This is an opening thread.

Those of you who have been riding Link Light Rail lately may have noticed some changes to the signage at each station, in preparation for the opening of University District, Roosevelt, and Northgate Stations on October 2. Among other changes, each station has a list of fares specific for trips from that station to each of the other stations, now including the three new stations, grouped by fare amount.

Two of the new trip pairings will charge a new top fare of $3.50:

• Northgate to SeaTac Airport
• Northgate to Angle Lake

The full new fare chart can be found here.

Listing all station pairings by fare, from north to south, would look like this:

The deadline for candidates to withdraw their filings for the races for mayor, city attorney, and city council positions 8 and 9 passed Monday.

For those who have been wishing to have a simple list of links to the candidates’ position pages, here ya go:

Mayor

Clinton Bliss

Henry Clay Dennison (no website found)

James Donaldson

Colleen Echohawk

Jessyn Farrell

M. Lorena González

Bruce Harrell

Andrew Grant Houston

Arthur K. Langlie

Stan Lippmann

Lance Randall

Don L. Rivers

Casey Sixkiller

Omari Tahir-Garrett

Bobby Tucker

City Attorney

Ann Davison

Pete Holmes

Nicole S Thomas-Kennedy

City Council Position 8

Brian Fahey (no website found)

Jordan Elizabeth Fisher

George Freeman (no website found)

Paul Glumaz

Jesse James (no website found)

Kate Martin

Bobby Lindsey Miller (no website found)

Teresa Mosqueda

Alex Tsimerman

Alexander White (no website found)

Kenneth Wilson (no website found)

City Council Position 9

Corey Eichner

Xtian Gunther

Lindsay McHaffie (no website found)

Sara Nelson

Nikkita Oliver

Brianna Thomas

Rebecca Williamson (no website found)

This is an open thread.

MedCram, a series produced by Kyle Allred, has done over 120 updates on COVID-19, featuring Dr. Roger Seheult, including comparing the Pfizer, Moderna, and AstroZeneca-Oxford vaccines, and their outcomes, along with advice on what to do if you test positive for the virus.

As the snow continues to blanket the region, it is high time we finally discuss a rather heated issue.

Long-time transportation reporter Mike Lindblom at The Seattle Times offered this twish last winter:

Should the transit agencies follow the sage advice of Mr. Lindblom, or continue past practice? Choose your side.

And, no, you can’t take your mask(s) off while on board. For the safety of everyone around you (and yourself), please keep your mask(s) on. If you are sure you don’t have the virus because you don’t have symptoms, you’ve missed out on the science that many carriers are asymptomatic. Nor does getting vaccinated automatically or immediately confer upon you a 100% guarantee you can’t get COVID-19. If you just have a single standard cloth mask on, most buses have medical-style masks available to layer up with your cloth mask and help you increase your protection against spreading or breathing in the virus.

If you really need to travel, find your local transit agency’s snow info page at STB’s snow info link list.

This is a snowpen thread.

On Thursday, Sound Transit staff presented a revised draft 2021 service plan, which the ST Board will vote on in November.

Three routes have changes in the revised draft, vs. the original draft:

• Link Light Rail would be upgraded to 10-minutes off-peak headway, as compared to the long-term continuation of 15-minute headway in the first draft. Late evening headway would be 15 minutes instead of the originally-proposed (and current) 30 minutes. These upgrades would take place as part of King County Metro’s March service change.
• Route 555 (Northgate to Bellevue), currently suspended, would continue to be suspended after Northgate Link opens. Metro route 271 would be expected to handle the reverse-peak ridership on the corridor.
• Route 586 (Tacoma – UW), originally slated for elimination with the opening of Northgate Link, would continue on, with a stop added at Federal Way Transit Center. The presentation did not specify whether the new stop would be added in March or September of 2021.

While there is a lot of lost service in the King County Metro network due to COVID-19 and its economic impacts, Metro has nevertheless managed to make lemonade out of lemons by assembling an increasingly robust network of buses connecting to Link Light Rail stations at frequencies that match Link’s temporary off-peak frequency of every 15 minutes. Link’s frequency is planned to be every 15 minutes during off-peak hours, until late evening, likely through 2021. Sound Transit is preparing for a long pandemic. The recent spike in new cases and deaths backs up their pessimism.

The following routes that serve Link stations outside of, or just on the periphery of, downtown have 15-minute off-peak weekday headway. (Link now runs every 8 minutes during the peak period on weekdays.) Unless otherwise noted, they also have 15-minute headway during the day on weekends.

