Movies on Crosslake Link’s opening last Saturday.
Miles in Transit.
Classy Whale.
Trains are Awesome.
Unedited video of the speeches (starting at the five minute mark) as well as some of the initial riders (much later in the video). The rest of the video consists of “dead air” and some aerial video of trains and boats.
This is an open thread.
Where’s my video?
I told you, there’s so much reflection you can hardly see anything outside the train, and it has long footage of third-party people who may not want to be published.
Ok
I’m thinking about linking to your videos page. Which route videos do you consider most important/interesting, and why? You can reply here or email it to the contact address. When I see mentions of arbitrary CT routes, I’m not sure why, or what’s so special along the route.
Scooby, in my opinion, you providing a link in the comments to one of your videos, which you have done, is enough. Don’t worry about an STB writer also making it a post video. You putting it out there is enough.
I’ve been boarding the 2 Line at Judkins for the last few days and noticed that the train tends to hold at the station for an extra 1-2 minutes before departing westbound. Must be associated with confirming no conflicts prior to merging with the 1 Line at CID.
Frustratingly slow 😞
I’ve had the same experience. We held at Judkins Park for at least 5 minutes this morning after creeping on the approach to the station. Interlining the timing of the 1 and 2 lines may be proving to be tricky.
Note the sign at the west end of the platform telling operators to call control. I presume operators need clearance to continue. You can listen to calls here: https://openmhz.com/system/psern025?filter-type=group&filter-code=68fae25208f6c9683b353f59
We seriously need to automate these lines, and replace the old train sets so we can increase the speed limits.
Link is frustratingly slow and delayed. The trips should be more efficient and timely.
Doesn’t MUNI automate within the tunnel portion only or something like that? Is that possible for Link someday, like automate IDS to Lynnwood segment?
Cole, of course it is. Either you have the operators board and alight at Pioneer Square or Symphony and let the train run itself north of there or have the driver read a book. A train equipped for automation can operate under manual control.
Automation is not the future. It’s already been solved long ago. We’re still stuck far in the past.
The initial schedules allocated five minutes to go between Judkins Park and CID. That always seemed too much of a time gap to me. A way to keep that schedule is to hold the train.
I suspect that the dispatchers are also prioritizing a consistent alternating between 1 and 2 Line trains (1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2…). Once the train line order is out of sequence there appears to be no good place to rapidly restore it.
If this is a recurring problem, the culprit may be that Eastside 2 Line travel times are operating quicker than ST estimated. So they’re held at Judkins Park to get the trains back on sequence/ schedule. They may eventually start to delay the Downtown Redmond departures by a minute or two to compensate (or the dwell time inside each upstream station can be lengthened by several seconds).
Because the 2 Line trains only have 2 or 3 cars rather than 4, it seems to work best if the 2 Line is a “chaser train” so that they don’t get too crowded at peak times when headed to Lynnwood.
The third track proposed at Mariner would someday help. But that’s at least a decade away.
My experience is that the entire route from (at least) Overlake to Downtown Bellevue is running more slowly than it used to run. The dwell times are already longer than before.
I hope they can fix this soon.
I noticed the same thing on Tuesday. I took the train from Judkins Park to Redmond, and returned to ID. On the return journey I had my phone stopwatch out to record the time intervals between stations. While the typical dwell time at the other stations was 20-25 seconds, we spent 1:26 at Judkins Park with the door open, then another 1:05 after the doors closed, for a total dwell time of 2:31. Then, enroute to ID while on the bridge over I-5, we came to a stop for nearly another whole minute. If this is typical, it severely degrades the rider experience.
I noticed the same thing Tuesday afternoon but on the 1 line. I got on at Sodo, and the train spent 4 minutes at Stadium with the doors open. I checked my Transit app during this time and saw that a 2 line train was due to arrive at CID in 1 minute, so presumably they held the 1 line at Stadium until the 2 line had arrived and cleared the station at CID.
I’ve noticed the long dwell at Judkins Park too. I have time to exit the middle of a 3 car train and walk to the west end of the platform and have to wait for the train that hasn’t even started to roll yet. And that was in conjunction with stopping on the bridges’ western fixed section.
Part of the issue is East Main and Wilburton have only ever one or two people getting on/off… often zero. So the train makes time here only to have to wait when it gets to Judkins Park. I also noticed an exceptionally long dwell time at Spring District on an evening EB train. At least that delay allowed a half dozen more people to board the train. If they can get the timing down longer dwells at major ridership stations would be more useful than sitting at Judkins Park or worse, parked on the bridge.
Link does about 64mph on the bridge so if a 550 passed it they were speeding. In the morning before say 7AM traffic is doing +70mph. In the afternoons it’s more like the posted 60mph. Lots of times in the PM it’s down to 30mph across MI. Nobody pays any attention to the variable speed limit signs which means you often go from 60 to zero rather unexpectedly.
I’m still wondering what the wind/wave criteria are for slowing the trains and at some point closing the bridge. Overall I’m more than happy with Link performance. Unlike being stuck in traffic (or just plain driving at the speed limit) I can do useful things while riding the train. I saw one person with the help of her daughter using the internet learning to knit. STB scarfs anyone? Ya’ll need to slow down and take time to smell the roses.
Link does 55mph on the bridge.
You can see the speed chart for the entire system here:
Eastlink:
https://www.kcmetroraildivision.com/_files/ugd/8b4077_aa4007fd92d640b8bcd35e53326ec640.pdf
Central Link + Lynnwood:
https://www.kcmetroraildivision.com/_files/ugd/29bd8b_6adb039a853e40a0847ba7ce6b6c1893.pdf
Federal Way:
https://www.kcmetroraildivision.com/_files/ugd/29bd8b_5da896850bd84a23a11c740da6218c00.pdf
Yeah, and traffic does 60mph because that’s the posted speed limit.
Bernie
I was clarifying your statement where you said link does 64 on the bridge. Maybe that was a typo in your original statement.
Myself and at least one other commenter have clocked the actual speed of link trains on the bridge. They are pushing the design speed by just under 10mph on the floating section. This was during simulated service as I haven’t been driving since the Line opened for revenue service. I’ll see if I can find an app to give me GPS speed on my way home. It would be interesting to see what the actual speeds are on other sections and also know when it’s running in crawl mode. It seemed like it was crawling this morning through the Mount Baker tunnel but hard to get a frame of reference underground.
Pantograph tells you bus or train speed. Go to the map. Click on map settings, which is the sprocket-looking icon in the upper right corner. Select speed. Close, then go back to the map. Click on an icon that represents a Link train. I just saw one train on the bridge that Pantograph said was going 64 mph.
About Mount Baker tunnel speeds, I read that there are OSC arching issues, so there are now “Coast Zones” in the tunnel, and this means trains will operate at lower than expected speeds going through the tunnel, and it’s most likely permanent.
Actually, I don’t think the Pantograph’s mph numbers are reliable. It just showed one train on the west end of the bridge going 77 mph. That’s impossible.
The ATP system does not physically allow the trains to go above 55mph for more than two seconds. If an operator fails to get to the design speed, it will automatically trip the magnetic track brake and stop the train. It is definitely not going 65mph.
Ugh, that sucks. It seems to be mostly WB that I’ve noticed the crawl/coast. I thought it was just so they wouldn’t end up waiting an extra long time at the platform. Hopefully they can get this fixed. Why only this tunnel. I know it was designed for cars not trains but that just means there’s lots of extra space.
