Reminders & Updates:
- Simulated Service of the 2 Line west of Lake Washington has resumed. Northerners rejoice. The Crosslake Connection of the 2 Line opens on March 28.
- Downtown Transit Tunnel Closure Mar. 21-22: Link service between Capitol Hill to Stadium will be replaced by shuttle buses next weekend for scheduled maintenance.
Local News:
- No transit measure for King County in 2026, but the Council will likely implement a 0.1% sales tax hike for roadway maintenance, which currently has no funding (The Urbanist).
- A state bill directly authorizing 75-year bonds is dead, but an amendment to the state’s transportation funding policies might give Sound Transit the authority it’s hoping for (The Urbanist).
- Bellevue wants to know if residents agree with dropping speed limits 5 mph on most city streets (Seattle Bike Blog).
- Sound Transit should leverage the vast popularity of light rail expansion to get laws and policies changed before cutting ST3 projects (Op-Ed; The Urbanist).
- King County Metro recorded over 334,000 boardings on Feb. 11, the Seahawks Victory Parade day (Metro Matters). Metro reports last February’s average weekday served about 265,000 boardings.
- SDOT is once again accepting applications to volunteer on the various advisory boards (SDOT Blog)
- Seattle Mayor Wilson has proposed legislation to speed up construction of tiny house villages, an early step toward delivering on a campaign promise for 1,000 new shelters in 2026 (The Seattle Times, $). Erica C. Barnett reflects on the consequences of abandoning “Housing First” (PubliCola).
Other News and Commentary:
- New trolleybuses are arriving in Vancouver, BC (Urban Transport Magazine).
- Why has the USA mostly built light rail while China builds subways? (Reece Martin)
- Global transit advocacy group explores how cables cars and gondolas have been implemented in France (UIPT News).
- A former deputy commissioner at the NYC Dept. of Homeless Services argues that a mix of permanent supportive housing and rental assistance is the only real solution (New York Times, gift link)
- The trouble with QUIMBY(“Quality Urbanism In My Backyard”) and a defense of QUIMBY (Planetizen)
- Gas prices surge as the USA goes to war in the Middle East, again, interrupting the global supply of petroleum (The Seattle Times, $). Continued transition to electric transit is good, but Washington needs a statewide electricity transmission authority to build necessary infrastructure (editorial, Seattle Times, $).
- A federal judge ruling last week preserves NYC’s congestion pricing against Federal meddling; experts say remaining lawsuits against the tolls are likely to fail (The New York Times, gift link)
- The death of the 5-day office commute means BART needs new revenue beyond its foundational commuter-oriented fares, or else it faces total collapse (The New York Times, gift link).
This is an Open Thread. Comments may relate to any transit or land use oriented topic. Uncivil comments will be moderated.
ST managed to avoid any large events at Climate Pledge Arena for September 21-22.
But the handling of crowds going to and from Pacific Northwest Ballet (McCaw Hall at Seattle Center, with lots of patrons used to taking the monorail from and to Westlake) and Alvin Ailey Dance Theater (at the Paramount Theatre) will likely see surges of riders being directed to the Westlake shuttle stop.
The largest surge will be before and after their 7:30 Saturday performances. The Sunday matinee performances start an hour apart. PNB also has a Saturday matinee performance.
Messaging can do a lot of the work, like sending out a press release in addition to the alerts, encouraging dance fans to arrive early (which may also prompt some to consider the earlier available performances that have not sold out), and pointing out the other available Metro routes.
Signage and staff at stations should not be shy about pointing out the other Metro routes to and from Capitol Hill.
But even with good messaging, surging shuttles between Capitol Hill and Westlake will likely be needed, particularly for the Saturday night event overlap, and particularly getting fans *to* the events on time.
The events themselves should be prepared with their own patience, to start late. Just don’t announce any plan to start late.
March 21-22, not September. Doh!
Speaking of Seattle Center, one thing I’ve always wished for, that will probably never happen, is a bus connecting it to the U district via the more direct Eastlake-Fairview route, rather than the roundabout path through Interbay and Fremont that the 32 uses. Perhaps this bus could even continue down Broad and serve the waterfront and ferry terminal.
The problem, of course, is that there is no way to pay for it without taking service away from existing routes, and a large chunk of the service would duplicate the 70, on its Eastlake to downtown route, and such a route cannot replace the 70 because you still have to connect Eastlake to SLU and downtown.
If such a route existed, it would make it lot easier to get to Seattle Center events from a lot of neighborhoods, including Eastlake, the U district, and any non-Link corridors with buses to the U-district. But, I could see such a route scoring poorly in the equity metrics, as most Seattle Center events are expensive enough that anyone attending them can easily afford parking or Uber, and the rent at homes that would be served along the way is not cheap.
Anyway, one can dream.
One thing I’ve always wished for, that will probably never happen, is a bus connecting it to the U district via the more direct Eastlake-Fairview route, rather than the roundabout path through Interbay and Fremont that the 32 uses.
I know a planner who has suggested a UW to Uptown express. It hasn’t gone anywhere. I think the best plan in the near future is a faster (and more frequent) 8 along with the 70 (and future J Line). This would also work with a future Boren/SLU/Roy* route. Thus you would have two ways to connect to the J Line if you are at Queen Anne & Mercer. Of course if you are right in the Seattle Center then the monorail/Link combination is probably the best bet. That is a fair amount of backtracking but given the speed and frequency that might be the best option.
*Theoretically the bus could go on Mercer but I think Roy would be better.
A faster or more frequent 8 would help, but it’s not really a substitute. The issue is, it’s not just the transfer, but the combination of the transfer overhead, out of the way travel, and walking further, on top of Denny being slow and the 8 not being frequent at the times that evening events typically end. In practice, the best option ends up being to just take the 70 to Roy and walk a mile, but the transit system should be able to do better than that.
Yes, I get that Seattle has a ton of unmet transit needs, and that this one is not highest on the priority list, but it is also true that a good transit should be well funded enough for routes like this to be above the cut line.
There is also a separate issue that it’s not easy to get there through increased taxes, as taxes for transit are already quite high. We need a structural way to dramatically reduce operating costs, but it’s not clear how to do that. Maybe, someday, it will become possible through bus automation, although I’m skeptical. I think, in practice, taxis, personal cars, and delivery trucks will get automated long before buses do, as any attempt to automate buses will be strenuously opposed by driver unions, disability advocates, etc.
UW to Uptown is like 25 minutes on the Link-Monorail trip. A direct local bus wouldn’t make the trip any faster.
Per capita spending on transit in Seattle metro is like $700 a year, which is high for the US but pitifully low in international terms. The issue isn’t really that taxes are too high, it’s more that the taxes that pay for transit in WA are regressive
The issue isn’t really that taxes are too high, it’s more that the taxes that pay for transit in WA are regressive
And even then the taxes are too low. Scandinavian countries have a Value Added Tax which is quite similar to a sales tax. It is around 25%. This is on top of income taxes. Basically they have high taxes (across the board) and a lot of people are better off.
asdf2,
yes, this was discussed in the late 1990s. Route 8 was first implemented in 1995; its frequency was improved in 2009. in fall 1998, Route 74 was extended to Uptown via Aurora Avenue North. During the I-695 crisis, the extension was deleted. In 2000, Metro got more sales tax authority to replace part of the MVET revenue stream. The connection was restored but via Route 30 via Fremont and Westlake. The SDOT Mercer Street project destroyed the Route 30 pathway and the Route 8 reliability by congesting Denny Way. in fall 2012, around the D Line and Route 40, Route 32 was provided between Uptown and the U District. Route 32 is a slower direct connection than its predecessors, routes 74 and 30. With Capitol Hill Link station and Route 8, there may be a better one-transfer connection with Wilson BAT lanes on Denny Way.
“The SDOT Mercer Street project destroyed the Route 30 pathway and the Route 8 reliability by congesting Denny Way.”
Hasn’t Denny Way always been congested? Especially with the SLU highrise offices that were built starting in the late 2000s. What does the Mercer Way project have to do with that? Are there people who used to drive on Mercer Street that are now driving on Denny Way? Why would they do that?
I think if you expect a surge at a PNB show you will be disappointed. McCaw Hall holds fewer than 3000 people.
In my experience, while I always take the monorail to PNB, it really doesn’t seem like anyone else does. I’m pretty sure most of the audience drives there.
There are indeed ca. 3K parking slots at Seattle Center. $15 for more than 2 hours, which most people going to an event at McCaw Hall can afford.
If just 1k of McCaw Hall event-goers get there and back via light rail + bus/monorail, that is still ca. 13 full artic shuttle buses or 10 full double-talls each way.
The Paramount Theatre (capacity 2.8K) does not have its own parking. I have seen the phalanx of patrons who head for Westlake when a full event lets out.
What utter insanity. It’s not like “find[ing] more money” means, “a Billion here, a Billion there…”. No. There are thirty-five of them to “find”! Does Robert Cruikshank believe that there are Billion Bushes growing somewhere in the Sound Transit Service Area? Do you? Mmmm; I didn’t think so either.
There must be “cuts to the voter approved system”.
Now, the question of course arises, “What cuts?” and it’s pretty obvious: WSLE, BLE other than Westlake to Smith Cove, the absurd “Line 4” and Everett Link beyond “Pain” Field [sic].
Yes, I get that I haven’t included Tacoma Dome Link, for strictly political reasons. It is only marginally less “terrible transit” than is Line 4, but it is mandated by Sub-Area Equity as is Link to Pain Field. Pierce County in particular is owed a large debt by North and East King, and Tacoma Dome link is the easiest to build and the least expensive of any of the expansion projects.
And “Yes, of course the short BLE stub should be Automated Light Metro”.
The Urbanist has been drinking from the same Kool-Aid jug as Seattle Subway.
Cruickshank’s point is that ST must explore and exhaust every possible opportunity to reduce costs and increase financial capacity before cutting scope just because the agency can’t afford it. I think it’s a fair point.
It seems inevitable that ST will propose an ST4 in 2028 to backfill ST3, increase its debt ceiling, and accelerate completion of the ST3 lines beyond the MOS it can afford to build on the current schedule. Transit “advocates” who oppose completing the light rail expansions planned under ST3 simply because the costs are too high will have to come up with a really good set of alternative projects that would actually pass across the ST taxing area. It’s worth keeping in mind that voters really like trains.
Nathan, isn’t the time of greatest stricture in the early 2030’s? And hasn’t ST encumbered everything that the Leg has granted it? So how does “passing ST4” help, if it would even pass given that the deferrals would have been in North King and Snohomish?
No, Seattle needs to concentrate on getting the Legislature to give it bigger taxing authority so it can contract with ST to build and run the only reasonable urban Metro.
> isn’t the time of greatest stricture in the early 2030’s?
Yes, so if ST wants to finish ST3 on the pre-2026 schedule, it will need to find new revenue and/or increase its debt ceiling (only possible with voter approval) before the 2030s. I expect ST will propose building the MOS for each line on-schedule and say something like “without more annual revenue or increasing our debt ceiling, remaining projects will be finished in the 2050s-2060s”.
