News and commentary from the past week or so.

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News:

Commentary:

This is an Open Thread.

56 Replies to “Midweek Roundup: clash over Aurora”

  1. Great to see the state rep grilling the city for dragging its feet on deploying the funding already allocated years ago to Aurora. More accountability of the Wilson administration is a refreshing and welcome sign from the State government and the email exchange proved worthwhile of a laugh or two. I may steal the spray water on my inbox line.

    1. It is more complex than that. Former Senator Carlyle targeted the funds for a south part that already has sidewalks. SDOT knows that the urgent need is for sidewalks, drainage, and access management the north part. The dust up is about a misunderstanding over a meeting regarding a group seeking additional at-grade crossing of a third part of the corridor. We should not be seeking “trials” on a state highway; we should seek permanent projects. All sides should remain calm. We should preserve flow of the E Line. Both funding and right of way are scarce.

  2. So where is this innovative paratransit map? I’d like to actually see it. Surely an online article will actually give it a link so we readers can check it out for ourselves…?

    Anyone…?

  3. If I’m reading the Canyon Park P&R announcement correctly, for the next two years, southbound ST 532 and 535 are going to be detouring off I-405, crossing over the freeway, and taking the several-block loop through the P&R? This’s bad. It’ll substantially delay through-riders. Surely there’s some other way?

    1. It’s going to be terrible, but at least transit riders going all the way from Lynnwood to Bellevue have the 2-line as an alternative option. In practice, many will abandon the bus and go back so sitting in traffic in their cars, though, to be honest, it’s not enough people to impact overall traffic congestion on I-405 that much. Hopefully, when the construction is all done, some of these riders come back.

      Also, in the announcement, they are not providing any alternative pedestrian pathway across I-405. They suggest riding the bus, but the bus is not frequent. They are at least providing free Uber rides across during late night hours when the buses aren’t running. That’s something, but still unusable to anyone without a smartphone on them. Expect to see at least some people attempting to walk on the road, in spite of all the signs saying not to; hopefully, no one will die from it.

      1. I heard there will be a shuttle from southbound stop to P&R that runs fairly frequently. That was the condition for them to close the ped bridge for construction.

        There isn’t really a way for them to build the STRIDE station there without closing the ped bridge. It is a choice between having the SB bus detour and stop inside Park and Ride or make inconvenience only for those who board from Canyon Park.

        Some may reconsider park and ride at Canyon Park and catch 532 at Ash Way instead when Canyon Park construction activity ramps up.

    2. “many will abandon the bus and go back so sitting in traffic in their cars”

      They may do that once. They they may decide one bus detour is better than driving in congestion most of the way for fifteen miles.

    1. Martin Pagel attended and made an extensive transcript with several interesting reveals and debates. He’s busy right now so others are consolidating it into an article. I don’t know when it will be ready. The reveals are “more of the same” but there’s one interesting new possibility that I’ll leave as a surprise.

      1. Here’s the link to access via SPL: https://infoweb-newsbank-com.ezproxy.spl.org/apps/news/document-view?p=WORLDNEWS&t=pubname%3ASTWES%21Seattle%2BTimes%252C%2BThe%253A%2BWeb%2BEdition%2BArticles%2B%2528WA%2529/year%3A2026%212026/mody%3A1020%21October%2B20&action=browse&format=text&docref=news/1AB61617499195C0

        On that note – does anyone use the Seattle Public Library proxy links I include for reading the Seattle Times? I prefer using the Library’s resources instead of the Internet Archive, but I know it’s not usable if you don’t have an SPL account. I haven’t checked to see if King County Public Library offers similar proxy access, but maybe that would be more accessible?

        1. I have used the links a couple times. SPL accounts are available to anyone in the KCLS service area.

          I believe KCLS uses a system for accessing the Seattle Times which is very similar to, if not the same as, SPL.

