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This is an Open Thread. Civil comments may discuss any transportation or land use topic. Uncivil comments will be removed.

127 Replies to “Midweek Roundup: 200,000 riders”

  1. Ironic that one of the neighborhoods that is most proximate to the business district has the highest work from home rate.

    And the areas where we have concentrated the bestest and fastest transit have 30-50% who don’t commute. Whereas Kent Valley, with arguably some of the worst transit, would be the ones who would most benefit from good transit, because they actually leave their homes.

    1. Even with half the people working from home, the number of jobs per acre is still far higher in downtown cores than places like Kent Valley. That kind of job sprawl actually makes driving a very reasonable choice, since any reasonable amount of service (e.g. same bus service hours/1000 jobs) will require riders to walk a lot more compared to downtown.

    2. Cam Solomon,

      Walkable neighborhoods with good transit are mostly upper class White hoods. But then transit is just a resource like anything else. With all of the transit needs throughout Greater Seattle…. the one that you’ll hear about here is the subway to Ballard.

      1. Why not make every neighborhood walkable with good transit rather than making it a scarce luxury. Link every US neighborhood was before 1940, and link other countries see as the only rational thing to do.

        In other words, make Kent walkable and with full-time frequent transit, and an akk-day express with reasonable travel time to Seattle.

      2. Dang, I guess Beacon Hill just doesn’t exist to you. Or Chinatown. Or Rainier Beach. Or downtown Kent. Or South Park. Or Othello. Or downtown Auburn. How “good” you think transit in those necks of the woods is subjective I suppose but I think they’re definitely places you can rely primarily on transit in (though South Park could use more service on a bus that isn’t the 60)

        There are a lot of diverse, working class neighborhoods that are walkable in greater Seattle. There are also rich and White ones. There are also rich and racially diverse ones. There’s a lot of neighborhoods in greater Seattle.

      3. Most “upper class white hoods” are cul-de-sac developments with half-acre lots. Exactly the sort of sprawl that you advocate for.

        The folks who live in Belltown and Capitol Hill may indeed by cashflow flush, but they are not wealthy.

      4. blumdrew,

        I lived in the Lincoln District, Tacoma for a long time. Go Abes!! I certainly understand diversity on a personal level. I would never trash on places like Angle Lake or Beacon Hill.

        Let’s run back what I said. This blog has seemly endless support of a subway to Ballard with a current price tag of 22 billion dollars (and rising!) There’s a great deal support on this blog for Ballard Subway to given higher priority than other “less White” projects like West Seattle and Tacoma. Why?

        If surface rail was good enough for Rainier Beach (Go Vikings!) it’s certainly good enough for Ballard. If you don’t believe me, go down to The Station Coffee House (either location… Beacon Hill or Columbia City) and ask the patrons if they think Ballard needs billions extra for Subway while Rainier Valley gets by with surface rail.

      6. tacomee,

        You’re right that if Link technology is used to get to Ballard, at-grade north of Uptown is quite acceptable. However, it is not acceptable through South Lake Union, Seattle Center and Uptown. That section has to be tunnelled or elevated. Period, end of story.

        What we want to do, though, is replace Link technology with something like Skytrain, with half-as-long automated trains running twice or three-times as often. That would make the necessary tunnel through SLU and Uptown much cheaper to build (smaller station footprints and perhaps shallower ones as well), allowing the section north of the tunnel portal to be elevated through Interbay and tunnelled or high-bridged into downtown Ballard for essentially the same amount of money as surface north of a Link-technology tunnel portal.

        You CANNOT serve SLU and Uptown on the surface.

      7. I mean we can serve it. that was the plans for all of the 2000s and the 2010s to serve it at-grade. at the last minute the new second tunnel idea was added but it is getting more and more clear that sound transit doesn’t know how to dig an urban tunnel

      8. I think the South Lake Union Streetcar demonstrates exactly how effective an at-grade light rail alignment through SLU and Uptown would be.

      9. “There’s a great deal support on this blog for Ballard Subway to given higher priority than other “less White” projects like West Seattle and Tacoma. Why? If surface rail was good enough for Rainier Beach (Go Vikings!) it’s certainly good enough for Ballard.”

        Because Ballard is denser, contains a larger and wider range of destinations and jobs that people from outside the neighborhood go to, has a larger 2D walkable area, and north Seattle has a flatter terrain that facilitates a four-way bus feeder grid. That’s transit best practices, regardless of ethnicity or income. See the “Human Transit” website and book. If that kind of building and destinations and walkability were in West Seattle instead of Ballard but West Seattle still had its current population and demographics, we’d be prioritizing Link to West Seattle before Ballard. But it doesn’t. Ballard is Seattle’s fourth-largest urban village after greater downtown, the U-District, and Northgate, so it should have the fourth-most-extensive transit infrastructure. Because it affects a larger percent of the region’s total trips, the neighborhood’s environment generates more ridership, and transit can be more transformative there and achieve a higher mode share than it can in West Seattle or Kent.

      10. Mike Orr,

        “Because Ballard is denser, contains a larger and wider range of destinations and jobs that people from outside the neighborhood go to, has a larger 2D walkable area, and north Seattle has a flatter terrain that facilitates a four-way bus feeder grid. That’s transit best practices, regardless of ethnicity or income.”

        Why don’t you look up “redlining” on the google and educate yourself? The problem is Ballard has gotten so much more public investment over the decades than Columbia City… so Ballard should be “rewarded” with even more public investment in the form a 22 billion dollar subway? I fought this kind of bullshit in Tacoma for years…. the decades of under investment in the Lincoln District, East Tacoma, the South End….

        Ballard doesn’t deserve 22 billion dollars in public investment for a subway. That’s like $27,000 per resident of Seattle! Try again! Find something that works and is affordable. Transit best practices indeed!

        What’s going to happen when the recession hits and METRO has a big fare box drop and bus service gets cut while Sound Transit is digging billion dollar holes in ground?

      11. tacomee,

        You said “Walkable neighborhoods with good transit are mostly upper class White hoods”. I’m saying you are wrong. That’s it!

        I don’t disagree per se with your assessment, but it’s also entirely irrelevant. Running at grade in Ballard wouldn’t even save much money, since it’s just one stop and the big cost is the bridge/tunnel. Running at grade on the way to Ballard might not even matter cost-wise, since it’s pretty cheap to go from Uptown to Smith Cove either way. And running at grade from downtown to uptown would be phenomenally dumb.

      12. > I think the South Lake Union Streetcar demonstrates exactly how effective an at-grade light rail alignment through SLU and Uptown would be.

        first we could build it as a center running rather than curb side. secondly it can actually reach ballard within our lifetimes. the current ballard link is more of a stub line to smith cove.

        would it be any faster if you end up having to transfer to a bus anyways?

    3. The census tract with the highest rate of WFH in 2025 appears to be tract 5303300800353033008004, which is on the north end of the waterfront. It includes residences between Denny, 1st Ave, Wall, and Alaskan Way/Western Ave. Here’s a map of census tracts if you’re like me and can’t zoom in close enough on the Seattle Times’ map: https://mtgis-portal.geo.census.gov/arcgis/apps/experiencebuilder/experience/?id=bc7d5cafd5e94dfb875ac36df0deaf77

      I think this tract is very poorly served by transit for how dense it is. I can’t find a single bus stop with active service inside of it. If you look at the other >50% WFH tracts, they’re all portions of neighborhoods with relatively poor access to transit. Of course, they’re also generally wealthier neighborhoods, which correlates with the fact that WFH is typically only available to office workers who are demonstrably productive at home, and those workers tend to be highly paid.

    4. “Even with half the people working from home, the number of jobs per acre is still far higher in downtown cores than places like Kent Valley.”

      You’d think so, and you are right about downtown core, and around UW. But most of North King is pretty much the same density as around Kent and Auburn.

      https://maps.geo.census.gov/ddmv/map.html

      And when you start looking at household income, and how much of an economic burden it is to be forced to own a car (or multiple) in the Kent Valley, by looking at driving costs, which are north of $15K in much of the Kent Valley, paired with much lower incomes than north King, it’s really frustrating that we place that huge burden on those least able to afford it.

      1. Most of Seattle outside the urban villages us still more walkable than most of Kent, with shorter blocks, small house lots, and corner stores. North Kent (240th Street area) is commendable for still having small-lot houses, but there’s a decided lack of corner stores or interspersed multifamily. and even this is only a tiny part of Kent or South King County ( small-lot houses)

      2. If the hugely burdened burghers of the East Valley would actually ride the bus sometimes, King County Metro Transit might notice and run the buses more frequently.

      3. An hour-plus by bus vs 20 minutes in a car? That’s not a bus that’s a multiseat frustration boat.

        Nobody signs up for that intentionally.