>hasn’t ST encumbered everything that the Leg has granted it?Seattle needs to concentrate on getting the Legislature to give it bigger taxing authority so it can contract with ST to build and run the only reasonable urban Metro.
I’m pretty sure Seattle already has this authority under the transportation benefit districts and monorail authority, both of which have the same almost-unlimited funding capacity if proposed taxes are voter-approved.
The state is about to pass a 9.9% income tax on millionaires which increases the number of items exempt from sales taxes. The hit on sales taxes will impact agency budgets severely, but I think the assumption is tax districts will start charging their own income taxes instead of having to implement workaround payroll taxes like Seattle has done for JumpStart and the Social Housing Developer. I think ST can and should consider implementing a capital gains tax or other progressive taxes to backfill ST3. These are the sorts of “clever solutions” Cruickshank is calling for.
Oh, my, I did not know that the millionaires’ tax was going to be partly used to reduce sales taxes. While yes, that would make the State tax structure more progressive, it will also make it more random and unpredictable.
This will hurt the smaller PTBA’s who have no herd of millionaires to milk.
Thanks for the info.
I thought the Monorail Authority was pretty strictly capped, but you seem to think not. I truly hope you’re correct and I misunderstood, because I’m pretty certain that an Automated Light Metro would be enough different from “LRT” to squeak by the embargo of that specific technology.
It’s another argument for changing horses for BLE. It can become the start of a better urban system with small stations and ultra frequent service.
I’m no expert on the monorail authority’s tax capacity, but if it’s anything like the transportation benefit district, the limits are on what the authority can levy without voter approval. The legislature generally seems open to allow voters to approve any sort of flat-rate tax (except, as previously mentioned, property taxes totaling more than 1% of property value).
The hard part is coming up with progressive taxation, but if you layer a bunch of different taxes which varying exemptions, you could construct a progressive system over time…
Nathan,
for RCW on SMP tax authority see:
https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=35.95A
It is limited to monorail through SMP. the max rate is 2.5 percent. When the SMP got approved, the rate was 1.4 percent. That turned out to be insufficient when their economist made an error interpreting the MVET database he got from ST. Rather than try a better ballot measure, the SMP attempted cotton candy financing that had bonds upon bonds. (Today, see 75-year term).
Rep. David Hackney, D-11, did attempt to get the RCW amended to allow the MVET to be used for Link. I do not think his bill passed.
Tom Terrific is correct. ST needs to reduce the size of its rock; see Sisyphus.
RE: the monorail authority’s tax capacity
Don’t get the Seattle Monorail Authority confused with Seattle Monorail Services that operates the Seattle Monorail. The later is a private company that operates at a profit which it shares 50/50 with the City of Seattle (which owns the Monorail).
Nathan, isn’t Westlake to Smith Cove with a small MF in Interbay or a single-track non-revenue connection between Third and Pine (southbound track) and Stewart and Westlake, the actual Minimum Operable Segment for BLE?
That’s the only worthwhile rail project in North King’s ST3 portfolio and the reason I chose it.
Building just the “MOS” to Delridge people have been talking about for WSLE would be criminal negligence with public funds. Spending three or four billion dollars on a mile-long viaduct from Fifth and Lander to Delridge and Andover should buy the perps a one-way ticket to Walla Walla.
Thanks, Jack; this is great information! It looks like what I believed about the enabling legislation is not true. It doesn’t specifically exclude “LRT” as I believed, but rather specifies “Monorail”. So an Automated Light Metro would not qualify.
Well, we can always ask the Leg to revise the legislation to include a Light Metro and reactivate it. If ST can pay for Westlake to Smith Cove, which really is a regional asset, the 1.5% cap can probably accommodate at least the First Hill leg to Yesler and (maybe?) getting across the Ship Canal? Ballard to Yesler could serve well for a decade or two and then maybe enough money would have accumulated to build either the Ballard-UW or Yesler-Mt. Baker leg. After another decade the money pot would be full enough to finish the last leg.
Of course, all of this Futurecasting depends on the continuation of the United States as a viable nation. Things are not looking too spiffy on that score right now. Jes’ sayin’
“That turned out to be insufficient when their economist made an error interpreting the MVET database he got from ST.”
And Eyman’s initiatives pulled the MVET out from under the monorail.
> isn’t Westlake to Smith Cove with a small MF in Interbay or a single-track non-revenue connection between Third and Pine
Let’s get the terms straight: I’m referring to the “Minimum Operable Segment (MOS)” defined used in the 2022 WSBLE DEIS. Study of an MOS is apparently required by the FTA for them to issue a Record of Decision regarding the project. We don’t actually know for certain what MOS is described in the new Draft EIS for the Ballard Link Extension, but it’s generally assumed to be the same Smith Cove to CID segment described in the 2022 combined DEIS.
ST studied the rough-order-of-magnitude feasibility of an MOS from Smith Cove to Westlake, but the Board did not direct staff to amend the BLE DEIS to include this as a potential construction option. The new BLE DEIS is reportedly in under review by the FTA (as of January 2026) and expected to be released in on May 29, 2026. Apparently the FTA’s review is “pending final FTA guidance regarding executive orders”. Take that as you will.
RE: monorail funding:
OK, you’ve successfully made me read the RCW (again). My supposition that the monorail authority enabling legislation had potentially unlimited tax authority was wrong. Here are the exact limits:
RCW 35.95A.080 sets a vehicle excise tax limit of 2.5% and a rental car tax limit of 1.944%.
RCW 35.95A.090 sets a special VLF limit of $100.
RCW 35.95A.100 sets a property tax limit of 1.5‰ if approved by simple majority of voters.
Nathan, yes, you’re right. To ST the “MOS” includes the DSTT2 all the way from Massachussetts on the south to New Westlake and then whatever they call it north of there to Smith Cove.
However, I believe that an operable segment can be built from Westlake to Smith Cove either by building a small MF for automated trains in the truck parking area between the throat tracks of Ballmer Yard and the Elliott Bay Trail OR digging a single-track connection to the southbound Spine track at Third and Pine under Third to Stewart, Stewart to Westlake and Westlake to its junction with Sixth.
Obviously, a hole in the north wall of the Westlake box would have to be demised to let the track and trains through, and that might mean some strengthening would be necessary. And it would require closing Third between Pine and Stewart to do all that. And there would be some weirdness about propulsion because a Light Metro would be considerably cheaper if built with third-rail power pickup (smaller diameter tunnels). So some sort of dual-mode “donkey” would be required to move cars between the two systems.
But it could be done.
I know this would be a hard pill for ST to swallow, but whatever BLE ultimately grows into will be fifteen to twenty percent cheaper to build and operate with third rail than pantograph LRT would be. The only place in the entire potential line that might be placed directly on the ground is a bit less than a mile alongside Ballmer Yard in Interbay, between Smith Cove and Interbay stations. Everywhere else will be elevated or tunneled, so elevating the trackway eight feet through this stretch to keep people safe is a reasonable “extra” expense in order to save many times as much on smaller tunnels and avoiding overhead in other sections.
Clarification. On the Third Avenue Closure I would expect that decking would cover the work and that buses would be allowed through the workzone, but not cars. It’s SOP to add the decking about 1/3 of the roadway width at a time while maintaining narrowed but safe two-way vehicle pathways during its creation. It would make sense to make it bus-only even if the rest of Third isn’t.
I saw how they did it on Market Street during construction of the BART/Muni tunnel. You have to get down about ten feet in each section before the decking can be constructed over that part. So you do the third next to the curb on one side, the third next to the other curb and then the middle, which doesn’t get fully decked until the excavation taking place below reaches its ultimate depth, so there’s a way to get the spoils out. The workers build a temporary steel scaffolding holding it all up until the box walls can be poured. Since this would be just a single-track, it’s possible that only half of Pine street would even have to be excavated.
Notice that this alignment takes advantage of two oblique angles (at Third and Stewart and Stewart and Westlake) to make the necessary curves easier.
It would make sense to have to stretch under Stewart bored, if the TBM boring the southbound BLE tube can turn up Stewart. That intersection is very oblique. The New Westlake station box would have to encompass the curve though, I think. Maybe the TBM comes into the box and is re-positioned to make the tube toward Third Avenue. The TBM could be removed at Stewart and Third after it bored that short stretch.
>operable segment can be built from Westlake to Smith Cove
Yes, and ST staff’s feasibility assessment agreed that this could be done, with a potential cost savings of $0 to 4B.
The only boardmember pushing to keep this option on the table was Claudia Balducci but she was unexpectedly kicked off the System Expansion Committee earlier this year. I think her willingness to abandon DSTT2 is what got her booted, but we may never know.
If you want ST to take any of these radical technical alternatives seriously, you’ll have to investigate ST’s engineering standards which drive their conceptual designs. I mean, they shaved half a billion off the Seattle Center cost estimate by changing the preliminary design of the station platform to be “slightly trapezoidal”!! What else could they accomplish if they were willing to deviate from perfectly flat, perfectly straight platforms, or increase their risk tolerance to allow them to run a TBD less than 20 feet away from existing subsurface structures?
After all the cuts you listed only TDLE, half of Everett link, half of ballard link is remaining. Or did I miss something?
The BRT projects, the in-fill stations, and the maintenance facilities would also remain in the plan. But, “Yes”, your summary is mostly correct. The costs of full BLE including DSTT2 and WSLE have blown entirely out of affordability given any reasonable assumptions.
I’ll admit that East King would probably have enough tax ceiling to get Line 4 to Eastgate, and that may choose that. But what a puny, pathetic rail project that would be. As Ross and others have noted correctly, a fan-BRT project, with multiple routes to many places in and north of Issaquah using a direct link between the center HOV lanes on I-90 and those on I-405 (preferably both directions) would be cheaper and serve far more people.
In order to avoid adding to the complexity of that four-level interchange, a low speed, “bus sized”, elevated, bus-only roundabout could be placed above its center with three access ramps, to and from north 405, south 405 and east 90. It’s not impossible to imagine including bus platforms in the northeast, southeast and southwest quadrants connected to a walkway to Factoria. There would necessarily be walkways crossing the Issaquah and Renton access roadway arms, but buses would be infrequent enough that the cross-walks would be safe.
[In simpler English, the northeast platform would be a stop for all buses headed for Bellevue. The southeast would be for all buses headed to Issaquah and the southwest to Renton.
So, someone going from Issaquah to Bellevue could of course ride an Issaquah-Bellevue direct bus (“STRide 4”?), but they could also ride an Issaquah-Renton (or beyond) (“STRide 5?”) bus, get off at the Renton platform and cross over to the Bellevue platform and catch a Renton-Bellevue (STRide 1) bus at the northeast platform if it came first at the roundabout. Someone riding from Renton to Bellevue could wait to take STRide 1 and just ride through on the same bus that might pick up the person mentioned above. Or they could take a Renton-Issaquah STRide 5 to the southeast platform, cross the I-90 East arm and wait at the northeast platform for STRide 1 or STRide 4.
To go from Renton to Issaquah a person could wait for mooted STRide 5 or take STRide 1 to the northeast platform, cross to the southeast platform and wait for whichever bus came first.