I didn’t get the GPS speed app running until after I’d crossed the bridge. GPS signal in the train is weak at best. A window seat is a must. Doesn’t seem to matter if you are inside (toward the other set of tracks) or outside. I guess it’s the train car body blocking the signal and not interference from the high voltage wires.
For the portion in the trench north of S. Bellevue P&R the app said 45mph +/- 2 mph which is the design speed. So I think the app is pretty accurate even with a weak signal (~6 of 50 satellites). I’ll test it in the car this weekend. I’m using a tablet so a phone with cell tower triangulation may be better. I of course have zero signal in the tunnels and pretty much nothing while in the trench on MI. May also break out the old Garmin eTrex.
It’s interesting that WB there is a short section right after East Main with a design speed of 55mph. It’s so short I can’t believe it makes any difference.
Design speed of the track doesn’t necessarily mean that the train will get up to that speed unfortunately. The section there is likely designed for 55mph to allow for maximum acceleration before it has to slow down again to get to the at grade spring blvd section. I have had a redmond bound train get up to 55mph, but the seattle/lynnwood bound trains rarely get up to 55 on that section for whatever reason. My guess is they are slowed by the ATP to allow for time for the light on NE 20th st to change to allow the train through. FWIW, I have never, ever stopped on that section and I think the train has absolute priority for those signals.
From what I’ve seen signal priority is 100% for Link. The last time my cousin from England was here the starter line had just opened. He mentioned that in England the cars have to stop for the train rather than the other way around. That was sort of embarrassing. USA USA Usa us… never mind. I haven’t timed it but it also seems they have tighten up the period from when the train is approaching and the crossing gates go down. Previously it was like the train was nowhere in sight when the gates came down and then they stayed down long after the train had passed. Seems to be now when the gates drop the train is coming into sight (Bel-Red station) and shortly after it passes the gates go back up. Better, not worse or the same so that’s encouraging.
RE: 55mph segment WB at East Main. I may have had directions mixed up before but the 55mph design speed is from East Main south (WB) for a short stretch. That just seems wrong (typo in the design doc?). Why “floor it” only to have to brake for the next section. It does seem East Link has a fair number of “go fast to wait” sections. ST needs to revisit the tortoise and the hare.
“Pantograph tells you bus or train speed.”
Who owns Pantograph?
Pantograph data comes from Sound Transit as part of their Open Transit Data API initiative.
So if the data is wrong, it’s incorrect from Sound Transit.
Some things I’d hope to see… Metro also add speed data to their buses, higher frequency updates, as well as adding passenger count (percentage capacity) to live data. Other regional systems provide this data.
And Metro should also enable real time tracking of a bus before it starts it’s route. That enables transparency about whether a bus is actually running on time or not …. Which Metro’s current prediction algorithms don’t account for
It just says “on time” (if the block is currently active) until the bus is late. And the bus could be 30 mins away at the bus base for that matter. If the bus is scheduled, that’s different… But significantly late buses can still indicate on time if the bus is on the road, but not at the terminal yet.
Is Pantograph run by Sound Transit or a local organization? Or is it a national organization?
I think it’s open source by local contributors. The government doesn’t have stake in it.
However the data they use is entirely provided by the agencies that they support.
Pantograph is just a visual interface that displays the data in a nice format. The data entirely is imported from Sound Transit.
It’s similar to Google Maps and Onebusaway. Independent apps that visualize the data supplied by the transit agencies.
All operators have to call at Judkins Park westbound to get permission from LCC to proceed into the core section.
Trains that arrive early to Judkins Park westbound have to wait until the exact departure schedule.
Ahhh…
That explains the conservative five minutes in the schedule to go between the stations.
But it’s rather stunning given where technology (especially geolocation systems) is that they have this step in operations.
Nonsense. They have to be in the early 1900s if they’re operating with this level of incompetency.
@South King Resident
[ed: removed insult]
The trains have to run on time.
Then… Fix the schedule? How hard is it to make schedules? There are computer programs that can do it for you.
Are they still hand writing schedules like the 1900s? That was my complaint.
And why do the trains need to “wait” for several minutes for a human to approve it to move from a station?
It’s a joke of a system.
The trains have to run on time.
Do they? I’ve given up on the schedule and I think most people have. Most people just show up, look and see when the train is supposed to get here and then either sprint towards the platform or start killing time.
Which is OK. The main thing you want to do is time it properly with the other train. If the trains are running every five minutes from downtown to Northgate, it doesn’t matter if they pass by the Roosevelt Station at 11:53 or 11:57. What you don’t want is a train going by and then the next train eight minutes later. This was happening during testing. I got really excited about five minute headways through the core, only to realize it was theoretical.
My guess is, this is exactly what is happening. They aren’t trying to adhere to a published schedule. They are just trying to equally space the trains in the tunnel.
The other possibility is that they added a huge amount of extra “float” for crossing the bridge. Maybe the time it takes to cross varies quite a bit.
“They are just trying to equally space the trains in the tunnel.”
That seems like an unreasonable demand. The tunnel frequency is already 4-5 minutes. We can spare unequal spacing. It’s not worth extending the trip for riders already on the train.
Those 15 mins to ID seriously need to be cut down to 10 mins. It’s very possible. Simply only use the newest train sets that can go 65 mph, and fix the Judkin Parks “waiting” mess.
Didn’t they already do some work to modernize the signals and systems in the tunnel? Or was that for later?
Whatever happened to that “modernization”?
The trains also seem to move unusually slow in the tunnels on I-90 as well, well before reaching a station. Not sure if there is a reason for that. Tunnels should be designed to be even faster… Like the Capitol Hill to UW segment.
If early Line 2 trains are being held back midway to return to schedule, why is the variation in central and north Seattle as variable as always? It’s supposed to be 5 minutes between trains off-peak, 4 minutes peak hours. Instead half the time it’s 2 minutes, 5 minutes, or 8, 10, or 12 minutes. And at times two 2 Line trains in a row with only a few minutes between them.
SKR, I very much doubt that “a human approves” entry into the section between Judkins Park and the junction south of CID. It’s the Traffic Control System that is making the call.
There is almost certainly a human “dispatcher” overlooking system performance, but ST is not going to have an Air Traffiv Controller incident.
It would be better for trains to be fully automated from SoBel to Lynnwood and from just north of Stadium to Lynnwood. That way the trains could leave the conversion station with only a little delay and just feather along to approach the merge junction at as even an interval as the accumulated delay in real time from points south and east makes possible.
Yeah, it’s frustrating for riders to go slower than they expect, but it’s not as bad as going fast and then stopping in an unfamiliar place.
Metro treats late buses as more tolerable than early buses. Passengers get annoyed at late buses, but they get really teed off if the arrive at a bus stop in time but the bus has just left. Drivers have timepoint requirements for major stops, so if they’re early they’ll pause before the next one to catch up. ST may be doing this on the 2 Line too, and padding the schedule 5 minutes to give a buffer for unexpected delays. Especially since this segment is only a week old and the first time ST has had two operating lines with passengers merging onto one track, so ST is still evaluating what its real-world performance is.
Has anyone else noticed 50th anniversary stickers on CT buses? Here’s a video I took of them:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XdxJeoS9DRk
East Link would be sporting 50th anniversary stickers too if it had opened on time :=>
King County Metro is bringing the 4700 series back into service. They were the New Flyer electric buses that were recalled.
How do I know? I saw 3 of them following each other on the highway with “Testing Coach” on the front display.
Perhaps the recall expired. The 4800 coaches will be useful too as Metro continues to experience a shortage in articulated bus availability for many suburban routes.