      4. Kent and South King County do ride buses more than average because so many can’t afford cars. Metro’s performance metrics already say they should have full-time frequent service. The reason they don’t is limited resources, and the failure of the countywide Metro levy in 2014 that would have provided more resources, and King County’s neglect in talking about a Metro Connects levy since 2016 but a decade later it still hasn’t been put on the ballot.

        The county was going to have a Metro levy in 2020, but covid hit and sucked all the officials’/staff’s capacity for months. Then it wanted the Harborview expansion levy alone on the November 2020 ballot to give it the best chance for passage, and then it never got around to doing anything about Metro after that.

      5. Kent could step up with a Kent Transit Measure like Seattle did but it hasn’t done so. It may subsidize one or two routes somewhere.

      6. Alternatively, Metro and Sound Transit could start allocating funding more equitably. Ballard and West Seattle already have some pretty decent Rapid Rides and multiple frequent bus routes. And we are planning on showering them with 10s of billions in subways, with South King and Pierce footing part of the bill. Because a deep, deep hole in the ground under Seattle is such a boon for “regional” transit, that we should all pitch in.

        And we can’t even manage an express bus for Kent.

      7. An hour-plus by bus vs 20 minutes in a car?

        Huh? Where are you going? Seriously, here is a pretty common trip in Kent: https://maps.app.goo.gl/PgcUEfrw3mnf55x46. The bus runs every fifteen minutes. It isn’t super fast but it takes less than a half hour. A car will save you about ten minutes — maybe more if there is traffic. At least I’m assuming there are BAT lanes on main corridor. In event, this doesn’t seem particularly bad compared to most transit in the region.

      8. Terrific. Now you are in Tukwila.

        I was thinking about Kent to Seattle, though I’m not trying to go anywhere. I’ve occasionally attempted to at least ponder transit to Kent, but it’s close to 2 hours each way from Tacoma. I ain’t that kinda masochist.

      9. But, as I have said before, the obvious answer is buying and upgrading the tracks for the Sounder and bringing it to hourly (maybe every 30 minutes down the road), renting back slots to BNSF. I would be very surprised it cost even half of the Ballard fiasco, and you could get Amtrak to pitch in. This is something that needs to be done anyway, for truly PNW regional transit.

        This would make transit viable from both the north and the south, and create a boom on housing on relatively affordable land in walkable town centers all along the corridor, serving an order of magnitude more people than the BLE.

      10. I was thinking about Kent to Seattle

        Ah, see, that’s the problem. You’ve focused on density but ignored proximity. Seattle and Kent are really far apart. In contrast Ballard and Downtown Seattle are not. Proximity is really important when it comes to ridership. To quote Jarret Walker:

        In this image, two towns are identical except for the distance between the main residential area and the main business area. Longer transit lines cost more to run than short ones, so in the second town it will cost more to serve the same number of people. If a transit budget is the same in the two towns, the second town will have less frequent service or service for a shorter duration. That’s because the same resource is spread over more route miles, yielding less frequency. That, in turn, means lower ridership.

        This also means that if you were to actually fund more long distance trips you would have much worse performance. In other words, you are spending more money to serve fewer people. I actually believe that Sound Transit (not Metro) should run express buses to Kent for that very reason. Sound Transit is used to running poorly-performing buses — Metro isn’t. Metro has historically culled poorly performing routes which is why there are so few express buses left anymore (even during peak). This brings me to the other point:

        the obvious answer is buying and upgrading the tracks for the Sounder and bringing it to hourly (maybe every 30 minutes down the road), renting back slots to BNSF

        I don’t see this happening as a local project. Maybe as part of a higher speed rail to Portland. Or maybe if we nationalize the railroads (which I believe we should do). But again, even trains (on their own tracks) would perform poorly on this corridor much of the day. You just wouldn’t get many riders. Just look at the numbers:

        Sounder South gets less than 10,000 riders a day. That sounds good, except many of the trains carry less than 100 riders a day. The 1524 for example is the last train back to Seattle. It hasn’t topped 100 in over a year. The 1518 — the last train in the morning headed to Seattle and the last one of the day from Lakewood — does a little better but it rarely gets over 200. There just aren’t that many people riding the train in the middle of the day. The more trains you add, the fewer riders you get per train. Even if you own the tracks, running a train is more expensive than running a bus. Sure, you could run trains hourly (or even every half hour) but don’t expect them to be a good value. You just won’t get that many riders.

      11. Alternatively, Metro and Sound Transit could start allocating funding more equitably. Ballard and West Seattle already have some pretty decent Rapid Rides and multiple frequent bus routes.
        You seem to be asking for more equal funding. Those frequent routes you mention are there largely because Seattle itself funds them through the STM, and I’m not sure that equalizing funding/service by exporting more tax dollars and service to the ‘burbs would actually be equitable.

        Sure, the South King (as defined by ST) AMI is lower than in North King, and the average yearly transportation costs in South King seem to be about $2k higher [see here], but there are actually significantly fewer people overall in South King who are seriously burdened (>80% income) by housing+transportation costs, since mean housing+transportation is actually slightly lower in South King, and there are 1.8x more people in North King than South King as of 2024. Even though only 12.65% in North King vs 16.1% of people in South King are below 200% of federal poverty level, there are than 34k (42%) more people at or below that income level in North King; this is slightly lower than the income required to be 80% burdened in both regions, but I think it still illustrates the point.

        Since 9 of the 10 most productive Metro routes are in North King and there are more seriously cost burdened people there, moving service out of North King in the name of more equal service levels (remember, the lower South King density = more cost for service levels equal to North King) would seriously degrade service for so many people in North King that it would result in more people cost burdened overall, not fewer.

        On the other hand, if South King were to pass their own levy, or the entire county were to pass Metro Connects (fingers crossed), then we wouldn’t have to move any service at all. Same thing goes for Pierce County. We probably wouldn’t have the equal service you’re asking for, but it would be great for all the people in South King and Pierce County who are cost burdened.

        [W]e are planning on showering them with 10s of billions in subways, with South King and Pierce footing part of the bill.

        South King County and Pierce County are not footing any of the bill for a subway to Ballard or West Seattle, they are footing part of the bill for the second downtown tunnel. I imagine we agree that this tunnel is a terrible investment, but it’s disingenuous to suggest that anyone but Seattle is paying for the actual Ballard or West Seattle extensions since a Ballard stub is quite possible.

      12. Cam, railroad are explicitly protected from Condemnation by Eminent Domain. In fact until the 1920’s or so, they essentially had eminent domain themselves. Neither UP nor BNSF is going to sell their fantastically valuable entries to the Ports of Seattle and Portand and thereby lose control of scheduling.

        Now if ST wants to foot the bill completely for raising the UP line to two-main-tracks with appropriate crossing elimination in order to divert a significant portion of BNSF through freights from the passenger line, they’d probably come to the table.

        But enough with the eminent domain fantasy.

      13. “Longer transit lines cost more to run than short ones, so in the second town it will cost more to serve the same number of people.”

        Yeah, I’ve read walker. His a static, linear thinker, who does his jobs in a point in time. He doesn’t think it terms of potential change over time.

        And also, in our case, it is very, very far from the same number of people. Ballard is bloody tiny. Kent Valley is massive.

      14. “you could get Amtrak to pitch in.”

        Amtrak doesn’t pitch in. There are several federal laws governing Amtrak; this is what has evolved:

        – Federal subsidies can only go to Amtrak’s long-distance routes.
        Subsidies to regional services like Cascades were discontinued a couple decades ago. So Amtrak can’t pitch in.

        – States fully fund the regional services they host.

        – Amtrak pays the host railroad only the incremental impact of its train runs. The railroad can charge other operators as much as it wants. That’s why Washington state has Amtrak operate Cascades, because BNSF would charge anyone else a lot more.

      15. The actual limit is that Amtrak is not allowed to use federal funds for any trains operating less than 750 miles, unless they are the Northeast Corridor trains.

        For a while, there was a sharing agreement where Amtrak and states would jointly fund regional trains. Congress killed it some years ago. The 750 mile limit was specifically set to target one specific train operated by one specific state that had terrible ridership.

        Tom:
        Railroad companies, pipelines, and certain power companies still have eminent domain power. It’s not used often, but it’s there.

      16. Glenn, thanks for the clarification. It makes sense; they can’t go just anywhere. They’re very terrain-constrained.

        That train in Spain
        Is very hill-constrained.

      17. Regardless of who actually spends the money, the money clearly needs to be spent, for Amtrak to achieve it’s goals. So two birds. One track segment.

