Crosslake Connection: 50 Years in the Making

82 Replies to “Crosslake Connection: 50 Years in the Making”

1. Thanks for writing this up. I find these articles outlining the history of a project particularly interesting.
   For example I knew that Kemper Freeman sued but didn’t know that Mercer Island sued (two times!) too.

2. [Ed: off topic, please comment on an open thread.]

3. An issue not mentioned was the need to protect the bridge pontoons from stray electrical current. WSDOT has an asset to protect.

4. I remember a former STB commenter who predicted that the 2 line would never open, that it would damage the bridge and impact “real transportation”. Looks like he’s proven wrong.

   1. Kinda sounds like what STB commenters now say about DSTT2.

      1. No? I’ve never seen anyone here say that DSTT2 has no chance of actually opening. Many people, including me, think it adds little to the system and prevents much more valuable projects from being built due to its cost, but that doesn’t mean we think it’s a sure thing that it’ll be cancelled (unfortunately.)

         If you want to take swipes at this idea, at least do it a little more substantively. It would be easier to discuss productively.

      2. Are the “Nuggets” comprised of chicken or created by chickens?

         Enquiring minds want to know.

      3. @Chicken Nuggets

         Not true at all.

         Many commenters state that DSTT2 isn’t necessary and is making the already expensive extensions even more expensive with no additional benefit. That’s not the same thing.

      4. The kind of argument is different.

         The I-90 bridge concerns are that what ST did won’t be enough to counteract heavy trains sinking the bridge, heavy trains breaking the joints that connect the fixed land roadway to the bouncing bridge roadway, or high winds derailing the train or such. The argument is that ST didn’t do enough, or it’s impossible to do enough, or it would be cost-prohibitive to do enough. ST has spec’ed and tested all this, and we’ll see how well it performs over the first year. The bridge probably won’t break.

         The DSTT2 issue isn’t that ST can’t build it. It has built other tunnels. Seattle’s complicated, liquefication-prone soil issues are probably not worse downtown than they are at the Ship Canal, First Hill, or SODO. The issue is that a second tunnel is arguably unnecessary, so it’s a waste of money.

         If you want to make a comparable argument for the I-90 bridge, you’d say that Seattle-Eastside light rail in itself is unnecessary, or that it should go over the 520 bridge or its own bridge or a tunnel. That ignores the fact that the I-90 bridge’s center lanes were specifically designed to be convertable to rail in the future, so that lowers the cost of Link dramatically, the same way as the DSTT in the 1980s lowered the cost of Link and saved us from an elevated or surface alignment downtown or no Link at all. So it would look bad not to leverage such low-hanging fruit, an earlier infrastructure investment that was made for this purpose. And I’d say Bellevue-Redmond is a large enough transit/economic market and close enough to Seattle that they should be connected in a Metro network, like San Francisco-Oakland or Minneapols-St Paul. A lot of people travel between the two, and more would do so and switch to transit if the transit connection is excellent. The existing ST Express service between the Eastside and Seattle is not excellent.

      5. There’s a bit of a difference between speculating if something will work or not, and pointing out known flaws.

         Speculation about the bridge flies in the face of a lot of experience and testing.

         Building DSTT2 flies in the face of experience and operation, so criticism of it is the opposite. Eg: replacing trains going through Seattle with an 11 floor escalator transfer at Westlake will make many light rail trips longer and less convenient. There’s no real way to debate it because there’s no magic teleportation device that makes all those escalators disappear from the current plan.

      6. Speculation about the bridge flies in the face of a lot of experience and testing.

         Evergreen Pt they managed to replace before it failed catastrophically. But Hood Canal twice and Lacey Murrow in a Turkey Day storm). And Evergreen Pt was so low in the water from all the concrete used to patch cracks they had to close it when winds exceeded 35mph. Even w/o the train the bridge is good for maybe 25 more years. What’s the max sustained wind it’s good for before they shut down the train? How many years before they have to shut it down for transition joints at each end to be replaced? Washington has a less than stellar record; West Seattle (both spans), I-5 Skagit River, Columbia River crossing on rotting wood piers, ditto for I-90 across the Mercer Slough… A proud history going all the way back to Galloping Gertie.

5. Congratulations! This is a great history of the eastside rail plan. Thank you for explaining how this unique solution came about.

   A little note of amplification: one of the alternatives to building the second bridge considered before the Memorandum was signed was a heavy rail line to Eastgate on a new rail-only floating bridge.

   Needless to say, that went nowhere fast, but the idea was the seed for the “convertible” express lanes that were built.

6. This article has reminded me of the ridiculously long period it took to complete the “Connect 2020” work. Ten weeks to rebuild a couple of hundred yards of existing track and cut in two turnouts is a terrible performance.

   About nine months ago, NS reconfigured its diverging junction comprising a triple-track line to double-track and double-track lines in northwest Atlanta in thirty-six hours. This included level crossings with the parallel CSX line that crosses one of the diverging double track lines.

   Ten weeks was absurd.

   1. And it’s even more absurd given that they’ve needed to close the tunnel again and again for more tie-in work!

   2. Norfolk Southern doesn’t need to run consistent passenger service nor does it have power and electrical. Comparing freight rail to rapid transit is apples to oranges, they just happen to use the same base technology of rails.

      Also, NS was completely ballasted track. You can just prefab sections and plop them in, weld them, and that’s it. The section tie in at IDS is concrete direct fixation which is much more complicated to install.

      1. I would just like to suggest to you, sir, that Norfolk Southern values the ladings on its trains more than Sound Transit values the passengers on its.

         This is based entirely upon the relative prestige within their respective industries in which each organization is held.

         To your direct criticism, you are correct; panel track is more difficult to modify than is ballasted track. But it’s not forty-seven times more difficult.

         (One hundred sixty-eighty hours per week times ten weeks equals sixteen hundred and eighty hours. Divide that by thirty-six hours and you get forty-six and two-thirds.)

         The “power and electrical” can be done as parts of earlier stages of the project except for the last couple of spans of the overhead and the overhead frog, so that’s not an excuse. There is no level diamond crossing in this junction; it consists of a right-handed facing point turnout and a left-handed trailing point turnout and modified trackage on the existing line, presumably to make the turnouts smoother.

         All the setup on the diverging line should have been completed up to a short gap to where the re-configured Line 1 trackage would go. However long it would take to move a hundred yards of that trackage is all that should have been required for closure.

         Perhaps that is how the project was staged; I certainly hope so. But if so, the obvious question “Why was the new trackage built as direct fixation?” arises. There are no buses requiring a roadway within the station now, and presumably never will again be.

      2. I have no clue what you’re trying tk say in your first paragraph.

         Anyway

         Direct fixation track is much easier to maintain in tunnels. Also, the roadway deck had to be ripped out, concrete poured and set, and new track plinths laid and rail fixated. It’s a short term time investment for a much longer term maintainability and reliability payoff.

         This “criticism” makes absolutely no sense and frankly I feel like you’re always grasping at straws to find something to criticize ST for. By basically all other accounts this was a very well planned and prepared for disruption. Service was continued and the shuttle trains were easy to yse thanks to the temporary transfer platform at Pioneer Square. Before you get mad that it was taken out, it was the fire department not ST that mandated they remove it.

   3. NS scales in the industry so it has the resource to pull off project at this rate if it thinks necessary. If ST owns and manage thousands miles of tracks and make huge amount of profit in transit, it probably can do the same and is able to put together resource for emergency repair at impressive speed.
      Also, freight rail is basically a carbo pipeline. The quality standard is pretty low because train doesn’t run fast and derailment is acceptable at a higher rate than passenger rail.

      1. But neither project was “an emergency”. Both were certainly “Critical Pathed”, choreographed efforts. It’s just that the railroad cares about its customers, while ST has done little to build confidence that they do so.

