Seattle Transit Measure Renewal 2026

106 Replies to “Seattle Transit Measure Renewal 2026”

1. Can there be accountability for Metro to also increase service in Seattle proportionally when service is increased countywide?

   1. There are ruled designed to prevent Metro from simply shifting money away from Seattle when it passes. The same thing is true if Metro improves transit county wide. Metro is basically supposed to assume the levy doesn’t exist when it comes to spending.

   2. Proportional to what? Population? Bus service hours? A city’s total square miles?

      1. See my comment for an explanation. So basically proportional to what it would be if the levy didn’t exist.

   3. One would hope so, but it is unlikely to happen given it is always easier to tax tax tax than to make sure the money is well spent. So that is how we will probably soon end up with a 15% regressive sales tax rate.

      1. Is the current Seattle Transit Measure not well spent? Why and how?

         1. Not saying the taxes aren’t well spent, but I find it interesting that the same percentage of taxes seems to buy less service now. According to an article on the proposal in Publicola, the original 0.1-percent sales tax expanded transit access by 350,000 hours/year, whereas this 0.15-percent increase is projected to fund only 280,000 hours/year. I understand that costs increase due to inflation, but I would have expected sales tax revenue to increase roughly proportionately due to inflation as well. Costs increasing faster than the tax base does not seem like a sustainable formula, which makes me wonder if there may be operational efficiencies out there that could squeeze more transit service out of the same taxes.

         2. Paying 50% more gets you 20% less. Sounds like shrinkflation.

         3. The current service levels are being paid for by spending excess funds reserved from previous years when Metro couldn’t provide enough service. In order to maintain current service levels, the sales tax would have to be 0.22-0.23%.

            https://seattletransitblog.com/2026/02/26/seattle-transit-measure-performance-since-passed-2020-to-now/

         4. I was hoping the STM would save the money Metro didn’t have drivers for to spend later when it could. I was assuming it would be used to extend service for a while if the renewal levy fails. I disagreed with diverting some of the money to student passes or other non-service-hour purposes, because the intention of the levy was to increase frequency and reliability. I thought it hadn’t saved any money for future years, and I’m glad it did, and if it’s needed now then it might as well be used now, because that was the point of raising it.

            I’m fine with the proposed mix although it wouldn’t be my first choice. “Transit infrastructure” helps the cause of more frequent and reliable service. The “streetcar” allocation should go to buses because that produces more runs per dollar, which is what we need. The ST3 allocation is reasonable: it’s for the city’s partnership work on streets and permitting, which should be done anyway. When I objected to Seattle money going to ST3, I was referring to a direct contribution to accelerate DSTT2/Ballard/West Seattle construction: I’d rather see it delayed or canceled than have good money go after bad, when we need money for bus service.

2. Overall this looks really good. One of the things they emphasized is better service nights and weekends. This could make a huge difference.

   It does seem like we are spending too much money on the streetcars though. Ridership is pretty small compared to the buses. But maybe a lot of this is for maintenance that has been deferred. It would be great if we had a more detailed breakdown as to where the money is going, given the huge difference between the two streetcars. It is a judgement call but I think we would easily live without the South Lake Union Streetcar. Ideally we backfill with an extension of the RapidRide H (to South Lake Union) but even without that we would be OK. In contrast, the elimination of the First Hill Streetcar would require a substantial shift in bus service to make up for what it offers.

   1. I presume you mean a RapidRide H extension to SLU?

      I think the streetcars are a politically challenging topic, but I do not think either are worth running as they are now. The real issue there though is that it costs a lot of money to abandon them and rebuild the streets. The First Hill Line is good, but it would be better if extended further north on Broadway or to other parts of Capitol Hill. It would be trivial to route the 49 to cover the FHSC, or to run the 43 like a normal bus. The 43 could enter service at 5th/Jackson and essentially be a 1:1 replacement that extends to more parts of the hill and to UW. Broadway – Jackson is a great transit route in general, and I think the most natural thing to do would be to route the 49 that way

      1. Yeah, oops, I got the RapidRide letters wrong. I’ll fix it.

      2. I think the streetcars are a politically challenging topic, but I do not think either are worth running as they are now. The real issue there though is that it costs a lot of money to abandon them and rebuild the streets.

         My guess is the city would make money. The barns that hold the streetcars (and the streetcars themselves) are worth significant money. Paving over tracks is fairly inexpensive.

         The First Hill Line is good, but it would be better if extended further north on Broadway or to other parts of Capitol Hill.

         They tried but the local businesses objected.

         It would be trivial to route the 49 to cover the FHSC, or to run the 43 like a normal bus.

         I guess it depends on your definition of trivial. To be clear, I would definitely support sending the 49 south to Jackson. But you still have to find layover space and a turnaround (I don’t think you can just reuse the streetcar space). I would skip the detour to 14th but that could come with opposition. You would also have to increase frequency on the 49 (although that might be paid for with the savings from not running the streetcar). I think all the trolley wire is there but it could be an issue. It is not a huge project but I wouldn’t call it trivial either. In contrast, extending the H does seem trivial. It can just use all the same bus stops to the north (and the same layover). There is concern over the size of the layover but it seems plenty big to me.

         Then there is the politics. Saka has proposed getting rid of the South Lake Union Streetcar. He hasn’t said anything about the other one. There is good reason for this. The SLUS doesn’t get many riders. The First Hill streetcar does. Plus there is tourist value in the streetcar. But you don’t need two streetcars any more than you need two Ferris wheels. There would be a much bigger fight to preserve the last streetcar (for good reason). I think we should focus on getting rid of the South Lake Union Streetcar (for the reasons I mentioned).

