J-Man Explores rides the Red and Green Vine BRT lines in Vancouver, Washington, after taking MAX and an interstate C-Tran route from Portland. He argues they aren’t BRT but they are frequent. He also takes a walking tour of the upcoming Purple line corridor, which is expected to open next year, in downtown Vancouver and new urban villages.
This is an open thread.
I have a bunch of transit swag—pins, ephemera, ORCA cards, etc—that need a new home. Anyone know of a good place?
I’m sure that the Transit Rider’s Union would be interested – send me an email (andrew@city-hikes.com)
Metro needs to add bus shelters to the Pinehurst Station route 77 bus stops. If I were a Lake City or Aurora-bound Link-to-bus rider, the absence of bus shelters, especially on rainy, or cold and windy days, would make me choose another station over Pinehurst. All the other nearby stations have bus shelters. And speaking of route 77 bus stops, it’s be so much better if the westbound route 77 stop was on the west side of 5th Ave NE. As is, so many riders are going to be temped to cross against the light. I suppose they don’t want cars getting stuck in the intersection behind a bus stopping on the far side of the intersection.
I’d also like to see Seattle improve the 130th overpass sidewalks, especially the one on the north side. Not sure how, a barrier, widening, fencing, lighting. A lot of walkup riders are going to be using that overpass sidewalk, and as far as I can tell, not one improvement has been made to it.
You’re in luck on the overpass at least, there are plans to widen the sidewalk on the north side
https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/programs/transportation-planning/ne-130th-and-125th-mobility-and-safety-project
Yeah, the area is certainly a work in progress. They are nowhere near completing the work on the street. Even when the are done with this project there are things they could add that make sense. For example, consider 3rd Avenue NE & 130th. There is no crossing there. Now consider how someone from the south gets to the station. Ideally they take the route that Google recommends (straight through the park). Unfortunately, Google is wrong. There is no crosswalk there. So instead they have to go out to First and then north. This adds about five minutes to the walk. Thus it really would be valuable to have a crosswalk along with a traffic light and beg button at Third. But even the neighborhoods advocates (including me) decided not to push for this. We figured it was too expensive (in the short term). It is all single family housing in there so there aren’t that many people have to detour to First. That could change over the long run. (It would actually be a more pleasant way to get to the station from the Haller Lake area although you wouldn’t save much time).
As for bus shelters, I think it is highly likely they will be added once this round of construction is done. The work is taking a lot longer than everyone expected which means that it won’t be done before the station opens. The same thing was true at 148th Station. They are related. SDOT didn’t want to have closures on 125th/130th while they were working on 145th. Since the 145th project got delayed (a lot) the 125th/130th project got delayed.
Another thing about Pinehurst, the pick-up/drop-off loop, just north of the north entrance, may be in the only location it can be, but it’s an inconvenient location. Will drivers coming from the south end of station want to drive down there, instead of doing a mid-station pick-up or drop-off in the paratransit cutout? The loop, however, does have a few kiss and ride parking stalls. Or maybe those are for ST vehicles.
“If I were a Lake City or Aurora-bound Link-to-bus rider, the absence of bus shelters”
There’s no shelter at the transfer stops? That should be high priority to fix. But unfortunately it’s not uncommon. The transfer stops at Overlake Village station have no bench or shelter. Some significant stops have a shelter one direction but not the other. Somebody thought that direction was more critical or got more people, but that leaves the people transferring the other direction in the dust. And sometimes the choices of which stops are important enough to have shelters just seems arbitrary.
I’ve rode the Vine a few times when I lived in Portland, the longest of which was a trip end-to-end on the 4th Plain route. It was a good bus, but definitely not BRT; it’s even less BRT-like than RapidRide. I’m not sure it has a single stretch of bus lane.
The way that the FTA has historically handled doling out BRT dollars should be a minor scandal (though the current “no money for anything” scandal is a much bigger deal, so this is just a rant). If they would have insisted on at least some level of bus lanes as a contingency for funding, there almost certainly would have been an opportunity for CTRAN to push the issue further. In this specific case, maybe that would have killed the project, maybe not. But the fact that the federal government wasn’t even interested in pressuring agencies to dedicate any right of way to BRT is a big reason why there are so many “BRT” systems that are really just a new bus with new paint and some new branding. It’s one of the biggest own-goals in the long series of own-goals that is US Federal transit policy.
If you’re curious, here’s the criteria used by the feds for the Mill Plain “BRT”: https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/docs/funding/grant-programs/capital-investments/147601/wa-vancouver-ctran-mill-plain-brt-ar21-profile.pdf. Economic development and land use opportunities are the only listed criteria, with no specific evaluation criteria for the service pattern or alignment.
The way that the FTA has historically handled doling out BRT dollars should be a minor scandal
Federal transit funding is a huge mess. The tail often wags the dog. The local agency focuses their efforts on getting more money from the feds instead of improving things. It rewards symbolism. Consider two cities:
City A: Spends a bunch of money on plans for both a streetcar and a “BRT” line. The feds chip in money and they go ahead and build it. This leads to a slight increase in ridership as the vast majority of the city doesn’t use those two lines. Even those that use it aren’t that much better off.
