Route 41 is one of many Pierce Transit routes that would see improved frequency and service if the Pierce Transit ballot measure is approved by voters. (Michael Smith)

This is an Open Thread.

193 Replies to “Midweek Roundup: Park (or ride) the bus”

  1. Metro’s sales tax rate is below Community Transit, Kitsap Transit, and Intercity Transit? We keep hearing Seattle and King County have high taxes, but here’s one case where it doesn’t. Why isn’t King County using that capacity to replenish Metro’s reserves and fill in frequency gaps? It’s frustrating if this is the reason we don’t have as comprehensive bus service as Vancouver BC or Chicago. Because the King County government can’t be bothered, or it doesn’t prioritize non-car mobility availability enough like those other cities do (or all of Europe or Latin America). There was a failed Metro levy in the 2010s, but since then King County hasn’t even tried. It could keep introducing levies and trying different packages and sizes until it passes.

    “”Pierce County deserves transit that is frequent, reliable, and connected,” Svancarek said. “You should be able to live your life using transit with comfort and dignity.””

    Especially with some 800K+ people, and so many people moving to Pierce County for more affordable housing. If they need lower-cost housing, they need transit availability too. That would help them save even more money, give those who can’t drive more independence, give people the freedom to access more jobs and destinations without driving or taxis, and make the transportation system more environmentally sustainable.

    1. King County just voted to use their 0.1% sales tax authority for roads, which previously had zero regular funding. I think the problem is King County politicians got spooked by the first transit measure failure and suburban King County is much less open to increasing sales taxes to pay for transit than Seattle is.

    2. Vancouver and Chicago do not have referendums every time they raise taxes. It is indeed frustrating.

      1. I think one of the things that makes PNW politically interesting is the contrast between the social progressivism projected by the major metropolitan centers (Seattle and Portland, mainly, which is somewhat tolerated by each state’s suburban and rural areas, contrasted with the fiscal conservatism enforced at the state and county level, which tamps down fiscal progressivism at the city level.

        It seems that only recently has Olympia started letting Seattle tax itself, largely because voters outside the Puget Sound are starting to send more progressive politicians to the legislature.

        The election this November will be a historic one for Washington as voters are asked to reject or accept the Millionaire’s Tax. If voters reject the tax, it will be a generational setback for progressive politics (and I think that’s an understatement).

        1. A lot of it is Eyman. He had great success for a while in his anti-tax crusade. Eyman had a big winning streak from 1998 to 2002. It is understandable that the legislature has been afraid to mess with some of these laws. The big one was in 2001. He was able to pass an initiative that limited property tax increases to 1% a year. The courts threw it out but the legislature overwhelmingly passed the same basic law. We’ve been living with similar restrictions ever since.

          But he has had mixed results since then and the state has clearly moved to the left. We haven’t had a Republican governor this century. Democrats have controlled both chambers in the legislature since 2018. Allowing counties or cities to raise taxes without a levy seems quite possible now — the state just needs to realize that times have changed and allow them to do so.

    3. The problem with Pierce Transit and funding is that folks here have had such bad transit for so long, they don’t actually know what they are missing.

      If you have a job, transit is so infrequent that you are de facto car dependent in Pierce County. With usable frequency people will come to realize that 10K a year keeping the junker on the road is actually optional.

      But it is chicken or the egg. You need the usable, frequent transit to demonstrate the value. But if everyone drives, they don’t see the value paying a 3rd of a cent more to make transit frequent.

      1. The PT district shrunk in the 2010s to exclude the high No-voting southeast. This was to make it easier to pass the expansion levies Tacoma and Lakewood residents wanted. Yet it’s been over a decade since then with no levy. Finally it’s doing it now.

        1. The district was shrunk after the first vote that failed in 2011. The second vote failed in the reduced PTBA. Most of the opposition came from the eastern half of the county that remained in the district (namely Puyallup, where the auto dealers funded the “no” campaign materials).

      2. I realize that.

        But even in denser, left-leaning, transit friendly Tacoma, few people ride transit, and so few people understand it’s benefits. They own a car, so they are just going to use a car. Sunk costs.

        People seem to abstractly get the value of trains. Buses are another matter entirely.

        1. Something many people on here don’t get.

          People aren’t avoiding transit because they’re car brained. There is a level of car brain that people developed over time as a result, but people would gladly take transit if the benefits were there

          Our cities are simply not designed for transit, and our transit agencies do a terrible job. Transit isn’t fast, frequent, reliable, or high coverage like in proper Metro areas outside of the US.

        2. Saw an article from MyNorthwest with a typical right winger crying about Sound Transit and claiming they’re building for the past.

          It’s true ST is building for the past, but not in the way that author believed. He thinks the future of transit is autonomous vehicles, which is ridiculous. I’ve brought up the prospect of it being useful in some scenarios, but it’s only a side effort. Mass transit is still very much necessary especially for commuting.

        3. “People aren’t avoiding transit because they’re car brained. There is a level of car brain that people developed over time as a result, but people would gladly take transit if the benefits were there

          Our cities are simply not designed for transit, and our transit agencies do a terrible job.”

          Exactly. There’s a century of pro-car propaganda, subsidy, and coercion that makes people think transit can’t be effective or is categorically too inconvenient and everyone will choose to drive. That’s a drag but it has only a finite effect. If you make transit frequent, fast, direct, and effective, people will ride it.

          This is shown in both US and Canadian cities: when you expand transit and make it more reliable, ridership increases. When you contract it, ridership decreases. This shows up in year-to-year ridership as agencies add frequency/coverage or subtract it. Pugetopolis was one of the only metros in the mid 2010s that significantly expanded transit, and ridership went up. Other cities went the opposite direction and cut service, and ridership went down.

          The reason American cities have such low ridership is they’ve never had good transit in the past century. Canadian metro areas are comparable to American ones in density, yet they have two or three times more transit, so they have two or three times more ridership. This can happen here too.

        4. Part of the problem is that you have to pay more to get less. I realize this is not an obvious concept. But imagine if all of Pierce County lived in the city of Tacoma. It would be a big city, but not extraordinary by world or even national standards. The cost per person would be the same but the transit you could build would be much, much better. You are just covering a lot less land. The buses run a lot more frequently. Unfortunately the county is the opposite. Even Tacoma isn’t that dense. Pierce County gets a lot less for their dollar than a lot of places in the world which is why it is hard to get people to pay for it. That is the big drawback to a sprawling county like Pierce.

        5. I would agree with this, but most Tacoma is not particularly less dense than most of Seattle. The exceptions are around UW and around the downtown core. Those two areas were significant drivers in ridership gains as transit improved in the 80s and 90s. Taking the bus to places that are gridlocked and lack parking simply makes sense. Tacoma doesn’t have that strong impetus, and associated natural transit constituency.

          Better transit would still help many people in `Pierce County lead better, healthier, cheaper and more productive lives. Just not that particular group of politically connected, high-turnout ridership that I think keeps the transit train moving mostly forward in positive ways that Seattle has.

        6. “Part of the problem is that you have to pay more to get less.”

          That’s the legacy of past transit and land use decisions: we’re starting from a lower base. That doesn’t erase the need. If you bought a thin summer jacket instead of a raincoat because you didn’t know about Seattle rain, you have to buy a raincoat, not get soaked forever because you don’t have a raincoat. Denying this is just putting your city at an unnecessary disadvantage, as people waste time and money working around the lack of it.

        7. If Pierce County were in the Vancouver BC metro, it would have better transit and ridership. You just have to do it.

          But the transit also has to be sensible and productive, not pretending to solve a problem but not really solving it.

        8. “Part of the problem is that you have to pay more to get less.”

          That’s the legacy of past transit and land use decisions

          Land use yes. But past transit decisions are irrelevant. It doesn’t really matter where you are starting from. The point I’m making is that because Pierce County is so sprawling it costs a lot to provide the same level of service as a more densely-populated place. This is not intuitive. This doesn’t apply to say, a trauma hospital. It costs the same per taxpayer. Land use is irrelevant. But it matters a lot when it comes to transit. If Pierce County wants the type of service as say, Seattle, it will have to pay a lot more than the folks in Seattle do.

          Of course they should still pay for it. I’m just saying it is harder to convince voters to pay for it.

        9. Waiting 30 or 60 minutes is waiting 30 or 60 minutes no matter where you are. People can walk the same distance no matter where they are. Yes, transit costs more in undense areas, but that’s the fault of past decisions. It’s better to improve the situation than to perpetuate it. The issue of the existing service level is the relative cost of bringing it up to par (15-minute routes in urban/suburban areas). The PT service area has already contracted to exclude the lowest-density/most-no-voting areas. Politicians don’t do enough to argue for a normal level of transit in counties like Pierce, King, or Snohomish — to make the case why it’s needed and what’s minimum transit in other industrialized countries and to try harder to convince the state, local public, and federal government to do it.

        10. I would agree with this, but most Tacoma is not particularly less dense than most of Seattle.

          Yes it is. I know this surprises people because Tacoma “feels” dense. It has old buildings with character and it seems a lot more dense than it really is. (By the way, the opposite is true in L. A.) But if you look at the density maps you can see this: https://maps.geo.census.gov/ddmv/map.html. There are dozens of census tracts in Seattle that are above 10,000 people per square mile (more than I care to count). There is a pretty large, contiguous swath that includes the Central Area, downtown and Queen Anne. Many of these areas are over 25,000. This extends north of the ship canal most of the way to the city border with only occasional outliers. It also extends south to include parts of Rainier Valley and West Seattle. In contrast, Tacoma has four. Three are close to downtown and the fourth is in the south end. None of the blocks are close to 25,000. Tacoma is at best West Seattle. West Seattle is low-density compared to the rest of the city. Tacoma has its charms but it isn’t dense.

          If you extend out to the county you see the challenge. There are just huge numbers of people living in moderate-density areas (between 5,000 and 10,000). This is very challenging from a transit standpoint. There are not enough people to get good ridership with transit and yet enough people to add up. It is the bane of American sprawl. Huge numbers of people living in that level of density. If the density was any lower it just wouldn’t account for many people — it couldn’t. Any higher and it would be enough density to make transit a good value.

        11. Yes, transit costs more in undense areas, but that’s the fault of past decisions.

          Yeah, sure. Who cares? Seriously Mike, I’m not trying to pontificate about how America is too damn suburban for its own good. I’m just trying to point out how you get less bang for your buck in these type of areas.

          The issue of the existing service level is the relative cost of bringing it up to par (15-minute routes in urban/suburban areas).

          Again, that has nothing to do with it. Imagine Seattle had absolutely no transit at all. Not a single bus or train. Now imagine Tacoma is in the same boat. Now they charge each person in each city $100 to pay for transit. Which city has better transit. Seattle! By a huge margin. Why? Because it has way more money per acre. The amount of money you raise is based on the number of people. The amount of service you provide is based on the land you need to cover. Ergo, the more dense you are the farther your transit dollar goes. Whether it is a new dollar or an old dollar doesn’t matter. It is just math.

        12. Two points.

          I agree that Seattle is denser, but not a lot denser. Tacoma is probably about as dense as Seattle was when I moved there in the ’90s when the population of both Seattle and the region was only around 60% of what it is now. And that’s actually the time period we need to think about (As as aside, I find the cutoffs in that density map to be a little misleading. There are better maps, but that’s not worth arguing about.)

          This is important because I’m thinking right now about what barriers exist, and with that in mind, what arguments we can use to convince voters to vote yes in November. And I was thinking about how Seattle may have done to take those first baby steps to usable frequencies back 20 to 40 years ago. But I’m not sure I can take too many lessons from Seattle, because they had those 2 advantages – An active central core with lots of white collar jobs with expensive parking and true congestion, and a world class university with a lot of students who could live car free and got free bus passes. These were massive advantages that created a constituency of regular commuters who didn’t have to be convinced to take transit. They saw on a day to day basis what the advantages were.

          That leads me to my 2nd point. Mike is right. It really, really does matter what the current state on the ground is. We do not have that constituency that Seattle had back then. We maybe have some transplants from places like Seattle that do have usable transit, but it’s a small number, and talking with these people, they stopped using transit when the moved here. Yes, from a rationalist perspective, it doesn’t matter, but humans are pretty darn far from rational.

          So Tacoma has a much larger hill to climb than Seattle did back in the day. It’s not just money and political will. You have to convince the people voting to increase what is already one of the highest sales taxes in the country for something they don’t have a first-hand experience as to why it will help their lives.

          The messaging is important, and I’m not sure what will gain traction, given the above.

        13. “Yeah, sure. Who cares?”

          I care. I want everybody to be able to live without the artificial hardship of substandard transit or car dependency. I don’t think people should have to choose between an affordable place to live vs having normal transit.

        14. Cities poorer than Seattle have better transit. Cities a hundred years ago had better transit..

      3. “If you have a job, transit is so infrequent that you are de facto car dependent in Pierce County.”

        King County was that way in the 1970s and 80s but it managed to crawl out of it with incremental transit improvements.

        1. It’s still difficult to bear unless you’re lucky to have the right route near you.

        2. That’s what Metro did. It increased Seattle service from mostly 30 minutes daytime to mostly 15 minutes, and suburban service from mostly 60 minutes to mostly 30 minutes with several 15-minute trunk routes. It consolidated routes that were parallel a few blocks apart to frequent corridors, straightened out routes, added more crosstown routes (not going downtown), split ultra-long milk runs, and added coverage service to areas that hadn’t had it. All that led to increased ridership.

          Pierce Transit’s frequency is like what Metro was in the 1980s. Metro improved, but Pierce Transit didn’t. PT does have better crosstown routes and grids than Metro does, so that’s a plus. But the service is just so minimal it isn’t feasible for most people’s trips.

