ST3 Truncations

189 Replies to “ST3 Truncations”

1. The article makes it sound like ST is choosing between door number 1, 2, or 3, but actually these are hypothetical illustrations of three different philosophies (described below). The staff is asking the board to make policy decisions to prioritize which philosophies, factors, and individual items it wants to pursue further, so that the staff can quantify these further for comparison and consideration. The board aims to make a decision by May. This is an incredibly complex issue as multiple boardmembers said, so we struggled to articulate it all within a half day of the retreat. I’d read this alongside the Urbanist article for context. I’ll put my notes from the retreat here:

   The three philosophies in the approaches are:
   (1) build the light rail projects that are furthest along in planning (e.g., West Seattle).
   (2) connect the most regional centers and jobs (e.g., SLU/Seattle Center, Issaquah).
   (3) start the most projects now (i.e., truncate light rail extensions to free up money for everything else: infill stations, Sounder, parking garages).

   These have not been evaluated for subarea equity yet. All subareas are in deficit, so the staff is waiting for systemwide guidance before scoring what remains for subarea equity.

   Boardmembers brought up other philosophies they want information on before deciding: prioritizing ridership (Ballard is highest by far of any ST3 project), cutting things vs finding more revenue, prioritizing infill stations, Spine vs non-Spine, prioritizing projects that have been waiting the longest, subarea equity impacts, etc.

   It’s not clear what “waiting the longest” alludes to, but it might be BAR station (deferered in ST1), Sounder station improvements/garages, Sounder runs, and/or the Spine (Everett Station, Tacoma Dome).

   There’s a chart comparing the three approaches on metrics on page 33 of the slide deck in the first paragraph of the article. Here’s the ones that perform best on various metrics:
   Ridership: 1.
   Job access: 2. (1 is worst.)
   Zero-vehicle household access: 1.
   Travel time reduction: 1 and 2 tied.
   Competitiveness/readiness for grants: 1.

   So if it were based solely on that, 1 would win and 3 would be left in the dust. One boardmember said they thought 3 was unlikely.

   (1) prioritize projects that are furthest along in planning
   (2) connect the most regional centers (e.g., Seattle Center, Issaquah)
   (3) start the most projects now (truncate lines in order to fund all the infill, Sounder, and parking garage projects)

   1. I still don’t get what the purpose of Boeing Access Rd Station is, since it is too far from the S Line to serve as a modal transfer station.

      About the only things it accomplishes are to pre-empt a Sounder transfer station from ever being built and pre-empt an Allentown station near Metro’s South Base from ever being built.

      I probably live closest to it among everyone in the commentariat, and see no positive value in it. Stop spending money on the counterproductive Boeing Access Rd Station, please.

      1. The City of Tukwila’s stated reasons for insisting on BAR station are:

         1, To extend RapidRide A to it for an urban village at 144th.
         2. Better access to the Museum of Flight and Aviation High School. (This would be via a shorter route 124 transfer).
         3. Potential bus route truncations, unspecified routes.

         And probably:
         4. Another P&R.

         No, it doesn’t make sense.

      2. It is a pet project that’s totally redundant. A nice to have versus a must have. Much like Pinehurst, ridership will be anemic and the cost absurd.

      3. 4. Another P&R.

         Isn’t this withing Seattle city limits? If so, then aren’t new P&R lots vorbotten?

      4. No, Seattle ends just north of the Boeing Access Road. It may be a legacy of when the Seattle boundaries were redrawn to exclude Boeing because it didn’t want to pay city taxes. The southern border is very jagged.

      5. Believe it or not, the southern city limits had nothing do with Boeing — or, rather, the southern city limits weren’t REdrawn to exclude Boeing. See https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/1e276acd0fc147ce97edb5ef0c0f209c. We’re talking 1907 in the area in question.

      6. I still don’t get what the purpose of Boeing Access Rd Station is

         That is because the project has evolved over time and folks forgot what it is for. It would be like putting the Pinehurst Station at 120th*. Look at the map from the original Sound Move proposal. Clearly it was designed to a multi-modal station, serving both Link and Sounder. It also shows it right over I-5, which means it could serve buses as well. This definitely adds value.

         Yet over time it has been chipped away and now it can’t work as a multi-modal station. Sounder won’t stop there. The buses from I-5 won’t stop there. Like Pinehurst, there will be very few walk-up riders. Unlike Pinehurst, it provides very little value from a bus interface standpoint. It is not a good value (although you can say that about most of ST3).

         *For those who don’t know, Pinehurst is a bus-interface station, similar to 148th, 185th, Mountlake Terrace and Lynnwood. Like those stations, it will get most of its ridership from buses. In the case of Pinehurst it will provide a key east-west connection to areas that are more densely populated than any neighborhood to the north (until you get to Canada). It is also closer to more popular destinations on Link which will lead to higher ridership (eventually, when Metro provides decent service to it).

      7. I think the Boeing Access Rd station could make sense if there was a convenient transfer to a freeway bus station (and maybe a Sounder Station eventually). That way passengers on freeway running buses could conveniently get to rainier valley and Link riders could bypass rainier valley on their way downtown. This would also give riders options in the case of service disruptions. Adding HOV 3+ lanes and ramps on I5 would help make this viable.

   2. > The article makes it sound like ST is choosing between door number 1, 2, or 3, but actually these are hypothetical illustrations of three different philosophies (described below).

      that’s partially true as technically ST has to be neutral, but ST/dow constantine are pushing for approach number 1. we can see that on page 33 of the pdf as well.

      they mark it as program competitiveness high, project readiness high, and completes the spine as yes. the other board members aren’t quite happy though and repeatedly asked about off ramps from approving west seattle link extension though.

      https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/ActiveDocuments/Presentation%20-%20Board%20Retreat%20-%2003-18-26.pdf#page=33

      1. Great!

         ST can accomplish the north downtown portion of Door #1 (or Door #3) by purchasing the Seattle Center Monorail from the City of Seattle.

      2. Yeah, good point. Keep in mind that while they define terms like “Modify” and “Defer” (which are pretty obvious) they don’t define what “Program competitiveness” actually means. Yet Option 1 is ranked “High”. This just reads like BS designed to favor a particular outcome (trains to West Seattle).

   3. I realize these are just examples designed to show the various approaches. Yet they suggest the approaches are all worthless. In all three options they build a second tunnel. In all three options they fail to get to Ballard. This clearly implies that building a second tunnel — which will make transit worse for a lot of people — is more important than getting to Ballard. This is ludicrous.

      It is easy to just blow off the slides as a typical powerpoint BS presentation. Throw around phrases like “Enterprise Initiative workstream” (Page 14) to make it sound like this is a technical discussion. Then have later slides stating the obvious (“Focus on what matters”). But there are real ramifications with the methodology they want the board to take. Yes, they are encouraged to take a mixed approach — but only within this flawed set of approaches.

      Consider Graham Street Station. It is quite likely that the station is now the most cost-effective project in ST3 by traditional metrics. These include things like subsidy-per-rider, additional-ridership-per-dollar, ridership-per-service-hour or the metric that used to determine federal matching funds: ridership-time-saved-per-dollar-spent. Basically you look at all of the riders and calculate how much time each one would save (compared to the current system). Then divide the cost. It is quite likely Graham Street comes out on top because it has high ridership-per-dollar and the alternative is a long walk or a bus transfer. Such a metric is harder to gather, but consider subsidy-per-dollar. A few years back, Graham Street Station was considered the second most cost-effective project (after Ballard Link). In other words, the subsidy-per-rider was second lowest. Obviously the costs have changed, but it is quite possible that Graham Street Station is the best value.

      Yet somehow it only gets built if we “Phase all light rail extension projects to advance other ST3 elements”. WTF? It only gets built if we build a stub line to Delridge, Fife and the Seattle Center?!! That makes no sense. Yes, I realize this is only meant for example purposes but it suggests a flawed methodology at the very least. At best it is just complete BS and they will make their decisions based on more important ridership considerations, like value.

      1. 100%

         The other underlying implication is that there is no way that Link doesn’t end up in the Junction; Dow is going to make sure that happens even if the line goes from SoDo to the Junction with no other stations on the way and it costs $100 billion. Just as they are going to build a second tunnel no matter what. It’s done and sealed.

         It doesn’t matter how badly it pencils out, how they phase it in, how they focus on “what matters”, or any other buzzwords Dow will eventually throw out to the masses (“value engineering”) – the Junction is going to have a Link station and there will be a second tunnel.

      2. Graham Street is redundant. This Rainier Valley is already well served with multiple stations and a much cheaper and smarter way to serve the area is by feeder buses instead of overpriced stations in the slowest section of the line. Similar to Pinehurst, where a shuttle or bus reroute was all that was needed, you can achieve the same benefit at marginal cost increase and zero impact on existing riders.

   4. Abandoning Ballard Link or terminating it at the Seattle Center wouldn’t just be an embarrassing planning failure, it would betray many of Seattle and many of Sound Transit’s biggest supporters. It’s not okay if Sound Transit abandons a goal of Ballard in 2044 for Ballard sometime, hopefully. The best crazy solution that I’ve heard is to replace West Seattle Link with a cable car. It would save a lot of money with the Duwamish crossing and reduce the amount of land acquisitions. Abandoning Ballard Link is an absolute non-starter.

      1. Ballard Link that only goes to Seattle Center and skips SLU is absurd. We’re better off building nothing. All it would do is compete with the monorail.

         We won’t, but what we really should do is construct a line from UW-Ballard-Westlake instead, similar to original ST Long Range Plan. An automated line, higher-frequency, with smaller stations, that does serve SLU.

         Cancel West Seattle Link.
         Cancel Issaquah Link.
         Cancel DSTT2.

         That should save enough money to build Graham Street station.

      2. The current Ballard plan of serving Ballard with a station on 14th doesn’t really serve Ballard either.

         And why on earth build an expensive tunnel to South Lake Union, and then decide not to put a station there?

      3. “The current Ballard plan of serving Ballard with a station on 14th”

         The preferred alternative is 15th again apparently. So 14th is a potential threat rather than a break-glass alarm at this point, unlike the ultra-bad transfers downtown that are the preferred alternative.

      4. No train to Ballard? Blame Ballard’s very small but vocal anti-transit minority, car-dependent doofuses, aided and abetted by the Ballard Alliance. These wackos convinced enough people to change Sound Transit’s preferred design from a very affordable moveable bridge design over the Ballard Canal to a super-unaffordable tunnel underneath the waterway and voila, too expensive to build. Cancelled! Just like they wanted.

         Sound Transit light rail vehicles are very tall with catenary overhead so they require a lot of height. Bridges have overhead height, tunnels don’t. Round tunnels to carry this tall light rail configuration need to be massively oversized and hence very expensive whereas overhead track routes are much more affordable. While Ballard Alliance was busy demanding Ballard rail be maximally unaffordable, on the other side of the lakes, Issaquah watched and learned and made meaningful strides to identify cost-savings to ensure their rail be maximally affordable. Without course correction guess which track the Sound Transit BoD will choose to lay first?

         Mayor Wison, CM Strauss, if you want to prove your worth your next move is to say “tough luck Ballard Alliance, we will shut down 15th NW to cars and run the light rail straight over the Ballard Bridge as the maker intended if that’s what it takes to get light rail to Ballard as part of ST3”. No stupid tunnels where they are not needed! A bridge will be much more affordable to get ST Light Rail to Ballard. 10-15 years ago, SDOT proposed a Ballard Bridge replacement that would carry ST light rail, private cars, and be much better for walkers and bikers. At that time ST had sufficient money and ST’s timeline was not aligned to SDOT’s timeline. Now its time to resurrect those surveys and plans, align timelines, and re-build the Ballard Bridge with light rail as the primary user. Lord knows the Ballard bridge needs replacing. My only ask is that SDOT add a hefty toll for every private car that uses the Ballard Bridge.

2. Some facts that were mentioned in the retreat:

   The affordability issue is the debt ceiling between 2034 and 2043 (page 33). This limits how much ST can spend in those years on construction. The two limits are:

   * State limit: 1.5% of the aggregate real property value in the ST district.

   * Self-imposed board limit: 1.5% of net revenue (after expenses) divided b annual debt service payments.

   ST has a tax authority it hasn’t used so far: a car-rental tax. In past board meetings a payroll head tax was mentioned: I don’t know if it’s still available.

   Hunter George said the legislature is angry at ST3, so that would hinder convincing them to give ST more resources. He said Pierce County residents are angry at ST3 for not delivering things sooner, thinking Tacoma Dome will never happen (they want it to happen).

   Other tidbits:

   Seven people in the audience had T-shirts saying “Save Issaquah light rail”. That made me start thinking about a T-shirt: “Good transfers”.

   Claudia Balducci and other boardmembers/staff boarded my 594 at Yesler to get to the retreat. Dow Constantine and others took Sounder.

3. In the category of totally unserious options, there are;

   1) ending the line in Fife, and not reaching Tacoma Dome;

   2) skipping the able-to-move transit desert portion of downtown that is South Lake Union;

   The only thing going for a Fife truncation is forcing Pierce County to vote for ST4 to complete the Amtrak-to-Amtrak-to-Amtrak spine. But I think Pierce County has waited long enough already, and ST4 is very, very far away.

   I see all three realignment options skip SLU. Has anyone looked at whether money can be saved (and ridership and transfers improved) by an aerial alignment, in particular one that could tunnel more shallowly under First Hill in ST4?

   If any line needs a start-over, it is West Seattle. Make it aerial or at-grade with separated ROW. And move it back in the priority line, ahead of South Kirkland. I say this as a constituent of all the West Seattle politicians.

   1. We should improve bus service in West Seattle first. The biggest problem is not speed — it is frequency. Think about this for a second. Imagine you live in the Central District. It takes 15 minutes to get downtown at noon. From the West Seattle Junction it takes 15 minutes as well. West Seattle is considerably farther away. Thus it is already considerably faster than many of our routes. In general it is quite fast. Fifteen minutes to get from the “heart” of the neighborhood to the middle of downtown about five miles away is blazing fast. Link wouldn’t make it that much faster.

