Seattle Transit Blog

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 […]

Community Transit has released their proposed 2017 budget, which estimates $19 million in additional sales tax revenue thanks to the passage of the 2015 ballot measure, for a total of $172 million in operating revenue and $134 million in operating expenses. CT plans to use the additional funding to increase bus service by 6 percent, […]

With the (60′) trolley replacement project now complete, the last of the Breda trolleys will take its final in-service ride tomorrow afternoon with a ceremonial trip from Beacon/Spokane to Atlantic Base. The lovably awful buses – dubbed ‘Frankenbuses’ by many – have a complicated and storied history in Seattle. Originally a “DuoBus” of electric trolley and diesel […]

Testing

If you haven’t ever registered to vote before, you still have time. If you turn 18 on or before November 8, you are eligible to register and vote. If you are registered in another state, and want to vote in Washington State instead, you still have time to register here. But you have to go […]

Eight months after Kevin Desmond’s abrupt departure for Vancouver, BC, Metro again has a General Manager. Later this morning, County Executive Dow Constantine will name Interim GM Rob Gannon as the permanent General Manager. By deciding against a wider candidate search and going with an internal hire, Gannon represents a choice for continuity. Metro appears content […]

On October 5th, the University of Washington released its draft Seattle Campus Master Plan (CMP) along with an accompanying Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The Plan governs the University’s future development on campus between 2018 and 2028. The document is particularly important because pursuant to the City-University Agreement signed between UW and the City of Seattle […]

These are STB’s endorsements for this November’s General Election. As always, candidate endorsements are meant to only reflect their positions on transit and land use. Ballot Measures YES on Sound Transit Proposition 1. Our full endorsement is here, and much more material is here. This measure, informally known as Sound Transit 3, would build 62 miles […]

Bellevue has a progressive transportation levy on the ballot next month that will step up investments in neighborhood safety and connections. The levy augments baseline spending in Bellevue’s Capital Improvement Plan, accelerating local projects that would otherwise wait many years for funding. Bellevue is growing quickly, and the growth has been accompanied by increasing public demands […]

In a move that will surprise no one who has been paying attention, The Seattle Times endorsed a NO vote on ST3 ($), apparently less interested in quality transit than the Tacoma News-Tribune, among others. It is fundamentally insincere and dishonest about why they oppose the package. As usual, they apply arbitrary and vague objections they wouldn’t apply […]

Ballots for the November 8 general election have been mailed out. Numerous drop boxes open today, as do a limited number of accessible voting centers. Be sure to sign your ballot envelope and include contact info in case the county questions your signature. If you mail your ballot, put postage on the return envelope worth […]

September 30 was a glorious day for transit ridership in many respects. Link broke 100,000 for the first time, and our system bent but didn’t break under the simultaneous pressure of a regular afternoon commute, a Mariners game, and a relatively rare weeknight Husky football game. But the darker side of this is that regular […]

After a few years of steady but slow progress for Pierce Transit (PT), things are beginning to accelerate in a positive direction. After hemorrhaging service hours in the recession – with most routes cut to hourly service and span of service barely extending past dinnertime – PT is back with a bold new service proposal that restores a […]

After my piece yesterday regarding Seattle’s choice for a new bike share vendor, I spoke with Andrew Glass Hastings, who runs SDOT’s transit division. Glass Hastings has been deeply involved with the procurement process to date and provided some great insights about the state of negotiations with Bewegen, the preferred vendor, as well as SDOT’s overall vision […]

Seattle recently entered negotiations with a vendor to replace Pronto, the bike share network that became insolvent last year and required a $1.4M taxpayer bailout. Tom at Seattle Bike Blog did a fantastic run-down that I highly recommend. The high scorer of the six bids is an all-electric proposal from a young Quebec company, Bewegen. Motivate, […]

Sound Transit 3 is far from a perfect package. For the technically-minded advocate, election seasons must be maddening in their necessary binary framing, with nowhere for the pro-transit ST3 skeptic to turn. Such purists repeatedly cite particulars as a reason to reject the whole, seeing ‘undeserved’ rail lines outweighing the value of the indispensable ones, or […]

Cliff Mass is sounding the alarm on his blog, about some pretty serious weather incoming from the Pacific: Starting Thursday, we will enter a period of extraordinarily active weather with the potential for heavy rain, flooding, and a highly dangerous windstorm with the potential to be an historic event. The coastal waters and shoreline areas […]

BY SEATTLE SUBWAY A lot of the discussion of Sound Transit 3 (ST3) – the transportation expansion package you’ll see on your November Ballot – has centered around regional mobility. ST3 will deliver a lot of value for the region, but what Seattle is getting can sometimes get lost in discussions about Everett and Tacoma. […]

[Update: Facebook commenters pointed out that the behavior I’m advocating for is already legal per Washington Administrative Code 468-510-020, which lifts the “keep right” requirement for the 40-mile stretch of I-5 from Tukwila to Everett, and on I-90 between I-5 and I-405.] Every June, the National Motorist Association uses its own Lane Courtesy Month to produce a rush […]

This morning Sound Transit released ridership numbers for September 30, the day a perfect storm of Mariners, Huskies, and an afternoon commute converged. And ridership lived up to the hype, with an estimated 101,000 riders, 18% higher than the previous record of 85,000 on August 25th. Sound Transit stretched its undersized fleet to the limit – running […]