Transportation:

More headlines after the break.

Land Use & Housing:

This is an Open Thread.

84 Replies to “Midweek Roundup: busiest summer”

  1. If people want ST to throw Ballard a bone, the N Line is a silly choice. 8 round trips per day that can only serve peak hour Seattle and not likely to be much faster than the 17 or D for most people who live in Ballard and work downtown. It’s only 25 minutes or so on the 17 from the locks to Westlake (it’s busiest stop), and unless you’re going to Pioneer Square or points south, the N Line wouldn’t even be faster.

    It’d make way more sense for an ST Express bus to serve Ballard instead, and on that front I think extending the 542 is the best option. It may not be a super fast alignment, but speeding up trips from Ballard to UW and Redmond seems like a better choice than the already reasonably well served Ballard-Downtown. Plus, it could run more than 8 times a day.

    1. Yeah, it only really makes sense if for people who want to ride steel rails from Ballard to King Street, and refuse to take a bus.

      ST should bring the RapidRide D improvements back to the table and buy the hours needed to revive bring the 15X as an all-day route running every 15 minutes.

      1. Yeah, and given that the N Line cannot and will not receive more service at any point in the future it seems like this would be a purely performative way to do that anyways. Money spent on making the buses better is way better spent.

    2. Also forgot to mention – that Urbanist op-ed is just wrong about current transit travel times between places and the benefit the N Line would bring from a network perspective. No one is going to take the N Line from Everett, Mukilteo, or Edmonds to UW via a connection to the 44; they will do what they do now of a bus to Link at Lynnwood or MLT. The benefits will solely be that a handful of Ballard residents have a marginally faster and noticeably more reliable commute to downtown.

      1. They totally forgot the fact that most people don’t go to work near CID or Belltown (another potential Sounder infill station). So a commute by Sounder from Ballard to Seattle can take longer than bus.

    3. Time saved from sounder train can be easily offset by the extra time it takes getting to Sounder Station for most part of Ballard and going from King St Station. So yeah it is a terrible choice.

      We have a very straightforward idea, which is restoring suspended Ballard service and add more. Yet some people still try to tap some unrealistic fancy ideas. Sounder to Ballard just seems as challenging as building Link to Ballard. If they had that kind of energy to push Sounder Ballard stop, I suggest they save that energy to delivery Ballard Link extension faster.

      1. I think Sounder to Ballard is an order of magnitude simpler than Link, it just provides basically no transit value. It would be easy to do it, it just wouldn’t be nearly as useful as running more express buses.

    4. If there were an express bus between Ballard and UW, though, wouldn’t the bus just get stuck behind the 44, anyway? If so, it kind of defeats the purpose of an express bus. May as well just use the service hours to run the 44 more often.

      1. I think 44’s route isn’t the fastest between UW and Ballard. I think there is an opportunity here for this “express” to just be a different east-west route that covers few other east-west streets.

        When I drive between UW and Ballard, the 44’s route isn’t usually what’s recommended by navigation software.
        If I start in U District closer to 45th, Google often recommends 50th-Green Lake Way to bypass Wallingford. If I start from somewhere south of U District closer to NE Pacific, it usually recommends routes along Northlake Way, N 34th (or N 35th), and then Leary after Fremont.

        1. In this case, I don’t think it’s fair to use Google driving directions to inform what would be the fastest route for an express bus. For starters, a bus on 45th could take advantage of existing bus lanes and queue jumps, while a bus on 50th would just have to sit in traffic with all of the cars. The drive-time estimates used by Google are based on the assumption that you are a car, not a bus, and therefore, cannot use the 45th St. bus infrastructure – which a bus, of course, can.

          Then, there’s the issue of what happens in the local area around the U-district. A bus that takes 50th would have to backtrack to 45th, which would add additional turns and stoplights, which a bus down 45th would not have to do.

          When driving, the situation is a bit different, as a large portion of the cars are simply trying to get onto I-5. When accessing I-5, 50th St. and 45th St. both have ramps, so no “backtracking” to 45th is needed, it’s simply take whichever street reaches I-5 the quickest. But, for a bus that’s trying to actually get to the UW to drop passengers off, the situation is very different.

        2. There was an express bus from Ballard to UW IIRC, back in the 80s when I was a student there. It began at Shilshole Marina and used 50th.

