Seattle Transit Blog

Comments on Sound Transit’s 2017 Service Implementation Plan are due TODAY. Sound Transit staff will then process the comments and submit the service plan to the Board later this month. Send an email to the board emailtheboard@soundtransit.org and to service planning fastride@soundtransit.org now. For maximum effect we suggest you keep your comments short and sweet. Here are what we consider the […]

Sometimes the quest for narrower streets creates strange bedfellows. This is certainly the case with the future Alaskan Way, whose proposed 9-lane “stroad” (surface highway) has upset a conflicting array of local advocates. Walk, bike, and Vision Zero advocates rightly clamor for a smaller, safer, slower roadway (reduce the general purpose lanes!). The Alliance for Pioneer […]

BY KATIE WILSON If you’re homeless or living on a bare-bones income, transportation is a challenge. With even reduced fares out of reach, chances are you rely on Metro’s Human Services Ticket Program. This program was born of protest. Back in 1991, SHARE (Seattle Housing and Resource Effort) was spending most of their budget buying […]

Last week I attended a conference in Seoul. After long days of, uh, conferring, I wandered the subways and streets of one of the largest Asian megacities. For a great walking city, Seoul is a curiously bad walking city. Things are close together, and the side streets are narrow enough to be dominated by pedestrians […]

When Sound Transit decided to split the spine for the ST3 package – sending Everett trains to West Seattle and Tacoma trains to Ballard – it did so for a number of reasons. The unprecedented length of the spine corridor meant it was always infeasible to run trains end to end; and capacity concerns in […]

As reported by Mike Lindblom over the weekend ($), State Senator Steve O’Ban (R – University Place) has signaled his intent to file a bill in the upcoming legislative session requiring the direct election of Sound Transit Boardmembers. Just two weeks after an election in which voters explicitly affirmed Sound Transit 3, O’Ban’s contention is that Sound […]

Two groups appeal the Waterfront EIS, joining the bike and pedestrian community in decrying the “8-lane highway”. But it’s mixed messaging at its best: the Alliance for Pioneer Square wants fewer buses, the Historic Seattle Waterfront Association wants more surface parking, the transit community wants bus lanes, and the bike/ped community wants a more human […]

BY SEATTLE SUBWAY Unless you have been living under an automobile for the last nine days you are probably aware that last Tuesday, ST3 passed. It’s been a long, winding road to get here, and we have yet to summit the mountaintop, but at the moment the view is great. ST3 is a huge win, […]

The only public hearing on the big UDistrict rezone is tonight at 5:30pm at the Hotel Deca (4507 Brooklyn Ave NE). If you believe abundant housing near transit is an unequivocal social good, please attend tonight and make your voice heard. Since we last covered the rezone in September, the scope has been whittled away somewhat, including elimination […]

Any of you who saw the Seattle Times ST3 precinct map saw a very similar map to 2008, with North/Central Seattle and Downtown Tacoma doing the heavy lifting for passage. Seattle carried King County, and King County carried the region. More people voted Yes on ST3 in King County than voted at all in Snohomish and […]

A bit lost in the tornado of Trump and ST3, King County unanimously passed its $11B 2017-2018 budget yesterday. As we wrote about in September, the budget restores Metro’s capital program, provides 300,000 new bus service hours, hires 213 new bus drivers, and prepares Metro to implement the Metro Connects Long Range Plan. The Metro portion of the […]

Reader Greg Briggs wonders “if there is a way to just get the full low level schedule” for 3-car Link trains, because they’re much more comfortable to ride than the 2-car trains during rushhour. There is, although it’s important to remember that Sound Transit will change the schedules on days of big events. Furthermore, if […]

How many times a day does this happen at Sound Transit’s new UW Station? Someone arrives at the station from street level, hops on the elevator, and gets to the platform. As they’re about to board the waiting train, they realize that they forgot to pay. There’s no ORCA card reader on the platform, so […]

