While Mexico City’s population keeps growing (currently at 23 million), it has become the city with the worst traffic and one of the most polluted cities in the world. To address these challenges, the city has invested in a mostly carbon-free multi-modal transit system consisting of the Metro subway, MetroBus BRT, trolley and regular bus lines, regional rail and light rail, a bike share system, and one of the largest urban gondola systems (CableBus) on the world. Outside of the city boundaries it also connects to the state’s bus and gondola lines. To serve riders from all income levels, it is also very affordable (7 pesos, about 40 cents, less for students/seniors). A single payment system makes it easier to use any of the different modes. This article explains the changes during the last decade and potential learnings for Seattle.
Metro
Mexico City’s metro network was originally envisioned during the 1968 Olympics. Some parts of the network run underground while most of the network is above ground, either elevated or in the median of highways or boulevards. While the initial lines use the same rubber-tired trains as the Paris Metro, more recent lines use regular steel wheel technology. With over a billion trips per year, only New York City provides more trips in North America. While some new lines and extensions had been proposed, the city decided in 2021 to modernize its busy lines with Communications-Based Train Control (CBTC) to increase capacity and speed them up. With new CRRC (China Railway Rolling Stock Corp) trains and Siemens Mobility CBTC travel time on Line 1 was reduced in 2025 from 40 to 30 minutes (Pantitlán–Observatorio). After the World Cup, the city plans to upgrade Line 3 to increase capacity by 30%.
MetroBus and Trolleybuses
Just like other North America cities like Seattle, Mexico City used to have many tram lines. Over time, those were mostly replaced by trolleybuses, cable cars, and a light rail line – all emissions-free. But over time the buses and wires did not get much attention; only 8 of the 30 lines survived. Some lines were replaced by metro lines, but most by diesel buses.
In 2015 the Tram Workers Alliance of Mexico (ATM) union started the “Save the Trolleybus” campaign. They surveyed riders who favored emission-free trolleybuses over diesel buses. STE (Servicio de Transportes Eléctricos), the local transit authority, proposed replacing the trolleybuses with battery electric buses (BEB). But the public pushed back as BEBs would be far more expensive and require new infrastructure while Mexico City already had great trolleybuses expertise. When Claudia Sheinbaum ran for city office, one of her proposals was to keep the trolleybuses and focus on green transit. Once she took office, she improved the trolleybus network. When she became president in 2024, the city had upgraded and extended its buses with 500 new trolleybuses with batteries for extra flexibility. The city not just upgraded buses but added new trolleybus BRT lines such as the Line 11 which operates in the freeway median, some of which is elevated, at speeds up to 45mph.
CableBus station Vasco de Quiroga By Cocu15
CableBus
More affordable housing usually means living in the more dense and hilly suburbs. Often those do not have good road infrastructure. They are challenging to serve with rail or even buses. Mexico City learned from South American cities such as Medellin, Colombia, and La Paz, Bolivia by building gondola lines. Sheinbaum inaugurated the first CableBus line in 2021 with the goal to connect their Metro and MetroBus lines into those neighborhoods. Now the fifth CableBus line is under construction. It will become world’s longest urban gondola line. 3 more are under consideration. Beyond the city limits the state is planning to extend its MexiCable network with a fourth line. While South American gondola systems typically have a daily ridership of 15,000 to 40,000, modern CableBus lines carry 80,000 riders rivaling some subway lines. Unlike commute focused buses mostly used by the working-class men, the lines provide high-frequency service throughout the day (until 11pm) to woman, children, disabled, and seniors to get their errands done. The area around many of the stations have become social hubs providing community centers, libraries and sports facilities.
Multi-Modal Network
Mexico City realized that an expansive and affordable transit system is extremely important to meet its social equity and emission-reduction goals. Instead of focusing on high visibility metro network expansions, it focused its limited financial resources on improving the efficiency of its existing network and expanding its network into underserved neighborhoods. This meant a new signaling systems for its Metro network, doubling down and extending its trolleybus network along its road network, and building gondola lines to dense neighborhoods lacking sufficient road corridors.
Puget Sound Network
Now that ST2 is finished and ST3 projects requiring far higher investments than planned, the Puget Sound region may want to look at how Mexico City made these tradeoffs to serve as many people as possible while staying within its fiscal abilities. For example, Sound Transit is already considering upgrading the signaling system in the downtown tunnel rather than building a parallel tunnel.
