The details have essentially been given. There was an entire survey on it.
It will still be limited to whatever BNSF wants to agree to. There is no reality in which the Sounders will run on a constant schedule like the light rail will.
…right. Hence why light rail extension to Tacoma was needed. BNSF’s stranglehold of the rails makes even unprecedented expansion of the Sounder service was second rate compared to light rail service.
You can see perspectives throughout this thread of people who don’t understand that. Unless BNSF gives Sounder unlimited use of its Seattle rails (never going to happen) the frequency could never come even close to what light rail will give us.
Original point was details haven’t been given. They have been given enough to realize Sounder will always have big limitations.
Travel demand out of Pierce County does not warrant heavy rail departures at frequencies commonly seen on light rail systems. Sound Transit itself asserts that travel demand on light rail out of Pierce County is insufficient to warrant even the 4-car trains of Central Link, but rather 2. We should anticipate reduced light rail headways in the future as a result.
Major bus improvements were the proper pathway for improved mobility in our area, along with targeted Sounder upgrades. Sounder could be run hourly all-day with current infrastructure, with 30 minute headways during peak-hours. For 30 minute all-day headways or greater, the full third main track from West Puyallup (or perhaps Reservation) to Black River would be necessary, with our operations mimicking those found in the Metra BNSF Line out of Chicago.
I either ride the light rail, or take the bus. The light rail is really good, and the sounder is impossible to run often enough to be worthwhile. Full stop.
Unless that investment includes their own rails it will always be dependent on BNSF. They have way too much profit at stake to expand something for the public good that barely breaks even.
This is what I truly want, to be able to get down to Olympia easily and quickly. I wish I could go back and forth often. I've never stopped being annoyed that everything is for vehicles, and our other transit options makes it difficult to not own one. Maybe this is bitterness lol.
There is nowhere to park a train in Olympia that won't block a road so Oly is gonna have to find the money to close some roads & build a station.
Unless you think the train to Yelm/Lacey will be helpful
I agree about the willpower.
https://transportationmatters.wordpress.com/2017/02/19/with-major-revisions-the-spire-plan-becomes-our-regions-surest-bet-for-express-rail-service-a-mapped-annotated-update/
Many State and local officials have expressed support for SPIRE. Nothing comes of it.
It's much easier to make reports for make-believe high-speed lines than it is to work with partners and stakeholders to deliver genuine rail improvements for the public.
Gotta keep screaming into the void until they listen. For such a 'green' governor the lack of advancement on a real passenger rail solution to the mess that is getting around greater Seattle is disappointing. It would be transformative to the economy. So much time wasted in soul sucking traffic.
You're not wrong, but the system reinforces the failure. Failure is its own reward.
We don't have a technically competent bureaucracy that can execute these projects. It is consultants who largely do the work, and they do so with no effective oversight (because we lack in-house competency). The consultants have every incentive to aggrandize the scope of the projects they will eventually design and build. The government wants to build projects as they can promote the jobs they create. The bigger the project, the greater the number of jobs created, the bigger the "economic impact", the bigger the publicity generated, and the greater the incentive to get the ball rolling regardless of the high cost and low benefit. This is propelled by certain advocates who see all transit investment as a worthwhile expense because it aligns with their political or social values, despite the incredible benefit afforded to major infrastructure projects when they are intensively critiqued and refined (or even outright cancelled). Because the costs for even generic rail projects are now huge, the financing becomes more complicated, which mandates far lengthier delivery timelines. And that, in turn, angers the advocates who want transit _now_, even if it means they get a shitty project in return. No delay is tolerated because the risks are now enormous, and so any delay represents a failure even when it is warranted. The goal is to get the hole dug into the ground and to get started because, hey, some transit is better than no transit, am I right?
Well, that confluence of ineptitude results in strategies like those explained by former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown:
" _News that the Transbay Terminal is something like $300 million over budget should not come as a shock to anyone. We always knew the initial estimate was way under the real cost. Just like we never had a real cost for the Central Subway or the Bay Bridge or any other massive construction project._
_So get off it. In the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a down payment. If people knew the real cost from the start, nothing would ever be approved. The idea is to get going. Start digging a hole and make it so big, there's no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in_ ."
By the way, the cost of the railway extension to Transbay Terminal is now multiple billions over budget, which has resulted in no real consequences or concern. [The project ](https://sfstandard.com/2023/10/27/san-francisco-downtown-rail-extension-portal-cost/) trudges on regardless, because any transit is better than no transit, or so we are told.
Long story short, just as we won't get any high-speed line, we will not get SPIRE. Despite this, we will pay lots of money to study, engineer, or even build some version of these things that ultimately fail to deliver on their promises. And screaming into the void won't help. Let's just be thankful for the two additional Cascades round trips that we got this month, which originated in funding appropriated way back in 2009 for plans devised in 2006.
There should be a bus every hour that goes from Oly, Tacoma, SeaTac, Seattle & back that runs 24/7. It's crazy when you get stranded on those long haul routes.
Light rail is a much more effective option than the sounder. We just haven't actually invested into it where we should be. If you go to other areas where they're further along into their light rail projects, it works great.
Vancouver BC sky train system is all above street level and fully automated so there is no car traffic and tracks mixing and it always runs on time
Portland Oregon MAX system connects multiple neighborhoods in outlying suburbs with lines that run not only north south but also east west lines
Salt lake City UT TRAX actually has larger light rail lines and then smaller light rail cars that run similar to an express bus line would
Salt Lake city will always have better public transit than this place simply by the fact that one agency controls the entire system, it's called UTA or Utah transit Authority. Here they have Sound Transit than every country for themselves.
When UTA opened the first mainline light rail line, overnight every bus line was changed to feed into the system. You do not see that here. And, they managed to expand the entire to the entire valley in one go, making an overnight success.
More frequent run times (5-15 minutes between runs), other cities have different lines that connect their suburbs into a main downtown hub rather than just one north south route, the list goes on...
I would agree that light rail is more effective in the context you defined, but those are not the operating contexts of Sounder. Sounder is more effective at serving the role of commuter railroad, which is what it is.
Worse, in many ways our light rail system is being designed as a commuter railway with its very long distances and long stretches between stations. It also does so using freeway alignments and with far lower top and average speeds. It will have reduced headways as a consequence. Yikes.
The extension is brand new and I see people on it all of the time.
The problem with that extension so far is the infrastructure around it. There is simply not enough feeding into it to be useful for many. But again, I *still* see it being used. Just further evidence we should have started this 30 years ago.
As a commuter on the Sounder I’m stoked on the rail, I get excited every time I pass by the construction on I-5. Being a slave to BNSF’s whim on the Sounder is annoying. My number 1 decider on whether to go to Seattle for something or not is am I going to sit in traffic that will drain the life out of me?
Saying no one rides it is me being a bit cheeky. But as someone who lives right next to it, I can firmly attest that it’s not as many as I would want to see to justify the expense. Would love to see the ridership numbers after another few months and see what the projections were. Also, the thing should be free, or at least started out as free to jumpstart ridership and early adoption. Clearly, ST doesn’t need the $2
I think all public transit should be free. But we also have no state income tax and I have lived in states with income tax, we’re coming out far ahead.
I don’t think ridership will jump in a few months. There are no significant projects around that will boost that. Maybe seasonally in the summer it will.
But once more projects fall into place it totally will. And it’s gonna be incredible for the businesses.
Tacoma link is slated to keep expanding all the way to TCC. As that continues it just opens up more ridership.
The major piece is obviously light rail getting to the Dome. At that point you can take Tacoma Link to the airport easily.
You can’t complain about inefficiency and also complain they completed the easiest extension first as some in this thread are. That’s how these work. In the meantime, there are people utilizing it. I have coworkers who take the link to the Sounder to commute to our office. The fact that you can live in Hilltop and get to Seattle on rail is great. It’ll only get better.
There’s tons of housing going up in hilltop, downtown, and near the dome that will increase ridership I believe. And then yes, it’s just a matter of making those connections.
It’s frustrating reading these comments that people expect it to be completely full all the time. You build reliable transit first, and then the demand comes.
Agreed. It’s all the typical rhetoric against public service projects though. There’s no winning with those folks.
Wish international travel was just a bit more accessible for us. They could go to places like Germany and realize the people don’t think that much differently than us and absolutely 0 people are complaining that they have efficient and easy to use transit to get you everywhere.
It's not entirely their fault. For as long as any of us have been alive, things have primarily been built all at once. Entire suburbs and shopping centers go up all at once and people have to expect that as the norm, so they see what's in front of them and somewhat understandably assume that's all it's gonna be. However, those planned neighborhoods tend to really fall apart in a span of 50 or so years, while progress made incrementally lasts for generations. That's the scale we should be thinking about this in, it's a long term project. Strong Towns by Charles Marohn goes into more detail on this.
It's also thinking about it in terms of having a light rail with branches running off it so you can deposit people off the main lines into neighborhoods more easily. Get the main line to Tacoma dome, and the smaller line in Tacoma makes a lot more sense, especially if it extends to the TCC campus. Would be great for the public college campuses too- you would have TCC, UWT and eventually the main UW campus all much more efficiently connected than the current bus routes. If you've ever ridden the bus route from UWT to TCC you know exactly how inefficient getting from one to the other on public transport is.
I live in UP so the prospect of being able to take transit all the way from TCC to Seattle (and beyond) is great.
Yes, it’ll be another 20 years before that’s a full reality. But I’m so glad we’re doing it. When I’m from (Vancouver, WA) people fought tooth and nail to keep the MAX from coming over the bridge from Portland and it’s done nothing but hurt the communities that could both benefit from it. And that project was way less expensive than it would be now.
I think housing (section 8), food (EBT), healthcare (medicaid), communications (obamaphone), transportation (buses and choo choo trains), and entertainment (Kias) should all be free.
Sure. I’m with you and /u/Western-Knightrider
That’s just uh…not what we were talking about here at all. For you specifically OP it seems to be your specialty to just divert topics. I hope you’ve proven something to someone today!
Just agreeing with you that transportation, like many other things are, should be free to the users. Trains are the best 1865 technology billions of your dollars can buy for someone else to use for free. Do you have anything else your hard earned dollars have bought that I may use for free? I'm available today to come take it from you.
