As ST3 construction cost has skyrocketed, Sound Transit is considering truncating the Ballard line at Smith Cove for now. Ballard riders would need to continue on the bus as very few people live around that station.
When Paris faced similar topography challenges to serve the end of line 8 by bus, they built an aerial gondola line instead. Building such line is far cheaper than extending the subway underground a recent short video explains while still providing faster transit times than the bus lines. The gondola line just opened in December and was built by Doppelmayr who constructed and operates many cable-operated systems here in the U.S. as well as around the world.
Instead of stopping at Smith Cove, I suggest continuing to Interbay. But instead of building the tunnel under the Ship Canal, build a gondola line from the Interbay station to a station at Fishermen’s Terminal and then across the Ship Canal along 20th Ave W to a station on the corner of NW Market Street.
A Market Street station would be far more central than the station along NW 15th or 14th which Sound Transit currently plans. Such station would provide a high-frequency connection between the Interbay Link station and the many apartment buildings in downtown Ballard.
Once funding would allow extending the Link line under the Ship Canal, the gondola line could be moved elsewhere to serve other transit needs.
Other Examples
Mexico City just approved construction of their 5th gondola line. It will be the longest urban line, almost 10 miles long with a total of 12 stations (including branches).
Cologne already has a Rhine crossing and is considering more such lines.
The new gondola in Paris is already carrying 14 percent more riders than expected and they are looking at a second line.
Peter Landsman,
Gondolas are going to have high rider numbers…. simply by being gondolas. People love gondolas. There are people who will never take a bus, but will take a gondola. Gondolas are just cool.
If Seattle wants to change directions and go with gondolas, make sure the stanchions are high enough (and strong enough) to stack another line on top of the first line?
Sound Transit is looking at $30 billion plus for city trains to West Seattle and Ballard. I guess we can spend another decade (at least) talking about light rail or build something Seattle can actually afford? I’m guessing if the Ballard line is truncated at Smith Cove, it’s staying there for at least 50 years.
The second line would be a different route. The original line has plenty of capacity.
tacomee, rather than stacking two lines, you can also increase the gondola cabin size. 3000pphd is industry standard capaciy, but some allow for 8000, but hopefully ST would have enough money to build a tunnel.
https://www.doppelmayr.com/en/systems/20-mgd-d-line/
LOL everything old is new again. Look in the archives for anything written by Matt Gangemi.
I would hardly say that Paris faced similar topographic challenges with the Line 8 gondola. The terminus of that gondola is a significant hill which presents different sorts of challenges to crossing a waterway.
And it’s worth saying that Line 8 already extends 7 to 10 miles from Central Paris to Pointe du Lac – Ballard is like 5 miles from downtown Seattle. It makes like 15 stops between Pointe du Lac and Bastille. It would be radically different to do a gondola instead of building the Ballard line to Ballard. By the time Line 8 reaches its terminal, it’s already served a whole swath of urban Paris. Link to Smith Cove serves SLU, downtown, and Interbay. Ballard is the primary urban node it seeks to connect. Plus, gondolas are generally not great at serving large crowds. How long would it take to clear one rush hour train of people heading to Ballard?
If we can’t get Link to Ballard, it’s not worth building Link to Interbay. No gondola will fix that. And I don’t think doing the “start the project with an unfunded extension” is a good move. It’s worked in the past in the Seattle area, but that’s not a guarantee it will work in the future.
“By the time Line 8 reaches its terminal, it’s already served a whole swath of urban Paris”
SLU and Uptown is a whole swath of urban Seattle because the city is smaller and doesn’t have a lot of urban areas.
“If we can’t get Link to Ballard, it’s not worth building Link to Interbay.”
We may get it anyway. The decision is ultimately a political choice by the Sound Transit board.
“No gondola will fix that.”
If Link is built out to Smith Cove, the question is how to make overall transit the least bad. Would a gondola from Smith Cove to Ballard be time-competitive with taking the D or 40 from downtown? We need to speed up access to Ballard somehow. Maybe a gondola could be a practical solution that ST could afford if it can’t afford to go underground to Ballard. Even if not, it gets us thinking out of the box of what other solutions could be practical.
SLU and uptown are two stops. Sure, they are significant parts of urban Seattle but that’s not really the point. The point is Line 8 is a fully fledged metro line serving a ton of existing parts of Paris, with a short gondola extension in the suburbs. Line 8 doesn’t need the gondola extension to Valenton to justify being extended to Créteil. The Ballard link might as well be truncated to Uptown if it’s not going to go to Ballard.
ST doesn’t have the money for anything because they are trying to build projects that are out of their scope of funding – namely tunneling to both Ballard and West Seattle. Sure, a gondola could work but the other solution (of simply building above ground trains) is probably a better choice
Yes, gondolas are not very good at large crowds.
I don’t think ST has published ridership numbers for Ballard station, let’s assume 20,000 per day or 3000 per hour in the evening. Some of these riders would get on a bus, I would expect about 2000 per hour to walk within Ballard, meaning to take the gondola. Gondolas can handle between 3000 and 8000 per hour, which would be plenty.
If we build an automated line to Ballard which operates every 3 min, that means those 2000 riders would spread across 20 trains, meaning 100 riders would arrive on average on a train, the worst a rider would need to wait for 10 gondolas to arrive, meaning about 2 minutes.
Per hour ridership isn’t the issue. Gondolas have steady capacity over time, but limited capacity in peak minutes. And it’s probably not possible to board a gondola of ten people every 12.5 seconds as you’re suggesting. The C1 in Paris seems to run about once per minute. It could run more often at peak, but they’ve got 105 vehicles and it takes ~45 minutes round trip. To maintain 30 second headways system wide would require 90 vehicles, so I doubt it gets more frequent than that.
At 30 second headways, it would take about 10 minutes to clear a rush hour train (200 people). If they come every 8 minutes, this is going to be a problem. I don’t really see a way around that.
Also what about the ADA? Will this gondola be accessible? How will that affect the dwell times?
@blumdrew
I believe ADA-accessible gondolas are mostly a solved problem. But I agree, gondolas come with major capacity concerns. See: literally any high utilization gondola; off the top of my head ski lodges, Hong Kong, Medellin all have issues with long wait times with even modest crows.
blumdrew, the Paris gondola only has a capacity of 2000 riders per hour. There are urban lines in Mexico and South America with 4500pphd, new technology goes up even higher. What often gets missed is the fact that while cabins arrive/leave every 30sec, multiple gondolas are in a station to allow people to get off and on. There are more than 100 cabins on the Paris line.
https://www.doppelmayr.com/en/reference-projects/cable-c1-paris-greater-region/
Thanks for the clarification. I’m still skeptical that this makes sense though. Even a gondola running at absolute peak posted by manufacturers spec would induce long rush hour queues for Ballard. At 75 people/minute, that’s still upwards of ten minutes for an at capacity train. At rush hours, there’s almost always going to be capacity constraints.
Is that better than what we have now? Maybe. But most of the issues with travel time on today’s routes could be alleviated with enhancing existing buses for like 1/100th of ST3s budget.
Gondolas are fine for medium to low capacity needs. But if you have medium to low capacity needs, unless there are serious geographical constraints, it makes more sense to run buses. Latin American cities with gondolas run them up very steep hills to informal settlements where transit is extremely difficult to provide otherwise. I don’t think it makes sense to consider the ship canal that kind of geographical barrier, considering there are 8 crossings of it.