I’m surprised there’s no mention of the pesero. I’m having a hard time finding up to date English language resources on ridership, but a decade ago estimates were that they carried something like 14 million daily riders (60% of all transit trips) in CDMX. There’s also the (now two!) suburban trains – Tren Suburbano and El Insurgente. El Insurgente only fully opened this month, but the Tren Suburbano gets over 200,000 riders a day on its single line.
I’d also just say that the transit needs in CDMX are categorically different than Seattle. In CDMX, they build anything serving anywhere and the immediate concern is capacity and overcrowding. There’s just so much latent demand. Here, things are both much more expensive and much less well used. And particularly for the gondola transit systems of Latin America, I struggle to see any parallel for implementation in Seattle. We just do not have the kind of history of informal settlement on steep suburban hillsides with poor road access that drives the ridership on those systems.
blumdrew,
Well, the first thing transit supporter need to realize if Mexico City can build a transit system for way less money than Greater Seattle is doing, then something is fundamentally wrong with Sound Transit. Yeah, I do understand that Mexican labor is cheaper, but it’s much deeper than that.
The problem as I see it is a fetish for rail. Sound Transit wants to build a light rail line to Tacoma that is slower than the current bus to Tacoma….. and why not just put a “transit only” freeway lane on 1-5? Maybe a couple transit only off and on ramps? Surely this is all much cheaper than a train! Because transit nerds have a rail fetish? I hear people constantly going off about how Seattle needs a second downtown tunnel and I doubt their transit expertise is much better than mine.
When (if) the light rail project to T-Town ever gets finished and KOMO News reports it’s slower than the bus it’s replacing, do you really believe ST4 stands a chance of passing?
If we were to bring in European or Asian transit experts to look at the “rail spine” Sound Transit wants to build, they would look at the lack of density in Tacoma. Everett, West Seattle, and Ballard and suggest no more rail projects, or at least no more tunneling. But what’s the slogan? Build the Damn Trains!
Mexico City has rail too, but their rail probably costs much less than our rail, as does virtually every city outside the US, as they aren’t constrained by US government policy requiring American companies to manufacture the tracks and trains.
> if Mexico City can build a transit system for way less money than Greater Seattle is doing, then something is fundamentally wrong with Sound Transit.
There’s also something fundamentally wrong with a government that lets cost and schedule compromise construction safety, most recently exemplified in the 2021 Metro City Metro overpass collapse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico_City_Metro_overpass_collapse).
The New York Times did a nice explanation with graphics: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/12/world/americas/mexico-city-train-crash.html?unlocked_article_code=1.MlA.DpeH.ZR3m1Veh9JOc&smid=url-share
But rushed construction and poor maintenance are not necessary to avoid the extreme costs associated with construction in America. Other countries are able to build much more for much less money while running safe systems. The “Build the Damn Trains” coalition is advocating for ST to find ways to adopt planning, design, and construction techniques like those used in those systems, in addition to finding more funding and building ST3.
I wouldn’t presume that would be the conclusion of any foreign rail expert. ST’s current system is quite good, and there’s plenty of reason to expand it, especially to Tacoma. It’s only 15 minutes by Link from Federal Way to SeaTac, I imagine a 25 minute ride to the airport would be popular with residents in Tacoma and workers. Everett Link has some routing issues, and the Seattle projects are just too bloated. None of those are reasons rail can’t work, they’re just issues with the current iteration of the specific projects.
The downtown trip is slow, but it could be sped up if ST hadn’t ruled out a Rainier Valley bypass line, and that’s a project that will start to make more sense once the line extends further south. And there’s no reason faster express bus service can’t complement Link. Express bus service completing local or regional rail service isn’t uncommon, and if the demand exists I don’t see an issue with providing “redundant” services.
But this is all pretty tangential to CDMX. I generally think Seattle (and US cities in general) would be smart to develop stronger relationships and borrow expertise from the great Latin American cities, but the conditions are so different between a mega city like CDMX and Seattle that it’d be more useful for things like technical expertise and construction management techniques than the specifics of planning a system.
the first thing transit supporter need to realize if Mexico City can build a transit system for way less money than Greater Seattle is doing, then something is fundamentally wrong with Sound Transit.
