Seattle Transit Blog

Update 2: STB now has a Snow Info Page, linked on the top bar, providing links to snow service pages for all transit agencies around Puget Sound and most around the state. Update 1: King County Metro has pushed out an announcement that it will continue on the Emergency Snow Network Sunday, and updated its […]

Before East Link comes online in 2023, the extension’s track has to be connected to the existing light rail network just south of the Chinatown/International District (CID) station. Sound Transit will close existing portions of both north and southbound track for 10 weeks in early 2020 to make the connection, according to plans released yesterday. […]

Video courtesy Rooted in Rights Update: The two automated camera enforcement bills are scheduled for hearings next week. Senate Bill 5789 will be heard Monday at 3:30 pm. House Bill 1793 will be heard Thursday, February 14 at 3:30 pm. Four bills were introduced last week — two pairs of identical “companion” bills – to […]

The junction of the I-405 and SR522 Stride BRT lines will be frustratingly close to the University of Washington – Bothell (UWB) and Cascadia College joint campus, close enough for a tempting diversion but too far to actually be convenient. Universities are good all-day transit demand generators, but too many campuses in the area were […]

The car tunnel under downtown opens today, and will be free until at least summer. West Seattle and Burien express buses will now use Columbia St (with its recently-painted bus lane from west of 3rd Ave to 1st Ave), 1st Ave S, Dearborn, and then S Highway 99 to exit downtown. Northbound paths into downtown […]

Seattle Channel interviews MOHAI director Leonard Garfield for insights into the early history of the Alaskan Way Viaduct. The full episode of CityStream is also available here on YouTube. This is an open thread.

KIRO did an interesting investigation into why the new (post 2015) trolley buses keep dropping off the wires Update: this is apparently an old story Mayor Durkan announces a missing middle housing task force WSDOT spending $4.4M to market the new downtown tunnel On a totally unrelated note, here are all the new single-family homes […]

Correction 1: The original claim on this post of free water taxi service was incorrect. The author apologizes for the error. Correction 2: Only one ramp will still be closed Monday — the northbound ramp from Highway 99 to Dearborn St — while the seven other ramps will be open. Northbound bus re-routes will continue […]

SDOT’s Jonathan Dong wrote in to tell us that the agency is planning to upgrade the eastbound bus lane on Howell St this spring. Howell St. is a four-lane, one way street with lots of traffic competing with Snohomish County express buses to enter I-5 in the afternoon peak. Today’s right-hand (or center) bus lane […]

At a Stakeholder Advisory Group meeting last night, Sound Transit released its first cost estimates and evaluations for the three proposed Level 3 alignments of the West Seattle-Ballard Link extension. Agency staff presented cost estimates and “mix and match” opportunities, both of which advisory group members and elected officials requested in earlier meetings. Sound Transit […]

Where will riders use the ST3 Link system in 2040? Longtime readers will be familiar with project ridership estimates, but most riders on Link are not going to the ends of the line. Along any line, ridership can be much higher on some segments than others. The suburban lines have weak ridership at the tails. […]

Over the holidays, policy analyst David Gordon made an argument for assessing a county-wide payroll tax to make transit free. I don’t know enough about tax revenue to critique Mr. Gordon’s math, but the idea of replacing the regressive transit sales tax with a progressive payroll tax is certainly appealing. Free transit proposals have been bubbling […]

For the last seven years, Metro’s service-change planning has been driven by the agency’s Service Guidelines, adopted by the County Council to professionalize a planning process that had been increasingly driven by political pressure on individual Council members. The Service Guidelines process has been enormously helpful to the agency over time, allowing it to prioritize […]

Gothamist schooled New Jersey car commuter Whoopie Goldberg on bike lanes, safety, and entitlement. She later walked back her series of rants against NYC bike lanes, sort of. Phyllis Porter, advocate for safe streets and building more family-sized affordable housing, and founder of the local chapter of Black Girls Do Bike, is jumping into the […]

In a Carpocalypse update yesterday, King County Executive Dow Constantine and other officials said again that the traffic crunch has gone as well as they could have hoped. They again encouraged commuters to continue using transit and avoid driving during the viaduct closure, and warned drivers to stay off the road. “While we’ve survived the […]

The Link light rail extension to Federal Way is up next for federal funding approval, but Sound Transit is looking beyond for its future operational needs once the Tacoma Dome extension is completed in 2030. Among the priorities is identifying sites for an operations and maintenance facility (OMF), which is the subject of an ongoing […]