      4. its unfortunately the same way for a lot of people in everett regarding merging Everett Transit and Community Transit. people there have lived with an isolated transit network that has only marginally grown (with a lot of heavy lifting by partnering with CT anyways for swift) for about 15 years. generally speaking, people are so used to detrimental backtracking/transfers, 45-60 minute headways, short span, and still less coverage than equivalently dense areas of SnoCo.

        people arent seeing that service hours have basically topped out at 100-110k since the 2005 tax increase vote (not counting the 2008-2011 service spike. does anyone have a schedule book from 2010?), prior to the 2005 vote that ceiling was just 90k service hours. and yet it is still is running arguably dangerously lean and may need cuts soon without new funding.

    4. Metro is subtly different from the other major transit agencies by being a direct department of King County and regional dynamics lessen the need for a higher rate. In Snohomish, Community Transit’s tax base only covers the incorporated cities (outside Everett) and some swathes of rural land. It does capture most of the urbanized (and thus sales tax generating areas) of the county, but does leave out Maltby. In Pierce, neither Frederickson nor DuPont is within the PBTA. King County also receives a disproportionate amount of regional sales relative to population – about $38k per capita compared to $26k per capita in Snohomish and Pierce. (Data from table 16: https://dor.wa.gov/about/statistics-reports/reports/tax-statistics-2025 and OFM: https://ofm.wa.gov/data-research/population-demographics/estimates/april-1-official/).

      Metro does spend less than the CTA per capita on transit ($418 vs. $597 in 2024), but it’s important to note that the CTA also runs the equivalent of Link and then some in a way not too dissimilar to Sound Transit. Chicago has a 1.5% sales tax rate, receives funds through a real estate excise tax, gets a 30% state match, and now also gets motor fuel excise taxes (https://www.rtachicago.org/blog/2025/10/13/how-are-transit-operations-funded-in-chicago-vs-peer-regions, https://www.rtachicago.org/blog/2025/11/10/illinois-legislators-pass-landmark-transit-funding-and-reform-bill-averting-fiscal-cliff-what-does-it-mean-for-riders). That 1.5% is split between the CTA and Metra in Chicago itself, though I am not entirely sure how and don’t feel like researching the RTA (IL) budget practices, but it’s about a 2/1 split, which means that the CTA effectively has a 1% rate but gets much more state and other funding (https://www.rtachicago.org/uploads/files/general/Transit-Funding/2025Budget/2025_RegionalBudgetAdopted.pdf).

      This is all to say that we should consider other taxing methods before pursuing additional sales taxes, but I would still support Metro bumping the rate to 1.2% county-wide.

      1. we should consider other taxing methods before pursuing additional sales taxes

        OK, but I’m not sure what that would be. I’m pretty sure any increase would require a vote (because of the limits the state puts on it). I’m not sure a property tax would be any more popular. A car-tab tax would probably lose votes. An income tax might work, especially if the state soundly rejects the initiative repealing it. The county is large enough that you don’t need to worry much about people leaving it for tax purposes. It will happen but at a fairly small level.

        1. I agree – this is more commentary on how Chicago leverages more state funding and other sources which means it is less reliant on sales taxes (1.5% for city and regional vs. 2.3% in Seattle). I don’t think I’d point to Chicago as a place to fully emulate – as the perception state-wide tends to be that downstate/non-Chicago places are paying for projects in Chicago as a result of the 30% state funding match and receipt of certain types of funds (like fuel taxes). To the extent that downstate’s political beef with Chicago is grounded in reality is an open question, but it certainly has not generated a consistently fruitful political climate.

          That said, I do think that WA could set up a better taxation system for transit. A property tax may be equal in popularity, but there are sound tax policy reasons to prefer it. I’d definitely like an income-tax based transit funding system, but that is an open question. But really, this is part of a broader issue where the state legislature has consistently acted to reduce the number of local funding options available for local governments (including transit agencies). I’d like to see legislation enabling local governments to raise more than just sales taxes, even if it was always revenue neutral.

    5. Mike, not a Metro measure. In spring 2014, a KCTBD measure failed; its revenue would have been split between Metro and the roads funds of the 39 cities and unincorporated King County.

      In the 2015 session, Dow changed his ask to ST3 authorization from Metro local option. The session approved a huge highway package and allowed CT to go for three tenths more. The county had the legislature for a Metro option each session, 2009 through 2014, until Dow changed to ST3.

      1. King County has to ask the state’s permission for every Metro levy? I thought it could allocate it could allocate the unused capacity whenever it wanted. Otherwise what does it mean for Metro to have unused capacity?

        1. The capacity is set by state law; both Metro and CT are at their respective capacities; the CT capacity was increased in the 2015 session; that of Metro was not increased. In 2000, after the I-695 debacle, Metro was given an additional three tenths; they asked the voters about in two phases. The TBD authority is separate.

  2. I hope this Denny bus lane improves things although I’m concerned motorists will clog the lane turning off Denny onto this new route to I-5 and also those that leave it to the last minute and try to turn right at Stewart.

    Surprised despite bringing back the second westbound lane between Fairview and Stewart that one is not a bus lane. I do appreciate the new WB stop by Stewart and the substation.

    And also we need bus lane cameras.

    1. There are ways for traffic to reach Howell Street and the ramp. Folks could use the deep bore to go south.

      1. It seems mistaken for SDOT to suggest Denny Way and Boren Avenue as the alternate pathway. Better for the traffic not to use Denny Way at all; it could other streets to reach Howell Street: 5th, 7th, and 9th avenues. Southbound traffic could use the deep bore.

        1. I’m not sure if it makes much difference what they recommend. Most drivers are going to figure out a different way to get there using their phones. They probably just suggested something that is similar to what people are doing now even if that is not a great way to get there now.

    2. It is a bit like beavers building a dam. You block some water here and notice it flowing over there. You keep blocking various places and next thing you know you have a huge lake. I’m sure the hope is that Boren has enough space that it isn’t a problem. It is also quite likely that a lot of people will find an alternative way and not even bother with Denny. Right now it is quite reasonable to go southbound on Dexter and take a left onto Denny followed by another left onto Yale (to get onto the freeway). But with this change I might avoid Denny completely. Instead of this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/LqhPbqE8MxEMppR7A, I might do something like this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/PoUsSquSm8n8GT9V7 or this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/hVgFFuo6sTUqhVHo7.

      Surprised despite bringing back the second westbound lane between Fairview and Stewart that one is not a bus lane.

      I agree.

      I’m not sure the reasoning. I doubt they will allow two lanes of traffic to turn left from southbound Stewart to westbound Denny. But I could see it reducing traffic on southbound Stewart for those turning. Maybe they can’t turn because the street backs up. I could see how that would help buses like the 101 (which stays southbound on Stewart but prefers the curbside lane). I think it would be better if they changed southbound Stewart like so: The rightmost lane remains right-turn only. Add a bus lane that is the second to the right. Move the bus stop to just south of Denny. You will still have people weaving (and thus potentially clogging up things) but it seems better. At that point you could add the bus lane on Denny but that seems more long term.

      1. OK, this got me thinking about buses like the 101. It goes northeast on Olive/Howell until it lays over on Eastlake (I assume). It goes south on Eastlake and Stewart. There are a lot of other buses that follow the same pathway, like the 102, 111, 150, 177 and a bunch of ST buses. Some of these routes will change but I think it is fair to say that a lot of them (like the 101, 102 and 150) will continue to go this way. Maybe the buses could be shifted over to take advantage of the additional right of way on Fairview for the RapidRide bus. Maybe not. Maybe it will remain an important corridor.

        While they have done some things to make it faster it is pretty easy to see how it gets bogged down through there, especially as with this (and similar) changes. I would rather have cars on Stewart and Howell instead of Denny but I’m sure riders of the 101 feel differently. While I can see some little things that can be done it has the same problem as many of our downtown streets. The BAT lanes don’t work very well because there are too many cars turning right (and too many pedestrians crossing the street). One solution is to just make it a transit street (like Third). I don’t see that as being realistic. The solution is contraflow. Just as center-running buses work great on two-way streets, contraflow works great on streets that are currently one-way. You basically have a transit street one direction and general traffic going the other.

        Northbound it is fairly easy. Starting at 4th, Stewart would have a single northbound lane all the way to John. From there the bus would turn left onto Eastlake (which is two-way). This means there are fewer southbound lanes for cars but that isn’t a difficult adjustment. You do have four lanes of traffic from the freeway feeding into Stewart but changing that to three isn’t very hard (you could simply converge into one lane before the traffic light).

        Southbound is a little trickier. South of John, you basically revert it back to what it was way back when. The main difference is that you retain the bike lane, get rid of parking and only allow buses to go south through that intersection. The bike lane ends at the corner and then it would look remarkably like twenty years ago except there would only be buses in the lane going south. This would continue south with very little work. Between Olive and 9th you move the parking to the other side of the street (where the current bus lane is. You take a general purpose lane which means Howell is only one lane northbound for that block. It would widen to three so it wouldn’t change the traffic flow much. The existing parking could be replaced by a wider sidewalk. At Olive it becomes simple again — you basically just switch sides. At some point you have to dogleg over. The simplest way to do this would be at 6th but I could also see this happening at 4th if there was a special light for the bus. Of course if they add a contraflow lane for 4th then that would be the most elegant solution (but that would be a bigger project).

  3. The article on the Interstate Bridge Replacement project contradicts itself. It laments the drop in vehicle crossings ostensibly to be caused by the tolls and quotes autoista members of both legislatures lamenting their inability to afford another set of auxiliary lanes.

    Which is it? Will tolls cause crossings in the corridor, to plunge, wrecking the payment plan, or will drivers ignore them and overwhelm the four-lane design?

    Enquiring minds want to know.

    1. The former. Without tolling I-205, a lot of interregional traffic will divert. It’s longer and slightly slower at most times of day, but still about the same. The members of the legislature quoted simply want to jam as many lanes as possible in a vague posturing about how we just need one more lane to fix traffic.

      1. But Washington and Oregon can’t toll I-205. It’s simply not legal; to toll an Interstate facility which was paid for with Federal matching funds (well, 90% in this case) a state has to add capacity to the facility being tolled, like the ET lanes on I-405 through Bellevue. You don’t “get credit” for an improvement to a parallel facility.

        So, if you’re confident that the tolls will result in a huge volume of detours then for sure there’s no need for a second set of auxiliary lanes.

        2. Okay, but not tolling the I-205 bridge will in fact cause massive diversions once I-5 is rolled. It’s in the investment-grade proposal for the I-5 tolling bond package. Don’t take it from me, take it from the banks and financial institutions preparing to potentially purchase bonds backed by the tolls. The proposed toll will cut traffic volumes on the I-5 Bridge from 125k to 75k (source: https://cityobservatory.org/investment-grade-forecasts-actually-over-estimate-future-traffic/)

          And yes, Oregon was working on Portland-wide regional tolling, but Kotek pulled the plug (and created a fiscal crisis that ODOT is not even close to being out of). I’m not sure on the specifics, but I am confident that the proposal would have been legal, it just wasn’t pursued for political reasons.

        3. Ryan Packer, no matter how much lipstick you put on the pig, it is still not legal to toll an Interstate facility that is not a legacy “grandfathered” toll road, UNLESS its capacity is expanded or replaced. You must know this given how much you write about transportation in a region that has Express Toll Lanes.

          Now it’s true that Oregon at one time had one of the fifteen “Value Pricing Pilot Program” exemptions granted the first Bush Administration, but that program has been effectively repealed by recent Federal hostility. Certainly the Trump Administration would never approve a VPPP “congestion pricing” project, but Biden’s DOT didn’t move any forward either. Region-wide tolling proposals generate enormous push-back from drivers.

          Anyway, of the four methods evaluated, three would be entirely legal from a Federal point of view, and would not involve “tolling I-205”. Even the “Roadway” option makes no mention of extra tolling on the I-205 bridge to balance tolling on the replacement I-5 bridge. Presumably I-5 south of the Interstate Bridge would be tolled to a similar degree to I-205 south of the Glenn Jackson Bridge would be.

          I’m not privy to Governor Kotek’s personal preferences, but I expect that her “plug-pulling” had more to do with public opinion than with her particular dislike of tolling I-205.

        4. Allow me to quote a section from the study that Ryan referenced:

          The panel consisted of five experts listed below:

          …

          • Christopher Tomlinson, Executive Director at State Road and Tollway Authority, Georgia Regional Transportation Authority, Atlanta-region Transit Link Authority; Expert in political, policy, and legal aspects of tolling.

          Holy shit, they had an expert in this very subject and yet you think you know better! It is quite likely that all you need is just federal approval. That might not come from Trump but it may very well come from the next administration. But it is quite arrogant of you to claim that you an expert while Ryan (and the people who put together the study) don’t know shit.

        5. They certainly are experts. They surely know of exceptions and special cases that might apply. For instance, since the Interstate Bridges pre-dated the Interstate System and were tolled at one time, perhaps they would qualify for being tolled (again) without adding capacity. So maybe your suggested staged plan — which is a lot like the Common Sense Alternative, but different for sure — might be legal.

          But that clearly doesn’t apply to the Glenn Jackson, which was built with 90-10 Federal matching. Sure, Oregon does have one of the fifteen VPPP “slots”. However, that program has been functionally dead for a couple of decades. But since it’s on the books, given a sympathtic adminstration, maybe it could be done.

          But it’s likely that Governor Kotek recognized the delay that including it in the plan would produce while lawsuits wended their ways through the courts and the likely wave of criticism and anger that would come and decided that it wasn’t worth the grief.

          The truth is that after a few months of sitting in jams on I-205 and I-84, people will be saying, “I need a life; I’ll pay the damn toll.” and things will even out to somewhat more traffic on I-205 and a about the same less on I-5, but not a 40% diversion.

        6. Here’s what Gemini has to say on the topic:

          The Glenn Jackson Bridge on I-205 cannot legally be tolled under current state laws, and it remains completely free to cross.

          Even though federal law permits states to toll an interstate bridge under certain conditions (like massive reconstruction), the specific state and political realities of the Pacific Northwest have blocked tolling on I-205:

          Washington State Prohibition: The Washington State Legislature explicitly passed laws prohibiting tolls on the Washington side of the I-205 bridge. Because it is a bi-state structure, Washington’s refusal kills any joint interstate toll program.