To go to Issaquah from Renton (or beyond) would require crossing two of the access legs, the I-90 and I-405 South connectors and a somewhat longer walk.
Some sort of long ramp up from the Mountains to Sound Trail would connect to the bus loop level. That would make the pedestrian semi-circle would about two hundred yards farther from the Factoria Trail and Factoria Boulevard than the proposed Richards Road Line 4 station north of I-90 would be but it would also provide access to STRide 1 which isn’t currently planned to have a stop for Factoria. (By the way WTF is THAT about!?!?!)
What is actually utterly insane are your proposed cuts. Literally all we get out of it is Light Rail to Tacoma Dome that is supposedly “terrible transit” even by your own admission, light rail halfway to Everett but not all the way, and the worst version of the automated Ballard stub to date where it doesn’t even go to Ballard. At this point money would be better spent to just buy everyone a car instead of this half baked monstrosity but that’s probably the point.
If The Urbanist and Seattle Subway are drinking from a Kool-Aid jug I have no clue what you’re chugging but I kinda want it just for the ridiculousness of it.
Well, for one thing, it’s affordable and gets the UW-Ballard-First Hill-North Rainier Valley line that actually serves useful transit destinations started. And it’s all that the North King County Sub-Area can afford!!!!
Quit drinking the Seattle Subway Fireball and wake up. The dollar is plunging in value as we speak, the national deficit is half-way to the Moon — it’s gonna get there before Artemis, you can be sure of that — the rest of the world says, “What the F happened to you people?” and the current worst-case estimates are probably already too small.
Save something useful for Seattle, or you’re going to get DSTT2 from Massachussetts to “Midtown in Pioneer Square” and a mile long viaduct to 35th and Avalon.
Which trips do you perceive as being made better by any of the proposed projects?
What voter in Snohomish County approved having to take 11 floors of escalators to transfer to anything at Westlake (including their existing trips to SeaTac)?
What voter in Ballard is going to want to take the 44 to 14th and transfer to something that really isn’t that much faster than the D or 40?
West Seattle would likely get the C and H lines truncated, with the Link line running half as often as the combination. The Link line at Alaska Junction winds up about as deep as Capitol Hill, and pretty much everyone has to transfer there. The West Seattle plan also eliminates the SoDo busway, making a lot of trips from the south slower.
Everett Station isn’t that close to anything in Everett. There’s a fair number of bus routes that terminate there, but for the most part it’d be better to spend the limited funds on a station located somewhere in Everett that’s actually where people need to go.
It’s a difficult situation because people voted for the lines on a map, but now the actual plan for how to do those lines isn’t especially great. The cost cutting changes to do things like make Line 4 not serve much in either Issaquah or Kirkland, and chopping a West Seattle station, makes it all the worse.
Thanks, Glenn. You have given an excellent list of several the “problems” of the “preferred alternatives” of the ST3 parts of the system. Most are really not amenable to satisfactory solutions, regardless of the cost of those “solutions”.
“What voter in Snohomish County approved having to take 11 floors of escalators to transfer to anything at Westlake (including their existing trips to SeaTac)?”
According to ST, that’s an unimportant detail. And there’s been no movement among Snohomish politicians or voters to counteract that. It would really help if there were one.
“What voter in Ballard is going to want to take the 44 to 14th and transfer to something that really isn’t that much faster than the D or 40?”
Transferring at 15th was on the ballot, so that’s what they voted for. It’s unclear whether 14th will still survive: last I heard 15th was ST’s preferred alternative. Link will be significantly faster than the current D or 40 because it’s grade-separated and immune to congestion, traffic lights, and the street grid.
Of course, SDOT is currently making the 40 faster, and it could do so with the D (especially by staying on Elliott/Denny rather than going through Uptown, or Metro could run the 15 all day as a faster alternative). But it remains to be seen how much faster the 40 would be and whether it would be competitive with Link. And SDOT/Metro haven’t committed to improving the D or making the 15 all-day at all. There’s vague money in ST3 for “RapidRide C/D improvements”, but nobody has said what those would be or when they would happen.
“ST3 simply because the costs are too high will have to come up with a really good set of alternative projects that would actually pass across the ST taxing area”
Sound Transit is filibustering the ideas we’ve already come up with and any other productive ideas. If somebody really explains to the public what the experience will be coming from the Eastside in DSTT1 and transferring to the airport in DSTT2, or coming from Rainier Valley in DSTT2 and transferring to the U-District or northeast Seattle or Capitol Hill in DSTT1, and why it’s absolutely imperative to improve these transfers, there would be significant public support for it. But ST is blocking any alternatives and the politicians aren’t having an unbiased debate about what the impacts of ST’s projects and potential alternatives would be. We don’t know these wouldn’t pass because the public has never been asked or heard the real impact arguments.
> politicians aren’t having an unbiased debate
… is it possible for politicians to have an unbiased debate?
My point is that I think Cruickshank’s style leans on just telling political leaders what the people want to see and making the politicians figure it out. I think it can be effective, but it assumes political leaders care about what transit advocates think. There’s a much more complicated and always evolving debate about which advocacy styles are more effective than others, but ultimately I’m not sure the public really cares about the opinion of armchair engineers over the professional regarding system design. The public just wants to see results. They want to see trains, not buses.
“Light Rail to Tacoma Dome that is supposedly “terrible transit” even by your own admission”
The Tacoma Dome segment is inexpensive because it’s all in public right of way on straight flat highways in a wide-open area, and Pierce saved up a large down payment for it, and it’s politically sensitive because Tacoma is one of the four Spine cities. So if it’s the only extension that gets built, we can ignore that. It’s not worth putting a lot of energy into trying to kill it.
Tacoma Dome actually has quite a few challenges ahead of it. The land on the Puyallup reservation is different to negotiate than something off rez. I believe this is the first rapid transit project on a reservation in the US so it will be complicated simply because it’s new. I believe that there isn’t the same takings process that you would expect for the rest of the system. Additionally, there is land that needs to be taken in Fife for their preferred alternative, which is fine but will present more cost and challenge.
D M, yes those are “obstacles”, but “Fife” is such a malleable concept that if necessary the station can be placed between SR99 and the freeway or, heck, put it on structure in the freeway ROW through the Milton wetland and cross-over to SOUTH of the freeway interchange for the station. If the Puyallup Tribe wants to extort from SoundTransit, just bypass their lands.
The point is that Pierce Sub-Area already has a huge lien against North and East King, so it will, rightfully demand that it comes first.
Tom, you can’t just bypass the Puyallup Reservation. Any alignment would necessarily go through it. Also, disenfranchising a tribe further is hardly ethical nor does it fulfill treaty obligations that the US would have with them. They are a sovereign entity, not just a county or town, and we are going to be building on their land. That is challenging but doable.
OK, I see that the Reservation does go quite a bit south of I-5, so just going on the south side of the freeway won’t avoid it. So if the tribe simply does not want Link to pass through its land, then don’t build Tacoma Dome Link.
Jesus, people, all of these billions and billions of dollars will maybe carry 10% of total person-trips within the service area when all is said and done, if we’re lucky! If Tacoma is out of reach because the Tribe just can’t allow it to cross their land, so be it. You are right that they have treaty rights to stop it.
What have they said that makes you think they want to do so?
I never said they want to cancel the extension, just that the way it will be built will be complicated and different, which could pose a cost risk.
I think ST has already worked out the issues with the reservation.It’s part of the EIS process for Tacoma Dome Link.
The spine worship is one of the main ST problems.
The Legislature should ask WSDOT to convert some of the I-5 lanes between the TDS and FW to HOV or HOT lanes.
Sound Transit was formed to build a light rail transit spine from Everett to Tacoma via Seattle first, and connect other regional centers second. Why would ST ever abandon that founding principle?
Nathan,
for two reasons: the founding principle is flawed; the spine is unaffordable. Note that Pierce voted no in 2016. The spine could be redefined as a combination of Link, Sounder, and bus service. Each has its best use. In ST3, Link is used to connect to parking at the Tacoma Dome and South Kirkland P&R; that seems a poor choice. The Issaquah line is again in a freeway envelope; that seems a poor choice. If the ST3 Stride2 center access ramp is provided at NE 85th Street, ST could implement fast and frequent bus service between the KTC and Issaquah via BTC and Eastgate. It could be accomplished much faster and be better on some margins. But you are correct, the spine is a founding principle and a major issue for ST. In ST3, they are attempting to split the spine. In south Everett, they intend to give the spine scoliosis.
Good one. Very good.
His essay is contradictory. He calls for reforming Sound Transit at the same he says we should build what the board approved. It is the same problem. The lack of proper planning led to this mess. It led to choosing options that are simply a terrible value. He seems to call for more funding but just assumes it should be thrown at these same projects. West Seattle Link was a bad value at $1.5 billion. How does it become a good value at $8 billion. And yes, the cost goes up the longer we wait — but that is not the big problem. The main reason the project costs so much is because they’ve finally done the detailed engineering to figure out the costs.
They really don’t need more money. They need a different set of projects. Yes, that is admitting failure. Anything they do at this point is admitting failure. If we are going to ask for more money we need to go back to the drawing board and come up with different ideas. Then we need to investigate those ideas in detail before going further. There is no reason at all to assume that the set of plans they came up with initially are the best value.
This, in a concise nutshell. Well done, Ross.
Correct. ST has three large streams of revenue from 1996, 2008, and 2016. They have more than other transit agencies here and around the nation. ST needs to reduce the size of their rock, see Sisyphus.
In the NYT this week, there is coverage of a fiscal crisis for BART and SF Muni; they are attempting a joint ballot measure. See:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/10/us/bart-bay-area-san-francisco-transit.html
From the NYT piece on BART:
‘Voters in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties would be asked to add an extra half a percentage point to their sales tax rates. Those in San Francisco would be asked to approve a full percentage point that would also help Muni, which desperately needs money to run the city’s local buses, subway trains and street cars. (Muni, like BART, has also threatened dire measures, such as no longer running the city’s historic cable cars or ending service at 9 p.m., before San Francisco Giants night games end.)”
Could King County and Seattle perform a similar dance in 2026? Could they attempt two parallel and simultaneous TBD measures. King County needs roads funding and additional service subsidy, especially for South King County. Seattle wants to continue its more robust transit service.
“They really don’t need more money. They need a different set of projects. Yes, that is admitting failure. ”
Yes I fully agree. ST could get more for the billions that the taxpayers gifted them a decade ago.
But they refuse to ask the basic question: What’s the best value for what we were given in 2016?
Many of the regular posters have varying opinions on the detail and technologies, but we all seem very frustrated that ST won’t ask this question.
Most urban regions in the US don’t have this big of a transit gift to spend on capital projects per capita. We do! ST is blessed with billions! The revenue stream will go for at least 20 years and maybe more.
Let’s be clear too that the huge costs are incurred because very wealthy interests play the transit capital game for their personal financial benefit. They want to either sell their problematic real estate parcels/ buildings to ST, or they want ST to give them mitigation money or they want to make a profit on the real estate land that they’ve bought in anticipation of a nearby station that brings desirability or upzoning potential.
