A special-edition ORCA card is available celebrating the 2026 FIFA World Cup this month (King County Metro).

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Further Afield:

This is an Open Thread. Uncivil comments will be moderated.

44 Replies to “Midweek Roundup: Tap into Seattle Summer”

  1. [Repetitive off-topic, nonspecific allegations of general government waste, complaint about a non-transit agency. Deleted 15 replies and repeats.]

    1. I debated whether to delete the thread as a non-specific ad hom against sales taxes and alleged waste, but perhaps it’s important to address this head-on sometimes. We’ve got a federal adminstration that’s arbitrarily cutting programs over nonexistent or overexaggerated “waste, fraud, and abuse”, while similtaneously expanding other programs in a wasteful, fraudulent, corrupt, and unconstitutional way. So the whole issue of alleged waste is becoming a more critical issue, and it needs to be refuted head-on sometimes so it doesn’t grow as quickly.

      1. I’ve been reading that Americans have an expansive view of “corruption” and “waste” as inclusive of policies that they don’t support. As in, someone may view military support or someone may view “housing first” policies as waste and corruption.

        That’s not to say that waste or corruption in the more literal sense doesn’t happen (it certainly does) but I think it helps explain some of the rhetoric surrounding government spending.

      2. Looking for waste shouldn’t be refuted or denied, it should be welcomed, and be a continual process within all levels of government.

      3. Of course government should continually look for real waste and fix it. The issue is preventing false allegations of waste or baseless assertions that “every sales tax is wasteful” or “government is 100% waste” from undermining needed services. If we don’t do that, government will become worse and society will shoot itself in the foot.

      4. The waste of the federal government is not relevant to sales tax issues and their regressive impact. Seattle is on track to one of the highest sales taxes in the country even as it touts affordability. King County Homelessness Authority is an example of something that’s not exaggerated and not Trump’s fault. Are we claiming Seattle is a zero waste government? That would be highly doubtful. There’s always government waste, and ignoring it is not serving taxpayers. One thing is if the tax was progressive. But this is a highly regressive tax.

      5. The waste of the federal government is not relevant to sales tax issues and their regressive impact. King County Homelessness Authority is an example of something that’s not exaggerated and not Trump’s fault.

        The waste of the KCHA is not relevant either. We are talking about a different organization (the STBD). You claim there is a huge amount of waste there and yet you provide no evidence at all. You merely point to a different organization. That is like saying every business is corrupt since we saw what happened with Enron.

    2. If there’s government, there’s waste. Cut that first, then raise progressive revenue. Regressive revenue without doing cuts is not serving taxpayers that already choked with one of the highest taxes in the country. Sales taxes tax the poor the most. It is the duty of elected officials to ensure waste is cut first asking taxpayers even more

      1. If there’s government, there’s waste. Cut that first, then raise progressive revenue.

        OK, hold on. This will only take a minute. Alright, the waste has been cut. Happy now?

    3. If there’s government. There’s waste. Are you saying taxpayers should simply trust? Like we trusted King County Homelessness Authority ? How did that work out?

    4. The thing with waste is that it thrives when nobody wants to talk about waste. Reaching for the most regressive form of taxation should be a last resort, not first.

  2. I have enjoyed reading and viewing Seattle Now & Then and HistoryLink so much over the years, that I want to mention the passing last week of the founder/co-founder of each, Paul Dorpat. As the Seattle Now & Then website puts it, “Seattle’s leading public historian has officially joined his city’s past.” Here’s a YouTube video featuring Mr. Dorpat explaining the history of 5th and Mercer area (Gates Foundation), which used to be the North Seattle Trolley Yard.

    https://youtu.be/U6Geq5UKtII

  3. Vancouver WA (yes, WA not BC) is rolling out its future zoning:
    – neighborhood commercial in even the least dense residential areas
    – large swaths of 75 ft, 110ft, and unlimited ft zones
    – minimum density requirements across the board

    https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/82d081f7815941bd85ca07270144a125