It is not really a good comparison. A better comparison is with countries in Europe. For example Norway or Spain. These are developed countries with strong labor and environmental laws. Norway in particular has very high labor union rates as well as a high standard of living. And yet they can build subway systems for a lot less than in the United States. We are pretty much the most expensive in the developed world. We are worse than Canada while Canada is worse than France which is worse than Spain or Norway. We could try learning from those countries but we like to think we are special. We like to make excuses, as if they don’t have strong property rights or labor unions in other countries.
Of course pinpointing why it is so damn expensive to build in the United States is complicated. You can never make a complete apples-to-apples comparison. But it is pretty well established that it costs more to build things here than in other countries.
As for Sound Transit, they may be especially expensive, even for the U. S. Hard to say, because again it is tough to compare the system with others in the country. Cost is very important but it also important to consider value. For example the Second Avenue Subway was very expensive but it also is very valuable. Then you have the opposite (like a relatively cheap streetcar or “BRT” project). Assessing value this is tricky as you can look at various metrics, such as ridership on the new system, overall increased ridership, total rider time saved, etc. Even so, It is quite likely that ST3 is the worst project from a cost/benefit standpoint in the world, ever.
there’s plenty of reason to expand it, especially to Tacoma.
Tacoma Dome Link would cost a huge amount and add very little value. There just aren’t that many people going from Tacoma to the airport (or similar destinations). The other problem is that it won’t serve Downtown Tacoma. Very few people live close to the Tacoma Dome. Some buses serve the Tacoma Dome but the center hub of the system is downtown. This means that riders will have to make a transfer either way. Might as well take the express bus to Federal Way (and transfer there) instead of the bus to the Tacoma Dome. In other words, even the handful of riders that will use Tacoma Dome Link won’t save that much time.
It is really a bizarre concept. I know we call it “light rail” but it is essentially a metro (also sometimes referred to as a “subway”). Most of it is grade separated. That is why it is so expensive. A metro to the Tacoma dome is just silly. No one does that. Even major cities (like London) don’t extend their metros out that far. They either run express buses or regional/commuter rail. The latter take advantage of old rail lines. We already have that in Tacoma by the way — it is called Sounder.
Running the metro to Tacoma is very unusual. There are no studies supporting it. They didn’t get a bunch of transit experts in the room and ask them how best to spend $4 billion on transit for Pierce County. If they did, they would have a very different plan. No, the plan was hatched in Olympia, as leaders thought “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool to have a subway line from Everett to Tacoma. Let’s make it light rail though — light rail is what people are building now”.
It was a silly idea born of ignorance and remains a silly idea.
Ross,
Not serving downtown Tacoma is definitely a major issue, but I think it’s a fine project. And this a bit perfunctory, but London definitely has metro lines further afield than Tacoma – the Metropolitan Line serves Chesham (some 25 miles as the crow flies from the City). But London is so different than Seattle that it’s not really relevant (and the Metropolitan line is weird by metro standards anyways).
As currently conceived, Tacoma link is the most reasonable of the ST3 projects if only because it’s the least expensive. Is it a bit silly to run light rail 30 miles to Tacoma? Sure. Would we have been better off with a more traditional regional rail system? Yes. Would express buses complementing a Seattle-based metro be better too? Yes. But I’m not sure any of those options are practical for the region to consider now (absent a regional rail network leveraging a high speed rail line, but seeing as I’m using “high speed rail” as the practical thing… yeah). But I do think it could have pretty good value too. Tacoma Dome is out of the downtown core, but it’s still a useful transfer point and I would think more riders would prefer a (local route) -> Link to a (local route) -> Federal Way express -> Link trip for Airport bound trips.
And I can think of tons of transit projects with a worse cost/benefit than the combined ST3 package. They’ll cost a ton, but they will be worth riding at least. Beats things like the Milwaukee streetcar L Line, the DC streetcar, the Atlanta streetcar, the OKC streetcar, and the Omaha streetcar.
“he plan was hatched in Olympia, as leaders thought “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool to have a subway line from Everett to Tacoma.”
It was hatched in Tacoma and Pierce County! The three counties only went to Olympia for permission to have a regional transit agency and for tax authority to build something they wanted.
