April 25-26: Link 1 Line trains between Rainier Beach and SeaTac/Airport stations will be replaced by shuttle buses.
Local News:
- Citations Virtually Nonexistent After Metro Resumed Fare Enforcement (The Urbanist).
- Builders Push for Temporary MHA Fee Break to Spur Housing Starts (The Urbanist).
- Mayor Wilson’s “Shelter Acceleration” Plan Moves Forward, With Some Questions Unanswered (PubliCola).
- Tacoma-Seattle fast ferry ‘unlikely’ to launch ahead of World Cup (KUOW).
- Seattle’s traffic deaths are climbing. One City Council member wants an audit to find out why (KUOW). Also discussed on the Seattle Bike Blog.
- Sixteen transit agencies from around the world, including King County Metro, are conducting a bus service customer satisfaction survey (Metro Matters). The survey is open until May 10.
- Soccer fans and tourists can refer to Metro’s Sea26 page for info on how to get around during the 2026 FIFA World Cup in Seattle (Metro Matters).
- Despite Mercer Island’s best efforts, anyone can disembark the 2 Line there. Sound Transit promotes some walkable destinations from Mercer Island Station (The Platform).
- Shape Aurora Ave’s future by joining new advisory group (SDOT Blog).
- Seattle was one of 329 stops of the “Spirit of 1776” Freedom Train in April 1948 (Seattle Now & Then), and was visited again by the Freedom Train in late 1975. This year, Seattle is one of eight cities which will be visited by the “Freedom Plane” celebrating the USA’s 250th birthday.
More headlines after the break.
Further Afield:
- Learning from Many Places is Better than Learning from One (Pedestrian Observations).
This is an Open Thread.
A guide to Mercer Island that sends people to Macrina for baked goods, but skips Shawn’s seems suspect to me.
Super agree!
Interesting Pedestrian Observations piece. I tend to agree with it- the core issue with ST isn’t any specific technical choice, but instead is an issue with the political construction of the agency itself. This is true of most US transit agencies, but I think the historical reason for this is important: in the US, keeping transit running at all has required much more political compromise due to the smaller base of riders. Even in NYC, the place we look to as our transit Mecca, the MTA was born out of a political compromise hatched in no small part to ice one guy out of power – not to provide an agency capable of delivering capital projects on budget. Agencies like the MTA just don’t exist overseas – transit never experienced the depths of the crises that it did in the US thanks to our automotive dreams of the mid century.
Sound Transit is a poorly conceived political entity – almost purpose built to ensure infighting and shirking from difficult decisions. If that core issue isn’t addressed, then we will basically never get out of this cycle of over promise, under deliver, and the highest costs in the known universe. I’d keep ST around to run the buses and Sounder, but spin off a new entity to manage the urban rail system that is more politically centralized around the base of urban rail riders (i.e. Seattle). But a regional system could work – it just has to be run by something other than a random combination of primarily suburban elected officials with their own niche parochial interests to protect.
Yes, we can and should demand more of the agency as it exists now, but we should also talk about agency reform. Maybe the ST3 projects blowing up will provide the reason to do that.
The biggest issue is that so far, the number of trips taken per dollar of ST taxes paid is way higher in the suburbs than in Seattle. While I agree that shifting to a more Seattle-centric system would be operationally better, it would essentially require massively increasing taxes within Seattle to buy the system from the suburbs, then somehow reimbursing the suburban voters.
There are probably easier ways to reform Sound Transit that don’t involve changing the regional balance significantly. By simply having elected officials appoint more technically-minded people to the board instead of sitting there themselves, we could avoid much of the infighting and lack of creativity.
Your first point is both not likely to be true, but also a poor metric to judge by. All the busiest Link stations are in Seattle proper, and busy Link stations get more ridership than the busiest ST express bus lines. There’s also significant trips taken originating in Seattle and ending in the suburbs, so a strict accounting along the lines you suggest is almost inherently misleading. If there is more total ridership at suburban stops than Seattle ones, that still isn’t saying anything about the utility for the suburban municipalities themselves.
Technically minded board members would be a good start, but the core issue is often making difficult decisions versus expensive decisions. That’s what needs to be addressed, and technical staff can be even more constrained in making policy choices.
I see two problems:
One basic problem is the convoluted relationship between ST and local operators.
No other major metro area in the US I can think of has such confusion except for maybe BART. (In BART’s case, they have been able to be a stand-alone mostly self-sufficient operation with expansion projects funded out of third party sales tax agencies. And after COVID, they lost their level of self-sufficiency and are in the midst of a funding crisis.) ST appears to now be carrying about 1/4 to 1/3 of all King County transit trips.
Then add to that how ST acts like a contracting agency for way too many things. From advance planning to even minor construction to operations and maintenance including dispatching, ST has only indirect control of many things. That also creates a management problem as senior management is hired more for things than supervising people.
And unlike many other areas, ST raises and manages its own expansion planning with a Board that isn’t trained or spending most of their time providing transit. Board members have a few hours at most to deal with oversight and it shows.
With so many structural challenges, ST has held up ok thus far. However that’s true for anything “new”. “New” things are in great shape and feel like it’s a bonus to travel. As the system ages, attitudes shift to where smooth Link operations are expected rather than sonething that’s a bonus.
These are collectively a very multi-dimensional challenge going forward. No single action — an elected Board, internal employees, third party expansion funding agencies, all providers merged into one huge regional agency or adjusted district lines — will resolve things.