        3. True, but the 80’s also had a lot less car traffic than today, and none of the current bus priority on 45th existed yet. Another difference, back in the 80’s, there were no Orca cards yet, nearly all riders were paying with cash. That meant passenger stops were very slow, and the time saved by skipping them (by running express) very substantial. Today, passenger stops on the 44 are usually quite fast, as people tap their orca cards, or credit cards, and walk aboard. The situation is completely different.

        4. 50th is probably still faster than 45th. I took the 44 eastbound a couple weeks ago again around 6pm. I’d gone to the Locks visitors center to buy a mug I’d seen for a gift. I took the 44 to U-District station rather than transferring to the 40 or 44. It took an inordinately long amount of time, crawling from Fremont to I-5.

          It was mostly because of cars lined up to get onto I-5. When we passed I-5, southbound was packed with cars. The queue jumps work, but nothing else on 45th works. Going on 50th would get it out of that, at least east of Greelake Way. Drivers who don’t know Seattle well take the 45th exit instead of 50th even at rush hour and contribute to the congestion there. And for some destinations you have to take 45th; e.g., U Village has no way to get to the 50th I-5 entrance, at least without crowding Ravenna Blvd, which already has more cars than it can handle.

        5. 50th is probably still faster than 45th.

          Only because of traffic. The stop light at 50th and Stone Way is terrible (it is a five-way intersection). Put it this way. Use Google again but this time put in “9:00 pm”. Bingo! Just like that, 45th is the fast way. If they add enough bus and BAT lanes, then 45th would likely be faster than any alternative. Of course there is a limit to what they can (which is another big reason why it makes sense as a Link extension) but with more work they could make it better than any alternative. At that point there isn’t much value in adding an express.

          Ballard to Downtown is a different matter. The D Line makes a big detour to serve Uptown. That means that old routes like the 15 and 18 are solid express routes that can save a lot of time. In general we can run the existing buses more often, resurrect the old buses and add bus/BAT lanes as much as possible. All of that is a better value than any investment in North Sounder.

        6. Bus lane on 45th is only enough to offset the delay caused by passing through core part of Wallingford while 50th skipped Wallingford. The 5-way intersection at Stone Way seems to give a lot of capacity to 50th to Greenlake Way movement, so I don’t think that would be much of issue. The only question is whether this route still makes sense if it bypasses Wallingford.

          Every time I ride 44, I notice most people boarding from UW/U District have already got off before or at Aurora. Only very few heading to Ballard from UW.

      2. Market is 5 lanes wide for most of its length – so it should be possible to run express from their (only stopping at select spots like 15th). More service hours on the 44 is also a good idea, though I do think there’s at least some network value for the 542 being extended regardless of how much faster than the 44 it can go in practice.

        I guess the specifics are less important than the broad stroke of “more and better buses”.

        1. The issue is cars lining up for the I-5 entrance, or getting off I-5. That’s where the congestion comes from that slows down the 44. The new queue jumps work, but the other 90% of the route needs transit-priority lanes and doesn’t have them. The city has considered it before several times, but the merchants don’t want to lose their street parking, saying they’ll go out of business without it. They don’t believe that walk-up customers might more than compensate for it as happens in other cities, and they tend to underestimate the number of walk-up customers they’re currently getting (there was a study about that too). The RapidRide 44 project was supposed to make substantial improvements to transit priority, and even have dedicated transit lanes in the blocks around I-5, but it was canceled.

          The left side of Phinney Ridge has only three lanes, so I don’t think it would be possible to convert two to transit-priority/transit-only, since that would leave one direction without a car lane, and the geography there doesn’t give any other street cars could use without detouring several blocks. But this is a minor issue compared to the entire street, and not where the congestion is coming from. We could have transit-priority lanes everywhere except that segment.

        2. The left side of Phinney Ridge has only three lanes, so I don’t think it would be possible to convert two to transit-priority/transit-only

          Yeah, there are parts where they can (and should) add bus/BAT lanes and parts where they can’t do much. We should add a lot more. We should also close off the 45th on-ramp and exit to the freeway (the cars can use 50th). That would make the bus considerably faster.

          None of that means that there should be an express. Maybe a stop diet (something more reasonable than the RapidRide R proposal). But the time savings from an express would be relatively minimal compared to the 15 or 17 versus the D Line. We would probably be better off just adding bus/BAT lanes and running the bus more often (like the 8).

