The MarketWatch podcast discusses the future of transit, with some good ideas, and some bad.

This is an open thread.

So, I remember reading somewhere that the transportation bill that the governor signed earlier this year is going to include free transit passes for kids. Does anybody know the details of how this is going to work?

I think it’s an unfunded mandate to qualify for some state transit grants. So the onus will be on the agencies to raise the money. Seattle’s transit benefit district already gives passes to school-age children, at least for public schools, so that’s a start. (Although I would have put the money into additional service instead. But one of the arguments against additional service was that Metro doesn’t have enough bus-base capacity, and now it doesn’t have enough drivers.)

According to Crosscut, transit agencies expect the cost to implement the program to be far less than the grant money they will receive; Metro expects to get $31 million per year and only lose $10 million per year in fares. I wonder if the Seattle TBD can then discontinue its own program for school kids and put the funding into service again.

In any event, I think it’s going to pay dividends in the long run by getting people in the transit mindset while they’re still young.

I’m posting this comment from our neighbor to the north. Here in Vancouver, the buses and trains are packed, pretty much everywhere at all hours of the day. And everything runs extremely frequently. The whole mantra of “transit is dead post-covid” simply does not exist here.

Of course, there are many factors that get people to ride it in such high numbers. The quality of service is excellent. The system is clean – far fewer homeless people and no bad behavior on transit so far. Some of it is population density, but not all of it. The bus to Stanley Park was packed, in spite of not really going anywhere except downtown to the park – the number of people who ride the bus from downtown Seattle to Discovery Park is far, far less. Even in single family home neighborhoods to the north of Vancouver, ridership was surprisingly high.

Seattle has so far to go to catch up.

Yep, this was our experience in LA on Metro and LADOT/DASH – buses especially were full and often SRO, though the trains a bit less so. I really think it depends on what bus routes you’re riding and when, too; the E has been reliably busy since the end of 2020, but even the 44 is getting busy again, especially off-peak. We rode the 44 back from the U-District last night and on a 40′ coach, it was about 3/4 full, mainly college students going to bars/clubs. Hopefully that will bring back the frequent late-night service as it’s currently at 20 minute headways late night, but IIRC it was 15 minute headways until 11 or so pre-pandemic.

Of course, there’s other things we can do to help, like making rideshare companies pay the true cost of business, like guaranteeing living wages for their employees and penalizing them for unsafe driving, and parking in bike lanes and bus stops.

I don’t really mind the lost peak ridership if it

This article is interesting about the average income for an Uber driver

IIRC there have been posts on this blog noting Pierce, Community Transit and Metro have difficulty attracting drivers due to low pay and inconvenient schedules. Of course if those pay rates were raised fares would have to be raised or service cut. There s no free lunch.

When it comes to parking in lanes the delivery trucks like UPS and Amazon are worse IMO because they actually park while the driver delivers the goods. Uber drivers are just stopping to drop off or pick up riders, and you get an email before arrival so you are waiting.

Downtown Seattle has done a pretty good job preserving its alleys, but riders and delivery drivers don’t like using the alleys of leaving their trucks in alleys. . I am told Bellevue now requires new buildings to have delivery areas, but sometimes those are cut outs into the sidewalk. At the Smith Tower the delivery trucks just park on the sidewalk by the station entrance without going into the alley.

With the driver shortage for all transit maybe promoting every mode makes sense. Uber to me is better than having that rider drive and park themselves. Riding on packed buses is not pleasant IMO, so until the drivers shortage is fixed maybe we should promote all modes, and even then I am not sure how much operations revenue transit will have. Just like drivers like other drivers to use transit to reduce congestion for their car transit riders might want some on a packed bus to find another mode to reduce the congestion on the bus.

I understand transit advocates see packed buses as signs of recovery, but packed buses are an unpleasant experience for riders if you have to stand pressed against strangers.

“Of course if those pay rates were raised fares would have to be raised or service cut.”

I’m sure you are aware that there is another option. We choose, as a society, to properly invest in transit.

Yeah, it really depends on the routes. The big difference is that Vancouver has a much better transit network, so their system rebounded quicker. Ours is a big hodge-podge, and some of it has recovered, while other parts of it remain below normal.

That’s true Cam, general fund subsidies for transit could be raised, although that tax revenue comes at the expense of other social needs.

I just assumed current transit funding would stay the same. I would guess most King Co. residents would look at the funding for ST through 2044 (which has doubled over what they voted for) and Metro’s capital and operations funding and think that is pretty generous.

What I thought was interesting in the podcast was the concept that future transit systems have to be more efficient and probably smaller. In the past the “grid” — no matter how large or undense the area — was the design, with massive coverage and frequency without enough consideration of where folks are actually riding transit, and where. Ideally like an airplane every bus would be full without a lot of SRO. When you got to the undense areas and ridership dropped because of first/last mile access and a different Democratic transit advocates would demand greater coverage and frequency and greater density while ironically ignoring urban areas where the density and congestion and first/last mile access exists, which is a small part of Seattle (and not West Seattle)

Ross has a good post about the fundamental flaw of not building light rail from the urban core — where it excels — to less urban areas where the cost per rider mile gets worse and worse.

Driverless transit is the most obvious efficiency, especially on fixed routes. When you look at the capital and operations subsidies for Metro each one way bus trip is costing close to $15 with fares paying 20%. That isn’t the taxpayers’ fault.

The other exciting technology is using real time anonymous cell phone data to allocate transit based on the riders themselves. ST thought it could force people to live someplace or work someplace, and then manufacture with the PSRC that housing and employment. Granted ST tried to predict this correctly, but things change, and ST’s huge flaw is it thought people choose where to live or work based on transit, which really looks foolish post pandemic. Transit was planning blind, but a lot of that was arrogant, when few make key decisions about where to live or work based on transit.

With driverless technology and buses and real time data and a good website transit allocation can be much more efficient. If a route needs BAT lanes do be it: the ridership data will prove that.

This kind of system would be much more efficient. It won’t change suburbia to an urban density, it will likely reduce peak transit with the decline of the commuter, and will allocate limited transit to where the riders are. Basically micro-transit but with larger buses.

Metro and all transit must improve their efficiency, and then realize you can’t create a “grid” for all of king Co. in fact only a small part of it. The reality is I don’t need transit to Federal Way or Lynnwood, and it can’t compete. I do need it around the urban core, although it must be safe, secure and clean which is a different issue.

“most King Co. residents would look at the funding for ST through 2044 (which has doubled over what they voted for) and Metro’s capital and operations funding and think that is pretty generous.”

People often think things contrary to facts. Most King County residents don’t pay attention to what ST’s funding is, or can really make a comparison between $5 billion and $10 billion. They might think ST and Metro are the same and blame Metro for ST’s problems. Re Metro’s funding, define “generous”. Countywide Metro funding has stagnated for over a decade. It’s clearly not enough to fund all the corridors Metro own reports consider underservice. That’s what Metro Connects is for, if it ever happens.

I agree with most of Al’s points about SkyTrain except the tired cliche that anyone who disagrees with another’s zoning or transportation desires is a NIMBY. I just think the term NIMBY is so stupid, as though it is a pejorative.

Of course people have a strong vested interest in their neighborhood and community, and if they love it don’t want it changed, certainly by someone trying to sell Real Change to them. Right now Seattle is so toxic on the Eastside any concept that might remotely bring Seattle to the Eastside is opposed (including East Link).

I just wish more on this blog would understand most “NIMBYS” moved to where they live to escape Seattle, which IMO is one of the worst examples of urbanism. If I lived in The Smith Tower I wouldn’t take transit downtown, even during the day. Let alone my wife. You probably can’t sell transit on the Eastside anyway, but if you want to spend billions trying I would suggest safe and clean trains/buses. Like the Uber car that picks you up at your doorstep.

But actually Al’s point was Ross’s point: if you know neighborhoods or cities will object to your transit or zoning goals why demand they do. Because transit is “good”? Vancouver was smart enough to avoid a lot of those fights because it concentrated Sky Train in areas where folks wanted to ride transit — and of course provided a safe, clean and convenient transit experience.

The key IMO is not to try and force transit choices or zoning on areas that prize their zoning (and have the highest property values) hoping to get them out of their BMW’s onto a train or bus that smells like urine. That is how you get East Link on 112th. It is pointless trying to convert NIMBYS to transit that is unsafe, unclean, and inconvenient with no first/last mile access. No one buys shit, or changes their zoning for shit. If you want good transit move to Vancouver, although housing prices are higher than Seattle.

Take a page out of Vancouver’s playbook: run transit to areas that want to ride it, and zone for it. Don’t try to convert the rest.

Oh, and create a safe, secure and clean transit experience that goes where grads separated transit excels: urban areas (and no, Ivdont consider Federal Way or Lynnwood urban areas although on this blog just about anything is “urban”). And ideally try at least to be a little more efficient and truthful when it comes to costs.

Daniel, the NIMBY’s I’m referring to are those in West Seattle and Ballard who demanded getting Link there in 2016 and now get all up in arms if any stretch isn’t in a subway and would object to buildings over 85 feet tall.

Ok Al, but I stated from the beginning on this blog the stakeholders from WS to Ballard would demand tunnels and underground stations, and object to upzoning. What community does want buildings over 85’. If that is what you want move downtown.

Mercer Island objected to changing the SFH zone to the north of its station that is 15,000 and 12,500 sf lot minimums because the neighborhood (where I live) felt the lot size minimums and SFH zoning were more important to their neighborhood character than a train they will never take.

Sure communities prefer light rail if they don’t have to see it. Our station is 35’ below grade between the lanes of I-99 uncovered which will be very unpleasant (and needed a noise variance).

Unlike transit advocates the residents of a vibrant community rank transit low on the list of what makes their community special. Transit and light rail won’t improve their neighborhood and most will never take it.

The rub will be when the cost of WSBLE and a SB5528 levy are revealed. Most think light rail is free. For that reason I don’t think WSBLE will get built because the residents of Seattle will balk at the cost per rider and the stakeholders will object to anything but underground.

Is that NIMBYISM? Of course. But that is how every community makes decisions (unless you are poor in S. Seattle and get surface lines and stations).

“If you want good transit move to Vancouver,”

That requires Canadian residency. That in turn requires high skills in professions that are in demand in Canada, and hundreds of dollars for the fees, and a months-long process, and not returning to the US for a number of years to prove you want to live in Canada.

“although housing prices are higher than Seattle.”

So how can average Seattlites afford it?

The Vancouver system was built with customers in mind, to get people around a dense city with frequency unconstrained by operator cost. The Puget Sound chose not to build a circulation system for the urban area, but instead to build a commuter system to downtown Seattle from distant suburbs to promote real estate development dreams. Post-pandemic, that’s looking like a poor choice.

SkyTrain is actually pretty suburban, but they’ve allowed density at a bunch of the stations. Northgate station built by SkyTrain would be at least 1/2 mile east of the freeway, bridge a major highway where through buses could pass through rather than get stuck doing loops, only be 1 floor above ground, and be completely surrounded by 20-30 floor towers.

SkyTrain does serve the suburbs, and the extension to Surrey will make it quite suburban. But it does a much better job of serving the urban core than Link.

To me the biggest difference is not density, nor the trains (although I think Vancouver’s are better), but the network. Vancouver just has a much better network. They have what Jarrett Walker once called “an almost perfect grid”. It enables people to get practically anywhere-to-anywhere. If you look at a frequent transit map, you can see how relatively easy it is to get around with only a single transfer (and very little waiting).

Vancouver does have more dense neighborhoods, but it isn’t Amsterdam. Seen from the air, this looks a suburb: https://goo.gl/maps/MUM5FADE9Nbe31jG6. This could be Staten Island (at best); you’ve got lots of single family houses, most of which are neatly arranged on relatively small lots. But you also have big houses on big lots in Shaughnessy Park — it looks like Windermere. To be fair, many of these houses pack in a surprising number of people (with ADUs) but much of it makes Capitol Hill look like Manhattan. Yet this is very close to downtown, and sits in the middle of all of that transit frequency. From a neighborhood standpoint, it really isn’t that different than much of Seattle (Wallingford, Fremont, Central Area). The big difference is that they didn’t ignore those neighborhoods in their zeal to serve distance cities. The trains make stops in or just outside of those neighborhoods, providing the backbone for the frequent grid. But the frequent buses don’t just connect to the trains — they provide their own excellent network, making a trip from here to here is this easy. This is kind of shocking, really, but it isn’t unique. These neighborhoods aren’t lucky. They are just in Vancouver.

