Vancouver BC chose a Skytrain extension in the eastern Surrey-Langley suburbs over a competing surface light rail (LRT) proposal with a different L-shaped route. The video discusses the tradeoffs between the two, how to build an elevated rail extension, and the socioeconomic factors for the station cachement areas in both alternatives. (The B1M)
This is an open thread.
The video misses one big consideration: With SkyTrain Vancouver was able to automate their trains while with surface bound light rail that’s far more challenging. You also need to allow car traffic to cross the tracks, meaning you can’t run at frequent as the SkyTrain can (up to every 90sec).
In the past, the comment section has supported at-grade alignments.
They are fine if the system uses them extensively, because they are inexpensive and operating speeds are low but consistently so.
One or two at-grade stretches in a largely grade-separated system are false economy because they make automation impossible and areva bleeding sore of lower-speed operations.
They are technologically possible, but lawsuit impossible.
Citation, please?
You still think it will be impossible to automate a 90% grade-separated rail line when it is already possible to automate a 0% grade-separated bus route?
Skytrain required grade separation because it was built on a technology stack that is >50 years old.
Tom, do you think it was a mistake for ST to build Link at-grade through the Rainier Valley?
Tom, you are living in the 20th century?
The video misses one big consideration: With SkyTrain Vancouver was able to automate their trains while with surface bound light rail that’s far more challenging.
They actually mentioned it. To quote the transcript from the 12:18 mark:
The SkyTrain cars will be bigger, and driverless, offering more trains per hour for more passengers. This is an easy point to the SkyTrain.
I don’t think the video mentioned BRT. Just to back up here, the light rail plan was not popular. It is interesting to see how people view technology. Around here, people think “light rail” means a fast, frequent train for the urban and suburban areas. Basically a metro or subway. In greater Vancouver they view light rail as a tram — a cheap substitute for a real metro, like SkyTrain. But it isn’t that cheap, which is why they eventually went with a SkyTrain extension.
But they did consider BRT, since it would have been much cheaper than light rail and yet just about as good. To paraphrase Reece Martin — who coincidentally grew up in Langley — trams/streetcars are a niche mode. Buses and metros have a much wider application and are almost always a better value. They sit at either ends of a spectrum. Bus infrastructure (roads) already exist. The slow parts can be improved for relatively little money. But they lack the capacity and automation capability of a metro. Thus it costs a lot of money to serve a busy bus corridor (like Broadway in Vancouver). Rail solves that problem and if you need that much capacity you probably need grade-separation and thus a subway/metro. Light rail and trams fits in between. Somehow you need the capacity but don’t want to invest in a subway/metro or you have a lot of existing rail that can be leveraged cheaply (with trains cruising through the countryside and making a few stops in town). There are very few places in the world where it actually makes sense to build new light rail but that doesn’t stop North American agencies from choosing the mode.
Oh, and then there is the existing system. It would be silly to run automated trains from Federal Way to Angle Lake even if the mode is better. In the case of Langley, there is a lot of value in connecting to the existing SkyTrain system. Given the high cost of the light rail proposal, I think this is a much better value. Whether it would have been better to improve the bus system instead is a much tougher call.
In many cities in the US light rail tends to run more like a ‘enhanced’ streetcar rather than a fast, frequent train. I think of examples like Portland or Phoenix where street running in urban areas is the norm, frequencies at 15 minutes is considered good and lots of small and frequent stops (1-2 car trains) which slow things down a lot. You could grade separate light rail like in Seattle but then you are essentially spending as much or more for a metro like train but with inferior capacity and no automation. Sometimes I wonder if ST should start calling Link something else besides ‘light rail’ since it operates differently from most other cities in the US that also have light rail.
Link has fair amount in common with the LA Metro light rail lines, which are all essentially rebuilt interurban (Pacific Electric) lines, but it definitely is the most grade separated of any light rail system in the US. A comparison to somewhere like Chicago is interesting here – both because the L has ~2 miles of semi at-grade sections at the ends of the Pink and Brown lines (though they are not median running like Link) and because the South Shore Line is a surviving interurban with significant street running section in the middle of the route. It’s probably correct to call the Chicago area services “train-like”, as even when they run at street level, they don’t run in mixed traffic (anymore – the SSL converted most of 11th street to a railway to remove the street running section in Michigan City).
I find the distinction between “train-like” and “tram-like” light rail lines (or even segments) to be the relevant point of analysis. In Portland, certain lines are much more “train-like” (Goose Hollow to Hillsboro) with others are obviously “tram-like” (Interstate Ave). The ultimate distinction is that “train-like” light rail has full priority at all crossings, while “tram-like” light rail has limited priority. The issue with Link isn’t that MLK is at grade per se, it’s that it doesn’t have full priority.
While this issue is solvable by burying or elevating the tracks, that isn’t the only way to do things. It’s perfectly feasible to make a “train-like” alignment along MLK, it just would mean substantially altering how it functions as a street. That may make automation feasible, but I am less worried about that than having an alignment that is conducive to good transit operations.
You could grade separate light rail like in Seattle but then you are essentially spending as much or more for a metro like train but with inferior capacity and no automation.
Exactly. That is why it is a niche solution. Trams are niche and light rail (insofar as it is different than a tram) is also niche. Consider this situation. The public owns an old railway connecting several town. Each town is fairly centralized, like in Europe. The tracks all run on the surface and there are several intersections where the trains have to wait for cars. You run trains there every so often and it works well. It is basically “light rail” as it has big sections with no traffic. But it isn’t a metro (or even typical regional rail) since the trains move slowly through each town. It is cheap to build. It can evolve to be faster by adding more right-of-way. Even though this is expensive (like a metro) you are only doing this in bits and pieces. If this describes the situation your region is dealing with then light rail is a great choice.
