This week Sound Transit announced another batch of work for which it will be “strategically closing” sections of the 1 Line for upgrades and complex maintenance. In summary:

Friday, January 9 to Sunday, January 11 (Now): Buses will replace trains between Capitol Hill and SODO each night from 10pm Friday to noon Saturday and 10pm Saturday to noon Sunday. This closure is for continued installation of advanced signals (ATP) in the former DSTT.

Tuesday, January 13 to Thursday, January 15: Buses will replace trains between Stadium and Mount Baker each night after about 9-10pm, with normal service resuming each morning. This work is part of ST’s monthly maintenance program.

Friday, January 16 to Sunday, January 18: Buses will replace trains between Capitol Hill and SODO each night from 10pm Friday to noon Saturday and 10pm Saturday to noon Sunday for continued ATP installation.

Friday, January 23 to Monday, January 26: Buses will replace trains between Capitol Hill and SODO from 10pm on Friday through the weekend with normal service resuming on Monday morning. This longer closure is for ATP installation and testing.

Check Sound Transit’s service alerts for up-to-the-minute updates. Sports fans will be enthused with a few additional updates ST included in Thursday’s press release:

King County Metro Route 50 travels inbound from Othello station to the Alki beach, via Columbia City, SODO, and Alaska Junction. Outbound trips travel in the reverse direction. In October 2025, Route 50 had 2,803 average weekday boardings.

Average Ridership Per Trip

The plots below show the average weekday ridership by stop in each direction, color-coded by time of day. For a more detailed breakdown of how the plots are set up, please refer to the How to Read the Plots section of the article discussing Route 70.

Route 50 is the primary east-west route in south Seattle. It connects numerous neighborhoods with three Link stations and two RapidRide routes. Route 50 is designed as a coverage route with 20 minute daytime frequencies and numerous detours to better serve specific locations. Some observations:

On January 2, Katie Wilson was sworn in as Mayor of Seattle by the Transit Fairy. Coverage of the ceremony: The Urbanist called her Seattle’s Unabashed Urbanist Mayor. The Stranger thought she came in strong [good]. The Seattle Times ($) quotes Wilson’s slogan “This is your city”. PubliCola celebrates Wilson’s thesis “we need bread, but we need roses too”.

Transportation:

• Bus stop improvements planned for future Judkins Park Station (Metro Matters)
• WSDOT Eyes Major Transformation for SR 99 in Snohomish County (The Urbanist)
• Sound Transit’s blog has started a new series called “The Download”, in which CEO Dow Constantine muses on the agency’s past and present work (The Platform)
• 10 million rides: Seattle bike & scooter share sets new record in 2025 (SDOT Blog)
• Symphony Station pulses with big-city energy and early digital artworks (The Seattle Times, $)
• WA Gov. Ferguson’s ferry plan tested by broken boats (The Seattle Times, $)
• $126M incentive program for zero-emission trucks nears launch in WA (KUOW)

Top 10 US cities that have become more city-like since 2010. This isn’t the most urban cities, but the ones that have improved the most. (CityNerd)

This is an open thread.

What will happen in 2026 in Pugetopolis transit? Here’s a few things off the top of my head:

• January: Katie Wilson will reveal her transit agenda as Seattle’s mayor. We’ll see how well her negotiation and implementation skills perform.
• March-May: The full 2 Line is expected to open in this timeframe.
• June: The World Cup. Transit service will be the current network and the full 2 Line, plus extra runs on a few Metro and ST routes.
• September: The ST Express network restructure. The final proposal will probably go to the board in late spring.
• Sometime: Pinehurst Station opening.
• Spring-ish: The Sound Transit board will identify which ST3 cost-cutting measures it will advance in the Enterprise Initiative.

More events are below in the comments.

Also, what should the agencies/governments do in 2026? Especially things that are politically and logistically feasible.

