News and commentary from the past week.

Transit & streets:

Housing:

Miscellaneous:

This is an Open Thread.

87 Replies to “Midweek Roundup: Decision Point”

  1. I attended the “Urbanist x CityNerd: Building a Transit-Oriented Puget Sound” event at Town Hall Seattle last night. The event featured Ryan Packer, Ray Delahanty, Claudia Balducci, and Alexis Mercedes Rinck.

    Perhaps one of the most interesting things was Claudia Balducci saying quite definitely that with the way the last realignment went, any idea of an ST-wide ST4 ballot measure is basically dead, or “on ice” as she put it. Perhaps not a surprise, but the message was pretty clear that if Seattle wants WSLE or BLE built faster (or any other Link expansions), the city would have to go alone.

    There wasn’t much discussion of RapidRide. I was hoping there’d be a Q&A but there wasn’t one, and Balducci didn’t stick around for questions afterward.

    1. What would Seattle going it alone look like? Would it start with a citizen-led initiative? What would be the best funding mechanism? And could Seattle be reimbursed by Sound Transit? “Hey, Sound Transit, we spent $20B for an automated light rail line from downtown to Ballard, so now you don’t have to build it, so we’d like to be reimbursed the amount you were going to spend on it.”

      1. Where do you think the votes would come from to support such a reimbursement scheme? Seems pretty unlikely as a political matter.

      2. Seattle would have to identify its own independent funding source and get it approved to spend on Link expansion.

        To be fair, the authority to do so already exists in a limited capacity; in 2022 the state legislature enabled creation of “Enhanced Service Zones” (https://app6.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=81.104.220). They require board and voter approval to be established but can only levy car tabs and commercial parking taxes, neither of which would generate the billions needed to significantly shift the timeline on Ballard (or other projects).

        Seattle’s only real hope of getting Link to Ballard before 2060 is a complete rework of how transit megaprojects are planned and approved.

      3. Seattle would have some kind of levy to accelerate WS/BLE projects.

        Voting for a non-ST project (an automated Ballard line or Ballard-West Seattle line) would bring us back to the Monorail situation. The Monorail team chose its lines to avoid redundancy with ST’s then-plan (i.e., no downtown-UDistrict or downtown-southeast). Now ST has Ballard and West Seattle projects approved and started, so that adds complications. One alternative might be Ballard-UW since ST is not currently pursuing it.

        Voting for an automated “ST3” Ballard line would require convincing the ST board to vote to study automation in that corridor, and ultimately to vote to build it. Even with Seattle money, Seattle can’t just impose project modifications on ST against its will.

        And Mayor Wilson and Councilmembers Strauss and Fain are on the ST board. They have the most clout to insist on automation or at least studying it further and getting it into the EIS, but they haven’t done so. So you’re left with getting them as city officials to support automation while they’re against it on the ST board. So the only way to bypass the board’s opposition is a non-ST Ballard project, and to bypass them if they’re fully opposed.

        The way to bypass all the city officials is an initiative. That’s what the Monorail project was. And it had… problems… in its leaders not knowing what they were doing and not knowing about finance. How would we guarantee that doesn’t happen again?

        And the money the state has authorized Seattle to raise (the unused Monorail authority) can only raise around $1 billion. So that would be the budget limit. Unless you can scrape together some other sales taxes and property taxes to add, but that wouldn’t add up to much without hitting other state limits, and we need that money for other things like Metro routes and street improvements and housing support and everything else. We could ask the legislature for permission for a larger tax for an automated rail line, but that will go nowhere when the legislature gave ST equivalent tax capacity for a Ballard line and it’s still active and Seattle voters voted for it (as part of the ST-wide vote).

        If Seattle somehow passes a levy to build a non-ST automated Ballard line, then after the fact it could go to ST and say “We don’t need your stinkin’ light rail any more and it would be redundant”. In that vanishingly impossible scenario, ST might actually cancel its Ballard/DSTT2 projects. The saved money wouldn’t go directly to Seattle’s other desires, but under subarea equity the money would stay in North King. (Although it would be borrowed for Everett/Tacoma/Issaquah/Stride construction, as if you think those won’t tie it up for 2+ decades.) And the whole reason we’re discussing this is ST can’t afford Ballard/DSTT2 or Avalon station. ST can’t reallocate money it doesn’t have. So that part of the money wouldn’t be available.

      4. Start charging a congestion fee to drive in to the city center. Around 40k do it every day. Back of the envelope calculation gets me to roughly ~100Mil/year with a $10 charge. Over a decade, that’s a billion right there. Should be enough to build something, perhaps an urban gondola system connecting to (not replacing current and planned!) light rail. Or at least, a bunch of Rapid Ride lines. Especially if you can get some Fed match when the pendulum eventually swings back.

        1. Ding ding ding! Correct answer. I think this is also just a good bargaining chip to use against the suburbanites that fxcked Seattle in the last system realignment.

        2. A decongestion charge is good policy, but politically the revenue is more likely to fund suburban express & feeder service. Even in NYC, the decongestion charge in Manhattan is intended to fund LIRR improvements.

          It’s still good policy for Seattle by decongesting local streets.

        3. A contradiction is forming in the comment section. Create a congestion charge that will raise a lot of money for transit. Or, high taxes will drive businesses to Bellevue and increase downtown Seattle’s vacancy rate (and reduce its congestion charge revenue).

    2. I wonder if the reason the mayor didn’t opt for car tabs for the seattle transit measure is actually because she plans to put forward a ‘Seattle rail’ measure in a year or two that is funded with car tabs.

      2. The City already collects $50 car tabs for the transportation benefit district, which SDOT uses for street maintenance and other projects.