For the vast majority of the world it isn’t. It is definitely not the case with Seattle. If anything the model that is more appropriate is the one we built initially: a bus tunnel. Instead of old rail lines connecting centralized towns we have massive freeways connected to sprawling suburbs. A bus like the 101 can serve various places in Renton and then get on the freeway and run express to downtown. By using the tunnel it was able to avoid the slowest part of the route (the slog through downtown). This was expensive but not nearly as expensive as replicating the freeway section (where it is fast). Other improvements (like the SoDo Busway) was even cheaper. Connecting the HOV lanes to the SoDo Busway would be fairly cheap as well. It really doesn’t cost that much to make that corridor as fast as really good light rail. It can’t be automated but the surface sections aren’t that slow and don’t involve that many riders. That’s because the fast sections involve lots of different buses, from all over. For all its flaws and limitations it was a great value.
At the same time, it is quite reasonable that Seattle build a metro. As it is, the part of the light rail that is very successful acts like a typical metro. It just doesn’t have enough stops. But that isn’t the issue with the mode. That is a manifestation of the other problem that is common in North American systems (or maybe just U. S. systems) which is infatuation with distance. Rather than build a typical metro with lots of stops the focus was serving distant, largely independent cities (Everett and Tacoma) and a handful of relatively low-density suburbs along the way. Given the overall cost of building a metro (in the U. S. ) that big meant compromises had to be made. Fewer stations. Stations close to the freeway. In short, crap. Not 100% crap, but much crappier than what they should have built.
I’ve often marveled at how Seattle has so many different modes over the years. Electric trolley buses, a streetcar, a monorail, a bus tunnel and now light rail operating like a hybrid commuter rail/metro. It is a bit of everything. Innovative solutions that were quite effective; classic mistakes made by various U. S. agencies; just enough of a standard metro and good bus right-of-way to be mediocre.
I wouldn’t consider serving Rainer Valley a “niche” solution, it’s a keystone for the ST1 and ST2 networks. More importantly, the interoperability with buses in the DSTT was essential for ST1;
Seattle’s error is abandoning at-grade operations (even in reserved ROW) without abandoning the mode. In ST1, Link should have been at-grade through Tukwila, but instead we have a bad, squiggly alignment because of a political decision. In ST2, Link should have follow 99 in South King and in Snohomish, in both cases with at-grade operations much like Rainer. In ST3 there are at-grade opportunities everywhere – in West Seattle and Tacoma, in Interbay, in the Paine Field, etc.
These errors don’t make the original decision wrong. Joint operations in the DSST, at-grade in RV, and even at-grade in Bel-Red all unlock massive cost savings for minimal loss of quality. The region either needs to go back to at-grade alignment or switch to a different mode for future rail projects.
LA Metro, albeit belatedly, invested in undergrounding it’s light rail where it matters, in the downtown core, but otherwise its light rail alignments are good and properly leverage the technology. Interestingly, LA Metro is at risk of making the same foolish decisions at Seattle with the West Santa Anna extension – the corridor through the suburbs at something like two dozen at-grade crossings along an old rail ROW, which points to light rail as the obvious solution … but some stakeholders are pushing for heavy rail, which means at-separating all of those crossings, including billions in costs with negligible improvements in travel time or reliability (remember, these are existing albeit dormant at-grade crossings, not greenfield intersections).
I don’t get the love for at grade trains. They suck. A bus does the job better 100% of the time if they’re given the right ROW, which is way cheaper than laying track.
Trains should beat traffic. Tunnels and elevated, lower stop density than a bus. The concept of a light rail and streetcar are no different except one is a magnitude higher of useless.
Just build Metros and Subways. Everything else should be a Rapid Ride bus.
Maybe at grade trains are slightly more automatable than buses, but ST will never bother anyways. And we’re walking into an era where we can draw virtual tracks on roads, and automated buses can follow them.
If Seattle folks have a problem riding the bus and will only ride “light rail”, they’re also part of the problem why we’re so far behind Europe and other countries. Possibly more than the car brained. Every good transit system starts with fast, moving buses and BRT before moving on to AUTOMATED light rail and metro for the highest capacity corridors.
For some reason, Ross has it backwards.
Trains with all their potential and free ROW should run slow as a nail, while buses should try to “beat” traffic (it never will) and run as expresses between two arbitrary points that not everyone will live at.
I wouldn’t consider serving Rainer Valley a “niche” solution, it’s a keystone for the ST1 and ST2 networks.
Rainier Valley should have been served by a cut-and-cover line down Rainier Avenue (with more stops). This would have had a lot more ridership and a lot more ridership per mile. You shouldn’t start with that line either but it would be a decent addition to a system that by then would include downtown to the U-District. Link was built with an extremely low budget and an emphasis on length — a bad combination. This led to poor decisions in Rainier Valley and elsewhere.
Just to back up here, there are really two different reasons to run on the surface:
1) You are adding a lot of stations and want to keep the costs down.
2) You have a large stretch with no cross streets.
Link has neither. There are lots of cross streets in Rainier Valley and they didn’t add that many stations. Partly it was because it abuts a green belt — various areas are not amenable to development. But mostly it was because of the other dynamic (the focus on length). Once it leaves Rainier Valley it has a very long stretch with no stations at all. Yet it isn’t running on the surface anymore. It runs elevated which pushes up the cost. It is a strange mix that really doesn’t know what it wants to be and that has been the case from the beginning.