The more I look at the sudden changes made by the Board and the more I see the Board quietly making real estate deals and begging for lots more money even as they debate what to do about the shortfall, the more I feel like ST3 has become about about a transfer of real estate wealth than it is improving transit. Heck the Board doesn’t even care about total rider time or ridership volumes in their discussions, and they haven’t for years. But they salivate at renderings of the most grandiose capital alternatives and complain that they don’t have enough money to spend.
“But they refuse to ask the basic question: What’s the best value for what we were given in 2016?
Many of the regular posters have varying opinions on the detail and technologies, but we all seem very frustrated that ST won’t ask this question.”
They are answering it: they’re saying the full Everett, Tacoma Dome, Ballard, and West Seattle extensions, and DSTT2, even if it has bad downtown transfers. They’re saying that’s the only thing that fulfills the will of the voters. (And they have a blind spot about transfers.)
Hugely agree! Let’s say ST3 all gets built at the projected price. We will have “accomplished” at least these things:
1. the most capital-expensive light rail per mile in the world
2. the most capital-expensive light rail per passenger in the world
3. kneecapped ourself with the operating cost of that system
4. become a laughingstock for rail projects everywhere
I’m ideologically aligned with local transit projects (why I follow this blog) but ST3 is destined to be even worse than CAHSR at this point
Speaking of CAHSR
And then there’s Brightline West:
Thanks Bernie, I actually had that CAHSR business plan in mind when making the comparison. CAHSR is hugely expensive and delayed, but at least has a path to profit when connected to the conventional rail lines at each end. No such luck for ST3 – a money pit today (capital) and forever (operations)
Just like STB, the Urbanist lets writers write op-eds that don’t have to be approved by an editorial board.
The STB editors have a set of values and goals. We choose authors based on general compatibility with those goals, along with writing quality, etc. Once we have a proven author who’s a regular contributor, we don’t micromanage their articles: we let them express their viewpoints and interests even if not all the editors agree with them or they’re at the fringe of the editors’ goals. In journalism these are called “commentaries”, though “op-ed” is OK if people are clear what it means.
There’s a separate set of articles, “editorials”, signed “by the STB Editorial Board”, for STB’s official viewpoint and calls to action that the editors are agreed we can all support and are critical and we’re not likely to change our mind on. We rarely use this, but instead reserve it for the most urgent and critical issues.
Page 2 offers a place for dissenting opinions, ideas that need more thought and debate before we’re ready to put them on Page 1 (the first gondola articles were on Page 2, and the first funicular article), and other things.
Vancouver builds cheaper by not digging tunnels unless it is absolutely necessary. One doesn’t have to outright cut projects given transit agencies, unlike people, can support debt obligations for as long as there’s people alive to pay taxes. The right approach is to build smarter like our northern neighbor does. If they can’t afford West Seattle and Ballard underground, then elevate it. But the system should go where it has been promised to go as simply not building it just means it will be more expensive later. That’s exactly why they can’t afford it now. Too much waiting. Too much short term fear.
Sadly for your simplistic “bright idea” there’s no way to “elevate” BLE through South Lake Union, Uptown or the “Classic CBD”. And nobody has proposed tunneling it through the industrial flats between Smith Cove and The Ship Canal.
The problem with bridging the Canal is that the Coast Guard wants clearance for a ship the height of which has not transited the Canal in seventy-five years. Nobody is quite sure why.
The storage tunnel just being completed along the north shore is a real impediment to a possible rail tunnel, so a bridge it will probably be, but it will have to open to avoid being a lovely eyesore.
And there is certainly no way to “elevate” a line serving First Hill, which is a primary goal for most of the regular “blogosphere” here. We understand that the first principle of “Good Transit” is “Build it where people want to go.”
Tom, staying underground from LQA through to Ballard is a proposed alternative but it assumes combining Smith Cove and Dravus into one station east of 15th Ave W. It’s the “no impact” option and it’s dumb, but it’s in there.
Thanks, Nathan. It would be “dumb”, indeed. I don’t recall ever having seen that one.
Huh. I went looking for it and I guess I’m misremembering from my time on the Community Advisory Group when the WSBLE alternatives were being screened. But there’s still a webpage with showing ST’s analysis of the alternative (“Consolidated Alignment”): https://ballardlink.participate.online/interbay-ballard-further-studies.html#si-ca
Apparently the option didn’t make it to the WSBLE DEIS.
If they can’t afford West Seattle and Ballard underground, then elevate it.
West Seattle Link is elevated. That isn’t the problem. As I’ve said before, the biggest problem is not cost — it is value. West Seattle Link does not improve transit very much in West Seattle, let alone the region.
This is the biggest difference between us and Vancouver. Look at North Vancouver. It has similarities with West Seattle. As the crow flies it is fairly close to downtown. But there is a lot of water between there. Routes by land pass through very little (a nice park in the case of Vancouver, an industrial area in the case of West Seattle). The region is connected to the rest of the city via big bridges and freeways. There is also a ferry. But despite having way more density in North Vancouver than West Seattle, running a train line there is not a priority. That is because it is bound to be expensive and yet not add that much value. So instead they run the ferry and lots of buses. I count nine buses over one bridge and seven over the other. That’s because it is the best way to serve the area.
That doesn’t rule out the possibility of serving North Vancouver by rail. But there is no interest in a “starter line”. There is no interest in a train line with only three new stations (all of which are in North Vancouver) following the same pathway as a bus. They aren’t that stupid. They figure if you are going to do it, then it should run through North Vancouver — replacing a lot of bus trips instead of just forcing those riders to transfer. But again, they have a lot more important things to build first.
Somehow West Seattle Link managed to be both a weak project (providing little benefit for West Seattle riders) and get priority over other projects that clearly provide more value.
“As I’ve said before, the biggest problem is not cost — it is value. “
Our decision-makers seem to have a loose definition when it comes to the term “value”. We as riders see it in terms of travel times or ridership volumes. And using the term that way is what I believe is the most appropriate so I agree with you.
From a referendum builder perspective, value is not about riders. It’s about votes. I could see the case made that light rail had to go to West Seattle merely to get Yes votes there in 2016. The same is true for several other Link extensions.
And to a real estate investor, value is how a project creates investment opportunities. There surely is a massive backroom chess game going on with Link expansion and real estate. Those players are working hard behind the scenes. That also extends to the engineering and construction companies. Disrupting that would be like bombing a legal high-stakes poker game.
I see that there are really only three ways to maximize the value of ST3 in the ways that we define it at this point:
1. Technology switches. ST expansion could be order of magnitude cheaper to build and operate through automation. Shorter and more frequent trains are the generic value answer.
2. Alignment switches. Topography constrains aside, the cost culprit of ST3 is tunneling. The budget problems of the surface or aerial extensions is there, but it’s the tunneling that is big cost and the big cost increase problem. And it’s not a little factor; it’s a BIG factor.
For starters, West Seattle was never promised is tunnel, let alone a bored one with a deep station excavation. That planned multi-year pit in the middle of the Junction will forever change the area. Half of the West Seattle Link project capital cost is just to go from Delridge to the Junction. Half! No elected official is willing to give West Seattle the ultimatum: Choose between aerial/ surface or nothing or pay 100 percent of the cost difference within West Seattle!
The other alignment cost elephant is DSTT2. It’s not just boring a tunnel under Downtown Seattle like it’s a Swiss Alp with nonstop trains. It’s requiring 6 deep excavated stations in the heart of the City through some still questionable soils. And making short distance trips between those stations will forever take time to go down and then back up from the platforms. In that case too, a similar ultimatum may be necessary. However, unlike West Seattle, the project was originally promised a tunnel. Still, the public was never made aware of how deep these stations had to be in the 2016 referendum materials.
3. Transferring. There remains no focus on the value of good transfers! It saves travel time! It attracts more riders! It facilitates mobility for not only those in wheelchair but those carrying anything or even has minor arthritis and can still get around. Adding 5 minutes to a transit trip for every rider just to get from one train to another is the same penalty as decreasing the schedule from 6 minutes to 16! It’s why putting three lines in the DSTT would be better for riders, even if it meant reducing peak headways from 7.5 to 10 minutes at peak and from 10 to 12 minutes off-peak. I’d much rather wait an extra 2 or 3 minutes for a train to keep from having to work through the proposed 5 minute underground 3-D mazes being designed. The ST3 materials broadly deceptively conveyed cross-platform transfer ease.
With that personal frustration stated, maybe the best thing is to simply push for a better awareness and focus on rider value. That includes mentioning total trip times with station treks included as well as forecasted ridership volumes.
I have yet to see any Board member ask how many daily transfers are expected between same direction 1 Line and 3 Line trains.
Is there any way that we can ask for these giant view-block Don’t be a Monster signs to be removed ahead of Crosslake opening?
The rider etiquette signs with monster characters on Light Rail car windows. I am almost certain that they have had no effect on rider etiquette, and people want to see out the windows when the Crosslake Connection opens.
I don’t see why people think the Tacoma Dome extension is such a bad idea. What seems ludicrous is to stop at Federal Way. As is it’s a one way route into Seattle in the morning. Extending that short bit south starts to pull in Tacoma commuters which, while small now will rebound.
The Tacoma Dome hosts large events and Link to Seattle and the Eastside will make it a more attractive venue. There’s already a whopping big parking garage making it ideal for travel into Seattle for events. You might be able to eliminate Sounder; you sure have a lot more flexibility with Link.
I’m sure the Puyallup Tribe will be supportive. Casino Station will be one of the nicest on the entire system and increase ridership.
The other money pit for Pierce subarea is extending the streetcar to Lakewood. Now that’s a bad idea!
The “massive” park and ride structure only holds about 2,000 cars. This doesn’t really represent that many riders.
Due to the proposed Link extension taking about 1/2 hour longer between Tacoma and Seattle, very few people are going to commute that distance using Link. During peak periods, Sounder is faster. During periods Sounder doesn’t run, the express buses are faster, and get people closer to their destination. Under the current plan, someone using transit would enter downtown Tacoma on the local bus, get to Tacoma Dome using T Link, then switch to 1 Line trains to get where they need.
Tacoma Dome events in the evening will be poorly served by Link due to the system shut down time. As illustrated by poor ridership at Stadium station, events really don’t create very much full time ridership.
I just don’t see that many people using this, since the service that is planned will be so much slower than what is there now.
Tacoma Dome parking capacity is 2,380 and #1 by a wide margin until construction at Eastgate ups capacity to 2,917 (Pro tip, download the .csv rather than trying to scroll through all 4480 line in the database). And it’s already built (i.e. sunk cost). I shudder to think what percent of East Link construction was brand new P&R lots. If parking capacity ever is an issue the Tacoma Dome has huge surface lots and so does LeMay – America’s Car Museum. Likewise the streetcar and Amtrak are already there. Tacoma’s a pretty fun place to visit and will be more frequently on my list when I can walk to the Bel-Red Link station and ride a nice smooth train all the way there (albeit with an @#$% transfer at CID).