      The biggest problem in West Seattle is just lack of service. It is good from the Junction and non-existent to Alki. Oh, and you can get downtown — with a transfer. The trip takes 42 minutes! That is because the bus has to go way out of its way to serve the Alaska Junction — the same stop that Link would provide. Link would have the same frequency as the C Line and be only marginally faster. This means that riders from Alki (and other locations, like Admiral District) have a much slower trip mainly because they have to go the Alaska Junction and transfer. That wouldn’t change with West Seattle Link.

      Now consider the 56. It runs from Alki and Admiral District to downtown. It skips the Alaska Junction. It only runs during peak — when traffic is at its worst. Yet it gets to downtown in less than a half hour. It really doesn’t matter how fast West Seattle Link is — the 56 will be faster. The problem is, the 56 only runs during peak. Like most of West Seattle, it needs better bus service.

      This is the fundamental problem with West Seattle Link. It really only adds significant value *within West Seattle*. A train running between Alki and the Alaska Junction would save riders a lot more time than West Seattle Link will (for any of its trips). But the part of the line that has trouble competing with buses — West Seattle to downtown — is extremely expensive to build. So you end up spending all of your money on the part that doesn’t add much value and you don’t have enough left over for the part that would. To be fair, the trip from The Junction to Youngstown would be faster. But even then the improvement would be minimal (because it is so short) and there just aren’t that many people taking that trip. West Seattle Link needs to be a lot bigger to actually provide meaningful value and we obviously don’t have the money for that.

      As you wrote, it should be placed back in the priority line. Way back.

      1. Oh, and to be clear, I would spend capital improving the bus speeds. A deal is a deal. We promised West Seattle faster speeds for their trips from the peninsula to SoDo (and the rest of the light rail network) and the Spokane Street Viaduct/SoDo Busway connection would provide it. But the first thing to do is run the buses more often.

      2. Let’s just forget that a few short years ago there was no direct way in and out of West Seattle. That alone should make it the priority.

      3. No idea where you’re getting your info about the frequency and speed of West Seattle buses. According to the official schedule (https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/routes-and-service/schedules-and-maps/c-line#weekday), it takes 23 minutes to get from the Junction to downtown during the morning commute. At off-peak times, it still takes 20 minutes, and the frequency is 15-20 minutes outside of commute hours. In my experience, the C is always running late, too. Light rail would be a vast improvement over this.

   2. Do the scenarios suggest not building the station near Denny Way? Only to save cost? The thinking backwards.

      1. The scenarios just say “no SLU station”, and at some point I heard the Denny station would be moved north to compensate. There’s no specific station location yet so it’s hard to say how much the impact is. Any movement away from Denny Way makes transfers to the 8 harder, but how much is unacceptable?

         The “SLU” station is at Aurora so it doesn’t have a good walkshed. It’s being pushed for transfers from the E, but we find it hard to think of who would want to do that. It’s not that much further to downtown.

4. If ST is to skip a station in West Seattle, wouldn’t deferring Alaska Junction easily make the most sense?

   1) Avalon is on the near side of West Seattle’s island of urbanity. It will have a much better ridership cachement. Alaska Junction is on the far side of the urbanity, kind of like Beacon Hill Station.

   2) Isn’t it far easier to extend the line to Alaskan Junction than to build Avalon later as an infill station?

   3) Wouldn’t truncating to Avalon defer a lot more tunneling expense?

   4) Removing Alaska Junction could shorten the timeline by shrinking the NIMBYshed.

   1. I can’t believe ST has never considered eliminating the new SODO Station, it’s probably the safest option and saves a good amount of money and eliminates redundancy. Truncating at Delridge could make Delridge a regional hub (and as well a way to bypass the West Seattle Bridge traffic) but it just concerns me over how short the extension is and the ridership. The only way to get a good amount is to truncate ALL buses that run on the bridge to Delridge from West Seattle (though I would think about truncating the 50). Delridge is also in a dead end place with nothing but industry so rethink ST.

      1. SODO station is critical for a variety of reasons. First, while WSLE and BLE are being built, SODO will be the terminus for the 3 line. It’s also an at grade transfer station, so the costs are a lot lower than a trenched station like Avalon, which won’t have a large effect on ridership. It’s also a cross platform transfer from NB 3 line trains to SB 1 line trains, which is a good thing for airport travelers. The reason the two platforms are separate is so that any RV disruption won’t have an effect on the DSTT operations after BLE gets built. The 3 line will be entirely grade separate, and the 2 line’s at grade portion is minimal and not nearly as disruptive as the RV segment. Isolating the 1 line in the short term is a smart idea to gain lots of reliability until the system can be entirely grade separated in the long term.

      2. The big transfer pattern at SODO will be two level changes because it’s going to be same direction travel. Two level changes is still much easier than the 6-8 level changes being planned in Downtown. Every time a train arrives, a surge of transferring riders going in the same direction will hit the few escalators abd elevators — and they will back up.

         And the “no disruption” argument to me is disingenuous. There will be big disruptions! First ST has planned to shift the platform at the existing station already and trains won’t be allowed next to the platform change. Building overpasses for the new station and for Lander will also create disruptions. At some point, the mainline 1 Line tracks would have to get new switches to go into DSTT2 while 3 Line trains will have to tie into the current 1 Line tracks entering or leaving Downtown.

         I believe that ST should plan to put 1 Line trains on the outside and 3 Line trains on the inside. The station would work so much better — for same direction transfers and for trains that need to swap tracks in any periodic operational disruption. And building a southbound 1 Line stop as the westmost platform first would seem to make any needed disruptions less frequent as it could open early as a bidirectional station and this free up ST to rebuild the rest of SODO Station without more disruptive stress.

         I’ve long argued that the SODO track configuration needs a major rethink. I’m actually rather pleased that the SODO station layout is back on the table! I hope it initiates a badly needed discussion about same direction transfers.

      3. Al, I never said anything about SODO construction not disrupting service, I was talking about crashes and at grade incidents in the rainier valley not affecting the 2 or 3 lines once the second tunnel gets constructed. I think ST has been pretty clear that there will be some disruptions to construct another SODO station regardless of if it were tied in to the existing one or a new one were constructed.

         In any event, the architectural renders for the rebuilt SODO station have the platform configuration as follows:

         Platform || || Island Platform || || Platform

         Same direction transfers at SODO would be nice, I agree, but it would be a lot of special trackwork and flyovers to achieve such a configuration. That would surely require far more disruption to existing service than the above configuration to also achieve the more pressing goal of isolating the RV segment of the alignment.

      4. @D M, the second SODO station can be avoided if ST simply upgraded DSTT to handle all 3 lines. After South OMF is built, reconfigure Central OMF to turn the existing flying junction into a revenue track, and interline West Seattle Link from there with zero disruption to existing 1 Line operations and no stupidly expensive new SODO station.

      5. Sunny

         Triple interlining would be legitimately awful. You have limited capacity in dstt, both because of ventilation requirements from the NFPA and due to signaling requirements. You limit the branch frequency significantly, and either require short turning trains at Northgate, which requires using the pocket track and losing the gap train capacity there, of which there aren’t any more pocket tracks farther north, or you push the already at capacity Lynnwood even further.

         ST also says you wouldn’t save any money with triple interlining anyway, if you did the connection to denny from symphony. Given the risk associated with that option I’m inclined to agree. Working on existing structures and shutting down the entire downtown core for years potentially, or single tracking it for years, would be legitimately catastrophic.

         How would it be any cheaper to reconfigure a yard junction to tie in wsle. That makes zero sense and those curves from the yard have a 5-10mph design speed. That would not work or be fast at all.

      6. I agree with Sunny. Three lines are common in other metros. WMATA has the Blue, Orange and Silver Lines, for example. They run every 10 minutes each at peak hours.

         And there would be no need to stub a West Seattle train at SODO.

         The key is in the branching. There ideally would be three branches of Link north of Fowntown to pair off with the three south of Downtown. Instead ST has planned one line with scoliosis (Paine Field) that has midpoint turnarounds.

   2. I completely agree that truncating at Avalon could make a lot of sense. It would be a much better bus intercept for routes like the 21 and C line. It is right on the edge of the West Seattle urban village. Not ideal for access to the junction, but it can be walked and buses would certainly run between those spots. From both a stop spacing and geography perspective, it is a sensible spot for a station. Its frustrating to see ST opting to skip it and preclude it from ever being built in the future.

      I recall seeing a King County Metro map for projected service in 2050, which assumed full ST3 buildout. When deferring a station like this, ST should really be considering impacts to things like the bus network.

      1. Yeah I’ve long argued that Avalon Station or maybe one slightly further west should be the end station.

         The density around the planned Alaska Junction Station falls to single family within two blocks in three directions! It’s not the heart of the neighborhood residential density; it’s almost at the western edge.

         Most of the Alaska Junction riders are transferring from buses rather than walking. The station will be as deep as Capitol Hill if not deeper and that takes time to negotiate.

         And the many years of excavation and construction will puncture a hole in the middle of the narrow commercial district, making all those unique businesses struggle for several years. Many WS businesses may have long closed or relocated by the time the station opens.

         I think the reported billion-plus cost savings from merely the tail track removal (note that it extended to single family blocks) is a pretty big clue that a bored tunnel is overkill for West Seattle.

      2. “I recall seeing a King County Metro map for projected service in 2050, which assumed full ST3 buildout.”

         Metro Connects 2050.

         It’s unfunded, and Metro doesn’t always follow it during restructures, so you never know when/if a particular route will be implemented.

         Seattle has its own future transit concepts somewhere, which are somewhat different.

   3. Alaska Junction is the literal heart of West Seattle

      1. It is at the west end of the heart. Most living in the heart would have to go backward to get to it.

         Spiritually, yes it is the heart of Old West Seattle, but geographically, nearly all the TOD is east of it.

      2. Also, Alaska Junction Station construction will end up removing most of the nostalgia destinations that are a draw, along with some of the new TOD.

      3. Alaska Junction is the literal heart of West Seattle

         Exactly. You folks are thinking about this all wrong. West Seattle Link is not about improving transit. It is a symbolic project to show that we really care, deeply about West Seattle. By going to the heart of West Seattle we show that.

      4. Brent under the current cost cutting plan without Avalon what nostalgia destinations will be impacted? Jiffy Lube? Bank of America?
         Where is the heart of West Seattle? I would argue Fauntleroy/Alaska (Whole foods). There will be a station entrance is 1 (one) block away from there. Seems pretty close to me.

      5. Ross a better symbolic project would’ve been a waterfront light rail going to Alki along Harbor Ave SW. Now that would be cool while also serving even fewer people than WSLE

      6. “It is at the west end of the heart. Most living in the heart would have to go backward to get to it.”

         But the most commercial destinations are at it or north and south on California Avenue, particularly those that draw people from outside the area, and transfers to bus routes north and south on California are there.

      7. Brent

         The only buildings alaska junction will be removing are the jiffy lube and the safeway parkinglot. The record store and anything on California Ave isn’t being touched.

5. Pushing back in infills is long overdue. Absolutely unnecessary at this point in time as buses can easily provide the feeder connectivity to Link without degrading travel times in the already worse section of the one line.

   They should consider an elevated automated system like skytrain for Ballard and West Seattle. Vancouver builds at a fraction of the cost by simply not tunneling everywhere.

   1. The infill station at Graham Street is a better value than most of ST3. Yes, riders can take a bus to the station. The same is true for every other rail project (Everett Link, Tacoma Dome Link, West Seattle Link, etc.). Infill stations tend to be cheap. Graham Street will get decent ridership. I’m not convinced BAR will.

      1. The difference is distance. Graham Street is extremely close to the adjacent stations relative to all the other examples you cite. A simple cheap high frequency shuttle or bus would do just fine and even better if the road is upgraded for multi-modal uses like bikes, scooters, and transit lanes. There’s no reason to splurge on these luxury when the system is already in distress.

      2. Graham Street is extremely close to the adjacent stations relative to all the other examples you cite.

         No it’s not. It is a full mile to Columbia City and over half a mile to Othello. That is a long ways to walk (either direction). Typical metro stop spacing is about half mile or a bit more (800 to 1000 meters). In other words, with the new station the gap between it and Othello would be right in the middle of the common standard while the gap to Columbia City would be a bit too big.

         A simple cheap high frequency shuttle or bus would do just fine

         Sure, and again, the same thing could be said about the extensions. The bus is just about as fast as Link (while both are much faster than walking). In some cases (Everett to Lynnwood) the bus is actually faster. The main issue is the transfer. The same is true for Graham. Riders can take the 106 and transfer but the 106 isn’t that frequent. You could run the 106 a lot more frequently but then you could run the 512 a lot more frequently. The main difference between the infill station and these particular extensions is that Graham will cost a lot less.

      3. i used to have a friend that lived about 3 blocks from the Graham street station location. shortly after Link opened I thought it would be cool to take the train to their house. It took almost more than 30 minutes to walk there from Columbia City station which is longer than it took to get to CC station from Downtown. I never did that again. and the 106 bus on MLK is not especially reliable or frequent. The old 42 was, but it got eliminated once Link opened. I live in within a 10 minute walk of CC station. As much as I don’t look forward to the impacts of building the Graham infill station, it seems worthwhile, and there is potential for increasing density significantly around that catchment area. People seem to forget what the Othello station area looked like before Link. it’s almost Urban now with a few dozen more large buildings in planning or construction and lots of developable land left. Graham could be similar (though probably not quite as much).

      4. Michael H,
         Route 42 had 30/30 headway (peak/midday); before June 1997, half the trips deviated to South Othello Street, so the headway was uneven north of that. Route 106, and routes 38 and 8 before it, have had 15/15 headway, so the waits have been shorter after Route 42. Further, Route 42 always had a north Seattle through route partner. Route 106 does not, so southbound trips are more reliable.