There are relatively few examples of where light rail makes sense in North America for this reason. Our cities and towns rarely have “hard edges”. They lack a strong central core and tend to sprawl with no clear ending. There are exceptions. Consider the town of Davis, California. While it lacks a strong central core it at least has a hard edge. The small city just ends abruptly — the type of thing that is common in Europe. It has an old rail line running through town. It is easy to imagine a light rail line from there to Sacramento with several stops in town. You have maybe eight stations in town which means it isn’t particularly fast from the south campus of UC Davis to the north end but once it hits the farms it can cruise to Sacramento (where again it would make numerous stops). But this takes some imagination. You have to pretend that both Davis and Sacramento being more dense. But that is the idea.
Part of the problem is that North American cities embraced the automobile relatively soon after we built the trains. We also passed a lot of zoning regulations that encouraged low-density development. This is a problem for transit in general. Any investment in rail will likely be less successful. American costs are also very high. Thus agencies try and cut corners by providing “light rail” where it really doesn’t make sense. A city like Sacramento has close to 2 million people. But very few people live in dense areas. Any rail project is faced with this harsh reality. A metro just won’t be worth the money. Thus they search out cheaper rail alternatives and the result is a system that just doesn’t work well. They would have been better off just improving the buses. So many American cites would be better off just investing in the buses.
Seattle is a bit different. We do have a compact core. The city proper is growing faster than the suburbs. This means that parts of town that aren’t particularly dense but have good fundamentals (like Rainier Valley) should continue to grow and transit can play a part in that. But like most cities, it shouldn’t be light rail. Any surface running should be completely grade-separated (like the New York Subway). It is quite reasonable to run on the surface on Elliott/15th for example but with fences and no cross streets (i. e. grade-separated). But once it reaches Ballard it should be above or below ground (not running on 15th NW as has been proposed). We just don’t have the layout where light rail makes sense. Few cities do, which is why it is a niche mode.
“Seattle’s error is abandoning at-grade operations (even in reserved ROW) without abandoning the mode.”
That’s the key point as I see it!
Too many elected officials and other interested parties still believe that light rail as we have is the only kind of rail technology.
In LA, every rail corridor alternatives study looks at two or three or four technologies.
Our terrain — with hills and navigable waterways — is challenging for any rail technology without a considerable amount of grade separation. Most other US metro areas have broad areas where much more the developed terrain is relatively flat and more suitable for at-grade light rail.
The current political problem is that ST3 was a rushed measure designed to inspire imaginations to get yes votes. It was never a system based on some sort of systems logic about what would attract the most riders or the lowest operating subsidy per passenger or the fastest travel time for the region. Even the “spine” is a political construct rather than once developed after careful productivity analysis. But that’s what we are probably stuck with it for at least 30 years more until the program is built.
And there are so many structural problems with the system beyond MLK. ST designed a system to be overcrowded at the core, yet will be barely used for long stretches of outer segments, for example. Few in power seem to care more than conceptually about station convenience or good transfers. And they don’t realize how the design decisions about vehicles, stations and tracks are not easily or cheaply remedied. The region will have to work around what ST has built and is building.
These errors don’t make the original decision wrong. Joint operations in the DSST, at-grade in RV, and even at-grade in Bel-Red all unlock massive cost savings for minimal loss of quality.
I disagree. We painted ourselves into the corner with a lot of these decisions. It goes back to the original sin of Sound Transit: The Spine. We grossly underestimated the cost of building a train line from Tacoma to Everett. We grossly overestimated the value. When the sh** hit the fan we panicked and built the wrong thing in the wrong order. There was a strong emphasis on quantity (rail length) not quality.
Joint operations has its place. But agencies typically make that decision when they luck into it. For example an old rail line can be connected to a bus tunnel. We did the opposite. We chose it. It was the wrong decision. We should have started with this basic question: How do we get enough value from a rail system to justify kicking the buses out of the tunnel? Given the value of the bus tunnel (serving lots of riders) you need to provide a lot of value. You also need to replace a lot of buses. But this goes back to an even more basic question: What is the smallest possible metro system that makes sense for the region? Of course you design it to be expanded, but that is your starting point. It all points to the same thing: Kick out the buses and run trains from the U-District to Downtown. You should have three stations in the U-District and another two or three between there and Westlake. That means about ten stations altogether — a solid metro with excellent ridership per mile. Run automated trains (of course) with high frequency (every 3 to 6 minutes all day long). Almost immediately you expand northward to Roosevelt where you can connect to buses from Lake City and the suburbs at the north end of the lake.
At that point you have a tough decision. You really have two goals with a northward expansion: connecting to express buses from the north and serving more neighborhoods. There is very little value in serving the Northgate Transit Center. It was designed to provide a fast bus ride to the south (a feature that became obsolete with the subway). Worse yet, it doesn’t connect well with buses coming from the north — not unless you spend a bunch of money on freeway infrastructure. It is also hard to access with east-west service. It hugs the freeway, limiting TOD. Building the station there was a mistake.
To be fair, there aren’t easy solutions for a station serving as the connection point for express buses from the north. But here is what I would have done: Go under the freeway after Roosevelt. Build a station at the south end of the North Seattle College. Build bus-only freeway ramps to there. This then becomes the main terminus for buses to the north. You’ve got plenty of space to the south of the college to build a transit center. It is still poor for local buses (other than a bus like the 61 which goes diagonally). But at least you’ve worked your way to the other side while making the essential bus connection. Any rail extension after that involves Aurora. It would be underground at first but likely transition to above ground as it heads north. You can go as far as you want while serving every major crossing street (Northgate Way, 130th, 145th, etc.).