I think Judkins might be a new Operator relief point. I know before the Crosslake Connection, East Link Operators were relieved at Spring District Station, with Operators walking between OMF East and Spring District. I think it’s still is a relief point, but I think they may have added Judkins Park as a place to relieve Operators.
But, as was mentioned here, I also think westbound 2 Line trains are sometimes holding for northbound 1 Line trains.
I’ve noticed that since the start of 2 Line cross Lake service (actually for about a week before) they are no longer parking a train on the center track west of Judkins Park. I thought maybe that train was staged to go into service when another was finishing a shift or the operator got a break. The long dwell I experienced at Spring District (PM EB) was most likely an operator swap or nature break.
I know that Spring District Station is a Link Operator relief point because I often drive on 120th, and frequently see Link Operators walking between the station and OMF East.
I think Judkins is also now an Operator relief point, because after the comment section complained about occasional long dwell times at Judkins, I checked the Link radio scanner yesterday morning, and heard a call where an Operator told the Control Center they were making an Operator switch at westbound Judkins. The Control Center acknowledged, and said to leave asap. That’s not to say that all long Judkins dwell times are related to changing Operators. I hope someone here can confirm that Judkins is a relief point.
Regarding westbound 2 Line trains waiting for northbound 1 Line trains, I also have seen a westbound 2 Line train stopped above I-5, apparently waiting for a behind schedule northbound 1 Line train.
Dow says Link had 205k boardings on Cross lake connection opening day. https://bsky.app/profile/typewriteralley.bsky.social/post/3mijqkdzhp22m
This is 20k less than the record setting Seahawks parade day (225k).
https://www.theurbanist.org/seattle-superbowl-victory-parade-spurs-ridership-records-for-transit-and-scootershare
There will be some days with both a World Cup match and a Mariners game…
As of today, April 2, 2026, ST has not made any Link ridership data available for 2026. January data was available for a few weeks back in February but it had obvious flaws and then it disappeared.
https://www.soundtransit.org/ride-with-us/system-performance-tracker/ridership
So there remains no public ridership data published on the victory parade day nor Seahawks playoff days, and only a few days in December for Federal Way Link.
Throughout 2025, the information was provided within two weeks of the close of the month. So they are now about 6-7 weeks overdue.
I will take a focus on providing good safe service over a focus on providing data to the critics of publicly-funded transit any day of the week. Even Thursdays.
I appreciate when the data comes within a month, but don’t treat it as an entitlement.
“January ridership is not yet available for Link and as a result January data is not shown on this chart. We are addressing
a known issue. Starting a few weeks before the opening of our Federal Way extension, we began to notice oddities with
the methodology we use to collect and process our data. These issues resulted in anomalous and unlikely ridership
counts at the daily level that impacted our monthly ridership numbers. We are continuing to work on diagnosing and
fixing the problems associated with these issues and also to update the methodology that will allow us to calculate
ridership once we connect Link across the lake”
https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/ActiveDocuments/Report%20-%20REO%20Metrics%20Monthly%20Performance%20Report%20-%2004-02-26.pdf
Wow, Ian! You have access to a well-written SharePoint ridership report that is otherwise not easily available to the public.
I didn’t know ST had well-written and detailed yet secret ridership reports!
Al, it’s not secret, just not super obvious to find on ST’s Board of Directors Document Search.
https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/documents-reports/board-directors/search?order=published_date&page=1&facet_1135%5B%5D=1317
There’s a similar report/presentation for each monthly meeting of the Rider Experience and Operations committee.
Why not just use the number of “paid” fares instead of guesstimating with cameras and counting algorithms.
because if they only counted paid fares, they’d have no way of knowing how many people were riding without paying fares.
It is also useful to find out where people are alighting. Since we don’t have “tap-off” anymore, this is the only way to do that.
And there were all those people who couldn’t get on a train, including me.
At least one of the Comments on yesterday’s post is verifiably true.
Which post, and which comment?
An STB mystery. Which of these statements is true? Maybe we should have more of these puzzles. Sam, I’m sure you can write detective puzzles as well as you can write brilliant investigative exposes, so go to it.
Just came back from office second time this week. So far it is pretty clear to me there are more people taking 2 Line across lake than I’ve seen on 550 before last week.
The 550 still looked full. I was taking the 2 Line and saw the 550 buses at S Bellevue. Seems like some people are still not convinced.
Unfortunately Link had to be this slow. It’s a joke honestly. No reason to run so slow…. It’s a train with few stops across the bridge.
It will take several weeks for patterns to sort out. People who have done the same path don’t automatically change unless a transit operator literally forces them to.
It should be noted that some 520 bus journeys probably moved to Link via I-90. There may also be some South King — Eastside trips now being made on Link.
10 minute frequency is enticing. So is getting a seat on a smooth train so you can play either your phone.
Finally, gas prices have risen so fast these past few weeks, that I suspect some people are switching to transit.
It takes several months for people to realize one by one that a new route is available.
I don’t think speed is the issue here. Light rail might be slower than 545, it is not slower than 550 most part of the day.
NE 4th St & 105th Ave NE, NE 4th St & 108th Ave NE (WB), and Bellevue Way NE & NE 4th St are all popular 550 stops in Downtown Bellevue, more popular than Bellevue TC sometimes, but they are quite far from any light rail stops.
If I worked at Amazon or went to Bellevue Square, I would keep taking 550 until it is deleted.
It would be faster than the 550 if it doesn’t park at Judkins Park for several minutes and crawl into each station. The 56 mph cap is just the start of the speed issue.
I’ve been seeing “Bel Hop” around NE DT for the last year or so. Could this service pick up the 550 stops not near Link? Obviously something needs to be done to keep serving Bellevue Way. I had to drive on that today. Uff Da, how things have changed. Previously the only reason I would have gone to that far flung region of Bellevue was Sturtevant’s but they don’t really exist anymore (old location is a Panara Bread) and the discount store is walking distance from my house on Northup.
I am not sure if your conclusion was based on seeing Sound Transit express flying by you at 65 mph or you actually timed the trips between bus and light rail. I did that at my commute and it occurred to me that light rail is either faster (especially Seattle-bound) or about the same (morning Bellevue-bound).
I am talking about trips between Bellevue (Downtown) and Seattle (Westlake). If you are talking about travel time between South Bellevue and Mercer Island, yes 550 might be faster all the time, but how many people does that?
Bernie,
TBH I don’t know how BellHop works, but I suppose there is always some waiting time. In that case, cutting through City Center Plaza is probably faster than counting on BellHop unless someone carries tons of stuff and cannot walk much.
I would estimate that Link takes about as long as the 550 from CID to S Bellevue. Outside of that Link is much faster, especially down Bellevue Way in the PM peak.
The 556 will eventually replace the 550 on Bellevue Way. I believe Bellhop is funded by Bellevue directly, not sure how. Some kind of circulator service would probably draw more ridership (a-la free waterfront shuttle), but I think it’s meant to be a tourism promotion kind of thing.
I’ll do my first crosslake trip tomorrow and check the travel time.
Even if Link Westlake-South Bellevue takes as long as the 550 or longer, there are other factors too:
1. Link’s 8-10 minute frequency vs the 550’s 15-30 minute frequency. People might rather take a train now than sit waiting 20 minutes for a bus.
2. Link’s immunity from traffic congestion.
3. South Bellevue-Bellevue Downtown must be faster.
4. Link’s advantage for trips beyond the 550’s termini to Capitol Hill, mid Bellevue (between the TC and Overlake Village), UW, north Seattle, and Redmond.
5. The future 556 will backfill the south Bellevue Way stops when the 550 is retired this fall.
Not too sure. A 270 + Link would be better to reach the UW.