“At 75 people/minute, that’s still upwards of ten minutes for an at capacity train.”
Not everybody on the train will be going all the way to Ballard. If they did, there would be no room for people going to SLU or Uptown.
I agree with blumdrew to a certain extent. A train line that ended at Interbay would have considerably less value, even if it was connected to Ballard with a gondola. Then again, I wouldn’t rule it out. It is an intriguing idea the more I think about it.
Just to back up here, the Ballard/Interbay/Uptown corridor is a bit of a mix. From Westlake to Uptown it is very urban — the type of place where a metro makes sense. You have multiple potential stations with demand between each one. North of there is where it gets weird. There is very little between Uptown (e. g. Queen Anne Avenue & Mercer) and Ballard. The geography is all wrong. You basically have a narrow strip of land with the sea on one side and a steep hillside (containing only trees) on the other. This is not a short distance — it is about three miles between Ballard and Uptown. There is an office complex at Smith Cove and the small community of Interbay (at Dravus). I could also see a station at Armory (there could be TOD there). The best potential is with that Dravus stop, as it would connect riders from Magnolia (I would expect all buses in Magnolia to go by that station). So you have about a three mile stretch with somewhere between one and three stations at most (and only one of them with good good ridership). This is not good. This is blumdrew’s point. It isn’t the Line 8 of the Paris Metro. There just aren’t that many good stations.
But then you reach Ballard. Ballard is similar to Capitol Hill. It is urban in the sense that there are a lot of people that live and visit there (for work, medical appointments or entertainment). But like an Interbay station, a Ballard Link station would get riders from the buses as well. I think it is a given that the RapidRide D and 40 would connect to it, bringing riders from the north.
This is where the gondola idea breaks down. Yes, it could work well for those who can walk to the gondola. But asking riders to transfer to a gondola and then transfer to a train is a bit much. It is also quite possible that Metro would ignore the gondola. The D would continue to go over the bridge and stop at Interbay (or continue and serve part of Magnolia). This means riders would have to contend with one of the bigger delays on the corridor (going across the bridge and dealing with the Interbay stop). The trip from there would be faster but it is likely that the 15 would be faster if a rider was headed to downtown. Meanwhile, I don’t thing the 40 would change. That means riders along 24th would either ignore Link or transfer twice to use Link. Even with the outstanding headways of a gondola (typically measured in seconds, not minutes) and a frequent automated train line that is probably not worth the hassle if you are headed to downtown, SLU or Denny. Thus riders from the 40 would only transfer to get to Uptown.
But there are other advantages to the gondola from a network standpoint. Interbay-Ballard is a pretty good connection. Someone living in Interbay would take the gondola to Ballard just for that trip alone. But in both cases you have connecting buses (especially if all the Magnolia buses go through Dravus towards SPU). Someone in Magnolia would take a bus and then transfer to the gondola to get to Ballard. Someone in Ballard would take the gondola to transfer to a bus headed to SPU.
So yeah, I can see blumdrew’s point. It isn’t exactly analogous. On the other hand if budgetary constraints force us to fall short of Ballard then this would be a good backup plan. There has been talk about ending at Smith Cove but that would be terrible. Interbay is a much better station than Smith Cove in every respect — including the possibility of connecting from there to Ballard via a gondola. It is also not that expensive to get from Smith Cove to Interbay (nor would it be that expensive to build a gondola). Eventually it makes sense to send the train to Ballard but at least this is a good first step. It also means that even if ST completely screws up the station placement in Ballard (and puts it at 14th) you could still get to the main part of Ballard (via the gondola). So yeah, I’ve warmed to the idea.
“It isn’t the Line 8 of the Paris Metro. There just aren’t that many good stations.”
It’s also a very short distance. Are we really arguing that it can be truncated at Uptown but, oh no, we can’t truncate it at Smith Cove because there’s not enough between Uptown and Smith Cove? I’d say the distance between Uptown and Smith Cove is too short to matter.
“But then you reach Ballard. Ballard is similar to Capitol Hill.”
And going through Interbay to reach Ballard is not much different than going across Lake Washington to reach Bellevue, or through the south King County industrial district to reach the airport. Bellevue and the airport need good transit connections to Seattle, even if there’s a few miles of little in between.
Ross,
I think this is a worse Plan B than rebuilding the Ballard Bridge to be better for buses, pedestrians, and cyclists. But it’s a fine Plan C.
But the real risk of advocating for stuff like this is the old adage: “the most permanent solution is a temporary fix”. If Sound Transit invests $1B+ in capital plus planning into a gondola between Interbay and Ballard, we will never get a Link extension. It’s too easy to say: “that’s better than what everyone else has”. I mean I have to imagine that the First Hill Streetcar played some role in the fact that First Hill still lacks Link access despite being the most critical neighborhood without a station to date.
A gondola might work (though I remain skeptical). But it will almost certainly permanently close the door on Link to Ballard. And I’m not really convinced the Bus – Gondola – Train trip will be much better than the current bus trip either, so it’ll be a lot of money for nothing much for transit riders who want a faster trip
If Sound Transit invests $1B+ in capital plus planning into a gondola between Interbay and Ballard, we will never get a Link extension.
If it cost a billion dollars then it wouldn’t be done. The only reason you build a gondola is if it is a lot cheaper than the alternatives. In this case there would be two stations. It would have to go really high to get over the canal but that still wouldn’t push the cost up that much.
I mean I have to imagine that the First Hill Streetcar played some role in the fact that First Hill still lacks Link access despite being the most critical neighborhood without a station to date.
Not really. People wanted First Hill as part of the new train line downtown but Dow shot it down. He never mentioned the streetcar. He just wanted a one-seat ride from West Seattle to the business part of downtown. Of course that become a moot point once West Seattle got connected to the main line.
Ultimately the Ballard line should continue and go to the UW. That is where you get the most improvement in the network. I see your point in that they probably wouldn’t put a train station where the gondola is but to a certain extent that is my point as well. I don’t think they will put it there no matter what we do. But I do think it crosses the water — it would just end up at 14th or 15th. That is another way to look at it. If Ballard Link ends up at 14th do you think they add a gondola from Interbay to the heart of Ballard? Of course not. In the long run we might at well go with the current plans (as bad as they are) and then push to have it turn and head towards the UW (while also connecting Ballard with Interbay via a gondola).
Are we really arguing that it can be truncated at Uptown but, oh no, we can’t truncate it at Smith Cove because there’s not enough between Uptown and Smith Cove?
Who is arguing that it can be truncated at Uptown? That would be even worse. The point is, that is not many stations. You only have three and one of those (SLU) is designed as an interface for Aurora buses. Even then the station doesn’t improve things that much. In terms of big walk-up ridership, you’ve only got two stations (Uptown and Denny). That is just nothing like Line 8 in Paris. Even if the line went to Interbay (what I would consider the minimum) it still doesn’t have many stations. Then there would be another transfer. Or we build the ridiculous second tunnel and if we are going to do that we should instead just run the line to Ballard.
But a stub line needs to at least get to Interbay. Interbay is really the only major improvement to the network (until you get to Ballard). There is some density there but even if you consider that a high grade station there just aren’t that many stations. It is nothing like the Line 8 in Paris. Keep in mind — I still think this idea has merit — but I also don’t think this is like Paris in that the subway line will be fairly limited.