    5. If you think Sounder running twice every hour can satisfy you, why can’t you just park and ride at Link station. It is not like there is a lot people living with walking distance to Sounder station anyway.

      1. This is a transit blog. Some people, as much as 20% in some census tracts don’t have the luxury of spending 15K on owning a car just to park it next to a train., or can’t drive at all (young and old, with the later demographically growing).

        Plus those parking garages don’t scale very well. Each spot costs upwards of $50,000 to build, and we don’t want to spend our transit dollars that way. At least I don’t.

        The idea is to find places which are very walkable, have a ton of development potential, and are proximate to transit. Make that transit usable (you can get to many destinations and home again in reasonable time, and at most times of day), and those areas explode with housing where owning a car isn’t necessary.

      2. Kent, Auburn, Sumner, Puyallup all have, to a greater or lesser degree, very walkable town centers very near their train stations with reasonably low-priced land that could hold remarkable density with the right incentives and triggers. I argue that usable Sounder (beyond just the Seattle commute) would be one of those triggers. This is something that Jarret Walker never considers. Why would he? Not his job. He’s not a city builder, he’s a transit builder.

      3. Yes, Cam. All-day Sounder might very well increase development around those particular areas. That would easily be consider transit oriented development, or TOD. But so what? Unless you are a developer, why should you care. We could change the zoning in various places in Seattle and see way more development. The people in Seattle would use transit more often (because they are closer to other dense areas). They would be less likely to use a car on a regular basis. When the dust settled and places like Kent or Auburn became small, dense cities they would still be surrounded by miles and miles of sprawl. That means people living there are more likely to feel like they need a car (and are more likely to use one). It is also a lot easier for an agency to provide really good transit.

        So yeah, creating communities based on the Sounder Stations is a laudable idea. But it likely won’t result in cities with a lot of transit use. Those cities sprawl and the ability to go to a different city — quite far away — is simply not that appealing. We can see that on the East Coast or Midwest. Many of the smaller cities grew up before the automobile and thus are more centralized. They are tied together with trains that provide fast, all-day service. Yet they still don’t get that many riders. Again, look at MARC. Before the pandemic it got 40,000 riders. The most popular line is the Penn Line. It has trains that go 125 mph between Baltimore and Washington DC. It has several stops along the way — places that have had their share of TOD (like this office building — https://maps.app.goo.gl/nTessb77g3pobqQu7 or the apartment complex next door). It even connects to a state university in Maryland. Yet with all of that, it carries less than 25,000 riders a day. Again, this is between Baltimore and Washington DC! Baltimore is much bigger than anything in the state of Washington (other than Seattle). Washington DC is much bigger than Seattle. Yet this MARC line — as good as it is — doesn’t carry that many people. This is despite the outstanding transit that exists in Washington DC (that Seattle lacks).

        Of course it would be good to have an all-day Sounder, but you have to put things in perspective. It might spur a little extra development but it will never transform a region. It will never help that many people (and it would likely cost a fortune).

        Proximity matters, a lot.

      4. Half-hourly Sounder like Caltrain is an ideal several of us have promoted, but that’s not realistic when BNSF owns the track and has no incentive to charge a reasonable price, displace freight, or pay for adding a track. The state would have to take an interest and buy the corridor, build the additional track to support Cascades and Sounder, and shift some freight to the UP track. Or come up with some sharing deal and pay BNSF to cooperate.

        Half-hourly Sounder would make trips to Seattle and Tacoma from Kent and Auburn much faster, but you’d still be waiting half an hour for a train, so it doesn’t make mobility as seamless as 10-minute Link would.

        For better or for worse, the city that does have 10-minute Link to its downtown now is Federal Way, so that’s the first place in South King County we should focus on to create a large walkable downtown that many people could live in.

        At KDM station, Kent has promised a significant urban village on the east side of 99, probably mainly housing. Des Moines has offered a couple token TOD buildings on the west side of 99. We should push Des Moines to do more, and for both cities to include more retail/services rather than just housing. That would give people in Federal Way someplace to go on Link shorter than the hour-long trip to downtown Seattle or half hour to Rainier Valley, to meet more of their everyday/regular needs. It’s like how Lynnwood Link luckily goes to north Seattle before downtown. Unfortunately KDM is not north Seattle, but it’s the closest possible thing.

      5. “Yet with all of that, it carries less than 25,000 riders a day. ”

        What are the daily rider estimates from Ballard?

      6. ST hasn’t released revised ridership numbers since the 2022 WSBLE DEIS, but they’re here for reference: https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/14a-wsble-drafteis-appendixn1-transportationtechreport-202201.pdf

        Boardings at new stations on the “preferred alignment” (5th Ave prior to the North/South CID changes; Midtown, Denny, SLU, Seattle Center, Smith Cove, Dravus, and Ballard) were projected to total about 72.5k. A lot of these riders were expected to be poached from current bus riders, but the DEIS projected a net increase 20k new transit riders based on existing travel and development patterns.

      7. MARC looks like largely a freeway alignment, serving a series of park and rides. Even your solitary office building example is basically stuck in the middle of a highway interchange. It’s much more like Link than Sounder, which serves a string of pearls. I would expect much better ridership from Sounder as those downtowns are allowed to blossom.

        I would suspect that the track purchase and upgrades would come in less than half of BLE (and something Amtrak has identified as essential in any case), and the number of riders served might be pretty similar.

        Yes, proximity and network affects matter, all else being equal. But this is that the case here.

        You are maybe saving a few minutes for most riders served by BLE by spending 10s tens of billions.

        You are saving far more time to those in the Kent Valley for spending far less. And it’s serving a catchment of more than a million people, compared to a few 10s of thousands.

        Plus Sound Transit is supposed to be serving the REGION, not building intracity subways.

      8. MARC looks like largely a freeway alignment, serving a series of park and rides.

        You have it backwards. From Wikipedia:

        All three MARC lines date from the 19th century.

        Thus the train came before the freeway. Decades and decades before the freeway. But yes, the freeway was built close to the train line. In some cases, it was adjacent to it. This is not unlike, well South Sounder. Seriously, it is quite similar.

        You are also missing the point. There is just no way that South Sounder can come close to offering what even one MARC line offers. Thus there is no way it can come anywhere that ridership level — even though it isn’t that high. Even in cities that have outstanding regional transit don’t have that many people riding it.

        Regional rail is nice but in the grand scheme of things it really isn’t that important. Just a minor improvement in bus service within Seattle would make a much bigger difference to way more people than high quality regional rail would.

      9. You are also missing the point. AS I SAID, yes proximity matters.

        But the comparison you should be, if you are doing a cost benefit analysis is, how to spend 20 billion so that the most riders benefit, on how big that benefit is.

        In this particular situation, I am arguing spending the money would get us more bang for our buck in terms of both number of people who use transit as well as the number of people who actually decrease their transit time substantially (i.e. 40 minute shorter trip to Seattle rather than a 4 minute shorter trip).

        I am arguing, BECAUSE ALL OTHER THINGS ARE NOT EQUAL in this situation, the money is better spent on the Sounder than in Ballard.

        (also, sorry about my name auto-populating to my kid’s name above.)

      10. Just a minor improvement in bus service within Seattle would make a much bigger difference to way more people than high quality regional rail would.

        Exactly. In basically every case, because there are so many more people and so much more density in Seattle proper, any transit improvement inside the city will have a much greater impact if your merit function involves number of people served. Even when you only consider a subset of people for equity reasons, like those who are cost burdened (which I ran the numbers on in a sibling comment), it’s pretty clear that investment in Seattle is much more worthwhile if you care about maximizing the number of people served.

        This is even before normalizing for cost (i.e, riders/$), in which case urban bus service and even the more expensive tunneled urban light rail come out on top.

        I get that it’s not very pleasant to admit if you’re attached to these places, but e.g. Kent and Auburn and even Tacoma will probably always be a worse transit investment on most standard metrics compared to most parts of Seattle. This is only a relevant consideration when the funding is zero-sum, which is often not true for tax district reasons, of course.

      11. You are saving far more time to those in the Kent Valley for spending far less. And it’s serving a catchment of more than a million people, compared to a few 10s of thousands.

        That is ridiculous. There aren’t a million people next to the South Sounder stations. If you take out Seattle you are probably talking about a few thousand. Yes, those neighborhoods could grow but the fundamentals aren’t that strong. South Sounder mostly serves sprawling suburbs that are highly car-dependent. It’s strongest potential station is Tacoma, and yet it only serves the outskirts of it (not the downtown area). Like several of the other stations, the Tacoma Dome is very close to the freeway(s) and a large industrial area. It would be as if the Sounder line ran to SoDo. Oh, and because of the way the tracks are laid out, the train is not particularly quick (compared to an express bus). That is why I think the only way it gets significantly better is if they build high(er) speed rail. If the trains can go 100 mph it would make a big difference.