7. And, last but not least, the 2 Line is an excellent example of how water features constrain and direct transportation solutions in the Puget Sound region. “U”-shaped routes — or maybe in this case, strictly speaking “J”-shaped — are in bad odor among the transicenti. So “The Snake” as proposed is vulnerable to criticism that it would loop around Lake Union and Queen Anne Hill.

   Well, a schematic of the 2 Line looks very much like a larger (inverted) version of The Snake.

   1. The full 2 Line is effectively two lines interlined: east-west Redmond-downtown, and north-south downtown-Lynnwood. It’s because the Eastside is economically/culturally similar to north Seattle and there are more trips between them than with other parts of Seattle, and because the north end needed double frequency anyway for the huge ridership in the U-District and Capitol Hill and Northgate, so this kills two birds with one stone.

      A U-shaped segment that meets in one end of downtown, veers to another part of downtown or a downtown-adjacent neighborhood, and comes back to meet at another end of downtown, is a common feature in transit systems. The Washington DC and St Petersburg metros have similar patterns. It’s used to bring a high-volume neighborhood into the system that wouldn’t otherwise be on it, and it creates exponentially more trip patterns, because you can start on one line and end on another.

      1. Good point about the Red Line in Washington. I did not know that St. Petersburg has a similarly configured line. Thanks for the info.

         To be clear to other readers, I am not slagging the 2 Line. I expect that a lot of folks in the U District proper headed toward downtown Bellevue will take the 2 Line rather than the 271 even though it’s a bit longer, because it will be dead on reliable most of the time.

         That’s about as close as a one-to-one “fair race” as you could come up with.

      2. No, the 2-line is one line connecting the major urban centers: U District, Downtown, and Bellevue. The “U” is the optimal shape given the location of the urban nodes, not because of the lake.

         The 1-line is the secondary corridor, but it was built first because Seattle to TIBS was easy to build and because SeaTac is the politically obvious terminus. ID-Redmond will have better ridership metrics than ID-SeaTac.

      3. Not the DC Red Line in particular: all the DC lines. They’re arranged in a kind of triangular configuration like St Petersburg. So it’s not just one line that meets at one side of downtown and then again at the other side; it’s all of them. If your destination is in a part of downtown your line doesn’t go to, you transfer. In the Ballard-Westlake-First Hill-Mt Baker or CID situation, it would be people from Ballard transferring to go downtown. But in DC and St Petersburg, it’s people on a lot of lines transferring to each other’s lines to get to different parts of the center, so it’s hard to say which line is the primary core and which are the peripheral ones, because they’re all about equal. That’s the nature of a triangle-designed network: there’s no one station or line that’s clearly the core; they all equally share it across the whole triangle. DC has a station called Metro Center but in my limited experience traveling there it’s not really the center: it’s just from an administative/nominal standpoint and where Amtrak is, but it’s not where the overwhelming majority of people are going to; they’re going to everywhere in the triangle about equally, or going through the triangle to something on the other side, and it doesn’t matter as much as you might think whether the line goes through Metro Center and the blue/green/orange stations or not.

   2. I get what you are saying Tom. It doesn’t make sense to take a train from Redmond to the UW, or anywhere north of the UW. You would be better off with a bus to the UW followed by a transfer. As a result, you lose some functionality. But south of there you definitely benefit. Capitol Hill to Bellevue (or even Redmond) is a reasonable and fast trip using Link.

      As Mike mentioned, the big benefit is running the trains twice as often. If you were being very frugal with your service you probably just turn back after the U-District. But there is no turnback there and besides, you get good ridership to the north of there (which isn’t that much farther). I’m not sure the best turnback — although Northgate and 148th sound reasonable. It is hard to see why were are running trains every five minutes to Mountlake Terrace but not every five minutes in Rainier Valley but we kind of stumbled into this thing.

      If you were trying to have more one-seat rides then you would pair East Link with Ballard Link. But even though they have rejected a separate automated line and even though they still want to build a brand new downtown tunnel they don’t want to do that. This is just another example of a bad design. Pairing the East Side with Ballard makes sense from a geographic standpoint — every trip pair is faster than a bus. At the same time, there is an obvious business connection between the East Side and South Lake Union.

      1. Ross, yes, had they started out with the idea of sending Eastside trains to Ballard the viaduct between the I-90 cut and CIDS could have descended to the east or west of the Spine Main for a directly adjacent station. That train has left the station, of course.

         I would point out that given how deep UW Station is, and the time it takes to cross Montlake either by signal or the bridge, a person already on a 2 Line train from north of U District headed, say, to Redmond Tech when it’s raining or cold out is likely to sit tight on the train and take in the view of Mt. Rainier from the southern crossing rather than fuss about transferring. Headed to Bellevue? It’s a no-brainer; stay on the train, even on a nice spring morning.

      2. “I get what you are saying Tom. It doesn’t make sense to take a train from Redmond to the UW, or anywhere north of the UW.”

         Unless the agency is too cheap to run the bus frequently, in which case, the bus becomes just as slow as riding the train all the way around, after accounting for wait time. Which is currently the plan for evenings and weekends.

      3. Headed to Bellevue? It’s a no-brainer; stay on the train, even on a nice spring morning.

         If you are starting in Northgate you might decide to just ride all the way around (and avoid the shortcut). As asdf2 mentioned, frequency matters. You are already on the train, so if the bus is infrequent, it isn’t worth the transfer. But it also matters where exactly you are headed. If you are going close to the station (or other stations) then the train is a good option. It might be slower but you avoid a transfer involving a really deep tunnel. If you are going to other parts of Downtown Bellevue (like NE 8th & Bellevue Way) then the bus is much better. You still have to transfer anyway (or walk 15 minutes). Might as well transfer in the UW.

      4. Put me firmly in the camp of just sitting tight on the train. If I’m going from Bel-Red to UW I’m not getting off the train on the wind swept porch over 405 and hiking gawd knows how far up the transit center to find a bus has just left and wait around to find out the next one doesn’t come. Plus it has to be an ST bus or I get to pay another fare. And then take into consideration that you might get stuck in traffic. If everything goes swimmingly you still have to hike from the 520 lid so I’ll take my chances on at least one escalator being functional at UW.

      5. If you are starting in Northgate you might decide to just ride all the way around (and avoid the shortcut)

         Yes, that’s exactly what I had in mind. And of course the exact destination matters a lot. A trip to a point far from the train station is much more likely to attract a transfer.

      6. “ Put me firmly in the camp of just sitting tight on the train.”

         I’ve long argued that once someone boards a train that eventually goes to a downstream destination on the same line, they rarely may hop off if it’s reasonable — and even a 20 minute frequency may be too risky to transfer to Dave time.

         A rider definitely won’t get off at one rail station, wait for a bus — and then get off and wait for a train. Unless they’re a travel time junkie checking bus and train positions every minutie.

         Transferring is a lot of physical effort — and the worries of transferring adds stress too. It’s work! Most riders will be content to just stay on the train — even if it costs them extra travel time. That’s time they could be writing emails, reading e-books, catching up on new and sports, or playing a game on their phone.

         The one thing that may pursuance ghem to get off early is if they have to stand. But even then, it the boarded upstream like MLY and got a seat, they aren’t moving until they have to. But if they got on at a Roosevelt and must stand as the train is very crowded, they may consider a bus transfer or two.

