Seattle Transit Blog

Where shall we put Ballard’s lone light rail station? As Peter reported, Sound Transit is now in the process of reviewing the many potential alignments for Ballard/Interbay as we approach “Level 3” analysis. Last week’s Elected Leadership Group meeting (video link) was at times a reminder that needs of the riders who will eventually use […]

Last month, the first pair of 18 new Swift bus rapid transit buses entered service on the Blue Line, as part of the line’s return to 10-minute weekday frequencies. The buses were ordered for the Green Line, which will debut next year, and have a few differences from the decade-old coaches that run on the […]

This season’s Trailhead Direct service is wrapping up on October 28th, as the weather worsens and parking demand at trailheads drops. This year’s innovation was to directly serve particularly carless neighborhoods like Capitol Hill, rather than forcing a transfer (or drive) to Issaquah. Feel free to comment on your experiences with Trailhead Direct below, but […]

It shouldn’t come as a shock that STB would endorse a ballot measure that would add more bus service, including longer hours, more frequency, more and faster connections, and more right-of-way priority treatments, in an urban region that makes good use of it. Bruce Englehardt described in full what the measure would likely fund. It […]

Working completely as designed. Thank you @wsdot_520 @DGoldboig, this likely saved everyone on my standing-room-only @SoundTransit 541 bus 4-5 minutes. My @kcmetrobus operator asked me to get you guys to do same for Montlake Fwy stop. Looks like plenty of room for 3 lanes. pic.twitter.com/ZANhp0d5Ba — Glen Buhlmann (@GlenBikes) October 9, 2018

The city’s released its final environmental impact statement (EIS) for accessory dwelling units (ADUs)/backyard cottages last week. Other sites in the urbanist blogosphere analyzed the entire document. This post focuses on the EIS’s study of parking impacts in particular, since worries about street parking availability are a common anti-density talking point. So: would the ADU […]

Voters in the Intercity Transit district, which roughly covers the cities of Lacey, Olympia, Tumwater, and Yelm, will soon decide on Proposition 1, a ballot measure that would increase sales taxes by 0.4 percent in order to fund transit services. Intercity Transit currently levies a 0.8 percent sales tax, which makes up 79 percent of […]

The wonderfully named STAB (Seattle Transit Advisory Board) needs new members. More apartments = stabilized rents ($). People “rebutting” this by pointing out the lack of units at the low end of the market should ask themselves if stabilizing market-rate rents matters or not. Though market-rate construction doesn’t solve all problems, it is a necessary […]

If you’re reading STB, you likely need no reminder that climate change is an emergency that requires urgent action. So we’ll dispense with the general case to take on some of the arguments, often in bad faith, deployed against this ballot measure. First, familiarize yourself with the specifics of the measure. The carbon fee will […]

In a meeting last Friday, Seattle and King County elected officials rejected the most expensive West Seattle Link alignment, endorsed a tunnel under the Lake Washington Ship Canal from Interbay to Ballard, and urged Sound Transit to significantly revamp plans for the Chinatown/International District (CID) station. The rejection of CID plans, so far the most […]

Our three endorsements in the primary election remain: Sen. Marko Liias, running for re-election (State Senate, District 21) Jesse Salomon (State Senate, District 32) Joe Nguyen (State Senate, District 34) Six Representatives, five Democratic and one Republican, stood up for Sound Transit against the MVET rollback efforts this year: Jacqueline Maycumber (District 7, Position 1) Beth […]

Today is the deadline to register online to vote in the November election. If you’ve moved here, changed address, or otherwise haven’t registered to vote, the time is now. Please go to MyVote.wa.gov, which is a portal for whatever registration transactions you need. Only Thurston County is offering a strictly transit-related measure on the ballot. […]

Car-sharing attempt in France in 1971. "Lime for cars". Subscription model (to get a key) + pay per ride (with plastic tokens, like coins in phonebooths). While riding, radio signals were sent to the company. (video in French) Entrepreneurial spirit in pre-iPhone era 🤩 pic.twitter.com/lM1notF4xZ — Romain Serman (@romainserman) September 15, 2018

Two months ago I wrote about the Downtown Seattle Association’s experiment with a free waterfront shuttle. The pilot’s original term ended on October 1st, and the numbers are in. September 14th was the highest ridership day, at 1,674. The average weekday attracted 953 boardings, or 95 per hour. Weekends actually saw more usage, at 1,044 […]

It was disappointing to learn that 3 of the 7 RapidRide corridors planned for the Move Seattle levy have been postponed indefinitely. Fortunately, the most effective way to improve transit is also the least expensive: red paint. The Mayor’s budget promised 100,000 new bus service hours. It’ll be a shame if those hours are spent […]