         1. I agree Mike – I think South Lake Union Streetcar has been a sunk cost fallacy at this point. It was an interesting and expensive experiment – but now is the time to wind down that line, dismantle, sell the assets and reinvest in better transit service in SLU.

      3. The streetcars are fine, the problem is that city leadership has waffled on connecting the two disparate lines together with the CCC. The CCC would bring operation efficiency that the two seperate lines currently don’t have.

         1. That is the sunk cost fallacy again. Put aside the cost of actually building the connection between the two lines and consider the route itself. It is objectively terrible (https://humantransit.org/2013/08/translink-high-and-low-performing-routes.html). But not only is it “short, squiggly and looping” (as Jarrett Walker put it) it is also redundant. There are lots of buses that go from one end of downtown to the other. There are buses that go from Jackson then north, through downtown. There are buses that go from South Lake Union to the south end of downtown. All of these buses have better routing. The only part of the route that is unique is Broadway to Jackson and the streetcar does a poor job of that. When it hits Yesler it turns the wrong way! So not only do riders have to sit through traffic but they have to sit as the bus makes several more turns, just to get very close to where they started. The detour is so small it adds very little and yet cumbersome enough to take a while. Oh, as mentioned earlier, it also ends too soon along Broadway. At the very least it should end at Roy, if not Aloha.

            If it was a bus route it would be restructured out of existence. But it appeals to tourists. There is simply no transit reason to keep it, let alone connect the two lines.

         2. It really isn’t a sunk cost fallacy, but whatever.

         3. “It really isn’t a sunk cost fallacy”

            The only reason the plan exists is the two streetcars were already there. Nobody would propose that egg-dropper shaped network from scratch. Instead they would have proposed (A) bus service elsewhere, (B) BRT on 1st Avenue from Pioneer Square to Seattle Center, or (C) a streetcar on 1st Avenue from Pioneer Square to Seattle Center.

            So let’s review: the SLU streetcar is a dud that doesn’t improve mobility and has little ridership. That’s a sunk cost. The SLU streetcar wasn’t the best technology choice, has a bad alignment east of Boren, and the tracks get in the way of transit-priority lanes for buses and the streetcar stops are at different locations from the bus stops. In spite of that it still has better-than-expected ridership so we might continue it. That makes it a sunk cost too, and it alone does not give a reason for the Culture Connector. It could give a reason for an extension on 1st Avenue to Seattle Center, but the city has never proposed that as an initial project, and it would run into the same problem of costing more to operate than a bus. So it is a sunk cost fallacy at least partly, or throwing good money after bad, when we could instead do something more strategic for Seattle mobility.

         4. ” it appeals to tourists”

            Does it? How many tourists make riding one of the two streetcars a highlight of their visit? They’re much more excited to ride Link. And they could ride a trolleybus, which most cities don’t have.

         5. I’m sure there are some riders who specifically seek out a trip on the streetcar because it is a streetcar. If the route was replaced by a bus they just wouldn’t ride it. I call these riders “tourist” even if they live in Seattle. Maybe I should use the word “novelty” — but you get the idea. The tourist value isn’t huge (unlike the monorail) but it is significant. There is value in this. But the value is diminished with two of them — one will do.

      4. @blumdrew… totally agree that Streetcar lines are not worth running. In an ideal world, both would be axed (just like DC did to their H-street line). But realistically, I think a major campaign push backed by ridership data v operating costs *can* convince the Wilson regime to axe the SLU line. The FHSC would likely be kept because it actually connects a diverse array of neighborhoods.

         In our transit-nerd fantasy world, I’ve always supported the idea of reinstating the 43 but interlining it with the 49. For example: the 49 would leave the U-District and go to Broadway as it does today. But turn left at Cap Hill station and become the 43 to 15th and 24th Avenues…eventually returning to the U-Dist. The only segment lost is a few blocks between John St and Pine St as route 11 now covers Pine St. The loser would be riders who travel between Pine St and the far end of Broadway or beyond.

         1. Yeah, I agree with your first paragraph. I think there is a good chance that in the near future we can get rid of the South Lake Union Streetcar. I don’t think that is the case with the First Hill Streetcar.

            But if we did, then just sending the 49 to Jackson seems like the best option by far. It works quite well with this: https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/08/30/high-frequency-network-surrounding-rapidride-g/. Instead of breaking up the 60 just keep it basically the same, but have it run along Broadway. It could be timed with the new 49 to provide excellent combined headways (6 minutes all-day) along Broadway from Roy to Jackson.

            I get the argument for replacing the Montlake part of the 48 with the 43. But this then leads to more turns, not fewer. Whenever possible, a bus should just keep going straight. There are plenty of people in Montlake that want to get to the Central Area. There are plenty of people in the Central Area that want a one-seat ride to the UW. The 48 should just run a lot more often — which would be possible if we adopted routing like this. Riders can easily transfer to a frequent RapidRide G if headed downtown or the 2 if they are going to Pike/Pine. To get to Broadway there are a bunch of buses depending on which part you are headed to. Those headed to northern Link destinations will just keep going north. Those headed to southern Link destinations just transfer at Mount Baker. I really don’t see the 43 ever being a worthy route, even if it was extended.

      5. Ross,

         I’m not convinced the city would make money abandoning the FHSC. Who would buy the cars? And the depot in C/ID is part of a larger city-owned facility and unlikely to be a good prospect for redevelopment. The SLU line yes – the depot alone could probably be sold for $20m or likely more (though the market isn’t as hot as it was 10 years ago of course).

         The 43 – as it exists now – could be a 1:1 replacement for the FHSC if it just entered service when it turns from 5th onto Jackson. The 106 already lays over in that area too, so I don’t really see an issue there. Granted, the 43 is a weirdo bus with a silly schedule now, but even with meh demand in Montlake, it’d be a better line simply by being longer and serving John/Thomas of course. This isn’t to say I think it’s viable or wise to attempt to abandon the FHSC, just that it’d be easy to replace – just as easy as SLU really.