At some point — maybe in a year or maybe in 39 years or somewhere in between — the whole topic will have to be addressed by the state legislature. It will probably take something major like blatant ethics violations (like elected officials who ran campaigns on donations taken from engineering and construction companies suddenly directing those same companies to get huge new ST contract awards as newly-hired agency management), fraud like gaming the cost data to look better than it is or maybe just an old-fashioned sex scandal. Since it appears that half of the state population resides in the ST district, the state pretty much has to lead the way going forward; it’s never going to change from the bottom up like a coalition of cities with Board members.
So you want Seattle to have all the power and everyone else to just foot the bill and shut up with their parochial interests of the areas they…you know live at. Yeah I’m sure voters will go for this.
These people are insufferable. If they want more transit for themselves, they should pay more taxes and stop leeching off the suburbs. Why am I paying extra at the pump and RTA tax for 30-60 min always late Metro service and 2 unreliable ST Express buses that are over 5 miles away from my house? 🤡 I’m lucky I have a bus within walking distance of my house. Most people paying those taxes here don’t.
Why is Tacoma and Everett paying just for a bus and an unreliable low frequency Sounder connection?
Why is SE King and NE Pierce paying they don’t even get ST at all? The closest ST bus is 10 miles or longer away for these folks, and they require multiple transfers.
Sound Transit deficit is $10000/person. Why should we pay that when we won’t reap from the service?
The sub-area equity policy dictates that SpundTransit service money stay in that sub-area. So, you’re getting what the elected representatives in your area think you want, within that budget constraint.
As if 2024, Link accounts for more operating expense than the entire bus network, or more than Sounder:
https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/transit_agency_profile_doc/2024/00040.pdf
So if you want to know where your money for more ST buses is, it’s in the Link trains.
Seattle is paying extra money for extra bus service, in regard to the extra routes they have.
The subareas are not large enough. And Renton got tossed into the East subarea and is paying for all of Bellevue’s stuff. 🤡
*not small enough
Suburban victim complex is exhausting.
Half of the foamers on here are suburbanites themselves but live in the elite Bellevue and Redmond corridors. They’re perfectly fine arguing for 50 buses to Bellevue College, but think it’s unsustainable to have a couple extra buses run in S King County which delivers some of the best ridership numbers like on the 105 and 160.
Oh and not to mention a gondola to Issaquah and Bellevue College.
How corrupt is it that Dow Constantine got a $600,000 job running Sound Transit without any prior transit experience and without any serious search of other candidates? The same Dow Constantine that ensured a crappy transfer experience between Amtrak and Sounder and the new downtown transit tunnel, and generally poor transfer conditions at every Link station to buses. Compared to how it’s done in Toronto, the transfers between Link and buses are universally lengthy, slow, and inconvenient.
Toronto line5 to lines 1 and line2 had long and deep transfers like link will now so maybe not the best example
From the Ballard torches and pitchforks thread, it is taken as a given that West Seattle is getting built while Ballard gets squat. Asking the horde if anyone at the march was threatening litigation (at least some of the pitchforks crowd are adjacent/fellow travelers to the forever Missing Link Litigation) to get Ballard built instead of West Seattle?
litigation? what exactly are you litigating? inflation? tariffs? lack of cheap tunnel machines? Litigation because something costs too much and arrives later than you ean it is not exactly solid legal theory here…
I don’t see grounds for litigation either.
There would need to be some sort of malice — like a Board member gaining from making a decision that personally benefitted them, or an issue was not addressed in the environmental review stage even though it was mentioned in the scoping.
For example, my comments to ST on the EIS was that it had a negative effect on ADA access by splitting the 1 Line, and could be better remedied by a cross platform transfer at SODO. But it’s just me and not an organized group. I’m not in a wheelchair and I’m not willing to spend the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to then possibly use. And even if I sued and won, ST would only have to prepare an addendum to the EIS or change the design at SODO. It couldn’t stop the project.
The way most projects get stopped is with some sort of irreversible impact like an endangered species. Unless there is some unmitigatable concern expressed already but hidden from the public, I don’t see this situation.
I don’t see how litigation can stop West Seattle Link in particular. Even a property owner being forced to sell can only sue for compensation rather than project cancellation.
Am I wrong? Is anyone aware of any way to litigate that could cancel West Seattle Link once ST goes forward with it?
Mayor Wilson is announcing Denny Way bus lane designs and timelines this afternoon! https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2026/04/f-u-8-wilson-set-to-roll-out-the-red-carpet-with-plan-to-finally-speed-up-the-l8/
I’ve always been pro-car regarding Denny Way. Now that it’s looking more likely the bus lane will happen, I’m becoming eager to see if:
1) if peak traffic becomes noticeably worse in the Denny Triangle area
2) if cars clog other streets, then how will it affect the C, 40 and the streetcar and
3) if there’s gonna be any backlash from Amazon… especially in light of Starbucks gradual departure from Seattle (no I don’t think Amazon will leave Seattle because of a bus lane but may give them one more reason to start devesting from Seattle)
Amazon has a longtime commitment to locating in urban areas, with walkable buildings beyond the minimum requirements, and funding additional bus service on the 8 and probably the streetcar and other routes, and sponsoring an arena with “climate pledge” in its name. So Amazon is less pro-car than some other companies, and it’s patently obvious that if all its employees drove their cars wouldn’t fit.