      7. Both the starting and ending destination matter. I’m assuming at trip to the East Side. As I’ve mentioned, if you are headed to the north or east end of downtown Bellevue then the bus is probably better. But also consider the starting point. A lot of people don’t walk to the station. They take a bus. The U-District is a major hub. Rather than take a bus to the station they could take a bus to the bus stop. Consider someone in the U-Village. They could take the 31/32 to the U-District. Then they could ride Link all the way around. Or they could take one of the buses through campus. Then they would walk to bus stop and catch the 271. Likewise, consider someone in Maple Leaf. They will have to ride the 67. They could get off the bus at Roosevelt and ride link all the way around. Or they could stay on the bus and transfer at the UW. Lake City is an interesting one. They have several options to get to Link but it may be that the fastest option is to just take the bus to the U-District (when it goes there) and transfer to the 271. As you get further north into Shoreline a Link trip is required. But you tend to get fewer riders until you get to Lynnwood. At Lynnwood it might be faster to catch the 535 (and it will be faster to catch the Stride bus when it gets here).

         Thus a lot depends on the network. Not just the path and frequency of the 271 but where the other buses go and how often. At Sand Point you can go south, towards the UW (and the 271). Or you can go across and get on Link. The former requires a considerable walk — that might tip the balance. But the biggest factor may be the frequency of each bus. Right now they are about the same. But if one bus gets a lot more frequent, that might be the way to go.

   3. As for Westlake/Interbay/Ballard/UW, it has the same weakness, to be sure. It doesn’t make sense to take that train from Westlake to the UW unless something happens with the main line (which never happens — snark). The main advantage of that weird route is because it connects to the train yard (in Interbay). That was always an unsolved issue with Ballard-UW. Ideally you branch but since they didn’t plan on it, you have to spend a bunch of money or maybe find a way to make a non-revenue connection to the main line. If the trains access a yard in Interbay that issue goes away. That being said, there would be some benefit from the “snake”. Interbay to the UW would be dramatically faster. The trip to Ballard isn’t a lot better — although a lot more reliable and frequent (if they automated the trains). But the trip to Fremont, Wallingford and the UW is dramatically better. As in, faster than driving, at noon. This makes up for the transfer. There are trips involving transfers on both ends that would be would be dramatically faster as well. Greenwood to Magnolia Village (https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZYJjKWsd2u7dJgpt8). Right now, if you leave at noon it takes about an hour — after you’ve caught the first bus. My guess is even with transfers in Interbay and Fremont you’ve got the travel time down to about a half hour (and thus competitive with driving). It is even better if you are somewhere else in Magnolia (and most people are). The routing is pretty simple: focus all the buses to Interbay (while some of them continue to get you one-seat rides to SPU).

      Basically, the train would dramatically improve transit for *everyone* in Magnolia. You can’t say that with West Seattle and West Seattle Link. There are other combinations that work as well. For example Wallingford to Seattle Center/Uptown. Right now the best bet (midday) is the 62 and 8. This is straightforward but not especially fast. A fast, frequent one-seat ride would be welcome (even if it “detours” to Ballard).

      So while the “snake” is less than ideal it has more combinations than I first assumed when looking at it.

      1. ++++

      2. Westlake-Ballard-UW as a standalone line has dramatic cost savings on both ends by avoiding branching and therefore avoiding tunneling. This line should be elevated, allowing for a extensions Westlake-First Hill and UW-U Villages, unlocking more trip pairs than simple branching.

         Also, by being standalone the operating pattern can be different and therefore optimized for urban service: aka higher frequency with shorter trains.

      3. If we were starting from scratch there is a strong case for a branch at the U-District. Ridership basically splits after that. So imagine automated trains running every three minutes from the U-District to downtown. You would have trains running every six minutes to Northgate and every six minutes to Ballard. Someone in Ballard could take the train to downtown (via the UW) and save themselves a fair amount of time. It would continue (as it does now) and connect to places like Rainier Valley, SeaTac and the East Side. Suddenly Ballard (one of our bigger, more densely populated neighborhoods) has transit that is much, much better.

         But that isn’t the world we live in. Our subway line is not automated. It is also low-floor light rail (which contributes to the poor dwell times). It is inferior. There are no branches, either. This means making a branch would be very disruptive and expensive. We are better off building a separate line.

         Yes, that does offer the opportunity for extensions the other direction as well. Such an extension wouldn’t be worth it if there was a branch but becomes a lot more plausible with a separate line (especially one with smaller platforms).

   4. The most famous U-shaped line has to be TTC Line 1. Its daily ridership is twice as many as some similar routes because it is practically two lines.

   5. Unlike “narrow U” lines like DC’s Ree Line, Chicago’s Blue Line and Toronto’s 1 Line, the ST 2 Line is 6 miles between the sides of the “U” with a lake barrier in between. It’s more like two “L shaped” lines that happen to be attached to me.

      1. In Chicago and Toronto you can jog between the segments of the ‘U’ and beat the train. That won’t happen with Link. The curve is wide enough.

         But that doesn’t rule out a bus making the connection faster, especially since there is a freeway connecting the points in which they are closest (Downtown Bellevue and the UW). It also makes sense to connect those two points with an express, given the demand. The same is true for Lynnwood to Bellevue. In contrast if the train went to Ballard (not the UW or Lynnwood) that wouldn’t be the case. It is not that big of a deal — just an interesting observation.

      2. Toronto’s is clearly two lines interlining. There’s no way to explain its existence otherwise.

      3. The history of the Toronto line is interesting. From what I can gather, it went like this:

         First they ran a line from Eglinton to Union station (the eastern part of the ‘U’). This was the only subway for about ten years. It curved to serve Union, which meant the train was heading west.

         They wanted to expand to the northwest. As this Reddit comment notes:

         The U shape was created so that there would be no transfers needed for people on Bloor or Danforth headed downtown. Half of the trains going through the U would turn east at Bloor, and the other half would turn west. For people on Bloor and Danforth, half of the trains would head downtown and the other half would keep going east/west.

         In other words you would have one train that was basically heading east-west but it would curve to serve downtown and then go back north again. At the same time, they would have another train that would skip the detour and just go east-west. They ended up abandoning that approach. Eventually there was just the ‘U’ and the crosstown train.

         But this begs the question: Why not make the ‘U’ wider? It seems like it could go up Spadina the whole way (for better coverage south of Bloor). My understanding is that at the time, University was just a lot more developed. It is also worth noting that the two edges of the ‘U’ are about 650 meters apart, north of Union (they get farther apart as you go farther north). The new downtown tunnel (if it is built) would be less than 200 meters from the existing one. If we had a tunnel spaced like those in Toronto (that I think everyone agrees is too close together) it would mean actually serving First Hill. Imagine that.

         As for Chicago, the Blue Line does form a ‘U’, but it spread out fairly quickly. You have to be west of I-90 to make the walk faster than you would by looping around on the train. Riding the bus is a different story.

         The DC Red Line is weird. It is nice and round towards the bottom of the ‘U’. This means that riding the train is always faster than walking or surface transit for that section. That is what you want. But as you get much further north, the two parts of the ‘U’ get pretty close to each other. Not close enough to walk, but close enough that a bus can beat the train by quite a bit. Even though the design if very different it seems to the most similar to the Link 1/2 line combination. At no point is it better to just walk. But for some trips — trips that are not particularly short — the bus is faster.

         These are all flawed for that reason. A ‘U’ shape is just not good. Of course if we connect the streetcar lines it will form a ‘U’ and be the worst of all combinations. For various trips it will be faster to walk. For a lot of trips a bus would be faster. It is a particularly poor design, especially for surface transit.

8. A lot of parallels too with BART which opened in phases in the early 1970s culminating with the opening of the Transbay Tube in 1974 providing the key link. Prior to the Tube opening there was BART in the East Bay and separately in San Francisco.

   1. Though that was for less than year, and operations there were much more complicated because there was no Daly City Yard yet.

9. Can we get a blog post on where you see Seattle/the Puget Sound area being in terms of transit 50 years from now?

   1. If we’re lucky by then there would be HSR and a link system resembling this
      https://www.seattlesubway.org/regional-map/

      1. Only if the Sound Transit Service Area has six-million residents. Otherwise it is enormous over-building.

         It will not happen unless the country splits into two or three countries or the West Coast joins Canada. That would bring millions of female refugees from “Gilead”. Smart men would follow them.