        I don’t know why people get obsessed with the whole “string of pearls” idea. Maybe it is our love of suburbia. They see a system like the S-Bahn and think “That’s it! That is what we need, right there.” They ignore the fact that within the core of the system there is outstanding transit. Not only that, but it is trips within that urban core that dominate ridership. The train lines outside are just a bonus — a cherry on top. Even in regions that really do have strong, highly centralized small cities (like in Germany) those regional trips make up a tiny portion of the ridership.

        This is a key point. As the train gets farther and farther away from a city, it really doesn’t matter what you do. Yes, it is really stupid to follow the freeway from south of SeaTac. But it is not nearly as stupid as the huge gap in service between Rainier Beach and Tukwila. Or for that matter, running down MLK instead of Rainier. The same is true in the north end. The train should have cut over to Aurora and gone north from there. But you still wouldn’t get that many riders in Snohomish County. It is just too far north. No matter what you do, the ridership is going to be dominated by trips within the urban core. That is why the best thing to do is to focus on that.

        Yes, I know that Sound Transit is focused on regional transit. But that is one of the big problems. Regional transit has its value (just like intercity transit). But it should have a much smaller budget. In a region like Puget Sound it would mean running lots of regional buses and some commuter rail. Sounder has some value, but the subsidy (even for South Sounder) is very high. That means we are spending a lot to move relatively few people. If we ran the trains more often it would get worse. That’s because we rent the tracks and the more we use them, the more constrained the tracks are. Thus going from say, 10 runs a day to 20 times a day doesn’t cost twice as much. It costs more than twice as much. At the same time, you don’t double your ridership. Thus the subsidy per rider goes way up. At some point you gotta ask — why are we doing this when the regional buses suck so much? Just as with Link, at some point it makes sense to not worry about the trains so much and focus on the buses.

        For example, consider a bus that runs express from Auburn and Kent to Seattle every fifteen minutes. It isn’t quite as good as a train that runs that often, but it is still very fast (when there is no traffic). Since it would complement Sounder, it wouldn’t run when traffic is really bad (it would also take advantage of HOV/HOT lanes when available). It is likely much cheaper — even for those riders — to run the buses. But wait, what if you don’t live by the station. What if you aren’t heading anywhere near another station (or Seattle). What if you are making this sort of trip: https://maps.app.goo.gl/BU645cWgthuNPBes5. This is a trip from the census block with the highest density in Kent to a major hospital. This is not an obscure trip. Why should we spend a fortune on trains when trips like that vastly outnumber them?

      12. Yes, I agree. And you are not telling me anything I don’t know.

        You are also talking past what I actually said.

      13. In other words, yes, it may not make sense to spend 5 or 10 billion buying the tracks and improving Sounder.

        But I suggest it makes even less sense spending 20 Billion on whatever travesty BLE is. It helps so few people improve their transit by such tiny increments that could be largely achieved by teeny tiny fractions of investment in improving bus right of way the the project is absurd on it’s face.

        But if we are dead-set on spending 10 or 20 million, Sounder is the better way to spend the money.

      15. [Ballard Link] helps so few people improve their transit by such tiny increments that could be largely achieved by teeny tiny fractions of investment in improving bus right of way the the project is absurd on it’s face.

        That is ridiculous. Again, look at the facts. The last time they looked at proposed ridership, Ballard Link was the most cost effective project in terms of ridership per dollar spent (https://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2016/04/06/youve-got-50-billion-for-transit-now-how-should-you-spend-it/). Now obviously you’ve got major cost overruns and adjusted ridership estimates but if anything, they have simply bolstered the case for Ballard Link compared to every other project in ST3. Transit in the city has been way more resilient than transit to the suburbs. Now also consider time saved. The fact is, we run buses to Ballard. All the time. It is one of the busiest corridors in terms of ridership per mile in our system. It is a proven corridor with lots of riders. A light rail line would save those riders a lot of time. Again, look at the facts.

        Now consider the Sounder corridor. We don’t know what all-day ridership is because we don’t run buses there. The exception being Tacoma, but it unlikely riders would prefer the slower trip on Sounder given so many take the bus during peak (when Sounder is usually faster). There is just no reason to assume it somehow leapfrogs to be the best value. Not even close.

    6. On the original post, I think the implied idea that I’ll paraphrase as “it is worse to serve higher work from home areas” is ultimately irrelevant. That’s because there are many other factors at play:

      1. Employment locations are more flexible than ever before. So any employer at any time can change the work from home approach — and they often do. It’s pretty silly to plan and build anything based on this very temporary work site assumption.

      2. Using transit for commuting anywhere is heavily affected by parking charges. While a certain percent of working people do not access to a car, even those with a car will choose transit if workplace parking is too expensive — perhaps even more so than modest traffic congestion is.

      3. Work trip length matters too. The further the trip, the more willing a commuter will consider a mode change on a trip (either driving to a parking garage to ride a train, or take a feeder bus to a train). Short distance commutes (like from Ballard) and long distance commutes (like from Auburn) involve very different approaches to serving them with transit — and the shorter the distance the more a transit service will carry non-work trips. Rail transit is just too expensive to create and provide unless it’s carrying more than work trips.

      4. Work schedules and time of day also heavily influence transit use. It’s a big factor to why the new ST overnight service is important for SeaTac workers or why many commuter rail lines around the country are increasingly struggling.

      The concept of peak direction, standard white collar work hour, on-site employees as the primary rail transit market to serve justified modern transit investments for the past 60 years has been a foundation of many rail transit projects — but that market is less and less important than it used to be and the overall trend is not reversing anytime soon.

      The most resilient strategy nowadays seems to point to creating rail lines than can be reasonably frequent in both directions most of the day and evening and for stations to have a variety of destination functions close to them.

      That’s what we are mostly achieving with Link (even though it’s not going places we think it should or shouldn’t). To retrofit Sounder to be a similar operation seems unattainable given major structural obstacles — from track ownership to destination activity density to commute trends like work from home and Flex Time. It’s not technically impossible; it’s just questionably a good public investment strategy.

      1. I think sounder frequency upgrades and extending it Olympia would be huge for students commuting between different universities.

      2. The most resilient strategy nowadays seems to point to creating rail lines than can be reasonably frequent in both directions most of the day and evening and for stations to have a variety of destination functions close to them.

        Yes, but for a city like ours it very important to improve buses as well. They will always carry more riders than the trains. Integrating the buses and trains is also very important. We just aren’t going to have the money to serve most of the places with trains (like they do in New York). Even in New York (one of the few cities in North America with substantially more subway riders than bus riders) the buses are extremely important.

      3. My words admittedly were ambiguous. I meant to more clearly say that I think any rail investments should be made to ultimately operate in both directions at a reasonable frequency — as opposed to rail projects that are only able to run in only one direction at peak hours. That’s because of the expenses and maintenance of the tracks and ballast underneath as well as other things. I certainly did not mean to imply that buses were a poor strategy .

      4. I certainly did not mean to imply that buses were a poor strategy .

        Nor did I imply that is what you meant. I just wanted to make sure that people understand how important the buses are. I realize you get that, but I’m not sure everyone does. With so much money being spent on the trains — and so many tough and very important decisions being made — it is easy to think that buses are secondary. They aren’t. Nothing is more important to transit — in this region — than the buses. The more the trains help the buses, the better. The type of rail service you suggest (all-day frequent service to stations with a multitude of uses) can also enhance the buses considerably. Much more so than a train that simply replaces peak-hour commuter service.

  2. Dropping the Richards Road station would just amplify how silly the 4 Line is. Even if you connect it at South Bellevue, that means just two new stations – Eastgate and Issaquah – for seven miles of track! And seven miles that existing freeway express buses already serve well! Just run more buses!

    1. Really? Are you proposing to eliminate Richards Road station and redirect the 4 Line to South Bellevue rather than running along I-405?

      I used to think this way, but now I feel like instead of running it to South Kirkland, we should run it west to Seattle via I-90. The 4 Line would share stations with the 2 Line at Mercer Island and Judkins Park. Once it reaches Seattle we can build new pocket tracks at Westlake for lay over.

      What I’m saying is that we don’t cut Richards Road station and we re-route the 4 Line west to Seattle rather than going up I-405 to East Main, then overlapping the 2 Line, then splitting from the 2 Line to serve South Kirkland. I can see South Kirkland’s ridership being poor, but the Seattle re-route getting more ridership. An Eastside connector should be a BRT line and not a light rail line.