    2. Dan Strauss loudly claiming that transit to Tacoma is faster than to Ballard from downtown… please can he stop saying stuff like this? It’s easily twice as far. The 17X makes the trip from 3rd/Pine to Market/Ballard in 25 minutes at 4:30 PM. The 590 that leaves 5 minutes later is scheduled for 1:24. It’s an hour longer – and that’s only to Tacoma Dome (hardly downtown Tacoma). Sure, it’s 55 minutes on Sounder. I guess if “downtown Seattle” means “King Street Station” (dubious) and “downtown Tacoma” means “Tacoma Dome”, then its 33 minutes to Ballard and 55 minutes to Tacoma. Even if “Ballard” means 32nd and 85th, the 17X is still 12 minutes faster than Sounder.

      Even using the least reasonable definition of “downtown Seattle to Ballard” of King Street Station to Crown Hill and the least reasonable definition of “downtown Seattle to downtown Tacoma” of King Street Station to Tacoma Dome, Ballard is still closer by travel time. Of course, we all know this. Maybe it was a figure of speech, but I am sick of hearing Dan Strauss babble on about stuff like this. He is a Sound Transit board member! It makes me so annoyed.

      1. It is strange. Ballard has pretty decent bus service. But I have talked to some people living in Ballard who are convinced that their bus service is significantly worse than the rest of Seattle.

        1. Yeah, the 40, 44, and D are all about as good as buses get frequency-wise in Seattle. They’re all in the a bit too slow world, but that’s hardly unique to them.

      2. The D Line at PM rush hour is scheduled for 50 minutes from Prefontaine & Yesler to Carkeek Park. Add in a transfer or walk to get there from King Street Station, and you’re easily at 55 minutes.

        So yes, it is possible to contort his statement into correctness.

        1. I mean it is possible to contort your way into anything being true if you try hard enough. I just don’t see why Dan Strauss insist on doing so. A reasonable definition of downtown Seattle, Tacoma, and Ballard leaves you with a 30 to 45 minute travel time gap between them. It’s just not a good comparison point

        2. What could be done to speed up the bases that currently operate in Ballard? If they’re only “a bit too slow”, as blumdrew suggests, then it may be possible to improve them without too much cost.

      3. Perhaps he is just referencing the speed and not the actual travel time. 40 mph is “faster” than 25 mph.

        1. Makes sense. It is way faster to commute to Tokyo from Downtown Seattle than to Ballard, after all.

      4. The schedules for the Tacoma buses have a lot of padding time to account for I-5 traffic. If there is no traffic, the bus can arrive early. Not the case for Ballard.

        According to Google, drive time from Tacoma Dome to downtown Seattle is about 35 minutes. That is what the 590 will actually do without traffic. From Ballard to downtown on the 40 bus (starting at 24th/market) is no shorter than this.

        1. Sure, if there’s no I5 traffic at rush hour and you’re going to Tacoma Dome and you’re starting in SODO and traffic is bad on Elliott and the Ballard Bridge opens it’ll be faster to get to Tacoma, but that’s a lot of convolutions. I’ll take the schedules at face value.

          The 40 is scheduled for 37 minutes from 3rd/Pike to 24th/Market/Ballard at 4:30 PM, but the 17 makes the trip in like 25. Off-peak, when the 17 isn’t running and traffic on I5 isn’t awful, the time is comparable if you squint very hard – but it’s like 25 to 30 minutes on the 40 from the heart of downtown Seattle to the heart of downtown Ballard. The very optimistic 35 minutes that you really cannot count on is still only to Tacoma Dome, which is not in or walkable to downtown Tacoma.

      5. If all the stars align, I have made it to SODO Busway from the Tacoma Dome in a bit over 30 minutes. It’s rare though.

        I am pretty much the only person who would get on at the last stop in Tacoma and get off at the first stop inside Seattle city limits, because I often bring a bike, and riding the low-bridge to Delridge and the H can be the fastest way to White Center, even though it’s probably an extra 15 miles of travel, compared to the T line->574->1 Line->560 (soon to be ->F->H.)