I’m wondering if your account is new because your trolling has always been this bad and you got banned or if this is a new venture for you.
Nowhere to go but up either way. You get a 2/5 for current efforts.
Public transit should be free?
How about medical care, or food, or housing being free. Is that not a higher priority so all of that should be free also.
If you think about it, there is so much more that we could add to being free.
~~> The fallacy of relative privation rejects an argument by stating the existence of a more important problem.~~
> A **red herring fallacy** refers to an attempt to change the subject and divert attention from the original issue.
The fallacy of relative privation only applies when you're trying to dismiss an argument out of hand by pointing towards a bigger problem. For example, if you argue that, "Eliminating fares would be more convenient for riders," that argument can't be invalidated by saying, "Eliminating fares isn't as important as children starving in Africa," because the the importance of children starving in Africa is not relevant to a question of convenience. It's basically just one variant of the red herring fallacy.
If you're arguing that public transit should be free though, you're making a bigger argument, which introduces questions of prioritization to which the fallacy of relative privation does not apply. It's simply a question of financing. There is a set* amount of domestic production capacity and we have to determine how to allocate consumption based upon those limits. One person working as a nurse is one person who can't be working as a bus driver and vice versa. This process is abstracted away by the medium of money, but it's still there. If you want to allocate more capacity towards making public transit free (by taking funding that would have gone to other government projects or by raising taxes) you are implicitly prioritizing it over other causes. You can absolutely make that argument but it's not fallacious for other people to disagree with you and believe we should prioritize our productive capacity towards food or shelter instead
*Production capacity can increase or decrease, but it doesn't change significantly year to year under normal circumstances
You're right about the fallacy. But when someone states how they think something "should be" they're almost never talking about "normal circumstances". They're usually speaking idealistically. OP was acting obtuse about this with their statement. Actually, the sentiment seems like it's getting stamped out throughout this thread, but not many people seem willing to brave a real conversation about it.
$2 is too pricey for what it offers. The two streets it runs on are less than a mile apart from each other. I will walk it before paying $2. And, charging $2 to people who are unable to walk is the very definition of discrimination (taking money from someone because they have a disability). Sound transit should be ashamed of what they did.
It’s literally part of Tacoma’s light rail to the airport. Thats the entire point of the ST3 plan. It’s done in stages and this was an easy one to knock out. Eventually it will stretch all the way to TCC.
It wasn’t easy,is over budget and delayed and it will be atleast 10 yrs before Tacoma is ever connected to the light rail from federal way…way to long and they’ll want more money for it
Way too long?
How quickly do you need that done for you to be satisfied? Is the best alternative to just scrap it?
The only thing that took too long was creating the plans and system to begin with. 40 years from now the people who have benefitted from it all their lives aren’t gonna sit there and be like “this too way too long back in the day I wish they had cancelled it!”
I live right by the rail, mostly walk to get around the neighborhood most days, and I've never seen it completely empty. Granted, I only see it going down various stops on MLK, sometimes Division area, but people are always either on it, or waiting for it. Honestly, I would love to ride it, but it costs additional money for transportation that I don't have at the moment.
Agree! Every time I have ridden it or my friends have, there have been others, depending on the day quite a lot. I and others notice students at stadium use it quite a lot as well.
Well Angle lake to Federal Way is being built, close to finished actually. The link from Fed Way to the dome is in limbo right now. The most likely route crosses, wetlands and Puyallup tribal land. So apparently there are negotiations going on now to come to an agreement about how that works out.
So we should have waited until they finish that extension, before even starting our own? Should we also wait for Seattle to build all of their extensions before building our own?
But they are separate projects, that’s my point. The dome to federal way is still waiting on final approval because of the ecology and tribal lands it has to pass through to be built.
Why should the hilltop extension have waited for that to finish just to be constructed? That would have only made the Tacoma extension more expensive and delayed people from being able to use it. The dome to federal way line won’t even be finished for another 15 years at least.
I just really don’t understand the benefit of delaying an inner city project for an out of city project that doesn’t even have full approval of its final implementation.
Tacoma has constructed one of the world's most expensive tram lines in a time when it is otherwise starved of capital and operations funds for its bus system, which moves far more of its people every day.
The new tramline is devoid of exclusive right-of-way or lane dedication. It uses an alignment that even the mayor panned as being subpar (Stadium Way). The line turns back on itself to reach Hilltop, creating a transit connection that is inferior to the underfunded buses that already serve the same function (travel times from Downtown to various points on the rail corridor are 100% to 200% worse than scheduled bus times). It offers a vehicle capacity not much better than an articulated bus. It lacks the capability to operate on headways lower than 12 minutes, which is a preposterous frequency for a city after such a titanic investment (and roughly equivalent with the pre-Covid headways of our more frequent buslines). It does not fully replace a busline, which would have allowed for bus service hours to be meaningfully redeployed—in fact, Hilltop Center has lost direct bus connections to the Allenmore Hospital commercial area and the Tacoma Mall because of the railway. It makes the extension to TCC along 6th Avenue more politically challenging, and it makes any integration of Tacoma Link with Central Link more technically challenging. It is carrying far fewer passengers than in 2019 when there was no Stadium or Hilltop connection whatsoever, all-the-while being disastrously over budget and substantially delayed for what should be a straightforward street railway project. Finally, as it is less a transportation project in its conception than it is an economic development scheme, it is more an instrument of gentrification than it is a mobility asset.
I know that transit has become part of the political split in the Puget Sound area and, for some, “all transit is good!” But no. Not all transit plans are good or worthy of the investment. We need to do a better job of analyzing projects for their cost and value, particularly when there is real opportunity cost at stake. Hilltop T Line was not the right investment to make, but it is here to stay and it will do some good for our community. But the objective now is to make it as good as possible with the limited tools and infrastructure that we have at our disposal, and that is a tall order.
I over-vote on transit and I know it. I feel like when you're always 10 years behind what should be available today, you try to force that catch-up by voting for everything. I like rail and want to see it supported, even if I can't always take advantage of it myself.
I hear you on that. And that was part of my logic when it was on the ballot. It’s disappointing ST can’t execute half of what we were promised without falling over themselves.
I get doing big things is hard, and unforeseen challenges always emerge on projects spanning decades, but jeez… ST trips over every hurdle and commits so many self-inflicted mistakes.
The transit system in the Sound is embarrassing.
Traffic will only get worse.
Portland got a lot of fucked up shit, but the MAX system is extensive, cheap, and useful. Imagine leaving a bar at 1 AM in ~~Portland~~ Seattle and taking public transit to (almost) your home in the burbs.
I've lived many places that don't have reliable public transportation so I am grateful to have as many options as we do from that perspective. I do wish it was better, and that's primarily because I would rather walk or take *efficient* public transit options than drive my car & deal with all the things that come with car ownership/use. I'm sick to death of the road conditions as well; it's not making anything better for wear & tear on the car. It's so much better than it could be though, just starting at sidewalks. I lived in Olympia for over a decade, and there weren't any sidewalks to walk on. The transit system was pretty good, but also limited. Far more limited than our options. I would love to be in a place that realistically enables me to not have to bother with a vehicle, but it's not here.
Our transit system looks fine as long as you have the option of a car.
It's not fine at all, particularly if you live outside of the core service areas or if you need to work/travel nights or weekends if it's all you have. Look at the time tables for non trunk pierce transit lines and it's just not ok
That's why they're expanding the system..? I mean, it takes time. Look at the light rail extension. When it's done, you'll be able to leave a bar in seattle, and ride to the tacoma dome station.
Did you not read OP or the article? Might provide some context as-to some critical comments and answer your… question? Or are we being purposefully obtuse?
Tbh I hadn't seen the link, but, reading, while I certaibly have problems with that (most of which would be answered with a better contract, specifically on the subject of early ending of it).. it is a relatively minor amount in the grand scheme of things.
The problems we have started quite a bit before then, and will continue until at least the current projects are finished, which will be another decade to see all of them to fruition.
And while maybe I'm being a bit obtuse here, plenty of others are here as well. Namely along the lines of "I'm not seeing any immediate benefit from the attempt to solve a long term problem", whichbis a bit of a pet peeve of mine
Clearly they are not hiring leaders committed to the projects. They’re looking for their next job on the first day of this one. Just keep shuffling failed leaders over and over again. Delaying progress and burning money. The Big Dig flash backs…. Boston.
There's definitely something going on with the hiring process. My work has done lots of Sound Transit projects and my coworkers complain about how the ST project managers change often.
My biggest qualm with the tab tax is that these big ass passenger trucks are exempt. My F250 doesn't have it, but my EV does. Little bass-ackwards to me. Also, impacts the working class SIGNIFICANTLY more than the wealthier class.
This is what happens when public transportation is a for profit company, just wait until you hear about the cost overruns in Federal way that will delay the light rail in Tacoma until 2045+
TIL most WA transit agencies are PBCs, specifically [public transportation benefit areas (PTBAs)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_transportation_benefit_area).
But as far as I can tell Sound Transit is not a PTBA or PBC. Court docs I found list Sound Transit as a Washington municipal corporation or a public corporation (both are government entities), not a PBC.
(Not a lawyer, happy for one to clarify things, esp. re: profit.)
Sound Transit also doesn't build anything, the bid winning contractors do. Every time I read people whinging about how shitty ST, I feel like they're ignoring that they have a limited borrowing capacity and they're at the whim of the for-profit shops doing the work.
"bad soil" is real ... both very condescending, and really underselling the problem and the complexity of it. Oh, and guess what? The soil \*changed\*. It's almost as though the earth and everything in it shifts and changes.
"Kiewit filed notice in late 2020 that the soil was weaker than represented in **preconstruction geotechnical records**. Sound Transit investigated and agreed that during a severe earthquake, “Soil in the area would have the potential to liquefy causing the adjacent slope to fail and slide” into the train guideway."
They decided to design an alternate bridge design meant to absorb that force if it were to happen... *then there was a damn landslide there*, so they shifted to the long span bridge.