        The clear political calculus was that adding $50 to that (to reach the legal maximum of $100) to raise an additional $20M annually would not be worth the risk of the measure failing. Since flat-fee taxes are even more regressive than sales taxes, it would be a much harder sell.

      3. The current $50 car tabs only generate $23M a year. The amount of money to build BLE is probably $15B to $20B. That fee would need to be collected for something like 700 years to pay back a no-interest loan in a rail capital proposal for BLE using a $50 car tab funding source.

        A $50 car tab increase for Seattle and its 460,000 registered vehicles is a pretty small amount compared to the billions that ST wants to spend building BLE.

      4. Public opposition to car-tab taxes is large. Larger than for other taxes. Because people get the annual bill in the mail and get sticker shock, and they feel strongly that without their cars they can’t get to work. or that poor people who can’t afford the car-tab spike can’t get to work. They may or may not know that some poor people could take transit to work, but everybody knows that for some home+work location pairs, there’s no transit option or it takes an unreasonably long time (like 1-3 hours each way).

        So cities shy away from using the car-tab tax authority they have or asking for more, because it gets so much public opposition, and is the one tax that’s most likely to get them voted out of office.

      1. Yeah, that was nice to hear but not really a surprise. I think Ryan’s quip (“get in line”) was a reference to Rob Saka who’s been practically begging to get on the Sound Transit Board.

        Seattle usually has 2-3 reps on the Board; currently they’re Mayor Wilson (obviously) and CM Strauss, who’s spent a good amount of political capital pushing BLE forward as much as he can. Strauss would only step off if he lost reelection, which could fairly easily happen next year if there’s a worthwhile challenger. Maybe AMR could be slotted before then if one of the other board members from King County stepped out and there was no replacement, but I think Issaquah’s electeds have a better claim to that seat than a third rep from Seattle.

        2. The Exec is an automatic member of the ST Board. He or she may not reside in the North King subarea.

    4. It seemed like most of the event was dedicated to previewing an upcoming video by Mr. Delahanty and reviewing East Link station areas. I appreciated his observation that the region is spending billions to build rail connections to places like a self-pick blueberry farm while failing to connect denser neighborhoods to each other. Even if there were an ST4 funding package, having these people in charge of it may not be the best idea.

    5. “Claudia Balducci saying quite definitely that with the way the last realignment went, any idea of an ST-wide ST4 ballot measure is basically dead”

      What is Balducci’s reasoning? What in the realignment makes ST4 dead? Urbanists are angry about WS/BLE, but suburbanites more or less got what they wanted, and West Seattle Link supporters got what they wanted. Issaquah got delayed indefinitely, but Balducci at least saw that as inevitable, and other Eastsiders probably did too. So urbanists turning against ST3/4 might kill any chance for passage, but at the same time we’re not the majority. Pierce will vote against it but it has long done so, so that’s not a net change.

      1. Mike, if you think that the suburbanistas who are getting all their projects fully funded in ST3, albeit on a slower timetable, are going to vote for an “ST4” out of their sympathy for “poor Seattle”, I have a large inventory of waterway crossings available for your consideration. All are currently 25% off their already low-low prices!

      2. I think the Eastside is mostly happy with what they already have (and are getting), and would be willing to vote for more.

        All of the other suburbs are apparently angry with what they’re getting – they don’t seem to consider the express bus service to be very important. I think they overestimated what was possible with light rail service.

        1. Which is why I think the politics for ST4 will be straightforward. Pierce and Snohomish will want more funds to finish the Spine. That may mean extending the Spine beyond ST3 (e.g. Tacoma Mall, Everett CC), but primarily ST4 funds will be used to improve and accelerate (i.e. finish) the ST3 projects, in the same way that ST3 funds allowed for Lynnwood, Redmond, and FW extensions to be completed sooner.

          So the political question is what does East King want, which should be easy to provide. Both Kirkland and Renton are screaming for better service, plus whatever the Bellevue/Issaquah project ends up.

      3. Balducci’s reasoning was that there are no more big projects to fund in Pierce County or Snohomish County once the Spine is finished, so it will be extremely difficult to get voters in those counties to approve another fourth tax increase just to finish BLE before 2060. That’s not really considering Issaquah Link, but it hasn’t even started real planning yet and I think ST is hoping whatever “innovations” are found in delivering Link to Ballard will be helpful for getting it to Issaquah, too.

        One version of the “Enterprise Initiative” realignment proposed truncating the ends of the Spine in order to get BLE to Smith Cove. If that version had come to pass, we might have had a shot at getting an ST4 passed to finish ST3 on-time (and get some new corridors started), but now only Seattle is let holding the bag to get its project finished.

        1. “No big projects” is such an odd take and underscores the mistaken mindset that Link = good transit and buses = bad transit.

          All day Sounder surely would be a big project.

          I sincerely hope that 405 Stride (N) shows the region that high quality BRT can provide the same speed, convince, and reliability as Link and build support for further investment in higher quality bus lines.

          Extending ST4 to fund regional trails could also get the suburbs excited. High visibility projects like Wilburton Trestle are great for public engagement. The idea that SW Snohomish county has no backlog of public works projects is just silly.

        2. ““No big projects” is such an odd take and underscores the mistaken mindset that Link = good transit and buses = bad transit.”

          This argument doesn’t hold water when Community Transit is well supported by county residents, is expanding Swift service over the next decade with two new lines, improving bus service overall, and looking to a major overhaul of Everett bus network if the CT/ET merger is approved that’ll improve frequency on many Everett routes. Same thing for Island and Kitsap Transit, I hear nothing but good things from people who use them other than needing better service span and frequency.