    You get the sense that they have actually put their money where their mouth is in terms of affordability and walkability

    1. Sometimes the suburbs or smaller cities overtake Seattle. Spokane passed a decent citywide floor for residential zoning a few years ago, like Minneapolis and somewhere in Oregon. Shoreline has transit-priority lanes on its part of Aurora for RapidRide E, while Seattle was unwilling to do more than a couple scattered miles here and there until finally this year when it did something more substantial. Cities along Pacific Highway have more transit-priority lane coverage for RapidRide A than Seattle has/had for the E. And likewise, Seattle’s spot zoning in and around urban villages lagged behind a few spot advances in the suburbs. So the largest and densest and most walkable city in the state, who should be at the forefront and the example on this, sometimes gets overtaken by what a suburb or smaller city is doing.

    2. “You get the sense that they have actually put their money where their mouth is in terms of affordability and walkability”

      Isn’t this the same Vancouver WA that is advocating for the largest highway expansion in the PNW (the bridge replacement that includes new interchanges and widening on WA side)?

  4. A guy was doing pushups on the floor of a Link train between stations. He did one set south of UW station, and then another set between UW station and U-District station. I counted the second set assuming 10 but he went on to 40. That impressed me because I gave enough trouble with 10 or 20 (and I can’t get down to the floor now. His clothes suggested he might be training for an MMA match, or maybe he’s on an exercise spurt. That could have been me when I was younger, though I did more dips and jumping jacks and calf raises while waiting for a bus. And of course, it would have to be weighed against the disruption if taking over the floor if a Link train. I was also surprised one can fit 40 pushups between stations. That suggests an alternate way the measure station spacing. UW to U-District has a 40-pushuo spacing.

    1. Another overlooked transit benefit.

      I do a lot of stretches and balance exercises while waiting for transit, though not actually on transit. Something you can’t do with your foot on the gas pedal. I feel like push-ups and such on a bus or train is a bit of bridge too far. Don’t want to be “that guy.”

  5. Do we have a guess that whether effort of doubling transit measure would delay execution of service recovery plan? Is driver shortage the only thing that is holding agency back?
    Is current 0.15% sales tax rate enough to bring back all the STM trips that still makes sense to bring back after light rail expansion?

    1. The Metro driver shortage has been gradually shrinking and will disappear next year. Metro will restore all the pre-covid service hours in Fall 2027. (That’s for Metro’s baseline budget, not the Seattle Transit Measure hours.) The city surely coordinated with Metro on its intention before announcing the expansion measure to ensure there would be enough drivers for it. Metro knew an expansion was likely coming because people have been talking about it for months and it knew Wilson was eager for it.

      That will get us through five years. Then Metro will hit a fiscal cliff around 2033, because its revenue and farebox recovery isn’t keeping up with service expenses and it will run out of reserves then. So if nothing is done by then to fix it, we’ll see a major cut like in 2014, and then the STM hours may go to reducing the cut’s impact rather service above current levels. But let’s at least solve the immediate problem and then work on the medium-term one.

    2. This is also in the context of King County not having a countywide Metro expansion measure. It has been talking ever since 2016 about a Metro Connects measure to fulfill the long-term plan, but a vote has never come. It was going to offer it in 2020 but then covid hit and sucked all the oxygen out of the room, and then in November the county didn’t want a Metro measure on the same ballot as a Harborview measure, because it wanted to ensure the Harborview measure would pass. Then this year it started talking again about finally having that Metro measure, which would replace Seattle’s STM renewal and incorporate into a countywide expansion, but then it decided not to this year. So Seattle’s STM renewal is moving forward.

    3. If King County had a countywide Metro expansion measure, it would require even more drivers than Seattle’s STM will, so if those drivers aren’t needed it will reduce the pressure on Metro even with the STM compared to what it would have been.

      1. Yeah, I was thinking that as well. While this is a big improvement in service from Seattle’s perspective it isn’t from a regional standpoint (which is where labor is an issue).