If trips like that are fast and frequent, obviously more common trips are. Not just to the major destinations, but to various urban neighborhoods. For school, work, errands or just a visit, you can get around just about everywhere in the city quite easily. They designed the system that way.

In just about every case, when they considered adding a stop to SkyTrain, you had to have a good reason not to add it, instead of Link, where you had to have a very good reason to add it (and even then, they would skip it sometimes). For example, consider the stops on the Canada Line. It is easy to assume that with so many stations, each must be a little gem, or perhaps the entire corridor — or the entire city — is bustling with urbanism not common on this continent. A little bit of Europe or Asia perhaps. Not really. Right by the stations there is plenty of development, but a block or two away — even sometimes just a few feet down the street — you have places like this, or thisNo matter, they will build the station anyway. If it made sense for the grid, they built it. To be fair, it is quite possible that those places will have increased density in the future. But you could say the same thing for the entire city. The point is, they aren’t dependent on huge development right around on each station. It is all about the network.

In contrast, Link has only one station between Westlake and the UW, in the heart of the city. Nothing to enhance the bus network, let alone serve the areas more urban than many of the Canada Line stops.

The end result is that more people ride the train and the bus in Vancouver, even though it is smaller. Vancouver gets about 750,000 on the bus, and 500,000 on the train. When the dust settles, and ST3 is complete, we will still be way behind our neighbors to the north. Oops.

I wrote a comment with several worthwhile links, but some reason it triggered the automatic filter, and now it is pending. I’ll try again, this time without the links:

SkyTrain does serve the suburbs, and the extension to Surrey will make it quite suburban. But it does a much better job of serving the urban core than Link.

To me the biggest difference is not density, nor the trains (although I think Vancouver’s are better), but the network. Vancouver just has a much better network. They have what Jarrett Walker once called “an almost perfect grid”. It enables people to get practically anywhere-to-anywhere. If you look at a frequent transit map, you can see how relatively easy it is to get around with only a single transfer (and very little waiting).

Vancouver does have more dense neighborhoods, but it isn’t Amsterdam. Seen from the air, this looks a suburb: https://goo.gl/maps/MUM5FADE9Nbe31jG6. This could be Staten Island (at best); you’ve got lots of single family houses, most of which are neatly arranged on relatively small lots. But you also have big houses on big lots in Shaughnessy Park — it looks like Windermere. To be fair, many of these houses pack in a surprising number of people (with ADUs) but much of it makes Capitol Hill look like Manhattan. Yet this is very close to downtown, and sits in the middle of all of that transit frequency. From a neighborhood standpoint, it really isn’t that different than much of Seattle (Wallingford, Fremont, Central Area). The big difference is that they didn’t ignore those neighborhoods in their zeal to serve distance cities. The trains make stops in or just outside of those neighborhoods, providing the backbone for the frequent grid. But the frequent buses don’t just connect to the trains — they provide their own excellent network, making a trip from here to here this easy: https://goo.gl/maps/Q6EXqZAS5HVdbYeY7. This is kind of shocking, really, but it isn’t unique. These neighborhoods aren’t lucky. They are just in Vancouver.

If trips like that are fast and frequent, obviously more common trips are. Not just to the major destinations, but to various urban neighborhoods. For school, work, errands or just a visit, you can get around just about everywhere in the city quite easily. They designed the system that way.

In just about every case, when they considered adding a stop to SkyTrain, you had to have a good reason not to add it, instead of Link, where you had to have a very good reason to add it (and even then, they would skip it sometimes). For example, consider the stops on the Canada Line. It is easy to assume that with so many stations, each must be a little gem, or perhaps the entire corridor — or the entire city — is bustling with urbanism not common on this continent. A little bit of Europe or Asia perhaps. Not really. Right by the stations there is plenty of development, but a block or two away — even sometimes just a few feet down the street — you have places like this, or thisNo matter, they will build the station anyway. If it made sense for the grid, they built it. To be fair, it is quite possible that those places will have increased density in the future. But you could say the same thing for the entire city. The point is, they aren’t dependent on huge development right around on each station. It is all about the network.

In contrast, Link has only one station between Westlake and the UW, in the heart of the city. Nothing to enhance the bus network, let alone serve the areas more urban than many of the Canada Line stops.

The end result is that more people ride the train and the bus in Vancouver, even though it is smaller. Vancouver gets about 750,000 on the bus, and 500,000 on the train. When the dust settles, and ST3 is complete, we will still be way behind our neighbors to the north. Oops.

The Vancouver system was built with customers in mind, to get people around a dense city with frequency unconstrained by operator cost. The Puget Sound chose not to build a circulation system for the urban area, but instead to build a commuter system to downtown Seattle from distant suburbs to promote real estate development dreams. Post-pandemic, that’s looking like a poor choice.

It was a poor choice before the pandemic.

I think your summary is a good one, although I’m not sure if promoting real estate development was the motivation. I think it was just born of ignorance. The folks in charge had no idea how important it is to build a system from the inside out. When the dust settles, folks in suburban Vancouver will have much better access to the city than people in suburban Seattle. I hesitate to use that phrase, since it is more of a regional thing (I wouldn’t call Tacoma or Everett a suburb of Seattle). Either way, those outside Vancouver will have it better, even though there will be a lot less rail out there. Yes, they might have to take a bus or a boat (or both) to get into the city. But once there, they can get damn near anywhere quite easily.

This isn’t a radical approach. What Vancouver did was quite normal by world standards. An Asian or European transit planner would look at the system and not find it unusual. They might have some questions (“Why are you extending the train out to Surrey before UBC?”) but just about everything would make sense. In contrast, they would look at Link and wonder what the hell we are doing. Of course, if they have seen other American systems they would just shake their head, wondering why Americans keep screwing up. It isn’t like we don’t have examples of what works and what doesn’t — why do we keep building really unusual systems, when they inevitably underperform?

My own theory is that as Americans, we treat mass transit like we would automobile infrastructure. Assume for a second there were no freeways or even major expressways in the region. Do the same for Vancouver. Now imagine you don’t care about the negative implications of freeways in your city, and just want to allow people to get around (by car). Our system actually looks better than what Vancouver is building! You will be able to drive from Tacoma to Everett very quickly. The lack of stations or crossing lines seems like a trivial problem. The network just builds itself (since the roads aren’t going away).

Unfortunately, transit doesn’t work that way. It isn’t obvious why, and as Americans, it is easy to think like a driver. I’ll admit, it took me a while to figure it out. Or course this ignorance shouldn’t matter — people like me (with no transit training to speak of) should not be planning the system. But in America (at least in Puget Sound) people with no transit expertise (formal or self-taught) really are designing the system.

Even though I’m repeating myself here, I think I’ll copy a comment I made earlier about the Canada Line, because it really sums up the difference between Link and SkyTrain.

The Canada Line starts at the waterfront (a destination in itself) with a great connection to SeaBus — a frequent ferry connecting riders to one of the biggest urban centers in the Northwest. Then you have several downtown(ish) stops, in very urban areas, the way you would expect a subway to operate.

South of Olympic Village, things get interesting. This is the point where many rail lines (in similar cities) begin to lose steam. You have a big drop-off in density. To be fair, a lot of those houses are on relatively small lots, and a lot of the houses have more than one family. But it still isn’t Brooklyn or Montreal, with its high-density, low-rise housing. Thus you would expect numbers to be relatively low, creating political turmoil. Urbanists battle it out with NIMBYs, trying to upzone the area. Planners defend the station, despite the low numbers, saying that some day they’ll build more there. Those in the surrounding suburbs — many of which have upzoned around their stations — find no use for the stops, and wonder why we spent the money. Some even suggest an express of some sort, since those stops add so little (and so few people actually use them).

Except that didn’t happen. Those stops are great because they fit the grid — a grid that Jarrett Walker called “almost perfect”. The five stops between Olympic Village and the Fraser River all have major east-west bus service (and one of those will eventually be rail). As a result, you can get anywhere to anywhere, and the train plays a huge part. This mobility extends beyond the city, into the suburbs. As my friend once put it, the folks in the suburbs are given the keys to the city.

Oh, and look at that suburban service. You have a split, right outside how the city — how appropriate. One line goes to the airport, where frequency beyond a certain point gets you nothing (no one takes a spontaneous trip to the airport). The other serves Richmond, again with some east-west bus service, but also more feeder style buses (appropriate for the area). You reduce frequency to Richmond, but given the distance, you don’t lose much as a result. Put it all together, and it is one of the best lines built on the West Coast, even if it cost a bundle.

But it didn’t! There are clearly steps taken to minimize costs. Above ground in the suburbs, cut and cover in the city (or at least most of it). Even single track in places. The biggest complaint from people is that it is sometimes too popular — a problem that Seattle wished it had. And yet this Canada Line isn’t necessarily the best of Vancouver’s three.

We just haven’t built things that way. In their zeal to just “get out of town”, our trains have failed to cover the urban core, and failed to enable a good grid. Unless we spend a lot more money than greater Vancouver on bus service (and chances are we won’t) we won’t have anywhere near as good a system. Oops.

I would say that there are many factors that make Skytrain seem better and attract more riders .

The first is the full grade separation and high frequency on shorter trains than we get with Link.

The second is that the NIMBY influences are less — partly because Skytrain doesn’t invade many neighborhoods with single family houses. They don’t wrestle with whiny neighbors only demanding subways to reach their small trendy commercial strips encased by a few blocks of medium density housing.

The third is demographics. Greater Vancouver has a much higher percentage of riders who come from other counties with a history of embracing rail transit use more. Someone who arrived from Idaho or Richland is more likely taught that transit is for “those blue people” per Fox News indoctrination year after year — and that success in life is a Dodge Ram with a gun rack, or a Tesla to drive to Whole Foods.

The fourth is terrain. Most of SkyTrain operates in relatively flatter areas than we have. Those slopes add cost and reduce walksheds reducing available riders.

The final one is station environment. Issues around security/ safety, cleanliness and less vertical challenges at stations seem much less of a problem in Vancouver.

I’m sure there are other factors too, but these seem to be the main ones.

Once ST2 extensions open by 2026, I expect some value shifts in our region about rail transit to make it more popular. It’s just unfortunate that ST3 was primarily designed to win votes rather than to attract riders (after all most major projects are literally the productivity “losers” unfunded in ST2) — resulting in a huge step back in overall system productivity once completed.

For me, the excitement I feel about ST2 opening is significantly dampened by the ST3 boondoggles on the drawing boards.

“When the dust settles, folks in suburban Vancouver will have much better access to the city than people in suburban Seattle.”

How long will it take folks in suburban Seattle to realize this? They haven’t realized it for decades, so why should they start now?

“What Vancouver did was quite normal by world standards.”

Yes! They built a normal, useful, effective transit network. The kind of mobility that transit is supposed to provide.

The first is the full grade separation and high frequency on shorter trains than we get with Link.

That is two things, but I get your point. Full grade separation helps them run the trains more often. But if one of the SkyTrain routes (e. g. the Canada Line) ran on the surface, but ran just as often, it would still be outstanding. Put it another way: once Link trains run 3 to 5 minutes all day long (between Northgate and downtown) it will be a huge improvement. But it won’t make up for the lack of stations. Likewise, being on the surface isn’t stopping ST from running the trains down Rainier Valley every six minutes — political will is. Lack of grade separation sucks — but there are worse things.

The second is that the NIMBY influences are less — partly because Skytrain doesn’t invade many neighborhoods with single family houses.

I’m afraid I have to disagree with you there. I’m pretty sure they wanted the Canada Line to be elevated, but settled on a cut-and-cover alignment because neighbors (often in single family houses) complained. Even that was controversial (some wanted deep bore). It would make sense to run the Broadway line cut-and-cover, but they don’t want the disruption. This pushes up cost, which is partly responsible for the delay. NIMBYs push up costs everywhere in North America I’m afraid.

The third is demographics. Greater Vancouver has a much higher percentage of riders who come from other counties with a history of embracing rail transit use more.

Yeah, maybe, and yet when given a chance, they voted against a truly outstanding expansion proposal (UBC/Broadway). It broke the same way it would in greater Seattle (the more urban areas supported it, the suburbs — as multi-cultural as they are — didn’t).

The fourth is terrain. Most of SkyTrain operates in relatively flatter areas than we have. Those slopes add cost and reduce walksheds reducing available riders.

I think this has a better influence on the network than the trains. Seattle could have a much better grid, but it still wouldn’t be as nice as the one in Vancouver. SkyTrain does OK though. Elevated and underground lines can adjust to tough terrain. If I’m not mistaken, some of the trains still go up steep hills, complicating the propulsion mechanism.

