The Seattle Transportation Plan has added new project proposals to the draft and extended the comment period to October 31. This is a 20-year plan. There are 42 new proposals related to transit, sidewalks, freight movement, complete streets, etc. SDOT or a future Move Seattle levy can fund only some of them in the medium term, so it’s asking the public, “Which projects are the highest priority?”

Map of the projects.

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Sound Transit has a passenger experience survey open until November 22. I’m sure readers will have plenty to say, and all of it will be positive. Respondents can participate in a raffle for a gift card, or apply to a sounding board. There’s a text box at the end for free-form comments. Beware that you can’t go backward to a previous question. If you choose a specific aspect from the list like safety, it asks a lot of safety-related questions, so I assume it does the same for the other aspects. It also goes on to ask about reliability, cleanliness, escalators, disability features, etc. My main feedback was: “Fix the escalators!” and “When an outage occurs, tell passengers on the platform. They’re the last ones to find out.”

Other feedback opportunities:

• Link has open houses on West Seattle stations October 25, and south downtown stations (CID, Pioneer Square) on November 15.
• [UPDATE: Moved Seattle transportation plan to a separate article.]
• Sounder South (S Line) has a survey on off-peak improvements until October 29.
• Community Transit is asking for input on its 2024 budget by November 2, as part of its medium-range plan.

Why are so many Amtrak trains late? ($)

Videos:

• How Hoboken, New Jersey, reduced pedestrian deaths to zero (Thomas Y)
• How Kensington Market in Toronto managed to avoid gentrification (Thomas Y)
• An ideal transit network would be like a Canadian and Australian one combined (RMTransit)
• US cities with the best and worst transit (Climate and Transit) This is an anecdotal list of cities the author visited, mostly West Coast but some others. See where Seattle is, and try to spot the Metro bus at the beginning.
• Why not just buy everyone a car or subsdize Uber instead of transit. (Alex Davis)
• Smaller US cities with high transit ridership (CityNerd)
• Can cities have hexagon-shaped blocks? (City Beautiful)

This is an open thread.

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The Seattle Times has an analysis of ridership recovery ($) high and low areas since the 2020 pandemic lockdowns. A stop on the 7 now has higher ridership than in 2019, and the Aurora Village transit center has recovered 95% of its ridership.

2021 saw an early recovery in southwest Capitol Hill; parts of downtown; and between SeaTac airport and Burien.

2022 saw a more widespread recovery, expanding more into Capitol Hill; the neighborhoods east of the Northgate Link extension (U-District, Roosevelt, and Northgate stations); Renton; and individual corridors in east Kent, southern Bellevue, and Kirkland-Redmond.

2023 saw a broad recovery in northeast Seattle; east Seattle; southeast Seattle; parts of West Seattle; Kirkland; central Bellevue; Renton; and the whole area between Burien, Federal Way, Kent, and Auburn. Exceptions are northwest Seattle (Ballard), Magnolia, northeast Kent, and east/northeast Bellevue. Youths under 18 got free fares via a state grant.

“The changes give urgency to Metro’s long-term plan to provide more frequent and reliable all-day and weekend service, nudging away from being a system built around commuters. ‘The trends of where people have continued riding makes the case even more clear for some of the things that we might have been thinking about or hearing about from the community before,’ said Katie Chalmers, managing director of service development with Metro.”

I saw the impact of students riding in Bellevue a few weeks ago. A 550 eastbound at 1pm got 10 students going from Bellevue High School and Main Street to the Bellevue Transit Center. A 226 eastbound at 1:39pm got 15 on and 2 off at Interlake High School, and 3 on/off at Highland school. That 226 run had surprisingly high ridership in general, with 18 initial people at Bellevue Transit Center, and 16 getting on/off along the rest of 12th/Bel-Red.

Coming back westbound in the PM peak, ridership seemed normal. The 245 had 13 initial riders and 6 on/offs in the ten blocks between Main Street and NE 10th Street. The B had 15 initial riders and 10 on/offs between 156th and Bellevue TC. The 550 had 6 initial riders from the library, 12+ getting on at the transit center, 6 getting on at NE 4th, 7 on/offs south of there, and 1 on Mercer Island. Congestion slowed down to 30 mph in south Bellevue and on much of I-90 between Bellevue and Mt Baker, including the HOV lanes.

