Seattle Transit Blog

I rode back and forth on Link Light Rail trains a couple times Tuesday afternoon, just to see how the new Capitol Hill Station and University of Washington Station ridership would impact PM peak Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel Operations, during the interim week before several northeast Seattle routes start terminating near UW Station. The time […]

Walking by Seattle Pacific University early last week, I noticed that the trolley wire extension project appeared to have been complete, yet service has not yet been proposed for extension. We’ve been covering this issue since 2012, and earlier estimates had Metro hoping to complete the project in 2014. The passing trolley wire at SPU allows […]

Last week we reported that, in a bid to improve tunnel operations and ULink reliability, Route 550 would be surfaced to 4th Avenue westbound each weekday afternoon. Confirming the change, OneBusAway showed trips departing Bellevue from 2:35-5:25pm as running on the surface. But in an email update, Sound Transit’s Bruce Gray says the agency is backing […]

After three days of riding ULink, my experience has been one of nearly unqualified satisfaction, frequently bordering on jubilation. Sound Transit expertly managed the project’s construction and put together a fantastic opening weekend, and it’s not a stretch to say that the service will revolutionize my life. But one thing has already consistently disappointed, and […]

http://cpa.ds.npr.org/kuow/audio/2016/03/RECORD_20160321_LIGHTRAILFULL.mp3 Zach joined KUOW host Bill Radke this afternoon on The Record to talk about ULink. The report runs 9 minutes, and Zach’s portion begins at 4:10.

Last month’s ST3 letters had lots of requests for projects not strictly required to have a functioning rail line serving the stops the corridor concepts enumerate. Cities up and down the corridors have asked for help on station access — parking, feeder bus improvements, bike and pedestrian work and so on. A number of stakeholders […]

Ceremonial opening of new Husky Stadium light rail station. https://t.co/7FxrE7J1Cn #ULink2016 pic.twitter.com/Zd1yE9Qcga — Graham Johnson (@GrahamKIRO7) March 19, 2016 It’s finally here! We’ll see you at 10am at Capitol Hill Station with Mayor Murray to kick off the public launch, and we hope you have a great time at today’s all-day party in Capitol Hill and at […]

by GREG NICKELS There are those who believe the debate over light rail in Seattle began in November, 1851 with the landing of the Denny party at Alki. Seattle Mayor Bertha Knight Landes (1926 – 1928) created a committee of businessmen to study rapid transit. However, most point to the defeat of the 1968 and 1970 Forward Thrust […]

Saturday’s ULink launch promises to be a hell of a party. Here’s what you need to know to have a great time celebrating a historic day for Seattle’s transit. 8-10am: Golden Ticket Ride If you won a Golden Ticket to be on the first train from UW, check in at UW Station between 7:30-8:25am. You’ll get […]

[UPDATE: In a development inconvenient for my thesis, Save Our Trails utterly rejected the compromise proposal today, for reasons good and bad.] If the numerous corridor studies have shown anything, it’s that a small transit capital investment in transit for Kirkland wouldn’t be a disaster for the region. Projected ridership just isn’t that high. Despite interest group […]

Martin and Frank talk Kirkland light rail, infill stations, and car sharing services. https://media.blubrry.com/seattletransitblog/s3.amazonaws.com/stb-wp/wp-content/podcasts/STB_podcast_012.mp3 Subscribe in iTunes or your favorite podcast player. Like the show? Leave a review.

On Tuesday evening, the Kirkland City Council approved a letter to the Sound Transit Board offering a compromise to resolve the impasse over transit on the Cross-Kirkland Corridor (CKC). The letter (significantly revised from the draft Zach reported on Saturday) seeks an investment in trail access from Kirkland to the Wilburton Link Station and Kingsgate BRT station. These […]

Everett Transit has laid out plans for some major service changes to its bus routes in North Everett and Silver Lake, slated to take place this August. Under the new proposal, the North Everett Circulator (routes 4 and 5, which run in opposite directions in a loop around the neighborhood every hour) would be split and partially […]

Four days out from launch, yesterday Sound Transit invited local media to take a preview ride on ULink. The hourlong event included station tours at UW and Capitol Hill, and a roundtrip ride between UW and Capitol Hill. Like clockwork, the southbound trip took 3 minutes and 56 seconds, with smooth acceleration and great ride quality after […]

SEATTLE SUBWAY Tonight the Kirkland City Council is planning on voting to ratify a letter that, among other things, contains the following statement. “If light rail on the Cross Kirkland Corridor is included in the ST3 package, Kirkland would have to oppose the ballot measure.” The Council’s opposition to light rail is a tactic to […]

