At the Sound Transit Board System Expansion Committee meeting on Thursday, the agency shared a series of updates on the upcoming West Seattle Link Extension. The grand opening for the 3.9 mile extension from SODO to Alaska Junction has slipped from 2032 to 2035. This delay is due to longer than expected construction time for building the new bridge to West Seattle. Starting in 2035, 3 Line trains will shuttle passengers across the Duwamish Waterway where they will transfer to the 1 Line in SODO. West Seattle passengers will need to wait until the second tunnel is complete in 2042 before they can enjoy a one-seat-ride to downtown Seattle in the first tunnel.
Sound Transit also shared a new $100 million in project savings achieved through a redesign in how key Seattle City Light infrastructure is relocated. Earlier designs required additional construction on 6th Ave for the 230 kilovolt power lines, but the new approach has moved this infrastructure to be located within the light rail corridor. These savings are part of the nearly $2 billion saved by various other design changes to the extension, including the removal of Avalon station.
The System Expansion Committee approved a resolution to start the acquisition process for 55 properties located along the planned right-of-way. This includes 19 homes, industrial facilities, railroads, and City or County owned land. Sound Transit will begin the appraisal process for each property and start negotiations with the current owners within the next year. Tenants usually have 18 months to relocate.
This is an open thread.
“Shovel-ready” was a lie. As you can see, they are still designing it.
Exactly. Remember, they wanted to start with West Seattle Link because they felt like it could be done quickly. That is simply not true. There is also a myth that the paperwork is the main bottleneck here. This is an idea spread not only by the board by groups like “Build the Damn Trains”. But the problem is simply money. They could start the whole process over again from scratch and still finish at the same date. That is because it is going to take a long time and cost a lot of money to build a new bridge to West Seattle.
There you have it, in a nutshell. The project is going to cost a fortune. It will delay other, more worthy projects. The main cost is a brand new bridge to West Seattle. West Seattle riders won’t have a rail connection to downtown until 2042 (if not later). There will only be two new stations. When it is finally complete, it will provide very little benefit to West Seattle riders, since they already have a bridge capable of high speed transit to downtown (from a lot more areas). Yet Sound Transit insists on building things in this order.
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At a Sound Transit community forum I attended recently, staff argued that the second downtown tunnel was fairly necessary for redundancy, in case something went wrong with the current downtown tunnel. I suppose the same argument could be made for a second West Seattle bridge. I recall that there have been occasions when the existing high bridge was out of commission for extended periods, so building a new bridge for light rail would provide a back-up option for folks who would otherwise drive (in SOV or busses) in that scenario. Of course, as with the second tunnel, the price of redundancy is very high.
There’s a serious flaw in that argument. ST could install crossover tracks so that some runs that can’t use the disabled tunnel can switch to the working tunnel and stations. Then Tacoma-(not Ballard) could be switched to Tacoma-Northgate for instance. Or Redmond-(not Everett) could be switched to Redmond-Ballard. In the future ST might find strategic ridership reasons for Redmond-Ballard or Redmond-West Seattle lines. All of this would be possible with crossovers, BUT ST IS NOT PLANNING FOR THEM.
So if DSTT1 gets closed for some reason, DSTT2 could not compensate for it, any more than the minimal sense of CID-Westlake trips (the same trips that abundant 3rd Avenue buses could serve). Having an intact line to Ballard or SeaTac doesn’t help you at all if you’re going to UW, the Eastside, West Seattle, or Capitol Hill. The impact for DSTT1 riders would be exactly the same as now: use a Link shuttle replacement or other bus routes to get sort of to where you’re going. Vice versa for DSTT2 riders.
So the “redundancy” is illusiory. There could be real effective redundancy with crossover tracks, but ST is not building them. So having “a redundant tunnel downtown” becomes an abstract issue for any particular rider, who’s going to a particular destination that only one tunnel serves.
If there’s a huge parade or protest or evacuation downtown, then yes, people could go to the intact tunnel and travel to somewhere out of downtown and transfer to an alternate bus from there or call for a ride home. But this is really farfetched and rare. And if there’s a really big crowd, the intact tunnel will be full anyway and won’t be able to accommodate a second tunnel’s worth of riders. (See the World Cup experience and the Seahawks Victory experience.) And if an evacuation is caused by an earthquake, it may not be safe to run trains in the intact tunnel anyway. So is most of the resiliency real?
It may be the “freeway/water flow fallacy”. BART was designed with a terminus triangle at SFO (airport), San Bruno (city), Millbrae (city/caltrain). If you’re looking at it from a driver/plumber perspective, cars/water can turn any direction to all three legs of the triangle. But a rail line has to go one specific route, serving only two legs, or going one direction to all three. This either leaves out a trip pair (SFO to Caltrain, Millbrae to San Bruno), or makes one station unlucky because the train has to detour out of the way to get to it. The agency realized this late, and tried several of the potential workaround.
VTA light rail had a similar issue with a Y-shaped design. The track originally came from the north (Tazman in Santa Clara), went south through downtown San Jose, then split at Olhone to Santa Teresa (southeast) or Almaden (southwest). Santa Teresa is a residential district where tech commuters live. Almaden is known for its winery and probably has fewer, richer people. VTA originally served both branches equally: Tazman-Santa Teresa and Tazman-Almaden. Maybe with extra peak service or expresses to the split point or Santa Teresa. But if combined service in the common segment is 10-15 minutes (typical US underservice), then service to each branch is 20-30 minutes (bad and barely usable). Ridership in actual use heavily favored Santa Teresa. Almaden ridership was so low that VTA switched to the shuttle pattern: all regular trains were North-Santa Teresa, and Olhone-Almaden became a shuttle. And now they’ve eliminated the Almaden segment entirely.
