Reminders: To ensure there is enough space on trains, bikes and scooters are not allowed on trains on World Cup match days.

Local:

Further Afield:

This is an Open Thread.

126 Replies to “Midweek Roundup: Level Up”

  1. Heard on the 2 line this morning, This is the 2 line to Lynnwood City Center via Seattle Stadium.

  2. RE Pedestrian deaths my cousin told me the Cyber Truck is banned in Europe because of its (literally) impact on pedestrians. The flat front is like a bulldozer blade.

    1. A lot of headlines are written as if a bunch of Germans sipping Italian wine in Brussels passed around pictures of the cybertruck to each other, then stood up and declared unanimously in French that this garish Americanism would be banned from Europe. But my understanding is that the Cybertruck just didn’t meet existing regulations and Tesla wasn’t interested in trying. Probably a bunch of other oversized American trucks also wouldn’t meet the regs — the Cybertruck isn’t an outlier in terms of any of the bad characteristics of big trucks.

  3. I gotta agree on buses being too loud. The rant is about them being too rattle-y, which is true — can’t bus manufacturers give the vehicles better shocks? But also, buses are too loud on the outside. Those air brakes are deafening.

    2. Yeah, Metro buses are way too loud.

      The worst is sitting in the back. Ever since covid, the fans seem to be set to the maximum all the time. Which is understandable, since this does reduce disease transmission, but it’s loud.

      1. The back of the bus is where the engine is. If you want that noise to go away, you need the bus to be electric.

      2. If someone is bothered by bus noise, no, the best thing is not to hope that one day all the roads are better maintained, or wait for buses to switch to electric, or wait for buses to use better shocks, etc. The best thing someone can do is use ear protection. Foam ear plugs, AirPods, or if they are extremely bothered by noise, industrial earmuffs.

      3. My experience of bus noise barely comes from the engine.
        Certain parts on some of the buses, especially XDE60 are falling loose, but of course the pavement quality doesn’t help.

        1. It depends on the route and the bus. The engine is loudest if you’re sitting near the back and the bus is going up a hill.

          Pavement rattling is also a thing, but that depends a lot on the quality of the road that the bus travels on. The part I don’t get is why the bus rattles a lot more than a car does traveling the same poor quality road. Maybe it’s because the bus is such a large vehicle, maybe it’s because Metro buses use cheap suspensions to save money. But, either way, it becomes yet another reason for a person to prefer to drive over taking the bus.

        2. “ I don’t get is why the bus rattles a lot more than a car ”

          I believe that’s the nature of diesel engine

      4. There was a news story a week or so ago about MI residents filing a lawsuit over the “added” noise of the Link trains on the bridge. Yeah, right… way louder than the express lanes they replaced. And with the coming restructure there will be less “noisy buses” interrupting their bucolic life on the Island. I really can’t figure out what their end game is. Maybe just bored lawyers looking for something to stir the pot? Give us X $$$ and we’ll go away? knowing that would be cheaper than fighting self funded lawyers with nothing better to do.

        1. “There was a news story a week or so ago about MI residents filing a lawsuit over the “added” noise of the Link trains on the bridge. Yeah, right…”

          The news report that I saw interviewed residents of Enatai, which is part of Bellevue. Regardless, it does seem silly.

        2. If it’s Enatai then I would guess the complaint is about the elevated section from S Bellevue to the connection to the East Channel Bridge. If the noise exceeds what was (I assume) mentioned in the EIS then they may have a legit complaint. I guess ST went elevated here to A) not have a grade crossing in/out of the P&R and B) because they have to get to the height of the bridge and try to minimize the grade. I wish they had better rails on this section. What’s there won’t keep a derailed train from falling into the swamp and I don’t want to end up getting eaten by gators. I think they could have at least made some attempt at a noise wall.

        3. Bernie, no retaining wall shorter than six feet high would keep a badly derailed train from tumbling off an elevated structure. What does keep them from falling are the “guard rails” just inside the running rails. When a car derails the set of wheels on one side or the other of the car fall into the slot between the running and guard rails, and that controls lateral motion. The slot keeps the car away from the edge of the structure.

          Retaining walls sufficient to do the same thing would be enormously heavy.

      5. If using headphones, over-the-ear ones are better than small earbuds or on-the-ear. The over-the-ear ones intrinsically block some noise, and some of them have noise-cancellation to block more background droning. Earbuds encourage people to turn the volume loud to hear it over the noise, and that causes ear damage.

    3. I think it has a lot to do with their being low-floor. Doing that significantly reduced shock travel, which in concert with our beat-ass urban streets results in everything rattling continuously.

    4. If you want loud, take the 5, 28 or the E into downtown as it makes the stretch from Wall St to 3rd Ave. Wall street is filled with craters and a lot of drivers don’t slow down in this section, making the ride extremely bumpy and LOUD AF. The quality of Metro operators has noticeably decreased since COVID.

      1. Same with the 40. The rebuilt sections are nice and smooth, but everything else is awful ( particularly that long stretch on Leary where there’s these big protruding manhole covers and the bus hits every one).

        3. Fremont is definitely rebuilt and I don’t know if construction is finished. Westlake Avenue got the FAB (Freight and Transit) lanes earlier I think so there may be nothing to do there.

        4. Fremont rebuild is in-progress. Leary is messed up northbound from Fremont Ave through 1st Ave NW. The only stretch that’s “finished” is 34th & Fremont but it still lacks markings and cones are up.

        5. Thanks. I almost only use the 40 between Northgate and Ballard, so I wasn’t sure why I wasn’t seeing these rebuilt sections. Now it’s clear :)

    5. “Those air brakes are deafening.”

      I only hear a small pfff sound. It tells me there’s a bus or truck nearby (maybe my bus), but it doesn’t sound louder than the cars. The only times I’ve heard really loud air brakes is on very large trucks, and the last time was several years ago.

    6. I have to agree with you, Dave. I just don’t understand why Seattle’s buses are louder than many other cities. In my experience, Vancouver, Portland, San Francisco, and virtually every city I’ve visited have quieter buses. The noise makes the bus rides unpleasant. They make me anxious as a rider. The sounds when the bus kneels are particularly bad—both loud and sudden. Unfortunately, noise canceling headphones don’t always help with these sudden noises, and the noise is too loud for foam ear plugs to help.

      1. “I just don’t understand why Seattle’s buses are louder than many other cities.” That’s not true.

        1. I think they are louder in Seattle. Someone needs to test this with a decibel meter.

    1. Great to hear! The line crews were out on Monday and Tuesday completing the overhead work at 13th Avenue. According to Pantograph it’s vehicle 4395. I hope the testing goes well.

