate businesses (rather than staying on campus) with the John Lewis bridge spanning I-5, for example.

      Still, it has been my interpretation that the term “induced demand” was created to more specifically describe about how highway projects encourage new sprawl, which is a real estate developer/ growth thing rather than a behavior changing thing. I think of it as how a highway project would “induce” development by first changing where people want to live or work, and that would then create additional demand because that new development occurs as a response in the marketplace. We fortunately live in a region that has more restrictions on allowing sprawl development than many other parts of the county do, so even our highway projects don’t induce additional sprawling demand like they would in most of Texas or Florida. I think of land use growth in North Snohomish as an example of induced demand resulting from widening I-5.

      So like so many other popular terms like “sustainable” or “transit oriented development” the meaning can get diffused. Should the term be expanded to describe all travel, or travel that gets added because of real estate developments?

      Let’s keep our eyes out for studies that show how real estate developments happen as a result of multimodal projects. The ones around several new Link stations are very obvious great examples. Perhaps there are developments that happen mainly because there was a new bike facility or new pedestrian connection.

      Personally, I prefer keeping the term tied to impact on the real estate or development marketplace. In the North a Seattle College example, I would call offering more classes of citywide interest there because of Link and the Lewis bridge connection (especially when resulting in a new classroom building) as an example of induced demand — but if the projects did not result in new classes or buildings there it’s not induced demand (and is instead just encouraging a shift in preferred destination or mode by existing students). But that’s my own preference.

      2. Al S.

        The City government of Tacoma was 100% cocksure that light rail would put development. It didn’t. In fact the near endless construction for the T-Line might have very well stunted development. There are a few Hilltop projects on the T-line going in, but I really don’t think the light rail spurred it.

        America loves houses in suburbs, freeways or not. The area around the Tacoma Dome is “transit rich” but it’s also the worst place to live in Puget Sound. TOD is a lie that people make life choices on transit. They absolutely do not.

      3. If you want to know how much people want to live in the suburbs and commute, by whatever mode they choose, then make all of the options subject to a vote.
        Want freeway [capacity] improvements?
        Give me a chance to vote on a voter package- Oh, I don’t know…
        We could call it something like –
        Reduce Congestion Now.
        Want transit improvements?
        Voter package.
        Inter-county high capacity improvements?

        You’ll know what people want if you give them a choice of what taxes they want to pay, for a specific improvement.

      4. “Induced demand” is primarily used for bad demand increase or tragedy of the commons. When I-90 added more lanes and a second bridge in the 1980s, at first the additional capacity was little used, but in a few years it filled up.

        The same thing happens when you add transit capacity or make transit more convenient: more people use it to fulfill more of their needs and wants. But it’s a good thing if trains and buses fill up and we have to add more to saturate latent demand. That’s the goal.

        Another term for this is “latent demand”. People may want to ride a bus route on NW 65th Street or NE 70th Street, but they can’t if there’s no route. If there is a route but it only runs every hour or half hour, it’s barely usable so many people won’t put up with it. But if you create a route or make it frequent, all that latent demand comes out of the woodwark. Not only that, but people move to the area because it has better bus service, or they see ways it could benefit them that they hadn’t thought of before.

        If you try to do expand car infrastructure the same way, it creates more externalities than benefit. That’s primarily what the phrase “induced demand” is used for.

      5. @tacomee

        It’s hard to say that T-Link drove the growth, but the fastest growing neighborhood in Tacoma since 2020 is downtown by far. Census data has the population growing by 45% from 2000 to 2020.

      6. Tacomee is taking a shrinking subset of people and saying it’s what all people want and it’s the only way. That’s a 20th century mindset.

        Some people do move to walkable medium-density development because they prefer it, and others because they don’t care much either way whether it’s dense or not, they have other things to think about.

      8. Mike Orr,

        TOD is something that the USSR did. It never works in America.

        Let’s say we shut down Metro and the light rail in Seattle. It would be a mess and hopefully it never happens, but Wallingford and Capitol Hill would still be desirable places to live, transit or no transit. The popularity of neighborhoods in Seattle drives the need for better transit.

        You can add the transit you want to the Tacoma Dome and still, nobody wants to live in a light industrial homeless camp. Even “the box” in Federal way (99, 320th and I-5 and 312th…. Is an awful place to live car free. It’s not very walkable and the endless pollution and traffic noise is unbearable. Federal Way has tried to make the place more pedestrian friendly with Town Square Park and Steel Lake, but there’s just too many huge roads and box stores. You can’t add TOD to place like that and have it thrive.

