Seattle Transit Blog

Imagine an alternate universe for a moment. In 2023 you come to the opening day of 145th Street Station in Jackson Park. You wait 15 minutes for a 2-car, rush-hour train. The train departs along 5th Avenue Northeast, going through 13 at-grade crossings just en route to its first stop at Northgate. 110 minutes, 33 miles, and more than 100 […]

District Councils not very representative. There’s a new bus from Camano Island to Everett. When I mentioned Tim Eyman had a new “We Love Our Cars” initiative, I neglected to mention that he had to abandon his narrower anti-car-tab, anti-Sound Transit initiative. Shoreline to discuss light rail permitting requirements. A history of our Union Station. […]

Backyard cottages (1:40), ST3 updates (17:30), Sounder (38:50), Link vs. ST Express (49:50), and the importance of a good plan (52:30). http://traffic.libsyn.com/seattletransitblog/STB_podcast_018.mp3

A couple weeks ago I had the pleasure of riding in a friend’s new Tesla Model X. It parks itself effortlessly, and as my friend engaged the autopilot and let go of the wheel at 70mph, my trepidation quickly evolved into a sense of awe and wonder. For two hours from Mt. Vernon to Seattle […]

A video explaining the advantages of a Communications-based Train Control (CBTC) system, which is being adopted by metro systems around the world. The case studies in their report their website is worth reading.

Though we’ve already covered daily ridership for ULink’s first full month – a weekday average of 60,000 with spikes above 80,000 – Sound Transit also recently released its April systemwide summary. The figures are as robust as you’d expect, with 79% year-over-year growth for Link Light Rail, clocking in at 60,000 weekday boardings versus 33,000 […]

Puyallup parking garage negotiation not going well. Happy 40th Community Transit. Don’t pry open the ticket vending machines. Open House for Lander St. Bridge is coming. Sounder maintenance base will be in Lakewood. Logical critique of Seattle Times “war on cars” rhetoric is a category error, but KUOW argued it out anyway. Washington’s GOP platform […]

This morning from 9am-12pm, the Sound Transit Board will hold a special meeting to finish up the substance of the ST3 System Plan, formally voting on a series of amendments reflected in last’s weeks Draft Plan Update ahead of a final vote on June 23. When live video is available, it will be linked live […]

In the weeks leading up to last week’s Sound Transit 3 Draft Plan update, the City of Renton made some noise about feeling left out. As part of the East King subarea it has funds to build things, but will see very little in the plan except for I-405 BRT. Some of this perceived wound […]

SEATTLE SUBWAY Last week Seattle Subway wrote about the importance of future proofing ST3 by including provisional projects in the plan. A provisional project is a project approved by the board and voters, but doesn’t have any budget. This would mean voters approve projects now and when funds become available they can immediately be used towards […]

Recent Census data showed another year of strong growth in Seattle and Bellevue. Everett and Tacoma grew more slowly. This raised a familiar question: why are regional plans so out of step with recent experience? Seattle grew 2 1/2 times faster than either Everett or Tacoma in the last five years. Bellevue and other cities on the Central […]

BY DAVID SEATER This article is cross-posted from Central Seattle Greenways. On February 29, 2016, Central Seattle Greenways volunteers and Seattle Neighborhood Greenways staff met at Capitol Hill Station to conduct an accessibility audit of the station area. We focused on three priorities: safety of street crossings, obstructions in crosswalks and along sidewalks, and sidewalk capacity. The station […]

Amid the breaking news last week of the Sound Transit 3 Draft Plan Update, Sound Transit’s Q1 Ridership Report got a bit buried. The Q2 report will be far more consequential, being the first one with a full quarter of ULink ridership, but even so there are interesting (and mostly positive) trends from the Q1 data. […]

From signal lever boxes to computerized control rooms.

Sound Transit 3 materials have not said a lot about the agency’s successful South Sounder service. Most of the attention in that subregion has gone into extending the light rail “spine” into Tacoma. Sounder will actually have a quicker running time from Tacoma to Seattle, although Link may have its advantages for somewhat spontaneous Tacoma-Seattle trips, […]

Monday, May 30 is Memorial Day, which is the traditional final day of Northwest Folklife Festival, at the Seattle Center, wherein you will likely find hired petitioners gathering signatures for lots of state ballot initiatives, including possibly one or two initiatives designed to kick the legs out from under transit funding. If someone has a […]

Responding to universal angst about the pace of the Sound Transit 3 (ST3) Draft Plan, this afternoon the Sound Transit (ST) Board introduced a series of amendments that propose a leaner, faster Sound Transit 3 measure. The Board will vote on each of these amendments at its Special Meeting on June 2, ahead of a […]

