I'm totally cool with supporting these investments, but it certainly would be nice to make this stuff happen faster / would have been nice to do them decades earlier. 🤷♂️
No other state builds light rail systems faster. Europe and Asia build rail systems about twice as fast but not 4 times faster like you're implying.
The truth is we stopped building these systems for 50 years. We've forgotten how to do it and we have to relearn. That takes time.
I wish the generation before me had the same mindset as you. We should have had a functional rail system 20 years ago.
Personally I'm going to adopt the boomer mentality of fuck them grandkids. I want great stuff for me right this instant and fuck everyone else after me forever.
Well to be fair, look at the geography. I’m all for public transit, but I’m honestly unsure if a Ballard—UW train line would make sense. It’s just not that much distance. I guess if it’s part of a longer route maybe.
Edit: I think some of other commenters can’t get out of the minds of commuters, and not consider the cost to build. Of course it’d be extremely useful to have rail between Ballard and the U District. It’d be well utilized. But as I said in other comments, I’m not sure the billions upon billions it’d cost to build a mere 3.5 mile long route would be justifiable given other alternatives.
It's not much distance, but it takes *forfuckingever*, which sounds like bang for your buck. I suspect taking a bike on the Burke-Gillman is faster than the major crosstown car routes.
It would honestly be a game changer.
Sound Transit did a preliminary study of it and found that the journey time would be eight minutes. That’s faster than driving that journey, and the 44 is one of the busier buses in the system.
> I’m honestly unsure if a Ballard—UW train line would make sense. It’s just not that much distance.
It’s a 90+ minute walk, I feel like it’s very reasonable to build a public transit option over that distance
Relying that heavily on the 44 Bus is a damn shame considering how backed up Market/46th/45th gets. Separated transit seems like a no brainer for that corridor but here we are.
Seattle is making the same mistake many American cities have made in developing rapid transit/light rail, they're going in/out of the city to accommodate commuters instead of making it easier to travel within the city like most cities around the world. Instead of following arterials built for cars, it should rethink that strategy and connect neighborhoods together.
We need both. The suburban extensions are freeing up a lot of bus service hours that are otherwise wasted sitting on I-5 and help funnel away would-be drivers. As the suburbs are more affordable than Seattle itself, improving transit links on these trunks are also good for equity.
We've been thinking of moving from downtown up to the Greenwood area and all the houses we're looking at are roughly 1.5-2 miles from the Northgate station. Hilariously, you have to walk at least a mile to the southeast to find a bus that will take you north to Northgate, and with the whole trip taking significantly longer than just walking the whole way. Absolutely disgusting.
There needs to be some ring routes.
Ballard>Fremont>UW>Magnusson Park>Lake City>Northgate>Holman Curve>Ballard makes sense.
It doesn't even need to be light rail for some of them. A streetcar/tram loop would work in some smaller neighborhood areas.
Seems like if it isn't ligh rail, the city should just taken it on themselves in collaboration with Metro. Remove the ~100 spots of street parking on 45th and make a dedicated bus lane with signal priority and keep the queue hops under Aurora and the 44 would be far more useful and serve more people than the parking. I used to be able to walk faster than riding that bus at rush hour.
It made me sad because it's true. With the pissing matches people have over the Ballard station I'd be surprised if even half of this is completed by 2044.
It’s sort of chicken and the egg. Our infrastructure is all built around the car. Our country is super young and didn’t really build up from agrarian societies over thousands of years. We basically won ww2 and got hooked on highways and oil. Hence cars are central to life in America.
Not nearly as conducive to transit expansion as European cities and countries which were all build abound foot and horse travel centuries ago.
What I’m sayin is, we’re kinda fucked. Like light rail stations go to park and rides…. Cool lol.
Yes, Seattle had interurban trains running from Everett all the way to Tacoma 100 years ago. Seattle had an extensive streetcar system, too. But cars killed these transit systems in the 1930s. A lot of I-5 in South Snohomish County runs along the old interurban route. So sad that we didn't keep that infrastructure and are having to rebuild it now.
That's a nice explanation, but not exactly accurate. We destroyed large swaths of our cities to build the highway system, and it took a ton of investment to widen our streets to accommodate cars. No, we didn't have centuries worth of organic growth to combat, but even the northwest outpost of Seattle tripled in size (from 1100 to 3500) between 1870 and 1880, reaching 450,000+ by 1950. That's a lot of growth to work between for cars! East coast cities are even older and bigger.
I think the real issue is not that we could not and cannot divorce ourselves from cars, but that after WWII we had a flush economy and money was cheap so we undertook a grand social experiment of rural living with urban amenities. The only way that was feasible was massive government investment/subsidies in utilities (electricity, plumbing, concrete) and cheap cars with cheap fuel. It worked, more or less, for 50 some odd years, but it's not really feasible without ongoing government subsidies. In a globalized economy, we can't really sit back on being the lone industrialized nation still standing anymore/again, so what do we do?
The question is do we say that suburban experiment is a failure and reboot, or do we keep building out and kick the can down the road, pumping more money into more distant water treatment plants, pouring more concrete instead of repairing the bridges we already have? It's less of an economic question than a political question, as there is a HUGE number of people who think suburban life is their birthright, and tearing down parts of our cities to make way for improved mass transit feels even more like an experiment than the one we're accustomed to.
A lot of European cities went all-in on car infrastructure after WW2 as well and only recently got serious about infrastructure for other modes of transport. Take Amsterdam for example. In the 70s it had been completely taken over by cars and today it has some of the best bike, tram, and train infrastructure in the world.
https://exploring-and-observing-cities.org/2016/01/11/amsterdam-historic-images-depicting-the-transition-from-cars-to-bikes/
Not wrong but it’s not like they leveled the city and rebuilt it for the car. The way our cities, suburbs and interconnected roads are all literally built with the car in mind. Amsterdam more or less shoehorned cars in, then walked it back
Ya, park and ride is crazy, you have to be able to afford a car, insurance, licensing fees, parking fees, and pay for light rail! If I need a car then I’ll just drive, way faster and more convenient.
A large portion of this will be opening in the next 3 years, including the extension to Redmond through Bellevue, the extension north to Lynnwood, and the extension south to Federal Way.
still irks me we are not getting it fully funded by now we have had nearly 2 years of Dem control. I think Buttigieg is writing Washington off because Washington always gets written off because we never bite back.
Hes too busy worrying about people getting on their gas guzzling summer vacation flights to France and lines at sea-tac than the enormous carbon footprint of our ground based infrastructure.
This is a diagram of the complete Sound Transit system that was voted for by the Puget Sound region voters in 1996, 2008, and 2016. This map includes all of the existing, under construction, and upcoming expansions to the Greater Seattle metro area rapid transit system. This includes the Link Light Rail, Sounder Commuter Rail, and future Stride Bus Rapid Transit. This diagram also includes provisional stations included in the Sound Transit 3 plan and has a conservative completion date of 2044.
This diagram was designed in the style of the New York City subway Independent System maps of the 1930s - 1940s. I really like the look of this design and decided to apply it to the upcoming state of the Greater Seattle system.
