Seattle Transit Blog

To date, I’ve been pretty disappointed in the public discussion of Sound Transit 3. Instead of discussing the transportation merits, we’ve been lost in hang-wringing over Sound Transit’s advertising expenditures (so much for “run government like a business!”), overambitious responses to public records requests, or other political minutiae. There has been the “multitasking fallacy”, in which SeattlePI’s […]

UDistrict Rezone Presentation – PLUZ Committee 9/20/2016 The City Council’s Planning, Land Use, and Zoning (PLUZ) committee meets Tuesday morning at 9:30 am. Towards the end of the agenda will be the first committee briefing on the big UDistrict Rezone announced last week after more than 5 years of planning. With the Comprehensive Plan entering […]

Although it hasn’t gained any support at all among regional decisionmakers, a longtime favorite in the STB commentariat has been the “peanut butter” plan. It would build rail and bus tunnels where surface buses are hopeless, namely the Ballard/UW corridor and in downtown Seattle, and try to address the worst bus bottlenecks on Elliott Avenue and […]

“So what’s the problem with BART?” (Martin H. Duke, April 6, 2016). With reference to Metrorail, BART does better than Duke implies. It achieves significantly lower unit operating costs than Metrorail, and does much better in terms of energy efficiency and labor productivity. Granted, BART has “issues,” but does do some things right. The exercise […]

We are just one week from the opening of Angle Lake Station, completing a heady year of progress for Sound Transit. I hope to see y’all there! With the disappearance of waiting trains laying over at SeaTac Airport Station, since they are continuing on to Angle Lake Station out of service for pre-revenue testing, the […]

Author’s Note: The underlined clarifications below are from Scott Gutierrez, Metro spokesperson. Policies that nudge bus passengers away from paying cash while boarding the bus remain low-hanging fruit for system-wide service improvements via travel time reductions. King County measurements in 2012 measured it as 4.6 to 6.9 seconds per boarding, with another 1.5 seconds saved […]

When commuters get frustrated with transit in greater Seattle – be it cars hogging bus lanes with impunity, lack of transit priority altogether, or bafflement at specific planning decisions – a common refrain is “None of this would happen if only our agencies rode their own services!” Our politicians and executives like to tout their transit-riding cred, […]

Alert readers may have noticed the new “ST3” item on the menu bar at the top of this page. It’s intended to be a single, simple URL (http://seattletransitblog.com/ST3) for a useful reference to November’s ballot measure. You’ll find our endorsement there, of course, but also answer basic question like “What is in the package?” and […]

Hefty Snohomish County Ballot will cost 68 cents to mail; don’t screw up your chance to vote for ST3. An update on Seattle 2035. PSRC recommends $700m of federal grants in a $4.5 billion regional transportation plan. Checking in on ST2’s Tacoma Link expansion. Affordable housing on the agenda in Bellevue. Seattle CM Lorena Gonzalez […]

I recently had the opportunity to check out Portland’s new-launched bike share system, Biketown. While the bikes are similar, the rest of the system is quite different and there are many things Seattle could learn while mulling Pronto’s expansion. I joined Pronto earlier this year and use it several times a week. The two systems […]

The League of Women Voters is hosting a series of free public forums on Sound Transit 3 at five locations around the region. Each forum will feature pro and con speakers, including Sound Transit CEO Peter Rogoff, Transportation Choices Coalition’s Shefali Ranganathan, and Smarter Transit’s Maggie Fimia. Tacoma – Monday, Sept. 12 at 7 pm (tonight): Phillips […]

Mass Transit Now, the campaign to pass Regional Proposition 1, also known as Sound Transit 3, which this blog has wholeheartedly endorsed, is holding a series of campaign kickoff events around the region this week. Everett: Monday, September 12 (tonight!) 5-7 pm, The Anchor Pub, 1001 Hewitt Ave. The Anchor Pub is at the west end of Hewitt Ave, […]

Hi there, for the past few hours I have been mapping out our future ST3 Light Rail system in it’s entirety over a geographic map, so now you can see exactly where every station and routing will be and how it fits into our urban environment. Check it out here. If I have made any errors, […]

