Seattle Transit Blog

Friends, I was struck by something I heard Chris Hayes say on a recent podcast, in the middle of a conversation about the tumult in the country today and how we might turn a corner. He said: And then finally I think about how do we create shared public life, civics based institutions. The thing […]

Head tax (2:09) Transportation Benefit District (16:27) Move Seattle reset (32:33) Northgate TOD (44:43) http://traffic.libsyn.com/seattletransitblog/STB_podcast_062.mp3

County proposes putting hotel/motel taxes to use for affordable housing Capitol Hill TOD breaks ground Where the growth is happening in the region What’s up with the fans in the I-90 tunnel How interactive mapping helped sell MHA Lynnwood link construction contracts to be awarded this fall The case for keeping Island Transit free Seattle […]

Underground cell service is going LIVE in Beacon Hill TODAY for uninterrupted connections from end to end on Link! pic.twitter.com/kAWmaV6YJw — Sound Transit – 🚆 🚈 🚍 (@SoundTransit) June 18, 2018 Fifteen months after the DSTT, ST announced T-Mobile had service in the Beacon Hill Tunnel, though as of Tuesday evening Bruce Englehardt was unable […]

This past week I was contacted out of the blue by someone who’d newly returned to Seattle, found an old post of mine here on the blog, and wanted to meet to learn more about the history of transit and land use in the city and how she could help make things better. It reminded […]

Earlier this month, VIA architecture released its study of the potential for higher capacity and usage of the Seattle Center Monorail. Though activists had been asking for years for ORCA integration to bring the independent line into the fare system, it was the commitment to bring big-time sports back to Key Arena that finally made […]

Back in 2014, Seattle voters approved a $60 license fee and 0.1% sales tax for a Transportation Business District (TBD) that would fund bus service through 2021. Originally conceived as a way to avoid bus cuts after a countywide measure failed earlier that year, before the election this was re-framed as an opportunity to increase […]

By Joel Sisolak, Senior Director of Sustainability and Planning, Capitol Hill Housing If you have an ORCA card, there’s a good chance you got it through your employer or your apartment building. The largest group of ORCA users get their pass that way, taking advantage of one of two “Passport” programs (ORCA Business Passport Programfor employers and […]

King County Metro restarts affordable TOD process at Northgate link station, hoping to get more affordable units Lakewood’s SR 512 P&R closing for 4 months, here are alternatives Naming the new Seattle tunnel City scores a victory in MHA process 160 affordable units near the Rainier Beach Link station Rezoned, revitalized Aurora Vancouver looking at up […]

The West Seattle Link extension was promised to voters as three stations (Delridge, Avalon, and Alaska Junction) running on an elevated guideway. Some West Seattle residents are advocating for the removal of Avalon station to pay for a tunnel under the Junction. Sound Transit has pushed back on this idea, arguing that removing a station […]

While work Northgate Link moves past construction and into cleanup and testing, developers have been busy drawing up plans for new housing near its stations. Opening day is only three years away, so projects that have started early design review should be able to finish up around the same time that light rail service begins […]

SODO Station and the SODO busway: Future home of West Seattle – southside train transfers Photo by Joe Kunzler / flickr When ST3 is built out, it will have two major downtown transfer hubs, at already-very-busy Westlake Station and International District / Chinatown Station. In all likelihood, transfers at these stations will not be fast, […]

Class action lawsuit filed against Sound Transit on car tab fees One step closer to free transit for high school students Metro kicks off Eastside mobility survey the death of America’s small apartments Lynnwood link online survey California going big on EV charging Meanwhile, plenty of hypocrisy to go around with BART and housing What […]

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been nearly a year since Seattle became the first American city to have a large dockless bike share presence. With the initial permits set to be reviewed this summer, SDOT’s Joel Miller reported to the committee last week on the system, which now includes 10,000 bikes provided by 3 […]

This week, crews started demolition work along the 9th Avenue wall that runs along the edge of Convention Place Station and its bus layover lot. The demolition work will be conducted primarily on weekends from now until October and is being done to prepare for the eventual turnover of Convention Place to the convention center […]

Last week, Sound Transit kicked off a summer of public events centered around SR 522 BRT. “Project Refinement” will be done in early 2019, the board selects a final project for preliminary engineering in January 2020, and the line should actually open in 2024. This phase collects input on station locations, parking location and type, […]

Tomorrow, Capital Metro in Austin launches a Houston-style network restructure they call Cap Remap that streamlines routes and expands frequent service to more of the city.