City B: Spends money running the buses more often. They get nothing from the feds. Ridership goes up (just as you would expect).
Obviously something is wrong with this process. The big problem is that the federal government isn’t sure how to spend money on transit. Traditionally, the idea was that they would help with big capital projects (such as subways). The problem is, only a handful of cities across the country should build a subway. Thus in an effort to be more inclusive, they branch out to other projects (like streetcars and BRT). They used to have metrics for funding. One of the key ones was “total time saved per dollar spent”. They basically looked at how many people who were expected to take advantage of the improvement, multiplied that by how much time they would save and then divided that by the cost of the project. It was a flawed metric that tended to favor New York Subway projects and commuter rail. It ignored potential long term benefits. That being said, it was better than what we have now: https://www.transit.dot.gov/CIG. Basically as long as you put in the right paperwork (showing you considered alternatives but believe this is the best option) you can get matching funds.
Another example is Sound Transit 3. There is no way that an objective party would conclude that the best use of money (at this point) is West Seattle Link. Yet the federal government is not weighing in. As long as you dot the i’s and cross the t’s you will get your funds. (Unless of course, you get nothing.) The federal government could and should have a voice in this but given the process, they stay out of it. This helps explain why we America is the worst country in the world when it comes to spending money on transit.
I think we would be better off if the feds just granted every city money to spend on transit. Spend it on more frequent buses. Spend it on bus lanes. Spend it on streetcars or subway lines or even something you call “BRT”. This would go a long way towards reducing the mess we are in. We would still have the mess that is West Seattle Link although one of the arguments for it was that the federal funding process for that project was further along (while they weren’t done with the other projects).
“I think we would be better off if the feds just granted every city money to spend on transit.”
There are two ways to distribute Federal funds — formulas or competitive grants and loans . The formula method won’t provide the infusion of funds all at once that’s required for big capital projects.
Winning competitive grants and loans is realistically the only way for the Federal government to help get capital projects built.
The bigger crisis is that there are few future massive transit capital projects in development around the country. (It’s not zero but it’s not like the 1990’s.) There are no longer the number of senators and congressman interested in advancing the bigger New Starts program.
There is also a huge refurbishment backlog emerging . Existing systems need major infusions of cash to keep operating what’s already been built. Should we be building new lines while existing lines with great ridership fall into disrepair and increasingly have service disruptions?
It may be that we’ve hit a wall with the current way that we provide transit new big project funding as a nation. Along with that, population growth nationally has slowed down. Office space vacancy has soared since COVID everywhere — and growing Downtown skylines has been a key real estate and public opinion driver of building big ticket transit projects.
Sure we wish it was different. We’ve been fighting hard to get what we’ve got. Rising fuel prices make providing transit more critical.
It’s a struggle. But it may be that state or regional funding methods are the primary things we will need to rely on. And we may have to advocate harder for the Federal government to provide no-interest loans instead of grants as the interest payments on bonds can be a huge portion of what total projects cost.
It is all about funding prioritization. There is limited money for more projects. However FTA expands its budget, it is always going to be a problem, but less money probably make it worse.
So some smart heads thought maybe making their regular bus “BRT” will make their proposal more appealing to funding opportunities. People just prefer applying some kind of template rather than making the point based on real context. Maybe the context is less relatable because Fed cannot know all the detailed background of every project competing for funding.
“Office space vacancy has soared since COVID everywhere”
Only in Seattle and a few tech-heavy cities. Smaller cities with a more mundane job mix focusing on physical products, traditional services. and essential services, recovered to their pre-covid level or closer to it in the 2022-2024 period.
I wouldn’t say DT Seattle is tech heavy. South Lake Union is but that’s not where the big vacancy rate is; it’s the DT core which is more financial heavy. It took a hit when WaMu collapsed but Russell and Weyerhaeuser have moved in. DT Seattle is around 36% (overall Seattle is 24.9%) which is at or very near the top. DT Bellevue is only 14% and still adding space. For some reason it seems west coast cities are fairing the worse San Diego, San Francisco, Portland are all over 22%. Los Angeles seems to be the exception with only a 14.5% vacancy rate. Manhatten is only 10.4%. Houston is almost the same as Seattle so it’s not just liberal politics; although that is certainly not helping Seattle. And there doesn’t seem to be any direct correlation to size or industry. Boston for example which is much like Seattle is only 17%.
“So some smart heads thought maybe making their regular bus “BRT” will make their proposal more appealing to funding opportunities.”
It’s because they’re making them full-time frequent. That makes them highly usable, makes them convenient for a wider variety of trips and longer-distance trips, and increases transit mode share and public attitudes. Frequency is a BRT feature, but at the same time “BRT” isn’t necessary for it. Still, “BRT” is a guarantee it will be frequent, and that’s often the only way to get it through the political approval process and tax-increase process, so the BRT label is, perhaps, a necessary evil.