         Abandoning the SLU line is a no-brainer, since the cost to make it useful is way more than it’s worth on its own. But I’m personally skeptical of the tourism value of modern streetcars. They are more novice friendly, but that’s more a reflection of our society’s broken relationship with buses than something intrinsic to a streetcar. Or that’s how I see it anyways. For tourists to use transit, the transit first has to go lots of places. I don’t think our streetcars do that effectively

         1. Plenty of cities would be interested in the streetcars. But the real money would be in the land. But yes, I agree. The South Lake Union depot is prime real estate. That is another reason why getting rid of that streetcar is more likely. They would have got more money for it ten years ago (with the office real estate boom) but there is still plenty of value in land zoned for apartments. The city owns about 30,000 square feet of contiguous land there. Based on nearby appraisals the land should be worth at least 30 million (https://gismaps.kingcounty.gov/parcelviewer2/) but even if it is “only” worth 20 million that will pay for a lot of paving.

            Yeah, they would likely get less for the First Hill depot. But they wouldn’t have to do anything. Sell off the streetcars, keep the depot, whatever. Of course the road would be better without the tracks but that can happen in the future. You don’t have to pave over the tracks (or rip them up). Cars and buses already travel over them — it really doesn’t matter. Getting rid of the tracks is just a bonus. You could also prioritize the sections that are most problematic (i. e. have resulted in the most injuries to cyclists).

            The 43 – as it exists now – could be a 1:1 replacement for the FHSC if it just entered service when it turns from 5th onto Jackson.

            Huh? The 43 serves Montlake. It also runs along Thomas and John (like the 8). It spends a relatively tiny amount of time on Broadway before ending at Yesler (not Jackson). It doesn’t make any sense at all to double up service along Montlake (with the 43 and 48). I get why some want to replace the 48 with the 43 (although I disagree with that approach). But it would be much worse to overlap the 43 and 48. That would mean 12 minutes service (for combined 6 minute headways) in an area that doesn’t have that much density. That makes sense for Broadway, not Montlake.

            In contrast, running the 49 every 12 minutes is fine. Sure, it is overkill as you get north of Roy but it is not crazy. It competes with Link for a lot of rides but plenty of people want a one-seat ride instead of taking the bus, transferring to the train and then taking the bus again (Google concurs — https://maps.app.goo.gl/7jyihLKrZBEWAD4E8). That is a very high density trip (middle of Broadway to the southern end of the U-District). Yeah, you could do the same thing with a souped-up 43 but it would be slower and less direct. I would rather trust the grid. Whenever possible, keep it straight.

         2. I can assure you that someone at Portland Streetcar is eagerly awaiting a source of parts for some of their cars, based on a phone call I received last week. A few spare cars would likely be useful to them.

         3. The 43 runs up Jackson from Atlantic Base. It would be easy to serve the stops along Jackson if it were tasked with replacing the stops along Jackson that the FHSC serves. And I don’t think doubling service in Montlake is bad per se – it gets service purely by virtue of being on the way to UW either way – and the parts of Capitol Hill between Broadway and 23rd need good service too. That’s a bit besides the point though, since I do agree that the 49 is a better fit anyways (since it already serves more of Broadway which someone has three different services serving different subsections in like a 1 mile span).

         4. I don’t think doubling service in Montlake is bad per se

            It is a flaw. You want the cost of the service to match the demand. Serving Montlake is not that cheap because you have traffic along there. Demand in Montlake itself is not that high. Thus it is not a good value. Sometimes you can’t avoid this problem. We probably don’t need that 24, 33, and RapidRide D all combining to serve part of Elliott Avenue, but it is the only way to get downtown from that section of town. But in this case it would be avoidable. We are much better off just running the 48 and 49 more often.

   2. One reason The streetcars are expensive because the parts aren’t very easy to get. It’s not like Siemens light rail cars where there are hundreds on the continent now.

   3. The City has not seriously assessed the streetcar situation since Covid. Along with that, the current ones were originally defined as political decisions rather than systemic ones.

      It seems to me that it’s now time to do three things:

      1. Define a performance standard of ridership, productivity and speed to measure the current services. It should be pass, marginal or fail.

      2. Determine if additional tracks and stops (or maybe a different system configuration) can improve things or not. To make a difference, some major new destination has to be served though. And it may be that an additional destination is still better served by buses than by streetcars. (Note that RapidRide G vehicles did not exist in the fleet when the streetcar lines were built.)

      3. If the lines cannot reach “pass” (1 or 2), retire them. Shift the service hours elsewhere. Maybe a RapidRide G vehicle could replace the cancelled service if it could be routed to do something more useful.

      1. The best biggest destination is to extend it to UW, build it to light rail standards, and make it faster.

         But they’ve already got RapidRide 70 in the works.

         1. Yeah, and they chose buses for the RapidRide version of the 70 (RapidRide J). There just isn’t enough demand to justify a large train. Not with Link competing for many of the riders. That has always been the issue with streetcars in Seattle. Either Link makes more sense or it is better with buses. If there was no tunnel from the UW and downtown (and no freeway) then a streetcar probably would have been built years ago. But that just isn’t the case. The same thing is true in Vancouver. A streetcar would definitely make sense for Broadway, but they are building a subway line instead.