6. What even is the point? Either cancel the whole project or come back when the funding/political will is there to do it right. Cutting CID was egregious enough, but I’d honestly rather have nothing for a while longer than have a terrible system that can never be fixed.

7. All of these options are terrible. I hope that this finally shocks the board into considering cheaper alignments.

8. Is a single downtown tunnel not being considered then? I think they owe us all at least a solid analysis for why two tunnels (and a terrible interline transfer) are the only solution. Just pretending the suggestion never came up is more than unsatisfying.

9. What if we knew all this when ST decided to keep the full second tunnel? All the advocacy for keeping the tunnel to keep Ballard reliable for a line that very well may never reach Ballard. The way I see it, it’s always easy to say that we “should” build when we only see the downside risk. Touching the existing tunnel is scary. Things could go wrong, and you might not save the full $4 billion. Now we’re just now starting to see the other side. So in my opinion, tying Ballard into the existing tunnel is an easy decision, and easy not in the sense that I’m not concerned about risk, but in the sense that it seems like the only intervention that could save Ballard at all. I’d say a similar thing about the Everett Link diversion to Boeing Field, but even getting that far is in doubt.

   From there, I would focus on these priorities:
   A. Operational need – Is it needed to operate the network? Without it, would projects need to be re-sequenced to operate?
   B. Density and traffic – Are there a lot of people here, and is it very slow to move around?
   C. Regional connectivity – Can buses from farther connect well to it? Does it facilitate local transfers well?
   D. Cheap/easy wins – Is it so cheap that it’s worth it even for lower ridership? Or is it “almost there” after other projects?

   here is where I would set my priorities:
   DSTT consolidation – People assume this violates A, but I refuse to believe that it is impossible to reliably operate sub-3 minute headways. I’ve been to places other than Seattle. Does it need work to get there? Of course, but if the work costs less than $4 billion, then do the work on the tunnel.
   BLE – Branching off the existing tunnel after Symphony, do NOT skip SLU under any circumstances (B). In fact, I’d rather drop Seattle Center than SLU because the monorail is actually a pretty fantastic connection. I’d probably consolidate Smith Cove and Interbay into just Interbay, because with the bleak future of the Magnolia bridge, buses will need to connect at Interbay (C). Lastly, build it all the way to Ballard (B and C).
   WSLE – The most important thing I see about the West Seattle extension is getting transit off the West Seattle Bridge, which is heavily retrofitted and monitored constantly for signs of failure. I’ve seen balking at the idea of $X billion for a single station, but I think with good ramps, a Delridge-only line could work well (B and C, and maybe A for transit in the case of issues with WSB), but getting over to Alaska Junction should be a high priority as well.
   EVLE – Truncate at Ash Way. This gets to Alderwood Mall and connects buses that end at Ash Way. Could shorten the 512 and possibly the 510 (C). Savings could also pay to complete the direct access ramps to the north at Ash Way (C and D), and maybe a freeway station at Mariner.
   TDLE – If we’re going to do this halfway, Fife really doesn’t make sense. It’s the farthest thing from transit-oriented anything. There are two local bus routes, but they go through Fife, not “to” it. A Fife termimus might spur TOD and transit access that would never happen there otherwise, but that’s basically it. The only partial point that really makes sense here is South Federal Way. That gets to the OMFS (priority A, assuming it’s needed still), and would make a good restructure opportunities for local buses (C).
   S. Kirkland/Issaquah – South Kirkland is a priority D project, the only Link project that is “cheap”. Despite crossing two freeways, the path is an easy at-grade extension from OMFE along the CKC. The only challenging part is the station itself, but even there it has space to work with. On the Issaquah side, I’d truncate it to Eastgate (C) and build a station at Factoria (B). I’d also want to really try hard to get it connected at S. Bellevue.
   Graham St – Worth considering, but not high priority
   BAR – Why are we even still talking about building this?
   Tacoma CC – I think worth doing (B, C). With full grade separation and “pretending” that it’s proper Link Light Rail, it can be a really good streetcar. Stop consolidation could save some money and make it a faster regional connection.
   DuPont Sounder – I want to say half of B (the traffic, not the density). Might be a good consolation for Pierce County, and getting rail across JBLM would be big for people coming from way south. Could let ST cut back the 592 and let Intercity Transit reorient commuter service to DuPont and increase frequency (C).

   1. Ballard extension as a stand alone line with light-metro tech (allowing shorter stations) and an OMF in Interbay strikes me as a lower cost and far lower risk option than attempting to interline.

      Seems likely you would still need to postpone the Ship Canal crossing, but a Westlake to Interbay starter line which keeps the SLU station strikes me as a better option than building a duplicate tunnel, and effectively only adding only two new stations (Denny and Seattle Center). Especially if in the next decade SDOT gets around to improving the Ballard Bridge for bicyclists, which would make an Interbay station fairly convenient for those in Ballard to access by bike.

      1. I agree. It would be cheaper. It would be less disruptive — in both the short and long term. It offers up the possibility of a new downtown tunnel that would be useful (and not a second-rate version of the existing one). By that I mean, it could go to First Hill.

         The only potential issue is that trains from West Seattle could overwhelm the existing tunnel. But that is a possibility anyway. Furthermore, getting to West Seattle is not as high a priority as getting to Ballard.

   2. I agree with all of your points here.

      For Ballard Link, I think a small maintenance base in Interbay probably makes more sense than a tie-in at Symphony if we can use shorter, more frequent trains until the line is extended beyond Westlake (hopefully via first hill to Judkins Park and Mt. Baker).

      Another idea I had was to build a streetcar line along 1st Ave between Seattle Center and International District. Non-revenue service connections could be added to the Ballard Link line at the tunnel portal west of Seattle Center and the 2 Line in International District (using the existing ramp from 5th Ave). Even if the electrical standards don’t match, trains could be pulled through downtown at night using some sort of switching vehicle. I think this could cost a similar amount to building the maintenance base in Interbay (~$500 million-$1 billion), but we could finally get the City Center streetcar out of it (this new streetcar line could connect to both existing lines).

      Better express bus service would probably be a better outcome for West Seattle than building any amount of Link, but if we do build Link to West Seattle, I think we could reconfigure the existing ID station to allow the 2 Line to terminate there while the 1 and 3 lines continue into the downtown tunnel. I think this could be done in phases with minimal disruption.
      1. Connect the tail track at the north to both mainline tracks.
      2. Demolish one platform and build tracks where the current platform is. The station would be closed in one direction until the work is completed, at which point trains in both directions could use the new (offset) center platform.
      3. Demolish the other platform and track, and rebuild them in the opposite orientation.
      Once the work it complete, the 1 and 3 lines could use the outer platforms and the 2 line could turn back at the center platform. The northbound and southbound 1 lines could be timed with the 2 line for easy cross-platform transfers in both directions.

      For Everett link, truncating at Alderwood, Ash Way or maybe even Mariner (since it would likely be at grade from Ash Way) would probably make the most sense from a ridership/$ perspective.

      1. Sound Transit looked at two options:

         1) Have a full service branch at Westlake.
         2) Built and independent line starting at Westlake with a yard in Interbay.

         This is a good write-up. The first was very disruptive but saved the most money. The second would save a little bit less money (“only” $4 billion) but involve less disruption than the current plans. They failed to investigate a third option, which you mentioned:

         3) Build a non-service connection between the two lines. I was thinking of something similar to what Toronto has. This simplifies the connection greatly. You don’t need to have a flyover track — you just overlap the tracks. For that matter you only need to connect one track. Having said all that, it is still probably easier and cheaper to just connect at Interbay.

      2. #3 probably has the same service impact as #1, as you still need to close the main tunnel and cut into it. Also, 1 & 3 require a tunnel LQA to Westalke, whereas #2 could be elevated at Westlake, for potentially another Billion of savings.

   3. ST already said one tunnel doesn’t save any money and it will impact the system for years. forget it. It is a fake option.

      1. ST already said one tunnel doesn’t save any money and it will impact the system for years.

         That is simply not true. They said it would save around $4 billion dollars to just end at Westlake. It would not be disruptive in the least. Riders who are used to taking the train from say, Northgate to SeaTac would continue to do so.

         In contrast, the second tunnel would shift service. Riders going from the north to the south would have to transfer — forever. This is on top of whatever work needs to be done in places like SoDo during construction. The cheapest, least disruptive option (by far) is to turn a stand-alone line from Westlake to Ballard.

      2. In addition to the modeled savings mentioned from axing the tunnel (~$4B), their would likely potential savings from using a different tech, which would be possible for a stand alone fully grade-separated line. Specifically, and automated light-metro (like is used in Vancouver) could have significantly shorter platforms (250′ vs our 400′) on account of higher frequency. I have to imagine 37.5% shorter platforms would yield significant station building cost savings, in addition to reducing impact.

      3. @Alex — Yes, absolutely. An automated line is much more efficient. You can achieve the same capacity with smaller platforms. Toronto did that in their new “Ontario Line”. It is worth noting that for a long time this was referred to as the “Relief Line”. The goal to relieve crowding on the main subway line. The original plan was to use similar trains as the rest of the system. But late in the planning process they decided to switch to smaller trains, running more often. You also save space by eliminating the operator cab (on both ends).

         In our case this is a big deal. Our trains aren’t that long. The cabs take up a lot of space relative to the seating room. Even when we go to longer train cars — of even if we had one really long train car — it would take up a significant amount of space. It is worth noting that the Ballard Line is supposed to be tied to the line from Rainier Valley. While it is theoretically possible to have a train from Ballard turn around at SoDo, there are no plans to do so. The assumption is that what is good enough for Rainier Valley is good enough for Ballard. This means trains running every six minutes at most. Thus you could run the trains every three minutes with platforms half the size and your initial capacity would be much larger. If the line is built to handle 90 second headways then it would be like running a four-car light rail train to SoDo and Rainier Valley every three minutes. Except with more capacity.

         Again, that is a platform half the size. They could easily compromise and have a platform 60% of the current platforms — providing a lot more capacity than anywhere else in the system. It is likely this would save a considerable amount of money.

         You would also have high platform trains. This makes it easier to get in and out. This reduces dwell times and speeds up the train.

      4. It’s a lot of money, but it’s going to need to happen eventually. DSTT platforms can be crowded already during rush hour and events with only the 1 line. It’s rarely a problem now except occasionally if there’s been a service disruption. But we’ve also never had to contend with pushing through people who are not waiting for the train that just arrived. It will be interesting to see how that goes with the the influx of Eastsiders after crosslake opens. Adding the Ballard and West Seattle lines is likely to make that intolerable, nevermind the delays that will certainly happen due to increased dwell times. I could see the downtown platforms becoming extremely difficult to navigate, especially for folks with disabilities. Imagine every downtown station looking like stadium or CID after a Seahawks game, except every day during the evening commute. Maybe it doesn’t happen everyday, but during baseball season…that’ll sounds like a nightmare.

      5. Note that the ST3 DSTT2 also results in poor service and a degraded network. The split CID station means long transfer times between the east and south lines in both directions. The Constantine-Harrell option does not help. The deep stations mean longer transfer and access times. Minutes matter to the riders. It has one fewer station so there is less access. There is a poor connection with the G Line. Does waiting for the DSTT2 mean that the West Seattle line is a shuttle for a few years? That is silly. It is very costly. It does not really increase capacity. The trains from the north do not have options; they can only access one of the two tunnels. A frequent bus line between Tacoma and Westlake via Federal Way Link station would add capacity. Let’s ask the Legislature and WSDOT to convert lanes on I-5 to HOV or HOT. Between the TDS and South Jackson Street, without congestion bus is 50 minutes, Sounder is 60 minutes, and Link is about 75 minutes. Link is not a great long distance intercity mode. The spine is a flawed religious relic. The ridership map for ST3 Link has a pencil thin line between TDS and Federal Way.

10. I’d probably drop the Kirkland-Issaquah line. I’m skeptical of how much use such a “suburb-to-suburb” line would generate. The current “starter line” from Redmond to Bellevue provides a data point for the appetite that exists for inter-suburb usage. I live in Redmond and have taken the starter line to Bellevue perhaps a dozen times, and usually there’s no more than 3 or 4 passengers on my train car, which doesn’t bode well. And, yes, I know that it would be a different situation if a transfer were available to a line that went to downtown Seattle. But still, I am skeptical.

    For Issaquah commuters who would use it to travel to downtown Seattle by transferring to the 2 line, it’s a circuitous routing. If the line is to be built, I’d route it via South Bellevue station to enable a geographically more efficient transfer. Or maybe just make it a “spur line” that goes back and forth between South Bellevue and Issaquah.

    1. If you ride Link 2 during peak commute times, you can see quite a few more riders. But yeah… building more Link far into the suburbs is not cost-effective.

       I think what’s going to happen, ironically, is that Ballard gets cancelled (euphemistically, “truncated to Seattle Center”) in favor of everything else.

    2. It’s barely even suburb to suburb… the starter line at least went from downtown Redmond to downtown Bellevue. South Kirkland P+R and Issaquah TC are located pretty far away from their respective downtowns.

       Issaquah’s proposal for a freeway stop (a-la Mercer Island Station) at least improves that situation, but South Kirkland seems unfixable.

       I think connecting Issaquah at South Bellevue is an absolute must if the line is built. Otherwise it will be an extra 6-8 minutes to transfer to Line 2 toward Seattle and there will forever be a need for I-90 busses running from Issaquah to at least Mercer Island.

    3. Yes, it is a stupid project that can easily be replaced by an improvement in bus infrastructure. Connect the HOV ramps of 405 and I-90. Now a bus from the Eastgate bus ramp can stay on the freeway (in the HOV lanes) until it gets to Downtown Bellevue. This means someone from Eastgate would get to Downtown Bellevue just as fast. It also means that several buses from Issaquah — serving several bus stops — would follow the same pathway. This is not only cheaper than Issaquah Link, but better for riders.

       For Kirkland it is even easier. Just run buses express from Downtown Kirkland (and/or Juanita) to Downtown Bellevue. This is a much more important connection than South Kirkland to Downtown Bellevue.