The past year was another tumultuous and exciting one for transit and land use in the central Puget Sound. Dow Constantine became CEO of Sound Transit and the agency began seriously reckoning with its massive long-range financial gap. The eagerly-awaited extension of the 2 Line to Redmond opened on-time, but opening of the 2 Line’s crossing over Lake Washington was delayed (again). Meanwhile, the 1 Line extension to Federal Way opened sooner than expected, Rainier Ave South got more red paint, and “Fix the L8” advocates hop-scotched from Dexter Ave to Stewart St faster than Metro’s Route 8. November elections put several transit-oriented Urbanists in positions of power across the region including TRU’s leader Katie Wilson as Mayor of Seattle.

Here were Seattle Transit Blog’s Top 10 Most Read (by number of views) and Top 10 Most Discussed (by number of comments) articles:

Transit agencies around the region will be free to ride all day (and most of the night) on New Year’s Eve. Some agencies are extending late-night service to accommodate riders celebrating the end of 2025 and the start of 2026.

These agencies will operate fare-free tomorrow until end of service:

Alternatives for a Geary Street subway in San Francisco with BART, MUNI Metro, or automated Skytrain technology. (Tomo Tawa Linja)

Wordless 1900-era dream drama. MrWhippler combines Klovn’s ambient song “McKlaren” with a silent movie “In the Land of Nod”. The dream starts at 1:15, a main street inhabited with stop-motion toy dolls and animals on foot and in vehicles. The street is shared by pedestrians, wheelbarrows, horse carriages, tricycles, motorcars, and a double-decker buses. The characters get into street fights and mayhem and vehicle crashes.

This is an open thread.

As 2025 comes to a close, let’s take a look at the current state of transit lanes in Seattle. Since the SODO Busway opened in 1991, the City has built over 55 miles of transit lanes for buses and streetcars. To keep track of where transit lanes are and when/how they can be used, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) maintains a dataset of the City’s transit lanes. This dataset does not include the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel or at-grade Link tracks. Using this dataset, the Seattle Transit Blog created a map that highlights the type and location of each transit lane. The red lines indicate 24/7 transit lanes and the blue lines indicate transit lanes with limited hours (peak only, daytime, etc). Darker lines are exclusive transit lanes while lighter shades allow some general purpose traffic, such as right turns. The table below the map has more details. Click here or on the map to view the interactive map in a new tab. Clicking/tapping a segment on the interactive map will show more details about that transit lane.

Each transit lane has been grouped into one of the seven categories below. Limited hours usually refers to peak hours or daytime hours.

Nate O’Brien moves to a tiny house off the grid on his own rural timber land.

A subway entrance in the woods. (Ambient soundscape by Miracle Forest)

There’s also the mysterious subway station and abandoned subway station. (Miracle Forest) The mysterious subway station is in the Budapest Metro. Can you spot two things unusual about the trains?

This is an open thread.

Service Announcements:

• Holiday Service: Transit services will be on special schedules or closed for Christmas tomorrow. Check agency websites for more information. Several agencies in the region will be fare-free on New Year’s Eve.
• Sat., Dec. 27: Link service between Stadium and Capitol Hill stations will end at 11pm and restart at 10am on Sunday as ST works on upgrading the DSTT’s signals system. Shuttle buses will run in the meantime.
• Fri., Jan. 2 to Mon., Jan. 5: Link service between Stadium and Capitol Hill stations will end early on Friday and restart Monday morning as ST continues DSTT signal upgrades. Shuttle buses will run instead.
• Evenings Jan. 13-15: Link service between Tukwila Intl. Blvd and Mount Baker stations will end early (around 10pm) each night as part of ST’s monthly extended overnight work program. Shuttle buses will run instead.