Paine Field commercial flights begin next year ($). Seattle government ditching some cars. As we reported previously, CT fares went up a quarter this week. Link tracks cracked ($); maintenance work this weekend. Everett Transit fares rising steeply through 2020. Buses on I-5 shoulder coming soon. Once a bikeshare leader, SDOT now squashing scooters ($) […]

Last week I pointed to some data from Gene Balk that transit ridership was higher for lower income brackets than higher incomes, consistent with conventional wisdom but disproving the argument that transit improvements are an elite project. But Monday’s column ($) draws the opposite conclusion: Among Seattle-area residents with a salary of $75,000 or more, […]

Peter joins Frank to talk about Paris The Mayor’s budget (7:00) RapidRide (19:15) ST3 Level 2 (32:38) http://traffic.libsyn.com/seattletransitblog/STB_podcast_67.mp3

In a letter addressed to elected officials, Port of Seattle Executive Director Stephen Metruck and Northwest Seaport Alliance CEO John Wolfe announced that the Port opposes both a movable Ship Canal bridge, and an Occidental Avenue alignment for the West Seattle extension. Ship Canal and Duwamish crossings “Moveable bridges across the ship canal should be […]

Metro’s head of service development, Bill Bryant, told STB about Metro’s provisional plans for West Seattle bus operations when the viaduct closes later this year, during the 3-6 week period when the SR 99 tunnel has not yet opened. These changes are not permanent. Metro will revise service again when SR 99 is back in operation […]

Yes, Tokyo, home to the world’s most extensive urban rail network, has one station named “Tokyo”.

If you’ve driven to the San Juans, especially in summer, you know the horror: scheduling a ferry slot months in advance, struggling with an overloaded website when the slots are released, allotting plenty of extra time in case you hit traffic, and showing up no later than 45 minutes before sailing. And then you fork […]

Two pieces of good news for bus commuters on SR-520: one next month and another in 2023. Next month, WSDOT will install a temporary bus-only queue jump in the Montlake off-ramp. This comes a few months after several advocates met with the agency to discuss potential improvements. The queue jump will take advantage of excess […]

What YIMBYs should learn from New York’s ethnic neighborhoods Lyft, Metro, and Zipcar want you to ditch your car Lime scooters are up and running in Tacoma LOL: This Teacher Was Taking Three Buses To Work, So Her Students Surprised Her With Better Public Transit Infrastructure Denver launches its version of ORCA LIFT This Q&A […]

Several of Metro’s busiest routes are scheduled to be upgraded to RapidRide before 2024, while several others will get speed and reliability improvements but without the RapidRide branding, according to the agency’s latest Capital Improvement Plan (CIP). While RapidRide is a program of King County Metro, Seattle’s 2015 Move Seattle Levy promised “seven new RapidRide+ […]

Yesterday Mayor Durkan announced her 2019-2020 budget proposal, to be presented to the City Council, which will have an opportunity to weigh in. In the context of an overall effort to control spending city-wide, the SDOT budget increases by $128m over 2018 levels. Here are some transit highlights: The Streetcar lives! The budget includes $9m […]

Gene Balk has a typically informative column ($) about who is taking to transit to work these days. University professors, housekeepers, and computer programmers have the highest transit share of any professions in Seattle. He astutely points out how much this has to do with where jobs are located. Seattle is incredibly fortunate that Amazon […]

Everett Transit, on the verge of a major network restructure, brought its first electric battery bus into service earlier this week. The bus, a 42-foot Proterra Catalyst E2, is identical to the newer generation of electric battery buses operated by Metro in Bellevue and has been one of the most popular electric models for the […]

Sound Transit is currently gathering public input on the ST3 Level 2 Planning options they presented a few weeks ago. As we noted early this year, this is an opportunity to make light rail exceptional and the difference is all in the details. At this phase it’s time to apply the concepts of reliability, expandability, […]

SeaTac international arrivals terminal soars to $1B City Council looking at using public land for affordable housing Downtown Seattle Association argues for the CCC Parking-light TOD going in near Tacoma’s Freighthouse Square Minneapolis’ ambitious housing plan is facing the inevitable headwinds A mediator will be brought in to try and appease opponents of bike safety […]

Rainier Freeway Station, at I-90 and Rainier will close for 5 years beginning Monday, September 22, for East Link Construction. You can read Sound Transit’s explainer for more details. Most routes (111, 114, 212, 214, 216, 218, and 219) will bypass the station and head into downtown, while the 554, 217, and some 212 trips […]

This is the third and final post in our series about the latest designs for the West Seattle and Ballard Link extensions. This post covers West Seattle. On September 5th, Sound Transit released its latest concept work on the West Seattle and Ballard light rail extensions. We’re examining each segment in-depth, from north to south, […]

This is the second of three posts in our series about the latest designs for the West Seattle and Ballard Link extensions. This post covers Uptown and South Lake Union. Last Wednesday, September 5th, Sound Transit released its latest concept work on the West Seattle and Ballard light rail extensions. We’re examining each segment in-depth, […]

Dublin is reimagining its bus network.