          Oregon Toll Halt: While Oregon theoretically could have pursued tolling on its own side of the river, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek indefinitely postponed all state highway tolling projects. Oregon’s legislature has not revived any plans to toll I-205.

          The I-5 Diversion Conflict: Environmental and revenue studies for the neighboring Interstate Bridge Replacement Program reveal that when tolls are introduced on the I-5 bridge, at least 50,000 vehicles per day are projected to divert to the Glenn Jackson Bridge to avoid paying. Despite critics warning that this will cause massive gridlock on I-205, there are no legal mechanisms or active plans in place to toll I-205 to stop it.

          [Side Note: Notice Gemini’s “conversational” voice and ingratiating style.]

          More generally the question “Is it legal to toll an interstate highway bridge that was not tolled at the time the system was created?” produced this answer:

          Yes, it is legal to toll an existing, previously untolled interstate bridge, but only under specific federal conditions such as completely reconstructing or replacing the structure, or adding new capacity lanes. Under 23 U.S. Code § 129, states cannot simply place a toll booth on any old federal highway or bridge without meeting strict federal statutory allowances.

          Federal Rules for Tolling Interstate BridgesReconstruction or Replacement: An existing toll-free interstate bridge or tunnel can be converted to a toll facility if the state completely reconstructs or replaces it.
          Capacity Additions: States are permitted to toll newly constructed lanes added to an existing bridge to increase capacity, provided the pre-existing number of toll-free lanes remains free.State Laws: The state must have an active, valid state law in effect that explicitly permits the tolling of that specific highway, bridge, or tunnel before any tolling operations begin.
          Federal Approval: The state transportation department must coordinate and secure agreement/approval via federal guidelines through the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA).

          These are the things I was basing my statements on, though I had just studied the issue previously and did not use Gemini before commenting. I just asked it now to be sure I was remembering correctly.

          From this disagreement I have learned that ONLY the additional capacity can be tolled on an expanded facility; the number of un-tolled lanes must remain unchanged. That’s sort of what I thought was true, but I had not read a specific citation of the law about it.

          If the IBR gets built — and it finally looks likely — it will be tolled, and I-205 will not. There will initially be a huge diversion to I-205, especially from incensed MAGA Republicans who will SWEAR they’ll never go to Oregon again (until Monday when they remember the need to go to work).

          But over time the sheer exhaustion of facing what used to be just an afternoon nightmare on I-5 but now both directions, they’ll hear their co-workers bragging about getting from Salmon Creek to US 26 West in twenty minutes at 7:30 in the morning enough times that they’ll switch back and just take the $12 or $14 a day hit.

          Sure, there will always be a bit more traffic on I-205 than there would have been in the absence of I-5 tolling, but it’s far enough away and is dependent on the choked Banfield to get to either downtown Portland or Silicon Rainforest, that it will stabilize and about 10% more on I-205 and 10% less on I-5 than would be true in the absence of tolls.

          And the express buses will do a land office business.

        7. If both bridges are tolled then it won’t reduce congestion by much. Instead you’ll just be collecting money for the government, and probably reduce tourism by car between the states.

        9. If both bridges are tolled then it won’t reduce congestion by much.

          Congestion pricing works. It has been applied in many cities and is now working in New York. I’m surprised you doubt its efficacy.

          Just convert one into a bus / toll variable lane.

          One of the lanes (each direction) is already HOV. So that is an alternative for those heading across the river. The main purpose of HOV/toll would be to raise money. But as you pointed out, applying that to all drivers also raises money.

        10. The Washington State Legislature explicitly passed laws prohibiting tolls on the Washington side of the I-205 bridge.

          Again, this is something that could be changed tomorrow. OK, not tomorrow — the legislature is not in session — but very quickly. All you need is political will. Given the political makeup of Washington State right now I would consider it fairly easy. The only people who could stop it would be in Vancouver. But the state could easily say it simply doesn’t have the money to rebuild the bridge so the only other alternative is congestion (and some Republicans would join their efforts).

          It is also not clear you need Washington State’s approval in any of this. You would be tolling inside the state of Oregon. Of course this effects Washington State drivers so it would make sense to work together. But legally each state could do its own thing unless their is a federal law preventing tolls of this nature.

          The only issue would be the feds and there is enough wiggle room to get this through (from what I can tell). And no, I don’t trust AI for such a nuanced argument as this. I would want to hear from a real lawyer who has done the research. Even then there might be court challenges. I would bet on the ability to toll I-5 (if the money went for seismic retrofitting, AKA “reconstruction”). I-205 would be a different story. But it is also quite possible that the law gets amended in the next few years. This has happened periodically. The last time they even added grants for a limited number of congestion-based tolls. In this case they wouldn’t be asking for money — only for the ability to toll in this manner. It seems like a clause allowing a state (or in this case two states) to toll in this manner seems like it would pass. Even some Republicans would favor state control.

        11. “One of the lanes (each direction) is already HOV. So that is an alternative for those heading across the river.”

          The I-5 HOV lanes aren’t on any of the bridges. They run from approximately Victory Blvd to Beech Street in Portland. The I-205 “lanes” are an allowance for buses to drive through all the trash on the shoulder of the I-205 bridge, if they feel like getting a flat tire in the middle of the bridge.

        12. Yeah, you’re right. I was only talking about I-5 but forget there were no HOV lanes yet. There are only northbound lanes and they end before the bridge. They would need to add a lot of HOV lanes southbound even if they built a new bridge. Of course if they tolled the bridge then there would be less traffic which kind of solves the problem.

          This is another problem with the plans. They are treating the bridge itself as if it is the weak link. It is, but only when it opens. The rest of the time it doesn’t matter how many lanes you add. You are going to run across the same problem further south (at least in the southbound direction). It would be crazy to build this massive bridge with all of those lanes and then traffic just converges into a different bottleneck further south.

        13. An interstate bridge isn’t like NYC streets. In NYC, cars don’t belong.

          The I-5 and I-205 bridges are essential crossings between WA and OR. It isnt even comparable.

          They should not be entirely tolled. Buses don’t need that much space.

          HOV lanes are useless. Update those to a strictly bus only lane during traffic, and put variable tolls outside of that.

        14. An interstate bridge isn’t like NYC streets. In NYC, cars don’t belong.

          You are missing the point. The tolling in New York (just like the tolling in other cities) works. It reduces congestion. Whether you think cars belong there or not doesn’t matter. Now cars can go there and avoid congestion. It is actually better for drivers. They aren’t stuck in traffic.

          The same approach could be taken here. At certain times of the day there is no congestion so there is no charge. But during rush hour they charge. If the goal is to allow drivers to get to their destination without congestion this is a good approach. This is not without precedent. Look at the Wikipedia page for congestion pricing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing#Roads).

          Autoroute A1 in Northern France is one of the few cases of congestion pricing implemented outside of urban areas. This is an expressway connecting Paris to Lille, and since 1992 congestion prices have been applied during weekends with the objective of spreading demand on the trip back to Paris on Sunday afternoons and evenings.

          But it also quite common to have tolls just to raise money to pay for the roads. When you have tolls it makes sense to have them variable depending on the time of day. That would be the case on I-5. I-205 is a different story.

        15. “This is another problem with the plans. They are treating the bridge itself as if it is the weak link.”

          Exactly.

          Southbound, There’s 2 lanes of I-405 that drop down onto I-5 just north of Broadway, then at Broadway the whole thing gets squeezed down to two lanes each direction. Expanding that is a major undertaking because of the local streets and buildings it would impact.

          Then, the problem becomes the US26 / I-405 / I-5 / I-84 convergence at the Marquan Bridge.

        1. Also locally in Multnomah County. Most of us are tired of paying $175 in car registration taxes for a Multnomah County bridge with Clackamas County majority use.

      3. I almost always use I-205 rather than I-5. The freeway is a mess through DT Portland. My experience is that it’s usually the same amount of time but sometimes you can get trapped in DT Portland with no alternative but to sit in traffic and wait it out. So yes, with tolls the only people using 5 will be those that need to exit in DT Portland.

        If I have the time, vacation trip, I’ll head over to the coast. That bridge is in a world of hurt too.

    2. The article on the Interstate Bridge Replacement project contradicts itself.

      No it doesn’t. Various people have contradictory opinions on the project but there is nothing wrong with the article itself. Ryan Parker has written numerous excellent articles about this boondoggle and this is just the latest one. It is a complicated issue involving freeways, buses, light rail, ships and rail freight. To make matters more complicated they can’t just leave it alone — it is an aging bridge that could collapse in a major earthquake.

      The basic problem is that this project is just way too big. The solution is something much smaller. Several proposals have been suggested but I think it is worth backing up and considering the problems we are trying to solve. I see several:

      1) The age and seismic vulnerability of the existing bridge.
      2) The I-5 closures due to ships.
      3) Congestion on the bridge itself.
      4) Express buses are stuck in traffic.
      5) No light rail to Vancouver.

      While the new bridge is supposed to solve all of the problems at once I don’t think it would actually do that, nor do I think that is the best approach. It is better to just look each problem separately. I’m guessing the cheapest way to solve the first problem is with seismic retrofits. The second problem seems to be the biggest issue from a day-to-day standpoint. It has a simple solution: a new BNSF bridge. Congestion is best handled with tolls. This might solve the fourth problem as well. That leaves the lack of light rail which seems tangential at best. Even if you ran light rail to Vancouver you still would need express buses so it isn’t clear how much benefit you get out of an extension. It isn’t like Link where you essentially have an express train between Downtown Seattle and Downtown Bellevue (since there are only three stops in between). Thus it seems quite possible you could fix things for a lot less than what they are proposing.

      I also like various aspects of the “Common Sense Alternative“. It has the new BNSF bridge as the first item. It is also clever in the way that it deals with various trips that currently involve I-5. To get to Hayden Island from Vancouver would involve a trip on the old I-5 bridge (not the new replacement). There would be bus lanes which means that a bus could go from Vancouver to Hayden Island, connect to MAX and then get on the freeway to run downtown. I could easily see this as a midday express when you can’t quite justify an express to downtown and service to Hayden Island from Vancouver.

      One very nice thing about the proposal is that it can be done incrementally. Fix the BNSF bridge first. Seismically retrofit the I-5 bridge next. Add tolls to manage traffic (and help pay for this work). At this point you might be done. It is not ideal but it is a lot better (for everyone) than it is now. Eventually you extend MAX to Hayden Island. This has merit (assuming a low price tag) and is somewhat independent of this project. It has network advantages in various ways, including buses from Vancouver (as suggested in the last paragraph).

      After all of that you build the big bridge. But the main benefit of a bigger bridge is the HOV/Bus lanes. That is the only way you significantly increase capacity. But that has marginal benefit if the rest of the corridor lacks HOV lanes. From what I can tell you are in good shape heading north but not south. I don’t know why I-5 southbound doesn’t have HOV lanes in the north end of Portland but that needs to be fixed first. Otherwise the new bridge isn’t enough of a change to actually move the needle. Spending a fortune on a new bridge for a marginal improvement in capacity just isn’t very smart.

      There are, of course, similarities with our local boondoggle: ST3. In both cases you have a group of officials focused on overly large projects of minimal benefit. In both cases you have ideological division based on mode, not value. A traditional Seattle conservative would tell you that transit needs to be improved but that ST3 is a terrible way to do it. It is way too expensive for what it actually provides. The same thing is true for someone who wants to improve automobile (and truck) traffic from Vancouver to Portland. But instead you have folks pushing for a bigger I-5 because that is the only way they see of solving the traffic issues. You have people pushing for light rail to West Seattle for much the same reason. You also have elected leaders who defend the project simply because it is too far ahead (in the planning stages) to change. To be clear, they haven’t actually started construction — just planning. There is a breakdown in communication as people assume that any criticism of ST3 or IBR is based on hating transit/light rail or hating cars (respectively). Both projects seem headed towards a financial disaster. Maybe it gets built, maybe it doesn’t. But it is hard to argue that when the dust settles it will be a good value. Quite the opposite.

      1. MAX to Hayden Island or Vancouver has little value, if the only thing within walking distance are parking lots and freeway interchanges. We’ve already found this doesn’t work with MAX Orange and Green lines.

        And at least those lines connect to busy bus routes and are reasonably fast. That won’t be the case here, with most of the yellow line along Interstate.

        1. MAX to Vancouver is very valuable from a transit network perspective, but only if it interfaces well with CTRAN’s network. The Mill Plain (or Evergreen? Can’t recall the name off hand) station is far superior to the Waterfront Station on that front. The current transfer to the CTRAN 60 at Delta Park if you’re coming from anywhere other than downtown Portland and have good timing with a 105 is pretty miserable.

          Good feeder buses can make up for poor placement or land use – the 82nd MAX stop has awful land use and is miserable to be at, but gets good ridership because the 72 is a workhorse. Most MAX Orange and Green line stops have middling connecting service. For the Green line, plenty of great east-west buses connect, but since the Green line isn’t really any faster than staying on those east-west buses, and since the land use around the Green line is poor, it’s of much less value. And outside of the 33, most bus connections to the Orange line are of limited value too, since the routes connecting essentially (or entirely) parallel the MAX.

          The Yellow line has actual places people may want to travel and it to extending to Vancouver makes N/NE Portland trips to Vancouver on transit a lot faster by virtue of removing the CTRAN 60 transfer entirely. It has massive value for local trips between N/NE Portland and Vancouver.

          Now, there are other issues with the project – most notably the choice to cut the MAX back to the Vancouver Waterfront (which will seriously hamper the network impacts for CTRAN), the fact that the design of the physical right of way is so expensive that it may bankrupt both TriMet and CTRAN to maintain, the fact that the FTA has not indicated that they will pony up $1B for the project, and probably 100 other things I’m not thinking of. But in terms of local transit impact, it will (eventually) be a massive improvement over the local options now.

        2. blumdrew, you could get nearly the same network rationalization by sending the Fourth Plain and Highway 99 Vine Lines across the bridge to a new Yellow Line terminal at Hayden Island. No, it’s not as good as an extension to the Library, but it’s a big improvement over the 60.