News:

• Ferguson proposes $3 billion WA transportation budget, $1B of which would go toward buying 3 new ferries (The Seattle Times, $). Additional coverage by The Urbanist.
• After rivers flood, King County Water Taxis use infrared goggles to dodge logs (KUOW)
• Seattle OKs New Growth Plan, but Biggest Zoning Battles Lie Ahead (The Urbanist). Additional coverage from PubliCola.
• Transit-oriented development moves forward at new South King County Link stations (The Platform)
• SDOT finished repainting the Dr. Jose Rizal Bridge ahead of schedule (SDOT Blog). This maintenance project included stripping layers of decades-old lead-based paint from the structure and repainting with an eco-friendly coat of green.
• Crosslake Update: Work on the 2 Line connection enters a new phase (The Platform)
• “if it feels like Sea-Tac is always under construction, it’s because it is” (The Seattle Times, $). For those worried SEA might run out of room for more flights, the Port of Seattle’s long-term master plan includes a new terminal north of the current set.

More fare payment options are coming to ORCA in 2026, both motivated by the FIFA World Cup coming to Seattle next summer. Public pilot programs testing Open Payments and a 3-day PugetPass are planned for 2026, allowing more flexibility in how transit riders pay their fares. The last major updates to ORCA came in 2024 when Sound Transit and ORCA announced the ability to add ORCA cards to Google Wallet app on Android phones. Open Payments will allow users of iPhones and other non-Android phones to pay with their phone, too, but not with a digital ORCA card. Unfortunately, there is no update on when iPhone users might be able to put their ORCA cards in their Apple Wallet.

The Fremont Bridge is a double-leaf bascule bridge that connects Fremont and Queen Anne. Opened in 1917, the bridge served as the sole link across the Fremont Cut for 15 years. When the George Washington Memorial Bridge (aka: Aurora Bridge) opened in 1932, travelers between Fremont and Queen Anne had a more reliable connection. The Aurora Bridge carries SR-99 on six lanes 167 feet above the water and is not disrupted by the frequent maritime traffic below. At just 30 feet above the water, the Fremont Bridge opens about 35 times a day. The frequent openings cause traffic jams that delay drivers and transit riders and subject people walking and biking to toxic fumes from idling vehicles.

A few weeks ago, Jeremy Cole shared an idea about the Fremont Bridge in a Bluesky post.

Is Jeremy’s idea for a car-free Fremont Bridge feasible? Let’s take a look at the data to see why it makes sense to redesign the Fremont Bridge for people walking, biking, and taking transit.

How many trains per hour can fit into one downtown tunnel, both currently and with tunnel upgrades?

Sound Transit’s current ceiling is 20 trains per hour, or one every 3 minutes. With capital upgrades this could be increased to 30-45 trains per hour, or one every 2 to 1.5 minutes, as many other metro tunnels around the world operate. 30 trains/hour is common in many subways like New York, London, Moscow, and St Petersburg. The Paris Metro gets up to 40 trains/hour. Automated Skytrain can reach 45 trains/hour.

The 1 Line currently runs every 8 minutes peak, or 8 trains/hour. The 2 Line will have the same, or combined 4-minute frequency and 16 trains/hour. Sound Transit is currently upgrading the signals in the tunnel to ensure it can deliver that reliably; that will require two weekend closures in January. That leaves a theoretical 4 slots unused to fit within the 20/hour limit, equivalent to a line every 15 minutes.

With three lines in the tunnel all at 8-minute frequency, that’s 24 trains per hour, or a train every 2.5 minutes. That’s 4 trains over the 20/hour limit.

If those three lines are each increased to 6-minute frequency, that’s 10 trains per hour each, or a total of 30 trains/hour. That would combine for one train every 2 minutes. That’s at the low end of the upgrade range, so the easiest to do. It’s also what the tunnel alternatives study seems to be targeting to meet ridership demand in the 2030s and 2040s with more Link lines to more areas.

It’s not that Link can’t go over the 3-minute limit now. It currently runs trains every 1.5 minutes after ballgames, with extra trains in the Stadium-Roosevelt segment, some reversing on both tracks, and southbound trains from Lynnwood coming in between whenever they can. But this level of service throws reliability out the window, so trains come whenever they can. And it wouldn’t be allowed for every day service due to the limited number of egress paths in the downtown tunnel stations currently (elevators/ escalators/stairs).