Over the last three years, we’ve gotten used to a continuous stream of service improvements from Metro. The pattern continues with this fall’s service change, which starts next Saturday, September 22. There are almost no substantive changes to Metro service this time around. The big picture is a peanut-butter-style scattering of new trips throughout the Metro […]

The Sound Transit Board’s capital committee on Thursday made the early construction of the North 130th St. more likely. The agency’s staff and elected leadership also continued to express concerns about the Trump administration’s hostility to transit projects. The committee also voted to elevate Downtown Redmond’s new Link station, change the Federal Way Link federal […]

Mike Lindblom writes a fair deep dive on the 85th St BRT Station ($). ST to talk with Lower Queen Anne about station locations Sep. 20. The pro-CCC coalition ($) is impressively broad. The bus stop improvement plan was scuttled by privacy concerns. “Adaptive signals” are not great. Nuisance lawsuit against ST3 car tabs thrown […]

Possible good news for North Seattle: the Sound Transit board’s capital committee will vote Thursday on a resolution to move forward with preliminary engineering for 130th St station, meaning it could open years earlier than originally planned. We started writing about 130th back in 2013, touting its potential for east-west connectivity and transit-oriented development. 130th […]

Sound Transit’s new schedule books are out. The September 22 service changes include some bad news and little bits of good news. Seven ST Express bus routes, including the two with the highest ridership (routes 550 and 545), are losing trips. Routes 511 and 580 are the only routes gaining trips. Some routes are losing […]

Answering your questions Elected boards (2:31) Earthquakes (9:20) Fare evasion (9:50) Streetcar alternatives (11:20) Light rail to Laurelhurst (19:00) East link frequency (22:00) Center platforms (24:20) Fare evasion and ORCA (28:20) Post-viaduct transit from the South (30:20) 4th avenue CID station (31:20) Seattle Circulator (32:59) City council (36:01) Post-viaduct transit from the north (40:55) Real […]

This is the first of three posts in our series about the latest designs for the West Seattle and Ballard Link extensions. This post covers Ballard and Interbay. Last Wednesday, September 5th, Sound Transit released its latest concept work on the West Seattle and Ballard light rail extensions. We’re examining each segment in-depth, from north […]

When you have no room to turn a bus around…

The Federal Transit Administration approved $2.6 billion in Capital Investment Grants funding this week, including $100 million for the Lynnwood Link Extension. The installment in the second granted to Sound Transit for the project, but can’t be used until the signing of a full funding grant agreement (FFGA) between the FTA and Sound Transit, which […]

On Wednesday, Sound Transit released the latest design work on the West Seattle and Ballard Link extensions. We’ll have more detailed analysis of each segment next week, but here are the major takeaways from the presentation. More cost concerns ST staff opened the meeting with a warning about cost control, which is an increasingly common […]

A twitter thread, since deleted, questioned which dollars the new Center City Connector cost estimates were expressed in. If the study counts year of expenditure (YOE) dollars, then simply deferring the project balloons the cost. Absolutely obsessed with questions about YOE vs. constant dollars during the ST3 campaign, I was embarrassed not to think of […]

If you missed the Friday night news dump, it was a doozy. Lizz Giordano says they’re Upzoning downtown Everett ($). Bus lane coming to Columbia Street. Open Houses for the Link extension to Tacoma begin next week. RFP for Northgate TOD reissued; delay turns out to have been mostly a waste of time. Another for […]

Sound Transit will brief the public and stakeholders on the latest West Seattle-Ballard concepts tonight, and what it shows could make a ruckus. So far, ST has tipped a preference for siting the Chinatown station and segment on 5th Avenue South. But a coalition of neighborhood groups and transit advocates is rooting for a 4th […]

Frank and I will tape another mailbag for our podcast as early as Wednesday night. Please fill this comment thread with your questions in the next day or so.

In the 2018 primary election, STB endorsed three state senate candidates, including one devoutly-pro-transit incumbent (Sen. Marko Liias), one open-seat candidate (Joe Nguyen), and one challenging an entrenched incumbent (Jesse Salomon, challenging light rail opponent Sen. Maralyn Chase). All three of our endorsees came in first in the primary election. We’re hungry for more. Or […]