      Benefits:
      – We connect all four light rail lines (excluding the T Line) in Seattle.
      – We save money.
      – Ridership is higher.
      – We give commuters a faster ride to Seattle rather than transferring at East Main.
      – You create a grid system.

      Riders who wish to go up to Bellevue and Kirkland can take a new BRT line I propose from Kirkland TC to Richards Rd/Eastgate via South Kirkland P&R, Bellevue Way, Bellevue TC, South Bellevue Station, and I-90.

      With my proposal, you also prevent overlap in the Downtown Bellevue tunnel which already makes trains slow and we don’t want to slow them down even more with another line. You also don’t have to close a trail just to build light rail tracks.

      Bellevue already has two stride lines and a light rail line, another light rail line would be welcome but I just feel like two Stride lines and a light rail line is enough.

      1. With my proposal you can also add more trains to the I-90 bridge, which means congestion could be relieved when people become more aware of light rail when they see more trains zoom by while sitting in their cars. The I-90 bridge also deserves another line, I mean people spent YEARS designing it with design challenges, building it with building challenges… Those twenty years should pay off.

        Two lines would operate on the floating bridge, one continues to Issaquah and the other goes up to Bellevue and Redmond rather than having one coming east go up to Kirkland and another coming west go up to Bellevue and Redmond…

        You create a grid system as I said.

      2. I’m not proposing that, but the City of Issaquah is (in the second link).

        My own thoughts on the 4 Line are that we should drop it and instead build a Richard Road freeway station for the express buses. Maybe we can have a 156th Ave freeway station too, to serve the east edge of Eastgate; we’d still be saving a whole lot of money over Link.

      3. Sorry, I didn’t read the article. I was just assuming it was your proposal.

      4. > We connect all four light rail lines (excluding the T Line) in Seattle.
        uhh this also max caps all the light rail lines to 1/4th of their capacity if you have all 4 branches in one tunnel. the 3 branch idea with west seattle was already bad enough now to do 4 branches.

      5. I have a solution regarding tunnel capacity, it’s just that you guys blow up over it and I’m not going to share the solution ANY TIME SOON.

      6. Link Line 4 needs a round of refinement generally.

        The concept was quickly added into ST3, but the actual alignment and station areas were never fully vetted. It’s just a line drawn following ERC and then I-90 with several stops at existing park and ride facilities. It lacked a comprehensive vision.

        Since it’s not going to an EIS soon, it’s a good time for interests to work together to make it be as great as possible. The way it interfaces with 2 Line, the walkability around every station, the land use and destinations near every station all need significant study and debate. Bellevue and Issaquah should work together to develop a unified concept for the corridor with ST and Metro and WSDOT.

        Some key refinements need to be considered:

        – The station in Factoria needs careful placement.
        – The station at Eastgate should be north of I-90 and Bellevue College is the big destination. Maybe it should have two stations.
        – The South Bellevue transfer point needs objective assessment, and the way that tracks meet south of East Msin may be a very messy and environmentally problematic setup. It may be less environmentally damaging to cross Mercer Slough at I-90 rather than running along side it and then crossing Mercer Slough south of SE 8th as it curves.
        – Issaquah has already proposed moving the station. A question should be whether Issaquah should have two stations — one for commuting to external destinations and one creating a destination (like Redmond).
        – The deferred Lakemont station and its development potential needs addressing.
        – The technology may need to be driverless. That change would allow for frequent trains, shorter stations and maybe single track segments over environmentally sensitive areas like Mercer Slough. The change may make two stations for Eastgate and Issaquah viable. In the other hand, a technology compatible with 2 Line can open up considering a second crosslake line rathercthan running into Downtown Bellevue.
        – Finally, it may be necessary to drop that South Kirkland station. Metro is planning a parallel RapidRude line to Downtown Bellevue that was not known when ST3 was developed. One option should be to spend the money to instead enhance the 520 corridor bus stations between Redmond Technology and UW, for example.

        These issues are all intertwined. There is no referendum deadline. Creative interests can create something profound. But it’s not going to happen if these topics are not addressed holistically. Instead, we will get what got slapped quickly into ST3 — and it’s pretty suboptimal and an outrageous cost for the resulting forecasted ridership. I would even recommend that 4 Line be scrapped for BRT unless it can be significantly enhanced with a comprehensive station area siting and land use strategy including walkability and land use .

      7. I agree that there needs to be some serious BRT work.

        Al, if you were to drop the South Kirkland station… Where would the 4 Line end?

        I can also see a provisional 4 Line extension to Issaquah Highlands with a station near Gilman Blvd. The extension would be similar to the Downtown Redmond Link Extension as it’s within a city, is short, and only opens two new stations.

        But a question for you… Do you agree that we should send the 4 Line to Seattle rather than South Kirkland? A local eastside connector would function better as a BRT line than a light rail line. The Seattle redirection would also be in favor of commuters aka 554 riders.

        Here’s what I’m proposing:
        – Run the 4 Line, but instead of going north to Bellevue/Kirkland, continue west towards Seattle via the I-90 bridge, sharing stations with the 2 Line. With that said ST should also consider a provisional extension to Issaquah Highlands.
        – Run a new RapidRide line with the G Line’s standards (center running lanes to be exact) from Kirkland TC to Richards Road Station. The line would take over the 250 from Kirkland TC to South Kirkland P&R, then continue south on Bellevue Way, it would deviate to Bellevue TC on it’s way to South Bellevue Station, once it reaches South Bellevue Station it would head east on I-90 to Richards Road Station… Congrats, you technically have already built half of the 4 Line.
        – Greatly restructure bus routes in the eastside… But oh wait, there’s not much to do! With the K Line, the new RapidRide line, and the 4 Line redirection… We basically covered the meat and potatoes!!!

      8. Certainly it should be extended east with stations in central Issaquah and the Highlands P&R, for the same reason Tacoma Dome Link should be extended to downtown Tacoma. Because that’s where the most pedestrians, jobs, residents, and destinations are. Just serving a future urban center in northwest Issaquah is not really “serving” Issaquah that well, in the same way Totem Lake and the 85th Stride station don’t serve the bulk of Kirkland’s people or destinations and we need something for downtown Kirkland.

      9. “Al, if you were to drop the South Kirkland station… Where would the 4 Line end?”

        Let me say that I look at things from the perspective of a rider. If I’m coming from Seattle, what’s optimal?

        Obviously a second crosslake line is the best. But the trains would need to be dealt with in Seattle. Whether that’s to West Seattle, into DSTT2 or a Metro 8 subway or just dead ended, it would need resolution. But there’s just no plan or money to make that happen.

        The next best thing — and the seemingly affordable thing — is to have a train car sitting at South Bellevue Link station that offers a quick escalator transfer to an automated train that’s running every 4 or 5 minutes. As a rider, if I can’t sit in my train car seat all the way to Issaquah from Seattle, I’d like to just step out of the train, go quickly up the escalator, and see and then board an idling driverless train when I could sit right back town inside a heated or cooled train car. With only a few minutes seated there, the train would then leave for Issaquah.

        What the current plan is, a rider would have to ride to East Main, cross over two active Link tracks to the opposite side platform (because ST stupidly didn’t build a center platform at East Main) and then STAND IN THE ELEMENTS waiting for the Issaquah train. So not only is going to East Main adding several minutes of travel time on Link, but it adds transfer hassle and by having drivers it adds wait time too!

        *****

        Then there’s the rider going between Redmond or Bellevue and Issaquah. If 4 Line goes to Seattle, that rider probably would need to ride to Mercer Island and then ride back out to Issaquah. With the scenario I described, someone from Redmond or Bellevue would have an identical transfer experience as someone from Seattle would have.

        A South Bellevue transfer to and from an automated train is a great way to offer good connectivity to both Seattle as well as Bellevue and Redmond.

      10. If Issaquah wants the 4 Line and Kirkland doesn’t, I say the 4 Line should head across SR-520, cross over UW Station and head west to Ballard from there. There’s some crayon mapping work for you!

      11. @Scooby

        A line from Issaquah can’t get extended to Seattle due to capacity issues on the floating bridge as well as capacity issues through the downtown tunnel.

        My understanding is that the floating bridge can only support one train in each direction every 6 minutes at maximum. Bellevue-Seattle is already scheduled to run every 8 minutes. Adding an Issaquah line would mean 12 minute frequencies at best.

      12. > But a question for you… Do you agree that we should send the 4 Line to Seattle rather than South Kirkland?

        I guess the 4 line could just continue to redmond a bit odd but it’s fine

      13. or alternatively it could just go to wilburton then head towards the east base and just turn around using the crossovers

      14. In answer to Scooby’s question, if there is a line to Issaquah it should follow Line 2 to Microsoft and turn back there. Having five minute service between Bel-Red and downtown Bellevue would be a very good thing.