And going through Interbay to reach Ballard is not much different than going across Lake Washington to reach Bellevue, or through the south King County industrial district to reach the airport.
Right, but they both are not nearly as good as a typical line in Paris for precisely that reason. It is a major weakness in those lines. It is why our metro doesn’t get that many riders in general — the stations are too spread out. It is why Ballard to UW is a fundamentally better proposal than Ballard Link. You not only have more stations per mile but you also have a lot better network.
Or, we could have chosen Ballard to UW as the preferred line. /S. Alas previous STB leadership did not use its close ties to Scott Kubly to discuss the SDOT ST3 proposal, despite many of us requesting it
The Paris gondola project went from groundbreaking to opening day in under four years. That’s a huge improvement over light rail tunneling.
It’s so much easier to plan a gondola than a subway or even elevated line. So much less infrastructure (roads, sewer, electrical lines…) to worry about.
“truncating the Ballard line at Smith Cove” Really?! What is the source of that? Sounds like a story in of itself. If that is true, and even if it isn’t, maybe it makes sense to find some way to speed up Ballard to U District Station transit.
Regarding the gondola, as long as it has multiple stops it could work and it’d be a bit of a tourist draw. Although not sure people are going to want to share a Gondola with someone having a mental episode.
“truncating the Ballard line at Smith Cove… What is the source of that?”
It’s one of the potential strategies in Sound Transit’s Enterprise Initiative if it can’t afford the full Ballard Link. The project was split into two so that ST could build Smith Cove first or only. You’ll hear more about it in a couple months when the board starts fully debating the Enterprise Initiative to reduce ST3 to what it can afford. The list of potential cost-saving strategies isn’t public yet, but boardmembers have mentioned some of them.
I’ll be honest here: in every other case, I think mode choice for a transit project should be made by objectively weighing costs vs benefits. But in this case, I have a fear of heights and do not want to be in a vehicle that rides far above the ground suspended by a thin cable.
yes, I talked to someone who had a fear of height. They decided to use an urban gondola because it was the most convenient connection and still enjoyed it. But yes, there are various reasons why certain users prefer one mode of transit over others. Some people don’t like tunnels, others don’t like crowded vehicles, others don’t like height or other reasons.
Gondolas can be pretty scary. I rode a bunch of them in Europe. I’ve found the best strategy is to stand towards the middle and look at the floor. My wife is more scared than I am.
I’m mildly claustrophobic. Subways aren’t real fun for me. The worst part is when they break down and don’t move. But at the same time I’m still going to take them. But I can sympathize with people who have a worse phobia.
I would say in general a gondola tends to be popular (as a mode). Call it “cable bias”. I think someone is more likely to ride a gondola just because they enjoy it than other land-based modes. The only other thing that can compete is probably a boat.
But that shouldn’t drive the decision because it is a fairly mild bias. Either it works for riders or it doesn’t (London found that out the hard way). In this case I could definitely see it working for riders (even if a train extension would be better).
Agreed….i did not hear that STis ending the line at Smith Cove. Source?
Stop the press….
ST is considering truncating the line at Smith cove? This is news to me? Please provide sources.
If this is true, the D line should NOT be truncated too. That would force riders, like me, to take a 3-seat ride within the city.
The Board had put a Smith Cove terminus in the table in 2020-2021 when they talked about realignment ( an effort that is being repeated as the Enterprise Initiative this year, which to me is a terrible non sequitur name).
It’s mentioned in this presentation:
https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/FinalRecords/2021/Presentation%20-%20Realignment%20Update%2005-6-21.pdf
That’s when the Board ultimately did the irresponsible thing and chose to just theoretically extend our taxes rather than do the painful scaling back that they should have done five years ago. That probably helped to trigger Rogoff’s resignation.
The “minimum operable segment” (MOS) of the Ballard Link Extension is (currently) from Smith Cove to SODO. Analysis of an MOS is required for grant funding purposes.
Relatedly, the MOS for WSLE is the SODO to Delridge segment, which would expand the existing SODO station, build a high bridge over the Duwamish River, and terminate at Delridge.
Updated costs to build the MOS have not been made public. However, we know costs to build the MOS were about 80% of the overall cost of the Ballard Link Extension in the original combined EIS for WSLE and BLE from 2022; in 2025$, the “affordable” cost of BLE is about $12B.
80% of BLE’s current cost estimate ($20.1-22.6B) would be about $16-18B, which exceeds the “affordable” cost of BLE by $4-6B. So, unless ST can get authorized for a major new revenue source by the end of 2026 (extremely unlikely), the only available solution that doesn’t result in immediate delays is to defer the segment north of Smith Cove (assumed to save about $4B) and somehow convince the outer subareas to pay for more of DSTT2. That second part will be tricky since Link projects in the North King subarea are already responsible for a disproportionate amount of the $34.5B long-term shortfall, as the North King subarea will contribute about 30% of the total ST3 program revenues but its projects are responsible for 50% of the current ST3 program overages. The only subarea which might be able to afford its main Link project is Pierce, which is only short about $1.5B on its $22.5B spending plan. Try telling Pierce County ST3 voters that TDLE might need to be delayed to pay for the new tunnel in Seattle.
Nathan, thank you for the details. Wouldn’t the newly proposed stub line cost as much as the Smith Cove option or be cheaper??…??…since it would not immediately require a tunnel through downtown?
You’re conflating multiple projects. ST’s preferred alternative is from Ballard through DSTT2 to SODO. At that point the 1 Line would become Ballard-Tacoma Dome (DSTT2, existing SODO track). A new 3 Line would go West-Seattle Everett (DSTT1, new SODO track). All that is what’s unaffordable, although the board is still in semi-denial that it will have to cut projects.
So ST’s lower-cost alternatives include:
1. SODO-DSTT2-Smith Cove. That’s the scenario this gondola line is based on.
2. A Ballard-Westlake stub line. We think that would be cheaper than building DSTT2. ST thinks it may not cost any less.
3. Interlining Ballard into DSTT1 at Symphony, bypassing Westlake. This would put three lines into DSTT1, requiring capital upgrades to it.
#2 and #3 are covered in several STB articles between December 15 and 21.
Jordan, the proposal to drop DSTT2 would require a supplemental EIS to review alternatives and potential impacts for an OMF in Interbay and changes in assumed construction process. This EIS which would take at least two years to complete due to minimum requirements for public comment periods, agency review periods, draft release, revision, and finalization. BLE’s current timeline assumes finalization of its EIS and a Record of Decision from the FTA by the end of this year.
ST staff have already used the inflation-based cost increases associated with project delay as an excuse to refuse to study certain last-minute station alternatives in SLU, so that’s now working against any cost-savings proposal that requires more study.
Finally, ST staff estimated that the cost savings associated with deferring DSTT2 (~$7.2B) would be partially or wholly consumed by costs for additional study, construction of an OMF in Interbay, and required upgrades to the original DSTT. Proponents of DSTT2-deferral are assuming the savings would still be significant; opponents are assuming the savings would be negligible.
The Board is reconsidering the long-range plan behind closed doors for the next several months. The Build The Damn Trains people assume the Board will come up with a solution that serves transit riders the best. I think they’ll come up with a solution that punts any true consideration of transit rider’s needs to a future ST4 ballot that will have difficulty passing.