So when ST says having two tunnels will improve redundancy, with no crossover tracks, it sounds like ST is falling into the freeway/water flow fallacy. Or it’s thinking that the intra-downtown segment (Westlake-CID) is so important that it must have one tunnel open even if the other tunnel is closed. For what? Trips within that one mile (2-3 stations)? Trips that 3rd Avenue buses and 3rd Avenue shuttle buses couldn’t fit? Because nobody can walk one mile if the only tunnel is closed and they can’t/won’t take a parallel bus? A significant subset of the population can/will, enough to relieve substantial demand on bus capacity.
Mike, why do you think ST isn’t planning to have crossovers? What evidence do you have for this claim? From everything I’ve seen the 1 line will be able to use the DSTT and the 3 line will be able to use the new tunnel via crossovers.
A new tunnel would allow service to westlake to bypass the failure prone and capacity constrained DSTT. If you remember the resiliency report that the Seattle Times published, it recommended that a new crossover be installed at Pioneer Square or Symphony as well, to make single tracking headways more viable as well.
“Mike, why do you think ST isn’t planning to have crossovers? What evidence do you have for this claim? From everything I’ve seen the 1 line will be able to use the DSTT and the 3 line will be able to use the new tunnel via crossovers.”
I and other STB authors haven’t seen anything in the drawings or descriptions to that effect. We’ve asked ST repeatedly to include crossovers but it has never acknowledged the issue. I’m not good at interpreting drawings but other people who are better at it have looked for those and not found them, and have asked ST about it and heard nothing.
“If you remember the resiliency report that the Seattle Times published, it recommended that a new crossover be installed at Pioneer Square or Symphony as well, to make single tracking headways more viable as well.”
That’s a different issue. That would help if one track in DSTT1 is disabled, so that ST wouldn’t have to single-track such a long segment, which would mitigate frequency loss. It wouldn’t do anything for DSTT1-DSTT2 issues.
And it’s a decade too late. During Connect 2020 in January 2020, when the tunnel was close/single-tracked for a few weeks for 2 Line tie-in, ST installed a temporary center platform at Pioneer Square station, because one track only went north and the other track only went south, so everybody had to transfer there to continue onward. When Connect 2020 was finished, we urged ST to leave the platform there permanently for future needs. It left it for a while and then removed it.
A couple years later, some STBers proposed installing crossover tracks at Symphony station, again to shorten single-tracking segments. This came after several DSTT closures or single-trackings for unplanned outages and planned maintenance. ST wasn’t interested.
Now in 2026, ST is finally interested in crossover tracks at a DSTT station. I think Pioneer Square? That’s great. But it should have been done much earlier.
And it should also put high priority on crossover tracks between DSTT1-DSTT2. So far we haven’t seen any indication of ST interest in this. Have you?
West Seattle already has a second bridge. It was used exclusively by transit and freight when the main bridge was out. Everyone from West Seattle who takes transit remembers this.
The second tunnel adds redundancy where it is needed least. It overlaps the main busway in the region. For example, if I’m trying to get to Chinatown from Northgate I would normally just ride the train. But if the train can’t get past Symphony Station then I just hop on a bus. Thus it provides very little redundancy. It isn’t even our busiest section. That exists between downtown and the UW. That particular section is not only busier, but taking a bus is much slower (and the buses have far less capacity).
Nor does the second tunnel add coverage. That would be the normal thing to do (e. g. serve First Hill). If they did that, then most of here would reluctantly accept it. But the redundancy comes with a cost — and not just financial. The second tunnel means you have more points of failure. Worse yet is the new pairing. If West Seattle was paired with Ballard then it could at least be argued that no one is worse off. But in this case, thousands of riders who currently ride through downtown will have to transfer. Not on those rare days when there is a problem, but for very single trip. Thus it is quite possible that West Seattle Link and the second tunnel will end up being worse overall then what we currently have.
“ A new tunnel would allow service to westlake to bypass the failure prone and capacity constrained DSTT”
A few weeks ago I got caught up in one of the Link delays, so I exited at Westlake. It took me about as long to get from the platform at Westlake to 3rd as it did to take a bus on 3rd to Pioneer Square.
The new Westlake station will be about 11 floor deep, with the primary access being by 9 layers of escalators. So, it will likely take longer to get from the DSTT2 platform to the surface as it will to just take a bus on 3rd.
The proposed DSTT2 as it is just isn’t that valuable.
The problem is that the second tunnel has no northern connection to the existing one, so as designed it’s not redundant without one multi-level transfer and one bi-level transfer for Line 1 passengers. It is completely useless as a bypass for Line 2 unless the blockage in the old tunnel is between Westlake and Pioneer Square, and then it’s two multi-level transfers.
This is really not “redundancy” but rather “alternative routings”.
D M, the problem with “crossing-over” between Lines 1 and 3 as designed is that both moves require crossing an opposite direction track. If we number the tracks at Holgate east to west as 1, 2, 3, and 4, Track 1 is Line 1 NB, Track 2 is Line 1 SB, Track 3 Line 3 NB and Track 4 Line 3 SB.
So, lest say that DSTT2 is closed and Line 1 trains are using The Spine to the pocket at Northgate for turnback. To move from Track 4 (Line 3 SB) to Track 2 (Line 1 SB) a Line 1 train from Northgate would either have to cross Track 3 (Line 3 NB) using a diamond or move through a pair of turnouts that would require running out-of-direction on Track 3 for a few yards. [Ed note: even with the out-of-direction running, this is a better solution because the cross-over between Track 3 and Track 4 can also function as a simple cross-over for Line 3 trains.]