    2. A friend of mine showed me a picture of an XDE60 running a 13 and since the 13 is basically the 2… I can’t imagine that 60 footer crawling through those Madrona streets!

      1. That is very strange. I would imagine during march day there is a shortage of 60-ft.

    3. Is the route 12 gap wire being closed as part of this overhead work in the immediate area?

      2. It’s being installed but it won’t be finished for a couple years. The 2 and 49 are getting done first.

        1. The intended 12 overhead would degrade the network ; it would be better to have routes 10 and 12 serve Capitol Hill station via East John Street; Route 12 would only need switches at 19th Avenue East. Route 12 need not compete with the G line.

        2. How much does 1 1/4 blocks of wire cost? True this probably isnt the optimal permanent route but wouldn’t hurt to connect this short stretch for network connectivity even desdheading. Isn’t it deadheading why they are stringing the Madison wire?

        3. “Isn’t it deadheading why they are stringing the Madison wire?”

          It’s to restore trolleybus service on the 2. It travels on Madison for one block each direction in a bow tie due to the street configuration of the Madison-12th-Union intersection. The wire had to be removed for RapidRide G construction, and now Metro is restoring it.

        4. Mike, didn’t they string more Madison wire beyond just the 2 bowtie to connect to the Broadway wire and the existing Madison wire that currently ends at 16th?

        6. Yes, there is wire between Broadway and 11th Avenue that will only be used by trolleys when they are heading to/from base, unless Metro has plans for some new trolley route configuration. The connection to the Broadway wire hasn’t been completed yet, so the 2 is using another route to/from base.

          Regarding the 12, whether or not the missing 1.5 blocks of wire should be restored is a good question. On STB, I’ve seen proposals to (a) re-route the 12 onto the 10 pathway to Kaiser and then install a switch at 19th to Interlaken Park, (b) return the 10 and 12 to Olive and John, (c) eliminate the 12 completely. My opinion is that (a) is the most intriguing.

        7. The 1.5 block gap in the new 12 route (between 15th & Pine and 16th & Madison) is not “missing” or “restorable”; it’s a brand-new trolley segment. There was never wire there because there was never a Pine-Madison bus route until the 12 moved there in the RapidRide G restructure.

          I’ll put the history of the 2 and 12 restructures in a new thread.

  5. Link seems to be running every 6 minutes all day. I saw 3-minute intervals in the shared segment twice midday.

    1. I think 6-minute service all day is part of ST’s boosted service for World Cup games.

    2. Yup, I think it’s every tenth of an hour until at least 1 am. I haven’t seen big crowds like people pushing to get into the train and the train being a personal space invader but… Hey! It looks like the 2 Line’s extra service is keeping those trains healthy and not overstuffed.

    3. The Westlake mezzanine had rows of crowd-control poles throughout the middle of the mezzanine. There was no crowd then and I wasn’t sure there would be a crowd, but ST was prepared for it.

      1. Yes, they set up stanchions during events so they can create orderly queues for boarding and making space for passengers to deboard.

    4. So, can the turnaround at Lynnwood handle the combined three minute headway? Clear trains, move to tail track, move to southbound platform, change operator? There are two tail tracks? If so, great.

    5. Today it seemed to be at 4 minutes at 4 pm for 1/2 combined lines. It may be that there are some 3 minute intervals for short periods because MLK can be slightly irregular with all the stoplights.

  6. I’m planning to make a video on how to build a Rainier Valley bypass line correctly. Since the proposal is too long to be explained in a reply and I don’t want to write an article on it can it be considered a future Sunday movie once I upload it?

    2. Route it via SR509 and then possibly through 1st Ave S? A second stadium station at 1st & Royal B would be heaven.

    3. “Correctly”? There’s no :”correct” way to build a transit line, only one best optimized for a specific set of preferences among several.

  7. Two days before Golden Garden Direct opening and there is still no GTFS update from Metro.

  8. Public Transit Is Not “Coming Back” … It’s Doing Something Better (Human Transit)

    Commuters are transit riders too. Perhaps one of the most useful ridership you can get as they contribute the most to pollution and traffic. So it’s not “better” because you’re forgetting about commuters.

    The focus on just “low income” and all day riders is fine, but a good transit system will win:

    Commuters to both work and school (school is an underrated market)
    Tourist destinations
    Airport travel
    Event travel (sports, concerts, etc.)

    The above cause some of the largest traffic bottlenecks which we can ease with adequate transit coverage.

    1. Commuters who only ride transit to work are more expensive to serve well, especially in suburban areas. And historically, the US has greatly overemphasized the transit to work service (typically for traffic alleviation purposes) at the expense of general utility transit for everyone who doesn’t work in a CBD. Transit requires a large base of people who use it, as it’s funded by tax dollars. Focusing too narrowly on one group (commuters) over another is bad because it erodes potential public support and is often only mildly successful.

      1. It has to start from somewhere. Attracting people to take bus to work is where they start because it is relatively easier.
        There is no other trip like work trip which consistently require people travel during worst time of day and stay at one place for 6-8 hours that it would cost them quite a bit for parking. So although it is expensive trip to serve, it has better capture rate than other type of trip.

        Some non-commute trip might be cheaper to serve by transit, but they just couldn’t make people take transit, so it costs money for nothing.

        1. Yes, it’s good to serve work locations. But I think peak hour only service is generally bad, since it likely means that work is the only trip someone can take. Maybe that’s better than nothing in terms of creating a political base of transit riders who will vote to fund service, but it’s also expensive and means less service elsewhere. And I think that “transit as a means to get to work but nothing else” is a cultural norm we need to be wary of. US transit agencies have tried over and over again to do this, but it hasn’t really been successful. The places where the most people commute by transit are also the places where transit is most conveniently integrated as a way to serve most trips.

          There’s some balance to be had, but I think there’s good reason to believe we have focused way too much on the downtown commuter, and that is generally not a good thing.

      2. In some Canadian cities, buses go through every single family homes neighborhood and random stroads. Their light rail actually looks fast.

        It’s not an excuse at all.

        2. Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa have higher transit ridership and mode share than comparable American cities. It’s because they have more comprehensive bus service running more frequently in neighborhoods and suburbs, better metro and light rail alignments, better suburban feeders to outer metro stations, and better BRT lines with more lane priority.

          Examples: Vancouver Skytrain, city buses, suburban buses and feeders, and Surrey BRT. Calgary light rail. Ottawa BRT. Toronto subway and grid bus routes. Montreal metro and RER.

          I don’t know about “going to every single family home and random stroads even at midnight”. What does that mean? Which cities and which routes? There certainly aren’t buses to every single-family house. The routes aren’t located at random but strategic. Toronto’s 24-hour bus network is one of the city’s assets.