If you like this map and wish to view it in higher quality or to download, please visit the links below:
PNG: https://drive.google.com/file/d/104LZApFG7R7kZgTfLNTC7lndljlrke50/view?usp=sharing
PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/106qbGJ25NGV9H9hKEU2b4LgSkgKDuqCm/view?usp=sharing
It’s disappointing the way Burien and white center are totally neglected. Those are some of the poorest neighborhoods and the people that would benefit the most from public transit
I’m spending the week in London with its vast subway subsystem and it’s astounding how magnificent the system is, even though I’ll be in my 50s by the time this is complete it’s nice to know they’re finally starting to work on getting it done.
The region has had MANY opportunities to do this over the decades and the voters always decline. I was surprised ST2 and ST3 passed. It killed our cheap car tabs but its LONG overdue. I do have a few gripes, like the used of express busses and commuter rail in lieu of a bigger expansion of light rail, but its better than what we had. (I wanted a light rail replacement of the Sounder going up 167 from Tacoma to Tukwila through Renton.
> London with its vast subway subsystem and it’s astounding how magnificent the system is,
Stockholm, Sweden here.
All the locals hate it because it's slow/late/inefficient/not good enough, and I laugh.
I lived in San Antonio. *Having* a transit system is glorious.
Having one as good as Sweden's is a goddamned miracle.
I can get from Stockholm to Linkoping, 2.5 hours south, by a simple ticket in an "ATM" looking device.
From there, I can do the same and get to Malmo, in the south. Or over to Copenhagen, same thing.
Or I can use local transit on a simple bus pass. You buy that for 48 hours or 72, or a week or a month, then just blip it on the bus/subway/commuter train and light rail and go where you need to go.
That even in 2044, there's no better mass transit option to get from the Edmonds ferry to Seattle is a goddamn travesty.
The last ferry to Kingston may leave at 11:45pm, but the last bus from the Lynnwood transit center to Edmonds Station leaves at around 10pm. Pretty big disconnect there.
On a Saturday night, I can get from my friend's place in west Seattle to the Lynnwood TC for about $5, but to get from there to the ferry via Uber/Lyft late at night will run me almost $20, because the buses have stopped running.
Transit for EVERY FERRY!
I'm starting a new job at Boeing up in Everett. Live in Seattle, totally willing to bike downtown to catch the Sounder, no problem... except...
There's no reverse commute. Boeing is this massive employer in the region, steps from the Mukilteo Ferry station and there's not *one* bus/train/anything that goes directly from anywhere in Seattle to Paine Field.
Unless someone has an idea that I'm just missing right now.
It’s kind of a head scratcher that such a big employer wouldn’t have the clout or whatnot to warrant a transit option anywhere nearby. Here in Beaverton, OR we have Nike and they pretty much have their own rail line stop on the southwest corner of the Nike campus.
If they add permanent transit to the campus, people might think they intend on staying in the region and take their periodic threats to close less seriously.
That’s basically what they say!
It blows my mind that they haven’t tried wifi-equipped commuter shuttles akin to what other big tech corps have. It’d be a great retention tool for young workers (which B sorely needs).
How long ago? Comments in here and on other Boeing threads I've seen seem to point to more desire among the younger new hires. Just my impression from on here and my one friend that works for B and lives near Payne.
About 8-9 years ago. They tried it on the south end. Auburn to Renton. They got a fancy touring bus with WiFi and all. I was Vanpooling at the time so it didn't appeal to me. They did it for a few months and never brought it up again. But that's the lazy B way.
That is (sadly) actually the case. The majority of Boeing Everett’s employees don’t live in Lynnwood/Everett/LFP/Edmonds, but *way* north in various areas of Marysville, Lake Stevens, Smokey Point and Arlington. The culture in the industry is blue collar, suburban and car-oriented.
Yep, that's pretty much it. Either lacking desire or competence.
Community Transit built a fairly large transit center (Seaway TC) on the eastern edge of the Boeing plant back in about 2016 or 17.
Boeing has (or had as of about 3 years ago) shuttles that meander around the plant, but they are very slow, infrequent, and nonsensically routed. And in no way timed to the buses that serve the transit center.
I worked in facilities while I was there, and they were constantly griping about not having enough space on site...even though significantly more than half of their property was devoted to parking lots.
My GF used to work at Boeing and I still have several friends who do, both north and south facilities.
My guess: there isn't very much demand for it. Outside of some young engineers who move to the city, the vast majority of their employees, engineering and manufacturing, already live out in the farther flung suburbs.
I can't remember if they changed but, but pretty sure they were going to run a frequent-ish rush hour bus loop from the light rails station out to Paine field once complete.
>I can't remember if they changed but, but pretty sure they were going to run a frequent-ish rush hour bus loop from the light rails station out to Paine field once complete.
See, I remember this too, but it feels so stupid when they could run *one* reverse commute train *now* and skip the "wait 15 years" part of it
It's because the tracks are owned by BNSF not Sounder. Sounder cannot increase the frequency without approval of the freight company.
As a side note, this is why link is building a new rail line -- otherwise it'd make much more sense just to increase frequency of the existing sounder line and add underground/at grade stations to the existing line.
I know *why*, I just don't like the reasoning for it. We should be focused on multi-modal systems, and I just wish the Sounder was a part of that for the region, since it'd be a lot more effective if we used heavy-rail for that kind of trip.
EDIT: Obviously *some* transit is better than *no* transit, and I'm excited for every advancement the light rail makes.
Are you referring to the Swift Green Line? It's been running since 2019 and connects the Boeing plant (via Seaway Transit Center) to Airport Road, Mill Creek, and Canyon Park.
I was referring to the future LINK planks. Looks like I got it slightly wrong and they are taking the LINK directly to Paine field.
I couldn't remember if that was the final alignment or if they were sticking to I5 and going to run a circulator bus instead. I remember that was one of the debates.
In the Bay Area, Genentech has their own, private, commuter bus system with that picks up from various suburbs around the bay and takes people to their campus in South San Francisco. It's kind of shocking more big employers don't do something like that.
Metro used to run a bus from Auburn to Boeing Everett, but it was cancelled during the pandemic cuts. Your best bet right now is to take Route 512 up to Lynnwood and transfer to Route 107, which is a limited express to the Boeing plant that primarily caters towards first shift.
Alas, the Boeing campus is really not made for good transit connections, though not for a lack of trying. The Swift Green Line has decent service all day to a transit center where you can transfer to the employee shuttles if Route 107 doesn't work for you, but it doesn't link up directly with Route 512.
I'm likely going to end up taking the 512 and then biking from South Everett to whatever the main building is called... 40-82 or something... which is 5 miles or so. I used to bike to Woodinville from Eastlake
I just *don't want to drive*. I'll hopefully likely find some sort of carpooling group.
Lots of people use van pools. In my 11 years of working there there have been at least 3 efforts started to get a bus route going but they all fizzle out. Most people prefer to drive or live in the 'burbs I guess. Perhaps when Light Rail reaches far enough north it will encourage more transit commuters.