      2. I really LOVE that Fauntleroy to Seward Park line. It’ll be SRO with four minute headways, I’m certain!

      3. What is “Grass Lawn” in Kirkland??

      4. That one is quite the overbuild, but I do envision the following being reasonable:

         1. Reroute the current 1 Line after TIBS through Georgetown like shown in the Seattle Subway. This ensures a faster trip into Seattle.

         2. Create a new line that continues from TIBS along the existing path, but after Mount Baker, it continues north to Judkins Park where riders can transfer to the 2 Line. After that it continues to the Central District, Montlake, and UW like the Renton Line shown in that map.

         3. For the Renton-Lake City Line, send it to Ballard/Seattle instead via Beacon Hill. And maybe occasionally, swap and send it to the UW for riders headed that direction.

         4. Extend the 4 Line to the UW and then extend that towards Wallingford and Ballard.

         5. Add the improvements shown in Seattle on that map, including an SR-99 rail option.

         6. Design for future improvements including rail replacing the current Stride corridors.

         7. Add a rail connection to Mukilteo Ferry (not shown in the Seattle Subway vision)

      5. The Seattle Subway map is ridiculous. It is one of the problems with the organization. They are focused on rail to far flung places. Two lines to Woodinville. Three lines to TIBS. It is quite silly. Yet at the same time, nothing in First Hill or Belltown. It is not just silly. It sends the wrong message.

         Anyway, Grass Lawn is a park in Redmond. I’ve played soccer there. You are right, Tom. The Seward Park line is quite amusing. It is such a bizarre mix of cost-conscious compromises and pie-in-the sky dreaming.

      6. What is “Grass Lawn” in Kirkland??

         As far as I know there is no “Grass Lawn” in Kirkland. Grass Lawn is a park in Redmond on 148th just north of M$FT. It has two turf (not grass) sports fields, some tennis courts. picnic area and a playground.

      7. @South King. My critique of those idea:

         1. Very high cost, very few riders. There would only be a couple new stations along the way. Express riders are better off with buses. Burying the line in Rainier Valley seems plausible though. It would improve speed for some of the same trips (SeaTac to downtown) while allowing for better headways.

         2. The problem is crossing the ship canal. You could try and connect to the main line but that gets expensive. So now you have a second tunnel and a second UW Station (or you somehow share the existing one). That gets really expensive. You are better off curving around and trying to do the “Metro 8” thing. That being said, you are probably much better off running a line through First Hill instead. You could still connect in Capitol Hill (a Metro 8 that makes a sharper turn) or you could connect in Westlake, like this proposal.

         3. I don’t see Renton ever having light rail. Maybe if they bury the line in Rainier Valley and then have a branch it could work. The problem is, there is just so little in between.

         4. Running another train across the lake just isn’t worth it. To their credit they propose a line from Downtown Kirkland to Sand Point. This is faster than driving (at noon). But it is also massively expensive. There just aren’t enough riders to justify the cost. The other alternative is to run a train on 520. This is less expensive but still costs a bundle. But it also isn’t as good. You are better off with what the consultant hired by Kirkland recommended: BRT on the CKC. Run several buses through Kirkland to both Bellevue and Seattle (via the freeways, which are fast).

         5. An SR-99 train would be a tremendous waste of money. You spending a bundle duplicating the expressway. Keep in mind, there are no crossing streets between South Lake Union and Green Lake. Run buses in the middle of the street and a bus never stops for traffic or traffic lights on this stretch. Thus a train line doesn’t actually add value until it gets north of Green Lake (and by then you’ve spent a fortune). You would be better off building a busway north of Green Lake. Dig a trench and put the buses in there.

         6. Most of the Stride corridors are low performing routes. Yet they will be quite fast. Replacing them with rail would provide very little benefit for that reason. The exception is SR-522. There would be value in having a branch, with one branch going to Lake City. That gets expensive though (since we didn’t build the line to handle branches). At that point the train would continue to Kenmore but again, there is so little in between there. This means it costs a lot and you get very few riders. Sure, it is possible but I don’t see them doing that — not after spending half a billion for the buses.

         7. Mukilteo is a small town. There are frequent ferry riders but not enough to justify a new rail line. It is the same old story. If we owned the tracks and running trains was really cheap then you might as well. But that isn’t the case. A combination of express buses (to Lynnwood and Everett) is adequate.

      8. Grass Lawn Park is the name of the park at Old Redmond Road (NE 70th Street) and 148th in Redmond. It has a big grass lawn, a performing-arts center I’ve seen one or two low-budget plays at, and from Google Maps it also has soccer fields. It’s kind of just outside of Redmond’s downtown (about a mile southwest), and west of it is house-like condos and then houses, and later a supermarket plaza and more houses, and then southwest Kirkland. So it’s more of a coverage stop under current zoning. If Seattle Subway intends to go on Redmond Way/85th instead of Old Redmond Road/70th — which is more direct and would serve the Stride 2 freeway station — then it would bypass that area, and I don’t know if there’s a “Grass Lawn” neighborhood identity that extends to Redmond Way. So it may be a name like Othello, which ST chose because there was no existing well-known name for the area. (The names Hillman City and Brighton having been neglected and forgotten two generations earlier.)

      9. “The Seattle Subway map is ridiculous.”

         Since they’ve gone this far, I am surprised they haven’t dreamt on a Seattle to Bellevue line that runs across Madison Valley and 200+ft deep Lk Washington.

      10. 1. I think elevating Rainier Valley, and double tracking some trips make sense if a new line cannot be constructed. Rainier Valley ridership is not at all good and worth serving with every trip, so double tracking will encourage more airport ridership and compel visitors to use transit instead of Uber/rentals.

          2. It could remain elevated to the UW across Montlake, creating a multi layered station. It doesn’t have to be a tunnel. But this will ensure the UW maintains a one seat ride to the airport, which will be lost once the Ballard segment opens. It will also speed up trips from the Eastside / Lynnwood down to the south, by avoiding the Downtown Tunnel. It also solves the 2 Line to 1 Line transfer dilemma by having Judkin Park be the transfer point instead.

          3. It wouldn’t be expensive to add a short extension of the Rainier Valley segment to Renton (most of the line is built… You are just adding a short surface/elevated
          segment along MLK up to the Landing and Southport), but it would greatly expand light rail access to Kent and Renton, making trips to Westlake, Ballard, and the UW more feasible then current bus or rail options.

          4. In that case, sending it up to Bothell (via Kirkland downtown) appears more useful.

          5. No comment.

          6. I said design for future improvements. It is a stretch goal, but replacing bus transit with faster semi high speed commuter rail should be a goal of a mature transit system. We’re far from that status, hence I said “designing” for that outcome in the unforeseeable future.

          7. It still expands rail access not just to Mukilteo, but to ferry riders from all across the Olympic Peninsula. It is an important destination to serve, especially since we’re building to Everett anyways.

      11. A Renton Line also adds the ability to send 4 minute headways through key segments in Rainier Valley, as well as adding new destinations and opportunities. This would require elevation of the line. It also connects employment centers like Boeing, as well as key shopping and entertainment destinations in the Landing / Southport. Nearly 250k people live in Renton and Kent combined. If they could add Federal Way, which is arguably a more useless location in terms of employment, they can and should add Renton (which is the only major city not included in light rail plans at the moment). Kent and Auburn have the Sounder at least.

      12. The reason ridership is so slow outside of Seattle is because the transit system isn’t good there to begin with.

          The pushback against my ideas seem to be based on the fact that these areas have poor ridership. They won’t have good ridership until after the transit is built. It also has to be marketed.

          People remain car-brained as long as trains and buses remain slow and unusable. These areas are heavy producers of SOV congestion. They need rail options to rectify this issue. SOV congestion doesn’t affect suburbs alone, but also neighborhoods and streets in urban areas as well.