          I was in Toronto around 2000, staying at somebody’s house on West Queen Street. Somebody was with us from North York and stayed until late in the night. When he left I asked, “Will you be able to get back hoome?” He said there’s a 24 hour Bathurst bus and took it.

        3. That isn’t even what I’m talking about though. I’m saying the US has overprovided peak-only commute service to CBDs in the past. Canada is a different place, but you could see it’s better grid-like coverage of the suburbs as indicative of this, as they spend relatively less on peak-only CBD commute services.

          Also “their light rail actually looks fast” is funny to me, since they just built a really slow crosstown light rail in Toronto.

        4. “It’s not an excuse at all.”

          Of course it is not, but you do realize every city in other countries with great transit like Toronto has very different funding structure, right?
          I don’t think Seattle prioritizing the wrong thing is the reason why we have the service we have today. There is simply not enough to run the kind of transit Vancouver and Toronto have.

    2. Walker’s perspective is interesting, and I think STB articles will take it more into account and explore its ramifications. If we take the 2020-2022 change as a societal reset not reflecting on transit, and take 2022 as a new baseline to compare against, then transit ridership and expansion is a roaring success.

      2022 was the end of minimum ridership and maximum office closures. A driver shorted emerged in the recovery, so many runs were canceled without notice, and Metro eventually suspended more runs to bring service commitment down to actual driver availability. I’d say that contraction effectively happened in 2022 even if it didn’t formally happen until later, because the cancellations were de facto lost service.

      Since then, the driver shortage has been gradually reduced and Metro has been able to add service hours in each service change. The RapidRide G restructure was going to be even more draconian on the 10 and 12, but in the end it was bad but not as bad as that. Metro anticipates the driver shortage will be eliminated by next fall and it will restore its full set of service hours then.

      Ridership has been increasing from 2022 levels, and it continues increasing each year. Evidence is the massive popularity of RapidRide G, Link’s and Metro’s stellar spikes during the World Cup, Crosslake and Federal Way Link being higher than expected, and a widespread general increase on RapidRide and other routes.

      Ridership has drifted away somewhat from peak-hour use to midday, evening, and weekend, and Metro has shifted hours in response, and that has made transit more usable during those periods (more like peak-hour usable), and that has increased ridership as expected.

      Several openings occurred in 2024-2026: Downtown Redmond, RapidRide G, Federal Way, and Crosslake. These were all planned and funded before 2020, and expected to open earlier. So I’d count their ridership increase as partly a result of pre-2020 plans and partly of post-2022 trends.

    3. “Commuters are transit riders too.”

      The agencies aren’t throwing away commuters. The shift in hours follows how passengers are voting with their feet. The era of 200 people at each downtown bus stops at 5pm vanished in 2020, so you don’t need 4-8 aggregate extra bus runs for them. Instead you see more off-peak levels at 5pm, and at most, buses that are half-full off-peak are full peak.

      Metro plans to keep the 218 peak-only express, which exists only to alleviate crowding. That indicates there are a lot of peak riders in Issaquah, and Metro is continuing to serve them, not throwing them away.

      In any route change there are always particular winners and losers on a few routes. You seem to be focusing on the losers, and projecting that out to all commuters, and saying all commuters have worse transit options or no transit anymore, when in fact it’s a small minority of commuters.

      And if my prediction is correct, the suspended hours (which are mostly peak-only routes or extra peak runs), when they’re restored, some of them will be assigned back to the peak routes they used to be. So I suspect the 15 will be restored, because both the D and 15 are reported to be full and crowded peak hours. Some other routes/runs like in Renton might be restored too. But not all of the hours that previously went to peak routes/runs. I don’t know enough about specific peak routes/runs to say which ones would be most full or needed.

    4. Jarrett Walker says “Low ridership doesn’t mean failure.” Time to bring back the route 246!

    5. So it’s not “better” because you’re forgetting about commuters.

      Did you read the same article? Agencies aren’t “forgetting” about commuters. The commuters to dense downtowns just aren’t going into the office anymore (as often as they used to). Meanwhile, new riders are taking the bus outside peak hours instead of driving.

      Your list of riders a good transit system will “win” appears to be really self-centered as the trips reasons you, personally, would consider taking via transit. Which, yes, a good transit system will serve those trips too, but only in course of serving dense areas because those happen to include those destinations.

    6. There is an overarching challenge: US demographics itself. The history of our country is completely linked to phenomenal population growth since the Colonial Era (and especially the last 80 years) and this is now going to be subsiding. The US population is structurally no longer going to add several millions every year.

      This has enormous ramifications to our land use pattens and transportation systems as expansion will no longer generally be needed. Along with this, a small but growing percentage of workers can now work at home — returning some commutes to a time before the Industrial Revolution when humans were agrarians or performed trades in a home workshop. And per capita miles of travel in the US is no longer growing either.

      Getting commute transit ridership to grow is going to be increasingly difficult because of these things. It’s a reason why I see transit’s future is more to serving demand all day and into the evening with targeted high-frequency corridors instead of low-frequency route coverage spread thinly. Different last-mile strategies that don’t involve paid drivers — like scooters, shared bicycles, automated shuttles and taxis and arguably EVs — will likely grow in use to replace them.

      It’s really tough to get higher transit ridership with these fundamentals going against travel in general.

      1. @Al S

        This is a common anti-growth talking point. The idea that we will stop growing because the US will stop growing has been repeated over and over on this board and it is simply not true. We obviously cannot guarantee continued growth in the Puget Sound region, but we have consistently grown faster than the United States as a whole, and I really don’t see any reason why we would expect that to stop.

        This is not a unique scenario. Tokyo continues to grow while Japan’s population shrinks. Shanghai continues to grow while China’s population shrinks. Vancouver has a much higher growth rate than Canada as a whole.

        1. Our region’s growth has already eased from roughly 40-50K a year long-term between 1980 and 2020 to 30K a year since 2020. While Seattle City continues to show marked growth, many suburbs quit growing already. Here’s a census map with the estimated population changes since 2020 by jurisdiction:

          https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/stories/2026/05/major-city-outer-edge-growth/figure-4-major-city-outer-edge-growth.jpg

          Certainly our metro area has enjoyed the benefits of marked growth since statehood in the late 1800’s. But it’s going to someday slow down. It happens with any metro area eventually. And I’m not saying that it will actually decline. It just saying that it won’t be as pronounced in percentage terms and probably not in absolute numerical terms like it has been during our lifetimes.