Do you see other ridership patterns in the charts, or have you seen trends in your own experience or in information from Metro? How are ST Express, CT, PT, and ET recovering? I saw several people waiting for ET 7 two Sundays ago, although I’ve only been there a couple times so I can’t say how it’s changed.

(To comment on other topics, Open Thread 20 two articles before this is available.)

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CityNerd visits Seattle and discusses Link’s Northgate station area. Bonus: He grew up in the Maple Leaf neighborhood, so this would have been his station.

He also did a recent video on Portland’s multimodal transit network and bicycle infrastructure.

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West Seattle Link (WSLE) has an online open house now, and an in-person one October 25th.

Sounder South (S Line) has a survey on potentially shifting its focus to more off-peak service. This would cancel plans to make trains longer peak hours, and reduce peak frequency from 20 to 30 minutes. Respond by October 29th, or visit one of the popup tables.

The Seattle Transportation Plan draft is taking comments until October 23rd. The Seattle Comprehensive Plan (“One Seattle Plan”) is ongoing.

King County estimates it will need 309,000 new homes over the next 20 years ($), a third of those for people making 30% or less of median income. Seattle will need 112,000; Bellevue 35,000; Federal Way 11,000; Shoreline 13,000; Kenmore 23,000.

Several West Coast cities wring hands ($) over homelessness. They’re asking the Supreme Court to allow them to close encampments even when there’s not enough housing to move them into. “The cities appear to be acknowledging that the well-meaning effort to house all the homeless, for years now a widely espoused goal, isn’t actually possible.” That it would cost too much to provide housing for everyone. Missing from this is that if you sweep homeless off the streets, it doesn’t make them go away, it just move them to other streets. The only way to get them out of public spaces and church lots is to give them housing, put them in jail, shoot them all, or give them a basic income high enough to afford market-rate housing. Putting them in jail would require building 6,000 jail units, and maintenance costs of tens of thousands per person per year. Meanwhile countries poorer than the US, like Japan, manage to house practically everybody.

Which transit riders matter?

Seattle needs more public restrooms. ($)

Busier transit, better transit (RMTransit video)

Evaluating Portland’s multimodal transit network and bike infrastructure (CityNerd video) The bike infrastructure is stagnating.

Adding coffee grounds to concrete ($) strengthens it and lowers carbon emissions.

The high cost of owning a car. ($)

The final part of the East Lake Sammamish Trail in Issaquah opened October 7th. This provides a continuous series of trails from Golden Gardens in Seattle to the Issaquah Community Center, where several mountain trails start.

This is an open thread.

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SDOT Asks for Input on Latest Plans around 130th Station

Bike/Bus Stop Work on Roosevelt Soon

Open House for New Building Next to Burien Transit Center

UW Researchers Release Study of Second-Hand Drug Exposure on Transit — Transit Agencies News Release

Congratulations to Lisa Nault for becoming Metro’s Operator of the Year

This is an open thread.

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“Rethink the Link“: A West Seattle movement advocates the “No Build” EIS alternative for West Seattle Link. This one seems to be not just nimbys but people concerned about effective transit. As this blog has discussed, existing bus routes fan out from the West Seattle Bridge in a stick-shift pattern, connecting West Seattle neighborhoods to each other as well as short one-seat rides to downtown. Link will serve only the middle horizontal bar of the stick shift, serving only a small area directly while the vast majority of neighborhoods require a transfer. And RapidRide H (Delridge) will probably continue running downtown in parallel. All this gives a reason to stop West Seattle Link. Ideally multi-line BRT fanning out from the bridge would replace the existing bus routes. But even lesser bus improvements might be better than an ineffective and expensive Link route. Here’s a manifesto of sorts.

This could be a model for advocacy on the problematic Ballard/DSTT2 project with horrible transfers, and the arguably-unnecessary Tacoma Dome and Everett extensions and the Issaquah line. ST2 Link and the short exensions to Lynnwood, Federal Way, and downtown Redmond are critical for the region’s transit mobility. But the further extensions have diminishing returns, and the proposed bad transfers downtown would cripple the network. A “No Build” alternative is required in every EIS, and people can argue for it. Most no-build alternatives assume incremental bus improvements, and it may be possible to divert some of the project money to them. Of course, it would be a long shot to convince the ST board and subarea politicians and local politicians to cancel the Link projects.