Beginning tomorrow, September 11, Pierce Transit will improve midday frequency and expand weeknight service on 13 of its routes. This is the second major expansion of the system since the Great Recession, during which the agency cut much of its service, withdrew from several cities, and failed to pass two ballot measures. Pierce Transit joins Metro, Sound Transit and Community […]

The idea that carsharing membership would reduce vehicle ownership is intuitive. However, the overall impact on Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) is less obvious. While an explicit per-mile charge discourages marginal driving, carsharing can also avoid an inconvenient transit trip for travelers who would not have purchased a car, or would have been deterred by the […]

Yesterday County Executive Dow Constantine launched the official Long Range Plan process, moving it from a (very good) draft to an actionable item of legislation. Now called “Metro Connects“, the County Council will tinker with and debate it through the autumn, with expected adoption in early 2017. As a reminder, the plan would a number […]

Discussing our ST3 Endorsement (1:30) Vancouver’s real-estate bust and what it might mean for Seattle (13:00) Reader mailbag (21:40) http://traffic.libsyn.com/seattletransitblog/STB_podcast_024.mp3

Most people who have a vehicle choose to use that vehicle to get to and fro rather than opting for travel via public transportation. However, using public transportation is often the smarter choice; using public transportation is better for the environment, can be more cost effective, and is often safer. The following highlights the top […]

Charles Mudede joins our crusade to make the Monorail accept ORCA. Labor group endorses ST3. U-Link stations allow busking. Zoning at Angle Lake. CHS has details on Judkins Park station. Sound Transit reserved HOV parking now accepting applications. Metro short of drivers, canceling trips. Putting the ST3 price tag in perspective. The Seattle City Council […]

At the end of August, transportation and tech writers seized on the news that not only is Uber losing money, it’s hemorrhaging cash faster than any startup in history. In the first half of this year, Uber’s losses totaled $1.27B, and subsidies for Uber ‘driver-partners’ accounted for a majority of the losses. Though purposefully losing […]

ST3 opponents are wearing the $54 billion figure like armor. It’s doubtful that a 25-year program expressed in year of expenditure (YOE) dollars results in a figure that people can meaningfully evaluate, but that’s the number the press has settled on. There’s the median $169 per adult estimate, which hides a lot of variation, or the online […]

Sightline had an interesting report recently about displacement of older (presumably more affordable) homes by new development. They looked at 19 apartment complexes built in Seattle (all of the 8+ unit developments the King County Assessor considers as built in 2016). Those developments created 1,764 new homes while displacing only 21 older homes, a compelling 84-to-1 ratio. 12 developments on […]

In a break with tradition, Bumbershoot‘s three days span this Friday through Sunday, but not Labor Day. The monorail is staying open a little later for the crowds. The Washington State Fair opened Friday, and runs through four weekends and three weeks, with Sounder service provided on the final two Saturdays, September 17 and 24. […]

Frank and I will be taping soon, so if there’s a question you’d like us to answer, please leave it in the comments over the next couple of days.

It’s that time of year again! Metro and Sound Transit service changes begin Saturday, September 10. If you feel like this is earlier than past years, well, you’re right. The agencies have moved to biannual service changes, in mid-March and mid-September, replacing the previous late-September timing when there were three changes each year. The big news is […]

The Sound Transit 3 campaign now has their own official online tax calculator. Fauntleroy ferry operations not going well. Pushing for a narrower waterfront highway, but general-purpose lanes are “non-negotiable.” I wish I could be this optimistic that we’d be the first to see self-driving cars. Community Transit repainting Lynnwood Transit Center; some service revisions. SDOT […]

The wait ends this Saturday. At long last, Husky football is accessible to the masses by means other than buses crawling through a sea of cars and then a wall of people. The 2016 edition of Husky football kicks off Saturday at 11 am, against the Scartlet Knights of Rutgers. This will be the first-ever […]

The long-awaited mid-day Sounder round-trip will begin a week from Monday, on September 12. Perhaps more accurately described as “shoulder peak” than mid-day, the new trip will leave Lakewood at 10:18am for a 11:31 Seattle arrival, with a 3-hour layover before departing Seattle at 2:32pm for a 3:45 arrival in Lakewood. The service will utilize […]