This is a great consideration. Look at La Paz, Bolivia. They have over a dozen lines that connect within the city and with it’s neighborhood, El Alto. The topography in La Paz is much steeper and more rugged than Seattle. Not only has this system expedited travel by locals from El Alto on top of a 13000 ft. plateau to and from La Paz in the massive canyon below, it has become a tourism magnet as it gives amazing view for miles. Over the last 10+ years I’ve thought that Seattle should consider a similar system
Yvonne, yes, La Paz and Mexico City have great gondola networks. Other cities have better roads and therefore use more buses. Seattle has many hills, waterways, tight roads, and freeways. Link can provides a solid north/south link, but there are plenty of routes which have high ridership and lots of obstacles where gondolas would make sense.
“the D line should NOT be truncated too.”
Metro has not said anything about truncating the D. The last time Metro released a long-term vision, the C and D remained until the full Ballard/DSTT2/West Seattle Link system was built out. Metro has said it won’t delete the C in the interim period with the West Seattle-SODO Link stub. The Smith Cove phase option is too new for Metro to say what it would do, but likely the D would remain as is.
Ending at Smith Cove would be really stupid. Smith Cove adds so little. You pretty much have to extend the line south of Westlake to provide worthy trips. Branching the main line in downtown is way to problematic (based on the study they did) which means you have to build another tunnel. That pushes the cost up much higher without adding much value. From a bus standpoint you would not add much either. The RapidRide D and Magnolia buses would have to head there. In the case of Magnolia it means the buses are again spread too thin. You can’t have good frequency because half the buses are headed towards Fremont and the other half are headed towards downtown. For the RapidRide D you truncate in Smith Cove or keep going downtown. I guess it would be nice to have the bus just follow the fast route downtown but you could achieve the same thing by extending the 8 to Smith Cove. Either way you are asking riders to transfer to get to Uptown. The difference is that with the 8 there are a lot more stops.
I understand why it might be too expensive to get to Ballard. But if we fall short we should end at Interbay. While Interbay isn’t a bustling neighborhood it is compared to Smith Cove. More importantly it is the connection point for *all* of the Magnolia buses (or at least it would be). If the RapidRide D doesn’t go downtown, then it could go to Magnolia. Riders along Nickerson would also benefit. Compared to every other aspect of the project, going from Smith Cove to Interbay is dirt cheap. There is only one more station. The train could run on the surface (and still not deal with any traffic lights). Even as an elevated line it isn’t that expensive. You just get way more value by going to Interbay than ending at Smith Cove.
“Ending at Smith Cove would be really stupid.”
Maybe it would be stupid for making some travel near a future Ballard station, but Ballard isn’t the only reason for building the line. It appears that over 2/3 or the boardings on that line are expected to be south of plus including Smith Cove. Add in transfer to Metro buses coming from north of the Ship Canal and the line could easily reach beyond 80 percent of currently expected ridership by stopping at Smith Cove.
And the expected walk time to get to Link from places like Old Ballard as planned appears similar to the time it takes to ride on a bus from there that then turns to run across a new, slightly higher Ballard bridge in exclusive bus lanes to Smith Cove.
Given the dispersed distribution of attractions and broad density in this part of Seattle, it would appear that a singular gondola is not a clearly strategic answer as it could be elsewhere. The main benefit is that it’s a relatively inexpensive way to cross above the Ship Canal. But a new Ballard drawbridge that’s a bit higher and with 24/7 bus lanes added would address the issue with the current drawbridge disruptions.
I agree with Al. The major transportation need for Ballard is a more reliable pathway for buses across the Ship Canal. A second, higher span in the 14th NW alignment could have two bus lanes, one in each direction and three northbound general purpose lanes. The existing bridge would then have three southbound general purpose lanes and a two-way protected bikeway..
When and if Light Rail Link is extended to Ballard, the trains could share the busway. That probably wouldn’t work for an automated train, though.
Maybe it would be stupid for making some travel near a future Ballard station, but Ballard isn’t the only reason for building the line.
You completely missed my argument for Interbay (as the northern terminus). As I wrote, Interbay connects to all of Magnolia. All of it. Every single bus would go through there. You would also increase the number of buses towards the UW. It is reasonable to expect fifteen minute midday service to the UW from every bus stop in Magnolia. Thus riders in Magnolia would have a (reasonably frequent) one-seat ride to SPU, Fremont and/or the UW along with a good two-seat ride to Uptown, SLU and Downtown.
Is that overkill for Magnolia? Sure, now. But it is highly likely that by the time this is built the city will have grown broadly. There will be a lot more “missing middle” growth all over the city (including Magnolia). Instead of 22,000 residents they could easily double that. We should also have better funding, making fifteen minute buses the standard throughout Seattle. Given its location, Magnolia would be well suited for at least decent transit like the one I’m describing (maybe better).
All of that is possible (and affordable) with a line to Interbay. But it just doesn’t work if Smith Cove is the terminus. Buses to Magnolia are spread too thin. You have some heading towards Fremont and some heading towards downtown. And where are the buses heading downtown supposed to go? End in the middle of nowhere (at Smith Cove)? Continue to run downtown? The former is annoying for riders (like forcing West Seattle riders to transfer at SoDo) while the latter means spending way too much money on service that is practically redundant.
This is what I mean by a “network improvement”. Smith Cove has a minimal impact on the network. Interbay improves the network considerably.
Then there is the cost. This has to be the cheapest segment of the entire proposal. It is surface or elevated between the two stations. Given the cost/benefit of going to just one more station, ending at Smith Cove would be stupid. At the very least it should go to Interbay.
It appears that over 2/3 or the boardings on that line are expected to be south of plus including Smith Cove.
You should know by now that those sorts of estimates are often wrong (by a huge amount). You are also ignoring the big picture. Those estimates assumed a full line (from Tacoma to Ballard). It assumed good stations and good transfers (this seems unlikely). But the train ending at Westlake changes the equation. By ending at Westlake, you shift ridership to the north. Consider the Denny Station. It is a extremely high density (by Seattle’s standards). But very few would ride the train to Westlake. It is just easier to take a surface bus. They might take it to Uptown but that is only one station. Then there is the SLU. It is meant as a connector to buses coming from Aurora. If a rider is heading south they will just stay on the bus. If the rider is heading to Denny they could take it but they might be better off just staying on the bus and transferring to the Metro 8 (by now running every six minutes all-day). Basically the walkshare of the stations shrink. It is the opposite of some of our stations. Someone trying to get downtown from the U-District will walk a really long distance to get to the station. In the case of Denny you have to be very close to the station and the other station has to be close to the destination to make it worth your while. Even for trips from Ballard the value of the line shrinks. The RapidRide D can now skip Uptown. If you are headed to Uptown you transfer to the train. They might transfer to SLU or Denny but it is quite possible they just transfer to the 8 for those trips.
It is like the East Link starter line. When they added Redmond, ridership boomed. That’s because it is far enough away from Downtown Bellevue to be really attractive as a train ride. But that doesn’t mean that Downtown Redmond will have a huge portion of the ridership when the train goes across the lake.