From S Bellevue, Link is advantageous for the UW. But 27 minutes is still a longer than necessary trip.
The only winner is Capitol Hill..every other station still benefits but it’s not much of an improvement from what we have before.
We can accept mediocrity or we should push for an even more efficient travel time.
The 255 is pretty frequent and busy. Yes there could still be more service, but it’s pretty close to an open BRT.
If they ramp up 542 frequencies, it’s getting there.
And I suppose the 270 would soon start serving the stations there.
Still Yarrow Point and S Kirkland P&R and such have quite limited opportunity. They need more routes connecting there.
Even before 2020, Renton used to have the 167 connect there. It was quite useful for us who wanted to transfer onto any route at those stations. But with the 2 Line though… It’s not so bad for Redmond. And once Stride opens, the UW won’t be so bad either with a 270 transfer.
The 255 is pretty frequent and busy. Yes there could still be more service, but it’s pretty close to an open BRT.
Yes, agreed. You could say the same thing about the 271 and some of the other buses. The irony is that the 271 will finally switch over to using the freeway stations *after* we stop running so many buses to downtown (because of East Link).
Imagine a system like this before Link: The 255 runs downtown. The 271 runs to the UW but via the proposed new 270 pathway. Thus both stop at the freeway stations. Now riders can transfer from one bus to another at a freeway station. With good headways (or more buses doing similar things) the transfer is quick and easy. You don’t need to run buses going to both downtown and the UW from each neighborhood. You don’t even need the Montlake freeway stop. Riders would just transfer at the I-90 freeway station.
It is worth noting that you can do something similar by running a bus from the UW to say, Totem Lake Transit Center. Better yet, go to the nearby college (LWIT). Now riders from UW Bothell can take Stride to Totem Lake and transfer to a bus that is going to the main UW campus or the technology college. Riders from LWIT can quickly get to Downtown Bellevue. All it would take is running a bus every fifteen minutes or so.
I feel the 256 should have gone to UW all day instead of Downtown peak. And we should bring back the 544 for Redmond-SLU trips.
The Woodinville to Bellevue peak express that Metro is proposing seems not as useful, when a Stride S2 transfer at Totem Lake won’t be that hard. Though again I wouldn’t mind since it’s just extra open BRT-like service on I-405. But a Woodinville to UW will be great. UW Bothell students can connect to it as well.
And bringing back the 167 would be nice too. Currently Renton to UW is a bit challenging. The 101 + Link is okay, but consider someone already transferring from another route. They’d just want to get it over with using a fast direct trip. And with the 405 express lanes and no stops/transfers.
The 167 would also skip Bellevue and serve the 520 freeway stations. This adds a new service from the south to Kirkland, UW Seattle, Lynnwood, UW Bothell, etc. it also just adds extra capacity to 405/520 transit that we need. If ridership isn’t too strong, they can keep it peak only like before.
Lots of video circulating online mocking the 2 Line for being overtaken by the 550/554 bus. ST really needs to do something about it.
Even 10 mph changes the perception of the train greatly, even if only a few minutes are saved in travel time.
I leave home and wait for the same bus every time I go to work. It has been twice so far. Both times, 550 beat light rail on I-90 big time even after Mercer Island, but light rail caught up after South Bellevue. Light rail is so much faster than 550 in Bellevue local streets. And that’s morning eastbound direction. In the afternoon on westbound direction, light rail is noticeably faster than any cars on I-90.
It would be nice if Sound Transit could implement a more aggressive cross-lake schedule, but I think the biggest problem is the location of Bellevue Downtown station. It is just 3-5 minutes more walk than taking 550 for a lot of people.
Both times, 550 beat light rail on I-90 big time even after Mercer Island, but light rail caught up after South Bellevue. Light rail is so much faster than 550 in Bellevue local streets.
That is not surprising at all. The old 550 used to run in the tunnel. I’m sure it was faster from Mercer Island to anywhere downtown than Link is now. If the 550 ran express from Bellevue Transit Center (and used the 405/I-90 HOV ramps) it would also beat Link. The difference is capacity as well as the fact that you can also serve stops like South Bellevue in the process. South Bellevue isn’t much of a station (and wouldn’t warrant the extra cost) but the other stations in Bellevue and Redmond are better and they all add up. Likewise trips to Capitol Hill from the East Side are now dramatically faster.
By the way, the same sort of thing happened at Northgate, with the 41. The 41 was faster if you were going from Northgate Transit Center to downtown (peak direction, when the express lanes were in your favor). It was considerably faster if you were going from a different bus stop in Northgate (you could avoid the transfer). But if you were going to Roosevelt, U-District, UW or Capitol Hill the train was dramatically faster than any bus.
In general a subway that replaces travel on surface streets is a great value. A subway that mimics a freeway is not. Fortunately, while East Link has enough of the former to make up for the latter.
“A subway that mimics a freeway is not.”
Traditionally, yes. But Link could have been an excellent opportunity to prove otherwise. A mix of commuter rail and subway hasn’t been seen in many other systems …
Some segments have to be forcefully low density. You can’t add more stations to the lake… And it doesn’t make sense to add more stations in some other areas of the system as well.
The engineers should have at least tried to make Link compete with the freeway for those segments.
The train will definitely win out in rush hour, but the optics would be really ever the more better if it can operate on par with (or even slight faster than) free flowing traffic as well.
UW Link is probably the only successful attempt I’ve seen from ST at competing with the freeway.
From Seattle to UW, the Link is absolutely the fastest and really a wonderful option. It feels like you get teleported between the two areas. I-5 traffic and city streets would never compare.
I just wish that same feeling was implemented for the Crosslake Connection and some other areas of the system where riders are trying to make the “long” trip (e.g. airport)
The 520 bridge also essentially acts as an Open BRT. I am jealous at how lucky the UW and areas along 520 are. They have stellar transit.
The same should be prioritized for the rest of the region. Link is not meeting the mark…. It’s great within Seattle downtown, but it’s not delivering as well as it could outside. That’s my complaint.
“If the 550 ran express from Bellevue Transit Center (and used the 405/I-90 HOV ramps) it would also beat Link.”
I doubt 550 will be reliably faster than light rail if it skip Bellevue Way and take 405. The HOV ramp only send HOV to the outer side of I-90 while the actual bottleneck is I-405 northbound merge. The Seattle-bound might be faster though.
“A subway that mimics a freeway is not.”
I’d say it is almost as good as if its top speed is 65 mph at cross-lake section. Enter/exit I-90 by car is not super smooth these days.
Because of the tunnels and track elevations and lines of sight, the distance that 2 Line speeds are visually comparable to I-90 car driver speeds pale when compared to Lynnwood or Federal Way Link extension distances .
The only places that a driver can compare speeds is pretty much just a very short segment of about 1/2 a mile west of Rainier Ave, the floating bridge with short approaches (about 2 miles) and between 80th Ave SE and the track curve before Bellevue Way SE (about 2 miles). It’s really hard if not impossible to see a train stopped at either median station when traveling at freeway speeds. And even then, drivers are negotiating traffic and lane switching as well as looking at some spectacular views from the road.
Frankly, a I-90 driver almost has to be deliberate about making a visual comparison to notice.
“The 520 bridge also essentially acts as an Open BRT.”
A good BRT is frequent full time and busy full time. Both 520 ridership and 520 transit service is heavily skewed peak hours. To that we can add the 10-minute midday frequency on the 545 and the 542 supplement. All that is gone weekends and evenings. And Kirkland has no 10-minute service even weekdays, nor does the 271 between UW and Bellevue. So much for BRT.