          Any city with a high population should be in consideration for light rail, express transit, etc. especially if they experience regular traffic congestion. And Sound Transit has built / proposed heavy rail and light rail in every one of those cities except for Bothell, Kirkland, and Renton. That gap needs to be filled in ST4, and actions need to be taken to convince riders that using their car isn’t the faster and reliable option to reach work, sporting events, or the airport.

      13. Both transit quality and other factors contribute to the suburbs’ lagging ridership. Every area needs usable transit quality before you can expect the ridership curve to turn toward transit. As advocates of high-quality transit keep pressing and have documented around the world, the absolute minimum frequency is 15-minutes all day and evening in all urban and suburban areas. 10 minutes would be even better. In King County terms, that would be 98% of Metro’s all-day routes. Link has always reached that level, so we just need to make sure it doesn’t get watered down during extensions and branches and recessions.

          The reason is people hate waiting more than anything. Even a longer ride or more transfers is more tolerable than waiting a long time. Every minute gets people more bored and irritated. People accept that five or six minutes is the best they can expect for reliable transfers and avoiding excessive service, but as the wait gets up to 8 or 10 or 15 minutes they get increasingly dissatisfied, and at some point they just won’t take it or will be mad at the agency and less inclined to support it with tax increases. This gets compounded in 2-, 3-, or 4-seat rides, where each seat is a wait and they add up. And it adds up cumulatively if you use transit several times a week.

          Transit is competing with driving. Drivers don’t have to wait for their garage to unlock at two points per hour. The equivalent of a transfer is turning at an intersection or a freeway exit.

          If we look at Metro’s actual service, most routes are far below that. In Renton, only the F and future I reach that level. The 101 misses it evenings and weekends. The 106 and 107 miss it evenings. And the 106 and 107 are supplemented by the Seattle Transit Measure, so their daytime frequency depends on short-term levies that might not be renewed or the City of Seattle could redirect the money to other routes at any time. The 105 misses it off-peak. The 148 always misses it. The 240 misses it now, although 15-minute weekday service is coming next week. The 240 isn’t just for Renton-Bellevue trips or low-density Newcastle; it also serves part of the Renton Highlands.

          That’s why people are so frustrated with transit in suburbia. A lot of the routes aren’t usable a lot of the time.

          When people don’t have good transit for an extended period of time or over multiple generations, they learn not to depend on it, to think anything better is impossible, and to be less willing to pay for it. That’s reinforced by the anti-transit propaganda that has been running since the 1920s.

          The suburbs are partly based on that anti-transit propaganda: people want their city to be somewhat rural. They see car use as a sign of success and American freedom. They don’t want their cities to get dense and have lots of transit because they fear that’s communist and will bring homeless druggie criminals. People with that mindset tend to live in the suburbs when they have a choice. And those who don’t have a choice because they can’t afford to live in a large city or it’s too far from work, don’t have a choice.

          Still, we haven’t tried good transit, and it works in Canada and other countries that have it. Everywhere that makes transit frequent, finds that people use it and become more transit-oriented, more than the naysayers claimed they wouldn’t, even in suburbs and many affluent areas. It’s just that we haven’t really tried, or we keep implementing it on one route for a few years but then it goes away, so you can’t make long-term home and job decisions knowing it will be there.

          All this is mostly about a way to get from A to B, regardless of whether it’s a bus or a train. What we most need is to get a good baseline of bus service everywhere. Now that we have the basic core of a metro and then some — to Lynnwood, Redmond, and Federal Way, and the higher-ridership eastern half of Seattle — it doesn’t matter as much if Link is extended or not, and it shouldn’t be the primary goal in a city like Renton. Renton like everywhere should have a baseline of good bus service. and if we want to improve on it someday by extending a Rainier Valley Link branch to it, or ST’s questionable West Seattle-Burien-Renton concept, or the even more questionable Renton-Bellevue concept, we can do that secondarily later.

      14. SKR, the reason that ridership is so low outside Seattle is that the physical build-out favors cars. There are cul-de-sac streets all over the place, so walking to a bus stop often involves quite a detour, arterials are wide andtempt drivers to speed. Out in the ‘Burbs there are no streets like NE 91st between Fifth NE and Fifteenth, lined on both sides with parked cars so that traffic has to go single-file with empty parking spaces serving as “passing sidings”. Speeds are lower in town, so the penalty of riding transit of stops for all those other jerks who want to get on or off your bus is less severe. You wouldn’t be going that fast anyway.

          In the Outback, you would.

          Suburban infrastructure essentially mandates ownership of a car for every occupant of any given house over sixteen years of age.

      15. 3. RE Link to Renton:

          MLK (SR 900) has room to either run light rail at grade or slightly elevated. An issue is that it would skip SouthCenter which the 2015 transit corridor study assumed.

          And the interface point with the 1 Line is a topic too.

          The thing is though that it remains unvisioned. And most of the time Route 101 makes that trip pretty fast. There is some congestion southbound in the late afternoons but a bus lane could bypass that. On the other hand, the impending SODO busway closure for West Seattle Link’s new SODO platforms could really ruin Route 101 as early as next year (2027).

          Note that Renton is in the East King subarea. That could play into things.

          West Seattle Link’s new SODO Station construction will be a bigger hassle than many leaders realize.

      16. I’d add a 4 line extension to Downtown Kirkland.

          Also for Stride Line 1 a short stretch of elevated busway to serve Southcenter and Tukwila Sounder/Amtrak where it would deviate off I-405, serve these, then rejoin I-405. These are huge misses on Stride-1 and missing from the regional HCT network (Tukwila is a key regional connection point).

          Love the Westlake-First Hill-CD-Judkins Park-Mount Baker extension via Boren and Rainier. Definitely need that if we can get rid of DSTT2.

          Would still try to squeeze more out of Sounder South including extending its service north to Queen Anne and adding a few infill stations in Seattle like Pike Place/Belltown and Queen Anne (adequately close enough for Climate Pledge/Seattle Center).

      17. Suburban living does mandate a car. Just because someone owns a car doesn’t mean they should drive it everywhere. Transit and cars can be used together for multimodal travel in suburbs.

          Going to school? You should be taking transit.

          Going to work? You should be taking transit.

          Going to a Seahawks game? Transit.

          Going to the airport? Transit.

          Now there are some situations in suburbs that mandate the use of cars. That would include shopping at big box stores.

          But that doesn’t change the fact that transit should be accessible and reliable for people in suburbs. If built out properly, most suburbs should have adequate transit access within a 10 min walk maximum. Most communities are close to a main street. For the ones further out, that’s where park & ride (or even better, carpooling / getting dropped off) comes into play.

          It reduces congestion in communities that have been plaguing us for decades. It will end the nightmare of people taking neighborhoods as shortcuts to get to work. That’s why express bus service and reliable light rail branching is needed to expand access and create a fast, dependable trip beyond just Seattle and Bellevue. Anywhere with a heavy population, even if medium density, should be considered for transit. Rural areas can keep driving but they won’t add up to much.

          The point of transit is only two things:
          (1) Reduce road and parking congestion
          (2) Give affordable options for the public

          Our metro and transit agencies are doing a good job with #2. But we’re sure as heck not doing #1. And there is still significant inequitable access in S King County, forcing low income households to get a car or suffer multi-hour commutes every day because we don’t care about transit speed/reliability… Because someone in Seattle doesn’t want to walk an extra block or wait a couple minutes longer for their bus.

      18. And most people outside of Seattle proper (and any lucky areas that happened to get a direct route) don’t put up with transit.

          I mean who wants to take 3-4 buses, Link, and another bus… Maybe walk a fair distance with each destination? 2-3 hours of travel in just one direction.