Issues around security/ safety, cleanliness and less vertical challenges at stations seem much less of a problem in Vancouver.

The main reason given for why voters opposed the expansion was because of the conditions of the stations (e. g. failing escalators). Sounds pretty similar really.

There really are some unusual physical aspects to SkyTrain that make it interesting for transit nerds. But it is the basics that make it work so well. Specifically:

1) Good stop spacing. They have it — we don’t. 2) Good frequency. We will have it on parts; they have it on a lot more. 3) Better lines.

It all comes down to priorities and picking the right tool for the job. North Vancouver has much more density (of all sorts) than West Seattle. Yet North Vancouver has no plans for a SkyTrain line, while West Seattle will have Link. SkyTrain has lots of stations covering a wide part of the region. This enables an outstanding network, with frequent crossing service of both buses (and eventually) trains. Link skips huge parts of the city, creating challenging trade-offs for bus routing (e. g. the 43). Link doesn’t prioritize the network — SkyTrain does.

I don’t mean to imply that SkyTrain is perfect. There are definitely things I would have changed. But in terms of stop spacing and creating a good network, they are just way ahead of us (and likely always will be).

“The second is that the NIMBY influences are less — partly because Skytrain doesn’t invade many neighborhoods with single family houses.”

The government structure is also different. Nimby neighborhoods and small cities don’t have the power to veto things. A rapid transit line is rightly seen as a compelling public good. The public is more positive on transit. So the transit authority designs a transit best-practices network, with the right number of rail lines connecting the largest pedestrian concentrations, and a comprehensive bus network around it, and it has full authority and funding to make it happen.

Also, the first Skytrain line was built partly as a World’s Fair circulation system, to showcase Canada’s innovation capability and its construction company Bombardier. You know, like our Monorail, only it served more of the city from the beginning. And it was planned to go to its biggest and growth-channeled suburb, Surrey. Like the Eastside. Or Forward Thrust.

This is the type of thing I was referring to: https://www.google.com/maps/@49.1677772,-123.1364587,3a,75y,345.2h,87.36t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1seX0CvlcK-XsuxkHuJJhDtQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DeX0CvlcK-XsuxkHuJJhDtQ%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D86.409%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en

The line to Richmond goes through a fair amount of single family sprawl, but surrounding the stations you get a lot of density (commercial, residential and retail), so that the stations are far more useful to far more people.

Certainly, there are a few stations where this hasn’t happened quite yet. However, their zoning seems to allow for a downtown Bellevue type development around most stations, even quite suburban ones. Federal Way will ultimately get what? Maybe 5 floor buildings at best?

The government structure is also different.

Good point. That is probably the biggest difference, since it lead to everything else. I’ve long since argued that if Sound Transit had a different governance structure, we would have a very different (and much better) subway system. I’m no expert on TransLink, but this is what I’ve gathered (please correct me if I’ve got something wrong).

The first big difference is that in BC, there has never been a separation between the trains and the buses. It is all one agency. At first it was run by the province, then TransLink. In my opinion this is huge. The lack of communication (or at the very best, after-the-fact planning) between Sound Transit and Metro is responsible for some of our biggest blunders, in my opinion.

One unusual aspect of TransLink is that they do pretty much all transportation planning for the region (roads, cycling, railroads, shipping, etc.). Thus the board often has railroad experts, as well as a more private sector focus (similar to the Port of Seattle).

The management of TransLink is complicated, and has evolved over time. Right now there is a mayor’s council and a board of directors. The mayor’s council approves the board, and the board does most of the work. The mayor’s council has final approval of the plans.

It is an unusual setup, and there has been plenty of criticism. It is somewhat unwieldy, and made more complicated with the relationship between TransLink and the province. There is an excellent review of the bureaucracy (tinyurl.com/2p9xcpxh) and how it compares to many around the world. Interestingly enough, they largely dismissed American systems (for not being very good).

I don’t think TransLink is especially good, I think Sound Transit is just unusually bad. TransLink was setup to provide many modes of transportation (replacing work done by BC Transit). There was no specific goal for the agency, just as BC Transit didn’t have a specific goal in mind (other than “move people and goods as best possible”).

In contrast, Sound Transit was setup with the goal of building a subway system from Tacoma to Everett. It has existed despite most of the public transportation work being done by other agencies. But it is this singleness of purpose that has forever screwed it up, in my opinion. Having a public transportation board from the very beginning being tied to a particularly mode for the region is putting the cart before the horse.

Canadian systems tend to be provincially based. In other parts of the world they grow from the city, or from an area that surrounds the city (analogous to King County). Having a Canadian style system would mean either the state running all public transportation in the region, or creating a regional system, similar to TransLink. This would mean that all Metro, Community Transit and Pierce Transit buses would be under the same umbrella. I think this could offer some advantages, but would be unrealistic.

I do think there is value in having a regional public transportation system. I don’t think they should be tasked with building the subway system, and I certainly don’t think they should have a goal in mind from the very beginning (“the spine”). A statewide agency focused on minimizing the border issues would be very beneficial. They wouldn’t necessarily have their own buses (ST doesn’t run theirs) but I also see nothing wrong with that. The budget would come from a mix of county, state and regional funding. For example, Sounder would be paid for with regional or state funds. But Sound Transit would get Metro and Community Transit to cooperate so that more of the buses cross the border. Express buses could be a mix of both.

The subway system should have been part of Metro. They should have come up with plans that the county would then approve (just as the county runs Metro). There would have been some regional cooperation (perhaps with a smaller Sound Transit outlined in the previous paragraph) but it would have been driven by Metro. I think we would have a much better rail system — and a much better public transportation system — if we had done that.

“ Sound Transit was setup with the goal of building a subway system from Tacoma to Everett.”

I think the use of the word “building” is spot on. I see the goal of “building” rather than “operating” a primary root cause of ST’s many emerging problems. The predominant view of the agency is to build and not run a system.

ST handed over the duties of providing drivers and service to other transit agencies. This got them “off the hook” from the daily operations duties.

Only it seemingly can’t work this way in the long run. The emerging problems like escalator and elevator closures, station security, accidents on MLK, real-time info implementation and other things are all operational issues. I feel that ST cannot simply will them away by contracting things out.

It’s all going to come to a head by 2026. I’m watching closely to see if this is addressed with the hiring of the Rogoff replacement. If the Board hires a “builder” — or worse a “grants and approvals expediter” — rather than operations talent, ST will continue to have an inadequate response to its operational problems.

It’s not just TransLink, it’s the provincial and municipal governments too. They have different powers and a different relationship to each other. The federal government is also different. I don’t know many details of Canadian government, but it seems to be more focused on good governance and getting sensible things done than ours is. There doesn’t seem to be anything like our particular EIS process that allows cities or neighborhoods to block transit to avoid density, or allows them to extort money from the transit agency claiming transit is a negative impact that must be mitigated. TransLink is better and more integrated than any of our agencies, but it’s also the rest of government and the public that allow it to fufill its plans and don’t obstruct it.

Most of Vancouver’s rail lines are Skytrain. There have been repeated controversies over whether Skytrain or lower-cost surface light rail is more apporpriate for the Broadway corridor, or whether Skytrain extensions or center-lane BRT are more apporpriate for Surrey extensions east and south of Surrey Centre. They aren’t saying Broadway should have no transit upgrade, or that it should be blocked to preserve existing density levels and views. Surrey BRT is high-quality, with center exclusive lanes the entire way. There are three Skytrain lines in Vancouver, while Seattle still has only one,it doesn’t go north of Northgate, and it didn’t even reach the U-District until six months ago.

As for Skytrain not going to North Vancouver, that seems like BART not going to Marin County. OK, it stopped short of a waterway, and that area will have more-suburban, less-effective transit. But that also follows from the decision to have a separate SeaBus cross the strait rather than a Skytrain extension. The SeaBus runs every 15 minutes, far more than our West Seattle water taxi; it’s more like the Monorail. And it has the Spanish Solution for exit and entry so it can load a lot of people quickly.

“The predominant view of [TransLink] is to build and not run a system. ST handed over the duties of providing drivers and service to other transit agencies. This got them “off the hook” from the daily operations duties.”

ST sees itself as primarily a planning and capital-project organization. Why is it so bad to contract operations to the local transit agencies? Community Transit also contracts operations to First Transit.

“ ST sees itself as primarily a planning and capital-project organization. Why is it so bad to contract operations to the local transit agencies? Community Transit also contracts operations to First Transit.”

ST has fixed assets that they must maintain for rider use that are much more complicated than bus stops and shelters. They have tracks and stations, and will be responsible for 38 or so stations in 2026 with about 29 having vertical conveyances (compared to just 9 in 2015 with only 3 having vertical conveyances) as well as more than twice the amount of track. Their level of active operations responsibility is going to be many orders of magnitude higher than they had when Rogoff was chosen.

Oops. 4 vertical conveyances stations in 2015 (Beacon Hill, Mt Baker, TIBS, SeaTac).

to pile on the RossB comments, the TransLink and Vancouver system is better on many margins: frequency, bus-rail integration, bike infrastructure, zoning; it serves a metro area with several cities. in the weeds, the transfer walks are short; the waits are short; the trains are automatic with lower operating cost. Their smart card is years ahead of ours. Excellent. Montreal is also good. I read that Toronto is as well.

The bus to Stanley Park was packed, in spite of not really going anywhere except downtown to the park – the number of people who ride the bus from downtown Seattle to Discovery Park is far, far less.

I don’t think that is a fair comparison. Stanley Park sits adjacent to downtown Vancouver. For many people in Vancouver, the only good way to get there is through downtown. You can access it from the highway, but that only makes sense if you are coming from the north. For people who would do that, you can take lots of buses, since the buses that go downtown go through the park.

In contrast, Discovery Park sits isolated from much of the city. It isn’t that far from downtown, but in most cases you don’t have to go through downtown to get there. Unlike Stanley Park, driving is quite a bit more convenient in most cases.

A better comparison would be trips to the waterfront or Pike Place. My understanding is that transit to that part of the city has rebounded (although I’m sure a lot of potential visitors are waiting for the dust to settle).

Some takeaways from the podcast:

1. The $1 trillion infrastructure bill allocates $108 billion to public transit, but there is an existing maintenance and replacement backlog of $100 billion. So basically the infrastructure bill won’t fund new public transit.

2. Ideas like running rail through the mountain so LA residents can get to more affordable housing on the other side but still work in LA seems odd. Wouldn’t those areas instantly rise in cost? How much would such a project cost, should citizens subsidize the business who need these workers with a tunnel and rail line, and are we seeing the beginning of de urbanization in the recent census figures for cities? Housing prices are already starting to moderate or decline due to higher mortgage interest rates.

3. The transportation engineer stated that due to the massive loss of ridership on transit during the pandemic public transit will never be the same. But today with anonymous cell phone data transit planners get real time info about where transit riders actually want to go which will help designing likely smaller transit but more efficient systems, rather than an “induced demand” model of coverage and frequency that simply won’t be affordable with fewer riders. . I think one of Link’s mistakes is trying to tell transit riders where to live or go, and overestimating the distance they will take public transit.

4. Although the transportation engineer noted we are a long ways from flying Uber or driverless cars, or hyperlink, the issue of cost wasn’t really discussed much, especially if virtually all of the federal infrastructure funding for transit will go towards upgrading what exists now. Rail for rail’s sake is what we are seeing in CA now. There has to be some technology breakthrough to speed up trains — including going through cities — to justify the cost of long passenger rail lines when flying is relatively cheap.

5. Driverless transit should be here much sooner than driverless cars because the routes are fixed. That would help with costs. Certainly for grade separated transit.

6. I liked that the transportation engineer looked at every mode when deciding how much to spend on which mode, because each mode has advantages and flaws. I disagree with attempts to disadvantage one mode to try and promote another mode. Make each mode as successful as possible and let the citizens choose which best works for them. If the peak commute returns to downtown Seattle I would think Link will be packed during the peak commute because it has advantages. During non-peak times transit is going to struggle more to compete for riders.

7. I wish there had been more on parking. For example one benefit of Uber is it reduces the amount of parking that is necessary. If population and commuter levels drop or stay depressed in large cities that should reduce the scarcity of parking in cities, so how will that affect mode choice. I think the amount of free and easy parking on the Eastside affects mode choice to some extent. But that doesn’t mean I want to reduce or eliminate free parking, just understand how parking affects mode choice just like BAT lanes affect choice, or not.