            Streetcars are a niche mode. They really only make sense when you already have a metro (or can’t afford one) but have too much demand for a bus. They also make sense in areas where you have a lot of flat ground. That just isn’t Seattle. The only place where we have a lot of demand is right through downtown. Not only do we have a metro there but we also have a “spine“. It is not an independent corridor but a corridor shared with a lot of buses that would share it anyway. You could add a streetcar but it wouldn’t provide anything the buses don’t provide. Nor could you get rid of the buses — not without forcing riders to transfer right before they get to their destination. On paper this sounds good but people hate it (which is why we don’t just truncate all the buses at SoDo). The combination of the spine and the subway is much better.

            There are corridors that are at least in the ballpark when it comes to demand, like the 7 and 70. But they have nowhere near the demand that would justify rail. They don’t have that much crowding, despite mediocre frequency. You really want to be running buses every couple minutes before a streetcar makes sense (Paris was like that). We just don’t have that kind of demand, even during rush hour. That is why the emphasis on this proposal is not to deal with crowding (a relatively minor issue now) but to improve all-day, everyday service. We no longer have to worry about running the 312 every three minutes during peak — we want to make sure the same corridor has 15 minute service on the weekends.

      2. The streetcar has the issue of being a short route that gets off schedule due to auto congestion in SLU. Real time arrival cant track it because it doesnt know how long it will lay over at the terminal and you cant go by the schedule since its knocked off schedule. I just experienced this today with another short line, but not a streetcar… the G line (arriving 2 mins and 17 mins with a 5 min delay with no mention of the one between – Madison/17th inbound stop. I chose an alternate route to go downtown).

         This real time arrival/schedule issue is one of the ridership killers for the SLU Streetcar.

      3. “The streetcar has the issue of being a short route that gets off schedule due to auto congestion in SLU”

         And it hits a red light every block south of Denny, in addition to all the station stops. The buses don’t miss all the lights so they go faster.

         1. Well the G line RR sure does hit every red light.

            The buses in SLU are part of longer routes so they are already underway and can be tracked by real time arrival when they are knocked way off schedule.

         2. The G line is not on Westlake Avenue that we’re talking about, and it doesn’t hit every red light. I take the G from 3rd or 5th to 17th or Boyleston a couple times a month, and I’m glad it’s much faster than the 12 when it was there or the Pike-Pine routes. Before I rarely took the 12 because it was very slow and not particularly frequent, and the difference with the G is like night and day. The SLU streetcar would be lucky to run as well as the G.

   4. I don’t really have a dog in this fight, as I almost never go to South Lake Union, and when I do, I walk. But I would like to see a real attempt at exclusive lanes and signal priority before abandoning the street cars. These things work pretty well in Europe. It is true that they do not offer any speed advantage over buses, but they do offer a smoother ride.

      Without exclusive lanes and signal priority, I agree that they should be replaced with buses.

      1. SDOT has been adding transit lanes a little at a time for years. I think Westlake Avenue has full transit lanes now south of SLU. Is that two-way or just one-way? They’re also needed for RapidRide C, J, and the route 40 upgrade.

      2. These things work pretty well in Europe.

         Europe also has a lot of gondolas. Japan has a lot of monorails. Airports have people movers. There are all sorts of modes from all over the world that are used effectively. But that doesn’t mean that we in America know how to use them. Instead we see them, think they are lovely, and just plop them down willy-nilly and hope for the best.

         There are three basic problems with the streetcar:

         1) The routing is poor.
         2) It costs substantially more to run it than it does a bus.
         3) It is a hazard to bikes (and it screws up the bike network).

         The solution is fairly simple. It is this (https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/10/04/replacing-the-south-lake-union-streetcar/). So basically replace the streetcar with bus service. Move the bike lanes to where they should be (close to Lake Union). Replace the bike lanes on Valley with BAT lanes. The C avoids some of the existing congestion. The C and H both go to South Lake Union. You have a much longer combined route — from the south end of the waterfront to South Lake Union. If timed properly you would have buses every 5 or 6 minutes all day long (much better than the streetcar). Riders of the H don’t have to transfer to get to South Lake Union. All of this is a much bigger benefit to riders than a “smoother ride”.

         1. Somehow bikes and streetcars coexist in Europe. The best biking cities are the best streetcar cities and vice versa. Maybe its the way we build streetcars here or the MAMILs/Spandex Justice Warriors of the US.

3. according to this https://seattle.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=15549586&GUID=E1A729FA-2CCE-46C4-B187-C79BD78F7289, additional service hours probably aren’t going to peak period but weekend and weekday off-peak of routes that run more frequent during weekday peak.

   1. Yeah, exactly. This should be a welcome improvement.

      1. I think they should focus on coverage, when restoring service hours. That’s not what they’re doing..

         Lots of closed bus stops that will never be reopened

   2. Metro will restore all suspended service hours in September 2027 as the driver shortage ends. The hours won’t necessarily go to the same routes as before, but I assume the 15 is high priority because the D and it are two of the fullest routes. So that would be one peak route.

      1. I would agree with you there are routes that are crowded, but Metro’s System Evaluation Report last year found “zero bus hours are needed
         to reduce crowding. Although
         ridership is on the rise, no routes had
         chronically crowded trips during the
         evaluation period.”.
         This seems to send consistent message that the reducing crowding are not among their priorities, but later part of the report did identify needs to add trips during peak around the city including trips along D Line corridor.

         I guess it depends what’s the definition of crowding.

      2. “no routes had chronically crowded trips during the evaluation period”

         That’s not what we’ve been hearing in the comment section. There have been several complaints about peak crowding on the D since the 15 was suspended. There are three possibilities:
         A. Metro’s definition of crowding is different from theirs.
         B. It didn’t occur during Metro’s evaluation period, which may have been one day.
         C. It’s not crowded enough days per year to meet Metro’s threshold, but still annoyingly high for passengers.