          The Mill Plain line is just way too long to be extended.

        3. There is a lot of new housing in downtown Vancouver. It’s not just parking lots.

        4. Tom;

          I agree that downtown Vancouver is a great place for transit, and it’s not just the new housing.

          Downtown Vancouver isn’t well served by the planned line, however. Like most other MAX lines have, it sacrifices expediency over utility.

        5. Expediency is utility. There is a limit to how much slowness people can tolerate.

        6. For clarity, when I mentioned extending the two Vine lines, that was instead of extending MAX beyond Hayden Island, which is a much better anchor than the Expo Center. At least there are a couple of thousand residents on the island, and the possibility of many more above the parking lots.

          By providing a busway rather than an LRT trackway as the transit facility it is at least possible to contemplate some sort of flyover from about where the ultra-elevated “Waterfront Station” would be to the shoulder lanes to get the expresses to and from the north on I-5 over to the transitway. It could be a single lane ending in a week that descends to the shoulder lanes.

          Right now the shoulder lanes are too narrow to host the landings of such a structure, but the freeway is supposed to be rationalized with “braided ramps” like I-205 recently got at NE 18th. This could be added at that time, assuming long as the interchange at the north bank of the river were planned and accommodated as the bridge is built. It would make the transitway much more useful than either a MAX extension or a Vine-only bus extension.

        7. blumdrew, what is the issue with the design of the transitway which you predict to be ruinously expensive to maintain? I thought it was just a pair of tracks on an extension of the bridge decking to the west. Is it to be a separate structure?

          Thanks.

        8. I agree with what Tom wrote. You improve the network considerably by just getting to Hayden Island. You can have a route that is basically the combination of the CTran 60 and 105. Just to back up here, the 105 (and 105X) is an express between Vancouver and Portland. It runs every twenty minutes during peak but hourly in the middle of the day. The 60 connects Vancouver with both Hayden Island and Delta Park (which is the connection to MAX). But it often skips Hayden Island. Riders heading north after noon (or south before noon) have to backtrack to Delta Park on a different bus (the TriMet 6) and then the 60. People hate backtracking.

          With a MAX extension the 60 can just end at Hayden Island. This avoids backtracking. But the 60 could also be extended. After connecting to MAX it could get back on the freeway and head express to Downtown Portland. This would only happen midday, when the 105 is running infrequently. Thus riders from Downtown Portland get a more frequent express during midday (that makes a fairly minor detour). The other thing I could see happening is a simpler TriMet 6.

          Obviously this isn’t a huge improvement. But it also doesn’t look very expensive. In contrast extending MAX to Vancouver looks extremely expensive.

        9. Extending the Vine is fine, but downtown Vancouver will always be a better transfer point than Hayden Island and a MAX extension is way better for transit riders. The MAX intercepts the very busy 75 on Lombard and the busier 72 on Killingsworth. The Vine extension would be better than the current 60, but there are more than just the Vine to use in the CTRAN network in downtown Vancouver. The routes crossing the river really should be coming from Portland and only don’t because TriMet offloaded it onto CTRAN 20 years ago.

          The cost of everything related to the IBR is just ludicrous, so I get the instinct to cost cut, but a Vine extension is inferior to a MAX extension. Maybe it should be considered, but first priority really should be the MAX. Though of course they could do both – Hayden Island is a bonafide destination for Vancouverites anyways.

          And Tom, I’d have to dig up the articles on it, but I think just CTRAN’s allocation of O&M was like 30% of their existing budget. It costs more to maintain a train 100 feet in the air than one on the ground

        10. “Expediency is utility. There is a limit to how much slowness people can tolerate.”

          Say that every time the rapidly built South Lake Union streetcar runs its entire length and carries 2 passengers.

          I’m sure future Vancouver MAX passengers suffering through the continued existence of the 15 mph curves just north of the Delta Park station will very much enjoy hearing about how much more quickly they got a poorly planned slow MAX line than one that actually provides a good transit alternative.

        11. That’s a good idea to run the 60 on downtown Portland during the off-peak. It would use the busway to cross the river, so it wouldn’t get stuck like it does today between Delta Park and the bridgehead. It would serve folks making trips between North Portland and downtown Vancouver AND between the two downtowns. The Vines would handle the folks traveling between North Portland and places a little farther into Vancouver. The 60 could run as the third five minute interval of a three line trunk between downtown Vancouver and Hayden Island.

        12. blumdrew, Oh, yes, I agree that the best network is produced by extending MAX. I said clearly that extending the Vines was “not as good as an extension to the library” and I meant it.

          But there’s no way that Trump is going to let his FTA release that $800 million to a billion for building out the trackway and stations. And I am very sad to say, even if a Democrat wins in 2028 — the last time it will be possible for at least a decade unless Texas becomes contestable — Congress has been Gerrymandered and “every state gets two Senators”-ed into a rigid Republican-dominated beast. There will be no funds allocated for transit projects, except for sillinesses like the Omaha Streetcar.

          Thirty-percent of C-Tran’s operating costs is certainly daunting, but most of that will be the north of $400 per hour for train operations. I really don’t see why maintenance on a fixed bridge would be ruinous. I would expect — and certainly hope that the trackway will be paved so that it can be used by buses as well as MAX.

          Grant, that would mean gallery track, which is more expensive to maintain because the roadway has is impacted. But it also lasts a very long time when well built.

          And of course there is the overhead power distribution, which is always expensive for Light Rail, but Tri-Met has an EXCELLENT overhead maintenance group. I’m sure they’ll do it all — for a fee of course — because it doesn’t make sense for C-Tran to bear the administrative burden of building their own group.

          I think that the biggest question mark about extending MAX — besides the billion buckos — is the opportunity for strife between C-Tran and Tri-Met. Even though it would make NYP operate massively more efficiently if there were run-through trains from Ronkonkoma to Morristown, NJTransit hasn’t teamed up with the LIRR yet. Not even for big events at The Meadowlands.

      2. Ross, without some sort of expansion of capacity, the existing bridge pair cannot be tolled either.

        Your staged idea has merit, but it’s an open question if “seismic strengthening” would qualify as a “capacity expansion”. I expect the FHWA would look at it as “State Of Good Repair Maintenance”. So no tolls.

        So far as the southbound morning HOV, Oregon’s refusal is based on the fact that none of Hayden Island, Marine Drive/MLK, nor Delta Park is i significant SOUTHBOUND traffic source. The bridge is essentially a very effective “ramp meter” for traffic from Washington, so there is no need for HOV priority until Lombard, and then it’s only a mile and a half to the I-405 interchange.

        I’d like to see an HOV, but the best thing they could do to improve bus service is to ENFORCE the one they have in the afternoon.

        After all, the people paying the fines would not be there own voters.

        1. Again, you are not an expert on tolling (see previous comment: https://seattletransitblog.com/2026/07/22/midweek-roundup-park-or-ride-the-bus/#comment-996315). I think this work could easily fall under the category of “reconstruction”. The BNSF work could also be seen as increasing capacity as it would mean fewer bridge openings.

          By the way, this is the same sort of bullshit that has us building a second tunnel. Sound Transit is afraid of trying something different than they initially planned. Not because of the engineering but because of the legal hassles. They are willing to spend billions of dollars on a failed project just because they assume that doing it differently will lead to some sort of paperwork snafu. This is crazy. We shouldn’t just shrug when this happens. We should demand the people in charge — who literally make laws — either figure out a workaround or change the law.

        2. As I mentioned in another reply, the fact that the Interstate Bridges were “inherited” by I-5 and had been tolled in the path probably does mean that they could be tolled again for congestion relief without adding capacity or replacing them.

          I have been reading about this for a long time. I’m not just wish-casting and I’m happy to learn new dimensions of when and how congestion tolling can work.

          But it cannot work on I-205. Nobody is suggesting that the Glenn Jackson has outlived its usefulness and needs to be replaced. And maybe it does need more capacity, which could be in the form of ETL’s to pay for them.

          But it can’t be tolled, even by Oregon, just because I-5 is going to be, no matter how much sense doing so would make.

    1. Good question!

      ST no longer itemizes the vehicle purchase program status as a subset of East Link in its System Expansion monthly progress report.

      It appears that ST ordered/ is expecting 10 more vehicles in the next two years. That appears to only allow for all three car trains on 2 Line though.

      Because each car has specifications unique to each system, it’s not like ST can find additional vehicles quickly by looking for used vehicles elsewhere or new vehicles sitting on a track waiting to be sold like a private car.

      So it appears that there are no plans nor allocated funds to order more vehicles to create four car 2 Line trains — and even if they did, the vehicles would start roughly arriving until 2029 and finishing in 2032 at the earliest.

      There is also the issue of storage. OMF South just got a design-build contract for completion in 2032. So it looks to me that 4 car trains could not happen until at least 2032 and probably a few to several years later. My guess is that it is at least a decade away.

      An unlikely scenario: ST could run three car 1 Line trains to enable more 2 Line vehicles. That however seems nonsensical. Looking at the 1 Line summed boardings at every station south of CID they are notably higher than 2 Line summed boardings east of CID.

      I am speculating that there will be an update on vehicle procurement schedules in the next several months. It’s likely complicated by an unsupportive FTA providing loans and grants. It must be done as part of the next stage of planning for system expansion anyway.

    2. ST must have planned the 2 Line with full 4-car trains because it never suggested anything different. This must be due to Link needing more vehicles for operations than expected because of longer travel times than the estimates and more vehicles going out for maintenance more frequently than expected. That must have eaten the capacity that would have provided full 4-car service.

      1. Then this just accentuates how Sound Transit needs to start reducing the travel times. The 2 Line is frequently crawling; if it can’t be sped up, then that’s a huge indictment of how Sound Transit built the line.

      2. The 1 Line also has longer travel times than expected. This was identified a few years ago before the 2 Line opened, and is one of the things that tightened the spare train capacity and increased operating costs. The 2 Line east of CID is a quantum level beyond this: most of the track is perceptibly slower than similar segments in the north and south corridors. Not just on the bridge where there are unique and unprecedented floating bridge factors, but also in the west side (east and/or west of Judkins Park), the Bel-Red surface segment (slower than Rainier Valley or SODO), and some grade-seprated segments on the east side — I’d have to ride it again to pinpoint exactly where the slow segments are. ST has never explained why these segments are so slow, or whether it thinks it can ever get them up to normal speed like the rest of the network.

        1. There are some weird little things like the westbound trains pulling into Bellevue Downtown at an extremely slow speed rather than pulling into the station at a normal rate such as at Northgate. The situation is the same – elevated structure with a clear line of sight into the station on a straight stretch. The only difference is what happens after the station, where the line leaving Northgate just continues and there’s the Kemper Freeman Slow Order Tunnel immediately to the west of BD station (maybe that mandates a dramatic slowing when entering the station from the other end?).

          Trains are extremely slow in that tunnel, at some points not much more than walking speed due to the curves – no idea if ST’s time estimates through there were faster than they actually take it, and fortunately it’s relatively short, but that might be another travel time issue.

        2. there’s the Kemper Freeman Slow Order Tunnel

          More accurate to call it the Claudia Balducci DT Bellevue Bypass. She actually had a say on where the tracks went and managed to push through the most expensive option with the worst performance metrics. It is great if you are going to City Hall.

        3. There are some weird little things like the westbound trains pulling into Bellevue Downtown at an extremely slow speed

          Speaking of weird, at Judkins Part the lights start flashing (no cross) when a WB train is approaching the station and don’t shut of until about 10 seconds after the train has passed. But at Bel-Red when a WB train arrives the crossing arms on 130th don’t activate until the train is actually ready to leave the station. In fact I crossed in front of a WB train yesterday while it was loading passengers. However, I’ve missed an EB train at Judkins Park because the lights activated as the WB train was approaching the station and by the time they went off an EB train had arrived and left. I guess they optimize when there is automobile traffic inconvenienced by the train but if it’s just pedestrians, who cares?

      3. I just took Link to get from Lynnwood to Stadium. It wasn’t especially crowded north of Northgate. It would be a significant rearrangement, but you could probably run 2 car trains north of Northgate with no problem. If there were good turning spots you could make Northgate to Lynnwood the 5 line for now and run it with shorter trains.

    3. Also, did ST run six-minute headway on both the 1 and 2 lines during FIFA? That implies they figured out how to turn the trains quickly at Lynnwood.

  5. Wednesday Link outage: all TVMs on 1 Line, 2 Line, and Sounder. ST says, “Passengers can purchase tickets digitally by downloading the Transit Go app. ORCA card readers can still be used to tap on.” The reason/suggestion messages change in each alert, even with updates to the same incident, but at least this one is better than the one last week when the ORCA readers broke that suggested passengers must buy paper tickets or install the Transit Go app to be fare compliant — instead of just suspending fares.

  6. Can pierce transit please increase routes frequency to connect federal way to the Tacoma dome?

    1. https://seattletransitblog.com/2026/03/26/st-express-2026-restructure-approved/

      Pierce Transit won’t (it only runs very slow, very infrequent, local routes 500 and 501 ), but ST is planning on upping the 574 to every 15 minutes in the fall.

      Unfortunately, the 574 doesn’t go downtown, so unless you are a park-an-ride car-clown, you are stuck with a minimum 3 seat ride, unless you live under the 705 underpass, or thereabouts.

      And even that 3-seat ride is pretty dubious, because almost no local routes go to the Tacoma Dome, other than the T-line and and 41. And the T-Line’s connection really sucks if you want to get the Tacoma Dome Station.

      Perhaps we could get Metro to run a line from Federal Way to Downtown Tacoma, for all King County residents who would like to enjoy the amenities of a big city without the slog of getting into perpetually grid-locked Seattle.

      1. I think that you make a valid point. ST somehow believes that Tacoma Dome is “good enough”. It’s a bias that institutionally pervades ST. They would rather serve a smaller park and ride lot in Lakewood before serving an actual Downtown with an adjacent college campus (UWT). Maybe that’s because Pierce Board members drive.

