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The goal isn’t to make an alternative to the D. The goal is to make an alternative to the 44, which is ponderously slow in many locations. It doesn’t go to the core of Fremont, and skips other important places as well.

Except it connects to other transit options more than itself. It consolidates riders to lines that already exists. It expands rider-base on the whole and provides more options. It dramatically increases development values near it, which further increases rider-base. You have to look at public transportation holistically like this, not overly profit motivated or short-term focused. Growth is happening in the city. You don't want that wasted on more space for cars, and not on denser and alternative transit. You know, knocking even 5% of people off the roads actually solves a lot of traffic. 90% of the traffic time...

A more apt term is parochialism. West Seattle Link is parochial: it's spearheaded by one powerful politician who lives there, who's now the ST CEO. He put his thumb on the scale and prioritized it first before Ballard, disproportionate to its merits. Ballard/SLU has much higher ridership would shift more of Seattle's overall mode share. Mayor Mike McGinn similarly put his thumb on the scale for Ballard-downtown, even though Ballard-UW would cost less, have higher ridership per mile, and would even have competitive travel time for Ballard-downtown trips with a U-District transfer, because Ballard-downtown is the long side of the...

I agree Al. Of course I don't like corruption. People have written songs about it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD9sNKTLVR8). But at the end of the day what matters is results. A corrupt organization is by definition going to be less than ideal. But if they actually get the job done (like in Chicago back in the day) they are tolerated. In contrast a squeaky clean but incompetent organization can be just as bad. Maybe Sound Transit is the latter. Maybe everyone was simply trying to do the right thing, as they saw it. Whatever. I really don't care why they have failed. I...

Nandert highlights how data doesn’t support possible LA MTA decisions. But most of the outcomes have been a victory of data over favoritism. Here the Board doesn’t even discuss the data. ST buries or doesn’t report the data. Everyone is just supposed to go along. It’s a recipe for future corruptiiin here. It’s looks pretty shady when a group funded hugely by donations from engineering and construction companies (TCC) calls for the ST Board to not delay or expand options and instead start spending billions ASAP, doesn’t it?

Just a technical note that the UW and Downtown figures are for boardings only. Yes, and that is my point. We don't have any stations close to 25,000. Even if you think of the UW and U-District as one giant station it gets less than 20,000. But you are right. There are people that go between them. This reduces the number. In other words, there are even fewer people boarding from one of these stations and going outside the area (since some people travel between the stations). The idea that the *average* station along this line would get 25,000 boardings...

Up until Macy’s closed, Westlake was a very active hub! Last weekend I was at the waterfront and then walked to Westlake Station. I never saw so many people in Seattle (other than inside one of the stadiums). Westlake is still major hub and what happens at the old Bon Marche building is largely irrelevant. Plus there are great transit connections between SLU and Westlake today. And in a couple years there will probably be really good transit connections between Capitol Hill and South Lake Union (via the faster and more frequent 8). While transit connections are important, so are...

"It’s heartening to see not everyone on this transit oriented site is still drinking the Kood-Aid that ST can do no wrong." That's a strawman; many writers and commenters on this site have regularly pointed out ST's failings. And I distinctly recall Ross pointing out flaws in ST3 before the actual vote (as did others). It's never been "ST can do no wrong." Maybe you're thinking of Seattle Subway, or some other org. There are certainly some commenters that might feel this way, which are probably balanced out by those that think everything ST does is wrong. The truth lies...

That is a really long trip from one fairly obscure location to another. Trips on a subway line that long usually take that long, if not longer. The only time a trip like that is significantly faster is if the trip involves a regional rail system. These typically involve areas with a lot of density, even if they aren't that big. They also tend to have hard borders. You go from a fairly well defined town to farmland fairly quickly. Thus you can don't have many stops because you don't need that many. You connect one small town after another...

By US standards, though I think sound transit is very good I don’t know if you guys have seen any of Nanderts videos recently but in LA the short story there is major corruption, taking place. Their board is being influenced by members who have said publicly that they’re abstaining due to conflict of interest. They have political in fighting, with the mayor to try to cancel an extension just because one of her opponents wants it built. I do think there’s a lot that could be improved with sound transit, but at least the board members are fighting for...

If you find yourself writing "California is a good example," just pause and reflect. The anglosphere is much worse than the rest of the world in public works, in particular megaproject and in particular transit projects. The USA is worse than the rest of the anglosphere, and then CA is worse than most of the USA. Outside of perhaps Hong Kong, the NYC 2nd Ave and BART San Jose are the most expensive per mile subways even build in the worse. The Cal HSR is known globally as a boondoggle, plagued by bad process and bad execution. Your frame of...

@ AJ: ST is projected to be billions of dollars in the hole. They blame inflation but much of the problem is either scope creep (like a bored tunnel in West Seattle) or lowballed initial estimates (like not assuming right of way needs). ST3 gave the agency a huge sum of money for 30 years. ST wants to extend that now and has already voted once to extend the end date. There are plenty of other models that put an agency firewall between long-term tax referendums and a transit builder like ST. California is a good example. I get that...