The legislature saw that regional transit was inevitably needed. The county-based agencies couldn’t provide it because all-day inter-county expresses were their last priority behind neighborhood needs/desires, and they didn’t have enough money for it or rail anyway. The legislature agreed to create Sound Transit so that the state wouldn’t have to be directly involved in alignment decisions and operating service.
It was suburban Pierce/Snohomish/King county and city officials who insisted on a Tacoma-Everett-Redmond spine. Those of them on the ST Board chose light rail mode for the “electric rail” implementation (as they called it then). The others not on the board didn’t say even one word questioning it. Instead they all pressured ST to stick with the “light rail to Tacoma and Everett” plan. It was them and part of the public forcing it on ST, not ST forcing it on them. If they hadn’t insisted on that from the 1990s all they way through now, ST might have done something different, and would have listened to voices like STB at least somewhat more.
Nathan Dickey,
I have a friend who worked on public housing projects in California off and on for 25 years. Every project he worked on cost over half a million dollars per unit (mostly one bedroom) and some cost over a million dollars a unit. You would think the local and State governments would look at the costs and reevaluate the whole public housing industry, right? But that’s not what happened. What happened is a steady drumbeat for more money for public housing. Never mind that the costs are outpacing any new funding. The whole system is deeply flawed and if you live and California and care about lower income people….. you want to get value for money spent on public housing, right?
The answer to Sound Transit’s problems isn’t more money (spoiler alert… there’s absolutely no extra money in local, State or Federal budgets to prop up Sound Transit). The answer certainly isn’t borrowing more money with 75 year bonds. The answer is 2 fold. Start with getting the best service out of the transit Sound Transit has already built and then come up with improvements that fit the actual budget.
I’m sorry, but the “Build the Damn Trains” movement, whatever it is, doesn’t bring anything to party. I’m I missing anything here? Other than a slogan and anger about Sound Transit tapping the brakes on over budget projects, what have you got?
“Hey, wouldn’t it be cool to have a subway line from Everett to Tacoma. Let’s make it light rail though — light rail is what people are building now”.”
They didn’t choose light rail because it was cool: they chose it to keep capital costs down to the level of previous American light rails. That was seen as important to get a yes vote among a public suspicious of taxes and large transit projects. The previous light rails were 95+% surface (MAX, San Jose, San Diego, Sacramento), so that was Link’s model. It was known that it would use the existing DSTT, and the tunnel would have to be extended to the U-District because of the hills and Ship Canal, but the rest would be surface wherever it was feasible.
ST chose light rail because “it can do all three: street-running, elevated, underground”. It saw it as a universal solution that could handle all topographical/neighborhood environments it might need to.
After Rainier Valley and SODO went through design and their surface alignment was confirmed, the next segment to go through that was Tukwila. Tukwila objected to surface trains on Intl Blvd (which it had just beautified and didn’t want it dug up again), and to taking a corner of Southcenter’s land. Tukwila was a city rather than a neighborhood so it had more clout than Rainier Valley did. After that, all areas wanted elevated/underground and said they were willing to pay more for it. That’s how Link became grade-separated by default. Bel-Red was an exception because the City of Bellevue begged ST to economize elsewhere in East King to release enough money for its short downtown tunnel.
Tacoma link is the most reasonable of the ST3 projects if only because it’s the least expensive.
Huh? It is by no means the cheapest project. We have three infill stations being added. There are also bus projects, station improvements, the works. But that gets back to the main point — how much value is being added. In the case of Tacoma Dome Link, very little. Again, it will cost over $3 billion! That is a huge amount of money for what it will add. The numbers are of course way out of date, but check out the ridership per dollar numbers of each project: https://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2016/04/06/youve-got-50-billion-for-transit-now-how-should-you-spend-it/. Tacoma Dome Link performs very poorly in this metric (even with ridership that is obviously inflated and costs that are no longer realistic).
Of course this is only one metric. But with other metrics it will perform worse! Again, riders won’t save much time. Very few new riders will be added. In contrast, take a project like Ballard Link. It is much better when it comes to ridership per dollar. But it will also save those riders quite a bit of time. That is what happens when you build in the city. That is why agencies that care about performance build in the city (and why cities that don’t build these sprawling, underperforming messes).