        So TOD gets it 100% backwards. Transit works in places people want to hang out in (without cars) Transit by itself is…. the Tacoma Dome.

      9. “TOD is something that the USSR did. It never works in America.”

        What do you think the recent apartments at Capitol Hill station and Othello station are? Or Roosevelt or Downtown Redmond or Marymoor Village? People are moving into them.

        One Russian who filmed his walk from Lynnwood station to Alderwood Mall next to the freeway with nothing around said that’s what reminded him of commie blocks, and what he wanted was something walkable and pleasant like these other stations.

        “You can add the transit you want to the Tacoma Dome and still, nobody wants to live in a light industrial homeless camp.”

        When the housing and retail goes in it won’t be industrial anymore. And if they do it right, there won’t be a homeless camp. (If there is one right now, which I only have your word of.)

        “there’s just too many huge roads and box stores”

        You replace some of the big box stores with multistory buildings and structured parking. You can even have big box stores stacked on top of each other like Northgate North. The huge roads are something the city of Federal Way can do something about. At minimum there should be a pedestrian bridge over 320th from the station to the mall. Another thing some cities have done is to break up superblocks to smaller blocks with smaller streets between them.

      10. What do you think the recent apartments at Capitol Hill station and Othello station are? Or Roosevelt or Downtown Redmond or Marymoor Village? People are moving into them.

        Yes, but the point is they would likely move into them anyway. The big change is the zoning. Change the zoning the middle of Magnolia and you would get a lot of new apartments (just like in Fremont and Greenwood).

        But there are places where TOD is common. Japan is one. The rail company buys up land, runs the train out there and then sells it. Since they have a more liberal zoning code the market is driven more by overall cost (to build) and demand. Places that didn’t have much demand (because they were nothing special) are suddenly a lot more convenient and thus more attractive. These places then see development while other places (that are zoned the same) do not.

  5. I wonder how the first encampment sweep of the Wilson administration has been going. Wasn’t it scheduled forv oday??

    1. I don’t know. I wonder how she’ll reconcile sweeps with her leftist tendencies. I hope she addresses 12th & Jackson soon, which doesn’t have tents but it has a crowd of stolen-goods salespeople.

      2. What we are seeing near the Rizal Bridge is a tragedy. People are dying from opioids and there isn’t any leftist argument that supports allowing the situation to persist. Addiction smothers the person’s free will and there is only one thing that the addict works for: short term relief from pain. If that means selling cans of stolen shaving cream at 12th & Jackson, that’s what’s going to happen.

        Unfortunately, homelessness has many causes and no easy solutions. Spraying soapy water at the problem 3 times a day certainly hasn’t worked and I don’t think strong-arm police sweeps would work either. But allowing the current situation to continue isn’t going to save lives or personal civil liberties.

  6. Another article update: Metro is hiring part-time drivers. Apply by January 23.

    The email announcement also says, “King County Metro plans to increase bus service by 400,000 service hours in 2026 and 2027, a roughly 10% increase above today’s service levels, adding hundreds of additional daily trips for riders. Growth will focus on providing more frequent service, connecting people with new Link light rail stations across King County, redesigning service to meet current and future needs, and launching new RapidRide lines. “

    2. It’s the natural result of how tax revenue grows and shrinks with the economy, and Metro is gradually closing the driver shortage gap. All that happens with the current tax rates as the economy evolves. A countywide Metro levy or renewing the STM at a higher rate can expand it more beyond that. Metro has a Metro Connects vision of an ideal level of service, so that’s its goal, but it needs additional funding to fully implement it.

    3. Did Metro slow down hiring while waiting to deploy a battalion of operators on the 2 Line? (which will assumedly happen between the end of schedule upgrades and the beginning of full-schedule simulation).

      A class hired and trained in February would not be available to backfill pick packets until some time in latter March.

  7. King County Metro seems to be using Rapid Ride coaches on some trips for Route 102 since the start of the New Year.

    The irony is a “Rapid Ride” coach just showed up 24 minutes late while practically no other bus for any other route at this stop is running late 😀

    2. The 102 probably comes from the south base, which may have a different range of extra buses of different types than other bases. It also depends on how many of each kind of bus are inactive for maintenance. It’s been taking a long time for parts to arrive since the pandemic, and some bus types may be less reliable or need more parts than other types.

      1. Normally they use 40 footers but seems like they’ve been trying to replace those with Articulated 60 foot buses.

        They transferred some of the older 6900 buses from the East base and started using them late last year. The Rapid Ride buses are a fairly new thing though, and it’s almost a daily occurrence.