You of course build a line to the East Side. I would probably build that after the North Seattle College station. Then I would build a line from the UW to Ballard. It could be a branch or a spur junction. In the meantime you make big bus improvements for south end buses that should have been done years ago. Add a ramp from the I-5 HOV ramps to the SoDo Busway. Connect the busway to Third Avenue better. But at some point you build to the south. Again, this should be cut-and-cover down Rainier Avenue. All the trains should be automated. Yes, this pushes up the cost but the value is huge. If it means we don’t get to SeaTac until much later, so be it. You’ve started with the core (U-District to downtown) which means you likely have more ridership every year than what we built at every stage. Order is important but quality is more important than quantity. Making compromises here and there is fine (e. g. if you can’t directly serve First Hill then at least have a station at 23rd & Madison) but we’ve gone to the other extreme. That is why our system carries a lot fewer riders than SkyTrain despite being longer. Vancouver is building things out of order as well (Broadway should have been done a while ago) but at least they are building it and not wasting money building a train line next to the freeway for miles and miles.
It gets into the unique way the US funds transit expansion expansion at the national level, Paul Allen’s vision in Portland and Seattle, Sound Transit’s “electric rail” vision, and the modes Pugetopolis have settled into. None of these have any counterpart outside the US.
In the 1960s and 70s, the US government paid 90% of transit projects and favored heavy rail metros. This was to be the nucleus of a complete trunk network as cities had built before: NYC subway, Chicago L, London Underground, etc. Do something really transformative that would solve the heavy lifting. Light rail had not yet emerged from its pre-WWII legacy: Germany was just starting to build high-quality trams with downtown tunnels, and that hadn’t spread to the US yet.
This is generally what other countries do: a heavy rail metro. High-quality surface light rail (trams) is a secondary mode for smaller corridors. If it’s used as the highest/primary mode in smaller cities, it has robust right-of-way priority, which often includes downtown tunnels.
Since the 1990s, US transit grants have been much smaller and favor technologies with lower capital costs: streetcars, BRT, light rail. That leads to less robust solutions that don’t solve the mobility problems as much. Worse, they often get so watered down with bad alignments, priority, and frequency, that they improve transit little, not at all, or make it worse. Yet the FTA and local governments pretend it’s a robust transit solution, and deny the fact that it doesn’t save people much time or give them much of a reason to switch from driving. These projects are largely not built in other countries because they don’t address the basic need that motivated upgrading transit in the first place.
Portland build MAX as one of those lower-cost solutions: surface light rail, even downtown and with too many stations. Something suitable for a secondary suburb or a small city like Spokane, not for the largest city in a major metropolitan area. That was its first problem. Then it compounded that with even less-effective “streetcars”. Streetcar technology can be useful, but only if you get it out of traffic and make it higher capacity than regular buses, otherwise what’s the point? The idea that we should have something that looks pretty and encourages developers but isn’t effective transit is misguided: it doesn’t address the basic transit mobility need in the first place, it just pretends to.
Paul Allen saw the Portland streetcars and decided that would be a good idea for Seattle. That was the wrong mode, wrong location (not one of Seattle’s biggest transit-corridor needs), and watered down into uselessness.
Sound Transit’s original vision of Link was like MAX: surface light rail, to keep capital costs at the level of other US light rails. Using DSTT was a given, since the downtown tunnel had been built for a future subway. And it had to remain underground to the U-District because of the hills and Ship Canal. But wherever possible it would run on the surface: from Intl Dist all the way to Tacoma Dome. But after Rainier Valley, as Tukwila and Roosevelt and other segments went through design one by one, the localities demanded underground or elevated to minimize surface impacts and speed up trips. So ST backed into a mostly grade-separated posture. And it never addressed the travel-time limitations of capping the speed at 55 mph or even having 35 mph surface going 35 miles to Tacoma as it had originally envisioned.
So light rail in other countries means a high-quality surface tram. Light rail and streetcar in the US means something lower quality. Link backed into being a light metro in most segments, but it’s still an awkward hybrid, and slow for its ostensible goal of being an Everett-Tacoma Spine.
Sound Transit’s original vision of Link was like MAX: surface light rail, to keep capital costs at the level of other US light rails.
Yeah, and this goes back to what Reece Martin wrote about the Surrey light rail plans (https://reecemartin.ca/126020337/dumb-mode-and-cost-battles/):
Arguments about mode were retroactively created to justify an already assumed chosen plan, and instead light rail plans often seem to be based on the premise of light rail being cheap, or perhaps even a good value… The idea that you could get more rail, and thus more lines on the map by going with light rail was very enticing.
These issues of trying to more or less get blood from a stone is what happens when you have an infrastructure cost problem: Cities across the anglosphere spend plenty on transit capital projects, but are forced into awkward and poor decision making trying to “stretch” those dollars.
The ultimate takeaway here is that if your transit/infrastructure discussions all happen through a lens of “we can never built anything (affordably) anymore”, you’re bound to get some very weird outcomes. Any serious discussion of infrastructure needs to take its cost into account.
I would add that anti-transit politics have a lot to do with it as well. No matter what we propose, there will be a significant portion of the population that will think it is a bad value. They don’t want to spend the money on transit — they want to spend the money on cars (or nothing at all). Thus the type of rail system that is bound to be more cost effective (small, urban, automated) is a much tougher sell. You are just preaching to the choir (and not getting any new votes). A line from the U-District to downtown (with a lot more stations) is a great starter line — the type of thing that gets very high ridership right off the bat. But folks from the suburbs (and even the suburban parts of Seattle) aren’t impressed and wonder why we should bother. In contrast, a vaguely defined “spine” with light rail (“light” as in cheaper — hell, might as well call it “lite rail”) is bound to attract edge voters who can imagine taking it once in a while (or better yet, everyone else taking it so that traffic isn’t that bad). Throw in a lack of political leadership or just political ignorance and Seattle finds itself building the same sort of thing many other American cities have built. Which is to say, it hasn’t been a good value. The main difference is that we are just spending a lot more for it.