The same is true for northbound “cross-overs”, except the tracks connected are Track 3 and Track 1 and the track crossed is Track 2.
Both these sets of turnouts should be a fairly large number so that trains can navigate them at close to normal speed, but that makes each set of four turnouts with the connecting diagonal trackage pretty long. It would make sense to make the overall system a “scissors” by putting a diamond used by both directions between Track 2 and Track 3. Scissors cut the length of the entire plant in half.
Such a “Grand Central Terminal Passenger Throat” trackage design ought to show up on diagrams because they’re so consequential.
This line of thought is silly. Almost every bridge is more or less a piece of critical infrastructure that is inconvenient for tons of people when unusable. That alone isn’t good justification for building another bridge – you do that when the need in regular circumstances exists. I don’t know if that’s the case for West Seattle, but I rarely see traffic backed up on the high bridge (which I can see from my balcony). It would be inconvenient if the I5 ship canal bridge wasn’t usable anymore, but that certainly wasn’t why building Link between Capitol Hill and UW made sense.
I think ST is just using the specter of the recent and painful West Seattle Bridge closure to justify prioritizing this particular. Or at least that’s how that statement comes off to me.
Also: the ST3 second tunnel is connected only to the south line on MLK Jr. Way South, limited to six minute headway. So, a new tunnel costing billions and many years for 10 trips per hour per direction.
The current north line would have connection with the second tunnel; how would that help resilience?
ST has not suggested a turnback variant to/from South Forest Street base serving the SODO station. But for Ballard only, not likely.
I have suggested the turnback variant as a substitute for the WSLE; retain lines improved lines C and H; feed local routes to SODO via the South Lander Street overcrossing.
Jack, this is exactly the right solution. Build Ballard-Westlake as a Skytrain-like automated system with small diameter tunnels made possible by third-rail operation and shorter trains but more frequent operation. Then make Everett trains, if they ever come about, Everett-SoDo using the outer loop at Forest Street for turnback. Don’t build DSTT2 or take the busway.
But other people have been advocating for this exact solution for at least a decade.
Thank you, guys — especially Tom terrific — for explaining the operational consequences of the incredibly short-sighted SODO segment track layout. It truly makes DSTT2 unable to be redundant because track switching would freeze all the trains and they would quickly back up. As a result, the only redundancy is having another train line nearby — and reaching it will be more circuitous than reaching the Third Ave transit mall.
On top of that, many disruptions usually begin at Stadium and Capitol Hill because of where the current crossovers are located. These are not DSTT2 stations!
Every time someone calls DSTT2 redundant, I am tempted to scream that it’s a de facto LIE. Then I calm down, explain the lie and yet it never eeens to register except with those who can foretell it.
This is why ST needs to be hiring people away from other large urban rail systems! Local staff and electeds can’t envision the problem because to them it’s a paper exercise. But those who have operated or at least ridden other multi-line rail systems understand.
Sadly, once built this mistake in design will haunt riders for decades. It’s only in the past few years did Chicago correct the much less punitive Brown/Red Line crossover problem after over a century. (Note this exact CTA problem is being replicated with proposed 2/ 4 Line operations at two locations in Bellevue.)
The best way to achieve better redundancy is to figure out how to have crossover tracks available in the DSTT. It’s not building DSTT2.
Jack, and, as a refinement to your mention of the C and H, extend them north via Sixth from Virginia and Lenora to Dexter with a southbound contra-flow bus lane and then turn east on Harrison or whichever street is made the “transit spine” through SLU. You could use Fifth to go south, but that would require two more turns southbound. In either case, it would be feasiable to keep the SLU station because it would be smaller for a Skytrain-like system.
This adds a new frequent pathway through “south SLU” which is actually the highest-density part of the Amazon development, not Westlake.
My particular slant on these projects falls more along the line of –
where did the estimate go wrong, IF AT ALL?
The lazy explanation is to jump on the bandwagon and say –
Sound Transit is incompetent!
Mob Rule, yessiree!
How did ST come up with the original $4 Billion estimate for West Seattle Link?
What was the last major construction built to provide transportation access to West Seattle?
The West Seattle High Rise Bridge.
Completed in 1984 for $150 Million for the ½ mile segment.
The ST3 vote was in 2016.
Now apply inflation to that, and to build that same structure in 2016 would cost $348 million for that ½ mile structure.
Four miles of that is around $2.8 billion. Toss in 3 Pinehurst type stations @ $250 million each for a total of $750 million, and the total is $3.5 Billion
$4 Billion sounds like a reasonable cost estimate.
The question for me is, what is driving the costs up from the original.
The original assumes all elevated.
Don’t forget, when putting together an EIS, there are two cost types:
Budget and
Y.O.E. – Year Of Expenditure
Any major project accounts for the fact that by the time it’s completed, it will add 30% to the total, on average, for inflation and other contingencies.
Don’t forget the addition of the West Seattle tunnel, which will add cost while increasing the time required to access the station. It also greatly increases the cost of the station that’s in the tunnel.
Yes. We should also keep in mind that construction costs rise faster than general inflation, because there are fewer opportunities for automation in construction than in other sectors of the economy.
On the other hand, we are definitely doing something wrong, because our costs (for both roads and transit) are much, much higher than in other comparable countries.
Not exactly true. While “you can’t offshore my hammer” is true automation has big time taken over excavation and tunnel boring. The “next big thing” is transportation. Trailer backing/loading/delivery is already a big thing in Europe. Over the road trucking will be a reality before any new Link extension. There’s also a lot of expense that goes into construction drawings and AI is going to expedite that as well as just ordering and delivery logistics which is another significant cost of construction. If you don’t have to buy several millions of dollars of material only to pay to store it for several years that’s a big cost saving. It’s an even bigger cost saving when what you need on the job site is there instead of going “oh sh*t” we dead in the water until we get widget ### expedited.