    5. You’re right. It’s a silly choice. Not only is it a mere few trips a day, the tracks are nowhere near density nor big destinations in Ballard.

      I get how congested things are going north-south — but there are BAT lanes to Ballard that could be used for more Route 17X buses at a cheaper cost and a much shorter implementation timeline.

    6. The only way to save the N line is to add stations and trips. It shouldn’t just be Ballard. There should be stations added at Richmond Beach, Ballard, Interbay and Pier 70, for 4 total. And at a minimum ST should try to provide the original 6 planned trips. But all that would require a lot of North King $$, so it will never happen. I always thought a bi-directional DMU operation would be intriguing serving those 8 stations, but it wouldn’t be compatible with active freight operations.

      1. The only way to save the N line is to add stations and trips.

        I don’t think that would save it. Adding more trips would get more riders but it would cost a lot more per rider. Ridership goes up when you add trips but ridership-per-trip goes down. This is especially true for commuter rail. Meanwhile, the cost per trip goes way up. We aren’t just paying for the driver (like a bus) we are leasing service from BNSF. Each time slot costs more than the last one. So the ridership per dollar gets even worse (and it is terrible to begin with).

        Nor can it be saved with more stations. The problem is the geography. The train hugs the shore. Once you get to Everett the bus is faster. We have some development along the coast but not that much. We mainly have Edmonds. Mukilteo is tiny. Richmond Beach is tiny. The west side of Ballard is tiny. OK, Interbay has some people. But again, once you are at Interbay you might as well take an express bus instead of timing the train. The geography is all wrong.

        In contrast, South Sounder works. It is classic commuter rail. The trip on the train is significantly faster than express buses for most of the stops (the one exception is Tacoma). This is key. It then justifies the huge parking garages that serve a car-centric area. People drive to the station and then get to Downtown Seattle much sooner than they would by any other mode. There is some development close to a few of the stations as well. There is even some travel between stations (it is not all just people headed to Tacoma).

        You can see this with the old reports. (Sound Transit used to release these but they haven’t for years.) This is the numbers for North Sounder, coincidentally, right before the pandemic. Note that only 30 people a day take a trip that doesn’t involve Seattle. Despite Edmonds and Everett being real destinations (and Mukilteo having a ferry dock) people just aren’t taking those type of trips. In contrast, look at Sounder South. There is a lot of bidirectional demand. It is still clearly commuter transit but Tukwila actually has more people heading south, rather than north! Kent has more people heading south than every stop on North Sounder.

        The fundamentals for North Sounder just aren’t good. If anything is to be done for Sounder it is to add a station at Belltown for South Sounder. That way riders from the south can get to that part of downtown without a transfer. That is about it.

        Unless, of course, the state or the feds improve the speed of trains between cities. Even then that is more likely to benefit South Sounder than North Sounder since there just isn’t much they can do for the trains that go along the coast.

        1. I don’t disagree with any of that, and perhaps “save” was too optimistic a word choice. I guess my main point was twofold: 1, that scenario is the only way to get any kind of meaningful productivity out of the line (and don’t sleep on the Pier 70 station, that solves of lot of the backtrack issues.) and 2, Sounder is really just another odd manifestation of subarea equity, where the arbitrary political framework has prevented a realistic and meaningful examination of what it might take to put a useful transit investment into that corridor. All those investments are in the NK subarea, and those politicians then & now have only ever had eyes for Link. Too bad.

        2. Sounder is really just another odd manifestation of subarea equity

          That is partly to blame but I think the bigger problem is that it costs a fortune and doesn’t get as many riders as they hoped. It isn’t hard to come up with ideas that would benefit that subarea. There are a couple ideas that folks have suggested from time to time. One is an ST Express from Edmonds to 185th Street Station. It would run every fifteen minutes midday. It would make all the stops along SR-104 but head towards Aurora and then the station (stopping only to make key connections). Then there is the 512. It could skip Ash Way and be extended farther into Everett. To help compensate, ST would run the 513 more often during peak — or maybe come up with another bus (e. g. a bus from Swamp Creek to Ash Way to Lynnwood. Both of these would help Community Transit (CT), allowing them to put money into other projects.

          That’s just off the top of my head. There are plenty of other options. It is worth noting that CT is willing to spend plenty of money on their Swift projects. ST could just help subsidize them. The main thing is to work with CT and come with ideas to improve the bus system. That would be a much better value than investing or even running North Sounder.