8. Maybe because transit advocates and transportation engineers tend to very urban oriented they rarely discuss or understand first/last mile issues in less dense areas like suburbia. Instead their solution is to “densify” which really isn’t a solution. I know many on this blog dislike park and rides I never hear a good alternative for first/last mile access, just a lot of urbanism ideology. The areas are too large for feeder buses that riders could walk to, and micro-transit is too expensive. Transit struggles in the areas it’s main Achilles heel is exposed: getting to it.

9. Safe streets and buses/trains was basically assumed in the podcast, although I think they are critical to transit ridership, and understanding everyone has different tolerances for risk.

There’s no way a country that doesn’t have a will to build a national high-speed rail network (i.e., a normal country) will build a national hyperloop. It would cost much more to perfect the technology, build the tunnels, and verify that hyperloop would have enough capacity. Musk is thinking small cars rather than what you’d really need for mass transit.

“Housing prices are already starting to moderate or decline due to higher mortgage interest rates.”

“Moderate” prices that work for people making $200K a year don’t work for people making $60K a year. You haven’t solved anything until you reduce prices by half or build enough subsidized housing to fill the gap.

“today with anonymous cell phone data transit planners get real time info about where transit riders actually want to go which will help designing likely smaller transit but more efficient systems,”

They don’t need that info, they can start by just filling in the well-known transit gaps that exist. They can also compare what high-ridership cities have that low-ridership cities don’t. Vancouver vs Seattle is one example. You can also compare Washington DC and Chicago to most American cities. Or Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal to most American cities. Or European or Asian or Latin American cities to most American cities. Saying we need personal-trip info to know which corridors and level of service we need is just a delay tactic by people who don’t know what they’re talking about. Even if we build a 2 1/2 hyperloop from New York to Los Angeles (and how many other stops would it have; i.e., how many cities would it serve?), that doesn’t address the several-times larger demand of getting around Southern California or Pugetopolis or any other metro where most of the total trips are. Even those who take the national hyperloop would need something at the endpoints.

“they rarely discuss or understand first/last mile issues in less dense areas like suburbia”

How have we not discussed it? Mercer Island and all the suburbs should have all-day local transit at least every fifteen minutes, so that people could actually use it. This could be funded by a local transit levy (i.e., a super Metro Connects), or the cities could fund it themselves.

Jesus Mike, all day 15 minute feeder bus service for all of MI would be a stupid waste of money. Do you know how steep the driveways are. Minimum lot size on the south end is 15,000 sf. It is time to move past the transit “grid” system, or the “build it and they will come” induced demand model. There are some areas transit is very difficult with limited budgets.

Absent severe traffic congestion or very high parking rates residents on MI don’t WANT to ride transit, even if safe and frequent. So Metro is wise to not chase them. Just make sure there is adequate park and ride space because that is the most convenient and cost effective first/last mile access in an undense huge area like East King Co.

Or don’t be surprised if folks don’t take transit with a car sitting in their garage. I mean did anyone really believe East Link would move eastsiders out of their cars onto feeder buses and then a transfer to trains? Even pre-pandemic?

According to Martin WSBLE will move 400 West Seattleites from their cars to light rail at a cost of $180,000 to $360,000 per intended rider. And my guess is West Seattle is more transit tolerant than most of the Eastside.

You complain that transit advocates and engineers rarely discuss last-mile issues, then you blast the proven solutions that work all over the world including in Canada and say suburbanites don’t want transit after all. Those two are contradictory. Maybe Mercer Island has uniquely steep hills between most people’s residences and the arterials that preclude local transit, but that’s not the case for the much larger populations in the lower-density parts of Bellevue, Kirkland, Renton, and Sammamish that also need last-mile transit. And it’s not just “last mile”, it’s also from one part of the suburb to another outside Link’s corridors, and between adjacent suburbs.

Here are some disadvantages of Uber: it carries half or fewer passengers per hour than a fixed-schedule coverage bus route in the same low-density neighborhoods. Drivers aren’t paid a living wage; many of them probably can’t even afford an apartment to live in on their Uber wages. The wage doesn’t cover the full cost of car depreciation for those Uber-miles. The company is losing money so investors are funding the gap. Autonomous cars are always twenty years away.

Since coverage routes only require small buses or vans, there’s not much difference in cost between a minivan-sized bus and a minivan-sized shared-trip Uber. Yet the bus serves twice as many passengers per hour, partly because it doesn’t deadhead between every single passenger-trip and the next, and partly because it has a fixed schedule so you can show up at the bus stop when it comes without ordering a custom ride on an app and waiting an arbitrary amount of time, so people will take it who wouldn’t take Uber.

There’s even a flexible-route alternative, where it runs on schedule and mostly on a fixed route but allows last-mile deviations in certain segments. If the alternative is running Ubers all day, and enough of them so that most passengers can get one in a timely manner, then that’s most of the cost of 15-minute fixed service right there.

“WSBLE will move 400 West Seattleites from their cars to light rail at a cost of $180,000 to $360,000 per intended rider.”

WSBLE is not East Link. How much does I-5 or I-90 cost per intended driver?

Oh, and how much do P&Rs cost per space? All transportation modes are subsidized. The largest subsidies should go to the ones that are most efficient, and are the most friendly to the climate.

Mike I am trying to focus limited transit dollars on people who want to ride transit and who can get to it. First/last mile access is where transit loses most of its intended riders to cars that have no first/last mile.

Metro stopped the 201 on MI because no one took it. The lack of density made it very slow with lots of stops IF the person could climb their driveway to get to one of the Mercers. And this was pre-pandemic.

Those folks don’t want to ride transit so don’t try. They have zero desire to amend their zoning for transit they won’t ride.

Much of the Eastside is like this. The Plateau has endless cul-de-sacs because folks think they are safe for kids. They have no desire to take transit if they don’t have to, and the only first/last mile access they will use that is not a “seat” for them is a park and ride, and they won’t transfer a second time.

But at the same time I agree building more park and rides on the Eastside is probably not wise because no one will need a park and ride because they no longer need to ride transit and it just doesn’t fit their needs.

If you oppose park and rides based on ideological grounds, or cost per rider, fine, but then forget about these folks when it comes to transit.

Here is the catch—22. How do you get folks who don’t want to ride transit to ride transit. Peak congestion and inflated parking rates was one way, but that is gone.

The engineer in the podcast is correct. Post pandemic transit systems have to become smaller, smarter, and more flexible. The gilded age of transit in which you spend a fortune to build a grid in East KC when those folks don’t want to take transit is over. That rider is gone. So let’s focus on those who will ride transit.

Let’s focus our “grid” on those who want to take transit, can, and will, which going forward will be more like targeted micro-transit with real time data, which might include a reservation system.

We need data driven transit. Anonymous cell phone data tells us who will ride transit, how many, and where they are going. Pretty much the opposite of Link.

Link spent decades and tens of billions of dollars trying to attract the peak suburban commuter not understanding that person did not want to ride transit, but had to. The pandemic and WFH let them escape the peak commute. East Link is already a relic hoping to attract a rider who is gone.

Bus riders will take East Link because they have to because their bus truncates (unless they are a coveted peak employee going from Issaquah park and rides to Bellevue Way). Maybe sporting events. Or those who can’t afford a car but for some reason live on the Eastside. Or students going to UW.

Don’t spend time and money on folks who don’t want to ride transit. Just the land use on the Eastside and endless free parking should tell you most of these folks don’t want to ride transit, even if safe and clean. Focus on those who are riding transit now, because those folks will ride transit.

Jesus Mike, all day 15 minute feeder bus service for all of MI would be a stupid waste of money. Do you know how steep the driveways are?

I’m pretty sure the buses won’t go down the driveways. Mike is basically suggesting a more frequent 204, except on the permanent route (not the on-demand DART service, which I think does go down driveways). Of course it is a stretch, but not the craziest thing in the world. It makes more sense than building out a big park and ride lot. I would look into simply charging for use of the park and ride lot, and then putting the money into the feeder route. People end up walking to the bus stop, or in some cases driving to them. It still provides value, because there are plenty of parking spaces on the street in Mercer Island (at least there used to be back in the day — I haven’t been there in a while).

It seems like it is one way or the other. Either Mercer Island is too small and/or too disinterested in transit to take advantage of a park and ride lot, or they could use a shuttle system.

The 201 didn’t access individual driveways. If it had it would have never made it back up.

The 201 circled the perimeter of the Island on East, West and North Mercer Way. The driveways are so steep and long riders could not walk up them to catch the 201. Since there is little density and riders were exhausted from the climb to the road the 201 would have endless stops to pick up or drop off a single rider and so was very slow, which is why the post office requires mailboxes on the road. And this was just the feeder bus.

When Metro cancelled the 201 pre-pandemic I think it was averaging three riders during peak hours.

The city tried a van pool that could access the driveways, and tried a pooled Uber program but it took so long to drive down each driveway it took forever if there was more than one rider.

The 204 runs north/south along Island Crest Way. It has one small park and ride on the south end (that off-Islanders used) but very few can walk to a stop as ICW is at the top of the Island. So you need first/last mile access to the 204.

Pre-pandemic ST tried to implement a paid reservation system for the park and ride. The cost was going to be $120/month. It had few takers because either commuters could not afford the cost of the round trip transit ride plus parking, or they just drove to work because it cost the same. Or demanded shuttles from their employers like the 630 or companies like Microsoft.

Ross is correct that today there isn’t the demand for a feeder shuttle or bus, or a reservation system for the park and ride. You can park there any time, and today it is used mostly for overflow residential or employee parking. The 550 and 554 are dead. .

I definitely would not spend the money on a feeder bus or shuttle system on MI, unless it is a one seat ride like the 630 which is basically what Issaquah demanded with the 554 to Bellevue Way. The citizens don’t want to ride transit, and it sucks here, which isn’t Metro’s fault.

2019 is dead. People are not going to drive to a park and ride during peak hours to catch a bus to Seattle, or to a train. Those days are over. And they won’t ride transit during non-peak times, so it is pointless to threaten them with paid park and rides, or shitty feeder buses, because they don’t need it.

At best employers will provide flex schedules and subsidized parking at work, WFH, private shuttles, the 630 or one seat 554. Good employees are gold these days, and wont put up with the abuse of the peak hour commute on transit. So employers offer alternatives.

ST and Metro need to concentrate on those folks who want to ride transit, or must, which are those who are riding transit today, and ideally have decent first/last mile access and no transfer.

“First/last mile access is where transit loses most of its intended riders to cars that have no first/last mile.”

And frequency. Frequency is the biggest reason people don’t take transit if it goes anywhere near them. People hate each extra minute of waiting more than they hate each extra minute of travel time, because have to stand there at the stop waiting for it, or sit there at home waiting for the time to leave. People can’t fit as many activities into their day because of the wait times. Sometimes they can’t do everything they have to do, or they aren’t willing to do fewer things than they could if they were driving. That’s why I said 15 minutes minimum, which is also what Jarrett Walker says. Once you go below 15 minutes, transit becomes less usable, so you can’t get maximum ridership.

“Anonymous cell phone data tells us who will ride transit, how many, and where they are going.”

We already know that. They’re going within and between the largest cities and neighborhoods. That’s where the most people are, so that’s where the most trips are. It’s also what transit can be most effective.

“Metro stopped the 201 on MI because no one took it. The lack of density made it very slow with lots of stops IF the person could climb their driveway to get to one of the Mercers”

The infrequency and probably short span was a major reason no one took it. And as I said, Mercer Island may be in a unique situation if most houses are down a steep hill from the arterials. If that’s the case, Mercer Island is an exception, and it doesn’t apply to most of the suburbs.

“Mike is basically suggesting a more frequent 204”

There are three streets I see as suitable for transit: Island Crest Way, East Mercer Way, and West Mercer Way. I don’t know enough about Mercer Island to tell whether just Island Crest Way should be served or all three of them. Transit can’t reach every house, but it should strike a balance between where people want to go and limited resources, and aim to serve the largest cross-section of people and trips that it can.

One thing I started thinking about today was a kind of figure-8 route that could serve all three streets. The West Seattle Water Taxi has two shuttle bus routes, one making a one-way triangular loop between the ferry terminal, the Admiral District, and Alki. Could something like that work on Mercer Island? A figure-8 route serving all three streets? Or two routes overlapping on Island Crest Way? The 24 zigzags on Magnolia to serve three streets. Could something like that work on Mercer Island? How long would it take to get to the south end of the island and halfway back? I can’t imagine it would take more than fifteen minutes. And Magnolia also has steep hills. In fact, people who live between 28th and 34th get on on one street and get off on the other so they can walk downhill both ways.