          China still has marked rural to urban migration but the rural density near Shanghai is much greater than the Pacific Northwest. Tokyo’s migration is also expected to subside — and their #2 metro (Osaka) has a flat population of about 19M. Canada actively promotes immigrants as 42% of metro Vancouver residents are estimated to be foreign born (with Seattle metro estimated at 22%). These are particular but not universal circumstances. Meanwhile many metro areas in the US have seen much slower growth or actual decline during this decade including our biggest three (NYC, LA, Chicago).

        2. And yet Seattle as well as many, many other metro areas in the US are seeing growth rates far above the US as a whole. I don’t see the trend toward urbanization slowing down.

          My point is that it is just not accurate at all to say that we need to plan for less growth because the growth of US as a whole is slowing down. Housing costs continue to rise with the demand to live in our region, and Seattle is continuing to grow at or above 2% annually. In fact I think it would be hard to argue that our land use patterns are anywhere near where they need to be, considering that our housing prices are some of the highest in the nation, even when adjusting for income.

        3. jd where will they work, these inflowers you so confidently prognosticate? Might they not move to Austin or Phoenix? Perhaps to HotLanta?

          I think you’re right about the trend toward urbanization. That’s not quitting.

          But the tech companies who have driven Puget Sound’s meteoric rise are about to be subsumed into the AI Oligopoly or smashed by it.

          Now Puget Sound’s “Ace in the Hole” is clearly Climate Change. Austin will likely be literal toast in twenty years. Ditto EvenHotterLanta. But the Red Corporations that have migrated there won’t come willingly to The Soviet of Washington.

        4. “many metro areas in the US have seen much slower growth or actual decline during this decade including our biggest three (NYC, LA, Chicago).”

          Chicago’s north side is growing and its south side is shrinking. The north side is growing because it’s a convenient walkable urban area in a much larger city with more job and activity prospects than Seattle. The south side is shrinking because the long-term neglect and violence is still there and makes it an intolerable place to live for many residents or would-have-been residents.

        5. The difference between Seattle vs. Tokyo is when they need to build new housing, they build new housing. I suspect the same is true of Shanghai.

          Seattle and the region has been suppressing housing development for 60 years, and that caught up to us 20 years ago, spiking housing costs and severely limiting how much Seattle could even grow. We have recently made baby-steps towards reluctantly allowing some new housing, but not nearly enough for the demand.

          Growth may now be subsiding, but the biggest reason for that is it’s a really expensive place to live. If we fixed that, in part by unzoning the city and region, I strongly suspect growth would continue very strongly for many decades to come, even after we hit peak-human globally in the 2050s or 2060s.

        6. “Seattle and the region has been suppressing housing development for 60 years, and that caught up to us 20 years ago, spiking housing costs”

          What specifically happened is that Seattle’s population peaked in the early 1960s at 550K. Then with the suburban siren song, white flight, and desegregational school busing, people moved to the suburbs and Seattle’s population fell to 420K in the 1970s. So the vacancy rate was high and housing was cheap for those who did want to live in the city. Zoning tightened in the 1950s and again in the 1970s, banning missing-middle housing and corner stores in most of the city (the single-family areas). Since there was slack in the market, it didn’t raise prices or location choice much; it just meant that fewer people could live within easy walking distance of neighborhood centers and bus routes.

          I moved out on my own in 1989, after spending 4 years in the UW dorms. Seattle’s population was rising again but still below its previous peak, so there was still slack in the market. 2 BRs on NE 55th street (upper U-District) were $450. I found a bargain 3 BR unit at that price and shared it with 2 people. That meant a person on minimum wage could afford that situation.

          Prices rose modestly after that, and by 2010 there were still $700 1 BRs and $120K condos in walkable urban neighborhoods near good transit (“good” relative to Pugetopolis).

          Seattle reached it previous 550K peak again in the early 2000s and continued to grow.

          In 2012 the last of the slack was finally squeezed out of the market, and the vacancy rate went below 5%. The lowest rents in the most run-down apartments jumped in one step from $700 to over $1000, forcing people living in them to move to the suburbs or do something else. Typical rents in the $1000-1200 range and other levels rose 40% over 3-4 years. They remained rising around 10% per year until the 2020 pandemic, even though inflation was rising 2% or less.

          After the pandemic, rents have been relatively flat in Seattle, especially in the neighborhoods that had risen the most in the 2010s, but they’ve been rising faster in the suburbs that started from a lower base.

        7. Yeah, that tracks.

          And now we are just coming over the crest of a pretty big multi housing development boom, that raised vacancies a bit and flattened rent increases.

          But high interest rates and high prices for material and labor have stunted permitting and near-term development in this still very constrained market for buildable land.

          So we will likely consume the available units pretty quickly and then have another supply crunch, accompanied by further rising rents and housing values.

      2. We still need expansion to catch up to a comprehensive level of transit; i.e., to make up for all the expansion we didn’t do for the past eighty years during the rapid growth.

        Pugetopolis population growth will continue at maybe a smaller 2000s rate until a theoretical time that migration and immigration to Pugetopolis stops. It may continue for longer than we think, because people have underestimated it repeatedly since 2012. Also, a commentator said that the current growth rate is as fast as the heady 2010s rate.

      3. Canada seems to do it just fine. You guys just want more service in your neighborhood. Why can’t Seattleites deal with 15 min service (and want to boost it) but they want the rest of us to have zero service or 45+ min frequency only during peak?

        1. South King Resident, I want you to answer your own question. But pretend that you are a Seattle urbanist. What do you think their answer would be as to why you are less deserving of good transit?

        2. Vancouver has regionwide transit planning and implementation by TransLink, and has full government and public support for transit including adequate taxation, and it doesn’t let nimby/parochial neighborhoods or burbs hinder the transit network or make it do insane things in their borders. Pugetopolis lacks all of these, and is why we have such a fragmented and inadequate transit network.

          “they want the rest of us to have zero service or 45+ min frequency only during peak?”

          You think Seattlites want people outside Seattle to have no transit or 45+ minute frequency? That’s a strawman caricture of a sadist, not real Seattlites. Seattlites want to have good transit, and they want everyone else to have good transit too. The reason they don’t is voters and politicians outside Seattle. That’s not Seattlites’ fault.

          The county as a whole voted down the lasrt countywide Metro expansion measure, with the biggest No in south King County, saying they’re poor and can’t afford more transit taxes. Part of what’s making them poor is the need to own a car and use it for almost every trip. They voted against the transit that could alleviate it. The county has talked since 2016 about offering a Metro Connects levy to fulfill the long-range plan, but it still hasn’t happened. In its absence, Seattleites stepped up with the Seattle Transit Measure. The other cities could have done the same but didn’t. So it’s their fault. It’s not Seattlites who are preventing it or taking hours from them.