        3. “That is partly to blame but I think the bigger problem is that it costs a fortune and doesn’t get as many riders as they hoped.”

          I think it was a mostly political strategy to get yes votes for ST ballot measures. ST still operates with little focus on generating more ridership (productivity) as a primary objective. Consider how the latest Link openings are resulting in lower farebox recovery and boardings per mile and no one talks about it..

          At some point, fiscal austerity will be a much bigger Board focus. I’m not sure when. But it will happen someday. And when it does, North Sounder is an easy call to cancel — and give the easements to the Cascades to use.

        4. the latest Link openings are resulting in lower farebox recovery and boardings per mile

          Lower farebox recovery could have just as much or more to do with A) a laissez faire attitude toward fare collection B) a shift from distance based fares to flat fares at the same time the line was extended to make the average trip longer. There’s also just a fundamental shift in ridership with less people working DT but trips to the airport way up.

          I don’t think lower boardings per mile is a negative unless you are comparing the same segment of track before and after system expansion; which is essentially station boardings. The only stations that have dropped are Angle Lake (no longer the farthest south P&R) and Beacon Hill which seems to be more about demographics and less of the population using transit. The extensions may have kept it from dropping farther which is something you could read into the monthly ridership reports. If the system is more people miles moved that’s a good thing as it means lower VMT.

          Fundamentally though you are right; the main goal of ST is to generate the votes to increase taxes. Improved transit is only important if it generates said votes which, to win at the ballot box, need to be votes in the far flung suburban areas. Votes in the urban core are a slam dung so why give a damn about “those people”.

  2. Sounder N is single direction with a handful of trains in the morning and afternoon on weekdays only at a staggering cost thanks to BNSF it will not get better or cheaper or provide adequate service. This, with sound transit already at the edge of a fiscal cliff delaying projects left and right, spending more money in these low ROI projects like a Sounder Ballard station only serves to distract from the real effective solutions proposed around elevation and automation.

    Please put that idea in the air lock and send it floating into space like the alien queen

    1. Sounder N should be shifted to Amtrak. ST paid probably like $100 per train mile for the easement to get the track slots while Amtrak’s cost per train mile system wide is under $10 per train mile. Having Amtrak run it would give the added benefit of being able to serve more places further north too – they could just be short turn Cascades trains that happen to occupy the current Sounder N slots.

      1. I’m pretty certain this is the unstated long-range plan. Transfer the rail easement to WSDOT for Amtrak Cascades and retire the Sounder cars when they reach end of life.

      2. Sounder N should be shifted to Amtrak.

        Agreed. Hopefully that is the plan already (as Nathan suggests). I think it should happen sooner rather than later. They should run buses from Edmonds to 185th Station to help compensate those riders. Everett and Mukilteo riders are OK with the existing routes. Very few people ride it between stations.

  3. Ballard pushed out another 10-30 years? Seattle area politics has been a horrid pain lately. So much for progressivism…

    1. It is not about left or right it is just stupidity. We are spending a fortune on transit (more than anyone else per capita in the U. S. and probably more than most cities around the world). Yet we are getting very little for our money.

    2. It has little to do with progressivism because the issues are different than what progressives spend most of their energy on. Progressives may be more pro-transit/urbanism than anti-transit/urbanism, but they aren’t all 100%, and they have a range of viewpoints about what should be done. Some of them are still NIMBY. Some support whatever Sound Transit wants. Some are so focused on identity politics or Gaza or smashing Capitalism or trolling that they have little time to think about transit.

  4. “the region’s fastest growth is on the fringes”

    This is another case of percentage growth in tiny cities giving misleading impressions. Last year Seattle added almost as many people as #1 Lake Stevens did in six years.

        1. Data I found for Seattle shows an increase from April 2020 to July 2025 of <48k or overall 6.5%. Not bad but Redmond grew by 12.6%. If you look at number of people added per square mile of land area it’s almost dead even at a little under 600/sqmi. Growth for Renton was similar to Redmond but Bellevue hardly added anyone.

        2. Bellevue is interesting because I believe the urban neighborhoods are adding population but the SF zones are dropping population as household sizes plunge, causing total population to hold flat.

        3. @Bernie

          The OFM data should be much more accurate than the census for population data. Census population data is only accurate every 10 years, during the decennial census

        4. If you look at number of people added per square mile of land area

          Yeah, that’s the more meaningful number.