        1. “ST somehow believes that Tacoma Dome is “good enough”. It’s a bias that institutionally pervades ST.”

          It’s not Sound Transit; it’s Pierce elected officials at both the county and city levels. They’re the ones who told ST what Pierce needed and wanted and convinced the rest of the board to go along with it. They said Pierce needed rapid electric rail to Tacoma Dome station, and that and the T Line was enough, or maybe they’d extend it to Tacoma Mall but not to downtown Tacoma. Or, according to Troy Serad, their original plan in the 1990s and early 2000s was to have Central Link all the way to downtown Tacoma, and the T Line was just interim service until Central Link could reach downtown Tacoma, but the politicians in the mid 2010s and later forgot all that and thought a transfer to a 1-car T Line running every 10-20 minutes was the long-term final vision.

          If they change their minds and say Pierce needs something else instead, that would be the most effective way for it to happen because they’re the ones with authority on this. They’ve had two decades to do so but still haven’t. Nothing in 2016, and nothing in the Enterprise Initiative retreat or vote last spring. It’s harder to do now because it wasn’t in the 2016 ballot measure. But they’re the ones who have the most power and persuasive ability to change things. Or Pierce voters need to elect mayors and councils who will do so.

        2. I consider locally elected officials on the Sound Transit Board as part of Sound Transit as a whole, Mike. It may be a belief that’s bigger than ST, but it’s pretty clear to me that this it’s what ST institutionally believes. I’m not calling ST the misguided evangelist here; just a believer.

          I think that of the belief is driven somewhat by how that the T Line is considered a “shuttle” to Tacoma Dome (and it opened over two decades ago). The fact that the single tracking limits frequency is simply ignored — probably because Pierce bus service is generally so infrequent that it seems “good enough” for Downtown Tacoma.

        3. “I consider locally elected officials on the Sound Transit Board as part of Sound Transit as a whole”

          That’s misreading the situation. It’s the Pierce boardmembers and cities that are driving the situation in Pierce. It’s not the rest of ST imposing it on Pierce. It’s not that ST is so stupid it’s forcing bad things onto Pierce. It’s that Pierce politicians are so stupid they’re insisting ST do bad things in Pierce, and the rest of the board and agency is going along with it because nobody wants to go against another subarea’s wishes — because then ST might go against their subarea’s wishes. So the problem is the Pierce politicians, and the solution is better Pierce politicians or convincing them to change their minds.

        4. “It’s that Pierce politicians are so stupid they’re insisting ST do bad things in Pierce”

          Mike, they’re really not stupid and you’re yelling at the wrong people to be frank when we’re complaining about decisions made by politicians that aren’t working for Pierce County or local municipalities now because they either lost reelection, retired, or passed away by this point.

          I’m personally ambivalent towards it ending at Tacoma Dome, would I perfer it to go farther into Pierce and end at both Downtown Tacoma and the Tacoma Mall, sure I’d love that. But it is what it is and i think letting perfect be the enemy of good like you’re doing here is honestly not helpful to the conversation in implying that we’re run by morons down here. If we could wave a magic wand to get our perfect line, we would’ve already. But politics is a game of the possible, and sometimes that means not getting everything on your wish list in the first go.

          I do foresee changes to PTs and STXs network once TDLE opens that orient more routes around the new South Federal Way, Fife, and Tacoma Dome Link Stops to better service connections to and from Link to the rest of urban Pierce.

        5. The CURRENT Pierce politicians/boardmembers should be telling Sound Transit the PAST Pierce politicians were wrong and ST needs to change its plan. They should tell ST:
          – Help build the Rapid routes in PT’s long-range plan.
          – Get Tacoma Dome station closer to Pacific Ave for bus transfers.
          – Put passenger transfers first in choosing a Tacoma Dome station alternative.
          – Add a Federal Way stop to the 590/594 to serve downtown Tacoma-Federal Way Link trips.
          – Add more ST Express service in general between Pierce cities and for Pierce-Federal Way trips.
          – Ditch the T Line and don’t expand it.

          They should have told ST that in 2016, in the late 2010s, in the early 2020s, and now. Even if they weren’t in office in the 2010s, they’re in office now.

          If Pierce officials would only tell Sound Transit they want something different than the legacy plan, that’s the most effective way to get it. Some of it may require modifying ST3 and another vote, but at least start talking about it and identifying the need, and in the meantime don’t make counterproductive investments that don’t really help Pierce’s overall mobility. Pierce has an acute need for better transit mobility, both local, mid-level (limited-stop), and express. The politicians should at least be raising the need and trying to get it fulfilled, rather than acting like it doesn’t matter, and Link to Tacoma Dome and night owls to P&Rs where nobody lives will solve all the problems.

        6. “The CURRENT Pierce politicians/boardmembers should be telling Sound Transit the PAST Pierce politicians were wrong and ST needs to change its plan.”

          Then go air your grievances to Pierce County politicians via email or phone call next week instead of complaining that they aren’t doing anything here. You have a voice Mike, use it for civic advocacy instead of expecting Pierce County politicians to be able to read the smoke signals you’re sending to them from afar if they aren’t being made known to them.

          Advocacy doesn’t work if you’re silent.

        7. Help build the Rapid routes in PT’s long-range plan

          PT is doing that with PT ballot measure they’re putting on the ballot in the Fall to build up a core of 15-20 minute frequency routes. PT will likely revisit the Stream BRT project eventually, but they need more funding resources to do that.

          Get Tacoma Dome station closer to Pacific Ave for bus transfers

          Doesn’t make really any sense to move the current Tacoma Dome Station away from the most multimodal transit station in the county that’ll have connections to buses, tram, commuter rail, intercity bus, and intercity rail. Something you and others on here praise about CID station. Can we argue about extending the line one or two stops to say UWT/Convention Center and Commerce St Station/Theater District in the future, sure. But you’re making a different argument in my opinion.

          Put passenger transfers first in choosing a Tacoma Dome station alternative

          They’re doing that with the proposed station design intended to integrate itself into the current Tacoma rail station with a new mezzanine bridge to make rail platform transfers better. Something Sounder and Amtrak riders will very much appreciate. And are looking at building connectivity to the Transit Center and T Line to make transfers easy for them as well.

          Add a Federal Way stop to the 590/594 to serve downtown Tacoma-Federal Way Link trips.

          There isn’t much need for this when the 574 will serve this purpose till TDLE opens. Also a detour to Federal Way will add 15 to 20 minutes. That added time means wasted time on bus hours that could be used to expand 590/594 service to be 4 times per hour.

          Add more ST Express service in general between Pierce cities and for Pierce-Federal Way trips.

          They’re doing this with the service changes for ST Express in the fall. They’re adding more 574 trips now that the Seatac to Federal Way segment is being eliminated. Will we see further changes in the coming years to the other Pierce STX lines, probably. I foresee some Pierce County STX bus hours being shuffled around once more people move to Federal Way Link and off routes like 577.

          Ditch the T Line and don’t expand it

          It’s the line with the highest ridership in the county and will get 18,000 riders per day when the TCC extension will open. No bus line PT currently runs gets the ridership T Line gets and are unlikely to touch the ridership a fully built out T line will get. The closest currently is the 1 with 3,350 weekday riders. Alongside people are pretty happy with the T line, the Hilltop Extension fully realized the inital potential the line had when it opened over 2 decades ago. People are using it to connect with job, school, recreation, entertainment, errands, retail, and medical nodes that are within the core of Tacoma.

        8. “Then go air your grievances to Pierce County politicians via email or phone call next week instead of complaining that they aren’t doing anything here. You have a voice Mike, use it for civic advocacy instead of expecting Pierce County politicians to be able to read the smoke signals you’re sending to them from afar if they aren’t being made known to them.”

          I’m not a Pierce County constituent. My dad’s family is from Tacoma but I’ve never lived there. The issue is the Pierce County voters who voted for these politicians and aren’t telling them in sufficient numbers to change their minds. Bernie and a few others are telling them to, but not enough people to reach critical mass.

        9. “Get Tacoma Dome station closer to Pacific Ave for bus transfers”

          “Doesn’t make really any sense to move the current Tacoma Dome Station away from the most multimodal transit station in the county that’ll have connections to buses, tram, commuter rail, intercity bus, and intercity rail.”

          People will go from Link to Tacoma neighborhoods every day. They take intercity rail or bus a few times a year if ever. Only a small fraction can take Sounder because it has limited hours. We should design transfers for what the most people need every day, not optimize it for occasional use cases and ignore the majority cases. The buses that currently go to the Tacoma Dome bus bays can continue to do so, stopping at Link on the way. The buses that don’t currently go to Tacoma Dome station, well, that’s the problem: it’s out of the way for them to detour to. That’s why it’s a bad location for the Link station. The station needs to be where the most bus routes can reach it without detouring. Pacific Ave is a better candidate for that.

          “Add more ST Express service in general between Pierce cities and for Pierce-Federal Way trips.”

          “They’re doing this with the service changes for ST Express in the fall.”

          The 574 doesn’t go to downtown Tacoma or the aforementioned bus transfers. And I was talking about general ST Express service between more Pierce Cities more often, so that people can get around in their own county.

      2. I am going to suggest a more robust restructure of ST Pierce County service for fall 2027.

    2. That looks like an oversight in PT’s plan. It has dark rapid lines to most of the major nodes that have highest population and ridership, but not to Federal Way. I had to look at the map again to verify it wasn’t there.

      Pierce County has long been screwed by its own governments and Sound Transit. This is just another example of how transit doesn’t really work in Pierce County because it doesn’t meet people’s trip-pair needs or frequency needs. However, it will get better next month when the 574 starts running every 15 minutes between Tacoma Dome and Federal Way. Neither ST nor PT will offer service between downtown Tacoma and Federal Way that takes less than an hour, so you’ll have to find some way to get to Tacoma Dome station.

    1. David, Seattle Transit Blog is a 100% volunteer organization and anyone can volunteer to write posts! Please email your pitch for a story to contact@seattletransitblog.com, and we’d be happy to help you contribute to our front page.

      In the meantime, weekly news roundups and Sunday videos have been an STB tradition for many years, so we will continue to post them along with other articles.

  8. TDLE Comments Post:

    You gotta love the institutional vagueness about comment responses at ST! Here’s a line from the article:

    “Most people plan to access future stations by driving and parking, taking transit, or getting dropped off.”

    Doh! There’s very little residential within walking distance of these stations. And bicycling share is small everywhere outside of Seattle.

    How else would a significant share of Link riders get to these planned stations?

    This is just not informative!

  9. I’ve recently downloaded the bike link app and started using the whole bikelink locker system, but I’ve found myself using the lockers more to store my backpack and bags than to store bikes. Does anyone know how often the bikelink lockers are used and do you think it would be a good idea for stations to have Amazon pickup style lockers using the bikelink system?

    1. Just as streets aren’t just for cars, they’re for everyone, including bikes. Lockers aren’t just for bikes, they’re for everyone, including storing backpacks and bags.

    2. You should know storing backpacks and bags in the BikeLink lockers are explicitly not allowed per BikeLink’s user agreement unless attached to a “permitted vehicle” (section 1.17).

  10. I’m not sure when it was installed, but there is now a westbound B Line bus stop on NE 8th street underneath Wilburton Station. As a transit investigative reporter, I waited to see if anyone got on or off there, and can confirm riders are using that stop, however I did notice bus drivers stopped about 40-50 feet short of the bus stop signpost, I guess because it makes it easier to merge left. I also noticed most people who cross NE 8th at that location don’t use the pedestrian bridge, they jaywalk underneath it.

    1. What!? Does that mean Wilburton Station getting bus bays? That should have been done a while ago.

      I would say the East Link Connections mobility project was a disaster because they focused on frequency over coverage… Like Richards Rd lost bus service! And so did Somerset, and there will be no coverage for the 271 east of Eastgate.

      Buses also still poorly feed into the Link stations in BelRed. We need to rethink the restructure!

      The lack of bus bays in the BelRed stations also falls into the problem of buses cherry picking bus stops on 3rd Ave. Even though they’re color coded buses will sometimes use another color and it’s going to be quirky. I’ve mused designated bus bays for Westlake, Symphony, and Pioneer Square stations on 3rd Ave similar to how transferring at The Junction (and kind of U District). Currently the 3rd Ave buses feed poorly into Westlake, Symphony, and Pioneer Square stations and so do the Eastside routes to the East Link stations.

      We need to feed buses better into Link stations!

      1. “I would say the East Link Connections mobility project was a disaster because they focused on frequency over coverage…”

        Frequency is the biggest issue. It’s what affects several times more people, and what makes using transit viable. The biggest thing people hate about transit is long waits, even more than the same amount of travel time, and the biggest thing that makes the difference in whether people take transit or not. You’ve got to consolidate service to real frequent corridors rather than spreading it out too thinly like peanut butter.

        “Like Richards Rd lost bus service! And so did Somerset, and there will be no coverage for the 271 east of Eastgate.”

        Frequent/fast service between Issaquah and Bellevue is a much bigger issue. You’ve got to have good trunk service between the cities and the most populous areas and where the most retail is. That’s not Richards Road or Somerset. Or NE 20th Street.

        And Somerset does have bus service. I took the 203 from end to end a month ago to see the new route in action. It goes on Newport Way from Factoria Blvd to Issaquah, halfway up Somerset Hill. So you have east-west service; you just don’t have north-south service. And it’s located where the most people on Somerset can get to it.

        I lived a quarter mile from the 150th & Newport Way stop in high school for a short time, and I used the routes that were the ancestors of the 203. So I was especially interested in that area. Back then the 252 went hourly to Crossroads, Bellevue, and the U-District, but only westbound service went to that stop; eastbound service terminated at the bottom of the hill. The 210 went every 90-120 minutes to Seattle and Issaquah, and a few times a day to North bend. So I mostly rode the 210, which was the ancestor of the 203.

        1. Coverage also impacts ridership, even at the semi-urban level. If people can’t quickly get to Link, they wouldn’t ride it either. Or they’ll resort to park and riding.