Jarrett Walker has a typically insightful post on New York’s plan to speed up its buses, bucketing the city’s proposed improvements into two categories: cost and controversy: The other big step involves controversy rather than money. More bus lanes need to be created, and the space for them will come from some other street use, usually […]

But it needs more funding Mayor Jenny Durkan announced yesterday that the 1st Avenue streetcar will go ahead, if the city can secure $88m in new funding. In a release, the mayor offered her most enthusiastic endorsement of the Center City Connector to date: “We have the opportunity to create a downtown with fewer cars […]

The Washington State Legislature opened the 2019 regular session Monday. Seven bills directed at dealing with greenhouse gas emissions had already been pre-filed, with most of them scheduled for hearings this week. At the request of Gov. Jay Inslee, Sen. Reuven Carlyle (D – Seattle) introduced Senate Bill 5116, which would: Require electric utilities to […]

Sound Transit is entering yet another round of public feedback for the I-405 BRT project and has revealed the name of the service: Stride. In their online open house and an e-mail to STB, Sound Transit described their criteria for choosing the name, the first new ST brand introduced since Link and Sounder were chosen […]

Some buses were reported to be skipping stops yesterday when they were “full”. Not all “full” buses are really full, because riders don’t always fill the standing space in the back. So, please be kind to your fellow riders down-route who also need to get on the bus. If you are standing, move all the […]

King County officials, including Executive Dow Constantine, were cautiously optimistic on the first day of the Squeeze. In a press conference yesterday afternoon at Metro’s Operations Center, Constantine and Metro officials said that Monday morning’s commute had gone as well as they’d hoped, but reiterated that commuters should pad their schedules by 30 to 60 […]

On Thursday, shuttle bus operator Chariot announced that it would cease all operations by March. The company has a contract to operate King County Metro’s pilot “Ride2” microtransit service around the Eastgate Park and Ride, which hoped to shuttle suburban residents and visitors to and from the park-and-ride without relying on the existing, meandering bus […]

The Alaskan Way Viaduct shut down at 10 pm last Friday, forever. SR 99 will be connected to the tollway under downtown in approximately three weeks. This is an open thread.

Here’s another installment of the series in which STB writers travel around to other cities and make wild generalizations about their transit and land use. This post will arbitrarily grade San Diego’s better-than-I-expected transit system. San Diego’s Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) offers bus, light BRT, light rail, and heavy rail commuter service. It’s one of […]

On Friday, Sen. Patty Kuderer (D – Clyde Hill) submitted a bill that would offer a motor vehicle excise tax (MVET, or “car tab”) market-value adjustment to low-income car owners, for the portion of their car tabs going to Sound Transit. Senate Bill 5075 would offer a discount based on the difference between the MVET […]

Trams running though roundabouts can be found throughout Europe. Salt Lake City implemented one in 2003. Now the Phoenix area is getting one.

Good news: traffic deaths in Seattle were down significantly in 2018, according to SDOT according to the latest available data from SDOT. But we’re still far from Vision Zero. Update: Please note that collision data for 2018 is incomplete, as reporting is still in progress. We’ll continue to track the story, and post complete data when it becomes available. In future data stories, we’ll make important metadata like this much more prominent. The data in this story was released on December 19, 2018 and downloaded on December 25, 2018. The City’s internal data collection is ongoing. We’ll follow up with the definitive statistics when they become available. Ten people were killed in collisions this last year, down from 19 […]

When Sound Transit takes over the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel (DSTT) later this year, it will take over the DSTT’s escalators. It’s not yet clear whether Sound Transit will be responsible for making them work better. Sound Transit has had some trouble with escalators. Dramatic system failures crippled Sound Transit’s Capitol Hill and Husky Stadium […]

While 2019 will be a quiet year for transit openings, there’s plenty of upcoming events for transport aficionados to look forward to, whether we’re ready or not. January–February: The viaduct, the tunnel, and the apocalypse It’s been covered to death locally, ourselves included, but in case you’ve been under a rock for the past year: the long-overdue closure of the Alaskan […]

It’s time to look back at the top articles of the last year. The major themes should be no surprise: ST3 and high-speed rail dominated. But our series on East Link and how it’s shaping the Eastside was popular as well. Introducing Cascadia Rail by Cascadia Rail (Feb 12, 2018). The launch of a new […]