And it had to remain underground to the U-District because of the hills and Ship Canal
Not really. It could have gone on the surface via Eastlake (like the 70). One problem with that route is that it South Lake Union and Eastlake were too small at the time. Another is that the key connection that would offer (U-District to downtown) was faster with the buses (at least when the express lanes were in its favor).
This continues to be a big issue with the type of system we built. It is tough to compete with the freeways. For long trips, a bus is often faster. We really only gain strength by adding a bunch of stations in between those major destinations. Riding the train from the U-District or Northgate to downtown is not much faster than the old bus. But it is dramatically faster to get from the U-District or Northgate to Capitol Hill. Thus a more traditional subway line (with lots of “Capitol Hill” type stations) makes especially good sense here, as it does in every North American city. It is how you make transit faster than driving, at noon. But instead we have spent far to much money replicating what the buses did (or do) quite well while ignoring the areas where the buses are particularly slow (and will always be slow).
It is worth noting that Vancouver avoided this particular problem. While SkyTrain is poised to go deep into the suburbs (very deep, maybe even too deep) it is not following a freeway line. It is following a highway (similar to SR-99). While this seems like a trivial distinction (it does not bode as well for the towers that will likely surround each new station) it makes all the difference in the world when it comes to competition. You can get from Surrey to the edge of Vancouver quite quickly by car via the Trans-Canada Highway (when traffic isn’t that bad). As it turns out, there are SkyTrain stations there. But the stations in Surrey (or Langley) don’t really compete because they are nowhere near there. Once you add on the extra time to get to the freeway it is clear that from those stations on this new line it is often faster to take the train to that area, let alone the parts of the line more centrally located. At the same time, the agency isn’t seriously considering a SkyTrain line to North Vancouver. The express buses (and the ferry) are just fine. Vancouver seems to have figured out what most U. S. agencies have largely ignored — it makes sense to build a metro where it doesn’t compete with a freeway.
The video’s point about land value seems very relevant to Link. I have to wonder how much lobbying goes on for ST to site things at the request of land owners. Some of the ST Board choices seem odd to a rider — and yet they are made for mysterious reasons. I’m highly suspect of the ST decisions being altruistic in many cases.
Dow’s proposal for placing the CID station where the old King County office is located comes to my mind and so was the location east of the CID (closer to the Stadium) which is owned by one of his buddies who would not only get a great price from Sound Transit, it would also increase the value of the surrounding land and future development. Yes, great opportunity for the city and also great opportunity for developers. I wish the city would learn from Hong Kong MTA.
The Hong Kong MTR is a unicorn that is hard if not impossible to duplicate elsewhere in the West.
If only we had the will and competency to organize that. One can dream…
[Ed. Fixed acronym typo.]
Continuing the Kent restructure thread from Wednesday.
South King Resident: “why is Metro taking away funds previously directed to certain areas and closing bus stops to boost frequency in other places? … 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.”
This appears to be referring to the South Link Connections restructure, which is final and will be implemented this fall. Metro has a comparison map showing the differences between current and future service.
The routes I see deleted are the 157 (northeast Kent peak express), and the 162 (Lake Meridian peak express).
I’m not sure about route 914 (northeast Kent DART, also west Kent). In the first link it’s not mentioned, which should mean it’s unchanged. In the second link, both maps have the same DART area south of 240th, and the same Metro Flex area north of 240th. Inside the Flex area, the current map has yellow lines that may be unchanged routes, but the new map doesn’t. The lines don’t seem to correspond to the 914, and one set of lines seems to be the 150. But the DART area corresponds to part of the 914.
Where did those hours go? The 164 (240th, 132nd, GRCC) gets a major service increase, to 15 minutes daytime, 30 minutes evening (Sunday increase), 30 minute after 10pm. The 168 gets 15 minute peak frequency, replacing the 162 runs. Both routes serve the Kent Meridian P&R, and both improve service in east Kent.
Re losing two peak-only routes and bus stops, you can’t have it both ways. Metro can’t both keep those bus stops and improve the E-W and N-S service in the biggest ridership corridors on KK Road, 272nd, 240th, and 132nd — at least not with more service hours, which it doesn’t have. It’s not shifting hours to another city, it’s improving the highest-ridership corridors in east Kent itself. The lost 157 is the most rural part of Kent — there were still farms there the last time I took a bus there. So it affects the fewest riders, and the peak-downtown schedule may not meet most of the residents’ needs anyway. They aren’t left with nothing. They have Metro Flex, which Metro is pivoting to in the lowest-density areas, for better or worse. It looks likely the 914 will remain if I understand the maps, so northeast Kent will still have that too.
A DART route is almost unusable for suburbs. It’s too slow, waste of resources, and doesn’t even serve every neighborhood. Instead they need a small P&R and feeder route that doesn’t wind through random lucky neighborhoods… So they don’t have to drive and park at Link stations. It can’t be so hard.
The 906 is an exception but it hardly acts as a Dart Route. It gets high ridership during it’s fixed portion, which really should be a normal route with 40 foot buses
Except when Mike said 30 minute routes are almost unusable, you said a 30 minute route is better than no route. Now you are saying a DART route is almost unusable. So let me paraphrase you. A DART route better than no route.