They’re making some progress on getting a contractor to demolish the Centennial Mills warehouse in Portland. This is the place where the fire and resulting risk of structure collapse has closed Amtrak service north of Portland.
https://www.koin.com/video/centennial-mills-demolition-plans-begin-amid-risk-of-building-collapse/12069191
I have great news. The global transit community has been pestering about this, but I can now announce I’m about to start taking photos again for my Flickr account. I began it in 2015, have 1 subscriber, and 2 photos. Stay tuned.
@Sam, I have no words to express how long I’ve been waiting for this.
I’m sure you’ll post an excellent and high-quality comment here about every photo you post to Flickr, giving the inside story on it, and the comments will be longer than the photos are. Maybe we can guess which transit-related photo Sam will take first. My guess is something about BelRed station, or maybe Spring District.
Ooh, the prediction websites are all a Twitter about which transit-related photo Sam will take first. My chance to make the big bucks!
Such a failure that there isn’t a mechanism within ST to go back to the drawing board for ST3 in Seattle.
What is being planned is so much more expensive and will be completed so much later that it arguably invalidates what was voted on for ST3 in Seattle.
IIRC, before the SDOT Kubly two tunnel proposal (now looking dumber and dumber by the day), former council member Mike O’Brien proposed looking at Ballard to UW and West Seattle to SODO. Too bad he was hounded out of office by the anti-Missing Link folks. Next century, he might be seen as Copernicus and Galileo (along with the people who fought for Forward Thrust) while our descendants ride the bus.
Mike O’Brien did sell us up the river with his tratorious agreement with the Obstructionists to move the Missing Link from 54th, where it was planned and funded for decades, to Market St, that didn’t even register on the list of reasons he didn’t run again.
Case in point: before Strauss ran again in 2023, he announced his version of treachery to move the Missing Link from Shilshole, where it has been planned and funded for decades, to Leary, and he won comfortably by ~6%. Not sure he’ll survive again, but for many different reason.
Nah, that was Strauss who sold the bicyclists out– O’Brien was physically attacked by the Shilshole folks.. It’s notable that Strauss has not really faced a serious urbanist contender since his election
Such a failure that there isn’t a mechanism within ST to go back to the drawing board for ST3 in Seattle.
Or a mechanism by which voters can ask for the same thing. Either would work. It is very hard to argue that this is what we should be building. Even the board doesn’t seem to agree with that. Their argument seems to be “We planned to build this, so let’s finish it” as opposed to “this is the best value”.
I’ve been foretelling this delay for several months here on STB. 2032 was never really logistically doable since about 3 years ago. I actually don’t expect it to open until 2037 at the earliest but ST would look too pathetic to announce a 5 year delay now.
Cable stayed bridges almost always take at least 6 years by themselves (design and order lots of custom steel besides the cable) before tracks can be laid and trains tested.
The deep Alaska Junction station vault also takes more than the typical time too. They must remove a football field of soil and rock at least 80 feet deep in the middle of West Seattle. Some of us witnessed a similar situation with Capitol Hill Link, where the station site was under construction from 2009 to late 2016.
Note too that the cable-stayed bridge is a purely vanity decision. Most bridge projects have several months where the bridge design is debated. But ST puts one bridge design on the table and refuses to let the public consider others. We could have been debating this as early as 2020. It’s just not in ST’s culture. They decide everything and then announce it to the public. Locals accept this without understanding that this is culturally unacceptable in most places in the US.
Alaska junction is quite shallow though. It’s probably going to be the shallowest station other than the DSTT ones…
Nitpick, but did you count the Spring District?
Spring District is in a trench, not a tunnel. The covered areas are a lid and an overpass. Yes there is an escalator and elevator to get down to the platform but there is the same at Judkins Park and DT Bellevue
As I’m reading through the latest design I see that you are correct. I also didn’t realize that the Jefferson Square site is now no longer the station site. It’s back to the B of A site (and across the street).
I’ll give ST credit for reducing the cost and moving the site a block eastward. Losing Avalon makes moving Alaska Junction eastward more important.
But I still feel that SODO should be redesigned differently. Right now it’s a terrible transfer station compared to how it should be designed. Having three platforms is fundamentally unnecessary.
They are using a different design now as part of the cost cuts.
Part of the cutback is removing vertical capacity at SODO. So transferring will be more crowded. Imagine that when an entire trainful of riders transfer.
I think ST isn’t telling the truth. They need to be curbstomped and fully replaced by a competent staff and board.
My suspicion is that they went over budget for ST2 and are silently using ST3 funds to finish the ST2 projects.
They need to be honest about what is going on and fix it. That means taking the big step to scrap ST3 and replace it with a resilient system.
Seattle Subway for downtown. Use light automated vehicles, and maybe introduce a PRT setup in less dense, longer sections.
Replace long lines with proper freeway running rail. Line 4 should not be a light rail. Line 1 and 2 weren’t supposed to be either. People riding for those locations need efficiency and longer distance travel. In fact bus projects could be more appropriate and way cheaper for some of it. I’d only support an I-5, I-405 , and I-90 express rail at most since they’re major corridors. The rest of our money should go to a major regional bus expansion.
“My suspicion is that they went over budget for ST2 and are silently using ST3 funds to finish the ST2 projects.”