         1. Speaking of D Line crowding, I had a really weird experience on D a few weeks ago.

            I boarded A Ballard-bound D Line during later part of PM peak. It was a little bit full but definitely room for more boardings. About 20 people in the front part of the bus with a few foldable seats still available. Right around Symphony, all of sudden driver decided the bus was full and left at least 10 people waiting at the stop behind. He kept skipping stops until 3rd & Vine. One angry passenger skipped at 3rd & Bell chased the bus on foot all the way to 3rd & Vine and almost started a fight with the driver.

            I think it was really that driver’s fault. Many passenger onboard found it odd that the driver thought that bus was full. And there was no next bus behind according to Pantograph.

         2. Looking at that report again, it was out in June 2025. So it is really an 2025 report about 2024-early 2025 condition.
            I think a lot of crowding reappear in the past 1.5 year.

4. The STBD may have already imposed the $50 VLF councilmatically. The enabling legislation was changed since 2014. For the 2014 measure, Licata helped prevent its expenditure on the streetcar. The FHSC subsidy is a big issue now that the ST2 has expired. Seattle could say to Vulcan and Amazon: you can have the SLU line if you pay the operating cost, otherwise, Seattle cannot afford it. With the C line and routes 40, 62, and 70, no replacement service is needed. Mayors Nickels and McGinn have left Seattle is a messy streetcar mess. The STM would get more bang for their buck buying bus hours than streetcar hours; the rates are about $250 v. $400 per hour.

   1. More digging. They have $50 more in VLF capacity with voter approval.

      1. Yes, transportation benefit districts can get voter approval for up to 0.3% and $100: https://seattletransitblog.com/2026/03/05/seattle-transit-measure-renewal-and-a-course-for-more-frequent-transit/

         This was increased during the 2021 or 2022 state legislative session. It’s unclear exactly why a car tab increase isn’t under consideration for this measure, but my guess is the fact that flat fees are even more regressive than sales taxes makes it a hard sell to voters, and it doesn’t generate that much revenue. They might also be trying to reserve that capacity for more SDOT funding if it’s really needed.

      2. The mayor doesn’t like the car tab tax. She claims it is unpopular. Historically this has been true. It is probably the least popular type of tax out there. That being said, the city council could modify the proposal by adding it.

   2. McGinn.

      1. Fixed.

5. Did the previous STM use sales taxes and if so what rate?

   1. In short, yes, we’ve had a sales-tax-based STM since 2014. Nick Sattele wrote an excellent series earlier this year: https://seattletransitblog.com/2026/02/19/seattle-transit-measure-history-as-the-stbd-2014-to-2020/

      2014-2020: 0.1% sales tax and $60 car tabs (on top of $20 tabs already enacted by City Council for SDOT projects)

      2021-Now: 0.15% sales tax and no additional car tabs; council eventually increased car tabs to $50 to fund roadway maintenance (potholes, etc.).

      Proposed: 0.3% sales tax and no additional car tabs beyond $50 already enacted for SDOT work.

      1. If you look at Nick’s chart of STM spending over time (https://seattletransitblog.com/2026/02/26/seattle-transit-measure-performance-since-passed-2020-to-now/), you’ll see that the city built up a reserve during COVID when Metro didn’t have enough operators to provide the bus hours Seattle wanted to buy, and we’ve been spending down that reserve to bring service in the city back to pre-COVID levels. However, in order to maintain that spending rate, we’d have to increase the sales tax to ~0.22%. The maximum allowed under the transportation benefit district’s authority is 0.3%, so it only makes sense to max it out now instead of charging more sales tax for no apparent increase in service.

   2. Yes. It was 0.1% + VLF initially, and was 0.15% when voters approved it again in 2020. State law limits this kind of tax levied by a city to be vehicle license fees, sales taxes, tolls, or transportation impact fees (on development). The latter two have implementation issues (TIFs would impact existing TIF funding, while tolls require state legislature/WSDOT approval). See RCW 36.73.040

6. Im confused. What happened to sales tax bad/not progressive?? Happy abouthe prospect of additional kcm service though..

   1. There aren’t many alternatives in terms of taxes. There is also a big difference between taxing things at the local level and state level. If Seattle had a high income tax, a lot of people would just move to the suburbs. But at a state level it is less likely to happen (especially since the border states have income taxes).

   2. You have to go with the least-bad solution. It’s either sales tax or no transit boost. If there’s no transit boost, we’ll continue stagnating and never become a fully well-functioning city, and the lack of it causes other problems and sours people’s general attitudes toward the city and the possibility of improvement. Car-tab tax is politically very unpopular because of how people feel about cars; there have been initiatives against it. Having a King County expansion requires King County to offer one. The county has been saying since 2016 that it would do it; it said it would do it in 2020 and then this year, but it declined both times. The types and amounts of taxes are limited by what the state allows to Seattle or King County. Sales tax is the easiest to get state approval for, and it’s not as controversial among the public as car tabs.

      1. Yeah, and once again I have to point out that Scandinavian countries have very high value-added-taxes (or VATs). These is basically the same as a sales tax. I think every country has about a 25% VAT. They are widely considered the best run countries in the world. There are other reasons for that (not many people “bowl alone” so to speak) but that is an argument for high taxes (even if they are regressive).

         1. The correlation of high taxation equals how well a country runs is ridiculous. Their political systems are very different and that has a much bigger impact than tax rates. Some of these countries also have different sources of revenue and industries so you can’t just look at a tax rate and imply, oh that’s well run.

         2. That countries with higher taxes are better run is well-supported by empirical evidence. On the other hand, there are a very few exceptions, for example South Africa has higher taxes, while Singapore has lower taxes. I believe that the causation comes from another place, so to speak: the systems that lead to better-run countries also lead to higher taxes.