“The lack of density made it very slow with lots of stops”

Metro’s stop spacing was excessive until it started doing stop diets in the 2010s. It used to stop every two blocks, so yes it was slow. Its current standard is to stop every 1/4 to 1/3 mile, so every 5-7 blocks. That’s transit best-practice for local routes recognized throughout the world. Hills require closer spacing to compensate for the difficulty of walking up/down, so it may still be every 2-3 blocks where the bus is going up or down a hill.

And if it’s so undense and hardly anybody is riding it, then it won’t stop at many of the stops, so they won’t slow it down.

I would expect people who choose a home with a steep driveway to begin with to be in good enough physical condition to be capable of walking it. Being completely dependent on your car for every single trip out of the house – even walking the dog – gets very old, very fast. It also means if the car ever breaks down, you are completely stranded.

“I would expect people who choose a home with a steep driveway to begin with to be in good enough physical condition to be capable of walking it. Being completely dependent on your car for every single trip out of the house – even walking the dog – gets very old, very fast. It also means if the car ever breaks down, you are completely stranded.”

Asdf2, I think the decision to live on a steep drive on Mercer Island, which is probably at least half the lots due to the topography, has to do with public safety, schools, views of the lake, living on the lake, etc. If your car breaks down there is AAA, towing insurance, Uber, etc., or your other car. You won’t starve. In fact many European cities that extend to the water are also very steep, like in Italy, and I remember huffing and puffing up those hills when I was young and very fit.

People get old, whether it is on Mercer Island, Perkins Lane or Queen Anne. I don’t see a lot of folks walking up Queen Anne Ave. I sometimes get irritated by the amount of obesity in this country, but it is what it is.

I think you miss the point of my post. These folks don’t want to take transit to begin with. They own cars. They won’t take a very slow and infrequent feeder bus like the 201 and then transfer onto another mode of transit, and they would not do it pre-pandemic. Their time has value. So Metro wisely terminated the 201.

Transit should not worry about these folks (and clearly Metro does not). Even a very good and frequent 201 and a flat access to the bus stop will not get them to take transit, so why try. Clyde Hill and Medina are pretty flat and no one there takes transit.

Maybe a one seat ride on the 630 to First Hill or a one seat ride on the 554 to Bellevue Way or an employer direct shuttle might get some to ride transit who have to go to work and has a very good job, but not crummy feeder bus service with a transfer or two. No way, not with such worker shortages. Focus transit funding on those who are riding transit now, not unlike Metro determined equity when it comes to transit: those who rode it during the pandemic because they obviously had to.

Here is a personal anecdote. My daughter returns from her first year in college for the summer. Last year she worked as a server’s assistant in the top restaurant in Bellevue. She is smart, hardworking, and conscientious. So she has her pick of jobs in the service industry, which covets workers without drug and alcohol issues.

She was offered a job serving conventions at a major hotel chain which she likes because she doesn’t like working to 1 am. Average pay will be around $35/hour, plus benefits (although she has benefits through me). She also gets up to 80% off hotel rooms for her entire family anywhere in the world, even after she returns to school in the fall so hopefully she returns to the hotel.

She was offered a Seattle or Bellevue hotel. She chose Bellevue because it has free employee parking, she feels safe in Bellevue, and she won’t take transit in Seattle, especially at night, nor would we allow her to.

Mercer Island doesn’t have that many people (roughly 25,000). According to the latest census report, about 10,000 a day commute. Of those, around 40% (4,000) commute to Seattle (mostly the greater downtown) area; 14% to Bellevue; 6% to Redmond; 9% never leave the island for work. This was before the pandemic.

Thus you have around 6,000 potential commuters to Link locations. Realistically, it is a lot less. In some cases Link makes for an awkward trip, and of course, more people will work from home than they did in 2019.

Of course people leave the island for other reasons. I’ve always found driving downtown to be a big pain, and worse than ever. If I wanted to see the symphony, for example, I would take the bus (or now, the train). My guess is there are a lot of people in Mercer Island that feel the same way. About 20% of Mercer Island residents are over 65. My guess that number will grow. It is common for older folks to want alternatives to driving, especially if driving involves getting on the freeway (the only way to leave the island).

To a large extent, the existence of the park and ride solves the planning problem. If it is empty, so be it. But if it routinely fills up, then obviously there is unmet demand. At that point, better shuttle service makes sense, rather than expanding the park and ride. Some people would walk to the bus stop, others would drive. But the shuttle service would provide additional benefit above park and ride use, as riders could use it to get around the island.

Structurally the park and ride on Mercer Island can’t be enlarged, and I think that was on purpose because of opposition by the residential neighbors to the north. Of course, when built most felt 453 stalls was sufficient for MI.

The 2017 settlement with ST includes $4.5 million in matching ST funds for commuter parking. The city was looking at a mixed-use development at the old Tully’s location on 80th with underground commuter parking but the cost for 100 stalls was $9 million, underground parking is expensive, the citizens felt the building was out-of-scale, and then the pandemic hit and commuter parking was no longer a pressing issue.

The reality is a shuttle or feeder bus is just not practical on MI, and of course work commuters hate transfers and waits. This is common on the eastside. When the park and ride was full folks found alternatives, like employee shuttles.

I don’t know what will happen in the future. ST estimated 3000 Islanders would use East Link when it opened. Probably that is high post-pandemic, and more will go east. If Seattle returns to the work hub it was East Link is a very good form of transit and I would think Islanders would take it if they could not afford parking, but they have to get to it. You can’t make first/last mile access so difficult no one wants to take it and then blame the riders for finding alternatives, like the 630 or 554 or employee shuttles or WFH.

When it comes to non-peak travel very few Islanders — or eastsiders — will use transit. I agree with Ross that parking in downtown Seattle is a huge hassle, and so we either go east or take Uber.

First/last mile access was probably the second largest mistake ST made because as it moved out of the urban core it didn’t understand the customer, and how to get them to Link. The first biggest mistake of course was moving out of the urban core.

Right now there is more park and ride capacity on the eastside than is probably needed, although much does not serve East Link and transfers are hated. At least figure out a way of repurposing those park and rides when East Link opens, if they are needed. I think an anti-car ideology on the eastside is a very big mistake when it comes to first/last mile access. You can’t force folks to ride transit in this area if they don’t want to, and we see that today.

“Transit should not worry about these folks (and clearly Metro does not).”

Metro terminated the 201 because it has limited service hours it has to stretch across the country. It thinks Mercer Island should have a half-hourly all-day route; it was in Metro Connects. Current service levels don’t mean Metro doesn’t think there shouldn’t be more; it just doesn’t have the money for it.

Yes, Mercer Islanders, Clyde Hill residents, and Sammamish residents are more transit-adverse than average, but that doesn’t mean nobody would ride it if it had decent service. Not everybody in a city is monolithic. People get temporary disabilities and can’t drive, part of their lives they’re under 16 or over 65, and others from out of state visit them or live with them temporarily. Different people move in and out over time. The quality of the transit network affects who decides to move in and who doesn’t.

yes, this. Route 204 should have a 15-minute headway and full time service. It could have been funded with the network hours in place before the fall 2014 reductions; it could be funded with East Link. Route 630 goes in the wrong direction; it duplicates Link.

“yes, this. Route 204 should have a 15-minute headway and full time service. It could have been funded with the network hours in place before the fall 2014 reductions; it could be funded with East Link. Route 630 goes in the wrong direction; it duplicates Link.”

It duplicates Link? Does East Link go to First Hill?

How do 97% of Islanders get to the 204 in this plan? First/last mile access begins at your doorstep although I am not sure some on this blog understand that. It isn’t 2014. It is 2022.

Very few Islanders will ride transit if they don’t have to. Why in the world would someone with a car in the garage get a ride to the 204 to wait to ride it to the park and ride to wait to catch a bus east or west and then find a way to their final destination if: 1. they can drive door to door and save the $6.50; or 2. they can drive to the park and ride which is empty?

The point I have tried to make is right now, when Islanders don’t have to take transit (which is only during peak commutes in the past) they won’t take transit.

There is nothing you can do to change that, even if transit suddenly became safe and clean. It has nothing to do with frequency. If somehow the peak commute to Seattle returns along with road congestion and expensive parking those who cannot afford to drive and park at work might take East Link to Seattle IF it is safe, fast, clean and convenient from doorstep to destination, but I doubt it. That rules out a feeder bus you can’t get to.

Instead what I think will happen are: 1. one seat buses like the 630 and 554, whether transit advocates like that or not; 2. private employer shuttles; 3. employer subsidized parking; 4. flex schedules or pure WFH; 5. the city uses the ST matching funds to build more commuter parking which was the demand pre-pandemic, just like Issaquah will demand one seat buses to SLU/First Hill/Downtown Seattle, if anyone is going there, or 6. Uber. Right now people just are not commuting to work during peak times, and if they are they are driving. Probably that is the future for east King Co.

Over and over Mike tells me the number one thing transit riders hate is waiting for a bus or train (although they have to get to the stop first). Well, will adding a wait for a feeder bus like the 204 help, so rather than one 15 minute wait you have two, or three?

The people who will ride transit in the future are the folks riding it today. Use that data. There is not going to be some magical shift back to transit by the return of the peak commuter, so don’t waste money trying to bring them back or build greater frequency on peak runs, especially with endless feeder buses they can’t get to. Or chasing non-peak drivers.

More and more I agree with the decision to allocate more transit to those who rode transit during the pandemic, because they need transit, and will ride it. Don’t chase people who don’t need transit. Transit just does not have enough money for that plan, and without the peak commute 98% of the folks on the eastside don’t need to ride transit.

Know your possible customer, know your competition, understand budgets are limited, and remember just like with eliminating parking and the rise of Uber the market will exploit any mistake because people just intuitively choose the mode they think is best for them, for whatever reason.

Thompson: East Link will serve several Link stations with bus routes serving First Hill: Judkins (routes 4 and 9), IDS (First Hill streetcar), Pioneer Square (routes 3, 4, and more in future) USS (routes 2, 3, 4, and G Line), Capitol Hill (routes 9, 60, and streetcar). Riders can transfer. Route 630 has a very limited span and runs in one direction. Riders can walk. Route 201 was a sad joke; it had very little service. Frequency and short waits are key.

Eddie, I am aware of the route East Link will take westbound. But that isn’t First Hill. Is it.

The folks on Mercer Island who work on First Hill and have jobs that require them to go to their work location (mainly healthcare) don’t want to transfer downtown, and don’t want to walk up to First Hill, even if they can get a spot at the park and ride. Ideally, I would rather have the employers subsidize the 630 and not Island taxpayers, like employer funded shuttles, but these are very important workers. If they refuse to transfer downtown, or to walk up to First Hill, what are you going to do? I don’t understand why the First Hill employers can’t just supply subsidized parking. You know the doctors and dentists are not taking transit.

“the city uses the ST matching funds”

What’s this? Is this part of the station-area lawsuit mitigation? Then Mercer Island can spend it on what it wants: more P&R spaces, Metro’s Uber-like service like Crossroads Connects, bike access, more 204 service, etc.

“Over and over Mike tells me the number one thing transit riders hate is waiting for a bus or train (although they have to get to the stop first). Well, will adding a wait for a feeder bus like the 204 help, so rather than one 15 minute wait you have two, or three?”

Yes, they have to get to the bus, but in areas like Ballard where there is a bus, frequency makes a difference. When I lived in Ballard the 15 and 18 combined for 10-15 minute service from downtown to 15th & Leary, then split to 15th and 24th. I lived between them on 65th, so I could walk one way and take the 15, or the other way and take the 18. Which one should I choose? It depends on which one is going next, which means knowing the schedule, knowing how long it takes to walk to each stop, and how many minutes they’re likely to be late. It’s much easier to walk to one stop and know a bus will come in 5, 10, or 15 minutes. I will take transit even if there’s a lot of waiting or this two-stop dilemma, but many people won’t. There’s always some people right on the edge of either taking transit or not, and a few minutes difference is enough nudge to make them go one way or the other. Those are the riders you lose with each step the frequency gets worse.

Yes, the waits stack on top of each other for a multi-seat ride. That makes frequency even more critical. You can time when you leave your house, but you can’t time when the first route arrives and the second route leaves. 15+15+15 is not good. But Link will be 15+10, and many destinations are on East Link so there wouldn’t be a third seat. And the bus could be timed with Link if Metro gets its act together, since there’s only one point on Mercer Island that needs to be transfer-coordinated.