Amazon has several faults, like not wanting to pay a fair share of taxes, but being pro-car is not one of them.
They paid for extra 8 service?
Amazon has been paying for extra peak runs on the 8 for almost twenty years.
Pro car on Denny Way? Why? The 8 is packed already. Without priority, it’ll be stuck in traffic and no one will have a faster option.
Why would Amazon not prefer a bus lane for a route that a ton of workers take? Surely they’d prefer more reliable transportation between Capitol Hill and their campus.
There are only two options in/out of SLU for I-5 (basically, suburbanites trying to get home): Mercer or Denny. Both are horrendous. Take away a lane from Denny and I fear it’ll be perpetually gridlocked or traffic will worsen on Mercer or in downtown. Consequently, affecting nearby routes such as the C and 40. If we had fully comprehensive transit options from all parts of the Puget Sound that is truly competitive with solo driving, then I’ll support the Denny bus lane. But we don’t What we currently have are a couple of paltry routes 256 & 322 and zero service to Snohomish Co, South King or Pierce. The remainder is forcing people to catch a packed light rail that runs every 5-7 minutes (less from South King) and then transferring to a bus. I’m sorry, that doesn’t cut it for one of the largest employers in the Puget Sound area.
I support transit but I also recognize transit doesn’t work for everyone. Now if have the bus lane and run buses every 5-10 minutes straight to/from Fed Way, Lynnwood, Everett, Bothell, etc without the light rail transfer – then I’m on board.
@Jordan
The bottleneck is I-5, not Denny or Mercer. It doesn’t matter how many lanes are there, there will be a line to get onto I-5 because it’s completely full at peak.
Jordan,
No one is forcing anyone to work for Amazon and live in any of those places. If you don’t want to sit in traffic in downtown Seattle in a car, live in a place with a reasonable transit commute of your office. I work in the Denny Triangle and ride the 36 into work. It takes like 15 or 20 minutes it’s great. Suffering in traffic for a big house with nothing to do is a personal choice, and our society shouldn’t encourage it. Adding a bus lane on Denny is part of getting away from encouraging objectively wasteful decisions.
Also “zero service to Snohomish County”. The 510 does in fact exist and serve a reasonable walk to SLU. Yeah, maybe you won’t get a bus from door to door but also maybe we all need to collectively walk more anyways.
There are only two options in/out of SLU for I-5 (basically, suburbanites trying to get home): Mercer or Denny. Both are horrendous. Take away a lane from Denny and I fear it’ll be perpetually gridlocked or traffic will worsen on Mercer or in downtown. Consequently, affecting nearby routes such as the C and 40.
First of all, traffic sometimes disappears when these sorts of changes occur (https://thecityfix.com/blog/traffic-evaporation-what-really-happens-when-road-space-is-reallocated-from-cars/). It is the same idea as induced demand (in reverse). Some people who now drive decide to take transit (now that the buses aren’t stuck in traffic). But the people who do drive simply alter their driving time.
Secondly, from a transit perspective, it really doesn’t matter what happens on Mercer Street. East of First Avenue North, there are no buses. That means that unless traffic backs up all the way to Queen Anne Avenue, it really doesn’t matter. The C and 40 — buses you mentioned — don’t run on Mercer. The 40 runs perpendicular to it — they’ve already added the bus lane so that the bus can avoid traffic from drivers turning right on Westlake to Mercer. The C also runs in that bus lane before turning on Valley. It is theoretically possible that more cars will go to Valley and then backtrack on Mercer, but given the limitations in simply getting to Valley, that seems unlikely.
As for “forcing people to catch a packed light rail … and then transferring to a bus” — that is a bizarre perspective. No one is forcing anyone to take transit. If you want to sit in traffic on I-5, I-90, 520, Mercer or Denny — be my guest. Your world really hasn’t changed. Traffic sucked before — it sucks now. But if you decide to take a train and then a bus, the bus is now a helluva lot faster. This makes all the difference in the world. Transit is basically a losers game. It doesn’t matter if parts of it are fast if other parts are horribly slow. By making the worst part of the trip significantly better you make transit much more attractive.
It is also absurd to think that riders need a one-seat ride to attract them. Millions around the world take similar two-seat riders. Hell, just look at our nearest neighbor, Vancouver. Yes, the train is much better than ours. It carries a whopping half million riders a day. But guess what? Three quarters of a million ride a bus! Do you really think that no one is transferring between the two? Get real. The reason so many people take transit in Vancouver is because the two options work well, and work well together. This is just one small step to make sure our buses work well.
@blumdrew… “no one is forcing anyone to work for Amazon and live in any of those places.”
This is the exact type of elitist, backwards thinking many transit enthusiasts become trapped in. Not everyone can afford the cost of living in Seattle, so they’re forced to the suburbs or beyond. So some people MUST live in Marysville and Kent and Tacoma to afford rent, raising/feeding their jobs yet maintain a decent wage. So they’re forced to trek to SLU (or elsewhere in Seattle) to earn their living. And the options to do so are slim.
There’s life outside our urban bubble, blumdrew.
@Ross..”Secondly, from a transit perspective, it really doesn’t matter what happens on Mercer Street… there are no buses. ”
This is true. However, buses that cross Mercer become stuck behind traffic that is trying to turn onto Mercer or cars blocking the intersection. The C-line and streetcar are habitually blocked by turning traffic on Valley St. The 40-south also gets blocked by traffic in the same area as cars are trying to turn left onto Mercer.