You could say that a reasonable federal transit funding system would not fund West Seattle Link, and I would agree. The problem is that a reasonable federal transit funding system wouldn’t spend much money in Seattle at all.
If we had an entirely fair transit funding allocation system, the majority of the funding would go to New York City. Transit is just so much more useful (and used!) there than anywhere else. I can think of at least a dozen different potential subway extensions there that would have much more ridership than anything we could possibly build here.
“If we had an entirely fair transit funding allocation system, the majority of the funding would go to New York City. Transit is just so much more useful (and used!) there than anywhere else.”
But we need to make transit useful throughout the country. Other countries have New York’s walkability and transit scaled down to every city’s size. So you can go to any city or town without a car and meet your basic needs and cultural/social/recreational needs. We can only do that with a massive improvement in transit throughout the country, and that requires large investments everywhere, to get them up to the average for industrialized countries. The fact that politicians have little motivation to address this problem doesn’t make the problem go away; it just makes like in the US more inconvenient and frustrating and less efficient.
If we had an entirely fair transit funding allocation system, the majority of the funding would go to New York City.
That may be true for major projects but it isn’t true in general. New York only has so many people. Imagine that the goal is simply increase transit ridership across the country. New York already has fairly high ridership. It is quite low in L. A. and plenty of other big cities. Thus there is far more potential new riders in those other cities. Many of those cities suffer from problems that are relatively cheap to fix. Just run the buses more often. Add red paint here and there. Even in New York they could focus on maintenance and increased bus service and probably get more new riders than the Second Avenue Subway (as laudable as that project is).
Yet the government doesn’t chip in for service. They won’t chip in for small projects — it isn’t worth the paperwork. The whole idea of federal funding is to chip for major capital projects. This sounds like a good approach. Agencies focus on operations but need incentive to expand. New York is bound to pay more but get more. But cities like Seattle can build smaller metros (like UW to downtown) and get a lot out of them. Or they can build projects more appropriate for a sprawling metropolis (like a bus tunnel). Smaller cities can build cheaper projects that provide similar benefit to cities like New York (at least in theory).
So instead of making small, highly effective changes we go big. Seattle is building projects that cost as much as the Second Avenue Subway but with a tiny fraction of the riders (let alone rider-time-saved). Other cities don’t even try. They know that building a real metro isn’t going to happen so they make compromises. They fail to hit the major urban centers but insist that it go out to the sprawling hinterlands. The line is as effective as commuter rail (appealing only to long distance commuters) but it costs the same as a full fledged metro. Or they just build streetcars. Or they have special buses and call it “Bus Rapid Transit”. Sound Transit, of course, has done all of this.
A big part of the problem is this fixation on big projects. Most cities should just invest in small improvements and better service. The fix for the Metro 8 cost $4 million. It will dramatically improve transit for about 7,000 riders. Nothing in Sound Transit 3 comes even close to providing that kind of value. West Seattle Link is expected to get four times as many riders but cost more than 1,000 times as much! It is not alone. Stride is expected to cost $2.5 billion. At best the three lines will get three, maybe four times as many riders as the 8. Yet again, it costs hundreds of times more.
Then there is the choice of project just within the agency itself. Assume for a second that the federal government is only interested in big projects. Also assume that they are willing to “spread the wealth”. They know that Seattle can’t possibly build a big project that provides as much value as a big project in New York. Even with the confines of major rail projects there are projects that just shouldn’t make the cut. West Seattle Link, Tacoma Dome Link and Everett Link are terrible values — even when you only consider big projects and only projects in this area. But the federal government doesn’t seem to care about value, otherwise we wouldn’t have been in this mess.
“Other cities don’t even try. They know that building a real metro isn’t going to happen so they make compromises.”
No, they don’t try, and the issue is far bigger than compromises. Trying would mean minimum 10-minute all-day service on most of Metro’s routes; 15 minutes on most of Pierce Transit, Community Transit, and Everett Transit routes; and 30 minutes on rural connector routes. At best they have false vision of the problem; at worst they know what their city needs but won’t do it. They need to look at a real passenger eye’s view and what works best for non-drivers, and that’s what they’re not doing at all, or at most barely doing just a token amount.
Fourth Plain has good length of bus lane, while Mill Plain seems to have nothing, but I don’t know how bus lane works there. I’d say people in Seattle respect curb bus lane more than what I see elsewhere.
Mill Plain has no need of bus lanes except the too-narrow section from 97th to about 120th over I-205 and through the highest usage intersection in Clark County, Mill Plain and Chkalov. From downtown to 97th the bus runs quickly and doesn’t have nearly as much traffic signal interference as does the Fourth Plain Vine. East of 120th there are plenty of lights, but there are three lanes and the lights are mostly green for Mill Plain everywhere but 136th.
So the Mill Plain Vine is a pretty quick bus, except from 4:00 to 6:00 PM when Mill Plain and Chkalov siezes up. There’s no easy fix for it, because there’s a two-way turn refuge west of the freeway and a huge street east of it.