          The reason why some people don’t have a high opinion of buses is down to how King County Metro and to a lesser degree Pierce Transit don’t really invest time and money into making the experience actually nice like CT and ST does. While my experience with both KCM and PT are fine, I can see why a choice rider would find the experience to be less than stellar with how cleanliness, safety, and maintenance have taken a complete backseat at the agency.

          Take for example the TC at Southcenter, it used to be nice when it was built over a decade ago but over the years KCM has not given a damm about properly maintaining it. And in my opinion, it now looks disgusting and is not inviting to wait for a bus (especially at night) including them taking out the seats. Something regular people care a lot about and definitely will notice.

          I’ve talked with my friends who say they’d ride the bus but safety, reliability, time, and cleanliness are the biggest factors for why they don’t. They see Link as clean, safe, well ridden, comfortable, etc. And will happily ride. Along with the fact that its frequency is pretty good with 4/8min frequency. If KC Metro wants to start fixing their reputation, I’d say keeping their RapidRide stops and TCs properly and consistently maintained would be a start.

        3. To be honest, I think we have too many transit centers, in general. Rather than having a transit center that every bus detours into and out of, in order to provide shelter to people waiting 45 minutes for a bus, I’d rather them just run the service more often and pick people up a regular bus stops on the street.

          There are a few very special situations where a transit center makes sense, the Port Authority bus terminal in NYC being one such example, but for the most part, but that’s the exception, not the rule. In general, transit centers tend to be a concept that transit agencies like to drastically overuse.

        4. I would argue that the PABT is not good, in fact, since most of the passengers are not headed to that area. They are going east of there. The buses should instead run on bus-only lanes on 42nd Street.

          I think transit centers make sense when you have a pulse system. This is where you have multiple infrequent routes converge at the same place, at the same time, and wait a few minutes for passengers to switch between buses. But we don’t have anything like that in King County. The transit centers are pointless.

        6. Bellevue downtown TC works well – it is essentially 6th Ave closed for only transit for a full block, but it also includes the features that Zach values: shelter & seating, wayfinding and signage, etc.

          Off street TC make sense when they are the terminus for multiple routes.

        7. AJ: today, BTC should extended on block east to reduce transfer walks; Stride1 and 2 riders should have bus stop at east entrance of downtown Bellevue station

      4. “Balducci’s reasoning was that there are no more big projects to fund in Pierce County or Snohomish County once the Spine is finished”

        That’s what I wanted to know. That has been known, debated, and worried about since the mid 2010s when it became clear ST3 would reach Everett Station and Tacoma Dome. The realignment didn’t change that situation. It just reinforced it, since they were prioritized (along with West Seattle).

        If was clear the subareas’ interests would diverge when the Spine was finished, with Seattle wanting several more expensive lines and the suburbs just wanting a few little projects. That was an unresolved issue that everybody punted to whenever ST3 was substantially finished.

        The context didn’t say whether Balducci was even referring to WS/BLE’s cost or part of it being deferred, or whether the suburbs were satisfied or dissatisfied, so I wanted clarity on that, because it could be an important turning point depending on what she means.

        1. of course, Everett Station and the TDS are not in the pedestrian centers. The TDS does not help Tacoma riders much.

      5. Mike and Nathan:

        of course there will not be an ST4. ST will be lucky to do ST3; it seems more likely that they will have to another reset of the system plan when the DSTT2 part of the BLE turns out to bust the bank. DSTT2 has already failed from a transit service perspective: deep, taking more minutes to access; split CID stations, making transfers between the east and south lines unacceptably long; fewer stations and not one the G Line. The next failure for the DSTT2 will be fiscal. There may also be boardmembers who wake up and see that the DSTT2 has little capacity or resilience benefits; those are what Chair Sommers cites. The DSTT2 is hooked to the south line on MLK Jr. Way South and limited six-minute headway; there is no connection at the north end between the north line and DSTT2.

        ST still has three large streams of revenue. It is just that their governance leads them to spine worship rather than ridership maximization. ST3 has several goofy projects that are still funded; the best ST3 project was not funded.

        Note that Balducci and Strauss voted no on final passage for the amended chair’s package for revised system plan. They may be the best two boardmembers.

        I could see the North King subarea attempting their own ballot measure; a few sessions ago, Representative Hackney proposed that the SMP/ETC MVET authority be allowed for non monorail HCT. But even within that subarea, it is not clear that Link is the best use of scarce tax revenue, given the need for pavement management, sidewalks, bridges, and transit service.

      6. I’m against any Seattle ballot measure to accelerate WS/BLE. The STM contributions are fine because the permitting/coordination it’s what Seattle has to do for any Link station. But I don’t want good money going after bad for worse-than-peer line-to-line transfers between the three primary lines, stations not addressing walkability to CID destinations, or a Ballard station that might be east of 15th, or breaking the southeast-northeast axis, or West Seattle Link at all. ST can do it with its existing money, or if it can’t do it, that’s fine.

        Seattle has several more critical priorities for local-levy money: full-time frequency on most bus routes, interim/alternative bus investments for Ballard, and widespread transit lanes to fix reliability. We can’t sacrifice those just to accelerate a Link line to Ballard in fifteen years with unworkable transfers and splitting the Spine.

  2. So how do you know which runs will be using the new Airo trainsets? I’d like to take a scenic trip to Eugene but have no desire to ever again be on one of the school bus like Amfleet cars.

    1. I don’t think it’s been explicitly released yet, but I believe it is 503/508. I was on a 508 back from Eugene that was cancelled by Amtrak and automatically rebooked for sometime next month (I had to cancel the trip anyways). I think it will be 516/519 for trips out of Seattle heading north as well based on the Urbanist reporting too (since it says Seattle to Vancouver and the other Vancouver trains start in Portland). My assumption is that they have to be Seattle-based trainsets as well.