Chile builds metros for $100 million per mile, fully underground and with platform screen doors. Sound Transit spends $1 billion for a mostly-elevated line to West Seattle. A video on Santiago’s network and how it keeps costs low (RMTransit). And Santiago is building a gondola too.

Are turnstyles or proof of payment better? RMTransit weighs in.

Singapore seeks to eliminate the urban heat island effect ($). A V-shaped hospital campus next to a pond with a wooded “courtyard”. Plants on skyscrapers. White buildings like Greece. Trees and wind corridors throughout the city. Rail transit. All to counteract the 10 degrees Fahrenheit urban heat island to protect residents’ health.

Seattle and the Eastside continue to bifurcate into rich and poor with little in the middle. ($) San Francisco went through this twenty years earlier.

Are Link’s next-arrival displays on again? Are they accurate this time? Sound Transit turned them on for a few weeks this summer to quantify the errors and see where they’re coming from. One commentator saw one on this week and it was accurate. Has ST finally made some headway, or is it still as far off as ever?

This is an open thread. Thanks to Martin Pagel for the West Seattle and Chile topics.

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The T line phase 2 in Tacoma opened today, with tour guides and festivities until 5pm. The original T line runs north from Tacoma Dome station on Pacific Avenue and through downtown Tacoma on Commerce Street. The extension turns west on 6th Avenue Division Street and south on MLK Way. This is Tacoma’s “First Hill”, the hospital district and historically lower-income Hilltop neighborhood. It ends at South 19th Street. A third phase in the 2040s will go west on 19th to Tacoma Community College. Trains run every 12 minutes until 8pm weekdays and Saturdays, and every 20 minutes 8-10pm. On Sundays trains run every 20 minutes until 6pm. The last inbound train (to Tacoma Dome) leaves 32 minutes later. [Update: Corrected the frequency.] The fare is a flat $2. A day pass costs twice that. If you get a chance to try the current T line, let us know. I’ll go down sometime in the next few weeks.

I’m also thinking of a bus trip on CT 271, the route on Highway 2 that goes through Snohomish, Monroe, Sultan, and Gold Bar in Snohomish County. A commentator recently took this route to Gold Bar for a hike. I’m thinking about visiting the towns. Do you have any recommendations for things to see in there, or whether to go end to end first, or which town to spent time in and turn around? Everett to Snohomish is 15 minutes on Saturdays, Everett to Monroe 28 minutes, and Everett to Gold Bar 59 minutes. On weekdays it’s several minutes longer. The bus is hourly until around 8pm every day. A total end-to-end round trip from Seattle on Link, ST 512, and CT 271 would be 4 hours of riding and 2-3 hours of transferring (aka forced layovers). Turning around at Monroe would shave an hour off that. What would you do?

This would complement my Snoqualmie Valley bus trip in 2014. I repeated the trip last year. I didn’t have enough new things to say for an article, but I traveled with a friend this time, got another look at Issaquah’s route area, stopped in a cafe in Snoqualmie and Duvall, and checked ridership in the New Urbanist developments of Snoqualmie Ridge and Redmond Ridge. The Snoqualmie Valley Shuttle had around twenty passengers getting on and off at various stops. To get the shortest transfer waits and finish in the early afternoon, I really had only one schedule choice, that left Seattle around 7am and Snoqualmie at 8:44am. The 208 made about four stops inside inside Snoqualmie Ridge. I don’t remember it doing that before; I thought it just stopped at the parkway entrances. On/offs were in the 0-2 range. Redmond Ridge was a contrast. The 224 makes several stops inside the neighborhood, and ten or fifteen people got on/off, more than I expected. The sidewalks in Redmond Ridge had several pedestrians walking around too, making the most of their walkable environment.

If anyone else has other transit tours to describe, put then in the comments or email a paragraph to the contact address for a future open thread.

This is an open thread.

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There is a new grass roots movement to fix the often delayed Metro 8.