        3. “Part of what’s making them poor is the need to own a car and use it for almost every trip. They voted against the transit that could alleviate it.”

          The problem is, because every street, home, every business is designed from the ground up around the assumption that every person owns a car, and trip is a car trip, getting transit good enough to alleviate this is simply not possible at reasonable cost. Extra money can definitely make a difference for some people, but for the masses of people in South King, transit will still take too long, no matter how much money they throw at it, which means, they have to continue to drive their car everywhere, which means all the money they spend running their car and paying for other living expenses leaves very little left to pay taxes to fund transit.

          Seattle is different because the environment and streetscape are much better for transit to operate, so the amount of investment in transit needed to make a meaningful difference in diving rates or car ownership rates is much less than in South King.

          To be clear, I would like to see a county-wide transit measure. But, if it passes, it’s going to come from “yes” votes in Seattle overcoming “no” votes in South King, with East King more evenly split (since the people are wealthier, a higher sales tax is an easier sell, even for people who will never ride transit). I don’t see any universe where south king votes “yes”.

        4. Note that Dow led the area to shift its legislative ask to ST3 authorization from Metro local option, that had been the ask since 2009. ST3 Link does not improve local transit service in South King County.

        5. Jack, you are exactly correct. South KC gets essentially nothing in ST3, now that the parking garanges and “hourly Sounder” are “postponed” [i.e. “eighty-sixed”].

        6. Sounds like something south King County has in common with the rest of the ST region.

        7. ” South KC gets essentially nothing in ST3″

          It got KDM-Federal Way Link, and will get Federal Way-South Federal Way Link, and Stride S1. The Link extensions are what it insisted was its most important priority. And Stride was its second priority. So South King is getting its top two priorities, as defined by its ST board delegation and mayors and city councils.

        8. My complaint is about the shift of hours using the current funds. Obviously we can fund it more.

          But why is Metro taking away funds previously directed to certain areas and closing bus stops to boost frequency in other places? That is wrong .

          They’re still collecting taxes even if people voted No. So they should fulfill on what they’re collecting taxes for.

        9. It’s not always just Seattle either. Even within a subarea, they’re redistributing service. They’re closing bus stops to boost frequency along other routes.

          Sure those routes may get more ridership, but a significant portion of their trips don’t pull much ridership (buses are almost always empty). By reducing frequency for those routes in off hours, they can redirect those hours back to peak only trips serving more area.

        10. Mike, yes you’re right. Link was supposed to be truncated to Kent-Des Moines after ST2.

        11. “Link was supposed to be truncated to Kent-Des Moines after ST2.”

          ST2 originally went to Star Lake because Federal Way couldn’t fit into the tri-county tax rate compromise. Then in the 2008 crash, South King sales tax revenue plummeted, so Link was truncated to Angle Lake. Later in the 2010s recovery it was re-extended to KDM. ST3 funded the rest to Federal Way.

        12. “But why is Metro taking away funds previously directed to certain areas and closing bus stops to boost frequency in other places?”

          Where is Metro closing bus stops? To fund what frequency boost where? We have to look at particular corridors to tell whether it’s reasonable or not. Sometimes there are two infrequent routes a few blocks apart: it serves more people better to have one frequent route on one street.

        13. I honestly don’t even see what South King Resident is talking about, unless they can point to examples about South King bus service getting shafted then I can’t see the argument holding water. Also South King is getting stuff in ST3, so the take “we’re getting nothing” doesn’t hold water either.

        14. I never singled out South King. This is happening in every subarea. South King possibly is having the least impact. But the service was always subpar east of the SR 167 where most of the people actually live. The only route of value there is the 160 (at least soon to be RR), then a huge desert of no E-W and N-S service in the eastern part of Kent towards Maple Valley north of the 168.

        15. My humble observations:

          The big drains on South King ST budgets are Sounder South and Link between Rainier Beach to South Federal Way. They impact both capital and operations funds. The fundamental dilemma with both services are that their primary objective is to serve Downtown Seattle ( SeaTac Airport is a secondary destination objective), with Sounder only doing that well for commuters. It does little to connect South King residents to South King destinations. Stride 1 is someday in there too — and yet it will not connect to Sounder or ST Express or Route 150 in South King as currently designed.

          It’s a microcosm of letting car-driving elected officials draw lines on a map but not analyze those lines strategically. The result is a pretty map for a referendum but not a service that is a day-long trunk for residents east of I-5..

          Then KCM is charged with filling the remaining transit service needs. They do what they can, but they don’t have the resources of ST.

          Along with that, the lower-density, lower-median-income nature of South King means that transit travel needs are much greater than just getting to and from an office job in Downtown Seattle.

          All of this creates a sense of poor transit service within South King. Because the issues are multi-layered, a single transit service solution does not exist. That said, the cities need to develop a subarea transit system vision with both ST and KCM both participating. Each transit project currently seems to be developed singularly rather than systemically — as if it was like building a highway. A consensus transit vision would help the entire area to create a better transit network that would be more useful than the current piecemeal approach does.

        16. Here is a link to recent transit planning efforts in the San Gabriel Valley (eastern LA County), which has lots of similarities to South King:

          https://www.sgvcog.org/sgvforward

          This kind of coordinated effort — led by a subarea organization called their Council of Governments that South King does not have — would help to clarify where needs actually are. Note that the maps and visions do not obsess about city limits or transit operator.

        17. Shame a Link line branching off to Southcenter, Renton, Kent has never been seriously looked at. But I recall the Renton mayor said no to Link to Renton years ago. We are living in the bed made two decades ago, like many Link routing decisions.

        18. poncho, I just a search of your statement. I asked “did the city of renton ever say that renton didn’t want link light rail?”

          Answer: “Yes, Renton city leadership has confirmed that the city previously opposed it. Mayor Armondo Pavone became the first mayor in Renton’s history to state that previous city officials actively denied light rail in the past to preserve a “small-town feel”. Decades ago, early Sound Transit long-range visions included light rail options through Renton. However, the city council and mayor at the time opposed them out of fear of increased taxes, high density, and local displacement. Because of this historical opposition, Renton was left off the regional light-rail network. Instead, Sound Transit and the city are building the new Renton Transit Center, which will feature Stride Bus Rapid Transit opening by 2028.”

          I routinely see Kemper Freeman being demonized for opposing light rail to Bellevue, but never see the past Renton Mayor and City Council being demonized for opposing light rail to Renton.