    1. If Seattle want’s a downtown to Ballard line sooner than later, it needs to stop thinking of it as a Sound Transit project, and build it themselves.

      1. How would Seattle try to build the Ballard part on their own? The RFI to look for new technologies- how would that look in practice? If it uncovers that an automated system is best value with reasonable savings. Would this be the Ballard stub? I don’t think the DSTT2 tunnel is going anywhere with how the votes progressed.

        Barring a Seattle only funding to help get further closer to Ballard, I just don’t see this proceeding.

    1. I recall to see articulated one on 111 from time to time maybe 2-3 years ago.
      Has that not happened recently?

      1. Route 111 uses the 6800-6900 DELF buses used in the Eastside if articulated, but mostly Gillig Low Floors since ridership is low. Although I didnt check if they used it on the 111 back then… But I don’t think they did.

        The 4800 numbered buses are the new electric XE60 articulated buses from New Flyer in 2021. They were mostly used on S King County peak commuter routes (102, 162, 177, and 193).

        They got recalled along with the XE40 4700s due to battery issues. But it seems like at least for the XE40s they are finally back in service. I commented a couple months ago seeing these buses running as test coaches in S King County on the roads.

        1. That was a couple years ago (before the 2022 service cut), so I cannot be sure, but I thought that was the XE60 because I that saw the pantograph hidden in front top and the body is relatively new. I also spot XE40 once on 153 I think.

  8. So, the other day someone mentioned the old bus tunnel. This reminded me of this post, from Seattle Subway: https://seattletransitblog.com/2015/02/18/westside-seattle-transit-tunnel/.

    It is striking how prescient that post was. This was written before ST3 was on the ballot. They were still in the planning stages and it looked like we couldn’t build a line from Ballard to West Seattle. Then the board somehow magically found enough money to build things. Now they lost it again. Take away some of the particular numbers and it is as valid then as now:

    It is becoming clearer that Sound Transit 3 (ST3) will not provide Seattle (‘North King’) with the [money] needed to fund a true subway from Ballard to West Seattle. This presents a dilemma: should we build the high quality segments we can afford (and risk alienating the neighborhoods we pass over), or give in to the political temptation to dilute the quality of the lines (surface running, stub lines, [skipped stations], etc) to serve more neighborhoods at once?

    That is precisely what we did. Skipped stations, stub lines, alienated neighborhoods — you name it.

    It is also worth noting that the solution is much better than what we are building. To be clear, I’m not saying a bus tunnel is what we should build next. I’m just saying that a bus tunnel like this one is much better than what we will end up with. I want to add that it also makes sense for the bus tunnel to include a station at First Hill (instead of “Midtown”) — something we discussed with Mike Lindblom when he published the same idea in the Seattle Times. That really changes the dynamic. Riders could quickly transfer to get to First Hill instead of just using whatever tunnel they happen to be on. The RapidRide G is great — it is both fast and frequent. But these buses would be faster and *more* frequent.

    But even without a First Hill Station it is striking how much better this bus tunnel is. Frequency within the core (Belltown to SoDo) is much better. Headways are measured in seconds, not minutes. You serve Belltown along with Denny/SLU and the Seattle Center (AKA Uptown). Riders from Ballard or West Seattle don’t have to choose between a slow bus or an awkward transfer to an infrequent train. The bus goes through downtown and serves all the stations the new tunnel will. It still opens up the possibility of trains to Ballard (if we get more money) but in the meantime things are still much better for Ballard. Instead of buses from Renton, Kent and Tacoma being forced to run on busy streets they would continue on the SoDo Busway until they got into the new tunnel. Yet it probably costs a lot less. To be fair, all other things being equal, a bus tunnel is more expensive than a train tunnel. You have to pay for those entrances. But in this case the saving from not building West Seattle Link are more than enough to pay for those entrances (and the improvements to the SoDo Busway). It is just a better value for the vast majority of riders. I personally think we should mimic Vancouver but mimicking Brisbane would have been much better than what we are doing now.