Smith Cove as a terminus only makes sense if they build a second tunnel. But building a second tunnel would be extremely expensive — you might as well run from Ballard to Westlake, where you add a lot more value. Don’t get me wrong. If you want to start with First Hill to Interbay I would be all for it. Extend that (in both directions) eventually. But a line to Smith Cove without going downtown would be very expensive and add very little value. A line to Smith Cove to a new tunnel would be a huge waste of money (because of the second tunnel). In short, ending at Smith Cove would be stupid. At the very least it should go to Interbay.
I’ve always felt like a Magnolia-Interbay Station-Queen Anne gondola would skyrocket the use of the future Interbay Link Station. Could use the same trick to connect Rainier Valley stations to points on Beacon Hill.
Yes! 100%, perfect spot for it. Extend the reach of the light rail station which isnt in the most optimal location.
There wouldn’t be much value-added for Magnolia. If the train makes it to Interbay then all the Magnolia buses go through there (and most would go to the UW). Queen Anne is a different story. There is no bus connecting Magnolia/Interbay with Queen Anne. Riders have to go around the hill one way or another. The only connection from Ballard to Queen Anne is the 29. But Ballard Link wouldn’t change things that much. If you are trying to get from the top of Queen Anne to Uptown or Downtown you would still take a bus directly there. So it really only helps in getting to Ballard. I could see that, but I could also see the 29 being shifted to Interbay and continuing through Magnolia. Better yet, have it go down Gilman to Dravus and then turn west to Magnolia. That is a good route — I could see it running every fifteen minutes. This helps solve the issues surrounding Magnolia buses. There is no need to run buses from Magnolia to downtown once Link gets to Interbay. But if every bus goes to Fremont it could be overkill. Sending a bus up to Queen Anne would be really nice.
My list of possible gondola or pinched loop cable corridors to existing Link stations:
1. SLU to Capitol Hill Station
2. Pioneer Square to Harborview
3. U District to U Village
4. South Bellevue to Factoria and Bellevue College
5. Downtown Bellevue or Wilburton to South and Downtown Kirkland.
6. Mountlake Terrace to Edmonds College to Downtown Edmonds.
As far as West Seattle and Ballard go, it’s an interesting investment strategy for future truncated lines. The $4B just to go from Delridge to Alaska Junction could instead be spent going to Admiral-Alki, Alaska Junction – Morgan Junction, Delridge – Westwood Village and still save billions. The same is true for a Seattle Center or Interbay end station that could connect to something like Cruise Ship Terminal – Magnolia, upper Queen Anne , Old Ballard and West Woodland – Fremont.
Even a Tacoma Dome gondola hub could connect Downtown — Stadium District, UWT and Hilltop and Tacoma Mall.
Of all of these places, it would take at least one or two to open locally to demonstrate their value to the general public.
And the transfer experience would need to be carefully designed. But I don’t see that being anywhere near as difficult as reaching a bored, deep tunnel station is.
Politically, I frankly don’t see this technology on any radar screen of our elected officials. If we can’t get them forcing ST to examine something as familiar and a better investment value as driverless trains are, this seems way too difficult to accomplish.
good list!
King County could start SLU to CapHill and ST could start Interbay to Ballard.
I would add Kent Station to Kent/Des Moines Link station.
For West Seattle I would stick with buses for now.
I’d agree with you about sticking with buses for West Seattle — maybe with Ross’ suggestion for a direct SODO busway connection to the West Seattle bridge.
However, I could see an outcome that ends West Seattle Link at Delridge for budget reasons. That’s when a more extensive gondola hub could be a politically strategic addition to connect to more places than just Alaska Junction. Even if the choice is made to stick with a West Seattle feeder bus network to a Delridge end station, at least the option would be considered.
And even through buses could offer the connection, gondolas would work well in overcoming West Seattle’s undulating and steep topography combined with the narrow arterial streets.
ST did issue that negative gondola report in 2022. (https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/sound-transit-feasability-report-regarding-aerial-gondola-from-west-seattle-20220407.pdf). That was examined a gondola to SODO station, which would be a much further distance and a much longer travel time than a gondola just to Delridge would be.
I forgot one: SouthCenter to either TIBS or a future BAR station (although these both could be problematic once flight paths are overlaid).
yes, if WSLE is built, it could run along Delridge or along 35th Ave SW with a gondola connecting to the Junction. Much cheaper than a tunnel and easier to access, too.
The City of Kirkland is considering a gondola from downtown Kirkland to the 85th Street Stride 2 station.
The SLU to Capitol Hill Station is probably the most feasible place to start. One issue that isn’t mentioned is that the endpoint station footprints are rather large in a gondola system. Intermediate stops can be smaller and more streamlined, but the 7,200 ft^2 former drug store space at Broadway and John would likely be needed for a terminal station.
Then it can keep the Broadway marquee as Roosevelt station kept and incorporated the neon Standard Phonograph Needles sign from the previous building. The rest of the building in its last incarnation as a drugstore didn’t seem particularly noteworthy.
Not opposed to the idea, but a gondola to/from Capitol Hill would be horrifically filthy, the private individual cabins are not conducive to the neighborhood… trash, graffiti, drugs and more. And I say that as someone who lives in the neighborhood.
Add Lincoln District Via McKinley District and on to the mall. I-5 and that steep hill has been a real barrier to those two districts, both with true main-street good-bones potential, blooming with substantial density.
Columbia City to White Center via Georgetown. Extra cabins for Friday and Saturday nights.
I’m a little surprised that the Ballard – UW corridor hasn’t been considered for a gondola. It could connect to UW Station or U District station years earlier than a full Ballard Link extension could. It could hop across the Ship Canal at different places to serve Eastlake, Fremont, West Woodland, Ballard and north Magnolia.
One challenge though may be the Lake Union seaplane runway though. The designated landing strip in the water runs due north to Gas Works Park. It coukd be considered too risky to run a gondola line just north of it.
if it goes over straight over the top (along 45th) , it should be far enough from the seaplane route.
I’m not. That would be a very unusual urban gondola line – it has no significant topographic barriers (unless you count the ship canal). And it’s all highly developed.
We could just design a good BRT line for the 44. That’d cost less, and would have some precedent in US transportation planning. It’d probably require leveraging a lot of single track busway, but that’s been done before.
I’m sure planners in Seattle are familiar with the history of Portland’s aerial tram. It was very contentious, and went way way over budget.
Portland Areal Tram went over budget due to demands by OHSU (the complex at the top of the hill) for modifications to the upper structure.
“We could just design a good BRT line for the 44… It’d probably require leveraging a lot of single track busway”
The reason transit-priority lanes haven’t happened yet is opposition to taking street parking and general-purpose lanes. Business in Wallingford say they’ll go out of business without street parking. So your busway would require that political battle to be won. It’s easier to get a gondola or an underground subway approved because they don’t take car lanes.
Mike Orr,
Sorry it’s ridiculous to say that a gondola from UW to Ballard is more realistic than a BRT on the same route. The property acquisitions, the litigation from homeowners under the route… it would be intensely political. Buses are always going to cost less than a gondola.
And Glenn, I was under the impression cost overruns also came on the city side for poor construction oversight and demanding a prettier support column. But I was in Portland well after it operational
“Sorry it’s ridiculous to say that a gondola from UW to Ballard is more realistic than a BRT on the same route. The property acquisitions, the litigation from homeowners under the route.”
Certainly those are concerns and delay factors.
I will point out that gondolas don’t have to run in a straight line and can easily run above a narrower waterway. I’m not sure what that would mean for connecting Ballard and UW or Fremont and UW. Heck maybe Seattle Center or SLU and UW! It’s not been studied.