Jarrett Walker shares his thoughts on an automated bus pilot in Scotland. (Human Transit)

SDOT is planning around the future 130th Station. (SDOT)

Ryan Packer writes about potential Link overcrowding and changes to the 5. (Urbanist)

Sound Transit delays the Real-Time-Arrival system for Link.

Checking in on the BellHop ($), downtown Bellevue’s demand-response circulator. It’s called BellHop, not Bel-Hop like previous circulators in the 80s.

Do flashing pedestrian beacons (RRFBs) make streets safe to walk across? (CityNerd video) I say they help. I looked at two adult family homes for a relative. One was in Burien and required crossing six-lane high-speed 1st Avenue South without a crosswalk to get to the 131 northbound bus stop. I saw people with walkers or walking their dog doing it between 40 mph traffic. But I was afraid that if I went there monthly I’d inevitably get hit by a car someday. Another home in Bellevue had RRFBs on 156th at three residential intersections, so that was one of the reasons we chose that home. I assume the difference is that Bellevue is rich enough to afford RRFBs and Burien isn’t. Still, I’d call 1st Avenue South dangerous like the stroads in the video, and something needs to be done.

Art deco wonders in downtown Seattle. ($)

Downtowns find creative uses for underused office buildings. ($) Breweries, farms, spas…

Homeless people in programs that give cash use it for basic needs ($) such as “housing, furniture and transportation”, and not on “temptation goods” (defined as alcohol, drugs, or cigarette).

Urban planning in communist countries. (Wikipedia) Where did all those commie block highrises came from?

Cars are making our lives worse. A Puerto Rico perspective. (Bianca Graulau video)

This is an open thread.

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Now that Sound Transit has paved the way for an East Link Starter Line (ELSL) opening for next Spring, it’s worth deep diving into the projected ridership numbers. At the last Sound Transit Board meeting, early ridership estimates were pegged at a modest 6,000 average weekday boardings, reflecting limited demand until the 2-Line is fully connected to the main 1-Line spine via I-90.

The ELSL, which will run between South Bellevue and Redmond Technology Station, is not directly served by any single bus route currently. Rather, its sub-segments are served by various disparate routes that are a hodgepodge of local and express service:

• Between South Bellevue & Downtown Bellevue: 550/556 (Bellevue Way), 241 (108th), 249 (Enatai)
• Between Downtown Bellevue and Overlake Village: 226 (Bel-Red Rd), 249 (Northup, NE 20th), B-Line (NE 8th, 156th Ave NE)
• Between Downtown Bellevue and Redmond Technology Station: B-Line, 566

The ELSL does serve some existing commuter markets, namely the two corridors between South Bellevue, Downtown Bellevue, and Redmond Technology Station (Microsoft). But it is also serving entirely new markets that are difficult to forecast given the rise of remote work, lack of connection to the 1-Line, and absence of any single precursor service. More on each ELSL sub-segment below the fold.

Continue reading “Breaking down East Link Starter Line ridership” | 335 comments

Metro’s service cuts announced in May go into effect tomorrow, September 2nd. These are due to the driver shortage, mechanic shortage, and supply-chain bottlenecks for bus parts. Metro is shrinking the schedule to fit the available resources to minimize mid-term or last-minute cancellations. Normally new schedules are available a week ahead, but I just saw the Rider Alert yesterday. Sound Transit and Community Transit also have their semi-annual service changes at the same time. Everett Transit had a change in June. Kitsap Transit doesn’t appear to have changes.

Quick links to changes: Metro | Sound Transit | Community Transit

Metro

On September 2nd the following routes will be suspended (no service): 15, 16, 18, 29, 55, 64, 114, 121, 167, 190, 214, 216, 217, 232, 237, 268, 301, 304, 320, 342. The link above has an extensive list of alternatives for each route. These are all peak expresses I believe. With the loss of the 15 and 214/216/217, anecdotal reports predict overcrowding on the D and 218 peak hours.