Today’s the big day. At today’s Sound Transit (ST) Board Meeting, the Board will offer amendments to the Draft Plan released in March. Today is the single most consequential day in shaping what will be the final plan adopted in June. Will timelines change? Will new projects be added or projects cut? We’ll be tweeting […]

Pierce Transit asking really fundamental questions before service expansion. Data show I-405 HOT lanes are working, despite the complaining. Toby Nixon pushing a Willows Road Link routing ($) to keep rail off the CKC; somehow, the ideas keep getting goofier. Councilmember Lisa Herbold travels to U-District in solidarity with dedicated anti-density advocates like John Fox’s […]

Backyard cottages are popular in theory, yet few homeowners end up building them. Just 221 have been built in the nine years that they’ve been legal(far fewer than Vancouver), despite the fact that 75,000 lots in the city are eligible to have one. Councilmember Mike O’Brien, whose been on the cottage beat for several years now., is looking to increase […]

Martin and I chat briefly about big ST parties, and then go through the reader mailbag. Topics include alternatives for ST3, the Seattle Process, zoning, improvements to STB, and much much more. http://traffic.libsyn.com/seattletransitblog/STB_podcast_017.mp3 As always, you can subscribe in iTunes. Also, if you like the show, leave us a review.

When Move Seattle passed last November 3, the mood was jubilant. An expected nailbiter became a comfortable 17-point victory, with the beers flowing at the election night party at the Belltown Pub hastily morphing from a hedge against disappointment to the fuel of celebration. The city had put the War on Cars before voters and won, marking […]

BY SEATTLE SUBWAY As regional stakeholders continue to work on the inevitable push and pull of budgeting for a massive transit expansion, we want to make sure that a huge improvement to the Sound Transit 3 (ST3) system plan isn’t overlooked: designation of “provisional projects.” Adding provisional projects will cost next to nothing to implement […]

Last week, the US Census Bureau released 2015 population estimates by city. To nobody’s surprise, Seattle continues to grow rapidly, having added 15,300 more residents in the year ending June 2015. Seattle has grown by 74,000 residents (12.1%) in just five years. Seattle, for the third year in a row, is among the five fastest […]

Last December I made the modest proposal that the 5th and Madison Station in Sound Transit 3 move three, or even six, blocks east. This would reduce overlap with the existing tunnel stations. More importantly, it would bring First Hill — one of the densest neighborhoods in the Northwest, with three hospitals and Seattle University […]

The first part of New York City’s long awaited Second Avenue Subway, 2 miles and 3 new stations, is expected to open this December.

Yesterday, Sound Transit released its latest figures on ULink, including daily ridership for April. Weekday ridership is holding at roughly 60,000 per day, and two Fridays in April (8th and 29th) set new records at 82,000 weekday riders: In April we reported early ridership trends on Link light rail were beating expectations after opening two new stations […]

One of the ironies of land use policy around here is, relative to Seattle, suburban jurisdictions have often been willing to upzone more aggressively in advance of light rail’s arrival. Kent and Des Moines, for instance, jointly up zoned the Midway area for up to 200′, while nothing at Capitol Hill Station will exceed 7 stories […]

It’s been well over two months since our last listener mailbag. If there’s a question you’d like Frank and me to answer, put it in the comments and we’ll get to as many as we can. The podcast should air sometime next week.

There is a certain type of anti-transit writer whose perspective can be summarized as: “For every agency proposal n, the agency should instead do n-1.” When rail proposals are on the table, such writers often make substantive and seemingly pro-transit arguments for bus rapid transit (BRT) as a superior alternative for less capital cost. When BRT proposals are advanced, their arguments […]

Last week we wrote about technical problems delaying analysis of the First Hill Streetcar’s ridership. With the Automatic Passenger Counters (APCs) data transmission process broken, SDOT staff had noted that March ORCA data showed 50,000 boardings, or roughly 1,600 per day (though higher on weekdays and lower on weekends, of course). Yesterday SDOT’s Norm Mah […]

Gubernatorial candidate Bill Bryant (still!) opposes light rail on I-90, thinks WSDOT is too focused on transit (!). Kirkland leaders present their updated vision for ST3 and beyond. Sumner Sounder garage close to final approval. Mercer Island, building its case for least environmentally conscious city in the region, considers downzoning ($) around its light rail station. Seattle […]