I struggled finding a better word than “BRT”. I didn’t want to say “quasi-BRT” because that would be derogatory and make people not watch the video or have a negative prejudice going into it. “Enhanced bus” was too vague. “RapidRide-like” was too distracting. So I went back to “BRT”. Then I had the dilemma that I’m calling it BRT while the author spends several minutes saying it’s “not BRT” and doesn’t have street priority (just frequency). I had to acknowledge that too so it wouldn’t look like I hadn’t watched the video or had missed the “not BRT” point. But both the author and I want people to go into the video ready to see the positive things of these lines and station areas, not with an overall negative attitude. So I finally settled on calling it “BRT” and then in the next sentence mentioning the author argues it’s “not BRT” but still a step forward in its own way.
I recently learned that the E line skips Fremont and Woodland park. I can see that there’s not exactly a great location to add stops today, but with some infrastructure built they could add stops at one of the overpasses in the park and another one by the Fremont troll. They would be very useful.
Yep. This has been a problem since before the bus was called the E Line: https://seattletransitblog.com/2013/04/04/connecting-fremont-to-rapidride-e/
Looking at lines and corridors is a common way that we are trained to think. That perspective a bit car-brained. There are plenty of scales that we should be looking at as stops and stations instead rather than just lines in a map.
Some progress has been made — but adding rather than reducing stops or stations seems to be how things should happen yet they usually aren’t. From dropping Link stations to a missing South King Cascades station to Stride 1/2 stops skipping major destinations and transfer points to Rainier stop consolidation, anecdotes abound.
Certainly, closer and more accessible stops to these hubs is best. And with Link now operating that can carry the much longer trips faster every 4-5 minutes, adding intermediate RapidRide stops seems more timely — and even with the high perceived capital cost, its orders of magnitude cheaper than a new rail line.
It would be essentially no-cost, except for the gate in the fence and a walkway. However, I think that WSDOT does not want the transition zone between “sort-of-freeway” to the south to “Watch out, they’re coming from all directions!” to the north seamless, without buses stopping during the cool-down zone.
I passed through the Saturday market Mt. Baker Station yesterday and both Metro and WSDOT had info tables set up. At the WSDOT table there was info about the I-90 Judkins Park freeway ramps realignment proposal. WSDOT has selected the option that routes all traffic exiting I-90 to a new traffic light or roundabout near S. Bush St. This option is probably the best, even though it appears to delete the existing traffic signal at Massachusetts St. The bad news is that no funding exists for the project and it hasn’t even started design work. Expect at least 4 years before there’s any construction.
At Metro’s table I asked about the RR-R project. None of the 3 people working at the booth knew anything about a RapidRide line in Rainier Valley. So, I guess it’s not a real hot topic inside of Metro.
A Saturday markket at Mt Baker station? Is it underneath the track? I’ve always thought there should be a farmers’ market or something there rather than just a lonely place that’s empty or a few lone people walk through. Is it there or someplace else?
Saturday market is on the plaza at ground level. It’s been happening all summer. I don’t know how many more weeks it will continue.
Some places need BRT kind of storytelling to get Feds to understand why local needs money for such capital project and to have people’s attention that there is a decent transit service somewhere in the system, but I think the whole RapidRide campaign is just unnecessary.
RapidRide lines are not region’s first frequent service nor limited stop service. Seattle has many frequent bus routes and good transit-only corridors long before RapidRide was invented. A typical BRT campaign that worked in other systems where there is no regular service running frequently means less when you already have a decent transit service.
It is especially unnecessary in case of RapidRide R which they said they wouldn’t build with federal funding and 7 has already got good amount bus lane. They seriously should drop the RapidRide branding part and just focus on the remaining things that actually improves Rainier Ave transit corridor. People in Seattle understands what a good bus line is. We don’t need a branding effort to help us understand that.
Lately, I’ve been riding the 7 more just to see the ridership patterns and watch the ebbs and flows of the route. One thing that really stands out is the amount of real estate along the route that is vacant and surrounded by chain link fencing. From just south of I-90 to Alaska St. there is a long stretch of “future development opportunities” that are sucking the vibrancy out of RV.
The second thing is the lack of grocery stores along the route. There’s an undersized QFC at MBS, the Safeway at Andover, the PCC in Columbia City, then nothing until Rainier Beach. Neighborhoods need access to grocery stores and transit service to support daily activities like grocery shopping. If Metro wants to move ahead with the R Line, it should be in step with the city’s plans for rebuilding Rainier Valley’s housing and commercial spaces.
There are several different types of ethnic grocery stores on Rainier too. I see that they are popular for the ethnicities that they serve, including many patrons who ride Route 7 to get there.
The dearth I see are with banks. There are no longer any Chase banks on Rainier, for example. And all the stand-alone Starbucks are gone. And there’s basically two big pharmacy’s plus the one in Safeway and some very small independent ones.
All for an area of 84,000 residents or similar to Redmond and slightly more than West Seattle at 77,000.