        We need to stop running everything through downtown Seattle.

        1. The 594 also doesn’t take the fastest way into downtown Seattle. It should be staying on I-5 to Seneca St. instead of using the bus way. (Note: most of the slowness is causing not by the busway itself, but by the east/west slogs on Spokane St. And Royal Broughm getting too and from it, which have some long red lights).

        2. Probably a bit, but it really depends on your destination. More than half the time my destination is Pioneer Square or West Seattle. So Seneca would be even more backtracking than I’m already forced to do, because we our system is so downtown-centric.

      6. When the SODO busway closes next year for West Seattle Link construction, it will take longer to get to Tacoma. 4th Ave S and the effort to get to and from I-5 will surely add several minutes to a Tacoma trip. And if Link ever opens its top speed may easily be slower than today’s ST Express buses.

        Sound Transit. Ride the slower wave!

        1. Will it? They are planning bus lanes on 4th, so the bus will be out of traffic anyway. The east/west slog on Royal Broughm goes away. I think, it anything, the bus might be a little bit faster, depending on how they route the bus downtown.

          As I said before, the real bottleneck is Spokane St. and the interminable red lights getting between the busway and I-5.

        2. No, the 4th Ave light cycles take longer. There are longer pedestrian crossings so red lights will take longer so pedestrians can cross. And there are left turn phases too. Add to that how buses will not have an exclusive turn. Lanes at an often-congested Spokane Street, adding time there instead of Royal Brougham..

        3. Yet another good reason to NOT implement the WSLE; it is bad for routes 101, 150, 590, 594, 595.
          The several billion could be better spent elsewhere in the North King subarea. West Seattle could have better service without it.

        5. “And if Link ever opens its top speed may easily be slower than today’s ST Express buses.”

          This is a sure thing. Probably approaching twice as long.

          Sound Transit: Using Your Billions To Make Your Trip Slower. Now With Extra Transfers!

          Doesn’t quite have the ring to it I was hoping. ;)

      7. The 17X doesn’t run off-peak or reverse-peak. The 15X is still suspended, although Metro anticipates reaching 100% driver availability by 2027, and it’s likely the 15 will be restored or the Seattle Transit Measure will fund it.

        The D and 40 take 30-45 minutes to get to Ballard in traffic. The 577 takes 37 minutes to Federal Way at noon. I think Strauss is confusing Federal Way with Tacoma Dome. He’s a North King boardmember after all. :)

        A 3-mile trip to a large urban village like Market Street with low-to-medium density in between should take 10-15 minutes grade-separated or 15-20 minutes by bus. That’s the frustration with Ballard’s current transit options. The D, 40, and 44 all take 30-45 minutes to get to a regional transfer point (Westlake or U-District station). The 17X and 15 aren’t running most of the time, or are running in the wrong direction. The 17X takes 25 minutes at 5pm, so it’s still substandard. The 15X should run frequently all day if Link isn’t coming soon and Metro is unwilling to eliminate the D’s Uptown detour.

        The Seattle Transit Measure should address this with operating funds for an all-day 15. Sound Transit should contribute capital improvements to the D that would speed it up. We’re paying for ST3 to do that.

        1. 45 minutes is a stretch. The longest scheduled time from downtown (3rd/Pine) to Market for either bus is 37 minutes. It’s always possible that things will be late, but that’s also true of the buses heading south. Comparing peak hour schedules on the D/40 to off-peak on the 577 is hardly fair too. It’s like 30 minutes at noon on the 40

          Ballard is 5 miles from 3rd/Pine. The 3 miles from Uptown to 15th/Market is 15 minutes on the D (maybe a bit longer at rush hour).

          The buses can and should be faster. But we don’t need to exaggerate Ballard’s current bus woes to do so. Insofar as the buses are pretty good in Seattle, it’s pretty good right now, with room for improvements. It’s certainly not substantially worse than other parts of the city.