        19. Sam, you cannot trust everything the AI says. In fact, you shouldn’t trust anything a chatbot says. This is a strong example because there doesn’t seem to be any support for Mayor Pavone’s recent assertion that previous Renton representatives spurned light rail.

          Basic, “old-school” internet searching reveals a blog kept by former Renton City Councilmember Randy Corman, who argues that every Renton mayor since the mid 1990s has pushed for high capacity transit: https://www.randycorman.com/?p=29727

          You never see former Renton representatives being blamed for denying light rail because it didn’t happen. At least, if it did (which appears to be highly unlikely), it was nowhere near as public as Kemper Freeman’s advocacy.

        20. Or, you could just ask me !

          “But I recall the Renton mayor said no to Link to Renton years ago. We are living in the bed made two decades ago, like many Link routing decisions.”

          Since “two decades ago” was mentioned, I figured it was time for me to chime in.

          The I-405 Corridor Program’s Master Plan end points were from Lynnwood to Tukwila (essentially the I-405 footprint).

          Renton didn’t object to light rail in the corridor, they (Jesse Tanner was mayor back then) objected to the ERC being used for any transit.

          Light Rail throughout the corridor used $4+ Billion as the cost.
          When compared to “BRT” at roughly $1.2 Billion, light rail didn’t achieve the cost benefit ratio needed for the time frame (20 years of operation).
          They were using the same ridership modeling, so it was the cost of light rail (think Lynnwood Link style infrastructure) that sunk that option.

          What came close in cost/ridership modeling was Commuter Rail in the ERC.

          That’s why I harp about the politics being the driver of decisions.

          The rest is basically inertia.

  9. “Jarrett Walker says “Low ridership doesn’t mean failure.” Time to bring back the route 246!”

    What was route 246? We’d have to examine the particular corridor to determine how much potential it has or how necessary it is. Also, it depends on whether it was a peak express or an all-day route. Those are different beasts.

    Jarrett recommends primarily an all-day network. That more directly reflects total demand; i.e., all trips for every purpose.

    Peak expresses have some similarities with coverage routes. They’re usually longer than all-day routes, to bypass the nearest transfer hub in favor of a distant larger hub (downtown Seattle, downtown Bellevue, UW). That may be because the local alternative and transfers are deemed to take too long. Or peak expresses may be to alleviate crowding, or an A/B stop pattern (where the local route is “A” and variations are “B”, etc): if entire busfuls are going to both A and B stops peak hours, then it may make sense to have different buses have different stop patterns, as in the D and 15. Extra peak service is expensive to provide, because it requires split-shift workers or part-time workers, and going to the base four times a day rather than two. Unidirectional peak expresses are even more expensive because the reverse direction is deadheading. One long unidirectional express run like Federal Way to downtown may fill up more than half of a split shift, so the time to/from the base is distributed to only one run. So agencies need to scrutinize extra peak service more closely than all-day service to ensure it’s worth the expense.

    Agencies also have a tendency to serve peak trips well but not fully address off-peak trips, so that’s latent transit demand that’s thrown away. Shifting hours to all-day service helps bring demand and availability more into balance. Three quarters of people’s trips are non-work trips. Transit is less available for those trips, so people don’t use it for them, and this they need cars/taxis for at least those trips. That’s something we’re trying to correct by making it easier to do all one’s trips on transit, so that people can downsize their number of cars.

    1. Shifting service hours from peak to all-day is generally a good thing, so long as it can be done without causing overcrowding during peak.

      One reason why, with Jarrett has talked about, is that peak-only service tends to be particularly expensive to operate. It requires buying an extra bus and hiring an extra driver, and enlarging the base to park that extra bus, just to do one or two round trips per day. Labor-wise, a 4-5 hour gap between a driver’s last AM trip and first PM trip tends to be expensive, and often requires the agency to pay the driver to spend at least an hour or two sitting around, doing nothing. Peak-only routes typically require the bus to drive more miles each day deadheading than actually carrying passengers. And, traffic makes the passenger runs the bus does make time-consuming.

      In many cases, this phenomenon is so big that an all-day bus route where each trip is only half full can actually operate at a lower cost per boarding than a peak-only route where every trip is completely full.

  10. Link’s first known outage during the World Cup.

    “1 Line trains are arriving every 12-15 minutes due to a fallen tree on the overhead contact wires.”

    That sounds like single-tracking, and only Stadium on south are affected.

    1. And now a track blockage near Rainier Beach station, if that’s not the same incident.

  11. The saga of route 2 and 12 restructuring is a long one. Since I started riding in 1979, the 2 hasn’t changed. The 12 kept its Madison-19th path until it moved to Pine-Madison-19th in 2024, although under a different number and with changing through-routing downtown. In the 80s it was part of the 13 (Seattle Pacific, Queen Anne Ave, 3rd Ave, Madison St, 19th Ave to Interlaken Park). In the 90s or 00s the 13 was split, and the southern half got a new number 12. (The last route 12 was before my time and an unrelated route.) For some years the 10 and 12 were through-routed at 1st Avenue (an extension of both from 3rd to 1st). After that ended, I don’t know if the 12 was paired with another route; I doubt it.

    In the RapidRide C/D restructure, E restructure, 2014 cuts, and U-Link restructure (all between 2012-2016), Metro tried repeatedly to split the 2 but failed. It also tried repeatedly to delete the 12 and restructure Madison St service but failed too. At the public hearings, splitting the 2 got the largest opposition I’d ever seen of any Metro route change. Deleting the 12 got the second-largest opposition. So Metro withdrew the proposals, and this had cascading effects of withdrawing change proposals on other routes too (3, 4, 5, 26, 28).

    Some opponents of splitting the 2 said everything they went to was on the 2, and transferring downtown to get to Queen Anne or Seattle Center would be unsafe.

    RapidRide G planning was underway by then, and there was disagreement on whether it should remain on Madison (1st to 23rd or beyond, SDOT’s preference) or be a Broadway-Madison route (Metro’s preference). Since SDOT was paying for it, it was SDOT’s decision. Either of these alternatives would replace the 12. In the 2014 and 2016 restructures, Metro proposed anticipating the G by restructuring Madison service, and thus the 11 and 12. It suggested an all-Madison route from 1st to Madison Park. All of this would have eliminated service on 19th Ave E. That’s where the opposition came from. In the end Metro kept the 12 unchanged.

