I don't understand why the transition was made NOW, when the next Link station at Northgate won't even be in-service for roughly another 2 years. So, what was the big rush all about?

Not really.

They have to finish the convention center station, which is hard to do while bus lines are using it, they needed the space to locate materials, and they have to test out the new LINK from Husky Stadium to Northgate line - the latter takes about 18 months to do - first they start with a single train moving at a very slow speed with only a driver and they slowly increase the number of cars, the number of stops, the load factors (they start without actual people), and the electronics. You can't see that part yet, but it takes people to do it.

Originally, they were going to switch to train only a long long time ago, but somebody (hint) pointed out that utilization and public acceptance of taxes would increase if they had bus lines sharing it, phasing out first the local lines, then the Seattle only lines, then the suburban lines (all those 3xx 5xx lines) - since the areas they had to expand to were in suburban areas, it was better to get them used to seeing bus and train connections there for the longest period.

Each phase out reduced bus capacity and increased train capacity. Now, while the Husky to Northgate is in testing, you don't see any increase, but it's only for a short period. When Northgate comes online, it's going to be party city at all the stations, the bike usage will skyrocket, the escalators will fail (trust me on this part, not my choice), and ridership will be astronomical.

You're welcome.

The love of a deserted subway station in its off hours is a true urban thing, a pleasure only for people of the city-type mindset.

To find this splendidly and ever-so-temporarily empty urban space offputting or unsettling is a rural-type person's reaction, a sure sign of a bumpkin aesthetic.

What allows SkyTrain to be so wonderfully frequent is automation. When you don't have to pay drivers you quickly realize that the number of trains you run is mostly just a first cost issue. Trains can be as frequent as you can fit them on the tracks and you pay only once, not every day.

Of course we chose to go the cheap route and put trains on surface streets, ensuring that unless/until we take the risk for great custom AI that's able to tell the difference between a flying garbage bag and a running pedestrian at 2am we're stuck with paying drivers.

(ducks out of discussion about whether we should be minimizing or maximizing jobs, using scarce transit dollars to prop up our economy)

The city also needs to allow busking in the tunnel. If you’re going to be stuck down there for hours, let’s have some music.

Yes, the tunnel appears to be half-dead during off-commute hours, but for Pete sakes it's only ONE LINE! Seattle is paying the price for not starting this system years ago.
Multiple lines to multiple neighborhoods would increase rider usage at all hours.

Six quality comments, no trolls.
On a Mudede piece no less.
Will wonders never cease.

The downtown stations are about as busy as the non-downtown stations in terms of frequency.

I was always against removing buses from the bus tunnel.

Our Dear Will's explanation is both uncharacteristicly coherent and somewhat plausible.

2, 10

Maybe the piecemeal approach to the Link is the problem. Seattle is enamored with process, and that of course means asking for public input after each small step. The result is an incredibly gradual rollout. If we cannot have more trains until after Northgate is finished, will they again be delayed until Lynnwood is done, too? Everett? Tacoma?

At this rate, the Link will become useful sometime in the 22nd century.

I think maybe a better approach would have been to do the light rail line by fiat. Just build every station all at once, and run the thing from Blaine to the Columbia River.

Look, if you have a dog and you need to dock the tail, cutting it off in 1 mm chunks will cause the dog to bleed to death. One swift, sharp stroke is what’s needed. The same is true for government. Too much hesitation results in paralysis.

Wandering Stars dear, there's this thing called money. We use it to pay for things, Government gets it through a mechanism called taxes, and voters have to approve those taxes. The hesitation here is the voters, not the government. We're building a system in the middle of some of the most valuable land in the nation, using a highly skilled workforce consisting of both professional and vocational workers. That's expensive, and that is why it is being done in chunks.

My buses run a little slower now thanks to the tunnel closure (and they seem more crowded too) but I mainly feel bad for the people who ride the 41. It used to get from the Northgate transit center to the Convention center in 10-15 minutes when the express lanes were open, now it probably takes twice as long because now it's taking the Denny/Stewart exit where it gets stuck in traffic for at least half a dozen blocks before the first stop. So now, everyday until the light rail opens Northgate transit riders get to suffer a little more for their commitment to public transit. Encouraging...

12,

Dear Mme Vel-DuRay, esq:

This area was not as valuable as it now is when light rail broke ground in 2003. And it certainly wasn’t during the Great Recession, when a massive statewide construction effort would have brought many unemployed into the job market. As far as taxation goes, that too is something best accomplished by fiat. The more you dither, the more time time Tim Eymans of the world have to undermine things. It’s better to just slap a capital gains tax on and a statewide income tax as a shock measure, and deal with the political fallout during the next election cycle, when you can point to the thousands of jobs created statewide during a period when the private sector wasn’t employing enough people. If, for example, we were to extend a line running along routes 101 and 90, from Aberdeen to Spokane, with transfers possible to the Central Link at Olympia, Eastern Washingtonians who grumble at paying taxes on projects that only benefit Seattle would be quieted, as they too would enjoy the benefits.