Honestly, even Metro isn't great at coordinating with the ferries. (Getting from the nearest practical stop to Coleman dock isn't as straight forward as it should be, but I hope that changes when the remodel is FINALLY done.)
But yeah, Community Transit is worse. Can't tell the number of times I've walked off the boat only to see the bus leaving because their times aren't synced up.
Of course, this is no big deal if they run ever 10 or 15 minutes, but when they run once an hour, it's rather infuriating.
Community Transit is planning to boost service to the ferry terminal from the Lynnwood light rail station (being built at the transit center) and Mountlake Terrace in 2024. They're generally aiming for buses every 30 minutes until 11 pm, but if you write to them [in the survey form](https://transit2024.participate.online/) they could extend the hours a bit more.
The lack of Renton access is glaring.
And the lack of connection between U-District and Ballard is ridiculous. Is bus service that good between those two points?
Renton refused to participate so ST skipped them.
U-district to Ballard has a subway line in the original ST 3 package but it was dropped as they needed votes outside just king county. The only way we get this line is if Seattle funds it themselves.
It’s just so minimal. It’s unbelievably frustrating to have lived here for most of my life and to see that in another 25 years nothing will have really changed.
I still can't believe how long a lot of the light rail goes for. A lot of that should be a sturdier, faster rail. Like, if I'm in downtown Seattle, I can get on the light rail and it'll take me around 40 minutes to get to the airport, and then I have to walk another 10 minutes and that's IGNORING how much I had to walk to get to Westlake, but I can jump in a car from there and, in bad traffic, I'm there in under 30 minutes.
I love rail, like I'm a dork for the stuff, but this just isn't all that practical. Light rail should be used in dense areas, not for distance traveling of that magnitude.... and they plan on extending the rail even farther than it already goes, as light rail.
Hell, better some rail than none, I suppose 🤷♀️
They really need to give traffic priority to the light rail when it is street running or else it will be held up at every intersection. That and maybe increasing speeds and eliminating more grade crossings.
Do you know if the light rail can handle any higher speeds than what it's currently running at?
Totally agreed on grade crossings and Street running. I have no clue why they even run it on the streets, that's what a street car is for. And even then, there really shouldn't be any normal traffic allowed in the path of a street car!!
It's honestly all just a North America problem. I probably just need to shut up and move overseas 😂
I'm sure the LRT vehicles can handle higher speeds, it's probably a safety restriction to reduce the speed and also because of the street intersections.
Tbh, I really don't think light rail is all that great, especially if it has a lot of street-running segments. If they really want to create a rapid transit system without spending as much money on a full-scale subway, they could've invested in a light metro system like the Vancouver Skytrain. It would've been much better because it has both higher capacity than LRT and faster speeds because of total grade separation.
I hope that someday Sound Transit can convert the light rail into a light metro because most of the infrastructure already exists for it. It would be so much better and will attract more riders because of the prospect of getting to work faster by avoiding traffic entirely on a grade-separated right of way.
Same with Woodinville.
I can't believe we pay for the tabs tax and get buses. I love the light rail and drive from Woodinville to Northgate to take it into the city, but fucking buses? Buses get stuck in the same traffic my car does. I'd rather be sitting in my car than crammed in next to other people if I am going to sit in stop and go.
Other drivers need to be able to turn off of 522, making these 'dedicated lanes' actual general purpose lanes at almost every intersection.
Bus Rapid Transit that's not actually completely separated is not really BRT. They just want to call it that while screwing over that entire part of the region.
> I love the light rail and drive from Woodinville to Northgate to take it into the city, but fucking buses? Buses get stuck in the same traffic my car does.
I doubt Woodinville / Bothell have the density for light rail stations, so going with a feeder BRT system that gets dedicated lanes and priority signaling to avoid traffic snarls seems like a best use of taxpayer dollars.
> I can't believe we pay for the tabs tax and get buses.
Alright, let's not pretend that Woodinville is getting the short end of the stick when it comes to funding.
NE side is totally screwed. Massive neighborhoods are popping up and absolutely no improvements to local infra.
I would not want to be there in 10yr from now, gridlock every day even after rushhour.
It basically is the same as the long-range plans made in the 1980s by Metro and 1990s by Sound Transit, with some changes here and there. Sadly this does not mean some of the needed forward-thinking measures (like stub tunnels and crossovers to prevent construction disruption) were adopted.
It seems strange that they wouldn’t connect the Alaska Junction stop to Burien. But, oh well.
I was very excited to get a stop in my neighborhood, but it looks like there’s a 1/3 chance that one of these stations will be built exactly on my house based on current proposals 🫠
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Just make sure to shut down the lines at 12:30 because nobody should be out past midnight in this little town. At 12:31 it goes from 24 min to 1:15 min to get to Northgate Transit Center via transit, the joy.
Man, it's a bit funny looking at this compared to a future map of Portland - [https://i.redd.it/u4y8w6mbyyf61.png](https://i.redd.it/u4y8w6mbyyf61.png)
I know they had a 30 year head start, but just so far behind...
Some of those lines aren't even in planning and likely won't be built until far after 2040. Portland was early to the light rail game but will ultimately be paying the price long-term, with their too-short trainsets, limited capacity, street-running segments, and lack of downtown tunnel.
30 year headstart and multiple of those lines are not on their own track. There's a lot of interlining in Portland, which makes maps like that look better than the situation actually is.
Portland's service frequency is also not great.
Awesome that the 1 will go all the way to Tacoma and that the 3 will go all the way to Everett. Much better than the ridiculousness that is the still not connected North and South stations in Boston.
I...had honestly expected a bit more by 2044.
I mean, it doesn't need to go the Moon, but this seems pretty doable in a decade.
That said, I guess the second best time to build a metro is today.
Barely robust. AND it will take too long.
I'm certain this won't be don't on time.
Pisses me off that we have to deal with shitty logistics in one of the largest economies on the planet.
Old guy response here. Presumably you're in your late 20s? I'm in my late 40s. Funny how when you're in your late 20s your late 40s seem forever away, but looking backwards it feels like it was a little while ago.
Anyway...my rambling point here is when I was that age ST hadn't even officially broken ground on converting the bus tunnel into a light rail line. Here we are 22 years later and you can actually take light rail from SEA up to Northgate.
If this goes on schedule (I know, I know) you're going to have an amazing foundation for a light rail system. I'm planning on riding it when I'm 70, and I'm glad others much younger than me will be able to as well.
To answer your question: yeah, you'll probably have to transfer. Assuming this is like modern metros in other cities when it's done, it also should be a non-issue. Get off train A, walk for a couple of minutes to the other platform, and wait a couple of minutes for train B to arrive and then you're on your way. It's easy enough to do in places like NYC, DC, Paris, London, Tokyo, etc. so I'm guessing we can get it right eventually.
