Once the Seatac station opens, there will be 3 elevated stations in the system.
The mean time between adjacent stations is about 3 minutes.
$2.50 is the maximum fare on Link (rounded to $3).
Sound Transit is a 3-county agency.
The Seattle City Council wants to open the First Hill Streetcar in 3 years – by 2012.
This is an open thread.
A week from today, I bet most of us are going to be somewhere along the length of Link – some of us riding it for the first time, some watching others get their first experience, some volunteering. Behind all that, Sound Transit will be dealing with the largest event they’ve ever organized.
To begin I want to note – Sound Transit has enough vehicles for regular service, not an all-out attack like opening day is likely to be. Trains will be running every few minutes – likely a two-car train every few minutes in each direction – but wait times to ride are expected to be long. As I understand it, trains will be running as often as possible, not just every 7-8 minutes.
Waitng will be fairly organized – not everyone will simply pile onto the platform. Sound Transit will be actively managing the number of people on each train on opening day, and will only allow those who are getting on the next train onto a platform at any given time. It’s probably going to be hot. Bring water, wear a wide-brim hat, wear sunscreen. Sound Transit will have stations so you can refill your water bottle, too.
It sounds like there should be entertainment at most stations. A full list is available from Sound Transit here (PDF), but I’m pretty sure if you just off the train, you’ll find something interesting. I’d recommend avoiding Stadium Station midday, as the Sounders play Chelsea on Saturday, and it’s likely to be a madhouse. Portable toilets will be available at all stations on opening weekend – normally public restrooms are not provided at Link stations.
Ribbon cutting should be at Mount Baker Station at 10 am, and the inaugural ride should start there, for those who have tickets. Rumor has it that a giveaway might be what’s going on @ST_TravelLight on twitter. That’s also who you want to follow for opening day news.
Note that if you take the train to a new station and don’t want to wait in line for hours to get home, there will be free shuttles from Sound Transit from station to station, as well as your usual Metro service, which won’t be free.
Any questions about opening day? Only a week to go! And this is an open thread.
Via Greater Greater Washington, Infrastructurist names 11 great, demolished train stations. No prize for guessing #1. 6 more here.
While we’re on the subject of intercity rail, Frank at OR points to this great NY Times Magazine piece on California HSR.
And on a completely unrelated note, the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel will be closing at 7pm each night this week. Buses will be diverted onto the surface streets.
For your weekly dose of light rail porn, here’s the Seattle Channel’s story on the Link Media Ride. (Hey, Seattle Channel, how about an embed function?)
Also, Streetfilms profiled our sister Light Rail system in Phoenix:
I wanted (and no one objected) to getting at STB Flickr pro account. From now on any photos we don’t want to post on personal accounts will be posted on the Seattle Transit Blog Flickr account. I have uploaded photos from this weeks O&M tour as well as the LINK media ride from a few weeks ago. I have also added some transit related photos from a recent trip to the east coast. Please continue to contribute to the Seattle Transit Blog pool. Thanks to the over 70 people who have already contributed 2,000+ photo to the pool. Keep on adding and tagging! Below are a few of the flickr sets that we have already uploaded to the new account. This is an open thread. Enjoy!
Less than a month to go!
A Link Car is 29 meters long.
According to urbanrail.net, there are 29 American cities with rail systems prior to Link opening. I might quibble with the number (why count Detroit’s tiny system, but not Tacoma or the Seattle Monorail?), but given that we’re the 14th largest metro area it’s pretty sad.
This is an open thread.
Every once in a while, someone asks me how long it will be before the buses are kicked out of the tunnel downtown. I bet we’ve talked about this before in the comments, but we could do with a discussion of frequency and routes.
At launch, peak train frequency will be 7.5 minutes. It’ll be listed as 7-8 minutes on the schedule – Metro’s scheduling system doesn’t handle 30 second increments. I was hoping for 6 minute peak headways, but we’ll get them eventually. As the first year of operation is only projected to average out with 20-25,000 on weekdays, I think we can wait a bit for 6 minute peaks.
I’ve been told that somewhere around 5 minute headways, there’s no longer safe time for buses to get through and load between trains, and at that point they’ll go back out to third avenue and elsewhere. That may happen when University Link opens, as ridership demand skyrockets. As we saw during the tunnel closure, surface congestion isn’t that bad with the extra buses, and a number of the tunnel routes will be replaced by rail soon after anyway. Perhaps at that point, we’ll consider further separating the bus corridor from cars.
When ST2 lines are built out, the expectation is that we’ll drop to 3 minute headways. The ST2 planning documents I’ve seen show three ‘lines’ – Lynnwood to Sea-Tac, Northgate to Federal Way, and Northgate to Redmond, each running on nine minute headways to combine to three between Northgate and ID Station. But we’d end up with headways of 3/6/3/6 minutes in the Rainier Valley, and I’m not sure 3 minute headways there would be feasible.
A little bird told me that a better option might be two six minute headway lines – one all the way from Lynnwood to Federal Way, and one from Lynnwood to Redmond. I like this better, it would cause far fewer passenger headaches. Oh, and wouldn’t it be awesome for the two lines to be Purple and Gold? It’s not my idea, but I like it.
Okay, how about the longer run? We should be able to get headways down to 2 minutes north of ID Station. At that point, in fifty years, we’re probably going to want to increase speed to Sea-Tac anyway. This is pure speculation, but I’ve mentioned in the past that it’s interesting that we leave and return to the Duwamish valley with Link. An elevated bypass along Marginal Way could save a couple of minutes for trains to the airport, serve SoDo better (with a stop near Georgetown), and allow us to add stations at Graham St. and S. 133rd without affecting longer distance users.
Consider this an open thread.
A lot of people seem to want GM to start building light rail cars. Personally, I’d prefer transit agencies to buy cars that are efficient, reasonably priced, and pleasant to ride in. When it comes to building cars, which they’ve done for a hundred years, GM’s record is a bit spotty on these characteristics, so I’m not terribly optimistic about a foray into rail. For destroying streetcar lines and defeating rail initiatives, though, they’re your company.
As the title says, it’s an open thread.
Last night, a 24 year old MBTA trolley operator rear-ended another trolley, apparently while texting his girlfriend. There were 49 injuries, including a broken wrist on the part of the operator.
This isn’t the first time there’s been a rear-ending on the Green Line. Last May the same thing happened, albeit without the texting part. The operator died in that crash.
Link, I believe, won’t have the rear-ending problem. If I’m not mistaken, our signaling system keeps the trains separated in blocks, and trains going through a red signal or going too fast will be automatically limited or stopped. Granted, it’s possible for an operator to enter an intersection in the Rainier Valley, and someday I hope we can grade separate that portion of Link, but Sound Transit seems to have taken every precaution to prevent problems like the Green Line has.
Feel free to consider this an open thread. Is there any other interesting transit news? H/T to Sam for this one.
1973 is the year King County Metro was formed from the combining of Seattle Transit and the Metropolitan Transit Corporation.
Here’s a news round-up:
This is an open thread.
Update: This is a big week for BRT in the Puget Sound region. Today, Community Transit had an unveiling ceremony for its version of BRT called Swift. It will run along SR-99 in Snohomish county starting Nov. 30th of this year. It will have higher service frequencies than Rapidride (10 minutes all day) and use Transit Signal Priority to speed buses along SR-99. This corridor is perfect for BRT and will be very interesting to watch.