Beginning next Monday, May 23, the Yesler Way bridge over 4th avenue will close for up to 16 months for a $20 million structural and seismic renovation, funded jointly by Move Seattle’s predecessor (Bridging the Gap) and by a Federal Highway Administration “Historic Bridge Replacement” grant. The 1910 y-shaped steel structure is Seattle’s oldest bridge, covering […]

The King County Council unanimously approved Metro’s September service change at its meeting Monday afternoon. Public testimony is from 36:17-51:35 of the video. Debate and action on the item is at 1:07-1:10 in the video. A line-up of eight speakers from various Asian immigrant communities testified in favor of proposed route 106, which creates a […]

BY FEET FIRST, TRANSPORTATION CHOICES COALITION, AND CASCADE BICYCLE CLUB Together, we believe that a waterfront rebuilt post­viaduct is an opportunity to shape the city into a more sustainable, safe, vibrant, accessible, and connected destination for people of all ages and abilities. While we stand by our original comments on the previously published DEIS, we […]

On May 5 at Sound Transit’s Executive Committee, Sound Transit Staff presented initial results of the ST3 Draft Plan public comment period that ended on May 2, and EMC Research presented the results of a separate region wide phone poll. After a Friday the 13th weekend, here are 13 takeaways from that presentation. #1: Huge Overall Response […]

a fascinating documentary from 50 years ago about the engineering and development of BART. They literally reinvented the wheel.

In a win for efficiency, operational speed, and regulatory simplicity, beginning today all Rapid Ride lines will allow 24/7 all-door boarding. Until today, the lines have reverted from proof-of-payment to traditional front door boarding after 7pm, causing unnecessary complexity and confusion for riders. The change comes after Metro management polled operators about the proposal, with […]

At Thursday’s meeting of Sound Transit’s Capital Committee, staff updated boardmembers on both the latest concepts for expediting ST3 project delivery and modifications to the ST3 financial plan. It was an excellent and substantive conversation, and we’ll post video when it becomes available. CEO Peter Rogoff’s presentation on project delivery was a particularly good primer on […]

Back in December we reported that the Office of the Waterfront would undertake a Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement (SDEIS) to study removal of the planned bus lanes on the future Alaskan Way. There was some confusion at the time because no organized groups were agitating for such an outcome, and that all parties had generally […]

Parking in ST3 (4:50) HOV3 Lanes (28:00) Kirkland light rail (34:55) Paine spur (41:15) SE Seattle restructure (43:20) Overnight Link bus (56:00) Metro’s long-range plan (1:02:10) http://traffic.libsyn.com/seattletransitblog/STB_podcast_016.mp3 As always, you can subscribe in iTunes. Also, if you like the show, leave us a review.

Everett contemplates redeveloping the Everett Station area. Pierce Transit’s public feedback form is a service planning game. Subjecting fewer projects to design review would be a huge improvement. The next iteration of ORCA sounds cool, but won’t arrive earlier than 2019. A review of the new Seattle 2035 draft. Closing the viaduct wasn’t a disaster, […]

The Center City Connector project took another step forward with the recent publication of its Environmental Assessment (EA) documentation. A 30-day public comment period began Monday, with emailed comment accepted at centercitystreetcar@seattle.gov The EA process is a slimmed down version of the more familiar Environmental Impact Statement. Agencies proposing projects unlikely to have significant impacts may opt […]

While ULink is already setting ridership records, it’s easy for this North Capitol Hill resident to forget about the First Hill Streetcar, the beleaguered line that opened in late January after a series of delays and technical problems. Curious about the line’s ridership both before and after ULink, I asked SDOT for ridership data a couple weeks […]

Last summer we held our first fundraising drive, and I honestly had no idea what to expect. But many of you stepped up, and thanks to your support we were able to hire our first reporter. In the last year, I think Zach and the rest of the volunteer staff have done a fantastic job […]

County Councilmembers Joe McDermott and Larry Gossett kindly offered some reasons for supporting more bus service in southeast Seattle last Thursday. STB supports adding more service in southeast Seattle that delivers real improvements to riders, which means avoiding wasteful duplication. The councilmembers’ arguments failed to explain why these specific route restructures (in particular, the extension of route […]

It’s no subway, but Los Angeles once again has a train through the Westside to its world-famous beaches. The Metro Expo Line Phase II opens May 20. It’s been an exciting Spring for new rail openings this year.

After decades of deferred maintenance and neglect that has led to crashes, fires, and in some cases killing its own riders, the DC Metro will soon rip off the band aid with a year of painful closures and single-track operations affecting hundreds of thousands of riders. View the full closure details here. The intensive work will replace infrastructure […]