To be clear, there are cities where building things like this would make sense. L. A. is a great example. It is a sprawling yet dense city. But Puget Sound is not like that. Not even close. Almost all of the density is within Seattle proper. We run express trains to the airport that do OK but the overall system does not perform that well because we focused way too much on quantity rather than quality. It is a hybrid system — like DC Metro — but without the urban coverage. Link is very good for getting from say, Tukwila to downtown but it manage to skip First Hill, Fremont, the Central Area and numerous other urban neighborhoods.
To be clear, the plans for Seattle are also poor. I don’t know how they could screw up this area so much, but ST managed to do so. Ballard to UW is a much better value than West Seattle Link and probably a better value than Ballard to downtown. It is what we should build next. Of course the second tunnel is stupid unless it adds coverage like a stop at First Hill. By the way this is another weird thing to do (add a second line in an urban area and not add coverage). So yeah, Ballard to UW should have been the next thing they build. It would be more expensive than Tacoma Dome Link but it would have improved the transit system a lot more. Then it gets a little tricky. A Metro 8 subway is a possibility as is from Ballard to downtown (via Interbay) and then on to First Hill. All of that should happen before we even think about an extension to West Seattle, Everett, Tacoma, Issaquah or South Kirkland.
“You would think the local and State governments would look at the costs and reevaluate the whole public housing industry,”
No, they would reevaluate how to build the housing less expensively. They wouldn’t just give up on building subsidized housing because it’s obviously needed. States can’t just say “We’re full” and refuse to accommodate any more people, and forced millions of existing residents and all non-wealthy newcomers out of the state.
“I’m sorry, but the “Build the Damn Trains” movement, whatever it is, doesn’t bring anything to party. ”
We don’t know what exactly “Build The Damn Trains” wants or what it would agree to. It’s ambiguous whether it’s insisting on “ST’s preferred alignment with no changes or delays”, or whether it’s willing to accept sensible changes and rethinking that would lead to a more cost-effective and useful system. I’ve told you that (and I appreciate you recognizing it), so I’ll tell Nathan that too.
Let’s avoid claiming BTDT supports one particular strategy or attitude when it’s not 100% certain they do.
And I’m not sure if “Build the Damn Trains” still even exits as an entity, or if it was just a one-time press release.
It was hatched in Tacoma and Pierce County!
I stand corrected. It was still a stupid idea born out of ignorance.
They didn’t choose light rail because it was cool: they chose it to keep capital costs down to the level of previous American light rails.
That is a distinction without a difference. It was part of the same thought process. They didn’t know what they were doing. Rather than consult with experts to find real solutions (a mix of express buses, commuter rail and a standard metro) they came up with a “Supertrain” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDjy9uJUawU). The idea being that one train can do it all. It can provide regional transit (Tacoma or Everett to Seattle) as well as function like a metro (Downtown Seattle to the UW). This thought process has driven ST from the beginning. There is way too much emphasis on “completing the spine” and not and actually providing a useful metro for the one area in Puget Sound that should actually have one. It is easy to dismiss concerns given subarea equity (“Hell, if Everett wants to pay for a train very few will use, be my guest”) but it screwed up the subway line in Seattle as well. There are way too few stops on the main line. The best example of this is the section between downtown and the UW. This is the section with the greatest potential of any within the region. It is the section that most experts said we should start with (and many thought should be the only thing worth building). But they only added one station in between there — the same number of stations that existed when buses ran express between the U-District and downtown. Of course Capitol Hill Station is better than Convention Place Station but there is no excuse for so few stations. It is easy to blame “soil issues” but that misses the point. The normal way to build a metro is with the most cost effective section first, which was clearly UW to downtown. Add as many stations as you can. Then expand. But instead they were focused on “The Spine” — a stupid idea that places way too much emphasis on quantity over quality.
Ross,
I guess I meant to say of the major extension and new line projects. And I’d rather see Tacoma link built than Boeing Access Road (not that my opinion counts for much).
It’s undeniable that there would be more ridership on lines more focused on Seattle. But that has never been the purpose of Sound Transit. Maybe that’s stupid, but the purpose of Sound Transit is regional transportation, and they really should focus on how good regional rail has been built elsewhere: existing corridors, electrification, and S Bahn tunnels. The real issue with Link is that it’s not really built as a regional system – it’s got the wrong rolling stock and in some places (Rainer Valley) the wrong type of alignment. I’d say those are fixable issues, and that the biggest focus should be on ensuring the least fixable problems (alignment) are addressed before planning has concluded. Plus taking out obviously dumb things like a second tunnel when the first one isn’t anywhere near capacity.