        The buses do get pretty full so they probably got complaints about it, and probably using extra Rapid Ride buses since there may not be enough articulated buses left.

      2. According to Pantograph, it appears the red buses are being used on Route 162 and occasionally Route 177/193 as well. All peak hour routes. This is pretty much a daily occurrence now, with multiple trips in the morning and afternoon.

    3. Yeah south base has been doing a lot that lately. 150 is old timer, but it doesn’t pop up in 162/177/165 from time to time.

      Other bases do that too. On the weekend, RapidRide livery fleets are often seen on 7/44 when trolleybuses are not running.

      2. Yep, again today. First three afternoon buses on the 102 all have Rapid Ride livery since they are numbered 62xx.

        I know they sub them out occasionally for some routes, but this has been extremely regular over the past week. Basically every day over multiple trips.

  8. It feels weird writing this, but Kubly has some really good insight. That is a good article. Here is one of the more interesting paragraphs:

    The most likely casualties are known: truncating the Ballard line at Smith Cove, reducing West Seattle Link to a single station at Delridge, eliminating Graham Street Station… The prevailing wisdom among insiders is a repeat of the past, where work is phased and bailed out with future packages, whereby the next “ST4” ballot measure becomes completing Sound Transit 3 (ST3) – asking voters to raise taxes to make up for shortfalls on projects they already voted for and funded.

    (emphasis mine)

    I completely agree. We have been down this road before. We have grand plans but we don’t have the money for them. So we build as much as we can. That meant the trains didn’t go north of Westlake initially. It didn’t even make it to SeaTac (but it was close). Northgate Link didn’t open until fifteen years after the initial vote. Even then it took a second vote (and a lot more money) to get there.

    But it begs the question: If we have to wait a really long time for the next phase — and there is a possibility that voters reject any further expansion — what should be build? The answer is obvious: Ballard Link. Nothing else comes close. A line from Alaska Junction to SoDo adds very little. A line from Delridge to Westlake doesn’t add much either. If they truncated the bus it would get less than a thousand riders a day. If they truncate the bus it means most of the riders are delayed for their trip. Alaska Junction to Westlake at least adds something, although not that much. Yet if we build from that direction that is about all we can afford. So we would be stuck with something like that for years, maybe decades.

    But a line from Ballard to Westlake (with automated trains running frequently) adds quite a bit. Maybe not as much as Ballard to UW but that isn’t on the table. It means retaining the SoDo Busway, which a lot of people rely on. It means the current pairing (UW to SeaTac) remains the same. It still retains the possibility of going to West Seattle but you don’t start with that.

    1. Even a standalone line from Smith Cove to Westlake is useful, if there’s a delay in figuring out the ship canal crossing.

      1. I agree with that. SLU and Uptown are dense and actively growing neighborhoods that are very hard to serve well on the surface. Now I’ll say that the preferred alignment is sub-optimal. The line should go farther north along Westlake before turning west, so that the Aurora intercept station is far enough from Denny Way to have a decent walkshed on its own and can grab from the rapidly gentrifying southeast corner of Quenn Anne Hill. The station should straddle Aurora so it can serve both sides of the Aurora Wall with entrances at Dexter just south of Mercer and on Sixth North just north of Mercer.

        Also, given the HUGE development just west of Dexter south of Denny Way, does it make sense to have the Amazon Station at Sixth or Seventh and Blanchard or Bell?

        I would wiggle the line back south of Mercer for the Uptown station, because the Lower Queen Anne triangle has some employment that Roy Street doesn’t and the station would be closer to Climate Pledge Arena.

    2. yes, great article! I like that he pushes for smaller stations and automation though he does not connect those two concepts. Both together offer even better value.

      1. If automation really does cut the minimum headway in half, why not keep the stations the same length as the current ones, so the trains can carry twice as many passengers as ST is designing for?

      2. Because the planned 400 foot stations are too expensive for ST to build. One of the ways to make Ballard Link doable is to reduce the construction costs.

    4. The problem is, logically, you build the best parts first. But, the political instinct is to build the worst parts first (provided they have the backing of influential politicians) so that the supplemental ballot measure to fund the rest (e.g. ST4) has the best parts in it, thereby giving it the best chance of passing. Kind of like how CAHSR is building train tracks through the desert first, figuring additional money can connect it to LA and SF later.

      1. It’s not “the desert”, it’s where you get your fruits and vegetables from, the San Joaquin Valley. The only “desert” Cal-HSR will cross is the high plateau between Tehachapi Pass and Palmdale, which in fact is likely to be the last segment built, at least of the main stem between LA and The Bay Area.