Sometimes, you just gotta be bold, Catalina. Stage it as a dawn raid. One evening, there is no light rail. The next morning, there’s construction crews employing half the state’s unemployed in the most hard hit areas. A few years later, when the recession has lifted, everyone’s riding the train out to see Ruby Beach.

Yours,

The Honorable W. Stars.

Given the current frequency of traffic light delays on MLK that impact the light rail, and then the frequency that light rail crossings delay cross traffic along MLK, I would impressed if realistic optimization could occur. Running a train every two to five minutes down mlk would essentially shut down cross traffic.
Now if the decision was made to elevate the rails, we would be in a far better spot to optimize frequency. But here we are and it's a real bummer.

@11 and 14: First you use a really egregiously inhumane analogy about someone "needing" to dock a dog's tail, and then you mansplain Catalina. Two for two, try for three?

16, Sure, the bets on.

You should make it a point to interrupt every conversation where at least one person is male and tell them that whatever they said is invalid, because they’re a guy. This is the #metoo era, so be sure to accuse me of sexual assault while your at it. Or at least tell everyone that I’m ‘problematic’. Oh, and even if the girl he’s ‘mansplaining’to is a drag queen, feel free to shove your heterosexual finger in his face, because you just have to be the center of every discussion. You can even invade our nightclubs for your bachelorette parties, and tell us who we should and shouldn’t marry. Gay guys are just your props, anyway. Someone you can show off to your debutante friends to show that you’re not really a bigot.

Oops, I guess that does make it hard to say #metoo, though, huh? Unless I’m George Takei. No matter. You’ve already decided all men are rapists anyway.

How’s that working? Did I get the hat trick?

So, this leads to the obvious question:

When can we have a dance party and EDM music festival in the barely used tunnel? Either by using platforms ("shutting them down") or in the actual station space?

Oh, come on, it would be fun!

@10 because it's what happened. as to the others, there are times I've regretted not having us do minimal stations with one elevator and one set of stairs, because every time we add complexity, more things go wrong.

But it is due to money - people want projects that create jobs and profits for those who build them, so we end up with stuff we don't really need.

I'm trying to work within the constraints and complexities of both the Seattle and Puget Sound regional processes, to make things work in a way that meets most of our needs, and is reasonably adaptable to unforseen events. On a strictly transit scale, if we only measure PEOPLE moving, it would be far better to convert all of these into bike-only tunnels, which we could use smaller drills to build, A bus or light rail car carries fewer people in the same space and time that a bunch of ebikes in the same space do. But "important" people want to sit down and can't be bothered with cargo bikes (you could rent) to get to the airport.

@1: The transition was made NOW because East Link construction is now to the point where they're doing work just south of International District/Chinatown Station that will connect the two lines, which includes laying tracks in the ramps that some of the buses used to use to get in/out of the tunnel.

@20 -- Not quite. The timetable for this was moved up only because of the expansion of the Convention Center. You can thank our leaders -- especially Dow Constantine -- for screwing over transit riders in the name of a dubious project.

But the basic problem is the one Charles so eloquently described. This is what happens when you fuck up the design of your subway, and focus on long distance suburban commuters, instead of urban residents trying to get around. The problem is that ridership suffers. That is because ridership -- in every city -- is higher for urban riders. Agencies don't like to run empty trains. The longer they run empty trains, the more they lose money. In the middle of the day, there just aren't enough people riding from Angle Lake to Rainier Valley to justify six minute frequency.

The situation will get a lot better with Northgate Link. Then we will have a much more urban line. It will still be saddled by the weak suburban southern end, but ridership to the north may be enough to allow Sound Transit to run the trains every six minutes all day long. When Link gets to Bellevue, the two lines will overlap, allowing three minute trains in the core. It is at this point where the system will likely be its most efficient. Ridership per mile -- which is a good proxy for ridership per dollar of maintenance -- will be highest.

Then we will start to fuck things up again. We will spend billions extending the line(s) to places like Fife, Ash Way and Issaquah. Not only will Sound Transit be dealing with the debt burden of those construction projects, but the maintenance costs as well. We will have the third longest subway system (and the longest light rail system) in North America (exceeded only by New York and Mexico City). Yet we won't have stops in the Central Area, Belltown, First Hill or Fremont. The result will be relatively low ridership, and the low frequency that typically follows.

Wandering Stars dear, while you are correct that real estate values were not as high in 2003 as they are now, they began a precipitous 73% increase almost immediately, which is the time period in which the land acquisition began. The "Great Recession" only erased about half that increase, and only for a very short period of time (at least in the scope of public works projects) with Seattle proper being cushioned from the greatest loses.