    1. How would you evolve the Westside Seattle Transit Tunnel proposal for today? For example, would you move the Belltown station over to Denny Triangle to reflect the job growth around Amazon HQ1 that wasn’t there a decade ago? Would anything change to take advantage of autonomous vehicle technology that was science fiction in 2015 but is a reality in 2026?

      One big change vs 2015 is advancement in battery bus technology. The DSTT needed to be able to handle diesel bus operations, which requires a bunch of ventilation investments that are not needed for a light rail only tunnel but would be needed for a Westside Seattle Transit Tunnel. However, today the WSTT could be designed to assume 100% electric operations (trolley or bus)), with solid costs savings.

      1. How would you evolve the Westside Seattle Transit Tunnel proposal for today?

        I don’t think I would change it. There is density all over the place. I could see variations though. The map seems designed to take advantage of the density in the cheapest, most efficient way possible. But if for some reason that didn’t work, things could be shifted around.

        But in terms of overall coverage it is worth backing up here. Think of the big triangle formed by Denny, Stewart and First. This is essentially part of downtown. This level of density extends several blocks north (to the South Lake Union neighborhood) while being hemmed in by the Seattle Center and the freeway. It is tough to serve that area with one line. In this case you do have two lines, so it could be done, but it would increase the cost dramatically. Have the western line (towards Ballard) go under the Seattle Center and then have a station at say, Westlake & Harrison. Then turn south on Boren with a station at Boren & Denny. Now follow Lenora (underground) until you connect up to the main line. That adds significant high-density coverage but a lot of cost as well.

        In contrast, moving the First Hill station involves the same number of stations, just shifted a bit. It might be more expensive but probably not a lot more expensive. You replace a redundant station (too close to the existing ones) with a station that is definitely worth transferring to.

        Would anything change to take advantage of autonomous vehicle technology that was science fiction in 2015 but is a reality in 2026?

        Autonomous buses don’t change things that much — it is just another argument for this proposal. I use the example of Brisbane. They seriously considered replacing their Open BRT system with a subway line. Cost was the biggest negative but I’m sure someone mentioned the long term prospect of automated buses.

        The big change is the one you mentioned — battery electric buses (both wired and not). Brisbane has electric buses that are charged at stations (in only a few minutes). This is done at bus stops (especially at the end of routes). But I could also see adding wire inside the tunnel (and perhaps other places) so that the buses charge up while moving. It would likely have center platforms at all or most of the stations which means buses with doors on both sides. Thus we could end with a very large fleet of trolleys that can run off-wire for long distances and have doors on both sides. The fleet could be used for any trolley line. This means that we could add center bus stops for trolley routes without worrying about getting a whole new set of buses.

        I didn’t realize the old tunnel had ventilation shafts. It was designed from the very beginning for trolleys (using dual-mode buses). I guess this makes sense, since once in a blue moon a bus would run through the tunnel on diesel power (and stink up the place). I don’t see buses like that being used here — electric buses have a lot more range now.

        Doesn’t a rail tunnel need portals as well? What’s the additional cost?

        Yes, but in this case you have an extra portal (for the Aurora buses). But yeah, that probably doesn’t add to the cost much. I think the biggest additional cost is if you design the stations so that buses can pass buses (which the old tunnel had). That makes the station significantly bigger. But I still think this is much cheaper, simply because you avoid the very high cost of West Seattle Link. It is just extremely expensive to run trains to West Seattle which is why even Forward Thrust didn’t plan to (they would have BRT, as with this proposal).

        In particular if the C, H, and E lines are going to be bus in perpetuity, I don’t know if I’d bother with future rail compatibility.

        It would certainly be lower priority. I would build Ballard to UW first. Then I would build a Metro 8 subway. So yeah, chances are this would be used by buses in perpetuity, especially as buses get automated. But chances are, what we are planning on building will be the last thing we build as well (if we manage to build it). I don’t see trains every making it to Ballard the way things are going.