And yes, no one is forcing anyone to take transit. That’s sort of the point. People have options and we can’t fault them for choosing their car. Why? Because the alternative is much less appealing: cramped trains, homeless rants, transfers and schedule unreliability. If you seriously think that our current state of transit is a viable option for suburban commuters going to places outside of the downtown core, then it only shows the major disconnect between transit enthusiasts and the rest of society.
@Jordan
The bus lane is going to dramatically improve the transit experience on the 8. It’s barely usable, it’s typically faster to walk (and many people do!) since it’s so slow at peak. Despite that it’s crushloaded every single day.
The alternative is to do nothing and everyone will continue to drive to SLU.
“The alternative is to do nothing and everyone will continue to drive to SLU.”
A lot of people take the bus already, so not “everyone” drives to SLU. One reason they take the 8 is the steep hills. That makes them more willing to wait for an unreliable, slow route. But that’s not an excuse to keep it unreliable and slow: instead it needs to be brought up to the standards that every bus route should have. In other countries Denny Way would be seen as an essential strategic transit corridor because it goes east-west, connecting several north-south bus routes, and connecting urban Uptown, SLU, southwest Capitol Hill, Broadway, and central Capitol Hill (15th) together.
Jordan, if I’m going to Seattle and don’t have a bus nearby, I would just park and ride. Most suburbs have good park and rides, and decent service into Seattle. Walk to your workplace. Within downtown it’s all walkable or a quick bus transfer.
I don’t see why any car should use Denny Way except for service and emergency vehicles.
Unfortunately Metro isn’t providing good enough commuter and weekend service to most suburbs. People want direct connections otherwise transit isn’t as attractive. Examples are the 101 or 560/566 in Renton. Slow and tedious. Stride and hopefully a 102 expansion will fix this problem.
Same with the 554 and 556 which were both terrible routes for a while until Link opened. As well as 257/311 and 256. Rainier Valley Link is also another choke point that dissuades light rail usage for many commuters.
Sounder is a really great service for those in Kent, Auburn, and Puyallup. As well up north in Everett. But people in between don’t have a good service. They need to increase the frequency and service hours.
Tukwila is too close that the time wasted at the station and transferring is simply not worth the trip compared to light rail which covers more stops. Better faster express bus and rail service needs to be implemented along I-5 and I-405.
I hope that bus lanes for the 8 can be paired with a service increase to make the bus easier to use. Especially in the evenings, as a lot of Seattle Center events let out right around the time the 8 gets cut back to every 30 minutes.
Splitting the 8 should also be considered, so frequency can increase on the core part of the route without having to increase frequency also along MLK, which is much lower ridership. Ideally, the part from Capitol Hill to Belltown should have G-line-like frequency, a bus every 6 minutes, all day long. While, for the MLK section, current service is probably more than plenty.
Frequency is important here as, people will still end up sitting in traffic on Denny in their cars, if they think doing so is faster than waiting for the bus.
Splitting the 8 would definitely improve reliability. Bus lanes aren’t a silver bullet. Bus lanes won’t help if an 8 is stuck at a traffic light near Pledge for 15 minutes after major concert.
Having the 8 turnback at MLK is ideal. However, I do support overlap between MLK and Cap Hill. This will ensure MLK/Central District rider can connect with Cap Hill and Kaiser without having to transfer the last mile. ..or adding a 3rd leg to their journey.
Yeah, overlap is cap hill is fine. But, the MLK bus doesn’t need to go all the way to Seattle Center. For that trip, it’s probably faster to just go downtown (via a different bus route) and transfer.
Bus lanes aren’t a silver bullet. Bus lanes won’t help if an 8 is stuck at a traffic light near Pledge for 15 minutes after major concert.
But if the bus lanes are implemented properly, the bus isn’t stuck. That’s the point.
@Ross…as you already know, the 8 starts in Lower Queen Anne. The bus lanes on Denny aren’t going to make the 8 start on-time if a Kraken game or major concert lets out and the streets are clogged with bumper-to-bumper traffic. When it reaches Denny & Westlake, it’ll already be 15 minutes late. The good thing about the bus lanes, hopefully, is the ride will be faster between the Denny Triangle and Capitol Hill… although a late one. A comprehensive plan of bus lanes, queue jumps and splitting the route is needed to truly make the 8 reliable.
I hope that bus lanes for the 8 can be paired with a service increase to make the bus easier to use.
The mayor suggested that in the speech. There will also be an announcement in the next few days about service increases in overall bus service (which would likely include the 8).
“There will also be an announcement in the next few days about service increases in overall bus service”
Exciting news. I wonder if this echoes with one of the march article about Pre-Pandemic Service Coming Fall 2027.
“There will also be an announcement in the next few days about service increases in overall bus service (which would likely include the 8).”
(Jumping for joy.)
Page 2 of the SDOT memo Lurker lined below says the 8 will increase to 12-minute frequency midday in August every day.
Has there been any observations that opening Judkins Park Link Station with a rerouted Route 8 has changed the ridership totals?
Opening 2 Line at the station could either attract new riders (with the new destination) or it could takeaway riders from Route 8 (trips now possible by using 2 Line).
I know it’s not anywhere close to Denny Way and it’s still very new but I felt that it could factor into the frequency discussion.
