Seattle Transit Blog

Bellevue is considering an upzone of the Wilburton area east of Downtown across I-405. A draft EIS, currently open for public comment, examines much greater height and more intense urban activity. The Citizens Advisory Committee is also looking broadly at development standards and public investments to improve the livability of the city’s traditional Auto Row. […]

On a recent week-long business trip to Melbourne, Australia, I had the pleasure of attending a Twenty20 cricket match. I’m not a cricket die-hard. But as someone who’s coached youth baseball for a number of years, I’ve had to reflect a lot on its fundamentals. It was fascinating to see how minor and arbitrary choices […]

Sine die came this evening in Olympia, with the Legislature managing to get its work done on time. There will be no extra sessions. The big drama of the session was over Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 5955, which started out a year ago as a bill to simply reimburse newer car drivers for the difference […]

After almost three years without any significant service cuts, we’ve gotten pretty used to happy service change announcements from Metro. The latest change, which begins this coming Saturday, March 10, is no exception. Service additions are sprinkled throughout the system without much countervailing bad news. (The redundant route 99 does disappear, but ridership numbers suggest that […]

TransLink has been undergoing a transit fare review.

The House Transportation Committee met this morning to hold a public hearing and take action on Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 5955, the car tab relief bill that would reduce the funding stream for Sound Transit 3. Rep. Judy Clibborn (D – Mercer Island), the chair of the committee, proposed an amendment that would strike most […]

Last night, the Senate approved SB 5955, changing the valuation schedule for the ST3 MVET (Motor Vehicle Excise Tax). Up to two-thirds of the cost is remedied by reducing payments from Sound Transit to the Puget Sound Accountability Fund. The vote was 30 yeas, 14 nays, with 5 members excused. The bill now moves to the […]

At recently as 2012, Sound Transit had less than one billion dollars of debt. That increased to $4.6 billion by the end of 2017. The ST3 program will push it much higher, peaking at a projected $17.6 billion in 2035. That path puts Sound Transit close to legal limits as major ST3 projects are delivered. […]

Sound Transit and Metro have released their 2017 ridership numbers, and they paint a rosy picture for our regional transit system amid a national decline in transit ridership (particularly among buses). The two agencies alone carried 155 million total passengers within King County; add estimated figures from Pierce and Snohomish counties and the number of […]

A film produced after the TGV‘s first year. The French had self-service ticket vending and seat reservation for its high speed train in 1981!

In response to a successful challenge by a Phinney Ridge neighborhood group over the lack of onsite parking proposed for a 57-unit apartment building, the city is planning changes to the land use and zoning code that would allow the project to continue. The legislation under consideration would change how the city defines “frequent transit […]

As Sound Transit steps up planning for I-405 BRT, WSDOT is preparing to extend managed HOT lanes from Bellevue south to Renton. Meanwhile, a political consensus in favor of tolling has solidified. After an unsteady start, managed lanes have grown more popular with the public. Eastside cities are recognizing both the benefits in managing traffic […]

On Tuesday night, Sound Transit put on an open house in West Seattle that was well attended (a little crowded, at that) and seemed to generate good ideas. It had all the standard fare: a looping video of the project alignment; some rollplots with maps that vaguely showed the alignment over some aerial imagery; boards […]

Seattle’s $50M yearly investment in additional bus service has helped deliver frequent transit service to a majority of households in the city. After three years, the percentage of families living near routes with transit service every 10 minutes has more than doubled, SDOT says. Now a driver shortage could limit the extra service Seattle can […]

Thursday, the Sound Transit Capital Committee approved funding for project development for two bus rapid transit routes. As part of the ST3 package, the projects will add 45 miles of BRT to the region. One BRT route will run between Lynnwood and Burien along I-405 and State Route 518, with 11 stations in between. The […]

Video explaining Translink and the Mayors’ Council 10 Year Plan.

While the state legislature has shifted from prioritizing wealthy new car owners over carbon-footprint reducing electric mass transit to prioritizing both over education, the bill to allow automatic camera enforcement on transit-only lanes is still getting a chilly reception. Substitute House Bill 2403 got out of the House Transportation Committee back on January 17, and […]

Apps are not transforming the urban transport business. If you read only one thing out of this list, make it this. The per-ride costs incurred by some startup flexible-route/microtransit services are staggering, to say nothing of the (as yet unknown) year-on-year losses incurred by Uber, Lyft etc. A future free of congestion thanks to driverless […]

The Senate Transportation Committee completed the first half of its work for this session with its final meeting to pass out senate bills this afternoon. The only bill among the ten on the agenda that didn’t get bipartisan unanimity to move forward was Substitute Senate Bill 5955, dealing with Sound Transit motor vehicle excise tax […]

Senate Bill 5955, Sen. Patty Kuderer’s (D – Bellevue) car tab relief bill, has been added to the list of bills scheduled for action in the Senate Transportation Committee today. Today is also the last day for bills to get out of committee, unless they are necessary to the budgets. The committee meets this afternoon […]

Before Sound Transit began planning light rail expansion east to Redmond, the city’s then-mayor, Rosemarie Ives, was already eyeing a congestion-free trip via public transportation from her city to Seattle. Many are glad Ives, who served as mayor from 1991 to 2007, never got her way and a 60-mile monorail system crisscrossing the region was […]