There are two sets of future tunnel upgrades. One is needed anyway regardless of whether the second tunnel is built, to bring reliability up peer cities’ norm. The other is to increase tunnel capacity if we put three lines in the tunnel or make Ballard a Ballard-Westlake stub line instead of building the second tunnel. Both of these lists of projects are still being identified, but we know both of them involve signal work, and the second involves adding egress paths to Westlake station and maybe others. Other kinds of upgrades are probably needed too, but ST is still identifying them so we don’t know what they are yet.

This is an open thread for miscellaneous transit and land-use topics. There will be no Sunday Movie this week. Instead Sunday will have another Link article, and next week will have five non-Link articles.

Transit ridership in the Seattle area typically reaches its seasonal low in early months of the year as tourists avoid the Big Dark and locals hunker down after the holidays. Sound Transit often uses this time to complete disruptive maintenance and upgrade projects. At a Sound Transit Board committee meeting earlier this month, agency staff presented plans for construction, upgrades, and maintenance requiring disruptions to Link 1 Line service in January and February next year.

• January 2-5 (Weekend): No service between Stadium and Capitol Hill stations.
• January 13-15 (Weeknights): Service ends early between Tukwila/Intl. Blvd and Mount Baker stations.
• January 30-February 2 (Weekend): No service between Stadium and Capitol Hill stations.
• February 10-12 (Weeknights): Service ends early between Mount Baker and Stadium stations.
• Ongoing (Weeknights): Reduced 1 Line service after 7pm.

Read on for details.

The Sound Transit board met today to discuss alternatives to building the second downtown Link tunnel (DSTT2), as part of its monthly board meeting. Video of the meeting will be available in 24-48 hours on ST’s YouTube channel. (Here’s the meeting agenda and webpage.)

Sound Transit did an ad hoc study of two alternatives to the second tunnel and presented the results last week in a committee meeting:

• Interline alternative: Merge the Ballard extension into the existing downtown tunnel (DSTT1) at Symphony station, bypassing Westlake station. This preserves ST3’s Ballard – Tacoma Dome line (the future 1 Line).
• Stub-End alternative: Build Ballard – Westlake as a standalone line. Everybody would transfer at Westlake to the rest of the Link system.

Today’s full-board meeting concluded with no decision for or against the alternatives, but further substantial work on them would require the board to allocate resources and contracts to it.

The Seattle Transit Blog favors the Stub-End alternative over Interline or DSTT2. We also want ST to study making it automated, an automated Ballard – Westlake line. And we’d like it to be forward-compatible with a potential future extension to First Hill, Judkins Park, and Mt Baker station in a future vote.

Boardmembers’ discussion on the alternatives is below the fold.

Yesterday, Mayor-elect Katie Wilson announced Angela Brady will be the next Interim Director of the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT). Since 2022, Brady has served as Director of Seattle’s Office of the Waterfront, Civic Projects & Sound Transit. In the statement announcing the change, Wilson touted Brady’s “strong operational expertise” and said Brady “is committed to addressing our maintenance backlog, and shares my vision of world-class transit, a citywide network of protected bike lanes, safe and accessible sidewalks, great pedestrian spaces, and housing-rich neighborhoods packed with amenities.”

Prior to her current role, Brady was the Deputy Director of Design and Delivery for the Waterfront Program. While not perfect (largely due to minimum lane requirements from WSDOT), the revamped waterfront is a significant improvement over the Alaskan Way Viaduct. Before working on the waterfront, Brady oversaw Seattle’s Mercer Corridor Project as a Supervising Program Manager at SDOT. The Mercer Corridor Project revamped Mercer St in South Lake Union and Lower Queen Anne to contain several lanes of eastbound and westbound vehicles. Other than a two-way protected bike lane under SR-99, the project had few transit, bike, or pedestrian focused improvements.

While the projects on Brady’s resume may not align with Wilson’s vision for a truly multi-modal city, her experience working with and for SDOT will ensure a smooth transition for the agency. During the next few months, Wilson’s team will continue the search for a permanent SDOT Director who will be more aligned with Wilson’s transportation priorities.