This November we have a generational opportunity to build on Sound Transit’s recent successes, and extend a regional rapid transit network that is able to scale with a growing region. To understand why a yes vote is important, we’ll start from the beginning. Why Transit? The reasons to favor transit investment over cars are numerous. The […]

With the confluence of Mariner and Husky season looming, Mike Lindblom reports that Sound Transit is looking to beef up “mega event” service beyond it’s already-boosted weekend standard of 3 cars every 10 minutes. Sound Transit would do this by running weekday peak frequency but inverting the baseline, with twelve 3-car trains joining seven 2-car trains. During regular peak […]

I-732 and progressive coalitions (1:20) Reuven Carlyle’s doubts about ST3 (24:05) What do ST1’s cost overruns tell us, if anything, about ST3? (35:30) Angle Lake (42:30) Sponsored by Talking Headways http://traffic.libsyn.com/seattletransitblog/STB_podcast_023.mp3

In the discussions of Transit Oriented Development (TOD) at Shoreline’s future 145th Street Station, Charles Bond at The Urbanist broke the news that Sound Transit, Metro, and WSDOT have agreed to move the station north by roughly 400′, to the vicinity of NE 148th Street. As we discussed last week, the station already has much going against […]

Acting WSDOT secretary Roger Millar no longer acting, will be ST Board Member as well. East King Park and Rides filling up. Vancouver tries to learn from Seattle bikeshare’s mistakes. ST Board approves Northgate parking garage. TransitApp keeps improving. “Environmental” groups reject I-732. Apparently reducing carbon emissions is not a big enough priority to subordinate their […]

At a press conference this morning, Sound Transit CEO Peter Rogoff and Sound Transit Board Chair/King County Executive Dow Constantine announced that Angle Lake Station will open on Saturday, September 24th. Alaska Airlines is sponsoring the opening ceremonies to the tune of $25,000, with total costs for Opening Day expected to be just north of $50,000, more […]

I’ve just returned from a weeklong vacation in Glacier National Park, and though I didn’t intend to think much about transit while there, I was more than pleasantly surprised by the effectiveness of the park’s bike, bus, and rail options. Glacier draws 2.3m visitors per year despite its remoteness – the nearest large cities (Calgary […]

If you commute on Link between Westlake and UW, you may notice something a little different beginning this afternoon: cell service. Sound Transit has announced that the long-awaited addition begins today and will be rolled out over the coming months in (many) phases. For various administrative reasons and because each carrier has to sign a […]

While they remain controversial politically, the HOT lanes on I-405 between Bellevue and Lynnwood are increasingly popular with transit users and the drivers who use the lanes. Higher than forecast driver demand has led to higher toll revenues, and those revenues are being put to work to benefit drivers in the corridor. The first improvement is […]

At this point it’s a cliche to say that we have an affordability crisis, although it’s more accurately described as a housing shortage. There are many powerful anecdotes that support this thesis, but unfortunately policymakers lack the metrics to indicate if their housing strategy is working. In the news media, we see two data series […]

Whether or not the current run-up in housing prices constitutes a “new bubble” is an open question, but it can’t be denied that the U.S. housing market is awash in investor capital, seeking outsize returns in a world where there aren’t many to be had. Case in point: Goldman Sachs bringing back the bubble-inflating CDO. […]

Community Transit announced Friday that the agency’s board of directors has approved the purchase of at least 57 buses to be delivered beginning next year. The buses ordered were part of three contracts awarded to three different manufacturers: Alexander Dennis for 17 double-decker (“Double Tall”) buses, Gillig for 26 40-foot buses to be used on […]

Roosevelt station progressing [DJC] Car makes illegal left, gets hit by light rail [KIRO] Sen. Reuven Carlyle reflects on ST3 after reading Zach… [Reuven Carlyle’s blog] … while Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon writes a full-throated rebuttal… [PubliCola] … and Rich Soltz of OneAmerica piles on [the Stranger] Wallace Properties – yes, that Kevin Wallace – making bank on […]

It’s high time for a resurrection of this blog’s classic Transit Report Card series, in which STB writers wildly generalize another city’s transit system based on limited experiences. I’m here to report from two separate car-free trips to Washington, D.C., home to the (in)famous Metrorail system. Over the course of two cumulative weeks in October and June, […]