Upcoming Link service impacts: Buses replace 1 Line trains between Rainier Beach and SeaTac/Airport this weekend for track and power work on the Tukwila Curve. Link service reductions after 8pm resumed this week as construction of Pinehurst Station continues.

Local News:

Further Afield:

This is an open thread.

21 Replies to “Midweek Roundup: hell or high water”

  1. Glad Pierce County officials are actually trying to rally support to get their project built!

    Ah wait, Tacoma Dome Link is supposedly a huge waste of money according to this blog… grumble grumble grumble.

    Perhaps it should be built as a separate automated metro service.

    1. As someone who doesn’t live in Pierce county, I would be excited about rapid transit in Tacoma, but Tacoma Dome Link does not take me where I want to go. After reaching Tacoma Dome, going downtown is on average, 2 minutes walking to the T Line (optimistic), 6 minutes waiting (average), and 10 minutes riding. That is the same amount of time that it takes to go from Federal Way to Tacoma Dome! Or if I wanted to go to the mall, even if they do a restructure that sends the #3 bus to Tacoma Dome before going downtown, it is still a 20 minutes bus ride after an 8 min average wait. I would’ve imagined business leaders in Pierce county wanting to attract King county folks to work and socialize there, but instead all we get is a park and ride and bus transfer point at Tacoma Dome, cementing Tacoma as a satellite city rather than a truly thriving place in its own right.

      1. That being said, I guess I’m not paying for Tacoma Dome Link living in King County, so ultimately I know it’s not my decision.

        1. Part of TDLE includes a South Federal Way station so South King is paying for part of the project. But of course, North and East King do not.

    2. Such a line between TDS and Lakewood via the Nalley Valley and South Tacoma might have more potential.

      1. Or why not sell the Mountain Divison to Sound Transit and build a line between Tacoma Dome and Frederickson? You know, that loose Sound Transit district in Pierce County could see some utilization for people paying 14 dollars a month for nothing in those areas. The line can be a Sounder or light rail line though I’d personally prefer a light rail line for track redevelopment (since they’re kooky) and can run parallel to the future Stream BRT line along SR 7.

      2. It would be more valuable for freight to the port, I suspect.

        Get some of those trucks off the road and cancel the Canyon Road Hwy.

    3. They have been paying taxes for Link and not seen an inch of it. Their stance is entirely justified.

      1. Not an inch in their county but you cannot say Federal Way Link Extension means nothing to them. It probably means nothing now because ST hesitates to truncate Pierce County service at Federal Way

      2. The fact that they aren’t serving any population, job or other activity centers in Pierce County, even AFTER ST3 is built out, means Link has incredibly little value for our billions.

  2. ST Chair Somers’ proposal for realigning ST3 has been released ahead of tomorrow’s ST Board meeting and will be reviewed in an article planned for tomorrow.

    Edit: article has been posted.

      1. This strikes me as the politically ”safe”, incremental solution that still remains ultimately wildly unaffordable (especially SLU Link segments). What it’s going to do is get construction started on new extensions — and eliminate putting future options on the table that offer both more cost savings and better transit service. Then future Boards will have to make further drastic deferrals as capital costs will soon soar higher followed by permanent operating deficits soaring due to low ridership with these mostly low-productivity extensions when they open.

        The Board is mostly still giddy, eating and dancing at the ST3 buffet spread at the party. They still won’t look out the window and see what they’re actually doing.

        1. Operational deficit is the operating mode of transit. Ridership never pays for operations fully and they already knew that when they structured funding via permanent taxation in the RTA districts. So the argument of an operational deficit due to fare recovery is disengenous to how Link was operationally funded. That said, if we’re going to cry fare recovery, start putting up fare gates and fining people who fare skip like they do I civilized Europe.

      2. Oh great, the 4 Line has been delayed to 2050 and the T Line extension has been delayed two years.

      3. During the TCC forum in Bertha Landes last evening, the four boardmembers (e.g., Executive Zahilay, Mayor Wilson, and councilmembers Strauss and Mosqueda) from the North King subarea vowed to build it all. The TCC T-shirts read: “Build the Damn Trains”. The chair’s resolution does not do that. It does not build the Ballard line.