Monday afternoon the Seattle City Council approved $1.4m to purchase Pronto Cycleshare’s privately-held assets. The buyout gives Pronto a needed infusion of cash to keep service going while the City prepares to financially restructure the struggling bikeshare service. The City will retain the private operator (Motivate Co) through the remainder of 2016, and will issue an […]

On Saturday I wrote about conflict between the City of Kirkland and Sound Transit on proposed transit investments in Sound Transit 3. If you’re new to this issue I suggest you read that piece before this one, but to reiterate, the basic issues are as follows. Kirkland developed a detailed Bus Rapid Transit plan for its Cross […]

Toronto’s regional transit authority and their big transit plan. They sure loved shots of our Link trains.

Sound Transit 3’s politics require a delicate dance between keeping subarea dollars local and funding the most productive and popular projects. Some subareas are long on projects and short on funds (Snohomish County, and to a much lesser extent Seattle), while others are relatively flush with cash but lean on popular projects (East King County, and to […]

One week before ULink’s opening, there is still significant education and outreach to be done in communities affected by the major restructuring of bus service. Tomorrow (March 12), Councilmember Rob Johnson will host a forum at the University Heights Center (5031 University Way NE) from 10am-noon to discuss the opening of ULink and the associated […]

Last week, King County Parks published a draft master plan for the Eastside Rail Corridor Regional Trail. The County aims to develop a permanent paved trail on over 16 miles of the corridor. As the trail plan enters a public comment period, Sound Transit is finalizing its own draft system plan. That will clarify how portions of the […]

SDOT scrapping caps on short-term car rentals. Hurrah. The mechanics of a potential Local Improvement District for the First Hill Streetcar extension. Two teams bidding on Lynnwood Link contract. Kitsap Transit resolves labor trouble. Stats about crimes on buses in 2015. Local unions ask UW to contain U-Pass charges for employees. Passing buses rattling houses […]

[Post has been updated with minor clarifications on Routes 24, 28, 33, 48, 62, 73, 75, 78, and 373.] With ULink launching next weekend and Metro’s huge service change happening one week later on March 26, Metro released its official service change information page this afternoon, and County Executive Dow Constantine has issued a media release about the changes. Those […]

A blast shook Greenwood early this morning, destroying 3 local businesses (Quick Stop, Mr. Gyros, and Neptune Coffee) while causing heavy damage to nearby businesses such as G&O Family Cyclery. KOMO News reports the cause as a natural gas leak that had been reported roughly 40 minutes prior to the explosion. 9 firefighters have been […]

At its monthly board meeting held earlier this Thursday, Community Transit unveiled its proposals for its first Proposition 1-funded service expansions, scheduled for September 2016 and March 2017. The two expansions add about 38,300 hours of service, fulfilling the promise of transit service on the State Route 9 corridor (in the form of two new routes) and […]

Long planned but also long delayed, Seattle’s annexation of North Highline/White Center received new life last week when the legislature agreed to redirect $7m in state sales taxes to Seattle to cover the transitional costs of annexation. Three sequential process steps remain for annexation, namely the approval of the King County Boundary Review Board, approval […]

January’s Link weekday ridership was 15.6% higher than the year before. In the last 4 months (Oct 15 – Jan 16) Link has averaged 13.9% growth. It’s becoming quite apparent that the October 2014 to September 2015 ‘slowdown’ (for the first time ever Link wasn’t growing by double digits) was in fact simply a reaction to […]

Five housing bills made the Friday deadline to get voted on in their second house, with two now headed to the governor’s desk, and three going back to their original house to try to get agreement on final language. Unfortunately, Sen. Joe Fain’s (R – Auburn) housing preservation bill, 2nd Substitute Senate Bill 6239, did […]

Starting April 22, you’ll be able to ride RTD’s A Line, an electric commuter train, from Denver International Airport to Union Station in 37 minutes, every 15-30 minutes, 22 hours a day, at speeds up to 79 mph.