        1. Given the obstacle of the 99 tunnel, I would prioritize the Aurora portal over the Ballard/LQA portal. Having the junction on the north end seems complicated and expensive.

          Politically, what I would do is:
          1. Present the WSTT as a replacement for WS Link and the DSTT2. Prioritize the investments in SoDO so West Seattle still gets an immediate benefit, and then move forward with the tunnel, which will take a decade or more to build out. The WSTT should fit within the existing funding for WS Link & DSTT2 (it is still an expensive tunnel, but it will be shallower and shorter, plus whole segments like the bridge over the Dwamish disappear completely)
          2. Continue with Ballard Link as a standalone, elevated line. Without the need to tunnel & tie into DSTT, it will fit within existing funding (OMF-Interbay is funded by taking half of the OMF-N budget)
          2b. If Standalone Ballard Link doesn’t subsume the monorail, add a Belltown infill station for the monorail.

        2. From a practical standpoint, I’m not sure the best way to connect to the Aurora buses. I think you start with the assumption that buses are running in the middle lanes as they near South Lake Union (heading south). This fits in with the long range plans for Aurora. I think you then end up with a portal on 7th — which is plenty wide. It does seem likely that the buses would have to cross Harrison (and potentially wait for a traffic light) but that seems like a small price to pay. It also gives you another bus stop. You could then have a portal between Harrison and Thomas.

          Politically, what I would do is:
          1. Present the WSTT as a replacement for WS Link and the DSTT2…

          I think we just need to start over. We’ve all tried to live with the flaws of ST3 and come up with solutions that at least adhere to the spirit of what was promised. Focus on Ballard and West Seattle, since that was in ST3. This led to the bus tunnel, which is clearly better than what they will build. When that fell through, folks proposed improved bus service to West Seattle and an automated stub line from Ballard to Westlake. But none of it seems to please the powers that be. They seem to be more committed to mode than actual functionality. Getting rid of stations is OK — as long as you run the train line somewhere in the vicinity. But even if we managed to run automated trains to Ballard, it is quite likely they would be at 14th — an awkward location for the vast majority of potential riders. There would be no easy way to serve the area to the west or run a line to the east.

          I think we just need to start over from scratch. West Seattle was picked out of a hat. Even Ballard Link had very little to support it (Ballard to UW likely remains a better value). If we start from scratch then I could definitely see a new bus tunnel working. But I could also see them building an automated line from Ballard to the UW along with much smaller bus improvements everywhere.

    2. “To be fair, all other things being equal, a bus tunnel is more expensive than a train tunnel. You have to pay for those entrances.” Doesn’t a rail tunnel need portals as well? What’s the additional cost?

      “It still opens up the possibility of trains to Ballard” – if you built the WSTT first, I think it would become more more compelling for Ballard rail to follow a different alignment that 1) is elevated, likely replacing the monorail, and 2) serves First Hill.

      In particular if the C, H, and E lines are going to be bus in perpetuity, I don’t know if I’d bother with future rail compatibility.

    2. Nice shoutout for the blog. And a bit surprising that a frustrated comment on a post here sparked a debate that “made the news.” I suspect that the Seattle Times has the widest distribution of local news sources in the region covered by Sound Transit and notice that they’ve had a number of opinion pieces lately about ST3 and transit issues. I wonder if the editors here have considered submitting a guest editorial about the recent issues the Sound Transit Board has been wrestling with?

      Ross recently posted, “We are a niche group precisely because our message is subtle. We like transit. We like trains. We just don’t like this proposal. In an increasingly oversimplified, polarized world this sort of message is hard to convey. I would sincerely love to hear ideas for getting the message out, in hopes it will convince the board to change their mind.” A guest editorial in the “paper of record” might be one way to push ideas out to a wider audience, and given the Board’s official commitment to continue investigating ways to get to Ballard, there may still be opportunities to influence the process.

    1. SDOT street work moratorium starts on Monday, so maybe Metro didn’t approve any trolley deactivations this weekend in preparation for it?

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