Sound Transit won’t, and probably shouldn’t, build a Route 8 subway. That just isn’t a region-wide concern.
“Sound Transit won’t, and probably shouldn’t, build a Route 8 subway. That just isn’t a region-wide concern.”
It’s either Sound Transit or nothing, unless we can convince the legislature to give Seattle or Metro enough tax authority for it. That has always been the problem, and the reason Seattle went with Sound Transit/Link for the northeast/southeast solution in the first place. The unused monorail authority can raise up to $1 billion, which may or may not be just enough for an underground Ballard-UW line. Uptown to First Hill would probably cost more. And then the authority would be used up.
Comparing Tacoma Link and Boeing Access Road Station is a category error. There’s an order of magnitude between their respective costs. Axing BAR won’t get you even to South Federal Way.
CDMX, Quito, Medellin, Bogota don’t have an interstate freeway system running through their central city cores. People in those cities are very dependent on their public transit systems to commute and get around the city. And when those cities build a surface bus line, they build it with hard infrastructure that allows the buses to bypass auto traffic and get people to their destinations faster than autos. The RapidRide lines we see in the Puget Sound area are wimpy compared to what would be built in Latin America where major arterials see crush-loaded buses running at 2-minute headways much of the day. But in Seattle, we worry about left turns, on street parking and landscaping when designing our bus lines.
I think freeway infrastructure is somewhat incidental in explaining different levels of transit use. Latin American cities have way fewer cars per capita than US ones do, and the limiting factor there is often income rather than traffic issues (as bad as traffic is in like every Latin American city). But I guess why transit is used more is a bit incidental anyways. If the general question is “what lesson can be learned from CDMX?”, I think the answer is “take lanes from cars for buses for transit and run lots of service”. In the US context, Seattle does well on the latter but only okay to poor on the former.
More like learning from its population density and car ownership stats…
The ubiquidous frequent transit is part of the reason car ownership is so low. The alternative is India, which we had a Sunday Movie on. India barely has subways or bus routes, and they don’t cover large lower-income parts of cities. So people use cars, motorcycles, taxis, e-rickshaws, etc, to fill the gap. That makes congestion and travel time much worse than we have, or probably even than what Mexico City has.
In American cities without even average transit, like many parts of South King County, lower-income people drive cars much more than they otherwise would, because they have to in order to get to work or errands in a reasonable amount of time. And that makes them more insistent on having lots of car lanes and free parking spaces and P&Rs.
No, Mike, the frequent transit in Latin America is not a reason that car ownership is low. That people are poor is why car ownership is poor. It is also the reason for the ubiquitous frequent transit. Since they don’t have cars, they have to take transit, whether they want to or not.
Tom, did you even read what he said? There are plenty of car/SOV dependent poor countries. A lot of them use scooters or motorcycles, or taxis if they can’t afford a car which is just as worse. On the other hand, plenty of richer countries that have lower car ownership and great transit.
I think the US can be a country with high car ownership for shopping and other personal travel, but also great transit and a reason for everybody to ride it for work, school, sporting events, concerts, sightseeing, airport rides etc. We just need the willpower to do it, and for people to realize that traffic, parking, and lack of walkability can all be avoided with significant trip time savings compared to driving.
Japan has high car ownership but also very high transit ridership. Indonesia has much lower car ownership rates but very low transit ridership. There is *some* correspondence between car ownership and transit ridership, but not as much as people often assume. The quality of the transit system has a much bigger influence on transit ridership than car ownership.
How good are the transfer stations? I have never been there so I’m wondering.
What a coincidence, as I am typing this comment while on board a flight to Mexico City. Looking forward to seeing what it is like.
Looking forward to hear your observations!
Seattle emphatically should not build “a parallel tunnel”, it should build a crossing tunnel to serve new parts of “downtown Seattle” which are not now served by HCT. I’m certainly not saying anything new here; the “consensus” model that most blog readers support of a fully-automated diagonal line from Lower Queen Anne (“Uptown”) through South Lake Union to First Hill is what makes the most sense for both urban and regional mobility.