SDOT memo is here: https://old.theurbanist.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/EO-Denny-Implementation-Memo-04_17_2026_Final.pdf?ref=theurbanist.org
Some of the best news is that this project will cost… only $4 million! Really makes me wonder what else is possible in this city if we just cared more about transit.
A huge ton could be done with say $250 million or $1 billion dollars. A huge increase in bus frequency, transit-priority lanes, a robust integrated cycletrack network without gaps, etc. That would really make transit a lot more viable and a lot of people’s first choice, to the point that it would have a couple hundred thousand defenders in Seattle so reducing it to its current level would be unthinkable and a political non-starter, people would wonder how they could ever get along without it.
The biggest problem is a will to do this among city and county leaders (who oversee Metro), Sound Transit having goals that contradict this, and constraints from the legislature (tax ceilings, vote requirements and sometimes 2/3 minimum for transit projects but not highway projects, etc). But you have to start somewhere. Katie Wilson and some city councilmembers at least have the goal, and motivation to get it done beyond what previous administrations have had. So that’s something, and Denny Way bus lanes can be a concrete first step.
“Sound Transit having goals that contradict this”
By this I mean, Sound Transit has gotten us beyond the hurdle of whether to have rail (“The region is too small/undense for a subway.”, “People won’t vote for it.”) to what kind of rail to have. We’ve gotten beyond the failed Forward Thrust votes. We now have a core circulation system between Lynnwood, Redmond, and Federal Way. That makes us much better off than we were in the 1990s. But it’s not an urban-minded rail network, or a second city network to complement the regional one: it’s a hybrid between the two that is medicore at both jobs. Medicore is better than nothing. But there’s still a lot more that could be done, and a lot of the needs could be met by buses if only the cities/agencies/public could get their act together and do it.
We’ve gotten beyond the failed Forward Thrust votes.
The vote for Forward Thrust was similar to the vote for the Sound Transit proposals. In both cases a majority of people supported the transit plans. The difference was that Forward Thrust required a super-majority (over 60%). Not only did ST3 fail to get 60% of the vote region wide, it failed to get that much support in any county — including King. The only area where we might get that level of support is in Seattle itself. The last proposal for increased bus service got over 80%.
Page 6 has a list of additional potential corridors. Hopefully those can be implemented sooner rather than later.
I believe that the potential transit demand (person trip) on Denny Way can justify bus lane, but existing bus volume per hour on Denny Denny doesn’t.
If SDOT dedicates almost half of the road to bus and only run 4-5 buses per hour like today, it is unlikely the bus lane will be more utilized from person trip standpoint. The 6000-7000 Rt 8 ridership doesn’t all happen on Denny Way. The 20-30k passenger vehicles on Denny Way are not all single occupancy, so existing transit demand doesn’t make a strong case here, but this can be changed if SDOT and Metro can think of something to make better use of Denny Way’s bus lane. They should put more route(s) on Denny Way or make part of 8 run every 10 minutes.
Seattle Time article today mentioned “About 25% of those people will disperse to other roads or take the bus, project managers hope”. I am glad SDOT has a not-so-optimistic estimate of diversion rate of this general traffic lane reduction. That means they will take traffic impact seriously rather than just focusing on the bus lane.
Busier general-purpose lane can also hurt buses entering from other directions that are not prioritized. For example, adding a new BAT lane from Queen Anne Ave N to Denny Way to help 1/8/D Line will make other movements at intersection of Western Ave & Denny Way more congested. This means longer delay for 24/33 at the spot. That signal has been the chokepoint for morning southbound 24/33 today. Maybe they should send 24/33 to Harrison if 60-ft bus can make those narrow turn.
My bad. I didn’t realize the plan only took one lane for eastbound bus lane. So I wonder how is westbound? Does WB not delay as bad as eastbound because traffic was effective metered somewhere else?
WB can slow down but from my experience it doesn’t have nearly as many issues. I think traffic is more dispersed, EB everyone is headed to I-5 S, but WB people are headed to different destinations. Also, I think most I-5 traffic headed into SLU exits via Mercer or Spring, there’s not much reason to exit elsewhere and take Denny
The 8 is one of Metro’s top ten routes. The existing buses and riders are sufficient to justify bus lanes. Any more is just an additional benefit.
It’s rather sad to me that so many years have passed since SLU started getting tall buildings while no cogent transit plan was developed for the area outside of the now jeopardized ST3 Link extension that is now proving unaffordable and even if it is it won’t open for at least 14 years and probably more like 20-30 years.
The Denny bus lane to me feels like a band-aid solution to a problem that has been around for many years now and gets worse with every new tall building becoming occupied.
I commend Wilson for taking aggressive action. But it won’t resolve the underlying severe congestion that the City permitted to happen. The problem has been evolving for many years and can’t be solved quickly.
I also think that buses and single-car streetcar lines cannot be a realistic long-term solution. The density is just too high.
One basic thing I think needs to happen is for Wilson and the City Council as well as Zahilay and the rest of King County Council to establish that this district deserves the next Link project. It should have been said in 2017!
And ST shouldn’t be spearheading the planning. Waiting for ST to churn through its process is not working. They’ve had 9.5 years since ST3 passage. A different approach appears to be needed and the City needs to lead it.
All of these other Link extensions being considered are not as essential for our regional economy. That especially includes West Seattle. Wilson needs to be aggressive and clear that ST needs to put their resources to serving SLU as the top expansion effort.
