My photo: A Light Rail Driver and A Passenger Wave
This should have happened long ago, but with Thursday evening’s Sound Transit 3 meeting knowing Community Transit & Everett Transit & more will be there, thought I’d let you plant some questions into my mind.
I already got several that went from ideas to words, thanks to Mike Orr, so let me start with his help:
- What is the projected ridership for a Lynnwood – Paine Field – Everett CC corridor and where do those people live?
- How would workers get from Paine Field Station to their scattered jobs in the Paine Field industrial complex – whether at museums or flight schools or industrial?
- How will a Link route service Mukilteo and other points west towards the coast?
- What barriers are there to hourly if not half-hourly transit service from Seaway Transit Station to Hwy 525 & 84th St SW if Community Transit gets its transit levy lift?
- What if Paine Field does get its passenger terminal – what then in regards for transit?!?
- What if Sound Transit 3 only has $12 Billion of taxation authority, what then?
- How does the Mayor of Everett’s Office respond to the current issues around lack of transit ridership to Paine Field?
Plant a few more questions in the comments if you would please. As I cannot edit this post, I think I’ll post my final question list in the comments as well. So make sure to follow along here…
1st comment for notifications
Hey guys…. questions please.
Here’s what I see; maybe you can find some questions in it.
My goal is the same as everybody’s: more frequent and a longer span of service on CT and ET, and progress on the proposed Swift lines. I’m not as concerned about the routing because I’ve been impressed by CT’s improvements the past twenty years and expect them to continue. In the 80s routes were so circuitous it took a long time just to go between adjacent cities. Now many routes go from transit center to transit center with another city in between, more or less straight and serving multifamily areas. They feel faster than Metro on average. The problem is the frequency and span: the buses are great when they come but you often have to wait a long time (or use non-transit mode or forego the trip).
For Everett Transit I’d like more background information. Why is it separate from CT? What is its history and the city’s current attitude? ET seems to have a lesser span than CT. Does the city think ET has the right amount of service? Does it have future plans? Have there been any surveys of what Everett voters think?
The biggest regional issue is ensuring that Swift II has a transfer to the 512 in the middle. Canyon Park and the whole area east of I-5 is pretty isolated from the region. Without a 512 transfer, the only way to access Swift II is to live along it, transfer from another CT route, or drive to a P&R. This limits its ridership, as Swift I is also limited because it doesn’t connect to the 512 on the south end.
Another issue, although maybe more ST’s than CT’s, is express service between Snohomish County and Northgate. That’s a hole in both agencies’ networks. I’ve worked at multiple jobs in north Seattle with people who live Mill Creek, south Everett, etc, and the lack of such a route makes transit into a 2+ hour trip so I can’t realistically recommend it to them. The guy in Mill Creek did take the bus when he worked in Bellevue, but not when he works in north Seattle. Of course Link will remedy this in eight years, and CT has bigger unmet needs in its local area, but it’s frustrating that this has been ignored for decades.
Mike;
I ran this off but sadly didn’t ask many of these questions. So sorry…