          Most of even Seattle and Bellevue isn’t particularly dense. They are relying on coverage routes.

          You need coverage and frequency. Hard to get both, of course. But I’d put a lot more money into coverage and reliability, before frequency, especially in suburbs. Because suburb ridership isn’t good anyways that the frequency is a waste of time. The buses in the Eastside are largely empty like 203, 269, 239, 226, 249… getting frequency upgrades.

        2. Directness of route will also drive ridership. If a route goes through the whole world, people won’t use it to commute at that point.

          They just want to get to the Link station or downtown. When serving suburbs, buses should stay on the main road. I understand the accessibility purpose but those should be DART routes instead.

        3. Mike, Somerset doesn’t have bus service. Newport Way is a road that borders the neighborhood. No bus route enters Somerset. Just like after the route 47 was deleted, it was said the Summit neighborhood no longer had bus service, even though there were still routes on Olive Way, a road that borders Summit.

        4. Coverage also impacts ridership

          It depends on what you mean by “coverage”. The RapidRide E covers Aurora. If you got rid of coverage there you would see a lot less riders. But people often to refer to “coverage” as providing service to areas that don’t have many riders. That is what the whole “coverage-ridership trade-off” is all about (https://humantransit.org/basics-the-ridership-coverage-tradeoff). You can spend money getting more riders (i. e. running the RapidRide E more often) or covering more areas (i. e. buses to East Lake Sammamish). The point being there is a clear trade-off here. Every agency tries to balance these two ideas. But they are by their very definition contradictory. It is quite reasonable to argue that an agency is neglecting one while focusing too much on the other. But in general you can’t have more of one without less of the other.

          But that doesn’t mean that the restructure did a great job in either respect. Maybe they will lose a lot of coverage and not get much additional ridership. The opposite is common. For example the 10 and 12 run very close to each other in Capitol Hill. This provides a tiny bit of coverage. Yet ridership gets hammered since the buses run half as often. At a minimum they should branch at 15th & Thomas (Kaiser) but they don’t.

          As for the East Link restructure, they may just have bad routing. Maybe they lost some coverage but the routes aren’t very good at getting ridership either. Or maybe coverage is roughly the same but the routing is poor. I would say that has been the case in Shoreline with the last restructure. I don’t know enough about the East Side restructure to say one way or another. If your point is that they have abandoned corridors that could get them good ridership than this isn’t really about coverage, it is about bad routing (in the same way it can be argued that Shoreline routes are poor even though it has nothing to do with coverage).

        5. “Frequent/fast service between Issaquah and Bellevue is a much bigger issue. You’ve got to have good trunk service between the cities and the most populous areas and where the most retail is. That’s not Richards Road or Somerset. Or NE 20th Street.”

          Isn’t the 554 adequate enough?

          Also why are we prioritizing high density over low density? I know it’s logical but we’ve got to think twice before removing bus service off of streets when there could be room for improvement. What was the ridership data on the 246 and 249 anyway?

        6. “Directness of route will also drive ridership. If a route goes through the whole world, people won’t use it to commute at that point.”

          Also this:

          Think of a Tacoma to Federal Way trip via Pierce Transit, you’ve got the 500 and the 501. Obviously you’d take the 500 because it’s more direct via SR 99 while the 501 slides through the communities of Milton and Fife. While the 500 is direct and Federal Way to Tacoma commuters would obviously take it, the 501 picks up Milton and Fife which means extra riders.

          So it’s not really about the directness of a transit route that draws the ridership, it’s the people that take it, where to, and how. Basically it’s the “not-so direct” routes that feed into the more direct ones, how ridership works between the direct route and the one that’s the opposite of that.

        7. “Somerset doesn’t have bus service. Newport Way is a road that borders the neighborhood.”

          There’s a difference between the Somerset neighborhood and Somerset Hill? Why should that matter?

        8. What was the ridership data on the 246 and 249 anyway?

          Not very good. This is the performance report from last year. On page 55 it lists the performance data for both routes. They are both below average for a “suburban” route (which is lower than an “urban” route). You can see current overall ridership here. Both were at least trending upward. You can dig into the ridership of each stop here: https://seattletransitridership.com/.

        9. “Isn’t the 554 adequate enough?”

          The current 554 doesn’t go to Bellevue and is half-hourly. Issaquah needs frequent express service to its own metropolitan city, which is downtown Bellevue. Issaquahites have been asking for this for decades. It’s better from a miles-traveled perspective if people stay in their own subarea, and many Issaquahites want to go to the jobs in downtown Bellevue and Redmond, high-end retail in Bellevue, retail and services of all kinds in Bellevue, and soon transfers to Stride north and south. It’s inertia from the past that Issaquah has all-day express to downtown Seattle but not downtown Bellevue. It should be the other way round, with a transfer to Link for Seattle, because we built Link for Eastside-Seattle trips so we might as well use it for that.

          “Also why are we prioritizing high density over low density?”

          The aim should be to serve at least half the residences, and the densest and most walkable neighborhoods. That serves the most people, and the ones most likely to use transit. If you have a large 2D coverage area, like Bellevue between 140th and 180th, and no street is denser/more commercial than the rest (“the obvious choice”), the best route may be through the middle, where it serves the most people on both sides. That’s the rationale behind the 245 (156th) and 226 (164th). 140th has another route so it’s not left out.

          If we look at 156th, Overlake Village station as at NE 29th, the east Bellevue retail/apartment core is between NE 24th and NE 8th, NE 8th to SE 24th is houses, and SE 24th is Bellevue College. So it’s clearly a productivity-based route between NE 29th and NE 8th. It’s a coverage route between NE 8th and SE 24th. At the same time it needs to traverse south of 8th to get to Bellevue College, a major destination, and one we want to have a high transit mode share.

          If we look at 164th, the only non-house thing on it is Interlake High School. Still, it’s a high school. And the 226 does go to Bellevue College and the Eastgate transfer hub. I happened to grow up a half mile east of 164th, and my mom now lives on it, so I have a bias for service there. The 226 has coverage frequency: 20 minutes peak, 30 minutes daytime, 60 minutes evening. I’d like to bump those up to 15 minutes like I would for all coverage routes, but the Eastside has higher priorities and limited service hours, so that will have to be a long-term goal.

          The highest priorities in east Bellevue are probably to get full-time 15 minute service on the 245, and to reroute the 226 from Bel-Red Rd to Spring Blvd to facilitate Link transfers and village trips. The 156th RapidRide in the 2040s will address the first. We still have to convince Metro of the second.

          140th/145th Place has a coverage route. That leaves 405 to 140th. Richards Road is in the middle of that. I’ve never been to the Richards Road area; I’ve only been through it once or twice in a car at night. My impression is there’s little there. It’s not that Richards Road doesn’t need a coverage route; it’s that Bellevue has higher transit priorities and limited service hours. It doesn’t make sense to degrade the 245 or 226 further to put a route on Richards Road. You need frequent service somewhere so that some people can get to their shopping centers and transfer hubs, rather than nobody being able to unless they wait an hour and don’t travel weekends.

          “What was the ridership data on the 246 and 249 anyway?”

          I have no idea. I haven’t heard of the 246. The 249 isn’t deleted; it’s split, and a middle segment is deleted. The western segment still serves Enatai to Spring District station, all those people going to downtown Bellevue or schools or such. It will be moved from Bellevue Way to 84th to backfill the 271. North Bellevue Way needed a better route because it has wall-to-wall apartments all along it, and they need more frequent service and a route to the U-District — because it’s a denser street so a route can serve more people. Medina is less dense by its own choice, so it gets the coverage route.

          The middle segment between 120th and 156th is close to the parallel 226, so that’s why I think Metro thought it could be deleted. The eastern segment will be another route, so they’ll still have coverage to Overlake Village station and Downtown Redmond station.

        10. “They just want to get to the Link station or downtown.”

          They’re also going to the local shopping centers and schools. That’s what a local route is for.

      2. The biggest thing people hate about transit is long waits, even more than the same amount of travel time, and the biggest thing that makes the difference in whether people take transit or not.

        Yeah, yes… sort of. Of course long waits are the big thing to hate on. Two ways this can be “fixed”. The cost is no object ideal solution is transit shows up so frequently that it doesn’t matter when you get to the stop/station. The other way is run on time with a fixed schedule. That’s less $$$ but a lot harder to implement with buses that have human factors and have to deal with transit. My biggest gripe was when I used the old 249 to connect to the 255 when I worked in Kirkland. I could time my walk to be at the stop at the posted arrival time and usually had to wait 5-10 minutes for the bus… fine. But occasionally there would be a driver that left their timed stops early and of course just continued to get farther and farther ahead of schedule. Then I’d end up wasting 30 minutes waiting for the next bus and additional time waiting for the 255 connection at S Kirkland.

        1. All buses should get Rapid Ride treatment , and full signal priority.

          The main reason a bus can run early is because of people not at the stop. The fix is to control the light timings the force the bus into the schedule anyways. The stop light makes up for the earliness of blowing past stops. However, if a route regularly does not see stops, I wouldn’t do this and instead make the schedule more optimistic and let the bus be a little late if there are more stops than usual.

          This paired with at least 15 min frequency, and a computer algorithm optimized transfer timing to other routes, is pretty much golden.

        2. Of course long waits are the big thing to hate on. Two ways this can be “fixed”. The cost is no object ideal solution is transit shows up so frequently that it doesn’t matter when you get to the stop/station. The other way is run on time with a fixed schedule.

          Those are two things: reliability and frequency. Frequency matters even if reliability is extremely good. A train may leave the station every hour on the hour. Great! You can set your watch to it. It will get more riders if it runs more often.

          There are other factors. There is a curve as you would expect. Going from every hour to every half hour is much better than going from every ten minutes to five. Eventually you end up approaching the point where it doesn’t make much difference. But interestingly enough, it still matters even if you are running every minute. This is why people spend a lot of time dealing with elevators that have relatively short wait times (measured in seconds). There is no magic point where it doesn’t matter although most agencies stop at six minutes. They would get more riders if they ran more often than that but it usually isn’t worth it. They are better off increasing frequency on other routes (imagine if every bus and train ran every six minutes… yeah, that would be awesome).

          Another issue is trip length. The longer the trip the less important is frequency. Running the trains every five minutes between the UW and Northgate probably resulted in a substantial increase over running them every ten minutes. But it doesn’t matter as much if you are heading to Portland. The same thing is true with commuter rail. Frequency is less important because the trips tend to be long.

          People also hate a lack of reliability. This leads to waiting of the worst kind. One day the transfer works great (no waiting). The next day you are forced to wait a long time. This makes it difficult to plan a trip. The two can be considered independent variables although they obviously influence each other. A bus that is unreliable may be OK if it has good frequency and is managed well. You expected to take the 5:15 but you ended up taking the 5:05 — it is just running ten minutes late. As long as you still have that ten minute spacing it is fine. (Obviously it impacts travel time but that is a different matter.) The opposite (which you mentioned) also works but it is no substitute for a more frequent route.

          There are studies to support these ideas about frequency. I can try and dig them up but I’m feeling lazy right now. I don’t know about the science behind reliability — I’m just using common sense here. Jarrett Walker spends relatively little time on the subject even though it seems fairly important. Maybe planners don’t spend a lot of time on the subject since it isn’t their job to make the buses more reliable. But it definitely influences decisions. It is why one reason there is no bus on Boren. I could see it influencing decisions in other ways. It is the basis for timed transfers which are common throughout the world. Maybe reliability doesn’t get as much attention because most of the country (including this region) still struggles with very poor frequency on most of the routes (while most of their buses are relatively reliable).

        3. “Of course long waits are the big thing to hate on.”

          It’s not just a theoretical abstract issue to argue about in the comment section. Studies have repeatedly shown that long waits is the biggest factor in passenger discontent and the biggest thing that makes them not choose transit. Transit is competing against cars where the wait time is zero. Rail is no longer the miracle it was in the 1800s or 1920s where it was the fastest thing around so people had more tolerance for waiting. Now transit has to aim higher to be competitive.

          I don’t know where to find those studies because I’m not good at that kind of research. Ross is better at that.

          Frequency is king. It’s what cities with comprehensive transit have, and why their transit mode share is so high and car ownership is so low.

        4. I don’t think anyone in my neighborhood, which is mostly multifamily residential, who doesn’t use public transit, would mention frequency as the reason they don’t use it. Our route 250, and even every route in our regional transit system, could run every 5 minutes, and I don’t think it would attract one more rider from my neighborhood. I think they view using public transit as a hassle that no amount of increased frequency can solve.

        5. @Sam

          There’s certainly diminishing returns depending on the neighborhood but every single route that has seen frequency improvements has also seen a corresponding increase in ridership. Recent examples in the most recent service change include the 225 and 240.

        6. The issue is decisions on the margins. For people who are close to 50/50 on either taking the bus or not taking it, frequency can be the thing that tips them one way or the other. The more people ride it, the more it will motivate other people to ride it.

          Your neighborhood may be one of the very low ridership areas like Medina, and even 5-minute service may not be enough to attract them at all. To some extent, they moved to Medina because they intended to have a non-transit-riding lifestyle. And Medina and south Kirkland is more expensive than other neighborhoods, so there’s unlikely to be lower-income people needing transit there. But if you look at the entirety of the route, it also serves other neighborhoods with higher ridership, the low-density McMansion area where people may not take transit is only two miles, and buses have to traverse it anyway in order to get between the higher-ridership areas that people are going between.

        7. There may also be riders in Sam’s neighborhood that Sam doesn’t see. I’m sorry to break it to you, Sam, but you’re not onmiscient. At least, almost but not completely omniscient. I bet you don’t have 24-hour surveillance at all the bus stops in your area so that you can count everybody who gets on.

        8. Even former commenter and Mercer Island resident, DT, once said that the route 550 could run once a minute, and he still wouldn’t ride it.

          Btw, I’m thinking of unbanning DT, and allowing him to comment again. I’ll think about it some more over the weekend, and let you all know of my decision on Monday.