“The folks on Mercer Island who work on First Hill and have jobs that require them to go to their work location (mainly healthcare) don’t want to transfer downtown, and don’t want to walk up to First Hill”

There is Capitol Hill Station, which is flatter than coming from downtown. The streetcar and the 60 both stop at the southwest entrance, and both are frequent daytime so the wait would be less than 15 minutes. Some First Hill medical locations are within reasonable walking distance for those who want a little exercise. RapidRide G is coming, which will go up the hill every seven minutes or so.

“You know the doctors and dentists are not taking transit.”

They can’t take patients without nurses, med techs, and desk clerks. The patients also need to get to the facility. And visitors for inpatients.

“the city uses the ST matching funds”

“What’s this? Is this part of the station-area lawsuit mitigation? Then Mercer Island can spend it on what it wants: more P&R spaces, Metro’s Uber-like service like Crossroads Connects, bike access, more 204 service, etc.”

Yes, this is part of the 2017 litigation/settlement agreement for mitigation. Mercer Island can spend the $4.5 million on first/last mile access.

The city tried an Uber match program hoping folks would migrate to pooled Uber rides to the park and ride as the subsidies ended but it didn’t work. The city tried a shared e-bike program but it didn’t work. The city bought the Tully’s property for $2 million and spent $1 million on pollution due diligence and may pursue some kind of commuter parking on that property, ideally underground as part of a mixed-use project, but there is only $3 million left over from ST’s match after deducting half for the purchase and due diligence. The original design for the Tully’s project was way out-of-scale and the citizens objected so the city decided to go back to the drawing board, and then the pandemic hit and no one needed commuter parking, and like many cities Mercer Island was laying off staff like crazy and eliminated public meetings.

1. a council member thought the city should hold onto the money until driverless technology arrived, mostly for a fixed route driverless shuttle, but that has the same issues as the 201 and 204; and

2. some thought the city should use the money to lease park and ride stalls from ST for $120/mo. or $80/mo. when ST was trying to go to a paid reservation system. If an Islander paid $3/day and the city used the $4.5 million toward a match of $3/day the city could control around 220 stalls for 25 years, at which point some thought transit would be totally different, not knowing a pandemic and WFH transformation was coming. A reservation system would also allow the city to more efficiently allocate the spaces.

Now commuter parking isn’t on anyone’s minds, the current park and ride is mostly empty except for overflow residential and employee parking, and who knows how the 1500 stall park and ride at S. Bellevue will affect things, except now East Link won’t open until around summer of 2024, and Mercer Island will have 12 peak buses accessing it per peak hour, mostly half filled if at all, with no place to charge them if they layover. And I got a bad feeling about the bridge structure when East Link opens.

It is crazy how much things have changed since 2017.

“The folks on Mercer Island who work on First Hill and have jobs that require them to go to their work location (mainly healthcare) don’t want to transfer downtown”

So in addition to East Link there should be a route to First Hill, another to the U-District, another to Ballard, another to Issaquah, another to Renton, and another to Kirkland and Totem Lake, so that everybody can have a one-seat ride? That’s not going to happen.

“The folks on Mercer Island who work on First Hill and have jobs that require them to go to their work location (mainly healthcare) don’t want to transfer downtown”

“So in addition to East Link there should be a route to First Hill, another to the U-District, another to Ballard, another to Issaquah, another to Renton, and another to Kirkland and Totem Lake, so that everybody can have a one-seat ride? That’s not going to happen.”

It is already happening Mike. Just because the region spent a fortune on Link doesn’t mean folks have to ride it. You love transit for transit’s sakes, or for some other ideology, but very few others do. If transit is a better transportation mode folks will take transit. Otherwise they won’t.

WFH, driving your own car, employer subsidized parking, direct buses from Lake City Way, the 630, a one seat ride on the 554 from Issaquah park and rides to Bellevue Way, Uber, one seat buses from Issaquah to downtown Seattle if needed, the underlying theme is today with the worker shortage (look up the statistics on nursing shortages; they can work on the eastside too) the worker, rider and shopper is discretionary.

If transit, or Link, loses that discretionary rider this happens. https://www.realchangenews.org/news/2022/06/01/tap-below-sound-transit-reintroduce-fare-enforcement-september-despite-past-racially

This is the real ticking timebomb I have raised over and over. I believe so many of ST’s hard to understand decisions come down to the fact its operations budget is exhausted.

I think the discretionary transit rider is gone forever, and so is much of the work commuter. Dying in that situation for cities is the loss of all that tax revenue. It is time for transit agencies and advocates to start thinking about a smaller, smarter, and more equitable transit system if the farebox recovery is so low. Stop chasing discretionary riders who are gone, and focus on those who truly need transit.

I don’t know how we got into a protracted argument about whether to run buses on Mercer Island. Mercer Island is not why we favor transit – it’s the many, many other places, with greater populations and greater density, that need better service.

For Mercer Island, you run a coverage bus. For King County, that means a frequency of 30 minutes or greater. That’s fine. Even if everyone on Mercer Island has two Teslas and a Tahoe, there’s people who can’t drive or won’t drive for other reasons. We know this.

As for the way the transit agencies should react to the loss of “the commuter,” I’ll ask: how should highway agencies react? Most people were private vehicles before the pandemic. The logical response is to constrain highway capacity. Stop building new lanes.

I agree Andrew. Transit needs to focus on folks who will ride transit, whether they have to, or want to. It also has to focus on safety and farebox recovery because all the funding models depend on at least some discretionary riders. But it makes no sense chasing discretionary riders transit cannot get, or trying to serve areas like East King Co. with a transit model of feeder buses and transfers designed for a very urban area, when these folks who have so many transportation options.

The loss of the commuter is traumatic for transit because the funding models are predicated on that revenue, and because of the high farebox payment rate. The Seattle Times has an article today noting Pemco will be selling it corporate headquarters in S. Lake Union and going to a WFH home model. Not because Seattle is dying but because now those workers get an extra hour or two per day they don’t have to commute, and Pemco — nationwide — will save a lot of overhead expenses in a very competitive industry.

I use Mercer Island because it is a bit of both. The residential neighborhoods are like much of the eastside. You will never get them to ride transit, and even if they wanted to it is very expensive to serve them. A transfer that is not from a park and ride to a one seat bus/train is death. The park and ride is the only first/last mile access they will use, or works, but with WFH and other changes they may not need transit anyway.

But MI also has a concentrated downtown with multi-family housing. MI was smart enough to concentrate this denser zoning near transit and in the town center. These folks can and will ride transit, but also tend to own cars. So East Link has to sell, and that means safety, and basically going west because there is free parking on the eastside. But more and more they don’t have to take transit to work.

At the same time much of our road system was built for the peak commuter and is overcapacity. But if you look at the federal infrastructure bill most of the funding goes towards maintenance. $108 billion is allocated to public transit which has a $100 billion need just for replacement and maintenance.

Same with roads. Seattle has $3.5 billion in bridge repair and replacement, and the closure of the West Seattle Bridge shows how traumatic that can be for a community.

We don’t need new roads on the whole. Like transit we need fewer roads but smarter roads. For example the design flaws on I-5 through Seattle. Both roads and transit have to get much smarter.

A P&R is more reasonable on Mercer Island than elsewhere because it is a small island, and its isolated geography makes it questionable whether increasing the population signifcantly is a good idea. And the P&R is already built, so it’s not new money going to $90K/space that could have gone to local transit instead.

Why do Link tracks need barrier fencing on overpasses, but vehicle roadways don’t?

https://www.google.com/maps/@47.4742952,-122.2700116,3a,75y,179.13h,95.86t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sNqauyhTd9Wayx-ENTsOqQQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

If I had to make a guess, it’s to keep people from throwing conductive things onto the catenary. That said, there certainly are barriers on pedestrian/biking freeway overpasses – see the hamster tubes at 195th crossing I-5 and the I-90 trail connector to Newport Way.

Could also to prevent people from trying to jumping off the bridge and grabbing onto the wire as some kind of a stunt.

My first thought is it’s to prevent suicides, like the fencing that was added to Aurora Bridge. I can’t figure out how it would be useful at the end of the bridge but not all the way across it, because people could simply go past the end and jump or unfurl a banner or hurl rocks at cars. Is the bridge a road, a pedestrian path, or is it too narrow for either?

Trains cannot stop as quickly as rubber tired vehicles can. So anyone that acts stupidly and walks on a Link bridge can’t easily get out of the way of a train once they suddenly realize that the train can’t simply stop. I don’t see it for suicide prevention as I do for discouraging walking on tracks and for preventing falls if someone ends up walking on them.

Many states have become more aggressive at fencing sidewalks over freeways, and Washington actually seems to be lagging behind. It simply is physically and psychologically dangerous for human bodies to land on cars driving down the freeway to the drivers on that freeway. Suicide is unfortunate — but they aren’t the only victims when someone falls into high speed traffic below. Plus there are other things going on that such fencing discourages/ prevents like forcing people off bridges (homicide) and snipers throwing rocks or shooting from overpasses.

My best guess is because the Link track is new and therefore required the fencing (either ST or the DOT could have required it), while the freeway is old and there isn’t a requirement (or funding) to build fencing on that section of the bridge.

Maybe it doesn’t. Who knows why they built it.

Maybe it’s part of a sneaky government conspiracy to waste everyone’s money through building probably helpful but slightly unnecessary infrastructure. That’s it.

How the suburbs are subsidized. I.e., walkable areas subsidize unwalkable areas.

This stuff gets overstated. Mostly what it’s measuring is that business properties subsidize residential properties. There’s a subsidy from high-density residential to low-density residential too, but it’s distinctly secondary.

If I live in a wholly residential neighborhood, and do my grocery shopping downtown, is the sales tax revenue really a subsidy from the downtown grocery store neighborhood to my neighborhood? No, it’s just an artifact of separated uses. Neither the homes nor the grocery stores exist independently of each other.

If the grocery store is is in a different city/county/state, then yes there is a tax arbitrage that impacts local government revenues and transfers wealth from some entities to others. It certainly impacts land use decisions.

Car tabs used to fund the municipalities (pre-I-695) that were on the negative side of the residential/business revenue equation. Those fees helped with ‘Sales Tax Equalization’, and I remember something about a few small bedroom community type towns having to dissolve after the legislature implemented the $30 tabs.

Yes Jim, it was not fiscally a very good move for smaller rural towns and cities to vote for $30 tabs, especially when it came to state funding for police costs, and their vehicles tend to have lower values. They were a net tax beneficiary.

Still in WA a city can enact up to a $40 license vehicle fee without a vote for transportation. Mercer Island has a $20 fee, and I always tell the council to raise that to $40 because it is one of the few taxes Islanders pay that go 100% to MI. But now with the federal stimulus funding and sales tax boon no reason to raise that tax.

The pandemic and WFH have been a sales tax boon for wealthier bedroom suburban cities like Mercer Island because sales tax is allocated to the place of purchase. So is B&O tax. Since the pandemic, Mercer Island has had one record sales tax year after another because people ordered so much stuff online and moved their businesses to their homes when in the past they commuted to work in other cities and did much of their shopping and dining there. IMO that is the biggest effect of WFH: not the loss of tax revenue but its reallocation.

The problem is usually the larger more urban city like Seattle bears the brunt of the region’s social costs, that as Dan notes were paid for by business (even if the Seattle City Council never understood that). My guess is King Co. will try to smooth that out, but more and more eastside cities are growling back because they think Seattle creates a lot of its own problems, when in reality Seattle was a regional cash cow, and Harrell is slowly making progress.

Got this in the mail the other day (an excerpt):

“I am pleased to announce an exciting addition to your UW employee benefits package. Beginning July 1, 2022, you will receive a fully subsidized U-PASS loaded onto your Husky Card, allowing you unlimited rides on regional buses, commuter trains, light rail and water taxis as well as full coverage on regional vanpools. ”

Your contact e-mail is broken, by the way. How DO people contact any of you?

Fun times ahead for Link – lots of upcoming service interruptions / frequency reductions in 2022.

https://www.soundtransit.org/blog/platform/plan-ahead-upcoming-1-line-maintenance

“Because the tiles are failing well short of their intended lifespan”

Why does this sound like the escalators?

Agreed, and what are they doing to recoup money from the vendor? The difference b/w this and escalators is that the tiles are 100% a problem of ST’s making.

The 800# gorilla is the I-90 sinking bridge which will reach end of life way before what was projected to sell the project (which is many years late and slipping)>. On the bridge a week ago when it was windy and waves were coming across the sides… shades of 520. And when if fails the State will want to build another “largest in the world” sinking bridge to “save money”. The good news is I’ll be dead, have one foot in the grave or have (hopefully) moved out of State.

https://www.wsdot.wa.gov/partners/irt/MaterialsSources/IRT-LightRailTrainImpacts-Final_Report.pdf

In 2008, useful life of the float bridge was forecasted 100 years, so end of life projected to be 2089. Plan was for 70 years of light rail use … with East Link now to open in 2023, it’s 66 years, which IMO it well within the error bar of the 100 year estimate.