   3. [off-topic about general taxes]

7. Just finished Westneat’s article in the Sunday Times. I wholeheartedly agree with folks who are fed up with people using transit and not paying. My other huge disappointment as a retired rider of the light rail, parking is unavailable after 7:30am. We even tried reserving a spot, paying the advance, and still coming up with no space to park. Our household will not be voting for anymore transit tax increases. Maybe they need to use some of the last available land near these stations for more parking garages instead of more apartments. Those of us who own our homes in the county, who pay the tax on our property and autos, would like to access the transit too. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

   1. Which lots are closed after 7:30? I thought most lots were open 24 hours a day. I could see why some lots might close at midnight or even earlier (especially indoor ones) but 7:30 seems a bit early.

      1. They’re talking about lots being full at 7:30 in the morning.

   2. Rather than parking near a station, I think we should be expanding bus service to more neighborhoods that connect directly to the Link station. In the end, a parking expansion can only accommodate a couple hundred more riders… Whereas apartments can feature many more riders without any parking constraint.

      Because of low density, that can be challenging to include everybody without slowing down the bus, so I have suggested the idea of taking advantage of existing church and city/county owned lots along corridors and providing direct, fast and frequent shuttle service between them to the nearest Link station.

      1. I agree. I’m just trying to figure out the specific complaint. You want to park your car at the park and ride and pick it up at 9:00 pm. You can’t, because the lot closes at 7:30. That seems like a valid complaint, I’m just not sure where that is an issue.

         1. I think he was saying by 7:30 am in the morning, park and ride lot is full.

      2. Suburbs have a lot of very empty parking spaces especially during weekday commutes.. such as along strip malls. I do think we could take advantage of that space somehow to help people connect to transit. I doubt the owners would let us use their lots though :/

         I also think a lot of people have a relative or friend who they can have “drop” them off at a bus stop or Link station, which would be far better than taking multiple vehicles / parking. And incentivize carpool and park + permitting.

         1. You must have missed the news about towing companies making a killing towing cars around Lynnwood because the garage fills up by early morning and community transit buses are not designed as feeders to Link but still operating as milk runs

         2. “community transit buses are not designed as feeders to Link but still operating as milk runs”

            Which routes are still milk runs, and how would their alignments have to change to make them feeders?

   3. [off-topic rant about general taxes]

8. [off-topic]

9. Just another piece of Wilson’s sinister plan to get the 8 unstuck: first she decrees new bus lanes and now she is trying to sneak in extra frequency as part of a larger transportation package. Diabolical!

10. This is a bit of a “chicken and egg” problem. Dense areas choke without good transit, or more commonly, never come into being.

    But frequent service to serve their needs during the construction period when some but not all new units are completed doesn’t make sense, even in a “Designated Urban Village”. It’s wasted until the buildings are completed and folks are there to ride the buses.

    But the buildings won’t even be proposed unless there is some certainty that the buses will be there when the residents need them.

    Which means that the City Council (and Metro) have to plan for expansion together, so that one side or the other doesn’t get too far ahead.

    So what’s the solution? Impact fees, which are fundamentally paid for by end users [i.e. “new homeowners” in this instance. Developers pay for their impacts on electrical utilities, street construction and maintenance, and public safety expansions.

    Why not get them to chip in some of the costs of serving them for the first few years while ridership builds?

    1. I think value capture is a better way of doing it. It’s hard to say why it hasn’t been widely adopted in the States, though.

       1. Aren’t impact fees a form of “value capture”? Are you proposing some sort of differential property tax? That is prohibited by the State Constitution and I think that’s true in most states.

          You’re right about the “Streetcar Suburbs” that were established from the 1920’s through the end of World War II. They supplied the template that still enraptures and plagues us today.

          1. In WA, we do value capture with Local Improvement Districts (LIDs; https://mrsc.org/explore-topics/facilities/districts/local-improvement-districts). For example, the Seattle Waterfront was predominantly funded using special property taxes within a LID in the vicinity. Condo owners complained but also their condos are generally more valuable now than they were before, so the LID allows for an additional levy based on the assumed property value increase from whatever project the LID is funding.

             It doesn’t seem like LIDs have been considered useful for transit projects, but I’m not a public policy lawyer.

          2. Impact fees can sort of generally be considered as “value capture”, but impact fees in WA can only generally be used for capital projects. I know that the enabling legislation for the transit benefit district allows the levying of an impact fee, but it’s still constrained in the same way as any other. So roads (and paths), parks, schools, and fire stations.

             I don’t see any philosophical reason why a transportation impact fee shouldn’t be able to be used on transit. The general justification is that new development brings traffic, so they should pay some share of rectifying that. Seeing as transit is often thought of in a similar vein, it seems like a pretty obvious policy move.

             Per MSRC it’s also unlikely that a transportation impact fee can be used for dedicated transit infrastructure at all – even capital. https://mrsc.org/explore-topics/planning/administration/impact-fees

    2. Streetcars were the chicken which laid the streetcar suburb eggs, though. The problem with bus investment is that it’s too easy to reroute the bus or cut service. As Ross often repeats, the SLU Streetcar would not but running today if it were a bus route. But, its steel rails and station infrastructure help justify ongoing operations. Sure, the DC Streetcar just shut down, but that’s been widely held as an extremely unusual example of a modern streetcar dying for many reasons.

       Perhaps the RapidRide “BRT” system is a good-enough level of investment, but I’ll say I’ve never seen apartments advertise adjacency to a RapidRide line, but I have most certainly seen then advertised being close to a Link station. My point is density isn’t fostered by transit unless developers (and their lenders) have strong assurances the service is there to stay. Simple bus service does not provide that assurance.