        Grant, managing a turnback inside that trench would be difficult. It might be necessary just to run to end-of-track in Redmond Downtown.

      15. “If Issaquah wants the 4 Line and Kirkland doesn’t, I say the 4 Line should head across SR-520, cross over UW Station”

        That’s one of ST’s long-term alternatives. The Issaquah line could be extended west to UW, or north to central Kirkland and Bothell, or both.

      16. So if I understand correctly, Scooby, you are basically proposing a branch of East Link, with one branch heading to Issaquah and the other doing what it does now. I see several problems with that:

        1) Getting to Downtown Bellevue from Eastgate or Issaquah is no faster than it is today.

        2) As jd mentioned, a branch means fewer trains on the existing East Link line. At best you would be running trains every 12 minutes between Downtown Bellevue and Seattle.

        3) It would still cost a fortune.

        4) It wouldn’t add much value for Issaquah.

        Think about a typical rider from Issaquah. Someone at the Highlands. They will soon be able to take an express bus from that neighborhood to Mercer Island. It will stop once along the way, at the Eastgate freeway station. Now, instead, they will take a bus to some other station. They don’t save any time for any of their potential trips.

        Issaquah to Seattle is really not a problem. The buses will be able to serve Mercer Island just as well as they could serve a station in Issaquah. If the only stations along the way are also served by the buses then the super-expensive train doesn’t add anything. Just run more buses to Mercer Island. That would be much cheaper and much better for riders.

      17. My Sim City fantasy would be to have the 4-line cross into Seattle and become Ballard Link. A one-seat ride from Issaquah to downtown, SLU/Uptown (oh, and Ballard itself). One transfer to the airport. Versus two transfers, and one of them out of the way, to go from Issaquah to SLU/Uptown or the airport.

      18. Ridership on this Issaquah line isn’t going to be that great.

        What I have suggested in the past is
        1) complete the wye just south of CID so Eastside trains can go south (this also allows the center track at CID to go away).
        2) run the line as a West Seattle – Issaquah line.

        It still means 1 transfer to downtown Seattle, but it also means 1 transfer to SeaTac. As it combines two lines with less than estimated 5,000 daily riders, they could both be designed for single car trains, making the stations much less expensive, and correctly sized for the estimated ridership.

      19. Yeah, ridership wouldn’t be so great if it was CID to Issaquah or WSE to Issaquah. Perhaps once Tacoma Dome Link is open, we can run the 2 and 4 lines every 12 minutes, and the 1 Line can run every 6 minutes… That combines 3 minute service from Lynnwood to IDC (which all three lines would overlap). Then the three split past IDC, one goes to Bellevue/Redmond, the second to Issaquah, and the third to Tacoma.

        This is based on my proposal and not ST.

        12 minutes on the eastside wouldn’t be so great, but it’s at least something… Speaking of how low the ridership on the 2 Line stations are (I can expect ridership to be like Rainier Valley outside of Downtown Redmond, maybe Redmond Tech, Bellevue Downtown, and maybe also South Bellevue once crosslake is open), it makes sense. I also expect 4 Line ridership to be semi-low because of poor ridership I expect on the I-90 corridor.

      20. “You create a grid system as I said.”

        When some places plan a regional rapid transit system that only contains four to six lines, it shouldn’t be nothing like creating a grid system.
        It should be creating a system that maximizes one-seat ride on busiest corridors whatever it takes even if it means it will look nothing like a grid.

        When you have 15-20 lines, then you create a grid system because that’s when you truly have the resource to build a “network” rather than just some arteries.

      21. run the line as a West Seattle – Issaquah line.

        Again, this runs into the problem jd mentioned. A branch on the East Side means fewer trains running between Downtown Seattle and Downtown Bellevue (as well as all the other East Link Stations to the east). That is the nature of a branch. You could branch later, but it is the same idea.

        I really think people are missing the big picture here. Folks are trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. Transit between Issaquah and Seattle will be really good once Link goes across the lake. Riders from Issaquah will get on a very fast bus that connects them very well to Mercer Island, which will connect them very quickly to Seattle. A branching train would not be better. Remember, the plan is to have one station in Issaquah itself. This means that if Issaquah Link is built, the vast majority of riders — in Issaquah — will have to detour. Instead of taking a bus to a train running every ten minutes from Mercer Island they take a bus to a train running every twenty minutes from Issaquah. This is worse.

        Give ST some credit. They are at least trying to solve a real problem here (at least on the East Side). It takes a long time to get from Eastgate to Downtown Bellevue, even though they appear connected via freeways. This is the drive from below the transit overpass in Eastgate to the transit overpass in Bellevue. This looks fantastic. There are HOV ramps connected to each overpass. Thus means a bus could probably get from Eastgate to Downtown Bellevue in about five minutes. It is not far from the college, either. That means that riders could get from Bellevue Community College to the main Bellevue Transit Center in about five or six minutes. Except you can’t. You can’t get from the Eastgate ramps to 405. That’s because it puts you in the far left lane and they don’t allow buses to move all the way over to the far right lane in such a short distance. The same thing is true going the other direction. You have to find an alternate way, like this. This is no longer an express. It is about as fast to use the freeways as it is the local roads. Since you are using the local roads you might as well make stops along the way. As a result, riders from Issaquah (or Eastgate or Bellevue Community College) don’t have an express to Downtown Bellevue. They have an express to Mercer Island (and thus a fast trip to Seattle) but not to Downtown Bellevue. This is the problem that Issaquah Link is trying to solve.

        The problem is that they are using a sledge hammer when a thumb tack is better. They are trying to spend a fortune and the result will be much worse for riders. It would be much better if you just connect the HOV lanes of 405 and I-90. That way the buses from Issaquah, Eastgate and Bellevue College can get to Downtown Bellevue very quickly. It means that fewer riders have to transfer and as a result, they get to their destination much sooner.

      22. Just drop the ridiculous 4 Line and make a Kirkland to SeaTac line (which could be extended to Bothell later). It’d be way way more useful. Stride doesn’t even go to the airport but this line can interline with the 1 Line and continue south to Federal Way even.

      23. And with this line, can also add a short segment connecting Renton to Rainier Beach which would add a better connection in that way. And a new extension from Mt. Baker to the UW via Judkins Park, Central District, and Montlake for new trips in that direction.

    2. We have an article coming by an Issaquah official on Issaquah’s proposal. I don’t know the timeline yet. I haven’t looked at the proposal. But if it drops Richards Road/Factoria, that sounds bad and and would remove one of the most productive stations and coverage areas. It would be like Bellevue to Redmond bypassing the Spring District.

      Factoria/Eastgate is a designated growth center and has been since Forward Thrust proposed a line to Issaquah. It’s just that the actual built development has been in walkable, although Factoria has gotten significantly better since I lived in Somerset in the early 80s.

      1. if it drops Richards Road/Factoria, that sounds bad and and would remove one of the most productive stations and coverage areas. It would be like Bellevue to Redmond bypassing the Spring District.

        It is worse than that. Imagine we add both. Imagine we spend the half billion or so to connect the I-90 and 405 HOV lanes. Now we run buses from all over Issaquah to Downtown Bellevue (via Eastgate). While we are at it, might as well run a bus or two through campus to Downtown Bellevue as well (via Eastgate). Now we also build a light rail line that runs along the freeway from Issaquah to Bellevue. Why would anyone use that light rail line? It only serves a subset of the trips the buses do.

        Now consider the original plans again. The Link line goes to Factoria. This means you actually have a trade-off. Now at least you have riders that would prefer the train. Not a lot, but at least some. It is still highly likely that the bus plan would save a lot more riders a lot more time (for a lot less money). But at least the train proposal would get some additional riders.

    3. This. There was an article about moving the “Lakemont” interchange stop west to just east of 150th SE and building a density center there. It makes MUCH more sense, since Lakemont will never be anything other than a quarter-cloverleaf to nowhere. The damned interchange is surrounded by greenbelt.

      Greenbelt is often a very good thing. Not this one.

      1. I recall reading somewhere that the only spot left for new multi-family development near that proposed Lakemont Station is smack in an earthquake risk zone—yeah, that’s a non-starter. Makes way more sense to shift a neighborhood station over near 150th Ave SE instead. Tons of potential there for real growth, not to mention those killer views looking east from high up in Eastgate—especially if high-rises go up. Heck, you could even plop in a new elementary school to replace the old Eastgate one that just closed.

        If planners really wanted to go big—though the single-family homes, hotel, and church property nearby probably aren’t up for grabs right now—it could turn into some cool eco-development tied to fixing the Vasa Creek culvert under the highway. Development could then extend organically eastward through induced demand and relaxed zoning, all the way out to 164th Ave SE about 8 blocks away—where a provisional gondola station could be sited to keep future options open for eventually serving Lakemont via the powerline corridor.