When I see the network built out, I see obvious gaps. This isn't new lines that are needed but extensions to cover more of the city:
1. The green line should not end at Ballard, but go to Greenwood.
2. The purple line should go into Kirkland, possibly as far as Juanita.
3. The green line south should not end at the Tacoma dome, but go to downtown Tacoma.
On the subject of the north Seattle line, my expectation is that it will need another train depot. Therefore the line will go from somewhere in Ballard (the desirable but impractical end should be Golden Gardens), through to U village, up through lake city and have a depot somewhere before reaching Bothell.
Wow still no way to go east-west in north seattle… driving east west takes forever and light rail would be a great alternative to taking a car. Also, I guess north Ballard and Greenwood are screwed? Don’t bother putting in the light blue commuter rail so you can see how much of north seattle is ignored despite tons of apartment development in the last decade 🙄 Did these urban planners even go to college?
The cynicism in this thread is the same kind of crap that prevents efforts like these from going through faster. Just like NIMBY is "not unless I will directly benefit from it". Think of the future and the incremental progress. This is going to be great for the region.
Like I get that most people on here are joking, but jesus did people think a light rail system gets built overnight? Or even a year?
And how does the saying go again... "A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in"? Or I guess we can just update it to "fuck you got mine"
It was approved by a majority, but the bonds required a supermajority of 60 percent. Even if it was approved, I don't doubt some later meddling would have meant only a portion of the system would exist as planned.
The money instead went to the Atlanta system, but their subway isn't great - from talking to locals, it's good if you want to go to the airport but not much else (although I'm sure there are differing opinions on this). So even if Forward Thrust had passed, I'm not sure if it would have necessarily succeeded. Although Atlanta and Seattle are two very different cities so it's hard to say what Seattle's subway would have ended up like.
I don't think anyone expects this to be done in a year. However, I don't think it's unreasonable for people to think that the system in this image should take less than ~50 years to build. (The first light rail funding was approved in 1996.)
Individual Chinese cities have built more than this entire system in the last ten years. The fact that this isn’t a 2030 map shows that there’s something deeply structurally wrong with The US ability to build urban public works projects.
Chinese ability to crank out public works is honestly admirable. Just see how fast they built high speed rail from Beijing to Shanghai. A lot easier too when the Chinese government straight up kick people out of their homes that are in the way of public works projects, have a more... shall we say permissive view of the environment, and have an huge supply of cheap labor that can work around the clock.
It’s not just China though, London literally built an entire 40 station line in just ten to twelve years, the Elizabeth line, which is far more ambitious than this entire system overhaul Seattle is working on.
> Like I get that most people on here are joking, but jesus did people think a light rail system gets built overnight? Or even a year?
How long do *you* think it takes? The majority of NYC's subway lines got built in 20 years, and that was *a hundred years ago*.
It is not taking us this long because the work is hard. It's taking us this long because the city is prioritizing corporations over people.
Yeah they'll expand the cars as the rail expands. That's what they did when the light rail expanded to Northgate and they have more trains arriving for when the rail expands again soon.
They're also building more maintenance garages to house them too. They just finished a yard in Bellevue if I remember right. They're looking at a location in Federal Way as well. I assume they'll have one up north eventually to
ITT: Every motherfucker complaining that they'll be in their 50s or 60s when this is done as if they'll be dead, that improving infrastructure is only for them so if it isn't an immediate benefit then it's a fucking waste, or as if that getting older isn't exactly when they'll want to ride a fucking train instead of driving.
Like, what the fuck people? Do you not know anyone who A) is in their 50s or older, B) who is young enough that this will drastically improve their transportation options throughout the region or C) are totally okay with helping improve things even when it's not for instant gratification?
What lucky grandkids I'll have. They can use the rail system to visit me in the retirement home.
This, but unironically. I have no issue supporting things that won’t directly help *me* but will be a huge boon to others.
I'm totally cool with supporting these investments, but it certainly would be nice to make this stuff happen faster / would have been nice to do them decades earlier. 🤷♂️
The best way to have made it happen sooner is to have funded it earlier.
We can't change the past. So the best way to get it done sooner is to get it done sooner. There is 0 reason this should take more then 5 years.
No other state builds light rail systems faster. Europe and Asia build rail systems about twice as fast but not 4 times faster like you're implying. The truth is we stopped building these systems for 50 years. We've forgotten how to do it and we have to relearn. That takes time.
I wish the generation before me had the same mindset as you. We should have had a functional rail system 20 years ago. Personally I'm going to adopt the boomer mentality of fuck them grandkids. I want great stuff for me right this instant and fuck everyone else after me forever.
The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is right now.
If only our grandparents or even our parents thought that way.
Probably your grave
fingers crossed
Actually, they’ll be visiting you via VR from their drone hovering over your grave.
As long as they help me set up my printer, that's all I can ask.
That’s cool, I don’t want to go west-east between ballard and UW anyway
The 44 will probably still be running in 100 years
Sometimes I feel like my ride on the 44 is taking 100 years
only going a few stops i take it?
The old 7 before it was split up was 2 1/2 hours and that was forever from Rainier Beach to UDistrict, it was a crazy long ride on old buses.
A Ballard - UW - Kirkland - Overlake line would be amazing. Maybe by 2064.
Going east-west is pretty much fucked anywhere in the city with these plans. It's all north-south dominated.
As is tradition
Well to be fair, look at the geography. I’m all for public transit, but I’m honestly unsure if a Ballard—UW train line would make sense. It’s just not that much distance. I guess if it’s part of a longer route maybe. Edit: I think some of other commenters can’t get out of the minds of commuters, and not consider the cost to build. Of course it’d be extremely useful to have rail between Ballard and the U District. It’d be well utilized. But as I said in other comments, I’m not sure the billions upon billions it’d cost to build a mere 3.5 mile long route would be justifiable given other alternatives.
44 would be better if there were bus-only lanes on the entirety of the route
44 should just run along the Burke-Gilman because fuck bicyclists and those other non-SOV car drivers. (jk)
Is going underground feasible then?
I hope so. Japan has often used subways to connect neighborhoods without destroying existing residential areas.
It's not much distance, but it takes *forfuckingever*, which sounds like bang for your buck. I suspect taking a bike on the Burke-Gillman is faster than the major crosstown car routes.
It would honestly be a game changer. Sound Transit did a preliminary study of it and found that the journey time would be eight minutes. That’s faster than driving that journey, and the 44 is one of the busier buses in the system.
I referenced tradition as the east-west transit within Seattle has long been lacking; it was not only about the construction of a new rail line.
> I’m honestly unsure if a Ballard—UW train line would make sense. It’s just not that much distance. It’s a 90+ minute walk, I feel like it’s very reasonable to build a public transit option over that distance
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Relying that heavily on the 44 Bus is a damn shame considering how backed up Market/46th/45th gets. Separated transit seems like a no brainer for that corridor but here we are.
Seattle is making the same mistake many American cities have made in developing rapid transit/light rail, they're going in/out of the city to accommodate commuters instead of making it easier to travel within the city like most cities around the world. Instead of following arterials built for cars, it should rethink that strategy and connect neighborhoods together.