It’s surreal to me that the transit situation in SLU is usually discussed separately from the current ST3 priorities. These two issues are directly connected — yet the leadership dialogue even now continues to act like they’re separate and distinct.
Wilson needs to put her thumb on the scale — and stand up at every ST Board meeting and state that this must be the top expansion priority. If she won’t, she’s a mere political hack.
Here os the thing about fare enforcement, people are not going to care if there is zero incentive to pay them. There needs to be consequences that are hard and real.
The fact that there was an entire security “plan” created after the stabbing death of the metro driver and it resulted in 8 citations from 30 officers in 10 months – shows that Metro leadership gives ZERO f##k’s about riders and has no accountability.
exactly. The same reason nobody pays during those games to ride link because why would you? no consequences. but they will surely pay for a 7 dollar hotdog and a 6 dollar coke… because if they don’t there are consequences. funny how life works
“The same reason nobody pays during those games to ride link because why would you?”
Most people do.
New Jersey Transit is charging $150 for commuter rail tickets, cutting off at 40k riders and closing down Penn Station 4 hours before gametime. Remaining fans will have to use a charter bus for $80 for Uber to the stadium drop-off, which is a mile walk. https://whyy.org/articles/fifa-world-cup-matches-new-jersey-nj-transit-fares/
Meanwhile in Philly, SEPTA is keeping fares the same AND offering free rides after the game. https://www.phillyvoice.com/world-cup-septa-free-rides-broad-street-line/
..during FIFA..
Somebody said FIFA forced Penn Station to close because it’s inside the game’s security perimeter.
The high prices are to pay for the heavy security costs imposed upon the agency by the world cup, without taking money away from regular service used by regular commuters.
I suspect that the ridiculous price might be a stand off to FIFA for not paying for what New Jersey asked for, similar to what happened to Seattle Center Fan Zone originally planned
Ryan Packer of The Urbanist reports on Denny Way upgrades! In addition to bus lanes, it seems there are plans to bump up frequency on the 8 from 15 to 12 minutes all day. I’d like to see an additional overlapping route to increase the frequency even further (send the 11 to LQA please!) but it’s a great start.
https://www.theurbanist.org/denny-way-bus-upgrades-include-i-5-ramp-reroute/
I would not be surprised if an upgrade from every 15 minutes to every 12 minutes can be paid for just through shorter travel times offered by the bus lanes. Although, as I said, I would really like to see the 8 match the G-line and run every 6 minutes, all day long.
However, if we want this level of frequency, the route almost certainly would have to be split, as finding the money to run the MLK bus every 6 minutes would not be easy.
The 11 can reroute to LQA via Denny at a 12 minute frequency, which can combine with the 8 for 6 minute frequency from LQA-SLU-Capitol Hill. Win-Win.
Amazon is really a pioneer in urbanist corporate culture. While it was normal and prestigious to have a downtown headquarters tower through the early 20th century, the mid and late 20th century turned against it. Most headquarters and offices sprouted up in car-oriented isolated office parks like NE 20th Street (tech companies), Eastgate, Interurban Avenue (BECU), etc. Downtown became relegated to banks, law firms, and government. In my 20s I had to choose between high-paying jobs and working in an automobile hellhole. Over the 2000s it became gradually easier to find a job in a walkable neighborhood.
Microsoft built a greenfield office park in Redmond. At the time the suburban ring pretty much ended at NE 24th Street and south Kirkland. The Microsoft area was transitioning from semi-rural, and western downtown Redmond was just trees. For the first twenty years of Microsoft’s campus it was only slightly denser than a typical 1-2 story office park, and did not have the mass of apartments and retail around it it does now. People without a car had somewhat of a hardship to commute there or live around there. The newfound urbanism is johnny-come-lately, and may have been forced by the changing attitudes of college graduates and its competitors. Or if it was intended all along in the early 1990s, it took a heckuv a long time to make it as non-car-friendly as it is.
Apple had an even worse location in Silicon Valley, a forty-five minute drive from San Francisco, and spurning central San Jose. Google followed suit. Yahoo! was in that greenfield tower-in-the-park area in Santa Clara, where each block is a half mile long, with exactly one tower in the middle surrounded by underused open space.
Amazon started at the Pacific hospital building on Beacon Hill, on the frequent 36 and crosstown 60. It’s at least in a pre-WWII neighborhood and near downtown and a walkable village (Beacon Hill). Then it relocated to South Lake Union, and helped that area become an extension of downtown. And its buildings are more walkable and environmentally-friendly than the minimum requirements; e.g., those bioswales. Even if Amazon is now favoring Bellevue due to a tax tantrum, it’s in downtown Bellevue in a multistory tower next to a Link station and transit center, not in some hard-to-get to office park in Bothell or Issaquah. And its warehouses, while they are in industrial areas, the one in Kent probably helped the case for getting 15-30 minute bus service on West Valley Highway and East Valley Road so that workers could get to those warehouses without driving. (In the 80s and 90s, the 150 was half-hourly weekdays, hourly evenings/weekends; and East Valley Road had no all-day bus route or at most something peak/daytime only from Renton.)
Other tech companies likes building campus-style headquarters. Amazon is probably one of few that is consistently leasing city center office buildings. The HQ2 movement also primarily looks for urban core type of location and weigh heavily in things like public transportation.