Sure I could get there now, maybe even marginally faster, with a series of transfers to buses but that’s not going to happen. The quality of riding a train is just light years ahead of any bus. You can get up and walk around. You can talk with friends at a normal conversational level. And most of all, you know where and when it will be running.
I think people will be surprised at how well the Tacoma Dome extension works out. Again, there’s already the sunk cost of getting to Federal Way. Comparing boardings per dollar I’ll wager it far exceeds the benefit of building a light rail line from Bellevue to Issaquah.
“I think people will be surprised at how well the Tacoma Dome extension works out.”
Initial Federal Way ridership has been surprisingly high. We’re waiting for more months of data to see how promising the extension is turning out to be. If it does turn out to be more productive than expected over the long term, that could bode well for Tacoma Dome. But the headwinds against Federal Way’s productivity are even stronger at Tacoma Dome; i.e., an over 60 minute travel time to downtown Seattle, no downtown around the station, and no sign of when the promised urban village might be built.
@Bernie Even if each of those 2,380 spaces were filled and let’s say contained 2 people per car, that would only fill about 6 four-car Link trains (~800 capacity). Sound Transit runs more trains than that in an hour.
Park & Rides will just never be compatible with high capacity, high frequency transit.
I would say that Tacoma Dome Extension’s biggest problem is that ends at Tacoma Dome. It should have gone one more station at least to UWT where it could connect with local buses more easily as well as made much of Downtown Tacoma walkable from the end station.
I certainly agree, Al, but the “Good Burgers” [sic] of Tacoma want it to end at their shopping mall not their CBD.
For some reason.
I really don’t know what you folks are on about. Seems like none of you has actually visited Tacoma. Maybe instead of Tacoma Dome it would be better, certainly more accurate, to say Freighthouse Square. It’s near the Tacoma Dome but actually 4 block north. Freighthouse Square has Sounder, Amtrak and the Tacoma Streetcar. The streetcar is great. It takes you right downtown Tacoma and now to UW Tacoma. How in the hell would you get Link to UW Tacoma and at what cost, for what? It just gets you to the other end of the streetcar line. Pacific Ave in DT Tacoma is, thank god, nothing like 3rd Ave in Seattle. There’s no room for a fleet of noisy stinky buses. And no need since it’s served wonderfully by the streetcar. Think Seattle’s old waterfront except better. There also seems to be confusion about the difference between the Tacoma Mall (shopping center… sort of, dead and dying) and the Tacoma Dome. They are miles apart and a world different.
The idea that Freighthouse Square is too out of the way for PT transit routes but somehow DT or anywhere north of there is better, how so? Where?
I’ll take an hour to get to DT Seattle. So? It’s 45 minutes from Lynnwood to CID. It’ll be faster from Freighthouse Square to SEA than it is from Lynnwood and a lot of people think Link to the airport is the greatest thing since sliced bread. It’ll probably be faster from Tacoma to the airport than Bel-Red since you don’t have to do the up and over transfer at CID.
Tacoma has some nice things. Virtually none of these are within what most people would consider walking distance of Tacoma Dome Station. Sure, I’ve walked to downtown Tacoma from there, but nobody is going to be making that walk part of their daily routine to get to downtown Seattle.
Tacoma Link cars are only 8 inches narrower than Central Link cars. The two lower voltage insulation classes for railroad grade wire are 600 volts and 2,000 volts, so at 750 volts nominal they’re already using insulators rated at least 2,000 volts. Central Link cars are designed to be used by a wide variety of systems, including those with short radius curves. Substations can have their voltages adjusted, and in fact many MAX substations have been converted to put out closer to 1,000 volts on TriMet’s “750 volt” system.
So, convert Tacoma Link to use the same cars as Central Link lines, and extend the line to TIBS. Use single car trains (the ST estimated ridership south of Federal Way is about 1/4 that both of SeaTac, so single car trains and small stations will suffice for the small number of passengers).
To make the transfers easier, scheduling needs to be offset by 2 minutes. That is, southbound, a Tacoma Dome train leaves TIBS 2 minutes after a Federal Way train leaves, and northbound a Seattle bound train leaves 2 minutes a Tacoma – TIBS train leaves.
The total cost shouldn’t really be that much compared to the overall scheme of things, and it creates a Tacoma light rail line that actually connects to a number of transit hubs with only one transfer. It also gives ST additional light rail cars for the Central Link 4 car trains, since the 4 car trains won’t be needed south of Federal Way. Tacoma Link OMF can also serve as a terminating facility for early morning and late night services, helping to reduce deadhead moves.
For those needing to go from downtown Tacoma to downtown Seattle, there will still be the 594, since ST doesn’t plan to get rid of buses that are significantly faster than Link.
“The idea that Freighthouse Square is too out of the way for PT transit routes but somehow DT or anywhere north of there is better, how so?”
Do I have to explain why downtowns are downtowns, and why it’s the biggest destination and transfer point in a city?
Downtown Tacoma has UW Tacoma, office buildings where people work, three museums, the courthouse, transfers to Pierce Transit bus routes to all parts of Tacoma and Pierce County, residents in dense buildings, tourists, the Pantages Theater, the huge Sanford & Son antique store, and other cultural amenities you can probably list better than I can. All this is why Central Link should go to downtown Tacoma if it goes to Tacoma at all.
Why walk when you can take the streetcar? The only things I’d walk to from Freighthouse Square are the Tacoma Dome (never been) and the Lemay – America’s Car Museum (done that twice and will do it again). Everything else is walking distance (< 1/2 mi) or doorstep delivery via TLink. I'm looking forward on my next trip when it's a nice day to explore Wright Park. Dinner at the Old Spagetti Factory for nostalgic reasons and I've been wanting to check out McMenamins Elks Temple. The transfer is so easy why throw out all the TLink rolling stock? The curves would definitely have to be redone and all the station platforms. The advantage of running 1 Line trains to Tacoma General and St Joes? You have an elegant solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
“There you go again.” The Seattle centric point of view. The only reason people would use Link is to go to Seattle. Everyone who lives in Tacoma only does so because they can’t afford Seattle. Nobody in Federal Way has a job in Tacoma or would want one.
Exactly! All within a 1/2 mile walk of TLink. Ya know, the 2 Line is useless. I’d have to transfer to get to SEA. Nobody does that. Because I can’t walk from CID to the airport they shouldn’t have built it. You’re hating on a flat platform transfer to TLink but then complaining that the reason the route is useless is because there aren’t enough bus transfers. Let’s see, how many bus routes cross TLink on MLK or Division?
“Why walk when you can take the streetcar?”
Why force an unnecessary transfer just a mile short of downtown? That’s not the way to maximize ridership and position transit as a first choice. Rapid transit should be best in the major trip ends. Downtown Tacoma is clearly the one place it most should serve, just like downtown Bellevue, Redmond, Federal Way, and Lynnwood. Because a large number of people are going to there or from there or transferring there. Rapid transit needs to have stations in the center of where the largest concentrations of pedestrians are.
If you transfer to the T Line, you might wait 12-20 minutes for it. Say you’re going from Federal Way to downtown Tacoma. I’m guessing FW to Tacoma Dome is 20 minutes. You wait 20 more minute, and then take the T Line four stops, which is 10 minutes. Whereas if Central Link continued to the same place, it might take 25-30 minutes. So your 30 minute trip has ballooned to 50 minutes.
If the T Line went to Federal Way and you transferred there, and it were brought up to Central Link’s frequency and had the 2-minute transfer stagger somebody mentioned, then if you’re going from say Highline College to downtown Tacoma, both segments are reasonably long so the transfer feels more reasonable, and downtown Federal Way has actual destinations you can stopover at along the way.
I think it needs to be pointed out that T-Link operates on a single track. South of S 21st St. The limits streetcar frequency. A rider transferring from Link may have a wait.
Downtown Tacoma also has several bus routes. Forcing a double transfer in Downtown Tacoma and again at Tacoma Dome a short distance away is pretty mean to riders.
Redmond has just illustrated how to do it! It’s a very basic formula with the end station in a walkable village and the next station with the garage. Downtown Redmond even has more Link boardings than Marymoor Village. It’s an amazing prototype. It’s what ST should have in plans for Tacoma, Everett and Issaquah.
And the reason is the minimum radius curve to get onto S 25th St. If you want to double track that section it means taking a lot more ROW. It’s more than just the width of the second track. You have to increase the radius of the turn to prevent a collision like the Monorail had. Link would require an even wider ROW take. I don’t know if the 12 mintue headway can be improved but the ridership just doesn’t justify the expense. Pierce is not flush with money the way East subarea is. They chose to increase area covered rather than frequency with the last upgrade. More frequency would also require more rolling stock, higher operating cost and possibly expanded base maintenance facility. The cost means service reduction somewhere else. You’d take it from where?
The idea that if would be somehow better to increase shuttle frequency to Federal Way rather than extend Link is counter to every other argument about why the extension isn’t worth it. You end up hemorrhaging operating cost with the outcome being a double transfer to the same TLink. The extension to Freighthouse Square is straight forward and relatively cheap (as Link goes). Past there it gets really expensive if not impossible without a tunnel.
The idea that Link has to go to DT Tacoma is flawed. Are you going to have the same station spacing and slow down the entire Link Line? Are you going to shorten trains at Federal way so you don’t have to make the station platforms 8X longer in Tacoma? I think not. Are you going to rip out all the infrastructure because the current track curves and clearance won’t accommodate a Link train? Are you going to take a big part of DT with a tail track like there is at Redmond? What’s going to happen the streetcar past DT? Just gets thrown away?
Tacoma is not DT Redmond or even Lynnwood. The tallest building in Tacoma was built in 1970. How many of the tall buildings in Bellevue were built since then? Oh yeah, all of them! Tacoma is a city trying to Rebound. It lost all it’s smokestack industry. It lost most of the high paying longshoreman jobs to mechanization. It lost it’s largest financial institution to Seattle when they were able to buy WA Mu tower for pennies on the dollar. The old Russel Investments building sits empty as does most of the class A office space in Tacoma. It’s trying to rebuild and doing a decent job given the cards it was dealt. But that only happens incrementally. It seems everyone on this blog can only look at Tacoma through Seattle colored glasses.
Freighthouse Square will be demolished for light rail construction.
A part of Tacoma’s ‘soul’ likely to be razed to make way for light-rail station
I was surprised to learn that Freighthouse Square isn’t on the registry of historic places. Imagine the destruction if ST was allowed to plow through DT Tacoma. But it’s not just a detatched ST board that wants this. This is the alternative supported by the Tacoma City Council.
I don’t understand why ” the “Close to Sounder” option is a thing unless they are looking at banking operating cost by terminating Sounder there. At that point they might as well just kill Sounder all together; in which case the “Close to Sounder” becomes irrelevant.
I don’t know if the building has “good bones”. Frankly it’s always looked a bit sketchy to me. OTOH, some of the old warehouse structures, like the Foss Waterway Seaport are indeed very sound buildings.
“Why walk when you can take the streetcar?”
Because it’s an additional transfer that doesn’t operate very often.