Unlikely. The ST3 overruns are obvious: a tunnel downtown, underground stations downtown, a new and unnecessarily fancy Duwamish bridge, complications around the Pigeon Point slope that Martin understands better than I do, a tunnel in West Seattle, a tunnel alternative in Ballard, the ballooning cost of real estate ST must acquire for this, and any recent apartment/mixed-use towers ST may still intend to buy because it didn’t buy the land earlier before those towers were built, and the general increasing cost of labor and materials.
What in ST2 do you think overran more than ST is saying? Past expenditures and commitments are all in ST’s accounting set and buget-performance reports, so they’re visible there.
Remember that ST2 funded only to Redmond Tech and Star Lake. Downtown Redmond and Federal Way are in ST3’s budget.
This suspicion comes from the same person who claims Metro drivers are being intentionally late to increase their overtime. Both claims sound farfetched.
I do not see how they can do a tunnel in the 15th or 14th Avenue alignment to cross the Ship Canal. There’s that enormous holding pipe/tank along the north shore the entire distance from NW 20th to Third NW. It’s like sixty feet in diameter, which means that it reaches about -60 feet MSL. If a transit tunnel underruns it — it would have to clear it by fifteen feet at least — the track level is -95 feet at the north shore. Ballard Station would be at least minus 45 or 50.
Another station accessible only by several flights of escalators.
“tunnels…”
It’s not just that tunnels are expensive. Adding a tunnel is just a one-time addition to the budget. But building underground probably has more risks of additional overruns: challenging soils, discovering the soil is more challenging than anticipated, discovering unanticipated utility lines, TBM breakage, the walls must be waterproof, harder to construct underground stations, etc. More potential points of failure, and more expensive to fix them.
“Seattle Subway for downtown.”
You’d have to clarify what that means. Seattle Subway is an advocacy organization known for demanding “everything ST wants” plus their own several-line-and-exurban extravaganza on top of it. So “Seattle Subway for downtown” sounds the same as ST’s preferred alternative downtown that it’s pursing anyway, so what’s the difference?
“Use light automated vehicles”
We’ve been suggesting that, as you know. ST still has potential alternatives for Ballard-Westlake or Ballard-downtown-West Seattle that it could revive with automated technology. The bottleneck is the ST Board’s will, and its willingness to study these alternatives further.
“and maybe introduce a PRT setup in less dense, longer sections.”
PRT is a whole other large topic. If you want to pursue it, it would be best in a separate comment thread. Which segments do you think are suitable to PRT? I’d guess West Seattle, Tacoma, and Everett/Paine? Why do you think having people transfer somewhere to a PRT technology would be cost-effective?
Troy Serad has suggested extending the T Line streetcar to Federal Way station instead of extending Central Link to Tacoma Dome station. This would lower the construction and operational cost, give a one-seat ride to downtown Tacoma and the rest of the T Line (and a potential T Line network), and have capacity better matched to Pierce County’s demand. This would give some of the benefits of what I’m guessing your BRT vision is, with more conventional technology that would be more foolproof and an easier sell to the public. The biggest problem with the T Line is infrequency (12-20 minutes), but that can be fixed with more train runs (6 minutes, timed for Central Link transfers).
Who they? One of the problems is there is no continuity with the way the ST board is structured. It’s a rotating cast of clowns. You might have the Mayor of Buckley for a couple of years and then the Mayor of Fife. So the “goal post” keeps moving. This is great for Emperor Constantine as the master politician and king maker. The CEO is supposed to run the business (like Joni Earl did). But what the flawed structure has devolved into is a Democrat slush machine.
That’s a pretty bold statement to make without actual corroborating evidence. I’m no Sound Transit booster, but saying that they are lying in their accounting is something you need to have evidence for more than a vague hunch.
And introduce PRT? Be serious. There are two, maybe three operating PRT systems outside of airports in the world – Morgantown, Suncheon, and Abu Dhabi. I think they’re cool little gadgetbahns, but if the Morgantown PRT was a system worth replicating, surely someone would’ve built one in the US since it opened in 1975.
Eh thinking a mix of PRT and LRT. Vehicles won’t be as small as the ones used in Morgantown .There’d still be a schedule, not on demand vehicle hailing.
It’s more like using one Link car that each takes different routes, skipping certain stops. Pretty easy if the vehicles are automated.
So the sleepy single family home hamlet of West Seattle, who are vocally opposed to the light rail will have it by 2035.
Meanwhile, Ballard, which has been upzoned multiple times on broken promises of mass transit over the past few decades, and is literally begging for it, MAY get it by 2060, if we’re lucky.
This is how ST4 dies before it’s even conceived.
I wish it would die. But I don’t see a clear path to that yet.
Instead, it looks like it’ll linger on as an expensive zombie that will ruin any chances for good transit in the region.
It’s not a single-family home hamlet. Multifamily/retail/condo opportuniities are substantial in the Triangle that Alaska Junction station serves, and have increased substantially in the past decade, more than many people realize. It’s not Ballard but it’s getting at least partway toward it. The Delridge station area has some multifamily housing, much of it also built or increased in the past decade. And if you walk around the adjacent neighborhood; e.g., one block west of Delridge Way, you’ll find a little-known street full of un-West Seattle-looking multifamily buildings — it surprised Martin and I when we encountered it during a walk along the Longfellow Creek trail. (It’s not on the trail but near it.)