Do you need a study to tell you that it will cost a whole lot more to build and operate gondolas than it will to provide similar services via bus? Outside of places where it is not physically possible to run better buses, they are almost always a better choice for low to medium capacity transit. There’s good reason that every city has buses while gondolas are very niche. It’s not because people are afraid of thinking outside the box, it’s because buses are cheaper and easier in most scenarios
“Do you need a study to tell you that it will cost a whole lot more to build and operate gondolas than it will to provide similar services via bus?”
The issue is not cost, it’s political will. Those businesses on 45th are constituents, voters, and employers, and could influence other voters. Politicans are most concerned about their reelection chances.
This blog is a flat circle, we’re really going back to gondolas since it’s obvious SoundTransit isn’t gonna build the automated light metro spur.
What phase are we gonna go through next? Flying cars?
This article assumes that an automated light metro spur gets built but for cost reasons potentially only to Smith Cove or Interbay to avoid tunneling under the ship canal. The gondola would just cover the connection from Interbay to Ballard downtown with the additional advantage that it serves Ballard downtown rather than stopping along 15th.
As transit fans, it’s valuable for us to share what other transit solutions are being implemented around the world — even if they aren’t in a list of official alternatives this month. And at this point, ways to save billions shouldn’t be summarily dismissed because the alternative may be to do nothing (which may be ok given how our daily transit options are usually better than most places).
I also think many of us are frustrated by ST’s institutional refusal to think “outside of a very small box” (technology, station locations, station layout objectives). It’s seemingly a form of authoritarianism. So like authoritarian dissidents, we feel like we should not merely give in and accept a lower quality of life.
I do think STB has contributed to ST making some changes like renaming Symphony Station, changing from Link line designations from colors to numbers to making station locations having more useful walksheds a more important objective in extension planning. These are things that have been advocated by many others so it’s not unilateral influence, but STB discussions probably added some gravitas to the changes.
Gondolas are not fantasy technology. Cable powered transit preceded the internal combustion car engines. Seattle once even had several cable pulled lines. There’s even a historic wheel displayed at Pioneer Square station!
And modern gondolas are being increasingly considered around the world as urban transit solutions even though it’s still a bit rare. They’ve been introduced where there are constructibility challenges like steep terrain or surface obstructions like water or highways. Our region certainly has these — seemingly much more than most other large urban areas.
Seattle doesn’t have steep terrains. It has hills. Buses make it up just fine without having switch backs or stall going up which is the case in places gondolas you cite are used. as far as waters, it just so happens we have this innovation called bridges which can carry a bus. And Seattle isn’t an archipelago to really be concerned about water distances. Gondolas are a solution looking for a problem in Seattle.
All our suggestions are what many cities around the world are doing. Driverless metros are now the standard. Cities are using gondolas to jump over geographical barriers as a low-cost, medium-capacity solution.
Other cities might not do the exact gondola corridor above, but they also wouldn’t build a Link line requiring drivers, or a second downtown tunnel next to the first one (it would bend to First Hill and back for more urban coverage).
“I do think STB has contributed to ST making some changes like renaming Symphony Station, changing from Link line designations from colors to numbers”
STB did not suggest switching from colors. That was Rainier Valley activists, who overreacted to the term “Red Line” as if it was related to “redlining” (the discriminatory housing practice in the 20th century). As if other cities don’t have red subway lines that are uncontroversial.
Sound Transit introduced a number scheme to replace the colors. STB grumbled about the artificial controversy, but praised the number scheme as the best scheme ST could have come up with. Numbered lines are now seen internationally as the most universal in a multi-lingual environment.
There are some doubts about ST’s implementation of 3-digit station numbers and signage, but that’s not the fault of the line numbers themselves.
Maybe STB did not have a direct involvement in the change to numbers. But generally STB posters will encourage looking at best practices around the world, especially when it comes to things like accessibility and branding. This encouragement of looking into best practices hopefully does resonate with ST staff and Board when they can’t pursue the decision path that is their first choice.
At the time of the decision to switch from letters to numbers, LA Metro had just looked deeply into the topic from all sorts of angles. That research was mention by comments on STB. Unexpected negatives like faded signs, color names and shades being very different by language and culture, and abstractness for blind riders were all factors. Of course, LA was dealing with so many lines with colors that confusion was likely (like gold vs orange as a stand-alone color).
I remember some posters preferred a full-on German-style letter-number label for each line at the time. What ST ultimately created was not identical to that but certainly seems inspired by that.
I will never understand the fascination by some STB’ers over gondolas. I’d much rather see the investment into speedier buses and higher frequency As a Ballard resident – or anyone – why would I opt to have a 3-seat ride in the city? Based on Martin’s suggestion, I would have to take a gondola to Smith Cove, a train to downtown and then another train to Capitol Hill. Likewise, if I wanted to visit First Hill or Rainier Beach or West Seattle, it would be a 3-seat ride.
Stop with this gondolas nonsense. It’s not a practical solution for real transit issues.
Gondolas are set up to leave less than every minute. It would be more like taking an elevator inside a station than it is transferring to another train in terms of waiting.
Considering how the planned transfers at Westlake will involve taking multiple elevators inside the station just to make a single transfer, it’s less terrible than that is.
Gondolas can be a practical solution, but not in the context of connecting Ballard to the terminus of Ballard Link. Putting a gondola in the middle of a high capacity train line is silly, and I think it’s irresponsible to advocate for stuff like this. A good gondola project would be something like Queen Anne – SLU – Capitol Hill, but even that might be too busy for a gondola to work well.
I will say that exclusive bus lanes on 15th with frequent buses may be faster, especially if a transfer is required at the Ballard end.
For example, if three routes run up over the Ballard bridge at 10 minutes each. One went to old Ballard, the locks and Golden Gardens. A second went north on 15th by Ballard High and points north? Like Northgate. A third turned southeast and ran near Fred Meyer before ending in Fremont or maybe in the U District
Just to clarify: that’s three frequent bus routes from Smith Cove that cross the Ballard Bridge in that example. .
Yes, Ballard can be served by buses, so did Paris suburb. The main reason for Paris to build a gondola line was the fact that it could transport people in half the time. As gondola cabins arrive constantly and the 1.35mi only take 6min, by the time your bus arrives, you may already be in Ballard downtown. Until you do a proper study, this is difficult to compare. How often would buses run from Smith Cove or Interbay? How long would they take to old Ballard? How often do they get stuck in traffic? How often is the Ballard bridge open? How much will it cost to run the buses vs gondola?
Let’s have Link go to Ballard (the line that makes the most sense in the entire ST3 package). If we want gondolas, use them to feed this critical rail line at Smith Cove station with aerial connections to lower density Magnolia and Queen Anne Hill.
agreed 100%. These are tourists attractions or for really challenging geography where the compromises are worth the gains. You don’t see the transit superpowers rely on these gimmicks. They are building metros, regional rail, and HSR. This is a waste of time energy and attention.
They are pretty common in Germany — a country I would consider “a transit superpower”.
Of course it would be better if the train served 20th & Market but it likely won’t. It probably won’t even make it to Ballard (at first). That is the main issue here. The board is in cutback mode. They aren’t seriously considering 20th — they are looking at the cheapest possible approach. This means that in the short run the train may end at Smith Cove and in the long run only serve 14th. That would suck in both the short and long term.