        Recall the question: what thing is not like the others? The Ballard Link extension is high ridership serving three urban centers with strong two-way all-day demand where surface transit is slow. The Everett, Tacoma Dome, Issaquah and South Kirkland, and West Seattle lines are the so-called pencil lanes from the ST3 ridership forecast map. They are all included in the chair’s motion.

        I hope the ST Boardmembers push back and consider deferring the second DSTT. That is the largest fiscal albatross to the ST3 program.

        Our motto should be “build the smart trains”.

        1. Yeah ST only wants to cut Ballard Link because it’s an expensive project with a complex crossing of Salmon Bay, and it has some weird station placing in the center of Ballard not because it actually has limited ridership potential. Before we cancel Ballard Link, let’s cancel South Kirkland to Issaquah Link first. I mean it should be provisional at this point and it’s probably going to require some serious and hard work in Downtown Bellevue… I can imagine running two lines in that slow tunnel! That’s gonna be a problem, oh! And also why does it run along I-405 and make a weird crossing to East Main? Why are Richards Rd and Eastgate stations so close to each other? Why are there zero stations between Eastgate and Central Issaquah except for a potential future provisional infill. Why do we even need this? Why does Sound Transit think South Kirkland is a good terminus? Why are we having trouble placing a station in Issaquah? Why do we stop at Issaquah TC and not go further? That is a bad light rail extension right there spending OUR money on something that won’t even be good. And to finally top it all off it won’t even get us to Seattle fast… We have to go up to East Main and transfer to the 2 Line and make this crazy transfer and that’s just the fastest way! I bet taking a bus to South Bellevue to Richards Rd would be better but I bet it’s around the same time because you have to throw in a transfer penalty and the time it takes to get there!

        2. “Why does Sound Transit think South Kirkland is a good terminus?”

          It doesn’t; this is an interim compromise. The original vision was to continue to downtown Kirkland. But that got caught in a three-way disagreement between ST(which wanted light rail on the Eastside rail corridor), the City of Kirkland (which wanted Bellevuue-Kirkland BRT there instead), and Save Our Trail (a southeast Kirkland NIMBY group that didn’t want either). So ST stepped away from the controversy and truncated it at South Kirkland, and punted to ST4 the issue about extending it or giving downtown Kirkland BRT or doing something else. It’s hoping there will be less controversy against extending it by then or it will be politically easier to override it.

          “Why are there zero stations between Eastgate and Central Issaquah except for a potential future provisional infill.”

          Because there’s nothing there.

          “Why are we having trouble placing a station in Issaquah? Why do we stop at Issaquah TC and not go further?”

          For the same reason Northgate station, Shoreline North station, and Lynnwood station are at the existing P&Rs and freeway exits. ST finds that attractive because the land is already publicly owned, it’s near a freeway alignment, and it gives easy access for people to drive to the P&R. That was the assumption in the 1990s, and it still lingers on in a diminished form today.

          It’s not necessarily set in stone. The Issaquah Link alternatives analysis hasn’t started yet. The City of Issaquah and others are suggesting extending it to central Issaquah and the Highlands P&R. And west Issaquah is a designated regional center (Issaquah had to do that to justify Link), so it’s envisioned to become like Totem Lake or the Spring District. So ST wouldn’t delete a west Issaquah station that serves a future regional center, but it might extended it to serve most of Issaquah.

      4. It’s ST’s default position that we thought would be the most likely outcome. Truncating Ballard was foreshadowed by being in all three of the strategy scenarios at the retreat. This plan gives every subarea their highest priority as defined by their boardmembers. North King’s priorities are:

        #1 West Seattle stub
        #2 DSTT2/SLU
        #3 Ballard
        #4 Graham station

        Since Ballard and Graham are the last two, they get the short end of the stick.

  3. I know we are losing our minds over the ST3 deferals but I just want to say that the Barcelona superblock video was a nice watch. I did my study abroad there just before covid and they were getting started with implementing the first ones IIRC.

    The only place in Seattle that consistently speaks to me as a truly good public space like these super blocks is Hing Hay Park in the CID. As long as the weather isn’t awful I always find a sizable group of people just hanging out and usually some ping pong is being played. I like to get a lunch special from Kau Kau and eat it there. It’s a very pleasant experience that I wish we had 100x more of in the city.

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