          The same trip is 45 mins by car. In the heaviest traffic. How about park and riding? No use it just adds more time as well and gets stuck in the same freeway congestion, you could just drive all the way there. And light rail literally runs below the speed limit so why would anyone bother with that? The only reason suburbanites even take transit is for a few reasons:
          (1) They happen to live near a convenient route (more common in East King than the South)
          (2) They want to avoid tolls. Like SR 520 for example.
          (3) They are a university student, carpooling, or ride-sharing.
          (4) They don’t own a car
          (5) They can’t get parking or going to a high density event like sports.

          That’s a very bad set of ridership. So of course ridership will be low. That’s not because of suburbs, but the nature of the transit they receive. There is no attempt to speed it up. Of course it can be more expensive, and require more operator hours. That’s why light rail and automated freeway running metro is a solution for lower long term opex than long distance express buses that drain operator hours.

      19. It could remain elevated to the UW across Montlake

          That would be either an extremely high bridge or it would have to open. Both are expensive; one to build and get past the permit process and the other to operate and maintain. Plus there’s no ROW. Cant’ interline since the current tracks are below sea level. And that’s assuming you could even get that far north in the first place; probably require another hugely expensive tunnel for low/duplicate service.

          Can’t get to DT Kirkland even if you use the CKC (which is never going to happen). And if you could you couldn’t get out (north or east) without a tunnel since the reason you can’t get there is steep hills on all sides.

      20. I don’t think ridership is poor in South King. Obviously in comparison to Seattle it’s weak but by US standards it’s quite good. Kent’s station area has a fairly impressive ~20% transit commute mode share for instance. Renton’s downtown is at a more modest ~10%. I think the reason Kent’s is so high is because it is blessed with a good street layout and a rail station right in the middle of downtown.

          I think the biggest limiting factor is Metro’s service hours. If service was improved then we’d probably see a huge jump in ridership. That’s slowly improving as Metro’s hiring turns around (and Kent is going to have fairly decent service once South Link Connections is implemented) but I would really like a countywide transit measure to bump service levels up at a faster pace.

      21. Transit can compete with driving, but it’s not Mike

          “The equivalent of a transfer is turning at an intersection or a freeway exit.”

          Almost all of our transit including even Rapid Ride gets stuck at traffic signals and intersections. Unacceptable.

          It would cost almost nothing to add basic TSP to every signal along a transit route. Very little. Of course the state would probably find a way to spend $20M on a “study” and collecting “feedback” from NIMBYs. And then hire a random contractor that rips you off to create a botched algorithm for another $20M. But in the end, it’s not involving any expensive physical assets.

          Even other countries are going far more advanced with traffic lights that adjust based on real time traffic patterns, while we’re stuck with 20th century software with terrible timing or low quality sensor responses.

          Until buses get its own ROW on freeways, and we add basic cheap queue jumps and TSP to most intersections… And we make the decision to add more long distance, low stop bus routes – there won’t be a change to transit. It will always be slower and people will take their car. Especially considering the nature of our cities, people will need to travel far. Even some people who live in Seattle need to go to a Bellevue, Renton, Issaquah, etc. Those must be done with car in our current state of transit. Coverage is also weak and employers haven’t taken the step to offer shuttles from transit centers (except a few like Microsoft).

      22. transit should be accessible and reliable for people in suburbs

          Agreed. The problem is that it costs a lot more to provide the same level of service for the same number of people. Think of the key ridership factors before you even run a bus: density, walkability, proximity. Unfortunately, the suburbs struggle with all of these. Most of the people live in low-density areas. You often can’t walk directly towards your destination — you have to go around because they built it that way. (I’ve noticed that more modern suburban developments have kept the cul-de-sac pattern for the cars but they allow pedestrian pathways — progress.) Then there is proximity. Theoretically everyone wants to go everywhere. But a lot more people in Auburn are interested in making a long trip (to Seattle or Tacoma) then someone in Capitol Hill. So even before you start figuring out how to design a transit system, you are looking at lower ridership. The fundamentals are against you.

          But the costs go up as well. Serving a small, dense area is much cheaper than serving a very spread out area. You also serve the local areas along with downtown, making the trip more cost efficient. Consider the 11. It runs to downtown. It makes stops every couple blocks. It is no big deal — nobody is suggesting we run an express. Thus it serves that corridor *and* gets people downtown. You can do that in some place like Auburn but people would complain. It would take forever to get downtown. So now you are running two buses — an express and a “local” the same direction.

          In general, it is just a lot more expensive to provide the same level of service. You can do it — they do it in places like Australia. But they also just spend a lot more money on transit in those places. Unless you want to shortchange those living in more urban areas it would mean riders in the urban areas would get really good transit while those in the suburbs finally get decent transit.

      23. “Kent’s station area has a fairly impressive ~20% transit commute mode share for instance.”

          Renton is likely 10% because of no train. Kent has a better trip to Seattle. Most people in Renton aren’t going to bother with the 101. It’s a good freeway express but it spends half it’s time in Renton itself. The 102 is better but barely runs, and it’s also still too slow for the runs including Fairwood. Skyway people who happen to live along the 101/102 love it though… They get very good service door to door almost.

          The 560/566 also wastes a considerable amount of time in Renton. That will change with Stride, but now the Renton core loses service to Bellevue without a transfer. That’s why light rail (or a good bus way) fundamentally solves that bottleneck. It allows for greater coverage without getting stuck in all the intersection mess.

          As for Kent, 20% is still low. The east-west service is very poor. That needs improvement and South Link is making an attempt at that. But it’s still not reliable enough to push the average commuter. And they still have no decent option for Bellevue and the Eastside other than the 566 (which I forgot if they were deleting or not…)

          And the Sounder hits Seattle downtown really well..but going to SLU? UW? Shoreline? Not that easy anymore.

      24. Since they’ve gone this far, I am surprised they haven’t dreamt on a Seattle to Bellevue line that runs across Madison Valley and 200+ft deep Lk Washington.

          I think they did at one point and then backed off. The maps (and the thinking behind them) go back and forth. On the one hand, it is a ridiculous fantasy map. On the other hand, they routinely shoot down ideas in order to be “realistic”. The organization was originally founded by Ben Schiendelman. Back then it was focused on Seattle. I can’t find the old maps but they basically covered all of Seattle (similar to the old Bogue plan). Over time the group evolved. Now they clearly have a very suburban focus (to go along with Sound Transit). They treat Seattle like it is L. A. — a sprawling city with no central core (or multiple cores really far apart). That is simply not the city we live in. Almost all of the density is within the city itself. The remaining areas of density tend to be in Bellevue — closer to downtown Seattle than Lake City.

          I’m not saying they don’t have smart people within the organization. They do. But their map is ridiculous and unfortunately it leads to ridiculous thinking. It is literally called a “Vision Map”. This is their vision. It is all quantity over quality. More and more miles of track — to obscure places people have never heard of — rather than a comprehensive plan for serving the urban core. Somehow it is more important to serve Woodinville with a subway (on two lines, no less) then First Hill. It is easy to dismiss it but when push comes to shove, this is often their mindset. They want to have more and more rail, regardless of the cost or value. There is no recognition of the fact that buses will likely be the most popular mode no matter what we build. Holy shit, just look at our nearest neighbor, Vancouver. Within a decade they will have by far the best metro on the West Coast. Better than San Fransisco, San Diego, Seattle, Portland and even L. A. (although L. A. is now desperately trying to catch up). Yet way more people ride the bus in Vancouver. Every change — every advancement is done with the buses in mind.

          Focusing on just one mode is at best a silly obsession. At worst you end up with a transit system that is nowhere near as good as it should be.

      25. think the biggest limiting factor is Metro’s service hours. If service was improved then we’d probably see a huge jump in ridership.

          I agree, the biggest weakness is just lack of service. A close second is the routing.