In contrast, for relatively little money we can extend beyond Smith Cove to Interbay. Then, for also very little money we can run a gondola from 20th & Market to Interbay. Now people heading to and from Ballard can walk to the (gondola) station. They aren’t taking another bus. Yes, that is still a transfer but it involves a gondola with headways measured in seconds (not minutes). It also means the gondola skips any potential traffic backup within Ballard, across the canal or to the Interbay station.
The gondola does more than connect to the automated trains in Interbay. The buses in Magnolia would all go to Fremont (via Nickerson). Thus anyone in Magnolia would have an easy two-seat ride to the heart of Ballard. Anyone in the heart of Ballard would have an easy two-seat ride to SPU (or any other location on Nickerson). This would all be possible in the short term.
In the long term, the train would go to Ballard and then head towards the UW. At this point serving 20th is less essential. Of course it is better if it has urban stop spacing (20th, 14th, 8th, etc.) but it wouldn’t be the end of the world if the train served the stop at 14th (to save money). At least riders could take the gondola across (if they don’t want to wait for the bus).
I think there may be confusion about the difference between an aerial tram and an aerial gondola.
Aerial trams are built like elevators that move up and down or back and forth on their given cable.
Aerial gondolas are pulled off and on the cable as if they are attaching and detaching to a conveyor belt or chain.
This new Paris line is the latter. The Portland tram is the former.
closed elevated gondolas represent a huge safety risk. No security, no way out. Until we work on solving some other issues that seems like a pretty unpleasant reality.
Is it more risky than being in a bored tunnel subway and possibly becoming buried alive?
Yes I’m expecting that every station will need an attendant for safety and security reasons.
As I mentioned before, it may be that aerial trams are better than aerial gondolas in some situations.
The percent of dangerous passengers is tiny, so your likelihood of being in the same gondola car as them is small. And if the line is only a few minutes from end to end, there’s not much time for them to do anything. Existing Link station have security, so the gondola stations would have it too.
I have ridden the gondolas in Medellin many times. At busy times there are at least 10 people in each gondola and many attendants at the stations providing crowd control. Also, access to the gondolas is tightly controlled and only paying customers are allowed access to the gondolas. During off-peak times, people are allowed to wait 10-20 seconds and ride in another car if there is someone sketchy waiting to ride. I don’t think there are cameras in the Medellin gondolas, but they could be standard in a Seattle system.
” At busy times there are at least 10 people in each gondola”
Ah, I thought gondola cars were smaller, fitting maybe 4 people.
The 1962 Seattle Center gondola (still running at Puyallup fair grounds) only had 4 seats, but thereafter gondolas had at least 6 or 8 seats. Today’s gondolas (Paris) have 10 seats, some even 20 or even 35 (like Whistler’s Peak to Peak gondola).
not to mention literally everything is a single point of failure.
Martin, I very much respect your research and ideas, but here I think you have stumbled into a logical hole. Regardless whether you terminate at Smith Cove or spend another quarter billion to get to Interbay, you are setting yourself up for the same issue that is so obviously laughable about a Link shuttle between SoDo and Delridge: you either force people into three seats or you continue to run buses under the high-capacity guideway.
Yes, folks who are within walking distance of 22nd and Market (and maybe 14th and Leary?) will get a two-seat ride to downtown, the gondola and the BLE stub. But folks from Crown Hill on Fifteenth or Twenty-Fourth NW or Eighth Northwest will be forced to transfer at Market or Leary and then change again not that far away. Either that or you’ll be running the buses across the Ballard Bridge for however long it takes them to extend the LR line.
I think it is a given that the D would continue to cross the bridge. But at least this gives the folks in the heart of Ballard an alternative to taking the 40 downtown (or to any of the other Link locations) while we wait for the extension.
Could a gondola go from Ballard to Interbay and then turn east on Denny to Capitol Hill and First Hill? What’s the maximum length for a gondola?
It’s appeaes to be a function of gondola cable lengths. Gondolas also move at a slower maximum speed than buses can run, but of course they don’t have to worry about surface traffic with signal delays so the longer the distance the less strategic it is. The sweet spot looks like it’s 1 to 2 miles.
But it’s possible to increase the distance travelled if the gondola car changes cables on its journey. If one rides the Oakland Airport Connectir BART line (a cable line a bit similar to a gondola), the rider will notice that it stops halfway. That’s when it switches from being unhooked from one cable and hooked into the next one. The entire line is 3.2 miles.
In your example, a system would probably have a place where a car would hook into a new cable. It could be at a halfway station like near Smith Cove, as a gondola car could dwell there long enough to switch cables in addition to let riders get off and on. As gondolas it could get a bit tricky though.
I’ve always felt like a Magnolia-Interbay Station-Queen Anne gondola would skyrocket the use of the future Interbay Link Station. Could use the same trick to connect Rainier Valley stations to points on Beacon Hill.
Agreed, it seems like a gondola connecting both Magnolia and Queen Anne to Interbay would connect more people to the link station. That would work in conjugation with the cost saving measures of having a gondola go over the shipping canal and stopping Link in Interbay proposed in this article.
Yes, Interbay could become a gondola hub with connections not only to Ballard but Magnolia, Queen Anne, maybe even Seattle Pacific U, Fremont and UW.
some of these gondola ideas were mentioned in https://seattletransitblog.com/2017/08/16/seattle-gondola-network/
Maybe we just need the French to build our system. It would be cheaper, better designed, automated, and stylish.
Now compare the price per rider and capacity per hour to just buses. If we’re going to talk cost, let’s then consider all alternatives.
Vancouver did that and decided that it would be far cheaper to run a gondola up to Burnaby than a bunch of buses
https://www.translink.ca/-/media/translink/documents/plans-and-projects/rapid-transit/burnaby-mountain-gondola/burnaby-mountain-archive/burnaby-mountain-gondola-business-case.pdf
Burnaby Mountain is by far the best place to run a gondola in the Pacific Northwest. From a development standpoint it is an island with a lot of density (and a university) surrounded by forest. There is basically nothing on the way. It is also, literally, a mountain. The road doesn’t go straight to it, it winds around (as you would expect, given the topography). This makes it such an obvious choice for a gondola and the research just confirms it. While some may have a bias towards gondolas, this is a clear case of an agency reluctant to apply them when the clearly make the most sense. In all fairness to the agency, they are facing local resistance (NIMBYs) as well as funding issues. But it would pay for itself very quickly while giving riders an improvement over what they have now.
Nothing in Seattle is as clear cut. If anything it is the other way around. A gondola might work for various situations but we also might be better off spending our money on bus or rail related improvements.
Yes, a lot depends on the circumstances. I’m just saying that buses are not always cheaper to operate, a gondola can beat buses on operating cost, frequency, reliability, or transit time. The devil is in the details. If bus reliability is an issue (like the 8 up to CapHill), you can try adding a dedicated bus lane. You could do the same across the Ballard bridge and on Market St. That still does not help with delays due to the bridge openings. It may also interfere with the desire to add cycling lanes or broaden sidewalks. Then a gondola still makes sense. It all depends on what problem you want to solve and what tradeoffs you’re willing to take. Good to have options.
