Arlington, Texas (pop 400K) is the largest US city with no fixed bus routes, just subsidized Via app-taxis. (Classy Whale)
See Milan’s transit modes while learning Italian. (Easy Italian)
This is an open thread.
28 commentsFriday Roundtable: MEHVA Vintage Bus Tours
On a rainy Sunday in October, three Metro buses meandered through the beautiful Cascade foothills on their way to Black Diamond. Leading the pack was Metro bus 5034, a 1990 Breda DuoBus 350. Following the Breda was bus 3152, a 1987 MAN Americana SL40102L. Finally, a 2004 New Flyer DE60LF acted as the caboose for this trip. While the buses navigated the twists, turns, and hills (the MAN bus struggled up most hills), over 100 passengers enjoyed the views, both of the scenery and of the buses.
These three buses were operating the Metro Employees Historic Vehicle Association’s (MEHVA) Fall Foliage tour. The tour stopped in Black Diamond, where the tour participants could get a bite to eat at Black Diamond Bakery and learn more about the buses. The extremely knowledgeable operators shared insights about the buses and reminisced about driving in the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel.
Midweek Roundup: NIMBYs in a corner
Local Transit News:
- In a “special” media appearance on the Seattle Nice podcast, Mayor-elect Wilson said she wants to put BAT lanes on Denny (PubliCola)
- Amtrak ridership between October 2024 and September 2025 broke records in the PNW (The Urbanist)
- Sound Transit’s possible light-rail cost-cutting options floated at full-house West Seattle forum (West Seattle Blog)
- Sound Transit 2 Line Testing Enters a New, More Visible Phase (The Urbanist)
- Staffers Say Sound Transit Refused to Bargain on Return-to-Office Policy, Use of Consultants (PubliCola)
- SDOT’s seasonal street parking fee update puts parking in Pike-Pine at a premium (The Seattle Times, $). More details on the SDOT Blog.
- For sale: Two retired state ferries. Dreamers need not apply (KUOW)
- How Mayor-elect Wilson Can Hit the Ground Running, Walking, Rolling, and Biking (The Urbanist)
- Extended Rainier Ave Bus Lane Offers a Seamless, More Reliable Trip for Thousands of Daily Riders (SDOT Blog). SDOT also finished its refresh of the Ballard Bridge and 15th Ave NW including taking away a traffic lane, adding pedestrian signals, and red paint.
- Tale of Two Cities: Why Vancouver (BC) and Seattle Downtowns Look So Different (Post Alley)
Thanksgiving Holiday Service 2025
Thursday is Thanksgiving, so Puget Sound transit agencies are running reduced schedules. In addition, some agencies (indicated below) are running reduced service on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Click on an agency’s name to view the official announcement.
Sound Transit
Thanksgiving Day
- Link: Sunday schedule
- ST Express: Sunday schedule
- Sounder: No service
- T Line: Sunday schedule
Day After Thanksgiving
- Link: Saturday schedule
- ST Express: Weekday schedule
- Sounder: No service
- T Line: Reduced Saturday schedule
Sunday Movies: Berry Street & Climate
Berry Street in Brooklyn, New York. The best urban street in the US? (Fourth Place)
Sabine Hossenfelder, German physicist, is pessimistic about humanity’s ability to cope with climate change. (Sabine Hossenfelder)
This is an open thread.
101 commentsMidweek Roundup: hope this helps
Local Transit News:
- “Build the Damn Trains” is easier said than done (The Urbanist).
- Building planned infill stations for the damn trains to serve might be even harder (The Urbanist)
- Pierce Transit received national and local sustainability awards (Pierce Transit News)
- New and improved services are coming to Metro’s Access Paratransit service, including same-day pickups, more reliable reservations, and more (Metro Matters)
- The West Seattle Light Rail Visioning Forum was rescheduled to Monday, Nov. 24 (West Seattle Blog)
- What it looks like to get from Seattle to Portland using only local transit (The Seattle Times, $)
- Community Transit’s Swift Gold Line is very popular, but residents have concerns over exchanging parking for center-running bus lanes (Everett Herald)
King County Metro’s Most Productive Routes
King County Metro recently completed the 2025 System Evaluation, which is expected to be published later this month. This report is a review of Metro’s service in 2024 and highlights where additional service is needed. This article will focus on the Route Productivity data shared in Appendix H. Upcoming articles will discuss other sections of the report.