       1. The lack of a bus (“Stride”) alternative for Issaquah continues to baffle me.

       2. Yeah, there are similarities with the other Stride projects (especially Stride 1 and 2). You have some major freeway infrastructure work and then run buses that spend much of their time on or close to the freeway. I personally don’t think you should focus on only one line (or even specify the lines) that would use the I-90/405 interchange. But like Stride 1 and 2, other buses can take advantage of the infrastructure so I really don’t mind. At worst the Stride lines are place holders for future expansion. At best they are a commitment to a corridor.

          I’m afraid though, that once ST commits to light rail there is very little consideration of anything else. That was the story for the Cross Kirkland Corridor. The City of Kirkland hired an independent consultant and they recommended BRT. This was unacceptable to Sound Transit. It was rail or nothing. So Kirkland basically got nothing (or next to nothing).

          The same thing happened in West Seattle. Technically they considered BRT but it was so poorly designed it is no wonder it failed. They didn’t connect West Seattle with the SoDo Busway, let alone propose a new bus tunnel. It was “BRT” in the same way that RapidRide B is “BRT”. Reasonably frequent, but often stuck in traffic (let alone behind traffic lights).

       3. Kirkland got BRT, it’s just freeway express BRT. Given the specific corridor is express intercounty service, I think ST went with the right approach (405N is the best design of the 3 Stride lines). I would have preferred if ST paid 20% of the 85th street interchange rebuild rather than 100%, but that’s just accounting between 2 different public entities and given ST paid for 0% of the 405 HOT lane expansion, it’s a fair compromise politically.

          Separately, Kirkland still needs to figure out how to improve local bus service. Right now ST is proposing rail on the ERC, but that’s nothing more than a placeholder in the ST3 levy so it’s still very possible Kirkland could evolve the mode to BRT, if they are willing to invest the political capital. At this point the relevant decision makers within ST staff will have moved on.

    4. I’d suggest dropping the South Kirkland Station and installing an automated light metro from South Bellevue (instead of East Main) to Issaquah. An automated metro could enable a single track section over Mercer Slough. And the alignment needs some serious track deviations alto different possible station sites — like closer to Bellevue College or Costco HQ. What’s proposed today is merely a continuation of the park-and-ride to Doentown Bellevue office jobs concept and that could easily be provided with express buses or Stride line.

       1. You are still forcing the vast majority of riders to transfer. It is still a massively expensive project (with miles of very expensive rail) with very few stations and thus very few riders. But yes, that actually has the potential of being better than a bus-based solution but I doubt it could reach that point without spending a lot more money than they have. Unlike Ballard Link, the high cost of Issaquah Link is not based on the stations — it is the track.

    5. See former ST Boardmember Fred Butler.

11. I get how ST will not put automated light metro on the table. Still, if ST was looking at saving money it would seem that there would be an Alternative 4 concept where every extension would be added using an automated light metro technology. That would include places to create cross platform transfers at a current end station or the next station just past that. It would include the needed OMF changes too. And it may show slightly faster maximum speeds. It may allow for shallower subway stations.

    In some cases it wouldn’t save much cost or travel time. In others it probably would. But the option would be known rather than speculative. It’s hard to have an objective discussion about automation when there aren’t any basic info provided about it.

    1. I think it is largely based on saving the second tunnel which is largely based on running trains from West Seattle.

       Note that none of the examples show a line from Ballard to Westlake. Never mind automation. Consider the advantages of a light rail line following the same path:

       1) You serve the stations that will add the most ridership.
       2) You avoid one of the most controversial areas (CID).
       3) You save a considerable amount of money.

       If we eventually build a second tunnel and force north-south riders to transfer then this approach is less than ideal. We have to pay extra to manage the trains on what could eventually be an obsolete yard. But otherwise it is fine. It allows us to build the most important part first. Either way it is worth it. Of course if we don’t have West Seattle Link then the tunnel adds little value. You are basically forcing some people to transfer so that others don’t. It isn’t clear whether you actually come out ahead and even if you do, it is a lot of money just to avoid a transfer.

       The second tunnel is seen (rightly or wrongly) as essential for West Seattle Link. West Seattle Link is seen (wrongly) as more important than Ballard.

12. Typical of a project that has been a joke from the start. I knew you were going to screw over Ballard again. Mismanagement, price overruns, delays and shoddy installations. Why is the train downtown closed half the time? Where is the oversight? Build to Tacoma and Everett and forget the rest. At this point, you are building 20th century technology in the 21st century. That is ridiculous. Stop throwing money at a lost cause.

13. https://www.myballard.com/2026/03/19/councilmember-strauss-urges-sound-transit-to-maintain-ballard-light-rail-plans/?fbclid=Iwb21leAQpMhNjbGNrBCkx92V4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHlqc7coPkkydwXT39GWMOTlT0Dsoilz7R_CUiVPpUU1BJvkkkqVvxQeDqu3i_aem_SVKLj1ol25BPHDpq0HYpBw

    Wonder if and when the Ballard Alliance (whose members are infamous for the Missing Link litigation) will decide to jump in with Litigation if Ballard is hosed.

    1. Thanks for the link. I agree with Strauss.

       As for litigation, I don’t think there is much they can do. Technically, the project isn’t cancelled. It is simply deferred. That is what is so crazy about the process. They can’t build something different (even if it is better). They either build what is proposed or some subset of it. This is all just a subset.

       I’m not sure how they can cancel the project. It would probably require another vote. But I don’t know if that has to come from the board itself or if it can be done via initiative. I think it is quite likely that the current proposal would be rejected if put to voters right now (especially if proponents suggested a different approach towards improving transit).

    2. How dated are the ridership estimates? Do they take into account recent growth? SLU and Denny Triangle in particular have exploded in the last decade or so.

       1. The problem with the ridership estimates are in the station designs. It’s just not worth the time to go into a deep station and out again if takes several minutes just getting around the stations.

          Take a look at the embarrassing ridership at Rose Pak Station in SF’s Chinatown at under 1300 average daily riders. Union Square is just as bad at under 1200 average daily boardings. They were expected to get over 19K average weekday riders each.

          Taking Link for a short distance trip in a deep tunnel isn’t worth it. Sure a train ride may be 4 minutes but five-minute journeys around two stations turns that in a 14 minute trip.

          So anyone from SLU may think that they’ll someday use Link to go to a location like the Central Library, but the extra time going down and up make it easier to just take a bus on the street.

       2. Strauss complained the ridership estimates are ten years old, and don’t take into account three upzones in Ballard since then.

          There’s also the solid ridership in Seattle vs lower than expected ridership in Lynnwood, and Tacoma Dome and Everett would probably be lower if they were reassessed now.

       3. The problem with the ridership estimates are in the station designs.

          Yeah, as well as the quality of the bus system and travel distance (as you mentioned). Surface transit is often just better for those kind of trips. This is true all over the world, even with cut and cover stations. Paris has an outstanding and very popular bus system. So popular that it has slowly been adding streetcars to deal with the crowding. This is on top of one of the most extensive metro systems in the world.

          To a certain extent, connecting the Ballard line with the main line helps fix this. It isn’t about SLU to the library it is about Rainier Valley to SLU. The problem is, in doing so you break the existing connection that is bound to be more popular. The stations that make up Ballard Link are not as popular as those north of Westlake (on the existing line). I doubt this went into the calculations. There is a different dynamic though, because of the distance. Someone trying to get from Beacon Hill to Capitol Hill will probably just transfer (instead of taking the 60). To get to the UW, Link is the only transit option. But in some ways that is worse. Riders are probably not driving for that trip in San Fransisco (they are just taking the bus). But in the case of the tunnel, many will just give up on transit and drive.

          A lot depends on the quality of the transfer as well as the frequency. A lot of downtown trips are quite frequent using a bus. Yet until recently, trains ran every 8 minutes (at best). Trains running every 8 to 10 minutes to South Lake Union will have trouble competing with surface transit (on short trips) for that reason as well.

14. I realize these are just options and a vaguely defined framework for how the board is supposed to proceed. But as many have noted, all the options are terrible. There is no consideration of actual value. If this continues, we should rethink the process.

    For years now, people on this blog have worked very hard to figure out a way out of this mess. We stuck with the basic plans and goals of ST3 even though we knew the board chose them arbitrarily. Honor the voters will (even though they weren’t given a range of options). After a lot of discussion and proposals, this led to a consensus view on how to proceed. Keep in mind, many of the initial ideas — including ones I personally proposed — I would no longer support. It was an iterative process with lots of back and forth — exactly the type of discussion you want in a democracy. The consensus view — which is shared by most on the blog but not all — is as follows:

    Ballard Link should be an automated line running from Ballard to Westlake. It would have smaller stations but larger capacity. This would reduce both capital and operation costs while improving the quality of service. The train cars would be connected to Interbay — something the board was kind enough to actually study. This too would save a considerable amount of money compared to building a second tunnel. West Seattle Link would be replaced by capital improvements (principally a connection from the Spokane Street Viaduct to the SoDo Busway).

    While replacing West Seattle Link with bus service would certainly be different, it would provide similar functionality (while being more useful for more people). In Ballard it would involve the same basic mode (a metro) as well as the same stations. It would simply be better (and cheaper). Thus these ideas are not entirely consistent with ST3 but they are close. This has been the approach for a long time.

    But at some point I think we should just consider scrapping the whole thing. If they refuse to seriously consider major cost-saving moves that would provide better transit outcomes (like an automated line from Westlake to Ballard) or insist on wasteful projects that will actually make transit worse for a lot of riders (like the new downtown tunnel) then I see no hope. Screw it. Start over.

    Keep in mind — none of the options presented are what the voters approved! So that argument — which was flawed from the beginning — is now nonsense. ST3 would not have passed if not for Seattle voters. Yet the plans for Seattle are dramatically different. If you can’t get to Ballard — a project that was widely seen as the strongest project in ST3 — then we aren’t building what the voters wanted. If this is the best the board can do then we should start over.

    1. More about ST3 voting. First consider the vote by county. It passed in Snohomish County by less than 5,000 votes. It failed in Pierce County by over 30,000 votes. Thus it was the votes in King County that saved the proposal.

       Now consider the vote by city. Federal Way, Auburn, Kent, Kirkland, Renton and Sammamish all rejected it. Bellevue and Issaquah barely approved it. The only cities where it passed by big numbers were Seattle and Redmond. Redmond is just too small to make up for all the other cities that opposed it. (Oh, and the ST3 project for Redmond is now complete. It is quite likely Redmond feels the same way about the remaining parts of ST3 as the rest of the East Side.)

       The difference was Seattle. Without Seattle’s vote, ST3 fails. Yet this is clearly different in Seattle than what was approved.

       Now it is possible that Seattle voters simply approved this for the greater good. We wanted good transit to Fife because we care about those in Fife. Fair enough. But that being the case, we have to question the efficacy of these plans. If all we want to do is just spend more money on transit there are other ways to do that. Ways that would quite likely improve things a lot more.

       1. “The only cities where it passed by big numbers were Seattle and Redmond.”

          And Tacoma. It may have even more popular than in Redmond.

       2. I don’t know the numbers for Tacoma but it wasn’t enough to overcome the rest of the county, let alone the region. Only Seattle did that. (I wish I had the voting numbers by city but all I can find are things like precinct maps and those articles.)

    2. “There is no consideration of actual value.”

       I’ve long been saying this too.

       By avoiding info on value, it lets the Board make decisions based on whims and lobbying. That’s deeply troubling, especially when most of the Board doesn’t use Link daily.

       And let’s not forget that there’s a shadow real estate game going on behind the scenes. And the big engineering companies and construction companies know that the bigger the project, the more revenue for them so they have no incentive to propose projects significantly cheaper.

    3. I get we’re frustrated with how terrible of a situation ST3 is in right now, but saying screw it, scrapping everything, and starting over makes 0 sense.

       The option of doing nothing is definitely NOT what voters approved.

       Stubbing sucks, light rail sucks. If I were dictator I would copy paste 80MPH REM/Skytrain all over pugetopolis but we aren’t in that situation.

       I don’t know what the solution is. I also feel distraught and feel like there’s no good options left.

       1. I would rather do nothing than spend a lot of money for essentially no benefit to riders.

          Scrapping a worse-than-nothing plan in favor of nothing is a step forward.

       2. Building stubs is worse than doing nothing? It would at least set up ST4 to finish the original plan.
          That’s like saying we should’ve cancelled ST2 because it won’t reach Federal Way or Redmond Downtown.

       3. @Ian, building stubs isn’t the problem.

          The problem is that West Seattle Link, Issaquah Link, and Everett Link will increase travel time for most people in West Seattle, Issaquah, and Everett, without connecting them to significant new destinations along the way. They’ll suffer from this problem even when fully built out. They’re just bad lines. I’d question whether to accept them if we got them for free. It’s better to do nothing than to build them or parts of them.

       4. The problem is that West Seattle Link, Issaquah Link, and Everett Link will increase travel time for most people in West Seattle, Issaquah, and Everett, without connecting them to significant new destinations along the way. They’ll suffer from this problem even when fully built out. They’re just bad lines.

          Exactly! Well put.

          The transit agency (that runs the buses) would then have two choices:

          1) Just ignore Link. This is the best thing for riders but it means we would have spent a fortune and only a handful of people would ride that section.

          2) Truncate the buses at a station. This is much worse for riders than the existing system.

          We are much better off just running the buses more often, let alone making capital improvements to the bus system that would speed them up. By “capital improvements” I mean things like this:

          1) Connect the Spokane Street Viaduct with the SoDo Busway (West Seattle).
          2) Connect the HOV lanes of 405 with I-90 (Issaquah).
          3) HOV Ramps from Ash Way to the north (Everett).

       5. ST2 was useful as built (assuming the cross lake portion is included). No line or extension planned couldn’t stand on its own, even if they were truncated short of what would have been ideal.