In regards to the curve you are complaining about, TriMet operates MAX trains around that tight a curve and sharper.
With regard to single track sections, these really aren’t that big a deal either. Potsdam, Germany has 3 minute headways on its streetcar lines, and a short segment of single track. Many, many busy lines all over the world deal with short sections of single track.
As to why to move the transfer away from Tacoma Dome: because you are probably one of the few people that actually have it as their destination. Extending the line to TIBS gives people dozens of transit routes to connect to, are places people in Pierce are more actually interested in going to, and gives them a single line from downtown Tacoma to SeaTac, which is obviously an extremely popular regional destination.
It makes far more sense to have two lines that actually goes to these busy stations rather than end and transfer in the middle of logical trips.
The current plan breaks currently popular Link trips at Westlake, and then breaks another set of trips at Tacoma Dome rather than allowing downtown Tacoma to connect directly to the second busiest station on Link, plus a one seat ride to dozens of other routes.
Sure, Pierce would have to pay to operate 1 car trains to the county line rather than 4 car Link trains over the same distance, but this is cheaper. By not diverting bus routes to Tacoma Dome to connect to Link, Pierce also saves money, and makes their bus routes more usable as another benefit. Furthermore, large stations at 1/4 their capacity or less is expensive, but Pierce would have to pay for maintaining that if the current plan gets built. Smaller, simpler, easier to maintain stations would be better for the ridership encountered. Either way, Pierce has to pay for the frequency of the same number of Link trains from Tacoma Dome to the county line.
South King winds up with extra service from Federal Way to TIBS, so that’s the place that would need careful examination.
It seems better to me to pay for something people would actually use rather than a massive 4 car station that is terribly oversized for the actual estimated ridership.
“Are you going to shorten trains at Federal way so you don’t have to make the station platforms 8X longer in Tacoma?”
Troy says 4-car trains can work in downtown Tacoma on Commerce Street or Pacific Street.
(2024) https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/05/28/better-transit-in-pierce-county-the-t-line/
(2021) https://seattletransitblog.com/2021/11/21/alternative-link-alignments-into-downtown-tacoma-a-mapped-review/
(2021) https://seattletransitblog.com/2021/08/24/if-link-to-tacoma-must-be-built-do-it-right-send-trains-into-the-city-center/
“ The Seattle centric point of view. The only reason people would use Link is to go to Seattle”.
Bernie: you’re the one here insisting trains have to go through to Seattle. I’m the one saying most people taking transit in Tacoma are going places other than Seattle. Therefore, there’s no reason to have a Seattle centered train to Ballard go to Tacoma Dome. So Give them better transit than a change of trains at Tacoma Dome offers.
• ST doesn’t have money to build huge stations where it’s not necessary
• There’s no real reason to run 4 car trains all the way through, as the 594 will be faster for through trips. Even at Federal Way, the express buses continue to run because they’re faster.
• The 2019 estimated ridership south of Federal Way is not large at all.
Link should either go to downtown Tacoma and a major PT bus transfer point, or not beyond Federal Way at all. Terminating at Tacoma Dome station is the worst of both worlds.
And Tacoma Dome station is too far east for many PT routes in the area; they would have to detour blocks to it. That would slow down people going on PT from south Tacoma to downtown Tacoma or to north Tacoma, for instance.
The Tacoma Mall extension that’s a wishlist item in ST4 compounds the problem. Again it bypasses downtown Tacoma. For a “regional growth center” that may turn out to be not much better than what’s there now or Totem Lake, with too much parking and wide streets and car orientation.
Rapid transit must go directly to walkable downtowns! That’s one of its basic purposes. So either treat downtown Tacoma properly, or don’t build a “Dallas thing” going only to Tacoma Dome and Tacoma Mall at all.
But even though Tacoma Dome Link is questionable and slow compared to typical rapid transit lines, it is relatively inexpensive due to straight flat wide public highway ROWs it can run on the surface in, and it’s the Pierce subarea’s highest priority, and Pierce has saved up a large down payment for it. So even though it’s questionable, it’s not worth putting a lot of effort into canceling it. The Pierce subarea can cancel it if it decides to or can’t afford it.
“Link should either go to downtown Tacoma and a major PT bus transfer point, or not beyond Federal Way at all. Terminating at Tacoma Dome station is the worst of both worlds.”
Of course I agree.
ST3 does free up planning money for an extension study to Tacoma Mall. There’s nothing apparently stopping a Pierce Board member to advance that study and include serving UWT or Downtown as part of it. There’s nothing blocking that ask, right? Frankly it would be worthwhile to make sure that the tracks that are being designed can be extended further west in the future anyway.
It appears to be several different ways to extend the line and yet there’s no conceptual plan or estimated cost on how to make that happen. Since ST has chosen a station site next to the parking garage and G Street (and far from Pacific Avenue) there is even greater need for a non-garage station at or near Pacific Ave.
Troy Serad has been digging up evidence that the Link Spine was originally envisioned to go to downtown Tacoma. The T Line was built first because the rest of Link would take far longer. They piggybacked on another city’s streetcar order for vehicles, so the line spec and voltage were based on that.
Years latter in run-up to ST3, the original politicians were gone and the new ones had forgotten that goal. The T Line configuration was supposed to be temporary until Central Link could reach downtown Tacoma, but later it was treated like the T Line to Tacoma Dome was the end goal all along and that’s where the Central to T transfer would be.
There’s a small activist movement in Pierce to try to get back to the original vision, both in terms of extending Central Link to downtown Tacoma and reverting the T Line’s ST3 19th Ave extension back to 6th Avenue (so that it would be a branch with MLK). They haven’t been able to convince any Tacoma or Pierce politicians to take it up. Although the T Line’s EIS is still in the future, so there’s still time to add a 6th Ave alternative when it starts.
Yes, a Pierce boardmember can request any kind of regional transit in ST4. Just like how a couple of them asked to extend Central Link to Tacoma mall, another one could ask to extend it to downtown Tacoma.
But there’s now a precedent that a Tacoma Mall corridor study is in ST3, and the then Pierce boardmembers declared that that would be the final end of the Spine (and Snohomish similarly got a study of a downtown Everett/Everett college study and declared it the end of the Spine). Those studies out those alternatives at the presume head of the line for ST4 projects, and that board preference and any written resolution would have to be reversed. ST is loth to reconsider past decisions, so the fact that it decided that in 2016 makes it an uphill battle to change it to something else (downtown Tacoma). That’s the same reason ST gave us in 2022 for why it wouldn’t consider upgrading DSTT1 instead of DSTT2 (because it had decided for DSTT2 and against the upgrade in 2016), and why it’s sticking to conventional light rail with drivers (because it decided that in the 1990s).
Central Link can’t go to both Tacoma Mall and downtown Tacoma without branching because they’re in different directions. Branching would have the frequency on each branch. Link is currently 10 minutes off-peak but will go up to 6 minutes in ST3. That means each branch would get 20 minutes (under current frequency) or 12 minutes (under future frequency). That exceeds the 10 minutes maximum that I argue is necessary for a good rapid transit network. One of Link’s strengths is its 10 minute minimum frequency on every line. That’s better than BART or MAX (or even Germany’s U-Stadtbahn, which is unusually low), and gets us closer to a world-class level like Vancouver, New York, London, or St Petersburg. Let’s not water down that achievement. And it would be ridiculous for the most important and highest-ridership station in Pierce County (somewhere around S 11th Street) to have half frequency.
I don’t see why people think the Tacoma Dome extension is such a bad idea.
OK, I’ll give it a shot. Just to back up here, the vast majority of transit trips are fairly short. It doesn’t matter if the longer trips are really fast and the short ones are really slow — more people take the short ones.
With that in mind, what does Tacoma Dome Link add in the way of short trips? Not much. There are some destinations on there (SeaTac, Highline College) but it doesn’t connect well to Tacoma. Even if it ran to Downtown Tacoma it is hard to see it being worth it. Tacoma (and the surrounding area) just isn’t that big. There isn’t that much density. I know a lot of people find this surprising — I did when someone explained it. Tacoma looks and acts like a big city. But it just doesn’t have big-city density. Thus any subway line serving Tacoma is dubious, let alone one with a handful of stops in only one direction (and none in downtown).
I think most people would consider it a silly project if it wasn’t for the fact that it connects to the line from Seattle. But that just doesn’t work either. Sounder is faster and more comfortable than Link. Yet plenty of riders prefer the bus (even when Sounder is running). When it isn’t running, the bus is quite a bit faster than Link. If they ran all three it is hard to see why anyone would prefer an option that is slowest and at best the second most comfortable.
It doesn’t provide an improvement in that many short trips. It provides very little improvement (if any) with long trips. Yet it will cost a huge amount of money. That is why many of us think it is a terrible value.
What Tacoma needs — what Pierce County needs — is a lot more bus service. It is really bizarre that a county that hasn’t had over 30,000 riders a day since 2015 thinks it should build a metro anywhere let alone one like this. Just improve the bus system.
The link extension doesn’t add anything for short trips. That’s what the streetcar is for. I’d consider Tacoma to SEA a long trip. 40-45 minutes from Tacoma to SEA is pretty darn good. It’s comparable with driving. But 20 minutes to Federal Way (10 miles) seems unnecessarily long. A look at what’s actually being proposed exposes why.
Yep, I’ve made that point. It is big area wise but there is not a “Central” business district. It’s hard to point to any area and with a straight face call it a business district. It does have a legit Museum District that is growing and brings life back to downtown. It also has two major hospitals and a large UW branch campus; all of which is connected by T-Link that terminates at Freighthouse Square.
Would it be worth building Link from Tacoma to SEA if most of it wasn’t already there; of course not. But it is there just waiting for the last mile (OK, 10 miles).
Yes and no. Ridership is low so running more empty buses doesn’t improve anything. But the issue is that’s a different pot of money. The only bus service ST is going to fund is long distance commuter service. They won’t even fund something akin to Rapid Ride. Would Pierce County and Tacoma benefit more by using the money from a Link extension for more ST Express bus service? Maybe. For sure the small percentage of the population that ride said buses would benefit. But of the taxpayers that fund this folly who don’t use transit regularly (the vast majority) a train to the airport is the number one reason by a long shot for why they might support it.
Yes, estimate is ~$4.4B and ST estimates are always way lower than the actual as built cost. So why is 10 miles of rail to add a stop at Freighthouse Square $500 million per mile when ostensibly there is very little ROW acquisition cost? First, it’s not I-5 running it’s SR-99 running. That’s not what’s really driving the cost though. It’s not a Tacoma Dome Station. It’s a Wild Waves Station and a Poodle Dog Station and a Portland Ave West Tacoma Station. That last one is a real butt scratcher? And why you might ask should there be a Fife and a Milton station when the value of a (singular) Tacoma Station is in question. And the answer is… 2 new parking garages!