We need both. The suburban extensions are freeing up a lot of bus service hours that are otherwise wasted sitting on I-5 and help funnel away would-be drivers. As the suburbs are more affordable than Seattle itself, improving transit links on these trunks are also good for equity.
yeah, I mean this is fine but supplement the hell out of it. BRT lines etc.
I like this idea.
This is the biggest oversight of them all, the east-West routes across North Seattle suck already and then this does nothing to solve that.
We've been thinking of moving from downtown up to the Greenwood area and all the houses we're looking at are roughly 1.5-2 miles from the Northgate station. Hilariously, you have to walk at least a mile to the southeast to find a bus that will take you north to Northgate, and with the whole trip taking significantly longer than just walking the whole way. Absolutely disgusting.
Yeah, extending that green line to go over to U-Village or the children’s hospital would be great.
There needs to be some ring routes. Ballard>Fremont>UW>Magnusson Park>Lake City>Northgate>Holman Curve>Ballard makes sense. It doesn't even need to be light rail for some of them. A streetcar/tram loop would work in some smaller neighborhood areas.
I think they may look into some BRT for that for Sound Transit 4 but that probably won't come until 2050.
Seems like if it isn't ligh rail, the city should just taken it on themselves in collaboration with Metro. Remove the ~100 spots of street parking on 45th and make a dedicated bus lane with signal priority and keep the queue hops under Aurora and the 44 would be far more useful and serve more people than the parking. I used to be able to walk faster than riding that bus at rush hour.
We still can. Seattle can do its own projects within the city limits.
Oh great! Just in time for me to be dead.
Holy shit, that made me laugh.
It made me sad because it's true. With the pissing matches people have over the Ballard station I'd be surprised if even half of this is completed by 2044.
Part of that is due to our car obsessed culture.
It’s sort of chicken and the egg. Our infrastructure is all built around the car. Our country is super young and didn’t really build up from agrarian societies over thousands of years. We basically won ww2 and got hooked on highways and oil. Hence cars are central to life in America. Not nearly as conducive to transit expansion as European cities and countries which were all build abound foot and horse travel centuries ago. What I’m sayin is, we’re kinda fucked. Like light rail stations go to park and rides…. Cool lol.
Los Angeles used to have the most extensive streetcar system in the world before it was systematically destroyed.
I think we had one too
Yes, Seattle had interurban trains running from Everett all the way to Tacoma 100 years ago. Seattle had an extensive streetcar system, too. But cars killed these transit systems in the 1930s. A lot of I-5 in South Snohomish County runs along the old interurban route. So sad that we didn't keep that infrastructure and are having to rebuild it now.
Cars didn't kill those transit systems, car and gas COMPANIES did.
We also had an Everett to downtown inter-urban trolley
That's a nice explanation, but not exactly accurate. We destroyed large swaths of our cities to build the highway system, and it took a ton of investment to widen our streets to accommodate cars. No, we didn't have centuries worth of organic growth to combat, but even the northwest outpost of Seattle tripled in size (from 1100 to 3500) between 1870 and 1880, reaching 450,000+ by 1950. That's a lot of growth to work between for cars! East coast cities are even older and bigger. I think the real issue is not that we could not and cannot divorce ourselves from cars, but that after WWII we had a flush economy and money was cheap so we undertook a grand social experiment of rural living with urban amenities. The only way that was feasible was massive government investment/subsidies in utilities (electricity, plumbing, concrete) and cheap cars with cheap fuel. It worked, more or less, for 50 some odd years, but it's not really feasible without ongoing government subsidies. In a globalized economy, we can't really sit back on being the lone industrialized nation still standing anymore/again, so what do we do? The question is do we say that suburban experiment is a failure and reboot, or do we keep building out and kick the can down the road, pumping more money into more distant water treatment plants, pouring more concrete instead of repairing the bridges we already have? It's less of an economic question than a political question, as there is a HUGE number of people who think suburban life is their birthright, and tearing down parts of our cities to make way for improved mass transit feels even more like an experiment than the one we're accustomed to.
A lot of European cities went all-in on car infrastructure after WW2 as well and only recently got serious about infrastructure for other modes of transport. Take Amsterdam for example. In the 70s it had been completely taken over by cars and today it has some of the best bike, tram, and train infrastructure in the world. https://exploring-and-observing-cities.org/2016/01/11/amsterdam-historic-images-depicting-the-transition-from-cars-to-bikes/
Not wrong but it’s not like they leveled the city and rebuilt it for the car. The way our cities, suburbs and interconnected roads are all literally built with the car in mind. Amsterdam more or less shoehorned cars in, then walked it back
Ya, park and ride is crazy, you have to be able to afford a car, insurance, licensing fees, parking fees, and pay for light rail! If I need a car then I’ll just drive, way faster and more convenient.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.
A large portion of this will be opening in the next 3 years, including the extension to Redmond through Bellevue, the extension north to Lynnwood, and the extension south to Federal Way.
I was just thinking that! Hopefully Russia doesn’t nuke us.
Exactly. Completed after global warming kills me or Yellowstone super volcano flattens my way to taxed home.
I love the look of this. Great job! But Judkins Park Station is missing 😶
Thanks for pointing that out! I have fixed it so you should be able to click the links in my comment and see the fixed version.
👍👍
I also think the midtown station should be east of the current transit tunnel.
Would have been a lot cooler if we hadn’t rejected federal mass transit money in the 70s which went to Atlanta.
still irks me we are not getting it fully funded by now we have had nearly 2 years of Dem control. I think Buttigieg is writing Washington off because Washington always gets written off because we never bite back. Hes too busy worrying about people getting on their gas guzzling summer vacation flights to France and lines at sea-tac than the enormous carbon footprint of our ground based infrastructure.
This is a diagram of the complete Sound Transit system that was voted for by the Puget Sound region voters in 1996, 2008, and 2016. This map includes all of the existing, under construction, and upcoming expansions to the Greater Seattle metro area rapid transit system. This includes the Link Light Rail, Sounder Commuter Rail, and future Stride Bus Rapid Transit. This diagram also includes provisional stations included in the Sound Transit 3 plan and has a conservative completion date of 2044. This diagram was designed in the style of the New York City subway Independent System maps of the 1930s - 1940s. I really like the look of this design and decided to apply it to the upcoming state of the Greater Seattle system. If you like this map and wish to view it in higher quality or to download, please visit the links below: PNG: https://drive.google.com/file/d/104LZApFG7R7kZgTfLNTC7lndljlrke50/view?usp=sharing PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/106qbGJ25NGV9H9hKEU2b4LgSkgKDuqCm/view?usp=sharing
By 2044, I would hope that the light rail would go to Bellingham, but it looks like even Renton is too much of a stretch.
There's no room for more transit in Renton, the map key is in the way
Where will the specific stations be located? Is that known? I'm interested in Lakemont and Issaquah.
It’s disappointing the way Burien and white center are totally neglected. Those are some of the poorest neighborhoods and the people that would benefit the most from public transit
I’m spending the week in London with its vast subway subsystem and it’s astounding how magnificent the system is, even though I’ll be in my 50s by the time this is complete it’s nice to know they’re finally starting to work on getting it done.