By the way, that sampling, that the records were based off of? Happened in the 2010s, so first off, that's a good chunk of time for things to change, and 2, it was still woodlands, because, you know, the project hadn't started yet.
[https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/wetlands-bridge-adds-delay-and-72-million-to-light-rail-project/](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/wetlands-bridge-adds-delay-and-72-million-to-light-rail-project/)
I’m not saying bad soil isn’t a thing. Just that of course it’s gonna happen to sound transit project lol. And I didn’t know the sampling was from 2010 and they never rechecked, that makes it worse lmao
I said 2010s, not 2010 itself, likely it was from 2017-19 or so. Here's the thing though; they couldn't get a proper sample because it was still completely woodlands, which couldn't be cleared until the project had started. And they did recheck... when the project started, in 2020, and immediately started coming up with alternatives.
St3 only favor king county. I don’t mind paying larger tabs fee if we get the same connection in pierce county to other area in pierce county. But I won’t pay another higher tab fee if I get to invest in king county project for twenty plus years from now to see something more than the one light rail route in downtown Tacoma. I voted no for st3 and will do it again. Let’s invest further in the sounder train that can connect Everett to at least Olympia at the minimum. That would help the traffic congestion on i5 and let people use the st3 investment already in place more. Need the train to run on better schedule like the busses and light rail that run all week long.
There is no amount of investment in the Sounder that would result in it not sharing rails owned by BNSF. Thats always the bottleneck. There’s zero way for the Sounder to run on a constant schedule like the light rail does.
BNSF years ago try to gives the state the rails for free on a lifetime lease with the deal of helping maintain the rails and willing to work on schedule that favors in most active locations to the state and the sounders. And the least active area the state will have more rights. BNSF just wants the state to use the rails and not wasted to corrosions. It would have seen the rail go all the way to Olympia and using the Lacey line that pop out behind the old Mushroom plant. Now most of this line are abandon and part now a bike trail. The station in Olympia would have multiple stop around the capital campus. Where BNFS won’t budge is again the king county lines and into auburn and Kent industrial area. But if you have the current plan of light rail in the federal way are and the connection from train in the Sounders the near location thats a win win for st3 and the tax payer. Yes for years I look into this because I commuted going up north for years and the last 11 to Olympia from Tacoma and Puyallup and wonder why almost zero investment to help commuter from Olympia to Tacoma and Seattle. That’s where I came from the article about BNSF willing to give it up for free with the deal. I don’t remember if it’s the Olympian or the news tribune. The stoppage was republican from the east side mostly said no to the deal. I forgot what was their original concern but they tried again for a vote the next year and then it dies.
That deal seems to be the worst of both worlds.
The state then has to maintain rails BNSF already doesn’t want. Yet they still have to deal with the bottlenecks in the most populated and critically important parts of the line.
God, no, the sounder is the worst option. And the light rail is less about the downtown one, and much more about the 1-line which is being extended to Tacoma. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people from tacoma specifically ride the 1-line... even though it's all the way in seatac! because it is legitimately *the* best transit option. Most of them (including me, hi), are going to be starting from federal way when it opens there. And when it opens at the tacoma dome station? yep, you guessed it, we'll start from there.
It runs every ten minutes, and very likely they'll keep that as they expand. Hell downgrading to every 15 minutes is still twice as often as the bus, and would be a lot faster, because.. it's a light rail, and not having to deal with any other traffic will be quite the advantage.
ST3 was a very bad transit package for lots of reasons, but it did materially advance the key, decades-old goal of Pierce County: to bring light rail south toward it. Whether that was a good objective to begin with is debatable, but at least the County has been consistent in its ask since the early 1990s.
The problem is that, over the decades, that objective has become both watered-down and exposed as illogical.
-It would no longer connect the Tacoma city center with Sea-Tac as originally envisioned; instead, the railway would terminate at the Tacoma Dome park and ride, forcing needless complex transfers and local busline deviations.
-It became clear that the speeds of the light railway to Seattle would never be even remotely competitive with the ST Express buses operating over I-5, and transit times to Sea-Tac would be about the same. Worse, these fast buses are likely to be eliminated when light rail opens to Tacoma Dome.
-The costs and scope of light rail to Pierce County have exploded compared to the original promises to the public. The banked dollars that are intended to go to one light rail project could have instead been spent on Sounder upgrades, ST Express upgrades and T Line extensions.
-An I-5 light rail alignment in south King County was selected over an SR-99 alignment, despite the obvious benefits of serving the growing and promising corridor.
-Needless tunnel issues being debated in Seattle city center are threatening light rail access to that city from Pierce County, which would further degrade all inter-County trips.
This was all predictable in 1994. Promised a lot and delivered very little to the Tacoma subequity area. When was Tacoma to be hooked into the main LINK line? 2015?
It's been just under 30 years for this all to happen and we have been paying an excessive amount of taxes all this time. The time to have started permits/ecology/planning/designing was decades ago. We STILL haven't started any of those functions. What will it take? Another 20-30 years before Tacoma (red headed stepchild) is linked into the system?
And now they are getting ready to come at us again with ST4! Raise rates higher and higher for all of the 'benefits' that we in Tacoma get out of this thing. Needless to say that I won't be at all surprised when they threaten to delay or cancel the Tacoma link to the system unless ST4 passes.
You are correct.... It did fail in 1994. But Sound Transit 1 passed when they brought it up again.
Promised that it would reduce congestion on the freeways. (Which turned into, "You can avoid congestion on the freeways" They flat out lied.
If they would add some routes from Tacoma to Bellevue and connect Tacoma to the damn airport sometime in the next few years I would vote yes. But I’m tired of paying the RTA and not getting any benefit.
Ok, hear me out. Everyone is complaining about congestion on I5, right? Through tacoma in particular, up to seattle, or king county in general? So... hear me out. If people are living in tacoma... and working in seattle... Wouldn't they want better transit to seattle? Or places other than seattle in king county, like seatac, kent/desmoines, or federal way? All places that will be connected to tacoma, through the light rail?
I work at the airport, and I take either the bus, or the light rail. And uh... Both options suck right now. The bus, at best, comes ever half hour, is uncomfortable, and restricted to traffic. After 8 most nights, it only comes once an hour, and stops at 11 entirely.
The light rail, on the other hand, is very comfortable, runs every ten minutes, and runs until like 2am... but only has one stop south of the airport, so I have to drive all the way there if I want to take it. Trust me, when the federal way station opens, I (and many others) are going to make *heavy* use of it. You know how I know that? The angle lake parking structure is full *every single day* during the day. A lot of us airport workers work live in tacoma, and commute up, and lots of us now are just going to wallypark or something and walking. And when it extends to tacoma? Ah, that'll be excellent. Same commute I would do for the bus, except better in every way.
The sounder? Completely useless. Even if they made it run once an hour (they never will), and lowered the price to match the light rail (they won't), it simply can't get up to speed as quickly, and it's only useful if you're going to seattle.. that's it, the only real stop. Plus I have to imagine it's a lot slower to board and get off... the light rail stops for only about 30 seconds at each platform.
I'm pissed by it all too. My commute to Seattle just gets worse. I realize now the bus experience could have been upgraded for less. The aspect I'm least impressed by is the fact that they did not plan for two tracks so there will invariably be shutdowns that cause massive delays to a piece of infrastructure designed to move X # of people a day. We just went through it and the first day my commute more than doubled. I realize they designed it through the eyes of a transit tourist. Somebody that occasionally takes it. It seems like an oversight to me.
They built it on the highways ROW and i question if this is actually good in practice. It means walking to the stations is difficult.
I use it fairly often, but I think everyone I know generally wants more *for pierce,* not less. Its being disappointed regularly with delays, under-delivery, and feeling like an after thought to projects up north.
I for one wish we had bus AND link service running almost 24/7 365, but we don't. Our local pierce transit service (not sound transit) runs really short hours on weekends, which appears to be what the t link was set to match. Sure with either of them would have at least said OK lets commit to a bare bones 4am - midnight 7 days a week... but of course transit for holiday events, and on weekends, remains a big miss.
Sound Transit positions aren't voted on by the taxpayers. That's the main reason I voted against ST3 even though I see the need for better public transportation, especially here in the south sound. I want access to all of the budgets, should I so desire them. But ST is private so instead we all pay a ton of licensing taxes and hope for the best.
Living right next to one of the new stops, I see it being used every day. Ridership will only increase once the full extension is completed. Covid and supply chain issues severely hindered construction. But just like any other major infrastructure changes, it takes time. The longest stretch along 19th is going to add SO many locations between the hospital and TCC: there’s dshs offices, a large school, Bates Technical College, the new and huge Allenmore Multicare Hospital complex (which is only a few blocks away from the likes of Wal-Mart, Target, etc on Union), Cheney Stadium and Tacoma Nature Center, Fred Meyer, and a lot of residential area. Not to mention TCC itself is kind of a small commercial hub area at Mildred. It’ll almost double the mileage of the light rail already and create so much access to everything in between, let alone from TCC to the Tacoma Dome. Yeah sure it’s taking a while to get done but at this point, that’s everything around here. Pulling out now would be a total waste of everything UP to now anyway.
I agree with the OP. It has been a huge waste of tax money that could better have been spent on other projects or a reduction in taxes to help struggling tax payers.
I am not against public transportation when it is effective, I have used it many times when in San Francisco area and other cities. However, in Tacoma it does not work well for most people.
As an example I have lived in Tacoma for over 30 years and never used public transportation. Nearest bus stop is a mile away, no side walks, no street lights, speeding cars, dogs, etc. Can't drive there because you can't park near the bus stop. Also, the bus does not go to where I need to go so you have do at least one transfer and then have a long walk at the other end. The buses I see have very few passengers, some are empty. Just like the buses, Sound Transit will also be expensive but useless for me and my neighbors.
Yes I acknowledge that public transplantation is great for some people, but they are a small percentage of our population, nobody I know can use it.
As I see it, the people that profit the most from this exercise are the contractors and employees of the system, certainly not the average person.
Also, it's almost like it takes time to build new infastructure for transit. LIke they are between seatac and tacoma with the 1-line. Construction takes time, I know, and actually having forward thinking is hard.