      2. I guess metaphorically San Joaquin Valley is “desert” (for dense populated areas and shouldn’t be the one built first from logical operation perspective. So asfd2 makes his point.

      3. Populations:
        Fresno: 542K (5th largest in California)
        Bakersfield: 403K

        Seattle 1980s-90s: 450K, 2000s: 500-550K, 2010s: 600-700K.

        So not that much smaller than Seattle, and growing.

      4. Still small compared to the Metro areas of SF and LA. To get maximum benefit, you would start in one of the two big cities and work outward, so if the project runs out of money, at least you have a usable commuter line. Starting with Fresno to Bakersfield is a much smaller market…which is precisely the point, as putting the most useful part last raises the odds that politicians will keep finding more money, rather than stop.

      5. From what I’ve heard, the Central Valley residents have felt like they’ve been ignored by the California state government in favor of SoCal and the Bay Area for ages, like how Eastern Washington feels ignored over Puget Sound in state affairs. Starting CAHSR in the Valley was Sacramento’s way of attending to that imbalance, for better or for worse.

  9. Since many eastside bus routes will feed into South Bellevue from I-90 east, I feel like westbound off-ramp to Bellevue Way need a bus only shoulder. The queue is very long every morning these days and there is really no other arterial to get to South Bellevue from south.

      1. Those are all-day buses except one. Here’s the full East Link Connections, which is being implemented in phases:
        https://seattletransitblog.com/2025/03/20/east-link-connections/

        215: Express from Mercer Island to Issaquah Highlands P&R. Half-hourly, with every third trip extending to North Bend.

        218: Peak-only express from Mercer Island to Issaquah Highlands P&R.

        269: Express from Mercer Island to Issaquah Highlands P&R, Sammamish, and Marymoor Village station. 15 minutes peak, 30 daytime and weekday evenings, no service weekend evenings.

        All these combined will give 15-minute daytime service to the Highlands P&R, and more than that peak hours. None of them stop in central Issaquah. For that you’d need the 556, which runs every 15 minutes in ST’s last proposal.

      3. Highlands P&R is a proxy for the Highlands overall; the routes will serve 2~3 other stops on Highlands Dr/9th Ave that serve the midrise housing and retail core of the Highlands. The P&R is a good terminus; it has off street bus bays & I think driver facilities.

        The 218 was crush-loaded at peak pre-Covid, and since then there are been good development west of Highlands drive (mostly townhomes), with several full blocks along 9th Ave zoned but not yet developed.

  12. Question about the 520 bridge/Montlake lid. This video explored the engineering about the new bridges replacing the original floating bridge, plus adding the lid/transit section/park. It also seemed to suggest it took a couple of decades to build and a gazillion dollars over budget (or at least, many of the commenters alleged so). How accurate was the timeline and budget figures given here? https://youtu.be/0EwKnXtfsxg?si=4lxsuQsJeIWvxeBi

  13. Sound Transit appears to have just revealed the date of Metro’s spring service change; March 28.

    That’s the day the pilot half-hourly night owl bus route between downtown and SeaTac Airport rolls out.

  14. Mayor Ferguson asked the legislature to prohibit cities from requiring ground-floor retail in apartment buildings. The argument is that this can help lower rents because retail spaces are often money-losing. Instead the building could have more apartments, or tenant amenities like a gym or rec room.

    Um. but then you can’t walk to stores, and we’re back to residential-only areas, which we still have too many of.

    1. The population of a 5-over-1 can’t support the businesses of dense retail underneath it. The ground floor space for a single medium sized restaurant probably only has at most 10 units above it. So adjacent to a dense retail corridor (which should absolutely also have housing), we need dense housing nearby with less retail focus. Examples: 56th St in Ballard, 12th Ave in U District, Turing St in Overlake Village,

      1. “The population of a 5-over-1 can’t support the businesses of dense retail underneath it.”

        It’s not just for the residents of that building, it’s for everybody in a 10- or 20-minute walk circle. If it has something unique, it will draw people from the larger city or region.

    2. The Community center north of Columbia City Station is probably a better use of that first-floor.space than more retail. Likewise, the large meeting room at the southeast corner of Plaza Roberto Maestas is very-well used (just north of Beacon Hill Station).

      I’d hate to think the decision not to build on top of the Beacon Hill Library was forced by zoning. Perhaps housing could be mandated above new community centers, senior centers, libraries, etc.

      1. The libraries were built by library levies. The mandate was to build a library. Does any purpose-built library building have housing?

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