Your comment made me realize I will also be in my 50s…. Death is speeding towards me.
70s here
The region has had MANY opportunities to do this over the decades and the voters always decline. I was surprised ST2 and ST3 passed. It killed our cheap car tabs but its LONG overdue. I do have a few gripes, like the used of express busses and commuter rail in lieu of a bigger expansion of light rail, but its better than what we had. (I wanted a light rail replacement of the Sounder going up 167 from Tacoma to Tukwila through Renton.
> London with its vast subway subsystem and it’s astounding how magnificent the system is, Stockholm, Sweden here. All the locals hate it because it's slow/late/inefficient/not good enough, and I laugh. I lived in San Antonio. *Having* a transit system is glorious. Having one as good as Sweden's is a goddamned miracle. I can get from Stockholm to Linkoping, 2.5 hours south, by a simple ticket in an "ATM" looking device. From there, I can do the same and get to Malmo, in the south. Or over to Copenhagen, same thing. Or I can use local transit on a simple bus pass. You buy that for 48 hours or 72, or a week or a month, then just blip it on the bus/subway/commuter train and light rail and go where you need to go.
That even in 2044, there's no better mass transit option to get from the Edmonds ferry to Seattle is a goddamn travesty. The last ferry to Kingston may leave at 11:45pm, but the last bus from the Lynnwood transit center to Edmonds Station leaves at around 10pm. Pretty big disconnect there. On a Saturday night, I can get from my friend's place in west Seattle to the Lynnwood TC for about $5, but to get from there to the ferry via Uber/Lyft late at night will run me almost $20, because the buses have stopped running. Transit for EVERY FERRY!
I'm starting a new job at Boeing up in Everett. Live in Seattle, totally willing to bike downtown to catch the Sounder, no problem... except... There's no reverse commute. Boeing is this massive employer in the region, steps from the Mukilteo Ferry station and there's not *one* bus/train/anything that goes directly from anywhere in Seattle to Paine Field. Unless someone has an idea that I'm just missing right now.
It’s kind of a head scratcher that such a big employer wouldn’t have the clout or whatnot to warrant a transit option anywhere nearby. Here in Beaverton, OR we have Nike and they pretty much have their own rail line stop on the southwest corner of the Nike campus.
They don't lack the clout, they lack the desire.
If they add permanent transit to the campus, people might think they intend on staying in the region and take their periodic threats to close less seriously.
That’s shitty of them. “Want to work here? You need a car.”
That’s basically what they say! It blows my mind that they haven’t tried wifi-equipped commuter shuttles akin to what other big tech corps have. It’d be a great retention tool for young workers (which B sorely needs).
They tried, nobody used them.
How long ago? Comments in here and on other Boeing threads I've seen seem to point to more desire among the younger new hires. Just my impression from on here and my one friend that works for B and lives near Payne.
About 8-9 years ago. They tried it on the south end. Auburn to Renton. They got a fancy touring bus with WiFi and all. I was Vanpooling at the time so it didn't appeal to me. They did it for a few months and never brought it up again. But that's the lazy B way.
That is (sadly) actually the case. The majority of Boeing Everett’s employees don’t live in Lynnwood/Everett/LFP/Edmonds, but *way* north in various areas of Marysville, Lake Stevens, Smokey Point and Arlington. The culture in the industry is blue collar, suburban and car-oriented.
Didn’t know that. Must have been before my time
Boing doesn’t pay well enough to live in Seattle anyways. It’s by design.
Yep, that's pretty much it. Either lacking desire or competence. Community Transit built a fairly large transit center (Seaway TC) on the eastern edge of the Boeing plant back in about 2016 or 17. Boeing has (or had as of about 3 years ago) shuttles that meander around the plant, but they are very slow, infrequent, and nonsensically routed. And in no way timed to the buses that serve the transit center. I worked in facilities while I was there, and they were constantly griping about not having enough space on site...even though significantly more than half of their property was devoted to parking lots.
My GF used to work at Boeing and I still have several friends who do, both north and south facilities. My guess: there isn't very much demand for it. Outside of some young engineers who move to the city, the vast majority of their employees, engineering and manufacturing, already live out in the farther flung suburbs. I can't remember if they changed but, but pretty sure they were going to run a frequent-ish rush hour bus loop from the light rails station out to Paine field once complete.
>I can't remember if they changed but, but pretty sure they were going to run a frequent-ish rush hour bus loop from the light rails station out to Paine field once complete. See, I remember this too, but it feels so stupid when they could run *one* reverse commute train *now* and skip the "wait 15 years" part of it
It's because the tracks are owned by BNSF not Sounder. Sounder cannot increase the frequency without approval of the freight company. As a side note, this is why link is building a new rail line -- otherwise it'd make much more sense just to increase frequency of the existing sounder line and add underground/at grade stations to the existing line.
I know *why*, I just don't like the reasoning for it. We should be focused on multi-modal systems, and I just wish the Sounder was a part of that for the region, since it'd be a lot more effective if we used heavy-rail for that kind of trip. EDIT: Obviously *some* transit is better than *no* transit, and I'm excited for every advancement the light rail makes.
Are you referring to the Swift Green Line? It's been running since 2019 and connects the Boeing plant (via Seaway Transit Center) to Airport Road, Mill Creek, and Canyon Park.
I was referring to the future LINK planks. Looks like I got it slightly wrong and they are taking the LINK directly to Paine field. I couldn't remember if that was the final alignment or if they were sticking to I5 and going to run a circulator bus instead. I remember that was one of the debates.
In the Bay Area, Genentech has their own, private, commuter bus system with that picks up from various suburbs around the bay and takes people to their campus in South San Francisco. It's kind of shocking more big employers don't do something like that.
Boeing has that in the form of Community Transit's commuter routes, but they can only really serve first shift workers.
Metro used to run a bus from Auburn to Boeing Everett, but it was cancelled during the pandemic cuts. Your best bet right now is to take Route 512 up to Lynnwood and transfer to Route 107, which is a limited express to the Boeing plant that primarily caters towards first shift. Alas, the Boeing campus is really not made for good transit connections, though not for a lack of trying. The Swift Green Line has decent service all day to a transit center where you can transfer to the employee shuttles if Route 107 doesn't work for you, but it doesn't link up directly with Route 512.
I'm likely going to end up taking the 512 and then biking from South Everett to whatever the main building is called... 40-82 or something... which is 5 miles or so. I used to bike to Woodinville from Eastlake I just *don't want to drive*. I'll hopefully likely find some sort of carpooling group.
Lots of people use van pools. In my 11 years of working there there have been at least 3 efforts started to get a bus route going but they all fizzle out. Most people prefer to drive or live in the 'burbs I guess. Perhaps when Light Rail reaches far enough north it will encourage more transit commuters.
Transferring from King County Metro to Community Transit feels like going back in time two decades.