    2. Higher capacity is welcome, since Cascades has been full a lot of the time in recent years.

      It makes me wonder how were they able to fill in so many more seats? Are the trains larger? The photo seems to have similar aisle space as the Talgo trains. Are they double-decker?

      1. Current Cascades trains are mostly just 3 cars: 2 coaches and a cafe/business class car.

        The new trains will be 6 cars.

  3. The 160 was struck by a stolen SUV this morning. One person is dead (assuming one of the SUV occupants).

  4. The crime-per-neighborhood article does make me wonder about per-capita rates. We’ve seen population explode over the last decade or two, and I think a raw “measured crime” count is a bit misleading. The article makes it sound like crime is growing and spilling out across the city, but I don’t know that the numbers back that up.

    One data point that stood out to me is that the article has SLU/Cascade “measured crime” up 25-30% between 2018 and today. Over that same time period SLU/Cascade has grown 40-60% in terms of population. Also over that time period, Capitol Hill is up 20-25% and First Hill is up 25-30% in terms of population.

    I don’t really want to go through the legwork of calculating per-capita stats or changes, but it doesn’t look like a notable increase to me. To be clear I think that “measured crime” growing in proportion to population growth is generally bad; I would hope and expect that per-capita “measured crime” falls as density increases.

  5. So what is the crime-per-capita and how does it compare? Is it citywide crime per capita or per-neighborhood crime per capita? Is it really a better measure? I want to know how likely I am to be assaulted, not how my neighborhood’s density affects the rate number.

    1. “Per-capita” means per person, and “crimes-per-capita”, aka crime rates, are typically counted in crimes per 100,000 people. Crime rates are much more meaningful than total number of crimes. For example, if statistics indicate an area had 100 more crimes one year than a previous year, the meaning of that statistic is very different for an area with 200 residents versus an area 200,000.

      Crime rates can be calculated on a city-wide basis (available for Seattle under the third tab of SPD’s “Crime Dashboard”: https://www.seattle.gov/police/information-and-data/data/crime-dashboard), or on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis. Seattle added over 100,000 residents between 2018 and 2025. If crime rates stayed the same (indicating no overall change in rates of antisocial behavior), we could expect an increase of over 5,000 property crimes and over 600 violent crimes. As jd notes, we would hope to see a decrease in crime rate as density increases since we’d expect policing to become more efficient with density, but we aren’t really seeing it here.

      (moderator hat: opinions regarding SPD are off-topic for STB, and will be moderated. Discussion of crime stats is already at the edges of this blog’s focus on transit and land use issues).

  6. The relative change per neighborhood in the crime rate is still useful, because people know what the current impacts are and they can estimate “20% worse” or “20% more people” or how an increase might become manifest, even if they don’t know the per-capita rate.

    For instance, I was stunned that Capitol Hill now has the highest crime rate in the city. That means my neighborhood has the highest crime rate. At the same time, the vast majority of residents are unaffected by violent crime; I can’t think of anybody I know who has been or knows somebody who has been in the past decade. Maybe a neighboring shop owner; I don’t remember for sure. We have had an increase in people breaking into the apartment building and stealing delivery packages, but that’s not a shooting or an assault. Before I lived on Capitol Hill I lived in the U-District, for a total of 40 years between them. The police blotter printed in The Stranger said my U-District block (56th & U-Way) had something every day, but it rarely affected me. One break-in in 13 years to steal CDs/musical equipment, and my roommate thought it was one of his “enemies” for want of a better word, so not a random stranger. So many people live for decades in these so-called high-crime neighborhoods without getting shot or assaulted. The panhandlers and people sleeping on the sidewalk and in tents are annoying but not an existential crisis, and I hope the city solves those problems someday.

    And my relative says Bellevue is not low-crime either. People steal Christmas presents from cars and houses, and steal cars.

  7. I think total crime numbers sometimes doesn’t really tell the story. With so many retail spaces vacant in Downtown Seattle now, there is just not as many opportunity for retail theft as 2019. Usually people think a place is safer or not, it is more about assault and violent crime.

    2. That is one of the major issues. It’s not just downtown but in Capitol Hill and other neighborhoods that storefronts on the most walkable streets are remaining vacant for more than a year or two. How can we get those filled again? Is the city putting together a plan to do something about it?

      1. The problem of empty storefronts (and empty offices, for that matter) is driven by banks valuing commercial property based on asking rent instead of actual rent. This is a problem in every city. I’m not sure why banks do that, though.

        1. They do it so they do not need to write down the value of the asset or the loan. The rental value on paper is above water.

  8. Has anybody been to the new Cathcart Park and Ride? I checked it out on opening day and I was surprised to see there were cars parked. No people looking to ride the bus though. I like how the park and ride has some transit oriented development though like Cathcart Crossing and Eastview Village.

    I wonder who will be using Cathcart Park and Ride, people driving from miles away? People living at Cathcart Crossing? There’s barely anything to do over there. I did go to the Starbucks after riding the 166 over there but that’s it. Starbucks was full that day but no one caught a bus there.

    Maybe we have to see how things develop, especially that Cathcart P&R will be the future home of the Swift Silver Line.

    1. Strange how they put a park & ride in a rural part of the county and there’s not even a commuter route that serves it. CT is obsessed with the idea people will park and ride a bus to light rail. They aren’t… especially if that bus meanders through a bunch of neighborhoods along the way.

      1. “Strange how they put a park & ride in a rural part of the county”

        Won’t be so rural in the next decade or so.

        “there’s not even a commuter route that serves it.”

        There’s the 901 that connects to light rail.