        9. If I remember, he did ride the 550 sometimes, to ballgames and such. So he’s probably riding Link sometimes. Even if he doesn’t, he’s still only 1 out of 25,000 Mercer Islanders. Somebody is getting on and off at Mercer Island, and by that I mean more than one person.

    2. For anyone using the B to connect to Link to go to downtown Seattle, Wilburton station is the obvious connection point. It saves several stoplights, and some walking, compared to making the connection at downtown Bellevue station. Having the bus stop in front of the station makes perfect sense to me, even if drivers headed to whole foods who might get stuck behind the bus might not like it.

      1. The idea of everyone going to BTC to transfer is diminished by now having several Link stations. Because of transfers to other Metro buses and soon Stride, it does still makes sense — although it’s no longer as primary as it was before 2 Line.

        Honestly, for a westbound RapidRide B rider, it’s a faster (no Downtown Bellevue long signals to sit through), safer (no street with traffic crossing) and physically closer transfer to Link.

    3. It’s just a new bus stop much closer to the station. The old westbound B Line bus stop (which still exists), was 700 feet east of Wilburton Station. I think Metro realized there should be a bus stop closer to the station, so they finally put one in. It’s a basic bus stop, although they do call it Bay 2, and the one on the other side of the street is Bay 1. But they are just regular stops made in a lane of traffic.

      1. Yeah, I noticed this last week when I got off at Wilburton and hiked over to Uwajimaya (about 5 minutes if you do it right). The stop doesn’t have the RR treatment and from what I observed the RR drivers sort of look at you and see if you want them to stop. The signage is terrible! It’s good to see there is an attempt to correct what was aweful. The big miss now is the lack of a mezzanine connection from the Link elevated platform to the bridge across NE 8th. This whole thing was so poorly planned it should be a poster child to how to get transit wrong the more money you have to waste.

        1. I’d add that I’m seeing Wilburton (actually Midlakes but that’s a different battle) start to get more on/off boardings. Maybe this is because of the better, albeit obscure connection to Rapido Ride B. Or maybe more people are just discovering the train. I lean mostly toward the latter but I’ve seen upticks in ridership at all stations except Spring District (very slight if you look really hard on just the right day more people are using this) and East of Nowhere. I’m also seeing a huge difference in the demographics using the train. More on this later if anyone cares.

        2. “The big miss now is the lack of a mezzanine connection from the Link elevated platform to the bridge across NE 8th.”

          Some hearty posters would say “it’s just stairs.”

          Others like me get frustrated over ST’s seemingly nonchalant attitude about making riders use dozens of stairs on and off Link platforms to walk to a bus stop. The “use the elevator” argument seems rather flippant.

          The future poster child of horrible transfers is being planned with the Spine severing. It will have high volumes of transferring riders too — more than than the station boarding totals at many stations.

        3. At the Wilburton station plaza, next to the pick-up/drop-off, I did observe confusion, with some people thinking the stairs to the pedestrian bridge led to the station platform, and some people thinking the entrance to the platform was how to get to the pedestrian bridge. I think they need more obvious signs saying what leads to what.

          I also don’t put all the blame on Sound Transit for the pedestrian bridge/station platform not being better integrated. It seems like they were funded and built as two separate projects. The pedestrian bridge being mostly a King County project, and the station obviously being a Sound Transit project.

        4. Bernie, I’d like to hear more about your ridership observations of the 2 Line, demographic or otherwise. I boarded a westbound train at BelRed a couple Thursdays ago a bit after 5 PM, and was surprised how crowded every car was. I’m still a bit shocked by packed Bellevue trains, because of so many previous Starter Line rides that were mostly empty.

        5. Yeah, I continue to be amazed at how many people are using Link on the eastside. Last night was the first time I’ve used the DT Bellevue station. After leaving the meeting at City Hall at 8:30 about half the seats on the east bound train were occupied. While waiting I saw a west bound train stop and roughly 20 people got off and about the same number boarded. This was also the first time I’ve ridden the train after dark and was surprised at the number of people using it. When I got off at Bel-Red the P&R was probably ~90% capacity. In the morning parking seems to peak around 9AM with ~70% of the lot full. I know a lot of people use it to get to Mariners games so that would account for some of it. I’m seeing a lot of youth riders; kids maybe 13ish going places with friends. And I’m seeing a lot retirement age people using it. Many times it’s obvious they are bring along a friend who has never ridden the train before and quite likely never used transit of any form. I’m starting to see more people with luggage headed to SEA.

          If I had to guess I’d bet that maybe half or less of the ridership is generated by people commuting to work. But headed east in the afternoon after work the trains are standing room only at Judkins Park. Of course a large number get off at MI and after S. Bellevue there are almost always seats available.

  11. Why is Community Transit going to spend millions building a new transit center in Bothell in favor of the Swift Green Line Extension when they can just send the Swift Green Line to Bothell/Woodinville Transit Center?

    One of the problems might be layover space, but is the Stride S3 seriously going to take up all of it? It’s going to be the only bus that will lay over there as of now and the Stride S2 will cut through the transit center. That’s all the buses that are planned to serve the transit center as of now.

    But we can do better, send the Swift Green Line and all buses that use the UW Bothell/Cascadia College bus loop to the Bothell/Woodinville Transit Center. That way we create a more vibrant transit hub that works better than just for shuttling between two BRT lines. Transfers between Stride and Swift Green Line would also work better with my proposed redirection.

    But will layover space be a problem? If it will given that all of those buses will sleep there, then just restructure the network so we don’t have buses overlapping each other to the transit center and fighting over layover space. One notable example is the 106/120 segment between Canyon Park P&R and NE 185th St. Their corridor will be eaten up by the Swift Green Line and truncating the 106/120 at Canyon Park P&R not only gives UW Bothell-bound riders a transfer to the Swift Green Line at Canyon Park but also a Stride transfer, making both options competitive as ever.

    We all got to acknowledge the best ways to redraw transit and the adequateness of the alternatives.

      1. “Why is Community Transit building a transit center in King County?”

        That’s what I was also wondering. They really shouldn’t be doing so.

        I do not like the idea of a redundant North Creek Transit Center when there’s another transit center nearby and they can use that one. They should be coordinating with King County Metro and Sound Transit to create a large transfer hub at I-405 and SR 522.

        Oh yeah not to mention it would also save a lot of money on not having to build North Creek Transit Center. Let’s spend that money on something that will actually be needed!

        Also how are we going to add an infill station in North Creek? Will the Swift Green Line be re-routed? Will it be extended? Community Transit should think about that. Similar to how Community Transit plans to re-route the Swift Gold Line in Arlington in the future.

        Building a Community Transit bus hub in King County is the same argument as the idea I’ve enjoyed musing on building a Northshore Transit Center at Northshore Pkwy & Hoyt Rd in Pierce County so the 182, 187, 902, and 903 can all use it so they don’t have to be making weird loops through Twin Lakes. That would also support a restructure in Federal Way and make a grid network.

    2. send the Swift Green Line and all buses that use the UW Bothell/Cascadia College bus loop to the Bothell/Woodinville Transit Center

      I agree. The routing is very odd. I see why it doubles up service through Bothell. But I don’t see why it should serve anything east of UW Bothell. Even if you put aside the cross-county issues it seems like bad routing. There are a bunch of options that seem better:

      1) Just follow the Stride Line and layover at the new Bothell/Woodinville Transit Center.
      2) Go through campus (stopping once) and then layover over at the same place.
      3) Just layover inside campus. Right now the 372 does that. Since the 372 will no longer layover there, there should be plenty of space.

      The first option is simple. You add some additional connectivity as ST will run a bus from Woodinville to the transit center (which won’t connect to the bus any other way). But I think most buses (including Stride 2) will connect to the bus at other places.

      The second option gets you much closer to the middle of campus than the Stride lines. By continuing to the transit center you provide riders with a quick shuttle to campus (if they get off the Stride 2 bus). This would be a nice benefit but entirely within King County.

      The third option seems like the best. It is by far the cheapest. It serves the biggest destination in the area (the campus) while also connecting well to the rest of the network.

      I also find it odd that Community Transit is doing this. Consider how different this is compared to the Swift Blue extension. Swift Blue could overlap the RapidRide E (just as it is overlapping Stride 3 in Bothell). That would make the transfer between buses (which is very common) a lot faster. It would also mean that northbound riders from 185th & Aurora or 192nd & Aurora would not have to transfer at all. But instead it bypassed all of that and only served Aurora Village (a minor destination). Yet they are proposing something radically different here. Not only is it serving Beardslee & 195th — an area that is almost entirely residential — but it will be providing unique service to an area in King County. To be fair it will probably get some riders. But it is hard to imagine it is worth the extra cost in service, let alone the cost of building a transit center.

      If there is a consistency here it is probably a lack of communication with Metro. If asked, Metro would have made a very strong case for overlapping bus stops along Aurora with Swift Blue. Likewise, if asked, Metro probably would have suggested the layover inside the campus, noting that they will no longer be parking buses there.

      1. “1) Just follow the Stride Line and layover at the new Bothell/Woodinville Transit Center.”

        Yes. This should be the preferred option, not to mention Community Transit can spend those dollars that they would use on North Creek Transit Center on improving their local bus network like improving frequency which is something they actually need.

        “2) Go through campus (stopping once) and then layover over at the same place.”

        But it seems odd that Stride won’t be doing this.

        “3) Just layover inside campus. Right now the 372 does that. Since the 372 will no longer layover there, there should be plenty of space.”

        I wish they did that, but if the Swift Green Line does that then it means all the other Community Transit buses that will end at North Creek Transit Center will also end there since the Swift Green Line won’t. That will be a problem.

        I just wish we rebuilt the UW Bothell/Cascadia College bus loop rather than leaning fancy schmancy and building a fully new transit center in a new place.

        I guess Community Transit wants to keep their buses away from Metro and Sound Transit by building a new transit center in Bothell… But they have to acknowledge they’re not in Snohomish County, so why not just work together with the other agencies while they’re in a different country?

      2. “Swift Blue could overlap the RapidRide E”

        It will. Community Transit has already decided that. It’s waiting for Shoreline to do something to the street to support it. Shoreline plans to do it but isn’t in any hurry.

      3. Yeah the layover next to the south garage at UW Bothell seems like the ideal location. With the 522 and 372 no longer laying over there, there should be plenty of space for CT. A stop should probably get added somewhere around the layover as well, as a connection (with a 5-10 minute walk) to Stride North.

        Location of the layover: https://maps.app.goo.gl/pnYTcGpXbBL5wQFG6

      4. Comparing the Swift Green map and the Stride S3 map, the S3/S2 hub is south of Beardslee Blvd station on 405. The North Creek Transit Center looks the same distance south, so it may be part of the station complex or adjacent to it on the east side even though it has a different name. The Stride stop shows a pair of station dots on either side of 405. The eastern one must be in the same place as the CT station or adjacent to it; I can’t imagine CT would put it near-and-yet-too-far from S2 transfers.

        1. I can’t imagine CT would put it near-and-yet-too-far from S2 transfers.

          Riders will be able to transfer from ST to Swift Green at Canyon Park either way. If Swift Green ended at the Bothell/Woodinville Transit Center (AKA the 522/405 interchange) then there would be two transfer points.

    3. ” Bothell/Woodinville Transit Center” is the name of the TC that they are putting in at the 522/405 interchange?

      1. “Bothell/Woodinville Transit Center” is the name of the TC that they are putting in at the 522/405 interchange?”

        From the map it looks like the North Creek Transit Center is a different one east of 405. The station on 405 and presumably the multimodal hub is called Beardslee Blvd station on the map. I thought it would be called something like Bothell/Woodinville Transit Center too, but there’s no station called that on the map.

        So this seems to be a second transit center east of the Stride one. Maybe CT has so many buses they can’t layover anywhere else, but that seems unlikely.

    1. It’s been awful for the past few weeks. Some operators are good at maneuvering and being on time/early… While most of the fools don’t. Its mostly late because of late deadheads. If Metro instructed operators to start earlier during days of traffic, it’d be a lot more reliable. The operators have no reason to otherwise. They probably get paid overtime for being late on purpose.

      1. SKR, let’s say you’re a bus driver. You have 5 one-way trips to drive on the route 556 for your entire day’s work. What’s the logic of trying to make yourself late getting from the base to your first terminal, and then to make yourself late on each in-service trip? Please explain.

      2. They probably don’t get overtime: at the end of their shift they just go back to the base or hand the bus off to the next driver, and the missed trips are gone forever.

      3. This was on Wednesday around 4:30/5; it seemed like total gridlock downtown when I left work. I saw buses on Pantograph that were 30+ minutes late. I saw two #62s on Blanchard right next to each other that didn’t move the entire time I was walking from 6th to 3rd.

        Definitely not the operators fault. I thought maybe there was a big crash on I5 or something but didn’t see anything in the news.

        And no, operators do not run late to milk overtime. I imagine that they have some mandated minimum breaks and that sometimes late incoming buses then cascade. I haven’t really looked into this, but I think your comment is sort of ridiculous on its face. If there are certain buses that leave persistently late, that’s probably just a scheduling issue that should be addressed in the normal way.

    2. I just don’t like seeing buses start their trip so late. It’s fine if there’s traffic that comes after, but starting a trip 10 minutes late or more is egregious, especially if regularly as seen with some operators.
      The good operators keep to the schedule (running late after starting the first stop of a trip due to traffic is fine) except in the worst circumstances, which no one would blame them for.

      I also have passed by buses deadheading intentionally waiting in lanes with more traffic despite those lanes not even going the direction they need to go. They’re definitely intentionally stalling to collect some extra pay while blaming traffic.

      2. You’re blaming drivers for congestion, which they have no control over. The way to overcome congestion is with transit-priority lanes. Those are city/state capital projects outside Metro’s control, and certainly outside the bus driver’s control.