          It’s terrible planning to require a future ballot measure to ensure a project is useful to riders. That’s how you end up with highways to nowhere and transit lines with awful ridership. I would much rather see ST pursue one line as intended – even if it’s the somewhat ludicrous and slightly dubious spine – rather than half build four lines.

          Things like the 4 Line are already of questionable value as transit projects. Making them phased or shorter just postpones that issue. Ballard link is a good project, but it’s a whole lot worse if it skips a stop in SLU and doesn’t even get past Seattle Center. The project as outlined here is laughably bad. I’m almost certain my all in travel time (10 min walk north of Beacon Hill station) will be worse to Seattle Center – since I’ll have no good transfer options to the new line, which means I’d back track to Beacon Hill. I’d be very surprised if that’s faster than my options now of the 36 to the 1/2/4/13/D.

          What’s the point of spending $50B on trains that aren’t going to make any of my transit trips much faster?

    4. I agree. If the new projects don’t meaningfully improve travel times (and therefore draw more riders), then it isn’t worth spending all the money.

15. Did transfer difficulty arise as a Board topic yesterday? The chutes and ladders approach to transfer stations (with transfer requiring up to 7 minutes and 8 elevators/ escalators) has got to be one of the worst things about baselining ST3.

    If there was a local version of the Onion, I’d not be surprised to see a new article saying “ST plans Link cost reductions by switching to firefighter poles to change levels at transfer points.”

    1. There is a local version of the Onion: The Needling

    2. “Did transfer difficulty arise as a Board topic yesterday?”

       Not a word in the plenary meetings. I couldn’t hear what they said in the small-group discussions, but I doubt they mentioned it because they haven’t mentioned it elsewhere, in spite of us bringing it up repeatedly.

       I’ve refined my future T-shirt slogan to: “Good transfers make good transit”.

       1. Maybe add icons like 🚴🏿🧑‍🍼 🧳 ☔️ 👨🏻‍🦽👩🏽‍🦯 .

          Bad transfers affect lots of kinds of people. And the transfer volumes are projected to be orders of magnitude higher than most new planned station boardings.

       2. Members of ST’s CAAC (Citizens Accessibility Advisory Committee) have started speaking up about the terrible transfer layouts. Two spoke at a recent ST Board meeting.

16. Ending in Fife is absurd.

    The only “benefit” is ST can justify raiding Pierce sub-area money to pay for North King’s (also absurd) second tunnel. Because they crossed the county line. It’s not a regional asset if it makes regional trips worse.

    Let’s start calling it the “Regional Liability Tunnel.”

    The reason why the T-Line extension is so expensive is because they will have to rebuild the 19th street bridge that spans Hwy 16. If you route it up 12th or 6th, you can go under and save a billion or two. So do that.

    1. Don’t forget that the “Regional Liability Tunnel” is also a local liability! It gives the region nothing and it gives Seattle nothing―actually less than nothing, because the construction costs and the additional maintenance required in perpetuity seem like a great way to kneecap the rest of the system.

       Someone really needs to make it clear to the public that the only real benefit, the supposed added reliability, is basically a sham.

    2. Yeah that idea left me scratching my head. The only way it makes sense is if some sort of frequent Pierce County 167/509 Stride line is created that goes from Puyallup to Fife Link to Downtown Tacoma and some points west.

       Of course, the best thing about a Tacoma Dome terminus is that it meets Cascades and Sounder trains and T-Link. That goes away with a Fife terminus.

       I’m also not sure how the Puyallup tribe would feel about losing the East Tacoma station near their pretty, new casino.

17. The elephant in the room is DSTT2. The reason why everything else needs to be cut so much is that the board is prioritizing DSTT2 over everything else, leaving all the useful stuff to fight over the scraps.

    However, looking at the map, it’s not hard to see why the suburban board members are behind it. After all, with approach 1 or 2, everything Pierce and Snohomish want still gets built. It’s only Seattle that gets screwed. I really hope that West Seattle doesn’t end up with with a train to nowhere that only goes SODO->Delridge.

    Then, there’s east king. Regardless of what you think about the merits of Issaquah Link, if it doesn’t get built, that means east King money is going to cover shortfalls in other subareas, which is supposed to be a violation of sub-area equity.

    But, the root cause for most of this is board’s insistence on prioritizing DSTT2 over all else, including the projects that supposedly justify DSTT2 in the first place.

    1. Yeah the core problem was bad subway costing for West Seattle and for DSTT2 all the way through to LQA. The other ones are more expensive but they’re well less than 50% over while the tunnels portions in Seattle are off by about 200-300%.

       I’m frankly surprised that some suburban ejected officials are willing to hand over subarea money to build trains underneath Seattle. They could just say “build it above ground or you don’t get your train”.

       Maybe they just realize that expanding Link at the ends isn’t a very good value. Thus, they’re willing to give away their subarea money.

18. Why isn’t there an option that truncate other outer Link Extension in change for building Ballard Link at least to Smith Cove.

19. Can someone tell me if the businesses in west seattle have already been forced to move out for the Delridge station?

20. Can someone make the case for extending T Link to TCC? The school has an enrollment of 6,000 but that includes people that just take one or two classes; likely at night. It’s not a transit oriented school. Look at the website and they point you to “Driving Directions”. There’s three buses from DT and/or T-Dome station. They all take about 30 minutes to get from DT to Fircrest. It takes T Link 23 minutes to get from the T-Dome to St Joes so the extension to TCC will be ~10 min slower than the existing bus service with less coverage. And can a street car even make the grade on 19th both east and west of the Bellarmine campus? It goes past Foss HS too but other than that there isn’t much along 19th to drive ridership and little to no bus connections. And it’s not like it can then continue anywhere after TCC.

    1. The thing with the T line is that it serves multiple destinations along or short walk to S 19th and would replace part of a busy transit corridor in Pierce County (Route 2)

       – Two Colleges (Bates – Central Campus and TCC)
       – 4 Schools (Bellarmine, Foss, Stanley, and Life Christian)
       – Allenmore Hospital, alongside the currently served Tacoma General, Mary Bridge Children’s, and St. Joseph’s
       – Cheney Stadium
       – Snake and China Lake Trails
       – Franklin Park
       – Fred Meyers (Stevens) & Walmart (Union)
       – James Center
       – WorkSource
       – DSHS
       – Major cross streets like Mildred, MLK, Orchard, Pearl, Pine, Sprague, Stevens, and Union

       The long term goal of the T line is to become part of the greater transit system for Pierce, with more orientation around said line for major North South bus routes that connect with it. There have been talks about wanting streetcar expansions to 6th and the Porctor District once this has been done.

       1. T Link already serves the main Bates Campus. Bellarmine is a small HS with a student population from all the parishes in Pierce County. Little to no ridership to be had. Life Christian Academy is about the same size but K-12, Stanley is an elementary school. I doubt Foss will add much either as they already have Yellow Buss service. A minor league stadium a long hike from 19th isn’t a justification for fixed guide way transit. Stanley is an elementary school. Wetlands turned park property aren’t a transit contributor; exactly the opposite. James Center is a strip mall with Fred Meyer as an anchor tenant. Two Fred Meyer on 19th doesn’t scream huge capital investment in streetcar expansion. Seems like pretty much a dumb idea even if it was cheap; which it’s not. I can see extending west on 19th but only as far as Cedar before turning south to all of the mostly empty Brown Field potential development rather than extending the line to the outer reaches of suburbia (Fircrest and University Place). Or if ST won’t extend beyond Federal Way as least look at extending T Link north to “mend the gap.” Certainly not as good as finishing what was promised for Link but that may prove to just be a bald face lie (like so much, most, of ST3).

       2. There is some density around TCC, and there is more being added as we speak. Connecting all the hospitals seems like it might have some value. “The ER Express”. LOL.

          I’m incredibly frustrated with the buildout of the new Mary Bridge. It’s incredibly car-centric, with lip-service to pedestrian modes. Basically paths to parking. They already have like 5 massive parking structures, between they and Tacoma General, and they are taking up 2 full city blocks to add to more massive parking structures. It just deadens the city. But without usable transit, that’s how they likely feel it needs to be.

       3. I looked up Mary Bridge. It’s not a bridge but a children’s hospital named after a woman named Bridge.

          Seattle Children’s is also car-centric, and its entry architecture is designed to be a monumental tower-in-the-park rather than having a pedestrian-friendly front door right at the sidewalk and bus stop.

       4. Yeah, Sorry. It’s in my backyard, so I mistakenly assume everyone knows it’s a Children’s Hospital.

          I used to work at Seattle Children’s. It did make some attempt, funding some shuttles, and paying to complete some links to the Burke. Mostly because of how strong a neighborhood group Laurelhurst has. They wouldn’t even allow them a helipad.

          Seattle Children’s did have a position there that was exclusively working on getting people out of cars and into buses, onto bikes and walking. Mary Bridge doesn’t seem to be even trying. Their T-Link station is greeted with just a blank wall with sealed windows.

       5. And it feels like Seattle Children’s has half the parking and twice the beds of Mary Bridge, but it would take some effort to determine if my suspicion is true. Also, Mary Bridge is a complex, with Tacoma General (Multicare) and a big Kaiser urgent care (pretty close to an ER with a bunch of specialties) care all right there as essentially one giant campus.

       6. “I used to work at Seattle Children’s. It did make some attempt, funding some shuttles, and paying to complete some links to the Burke.”

          Yes, but if it had made its architecture pedestrian-friendly (real “transit-oriented development” around the bus stop), some of those mitigations would have been less necessary, because people could just step out of the bus into the building like they do at Harborview or Seattle Central.

    2. Yes, all the things that Zach said.

       But the big one is frequency. There are very few local bus routes that have even barely usable frequency (though hopefully the Pierce Transit vote in the fall will help that). Sound Transit isn’t going to be funding our local service, which is what we need most.

       Except that T-Link is local service. So if we want usable frequency, we are stuck with a non-optimal mode. It’s stupid, but I’ll take it.

       As for routing, 19th Ave is okay. It does have a lot of (currently very-car oriented) destinations on it. But that routing is also incredibly expensive because of the cost of replacing the 19th Ave bridge over SR16.

       So I would lean towards a 6th Ave routing, which also has a bunch of (more pedestrian oriented) destinations on it, and also goes under, rather than over, SR16. Which will save probably a billion dollars.

       1. Nothing Zack pointed to comes close to justifying mass transit. Hard to even justify a 40′ bus for ridership. 6th Ave is slightly better and cheaper but the streetcar terminates at 19th so you’d have to make another 3/4 mile jog north through a sea of nothingness (Union?). And 6th is a lot of single family houses interspersed with auto parts, fast food, old strip malls and a few apartments. It would be better if there were large swaths of nothing (brown field) because then you at least have the chance of redevelopment. This does little to nothing for Tacoma and less than zero for the rest of Pierce County. Tacoma is only 25% of the population of Pierce County. How does it justify pulling in 100% of the ST tax revenue unless it’s providing a benefit to the entire county?

       2. You don’t appear to have ever been to Tacoma, Bernie. 6th Ave is basically Tacoma’s Broadway on Capital Hill. Very walkable. Lots of great little shops, bars and restaurants. Speak of what you know.

       3. I went to 6th Avenue to watch a band in a bar, the same as I do in Capitol Hill or Fremont or Ballard — it was even the same band on a different tour. It was playing in the afternoon, otherwise I could never get back to Seattle afterward on transit.

          6th Avenue has fewer destinations per quarter-mile than those other areas, but that’s the fault of Tacoma’s stricter zoning as if it’s still a small town. At least it has a street with some walkable cultural attractions. And that street should have more frequent transit.

       4. 6th Ave is basically Tacoma’s Broadway on Capital Hill.

          I think what Cam is saying is that 6th Ave is the closest thing Tacoma has to Seattle’s Capitol Hill. That doesn’t mean they are even remotely similar. I grew up in Lakewood and went to HS in Tacoma (19th & Union). A trip down 6th Ave today shows a City stuck in 1976. Schucks and Als have changed names but the buildings and land use are the same. It’s not until you get west of SR-16 that there is significant change.

          Take a “walk” down 6th Ave via Street View, count the number of pedestrians you see. Now do the same with Broadway on Capital Hill in Seattle. Here’s the real tell, count up the number of surface parking lot spaces you see from the street. Another sign of what a different world they are is that west of Alder, the part where the streetcar extension would run, the City doesn’t even bother to paint the crosswalks. Sure, east of there 6th Ave has stuff and is already on the Streetcar route. Tacoma wisely turned south to serve the two major medical centers and hope for new development on mlK Street. Now the streetcar ends on 19th so jogging back north to 6th eats a lot of the savings of not having to bridge SR-16 and makes the already too long trip time even longer. The other alternative would be to branch at Alder but then you cut frequency. Either way you end up turning what’s now a 15-30 minute bus ride in a 30-45 minute trip with an added transfer.

       5. “A trip down 6th Ave today shows a City stuck in 1976.”

          So are 90% of Renton, Kent, Auburn, and Lynnwood. It’s the 20th century Futurama vision and suburban disease. But 220,000 people live in Tacoma and need usable transit. Frequent buses would be more effective and cost-effective, but if ST insists on building the T Line and the City of Tacoma demands it, it’s better than nothing.

          6th Avenue may not have a lot of destinations, but does S 19th Street have more? What’s the compelling reason for the T Line to be on 19th instead of 6th.

          It shouldn’t backtrack from 19th so it would have to branch. ST could double the total frequency and then MLK wouldn’t lose half its 12-20 minute frequency. Buying and operating more vehicles for the T Line is peanuts compared to extending Central Link or Sounder improvement costs.

       6. “A trip down 6th Ave today shows a City stuck in 1976.”

          I think you’re conflating South Tacoma Way with 6th Ave, Bernie. South Tacoma Way is what old Tacoma is more like than the current Tacoma.