The issue with West Seattle is not that it’s all single-family or 1-2 story, but that more than it is than counterpart urbanized districts (Ballard, Rainier Valley). And that the zoning drops off sharply just one block west and east of California Avenue outside the Triangle. The zoning should be a larger 2-dimensional area both west and east going continuously north to the Admiral District (Admiral Way) and south to Morgan Junction if not beyond. Then there’s the islands of village density at Westwood Village, the Admiral District, and Alki, and rumored on 35th (although I can’t find the supposed High Point density riding the 21) — some or all of these could be connected to the primary California Avenue density in a continuous 2D corridor. That’s what urbanists would want and would justify more high-capacity transit priority. But that’s what West Seattle residents are fiercely against, to the point that the city and urbanists have given up on trying to get it implemented, like we’ve given up on Magnolia.
The issue with West Seattle is not that it’s all single-family or 1-2 story, but that more than it is than counterpart urbanized districts (Ballard, Rainier Valley).
West Seattle is not much different than the rest of Seattle. There are dense areas — there are areas that aren’t so dense. That is really a side issue though.
The issue with West Seattle Link is that will benefit so little of West Seattle and yet cost a fortune. There are only two new stations in West Seattle. The Junction is fine — it reminds me of Columbia City. There is a bit of cultural and residential density. Nothing huge — not like Capitol Hill, let alone the U-District or downtown — but still something. The station serving Delridge has very little. I expect it to eventually look like Othello. Not much history there but at least a few midsize apartment buildings and some new restaurants and whatnot.
But that’s it. Those are the only new stations. It is worth noting that the two stations I find similar (Columbia City and Othello) get about 6,000 riders a day (combined). It also worth noting that for trips both directions. In contrast, West Seattle Link primarily just serve riders heading north.
But the greater point is that there aren’t many new stations. SoDo exists already. It should be noted that the main reason they want to build a new tunnel is for West Seattle. Ballard Link doesn’t need it. Thus West Seattle Link can be thought of as a train from the Alaska Junction to Westlake. Again, the only new stations are the two in West Seattle. That is a massively expensive system for only two new stations and so little in terms of potential ridership.
Like all transit infrastructure there are network ramifications. But again, the train adds very little. That is because the trip from West Seattle to downtown (or even to SoDo) is very fast. This isn’t like Capitol Hill to downtown or Northgate to the UW. In the case of West Seattle, the bus is competitive with the train for every trip. This means that riders who are currently on the bus gain very little (if anything) by being asked to transfer. Some will lose.
There are also negative aspects to the project. The SoDo Busway will be eliminated. So instead of improving a busway that speeds up travel for tens of thousands of riders they will have a degradation. You also have worse pairing for Link. You want the bulk of your riders to be able to avoid a transfer. You want to pair a high-ridership area (like the existing north end line) with another high ridership area (like the existing south end line). But instead they will pair the north-end line with the very weak West Seattle segment. Thus a lot more people will have to transfer.
There are just a lot of people that will be worse off while relatively few will be better off. Even if this project was cheap it is dubious. But given the extraordinary cost, it is one of the worst projects in the history of transit.
West Seattle is my recreational escape relief valve. When I’m stressed and want something different, I take the C to Lincoln Park or the Junction, or the 50 to Alki, or sometimes to Schmitz Preserve Park or the Longfellow Creek Trail.
The Junction vibe in the past decade has impressed me. The mix of a variety of businesses and pedestrians and housing reminds me of how the Ave (University Way) felt in the 1980s. That’s a major achievement, and West Seattle is lucky to have it.
In this way West Seattle is very much like Kirkland. It’s a small urban onclave that retains a small town vibe because it’s physically isolated. That’s what mass transit to either location is not feasible to the cubic dollars required. And, like Kirkland, once your run tracks there you are literally at the “end of the line” because there’s nowwhere to extend to.
I do have to say that the cable stay bridge is pretty cool. I wish WSDOT had gone that route for Portage Bay. The high bridge to W. Seattle has had long closures and may be close to end of life. The low bridge is past it’s expiration date. Why not wait until there is a new crossing required and build a joint WSDOT & ST project?
My mom’s favorite getaway is the Kirkland waterfront. She likes to walk on the docks and see the boats, and she used to have a Captain’s Table annual pass for the Argosy cruises. We lunched at George’s, dinnered at the Happy Clam, and had ice cream across the street, and admired the bronze statues in the park.
The last time I was there I encountered a pedestrianized block lined with restaurants, just west of the transit center. It was packed full of people like a European plaza. Downtown Kirkland is walkable and has gems like that. I just wish the rest of the city weren’t so suburbanish and car-oriented.
Do you think a New Flyer Western is better looking that a Jaguar E-Type</a
The spam epidemic against STB has spread to near-recent articles that regular commentators have stopped reading. Each article has a commenting time limit, after which it becomes read-only. The current limit is set to something like several weeks. I’ve suggested to the editors to shorten the period to 8 days. This would allow people to comment on today’s (Friday’s) article through next Friday. This would limit the window of articles we’d have to continuously monitor for spam comments.
What does the comment section think of this approach? Is 8 days the best time period, or would another length be better?
I would be fine with a shorter limit–3 days maybe? The longer a thread goes on, the more it seems to become full of nitpicking and now, bots like Leann Harrison telling us about her money making schemes. Keep the articles and comments fresh!
It’s probably more work for the STB volunteers but you could just end one open thread comments when the next one opens. If there is some really hot topic it can be ported over with quotes.
OTOH, I actually appreciate some of the SpAM ;+>
Wouldn’t a captcha solve this
it would partially solve it but
1) ai is already getting pretty good at solving captcha
2) it would kind of kill the number of comments this blog gets.
I think for now it’d be better to have slightly more comments/traffic than to enforce captcha. though maybe if the spam gets worse the blog might have to add it
If STB does a CAPTCHA it should be something silly, local, and nerdy, with questions like “identify which of these diesel buses is substituting for a trolley bus route” followed by five thumbnails of bus photographs to select.