In response to several requests, this post is adapted from a recent Twitter thread that readers seemed to like, even though I impulsively started it during a break at work while irritated at some tweets. There’s a straw man that gets a lot of abuse in online housing debates: that the more-market-oriented variety of pro-housing activists […]

The third and final (for now) installment of our photo tours is here, and covers the most exciting and fastest-changing part of East Link. Continuing from Tuesday’s tour, the downtown Bellevue tunnel will emerge at the east end of Bellevue Transit Center, and has a mixed bag of public views. These photos were all taken […]

Correction: The original post referred to a “carbon tax” in I-1631. The initiative actually refers to a “pollution fee”, a methodology different from the carbon tax in Initiative 732. I recently ran into a couple stack petitioners seeking signatures for four initiative petitions, starting with Tim Eyman’s latest $30 car tab effort, and ending with […]

First Hill station is not to be (1:21) Electeds bail on First Hill the process rears its ugly head Napkin math analysis Backyard cottages (42:12) Single family rentals leveling off Pierce County & Lyft (50:21) http://traffic.libsyn.com/seattletransitblog/STB_podcast_061.mp3

Some suburban cities looking to slow growth Growth in single-family home rents also slowing Diminished budgets for Seattle’s transit corridors Mariners-Link promotion extended to July 8 Mixed-use TOD near Mountlake Terrace station Local mayors learning about bikes in Copenhagen (Pipeline trail in Pierce Co. looks 🔥) High gas prices straining some transit agency budgets Mobility workshops […]

It appears we’re not going to get a formal study of building the Midtown Station on 8th Avenue, much less further up First Hill. However, a little searching can give us an idea of costs and benefits. Call it the discount version of the study Sound Transit will refuse to give us. Costs Back in […]

The nice thing about BRT is that it doesn’t take forever to open. After we approved BRT on SR522 in 2016, it will open in 2024. ST is holding two community meetings this week to start public planning for the project: Bothell Public Meeting Wednesday, May 30, 6-8 p.m. (presentation at 6:30 p.m.) Northshore Senior […]

In a Request for Proposals released April 13th, Sound Transit outlined a set of system upgrades for its passenger information systems (PIMS). The most visible component of these systems are the realtime arrival information for ST trains and buses, but they also include backend systems that collect and process the data. This project has three […]

Estonia on the free transit tip Bellevue’s Spring District getting more offices NTSB holding a hearing on last winter’s Amtrak Cascades derailment Even when you think you’re done paying for parking garages, you still gotta maintain ’em Deep dive from the Times on bike lane costs [$]. Spoiler: most of the money wasn’t for the bike […]

I have long been skeptical that Sound Transit would build a First Hill light rail station. When the staff doesn’t want to do something, it takes a combination of grassroots pressure and an aggressive leader to make them do it. For over a year, there was no organized campaign and no elected champion for the neighborhood. […]

In September 2014, when the median single family home price in Seattle was $431,000, the city council passed a resolution aimed at increasing Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs). In 2016, when the home price was $513,000, neighborhood activists sued to stop the policy, forcing the city to conduct an environmental impact statement (EIS). Now, in 2018, […]

Early Tuesday morning, a construction foreman for Kiewit-Hoffman was killed after falling 30 to 40 feet from a column on the East Link guideway, near the 148th Avenue interchange on State Route 520 in Overlake. The accident, only the second fatal incident at a Sound Transit construction site, triggered a one-day halt in girder work on […]

After returning with additional modifications, Metro gained approval from the Burien City Council for RapidRide H improvements (previous coverage here). See Omaha Sternberg on Twitter for the play-by-play. You can read Metro’s full proposal (Alternative C) on the Burien website (PDF). RapidRide H, the upgraded version of Metro Route 120, will use Business Access and Transit (BAT) […]

Last Thursday, the Sound Transit 3 “Elected Leadership Group,” a supergroup of local elected officials (the Infinity War of transit oversight, if you will), met to consider which of Sound Transit’s Level 1 alternatives should advance to Level 2. The ELG’s recommendations, like those of the nonelected “Stakeholder Advisory Group,” are nonbinding. The final decision will […]

Beginning Monday, potential riders in some areas of Pierce County will have the option of a free Lyft ride to or from a nearby transit hub. The Federal Transit Administration is providing the $205,000 for this one-year pilot. From the press release: The Limited Access Connection project’s goals include addressing mobility challenges for those with […]

After much debate, a compromise version of Seattle’s employee head tax is now law The Tom and Curley Show is on point on affordable housing Portland streetcar breaking ridership records Slower streets, not autonomous cars, are the real safety breakthrough (Props to Wired for publishing this bit of techno-skepticism) The feds pony up $75M for […]

It’s come to my attention that our hiring of a paid staff reporter has introduced a little confusion into the process for volunteer contributors. Transit enthusiasts who are not seeking payment for writing, and are able to commit to contributing articles on a regular basis, are welcome to start the much simpler process to join […]