      2. I cross-referenced the numbers in a comment to the Times article. I didn’t want to do it again this morning and I was in a hurry, but here it is:

        The exurban growth article.
        The Seattle growth article, linked in it.

        If a city of 1,000 adds 1,000 people, that’s a 100% increase, and completely changes the character of the city. If a city of 823,000 adds 1,000 people, that’s a 0.1% increase and isn’t even noticeable.

        Seattle is 823,000 and added 6,800 last year (April-April), per the second article. I don’t know Seattle’s growth per year between 2020 and 2025, but it’s similar or higher. It wasn’t that long ago that Seattle was 720,000, probably a decade.

        The chart in the first article with six-year growth (2020-2026) for the top five exurbs shows #1 Lake Stevens at 6,960. So Seattle in one year grew almost as much as Lake Stevens in six years. By number of people, not percent. #2-#5 range from 1,620 to 2,853. That’s 24-42% of Seattle’s one-year growth.

      2. I thought it might be explained by the cost of housing, and might be if we could find average cost of new construction. But by median home price Seattle ($912,100) is now lower than all the eastside cities (>$1,000,000).

        Part of the reason might be the loss of office jobs in Seattle where there’s current.y ~35% vacancies rates. This could swing the other way if office space is converted to residential.

        1. Speculating – I think it’s because a lot of these “fringe” cities approved big tract developments and WFH motivated enough folks to move to newer houses with extra bedrooms they can use as offices.

          The article denegrates townhomes and condos but that’s what we’re building in Seattle. Folks who want big houses and big yards have to look further afield, and pay more for it.

        2. A tale of three cities; Renton, Redmond & Seattle. If you look at the Census QuickFacts the demographics for Seattle and Renton are pretty similar with respect to income and cost (less income in Renton but lower cost). Where Renton and Redmond diverge from Seattle is in the percentage of children per household. Renton 20.8%, Redmond 20.9% but Seattle only 13.8%. This difference is reflected in the persons per household; 2.57%, 2.32% & 2.00%. That means that about half of the housing units in Seattle have only one person living there. Hence the meme, Seattle has more dogs than children and the infamous Seattle Freeze.

        3. Median house prices doesn’t tell you much useful,

          Sure, there’s lots of multimillion dollar houses on the east side. There’s also a significant number below $250,000. There’s one in Renton for $70,000.

          The only places selling for that low in Seattle are tiny.

      3. Some people specifically want a house and a largish amount of land, and they don’t care if it’s 40 miles out or car-dependent. Maybe they have children or relatives, maybe not.

        1. House prices go down the farther they are away from the city.

          Drivers only think about the cost of gas as it affects their commute and that pain only shows up intermittently.

          Even if you attempt to rationalize the cost as being anything other than AAA’s $.50+ mile (because that includes sunk costs), it’s still $.37/mile in incremental cost.

          A daily round trip from say, Lake Stevens to Seattle is around $25.

          Commuters don’t think of costs that way, because it’s spread out.

          Plus, their commute gives them something to whine about when they’re stuck in traffic congestion.

      4. What did the article say the reasons are for the fastest growth rates being on the fringes?

        The obvious answer is a statistical anomaly given it is a silly way to look at population growth.

    3. Some of you missed one of the points of the article. Regional growth rates have recently shifted, or in some cases, flipped. Central city growth rates have decelerated, but growth rates in the exuburbs have accelerated. The article has nothing to do with the law of small numbers, and everything to do with the rates of change.

      1. This is just not true though. It may be true that Stanwood and Carnation have seen growth rates continue to increase while Seattle’s has slowed, but that is not true of all places equally. Sultan has seen 45% growth since 2020, but growth rates have gone from 16% to 6.5% to 1% from 2021 to 2026. Black Diamond has a similar growth rate distribution.

        And why further out places are growing faster probably has more to do with what’s happening in the inner suburbs than Seattle. It’s a cost/housing availability/construction conversation, not some fundamental change to the structure of the region.

        Honestly, it’s a very bad article that draws incomplete conclusions. Seattle’s growth rate has slowed at the same time as some of the specific examples shown, but the proof of those examples growing is not in the 2025/26 YOY change, it’s in the 2020 to 2026 change. Using this baseline, Seattle has added more people than all their examples combined.

        It’s just another bad piece of analysis by the Seattle Times that frames Seattle as sluggish or behind when that is demonstrably not the trend of the last 6 years.