      2. Lakemont interchange should eventually be rebuilt to include a center access HOV lane, at which point a bus stop should be included. Something like the 44th interchange rebuild in Renton, but without parking and ideally funded by WSDOT not ST. It’s a good spot for an HOV ramp, at which point the cost of including a bus stop is tiny.

        For a infill station not a part of an interchange, somewhere around 155th~160th in Bellevue would be great. I call it East Eastgate. The old Bellevue Airfield footprint is now large lot lowrise that can become good TOD.

    4. I’ve long opined that ST extension planning in general has been more about drawings and impact mitigation and capital costs rather than optimizing the investment of building rail.

      At some point, fiscal questions about low performing stations and long segments will happen. Every government service periodically occasionally gets brutal fiscal scrutiny.

      The summary disregard of ridership potential by the ST Board and senior staff is deafening to me. It’s like the Board is drawing an art diagram for an elementary school art night rather than building our future. It’s terribly naive.

      Across the US, many transit agencies are in existential crisis with their operating budgets right now. At some point, Sound Transit will have to face a similar austerity period.

      Not only is ST3 woefully underfanded with capital dollars, but operating dollars will come into play too if more extensions open. All the long-term Link budgeting includes overly optimistic farebox recenue.

      I’m reminded of how BART set up this great system of farebox revenue paying for most of the operations — until Covid happened. Now they’re facing a huge operating revenue crisis and are considering closing 10 stations!

      It’s never too early to develop a ridership generation strategy for each station.

      The one future savior is switching to automated trains. It’s probably the best hope to combat against an inevitable operational fiscal crisis stemming from week ST3 Link ridership.

      1. ST’s ridership generation strategy is to assume its member cities and counties will legalize transit-oriented development around each station.

      2. ST’s ridership generation strategy is to assume its member cities and counties will legalize transit-oriented development around each station.

        Is it? I don’t think there is much of a ridership strategy, really. Building a bunch of stations close to the freeway in suburban areas is a strategy that has failed in the past (https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/economics-of-urban-light-rail-CH.pdf). So whether or not they build there isn’t likely to matter much when it comes to ridership.

      3. At some point, fiscal questions about low performing stations and long segments will happen. Every government service periodically occasionally gets brutal fiscal scrutiny.

        Yep.

      4. Identifying external impacts and mitigating them is what the EIS requires. Otherwise ST might not be doing it.

      5. >I don’t think there is much of a ridership strategy, really.

        Does “assume TOD is built sometime” sound like much of a ridership strategy?

        ST has no real power to generate ridership at existing stations, except maybe by adjusting service levels (unless it’s already operating at maximum service capacity). It also doesn’t seem to have much power to significantly change the routes and station locations presented to voters unless there’s serious political profit (and ridership does not produce political profit). It picks routes and station locations based on a faulty ridership model required by the FTA and gets them approved in the legal record by voters. These same models predict Pinehurst station will garner no net new Link riders. But for Sound Transit’s financial purposes, does ridership really matter? When ST3 is “finished” in the 2040s, it will know how much operations cost and it has the power to maintain its tax base indefinitely to provide that service. Perhaps operations costs will inflate in the 2050s-2060s faster than ST’s tax base, but humans have never been good at solving problems before their time.

      6. Does “assume TOD is built sometime” sound like much of a ridership strategy?

        All else being equal, it is not a bad strategy. It worked in Roosevelt, for example. If they added a station at 23rd & Madison it would be part of the strategy (although it would be focused mostly on bus integration).

        But what I’m saying is that ST doesn’t have a ridership strategy. They don’t care. Their own estimates do not look promising (https://seattletransitblog.com/2019/01/30/link-riders-2040/). They are focused on things like West Seattle Link even though Ballard-to-UW had higher ridership (and higher ridership per dollar). I think they basically ignore every metric their is. They just assume it will all work out, because light rail is really cool.

      7. “ST’s ridership generation strategy is to assume its member cities and counties will legalize transit-oriented development around each station.”

        ST is not willing to push cities and counties into TOD. They have to develop forecasts for the EIS and Federal grants — but they never make discussion topics for the Board.

        In ST3, there are funds for station area walkable connectivity. The thing is though it’s a competitive gift they dole out — and it isn’t much.

        ST could play harder ball with the cities. They could say things like “we won’t begin construction of a station unless our forecasts project at least 2000 boardings a day” and stick to it. But they don’t.

      8. “ST is not willing to push cities and counties into TOD. They have to develop forecasts for the EIS and Federal grants — but they never make discussion topics for the Board.”

        ST doesn’t develop those alone. The cities have to show the zoned capacity exists or is close to approval, otherwise it’s not eligible to base ridership estimates on. Likewise, Metro draws up potential feeder routes and ST incorporates them into the EIS. The issue is those aren’t binding on the cities and Metro, so it doesn’t constrain them from not doing it later.

    5. Dropping the Richards Road station would just amplify how silly the 4 Line is. Even if you connect it at South Bellevue, that means just two new stations – Eastgate and Issaquah – for seven miles of track! And seven miles that existing freeway express buses already serve well! Just run more buses!

      Agreed, although I would at least honor the spirit of the proposal by connecting the HOV lanes of I-405 and I-90. That would mean a bus from Eastgate could get on the freeway (in the HOV lanes) and connect to Bellevue in about five minutes. In other words a trip from Eastgate to Downtown Bellevue would be faster by bus than driving — at noon. Riders from all over Issaquah would also have a fast ride to Downtown Bellevue (and Eastgate). Unlike with Issaquah Link, they wouldn’t have to transfer. Run a few express buses from Downtown Kirkland to Downtown Bellevue and you actually have a system considerably better than the Link proposal. So not only is it cheaper, it is simply better.

      1. The HOV 90/405 direction connection is a great project – but it can happen before or after a Central Issaquah station! It’s useful if it happens before, because the express buses will use it, but if it’s happens after that’s fine too.

        The corridor should be BRT because each key problem can be solve independently.
        1. Connect better to East Link & Bellevue TC; this is the HOV ramp project
        2. Connect better to Factoria. This is a freeway station over Richards Road and/or on 405.
        3. Connect better to Central Issaquah. This is a freeway station right where Issaquah is proposing.

        Projects 1, 2, and 3 can move forward in any order.

    6. The Issaquah mayor makes 2 accurate points.
      1. The best spot for a Central Issaquah station is in the freeway median because the ridership demand will be in both directions, with Costco’s HQ campus anchoring ridership north of I90. As long as the station is at Maple St~Lake Dr, the walkshed should be clear of the Exit 15 Interchange. Issaquah does not need a Link station pulled a few blocks away from the freeway, like in Lynnwood, Highline, or Federal Way, because the freeway is in the middle not edge of the urban center.

      2. Factoria will be difficult/expensive to serve. The rail alignment either needs to cross I90 twice or will serve Factoria poorly.

      Both points underscore that the correct mode for this corridor is BRT. 1) If the station is going to be in the freeway median, rail isn’t any different that a bus lane, and 2) BRT stations can be added as independent projects, investing in the corridor over time, rather than a mega-project that is mostly tied up in building rail ROW; just like Stride 405, the HCT ROW already exists.

      Issaquah should advocate for a BRT project that can move forward quickly with a freeway station in Central Issaquah, including a pedestrian bridge over I90. The initial project doesn’t require any other capital investments; the line should start at Issaquah Highlands TC, stop at Central Issaquah and Eastgate freeway stations, and terminate at MI or S Bellevue Link stations.

      Later, additional infill stations can be added. A important but challenging station is at Richard Road. Other future infill options include Lakemont (the ST3 provisional station), but also SE 37th-ish to serve eastern Eastgate (good TOD opportunity; large parcels from the old airport), or additional Issaquah valley stations at 19th Ave NW (State Park), 4th Av NW or Front, and 3rd Ave NE (Olde Town) … 0.5 station spacing suggests 3 freeway stations to serve Issaquah Valley (again, since it is BRT we can grow from 1 to 2 to 3 over decades, commiserate with Issaquah’s growth). Other than Factoria/Richard Road, these should all be cheap inline freeway stations.

  4. How’s the overlapping lines going weekdays?

    It was wonderful hearing a northbound train depart while I was approaching the elevator, knowing the next one would theoretically come in 5 minutes or less.

    The Westlake arrival displays have 2 on a blue circle now, at least southbound.