Tuesday’s election was an existential whiplash in a number of ways, but it was a particular disaster for our cities. As Erica Barnett wrote in The C is for Crank this morning, Trump has promised to withhold all federal funds from Sanctuary Cities, of which Seattle is one. If enacted, human services, parks, housing, and transportation projects could take the […]

While we celebrate a huge victory for transit here in Seattle and lament the result of the presidential race, one must not forget about the plethora of other transportation ballot measures put on by other cities across the country Tuesday night. Out of a total of 48 local and state transit measures, 33 were approved as […]

Beginning at 4 p.m. today, Sound Transit will hold a press conference in the wake of ST3 passing and what next steps the agency will take to expand mass transit in the region. ST will have a Facebook Live stream to watch, and we will be live blogging and live tweeting comments made by Sound Transit […]

Friday, November 11 is Veterans Day, a day most rural transit agencies treat as just another day, while agencies like King County Metro have traditional painfully reduced service. Thanks to SDOT funding, the only Seattle-only routes cut back on Veterans Day are those cut back due to the University of Washington not being in session […]

On what can only be described as a destabilizing, contradictory night, Puget Sound said Yes to ST3 just as the country elected Donald Trump. At the subdued victory party at The Crocodile, Dow Constantine did his best to sieze the moment, successfully rallying the crowd and thanking them for a vote of visionary generational impact. […]

So you lost your ballot or left it at home and don’t have time to grab it. You can still vote in person at Union Station, or several other sites, as long as you are registered and in line by 8 pm. If you still have questions about how you can cast a ballot, the […]

For all the technical merits of transportation projects, there’s nothing like a personal stake in the outcome to elevate your interest level. Recently, STB veterans like us have been pulled towards Central or Southeast Washington for various personal reasons. For Zach, it is the possibility that his partner may be taking a job in Yakima three days a week. For […]

2017 will be a relatively quiet year for Sound Transit in terms of service delivery. The agency released its annual Service Implementation Plan (SIP) (Executive Summary, Complete) last Wednesday, combining 5-year service planning with in-depth route and corridor performance data. Here are some highlights: Sounder and Amtrak The biggest service addition in 2017 will be […]

Sound Transit released its September ridership numbers yesterday, and it was another impressive month for Link and Sounder. Average weekday Link boardings held steady at 68,358 (+76% YOY), average Saturday boardings were 51,799 (+100%, thanks Huskies!), and average Sunday boardings were 39,919 (+116%, thanks Seahawks!). As usual, weekday Link ridership dropped slightly from August to September, […]

Sound Transit 3 isn’t the only “Proposition 1” on the ballot next Tuesday. Kitsap Transit has an ambitious proposal for year-round passenger ferries from Bremerton (July 2017), Kingston (July 2018), and Southworth (July 2020). From May-September, the ferries would operate with all-day, bidirectional service from all 3 terminals, with an impressive span of service from 5am-9pm Monday-Thursday, 5am-11pm on Fridays, and […]

We are used to a debate about regressive taxation every time a transit proposition is on the ballot. Sound Move (ST1) in 1996 was funded by a 0.0.5% 0.4% sales tax increase, a vehicle license fee of $30 per $10,000 value, and a 0.8% car rental sales tax. Sound Transit 2 in 2008 was funded […]

The last time we had a civic discussion about a new basketball/hockey arena, let’s just say it didn’t go well. There was politically convenient fear mongering about our Working Waterfront and industrial jobs. There was the hypocritical HIGHF (Hey! I Got Here First!) form of corporate NIMBYism from the Seattle Mariners. There was charmingly predictable concern trolling […]

Last week I spent a few days in the largest city in the Western Hemisphere, Mexico City. While walking its colonial streets and riding its expansive Metro, I was reminded of something I wrote shortly after ULink opened: Done well, transit is is a public utility that improves life for the many but excites the passions of […]