But beyond that, and you know this, you can't do anything "by fiat" in WA state. There's not way to put in an income tax, and very little ability to put in a capital gains tax, particularly with the Republicans being in the Leg. (Republicans are horrible people, after all) We have property taxes and sales taxes, which are intended to pay for state operations. The rest must be raised by bonds. That's why we voted on the new youth jail, for instance, and why we voted on all the phases of ST. If we had put forth an initiative to spend 100 billion dollars (which is the low end of what you are suggesting) it would not only not pass, its gigantic failure would have assured that we would have had no further transit initiatives for the foreseeable future.

MMe Vel-DuRay, Esq:

Your majesty, I would submit there is but one possible solution: deport all Republicans to Idaho.

I'm only half joking.

Sadly, it seems that we do accomplish many things by fiat, however, these are only things that benefit major corporations. Prior to the rise of Amazon, the light rail was really just a toy train that ran a few blocks downtown, something cute for the tourists so we could show them we're a real city after all. I'll grant that it doesn't go much farther now- the damn thing doesn't even leave King County- however, the opposition to expansion is less than it was. Bellevuie residents put up a real hissy fit over the idea of light rail bringing "those people" into their city- until Unca Jeff and Unca Satya said they backed the idea. Now, they're rebranding East Bellevue as "Bel-Red' and wetting themselves with anticipatory glee over the East Expansion.

We wasted a good crisis. The Great Recession was felt with great intensity in the Eastern part of the state, and the GOP capitalized on that. They blamed it all on liberal elites. The decision not to reign in WaMu was indeed the fault of liberal economic policies, however, both Republicans and corporate Democrats were the proponents of that deregulation, not the Left wing of the Democratic Party. if it were up to the Left, WaMu's board would be in prison right now.

I digress. The point is that we could have used that recession as a pretext for a massive public works project aimed at employing people across the state, and make the light rail part of that project. Even if we had to borrow the fund to do it, it would have defanged the GOP by offering something to Easterners the GOP never seems to be able to deliver: jobs.

Frankly, I would have nationalized WaMu and every other bank responsible for the crash, but I'm not sure if states can do that or if it has to be the feds. If it is possible at the state level, fuck it, roast the billionaires over a spit and use the meat to feed the grey whales. Jaime Diamond would finally have something useful to contribute to society.

Yours in awe of your majestic glory,

Wandering Stars

@4 -- SkyTrain's automated trains allow them to run them more often then they would otherwise, but that isn't the only factor. Otherwise they would run them at maximum frequency (2 or 3 minutes) all day long. They don't do that. The lines transition to 10 minutes outside of rush hour. In contrast, the Toronto subway maxes out at 6 minutes (with regular operators).

This is because drivers are only part of the cost. You have track maintenance and train maintenance. The New York subway is very costly to operate because they run the trains so much (because demand is so high), not because they have operators. We are the other extreme. We don't run ours very often, because we simply lack the demand that would make running them more often cost effective. The lack of demand is largely based on poor station placement.

Wandering Stars dear, what you are alluding to is a tax "break", not a tax increase. I share your dislike for a tax break for Amazon or Boeing or a sports team. However, the many Boeing employees/retirees/stockholders, Amazonians, and fans of sports teams - who, after all, are also citizens and taxpayers - may find the breaks to be just dandy because that's part of their tribe. They would prefer to pay more at the till or on their property tax because they think of Boeing/Amazon/Pro sports as economic development. A tax increase for transit does not get quite the same amount of enthusiasm.

And I'm not sure you quite understand the mechanisms of transit. The Link light rail line is not intended to be a regional solution. Leaving the eastside out of it for a moment, Tacoma to Everett is about the most one can hope for, with the balance being taken up by heavy rail or buses.

Of course, our geography adds to that - on the south end, a light rail line along the very direct "highline" picks up Federal Way and Tacoma, while heavy rail serves the less populated towns along the Green River Valley (Kent, Auburn, Puyallup). The same is true of the north, with Sounder serving the coastal towns, and Link serving the communities on higher ground.

Another thing: You vastly underestimate the effect that the first phase of Link had on the Rainier Valley and Beacon Hill. Formerly forgotten neighborhoods were opened up to economic development, and MLK Way S in particular got an infrastructure makeover (utilities, wastewater, paving) that completely transformed it in a way that regular city maintenance never could. On the one hand, that's gentrification. On the other hand, a lot of people who had bought their homes in much less grandiose economic times suddenly found themselves with an unexpected nest egg. As with everything in real estate, there's winners and losers.

Finally: If we had been able to do the epic transit plan that you envision, where would we have housed all those workers from eastern WA? We are already pressed for affordable housing. It would have made the current situation much more dire.