        “CT is obsessed with the idea people will park and ride a bus to light rail.”

        That trend is dying post-Lynnwood Link onwards.

        1. I don’t consider the 901 a commuter route, despite its categorization by CT. The concept of a “commuter” is a route that directly takes people from A to B quickly. In the case of the 901, it’s just another neighborhood route that is more limiting than simply driving to Lynnwood Station.

    2. Even if it doesn’t make sense as a place to catch a bus, there may still be some carpools or vanpools that make use of it. That would be my guess.

  9. Question for anyone. Have you ever emailed customer service of a local transit agency to ask a question? If so, did you get the feeling the response you got was written by someone who actually read your email, then answered your question themselves? Or, do you think you got a canned answer, which perhaps mentioned the general subject matter of your email, but didn’t actually answer your question, leaving you feeling like a human didn’t actually write the response?

    1. I recently called Metro’s number to report a broken stanchion that was swinging dangerously as the bus moved. My call was answered immediately (at 630am) by a human who did a great job responding. I also emailed Metro a few times last year to note that some drivers didn’t know that the Montlake Freeway Station had opened and that the 271 and 255 should be turning left off of Montlake instead of right to access 520. I never got a response and it took weeks for the buses to get on the right route.

    2. I have called and emailed to complain, multiple times, at multiple agencies. The response was never canned. In some cases, it led results I could see.

      Even when transit service is terrible, I’ve always felt like the transit employees are trying their best.

    3. Metro customer service is terrible. Three times they have followed up with either an incorrect response (i.e. saying I was wrong) or didn’t even read my email. In each case, I called a supervisor and they corrected their error.

      ST and CT are better in responding but still not the greatest.

  10. The discussion around Seattle potentially funding future Link expansion on its own is especially interesting. It really highlights how much the challenge is about financing and governance, not just engineering.

    [Ed: this is AI spam, but already got a couple of replies so we’ll leave the content but delete the spam links.] [Ed2: I thought it was likely AI spam too because it has that wording. But I was puzzled me that there was no link to an unrelated marketing gimmick.]

    1. Well, the math isn’t mathing with the city in a massive budget hole they keep digging deeper. They have no plans other than regressive taxation or more high earning taxes as corporate vacancies soar and Bellevue keeps becoming a taxation heaven. Link actually works wonders for Bellevue giving employers and employees choice to avoid Seattle taxes

    2. “They have no plans other than regressive taxation or more high earning taxes as corporate vacancies soar and Bellevue keeps becoming a taxation heaven.”

      How else can Seattle build the housing it needs, the transit it needs, maintain its infrastructure, or provide the social help people in an increasingly unaffordable environment need? Bellevue is just ignoring these problems to the extent it’s not doing them. But companies need workers who can find housing and get education and are healthy. Tax havens can live off other cities for only so long before their model becomes unviable.

      Saying Seattle should just cut taxes sounds like saying Seattle should eliminate services in a race to the bottom. What do you think those taxes are funding? Nothing?

  11. Ballard Link Extension will never actually “extend” any farther than “Uptown” or “Seattle Center” Station because it will have catastrophically poor ridership. Because DSTT2 breaks the “Link” between anywhere south of CID Station and UW and will have deep, poorly integrated stations, it is likely that upon its opening ridership on Line 1 will fall!

    Yes, it’s that bad, even assuming it doesn’t open until the two-station “stub” is ready. Will riders from Lines 2 and 3 actually descend eighty feet and five escalator banks to catch a train that will run unreliably every eight to ten minutes?

    Perhaps on rainy days in December, but from Old Westlake to Amazon’s towers around Denny and Westlake is about ten minutes at a pretty leisurely pace. That’s quicker than the total time to descend (and ascend at Denny Way) plus half a headway.

    Plus, there’s now the Gr8 bus from Capitol Hill. And the final nail in the coffin is that there will be no “SLU Station” north of Denny Way for destinations that would have grown up along Aurora.

    Finally, the placement of “Seattle Center Station” makes its potential use as a “bus intercept” for riders from Ballard and Magnolia to the south end of Downtown ineffective, because only the “D Line” will pass by it. The peak-hour expresses will fly by on Elliott.

    What a terrible waste of money.

    1. “Ballard Link Extension will never actually “extend” any farther than “Uptown” or “Seattle Center” Station because it will have catastrophically poor ridership. Because DSTT2 breaks the “Link” between anywhere south of CID Station and UW and will have deep”

      Even just Rainier Valley to SLU and Ballard is a high-ridership corridor, and add to that the airport and the south. It’s not that that corridor is bad, it’s that southeast-northeast is the highest-ridership corridor in the region, so ST is elevating #2 over #1. Making #1 harder would lose some riders, as they go back to routes like the 48 unwillingly or stop taking transit. It also breaks the promise from the 1990s to 2015 that southeast-northeast would be a one-seat ride long-term.

      If ST is worried about Tacoma-Everett being too long for drivers, have a line turning back at Northgate or the airport or somewhere to keep at least some service in that corridor. Rainier Valley doesn’t need a one-seat ride to Lynnwood or Everett because that’s a long distance trip with relatively few riders, but it does need a one-seat ride to the U-District and Roosevelt because that’s a short distance with many riders.

      It’s because the U-District, Capitol Hill, and even Roosevelt are such large activity centers drawing so many people for a wide variety of reasons, and the distance is less than ten miles or a 40-minute ride. Conversely, southeast Seattle has high ridership because it’s a linear corridor with lower-income people (for whom the cost burden of driving is heavier) and a variety of businesses, mostly Asian-themed, but a wide variety of people go to them. Plus there’s all the people going from the airport, and from the highest-ridership part of Link to the airport.