Friday was the cut-off in the state legislature for bills to get out of their second house. 37 transportation bills did so. Six of them were detailed in the list of transit-related bills that at least made it to their second chamber’s Rules Committee. Among those, HB 2516, EHB 2745, HB 2815, SB 6299, and […]

March is nearly here, bringing with it the arrival of spring, minor and major service changes, two new Link stations, and the return of Major League Soccer after the winter off-season. Sound Transit is continuing its annual tradition of offering special weekend Sounder round-trips to and from King Street Station in Seattle (a short walk from […]

The near final draft of the Seattle Transit Map featuring U Link and Metro’s new bus service taking effect on March 26 is ready for your review. Thank you to everyone who gave their feedback on the first set of drafts. Comments on this map are due March 6. The priority is to finish the […]

Seven bills in the state legislature related to transit survived Monday’s cut-off to get to the Rules Committee in their second house. They have through this Friday to get voted on in their second house. One controversial bill that did not make the cut was Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 5343, by Sen. Bob Hasegawa (D […]

Big project at Othello breaks ground; rent starts at $450/month. Sound Transit restores funding for preliminary engineering to central Federal Way and Redmond, a previous casualty of the recession. Metro aiming for cameras on 100% of buses by 2021. Rough early counts suggest 3,000 FHSC boardings per weekday. Councilmembers O’Brien, Sawant, Johnson, and Juarez for saving […]

In our summary series of Sound Transit 3 community feedback letters, four letters fell through the cracks, as they were not included in our original request for letters from Sound Transit and were not published by Sound Transit’s website until last week. But without further ado, here they are! Sierra Club The Sierra Club’s comments are […]

Martin and Frank discuss housing shortages, potential early wins for ST3, community feedback, water taxis, and dive into the reader mailbag. https://media.blubrry.com/seattletransitblog/s3.amazonaws.com/stb-wp/wp-content/podcasts/STB_podcast_011.mp3

In addition to the vast new stretches of track Sound Transit will consider for a November 2016 ST3 ballot measure, there are a number of infill stations on existing track segments that ST is considering for inclusion. In December, they presented cost and ridership estimates for these infill stations. All figures are in 2014 dollars, […]

BY SEATTLE SUBWAY The Sound Transit Board is now seriously considering a larger package for the next big regional transit expansion, ST3. Our understanding is that the most likely timeline for the finance plan is at least 25 years, up from 15 years. This means at least an 84% increase in funding for North King […]

If you want a chance to ride ULink’s inaugural train on March 19th, with a “Golden Ticket” commemorative ORCA card to go with it, a reminder that the the deadline to enter is today, February 29. The easiest way to enter is via social media; simply like/follow Sound Transit on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and share a […]

On the first birthday of the ORCA LIFT (low-income fare) program, this coming Tuesday, March 1, low-income fares will go live on two more services: Sound Transit Express buses ($1.50 in-county, $2.75 inter-county) Sounder commuter rail ($2.50 to $4.25, based on distance) . It took 30 years for Kitsap Transit’s low-income fare program, started in […]

Back in 2012 I wrote a skeptical piece about the prospects for Pronto (née Puget Sound Bike Share) in Seattle. I saw our dearth of safe bicycle facilities and rare all-ages helmet law, alongside the traditional complaints of hills and weather, as potentially fatal to the confident spontaneity that drives bikeshare ridership. Though some of my fears […]

For our next podcast, which will air sometime next week, Frank and I plan to select some questions from readers. So if there’s any subject you’d like us to discuss or questions you’d like us to answer, put it in the comments below before Sunday evening and we’ll consider if we have anything remotely interesting to say about it.

Daniel Hertz, writing at City Observatory: Land costs are also part of why yearning for the old days of moderate-cost bungalows is unproductive. A century ago, in most cities, it was possible to find relatively cheap land within commuting distance of downtown—partly because the invention of streetcars had just radically expanded the definition of “commuting […]

During institutional comment on Sound Transit 3, Seattle strongly asked for “early wins” that would show near-term value for Sound Transit 3. The intent of the request seems to be twofold: to chip away at today’s myriad transportation needs and also to incentivize additional ‘yes’ votes on the eventual ballot measure. Yesterday at the Sound […]

MRN’s almost ready in Ballard #seattlenewconstruction #seattlerealestate #mrnhomes A photo posted by Kelly Deen Morse (@seattlenewconstruction) on Jan 11, 2016 at 11:37am PST A few interesting articles on housing and land use caught my eye recently. First up, Nick Fitzpatrick in Forbes: An Axiometrics study of two metropolitan areas – Dallas and the San Francisco […]

[Update 11:30am: WSDOT responded that the MyNorthwest link reporting Good2Go identity theft is a 2013 issue that has been resolved. We’ve uploaded WSDOT’s full statement here.] I-405 HOT lanes saving bus riders an average of 7 minutes during peak. Othello Station is my favorite in terms of food available. Mason Transit GM resigns under a […]

In the race to pander to people that object to any genuine escape from congestion, Jay Inslee’s latest entry is more of the same old thinking ($): He is advocating two projects: • Adding a lane on I-405 at Highway 520 to Northeast 70th Place in Kirkland, where it would become an exit-only lane. Costs might […]