        2. “The longest scheduled time from downtown (3rd/Pine) to Market for either bus is 37 minutes.”

          The point is it takes longer than the scheduled time.

    3. This thread about travel time comparisons between Ballard and Tacoma is a distraction and immaterial to the issues at hand. The issue at hand is ST cannot afford Ballard link, and appears to be saying the only solutions are to find $9B under a rock or wait another four decades for the cash to pile up.

      Which are both ridiculous. ST needs to go back to square one on the project and find a less expensive way to do it. Look at elevated. Look at more surface opportunities, look at trimming the number of stations. All those things could reduce the lift and shorten the waiting period. The first step to solving any problem is admitting you have one.

      1. Has ST changed to plan enough on Ballard Light Rail and the 2nd downtown tunnel to need a revised initiative to send to voters? Things seem to be totally out of hand from acost and schedule perspective.

        1. ST says all its changes are small enough to be “in scope” with the ST3 ballot measure.

        2. Mike is correct. They have authority to plow forward. The question is, with what project scope?

        3. What do you mean by “with what project scope”? In scope means “In scope” means a certain change matches the ballot measure’s explicit requirements and voters’ expectations (=implied requirements), in ST’s judgment. If you mean the project itself has a scope, I don’t know what that means. Ultimately, if somebody sues ST for violating the ballot measure’s requirements, it would come down to how a judge interprets it.

          The ballot measure has a representative alignment, with certain tunnel extents and station locations. The requirement is to connect all the regional centers in it. So Westlake (representing downtown), SLU, and Market Street (representing Ballard’s center). The stations in between aren’t strictly required and have more latitude in moving. In the past we identified both Westlake and CID as downtown anchors, especially with multimodal train station transfers. So ST has dropped the second SLU station (Aurora), and could drop Seattle Center and Interbay or reroute it there.

          What ST can’t do is spend money on non-voter-approved projects before fully funding all voter-approved projects. And it can’t build an alternative without first disclosing it in an EIS.

          So the scope revolves around voters’ expectations. Did they think it’s DSTT2 or bust? Did they just expect a Westlake transfer point? Would moving Midtown station to 8th & Madison be in scope? Would an automated line be in scope? Would Ballard-UW instead of Ballard-downtown be in scope? All of these are judgment calls. We have our opinions. The ST board decides ST’s direction. A judge decides whether to punish ST or not.

      2. The comments from the meeting reflect how many elected officials still believe that the problem is simply not enough money — not a bloated design approach. I and others may agree with you, but these elected officials are too afraid or too uninformed to see that not only are the current plans unnecessarily costly, the resulting end-to-end travel times are worse for many transit trips. They won’t dare discuss or inquire about ridership or destination travel times or transfer difficulties.

        They just want pretty AI videos and renderings.

        1. “The comments from the meeting reflect how many elected officials still believe that the problem is simply not enough money — not a bloated design approach”

          Exactly. Many of us think the current Ballard/DSTT2 alignment is unaffordable, and a new approach like automated trains or an elevated alignment would bring the costs down enough to make building all the way to Market Street realistic. But the ST board and local politicians don’t believe it.

      3. Agreed. As designed, I don’t feel any of Tacoma Dome, Ballard, West Seattle, or the downtown tunnel should be built. Full stop.

        Is the average rider going to actually save a material amount time from Ballard to Westlake, adding in the transfer at 14th or 15th or where ever they end up? Is that time savings/loss worth the 20+ billion? And that’s the best of the projects?

        Can better design make them worth the money? I wouldn’t count on it with this governance structure.

        1. What design changes would you make to bring the cost of these projects down and make them worthwhile investments? The current governance structure might not be open to any ideas other than finding more money. But that doesn’t mean that we the people can’t discuss what we believe could be done to bring costs down.

        2. I support elevation and automation of the Ballard Line to Westlake. The no build option for the 2nd tunnel, West Seattle, Everett, Issaquah, and Tacoma Dome.