      Ballard is a large village attracting a diverse range of people, such as to the bars and farmers’ market and hospital branch and tourist attractions, but it’s the fourth-largest one and then Link ends. SLU’s ridership is skewed by being office-heavy and having a limited range of retail. Both of them are large, but they can’t compare to UW/U-District alone or the fact the northeast segment has all three of Seattle’s largest regional centers. So a lot of people want to go there from the airport or from southeast Seattle.

    2. Well yeah… I’m glad that more people understand that the planned transfers are really, really bad. Still, not enough riders and the public — and especially Board members — understand.

      There is absolutely no reason other than ST obstinance that ST can’t put a level transfer in at SODO. It won’t help 2 line but it would help 1 Line riders coming from SeaTac, the RV, South King and Tacoma. They can’t say that it’s too expensive as they are spending billions so a minor redesign of tracks and platforms is minute by comparison. And this is a West Seattle design flaw and the window to fix this is almost closed!

      1. No, there is not a natural high southeast-northwest ridership. As you point out, folks in the Rainier Valley on average are less wealthy and considerably less likely to be involved in the “tech industry”, which is what SLU is about. They are completely uninterested in Ballard’s restaurant culture. The RV has its own.

        I have said MANY times that Line 1 should end at Northgate, Line 2 at Lynnwood, and Line 3 at whatever is the current terminus of “Everett Link”. I’ve even asserted that regardless of the difficulty of turning trains in a single pocket track hour after hour, day after day. Either the trains will have to be “double-seated” to avoid the long walk-back or a second pocket will have to be built.

        What I am saying is that “The Stub”, even though it covers the high-density “regional core” in SLU, but does it relatively poorly will sour even Seattle on further Link expansion, so it will end there permanently. It will never go to Smith Cove or Dravus and especially not to Ballard.

        North King Sub-Area will have spent billions of dollars on a “Tunnel-To-Nowhere” after it spends $7 billion on a “Redundant Bridge To Nowhere”.

        The only rail transit improvement appropriate for the Downtown-Ballard Corridor is a Skytrain Clone from Westlake to Ballard. ST’s proposed routing is too far south to make the best of SLU and Uptown Stations, but is tolerable.

        1. Just noting that it wasn’t my comment even though it’s nested under me.

          I don’t doubt that SE Seattle residents have low interest in going to Ballard. They have a much stronger interest in getting to First Hill (which most can’t reach directly even on a bus) and Southcenter (which none can reach directly even on a bus).

          And as you say, there’s not the money to get to Ballard anyway using Link light rail technology.

          I think it’s important to establish that there’s a huge difference between a seamless, level cross-platform transfer and a difficult one.

          And people not only in SE Seattle but anyone going to SeaTac period north or east of Downtown Seattle will have a much bigger hassle to reach SeaTac.

          The ST3 problem is more in the details of transferring than in anything else. It won’t be redundant. It won’t be helpful in a disruption that turns back trains at Judkins Park and Capitol Hill like ST is doing often these days. These are Trump-level lies told to the public.

          The thing about an automated system is that the train doors will sit open on the platform at Westlake waiting for riders — and then leave every 3 minutes. 1 Line will come into the station platform every 8 or 10 minutes. Sure ST promises 6 minutes but that looks like a speculative campaign promise to me.

        2. My apologies, Al. I’m using a phone rather than a desktop, and it’s hard to see where one is in the comments.

          To your reply, “Yes, to pretty much everything. Thanks for continuing to throw shade on a very flawed “transit solution”.

        3. The idea that the 1 line should end at northgate is detached from reality. At the end of the line security sweeps the trains, custodians clean the worst of the mess and if there’s a problem with a train it can be stored in the tail track. If you try to turn trains around at northgate in the pocket track, you’re going to back up the line of both 1 line and 2 line trains in the tunnel (not good!) if anything goes wrong. You’re doubling the amount of staff, you’re introducing a lot of complexity into scheduling. You’re making it so that any delays north or south the station ripple into the other line as they become desynced from each other. You’re also turning 4 minute headways north of northgate into 8 minute headways for no real advantage. And to be clear there’s really no advantage to doing it this way.

        4. No, PF. The Line 3 trains would continue north of Northgate, so there would still be four minute headways (Lines 2 and 3 at eight minutes each) to Lynnwood. This would not happen until West Seattle Link is completed. Until then Lines 1 and 2 would run as they do now. Going to Lynnwood from Federal Way is not a hardship on the operators. Going to Lynnwood from Tacoma Dome would be. That’s why ST wants to run Line 1 to Ballard; it would take about the same time as going to Northgate.

          Right now there are nine stations between SoDo and Northgate, or ten segments. From SoDo to Ballard with the current plan — if it ever got there — there would be seven between SoDo and Ballard, or eight segments. So going only to Northgate is two segments farther than the current plan, but avoids four stations or five segments to Lynnwood.

          What you say about turning the trains is why I specifically said that a second pocket track is probably needed. There is room for it, but it means that the southbound main would have to move west over Fifth North, which means that likely the southbound track would have to have a fairly sharp curve leading into the station.

          You apparently disagree with the many criticisms about breaking the The Spine, the lousy transfers, and the ultra-deep stations that ST is planning. That’s certainly your prerogative, but it’s transit mal-practice.

      2. “folks in the Rainier Valley on average are less wealthy and considerably less likely to be involved in the “tech industry”, which is what SLU is about. They are completely uninterested in Ballard’s restaurant culture. The RV has its own.”