King County Metro measures route productivity using two metrics:
- Rides per platform hour (RPPH): how many people are using a route relative to how many hours it is in operation
- Passenger miles per platform mile (PMPPM): how far people are traveling on a route relative to how many miles the route serves.
Both are important measures for how well a route is serving communities in King County. Routes with a high number of rides per platform hour are serving a lot of trips. Routes with more passenger miles per platform mile are used by passengers for longer trips.
Most Productive Routes By Rides Per Platform Hour
The System Evaluation reports each route’s RPPH by weekday peak, weekday off-peak, weekday night, Saturday, and Sunday. To simplify this analysis, we’ve calculated the weighted average RPPH for each route. The top ten routes are listed below, along with the RapidRide routes that did not make the top ten. Click/tap on a route to see its schedule and map. Note: Only routes that run during all time periods were considered.
Continue reading “King County Metro’s Most Productive Routes” | 53 commentsSunday Movies: One-Way Streets & Self Storage
All about one-way streets. (City Beautiful)
Americans have gone crazy for self-storage units. (Wendover Productions)
This is the last of the movie backlog, so future Sunday Movies will depend on if I can find more relevant movies.
This is an open thread.
79 commentsFriday Roundtable: Tokyo’s Trams vs Seattle’s Streetcars
At first glance, the passenger rail systems in Seattle and Tokyo have nothing in common. Seattle has seven passenger rail lines (1 Line, 2 Line, S Line, N Line, First Hill Line, South Lake Union Line, Seattle Center Monorail). Meanwhile, Tokyo has 102 passenger rail lines. Seattle’s system has 130 thousand daily passengers while Tokyo’s has 41 million daily passengers. Despite these differences, there is one commonality between the transit systems: both Seattle and Tokyo each have two disconnected streetcar routes. (Note: “Tram” and “Streetcar” are used interchangeably in this article)
Trams in Tokyo
Tokyo’s passenger rail network is one of the best in the world. Subways, regional trains, and Shinkansen high speed trains carry over a million people every hour. Before many of these services were built, Tokyo had a dense network of trams called the Tokyo Toden. At its peak, the Toden system had 41 routes. Over the past 75 years, almost all of these routes have been replaced by subways or buses, except the Arakawa Line. The Arakawa Line is a 12.2km (7.6mi) cross-town route that connects several neighborhoods and ten subway lines. The route primarily uses a dedicated right-of-way (ROW) but it does have a short segment in mixed traffic. Despite 5 minute frequencies during the day, the trams are consistently full. In 2018, the Arakawa Line carried over 48,000 passengers every day.
Katie Wilson is Seattle’s Next Mayor
After an 8-month campaign and 8 days of election results, Katie Wilson has been elected as the 58th Mayor of Seattle. As of Wednesday afternoon, Wilson has a 1,976 vote lead over incumbent Mayor Bruce Harrell. Harrell is expected to concede in a speech at noon today.
Since founding the Seattle Transit Riders Union (TRU) in 2011, Wilson has been an effective force in local and regional politics. In 2014, Wilson and TRU successfully lobbied King County to create ORCA Lift, a reduced-fare transit access program for low-income riders. She was driver of efforts to raise the minimum wage in Burien, SeaTac and Tukwila, many of which were successful. Wilson also played a key role in getting the JumpStart Payroll Expense Tax passed in 2020. Although not quite as charismatic as the Mayor-elect of NYC she is often compared to, by all accounts Wilson is a skilled coalition builder and an impactful proponent of progressive policies.
Throughout her campaign, Wilson emphasized the importance of fixing Seattle’s streets to make them safer, minimizing the planning and permitting delays for Link extensions, and expanding bus service. Here are a few major opportunities she’ll have to achieve those goals as Mayor:
Continue reading “Katie Wilson is Seattle’s Next Mayor” | 42 comments