Seattle Transit Blog

The City of Everett is looking to join the wave of cities absorbing our ever-exploding population growth by writing two key long-range plans over the coming months, one for downtown land use and one for citywide transit. The “Metro Everett” plan, which will try to accommodate an expected 60,000 new residents and 40,000 new employees […]

Last evening, Metro and Sound Transit released service change concepts for revised bus service on SR 520. This kicks off the second of three rounds of public input, including an online survey and several open houses in mid- to late June. Because these are service concepts, they do not describe capital improvements in Montlake or elsewhere could […]

A familiar story is playing out in Kirkland’s Houghton neighborhood. The Houghton-Everest Business Center is a collection of strip malls and small offices, mostly over 40 years old. Retail spaces are antiquated and undersized. The pedestrian environment, dominated by curb cuts to parking lots, is unsafe. But it is just a block from Google’s office, less […]

A brief Los Angeles transit history lesson.

There’s been a good deal of recent attention to Seattle’s continued growth spurt. The Upshot column in the New York Times points out that we’re also one of the few cities that is growing denser as we add population. In fact, Seattle is already cited as the 8th most dense of the 50 most populous U.S. cities. I’ll expand […]

From now on, board the third car if you want to avoid crowds like this. Photo by SounderBruce Sound Transit will be rolling out increased capacity on Link Light Rail beginning Monday, featuring twelve 3-car trains from opening of service to at least end of PM peak, seven AM peak-only 2-car trains, and seven 2-car […]

Mercer Island has reached agreement with Sound Transit on access to I-90. The agreement means the express lanes can close permanently to auto traffic as scheduled this weekend. A planned hearing this morning in King County Superior Court on Mercer Island’s injunction to prevent the closures is now cancelled. The agreement includes $10 million in […]

Erica interviews Jessyn Farrell. Metro running a survey about I-90 trailheads. Vision Zero making progress, but is it enough? The first reviews are in for Pierce Transit Route 15 (Tacoma-Pt. Defiance) The indispensable Heidi Groover interrogates Bob Hasegawa’s views on transit. Is it too early to allow private bikeshare in? One Center City group collecting […]

After about a decade of planning, legislative showdowns, and lawsuits, two-way HOV operations (R8A)* are to begin on Sunday, June 4th. WSDOT expects delays the first Monday, as people learn about the new configuration. A significant opening in its own right, two-way operations are an omen of even greater changes to commutes in the corridor, and to the […]

Mike Lindblom, The Seattle Times [$]: Sound Transit and its allies in Congress say they’ll fight a 2018 budget proposal by President Donald Trump that yanks $1.1 billion to build the Lynnwood-Northgate light-rail extension — half of that project’s entire funding. The White House policy change would also remove an anticipated $500 million grant for […]

Using the same technology licensed from Alweg, Tokyo’s monorail opened two years after Seattle’s monorail for the 1964 Summer Olympics. It is ten times longer and connects central Tokyo to the airport. There’s that and they also built a bullet train.

Thoughts on Dan Savage’s transit post (also read this) (0:40) Light rail signage (turns out station icons are constellations) (25:15) Flights coming to Paine Field (39:15) Grouping buses (49:20) Car tabs and legislative reading comprehension (55:15) http://traffic.libsyn.com/seattletransitblog/STB_podcast_039.mp3

Seattle’s growth is still accelerating. Census estimates released yesterday show almost 21 thousand new residents in Seattle in the year ended July 2016. With 704 thousand residents, Seattle is once again the nation’s fastest growing city with 3.1% annual growth. We’ve become accustomed to fast growth, averaging 15 thousand new residents in Seattle annually between 2010 and 2015. […]

As of last Friday evening, it was official: no fewer than twenty-one candidates formally filed for the 2017 City of Seattle mayoral primary. As usual, most of this unprecedented crop are unlikely, single-issue, or perennial candidates. But Mayor Ed Murray’s announcement that he won’t run for re-election in the wake of multiple accusations of sexual assault encouraged a bumper […]

djw has some theories about the latest Republican attack on Sound Transit. I endorse the latest Dan Savage gentrification screed 100%. PSRC gathering comment on their next round of transportation grants. Rob Johnson says HALA is working. Data here. Madison BRT work begins. Metro to increase park-and-ride enforcement. All the lawmakers that claimed to not […]

Suppose you were in charge of an Inland Northwest city of about 215,000, an island of vibrant urbanity frozen in a tax- and transit-hostile hinterland. Now suppose your city had a transit system about on a par with Wenatchee, Washington — population 35,000 — with buses running at best every 30 minutes to 10 PM […]

You’re standing at 3rd and Union. You want to go to 23rd and Jackson, the commercial heart of the Central District. Or you want to go home, in the dense housing near Washington Middle School. What’s the quickest way to get there? The answer is “Who knows?” And this common trip between major destinations may […]