Given that Amazon is famous for being frugal, it is also possible that they do this only because this type of real estate is cheaper to manage.
This Urbanist article about the SnoCo boardmembers’ insistence on “the spine” is a depressing read. Somers and company seem hell-bent on ignoring any changes that would result in real cost savings or better passenger experience all because they’re afraid of jeopardizing the completion of their extension into the sticks that will yield little ridership and be slower than the existing express busses. It really feels like people who live in the city are going to be screwed for the next century because of the ignorance and parochialism of these suburbanites. We need board reform now.
The Snohomish County leaders’ dogmatic clinging to the alignment through a very suburban SW Everett Industrial Center (with its shockingly weak 1500 daily boardings) while keeping the 99/Airport station “provisional” where Blue and Green Swift cross is to me illustrating how these leaders don’t fundamentally understand rail transit. So is having an added 9 minutes from Downtown Everett and having only one station in the last three miles that stops short of reaching the heart of Downtown Everett. The end station location is a mirror of the Tacoma Dome station situation, too.
Either Somers as dumb as a doorbell about productive transit or he is prioritizing interests other than those of riders. Which is it? What’s the source of the dogma?
> dumb as a doorbell about productive transit or he is prioritizing interests other than those of riders
Both, I fear.
1,500 riders is on par with the Avalon station which they are looking to cut for WSLE. Might as well cut the SW Everett station as well and gain some additional cost savings.
Somers is directly responsible for shutting down discussion around deferring DSTT2 and will also likely be responsible for ST choosing the worst of all possible worlds for the revised long range plan.
But hey, SnoCo will get a few more light rail stations right as he’s retiring so his Wikipedia page won’t be marred by the inevitable decision to shut down Sounder North once the Spine is done.
Eh the sounder north corridor would be better served by express busses to link anyway. The time savings is 5 minutes compared to what Link will be, and the frequency will be incomparable. Those slots would be better off used by Cascades runs north anyway.
I wonder sometimes if the ST board should have a requirement to actually ride transit (Katie Wilson, et al.) and/or work in transit professionally (Jarret Walker, et al.).
The biggest flaw in my mind is that Somers and others keep framing ST3 as complete/not complete “the spine”. Problem is, “the spine” is complete today for most purposes via Sounder and bus connections. The conversation needs to be why or why not it’s worth converting the spine to a one-seat light rail. Then we can use objective metrics like boardings per stop, trip time, frequency, etc.
Forgive me forcreoesting:
A spine isn’t any good if it’s not connected to ribs (transfer ease). And it’s almost useless if it’s severed in half (the awful proposed transfer stations downtown replacing a through route).
Every time I read about an elected official defend the “spine” concept on want to call them out on the hypocrisy. They’re defending bone fragments that look like a spine with scoliosis on a diagram — when it’s actually just badly connected bone pieces close to each other.
>For repeating
haha I actually forgot that in ST3 that we want to split the spine in half too. So even worse, we’re talking about making a two-seat ride (bus to link connection) into a two-seat ride (link to link connection)
Not just another seat, Lurker — but one that could take several minutes with multiple escalators or elevators to negotiate (and probably at least one out of service a notable part of the time).
Sounder is a joke. Infrequent and only runs in one direction at rush hour. The idea this somehow completes the spine is ridiculous. ST3 made promises in exchange for sweet tax dollars in perpetuity to Snohomish county. There was no “or maybe just sounder and buses but you still get to pay the RTA tax”.
Agreed. You’re a voice of reason among many on here.
Zahilay is curiously absent from all this, despite having more power over Sound Transit than anyone else. I always felt he had little interest in transit, so I guess I’m not surprised.
This is consistent with what Somers has been saying and doing as ST board chair, and what all Snohomish officials have been pushing for forever.
The reason Snohomish and Pierce and Issaquah do this is they don’t want to be left out of the region’s economic boom and become the potential future slums, if all the investment and jobs and affluent residents stay within Link’s current extent. They have a dubious idea that they can attract employers and affluent residents and increase their tax base if they have Link to Everett, Paine Field and Tacoma Dome, and a more realistic idea that they won’t if they don’t improve transit access substantially somehow. (They’re leaving out lower-cost concepts that could improve their transit situation, jobs situation, tax base, and convenience for their residents. That has been the problem with the Spine concept all along.)
But look at this! “The Urbanist asked Somers if the agency would explore converting Ballard and West Seattle Link to an automated light rail line with shorter trains and stations to save money.” It’s not just STB alone in the wilderness about this. It’s STB, Scott Kubly, and The Urbanist’s Doug Trumm and whoever asked the question. That’s a step forward.
Somers’s response doesn’t totally shut the door either: “Somers granted automated trains are the future, but he said it would not be a factor in the realignment votes this summer.”
So at least it has penetrated the board that far. Looking at the totality of ST3’s timeline and Somers’s interests, there’s still time for ST to look at Ballard automation between the alignment vote and when Ballard construction starts. And Ballard-West Seattle is still possible if ST takes it seriously sometime before West Seattle construction starts; I don’t know when that is. And Somers has a point that Everett/Paine is not the major cost driver in ST3, because there are no tunnels, private land, or built-up areas involved. Lynnwood-Everett is the second-most cost-straining project after Ballard/West Seattle because it’s so long (as long as Westlake-Lynnwood!), and the Paine Field detour exacerbates it. Snohmish needed the “expanded ST3” to get that in (it wasn’t just North King needing it), and I’m surprised ST can fully afford Everett/Paine now, but if it can and the board won’t be deterred from it, we don’t need to stand in the way of secondary issues like Everett.