Honestly, even Metro isn't great at coordinating with the ferries. (Getting from the nearest practical stop to Coleman dock isn't as straight forward as it should be, but I hope that changes when the remodel is FINALLY done.) But yeah, Community Transit is worse. Can't tell the number of times I've walked off the boat only to see the bus leaving because their times aren't synced up. Of course, this is no big deal if they run ever 10 or 15 minutes, but when they run once an hour, it's rather infuriating.
Community Transit is planning to boost service to the ferry terminal from the Lynnwood light rail station (being built at the transit center) and Mountlake Terrace in 2024. They're generally aiming for buses every 30 minutes until 11 pm, but if you write to them [in the survey form](https://transit2024.participate.online/) they could extend the hours a bit more.
The lack of Renton access is glaring. And the lack of connection between U-District and Ballard is ridiculous. Is bus service that good between those two points?
44 is not bad if you live along the route, which I used to....
Renton refused to participate so ST skipped them. U-district to Ballard has a subway line in the original ST 3 package but it was dropped as they needed votes outside just king county. The only way we get this line is if Seattle funds it themselves.
Gotta take the 160 from Renton to Kent to get on the rail I guess
It’s just so minimal. It’s unbelievably frustrating to have lived here for most of my life and to see that in another 25 years nothing will have really changed.
I still can't believe how long a lot of the light rail goes for. A lot of that should be a sturdier, faster rail. Like, if I'm in downtown Seattle, I can get on the light rail and it'll take me around 40 minutes to get to the airport, and then I have to walk another 10 minutes and that's IGNORING how much I had to walk to get to Westlake, but I can jump in a car from there and, in bad traffic, I'm there in under 30 minutes. I love rail, like I'm a dork for the stuff, but this just isn't all that practical. Light rail should be used in dense areas, not for distance traveling of that magnitude.... and they plan on extending the rail even farther than it already goes, as light rail. Hell, better some rail than none, I suppose 🤷♀️
They really need to give traffic priority to the light rail when it is street running or else it will be held up at every intersection. That and maybe increasing speeds and eliminating more grade crossings.
Do you know if the light rail can handle any higher speeds than what it's currently running at? Totally agreed on grade crossings and Street running. I have no clue why they even run it on the streets, that's what a street car is for. And even then, there really shouldn't be any normal traffic allowed in the path of a street car!! It's honestly all just a North America problem. I probably just need to shut up and move overseas 😂
I'm sure the LRT vehicles can handle higher speeds, it's probably a safety restriction to reduce the speed and also because of the street intersections. Tbh, I really don't think light rail is all that great, especially if it has a lot of street-running segments. If they really want to create a rapid transit system without spending as much money on a full-scale subway, they could've invested in a light metro system like the Vancouver Skytrain. It would've been much better because it has both higher capacity than LRT and faster speeds because of total grade separation. I hope that someday Sound Transit can convert the light rail into a light metro because most of the infrastructure already exists for it. It would be so much better and will attract more riders because of the prospect of getting to work faster by avoiding traffic entirely on a grade-separated right of way.
Amen!!
I misread this is 2024 and was exceedingly excited and now I'm depressed.
I love seeing a rail system 20 years from now that is inadequate to support the current needs.
Sad bothell noises
It looks like Bothell will have a few stations, no? Am I missing something?
That's rapid bus stops. Light rail ignores the East side except for the lower section in Bellevue/Redmond/Issaquah.
Same with Woodinville. I can't believe we pay for the tabs tax and get buses. I love the light rail and drive from Woodinville to Northgate to take it into the city, but fucking buses? Buses get stuck in the same traffic my car does. I'd rather be sitting in my car than crammed in next to other people if I am going to sit in stop and go.
BRT should have dedicated lanes so it is less prone to getting stuck in traffic.
Other drivers need to be able to turn off of 522, making these 'dedicated lanes' actual general purpose lanes at almost every intersection. Bus Rapid Transit that's not actually completely separated is not really BRT. They just want to call it that while screwing over that entire part of the region.
> I love the light rail and drive from Woodinville to Northgate to take it into the city, but fucking buses? Buses get stuck in the same traffic my car does. I doubt Woodinville / Bothell have the density for light rail stations, so going with a feeder BRT system that gets dedicated lanes and priority signaling to avoid traffic snarls seems like a best use of taxpayer dollars.
> I can't believe we pay for the tabs tax and get buses. Alright, let's not pretend that Woodinville is getting the short end of the stick when it comes to funding.
You live in a bougie white suburb, what do you expect? Move to the city.
NE side is totally screwed. Massive neighborhoods are popping up and absolutely no improvements to local infra. I would not want to be there in 10yr from now, gridlock every day even after rushhour.
It frustrates me to no end that transit maps always completely neglect East/west travel across the city.
It feels to me this is the way it should have been thought from the beginning. And even the plan in the picture has room for improvements
It basically is the same as the long-range plans made in the 1980s by Metro and 1990s by Sound Transit, with some changes here and there. Sadly this does not mean some of the needed forward-thinking measures (like stub tunnels and crossovers to prevent construction disruption) were adopted.
It seems strange that they wouldn’t connect the Alaska Junction stop to Burien. But, oh well. I was very excited to get a stop in my neighborhood, but it looks like there’s a 1/3 chance that one of these stations will be built exactly on my house based on current proposals 🫠
That will be done by 2075, 2100 at the latest.
They still could in a future proposal, and it certainly makes sense to do so. It just wasn't in scope for ST3.
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Just make sure to shut down the lines at 12:30 because nobody should be out past midnight in this little town. At 12:31 it goes from 24 min to 1:15 min to get to Northgate Transit Center via transit, the joy.
Man, it's a bit funny looking at this compared to a future map of Portland - [https://i.redd.it/u4y8w6mbyyf61.png](https://i.redd.it/u4y8w6mbyyf61.png) I know they had a 30 year head start, but just so far behind...
Some of those lines aren't even in planning and likely won't be built until far after 2040. Portland was early to the light rail game but will ultimately be paying the price long-term, with their too-short trainsets, limited capacity, street-running segments, and lack of downtown tunnel.
To be fair, a lot of Portland's future system is interlined so its not that much larger than Seattle will be.
Well sure, the Seattle metro is bigger in area than the Portland metro. But the Max line will be basically twice as long in terms of laid track.
30 year headstart and multiple of those lines are not on their own track. There's a lot of interlining in Portland, which makes maps like that look better than the situation actually is. Portland's service frequency is also not great.
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Awesome that the 1 will go all the way to Tacoma and that the 3 will go all the way to Everett. Much better than the ridiculousness that is the still not connected North and South stations in Boston.
Forgot to put air quote around “rapid”.
I sure love science fiction.
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God inject this into my VEINS
It's so perty
I will be 79, if ever I should live that long. Should have started in the 70's.
Nice sepia tone to represent the 2044 wildfire sky colors.
I live in the key, glad to know we’re never getting public transit 🤙
I...had honestly expected a bit more by 2044. I mean, it doesn't need to go the Moon, but this seems pretty doable in a decade. That said, I guess the second best time to build a metro is today.