          Alongside your claim that I didn’t point to any good ridership generators and yet I pointed to multiple on S 19th. Multiple colleges, multiple schools, multiple grocery stores, multiple sports & rec facilities, government offices, etc. And while the housing density isnt strong yet on S 19th, 6th Ave already is building out new buildings and has been densifying the last few years.

          It honestly feels like your going off old information about Tacoma than what is the current outlook for the city. Tacoma isn’t the same place it was 10, 20, or even 30 years ago.

          The T Line is projected to get 18,000 daily riders with the complete build out of the line, and a big chuck of that comes from being able to connect people to school, college, healthcare, major stores, recreation, etc. There’ll be plenty of people who’ll take the T to a Rainiers game just to avoid parking at Cheney. 18,000 riders would also make it the busiest transit corridor in the county by a mile, that’s nearly 2/3 of Pierce Transit’s current ridership.

          So I frankly wouldn’t sleep on the T line.

       7. @Zack B, just because you listed off things that are on or close to 19th doesn’t mean they will generate ridership. Christian schools, nope. An elementary school, Really? That’s a large parcel that precludes multifamily development as does park land and the Allenmore Golf Course. If the old Heidleberg plant were still sitting vacant that would be a prime parcel for development but now it’s a park. Foss HS also locks out another large parcel from potential development with lots of surface parking and sports fields. Very few students will use public transit so you’re talking about a relatively small number of staff that’s only there 9 months out of the year. Then there’s the long stretch to cross 16 that’s forever nothing but expensive track to build. The Fred Meyer being sold is the best shot at any TOD. Kroger is closing stores. They’d much rather people shop for groceries at a higher margin QFC than a Fred Meyer and the home goods and electronics has taken a beating from Amazon.

          Tacoma Rainers draw 5k people to 75 home games. That’s nothing and very few people are going to use transit. The vast majority have to drive from home or work anyway. So you’re going to park at TCC or Tacoma Dome, spend a 1/2 hour before and after a game to save $10 on parking? Actually less because you have $2 in fares and if you’re carpooling (most people don’t go to games alone) it’s even less.

          South Tacoma Way is also very much like it was in the 70’s but even more sad. The B&I sign is still there (RIP Ivan) but it’s not what it used to be. However, it consists almost entirely of large parcels that are ripe for redevelopment just waiting for that embryonic start. . The exception being the couple blocks just north of 56th. I’m not familiar with that area but IIRC Mount Tahoma HS used to be just west of there.

          The T Line is projected to get 18,000 daily riders

          That’s a 450% increase so I a bit skeptical of that number. But the additional boardings aren’t new transit riders or even new trips. It’s by and large completely because of forced transfers at TCC from primarily the 1 and 2 routes. Theoretically that means you can reallocate some bus service hours which should generate additional ridership. But you’re going to make what’s now a one seat ride into a considerably long affair with a transfer. So it’s not certain there will be any increase or overall benefit. There will be a definite degradation in service for thousands that are forced to transfer to a longer trip time with wider stop spacing on the streetcar.

    3. Will run 60-ft bus on that corridor every 10 minutes do the trick?

       1. Making Rt 2 every 15 minutes instead of every half hour would probably be the best use of money. And that will likely happen if they pass the sales tax measure in the fall.

          https://piercetransit.org/routes/route-2-s-19th-st/

          It connects TCC to UWT and downtown, and I think it has the 2nd or 3rd most ridership in the system. Students ride transit.

       2. Students ride transit.

          I found a link to the Pierce Transit
          2024 Local Bus Performance and Ridership Report

          Indeed Tacoma Community College is #2 for Boardings & Alightings (pg 14). That was a surprise but even more surprising is #1 is Lakewood Towne Center (aka the Villa Plaza, not to be confused with the Colonial Center). What could be considered DT Tacoma would be tied for #2 but is split between Commerce St (75%) and Tacoma Dome (25%). Tacoma Dome is showing by far the fastest growth (pg 15) which from the chart appears to be directly correlated with a steep drop for Commerce St. I’m sure this has to do with route reconfiguration and not any sudden change in land use or trip origination point.

          So why is the Villa Plaza #1? That’s easy to understand when you look at the link Cam posted for Route 2. To get to “Tacoma” you have to go through TCC which is a major transfer point and the closest P&R except for Tacoma Dome to DT. Here’s a link to Pierce Transit Transit Centers.

          Page 16 “2024 Total Unadjusted Activity by Bus Stop” paints a rather different picture than page 14 “by Transit Center”. Here the big dots are Lakewood, Parkland, Federal Way and Commerce St. TCC is second tier on par with South Hill & Tacoma Mall plus several stops that aren’t considered transit centers. I’m surprised/puzzled by the big dot(s) up by Point Defiance. Must be a P&R lot there?

          Another page of interest is 22, Detailed Route by Route Performance. It’s heartening to see most of the big losers listed as “retired”. The outliers are STCL (Stream) and the 497 Express. Is the 497 Pierce Transit branded or Sound Transit (usually >500#)? Both of these are in the $45-50 cost per boarding range. Almost all of the rest of the routes are in the $10-15 range. I can understand Stream needing time to get established. The 497 is the only route classified as “Express” so I’m assuming there is a huge dead heading cost. What’s the 101 “Seasonal”; the summer connection from DT to Ruston? It’s total operating cost is minimal and may also need time to “mature”.

          I know it’s not a bus so not in this report but it would be nice to compare the same metrics with T Link performance. I’m also curious why the two ST routes are classified as “Urban” and not “Express” or “Connector” and what the difference is between “Urban” and “Core”.

       3. Thanks for the reference Bernie. I tend to focus on route performance and not stop performance with those reports.

          even more surprising is #1 is Lakewood Towne Center

          That is for transit centers. If you look at page 16 it has overall activity and it is quite a bit different. To quote the report:

          The downtown Tacoma area had the largest concentration of high-activity stops, but significant activity was also observed in Fife, Lakewood, Federal Way, Spanaway, and Parkland.

          So yeah, some of these other places have a lot of activity – a lot more than I expected. Good point. But downtown Tacoma is still the big kahuna. Even though it isn’t an official “transit center” it is the center for transit in Pierce County.

       4. @Cam — I agree. The 2 is the second best in terms of overall ridership, ridership-per-service-hour and ridership-per-mile (based on the report Bernie linked to). It should definitely run every fifteen minutes. In general the first thing I would do in Tacoma is just the buses more often. Then figure out how to run them faster. [Correction: It is second in ridership but the 54 and 202 perform better in some of the metrics. The 2 is second and third — see page 22]

          Ideally the “Stream” project is a backdoor way of achieving the same thing. If they do it right, it replaces the 1. This means that all of those hours that went into the 1 are now being paid for by ST. Riders on the 1 have a faster bus but otherwise it is the same. But now Pierce Transit can take those savings and put it into running other buses (like the 2) more often.

       5. downtown Tacoma is still the big kahuna. Even though it isn’t an official “transit center”

          It sort of is, Commerce St. But that’s why I combined it with the number for Tacoma Dome. Clearly they are tied together as seen by the 18.7% increase in activity for the Dome vs a 12.1% decrease for Commerce St from 2023 to 2024. About 1/2 of the decrease could be attributed to the 33k STREAM boardings. Percentage wise, which is what the chart shows the number would be greater for the Dome because it has a much smaller number of boardings. But yes, DT (the double track portion of the original streetcar line) is the big kahuna. It would be interesting to see what the number of boardings are at the medical centers.

       6. Making Rt 2 every 15 minutes instead of every half hour would probably be the best use of money. And that will likely happen if they pass the sales tax measure in the fall.

          What is the current state of this measure? All I can find searching is an Uranist Op-Ed piece from February saying “The Pierce Transit Board is considering a ballot measure in November”. On the Pierce Transit website:
          Search results for : ballot measure – Nothing Found
          All I see for official Pierce County elections is a referendum to repeal the 0.1% sales tax increase for law enforcement.

       7. “Ideally the “Stream” project is a backdoor way of achieving the same thing. If they do it right, it replaces the 1. This means that all of those hours that went into the 1 are now being paid for by ST.”

          ST never agreed to pay for Stream 1’s operations. It only contributed to capital costs. So it’s the same way ST contrbuted to building the First Hill Streetcar and RapidRide G. ST doesn’t own them and has no further obligation to them.

       8. ST never agreed to pay for Stream 1’s operations. It only contributed to capital costs.

          Are routes 500 and 501 a similar situation? I assumed they were ST routes since I thought all routes with 500 numbers were ST. But I see they are not listed on the ST website. The route and schedules only show up on Pierce Transit.

       9. “Are routes 500 and 501 a similar situation? I assumed they were ST routes since I thought all routes with 500 numbers were ST.”

          No, they predate Sound Transit. I rode the 500 in the 1980s when it was the only way to Tacoma. ST Express’s number range is 510-599 to avoid overlapping with the existing PT 500 and 501. None of the other agencies had any 5xx routes.

    4. There are similarities with the Seattle streetcar extension (now called the Culture Connector) although I see some differences. On the one hand it enhances the existing streetcar. On the other hand it is not a good value. In the case of Seattle, there is an obvious alternative that would cost very little money. Just shift the buses to First. This would provide more benefit than connecting the streetcars while saving a lot of capital. From a *service* standpoint this would be essentially free (which means saving a lot of service money as well).

       In the case of Tacoma you could move the routes around but it would be a bigger deal (in my opinion). You could move the 2 to follow the streetcar (to enable one-seat trips from 19th to the Tacoma General) but then it is basically just following the streetcar. I know this is bordering on a “sunk cost” argument but the main difference is that the completed streetcar route in Tacoma is just fundamentally better. Yes, it makes a big button hook in the middle but it also extends out on either end. An end to end trip is not that crazy.

       The big issue is cost. As mentioned, ST is footing the bill. While ST isn’t about to just write Pierce Transit a check, they have invested in Stream (which basically failed). It seems quite possible they could shift there efforts towards that, instead of the streetcar. That would leave the streetcar as a bit of an odd duck, but that is bound to be the case in Seattle. While flawed, the First Hill Streetcar is long enough and distinct enough to provide some value. But the South Lake Union Streetcar is a waste of service, let alone potential capital. The city should sell off the shed, pave over the tracks and run more buses there. Tacoma should probably do the same thing with their streetcar — and build a spine — but that would require more thinking.

       1. Yeah, I think they over-estimated how many folks would even consider riding a peak-only bus to hop on a commuter option (STX, Sounder) at Tacoma Dome. I haven’t seen the numbers, but the couple times I’ve ridden, they were empty.

          They are extending it to 10th and commerce so it will serve downtown, as a way to make it slightly more useful, but I’m not sure how successful it will be, given how limited the runs are.

          At least they built some fancy new bus enclosures and such along Pac Ave. Now they just have to add the paint and the buses, skip the takings, and get the first BRT moving.

       2. “they have invested in Stream (which basically failed)”

          It was never fully implemented. The interim service is a peak express to Tacoma Dome. The full Stream was supposed to be all-day frequent RapidRide-like service. That wasn’t built because PT couldn’t come up with the local match to fully fund it. I’m not sure if the partial federal defunding of transit grants hit it.

          Stream would certainly be popular for the same reason the existing Route 1 is popular and Metro’s RapidRide lines are popular. A medium-density arterial with urban villages is a ridership magnet.

          It was a mistake to terminate Stream at Tacoma Dome, and I’m glad PT is now extending it to downtown Tacoma. The Pacific Avenue and 6th Avenue service should overlap in downtown Tacoma because… it’s a downtown. A lot of people go there for a lot of different reasons, and that’s where most of the bus transfers to everywhere else are.

       3. I know the SLUT has dismal ridership. Not sure why it didn’t work out but how does this scream “Must have Link station!”. Ditto for Seattle Center. It has the Monorail which seems to be working just fine and making money for the City. The proposed Link stop looks more like a Lower Queen Anne station than a Seattle Center station.

       4. The SLUT has dismal ridership because the line is too short and the buses nearby are more useful. SLU (including Denny Triangle) is a very high ridership area. Depending on how you define the boundaries bus ridership in SLU is something like 2-3x the ridership of downtown Ballard; bus ridership in SLU is comparable to First Hill

       5. Yep, I used to ride the 17, now 40 everyday from Fremont. 60′ buses every 10-15 min packed to the gills in the morning (sometimes they’d have to skip stops because no one else would fit), and they would nearly empty at SLU on Dexter (or Westlake) between Mercer and Denny…opposite pattern in the evening. A Link station in SLU coming from the Eastside and UW (via transfer or not) will be very busy whether at Denny, Harrison, or somewhere in between. The streetcar is a totally different animal – too slow and the line is too short.

       6. The problem is that the planned truncated line will not meet the transportation needs of those going from Fremont or Ballard to SLU. All those people still have to take the 40.

          I guess it would be great for the dozen or so people per day coming from the Victoria Clipper and wanting to go to Westlake?

       7. The SLUT has dismal ridership because the line is too short

          Which is why the connection to the 1st Hill line “seems like” it’s worth doing vs selling the shed and paving over the track. Too slow is more difficult to fix. The problem is the traffic in that area makes surface running kind of ridiculous. I would have expected the new Westlake Ave transit improvements would have addressed that but I guess not.

       8. “The SLUT has dismal ridership because the line is too short”

          Which is why the connection to the 1st Hill line “seems like” it’s worth doing vs selling the shed and paving over the track.

          Yes, definitely — if this was the 1800s and buses weren’t invented yet. But it doesn’t make sense when we can just divert a few buses and achieve something better. Even with it all connected, the streetcar routing is flawed. It forms a relatively small ‘U’ with an extra button hook on the side. The routing is exactly the type that performs poorly. The big problem is, it offers so little. Think of a bus like the 24/124, diverted to First Avenue. Every trip combination make sense. Someone could board at First & Battery and get off at SoDo, Georgetown, Interbay or Magnolia. Now think of the streetcar. A very large portion of the trips just don’t make sense. It is a pairing based on mode, not good routing principles.