    In Metro’s long-range vision in 2016 for the ST2/3 eras (Metro Connects), it had to address a post-RapidRide G future. The 2 and 12 were within two blocks of the future G. Metro suggested moving the 2 to Pine-12th-Union. I think the 12 was deleted and 19th Ave service eliminated. There wasn’t in-person hearings on these because they weren’t concrete restructures, just preliminary concepts, so I couldn’t determine how much opposition they got. But some people said Virginia Mason needed a Seneca Street bus stop for mobility-challenged patients, which only the 2 could provide. (Some people can’t walk more than two blocks to a bus stop, but that’s not enough to qualify for Access.) Metro Connects also suggested turning the 49 into a Broadway north-south route (U-District to Beacon Hill), and extending the 106 to Boren Ave and SLU.

    When the RapidRide G restructure came around in 2024, Metro defined its scope narrowly. Only changes to routes 3, 10, 11, and 12 would be considered. Not the 2, 49, or 106. The 12 was moved to Pine-Madison-19th. So that seems to be to assuage opponents of the previous 2 and 12 proposals: the 12 kept 19th service but moved away from Madison, while the 2 kept its Virginia Mason stop and through route (2N-2S, which are different routes internally to Metro).

    When the 12 change went through, there was a 1.5 block gap in trolley wire between 15th & Pine and 16th & Madison that had never had a bus route. Metro said it would fill in the gap but it would take several years, so in the meantime the 12 is dieselized.

    After that as we continued to discuss the disappointing Capitol Hill restructure, RossB suggested moving the 12 to Pine-15th-Thomas-19th. Thus it would follow the 10 to 15th & Thomas, so that Kaiser Permanente would have 10-minute combined frequency at a bus stop. (Currently people have to choose between the 10 and 11 at different bus stops, each 20-minute frequency.)

    I have argued that the most important east-west corridor is Pine-Madison, which was the 11’s route until 2024. The current 12 preserves at least part of it, and gives access from the Pike-Pine area to Trader Joe’s, an important grocery destination. This should have been the RapidRide corridor originally, or the primary one with a second shorter one on Madison. But Metro has never acknowledged either this or Ross’s suggestion.

    1. The 40-foot trolley network could be re-designed for greater efficiency. The most glaring issue on the north end is the abundance of service hours dedicated to Kinnear Park service (15-minute headways on Route 1) versus 30-minute headways on Route 13. I’m not in Seattle currently and can’t quote the specific numbers, but the ridership numbers on routes 1 and 13 between Lower Queen Anne and their northern terminals are shocking. The 13 with 30-minute headways generates vastly more riders than the 1 at 15-minute headways.

      There are inefficiencies on the south end network too. Why does the 4 come so close–but still so far–to Mt. Baker? And why does the 14 keep its loop-de-loop routing in Mt. Baker? A smaller, Trailhead Direct-type coach could connect both of those loops with Mt. Baker Station and Judkins Park Station. I suspect there isn’t enough capacity at MBS to layover 2 more routes, but connectivity really suffers. Someday Metro and ST are going to have to address the inefficiency of the Mt. Baker TC.

      1. It should be obvious that the 13 that goes through the center of the entire Queen Anne village should be the most frequent route, but it has long been an afterthought. The reason the 13 is half-hourly is the 2 overlaps part of it and reaches the south end of the upper Queen Anne village. The 1 is paired with the 14, which has all the Jackson Street ridership, and apparently 31st Ave S has more riders than 10th Ave W, and Jackson is an equity area, so the 14 is boosted for that and Kinnear gets the indirect benefit of it.

        1. There’s plenty of unused real estate behind (west) of Mt. Baker Station that could potentially create an effective layover space for routes that terminate at MBS. and would force fewer riders to cross Rainier Avenue to access Link.

          My suggestions: (a) The 8 doesn’t have sufficient ridership along MLK to justify 12-minute headways. It also duplicates much of the 48. Create a new route path for the 8 from 19th & Thomas > 19th & Union > MLK & Union > new terminal at Garfield HS/21st & James. This would work well with RossB’s modification of the 12. Use the saved service hours to shorten headways on the 48 or increase service on the 11.
          (b) Extend the 4 to the MBTC with 15-minute headways without the Lighthouse loop. Drop the 14 Mt. Baker legacy loop. Replace both loops with the Trailhead Direct-sized coach on the routing I suggested earlier.

        2. Transit management froze part of the 2012 process, leaving most of QA and Magnolia in amber. Most of the Seattle network should be reset.

        3. “Transit management froze part of the 2012 process, leaving most of QA and Magnolia in amber.”

          What does this mean? Is this what I perceived as withdrawing the 2 and 12 proposals, which cascaded to the 3, 4, 5, 11, 12, 17, 26, and 28? That wasn’t just the restructure team backing down in the face of public opposition to changing the 2 or 12 in East Seatte, but a directive from the top not to change anything, especially in Queen Anne and Magnolia? (And which proposals affected Magnolia? None that I can see.)

      2. The trolley network is a mess. I see so much apathy in the way Metro deals with it. Taking over 10 years to study whether the 48 can go off-wire for 2 miles using batteries with over 20 miles of range. Running the entire route 2 with diesel buses for years due wire gap of a few blocks that should be easily coverable with batteries. Running nearly every trolley route, systemwide, with diesel buses every weekend, for no obvious reason. Refusal to ever consider extending a trolley route to new areas, let alone create a new trolley route. I also find it very ironic that using diesel buses on a trolley for years, over a few blocks of construction, is perfectly fine, yet doing so to allow for a route restructure that makes a more efficient network, is not ok. In an ideal world, for example, the 13 should be extended at least over the Fremont Bridge, yet it doesn’t, and never will, because the #13 is a trolley.

        1. “for example, the 13 should be extended at least over the Fremont Bridge”

          I think a foot bridge near SPU can be equally beneficial. Regardless, they need more ways to cross ship canal. Fremont Cut has been more disruptive to transportation system than Interstate Highway to this day. It serves very little transportation function while creating a huge bottleneck for the city.

      3. “Someday Metro and ST are going to have to address the inefficiency of the Mt. Baker TC.”

        Yes I agree. The Mt Baker TC is sited in the wrong place in relation to Link and to these routes. It isn’t internally usable for Routes 106 and 7 either.

        The area has been studied numerous times — but the proposed alternatives that keep the TC where it is never make things better.

        I think the decentralized nature of the situation contributes to its lack of a better design to emerge. SDOT, Metro and ST are all stuck in the bureaucratic trenches — including a lack of funds to make profound changes.

        And now both Rainier and MLK lost through traffic lanes in the last few years so midday traffic now backs up several blocks and many of those busy streets have Metro buses running on them. .

        1. I think it’s worth thinking even more out of the box and asking why Mt. Baker Transit Center even needs to exist in the first place. After all, Link doesn’t use it. Routes 7 and 106 don’t use it. The only routes I know of that do use it are route 8, 14, and Trailhead Direct (Issaquah Alps route).