Some ethnic groceries attract more than their ethnicity. I’ve found that to get ingredients for Japanese, Thai, Korean, or Chinese dishes, I have to go to different stores. Uwajimaya has Japanese ingredients and many pan-Asian ones. But for some Thai ingredients I had to look for a Thai store, and I couldn’t find any, but the recommendations said Mekong Rainier (on the 7 just south of Mt Baker station), or the now-closed store at 12th & Jackson (Viet Wah?) have them. I can’t remember what else, but I’ve been surprised when Uwajimaya or H-Mart didn’t have certain ingredients from other Asian ethnicities I’d assumed they’d have. Or if they do have them, the selection is too small.
Real mirin (hon mirin without corn syrup/sugar) is one. I assumed Uwajimaya would have a lot of them, but 99% of them have added sugar. I had to get Eden Mirin from Whole Foods. (Finally Uwajimaya started carrying it.) Others have been galangal or some Thai pastes; I’ve had to shop around for them. When I ask in some stores, staff don’t recognize galangal. Dulse seaweed (my favorite) is another. I could only find it at Central Co-Op. Uwajimaya and H-Mart have lots of other seaweeds (many unnamed) but not that one. I’ve had to fall back to Wakame as my second favorite because I can’t find Dulse.
Even along the north part of the line stations the lack of groceries, etc. is a problem – there’s nothing at UW, U District (although several smaller options), Roosevelt, Northgate*, Pinehurst, Shoreline S, Shoreline N, or Mountlake Terrace**.
There’s a soon-to-open Trader Joe’s where the old Bed Bath & Beyond was, on the other side of the mall property from the station, then Target across Northgate Way – neither really station-adjacent but still probably tolerable.
**Mountlake Terrace has development plans E of the station, although I don’t believe there’s a grocery there yet.
Even worse, Lake City – which is one of the denser areas of the city – no longer has a grocery store other than Grocery Outlet or a pharmacy. This is a big enough problem in the city that it has become a campaign issue for local pols. Not having basic services in the immediate proximity drives people who have a choice away from transit, and makes life that much worse for those who don’t have a choice.
Roosevelt has a Whole Foods. As you mentioned, there are several small grocery stores that aren’t a far walk from the U-District Station (including a Trader Joe’s). But after that riders are better off taking buses (it is too far of a walk). That is one of the drawbacks to running a train along the freeway — rarely is there anything there. In contrast if the train just kept going up Roosevelt/15th (from the Whole Foods in Roosevelt) it would go by both the QFC (on Northgate Way) and the Safeway (on 125th) before reaching another QFC (on 145th). I’m not saying that should be the priority but it is an example of the drawbacks to going by the freeway.
As for Lake City, that is a very unfortunate situation that so far isn’t that common. There are more than enough people in the area to support a grocery store bigger than Grocery Outlet but for whatever reason they aren’t interested (yet).
There’s nothing wrong with medium-sized grocery stores like Trader Joe’s or H-Mart. They have a wide variety of items and count as a station-area supermarket, even if they don’t have everything.
The big-box mainstream supermarkets (QFC, Safeway, Fred Meyer) have gotten so bad that people need an alternative to them. Sale prices require a loyalty card, switching to all self-checkout, gates at the entrance, closing pedestrian-friendly entrances leaving only the parking-lot entrance on the other side open. not accepting cash after 8:30pm — not to mention walking through a huge parking lot or ever-increasing miles of aisles. Combinations of those are what turned QFC and Fred Meyer from two of my preferred stores to stores I avoid if at all possible. Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and H-Mart don’t do most of that.
I’ve also learned to like small convenience stores if they have full service (e.g., produce, deli — not just canned foods/snacks/soda/beer/cigarettes), like City Market near me. I avoided them for decades because their prices are higher than full-sized supermarkets. Now I’ve realized paying a dollar or two more for two or three items a week (toilet paper, my favorite chips) is not that big a deal, and it beats spending half an hour getting to a bigger store and back or carrying a bulky item (again toilet paper).
So Link stations and RapidRide stations should have these small grocery stores too, and it’s OK if some stations don’t have large supermarkets. The bigger issue is that a large supermarket is adjacent to a station within a few miles of you, like the Whole Foods at Roosevelt station, or maybe the one at Wilburton station.
It was when my partner’s brother from Spain visited us that I realized the value of convenience stores. There are two on my block that I never went to but he did. Doutbtless that’s similar to what he does in Granada and what many Spaniards do in their 15-minute neighborhoods. He found Dutch stroepwafel cookies there: I didn’t know they existed and never imagined a convenience store would have more than Oreos and Snickers and such. He went there for other household things too. I began to realize they’re not so bad — as long as they’re not the horrible kind with only beer/cigarettes/soda/candy.
@Ross – Ha ha, you’re right – I forgot the Roosevelt Whole Foods (and I used to shop there occasionally!). That’s actually quite close to the station and I’ll need to put that on my radar again. I get my coffee at Kitanda; the one at Capitol Hill is right across the street from the station; pop up, grab a bag or two, back on the train.