Bottom line, this is never going to get built because like West Seattle and Ballard the cost is increasing faster than the revenue which wasn’t sufficient in the first place. Unlike West Seattle and Ballard though the Tacoma Link extension failure is entirely because of mission creep. I think it’s illustrative to look at some of the ST board members behind this boodoggle: Mayor of Federal Way, Mayor of Tacoma, Council member Puyallup Tribe, Mayor of Fife, Mayor of Milton. We circle back to the old problem of even given a good project the ST board structure will guarantee it’s screwed up.
It [Tacoma] is big area wise but there is not a “Central” business district
I don’t think you get the point. There actually is a Central Business District but that is about. There is no equivalent of Capitol Hill or the U-District, let alone one being served by this massively expensive subway line. Tacoma has a downtown and with it some employment density. But it doesn’t have population density.
Would it be worth building Link from Tacoma to SEA if most of it wasn’t already there; of course not. But it is there just waiting for the last mile (OK, 10 miles).
But it a subway line, not a commuter rail line! There is a big difference. Subway lines thrive on short trips. It is all those combinations. Northgate to the UW, Roosevelt to Capitol Hill, U-District to Beacon Hill — that sort of thing. That is before you actually serve downtown. The problem is, this extension has so little of that. Fife to Star Lake. Angle Lake to the Tacoma Dome. It just doesn’t add up to many riders.
So you are left to a very slow ride from a large parking lot in Tacoma to Seattle (70 minutes from the Tacoma Dome to CID). A bus will be considerably faster most of the time (while not requiring a transfer). Sounder will be faster every time it runs. You’ve basically built the world’s most expensive commuter rail and it doesn’t even work well at that.
I guess if you have to pick a center of this “Central” Business District it would be the Columbia Bank HQ at 1301 A Street. Across the street is the old Washington Plaza Building. It’s the tallest building in Tacoma and sits virtually empty. Russel used to be just up the street but they left going on 15 years ago. State Farm leased it for a while but bailed when they found they couldn’t lease any of the corporate campus they’d built in Dupont. It’s a stretch to call it a district when you only have one business left. Google Maps labels it as New Tacoma which is ironic since the Washington Plaza was built more than 50 years ago. Now that the ASARCO smokestack is gone Tacoma doesn’t have a structure over 400′ tall. The Narrows Bridge towers but they aren’t inside the City limits.
Link is combination commuter rail and metro light rail. Maybe not a great idea but a spork is what we got and a stupidly expensive one at that. For the commuter rail part a bus might be faster except during peak when it really matters. The bus isn’t nearly as frequent or reliable with respect to schedule. Most people would rather spend 70 minutes rather than 60 minutes most days but 90 minutes when there’s an accident or construction. Talk to the I-5 commuters using the ship canal. A train that’s not packed standing room capacity is just way more pleasant than driving or being crammed into a bus.
Sounder is not cheap to operate and has an extremely limited schedule; mostly peak commute and nada on the weekend unless there’s a special event. And it doesn’t go to the airport which is the money ticket for most suburban voters. A premium service to be sure but not relevant to a bus vs light rail debate.
All that aside, the current proposal to extend the line 10 miles south continues the ST tradition of stuck on stupid. If it was $50 million a mile I’d give it my full throated support. I’d gag a little at $100 million per mile but could still swallow it. At $500 million a mile (before the inevitable ST cost spiral to heaven) it’s ludicrous. It’s a worthwhile concept building on what’s there. But the devil is in Sound Transit’s details.
For the commuter rail part a bus might be faster except during peak when it really matters.
Except that is when Sounder runs. Sounder is faster and more comfortable than Link.
The bus isn’t nearly as frequent or reliable with respect to schedule.
So run the bus more often. Also change the HOV-2 to HOV-3.
Most people would rather spend 70 minutes rather than 60 minutes most days but 90 minutes when there’s an accident or construction.
You are still confused with the numbers. This is (or will be) the travel time from the Tacoma Dome to CID:
Bus at noon: 46 minutes
Sounder: 62 minutes
Link: 70
As it turns out, the bus is quite popular, even when Sounder is running. So your claim of rail bias is unfounded. People take whatever option works for them. For some that is the bus. For others that is Sounder. But Link will be slower (and less comfortable) than Sounder during peak and a lot slower than a bus outside of peak. It is hard to see why anyone would take it if they are headed to Downtown Seattle (or someplace north). Consider this situation. You are in Downtown Tacoma and want to get to Capitol Hill. Sounder isn’t running (it is midday). The fastest option is to take the 594 and transfer at SoDo. It is quite likely you will get on an earlier Link train to the UW. Either way you have to transfer — might as well transfer there.
Talk to the I-5 commuters using the ship canal.
Huh? At best this is irrelevant. At worst it is an argument against Link.
A train that’s not packed standing room capacity is just way more pleasant than driving or being crammed into a bus.
Who said the buses are standing room only? If they get that crowded, ST adds more buses. That is why they used to run them so frequently during peak. You can see by the old graphs that riders all had a seat, even during peak. Since the pandemic they have reduced the number of buses as there is less demand. And again, during peak, riders have the option of taking Sounder. That is the 590, the 594 had even more space. If they ran the buses every fifteen minutes (which was the plan) then there would be plenty of room.
In contrast, Link isn’t going to increase the number of trains heading south unless people are left at the platform. If people have to squeeze to get on, so be it. This means that unlike Sounder and unlike the buses, riders may have to crowd onto a train and stand (at least for a while).
The Tacoma Dome extension just adds so little. We are way better off working with what we have (and that includes the buses).
“A train that’s not packed standing room capacity is just way more pleasant than driving or being crammed into a bus.” Poorly worded, what I meant was when the train is not pack it’s way more pleasant. If you’re pack in like cattle then you lose the advantage. But since the trains are sized for DT Seattle riders from the south won’t experience crowding until the Rainer Valley or more likely the DT stations. ST Express buses are way more comfortable than Metro (at least if you’re not in the trailer or worse, the bendy part) but you can’t get up and move around. And the train’s the winner if your bringing baggage or even a bike. I’ve experience bike riders have to wait for the next bus because the rack is full. We’ll be able to see if there’s a bias for trains when the 2 Line opens in a couple of weeks. I’ll be one statistic in the train column.
What we have is light rail that is 30 miles from Seatac Airport to the terminus of the 4.2 mile long Tacoma Street car with a 10 mile gap that hasn’t been finished. What we also have is a $4.4 billion dollar proposal from ST to finish the job. That’s about 5X what it needs to be. In part (there’s lots more wrong with it) because it adds 1,000 structured parking spots at two stations in the middle of nowhere while the largest parking garage in the entire metro area remains at just over 40% capacity. The existing garage can handle another 1,000 cars and still have 400 empty spaces! Maybe it would be better to look at extending T Link north?
ST Express buses are way more comfortable than Metro (at least if you’re not in the trailer or worse, the bendy part) but you can’t get up and move around.
Sure you can. You can change seats if you want. Same goes for riding Link. But even even if there is a slight comfort advantage to Link it isn’t worth the extra 24 minutes of travel time (and the extra transfer).
And the train’s the winner if your bringing baggage.
Right. So now we are back to the “short trip” argument. SeaTac to Tacoma. It will get some riders. Except wait. How are they supposed to get to the Tacoma Dome, anyway? Not that many people can walk there. So either they are riding a bus anyway (true of employees and those on short trips) are they are driving to a parking lot and lugging their luggage to the train. Fair enough. Except can’t they do that at Federal Way? Thus you are talking about a handful or riders who save a little driving. It just isn’t worth it.
I’ve experience bike riders have to wait for the next bus because the rack is full.
Bike riders? So now we are concerned about bike riders? Only a handful of people ever do this. Bikes are also a hassle on Link. In contrast, Sounder is much better suited for it. We really aren’t talking about that many potential riders.
What we also have is a $4.4 billion dollar proposal from ST to finish the job.
Holy cow, that is a lot of money. I forget it was that much. So again, we are talking about a lot of money for very few riders. ST would be much better off shifting the spending to buses. Federal Way is an excellent terminus. A bus can serve the station and keep going (or end there). The first thing ST should do with the money is run buses every fifteen minutes to Seattle. That was the plan. Each bus should stop at Federal Way (so that riders can get to Link). If the bus from Lakewood is too inconsistent (because they haven’t finished the HOV work) then just split the line. Run an express from Lakewood to Federal Way (all day). Start the Seattle-Tacoma bus in Tacoma. Use some of the capital to improve the bus connection from the Tacoma Dome to the HOV lanes. Likewise add as many bus lanes as possible in Tacoma itself. ST should also help pay for service in Tacoma. This can be done directly or indirectly. For example, ST could simply take over service for the 1. It is relatively frequent (for Pierce Transit) which means it would save PT quite a bit of money which they could use for other buses. The 1 carries more riders than Tacoma Link ever will.
Of course Tacoma Dome Link will have some riders. But Pierce Transit — as underfunded as it is — will have more. If they get rid of the express buses between Seattle and Tacoma then a lot of people will be worse off. If they don’t then not that many people will ride Link from Tacoma. Tacoma Dome Link is just a really poor value.
There’s more to travel time than the minutes you are actually moving. The big gain here is the 8 minute vs 15-30 minute frequency of Express buses. Then you have to consider the flexibility. With the bus you have to follow it’s schedule which may end up costing you 30 minutes that you have to arrive early or sit around waiting to go home. Sounder is a premium service and a good value (South line, north line not so much) but even more rigid in it’s schedule. And you have to adhere to that timetable whereas with Link you can stay late or go other places and do things besides go straight home. We’ll be able to see when the 2 Line opens across the lake in two weeks.
People going to the airport will either get dropped off or use one of the many now empty parking spots that are bought and paid for. People living in Tacoma along the streetcar route will use that. Bus connections would be reconfigured as part of the plan if the rail connection is ever finished (i.e. deliver what was promised to the tax payers).
Federal Way is a good connection point for those driving. You have both I-5 and SR-18 right there. I don’t know what the utilization is of the 400 car garage they built. Until it’s full there is little additional value to anyone driving.
A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you’re talking real money. A truism ST doesn’t care about. Small town mayors are entrusted with a pot of gold they never could have imagined and squander it in ways that are unimaginable. The one thing they won’t spend money on is improved local bus service. No soup for you!
The big gain here is the 8 minute vs 15-30 minute frequency of Express buses.
Midday the train runs every ten minutes. The bus could easily run every fifteen. Remember, that was the plan until the driver shortage. There really isn’t that much difference between ten and fifteen.
More to the point, if the bus ran every fifteen minutes it doesn’t matter how often the train runs. You are better off catching the bus. Imagine you get to the bus stop just as the bus is taking off. You look to the side and there is Link, also ready to take off. So you have two choices: take the light rail right now or wait fifteen minutes for the bus. You are better off waiting for the bus. It will get there an average of nine minutes faster. Something could happen with the bus but something could happen with the train, also. There is a reason why cities like New York have express buses that duplicate subway routes. The bus is faster for longer trips.
People going to the airport will either get dropped off or use one of the many now empty parking spots that are bought and paid for.
And those people can get dropped off or park in Federal Way. So this is definitely an improvement (a little less driving) but there aren’t that many riders trying to do this. The same thing is true with people that prefer taking Link to Seattle (instead of Sounder or the bus). It is just an absurd amount of money for the benefit it will provide, especially given the state of transit in the county (for more common trips). ST is spending a huge amount of money to save a handful of riders a tiny amount of time while the vast majority struggles with crap.