I’m joking, somewhat.
I think 8 days sounds right. Also Capt has are becoming obsolete because modern AI is getting decent at bypassing them.
Winner, winner Chick-fil-A dinner!
Capt has are becoming obsolete because modern AI is getting decent at bypassing them.
I have a hard time with most Captas. The images are so small I can’t tell if there is the corner of a traffic light in one or not. But great idea, I’ll try asking Copilot to solve it for me!
@Mike, are you just trolling to see if you can get the record for most responses ever to a comment on the STB blog ;->
I mainly wanted to see if people would converge on longer or shorter. I have a feeling 3-4 days would be suitable a lot of the time but may be too short in some circumstances. It partly depends on how many other articles surround it that week, how popular the topics are, and how long people want to talk about that topic. That varies by week.
We don’t have a prize for the comment with the most replies, but we do know that Sam is the best commentator in his own mind.
This would limit the window of articles we’d have to continuously monitor for spam comments.
It wouldn’t make any difference in terms of how I monitor the comments. I look at this page here: https://seattletransitblog.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php. This lists the comments based on when they were entered. It doesn’t matter at all which post they are attached to. So I really see no reason to cut off a discussion so soon. Maybe I go on vacation, come back, and notice the story about the RapidRide R. Sure, I can post something on an open thread, but it would be useful to discuss it there. The same thing is true with other comments. Having a discussion spread through multiple pages is annoying. More than once I’ve wanted to clarify something I’ve said but it was too late.
I get the point of the deadline but I don’t think it played a role in this latest spam attack and I don’t think shortening the time limit will help much at all.
That is my opinion anyway.
I read comment updates by clicking on recent articles on the home page and scrolling down to the blue-panel highlights. I want to see them in their original context, not on an aggregation page. So Ross’s technique wouldn’t work for me. I have a “feel” for how far to go back, probably four articles at most (?). When a new open thread starts, I check the last one once or twice more and then stop.
A fixed cutoff would probably be more manageable than one varying, or closing each article individually.
If I come back from a trip and the RapidRide R article is several days old, I’d assume nobody would read any comment I might put there, so I’d put my great opinion in the current open thread.
While sunsetting comment periods after several days is good practice, I don’t think it gets at the core spam problem.
I see the core problem as embedded hyperlinks in bot comments. I noticed a few times that my comments with hyperlinks have been moderated and that’s a good thing. It may be good for the moderators to have a secret list of “trusted commenters” and make all other comments with hyperlinks get moderation.
With AI entering the picture, it is harder and harder to weed out spam. As seen very recently, a spam bot can generate a halfway cogent comment about transit and still add a malicious hyperlink.
I think 8 days is fine. or if that seems too restrictive than just start with like 10 days (1.5 weeks) and see how it goes from there
If a n article generates a particularly lively discussion, is it possible to give that particular one a longer period?
Under the current circumstances, considering it’s been a while since a particularly extensive discussion, 8 days seems more than generous.
I agree. I’m totally fine with 5 days for most articles, but I’d like longer periods for articles that keep having active discussions.
We had a movie saying cable-stayed bridges are better than suspension or other bridge types. I have no expertise in this area, and I personally find cable-stayed bridges ugly. But we should at least look at the case for them before dismissing it it as an unnecessary or non-cost-effective choice for West Seattle.
“I actually appreciate some of the SpAM ;+>”
I edited an ezine in the early 2000s, and we got some now-quaint doozies in the mailbox. On the back page I used to satirize them in a column “Spams I Have Known”, later “World of Spam”. Here’s a sample:
“Dear sir, We want to transfer to overseas $ 152,000.000.00 USD (ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-TWO MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS) from a Prime Bank in Nigeria, I want to ask you to quietly look for a reliable and honest person… this money to any foreigner’s reliable account which you can provide with assurance that this money will be intact pending our physical arrival in your country” [How do you know I’m honest and reliable? Do you know what my country is? Do you realize you sent this to an ezine not a person?]
“I REPRESENT MOHAMMED XXXXX, SON OF THE LATE GEN. XXX XXXXX, WHO WAS THE FORMER MILITARY HEAD OF STATE IN NIGERIA. HE DIED IN 1998. SINCE HIS DEATH, THE FAMILY HAS BEEN LOSING A LOT OF MONEY DUE TO VINDICTIVE GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS WHO ARE BENT ON DEALING WITH THE FAMILY. BASED ON THIS THEREFORE, THE FAMILY HAS ASKED ME TO SEEK FOR A FOREIGN PARTNER WHO CAN WORK WITH US AS TO MOVE OUT THE TOTAL SUM OF US$75,000,000.00 ( SEVENTY FIVE MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS ), PRESENTLY IN THEIR POSSESSION.”
“My mother died when I was a baby and since then my father took me so special. Before the death of my father on November 2001 in a private hospital here in Abidjan he secretly called me on his bed side and told me that he has the sum of eighten million,five hundred thousand United State Dollars. USD ($18.500,000) left in one of the Security Companies in overseas.”
“Ever wanted to gamble on-line? This is your chance to avoid shady casinos and their practices. We have scrutinized 100’s of on-line casinos so you won’t have to!”
“I have got your e-mail from the Web site and I am very interested in working for your company. I have a BS in Electrical Engineering…” [We haven’t been soliciting for engineers. We’re a volunteer group who doesn’t have money to pay people.]
” Hello I visited your web site and I noticed that you did not have a message board.. So I just wanted to say that you should add one, because it will allow your visitors to interact with each other.. and also allows you to interact with them too..” [Great idea. In fact, we already have it!]