@Mike – the problem with not having stores near a station is that most people are traveling at least a little distance just to get to the station, so you’re making a trip to the store a two-stop experience rather than just grabbing something near the station before walking/hopping on the bus to get home. Smaller stores certainly would do near most stations; a supermarket at busier/denser stations like Northgate and Lynnwood.
Europe is set up so differently than everything in most neighborhoods in this country – you are correct re the small neighborhood stores being go-tos for multiple things, and most have produce and household things rather than just chips, candy, and soda. In Portugal I can walk in a few minutes to what in effect is a little grocery store, kind of like the old IGA in my neighborhood here was; a couple of convenience stores; an Indian grocery; or two chain grocery stores (much smaller than we’re used to, but still with everything from a butcher to a baker and fishmonger). Tavira like much of Portugal outside of Lisbon or Porto doesn’t have much in the way of public transportation but everything is walkable. For supermarkets there’s an Aldi next to the train station and a Pingo Doce (I love Pingo) on the other side of the old town. Then, of course, you have the town market, which is open every morning and is chock full of fresh goodies from veggies to meat, fish, eggs, dairy – whatever is local. The towns are sized such that you can relatively easily walk to any of these – definitely 15 minute cities!
(There is an American-sized supermercado in the mall on the edge of town, another Portuguese chain, that in a pinch will do; I rarely go there though as it’s a bit of a walk and the smaller places almost always have what I need. That said, it’s no more of a walk than most people here without cars have to manage any time they need groceries.)
Oh, and next time you’re in Coupeville, stop by the little Dutch store and get some pretty darn good stroepwafels they bring in from the Netherlands. :-)
“the problem with not having stores near a station is that most people are traveling at least a little distance just to get to the station”
Every station should have an adjacent store so that people can stop for everyday needs on the way home or while waiting for a bus transfer. I’m just saying smaller station areas don’t necessarily need a big-box supermarket. They just need a store that has a reasonable variety of things — like supermarkets were in the 1950s. So if Northgate has a bug-box supermarket, Roosevelt and Shoreline South don’t necessary need one — they just need something their residents can go to when they don’t want to travel to a large supermarket.
As it turns out, it’s the other way around: Roosevelt has the big-box supermarket, and people travel from central Seattle and Lynnwood to shop at it because it’s an easy walk from a Link station.
(Who travels from Lynnwood to it? My friend in north Lynnwood. Her two closest supermarkets are a 40-minute walk away in different directions and there’s no bus route to them. So she’d rather shop in Seattle where it’s easier and she can do other errands and visits at the same time.)
In south Seattle, Othello and Beacon Hill stations have the big supermarkets, so Rainier Beach station doesn’t necessarily need one. It does need a better store than just that one produce shop.
Special stations with no local residents may not need one as much. South Bellevue station has only a few houses around it. Star Lake station seems to be only for park n riders, and they can drive to a supermarket. But on the other hand, it would be better for South Bellevue station to have a store than not have one.
@Mike – yes, exactly, hence my next line “Smaller stores certainly would do near most stations; a supermarket at busier/denser stations like Northgate and Lynnwood.”
Lynnwood will likely get one as the area around the station is built out (yes, there’s a Freddie’s relatively nearby, but again that can make for a two-stop trip home depending on which direction you’re headed from the station). It is interesting that the only one along the line is at Roosevelt. It was fairly interesting to begin with that they put the Whole Foods there, although they did have some parking available across the street and below. If the Trader Joe’s at Northgate were adjacent to the station that would be perfect. As it is, it’s only walking the length of the old mall and not even crossing a street to get to it from the station/transit center. I have a feeling this store will be heavily used. Although it’s still going to be a “mall” albeit with housing – yay – there will be stores and restaurants around the updated Northgate area and that should make it much friendlier to stop on the way to/from the station for various needs.
Unfortunately the model for most of the ‘little’ stores in this country is much more the chips/candy/pop/beer drive-up variety rather than the mini-supermarkets that you see in Europe, that will normally have some fresh produce, decent bread, a few household items, a selection of dairy etc. Those would be really nice next to some of the smaller stations as you mention (of course in Europe you’d probably also see a day care, café/bistro, pub, pharmacy, other services like perhaps a dry cleaner – things perfectly placed for going to/coming from work or elsewhere on the train; maybe Northgate and perhaps Lynnwood will end up with many of these things).
By the way, Trader Joe’s is three blocks from U-District station, and on RapidRide G.
Roosevelt was the first Whole Foods store in Seattle. It opened long before Link.
Northgate station’s location goes back to the 1990s thinking. It was an existing P&R next to a freeway entrance on public land, so it would be inexpensive and get that P&R ridership. It’s sort of next to the mall, so on an executive’s map it looks like it serves shoppers.
A Trader Joe’s in the northern half of the ex-mall will not get as many riders as the supermarkets closer to stations we’ve already identified. It’s one thing to go to Northgate Mall or Northgate North a few times a year for something and deal with the mediocre walk; it’s another thing to go to a supermarket one or more times a week.