        1. I blame the editorial board for pushing an inane “Seattle is dying” agenda. Truly the “Suburban Times”

      2. The article has nothing to do with the law of small numbers, and everything to do with the rates of change.

        Yes it does Sam. The rate of change is bound to be higher if you have very few people living there. Who cares who was there before — what matters is how many people are moving there. For example, imagine a small town with only ten people in it. A new family moves in. Suddenly the town has increased its population by 50%. It is silly to think this is similar to a city like Seattle seeing a 50% increase. Who cares what these numbers are — it is a silly comparison.

        In contrast, comparing population growth by area is significant. Again, consider two cities of identical size. One has 20,000 people the other has 200,000 people. They both add 10,000 people. They both grew by the same amount and they both grew by the same amount per area.

        2. The gist of the article, for me, was that in just the last six years, exurban town growth rates have grown, in some cases, five times the growth rate from the entire decade before. Example, since 2020, Black Diamond’s population is up 61%. The article then said, “Compare that to the 2010s. Over that entire decade, Black Diamond grew just 13%.” That’s what I took away from the article. That in exurban towns, the population growth rate has greatly increased. No, that’s not exactly breaking news, especially considering the rise of WFH this decade.

          Granted, relative growth can distort things. If a tiny town of 1 person gains 5 people, that’s an increase of 500%. But if 5 people are added to Seattle, that’s basically an increase of a hair over 0%. But comparing the growth rates of the exurbs and core cities over time was only one part of the article, and even then, they talked about it in terms of increasing and decreasing growth rates. I didn’t take it as an us vs them, or core cities vs exurbs article. The title made it seem that way, but the article said much more.

          Newspaper trivia. Op-Ed doesn’t stand for Opinion-Editorial. It’s short for opposite the editorial page.

        3. Ross, I assume you read the article. How would you summarize it?

          Some useful data, although not a lot. Misleading interpretation of the data. Lazy to nonexistent reporting on the many issues driving housing development in the area. In short, a very disappointing article by the Seattle Times.

          That is my summary. Now a more detailed look at the two articles. This chart is useful because it lists the actual population growth. Focusing on growth rate is not. This chart is not very useful for a couple reasons. First it only looks at one year. Second, it doesn’t even list the total population growth. They kept the least useful number (the rate of increase) and didn’t include the most useful (total population growth). I’ve already explained why ranking by growth rate it stupid (so I’m not going to do it again). Thus even the charts are poor.

          Then there is the reporting. Much of it just rehashes the data in a misleading away (again, focusing on growth rate). The big summary is that the region as a whole continues to grow in both the urban and exurban areas. There is obvious demand to live here. But there is no explanation as to what drives the growth, other than the ridiculous notion that it is remote work (as if Lake Stevens or Sultan doesn’t have terrible traffic during rush hour).

          There is nothing about regulations. Anyone with a brain would realize this has a major impact, given the area as a whole remains popular. The only news at all about the regulations is in an article the reporter references (written by a different reporter) about Black Diamond. The old article covers a project that was highly controversial and quite likely scandalous. The old article mentions that opponents of the project appealed to the Growth Management Board. Yet the new article doesn’t mention the outcome. In fact, there is nothing at all about the Growth Management Act in the new article. Thus the only real reporting was in an article written fifteen years ago. For that matter, there is nothing at all about the regulations in Seattle, either. Did the MHA play a part? The people who actually build new apartment buildings believe it has. Again, that is real reporting, done by a tiny blog! But that is just one aspect of the regulations that clearly influence development. There is nothing about the overly restrictive zoning in the bulk of the city (which is not zoned for apartments). There is nothing at all about what is actually being built in Seattle. How often have they added ADUs and DADUs to an existing house? How often have they torn down an old house only to replace it with three units (a new house, an ADU and DADU)? How does this compare to other housing types in the areas that allow them? Again, nothing. There is no attempt to figure out the local housing market. Maybe interview some developers, housing experts, economists. Nope. Instead they fixate on meaningless numbers and working from home.

    4. Population growth articles are often written by someone who doesn’t get demographics.

      For example, a city that grew rapidly between 2000 and 2010 may have population loss as children tend to want to move out of their parents’ homes. That’s not an indication of a city’s or neighborhood’s decline. It’s often just normal household trends.