[One email was in Turkish. My Turkish friend confirmed this and translated it.] “Cinsel Problemlere Kalici ve Kesin Cozumler” [Decisive and Permanent Solutions to your Sexual Problems] …
“WE’RE LETTING A MAJOR SECRET OUT OF THE BAG TODAY! The top Legal Consultant in this industry has just developed a literal cash machine. Now, people in our activity are receiving money from all over the place. $500 into $4,000 virtually overnight. And that’s just for starters. Everything is done for you automatically!”
“Decisive and Permanent Solutions to your Sexual Problems”
Something about that wording made me crack up. Funny stuff. The Nigerian prince thing takes me back.
SpamAssassin was released in that era, the first machine-learning (AI-like) spam analysis tool, and the precursor to Google’s spam filter. It was trained by comparing a large set of known-spam emails to a large set of known-non-spam emails, looking for patterns in the former that weren’t in the latter. You could add to its knowledge on the fly by confirming whether a certain new message was spam. Here was its result on one email:
SPAM: Hit! (3.0 points) BODY: Nigerian widow needs your help,
cf http://www.snopes2.com/inboxer/scams/nigeria.htm
SPAM: Hit! (4.3 points) BODY: Mutated Nigerian scams,
cf http://www.snopes2.com/inboxer/scams/nigeria.htm
SPAM: Hit! (-0.4 points) BODY: Contains a line >99 characters long
SPAM: Hit! (2.0 points) Forged yahoo.com ‘Received:’ header found
SPAM: Hit! (2.0 points) Received via a relay in relays.osirusoft.com
SPAM: [RBL check: found 135.155.86.64.
relays.osirusoft.com., type: 127.0.0.4]
SPAM: Hit! (0.5 points) Received via a relay in
ipwhois.rfc-ignorant.org
SPAM: [RBL check: found
135.155.86.64.ipwhois.rfc-ignorant.org., type: 127.0.0.6]
SPAM: Hit! (1.9 points) Subject is all capitals
SPAM: Hit! (3.0 points) DNSBL: sender is Confirmed Spam Source
SPAM:
SPAM: ———– End of SpamAssassin results ———–
“I am Alhaja Maryam Abacha, the widow of the Late Gen. Sanni Abacha former Nigerian Military Head of State who died mysteriously as a result of Cardiac Arrest. Following the recent discovery of my husband’s Bank Account by the Nigerian Government with Swiss Bank in which the huge sum of US$700 MILLION and DM 450 Million was logged….”
Tacoma might end up getting Link Service first before West Seattle at this point, possibly even Link service to Mariner P&R
I think that they all will open about the same time. Given the more challenging engineering and construction of the West Seattle extension, it easily could be the last of the three to open .
Because it will make 1 Line much longer, I’m expecting ST to want to run 3 Line from West Seattle opening day. ST will make 1 Line riders switch at SODO and end 1 Line there.. Ultimately it will come down to how many rail cars ST has and needs. A West Seattle stub needs just 2 cars most of the time. But frankly anything south of SeaTac also will need only two cars. If SeaTac to SODO can be carried by three car trains then ST will indeed terminate 1 Line at SODO. But if four cars are needed on this segment, 1 Line will likely continue to Mariner until DSTT2 opens to at least the King Couny Courthouse. .
This is a shovel ready project? Crap like this should have been identified at the 60% project review stage. How much of that $100M did it cost them to figure out? ST doesn’t do engineering so it had to be consultants which don’t work for free.
ST continues to dump wheelbarrow loads of money into the Duwamish because Dow wants a train to West Seattle. Forget changing the board structure. Just get rid of Sound Transit entirely. Transfer taxing authority to Metro and other county agencies and let them operate the trains as they do now. Ballard? that monorail plan doesn’t look so bad now does it? It was poorly conceived as far as deliverables but ST ain’t any better. As I opined at the time… the ROW should have been kept (Rail Banked).
“Ballard? that monorail plan doesn’t look so bad now does it?”
Its funding collapsed. An Eyman initiative yanked its primary source (car tabs) out from under it. Its operating budget was so lean it wouldn’t accept transfers from other agencies, so you’d have to take the parallel bus instead of the monorail if you didn’t want to pay double-fare for two-seat rides. Its maximum speed was 35 mph, compared to Link’s 55. Part of it was single-tracked (another budget constraint) so frequency would be limited to 20 minutes. Half the line was truncated in the final months. (I forget if it was Ballard or West Seattle.)
Many of these issues are as bad as Link’s bad transfers.
“Many of these issues are as bad as Link
Yep, except Link is a order of magnitude more expensive and can’t be built. They really should have kept the ROW; that was the big loss. ST still gets hundreds of dollars more every time I have to get new tabs (on cars driven <3k per year) despite the $30 car tab initiative. I’ve spend thousands of dollars more in ST taxes than I have in fares actually riding the damn train. And now the priority is to Link Dow’s place to DT with a short extension to nowhere. Get rid of Sound Transit. It’s past its expiration date!
[Ed. Bernie, blockquote doesn’t work.]
“Link is a order of magnitude more expensive and can’t be built.”
If it can’t be built, it won’t be built; you don’t have to worry about that or do anything.
If you mean we should convince the board not to build it and to do something else, what do you think we’ve been doing for the past eight years since the cost overruns and wide transfers first emerged? Or ten years, to go back before the vote. It’s not working, and nobody has figured out a way to overcome the impasse or get a critical mass of the public and politicians on our side. So ST will continue doing what it’s doing until it either finishes it, or realizes it flat-out can’t and gives up, or some more effective politician or activist emerges to stop it, or boardmembers start spontaneously changing their minds, or the public elects people with different ideas onto the board.