Yes, it depends on the particulars. Consider this proposal. For want of a better term I will call the area at roughly 20th & Market “Downtown Ballard”. So the idea is a gondola from Interbay to Downtown Ballard. The first assumption is that the train can’t make it to Ballard — it ends in Interbay. Another assumption is that all the Magnolia buses serve the station. Most go to Fremont and the UW, but some may end in Interbay or go somewhere else up in Queen Anne or Ballard. Another assumption is that the RapidRide D goes across the ship canal and connects to Link in Interbay. Not sure what it does after that. You basically have three choices for serving Downtown Ballard:
1) Do nothing. The 40 still connects Downtown Ballard riders to Downtown Seattle and South Lake Union. They can backtrack (using Link or the 8) to reach Uptown or Denny. To get to SPU they go through Fremont (one transfer). To get to Magnolia they backtrack (via Fremont), take a three seat ride (using the 44 and D) or walk a ways to catch the D and then the Magnolia bus.
2) Run an all-day version of the 18. Again it isn’t clear if it goes downtown or goes somewhere else (after serving Interbay). But if it ran every fifteen minutes it would give riders a good connection to Link and the Magnolia/SPU buses from Downtown Ballard.
3) Spend money making the buses faster across the Ballard Bridge. This would be more likely if we went with the second option but they could just focus on the D Line.
4) Run a gondola from the main part of Ballard to Interbay.
A lot depends on the cost of the third and fourth option. Bus lanes are a lot cheaper than a gondola. If the city was willing to allow only one lane of general-purpose traffic each direction then the buses would avoid all the congestion related to an opening of the bridge. It would still have to wait for the bridge to up and down (once in a while) but that is minor. A new bridge would be really expensive but at some point we have to build a new bridge anyway.
From a service standpoint there are trade-offs. I measured it and it is a bit longer than ideal for a gondola. This means that a bus might beat the gondola more often than not. But it is close enough that I would call it a wash. The main advantage of a gondola is the headway. Buses running every fifteen minutes (what is considered pretty good around there) means a rider could end up waiting over ten minutes for a bus. In contrast gondolas come every few seconds. But a bus like an all-day 18 would serve a lot more of Ballard. It would also improve the effective headways along 24th NW into Downtown Ballard. Riders on 24th heading downtown (or to South Lake Union, Uptown or even SPU) could catch the 18 or 40, whichever came first. Thus a lot of people (on 24th) would suddenly have much better transit service to various destinations.
From a service cost it is tough to compare. If the 18 ended at Interbay it wouldn’t cost that much to operate. The same is true if it continued (to say, Magnolia) on a corridor that would have been served anyway. The cost (of a relatively short route running every fifteen minutes) seems similar to operating a gondola with two stations.
Then there is the long term. While it might take years (or decades) for the train to go across the ship canal, I think it will eventually do so. Then what? Any investment in bus lanes across the bridge becomes largely wasted (like the freeway bus stop at Mountlake Terrace). If we didn’t spend much then it doesn’t matter (it was definitely worth it). But the gondola might end up being a white elephant or at best a tourist attraction that gets few riders. There are worse things. But that also assumes that Link serves Downtown Ballard. If Link goes to West Woodland (14th & Market) then the gondola continues to add value. It is about a ten minute walk from 14th to 20th. The gondola would be faster (from Interbay) and that doesn’t count the time (on the train) to get from Interbay to West Woodland. The walk is also unpleasant. Riders could catch the 44 but that wouldn’t save that much time (if any) even if they time it just right. Depending on the frequency of the 44, the gondola could continue to save riders a considerable amount of time.
Of course if we are thinking long term we should consider automated buses. Sound Transit is ignoring this (just like so much else). Just to back up here, the main advantage to rail (in an urban setting) is capacity. You could run buses in the New York Subway but it would take way too many buses and drivers. Automation doesn’t change the equation that much; trains are better in that situation. But in this case I could see buses having an advantage over both rail and a gondola. If we create a busway from Ballard to downtown then it could include the 15, 17 and 18. If the buses were automated then it would provide headways similar to an automated train but along all three corridors (e. g. every six minutes along all three corridors). At that point the gondola loses a lot of its value. It still makes sense if you are right there (very close to the gondola stop) but just a little ways away and it is faster to take the bus (assuming a good busway).
Wow, this comment got a lot longer than I thought when I started it. Anyway, obviously there are a lot of particulars and many of these ideas are worth considering. I would say the big takeaway — the most important thing to consider in this case is:
1) Going to Interbay is a much better value then ending at Smith Cove (with or without a gondola).
2) A gondola to “Downtown Ballard” from Interbay would be a good option in both the short and long term (if a train never makes it to Downtown Ballard).
Regardless of technology, I think it needs to be said that the quality of transit vehicle transfers make a huge difference. A gondola that can be across a light rail boarding platform is a huge improvement over one placed across a street that takes two elevators to reach. I’ll even go as far to say that if it can’t be directly accessed from a rail platform it’s probably not worth it in most cases.
Consider how much better DSTT2 would work as a concept if it was at surface level. But of course it’s not supposed to be — and that is the big design reason why informed people hate the concept. The mass public often doesn’t fully get the transfer effort problem because they don’t understand the layouts.
So rather than always force the technology discussion before the transfer discussion, we may be doing a transit a disservice. Perhaps we should ask “what technologies are most suitable for making transfers?” first — before deeming one awesome or terrible.
Yes, planners like to draw lines on a map but miss important aspects such as transfers and headways. A gondola right above a train station is far better than a bus stop half a block away (Mt Baker station) or a tunnel station 15 floors down. A gondola arriving every minute is far better than a bus every 10 minutes as the gondola may have dropped you off by the time your bus alternative arrives.
Food for thought: the salmon bay waterway/ship canal is a coastguard regulated waterway.
Currently the coast guard’s statement is from the Aurora bridge west if there’s a new fixed (non opening) bridge in place it must be 205’ tall.
That was set as there are no overhead obstructions from the power lines on 3rd (Fremont cut) through shilshole bay. Why 205’? Cuz that’s the clearance of the Panama Canal bridges. Any bridge built must be built for a vessel 100 years from now and that became the number. (Add that to the fun fact list) also why they rebuilt the west Seattle as it stood rather than re build it because it would’ve need to be raised.
Not saying a gondola couldn’t reach those heights but I’m curious how that ride would go… the height restriction part of the reason for the Ballard link being a tunnel design from Dravus to Market rather than the bridge initially proposed.
It is a lot easier (and cheaper) for a gondola to go up really high and over than it is a train. Gondolas can go at a very steep angle (and routinely do in the mountains). You still need to build really tall towers but those aren’t that difficult. In contrast, train tracks can’t be that steep. You would need a really long approach with tall, heavy pylons holding the tracks. This is one of the reasons West Seattle rail is so expensive. In any event, a fixed bridge over the ship canal just doesn’t make sense. Either they go back to the original plan (a bridge that opens) or they build underground.
A bridge that opens would probably be cheapest. It would rarely open. It is worth noting that the bridge operator decides when the bridge opens. It also never opens during peak. So even if you ran automated trains every six minutes it is quite possible that riders would rarely (if ever) experience a delay caused by opening. The operator would wait for train to pass and then open.
The youtuber who produced the Paris C1 cable car video provided an updated video now that the line is open: https://youtu.be/WqP4QipFCkc?si=G2kgP1VqBn6s6Fp8