Eastside leaders gathered in Bellevue on May 5 to review transit and other transportation projects coming on the Eastside. 0:00 Claudia Balducci, King County Council Member for District 6 5:57 John Howell (Moderator), Founding Partner, Cedar River Group 7:25 Ariel Taylor, King County Council Staff 18:10 Roger Millar, Secretary of Transportation, WSDOT 40:15 Peter Rogoff, […]

How dense is Seattle? It depends on what geographic area is meant by “Seattle” and also temporal factors like day of the week and hour of the day. For instance, the Downtown Seattle Association’s 2014 economic report estimates nearly 60,000 residents in the “greater” downtown area (roughly, Mercer to SODO and Elliott Bay to Broadway) with […]

Alaska Airlines shocked everyone yesterday by announcing they would begin commercial service out of Paine Field in fall 2018. There will be 9 daily flights by Boeing 737 and Embraer 175 jets, presumably to major Western cities. But how does this fit into the overall strategy for the area, a strategy that includes Link to Paine Field? […]

California’s full-on legislative assault on NIMBY obstruction. Take note, Olympia. Local car ownership dropping ($). Erica interviews Mayoral hopeful Nikkita Oliver, and as always, goes deep on housing. Rep. Jessyn Farrell and Jenny Durkan are also running for Mayor. Cascade Bicycle Club trying to get accessible Link station designs in Redmond. Good for them for […]

In the months since the November election, we’ve seen a huge nationwide uptick in digital newspaper subscriptions, with the NY Times and the Washington Post leading the way. But while national newspaper brands are thriving, local news is different. Consider the story of our own KOMO news, forced to create content to appease its new […]

Late last year, Kitsap Transit made news with the passage of its foot ferry initiative, which provided the funding to fulfill a long-standing dream of fast, cross-sound passenger service. For those paying attention to the less-sexy, workhorse transit modes, however, news across the sound has been bad for years. Like every sales tax-dependent agency in Washington, KT took a […]

In case you missed it, Mike Lindblom had a great piece in the Seattle times this past weekend about the final engineering plans for East link on I-90: Engineers have to ensure the bridge will remain buoyant when a pair of 300-ton trains pass each other, and that the high-voltage current that powers the trains won’t stray into […]

This just in: new light rail train interiors unveiled! pic.twitter.com/MAmjgkdZV6 — Sound Transit (@SoundTransit) April 28, 2017

This is my 485th and final post here at Seattle Transit Blog. As I move on to an exciting new opportunity, I wanted to take a minute to thank the reader community here. For the past 7 years I have been able to take for granted having substantive policy conversations every day, a rare treat in today’s media […]

Ten Years of STB (0:30) More on the mayor’s race (9:00) Martin’s commute gets better (25:30) Improvements at the airport (30:40) Stationless bike share (33:10) http://traffic.libsyn.com/seattletransitblog/STB_podcast_038.mp3

Judy Clibborn provides some facts for Mercer Island. Republican Senate again votes to slash Sound Transit revenue. Empire Builder fans speak up for it. Sara Bernard’s feature on carlessness in Seattle is far more insightful than most of that genre. In a development that would have been shocking two months ago, Ed Murray will not run for […]

Heading south into U-District Station:

SeaTac Station by edgeplot [UPDATE: Mr. DeRoy corrected his original statement of when the plexiglass was installed. January, not March.] When last we’d heard from the Port of Seattle, six years of experience with Link service to the airport had inspired the Port (and Commissioner Stephanie Bowman) to come up with a $3.5m, four-step plan […]

From time to time, we’ve posted job openings of interest to the many professionals that read our articles. But today, there’s a somewhat different — and more personal — opportunity. For almost two years, the generosity of our donors has allowed us to hire Zach Shaner on a part-time basis. You’ve all read the output of that […]

On Sunday, the Seattle Times wrote up ($) SDOT’s Employer Shared Transit Stop Pilot program, which started a week prior. It’s a good writeup, although transit nerds probably won’t learn too much they didn’t already know. From SDOT’s page: The City of Seattle and King County Metro are collaborating with Seattle Children’s Hospital and Microsoft to […]

The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) meeting started in Seattle yesterday. For coverage, you can see the liveblog here. For those visiting the city this week, our guide to urbanist sightseeing in Seattle, written for Rail~Volution in 2013, has been kept up to date.

The legislature is back at work, and still going after Sound Transit. Erica interviews mayoral candidate Cary Moon on topics of interest to us. Transportation strategies ($) for the dueling Key Arena proposals. Move Seattle will bring forward SPU work, raising rates in the short term. Legislature scales back $1m high speed rail study to $300,000; […]