“The reason Snohomish and Pierce and Issaquah do this is they don’t want to be left out of the region’s economic boom”
The reason is they were asked to vote for perpetual RTA taxation in return for light rail. And without a vote to rescind those taxes and refund them, sound transit has to do what they told voters they would do. The fact the alignment is cheaper because it doesn’t need a tunnel in a complex area is irrelevant to the promises made to voters in return for ST3 support and their perpetual taxation.
They voted for a plan that was supposed to make transit better than the existing express buses, not worse.
Well, you needed them to pass ST3 and pay for the tunnel to a place they don’t care to go to. So now you have to live with the consequence of having them pay and have a say. Taxation turns out earns representation.
[repetitive false claim that nobody pays fares]
But the author can attack Mercer Island, whose residents voted for several ST ballot measures.
Unlike Mercer Island, I’m not interested in relitigating the motivations behind Mercer Island’s many lawsuits against Sound Transit.
PV keeps spamming comment threads with a false claim that nobody pays fares if they’re not forced to. This wastes everybody’s time in redebating what the level of fare evasion is, and slanders paying riders as being fare evaders. There are also people eligible to ride free (youth).
I haven’t noticed PV making similar false attacks on Mercer Island, much less repeating them endlessly. It’s possible there’s more of that than I realize, but I haven’t seen it.
There is some truth to his claims. Thought not “everyone” evades fares, I see ALOT of people not tapping their cards on the bus or at stations. It is frustrating to see that ST and Metro have lost utter control over bad rider behavior. This is more evident on Metro buses than trains.
To make it perhaps more clear, just because you see someone not tapping in doesn’t mean they are evading fares. I’ve been traveling on transit the last few days with relatives from England. On the bus we tap to board. But on the train they have bought day tickets so no tapping required or possible. I was doing the same when I bought day passes prior to my Reduced Regional Fare Orca card arriving.
FWIW the relatives are impressed with the new 2 Line and my cousin worked many years for the London Underground. They can’t believe how how cheap it is and although when we used Link walked to the station parking Free at S. Kirkland just blew their mind. In US dollars you’d be paying about $20 just to park for the day anywhere near London and the $6 day pass just floored them. $6 wouldn’t even cover the lowest cost one way fare in the UK… anywhere.
I guess I should add that the relatives from UK were also astounded that the entire system here is on the honor system. I haven’t seen any fare enforcement in the three weeks I’ve been using Link to work. They were also amazed at how many transit security officers we have… not doing any fare inspection.
Well you can take the data from Metro and ST itself. A majority of people were evading fares.
I’m sure the number went down now, but it’s probably still higher than we want.
I’m not nearly as concerned about the part that people are evading fares for the money… I’m more concerned about the fact that criminals and homeless/drug addicts are getting on the trains.
The only thing fare enforcement did was get regular people to start paying. Criminals and drug users are still boarding the trains. We need more security if anything, that actually have the power to remove anyone using drugs, having a mental crisis, making threats, or actively harming people on the train or bus.
It’s not “compassionate” to forgive these criminals or drug addicts or homeless. They’re such a small percentage of the population.
Instead, you’re not being compassionate to the MANY women being harassed or children/students not feeling safe using public transit by themselves. And yes this is not an infrequent experience especially for women on the trains to experience some form of harassment.
Like any public space, there should be some basic decorum. It’s not like Seattle enforces that on their streets anyways. Or really most places in King County for that matter.
Not to mention every station and bus stop especially in Seattle and South King are littered with these people smoking and throwing trash everywhere. Tukwila especially is filthy. It’s not acceptable and it’s bad for 99.99% riders of every race, gender, immigration status, etc.
https://www.communitytransit.org/news-and-events/article-detail/2026/04/23/city-of-everett-and-community-transit-announce-work-toward-public-transit-consolidation
Community Transit and City of Everett announced they’re starting up their negotiations again to look at merging Everett Transit into Community Transit to consolidate operations and improve operational transit efficiency in the county.
The way the political winds are blowing, we’ll probably need an ST4 to finish the job of ST3.
Another day of seeing 550 got stuck just coming out of Bellevue TC because illegal parking at center lane.
Kudos for the speakers at the ST Board meeting today that mentioned studying automation. Kudos too for those that mentioned studying building aerial rather than underground. And kudos to the few that mentioned the costly duplication of the DSTT2 and interlining . And many stressed that improved travel times should be a factor. .
Lots of other speakers were seemingly in denial of the financial shortfall or defensive of their pet corridors as if it’s a competition. The Ballard supporters pushed hard for rethinking the technology and vertical alignment instead to achieve as much of ST3 as possible.
It would have been nice if there was more emphasis on station circulation and travel time penalties within stations. But with each speaker having just 60 seconds, there seemingly wasn’t enough time to get into those details.
I think the public forum part of agenda took about an hour even with the 60 second per speaker rule.
Sound Transit was voted for by the people to be a regional agency.
I think Seattle should make a Seattle Transit agency. The tax region can be Seattle. Build the subway and all the light rail 👍
If people don’t want ST after that, maybe it can get removed. I’d personally like to see ST stay and deliver on regional transit connectivity goals. It should not get mixed up with local Metro services or city specific transit goals.