      26. Kent has a good street grid and development pattern

      27. (cont) compared to Renton; the train station is likely what led to that development pattern, but most of the ridership is within Kent rather than to Seattle. Sounder is a tiny fraction of ridership, and the 150 is serves a large number of local trips in addition to a relatively long trip to Seattle. For a point of comparison, Sounder has 300-400 boardings per day in Kent. The 168, an infrequent relatively suburban route, has 1600-1800 boardings per day.

   2. To answer your question, there is no long range plan. That is part of the problem. The only thing they are truly committed to is “The Spine”. That being said, ST3 passed. It proposed several new lines. The problem is, it will take a very long time to build them. It is quite possible that they aren’t built in 50 years.

      I would say that the major potential improvements aren’t on the agenda. There should be a line serving First Hill. We should build a subway line from Ballard to the UW. Other than that, there really isn’t that much we should (let alone can) build. ST3 really isn’t helping. To quote Reece Martin, if you build the wrong thing then it is a lot harder to build the right thing. The CEO is trying very hard to skip First Hill for the second time. If they really build a second tunnel (where they want to build it) then my guess is, the neighborhood never gets served.

      That leaves Ballard to UW. This could get built but again, the agency is making it harder (not easier). They are focused on that second tunnel and the line to West Seattle. As a result, even service to Ballard (from Interbay) is being put on the back burner. So basically you have to build a line to West Seattle first, then a second tunnel, then a line to Ballard before you start working on the project we should have started already. Oh, and since they insist on using the same inefficient trains (that are infrequent and have lower capacity) it pushes the cost up. Running a line with small, automated trains and thus small platforms from the UW to Ballard would be a lot cheaper (and have the same capacity).

      So, realistically I think in 50 years the Link light rail system will look very much like ST3. Maybe, with luck, it will curve around and connect Ballard to the UW but I wouldn’t bet on it.

      The buses will continue to carry the bulk of the riders. This is where the biggest improvement will happen. It is quite likely that there will be a lot more dedicated right-of-way for the buses. Thus they will be faster. It is quite likely that in fifty years we will have automated, battery-run buses everywhere. This network would be pessimistic. The blue line goes from 15 minutes to 10. The yellow line goes from 10 to 6. The green line becomes “better than six minutes”. All the buses and vans run at least ever 15 minutes and there is greater coverage. There would still be access vans (for those with mobility issues) but everything serving the city would be fixed route, fixed time service. Even without drivers this is cheaper and easier to manage.

   3. Some leaders just want to get 75 year bonds for ST, which would mean that our rail transit wouldn’t be much different than the ST3 plan.

      It’s always easiest to dream up new extensions or infill stations. But there are some enhancements to the existing system that may become more important. From dealing with MLK to gradual shifts towards driverless trains to repairing problem piers for overhead sections to neglected crossover track locations, the long Sound Transit track system already built will need attention. And our region likes to use transit money to accomplish other system rebuilds — like I could see how ST won’t cross the Ship Canal at Ballard until the project can be integrated into a larger Ballard Bridge replacement program .

      I think mini, driverless, autonomous shuttle systems will also evolve. There is a ton of research on the best way to offer these vehicles. (There are at least two dozen private sector groups trying to make it happen.) The concept is still in the experimental stages but it is being rolled out more and more. It seems inevitable like having an elevator without an attendant — and unlike something fantastical like flying or amphibious car or bus.

      The nature of commuting is still changing. Flextime, remote work, increasing proportions of seniors in the population and AI replacing jobs are just a few major factors — but they all generally seem to point to less and less of a heavy commute hour focus that has driven our transit expansion for the past several decades.

      Finally, population growth is increasingly less likely. The National population won’t surge by about 100 million like in the past 40 years. It’s supposed to cap out at about 370 million from about 342 million today. Migration could change that, but many countries can offer a standard of living comparable to the US nowadays and world birth rates have really fallen — so immigration will also be less of a factor.

      1. “The nature of commuting is still changing. Flextime, remote work, increasing proportions of seniors in the population and AI replacing jobs are just a few major factors — but they all generally seem to point to less and less of a heavy commute hour focus that has driven our transit expansion for the past several decades.”

         As long as our highways continue to be jam packed (which they most certainly are), this should be the biggest priority of our transit system.

         This is the biggest cause of congestion in our cities and surrounding communities. Solving the commuting problem will reduce emissions the most.

         Of course creating reliable transit for day to day use in Seattle is important, but that’s Seattle’s job to fund. Sound Transit is a regional agency and it’s designed to serve the region. And commuting is the biggest form of travel from a regionwide perspective. The pandemic is over and people are heading back to work. My company still does some remote work but they’re eager to fully open up soon… They’re only holding back because of employee pushback. More and more companies will bring people back for white collar jobs.

         And this is also completely ignorant of the large number of blue collar workers who never had a choice to work from home. Some of which are even making the reverse commute from Seattle into the suburbs, and have zero reliable travel option after Metro shut down critical routes and decided to discontinue them for good. They had to get a car of course.

      2. I know plenty of car free commuters, the few who are still doing it after many others including myself quit, who are still trying to do it.

         It gets worse for them every day and it’s very tempting for them to buy a car. That’s what the new leadership in Metro is doing everyday, ever since they decided to completely flip the script on commuters shortly after the pandemic.

         It’s a negative feedback loop. Low ridership that never recovered justifying even more service cuts, resulting in even less ridership.

         People are commuting. Just by car.

      3. As long as our highways continue to be jam packed (which they most certainly are), this should be the biggest priority of our transit system.

         Sorry, No. That is a common mistake. You don’t base your system on the freeways. You base it on where you can do the most good. You balance coverage and ridership. But by and large, you aren’t going to get that many riders by just focusing on the freeways that happen to be congested.

         Of course it makes sense to serve some of those riders. We already do. We run express buses from the suburbs into Downtown Seattle, since that is where a lot of those riders are headed. These tend to perform poorly. We spend a lot of money on very few riders. We can run more of those buses but we can also improve more local bus service which is quite likely to be a better value. You get more riders per dollar.

         Of course we can — and should — improve things for long distance commuters. The first thing we should do is change HOV-2 to HOV-3. This is long overdue. But even with express buses from various places it doesn’t eliminate congestion. If you want to reduce congestion on the freeways, then toll them. People hate it, but it works.

         Part of the problem from a transit perspective is that people use the freeway for both short and long trips. I drive to the mountains quite a bit which means I contribute to traffic. You can’t fix my trip with transit — not unless you plan on running buses to every trailhead within a two hour drive of my house. (That would be awesome — I would love it — but it is unrealistic.) There are people that do the opposite — hell, I used to the opposite. I used to use to get on the freeway and then immediately exit. So it is all these trips — long and short — that create the congestion. The folks that are driving downtown only contribute to a small part of it. That’s because a lot of people take transit to downtown. If they do drive downtown it is often because they “need” the car in the middle of the day. In other words, transit to downtown is fine, but transit for all their trips is not. Or they are delivering freight and transit just doesn’t make sense. It is all these trips together that create congestion and most can not be easily fixed with transit. Some can, but there is no reason to focus on just this one aspect. Not system wide.

         Again, there are things they can do to help. Back when Community Transit had more riders they had plenty of people in the vanpools. But CT peaked at 42,000 riders a day (in the second quarter of 2008). Vanpools probably accounted for about 10% of that, or less than a typical bus in Seattle.

         So there are definite things we can do to help those riders. But there is no reason to prioritize them. People just happen to use the freeway. If we improve the system they might switch to taking transit. But the same can be said with other improvements. We should be focused on improving ridership (and coverage) for the least amount of money. Sometimes it means improving a trip that would otherwise involve the freeway — often it does not.