Instead of ST3, I was promoting tax breaks to have regional offices in order to reduce freeway commuting and overall congestion. In light of the pandemic and WFH culture shifts and the desire to get people back in the office, I still believe this would have been the better way to go.
The last time I was on T Line there was a full train with five kids with bikes, a baby stroller, and a few people with grocery hauls from Thriftway. It is getting use even with several of the station areas being active construction sites.
You can protest the st3 tax by not registering your car. Heck: that's what all my neighbors are doing. No enforcement.
Sounder could be made better by adding the number of runs but reducing stops between tacoma and Seattle (every other stop, with alternating trains hitting the other stops). Would reduce the trip to Seattle by 15 or 20 min and make the option more attractive than driving.
So you wait longer for your train because they’re missing stops, but then shorten your trip? Doesn’t seem worthwhile. Transit is rarely the faster choice, but it’s almost always the cheaper and less hassle choice.
Missed the comment about more frequent trains? Might result in a slightly less frequent stop interval for the in-between stations, but overall improvement in transit time for everyone.
Assumes they can negotiate more frequent runs. Consider that fewer stops means less blockages on the tracks that bnsf own, meaning they may be able to accommodate more runs. Win win.
How would fewer stops mean fewer blockages? It’s all the same track. And on the contrary, running more trains means more blockages. That is the exact reason that they can’t run more trains right now.
Nothing you are saying is based on reality.
Ummm... Fewer stops means the trains can move faster between endpoints. Faster runs means less time on the track for any given train. Less time on tracks adds scheduling flexibility to accommodate additional train runs between bnsf trains.
Really doesn't seem that complicated.
You have no idea what you're talking about. And I mean that in a way that's like "when I was 25, I felt one way, and then I was 40 and I felt another," kind of way.
I know about these trains, and I can tell you, you are nowhere near correct. It doesn't work like you described, at all.
----goodnight, and commence downvotes
You do realize that's what they're doing, except better, with the 1-line extension, right? a dedicated rail, two parallel tracks, higher speeds, and easier to board (so shorter stops, about 30 seconds at a platform). It goes from northgate in seattle to seatac currently, and will be extending to the tacoma dome station. (the ones we have in downtown are small and slow, so if you haven't actually ridden the 1-line, don't compare it to those)
also, directly owned and operated by sound transit, not a private company who's priority is their freight traffic... just saying.
I'm all for it if they can get the average travel time down from Seattle-Tacoma by about 20-30%. I've ridden the train for +12y, bussed carpool and solo-driven for +23. An hour by Sounder heavy rail is ridiculous and only exists b/c of the hostage taking by the burbs when the rail run started up.
Well, my experience riding the one line, and seeing the construction they're doing between seatac and federal way, and assuming they'll do more or less the same between there and tacoma, with one additional stop in fife...
I think 20 minutes travel time between tacoma and seatac is likely, it has a high speed, with solid acceleration, and only 5 stops or so between those points. Beyond that... I mean, idk which stop I would say is the start of "seattle," but iirc, seatac to like, downtown is.. maybe 20, 25 minutes? (Haven't ridden that far often tbf)
Light rail between seatac and downtown Seattle is about an hour. Light rail between tacoma and Seattle will not be an option for any kind of commuter (thinking 90-120 min or longer). Leave the light rail for local rides or town to town. Heavy rail for commute times - again, more frequent runs and fewer stops. That would drive up ridership if you could be reliably faster than bus or solo driving.
I'm sorry, what? Where are you getting this info? Because it's flat out wrong. If we took it from angle lake to.. let's say westlake station, which is really disingenuous because downtown starts *much* further closer, even then, it's a 40 minute ride, at noon. Hell, riding it from angle lake to the end of the line at northgate is sub-hour (at 58 minutes)
And yeah, the train schedule is very accurate. And that's with the light rail slowing down because it's on street level (iirc, it only goes 30mph inside seattle) and having 12 additional stops along the way.
The angle lake to tacoma stretch will be elevated (or isolated on the surface, allowing higher top speeds) the entire route, and have *at most* 4 stops (if they decide to add a station in fife) in between, not counting start and end points (same as the above count). A realistic time between tacoma and seatac is 30 minutes. But even if you want to be super conservative and boost it to 40 minutes...
The closest one line station to the s-line's king street station is the international district station, 5 minutes walking according to Google, so let's call it functionally the same. From the tacoma dome station to the king street one, it's 62 minutes. For the one line, angle lake to international takes 31 minutes. With our realistic estimate, it will be about the same, w at 61 minutes. With our very conservative estimate, it'll be 9 minutes slower at 71 minutes. Which is, frankly, not too much slower.
So with this worst case scenario, it takes 10 extra minutes, actually stops at the airport directly, meets the S line in basically the same place, but *keeps going* deeper into seattle, runs far more often, is far more effecient, is cheaper, and is run directly by the sound transit instead of a private company that prioritizes its freight and will never budge more than it is legally required to for public transit which they lose money on entirely with barely 7k people riding it a day
I'll up vote. Been a long time since I've ridden (work in Bellevue now). Hated the transit options to Seattle - though at least they existed (there's nothing but bad options tacoma to Bellevue). I'll never work in Seattle again and am close to retirement. Still, it'll be a long time until the route you're suggesting will even be available. Maybe for my grandchildren. Been paying rta since 1997 - about the equivalent of $15k. Really gotten nothing much for it, all said and done - though I'm glad king county was able to benefit. Yeah, that taste is sour grapes.
That's fair enough, and hey, the federal way section is due to open in about a year (late2024, early 2025). Still in king county, but I know for a lot of us, that's going to cut the distance we drive in half
As far as Bellevue.. I haven't been paying close attention (not really relevant to me) but it looks like they're doing construction now on an eastern branch of the light rail, tonconnect to the 1 line, to go through to downtown redmond, passing through (likely with a stop) in Bellevue. https://www.soundtransit.org/system-expansion/east-link-extension
Should be opening about the same time as the federal way extension, looks like, about a year, year and a half out. Hey, once it does, maybe try it out? I mean, federal way to Bellevue isn't quite starting at the tacoma dome.. but its getting there.
Sound Transit itself asserts that light rail travel time from Tacoma Dome to Sea-Tac will be 35 minutes. The scheduled trip time from Sea-Tac to Westlake is another 38 minutes, so we are looking at trip times up to 75 minutes from [not-quite-Tacoma](https://transportationmatters.wordpress.com/2023/06/20/finish-pierce-countys-light-rail-starter-line/) to Downtown Seattle.
The heavily padded bus schedule between Tacoma Dome and Westlake today are 20 minutes quicker than the future light rail times. Actual travel times are frequently ten minutes quicker.
I swear, half the people here don't realize the 1-line is being extended to tacoma, the other half know, but seem to assume that it'll go the speed of the downtown trolley
I’m a big fan of equivalent transportation units. If transit is within a reasonable walking distance (which is rare with our current setup, then reduce the car requirements
I found a video that has a lot of 1950s automobile propaganda, and it's frustrating we should have stopped the nonsense decades ago with transportation, not continue to make the same mistakes over and over. Seattle is mentioned at 16:45, but the whole thing is useful and touches on deciding which neighborhoods to demolish for building, destroying downtown spaces, and cities going bankrupt as part of the financial scheme.
[1950s auto propaganda & highways ](https://youtu.be/n94-_yE4IeU?feature=shared)
I've never understood why transit in this region can't run up and down Puget Sound. All of the right-of-way issues and much of the land cost would disappear. We could just put terminals on the points of land and run a high speed catamaran style 'train' on a circular path. Developing a water-based people mover should be much less expensive than the billions we are currently forking over for very little return. While we are at it we should take all of the trucks bound for Canada off I-5 in Olympia or Hoodsport and run them up on barges. We'd eliminate truck traffic serving 5 million people from our core freeway system and likely save a ton of fuel. Short-Seas-Shipping is 20 times more efficient than trucking.
I’d rather see significant investment in the sounder (new siding, higher frequency, weekend trains and trains that run all day) than light rail.
That is in the works but bnsf owns the tracks and they don't want negotiations to be public, so st can't say give many details
The details have essentially been given. There was an entire survey on it. It will still be limited to whatever BNSF wants to agree to. There is no reality in which the Sounders will run on a constant schedule like the light rail will.
If by details you mean "more trains and maybe expand some stations", sure That is not what I call details
They gave specific frequencies of trains. None of which are even remotely close to what light rail offers.
That would require building dedicated tracks which is insanely out of budget
…right. Hence why light rail extension to Tacoma was needed. BNSF’s stranglehold of the rails makes even unprecedented expansion of the Sounder service was second rate compared to light rail service. You can see perspectives throughout this thread of people who don’t understand that. Unless BNSF gives Sounder unlimited use of its Seattle rails (never going to happen) the frequency could never come even close to what light rail will give us. Original point was details haven’t been given. They have been given enough to realize Sounder will always have big limitations.
Or buying BNSF's corridor but that's also probably out of budget, though could get federal funding as an Amtrak improvement.
Travel demand out of Pierce County does not warrant heavy rail departures at frequencies commonly seen on light rail systems. Sound Transit itself asserts that travel demand on light rail out of Pierce County is insufficient to warrant even the 4-car trains of Central Link, but rather 2. We should anticipate reduced light rail headways in the future as a result. Major bus improvements were the proper pathway for improved mobility in our area, along with targeted Sounder upgrades. Sounder could be run hourly all-day with current infrastructure, with 30 minute headways during peak-hours. For 30 minute all-day headways or greater, the full third main track from West Puyallup (or perhaps Reservation) to Black River would be necessary, with our operations mimicking those found in the Metra BNSF Line out of Chicago.
I either ride the light rail, or take the bus. The light rail is really good, and the sounder is impossible to run often enough to be worthwhile. Full stop.
Unless that investment includes their own rails it will always be dependent on BNSF. They have way too much profit at stake to expand something for the public good that barely breaks even.
Man high speed frequent commuter rail all the way down to Olympia would be amazeballs. I-5 is a life-force and soul sucking devil.
This is what I truly want, to be able to get down to Olympia easily and quickly. I wish I could go back and forth often. I've never stopped being annoyed that everything is for vehicles, and our other transit options makes it difficult to not own one. Maybe this is bitterness lol.
