Jane’s Walk is an annual celebration where volunteers in cities throughout the world host group walks in their neighborhoods to honor Jane Jacobs’s birthday. In Seattle, Feet First will host Seattle’s Jane’s Walks between April 26 and May 6. They will all be guided tours: 6 in central Seattle, 1 in West Seattle, and 1 in Auburn. The Seattle Transit Blog will have our own walk April 25 in Mercer Slough, details below.
Jane Jacobs wrote the groundbreaking book The Death and Life of Great American Cities in 1961. It revolutionized urban planning and showed the unique contributions to society and the economy that cities and walkable urban neighborhoods bring. Jacobs lived from 1916 to 2006; she would have been 110 this year.
Both the 1 and 2 Lines have closed segments this weekend, April 25-26.
1 Line trains will be reduced Saturday and Sunday until 9pm. Trains will run every 10 minutes between Lynnwood City Center and Rainier Beach. Then shuttle buses will run every 10-15 minutes between Rainier Beach and SeaTac/Airport. Then trains will start again every 10 minutes between SeaTac and Federal Way Downtown. At 9pm, normal evening service will resume.
2 Line trains will be reduced Saturday and Sunday until noon. Trains will run every 20 minutes between Lynnwood City Center and Spring District. Then shuttle buses will run every 10-15 minutes between Spring District and Overlake Village. Then trains will start again every 13 minutes between Overlake Village and Downtown Redmond. At noon, normal 2 Line service will resume.
This is all for multiple maintenance projects: track and power systems maintenance near Tukwila International Boulevard station, and to install new crossing panels near BelRed station.
Mexico City elevated trolleybus BRT line. Elevated light rail would have cost 2 1/2 times more. (TransitWorld)
Scooby Doo and the Goblin King has a YouTube channel with raw footage of several Metro, Community Transit, and Sound Transit bus models in action on various routes.
Lynnwood-bound 2 Line train entering the Mount Baker Tunnel.
Now that the full 2 Line has been running for two weeks, what has been your experience on the 1 and 2 Lines since the first regular weekday (March 30)?
Most people seem to say there’s lots of 2 Line trains, ridership is higher than they expected, trains are slow in several places, some of the slowness was resolved after the first few days, there’s side-shaking (“hunting”) in some places.
I’ve seen 2 Line midday and afternoon trains almost full or standing room only at Westlake, Capitol Hill, and north Seattle. Others have reported the same in the Eastside. Before simulated service, the 1 Line was like that in central and north Seattle. We assumed a lot of people would disappear from the 1 Line when the 2 Line and simulated service started. Instead the 1 Line is as busy as ever, and there are a lot of people on the 2 Line. However, 2 Line trains are 2 or 3 cars now, so people aren’t spread out across 4 cars. Still, off-peak ridership in the Eastside seems higher to me than in Shoreline, Lynnwood, and Federal Way.
I haven’t heard any complaints about long waits. In Seattle “5-minute combined service” sometimes stretches to 9 minutes.In the Eastside I’m guessing 10-minute service might stretch to 15 minutes sometimes, but I haven’t heard any reports of it.
How have you been using the 2 Line, or combined 1/2 Line service north of Chinatown/International District? Have your experiences been similar or different?
Unedited video of the speeches (starting at the five minute mark) as well as some of the initial riders (much later in the video). The rest of the video consists of “dead air” and some aerial video of trains and boats.
On the same day the March service change will go into effect. King County Metro, Sound Transit, and Community Transit will change some of their routes on Saturday. Pierce Transit will follow on Sunday. Metro has a list of route changes and which Link stations they will serve.
Also on Saturday there’s a large No Kings march, and the Mariners opening weekend. Here’s the total large events list:
9am: Crosslake Link speeches and ribbon cutting, Sam Smith Park at Judkins Park station.
10am: Crosslake Link service and the full 2 Line start.
10am-2pm: Crosslake Link celebrations at several stations. (Schedule link above.)
12pm-4pm: No Kings march from Cal Anderson Park at Capitol Hill station.
6:40pm: Mariners first pitch at T-Mobile Stadium near Stadium and CID stations.
To get to Judkins Park station for the speeches before Crosslake service starts, Sound Transit will have shuttle buses running from South Bellevue and Mount Baker stations from 7-10am every 15 minutes. The City of Seattle has a page on getting to Judkins Park station from the surrounding neighborhoods and bus routes. Seattle residents have Metro routes 4, 7, 8, 48, and 106. Route 7 comes from downtown every 10-12 minutes. Route 4 also comes from downtown but is half-hourly and the stop is a few blocks further away on MLK. Route 8 will be on its service-change alignment so it will stop on 23rd at the station.
Go early in case the trains are full and you have to wait a couple trains to get on. From past experience full trains are most likely:
10am-12pm Crosslake (CID through Bellevue Downtown) for the Link opening.
`10am-11am Eastside (South Bellevue through Redmond) for the Link opening.
11am-1:30pm Capitol Hill (U-District through downtown) for No Kings.
3-5pm downtown for going home from No Kings.
5:30-7pm Stadium (starting in the U-District, Eastside, and south Seattle) for the Mariners.
I don’t want to overstate the problem. In the first and last half hour you’re likely to be able to get on the first train but you may have to wait for the second. At the height of it you may be able to get on but you’ll likely have to wait one or more trains within a couple stations of the target. The crowds could be as expected or they could be larger. And tens of thousands of people will want to board Link at Judkins Park after the ribbon-cutting and VIP ride.
When did you start riding public transit independently? Were there certain pivotal trips that made you more of a transit enthusiast and shaped your viewpoint? What’s the youngest people you see now taking transit independently? The full 2 Line opens tomorrow, which many be a similar pivot point for many people. That makes it a good time to reflect on how we all got into transit.
I started riding Metro in 7th grade in 1979 when I chose to go to an alternative junior high school on the other side of Bellevue that didn’t have school buses. At first my parents drove me and I was afraid to take the bus because I’d never been on public transit before. Would I be able to reach the stop cord and activate it, or would the bus sail past my stop? After several months, I took Metro home from school, and saw how easy it was and and other people from my school were taking it. I started taking it to school every day. My first trip to Seattle was to the Record Library (a record-rental shop) at Broadway & Denny. Then I started taking it to the downtown library, and the U-District for its used record shops and bookstores and friends who hung out there.
The Sound Transit Board just voted to pass the ST Express 2026 restructure, which will be implemented this fall. There are little or no changes from the last proposal. The vote was unanimous.
Until then the ST Express routes will remain unchanged, even though Crosslake Link will open in two days and Federal Way Link opened last December. ST says this is to provide “resiliency” through the World Cup period. I take this to mean if Link breaks down or gets overcrowded during the World Cup, these routes will remain as a backup, and the routes are widely known so residents can help visitors find them and tell them when they run.
There was extensive public testimony at the beginning of the board meeting, though most of it wasn’t about ST Express. The meeting livestream should be on ST’s YouTube channel within a couple days. I listened to bits of the testimony: most of what I heard was advocating for ST3 Link extensions not to be dropped, and there were a few ST Express comments.
We have reservations about parts of the restructure, missed opportunities for further restructuring, and the way public input was handled. The online survey had no text field to suggest changes to other routes or other alternatives for these routes. I sent my feedback in an email to ST, but most people wouldn’t think of that or get around to it or realize other changes were even possible.