        These kinds of simplistic assumptions leave a lot of people out. The fact is, Rainier Valley and Ballard each probably have a hundred thousand people. If even a fraction of them travel between them, that’s a significant number of people. People travel between them because that’s what people do between all neighborhoods in a city. That includes condo owners in Rainier Valley, who are not lower-income. It includes people visiting people they know or going to hobby events. Ballard is more than restaurants. I had a job and Ballard, and a medical procedure there. Designing a transit network based on assumptions that “people here don’t go there because of [one or two stereotypes]” leads to a less effective network.

        Southeast-northwest is a good corridor. It’s just that if we can have only one corridor for the southeast, it should be paired with the northeast.

        1. It might be a “significant number of people” but not enough to build a new grade-separated rail line connecting them. What you say about southeast to northeast being more important is exactly correct, as is shown by Metro having two short-cut bus lines across the bow that is Link between Mt Baker and UW Station.

          This is a five alarm fire, Mike. The overworked but under-educated politicians in charge are about to commit the North King Sub-Area to twenty billion dollars of the transit equivalent of New Coke. They need to be yelled at by people who know about this stuff but aren’t beholden to some Private Equity tyrant saying “Tell them we can give them what they think they want without hinting that there are alternatives!”

          I can’t do it because I don’t live in the Sound Transit service area, and they wouldn’t listen to an 80-year old cane shaker anyway.

        2. “not enough to build a new grade-separated rail line connecting them.”

          It’s not building a new line to connect them; it’s building a new line to connect Ballard to the region; i.e., to the downtown transfer hub. The rest of it is existing track and doesn’t involve any new grade-separated infrastructure. It’s just repurposing an existing segment. The reason they’re repurposing the segment has nothing to do with Ballard or SLU; it’s to avoid a Tacoma-Everett service that ST says is too long for drivers. So it’s using Ballard and Rainier Valley to solve an unrelated problem ST has.

        3. Jesus, Mike, I know that’s what’s SUPPOSED to be, but it will never make it to Ballard or even Dravus if it is built as ST is planning it. There will be no ST4 to pay for extending it, and the City doesn’t have sufficient taxing authority to go it alone. You can be double damn-betcha certain that the rest of the region is going to put a quick stop on further bond sales for construction immediately after ELE and TDLE-Links reach their respective goals. “Issaquah Link” will probably end at Bellevue College also.

          “Welcome aboard the BCC Flyer with speedy service from the quarry at South Kirkland to a brisk walk to Bellevue College. All Abooooard!”

          So “BLEEEE” will be stuck at “Seattle Center Station” — if it gets that far. It might end at Denny Way given the history of overruns and the hazards of digging such a deep DSTT2 and the ultimate Palace that is New Westlake as ST envisions it.

          The only savior is to dump the very obviously unneeded DSTT2 south of Westlake and tack the money saved onto the other end. That might get Link to Market using an opening bridge if a bit of money could be cadged from WSDOT for a shared bridge project.

          You know the rest of the blah-blah about automation, short shallow stations, frequent trains, and an MF in Interbay. It is the only way Ballard will ever have rail transit.

        4. Also, Line 1 would NEVER go all the way to Everett. It would turn back at Northgate or Lynnwood. Both have pocket tracks for turning trains.

          Posting Frog is right about the difficulty of turning a line with an eight minute headway in a single pocket. Northgate — or Mariner — will have to have a double-pocket or some sort of elevated loop added or included in the original construction.

          I just had a thought. What if the pocket at Northgate were turned into a ramp up and a short stub went west to straddle Aurora. Line 1 trains would turn there and, suddenly, the E would be Linked. Ideally it would be at 105th, but I don’t think there’s enough space along Northgate Way, and the curve would be too sharp from the ramp. But 107th might be perfect. Yes, one side of the street or the other would have to be purchased for the trackway supports, and that’s not nothing. There are apartments west of Meridian which would be very close to it, and many nice trees would have to be removed.

          Interestingly, right at Northgate Way the street goes up a fairly steep hill. It might be possible to dive down into a trench along the north side of the street which has a large number of derelict houses, cover it and then build new above the trench. That would mean that the station at Aurora would have to be underground, which certainly adds cost. The area around 105th and Aurora is prime for re-development so there would be plenty of walk-up ridership as well as E intercepts.

          Obviously, this is several hundred million dollars to accommodate reversing Line 1 trains at Northgate, but it has the huge benefit of a direct connection to the E. And remember, the reason for turning Line 1 trains at Northgate is that there would be no DSTT2 south of Westlake, and no hideous transfers to and from the airport and Rainier Valley stations.

        5. “I know that’s what’s SUPPOSED to be, but it will never make it to Ballard or even Dravus if it is built as ST is planning it.”

          That has nothing to do with whether Ballard deserves a subway line to it, or how much it should cost. And there’s certainly no brand-new right of way in southeast Seattle to get to Ballard. And a line to Ballard also serves downtown-SLU trips and region-SLU trips, so it’s not just people going from Othello to Ballard because they’re rich house owners and Ballard restaurants are chic.

        6. When did I say that Ballard didn’t “deserve a subway line to it.” I am trying to figure out a way to get one there, along with a lot of other people here on the blog. I used to think that included you.

          It will never get there if the ST plan is followed for all the reasons I outlined above. It’ll be stuck at Seattle Center or even Denny Way and the rest of the region will vote a loud, clamorous “NO!” to the ST4 bonds required to complete it. It has to be a stub from Westlake with small stations and automated trains so that it can fit within the budget available to ST3.

          But it sure seems like you’ve given up and joined the “Build the damn trains!” ST claque.

        7. “But it sure seems like you’ve given up and joined the “Build the damn trains!” ST claque.”