A mix of commuter rail and subway hasn’t been seen in many other systems …
It is pretty common in America. Bart, Dart, Denver RTD and now Link. It isn’t a very successful pattern. Freeway stations themselves tend to do poorly (https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/economics-of-urban-light-rail-CH.pdf). But it is also quite common for agencies to shortchange the urban core as they trying to make this unsuccessful hybrid. That is what happened in all these cases. Maybe it would have happened anyway, but if you are focused on running a train from Dallas to Fort Worth — and you don’t want to spend a fortune — you are bound to skip a few worthy stations along the way. The result is not an S-Bahn system (in design or cost). More of like a flying car. Not very good at either and quite expensive.
Part of the problem is that in most cities, very few trips are long distance, other than to the central city. For those trips it makes sense to run express buses and commuter rail. Both are typically fairly cheap. When it comes to running a metro, you should focus on the urban core.
The only city where it might make sense to build the sort of thing you envision is Los Angeles. L. A. is weird. Not that it sprawls (lots of cities do that) but that it sprawls with fairly high density in all directions. It is also not very strongly centered. New York City might sprawl but Manhattan is enormous compared to every other place in the region. Downtown L. A. just isn’t like that — it is just one big place amongst many. Seattle is more like a small New York than a small Los Angeles. Seattle has a strong central core — the city proper and a handful of inner suburban neighborhoods like Downtown Bellevue. But places like Lynnwood and Federal Way are just minor suburbs with very little density. They aren’t like Long Beach, Anaheim, Irvine any of the dozens of fairly dense, contiguous and sprawling cities that make up one of the largest megacities in the world.
A good BRT is frequent full time and busy full time.
It is more like a busway, rather than BRT. The biggest weakness of the 520 shared corridor is the stations themselves, not the frequency. At Evergreen Point you have the 255, 270, 542 and 545. I think that is 14 buses an hour (midday) which seems like is enough that I would call it a spine. So if you are trying to get from one freeway station to the other, you have very little wait. The problem is, very few people are trying to do that. So from a topological standpoint it seems like Open BRT — just with weak stations in the closed part.
SKR, oh, I know a very famous place that tried to mix “commuter rail” and “subway” and to this day they have been plagued with under-patronage outside of the very urban core from Berkeley Central to Daly City.
I don’t think I need to name the example.
Too bad, so sad, you believe in the myth that ‘Burbanistas who are paying the upside of their three-year old Beemers, Escalades and Oh So Virtuous Teslas are going to leave them in the garage depreciating their $100 K selves for anything other than the Manosphere Games by the Big Ship Cranes.
Hint: occasional use of a multi-billion dollar transit facility does not pencil out.
So far as the less fortunate in the SoKing Sub-Area, 97 percent of their destinations are not in the Rainier Valley, downtown Seattle or the U-District. Again, the pencil is sharpened but does not make a mark.
You have gotten what your regional representatives asked for, and even insisted on running the trains uselessly alongside the freeway south of the Airport.
If you wanted a full-onBART del Norté you should have asked.
“upside of $10K on their Beemers…”
The Eastside isn’t all rich people with Beamers and Teslas and whatever that other car is (Escalades — haven’t heard of it). 20% of Bellevue is low income. So the issue of whether BMW and Tesla owners will use transit, who cares, that’s only a small minority of residents and visitors. There are tens of thousands of other people leading ordinary lives, and some of them are already riding buses, and some are maids at those Tesla McMansions. And somebody is on the 2 Line, whoever they are.
I don’t think I’ve ever met a BMW owner except in Germany. If I did it was years ago. I’ve met one Tesla owner, or at least until they got divorced and the wife got the car. And one Mercedes owner who was a friend of my dad’s.
We must have a similar commute. The train car I am on right now is pretty busy. I’d estimate 80-100 people on it right now, between Mercer and Judkins.
Yeah there wasn’t so much people on Monday, but I was quite surprised for today’s occupancy.
Agreed. I rode the 2 line four days this week. There were far more people boarding and alighting than I ever saw on the 550. For more anecdotal evidence, I now wait 2 light cycles to get out of South Bellevue P&R where I previously got out on the first light cycle when riding the 550.
That backs up my observation that the P&R is now being way more utilized than before the Lake crossing. I’ll be interested to see on Friday if the P&R at Bel-Red is continuing to ramp up usage. Besides the P&R there are three large new apartment complexes next to the station that I don’t think are anywhere close to being at full capacity yet. But I’m still seeing a fair number of people walking to the station. I expect it will be popular with bike riders too when the weather gets nice. It’s a direct shot from the Bike 520 path down 130th.
Can anyone report on P&R usage at Marymoor, Overlake & Red-Tech?
If the 550 exited at Rainer like the 554 does I’d have been riding it for the last five years. When they ripped out the flyer stop (8 years ago?) and then made things even worse after covid transit has been completely useless for me until the 2 Line opened. The bump in ridership proves what I’d been saying all along that they should have been providing shadow bus service along the line from day one. A decade of dumb. Funny though that with the reduce (eliminated) service I didn’t see a reduction in my astronomical car tabs.
@HZ, I’ve not done a station to station stopwatch because that’s largely irrelevant to a real commute. From a common point I’d guess the train is ~5 minutes slower in the AM but a good 10 minutes faster in the PM. Obviously that changes with time of day but the beauty of LINK is you don’t have to plan your day around traffic congestion.
I don’t know squat about Bel-Hop other than I’ve seen their stretch golf carts driving around. No clue who funds this.
The City of Bellevue created and funds BellHop. “Bellevue’s first 100% electric, on-demand, and free shuttle service. In partnership with Circuit, Amazon, and City of Bellevue. Getting around town is now easier and greener as a shared experience with other BellHop riders. Simply download the Circuit app, request a ride, and a sustainable shuttle will whisk you away to downtown attractions, Old Main restaurants, Spring District market pop-ups, and so much more!”
There’s a service area map in the middle of the page. It runs between Main Street and NE 12th Street, 100th to 120th Ave NE, plus areas west of Bellevue Square (to 97th), south between 112th and 116th (to East Main station and SE 8th Street), southeast to the Bellevue Botanical Garden, and northeast (to Spring Blvd & 124th).
In the early 1980s there was a different Bel-Hop (one ‘l’), a fixed-route circulator in downtown Bellevue. The fare was 25c (Metro was 40c then). It started around the time the Bellevue Transit Center opened at its original location on 106th. It lasted a couple years but failed due to low ridership. For us high schoolers it didn’t go further than we could walk, and we didn’t want to wait for it.
Bellhop would be nice to implement in every low density suburb.
It’s pretty much a waste in Bellevue downtown itself. We should have a fast bus grid instead.
I feel like Bellhop is kind like a franchise as Via Transportation (the same company that owns Remix) in microtransit industry.
I saw similar service branding/vehicle operating similar service in some suburban business district elsewhere.
With that I heartily agree. Exactly so.
Day 2 of 102 Afternoon shenanigans
Buses depart Seattle in this order:
– 8 mins late
– 38 mins late
– 6 mins late
– 29 mins late
And they keep using 35 and 40 foot coaches despite knowing that the buses can easily get full.
People on here blaming suburbs for poor ridership is funny… It’s Metros fault that they can’t be on time especially for routes with low frequency. People don’t like waiting in the rain for 20+ mins just to get packed onto a small bus and a hour long ride. The drive is way faster.
I’m sure there is some good reason for the 102 to have 35 footers. But saying “your route is relatively less important and relatively less likely to face acute crowding issues” is a difficult thing to say with tact.