      Of course some cities are way bigger than others. So it’s a bit awkward to compare population change using only actual differences or percent differences. If some reporter really wanted to compare cities, I would suggest looking at raw population growth per square mile as an equalizer. But even then, it’s merely descriptive and doesn’t explain the causes.

    5. Mike is right. Percentage growth is silly. It leads to absurd numbers. A small town has 100% growth. That is because a big family moved in.

      A more meaningful number is the rate of increase per acre. There has been a subtle shift. Seattle was leading for years but now some other (smaller) cities have passed it. I am too busy to do the math again but you can look up the size of cities on Wikipedia, copy the data, put it on a spreadsheet and figure it out. I’m pretty sure Seattle is still top ten.

  5. I took the Bellevue Light Rail Shuttle just to try it. Normally, I’ll walk from the BTC or Link station to the mall. I got in, the driver asked me where to, and I said I Bellevue Square. Then another lady walked up and said she wants to go to Target, which is the opposite direction from the mall. But when the driver told her he first has to drop me off at the mall, she changed her mind and said she’ll go to the mall, also. As we were pulling up to the mall, there was another Bellevue Light Rail Shuttle there just leaving. (There are two shuttles in service during the day. I asked the driver what the most popular destinations are, and he said number one is the mall. Number two, in the morning, is usually an office bldg, like Amazon. He also said over by Target and PCC was a popular choice (116th & 4th).

  6. Anyone attended the Community Transit Everett Transit merger open house event?
    Anything interesting that was discussed?

    1. I was there. Nothing was really discussed. It was more of a Q and A.

      The opposition is the usual anti-tax crowd. The Everett Transit Drivers Union is also opposed but they haven’t given a good reason why in my opinion.

  7. Does anyone here know why King County doesn’t do anything with underutilized P&R’s, like Wilburton, Twin Lakes, or Woodinville? Why don’t they sell or give all, or part of the lot, for housing? What are they waiting for?

    1. king county often doesn’t own the land. a lot of the parks and rides especially ones next to the freeways might be owned by WSDOT or sound transit.

      also if king county does own the land… a lot of the time it was funded by the FTA so that isn’t straightforward to sell actually.

      Woodinville

      “Internal emails reveal advancing plans to convert the Park & Ride land into an apartment complex with a bus stop ”

      That woodinville one as far as i know is slated to turn into a TOD and also it is owned by WSDOt. though again like some https://onewoodinville.org/park%26ride campaign against it

      Twin lakes

      that one is still half active. it’d probably depend on if the city of federal way wants to do something with it.

      1. Thanks for the link about the DT Woodinville P&R. I’m just flabbergasted at how little respect this has gotten from Metro (King County) or ST. DT Woodinville could and probably will turn into a mini DT Redmond. There are already a couple of very large senior living complexes next to the sports fields and City Hall. Large tracts make redevopment very attractive. It’s also a natural terminus for SR-522 commutes from the Monroe direction plus all of NE King County (i.e. Cottage Lake & Duval). Don’t live out there anymore so no dog in the fight but it seems Woodinville and Lake City (where I lived for years before Woodinville) are both getting shafted.

    2. why King County doesn’t do anything with underutilized P&R’s, like Wilburton

      All of the parcels that make up the old Wilburton P&R are currently owned by City of Kirkland. The City bought it from the State in 2024. The north part was converted to pickle ball courts and a skate park. The southern half is currently under construction as a new Ice Arena; a joint project between the City and the NHL Kraken franchise. It never was a popular P&R because it never had decent 405 bus connections; chicken & egg problem.

      Not sure what you mean by Woodinville. The lot in DT is heavily used despite pathetic bus connections. It really deserves better but is getting the shaft yet again with Stride and other restructures. Perhaps you are talking about the one out at Cottage Lake?

      1. Bernie, you are thinking of Houghton P&R, not Wilburton. Wilburton P&R is on SE 8th street, next to 405. But you are right about Houghton currently being redeveloped.

        And the Woodinville P&R is no longer heavily used since covid. I looked it up, and it has around 459 spaces, and looks like it’s owned by WSDOT. It’s on the east end of the town, on 140th.

        I didn’t know WSDOT owned a lot of the Metro P&R lots.