Link Light Rail service will be partially disrupted this weekend, per an annoucement from Sound Transit:

Link light rail service will temporarily stop running between the UW and SODO stations Saturday, October 17, and Sunday, October 18 to allow for system upgrades.

During the service interruption, free bus service will be available between UW station and SODO station. Light rail riders will need to switch between trains and buses at SODO station stations [sic] to complete their journeys. Sound Transit will provide shuttle buses every ten minutes between the affected stations, and Sound Transit personnel will be available to help passengers with transfers. Trains will run every 15 minutes on the weekend. Light rail trains will return to their regular schedule Monday morning.

Other alternatives to get to or between the northern station areas include:

• Route 7 between Mt Baker Station and downtown.
• Route 36 between Beacon Hill Station and downtown.
• Route 48 between Mt Baker Station and UW.
• Route 10, 11, or 49 between Westlake and Capitol Hill.
• Route 49 between Capitol Hill and the U-District.
• Route 60 between Beacon Hill Station and Capitol Hill.
• Route 70 between downtown and the U-District.
• Route 101, 150, or ST Express 594 between SODO Station, Stadium Station, and downtown.

Any work Sound Transit has to do on Link is certainly best to do on weekends during the pandemic, while there are the fewest riders to be impacted.

Correction: In Metro’s Phase 3 proposal, route 64 goes to South Lake Union. (New route 361 from Bothell will also go to South Lake Union via Northgate Station.) Also, route 309 is renumbered as 322 to reflect the detour to Roosevelt Station.

One of the most notable features of King County Metro’s North King County bus route restructure proposed for September 2021, when Northgate Link is scheduled to open for service, is the continued use of north-end and Shoreline express bus service for First Hill. The rest of the express bus service from the north end and Shoreline to the Central Business District will go away.

Metro plans to have four First Hill express routes in operation after Northgate Link opens, three of them competing with Link Light Rail:

• Route 193 serves Federal Way Park & Ride (S 320th St), Federal Way Transit Center, Star Lake Freeway Station, Kent – Des Moines Freeway Station, and Tukwila Park & Ride before expressing to First Hill.
• New route 302 would replace some 301 and 304 service, but going to First Hill, with a stop at Northgate Station.
• Route 303 serves Shoreline Park & Ride, Aurora Village, Northgate Transit Center, and then expresses to First Hill. Routes 302 and 303 are planned to provide alternating service between Northgate Station and First Hill.
• New Route 322 would essentially be a renumbering of route 309 (Bothell to First Hill), but with a detour to Roosevelt Station before jumping on I-5 to get to First Hill.

The First Hill expresses only operate during peak hours, and only in the peak direction. Given the 24/7 nature of all the medical buildings, this specialty service is mostly irrelevant to a large chunk of First Hill employees, unless they are the lucky ones working the latte shift.

The lede is buried at 1:05 into the hearing.

Nationwide deaths from the virus have surpassed 200K and worldwide cases have passed 30M.

Please, please, please, wear your mask, and wear it properly, when around other people.

This is an open thread.

King County Metro has been and continues to be shutting down an unprecedentedly long list of routes while the virus sets its own long-term calendar, with new cases worldwide topping 300K daily.

And yet, like a bad zombie TV series, my silly bus stop in Georgetown that I rarely see anyone else use, persists. Yes, I’m talking about the loop-de-loop in the middle of route 107 that adds several minutes to other riders’ trips, almost certainly costing more ridership than it adds. Some of the business establishments that stop benefits are shuttered.

This expensive pimple of a bus stop is one of several throughout the Metro and ST system map that turn a relatively straight route into a milk run providing time-consuming off-arterial curbside service, some at facilities that are closed for the time being.

While riding a Metro bus last week, I finally witnessed an operator using his authority to get a rider who refused to wear a mask off the bus. The rider boarded the bus, talking to himself loudly, and sat in the back. The operator played the canned message about needing to wear a mask. He waited a few seconds, then got on the loudspeaker to let everyone know they need to wear a mask while on the bus. The guy in the back didn’t budge, but kept talking loudly to himself. (I realize there may be a medical condition involved here.)

The operator proceeded a couple stops. He then walked toward the back, and told the rider he needed to put on a mask, or get off the bus, and also to please be quiet and stop disturbing the rest of the riders.

Sound Transit recently released its proposed 2021 Service Plan, in which it prepared for the pandemic to continue through the duration of 2021, by continuing the suspension of ST Express routes 541, 544, and 567 indefinitely, continuing to have pared-down service on most other routes, and making 15-minute off-peak headway on Link Light Rail the plan for the foreseeable future.

There are a couple of categories of service savings, related to Link connections that have not been fully utilized by the collective transit agencies.