And yeah, you identify the issue with the suburbs. If you live in a place that is extremely difficult to effectively serve with transit, people will drive. Most people have some degree of choice when it comes to where to live, and if you choose to live in a suburb that’s difficult to serve well with transit, you shouldn’t expect extremely high quality service. Obviously the bus should still come on time, and anecdotally I’ve seen tons of late buses lately, but those are fixable issues. The structural challenges in the suburbs are often impossible for Metro to address.
Fishing for ORCA info. I am waiting for my RRFP ORCA card to get here via USPS. When I signed up I “linked” my ORCA card to a VISA card. Do I still have to manually add money to the ORCA account or is it smart enough now to just debit the linked credit card? I guess it would be marginally easier if I kept a balance on the ORCA account so that I could just “tap” as I walk onto the platform instead of having to purchase a ticket. So far I’ve been buying a ticket each way instead of just getting a day pass; old, slow & stupid. Work will reimburse my transit fare but it’s so cheap it’s hardly worth filling out the form and getting the required signatures.
It costs the company ~$100+/mo per employee parking space (more really but a good portion of it is baked into the lease) and the supply is limited. Of an office of ~50 we have 6-8 new transit riders since the 2 Line finally opened (vs ~ 4 transit users previously). We are literally right next to the Judkins Park Station.
If you scan your Orca card into to the My Orca app, you can set up an “autoload” for $2 when the balance falls below $1.
It’s not just ST that is plagued by copper thieves:
Both the 1 and 2 Lines were standing room only today at noon and 6:30pm between Westlake and U-District or Roosevelt. So both the 1 and 2 Lines are almost as busy as the 1 Line alone was. And this evening I saw an unusually large number of people at the Roosevelt entrance, some twenty people getting off the escalator and ten going down the escalator or elevator. I’m not sure if the station is busier now with the 2 Line but it may be. I’m seeing lots of 2 Line trains.
This is so fantastic to hear!! Cannot wait to see the ridership numbers mature. Would be amazing if daily ridership was able to average around 200,000 riders.
I got an email survey from ST about the Enterprise Initiative budget shortfall this morning.
The survey wasn’t structured to ask about specific corridors, trade-offs or technologies. So I’m not sure how much value can be expected from the results.
Regardless, I made sure to make three points:
1. 1 Line transfers are awful if ST goes ahead with their planned transfer stations. This needs to change.
2. Service South Lake Union and Seattle Center should be the top priority because it serves more riders than all the other Link projects combined.
3. ST needs to look at quantifiable measures per billion spent when making decisions. They have been ignoring measures like new riders, better total transit travel times and reductions in greenhouse gases per billion dollars spent.
The survey link is on ST’s page about the Enterprise Initiative here. A great way for folks to make their voices heard in the next couple weeks before the May board meeting!
https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/achieving-long-term-affordability
I also made a fourth point that ST needs to develop and analyze automated alternatives.
“The survey wasn’t structured to ask about specific corridors, trade-offs or technologies. So I’m not sure how much value can be expected from the results.”
That’s not surprising given the recent ST Express survey. It asked only for reactions to its route proposals, and had no space to suggest other alternatives for those routes and/or other routes.
I haven’t looked at the ST3 system plan survey yet, but I’m not holding my breath that it’s the most constructive it could be.
An article on KOMO about the spineless idea to terminate the 1 Line at the Poodle Dog.
Tacoma pushes back as Sound Transit weighs ending light rail line at Fife, not Dome
We don’t need more P&R stations in Milton & Fife. It fact it’s a detriment to the overall system since this section is definitely more toward the commuter rail end of the spectrum. Which makes me thing ST should really be looking at I-5 freeway running here to reduce cost and travel time. Also, the segments ST has built along I-5 seem to get done really fast which means less cost overruns and completion a generation earlier. The problem is clearly the way the board is made up. Every small town mayor pushes for their own little Fife-dom.
Bonus with the I-5 alignment, ST could put in a Casino Station at the big fancy Emerald Queen. This is about where the propose Portland Ave Station would have been but a freeway station could double as a STRIDE like stop.
A section along I-5 would take longer because the distance is longer. I don’t see the speed being particularly slower on the elevated sections.
The Puyallup tribe has a big influence yo what happens with the Fife and East Tacoma stations.
Both stations are in lahar territory though. It’s not a good place to add TOD because of this. Even a mere sudden Rainier warming could trigger rapid melting and a lahar.
I’m waiting for the big cutting edge proposal:
The first US light rail system with slot machines on the platform!
Maybe ST can even be party to a new slot game — Triple Fortune Dragon Link! It can merge Triple Fortune Dragon with Dragon Link and switch out the symbols to light rail references.
The tribe has a seat at the table but they don’t have any more influence on the ST Board decisions than the mayor of Fife. They do have a big wad of cash they can use if it makes sense for them. The Puyallup tribe is one of the few sane seats at the table. Tacoma should have way more sway than Fife or Milton but that’s not the way it’s set up. The ST board structure just needs to be radically changed if we are ever to have a rational decision made on moving forward. As it sits now, the only thing that’s going to happen is begging for more money so they can continue to build nothing. Do the same thing and expect a different result is…
I’m pretty sure the tribe has more legal rights than a city.
It’s tough to get Pierce out of the “drive to parking to ride north” mode and more into “a string of destinations” mode.
As long as this is how Pierce leadership views the region, we will get what’s been proposed in concept.
Drive to parking is fine. But there’s enough excess capacity in the Tacoma Dome garage that it could absorb all the proposed spaces in the Milton & Fife structured parking stations and still not be full. And if it does reach capacity there is lots of room for additional surface parking near the Station. I guess the big $$$ saver with stopping at the Poodle Dog is they don’t have to cross the Puyallup River. The I-5 route isn’t longer since they are building track out to the new OMF which is along I-5. Elevated on 99 is just stupid and stupid expensive. And all you get are expensive elevated P&R stations that aren’t needed.
I wouldn’t worry about a lahar event. If that happens most of Puyallup is gone, the BNSF RR is gone and I-5 is gone. It could happen in the next 10 years or it might not for 1,000 years. We might get wiped out by an asteroid. Or, more likely a nuclear war. Stop building in obvious flood zones, DUH! If there’s a major tsunami in Puget Sound (about as likely and unpredictable as a lahar) the bus tunnel is history and so is everything in SODO.
Drive to parking is fine.
Not if everything else is a parking lot. Even just having a string of parking lots is bad planning. There is no network effect between those stations. No one takes the train from one parking lot to another and thus you’ve thrown away the main benefit of a metro. Overall ridership remains the same — people just drive to a different parking lot. At best you’ve spent an enormous amount of money and saved those riders a tiny amount of driving. You might as well just run express buses to one of the stations.
A series of big parking lots can work with commuter rail because it doesn’t need a network effect. Everyone is headed to downtown and the train will get them there quickly, even if they are far away. That doesn’t work with a metro (too many stops). With a metro you need a series of destinations (relatively close together) to get that network effect. Otherwise it isn’t worth the money.
“Even just having a string of parking lots is bad planning. There is no network effect between those stations. No one takes the train from one parking lot to another and thus you’ve thrown away the main benefit of a metro. “
That’s a great explanation, Ross.
If someone looks hard at the stations south of SeaTac, they would see that there would be a string of stations intended primarily for parking. The same is true for all those stations north of Pinehurst except for West Alderwood (Seaway is too remote of a site to be a walkable destination). Every planned station on 4 Line was chosen for parking except for Downtown Bellevue and Factoria (which has already been seen as potentially difficult to walk to).