       1. The problem with bus investment is that it’s too easy to reroute the bus or cut service.

          It is not a problem. It is a good thing. Cities change and they should change. The more flexible the transit system, the better. Of course you have to take risks when it comes to more permanent infrastructure. It is a measure-twice, cut-once proposition. That is why you are much better off starting small and expanding, rather than spreading yourself too thin. But even then there are risks. If you build a subway line or a bus tunnel, you assume that those areas will be popular for years to come. You hope that the areas you are skipping won’t be. But if you could just up and reroute a subway line or add stations willy-nilly we most certainly would. The city would be much better for it.

          the SLU Streetcar would not but running today if it were a bus route. But, its steel rails and station infrastructure help justify ongoing operations.

          No it doesn’t. That is a sunk-cost fallacy. Just because we spent a lot of money on it doesn’t mean it is *now* a good value. It still costs more to run than a regular bus. You get a few tourists but other than that, it is no more useful than a bus would be if it was stuck on the same route. But the big problem is that it is stuck on a poor route. You can move it but doing so costs a lot more than it does for buses. From a transit perspective, we would be much better off if it was never built. More importantly, from a transit perspective we would also be better off if we got rid of it. We would spend less for transit and more riders would benefit.

          But that is true for the other streetcar as well. Just consider what would happen if we replaced it with a bus. The bus would get very similar ridership. It would run just as fast and serve all the same stops. If people are taking it to get from one place to another (e. g. First Hill to Jackson) then they will just take the bus. So the only people that won’t ride it our tourists. Fair enough. We lose a little ridership that way.

          But if we are going to do that, then we might as well improve it. Just extend it to Aloha (where the 9 lays over). The capital cost for this extension is essentially nothing. But ridership would go way up. You make a significant improvement for very little in the way of additional operational cost. That’s not all. The can get rid of the detour to 14th. You might lose a few people in the process but more than make up for it by creating a route that is faster. It would thus be more popular than the streetcar. You take advantage of that flexibility to improve the routing just as we’ve done throughout the city.

          Of course the big problem with service along Jackson is congestion there. Again, this is where it is nice to be flexible. For now, all you do is move the buses to the curbside and add BAT lanes. Now buses that carry way more riders (like the 7) can run faster. A lot of people come out ahead, even people that never considered taking the streetcar. Ideally you run the buses in the middle of the street (where the streetcar runs now) but this is a very cheap improvement that would make a huge difference for a lot of riders. You don’t have to get a new fleet of buses (with doors on both sides). You don’t have to worry about whether the 106 goes downtown or somewhere else. You just make the buses faster the same way they are making the 8 faster. Oh, and the same thing goes for Broadway. I’m sure there are areas where we could add a little “skip-ahead” section by having the bus move to one side of the street or the other. But that isn’t possible with the streetcar, because it is on tracks.

          There are advantages to running on rails (capacity being the biggest) but there are big disadvantages as well. Lack of flexibility is one of them.

          1. > No it doesn’t. That is a sunk-cost fallacy.

             I didn’t say the justification is logical, but it’s obviously why we still pay to run the SLU streetcar.

             > Cities change and they should change. The more flexible the transit system, the better.

             How many permanent mass transit lines have been torn out in other cities since the end of the streetcar era? Until the midcentury, most cities had neighborhood nodes which only became denser with time. Mass transit stations spawned new nodes which also only became denser with time. The only exception has been when cities became hollowed out in the midcentury due to massive federal investment in low-density transportation systems (freeways).

             The streetcars were removed because the zeitgeist of the 1930s-onward was maximizing car throughput and building a massive financial system on a foundation of 30-year mortgages on suburban SFHs. They were replaced with buses because buses were cheaper to operate and less impactful on traffic. But nearly all the beloved walkable neighborhoods in America were built around those “permanent” streetcar routes. The urbanist project since the midcentury has largely been to recreate the streetcar service of the past while figuring out how to serve “newer” unwalkable car-dependent suburbs.

             I mean, look at the map of bus and streetcar lines in Seattle in 1941: https://www.flickr.com/photos/afiler/2907931714/. South of 85th street, has the bus network significantly improved at all in the past 85 years? Maybe we got some trolleybus reroutes in the 1970s, but those were also permanent routing decisions.

             I’m not saying it’s worth paying to put all the streetcar rails back, but no one (in America) is building apartments around anything less than a tram-style BRT station. Sure, it’s worth having a flexible bus system for coverage, but growing areas need high-capacity transportation nodes to grow around.

    3. I don’t see the problem, Tom. It is very common for areas to become dense and then add transit. Broadway in Vancouver is a good example. It is very dense. It has been dense for a very long time. It is dependent on buses and the buses have gotten better over the years. Now they will add a subway line. If they couldn’t afford a subway line they would have added a streetcar line — it has enough people to justify it.

       Transit influences development, but only marginally. I’m sure it is a selling point for some residential towers in Seattle. But many of the towers occurred in areas that are not especially good for transit. They have cropped up in the north end of downtown, several blocks from the nearest tunnel station. Or they have appeared in First Hill, a place that doesn’t have Link at all. There are plenty of other things that influence transit a lot more. If they allowed it, Phinney Ridge would grow as fast as Roosevelt even though the transit options aren’t as good. Same with places like Magnolia or the top of Queen Anne. In contrast, development has stalled in Lake City while the area around Rainier Beach station doesn’t look that much different than it did twenty years ago.

       I get the whole idea of “Transit Oriented Development”. There is some merit for areas that already have very good transit and are trying to expand. But for cities that have invested very little in transit it isn’t a great value. We built the bus tunnel because there was a lot of demand to go there. Running trains from the UW to downtown always made sense — it was a corridor with a huge amount of demand that did not have a metro serving it. I believe the highest in the U. S. by some measure. It is really not that bad to build everything years after you should. Again, look at Broadway and Vancouver. It is far more important to make sure that when you do build things, you build them right. That has been our biggest problem from the very beginning, not the situation you describe.