          If the 8 could be restructured to continue onward, rather than end there, it would be able to stay on the street, and would have no reason to use the transit center anymore. The most obvious way to do this would be to split the 8 at Madison Valley, and attach the southern half of the 8 to route 106, discontinuing the section of route 106 between Mt. Baker and downtown (for alternative service, transfer to either route 7, Link 1-line (at Mt. Baker Station), or Link 2-line (at Judkins Park Station)). A splitting of the 8 is also probably a good idea anyway, as it would allow the high-ridership Queen Anne->Capitol Hill segment to get frequency upgrades without the need to run buses all day, every 6-8 minutes on the lower-ridership MLK section.

          Next, the 14. The 14 does a detour to serve Mt. Baker Transit Center before heading east to its tail over on Mt. Rainier drive. One potential option is to just do the detour on the streets and serve bus stops on Rainier. Or, they could take a bolder solution and discontinue the 14’s low-ridership tail altogether and send the bus westward on McClellan, adding some coverage to parts of Beacon Hill, along with some one-seat rides between Beacon Hill and places like 23rd/Jackson they didn’t have before (this would increase the service cost, but the discontinuation of the 106’s downtown section ought to be enough to pay for it).

          That leaves only Trailhead Direct left. Set up a layover zone on Forest St. just north of Mt. Baker Station. Problem solved.

          Instead of focusing on the location of Mt. Baker Transit Center, let’s focus on the bus network. With the right bus network, we should be able to just eliminate the transit center, rather than move it.

        2. Seattle should work with Metro and Sound Transit to figure out how to combine the Mt Baker TC with the Mt Baker Link station. That triangle of land (including the derelict gas station to the northeast and the ARCO) should be a commercial/residential tower.

        3. “Instead of focusing on the location of Mt. Baker Transit Center, let’s focus on the bus network.”

          That’s the need as I see it. A transit center location should be driven by the bus routes and not the other way around.

          Drivers do need places to take breaks, including restroom breaks. Also, Route 48 ends there.

          Metro has long suggested extending Route 27 to the Mt Baker TC as a way to eliminate the Route 14 Hunter Blvd loop. That would be a useful change.

          The easiest fix is to make 26th Ave and Forest St a one-way loop between McClellan and Rainier. Then park layover buses on that loop on 26th. Install a driver restroom next to it. Eliminate the northbound left turn pocket on Rainier to College, eliminating that signal phase. Then the current TC site can become TOD. Buses would have an easier time entering it off of McClellan than they do entering off of MLK today.

    2. I have a feeling they might touch 12 again at some point so that it can better justify a frequent service.

      1. The reason the 12 runs every 20 minutes is not that it can’t justify more, it’s that Metro doesn’t have more hours available without taking it from other routes. If it did have more hours, it would make more routes frequent.

    3. Pine street transit travel speeds have degraded significantly in the last few years. SDOT has installed several stop signs every few hundred feet and there are lots of pedestrians. It may look fast on a map, but it’s a brutally slower slog between I-5 and 12th Ave now compared to just a few years ago.

      Making a street better for pedestrians is great! However it makes things for through bus riders slower.

      Ultimately, the streets in Capitol Hill can’t be everything to every mode. At least Madison is now a deliberate transit street all the way from/to Downtown.

      I still hope that someday there’s a high-frequency route that connects Link at Judkins Park with Broadway or 12th, bypassing the slogs just east of I-5. To make that happen, Metro would need to rethink several routes. But it’s ridiculous to continue to need 20-25 minutes (and taking longer every year) to get to or from 23rd on Routes 2, 3, 4, 27 or 14 from Downtown. Judkins Park and/or Capitol Hill stations should be served by more bus routes that better connect them to First Hill and Capitol Hill rather than expect all the riders to transfer Downtown. That’s especially true for Capitol Hill Link with trains running every 4-5 minutes each way until later in the evening. It just needs curb space for more bus route layovers there in addition to route restructuring.

  12. “To encourage new investment and redevelopment in the Mt Baker Station area, it will be necessary to revisit zoning decisions made in recent decades. High rise buildings are probably not feasible in the station area, with the possible exception of some areas north of South McClellan Street. The current height limits are an obstacle to development for the following reasons. Existing 145-foot limits are not high enough to amortize the cost of concrete construction. At the same time, wood-frame buildings taller than 85 feet are not consistent with the building code and are not economically feasible in much of the area, especially south of South McClellan Street, because of code constraints and foundation design complications in loose soils. Zoning for impractically tall buildings may actually discourage redevelopment because it artificially inflates the cost of land, encouraging owners to hold out for a market that will not materialize. Combined with long-term tenancies, which pose an obstacle to redevelopment of any kind, actual short-to-mid-term development capacity in the Mt. Baker Station area may be lower than expected. For all these reasons, the City should review and revise the zoning envelope for the station area.” — From D M’s link to the 2019 TAP report

    1. The document is both encouraging and discouraging to read. Wow, it’s been recognized since 2019 that the designs of MBS and MBTC have serious problems. And what has changed since 2019 in the station area? Basically nothing, other than the RiteAid closing, Starbucks converting to El Rinconsito, and a few 1+6 buildings.

      I like the ideas for a bus layover area west of MBS and reducing the number of times passengers have to cross Rainier, but the suggestion to turn the existing TC into a small green space seems both trivial and silly. At this point, the renovation of the UW Laundry and adjacent spaces should be a top priority.

    2. The TAP is from the Urban Land Institute. It appears to re-envision a reuse off the transit center site and a general relocation of the buses to run next to the station. It’s not sponsored by transit network planners who must consider how buses operate safely (bus driver site distances , turning radii, boarding locations).

      The current, frustrating limitations that I see are transit vehicle maneuvering/ routing and transferring pedestrians crossing streets in the station area. That’s what needs to be primarily improved — and the report lacks details on how best to do that even though it does move the buses next to the station . Proposing a summary idea to allow for taller buildings or more green space at the TC site is ok — but it isn’t fully addressing these core issues.

      1. While not currently being considered by the “powers that be,” prior blog posters have proposed (even if only in the long term) a light rail line that would go through First Hill and connect at Mount Baker Station. https://seattletransitblog.com/2022/04/09/put-first-hill-back-on-the-table/. One of the arguments for this alignment was that it would present an “opportunity to fix Mt. Baker.” Not sure exactly what that would look like or how it fits with the discussion above, but I know that the location of the transit center across Rainier from the station has been recognized as sub-optimal from at least the 2008/2009 period. I don’t recall exactly why the transit center/MBS ended up across the street from each other, but I suspect it was a lack of timely coordination between ST and Metro.

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