          Put it another way. Imagine we just run buses on the exact same routes as the streetcar. Ridership would be the same*. Now we decide to do a restructure. Why keep these routes? Why pair these routes? That just doesn’t make sense. Adding transit on First Avenue is fine, but running buses there is cheaper and better.

          *No one would think “Oh no. This is a bus. I don’t ride buses. That is beneath me. I have to ride a streetcar”. OK, I guess some people would (tourists maybe) but I don’t really care about those riders (since the alternative isn’t really driving — it not making the trip). OK, I do care about those riders a little bit. That is why I would keep the First Hill Streetcar. If someone from Boise wants to take selfies of themselves riding the streetcar to the sight of CHOP, be my guest. Might as well keep it for them.

       9. “they have invested in Stream (which basically failed)”

          It was never fully implemented.

          Yeah, that is my point. I realize now that the word “failed” is misleading. It could be viewed as it having been implemented but not successful. That isn’t what I meant at all. I meant that ST failed to implement the project. Putting money into fully implementing would likely be a much better value than a streetcar extension. Of course that implies that they would do a better job this time and I fear they might make the same mistakes all over again. ST is capable of wasting a huge amount of money on BRT projects as well (see Stride 3).

       10. “I meant that ST failed to implement the project.”

           Pierce Transit failed to complete the project. It’s a Pierce Transit route. ST gave a contribution to capital costs, but PT couldn’t get enough grants or local funding for the rest. So it fell back to a peak express to at least get people to their 9-to-5 jobs faster than Route 1 can.

    5. I think that many people quickly conflate streetcars with high frequency. They think that if rail tracks are built, the operator would not dare to provide service only every 20 or 30 minutes. In this case, because T Link runs every 12 minutes Pierce interests assume that the extension will also run every 12 minutes. In other words, the tracks become a form of insurance against less frequent transit.

       Of course, while rail can spur some denser redevelopment, it likely won’t result in a surge of additional riders high enough to warrant more frequency. (Link’s success mostly comes from riders that used to be on Metro and ST Express.)

       Given how ST has been so willing to keep T-Link at current frequencies including extending it all these years, ST has shown no indication that it may run less often in the future. But it’s always possible when ST must someday face a fiscal austerity crisis in their operating budget.

       1. 12 minutes is already a deterrent to transferring. It makes a 15-minute difference in transferring to the T-Line vs just staying on a bus that already goes to downtown Tacoma after serving Tacoma Dome station. That includes both ST Express 590 and 594, and PT 41, 400, 500, and 501 among others.

          The T Line should run every 5-10 minutes if it’s intended to be the primary way to get to downtown Tacoma from a Tacoma Dome station transfer, and to travel through downtown Tacoma.

       2. Frequencies are bottle necked by the single track from Tacoma Dome to south of Union Station. If that were fixed then you could run a much higher frequency service on the T line. Personally I think extending the T Line farther to get to the Emerald Queen Casino, and incorporating a proper tram loop as the endpoint would also be a good option for a bus hub in South Tacoma.

21. There are so many problems with what is happening here. Every proposal is falling short of the most impactful endpoint (Ballard). Stations are being dropped in one of the densest areas of the region’s biggest city (South Lake Union). Light rail is being run between two suburban endpoints (Kirkland Issaquah) that don’t even sustain a well-utilized bus. Decisions are being made based on points on a map and parochial interests instead of what’s actually best for riders and mobility. Underlying it all is the inability to build infrastructure in the United States at anything less than a breathtaking cost.

    Said as an Eastside resident that would likely never see direct value from a Ballard line, build the best parts first and build them right. Yes, look for opportunities to manage cost in every step, but don’t make irreversible decisions like dropping in-city stations just to add distant points to a map.

    1. To use east sub-area money to build to Ballard there would have to be another sub-area loan. That certainly can be done and a better use of money than anything that’s proposed for the eastside.

       A new expanded parking garage is coming online at Eastgate? Was that ST3 money?

       1. If it’s happening now or in the near future, no. Issaquah Link’s alternatives analysis hasn’t started yet.

    2. “ Light rail is being run between two suburban endpoints (Kirkland Issaquah) that don’t even sustain a well-utilized bus.”

       Your point about 4 Line is spot on. It seems to be designed for peak hour commuting to Downtown Bellevue and nothing more. Using it to make other trips would appear to take longer than buses do today. Outside of Downtown Bellevue and maybe Factoria, every proposed station is an existing park and ride location.

       I have long felt that suburban cities should “earn” Link with more suitable station area land use. They shouldn’t just get it because it shows up on a larger system diagram. And a park and ride garage probably needs at least 1500 spaces if not more to justify getting a station by itself (noting that every current garage on the 4 Line is much smaller than that).

22. Extending to South Kirkland is cheap but equally useless. You still need to run buses back and forth from the P&R down 116th to serve all the clinics and with two routes that continue to DT Kirkland you have 15 min frequency all day. Add back something like the old 249 and you have 10 min frequency plus a connection to Spring District/Bel-Red w/o having to go thru DT Bellevue. Once the parking garage is full the only mid-day ridership at S Kirkland is from transfers. There is NO walkshed. And of course ST wants to double track the stub and put in an elevated station. No surprise they are short of $$$ with wasteful proposals like this.

    How about, if they have a windfall tax revenue boost and are able to build tracks to Issaquah, stay on I-90 to interline with the 1 Line and go south to the airport so that 2 Line transfers don’t have to do the alley-oop at CID? Oh wait, never mind, John Chelminiak proved that Link can’t get past I-405. Good thing they saved the furniture store that’s long gone before East Link opens across the lake. More money wasted by not using the most cost effective route that would already be half way to Issaquah.

23. As a West Seattle resident, I strongly believe WDLE should be canceled entirely.
    Rapid Ride bus takes only 15 minutes from WS to downtown. The 56 and 57 routes, which only run for morning and evening commutes, could be run all day at costs nowhere near what WS Link would cost. In addition to loss of direct non-transfer transit to Downtown Seattle, there are a number of serious concerns about the proposed plan. Please look at Rethink the Link website, with carefully thought out, researched and respectfully presented analysis. Yet ST’s modus operandi has been to stonewall dissent and bulldoze ahead.

    I support completing the spine, all the way to Tacoma. Scratch West Seattle, Ballard, Issaquah and the like.

    Final thought, I believe it is risky and unusual for voters to approve a conceptual plan without specific parameters and costs. It’s like saying, how would you like this wonderful program? Of course the answer is yes. In this case, the yes came a decade ago. It would make sense to change the city’s way of approving projects.

    1. We’ve attended some Rethink the Link forums..

    2. I’m in favor of running high-quality all-day BRT to West Seattle, but Ballard absolutely needs rail more than Tacoma or Everett needs the imaginary “spine”.

    3. Different STB authors have different positions on West Seattle Link, but Ross B, Martin P, and I who were at the Rethink the Link forum think West Seattle Link is bad for transit passengers in West Seattle. 90% of West Seattleites don’t live near the proposed stations so they’d have to take bus feeders. Currently they have bus routes that fan out from the bridge to all parts of the penninsula. The Junction area is not as large as Ballard or Northgate and doesn’t have as wide a range of destinations, so it’s less relevant to to all people’s trips in aggregate and forcing transfers there is less justified. At the same time the Junction is only a few miles from downtown Seattle, so it’s not like buses are overlapping a long distance excessively.

       All that makes a case to cancel West Seattle Link, and instead have multi-line BRT fanning out from the bridge like the C, H, 21, 55, 56, and 125 do. “BRT” meaning more transit-priority lanes, full-time frequency, and making the 55 and 56 all-day. This can be blended with other concepts in the 22, 50, and 128 corridors, in whatever combination of downtown routes and no-downtown routes makes sense for West Seattle. Both Metro Connects and SDOT’s frequent transit network have concepts for this, though they’re different from each other, and they assume full ST3 Link so they’d have to be retrofitted if it’s not there.

       Rethink the Link has different priorities, focusing on impacts to the environment and displaced businesses and homes, while also noting its passenger-hostile aspects. Its leaders know about our recommendation and concerns, and I’d say they generally agree with them.

       1. I appreciate you guys for pointing out the questionable value of WSLE.

          It needs to be mentioned that the stub operation until some version of DSTT2 is opened that the transfer time and effort will make things worse for West Seattle riders. And after 1 Line trains would be pushed into DSTT2 transfers are so awful that it makes travel worse off for SeaTac, South King and SE Seattle riders. It is literally spending billions to make transit travel take longer for almost everyone but those that live within walking distance of the two or three stations in West Seattle. That’s it! It makes it so much worse for everyone else. And ST’s own forecasts say that something like over 2/3rds (3/4ths?) of riders will be transferring to or from a bus in West Seattle.

          And ST3 never promised a tunnel or any excavation in West Seattle. Never! That was a deliberate decision driven by our leaders and its added billions to the project. The original project was already of dubious value. The deep bore tunnel and extra deep Alaska Junction station makes that value so much worse!

       2. “the stub operation until some version of DSTT2 is opened that the transfer time and effort will make things worse for West Seattle riders.”

          All the existing West Seattle-downtown bus routes will continue to go downtown until West Seattle is connected to DSTT1 and Lynnwood, so the impact on West Seattle riders is zero: they can continue taking their existing buses with their existing performance. It’s only when the full DSTT2 and bus truncations come online in 2039 or later that things will become worse for 90% of West Seattle residents.

24. If it were up to STB it would be the year 2090 and West Seattle would still not have any rail. There’s genuinely such a bizarre obsession with that project even though it’s projected to be cheaper/rider than both Issaquah and TDLE
    https://bsky.app/profile/avgzing.com/post/3mh4suxfi4k26
    Just in this thread West Seattle mentioned 70x vs 25x for Tacoma vs Issaquah 40x.

    It’s incredible how myopic so many of the commenters are with WSLE. All they look at is C line between Jackson ST and junction and see $5B price tag and throw the whole thing out the window and start begging for buses or gondolas (lol!)

    1. Building WSLE will mean more investment in bus service in West Seattle, just like South King County restructure is about to for FWLE https://www.theurbanist.org/south-king-bus-revamp-boost-weekend-service/

    2. Building WSLE means setting up further link expansion in the future (ST4) southbound toward Burien/Tukwila. Yes this initial segment is expensive but you have to build either a tall bridge or tunnel to get past the Duwamish River.
    https://www.theurbanist.org/map-of-the-week-seattles-new-long-range-rail-plan-goes-big/

    3. There is no REAL situation where West Seattle is given $4B for building bus expansions. KCM can’t even keep up with the funds coming in from the Seattle transit measure. What are they going to do if someone gives them $1B to run more buses in West Seattle?
    https://seattletransitblog.com/2026/02/26/seattle-transit-measure-performance-since-passed-2020-to-now/
    “But increasing service has been severely limited by Metro’s operator shortage.”

    4. Building WSLE will mean building a TOD node that is NOT NEAR A FREEWAY. Seattle will be more ambitious about TOD there than any other city in Washington. Sure the LLE cities build some TOD but it’s just next to a disgusting polluting freeway. Nobody who cares about their health actually wants to live there. TOD planning is already underway https://westseattleblog.com/2026/03/west-seattle-light-rail-new-survey-about-station-area-planning-for-two-stations-and-neighborhoods-beyond/

    1. If only there were a pro transit mayor in Seattle that could push for moves to make building BLE and WSLE cheaper (cut/cover, elevated, ignoring NIMBYs). Oh well maybe someday Seattle can elect a transit mayor.

    2. West Seattle is more familiar to most people in Seattle than Issaquah and Tacoma, and it’s being built first. It’s natural to have more opinions about local upcoming projects than further afield, decade+ away projects.

       A key issue for WSLE is that the buses (C/H) are relatively good. They run express from the bridge to downtown, and it will be difficult for Link to beat that since it will go via SODO and have more stops. There’s some time to be saved by running above/below grade from Junction to the bridge, but not that much. And it’s unlikely that the bus changes will improve the situation for the transit-oriented parts of West Seattle. Sure, the C is a bit of a wash, but if the H is terminated at the Delridge stop, everyone in Delridge will have a longer trip downtown than they do now. That could be made up for with more service on other corridors in theory, but in practice running east-west bus service is very difficult mostly on account of there not being very many roads. I think this is a qualitatively different situation than in South King.

       ST4 does not exist, and we shouldn’t plan a system around a future vote.

       Metro’s operator shortage is a short-term issue that is solvable easily. More stable and higher levels of funding for bus service means its easier to keep operators and pay them what they’re worth.

       There is nothing preventing West Seattle from having a TOD node not near a freeway right now. In fact, you could say it already exists. There is no reason why a working definition of TOD can’t be about good bus service too.

       I’m not dogmatically against Link to West Seattle, nor do I think we need a perfect plan before proceeding. But I do think it’s worth asking if the current plans will improve transit to West Seattle. I see it as a wash at best once WSLE is finished, at least in terms of what could be done to improve bus service and connectivity. That’s cause for concern. UW Link opened 10 years ago, and has been the most productive segment since in large part because it was more than twice as fast as the bus service it replaced (and because UW to Downtown via Capitol Hill is and always has been a premier transit corridor). I generally think commenters and authors here can have a bit too narrow of a focus on travel time, but it’s a useful metric to consider, and one that shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. There may be qualitative reasons to prefer a train over a bus for a similarly scheduled service (including reliability), but I think those reasons can be overstated.

       I think Seattle has seen the success of Link and attributed it to being trains, and that any place trains go will see similar levels of success to the Northgate – SeaTac corridor. I think this is a bit too optimistic. Portland’s MAX system had a similarly successful first line (Hillsboro to Gresham), but has failed to replicate that success on the newer lines. Now, TriMet is saddled with some high-cost, relatively low productivity train lines (Orange, Green) that it feels compelled to maintain in perpetuity (though the Green line is being truncated at Gateway in response to their funding crisis). This presents issues for the agency moving forward, and in some ways that could have been alleviated through better planning – particularly with a better Orange line alignment in SE Portland and connecting the I-205 lines together to allow a CTC – Airport line to operate now when they did the Better Red Project.