Obviously, it should be designed and built with extensions onward to Ballard and eventually the University District to the north and Yesler Terrance and the North Rainier Valley to the south in mind. Yes, this is a large “backward” question mark, and looping lines usually aren’t efficient. However, because of the topographical limitations here in Puget Sound, it works because it serves many important trip patterns.
So far as gondolas, it seems that one from Seattle Center across Denny Way is probably the best way to serve a corridor that has both limited surface options and a severe topographical discontinuity at the freeway. I’m less optimistic about one to West Seattle that some people like, simply because it’s a long, boring way to ride at low speed with no good intermediate stations.
If “The Snake” as outlined in the first paragraph simply can’t be built, then I’d certainly applaud Al’s enthusiasm for a funicular between Pioneer Square Station and Harborview/Yesler Terrace.
And YES!, hang more wire! ETB’s are much cheaper than BEB’s and last a loooooong time.
I’ve felt like the biggest problem with the Link spine concept is at the ends. I’m curious how CDMX planned land use at the ends of lines.
Take the Lynnwood and Federal Way extensions. They were both envisioned in a 1990’s model of focusing on multiple large garage focused stations for Downtown commuters. Sure there are TOD elements — but they were never the primary selling point for those extensions.
While the ST3 plan does reach both Everett and Tacoma — both are conceptual destinations in addition to parking garages — it still shows a lack of creating urban greatness at the end. There should have been 2-3 multi-use dense TODs at the ends to create two-way demand on Link. The politics was instead always more to “get there” rather than to create actual dense destination hubs.
I realize that it’s a chicken or egg argument about light rail and mixed-use density. I just feel like Link is viewed mostly as a non-viable egg.
I just feel like ST3 Link is viewed mostly as a non-viable egg.
One of the issues with regional transit optics is that Link is the “real transit”, while buses are apparently something else.
So a lot of politicians see Link as a catalyst for upzoning. But, all these nodes (Federal Way, Lynnwood, Everett, Tacoma) could already upzone. Surely the ST express and local busses can support the extra ridership. Same issue with Issaquah and West Seattle link – busses aren’t real enough transit apparently
I think you make a valid point about the hesitancy to upzone without Link.
I still would say though that even being awarded Link stations was driven by merely wanting a station rather than a deliberate effort to create dense urban setting. Otherwise, they would be more intentional about having two stations at the end, with one station without parking but with lots of activity and density.
ST3 was passed almost a decade ago now. TOD is still theoretical and additional end stations are never discussed (except by Tacoma activists who don’t seem to get any traction by the City itself). They’ve had plenty of time to make new plans.
These cities want the gift of light rail, but balk at making it a very useful regional investment by upzoning and other dense development strategies oriented to pedestrians. Instead, they seem to stop at celebrating a parcel here or there for affordable housing, and call it a day.
Planners are saying we won’t get higher density until Link arrives but we can here has been plenty construction along the C and 7. It seems good frequency drives more housing expansion.
A fair amount close to to the E has a fair amount of density. Not necessarily right next to 99 due to the parking lots, but you’ll definitely see condos and apartments as far north as Echo Lake.
The reason politicians want the Spine is the existing 233K people in Tacoma, 960K in Pierce County, 113K in Everett, and 864K in Snohomish County. Those are constituents and voters. Tacoma and Everett are the largest cites in those counties, so serving them is seen as a proxy for serving the county. 99% of those people could never live near Link, and with the current land uses most of them are in sprawl. So they see themselves as using the P&Rs; they only take express buses or regional rail (not local buses); and a half-hourly or hourly feeder is something they definitely wouldn’t use. We could imagine a high-quality BRT network like Mexico City or Mendellin or Bogota or Curitiba have, but we don’t have that, and the politicians aren’t willing to make our bus network that high quality.
TOD around the stations is important, but it’s irrelevant to 99% of Snohomish and Pierce residents who couldn’t all fit into those station villages even if they want to.
Driving or busing to Tacoma Dome is shorter than driving to Federal Way or Angle Lake, and it’s in their own county so it gives psychological reassurance that they’re being heard and their county has infrastructure, that it’s not all just going to Seattle. Look at the tons of people who waited at the Lynnwood platform for a non-full train to the Super Bowl parade. Future events like that will have the same thing at Tacoma Dome: people taking Link (or unable to take Link because it’s full) instead of driving to Seattle. They wouldn’t have done that to nearly that extent if it were just express buses.