Reductions:

• 10: 30 minutes after 8pm weekdays, after 6pm Saturdays, after 8pm Sundays.
• 20: Half-hourly off-peak, hourly at night.
• 28: Hourly off-peak.
• 73: Half-hourly peak hours, hourly otherwise.
• 79: Hourly.
• 225: Hourly.
• 230, 231: Each hourly. Combined half-hourly between Juanita and Kirkland.
• 255: Half-hourly after 7pm.
• 345: Hourly. Delete three northbound and three southbound trips after 6:35pm.

“Route 10 will have a decrease in service due to a reduction of the Seattle Transit Measure investment in the route…. To reduce the impact of reductions to Route 36, the City of Seattle is providing additional funding on this route in the PM Peak period through the Seattle Transit Measure.”

Routes with timing adjustments: 3, 4, 7, 8, 31, 32, 36, 44, 249.

Routes with stop location changes: 22, 208, 225, 249.

Other changes:

• F and 153: Continue long-term reroute due to I-405 overpass closure.
• 22: Extend last trip at 9:09pm to two additional stops.
• 107: Add two afternoon trips for Mercer International Middle School.
• 208: Add one trip westbound at 5:09am.

More below the fold.

Continue reading “September Service Cuts” | 197 comments

This was in the last open thread but deserves a feature position. Glimpses of Link in a few places.

This is an open thread.

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At last Thursday’s eventful Sound Transit Board meeting, a large contingent of supporters of the 4th Avenue Chinatown-International District (CID) station showed up en masse, thanks to prompting from community activists and Seattle Subway. Although the Board did not make any further alignment decisions, they did authorize a contract modification to HNTB to extend EIS planning and preliminary engineering for the Ballard Link extension.

Back in March, the Board voted to approve the “North of CID” and “South of CID” station options as part of its preferred alternative. These were relative latecomers to the game: all previous options were centered around Union Station, either at 4th or 5th. Sound Transit Boardmembers cited lower costs and lower impacts from the North and South options, in spite of the loss of a station actually inside the Chinatown-International District and the connection opportunities it would provide.

Two big champions of the North/South CID options are King County Executive Dow Constantine and Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell. A key linchpin in Constantine’s station preference has been the new Civic Campus Initiative, which he announced as part of the State of the County address back in March.

There are sensible reasons for redeveloping the civic center area. Most of the city and county’s key offices are located there and a number of the buildings are dilapidated tokens of modernist architecture. In recent years, the neighborhood has also contended with a large homeless population and street-level crime, particularly around the King County Courthouse.

None of these are good enough reasons to shift a future Link station out of an existing high-traffic hub into other areas merely on the basis of development potential. Prospects for infill TOD opportunities are always tempting to think about, but they wouldn’t warrant the loss of a station that would serve the thousands of existing residents between both the CID and Pioneer Square neighborhoods.

It’s also worth reexamining whether master planning the civic campus redevelopment is even the right approach in the post-COVID world. Rather than concentrating the bulk of key government offices in a single location, newer ways of working might instead warrant decentralizing the city’s and county’s real estate assets. Incentivizing developers to build a variety of mixed uses can help accomplish some of the initiative’s goals while still avoiding an eggs-in-one-basket situation.

But should the Civic Campus Initiative become reality, its success doesn’t hinge on the presence of a Link station right underneath it, especially if it’s at the expense of a much higher-trafficked area. The neighborhood is already extremely walkable: between the original Midtown and Jackson Street locations and the existing Pioneer Square Station, the civic campus would be well served by Link anyway.

Even if the county is keen on ensuring proximity to an ST3 station for its employees, there is no better place than the Jackson Street hub, which is already home to Sound Transit and Metro employees. The substantial amount of buildable capacity in the area also offers plenty of excuses to scratch any development itches that might otherwise be satisfied by the civic campus redevelopment.

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RapidRide G is set to open next year as what many consider the first (and only) Bus Rapid Transit system in the state. The buses will run quickly, traveling in the center lanes on Madison for much of the way. Just as importantly, the bus will run every six minutes every day until 7:00 PM, making it the most frequent individual line in the region.