Pinehurst station will be a major improvement to access to Asian Family Market’s Seattle location located at Aurora & NE 130th which I go at least once a week. There is also a Sprout Farmer’s Market in the same plaza. I’ve seen some people (non-Asian) in that Asian grocery store are just shopping for common produce like onions or potato.
Before Pinehurst, it was very inconvenient to take light rail to that junction because routing of 345 between light rail station and that Aurora & 130th is just weird.
“There’s nothing wrong with medium-sized grocery stores like Trader Joe’s or H-Mart.”
I think the bigger problem is the price not the size.
Trader Joe’s price are all good, but for H-Mart, I think it is big enough to have all the produce I need, but sometimes I wouldn’t refill things like soy sauce from there because it is more expensive. For the same reason I think Uwajimaya is less useful of grocery store for me. It is more of a tourist attraction in my opinion.
Last year, I ran into this small-midsize grocer store in Fremont last year called Markettime Foods. I expected Metropolitan Market/PCC level of price, but it was more affordable than that. I don’t know how they did it as a independent brand, but it is awesome.
Have at it Ballard horde!
https://www.myballard.com/2026/09/14/sound-transit-seeks-cost-saving-ideas-for-ballard-link-project/#more-354841
Let’s hope that ST is sincere. They need to explore an automated line for a number of cost-saving reasons!
They aren’t going to suggest anything the board has rejected like automation, only new tweaks to the preferred alignment. To get automation, you first have to convince the board to be open to it. Then they would tell staff, and then staff would include it in alternatives and study the costs/benefits.
Then why issue the RFI? If ST limits ideas, there will not be any way to get the cost savings needed to make a project affordable. That would make the RFI a massive waste of time.
The only reason to do it would be to merely take the heat off of ST for treating Ballard so poorly in setting their priorities.
It’s for strategies like they did with West Seattle Link, or making Seattle Center station trapezoidal and saving $400 million. ST thinks it might be able to shave a billion or two from the cost. It won’t know until it looks. Even if those don’t add up to the $11 billion or whatever shortfall, it will make it easier to finance. ST should be looking for savings like this anyway, so I’m glad it’s studying it.
Have at what, a public relations tactic?
Here’s what I wrote on MyBallard. I hope they publish it:
Use automated trainsets which can run more frequently and use that expanded capacity to shrink the stations to three car or even two-car lengths. Include platform access doors that close a few seconds before the train doors close in order to suppress “holding”. Ideally these trains would be “Light Metro” equipment with retractable third-rail power distribution, to allow for smaller diameter tunnels, but that is less important than that the trains be automated and shorter, to reduce the cost of stations.
This requires that the south end of Line 1 be separated from Ballard, and that makes DSTT2 unnecessary, at least at this time. Downtown Seattle has a 37% occupancy deficit, and there is little to no indication that will change. Therefore, it makes sense to connect West Seattle immediately to The Spine by having a simple merge junction just south of the relocated SoDo station.
Northbound West Seattle trains would take the right-of-way of the almost completely unused bike path between Lander and Forest to attain the east side of the descending structure of Line 1, with a trailing point merge under the to-be-built Lander Street bridge.
Southbound trains would either diverge at the apex of the rise to Forest Street with a turnout that just heads southward, OR, if your engineering staff can’t plausibly build a merge structure around the existing structure, just south of SoDo station, next to the northbound merge.
From there the trackway would take the northbound lane of the busway for a block until the structure turns away and the southbound Line 3 track can move east off the busway. Buses would pass through that one-lane section using demand-actuated lights. The northbound direction would be “favored”; it would stay green all the time except when a bus at the Lander busway stop “requested” clearance. If no northbound bus was already in the single-lane stretch or more than a couple of hundred yards to the south, the south signal would go yellow, then red and the north signal would clear for the southbound bus to proceed.
West Seattle trains would go to Mariner and eventually Everett.
Line 1 trains would continue to Northgate, where some work on the turnback pocket might be necessary to turn trains with a six-minute headway. There is room for a fourth track to belly one direction or the other of the main a bit to the east or west, allowing two turnback tracks.
The “maintenance facility” issue with an isolated “Line 5” (Ballard-Downtown) can be addressed by having a small, “cleaning and electrical” MF in Interbay, parking unused trains in the tunnel between stations on one track and going to single-track service in off hourse.
To access heavy maintenance a cut-and-cover tunnel from Third and Pine one block to Third and Stewart, then down Stewart to Westlake (both intersections are oblique, making a single-track curve relatively easy to fit within the underground envelope available).
Finally, make New Westlake much shallower than planned and place it on Sixth on both sides of Pine. If you don’t have to dig DSTT2, you don’t have to have New Westlake 160 feet deep. Just make it deep enough to snuggle under the DSTT1’s narrowing tunnel.
Here’s the most radical part. Move the tracks in Old Westlake together into the bus bypass lane and widen the platforms into the gained five or six feet. Then, use the five or six feet to get through the east wall of the station and into a pair of “mid-mezzanines” hanging over the platform for New Westlake! No going up to get to the Mezzanine in order to access the elevators to the new platform. [Excepting, obviously, the necessary elevation change between the crossing platforms.]