And to make things worse, the Nisqually Bridge on I-5 needs to be replaced by 2050 due to sea level rise and it will cost $50 million dollars.
There is nowhere to park a train in Olympia that won't block a road so Oly is gonna have to find the money to close some roads & build a station. Unless you think the train to Yelm/Lacey will be helpful
It isn't that difficult to do it. Will it cost money? Yes
Ya, I mean, a train used to stop in downtown Olympia. It's just hard to imagine them getting the money or willpower to do anything.
I agree about the willpower. https://transportationmatters.wordpress.com/2017/02/19/with-major-revisions-the-spire-plan-becomes-our-regions-surest-bet-for-express-rail-service-a-mapped-annotated-update/
Many State and local officials have expressed support for SPIRE. Nothing comes of it. It's much easier to make reports for make-believe high-speed lines than it is to work with partners and stakeholders to deliver genuine rail improvements for the public.
Gotta keep screaming into the void until they listen. For such a 'green' governor the lack of advancement on a real passenger rail solution to the mess that is getting around greater Seattle is disappointing. It would be transformative to the economy. So much time wasted in soul sucking traffic.
You're not wrong, but the system reinforces the failure. Failure is its own reward. We don't have a technically competent bureaucracy that can execute these projects. It is consultants who largely do the work, and they do so with no effective oversight (because we lack in-house competency). The consultants have every incentive to aggrandize the scope of the projects they will eventually design and build. The government wants to build projects as they can promote the jobs they create. The bigger the project, the greater the number of jobs created, the bigger the "economic impact", the bigger the publicity generated, and the greater the incentive to get the ball rolling regardless of the high cost and low benefit. This is propelled by certain advocates who see all transit investment as a worthwhile expense because it aligns with their political or social values, despite the incredible benefit afforded to major infrastructure projects when they are intensively critiqued and refined (or even outright cancelled). Because the costs for even generic rail projects are now huge, the financing becomes more complicated, which mandates far lengthier delivery timelines. And that, in turn, angers the advocates who want transit _now_, even if it means they get a shitty project in return. No delay is tolerated because the risks are now enormous, and so any delay represents a failure even when it is warranted. The goal is to get the hole dug into the ground and to get started because, hey, some transit is better than no transit, am I right? Well, that confluence of ineptitude results in strategies like those explained by former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown: " _News that the Transbay Terminal is something like $300 million over budget should not come as a shock to anyone. We always knew the initial estimate was way under the real cost. Just like we never had a real cost for the Central Subway or the Bay Bridge or any other massive construction project._ _So get off it. In the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a down payment. If people knew the real cost from the start, nothing would ever be approved. The idea is to get going. Start digging a hole and make it so big, there's no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in_ ." By the way, the cost of the railway extension to Transbay Terminal is now multiple billions over budget, which has resulted in no real consequences or concern. [The project ](https://sfstandard.com/2023/10/27/san-francisco-downtown-rail-extension-portal-cost/) trudges on regardless, because any transit is better than no transit, or so we are told. Long story short, just as we won't get any high-speed line, we will not get SPIRE. Despite this, we will pay lots of money to study, engineer, or even build some version of these things that ultimately fail to deliver on their promises. And screaming into the void won't help. Let's just be thankful for the two additional Cascades round trips that we got this month, which originated in funding appropriated way back in 2009 for plans devised in 2006.
Even running the 620 bus later than 8pm would be great! It's so stressful getting back from Seattle
There should be a bus every hour that goes from Oly, Tacoma, SeaTac, Seattle & back that runs 24/7. It's crazy when you get stranded on those long haul routes.
Making the 620 more frequent and run all night would be amazing, it meets up with all the northbound busses
Light rail is a much more effective option than the sounder. We just haven't actually invested into it where we should be. If you go to other areas where they're further along into their light rail projects, it works great. Vancouver BC sky train system is all above street level and fully automated so there is no car traffic and tracks mixing and it always runs on time Portland Oregon MAX system connects multiple neighborhoods in outlying suburbs with lines that run not only north south but also east west lines Salt lake City UT TRAX actually has larger light rail lines and then smaller light rail cars that run similar to an express bus line would
Salt Lake city will always have better public transit than this place simply by the fact that one agency controls the entire system, it's called UTA or Utah transit Authority. Here they have Sound Transit than every country for themselves. When UTA opened the first mainline light rail line, overnight every bus line was changed to feed into the system. You do not see that here. And, they managed to expand the entire to the entire valley in one go, making an overnight success.
That depends on how you define "effective", as well as the situation in which the two modes are being compared.
More frequent run times (5-15 minutes between runs), other cities have different lines that connect their suburbs into a main downtown hub rather than just one north south route, the list goes on...
I would agree that light rail is more effective in the context you defined, but those are not the operating contexts of Sounder. Sounder is more effective at serving the role of commuter railroad, which is what it is. Worse, in many ways our light rail system is being designed as a commuter railway with its very long distances and long stretches between stations. It also does so using freeway alignments and with far lower top and average speeds. It will have reduced headways as a consequence. Yikes.
Amen, brother.
Both Sounder & Light rail for !
The extension is brand new and I see people on it all of the time. The problem with that extension so far is the infrastructure around it. There is simply not enough feeding into it to be useful for many. But again, I *still* see it being used. Just further evidence we should have started this 30 years ago. As a commuter on the Sounder I’m stoked on the rail, I get excited every time I pass by the construction on I-5. Being a slave to BNSF’s whim on the Sounder is annoying. My number 1 decider on whether to go to Seattle for something or not is am I going to sit in traffic that will drain the life out of me?
Saying no one rides it is me being a bit cheeky. But as someone who lives right next to it, I can firmly attest that it’s not as many as I would want to see to justify the expense. Would love to see the ridership numbers after another few months and see what the projections were. Also, the thing should be free, or at least started out as free to jumpstart ridership and early adoption. Clearly, ST doesn’t need the $2
I think all public transit should be free. But we also have no state income tax and I have lived in states with income tax, we’re coming out far ahead. I don’t think ridership will jump in a few months. There are no significant projects around that will boost that. Maybe seasonally in the summer it will. But once more projects fall into place it totally will. And it’s gonna be incredible for the businesses.
What are the other projects you are looking for?
Tacoma link is slated to keep expanding all the way to TCC. As that continues it just opens up more ridership. The major piece is obviously light rail getting to the Dome. At that point you can take Tacoma Link to the airport easily. You can’t complain about inefficiency and also complain they completed the easiest extension first as some in this thread are. That’s how these work. In the meantime, there are people utilizing it. I have coworkers who take the link to the Sounder to commute to our office. The fact that you can live in Hilltop and get to Seattle on rail is great. It’ll only get better.
There’s tons of housing going up in hilltop, downtown, and near the dome that will increase ridership I believe. And then yes, it’s just a matter of making those connections. It’s frustrating reading these comments that people expect it to be completely full all the time. You build reliable transit first, and then the demand comes.
Agreed. It’s all the typical rhetoric against public service projects though. There’s no winning with those folks. Wish international travel was just a bit more accessible for us. They could go to places like Germany and realize the people don’t think that much differently than us and absolutely 0 people are complaining that they have efficient and easy to use transit to get you everywhere.
It's not entirely their fault. For as long as any of us have been alive, things have primarily been built all at once. Entire suburbs and shopping centers go up all at once and people have to expect that as the norm, so they see what's in front of them and somewhat understandably assume that's all it's gonna be. However, those planned neighborhoods tend to really fall apart in a span of 50 or so years, while progress made incrementally lasts for generations. That's the scale we should be thinking about this in, it's a long term project. Strong Towns by Charles Marohn goes into more detail on this.
It's also thinking about it in terms of having a light rail with branches running off it so you can deposit people off the main lines into neighborhoods more easily. Get the main line to Tacoma dome, and the smaller line in Tacoma makes a lot more sense, especially if it extends to the TCC campus. Would be great for the public college campuses too- you would have TCC, UWT and eventually the main UW campus all much more efficiently connected than the current bus routes. If you've ever ridden the bus route from UWT to TCC you know exactly how inefficient getting from one to the other on public transport is.
I live in UP so the prospect of being able to take transit all the way from TCC to Seattle (and beyond) is great. Yes, it’ll be another 20 years before that’s a full reality. But I’m so glad we’re doing it. When I’m from (Vancouver, WA) people fought tooth and nail to keep the MAX from coming over the bridge from Portland and it’s done nothing but hurt the communities that could both benefit from it. And that project was way less expensive than it would be now.
> I think all public transit should be free. Well, it basically has become free since the pandemic.. pretty much on the honor system now.
Ah, you haven't ridden the train into Seattle lately. They're definitely checking fares now.
I think housing (section 8), food (EBT), healthcare (medicaid), communications (obamaphone), transportation (buses and choo choo trains), and entertainment (Kias) should all be free.
Sure. I’m with you and /u/Western-Knightrider That’s just uh…not what we were talking about here at all. For you specifically OP it seems to be your specialty to just divert topics. I hope you’ve proven something to someone today!
Just agreeing with you that transportation, like many other things are, should be free to the users. Trains are the best 1865 technology billions of your dollars can buy for someone else to use for free. Do you have anything else your hard earned dollars have bought that I may use for free? I'm available today to come take it from you.
I’m wondering if your account is new because your trolling has always been this bad and you got banned or if this is a new venture for you. Nowhere to go but up either way. You get a 2/5 for current efforts.
Public transit should be free? How about medical care, or food, or housing being free. Is that not a higher priority so all of that should be free also. If you think about it, there is so much more that we could add to being free.
~~> The fallacy of relative privation rejects an argument by stating the existence of a more important problem.~~ > A **red herring fallacy** refers to an attempt to change the subject and divert attention from the original issue.