Frequency isn’t the problem. Anyone who actually has bare minimum brain cells can time a bus.
It’s timeliness (adherence to schedule), stop frequency, efficiency of routing, transfer line ups, and speed that matters more. If those two were followed, higher frequency wouldn’t be needed.
Frequency isn’t the problem.
This is America. Lack of frequency is the problem. The best value in transit funding for the vast majority of cities is to just run the buses more often. At some point you get diminishing returns (running every five minutes isn’t much better than every six) but very few routes run that often. Going from hourly to every half hour makes a huge difference. So does going from every half hour to every fifteen and even from fifteen to ten (or six). There is a huge amount of evidence to support this idea. That is why Jarrett Walker spends an entire chapter on this subject (“Frequency is Freedom”). He cites the scientific studies to support this idea if you care to doubt this fundamental idea.
One of the big reasons frequency is so important is that a lot of people can’t time their bus. They get off work at 5:00 pm. The bus arrives 5 minutes before or 25 minutes after. This means they spend an extra 25 minutes a day just getting home — not counting the time spent on the bus. It isn’t just work. Medical appointments, school, meeting a friend at a restaurant at the same time — we live in a world where things are timed. If transit doesn’t matching the timing, it is a lot less useful. Then there are transfers. Again, this means someone could end up spending a lot more time waiting for the bus then actually riding it, even if they time the trip perfectly. This creates a negative cycle. The buses are infrequent, making transfers very cumbersome. As a result, transfers are very unpopular. The agency then creates a system that avoids transfers as much as possible which in turn is a lot less efficient. This means the buses run less often.
What would car drivers think if their driveway and parking lots had a gate that opened once every 30 minutes? That’s what you’re expecting transit riders to tolerate. Average people would say, “Transit sucks, I’ll drive.” Driving is already structurally subsidized and propagandized to an enormous degree, so this is just more of it. To get to a situation where average people use transit voluntarily and downsize their number of cars, the transit must be CONVENIENT.
It’s even worse with transfers. You may wait 25 minutes to leave your house for the bus, but you have on control over when the second part of a multi-seat ride comes relative to the first part. And if either bus is unreliable, predictability goes out the window.
If you’re riding two 15-minute segments and waiting 15 minutes for each, your 30-minute trip stretches to a full hour. You’re spending half or more of the time waiting. If one segment is 5 or 10 minutes, it feels like you’re getting on-off, on-off all the time. Sometimes it’s worse: a 20-minute trip can stretch to 60 minutes.
We don’t have to reinvent the wheel, we just need to see what works in cities that have the highest transit ridership and mode share, and areas comparable to Seattle or suburban King County that have higher ridership. Those cities have buses a minimum of every 15 minutes. They drop down to 30 minutes at far lower density than we do. That’s the way to move from a car-oriented society to a more transit-oriented society.
30 minutes may be the best Metro can do in one area given its limited service hours. DART is a semi-fixed route, meaning it has a schedule and bus stops, but also has neighborhoods it will deviate in on call, so it’s a reasonable compromise to serve hard-to-serve areas. All DART routes are in the lowest-density coverage areas. DART is more cost-effective than Metro Flex, so it can serve twice as many people and neighborhoods for the same amount of money.
A DART route is almost unusable for suburbs.
DART is meant as a transit lifeline for low-density areas that will never have high ridership, no matter what kind of transit you provide. It is “coverage” in the classic sense. Of course it doesn’t get many riders and of course it isn’t particularly fast but for those that don’t have a car and need to get around it is essential. There are bound to be DART routes that should be replaced by regular fixed routes. But the idea behind the service is a good one.
Instead they need a small P&R and feeder route that doesn’t wind through random lucky neighborhood. So they don’t have to drive and park at Link stations.
I agree that we should have more small park-and-rides and buses connecting them to Link and Sounder. It makes sense to invest in these instead of the massive park and ride lots next to the stations. But those are two different agencies with two different funding sources. Sound Transit already built the big parking lots and since they are there, a lot of riders will drive to the station. Metro only has so much money to spend on routes like that and performance largely comes down to the rest of the line. The old 41 used to serve a mix of urban areas and (relatively) low-density housing. The latter had park and ride lots. But the rest of it allowed for very good all-day ridership potential when Metro leveraged by running more frequent buses. It is hard to see a route that gets most of its ridership from park and ride lots doing well in the middle of the day. Thus you are more likely to have peak-only service. This can work well but it can also leave people stranded, which impacts ridership. You can get by with frequent peak and infrequent non-peak but it isn’t great.
In general it is just tough to serve a sprawling low-density area, especially one so far away from major destinations. It costs more to provide good service and you are bound to get fewer riders.
Eliminate high school buses and replace them with Metro buses. Kids gets all day service, and commuters can hop on as well.
Bellevue does it just fine. City council leaders here needs to get some sense. I might bring it up.
Bellevue HS service is not regular Metro routes. They contract with Metro because they don’t have enough yellow bus capacity. I’ve never been able to get an answer if general public is allowed to board. I expect not.
The HS specific service is different. But some regular Metro routes are designed to act as a high school feeder in addition to general use.
In general, students need multiple trip options per day considering early and late day activities. They’re not just going for rigid school hours.
I’ve never boarded one myself but as far as I know the general public can board any Metro bus if it’s a typical numbered route. Though obviously most of the school-specific buses (8XX and 9XX) will be full of students
How many non-students are going from southeast Seattle to 35th Ave NE or a random point in the outskirts of Lake City (Lakeside School) at school hours?