        1. You are correct. I was getting Houghton and Wilburton mixed up. But yeah in was owned by WSDOT (technically the State of Washington) and Kirkland had to buy it at market value. Wilburton P&R is a relic from when Bellevue was a bedroom community of Seattle. It’s’ only used for an afternoon only special actives school bus route. But it is entirely within the ROW for the 405 interchange so WSDOT will never sell it just in case they want to widen or reconfigure the interchange. It has some value as a layover spot for special event parking. I’m thinking out of district school buses when Bellevue hosts events at Meydenbauer for example.

        2. “I was getting Houghton and Wilburton mixed up.”

          I was trying to figure out why Kirkland would own a P&R in south Bellevue.

          I think Wilburton P&R had an express bus route or two years ago, but in recent years has been more of a hub for vanpools and carpools.

  8. A couple is trying to get a petition to recall Mayor Wilson. I hope it fails.

    “Melinda Jacobson and Dale Osterud cited the mayor’s handling of the Bite of Seattle shooting that killed three people; persistent crime around downtown, Aurora Avenue and the Chinatown International District; and a decision to turn off CCTV cameras after the World Cup.”

    1. BOS shooting: a one-time unpredictable situation, something nobody can be perfect in, out of the thousands of decisions a mayor makes. I feel the same about Schell being voted out over WTO and Nickels over a snowstorm.
    2. Persistent crime: her predecessors couldn’t solve it either. She’s been in office less than a year. No amount of crime reduction would be enough to satisfy some critics.
    3. I think the cameras are off because ICE has been using camera footage in other cities to illegally detain people on pretext charges.

    A recall should only be for a major problem like malice toward some constituents, self-dealing, embezzlement, etc. Not because a difficult-to-navigate situation occurred. There’s also the issue of whether the originators really turned against the mayor because of some major fault, or if they always opposed her and just see this as an opportunity for political leverage. We can’t have every mayor recalled every year because the loser of an election sees an opportunity to do so.

    2. It’s totally crazy. From both the data and what I see with my own eyes, crime is going down in Seattle. But I know a lot of people (including many of my friends and family) fervently believe the opposite. For a long time, television news has given people a false impression of urban safety, but Facebook, Youtube, and Tiktok are just disconnecting people from reality.

      I hope Wilson stays. She seems to be doing a good job.

    4. “Maybe she isn’t kowtowing properly to the current cabal.”

      What’s the current cabal? She was elected by the majority; isn’t that a cabal? Has the cabal changed between November 2025 and now? If so, when did it change and why? Or is this just one couple making a tempest in a teapot?

  9. In the most recent monthly progress report, ST estimated a September 18 opening for Pinehurst. That’s now just 31 days away — yet ST has not announced the opening date.

    What’s going on????

    Shouldn’t testing be fully assuming the station opening now?

      1. I’ve not ridden north of U District in awhile. Are all trains stopping at Pinehurst now? Is the system announcing the stop? Opening an infill station requires testing changes like train control, automated signage and other systems even though there is no new track.

        Regardless, the opening date target is now close enough that opening day event planning should be well underway if it was going to happen on that day. I don’t see ST not trying to celebrate the day with special events. I guess ST could open it quietly but that just seems highly unlikely.

        Route 77 starts going by the station next weekend!

    1. It is comical that Everett Transit drivers are able to argue with a straight face that transit service there is good. It’s far worse than Community Transit.

      1. It’s good if one lives in the north end. Those like myself who don’t would like to see some improvement.

    2. The announcement came out just after the August 12th roundup was published, so I put it in a comment in that article. We’ve been following the larger ET-CT merger issue. I mentioned that CT and ET have proposed a framework for the merger, with CT continuing ET’s existing routes for 18-24 months, while developing a plan to reallocate the hours and a 50% increase to meet Everett’s current needs and integration into the larger network, in conjunction with the Swift Gold rollout and two new Zip app-taxi areas.

      I didn’t attend the meeting because it’s far outside my occasional travel area and in a relatively hard-to-get-to location (though some of the marketing mentioned it’s on an ET route). I don’t know if anyone attended beyond the couple of people who mentioned it in the comments. It sounds like there was no new information there, and no indication of public response beyond the usual anti-tax types opposing it.

      When we do hear more information about the merger, its details, or community response to it, we’ll be sure to publish it.

  11. It seems like delaying Ballard Link all the way to 2060 just puts more pressure on finding workable solutions for transit in the meantime. Rethinking the rapid bus options makes way more sense. After all, keeping people moving efficiently should be the priority, and that includes reliable local services until the rail can be built out. this resource

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