Bernie, platform doors set back a couple of feet and turnstiles which lock when a train arrives are the way to control door-jammers.

"I’m at a complete loss on the purpose of an agency that does nothing but distribute money, aside from creating jobs and paperwork to resolve the coordination problem it would create. Are you trying to recreate the PSRC? The FTA? The legislature? All of these entities allocate funds or funding mechanisms to ST for specific projects." How ST does or delegates operations, construction, and studies are an implementation detail. The purpose of Sound Transit is to provide regional transit in the tri-county area. It doesn't matter as much whether it does it in-house or outsources it. There are details about...

"ST3 running out of capital budget" The constraint is ST's debt limit. It will scrape the ceiling in the late 2020s and 2030s. That limits the amount of checks it can write each month. That forces projects to slow down, and the board should be concerned with prioritizing what's most urgent to do now and what can wait or be downscaled. Currently we're facing a situation where the board is likely to make bad choices, or not make any choice. In the latter case, when the constraint comes, ST would have to decide which contracts to sign on a last-minute...

You’re on the right track with this! The Friends of the Benson trolleys are working on a very similar vision though they’re starting with Ballard. Check out their work and upcoming projects on their website and also the articles the Puget sound business journal did last month.

The ridership estimate was for a very different type of line. For one thing it had more stations. The stations also intercepted the north-south bus lines. That is really the only way you get a lot of riders on this line. It is all about the network. It follows the Vancouver model. The buses and trains form a grid that works for a huge number of trips. In this case you have no chance of getting riders from Aurora. They could reroute the 5 and 28 to serve Fremont but I doubt they would do that with the RapidRide E....

I'm at a complete loss on the purpose of an agency that does nothing but distribute money, aside from creating jobs and paperwork to resolve the coordination problem it would create. Are you trying to recreate the PSRC? The FTA? The legislature? All of these entities allocate funds or funding mechanisms to ST for specific projects. Managing capital spend across demands and the ebbs & flows of tax revenues and the bond market is one of the primary functions of ST, which I can attest to because I was literally on that team when I worked at ST. The Finance...

"“Commuters better off driving to Everett and take 510. Which is the reason ST is keeping the 510 to Seattle to minimize transfers and to supplement the N Line." That's primarily people who live in Everett, nearby around it, or from the north (Marysville/Skagit County). Not people from Snohomish town or Monroe. One, those towns are small and have only a few people, so they can have only a few commuters. Two, Everett is out-of-direction for them. Three, as asdf2 has outlined, the transit alternatives from Snohomish or Monroe to Seattle via Everett take so long they're not really viable....

A Capitol Hill transfer was never considered. Up until Macy’s closed, Westlake was a very active hub! It’s just that it seems much less of a hub than it once was when all the ST3 concepts were being developed. It appears that a SLU connection would offer a more gradual way to reach First Hill from Ballard. It’s not been studied so it’s my own speculation. I mention it because if would offer an alternative to funding and building a completely new line. Plus there are great transit connections between SLU and Westlake today. It’s also much more walkable to...

Every article in this blog is primarily based on improving transit's usefulness for people's desired trip patterns. Jarrett Walker calls this "the freedom to access places", and measures it by transit circles: how many jobs, destinations, and housing units the population at each of its locations can access in 15, 30, 45, or 60 minutes on transit. This article is looking at trips between Ballard, Fremont, and UW, and some have suggested more stations in between. There has long been interest in speeding up trips between Ballard-Wallingford-UDistrict and/or Ballard-Fremont-UDistrict (since a line would have to zigzag to serve both Fremont...

“The *combined* UW and U-District stations get less than 20,000. All of the downtown stations *combined* barely get 25,000.” Just a technical note that the UW and Downtown figures are for boardings only. To get total station activity you should double those numbers generally. There will be short-distance riders between these stations too so it’s not an exact doubling. But it’s not far from it. And the larger point is valid. The entire 1 Line from Lynnwood to Federal Way was carrying about 110-120K riders for a system of over 30 miles with 25 stations.

"Commuters better off driving to Everett and take 510." Which is the reason ST is keeping the 510 to Seattle to minimize transfers and to supplement the N Line.

That is basically a subset of the "Metro 8 subway" but extended to Ballard. You serve South Lake Union much better (you avoid the awkward turn). You connect SLU riders (and Uptown) to Capitol Hill and the UW much better. Unfortunately you connect them to downtown much worse. Likewise, riders from Ballard would be connected to South Lake Union and Capitol Hill much better, but that's about it. Theoretically they could take the train to Capitol Hill and then back up to the UW but it takes too long to get to Capitol Hill (along with the transfer and dealing...

2 and 3 are not opposite. 2 is about having a different agency distributing money and ST would have that money once allocated. 3 is about hiring internal staff for operations. 1 and 4 are actually complementary. Improving feedback at two points in the process are the goals of each one. ST doesn’t do that today. They aren’t contradictory at all. And properly structured feedback is valuable to achieve better projects. All four items address what I see as this obsession at ST with avoiding healthy checks and balances. If ST is literally spending tens of billions of taxpayer dollars...