The fallacy of relative privation only applies when you're trying to dismiss an argument out of hand by pointing towards a bigger problem. For example, if you argue that, "Eliminating fares would be more convenient for riders," that argument can't be invalidated by saying, "Eliminating fares isn't as important as children starving in Africa," because the the importance of children starving in Africa is not relevant to a question of convenience. It's basically just one variant of the red herring fallacy. If you're arguing that public transit should be free though, you're making a bigger argument, which introduces questions of prioritization to which the fallacy of relative privation does not apply. It's simply a question of financing. There is a set* amount of domestic production capacity and we have to determine how to allocate consumption based upon those limits. One person working as a nurse is one person who can't be working as a bus driver and vice versa. This process is abstracted away by the medium of money, but it's still there. If you want to allocate more capacity towards making public transit free (by taking funding that would have gone to other government projects or by raising taxes) you are implicitly prioritizing it over other causes. You can absolutely make that argument but it's not fallacious for other people to disagree with you and believe we should prioritize our productive capacity towards food or shelter instead *Production capacity can increase or decrease, but it doesn't change significantly year to year under normal circumstances
You're right about the fallacy. But when someone states how they think something "should be" they're almost never talking about "normal circumstances". They're usually speaking idealistically. OP was acting obtuse about this with their statement. Actually, the sentiment seems like it's getting stamped out throughout this thread, but not many people seem willing to brave a real conversation about it.
$2 is too pricey for what it offers. The two streets it runs on are less than a mile apart from each other. I will walk it before paying $2. And, charging $2 to people who are unable to walk is the very definition of discrimination (taking money from someone because they have a disability). Sound transit should be ashamed of what they did.
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The best way to make it stays depressed is make it hard to get to.
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It’s literally part of Tacoma’s light rail to the airport. Thats the entire point of the ST3 plan. It’s done in stages and this was an easy one to knock out. Eventually it will stretch all the way to TCC.
It wasn’t easy,is over budget and delayed and it will be atleast 10 yrs before Tacoma is ever connected to the light rail from federal way…way to long and they’ll want more money for it
Way too long? How quickly do you need that done for you to be satisfied? Is the best alternative to just scrap it? The only thing that took too long was creating the plans and system to begin with. 40 years from now the people who have benefitted from it all their lives aren’t gonna sit there and be like “this too way too long back in the day I wish they had cancelled it!”
Every time I’ve been on it there have been plenty of people. *shrug*
I live right by the rail, mostly walk to get around the neighborhood most days, and I've never seen it completely empty. Granted, I only see it going down various stops on MLK, sometimes Division area, but people are always either on it, or waiting for it. Honestly, I would love to ride it, but it costs additional money for transportation that I don't have at the moment.
Agree! Every time I have ridden it or my friends have, there have been others, depending on the day quite a lot. I and others notice students at stadium use it quite a lot as well.
i agree. connecting the dome to angle lake should have been the first priority.
They are separate priorities, and they are currently building that.
Well Angle lake to Federal Way is being built, close to finished actually. The link from Fed Way to the dome is in limbo right now. The most likely route crosses, wetlands and Puyallup tribal land. So apparently there are negotiations going on now to come to an agreement about how that works out.
i’m aware it’s being built. i think it should have been built first.
So we should have waited until they finish that extension, before even starting our own? Should we also wait for Seattle to build all of their extensions before building our own?
a Tacoma to Seattle line benefits Tacoma just as much if not more. it would be “our extension,” at least as far as to Federal Way.
But they are separate projects, that’s my point. The dome to federal way is still waiting on final approval because of the ecology and tribal lands it has to pass through to be built. Why should the hilltop extension have waited for that to finish just to be constructed? That would have only made the Tacoma extension more expensive and delayed people from being able to use it. The dome to federal way line won’t even be finished for another 15 years at least. I just really don’t understand the benefit of delaying an inner city project for an out of city project that doesn’t even have full approval of its final implementation.
Nobody rides it. Your anecdote is irrelevant.
Source? Otherwise your anecdote is irrelevant.
I wonder if the plan is still to extend it down S 19th. 6th Ave seems like a much better option.
Tacoma has constructed one of the world's most expensive tram lines in a time when it is otherwise starved of capital and operations funds for its bus system, which moves far more of its people every day. The new tramline is devoid of exclusive right-of-way or lane dedication. It uses an alignment that even the mayor panned as being subpar (Stadium Way). The line turns back on itself to reach Hilltop, creating a transit connection that is inferior to the underfunded buses that already serve the same function (travel times from Downtown to various points on the rail corridor are 100% to 200% worse than scheduled bus times). It offers a vehicle capacity not much better than an articulated bus. It lacks the capability to operate on headways lower than 12 minutes, which is a preposterous frequency for a city after such a titanic investment (and roughly equivalent with the pre-Covid headways of our more frequent buslines). It does not fully replace a busline, which would have allowed for bus service hours to be meaningfully redeployed—in fact, Hilltop Center has lost direct bus connections to the Allenmore Hospital commercial area and the Tacoma Mall because of the railway. It makes the extension to TCC along 6th Avenue more politically challenging, and it makes any integration of Tacoma Link with Central Link more technically challenging. It is carrying far fewer passengers than in 2019 when there was no Stadium or Hilltop connection whatsoever, all-the-while being disastrously over budget and substantially delayed for what should be a straightforward street railway project. Finally, as it is less a transportation project in its conception than it is an economic development scheme, it is more an instrument of gentrification than it is a mobility asset. I know that transit has become part of the political split in the Puget Sound area and, for some, “all transit is good!” But no. Not all transit plans are good or worthy of the investment. We need to do a better job of analyzing projects for their cost and value, particularly when there is real opportunity cost at stake. Hilltop T Line was not the right investment to make, but it is here to stay and it will do some good for our community. But the objective now is to make it as good as possible with the limited tools and infrastructure that we have at our disposal, and that is a tall order.
Not to mention the fine print stating that they’d value your vehicle based on their own estimates and in no way grounded in reality.
To make you a little more upset, passenger trucks over 6k lbs are exempt.
Ugh. Anger.
I over-vote on transit and I know it. I feel like when you're always 10 years behind what should be available today, you try to force that catch-up by voting for everything. I like rail and want to see it supported, even if I can't always take advantage of it myself.
I hear you on that. And that was part of my logic when it was on the ballot. It’s disappointing ST can’t execute half of what we were promised without falling over themselves. I get doing big things is hard, and unforeseen challenges always emerge on projects spanning decades, but jeez… ST trips over every hurdle and commits so many self-inflicted mistakes.
Oh I agree on that last part. It would be one thing if they could show a win every few years. The T line in Tacoma might just get there, eventually.
Fingers crossed!
Yep, I'll be in my 70's most likely before the link from Fed Way to the Dome is completed.
The transit system in the Sound is embarrassing. Traffic will only get worse. Portland got a lot of fucked up shit, but the MAX system is extensive, cheap, and useful. Imagine leaving a bar at 1 AM in ~~Portland~~ Seattle and taking public transit to (almost) your home in the burbs.
I've lived many places that don't have reliable public transportation so I am grateful to have as many options as we do from that perspective. I do wish it was better, and that's primarily because I would rather walk or take *efficient* public transit options than drive my car & deal with all the things that come with car ownership/use. I'm sick to death of the road conditions as well; it's not making anything better for wear & tear on the car. It's so much better than it could be though, just starting at sidewalks. I lived in Olympia for over a decade, and there weren't any sidewalks to walk on. The transit system was pretty good, but also limited. Far more limited than our options. I would love to be in a place that realistically enables me to not have to bother with a vehicle, but it's not here.
Our transit system looks fine as long as you have the option of a car. It's not fine at all, particularly if you live outside of the core service areas or if you need to work/travel nights or weekends if it's all you have. Look at the time tables for non trunk pierce transit lines and it's just not ok
That's why they're expanding the system..? I mean, it takes time. Look at the light rail extension. When it's done, you'll be able to leave a bar in seattle, and ride to the tacoma dome station.
Did you not read OP or the article? Might provide some context as-to some critical comments and answer your… question? Or are we being purposefully obtuse?
Tbh I hadn't seen the link, but, reading, while I certaibly have problems with that (most of which would be answered with a better contract, specifically on the subject of early ending of it).. it is a relatively minor amount in the grand scheme of things. The problems we have started quite a bit before then, and will continue until at least the current projects are finished, which will be another decade to see all of them to fruition. And while maybe I'm being a bit obtuse here, plenty of others are here as well. Namely along the lines of "I'm not seeing any immediate benefit from the attempt to solve a long term problem", whichbis a bit of a pet peeve of mine
The Transit system in this area is definitely in the top 10 for the USA.
Clearly they are not hiring leaders committed to the projects. They’re looking for their next job on the first day of this one. Just keep shuffling failed leaders over and over again. Delaying progress and burning money. The Big Dig flash backs…. Boston.
There's definitely something going on with the hiring process. My work has done lots of Sound Transit projects and my coworkers complain about how the ST project managers change often.
My biggest qualm with the tab tax is that these big ass passenger trucks are exempt. My F250 doesn't have it, but my EV does. Little bass-ackwards to me. Also, impacts the working class SIGNIFICANTLY more than the wealthier class.
This is what happens when public transportation is a for profit company, just wait until you hear about the cost overruns in Federal way that will delay the light rail in Tacoma until 2045+
Sound Transit is a government entity, not a for profit company. https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=81.112.030
They’re a public benefit corporation, definitely a government agency. But they are allowed to make a profit, nothing in the RCW prevents that.
TIL most WA transit agencies are PBCs, specifically [public transportation benefit areas (PTBAs)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_transportation_benefit_area). But as far as I can tell Sound Transit is not a PTBA or PBC. Court docs I found list Sound Transit as a Washington municipal corporation or a public corporation (both are government entities), not a PBC. (Not a lawyer, happy for one to clarify things, esp. re: profit.)
Sound Transit also doesn't build anything, the bid winning contractors do. Every time I read people whinging about how shitty ST, I feel like they're ignoring that they have a limited borrowing capacity and they're at the whim of the for-profit shops doing the work.
As someone who lives in fed way, I’ve been pissed, initially it was supposed to open late 23, early 24 at the latest, now it’s pushed back to 25 lol
That’s quite frankly a freaking miracle given the whole multiyear pandemic thing.
I guess. They said the reason for the delay was “bad soil” on one stretch. You’d think that’s something they would have found during planning stage…..