WSDOT never estimated that three of the four pontoon bridges would sink. 520 didn’t come close to expected wishful thinking life. Pontoons on the new 520 cracked before they were even installed. WSDOT is constantly patching the pontoons on I-90 which is why waves now come over the railing in winds above 20mph. It’s sinking because of the added weight. Concrete is great when the stress is compression and best if it’s relatively constant; the exact opposite of what what’s required for the bridges. They are currently working on the anchors for the WB span. The bridge deck has been contorted in all kinds of ways because of this. I don’t know how often they have to do this but it will be a no go for rail during this regular maintenance which is taking several weeks.

The state can’t just close its second-largest highway, force cars onto 520 and 405 which don’t have the capacity, and cut off Mercer Island from access to Seattle. Will it reinstate ferries? It will have to maintain the bridge, and the light rail section will come along with it. The bridge was built intended for rail, and that was in the agreement with the feds that funded the I-90 completion in the 1980s.

I agree with Bernie that the structural integrity of I-90 is a real unknown. ST’s original engineers stated light rail could not be run across a floating bridge. ST then got new engineers who said it could.

Then it was “discovered” well after ST 2 passed and East Link was under construction that the drop from the fixed bridge deck to the floating bridge span by a very heavy four car train all day long would cause “micro-fractures” in the concrete, like in very old porcelain, which is why cargo ships are not made out of concrete despite the low cost to build.

ST then conducted experiments and trials in CO. The head of the Senate Transportation Committee Judy Clibborn, (D. MI) who has a degree in home economics, assured us all she personally travelled to CO and witnessed the trials, and the new deck “hinge” would allow four car trains at full speed but not damage the concrete.

Next we found out the entire bridge needed “post-tensioning”, which again is not the preferred method after the concrete has been poured. As I understand it the vibrations run through the rebar and micro-fracture the concrete, which is bad in a pontoon. Without post-tensioning the stress and vibrations from the trains would cause the pontoons to crack and leak, and the bridge to sink. ST claims the post-tensioning it is performing will resolve that risk. Unfortunately post-tensioning prohibited the rails from being imbedded in the concrete so complementary forms of transit like buses could use the center roadway, and the rails will now be raised above grade, although there are HOV lanes in the outer lanes, at least for now.

Then we had the train derailment on the inaugural run, and findings that ST was negligent — really criminal — in both design and operations just to meet a deadline, and that worried us even more. If an agency can’t get escalators right, or new trains get stuck in tunnels, what are the odds getting the first light rail system in the world across a floating bridge will go as planned?

Finally there is the current redo of much of the surface concrete. To be honest I don’t quite understand it, but my guess is this was not a contractor problem because ST’s engineers and inspectors are on that bridge every day. I think the engineering turned out wrong. The subareas can afford the cost of redoing the concrete, and the subarea is very non-chalant about delays in opening East Link, but we can’t have the bridge compromised just to replace buses in grade separated roadways with light rail with less frequency.

We do know running light rail across a floating bridge has never been done before, so fingers crossed. I am not qualified to opine on the life of the bridge without light rail, but I assume light rail will shorten that life expectancy even if ST gets it right, at which point we begin again the process to build a new bridge and new light rail, although I doubt either side of the bridge will agree to an alternative route through neighborhoods so the old bridge can remain in place while the new bridge is built, certainly a new tunnel through Mt. Baker. So we could be years without a bridge.

The good news, at least for MI, is so much of our focus has shifted east since the last time the bridge had to be replaced. And East Link can terminate on MI, which more and more some of us wouldn’t be all bad. I guess freight could go south to go east, and Seattleites could use 520.

After studying these issues for the last 7 years I think Bernie is probably correct, but I am not an engineer.

With ridership coming back and apparently 3 weeks (2 weeks plus another 2 sets of weekends) of 20-minute headways, how is ST going to address overcrowding, especially now that sports and conventions are also returning?

It occurred to me right after posting that ST didn’t explain why single-tracking between Mount Baker and Othello necessitates reduced frequency system-wide. Couldn’t they use the turn-back track at SODO to preserve frequency at least between SODO And Northgate?

Overcrowding might have some benefit: it would show in a visible way that ridership exists and light rail is needed.

It’s really going back to the pandemic schedule, so it’s just more than that. It will create the ironic situation that buses are more frequent than Link: for downtown-Rainier Valley, downtown-Beacon Hill, downtown-TIB, downtown Capitol Hill, downtown UDistrict, and UDistrict-Northgate. That raises the question of why not just shut down Link off-peak? That might allow construction to be completed faster.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/seattles-chinatown-seeks-to-push-a-future-light-rail-station-farther-away/

Most of this is pretty cookie-cutter nimbyism, but I do wonder if the “we need to rebuild 4th Ave viaduct anyways” is a good line of reasoning.

The article completely misses the benefit of a short walking distance between the station and the businesses and the Jackson Street bus and streetcar routes. A hundred years ago the businesses would be demanding a Fifth Avenue station and calling it racist to have it further away. Parisians grateful they built metro stations steps from their cafes, apartments, and offices, and it attracts tourists (i.e., customers) to Paris.

5th Avenue shallow. It’s the cheapest and the shortest walk. Transfers to buses occur all day and evening, while transfers to Sounder and Amtrak occur only a few times a day.

“Neighborhood advocates insist the station must go a block farther west, under Fourth Avenue South near South King Street, with the highways and sports stadiums.”

That’s a disadvantage, not an advantage. Sports fans will readily walk a block further. Highways don’t ride trains.

“That would lessen the impact on an area that’s been sacrificed for generations to regional construction. ”

Knock it off with the false comparisons. There’s a night-and-day difference between projects like I-5 that cut First Hill in half, permanently displaced the lots in a ten-lane right-of-way, and created long-term noise pollution and pedestrian headaches, vs an underground metro station that allows pedestrians to easily access the neighborhood. “But the streetcar.” The solution to that would have been to build a trolleybus line instead, since the streetcar has no transportation advantage. (It’s not faster or more frequent than regular buses.)

“The bottom line is they have an option to go down Fourth Avenue. They need to take that, because they need to think about the people in the neighborhood. They have a win-win option”

It’s win-lose for passengers going to the neighborhood, living in the neighborhood, and the whole part of the city east of there.

The legal definition of NIMBYism is SEPA, or NEPA. A DEIS identifies “stakeholders” who are expected to advocate for their neighborhood, just like every past Link project. This idea of the “common good” usually means what someone else thinks is the common good, without any money or risk at stake in the game (like surface stations and lines for Black people). Transit like some kind of board game.

Too often transit advocates are myopic, like Robert Moses, and assume transit trumps every other factor a neighborhood believes creates its character. The reason light rail (or any transit) is routed where it is — ideally — is because before transit got there those communities along the route are where folks want to go to, which is exactly why so much of Link runs along freeways. The neighborhood character has nothing to do with transit, which is just another mode, and often not the favored mode of stakeholders and merchants. Transit won’t change the world, certainly ST 3, not even Seattle.

The ID has a pretty good public relations argument: downtown Seattle will get a very deep tunnel, and so will wealthy white neighborhoods like West Seattle and Ballard because those stakeholders don’t want years of disruption or surface stations or lines, but Asian immigrants get what south Seattle got, and like the first time around so wealthy white folks can ride through their area, not a good look for such a sanctimonious city.

ST can be stupid, but from the beginning I thought this route and design would be what ST would go with even though it doesn’t have the funding for it, because it had to have known the objections each stakeholder group would raise along the line, if I did. There are very valid political reasons for the preferred design. Yes, people want light rail (if someone else is paying, and less and less) but they don’t want to see it, and they want to know who will be coming to their area on it.

What doesn’t surprise me is once the DEIS and alternatives were released just about everyone took the bait, hook, line and sinker, assuming every alternative is affordable. Even pretty astute folks on this blog who before the alternatives were released felt interlining or cut and cover or surface stations and lines in West Seattle and/or Ballard would be necessary, or a SB5528 levy, now just assume any alternative is affordable so let’s just debate design. Rather than the cost of very deep tunnels the concern is the rider experience.

If there is one thing I learned from East Link on Mercer Island it is many of the concerns, certainly if based on ST’s estimates or claims, will sort themselves out. There isn’t the money for ST 3 in N. King Co. East Link’s problem won’t be under-capacity but the opposite. A SB5528 levy for any alternative would be massive. A pandemic tends to expose an overly optimistic agency like ST, and really change way people live.

Most of all people will do what they want to do, and it is almost impossible to change that because they either elect new leaders or the market intervenes. Three years ago we had never heard of Zoom or Teams. Now they have changed the world.

My guess is ST adopts the changes the ID wants because why have this political fight — that will of course boil down to “racism” in Seattle — when all of WSBLE is not affordable. If you were on the Board and were an elected politicians in this hyper identity politics region would you really repeat what happened in S. Seattle with Link for the ID a second time when it likely won’t get built.

What I would do if on the Board is float the SB5528 levy first, and place the blame on Rogoff for the price tag, make very public 400 car drivers in WS will switch to Link, the cost per rider will be close to $360,000, and let the voters in N. King Co. pull the plug on WSBLE. This is a time the Board WANTS to be honest although I don’t know if they can comprehend that or it is their DNA, although the agency no doubt thinks if it just starts WSBLE the region will have to pay to finish it.

I am with the ID on this one. It is why we have a DEIS, although those are always badly manipulated by an agency with a vested interest in starting this project, but this time we are talking $20 billion with the preferred alternative, so I think the taxpayers in N. King Co. need to approve that first.

The fundamental problem with the article is the assumption that a new line is needed. Sound Transit should study interlining all the lines between Westlake and International District/Chinatown and branching. That would be better for riders, and better for the community. It is highly likely it would be cheaper, but that is why we need to study it.

Yeah it’s a bit odd that activist opposing the ST3 ID stations haven’t identified that as an option, but if they think the 4th Ave option is fine ‘because people can walk,’ then they probably haven’t put much thought into transit at all.

I’d agree with Ross and say it’s hard to argue in favor of the new station displacing people when I’m pretty sour on the entire DSTT2.

My girlfriend had a good point yesterday which is, they really should study some of these things beforehand. But the funding situation for transit makes the process run backwards. Everyone has to agree to do something, by ballot measure, before it is actually studied how it can be done.

As a result, we are locked into providing a new station for CID when many of the local residents don’t want it. Do they speak for everyone? No, But it does make me wonder if, instead of having to now decide between pissing a bunch of people off or spending a billion dollars of transit money to rebuild a car arterial; we could have done some of this scoping beforehand, and instead picked a route or a station location that the agency wouldn’t have to massage so much.

The funding situation for transit in the United States is flawed on many levels and results in a lot of our negative outcomes.

ST3 was studied, using funds from ST2, prior to going to a vote. ST3 includes money funding studies for future expansions. The issue is those studies (tens of million of dollars) had either bad assumptions (e.g. required station depth) or valued priorities people on this blog disagreed with. The former could, maybe have been resolved with better, bigger, more expensive studies; the latter is not a ‘study’ problem.

Ross’ argument isn’t “they should have studied interlining in the first place'” but “now that we have a better understanding of the specifics of the DSTT2, we need to revisit the decision to not branch from the existing tunnel.”

The CID does not need or want another station as part of WSBLE. What the CID stakeholders are waiting for is East Link. Those are the customers they want, those customers love Asian food, and know (or at least like) authentic Asian food, and can get off before they get to downtown Seattle and are right in the CID. They don’t want years of disruption for another tunnel to serve West Seattle because they don’t need it. West Seattle according to Martin will move 400 citizens from their cars to light rail. They are waiting for East Link.

I can even see my wife walking with me to the light rail station on Mercer Island to take East Link to Chinatown for dinner. Maybe, in perfect weather, and lovely view across the lake. For some reason Chinatown is not seen as “dangerous” on the eastside, and a lot of foodies think that is where the real Asian food is. Since East Link is a straight shot across the lake back to the eastside those trains should be pretty clean and safe. My guess is Harrell will make sure there is a strong police presence in the CID when East Link opens. The CID is just edgy enough for us eastsiders.

Trains coming from the eastside filled with diners and no parking hassles is gold. The CID has been waiting years for this, despite all the delays. A perfect match between eastsiders with cash and no parking hassles and real Asian food without having to continue to downtown Seattle. My guess is East Link will make the CID the restaurant and dining hub of Seattle, unless zoning changes ruin it.