        “The good operators keep to the schedule (running late after starting the first stop of a trip due to traffic is fine) except in the worst circumstances”

        Running late because of traffic or lane closures/blockages is 99% of the reason buses are late. The “worst circumstances” happen almost every day from 10am to 7pm, or 1pm to 7pm, and highways have lane closures at least once or twice a week.

        I don’t know what you mean by intentionally deadheading or going out-of-direction, or how you’d know.

        You’re accusing drivers of maneuvering for extra pay without evidence that they get extra pay. If they’re trying to make their shift long, all that would be at the end of their shift and only if the bus is going back to the base: that kind of maneuvering wouldn’t affect passenger trips. Drivers have no incentive to be intentionally late, and have a strong disincentive: both their bosses and passengers dislike it.

        Some drivers are more aggressive than others in trying to make up time when they’re late. Meaning some drivers go unusually fast between stops to try to make up time. That can help regain two minutes or so, but it’s not going to regain ten or twenty minutes.

        1. The live feed connects a block to OneBusAway when a bus starts their deadhead. On time buses start their deadhead (from base or layover facility) earlier than the late ones. Occasionally, some operators also connect their vehicle during the deadhead so you can see where they are before the trip starts. In some instances, you can see them rushing from the base last minute (with no traffic) when they were supposed to leave earlier and wait at the layover facility near the terminal. The data is all public and open source, it’s not hard to analyze. I am working on a script to further analyze this.

        2. Maybe it’s because Metro has a set schedule for the operators and going early is not paid for. So operators simply don’t have a reason to leave on time. But Metro and ST should fix it, and make sure deadheads start on time and buses leave the terminal on time (or at most a few minutes late) unless the traffic situation was actually unusual and unpredictable.

        3. Another advantage of buses coming extremely late (10 mins or longer) is that there will be fewer riders, and therefore there are a lot of cases they can blow past stops or even end their trip early.

        4. Buses that run late will get more passengers, not less. And the more passengers it gets, the later it will get. Lateness snowballs into even more lateness. And there is no incentive for the driver to run late. If he has a 15 minute break at his terminal, and runs on time, he gets a 15 minute break. But, if he runs 10 minutes late, he only gets a 5 minute break. It’s in the driver’s own self-interest to try to be on-time.

      3. Unlike in other areas where I’ve ridden buses, many Metro operators seem to take leaving at scheduled times seriously. Sometimes they seem to leave late per OBA but it’s rare. I even witness them holding at intermediate points if they’re too early.

        It’s true that late buses tend to pick up more riders. With every stop having a longer wait, more riders accumulate. It’s been a pretty well understood behavior. It’s a factor in the genesis from things like fare cards and bus stop Orca readers to speed boarding to a signal priority system only triggering if a bus is late.

        For a low volume route, it’s a mere wait frustration. But for a high volume route, just one bus 2-3 minutes behind schedule can create overcrowded buses and extreme bus bunching as it moves down the street a few miles.

        If an operator runs too early, the next operator can get more riders too. Sometimes it’s not an operator’s fault.

  14. Today’s transit effort, for your reading entertainment:

    • Original plan was Friday Harbor to Mt Vernon to catch Amtrak’s 9:45 am departure. This avoids having to sit in traffic on the mid-day buses.

    • The ferry I would need to do this got canceled due to mechanical issues, leaving me with an arrival in Anacortes at 9:30 am.

    • Amtrak’s 11:45 am connector bus is sold out today, so that leaves me with Skagit Transit 90x for going further south. There’s no way to get from Anacortes to Mt Vernon to get the 10:50 am departure, so that left me with a 12:50 pm departure.

    • Going south from Seattle to Portland, Amtrak is sold out today except for the 7 pm departure.

    • Flix bus has two afternoon departures: 2:25 and 4:45. There’s no way to get from Mt Vernon to the Seattle bus stop by 2:25 if I leave Mt Vernon at 1:50, so the 4:45 it is, putting me in Portland 12 hours after my departure from Friday Harbor (if all goes well).

    Alternatives I didn’t check:

    • I probably should have checked to see if Amtrak’s 11:45 am bus from Mt Vernon was sold out from Mt Vernon to Everett. This would have gotten me an earlier 512 at least.

    • Belair Airporter

    • Island Transit connecting to Mukilteo. This could very well have been faster than anything on I-5 under these circumstances.

  15. Does anyone know anything about King County Metro route 251? ( that’s the proposed route between Woodinville and Redmond ?

    Has that been postponed again?

    I think all of King County Metro’s new routes for the fall service change are available to see on the Pantograph app. ( although if it’s a new route number it’s only showing One Direction of the route. Which is something that usually occurs until it’s updated again later on. )

    But the 251 is missing from there .

    ( sidenote you can also see part of the new sound transit route 547, which is the late night service between Redmond and downtown. The 570 schedule is not for the new shake up. I’m assuming it’s going to Pierce Transit.)

    None of the other service providers updated their GFTS data yet.

    1. Pantograph is great at adding routes, but still cannot update vehicles 8270-8289 into 6270-6289, causing an unknown vehicle bug on Rapid Ride routes.

    2. Alex got got the GTFS data mid-month and loaded it into his Transit Times app. It was missing route 251. We don’t know why. Maybe Metro decided to postpone it for some reason, or maybe its schedule data just wasn’t ready.

      (To see the new route schedules, set the date to August 28 or later, and use the settings at the top to select a route. Only Metro-operated ST Express routes are included, because he doesn’t have the data from the other agencies.)

  16. Will the pierce transit measure fund more direct service between Tacoma dome and federal way downtown station? I’d like to see that become a brt route until light rail arrives.

    1. No, Pierce Transit wont, though ST will be upping the frequency of the 574 to every 15 minutes. The Pierce Transit ballot measure looks like it may up the frequency of the 500 and 501 to every 30 minutes, were it to pass.

      I personally think Metro should be funding inter-county trips, not Pierce Transit. They are far better funded to do this sort of thing.

      The center of gravity in the South Sound is Tacoma, and King should be supporting their South King residents to help them access Tacoma via transit.

    2. PT’s long-range map in the article shows the frequency-boosted corridors. At first I thought it didn’t reach Federal Way because the “Federal Way” label is further north, but comparing it to Google Maps it looks like it does reach the Link station. What do Tacoma experts think? Do it look like the 500, 501, and 402 going to Federal Way station?

      Even if it does, it’s not one of the three Rapid routes in dark green. So the only alternative to the 574 would be routes running every 20-30 minutes instead of every 15-20 minutes.

      I’m surprised that it’s not one of the Rapid corridors because it’s Tacoma’s gateway to the region. PT seems to think the planned 574 is enough for that, along with not having to wait an hour for the 500 or 501. Or PT may simply be prioritizing limited service hours: it might like to upgrade the 500 to a Rapid line but it has higher priorities, and the other areas are more critical.

      What are the Rapid corridors? There’s the 1, 2, 3, and 4, but there are also two east-west segments south of Tacoma Dome: what would their entire routes be?

      1. The 500, 501 and 402 all serve Federal Way Transit Center now, so I assume that would continue. They are all local routes that aren’t primarily focused on that, though. They are coverage routes that serve the in-between-places and at least the one time I took the 500, it take nearly an hour.

        That compares to the 574 that takes 11 minutes.

        I don’t understand why you think Pierce Transit should be focusing on a high capacity, high frequency line to Federal Way. If anything, it should be the reverse. Tacoma is the destination, not Federal Way. This should be Metro’s job to serve their constituents and provide service to a major city 11 minutes away. ST has already provided the hour long slog from Federal Way to Seattle, so they don’t have to worry about that.

        They are trying to form a somewhat imperfect grid system. I saw the presentation a month or so ago and I’m trying to remember the details. Basically making the 3 highest ridership routes into high frequency, 15 minutes routes, and a few new routes as well.

        Main page with details and the presentation

        https://piercetransit.org/more-transit/

        I’m not clear on why you think Pierce Transit should provide duplicate service to the 574.

        1. I’m not saying duplicate the 578; I’m saying the 500 has strong potential as a local corridor like Aurora or Pacific Highway (which it was part of). It’s mainly for the stops in between, not end to end. PT is throwing that potential away. But it’s the straightest route between Tacoma and Federal Way, so somebody in the middle can access both. It’s a potential growth corridor for more housing. Both the Dome District and central Fife are supposed to become densified, and the 500 travels right through them, and when it happens, there will be more demand for retail in the extended corridor around it.

        2. I suppose.

          There really is extremely little along that part of Pac Hwy through Fife until you get to South Federal Way, and even then it’s most big box stores and a hospital. Not your traditional ridership drivers.

          The 500 also has to do a weird jump onto I-5 to get over the Puyallup River, because Fishing Wars is closed, and will likely be closed for decades. That skips the few apartment complexes that currently exist in Fife.

          Just another problem with spending billions on new, redundant highways, and neglecting maintenance of your existing roads and bridges.

        3. That area is so hemmed in by highways, the Port and heavy industrial zoning that any natural expansion of Tacoma to the north towards Federal Way just hasn’t happened. It’s an incredibly unpleasant place to spend time.

          All the highways give anyone with a car easy ways to leapfrog the area.

          This is yet another strike against building a few stations there. I’ve walked and bike through that area a fair amount. It’s genuinely an extremely hostile place for humans outside of a car. And it isn’t great inside one either.

        4. It’s also not exactly a great place for long-term investment, if you start looking at flood, tsunami, and lahar maps.

        5. I’m surprised that it’s not one of the Rapid corridors because it’s Tacoma’s gateway to the region.

          Because the ridership currently isn’t there. The 500 sits around 8th highest ridership route for PT, but the ridership is also like around a 1,000 riders per day. Moving to 30 minute is a good step forward but tbh I don’t see the merits of turning it into a rapid or brt line compared to other higher ridership lines at the moment. The line also doesn’t really have a lot of “destination nodes” currently other than the end points. You have EQC and Kitts Corner retail area in South Federal Way, but that’s honestly about it. Its a lot of strip malls, car, RV, & boat dealerships, vehicle repair & accessory shops, and some housing (tho not a lot till you get into Fedeal Way). You’ll likely see a BRT between Tacoma and Federal Way eventually, but that’s more like 15 to 20 years down the line once TDLE is built rather than now and once the port highway expansion is completed as a lot of trucks still use Pac Hwy.

          The 501 is farther down ridership wise, tho it’s also more of a coverage route than something for getting to and from either Tacoma or Federal Way. The 402 sits a place or two below the 500 ridership wise.

        6. There really is extremely little along that part of Pac Hwy through Fife until you get to South Federal Way, and even then it’s most big box stores and a hospital. Not your traditional ridership drivers.

          Agreed. It has a very weak middle. The strongest part of the route is probably the section in Tacoma along Pacific (a route it shares with other buses). Overall it is basically a coverage route.

          The center of gravity in the South Sound is Tacoma, and King should be supporting their South King residents to help them access Tacoma via transit.

          Agreed. Federal Way is in a tough place politically. They are pulled in three directions. They still want an express to the big city (Seattle). They want their local service as well. But they also want service to Tacoma, the closest big destination. It is a sprawling area and Metro doesn’t have that much money so it is tough to serve all three.

          This begs the questions though: Why is Pierce running this bus? Again, it goes back to coverage. It is a coverage route for parts of Pierce County. As it gets into King County, then what? It can’t just end there — there is nothing there. It might as well keep going until it has a decent layover spot. My guess is the first good one is where it ends. I’m a little surprise it doesn’t end at South Federal Way Park and Ride (since it would be closer) but maybe it isn’t designed for that. It is better that it connects to the main transit center but it is spending a lot of time in King County. I think that Metro should be chipping in for this route. But it is also quite reasonable to take a bus north (like the Metro 182) and then transfer to an express bus to Downtown Tacoma. Something like this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/C1KkjHsmV3a5tXEY6.

          But as you can see, the big weakness there is not Metro nor Pierce Transit but the agency with the most money and a mandate to provide cross-county service: Sound Transit. The 574 does not run to Downtown Tacoma. ST doesn’t run a bus from the southern terminus of Link (a major transit hub) to Downtown Tacoma (the biggest destination in the area). Oops.

    3. I’m curious if the opening of SR 167 from 509 to I-5 in the next several weeks or the SR 167 opening between I-5 and Puyallup in a few years should result in express bus routing changes.

      1. It might make sense for the 594 to use 509 to 167 to I-5 to get out out of downtown. And in. It might save 5 minutes or more.

        But then it would have to skip the dome. I suspect they would be loathe to do it, not because of severed transfer connections (their aren’t really any to speak of. They are downtown), but because of the parking garages.

        This is a downside of building a regional transit system focused almost entirely around park-n-rides at $50,000 a space structures. One of many.

      2. The sad thing is that downtown, around Commerce Street Station, is a wasteland of decaying giant, empty parking structures. The result of misguided attempts to compete with the mall in the 1960s. They could have reused all that unused parking instead of building the dome garages, and made that the transit center, reinvigorating downtown at the same time.

        It’s just a snowball of bad choices.

        1. It’s just a snowball of bad choices.

          Agreed. One of the really bad ones was abandoning Union Station. Sounder would be a lot more useful if it ran there. While maybe not the middle of downtown it is certain in downtown in the same way as King Street Station is in Downtown Seattle. It connects to a lot more buses and isn’t that far from others (like the 2 and 3). It would still work very well with express buses, too. Riders who miss the train would just take the bus (like they do now).

          Yeah, parking is one reason why they favor the Tacoma Dome but there is also Sounder. Another is that it is easy to serve with buses from Lakewood. It creates a vicious cycle. Service to Downtown Tacoma isn’t as good and so more people drive to the park and ride. Since riders are there ST feels like it might as well run the bus like the 574 there. If nothing else they should fix that.

        2. For sure. Tear down I-705, bring passenger service (Amtrak and Sounder) back downtown and through the tunnel, and put the freight inland, hill be-damned. Reconnect the city to the water.

          Those freight trains need the double-tracking anyway. And electrification so the hill doesn’t bite so bad. But that’s another story.

          I don’t really think their will be too many transfers between the 594 and the Sounder though. Or any. I can’t think of a reason anyone would do that.

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