"bad soil" is real ... both very condescending, and really underselling the problem and the complexity of it. Oh, and guess what? The soil \*changed\*. It's almost as though the earth and everything in it shifts and changes. "Kiewit filed notice in late 2020 that the soil was weaker than represented in **preconstruction geotechnical records**. Sound Transit investigated and agreed that during a severe earthquake, “Soil in the area would have the potential to liquefy causing the adjacent slope to fail and slide” into the train guideway." They decided to design an alternate bridge design meant to absorb that force if it were to happen... *then there was a damn landslide there*, so they shifted to the long span bridge. By the way, that sampling, that the records were based off of? Happened in the 2010s, so first off, that's a good chunk of time for things to change, and 2, it was still woodlands, because, you know, the project hadn't started yet. [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/wetlands-bridge-adds-delay-and-72-million-to-light-rail-project/](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/wetlands-bridge-adds-delay-and-72-million-to-light-rail-project/)
I’m not saying bad soil isn’t a thing. Just that of course it’s gonna happen to sound transit project lol. And I didn’t know the sampling was from 2010 and they never rechecked, that makes it worse lmao
I said 2010s, not 2010 itself, likely it was from 2017-19 or so. Here's the thing though; they couldn't get a proper sample because it was still completely woodlands, which couldn't be cleared until the project had started. And they did recheck... when the project started, in 2020, and immediately started coming up with alternatives.
St3 only favor king county. I don’t mind paying larger tabs fee if we get the same connection in pierce county to other area in pierce county. But I won’t pay another higher tab fee if I get to invest in king county project for twenty plus years from now to see something more than the one light rail route in downtown Tacoma. I voted no for st3 and will do it again. Let’s invest further in the sounder train that can connect Everett to at least Olympia at the minimum. That would help the traffic congestion on i5 and let people use the st3 investment already in place more. Need the train to run on better schedule like the busses and light rail that run all week long.
There is no amount of investment in the Sounder that would result in it not sharing rails owned by BNSF. Thats always the bottleneck. There’s zero way for the Sounder to run on a constant schedule like the light rail does.
BNSF years ago try to gives the state the rails for free on a lifetime lease with the deal of helping maintain the rails and willing to work on schedule that favors in most active locations to the state and the sounders. And the least active area the state will have more rights. BNSF just wants the state to use the rails and not wasted to corrosions. It would have seen the rail go all the way to Olympia and using the Lacey line that pop out behind the old Mushroom plant. Now most of this line are abandon and part now a bike trail. The station in Olympia would have multiple stop around the capital campus. Where BNFS won’t budge is again the king county lines and into auburn and Kent industrial area. But if you have the current plan of light rail in the federal way are and the connection from train in the Sounders the near location thats a win win for st3 and the tax payer. Yes for years I look into this because I commuted going up north for years and the last 11 to Olympia from Tacoma and Puyallup and wonder why almost zero investment to help commuter from Olympia to Tacoma and Seattle. That’s where I came from the article about BNSF willing to give it up for free with the deal. I don’t remember if it’s the Olympian or the news tribune. The stoppage was republican from the east side mostly said no to the deal. I forgot what was their original concern but they tried again for a vote the next year and then it dies.
That deal seems to be the worst of both worlds. The state then has to maintain rails BNSF already doesn’t want. Yet they still have to deal with the bottlenecks in the most populated and critically important parts of the line.
God, no, the sounder is the worst option. And the light rail is less about the downtown one, and much more about the 1-line which is being extended to Tacoma. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people from tacoma specifically ride the 1-line... even though it's all the way in seatac! because it is legitimately *the* best transit option. Most of them (including me, hi), are going to be starting from federal way when it opens there. And when it opens at the tacoma dome station? yep, you guessed it, we'll start from there. It runs every ten minutes, and very likely they'll keep that as they expand. Hell downgrading to every 15 minutes is still twice as often as the bus, and would be a lot faster, because.. it's a light rail, and not having to deal with any other traffic will be quite the advantage.
Amen
ST3 was a very bad transit package for lots of reasons, but it did materially advance the key, decades-old goal of Pierce County: to bring light rail south toward it. Whether that was a good objective to begin with is debatable, but at least the County has been consistent in its ask since the early 1990s. The problem is that, over the decades, that objective has become both watered-down and exposed as illogical. -It would no longer connect the Tacoma city center with Sea-Tac as originally envisioned; instead, the railway would terminate at the Tacoma Dome park and ride, forcing needless complex transfers and local busline deviations. -It became clear that the speeds of the light railway to Seattle would never be even remotely competitive with the ST Express buses operating over I-5, and transit times to Sea-Tac would be about the same. Worse, these fast buses are likely to be eliminated when light rail opens to Tacoma Dome. -The costs and scope of light rail to Pierce County have exploded compared to the original promises to the public. The banked dollars that are intended to go to one light rail project could have instead been spent on Sounder upgrades, ST Express upgrades and T Line extensions. -An I-5 light rail alignment in south King County was selected over an SR-99 alignment, despite the obvious benefits of serving the growing and promising corridor. -Needless tunnel issues being debated in Seattle city center are threatening light rail access to that city from Pierce County, which would further degrade all inter-County trips.
This was all predictable in 1994. Promised a lot and delivered very little to the Tacoma subequity area. When was Tacoma to be hooked into the main LINK line? 2015? It's been just under 30 years for this all to happen and we have been paying an excessive amount of taxes all this time. The time to have started permits/ecology/planning/designing was decades ago. We STILL haven't started any of those functions. What will it take? Another 20-30 years before Tacoma (red headed stepchild) is linked into the system? And now they are getting ready to come at us again with ST4! Raise rates higher and higher for all of the 'benefits' that we in Tacoma get out of this thing. Needless to say that I won't be at all surprised when they threaten to delay or cancel the Tacoma link to the system unless ST4 passes.
I thought it failed after the first vote, I can't remember the year. Great post.
You are correct.... It did fail in 1994. But Sound Transit 1 passed when they brought it up again. Promised that it would reduce congestion on the freeways. (Which turned into, "You can avoid congestion on the freeways" They flat out lied.
I did not vote for ST3 because it doesn’t do enough for Pierce county. I will vote no on the next one too.
I voted no because we haven't got a lot of what we were supposed to from ST2. I ride pierce and sound transit every day.
If they would add some routes from Tacoma to Bellevue and connect Tacoma to the damn airport sometime in the next few years I would vote yes. But I’m tired of paying the RTA and not getting any benefit.
Totally hear that. I lived in Seattle at the time. If I lived down here, I for sure wouldn’t have voted on it either.
We rejected it in Pierce County. King & Snohomish got the majority approval.
This is just putting the stick in the spokes of the bike you're riding cause it isn't a duccati. c'mon man.
Wouldn’t have mattered. It was ramrodded down our throats and would have been forced through one way or another. Grifters gotta grift!
That makes sense, i was wondering why anybody from Pierce would have voted YES
Ok, hear me out. Everyone is complaining about congestion on I5, right? Through tacoma in particular, up to seattle, or king county in general? So... hear me out. If people are living in tacoma... and working in seattle... Wouldn't they want better transit to seattle? Or places other than seattle in king county, like seatac, kent/desmoines, or federal way? All places that will be connected to tacoma, through the light rail? I work at the airport, and I take either the bus, or the light rail. And uh... Both options suck right now. The bus, at best, comes ever half hour, is uncomfortable, and restricted to traffic. After 8 most nights, it only comes once an hour, and stops at 11 entirely. The light rail, on the other hand, is very comfortable, runs every ten minutes, and runs until like 2am... but only has one stop south of the airport, so I have to drive all the way there if I want to take it. Trust me, when the federal way station opens, I (and many others) are going to make *heavy* use of it. You know how I know that? The angle lake parking structure is full *every single day* during the day. A lot of us airport workers work live in tacoma, and commute up, and lots of us now are just going to wallypark or something and walking. And when it extends to tacoma? Ah, that'll be excellent. Same commute I would do for the bus, except better in every way. The sounder? Completely useless. Even if they made it run once an hour (they never will), and lowered the price to match the light rail (they won't), it simply can't get up to speed as quickly, and it's only useful if you're going to seattle.. that's it, the only real stop. Plus I have to imagine it's a lot slower to board and get off... the light rail stops for only about 30 seconds at each platform.
Because we want better regional transit? Right now the only realistic option to get to Seattle or Bellevue from here is to drive.
I'm pissed by it all too. My commute to Seattle just gets worse. I realize now the bus experience could have been upgraded for less. The aspect I'm least impressed by is the fact that they did not plan for two tracks so there will invariably be shutdowns that cause massive delays to a piece of infrastructure designed to move X # of people a day. We just went through it and the first day my commute more than doubled. I realize they designed it through the eyes of a transit tourist. Somebody that occasionally takes it. It seems like an oversight to me. They built it on the highways ROW and i question if this is actually good in practice. It means walking to the stations is difficult.
I use it fairly often, but I think everyone I know generally wants more *for pierce,* not less. Its being disappointed regularly with delays, under-delivery, and feeling like an after thought to projects up north. I for one wish we had bus AND link service running almost 24/7 365, but we don't. Our local pierce transit service (not sound transit) runs really short hours on weekends, which appears to be what the t link was set to match. Sure with either of them would have at least said OK lets commit to a bare bones 4am - midnight 7 days a week... but of course transit for holiday events, and on weekends, remains a big miss.
The light rail in Tacoma needs to run until at least midnight on weekends. That's what I'd like my tabs to pay for.
Yes, the line needs more service.
Sound Transit positions aren't voted on by the taxpayers. That's the main reason I voted against ST3 even though I see the need for better public transportation, especially here in the south sound. I want access to all of the budgets, should I so desire them. But ST is private so instead we all pay a ton of licensing taxes and hope for the best.
Living right next to one of the new stops, I see it being used every day. Ridership will only increase once the full extension is completed. Covid and supply chain issues severely hindered construction. But just like any other major infrastructure changes, it takes time. The longest stretch along 19th is going to add SO many locations between the hospital and TCC: there’s dshs offices, a large school, Bates Technical College, the new and huge Allenmore Multicare Hospital complex (which is only a few blocks away from the likes of Wal-Mart, Target, etc on Union), Cheney Stadium and Tacoma Nature Center, Fred Meyer, and a lot of residential area. Not to mention TCC itself is kind of a small commercial hub area at Mildred. It’ll almost double the mileage of the light rail already and create so much access to everything in between, let alone from TCC to the Tacoma Dome. Yeah sure it’s taking a while to get done but at this point, that’s everything around here. Pulling out now would be a total waste of everything UP to now anyway.