Along with this important addition, Metro is proposing several bus changes in the area. To call these disappointing is to put it mildly. The 10, 11, 12 and 49 would run every 20 minutes at best. The 47 may be eliminated. This is a major degradation in one of the most densely populated, highest transit ridership areas in the state. As an alternative to these plans, I propose the following:

As with the previous maps, you can make it full page (in its own window) by selecting the little rectangle in the corner. Selecting individual routes highlights them, making them easier to see (with a short explanation as necessary). There are different “layers”, visible on the legend (to the left). For example, you can hide or display the routes that haven’t changed. Feel free to ask questions in the comments if there is any confusion.

Changed Routes:

• 2 — Doglegs over to Pike/Pine to better complement the G.
• 8 — Sent to Madison Park, replacing the 11, and resulting in fewer turns.
• 10 — Goes south to Pike/Pine, combining with the 2 for better headways along much of the corridor.
• 14 — A little more efficient coverage in Mount Baker.
• 27 — Combines with the 14 for more efficient coverage in Mount Baker.
• 47 — Same routing as before, just operates more frequently.
• 49 — Sent to Beacon Hill, to take over that part of the 60. Runs opposite the streetcar.
• 60 — Truncated at Beacon Hill (runs from Westwood Village to Beacon Hill Station).
• 106 — Sent to Yesler to get better combined headways with the 27.

Frequencies:

Every bus would run 15 minutes or better midday. The 47 would run every 12 minutes (like the current 60). Buses like the 8 and 48 would likely run that often as well (if not better). This is based on current service levels and the savings found simply by building a more efficient network. It would be expected that these buses run more often as we pull out of the pandemic and its aftermath.

While these numbers represent a big improvement over the Metro plans, it is when you consider combined headways that things start looking especially good. Broadway along the streetcar path would have 6 minute headways. Yesler, east of 23rd would have 7.5 minute headways. So would Pike/Pine, between 3rd and 15th. All of this can occur at today’s heavily reduced service levels. It is definitely plausible that the 2 and 10 run every 12 minutes in the future, for combined 6 minute headways along their very productive corridors.

Complementary Service

Metro has struggled with the 47 for quite some time. Part of the problem is that it lies fairly close to the 49. Yet there are no routes to the west of the 47, until you get to Fairview (on the other side of the freeway). Thus the spacing between the lines is relatively close, but if you eliminate the 47, you create a large service gap to the west. Compounding the conundrum is the fact that Summit is one of the most densely populated areas of the state, and very close to downtown. A bus should get good ridership there, as long as another bus doesn’t poach its riders.

Sending the 49 to Beacon Hill solves this problem. The 47 and 49 go to different places. Thus riders in the Summit neighborhood walk to the 47 if they want to go downtown. Those headed to the south end of Broadway (or Beacon Hill) use the 49. This pattern continues to the east, as buses alternate between going downtown and going north-south. The results are striking. For most of the people in the area, bus service to downtown is better than ever, while we have more of grid.

Drawbacks

None of this comes without some cost. Service is eliminated on 19th. As a result, I could see a small modification in the northern tail of the 10 to cover it, using Aloha. Otherwise, it isn’t that far of a walk to a fairly frequent bus. At worst you catch the 48, which would require a transfer. Since the G runs every six minutes, this is about as painless a transfer as you can have. Losing service on MLK is perhaps a bigger hit, but it isn’t that far of a walk to 23rd for most riders. If funds become available, I could see adding a coverage route for MLK, and maybe even 19th. But at this point, what the area needs more than anything is better frequency on the core routes.

Likewise, it is clear that the grid for this area is nowhere near complete. It begs for a bus on Boren. Similarly, I could see serving the north-south gap between 23rd and Broadway. These are ambitious, future plans that should be considered when we pull out of the mess we are in.

But for now, we should create a set of core routes that run frequently even in the worst of times (like now). What I’ve sketched out does exactly that. The savings are large, and should be put into running these routes more often, even if they aren’t running as often as we would like.

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Sound Transit is inviting anyone who rode Link during the recent 1-Line disruptions to participate in a survey. Service was reduced between August 12th and 20th to fix sagging tracks at Royal Brougham Way. 1-Line service continues to be impacted due to platform reconstruction work at Othello and Rainier Beach stations.

Service disruptions are certainly a thorn in the side of the riding public, but I commend Sound Transit for taking the step to solicit feedback. Even if disruptions can’t be avoided, they can be mitigated by a sound communications strategy.

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