It’s not discussed much, but school kids used to ride city buses rather than school buses is most places in the US up until the 1950’s. The evolution of school bus fleets helped to reduce city bus usage significantly during that era. It’s popular to blame the decline of the increased popularity of driving — but this was another major factor. I believe that school kids used to be 25-35% of all transit trips back in the 1930’s and 1940’s.
Kent trips into Seattle are still good. But you can’t get anywhere else easily. Bellevue is very difficult. Stride will improve it a bit but too many transfers. UW is challenging too. Airport is tough as well. Better feeders are needed.
As a Bellevue resident, I agree, South King and Bellevue need better connections. Right now, we’re forced to transfer to the slow 240 or the infrequent 560 in Bellevue, and then transfer again in downtown Renton which’s well off the freeway.
It still amazes me that there’s no limited stop frequent bus from Kent to Link. A direct, limited stop bus on SR 516 or on 277th/272nd could get from East Hill to Link in less than 15-20 minutes.
And Stride 1 only will have 5 stops. Sure it will be a one-stop service between Downtown Bellevue and Renton, but it skips lots of busy destinations.
I agree that South-East King connectivity is poorly thought through.
It still amazes me that there’s no limited stop frequent bus from Kent to Link.
I think the bigger issue is the lack of an express from Kent to Seattle. This would use the busway (which means it would connect to Link in SoDo). More importantly, this is where you would save the most time (versus the existing 150). It would also complement the future 164. While not an express the 164 is short enough to be reasonably fast. It is about 20 minutes from Kent Station to Kent Des Moines Station. This means the trip to SeaTac isn’t bad. It also means you (continue) to have a direct bus to Highline and college as well as Green River college (and this bus connecting the two). It will have decent frequency as well (15 minutes midday). That basically leaves the section between SoDo and TIBS but those stations are not major destinations.
Part of the problem is the huge gap between TIBS and Rainier Beach. The BAR station could help but only if it is designed properly, with a bus-freeway station interface. That isn’t the plan and as a result you have the awkward situation that exists now. The buses go right by Link but there is no station there and detouring to make the connection just isn’t worth it.
“Kent trips into Seattle are still good.”
60+ minute travel time when Sounder isn’t running for a suburb 15 miles away is not good. People want their trips to take 20-25 minutes, and when it gets to 60 minutes, that’s far into the range of barely tolerable. And you’ve used up the entire 60-minute budget for Kent Station to downtown Seattle. But most Kentians don’t live near Kent Station: they’re in East Hill or beyond. So you’re talking about a 15-30 minute feeder on top of a 60-minute trunk — for a distance of twenty miles or less. That’s not good transit, it”s semi-barely-usable-if-even-that transit.
I guess I meant “good” relative to what we have now. Which is bad. But the only one seat side some people had is gone.
The Sounder connection is still alright… That’s all we have in Kent.
Renton still largely relies on the 101/102 for Seattle trips. Bellevue is a total mess unless you live/park in Renton proper.
“It still amazes me that there’s no limited stop frequent bus from Kent to Link. A direct, limited stop bus on SR 516 or on 277th/272nd could get from East Hill to Link in less than 15-20 minutes.”
There is a RapidRide 164 planned (GRCC, 132nd, 272nd, Kent Station, KDM station). (It’s called 165 in the table but will be 164 this fall.) It’s in Tier 3, so not until the 2050s if that. King County could have a major expansion push to get it done now or close to now, but it has ignored the problem.
But even if it’s built, it still won’t get Kent-Seattle trips down to less than an hour, or match the 150. Link Westlake-KDM is 45 minutes. That gives only 15 minutes to transfer and reach Kent Station in an hour. There’s nothing that can be done about this: Kent is so far east of Link, and Link has speed limitations.
Metro is responding to this by also planning a RapidRide 150 line. That’s in Tier 1, so it will probably start in the late 2030s. That should speed up the 150 to some extent.
Sound Transit has ignored the Kent-Seattle express market almost entirely. That was South King’s compromise with Sounder: it could get Sounder up and running in a few years, but that would use up money that could have gone toward a full-time frequent Kent-Seattle, Auburn-Seattle, and Renton-Seattle solution. Since they spent the money on Sounder, and Sounder has ongoing costs, that money isn’t available for something else like frequent express buses or a central valley Link line.
Even with express buses, the 162 takes 63 minutes from 2nd & Pike to Kent Station. It has only one stop, at the KDM P&R on KDM Road. So an ST Express bus couldn’t be much faster. Unless maybe a route via 167+405+I-5 could be faster than KDM Road+I-5. We don’t know because no bus has ever tried it.
The 162 schedule is botched. It regularly arrives 15-20 or even close to 30 mins early unless traffic conditions are bad.
So it’s not that slow.
I still stand by a new route from Green River to Issaquah (or at least Renton Highlands). Add some bus priority. It’s a misery to drive those roads and lots of schools, colleges, along that route. Pretty vital N-S connection with lots of housing along the way that’s completely deserted right now.
SKR, no offense, but you are not good at thinking up new bus routes. Green River College to Issaquah? Two weeks ago you said there should be a bus rapid transit line from Issaquah to Auburn via SR 18. Those both sound like the same route, but it’s a route that would mostly empty most of the time.
Anyone can think up a route that would have low ridership. It’s harder to think up a new route that would have high ridership.
This one’s not an express. It’s a local route.
Like the 250 or 226 or 203.
It’s an actual proposed route on Metro Connects
My apologies to you. I think I see it. Auburn – Maple Valley – Snoqualmie? Why does that corridor need a direct, one-seat-ride bus route? Keep in mind, when I ranted about my neighborhood in Kirkland now having a three-seat ride to downtown Seattle, the comment section told me to quit my f whining, and that a one-seat, and even a two-seat ride, is a luxury from a bygone era. But now Auburn to Snoqualmie needs to be a one-seat ride?