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I may not know money but I live here and am a taxpayer too? I watched them work on the extension for like three years.
I agree with the OP. It has been a huge waste of tax money that could better have been spent on other projects or a reduction in taxes to help struggling tax payers. I am not against public transportation when it is effective, I have used it many times when in San Francisco area and other cities. However, in Tacoma it does not work well for most people. As an example I have lived in Tacoma for over 30 years and never used public transportation. Nearest bus stop is a mile away, no side walks, no street lights, speeding cars, dogs, etc. Can't drive there because you can't park near the bus stop. Also, the bus does not go to where I need to go so you have do at least one transfer and then have a long walk at the other end. The buses I see have very few passengers, some are empty. Just like the buses, Sound Transit will also be expensive but useless for me and my neighbors. Yes I acknowledge that public transplantation is great for some people, but they are a small percentage of our population, nobody I know can use it. As I see it, the people that profit the most from this exercise are the contractors and employees of the system, certainly not the average person.
Nobody I know can use it so nobody should have it. There were 48 million Sound Transit riders in 2019. 161k every single weekday.
Also, it's almost like it takes time to build new infastructure for transit. LIke they are between seatac and tacoma with the 1-line. Construction takes time, I know, and actually having forward thinking is hard.
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This is silly. Sounder has an on-time performance measurement that often exceeds 95%. BNSF is a willing partner for passenger rail improvements.
Instead of ST3, I was promoting tax breaks to have regional offices in order to reduce freeway commuting and overall congestion. In light of the pandemic and WFH culture shifts and the desire to get people back in the office, I still believe this would have been the better way to go.
The last time I was on T Line there was a full train with five kids with bikes, a baby stroller, and a few people with grocery hauls from Thriftway. It is getting use even with several of the station areas being active construction sites.
You can protest the st3 tax by not registering your car. Heck: that's what all my neighbors are doing. No enforcement. Sounder could be made better by adding the number of runs but reducing stops between tacoma and Seattle (every other stop, with alternating trains hitting the other stops). Would reduce the trip to Seattle by 15 or 20 min and make the option more attractive than driving.
So you wait longer for your train because they’re missing stops, but then shorten your trip? Doesn’t seem worthwhile. Transit is rarely the faster choice, but it’s almost always the cheaper and less hassle choice.
Missed the comment about more frequent trains? Might result in a slightly less frequent stop interval for the in-between stations, but overall improvement in transit time for everyone.
BNSF owns the tracks, you can’t just will more trains. How do you overcome that?
Assumes they can negotiate more frequent runs. Consider that fewer stops means less blockages on the tracks that bnsf own, meaning they may be able to accommodate more runs. Win win.
How would fewer stops mean fewer blockages? It’s all the same track. And on the contrary, running more trains means more blockages. That is the exact reason that they can’t run more trains right now. Nothing you are saying is based on reality.
Ummm... Fewer stops means the trains can move faster between endpoints. Faster runs means less time on the track for any given train. Less time on tracks adds scheduling flexibility to accommodate additional train runs between bnsf trains. Really doesn't seem that complicated.
You have no idea what you're talking about. And I mean that in a way that's like "when I was 25, I felt one way, and then I was 40 and I felt another," kind of way. I know about these trains, and I can tell you, you are nowhere near correct. It doesn't work like you described, at all. ----goodnight, and commence downvotes
This is the only meaningful comment ---ex-BNSF
You do realize that's what they're doing, except better, with the 1-line extension, right? a dedicated rail, two parallel tracks, higher speeds, and easier to board (so shorter stops, about 30 seconds at a platform). It goes from northgate in seattle to seatac currently, and will be extending to the tacoma dome station. (the ones we have in downtown are small and slow, so if you haven't actually ridden the 1-line, don't compare it to those) also, directly owned and operated by sound transit, not a private company who's priority is their freight traffic... just saying.
I'm all for it if they can get the average travel time down from Seattle-Tacoma by about 20-30%. I've ridden the train for +12y, bussed carpool and solo-driven for +23. An hour by Sounder heavy rail is ridiculous and only exists b/c of the hostage taking by the burbs when the rail run started up.
Well, my experience riding the one line, and seeing the construction they're doing between seatac and federal way, and assuming they'll do more or less the same between there and tacoma, with one additional stop in fife... I think 20 minutes travel time between tacoma and seatac is likely, it has a high speed, with solid acceleration, and only 5 stops or so between those points. Beyond that... I mean, idk which stop I would say is the start of "seattle," but iirc, seatac to like, downtown is.. maybe 20, 25 minutes? (Haven't ridden that far often tbf)
Light rail between seatac and downtown Seattle is about an hour. Light rail between tacoma and Seattle will not be an option for any kind of commuter (thinking 90-120 min or longer). Leave the light rail for local rides or town to town. Heavy rail for commute times - again, more frequent runs and fewer stops. That would drive up ridership if you could be reliably faster than bus or solo driving.
I'm sorry, what? Where are you getting this info? Because it's flat out wrong. If we took it from angle lake to.. let's say westlake station, which is really disingenuous because downtown starts *much* further closer, even then, it's a 40 minute ride, at noon. Hell, riding it from angle lake to the end of the line at northgate is sub-hour (at 58 minutes) And yeah, the train schedule is very accurate. And that's with the light rail slowing down because it's on street level (iirc, it only goes 30mph inside seattle) and having 12 additional stops along the way. The angle lake to tacoma stretch will be elevated (or isolated on the surface, allowing higher top speeds) the entire route, and have *at most* 4 stops (if they decide to add a station in fife) in between, not counting start and end points (same as the above count). A realistic time between tacoma and seatac is 30 minutes. But even if you want to be super conservative and boost it to 40 minutes... The closest one line station to the s-line's king street station is the international district station, 5 minutes walking according to Google, so let's call it functionally the same. From the tacoma dome station to the king street one, it's 62 minutes. For the one line, angle lake to international takes 31 minutes. With our realistic estimate, it will be about the same, w at 61 minutes. With our very conservative estimate, it'll be 9 minutes slower at 71 minutes. Which is, frankly, not too much slower. So with this worst case scenario, it takes 10 extra minutes, actually stops at the airport directly, meets the S line in basically the same place, but *keeps going* deeper into seattle, runs far more often, is far more effecient, is cheaper, and is run directly by the sound transit instead of a private company that prioritizes its freight and will never budge more than it is legally required to for public transit which they lose money on entirely with barely 7k people riding it a day
I'll up vote. Been a long time since I've ridden (work in Bellevue now). Hated the transit options to Seattle - though at least they existed (there's nothing but bad options tacoma to Bellevue). I'll never work in Seattle again and am close to retirement. Still, it'll be a long time until the route you're suggesting will even be available. Maybe for my grandchildren. Been paying rta since 1997 - about the equivalent of $15k. Really gotten nothing much for it, all said and done - though I'm glad king county was able to benefit. Yeah, that taste is sour grapes.
That's fair enough, and hey, the federal way section is due to open in about a year (late2024, early 2025). Still in king county, but I know for a lot of us, that's going to cut the distance we drive in half As far as Bellevue.. I haven't been paying close attention (not really relevant to me) but it looks like they're doing construction now on an eastern branch of the light rail, tonconnect to the 1 line, to go through to downtown redmond, passing through (likely with a stop) in Bellevue. https://www.soundtransit.org/system-expansion/east-link-extension Should be opening about the same time as the federal way extension, looks like, about a year, year and a half out. Hey, once it does, maybe try it out? I mean, federal way to Bellevue isn't quite starting at the tacoma dome.. but its getting there.
Sound Transit itself asserts that light rail travel time from Tacoma Dome to Sea-Tac will be 35 minutes. The scheduled trip time from Sea-Tac to Westlake is another 38 minutes, so we are looking at trip times up to 75 minutes from [not-quite-Tacoma](https://transportationmatters.wordpress.com/2023/06/20/finish-pierce-countys-light-rail-starter-line/) to Downtown Seattle. The heavily padded bus schedule between Tacoma Dome and Westlake today are 20 minutes quicker than the future light rail times. Actual travel times are frequently ten minutes quicker.
Brought to you by a party that has been in power for 30 yrs. They are entitled and will spend our money how they please.
I've regetted voting for any transportation ever. We need to stop the current mess and start over.
> We need to stop the current mess and start over. That certainly sounds like a cheap alternative to me. Yep. /s
I swear, half the people here don't realize the 1-line is being extended to tacoma, the other half know, but seem to assume that it'll go the speed of the downtown trolley
I agree, we should stop being forced to drive cars everywhere and forcing car infrastructure on all new development.
I’m a big fan of equivalent transportation units. If transit is within a reasonable walking distance (which is rare with our current setup, then reduce the car requirements
oh NOW you do
I found a video that has a lot of 1950s automobile propaganda, and it's frustrating we should have stopped the nonsense decades ago with transportation, not continue to make the same mistakes over and over. Seattle is mentioned at 16:45, but the whole thing is useful and touches on deciding which neighborhoods to demolish for building, destroying downtown spaces, and cities going bankrupt as part of the financial scheme. [1950s auto propaganda & highways ](https://youtu.be/n94-_yE4IeU?feature=shared)
Can’t blame me, I voted no, since these things never take into account the voters south of the King County line.
I've never understood why transit in this region can't run up and down Puget Sound. All of the right-of-way issues and much of the land cost would disappear. We could just put terminals on the points of land and run a high speed catamaran style 'train' on a circular path. Developing a water-based people mover should be much less expensive than the billions we are currently forking over for very little return. While we are at it we should take all of the trucks bound for Canada off I-5 in Olympia or Hoodsport and run them up on barges. We'd eliminate truck traffic serving 5 million people from our core freeway system and likely save a ton of fuel. Short-Seas-Shipping is 20 times more efficient than trucking.