       I’m personally optimistic about Katie Wilson being mayor. But I don’t expect her, or any mayor of Seattle, to somehow fix any of the issues that ST has created. ST staff and the board have shown an incredible reluctance to all of the things you bring up, and it will take a lot more than just one board member to change that.

       1. Blumdrew regarding Katie I would expect her to pull out all tricks she can to keep both WSLE and BLE feasible. The non-seattle board members im sure would be happy to have ballard elevated or cut/cover to bring costs down which would make ELE, Issaquah, and TDLE more feasible

25. Some thoughts on truncating Everett Link. The ridiculous deviation to the SW Industrial Area should be reviewed: ridership to Boeing will be low – forecasts have said as much. End the line at Ash Way for now and reroute in the future directly north at street level (or aerial) to Everett via Evergreen. Put more $$into improved Sounder service running through to Tukwila or Tacoma. 10 trains a day would be a good start. Invest in Battery Multiple or DM units, which are cheaper to buy and operate versus locomotives & cars.

26. Ballard/West Seattle:
    Isn’t the second tunnel the biggest cost driver here? In the scenario where West Seattle is cancelled, perhaps a cheaper alternative could be found? Maybe part of the route could be elevated (over Mercer?), or the downtown tunnel could be rerouted. West Seattle would likely need major bus upgrades as a compromise.

    Everett:
    I doubt anything short of Everett would be politically acceptable. This should build a first phase to Mariner and reevaluate the deviation to Paine Field.

    Tacoma:
    Again I doubt anything short of Tacoma Dome would be politically acceptable. Short of Tacoma Dome, the only logical stopping point is Federal Way, where we already are. The planned extension is essentially the cheapest route possible. Maybe the Portland Ave stop could be deferred or even deleted? It’s a very constrained station fairly close to Tacoma Dome, with a train yard to the north and a freeway to the south.

    Kirkland/Issaquah:
    East King has the money and some form of Line 4 is likely going to get built. A Stride-like proposal along I-90 would likely be better (maybe bill it as “rail-convertible”?), but I’m not sure that is on the table.

    With the proposed line, the South Kirkland extension is useless. Funding an express route (Ross has suggested the 256 to UW) would likely be far more impactful for much less money. The freeway upgrades for that are already getting built as part of Stride.

    If built, I think the Issaquah line has to connect at South Bellevue; the proposed connection at East Main means backtracking for every trip into Seattle. I think the proposed freeway median station at Issaquah is a very good idea. A potential stop at 150th could also be a good idea; it would likely be the most developable of all the potential Issaquah Link stops.

    1. Agreed on the 4 line. The connection must be at South Bellevue. South Bellevue is the direct path of travel and closest transfer point, has a center platform ideal for transfers in the opposite direction, and avoids building wasteful redundant track. In case the anti-transit faux-environmentalists didn’t notice, I-90 already has 16 or so lanes crossing through the slough at this location.

       And a station at 150th or better yet a bit further east where all those vacant office parks are which can be replaced with mixed use TOD. Richards Road station needs to move south of I-90 to serve a rezoned and upzoned Factoria. Richards Road station is such a terrible location literally on top of a wetland, on the other side of a horrific freeway interchange, adjacent to the sole remaining industrial area in Bellevue and the single family Woodridge neighborhood.

       But at this point South Kirkland is really just a short spur to allow the 4 line trains to terminate and reverse out of the way of the through running 2 line trains to Redmond, plus half the track is already built now going up to the railyard. Its does also set up for a future extension to Downtown Kirkland where it always should have gone (but by the time it would open these NIMBYs will be long gone, plenty of time to revisit).

27. Suppose a second tunnel is necessary when Ballard/West Seattle Link extensions are fully realized (let’s set that debate aside).

    If Ballard Link isn’t even going to make it through Lower Queen Anne, does it make it less necessary to build a second tunnel?
    I feel like a second tunnel would only make more sense if additional cross-Seattle branches actually reach those regional centers. I think more people can benefit from a Ballard-Westlake/Alaska Junction-SoDo than a Seattle Center-Alaska Junction Link.

    1. I think the answer is “maybe”. A principal justification for the second tunnel is platform crowding, and truncating Ballard Link Uptown will reduce ridership by some appreciable amount, which in turn will reduce platform level crowding. To the extent this matters is up for debate, as I have haven’t seen any new ridership projections for the truncated lines.

       But I would say the second tunnel is still unnecessary by most metrics. The strongest benefit it has is making branching easier to manage. If trains come every 3 minutes evenly for a shared tunnel, it means north of Westlake trains will be spaced 3/6, which isn’t ideal. If trains are instead spaced 5/5 north of Westlake, it would mean 5/2.5/2.5 downtown, which is probably preferable but may cause operational issues in practice.

       1. After they cut all the stations, have terrible transfers, and snip the ends off the lines… dont think we need to worry about packed platforms and the need for a second tunnel.

    2. In 2015-2016, ST sold the second tunnel as being absolutely necessary for reliable operations of three lines at 10 trains per hour through downtown Seattle. ST believes it is infeasible to upgrade the DSTT to run trains every 2 minutes. They also believe there may be significant crowding and ventilation issues during regular operations in the DSTT stations if all three lines are running through them. Finally, ST staff determined that building a wye at 3rd and Pine would require completely rebuilding the curve and due to extremely challenging geotechnical issues there, they can only assume it would take years to complete. This would require truncating all service north of Seattle at Westlake and all service south and east of Seattle at CID for years while the curve is demolished and a wye built.

       1. “ST believes it is infeasible to upgrade the DSTT to run trains every 2 minutes. They also believe there may be significant crowding and ventilation issues during regular operations in the DSTT stations if all three lines are running through them.”

          It’s feasible; ST just has to do the capital upgrades to address the egress (more escalators/elevators) and ventilation issues. ST isn’t saying it’s not feasible at all, it’s just that it strongly prefers a second tunnel instead.

       2. “ In 2015-2016, ST sold the second tunnel as being absolutely necessary for reliable operations of three lines at 10 trains per hour through downtown Seattle.”

          The issue is the promise for 6 minute trains. The promise was a political choice , and not a technical one. At 800 riders per train and two directions, 30 trains an hour means 48,000 (800 x 2 x 30). Currently there’s about 320,000 jobs in greater Downtown Seattle. However many walk or bicycle or park. Among the riders are also a number arriving on Metro buses or WSF ferries or Sounder. So I don’t see that 48000 Link peak hour flow number from ever being a problem unless an unanticipated employment boom makes Seattle much much bigger.

    3. Basically the only way to reach Ballard would be
       1) go back to 2014 at grade plans
       2) build the ballard stub with separate omf
       3) build the interline option

       1. So it looks like lack of OMF or at least temporary access to existing OMF really limit the light-rail options to Ballard. No wonder they are more eager to build Tacoma and Everett link which are just the extension of existing line.

28. I live in West Seattle, and I would like to have WSLE built because of how bad it was during the bridge closure.

    However, if you look at the land area that is being up zoned for Alaska Junction, Avalon urban villages, it’s not really very large compared to the *potential* area that could be up zoned in Factoria, Eastgate, Issaquah. Depending on how you draw the map it looks like it could be 2-3x as large.

    It’s also possible for things to change, drastically, but at the moment Factoria does still have T-Mobile, and Issaquah has Costco corporate HQs which does count for something. If Bel-Red style rezoning did go through for those areas, I imagine it would be extremely competitive vis-a-vis WSLE.

    1. Not to mention orders of magnitude cheaper to build. There are no bored tunnels with the 4 Line.

    2. ST could build a gondola over the Mercer Slough to connect South Bellevue Station with Factoria and Bellevue College. Much easier than to build tracks through the nature preserve.

    3. It is worth noting that the project would not improve travel speeds to Seattle. Riders are still much better off with the buses heading to Mercer Island. Other than that there are similarities with West Seattle Link in that:

       1) The cost is extremely high.
       2) There are very few stations.
       3) You are basically duplicating what can be done better via buses.

       We wrote a post about a bus alternative to West Seattle Link. You can read it or just scroll down to the map to get the gist of it. Basically it offers the best of both worlds. A lot more riders would get a one-seat ride to downtown. A lot of riders would get the same connection to Link — just at SoDo instead of in West Seattle. This is much better for a couple reasons:

       1) People traveling south on Link can avoid the extra transfer.
       2) Many riders make that connection to Link much sooner.

       Consider a trip from Alki or Admiral Junction to SeaTac. With West Seattle Link they have to backtrack to Alaska Junction to catch Link. Then they ride Link to SoDo. With the bus improvements they ride a bus directly to SoDo (likely saving ten, maybe 15 minutes). There are similar issues with Issaquah Link.

       We haven’t written a post about Issaquah Link. It is on our “todo” list. Like West Seattle there is a better alternative involving buses. It would require a significant investment in freeway infrastructure but it would still be billions less expensive. In the case of Issaquah it means connecting the HOV lanes of 405 with I-90. This would allow a bus from Issaquah to serve the Eastgate freeway overpass station and keep going, directly to Downtown Bellevue. From Eastgate this would be just about as fast as a train. From most places in Issaquah it would be significantly faster, as you would avoid the transfer.

       There are similar issues for Bellevue. It isn’t clear where the stations will be. If the Eastgate Station is in the freeway envelope then it is still a big walk from Bellevue College. Again, riders from the college (let alone the surrounding neighborhoods) would be better off with a bus that went directly to Downtown Bellevue. If the Eastgate Station is by the college then you eliminate this problem. But it means that the connection to Issaquah buses would be awkward. The bus would exit the freeway, take 142nd Place and loop around. You could try and make the connection at Richards Road but that isn’t trivial.

       Overall — just like West Seattle — the area would be much better off with improved buses and bus-based infrastructure.

       1. In the case of Issaquah it means connecting the HOV lanes of 405 with I-90.

          This is a project that needs to get done anyway. WB on I-90 to NB I-405 is routinely backed up solid all the way to 148th. Coming back from Snoqualmie Pass on Sunday evenings I just take 148th north rather than 405. Sometimes I will even take West Sammamish Pkwy. EB 90 to both NB and SB 405 on weekday afternoons is also backed up to the East Channel Bridge so I exit on Bellevue Way to go north. But only 1 more week until the 2 Line finally opens!

          What the cost would be I don’t know. Less than ST building rail anywhere is a pretty safe bet. It will sure do a hell of a lot more for regional mobility than a train from Issaquah to Bellevue. And S Kirk P&R is really a why bother. Outside of a few riders at peak nobody will use it.

       2. In the case of Issaquah it means connecting the HOV lanes of 405 with I-90.

          This is a project that needs to get done anyway. WB on I-90 to NB I-405 is routinely backed up solid all the way to 148th. Coming back from Snoqualmie Pass on Sunday evenings I just take 148th north rather than 405. Sometimes I will even take West Sammamish Pkwy. EB 90 to both NB and SB 405 on weekday afternoons is also backed up to the East Channel Bridge so I exit on Bellevue Way to go north. But only 1 more week until the 2 Line finally opens!

          What the cost would be I don’t know. Less than ST building rail anywhere is a pretty safe bet. It will sure do a hell of a lot more for regional mobility than a train from Issaquah to Bellevue. And S Kirk P&R is really a why bother. Outside of a few riders at peak nobody will use it.

       3. Duplicate post because of “Secure Connection Error” reposted a previous comment instead of the one being edited. Please delete.

29. Defer
    /dəˈfər/
    verb
    To put off (an action or event) to a later time; postpone.

    Cancel
    /ˈkan(t)s(ə)l/
    verb
    To decide or announce that (a planned event) will not take place.

    Stop misrepresenting facts with garbage. Do better.

    1. Right. I have not given up on my dreams of playing in the NBA (even though I’m old and can’t jump). They are just deferred.

       In all likelihood, a project being deferred means it won’t be built. Not unless they get more money. Sure, it could eventually be built but you could say the same thing about anything you want to build. The monorail expansion could happen after all. So could Forward Thrust. Or the Bogue Plan for that matter. But let’s not kid ourselves. If a project is indefinitely deferred it means there are no plans by this agency to build it with the current funding. It is, effectively, cancelled.

       1. Eu·phe·mism
          /ˈyo͞ofəˌmiz(ə)m/

          noun

          1. a mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing:

          @Ross, I’d pay good money to see you post up against LeBron. It would be a once in a lifetime opportunity… since you probably wouldn’t survive :=)

    2. The Sound Transit Board members during the meeting also asked the same concerns asking how long it would be deferred by, and also if it would be impossible to fund the remaining projects given that operational costs would take up a lot larger share of the revenue by then.

       Sound Transit staff was unable to answer by how many years/decades it would be delayed by and also were unable not answer if they could still fund the “defer” projects.

       > Stop misrepresenting facts with garbage. Do better.

       It’s a fact that are effectively cancelled under the selected approaches. The staff and board legally cannot call it cancelled, but it would be a lie to not tell the truth to readers.

30. Unfortunately, Sound Transit constrains itself within what was voted on 10 years ago, i.e., there is little flexibility. If this wasn’t the case, the notion of automated trains would be on the table. Fortunately, at least at the moment, ST board members, most of who don’t ride transit regularly, certainly not a variety of routes and services, are making the decisions, and SMEs like STB commenters, are largely disregarded. IMO, the extensions in West Seattle and Ballard duplicate Metro’s Rapid Ride, while the last stretch of the Everett line (first segment) duplicate Community Transit’s Green Line while bypassing Paine Field. I would’ve much rather seen a Ballard-U District line, as that’s had heavy ridership for decades, while appealing to reverse commuters, for instance. The initial first segment of Everett-to Mariner/128th, where CT’s Green Line could take Boeing bound riders the rest of the way, was also my preference…they can transfer, like the rest of us…and the ST express 513 finally becoming bi-directional to/from Boeing after it being teased for the past few years makes my preference even more preferable. Most likely, some combination of the 1-2-3 concepts will be selected.

Comments are closed.