A string of several stations mainly for parking is also terrible for train loads. Trains get overly crowded for 2 hours a day in one direction — but run mostly empty for the other times the train is running.
A great thing about Ballard and SLU Link is that there are destinations there. That’s even true somewhat for West Seattle, although their local NIMBYs would never allow 30 story residential buildings like suburban Vancouver has and the urban village land footprint is actually only a few blocks. (By the way, SLU has them too but Ballard does not allow for them either).
If Pierce politicians were smart, they’d end C-Link at South Federal Way and extend the streetcar to SFW. The operating cost of the streetcar is dramatically less than C-Link, and by keeping C-Link out of the county, Pierce taxpayers will never need to put a dime into C-Link (aside from fares) yet still benefit fully.
Also, Link (C or T) should run at-grade between Tacoma Dome and East Tacoma, and that’s politically more likely to happen with the streetcar, so connecting Tacoma Dome and SWF with T-Link will be much cheaper than C-Link, even if the alignment is near identical. So there are significant savings up front on the capital side for Pierce as well.
Finally, the proposed elevated station at Tacoma Dome is dumb because it will make it very expensive to extend west over/through 705. A rail extension to Tacoma Mall is also better as a streetcar, which can run through valley using ROW already owned by ST and can then turn south to run at-grade down to & through the mall.
Yeah, the plans for the trains south of Federal Way are not very smart. What you are suggesting would be an improvement.
It reminds me of Troy Serad’s posts. There are a lot of really good ideas for improving the rail system. But he also mentioned various ways to improve the bus network. Personally I would focus on improving the bus system and high speed regional rail. The former is bound to benefit a lot more people with a lot less money. The latter will connect the major cities in the region in a way that Link or even express buses can’t.
Conceptually it makes sense to me.,There’s however some major hindrances to doing that.
1. The T-Link vehicles have maximum speeds of 43 mph (Skoda) and 44 mph (Brookville). That’s much slower than C Link’s Kinkisharyo or Siemens vehicles. With such a long extension ST could possibly find a new vendor with faster trains but I’m not sure if a different vehicle could go much faster.
2. The single track segment between 20th St and Tacoma Dome would need to be replaced by a double tracked segment. The street widths there are rather tight. Without it, frequencies are constrained.
3. The added cost of bridges, right of way, tracks with ballast underneath (the segment is on loose lahar material) and electrification, the technology may not prove to be much cheaper.
ST keeps saying that time is money too. TDLE put by out the DEIS already but hasn’t gone final. The web sage says that is expected in 2027. Note that the DEIS is now out a full year.
Objectively, I always thought that the better project technology was EMU or something similar to EBART. The trains can go 79 mph and could hopefully use the Sounder tracks all the way to JBLM. The stations are already spaced far enough apart to make a faster maximum speed useful. That may require ending Sounder at Tacoma Done and/or dropping EMU frequencies to accommodate Cascades trains. But a 15 minute peak with 20 minute off-peak, two-way, all-day train between South Federal Way and JBLM that runs much faster than Link seems to me to be a better value for Pierce County. I’ll call the concept “the P Line”.
Oh… and that point, the legislature could take the initiative to extend the O Line to the state capitol in Olympia in the future with state funding.
Link to Tacoma is fine. If TIBS to Seattle had a bypass line, then it’d actually be a lot faster and convenient than any bus or car could except in completely traffic free hours.
So if ST elevates Rainier Valley and add double tracking… Or build a bypass line that uses Sounder Tracks (or a brand new elevated segment through Boeing and Georgetown) maybe?
Even if not, people would take it to the airport. It’s convenient travel within the South Sound. Not everyone is going all the way up to Seattle.
Tacoma to Bellevue? Take Link up to TIBS, then transfer to Stride S1.
Tacoma to Redmond? Link to TIBS, Stride S1 to Bellevue, 2 Line to Redmond.
Finishing the spine is essential to regional connectivity where bus services become too slow or inadequate.
I’ve been posting that Tacoma (Pierce Co.) should be looking at extending T Link north if ST fails to follow through on what was promised in a timely manor (like before I’m dead).
Ouch, that really sucks for what is essentially commuter rail. I posit that Link south of RV is commuter rail. There’s just not much there there and the ridership comes from commuters and/or the airport. Freeway running has proven to be quick to build, relatively inexpensive (cough, choke gag saying inexpensive when referring to ST) and gets you “there” quickly. And the T Dome station actually connects with Sounder Commuter Rail!
The proposed elevated station at T Dome is dumb… full stop, end of sentence. And they want to tear down Freighthouse Square to do it. Dumb and dumber. Do it cheap at grade and if at all possible make the tracks compatible with Sounder trains. At some point Sounder and Link need to connect all the way to JBLM (Dupont, Tillicum is another DUMB idea (which only exists because of the brain dead ST board structure where every yokel politician gets to demand a station in their hamlet).
I don’t mind TDLE (aside from the terminus), so not disastrous if it proceeds more-or-less as-is. But if ST is going to truncate
The EIS isn’t a waste; 1) South FW station + OMF-S should still move forward promptly as the next Link extension, and 2) switching the mode should require only a refresh of some of the EIS, not a complete redo.
To Al’s counterpoints
1. Then replace the rolling stock. The original streetcars are somewhat old (and this proposed extension would be decade+ away from opening), so just refresh the rolling stock with something that has a higher speed.
2. Constrain it any more than current T-Link headways?
3. My thought was at least to E Tacoma it could run at grade, which is clearly cheaper; perhaps Fife to SFW ends up similar in cost due to topography, but that’s fine.
I should explain my P-Line suggestion a bit by referencing that Sound Transit already owns the Point Defiance Bypasd tracks between Tacoma Dome and Lakewood.
BNSF has some easements granted with the track and the Cascades use it. So converting that segment to an EMU line looks potentially low-cost.
https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/news-events/news-releases/sound-transit-takes-ownership-tacoma-to-lakewood-rail-line
With the savings of not building all the Link electrification to Tacoma Dome from South Federal Way, and pursuing at-grade stations along the way, a frequent Pierce County EMU trunk service looks viable to me.
Surely the tracks around Tacoma Dome would need to attach to new tracks between there and South Federal Way, but the same planned track alignment to Link could be used as a starting point for the track design. And the lower frequencies mean that at-grade crossings could be less problematic.
Keep in mind that Link is much slower than an EMU. The time it takes for Link to someday go between Tacoma Dome and South Federal Way. ST expects about 16 minutes to go between these two stations while an EMU could make the trip in about 11-12 minutes. Lakewood to Tacoma Dome on Sounder today is only 14 minutes. An EMU can accelerate and decelerate much faster than a diesel train — freeing up
An opportunity to add an infill station or two between Tacoma Dome and South Tacoma.
The problem with Tacoma Dome Link Extension is that everyone in Pierce has to drive to Link or transfer there (and most buses aren’t routed to stop at Link). A continuous P-Line would not have that transfer and would get to South Federal Way 4-5 minutes faster. If the service was designed to meet every other 1 Line train, it would be such amazing connectivity with a minimal transfer penalty.
The track ownership appears to go all the way to JBLM too. Imagine going from UW to JBLM with service every 20 minutes that’s a 66 minute ride on Link, a modest single transfer wait at South Federal Way and a P Linectrain to JBLM that just takes 30 minutes.
“Link to Tacoma is fine. If TIBS to Seattle had a bypass line, then it’d actually be a lot faster and convenient”
That started me thinking, what would Link in Seattle be like if it were like Link in Pierce County?