10. Thanks for the great history summary, Michael.
    Former Mayor of Mercer Island, Aubrey Davis was also a State Transportation Commissioner and former FTA Administrator ( when it was called UMTA). Aubrey, more than anybody, was a constant champion of rail crossing I-90 and was deposed as part of Kemper Freeman’s lawsuit in his final years. He was one of the signatories to the original I-90 memorandum of agreement and stood up to Kemper Freeman and the other opponents at each critical step.

    He was a mentor to many of us who planned and designed this segment of light rail. I wish he were still here to see the fruits of his labor on Saturday.

    Here is the op-ed he wrote as the ballot for funding was put to the voters in 2008.
    If there is ever a name put on this segment of light rail, it should be Aubrey’s. Visionary leaders like Aubrey are still needed.

    Light rail is the right choice for Seattle-Eastside connection
    https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/light-rail-is-the-right-choice-for-seattle-eastside-connection/

11. “Now there are some situations in suburbs that mandate the use of cars. That would include shopping at big box stores.”

    I and two friends I can think of do all our shopping on transit including big-box stores. You do need a car for large or heavy items, or if you’re getting a car full of things all at once. But most of the time you’re just getting clothes or a tea kettle or a present for somebody — you don’t need a car for that. Once you have a full set of furniture and housewares, you don’t need to get more every week or month.

    “[Transit] reduces congestion in communities that have been plaguing us for decades.”

    That’s impossible. Any space freed up by people switching to transit will be taken up by other people making more discretionary trips. The only thing you can do is have transit-priority lanes so that transit can bypass the congestion. Then fifty people on a bus can get around taking only the space of two people in cars.

    “there is still significant inequitable access in S King County, forcing low income households to get a car or suffer multi-hour commutes every day because we don’t care about transit speed/reliability… Because someone in Seattle doesn’t want to walk an extra block or wait a couple minutes longer for their bus.”

    That’s not what it is. In denser areas the average person’s expectations are higher, as they should be. Because it affects twice as many people in the walkshed, people are more inclined to take transit and less likely to have a car. And this is an urban neighborhood, so it should have urban transit. And Seattle is paying for some of its own transit through the Seattle Transit Measure.

    “It gets worse for them every day and it’s very tempting for them to buy a car. That’s what the new leadership in Metro is doing everyday, ever since they decided to completely flip the script on commuters shortly after the pandemic.”

    The 2010s Metro planners apparently got largely replaced by a new set of planners in the 2020s, and they are less willing to make bold restructure steps. They’re still doing some, as in the Federal Way restructure starting this week and the G restructure in 2024, but it’s not as transformational as the ones in 2012-2016; it’s not creating as many frequent corridors.

    “Low ridership that never recovered justifying even more service cuts, resulting in even less ridership.”

    That’s not what it is. The reason overall service has been reduced is a nationwide bus driver shortage that hit Metro in 2022. Metro doesn’t have enough operators for the full service it intended to run. By 2027 it’s expecting to fill its driver roster and get back to its prepandemic service level.

    South King County and south Seattle have been getting disproportionate service increases since 2020 for equity reasons. You may not see it on your routes, but it’s happening on other routes.

    The shift of hours from peak times and peak expresses to all-day routes is because people’s travel patterns have changed. In downtown Seattle at 5pm there used to be a hundred people at a bus stop waiting for their commute bus. It’s now more like twenty people. What are they doing now? They’re taking more trips midday, weekends, and evenings. Saturdays have surpassed weekdays in some cases. Bus service is following suit. The bus redistribution is following changes in travel patterns, not preceding it or contradicting it.

    If you say some suburban area or trip pair has “lost all bus service” or Metro or ST “flipped the script”, we really need to look at specific routes to determine whether they did something unreasonable. If there is an adverse change, it’s not everywhere in the suburbs uniformly, it’s certain routes and places.

    1. “By 2027 it’s expecting to fill its driver roster and get back to its pre-pandemic service level.”

       It’s not bringing back many of the routes though. They replaced it with other routes in other cities

       “That’s impossible. Any space freed up by people switching to transit will be taken up by other people making more discretionary trips”

       Not really. Road traffic over the weekends are significantly less than over peak hours in weekdays. Buses are different for the reason I explained. Buses have become unbearable for commuters to use, so commuters stopped taking the bus. So the remaining ridership are regular/weekend travelers. The roads show the complete opposite situation

       “And Seattle is paying for some of its own transit through the Seattle Transit Measure.”

       And that’s where their money should go. But Sound Transit is paid by the region, not exclusively by Seattle. Of course I’m not blaming Sound Transit for favoring Seattle (it’s not), but it has failed to provide adequate service to Renton, Kent, and Auburn despite it paying. And King County Metro has still eliminated peak hour routes in suburbs which need to return as all day, express connections to Link/Sounder. Those connections have not returned.

       East Kent Meridian still has not restored any service in a while (it used to have it). Zero bus at all serving the area outside of the 160 further west. Up north you have Fairwood with acceptable service, and further south you get the 168 in Covington. But there is nothing in between.

       I’m more so annoyed that Issaquah can get 15+ min service to Mercer Island and Bellevue even on the weekends, while there is no comparable route to SE King County. Issaquah is not a huge city by any means, amd is even less dense than parts of Renton, Auburn, and Kent. Its also not “closer” – its further than Renton even and has even less connection/transfer opportunities. It’s clearly a mistreatment and that is evidence. Even Woodinville, Redmond, and Kirkland gets better service too. I can understand Redmond but the others are clear biases. Renton isn’t some random small city like Bothell either. It has over 100k people, and Kent has nearly 150k people.

       1. Anyways once Stride comes in I do think Metro is primed to do great things down here for transit. And I hope they do.

       2. Which routes did one city “lose” to other cities? In the Federal Way restructure, the hours are being recycled to the same communities, and in large part to the same streets and centers. The route just goes to a different terminal, or is split, or is more frequent.

          “Road traffic over the weekends are significantly less than over peak hours in weekdays.”

          That’s irrelevant to bus ridership. Car congestion decreased in 2020 and came back in 2022. That doesn’t explain a redistribution of transit ridership patterns since 2022.

          “Buses have become unbearable for commuters to use, so commuters stopped taking the bus”

          Commuting experience isn’t much different than in the 2010s. Metro was unreliable in the early 2010s because increasing congestion slowed down buses and Metro didn’t have money to add buses to compensate or have standby buses to swoop in when a bus got stuck in gridlock or broke down. In the mid and late 2010s it did have such money, so it did invest it in those, and reliability went up. Since 2022 it hasn’t had that much spare cash and the driver shortage limits its options, so unreliability came back. Unreliability is not just on freeway expresses: it’s on Seattle arterial routes too. The ones I’ve seen this the most on are the Pike-Pine routes, 132/132, and the 62. Metro’s data agrees these are among the most unreliable route.

          South King County is getting the ST investment its local tax dollars can achieve. South King is the poorest subarea, so it has the smallest ST budget per capita. That’s the subarea equity policy the suburban subareas insisted on because they didn’t want their money going to Seattle lines.

          “I’m more so annoyed that Issaquah can get 15+ min service to Mercer Island and Bellevue even on the weekends,”

          That’s an example of a targeted Metro improvement project, of which there are several. People were clamoring for years about better Issaquah-Seattle service, and all-day service on N 40th Street, and NE 75th Street, and filling the gaps on NE 65th Street. So Metro responded by creating routes in those corridors and giving most of them higher frequency than surrounding routes. Some previous attempts at creating corridors succeeded beyond expectations, and some of these did (31/32, 62, earlier 8 and 48). Some are still lagging (79, some Eastside coverage routes). Issaquah hasn’t started yet so we don’t know. 15-minute 556 and 15-minute 215/218/269 seems maybe excessive for Issaquah, but we’ll see. If it does succeed in Issaquah it will be a success, and Metro can do similar successes in Renton and Kent. RapidRide I is one similar project it’s building in Renton/Kent/Auburn now.

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