          What? I’m saying “Don’t build the damn trains”. I never thought I’d be in that position, but long train-to-train transfers counteract the benefit a subway line is supposed to provide. Lesser crimes include bypassing the CID walkshed, and a potential Ballard station east of 15th. All that occurred after the vote. The vote itself was a compromise to get political consensus or we’d never get anything, so DSTT2 is built into that. So my recommendation regarding Ballard/DSTT2’s current alignment and cost and building only to Seattle Center is, “Don’t build that.”

        8. When did I say that Ballard didn’t “deserve a subway line to it.” I am trying to figure out a way to get one there,

          From Northgate branch the Everett line west on Northgate Way and then south on Holmman Blvd. In the far future this could extend to Lake City Way and eventually loop around the north end of the Lake. Northgate is the obvious nexus for north Seattle. this avoids the Ship Canal crossing along with a lot of super expensive tunnels and deep dive stations. Eventually build a smaller tunnel parallel and close enough to the bus tunnel so that it can provide third track redunacy and create at least one center platform.

          Alternately, build a second tunnel under DT in partnership with BNSF that can share freight and passenger service. Most freight is not time sensitive and can be moved overnight when passenger trains aren’t running or have infrequent headways.

      3. “I’m glad that more people understand that the planned transfers are really, really bad. Still, not enough riders and the public — and especially Board members — understand.”

        Reinforcing this, there was no discussion of this issue at the “Building a Transit-Oriented Puget Sound” event on Tuesday. I was very impressed with the size of the crowd but discouraged by the failure to acknowledge problems with the current plan, beyond that fact that there are insufficient anticipated funds to complete the extension to Ballard in a reasonable timeframe. Councilmember Rink got lots of applause for her “build the damn trains” lines, but there was no substantive discussion of how to build trains that are more effective in moving more people more quickly and at lower cost, and how the current ST3 plan fails on these measures.

  12. The other day, I decided to try out the 520 service by driving to the 92nd Ave. Freeway Station to catch a bus to the U-district, rather than taking the 255 from home. The idea being that, between the 255, 270, and 542, I would get frequent service for the ride back in the evening, rather than needing to rely on the half-hourly 255, alone.

    As it happened, I ended up riding the 270 both directions, but there a surprise. Apparently, the 270 only serves 92nd Ave. in the westbound direction, not eastbound. The bus blew by my stop on the return trip, forcing me to backtrack about a mile on foot to reach my car.

    Note that OneBusAway claims that the 270 serves 92nd Ave. in both directions, which means OneBusAway is wrong.

    This seems like an unnecessary confusion point.

    As an aside, it’s worth asking why I chose Yarrow Point to drive to, rather than Evergreen Point. Evergreen Point is quite cumbersome to get to in a car, requiring substantial driving down slow neighborhood streets. It has a P&R, but it was never intended to be used by the broader eastside, only rich Medina residents. Anyway, what’s done is done. I will use Evergreen Point the next time.

    1. I would ask Metro whether the 270 is supposed to stop at 92nd. The route map shows it as an express segment, which is labeled “limited or no stops”. So you’d have to ask Metro whether 92nd is one of the limited stops. Since all the other 520 routes have always stopped there if they pass it, it would be odd to quietly change the policy now for the 270. While it would save a few seconds of travel time, it’s not worth the confusion or passengers getting stuck a mile from the car they left at the same route. And it has direct-access ramps so the bus wouldn’ get caught behind cars or stoplights or turns.

      I suspect the eastbound driver was wrong.

      1. from Metro Service Alerts:
        Beginning Sat Aug 29, the new Route 270 starts service but will not use stops #71359 SR 520 & 92nd Ave NE (EB) and #71356 SR 520 & 92nd Ave NE (WB).

        Affected stops:
        Stop #71359 SR 520 & 92nd Ave NE (EB)
        Stop #71356 SR 520 & 92nd Ave NE (WB)

        For Route 270 Bellevue TC get on/off at:
        Stop #71348 SR 520 & Evergreen Point Rd (EB)
        Stop #68930 Bellevue Way NE & NE 30th Pl (SB)

        For Route 270 University District get on/off at:
        Stop #69402 Bellevue Way NE & 103rd Ave NE (NB)
        Stop #71355 SR 520 & Evergreen Point Rd (WB)

        For Route 270 University District get on/off at:
        Stop #69402 Bellevue Way NE & 103rd Ave NE (NB)
        Stop #71355 SR 520 & Evergreen Point Rd (WB)

        This scheduling data change will be available in Metro’s Trip Planner and third party transit planning applications after Saturday, September 26. We apologize for the confusion regarding this new service and appreciate your patience as the updated information becomes available.

    2. If an eastbound route 270 stopped at Yarrow Point, it could be difficult to change lanes in time to take the southbound Bellevue Way exit. An eastbound 256, 255, 545 or 542 don’t take that exit.

      The only way to solve that problem and have the eastbound route 270 stop at Yarrow Point is afterwards for it take the HOV exit to 108th, take a left, then left on Northup, then left on Bellevue Way. Asdf2 once said that detour would be a waste of time and should be avoided.

    3. It seems the ELC planners did not understand the layout of the SR-520 ramps; the center access ramps are at 108th/112th avenues NE. The ELC planners wanted their new Route 270 to serve Bellevue Way NE. Look at their P2 maps. So, it has to weave across the general purpose lanes. Yes, Bellevue Way NE needed better service, as Route 249 was reduced in the fall 2014 reductions; no, it was not necessary for it to be served by Route 270. Route 270 serves Evergreen Point.

      1. I noticed this before the 270 started running and wondered if the bus was actually going to serve 92nd. Well, I think the service on Bellevue Way would be great, I think serving 84th is unacceptable.

        I think that a better option might be to either use 112 which has center lanes for entering and exiting, or just continuing onto 405 as a full express with a small extension from the transit center to the mall.

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