I’m not condemning building parking garages at stations. I’m condemning only building a string of extension stations primarily intended for parking garages.
A healthy light rail system needs different kinds of stations, and some need to have walkable destinations because people cannot keep cars at both ends of their Link trip.
TOD is not only about high density residential. In fact, good TOD is probably more important at the non-residential (or destination) end!
I like what Redmond did: one station (Marymoor) for parking to capture riders further east and a downtown station.
Mike Orr,
Believe it or not, light rail projects jammed a whole lot of growth in Tacoma. Much of the area around the T-Dome and Hilltop was snapped up by slum lord investors before the rail went in, thinking they could “flip” the property to high dollar TOD and make a quick buck. The trouble is the property they’re holding is mostly shit nobody wants except for the poorest people in Tacoma…. Nobody wants to live in TOD next to a freeway, trap house or homeless camp. So most of it remains crappy rentals and section 8 as investors who don’t live in Tacoma just pay the taxes and collect rent letting the buildings go to Hell.
Look at property values in Tacoma and there’s light rail laced through some of lowest priced areas in the City. Was it a transit plan? Or a half baked urban renewal plan that went sideways?
“Much of the area around the T-Dome and Hilltop was snapped up by slum lord investors before the rail went in, thinking they could “flip” the property to high dollar TOD and make a quick buck.”
The city has planned an urban village around Tacoma Dome station. Do you know all the buyers were flippers and not regular developers? If they’re flippers (1) that’s their problem, and (2) the land value probably went up anyway so they could probably sell it for a profit, even if not the major killing they might have expected.
“The trouble is the property they’re holding is mostly shit nobody wants except for the poorest people in Tacoma…. Nobody wants to live in TOD next to a freeway, trap house or homeless camp. So most of it remains crappy rentals and section 8 as investors who don’t live in Tacoma just pay the taxes and collect rent letting the buildings go to Hell.”
Poor people need housing too. My mom was on Section 8 in Bellevue, because she was from the 1950s generation when wives didn’t work, until she got divorced and no longer had a husband’s income, and then she worked at secretarial positions and Boeing, but she couldn’t work there long enough to get a large pension and she has a lot of medical conditions that add up to a lot of expenses.
I don’t know what “trap house” means.
“Look at property values in Tacoma and there’s light rail laced through some of lowest priced areas in the City.”
How else could a train get from Federal Way to Tacoma Dome except by going in the I-5/99 corridor?
“Was it a transit plan? Or a half baked urban renewal plan that went sideways?”
A transit plan. One urban village at Tacoma Dome isn’t much urban renewal, and I can’t believe Tacoma/Pierce County would dedicate thirty years of insisting on the Spine just for two small villages at Tacoma Dome and Fife. The Tacoma Dome one hardly makes a blip in Tacoma’s total economics or housing or jobs, and Puyallup and Lakewood may wonder why billions would be spent on Link just for a village development in Fife. It’s not a very effective transit plan, but it is a transit plan.
People would like to not live next to a freeway, but tens of thousands or even a hundred thousand people do on 8th Ave NE in the U-District, the Ash Way P&R, in the new buildings in Redmond between Overlake Village and Redmond Tech station, along stroads like the Bothell-Everett Highway, etc, because they have to live somewhere and that’s the best they can find. So they will at Tacoma Dome too if the medium density is built out.
And presumably the homeless encampment you say is there will be gone by the time the apartments are built in ten or twenty years.
@mike
Tacommeee is just doing the typical nimby rant where the apartment dwellers are simultaneously both poor and rich.
And I apologize to Martin for not catching the off-topic parts sooner.
In CDMX, the areas around metro stations are extremely dense already. I believe it primarily or exclusively serves areas that were built up pre-Metro. I’m not familiar at all with Mexican land use politics but I think the idea of “transit oriented development” in most other countries is more like “development”. All development leverages infrastructure to exist, and transit oriented is a piece added to US nomenclature well after most transit oriented (i.e. streetcar or railroad) development occurred.
Mexico City’s transit operator is famous for shopping around all over the world.
It is probably one of few places where you can see European style Volvo 7700-7900 series running alongside with Chinese brands like Yutong which filled a lot of trolleybus order for the city. Pretty awesome scene for bus-spotting.