          If you must build West Seattle, go pure elevated and take it down Delridge to White Center, with it eventually connecting to the 1 line at the airport.

          Invest the savings in buying and or upgrading the heavy rail lines for Amtrak and Sounder and expanding frequency and span.

        3. Also screw the Coast Guard and their fantasies of Bezos yacht in Lake Union. Those rules need to change. If they want a 1000 ft tall bridge, they have to pitch in the extra billion or 2 for monkey wrenching essential transportation infrastructure.

      4. It’s material because Dan Strauss, a Sound Transit board member, loudly said it at a public meeting. For sure we can do more to make Ballard Link happen sooner but that isn’t the only material issue to discuss.

  6. For those that think rail bias isn’t real, you should open downtown Seattle in Google Maps and enable “public transit” under the map details section.

    As you can see, the most prominent lines are the streetcars (surpassing even Link), while the bus routes don’t show up on the screen at all, and can’t be viewed unless you zoom way in, select a bus stop, and click to show specific routes that serve that stop.

    This is why people feel compelled to spend $100+ million on a streetcar that is no more functional than a bus. In the eyes of many people, a city’s transit network is defined by what runs on rails, no matter how slow or infrequent, while anything that runs on rubber tires may as well not even exist, no matter how fast or frequent.

    1. I think the reason they don’t show all the bus routes is because it would make the map cluttered to the point of being unreadable. And there are a lot of bus routes that overlap for parts of their route so it would be next to impossible to deferential which route goes where. If you ask for directions using transit it shows you the various route choices. There’s also more work involved in keeping bus maps up to date than fixed guideway.

      1. That may have been what they were thinking, but I don’t buy it. For starters, Google’s backend already knows exactly where the buses go and how often they run – it has to in order give narrative directions to some wanting to get somewhere. This is purely a question of UI – what do you see in the map at various zoom levels.

        Of course, showing every bus route when zoomed out may make the map to cluttered, but that doesn’t mean that good maps that illustrate the high level view of a bus network can’t be done. After all, STB has had its armchair commenters creating them and posting them for years. There is no reason, in this day and age, for a company like Google to not be able to create such maps algorithmically from its troves of data, especially in a world where AI can so quickly whip out computer code.

        Rather, it’s a question of viewpoints of people in Silicon Valley who, quite frankly, probably drive everywhere, and almost never take transit, unless visiting a city like New York, London, Paris, or Tokyo, as a tourist. And, in these cities, the rail network is comprehensive enough to be essentially all that a tourist will ever need, especially one with money for an occasional taxi ride.

        But, in a city like Seattle, making the zoomed out view of the transit system be the rail network just doesn’t work. There are too many parts of the city which have only buses, and there are many trips (e.g. Pike Place Market to First Hill) that one theoretically could take by rail, but the bus will be quite a bit faster and more direct. You also have Sounder, which is technically rail, probably doesn’t belong in a zoomed-out view of the system, due to its peak-only schedule. What does belong is the 594 bus that gets you between Tacoma and Seattle all day.

        Nonetheless, if you imagine the Google engineers who designed the maps UI as some random sample of the non-transit-riding public, you get a snapshot of the way many people outside this blog think. Where, anything that is rail is automatically between than anything that’s a bus. And, when people with power start thinking this, it leads to wastes of money like the SLU streetcar, First Hill Streetcar (the corridor is good, but the service should have been provided as part of a larger bus route, for example, a modified route 49). And, of course, the Portland Streetcar, which is essentially just a shuttle for people who don’t want to walk, as an able-bodied person can usually go anywhere that streetcar goes, faster, just by walking.

        1. I think the lines are drawn by the local transit agency (KCM or ST in this case). To your point though, there probably should be more lines on the map. I’m not sure what a reasonable breakpoint is, but at least RapidRide lines should probably show up.

    2. By that logic, many people would believe that a number of communities in our region that have respectable bus service have no transit network at all.

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