The Renton-IssaquahMetro Connects route (2022) is an express: that’s what that first digit “2” means. 1xxx routes are “Frequent” concepts (every 15 minutes daytime at least). 2xxx routes are “Express” (every 30 minutes until 7pm, although some may be peak only). 3xxx routes are “Local” (every 30 minutes).
Most of the remote routes between cities are express: 2022 Renton-Issaquah, 2615 (Renton-Enumclaw), 2020 (Auburn-Snoqualmie), 2999 (Maple Valley-Redmond).
I look at disbelief at some of these. Are there really people going between Auburn and Snoqualmie? For what? Who’s going between Renton and Issaquah? People who work at Costco’s offices or Swedish Issaquah? What else is there in Issaquah that a lot of people go to? Issaquahites going to Boeing Renton? Maybe a Boeing shuttle bus would be more appropriate for them, and maybe there’s one already?
In any case, Metro Connects is preliminary concepts, not a commitment to those routes. On Capitol Hill Metro Connects also has the Denny-Madison route (8/11), the Broadway north-south route (UDistrict-Beacon Hill, 49/36), and the Rainier Beach-MLK-Boren-SLU route (106 extension), and the Pine-Union route (2 Pine-12th-Union), and the northern MLK route (Mt Baker-MLK to Madison, now extended to Kaiser, 8) — but none of those were in the RapidRide G restructure or Crosslake Link restructure. I met the planners after the G restructure and asked if that means the concepts are dead or what they’re waiting for. They said they’re not dead, but they could give no information on when/if they might be implemented or what would trigger them. And Ross keeps saying the Metro Connects map was drawn up over one weekend in a charette of public non-experts and was just “brainstorming with lines of string” — not a fully thought-out system. And the county still hasn’t put a Metro Connects levy on the ballot to fully fund it even though it has been talking about it for a decade now. So it’s all up in the air, and we have no idea when or if these concepts might become reality.
Metro has also been contradicting it. RapidRide 36, in the first tier after the I,J,K,R, contradicts the Broadway north-south corridor. The project had two alternatives, one the existing 36 to downtown, the other a Beacon Hill-UDistrict route that would implement the Metro Connects corridor, but Metro decided to advance the first alternative, and SDOT has a street project around it. So Metro’s left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.
Metro Connects continues to be updated as Metro’s ideals evolve. I see one new change since I last checked a couple years ago: the north MLK route (Mt Baker-MLK was going to terminate at MLK & Madison, but has now been extended to Kaiser (overlapping the Denny-Madison route). That’s better. I’d been worried about dumping people at MLK & Madison when there’s nothing there. Routes are better when they have a strong anchor at both ends to generate two-way ridership.
Those reads experience heavy congestion so certainly there is a demographic who rides.
Renton to Issaquah can probably be a shortcut/gateway to the airport as well from Issaquah / North Bend without having to go all the way to Bellevue TC and backtrack via Stride.
But Maple Valley to Issaquah would be extremely useful as that would be the fastest connection to Link (4 Line) and from there they can reach Bellevue College, Snoqualmie, and other attractions.
Two way ridership is probably not likely, but these are routes that need to be served regardless. They take SOVs off the road.
King County’s study on Issaquah-Hobart road mentions transit and employee shuttles as a key component to fixing the bumper to bumper traffic along the road, along with school bus infrastructure improvements. But without funding and regional alignment, it won’t be built. However I could see it as part of a 4 Line restructure.
“Maple Valley to Issaquah would be extremely useful”
Both Maple Valley and Issaquah are two small (third-tier) cities far apart. Why should they have an express bus between them? Why would anybody go between them? Does anybody? Maple Valley has access to Renton and Kent, and from them to Seattle and Bellevue. Why does it need direct access to Issaquah, and why should we spend resources on it? Likewise, the overwhelming demand in Issaquah is to Seattle, Bellevue, and Redmond. I doubt hardly any Issaquahite is going to Maple Valley more than once every twenty years, if ever.
I think the South Link Connections restructure looks pretty strong. It’s just adding frequency on the existing grid routes. There’s another map (link below) that shows the changes
https://cdn.kingcounty.gov/-/media/king-county/depts/metro/fe-apps/south-link-connections/phase-final/pdf/network/slc-final-improvements-en.pdf
The routes getting additional service are already successful (by suburban standards). Kent probably has the most successful network (in terms of bus productivity) outside of Seattle.
Has ST provided any timeline for the end of 2- and 3-car service on the 2 Line?
It will be a 3-car system by 2028. Won’t see 4-car trains until at least 2035 at the earliest due to equipment availability when trains shift when the new extended LRV’s are in service.
“A DART route is almost unusable for suburbs. It’s too slow, waste of resources, and doesn’t even serve every neighborhood. Instead they need a small P&R and feeder route that doesn’t wind through random lucky neighborhoods… So they don’t have to drive and park at Link stations. It can’t be so hard.”
Would you like to write up a proposal for eastern Kent, Renton, or somewhere? Which routes would go from where to where? What frequency and span? Where would P&Rs be located? How much would this cost compare to current service? (This may be hard to calculate, but you could compare it to an existing route, or if you email the contact address the STB authors can help.) Is Kent Meridian P&R sufficient for northeast Kent?
You could make a Page 2 article, or describe your proposal in the comments. It’s easier to debate a concrete proposal or concept than just vaguely “more routes, more P&Rs”.