    The next arrivals aren’t quite working at the moment. The northbound display said northbound 1 2 minute, 1 8 minutes. But the train that came on 2 minutes was a 2 line, and it’s outside display said “Sound Transit” (the out-of-service message). And inside the destination displays are off and the driver is announcing stations manually. Ridership on this 2 line train is light, as would be expected at the at this time.

    1. It’s difficult to respond when they mix city of Portland, Portland Metro, and statewide numbers.

      Intel alone planned to cut some 15,000 jobs, so that 8,000 number isn’t too surprising.

      1. WE MUST BUILD MORE TRANSIT!!! As they say, every dollar invested in public transportation generates five dollars in economic trade.

      3. “Didn’t even know Intel was in PDX.”

        Technically its out in Hillsboro in the area they refer to as the Silicon Forest, all their offices are either a short bus ride or walk from Fair Complex/Hillsboro Airport, Hawthorne Farm, or Orenco Station.

    2. I’ve been in Portland since 2022 living downtown adjacent taking advantage of living in newer housing in a slightly depressed market. Needless to say the city isn’t like a war zone. Tri-met seems to be making gains on appropriate behavior and I haven’t had concerns riding with my child on weekend excursions. I’m getting Pulsepoint alerts for medical emergencies requiring CPR (likely opiate OD’s) infrequently now and am not seeing as much needles/foil when I’m a pedestrian but there’s still obvious homeless around.

      I commute to an industrial manufacturing employer in the suburbs that’s doing OK due to a very diversified customer base and a strong parts/service business line but we didn’t have a great 2025 and deferred some capital projects. I know Intel, Nike, etc. have had some layoffs. Unlike when I was hired in 2022 recruiting at all levels is getting easier as unemployment is up a bit in the Willamette valley.

      I’m still struggling with affording an upgrade to a two bedroom apartment and am not house hunting with current interest rates.

  6. I would love to see the ticket receipts from sound transit showing how many people paid out of those 200k riders. I bet not even 5%. 600k in revenue gone

    2. It’s just a wild guess.

      Fare ambassadors can’t reach everybody when the trains and platforms are packed. But this is when Link shines as the most effective way to move a huge ton of people simultaneously. The Seahawks probably paid for the extra transit service.

      Turnstyles would take longer to get through, so the lines outside the station would be twice as long, and people would be waiting twice as long to get to the platform. That means people might be waiting two hours.

      Paul V never comments about anything except fare evasion, as if that the only or most important factor about transit. I’ve started moderating them as off-topic in random articles, and a slander against the large percent of people he says don’t pay fares but they do pay fares. I’m leaving it this time because it’s related to the Seahawks parade surge.

      1. By a conservative estimate, a single fare gate can handle 30 people per minute. Link was running every 6 minutes in both directions, so a single fare gate lets in 90 people per train. A 4 car train can hold about 1000 people at crush loads. So we only need about ~11 fare gates to completely fill empty trains. Westlake station’s mezzanine can probably fit about that many on each side (3rd Ave side and 5th Ave side), meaning we’d have double the capacity needed to completely fill trains from empty. So I don’t think waiting would be any longer.

        What would take a lot of time is people trying to buy tickets. Luckily, we are rolling out credit card tap to pay very soon, so that shouldn’t be an issue either.

        I’m skeptical that the Seahawks would have paid ST for service too – I’ll need to see some sources before trusting that guess.

    3. Well I paid. I think most people are honorable transit riders and paid their fares that day.

      I find it rather tacky to suggest that most Puget Sound citizens are so selfish that they wouldn’t. I think the suspicion perspective is a bigger reflection of that person’s personal desire to first want to “cheat the system” or to falsely accuse others of it to validate misguided resentment

      Yes there are those that don’t want to pay. Yes fare gates can become overwhelmed and be bottlenecks to pedestrian flow. There are times when fare enforcement gets suspended. In systems with fare gates, there are times when the operator must turn them off to manage crowds. But attending a community celebration via transit will be part of a positive lifelong memory — and many of those rare or first-time riders will return to using transit again and again, willingly paying fares each time as a flash of the memory of that happy day gives them satisfaction and pride.

    4. I bet not even 5%

      I would take that bet and give you good odds. But then I don’t gamble much anymore. I used to in high school (and made decent money) but I hate to lose more than I like to win. In this case I would make an exception, just for the joy of beating someone with such hubris.

  7. Why are they re-hanging trolley wire along Madison east of Broadway, where no trolley lines currently go? Meanwhile the 2 and 12 remain diesels because of a lack of a teeny bit of wire to replace, or a turn switch to be added, and the 48 could be electrified with just a few wire gaps filled. Unless they have decided to reroute a current line, most of the replaced wire on Madison will go unused. What is the plan that I’m missing?

      1. The 2 bus does not serve Madison. Eastbound from downtown it serves Seneca, then at 12th (the infamous “butterfly” intersection) it crosses Madison to continue east on Union. It is on Madison for about a block. The replaced wire on Madison extends from Broadway to 19th, most of which has no current bus route that could be served by a trolley. The only regular service on the Capitol Hill part of Madison is the G line, and a bit of the 60 bus. So I’m just curious about what’s afoot with this wire.

      2. @peter

        mhmm im not sure then. might just be due to federal project regulations to restore what was taken down on madison, they have to reinstall the trolley wires?

        or maybe some future plan for the route 2?

      3. If Metro were going to reroute the 2, it would surely make the decision before installing trolley wire. Especially since it has taken years to install wire it already knows it needs: restoring the 2, 12, 49, and 70, route 48 electrification, the once-upon-a-time plan to move the 3 and 4 to Yesler (which has since been canceled), the Henderson Street segment to allow the 7 to reach Rainier Beach station.

        Metro tried to split the 2 two or three times in the RapidRide C, D, and E restructures and in the recession cuts in 2012-2014. Loud opposition — more than any other route I’ve seen — caused it to withdraw the proposal, which had cascading impacts on other route changes like the 3, 4, 11, 12, and 49, which were also withdrawn.

        Later Metro Connects had a plan to move the 2 to Pine (a Pine-12th-Union route). That would have had similar opposition, and Metro didn’t even offer it in the U-Link, Northgate Link, or RapidRide G restructures. Instead the 12 was moved to Pine, probably to save 19th Avenue from losing bus service (the second-biggest thing that generated opposition throughout the 2010s), and to avoid provoking opposition about modifying the 2.

      4. I saw that wire yesterday and wondered what it could be for. Best I could come up with was a wire to get the 2 and 12 back to base without having to go downtown.

  8. “Metro and Sound Transit could start allocating funding more equitably.”

    They have been. Both Metro, Sound Transit, and all the city and county governments took a sharp turn toward equity in 2020 and never looked back. That’s why or partly why:
    – southeast Seattle has so much added frequency (7, 36, 50, 60, 106, 107)
    – RapidRide H was accelerated
    – the Northgate Link restructure may have lost some hours to southeast Seattle/South King County (the route 20/61/75 issues) (although I doubt it did — the driver shortage just swallowed the proposed service)
    – South King County has as much frequency as it does
    – RapidRide I is the next RapidRide to be built
    – RapidRide 36 and 150 are in the priority tiers for the next round of RapidRides after the J, K, and R.
    – South King County is the only area with night owls besides Seattle-funded routes and RapidRide A and E. This includes ST 574 and routes in Kent and Auburn.
    – The 594 etc are continuing to downtown Seattle.
    – ST Express’s planned night owl network.
    – Equity areas around 156th in Bellevue, in Issaquah, and in Snoqualmie, that are driving some of the decisions on routes there.

  9. It’s silly, but the roundup is missing this Stranger bit on a new bus route Wordle-type game. You can play it at https://www.routle.city/king_county_metro

    In a city with less weird topography and/or a grid-based system where the route shapes are more ambiguous, I think intermediate guesses would be a lot more strategic as a way to localize a route, but in Seattle they mostly just eliminate the route you guessed, which makes the game a bit more trivial but still fun.

  10. We shouldn’t be shrinking the elevators, not unless the building is short enough for firemen to be comfortable taking a stretcher up and down the stairs. I live on the fifth floor as someone both with a large motorized wheelchair and who has been carried out on a stretcher with a condition that made bending my body extremely painful. Elevators that fit stretchers in them need to stay. Not every emergency situation can be solved without a stretcher. If they could, and emergency wheelchairs could take their place, why would stretchers still exist?

    1. Yes, there are accessibility issues with smaller elevators. The Urbanist article says the smaller elevators would only be allowed in small apartment buildings which are already allowed to be built with no elevator, but 6-floor walk-ups are a hard sell.

  11. The copper wire thieves strike again; East Link is still shut down after 17 hours.

    One more example for why I support duplicative bus routes. Opening some sort of light rail isn’t enough; we need to keep them until we get an actually-reliable light rail.

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