The Federal Way/Tacoma Dome line would terminate at Stadium station. (There are two stadiums there, and one used to be a dome shape.)
A surface kind of streetcar would go from there through downtown Seattle. And for convenience we’ll attach it to the SLU streetcar, so it would terminate at Fred Hutch. A future extension would extend it to Fremont, since that’s more braindead than sending it to the U-District
The rest of the 1 Line is gone, replaced by some ST Express service. Route 573 provides the downtown-UDistrict trunk; it runs every 15 minutes weekdays and Saturdays, every 30 minutes evenings and Sundays. Or maybe it runs every 20 minutes weekdays and 30 minutes weekends. Or 30 minutes full time. Lynnwood/Snohomish still have the 512 and family, and CT’s 4xx.
Tacoma has a density of 4,500/sqmi. Seattle is 7,250/sqmi. So of course transit is going to look completely different in the two cities. Less than 2% commute to work using bus in Tacoma. Seattle is more like 20%.
2 Line report, Saturday 1:30pm, Westlake eastbound. The train was packed from the north the whole way past where I got off at South Bellevue.
The couple I was sitting next to. The man had grown up near where I did in east Bellevue, and now lives in Northgate. This was all of our first Crosslake trip. They were going strait to Redmond on a kind of sightseeing tour. The sky was beautiful and we saw Mt Rainier. nt Baker, and the Cascades.
It was a 7minute wait for the 226. I’m now going to Lake Hills for my elderly relative’s birthday, and will go to Redmond afterward, trying the BelRed station transfer.
Link was 25 minutes Westkake-Siuth Bellevue. But part of that was rush-level crowds getting on and off at the downtown stations.
I thought maybe most of the people would get off at Intl Dist. But only a modest number did.
How many on/offs would you estimate at Judkins & MI? And at S. Bellevue what would you guess the percentage was going to the garage vs transferring to a bus?
Friday morning ~7:00 was Friday light. Only about 10 people EB in my car counting the pair passed out in the back row. Friday afternoon around 3:00 it was standing room from Judkins to MI. From S. Belevue to Bel-Red there were seats available but still a pretty good crowd. The P&R at Bel-Red had cars across the whole lot rather than just the front row in the AM. I was surprised that more than half the people getting off were walking to a destination rather than getting in their car. And it was to places other than the two adjacent apartments.
How many on/offs would you estimate at Judkins & MI?”
None that I saw but I wasn’t paying attention.
“And at S. Bellevue what would you guess the percentage was going to the garage vs transferring to a bus?”
Again I wasn’t paying attention because I was watching for the bus. I think a few people got off behind me but I don’t know where they went. Ive never seen many cars in the garage and rarely see anybody going to it.
Looking forward to your reaction to riding Link across the lake for the first time. You’ve probably made that trip, albeit on a bus, longer than anyone here.
In the second phase of my trip around 4pm, the northbound 226 was whacked (hourly when it should be half-hourly; I assume a bus was lost somewhere), so we took it the other way back to South Bellevue station, and Link to Downtown Redmond. So I couldn’t try the BelRed transfer. But Bel-Red Road looked like it was a 5-10 minute walk away. So maybe not a good transfer either. The garage was a third full, mostly on the 3rd floor for some reason. I saw one person in the garage.
Link was packed again, so we had to stand all the way to Redmond . A chunk of people got off at Bellevue Downtown. Then a handful got on/off at every station from Spring District to Redmond Tech, like Rainier Valley but twice as many people.
At Redmond Tech a few seats opened up on the other end of the car, but it wasn’t worth it to go to them for just a few stops. At Narymoit Village half the train got off. Maybe they all parked at the garage, or maybe there was an event at the park too. At Downtown Redmond the other half got off.
I know it’s difficult to tell the difference, but did you get a sense that a lot of Link riders were just checking it out? Not necessarily riding it to go somewhere, but rather to experience the longer 2 Line?
Mike, were they running 2 car or 3 car trains? It’s good to hear East Link seems to be having great ridership. But like Sam I wonder how many are just checking it out for the novelty and if ridership will drop when the newness wears off. I’ve seen a large number in the afternoons weekdays that seem to be just joy riding. But, if they find things they like they might come back.
Don’t know of anything going on at Marymoor but according to King County it is the most visited park in their entire system. There’s like 6 multiuse sports fields that have soccer going on all the time plus a bunch of small sided fields for youth in the spring. The dog park draws tons of people. The velodrome is active a couple of nights a week with adult and youth racing (and Psycho-cross in the fall). Concerts and Cirque du Soleil draw big crowds. The asphalt pad they put down for Cirque also hosts dog shows and the like. Some Cascade bike rides meet up there. The couple of times I was in Redmond it seemed that Marymoor and DT had about equal ridership. They are both sort of terminus stations with Marymoor having the whopping big garage. Prior to the 2 Line crossing the Lake the P&R at S. Bellevue was a ghost town. Now it appears to be getting pretty close to capacity on weekdays. I’m betting MI P&R is completely full by 8AM. Look for MI residents to push for some sort of sticker system to keep off Islanders out.
Third phase, 7pm, Downtown Redmond-Capitol Hill.
Ridership was moderate this time. At Pioneer Square it became standing room only. Travel times from Downtown Redmond to:
Bellevue Downtown 18
South Bellevue 24
Mercer Island 29
Judkins Park 35
Westlake 45
Capitol Hill 47
Several people got off at Judkins Park, one with a bicycle. I didn’t see anybody getting on.
I think at least some of them were 2-car trains but I’m not sure.
I couldn’t tell how many people were going to ordinary destinations or sightseeing. I suspect a lot of them today may have been people who couldn’t ride it last Saturday so this was the next day they had free. And it was a beautiful day. The guy I was talking with took pictures of each of the mountains from the train. You could see both Mt Rainier, Mt Baker, and the Cascades. I didn’t know you could see Mt Baker from Seattle; I thought it was too far away.
South Bellevue-Westlake travel time coming back was 21 minutes. The 550 without traffic is 20 minutes; with afternoon traffic 30 minutes. So Link at its best is close to the 550 at its best.
Several segments were slower than I expected.
There was an audio announcement four times that the line would be closed east of BelRed and replaced with shuttle buses, but I could never hear when. I was hoping it wasn’t tonight.
Here it is on the alerts page:
“From April 14 -17, from 10 p.m. to the end of service, shuttle buses will replace trains between Downtown Redmond Station and Bel-Red Station.”
Ooh, they spelled Bel-Red instead of BelRed. It should have been that in the first place.
Sam, the the experience looking out the window between Intl Dist and South Bellevue on Link is about the same as on the 550. The same going through the industrial district, and the same across the bridge. On Mercer Island the train doesn’t have to stop at stoplights or turn to get to the stop; it just sails in and out.
The ancestors of the 550, the 226 and 235 then, were slower. They went on Dearborn/Rainier to the Rainier freeway entrance. The brick building right after the exit northbound was Black Manufacturing, which sold down jackets and sleeping bags. We got a big bag of down scraps and made a beanbag chair with it. There were three stops on Mercer Island. Then in south Bellevue the buses went on slower streets: the 226 on 108th (Enatai), the 235 on 104th (Beaux Arts). That’s the 249’s flex area now. I haven’t seen Beaux Arts since I was in high school; I want to go through there again sometime and see what it’s like now.
Has anyone been to Chism Beach Park? It’s west of Bellevue Way between SE 8th and 16th, down a long hill. I went there a couple times in high school and liked it then, but I haven’t been there since because of the minimal bus service in Beaux Arts now and the hill (we went in a car then).