    4. I would suggest impact fees would serve to dissuade developers from building at all. Right now, with high interest rates, the margins for a new development can be very thin. Adding more fees would in some cases push the decision “no build.”

       We are in a housing crisis. Don’t build barriers to more housing during a housing crisis.

       1. Yeah, I agree. Impact fees are a really bad idea. Development is good — you don’t want to discourage it.

       2. All residents should be treated equally, both old and new ones. The housing shortage and lack of infrastructure are citywide problems, so they should be funded by citywide taxes. It’s not fair to sic it on people moving into new infill buildings, when they have no other choices since the older buildings are full. Also, impact fees are only a temporary source of revenue, the way 30-year affordable units are only affordable for 30 years. That doesn’t address the ongoing needs after they expire, or the larger citywide needs.

          The reason impact fees are used so widely is that’s one of the few tax sources the state allows. But it’s misdiagnosing the problem, putting the cost unfairly on a small subset of people, and is addressing long-term needs with short-term solutions that expire.

       3. “Development is good, you don’t want to discourage it.”

          Of course not, but the State won’t let cities have the broad taxes that would spread the burden to all residents, and if the Leg did so, we might quickly learn that Seattle Nice can become NIMBA.(Not In MY Bank Account).

       4. Impact fees are already a widely used tool. If a local government could direct transportation impact fees (TIF) to transit, it would be better for transit riders and more philosophically consistent policy. The TIF legislation originally imagined that capital spending on roads to alleviate traffic was the only way to do things. It’s been amended to include sidewalks and bikes – why not transit projects? I’d prefer added transit service and operations too, but that’s a bit outside the spirit of an impact fee.

          1. Even though impact fees are widely used, most states have guardrails on how they can be used. Surely there are are other fee options, from developer agreements to density or FAR bonuses to required trip reduction rules that can more reliably fund transit operations. Impact fees are kind of a one-time check.

          2. “Surely there are are other fee options, from developer agreements to density or FAR bonuses”

             We need to disassociate transit funding from development. It distorts things the way having medical insurance tied to employment distorts things. It’s not developers’ or employers’ responsibility: it’s everybody’s responsibility.

          3. Yes, and WA restricts impact fee spending to the categories I described. I think it’s silly that a TIF cannot be spent on transit capital projects. Transportation benefit districts are allowed to collect a TIF, but they can only spend that money on roads, paths, and sidewalks – not a busway, rail line, or other transit-exclusive capital project. It’s a clear anti-transit bias in state statute that doesn’t need to exist.

             Rectifying that would be revenue-neutral. It would be up to jurisdictions levying impact fees to update their capital improvement plans to include transit stuff. I don’t know if impact fees are good policy in general, but I think it’s bad that they can’t be spent on transit-exclusive things.

11. Eliminate the route 106 it was pretty slow, lazy, and the worst so it has been 20 mins and half an hourly buses the bus is always delayed with a timetable apparently that was a worst bus route I’ve ever seen this.

    1. I think that it probably just needs to be shortened in some way. It’s not an easy route to sever though. The segment through Skyway is slow because it’s popular as an important lifeline for a lower income neighborhood that’s not walkable to much. The MLK segment is used for local tripmaking as well and it has retail all along the corridor. It’s used by Franklin High, Rainier Beach High, Talley High and Renton High students. And the northern segment connects the ID with ACRS a few blocks south of Mt Baker Station.

       1. I wish they’re bringing back 8, 42, and or 48X in MLK but yeah true 106 isn’t that great that was the worst, but it’s just every bus stops, there’s no bus lanes, and no bus signal in MLK

       2. I think the 106 should eventually be split into two pieces. This should happen after the 7 gets sent to Rainier Beach Station (and becomes the RapidRide R). After that, the southern end of the 106 could end at the same layover. The northern 106 could then overlap on Henderson and take over the current southern tail of the 7 (serving the frequent little loop and the infrequent big loop). That solves the coverage problem created by moving the 7.

          It also sets up long term possibilities for the (northern) 106. It would be considerably shorter so it could be sent to First Hill via Boren and then continue to Fairview and eventually Uptown (via Harrison, 5th and Mercer or Roy). That would require more money (for the new route) but it would be extremely popular and provide a key connection that doesn’t exit right now.

       3. Metro envisions splitting the route at Rainier Beach and extending it at both ends, into a Rainier Beach-Renton Highlands route and a Rainier Beach-Boren Ave-SLU route. It hasn’t given any indication of when this might happen.

12. Odd that Metro route 21 is included in the list of routes, but route 5 which it’s cross-routed with is not

    1. The 21 is in an equity-emphasis area, so the funding may have been just for it. If Metro couldn’t run the 5 that frequently without STM funding, the extra 21 runs would terminate downtown. Or it’s possible that the 5 is getting STM funds but it was forgotten in the list.

    2. Yeah, I think the 5 should have been on the list. Money that went into the 21 went into the 5, unless the money just went for the express 21 (which seems unlikely).

    3. “Money that went into the 21 went into the 5”

       Not if Metro’s base funding is covering all of the 5 and part of the 21, so that the 21 would have been less frequent without the STM.

    4. In the briefing, staff apologized for not including it. They said it was on the list but they forgot to include it on the map

13. I am glad to see that some small amount of money can be spent on capital improvements. I’d like to see that slice of the pie increase dramatically. Up-front investment pays for itself eventually in needing fewer service hours to operate a route with the same frequency, and better reliability.

14. How about using some transit access funds to bring the monorail fares down to the same as Metro and light rail?

    Would that save some money on competing bus service riders are choosing just to save a couple bucks?

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