This saves you another billion AT LEAST on New Westlake. Add the four billion no spent on DSTT2, the billion on duplicated tracks on the busway, and about a billion on each of the three remaining underground stations, and you have racked up at least $9 billion in savings.
P.S. This sets the system up for a swing into First Hill if and when “funding becomes available”. Just go south under Sixth Avenue at the same elevation as the plaform at New Westlake. You’ll be about minus 60 from the street level at Seneca. Put a station between University and Seneca (A “Midtown Station” that’s actually in Midtown) then swing up-hill to Ninth or Boren somewhere around Madison for the lollapalooza station there. Swing south to somewhere between Harborview and the new Yesler development and you’ve finally served First Hill.
Just saw an out of service trolley (4346) put poles up on E Madison just east of 17th while waiting for the G. Looks like a good sign for the 12 getting trolleys again!
Has Metro filled in the missing wire between 15th and the Central Coop? That’s all I can remember that’s missing.
I rode the 12 today but I didn’t think to check if it was a trolleybus.
The gap is 1 1/2 blocks between 15th & Pine where the 10 turns, and 17th & Madison where the previous 12 alignment was. Metro said it would fill it in within a few years but it has taken so long I stopped paying attention. The bus I rode today to Trader Joe’s looked like it might have been a trolleybus, but I didn’t look up to the roof to confirm. I’ll check the next 12 I see tomorrow if I remember. The 12 is now the best route in the Capitol Hill area to get to the most places (previously the 11 was), so hopefully it will get its trolley status back soon.
It’s not running trolleys yet, the one I saw definitely didn’t have any passengers on it but the operator stopped outside of Trader Joe’s on Madison to put the poles up. I presume it was for testing purposes but I haven’t seen any official chatter from Metro on the topic.
There’s still the gap from 15th/Pine to 17th/Madison
Was it part of plan to restore 12 trolleybus operation? I guess maybe I was too focused on the status of 2/13.
Yes. Metro said it would fill in the short gap where no bus had gone before. It’s just waiting its turn for an allocation of the annual capital budget and workers’ time among a hundred other projects. Metro intends to restore trolley service to the 2, 12, 49, 70/RapidRide J, and to electrify the 48.
The 2’s wire was displaced for RapidRide G construction, and some 2 runs are through-routed with the 13. The 12 was moved to a new alignment that has a 1 1/2 block gap in existing wire (which is west of 15th for route 10, and Madison Street for the former 12 alignment). The 49 and 70’s wire was displaced for the 520 rebuild. The 48 needs a mile-long infill between John Street (route 43) and James Street (route 4).
Link evening downtown closure Tuesday-Thursday. The downtown tunnel will close early September 15-17. I’m not sure if we’ll have an article ready before it starts. The last trains will go through the tunnel between 9:40pm (westbound/northbound 2 Line) and 10:44pm (southbound/eastbound 2 Line), with the last 1 Line trains in between them. Shuttle buses will serve the closed stations between Capitol Hill and SODO, and Capitol Hill and Judkins Park, running every 10-15 minutes. The reason is for “extended monthly maintenance enhancing system resiliency.”
How many 2 Line closures have to happen before Metro and ST actually restructure for a direct, high-frequency, day-long bus between Capitol Hill and Judkins Park? It’s clear that DSTT-related closures are almost always going to involve terminating service at these two stations. It’s also clear that closures will continue to be common events.
The 8 isn’t perfectly direct, but it is probably the best option for 2 Line riders to transfer to and isn’t that bad. It’s ~5 to 10 minutes longer than the 2 Line when it’s running, and ~0 to 5 minutes longer than the 9 (all measured from respective stops). It’s also 10 minutes faster than the shuttle (which I see when I plan a trip for today after 10:30 PM with Google).
While ST does provide the list of alternative routes, I think they could do a better job of directing riders to buses like the 8 (or the 7/106) that can provide a faster/better service than their shuttles, especially for the 2 Line. Shuttles serving Judkins Park are pretty meh. But I don’t have a lot of personal experience navigating these kinds of closures
It would also help greatly if Judkins Park had a convenient way to turn around buses.
Capitol Hill isn’t an easy place to turn around buses either.
Now that the 1 and 2 Lines are open AND ST better understands that Capitol Hill and Judkins Park will be end stations in disruptions because of the required track operations, the need is really clear to me.
Certainly Route 8 is an option. It reaches Mt Baker for the 1 Line too. Until a restructuring happens, it’s probably something that ST should promote as an alternative in signage and audio announcements.
Within the news reports about FTA allowing the release of the Everett Link DEIS, there is early word that the project is no longer $7.0B to $7.9B. It is now reported as just under $12B!
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/sound-transit-set-release-report-030414242.html
That’s a 50%+ cost jump past what was presented just a few weeks ago in June. And if FTA was reviewing the document at that time, ST staff had to have known in June but did not tell the Board or the public. .
This kind of deception needs to be ok be called out! This is malfeasance pure and simple. People need to be fired!