Starting to see Unsound Transit pickets all over west Seattle. Fuck the NIMBYs! Train power!
Barely robust. AND it will take too long. I'm certain this won't be don't on time. Pisses me off that we have to deal with shitty logistics in one of the largest economies on the planet.
Cool, when I'm almost 50 I can ride this. Also, we're gonna have to transfer trains to go from Northgate to SeaTac? That's unfortunate
Old guy response here. Presumably you're in your late 20s? I'm in my late 40s. Funny how when you're in your late 20s your late 40s seem forever away, but looking backwards it feels like it was a little while ago. Anyway...my rambling point here is when I was that age ST hadn't even officially broken ground on converting the bus tunnel into a light rail line. Here we are 22 years later and you can actually take light rail from SEA up to Northgate. If this goes on schedule (I know, I know) you're going to have an amazing foundation for a light rail system. I'm planning on riding it when I'm 70, and I'm glad others much younger than me will be able to as well. To answer your question: yeah, you'll probably have to transfer. Assuming this is like modern metros in other cities when it's done, it also should be a non-issue. Get off train A, walk for a couple of minutes to the other platform, and wait a couple of minutes for train B to arrive and then you're on your way. It's easy enough to do in places like NYC, DC, Paris, London, Tokyo, etc. so I'm guessing we can get it right eventually.
2044? What a joke.
I just moved to Chicago and having a passenger rail network is incredible. I’m so excited for Seattle to get their system online.
I love you greater Seattle Transit Man 🦸🏻♂️
Would sure love to see those N and S lines hook up with some Vancouver and Portland rails someday :D
When I see the network built out, I see obvious gaps. This isn't new lines that are needed but extensions to cover more of the city: 1. The green line should not end at Ballard, but go to Greenwood. 2. The purple line should go into Kirkland, possibly as far as Juanita. 3. The green line south should not end at the Tacoma dome, but go to downtown Tacoma. On the subject of the north Seattle line, my expectation is that it will need another train depot. Therefore the line will go from somewhere in Ballard (the desirable but impractical end should be Golden Gardens), through to U village, up through lake city and have a depot somewhere before reaching Bothell.
Damn, I thought it said 2024, not 2044 😂
It seems crazy to me it is going to take 20 years.
2044 sheeeesh
Hope I live long enough to see it.
This makes the great Seattle metropolitan area more connected. But we gotta wait for 2 decades to see it to happen.
The amount of bitching and moaning about what is objectively a little piece of hopeful futurism in this subreddit smh
I thought the West Seattle branch was supposed to loop around through White Center and Burien and then link into the Tukwila station?
Wow still no way to go east-west in north seattle… driving east west takes forever and light rail would be a great alternative to taking a car. Also, I guess north Ballard and Greenwood are screwed? Don’t bother putting in the light blue commuter rail so you can see how much of north seattle is ignored despite tons of apartment development in the last decade 🙄 Did these urban planners even go to college?
About 40 years too late
Just think, if they had done this when we voted for it in the early 2000s…
This looks pretty fantastic - wonder if I'll still be living here by then.
Precisely 50 years after we first voted for Sound Transit....
Why am I paying for this, it is nowhere near my house. I would need a car to access this even in 2044. WTF am I paying for this?
By 2044, it’ll need to be double that, to serve the metro area adequately.
The cynicism in this thread is the same kind of crap that prevents efforts like these from going through faster. Just like NIMBY is "not unless I will directly benefit from it". Think of the future and the incremental progress. This is going to be great for the region.
Like I get that most people on here are joking, but jesus did people think a light rail system gets built overnight? Or even a year? And how does the saying go again... "A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in"? Or I guess we can just update it to "fuck you got mine"
The realization is that no one played trees for us 30 years ago.
The problem is Seattle could've had a subway system by 1985 but they voted it out back in 1968 and now they are paying the price for it.
It was approved by a majority, but the bonds required a supermajority of 60 percent. Even if it was approved, I don't doubt some later meddling would have meant only a portion of the system would exist as planned.
Honestly the saddest timeline.
The money instead went to the Atlanta system, but their subway isn't great - from talking to locals, it's good if you want to go to the airport but not much else (although I'm sure there are differing opinions on this). So even if Forward Thrust had passed, I'm not sure if it would have necessarily succeeded. Although Atlanta and Seattle are two very different cities so it's hard to say what Seattle's subway would have ended up like.
I don't think anyone expects this to be done in a year. However, I don't think it's unreasonable for people to think that the system in this image should take less than ~50 years to build. (The first light rail funding was approved in 1996.)
Individual Chinese cities have built more than this entire system in the last ten years. The fact that this isn’t a 2030 map shows that there’s something deeply structurally wrong with The US ability to build urban public works projects.
Chinese ability to crank out public works is honestly admirable. Just see how fast they built high speed rail from Beijing to Shanghai. A lot easier too when the Chinese government straight up kick people out of their homes that are in the way of public works projects, have a more... shall we say permissive view of the environment, and have an huge supply of cheap labor that can work around the clock.
It’s not just China though, London literally built an entire 40 station line in just ten to twelve years, the Elizabeth line, which is far more ambitious than this entire system overhaul Seattle is working on.
I don’t think anyone expects 1-2 years, but 20 is a bit much. Granted it’s not like this is all-or-nothing. We’re gonna get bits and pieces over time.
> Like I get that most people on here are joking, but jesus did people think a light rail system gets built overnight? Or even a year? How long do *you* think it takes? The majority of NYC's subway lines got built in 20 years, and that was *a hundred years ago*. It is not taking us this long because the work is hard. It's taking us this long because the city is prioritizing corporations over people.
Nothing like all these drunks doing wine tastings in Woodinville and then swerve-driving home since there's no train station.
Couldn't they just use ST's Express Busses (Route 522) that feed into Roosevelt Station?
This is actually pretty great. Do they plan on buying new railroad trains and cars so there's less of a waiting time and more people can use it?
Yeah they'll expand the cars as the rail expands. That's what they did when the light rail expanded to Northgate and they have more trains arriving for when the rail expands again soon. They're also building more maintenance garages to house them too. They just finished a yard in Bellevue if I remember right. They're looking at a location in Federal Way as well. I assume they'll have one up north eventually to
Thats great! I mean this is just so good for our region. Can't wait till its fully operational.
>I assume they'll have one up north eventually to Yes, as part of the extensions past Lynnwood they will be adding another maintenance facility.
I mean look at how China building the railroads rapidly at such a vast land. This is shameful.
ITT: Every motherfucker complaining that they'll be in their 50s or 60s when this is done as if they'll be dead, that improving infrastructure is only for them so if it isn't an immediate benefit then it's a fucking waste, or as if that getting older isn't exactly when they'll want to ride a fucking train instead of driving. Like, what the fuck people? Do you not know anyone who A) is in their 50s or older, B) who is young enough that this will drastically improve their transportation options throughout the region or C) are totally okay with helping improve things even when it's not for instant gratification?
It’s the reason why we don’t have it today. The same reaction 50 years ago.