So why blow it with years and years of construction for another tunnel. The point of moving DSTT2 to 4th is that is the other side of where East Link will stop and the CID. The stakeholders don’t really care about the folks on those trains as long as they are on 4th. They know just from their take out receipts and credit card statements where the money is.

I should have added however that round trip on East Link just for two stops from the north end of Mercer Island to the CID for two will probably be around $16 unless the fare back is free or within a transfer window, which is less than paid parking in the CID.

So the trip on East Link — at least for my wife — has to be an “event” if it costs more than parking in the CID. Maybe the CID should push for some kind of dinner fare on East Link that allows a free ride back if within two hours of getting off East Link in the CID. ST has to run the East Link trains anyway and needs discretionary riders, which is most of the eastside during non-peak hours. $8 in fares roundtrip for two is better than zero.

AJ, if I’m not mistaken you have experience working at a transit agency? So you definitely have insight into this process. I’m curious your take on this.

The thought was not that transit lines aren’t studied. But it seems there are two points where a ballot decision has to be made prior to study. Funding has to be provided for specific projects to be studied, by ballot measure. Then, before the alternatives can be explored in depth and such, construction funding has to be passed.

I contrast this with my understanding of the highway construction process, where there is a agency that has recurring funding to explore and pursue projects, and that is what they do. Not only do they have the funding and mandate, they don’t have to get the public to approve it at multiple points.

It seems to me that the difference here is that highways have much more flexibility (and this is my understanding of how transit is done in other countries), whereas transit in the US has these hurdles that lock us into poor alternatives.

“… whereas transit in the US has these hurdles that lock us into poor alternatives.”

Our region seems recently culturally trained to the idea of choosing corridor, station and technology before adequate study first. Other US regions would study multiple rail technologies, as well as have broad corridors that can range as much as a mile or two (like 99 versus I5) and would vary the number of stations. Even here, it’s notable how ST would study both 99 and I5 for Lynnwood and Federal Way 10 years ago, but similar corridor deviation has not been studied for West Seattle or Ballard (and the early Everett and Tacoma Dome work is similarly heavily constrained to the ST3 corridor and station options). That’s how we end up with one station in Ballard getting more riders than the three West Seattle stations combined! The justification for the more limited approach was often that it would get the rail built faster — which in light of bad early engineering and cost estimating proved to be untrue as the realignment work demonstrated. It remains to be determined if ST deliberately misled the public to get their approval in 2016 through.

The West Seattle gondola debate is a good case study in this. ST only proposed current light rail and BRT in the studies with the heavy expectation that a light rail line would be the outcome. Once the West Seattle cost and disruption became better understood, advocates only put gondolas on the table, knowing full well that they are slow. They did not advocate for a broader study of cable-pulled systems in general and ignored shorter automated trains entirely. I think the gondola craze hurt a more rational assessment of West Seattle technology options as it turned a healthier broad technology study into a limited gondola versus existing Link trains debate.

With ST3, the “representative corridors” became affixed down to station locations and number of stations. The pre-ST3 studies in some corridors assumed only light rail in its current form (not fully automated) or a token BRT for comparison.

With our difficult terrain, alternatives are severely limited by topography. However, even within that the agency pre-ordained the outcomes in the pre-2016 studies.

A final point is that there was only just one “system plan” (how corridors fit together) presented — and it was not extensively studied but just appeared in mid 2016. For example, the Balllard-to-Downtown and West Seattle corridors were studied independently, and were combined after the corridor studies were completed. So while they were studied prior to the ST3 package, their linkage was not debated and other options were simply not studied.

Andrew, yes my professional expertise is finance (organizational finance, not Wall Street finance) but I did work at ST for a few years. I would say that your understanding is mostly correct – but the real difference is in political mandate rather than the legal structure. For highways, there is a perpetual funding source in the gas tax, but the WaLeg still fully allocates that money into specific buckets, and WSDOT cannot just pivot to a new project scope unless WaLeg funds that new project. The wrinkle with ST is the project scopes are articulated by the voter levy, so to pivot away from the ST3 scope, there needs to either be a new vote in the taxing district or a new vote by WaLeg to change the rules. So yes, transit projects are more democratic, in the sense they require an affirmative vote to move beyond previously approved scope; this is both good and better, and the devil is in the details.

If Sound Transit was given the steady stream of money and told “go build the best projects and we’ll leave you alone,” then that’s like Robert Moses and the various agencies he ran. I don’t think giving Sound Transit the political (un)accountability of WSDOT is the right model. I think the right thing to do is for ST to complete the EIS, determine the project as-scoped is not good enough, recommend no build, and go back to the voters in 2028 with an improved scope (which may, or may not, include branching the existing tunnel in lieu of a new tunnel). IMO, a healthy regional democracy would include ST going to the voters with regularity; I’m a big fan of funding major public works through standalone levies, and I wish we funded WSDOT’s megaprojects the same way.

But I do think you have a point on reoccurring funding to scope projects. ST’ System Access Fund is perhaps a good example of this, where the scope is prescribed but still vague enough to fund an unlimited number of small projects, at long there is still money in the kitty. This, in turn, is a good argument in terms of focusing on many small projects rather than a few mega-projects*. SDOT has demonstrated effectiveness delivering on hundreds of spot improvements while struggling to deliver a few big projects like the CCC, Madison BRT, etc.

Perhaps we need to shift long term regional transit planning to the PSRC and adequately fund a permanent technical staff, and let ST only get involve when the time comes for specific projects to be delivered.

*Argument in favor: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/3/21/the-folly-of-go-big-or-go-home-transit *Argument again: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2020/07/27/incrementalism-in-infrastructure/

https://www.soundtransit.org/system-expansion/creating-vibrant-stations/connecting-to-stations/system-access-fund

” less than paid parking in the CID.” this is true even in cities with great Transit. When I lived in Connecticut, my coworkers would drive into Manhattan on a Thursday for dinner and pay $60 to park … because with 6~8 people in the car, it was worth it to split the parking rather than pay all those round trips on Metro-North, and any time lost driving in during rush hour was offset by open roads at 11pm when heading home. Link will be preferred for lunch, but Dan is right that for a group dinner trip, driving will still probably be preferred if street parking is sufficiently available.

Thanks for your response, AJ!

The Urbanist has another great transit article, this time about the proposed re-route of the 8 to Harrison and Mercer: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/06/01/seattle-prepares-to-create-a-new-transit-street-in-south-lake-union/. There is a good picture here: https://www.theurbanist.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/image-39.png.

It is a trade-off. The bus would move faster, but it is moving it away from the bulk of people (closer to Denny). In a recent Page 2 post, my restructure proposal had both service on Denny as well as a new Harrison/Mercer route. In general I favor consolidation, but feel like they are far enough away to warrant the two routes. If there is only one route, then I’m not sure which way I would send it.

This approach is such BS.

https://www.heraldnet.com/news/sound-transit-panel-picks-new-ceo-but-wont-say-who-it-is/

“The next CEO’s identity will be announced before the final vote.”

Reads like the reality show “Survivor” where host Jeff Probst won’t reveal the season’s winner until they’re back in the CBS studios in LA.

So their pool of candidates can’t include people who don’t want their current employer to know they’re considering other jobs? That excludes a lot of people, potentially good ones. Are they supposed to quit before they apply to ST?

I’m not suggesting that at all. The applicants have had their confidentiality maintained throughout the process accordingly. I think you get the sequencing wrong. If the selection committee has made their choice and are moving forward, AND the chosen candidate’s name will be made public prior to the full board’s confirmation later this month, I think one can safely assume that a job offer has been made and accepted. It wouldn’t make much sense to do otherwise for either the committee or the candidate. Likewise, since the agency will go public with the selected candidate’s name prior to the vote of the full board, as stated in the article, then that final step can’t be the determining factor as far as the disclosure is concerned. It has to be the proffer and acceptance.

I feel that this is a messaging error, not a problem with the approach. It seems like the selection panel made a recommendation, which isn’t official until the board approves it. For the article to say “the next CEO” is not really accurate, because the board could turn down the recommendation, as unlikely as that may be.

But I may be misunderstanding your problem with it.

If I were on the Board I would wonder why the selection committee leaked that a CEO had been hired, which steals a lot of thunder from the Board, and like Tisgwm notes takes what should be a positive press event and tarnishes it by suggesting the taxpayers don’t get to know who the next CEO is. Stupid of the committee.

The Board should own the announcement that a new CEO has been hired and who it is so it can be scripted. If the committee is not authorized to release the identity of the new hire it does not have the authority to release that a new CEO has been hired.

I hope the next CEO is what Al has argued for: someone who knows how to run a transit system now that ST has a transit system. ST has a lot on its plate with the delay and completion of East Link, Lynnwood Link, and Federal Way Link, but the reality is those lines will not have the importance and ridership of Northgate to Sodo. Plus the next CEO will inherit a pretty clueless Board who will probably micromanage after Rogoff’s tenure.

This is the age of the discretionary rider. A lot depends IMO on how attractive downtown Seattle becomes for the discretionary rider/shopper/diner, but ST has to show the discretionary rider light rail is a better transportation option as Covid wanes, and WFH.

IMO, that should begin with securing the stations, and better include fare enforcement because … shock and surprise … it is hard to afford “equity” if you have a 40% farebox recovery goal. Link will NEVER attract riders from the new areas where it is being built without a perception of 100% safety, and those folks have a tolerance for safety about a 1000% lower than most of the urbanists on this blog.

It should be a concern that Diaz stated yesterday that it will take Seattle 5 to 10 years to return to its 2019 police officer levels, and the Seattle Times has an article that the number of detectives is down from 234 to 134 and so basically the city cannot investigate sexual assaults on adult women. That won’t help get the eastside female on transit to Seattle.

Frequency costs money. Ridership was wildly overestimated to begin with, and will be even less post pandemic. That means those who ride need to pay, and that means ST needs every rider it can get. The next CEO is inheriting a shit show on the capital and operations side, but I think Al is correct the CEO needs to get the operations part fixed first because ST now has a transit system, and that mean actually understanding the customer, both the current riders and the potential riders.

My guess is ST’s operations budget is exhausted, or will be in 2023 when the stimulus money expires (like the D.C. system), so talk about headwinds for the next CEO.

Maybe they’ve made an offer (the CEO has been ‘picked)’ but won’t announce the name until the CEO has accepted the offer and informed their current employer?

Exactly. See my follow-up comment up above. It’s the approach to disclosing the information/decision that I take issue with. If they have made the hire, then make the announcement. Or do we need to have a full-on strategy session with the PR group to sell this selection before that can happen? Geeesh.

I think they’re bringing back Joni, and they want to build up the suspense.

Lol. That comment made my day. Well done!

I wouldn’t count her out.

I got the impression that after her accident that impacted her mobility that she was content to settle into her retirement years. I could be wrong though.

https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/news-events/news-releases/committee-recommends-julie-timm-to-serve-sound-transits

(Saw the tweet from The Urbanist.)

Interesting Timm is coming from a transit agency with no light rail, but 400 employees and all mostly regional buses. This suggests to me the committee/Board is focusing on operations more than construction. I think that is smart. A nice southern woman coming to the Thunderdome. She will probably think once she gets here WTF.

The most frustrating thing to me is not the project cost estimates and other questionable assumptions used to sell levies, the most frustrating thing is ST now HAS a transit system — and it is the best line of all: Northgate to Angle Lake — but it is running it very poorly. It isn’t a pleasant experience.

Hard to get excited over Federal Way, Lynnwood and East Link opening if ST can’t make Central Link a safe, clean, pleasant experience.

Sure there are capital funding issues, but those can be solved by eliminating WSBLE. The pandemic and some inflated ridership estimates, and lack of fare enforcement and a pandemic, have left a hole in operations.

Look, ST is going to need an operations levy for the reasons listed above. If the trains and stations are secure, safe, clean, and the trip pleasant then that is something you want to keep operating. But the eastside swing voter is not going to vote for an operations levy for a light rail system they will not take, or can fathom taking, and looks like another Seattle equity experiment.

I hope Timm is ready for the self-destructive politics of Seattle. What will she think when the subarea with the best balance sheet, East King Co., with East Link scheduled to open in July 2024, tells her their main concern is trains coming from Seattle with no fare enforcement rather than excitement over East Link opening.

Who wants to bet Timm lives on the eastside, depending on her budget.

Seattle Transit Blog is an independent, award-winning publication covering transit and land use issues in Seattle and the Puget Sound area since 2007. About Us

Sign up for a weekly summary of our articles delivered via email.