Ross: your numbers for 70 minutes for Link are from Tacoma Dome, not the Central Business Distict.
The times I’ve taken T Link, the transfer and travel time penalty is about 15-20 minutes additional to get to actual Tacoma.
If it’s not raining and I want to go to the museum of glass or something, it’s faster for me to just walk from Amtrak.
“People going to the airport will either get dropped off or use one of the many now empty parking spots that are bought and paid for. People living in Tacoma along the streetcar route will use that.”
So why not extend that to connect to Link in Federal Way, so it can run all the way to SeaTac directly rather than have a forced transfer in the middle of a sea of parking lots?
Yes, you’d have a transfer if going from Seattle to downtown Tacoma. You have that either way. Extending T Link just moves the transfer point you’d have to make anyway to somewhere where people have better transit connections to various other routes.
The flexibility you claim Link offers is only valid if you’re within walking distance of the Tacoma Dome. There’s a great little African restaurant near there, but other than this it’s not a huge number of places we’re talking about. For everything else, you’re at the mercy of the more limited hours and frequency of T Link, or the very limited frequency and hours of Pierce Transit.
Ross, how do you propose to spend the $4.4 billion if TDLE-Links is not built? You may not use it for local bus service. Period, and it’s not going to be loosened by the Leg. You can use if for BRT or Express buses if they “connect regional centers”. Most regional centers are already connected by ST Expresses where they’re close enough together to stitch up a route.
So where? Pierce has raised the tax money over two decades, and while yes a significant expantion of inter-county transit has occurred, relatively little capital has been expended. Hence, Pierce Sub-Area has a huge lien against North and East King. If that lien can’t be spent on local buses or connecting regional centers, where does that leave Pierce County taxpayers?
In the Lurch and angry about it.
Is that a “good transit” argument for TDLE-Links? Heavens No! It’s a pathetic argument for TDLE-Links. But it’s one that Pierce voters will demand.
Exactly Tom! That is the Billion dollar question. However, I don’t think Pierce sub-area has anywhere close to $4.4 Billion in the bank. Hence, ST coming back holding their hat out looking for more. If well spent ridership in Pierce Co. will increase which in theory gives Pierce Transit more to work with. However, the major boost in funding has to come from increased sales tax and the best way to do that is to grow the economy. Tacoma has to be the engine that drives that growth (not parking garages in Fife & Milton).
I’ve always been skeptical of TOD arguement, “build it and they will come”. I think DT Redmond would have been built up (and mostly has been) without East Link. Mass transit does allow you to increase density as we are seeing in Bell-Red. But that’s happening because Redmond and Bellevue DT are rapidly becoming built out and additional projects only pencil out if they are really large big buck development.
Tacoma doesn’t have the problem of being too dense; very much the opposite. They are trying to resurrect the City that crumbled in the 70’s and 80’s. That said, the streetcar has made the area it initially served more vibrant. And that pattern seems to be holding with the extension that is seeing ridership above projections. So leveraging on that investment seems like it would be the play that makes the most sense for spending capital investment.
T Link could extend south. Tacoma/Pierce/Lakewood have hinted at a Tacoma Mall extension. The thinking is it will be like Totem Lake (dead mall turned into an “urban village”). Not going to happen. Totem Lake works because DT Kirkland is built out due to geographic and existing land use restrains. Another idea was Tacoma Community College; the streetcar to
nowhereFircrest.I could see an extension out 19th to Cedar/Pine and crossing Nalley Valley (another major employer that’s gone) to connect with South Tacoma Way. I think that’s better than aiming for the Tacoma Mall. There is a lot of develop-able land there and it would connect to Sounder, Mt Tahoma HS, Clover Park Voc Tech and has great access from I-5 and SR-512. It would also be the easiest access for most of Lakewood and JBLM. But I don’t see that being useful for more than a decade and only if DT Tacoma continues to rebound.
I seriously think extending the streetcar north to Federal Way should be looked at. If that can be done for a fraction of the cost of extending Link south then it might be the only option that is viable without another huge infusion of cash. The 10 mile connection should cost no more than $1 Billion dollars. That’s the high end of the rate for urban light rail in the USA. It really should be more like half of that.
“ I don’t think Pierce sub-area has anywhere close to $4.4 Billion in the bank. ”
I’ll note that TDLE is also a South King project too. It’s not all on Pierce’s dime.
However, part of OMF-South is “off budget” and not directly in that TDLE cost and Pierce is partly on the hook for that.
I too like Glenn’s idea of extending the streetcar north instead of Link south, but I think your estimate of $1 billion to do it is way underpriced. The only significant saving would be on stations. The trackway will still have to be off SR99 in order to for the cars to perform adequately. That means building something quite similar to Link trackway. Maybe it could be a bit “lighter”, but prudence would demand that it be built to Link standards “in case”.
This just in from ST: The DSTT closure March 21-22 is to replaced a cracked rail at Pioneer Square station, where currently has a slow order northbound. I experienced this slowness Saturday and wondered why.
Also, the westside 2 Line will be suspended March 18-22 to prepare for the full opening March 28. “2 Line trains will run a pre-simulated service scheduled between South Bellevue and Downtown Redmond.” That sounds like late-evening service will be suspended too.
@Ross Bleakney:
You say that taxes are too low compared to Scandinavian countries. Well, you are not a senior citizen like I am and on a fixed income and for me taxes are high and throw in that the cost of everything else keeps going up it is hard to keep up.
I know that your response will be something to the effect that I should move to an area where the cost of living is lower. That is easier said than done for someone who has lived in this area for some 60 years.
And keep in mind that one day you will be a senior citizen on a fixed income and you will find out what that is like.
Perhaps fixed incomes for retirees are the problem, not taxes?
Scandinavian countries have a larger social safety net, so you don’t have to spend as much of your personal income on necessities and insurance. That’s what the higher taxes are for: you pay a little more, and in return you get more economical services that also cover everyone, so that your neighbors aren’t falling through the cracks and the impacts on them won’t spill over to you.
Washington state has the most regressive tax structure in the US, so the tax burden falls more heavily on the poor than in other states. That’s because it depends so heavily on sales tax, and the poor spend the most of their income on necessities (partly to make up for the lack of social benefits). Now that the legislature has passed an income tax (although the governor hasn’t signed it), there’s a possibility for the tax system to become less regressive over time.
The problem with taxes is that people on this site propose projects that cost money or increase in taxes to pay for those projects. They may be good proposals but at the same time there are other groups that support their projects that cost money and propose taxes to pay for them.
Then you have politicians with their projects so where does it end. We don’t live in a Scandinavian country so the burden to pay for all these proposed projects falls on taxpayers like me on a fixed income or the poor.
The income tax is not a sure thing as the legality of it will be challenged in the courts and an initiative drive will probably place it on the ballot.
As I said all of you will become senior citizens and have to live on a fixed income and when you do you will find out what that is like.
You may bring up other countries and their larger social safety net but we don’t live in those countries.
Then you get into a downward spiral of where you don’t have pubic services so you have to spend more of your income trying to fill the gap. That doesn’t fully work, or even if it works for some people it doesn’t work for everybody.
This directly relates to transit. The infrequencies and gaps in the bus network make it hard to use or infeasible for a lot of trips. This forces people to drive and maintain cars that they don’t always want to or have trouble affording. The only way to get out of this is to make the buses more frequent. That requires more taxes. We’re not asking for an extraordinary amount of transit service, and not necessarily even as high as Scadinavia, just up to the average of industrialized countries. For instance, Canada is one milestone, where it’s a lot easier to get around on transit throughout the city and suburbs (Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa), so people use it more and don’t need a car as much.
But, Jeff, it isn’t really “fixed”. Unless you have a significant portion of your income from annuity sources, your yearly SS COLA is a significant boost. Is it “enough”? Maybe not in some ideal universe, but it’s not nothing.
According to Metro, they will be implementing all-door boarding systemwide starting on March 28. https://kingcountymetro.blog/2026/03/12/king-county-metro-expands-bus-service-and-launches-systemwide-all-door-boarding-starting-march-28/
My observation is that rear door ORCA readers are still only partially rolled out. For instance, nearly every non-articulated coach has them already. As do some articulated coaches. For example buses whose ID numbers start with 8XXX seem to nearly all have rear door readers. But practically none of the buses whose ID numbers start with 69XX have them.
My main route is the 372, and less than 5% of buses on the route have a back door reader. It’s not feasible to have people enter in the back and swim upstream to the front to tap. So is Metro pretty much making the 372 (and other similar routes) fare free at the end of the month?
Not to mention how does this impact STX buses? They are operated by Metro. If people can enter the back door of a 372 along Bothell Way, then I’d think passengers would have an expectation of entering the back door of a 522 serving the same route.
This is a Metro policy, so it doesn’t apply to ST Express even though Metro operates it. ST Express stopped recognizing paper transfers years ago, while Metro still has them.
Almost all the Metro buses I’ve been on in the past year have ORCA readers at the rear doors, and I’ve been entering and tapping there whenever the rear doors are closer. Some drivers open the rear doors for entrees, others don’t, so I guess that will be the biggest change.
Does the 372 have the old kind of articulated buses with no middle door? I encounter those mostly on ST Express, where it seems like most of the buses don’t have a middle door so it’s infeasible if you’re sitting in front to walk to the back to exit, especially when the bus is moving and there are no handholds in the articulation area. These might have to wait until the buses are replaced. I imagine Metro will let people enter free if it’s announcing systemwide all-door boarding but it doesn’t have readers on all the doors. Most people aren’t dedicated transit fans, and will hear Metro’s marketing about all-door boarding and not understand the issues.
Has anyone noticed whether there are ORCA readers at rear doors for any ST Express buses? I’m not including coaches, for which the rear door is a lift.
I only see rear door Orca reader on King County Metro routes. At least 550 doesn’t have rear door reader.
This route is no longer crowded as it could possibly be pre-pandemic, so I barely see anyone with intention to pay board from rear door.
Trips and frequency are being reduced on both ST Express 510 and 515. The rest of the Community Transit service change seems pretty much a wash. Is CT having trouble hiring operators?
(I happen to be in favor of eliminating the 510 and 515 after the World Cup, along with the Ash Way stop on the 512, which we have discussed ad nauseam.)
The 515 was created to help alleviate crowding on Link. With East Link about to go over the lake it seems completely unnecessary.
The 510 is a different beast. I am not saying it is justified but I can see why someone in Everett would prefer a one-seat ride from Everett to Downtown Seattle. Sound Transit’s Ridership Tracker (https://www.soundtransit.org/ride-with-us/system-performance-tracker/ridership) does not have any information from the last couple months for the 510. It is possible that ridership has dropped quite a bit, given the reversal of the express lanes. Maybe riders are only taking it northbound. I have no idea what happens with the 510 after it serves riders (maybe it just deadheads back). But it seems like cancelling some morning runs would save some money and lose very few riders.